Walk Boldly With Jesus: Recent Episodes
Catherine Duggan
Does life feel extra hard right now? Is it difficult to find joy in your day to day living? Do you feel like something is missing? I did. I was struggling with all of it. Life seemed so hard. Then one day I realize what was missing. I needed more Jesus in my life. Our home needed more Jesus. This may be just what you are missing too! This podcast will give you tips on how you can become closer to Jesus. It will talk about scripture and how those stories can relate to your everyday life. It will help you find joy in life again and teach you to be bold with Jesus by your side. If you would like to reach me you can email Catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or go to my website findingtruenorthcoaching.com
Music: "Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Which Path To Choose?
Isaiah 30:21 “And when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left, your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it.”
Do you ever wonder why you ask the Lord what you should do and you don’t hear a clear answer? I was talking with my spiritual advisor one time, and I told her I was going to pray about the two choices I had to choose from and see which one God wanted me to do. She told me not to be surprised if God wasn’t super specific or if He didn’t tell me which one to pick. She said He doesn’t always tell us what to do. Sometimes He lets us pick. Then we talked about how there might not be just one path God wants you to walk down. We talked about how we don’t have to worry that there is one right answer and all the rest are wrong.
I didn’t know there was scripture to back this up; it was more of a feeling. I truly felt if God wanted you to do one specific thing, he would let you know. He would place the desire to pick that one thing directly in your head. You would know what God wants you to do. Then there are the times when you really don’t know which to pick. You feel you could be happy doing either job, or you could be happy living in either place. It is in these times, I believe, the decision about which to do is left up to us because God is ok with both of them. Yesterday I was listening to another elevation church podcast, and I heard Pastor Steven Furtick read this verse, so I wanted to share it with all of you because I know many of you have been in a situation where you were praying for God to guide you one way or the other.
The verse above says, “And when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left. God will be with you no matter which you choose. We know God is always with us; however, that doesn’t mean He always supports our choices. When we are about to do something that goes against God or something God knows will lead us down a wrong path, He will let us know. Think back to all the times you made a decision that ended badly. Did you have a feeling it might? Did you feel as if God was urging you not to do it? That’s the thing: we always have a choice. Even when God knows the path won’t end well, he will warn us against it, but He will not prevent us from doing it. God honors our free will.
I think sometimes we want God to tell us which way to go so we don’t have to make the decision. If we let God choose, then we can blame Him when things go wrong, when they don’t turn out like we expected they would. Another reason we would like God to make the decisions is that there are so many decisions we have to make all throughout the day, and it can be overwhelming. Then there are also so many choices for each of those decisions. Have you ever heard the term analysis paralysis? Analysis paralysis is an inability to make a decision due to overthinking a problem. An individual or a group can have too much data. The result is endless wrangling over the upsides and downsides of each option, and an inability to pick one. This used to happen to me every time the kids would bring home a sheet from their teacher asking for donations for something. The list would have 50 things we could donate. I would look at them, and they all seemed easy enough. However, there were so many to choose from that I would usually end up frustrated and not get any. I loved the teachers who would just send home a note telling me what to bring, no choice involved.
With all the technology we have at our fingertips these days, the choices and amount of information can be overwhelming. For instance, if you are throwing a party, instead of going to the local party store and seeing what they have in stock, you can Google how to throw a party, or you can look up different themes, decorations, table pieces, and more. Pinterest is also a big thing. This is a website and an app where people post photos of things they have done, all the decorations they’ve made, all the parties they’ve had. If you go on Pinterest, you will probably get lost in your search and spend hours there, just looking at all they have to offer, and yet you will probably make very few decisions. Because of this, I am thankful to have found this verse. I am thankful to know that sometimes God is ok with us picking any path.
I want to do what God wants me to do. I want to follow His will. This is why I get frustrated sometimes when I don’t know what He wants me to do. However, what I take from this verse is that He hasn’t just set up one path for us. He hasn’t just planned our every move; He allows us to decide what we want to do. The verse goes on to say, “Your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it.” No matter which path you decide to go down, God will be there to guide you. You just need to listen to the voice you hear in your ears. God will tell you when it is time to pivot to a new job, a new house, or whatever the next step is. I watched a video about this very topic by Father Mike Schmidt. He said we tend to look for God to reassure us with every step we take. Our intentions are good; we want to know we are doing the right thing. We want to please God and to do His will. Father Mike said when God wants us to move, or to change something, he will tell us. If God is not saying something, then you are good to keep doing what you are doing. Why is it we need that constant assurance from God? We want Him to cheer on our every step. We want Him to keep telling us we are headed in the right direction.
One thing Pastor Furtick said that I think is so powerful is, “The important thing is not which road you take to get there; the important thing is how you walk on that path.” Sometimes we might have to choose between two things, and we don’t really feel God is leading us one way or another. That might be because He is ok with either path. They both could be good, and they both could be bad. Your success isn’t dependent on the path you picked; it is dependent on how you walk that path. Are you staying close to God? Are you close enough to hear that voice the verse is talking about? Are you checking in with God regularly to see if He is still ok with the path you are on, or does He want you to make a turn down a different road? How are you walking on your path? The verse says there will be a voice behind you saying, “This is the way, walk in it.” Are you listening to that voice? Are you following the directions it is giving you? If the Lord is not giving you directions, just continue going forward in the direction you are going, and when it is time to make a change, God will let you know.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to hear your voice. Help us to listen to your voice. Help us to make difficult decisions and help us to know you will be with us no matter what decision we make. Lord, we ask you to lead us down the path you want us to go, and we ask you to help us to walk uprightly down that path. Give us wisdom and discernment, Lord, so when we need to make a decision, we can make it swiftly and without too much anxiety. Lord, we ask you to help us sift through all the information and all the choices and just focus in on you, Lord. We love you, Lord. You are so great! You are the almighty one. You are the Light of the World. We adore you, and we are so grateful for all you do for us. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus! I look forward to spending time with you on Monday! Have a blessed weekend.
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Tiny Steps of Trust
Psalm 56:3-4 “But in the day that I'm afraid, I lay all my fears before you and trust in you with all my heart. What harm could a man bring to me? With God on my side, I will not be afraid of what comes.”
Today, I decided to read from the Jesus Calling Devotional. I have not done that in a while; I am unsure why. For those of you who don’t know, this is a devotional book written as if God is speaking to you each day. It is really good and often says exactly what you need to hear for that day. Today’s spoke right to me. It reminded me how important it is to trust God in all times with all things. It is just as important to trust Him with the small things as it is to trust Him with the big things. I will read today’s devotional for you, as I think it will speak to you just as much as it spoke to me.
“TRUST ME with every fiber of your being! What I can accomplish in and through you is proportional to how much you depend on me. One aspect of this is the degree to which you trust me in a crisis or major decision. Some people fail miserably here, while others are at their best in tough times. Another aspect is even more telling: the consistency of your trust in me. People who rely on me in the midst of adversity may forget about me when life is flowing smoothly. Difficult times can jolt you into awareness of your need for me, whereas smooth sailing can lull you into a stupor of self-sufficiency.
I care as much about your tiny trust-steps through daily life as about your daily dramatic leaps of faith. You may think that no one else notices, but the One who is always beside you sees everything — and rejoices. Consistently trusting in me is vital to flourishing in my presence.”
Do you see what I mean when I say it often says exactly what you need to hear for the day? I love that it is written as if God is saying it directly to you. This is truly how God talks to us. I am not sure how many of you listening have taken the time to sit and listen to what God has to say to you. If you have not, give it a try today. God wants to talk to each one of us, and yet the world around us is so noisy it is hard to hear him. However, if we sit down and take the time to listen, we will hear what He wants to tell us. This can take time and also practice. The more time you put into trying to hear God talking to you, the more clearly you will hear Him. The more you will begin to recognize what He sounds like to you.
I have a journal, and I try to write in it as often as I can. In 2020, I changed the way I write in my prayer journal. I used to just write God about my day and what was going on in my life. I still do this, but I don’t just do this. Now, I try to stop and take the time to listen to what God has to say back to me. This has been amazing. I have spent a lot of time listening and have given the Lord time to speak into my life, and it has been life-changing. You would be surprised what the Lord wants to say to you if you only gave Him the time to say it. He is so gentle and affirming.
Sometimes, we think we wouldn’t want to hear what the Lord has to say because we feel we aren’t doing a very good job, and He probably wouldn’t have anything nice to say to us. This is not true. That is what the enemy wants you to think so that you don’t stop and give the Lord time to speak love, light, and truth into your life. When you give Him the time and you listen, you will be surprised at how nicely He talks to you. You will be surprised at how much He loves you. Even in our brokenness, even in our sin, He still speaks so much love into us. It is truly amazing.
This is why I started ending each episode with the Word from the Lord that He gave to our prayer group. The more we all start hearing the way He talks to us, the more we will start to recognize it when we hear Him talking in our own lives. Here is what I do when I write to the Lord. I write Him a letter, and then I ask Him to answer me using my pen, and then I start to write a letter back to myself. I don’t question what comes to mind; I don’t overthink it; I just write everything that comes to mind. Does that mean that every single thing I write down is from the Lord? No, probably not. However, I asked Him to answer me, and when we ask, He answers, so I trust that what I am writing down is from Him.
After you are done writing it down, you can re-read it and see what you wrote and how it makes you feel. If you wrote anything down that makes you feel bad, shameful, or guilty, that is probably not from the Lord. That is not how He talks to us. Sometimes He will convict us of something if we are doing something wrong. However, He doesn’t use shame and guilt to do it. God does not condemn us. He lovingly points us in another direction and then gives us the strength to go in that other direction. Anything you are not sure of, you can take to discernment. You can ask the Lord to clarify; you can ask the Lord to explain more, and you can always go deeper with what you got in the letter. If you do this often enough, you will recognize patterns. You will see that He tends to say the same things over and over again because we tend not to listen. Yet, He keeps saying them until we do listen.
The verse above says, “But in the day that I'm afraid, I lay all my fears before you and trust in you with all my heart. What harm could a man bring to me? With God on my side, I will not be afraid of what comes.” This is a good verse for today because I know a lot of people who are staring down some pretty big fears. Whether they are worried about losing their job, getting sick, or finding a new job, it is all scary. Several people I know are also sick and are worried they won’t be healed. This can be very scary to think you will have to live with this illness for the rest of your life. This is why today’s verse is so important.
Today's verse says that I lay all my fears before you and trust you with all my heart. I hope we are all doing this. I hope when something scary comes our way, our first instinct is to turn it over to the Lord. Give Him our cares, and He will help us carry them. He will even carry them for us if we can be brave enough to let go and let Him carry them for us. Often we want to pick them back up again. But if we can fully let go, He will take care of them for us. If we can trust Him to do this, our worries and cares become so much lighter.
My favorite part of the devotional from Jesus Calling is, “Another aspect is even more telling: the consistency of your trust in me.” I also love, “I care as much about your tiny trust-steps through daily life as about your daily dramatic leaps of faith.” These both remind us that although it is important to have trust in the Lord when things are going wrong in our lives, it is just as important to trust Him when things are calm and there isn’t a crisis. Do we do this? Do we trust that God is taking care of all the things, or just the big things? When things are going well, do we still turn to the Lord, or do we try to fix those things on our own?
I think this devotional gives us something to think about. What could we be doing differently? Do we need to be more consistent with our trust in the Lord? What are those tiny trust-steps in our daily life that God is talking about? What if you took 20 minutes sometime today and sat down and asked God these questions and then wrote down whatever you think you hear Him say back to you?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to trust you. We want to trust you not only with the big things but the small things too. Please show us how; please guide us. Help us learn how to take those tiny trust-steps into our daily life. Lord, we ask that you help us hear your voice in our heads. We ask you to open our spiritual ears so we can hear you more. Lord, I ask you for a special blessing for each person. I ask that you bless them and their families. I ask that you bless their jobs, their ministries, whatever it is they do. We love you so much, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Remember, Jesus really does love you, yes, you, and so do I! Have a blessed weekend.
Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I am the crucified Christ. My blood has freed you. I have washed you clean in my blood. Block your ears to the evil one. He is jealous of my children. His mission is to destroy. I surround my children with my all-consuming love. Love that doesn't skip a beat, and he knows it. Stay strong, stay focused on me.”
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Your Jordan River Will Part
Joshua 3:13 “When the soles of the feet of the priests carrying the ark of the Lord, the Lord of the whole earth, touch the waters of the Jordan, it will cease to flow; the water flowing down from upstream will halt in a single heap.”
This is a story that I don’t remember from the Bible. I have gone through the Bible in a year twice with Father Mike, so I am sure I have heard it; I don’t remember it, so I thought we would take a look at it today, especially because I know a lot of people who need some reassurance that miracles do happen. God will take care of you no matter what circumstances you find yourself in. God is not surprised you are in these circumstances. He knew you would be in them, and He has prepared you for them. He has a plan to help you through them. Trust Him.
This verse is taking place when Joshua is trying to get the Israelites to cross the Jordon River to go into the promised land. Let me read to you this part of the story so you can see how it all unfolded. Remember, Moses led the people out of Egypt but was not able to live to lead them into the promised land. This was left to Joshua, as He was faithful and trusted that God could conquer the people who occupied that land currently. I will read you Joshua 3:7-17: “Then the Lord said to Joshua: Today I will begin to exalt you in the sight of all Israel, that they may know that, as I was with Moses, so I will be with you. Now command the priests carrying the ark of the covenant, “When you come to the edge of the waters of the Jordan, there take your stand.”
So Joshua said to the Israelites, “Come here and listen to the words of the Lord, your God.” He continued: “By this you will know that there is a living God in your midst: he will certainly dispossess before you the Canaanites, Hittites, Hivites, Perizzites, Girgashites, Amorites, and Jebusites. The ark of the covenant of the Lord of the whole earth will cross the Jordan before you. Now choose twelve men, one from each of the tribes of Israel. When the soles of the feet of the priests carrying the ark of the Lord, the Lord of the whole earth, touch the waters of the Jordan, it will cease to flow; the water flowing down from upstream will halt in a single heap.”
The people set out from their tents to cross the Jordan, with the priests carrying the ark of the covenant ahead of them. When those bearing the ark came to the Jordan and the feet of the priests bearing the ark were immersed in the waters of the Jordan—which overflows all its banks during the entire season of the harvest— the waters flowing from upstream halted, standing up in a single heap for a very great distance indeed, from Adam, a city in the direction of Zarethan; those flowing downstream toward the Salt Sea of the Arabah disappeared entirely. Thus the people crossed over opposite Jericho. The priests carrying the ark of the covenant of the Lord stood on dry ground in the Jordan riverbed while all Israel crossed on dry ground until the whole nation had completed the crossing of the Jordan.”
Wow, the Israelites crossed on dry ground again! Remember, these are the ancestors of those who crossed the Red Sea on dry ground. These people were not actually there, but I am sure they heard all about it. So, why do you think God needed to show them again? Why do you think God parted the Jordan River for them to cross? It says above that it was to show the people that God was with Joshua the same way that He was with Moses. This miracle, like many others, is a testament to the power and faithfulness of our God. It amazes me how often we can see signs and wonders and yet still doubt the Lord will come through. The Israelites had seen miracle after miracle while they were in the desert. Their food miraculously showed up each morning. When they complained about not having meat to eat, Quail miraculously showed up. They walked across the Red Sea on dry land, and this is to name a few of the big ones.
So, why would they need to see another miracle? I think it is because we sometimes think it is the person doing the miracle instead of God doing the miracle through those people. God knew the Israelites knew God was with Moses because He was the face of most of the miracles they had received. However, God also knew they weren’t sure if God was with Joshua. He was young and new to leading them. God understood that these people would need a sign to show them that He was with Joshua.
How many times have we been like this? How many times has God called us to cross our own Jordan Rivers, and we have been hesitant because we don’t know that He is with us? How many times has He given us a sign, and yet we require another one? If we look back upon our lives, I bet we can all see how the Lord has been right here with us in each of the hard times. If we can see this, why do we still doubt He will be with us in this hard time? I am sure we have all seen miracles in our lives. If we haven’t, then we are not looking hard enough because the Lord is working in each of our lives.
The news doesn’t like to talk about the good stuff going on in the world, as that doesn’t sell as much as the bad stuff. However, you don’t have to look too far to find the good things going on in this world if you want to. You can find articles and videos on the internet. We can actually be a beacon of light to those around us. If you see someone you know struggling, you can give them hope and peace in Jesus Christ. If someone you know needs a miracle right now, relay this one to them. Relay other ones from the Bible. Look on YouTube for testimonies from others who have been healed from what they have or gone through what they have gone through.
Sometimes, seeing is believing, so pray for God to show them a miracle. Pray for a miracle in your life. Miracles are not reserved for certain people. They are not reserved for perfect people, people who pray a lot, or those whom God loves the best. Miracles come to those who ask for them, those who seek them, and those who believe they will happen. We believe, Lord. Help our unbelief.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening today. Lord, we love you, and we know you are there with us in the hard times. We are sorry we sometimes forget. We ask you to be with all those struggling in a special way today. We ask you to give each one of us a renewed sense of awe and wonder. We ask that you give us renewed faith and belief that miracles are not only possible will happen in our lives. Open our eyes to the miracles that are happening in our lives every day! We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name; amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in January 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “There is no more time for looking back. Look only to what is ahead. Look up, and you'll see the glory of God.”
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Redeeming the Time
Ephesians 5:15-16 “See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil.”
I really liked this verse and wanted to talk to you about it today because I am not sure we realize how important time is. It matters how we spend our time. The first part of this verse talks about how we need to make sure we are walking circumspectly, not as fools but as wise. Circumspectly is a fancy way to say we need to think carefully before we act. This is hard for us sometimes. I feel like I say this a lot, but I think it is so important that we all become aware of it. We go through life on autopilot. There is so much of our day we spend just going through the motions. We aren’t actually making a lot of the decisions as we go through our day. We have all formed habits, good ones and bad ones, and those habits are what make a lot of the decisions for us.
It sounds like this is not a new problem. I think from the beginning of time this was a problem. We tend to default to whatever we have done in the past. It is not easy to always walk circumspectly. It requires us to pause and think before we do something. This is contrary to how we live out our day-to-day moments. Do you stop and think before you eat your breakfast? Do you stop to think if whatever you’re about to eat is actually the best thing for you to eat? Is it something that will nourish your body, or is it something you are just in the habit of eating? What about how you spend your time in the mornings? Are you spending this precious time in a way that is going to set your day up for success, or are you looking at your phone and then reacting to whatever you saw on your phone?
It is important that we look at how we are spending our time and try to stop and think before we do anything. I have been much more aware of how I am spending my time lately. I am trying to be more focused and stay on task better. I am trying to spend my time more wisely. However, I am finding it is very hard. I find myself slipping into old habits throughout the day. For instance, I will pick up my phone and check my email so many times throughout the day. I do not have a ton of important emails coming in throughout the day. I could easily spend 15-30 min at the end of the day and go through all my emails and be good for the day. However, I am in the habit of checking them, so I do. This is something I am working on changing.
I read something one time that said we all think our time is our own. However, it is a gift from God and one day He is going to want us to give a full account of how we spent His gift. I don’t know about you, but I thought this was pretty powerful. If you knew one day you would have to answer for how you spent your time, would you spend it differently? Would you spend as much time on that video game, or watching those Facebook or YouTube videos? Would you still binge-watch all 8 seasons of that TV show during work hours if you knew you would have to explain your actions to God someday? I ask that question in a loving way. I don’t picture God asking us in a very condemning way. I can picture Him asking us in a loving way. More of a response to us asking why we didn’t get to do all the things we wanted to do. God has amazing plans for each one of us, and no matter where we are on this journey of life, it is important to take a minute and think about how we are spending this precious time that God has given us. There is a song I love, and it talks about this very topic. It is called “Spend a Life” By David Dunn. I will put a link to this song in the show notes, and I highly recommend you take a minute and listen to this awesome song. I am going to take a minute to read you the lyrics, no, not sing them, don’t worry. I think you all need to hear them, and I know we are all busy, so most of you probably won’t listen to the song.
Spend a Life by David Dunn
Everybody's got a balance
But no one knows how much
There's no way to run the numbers
No way to count it up
And we're pouring out our fortunes
In the moments
Both the big and the small
Yeah we gotta spend it all
All I have is what You gave
Watching seconds turn to days
I was made for more then just to watch it fly
A few more turns around the sun
Could be hundreds, could be one
Show me how to spend the treasure of my time
Show me how to spend a life, yeah
Show me how to spend a life
I have never seen a tombstone
Say I didn't work enough, nah
Nobody ever heard a father say
I held my kids too much
God I wanna run after
What really matters
So remind me when I fall
How a good man spends it all
Don't let me waste it
Don't let lose it
Don't let me steal it for myself
No, no
I know it's precious
I know it's priceless
I know my time is flying by
Show me how to spend a life
'Cause all I have is what You gave
Watching seconds turn to days
I was made for more then just to watch it fly
A few more turns around the sun
Could be hundreds, could be one
Show me how to spend the treasure of my time, yeah
Show me how to spend a life, yeah
Wow, did that hit you as it hit me? I got teary-eyed just thinking about all this song talks about. None of us know how much time we have. I love when the song talks about trips around the sun, and he says, could be hundreds, could be one. This is so true, and as much as I don’t think it is helpful to constantly be thinking about our death, I do think it is healthy to occasionally look at how we are living our lives and ask ourselves, would we be proud of how we lived our lives if we were to die tomorrow? Sometimes we put things off, and we say we just need to do x, y, or z, and then we will do the things we really want to do. We know in our hearts we aren’t prioritizing this correctly, and yet we tell ourselves we only have to do this for a few more years, just until we get that promotion, just until we make more money, just until…But we aren’t guaranteed anything. What if we lived our lives with the realization that tomorrow is not a given? What if we woke up each day grateful that God blessed us with another day and then lived it as the gift it really is? What if we thought about how we are spending our time and consciously chose how we wanted to spend it? What if we realized we only get a finite amount of time and so we live each moment as if it is a precious gift? What if we stopped putting things off and did them right when we wanted to? Would your life be any different if you started walking into your days circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise? How can you redeem the time you have been given?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to notice how we are spending our time. Help us to take back control of our time. Lord, I know I really struggle with wasting time, and I know I can’t be the only one who struggles with this; please help us, Lord. We ask the Holy Spirit to nudge us when we are wasting time and help to bring us back on track. We ask you to help us realize how important our time is. We ask you to help us realize how finite our time is, but not in an anxious way where we stress out. We ask you to help us see it in a helpful way so we can take advantage of every minute you have given to us. Help us to be grateful for each and every precious second you give us, Lord. You are truly amazing, and we are so grateful for you. You are the light of the world, and the word made flesh. You are so kind to give us so many wonderful days; help us appreciate them more. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus' holy name. Amen.
Thank you for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
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Today’s witnesses are from Matthew West’s website, called popwe.org. If you don’t know who Matthew West is, he is a singer, songwriter, and storyteller. This website is for the non-profit that he has with his father, a pastor. Matthew and his father encourage people to share their stories. They have various categories of stories. Today, I chose testimonies from the Healing Category. Often, we can hear our own story in someone else’s story. When we listen to others tell their story, it helps us see that we are not alone. When we hear how God worked in their situation, it gives us hope that He will work in ours, too! I pray that when you hear these testimonies, you get the faith and hope to believe that miracles can happen in your situation, too. I pray you know that God is there with you, and if you invite Him into your situation, He can help. I hope you enjoy these testimonies.
Hi, I’m Janet, and I am a mom and teacher! I love my life and glorify God every day! Ten years ago, I was diagnosed with colon cancer!
I had excellent specialists and doctors. But the scans definitely showed cancer growths! I was on many prayer lists and trusted God completely!
But the family conversations were very tough and heartbreaking!
Surgery day arrived. In the operating room, I asked to pray aloud with the team of surgeons. Four hours later I woke up to two surgeons sitting next to me. They told me they could not find the growths at all. They were gone! However, they had removed a section of my intestines just as a precautionary measure. Oncology tested twice and found nothing!
God healed me completely! After a long recovery, my life was restored, and I’m praising God every day for His mighty and loving hand over my life. I dedicate myself to complete surrender and complete obedience daily, so I belong to my Lord Jesus now and forever!
Melissa: In February 2024, on my 36th birthday, I got super sick. I had Crohn’s. I was in the hospital one month and in rehab for another month. I had to do home health care for two months once I returned home.
While in rehab I had to learn how to walk, stand, and sit again. I also lost my voice for two months and had to learn to talk again. I also temporarily lost my hair while losing 90 lbs. I had to learn how to chew and eat again.
God stayed with me! And after 6 months of the onset of my sickness, which was only two weeks after my home care ended, I was able to go back to work. All glory to God for getting me through.
Laurie: I was diagnosed with ductal cell carcinoma in July following my yearly mammogram. After two biopsies, two tags, and a postponed and then canceled surgery due to my surgeon having a boating accident, frustration set in.
I was downright mad at the world. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I reached out to God in my darkest hour and asked, “Why me, God?” I just wanted the cancer gone.
I didn’t know what to do. I wondered if I should wait for the surgeon to heal or see a new surgeon an hour from my home and move forward. I decided to go with a new surgeon.
I’m happy to report that after a 4-hour surgery, my cancer surgeon and plastic surgeon were able to remove all the cancer and do reconstructive surgery on September 25th.
I am healing well and will be starting radiation treatments soon. I am so grateful for all the prayers I received from my family and friends! I am following the plan God has for me; He’s not done with me yet!
Sean: On December 29th, 2023, during my first routine colonoscopy, I was told I had Colon Cancer. Something inside me said, “Ok, now what?” Not scared, I believed that knowing that with Jesus and my family fighting for me, I’d be “ok. “
I had my surgery to remove 10 inches of my colon on Jan 30th, and all went well. There were no signs of spreading. I was back doing everything as normal, including playing softball again. Nothing short of a God-placed miracle.
My next colonoscopy in January 2025 went well, and I was still all clear. This news really made my faith journey grow.
Two weeks later, I had a CT scan, and my world changed forever. Stage 4 metastatic colon cancer spread to my liver and lungs. I can’t lie; my first reaction was to ask why He would allow this after healing me a year prior.
I went home and started looking at survival rates of my situation. Everyone on the internet, including all the main cancer sites, said a 12% 5-year survival rate.
I hear the words “they say….” so much it drives me nuts. Who are “they” and what makes them an expert on me? They say they know, but they don’t know my King!!
I started writing down how I was feeling. During this whole process, I was hearing God speak through music from a few artists, namely Matthew West and Anne Wilson. I was listening to songs like “Truth Be Told” and “Strong.”
I had 5 Chemo sessions to try to shrink the tumor in my liver to make it operable, and it worked. I went in to have a lung tumor removed, and they prepped me for surgery and brought me into radiology to do a process where they use a biopsy-type needle to mark the tumor for the surgeon.
After 20 minutes of a lot of commotion while I lay in the CT machine, they took me out and said they couldn’t explain it, but the tumor was practically gone. A small speck showing that was too small to even mark, let alone try to cut out. Surgery was canceled! God is good!!
On June 9, I went in for the open liver surgery. Moving on to liver surgery. The surgeon opened me up and saw damage to my liver and stopped the surgery. He was afraid of the liver not growing after surgery, causing liver failure. Again, I asked why He saved my lung, but let this happen.
I went back a couple of weeks later for a procedure where they put a clot in the vein going to the left side of my liver to make the right side think it was gone. The goal was to see if it would grow again. Again, God showed up as always. God is Good!
My liver was growing, given the “ok” to have the second surgery. I already had plans for the end of July, as my wife and I volunteer at Kingdom Bound at Darien Lake, NY each year. This year would be special for me with you and Anne both performing. During your concert, I wrote down a request for a prayer card for your prayer wall. Thank you for that!! As usual, God was saying, “Have faith!”
My surgery had been scheduled for Aug 5th, which was one week after you performed. It went successfully.
I can’t thank you enough for your inspiration and prayers. You have been a big part of my daily story through your music. Keep spreading His light!
Thank you all for sharing your stories with us! It is not always easy to be vulnerable and share your story, and yet when you do, it helps so many other people. May God bless you and keep you and your loved ones healthy.
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You Already Have the Power
1 Corinthians 3:16 “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?
This is a question I think often when I am talking to people. Whenever I talk to someone who doubts their abilities or their capabilities, I want to ask them this question. I want to ask most people this question as I think a lot of us don’t know this. I have heard people talk a lot about our body being a temple when they talk bout how we take care of our body. I have heard people mention “our body is a temple” when they are wanting you to do their workout program, or their nutrition program. I have also heard people talk about how our body is a temple when they are talking about sexual sin or trying to convince you not to use your body in a negative way.
I do think it is important to think of your body as a temple, not just any temple, but God’s temple. Knowing I am God’s temple is quite a responsibility. Currently, I am not acting as if I know my body is a temple. Right now I am acting as if my body is a waste station and I am throwing all the junk I can find into it. I seem to be struggling with self-control when it comes to eating and exercising these days. This is somewhat new to me, as I have done really well over the past several years to gain lots of self-control when it comes to eating and exercising. I know I don’t need to base my eating and my working out on my feelings. I know if I get into a good routine, I can work out even when I don’t want to. I know I don’t have to eat the ice cream just because I want to.
Even though I know these things, I am still struggling. Have you ever had this happen to you? You know what you need to do, and you still can’t seem to do it? I think this happens to all of us. Right now, for me, I think it is the enemy making my desires stronger than my willpower. I believe God is calling me to so much more in life, and the enemy doesn’t want me to hear this call. He doesn’t want me to live up to my purpose, so he is distracting me with social media and other things on the computer. He is tempting me with all sorts of food that is not all that healthy, and he is loving every single time I give in to his distractions. He has me saying things like, “I just can’t resist, or I can’t overcome my desires to not work out.” The devil is a liar.
I can resist. It is not easy, but it is possible. We have the power of the Holy Spirit living inside of us. I don’t think we realize how much power we have living inside of us. Romans 8:11 is a very powerful scripture to write down and read often. It is a great scripture to remind yourself of every time you feel like you can’t do something. Romans 8:11 says, “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.” The Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead. Remember when Jesus died on the cross for our sins and then three days later rose again? The Holy Spirit raised Jesus from the dead. That same Holy Spirit is now living in you and me; that’s remarkable to me.
I forget this often. I often rely on my own willpower, my own mind, thoughts, talents, abilities, and so on. I know God is always there to help me, but I forget the Holy Spirit lives inside of me. I forget how powerful the Holy Spirit is. Well, actually, I don’t forget how powerful he is, but I do forget that power is living inside of me. When I pray for people, I pray the Lord sends the Holy Spirit down to be in the situation I am praying for. I forget the Holy Spirit doesn’t need to come down to be in the situation because He lives here on earth in each one of us. He is right here inside of us to give us the power we need. All we need to do is call upon that power.
Are we doing that? Are we remembering to call upon the power of the Holy Spirit? I know I’m not. I have been complaining a lot about my lack of willpower. I have not been running like I want to, and I have been gaining weight because I am not really being careful about what I eat. I get frustrated, and I wonder why I was so good before, and now I am not. I was talking with a friend the other day, and she helped me figure it out. When I first moved to MA, home life was pretty out of control. I was struggling big time with behaviors from my kids, with just having moved to a new community where I didn’t know anyone, trying to work when I kept getting called by the schools, struggling with my marriage. Everything seemed pretty out of control. I think I was so good about exercising and watching what I ate because it was the one thing I felt I had control over. I couldn’t control a lot in my life at that time, but I could control what I ate and when I worked out.
I think I was also better at remembering to call on the Holy Spirit because I needed his power daily, hourly, sometimes minute by minute. People who knew me when I was going through the worst of it would comment how strong I was. I was quick to tell them, it’s not me, it’s God. He is the one holding me up right now. The Holy Spirit was my go-to because it was obvious I was out of my depth. The things that were going on in my life were so far out of my control. I am grateful I had God to lean on and I am beyond grateful He gave us the Holy Spirit. They say a mother’s love is so strong you can do anything you need to do to protect your kids. I don’t disagree that a mother’s love is strong, and also I don’t think it is her love alone. I think it is our desperate need to protect our children that gives us the courage to call out to the Holy Spirit. The strength comes from Him.
I am grateful things have calmed down now. I am grateful God answered my years of prayers. I am grateful he provided our family with a miraculous restoration. I love my life, and I am so grateful to God for loving me enough to answer my prayers. I also want to make sure I am not taking these answered prayers for granted. I think my perceived lack of willpower right now is because I am forgetting to call upon the Holy Spirit. I am thinking I need to do it all on my own, and I don’t. I am trying to will myself into doing the things I want, and I am forgetting to reach out and ask for help. I have reached out to friends and asked for accountability partners. I have reached out and asked people to call and check in with me, ask me if I have done it. I have asked God to help me, but I am not sure I have invited the Holy Spirit into this struggle. I have been keeping the struggle separate from God. Telling myself things like, “God doesn’t care if I eat this cookie.” God may not care if I eat that cookie; however, he does care if I feel bad about eating that cookie. He does care if I am mindlessly giving in to temptations. He does care about all the little things, and He does want to be invited into all the parts of our lives, especially the ones we are struggling with.
I am grateful I read this scripture verse today. I am grateful God showed me this small yet powerful reminder this morning. Today I am going to invite the Holy Spirit into my struggle. Today I am going to write this verse on a sticky note and place it up somewhere I will see it often. Today I invite you to do the same. Invite the Holy Spirit into whatever you are struggling with the most. Actually invite the Holy Spirit into all aspects of your life, the good and the bad. Who couldn’t use more power in their life? Wouldn’t you like the good to be even better and the bad to get better? The Holy Spirit has incredible power to make things better in your life. I am living proof of that. Our family went from an angry and somewhat violent family to a loving and calm family. Things are not perfect, and I am not sure they will ever be as we live in a broken world. However, they are so good, and I am so grateful. Whatever you are struggling with, please believe me when I say the Holy Spirit has the power to change it. Remember Romans 8:11: The power of the Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you. What could be more powerful?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Holy Spirit, we invite you into our lives and give you permission to intercede as you wish. We give you free rein, as we know your ways are higher than our ways. We are sorry we keep relying on our own power, and we will try to remember to call upon your power. We are so grateful for all you do for us. Lord, we are so grateful you sent the Holy Spirit to come live within and to guide us. Please help us remember to call upon the Holy Spirit more in our lives. Help us to remember we don’t have to do anything on our own; He is always with us. He is just waiting for us to ask. Lord, help us to remember our bodies are a temple and the Holy Spirit is living inside that temple. Help us to treat our bodies like a temple. Lord, you are so amazing. You are my joy, you are my life, you are Emmanuel, God with us. We love you, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I thought the Holy Spirit would be a great topic for Today’s Devotional because the theme for mentoring this month is Loved and Led by the Holy Spirit. The last two months we looked at the love of the Father and the love of the Son. Now we look at the love of the Holy Spirit. CLICK HERE if you want to learn more about mentoring or if you want to join our community to learn more about the power and love you have living inside of you! I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in February 2026 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, let my goodness flow and overflow in you. Let it spread to all those you meet. I am the Lord of goodness. I am the Lord of kindness. Open your hearts more fully to me so that you can know how to share it with those you meet.”
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Three Steps to Break Your Chains
Acts 12:6-8 “The night before Peter was to be placed on trial, he was asleep, fastened with two chains between two soldiers. Others stood guard at the prison gate. Suddenly, there was a bright light in the cell, and an angel of the Lord stood before Peter. The angel struck him on the side to awaken him and said, ‘Quick! Get up!’ and the chains fell off his wrists. Then, the angel told him, ‘Get dressed and put on your sandals.’ And he did. ‘Now put on your coat and follow me,’ the angel ordered.”
In this passage, God is telling us three steps we can take to break our own chains. I know some of you may be saying that this is great for some people, but my chains are too strong for such a simple solution. Although this may seem simple, I am not saying it was easy. Peter was asked to get up while he was still wearing the chains. His chains did not come off before he was told to stand. His getting up while he was still chained took courage and trust. He needed to trust that God was telling him to get up for a reason.
We all have some responsibility in getting out of our chains. Peter did not know what was coming next. He just knew that he had first to get up before anything else could happen. Can you do this step? Can you get up and get out of bed even if you don’t know what is coming next or what the next step is? Can you trust that God is there with you and that if you get up, he will take the chains off of you?
Next, the angel told Peter to get dressed and put on his sandals. When we are in the midst of a challenge, this may be the hardest step. It may take all our energy to get up out of bed, and getting dressed is another step that may seem impossible. This is when we need to rely on God. He is there for us, and He is there to give us the strength to get up when we don’t feel like we can. Why is it important to get dressed? Getting dressed means that we are ready to go somewhere. We are ready for God to take us to a new place, a new situation. We need to be ready for anything to happen.
Just the act of getting dressed can help change our mood. Even if we accomplish nothing else the entire day, we at least accomplished that. Also, depending on what you wear, it can change your mood as well. Are you getting dressed in clothes that tell your body that you are ready to go for the day, or are you dressing in clothes that tell your body to go back to bed? I have heard many people say that we should dress like we want to feel, not as we do feel. If you want to feel beautiful, then do not wear your yoga pants that are worn and have lots of holes; dress as if you already feel beautiful, and that is how you will start to feel.
The last step the angel said is to follow me (God). We may not know how we can get out of our chains or what we can do to get out of the current situation. This is when it is important to be still and listen. Sometimes it is easier to hear God than other times. I have had times in the past when I rarely took the time to stop and spend quiet time listening to God. I talked an awful lot to him, but I struggled with the being still and just listening part. I have worked on this and grown in this area over the last several years. Oftentimes we know what God is telling us by the little voice inside our head that tells us what we should do. Are you listening to that voice on a regular basis, or are you shutting it down?
I often do not listen to that voice and then always regret it, as it usually knows the right choice. Once you are ready to go, stop and listen and see if you can follow God. Where is he leading you? What does he want you to do next? If we ask God to direct us and lead us, He will. Listen and see what step he is leading you to take. No matter how small that step is, if we take one step after another, we will break free from our chains. There were many instances in the Bible when people had to act first before seeing the results. At the wedding at Cana (John 2:1-11), they ran out of wine. Jesus told the stewards to fill up the wine jugs with water. Then, he asked them to take it to the chief steward. They had to act in faith before they were sure of the miracle. They had to take this cup of what they thought was water to their boss and ask him to taste it. This required their action and their faith. In John 5:2-9, Jesus met a man at a pool, waiting for someone to help him into the healing waters. He had been an invalid for 38 years. Jesus asked the man if he wanted to be healed. This required the man to answer. Then he told the man to rise up and take up his mat. This man had not been able to walk for a long time. Before he was healed, he was told to rise and take up his mat. He needed to trust that when he tried to stand, he would be able to. His faith and action were required before the miracle took place.
God does amazing things every single day. Yes, God could save you without requiring anything from you, and sometimes he does. Sometimes, He saves people who do not even know they need saving. However, oftentimes, God is asking us to take some responsibility for our own situation. What can you do to save yourself from this current situation that you are in? What is one small action you can take to show God that you are willing to help yourself? Absolutely, pray to God and ask him to help you in any situation you are in, especially the really difficult ones. I am not saying that we need to save ourselves from everything. What I am saying is that we should pray and have faith that God will save us and then act on that faith and take a step in the direction we want to go. I will end with one of my favorite quotes. “Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.” ~Saint Augustine
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to the episode today. Lord, we want to follow you; please show us how. Please show us the way. We want to get up and get dressed, and yet some of us are in circumstances that make that really hard. Please give us the strength to get out of bed and get dressed. Give us the strength to have faith that things will get better. Give us the faith to take that one step, that one small action, so that you know we want to help ourselves; we want to help you. We love you, Lord, and we need you; please help us! We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I invite you all to join me in mentoring. So far this year, we have learned about God’s reckless love, God’s forgiveness, Praying without ceasing, prayer journaling, our identity, setting intentions for the year, praise and worship, and replacing the lies we tell ourselves with the truth from God. When you sign up, you will have access to all the recordings for these previous sessions. If you have any questions, let me know. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
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When Hope Hurts
Mark 9:21-27 “Jesus asked the father, “How long has this been happening to him?” And he said, “From childhood. It has often cast him into the fire and into the water, to destroy him; but if you are able to do anything, have pity on us and help us.” Jesus said to him, “If you are able!—All things can be done for the one who believes.” Immediately the father of the child cried out, “I believe; help my unbelief!” When Jesus saw that a crowd came running together, he rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, “You spirit that keeps this boy from speaking and hearing, I command you, come out of him, and never enter him again!” After crying out and convulsing him terribly, it came out, and the boy was like a corpse, so that most of them said, “He is dead.” But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he was able to stand.”
Jesus is asking just how long this has been happening to the boy? We also find out that the spirit has not just cast the boy down onto the ground, but it has often cast him into fire and into water so that he might die. I think everyone listening can sympathize with all this boy has had to go through and how his father is at the point where he would do anything for his son. I can’t imagine watching anyone’s child go through life with this happening to them. It must have been heartbreaking for the father to see this happening and not be able to do anything about it.
The father says, “if you are able to do anything, have pity on us and help us.” Jesus picks right up on the man’s hesitation and says back to him, “If you are able!- All things can be done for the ones who believe.” I love how the father of the boy doesn’t miss a beat. He immediately cries out, “I believe; help my unbelief.” Imagine the level of faith the father must have had to believe that Jesus could save his son. Also, I love that the man was not too proud to say, I believe; help my unbelief. He wasn’t too proud to acknowledge that there might be some doubt. His son had been sick ever since he was a young boy. When we suffer, or when we see our children suffer for a long time, we start to think we or they always will. It can be easy to have hope at first that something will make them better. We have hope in God, in the doctors, in the medicine. But what about when that relief doesn’t come? What about when we continue to suffer or see our children suffer year after year with no relief? What do we do then? Where does our hope go?
I can see how the father might have struggled to believe that someone could cure his son. That his son might not have to suffer anymore. It is almost like it was too good to be true, and so it makes sense that he may have been a bit hesitant to believe. I think something we don’t talk about enough is how scary it can be to hope sometimes. How painful it can be to hope. When we don’t talk about it, and we don’t acknowledge it, we are doing everyone a disservice. I didn’t understand this before. I kept telling my friend she needed to keep hoping for what she wanted. She needed to keep believing that God gave her the desires in her heart and so He was going to fulfill them. What I wasn’t understanding was how much it hurt her to keep hoping and then be let down each time when it didn’t happen. I do believe that God gave us our desires and that He will fulfill them. However, I don’t know this for sure. I am definitely not an expert on God. I don’t know if any of us will ever be. He is so complex, and just when you think you have Him all figured out, you realize that you have only scratched the surface.
I can understand how if you keep expecting something to happen and it doesn’t, you could get tired of expecting it to happen. I can see how it would be painful to have hope and then feel like you are being let down over and over again. I think this happens more often than we are aware of, and I think it is something we should acknowledge and start talking about more. I think we don’t talk about it because we don’t want people to know that we struggle to have hope or we struggle to believe in the impossible. We live in an age where most people strive to portray the best side of their life. We like to brag about the good things that are going on and gloss over the bad things. We act as though we are fine, even though we are really struggling. We don’t want people to know we are struggling; we don’t want people to know we need help; we feel sad; we feel angry; we know we should be grateful, and yet we just don’t feel it. I know people who look like they are having the time of their lives. They are killing it as moms, wives, daughters; they seem like all is going so well. Then when I talk to them, they feel like they are failures, they feel depressed, they feel no excitement, or they feel overwhelmed. We need to start being honest. Not with everyone you meet on every street corner, but with someone, with those you love and trust.
We all struggle to believe things will get better sometimes. We all feel overwhelmed with our problems at times. Instead of me telling my friend she needed to keep having hope that her desires would come true, I told her that I would have hope for her. Did you know we could do this? Sometimes we get to a point where we can’t hope, or where we can’t pray. Sometimes we are so depressed, or have been sick for so long, we just can’t even pray. When this happens, your brothers and sisters in Christ can pray for you. We are a community of believers; we are not alone. If we are struggling, we can ask others to pray for us or to have hope for us. In the Bible, a group of friends carried their friend on a mat to see Jesus. Their friend couldn’t walk, and they thought if they could see Jesus, He would heal him. However, the house Jesus was in was too crowded, so they went up to the roof, made a hole in the roof, and lowered him down right in front of Jesus. Jesus did heal the man, and he looked up at his friends and told them that their faith healed him. Don’t get discouraged if your loved ones don’t believe that they will be healed or that their dreams will come true. Faith is a gift, and if you have faith that it will happen, that is enough. Keep believing for them, keep praying for them, keep hoping for them. If you are having trouble hoping for something or having trouble believing things will get better, ask someone to pray for you, to have hope for you. Don’t be afraid to talk about your fears, as it is only when you bring them to light that they lose their power over you. Jesus healed this boy after many years of being possessed. Just because you haven’t received your healing yet doesn’t mean it is not coming. Keep hoping, keep believing or have someone else do it for you.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we believe; help our unbelief. Lord, help us to have the courage to talk to someone if we are struggling with hope or with believing you will help us. Help us not to be ashamed of these feelings. Help us to know that the feeling of shame does not come from you. You are a loving Father who always forgives when we repent. We love you, Lord, so much! It is truly amazing how you work, and even though we don’t understand it all the time, we admire it and are in awe of it. We are so grateful for all you do for us. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in January 2026 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Do not forget where you come from, where your help comes from. When you are discouraged, fearful, angry, confused, or misunderstood, don't forget. I am the I am. I am your I am. Trust, believe, and move.”
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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Today’s witnesses are from Matthew West’s website, called popwe.org. If you don’t know who Matthew West is, he is a singer, songwriter, and storyteller. This website is for the non-profit that he has with his father, a pastor. Matthew and his father encourage people to share their stories. They have various categories of stories. Today, I chose three testimonies from the Marriage/Family Category. Satan is attacking our families, and I think it can help us to see that God is looking out for us. Satan wants to destroy families, but God wants to preserve them. Often, we can hear our own story in someone else’s story. When we listen to others tell their story, it helps us see that we are not alone. When we hear how God worked in their situation, it gives us hope that He will work in ours, too! I pray that when you hear these testimonies, you get the faith and hope to believe that miracles can happen in your situation, also. I pray you know that God wants to be there with you, and if you invite Him into your family issues, He can help.
First up is Alice. It was pitch black and pouring rain on the night of Alice and her sons’ escape. Alice’s husband had become violently abusive, and Alice had put up with his beatings for a long time. Initially, Alice thought it was best to have her two sons raised by both parents, but she began to grow fearful of the safety of her children. One day, she finally gathered the courage to leave her abusive household behind.
On the stormy night of the escape, Alice and her sons were led by a series of phone calls from Alice’s father. Each call directed them to another location, which ultimately led to a shelter for the night. The next day, the rain stopped, and Alice and her sons stepped into the sunshine to take a walk. For the first time, they felt free.
Matthew was so inspired by this story, that he wrote a song about it called, Into the Light. It is Matthew’s hope that Alice’s story and this song will encourage anyone else secretly trying to cope with an abusive spouse to speak up, get help, and step into the light. Further, Matthew hopes that Into the Light can be a metaphor for any storyteller to step out of the darkness and tell their story, because our God is the Light of the World!
Next we have Julie’s story. Three and a half years ago, Julie was broken. The world as she knew it was crashing down around her when she found out her husband cheated on her, and her marriage consequently failed. Julie was devastated and thought she would never find a spouse again. But then, God answered her prayers and brought a new man into her life. Soon, Julie was swept away by her new love and knew that this man would finally be her fairytale marriage that would last forever.
Then, it happened. Julie learned that her new husband committed adultery. Her heart was pierced with a hurt so bad that it was hard for her to breathe. She was filled with so many emotions and thoughts. She couldn’t believe that this would happen to her again. She thought to herself, “Just leave! You did it before, and it was an easy way out, and it won’t hurt as bad.” But instead of leaving, Julie got on her knees and prayed to the Healer, the only One who could get her through this. As she prayed, she felt God’s arms wrap around her. He quickly reminded her that her husband’s sinful act was not from Him, but from the evil one. Comforted by God’s love and healing, Julie decided that she would stay and fight for her marriage.
Julie found strength in Ephesians 6 and put on the full armor of God. She was tirelessly on her knees praying and reading His Word. Even though her husband lost his church job because of this sin, and every day was a struggle for them to get through, Julie was determined that Satan was not going to win. The battle was easier to fight with Christ back in the center of their marriage. Julie learned that with God, marriage is never too far-gone. Today, the enemy no longer has a stronghold over Julie’s marriage. The Lord was with Julie through all of this and lavished her with peace and strength. Her marriage is stronger than it has ever been, and all of the glory goes to God!
And last but not least, we have Joe. Joe was unfaithful to his wife by having an affair with another woman. Resigned to believe that the grass would really be greener on the other side, and feeling like too much damage had already been done to repair what was broken, Joe packed his things to leave for good when the phone rang. On the phone was an old friend pleading with Joe to stop and think twice before he made the choice to throw everything away.
Joe reluctantly went to meet with his friend. His friend helped redirect Joe’s heart and reminded him of the “Joe” he used to know. Joe realized what he needed to do. He raced back home, hoping for the chance to beg for forgiveness from his best friend. He expected to find a cold shoulder or a door slammed in his face, and knew he would deserve it, but was willing to do anything to get his marriage back. Instead of finding a cold shoulder, Joe returned home to find his wife running to meet him in the driveway, wrapping him in an embrace he would never forget.
Matthew, moved by Joe’s story of redemption, wrote the song Restored. Although Joe walked away from the riches of God’s blessing of marriage, God’s grace stepped in nonetheless. With God’s help, Joe’s wife found the strength to forgive Joe and was able to trust that God would restore a marriage that the enemy tried to destroy.
I am very grateful to Matthew West and his father for giving people a space where they can tell their story. People’s testimonies are so important because it not only gives glory to God, but it also shows us that we are not alone. Other people are going through stuff too. If God can help them through it, He can help us through it too. I invite you to consider sharing your story, or a story of a time in your life when God came through, even though it felt like he might not. You may feel like it is not that important of a story, but I guarantee that someone needs to hear it today. Please think about it.
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Have You Asked God for Wisdom?
Wisdom 7:7 “Therefore I prayed, and understanding was given me; I called on God, and the spirit of wisdom came to me.”
We have talked about King Solomon before and how, on the night before He became King, God told Solomon that He would give Him whatever He asked for. King Solomon could have asked for anything, and do you remember what he asked for? Did he ask for riches and wealth? Did he ask for all his enemies to be delivered into his hands? Did he ask for all the fame and power that can come with being a king? No, he didn’t ask for any of that. He asked for Wisdom so that he could be a just and fair ruler over his kingdom. When I just searched how old Solomon was when he became king, it said he was 12. Can you imagine becoming king at 12 years old? That must have been so much responsibility for such a young man. He was just a boy. Even though he was just a young boy, he knew enough to pray for wisdom. I find that amazing.
I talked a few days ago about how we don’t think as God thinks. I talked about how His ways are higher than our ways and His thoughts are higher than our thoughts. One way to help us understand God’s plan a little more is to pray for wisdom. When we are praying for wisdom, we are praying that God will help us to make the right decisions. We are praying that He will show us what we need to do and how we can do it. We are praying that God reveals to us the next step, the next right thing that we should do. We need God’s guidance in what is right and wrong. We need God to give us the gift of wisdom.
One way that God teaches us wisdom is through His Word. When we read His Word, we can see what He has taught those who came before us. We can see what they have done in the past, and we can learn from them. There is so much wisdom in the Bible. I mean, there is a whole book of the Bible called Wisdom. This is not the only book that is full of wisdom, though. Proverbs and Sirach are two others that are full of wisdom. If there is a certain subject or topic that you are looking for wisdom about, you can search the Bible. Actually, you can search the internet, and it will search the Bible for you if you are not sure where to look. You can just type a question into the search bar, and it will search the Bible for you. For instance, you can type, “What does the bible say about gossip?” The internet search will provide you with bible verses about gossip as well as articles that people have written about that subject. Give it a try; I think you will be surprised with all that you can learn.
Another way God teaches us wisdom is through our experiences. This one can be difficult at times, as it is usually through our mistakes that we learn our best lessons. We can learn through our successes and our failures; however, our failures usually lead us to our successes. Well, they do if we let them. Sometimes we don’t learn our lesson through our mistakes, and then we repeat the same mistakes over and over again. Proverbs 26:11 says, “Like a dog that returns to its vomit is a fool who reverts to his folly.” This is not a very pretty picture, but I think it is an accurate picture to prove this point. It makes no sense that a dog would return to eat its own vomit. Whatever it was that came up obviously didn’t sit well with them the first time around; why would they want to try it again? The same is true for us when we do something that we already know will not work. Why do we keep trying the same thing over and over again when it’s not working? Albert Einstein said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
Why do we do this? Why is it so hard for us to learn from our mistakes sometimes? I feel as though with some things we learn pretty quickly. For instance, if we touch a hot stove, we learn pretty quickly that we do not want to do that again. However, when it comes to other things, we repeat the same mistakes over and over again. For instance, I know that if I sit down to watch “one quick episode” before I do the thing I am supposed to be doing, I will get sucked in and watch several episodes and then won’t have time to do the important thing I was supposed to do. I know this about myself and recently have gotten a lot better about it. However, for years I would tell myself that I would just watch “one quick episode” while I ate my breakfast. It kills me to think how many hundreds of hours I have wasted watching TV when I knew better. How about you? Are there some lessons that God is trying to teach you, and no matter how many times it goes wrong, you still keep doing it? When will we learn? When will we decide that enough is enough and learn the lesson already?
Another great way that we can gain wisdom is mentioned in the verse above. “Therefore I prayed, and understanding was given me; I called on God, and the spirit of wisdom came to me.” This seems so simple and yet is so profound. We know that when we ask, God answers, so why don’t we think that we will get wisdom just by asking? Maybe you do know this. Maybe it is just me who struggles with this. Actually, as I said yesterday, we are never alone. Some of you may already know this, but I know some of you are in the same boat as me. I tend to feel like I have to earn whatever it is I am asking for. Do you ever feel like this? This is something that God has really been talking to me about a lot lately. I ask God for wisdom, and then I try to see what prayers I should be saying or what things I should be doing. I try to take it upon myself to gain the wisdom that I am seeking. Why don’t I know that just asking God for it is enough? It says right here in the verse, “I prayed, and understanding was given to me; I called on God, and the spirit of wisdom came to me.”
It’s that simple. Why do I try to make it harder? Why am I not trusting that He will answer my call and grant me the gift of wisdom? When I was praying on this the other day, the story of the centurion came to mind. This story can be found in Matthew 8:5-10. “When Jesus had entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him, asking for help. “Lord,” he said, “my servant lies at home paralyzed, suffering terribly.” Jesus said to him, “Shall I come and heal him?” The centurion replied, “Lord, I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. But just say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and that one, ‘Come,’ and he comes. I say to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.” When Jesus heard this, he was amazed and said to those following him, “Truly I tell you, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith.”
When I hear this story, I am in awe of this centurion. He trusted that if Jesus said his servant would be healed, then He would be healed. He didn’t need Jesus to come lay hands on the servant; he didn’t need Him to say a particular prayer. All the centurion needed was for Jesus to say that his servant would be healed, and he believed it would happen. If we ask God for wisdom, He will give it to us. We don’t have to earn it; we don’t have to do anything other than ask. God has told us this over and over again in the Bible: ask, and it will be given; seek, and you will find. I am hoping that this time around I am ready to learn this lesson and I will actually stop trying to figure it out on my own and trust that because I have asked God for wisdom, He will deliver.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we pray to you for wisdom. We ask that you help us find the wisdom in your scriptures. We pray that you help us to learn from our mistakes and not be like fools returning to our folly. We know you are the only one who can help us learn those lessons, Lord. Help us to trust that because we ask, you will answer. Help us to trust that there is nothing else we need to do. Your gifts are freely given and do not need to be earned; they just need to be sought after. We love you so much, Lord; you are truly amazing. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. This month in the Walk Boldly with Jesus Mentoring Group, we have been talking about the love of Jesus—how He sees us, comes close to us, and loves us exactly where we are. If you have been longing to know His love more deeply, I would love to invite you to join us. You do not have to have everything figured out, and you do not have to feel “holy enough.” You can simply come as you are. We meet Tuesday evenings on Zoom, and replays are available if you cannot attend live. CLICK HERE to learn more and join us. Let Jesus remind you just how deeply you are loved. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in January 2026 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Move in my steps and in my way, and you will see my glory. You will help bring others closer to me. But you must take that first step.”
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Mercy Sets You Free
1 Peter 2:23 “When he was insulted, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly.”
I think today’s scripture is a great reminder that just because someone did something to us doesn’t mean we need to do it back to them. This is something my kids seem to struggle with. If someone does something to them, they want “payback.” One of my sons especially. If someone cuts him off, he will go out of his way to cut that person off. If he feels like they were unkind to him, then he wants to be unkind right back. I know he is not alone. This is the society we live in.
We are so quick to take offense at everything that everyone says. If a co-worker is unkind to us, we take offense and want to retaliate. We have all heard people say that we should retaliate because the Bible says, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” (Exodus 21:24) However, do you know what else it says in the Bible? Matthew 5:38-42 says, “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.”
We are so quick to take offense and so quick to want revenge. We live in a world where we are told we can’t be weak. We can’t let people walk all over us. We should think about ourselves first. We need to take what we want. I think we have gone too far in one direction. I do think it is important not to let people walk all over you and to stand up for yourself. I do not think we always have to take revenge. Scripture tells us over and over again in the Bible that we are to love our neighbor. It even tells us to love our enemy. Scripture also tells us over and over again to forgive our neighbor and our enemy.
What if we led our lives with forgiveness? What if we stopped taking offense and realized that most everything that other people do has nothing to do with us and everything to do with them. People do not cut us off in traffic because they are trying to be mean to us. They are cutting us off in traffic because they are so focused on where they are going that they aren’t paying attention to the other cars. If people are being unkind to us, it is usually because they are having a bad day, or something is going on in their life, and they are taking it out on us. I am not saying those things are ok for other people to do. I just don’t think responding in the same manner is going to make us feel any better.
Jesus consistently chose mercy instead. Again and again, He was misunderstood, mocked, falsely accused, betrayed, and treated unjustly. And yet, He did not respond the way we expect power to respond. He didn’t rush to defend Himself. He didn’t demand vindication. He didn’t strike back. Instead, He trusted the Father.
Today’s Scripture tells us that “When he was insulted, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly.”
That last phrase matters deeply. Jesus didn’t ignore injustice — He entrusted it. Mercy, for Jesus, wasn’t passive. It was an active decision to place justice in the Father’s hands rather than carrying it Himself.
Mercy Is Not Excusing Wrong — It’s Choosing Freedom
One of the reasons mercy feels so hard is because we confuse it with excusing behavior. We think: If I show mercy, I’m saying what they did was okay.
If I don’t retaliate, I’m letting them win. But Jesus shows us something different.
Mercy is not about denying that harm occurred. Mercy is about refusing to let another person’s sin control our inner life. When we retaliate — even internally — we stay emotionally tied to the offense. Our peace becomes dependent on apology, acknowledgment, or change. Mercy breaks that tie. It says, “What you did matters, but it will not rule me.”
Jesus models this most clearly from the cross. In Luke 23:34, while being crucified unjustly, Jesus says: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”
This is not weakness. This is strength rooted in absolute trust. Jesus did not need to retaliate to prove injustice existed. He didn’t need to punish to validate His pain. He trusted the Father to see fully and judge rightly. Choosing mercy over retaliation always feels risky because retaliation gives us a sense of control. Mercy requires surrender. Jesus shows us that true righteousness is not about reacting quickly — it’s about trusting deeply.
Romans 12:19 tells us: “Do not avenge yourselves… but leave room for the wrath of God.” That verse doesn’t tell us injustice doesn’t matter. It tells us we don’t have to carry the burden of making things right. Mercy frees us from the exhausting work of holding onto offense.
What This Means for Us Practically
Following Jesus’ example doesn’t mean:
staying in unsafe situations
removing healthy boundaries
pretending harm didn’t happen
It means this: we stop letting someone else’s wrongdoing determine our peace, posture, or identity.
Mercy is choosing to remain free even when someone else remains wrong.
I have done many episodes about forgiveness. This is because I don’t think we all understand how important forgiveness is. We think that our anger and unforgiveness, our need for revenge, is not hurting anyone. We are wrong. It is hurting us in more ways than we know. It hurts our relationship with God. It blocks healing; it blocks mercy and grace. It keeps us stuck where we are. It holds us captive, like prisoners, to the thoughts and events surrounding that anger and unforgiveness.
I invite you to sit with this verse today, or sometime this week. I invite you to bring it to the Lord and ask Him what He wants you to do with it. Ask Him to highlight the ways in which you are holding onto anger and unforgiveness instead of entrusting it to him. When we release anger, we are not giving power away — we are taking it back.
We are choosing:
peace over reactivity
identity over insecurity
freedom over control
In John 8:36, Jesus says: “So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.”
That freedom includes freedom from being ruled by offense.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each person listening to this episode today. Lord, you are amazing! You are our one true God, and we love you. Lord, help us to see where in our lives we are being held captive by anger or unforgiveness. Help us to see any patterns of offense that we might have and help us break free from them. Help us to be more forgiving and more loving to all those we meet. Help us not to seek revenge or retaliation, but instead help us to stop and say a quick prayer for that person instead. Not because that person deserves the prayer, but because we deserve the freedom that comes from not holding onto anger and unforgiveness. Please help us, Lord! We love you, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you are struggling with your job, with your family or friends, or just with life in general. I want to invite you into my mentoring community. It is a place where you can learn to lean more into the Lord and build your relationship with him, one block at a time. Also, you will be with an amazing group of individuals who are warm and welcoming and struggling just like we all are. There are no perfect people in mentoring. Just those of us who are trying to love God better and to live our lives more in alignment with Him instead of the world. Click on the link below for more info, or sign up today, and you could be joining us on Zoom tomorrow. Remember, Jesus love you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in January 2026 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Take my hand, my children, and I will guide you to where you should go. Do not doubt where I bring you. It may be a place that you do not like, but I know what is best for you.”
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Why Are You Holding Onto What God Has Forgotten?
Isaiah 43:25 “I, I am He who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.”
This was the topic of one of our sessions at my Encounter School of Ministry class last night. The topic was dead to sin. We talked about how, because Jesus died on the cross for us and because we are baptized, we are dead to sin. When we are born, we have a fallen nature. This is because of original sin. However, when Jesus died on the cross, he took our sin with Him. Therefore, we no longer have a fallen nature; we have a sinless nature. In Romans 6:11 it says, “So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.”
Do you consider yourself dead to sin? I wasn’t sure what to say when asked this question. I wasn’t sure what this question even meant. Then we were asked another question that gave me a little more clarity. Do you consider yourself a sinner who does the right thing now and then, or do you consider yourself a saint who sins sometimes? This is all about a mindset. We have to live into our baptism promises. We need to believe that Jesus died for our sins, and when he did, he removed our sinful nature. Our identity matters. You may think this is a little thing and it doesn’t really matter. You may think the above question is just a matter of semantics. I assure you it isn’t. What you tell yourself matters.
We are saints who sin sometimes. It is important that we understand this because the enemy wants us to focus on our sins. He wants us to think we are unredeemable. He wants us to feel like we are our sins. The enemy wants us to take on our sins as if they are our identity. For instance, I lied to someone; therefore, I am a liar. I stole a piece of candy from a friend; therefore, I am a thief. You are not your actions; you are not your sins. You are a redeemed child of God; that is your identity. Your sins are things you do and they can be forgiven and forgotten.
Did you know that Jesus doesn’t remember our sins once we confess them? He forgives and forgets them. It says this in the verse above. Jesus is saying he blots out our transgressions and he does not remember our sins. One of the saints, St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, the nun responsible for the spread of the devotion to the Sacred Heart, was once asked by her spiritual advisor to ask God what her last mortal sin was. He wanted to make sure her visions about the Sacred Heart were truly from God. Who better to know our last mortal sin than God, who knows everything? The next time she was having prayer time, she asked the Lord what her last mortal sin was, and do you know what he said? I don’t remember. With this response, her spiritual advisor knew her visions were from God.
Can you believe this response? I thought this was a great verse to bring to all of you today because I don’t remember ever hearing this verse before. I have read through the entire Bible three times, and I have done several Bible studies, and yet I don’t remember ever hearing this verse before. We tend to think of God as someone who is writing down all of our sins in a book and keeping track of them so He can show them to us at the end of our lives and ask us to explain them. However, this verse says He forgives and forgets our sins. How amazing is that? Another things a lot of us think is that we need to work really hard to make up for our sins. We don’t. Jesus did that when he took our sins to the cross with Him. All we have to do is admit our sins, confess them to God, and they will be forgiven and forgotten. Our teacher explained it like this, “Jesus just wants you to admit that you took the cookie from the cookie jar.” God wants you to come before Him as a child and admit what you have done.
The enemy wants you to hold onto what you have done. He wants you to accept your sin as your identity, and he wants you to be too ashamed to share it with the Father. The devil wants to convince you that God couldn’t possibly forgive you for this thing you have done. He convinces you that this thing is different; yes, God forgives sin, but not sins like this, not sins this bad. The devil is a liar. He is telling you this because he knows your deepest fear is not being forgiven or accepted by God. There isn’t anything you can do that is unforgivable. And it is not hard to be forgiven. All you have to do is admit what you have done and then accept the forgiveness God gives to you.
This last part is hard for many of us. We are willing to confess our sins, and yet we have a hard time accepting the forgiveness God is offering us. We have a hard time believing we are worthy of this forgiveness. Let me set one thing straight: we aren’t worthy of God’s forgiveness or His Grace. We aren’t worthy, and yet He gives them to us freely. Through His death on the cross and through our baptism, we are redeemed from our sinful nature, and therefore our sins are forgiven and forgotten. It is incredible and yes, hard to believe.
If we look at this through our worldly eyes, we find it hard to believe God would forgive and forget. Forgiving and forgetting is something we really struggle with. If we are struggling with identifying as a saint who sins sometimes and instead think of ourselves as sinners who sometimes do the right thing, we can take this to God during our prayer time. This week, while we are praying, we can ask God to show us how to transform our thinking. We can ask God to help renew our minds so we can understand this truth. We can ask God to show us how to adopt this identity of a saint as our own. If God forgets our sins, why are we holding onto them? Why do we take these sins and make them our identity? Our true identity is a redeemed son or daughter of Christ. Our true identity is a saint who sometimes sins.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to truly believe we are saints who sometimes sin and not sinners who sometimes get it right. Lord, help us to believe you forgive our sins when we confess them, and then you forget about them. Help us to believe you are not sitting up there in heaven keeping a stick account of every sin we have ever done. We love you, Lord. It is amazing to us how you forgive and forget even though we aren’t worthy. We are so very grateful, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. If you would like to give a witness for Witness Wednesday, there is still time; just contact me today. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
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Don't Give Up—God Is Still Working
Jeremiah 30:7 “Alas! That day is so great there is none like it; it is a time of distress for Jacob; yet he shall be rescued from it.”
What a great promise from the Lord! Our God is so amazing. He acknowledges that it was a time of great distress for Jacob, and yet He says Jacob will be rescued from it. How many of you really need to hear that right now? How many of you could really use this promise from God right now in your lives? I know several people who are suffering. I know they could really use this promise right now. They could use the promise that they will be rescued from the situation they are in. They need to know the pain, hurt, and anger they feel won’t last forever.
It is important to remember God didn’t just make these promises to the people living at the time this was written. He is making this promise to all of us. You can take the promises you find in Scripture and apply them to your own life. God is talking to you just as much as He is talking to the people in the Bible, just as much as He is talking to me, just as much as He is talking to any of us. Yes, you are in a terrible situation right now, and yet you will be rescued from it.
Maybe you have recently lost someone close to you. If this has happened to you, I imagine you are feeling a whole range of emotions. I also imagine your emotions can switch at the drop of a hat. One minute you are sad, and you really miss them, and the next minute you are angry they are gone. Sometimes you can be feeling two competing emotions at the same time. For instance, you can be really sad you don’t get to see them anymore and yet be happy they get to be with Jesus and celebrate the fact they are whole again and no longer suffering. Whatever you are feeling, let yourself feel it. Sometimes we can make the situation worse because we tell ourselves we “should” be feeling this way or we “shouldn’t” be feeling that way. You have a right to feel however you feel. Allow yourself that grace. This pain you are feeling won’t last forever. God will rescue you from it.
Maybe you are having family issues. Maybe you’re worried about your children. You aren’t sure what their future looks like. You aren’t sure if they are safe. You know they are making bad choices, and yet you can’t save them from themselves. This is really hard. Trust me, I have been through this. I have had lots of family issues over the years. I had a marriage that was falling apart. I had kids that were making bad choices, getting in trouble, and it seemed I couldn’t help them. I was doing all I could, and nothing was really changing. I continued to pray; this was the one thing that did make a difference. I also didn’t give up hope that things would get better. I knew God was working, and yet I didn’t know how he was working, and I certainly didn’t know when it would be over, when things would finally get better. If you are in this situation right now, don’t give up. Keep praying, keep hoping. I know hope can hurt sometimes. Hope hurts because it feels as though we are leaving ourselves open to get hurt if it doesn’t happen. Try to still hope anyway. God never leaves us hanging. He will come through; it just won’t be in our time; it will be in His. I struggled for over 15 years. I definitely had times when I thought things weren’t ever going to get better. I had lots of times when I wondered why it had to take this long. I never got those answers, but I can finally say, after all those years, that I am doing well. Our family is doing well. It still feels strange to say because we struggled for so long. However, I am so very grateful I didn’t give up praying and hoping, and I smile every time someone asks how things are now. I used to say, “I’m surviving.” That was the best I could say; now, everything is really good. Praise God!!
I went to an event on Friday sponsored by American Needs Fatima. It was where a replica of the Fatima statue comes and visits a house. The custodian brings the statue to the house and then takes time to explain all about Fatima and what happened, what Mary asked us to do, what Mary promised us, and answers any questions we had. During his talk, the custodian of the statue mentioned St. Monica, and I felt as though I was supposed to remind all of you about St. Monica. St. Monica was a very devout Catholic, and her son, Augustine, wanted nothing to do with her faith. She did not approve of his lifestyle, and Augustine moved to Rome one night without telling his mom where he was going. She tried to follow him, and he had already moved on to Milan by the time she got to Rome. She finally found him, and she prayed unceasingly for his conversion. Finally, he did get baptized into the faith, along with his best friend and his son, whom he had with a woman he loved but never married. St. Monica prayed for her son for a very long time. Augustine was 32 when he finally became a Catholic. She prayed and cried for at least 17 years before she saw a change. God will rescue you; don’t give up hope!
God hears your prayers. Sometimes it seems like God is not working in our lives. It seems like He does not hear our prayers. If you have been praying for something for a while now and it hasn’t happened yet, I am sorry. If you have had unanswered prayers for quite some time now, I know how hard it can be and how easy it is to get frustrated. I know how painful it is to watch others get their prayers answered and yet yours seem to go unanswered. I know all of this is hard. I know it can get harder and harder to believe God hears you. I assure you, He does. He has not left you alone; He has not abandoned you. He is working diligently on rescuing you. Remember God’s timing isn’t our time. What is a year to us could be a blink of an eye to God. Don’t stop praying, don’t stop hoping, don’t give up. God will rescue you just as He rescued Jacob and countless other people before Him.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this podcast today. Lord, we want to believe you hear all of our prayers; please help us. Lord, some people listening have been waiting on some answers to some pretty big prayers; please help them continue to wait without giving up hope and without giving in to despair. Fill them with a renewed sense of hope and encouragement that you are working on the situation and help them truly believe you will answer their prayers. Lord, you are amazing! You are the resurrection and the life; you are the Way, the Truth, and the Life. You are our Savior, Lord, and we are so very grateful. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I wanted to share some exciting news with all of you who might not already know. Last year I published a 31-day devotional book called Walk Boldly With Jesus Devotional: Who I Am: Discovering God’s Truth About Me. If you are enjoying these podcasts, then you will love the book. It is basically 31 episodes about who God says you are. However, in the book I give you journaling questions and a place to journal right there in the book. I hope you will check it out. You can find it on Amazon, or you can buy an autographed copy on my website. I will write a personal message and mail it to you. My website is WalkboldlywithJesus.com. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I. Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in January 2026 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “If you give me your hearts, I pour my love into you, and you can do things far differently, far better, far greater than you ever dreamed. Not because you are wonderful, but because I love each of you and all of my children. And because you give me your heart, I give mine to you, and I use you as my conduit of grace and mercy. ”
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This morning I want to share some witnesses of healing with you. Before I share them, I want to talk with you about how important it is to enlist others to pray with you and for you as well. I am on several prayer chains. In case you aren’t sure what that means, let me explain. It is a group of people who offer to intercede on your behalf. A lot of churches have a prayer line where you can call in or email in a prayer request, and then whoever is in charge will email it out to all who volunteered to help pray. Also, it may be the members of a prayer group, or another group that has a group chat. I am in three different WhatsApp groups, and we send prayer requests when we have them, and then everyone on the chat prays for the person requesting prayer.
If your church does not have a prayer line, consider starting one. It is as easy as setting up an email address where people can send in requests. For instance, I started one at St. J’s collaborative in MA. So I went on Gmail and created an email account name that is St.Jsprayerline@gmail.com. Then I put an announcement in the bulletin looking for people who would be willing to pray for any requests that came in. There are 42 people who volunteered to be on that email list. Now, people send in prayer requests, and at least 42 other people are praying for them. For the various WhatsApp groups, there are different numbers of people in each group.
There are a lot of reasons why we may not want to ask for prayers. We may not want people to know we are struggling. We may not want to worry people. We may not think our struggle is important enough to bother people with. We may think God has more important prayers to answer. We may think other people are too busy to pray for us. Whatever it is that we might be thinking, the truth is, no one is too busy to say a quick prayer. Another truth is that there is so much power in asking people to pray for you. There is so much power in multiple people interceding on your behalf. You do not have to suffer in silence. You do not have to just deal. Ask people to pray. Also, we get graces every time we pray. So asking others to pray is actually helping them out too!
Here are a few prayer requests and responses from the various prayer groups.
This woman had asked for prayers because she had to go to the eye doctor. The pressure was high in her eyes, and they said she needed to come back for a follow-up. If it was still high, they were going to need to do surgery. The doctor seemed pretty sure that they were going to need to do surgery. Here was her text the next day.
“Good evening, Prayer Warriors. JESUS DID IT AGAIN! The test for my eyes was normal - the pressure was low, under 20! YES - HE DID IT AGAIN - what a wonderful GOD we serve. Thank you for your prayer this morning. God bless you all.”
Next is a woman whose uncle has been refusing to eat. He was having dreams of his wife who had passed away telling him not to eat, so he wasn’t. We prayed at our prayer meeting that he would start eating, and here is her text message afterward.
“Good morning, Watchmen. My uncle just asked for food. Thank you for your intercession. May God continue to bless all of you, and may He answer your prayers speedily!”
Next, I have the specific prayer request and the text message reply.
Dear Sisters, I ask for your prayers for my friend. He is young, in his late 40s. Tomorrow morning he is having a very complicated open-heart surgery to replace one of the valves. This is his third surgery, and it’s a complicated one because of complications from an enlarged heart/aorta.
Her reply after the surgery? “I wanted to update you that my friend has come through his open heart surgery successfully yesterday and is in the ICU. Thank you for your prayers and intentions. God bless you all.”
Here is the next prayer request and answer.
“Good morning, watchmen. Please keep me in your prayers. The director of the agency that I work for has recommended me for a promotion at the agency's headquarters. There are two other candidates, but the director just told me she would rather have me in that position due to my work ethic.
Good morning, beautiful people of God. God has done it! The prophecy came to pass. I got the promotion!!! Please help me praise God for his divine mercy and provision. May God do unto you all the marvelous things he has done for me.”
This woman did not even know there was a promotion available. She did not seek it out; her boss came to her, told her about it, and told her to apply. She not only got this promotion, but she got a second job that she had been looking for! God is so good!
This same woman was in prayer group one morning and mentioned her daughter was sick. Her daughter had been experiencing intense ear pain for the previous 8 hours or so. She was going to have to take her to the doctors. We took time to pray over her daughter. After prayer, her daughter said it felt a little better. Later that day I got a text from the mom saying her daughter felt so much better she wanted to go to school that day.
Here is a prayer request from another group. “Healing for my niece Kathy who broke her back 2 months ago. She is in a lot of pain, and can’t be treated until some healing can happen. Please pray for healing.”
Here is the text we received a few months later:
“Regarding my niece Kathy who broke her back in February, I asked for her because there was no hope the surgeons could restore anything. The sutures finally came out today; she will start Physical Therapy soon and will hopefully go back to work in August. A miracle thank you for your prayers!!!”
Here is another prayer request:
“Please pray for Ann, who is in the hospital and having surgery on her back to repair chipped bones to help lessen her back pain. Thanks”
And the text afterward:
“Update- Ann's surgery went well. She might come home today. Thanks for the prayers.”
Here is another one:
“Prayer request for Tom having cardiac ablation tomorrow at 12:30 pm. Thank you, everyone.”
The reply:
“Thank you, everyone, for your prayers. Tom had his heart procedure; so far, he is doing well and needs to be careful. 5 days of being careful, then back to normal! Praise God”
These are just a few of the many prayer requests that come in. As you can see, some of them are really big, and some might not feel so big. There is no criterion for when we should ask for prayers and when we shouldn’t. If you ask me, you always should; what could it hurt to get extra prayers? I remember in my Encounter Ministries classes Deacon Joe would always say it doesn’t matter if we are praying for a healing of cancer or a healing of a hangnail. God cares just the same about both and can heal them both. He doesn’t have to pick. When we are praying to God about the things we might think are small, it doesn’t take anything away from other people’s prayers. God can hear all of our prayers. He is not limited in any way.
I pray this episode of Witness Wednesday does three things for you. First, I pray in encourages you to ask others to pray for you whenever you have a prayer request. Second, I hope you search out a prayer line or prayer chain you can join so you can start interceding more for others. And finally, that when you do ask people to pray for you, you update them on how the situation turned out. When we tell others about how God answered our prayers, it builds their faith in God and also reinforces that prayer does work!
I love you all, and I want you to know that even though I may not know you, I am praying for you and your families. Please pray for others, it is so important!!
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Are You Spending Your Life on What Matters?
Ephesians 5:15-16 “See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil.”
I really liked this verse and wanted to talk to you about it today because I am not sure we realize how important time is. It matters how we spend our time. The first part of this verse talks about how we need to make sure we are walking circumspectly, not as fools but as wise. Circumspectly is a fancy way to say we need to think carefully before we act. This is hard for us sometimes. I feel like I say this a lot, but I think it is so important that we all become aware of it. We go through life on autopilot. There is so much of our day we spend just going through the motions. We aren’t actually making a lot of the decisions as we go through our day. We have all formed habits, good ones and bad ones, and those habits are what make a lot of the decisions for us.
It sounds like this is not a new problem. I think from the beginning of time this was a problem. We tend to default to whatever we have done in the past. It is not easy to always walk circumspectly. It requires us to pause and think before we do something. This is contrary to how we live out our day-to-day moments. Do you stop and think before you eat your breakfast? Do you stop to think if whatever you’re about to eat is actually the best thing for you to eat? Is it something that will nourish your body, or is it something you are just in the habit of eating? What about how you spend your time in the mornings? Are you spending this precious time in a way that is going to set your day up for success, or are you looking at your phone and then reacting to whatever you saw on your phone?
It is important that we look at how we are spending our time and try to stop and think before we do anything. I have been much more aware of how I am spending my time lately. I am trying to be more focused and stay on task better. I am trying to spend my time more wisely. However, I am finding it is very hard. I find myself slipping into old habits throughout the day. For instance, I will pick up my phone and check my email so many times throughout the day. I do not have a ton of important emails coming in throughout the day. I could easily spend 15-30 min at the end of the day and go through all my emails and be good for the day. However, I am in the habit of checking them, so I do. This is something I am working on changing.
I read something one time that said we all think our time is our own. However, it is a gift from God and one day He is going to want us to give a full account of how we spent His gift. I don’t know about you, but I thought this was pretty powerful. If you knew one day you would have to answer for how you spent your time, would you spend it differently? Would you spend as much time on that video game, or watching those Facebook or YouTube videos? Would you still binge-watch all 8 seasons of that TV show during work hours if you knew you would have to explain your actions to God someday? I ask that question in a loving way. I don’t picture God asking us in a very condemning way. I can picture Him asking us in a loving way. More of a response to us asking why we didn’t get to do all the things we wanted to do. God has amazing plans for each one of us, and no matter where we are on this journey of life, it is important to take a minute and think about how we are spending this precious time that God has given us. There is a song I love, and it talks about this very topic. It is called “Spend a Life” By David Dunn. (CLICK HERE) I will put a link to this song in the show notes, and I highly recommend you take a minute and listen to this awesome song. I am going to take a minute to read you the lyrics, no, not sing them, don’t worry. I think you all need to hear them, and I know we are all busy, so most of you probably won’t listen to the song.
Spend a Life by David Dunn
Everybody's got a balance
But no one knows how much
There's no way to run the numbers
No way to count it up
And we're pouring out our fortunes
In the moments
Both the big and the small
Yeah we gotta spend it all
All I have is what You gave
Watching seconds turn to days
I was made for more then just to watch it fly
A few more turns around the sun
Could be hundreds, could be one
Show me how to spend the treasure of my time
Show me how to spend a life, yeah
Show me how to spend a life
I have never seen a tombstone
Say I didn't work enough, nah
Nobody ever heard a father say
I held my kids too much
God I wanna run after
What really matters
So remind me when I fall
How a good man spends it all
Don't let me waste it
Don't let lose it
Don't let me steal it for myself
No, no
I know it's precious
I know it's priceless
I know my time is flying by
Show me how to spend a life
'Cause all I have is what You gave
Watching seconds turn to days
I was made for more then just to watch it fly
A few more turns around the sun
Could be hundreds, could be one
Show me how to spend the treasure of my time, yeah
Show me how to spend a life, yeah
Wow, did that hit you as it hit me? I got teary-eyed just thinking about all this song talks about. None of us know how much time we have. I love when the song talks about trips around the sun, and he says, could be hundreds, could be one. This is so true, and as much as I don’t think it is helpful to constantly be thinking about our death, I do think it is healthy to occasionally look at how we are living our lives and ask ourselves, would we be proud of how we lived our lives if we were to die tomorrow? Sometimes we put things off, and we say we just need to do x, y, or z, and then we will do the things we really want to do. We know in our hearts we aren’t prioritizing this correctly, and yet we tell ourselves we only have to do this for a few more years, just until we get that promotion, just until we make more money, just until…But we aren’t guaranteed anything. What if we lived our lives with the realization that tomorrow is not a given? What if we woke up each day grateful God blessed us with another day and then lived it as the gift it really is? What if we thought about how we are spending our time and consciously chose how we wanted to spend it? What if we realized we only get a finite amount of time and so we live each moment as if it is a precious gift? What if we stopped putting things off and did them right when we wanted to? Would your life be any different if you started walking into your days circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise? How can you redeem the time you have been given?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to notice how we are spending our time. Help us to take back control of our time. Lord, I know I really struggle with wasting time, and I know I can’t be the only one who struggles with this; please help us, Lord. We ask the Holy Spirit to nudge us when we are wasting time and help to bring us back on track. We ask you to help us realize how important our time is. We ask you to help us realize how finite our time is, but not in an anxious way where we stress out. We ask you to help us see it in a helpful way so we can take advantage of every minute you have given to us. Help us to be grateful for each and every precious second you give us, Lord. You are truly amazing, and we are so grateful for you. You are the light of the world, and the word made flesh. You are so kind to give us so many wonderful days; help us appreciate them more. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus' holy name. Amen.
Thank you for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Share: Who is one person God is placing on your heart right now? Send this episode to them and let Him do the rest. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in January 2026 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “What I want from you is hearts purposed for love. Love is not easy, but love is the greatest gift that you and I can give to the world.”
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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You Are More Forgiven Than You Think
Romans 3:22-24 “This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”
I love these verses because they remind us that everybody sins. Most of us tend to be hard on ourselves, thinking we are unworthy because we are not perfect and fall short of who we think God is calling us to be. These verses remind us that we all fall short of the glory of God. Let’s start at the beginning of these verses. They begin, “This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.” The verse before this was telling us that righteousness is apart from the law. Our righteousness does not come from the deeds of the law. We can not earn our own righteousness. Our righteousness comes through our faith in Jesus Christ. It doesn’t say by our faith; it says through our faith. We do not earn righteousness by our faith. We receive righteousness through faith in Jesus Christ.
Next, it says, “There is no difference between Jew and Gentile.” There is no difference between Jew and Gentile. We are not separate. We are one body of Christ. This was a big deal back in the early days of Christianity. The Jewish people had been God’s chosen people for so long, and now Jews and Gentiles alike were being baptized and believing in Jesus. I am sure it was hard for the Jewish people to just accept others in and not feel like they were closer to God in some way.
I say it was a big deal back in the day, but I think remembering that we are all one body of Christ is something we need to keep in mind even today. Back in the day, you were either Jewish or a gentile. You either believed in Christ or you didn’t. Today, there are 45,000 different denominations of Christianity. It is important for us all to remember that there is one Jesus, and He died for all of our sins. God does not like some of us better than others. God loves us all; we are all one body.
Next, it says, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” We all think we are the only ones who sin. Or the opposite: we see the sins of others and don’t look at our own sins. The verse reminds us that we all sin. None of us is getting it all right. The enemy likes to make us think that Jesus died for everyone else’s sins, but not ours. Ours are too bad. No one else has sinned as badly as we have sinned. We should just hold onto our sins. This is a lie. There is nothing you can do that is bigger than Jesus’s sacrifice on that cross. Also, your sins are not worse than anyone else’s.
When looking up these verses on the EnduringWord.com commentary, I found this quote from Leon Morris, who was quoting Handley Moule: “The harlot, the liar, the murderer, are short of it; but so are you. Perhaps they stand at the bottom of a mine, and you on the crest of an Alp; but you are as little able to touch the stars as they.” Everyone falls short, but everyone can be justified freely by His grace.
I think the second part of this verse is just as important as the first part, and I think sometimes we stop before we get to the second part. We think about how we all fall short, and then we think to ourselves, “What's the point of even trying. If we are all going to get it wrong, then why should we try to be good? Why should we try to do the right thing?” This is the part that can get stuck in our heads. Especially if we decide that we are going to try to do better than we have been. All of a sudden, our mind tells us it is not worth the effort. It tells us we will just fail. It tells us not to bother. When this happens to us, not if, but when, we can remember the second half of this verse. “All are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” We may all sin, but we are also all forgiven by the Grace of God through the sacrifice of Jesus.
We don’t have to do anything to deserve our forgiveness. Jesus did that for us when He died on the cross. What we are doing when we are trying our best to live the way God wants us to is we are saying, thank you, Jesus, I know what you did, and I am so grateful. We are not trying to earn our forgiveness; it is already ours. But we can try to show Jesus we are grateful. We can try to show Jesus that His sacrifice was not in vain, and we are trying to live as God wants us to live.
There are three things I want you to take away from today’s episode. First, we are the same, Gentile or Jew. There is no difference. God loves us all. This applies to all 45,000 denominations of Christianity as well. There is no difference; God loves us all. Even if you don’t believe in Christ or believe in God, He still loves you! Second, we all sin. It is a fact. There are no perfect people in this world. Even if people look perfect on their social media accounts, there is no one who is perfect this side of heaven. We all sin! And last, but not least, Jesus died on the cross to make up for our sins. Yours and mine. All of them. His sacrifice was enough to cover anything we might have done. There is nothing that we have to do to earn freedom from our sins. It was freely given by the Father through His only Son. Jesus paid the ultimate price so that we wouldn’t have to. Thank you, Jesus!!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each person listening to this episode. Lord, you are amazing. Thank you so much for asking Jesus to take our sins to the cross. Thank you, Jesus, for taking our sins to the cross. Lord, it is hard to fathom that kind of love. Please help us to understand it. Please help us to feel that love with our whole bodies. Lord, please help us take it to heart that we are forgiven. Help us to really believe that our sins are forgiven. Help us to bring our sins to you and not hide them from you. Help us to stop believing the voice in our head that tells us we won’t be forgiven. Help us, Lord! We love you, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I wanted to take a minute today to explain a little more about what happens during our Tuesday night mentoring sessions. When you are able to attend the live Zoom meetings, I truly encourage you to come. We are building a beautiful community where people can grow in faith, share honestly, and feel a little less alone. But even if you cannot attend live, mentoring can still be incredibly valuable. Every session is recorded, so you can watch the replay whenever it works for you. Each month, we focus on one central topic, and every week, we take a 30-minute deep dive that helps us understand it more fully and apply it to our everyday lives and relationship with the Lord. Maybe you have been considering mentoring, but the idea of joining a Zoom call makes you feel nervous or uncomfortable. You are welcome to join and begin by simply watching the replays. There is no pressure to participate before you are ready. My prayer is that mentoring will help you grow closer to the Lord, understand His love more deeply, and learn how to walk with Him through whatever you are facing. Pray about it, and when you are ready to take your relationship with the Lord to a deeper level, CLICK HERE to learn more and join us.
I look forward to seeing you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as ou are and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in January 2026 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, you can tremble before my majesty, my greatness, my wisdom, my power, my magnificence, but never fear me.”
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If We Don't Talk About Jesus, Who Will?
Romans 10:14-17 "But how can people call for help if they don’t know who to trust? And how can they know who to trust if they haven’t heard of the One who can be trusted? And how can they hear if nobody tells them? And how is anyone going to tell them unless someone is sent to do it? That’s why Scripture exclaims, A sight to take your breath away! Grand processions of people telling all the good things of God! But not everybody is ready for this, ready to see and hear and act. Isaiah asked what we all ask at one time or another: “Does anyone care, God? Is anyone listening and believing a word of it?” The point is: Before you trust, you have to listen. But unless Christ’s Word is preached, there’s nothing to listen to.”
We are all called to evangelization. What does evangelization even mean? According to the Diocese of Trenton, “Evangelization means bringing the Good News of Jesus into every human situation and seeking to convert individuals and society by the divine power of the Gospel itself.” This could look different for each one of us. I have a friend who feels called to share the Psalms with those he meets. When he does, people are often moved to tears, and it opens doors for him to talk about other parts of the Bible. I have another friend who likes to spend time mentoring women in all that Jesus wants for them. She meets people right where they are and uses the scriptures to show how they can live their lives in a big way. Some people like to go out onto the streets and talk to the homeless people about God and Jesus. Other people like to go door to door asking if they can share the Good News of Jesus with all those they meet.
There isn’t one special way that you have to evangelize. There also isn’t a set rule on whom you have to evangelize to. Sometimes we might feel more comfortable talking about Jesus within our family. We might talk about Jesus to our siblings, our parents, or even our children. Other people might feel uncomfortable talking about Jesus with their family, but they are perfectly fine talking about him to strangers or to their friends. Whatever feels best for you is a great place to start. I say a great place to start because sometimes it is good to step outside of your comfort zone and try something new. It’s great if you start by talking about Jesus with those you feel more comfortable doing so with, but then over time, as you become more and more comfortable talking about Jesus, you can branch out and start talking to others about Him.
The verse above says, "But how can people call for help if they don’t know who to trust? And how can they know who to trust if they haven’t heard of the One who can be trusted? And how can they hear if nobody tells them? And how is anyone going to tell them, unless someone is sent to do it?” We live in a world where there is so much noise and so many distractions. We don’t know who to listen to these days. This verse is saying: how can we call for help when we don’t know who we can trust? And how can people know they can trust Jesus if we aren’t talking about Him? If they don’t know who He is? It is our job, each and every one of us, to teach the world who Jesus really is and that they can trust Him. Even if you just start with your spouse or your children, tell them about Jesus. Tell them about all of God’s promises that Jesus came to fulfill. Tell them they can trust Jesus. God is our comfort, our shield, and our protector. If you didn’t already know that, wouldn’t you want to? I am not talking about going out and forcing your beliefs on others. I am talking about sharing the Good News with those willing to listen.
Next, the verse says, “That’s why Scripture exclaims, A sight to take your breath away! Grand processions of people telling all the good things of God!” How great would it be if we were all talking about God? The verse is saying that it would be so beautiful, it would take our breath away if we saw grand processions of people telling all the good things of God! Doesn’t that sound like something you want to be a part of? Doesn’t that sound exciting? Can you picture it? Instead of being afraid to talk about your faith because you don’t want to offend anyone, you freely walk down the streets proclaiming the Good News of Christ Jesus. When I picture that, I think of a time when we used to vacation at this military place called “Fourth Cliffs.” We would go camping there over the Fourth of July weekend. Every 4th of July, they would have a little parade. This parade consisted of a pickup truck with an American Flag attached to it. Anyone who wanted to participate in the parade walked behind the truck shouting “Happy Birthday America!” and “Happy 4th of July.” It was so much fun. When I hear the part of this verse that says “a grand procession,” I picture a whole bunch of people out in the streets talking about how amazing Jesus is!
The verse also says, “But not everybody is ready for this, ready to see and hear and act.” We can’t do anything about those who are not ready to see, hear or act. That is a job for God. God needs to soften their hearts, open their eyes and ears. We are not responsible for the fruit of our labor. It is not our job to make sure everyone we talk to hears what we are saying. It is only our job to say it. We don’t have to put pressure on ourselves to say the right thing to everyone all the time. We don’t have to stress about not knowing what to say. If we just follow the promptings of the Holy Spirit, God will take care of the rest. God will make sure what we say takes root in the people we are talking to. We don’t have to worry about that. God is so good!
Next, the verse says, “Isaiah asked what we all ask at one time or another: “Does anyone care, God? ' " Is anyone listening and believing a word of it?” I like how this says, we all ask at one time or another. I think this is so true. Especially if we have children. We teach them the ways of God, we tell them about Jesus and how much He loves them, and yet we often have no idea if they are hearing what we are saying. Do they believe all that we are saying? Do they believe any of it? What about our friends and family members? Do they believe what we are saying? Are they even listening?
The verse ends with, “The point is: Before you trust, you have to listen. But unless Christ’s Word is preached, there’s nothing to listen to.” This brings us back to the beginning. It is not our job to make sure everything we say is heard or understood; that is God’s job. Our job is just to get the information out there. Before anyone can trust, they need to listen, and if we aren’t talking about Jesus, then there isn’t anything for them to listen to. Take a moment and think about how many people you meet throughout your day. Think about how you could incorporate Jesus into the conversation. Maybe come up with a few one-liners about Jesus or God that could fit into most conversations. Or, practice listening to the Holy Spirit, so you can know when He is prompting you to share the Good News of Jesus with someone. Think of how you can share Jesus with your friends and family. One great way is to love them. Sometimes we teach people more with our actions than we ever could with our words. Especially if we are talking about Jesus, and yet we are not loving people and treating them with respect. In that case, our actions will be much louder than our words, and they won’t hear anything we are saying. We are all called to share the Good News of Jesus. How you do that is up to you and God. Ask Him how He wants you to share, and He will tell you.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we don’t want to keep you to ourselves; we want to share you with others. Please help us. Show us how you want each one of us to share with those around us. Give us the courage to share even when we're nervous or scared. Help reassure us that you will guide us in what to say if we ask, and if we listen to you guiding us. Lord, we love you, and we want everyone to love you. Please help us tell about all the amazing things that make you so incredible. You are the almighty one. You are the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. We are so very grateful for all you do for us, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. You can find both my books on my website, walkboldlywithjesus.com, or on Amazon. Total Trust in God's Safe Embrace and Walk Boldly With Jesus Devotionals. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
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I’d Do It Again!
Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrated his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
I love this verse. I may have done an episode on it before. I am not sure. But I heard a song this morning on my way to adoration, and it really spoke to me. This verse is such a great reminder that Christ didn’t wait until we stopped sinning before He died for us. He died while we were still sinners. He died for us just as we were. He didn’t put any conditions on it. He didn’t tell us that He would die when we got it all together or when we started putting God first in our lives. He didn’t die thinking we would be so appreciative of His sacrifice that we would suddenly stop sinning.
He knows us. He knows the human condition. He did not die on that cross for us because He thought we would change our ways. He died on that cross for us so that He could take the punishment that we deserve so that we could finally be reconciled with the Lord. When Adam and Eve sinned, they put a separation between God and us, and God did not like that. He is a just God and needed to carry out the consequences of their sin, but He didn’t want to be separated from us forever, so He sent His only Son to save us.
The song I heard this morning is called I’d Do It Again, and it is by Andrew Ripp. I won’t write out all the lyrics as it is not my song. However, it talks about how Jesus remembers everything that happened the night he was crucified. But after each description of the terrible things that happened that night, he says, “But, child, if I had to, I’d do it again.” This really hit me. I don’t know if I had ever thought of this before. I have heard people say that although Jesus died for everyone’s sins, even if you were the only person, He still would have chosen the cross. That is something wild to think about.
If I were the only person on the earth, Jesus would still have died on the cross to reconcile me with the Father. Can you believe that? Can you believe that if you were the only one on Earth, Jesus would have still chosen to go through all of that, just for you? Even if we can’t fathom it, I think we all know down deep inside that it is true. When I hear this song by Andrew Ripp, I knew what He is saying is true also. If Jesus had to do it all again, just for us, He would. I can’t fathom the pain and suffering Jesus went through that night. The betrayal, the beating, the crown of thorns, the mocking, the weight of the cross, the nails being driven into his hands, the spear in his side. I can’t begin to imagine the pain, agony and heartbreak. It’s too much to bear if we really sit and think about all He went through. This is why this song hits my heart so much because I know if Jesus had to go through all of that again, He would.
I know so many people struggle to feel loved these days. The world is often an unkind place. It is full of broken people who do not know how to love as Jesus loved. We don’t know how to love unconditionally. We get caught up in the world's judgment, and we want people to look, believe, or love a certain way so we can love them. I understand how it would be hard to gain the love of those around us when it is conditional. However, Jesus loves us unconditionally all the time.
We think God is judging us. We think He is keeping track of every time we mess up just so He can hold us accountable one day. Did you know that Hebrews 8:12 says, “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.” God purposefully forgets our sins. Did you also know that Psalm 103:12 says “as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.” We are so focused on our sins, but God isn’t. He is focused on who we are becoming and on his love for us.
This song reminds us of that love. Jesus literally went to Hell and back again for us. He suffered the worst pain imaginable, not because He had to, but because he wanted to, and He would do it again. The chorus says, “‘Cause there’s no distance too far, no pain too great. " There’s no grave too dark, no hell I won’t pay.” There is nothing Jesus wouldn’t do for us. For you. It is easy to read the words of the Bible or hear the words in these songs and fully believe them for other people. However, it can be hard to take them in and believe that they are talking to us personally. I want you to hear this loud and clear this morning. Jesus died on the cross for you. If He had to, He would do it all over again for you! Jesus loves you, and there is nothing He won’t do to save you and bring you home. Nothing! Let that sink in. Take time to think about all Jesus went through the night and day leading to the crucifixion, and then remember He did that just for you. That is how much He loves you.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each person listening to this episode. Lord, we thank you for all you do for us. We can’t thank you enough for sending your only Son to die on a cross for us. Lord, please help each of us who hears this today to truly take it in. Please help us see that He didn’t just die for everyone’s sins but for our sins personally. Even if I were the only person, He still would have done it. That is so powerful, Lord, that you love us that much. Please help each one of us realize how much you love us! Please let us sit with the thought that if Jesus had to do it again, He would. That is how much you love us. That is so incredible, and we don’t deserve it, Lord!! We love you, and we ask all of the in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I would love to invite each one of you to share this episode with anyone who could use a reminder that they are deeply loved. If you are enjoying this podcast and you have not hit that subscribe or follow button, would you do that for me today? It only takes a second and really helps me out. I look forward to seeing you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in November 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Today is a new day, my people. Today is the day I renew all my mercies and my graces, and I pour them out freely on each one of you, on your families and your friends and your co-workers and your churches and all the world. ”
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Witness Wednesday #216 Beth B.
Today’s Witness Wednesday testimony is from a woman I met through the Big Life mentoring group. I had put a post in the group asking if some of them would be willing to read my book and then leave an honest comment on Amazon afterward. A few of them decided it would be fun to all read it together, so they started a Facebook group to do a book study for my daily devotional book called Walk Boldly With Jesus Devotional. Who I Am: Discovering God’s Truth About Me. Beth made a post in that group asking for prayers, as she had been having some pain in her abdomen, and when she went for a CT scan, they found a different problem. I do not know Beth very well, so I didn’t have her phone number or any way of contacting her other than Facebook. So, I decided to just type a prayer in the chat. This is something I like to do when people ask for prayers. This way, they know someone is praying for them, and many times, even just reading a prayer from someone can bring peace in a difficult situation. Luckily, Beth got more than just peace from the Lord. I will let her tell you what happened next. Take it away, Beth!
I have been having left upper quadrant pain since May 5th. I have been in constant pain since May 5th. I was rushed to the ER on May 14th.
They did a CT of my abdomen, which they also got some of my lungs. On that CT scan, they found out that I had three lung nodules, five at the lower base of the left lung, seven at the middle lobe, and almost 10 at the upper lobe of the left lung. And I also had a hole in the middle of my two lungs, of my right and left lung, literally right in the middle.
There was a little pinhole, well, a little hole. Anyways, so I had a follow-up visit on May 29th from the ER visit with my doctor. I didn't get to see the doctor.
I saw the nurse practitioner. Anyways, she went line by line through every test. I mean, I was there for eight hours at the ER trying to find an answer why I'm having abdominal pain.
No one can find out. But anyways, so she went line by line trying to find out all these scans and testing that I did. So she was really concerned because I do have an extensive history of cancer.
In 21, I had six cancers. So I don't smoke and I don't vape. So the fact that I had three lung nodules, she was highly concerned that it may have been cancerous.
And I also was concerned about that too. So I'm in the prayer group. I'm in the group with Catherine about walkability with Jesus.
Okay. And I have really been trying to keep this in. I don't want to tell people.
I don't want to be like, you know, like, woe is me. It's not woe is me. I told Catherine and the group on June 12th about the lung nodules that I just wanted some prayers.
This is Catherine's prayer. And this prayer is very important for what I'm going to tell you. Dear Heavenly Father, we ask that you heal Beth, that you are the great physician, you are the miracle worker, and a way maker.
We know that you can heal these nodules and allow her to breathe easily once again. We believe, Lord, help our unbelief. Lord, we ask in the name of Jesus that you heal these nodules before she goes to the lung specialist.
It can also be once, it can be all at once or quietly over the next few weeks. Lord, we pray in the name of Jesus that you heal Beth and that she starts to breathe better and better every day. Lord, I ask that you give her new lungs just as you did for the father in Bobby Dawkins' book.
His daughter cried out to him and asking for a brand new lungs. Lord, we ask for that for Beth too. We ask, we thank you for answering our prayers.
You tell us over and over in the Bible that when we ask and we are asking, we are confident you will answer. We are confident that you will hear us and that you're taking care of Beth. Thank you, Lord.
We love you so much. You're the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. You're the Almighty.
We ask all this in the abundant name of the Lord Jesus. Amen. Okay.
So I had another specialist appointment again for the abdominal pain. They sent me back again for another CT scan. So I went to see the pulmonologist on the 30th.
Okay. So when I went into the pulmonologist on the 30th to find out why I have these nodules, he says, Bethann, you were at the ER on the 14th. I said, yes.
He showed me my scan. He showed me my lungs. He says, these are your lungs.
These are your three nodules. This is your hole. And I said, yes.
He's like, so I was preparing for this exam on Monday and I was 100% fully ready to send you for biopsies, like extensive testing to figure out the why. You had a CT scan yesterday. I said, yes.
And he says, well, when I was preparing for my, because I was the first patient after lunch, he says, during my lunch, I reviewed my afternoon charts and your CT scan came in from yesterday. And I don't know if you were praying for a miracle. I don't know if you were expecting a miracle, but you got a miracle.
You have new lungs and you have young lungs. And he showed me my, my CT scan from the 29th. He says, you literally have new lungs.
They are young lungs. I said, young. I said, I'm 54.
And he says, well, you would not, I would not know that you were 54 looking at these young lungs. I'm like, Oh my gosh. Like that is exactly what Catherine prayed for.
She prayed for new lungs, new lungs. And I've added on the young lungs just because I want younger ones. So that was my praise.
Like I am like, like, and then when I came out of the pulmonologist, there's not even a church, like locally, like around it, but there were church bells ringing, like for no rhyme or reason. Like, there are literally church bells ringing. I was like, Oh, thank you, Lord.
Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Lord. And I like fell to the knees, and people are looking at me, and I'm like, you don't understand.
I just received the miracle. So that's my miracle. That's my shout out.
Can you believe it? New lungs. God is so good! Thank you so much, Beth, for sharing your story with us and for giving God all the Glory. When we share the miracles that God is doing in our lives, it builds the faith of all those around us, and then they start to believe that if God can do it for you, then maybe He will do it for them too! We look forward to hearing more miracle stories from you in the future!
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You're Not Falling Apart—You're Becoming
Today, I felt led to start with this poem I read the other day because it beautifully demonstrates that we don’t always understand what God is doing. We think we are a mess, we feel like we are falling apart, we feel like God has abandoned us, and yet God is ALWAYS right there in the middle of it all! He knows exactly what He is doing and wants us to trust Him in the process. This poem gives us some insight into that process. I feel it makes it a little easier to trust when we have a bit of understanding. This conversation is between someone and God.
Me: Hey God.
God: Hello.....
Me: I'm falling apart. Can you put me back together?
God: I would rather not.
Me: Why?
God: Because you aren't a puzzle.
Me: What about all of the pieces of my life that are falling down onto the ground?
God: Let them stay there for a while. They fell off for a reason. Take some time and decide if you need any of those pieces back.
Me: You don't understand! I'm breaking down!
God: No - you don't understand. You are breaking through. What you are feeling are just growing pains. You are shedding the things and the people in your life that are holding you back. You aren't falling apart. You are falling into place. Relax. Take some deep breaths and allow those things you don't need anymore to fall off of you. Quit holding onto the pieces that don't fit you anymore. Let them fall off. Let them go.
Me: Once I start doing that, what will be left of me?
God: Only the very best pieces of you.
Me: I'm scared of changing.
God: I keep telling you - YOU AREN'T CHANGING!! YOU ARE BECOMING!
Me: Becoming who?
God: Becoming who I created you to be! A person of light and love and charity and hope and courage and joy and mercy and grace and compassion. I made you for more than the shallow pieces you have decided to adorn yourself with that you cling to with such greed and fear. Let those things fall off of you. I love you! Don't change! ... Become! Become! Become who I made you to be. I'm going to keep telling you this until you remember it.
Me: There goes another piece.
God: Yep. Let it be.
Me: So ... I'm not broken?
God: Of course Not! - but you are breaking like the dawn. It's a new day. Become!!!
~Author John Roedel
I know many of you are struggling right now. Whether it is with health issues, money issues, or in the process of losing old friends and making new friends, I think this poem shows us that God can use these hard times to help us step into the person we are meant to be. The person He knows we are capable of being. There are several things I love about this poem. The first is the gentleness of God. He is so good. I think this poem demonstrates the love that God has for us. He didn't say no when she asked if God would put her back together. He said He would rather not. He then went on to explain why He felt that way. Notice how He didn’t get short with her. He didn’t seem irritated or annoyed with her. We often imagine God feels that way about us. We tell ourselves that He is tired of us coming and asking the same thing. We imagine He wondering why we can’t seem to get it together already. If we are honest, we have felt that way about our loved ones before. God is not us. He doesn’t have to wonder why we can’t get it together. He knows. He made us. He knows everything we have ever done and everything we will ever do.
I also love that God doesn’t tell her never again to pick up the pieces that fell off. He tells her to take some time and decide whether she needs them. Maybe you are going through this shedding process right now. Maybe you are losing friends, workers, loved ones, or even material things. God isn’t telling you that they are gone forever. He is saying take some time and see if you need them. Do they bring joy into your life? Do they make you a better person? Do they help you grow closer to the Lord? Are they helping you on your journey to heaven?
If the answer to some of these questions are yes, maybe you can pick them back up again. Take the time to ask questions. Pay attention to the answers. Don’t pick them back up again because it is hard without them. Don’t pick them up again because it is easier with them or you miss them. It is normal to want to. When you are tempted to pick back up the ones that are not good for you, remember what the poem said, “What you are feeling are just growing pains. You are shedding the things and the people in your life that are holding you back. You aren't falling apart. You are falling into place. Relax. Take some deep breaths and allow those things you don't need anymore to fall off of you. Quit holding onto the pieces that don't fit you anymore. Let them fall off. Let them go.
The last part that I want to draw your attention to is what the poem says about changing. Listen to that part again. “Me: Once I start doing that, what will be left of me?
God: Only the very best pieces of you.
Me: I'm scared of changing.
God: I keep telling you - YOU AREN'T CHANGING!! YOU ARE BECOMING!
Me: Becoming who?
God: Becoming who I created you to be! A person of light and love and charity and hope and courage and joy and mercy and grace and compassion. I made you for more than the shallow pieces you have decided to adorn yourself with that you cling to with such greed and fear. Let those things fall off of you. I love you! Don't change! ... Become! Become! Become who I made you to be. I'm going to keep telling you this until you remember it.”
Isn’t that just like God? He keeps telling us something until we believe Him. And for most of us, He has to tell us a lot. God is telling you, yes you, right now that He is with you in this. He tells you that He sees you, not for who you think you are, but who you really are. He sees the you that He created you to be even if you aren’t there yet. He knows your journey and isn’t frustrated that you aren’t there yet because He knows exactly when you will arrive there. He knows exactly what obstacles you are struggling with. We actually had a word or prophecy at my Thursday morning prayer group in June 2024. God assured us, “I am there among your trials and your joys. I am the God who loves you, who cares. I am never displeased or impatient with you. I place my hope in you.”
This message is not just for my prayer group. This is a message for all of His children. This is something I believe he really wants us to know. We get impatient with our children. We get disappointed with them. God is telling us He is not like that. He knows our innermost thoughts. He knows everything we are going through. He knows our hearts. He knows how badly we want to do the right thing, and yet we tend to do the wrong thing. This is not unique to you. That is all of us. If Paul, who is credited with writing about half of the New Testament books, can admit to this, we can be sure we all struggle with this problem. In Romans 7:19-20, Paul said, “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within me.” God knows we are broken. He knows we struggle. He doesn’t get disappointed. Instead, He celebrates every time we don’t give in to temptation. Every time we mess up, we can bring that to God with the assurance that He welcomes us with open arms and celebrates because we came home instead of being upset that we messed up.
Dear Heavenly Father, we ask you to bless everyone listening to this episode. Dad, we thank you so much for loving us so much, for always being there for us, for helping us become who you created us to be, for your patience with us as we become that person, and for forgiving us again and again. You are so wonderful. You are our perfect father, and we are so grateful for all you do for us! Dad, could you give us the strength not to pick up those pieces that have fallen that we don’t need? It is hard to leave them there when our life seemed easier with them. Give us the strength to keep moving forward without them. Dad, could you also fill us up to the tippy top with hope that things will be ok because it doesn’t always feel like it will be. Help us to feel you right because of us. Maybe hold our hands as we walk side by side. That way, we know you are there. We love you, Dad, and we ask all of this in Jesus’s mighty name. Amen!!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If this podcast has blessed you in some way, would you consider sending it to others? Also, check out the link below for my mentoring group. I would love to see your face on Zoom this evening. There is no commitment. You can try it out for a month, and if you decide it is not for you, you can simply cancel. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed weekend!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in November 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, I draw you into the blazing heart of my love. All of you. You are connected to those who have gone before you through the gate of death. You are connected to your ancestors. You are connected to your loved ones. You are connected to your enemies. For if you are aware of your chosenness, then when you look at each other, see the chosenness in them also. You are one in me.”
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Your Prayers Are Never Wasted1 John 5:14–15 “And this is the boldness we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have obtained the requests made of him.”
I love this verse because God is reminding us that we can trust Him. He reminds us that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. If we know that He hears us, then we know we have obtained the requests we made of Him.
I don't know about you, but I can get caught up in the words "according to His will." I have asked the Lord for many things that I don't think He has given me. It can be frustrating when we pray for someone or ask for something we believe is good, and it seems like God isn't listening.
I know God's ways are higher than our ways and His thoughts are greater than our thoughts, but that doesn't always make it easier to understand. If you've ever struggled with this, let me share what has helped me.
Have you ever had a child, niece, nephew, or friend's child ask for something they were convinced they needed? They had thought it through and believed it was the best thing for them, but you could see it wasn't because you knew where that choice would lead.
For example, imagine a teenager begging to drop out of school because they're tired of the work and already have a job lined up. They think it's the best decision, but you know it will limit so many opportunities in the future. Because you love them, you say no.
I think this is often how God answers our prayers.
Good thing He doesn't give us everything we ask for because, just like children, we sometimes ask for things that aren't truly good for us. We think we know what we want, but God sees the whole picture. We may pray for a new job, only to later discover that job would have required constant travel or an unhealthy work environment. God protects us from countless things we never even know about because He is a good Father.
I heard a song on the way to Adoration this morning—and you know how much I love songs. It's called "Somebody Prayed" by Crowder. The song is all about the power of prayer and reminds us that many of the blessings we experience today are the result of someone faithfully praying for us. It also reminds us that God hears every prayer, even when we don't immediately see the results. The song begins:
Every night there by your bed
You fold your hands and bow your head
Throwing out another prayer in faith
When you're wondering if He's hearing you
Look at me, I'm living proof
I'm only right where I am today
Because somebody prayed
These lyrics remind us that when we pray and do not see results, we can look at those around us and be confident that if God answers their prayers, He will answer ours, too. I think it is vital to remember that the answers to our prayers may not look like we want them to and may not come in the timing we want them to. I like how Crowder can realize that the reason he is where he is today is because his mom prayed for him a lot.
So I hit my knees 'cause I've
Seen all Heaven move (don't matter if you hit rock bottom
My God pick you up when you call Him.)
I pray, "Father, please" 'cause I've
Seen what He can do (don't matter if the storm cloud coming
My God come through when you call Him)
I love this verse too because it says that it doesn’t matter if you hit rock bottom because God will pick you up when you call Him. This reminds us that we are never too far down for God to pick us back up again. It also says it doesn’t matter if the storm cloud is coming because God will come through when we call Him. Crowder says he has seen all heaven move, and he has seen what our heavenly Father can do.
You might be in a storm right now, or you might be at your lowest point yet. Either way, you can rest assured that when you call on the Lord, He is going to answer that call. He is going to lift you up out of that pit or get you safely through that storm. That is just who He is. If you wonder if this is true, look around you at all the people you know who are struggling, or the ones who were struggling and have made it through to the other side. They were not alone. God helped them, and if he helped them, he can help you too!
These hands have no power
There ain't an hour He don't come through
That's why when mountains move, I say
"Looks like somebody prayed”
This verse is reminding us that we can do nothing without God. He is our source of power. He is our Savior. This is why, when something amazing happens in our lives, we should automatically know that someone was praying for us. Our default should be to thank God and to thank whoever was praying for us. Sometimes we think that because we didn't pray, then it wasn’t God who helped us. However, there are so many people praying all the time. There were many saints who would send up prayers for anyone who needed them. Or they would pray for those who had no one else to pray for them. You might have a whole army of people praying for you, and yet you might not even know it.
For instance, when someone asks me for prayer I usually ask my parents to also pray for them because I know my parents are mighty prayer warriors. I also ask my prayer group to pray, my Encounter Ministry fellow students, and the prayer line at my church. Then sometimes I would also add their request to these three online prayer requests websites, one of which is the Lourdes website. Do you see how someone could have a whole army of people praying for them and not even know it?
For the child of God that's far from home
The one who thinks they're too far gone
I'm throwing out another prayer in faith (prayer in faith)
Worn-out altars, tear-stained pews
Still I won't give up on you
I believe that anything can change
When somebody prays
I love this verse because he is talking to anyone who feels like they are far from home. Anyone who feels like they are too far gone. Then he tells them that he is praying for them. We all need to be praying for those who are far from home and think they are too far gone. There is no too far gone with the Lord. He is always willing to take us back. He is always waiting for us to realize that and to come home. I love it when he says he won’t give up on us because he believes that anything can change when somebody prays.
This is an important thing for us all to believe. It is so true. Anything can change when somebody prays. The enemy often tries to make us believe that our situation is too bad and that there is no solution. He tries to convince us that we don’t need to pray because there isn’t anything God can do for anyone. There isn’t anything anyone can do. This is ridiculous! God can do anything! We might not see a way out, we might not think things can get better, but God can always make a way, even when we can’t see how. It is always worth it to say a prayer. It can make all the difference in the world. Sometimes God is just waiting for you to ask. He is waiting for you to invite Him into it all. Why wouldn’t we want God to be in all of it?
I've seen miracles come from feeble words
I've seen hospital rooms turned into cathedrals
I've seen freedom come to the prisoner
You can't tell me that prayer don't work
The first line says, “I’ve seen miracles come from feeble words.” Do you know why I love this? I love it because it reminds us that we don’t have to know what to say. We don’t have to pray these long, eloquent prayers. We don’t have to ask for the exact thing or say the exact right words in order for our prayers to be answered. It’s not like in all those movies about making a wish on a genie in a bottle. If you don’t get the wording perfectly, then something bad happens. God is not like that. We don’t have to know the perfect thing to say. We just have to call upon his name and ask him for what we want.
It goes on to say, “I’ve seen hospital rooms turned into cathedrals.” I think what he means by this is that hospital rooms can be a powerful place for prayer. Sitting by a loved one's bedside can prompt people to pray more. It can also help us to be bold and ask for more from the Lord. Desperation to save our loved ones can be a powerful motivator. He also says, I’ve seen freedom come to the prisoner. This is another great result of prayer. You might know someone who is stuck in their past. They may be an actual prisoner in jail, or they may be a prisoner to guilt, shame, and unforgiveness. Either way, prayers can free them from their prison. I have seen it happen many times!!
The song ends with:
So every night there by your bed
When you fold your hands and bow your head
Not a single word you've ever said in vain
'Cause He hears everything
I like this verse too because it reminds us that not a single word you’ve ever said is in vain. When we pray to God, He hears us. We can be confident in this, just as the scripture verse for today reminds us. God hears it all, whether you are in church praying or you are crying out to him in your car. Wherever you are, no matter how far gone you think you are, He always hears every word of it, and none of it was said in vain. He hears you, and He will answer your prayers according to his will and according to His timing.
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You Can't Miss God's Plan for Your Life
Proverbs 19:21 “Many are the plans in a person’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.”
I thought today’s verse went well with yesterday’s episode. Yesterday’s verse talked about being guided by the Holy Spirit. Today, we are being told that we may have many plans in our hearts, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails. What does that mean? Does that mean that it doesn’t matter what we want because we just have to do what God wants us to do? No, that is not what this verse is saying. This verse lets us know that God has a purpose for our lives and that it will prevail.
How we get there is up to us. However, if we want to get there the quickest and most effective way, then we will let the Holy Spirit guide us there. Oftentimes, we don’t stop and ask God what he thinks we should do. We just go about our day doing what we want to do or what feels good to us. When we have a big decision to make, sometimes we do stop and take time to think about it, maybe even pray about it, but after we pray about it, do we listen to see what the Lord has to say about it? Do we pay attention to the feelings in our body and see if the small voice inside of us is telling us to lean one way or the other?
I love that this verse assures us that the Lord’s purpose will prevail. I find great comfort in that fact. I have seen and heard evidence of this when I read stories or hear people’s testimonies about how they went down the wrong path for a long time, but in the end God brought them back to where they were supposed to be. I have been told that if it is God’s plan, no one can take it away from you. I think this is true. However, I do think things we can do and things others can do to us can delay that plan or that purpose from taking place.
A great example of this is the story of Jonah in the Bible. God had a great plan for Jonah. It says in Jonah 1:1-2, “The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai: “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.’” God wanted Jonah to let Nineveh know that God saw their wickedness and that if they didn’t repent, then in 40 days Nineveh would be overthrown. Jonah actually heard the word of the Lord. He was tasked with this important job. What did Jonah do? He ran away. He got on a ship going in the opposite direction.
Now, here is where we can see that God’s plan will prevail. God created a storm for the ship to run into. Jonah was thrown overboard and swallowed by a whale, and then a few days later was spat out on shore and went to Nineveh. So, yes, God’s plan did prevail. However, can you see how this is a good example of doing what we are told or asked to do the first time around, instead of trying to do things our way? Can you see how Jonah not only delayed the fulfillment of God’s purpose for him, but also made it much worse for himself?
The same things happen to us. We feel like we are supposed to do something, but we don’t want to, so we go in the opposite direction. Many of us, even if we don’t know that God is talking to us, still know when He wants us to do something. We all have the Holy Spirit living inside of us. So, if you feel a nudge to call someone you haven’t talked to in a while, that is probably the Holy Spirit nudging you. If you take the time to call that person, you will see why you had that nudge.
Sometimes we do something and get this feeling inside that what we are doing isn’t right, yet we ignore it. Then something happens, and it can prolong our purpose from God. For instance, you are with someone, and you know inside they are not the person you should be with. However, you stay anyway. This could delay God’s plan for you and the person you are supposed to be with. Oftentimes God asks us to do something, and we don’t understand why. It doesn’t make sense to us, and so we don’t do it. That can also take us down the wrong path or make us miss the path altogether, forcing us to take a really long detour to get back to where we were.
I bet we can all think of a time in our lives when we took a wrong turn, and we had to take a detour to get back on track. One example I heard the other day was a young adult who got his degree in engineering because that is what his parents wanted him to do. He knew his heart wasn’t in it, but he did it anyway. Then, when he graduated, he earned his Master’s degree in counseling, became a licensed mental health counselor, and is now living the purpose God had for his life. Would he have gotten there sooner if he had listened to his inner voice sooner instead of outside influences? Maybe, but the important thing is not how long it takes us to get there, but that we do get there.
I think what the Lord wants us to hear this morning is that his purpose prevails. Some of us are worried about doing anything because we are worried it is not what God wants. We want Him to reassure us every step of the way that we are still going the right way. That has not been my experience. In fact, I saw a YouTube video from Father Mike Schmitz, and he said that we want constant reassurance, but if God is not telling you to stop doing what you're doing, then keep going forward. God will tell you when to make a change, when to stop something you are doing, or when to start doing something else. If you aren’t hearing or feeling anything, then you are probably fine to keep doing what you are doing. In the end, God’s purpose will prevail! We just need the Holy Spirit to guide us!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to thank you for guiding us. We are sorry for all the times we didn’t listen and for all the wrong turns that we took. We ask that you help us to listen to you more. We ask that you talk louder when we act as though we can’t hear you. We thank you that your purpose prevails. We thank you for always being so faithful. We love you so much, Lord. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Will you help me reach the people who need this message? Share this episode today with someone who could use encouragement. It really helps me out when you share this podcast. I look forward to seeing you here again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in November 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Do you love me, my children? Do you call me often, my children? Do you hear my love flowing in every fiber of your body, crying out? Come to me. Come to me. I have given you a gift, spirit to spirit. You use it less and less. I want you to be strong in my love. Use your gifts. Call on me. Spirit to spirit needs to be strong. It will not be strong until you use it.”
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Are You Letting the Holy Spirit Guide You?
Galatians 5:25 “If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit.”
I love any verses that talk about the Holy Spirit because I don’t think any of us realize the power that we have living inside of us. The Holy Spirit, the same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead, lives in each one of us. That is amazing. That is something that we should think about more often than we do. When was the last time you thought about how amazing it is that you have the Holy Spirit living inside of you? When was the last time you thought about the Holy Spirit at all?
The first half of this verse says, “If we live by the Spirit…” So, before we move on from that, we should ask ourselves, “Do I live by the Spirit?” When I looked up this same verse in the Message translation, it provided a bit more detail, so I want to read it to you now. “Since this is the kind of life we have chosen, the life of the Spirit, let us make sure that we do not just hold it as an idea in our heads or a sentiment in our hearts, but work out its implications in every detail of our lives. That means we will not compare ourselves with each other as if one of us were better and the other worse. We have far more interesting things to do with our lives. Each of us is an original.”
I love the beginning part of this verse in this translation for a couple of reasons. First, it reminds us that we have a choice. Did you know you have a choice? Some of us may have grown up Catholic, or Protestant, or this denomination or that, and our hearts may not be in it, but we choose to stay because that is all we know. This is ok, but it is important to remember that you have chosen the life you have. This is important because we can often blame things on the life that we have. We can forget that we make choices every single day, and that the life we are living is directly related to those choices.
So now that we know we have a choice, are we choosing things that will give us the life we want? Are we choosing joy over anger? Are we choosing kindness over judgment? Are we choosing love over hate? Our choices are very important. Two people can have the same job, make the same amount of money, be married, and yet live very different lives. One could be saving for retirement and have money to go on vacations. The other could be living paycheck to paycheck. One could love going to work, and the other could hate their job. What makes the difference? The choices they make and what they decide to focus on.
The next important thing, I think, that the translation of the verse says is, “That means we will not compare ourselves with each other as if one of us were better and the other worse. We have far more interesting things to do with our lives. Each of us is an original.” Comparison is the thief of joy. We all know this. We have all said this. Yet, we still can’t help but compare ourselves to others. We look at social media and see others living the life we want to live. We see their car, house, kids, and marriage, and we want what they have. I love how the Message translation says, “Each of us is an original.”
God did not create you to be me, and he did not create me to be you. You are not supposed to be your neighbor, sister, brother, or best friend. You were created to be exactly who you are. Nothing more and nothing less. When we choose to live in the Spirit, this is what we get to do. We get to live authentically, trusting that God has a plan and that he is orchestrating our lives to fit into his plan.
The second half of today’s verse says, “Let us also be guided by the Spirit.” Are we allowing the Holy Spirit to guide us? Are we pausing before we make a big decision to see what the Holy Spirit thinks we should do? Are we taking the time to listen to the Lord’s voice on a daily basis so that when He does have something important to tell us, we will recognize his voice?
I want to share with you something that I didn’t realize until I started taking the Encounter School of Ministry classes. You can actually ask God questions, and then if you listen, He will answer them. I don’t know why it took me so long to realize you can have a back-and-forth conversation with God. I don’t think it is something many of us know or believe. It is true, though, and it is amazing!
When I think of this part of the verse, “Let us also be guided by the Spirit,” I think of a retreat I went to several years ago. I was really struggling in my marriage and with parenting, and God told me I wasn’t coming to Him. I didn’t think this was true, as I prayed to Him about it all the time. He told me that although it was true that I prayed for help, I didn’t actually sit and listen to what He thought I should do about it. I felt like He told me I was always turning to others, books, or podcasts for my answers instead of turning to Him.
What about you? Are you searching everywhere for your answers? Are you going to everyone except the one who has all the answers? Why do we do this? I think it is because we don’t know that God is talking to us. We don’t know that God will give us the answers if we ask. Also, it takes patience to wait on God as He doesn’t always give us the answer right away. Sometimes it takes a bit, and we are a very impatient people as a whole.
Today is our chance to change that. Today is our chance to come to God first and let the Holy Spirit guide us. Before we make a big decision, we can pause and ask God what He wants us to do. We usually get a gut feeling one way or another. I have a friend who always asks God for some sort of confirmation when making a big or important decision. She will ask Him to show her something specific, and if she sees it, she knows that it is the right decision.
God wants to be in our lives. He wants us to come to Him with our problems, with our joys, with our sorrows. He wants us to rely on Him, including asking for advice when we don’t know what to do. Or asking for confirmation when we think we know what to do but want to just make sure. If we choose to live by the Spirit, then the Spirit will guide us. We just have to let Him!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode. Lord, we thank you for giving us the Holy Spirit. We thank you for leading us and guiding us. Lord, help us to make time as we go throughout our day to listen to you. Help us to pause and ask what you think we should do before we make any big decisions. Help us to allow ourselves to be guided by you. Lord, we love you so much, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I want to invite you to join my mentoring group. This mentoring group is a safe, judgment-free space to grow in your relationship with God. If you’ve been looking for that, this is the place for you. This month we are talking about the love of the Son, and last night’s session was great. It reminded us all that Jesus accepts us right where we are. He isn’t scared of the real us, he actually moves in closer to the real us. There is a link in the show notes if you want to check out all the details for mentoring. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in November 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I know your interior struggles. I know every single thought that the devil feeds you in order to make you curse yourself and burn yourself. I love you, my precious ones. Stay strong. Keep trying. Keep moving forward. I will let nothing hold you from me or your purpose. I kiss each of you.”
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www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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God Is Holding Your Hand
Acts 18:9-10 “One night, the Lord appeared to Paul in a vision and said, “Do not be afraid. Continue with your preaching, and do not be silent, for I am with you. No one will attack you or try to harm you, for there are many in this city who are my people.”
I always get a bit jealous when I hear verses that say the Lord appeared to so-and-so in a dream or that they were visited by an angel. Then I remember that, although I am not being visited by an angel that I am aware of, if you listened to the episode on angels, you know we aren’t always aware when we are visited by an angel. Although I am not aware of any visits from angels or the Lord in my sleep, the Lord does show up and talk to us each and every Thursday during prayer group. He also talks to me during my prayer time, so I really have no reason to be jealous. I don’t know if you ever felt like I did. Have you ever been jealous that some people seem to hear the word of the Lord and you can’t? If this is the case, I want to assure you that He wants to talk to you. God is always talking to His people; we just struggle to listen sometimes.
If you are struggling to hear the Lord. If you wish, you could ask Him a question and really hear an answer. I want you to know you can. It is possible. If you cannot hear Him, it is not because He is mad at you or because He is punishing you. There could be a number of reasons why you can’t hear Him. Maybe you are harboring unforgiveness toward others, which can block all kinds of graces. Maybe you don’t believe you can hear Him, so you are afraid to sit in the silence and give Him time to talk? Maybe you don’t have any quiet time in your day? Think about how hard it is to hear someone you are intentionally trying to hear in a crowded restaurant or on a subway train. Look through your day. If someone were following you around trying to talk to you all day, would there be any times when you would hear them?
The world we live in is busy and noisy. It is not often that we sit and listen to the Word of God. This can change. If you want to start hearing from God, all you have to do is listen. He is already talking to you. I know that this may sound weird to some of you, and yet I think it is important to tell you. I often talk with the Lord. I write Him a letter, and then I write one back to myself and let the Holy Spirit lead what I write in the one back to myself. I feel the Lord is constantly telling me, “Thank you for listening; not many do.” God is not mad, He is not punishing you, He is patiently waiting for you to come to Him and ask Him what He thinks. He is waiting to tell you how much He loves you until you take a minute to listen. Can you give God 5 minutes of your time today to just listen? If you are quiet, if you are asking the Lord to talk and you can’t hear anything, then you can command the spirit of deaf ears to leave immediately. You can command your spiritual ears to open. You can ask God again and expect that He will answer as He always does!
I am not sure that it had a lot, or anything, to do with the verse, and yet when I feel led by the Holy Spirit, I just agree and go along for the ride. Back to the verse. It says, “One night, the Lord appeared to Paul in a vision and said, “Do not be afraid. Continue with your preaching, and do not be silent, for I am with you. No one will attack you or try to harm you, for there are many in this city who are my people.” I think this verse is a testament to God’s love for Paul. He knew He was afraid, and He came to talk to him and to reassure him. It sounds like Paul wanted to leave the place where he was. Paul was in Corinth, and that was not a nice town. Its nickname is “Sin City.” I have heard Father Mike liken it to parts of Las Vegas. Paul was preaching at the synagogue to the Jews & the Greeks, but they didn’t really want to hear what he had to say.
When they started to oppose him and hurl insults at him, he decided to leave the synagogue and search out the Gentiles. In case anyone listening is like me, and you are not sure who the Gentiles were or what that word means, let me explain. You were considered a gentile if you were not Jewish. It is not a particular race or tribe; it was all people who were not Jewish. God came to Paul in his dreams and told him not to be afraid, that He was with him and that he would not be attacked or harmed. God is saying this to us, too! He is with each one of us, and He is protecting us from all evil. I was typing up the minutes for my prayer group, and we had several prophecies that seemed to confirm this. There were two that I thought were especially good to go with this verse.
The first one says, “I watch over you, my children. All of you are my children. I break the sword of the enemy who would come against you. You have nothing to fear, for I am there for each and every one of you in each and every trial. I will never forsake my children or leave my children. I will defend you in battle. I have sent you the power of the Spirit, and He will give you all that you need to do what you have been called to do.” Isn’t that amazing? God is telling us that He is here for us. He will defend us in battle and any other situation. You may be thinking you are not in a battle, but you are not in the military. Each one of us is in a battle, whether we know it or not. Each one of us is in a spiritual battle, and sometimes the enemy can take it out on our family members. We need to stand firm and hold onto this word from God and all the other words He has given us. God will not let the enemy win. He will protect us. All we need to do is turn to Him.
The second word I thought went along with this verse says, “My children, take my hand. Realize that I am with you. Go into the world without fear. I am holding onto your hand. There is no need to fear, I am your God. I will protect you; I will defend you. Smile, for you are mine. Smile, my children. I am with you till the end of time. Come closer, my children, come closer, that I can reveal my mysteries to you, so you, in turn, can share them with the world. I am your Lord, I am your God, and I am all-powerful. I hold onto your hand. Move forward, move forward with joy, for you are mine.”
I love how gentle God can be. He is talking about protecting us, and He is doing it in this last verse as any Father would. Think back to when you were little. When you were walking with your dad, you were probably holding his hand. If you weren’t holding it all the time, you at least know it is there if you need it. God is giving us this visual of walking with Him through life and asking us to take His hand and walk side by side with Him. What an amazing visual that is for me. Yes, please, Lord, I would love to walk side by side with you! I would love to hold your hand so you can protect me and defend me against this crazy world. I also like how he ended the word with “Move forward with joy, for you are mine.” We are His children; isn’t that amazing!! God is so good!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to protect and bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we are so grateful you are protecting us! We are so grateful you are a loving Father who wants to hold our hands and walk through this life with us. Lord, we ask that you help us to be able to hear you when you are talking to us. We are asking that you open your spiritual ears and allow us to have conversations with you. I ask that everyone listening to this episode be able to hear your words just as they do in the prayer group meeting. Lord, we thank you for the words above, and we ask that you help them take root in our hearts. If anyone listening to this episode had a difficult relationship with their father, I ask that you let these two messages go deep down in your heart and take root. You are a good and loving Father to all your children! We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus! I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
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15 Promises to those who say the rosary.
Today’s episode is a bit different. Today, there is no scripture verse. Instead, I am going to explain what the rosary is and then list the 15 promises given to those who pray it regularly. There is a lot that is going on in the world right now. In our country and all around the world. Our country is pretty divided. We are kicking God out of this country one decision at a time. During this truly difficult time, I look to strengthen my faith and lean into God’s grace, strength, and protection. Who couldn’t use a little more grace and strength right now?
I have found a number of structured prayers that have really helped strengthen my faith. The first of these is the rosary. When I moved to New Jersey, one of the wives in Tony’s squadron had started a home rosary group. I did not know what that even meant, but I had just moved to a new place, and I did not know anyone. I thought it would be nice to get out of the house and meet some new people. I also knew I needed something more, as I had a newborn baby and was just learning how to be a mom. A home rosary group is a group of people who gather at someone’s home and say the rosary together. One person leads either the whole rosary, or you can switch leaders each decade, whichever you prefer. Whoever is leading the rosary says the first half of the prayer, and then everyone else says the second half of the prayer. It was so nice to be gathered with a group of women who all wanted to say the rosary each week. The rosary is a group of prayers that you say, usually using a set of rosary beads.
I knew there were many benefits to saying the rosary. I have read them before. There was a time, probably after I first read these promises, that I was saying them every day. However, the enemy has a way of putting things in the way so that you are suddenly “too busy” to say the rosary, or he convinces you that if you can’t do it perfectly, then you shouldn’t bother. Remember that the enemy is a master at half-truths and lies. He does not want us saying the rosary because he knows how powerful it can be. As soon as you begin to say the rosary faithfully, you will notice that things will begin to come up during the time you set aside for the rosary, or you will find yourself forgetting about the commitment. I decided to talk with you about the Rosary today because I came upon the promises that Mary gave to us, and I remembered why I was saying the Rosary every day. I know the rosary is a longer prayer than most of us might be used to, but it is only 20-30 minutes out of your day. If you get a full 8 hours of sleep at night, that means you are still awake for 16 hours. That is 960 minutes in your day. The rosary takes 20-30 minutes.
The Blessed Virgin Mary promised to Saint Dominic and to all who follow that “Whatever you ask in the Rosary will be granted.” She left for all Christians Fifteen Promises to those who recite the Holy Rosary. They were imparted to Saint Dominic and Blessed Alan.
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Whoever shall faithfully serve me by the recitation of the Rosary shall receive signal graces.
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I promise my special protection and the greatest graces to all those who shall recite the Rosary.
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The Rosary shall be a powerful armor against hell; it will destroy vice, decrease sin, and defeat heresies.
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The Rosary will cause virtue and good works to flourish; it will obtain for souls the abundant mercy of God; it will withdraw the hearts of men from the love of the world and its vanities, and will lift them to the desire for eternal things. Oh, that souls would sanctify themselves by this means.
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The soul which recommends itself to me by the recitation of the Rosary shall not perish.
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Whoever shall recite the Rosary devoutly, applying himself to the consideration of its sacred mysteries, shall never be conquered by misfortune. God will not chastise him in His justice; he shall not perish by an unprovided death; if he be just, he shall remain in the grace of God and become worthy of eternal life.
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Whoever shall have a true devotion for the Rosary shall not die without the sacraments of the Church.
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Those who are faithful to recite the Rosary shall have during their life and at their death the light of God and the plenitude of His graces; at the moment of death, they shall participate in the merits of the saints in paradise.
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I shall deliver from Purgatory those who have been devoted to the Rosary.
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The faithful children of the Rosary shall merit a high degree of glory in Heaven.
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You shall obtain all you ask of me by the recitation of the Rosary.
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All those who propagate the Holy Rosary shall be aided by me in their necessities.
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I have obtained from my Divine Son that all the advocates of the Rosary shall have for intercessors the entire celestial court during their life and at the hour of death.
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All who recite the Rosary are my sons and daughters, and brothers and sisters of my only Son Jesus Christ.
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The devotion of my Rosary is a great sign of predestination.
I cannot believe all that is promised to us if we say the rosary. I read through those this morning and just kept saying to myself, yup, I need that too. Who couldn’t use help destroying vices, or for their good works and virtue to flourish? Mary, the Mother of Jesus, promised special protection and the greatest graces to those who say the rosary. I don’t know about you, but I could definitely use some special protection and all the graces I can get. I know that I probably won’t start saying the rosary every day without fail, because I am human and I often fail. I have been reminded today what a blessing it is to say the rosary, and I am going to do my best to incorporate it into my daily routine. After all, 20 minutes a day is less than the time it takes me to watch one episode on TV. I have the time; I am just using it to do other things. You do not have to say the rosary every day, even if you say it once a week, or once a month, or one decade a day, I bet you would see a change in your life. Give it a try. What do you have to lose?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you, and we ask you to help us in our time of need. We ask you to put in our hearts a desire to say the rosary. Lord, help us to see the importance of it. Help us to understand the importance of Mary in your plan for redemption. Help us to find time in our schedules to set aside to say the rosary. Thank you, Lord. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you would like to join me for mentoring this month, there is a link below if you would like to sign up for mentoring or get more information. I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed day, and may the grace and favor of our Lord Jesus Christ be upon you!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in February 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My beloved ones, your desire for me unlocks my heart of bounties for you. Your desire overcomes your weakness. I am delighted in your desire for union with me. Feed that desire for me.”
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Today's Witness Wednesday is about my recent trip to Austin, Texas, with my youngest son, Ryan. I wanted to do a family trip this summer since Ryan just graduated from high school and all of the kids are now 18. However, we couldn't agree on where to go, and I couldn’t get everyone on board.
So I decided to do individual one-on-one trips with the boys this summer, which I felt could work better because we would get more one-on-one time together. And also, if someone doesn't want to do something, it doesn't ruin it for the other boys. So I started with my son, Ryan, and we went to Austin, Texas, because his favorite band, Once More, was playing two shows in a row, Friday and Saturday night.
And they were also playing with some other bands he really liked, all small bands. So we got on the plane very early Thursday morning. We got to Philadelphia and boarded our connecting flight with no problem. And then there was a navigational problem with the navigational system. And so we waited on the plane for two hours, and then we had to get off the plane. And then they kept delaying by 30 minutes for the next four hours.
And then they just said, we're going to get a new plane, and you can leave at 5 p.m. We were supposed to leave at 8 a.m. And now we're leaving at 5 p.m. So Thursday, instead of spending the day around Austin, we spent it at the airport. However, even at the airport, I could tell the Lord was at work because Ryan hates to wait, and he did well. He didn't love it, but he didn't complain a lot.
He just slept in the chair wherever we were and did well. I'm grateful that the Lord was there with us in that. Then we finally landed, and we got to our hotel, and we slept well that night.
And then the next day, we got up, and we did some things around Austin. And then he had his concert that night and the concert was at a small venue. So there weren't a lot of people there, and there were several bands there. And so he got to actually talk to somebody from his favorite band. And then later that night, he was texting with people from the band, and they just couldn't believe that he flew all the way from Boston, Massachusetts, to Austin, Texas, just to see them. So they said they would put him on the VIP list so that he wouldn't have to pay to get in the next day.
And they just had a really nice conversation, and Ryan was so excited. And then the next day, we went to this famous record store in Austin called Waterloo Records. And Ryan loved the store. It was cool to see him looking through all the CDs like I did when I was younger, because you don't really see CDs anymore. Everybody streams music. So it was just nice to see kids in a store looking through CDs and records.
Then, as we were walking out of the record shop, Ryan ran into the singer and the bassist of his favorite band. And it was really cool. They recognized him. They gave him a high five. They asked if he was coming to the show tonight, and they said they were looking forward to seeing him there.
Ryan was so excited. And it was also cool for the band because they're from San Antonio, and yet they're just walking around Austin, Texas, and they see somebody wearing their band t-shirts, and it was so surreal for them as well.
So I feel like God definitely orchestrated that whole thing, and it was amazing. And then Ryan went to their concert that night, and the singer of his favorite band wrote down their set playlist, the six songs they were gonna sing that night, and then had all of the band members sign it, and then gave that set list to Ryan after they played. He was so excited.
We went to Walmart immediately afterward so he could buy a frame for it. And it is now his favorite prized possession. He's so honored that they would have given it to him because you only have one set list, and they gave it to him, and they had everybody sign it.
And so it was just an awesome weekend. He had a really great time, and I'm really grateful to the Lord that he allowed that weekend to happen, that he allowed things to go so well, and that he orchestrated so many amazing moments for Ryan throughout the trip we had. We went back to that record store several times.
Ryan really liked the record store and looking through all the CDs. And we also got Texas barbecue one day. We went to see the Texas State Capitol building. Everything worked well. The rental car went smoothly, and I am just so grateful. For all that the Lord did for us that weekend.
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Where Does Your Help Come From?
Psalm 121:1-2 “I lift up my eyes to the mountains— where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.”
I heard this verse while I was listening to the Big Life Devotional by Pamela Crim yesterday, and I instantly thought of this song. The song is called Shoulders by For King and Country. I will place a link to the song in the show notes if you want to give it a listen. It is a really good song, so I do recommend checking it out. For King and Country is a great group of artists. They moved to this country from Australia in 1991 when their dad accepted a job here. I love this song because it reminds us where our help comes from. It also reminds us of various ways that God helps us. It also says the words from this verse. They both start the same way.
I look up to the mountains
Does my strength come from the mountains?
No, my strength comes from God
Who made heaven and earth, and the mountains
When we are struggling and suffering, we look around for strength anywhere we can find it. We look to TV for distractions, we look to food for comfort, and we sometimes turn to alcohol or drugs to numb the pain. We look everywhere for something that will take away the pain or help us get through it in some way. As long as we keep searching everywhere but where God is, then we will never find what we are looking for. God is our strength. He is the one who can get us through the hard times. We just need to turn to Him and ask Him. We just need to seek Him out instead of all the other things that we turn to when we are struggling.
When confusion's my companion
And despair holds me for ransom
I will feel no fear
I know that You are near
Think about what it is we do when we are confused and the feelings of despair set in. Do we turn to the Lord, or do we turn away? Do we have hope that the Lord will bring us out of this despair? I love the line that says, and despair holds me for ransom. That is such an accurate visual of despair. You feel like you can’t do anything but sit in it. This verse ends with I will feel no fear. I know that You are near. My prayer is that we can all say this. My prayer for each of us is that we can look to the Lord when we feel confused and full of despair. We can look to the Lord and not be afraid because we know that our strength comes from Him. The one who made the heavens and the earth. If He can create all of that out of nothing, think about what He can do in your current situation!
When I'm caught deep in the valley
With chaos for my company
I'll find my comfort here
'Cause I know that You are near
How many of us are in a deep valley right now? How many of us feel like we have been in this valley for a long time, and we see no end in sight? I love that it says with chaos for my company. Have you ever had chaos in your company? I am one of 11 children. Chaos and I are old friends. However, how often have we had comfort and chaos at the same time? This verse says I’ll find comfort here because I know You are near. When we find ourselves in a valley and we are surrounded by chaos, it helps to remember that the Lord is always near. We are never alone, even when it feels like we are.
My help comes from You
You're right here, pulling me through
You carry my weakness, my sickness, my brokenness
All on your shoulders
Your shoulders
Our help comes from the Lord. It can be easy to forget this because sometimes He uses human means to help us. For instance, we may think our help comes from the person giving us the things we need. For instance, help came from my neighbor when I was younger, and my dad needed a car. Yes, the neighbor did help us out, and yet even he acknowledges the Lord led Him to do so. He had no way of knowing my dad needed a car, except that my dad prayed for a car, and God worked it out for him. I like the image of this verse. You’re right here, pulling me through. Have you ever felt like God was pulling you through? Like, you for sure wouldn’t have made it if He wasn’t pulling you through. You didn’t have the energy or will to walk or even get out of bed, and yet you felt something pulling you out of bed and pushing you to keep going.
The next line is great, too, because it reminds us that we are not carrying our load along. It says you carry my weakness, my sickness, my brokenness all on your shoulders. God has some pretty broad shoulders. He can handle our weakness, sickness, and brokenness. We don’t have to carry it on our own. That is just something the enemy tries to get us to believe. We can give these things to the Lord, and He will carry them for us. All we need to do is ask.
My help comes from You
You are my rest, my rescue
I don't have to see to believe that
You're lifting me up on Your shoulders
Your shoulders
The Lord is our rest. We can just sit and rest in him. Whenever we want, whether we are weary and we need to rest, or whether we just want to rest in His love, mercy, and forgiveness. We can always rest in Him. He is also our rescue. He will rescue us from our circumstances, or He will give us the strength to get through them. I don’t have to see to believe that you’re lifting me up on Your shoulders. This is an important thing to remember. We don’t have to see it to believe it. We often worry because we can’t see the outcome ahead of time. We can’t see a way for the Lord to work things out. We don’t have to see it. We just have to trust that He can and will work things out. He is a Way-maker. He can make a way where there is no way.
You mend what once was shattered
And You turn my tears to laughter
Your forgiveness is my fortress
Oh, Your mercy is relentless
This verse talks to us about some of the things God does for us. He mends what was shattered. Can you think back to a time when you thought all was lost and things felt so broken you thought they would never go back together again? I know I can. A few years ago, my family and my marriage felt so broken I couldn’t see how it could be fixed. However, I never gave up on the Lord, and He came in and fixed what was once shattered. Our family is whole again, not perfect, but whole. God can definitely turn tears into laughter. I have seen Him do this many times. Especially when I go to visit my college roommate Kath. We spend the whole time laughing and crying.
The next line, I am actually surprised, is in here, as the verse I was going to use today talked about God’s mercy and forgiveness, and I didn’t use it as I had already used that verse in an earlier episode. This song verse says that God’s forgiveness is my fortress. Take a moment to think about that. What is the point of a fortress? It is to protect you and to give you a safe place to be. When I looked up the definition, it also said it was a place of defense and protection against attacks. Isn’t it interesting that the song says your forgiveness is my fortress? Did you know that God’s forgiveness can be your fortress? It can provide you with protection against attacks from the enemy. The enemy wants you to believe that you are the sum of each and every one of your mistakes. However, if we rely on God’s forgiveness, we know this is not true. We know that He forgives everything when we turn back to Him and repent. Also, I want to restate what the song says: that God’s mercy is relentless. He will chase you down just to give you that mercy!!
That is such a great song. I pray you all take the time to go and listen to the song. This song does a great job of reminding us of where our strength comes from and why we need it. Our strength comes from God!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we know our strength comes from you. Please remind us when we forget. Lord, we thank you for all you do for us. We ask you to help us remember all the ways you are there for us. We ask you to pull us through all the hard times. We ask you to pull us out of the valley of despair. We ask you to be with us every step of the way! We love you, Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I want to remind everyone that I am starting a group coaching program in January. If you have ever desired to know the Lord more intimately, to go deeper into your relationship with the Lord, or to walk more boldly in your faith, this is the right program for you! I will help you get to know the Lord better, develop daily routines that help you grow closer to the Lord, and teach you to step out more boldly in your faith. We will learn all of that while having fun and getting to know each other. I pray you will join me on that adventure, too! I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s word of prophecy from my prayer group is, “There is no demon who can touch you. There is no one who can steal my children from Me. You are ALL My children. I have given you a package of seeds. Those seeds will be scattered by each of My children. Some in small ways, some in big ways but not one seed sown is insignificant. It is all part of My forever plan. I am a part of you. Rest in My love and My peace. You are a chosen people. Chosen for me from the beginning of time. I cannot for the times. I cannot. You are whole in Me.”
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Keep asking! Nothing Is Too Big or Too Small!
1 Samuel 9:16 “Tomorrow about this time I will send to you a man from the land of Benjamin, and you shall anoint him to be ruler over my people Israel. He shall save my people from the hand of the Philistines, for I have seen the suffering of my people because their outcry has come to me.”
What stood out to me when I read this verse was the very last line. In this verse, God is talking to Samuel right before Saul shows up. God said that He will save His people from the hands of the Philistines because He has seen the suffering and because their outcry has come to Him. That is the part that stood out to me. He heard their outcry. I have been encountering more and more people who don’t pray for what they need unless it is a huge deal. If they don’t need a miracle, they aren’t asking God for anything.
I understand this sentiment. I mean, God is busy; He is doing important things, and we don’t want to waste His time with our small issues. When we do this, we are saying that God has a finite amount of power. We are assuming that He won’t have enough time or enough power to deal with the bigger issues and our smaller issues. God’s time and power are infinite. There are no limits to time or power for God. We never have to worry that our request will take God away from someone else. He is with each one of us 100% of the time.
Not only can God take care of the little things, but He also wants to. He cares about every aspect of our lives. When we ask Him to help us, to take care of things, we are showing Him that we trust Him. We are showing Him that we want Him in all aspects of our lives. There are so many areas where I see people suffering, and they aren’t asking God for help. I understand and believe that redemptive suffering is a thing. I believe that our prayers can be more powerful when we are in the midst of great suffering. I believe that if we can offer our suffering up for others, that is a powerful and beautiful thing. I don’t believe that God wants us to suffer for the rest of our lives. I don’t believe that if we have asked God for healing once or twice and it hasn’t happened, then that means that God isn’t going to heal us.
I don’t know why some people have chronic pain and have been suffering for a very long time. I don’t know why it seems like God heals some people, and yet it seems like He doesn’t heal others. His ways are higher than our ways, and His thoughts are higher than our thoughts. I do believe God wants us to ask for healing. I do believe He wants to hear the words come out of our mouths. God believes in free will. If we aren’t asking Him for healing, He is probably not going to be healing it. From all that I have learned, God wants us to be actively engaged in our relationship with Him. He doesn’t just want us to sit back and have a hands-off relationship with Him. I don’t believe He wants us to hold anything back from Him. I don’t believe He thinks anything is too big or too small for Him.
We have been told in our Encounter Ministries class that God cares just as much about our hangnail as He does about someone else’s cancer. It is not one or the other with God. It is everything. At the Encounter summer intensive, there was a woman who was saying that she had pain and stiffness in her hips. When she sits for any length of time, she has a hard time getting back up and a hard time walking afterward. For a year now, she hasn’t been able to wear shoes with laces because of the stiffness in her hips. She couldn’t bend down to tie them. She was prayed over at the end of the healing night for the summer intensive, and the next day she could bend down and tie her shoes again. Do you see? God even cares about what kind of shoes you want to wear.
In the verse above, God sent Saul to save His people from the Philistines. He did this because He heard them crying out. Are you crying out? Are you asking God for help? I am not saying that we need to just sit around and cry out to the Lord all the time. I am not saying we should be complaining about our pain or our circumstances either. What I am saying is that we don’t have to be afraid to ask God for something. We don’t have to feel like we are bothering Him. When we don’t ask Him, we are depriving Him of the opportunity to help us.
Think about how good you feel when you help someone out of a difficult situation. Think about the satisfaction and the joy you get when you help others. Now, think about how God might feel when He gets to be your savior and when He gets to save you from whatever it is you are going through, big or small. If you have chronic pain, you may be praying to God all the time, and yet you are not seeing healing. If this is the case, I am so sorry. I wish we could understand why God does what He does. However, if you are in chronic pain and you used to ask God to heal you and now you have given up asking, I ask you to start again.
I don’t know why He hasn’t healed you yet. I don’t know what His plan is or when He wants to heal you. I do believe with all my heart that He does want to heal you. I do believe He wants you to keep asking for the healing. I believe he wants you to keep believing that healing is possible, that you are deserving of healing, and that He loves you more than anything else in this whole world.
I am not sure I believed healing of chronic pain was possible. I mean, I think I truly believed it in my heart, and yet there was still doubt. I mean, if He wanted it healed, He would have done it already, right? Then I prayed with my aunt. She had pain in her legs for over 5 years. She couldn’t walk without pain. It had gotten so bad that she had to quit her job 9 months earlier, and she was basically bedridden, as when she walked, her pain was level 11. I told her we could pray together and that I believed God wanted to heal her. This was true, and yet I didn’t know what it would be like. I mean, she has had pain for so long. Surely if God wanted to heal her, He would have. We prayed, and she saw no change. We kept praying for a while. She didn’t have much change that night or the next day. However, a few days later, she got out of bed and was completely pain-free. How amazing is God? Yes, he could have healed her at any time, and yet He chose that specific day. We don’t know why, and we may never know why this side of heaven. We are just happy that my aunt kept asking Him and didn’t give up and just accept that as her fate. She could have said no to my praying with her. She could have thought there was no point. But she said yes, and God came through for her.
He can do this for you too! Please don’t stop asking. Please don’t think things are too big or too little for God. Please don’t feel like anything you ask would ever be an inconvenience to God or that you would bother Him. I don’t think anything makes Him happier than when we turn to Him, and when we show Him, we trust Him by entrusting our petition to Him. Another important piece to this, which I won’t go into but I do want to mention, is that we should not just ask God for things, but we should praise Him daily as well. Thank Him for all that He has done and continues to do for you. Show God you are thankful for what He has done, and He will continue to do more. God loves you. He wants to be there for you. Trust Him and share everything with Him.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to bring things to you. Please help us. Help us get rid of our feeling of not enough and our feeling that we would be bothering you with our requests. Please help us to see that you are there for us in the big and the small ways. Please help us to see that you care about all the details of our lives, even the little ones. Lord, give us the strength and the courage to keep asking, even if it is something that we have asked for many times before. Help us to keep asking, Lord. We love you, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
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You Don't Have To Be Strong All The Time
2 Corinthians 12:9 “But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” I will rather boast most gladly of my weaknesses, in order that the power of Christ may dwell with me.”
I love this verse. When I hear this verse, I remember that we don’t always have to be strong. We don’t always have to be perfect. We don’t always have to get it right. When I hear this verse, I am reminded that God’s power is made perfect in our weakness, not in our strength. I don’t know about you, but I find that awfully comforting. We tend to feel like we have to be strong for everyone else around us. Whether we are a parent, a spouse, or a friend, we want to be the strong ones for those around us. Do you ever feel like that? Do you ever get tired of feeling like you have to be strong? This verse gives you permission to not be the strong one all the time.
I have kiddos who struggle with their mental health at times. When they are struggling, it feels like we have to be strong as they need us to be there for them. They need us to be the safe place that they can land. They need us not to fall apart because they are already falling apart, and they need us to hold them together. This isn’t just kids, either. Maybe you have a spouse or a friend who struggles with mental illness. When they are falling apart, you feel you need to be strong to help hold them together. Is this you? Do you feel like if you fall apart, everything will fall apart? I get it, I understand how that feels. This is why I love this verse. We may have to be strong with others and for others, and yet we don’t have to be strong for God or when we are with God.
When we are with God, we can let it all go. We can be weak. We can cry, we can yell, we can fall apart. The beauty of it all is that when we are weak with God, He actually makes us stronger. I just thought of an analogy, and I don’t know if it’s an exact fit, but it came to my mind, so I am trusting the Holy Spirit wants me to share it with you. The analogy I just thought of was something my son mentioned the other day. He was talking about how when we work out, our muscles are broken down, and then when they heal, they are stronger. This is what came to mind when thinking of being stronger when we are weak with the Lord. God said His power is made perfect in our weakness. When we are weak with God, we are strong. Why is this?
One reason for this is that when we allow ourselves to be weak, we make more room for the Lord. We finally admit that we can’t do it all ourselves and that we need help. We turn to Him, and we ask him to help us. Actually, at this point, we usually beg Him to help us. When we finally decide to be weak, it’s because we have done all that we could do and it didn’t work. When we are finally ready to admit we need God, we are so desperate, and we would do anything for our prayers to be answered. This is when God can help us the most. This is when we are the most ready for His help.
God is just waiting for us to realize that we need His help. He is such a good Father that He waits for us to ask for help. He does not try to force himself on us. He is patient too! He will sit by patiently watching us make the same mistakes over and over again until we finally realize that we don’t have to do it by ourselves. I imagine it must be frustrating for Him to sit there and watch us make the same mistakes time and time again.
I heard this story at Christmas Eve Mass once, and I have never forgotten it. It just popped into my head when I was thinking about how patiently God waits for us.
It's called The Man and the Birds, a Christmas story made popular by Paul Harvey. (CLICK HERE to read the whole story)
The story is about a kind man who didn't believe that God would become human. One snowy Christmas Eve, while his family was at church, he noticed birds repeatedly flying into his window because they were desperately trying to escape the storm. Wanting to help them, he opened his barn, turned on the lights, and even scattered breadcrumbs to lead them inside. No matter what he did, the birds were terrified of him and wouldn't follow him to the safety of the warm barn.
Finally, he realized that if he could somehow become a bird, they would trust him. Then he could tell them not to be afraid and show them the way to safety. At that very moment, the church bells began ringing, and he suddenly understood why Jesus came to earth. God became one of us so we could know Him, trust Him, and follow Him.
I just love that story. To me, it shows how much compassion God has for us. He isn't watching us from Heaven, judging us or wondering why we don't get it. He sees us struggling, just like the man saw those frightened birds struggling in the snow. God knows our lives would be easier if we trusted Him and listened to Him. He isn't angry with us; He is patiently waiting for us to stop trying to do everything on our own and let Him help us.
When we finally come to Him in our weakness, I imagine Him smiling and saying, "Finally, my child. How can I help you?"
I just love that story. In the story, the man finally understood why God sent His only Son to save us. To me, it also shows how frustrating it must be for God to watch us live our lives. This man wasn’t angry at the birds; he was full of compassion and just wanted to help them. I believe this is how God looks at us, too. I think he watches us live our lives, and He knows things would be easier if we listened to Him. He knows we wouldn’t be suffering as much if we lived in this world but were not of this world. He is not up there judging us and thinking we are stupid and wondering why we just don’t get it. I think he looks at us with compassion and is just waiting for us to stop trying to do it ourselves and finally turn to Him. When we do, he is ready to jump in and help us. I think when we are weak, when we finally give in and ask for help, God smiles and says, “Finally, my child, how can I help you!”
You may feel you have to be strong with others, but you do not have to be strong with God. Let him shoulder your problems. Hand Him your worry, your cares, and your deepest desires, and let him carry them for you. In your weakness, His power is made perfect. Wouldn’t it be great to have more of God’s power in your life? I know I could definitely use more.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to be weak with you; show us how. We want your power to be made perfect in us. We love you, Lord, and we know your grace is sufficient for us. We know this, and we also forget it when times get tough. Please remind us, Lord. Remind us that we don’t have to always be strong. Remind us that your power is made perfect in weakness. Remind us that we can be ourselves with you. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Being a parent is hard, and raising kids who struggle with mental illness, and let's be honest, there aren’t many that don’t struggle with something these days, is even harder. If you have a child struggling, please know you are not alone. You are doing a great job. You are a good parent, even when it feels like you are failing. The unkind things they say when they are struggling are not true. They love you, even if they can’t show it at the moment. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
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Do Not Despise Small Beginnings
Zachariah 4:10 “Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin, to see the plumb line in Zerubbabel’s hand.”
I heard this verse in a sermon I was listening to on the Elevation Podcast. The sermon was given by Jabin Chavez. This verse was a small part of his sermon and yet when he said it something inside me said that someone listening to this episode needs this verse right now. Someone needed to hear that is it ok that things aren’t going as fast as you wanted or happening as big as you wanted. Someone needed to hear that we don’t have to be discouraged with our small beginnings. I know this verse is for me, and yet I felt as though I was not the only one who needed to hear it. This verse is telling us not to despise small beginnings as this is often how our prayers are answered. Are you looking around and thinking this does not look like you thought it would? You thought you would be further along at this point in your life. You thought you business would be more successful. You thought you would be married, or you thought you would have kids. You thought it would look different.
The “it” is different for each one of us and yet many of us share this common disappointment. Why is this? Why do we wish we were further along instead of enjoying the ride to get to where we are going? I think we want to be further along because that is what the world seems to care about and we often get caught up in the world instead of what God wants. The world tells us that we are defined by what we have. We strive to have the biggest car, the biggest house, the best job, the most stuff. We think this makes us worthy because that is what society tells us. This is not what God tells us. God tells us in Matthew 19:30 “But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.” God does not look at our lives the way society does. He is not looking to see who has the most stuff, the biggest house, or the best job. God is looking to see, “Did you help out those in need?” “Did you love your neighbor as yourself?” “Did you follow His ways and put Him first?” These are the things God is judging.
Even when we know this, even when we know the things God is calling us to, we can still feel discouraged because, “we haven’t helped enough people yet,” or “we haven’t loved well enough yet.” Whether it is in our regular life, or our spiritual life, we can often tend to be discouraged with our progress. How many of us have said, "I should be praying more,” “I should trust more,” or “I should rely on God more?” We all have times when we aren’t happy with our progress and this verse is the perfect verse to remember when we start to have these thoughts.
Many of us can get the idea in our heads that God is up there, sitting on His thrown, looking down on us and judging us because He is not pleased with our progress. We picture Him just shaking His head and saying, “Really, again?” or “I can’t believe they haven’t learned that yet.” I think this verse is telling us that we are wrong. God isn’t up there judging our progress and being disappointed. He is up there watching and smiling at every small step in the right direction that we take. He is reassuring us not to worry if are beginnings are small because at least we are beginning.
Pastor Chavez was saying that often times the answers to our prayers come in seed form. We want God to just give us the answer with all the details all worked our perfectly and yet that is not often how it works. It does happen like that sometimes and we Praise God every time it does. Often we will pray about something and God will give us an idea and then we need to take that idea and cultivate it. This takes time. It takes time and lots of listening to God to figure our what He is calling us to do with our lives. However, even when we know what our calling is, it is often revealed in stages. I am not sure anyone gets handed a roadmap for their whole life’s mission all at one time. We often feel called to one thing, which then leads to another thing, which leads to another thing and so on. I am sure this is intentional because we get the skills to do the next level of things while we are learning to do the first level. I can imagine it is also intentional because if we knew where our 40 years of hard work was going to lead us, we might not say yes to that first step.
If I knew that saying yes to attending a retreat when I was in college would lead me to having a personal encounter with the Holy Spirit, which would lead me to help start a whole revivial of the Charismatic Renewal in the Catholic Church, would I still go to that retreat, or would I be overwhelmed with that much responsibility. Honestly I don’t know. I am grateful for those who attended the retreat that is now known as the Duquesne Weekend and has marked the beginning of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal. I am sure their lives changed immensely on that weekend and they helped lead the Charismatic Renewal one step at a time. I can imagine they wanted it to spread quicker because once you know the power of the Holy Spirit you want everyone else to have that experience too. However, they went at the pace God took them and I am sure God was happy with their small beginnings. I will actually put a link for a description of the Duquesne Weekend in the show notes as it was an incredible experience for all involved and is really interesting to read about. (Click Here for article)
You might be looking at your life and thinking you are not where you wanted to be or where you thought you would be and yet God is looking at your life and saying, “You are right where I want you to be.” Most of the time we have no idea of the amazing things God has planned for our lives. It’s when we do have some idea that we get impatient and we want those amazing things now. God’s timing is perfect. If we want something now and God has not given it to us yet, there is a reason. Most likely, we are not ready for it yet. God knows our hearts. He knows what we will do with what we are given. God’s ways are not our ways and His thoughts are not our thoughts. We do not understand a lot of the things God does. We often can’t understand His timing. This is because we are looking at a very tiny piece of the puzzle and God gets to see the whole picture.
I think what God is telling us with this verse is “Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin.” He doesn’t want us to despise the small beginnings because He gave us those small beginnings. Also, we shouldn’t judge our ending on the small beginnings because we don’t know what these small beginnings will grow into. One saying the pastor said in his sermon that I really liked was that you can cut open an apple and count the number of seeds in it. However, you have no idea how many apples are in one seed. Only God can make your endeavors fruitful. We won’t know how much fruit will come from each seed, each idea you have, until it is fully grown. Keep nurturing your ideas, keep working at them, don’t get discouraged if you aren’t where you thought you would be, God will get you there in His perfect timing.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those who listen to this episode today. Lord, help us to be content, happy, even joyous over our small beginnings, knowing your timing is perfect. Help us to be patient as we wait for the amazing things you have called us to come to fruition. Help us to see clearly what you are calling us to and how we get there. We love you, Lord, we want what you want. We want our wills to be aligned with your will. Please help us. We are so grateful for all the desire you placed in our hearts. Please help us cultivate those desires and be patient while we wait for your perfect timing. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus! I am so glad to be back with all of you this week. II just want to remind you that you can pick up an autographed copy of my book on my website. You can also sign up for my newsletter there. walkbodlywithjesus.com I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day.
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Witness Wednesday #122 More PopWe Stories (Anxiety/Depression)
Today’s witnesses are from Matthew West’s website called popwe.org. If you don’t know who Matthew West is, he is a singer, songwriter, and storyteller. This website is for the non-profit that he has with his father, a pastor. Matthew and his father encourage people to share their stories. They have various categories of stories. Today, I chose three testimonies from the Anxiety/Depression Category. I know so many people who are struggling with anxiety and depression right now. Suicide seems like it is increasing as well. Often, we can hear our own story in someone else’s story. When we listen to others tell their story, it helps us see that we are not alone. When we hear how God worked in their situation, it gives us hope that He will work in ours, too! I pray when you hear these testimonies, you get the faith and hope to believe that miracles can happen in your situation also. I pray you know that God is there with you, and if you invite Him into your anxiety and depression, He can help.
Jenna: I grew up in a Christian family. We went to church every Sunday and Wednesday and were a part of almost everything; Awana, Elevate teen group, and even school there. Two and a half years ago, I lost someone who I was close to because she felt the need to commit suicide. I was heartbroken and I felt like I lost everything. 2022 was a challenging year for me. I had daily panic attacks and felt like I was worthless. My eating habits went down significantly, and I was stressed all the time. As exams neared, I was super stressed and ended up passing out.
Months passed and I still felt worthless. I planned to commit suicide when I got a text from a friend, and it was like a text from God. She said she heard I was going to camp and hoped to see me there. I thought if I waited til after camp, and then committed suicide it would be okay. So I went to camp and it changed my life. I met so many new people and was able to share my hurt with my church and they told me that I was not alone. Camp was my blue couch moment as I sat there in service Thursday night, I realized that I needed God in my life more than ever. I had already been saved, but I realized I hadn’t been living like Christ wanted me to.
Around late February early March, my friend introduced me to someone…we immediately hit it off and became great friends. A month or two later, it was revealed that he liked me. We started dating in June and have been together ever since. I tell you that little story because sometimes when you need it most, God has someone in mind who will help you grow in faith and support you through it all. They can also help you overcome the hardships in your life.
I still deal with anxiety and eating habits, but they have gotten so much better since camp and I am so thankful for all that my church has done for me. Also, I have my three closest friends with me right by my side and the Lord has blessed me with an amazing boyfriend who I love and who has helped me through a lot.
GOD’S NOT DONE WITH YOU OR YOUR STORY! HE STILL CARES A LOT AND WILL NEVER LEAVE YOU. YOU HAVE A PURPOSE – TURN TO GOD TO FIND THAT PURPOSE AND YOU WILL BE FOUND.
Brianna: From the age of 10, I was stuck with the label “child prodigy,” winning piano competitions, featured in local newspapers, and recognized as a passionate, fiery recitalist. Yet, even as a youth, I was severely depressed. I was insecure, seeking affection, and perpetually in pursuit of attaining “good enough.” Right before my 16th birthday, my world suddenly turned upside down. In an unexpected turn of events, I faced a close encounter with death, had my innocence taken, and watched helplessly as my mother’s health began to rapidly fail. Too ashamed to ask for help and blaming myself for the situation, I despairingly turned to self-harm, eating disorders, and eventually, planned my own suicide. One day, I heard the song ‘Broken Pieces’, and I found something onto which I could cling to – Truth, even when I could not feel it and it failed to make sense.
Through involvement with an organization called Csehy Summer School of Music, I came to personally know Christ. For the first time in my life, I experienced peace, hope, and true joy. Dedicating my life to God, I went back home with a different perspective. My life was still intense – balancing high school and conservatory studies, living between home and the hospital, while being a full-time caretaker for my undiagnosed mother. By the grace of God, I managed to graduate as Salutatorian and get accepted into music school. However, shortly before college began, my mother passed away.
I started my B.A. in piano at Charleston Southern University, using every spare moment to pour my heart out into the keys as a wordless prayer. Yet, a lingering pain in my right hand soon became constant. A few months after my mother’s funeral, I was diagnosed with severe damage in my right hand, incited by the physical strains from being a caretaker. The only option left was surgery, followed by excruciating therapy, without guarantee of returning to the keys. My doctor strongly advised me to quit and choose a different career path. But I fought back.
Over the next several years, I fought through recovery – from both surgical and emotional scars. I realized that though I had given my life to Christ, I hadn’t fully “surrendered” it. In those precious years of undergrad, I experienced the freedom found in surrendering to the grace of God, the beauty of vulnerability, and the power of learning to fly again.
Then, nearly four years to the day the doctor said it was over, I found myself sitting onstage, performing at Carnegie Hall. When I turned to the audience to see a standing ovation, I burst into tears, because I remembered the words, “With You I can attack a barrier, and with my God I can leap over a wall.”-Psalm 18:29
Today, despite the formalities infused in classical music, I get to use the concert stage as a platform to share my story and encourage others to seek help and experience the peace of God. I perform and travel internationally as a soloist and chamber musician, frequently being sought after to premiere avant-garde piano works, and I am actively involved in youth and collegiate ministry. Although healing is an ongoing process, by the hand of God’s work in my life, the label of “Victim” has been replaced with “Victorious,” “Hopeless” has been covered by “Confidence,” and what was “Impossible” is now a living, breathing, walking “Miracle.”
Bubby: Hey, I just wanted to thank Matthew for his book, “Hello My Name Is” and for all he does for us! I’ve met him a handful of times and he is such an awesome child of God. On page 58, I believe, he talks about the story of the 11-year-old who asked for the hug and shared about his anxiety. It took me back to my childhood. I didn’t come to faith until I was 14. A man!! (Lol. I thought…) But I can remember being 5-10 and suffering through anxiety and panic issues every night and throughout the day. I won’t go into it, but it was messed up. Family life was messed up. When I read how this little boy thinking of God holding him when listening to Matt’s song, it brought tears to my eyes. I’m 58 and still have memories of my childhood that can hurt if I dwell in them, but I very seldom do…only when things like reading or seeing or hearing someone else’s experiences. I looked back at how God was there for me all along even though I was not His child yet. His love is so totally encompassing!! It fills every void in my soul. At 12 I was prescribed some medicine that helped, but it was addictive, and when my mom took me off them abruptly, I turned to drinking and drugging heavier then I had already started a year or so earlier. It was a long road I went through, but thank God, I will have 19 years of sobriety this month. My name is “Saved,” in so many ways.
Thank you all for sharing your stories with the world. It can be hard to be vulnerable and talk about the hard things we have gone through.Yet when you are brave and do it even when its hard then we help others who are suffering know that it is ok for them to talk about it too! I am so grateful God saved each of you and thank you again for sharing your story!
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God, How Can I Help You Today?
Ezekiel 37:7 “So I prophesied as I was commanded; and as I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold, a rattling; and the bones came together, bone to its bone.”
I like this verse for many reasons. First, I love that it shows Ezekiel's obedience to God. God wasn't asking him to do something easy. He was asking him to prophesy over dry bones and make them live again.
Let me read the whole section:
Ezekiel 37:1-6 says, “The hand of the Lord was upon me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of the valley; it was full of bones. And he led me round among them; and behold, there were very many upon the valley; and lo, they were very dry. And he said to me, ‘Son of man, can these bones live?’ And I answered, ‘O Lord God, thou knowest.’ Again he said to me, ‘Prophesy to these bones, and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live.’”
Take a minute and put yourself in Ezekiel's shoes. God asks you to speak to a valley full of dry bones and tell them to come back to life.
I wonder what Ezekiel was thinking. Did he know it would work? Did he have a moment of doubt? What must it have felt like when he obeyed and suddenly heard the rattling of bones coming together all around him?
It must have been incredible.
Another reason I love this passage is because it shows that God likes to use us to do His work. God could have raised those bones Himself, but He chose to involve Ezekiel.
Did you know God wants to use you too?
I know many of you immediately counted yourselves out when I said that. Maybe you think you're too old, too young, too shy, too busy, or not holy enough. Maybe you think you're not bold enough or not qualified enough.
Those are lies from the enemy.
God calls us exactly where we are. He may not be calling all of us to raise the dead or travel the world preaching the Gospel, but He does have a role for each one of us in His plan.
What if we started asking God every morning:
“God, what can I do for you today?”
How do you think your life would change if you started each day that way?
God usually doesn't begin by asking us to do huge things. He often starts with small acts of obedience. As we become faithful in the small things, He entrusts us with more.
Sometimes we're afraid to ask God what He wants because we're worried He'll ask us to do something uncomfortable.
The truth is, He probably will ask us to step outside our comfort zone from time to time. That's how we grow.
But God also knows us better than we know ourselves. He isn't trying to set us up for failure. He loves us.
And if we miss it sometimes, that's okay. We can try again next time.
In our prayer group, we spend time in silence listening to the Lord. Over the years we've noticed that if someone feels prompted to share a word but is too nervous to do it, God often gives that same word to someone else.
I find that comforting. It takes some of the pressure off.
However, I don't think we should use that as an excuse not to step out when we feel God calling us.
I was reminded of a story this weekend that illustrates this perfectly.
A girl was at church camp when a pastor shared a story about his daughter. One day she felt God telling her to do a handstand next to the soda machine at a gas station.
She didn't want to do it. It seemed ridiculous.
But the feeling wouldn't go away.
Finally, she drove to the gas station. She walked in, saw only one employee behind the counter, awkwardly waved, walked over to the soda machine, and did a handstand.
As she was leaving, the employee stopped her and asked, “Why did you do that?”
She replied, “I felt like God told me to do a handstand by the soda machine.”
The man stared at her for a moment, pulled a gun from beneath the counter, and placed it on top.
He said, “Today after work I was planning to kill myself. I prayed and asked God that if He was real, He should send a girl to do a handstand by the soda machine.”
Every time I hear that story, I get emotional.
She had no idea why God was asking her to do something so strange. She only knew He was asking.
Sometimes God calls us to do things and we never find out why. Other times He lets us see the impact.
I don't know why God doesn't always tell us the reason ahead of time. Maybe part of it is building our trust and faith.
What I do know is that God wants to use you.
He wants to speak to you.
He wants you to be part of His plan.
What if, after listening to this episode, you took a minute and asked Him:
“God, how can I help You today?”
Don't worry if you don't hear perfectly. None of us do.
Don't worry if you don't always have the courage to do everything He asks. God doesn't stop loving you.
He simply invites you to try again.
Being part of God's plan isn't a burden. It's an honor. And it is an invitation He freely offers to each of us.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you so much, and we can't believe you invite us into your plan. Help us to say yes. Give us courage, boldness, and trust. Help us make time each day to listen for your voice. Help us ask how we can help you and then give us the grace to respond. We are so grateful for your love. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus' holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you've been feeling distant from God lately, but you're not sure why, I created a free quiz called "What's Quietly Blocking Your Connection With God?" In just a few minutes, you'll discover one of four common obstacles that may be affecting your relationship with God. At the end, you'll receive a personalized result, a short podcast episode, and a mentoring replay chosen specifically for your result. CLICK HERE for the quiz. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in November 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I know your interior struggles. I know every single thought that the devil feeds you in order to make you curse yourself and burn yourself. I love you, my precious ones. Stay strong. Keep trying. Keep moving forward. I will let nothing hold you from me or your purpose. I kiss each of you.”
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Are You Listening to God?
Zechariah 7:8-14 “And the word of the Lord came again to Zechariah: ‘This is what the Lord Almighty said: Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another. Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the foreigner or the poor. Do not plot evil against each other.’”
This is more verses than I usually cover in one day, but I wanted to include the whole passage because the context is important.
What stood out to me most was the beginning:
“Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another. Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the foreigner or the poor.”
There are two reasons this struck me.
The first is because of a retirement ceremony I attended for my husband Tony's boss. Several people spoke about him, and one phrase came up repeatedly:
“Sometimes you just need to give a little grace.”
That phrase has stayed with Tony for years.
I think we need more of that today. We are often quick to become offended, angry, or frustrated. Someone cuts us off in traffic, speaks sharply to us, or has a bad day, and we let it affect us for hours. I'm not saying bad behavior is okay. I'm saying that we all have bad moments. We all need grace sometimes.
Think about the last time you got upset. If you had stopped and given that person a little grace, would it have changed the situation?
The second reason this passage stood out to me is because of what God specifically tells us:
“Show mercy and compassion to one another. Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the foreigner or the poor.”
This is not a political statement. It is a biblical one.
No matter where we stand politically, we should ask ourselves:
Am I being compassionate?
Am I showing mercy?
Am I treating others the way God asks me to treat them?
God does not tell us to show compassion only to people who think like us, vote like us, look like us, or agree with us. He tells us to show compassion to those who need it.
One phrase that stands out to me is “the foreigner.”
We don't know people's stories. We don't know what they have escaped, what they have endured, or what burdens they carry. It can be frustrating when communication is difficult, but imagine living every day struggling to understand and be understood.
God calls us to compassion.
The passage then continues:
“But they refused to pay attention; stubbornly they turned their backs and covered their ears. They made their hearts as hard as flint and would not listen.”
That part convicted me.
Are we listening to God?
Or are we allowing social media, news, culture, and our own opinions to shape us more than Scripture?
God's Word has not changed. Yet sometimes we harden our hearts little by little until we stop hearing what He is saying.
I think many of us struggle to make time for God and then wonder why we feel distant from Him.
The people in this passage refused to listen to the Lord. As a result, the passage says:
“When I called, they did not listen; so when they called, I would not listen.”
That verse stopped me in my tracks.
Does this mean God sometimes ignores our prayers?
I wanted to be careful before answering that question, so I did some research.
The answer I found was essentially this:
Persistent, willful rejection of God's voice creates a barrier in our relationship with Him. Not because God stops loving us, but because we are turning away from Him.
The barrier is built by us, not by Him.
This passage is not meant to create fear. It is meant to invite conversion.
God is constantly calling us back to Himself.
The Catechism teaches that authentic prayer flows from a converted heart. The saints repeatedly taught that how we live affects how we pray and whether our prayers bear fruit.
This does not mean that every time we sin, God stops listening to us. If that were true, none of us would have hope.
I believe this passage is talking about a persistent hardening of the heart—a repeated refusal to listen to God and live according to His ways.
That should cause all of us to pause and ask:
How am I treating the widow?
How am I treating the fatherless?
How am I treating the foreigner?
How am I treating the poor?
Am I listening when God calls me to show compassion?
I want to leave you with one final question:
In what area of your life might God be calling you to listen—and are you giving Him the silence He needs to speak?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each person listening to this episode today. Lord, help us recognize anything that may be creating a barrier between us and you. Help us show compassion to the widow, the fatherless, the foreigner, and the poor. Help us give people a little grace. Help us listen when you speak. Soften our hearts and make them more like yours. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus' holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you've been feeling distant from God lately, but you're not sure why, I created a free quiz called "What's Quietly Blocking Your Connection With God?" In just a few minutes, you'll discover one of four common obstacles that may be affecting your relationship with God. CLICK HERE. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in November 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Look at them, I say to you, my father. See them, father? They try hard, Father. They see them all through their obstacles. They put their own needs on the shelf to be there for others. I am so proud.”
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God Can Give You a New Heart
Ezekiel 36:26-28 “A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances. You shall dwell in the land which I gave to your fathers; and you shall be my people, and I will be your God.”
When I read this verse, I was instantly in love. I think there is so much in this short verse. “A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” The Lord will give us a new heart and a new spirit. That is amazing to me. Do you understand how amazing that is? This is saying that nothing is too much for the Lord. Sometimes we think that our past is too much, and so when the Lord is talking about loving us, He is talking about loving others, but not us. When He is asking us to love Him, He is talking to other people. He knows that I could never love Him because I could never love anyone.
I wonder if we all know and realize that God knows all we have been through? God knows about your childhood. God knows about the parent or spouse who abused you. He still loves you! He knows about the sins of our past. He still loves us! He knows about the terrible way we treated others over the years, but he still loves us. He knows about that thing that you did that one time that you think no one knows about. He knows, and He still loves you. He knows about drinking and drugs. He still loves you! He knows about that unforgivable thing that you did that you would do anything to take back, but you can’t. He still loves you! I know I may sound like a broken record because I give you this message often. It is because it is the foundation of everything. If you know that God loves you just as you are, sins and all, then you can love God. If you can’t accept that God loves you, then I am not sure if you can love God.
I have heard it said before that we can only love God as much as we love ourselves. I don’t know if this is true or not. Honestly, I hope it is not because I know a lot of people who don’t love themselves very much, and it makes me sad to think that they might not be able to love the Lord. Also, it makes us wonder if they can feel the Lord’s love. If we do not think that we are worthy of love, then how can we believe that the Lord loves us? This is why I love this verse! The Lord can give us a new heart.
Maybe our hearts have been broken too many times. Maybe our hearts have too much baggage, and we just can’t seem to let go of it. Maybe our hearts are full of unforgiveness. We may have been hurt so much in the past that we don’t want to forgive. We can’t see a way to forgive the horrible things that have happened. We don’t have to; the Lord can give us a new heart. It says right in the verse that He will take out the heart of stone and give us a heart of flesh. Do you feel like He is talking to you? Do you feel like you have been hurt one too many times, and it is too difficult for you to love anyone? Have you asked the Lord for help? Have you asked Him for a new spirit or a new heart? Maybe this had never occurred to you. I know I never knew this verse before. But now that I do, I know that all we need to do is turn to the Lord, and he will give us a new heart and a new spirit. How amazing is that?
The next part of the verse is one that I need to remind myself of often. “And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances.” The Lord will put his spirit in us and cause us to walk in His statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances. I am constantly thinking that I have to do this all on my own. I turn to God, and I ask Him for help. We talk often. And yet, when it comes down to it, I try to be perfect for Him. I am hard on myself if I am not doing what I think He wants me to do. I wonder whether I am praying the right way, should I be fasting, should I be doing more? I wonder if the Lord is pleased with what I am doing, and I wonder if He thinks I am not doing enough. I know that He loves me and that He doesn’t need anything from me. Then I act like I need to do everything on my own.
I like this part of the verse because God is telling us that He will put His Spirit within me and He will cause me to walk in His statutes. I don’t have to do it all on my own. God is not saying that He will help me. He is saying He will do it for me. Why don’t I rest in the promise? Why do I strive to be perfect when I know the Lord doesn’t need my perfection? All He needs is my yes. All He wants is for us to be a willing vessel and then for us to let Him do His work. I worry that I don’t have enough faith. Then the Holy Spirit tells me that faith is a gift from the Lord. If I want more, all I have to do is ask. I worry that I won’t walk in His footsteps, and yet this verse is saying He will give His Spirit so that I will. I worry that my prayers are not fruitful, and the Holy Spirit tells me that He alone can make them fruitful. All God needs from us is our YES! Yes, I am willing. Yes, I am your vessel, fill me up. Yes, I want my will to be your will. Yes, I believe, help my unbelief. All we need to do is give God permission, and He will take care of the rest. Can you do that?
The last line of the verse says, “You shall dwell in the land which I gave to your fathers; and you shall be my people, and I will be your God.” We shall be His people, and He will be our God! I want to leave you with the words of God from our Prayer Group March 2021 because they go so well with this verse and because they are so powerful.
“Listen to your heartbeat. I want to be fully one with you. Draw closer. The Father and I are one, and you are one with me, so you are one with the Father as well. I will pour down my grace upon your heart, your will, your very soul. You will look like me. Trust in me. Follow me. Take time to listen to me, to know my will. Fear nothing. Have confidence in me. I am your Lord and God. I died for you to grow ever closer to me.”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to the podcast today. I ask that you put a new heart in us and a new spirit. Lord, take our hearts of stone and replace them with hearts of flesh. Lord, the world can be cruel, and we need a new heart and spirit. Lord, help all those who don’t believe they are worthy of your love. Help them to feel your love and to love you right back. Lord, help us to walk in your ways. We say yes to your spirit, causing us to dwell in your ways, and we thank you for being so gracious. Walking in your ways is not always easy, and we appreciate all the help we can get. Lord, we are grateful that we are yours and you are ours. We love you so much, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on the journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you've been feeling distant from God lately but aren't sure why, I created a free quiz called "What's Quietly Blocking Your Connection With God?" In just a few minutes, you'll discover one of four common obstacles that may be affecting your relationship with God. At the end, you'll receive a personalized result, a short podcast episode, and a mentoring replay chosen specifically for your result. CLICK HERE for the quiz. I look forward to spending time with you on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed weekend!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in November 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Each of you is more precious to me than anything else I have created. And I love my creations in all their forms. But each of you are my crowning glory.”
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The Holy Spirit Is Speaking to You
John 16:13-15 "When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason, I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.”
This verse talks about the Holy Spirit, the gift the Lord sent us when Jesus went to heaven. It tells us that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth and that He will guide us into all truth. This is important because it reminds us that we can trust what we hear from the Holy Spirit. He is not speaking on His own; He is sharing what He hears from the Father.
The verse also says He will declare to us the things that are to come. This doesn't mean we will know everything that happens in our future. It means the Holy Spirit can prepare us for what is coming if we make time to listen to Him. We need to pay attention to what He says and not just hear it and let it go.
Our prayer group sets aside time each week to listen quietly for the words of the Holy Spirit. We record these words and later discern what we believe the Lord is saying to our community. We then create a bookmark so everyone can remember the words and apply them to their lives.
This is our most recent bookmark:
“My call to each one of you is very personal. It is not a message for everyone. It is intimate, personal, all-loving, and all-consuming. From the beginning, I spoke, and my Word created new life. I speak again today through my holy Word to each of your hearts. I create new life. I renew, replenish, and fill you with grace and mercy that I wish you to share with others. I watch over you, my children. I break the sword of the enemy who would come against you. I will defend you in battle. I have sent you the power of the Spirit, and he will give you all that you need to do what you have been called to do. You are the anointing I send to the world. Be not afraid. I am with you. My Spirit will speak through you the words that I wish to say. When I say you can, don’t tell me you can’t. Smile that I sent you today.”
These words were spoken over the course of a month. We receive many words each week, so the discernment team helps identify the key themes the Lord wants us to remember.
There are four categories we look for: call, proclamation, promise, and directive.
First, we look for the call. What is the Holy Spirit calling us to do? God has a plan for each of us, and the Holy Spirit often reveals that plan little by little. Are you taking time to listen to what God may be calling you to do?
Next is proclamation. These are often "I am" statements where God tells us who He is and what He is doing. In the bookmark above, the Lord reminds us that He creates new life, renews us, replenishes us, and fills us with grace and mercy to share with others.
The third category is promise. God still reminds us of His promises today. In this bookmark, He promises to watch over us, defend us in battle, break the sword of the enemy, and give us everything we need to fulfill our calling. We are not on our own. The Holy Spirit is with us.
The final category is directive. What is God asking us to do? In the bookmark above, the Lord tells us not to be afraid. He reminds us that His Spirit will speak through us and give us the words we need. He also says something that really convicts me:
“When I say you can, don’t tell me you can’t.”
Isn't that exactly what we do sometimes?
I know I do. When I feel the Lord calling me to do something outside my comfort zone, my first response is often, "I can't." Yet God created me. He knows me better than I know myself. Who am I to tell Him what I can and cannot do?
Instead, I should be saying, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me."
The reason I wanted to share our discernment process today is because I hope it helps you recognize when the Holy Spirit is speaking to you. Now that you know some of the ways He communicates, maybe you will start recognizing His voice more often.
Hearing the voice of the Lord is a gift from the Holy Spirit. Like any relationship, it grows when we spend time together. When we make time to listen, God speaks.
I encourage you to write down what you hear from the Lord. I often look back through my prayer journals and am amazed at what God has said. Every time I do, I wonder why I don't do it more often.
I hope this episode encourages you to pay a little more attention to the Holy Spirit's voice and the different ways He may be speaking to you. He is speaking, and His words come straight from the heart of the Father.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we pray that we can all hear your voice. We pray that it brings fruit into our lives. Help us not only hear what you are saying but remember it and put it into action. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus' holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you've been feeling distant from God lately, but you're not sure why, I created a free quiz called "What's Quietly Blocking Your Connection With God?" In just a few minutes, you'll discover one of four common obstacles that may be affecting your relationship with God. At the end, you'll receive a personalized result, a short podcast episode, and a mentoring replay chosen specifically for your result. CLICK HERE to take the quiz. I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day
Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I planned ahead of your coming into this world. I saw every tear you ever shed. I have a picture of every time you laughed. I have a scrapbook for each of you. Yet, yet, you worry and fret. And though you come to me, you still wonder if I hear or see or know or care. My children, do you care for your children?”
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(Click Here) for Encounter School Boston YouTube Page. We will be posting more testimonies on this YouTube page each week.
We have all seen God working in our lives; however, we might not all be aware that it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences, the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working in your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click here. It won’t take up much of your time, and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story, and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow, and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Have a blessed day!
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When You Don't Understand What God Is Doing
Isaiah 40:31 “They that hope in the LORD will renew their strength, they will soar on eagles’ wings; They will run and not grow weary, walk and not grow faint.”
This is a message that I have been receiving a lot lately. The part where it says they will run and not grow weary, walk and not grow faint. I feel that God wants us to know that he is here for us. He knows what we are going through, and if we hope in Him, He will renew our strength. It seems like a lot of people that I know are going through some really difficult things right now, and they are definitely feeling weary. God wants us to know that he is with us in our struggle. When we feel weary, we can renew our strength by leaning into Him rather than pulling away.
What do I mean by pulling away? When we are going through a hard time, sometimes we get mad at God. We don’t understand what is going on. We know He could fix the situation, and we don’t understand why He is not doing anything. There is never a time when God is “not doing anything.” However, if we can’t see or understand what he is doing, it may seem like he is doing nothing. This can cause us to pull away. This can make it hard for us to pray. Our hope can sometimes diminish because we can’t see a way out of the situation. We can’t see a way for God to use the situation for our good.
This is normal. If you are in this situation right now, please know you are not alone. You are in good company. There were even some Saints who found that they could not find the words to pray sometimes. God understands this. God is not looking for us to have all the answers. He is not looking for us to know exactly what to say to Him, or what to do in each circumstance. He is just looking for us. Yes, that means you, too. He just wants you to be with Him in whatever way you can.
He wants you to hope in him even if you don’t know what to hope for. I know that may not make sense. How can you hope if you don’t know what to hope for? I think that just means that you hope in the fact that God has a plan. That even though you have no idea what the plan is, you know He has one. You hope in the promise that God uses all things for your good. That even though you don’t know how it will turn out, it will ultimately be good for you. I know this is not easy, but it is possible.
I was in a situation that I didn’t really understand. A very good friend of mine was in a lot of pain in the hospital. She had cancer. I know she was close to the Lord, and if it was her time to go, she would go to Heaven. I also knew that she wanted to get better. I knew God could heal her. It seems to me that if I ask God to heal her and trust that He will, then He will, in fact, heal her. I have read many Bible passages, and they all seem to support this theory. Ask, and you will receive. Have faith and trust with all your heart, and it will be granted. (ok, that last one was a paraphrase) You get what I mean, though, right? However, I think this is a trap that the enemy has set up for us to fall into.
This is something I struggle with, so I am letting the Holy Spirit lead my fingers as I type this, and I want to acknowledge that I have not figured this out yet. I am not an expert on this; I am on a journey of discovery and understanding, just like you. I have prayed for understanding on this a lot. I know I have talked about this before when discussing losing a close friend and my dog. What I am talking about now is my understanding from my time of prayer.
The reason I say this is a trap the enemy sets up for us to fall into is because there is so much potential for anger and doubt. If we ask God to heal her, and she dies, we will most likely get angry with God and not understand what is going on. We may stay angry for a long time. We may also start to doubt that there is a God, or that He actually hears our prayers. We may start to doubt ourselves if we read verses like Mark 11:22-23, “Jesus said to them in reply, ‘Have faith in God. ' " Amen, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it shall be done for him.” It says “does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it shall be done for him.” So if it was not done for you, then you may start to question if you could have done something differently. Would things have turned out differently if you had just believed more?
Do you see how all of those things are things that the enemy wants us to feel? He would do anything to try to destroy our relationship with our Heavenly Father. The enemy is the father of lies. I talked about him before and how he sometimes uses scripture against us. It is usually not a blatant lie. Do you see how he is not even changing anything about the scripture? He is just using it to try to show you that God doesn’t keep his promises and can’t be trusted. This is anything but true, and yet the enemy takes advantage of our weakened, vulnerable states and plays with our emotions.
So, if it’s not true that God let us down, what is the truth? This is what I was asking God this morning. What came to my mind was that we don’t know the whole story. Only God does. First, if we ask Him to cure or heal someone, and they end up dying, He still cured them, as there is no sickness in Heaven. They are no longer in pain and are restored to perfect health. He did still answer our prayer, just not the way we wanted Him to. Second, we don’t know what is really in a person's heart. Only God does. For instance, my friend stated that she wanted to go to rehab. This implies that she wanted to get better and go home, which is the purpose of rehab. She did not just want to go to hospice and just be comfortable. To you and me, this would seem like she was not ready to die or that she felt like she wanted more time here. Therefore, when I pray, I pray that she is healed here on earth and that she gets to keep on living.
However, only God knows what is truly in her heart. Only He knows why she wanted to go to rehab. Did she choose that because she is scared to die? Did she choose that because she is afraid her children aren’t ready for her to go? Did she choose that because she wanted more time with them? We don’t know what is in her heart, but God knows. We don’t know what His plan is and how He is going to use the outcome of this for everyone’s good. All we know is that right now she is in pain. We know what we want. We know what we think is best. He knows what is really best. He has seen the ending of her story. He wrote the ending of her story. If God chooses this to be the ending of my friend’s story, it will not be because I did not believe or trust enough. That is a lie the enemy is telling me. If she dies, it is because God has decided it was for her good.
If you are struggling and find yourself in a difficult situation right now, know that God is answering your prayers. The answers may not be what you thought they would be, but they are the best answers. God is not just trying to make you feel better in the moment. He knows the ending of your story, and he is working all things for your good. You may not understand what He is doing, but if you can hope in the Lord anyway, he will renew your strength, and you will “soar on eagle’s wings.”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. We ask that you help us to lean into you when times are tough. We ask that you help us to see all you are doing in our situation. We ask that you strengthen us and help us to fly on eagle’s wings, especially when we feel we can’t go on any longer. Lord, help us not to grow weary. We ask that you help us to understand when we feel like we don’t have any understanding. Lord, we ask that you comfort us and help remind us that you will use all things for our good. We love you, Lord, and we know that you do so much for us. We are so grateful that you always keep your promises. You are so amazing! We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you've been feeling distant from God lately, but you're not sure why, I created a free quiz called "What's Quietly Blocking Your Connection With God?" In just a few minutes, you'll discover one of four common obstacles that may be affecting your relationship with God. At the end, you'll receive a personalized result, a short podcast episode, and a mentoring replay chosen specifically for your result. CLICK HERE to take the quiz. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Rejoice in our love and our relationship. I am the rock upon which you lean.”
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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Putting God First Is Hard Sometimes
Matthew 6:33 “But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”
“Strive first for the kingdom of God.” This sounds easier than it is. Of course we want the kingdom of God. Of course we want to go to heaven. Yet there are so many distractions competing for our attention every day.
When I was younger, if you had a favorite TV show, you had to wait a whole week between episodes. Now you can watch an entire season in a day. Between streaming services, social media, games on our phones, and endless entertainment, it is easy to fill our days with things of this world and leave very little room for God.
How are we spending our time? Are we putting God first, or are we fitting Him in wherever we can?
Someone at my prayer group received this word from the Lord:
“My children, I tell you if you seek first my kingdom, I will bring order into your life. I will share my wisdom with you. I am always your God; there is none other like me. Seek not anything else. I tell you again, seek my kingdom, seek my will, place it first in your life, and you will have found less strife. My children, I love you. Imprint that deeply in your heart. I am your God, and I am to be placed first.”
After sharing the word, she said she sensed that the Lord was almost sorrowful because so many things are being placed ahead of Him. She could feel how deeply He desires to be first in our lives.
When I heard that, it cut right through me.
I knew God was talking to me.
Lately I have been putting other things ahead of Him. I will sit down and watch several episodes of a TV show even though I know I haven't finished writing my podcast. If I haven't finished writing it, then I certainly haven't recorded or edited it. That isn't putting God first. That is fitting Him in when I can.
It makes me sad to think that God may be hurt by that.
When we think about it, it makes sense. How do we feel when our spouse, children, parents, or friends continually put everything else ahead of us?
God provides for me every day. He answers prayers. He comforts me. He guides me. He helps me write these episodes. He never takes a day off. Yet how often do I give Him whatever time is left over?
The first step is recognizing where we are putting other things ahead of God. The answer will look different for each of us.
For me, it is often sleep, television, and distractions on my phone. I'm not saying these things are bad. Sleep is important. Rest is important. Entertainment is fine in moderation.
The problem comes when I give my best time and energy to those things and then give God whatever is left.
The reason I am telling you this is because I want to be honest with you. I struggle with the same things I talk about in these episodes. When I heard that word from the Lord, I knew I wasn't the only one who needed to hear it.
Living the life God calls us to live is not always easy. Sometimes we have to choose what God wants over what we want.
A while back, Tony and I had friends visiting for the weekend. We had such a great time together. On Sunday morning, our friends left just in time for us to make Mass. The church is only a few minutes from our house.
Instead of going, we sat on the couch, ate breakfast, and watched television.
I still can't believe we did that.
Actually, I can, because doing the right thing isn't always easy. And when we aren't in the habit of putting God first, it becomes easier and easier to choose something else instead.
I didn't really want to tell you that story, but the Holy Spirit kept bringing it to mind. Maybe someone listening needs to know they aren't alone. Maybe someone else struggles to put God first too.
I truly want to put God first. Yet every time I fail, I think of what St. Paul says in Romans 7:15:
“For what I want to do, I do not do, but what I hate, I do.”
I know I want to live the way God wants me to live. I also know that when I fail, that is not who I am. It is simply something I did.
The good news is that we can always begin again.
I don't think God is looking for perfection. I think He is looking for effort, persistence, and hearts that keep turning back to Him.
When we fail, we repent and try again.
When we get distracted, we turn back to Him.
When we put something else first, we ask for His help and start over.
I am going to keep trying to put God first.
Will you keep trying with me?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we hear you. We understand how it may hurt you when we place everything else ahead of you, and we want to stop doing that. Please give us the wisdom, strength, and courage to put you first. Help us place your will above our own. We are sorry for the times we have been too busy for you while making time for everything else. Thank you for all that you do for us. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus' holy name, Amen.
Thank you for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you've been feeling distant from God lately, but you're not sure why, I created a free quiz called "What's Quietly Blocking Your Connection With God?" In just a few minutes, you'll discover one of four common obstacles that may be affecting your relationship with God. At the end, you'll receive a personalized result, a short podcast episode, and a mentoring replay chosen specifically for your result. CLICK HERE for the quiz. I look forward to spending time with you on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed weekend.
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Wash away your doubts. They have no place in me. Your doubts cloud your vision and are a product of the evil one. Be not fooled.”
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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Can Unforgiveness Affect My Eternal Salvation?
Colossians 3:13 “Bearing with one another and forgiving one another, if one has a grievance against another; as the Lord has forgiven you, so must you also do.”
I recently attended a boot camp to learn about the Unbound method of deliverance. Unbound is a technique that helps set people free from the things that weigh them down. The reality is that our enemy, the devil, wants to keep us from living out our destinies as children of God. Evil spirits can gain influence in our lives through open doorways. These doors are often opened through our own choices, the choices of others, or wounds from our past. Sometimes we unknowingly open doors through things like the occult, bitterness, resentment, or unforgiveness.
The first two essential steps we learned were repentance and forgiveness.
The first step is repenting of sin and expressing faith in Jesus. We all sin, and sin damages our relationship with God. It also gives the enemy ammunition to use against us. One of his favorite weapons is shame. Shame is not from God. Shame causes us to hide, isolate, and believe we are unworthy. When we repent, we bring our sins into the light and remove their power over us.
The second step is forgiveness. This is the one that left the biggest impression on me.
Several years ago, I was at a Bible study discussing Matthew 6:14: “For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.” Someone pointed out that God forgives us the same way we forgive others. I was shocked. I had prayed the Our Father countless times and never fully realized what I was saying when I prayed, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”
That realization changed my life.
There have only been a few times when Scripture completely changed the way I thought. One was when I learned that the same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead lives in us. The other was realizing what I was actually praying every time I prayed the Our Father.
When I understood this, I became determined to learn how to forgive better.
Over the years, I have learned that forgiveness is an act of the will, not a feeling. It is choosing to stop carrying the offense and turning judgment over to God. Forgiveness does not mean what happened was okay. It does not mean forgetting. It does not mean reconciling or allowing someone back into your life. It simply means refusing to let unforgiveness continue to control you.
The analogy I hear most often is that unforgiveness is like drinking poison every day and expecting the other person to die. Usually, the person we refuse to forgive has moved on while we continue carrying the burden.
I know some of you have every reason to be angry, hurt, and wounded. I know people can do terrible things. However, holding onto unforgiveness hurts us far more than it hurts them.
Our teacher shared a story about a priest who had a near-death experience. Although he had spent his life serving God, Jesus revealed that he was holding unforgiveness in his heart toward people who had hurt him. Jesus reminded him that those people belonged to Him and that his job was to focus on the mission God had given him.
The priest later said something that really stayed with me:
“A person who can't forgive is a person who has forgotten how much they have been forgiven.”
That statement hit me hard.
What if God held all of our sins against us? What if He refused to forgive us? What if He never sent Jesus to save us?
Forgiveness is far more important than many of us realize.
I know many people refuse to forgive because they feel the other person doesn't deserve forgiveness. You may be right. They may not deserve it. But forgiveness is not about them. It is about you. It is about setting yourself free from the spirit of unforgiveness.
Unforgiveness can block healing, peace, freedom, and intimacy with God. Is it really worth it?
I want to end with some hope because some of you may be thinking, “I want to forgive, but I don't know how.”
The good news is that God does not expect us to forgive through our own strength.
One of my teachers shared a story about a woman who could not forgive her sister. She wasn't even ready to pray, “Lord, help me forgive.” But she was willing to pray, “Lord, help me want to want to forgive.”
That small opening was enough for God to begin working in her heart.
Maybe that is where you are today.
Maybe all you can pray is, “Lord, give me the grace to want to forgive.”
That is enough.
God meets us exactly where we are. He can do the hard part if we are willing to take even the smallest step.
Remember, forgiveness is an act of the will, not a feeling. God is asking us to give Him even the tiniest opening so He can transform our hearts.
Don't let the unforgiveness of what others have done continue to affect your life. Haven't they taken enough already?
A wonderful way to conclude your forgiveness of another is to pray the Father's Blessing upon them. God rejoices when we choose forgiveness because that is exactly how He treats us.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to spend eternity with you. We don't want anything to get in our way, especially unforgiveness. Please show us whom we need to forgive and then help us forgive them. For those we feel we cannot forgive, please soften our hearts and give us the grace to at least want to forgive. Help us allow you into every area of our lives. Help us repent of our sins and repair our relationship with you. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus' holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed day!
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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You Are Not Meant to Climb This Mountain Alone
2 Corinthians 1:3-5 “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ.”
This verse reminds me of a saying I heard several years ago that brought me comfort. At the time, there was a lot going on in my family. Everything was so hard, and I didn’t understand why it was happening. Why did I need to go through all of that with my boys or with my marriage? The quote was something to the effect of, “Maybe you have been given this mountain to climb so that you can show others it can be done.” That quote helped me because it gave my suffering a purpose. It reminded me that what I was learning through my struggles could one day help someone else.
This is what this verse is telling us. God is with us in our troubles, and He comforts us. God will be there for you through everything. There is nothing you have to go through alone. He is always there for you, not only to comfort you, but to strengthen you and help you through it. I love how this verse starts by reminding us that God is the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort. God plays so many roles in our lives. He is not only there to solve our problems, heal our loved ones, and answer our prayers. He also wants to comfort us. He understands what we are going through and has compassion for us.
Do you ever feel like no one understands what you are going through? Maybe you keep it to yourself because you feel ashamed, afraid of judgment, or convinced no one would understand. If this is you, please know you are not alone. Over the years, I have talked to many people, and almost all of them felt alone in their struggles. It is a common feeling, but that does not make it true.
Do you know who wants you to feel like you are alone? The enemy does. He is a liar. He whispers things like, “No one understands,” “Don’t bother people with your problems,” “Things will never change,” and “You have to do this all by yourself.” These lies keep us isolated and disconnected from the very people who could help us. It is important that you hear me right now: HE IS A LIAR! HE IS A LIAR!
You are not alone. There are many people who are going through the same thing you are going through, and there are many people who have already gone through it. Find someone who has been where you are and has made it through. I promise there is a way through whatever you are facing. There are communities for nearly every struggle imaginable—parenting challenges, depression, marriage struggles, caregiving, career issues, and so much more. The enemy wants us isolated. Let’s not give him that satisfaction.
Another lie the enemy tells us is that we would be bothering others with our problems. This is not true. People who truly love you want to know when you are hurting and want to help when they can. Even if they can’t solve the problem, simply saying it out loud to another person can help.
I once heard of two people who called each other once a week and simply took turns talking while the other listened without giving advice or judgment. Sometimes just saying things out loud helps more than we realize. If you don’t feel comfortable talking to another person, try talking out loud to God. There is something powerful about bringing your struggles into the light.
The enemy also likes to tell us that things will never change. This is another lie. I don’t know what your circumstances are. Maybe it is something that will be a lifelong challenge. Maybe you have an illness that cannot be cured, or you are caring for someone whose situation may never improve. Even if your situation cannot change, that does not mean there is no hope.
Even if your circumstances remain difficult, you can change how you show up to them. You can ask for help. You can practice self-care. You can allow others to support you. The enemy wants you exhausted and convinced you must carry everything yourself. That is another lie. There are people who want to help. Even when circumstances remain difficult, hope remains because God can change us within the situation.
Please remember this: You have so much more power than the enemy wants you to think you do. If you are feeling hopeless and you see no way things will change, please send me an email at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com. I can’t go into much detail in this short episode, but I truly believe that no one is stuck in a hopeless situation.
I get worked up when I think about how much the enemy attacks people and convinces them they are alone. That is why I love this verse. God shows us compassion and comfort, and we are called to pass that compassion and comfort on to others.
Is there someone in your life who is suffering? Have you been afraid to say anything because you worry they won’t want your help? We need to be brave and ask anyway. Some people may not be ready to accept help, but that should not stop us from offering it.
God did not create us to walk through life alone. If you are in a place to help someone, be bold enough to ask. If you need help, be brave enough to receive it.
I am going to say these next four sentences because I know someone listening needs to hear them:
YOU ARE LOVED!
YOU ARE ENOUGH!
YOU ARE STRONG!
YOU CAN DO HARD THINGS!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to see the enemy’s lies for what they are. Help shine a light on any lies in our lives that we might be believing. Help us to know that our situation is never hopeless because with you, all things are possible. Help us all to be bold and brave and to reach out and ask for help when we need it, or accept the help that is offered. Help us also be bold and brave enough to offer help wherever we can. Lord, we are so thankful for all the compassion and comfort that you give to us. Please help us to pass that on to others. Lord, help us to love others as you love us. You are truly amazing, and we love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you've been feeling distant from God lately, but you're not sure why, I created a free quiz called "What's Quietly Blocking Your Connection With God?" In just a few minutes, you'll discover one of four common obstacles that may be affecting your relationship with God. At the end, you'll receive a personalized result, a short podcast episode, and an email with a mentoring replay chosen specifically for your result. CLICK HERE for the quiz. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “You have time to give to me. You can be present in every moment with me. No matter what you do, I am in that moment with you. I am part of that moment. I exist in all moments. The moment of grief, loneliness, despair, joy, and success. I am there. I am there in all your moments. Across what you do.”
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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Our guest speaker today is my friend Mary. I met Mary because our husbands were both stationed at the same military base. Mary is going to give us her witness about how God helped her through the most difficult year and a half of her life. She talks about two terrible losses she suffered, how her husband was deployed to a war zone in the middle of all that grief, and then how God saved her life in a miraculous way. I I know you are going to really enjoy this witness, and maybe have some tissues nearby just in case, as I know I was teary eyed when I listened to it. Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ www.findingtruenorthcoaching.comCLICK HERE TO DONATECLICK HERE to sign up for Mentoring CLICK HERE to sign up for Daily "Word from the Lord" emailsCLICK HERE to sign up for my newsletter & receive a free audio trainingabout inviting Jesus into your daily lifeCLICK HERE to buy my book Total Trust in God's Safe Embrace
Why Looking Back Keeps Us Stuck
Isaiah 43:18-19 “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.”
I chose this verse because it made me think of the Chosen and also of what we talked about a lot in Encounter Ministries: a Renewal of the mind. In the Chosen, people are always saying Jesus is doing things in a new way. It’s like He is teaching them things they already know, but He is saying them in a completely new way. There are shirts with sayings on them from the Chosen, and two of them are “We are not what we were,” and “Get used to different.” These shirts show us that after you have truly encountered Jesus, you are not the same, and that is a good thing.
I wanted to look up the meaning of this verse so my thoughts on it wouldn’t override what it was actually saying. I am glad I did because I was focusing mostly on the words, “I am doing a new thing!” This was what made me choose this verse: Jesus was doing something new during his 3 years of ministry. He was doing and saying things that people hadn’t done or said before. He was not afraid to speak the truth, the harsh realities to everyone, and yet he spoke them with love. He spoke to them in a way they could actually hear and be changed by them. Do we let the words we read in the Bible change us? I was thinking this type of renewal of mind is what God was talking about in this verse. However, after reading more about this verse, I think it is about a renewal, but maybe not exactly what I was thinking.
The first part of the verse says, “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past.” God does not want His people to focus on their past. Sometimes we can get stuck focusing on our past and where we have been instead of looking ahead to where we are going. I don’t think it was just about the problems they had in the past; I don’t think God wanted them to think about how He had helped them either. The next verse says, “See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?” God is telling them He will help them in a different way than He has in the past. Do you know why it is important to tell them this?
Have you ever been expecting things to look a certain way, and when they don’t, you dismiss them? What if you were so sure God would save you the same way He did last time that you missed the help He sent this time? There is a parable of a drowning man that I think illustrates this idea. A fellow was stuck on his rooftop in a flood. He was praying to God for help. Soon, a man in a rowboat came by, and the fellow shouted to the man on the roof, “Jump in, I can save you.”The stranded fellow shouted back, “No, it’s OK, I’m praying to God, and he is going to save me.” So the rowboat went on. Then a motorboat came by. “The fellow in the motorboat shouted, “Jump in, I can save you.” To this, the stranded man said, “No thanks, I’m praying to God, and he is going to save me. I have faith.” So the motorboat went on. Then a helicopter came by, and the pilot shouted down, “Grab this rope, and I will lift you to safety.” To this, the stranded man again replied, “No thanks, I’m praying to God, and he is going to save me. I have faith.” So the helicopter reluctantly flew away. Soon, the water rose above the rooftop, and the man drowned. He went to Heaven. He finally got his chance to discuss this whole situation with God, at which point he exclaimed, “I had faith in you, but you didn’t save me; you let me drown. I don’t understand why!” To this, God replied, “I sent you a rowboat, a motorboat, and a helicopter. What more did you expect?”
This might be a silly parable, and yet I think there is some truth to how we think or behave at times. Sometimes we think we know how God will save us or how He will help us. Sometimes we are so sure we are right that we might miss out on what He really wants to do for us. On one of the Witness Wednesday episodes, I talked about how Tony had been wanting to get out of the military for a while, and yet nothing was panning out for him. Then, out of the blue, he needed to leave the Air Force, and the perfect civilian job opened up for him. It didn’t look like the answer he was looking for, and actually, he had stopped looking for any answer. He had decided to stay in and was okay with it. However, God knew his heart, and although the method God used was not ideal in Tony’s eyes, the outcome was greater than we could have imagined.
This verse is for each one of us. “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing something new! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.” God does not want us dwelling in the past. It is ok to briefly look back to see how far you have come and to make sure you don’t repeat the same mistakes, yet we aren’t meant to stay there. Our focus should be on where we are going. How will we ever get there if we are always looking back and never looking forward? Also, hear God when He says, “I am doing a new thing!” He is speaking this to you and to me. He wants to do something new in your life; let Him. Be on the lookout for this new thing. If you are looking, you will find it.
The last sentence in the verse is for some of you in particular today. You need to hear this today, and although I thought I chose this verse for all the reasons I already listed, the Holy Spirit is telling me He chose it so you could hear it today. “I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.” God wants you to know that He is making a way in the wilderness for you. He is making streams in the wasteland. I know it feels like there is no way forward. I have been there. I know it feels impossible to see how you will get out of this situation. I have been there too. The answer is that God is making a way. It is okay that we can’t see the way, because God doesn’t have to follow a path; He can make one. He can do miraculous things to get us out of the completely ordinary and normal trouble we find ourselves in. He loves us that much!! He loves you that much! If you are in the middle of the wastelands right now, if you feel like you are in the wilderness, know that the Holy Spirit picked this verse just for you, and He wants you to know God is making a way through it all!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to see you in our everyday. We thank you for doing something new, and we ask you to open our hearts and minds to see the new thing you are doing. Lord, we thank you for making a way where there isn’t one. We ask you to help us to keep believing that this is possible and that you will get us through this. Also, Lord, please take away this worry and this stress. Help us to focus on you instead of our problems. Lord, we love you, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you all for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you've been feeling distant from God lately, but you're not sure why, I created a free quiz called "What's Quietly Blocking Your Connection With God?" In just a few minutes, you'll discover one of four common obstacles that may be affecting your relationship with God. At the end, you'll receive a personalized result, a short podcast episode, and a mentoring replay chosen specifically for your result. (CLICK HERE). I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Go, my people, go. Go to the tops of the mountains. Shout from the rooftops. Shout my name. Shout my word. Shout who I am. Shout to all who will listen. Whisper in the ears of those who may be sick. Bring my word wherever you go. But go. Go and shout about my love. My great love for all.”
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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What's Pulling Your Eyes Off Jesus?
Luke 9:62 “But Jesus said to him, ‘No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.”
The leader of the Watchman Prayer group sent out an email yesterday entitled, “Don’t Look Back.” In it, she put two scripture verses. The first one was today’s verse. I did not really understand today’s verse. It seems kind of harsh to me. I know that not everyone will go to heaven. But that doesn’t mean I like reading about it. Some things I understand. I get why some things are so awful. If we don’t repent, then we won’t be fit for the kingdom of God. However, “No one, having put his hand ot the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.” I didn’t understand this.
So, I went to the Enduring Word commentary, which is where I go when I want to understand things a bit better. I am fully aware that there is so much I don’t know about the Bible and what it means. I could study it my whole life and still not understand everything. However, there are people who have studied it their whole lives, and we are so lucky because they have shared their wisdom with us. If you go to enduringword.com, you will find a tab for his commentary. Click it, enter any book and chapter you want, and learn so much.
I want to provide a bit of context for everyone who might not know why Jesus said this. I know when I hear a verse I don’t understand, I like to go back and see the verses around it and see if I can get more context just by reading those other verses. At the very end of Luke 9, there is a section titled The Cost of Discipleship. The scripture verses are Luke 9:57-62.
“Now it happened as they journeyed on the road, that someone said to Him, “Lord, I will follow You wherever You go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.” Then He said to another, “Follow Me.” But he said, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and preach the kingdom of God.” And another also said, “Lord, I will follow You, but let me first go and bid them farewell who are at my house.” But Jesus said to him, “No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.”
Reading this did not give me much more context. I still didn’t understand why someone wouldn’t be fit for the kingdom of God just because they wanted to go and say goodbye to their loved ones. It seemed kind of harsh to me. However, reading the Enduring Word Commentary, I get it now. It makes sense. The commentary explains that when we are so excited about Jesus, want to follow him, and go tell our families, they are not always that excited for us. Charles Spurgeon, an influential British preacher, said it like this, “O young man, when you are thinking of leaving the world, be afraid of these farewells! They have been the ruin of hundreds of hopeful people. They have been almost persuaded, but they have gone to their old companions just to give them the last kiss, and the last shake of the hand, and we have not seen anything more of them.”
As soon as I read that, it all made sense. I love God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. I love being Catholic. I love my religion. However, I do not feel I am over the top, I don’t think I am super strict, and I try very hard not to judge people or force my beliefs on others. However, my kids would probably tell you the opposite. They try to talk me out of my religion all the time. This is something people have been doing the whole time my husband was in the military. Protestants would try to convince me that my religion was wrong. I went to a retreat once where people were telling me I didn’t have to be Catholic.
I understand how difficult it might be to stay strong and follow Jesus back in the day. Jesus’s teachings were new, and some were very difficult. Jesus’s way was contrary to the way so many people thought. Especially when he would say things that seemed to contradict what the Pharisees and Sadducees were saying. I could see how people would hear Jesus give a sermon, be so on fire, run home, and tell their family members. Then, when their family members start asking questions, and they don’t have all the answers, they may start to get afraid.
When we are surrounded by people who don’t understand what we are feeling or how important it is to us, they may try to persuade us by listing only the negatives. What if He is not the Messaiah? How are you going to make money while you follow Him around? How will you eat? What if you get caught up in some fight between Him and the Pharisees and Sadducees, or Him and the Roman army? They could have some valid questions, and yet, that is not what matters. What matters is that you are giving all for Jesus, and He will take care of you. However, once they get you to stop and think about these things, you might get cold feet. Once we take our focus off Jesus, it is easy to lose our focus.
Jesus often used phrases and parables that would have made so much sense to the people he was talking to. However, to us, they don’t always make a lot of sense. I am not a farmer, and so I didn’t really understand the phrase, “No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.” Once I read the enduring word commentary this line made so much sense. Here is what I read: (again you can find this on enduringword.com)
Jesus stressed to this man the commitment necessary to follow Him. One must have a similar determination as a farmer plowing a field, who must do it with all his strength and always looking forward.
“In plowing a field back in that day, a farmer kept the rows straight by focusing on an object in front and in the distance (such as a tree). If the farmer started to plow and kept looking behind, he would never make straight rows and do a good job of plowing. In following Jesus, we are to keep our eyes on Jesus and never take our eyes off Him. “No plowman ever plowed a straight furrow looking back over his shoulder.” (From: William Barclay was a Scottish theologian and author known for his influential Bible commentaries.)
Plowmen also do something else of great importance: they hold on. A plowman who lets go is no plowman at all. “Plowmen are not usually learned persons, nor are they often poets in disguise. But there is one virtue they possess preeminently, and that is the virtue of quietly holding to it.” (From: George Morrison, a Scottish Congregational minister who served at Wellington Church, Glasgow, for over 20 years.)
More than anyone else, Jesus lived this; He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem (Luke 9:51).
Doesn’t that verse make so much more sense now? It makes sense that if we take our eyes off Jesus to look back at those we are leaving behind, we may no longer want to go. It makes sense that if we want to follow Jesus, it might cost us something. That is something we might know, but we don’t want to think about. Jesus is not being harsh or unkind by saying we can’t say goodbye to our loved ones. He is actually being loving and kind because He knows they could convince us to pull away from our true destiny, which is to be right by His side for all of eternity!
This week, I will do a few more scripture verses about not looking back because I think so many of us are tormented by our past. So many people look back with regret, sadness, and anger. We might even look back with a longing. We might long for the days when our kids were little or when we seemed happier. God does not want us looking back. So much heartache can come from looking back. We must have a singular focus, Jesus. If we keep looking ahead to Him, life becomes better because we know that no matter how bad things get, our time with Jesus is ahead. Today, I invite you to ask yourself, “Where am I letting other people distract my gaze from Jesus?”
Dear Heavenly Father, I love you so much! I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. I thank you for leading me to this scripture and to the commentary that helped me understand it. Lord, we ask that you speak to each one of our hearts today. Lord, show us where we are allowing others to take our eyes off of you. Show us how we can keep our focus on you more? Show us where our focus is drifting. We love you, and we want to always be focused on you. Help us, Lord! We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. One reason people may hesitate to join mentoring is the thought, “I’m not holy enough.” Mentoring is not for people who already have it all together; it is for anyone who wants encouragement, support, prayer, and a safe place to grow closer to Jesus. CLICK HERE for more information. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, just as I am, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Wrestling with the flesh is a challenge in mankind's lives. It is something that everyone struggles against and with. The saints struggled but claimed victory over it, but not without me. I am a necessary component and the key to your lives. All can and will be conquered and made with me.”
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Do You Realize Who Lives Inside You?
Acts 2:38 “Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins. And you will receive the Holy Spirit.”
I think when most of us read this, we focus on the repent and be baptized part of this verse. Repentance is so important, and it is something that we can read about all throughout the Bible. God is always calling His people to repentance, and sometimes they repented and other times they did not. In the case of Sodom and Gomorrah, they were a wicked people and they refused to repent. God sent fire down to destroy the towns. However, when God sent Jonah to Ninevah to tell them they needed to repent, they did, and God saved them.
Did you know that Jonah was angry at God for saving Nineveh? We read in Jonah 4:1-2, “But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. And he prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord, is it not this what I have said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster.” Jonah ran from the Lord when the Lord asked him to go to Ninevah. I had always thought he ran from the Lord because he was afraid of the people in Ninevah. However, this verse says that he ran because he knew God would have mercy on them, and he didn’t want them to be saved.
This is a somewhat common thing for us to do. Maybe not running from the Lord, but definitely wishing people would get what they deserve. Have you ever wished that someone got what they deserved? Have you ever seen a car speed by you, or weave in and out of traffic, and think to yourself, “I hope there is a cop ahead.” Or do you see someone cut in line and hope that someone notices and that they get kicked out of the line? Why do we do this? Why do we wish ill on other people? Maybe you are thinking that you are justified in thinking that you want the driver to get pulled over because you want them to learn their lesson and drive better. But, what if they did get pulled over and they just got a warning, would you be ok with that?
Sometimes we can do this with our kids as well. Jonah felt that these people needed to be punished, and he knew that God would have mercy on them. Sometimes, we can default to the thinking that when our children do something wrong, they need to be punished, and maybe that is true sometimes. But do we take the time to think about the situation first? Do we even consider giving them mercy? Sometimes our children need our mercy. Sometimes they messed up, did something they weren’t supposed to do, and they know it was wrong. They are truly sorry, and they learned a lesson from it. Times like these are times when we should consider mercy. Sometimes we think our kids will only learn if we punish them; however, I think they can learn a lot from mercy as well.
As I said earlier, we tend to focus on the first part of this verse, Repent and be baptized. However, I wonder how many of you also think of the ending of the verse? How many of you truly know what it means? The verse ends with, “and you will receive the Holy Spirit.” I am not sure that everyone, or even most people, knows how powerful a statement that is. Did you know that the power of the Holy Spirit is what raised Jesus from the dead? Did you know that the same power resides in you? Romans 8:11 "If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.”
When you are baptized, you are baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. This means that when you are baptized, you receive the Holy Spirit. If you are Catholic, then you receive the Holy Spirit again when you are confirmed. This is all amazing to me. The power that raised Jesus from the dead lives in me. I just can’t get over that. I think if we all knew the power that we had through the Holy Spirit and then used that power for good, the world wouldn’t know what was going on. Jesus said in John 14:12-14, “Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes in me will do the works that I do and will do greater ones than these, because I am going to the Father. And whatever you ask in my name, I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything of me in my name, I will do it.”
Did you catch that? Jesus said we will do greater works than He if we believe. This is only possible because of the Holy Spirit. We have the Holy Spirit inside of us; we just need to call on Him. We need to believe in Jesus and believe when He tells us that He sent us the Holy Spirit to guide us. The Holy Spirit raised Jesus from the dead. That same spirit lives in you. What are you going to do with it? Are you going to just sit around and let all that power pass you by, or are you going to use your newfound power for good? Who do you know that could use some extra blessings? I am sure that I have talked before about how important repentance is, and yet this will likely not be the last time you hear me talk about it. Repentance is so important for so many reasons. This verse just mentions one of the many: if you repent and are baptized, you will receive the Holy Spirit. Now, after talking for a bit about how awesome the Holy Spirit is, wouldn’t you do anything to be close to Him?
Most, if not all, of you listening already have the Holy Spirit inside of you. Call upon Him, and you will see how powerful He is. Don’t be afraid to talk with Him and ask Him for things. That is why God sent Him to us, to help us. Anything that happens as a result of the Holy Spirit glorifies God. Jesus is with the Father, so when we ask God for things in Jesus’ name, the Holy Spirit comes through for us, and the results glorify the Lord. It is a win-win for everyone. One of the easiest prayers to remember, and yet one of the most powerful, is, “Come, Holy Spirit, come.” When you ask, God answers. Anytime you are in need of a little assistance, or even a lot of assistance, pray, “Come, Holy Spirit, come.” I truly feel you will be surprised at all the ways He comes through for you.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, I ask that you send the Holy Spirit to everyone listening to this podcast. Lord, we ask that you open our eyes to how the Holy Spirit is working in our lives. Lord, we ask that you remind us to call on the Holy Spirit when we forget. Lord, we are so very thankful that you sent down the Holy Spirit to guide us in your ways. Lord, help us to see the places in our lives where we need to repent, and then give us the courage to do so. We want to receive the Holy Spirit, Lord Jesus. We are open to it. Lord God, you are amazing. We are so very thankful for all you do for us. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will, and in Jesus’ holy name, amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. This month in Mentoring, we're talking about the Father's love. One of the things we discussed this week is how many of us know God loves us intellectually, but still struggle to believe it personally. We talked about how the Father's love isn't something we achieve—it's something we receive. If you've ever felt like you have to earn God's love, prove your worth, or get your act together before approaching Him, I think this series could really encourage you. You can find the link to join in the show notes. I look forward to meeting you here again on Monday! Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “You may not see the light within you. I do. So if I can lift it up, the light within you, I can draw others to myself. My heart yearns for all of my children and all of my creation. Walk confidently in the plan of your life. I am your Father.”
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What Happens When Praise Goes First?
2 Chronicles 20:21-22 "After consulting the people, Jehoshaphat appointed men to sing to the Lord and to praise him for the splendor of his holiness as they went out at the head of the army, saying: “Give thanks to the Lord, for his love endures forever.”As they began to sing and praise, the Lord set ambushes against the men of Ammon and Moab and Mount Seir who were invading Judah, and they were defeated.”
In this chapter of Chronicles, God’s people have armies coming to attack them from three different places. Things were not looking good. Then the Spirit of the Lord came upon Jahaziel, son of Zechariah, as he stood in the assembly. He told the king and all the people of Judah that they shouldn’t be afraid because this was not their fight. It was God’s fight. He told them to march down against the invading armies, but that they would not have to fight the battle. This is where the verse picks up. “After consulting the people, Jehoshaphat appointed men to sing to the Lord and to praise him for the splendor of his holiness as they went out at the head of the army, saying: 'Give thanks to the Lord, for his love endures forever.”
Jehoshaphat and his army were headed into what seemed like a hopeless battle. There were three different armies waiting to destroy them and take their land. You would think they would have the soldiers lead them in this battle. Even if they trusted God, you would think that just to be on the safe side, you would have the soldiers go first. However, King Jehoshaphat appointed men to sing to the Lord and to praise Him for the splendor of his holiness as they went out to face the armies. “As they began to sing and praise, the Lord set ambushes against the men of Ammon and Moab and Mount Seir who were invading Judah, and they were defeated.”
Did you catch that last part? It doesn’t say that once they started fighting, the Lord gave them victory. It doesn’t say their enemy was defeated by their mighty hand. It says that as they began to sing and praise, the Lord set ambushes against their enemy, and they were defeated. They didn’t even have to fight a single person. They didn’t have to lift their hands at all in this fight. They just needed to lift up their voices. Do you have enemies that you need to defeat? Are you praising God now while you are in the middle of it, or are you waiting until you get out of it?
Sometimes we are trying to fight our enemies on our own. We know we need God, and yet we ask Him for so much that we feel we should try to do this one on our own. Yet, instead of leading with praise, we lead with anger, frustration, sadness, jealousy, and whatever other emotions we are feeling at the moment. Can you think of a time when you have charged into a situation with your emotions leading the way? How did that work out for you? For me, it never works out. When I go into a situation on my own without inviting the Lord to come with me, it never works out as I intended it to. However, when I do think to praise the Lord while I am in the middle of a difficult situation, it always turns out well.
There are times when we think God has abandoned us. We are praying and it does not seem like He is with us. Maybe we are the ones who have abandoned God. We may be praying, but are we praying with a hopeful heart? Are we trusting God will come through for us when we pray? Are we praising God for all He does for us? God is working in our lives every single day. Are we praising Him for that? I talk a lot about gratitude because I think it is so important to go through life being grateful for what we have. I think when we are grateful for what we have, God blesses us with more. Being grateful is also a great way to shift our mood if we are feeling sad or having a bad day. Sometimes, all it takes is a perspective switch, and we can turn our whole day around.
Praise is different from gratitude. Sometimes, we can be praising God for what we have and what He has done for us, and yet praise is so much more than that. We can also praise God for who He is. Sometimes we are in a situation where we may not want to or be able to praise God for the situation. For instance, in this verse, God’s people were not praising God for the situation they were in. They were not grateful that they had three armies coming after them. They were praising God for “the splendor of His Holiness.” They were praising God for who He is. He is the Fountain of Life. He is the great “I AM.” He is the Just One, and He is the King of kings. He is the Lord of Lords, and He is the Light of the world. He is the Lord our God. He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
How often are you praising God for simply being God? How often are you spending time in prayer, thanking and praising God for being everything you need Him to be? Maybe the next time we are in a hard situation, instead of charging into the situation with our guns blazing, we can lead with our praise. Instead of leading with our anger, frustration, and sadness, we can lead with our praise. God is always there for us. Let’s be there for Him. Let’s give God the praise that He so rightly deserves. The thought just came to me that not everyone knows how to praise God. There is no specific way. I love to listen to praise and worship music, which is really any Christian music. I am also part of a prayer group, and we praise out loud to the Lord, thanking Him for all He has done and all He Is. I say phrases such as those listed above, things such as, you are the Light of the World, You are the Word made flesh, You are the King of the Kings. You can also think back to all you have and thank God for that one by one. You can thank God for everyone He has brought into your life. Praise is time spent with the Lord when you are either thanking Him for something or you are talking about all the reasons He is awesome!! I challenge you to find some time in your day-to-day and praise the Lord. You can do it silently within your own heart, or you can shout it from the rooftops and everything in between. Whatever you feel comfortable with. The more you praise, the more comfortable it will feel to you. Also, the more you praise, the more you will see God working in your life.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to praise you more. Put praise for you on our hearts so we long to do it. Give us a thirst for praising you, Lord. It is so amazing how you defeated Judah’s enemy when they started to praise you. Lord, we have many enemies, and we need you to defeat them. Help us to praise you first instead of trying to fix it all ourselves. We love you, Lord; you are so powerful. You give Light to our lamps. You straighten our crooked path. You are always by our side, and we are so grateful. I ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. This month inside Walk Boldly With Jesus Mentoring, we're talking about the Father's love. One of the things we discussed this week is how many of us know God loves us intellectually, but still struggle to believe it personally. If you've ever felt unloved, forgotten, rejected, or like you have to earn God's love, I think this series could really speak to your heart. You can find the link to join the show in the show notes. I look forward to spending time with you on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed weekend.
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in December 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Surrender all the worries, anxieties, tests, and demands of this world during this season to Me. The most important thing you can do is surrender to Me, to my sacred heart. This is the most important gift to Me, to yourselves, and to others.”
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We have all seen God working in our lives. However, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences, the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com (https://findingtruenorthcoaching.com/contact) or just click here (https://findingtruenorthcoaching.com/contact) . It won’t take up much of your time, and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story, and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow, and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I. Have a blessed day!Music: "Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 Licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ www.findingtruenorthcoaching.comCLICK HERE TO DONATECLICK HERE to sign up for Mentoring CLICK HERE to sign up for Daily "Word from the Lord" emailsCLICK HERE to sign up for my newsletter & receive a free audio trainingabout inviting Jesus into your daily lifeCLICK HERE to buy my book Total Trust in God's Safe Embrace
I Am Free! (Identity Series)
Galatians 5:1 "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery."
We have talked a lot about freedom in my Encounter Ministries class. Fourth quarter was on inner healing, and I learned so much. I had heard that fourth quarter would probably be the most transformational because, as we learn various tools to set people free, we practice using these tools on each other. Instead of just acquiring book knowledge, we gain first-hand experience and begin the healing process ourselves. The amazing thing is that we let the Holy Spirit lead us. We ask the Holy Spirit, Jesus, or the Father questions and allow God to answer them for us. It is pretty remarkable.
This verse goes so well with the theme of inner healing. Inner healing is all about freedom. It is freedom from chains that hold us down, freedom from memories that keep us stuck in the past, and freedom from unhealthy attachments that keep us from moving forward. These things can become barriers to the freedom Christ wants for us. The verse says that freedom is why Christ has set us free. Christ died on the cross to set us free from sin, yet we can still allow other things to weigh us down and trap us.
There are many ways we can become burdened by a yoke of slavery. Sometimes we bring it on ourselves, and sometimes we do not even realize it is happening. Often, when something happens to us, we create lies about that situation. These lies form in our subconscious and begin influencing our thoughts and actions.
I heard an example of a young girl who told her mom about her day and got yelled at. Her mom later apologized and explained she was having a bad day. Even though the girl understood the apology, her young mind formed the lie, “My mom doesn’t want to hear about my day.” Without realizing it, she stopped sharing with her mom. Do you see how sneaky the enemy is? He whispers lies, and we start believing them.
Another example is soul ties. A soul tie is an unhealthy attachment to another person that limits our freedom. This could happen in a romantic relationship, a friendship, or even with a family member. Have you ever found yourself unable to stop thinking about someone even though you knew they were not good for you? You may have formed a soul tie. The good news is that through the power of Jesus, these ties can be broken, and the Lord can restore freedom.
The examples above are ways we may become burdened without realizing it. There are also ways we knowingly give up our freedom. One big one for me is television. I would love to say I am free to turn it off anytime I want. In theory, I can. In reality, I tell myself I will watch one episode and then end up watching for hours. That is not the freedom Jesus died to give us.
Another way we burden ourselves is by trying things we know can become addictive. The only time we truly have a choice is often at the beginning. Once addiction takes hold, it becomes much harder to say no.
We can also surrender our freedom when we constantly indulge the desires of the flesh. This could be anything from overeating to more serious sins. When we continually choose these things, we are not choosing the freedom Christ won for us.
The verse says, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” We are told to stand firm in our freedom. Jesus did not die so we could continue living captive.
Take a look at your life. Are there areas where you are allowing yourself to become burdened? What has more control over your life than it should? Your schedule? Entertainment? Other people? Addictions? It is important to identify where we have allowed something other than God to take control. If we find those areas, we can surrender them to God and allow Him to restore our freedom.
Some of these areas will be easier to overcome than others. If you are struggling with addiction, it may feel impossible. On our own, it often is. However, with the power of the Holy Spirit, all things are possible.
We need to remind ourselves that we are more powerful than our wants and desires. Just because we want something does not mean we have to have it. We have the Holy Spirit living inside of us, and that means we have power greater than any temptation. The enemy wants us to believe we are weak, but he knows the power God has placed within us. Too often, we agree with the enemy's lie instead of God's truth.
We are strong. Jesus died so we could live in freedom. Let's learn to live in that freedom.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask You to bless all those reading this devotional today. Lord, help us to live in the freedom You want for us. Bring to light any areas in our lives where we are not free. Show us how to become free in those areas. Please show us what needs to change so we can live a life of freedom. We are grateful that You sacrificed Your Son for our freedom. We are sorry we do not always live in that freedom. Please help us to live it more each day. We ask all of this in accordance with Your Will and in Jesus's Holy Name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to Walk Boldly With Jesus. As I was looking through the Identity Series this morning, I realized there was one identity I never recorded—"I Am Free." So today, we are completing the series!
If you enjoyed today's episode and would like to dive deeper into these identity teachings, I'll include a link in the show notes to the YouTube playlist containing all 31 Identity Series episodes. CLICK HERE for YouTube Playlist.
I also compiled these teachings into my devotional, Walk Boldly With Jesus Devotional, which includes reflection questions to help you journal and apply these truths to your own life. I'll place a link to the book in the show notes as well. CLICK HERE to buy on Amazon.
If you'd prefer an autographed copy, you can visit Walk Boldly With Jesus and order one directly from the website. CLICK HERE
I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I. Have a blessed day!
Today's Word from the Lord was received in November 2016 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today's Word from the Lord is, "I call you to a greater prayer, a time for you to multiply your prayer for My sons and daughters. Alone in your room, praying, you have the power to change events on the other side of the world. I will always be with you, aligning My light with your path. I will intercede for you. Enter in and be loved and purified, to be loved and pruned, to be loved and forgiven, to be loved and be blessed. ENTER IN."
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If God Was Faithful Then, He'll Be Faithful Now
Isaiah 51:15-16 “I am the Lord your God, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar— the Lord of hosts is his name. And I have put my words in your mouth and covered you in the shadow of my hand, establishing the heavens and laying the foundations of the earth, and saying to Zion, ‘You are my people.’”
This was the verse we used for the monthly bookmark we do at my prayer group. It seemed to go well with the words of prophecy that we received and discerned for that month. We were working on January’s discernment. After reading this verse again, I wanted to get a sense of what others said about it. I wanted to make sure I really understood what it meant, so I could help you understand it. I am glad I did because I definitely would have missed the context of this verse.
The first line, “I am the Lord your God, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar— the Lord of hosts is his name.” This is meant to remind the Israelites of when God saved them from Egypt. However, not so much about how He parted the Red Sea so they could pass through on dry land; rather, to remind them of what happened after they crossed safely. God sent the raging waters to destroy those who chased after them. This is God reminding them that He is their protector and their savior. A few verses earlier in Isaiah 51:12-13 it says, “I, I am he who comforts you; who are you that you are afraid of man who dies, of the son of man who is made like grass, and have forgotten the Lord, your Maker, who stretched out the heavens and laid the foundations of the earth, and you fear continually all the day because of the wrath of the oppressor, when he sets himself to destroy? And where is the wrath of the oppressor?” God is trying to remind the Israelites who they are. They are the chosen people of God. They have His protection. Throughout this chapter, He reminds them who they are and that they don’t need to be afraid. They don’t need to fear their enemies; they don’t need to fear anything because God is on their side.
This is a great reminder to us as well. We don’t have to be afraid of the current president, the last president, or the next president. We don’t have to focus on how bad the world around us is getting. We don’t have to focus on all the messes in our lives. We need to focus on how God is Sovereign over all of these – He is the Almighty. Everything He wills comes to pass. And God has promised Jerusalem that the day will come when her exile will be finished, and she will return. If God has promised it, then His people can count on it; they can rely on it. God is trying to remind the Israelites that He is the Lord of hosts, and if He saved them before, He can save them again. I think He is also telling us this, too! God rolled back the seas so His people could pass on dry ground and then let them roar again to protect those same people. What has God done in your life that you can look back on and know you will be okay in this tough time as well? What has He done in the past that proves to you that He will show up in this present situation as well? If you can’t think of something He has done personally in your past, you can look to what He has done in scripture. Hebrews 13:8 says, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” What He has done in the past, He can do again.
The last part of the verse says, “And I have put my words in your mouth and covered you in the shadow of my hand, establishing the heavens and laying the foundations of the earth, and saying to Zion, ‘You are my people.’” This part of the verse reminds us that we have a role to play in God’s plan. Yes, He is there to protect us, and He also wants us to go out and share His message with everyone we meet. He doesn’t want us to sit around, worship Him, and praise Him, yet keep Him to ourselves. He is protecting us and filling us up with His graces so that we can share them with all we meet. This might make us nervous to think about talking about God to others. I know I get nervous thinking about it. What if I don’t know what to say? What if they ask questions and I don’t have any answers? What if I say the wrong thing, or say something that isn’t true? In this verse, God is reassuring us that when we say yes, when we step out in that call, He will put the words in our mouths. God isn’t asking us to know everything; He isn’t asking us to be an eloquent speaker or have all the right words. He is asking us to be an empty vessel. He is asking for our “yes,” and then He will give us the words to say.
God is calling each and every one of us to go out and to pass to others all He has given us. Each month, as we review and discern the words God has given us throughout the prayer group meetings, we realize that God is giving us this call over and over again. He doesn’t always say it in the same way, and yet it is always there. Go and tell my people; go and spread my love, my hope, my peace, my forgiveness. God would not keep telling us every single week if it were not important to Him. He also probably wouldn’t keep telling us this if we were doing it. So, why aren’t we doing it? Why aren’t we passing on what the Lord is giving us? What is stopping us? This will be different for each one of us. I can’t answer these questions for you. Maybe it is the enemy telling us we don’t know enough to share with others? I can tell you that when I started reading the Bible more and learning more about my faith, I started wanting to share more with others.
When God is asking us in a prayer group to share with others, it is not the knowledge of scripture He is asking us to share. He is asking us to share His love, His peace, His joy, His forgiveness, and other such things. These are things we don’t need to be super smart and have the Bible memorized to share. We can share these things without knowing much scripture at all. However, we do need to have these things in our lives if we want to share them. If we don’t know God’s love, peace, joy, and forgiveness, then we can’t share it with others. God wants to give us all of this and more, and all He asks is that we share it with those around us. We don’t have to go up to strangers and share it; we could start right in our own home with those we spend the most time with. I have included the bookmark in this episode. I think hearing an example of God’s call for us to go out and share all He gives will help you understand a bit better. Also, as you can see in the bookmark, He doesn’t start by directing us to go out and share. He starts by calling us closer, then tells us how special we are and reminds us how amazing He is. Then he asks us to go out and share it with others. I will leave you with His words today. Here are the words we felt God wanted us to use for the January 2023 bookmark:
Come closer to me. Come deeper with me. Come into my presence because I want you, my diamonds, to sparkle so that all those around you will want to come and be in your presence to absorb your light. Your light is my life in you. I am the God who loves you. I am the God who protects you. I am the God who never stops caring for you. I give you my abundant blessings. No matter what is going on in your life right now, I take each step that you take. When you feel you can’t stand, I am there to carry you. What I share with you, you must share with others. It is I who sends you to share my way, my truth, and my life so that others may grow in me and love me. Arise and go forward with the name of Jesus on your lips.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you, and we are so grateful for your words above. We are grateful that you want to spend your time talking to us when you have so much to do. We are grateful for your protection and for being your chosen people. We are sorry we get it wrong so often, and we just ask for your forgiveness. We love you, Lord. We thank you for your protection and for putting the words in our mouths. Please give us the courage to use those words to help bring others to you, Lord. We love you, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. The Walk Boldly With Jesus mentoring group is a safe, judgment-free space to grow in your relationship with God. If you’ve been looking for that, I’d love to invite you to join us. CLICK HERE for more info on mentoring. I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I. Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I myself underwrite this plan of your life. I myself secure your path to it, to your destiny. It is from eternity. It is interwoven in my divine purposes. You are not insignificant. You are interwoven in the fibers of my being and the great eternal plan.”
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I Will Take Refuge In The Shadow Of His Wings
Psalms 57:1 “Have mercy on me, my God, have mercy on me, for in you I take refuge. I will take refuge in the shadow of your wings until the disaster has passed.”
What struck me about this passage when I first read it was the last line. “I will take refuge in the shadow of your wings until the disaster has passed.” The thought that came to my mind was, “Wouldn't it be nice to just rest in God’s shadow until the disaster has passed?” I thought about all the people I know right now who are in situations that feel like they are a disaster. I have a friend who is in a legal battle with a family member over money. Tony has a co-worker who is in intensive care, fighting for his life. I have a family member who just found out she has cancer. Another friend’s husband found out he is going blind. I got a text from a friend today who asked for prayers for her brother, who went to the ER today because he was having seizures. I could go on and on. It seems to be never-ending.
When I think of all of them, I can see how this verse applies to them. The beginning says, " Have mercy on me, my God, have mercy on me, for in you I take refuge. I can see them crying this out to the Lord. I am crying it out for them in my prayers. I am begging God to have mercy on them. I am begging God to please not let Tony’s co-worker pass away. Please have mercy on him. Please don’t leave his kids without a dad and his wife without a husband. Please let my family member’s cancer be stage one and easily removable. Please have mercy on my friend’s husband and miraculously cure his eyesight. Please stop the seizures my friend’s brother is having, and please heal any damage that might be a result of the seizures. Please God, have mercy on my loved ones and me. Please God, have mercy on them and their loved ones.
The verse says, “For in you I take refuge.” To take refuge means to go to a safe place. When we are struggling, as so many of us are today, we can go to the Lord; He can be our safe place. He can be the place we go to, and we rest. The ending of the verse says, “I will take refuge in the shadow of your wings until the disaster has passed.” When I hear this, I get two images. The first one is of a giant eagle. This eagle is taller than any person, but not so giant that we are tiny in comparison. This eagle is standing up tall and proud, and we are tucked under its giant eagle wing. It is as if he is hugging us, and we feel warm and safe there. The second image is us just falling asleep under the protection of His wings until the disaster has passed.
When something awful is happening in our lives, a lot of times we want to pretend it isn’t happening. Life is easier that way. We wish we could just stay in bed until the bad parts of our lives are over. Technically, we could do this, some people do this, and yet, I don’t think any of us would be happy with those results. Unfortunately, avoiding the disaster and trying to sleep it away will not change the fact that you are going through something really hard right now. I have a friend who is really struggling because her daughter is not talking to her, and her daughter is about to turn 18. Her daughter is going to graduate, and she doesn’t get to watch her walk across that stage. My friend does not even want to get out of bed in the morning some mornings, and who can blame her? I wouldn’t either. However, my friend does get up, and she does still do the things that are required of her. Not because she wants to and not because she has to, but because she has taken refuge in the Lord. She knows where her strength comes from, and no one can take that away from her. She is strong, and she knows she is a beloved daughter of God, and that makes all the difference in the world.
When we are going through a really difficult time, we can take refuge in God. We can hide under his wings, and He will protect us. I like the image I get when I hear this verse because we are asleep in the Father’s arms/wings and He is just holding us there until the disaster goes away. How great would that be? How great would it be to just hide away in a safe place until all this mess was over? While we can’t literally hide until the mess goes away, we can place our troubles in the hands of our Lord and then give Him permission to take care of them for us. We can hide in His shadow while we wait for the miracle that He has planned for our loved ones and for us.
We just have to hold on. We just have to turn towards the Lord instead of away from him when we need him. We just need to rest in his shadow and continue to say, “Have mercy on me, my God, have mercy on me.” If you are going through a disaster right now, I want you to know you are not alone. There are so many of us who are struggling right now. I also want you to know that I am praying for you and your family. I am praying God has mercy on you and your loved ones. I am praying you are able to find refuge in God our Savior. I am holding onto hope for you. Take refuge in the shadow of His wings until the disaster has passed. This disaster will pass, I promise you that. You will make it through this. God is there with you, even when you can’t feel Him. He is there, right there with you. Rest in Him!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each person listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to rest in you. Please help us. Lord, have mercy on our loved ones and on us. Please do this miracle for us. The one we keep asking for, the one we really, really, need right now. Yep, that one, the one that seems impossible. We know you are the God of the impossible. We know you are the Way-maker, and you make a way where there isn’t one. We know these miracles would be simple for you, and so we are begging for your mercy, Lord. Please help us. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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Catch Me When I Fall
Psalm 13:4-5 “How long, Lord? Will you utterly forget me? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I carry sorrow in my soul, grief in my heart day after day? How long will my enemy triumph over me? Look upon me, answer me, Lord, my God! Give light to my eyes lest I sleep in death, lest my enemy say, “I have prevailed,” lest my foes rejoice at my downfall. But I trust in your mercy. Grant my heart joy in your salvation, I will sing to the Lord, for he has dealt bountifully with me!”
The theme for mentoring this month is “How Long, Lord?” I chose this title because I know so many people who are suffering right now and who have been for quite some time. They have been sick for so long, and they can’t see an end in sight. Some have been going through struggles with their family, and they can’t see a resolution. It feels like things might always be like this. Many I know are struggling with a prodigal child, and they are waiting for them to come home, but feel like it may never happen.
In today’s verse, David addresses this same sentiment. It begins with “How Long, Lord? Will you utterly forget me? How long will you hide your face from me? How much do I carry in my soul, grief in my heart, day after day? How long will my enemy triumph over me?” I am sure that is exactly what my friends who are suffering are asking the Lord. I am sure they are struggling to understand why they are still suffering, what the purpose is, and when they will be through it. In mentoring this month, each week, I am going to examine a song that deals with these exact feelings. I really like music; it speaks right to my soul. I also like to use songs because you can always go back to them and listen to them and hopefully they will bring you comfort.
"When I Fall" by Katy Nichole is a song written out of desperation, reflecting a time when Nichole felt mentally, spiritually, and physically drained. She describes the song as a desperate prayer, expressing her exhaustion with trying to be "okay" and her desire to be honest with God. I think this is great. We should all be honest with God. I don’t know why we think we can hide things from Him. He is all-knowing. That thing you are too afraid to tell Him about, He already knows. That thing you don’t want to bother Him with, He already knows. There isn’t anything we can hide from God. Here are the lyrics for the song:
Lord, I can't find You right now
And everything is crashin' down
I'm losin' faith and fallin' into my doubts
How long will I have to fight
Just for me to stay alive?
This is a true and honest song. This is something that I know those who suffer with chronic pain are asking the Lord. I am sure at times we all wonder where God is. We wonder why He is letting us go through the things we are going through, and when He is going to pull us out of it. It is hard to keep having faith and fighting, not to let our doubts get the best of us when we are so tired from all the fighting we have already done.
I know You're there, God, please
Just meet me here tonight
My God, I'm tired of tryna be okay
I've prayed all the prayers I have to pray
Please don't leave me lonely
My God, I need You to hold me
This is the desperate plea of so many of us. We know God is there. We just need Him to hold us, even if it’s just for a minute. We are all tired of trying to be okay. We are tired of having to pretend to everyone that we are ok. One of my favorite sayings is, “It’s ok to not be ok.” I wish more people knew this. I wish more people would speak out and let others know they are not ok. I know so many people who seem so happy on the outside and yet are not ok on the inside. This world is a lonely place. Which may seem weird, as there are so many ways to keep in touch with friends and family. However, a lot of the relationships we have these days are superficial. We “like” or “love” people’s posts on social media, but we aren’t reaching out and having meaningful conversations. And, if we are being honest, we probably aren’t making posts that accurately reflect how we feel inside or what life is like on a day-to-day basis.
My God, I'm losin' all the hope I got
I'm far beyond the point of bein' lost
I've tried, but I can't let go
'Cause God, You catch me when I fall
You catch me when I fall
This is like so many I know. They don’t want to lose their hope, but it is hard day after day when it feels like their prayers aren’t being answered. When you look around, and no matter how hard you try, you can’t seem to find God. What is really good is that she knows that God will be there to catch her when she falls. If she can let go of all that she thinks is supporting her and holding her up, and just fully surrender to God, then He will catch her. He will always be there to catch us when we fall.
There's hardly any air in my lungs
With all the damage that's been done
Lord, please sustain me now
I know You are enough
My God, I'm tired of tryna be okay
I've prayed all the prayers I have to pray
Please don't leave me lonely
My God, I need You to hold me
The thing to remember about God is that He can repair the damage that is done. We think we need God to act now, before it is too late. However, it is never too late for God. God can replace your damaged lungs. He can repair your kidneys. He can do whatever needs to be done. God is our provision. He is our rock. Katy says in the song that she knows God is enough and is asking Him to sustain her. He will sustain you, too. I know it may feel like you just can’t keep your head above water right now. God’s got you. He is your arm float. He will not let you drown. He hears your prayers.
The last line of today’s verse says, “But I trust in your mercy. Grant my heart joy in your salvation, I will sing to the Lord, for he has dealt bountifully with me!” Sometimes we need to sing to the Lord before the breakthrough. Sometimes we need to thank God for all the unseen work He is doing. Praising when we don’t feel like we can will actually make us feel better, and it will make the enemy flee. Praising can lift us up out of the darkness, even if it is only for a little while. David was asking the Lord to give him joy in his heart. He was asking for the Lord’s help. We can do the same.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode. Lord, you are so good. Help us to remember that when we feel lost in our own pain or our own troubles. Help us to remember how good you are. Lord, help us to remember you do catch us when we fall. Help us to remember you never leave our side. Lord, we need you to come and let us know you are here with us. We love you so much, and we need you now, Lord. Help us to hang in there, help us to never give up hope. Please provide us with the strength and provision we need for today, Lord. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you love this podcast and want more, join me in mentoring and see how much more there is to learn. How much deeper can you go? The Lord is calling you closer. Will you answer his call? I look forward to seeing you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I call you each by name, my children. I invite you constantly to come to me. The more you come, the more I will reveal my secrets. You will know the deeper things in life.”
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Today's Witness is from a friend in Big Life Mentoring. She gives her testimony about how she has been through several unhealthy relationships in search of love. Her mentor, Pamela Crim, helped her discover what she was truly in search of: Jesus. This is a story of her victory over negative self-worth and shame. She is also a survivor of betrayal trauma. God transformed her life, and he can do the same for yours! www.findingtruenorthcoaching.comCLICK HERE TO DONATECLICK HERE to sign up for Mentoring CLICK HERE to sign up for Daily "Word from the Lord" emailsCLICK HERE to sign up for my newsletter & receive a free audio trainingabout inviting Jesus into your daily lifeCLICK HERE to buy my book Total Trust in God's Safe Embrace
Psalm 104 Day 9 The Difference Between Joy and Happiness
Psalm 104:33-35 “I will sing my song to the Lord as long as I live! Every day, I will sing my praises to God. May you be pleased with every sweet thought I have about you, for you are the source of my joy and gladness. Now, let all the sinners be swept from the earth. But I will keep on praising you, my Lord, with all that is within me. My joyous, blissful shouts of “Hallelujah” are all because of you!
We have spent the past eight episodes talking about the Lord’s majesty. We talked about all the parts of nature and how amazing God is to have created all of it. We talked about how powerful He is. Today, we are talking about praising the Lord. This is one of my favorite things to discuss and do. Praise is such an essential part of our relationship with the Lord. There have been many times when I have asked the Lord what has helped me grow so much closer to Him, and he always replies, praise, you praise me so often.
If we want to grow closer to the Lord, it helps to let Him know how much we appreciate all He has done and continues to do for us. God loves it when we show our appreciation to Him. It is so easy to take Him for granted if we are not careful, because there are so many things He does for us that we don’t even see. It is easy to be grateful to the Lord when He saves us from the dangers we know about, the ones we can see. However, what about all the dangers God has prevented from harming us before we saw them?
The verse begins with, “I will sing my song to the Lord as long as I live! Every day, I will sing my praises to God.” I hope I can say the same. I hope every day I take time to sing praises to the Lord. He does so much for us. The Lord has protected my family from some pretty scary things. I have had two kids who overdosed on drugs, and yet both are still living with no lasting effects. Our family was falling apart, and the Lord put it back together. I can’t even count the number of times we needed something to work out, and God arranged the solution perfectly. God deserves my praise, and I hope I never forget that!
Next, the verse says, “May you be pleased with every sweet thought I have about you, for you are the source of my joy and gladness.” This expresses a sentiment I think we all have. We all want the Lord to be pleased with us. I also like how the verse reminds us that the Lord is the source of our joy and gladness. This means we can have joy no matter our circumstances. Happiness and joy are two different things. Happiness is usually based on our circumstances. If something good and fun is happening, we are generally happy. However, Joy is different. I love Rick Warren, the author of A Purpose Driven Life's definition of Joy. He says, “Joy is the settled assurance that God is in control of all the details of my life, the quiet confidence that ultimately everything is going to be alright, and the determined choice to praise God in every situation.”
Let’s look at this definition a bit more closely. First, it says joy is the settled assurance that God controls all the details of my life. Can you see how we can have more joy when we realize God controls all the details? Everything is not up to me. I don’t have to be perfect. I don’t have to get it all right. God is in control, not me. Then, it says the quiet confidence that, ultimately, everything will be alright. Can you see how it would be possible to have joy in a difficult situation if you knew that everything would be alright in the end? Things might be crappy right now, but ultimately, eventually, things will be alright, and that makes the joy in the hard times possible. The last part of it ties right in with the verse of the day. It ends with the determined choice to praise God in every situation.
Did you know you get to choose whether to praise the Lord? Praising the Lord doesn’t have to be based on your feelings. There may be times when you are in the middle of something really difficult and you don’t feel like praising the Lord, yet you can choose to praise Him anyway. You could be in a period of dryness with prayer or under spiritual attack, and you don’t want to praise the Lord. Yet this is a great time to praise the Lord because it can lift you out of both situations. Praising the Lord when you are under spiritual attack from the enemy is a great way to make the enemy flee. Evil spirits will not stick around when you are proclaiming the name of Jesus Christ. They hate that name. Praising the Lord can bring you joy when you least expect it.
Today’s verse ends with, “Now, let all the sinners be swept from the earth. But I will keep on praising you, my Lord, with all that is within me. My joyous, blissful shouts of “Hallelujah” are all because of you!” The person who wrote this Psalm asks for all the sinners to be swept from the earth. This would be nice, except that we are all sinners. I am unsure who wrote this and if they had the extraordinary gift of not being a sinner, but I believe that right is solely reserved for Mary. I can see why the person would want all sinners to be swept from the earth. I am sure it breaks God’s heart when we sin repeatedly. I have indeed wished that all evil could be removed from this world. However, I think removing all evil and removing all sinners are different. Each one of us sins, so we are sinners, yet I don’t think we all need to be wiped off the face of the earth. Who are we to decide who is a sinner and who is not? That is for God to judge. We can only do the best that we can each day.
I love how the last thing the verse says is, My joyous, blissful shouts of ‘Hallelujah’ are all because of you!” Let that be true for each of us. Let us all have joyous, blissful shouts of “Hallelujah” because of all God does for us. Let us continue to sing out our praise to the Lord for all our days. Let us show the Lord how much we love and appreciate Him.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each listener to this episode. Lord, we want to praise you in all circumstances. Show us how. Lord, we want to understand the difference between happiness and joy. Please help us. Lord, help us to see that you are with us in good times and in bad times. Help us to have joy in all circumstances. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. You never know how one episode can impact someone’s life. Share this and let God use it in ways you may never even see. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! May the grace and favor of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your Spirit!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “At the moment of your conception, I already knew the path I had chosen for you and my eternal purposes. It came with you at conception. Both your body and the plan of your life were conceived in me before anything happened on earth.”
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Psalm 104 Day 8 The More We Need God, the More We See Him
Psalm 104:31-32 “May God’s glorious splendor endure forever! May the Lord take joy and pleasure in all that he has made. For the earth’s overseer has the power to make it tremble; just a touch of his finger and volcanoes erupt as the earth shakes and melts."
Wow, this verse has a lot of powerful language that helps to visualize what the verse is saying. First, it says, “May God’s glorious splendor endure forever!” God’s splendor is displayed so often when we look at nature. When we slow down and take the time to admire nature, there is no way we can deny God’s splendor. Look at the beauty of the sunrise and sunset. Look at all the beautiful flowers and trees. Look at the birds and all the animals. Even if you don’t find some animals beautiful, you must admire how God created them to work together. Each one has its purpose and its place in the world and in the food chain. It is truly remarkable.
Next, the verse says, “May the Lord take joy and pleasure in all that he has made.” I hope this is the case. I hope God looks down on the world and takes pleasure in it. I know we have messed many things up, and He probably is not a fan of all of that. However, I hope He can at least enjoy the parts He made that we have not messed up yet. There is still so much beauty and majesty in the world. I have a friend who is on a cruise right now, and the other day, she visited Iceland and said it was beautiful! There is so much to see in this world that it is impossible to see all of it.
Then the verse says, “For the earth’s overseer has the power to make it tremble; just a touch of his finger and volcanoes erupt as the earth shakes and melts.” This part of the verse serves as a stark reminder of the power of our Lord. With just one touch of His finger, He could make volcanoes erupt and the earth shake. Yet, we know God wouldn’t even have to touch it; He could make anything He wants with His voice. God spoke the whole world into existence. He can certainly speak other things into existence.
We can look at this line in the verse in two ways. We can view it as something to worry about. We can read that verse and get scared that God could reach out and touch a volcano, and it would erupt. We could fear that God will get mad at us and do something like this. I mean, if we are honest with ourselves, we have been taking God out of more and more of our lives. We have done our best to take Him out of the school, the government, and most places. That can’t feel good to Him. I can’t imagine He is looking down upon us and thinking we are doing great things right now, especially in this country.
It's important to remember that not everyone is turning away from God. Many good people are doing good things, and I am sure that pleases the Lord. There are people fighting to include God more in schools and the government. However, it's also true that many are doing terrible things, not just to God but to one another. Boston held a Satanic Conference this past year, and I doubt that made God happy. However, God promised after the flood to Noah that He would not do that again. This promise of mercy is a source of comfort and reassurance for us all.
The second way we can look at this part of the verse is to recognize the power that God has and to apply that to our lives. If God has the power to reach out and touch a volcano, and it erupts, then what could He do in your circumstance? Could he make a way for you to pay your rent and car payments? Could He heal that cancer or that sore back? Could He take care of your tenant who is not paying rent or fix your car that needs to be fixed? We can look at this verse and realize that the power of God has no limits. He can do ANYTHING!
Once we realize this, once we truly believe this in the depths of our hearts, then we start praying bigger prayers. Once we realize there is no limit to God’s power, we start to ask for the things we really need. We start to ask for our loved ones to be healed, even though the doctor said there isn’t a way. We ask for a car because ours just died, and we need a car to get to work to pay our bills. We ask for supernatural provisions because we know that we do not have enough money in our account to pay our bills or enough food in our cabinets to feed our family.
Sometimes, we look at the faith of those who live in other countries, and we are so envious. We wish we could have the faith they have. They trust the Lord so much, and we feel like we would give anything to trust the Lord that much. However, I have discovered that they trust the Lord that much because they truly need Him. They know they can’t feel their family on their own. They know they are powerless without Him. They can’t save their children. They don’t have the medicine we have here in the United States. Their trust in God is necessary because life would be much harder if they didn’t believe.
I know my parents love the Lord, and listening to their stories in High School and meeting up each morning so they could do daily mass together, I know they trusted Him even back then. My mom was the oldest of 10 children, so I am sure she had plenty of chances to rely on the Lord. There is never enough time, money, or resources when you have a big family. Like those in other countries, you must learn to lean on the Lord and trust He will help you. When you are looking at your bare cabinets and your ten children, you hit the floor on your knees, and you pray for God to help. When you are looking at your sick child, and you know there is no medicine to save her, then you hit the ground on your knees and pray to the Lord to save her.
We say we would give anything for that kind of faith, but would we really? Would we give up the comforts and security of our lives now to see the Lord working in our lives more? People who have to rely on the Lord get to see the Lord working in their lives more because they know they need the Lord. If we have all that we need and feel we can provide for ourselves all that we need, then we generally see God working in our lives less because we are taking care of everything, so we feel we don’t need Him as much. This doesn’t mean that God is working less in our lives. It just means we have a harder time seeing it because we have learned to rely on ourselves instead of God.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to see you working in our lives. Please open our eyes to see where and how you work in our lives. We love you so much, and we know we need you. We know we have nothing and can do nothing without you. We believe, Lord. Help our unbelief. Lord, show us where in our lives we can rely on you more. Show us how we can trust you more. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you’re ready for something to shift in your life and your faith, I would love to walk with you. You can join the mentoring group at findingtruenorthcoaching/mentoring. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, just as you are, and so do I! May the grace and favor of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your Spirit! (Philippians 4:23)
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Forgive yourself for your doubts and fears and move on. I am with you always. Give yourself a chance to be who you really are in me.”
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Do You Really Expect God to Answer?
Psalm 104:27-30 “All the creatures wait expectantly for you to give them their food as you determine. You come near and they all gather around, feasting from your open hands, and each is satisfied from your abundant supply. But if you were to withhold from them and turn away, they all would panic. And when you choose to take away their breath, each one dies and returns to the dust When you release your Spirit-Wind, life is created, ready to replenish life upon the earth.”
The Psalms are so beautiful. If you have always wanted to start reading the Bible but have no idea where to start, may I suggest the Psalms? In today’s verse, we hear about how the creatures wait expectantly for God to give them their food. It says they all gather around Him and feast from His open hand. Every one of them is satisfied with God’s abundant supply. There are a couple of things just in the first few sentences.
First, it says all the creatures wait expectantly for God to give them their food. Are we included in this? I mean, it does say “all the creatures.” Yet, are we waiting expectantly? Do we know for sure that God will provide all that we need? I think sometimes we pray, and yet we don’t expect to see results because we aren’t really sure results are even possible. For instance, I prayed for a woman who has breast cancer. She was starting chemo. I wonder if she expected to be healed when we prayed over here. I wonder if she was expecting big things. I know with cancer, it is hard to test out and see if you are healed. You usually won’t notice anything until you go to a doctor's when they do some tests. I wonder if that makes it hard to have expectant faith.
When I first started praying over people for physical healing, I thought I had expectant faith, yet I was afraid to ask how they were feeling or whether they were experiencing any manifestations of the Holy Spirit. I was scared to ask because I wasn’t sure what to do if they said no. Since taking the Encounter Ministries class, I've learned that the miracle often doesn’t take place until the person steps out in faith and tests whether they still have pain or can do something they couldn’t do before. Like in the story of the man with the withered hand. This story can be found in 3 out of the 4 Gospels. I will read the account from Luke’s Gospel. This takes place in Luke 6:6-11.
“ On another sabbath, he entered the synagogue and taught, and there was a man there whose right hand was withered. The scribes and the Pharisees watched him to see whether he would cure on the sabbath so that they might find an accusation against him. 8 Even though he knew what they were thinking, he said to the man who had the withered hand, “Come and stand here.” He got up and stood there. Then Jesus said to them, “I ask you, is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to destroy it?” After looking around at all of them, he said to him, “Stretch out your hand.” He did so, and his hand was restored. But they were filled with fury and discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus.”
The man’s hand was restored after he stretched it out. He had to have expectant faith to stretch out his hand. Jesus had to have expectant faith to ask the man to stretch out his hand. We need to have expectant faith, too. It is not just about healing, although that is important; it’s about everything. We need to expect that God will provide for us just like He does for the other creatures. We need to come to Him believing that He will answer our prayers and He will provide all we need.
Next, it says, "They all gather around, feasting from your open hands, and each is satisfied from your abundant supply.” I like this sentence for two reasons. The first is because it says they were feasting from God’s open hand. Can you picture that? Can you picture being so close to the Lord that you are eating out of His open hands? That would be amazing!! I also love when it says that each is satisfied from your abundant supply. We tend to have a scarcity mindset. We think that there is not enough to go around. We worry there won’t be enough money to pay all the bills. We worry there won’t be enough food for all the people. We worry that if we ask God for something small, He won’t have anything left for something big when it comes along.
However, this verse reminds us that God is one of abundance. He has more than enough of everything we need for each one of us. He has more than enough provisions, more than enough love, more than enough grace, more than enough mercy. God has more than enough. Don’t be afraid to come to Him with expectant faith and ask Him for whatever it is. The next part talks about how God has the power to take life away and the power to give life. The verse says that if God were to turn away from the creatures, they would panic. Is this us, too? Do we panic when we think God has turned away from us? God never leaves us. He doesn’t turn away from us, even when we deserve it. He doesn’t turn away from us when we turn away from Him. He waits with open arms, waiting for us to turn back to Him. We don’t have to worry about Him turning away from us.
It is amazing to think about how He can release His Spirit-Wind, and life is created, ready to replenish life upon the earth. God is so powerful. When I think about this, it makes me wonder why we question the abundance of God. This is someone who can speak the whole universe into existence. Surely He can give you whatever it is you need. Can we practice coming to the Lord with expectant faith today?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone listening to this episode. Lord, we love you, and we ask you to help us develop expectant faith. We ask that you help us believe you are a God of abundance, and we don’t have to worry that you don’t have enough because you have more than we could ever need. We love you, Lord, and we thank you for always being there for us. We ask all of this in accordance with our will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Can I ask you to please take just 10 seconds and send this episode to someone who came to mind while you were listening? That might not be a coincidence. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! May the grace and favor of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your Spirit!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Don't be afraid to let my light shine through you. It may seem a little frightening at times, you may seem a little overwhelmed, but remember that I am the source of that light, and I will never overwhelm my people so that they can't see me and know me. For I love them with a deep and passionate love, and I long for them to be part of my light as you are.”
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Today’s Witness is from a woman in the Big Life mentoring group. She shared it on Facebook, and after reading it, I thought it would be a great one to share with all of you! The devotion this morning was amazing. The entire time Pamela was speaking, the Holy Spirit reminded me of a time in my life when I was so heartbroken over a job layoff from a job I absolutely loved. It was a dream job. I was an administrative assistant for an amazing boss with a light but just-enough workload.
After working in the school system and in retail, this job seemed like a dream come true. I wrote in my gratitude journal every morning - at that job - about how thankful I was for the opportunity, etc., etc. I had made it… the dream job had happened. It was a state job with retirement and all the things. For six months, life was so good, happy, happy, happy! Then came October 2025, rumors of layoffs, the organization was in big trouble, and there would be layoffs… but I was safe. I worked for a separate but important part of this organization. My supervisor kept saying, “You’re safe, no worries.” So I didn’t worry. And besides, God had given me this job, NO WORRIES
Then came the dreaded text at 8:00 pm- yes, a text from HR. The text basically said they were holding meetings the next day… But I was safe, right? I didn’t feel safe at that point. Everyone knew these meetings were going to happen, and a meeting wasn’t good. Y’all, I prayed, but something didn’t sit right. FAST FORWARD… I was laid off from my dream job. It was ripped from me, and my heart was broken. And to make matters worse, HR even admitted: “We thought your job was safe, but at the last minute, one more employee had to be cut. We’re so sorry!” I had to pack my things, say goodbye to my beautiful office and friends, and I cried all the way home.
How did this happen? I did all the right things. I even wrote in my gratitude journal every day how grateful I was for my amazing job. I checked every box, every day. I was supposed to be safe - but I wasn’t. I lost the one thing I’d worked so hard for. It was gone, the money, the light workload, no stress, a great supervisor. No way would I ever have that again. It was all gone. And it was Christmas.
This was supposed to be the one Christmas that I got 2 weeks off WITH PAY, the first Christmas in years I could splurge a little bit on my kids. But that was taken from me, too. I was so heartbroken and disappointed, I wondered why God had let it happen. I remember talking to Him and asking why. So many other things in my life I had accepted, but this time, I wanted to know why. Christmas came and went, New Year’s, and then dreaded January with all my brokenness. I struggled. God did provide. I got unemployment, we had enough, nothing repossessed, bills paid, we ate. But my job was gone, and my unemployment was running out on March 1st. I was going to have to return to retail, or subbing at school - no benefits, and very low pay. While getting unemployment, you are required to apply for jobs to continue getting benefits. I applied for many jobs, including remote, state, and out-of-state roles. I also applied for a role I didn’t know much about at an organization I have tried to join many times. Close to the middle of February, I got a call for an interview for the GOOD JOB, the one I didn’t know much about, but wanted. It was a state job with all the benefits. First interview was Zoom - went great. She said if you pass this one, you get an in-person interview. A week later, I heard nothing. I was let down again. BUT THEN THE CALL CAME. Second interview. I am great at interviews; I’ve had so many. I’m calm, and I’m not afraid to ask questions. So the interview went great. Then I found out that another girl who already works there had also interviewed. She has a bachelor’s, works there, and she was the shoo-in… I lost out again… So I thought. After a week of telling myself I wasn’t good enough - I GOT THE CALL! A JOB OFFER! It was for the job I had no idea about, doing audits and keeping the office in compliance with state regulations. Scared me to death! But I was determined to make it work, to study, to go above and beyond to be the best, whatever the heck this was! And girls - it's a better job than the one I lost. MY BOSS IS AMAZING. My team is amazing; we laugh, talk, and care for each other. AND GUESS WHAT… I am making $10,000 more per year than I did in my other job. When it comes to God and what He wants to give us, girl, we can’t make it up. He has something better than you can even imagine. God had to literally pick me up, kicking and screaming, crying like a brat, hold me for a while, then sit me down where He wanted me - and it’s better than I ever imagined! HE IS JEHOVAH JIREH, even when we don’t have a clue what’s going on! Ain’t He good!
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Psalm 104 Day 6: Why Are We So Worried When God Provides for Everything Else?
Psalm 104:24-26 “O Lord, what an amazing variety of all you have created! Wild and wonderful is this world you have made, while wisdom was there at your side. This world is full of so many creatures, yet each belongs to you! And then there is the sea! So vast! So wide and deep—swarming with countless forms of sea life, both small and great. Trading ships glide through the high seas. And look! There are the massive whales bounding upon the waves.”
I like this verse because it praises the Lord for being so amazing. I believe the Lord loves it when we praise Him. Who doesn’t want a little acknowledgment? It begins with, “O Lord, what an amazing variety of all you have created!” Have you ever thought about that? Have you ever taken the time to slow down and look at all the nature around you? Have you ever really thought about the variety of things the Lord has created? He created humans, all animals, all vegetation, all rock formations, the seas, the skies, and the stars. When we take the time to think about it, the variety of things He has created really is amazing.
There are 400,000 types of flowering plant species all around the world. Over 1.5 million living animal species have been described, of which around 1.05 million are insects, over 85,000 are mollusks, and around 65,000 are vertebrates. It has been estimated that there are as many as 7.77 million animal species on Earth. There are around 1,097 different vegetables worldwide. God didn’t need to give us all of that. We don’t need that much variety. Plants provide us with food, oxygen, and energy. However, we don’t need 400,000 different types of flowers. However, God wanted to give us variety. We also don’t need over a million different kinds of animals, but God gave them to us anyway. Let’s take a minute and appreciate all God did for us.
The verse says, “Wild and wonderful is this world you have made while wisdom was at your side.” This verse reminds us that God did not accidentally create anything. He knew what He was doing, and each thing He made had a purpose. He thought about everything. He didn’t leave anything out. He made sure that every living thing had something to eat. This includes the plants, the insects, the animals, everything. Take a minute and imagine how much thought it would take not only to create all that God created but also to ensure they had the right environment to live in, the right resources, and the food they needed to survive. It really is remarkable.
Next, it says, “This world is full of so many creatures, yet each belongs to you!” Each creature on this earth belongs to the Lord our God. The animals don’t have to worry about where their food will come from. They know they are creatures of God and that He will take care of them. We are also God’s creatures, and He will take care of us, too! We don’t have to worry either. Worry comes pretty naturally to most of us, and yet it is not necessary. This morning in Philippians 4:19, I read, “I am convinced that my God will fully satisfy every need you have, for I have seen the abundant riches of glory revealed to me through Jesus Christ. This was Paul talking to the Philippians, but He is speaking to us too! God will take care of all we need. He has abundant riches, and he wants to shower them upon us. He has so much glory, grace, love, forgiveness, and mercy. We don’t have any reason to be anxious; God will take care of all of our worries!
Next, it says, “And then there is the sea! So vast! So wide and deep—swarming with countless forms of sea life, both small and great.” This is just reiterating the vastness of the Lord’s creation. Think of how many different sea creatures there are. It is known that there are more than 260,000 species living in the seas, and many more remain to be discovered. Some scientists believe there are more than a million species in the seas. How amazing is that? Each one of them has everything they need to survive. Let's remind ourselves of this when we get anxious. Hundreds of thousands of species live in the seas, including species of plants. There are millions of animal species, and God provides for all of them. If he can provide for the plants and animals, how much more will he provide for us?
The verse ends with, “Trading ships glide through the high seas. And look! There are the massive whales bounding upon the waves.” This reminds us that besides all the creatures in the sea, we also use the sea for trading. It provides fish for us to eat and can also support our livelihoods. This version says that there are massive whales bounding upon the waves. However, the New Revised Standard Catholic Edition says, "There go the ships and Leviathan that you formed to sport in it.” When I looked this up, it said that Leviathan is a sea monster. The commentators said Leviathan was included in this Psalm to show us that even the sea monster is under God’s control.
God created all things, and God does not make mistakes. God created all the plants and animals and made sure they all had what they needed to survive. Doesn’t it make sense that if God provides for the plants and animals, He will provide for us, too? We are His children, made in His likeness and image. He made us above all plants and animals. He gave us dominion over the plants and animals. So, why are we the only ones worrying about where our next meal will come from or if we will have enough money to pay our bills? God has got us in the palm of His hand. He will provide for us. All we need to do is trust Him!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone listening to this episode. Lord, we ask you to help us notice all your creations around us. Help us to believe that you provide for all their needs, so you will provide for our needs, too. Help us not to be anxious about anything. Lord, help us to appreciate the variety of your creation. Bring our attention to your majesty in this world. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If life feels busy and God keeps getting pushed aside, this mentoring group will help you gently bring Him back into your everyday life. You can join us through the link in the show notes. We meet once a week on Tuesday nights at 8:00 P. M. Eastern Time on Zoom. Each month, there is a theme, and we dive deep into the theme. There are about 30 minutes of teaching, followed by some small-group time. If you can’t make it on Zoom, you can always watch the replay. I also have a private Facebook group that you could join. There is a link below if you would like to check out mentoring. You can also visit walkboldlywithjesus.com and click the mentoring link. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! May the grace and favor of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your Spirit!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My light shines brightly in you, my children. It gives light wherever you go. It lights up your path, and it lights up the path of those who walk beside you. My light is not just for you; it is for all you meet. My light is what the world needs right now. My light, given through you, will help others to find the way to me.”
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Psalm 104 Day 5 When Creation Works Perfectly but the World Feels Broken
Psalm 104:19-23 “You have made the moon to mark the seasons; the sun knows its time for setting. You make darkness, and it is night when all the animals of the forest come creeping out. The young lions roar for their prey, seeking their food from God. When the sun rises, they withdraw and lie down in their dens. People go out to their work and to their labor until the evening.”
It just amazes me how perfectly everything in nature flows. Not everything in the world flows nicely because we have created many things that mess everything up. However, if we look at nature, we can’t help but be in awe of God’s majesty. Today’s verses start by talking about the moon and how we have seasons. What is even more incredible is that the seasons aren’t the same worldwide. There is a season for everyone. There are places you can go and leave the cold winters if you don’t like the cold. There are also places you can go to leave the heat if you are not a fan. Whatever type of weather you are looking for, there is somewhere on this planet called Earth that you can move to.
Consider the sun, faithfully following its natural course. Each morning, it rises, and each evening, it sets as if it knows the perfect time. This, too, is a wonder. Each day brings a subtle change, a slight variation in the sun's stay. It's a testament to the ever-changing yet perfectly orchestrated nature of our world.
Next, it says, “You make darkness, and it is night when all the animals of the forest come creeping out. The young lions roar for their prey, seeking their food from God.” How great it is that the animals can hunt under the cover of night. They can come out while most humans are sleeping and get the whole night to themselves. Then, when humans are awake, they sleep and rest. I like how the verse says, “The young lions roar for their prey, seeking their food from God.” It reminds us that God provides for all of us. God created this universe with everything we would need to survive. There is enough food for everyone.
Right after I said that, I thought about all the people who are starving to death every day. I looked it up, and one website said 25,000 people die every day due to hunger and related causes. This is a scary number. My first thought is, why isn’t God providing for these people? Why isn’t he giving them what they need to survive? Then he reminds me that we live in a broken world. There are many man-made reasons why they don’t have food. Here is what the actionagainsthunger.org website says, "The planet produces enough food to feed everyone on Earth. Yet more than 3 billion people can’t afford to eat a healthy diet. Why? Interconnected issues of poverty, inequity, conflict, climate change, gender discrimination, and weak government and health systems all play a role in keeping nutritious food out of reach for millions of families around the world.”
God has created enough food and resources for the world and all the people he created, yet so many are still starving. This isn’t because God doesn’t care or is not generous. This is because we live in a broken world. We have people who take far more than they need and use their power to prevent others from getting what they need. We have people who are selfish and keep the resources to themselves. All they care about is getting more and more power and wealth for themselves, and they don’t even care about what that means for others.
This is not how God created us to be, nor how He created the world to be. However, once sin entered the world, so did this corruption. That doesn’t mean all is lost. God has placed good people in the way of the corrupt people. Yes, there are many people in the world who do despicable things. There are also a lot of good people who are fighting against those people. I know it can sometimes feel overwhelming, and we can start to wonder if the whole world will fall apart. What we must do is to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus. If we keep our eyes on the Lord, we will see that He is bigger than anyone and anything that we run into in this world. God is continually sending people to help those in need. Yes, I am sure it breaks his heart any time one of his children dies for any reason. I am sure it is particularly sad if it is due to a lack of resources, when He has ensured there are plenty for His children.
This is why God sends missionaries and organizations who fight for the rights of people who are starving, who are being sold into slavery, who don’t have drinking water, and anyone else who is in trouble. God sees all of His children. He sees their plight, and He is sending people to help fix it. He didn’t create this mess, but you can bet He is not ignoring it. He sees it, and He is helping with it.
Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for how amazing you are. We thank you for providing all you have given us. Lord, we are sorry that some people are hogging all the wealth and resources you have given this world. We ask that you put in our hearts how we can help those who are starving or who lack access to drinking water. Lord, put on our hearts where we are being wasteful and what we can do to change our wasteful habits. Lord, thank you for being so awesome and for creating nature the way you have. It is amazing how you created everything to work so smoothly. Everything has a time and a place, and that is great! We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen.
Thank you for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you have ever felt like you’re not good enough for God, this space is for you. You can come exactly as you are and grow from there. Get all the details at findingtruenorthcoaching.com/mentoring. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I. Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I am the long shot. I am the one that only the brave will bet on, only the ones who want the blessing that comes with it. My children have courage always.”
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Psalm 104 Day 4 — What Are You Turning To for Comfort?
Psalm 104:14-18 “You cause the grass to grow for the cattle, and plants for people to use, to bring forth food from the earth, and wine to gladden the human heart, oil to make the face shine, and bread to strengthen the human heart. The trees of the Lord are watered abundantly, the cedars of Lebanon that he planted. In them, the birds build their nests; the stork has its home in the fir trees. The high mountains are for the wild goats; the rocks are a refuge for the coneys.”
Today, we are given a window into the flawless design of everything. This, I believe, is what we have been exploring in the previous three parts as well. God's goodness is truly astounding. It is wondrous how He has considered every aspect. Today’s verses demonstrate not only that God's interest is not limited to our necessities but also that He takes into account our happiness and comfort. This is a powerful reminder of the role of religious texts in inspiring and comforting us, serving as a source of reassurance and uplift.
The verse begins by noting that grass grows for cattle, and other plants grow for people to use to bring forth food from the earth. This is not a one-sided provision, but a comprehensive one. We need the plants to have food, but we also need the cows. The cows provide milk, cheese, and meat for us to eat, and God is making sure we are both fed.
Next, it says He gave us wine to gladden the human heart. I know many people who are happy that we have wine to gladden our hearts. I do think we need to be careful that we don’t turn to this wine to gladden our hearts more than we turn to the Lord. What starts out as a small glass of wine at night to wind down can turn into a few glasses every night just to cope with the stresses of our day-to-day lives. This is when it can become a problem. Do you need to have a glass of wine every night? What if you took a break and fasted from it for a week or even a month? Would you be able to do that? I know someone who gives us wine and all alcohol every Lent. This is a great chance for her to remind herself that although she really likes a glass of wine here and there, she doesn’t need it. She is ok without it.
One reason it is good to take a look at your wine or alcohol consumption is that if you regularly drink more than a glass at night, you might not feel your best in the mornings. I follow Rachel Hollis online, and I have read her books. She talked about how she used to have a glass of wine when she got home from work to help her unwind. However, the stresses of life increased, and one glass turned into two, and every now and then into every single night. She said she noticed that every morning she woke up, starting her day at a disadvantage because she didn’t feel great. She would feel crappy from the wine she had had the night before. I don’t know about you, but if I start each day feeling crappy, it usually doesn’t get better.
Have you noticed that you feel crappy when you wake up in the mornings? Do you have a headache or a stomachache? Do you just feel drained and worn out? You don’t have to feel this way. God does not want us to feel crappy. Instead of turning to alcohol to help you unwind, maybe put on some praise and worship music and dance it out. Maybe sit, read scripture, and talk to the Lord. He is there for you, and He will listen to you for as long as you want to talk. He can even help you in your situation, and He can show you a way forward. Alcohol can’t do that. It may feel like it is helping you in the moment, but it is not helping in the long run and could even be hurting you.
I am not sure who needed to hear that this morning; that certainly wasn’t what I thought I would be talking about, but the Holy Spirit knew someone listening really needed to hear that. If you are listening to this episode and the Spirit makes you reconsider how much you are drinking, I encourage you to listen to a few episodes of my friend Catherine Cody’s podcast, “Meet Me At The Well.” Catherine is a recovering alcoholic and is real and honest about her struggle in her podcast. She gave her testimony on one of my first few Witness Wednesdays. If you want to hear her incredible story, it is episode #236. She is so real and loving, and she has a heart for anyone struggling with any addiction. If you need someone to talk to about where you are at, please reach out to me, and I can put you in touch with Catherine. Or you can check out her podcast; she probably has contact information there. If you question whether you drink too much, just listen to her podcast, Meet Me At The Well. What have you got to lose?
Next, the verse says, “Oil to make the face shine, and bread to strengthen the human heart.” Can you believe that God even cares about our faces shining? He also gave us bread to strengthen the human heart. I don’t know about you, but I am more excited about the bread than the wine. I love bread. I also love how bread can be used as a sacrifice. There are many people who do bread-and-water fasts, where that is all they eat for a day or a certain period of time. This is a great addition to your prayer life. Fasting and prayer are so powerful. If you have a prayer you have been asking and have not seen any answers yet, try praying and fasting to see if that helps. It doesn’t have to be a 40-day fast like Jesus did in the desert. It could be one day a week, fasting from something you really like, missing one meal a day for a week, or whatever you feel called to do. If you want to try adding fasting to your prayer, ask the Lord how, and He will give you guidance. He will tell you what is best for you. In the past, I have fasted from soda because I love it, and it feels like an addiction at times. Also, I have a prayer request I would like answered sooner rather than later, and I am hoping God will look upon my fasting with favor.
Next, it says, “The trees of the Lord are watered abundantly, the cedars of Lebanon that he planted. In them, the birds build their nests; the stork has its home in the fir trees.” Isn’t it amazing how God takes care of all of his creatures, not just the humans? He created so many creatures and yet He hasn’t lost track of a single one of them. He knows exactly what each one needs.
God created trees with roots so they can take in as much water as they need. Trees are good for so many reasons for us humans. They provide us with shade, fruit, firewood, wood for furniture and houses, and paper. Trees were also used for weapons such as bows and arrows. However, trees are also useful for the animals. The verse talks about how birds build their nests in trees. They are not the only ones. I know squirrels live in trees as well. There are many animals that either live in or spend time in trees. Trees provide protection from many animals.
The verse ends with, “The high mountains are for the wild goats; the rocks are a refuge for the coneys.” I have no idea how goats can climb mountains. I have seen goats on mountains, but it doesn't make sense to me how they stay up there without falling down. It is great of God to make the high mountains for them. I am sure they are protected up there, and they know their way around better than we do. It also says the rocks are a refuge for the coneys. I don’t know about you, but I had no idea what coneys are, so I looked it up. It looks like they are a type of rabbit. So this verse says that the rabbits can take refuge in the rocks. This is great because their natural predators would be large cats, pythons, and eagles. If they can hide in the rocks, that will protect them from most animals trying to find and eat them. God is our protector, and He protects the animals, too!
Dear Heavenly Father, we ask you to bless everyone listening to this episode. Lord, thank you for looking out for us and for knowing us so well. You anticipated our every need and those of all the animals, and you provided for them. You are truly amazing, and we love you so much! Lord, I ask you to pour your love into everyone listening and that you help all those who are listening who may be struggling with alcohol use. Lord, help them get help if they need it. We love you, Lord, you are so amazing! We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you’ve ever felt like you’re not good enough for God, this space is for you. You can come exactly as you are and grow from there. Join us at walkboldlywithjesus.com/mentoring. I look forward to seeing you all on Monday morning. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed weekend!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, there are times when I will work the miracle for you, but there are times when I'll just walk with you through the trial that you're going through, because I see eternally and I know what works best for you, and I need to stretch you at times, but know that I am always with you, and I am faithful to you, and I will not let the darkness overcome you.”
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Psalm 104 Day 3 — You Are Stronger Than You Think
Psalm 104:10-13 “You make springs gush forth in the valleys; they flow between the hills, giving drink to every wild animal; the wild asses quench their thirst. By the streams, the birds of the air have their habitation; they sing among the branches. From your lofty abode, you water the mountains; the earth is satisfied with the fruit of your work.”
Today, we are back with Psalm 104. If you missed Monday’s episode, I have decided to stick with Psalm 104 and break it down into smaller sections. The reason I chose Psalm 104 is that it shows us so many things we can be grateful for and the many ways God provides for and looks out for us. Psalm 104 also shows us His power and majesty, and I think it is a good idea to stop and reflect on that often. Otherwise, it can be easy to take the Lord for granted, since He is always there for us, and much of what He does goes unnoticed because we don’t really think about how much He is doing. We think it just happens.
For instance, we take for granted the sun coming up and going down because it happens every day. However, it wouldn’t happen if God didn’t make it happen. If He hadn’t created the earth to spin the way that it does. Today’s verse starts by talking about how God makes the springs gush in the valleys and flow between the hills, giving drink to every wild animal. Did you ever think about how great it is that there is water spread worldwide? There is water in the mountains, there are oceans of water, but then there are also streams and rivers. Then there is groundwater you can tap with a well if necessary.
It’s also interesting that where water is more scarce, the Lord created the things that live there to suit their environment. In a desert, plants like the cactus have water-storing characteristics. You also have camels in a desert, and they are extremely efficient with the amount of water they use daily. They can go for about a week without drinking water. They can also drink a lot of water in a short amount of time. A typical camel can drink 53 gallons of water in three minutes. Isn’t it amazing how God thought of everything all the earth's creatures would need and then created us to meet those needs?
Next, it says, “By the streams, the birds of the air have their habitation; they sing among the branches.” Water is important to birds, just like it is to all animals. Birds build their habitat in many different places depending on what the bird needs. Some build them on the ground, and yet they know this makes the nest more vulnerable, so they camouflage them well. Many others build them high off the ground so they won’t be so vulnerable. They make the nests out of various materials. It depends on what they can find and what their needs are. Isn’t it amazing that God always provides for them exactly what they need?
The verse ends with, “From your lofty abode, you water the mountains; the earth is satisfied with the fruit of your work.” This part reminds us of how easy it is for God to provide for us. He doesn’t have to lift a finger. He just spoke the world into existence, and it was so perfectly made. He can sit up in heaven and command things to happen down here. I like how the verse says, “The earth is satisfied with the fruit of your work.” The earth is satisfied with His work because He thought of everything when He created the world and all its creatures.
When I think about how easily God created the world and how He thought of everything, even the smallest detail, and then made sure to provide for that detail, I feel better about the things I ask the Lord for. When I take the time to think about His marvelous creations and how he just spoke the words and the whole universe was created, then it reminds me that when I ask the Lord for things, I am not asking for too much. This is something we often think. We don’t bring our little cares and worries to the Lord because we don’t want to bother Him. We don’t ask Him for healing for every ache and pain because we know how busy He is.
The thing is, He is never too busy for anything you want to bring to Him. He is not busy because what would be impossible for us is easy for Him. He is not bound by the same worldly constraints as we are. God isn’t even bound by time. All things are happening at the same time for the Lord. That means it is okay if you did not say the prayer you wanted to say for someone before they left on a trip. You can still say the prayer now, and it will help them because God sees you saying that prayer as they are going away. I know that is a lot to wrap your head around, and we don't have to understand it perfectly. I don’t actually think it is possible to fully grasp the majesty of God on this side of heaven. There is much that will remain a mystery, and we may have many questions we want to ask God once we join Him for all eternity.
For now, I think it is important for all of us to know that we are not asking God for too much. He is not too busy for us to come to Him with all the little things in our lives. He cares about the small things just as much as He cares about the big things. Also, there is nothing too hard for God. Sometimes, I think we hesitate to ask God for the things we really want because we think it is too big an ask. It is too much to ask God for a complete healing of terminal cancer because the doctors said it wasn’t possible. Guess what? All things are possible for God. It is not hard for God to cure terminal cancer. He can curse that cancer and can shrivel up and die. Did you know you can do this, too? You have the power of the Lord living inside of you. You have permission from God to speak with authority because of the power that lives inside of you.
God wants us to come to Him with everything. Good or bad, big or small, He is our Father, and He wants to hear all about it. He also likes it when we use the power we have living inside us to help ourselves and others. Remember when I talked about how He created the camels and cactus with the ability to store water? God gave them what they needed to live in their environments. God did the same for us. He gave us the Holy Spirit to help us live in this world. This means we have all the power and the strength we need to survive this world. With the Holy Spirit inside of us, we have the wisdom and knowledge to do the right thing. We just need to ask. We have the power to heal. We just need to realize we have this power and use it. We have the power to resist sin. We just need to call on it.
God created us to be the people we are, and He gave us all we need to live in this world. I know this world is crazy, and it seems to be falling apart. I know this world wants less and less to do with God. However, He knew this would happen. None of this is a surprise to the Lord, and He created you to live in this time. That means He knew all you would need, and He gave it to you. If you feel you lack anything right now, that is a lie from the enemy. Your Heavenly Father knew exactly what you would need and gave it to you. You have the same power that raised Jesus from the dead living inside of you. Rely on that power, call on that power. You are stronger than you think you are.
Dear Heavenly Father, we ask you to bless everyone listening to this episode today. We ask that you help us to see how perfectly you made us. Please help us understand how you meet all of our needs. Lord, you are amazing. You have thought of everything when you created the world. We are in awe of how perfectly you created nature to fulfill all of our needs. You are truly remarkable. Lord, we ask you to help us bring everything to you, big or small. We ask that you let us know if you want to help with everything. Help us, Lord, to discover the power we have living inside of us and help us to rely on that power more than we rely on ourselves. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Let’s get this message out to more people. Share this episode with someone you love or someone who has been on your heart. I look forward to meeting you all here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “No storm, no tornado, no tsunami can uproot you from my love. In the worst of it, I stand with you. I surround you. You can never be conquered.”
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Psalm 104 Day 2 — God Hasn’t Forgotten Your Dreams
Psalm 104:5-9 “You fixed the earth on its foundation, so it can never be shaken. The deeps covered it like a garment; Above the mountains stood the waters. At your rebuke, they took flight; at the sound of your thunder, they fled. They rushed up the mountains, down the valleys to the place you had fixed for them. You set a limit they cannot pass; never again will they cover the earth.”
Today, we pick up where we left off with Psalm 104. The verse starts by reminding us that the Lord fixed the Earth. He created all things, and He created the Earth on its foundation so it can never be shaken. That can be pretty reassuring if we let it. If we really let that sink in, the Lord has fixed the earth on its foundation so it can never be shaken. Some days, the earth seems like it is falling apart. It is good to be reassured that God is in control and that He won’t allow the world to be shaken.
Next, it says, “The deep covered it like a garment; Above the mountains stood the water. This sounds like it refers to the flood. When Noah was living, the people of God had turned away from Him. Genesis 6:5-8 says, “Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. The Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. The Lord said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky; for I am sorry that I have made them.” But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.
Next, it says, “At your rebuke, they took flight; at the sound of your thunder, they fled. They rushed up the mountains, down the valleys to the place you had fixed for them. This narrative of the Lord's control over the water can invoke a sense of awe in us, reminding us of His power and sovereignty. The Lord created the whole universe with his words. When we stop to think about that, it is amazing. The waters fled at the Lord’s rebuke. How many of us can say that we speak to nature, and it listens to us?
Today’s verse ends with, “You set a limit they cannot pass; never again will they cover the earth.” Today’s verse shows us how powerful God is and that He controls all nature. God decides where the water will go and where it will not go. It is amazing how He made the oceans, rivers, and lakes. He contained the water where He wanted it. At one point, there was water everywhere. In Genesis 1:9-10, God said, “Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good.”
The last line of this verse also reminds us of God’s promise to us: “Never again will they cover the earth.” God made this covenant with us after He flooded the Earth. He promised He would not do that again, and He gave us a rainbow as a sign of that covenant. Rainbows are still a sign of that covenant. Sometimes, God will give us a rainbow when we are struggling to believe something will really happen. I remember being in a car with some of my girlfriends once, and we were talking about how one of them really wanted to get married and have children, but it hadn’t happened yet. We talked about how hard it is to keep hoping for something when you have waited too long and still don’t see any signs of it on the horizon. All of a sudden, there was a beautifully full rainbow right ahead of us in the sky. We know that was God reassuring her that He knows her hopes and dreams and He will fulfill them. My friend is getting married in four days! God is so good!
God can do the same for your hopes and dreams. I know hope is hard, especially if you have been waiting a long time. I know it can feel like it will never happen. I can feel like He has forgotten about you. You can be tempted to give up, hoping for what you want, and figure it just wasn’t God’s plan for you. I want to encourage you not to give up. I want to encourage you to keep hoping, even when it is hard and even when you feel like there is no point.
God rewards persistence. He tells us this through several stories in the Bible. God wants us to keep asking. I am not sure why some things take a long time, and others happen right away. I am not sure why it seems like God is ignoring us at times. I do know that is not true. God is never ignoring us. He is always right there by our side. His attention is always aimed directly at us. The problem is that His timing is not our timing, and that sucks! We feel we know what we want, and we even are pretty sure our timing is great. However, the Lord can see things we can’t see, and if we get what we want before we are ready, it won’t be as good.
My friend waited on God’s timing and has now found the man of her dreams. God brought her a guy who gets her. They have a similar sense of humor, they both love dogs, and they are so cute together. Does it stink that she had to wait this long to meet him? Yes. Does God have a plan that is bigger than our plan? Yes. My friend did not give up on her hopes and dreams, and I hope you won’t either, even if it seems impossible. Even if it seems like you missed your chance or you missed your window, if you want it, keep praying for it. God is a way maker. He can find a way where there is no way. As Matthew West would say in his new song, “Don’t Stop Praying!”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone listening to this episode. Lord, we are in awe of your majesty. We are in awe of how you speak commands over the earth, and it listens. We are in awe of keeping the water contained where you want it. Lord, you are incredible. I love looking at this Psalm to see your majesty on display. Thank you for your covenant with us, Lord. Thank you for reminding us of that covenant when we need it. Lord, we ask that you help us not to give up hope on our hopes and dreams. We ask that you help fortify us in faith that hope in you will not disappoint. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting some of you on Zoom this evening. It is not too late to join the mentoring, and you can be on live tonight as well. We are in week #2 of our new series. This month in mentoring, we’ll explore what it means to stay connected to God amid exhaustion, disappointment, and unanswered questions. Together, we’ll learn how to bring our real thoughts and emotions to Him honestly, discover His presence in the hard places, and begin finding hope again—even when life doesn’t change right away. If this sounds like something you could use, there is a link to sign up at the bottom of the show notes. Mentoring is $30 a month, and you get live mentoring on Zoom Tuesday nights at 8 ET. You will also get a recording of the session in case you weren’t able to come live or you just want to watch it again. I hope you will join us! Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, don't doubt that I don't hear your prayer. Even if it's not spoken, I hear it in your sighs. I hear it in your tears. I hear it in the beat of your heart. I am always listening to you, my beloved children.”
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Psalm 104 Day 1 — Learning to Notice God Again
Psalm 104:1-4 "Everything I am will praise and bless the Lord! O Lord, my God, your greatness takes my breath away, overwhelming me by your majesty, beauty, and splendor! You wrap yourself with a shimmering, glistening light. You wear sunshine like a garment of glory. You stretch out the starry skies like a tapestry. You build your balconies with light beams and ride as King in a chariot you made from clouds. You fly upon the wings of the wind. You make your messengers into winds of the Spirit, and all your ministers become flames of fire.”
For the next few days, we are going to look at Psalm 104. Someone mentioned it at prayer group last week, and it is a beautiful Psalm that shows us how majestic the Lord is and all the amazing things He does in the world. Nature can be such a powerful place to see God’s work. Sometimes, He shows off in incredible ways, and this week, we are going to take a look at some of those ways. I pray that by examining this Psalm and the ways the Lord shows off for us in Nature, we will begin to notice the Lord more in all the amazing things we see around us.
Today’s verse starts off by saying, “Everything I am will praise and bless the Lord!” Is this how we are praising the Lord? With everything that we have? For me, it's both yes and no. There are definitely some songs that I sing, and when I am singing those songs, I sing with everything I am. I pour my heart and soul into singing that song. The reason for this is that I resonate with the words of the song. Whatever it is about certain songs, I sing them with my whole being. I love music, and I love songs like that.
How about you? Is it music for you, too, or is it something else that helps you praise the Lord with your whole being? Maybe it is nature. When you see an amazing sunset or watch the wildlife, you become overcome with praise for the Lord. Or, maybe it is your family. Whenever you spend time with them, you are overcome with gratitude for the Lord. It seems David often became overcome with Gratitude for the Lord. It seems like King David understood how amazing the Lord is and praised Him with His whole being.
Next, it says, “O Lord, my God, your greatness takes my breath away, overwhelming me with your majesty, beauty, and splendor! Has this ever happened to you? The Lord has done something in your life, taking your breath away. It has definitely happened to me. There have been many moments in my life when my breath was taken away. When I got married and when I had my children, there were definitely times when the Lord took my breath away. I couldn’t imagine how lucky I was for the Lord to have blessed me with a husband who loved me so much and three handsome, healthy boys.
Looking at God’s majesty, beauty, and splendor over my lifetime has been amazing, too! I am lucky enough to have seen not only many parts of the United States but many other countries as well. There have been so many wonderful things that we have gotten to see. One time, when we visited Scotland, we got to take a boat trip out and see The Corryvreckan Whirlpool, which is situated off the west coast of Scotland between the islands of Jura and Scarba. It is one of the largest permanent whirlpools on earth and one of the most dangerous stretches of water around the British Isles.
I also lived in Turkey and visited many beautiful places there, especially Cappadocia. Cappadocia is known for its surreal landscape, sculpted over millennia by volcanic eruptions and erosion, and is a spectacle unlike any other. Towering rock formations, whimsically dubbed “fairy chimneys," dominate the horizon, creating an otherworldly atmosphere that captivates visitors. Other notable sites include Bronze Age homes carved into valley walls by troglodytes (cave dwellers) and later used as refuges by early Christians. The 100m-deep Ihlara Canyon houses numerous rock-face churches. It was breathtaking.
Next, the verse says, “You wrap yourself with a shimmering, glistening light. You wear sunshine like a garment of glory. You stretch out the starry skies like a tapestry.” I like this part of the verse because it reminds us that God is light. No matter what type of darkness you are going through, God’s light can shine through it. The verse says that God wraps Himself in shimmering, glistening light and that He wears sunshine like a garment of Glory. Sunshine is pretty bright, wouldn’t you agree? When the sun comes up, it chases away all the darkness of the night. God does the same in our lives. When we let the sunlight in, when we agree to have God work in our lives, His light comes in and chases away the darkness.
I love how this verse also says, You stretch out the starry skies like a tapestry. To me, this reminds us that even when we are in the dark of night, there is still some light. God gave us the stars in the sky. This means even when we are going through a dark time, there are still some places of bright light in all that darkness. Just like the stars are a bright light in the dark of night. Have you seen this in your life? You have been in a deep darkness, and yet there were still a few bright lights here and there that kept the darkness from overtaking you. Were there a few stars that shone a light into your darkness?
Lastly, the verse says, "You build your balconies with light beams and ride as King in a chariot you made from clouds. You fly upon the wings of the wind. You make your messengers into winds of the Spirit, and all your ministers become flames of fire.” Honestly, I wasn’t sure what this last part meant. When I looked it up, it said this part is meant to demonstrate God’s majestic authority. The verse says He builds His balconies with light beams and rides as King in a chariot of clouds. This is something only He can do.
The next line says, “ You make your messengers into winds of the Spirit, and all your ministers become flames of fire.” Again, I was not sure what this meant. However, when I looked it up, I was fascinated to learn that Hebrews 1:7 says, “Of the angels, he says: ‘He makes his angels wind and his ministers a fiery flame.” This last part of the verse shows us that the Lord has angels, and He can use them to carry out His missions. Whether He needs winds of the Spirit or flames of fire, the angels are there eagerly waiting to carry out His plan. Isn’t that amazing?
You will continue to see as this week goes on how amazing our Lord is! I look forward to spending this time reviewing Psalm 104 with you in more detail and looking at various ways the Lord shows off His glory to us. The Lord is amazing, and sometimes we get so bogged down by the pressures and troubles of life that we forget to appreciate how awe-inspiring God really is!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone listening to this episode. Lord, please help us to notice your beauty and majesty in this world. Often, all we can see are the problems of our world. Help us focus on your creations in the world rather than on our mistakes and those around us. Help us to see how incredible you are, and help us to gain back the awe we once had as children. If we never had an awe-inspiring Lord, help us to learn how to live in awe of you. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. It’s not too late to participate in this month’s mentoring theme, Held in the Hard: Finding God When Life Doesn’t Change. Also, if you liked this episode, please share it with your friends and write a review. I look forward to seeing you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, when you pray to me from your heart, your prayer has extra wings. It flies faster right up to my heart. Let us be heart to heart.”
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Seeing Yourself Through God’s Eyes
Song of Solomon 6:13b “The Shulamite Bride: Why would you seek a mere Shulamite like me? Why would you want to see my dance of love? The Bridegroom-King: Because you dance so gracefully, as though you danced with angels!”
I am in love with the passion translation of this book. Let me explain quickly for those of you who, like me, don’t know much about the Song of Songs. The Song of Songs is a love story between a Shulamite Bride, the Bridegroom King, and the brides-to-be, representing our interactions with the world. The Passion Translation tells you who is talking in each verse, so you don’t have to guess. It is easy to understand, and it can be read like a play. It is so beautiful. If you want to read this translation for free, you can go to bible.com and search for it. Once you read it, you will be just as in love with it as I am. Remember, this is meant to be our story, too. This is how much our Lord is pursuing us, too!
Limiting the verses to one or two is difficult, as this book has so many good things. I love the whole thing. However, the point of this podcast is to go deeper into the verses, so I will do my best to select a few to discuss. Today is just one verse, but a conversation between the Shulamite Bride and her Bridegroom King. The Shulamite woman is asking a question we all ask at some point. Why me? Have you ever asked yourself this question when talking to the Lord? Why would you pick me? What would you gain by working through me? What would lead you to choose me? I know I have.
This was the exact question I asked the Lord when I was trying to figure out why I had been baptized in the Holy Spirit and yet could not speak/pray in tongues. I heard/felt the Lord very clearly say, “Why not you?” He is saying that to you, too. The Lord is so amazing. When we look at ourselves, all we see are our flaws. All we see are our mistakes. That is not what the Lord sees. When He looks at us, He sees the person He created us to be. When He looks at us, He sees His child. If you have children or nieces and nephews, consider how you look at them. Do you see their mistakes and flaws, or do you see the good in them?
So many kids- my nieces and nephews, my boys, and their friends- don’t like how they look or don’t like anything about themselves. They don’t feel comfortable in their own skin. I wish, more than anything, that they could see themselves through my eyes. I wish they could see how amazing they are. I could tell them, and I do, but they don’t hear me. They don’t believe me. I imagine this is how God feels. I imagine how we talk about ourselves and see ourselves breaks His heart. I imagine He wishes we could see ourselves through His eyes, too.
Did you know this is something you can pray for? I have prayed for this for a long time, and while I am sure I don’t see myself exactly like God sees me, I do see myself better than I used to. I know I am a beloved child of God. I know God loves me, and although I may still question why He would want to use me or whether He is using me, I don’t question whether He loves or likes me. I know He does. I used to think the disciple John was a bit prideful or conceited, referring to himself as “the beloved disciple, or the one whom Jesus loved. Now I know that He wasn’t. He could see himself a bit more through Jesus’ eyes. He believed what Jesus said about him. Jesus didn’t just say it about him, though. He said it about all of us. John was just able to believe it a bit more than we are.
In the verse above, the Shulamite Bride asks, “Why would you seek a mere Shulamite like me? Why would you want to see my dance of love?” and the Bridegroom-King says, “Because you dance so gracefully, as though you danced with angels!” Do you see how differently the Lord sees us? Do you see the kind of gentle, loving answer we get when we ask Him to show us how He sees us or why He would pick us? He doesn’t stop there, either. He goes on for almost another chapter, saying how wonderful she is.
God loves you! He really does. If you doubt this or think God couldn’t possibly love you after all you have done or all that has been done to you, I assure you, He can, and He does. If you have ever wondered what it feels like to be loved or pursued by the Lord, read this book in the Bible, and you will begin to understand what it feels like. When you read this book, resist the urge to discount yourself. When you read this book, fight the feelings you will have to say that God is not talking to you. This is easy for us to do. We can easily believe that God loves others but not us. We can believe that God forgives others but not us. God loves you! God forgives you!
Read this book and picture Jesus saying these things to you. Try to take them in and sit with them. Maybe you just read one chapter at a time and sit with it. Maybe you just read one paragraph and sit with it. Imagine the Lord saying these things to you. Imagine feeling these things about the Lord. If we want an intimate relationship with the Lord, reading this book might be a good start. Understanding the depths of His love for me becomes a bit more achievable when I read this translation of this book in the Bible. I hope it helps you as well.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us see your incredible love for us. Help us to believe you could be saying these things to us. Help us put ourselves in the Shulamite woman’s place. Help us truly take in how much you love us, pursue us, and long for us. We love you, Lord. We want to feel this way about you. We want to long for you. We want to pursue you. We want to turn over our lives to you. We need your help, Lord. We can do all things through you and nothing without you. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “You are my little cubs, and I love you so much. You will never know the depth of my love for you, but it is real. It is abiding, and it will never cease. And where I go, you will go, too. I love you all.”
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When Waiting Hurts — Keep Hoping Anyway
Psalm 71:5 “For you have been my hope, O Sovereign LORD, my confidence since my youth.”
This is something I hope many of us can say. If I had one wish for all of you listening, it would be that you got to know Jesus when you were young and that He has been your hope and your confidence since your youth. When I was younger, it was great to have my hope and confidence in Jesus. It was great to know, especially when I was a teenager, that I was not alone, that Jesus was there, and that He was in control. I was happy with the rules of the Catholic Church, as they were something I could rely on. It also helped me make hard decisions as I did not want to fracture my relationship with the Lord.
That is not to say that I always made the right decisions. I made a lot of wrong decisions. Sometimes I knew what was right in the eyes of the Lord and yet chose to do the wrong thing. That is pretty much par for the course. None of us is perfect, no matter how much we would like to be. I would love it if my mind and body would just get on the same page when it comes to following in the Lord’s footsteps. But as St. Paul so famously says in Romans 7:19, “ For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.” Even St. Paul struggled to do God's will.
Sometimes we assume that, although we know we struggle, others aren’t struggling as much. We assume that because people seem closer to God than we do, it is easier for them to do the right thing. This may be true in some cases; however, we all struggle with something. I don’t think there is a single human being who finds it easy to follow God’s footsteps perfectly, without issues. Some things may come easily, and other things may be difficult. We are all different, and the things we struggle with may be different, but there is always a struggle.
If you did not know Jesus or the Lord when you were younger, don’t worry. It is never too late to get to know Him and to learn to rely on him as your savior and your confidence. It is never too late to have hope in the Lord. He is an awesome Lord who always keeps his promises and never lets us down. How many others can you truly say that about?
One of the reasons it is so great to have our confidence in the Sovereign God is that it is comforting to know that we are not the only ones in control of our lives. It is nice to know there is something bigger than ourselves. Once you are able to really believe this, it takes a lot of the pressure off many of the decision-making choices in your life. When you can learn to stop and ask what God wants you to do in different circumstances, then you can rest assured that things will turn out all right.
It is comforting for me to know that no one decision will be the end of all that is good in my life. I try to make well-thought-out decisions and use the wisdom God has given me. I also try to pray before I make any big decisions. However, I know that even if I make the wrong decision, God can turn it around and make something wonderful come of it. He is that good. Have you ever thought you were making the right decision, only for it not to turn out so well? Have you ever made what seemed the wrong decision and then had everything turn out ok in the end? God has a plan for our lives, and He is going to help us get there, even if we make a few or many wrong choices along the way.
The verse not only speaks of our confidence in God but also of our hope in Him. I know people who struggle with the practicality of hope. It’s not an issue with the idea of hope. I think many of us can say that we have hope for the future. It is hope for a specific thing that I think some people struggle with. If you have a desire deep within you and have been waiting a very long time for it to be met, I can understand why you may struggle with hope. I can see how it may actually hurt your heart to hope for something that you feel may never happen. I wish I had something wise and comforting to say to you right now if this is you.
All I can say is please don’t give up on your hopes and dreams. I truly believe that God gives us those desires deep down inside of us. Actually, he has confirmed this with the words he gave at prayer group, and Philippians 2:13 says, “for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” God is working in you! I know right now you are questioning if God really put those desires in you. You are probably thinking that He does not want you to have them or that he would have given them to you already. I don’t know why some people have to wait a really long time while others don’t. God’s ways are higher than our ways. He knows what we need and what we can handle.
If you have a deep desire for something, I ask that you keep hoping for it! Keep asking God to follow through on this desire. Ask Him to give you the patience to keep waiting on His timing. Ask Him for the strength to keep hoping when you feel like you can’t hope anymore. I think we sometimes want to give up hope because we can’t see a way that our desire could come true. We can’t see any humanly way that our desire could happen. We forget that God isn’t human. He doesn’t need to find a humanly way for it to happen. He can find extraordinary ways for it to happen. He can find supernatural ways for it to happen. He is the creator of the entire world. He can surely handle helping us with whatever desire He puts into our hearts.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless everyone listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask that you help us not give up our hope for our desires. Lord, we thank you for placing these desires inside us, and we ask that you give us the strength and perseverance to keep hoping. Lord, we know that your time is better than our time, and your way is better than our way. Please give us the patience to wait for your timing. Lord, we ask that you help us put our confidence in you. Lord, we ask that you help us do the things we want to do and not do the things we don't want to do. We love you so very much, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus ' holy name, amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on the journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you are enjoying this podcast, please share it with a friend. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day.
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I do not change like the seasons. I am always the same.”
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Today I decided to do a Witness Wednesday about how God has been working in my life. I think it is just as important to talk about the little ways God is working as it is to talk about the big ways. Today I want to give you an update on how I can see Him blessing my life.
First, I’ll start with Noah going off to school. Noah applied pretty late compared to when I remember applying, and he didn’t apply to many schools. He knew where he wanted to go—overseas—so most of his applications were in the United Kingdom.
He chose Edinburgh Napier University in Scotland and found out in early June. That gave us three months to get everything ready.
Going to school in another country is a lot of work. There were so many hoops—finding housing, registering, and getting a visa. It was long and tiring, but the Lord was with us.
By the time we applied for his visa on August 14th, we were told it could take up to 15 working days. That would have meant arriving on the first day of classes. However, thanks to the Lord and the people at the passport office, we got it back in about a week. That also allowed us to find affordable plane tickets.
I was able to go with Noah to get him settled. I was nervous leaving him in another country where he didn’t know anyone. But thanks to the Lord, I was mostly able to focus on what an amazing adventure this would be for him.
On the second day, we went to a store to pick up his residency permit. While there, we met another student who was also going to Napier. They are both engineering majors and found out they would be living in the same dorm building, just one floor apart. We also met his parents and exchanged information, which was so helpful. Suddenly, I wasn’t doing all of this alone. Thank you, Lord.
Noah moved in on Saturday, and I left Monday morning. Saying goodbye was hard, but I know the Lord is with him and that this will be an amazing year.
Next, I want to share about my new job. I felt like this fall would bring a breakthrough. I had been praying about going back to work and thought about substitute teaching a few days a week.
One morning at breakfast, a friend mentioned they were hiring coaches to work with people with autism. It sounded perfect. I love coaching, and this allowed me to continue doing that without having to find my own clients. It also gives me more time with my family.
Then, out of the blue, a friend from Encounter Ministries reached out about another opportunity—working with women in a homeless ministry as a spiritual mother. I was so excited. I love walking with people in their faith, and I’ve always felt called to this kind of ministry.
I spoke with the priest in charge, and we both felt it was a great fit. The commitment is about three hours a week, which works well with my other responsibilities.
They are also studying Bob Schuchts’ “Be Healed” model, which I had already read and loved. So not only do I get to walk with these women spiritually, but I also get to continue learning about healing. God is so good. He provided not only what I needed, but also what I longed for.
The last thing I want to share is what happened when I met these women. They invited me for evening prayer, Mass, dinner, and the start of their study. It was beautiful, and they were so kind and welcoming.
After dinner, we started talking about healing. One woman mentioned pain in her foot, so I prayed for her. After a minute or two, I asked her to move it, and the pain was gone. She was amazed.
Another woman had a sprained wrist. I prayed for her, and at first she felt doubtful. She renounced that doubt and asked Jesus where He was. She felt like He said, “in your wrist.” When she moved it, the pain was completely gone.
All of us were in awe. It’s amazing how God cares even about smaller pains. When we ask, He answers.
It was such a beautiful experience. I could see Christ in these women and how much they love the Lord.
I don’t know what is ahead, but I know God has something amazing planned.
I hope when you hear this, you can see how God is working—not just in big miracles, but in the little things. Things like getting a visa back in time so Noah could arrive before classes started.
I am so grateful for all the ways God is working in my life. He is such a good, good Father.
Thank you, Lord!
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Learning to Be Still with God
Psalm 46:10 “He says, 'Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.”
This is no small feat. “Be still and know that I am God.” How difficult is it to be still? I can’t be the only person who struggles to just be still. It seems like everything I listen to is talking about how important mediation is. How much better you will feel if you meditate each morning before starting your day. Have any of you tried this? Have you ever just tried to sit there and not think of anything? When I do this, I feel like my brain is a two-year-old child. You know how you tell a child to do something, and they want to do anything other than that thing? That is what my brain is like. When I tell my brain that we are going to be still and not think of anything, it wants to do everything but that.
I will start to think of things I never thought of. My brain will start making a grocery list, it will recite a song I haven’t heard in 20 years, and question why I said that thing to that person three weeks ago. It does everything except be quiet and not think of anything. Has that ever happened to you? Have you ever tried to quiet your mind and just sit with the Lord? The other day, at a discernment meeting, we were reviewing the words from our prayer group. At least three separate words were given that talked about how important it is to just sit and be silent with the Lord. That meeting was on a Wednesday, and now this verse comes up: “Be still and know that I am God.” I think God wants me to talk about being still. I think He really wants us to get the message.
Here is one of the words that was given at the prayer group. “My children, take time to listen to me. Listen deeply, it is my time. When you listen, I can help you, I can heal you. I can enrich you through my presence. But it is in silence that I speak to you in a new and better way. But you must take the time, ever take the time to listen to my words, to let them absorb deeply, absorb them deeply into your being so that you will know how to proceed, so that you may know how to act upon the words that I tell you. Be joyful that I speak to you. Take the time to listen.”
Did you catch that? God is telling us that when we take the time to listen to Him, He can help, heal, and enrich us. How much do we need healing? I feel like the whole world needs healing right now. How great would it be for God to enrich us? Could you use a little enrichment in your life? I wonder how many of us take the time to listen? How many of us set aside a part of our days to just sit and listen? God says that it is in this silence that he talks to us in a new and better way. How great would that be? I am definitely on board for having my Heavenly Father talk to me in a new and better way. I want to hear what He says and absorb His words deeply. Who wouldn’t want God’s words to direct their way? Who wouldn’t want Him to help them know how to act?
All of that sounds amazing. Then I remember that I struggle to sit and be quiet. God is asking us to listen, but what do we do when we can’t listen, when we can’t seem to quiet our minds? Then what do we do? Do we miss out on all God has to say? Do we miss out on his direction? If He comes to us in the silence and heals us, then what happens when we don’t make the time to be silent? As I said earlier, this same word was given in at least three different ways in this one month. I have no doubt that God can heal us anytime, anywhere. He doesn’t need anything from us to do His thing. And yet, He took the time to give this message three different times. I don’t think He would have done this if it was not important. So, what can we do with this message?
I think it is important to learn to be silent and to listen for His Word. If your Heavenly Father tells you to do something, you do it. Doing new things is hard. Developing new habits is hard, and yet they are always worth it in the end. There are many ways that you can learn to be silent and listen to the Lord. I talked about one already. You can sit still and try to clear your mind. When something comes up that distracts you, just acknowledge it and try to clear your mind again. You could start small. Maybe just take 5 minutes a day and sit in silence. You don’t have to do anything. It sounds like God just wants you to be available.
I think I get stuck because I am sitting there trying to quiet my mind and expecting to hear God’s voice. That is not really how it works, or at least hasn’t worked that way for me. It’s not usually a voice its usually a thought that comes into my mind. For instance, at the prayer group, I will tell the Lord that I am available if He wants to share anything with me. Then a thought will come into my mind, and I will share it. I don’t question it. I told the Lord I was available, and so I trust that what comes to mind is something He wants shared.
Another way you could be silent and listen for God’s word is to ask the Lord to speak through your pen, then sit quietly and write down whatever thoughts come to mind. This is a particularly good way to quiet your mind and listen when you struggle to just sit still. This helps keep you from distractions a little more because you are busy writing whatever comes to mind. When I do this, I do not question what I am thinking; I just write it all down. Again, I have asked God to talk through my pen, and I trust He is doing just that.
A really powerful way to sit with the Lord and quiet your mind is to go to Eucharistic Adoration. This is when you are sitting in the presence of the Lord and quieting your mind. If you have not tried this before, I suggest you give it a try. It is such an amazing feeling. Another helpful thing when you are trying to learn to quiet your mind and listen is to enter it with fewer expectations. The only expectation necessary is that God will show up. The rest of our expectations can actually get in the way of our experience. If we expect that we will hear God’s voice, that He will speak to us in our thoughts, or that we will feel His presence, we may be disappointed. God said that it is in the silence that He heals us. This can be physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, or other forms of healing. He also said He speaks to us in a new and better way.
Sometimes you may take the time to listen, and you don’t feel anything happen. You don’t hear any words, get any new thoughts, or feel any healing. You feel exactly the same as you did before you sat still with the Lord for 5 minutes. This is totally normal. Please don’t worry that you did something wrong. Trust that if you gave God the time, He showed up and did His thing. The more you take the time to show up for God and quiet your mind, the more He will show up in that time. You won’t always feel it when He is healing you. He may not always have something to say, but the more you practice listening, the better you will become at hearing Him. Can you take 5 minutes today and quiet your mind and give God the space He wants to enter in and heal you?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. We ask that you help us to quiet our minds and listen to you, Lord. We ask that you help us figure out how to make you a priority. Help us set aside some time every day to quietly listen to you. Help us to give you that time in silence so that you can enter in and heal us, oh Lord. Lord Jesus, you are so amazing, and we are so grateful for all that you do. We love you so much, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you know someone who feels far from God or unsure where to start, this episode might be exactly what they need. Take a moment and share it with them. I look forward to meeting with you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I took each of you to the cross with me. Your sins were vanquished on that day. Each of you are my pride and my joy.”
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When You Feel Unlovable — God’s Love Hasn’t Changed
Jeremiah 31:3 “ The Lord appeared to him from far away. I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore, I have continued my faithfulness to you.”
God loves us with an everlasting love. Did you know that? Did you know that there is nothing you can do to lose God’s love? Sometimes I know that we feel unlovable. Sometimes that’s after we have done something that we feel is wrong, and sometimes that’s after someone else has done or said something to us. However, God never stops loving us. He loved us before we were even born, and His love is everlasting; it never goes away.
I remember hearing a story once, I think it might have been Jeff Cavins, in the Great Adventure Bible Story, but I am not sure. Anyway, whoever was telling the story was talking about how God does not need anything from us. This was vastly different from the other gods at the time. The other gods got more power the more people worshipped them. They were almost fighting for people to worship them. Some of them even required human child sacrifices. However, our God was completely self-sufficient and did not need anything from us.
I remember the person saying that this is the reason that some people turned from those other gods to our God, the one true God. They turned to God because of His everlasting love. They turned to God because He loved them just for who they were. They did not need to do anything to earn that love. That love was just there. This was something they had not experienced before.
The next line in the verse is also an important line. “Therefore, I have continued my faithfulness to you.” This is important because God is always faithful to His word. This is something we talked a lot about last week, but I think it is important to touch on it again, as it is amazing. I think sometimes we may think that God stops loving us when we sin in some way. Or that he stops answering our prayers when we have sinned against Him. However, this verse dispels that belief. God continues His faithfulness to us, even when we mess up.
Look how many times He was faithful to the Israelites after they messed up. In Matthew 18:21-22, it says, “Then Peter came and said to him, 'Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? ' " As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.” If Jesus is telling us to forgive seventy-seven times, then how much more will our Father in heaven forgive us?
There is a song called “Reckless Love” by Cory Asbury. It is a great song about how amazing God’s love is. The song first talks about how good God has been to him. The chorus says, Oh, the overwhelming, never-ending, reckless love of God. Oh, it chases me down, fights 'til I'm found, leaves the 99. And I couldn't earn it, I don't deserve it, still, you give yourself away.” When he mentions leaving the 99, he is talking about Matthew 18:12-14, when Jesus tells the parable, “What do you think? If a shepherd has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray. So it is not the will of your Father in heaven that one of these little ones should be lost.”
God does not want to lose any of his sheep. He will not stop looking for us when we are lost. He will not stop loving us and hoping that we turn back to Him. Then the song goes on to say, “When I was Your foe, still Your love fought for me. You have been so, so good to me. When I felt no worth, You paid it all for me. You have been so, so kind to me.” This is so true, when we have sinned and pulled away from God, or fractured our relationship with Him, He is still fighting for us and still loving us. When we don’t feel worthy, God is still there doing all He can for us.
This last part of the song is my favorite, and it is a part I think we all need to hear because it is the truth. “There's no shadow You won't light up, mountain You won't climb up, coming after me. There’s no wall you won't kick down, lie you won't tear down, coming after me.” There is nothing that God won’t do to chase after His children to try and save them. He gave His only Son on the cross for us. There is nothing hidden in the darkness that will prevent him from finding you. There’s no wall He won’t kick down and lie He won’t tear down.
I think I like that part the best because when I think of it, I think of a father searching everywhere for his child. Have you even seen the movie “Taken” with Liam Neeson? In the movie, Liam Neeson is a father whose daughter goes to Europe on vacation with a friend. However, in the movie, his daughter is taken by sex traffickers. She calls her dad when she sees someone breaking into the house. Liam is some type of government spy in the movie, and he stops at nothing to get his daughter back. He does whatever it takes to find her and get her back. If a mere human will go through all of that to get his daughter back, how much more do you think your Father in heaven will do to get you back?
I know people who have often wondered if they are worth loving. When I tell them the things I am telling you, they say that they know God feels that way about other people, but they tell me I don’t understand what they have done or where they have been. If you are listening to this and think it is true for some people but not for you, I want you to hear me. GOD LOVES YOU!! He loves you right where you are. You don’t have to change in any way for Him to love you. He loves you perfectly right now, right where you are. Also, God’s love is everlasting. It never fades. It is always there, no matter what we do or what happens to us. Also, God remains faithful to us. He keeps His promises. If we are lost, He will come and chase after us and find us. He will be there for us whenever we decide to turn back to Him. He will welcome us home with open arms, and he will say to us, “I have loved you with an everlasting love.”
Dear heavenly father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. We thank you for loving us with an everlasting love, with a reckless love that will chase us down and leave the 99 to come and save us. Lord God, we're so very thankful that you love us so much, and even though we can't earn your love and definitely don't deserve your love, you give it to us freely anyway. Lord, I ask that you reach out to anyone who hears this and has trouble believing you could love them. I ask that you surround them with your love, that you rain down love and grace on them. I ask that you open their minds and hearts to the idea of you loving them just as they are. Lord, I ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you feel like you’re walking with God alone, I want you to know—you don’t have to. The mentoring group is a place of real connection and support. I’d love to have you there. There is a link in the show notes. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, you are my bodily mold. When people see you, I want them to see me. I will lead the way. Listen to my voice. It speaks out always. It's your guide. Learn to trust what I speak to you. I'm in many things, and I know all things. Remember, there is no unknowing in me.”
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You Don’t Have to Do It All—The Power of Being Still with God
Exodus 14:14 “The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to keep still.”
My friend Rosa just did a YouTube video about this, and I thought it would be perfect for an episode, as I know so many of you listening are going through some pretty hard stuff right now. Being still is not easy for most of us. We are doers, and we want to go, go, go. This is compounded by the fact that we live in a world that never stops. I know so many people who are doing so much, and they never have time to rest. They have jobs so busy they can’t finish everything they are supposed to in the allotted 40-hour workweek.
Being busy is not a bad thing in itself. Benjamin Franklin said, “Idle hands are the devil's playthings.” If we sit around doing nothing, we get bored, and who knows what we might get ourselves into. However, being too busy becomes a problem when we no longer make time for the Lord. Being busy becomes a problem when we stop recharging our batteries with the Holy Spirit's power and start relying on our own strength.
Something I learned in Encounter Ministries is that all fruitfulness flows from our intimacy with Christ. Fruitfulness means success. The success of all that we do flows from our relationship with the Lord. Think about this in terms of your other relationships. Let’s look at family life. Doesn’t it seem true that the fruitfulness or the success of your family depends on your relationship with those in your family? What if you never talk to your spouse, never spend time with them, and just go about your day? It is not necessarily that you don’t want to spend time with them; it is just that you don’t seem to have the time. You don’t make the time because there are so many other things you have to do. How successful would that marriage be?
What if you never had time to spend with your children? They have sports games or dance recitals, but you don’t have time to go because you are always working. When you are at home, you don’t spend time with them because you are trying to catch up on all the things to do around the house. If you never make time to spend with them, if you don’t ever talk to them, how successful do you think your relationship with them will be?
The same is true with your relationship with God. We need to make time for Him, and He will take care of all of our worries. When we spend time with Him, we can tell Him all that is going on. We can give Him our stresses, our cares, and our worries. We can hand them over to Him and let Him take care of them. Who else can we entrust our cares and worries to?
The verse above says, “The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to keep still.” After we talk to the Lord about what is going on in our lives, we can sit there in silence and let Him come into our hearts and heal us. The Lord has told us many times in our prayer group that He is coming in during the silence and healing our hearts. It is great to talk to the Lord. It is great to pray to the Lord and to do the Rosary, the Divine Mercy Chaplet, and all the other devotions that we do to grow closer to the Lord. These are all amazing and will help develop a more intimate relationship with the Lord.
The Lord is also calling us to a time with Him that is spent in silence. He just wants us to sit with Him. God can do all things. He can minister to you anywhere and anytime. Yet, He likes to come in the stillness. He likes to come to us when we make the time just to sit and be still with Him. I know it feels like you don’t have any more time left in your schedule. However, if you spend quiet time consistently with Jesus, I am willing to bet you will see more time open up in your schedule. God can’t be outdone in generosity. If you give him 20 minutes, He will give you 10 hours. He is that good.
God's math is not the same as our math. It doesn’t make the same kind of sense that our math does. If he can feed 5,000 men plus women and children with 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish, then he can certainly replace the 15 or 20 minutes during the day that you gave to Him in quiet time. My sister Dee gave me a plaque once with a poem on it, and I feel like it is the perfect poem for reminding us how important it is to start our day with the Lord. It shows how important it is to check in with God before starting our day. Here is the Poem:
The Difference By: Alan Grant
I got up early one morning and rushed right into the day;
I had so much to accomplish that I didn't have time to pray.
Problems just tumbled out about me, and heavier came each task.
“Why doesn't God help me?” I wondered. He answered, "You didn't ask.”
I wanted to see joy and beauty, but the day toiled on, gray and bleak;
I wondered why God didn't show me; He said, “But you didn't seek.”
I tried to come into God's presence; I used all my keys at the lock.
God gently and lovingly chided, “My child, you didn't knock.”
I woke up early this morning and paused before entering the day.
I had so much to accomplish that I had to take time to pray.
As you can see by this poem, God is ready to help us; He is just waiting for us to ask. Then, once we ask, He is waiting for us to give Him the time to work on us, to heal us. If you are going through a really tough time right now, I want to invite you to some quiet time with the Lord today. Sit with Him and ask Him what He wants you to do, and then listen for His answer. If you need to be filled with energy, strength, hope, love, power, or anything else today, just ask the Lord, then sit for a few minutes and receive it. The Lord says when we ask, He answers, so when you ask for something, expect to receive it.
I know sometimes, maybe most of the time, it feels like we are all alone in our battles. We feel like we are the only ones fighting our fights. This verse this morning reminds us that we are not in this alone. Not only is God in it with us, but He will fight our battles for us if we let Him. If we turn our battles over to the Lord, He will take care of them for us. Isn’t that amazing? This reminds me of 2 Kings 6:17. It says, "And Elisha prayed, 'Open his eyes, Lord, so that he may see.” Then the Lord opened the servant’s eyes, and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.” Imagine all the Lord surrounds us with. There is so much we can’t see when it comes to the Lord.
We can’t usually see His angels, we can’t see the reason He allows some things to happen, and we can’t always make sense of things. We might be sad that we can’t see these things, and I often wish I could see into the spiritual world. However, we have to remember that there are also evil spirits in the spiritual world, and I think we would be very frightened if we saw all that goes on around us.
Even though we can’t see God’s horses and chariots of fire ready to fight for us, we can trust that they are there because the Bible is the Word of God. It is a fact, and it is God’s promises to us. So, when we read in the Bible, “The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to keep still.” We can take that to the bank. We can count on that. We can be still and watch as the Lord fights our battles for us. Can we be still and allow Him to do that today?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask that you help us to be still and allow us to fight our battles. We ask that you teach us how to be still and that you give us the power to do so because we really struggle with it. Lord, we thank you for all you do for us each day. We thank you for fighting our battles. We thank you for surrounding us with protection and an army to defend us. We want to call on that army, Lord. We want to hand over all of our struggles to you, Lord. You are the almighty one; you are the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. We love you so very much. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you’re enjoying this podcast, one of the best ways you can support it is by sharing it with a friend. It really does help more people find it. I look forward to meeting you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “The world may crumble, but my love will never disappear. My love is eternal, my children. Fear not, for I am always with you. I declare my allegiance to you each and every day.”
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He Is Series - King of Kings - When Life Feels Out of Control, Remember Who Is in Charge
Revelation 19:16 “On his robe and on his thigh he has a name inscribed, ‘King of kings and Lord of lords.”
We end our series with a powerful name for the Lord. He is King of kings. There is no king greater than the Lord. He is above all. This is important for us to remember, especially in times of trouble, because we might be tempted to think other things are greater than God. For instance, if we are in chronic pain, we might start to believe that our pain is greater than God. We might believe He can heal some things, but not chronic illnesses, like Lupus, Multiple Sclerosis, cancer, and things like that. The world tells us there are no cures for those diseases, so we think the same applies to God, too.
Nothing is too big or too complicated for God to handle. He is the King of kings. We might also think that our financial issues are too much for God to handle. We know we have bills to pay, we know we don’t have enough money to pay them, and we don’t see a way that God can help. God doesn’t need a way; He is the King of kings, and He can make a way.
My friend once told me a story about how she was sitting in the Dollar Tree parking lot before the store opened, making her grocery list for the week. She had three kids at the time. Her daughter was in the car with her. She was writing down everything she needed, and she realized she was $50 short of having it all. She said a quick prayer to the Lord, letting Him know that if she just had $50 more, she would be able to feed her kids for the whole week. I am not sure if she expected God to do anything. I am not sure whether she was even asking Him to do anything, or just talking to God about how hard things were right now. All I know is that her daughter saw something fly past the window, and before my friend could say anything, she jumped out of the car to chase it. Luckily, the parking lot was empty because the store wasn’t open yet. When her daughter got back in the car and showed her mom what she had been chasing, it turned out to be a $50 bill.
Can you even imagine that happening? I am sure my friend couldn’t have imagined God would just create a bill out of nowhere and have it fly by her window just when she needed it most. There isn’t anything our Lord can’t do. Another friend was leading a youth group one week, and just as they were about to leave, she realized she had lost her keys. She couldn’t drive home without them, and she didn’t have a backup set. The kids looked everywhere, in all the rooms, on all the services, and they couldn’t find them anywhere.
Then, one of the kids remembered that there is a patron saint of lost keys. Her name is Saint Zita. So all the kids and my friend asked St. Zita to intercede on their behalf. While they were all standing together praying, they heard a noise in the other room. They heard a set of keys fall down onto the metal counter. They had checked this counter before, and her keys were not there. Now, out of nowhere, the keys were on the counter. I don’t know where she lost these keys, but I do know that God put them on the counter for her so she could get home that night. And probably also to build the faith of all those kids who see this amazing display of God’s power.
God is bigger than our problems. I know it doesn’t always seem that way. I know sometimes we feel like we are drowning in our problems. Drowning in debt, illness, anger, frustration, and anything else that feels overwhelming in our lives. God is right there with us. He will not let us drown. Just as He did not let Peter drown when he stepped out of the boat to walk on the water. He took his eyes off Jesus and began to sink. Jesus reached out His hand and took Peter’s hand before he could sink. He will do the same for you.
When we have our eyes on Jesus, we know He is the King of Kings. When we read the Bible and surround ourselves with His Word, it is easier to remember that. Once we take our eyes off Him. Once we start to look around us and read what the world has to say, we start to doubt. If we listen to the doctors, they will tell us that certain things can’t be cured. I am not saying we shouldn’t listen to doctors. Doctors are very important and save many lives. What I am saying is that we should listen to the doctor regarding the diagnosis and leave the prognosis up to God. Only God knows when our time in this world will be over, and I have seen miracles where people have had stage 4 cancer, the doctors said there was nothing else they could do, and yet, they are now living their lives cancer-free.
I feel that someone really needs to hear this today. There is no disease that God can’t cure. No diagnosis is too big for God to handle. There is no legal or financial issue too big for God. God can heal a broken vertebra; He can heal your diabetes, or your mental illness, or your chronic illness. Whatever it is you are facing today, keep your eyes fixed on the Lord, and know that He is the King of Kings and can heal you, help you, and save you. Just call upon Him, and He will come.
Over these past 31 episodes, we’ve been discovering who God is—His names, His heart, and how He meets us right where we are. We’ve seen that He is our provider, our healer, our peace, our strength, and so much more. And today, as we remember that He is the King of Kings, we are reminded that He is over it all—every struggle, every question, every part of our lives.
Whatever you’re walking through right now, you are not alone. The same God we’ve been learning about throughout this series is with you, for you, and working in your life. So keep coming back to Him. Keep seeking Him. Because the more you know who He is, the more you’ll begin to see who you are in Him.
Dear King of Kings, please bless each person listening to this episode. Lord, we love you and are so grateful that you are all-powerful. You are the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. There is nothing you can’t handle. There is nothing too big for you. Please help us to believe this, Lord. Please help us to always look to you instead of those around us. Please help us to trust that you can help us, even if we don’t see a way. We love you, and we ask this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you feel like you’re not growing the way you want to, this mentoring group is a place where you can take that next step with support and guidance. You don’t have to stay stuck. Join us at walkboldlywithjesus.com/mentoring. I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I ask that you remember who I am. I created the universe and all that is in it. Yours are the mountains I made. Yours are the great seas. Yours are the skies above. Yours are the deserts where the birds fly by. All for you, my children.”
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Today, I want to witness to you the power of prayer. I am very grateful because my parents are devout Catholics. They both grew up in very Catholic homes, and their parents passed down to them the importance of our faith. They both went to Catholic schools growing up. Sometimes I wish that I lived back when they lived, and it seems like being Catholic was easier. Although I am not sure it was easier. Sometimes I think that is just what we tell ourselves to make ourselves feel better. My mom and dad started dating when they were in High School. My parents, while in High School, used to meet at 5 or 6 in the morning so they could go to daily mass together. Nowadays, kids don’t even want to go to mass on Sunday morning. They don’t want to be up early on a school day, and they certainly don’t want to be in mass before school.
Maybe the same was true back then. Maybe my parents were different from all those around them. Maybe it wasn’t “cool” to go to daily mass back then, and yet they wanted to. Maybe they didn’t want to be at mass necessarily, maybe they just wanted to see each other, and that was the only way they could. I honestly don’t know, although I should ask them. The fact that they were waking up early to go to mass together before school is an answered prayer. Actually, it is probably many answered prayers. It is probably the answer to the prayer, please let me child know you. It is probably the answer to the prayer, please let my child meet a spouse who is Catholic. An answer to, please let my child meet someone who knows the Lord like they do.
I know my grandparents prayed a lot for my parents. and I can see the effects of those prayers, even after my grandparents have gone to meet Jesus. I am sure they are still praying for our family. I am sure they are up in heaven praying blessings and prayers of protection over us as we speak. Isn’t that awesome to think about? When our loved ones die, they don’t stop praying for us. Actually, their prayers probably increase because they don’t have the worldly distractions that we have here on earth. They can devote all their time to praising God and praying for their loved ones left here on Earth.
The reason I say I can see the results of their prayers is that my parents found each other. These days it is becoming increasingly rare to find a couple where both are Catholic. And even if you are lucky enough to find a Catholic spouse, it is rare that you are both as excited about the faith as my parents. My mom is the oldest of 10 children, ranging from 80 years old down to about 60 or so. All of my mom’s siblings are alive to this day. It is not as if they have all had easy lives. It is not that they have never been sick; they have, and yet they are all still alive and well. That is the answer to so many prayers that probably seemed unanswered at the time. My mom and several of her siblings have had skin cancer, and yet through it all, God has protected them. That is so many answered prayers!
My parents had 11 children. When they got married, they wanted to have 12 children, a whole dozen. The reason for this is that my dad only had one brother, and they didn’t get to play together too much when they were growing up. My dad’s house was always so quiet, and there wasn’t much going on. However, when he went to my mom’s house, it was the opposite. It was never quiet, and there was always something going on. So, they decided to replicate that in their house and have a dozen kids. The fact that I have 10 brothers and sisters is another answer to prayers. Actually, probably several answered prayers as my parents said if they were unable to conceive, they would say a novena, and at the end of it, she would be pregnant.
My mom and dad are both in their early 80’s and are doing great! They are more active than most of their kids are, as they go out square and round dancing three nights a week. They are very involved in the church and run the prayer group there. My mom does the daughters of Isabella at the state level. My dad is the chaplain for the Knights of Columbus and another organization in town. They are healthy enough to remain busy, and I know that is the answer to many prayers.
Another way I can see so many answered prayers is the fact that my siblings and I are all alive and well. It is not uncommon for large families to lose some of their siblings along the way. It is not uncommon in any size family, actually. However, all my siblings are doing great. I will say we have some close calls. My sister had a mysterious illness when she was younger, and we almost lost her. My brother was pulled through a big machine that makes chicken wire. We definitely could have lost him then. There have been a few suicide attempts in our family. There have been really bad car accidents. My sister had open heart surgery in the 8th grade. One of my brothers jumped out of a plane with the army and hit his head on the side of the plane on his way down. There have been plenty of opportunities when things could have ended very differently, and they didn’t, and I am so thankful for all those answered prayers of protection and healing.
I say all of this to let you know that your prayers are being answered. It is important that you continue to pray, even when you don’t see the results you want. I don’t know if my grandparents knew how important their prayers were. I don’t know if they got to see the fruit of their prayers while they were still here on earth. I don’t know if you will always see the fruit of your prayers either. Sometimes, we don’t recognize the fruit of our prayers. For instance, when Tony lost his job in the military, it didn’t look like an answered prayer. It looked like God had abandoned him. Yet for at least five years before he lost his job, he had been searching for a government job that was not in the military, and nothing was working out. It was a catch-22 because you got military preference once you were out of the military, but he didn’t want to get out of the military until he had another job. Well, God took care of all of that when he had Tony leave the military and then found him a higher-paying civilian job at a military base that he loved so much. It was definitely years of answered prayers, and yet it really didn’t look like it.
Our prayers matter. Keep praying for your kids to come back to the church, even if you don’t see any results. Keep praying they meet someone who loves Jesus. Or if they are already married to someone who doesn’t pray for that person’s conversion. Our prayers are so powerful. God has told us in our prayer group that we, the world, don’t understand how powerful our prayers are. Don’t give up. Keep praying, even when you don’t see results. I bet if you sat down and looked back over your life, you would also see so many answered prayers. God is good, and He does answer our prayers. All we need to do is look for the answers, and we will find them!
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He is Series - God of Reconstruction - When Life Feels Like It’s Falling Apart, God Is Rebuilding You
Ezekiel 36:36 “ Then the nations that are left all around you shall know that I, the Lord, have rebuilt the ruined places, and replanted that which was desolate; I, the Lord, have spoken, and I will do it.”
I was planning to finish the He Is Series today, on the 30th day, with the name King of Kings. I thought that was a great way to complete the series. However, my good friend Rosa, who reads the Spanish translation, had a vision, and He said to her, “I am a God of Reconstruction.” I knew after hearing about her vision that we needed to include this in our series. How many of us could use a God of Reconstruction right now?
Let me share her vision with you first so you know what we are talking about. Here is what she said, “I had a vision. The Lord showed me that we were looking at ruins and rubble. We were dwelling on the destruction , desolation, and calamity. The Lord said: I’m a God of reconstruction!! I am actively using periods of brokenness or "rubble" to rebuild you to be stronger and more purpose-driven. I restore broken lives, hearts, people, families, marriages, and nations. With my restoring power, I rebuild, reconcile, and bring new life out of ruins. I don’t just fix broken parts; I rebuild from the ground up, making the new creation stronger, wiser, and more radiant. The ultimate goal of this reconstruction is for you to become more like Me, to remove the old construction that is no longer needed.”
Wow, how many of us needed to hear that today? How many of us needed to hear that God was using this time of brokenness to rebuild us and make us stronger? How many of us feel broken right now? We are struggling with health. We feel like God has just walked away from us since we feel so broken. Yet, here God is saying, “I am using this time to make you stronger.” He has not abandoned you. He has not left you to fend for yourself. He has not forgotten about you. He is with you in this illness, and He can use even this to make you stronger.
The same is true for those of us who might be healthy, but we are struggling with money problems, family problems, work issues, whatever it may be. God is telling us that even in this time of brokenness in our families, He can work to make us stronger. I know it doesn’t look that way. What it often looks like is a mess. It looks like we are in this alone, and we can’t seem to get out of it. It often looks like everything is falling down around us, and we might get buried.
Let’s look at the analogy of a house being renovated. When a house is being renovated, it often looks worse before it looks better. Walls are torn down, things are messy, and it can feel like everything is falling apart. But the builder isn’t destroying the house—he’s rebuilding it so it’s stronger, safer, and more beautiful than before. In this vision, the Lord even said, “I don’t just fix broken parts; I rebuild from the ground up, making the new creation stronger, wiser, and more radiant.”
What we are going through is hard and messy, and we all wish we could skip it. However, what if even this hard part can be used by God to help us become a new creation? What if the walls that are being torn down are our walls of self-reliance? What if the walls we built to protect ourselves are not only keeping us from getting hurt but also keeping out all the light and love? What if even the painful parts we’re going through right now can be used to break down our pride so we can be humble and accept the Lord’s help?
The last line in her vision said, “The ultimate goal of this reconstruction is for you to become more like Me, to remove the old construction that is no longer needed.” I wonder how different our suffering would be if we knew this statement were true? Would it make your difficult times easier to go through if you knew that the ultimate goal was for us to become more like the Lord? Would it be easier to step out of our comfort zone if we knew it was no longer needed?
What I mean by this is, would it be easier to tear down the walls around your heart if you knew you were safe and they were no longer needed? Would it be easier for you to get through each day with your sickness if you knew that on the other side of it, you would be more like the Lord? I think it is so important for each one of us to know that there is no situation that is too badly ruined for the Lord to fix. I know you may feel like you will never be healthy again, but God can restore your health. He can restore your family. He can restore your finances. And as the Lord stated in the vision, He doesn’t just repair them, he makes a new creation that is stronger, wiser, and more radiant than the first one. God didn’t bring this brokenness into your life—but He will not waste it. He is already working on it, rebuilding something stronger. How many of us could use a little restoration in our lives?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those who are listening to this episode. God of Reconstruction, thank you for all you are doing to rebuild our lives. You are not only restoring them but also reconstructing them to be better than before. Thank you that even in this time of brokenness, You are making us stronger. We want more of you and less of us. Please help us Lord! We ask this in the name of Jesus, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If this episode encouraged you, would you take a moment to share it with one person who might need this today? You never know how God might use it in their life. I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “All my love spilled out on the planet Earth, the home I made for you. Look at the beauty about you and know that it is me speaking my love to you and washing you in my abiding love. I will always wash you. Come walk with me in steadfastness.”
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He Is Series — Lamb of God - When You Feel Ashamed, Jesus Already Paid for It
John 1:29 “The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him and declared, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”
Jesus is the Lamb of God. Do we really understand what this means? This means that God sacrificed his only son so that we would be freed from our sins. Why do we say He was a lamb? In the Old Testament, people sacrificed a spotless lamb. This symbolized innocence, purity, and payment for sin. The lamb took the place of the person. Jesus fulfills this completely. He is perfect, sinless, and innocent. In the Old Testament, there is a long list of sacrifices people were supposed to make for various sins. There were many different types of sacrifices to atone for our sins, and they were spelled out very clearly. However, when Jesus came, all that changed. And instead of many sacrifices over and over again. Jesus became the final sacrifice—once and for all.
When Jesus died on the cross and then rose again, He defeated evil once and for all. He defeated death once and for all. We tend to forget this. We worry about our sins because we love God, and we don’t want to be separated from Him. Yet we are sure that what we did is too awful to be forgiven. We think we are not worthy of forgiveness. We don’t deserve it. What is really strange is that we will be the first ones to tell our friends and loved ones that all they have to do is say sorry and ask God for forgiveness, and He will forgive them. It is easy for us to believe this with our whole mind, body, and soul for other people. Yet for us, we don’t believe it can be true. Not with all we have done.
Jesus died for all of our sins. Not just some of them. Not just the little sins. He took all of our sins, our shame, our regret to the cross with Him. I know you don’t feel worthy, and the truth is, we aren’t worthy, not on our own. That is why Jesus died on the cross for us. Ever since the betrayal in the Garden of Eden, there has been a separation between God and us. We weren’t worthy to talk to Him or to be with Him. God didn’t like this, though. He didn’t like the separation. This is why Jesus came to die on the cross. He died and rose again so our sins would be forgiven and we could live in eternity with God. What does this mean for us?
You don’t have to carry your sin anymore. So many of us feel shame, guilt, “I’m not good enough.” But we don’t have to because Jesus already took all that away from us. All we have to do is release them to Him. He didn’t die for everyone else’s sin, but not yours. Even if you were the only person on the planet, He would have still died on that cross for you.
You are not defined by your past because the price has already been paid. Not partially. Not conditionally. Paid in full with Jesus’s blood. This is a big one because it can be so easy to identify with who we used to be. The enemy will whisper in our ears that we can’t change. If we could, we would have already. He likes to remind us of who we are so that we never forget. Just because you once were that person doesn’t mean you still are that same person. People can change. You can change. Tony and I were really struggling in our marriage, and God came in and changed us. We are not the same people we were back then. You are not the same person you were in middle school or high school. We all change, sometimes for the better, sometimes not. But we do change. Your past does not have to define you. It will try, but if you are strong and you stand up to your past, it will not define you.
God is not waiting to punish you. The punishment has already been taken. This means God isn’t against you. God is for you! Another line in the song “Drops in the Ocean” says, “'Cause I am for you, I'm not against you.” God was never against us. Even when we were separated from Him when sin entered the world, He was still always there with us. When the Israelites were escaping Egypt, God was with them. Exodus 13:21-22 says, “The Lord went in front of them in a pillar of cloud by day, to lead them along the way, and in a pillar of fire by night, to give them light, so that they might travel by day and by night. Neither the pillar of cloud by day nor the pillar of fire by night left its place in front of the people.
You are invited into a relationship, not a performance. You don’t have to earn it, prove yourself, or clean yourself up first. God wants you to be in relationship with Him. There is nothing you can do to earn God’s love. He gives it freely. He has loved you since before you were born, and He will continue to love you long after your body dies.
You are deeply loved. The cross says: “You were worth this.” There is a song called “Drops in the Ocean,” and it is sung by Hawk Nelson. There is so much that I love about this song. I highly recommend you check it out. However, the part I just thought of while talking about the cross is the chorus. It says:
“If you want to know how far my love can go
Just how deep, just how wide
If you want to see how much you mean to me
Look at my hands, look at my side
If you could count the times I say you are forgiven
It's more than the drops in the ocean.”
I love that! It is so true. If we want to know how much God loves us and how much Jesus loves us, we can just look at his hands, which had nails driven through them for us. Look at His side. He was lanced with a spear for our sins. God sent His only Son to die on a cross for us. Jesus voluntarily died on a cross for our sins. It is not as if Jesus didn’t know why He was dying on the cross. Scripture tells us that while He was in the garden, thinking about all He would endure and all the sins He was taking to the cross, He sweated drops of blood. He knew all you were going to do, and He went to that cross anyway.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each person listening to this episode. Thank you so much for sending your son to be the Lamb of God. Thank you for His sacrifice that saved our lives. Thank you for loving us that much! Lord, we ask that you help us accept that sacrifice. We ask that you help us see that our sins have already been forgiven. You are not holding on to them. You are not punishing us for them. You are not keeping us separated from you. Help us to know how loved we truly are. Help us to feel it, Lord! We love you you and we ask all this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If something in you has been wanting more of God—more closeness, more depth, more understanding—I want to personally invite you to join my mentoring group.
Each month, we’re diving deeper into our faith and learning how to actually live it out in our everyday lives. And you don’t have to do that alone.
We meet live on Zoom, and it’s a beautiful, supportive space where you can grow, ask questions, and connect with others who are on the same journey.
If your heart is stirring, I encourage you to follow that. You can find the link in the show notes or visit walkboldlywithjesus.com to learn more.
I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I am your life's companion. I walk with you each and every day. My heart cannot be contemplated, my children. Reflect on each step you take, and I tell you that you take it with me. I accept you right where you're at. Don't try to understand the vastness of my love for you. Just believe, I tell you, that it is true. ”
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He Is Series Wonderful Counselor — When You Don’t Know What to Do, God Will Guide You
Isaiah 9:6 “For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”
I love today’s name, Wonderful Counselor. I think this is an often-overlooked name of the Lord. Many of us would not hesitate to go to the Lord if we are sick or if we have a loved one who is sick. Especially if their prognosis doesn’t look good. If we have nowhere else to turn, most of us, even some people who don’t really believe in God, will turn to God when they feel they have nowhere else to turn. If they are desperate enough.
What I didn’t always know is that we can go to the Lord seeking advice or wisdom. I always knew I could pray to the Lord for the things I needed. My mom and dad had a lot of children, and they did not have a lot of money, so I got to see firsthand how God provides for us when we ask. I am glad we did not have a lot of money because if we had, I would have missed out on seeing all those miracles. However, I didn’t know that I could sit and talk with God and He would talk back. I didn’t know that you could have a two-way conversation with the Lord. This was life-changing for me.
While I was in the Encounter School of Ministry program, I heard a testimony about a mom who went to the Lord seeking wisdom. You see, she had returned home from work one night to find her teenage son watching pornography. She was so angry and hurt and didn’t really know what to say or do. She knew how she handled this was important, but she wasn’t sure the best way to do it. She told him to go to bed for the night, and they would talk about it in the morning. Then she got on her knees and asked the Lord for Wisdom. She asked the Lord to guide her in how to handle the situation.
While she was sitting there talking with the Lord and praying for wisdom, the Lord gave her an idea. When she talked with her son, she told him that he needed to create a back story of what he thinks that young woman’s life must have been like growing up to make her go into that line of work. He had to sit down and write a paper for his mom explaining what he thinks that young woman’s life was like. He wrote the paper, and they talked about it, and he said he never wanted to watch pornography again. He said he felt bad for the people who felt like they had to do that as a profession.
If she had yelled at him and grounded him, do you think it would have had the same results? When I yell at and ground my kids, I find they don’t sit in their rooms and think about what they have done. They usually sit in their rooms, think about how terrible a person I am for grounding them, get angry, and their behavior rarely changes. God knows our children, God knows us, God sees everything, even the stuff we can’t see. God knew what would change her son’s heart. And what will change her son’s heart is not the same as what will change your child’s heart. This is why it is important to go to the Lord rather than to all the other places we turn for answers.
I had a lot of trouble raising my kids. They all had very different issues, and they seemed to be problems that no one else was facing. Although this is not true, this is what the enemy wants you to think. I read so many parenting books, took classes, and asked all the experts. I tried to do everything I could to be the best mom I could be to these three boys the Lord gave me to care for. Do you know what I didn’t do? I didn’t go to the Lord to ask for wisdom or advice. To be fair to myself, I did spend time praying to the Lord and journaling. I thought this was bringing it to the Lord. I thought I was seeking the Lord.
I went to a MCCW retreat in 2017, and I was having quiet time with the Lord, and I heard him say to me, " You are not coming to me. I was confused because, as I said, I was coming to the Lord for prayer. He acknowledged, yes, you are coming to me to ask for things, you might even ask me what you should do, but you never wait long enough for me to answer before you move on to something else. You ask me what you should do, but instead of staying with me, keeping still and listening, you get up, and you read a book, you ask a friend, you take a class. You don’t wait to see what I have to say.
What just occurred to me, I am sure, is that the Holy Spirit brought it to my attention: God is the perfect one to give us advice on what would work for each of our kids, because He created them. He knit them together in my womb. I always used to say that I wish kids came with an instruction manual. Not a generic one, but a separate one for each child that explained what would and would not work for that child. That explained what they could and could not do. What they liked and didn’t like. That is all the information we can get from the Lord. If we seek his counsel, He can help us know what will and won’t work best for our sons and daughters. The same goes for our siblings, our spouse, our co-workers, and our boss. They were all created by the same creator. He knows what they need, what they want, and how they function best.
I liked this name when I found it because it is so eye-opening. God is a wonderful Counselor. We can go to Him when we need advice. We can go to Him when we aren’t sure what we should do. There are many ways He can communicate His answers to us. Some people ask God a question, and then they receive a thought from the Lord. Sometimes, they might just get a strong feeling of what they should do. Sometimes they might get a scripture verse, and when they read it, they know what they should do. Sometimes it might be something someone else says to them, and they might just know that God is speaking to them through that person. There are no limits to how God can talk to you and share with you the answer to your question or the wisdom that you seek.
If you are struggling with something right now. If you have a problem you have been trying to solve on your own, I want to invite you to find some time to sit down with the Lord and ask Him what you should do. Then stay there with Him and just listen for his answer. Notice if you suddenly have an idea of how to solve it. Notice, if you feel a certain way, or you think of a scripture verse. Just notice your thoughts and feelings. Be on the lookout for the answer, as God has told us over and over again, when we ask, He answers, when we seek, we find. So, ask and listen for the answer. If you don’t feel like you receive anything in that moment, that is ok, you didn’t do it wrong, He just doesn’t always answer right away. Just seek the answer out as you go through the day. Seek, and you will find! Trust that He will answer, and He will! I have seen it happen many times.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, you are amazing, and we are so grateful for all you do for us. Thank you for being our wonderful counselor. Thank you for guiding us as we try to navigate this crazy place we call the world. Thank you for giving us wisdom when we need it. Thank you for helping us to parent our children. Thanks for guiding us on how to get along better with our siblings or our co-workers. Whatever it is, Lord, I know you are taking care of it, and we are so grateful! We love you tons!! We ask all this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I always say—Don’t keep good things to yourself. If this blessed you, pass it along to someone else who might need it too. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Peace be with you, my children. Peace I give you. A peace that flows from my heart to yours. A peace that I knew when I spent time in prayer with my father. One that gave me the courage to go on when things seemed overwhelming. A peace that passes anything that man can understand or know. A peace that only I can give. Open your hearts to receive it. Open your minds to believe it. Open all you are to me. Receive the peace I give you.”
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He is Series: True Vine “When You Feel Disconnected, Stay Close to Jesus.”
John 15:1-2, 5 “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.”
In this series, we’ve been learning the different names of God—who He is and how He meets us. And today, we’re going to look at a name Jesus gives Himself, because Jesus is God, and He reveals the heart of God to us in a personal way. When I first read verse one, I didn’t understand what it meant. Which, now that I see the two verses together, this is something I have heard a lot, and I do understand it. I think this often happens when we look at just one verse. We can take it out of context, or we can misunderstand what it means when it is not paired with the surrounding verses.
Jesus is our vine, and God is the vinegrower. God removes every branch in us that bears no fruit. This can be really hard for us. Have you ever had God remove something from your life that you knew wasn’t bearing fruit in your life, and yet it still hurt? The first thing that comes to mind for me is a guy I dated back in high school and in my early college years. I knew our relationship was not bearing fruit. I knew we were not right for each other, and yet it hurt when it ended. Sometimes this can be a friendship or a job. God loves us so much that He doesn’t want to see us wasting our lives on things that are not fruitful. Sometimes, it is not just that they are fruitful, but also that they are harmful.
If you think back over your life, can you see some times where God removed branches from your tree that were not bearing fruit? Can you see where he removed you from a toxic relationship? Can you see where he removed you from a job where you weren’t going anywhere? Can you see where he put up roadblocks or closed doors that you really wanted to walk through? He does not do this to hurt us. He does this to save us. He does this because he knows that path was leading us somewhere we didn’t want to be.
In the moment when God removes things from our lives, we usually don’t understand. It is usually painful and confusing, and we can often get mad. We can feel like God doesn’t care about us. We feel as though He wasn’t there with us through it all because we don’t feel Him there. Usually, down the road, sometimes way down the road, and sometimes just a little ways down the road, we start to understand why God removed that person or that situation from our lives, and we are usually grateful. But, at first, it hurts. I know it does. God doesn’t do it to hurt us. He does it because He loves us too much to watch us ruin our lives, or even worse, if we are doing something that could keep us from spending eternity with him.
The next part of the verse says, “Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit.” We do have good things in our lives. I know it may not seem like it at times. It may feel like the whole world is against you and that nothing is going right. However, we all have things in our lives that are bearing fruit. God takes those things, and He prunes them to make them bear more fruit. This can also be painful at times because when God is purifying us, it doesn’t always feel good. Gold and Silver are purified in fire. We are purified while we live our lives. When God is removing bad things from our lives, He is purifying us.
Sometimes, He also purifies us through things that aren’t bad but can still be hard. God might be helping you bear more fruit by showing you where you need to grow in your life. He might be convicting your heart that you need to forgive someone. This is not to make you feel bad; it is to help open you up to more of His graces. He may be inviting you to start your mornings with Him. He may be inviting you to daily mass or to say the rosary each day. There are all kinds of ways that God can be pruning your branches. God prunes all of our branches so that we can bear more fruit.
Another way God can help you bear more fruit is to put on your heart to volunteer with a certain organization. He can lead you to a job you would have never thought of before. He can put people in your path who need whatever skills you have. He can put you in the right place at the right time. God knows what He is doing. He formed us, He created us, He knit us together in our mother’s womb. He is the perfect person to prune us and to help us bear more fruit. All we need to do is listen and cooperate with Him.
So far we have talked about how God removes what is not good for us and prunes what is good for us so that it bears more fruit. What we haven’t talked about yet is probably the most important part of the passage. In John 15:5 is says, “I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.” This means that everything we need—our strength, our peace, our ability to grow—comes from staying connected to Him. Just like a branch cannot survive without the vine, we cannot thrive without Jesus.
This is important for us to know because when we are struggling, we tend to try to fix things on our own. We try to be strong, we try to hold it all together, we try to be the one to do all the things. This verse is showing us that we can’t do it on our own. No one can. We all need to turn to Jesus, and He will help us. It is also important to remember that when we feel disconnected, it’s not about trying harder—it’s about coming back to Him. Jesus is the True Vine, and we were never meant to do life on our own. When we stay close to Him, everything we need begins to flow.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode. Thank you for being the True Vine. Lord, we ask that you keep us attached to you. Help us to not wander away. Help us not to rely on our own strength or efforts. Help us to be close to you every single day. We need you, Lord! We ask this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If your life feels full, busy, maybe even overwhelming… and your relationship with God keeps getting pushed to the side… I see you.
This mentoring space is designed to help you gently bring God back into your everyday life—without pressure, without perfection.
If that’s something your heart needs right now, I’d love to invite you to join us. The link is in the show notes or at walkboldlywithjesus.com. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I hear your praises, and it gives me great delight. You are my beloved. I've given you many blessings. Bring my blessings to others, to all that you meet in your day. Let them know how much I love them. I yearn for them.”
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I have two witnesses for you today. I do not know either of these people. I saw one of the witnesses on the Encounter Ministries Facebook page, and then I saw the same witness on another friend’s page, and I felt like that was the Holy Spirit telling me to share her story. I think her story is especially good because so many people struggle with food allergies these days, and I am not sure it even occurs to us to ask for a healing from that. I am not sure we even believe that it can be healed. It probably doesn’t even enter our minds. However, for this young lady, it was life-changing. The first witness is Megan, who is talking about her miraculous healing and how it led to her new job with Encounter Ministries’ online campus. I will be relaying her testimony to you, and I will also include a link in the podcast show notes and the comments section of my YouTube channel so you can watch her give the testimony if you want to. It is so good watching her explain it. You can see the excitement and the gratitude on her face.
Megan was at a regional Encounter Ministries conference in Seattle in 2019, and she was suffering from celiac disease, eosinophilic esophagitis; she had so many food allergies that she could really only eat a handful of foods and be ok and she also had major depressive disorder. She had been Catholic her entire life, but she had never really truly met the Lord. At the healing service, the Lord took away everything that she was allergic to; the celiac disease was gone, the depression was gone, and I no longer had eosinophilic esophagitis.
In encounter ministries, we ask people to test to see if they have been healed. Test to see if the pain is gone. Test to see if you can do something that you couldn’t do before the prayer. For instance, if you couldn’t raise your arm above your head because of a shoulder injury, then after the prayer, try to see if you can raise your hand over your head. This added step to test if the healing has occurred gives the person praying and the person who has healed a chance to step out in faith and test the healing. Megan wasn’t sure how to test this healing, since it was about food allergies, and she was at a conference. She asked a friend how to test it, and they recommended she seek inner healing. During the inner healing session, she asked the Lord whether He had, in fact, healed her at the conference. And she heard Him say Yes, over and over again, yes.
After she left the inner healing session, she went to the only restaurant she knew in this small town in Texas, and she ate everything she had ever been allergic to on that plate. She ate gluten, wheat, soy, eggs, dairy, tree nuts, and peanuts, and there was not one reaction. She drove four hours home praising the Lord the whole time. She had depression for so long, and she woke up the next morning filled with joy. She had no idea where all this joy was coming from and why she was so excited and joyful. She then went to a summer intensive, and then a friend convinced her to sign up for the 2-year online course. She became aware for the first time of her identity as a beloved daughter of Jesus Christ and the authority that He gave us, and she was so excited to go deeper and deeper into their rich content. She is now working for Encounter School of Ministries as their Associate Director of the online school.
The second witness today is Sean. He is another Encounter Ministries student. In this witness, he is talking about an incredible grace he received during an Encounter Ministries class exercise. There are so many Encounter Ministry testimonies because there are so many amazing things happening at this school. I think one reason for this is that they are allowing the Holy Spirit to work through them and teaching so many others to do the same. The Holy Spirit is on the move in a big way right now. I love sharing these testimonies because we are all suffering in some way. The more I share, the more chance there is for you to see yourself or your situation in one of these witnesses. If God can do it for them, He can do it for you, too. Again, I will be telling Sean’s story, and then I will place a link for the actual video so you can watch him tell it if you want to. I think you should watch the original video, as no one tells our own testimony better than we do.
Sean was a compulsive note-taker, which doesn’t sound bad, but it can be really debilitating at times. He also has this really odd, obsessive thing where, if he is in a conversation and forgets what he's going to say, he can’t just let it go. He will spend 30 minutes poring over it, trying to remember. Sometimes he would still be thinking about it days later, and it really stole his peace. He had this going on when he started Encounter. Week after week, he encountered new revelations and new graces. A very powerful one was when a classmate was praying over him, and she received an image that he had the anointing of St. Peter to jump out of the boat at the first sign of Jesus. When she said that, he started crying, and he felt an instant urge to surrender. Now, when these obsessive thoughts come to him, he can move on instantly. He can be fully in the present moment, fully at peace. He can have new eyes to see. He can see Jesus in the people that he talks to. He can speak what people need to hear in the moment, leading them to Jesus.
One week, he received the grace of joy. He was at a Chamber of Commerce event, and even though they aren’t usually full of laughs. He found himself with a group of strangers, and they found themselves laughing and being joyful. When he got to work the next day, he had claimed victory over his workplace the night before, and the tellers were laughing for no reason. He works at a bank. The most beautiful thing was that none of it was rooted in emotion or even gratitude for the healing. It was rooted in who he is and who God is because God is faithful and Sean is His.
Sean’s father passed away when he was 3 years old. Sean had an image last week of himself with God the Father in a green field. Sean was 3 years old, and God was running after him, chasing him, playing with him, and throwing him in the air. He was teaching Sean his strength in Him. What God wants to do in all of us is to plant in our hearts that to be His son or His daughter is to be free. He told Sean at that moment that this is the new normal: this peace, this joy, this boldness. This is just the beginning.
I hope you will go and check out both of these videos. They are very powerful. I hope when you listen to these witnesses each week, you realize they are coming from normal, everyday people like you and me. There is nothing extraordinary about these people. God did not choose them because they were the best; he chose them because they were willing, seeking, and saying yes. You can too! We had a prophecy from the prayer group that we were just looking at the other day. Here is what we felt the Lord said to our group, and He is saying it to you, too. “My children, I have called each of you, and I continue to call you. I have chosen you because of your great love and your hearts that are willing. I have not chosen you because you are the wisest, speak eloquently, or perform the best. I chose you because you are small in the sense of being humble, knowing who you are, knowing that you need a God and Savior, and being willing to accept me as that.” There you go, straight from the Lord himself. He isn’t choosing people because they are the best. He is choosing people who are humble, who love Him, and who have willing hearts. He chooses those who know they cannot do anything on their own, and yet with Him, there is nothing they cannot do. Is that you? Do you want to be used by God?
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If you’re reading along, just know this has been slightly shortened to fit the space, so it might not match the audio word for word—but you’re not missing anything important.
He Is Series: Bread of Life — When You Feel Empty, Jesus Is What You’ve Been Missing
John 6:35 “Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life.’ Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”
Jesus is the Bread of Life. This was a very hard concept for people to understand. How can Jesus be the Bread of Life? Bread was a staple food in the ancient world, symbolizing sustenance and life. Jesus is telling us that He is our sustenance. He is the one who keeps us alive. He is explaining that we need more than physical sustenance—we also need spiritual sustenance.
When the Israelites were wandering in the desert, God gave them manna, bread from heaven. This met their physical needs. It was a miraculous food sent daily so they would have enough to eat. But it didn’t give eternal life. Eating manna did not prevent them from dying. However, Jesus is the bread of life, and He can give eternal life.
Jesus says in John 6:47-51: “Whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate manna and died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread… whoever eats of this bread will live forever.”
This reminds me of the Samaritan woman at the well. Jesus said in John 4:13-14, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give will never thirst.” We see a pattern: eternal life comes from God.
God gives us what we need each day. Yet we often don’t go to Him. We search elsewhere—for success, money, love, acceptance—and end up disappointed. We are all searching for something, and we will keep searching until we find Jesus.
As St. Augustine said, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in You.”
We try to fill this emptiness with things of the world—relationships, work, pleasure—but nothing satisfies. We expect others to meet all our needs, but they can’t. They weren’t meant to.
God alone can fulfill our deepest desires.
We work hard to feel worthy, looking for validation, when in reality we are already worthy because of what Jesus did on the cross.
We feel unfulfilled, unworthy, unloved—and we look to the world to fix it. But it can’t. We can’t even perfectly love each other. We want to give, but we’re often empty ourselves.
Do you see how we are set up to fail if we rely on the world?
Jesus is our daily bread. He is living water.
We need to go to Him when we feel empty, unworthy, or when our needs aren’t being met.
And yes—you can go to God for practical needs too. We pray for healing, jobs, and peace—but we can also pray for food, money, clothing, or anything we need. God cares about everything that matters to you.
Let me share a couple of stories.
I am one of 11 children. We didn’t have much money growing up. One day, my parents agreed to watch 10 extra kids, but there wasn’t enough food. They prayed—and a neighbor showed up with groceries, enough pasta to feed everyone.
While thanking God, they mentioned meat would help. In the middle of that prayer, another neighbor arrived with extra meat from hunting. God provided everything.
Another time, my dad’s car broke down. He needed it for work. That night, a neighbor knocked on the door and handed him car keys—just gave him a car. No payment, no expectation. God is so good!
God can do this for you too.
He is the Bread of Life. He is always there. When we are in need, we can turn to Him, knowing He sees us and will provide what we truly need.
We need to stop trying to fill our needs with the world. People, jobs, money—none of these can satisfy us.
Jesus is the only one who can.
And He doesn’t just give us what we need—He gives us Himself.
When we receive Him, that deep hunger inside us is finally filled.
Just like we need bread every day, we need Jesus every day—not just once, but continually.
Dear Heavenly Father, bless all those listening today. Thank you for sending Jesus as the Bread of Life and Living Water. Help us turn to you instead of the world. Help us see that only you can fill our hearts. We love you and ask this in Jesus’s name, Amen.
Thank you for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. We are building a community of people who want to live their faith boldly. If you know someone who belongs here, share this episode with them.
I look forward to seeing you tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are—and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have questions, email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com.
Today’s Word from the Lord is:
“I see a very large, living heart, burning with love—the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Your hearts are within mine. We beat as one. You love with mercy, power, and purity. My heart lives in you.”
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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This might not be word-for-word because I had to shorten it to meet the new character limit for this section. Some people like to read along while they listen, and I want to explain that it might not match up perfectly.
He Is Series El Kanna — The Jealous God (God Who Pursues You) When You Feel Forgotten, God Is Still Pursuing You
Exodus 34:14 “For you shall worship no other god, because the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.”
Today, we are looking at the name El Kanna — The Jealous God. This might seem a bit harsh at first. We’ve all seen jealousy in people, and it usually isn’t healthy. I was in a relationship with a very jealous person once, and it wasn’t good. That’s not the kind of jealousy we’re talking about with God.
We are imperfect, so when we feel jealous, it can come out as bitterness, control, or pettiness. But God’s jealousy is different.
God loves us so much that He cares when we turn away from Him. He cares when we stray from the path. Right before this verse, Exodus 34:12-13 warns not to make covenants with the people of the land because it will become a trap. God knew that following the ways of the world would pull them into things they didn’t want to do.
It’s like when you make a new friend and they invite you to do something you don’t really want to do, but you say yes anyway. I remember going to a horror movie with a new friend—I hate horror movies, but I went just to keep the peace. That’s not a big deal, but what if it was something more serious? What if they invited you into something harmful, and little by little you got pulled in?
We are called to live in the world, but not be of the world. We are meant to be examples of Christ. But sometimes we forget and begin to love the things of this world.
We may think this doesn’t apply to us because we don’t have false gods like in the Old Testament. But today there are more idols than ever. We treat influencers, celebrities, athletes, and entertainment like they are everything. We give them our time, attention, and admiration.
If we look at our lives honestly, we can begin to understand why God cares so deeply about where our attention and love go.
If you look at your day, can you see why God might be jealous? If you look at who or what gets most of your time, can you understand it?
God wants an intimate relationship with you. He sent His Son to die on the cross so He could be close to you. When you see it this way, His jealousy makes sense.
But He is not jealous like we are. He is not controlling, petty, or trying to get even. He is not going to hurt us because we hurt Him.
God is jealous because He loves us too much to lose us to sin. He is jealous because He wants more for us.
I love the saying: God meets us where we are, but He loves us too much to leave us there.
He knows how valuable you are. He believes you are worth fighting for.
If God weren’t jealous, that would be the real problem. That would mean He didn’t care if we wandered away or headed toward destruction.
We often want to believe we can do whatever we want and still end up in heaven because God loves us. But the Bible tells us clearly that we are called to love God with all our heart, mind, and soul.
Are we doing that? Are we putting Him first?
If not, it helps us understand why God calls us back. He is protective because He loves us. He doesn’t ignore us while we go the wrong way. He doesn’t just focus on those who are doing well. He wants all of His children with Him in heaven.
Do you know what that means?
It means God is actively pursuing you. He is chasing after you. He is fighting for you because you are worth fighting for—even if you don’t believe that.
God is not content to let you go down the wrong road. He is not content to watch you chase things that will only lead to emptiness.
He is jealous in all the good ways—and we are so blessed that He is.
Dear El Kanna, I ask that you bless each person listening. Thank you for loving us so deeply that you pursue us. Help us stay on the right path. Show us where we have gone astray and gently lead us back. We want to stay close to you. We love you, Lord, and ask this in Jesus’s name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If something in you has been stirred lately—like you want more of God—that’s not random. That’s an invitation. And if you’re ready to respond, I would love to walk with you in the mentoring group. You can join through the link in the show notes or at walkboldlywithjesus.com.
I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have questions, email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com.
Today’s Word from the Lord is:
“Please freely call upon my name. I long to hear from you, and I will come running.”
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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If you’re reading along, just know this has been slightly shortened to fit the space, so it might not match the audio word for word—but you’re not missing anything important.
He Is Series Jehovah Mekoddishkem (The Lord Who Sanctifies You) — When You Feel Unworthy, God Is Still Working in You
Exodus 31:13 “You yourself are to speak to the Israelites: ‘You shall keep my sabbaths… that you may know that I, the Lord, sanctify you.’”
Today, we are talking about Jehovah Mekoddishkem (The Lord Who Sanctifies You). To be sanctified means to be made holy. God is the one who makes us holy.
At a mission, a speaker asked who wanted to be holy; only a few hands went up. Then he asked who wanted to go to heaven—everyone raised their hand. He said, “You know the only way to get to heaven is to be holy, right?”
Another speaker said something similar. Few wanted to be saints, but everyone wanted heaven. The truth is, we are all called to be saints—not necessarily Saints with a capital S like Mother Teresa or Saint Catherine of Siena—but we do need to be sanctified to enter heaven.
God is the one who sanctifies us through His grace, love, and mercy. He wants each of His children to be holy so we can spend eternity with Him.
I think many of us hesitate to say we want to be holy for two reasons. First, we don’t want to seem prideful. Second, we think it will require more than we can give. We assume it means doing everything perfectly or giving up everything we enjoy, so we avoid it.
I looked up what sanctification means using the Truthly app—an AI tool that shares faith-based insights rooted in Catholic teaching.
To be sanctified means:
To be made holy — God transforms us from the inside out through grace.
To be set apart — We are dedicated to God, no longer living just for ourselves.
To be purified — God doesn’t just cover sin; He cleanses it.
The primary means of sanctification are:
The Holy Spirit
The Sacraments
Prayer, fasting, and works of mercy
Suffering united to the Cross
The goal is full participation in God’s life—what some call theosis—sharing in His divine life by grace.
This is the purpose of the Christian life: not just to avoid hell, but to become truly holy.
We cannot make ourselves holy, but we can cooperate with God—or resist Him.
Before I continue, I want to say something important.
I’m not sharing this so you feel like you have to do everything or that you’re falling behind.
This isn’t a checklist.
This is just a way to notice how God is already working in your life… and where He might be inviting you a little deeper.
You don’t have to do everything perfectly. Just listen and see if one thing stands out.
Here are simple ways we can cooperate with God’s grace:
Prayer — Opens our hearts to God
The Sacraments — Especially the Eucharist and Confession
Scripture — Helps us hear His voice
Fasting — Trains our hearts to depend on God
Works of mercy — Loving others
Offering suffering — Letting God transform it
Devotion to Mary — Drawing closer to Jesus
Spiritual guidance — Getting help from others
Daily reflection — Noticing God’s presence
Virtue — Choosing patience, humility, and love
This is not about doing all of these. Just ask: is there one step God is inviting me into?
We can also unintentionally resist grace:
Pride — Thinking we don’t need God
Serious sin — Though we can always return
Neglecting prayer — Losing connection
Small compromises — Slowly pulling away
Tempting situations — Leading us to struggle
Spiritual apathy — “It doesn’t matter”
Ignoring conscience — Dismissing that nudge
Attachments — Loving things more than God
Unforgiveness — Blocking grace
Despair or presumption — Too far gone or no need to change
Again, this is not to make you feel bad. Just ask gently:
“Is anything blocking what God wants to do in me?”
Grace is not earned—it is received. God is always giving. The question is whether our hearts are open.
As Saint Augustine said, our hearts are restless until they rest in God—and every step toward Him brings us closer to that rest.
I know this episode was more teaching than usual, but I felt called to share it. If you’re listening, I believe you want heaven—and God wants that too. He is working in you every day.
What is one way you can cooperate more with His grace? What might be resisting it?
Dear Jehovah Mekoddishkem, bless all who are listening. Thank You for sanctifying us and wanting us with You forever. Show us anything blocking Your grace and help us cooperate with it. We want to be holy. We ask this in Jesus’ name, Amen.
Thank you for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus! Take a moment and ask the Holy Spirit, “Who needs to hear this?” If someone comes to mind, send it to them. I look forward to seeing you Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are—and so do I! Have a blessed weekend!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have questions, email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com.
Today’s Word from the Lord is:
“When you find it difficult to be my voice, call upon the power of my name. My name will give you strength, help you overcome fear, and walk through every trial. My name is the power you need.”
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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He Is Series El Chaiyai (The God of My Life) — When You Feel Disconnected, God Is Closer Than You Think
Psalm 42:8 “By day the Lord commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life.”
El Chaiyai, the God of my life. What comes to mind right away is, “Am I letting God be the God of my life?” Am I following His lead, or am I expecting Him to follow mine? Am I putting Him first in my life, or am I fitting Him in where I can? We often fill our lives so full of stuff that it leaves very little room for the really important things, like faith and family. Many of us start our mornings off by spending time on our phones. We check our emails, our text messages, what is happening on social media, and what is happening in the news. Sometimes we have done all of this before we have even gotten out of bed.
You know what we often don’t do before getting out of bed? Thank God for a brand new day of life. We also don’t tend to offer the day to the Lord or invite Him in with us. We don’t ask Him to protect us and to keep us safe. We just wake up, hit snooze, wake up again, hit snooze, and then go on our phones to catch up on all we missed in those few hours that we allowed ourselves to sleep. We could be an hour or two into our day before we even recognize the Lord. Sometimes even longer. This is something we should be aware of and consciously choose whether to change.
If this is our current habit, unless we consciously choose to change it, it won't change. Do we need to change it? Is it okay to do all those other things first, as long as we fit in prayer time somewhere? If you are asking me this question, I will remind you that we are asked to give our first fruits to the Lord. That doesn’t mean that we have to pray with the Lord first thing in the morning. What it means is that we make a plan so we know when we are going to sit with the Lord. We make time for Him first, and then we fill the rest of our calendar with other things.
I think that God is super happy whenever we spend time with Him. I don’t think it matters when; I think it matters if we do it or not. God is just asking for some time with us. I know people often think God is mad at us when we do things “wrong” or when we don’t get things right. I don’t believe this. God knows us, He knows our hearts, and He knows the broken world we live in. He knows our past and all the experiences that shaped our lens on how we see the world.
I think instead of reaching for our phones first thing, I believe we should begin our days with a quick hello to the Lord. I am not talking about a long discussion with Him, but a quick hello and an invitation into your day would be a great way to start. I want to be honest and let you know this is not how I start my day. I start it by hitting snooze, then get up to make my husband breakfast and lunch before he leaves for work. I get the dog out of the door and into the backyard, then feed her. After all of this is done, I go upstairs and, on a good day, I read the Bible or write in my prayer journal. At some point, I will do a quick workout. Interpersed through this whole routine, I scroll on Facebook, check my messages, and my emails.
I say all of this because sometimes we look at other people’s lives and think they are getting it all right, and then we feel guilt or shame: if they are getting it right, why can’t I get it right? To be clear, I am not getting it right. I am just thinking about what it means to have the God of my life in my life, and I am realizing I might not be cooperating with Him as much as I could be. If I want God to be the God of my live then it would be good to invite Him into my day first thing in the morning. I can invite Him in and ask Him to lead me. Show me where to stay the course and when to shift my course in one direction or another.
If God is the God of my life, then why am I not running all major decisions by Him before I make them? Why do I not communicate with Him more? Did you know you can sit down and have a conversation with God? A real back-and-forth conversation. I did not know this until somewhat recently, and it has been a game-changer for me. I still don’t do it as often as I would like, but when I started asking the Lord questions and actually writing down what I felt He was saying back to me, my faith grew so much deeper. When I started to listen to what God was saying to me, I began to learn how He talks and to recognize His voice. This helped me discern whether something I heard was from the Lord, from myself, or from the enemy. It is amazing to hear the Lord say wonderful things about me. He wants to say wonderful things about you, too! All you need to do is sit and listen.
My challenge for you today is to look at your life and ask yourself, " Is God the Lord of my life? If the answer is yes, that is awesome, keep doing what you're doing. If the answer is no, that is ok. Just sit down and ask yourself what I could be doing differently to put God first in my life. What can I do to make God the CEO of my life? How can I make small shifts towards allowing God more control and power in my life? One of these can be to say a quick prayer to the Lord before grabbing your phone in the morning. I am not asking for you to change everything at once. All I am asking is that you notice whether you are blocking the Lord from being Lord of your life in any way, and, if so, make tiny shifts to change that. Remember, progress, not perfection. We will never be perfect this side of heaven. God is not looking for perfection; He is looking for progress. Are we moving in the right direction? That is all he wants from us.
Dear El Chaiyai, we ask you to bless all those listening to this episode. Lord, we are so grateful you are the God of our lives. You have seen the mess that we make of our lives when we are in control. We are sorry that we try to take the reins back over and over again. Please help us to turn our lives over to you once and for all. Please help us to give you our first fruits. Help us to schedule you into our lives before we schedule everything else. We are so sorry, we usually end up squeezing you in wherever we can instead of scheduling you first. We love you, and we ask all this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you’ve been listening to me mention mentoring and something in your heart still feels like, “This isn’t really for me… I’m not good enough… God wouldn’t want me like this,” I want you to know—that is exactly why this mentoring space exists. This is a place for real people, not perfect people. A place to come as you are and slowly begin to believe that God really does love you. If you’ve been longing for that kind of safe space, I’d love to invite you to join us. You can find the link in the show notes or visit walkboldlywithjesus.com. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “There is great power in my name, my little ones. There is great power. It is the power of love. It is the power of unity. It is a power that I wish to give to all of my chosen people wherever they are.”
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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If you’re reading along, just know this has been slightly shortened to fit the space, so it might not match the audio word for word—but you’re not missing anything important. Today I would like to talk about some amazing things that have been happening during my Monday night class. Sometimes, during praise and worship, the Deacon leading the class will sense that the Lord wants to perform healings or show His personal love for us. He asks if anyone needs or wants prayer. If you do, you raise your hand, and those around you pray over you. We may not all feel comfortable praying for others, but the point of the class is to step out in the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Let’s step forward, relying on the Holy Spirit to guide us.
In this class, we’ve been taught to assess the situation before and after prayer so we can see how God is working. Even asking how someone feels is an act of faith. When you pray, you want healing, but asking if anything has changed takes courage because they might say no. And sometimes they do. God always answers prayers, just not always how or when we expect. I’ve prayed for healing and not seen the result, but I trust God was still working. Asking what is happening is stepping out in faith.
When I begin to pray, I ask what they need and, if there’s pain, what level it is from 1 to 10 so we can compare later. After praying—maybe just a couple of minutes—we ask what they feel. Any change? Any warmth? What is the pain level now? We also ask them to share anything they notice from the Holy Spirit.
We do this because we pray with expectant faith. We expect God to show up. Jesus said in John 14:12-14 that those who believe will do the works He did, and more. If we ask in His name, He will do it. That doesn’t mean it always happens how or when we expect, but we can trust He is moving. One thing I love that we were taught is to say, “Don’t be nice.” Don’t pretend something happened just to make us feel better. God is the one doing the healing—He doesn’t need false praise. All the glory belongs to Him.
A few weeks ago, the Deacon felt the Lord wanted to heal that night. A woman in front of me raised her hand. Two of us prayed over her. She had severe stomach pain for months and couldn’t even enjoy a recent cruise. That night, her pain was a 10. After just a few minutes of prayer, it dropped to a 2. Praise God—He is so good!
The next day, I visited a friend with breathing issues. Doctors had found something in her lungs and needed more testing. I asked if I could pray for her, and she said yes. After praying, I asked if she felt anything. She said she felt peace come over her. Praise God! We didn’t see everything right away, but I know God is taking care of her. He knew she needed peace in that moment.
This past week, another woman asked for prayer. I didn’t hear her need, so I prayed in tongues. When asked how she felt, she also said she felt peace. Thank you, God—I love it!
Later, the Deacon said God was healing again and invited us to pray. I saw a woman raise her hand and went over. She had tightness and pain at about a 5 or 6. After prayer, it dropped to a 2. Praise God! She then mentioned feeling heavy pressure that kept her from standing.
We are also taught to invite an act of faith—trying something they couldn’t do before. I asked her to try standing, and she did, feeling a little better. We prayed again, giving all glory to God, and she improved even more. Later, she gave me a thumbs-up—and I saw her not just standing, but dancing. Praise God—you are amazing!
These things are incredible—and they are happening every day. God wants to do this in your life too. These miracles didn’t happen because we said the perfect words or did everything right. We’re just learning. They didn’t happen because we’re special. They happened because the Deacon listened and was brave enough to say yes—and we were brave enough to respond.
We stepped out, even when unsure. Even when afraid. Even when we didn’t feel good enough. We believed what Jesus said in John 14.
And here’s the truth—you can too.
God isn’t using us because we’re special. He’s using us because we said yes. We want to be His hands and feet—and so we are. The same is true for you.
You might be thinking this is amazing—but not for you. That’s not true. Anyone can be used by God if they say yes. You may feel too broken, too weak, or not holy enough. But God has already used people just like you to do incredible things.
Maybe you think you’re too old. That’s not true either. God doesn’t need you to change first. He just needs your yes: “Yes, Lord, use me.” He will do the rest.
I pray this witness plants a seed in your heart. Even if you’re not ready to say yes today, I pray the Lord shows you how He wants to use you. And when you see it, hear it, or feel it, I pray you say, “Yes, Lord, use me.”
I love you all so much, and I hope you have an incredible week!
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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He is Series El Deah (The God Who Knows) — When You Feel Misunderstood, God Knows the Real You
1 Samuel 2:3 “Talk no more so very proudly, let not arrogance come from your mouth; for the Lord is a God of knowledge, and by him actions are weighed.
El Deah, the God who knows. This is an important name for us all to remember as we look at our lives and wonder why God does what He does. We often have a plan and a timeline for how and when things should be done. And life rarely works out exactly like we want it to or on the timeline that we set for it. God knows everything. His ways are higher than our ways. God’s plan is not just different than our plan, it is better in every way. Often, when we are in the middle of it, we can’t see this. We see how it is unfolding, and we get angry at how God did things.
For instance, we apply for a job, and we don’t get it, and we get mad at God because He didn’t give us what we wanted. However, what if that job wasn’t right for us? Yes, with the limited knowledge we have, that job seemed perfect. However, God knows better than we do. He knows things we can’t see. For instance, he knows that your personality won’t get along well with that boss. Or he knows the current boss is only there for another few months, and the new boss will want you to work more hours. God knows that you have something really difficult coming down the road, and you will need more time to deal with that than the new job would give you. God knows the new job would require you to travel more, and you would miss your family. I don’t know all the scenarios, but God does. It is not our job to understand God’s plan; it is our job to trust that He knows what He is doing.
Another example is one that I read in a book, I think. It was about Heidi and Rolland Baker. I don’t recall the story exactly, but I will summarize what I remember. Heidi and Rolland have been used powerfully by the Lord in a healing ministry. They were in the Middle East for something, and they were called to pray for healing over a man who was very powerful, and he was in the hospital dying. They went to the hospital, and this man was surrounded by family. None of them was a Christian. Heidi and Rolland prayed for this man, and they did not see a change.
Heidi and Rolland didn’t understand. In their eyes, it would have been the perfect time and place for a healing, because if God had healed that man in front of all his family, they would have seen God’s power and glory and believed. Heidi and Rolland stayed and prayed as long as they could, but they had to go on a trip that was already planned, and the man was not expected to live very much longer. They went on their trip, and to their surprise, when they got back, the man was still alive. They were asked to come to the hospital to pray over him again. This time, when they got there, there was even more family. All of the man’s relatives, even those who lived far away, had time to travel in to say goodbye. This time, they prayed over the man, and he was healed, and every single one of his family members was baptized.
If God had healed him when Heidi and Rolland thought it was the perfect time, then all those family members who came into town later would have missed out on witnessing the Glory of God. God knows. He knows when. He knows why. He knows everything!
Another reason it is good to remember that God knows is that sometimes we can try to hide things from God. We might be mad at Him, but we don’t want Him to know it, so we act like nothing is wrong. We hold that anger in, and we don’t talk to Him about it. The problem is that anger can block so many graces, and you will be blocking those graces for no reason because God already knows you are angry. He already knows why you are angry, and He is just waiting for you to bring it to Him so He can heal those wounds.
We can get so caught up in trying to be who we think God wants us to be. We try to clean ourselves up and try to say our prayers perfectly. We try to look perfect when we go to mass and when we are around others. We don’t talk about how we are really feeling because we don’t want anyone to know, especially God. I think so many of us have a real fear that if God really knew the things we have done, or the things we have thought, then He would not love us anymore. He would reject. We are all so afraid that God will see the real us and leave. We worry He will realize we aren’t the person He thought we were. This is a lie and not something we need to fear. God knows us, the real us. God made us. It says in Psalm 139:13-14, “For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; that I know very well.”
We can not hide who are from the Lord. He knows exactly who you are. He knows your thoughts, your strengths, your weaknesses, everything you have ever done, and everything you will ever do. He knows it all, and He is still with you. He still loves you. He will never leave you, no matter what you do or say. It is ok to be yourself. It is ok to pray, even if you feel you are not good at it. It is ok to talk to the Lord, even when you are made at Him. It is ok to come to Him and ask for something. Nothing is too big or too small. You don’t have to wait until you change, until you are perfect, or until you feel worthy to come to God. He wants you to come just as you are. This can be easier if we remember that He already knows the real us, so there is no need to hide it!
Dear El Deah, I ask you to bless each person listening. Lord, you are amazing. We are so grateful that you love us even though you know the real us. Please help us remember that when we are scared to show you the real us. Please also help us remember that you know everything, so when your plan is different from ours, help us be patient and trust that it is not just different but also better. Lord, we love you, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If this episode touched your heart, would you consider sharing it with someone who might need to hear it too? You never know how God might use it in their life. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “You must bring them into a world that does not desire them, that does not acknowledge their goodness, but they know. They know that there's something special and so wear these virtues proudly. Wear these every single day. Wear these wherever you go because you bring them to a world that is starving for them.”
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He Is Series Jehovah Shammah (The Lord is There)— When You Feel Alone, God Is Already There
Ezekiel 48:35 “The circumference of the city shall be eighteen thousand cubits. And the name of the city from that time on shall be, The Lord is There.”
When I read this name this morning, Jehovah Shammah, the Lord is There, I thought it was powerful. How many of us really needed to hear that this morning? How many of us needed to hear that the Lord is right there with us? So many of my friends that I have been talking to lately have really been struggling with believing this. Something I have really been struggling with over these last few weeks is when my head knows something, but my heart doesn’t seem to fully know it.
Let me give you an example, in case what I just said doesn’t make sense to you. I know so strongly in my head that I don’t have to do anything for the Lord to love me. I know He loves me completely and unconditionally, no matter what I do. I will tell you this all day long because I know with my whole being that it is true for you too! However, then I will catch myself striving for his love anyway. The way it feels to me is like my conscious mind knows it, but then my subconscious mind doesn’t quite have it yet. It is still replaying old thoughts.
This verse is nice because it reminds us that God is always there. I know many of you are struggling right now. So many of you are chronically ill and feel like you are never going to get better. Others are suffering from depression and anxiety, and it can feel overwhelming. Some of you are suffering because you are watching loved ones suffer, and you just want to make it better for them, and you can’t. I know you feel like God has left you. He has moved on to someone better. You feel He has decided you are not worth the effort and that He doesn’t want to waste His healing on you. That sounds harsh, yet it is how some of you talk to yourselves. Whether you know it or not, some of you feel God has left you because you aren’t worthy. I have some news for you, none of us is worthy. Not on our own, at least. However, Jesus took all of our sins and shame to the cross with Him so that we could be worthy.
Here are some truths that I think we all need to know. First, God is always there for us. This is a fact. Even if we can’t feel God, He is still there. He never leaves our side. This may be hard for us to wrap our heads around. Especially if the people in our lives have not been there for us. If they have left us in our times of need, then we might think to ourselves, “Of course God is not staying, no one ever stays.” Have you thought about this before?
What comes to mind is something from the devotional about the name Yahweh. It said that God is so other than us. He is not like us at all. For me, this was one of those things I obviously knew, yet I am not sure I ever really thought about it like that. You know how you can hear something, and although you know it is true, when you hear it said out loud, it just makes you think differently. I know that God is not like us, and yet we still assume He will do things like we do things. He will abandon us, He will reject us, stop loving us if we show Him who we really are. This is not true! God is not like us, and He will never leave you!
The second thing is that God is actually closest to us when we feel the farthest from Him. This doesn’t make sense because why would we feel so alone if God were so close to us? That I don’t have an answer to. However, Psalm 34:18 states that "The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” God is with you. He knows what you are going through, and He is taking every step with you. And if you are allowing Him to, then He is leading you every step of the way. He will step in if He feels you are going to fall.
The image I just got is of a toddler learning to walk. As I wrote that last part, I could see a toddler trying to learn to walk, and it wasn’t easy, and they were struggling, but they were still doing it. I saw the Lord right next to the toddler as a loving father. Not rescuing them from this task, as they need to learn to walk, but right there, ready to reach out his hand if it looked like they were going to fall. The Lord is doing the same with you and me. He is walking beside us, ready to put out His hand when He thinks we may need it. He knows we need to learn whatever this hard time is teaching us, and so He is allowing it to happen. However, He is also right there to reach out his hand, or scoop us up into his arms to save us from danger we can’t handle.
I heard something in the Mel Robbins Podcast yesterday that I just felt a prompt to share with you. The episode was called, “Simple Steps for Getting Unstuck: Do THIS and Change Your Life.” The one thing that I want to share with you from this was about resistance. In the podcast, they were saying that resistance is a part of life. When I think of resistance, I think of anything that is getting in the way of you doing what you want to do. What the guest said, which I felt was so powerful, was that if you encounter resistance, you should be happy. The reason you should be happy is that that means you are doing something important that has a purpose.
I have said this before, and I will keep saying it until we all learn it. When you are trying to do something, and you keep encountering obstacles, sometimes we can start to think it wasn’t really a calling from the Lord, maybe I am not supposed to do this, what was I thinking, of course I am not the right person for this. Or, whatever it is you are thinking. I think this could be life-changing if we could start to reframe how we see all these obstacles. What if, instead of getting frustrated because all these obstacles are in our way, we got excited? What if we started looking at obstacles as if they were confirmation that we are on the right path and that the enemy is confirming for us that what we are about to do will be powerful?
Let me share a secret with you. If you are doing something that is not going to be powerful and is not going to change people’s lives, the enemy is not going to care about you. He is going to let you be and do your thing because it won’t affect him. However, if you are going to do something powerful, if people are going to be changed because of what you are trying to do, the enemy will stop at nothing to stop you. Do you see what a powerful shift this could be for us if we could stop letting the enemy convince us we can’t do it and instead, when we start to hear the negative voice in our mind we could take that as confirmation that we are on the right path and double down on our effort to let the enemy know He can’t stop us.
That might have been a bit of a side tangent, but I felt led to share it, so I know someone needed to hear that today. The last thing I really want to hammer home before I leave you today is that the Lord is there already. You don’t have to change for Him to be there. You don’t have to earn His love or His time. You don’t have to be perfect and do everything right for Him to be there. He is ALREADY THERE! He always has been, and He always will be, and there is nothing you can do about it! Like it or not, He is forever there!
Dear Jehovah Shammah, I ask you to bless each person listening today. Lord, we love you so much, and we ask you to help us feel you there more often. Help us to feel your presence. Lord, there are so many who feel so lost right now, and they need to know you are always there with them. Help us to know that you are there, not just in the good times but in the bad times as well. Please help us not just know this in our heads, but feel it in our hearts as well. We ask this according to your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you’ve ever felt like you’re trying to walk with God… but you’re doing it alone… I want you to know—you don’t have to. That’s actually why I created this mentoring group. It’s a place where you can be surrounded by others who are seeking God too—people who understand, who will pray with you, and walk alongside you. If your heart is craving that kind of connection, I’d love for you to join us. The link is in the show notes or at walkboldlywithjesus.com.
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, my chosen ones, I ask you to clothe yourself in virtues of kindness, humility, mercy, forgiveness, and patience. These are things the world you live in do not value, but they look at you. They look at the clothing you are wearing, the virtues I have bestowed upon you, and they wonder, and you are my witnesses because they wonder, and they see the goodness of these virtues.”
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Episode #1213 He Is Series YHWH (I AM) When You Feel Unworthy but God Draws Near Anyway
Exodus 3:13-15 “But Moses said to God, ‘If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” He said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I am has sent me to you.’” God also said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you’: This is my name forever, and this is my title for all generations.”
Today, we are discussing a name for the Lord that was not spoken out loud for a very long time, and eventually it was only spoken by priests in the Jerusalem Temple. This name is YHWH (Yahweh), which means I AM. Did you know Yahweh (yah-WEH) occurs more than 6,800 times in the Old Testament? It appears in every book except Esther, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs. I am learning so much through this series. I had no idea that this name occurred so many times. In the English edition, they usually replace the word Lord, with Adonay and then for Yahweh as “LORD” in all capital letters.
When trying to figure out what this name meant and why it was so important, I found an article called, “The Meaning of Yahweh: Why It Matters in Biblical Studies,” by Jenna Martin. (https://www.biblestudytools.com/bible-study/topical-studies/why-it-matters-that-god-is-yahweh.html) This article gives 7 attributes that we know to be true about God. I would like to share them with you now.
1.) Yahweh Is the Self-Existent, Eternal God- God has no need for us. He doesn’t need anyone or anything. The rest of us need a lot to go in the right order to keep existing. If we don’t have our health, then no matter what else we have, we will eventually no longer cease to exist. God is not like this. He is eternal. He has always existed. He is the beginning and the end. He needs nothing to continue to exist.
2.) Yahweh is a Relational God- Yahweh is only used in the Bible when the author is talking about His personal relationship with people. A great example of this is Psalm 19. The author talks in the first 6 verses about Elohim (another name for God) and his relationship with the material world. Then, in verse 7, he shifts and starts to write about Yahweh and his relationship with those who know him and who are in covenant with him. God is making sure we know that He wants to have a personal relationship with His people. He does not want to be far from them. He doesn’t want to be held at arm’s length. God wants to be very close to us.
3.) Yahweh Is with Us- Yahweh is here, interacting with our world, among us. And he does that out of love. God is under no obligation to remain close to us, working in our lives and writing a love story between himself and the world. And yet, he chooses to do so. In fact, he chooses to build his very kingdom among believers. Luke 17:21 says, “Nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’ For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.” God’s kingdom is right here.
4.) Yahweh Is the Unchanging God- God is the same yesterday, today, and always. (Hebrews 13:8). God is, who He is. He does not change because His teachings are difficult. He does not change because people don’t like Him. He is always the same. You can rely on that. In John 6:66, it says, “Because of this, many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him.” Jesus talked about how He was the bread of life, and then in John 6:53, He said, “So Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. ' “ Jesus said something that was hard to understand, and He lost followers. He still said it. He knew they would leave. He knew it would be hard, and yet He said it anyway. He did not change so that He would be more popular. He didn’t teach what people wanted to hear. He taught the truth no matter what. Knowing that God is never going to change, we need to decide whether to follow Him and conform to His ways or not.
5.) Yahweh is Wholly Other than Us- Psalm 50:21 says, ”These things you have done, and I have been silent; you thought that I was one like yourself. But now I rebuke you and lay the charge before you.” We tend to think God is like us. We know on some level that He isn’t. We know He is almighty. We know He is God. Yet, we also tend to think He is like us. For instance, we think He gets mad at us for no reason, because those around us do. We think His love is conditional because the love of those around us is conditional. We think that God thinks we are too much, just like everyone else does. God is not like us. He relates to us more deeply than we can imagine, but he is not like us. His ways are higher than our ways. We don’t understand why God does what He does because we forget that He is not like us. He knows everything. He is making decisions based on the past, present, and future. We mostly make them based on the past or the present.
6.) Yahweh Keeps His Covenant with Us- God’s covenant with Abraham shows His faithfulness, but when He reveals His name as Yahweh to Moses, He is making that faithfulness unmistakably clear—He is the God who is, who was, and who will always keep His word. Yahweh is not just the God who makes promises—He is the God who keeps them, unchanging and faithful through every generation.
7.) Yahweh Is Full of Mystery... but Worth Seeking!- We are not meant to completely understand the meaning of the name I AM who I AM. We aren’t meant to fully understand the Lord. Our brains can’t comprehend all of it. Our brains are human, and so they are limited in what we can understand. Also, He is so vast and so complex that there is not enough time in our lifetime to understand everything there is to know. Part of our pursuit to grow closer to the lord is to desire to seek to understand and know Him more and more.
Do you feel like you know more about the Lord now than you did before listening to this? Were there any things that were listed that surprised you? Maybe you already knew all of them, and yet it was a good refresher to go over them again. I definitely learned a few things today. I also went deeper on a few things I already knew on one level, but took root in a whole new way today. God definitely is mysterious. I love that! I love that He will never stop surprising us.
Dear Yahweh, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, you are amazing, and we are so grateful for all you do. We are grateful that you are a mystery. Please help our hunger to seek you; never die. We are grateful for all your covenants with us. Please help us to never give up trust and faith in your covenants. We are grateful that you are not us. Please help us to remember you are so much greater than us and that you have no limitations on what you can do. We are grateful that you are unchanging. Please always remind us of this when we forget. Remind us that you are always the same! We are grateful that you are always with us and that you are a relational God. Please help us to remember you never leave our side. Help us to remember that you desire a relationship with us and that you don’t need us to be perfect before we have that relationship with us. We are grateful that you are self-existent and eternal. It is reassuring to know you don’t need us and that you will always be here, no matter what. There is no beginning or end with you. Thank you so much, Lord. Please help us to remember all this. We ask this in the mighty name of Jesus, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “This peace will bring you closer and closer to me. This peace will give you the grace and the mercy and the compassion that you need to truly serve all of my children. You are all my chosen children, and peace to you is the gift that I give that more than anything will assure you of my great love for you.”
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He Is Series Jehovah Sabaoth (The Lord of Hosts) — When You’re Tired of Fighting and Need God to Fight for You
1 Samuel 17:45 “But David said to the Philistine, ‘You come to me with sword and spear and javelin; but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied.’”
Today, we are discussing Jehovah Sabaoth, the Lord of Hosts. I put this off because I wasn’t sure what it meant. I thought “Lord of Hosts” meant Eucharist, and I didn’t understand it. Do you ever do that? Put something off because you aren’t sure what it means or how to do it? I can always tell when God is stretching me because He highlighted this one for me. When I told Him I didn’t understand, He reminded me that this is the whole purpose of this podcast.
I didn’t start this podcast because I was a Bible scholar. I started because I had so much to learn and wanted to bring you along. I was learning through Bible studies and Encounter School of Ministry and wanted to share it. So when I didn’t understand this topic, I searched, “What does it mean when someone says God of Hosts?”
I found that “Lord of Hosts” appears over 200 times in the Old Testament. “Lord” refers to Yahweh, the self-existent, redemptive God—the “I AM.” He wasn’t created; He is the Creator. “Hosts” comes from the Hebrew sabaoth, meaning armies—spiritual and earthly. The name shows God’s complete authority over every power and realm.
As soon as I understood this, I knew I had to share it. So many of you are struggling and feel like you’re in a spiritual battle. Hear this: God is the Lord of Hosts. He is in charge of every army, seen and unseen. Sometimes battles in Scripture involved fighting, sometimes they didn’t—but God was always in control.
The battle we don’t see is the spiritual one. We can’t see angels and fallen angels fighting, but the battle for our souls is real. I take comfort knowing God fights for us. He is our Commander-in-Chief—not just of earthly armies, but of all armies.
Jesus defeated death once and for all through the cross and resurrection. Death no longer has a hold on us. So if we believe that, why are we so afraid? God is on our side. He is protecting us. He is our shield.
God is our Creator, Almighty, Provider, Healer, Peace, Shepherd, Strength, and Justice. If all of this is true, why does the spiritual battle feel so strong?
I looked for answers and found five reasons:
1. Knowing God doesn’t remove the battle—it reveals it
As we grow, we become more aware of what’s at stake.
1 Peter 5:8 reminds us the enemy is always prowling. The battle was always there—you’re just more aware now.
2. You matter more than you think
Your life has purpose, and your obedience affects others.
Ephesians 6:12 reminds us this is a spiritual battle. The enemy doesn’t fight what isn’t a threat.
3. Knowing God isn’t the same as trusting Him
We can know God is Provider, Peace, and Faithful—and still struggle to trust Him. The battle happens in that gap.
4. We are still being formed
God is shaping us to rely on Him.
James 1:2–3 reminds us trials build endurance. The battle is part of that process.
5. Love requires freedom
God could remove the battle, but then we wouldn’t choose Him. Real love requires trust and surrender.
The deeper truth: the goal isn’t to learn about God so life is easy. The goal is to know Him so you can stand when life is hard.
Sometimes we think if we pray enough or do everything right, life will be easy. But battles aren’t pointless. They change us.
If you are in a spiritual battle, you are not alone. God is with you, protecting you, healing you. We don’t understand His ways, but we know He keeps His promises. Sometimes He saves us from the battle; sometimes He saves us through it—but He always saves us.
God is the Lord of Hosts. He is the Commander-in-Chief. Everything answers to Him. We don’t have to be afraid.
Dear Jehovah Sabaoth, bless all those listening. Thank You for being in every battle with us. Give us strength, courage, and peace. Help us remember that the One in us is greater than the one in the world (1 John 4:4). We love You and ask this in Jesus’ name, Amen.
Thank you for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you want to go deeper, I invite you to join my mentoring program. This month we’re diving into fasting—what it means and how it draws us closer to God. You can join live on Zoom and be part of a supportive, faith-filled community. I would love to have you. Visit walkboldlywithjesus.com or check the show notes. I’ll be praying for you. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord (October 2025):
“Peace is my gift to you, my children—a peace beyond understanding. Receive it. Let it fill every part of your heart. Open yourself fully to it.”
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Witness Wednesday #203 Catherine D. (Retreat)
Today, I want to share about how the Lord can sometimes work in our lives. I went to a retreat in January with some of my big life mentoring sisters. There were about 20 of us there. We spent the time doing cool things like running in the ocean first thing in the morning, dressing in 80s gear, and doing jazzercise at a local restaurant. I had not met most of these people before. Aside from the cool activities planned, we also spent some time talking about what was going on in our lives and where we wanted to be at the end of the year. This wasn’t easy, as many of us had never met, and sharing the intimate details of our lives was scary. Although once people started sharing their stories, the strangest thing happened: we realized even though we were all very different, we were also the same in a lot of ways. It was a great experience.
A month or so after the retreat, I was talking to one of my new friends from the retreat. We were talking about our mentoring group and the various retreats our mentor Pamela Crim does, and my friend said she could see me doing something like that, mentoring and putting on retreats. The seed was planted. I was trying to figure out where to go with my business.
I had thought about this type of thing before, but hearing someone else say she could see me doing it made it all seem a bit more real. I tend to be a slow mover. I get an idea, and I talk myself out of it for quite a while. Do you ever do this? You come up with an idea and then don’t act on it because that inside voice tells you a million reasons why it won’t work.
One day, I was at Eucharistic Adoration when I felt the Holy Spirit telling me I needed to plan a retreat for that summer. So, of course, I obeyed and started planning right away, right? Wrong. I did what I always do when the Holy Spirit directs me. I asked a bunch of questions. Here are some of those questions: “This summer, are you sure? The summer is just a few months away. Who will even come to this retreat?” I felt as if the Holy Spirit said, “You just book a place and time, and I will get the people there.” “Ok, I said, but what about the theme of the retreat? What do you want us to do there? What will I talk about? Will I be the only speaker?” Again, I felt I heard the Holy Spirit say, “Once you book the place, I will give you more details.”
I really felt as if the Holy Spirit was wanting me to step out in faith. I started calling retreat centers to see if anyone had availability this close to summer. Most places did not, and the ones that did were too expensive. I wasn’t sure who would attend, but I knew I wanted to make it affordable for everyone. The price was going to be at least $400 at the places I was finding. I was getting frustrated and wanted to give up. I felt the Holy Spirit prompt me to email my prayer group to see if any of them would want to go on a retreat and whether $400 was too expensive.
I also asked if they even wanted a sleepover retreat. Maybe I should just do a daytime retreat or a one-day retreat. Many said yes to a retreat, most said stay over retreat, which I felt confirmed what I felt I was getting from the Holy Spirit. A few said they could go if it were $400; however, many said it was too much. Again, confirming my thoughts. I decided to ask a few people if they knew any retreat places. I am not sure how I happened upon the Holy Cross Retreat Center, and yet I am so glad I did!
This retreat center was affordable, and the person I talked to was so nice. They have many retreats there each year, and yet they are always the same type of retreat. This fall will be the first time they open their doors to outside groups for retreats. They do not have a minimum number of people I have to have. They are completely redoing all the rooms with new paint, new beds, and new mattresses. They already redid the bathrooms, so by the time we get there, it will look like a whole new place.
I was so excited that it was all coming together. I was amazed at how the Holy Spirit led me to find the perfect place. Now that it was really happening, I had to start thinking about the theme, who to invite, and how much it would cost. Oh, that is another way the Holy Spirit was guiding the details. The only weekend available, aside from Thanksgiving weekend, was October 6-8. That is the same weekend our prayer group is starting a Life in the Spirit Seminar on Friday. However, it is a long weekend, and many people may have Monday off. So I did my retreat from Saturday to Monday instead of Friday to Sunday. It all worked out perfectly.
I knew the Holy Spirit would make sure those who needed this retreat could attend it. My hope was that anyone who needed this retreat could come, even if they couldn’t afford it. I included a donation option on the registration page so that people who can’t pay can still come. I was able to have at least one person attend for free, and a few others I was able to pay for at least half of the cost.
I was excited to watch it all unfold, and it was exciting to see what the Lord had planned. I truly feel as though He poured His love out on His children. I feel He filled them up with His love and also provided some inner healing. I think the connection with other people who are also on this faith journey was important as well. I had 11 people attend, and it was an amazing weekend.
This is one way I have opened up my heart and let the Lord lead me into a new adventure. It has been an amazing journey so far. How is the Lord working in your life?
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He Is Series Elohe Mishpat--God of Justice The God Who Sees What’s Wrong and Makes It Right
Psalm 103:6-7 “You're a God who makes things right, giving justice to the defenseless. You unveiled to Moses your plans and showed Israel's sons what you could do.”
Today, we are talking about Elohei Mishpat- The God of Justice. The Lord’s timing is always perfect, although it doesn’t always feel perfect. I read this verse, and the timing was perfect because it confirmed a friend’s situation. I have a friend who has been struggling with workers’ comp for over a year. It has been so stressful, and he wants it all done and over with. I texted him on Wednesday of this week because he was supposed to have a Zoom meeting, which was sort of like a hearing to see the next steps. Several people told him he should have a lawyer present so he wouldn’t be taken advantage of during the hearing. He didn’t have the money for a lawyer, and he didn’t want one. He said the Holy Spirit would be his lawyer.
I prayed over him on Monday that everything would work according to God’s plan. We prayed for God to give him the words to say. We prayed the truth would come up somehow. Then, on Wednesday morning, I sent him another prayer to fill him with peace about the situation. To give him courage and strength, and again for the Holy Spirit to guide his words. He sent a text back saying the hearing was canceled, the insurance company dropped the suit, and no further action was needed. That same day, I read the verse above, “You’re a God who makes things right, giving justice to the defenseless.” God is so good! He took care of everything for my friend. He answered our prayers. This is what it means for God to be the God of justice. He sees when something isn’t right. He sees when someone is vulnerable. And He steps in.
He will do the same for you. Sometimes, we limit the scope of what we think God can do. We will go to Him when someone needs healing or if we need strength. We go to God when we have family issues or when our marriage is in trouble. However, when it comes to some things, we don’t go to Him because we can’t see what He could do in this situation. For instance, if we are in a legal battle, we might pray for strength but not for God to fix the problem because we can’t see a solution. We can’t see how God could fix it. It is difficult for us to understand that God doesn’t have the same constraints that we have. He is not bound by anything. There is nothing He can’t do. If He can create the entire universe, He can get you out of whatever situation you find yourself. God’s justice doesn’t always look like a courtroom decision. Sometimes it looks like God stepping into situations we don’t know how to fix and making a way where there wasn’t one.
I read this book called How to Be A King’s Kid. The author recounts a time when he served as president of a company. He put in a bid for a contract on a large government project. He was sure He knew all the details, so he didn’t read the fine print. After he signed the contract and committed the company and everything they owned, he saw that the fine print required them to do something impossible. The out-of-town contractor sent them registered letters informing them that the communication they received would constitute the institution of a lawsuit for all they owned. The government was involved, the army engineers, seven contractors, hundreds of people—Top priority. Penalties on top of penalties—There was no way to undo what he had done.
The author said he panicked and asked God what he should do now. He said it seemed like God said, “It’s a little bit late to ask that question. You didn’t ask me before you signed the contract.” The author said that although he messed up, he knows that our Heavenly Father has provided all kinds of latitude for His kids to goof, and that what we do about it determines the outcome. What does God say to do? If we confess our sins, He is faithful and will forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. The author prayed, “Lord, I have goofed. I have really made a boo-boo. How are You going to get us out of this mess? Hallelujah!”
Next, instead of worrying about this problem, he headed to a retreat. The retreat started out by asking everyone to confess their faults to one another. So he stood up and told them what he had done. He said, “God’s kids never give up. Praise God. We don’t know how our God’s going to get us out of it, but He’s promised to do it. He said in Psalm 50: ‘Offer unto God thanksgiving and pay thy vows unto the most high and call on me in the day of trouble, I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.” Then he said, “Lord, I’ll be glad to give You the glory because no man can deliver me.”
All of the people at the retreat gathered around him, laid hands on him, and prayed in tongues over him. In that moment, the Holy Spirit guided their prayer in a way he never could have come up with on his own. They prayed for something that seemed completely impossible—that the whole situation would be wiped away. It was a completely impossible prayer, but it had been prayed. No way to call it back. And so he waited day after day for the breach-of-contract lawsuit to begin. Satan kept needling him daily, “It’ll come tomorrow.” But tomorrow, it didn’t; days passed, weeks, and finally, years without mentioning a lawsuit. During that time, he had to learn to praise Jesus constantly or else fall into the tormentor's hands.
He doesn’t know what happened. The contractor still has his signature on the paper. And he is entitled to hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages unless God changed the minds of many people. He can’t explain to you how it happened. He is just reporting. God is in charge. The author said, “He used to be my partner, but no more. Since I’ve started to live like a King’s Kid, He’s Head Man. Hallelujah!
The verse ends with, “You unveiled to Moses your plans and showed Israel's sons what you could do.” I think God is still showing us what He can do. We are lucky because ever since Jesus died on the cross, there has been no veil separating us from the Lord. We can approach Him. We can be close to Him. Nothing is separating us from the Lord. Well, we can put up walls, we can put up blocks. However, the Lord has removed all that is in our way. Now, it is up to us how close we want to get to the Lord. There is no question in my mind that the Lord is still showing us what He can do. Almost every day, I am blown away by His goodness. It would be every day, but sometimes I am not paying enough attention to be blown away. Sometimes, I get wrapped up in my own stuff. There are so many miracles that happen each and every day. We need to pay attention to see them. If you have a problem, no matter the size or the type, bring it to the Lord. He will help you! It would be even better if we brought our decisions to the Lord before we made them and asked what He thought. I bet we would find ourselves in a lot less trouble that way.
Dear Elohei Mishpat, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, you are amazing, and we are so grateful you take such good care of us. We are grateful that you give justice to the defenseless. We are grateful that you see us, care for us, and step in on our behalf—even when we feel undeserving. Lord, help us to bring our decisions to you in advance so you can help us make the right decisions. Help us to turn to you, even in the impossible decisions. You are the God of the impossible. Remind us of that often, Lord. We love you, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Remember to sign up for my newsletter if you want all the details on my mentoring program, retreats, and more. You can find the link to sign up on my website walkboldlywithjesus.com or click on the link below. I look forward to meeting you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “There are times when you have to go through difficult things, and you don’t understand. But know that I have a plan. And the difficulties a lot of times are just to give you the strength, because I have an extraordinary work for you that you will accomplish, that will give me glory. So bear with your suffering. Know that I am with you. The greater things are coming.”
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He Is Series Elohei Tzur Yishi- God, the Rock of Our Salvation When You Long for God’s Safety but Keep Him at a Distance
Psalm 18:1-2 " I love you, O Lord, my strength. The Lord is my rock, my fortress, and my deliverer, my God, my rock in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.”
Today, we are talking about Elohei Tzur Yishi—God, the Rock of Our Salvation. This verse starts with, “I love you, God—you make me strong,” what a great opener. We can’t tell God enough how much we love Him. I don’t think He ever gets tired of hearing it from us. Also, what a great thing to remember. God is our strength. It doesn’t matter what kind of strength we need; it can be found in the Lord.
Next, it says that the Lord is my rock. We all know how solid Rock is. Some versions say He is the Bedrock under our feet. Bedrock is the solid rock underneath loose rock or soil. We rely on many other things before God. There might be various ways we try to protect ourselves; these are the loose rocks or soil in our lives. Maybe they work for a bit, but eventually, you will slip, or you will fall on that loose gravel. Underneath it all is our real protection. God is the solid rock that we stand on. With God as our bedrock, we can rest assured that our footing is solid and we will not fall.
It also says that God is my fortress. God is a safe place for us to not only rest but also to live. He is not just a stopping point, like a safe bench to sit on. We can live in his safety and security. It is always around us, just like the walls of a fortress. If we are in a fortress, we are surrounded by walls of stone so thick that we are safe from the enemy. The Lord protects us from all our enemies. We just have to live with Him. We just have to let Him surround us with His walls of protection. We just have to ask Him.
Next, it says God is my deliverer. How many times have you seen this in your own life? When we are struggling, God comes in and rescues us. He loves us that much. He doesn’t always come in right when we want Him to, and He doesn’t always save us in the way we want Him to. This is because He is so much smarter than we are. It is also because He sees the whole picture, and He thinks way bigger than we do. We believe our idea is the best. But what if what we are thinking is way smaller than what God is thinking? What if He has much bigger plans for us, but they require us to trust Him in these first few steps because we are not ready for the amazing life He has planned for us? We are still growing. We are still learning. If He had just plopped us into this new, amazing life, we wouldn’t have been ready for it, and we might have ruined it. God knows what He is doing.
The last line in this verse says, “my God, my rock in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.” This is another way to show us how safe we are with the Lord. We can run to Him with anything, yes, even if our lives are in danger. This means when we are sick, when we are scared, when we are in danger. We can run to Him, and He will be there for us. He will ALWAYS be there for us, which makes me wonder why we don’t go to Him more often. Why don’t we run to Him at the first sign of trouble? Why don’t we hide behind His Rock and stay safe behind His shield?
I received a word at prayer group, and then at the end, we had a bit of a discussion about it. What my friend said might be why we don’t always run to Him. The word I received was, “I want to be close to you, but you are keeping me at a safe distance. You are keeping me at arm’s length away from you. What are you afraid of? What are you afraid I'll see? Open it up to me. Let me in.” After the meeting, my friend said she thinks she is afraid of rejection. She is afraid that if she lets the Lord into the innermost parts of herself, He won’t like what He sees.
She knows this is not true in her mind, but is having trouble convincing her heart. She said she felt like she heard the Lord ask her, in a very gentle and loving voice, “Why would I reject you? I made you. I made every part of you. I have loved you since before you were born. I would never reject you.” Sometimes we feel like we want to hide things from the Lord. I don’t think my friend is the only one who fears rejection. We wonder what it would be like if God knew the REAL us. The one we don’t let anyone see. What if He knew the ugly thoughts we have sometimes? What if He knew about those things we did when we were younger? What if he knew the demons we are still struggling with? What if…
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but He already knows. He knows everything about you. Every thought you have, every single thing you have ever done, and yet He loves you anyway. He loves you just as you are. He wants to love and protect you just as you are. You don’t have to clean yourself up first. You don’t have to be perfect or have all the right answers. He loves you because He is your Dad and He created you. He knows all the things you don’t like about yourself, and He thinks you are wrong. He loves those parts of you. He thinks you are handsome and beautiful and loves you with an unconditional, unending love that we can’t even comprehend.
Take a moment to think of the thing that you love most in the world. The thing you can’t live without. The thing that you would sacrifice all other things for. If you had to put a number on how much you loved that thing, what would that number be? Now take that number and multiply it by a million, and you wouldn’t even be close to how much God loves you. His love is overflowing for us. So, let’s take some time today in silence and answer God’s question. Let’s have a conversation with Him about “What are we afraid of?” Why aren’t we coming closer? Why aren’t we turning to Him at the first sign of trouble? Why aren’t we living in His safe fortress?
Dear Elohei Tzur Yishi, I ask you to bless each person listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to come close; please help us. Lord, we want to trust you and to let you into the secret places of our hearts; please help us. Show us what we are afraid of, and then help us overcome that fear. We don’t want anything preventing us from coming closer, Lord! We love you so much! You are the Best! Thank you for your love and your protection. Please open our hearts and soften our hearts so we can accept them both. We love you, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you back here on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed weekend!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Everyone of you is exquisite in my eyes.”
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Episode #1208 He Is Series – Adonai (Lord/Master) — When You Don’t Understand God’s Ways but Still Long to Trust Him
Isaiah 40:10 “See, the Sovereign Lord comes with power, and he rules with a mighty arm. See, his reward is with him, and his recompense accompanies him.”
The name Adonai means “Lord” or “Master.” It means God has authority over our lives—but not in a harsh or distant way. He is a loving Lord, a good Master who leads, protects, and cares for His people.
In this verse, Isaiah says, “The Sovereign Lord comes with power, and He rules with a mighty arm.”
I think we can all agree that we like the part about God coming with power. Many of us have seen God’s power in our lives. And if we haven’t noticed it, it may just be that we haven’t been looking—because God is always at work.
But the part that says He “rules with a mighty arm” can feel harder to understand. It can even feel intimidating at first.
When we read the Old Testament, we see moments where God corrects His people. Not because He is harsh, but because He is leading them. He is teaching them how to trust Him and how to live in the freedom He created them for.
For example, in Numbers 21, the Israelites complained and spoke against God and Moses. They had seen God perform miracles—He had freed them, provided for them, and stayed with them in the wilderness—yet they still struggled to trust Him.
There were consequences. But even in that, we see God’s mercy. When the people turned back to Him, He provided a way for them to be healed.
We see something similar in Numbers 13 and 14, when the Israelites were afraid to enter the promised land. Even though God had promised to give it to them, they doubted Him.
Again, there were consequences—not because God wanted to harm them, but because He was forming them. He was teaching them what it means to trust Him as their Lord.
This is what it means for God to be Adonai. He is not just powerful—He is Lord. He has authority over our lives. But His authority is not something to fear. It is something we can trust.
Just like a loving parent sets boundaries for their children, God gives us guidance so we can grow, learn, and live the life He created for us.
God is just, and He tells us how He wants us to live. Then He lovingly gives us the choice whether to follow His ways. If we choose not to, there are consequences. Not because He wants to punish us, but because that is how we learn. If there were no consequences, we wouldn’t really have free will—God would be choosing for us.
The next part of the verse brings so much hope: “See, his reward is with him, and his recompense accompanies him.”
Even though God rules with authority and lovingly corrects us, He also rewards us when we live according to His will. 1 Corinthians 2:9 says, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard… what God has prepared for those who love him.”
The verse also says His recompense accompanies Him. Recompense means to make up for loss or harm—to restore. I love this. I love the idea that God restores what we have lost and rewards what we have endured for Him.
Romans 8:17 reminds us that if we suffer with Christ, we will also be glorified with Him. We suffer with Him so that we may be glorified with Him.
I don’t know about you, but I am looking forward to that. Yes, there may be suffering here, but it is temporary compared to eternity with Him.
Trust in the Lord. He comes with power, and He will reward you for your faithfulness. Adonai is not just the Lord over our lives—He is the Lord we can trust with our lives.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening today. Lord, thank you for being a just and loving God. Thank you for giving us clear direction. Help us follow your ways. Help us see when we are about to make a mistake and give us the strength to stop. Lord, you are amazing, and we thank you for all you do for us. We love you and ask this in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I. Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I am the Lord, there is no other. I am the beginning and the end.”
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He Is Series- El Olam (Everlasting God) — When You Need to Know God Won’t Give Up on You
Isaiah 40:28 “Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable.”
Today was are talking about the name El Olam. This name did not come from this passage. I just thought this passage was a good one to help us understand the name better. The name actually comes from Genesis 21:33, which says, “Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beer-sheba, and called there on the name of the Lord, the Everlasting God.” Abraham planted this tree after he and Abimelech made a covenant that God would deal with Abimelech loyally, since that is how Abimelech dealt with Abraham.
I thought that today’s verse gave us a bit more context as to how the Lord is everlasting. However, I did look up in the Enduring Word commentary online to see if I was missing something about the original verse where we heard El Olam. It said two things. First, after the successful treaty, Abraham did something that looked forward to the coming decades and generations. A tamarisk tree takes a long time to grow, but Abraham knew God had promised the land to him and his descendants forever.
This is a powerful point because sometimes we can be afraid to plant roots somewhere or to let people in because we aren’t sure what will happen next. We don’t trust that we will stay there long or that the people will be in our lives long enough. We put up walls to keep people out so that we don’t get hurt. Abraham could have done this, too. He could have done any number of things to commemorate this event, but he didn’t. What he did was plant a tree that takes a long time to grow, with the expectation that it will be around for generations, and his ancestors will also be there to take care of it. Abraham knew that God had promised the land to him and his descendants forever. He was trusting in this promise and moving forward as if it were already true, even though they were currently living as aliens in that land.
Second, even through this time of conflict in Abraham’s family and among his neighbors, Abraham kept a real, live walk with God. Conflict did not drive him away from God; rather, it pushed him closer to the Lord. Earlier in Chapter 21, Sarah and Abraham finally had their long-awaited son, Isaac. I am sure there was so much happiness and celebration, as I believe they had to wait 20 or 25 years after God promised them this son before they had the son. Then, in the middle of chapter 21, Sarah sees her son playing with the slave girl’s son, Abraham’s other son, and Sarah tells Abraham he has to send that woman and his son away. Abraham is upset about this, but the Lord told him not to worry and to do as Sarah had said. That is a lot that Abraham was going through. Yet He never turned away from the Lord; He just kept growing closer to Him. Wouldn’t it be great if it were the same for all of us?
Wouldn’t it be great if hard times pulled us in closer to the Lord, instead of driving us away? Wouldn’t it be great if we believed in his promises as Abraham did? The promises in Scripture are for all of us. We can count on them. We can have expectant faith that God will follow through with them. We can plant trees that need lots of time to grow because we know that God is with us forever, not just for a short time.
Let’s look at today’s scripture, “Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable.” El Olam, God is everlasting! God is the creator of the ends of the Earth. He is the Beginning and the End. He was always here before anything else, and He will be here long after we are gone. He will be here long after the Earth is destroyed. God will always be around. I know this can be an overwhelming thought. I used to be very scared of eternity and living forever. I used to worry, what if I get bored, what if I just want it all to be over, what will I do if I can’t handle doing something forever?
This is not what we are talking about here in this verse. I think in this verse, we are talking about what the rest of the verse talks about. “He will not grow tired or weary.” I thought of two things when I read this. The first was, " Wouldn’t that be nice? Wouldn’t it be nice not to grow tired or weary? I know a lot of us have been feeling tired and weary lately. A lot is going on in our world, and we are ready for a break. This is why my first thought was, "Wouldn’t that be nice?” My second thought was, do we believe this? Do we believe that God doesn’t grow tired and weary? I wondered this because I feel as though we often treat God as though this is not true. We treat God as if He is not the almighty and powerful Lord who does not grow tired or weary.
I say this because we tend to be cautious with our prayers. We save up our prayers for the really important times, as if we only get so many, and we don’t want to run out. This may sound silly, but you know you have all thought that at one time or another. Maybe you didn’t think that exact thought, but you did hold back from asking God for something because it wasn’t that important, and He had bigger things to think about. We have all done this. We want to pray that our child wins the football game, but then we feel guilty because there are people with real problems, and we are taking God’s attention away from them to ask Him to help our kids win a football game or to help me find a parking spot. This verse tells us something we already know on some level but have trouble believing. God does not grow tired or weary. God can help you with your small request and help someone else with their giant request all at the same time. He can do it all and still not grow tired or weary. He is that amazing.
Another thing that just popped into my mind when I read that last part back was that we may feel that God will grow weary of us. In this world, we all have our own insecurities, and we are all in relationships with other humans, and that means none of us is perfect. We may have people in our lives who feel as though we are weary with them, or maybe we are the ones who feel our loved ones are weary with us. If you feel this way, you are not alone. Also, God does not ever grow weary with you! Please hear me when I say that. You are not bothering Him; you are not a bother to Him. God loves you, and He loves every single time you come and talk with him. He doesn’t care if you are coming and asking Him to heal your hang nail or if you need Him to cure cancer. He just wants you to come to Him.
The next line in the verse says that no one can fathom his understanding. We can’t even begin to understand all that the Lord knows. We see how He is working in our lives, and we think He is a little crazy, or that He is upset with us because things aren’t going our way. We don’t understand that all these things are happening so that His plan for us to have ridiculous goodness can come to fruition. We needed to lose that job to get this better one. We needed to lose that sense of security to appreciate it when we regained it. We needed to go through that hard time to show someone else they can get through it, too. We can’t fathom the Lord’s understanding. It’s just like it says in Isaiah 55:8: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. The Lord knows what He is doing. It is ok if we don’t understand. It will all make sense one day.
Can you see how both of those things, His not growing weary and the fact that He has a plan for each one of our lives, help show us that God is Everlasting? When I looked up the word everlasting I got three definitions. First, it said, “Lasting forever; eternal.” I think we can all agree that the Lord fits that first definition. The second one was, “Continuing indefinitely or for a long period of time.” This one goes along with the fact that God does not grow weary. He can go on and on, and he never gets tired, he never grows weary. God never needs a break. The third one talks about persistence. I think we can definitely say that the Lord is persistent. We tend to make the same mistakes over and over again, and yet the Lord is so patient with us, and He is persistent in his mission to bring all of His children home to heaven. God is everlasting!
Dear El Olam, I pray you bless all those listening to this episode. Lord, we love you, and we are so grateful you are Everlasting. We are grateful that we never have to go through a day without you. We ask that you help us understand what this really means to each one of us. How does our life change once we realize you are Everlasting? Your love and mercy are Everlasting. That you are always with us. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day.
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Ever know my children that I love you.”
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Witness Wednesday #203 Catherine D. (Airplane trip)
Today, I want to witness to you about how much God is in the small things. We’ve had so many wonderful witnesses, and they have all been so different. Some have shared God’s presence through miracles in their day-to-day lives, while others have shared extraordinary miracles. That is the reason I created “Witness Wednesdays”—so everyone can see all the different ways God is working in our lives.
I have asked several people if they would like to give a witness, and many have said they don’t have anything to share. They know God is working in their lives, but not in any dramatic way. They say their lives are ordinary or even boring. I understand what they mean. They haven’t had angels appear or miraculous healings to report. But that doesn’t mean there is nothing to witness about. Today, my witness is about an ordinary experience where God showed up in many small ways.
I love the miraculous ways God shows up—healings, angels, supernatural moments. I love hearing about all of it! But there is also something really special about noticing God in the small, everyday details. When God performs big miracles, we praise Him and clearly recognize His hand. But how often do we praise Him for the little ways He steps in to help us? Do we even realize it’s Him, or do we call it a coincidence or luck? God’s presence in the small moments shows that He isn’t doing it for praise—He does it because He truly loves us.
Today I want to tell you about the time I took a space-A flight home from Germany with my three boys by myself. At the time, they were six, four, and two years old. My husband wasn’t traveling with us, so we were at the bottom of the flight list. We spent several days waiting at the airport, unsure if we would get on a flight. It was stressful at times.
The first way I saw God working was in how well my kids handled it. There were other kids to play with on the base, and instead of being bored and overwhelmed, they were having fun. The parents were calm, and everyone was patient. It may seem like a small thing, but I truly believe God orchestrated that whole week.
Eventually, I got tickets—but was told I had to move my car to long-term parking. I had no idea how I would do that with three kids, car seats, and luggage. I stood there completely overwhelmed. Then a man I didn’t know offered to move my van for me. That moment still brings tears to my eyes. God saw my need and provided help exactly when I needed it.
Then came boarding the plane. I was told I had to hold all three of my children’s hands, but I only have two hands—and I was also carrying everything. I didn’t know how I would do it. Before I could even figure it out, another woman traveling with her teenage children stepped in. Without hesitation, each of her kids took one of my children’s hands and helped carry their things. We were able to get on the plane together. Even when we landed, they helped us again.
Looking back, it would be easy to call all of this coincidence or luck. But what are the chances? Out of so many flights and so many people, everything lined up perfectly. God knew exactly what I would need. What could have been a very stressful trip was made easier by all the small ways He stepped in.
Sometimes it’s easy to overlook God in our everyday lives. We celebrate the big miracles but miss the quiet ones—the perfectly timed help, the moments when everything just works out. God is working in our lives every single day, even in the smallest details.
I want to encourage you to think about the ways God has shown up in your life—not just the big moments, but the small ones. Think about times when everything came together in a way that felt almost impossible. That is God.
The more we notice His work, the more we can praise Him for it—and the more we will see it.
I love you all! Thank you so much for listening, and I can’t wait to hear your story.
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He Is Series Immanuel (God with us) — When You Feel Far from God but He Never Left
Matthew 1:23 “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel.”
Every time I think about this, I am still amazed. I still can’t believe God loves us so much that He sent his only Son to die on a cross for us. What makes it even more remarkable is that when God created us, He knew this was going to have to happen, and He created us anyway! Doesn’t that feel crazy to you? I can definitely understand a parent doing something extreme to get their child out of a difficult situation. We have all heard the stories of the incredible things parents have done to save their children. However, they didn’t know they would have to do it in advance. God did. God knew exactly what was going to happen in the garden. He knew the betrayal before it even happened. Yet, He created us anyway!
I love to think about Adam and Eve and how they got to walk in the garden with God. I can’t even really picture it, as I don’t know what God looks like or how that worked. However, it is a great thing to sit and meditate on. Was God just a voice in the wind? Did he have a body when He visited them in the garden? What was that like? No one knows, but we can sit with the Lord and ask Him to help us visualize it. I feel as though that would be a calm and peaceful exercise in feeling the Lord around us.
I can think of so many ways that God is with us. He is with us in church in so many ways. His Word is proclaimed during Mass. His body and blood are contained in the Eucharist. He is consumed by each person who approaches communion. God also sent the Holy Spirit to be within us all the time. It was really important for God to be with us. So important, He sent Jesus. After Adam and Eve betrayed Him, He separated Himself from them and from His people. Yet, he still looked after them and protected them. He was still their God, but it was more from a distance. They could no longer see Him as they did in the garden.
Before Jesus came, God stayed separate from his people. When they built the temple, they built a special place called the “holy of holies,” where God’s presence could dwell in a special way. However, only one person could enter this area, only once a year on the day of atonement, and it was only to make a sacrifice. God would talk to his people through a prophet. Everyone couldn’t hear God’s voice; only a select few whom God trusted passed along his messages or performed his signs of wonder. No one was allowed to see His face. All that changed when Jesus arrived on the scene.
Another amazing thing is that God revealed his plan to his people over 700 years before Jesus was born. In Isaiah 7:14, it says, “Therefore, the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” This is such a good example of God knowing when the right time is. He mentioned Jesus coming a long time before He came. However, He did promise to come. He did promise that He would walk among them again.
I think the 700 years are important for us because they show that God has a plan for everything. God wasn’t just waiting in heaven for a random day and time to bring Jesus to earth. He was in all the details. He was arranging everything perfectly. He picked Mary out specifically. He ordained her for this task, and she said yes! His timing was and is perfect. We don’t know why God picked the time and place that He did for Jesus to come into the world. We don’t know why he picked Mary or Joseph. We do know that Mary and Joseph were the perfect parents for Jesus. We know God’s plan worked, and we are not reunited with Him.
Do you remember when I told you about the special room in the temple where the presence of God was kept? It was called the Holy of Holies and was separated from the rest of the temple by a curtain. Did you know that the curtain was torn in two when Jesus died? In Matthew 27:50-52, it says, “And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit. And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And the earth shook, and the rocks were split.” God wanted us all to know that there was nothing in between us anymore. He is no longer separated from us! I think most of us know this on some level, and yet I am not sure we are internalizing what that really means for us.
I think most of us know that we can talk to God anytime we like. I think this has always been the case. However, did you know that you can hear the voice of God as well? God is talking to each one of us, and if we sit and listen, we will hear Him talking to us. This is very different than the people in the Old Testament. Before Jesus came, direct communication with God was pretty limited to the Priests, Prophets, and Kings. The Priests mediated between God and the people through sacrifice and the law. The Prophets, men like Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Elijah, received direct divine revelation from the Lord. The Kings, like David, were anointed and guided by the Spirit of God.
The ordinary people, like you and me, could encounter the Lord through the Torah and sacred Scripture, the liturgy of the Temple, and the prophet’s public proclamations. But direct, personal, intimate access to God was not the common experience. The Holy Spirit would come upon people for a specific purpose, then would withdraw.
Aren’t you so excited that you came into the world after Jesus did? After Jesus died on the cross for us, everything changed! God sent the Holy Spirit to dwell within each baptised person. Not just for a purpose, or a season, but ALWAYS. We now also have direct access to the Father through Christ. (Hebrews 4:16). Prayer is no longer just a petition from a distance. According to the CCC#2564, prayer is a living relationship- a covenant relationship between God and man in Christ. It is life, not merely words. Here is an analogy to help you see the difference. Before Christ, it was like writing a letter to someone across the ocean, hoping they would read it. After Christ is like having a conversation with someone sitting right next to you.
We are so lucky to have the opportunity to have such a close relationship. My prayer for each one of you is that if you didn’t know this was possible, you do now. I hope if this information is new to you, you are so excited to see what is possible for your relationship with God. Did you know you can sit down and have a conversation with Him, and He will talk back with you? He also talks to us through Scripture, other people, songs, visions, and so many ways.
God is with you. He is right there next to you. He is in every situation you are in. He is rooting for you. He is protecting you. He is guiding you. He loves you. He is with you in the good times and in the bad times. I know sometimes we feel alone. We all do. The truth is that we are never alone. God is always with us. If we can’t feel his presence, it is not because he is hiding from us. Many things can get in the way of feeling God’s presence. They are things we put there, though, not Him. Here are some of them.
Unconfessed sin
busyness and distraction,
a false sense of self-sufficiency,
treating prayer as a technique instead of the gift that it is
Physical and emotional exhaustion
Spiritual dryness (this is not always caused by us; this could be God’s invitation to love Him for who He is, not merely for the consolations He gives.
Interior Distractions
Anger or Bitterness towards the Lord
Not taking Spiritual experiences seriously
Unforgiveness
I am not going to go into detail about each of those. I just wanted to show you that if you are not feeling God’s presence, you are not alone, and also, it is not because God is not there. Also, if you want to feel God’s presence more, you can do the opposite of those things. For instance, if you have unconfessed sin, you can confess it and remove that barrier. If you have unforgiveness, you can learn to forgive and remove that barrier, too. The CCC#45 says, “We are created to live in communion with God, in whom we find our happiness.”
Dear Immanuel, I ask you to bless everyone listening to this episode today. Jesus, we are so grateful you are with us. We are grateful that you walk with us through all the fires of our lives. We are grateful you are there to celebrate the good times. Lord, we ask you to help us to feel you more in our lives. Help us notice you more in our lives. We want more of you and less of us, Lord!! We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you are enjoying this podcast, please share it with a friend. Also, if you could help me out and leave a review that would be great. I look forward to seeing you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, let your hearts know that I am with you until the end of time. Let my words resonate through every trial. Let my presence soothe you. Let my presence go beyond any circumstance.”
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He is Series Day #13 Or HaOlam (Light of the World)— When the Darkness Feels Heavy, and You Just Need Light
Psalm 18:28 “It is you who light my lamp; the Lord, my God, lights up my darkness.”
This is one of the verses that is great to copy down somewhere and look at often. This is a great verse to refer to when you are in times of trouble or when you are confused as to what you should do. It is a short verse, so it is easy to memorize. Whenever we are struggling or feeling like we need some direction, Scripture is a great place to turn to. There are so many answers and reassurances to be found in the Bible. The problem can sometimes be that we don’t know where to find those answers. This is why it is a good idea when we hear a verse that we think can provide us comfort, we write it down somewhere we can easily find it again when we need it.
This verse talks about how God lights our lamp. He lights up our darkness. You are not an exception to this. Are you currently going through a dark time in your life? Are you struggling with something and wondering if you will ever get through it? I have so many friends who feel like they are in a really dark place right now. Many are chronically ill, and they are so tired of being sick. It seems like it is never-ending. I also have friends who are struggling with money and with basic needs, and they don’t know what to do. Do you know someone going through a similar darkness? This seems to be a very difficult time for so many of us. We all feel so alone, and yet when we are brave enough to talk about what we are going through, we find out that we are not alone.
I hope this verse can bring them and you a lot of comfort. They are not in this darkness alone, and neither are you. The Lord is with you. He is always with you. There is never a time when you are going through anything alone. God is with you each and every step of the way. He will never abandon you. Sometimes, when we are in the darkness, it is hard to see the light. I am sure that when my friends are up late at night and in pain or worried about finances, they feel alone in the darkness. I am sure they are wondering if it will ever end. Yes, it will end. There is a light at the end of the tunnel, and that light is our Lord.
Or HaOlam, The Lord is our light. When you are in a period of darkness or when you are unsure what to do, turn to the Lord, and He will light the way. Sometimes, he will shine a bright light and provide some sort of solution that renews your hope and brightens your whole day. Other times, he may just shine a flashlight. He may not illuminate the whole way forward. He might just give you the next right step, and then He doesn’t illuminate the next step until you take that first one. This can be frustrating. We often want to know the whole plan before we take any steps forward. Moving forward on our journey, one step at a time, takes a lot of faith. Where is the path leading us? What if we start down it and then we don’t like where we are going? We hesitate to take that first step because we are afraid.
The Lord has our best interests at heart. He would not lead us down the wrong path. He has amazing things planned for each one of us, but we have to be brave enough to keep taking the next right step, even when we can’t see where our steps are leading. Even if we feel like we are walking in the dark. The Lord is our light. Do you know where all of our fear and questioning comes from? The enemy! He puts these questions in our hearts because he is afraid of what would happen if we all followed the Lord’s light. Can you imagine if everyone on earth were following the Lord and living up to the potential that God gave them? Imagine what an amazing world this would be to live in if we all just did the next right thing.
The enemy has imagined that, and it didn’t make him happy. He loves it when we are at odds with one another. I am sure he and the rest of his evil spirits have been celebrating a lot over these last few years. The way we have been treating our fellow Americans over the last few years is crazy. I am sure it is not just the last few years; I know racism has been a problem since the creation of the country. However, these last few years, everything seems to have spiked. The country is so divided on so many issues. It reminds me of Luke 12:52-53, which says, " From now on, five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”
Why are we so at odds with one another? Because the enemy wants us to be. He is a liar and a troublemaker. He whispers things in our ears all the time. Our loved one can say something to us that isn’t a big deal, and yet we can blow it up into a huge thing, all because the enemy tells us we shouldn’t let them get away with it, or he keeps reminding us of it over and over again. He may point out annoying things about those around us just to keep us arguing. He points out the differences between us and everyone else rather than showing us how we are alike. The enemy is awful, and we can’t let him into our minds. It says in 2 Corinthians 10:3-5, “Indeed, we live as human beings, but we do not wage war according to human standards; for the weapons of our warfare are not merely human, but they have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every proud obstacle raised up against the knowledge of God, and we take every thought captive to obey Christ.”
This verse shows us how to live in the light God provides. It reminds us that we are not really fighting ourselves; we are fighting the enemy and all his evil spirits. The verse is also reassuring because it says that our powers are not merely human but can destroy strongholds. Does the enemy have any strongholds against you? Is there something he has been telling you for a long time that you keep believing? Or maybe it is an illness or an addiction, and the enemy keeps feeding you all kinds of lies about how it is never going to go away. He may be telling you God can’t take it from you or God won’t take it from you. The enemy may be telling you that you have always been like this, so you will always be like this. Don’t believe him; the enemy is a liar.
This verse tells us how to defeat the enemy. It says, “We take every thought captive to obey Christ.” Take your thoughts captive. Right now, the enemy has hijacked a lot of our thoughts and is feeding us misinformation. He is taking some kernel of truth and twisting it to fit his purpose of dividing all of us, turning us against each other, and convincing us that the Lord doesn’t love us. We need to stop listening to him, take captive our thoughts, and remember that our God lights up our darkness. It is the Lord who lights my lamp. God will light your path and show you which way to go. He will help you make your decisions if you ask Him. This is where a lot of us go wrong. We forget to stop and ask the Lord what He thinks we should do. I am not a betting person, but if I were, I would bet you that if you stopped and asked the Lord what you should do before you made any big decisions, you would see Him in your life so much more. He is right there, waiting for an invitation to lead you to the life you have always been waiting for. Are you ready to invite Him in? Are you ready to trust Him, even if you can see only the next right step and don’t know the final destination? Are you ready to finally step into the light?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Or HaOlam, help us to follow you, wherever you are leading us. Help us to invite you into our decisions. Actually, Lord, let’s invite you in right now. Lord, we invite you into our decisions, and we ask you to guide us in all future decisions we need to make. Let us know what you want us to do, and then give us the strength to do what is right, even if it is hard and even if that is not what we want to do. Lord, light our way and shine a light so brightly that we can’t do anything else except follow it. You are so wonderful, and you always save us, even when we do the wrong thing. We are so grateful for all the times you shone a light through the darkness. We wouldn’t have gotten through it without that light. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, just as you are, and so do I. God is for you, not against you. Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I see this golden path or rug. It's gold, and it's very shiny. And Jesus is at the head of the path. And all of us are white, and there's a great crowd staying on that golden path with him. We're all pure white.”
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He is Series Day #12 Jehovah Nissi (The Lord is my Banner)— When You’re Tired of Carrying the Battle by Yourself
Exodus 17:15 “And Moses built an altar and called the name of it, The Lord Is My Banner.”
Today’s name, Jehovah Nissi, The Lord is my Banner, was one that I didn’t really understand. Many of them I haven’t heard before, and yet this one, even after reading the verse and even the context around the verse, I didn’t understand it. I had to go to the Enduring Word commentary online to get a bit of an explanation. After reading that it made more sense, and maybe I could have gotten it from the context. Let me read you Exodus 17:8-16.
“Then Amalek came and fought with Israel at Rephidim. So Moses said to Joshua, “Choose for us men, and go out and fight with Amalek. Tomorrow I will stand on the top of the hill with the staff of God in my hand.” So Joshua did as Moses told him, and fought with Amalek, while Moses, Aaron, and Hur went up to the top of the hill. Whenever Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed, and whenever he lowered his hand, Amalek prevailed. But Moses' hands grew weary, so they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it, while Aaron and Hur held up his hands, one on one side, and the other on the other side. So his hands were steady until the going down of the sun. And Joshua overwhelmed Amalek and his people with the sword.
Then the Lord said to Moses, “Write this as a memorial in a book and recite it in the ears of Joshua, that I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven.” And Moses built an altar and called the name of it, The Lord Is My Banner, saying, “A hand upon the throne of the Lord! The Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation.”
What the enduring word commentary pointed out is that a banner is like a flag. Usually, the person who wins the battle will hold up their banner and run around the area. For instance, when you are watching the Olympics, you will always see the winners holding the flag of their country. When Moses was saying The Lord is my Banner, he was letting everyone know that the Lord is the reason that they won that battle. This is important because Joshua and his soldiers could have easily taken credit for the victory. They could have felt like they were the ones who defeated Amalek. However, as the verses state, when Moses put his arms down, the other team started to win. So it was not the soldier alone winning the battle. God’s favor on them is the reason they won the battle.
It is also so great that Moses did not think he had won that battle. It can be easy for us to confuse our victory with that of the Lord’s. Moses could have felt like he had the power because it seemed that the position of his hands decided who was winning the war. Are there times in your life when you felt like you were in control? Were there times when you felt the whole weight and responsibility for the situation or the outcome of the situation? If so, this is a great verse for you. It is a great verse for all of us.
This verse reminds us that God is in control. No matter what is going on within the situation, God knows about it and is working behind the scenes. God is in control. When Moses put his hands up, Israel prevailed, and when he lowered them, the enemy started to win. However, it was not because of Moses hands. It is because that is what God had decided. I love that God told Moses, “Write this as a memorial in a book and recite it in the ears of Joshua, that I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven.” I love that God wanted Joshua to know that God was going to take out Amalek for good. I love that he specifically wanted Joshua to know what had happened, as Joshua was the one who let the army into battle.
Something that was mentioned in the enduringword.com commentary that I really like is that he pointed out that this chapter is a great example of Man’s work and God working together. Joshua led the people into battle, and Moses prayed for God to give them victory, but only God could give the victory. I think this is so important to remember for a few reasons. First, I think often we can act in our own will and in our own strength, and we can forget to pray and ask God into the situation. If we do this, God will allow us to go at it alone because He loves us enough to respect our wishes. However, if we go at it alone, we won’t get nearly as far as we will if we invite God into it.
Second, we sometimes pray really hard about something, and yet we don’t do anything about it. We might see a problem, pray to God to fix it, and just expect that he will fix it without us having to do anything. Sometimes we need to do something besides pray. Don’t get me wrong, God does not need our help, but often he does ask us to help him. He does usually want us to do something. There have been times in the Bible when the army's leaders have prayed for victory, and God has given them victory without them even having to fight. However, God usually asked them to do something.
One example of this is 2 Chronicles 20, when Jehoshaphat learned that a massive army was marching against him. He knew they were outnumbered and unprepared, and so he called for a nationwide fast and gathered people to pray. The next morning, he sent singers ahead of the army to praise the Lord. As they sang, God caused confusion among the other army, and they killed themselves. In this case, the people fasted and prayed to the Lord. Jehoshaphat also listened to the Lord and trusted that the Lord would protect them, so he sent out the singers to go before the army to praise the Lord.
Do you see how God likes to work with us? Yes, at times He will do all the work. He will definitely be able to do things we can’t even dream of or aren’t strong enough to do. One great question to ask the Lord when we are praying for something, especially if it feels really big and has been going on for a while. While you pray, you can say something like this, “Lord, how can I help you in this situation? Or Lord, what is it you are calling me to do in this situation?” He will let you know if there is something you can do.
It is important to check in with the Lord with questions like this because although God often loves to work together with us, sometimes, we can get in the way. Sometimes what can feel to us like taking action is really us trying to take over the situation or take control of the situation. We disguise our trying to take our problem back from God so we can fix it ourselves as being helpful. It is important to examine our hearts and our motives when it comes to stepping in to help God. The more we sit and listen to what God wants and ask how we can help, the more we can actually be helpful and not go against His plan.
The Lord is our Banner. He can win this battle we are facing. He can win the war. He has already won the war between good vs. evil. Spoiler alert: Good wins every time! If good has not won in your life yet, that just means the war is not over yet. If you are fighting in a battle right now, whether is it is a physical one, a mental one, a spiritual one, know that you can call upon the Lord. The Lord is our Banner! He will save you.
Dear Jehovah Nissi, we ask you to bless everyone listening today. Lord, be our banner. Protect us from all the fires of this crazy world we live in. Protect us from the enemy. Protect us from ourselves. Show us the way through the battle. Show us you are here with us in the battle. Please show us we are not alone. That seems to be a theme of how people are feeling these days, and it is not true. You never leave our side. Please help us to feel that! We love you Lord and we ask this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, just as you are, and so do I! God is for you, not against you! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I have brought you all this far, and I will take you the rest of the way.”
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He Is Series Day #11: Abba (Father) — Why It’s Hard to See God as a Loving Father (and What to Do If You Can’t)
Romans 8:14-16 “For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received a spirit of adoption when we cry, “Abba! Father!” it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God.”
Today we are talking about Abba, Father. I love scripture verses that talk about how we are the children of God. I love the image of God being our father. At the same time, I understand how that image can be hard for some people. I had a wonderful father. I had a dad who wasn’t perfect. I am sure he feels he made a lot of mistakes, but he learned from them and then changed. I am from a large family, and I know he was a different father for us, the younger kids, than he was for the older kids. That is to be expected. None of us knows how to be parents before we become parents. The younger kids benefit from having parents who have learned from making mistakes with the older kids. Even the older kids would agree that our dad is pretty great. He is such a great example of walking in the faith. Both of my parents are. He also made sure we felt loved. I never questioned if my parents loved me. I know not everyone can say the same.
The idea of God as our Father makes it easier for me to feel loved by God. I know a Father’s love, and since He is God, I can believe that His love is ever greater than any love we could receive from a Father here on earth. However, what about those who didn’t have a great father? What about those whose father was mean, abusive, absent, unloving, cold? There are all kinds of people in the world and all kinds of fathers. If you did not have a loving father, if you did not have a kind and generous father, then it may be hard for you to see God as your Father. If this is the case, I would suggest you read the verse about God the Father. Read scripture and get to know who God truly is.
Another way to learn more about God as your Father is to ask Jesus to reveal who God is to you. Jesus says in Luke 10:22, “All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father or who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” Guess what? Jesus chooses to reveal God the Father to you; all you have to do is ask and then sit and listen. God knows all you have been through. He has been there every step of the way with you. He is not surprised that you struggle to see him as your Father because you struggle with the idea of a Father. He knows all of this. Take your struggle to Him, and talk to Him about it. Talk to Jesus about it. Ask Him to help you see God as your Father.
God is not a Father like anyone of us has seen before. Even if we had great dads, they still can’t compare to the love of our Father in heaven. His love for us is complete and immovable. There isn’t anything we can do to make Him stop loving us. I know it is hard for us to believe this, but it is 100% true. He loves us even when we are choosing evil over good. He loves us when we turn away, he loves us when we are weak, and he loves us when we are strong. He loves us when we repent and come back, and yet he loves us just as much even if we don’t come back.
What I love about this verse is that it says, “For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received a spirit of adoption.” We don’t have to fear anything because God is our Father and He is taking care of us. We fear things because we think we are on our own. We fear things because we forget that God is in control. We think we have to be in control of everything, and when we think like that, it makes sense that we would fear things because who are we to solve all of our problems? However, we are not in control and we were never meant to be. We don’t have to fear things because we know that our Father in heaven is looking out for us. We know He is arranging all things for our good. We have been adopted by God the Father, and we are His children. He is our protection and our refuge. We do not have to fear anything.
I also love when the verse says, “When we cry, ‘Abba! ' " Father!” it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God.” I am not sure most of us think we have a close enough relationship to call God Father, Abba, or Dad. When I hear most people pray, and when I pray, I mostly say Lord, although I do tend to start my prayers with Heavenly Father. I think if we want to have a more intimate relationship with God, it is up to us to ask for it and begin to cultivate it. God wants to be closer to each one of us, and yet He will not force it on us. If you want to feel comfortable calling God Abba, or even Dad, then it is up to you to start.
I wanted to think of God more intimately as my Dad. I wanted to feel that closeness as if I were a little kid, and I could just climb up on his lap and fall asleep. I didn’t really know where to start. In my journal writing, I decided to address the daily entries to God more informally. I started with “Dear Father” because I felt “Dad” was too informal, and I didn’t want to be disrespectful. As I continued to write to Him daily, or as consistently as I could, I felt I was growing closer to Him, and I no longer felt uncomfortable with calling Him Father, and then I switched to Dad, and that feels right now too. I have grown a lot closer to Him, and I do think of Him as my Father. It is not difficult for me to believe that I am loved by Him and that He delights in me. Do you know that He delights in you, too? He does, it’s true! Your heavenly Father delights in you, and you bring Him joy, unspeakable joy.
That doesn’t mean He likes everything you do, or say, but it does mean that He loves you always. I heard something at a conference last night from Peter Herbeck that I want to pass along because it was so good. He woke up one morning, and he opened his eyes, and he felt as if he could see God smiling at him. Kinda like when a parent watches their child sleep. He felt as though he “caught” God watching him sleep and smiling at him. He asked God if He wanted to tell him anything, and he felt God said, “It’s really good you exist, Peter. You were my idea, and I don’t have any bad ideas.” This message is not just for Peter; it is for each and every one of us. It is really good that you exist, Joanie, Peggy, Nancy, Kelly, and everyone else who is listening. Put your name at the end of that statement. For instance, it is really good that you exist, Catherine. God is saying that to you today, He wants you to know He is so happy you are here.
I also think it is great that He said, “You were my idea, and I don’t have any bad ideas.” Sometimes we can think it was a mistake that we are alive. We can think we don’t belong here, or that no one wants us here. However, if we ever start to think this way, we can remember that it was God’s idea to put us here, right now, in this time and in this place. God doesn’t have bad ideas, so what is the good in all of this? I am meant to be here; I am here for a purpose. God loves me and is happy I exist.
Dear Abba, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Father, I ask you to heal all of our hearts. I ask you to help those who didn’t have loving fathers see you as the loving Father they missed out on. I ask you to show them all the ways, over the years, that you were there, loving them through the difficult times in their lives. Lord, open us up to seeing that you are our Dad, our Abba. Soften our hearts so we can allow your love in. Open our hearts so we see that you did not give us a spirit of fear. Help us grow closer to you, Dad. Help us want to grow closer to you; help us seek you. We love you, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just the way you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Never forget or become complacent with that power within you. I am the power, and my presence in you can transform those you encounter and bring them into my heart of love and mercy.”
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Today I want to witness to you about a really cool experience I had with the Holy Spirit. I was at a retreat, and I was new to going on retreats. This was one of the first ones I went on. I wasn’t really sure what to expect. I was also pretty new to Eucharistic Adoration. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do during adoration. I had heard people at the retreat say that they could feel the Holy Spirit at the retreat. I didn’t know what they were talking about. I wanted to feel the Holy Spirit, too. When I went to Adoration, I asked God to help me feel the Holy Spirit. I asked Him if He could do something so I would know that the Holy Spirit was actually there with me. I asked God this, and then I just sat for a few minutes and waited. I sat expectantly waiting for something to happen, but not really knowing what would happen. I closed my eyes, and a bright white dot of light appeared. My eyes were closed, but I could see this bright dot of light dancing around, almost as if it were on the back of my eyelids. I was afraid to open my eyes because I didn’t want it to leave. I knew this was the answer to my prayers. I knew that light was the Holy Spirit showing me that He was there with me. I can’t really explain how I knew; I just knew without a shadow of a doubt that it was the Holy Spirit. This happened about 10 years ago. I have thought about it since then, but not too often. Last Thursday night, I was at a Conference put on by Encounter Ministries. It was an amazing conference, and the Holy Spirit was definitely there. There was a time on Thursday evening when we had a talk about the baptism of the Holy Spirit. We had prayed, we worshiped, and then we called the Holy Spirit to come down upon all of us. When I was sitting in the pew, I closed my eyes, and instead of seeing a bright white dot of light, my whole vision was filled with that same blinding light. I felt like my body was full of that light. The Holy Spirit reminded me of that time back at that first retreat, and I felt as though He was telling me, " See how far we have come. I started as a small light inside of you, and my light is filling you up. It was such an amazing feeling. I was filled with so much joy, and love.
The other time I wanted to talk with you about today is when the Holy Spirit asked me to step way outside of my comfort zone. I am an extrovert. I love to be around people. Being around people fills my soul with joy. At the same time, I am shy. I do not like to walk up to people I don’t know and talk to them. I am always self-conscious and think, what if they reject me? What if they don’t want to talk to me? What if I am bothering them? I get super nervous, and when I get nervous sometimes, oftentimes, I cry. I am not sad, I am just so nervous I cry. Then I feel dumb for crying, and so I cry more. I don’t know if some of you relate to this or not, but it is something that is true for me. I decided about three or four years ago that I wanted to go on a retreat. I hadn’t been on one in a little while and I felt I needed it. I looked online one day and found out there was a silent retreat the very next weekend. I was so excited. It felt like it was meant to be, as what are the odds that I would look right then and find one that was coming up so soon and was so close. When I arrived, we had a quick meeting to meet the other people on the retreat and meet our advisors, and then we went silent. The only time we could talk was at our meeting with the spiritual advisor we were assigned once or twice that weekend.
At this initial meeting, we all told why we were there and a little about ourselves. There was a man there who was suffering from some illness, and if I remember correctly, they weren’t sure what it was. I think his wife was sick too. I just remember feeling bad that he was sick. Before going on this retreat, I had been to a life in the spirit seminar and had been attending a charismatic prayer group. I had a baptism in the Holy Spirit, but at this point, I could not speak in tongues. While I was out for a walk on the grounds, I was having a talk with God about how I couldn’t speak in tongues. I was explaining to God how I wanted this gift, I was open to it, and so I didn’t understand why I hadn’t received it yet. Then I heard God say, well, not heard like heard His voice, but heard in my soul, “It’s not me, it’s you.” I instantly knew what God was saying. I understood that He was saying He wasn’t keeping me from receiving this gift; I was keeping myself from it because I didn’t believe I was good enough to receive it. I was thinking, "Why would He give the gift to me?" and He was saying, "Why wouldn’t I?” Once I realized I was the one holding myself back, I finally submitted and accepted that God wanted to give me this gift, even if I wasn’t good enough for it. We are worthy of the gifts of the Spirit not because of anything we have done, but we are worthy because of what Jesus did for us on the cross. I went to the chapel at the retreat center, started praying, and received the gift of tongues. I was so happy. Later that night, I was reading a book, and I felt the Holy Spirit tell me I needed to pray for the guy who was sick. I instantly answered with a no. You know me, I don’t just walk up to people and ask them if I can pray over them. I know lots of people who do that, but I don’t. The Holy Spirit was not letting me off the hook. I tried to explain that I couldn’t talk; it was a silent retreat, and it just wasn’t going to work. But then the Holy Spirit reminded me we could talk after mass on Sunday, before we left. Once I realized that the feeling I needed to pray over this man wasn’t going away, I started to pray. I explained to God, like He didn’t already know, that I was really afraid to just go up to people and ask them if I could pray over them. What if they said no? Then I would feel dumb, probably start to cry, and be embarrassed. As you can imagine, God already knew this, so He wasn’t swayed. I explained to God that if He wanted me to do this, I would try, I really would, but He was going to have to give me some extraordinary courage, and He was going to have to arrange a meeting that was somewhat natural. Meaning we would have to run into each other when it was appropriate. For instance, I couldn’t interrupt the mass to do it. Writing this for you now, I can see how silly this sounds. How silly it is for me to be telling God exactly what I need, like he doesn’t already know, but this is what I did.
The next day was Sunday. I went to church, and it was a weird feeling because I wanted to run into this man, and I didn’t at the same time. I really wanted to pray over him, but I didn’t want the awkwardness of asking him. Also, I was new to praying over people, and I didn’t want to screw it up. I was walking down the hallway, and I saw the man. It was the perfect setup, right? I mean, with God orchestrating things, how could it not be? So I went up to the man and asked if I could pray over him, or that is what I wish I had done. But I didn’t. I walked right past him, I walked into the restroom, and I had a little chat with God. Ok, I am sorry. I know that was the perfect chance, and I blew it. I wanted to, but I just couldn’t. If you give me another chance, I will try again. Later, after lunch, we were all getting ready to go, and I saw the man in a different hallway, and we were alone. I said, “I know this may sound weird, but I really feel as if the Holy Spirit wants me to pray over you. Would you mind?” He was very nice and said he didn’t mind. I started to pray over him, and of course, I started to cry because I was so nervous. He felt bad that I was crying and told me not to worry, it wasn’t as if he was dying. I felt silly for crying as I wasn’t sad; I was just nervous. However, I was happy that I had done what the Holy Spirit asked me to do, and I knew the next time I said yes, it would be a little easier. I still struggle when the Holy Spirit asks me to pray over people I don’t know, and I still have times when I argue and try to convince the Holy Spirit that I am not the right one for the job. However, I am growing and learning and getting stronger, and as I always say, God is looking for progress, not perfection. I believe He remembers the times I said yes more than the times I said no.
I hope by sharing this witness, you will see if you ask the Holy Spirit to show up, He will show up. Also, although the Holy Spirit may ask you to step outside your comfort zone, He will always be right there with you and give you the strength and boldness you need to do what He is asking. All we need to do is say yes, and He will take care of the rest.
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He Is Series #10 Jehovah Shalom (The Lord is Peace)
Philippians 4:6-7 "Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
Today’s name for the Lord is Jehovah Shalom. The Lord is peace. We often hear that Jesus is the Prince of Peace, and this is just reinforcing that for us. This verse reminds us that the peace of God transcends all understanding and will guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. I know firsthand how powerful the peace of God can be. I have experienced it many times before. Raising my boys has not been easy. I don’t think raising any kids is easy, but we have had challenges that I hope most people don’t have to face. I was in the middle of one of these challenges when the Lord gave me this verse, so I want to share that experience with you to help you see how God can bring you peace no matter what you are facing.
One night, I knew it was going to be a long night, and so I decided, while it was quiet, I would write a devotional. I only got as far as asking the Lord for a scripture verse that would get me through the night. One that was just what I needed for the situation I was in. When I have done this before, I have had my Bible with me, and I would ask the Lord a question, then ask Him to show me the answer in His Word. Then I would randomly open the Bible and read the pages until I found my answer.
Tonight I didn’t have my Bible. I mean, I could have gone upstairs to get it, but honestly, I didn’t really have the energy to move. So, I wondered how I could randomly search an online Bible, as I did have my computer. I decided to type into the search bar “A scripture verse to help me make it through the night.” And I told the Lord that He knew my exact circumstances, and I asked if He could give me the verse I needed to read or hear.
Today's verse is the one that appeared in the search results. "Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” I laughed at first because I thought that was a pretty tall order. Not being anxious in this situation was definitely difficult, as one of my sons was making poor choices, and there wasn't much we could do about it. However, when I really thought about it, I realized I wasn’t anxious. I was mad, and I was sad, but I wasn’t anxious.
This reminded me of a conversation I was having with a friend the day before. When I told her all that was happening, she asked how I was dealing with it all. She asked how I was getting out of bed in the morning. I stopped and thought about it, and the answer was through the grace of God. This is not just something I was saying because I didn’t know what else to say. I truly meant it. I could look at the situation and know that God’s grace was helping me through it. I could see His hands all over this situation, and that makes it easier for me to turn it over to Him.
I could have absolutely been worrying about my son all day, every day. I could have been trying to fix it and ensure everything ran smoothly. I could have let it get to me so much that I stayed in bed, fearing what might happen or sad about what had already happened. Yet I did not, and I know that is because God prepared me for that moment. He prepared me for difficult times. There have been so many really hard things that have happened in the last 21 years, and I know that they were all preparation for that moment and the ones to follow.
I know God got me through that hard time, just as He has through so many other hard times. I know that this addiction will not destroy my son because God has promised me that it won’t, and I can trust in His promises. I can wait for God’s timing on this because I have waited a really long time for things in the past, and although the wait was never easy, it was always worth it in the end. I always say that I don’t know how I developed a deep trust in the Lord. I don’t know why I am not more worried about my son. I think this is because we all expect it to be complicated. We expect some difficult formula to show us how to trust in the Lord. I think it is actually so simple that we don’t want to believe it. Kind of like the story of Naaman in 2 Kings 5.
Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Aram, was a great man and in high favor with his master, because by him the Lord had given victory to Aram. The man, though a mighty warrior, suffered from leprosy. He found out about a prophet in Samaria who could cure him. Long story short, Naaman came to Elisha’s house. Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, “Go, wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored, and you shall be clean.” But Naaman became angry and went away, saying, “I thought that for me he would surely come out, and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, and would wave his hand over the spot, and cure the leprosy! Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them, and be clean?” He turned and went away in a rage. But his servants approached and said to him, “Father, if the prophet had commanded you to do something difficult, would you not have done it? How much more, when all he said to you was, ‘Wash, and be clean’?” So he went down and immersed himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God; his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was clean.
We think it must be complicated to follow the Lord. It must be complicated to figure out how to hand things over to him and how we can get Him to answer our prayers. We search for the perfect formula, and yet, it is not complicated. God tells us so simply what to do, and yet we don’t listen.
This verse gives us a formula for peace, yet I think many of us dismiss it because it isn’t complicated enough. Let’s review the verse again, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” In every situation where you are struggling right now, are you doing all that this verse tells us to do? Are you praying to God about it? Have you asked God for exactly what you need? Have you talked with Him about it? Yes, God knows what you need, and yet He also wants us to turn to Him and ask. What about the Thanksgiving part of it? Have you been grateful in this situation? Not necessarily appreciative of the problem, but while going through hard times, there is always something for which we can be thankful. Then it says to present your requests to God. Don’t be afraid to ask God for help. Your request is neither too big nor too small. Bring it to Him!
The verse ends with “And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” This is how I get out of bed in the morning. This is how I can watch my kids struggle and yet not let it take over every thought in my mind. This is how I can make it through hard times. That doesn’t mean I don’t have hard days. That doesn’t mean I didn’t spend a week watching TV recently, just to take my mind off the situation. I am not doing this perfectly, I know that. Yet, I firmly believe with 100% of my being that this will not be forever. This addiction will not get the best of my son. There is a whole, amazingly bright future for him, and God’s timing is better than mine. So by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, I will present my requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard my heart and mind in Christ Jesus.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all of us today. Jehovah Shalom, help us to come to you with prayer and petition. Help us to know that you are the creator of the universe, so whatever our problem is, you can handle it! Help us open our ears, minds, and hearts to you, and truly hear what you are saying to us. Help us not dismiss it because it is too easy. Help us be obedient, Lord. We love you, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day.
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Every place you go, every room you enter is enriched when you enter because you carry me, the light of the world, your savior and redeemer.”
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He Is Day 9 Jehovah Rapha "The Lord Who Heals You"
Exodus 15:26 “He said, “If you will listen carefully to the voice of the Lord your God, and do what is right in his sight, and give heed to his commandments and keep all his statutes, I will not bring upon you any of the diseases that I brought upon the Egyptians; for I am the Lord who heals you.”
Today’s name for the Lord is Jehovah Rapha. In this verse, the Lord says, “I am the Lord who heals you.” There are so many examples in the Bible of when Jesus healed people. There are also examples in the Old Testament of God healing people. My first instinct is to talk about some of the many examples of God healing people in the Bible, and I will mention a few. However, I think if many of us know the stories in the Bible of where Jesus healed people. What I think we struggle to believe is that He is still healing people today. However, Scripture says that Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and always. This means if he was healing people back then, He is still healing people today. I will show you some extraordinary examples of different ways God is still showing up and healing today.
First, let’s look at the Bible. In the Old Testament, God usually healed people through His prophets. One example of this is 2 Kings chapter 5, when Naaman was healed of Leprosy. Naaman had leprosy, and he went to Elisha to be healed. Elisha said, “Go, wash yourself seven times in the Jordan, and your flesh will be restored and you will be cleansed.” Naaman reluctantly did so and was healed. Another one is found in 1 Kings chapter 17 when Elijah raises the widow’s son. Her son became ill, and he died. She was upset with Elijah and asked why he had caused her son to die. Elijah took her son and healed him.
In the New Testament, there are plenty of stories of Jesus healing the blind, the deaf, those overcome with demons; He even brought at least two people back from the dead. He cured a woman who had been bleeding for 12 years. She had gone to all the doctors, all those who said they could help, and no one helped. Yet, she was healed when she touched the garment that Jesus was wearing. If you read any of the four Gospels, you will encounter miracle stories of the amazing things Jesus did to heal people. The Gospel in mass on the morning I am writing this was the story of how Jesus brought Lazarus back from the dead. It wasn’t like he had just died and Jesus revived him. He had been dead for days and was buried in a tomb, and Jesus called to him, and he got up and walked out of that tomb. God is our healer!!
If we asked most Christians if they believed that Jesus was a healer when he walked the earth, they would probably say yes. Anyone who believes the Bible would definitely say yes. However, if you asked people whether they thought Jesus was still healing people today in the same ways He did back then, I think most would say no. I want you to know that He is! God is the same yesterday, today, and always. That is what the Bible says, and we know the Bible to be true. I have read many books about healing, and I have wanted the Lord to use me for healing in the same way He healed through the apostles. He sent them out two by two to proclaim the Gospel and perform signs and wonders. He has commissioned us to do the same. Many of us just don’t know that He has asked us all to do the same.
I went to a conference in October of 2018, and Mary Healy was the speaker. She talked all about healing, and if we want the gift, we can just ask the Lord for it. I heard this, and I felt a calling placed on my heart. I was so sure that I wanted the Lord to use me in this way. I started learning all I could about the healing ministry and reading books by those who had come before me with healing ministries. The more I learned about the Holy Spirit, the healing ministries, and how God was using ordinary people like you and me to perform signs and wonders, the more excited I got.
I started to be brave and ask people if I could pray with them and for them. I prayed with several people, and although they did not receive a physical healing, they did feel peace and the love of the Lord. The conference that got me on fire for the Lord’s healing ministry was in 2018. For the next year, I occasionally asked people if they wanted prayer, and I would pray with them. I did not see anyone healed, but that is ok because God is the one who does the healing. It is not up to me who gets healed; I just need to be obedient when I feel the Holy Spirit prompting me to pray with someone.
Then, at the very end of September 2019, my sister had a baby who was born 3 months early. She was less than 2 lbs when she was born, and I was lucky enough to be at the hospital just after she was born. She was in the intensive care unit because she was so little and they did not think she was going to make it. They allowed me to be in the ICU with my brother in law while they worked on my neice. My sister was also brought up there in a wheelchair, as she had just had a baby. The doctors and nurses told us that my niece was not going to make it. She was too small and too fragile, and she would not make the ambulance ride to the hospital that was equipped to handle such a tiny baby. Every time they tried to move her to the transport bed, her vitals would bottom out. She was too fragile to move.
We refused to believe she wouldn’t make it. I texted everyone I knew for prayers. We prayed over her. I prayed in tongues almost the whole time. We cried out to God for his healing touch, and He came through for us. My niece’s vitals stabilized, they transported her to the other hospital, and four months later, she got to go home. Today, she is 5 and a half years old and one of the most remarkable little girls I have ever known. God is still healing today.
If you still aren’t sold, you can listen to the many Witness Wednesdays I've had on this podcast. They are not all healing ones, but there are many that are. My friend was just on a Zoom call with her Encounter Ministries class, and they were practicing the healing prayer model they had just learned. While on the Zoom call, her one leg grew out so it was the same length as her other one, and her scoliosis was healed. At the healing practicum for the Encounter Ministries Boston Campus, there was a healing of a woman who had had this hip pain her whole life, and after being prayed over, she no longer had it.
There was a woman who attended an Encounter Ministries Conference one year, and right before the conference, she had been told she had stage 4 esophageal cancer, and there was nothing the doctors could do for her. She went to the conference and waited in line for the priest at a healing service to pray over her. He said she needed the kids to pray over her.
At the conference, they had a tract for kids and taught them how to pray over each other. The kids were between 6-9 and she told them what the doctors said and they started to pray over here. She started to feel warmth, and they got excited, as that is often a manifestation of the Holy Spirit. They continued to pray, and she thanked them and went home. At her next appointment with the doctor, they did scans to see if the cancer had spread, and the doctors were amazed. The cancer was completely gone. The doctor said in his whole career he had never seen anything like this happen.
God is still healing today!! If you still aren’t sure, just search online for miracle healing stories, or go to popwe.org and read some of the stories there. You will be amazed at how often God is still healing today. And oftentimes He is using regular people like you and me! If you need a healing, ask God and trust He will come through for you! Also, look for a miraculous healing story that fits what you need; I am sure you will find one. And remember God is the same yesterday, today, and always. So if he did it for someone else, He can do it for you!
Dear Jehovah Rapha, we ask you to bless everyone listening to this episode today. Lord, thank you for continuing to heal the world one person at a time. Thank you for all the miracles you are still commissioning your people to perform each and every day. Thank you for all the healings I have seen with my own eyes and those I have heard about. You are so amazing. Lord, help us to believe that you are still healing today. Help us to see your healing touch in those around us. Help us be brave and call upon the name Jehovah Rapha when we need healing for ourselves and our loved ones. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I pray each one of you listening calls upon Jehovah Rapha every single time you need Him because He never gets tired of us calling upon Him. I look forward to meeting you all here again tomorrow, and I pray you remember that Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! God is for you, not against you, and we are both rooting for you! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, let my power work through each of you. I seek willing vessels, open and be set free. Allow me to touch souls through you, trust, and move forward in my way.”
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He Is Series Day #8 Elohei Ma’uzzi (God of My Strength)
Psalm 105:4 “Seek the Lord and his strength; seek his presence continually.”
Today’s name for the Lord is Elohei Ma’uzzi, which means God of My Strength. I thought this was a great one because I know a lot of people who could really use some strength right now. When we are going through a difficult time, we can often turn to things other than the Lord for strength. We might start having a drink when we get home from work, or after a busy day with the kids. We figure that will give us just enough strength to get through the night until the kids go to bed, or it will relax us enough to forget about work. However, oftentimes one drink turns into two or three, creating another problem. Sometimes we turn to our friends and family for the strength we need. However, they can only provide so much strength, as they are human and have a finite amount. We also might try to rely on our own strength to get us through. This is not enough. We need to seek the Lord’s strength.
How can we seek the Lord’s strength? First and foremost, we can ask for it. That may sound so simple, and it is, and yet so many of us forget to start there. We look everywhere else first. We get upset with the Lord for not giving us the strength we need, and yet we never asked for it in the first place. God wants to help us. He is ready and willing. All He asks from us is for us to ask Him. Yes, he knows you need help, and also, he is willing to let you try to fix it yourself if that is what you want to do. Have you ever done this with your children, co-workers, or siblings? You can see them struggling, and you know they need help, but you don’t help them until they ask? You give them the chance to figure it out on their own. God does not do this to punish us, or because He doesn’t care. Quite the opposite, He does it because he cares. He cares about what we want and need. He cares about our growth, and we grow when we do difficult things. However, He will step in as soon as we ask him to.
Another way we can seek his strength is by using the tools He gave us. We can dig into His word and find strength in the scriptures. We can also seek the various prayers He has given to us. There are so many prayers out there. You can say your own prayers or find ones for your specific needs. Sometimes we don’t know what to pray, especially if we are really upset. Finding a prayer that someone else wrote and praying it can take a lot of the pressure off. If you are struggling and you can’t find the words to say, you can also just sit with the Lord. He doesn’t need us to say the right thing. He just wants us to seek Him. It says in Matthew 6:7, “When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words.” Our prayers don’t have to be long and drawn out, they don’t have to be perfect and eloquent, they don’t have to be exact. What God wants is for us to speak from the heart.
Another way we can seek strength from the Lord is to attend Mass or a church service. Being part of a community is great because when you surround yourself with others who share your beliefs, you feel freer to be yourself. You don’t have to worry that people will mock you or persecute you for your beliefs. You feel safe. You have people who will speak God’s truth into the lies that the enemy is telling you. Also, Mass is great because you get to worship God and participate in a sacrament. Mass is the ultimate way to seek God because you actually receive Jesus, through communion, into your body. At church services, you get to hear the word of God, and then the pastor gives a sermon on that word to make it more personal to each and every one of us. These sermons help us to take the word of God and apply it to our lives. The sermons help us understand the Word of God more.
Oftentimes at Mass, there is also praise and worship music, and that is another way to seek strength from the Lord. I have found so much strength from the Lord through the lyrics of these songs. I love to listen to praise and worship music. If I think back to the one thing I have done consistently since I discovered praise music in 2011, it is listening to it often. When I am really struggling, I will find a few songs that speak to what I am going through or to who God really is, and I will play them on repeat to remind me of the power I have through Christ, who strengthens me. (Phillipians 4:13)
Another way to be filled up with strength by God is to just sit with the Lord. At Catholic churches, you can go to something called Eucharistic Adoration. This is the worship of the Eucharist outside of the Mass. The Eucharistic Host is displayed in a monstrance on the altar so that all can see and pray in the presence of Christ. The Eucharist contains the body and blood of Christ, and so when you are in Eucharistic Adoration, you are in the true presence of Christ. Do you have to go to Adoration to spend time with God? Absolutely not. God is everywhere, He is all around us, and even inside of us in the form of the Holy Spirit. If you want to spend time with the Lord, you can do this anywhere. According to Jesus, it’s good to go away from the crowd to pray. In Matthew 6:6, it says, “But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” The Bible also mentions several times that Jesus went off to the Mts. or elsewhere to be by himself to pray. Whatever works for you is great. Just spend time with the Lord. When I sit with the Lord, I often write in my journal as if I were writing a letter to my Father in heaven, because it is difficult for me to sit in silence with Him. Again, whatever works for you is perfect. There are no rules to spending time with our heavenly Father; whatever feels right to you.
I have mentioned five ways that we can seek strength from the Lord. First, ask the Lord for His strength. Second, use the tools He has given to us. Third, attend Mass or a church service. Fourth, listen to praise and worship music. Fifth, spend time with the Lord, just the two of you. There are many other ways that you can seek strength from the Lord. Try these ways and see which ones you like best. One of the many things about God is that He knows we are all unique, and what works for one of us may not work for another. I promise that if you turn to God and seek your strength from Him instead of from the world, He will give you more strength than you need. I have seen people get through incredibly difficult, even impossible, situations because they relied on God rather than themselves or the world. Lean in, God is waiting.
Dear Elohei Ma’uzzi, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us turn to you for strength. Help us to see that the world can’t help us as much as you can. Help us make good choices when seeking strength, and avoid bad habits we will have to fix later. Lord, if anyone is turning to bad habits for their strength right now, I ask that you send the Holy Spirit to convict them of it and help them turn back to you. Lord, you are the Lord of Lords and the King of Kings. You are the resurrection and the life. We are so grateful for all that you do. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed weekend!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in September 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, I rejoice in each of you. You are all so unique, and yet each one of you is like a star in the sky, dazzling, precious to me.”
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He Is Series: Day #7 The Good Shepherd
Revelations 7:17 "For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd; ‘he will lead them to springs of living water.’ ‘And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.’”
Today’s name for the Lord is The Good Shepherd. I thought this scripture verse was a good one for this, and there is another one I will mention too. What a beautiful image of God wiping away every tear from our eyes. I don’t know about you, but I am a crier. I tend to cry a lot. God will be busy if He wipes away every tear. In all seriousness, though, this is a beautiful scripture. It starts off by talking about the Lamb at the center of the throne, who will be their shepherd. That Lamb is Jesus. He is our good shepherd. It says in John 10:11, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” This is exactly what Jesus did for us: He laid down His life for us, his sheep. I heard a story from a friend about an incident that happened when she was walking in Walmart during the pandemic. She was walking through Walmart wearing a mask because there was still a mandate requiring masks to shop there. However, a man was walking towards her with two young girls. When he passed my friend, he made sheep sounds at her. He was implying that she was a sheep blindly following the others.
I have heard this analogy often, and despite the popular belief that sheep are stupid, they are actually incredibly intelligent. They have very impressive cognitive abilities, and, just like humans, they form deep, lasting bonds with one another, stick up for one another in fights, and grieve when they lose a friend. They experience the same emotions we do, including fear, joy, boredom, anger, and happiness, to name a few. We envision the sheep blindly following whoever and going wherever they are told. This is not the case. Sheep recognize their shepherd’s voice, and they will go wherever their shepherd tells them to go. They have complete trust in their shepherd. The shepherd, in return for this obedience, loves them and is willing to lay down his life for them. How beautiful is that?
I think this is one way that sheep have an advantage over us. They recognize their shepherd’s voice, and so they follow it. I think we have a hard time figuring out whose voice to listen to. The world is so busy and so noisy, and there are so many voices speaking into our lives. There are the voices of the loved ones around us. They are speaking to us and leading us in a direction they think we should go. Then there are our friends who may not share our beliefs, and they are leading us in the direction they think we should go. Then there are all the voices of those around the world who also usually have opinions on how we should and shouldn’t live. There are so many voices, and we get confused, and we don’t know which ones to listen to. Oftentimes, the voices and the noises of the world are so loud that we can’t hear the voice of our good shepherd. The voices of the world are not the ones we need to listen to, and yet they are so loud that we can’t hear any other voices.
The verse above says that the shepherd will lead us to springs of living waters. Don’t we want this? Don’t we want to follow the shepherd who will lead us to springs of living waters? So, how do we learn to hear the Lord’s voice more? How do we learn to tune out all the noise of the world so we can focus on the Lord’s voice? First, we can begin by spending time each day trying to hear the Lord’s voice. How much time do you spend each day asking the Lord for things in prayer? How much time do you spend sitting quietly and asking the Lord what He wants to say to you? The Lord wants to talk to us, but we just don’t give Him the time to talk. This can be your first step. Just sit quietly, ask, and let the Lord know you are ready to listen. At our prayer group, we usually begin by saying, “Speak, Lord, your servants are listening.” (1 Samuel 3:10) You do not have to start off by sitting down and giving God 30 minutes of quiet time to speak to you. If you have never done this before, 30 minutes is a long time. Even if you have, it still may be a long time. Just start out with 5 minutes of quiet time and see what happens.
The next step that can help you start hearing the Lord’s word more is to write down whatever He tells you in those five minutes. I struggle to just sit there, think of nothing, and do nothing for 5 min. So, I do an exercise I learned from Fern Gorin at the Life Purpose Institute. I ask the Lord to speak to me through my pen, and then I write down whatever comes to mind for the next 5 minutes, or however long I am sitting there. This is especially helpful because then you can go back and read over it. Now, is every single thing that comes to mind in those 5 minutes from the Lord, probably not, but it is a start. I think the more times you do this, the more and more of what you write will be from the Lord. Also, you are asking the Lord to show up, and when we ask, He answers. So, why wouldn’t he show up and talk to you through your pen? The key to this exercise is not to question everything that comes into your mind. Just write it all down, then read it over later and reflect on what you think the Lord was telling you. While you are writing, don’t second-guess yourself, don’t let the enemy’s voice come in and get you to question why the Lord would talk to you, block out all the doubt, and just trust that you asked the Lord to show up, and so He will.
If we want the shepherd to lead us to springs of living water and the Lord to wipe away every tear, then we need to learn to listen to the shepherd’s voice and follow Him wherever He leads us. The way I suggested above is just one way to begin to hear the Lord’s voice. If it doesn’t resonate with you, no worries, do something different. We are all different people, and we all do things differently. The important part of this message is not that you listen to the Lord’s voice the same way I do. The important thing is that we all find a way to block out the world's noise and start hearing the voice of our good shepherd.
Dear Good Shepherd, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask you to help us hear your voice. We want you to lead us to the living waters and to wipe away all our tears. Help us to hear your voice above all others. Help us to block out the noise of the world and concentrate on your voice. Lord, we are so grateful for all you do for us. We are so grateful to be counted as one of your sheep. You are an awesome shepherd, and we love you. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in September 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Sometimes I catch you running in a different direction, but I stop you because I know the right way for you to go. So listen to the voice that whispers because that is me.”
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Witness Wednesday #201 Catherine D
When I was praying about what to witness about today, the Lord brought to my mind my grandpa, my dad's father. One night, we were sitting around the kitchen table, and we got a phone call from my grandpa.
He said he was watching TV and all the lights in his house were off. He just had one light on in the TV room. So somebody thought he wasn't home and tried to break into his house.
They were trying to break in through the door with a screwdriver, and the screwdriver hit the window, and my grandpa thought someone had knocked on the door. So he went out, and he opened the door to see who it was, and the young man pushed his way in. Then he asked my grandfather for his money, his wallet, and anything else he had.
My grandfather didn't have much cash or many valuable things. The man pushed him down, and he took the screwdriver, and he cut my grandpa's throat from one ear to the other almost. His whole throat was cut.
Luckily, my grandfather didn't die, and he was actually able to call my parents. He called our house, and my sister was on the line with her boyfriend, but we had call waiting at the time, thank goodness. So she clicked over, and it was my grandpa, and my parents kept him on the phone until the ambulance could come.
Then they went to meet him at the hospital. My brother Danny also went to meet him at the hospital. As my grandfather was recovering, he actually got a visit from not one but two bishops in the area.
I'm not sure if they were there visiting other people, or if they went there just to see my grandpa. Although I do know my grandpa helped out a lot at the church. When the doctors were examining my grandpa, they said that his neck healed faster than they had ever seen before.
They didn't expect him to recover as quickly as he did. I was in seventh or eighth grade at the time, so I'm not sure how long he was in there. It probably felt like forever for me because he's my grandpa and he was in the hospital.
I did go to visit him once while he was in there, and it was scary for me because it looked like he had staples in his neck. I don't know, it could have just been stitches. But for me, as a kid, it reminded me of Frankenstein, and it was a little scary, especially since it was my grandpa. I wanted to witness about how quickly he healed, and the doctor said it was miraculous because it should have taken him much longer.
Then, when I was out for my run this morning, I felt like God was telling me to witness about my Encounter Ministries class. I know I have talked about it on here, and you can go back and look. I testified about an Encounter Ministries healing session we did.
At least one. I think I might have witnessed about two. But today I just want to tell you how great the program is in general, and I also want to talk about inner healing in particular.
The program itself is really good. The first quarter is all about identity, and so it teaches us who we are as children of God. Who we are in God's eyes, in the eyes, and spends eight weeks reinforcing our identity as Christ's children.
Then, the next eight weeks, we spent listening to God's voice and hearing words of prophecy, words of knowledge, and words of wisdom, hearing blessings, and then being able to share those with other people and those blessings to bless others.
After that, the next eight weeks we spent on physical healing, and we got to pray over people with physical ailments and see them healed. We got to see them feeling better, and it was so amazing.
One testimony about this quarter was that we had a priest who was taking the class with us. He had one leg slightly shorter than the other, so he had to wear a lift in one shoe. However, at the end of each class, we do activations where we put into practice everything we have learned. That day, we learned that it was possible to pray for people with uneven legs, and that God can grow their legs to be the same length. We saw a video of this happening at a healing event in Mexico. My classmates prayed over the priest, and his leg grew out. He no longer needed a lift in his shoe! God is so good!
And then the last eight weeks were on inner healing, and those eight weeks were the most transformative for many students, because as we went through and learned about the various exercises, we also got to practice them on each other, and so we got to experience that inner healing. And inner healing is all about freedom. God doesn't want things weighing on you.
He doesn't want us to close our hearts off and not let anyone in, just so we don't get hurt again. He doesn't want our past trauma and our past wounds to affect our future. He doesn't want depression and anxiety weighing down on us and making us miserable.
God wants us to be free, and he wants to help us become free. When we're in a difficult situation, as we're growing up, things happen, and then we form a lie about that thing. We tell ourselves something that's not true, and then it informs every decision after that. Many times, we don’t realize we have formed a lie. We didn’t consciously do it, and we don’t know it is there, but it informs all our decisions.
During an inner healing session, you talk about what has happened in your past. You ask God to bring up any memories that need healing. You ask God to show you any lies that you might have developed over the years, and then you renounce those lies, and then you ask God to replace those lies with truth, and then you declare those truths.
We just had an inner healing practicum, and several people said after their session that they felt so much lighter. They said they literally felt a weight lifted off of them. They felt lighter, and they felt freer, and I just want to offer to all of you listening, this is available to you, too.
If you need prayers for physical healing or for inner healing, reach out to me. I'm happy to pray with you, and if you know me really well and you want to pray with someone you don't know well, I'm happy to point you to one of my fellow students. Everybody in the class wants to help people be free.
We want to share what we've learned with everyone we know because we want everyone to be able to live the life God intended for them, free. I'm going to be talking more about the Encounter Ministries class and the physical healing and the inner healing and all the things we've learned in the class over the year more on my Facebook page because I feel like the Holy Spirit's prompting me to share more about the class and about what we've learned and about the freedom that people can have if you're not already following me on Facebook and you want to learn more about Encounter Ministries. Also on Facebook, you can look up the Encounter School of Ministry Boston campus to see all the cool things they're doing, and if you're local, you can go to some of the events they're hosting.
Okay, that's it for my witness this week. I just want to ask again if anyone would like to give a witness. Please let me know. I know that everybody really loves listening on Wednesdays because they get to hear from other people, not just me, and because they get to see the cool things God's doing in other people's lives.
So please share your witnesses. Love you all!
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I am the Alpha and the Omega
Revelations 1:8 “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.”
Have you heard this description of the Lord before? “I am the Alpha and the Omega.” I feel as though I have heard that a lot. I am not sure I knew what Alpha and Omega were before, though. Did you know that Alpha and Omega are the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet? What God means when He says He is the Alpha and the Omega is that He is the beginning and the end. God is with us in the beginning, before we were even born. He will also be with us in the end.
One of the ladies from my prayer group mentioned that we can find comfort in this thought when we have aging relatives or friends. Sometimes, when we have aging relatives, they require a lot of assistance. We want to be with them to help them, and sometimes we just can’t be with them all the time. But we can rest assured that even when we can’t be with them, God is with them. He is probably better company anyway.
I remember when I was little, I always struggled with the thought that God was always there. That with God, there is no beginning and end. He was just always there. Actually, if I think about it too much, I still struggle with this. Then, yesterday, my friend Louise from the prayer group explained this in a way that made a lot of sense to me. She said that we struggle with things like this because we are human and we think in very finite terms. Our minds are limited, so we cannot understand everything about God. He is not finite, and we can’t try to make him fit into a box that our minds can comprehend. He is a wonder in so many ways.
I do take comfort in knowing that God was there at the beginning and He will be there at the end, and He is there every day in between. We are never alone. I am sure it does not always feel like this. Some days we can feel God’s presence more than others. Why is that? Why do we have some days when we know God is with us, and others when we feel He has abandoned us? Those are two excellent questions. Ones I am not sure I know the answer to, and yet ones I still wanted to ask because I think it is something we could all think about. I think we would each have a different answer to these questions.
When I think about those questions, I wonder when I feel closest to God. I think it is when I am praying or praising Him. Actually, maybe more so when I am praising Him. When I am listening to Christian music and singing along, I can feel God’s presence. I follow this woman on social media, whose name is Kristina Kuzmic. She is really funny and does short videos about parenting and about being a woman. They are very uplifting and encouraging. They help you to know that parenting is hard for everyone and that you are perfect just the way you are. Anyway, she dances all the time. Just walking down the street, she will be dancing. I used to wonder why. However, I’ve discovered I feel the same way when I am listening to praise music.
There is a free playlist on Spotify called Big Life Mornings. It is filled with upbeat Christian songs. I listen when I go for a run, when I walk my dog, when I drive, or when I clean. I listen to it a lot. When I listen to it and sing along, I feel as though God is with me. I can feel His presence, and it makes me want to dance, too. I am not sure I am describing the feeling correctly, but it is truly amazing. If you feel like God has abandoned you and haven’t felt His presence in a while, maybe take some time today to play some Christian music and see how you feel. See if Jesus fills your soul.
Another time I feel the Lord’s presence is in Eucharistic Adoration. If you are a Christian and not Catholic, you may not know what this is. We, as Catholics, believe that Jesus Christ is present in the Eucharist. Eucharistic Adoration is when the priest displays the host or eucharist in a vessel called a monstrance. The monstrance is placed on the altar or a table and is left there for a certain period of time. We get to go and sit with Jesus and pray in His actual presence. I know that God is with us all the time. We do not need to go to adoration to be with Jesus. However, I find I do feel closer when I go. I am not sure how to describe it, other than comparing it to when you go to a grave site to visit someone who has passed away. You do not need to be at the grave site to talk to that person, but somehow, being there, where their body is buried, makes you feel closer.
If you are Catholic and have never tried going to adoration, I would urge you to give it a try. Find out where it is located and go once a week for a month, and see how much it changes your life. I try to go for an hour, but even 10 minutes could make a difference. Just go sit with the Lord. I think you will definitely feel closer to Him. You don’t have to do anything specific at Adoration. The point of it is just to spend time with Him. Even if you are not Catholic, you could give Eucharistic Adoration a try. Most churches have adoration for at least a few hours a week, and I think there is perpetual adoration, meaning 24 hours a day, every day, in every state. When I was looking, I just googled Eucharistic Adoration near me. I am sure the Lord will do the rest.
As I said above, if we each took the time to ask ourselves, “When do I feel closest to the Lord?” then I think we would probably all come up with different answers. I wanted to share two things I do to feel closer to the Lord with you. You may be different. You may not like music or sitting in church with the Lord. You may feel closest to the Lord when you are out in nature, painting or writing, or maybe when you are with family. It doesn’t matter what the answer to the question is; what matters is that you ask yourself the question and then pay attention to the answer. If we are conscious about where we feel closest to God, then when we start to feel abandoned or wonder “Where is God?” we can go to that place or do that thing, and it may help us to feel Him again.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless everyone listening to this episode today. I ask that you allow each and every one of us to feel your presence today. We ask that you just let us know that you're here. We ask that you help us answer this question: When do I feel closest to you? Lord, we want to feel your presence at all times. It is especially important when we're going through difficult times, and we wonder where you are. Lord Jesus, help us to see where you are in our lives. Help us to know the things that bring us closer to you and also the things that separate us from you. Lord, we love you so very much. You are so amazing. We're so thankful that you are the Alpha and the Omega. We're thankful that you were there at the beginning, that you'll be there at the end, and every day in between. Lord, it brings us so much comfort to know that you are always there. Also, to know you are always with our family members and friends, and that when we can't be with them, you are. We thank you for always being there, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you are enjoying this podcast, please share it with a friend. If you would like to subscribe, that would be great too. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! God is for you, not against you, and we are both rooting for you! Have a very blessed day.
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in September 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Open the doors of your heart to me. I knock, but you do not open. Do not put false gods before me. Let go of any idols. Live by my word, and I will never abandon you. I am the Lord who loves you always.”
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He Is Series Day #5 Jehovah Jireh (God Will Provide)
Genesis 22:14 “So Abraham called that place ‘The Lord will provide’; and to this day it is said, ‘On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided.’”
God asked Abraham to offer Isaac, his only son—the son God had promised Abraham and Sarah would have even though Abraham was about 100 and Sarah about 90. God had said, “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.” Yet now God was asking Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. This must have been very confusing. Let me read Genesis 22:1–19.
Some time later God tested Abraham. He said, “Abraham!”
“Here I am,” he replied.
Then God said, “Take your son, your only son, whom you love—Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you.”
Early the next morning Abraham set out with two servants and his son Isaac. On the third day he saw the place in the distance. He said to the servants, “Stay here with the donkey while the boy and I go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.”
Abraham placed the wood on Isaac and carried the fire and knife himself. As they walked together Isaac said, “Father, we have the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”
Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.”
When they reached the place God had shown him, Abraham built an altar, arranged the wood, and placed Isaac on it. He reached out his hand to sacrifice his son, but the angel of the Lord called from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham! Do not lay a hand on the boy. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld your only son.”
Abraham looked up and saw a ram caught in a thicket. He sacrificed it instead of his son. So Abraham called that place “The Lord Will Provide.”
The angel of the Lord called to Abraham again and declared that because of his obedience God would bless him and make his descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore. Then Abraham returned to his servants and they went back to Beersheba.
I know that was a lot to read, but it is important because we all may face times of testing.
Has God ever asked you to do something you didn’t understand? Something that seemed to contradict what you thought He had already promised?
God told Abraham He would build a nation through Isaac, yet then asked him to sacrifice Isaac. Still, Abraham told his son, “God himself will provide the lamb.” He had faith even though he didn’t know what would happen on that mountain.
We also see his faith in Genesis 22:5 when he tells the servants, “We will come back to you.” He didn’t say I will come back—he said we.
How could Abraham be so confident? I think it was for two reasons.
First, Abraham truly knew God. He had a close relationship with Him and knew His character.
Second, Abraham knew God always keeps His promises. If God said Abraham’s descendants would come through Isaac, then Abraham trusted that God would somehow make that happen.
This story reminds us that God will provide even when we cannot see how. Abraham didn’t understand how Isaac could be sacrificed and still be part of God’s promise, but he trusted God anyway.
The same can be true for us. We don’t have to understand the plan—we simply have to obey what God is asking us to do and trust Him with the rest.
What if we looked at the challenges in our lives as tests of faith? Would it change how we respond?
Hebrews 11:1 says, “Faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” Can we hold onto hope even when we cannot see the way forward?
Hope is not always easy. But what is the alternative? Do we stop hoping so we won’t be disappointed?
For me, I choose hope—even when it hurts. What if this is the test? What if God only needed me to trust Him one more day?
Abraham kept his faith all the way up the mountain. You can too.
I know it can be painful when we hope for something and it doesn’t happen. I prayed for my friend Iris to be healed from cancer here on earth, yet God healed her in heaven. I prayed for another miracle that didn’t come the way I hoped.
But I have also seen many times when God did come through—when I had confidence in what I hoped for and assurance in what I could not see. God has worked miracles in ways I may never fully understand.
When you struggle to have hope, look to Abraham. When things don’t make sense and seem impossible, trust God anyway.
God is for you, not against you. He can make a way. Nothing is impossible for Him.
Move forward in faith.
Dear Jehovah Jireh, please bless everyone listening today. Help us to have the faith of Abraham. Help us to know you deeply and to trust the lives of our loved ones in your hands. Give us the strength and courage to say yes when you ask us to do things we do not understand. We know you are good and that you are for us, not against us. Help us to keep hoping, even when it is hard. Thank you for all you provide. We ask this according to your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are—and so do I! God is for you, not against you, and we are both rooting for you. Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in September 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have questions about the prayer group or how to join a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com.
Today’s Word from the Lord is:
“I say again, trust me. I can see the full picture. I know what you need for eternal life. I walk with you. You only see the present, but I see eternity. Trust me. I know what is best for you, and I will not abandon you.”
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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He Is Series Day #4 El Shaddai (God Almighty)
Genesis 17:1 “When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to Abram, and said to him, ‘I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless.”
Today’s name for God is El Shaddai. This means God Almighty. This verse is what God says to Abram right before He makes a covenant with Him and changes His name to Abraham. God promises Abraham that he will be the father of many nations and that his descendants will be too numerous to count. God made this covenant with Abraham 25 years before Abraham and his wife, Sarah, had a child together.
I want to go into a bit of detail about this timeline because I have always heard that Abraham had to wait 25 years, but when I read further into Genesis Chapter 17, God tells Abraham that he will have the baby in one year. Here is a quick summary of the timeline. When Abram is 75 years old, God first calls him and tells him that he will be the father of nations. (Genesis 12:1-4) Then, after 15 years, Sarah gets tired of waiting and, honestly, probably starts to question whether the promise will come true. So, Sarah gives her handmaid to Abram, and they have a baby together. Abram is 86 when Ismael is born. (Gene 16:16) Then, 13 years later, God returns, and that is where this verse picks up. God changes their names to Abraham and Sarah and promises that Sarah will conceive within one year. At this point, Abraham is 99 years old.
This is important to know because sometimes we think that if God is making a covenant with us and has a plan for our lives, then we will automatically see that plan come to pass. We start to doubt that God really has a plan for us when we don’t see immediate signs. Or maybe we are ok waiting for a few weeks or a few months, but what if we needed to wait 25 years? I am not a fan of waiting. God and I talk about this all the time. I am continually asking why we can’t go with my timeline rather than His. I am sure I am not the only one who asks Him this question. Do you ever feel tired of waiting? Do you ever wonder if it is really going to happen, since you have been waiting so long?
I definitely know people who gave up hope that the thing they were praying for would happen. This is not unusual. It is hard to wait for God’s time. Even Abraham and Sarah, who were chosen by God to be the parents of nations, got tired of waiting for God to give them a baby and took it into their own hands. Have you ever done this before? Have you ever gotten tired of waiting for the Lord to find you the right boyfriend/girlfriend and settled for the wrong one? Have you ever decided to do something, even though you were pretty sure it wasn’t right, just because you wanted the dream to come true?
When we force situations to fulfil God’s promises, instead of letting God fill them in His perfect timing, things never work out well. I know waiting is hard. It is especially hard if you are waiting on something that you feel has a time limit. For instance, if you want to have a family and you feel your biological clock is ticking, it may be very hard to wait on the Lord. And I know it is easy to say that Sarah gave birth long after her childbearing days were over, but it’s another thing to believe it can happen in this day and age.
God will come through for you. It just requires a whole lot of patience to wait on Him. I have a friend who really wanted to be married and have a family. She was in her forties and feeling like it was never going to happen. However, she kept trying to hope that it would happen. She kept trying to believe God would come through and fulfill her deepest desires. This summer, she will have been married for two years to a man who is perfect for her. The two of them just make so much sense together. They even have the same sense of humor. It’s so sweet to see them together! God will answer your prayers, too!
Whenever I said this name for the Lord in this episode, a song instantly came into my head. It is a great song to demonstrate how Almight our God is! The song is titled Good God Almighty and it is sung by Crowder. I am going to share that song with you now.
[Verse 1]
I can't count the times I've called Your name some broken night
And You showed up and patched me up like You do every time
I get amnesia, I forget that you keep coming around
Yeah, ain't no way You'll ever let me down
I love this verse because it reminds us that every time we call out to the Lord, He shows up. It also reminds us that we can cry out to him when we are broken; we don’t have to wait until we fix ourselves before we do. I also love the imagery when the song says, you showed up and patched me up like you do every time. God is going to come and help you every time. Not sometimes, not occasionally, EVERYTIME! I also like how it shows us we are not alone when we forget that God is there, or when we forget to call out to Him. We forget that God won’t ever let us down!
[Chorus]
Good God Almighty, I hope You'll find me
Praising Your name, no matter what comes
'Cause I know where I'd be without Your mercy
So I keep praising Your name at the top of my lungs
If you have been listening to this podcast for a while, you know how much I love praise. So, you can see why I love this chorus. Crowder is saying that he hopes the Lord will find him praising His name no matter what comes his way. I pray this for each one of you. I pray, no matter what situation you are in, that the Lord will find you praising His name. Praise will change your situation so much faster than anything else will. I also love the line that says, “'Cause I know where I'd be without Your mercy.” Where would I be without God’s mercy? Where would you be without God’s mercy?
[Post-Chorus]
Tell me, is He good? (He's good) Tell me, is He God? (He's God)
Hе is Good God Almighty
[Verse 2]
You say Your love goes on forevеr, that Your mercy never stops
So why would I assume you'll be somebody that you're not?
Like sun in the morning, I know You're gonna be there every day
So what on Earth could make me be afraid?
This verse is great because it reminds us that God is who He says He is. If He says His love is forever, and His mercy never stops, then why would we assume, or why do we worry that He will stop loving us or that He won’t forgive us? I also love the reminder that just as the sun rises every single morning, so too will God be with us every single day!
[Bridge]
Praise Him in the morning, praise Him in the noon time
Praise Him when the sun goes down
Love Him in the morning, love Him in the noon time
Love Him when the sun goes down
This bridge is great because it reminds us how important it is to praise God all throughout the day. It is also important to love him all throughout the day. I don’t know how much you praise the Lord, but if you praise Him more, you will notice a difference in your life. You will begin to notice that you are less negative and more open to those around you. You will see more good than bad when your focus is on praise.
[Outro]
Jesus in the morning, Jesus in the noon time
Jesus when the sun goes down
Jesus in the morning, Jesus in the noon time
Jesus when the sun goes down
And this ending couldn’t be better. If we focus on God throughout our entire day, we will see how good El Shaddai really is. It is important to invite God into each part of your day. It doesn’t have to take long. You don’t have to spend 30 minutes praying in the morning, at noon, and when the sun goes down. But you could take a quick moment to pause and to invite the Lord into whatever you are doing. It will make things run smoother if you invite the Lord into it.
The two main things to remember today. First, God is the Almighty one. His plan is better than your plan, and His timing is better than your timing! Second, sometimes God will give you a promise without a timeline. We don’t know when God will decide it is time for that plan to be fulfilled. However, if we rush it and try to take it into our own hands, it never turns out the way we thought. It might still work out, but it won’t be as amazing as the plan God had for us if we had just waited for it. Actually, there is one more thing: praise God while you wait. It will make the waiting time more bearable.
Dear El Shaddai, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, you are amazing. You are the Lord God Almighty, and I am so grateful for all you do for us. Lord, please help us to have the patience and hope to wait for your perfect timing. Give us the strength and wisdom we need to not take things into our own hands. We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you are enjoying this He Is series where we are learning more about who God is, please share it with a friend. I look forward to seeing you here tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! God is on your side and we are both rooting for you! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in September 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Do not let circumstances frighten you. I am above all circumstances, all situations. Anything that can come at you does not come at you without my permission. So, trust me.”
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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He Is Series Day #3 El Roi (The God Who Sees Me)
Genesis 16:13 “So she named the Lord who spoke to her, ‘You are El-roi'; for she said, ‘Have I really seen God and remained alive after seeing him?”
Today, we are talking about El Roi, the God who sees me. This verse is part of a longer conversation that an angel of the Lord had with Hagar. Let me briefly fill you in on the story of Hagar. The Lord promised Abram and Sarai that they would have a child. Actually, He promised that Abram would be the father of nations and his descendants would outnumber the stars in the sky. Yet Abram and Sarai had no children, and they were both well past the typical baby-making years. It had been over 10 years since God promised that they would have a child. Sarai got tired of waiting for God, and so she convinced Abram to take her Egyptian slave girl as his wife. He went into her, and she conceived a son. Sarai thought once she had a child, she would be happy. However, after the slave girl became pregnant with Abram’s child, she looked with contempt at her mistress. She got mad and dealt harshly with Hagar, and so Hagar ran away. This is where the conversation happens.
Genesis 16:12-13 “The angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, the spring on the way to Shur. And he said, “Hagar, slave-girl of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going?” She said, “I am running away from my mistress Sarai.” The angel of the Lord said to her, “Return to your mistress, and submit to her.” The angel of the Lord also said to her, “I will so greatly multiply your offspring that they cannot be counted for multitude.” And the angel of the Lord said to her, “Now you have conceived and shall bear a son; you shall call him Ishmael, for the Lord has given heed to your affliction. He shall be a wild ass of a man, with his hand against everyone, and everyone’s hand against him; and he shall live at odds with all his kin.” So she named the Lord who spoke to her, “You are El-roi”; for she said, “Have I really seen God and remained alive after seeing him?”
What I want to focus on today is that God sees you. Some of us really need to hear that today. God sees you in whatever situation you are in. God saw Hagar. She was not one of the chosen people. She was a slave girl from Egypt. She was asked to marry her mistress’s husband and to have a baby for them. She was doing as she was told, and yet afterwards she was acting as if she was better than her mistress, and so her mistress was treating her badly. I can imagine how unfair that felt to Hagar. She did as she was told, and now she was being unfairly treated.
Has this ever happened to you? You followed directions, you did what your boss wanted you to do, and then it didn’t turn out the way he or she wanted, and now he or she is mad at you? Did you ever feel like God was calling you to do something, and you obeyed, and then it felt like you were being punished for it? I wonder if Paul and Silas felt like this when they were captured, beaten, and thrown in jail for proclaiming the Word of the Lord? They were doing what God called them to do, and yet they were still put in jail.
God sent an angel to talk with Hagar and to let her know that God sees her. He sees her and her situation. God let her know that he would greatly multiply her offspring. She could not believe that God not only saw her but also cared enough to send an angel to interact with her, and that she would live through the encounter. God saw her in this mess. God sees you in your mess, too. He sees you in an impossible relationship. He sees you trying to do whatever you can to pay your bills, even though you have no money. He sees you trying to parent your children even though you are overwhelmed. He sees you in your illness, desperately praying for a healing. God sees you!
Let’s go back to the example I gave of Paul and Silas being beaten and thrown in jail even though they were doing what God called them to do. God saw them in jail. He saw them in their situation, and he created an earthquake that shook the building so much that all the prison doors opened. Paul and Silas were free. What situation do you need God to come and free you from? Whatever the situation is, God sees you!
If you are struggling right now. If you feel abandoned by God and wonder if he even sees you, or hears your prayers, know that He does!! He sees you right where you are, and He loves you! He loves you just as you are right now. He doesn’t need you to change first. He doesn’t need you to be different before He loves you. He loves you truly and completely just as you are now. He isn’t waiting for you to be healed to love you. He isn’t waiting for you to be anger-free to love you. He isn’t waiting for you to be free of all your addictions for Him to love you. He loves you, just for being you, the real you.
God sees the real you. Not the you that you pretend to be. Not the you that looks perfect in all your photos. Not the you that you want everyone else to see. He sees the real you. He sees all the places where you are pretending. He sees all the broken places. He sees all the hurt and betrayal you have gone through. He sees things about us that we can’t even see. The other thing that God sees is how much we have grown. He sees how much we have changed. He sees all the progress we have made. Often, we don’t notice it. We are hard on ourselves. We only see the negative. God sees it all. He sees the good, the bad, and the ugly, and He loves us anyway!
Dear El Roi, I ask you to bless everyone who is listening to this episode today. Lord, thank you for seeing us. Help us to see ourselves the way you see us. Help us to see the beautiful things about us that you see. Help us to know in our hearts that you have not abandoned us, that you do see us! Help us to believe that there is nowhere we can go, and nothing we can do that will prevent you from seeing us. We love you, Lord, and we ask this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! God is on your side, and we are both rooting for you! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in September 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “You have been set aside to act upon my will. I have set you apart. Believe it.”
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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Rosa's Plane Trip
Witness Wednesday, Rosa's plane trip. So as you all know, I had to go to Rhode Island because my mom had two strokes and my flight back was on Monday, March 2nd. My brother, who also lives in Florida, was in New Jersey at the time because of my niece's cheerleading competition.
So my brother decided to rent a vehicle and go all the way to Rhode Island to surprise my mom, which he did. And it was such a beautiful surprise. So I decided to take the ride back with him back to Philadelphia and travel from Philadelphia to Orlando versus from Rhode Island to Orlando.
On our way, we received a first email stating that our flight was going to be delayed until 8.13. Our flight was originally at 7.46. So we didn't think much of it because we still had plenty of time. So we just kept riding. We stopped in New Jersey, did a little bit of sightseeing.
Then when we were getting closer to Philly, we received another email stating that our flight was going to be delayed until 9.35 p.m. So we stopped in Philadelphia. We went sightseeing. We went to the Liberty Bell.
Then we went to Rocky Balboa's statue. So while we were there, I felt in my spirit, just in my heart, that the flight was going to be canceled. But no, we received another email stating that our flight was going to be delayed until 10.13. So we just were there and I still keep feeling that in my gut that the flight was going to be canceled.
So a few minutes later, we received another email stating that our flight was canceled. So we just thought, what are we going to do? What's going on? Why are they canceling the flight with no explanation? They just sent emails. They didn't tell us why the flights were going to be canceled.
So my brother and his family started panicking and I said, no, I'm not going to panic. I'm just going to pray. So I just did that.
I started praying and praying. So we decided to go to the airport to Spirit Airlines to ask them, you know, what's going to happen because we cannot stay in Philadelphia because we're from Orlando and we're far away from our family in Rhode Island. So while we were on our way, I decided to call Spirit Airlines.
So when I was speaking to the person, the person was very negative and all she kept saying was, I'm sorry, unfortunately, I'm sorry, unfortunately. So she was just saying things that she couldn't do instead of just trying to call me and give us peace. So she kept putting me on hold and kept checking flights and she said, we don't have anything until 48 hours.
Then she came back on the line saying that we have something for the next day at 746, but it's going to be with a stop. And we started telling her, it's no good. You know, we can't stay here.
We have no family. We have no money to stay in the hotel. So we need something for today.
So she kept looking and looking. We arrived at the airport. We were in front of the Spirit Terminal.
And then she just kept saying, no, there's nothing I can do. There's nothing I can do. I asked her for a supervisor and she said, well, I am the supervisor and I'm trying my best.
I explained to her that I have a special need daughter that's diabetic, that has chronic arthritis, and that she cannot sit for a long time. She cannot walk a long distance and we cannot stay at the airport. So she kept looking and looking.
While we were on hold, she stated, I'm going to see if I can find a different airline that can help you, but you are six. Maybe for you and for your daughter, I can try to find something and fit you in, but you are six. I said, well, they're my family and they're helping me with my daughter.
I cannot just leave them here because they have no money, no place to stay, no one here that they know. So I cannot just leave them. So where she kept looking, I received an email stating that my flight has been changed and they booked me with American Airlines.
So while I was still on hold, we started running to the terminal, to American Airlines terminal, so we can be there. The flight stated, the email stated that our flight was going to be at 717 and that we had to board by 636. We were there at 610.
We were not even on time to board and do all the checking. They stated, because it was less than 45 minutes, we could not add our bags. So we said, we have to take our bags.
The other thing is that they had my niece as an unaccompanied minor, which that is a mistake that the other airline made. And they probably couldn't make, they couldn't change it because of the time. So I started praying.
I started praying. I started praying. And yes, we were able to all be checked in and checked our bags in.
But now we had to go from the terminal to the boarding and it was already like 625. So we had to run and try to make it. So thank God, we made it.
The only other thing is, we had to pay for our bags again. Our bags, which we had paid already through the original airline, we had to pay them again through American Airlines. I had two bags, which I had to pay $80.
I only had like $90 in my account. So I had to use the $80 to pay the bags again. And honestly, I don't know how my daughter and I were going to eat since we didn't even have time to eat.
We only had breakfast in the morning. So mind you, this was all stressing us out. No money.
Now we had to run from one terminal to another. We had to run to the boarding gate. So everything was stressing us out.
I kept praying and thanking God. So we made it, as I mentioned, to the terminal. And guess what? Two angels sent me money.
One angel sent me $100. The other angel sent me $75. So the Lord not only made a way for me to make this flight, but he also provided for me to eat, for my daughter and I to eat.
So I just want to share and give testimony of the power of prayer. The Lord made a way. The Lord just opened the doors behind the scenes.
Even though I couldn't see in the physical what He was doing, He made a way. Instead of me just panicking and just losing my peace, I started walking up and down the corridor, just praying in the Spirit, just thanking Him and just praying and declaring His Word so He can make a way, which He did. So I just want to share with you this brief testimony and let you know that even though sometimes we don't see what He's doing, the Lord is moving.
The Lord is making a way where there seems no way. God bless you all.
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He Is Series Day 2-El Elyon (Most High God)
Genesis 14:18-20 “And King Melchizedek of Salem brought out bread and wine; he was priest of God Most High. He blessed him and said, “Blessed be Abram by God Most High, maker of heaven and earth; and blessed be God Most High, who has delivered your enemies into your hand!” And Abram gave him one-tenth of everything.”
The next title for God is El Elyon. This means Most High God. If we look at how this is used in today’s verse, we see two different ways of showing that our God is the Most High God. First, King Melchizedek of Salem says that God is the maker of heaven and earth. Next, he says that he delivered your enemies into your hands. I am sure we have all had times when we needed El Elyon to deliver our enemies into our hands. I can think of one instance in particular that a friend of mine just went through.
She had a family member betray her very deeply. He did some work for her and then said she owed far more than she really owed him. He made up all sorts of lies and, in the end, decided to sue her. She couldn’t believe that a family member would be doing this, and it caused so much pain, stress, and worry. However, she knows God, and she trusts God. This is a great time to call upon El Elyon to deliver her enemies into her hand. She did not know what she would do if she had to pay all the money the family member said she owed.
Even though she had the truth on her side, there were several times throughout this whole ordeal that it looked like things were not going in her favor. There were lies that were told and believed by the courts. However, she also had records and receipts for things she had paid for, and so she knew she was right and he was in the wrong. But would the courts see it that way? Would God come through for her? Would he save her from this injustice? I hope you all know the answer to that question. Yes, of course, he would save her. Of course, he would not let evil win. The court eventually advised the family member to make a deal that was actually fair, and she did not pay more than she felt she owed. God is so good!!
Here is one thing that I think we need to remember when we call up God. He is going to answer our prayers in the best way possible. That is not always the way we want Him to, and it is definitely not always in the timing that we want Him to. Remember, we are talking about the Most High God. He is the most high. That means His plan is better than our plan. I know you don’t want to hear that, but it is true. That also means that His time is better than our time. I know you didn’t want to hear that either.
We can get tired of waiting for the Lord’s time. My friend was in this legal battle for years. Not one year, not even two, I think it has been more than two years. I am sure she cried out to the Lord many times over those two years. I am sure you have too. That’s ok, keep crying out. God wants us to keep asking. He wants us to keep turning to Him. He also wants us to know He is with us through it all. Even if He is not answering your prayer immediately because of some reason or another, that doesn’t mean He is not in it with you. He is the one giving you the strength to keep going to work or the provisions to keep paying the lawyer. He is there with you every step of the way.
There was a time in Tony’s career when he had a boss who did not treat him well at all. She was always talking down to him and telling him he wasn’t very good at his job. Tony has always been great at his job. His previous supervisors had praised his writing skills, as he is an excellent writer. This boss told him he didn’t know how to write. It was awful, and he hated going to work. Every Sunday night, he would get very sad because it meant he would need to go to work the next day. He lived for the weekends.
I am not sure if Tony prayed for God to be delivered from this. I know I prayed, though. I prayed that whole year for her to be removed from command. I prayed that God would change her heart. I prayed that the military would move her. I prayed they would move Tony to another position. I didn’t know what the solution was, but I knew God did, and I prayed he would deliver Tony from this situation. She did eventually move on, and the next commander was so much better.
Aside from that one commander, he has always had amazing bosses. I am not sure why Tony had to go through that one year. I am not sure why things didn’t get better faster, but I do know that God was with him during that whole year. He gave Tony great friends so that he could enjoy his weekends and get a break. Despite this boss, God provided an amazing experience for us on that assignment. We got to go on trips, hang out with friends, and just enjoy life. I know that our Most High God was providing amazing things for us, even in the middle of that struggle.
What about you? When you look at your life, when you look through the years, can you see where the Most High God was delivering your enemies into your hands? When did you need a problem solved, and God solved it for you? Are you in this situation right now? Do you feel attacked on all sides, and you need to be delivered? Call out to El Elyon, He is the Most High God. Nothing is stronger than Him. Nothing is more powerful than Him. He is above all the rest. Call out to Him, and He will deliver your enemies into your hands!
Dear Most High God, please bless each person listening today. El Elyon, thank you for delivering our enemies into our hands. Thank you for knowing what to do and when to do it. Lord, help us to be patient while we wait for you to deliver us. Help us to trust that you are the Most High and you will save us. Please help us to keep coming to you and to keep calling out to you. We love you Lord and we ask all this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! God is on your side and we are both rooting for you! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in September 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I am the Lord. I am all that you need. I have made you worthy. Do not be afraid to come. Let the Holy Spirit work in and through you. Be the blessing I want you to be.”
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“He Is” Series Day #1 Elohim (God as Creator)
Genesis1:1 “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth.”
Welcome to He Is, a devotional journey through the names of God. So often we focus on what we need from God — peace, provision, healing, direction. But in this series, we’re going to shift our focus to who He is. Because when we truly know His name, we begin to trust His heart.
Over the Next month or so, we’ll explore the powerful names of God found in Scripture — from Jehovah Jireh, our Provider, to El Roi, the God who sees us — and allow each name to renew our faith and anchor our identity in Him. Lateley I have been hearing people mention the various names for God. It is not new for me to hear things like, God is our provider or God is our healer. However, I have been hearing people use the Hebrew and Greek names for the Lord. These are new to me. I have heard a few before, but I didn’t realize there were so many. The other day, I heard someone mention a few of the names, and I felt in my heart that I was supposed to do a series on them in case others haven’t heard of them either.
The more we know about God, the closer we can get to Him. If we don’t know God, if we don’t know all of Him, then how can we trust Him? How can we be in a close relationship with Him if we don’t know who He is? I pray that at the end of this series, you know more about God and who He really is. I pray you learn more about God than you did before. I pray this series not only blesses you, but transforms your view of God and our relationship with Him!
Elohim is the first name for God given in the Bible. It was given in the very beginning when describing how God created everything. Today’s verse is, “In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth.” However, that chapter goes into much more detail about all things God created in those first few days. God spoke the entire universe into existence. He thought of light and darkness. He thought of land and water. He thought of animals for the land and for the sea. He thought of days and nights and the sun and the moon. He thought of everything.
I invite you to take a moment and think about your life. Think about how much detail went into creating the life you have now. Imagine how many things had to line up in order for you to have your parents. Imagine all the things that lined up so you could go to the school you went to or have the job that you have. When I take a moment to look at my life, I think about all the ways God was creating the life that I have now. In high school, I dated a guy whom I thought I would marry. I wanted to go to school in New Jersey to be close to where he was. However, I ended up going to school in Connecticut because I couldn’t afford the school in New Jersey. I ended up breaking up with my high school boyfriend two years later. Then my roommate was taking ROTC classes at UCONN. They had a bring-a-friend day, and that is where I met the man I would marry. God knew what He was creating.
When Tony and I got married, we had to move away from family because he was in the military. We both agreed that once he was done with his four-year commitment, then we would get out of the military, unless we both wanted to stay in. Which we both agreed was unlikely. Then, 4 years turned into 15 years before we finally moved back close to family. It turns out God knew what He was doing, and we both loved moving to new places, meeting new people, and exploring different parts of the world.
God is an amazing creator. He can orchestrate things we never would have thought of. He can work with you to create the most amazing life you can dream of. He can create jobs you didn’t even know existed. I was just listening to a podcast this morning about a couple who started doing TikTok videos as a spur-of-the-moment decision. Now the husband has quit his full-time job, they make money from their videos, and they're taking on other adventures they never would have thought of before.
When you look at this couple on paper, they do not look like they would fit together at all. She has ADHD, and he has autism. He had a steady job for over 20 years, and she bounced from job to job. He has had 2 divorces and two children with two different moms. She has had numerous relationships with men and women that have never worked out. Even when they talk about their relationship, they talk about how it doesn’t make sense on paper. They are two very different people. Yet God helped them create a beautiful life together. They have learned so much about each other and how they function best. They have gone into business together, making these videos, and have written a book or two. Things are really good with them.
I do want to say one thing that I think we tend to overlook a lot. God did create a beautiful life for me and Tony and for this couple and for so many others. However, that doesn’t mean we go through life perfectly without any problems. God didn’t say we wouldn’t struggle; He said he would be there with us through the struggle. So, Tony and I still argue with each other, we still argue with our kids, and we still struggle with life at times. Yet, we know God is here with us to help us through it.
The same is true for you. When you look at your life and you wonder why you might be struggling, remember that God is with you in your struggle. Try to find the amazing things about your life. Try to focus on the good instead of the bad. If all you see are the bad things in your life, then pray to Elohim. Pray to God to create more of whatever you feel you are missing in your life. Do you need Him to create more joy, more fun, more adventure, more love, more peace? Whatever it is, ask Him for it. Ask Him to help you create the life you have been dreaming of, the life you have always wanted. God is an amazing creator. If he can create the entire world in 7 days, I think He can make some magic happen in your life as well. All we need to do is ask.
Dear Elohim, please bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, you are the creator of all things good. You are the reason we have what we have. Thank you, Lord! Thank you for our families, friends, and all those in our lives. Lord, help us to create the life we want to live. Help us to create a life full of all the things you have put in our hearts. Help us to remember to come to you first, Lord! Help us to remember that you are always there with us and that you are the creator of all! We love you, and we ask this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! God is on your side and we are both rooting for you! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in September 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, I know you listen. I know you hear me. Don't turn your back on me when I tell you something to do. Do it. It'll turn out right, because I am in it. And I have commanded it.”
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Be Wise With Your Words
Proverbs 10:11–14
“The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life, but the mouth of the wicked conceals violence. Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all offenses. On the lips of one who has understanding, wisdom is found… The wise lay up knowledge, but the babbling of a fool brings ruin near.”
During our Wednesday morning prayer group, someone received this word from the Lord: “Be wise with your words. Be positive, not negative. Use your words to build up and encourage, not discourage.” At the same time, someone else received today’s verse. It felt clear that the Lord wanted us to reflect on the power of our words. Lent seemed like the perfect time for this.
One woman in my Thursday prayer group said she is fasting from unkind words this Lent. I thought that was a beautiful idea.
Often we speak without thinking. We say whatever comes to mind, sometimes believing we are helping someone by pointing out what they are doing wrong. But is it truly wrong, or simply different from what we would do? And even if correction is needed, is this the right time and place?
If we slowed down and thought before speaking, this world would be a kinder place.
I love how the verse says, “The babbling of a fool brings ruin near.” Ruin does not always mean something dramatic. Sometimes careless words ruin a moment, a day, or even a relationship. Our words truly carry power. As Proverbs 18:21 reminds us, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue.”
Because of this, we must choose our words carefully. The world already has enough harsh voices. What if we stood out because of our kindness? What if people said about us, “That person never has an unkind word to say”?
As followers of Jesus, the Holy Spirit lives within us. What if we spoke to others as if we were speaking directly to Jesus? In many ways, we are.
Another powerful fast we could consider is fasting from gossip—not just during Lent, but permanently. When we refuse to participate in gossip, people eventually stop bringing it to us. It may feel awkward at first, but it is possible to gently change the conversation.
The world needs more kindness, less judgment, and more people willing to use their words for good.
This morning I watched a video from a young adult with autism who shared how often she has been misunderstood. Because she struggles with non-verbal cues, she sometimes loses friendships without even knowing what went wrong. Her friends might imply something or give subtle signals, but she needs direct communication.
It reminded me how important it is to learn how others communicate. Sometimes we take offense to someone’s words when they never intended to hurt us. They may simply communicate differently.
When we feel offended, it can help to pause and ask ourselves:
Why do I feel offended? What might the other person be experiencing right now?
Communication is a two-way street. Both people share responsibility for speaking with kindness and seeking understanding.
Recently our family learned that one of my sons has autism in addition to ADHD. This has opened my eyes to how easily misunderstandings can happen. Looking back, I realize there were many moments when clearer words or different phrasing might have helped him understand better.
You may not be communicating with someone who has autism or ADHD—but you might be communicating with a teenager, a quiet spouse, a struggling coworker, or someone carrying burdens you cannot see. Each person may require a different approach.
Communication matters more than we often realize. Two people can say the same words but receive completely different responses because tone, body language, and attitude matter just as much as the words themselves.
If we want to walk boldly with Jesus, we must pay attention to how we communicate His love. The same message can be delivered with compassion or with harshness. The difference matters.
I believe the Lord is inviting us to make a sincere effort to communicate in ways that help others feel seen and understood. When we take the time to do this, people often experience the love of Jesus through us.
If you ever feel misunderstood in a conversation, pause and quietly pray, “Come Holy Spirit, come.” Ask the Holy Spirit to guide your words. If a conversation feels difficult, invite Him in before it even begins. He knows exactly what needs to be said.
Dear Heavenly Father,
I ask you to bless each person listening today. Lord, help us to be wise with our words. Give us the strength to avoid gossip and unkind speech. Help us become people who build others up and represent you well in the world. Show us where we need to grow in our communication and teach us how to understand those around us. We know we cannot do this alone, but with you, all things are possible. We ask this in Jesus’s holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I. God is on your side, and we are both rooting for you. Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in September 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group or how to join us, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I am the Lord your God. There is none like me. I come in joy and glory. I wish for you to share it all with those you meet. Share it with others, for I, your Lord, love you.”
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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Stand in the Breach
Genesis 18:32 “ Then he said, “Oh, do not let the Lord be angry if I speak just once more. Suppose ten are found there.” He answered, “For the sake of ten, I will not destroy it.”
This verse comes from a discussion between God and Moses. Let me read you the whole conversation, so you have the context. This section follows immediately the one in which God promises Sarah and Abraham that they will have a son. In this section, God wonders if He should hide from Abraham what He is about to do to Sodom and Gomorrah, and He decides He shouldn’t. He has chosen Abraham to teach His children right from wrong, and so He decides to tell him the judgment He is about to hand down to Sodom and Gomorrah. Let’s read from Genesis 18:20-33.
“Then the Lord said, “How great is the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah and how very grave their sin! I must go down and see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry that has come to me; and if not, I will know.” So the men turned from there and went toward Sodom, while Abraham remained standing before the Lord. Then Abraham came near and said, “Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city; will you then sweep away the place and not forgive it for the fifty righteous who are in it? Far be it from you to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous fare as the wicked! Far be that from you! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?” And the Lord said, “If I find at Sodom fifty righteous in the city, I will forgive the whole place for their sake.” Abraham answered, “Let me take it upon myself to speak to the Lord, I who am but dust and ashes. Suppose five of the fifty righteous are lacking? Will you destroy the whole city for lack of five?” And he said, “I will not destroy it if I find forty-five there.” Again, he spoke to him, “Suppose forty are found there.” He answered, “For the sake of forty I will not do it.” Then he said, “Oh, do not let the Lord be angry if I speak. Suppose thirty are found there.” He answered, “I will not do it if I find thirty there.” He said, “Let me take it upon myself to speak to the Lord. Suppose twenty are found there.” He answered, “For the sake of twenty, I will not destroy it.” Then he said, “Oh, do not let the Lord be angry if I speak just once more. Suppose ten are found there.” He answered, “For the sake of ten, I will not destroy it.” And the Lord went his way, when he had finished speaking to Abraham; and Abraham returned to his place.”
There are at least two things I love about these verses in the Bible. First, I love what it shows us about God. It shows us that God is approachable. It shows us that we can talk with Him and that He will listen. God knows everything. He is the almighty one. He could have very easily shut Abraham down and told him it was none of his business how God handled those cities. He could have been offended because Abraham was questioning Him and His judgment. He didn’t do either of these things. He listened to Abraham, He allowed Abraham to make His case, and He agreed to spare the lives of the righteous. This shows us how compassionate God is. It also shows us his mercy as well. He was willing to have mercy on the whole town for the sake of a few righteous people, as few as 10 righteous people.
According to the internet, about 1,200 people lived in those cities at the time of destruction. Can you imagine having mercy on 1190 people who are doing awful things, including child sacrifice, just because there are 10 among them who are doing the right thing? That is how much God wants all of us to be saved. He is willing to give us so many chances. He was willing to spare the whole city for the sake of a few. We tend to think a lot less about God’s mercy and think more about His judgment and how He is just looking for us to mess up. That is not our God. That is not the God in the Bible. When we read scripture, we get to learn who God truly is. The story of Sodom and Gomorrah can be looked at as a story of how harsh God’s judgment is. However, if you read the whole story in context, you can see that God did not want to destroy the towns. He was willing to save them even if there were just 10 righteous people in the whole town. However, He couldn’t even find 10.
The other thing I love about these verses is that Abraham is willing to stand up for those he didn’t know. Right before this section, God told Abraham and his wife, Sarah, that they would have a baby. They had tried for a long time, and they were beyond their baby-making years, age-wise. This was going to be a miracle. I would like to think many of us would have done what Abraham did. I would like to think I would have kept asking God to save those people over and over again. The truth is, I don’t know if I would have.
Would I have been afraid if I pushed God, He would take away the miracle He promised me? Would I have been afraid God would have gotten tired of me asking and punished me in some other way? Would I have been happy if God’s focus was on someone else’s sin and not my own? I don’t know what I would have done. I love what Abraham did, though. He stood up for those he probably didn’t even know. He begged God to save the wicked for the sake of the righteous.
There was a concept we learned about in Encounter that is similar to intercessory prayer, and yet it seems so much more powerful the way they explained it. When they talked about us interceding for others, they said it’s like we are standing in the breach. We stand between them and God, pleading on their behalf. There is a scene in The Lord of the Rings Trilogy that my teacher used as an example. The good guys are being chased by the bad guys. They are crossing over a bridge, and it is collapsing. All of a sudden, a dragon or something comes after them, and the white wizard, the most powerful guy, protecting them, stands strong on the bridge and says, “You shall not pass.” The good guys are able to get away, and the bad guys are not able to pass.
When I think about interceding for others, I picture myself standing in the breach and not letting anything bad happen to them. I am standing there to pray for them and ask God to protect them from evil, sickness, sin, and whatever else they need protection from. Abarham was standing in the breech. He was brave enough to stand up and ask God to reconsider His plan. God wants us to stand up for those who don’t know any better. He wants us to pray for all the lost souls. He wants us to pray for sinners. He wants us to pray for the wicked. God doesn’t want to lose a single one of His children. He wants us all to celebrate with Him in heaven one day, and to do that, we need to pray for those we don’t want to pray for. He is calling us to pray for those we don’t like, those who are not nice, those who do things we don’t approve of. God is calling us to His team to pray for everyone. We have no idea how powerful our prayers can be. You don’t know if your prayer can be the one thing that makes the difference between someone going to heaven or hell. What if that person just needed one person to pray for him or her? What if they just needed one person to believe in them? What if. So many saints I have read about have prayed for sinners, lost souls, and even those who have hurt them. Like St. Maria Goretti, who forgave and prayed for her attacker. Stand in the breech for others. Help God bring all his children home!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone listening to the episode today. Lord, you are so good. You want to bring all of your children home. Please help us to help you. Please help give us the strength to pray for those who have hurt us in some way. Please help us to pray for our loved ones who don’t know you. Please help us to see that it is never too late with you. You are a merciful God who gives us so many chances to turn back to you. Help us to be brave and pray for those we feel do not deserve our prayers. Convict our hearts of who you want us to pray for, Lord. We love you, and we ask this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s Holy Name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If this podcast is blessing you, please share it with a friend or leave a review. That simple step helps more people find it. And if there’s someone you’ve been wanting to talk to about Jesus, but you don’t know how to begin, send them an episode and let me do the talking. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! God is on your side and we are, both rooting for you! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in September 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Stay the course. Be strong in my name. Pray for those who have been deceived. Offer your day to the fallen. Be my intercessors.”
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Witness Wednesday #199 Catherine D.
Today I would like to share with you a witness about how God came through at the last minute. He does this sometimes. Sometimes it can feel like He is not there, like He didn’t hear your prayers, and then just when you think all is lost, He comes through. Last September, I went to Ecuador for my niece’s baptism. This was a really big deal for me, as my niece was born at 27 weeks and almost didn’t survive. That is a witness for another time. She was in the hospital for 4 months, and just as she got to leave the hospital and go home, COVID happened. She had to stay in her house for over a year. Her grandparents, my brother-in-law’s parents, couldn’t come here from Ecuador to meet her, and they couldn’t travel there due to the pandemic. So, this past September, right before my niece turned 2, they decided to have her baptized in Ecuador. They had asked me to be the Godmother, and I was honored to make the trip to celebrate this amazing occasion. She is a miracle baby for so many reasons, and I was looking forward to being a part of bringing this beautiful girl into the church. My mom and dad traveled down a week early with my sister, brother-in-law, and my niece. Then I was traveling with my mother-in-law, Joanie, as she also loves to travel.
The beginning of our trip shows how God shows up in all the details. We had a really early morning flight, and then we had a long layover in Florida. When I say long, I mean we had a 12-hour layover in FL. We were both wondering what we would do to pass the time. We thought about leaving the airport and looking around the city, but we had our luggage, and we didn’t really want to walk around town carrying our luggage. I was praying about this on our flight to FL, and the thought came to me that we could rent a car. This way we could keep our luggage in the trunk and drive around the town. Once we landed and got to the car rental place, it turned out it was very inexpensive to rent the car for the day. We were all set and on our way. We drove to the beach, we walked along the boardwalk, we got ice cream, we drove through a beautiful scenic park, and we even got out and went for a nice walk through the park. We had a fantastic day and made it back to the airport in plenty of time to make our next flight. God was in all the details of that day, and He worked things out perfectly for us.
This next part of our journey is where things got a little bumpy. We had been traveling since about 4 am. We arrived in Ecuador at about 11 pm. We were tired and ready to get to the hotel and get some sleep. My brother-in-law had our flight info, but we had no way to reach him as our phones did not have international service. This wasn’t really a problem as our flight was not delayed, and he could always check with the airport if it had been. Joanie and I wait in the line to go through passport control. We finally get up to passport control, and we can see the door to go out to meet all those waiting to pick you up. We hand over our passports, and the man looks at them, then he looks at us. Then he calls over someone else, and he looks at them, they talk in Spanish, which I don’t speak, and I can see the one he called over shaking his head. I start to get nervous. I ask if there is a problem. He said, yes, I am sorry, ma’am, but your passport expires in less than 6 months. No, it does not expire until March of 2022 and we are in September of 2021. He explained that in order for me to enter the country, I have to be at least 6 months away from my expiration date. We looked at my passport, which expired on March 6th, and I landed on March 16th. He said they will only give a 10-day grace period, and I was already at my 10 days. Are you getting this? If I had traveled one week earlier, I would have been fine, but since my passport was going to expire in less than 6 months, 6 months, I couldn’t stay. I had this sinking feeling in my stomach, and I asked what that meant. He said he was going to ask his supervisor, and he was going to try to see what he could do, but it probably meant that I would have to get back on a plane that night and go back to America. Joanie and I were so confused. We didn’t know what to do. They asked if she wanted to stay, but she said she was with me; if I had to go, she was going home too. The man left us standing there for what felt like a really long time and went to talk to his supervisor. I told Joanie we needed to pray, and we both started to pray. We prayed that God would work some miracle. We prayed that we would get to go to the baptism. I pleaded with God, I begged Him to work his magic and not let them send me home. I praised God and thanked Him, I did and said everything I could think of in that moment, and you know what? It didn’t work. The man came back and said he was really sorry, there was nothing he could do, we had to wait for someone from the airlines to come and escort us back to the other part of the airport so we could get on a plane and go back home. Go home without seeing my family, without a way of telling them what is going on, without seeing my niece being baptized. I was heartbroken, and so was Joanie.
Even though we were heartbroken, do you know what I told Joanie? It’s not too late. We are not back in America yet. We don’t have a new ticket yet. We can’t give up. Yes, we had done all we could humanly do to help ourselves, but God is the God of the impossible, and He is a way maker. He makes a way where there is no way. I had a chat with God. I told Him that I appreciated all He had done for us that day. I told him how extremely grateful I was that He saved Charlize and that I got to be her Godmother. I let Him know that if he wanted us to get on a plane and go back to America, then we would obey. I also told Him that I knew it wasn’t too late for Him to fix this. I told Him I wasn’t giving up on the idea that we would make it to the baptism. I told Him that I loved Him, that He is amazing, and that whatever He wanted in that moment was what we wanted. I said, Lord, we believe, help our unbelief. Then I prayed in the Spirit because, honestly, I had no idea what to pray for or what to say. I had no idea how the situation could be fixed, but I knew the Holy Spirit could convey the messages in my heart much better than I could. We sat there for about 20 minutes just waiting for someone from the airlines to come and get us so we could go back home. Then, all of a sudden, the man from passport control walked over, and he said they worked it out and they were going to let us go into the country. He said we were very lucky as they never do this, but they will make this one exception. He was surprised. I told him it wasn’t luck, it was the power of prayer. I tell you, I have never been so excited to see my brother-in-law as I was that day walking through those passport control doors.
God is so good! He really is. If you are listening to this podcast, then I know you already know this, but we should say it again and again. We should say it often because He really is that good. We don’t just say He is the WayMaker, or the God of the Impossible, because it sounds good or because they are cool names. We say it because it is who God is. He really does make the impossible possible. He makes a way where there isn’t one. There was no logical reason why they let me through that night. We should have been put on a plane and sent back to America, and yet that was not what God wanted, so He made a way for us to stay. I know you have seen similar things like this in your life. If you haven’t, I don’t think it’s because they aren’t happening; I think it’s because you aren’t looking for them. God is working in every detail of our lives. If we want to see Him working in our lives more, all we need to do is open our eyes more and look for Him.
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We Have Been Set Free
1 Corinthians 6:12 “ All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are beneficial. “All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be dominated by anything.”
The prayer point for the healing service team today is to free the captives. This instantly made me think of my friend who I am praying for this week. I have asked those I know to give me a Bible verse, and I will assign a different verse to each week of the year. Then I will pray for that person during the week I have assigned their verse.
This week, I am praying for my friend, and instead of praying for her, she has asked for prayers for an urgent ceasefire in Gaza and for food and medical aid to reach the sick and injured. When I read the Captives this morning, I thought of all of those who were captured in the Gaza Strip many months ago. Then, when I started reading the scripture verses we were given, I realized there are many ways that we can be held captive. Some of us are physically held captive, like those in war-torn countries, those who were abducted and forced into human trafficking of all kinds. There are also many of us who are held captive by our own beliefs, addictions, or wants and desires.
This morning, while I was reading over the various verses, I asked the Lord to highlight the one he wanted me to talk about. I asked Him to make it clear to me. He actually highlighted two verses. The first one that jumped out was the verse above. 1 Corinthians 6:12 says, “All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are beneficial. “All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be dominated by anything.” I thought this was particularly fitting for today since yesterday was Ash Wednesday, and so Lent has just begun. Lent can be a difficult time of year because it is a time of sacrifice. It can also be a sad time of year as we remember all Christ went through to save us from our sins, to save us from ourselves.
Lent is also a great time of year to show ourselves that we don’t have to be controlled by our wants and our desires. We get the chance to show God that although we love chocolate, wine, alcohol, beer, swearing, desserts, TV, or whatever else we decide to give up, we don’t let them as much as we love HIm. We get to show ourselves that it is ok to deny ourselves something we want and that when we do we will be even more stronger for it. I have a friend named Sarah Jane. I remember she came over to my house one time, and I asked if she wanted a brownie. She said she gave up chocolate for the month. It wasn’t lent so I asked her why she gave it up. She said each month, she gives something up for the month to show herself she can and so that she does not get too attached to anything.
This is an awesome idea. I actually did this for a few months last year, but I don’t think I made it past May. I do think it is important that we know that just because we can do something doesn’t mean we should do it. It also doesn’t mean it is good for us. If we want to be holy, we must go beyond the letter of the law. This is what the Sadducees and Pharisees were doing. They were following the letter of the law but not the spirit of the law. They were so focused on doing things perfectly that they lost all sight of what God was really about. They forgot about the love God had for His people. They forgot about His mercy. They got caught up in all the laws and the rules and somehow got lost.
What I felt the Lord wanted me to remind you of today is that you do not have to become slaves to things of this world. The second scripture He highlighted to me is Galatians 5:1, which says, “For freedom, Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” This shows us that we have a choice. Before Jesus came to save us, we had fewer choices. Before Jesus came, we had the laws to tell us what we should do, but we didn’t have the Holy Spirit inside of us to give us the strength to resist the things that were not good for us. Then Jesus came, and He died on the cross to set us free from sin. Then He went to be with His Father, and they sent the Holy Spirit to be with us so we would no longer be left on our own. Because of this, we no longer have to accept the yoke of slavery. Because of this, we have been set free.
However, this does not mean that we are all free. We must make a choice to be free. We have to decide that our freedom in Christ is worth more than that cookie, that drink, that drug, that extramarital affair. Christ died so we could be free, but we still have to choose to be free. God has given us free will and He won’t force us to follow Him or to love Him. He won’t force us to choose Him. We have to do that on our own. Well, not really on our own because He gave us the power of the Holy Spirit living inside of us. We can rely on that power. We do need to make the choice, but then we can rely on the Holy Spirit to help us keep that freedom. We can rely on the Holy Spirit to help us stay on the path we want to be on.
When we feel like we want to be free of something and yet we don’t think we can, we can’t see a way to give it up. We can call on the Holy Spirit. We can ask the Holy Spirit to take away the desire for this thing. We can ask the Holy Spirit to come and give us strength. We can say, “Come, Holy Spirit, come.” The enemy wants us to think we don’t have a choice. He wants us to think we can’t do the hard thing. We can’t give up drinking. We can’t give up the drugs, the affairs, the food. The devil is a liar. Philippians 4:13 “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” It doesn’t say some things, and it says all things. You can do all things because you have the mighty power of Jesus living inside of you. All you have to do is call upon that power.
So, this Lenten season, let’s remember that we are no longer slaves to our desires. Whatever you gave up for lent, it may seem like it is going to be a long 40 days. You might be thinking about it and thinking there is no way you make it 40 days without that thing. If so, remember that you are not dominated by anything. You are a free son or daughter of Christ and of the one true God. You can do anything with Christ! You have been set free!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, you are truly amazing. We are so grateful you sent your son to set us free. We owe you a debt we could never pay, so we offer you these 40 days as a small token of our love for you. Please help us through these next 40 days. We ask that you help us every day. Lord, remind us when we forget that nothing will dominate us. Remind us when we forget that we do not have to accept the yoke of slavery. Remind us of your love and mercy each time we forget. We love you so much, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. If you are interested in receiving my monthly newsletter so you can be the first to know what is going on or when I am planning an event, please click on the link below or go to my website, walkboldlywithjesus.com. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Be not afraid to say yes to the Lord. When the Lord calls, He equips. He will give you everything necessary to fulfill what He asks of you. Be bold. Do not fear to answer the Lord. He loves you, and He will take care of you. You are His children, and He is your God, so go in boldness and answer the Lord's call.”
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Jesus leaves the 99 for the 1
Matthew 4:1-11 “Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.” Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written:
“‘He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’” Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. 9 “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.” Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’” Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him.
Have you ever had a time like this? A time when you felt like the Devil was right there by your side, attacking you? Did you know what to say? Did you know what to do? I remember reading this and wishing that I knew scripture as well as Jesus did. I wish I knew the right thing to say when the devil comes to tell me the lies. That is what he is known for after all. Satan is the father of lies. Usually, they are not bald-faced lies. Usually, they have some sliver of truth that is twisted to make you question something. But in this passage, Jesus was not deterred from his faith. He did not get drawn into a debate, defending himself or his God. He simply quoted scripture to the enemy.
This is one reason why it is helpful to read the Word of God every day. The more we read God’s word, the more we will know what to say to defend ourselves from the enemy. There are many reasons to read the word of God. Another one would be so that we know how God wants us to live. The Bible is full of stories, parables, and laws that can help us govern how to live. Knowledge is power, and if we know how God wants us to live, we can try to live in an upright manner. We can do our best to please Him. God does so much for us. The least we can do is try to obey his rules. We can try to live in a manner that honors Him and makes Him proud.
Do you struggle with this, with living in a way that honors God and makes Him proud? I know I do. I often think of the passage from St. Paul in Romans 7:15, “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” If St. Paul, who did amazing things for Christ, struggled to live a holy life, then I think it is understandable that we may struggle at times as well. However, remembering these passages and turning over our struggle to God can help us struggle a little less. When we are struggling, we need only repent and turn back to God.
God does not need us to be perfect, nor does he expect it. God knows every step you are going to take before you take it. Nothing you do is a surprise to Him. He is our creator, He is the creator of all things. He knows how your story ends before it even starts. He can see all the roads you will go down. He knows the windy road that is your life. And you know what? He loves you anyway. He loves you even though you are not perfect. He loves you even though you will turn away from Him from time to time. Maybe you have turned away from him a long time ago and have not come back yet. Guess what? He loves you anyway! And He is ready for you to turn back to him.
When you do, he will rejoice and celebrate. He won’t be thinking of all the things you did in the past. He won’t be holding your past sins against you. Once you repent and turn back to the Lord, He will rejoice that His son or daughter has returned home, and He will welcome you with open arms. That is just one of the many amazing things about your Lord. He is filled with so much mercy and so much grace. He knows all of our flaws, all of our mistakes, and yet He still loves us, flaws and all. There is nothing that you can do that is unredeemable in the Lord’s eyes.
I know people who don’t understand how valuable they are in the Lord’s eyes. They feel that because of their sins, they are worth less than others. Or, maybe they feel they are worthless. If you are one of these people who is struggling with your self-worth in God’s eyes, I ask you to picture that you have 2 pennies in your hand, one of them is shiny and new, and the other one is old, dirty, and looks like it has been found in the gutter. What is the value of each penny? Is the penny that looks shiny and new worth more than the penny that is old and dirty? No, they are both worth the same. This is the same with God’s love. You are not worth less because you have made mistakes, made bad choices, or turned away from the Lord.
The Lord is our father, and he is always there waiting with open arms, ready for us to turn back to him. Nothing makes him happier than when one of his lost sheep finds their way back home to him. In Luke 15:3-6, Jesus tells this parable: “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’ I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.”
I love this passage for a couple of reasons. First, I love the imagery of God leaving the 99 to come after me. He does not just let me wander away, but he comes to find me and guide me back home again. Another reason I love this passage is that it says that He will rejoice more over the one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent. If you are living your life righteously and you have no need to repent, I admire you. That is not easy, and it takes a lot of courage, especially in this day and age. However, if you are one who has turned away, or if you find yourself in the same boat with St. Paul, where you keep doing the things you don’t want to do and struggle to do the things you want to do, I hope you find comfort in this passage. “There will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.” Is that one repentant sinner going to be you? Is there some area of your life where you need to repent and turn back to the Lord? I can already hear the rejoicing in heaven.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you help us see in our lives where we could repent. Father, I ask that you shine a light on any darkness inside of us. We want your light to fill that space. I pray that you will put a love and desire for scripture inside our hearts. I pray that you help us to do what is right and help us to overcome the urges to do what is wrong. Lord, that is not easy, and we cannot do it without your help. Lord, we love you, and we thank you for all you do for us. We want to repent and turn back to you. Please just show us the way. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day.
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Don’t Worry, I Will Explain It
1 John 3:8 “Everyone who commits sin is a child of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The Son of God was revealed for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil.”
I read this verse and thought, “Nope, I don’t want to go there.” Actually, I read this verse and then read the next two verses after it. 1 John 3:8-10 says, “Everyone who commits sin is a child of the devil; for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The Son of God was revealed for this purpose: to destroy the works of the devil. Those who have been born of God do not sin, because God’s seed abides in them; they cannot sin, because they have been born of God. The children of God and the children of the devil are revealed in this way: all who do not do what is right are not from God, nor are those who do not love their brothers and sisters.” Ok, after hearing all that, do you see why I didn’t want to touch this verse?
First of all, I didn’t really understand it. If I sin, am I a child of the devil? What does that even mean? We all sin, don’t we? Then it says Those born of God do not sin. But wait, I am born of God, and yet I do sin? It is definitely confusing and not something I felt qualified to talk about. Secondly, I didn’t want someone to hear this verse, or read it in the transcript, and then think they weren’t a child of God because they sin. Because let's all be honest, we all sin. So, I was happy to skip this one and go on to find another verse. I felt the Holy Spirit stop me and ask, what does this verse mean? What if someone already read it and didn’t stop to ask what it means? What if someone is walking around thinking they are no longer my child just because they sin?
I am always humbled when the Holy Spirit reminds me of the purpose for this podcast. It is not to talk about all the things I understand. It is not the time to talk about things I really love talking about. It is to help myself and you, all those listening, to understand scripture a little better. My purpose is to help you walk boldly with Jesus one verse at a time. The only way to do this is to take difficult scriptures, ones I don’t understand, and figure them out, examine them, research them, and then share that with you. I may not always get it right, but I do try my best, and I ask the Holy Spirit to take care of the rest.
I am sure I will keep needing to be reminded to stop and examine a verse if I don’t understand it because the enemy loves to try and stop me by telling me I am not qualified to talk about the scripture. He tells me I don’t know what I am doing, and so I can’t help others. Do you see how he takes a kernel of truth and twists it? He is right, I am not qualified, and I don’t always know what the scriptures mean. However, the way he twists it is because I am not sharing just my thoughts on it. I am researching and looking to those who do know the answers. I am taking the time to explore the meaning and then sharing what I learned from those who are qualified so that you don’t have to take that time. If something I say is confusing, or you still don’t understand the verse, I urge you to reach out and let me know. I would be happy to explore it in more detail with you. Or you can explore it on your own as well. I just type “What is the meaning of 1 John 3:8” or whatever verse I am looking at in the search bar on the internet, and usually a list of articles comes up. Whatever it is in the Bible we are trying to understand, there are probably plenty of other people who have come before us who have asked the same question. Look for the answers they found. I will put the links to two of the articles I read in the show notes in case you want to read the full articles.
Now that I explained all that, what did I discover? What does this confusing verse mean? From what I found, I understand it to mean that when we are sinning, we are a child of Satan, meaning he is influencing those behaviors. When we are following God’s ways, God is influencing those behaviors. I feel the Holy Spirit just gave me an analogy that made me smile. It is one that if you have kids, you have probably said it, and even if you don’t, you probably heard your parents say it. When our kids are not behaving, I tell Tony they are his kids, and when they are behaving, I say they are my kids. Of course, they are all of our kids all the time. However, when I say that, I am implying that his DNA is what is influencing the kids' misbehavior, and my DNA is influencing their good behavior. It made me smile when this thought came to me because I could just picture God up in heaven shaking his head, looking at Satan and saying, nope, they are your kids today. I know He doesn’t do this, but it made me smile, remember all the times Tony and I went back and forth, nope, these are your kids.
One thing that everything I read agreed on is that this verse does not determine your salvation. This verse is not saying that because you sin, you are a child of Satan, and you are going to Hell. That is not the case. It does not say that if you want to go to heaven, you can’t sin. It is not talking about your salvation in any way. We are all born with a sinful nature. Ever since sin entered the world, it has plagued us. Sin entered the world because of Satan. He brought it here, and when we sin, it is because of His influence. It is because we are allowing his influence to shape our behaviors. We are cooperating with him. However, the ending of this verse says, “The Son of God was revealed for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil.” This means that although we were born with original sin and a sinful nature, Jesus was sent to destroy that. If you have been baptized, you have received the Holy Spirit living inside of you. Even though we have the Holy Spirit living inside of us, we also have Satan trying to influence our behaviors, trying to get us to go against what God says. One example I found in one of the articles talked about Matthew 16:23 when Jesus said to Peter, "Get behind Me, Satan!” He was revealing the source of Peter's rebuke of Christ by which Peter demonstrated that he was representing Satan's purpose, not God’s.
I pray these explanations clear up some of the confusion surrounding this verse. The verse is not saying you will go to hell if you sin. It does not mean you belong to Satan if you sin. It is saying that while you are sinning, you are under the influence of Satan. It is a good reminder, as sometimes we can write off little sins. We can say that it wasn’t so bad. We can question, is that really a sin, does it really matter? I think when we read this verse, it can speak to those situations. If you are sinning, you are cooperating with the enemy. Does it matter if it is a little cooperation or a lot of cooperation? Let me ask you this question. If one of your loved ones was being influenced by someone who was sent here to steal, kill, and destroy, would it matter to you that they were only being influenced a little? God cares deeply about even our smallest decisions. Instead of being offended by this verse, let’s take it as a warning to try harder not to be influenced by the devil.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those who are listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to follow your ways. Please help us. We want to only be influenced by you. Please help shield us from the influence of the enemy. Please help us put on your armor, Lord. Lord, I ask you to help each one of us understand what this verse is saying, and I ask that if we don’t understand it, you will inspire us to go deeper. Lord, we want to understand your Word. We thank you for your word and thank you for giving it to us. You are truly remarkable. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. I just want to remind all of you that if you haven’t gotten a chance to check out my book yet, I invite you to do so. Or if you have checked it out, I invite you to leave a review on Amazon or suggest it to a friend. If you didn’t know, I wrote a book; you can find it on Amazon. It is called Total Trust in God’s Safe Embrace. Thank you to all of you who have already purchased it. I truly appreciate it! Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I. Have a blessed day!
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Still Waters Psalm 23 (Part 3)
Psalm 23 “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his name’s sake. Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff— they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long.”
Today I will talk about the last part of this Psalm. There is a lot to like about this ending. First. It starts by saying that God will prepare a feast for me in the presence of my enemies. I don’t have to be worried about my enemies as God has got me. He is my shield and my refuge. Now he is saying we will prepare a feast for me. When someone is preparing a meal for us, they are not usually stressed out about it. They don’t worry about all the things going on around them. Picture this, there is chaos all around you, and yet in front of you is this beautifully set up dining room table. You have a seat and God is bringing you a feast one course at a time. He is not concerned with your enemies because He knows they can’t touch you. You are not concerned either because you feel so at home and taken care of. Isn’t that a beautifully relaxing image?
Next, the verse says that God honors us by anointing our heads with oil. Did you know that you have an anointing on your life? We all do. Did you know through baptism you were anointed to be priest, prophet, and king? It’s true, just as Christ was all three of these, you are also anointed to be these three things to your community. What does that mean for us?
Let’s start with the priest. Drawing on the priesthood of the Old Testament, a priest is one who offers sacrifices (see Genesis 14:18; Exodus 29:38- 42; Leviticus 23:6,8). Some sacrifices are personal, and some are on behalf of others. These sacrifices will look different for each one of us depending on our circumstances. However, sacrifice to some degree should be a part of our everyday life. I have tried to embrace this in different ways over the years. At times I did a bread and water fast one day a week. Other times I would fast from one thing for a whole month. I would switch it up each month, but there will always be something I am fasting from. I believe that this helps me to appreciate things more and it will also show me that I am not a slave to that thing. For instance, if I feel like I just can’t stop eating chocolate, then I will fast from that for a month. By the end of the year, I will have shown God and myself that I do not need these things. I will have also made a small sacrifice each month for 12 months.
Next, we have prophet. A prophet is a spokesperson for God or one who speaks on God’s behalf (see Exodus 4:30; Deuteronomy 18:18; Isaiah 42:19). In the Old and New Testaments, prophets called people to a different way of life. Can we be a spokesperson for God by how we live our lives? Can we live in a way that when people see us they think to themselves, “I want what they have?” Can we call others to a different way of life, not necessarily with our words, but with our love? Can we love others as Jesus did? Can we speak love and light into the world, into people’s lives? Can we be prophets?
Lastly, we are anointed as kings. What are kings called to do? Usually rule over others. We are called to rule over ourselves first and foremost. We are all responsible for making sure we are living our lives according to God’s laws. Most kings are called to rule over others, however, as Christians, we are called to servant leadership. A servant leader leads by serving others. In other words, servant leaders place the interests and needs of their followers ahead of their own self-interests and needs. Generally, they value the development of their followers, building their communities, acting authentically, and sharing power.
Now that we know what each one of these means, hopefully, we can apply this to our everyday life. God has anointed us in our everyday tasks too. For instance, I was anointed to be a mother and a wife. That was where God called me and that is what He set me apart to do. Maybe you are anointed to be a doctor, a lawyer, a pharmacy tech, a garbage collector, a grandmother, a teacher, whatever it is, God has anointed you to do it. Your baptismal anointing is not meant to replace any of those other calls on your life. You are anointed to be a priest, prophet, and king in the life you are already living. Think about your day-to-day life, how can you incorporate sacrifice into your days? How can you be more of a prophet spreading the Lord’s Word in your daily lives? How can you be more of a servant leader right now, right where you are?
The verse then goes on to say my cup overflows with blessings. This is also great imagery. I love to picture a teacup, as we grew up drinking tea in my family. Although I don’t picture a regular tea cup, the image I am getting is an English fancy tea cup from a china set. The tea is being poured into it with a steady stream and the cup is overflowing and running all over the table and even onto the floor. This is how many blessings God has for you. He wants to rain down blessings upon blessings on all of His children. Sometimes we get in the way of God’s blessings. Sometimes we don’t appreciate the blessings that we have so why would God give us more? Sometimes we find ourselves complaining about all that is going on in our lives instead of praising God and giving thanksgiving. God has ridiculous blessings for you. All you have to do is believe that and then praise God for any blessings, even if they are small. If you can be faithful to the small He will increase your blessings. He is a good, good Father!
The ending of this verse is beautiful. “Surely your goodness and unfailing love will pursue me all the days of my life, and I will live in the house of the Lord forever.” We had this word pursue the other day. I love that word. This verse is saying that God’s goodness and unfailing love will pursue us all the days of our lives. Isn’t that wonderful? We don’t have to chase after God, because He is already chasing after us. All we have to do is let ourselves be caught by God’s goodness and unfailing love. Unfailing love is not like any love we can find here on earth. It is an incredible love that knows no limits, that knows no boundaries. God’s love never leaves us. No matter how much we may try to run from it. No matter how much we try to reject it or send it back. No matter how much we might mess up. God’s unfailing love will pursue you every single day of your life. How incredible is that?
And the very last part of the verse says, “I will live in the house of the Lord forever.” Yes, please! I want to live in the house of the Lord forever. I think we all do. It is so amazing to me that God has an open-door policy to heaven. All are welcome. Come as you are, in your broken and wounded state. You do not have to earn your way, you don’t have to do anything to get there. Jesus has earned you your right to be there. All you have to do is surrender to God and let Him help you, let Him give you the strength to follow Him. Following God is not always an easy road but it is a rewarding road and one that leads to spending eternity living in the house of the Lord.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening today. Lord, we thank you for loving us like you do. We thank you for preparing us for a feast in the presence of our enemies. We thank you for the ridiculous blessings you want to give us and we are sorry if we get in your way of doing that. We thank you for making us priests, prophets, and kings and we ask for your help in discovering what that means for each one of us and how we can incorporate that anointing into our lives. We love you Lord and we can’t wait to live in your house forever! We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to bringing you another witness tomorrow. It will be an update from my friend Bruce. I have shared his story at least twice, and we have a new update coming tomorrow. Mentoring is tonight, so email me if you would like to check it out! Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day, and may the favor and grace of our Lord Jesus be upon you!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in April 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Trust me. I know what I'm doing. I know that sometimes trust is like pulling yourself through an eye of a needle. Those are the times when you need to trust the most. Because that's when I loom the largest. I love you, my children. Trust me.”
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Today, I have two witnesses that I have heard about from friends over the last week. The first one is from my friend, who has been struggling with hearing loss. I did a witness about her last year also. She had a ringing in her ears, and she said it had gotten pretty bad. I reminded her that we were at Encounter School of Ministry, where they teach us and encourage us to pray over people for healing, and where we see a lot of healing. I prayed over her for healing that night, and then later in the night, two other people prayed over her, and there was no change. However, when she woke up the next morning, the ringing was 90% gone. Praise God! She said it was the quietest her mind had been in a long time.
My friend also found out that she has a tumor in her ear. They said they are going to need to operate. The operation will leave her with permanent hearing loss. The last time she had her hearing tested, the intelligibility in that one ear was 39% when someone was yelling. That means that even when someone was yelling or speaking loudly into her ear, she could only understand 39% of what they were saying. We have been praying over her ear for over a year now. Besides the ringing that stopped, she had not seen much change.
When she was on the way home from an Encounter School of Ministries event the other day, she felt something weird going on with her ear. It felt strange, and I don’t remember if she said she heard a noise in it or what. I do remember she said she felt like her hearing was suddenly improving. When she got home, she decided to test it out. We have learned in Encounter School of Ministry that often, the healing doesn’t come when the person is praying, but it comes when the person takes that leap of faith and tests it out to see if a healing has occurred. In order to test it, you would try to do something you couldn’t do before, or you would stop and evaluate the pain and see if it's less than it was before the prayer started.
For my friend, she decided to put YouTube on her phone to a song that she didn't know the words to. She turned her volume all the way down until it was just one bar away from being on silent. She put the phone up to her ear and hit play. She could understand all of the words. Even the words in the commercial at the beginning. When she called me to tell me, she had the phone up to that ear that previously wasn't able to hear very much at all. In the past, when talking on the phone, she would have to have the phone to the other ear in order to hear the person on the other line. Praise God! He is so good! My friend's hearing is not perfect. It's not back to normal. And that's OK, she's happy with the healing that God has done so far, and she knows and has faith that God's not done yet! Thank you, Jesus!
The next one I heard was at the prayer group last week. Recently, there was a Men’s March for Life in Boston. It was peaceful; they were just walking the streets with signs in support of saving babies from abortion. Here is what the woman said.
Well, a dear friend of mine went on the walk and took her 11-year-old son. He was wearing a black suit and carrying a sign the whole way saying, Why should we kill our babies? They encountered resistance. There were hate-filled faces all around them.
There were knives. There were guns. There were people being thrown to the ground. There were people throwing urine-filled balloons. It was awful. There were police around, but the police couldn’t keep up with the number of people who were against the march. The people who were marching were scared for their safety. My friend's son got hit with one of these urine-filled balloons.
So my friend turned to her little son, who is, like her, very anointed, and said, What do we do? He said, We call on Michael. He was, of course, talking about Saint Michael the Archangel. He started yelling, Michael! And people all around started chanting, Michael! And they were already doing the rosary. Some people kept on saying, Mother Mary, you're going to help us. As many were calling out to Michael, there was a flash overhead. There was a flash. And then there were sparks of light; people were getting out their cameras to document the flash of light and the sparks. They knew St. Michael had heard their calls and came to answer them. The next thing they knew, they were completely surrounded by a blockade of military-looking police. The police were standing shoulder to shoulder, and there were enough of them to surround everyone marching in the parade. The march was able to continue because everyone now felt safe, and there were suddenly enough people to protect them. Thank you, St.Michael.
I'm not saying these were angel warriors because the report online said that the police did call for reinforcements. But it was a miracle that they were immediately after the flash in the sky and the sparks.
Thank you to both of my friends for sharing their miracles with me so I could share them with you! I am so grateful, especially with this being Thanksgiving week, for all the healing that God is doing in our world. I am grateful for all the miraculous ways He provides and protects His children. Thank you, Lord! I am also grateful for each and every one of you who gives your time to listen to this podcast. It truly means the world to me that I get to spend each morning with you. I pray for those of you in America that you have an amazing Thanksgiving weekend. For those of you not in America, I pray you have an amazing weekend, too! I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I!
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Still Waters Psalm 23 (Part 2)
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his name’s sake. Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff— they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long.”
I only really talked about the first few lines of this Psalm in my last episode and there are some other powerful parts to this Psalm. I want to make sure I go through the whole thing so when you are using it against your anxiety you can understand all the various aspects of it. Today I want to look at the very next line. “Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”
I was attending a conference once, and the speaker mentioned this verse. It was not a spiritual conference, so when I heard it, I figured it was a sign that I should talk about it. The verse says though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. This is hard. It seems like there is so much to fear these days. There is fear surrounding these elections. There is fear surrounding the future of our country. There is fear surrounding so many things.
When we read this scripture we wonder how it is possible to fear no evil. How is it possible to fear no evil when you are surrounded by death, or the possibility of death? If you read on it says “for thou are with me; they rod and thy staff they comfort me.” God is with us, we all know this, we repeat this and tell others this, but do we really believe this? Do you believe that God is right there with you when you are in the valleys? We all know how all-powerful God is, so if we believe that He is there with us, it makes sense that we wouldn’t be afraid. How could we be afraid when He is there? He is the Almighty One.
So, why do we have so much fear? Are we afraid that He won’t help us? Are we afraid He won’t show up? Are we afraid to die? What is it that we have been so afraid of? Maybe you find yourself worried about a lot of things. Maybe you worry every time there is a storm coming. Maybe you worry about your finances. Maybe you worry about your children, parents, siblings, or spouse. Worry may be a part of your everyday life. I am hoping to change that. It probably won’t change overnight, and it may not be easy, but it is possible. The bible mentions “fear not” 365 times. This is definitely something that God wants us to get.
I will be honest, I didn’t get the last part of this verse. “Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.” I looked up the meaning of this because I wondered if there was something that I was missing. I am glad I did because there is a great article called “Understanding Psalm 23: What Does the Staff and Rod Actually Mean? I put a link in the show notes so you can read the whole article. I highly suggest it as it is good. I will not retell the article; I will just touch upon the few descriptions of the rod and the staff. First, the author says that the staff symbolizes rest, as shepherds used to lean on their staff for rest. Next, the staff can symbolize rescue because shepherds used to use their staff to rescue sheep from the thick brush. Third, the staff can symbolize a guide as the shepherd used it to guide sheep across open fields.
This all seems to make a lot of sense to me. It seems like we are much happier and less afraid when we are able to just rest in the Lord. To just sit with Him and turn over all of our worries and fears to Him. Also, God rescues us from difficult situations when we need Him. He doesn’t abandon us. He is always there for us in good times and in bad. Lastly, He is definitely our Guide. How many times have we needed God to guide us through the rough parts of our lives? We need Him as a guide for the easy parts as well.
The article goes on to say that Rod is Our Protection. When shepherds were herding sheep they used their rods to defend against anything that wanted to attack the sheep. This is what God does for us. He protects us from our enemies. The Rod is also a symbol of Love. The shepherds used to use their rods to count the sheep. You might be wondering how this is a symbol of Love. This is an act of love because the shepherd is making sure that all of his sheep are present and accounted for. God is doing the same thing for us. He does not want a single one of His sheep to get lost. He loves us too much.
Now that I understand what the words rod and staff mean in the context of this verse and in the time that it was written, I feel as though I understand the verse as a whole better now. I can’t believe how much the Lord is saying to us with just a short sentence or two. I am also in awe, sometimes thinking about how much God loves us. It amazes me how He can be all these things for us, for each and every one of us. Understanding that His staff is our guide, rescue, and rest, and that his rod is our protection and love helps me understand why we should have no fear. We don’t need fear when we realize all that He has already done for us. We don’t need to fear when he is there to protect us, guide us, and rescue us. He has got us. We can rest in the knowledge that His staff and His rod are enough for us. They are more than enough for us.
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.” Is it any different hearing that verse again after hearing the description of the rod and the staff? Does it make you want to trust in the Lord more? Does it help you fear a little less? I hope that it has helped. I hope that we can all get to a place where we don’t have so much fear. It is so freeing when you can let go of your fears and learn to lean into and trust God. You won’t regret it. I will leave you with Matthew 6:27 to think about. “Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask that you help us to have no fear in times of trouble. We ask that you help us to feel loved. Lord, I ask that you help all those who are feeling anxious or worried today and every day. Help them to hand their worry over to you and not take it back again. We thank you, Lord, for guiding us through our lives. We thank you for protecting us and for being our place of rest. Lord, we thank you for rescuing us every single time we need you to. You are the best! We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day, and may the grace and favor of our Lord Jesus Christ be upon you!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in April 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Trust me. I am worthy of your trust. I gave all for you because I loved you. I do not abandon my children. Whatever comes your way, remember I'm there.”
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With recent posting changes, I’m no longer able to include the full transcript directly in the episode notes. If you enjoy reading along or prefer the written version, you can access the full transcript here: https://findingtruenorthcoaching.com/blog/f/still-waters-psalm-23
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With recent posting changes, I’m no longer able to include the full transcript directly in the episode notes. If you enjoy reading along or prefer the written version, you can access the full transcript here: https://findingtruenorthcoaching.com/blog/f/a-call-to-holiness
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God Has Not Forgotten Your Affliction!
Psalm 44:22-26 “Rouse yourself! Why do you sleep, O Lord? Awake, do not cast us off forever! Why do you hide your face? Why do you forget our affliction and oppression? For we sink down to the dust; our bodies cling to the ground. Rise up, come to our help. Redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love.”
The original verse I started with this morning was verse 24. “Why do you forget our affliction and oppression. Yet, when I looked up the verse, all these verses were together, and it reminded me of so many people. There are so many of you who listen to this podcast who have reached out and said this same thing. Maybe not in these exact words, but these are the thoughts going through your head. You are wondering where the Lord is in all of this. You are wondering why He is not answering your questions when you know He can. You are wondering why?
Why the broken dreams?
Why has He not healed you?
Why has he not brought the provisions?
Why does it seem He has not kept His promise to provide for you and to protect you?
Why are your loved ones still hurting?
Why has your protigal son or daughter not come home?
Why again, why now? Why? What is your why that you are wrestling with right now?
What the Lord put on my heart is that He wants us to know that if we are asking why we are not alone. Many times, we can think we aren’t supposed to ask why. We might hear things at church or from other people who say that if you are struggling, you just don’t have enough faith. You might hear that you can’t be mad at God, you just need to work through it on your own. If you are mad at God, you are bad or doing something wrong. You just don’t trust enough. You might hear a bunch of different things. Most of them are not true.
God wants you to know that it is ok to ask why. It is okay not to understand His plan. It is ok to cry out to Him in anger and frustration. I feel He gave me this scripture today to show you that you are not alone. The psalmists cried out to the Lord. They asked Him questions. They expressed their frustration with His timing and with feeling abandoned. Many of the Psalms were written by David. He was blessed beyond measure by God. He knew God, and He knew how much God loved Him. He was never afraid to take His sins back to God and ask for forgiveness. He had a very intimate relationship with God.
David also did not have an easy life. He went from being loved by the king to being hunted by the king, from being king to being pursued by his son, who wanted him dead. If we don’t know David’s whole story, we may think he killed Goliath with a stone and then became a mighty king. There is so much more to David’s story. He had some great years, some awful years, and everything in between. I tell you all of this to show you that you can be beloved and blessed by God and yet still have lots of trouble in your life. Having trouble and suffering do not mean that God doesn’t love you or that He has turned His back on you.
Many of you have been praying some pretty big prayers for a long time, and you feel angry that God is not listening. He wants you to know that He hears every one of your prayers. He is acting even if you can’t see how. Sometimes he is arranging things that you won’t see enter your life for years. Sometimes, He is changing people’s hearts, and that takes time. Sometimes our children have to learn their own lessons, and that takes time. Yes, God could heal you in a minute. Yes, God could change your heart in a minute. God can do all things. Yet that is not always how he chooses to do things, and it is our job to cooperate with God’s plan. I promise you, God knows what He is doing.
He is not placing amazing dreams and desires in your heart to tease you. He is not cruel. He is not showing you amazing things just to take them away from you. Only good comes from God. If He is placing amazing dreams in your heart, it is because He wants you to believe it can happen. He wants you to reach for it. He wants you to see what your future could be. He wants you to know you won’t always have these same limitations. I know it hurts to believe sometimes because we are tired of being disappointed. But hope in the Lord does not disappoint. (Romans 5:5) What if you could take away your timeline and just fully believe that all your prayers will be answered? How would your life be different if, instead of focusing on the when, you just celebrated that it would definitely happen someday? What if you pictured what you would do the day your prayers were answered? What if every time you started to ask why, you changed it and started thanking the Lord for answering your prayers in the most beautiful way?
I think the Lord is talking to me personally for that last part. I am constantly asking Him why he hasn’t restored Bruce’s eyesight yet. Why are my friends Suzanne, Rosa & Danielle still struggling? Why so many I know have not been healed yet. However, when I asked those questions above, my heart felt so full. I am not going to ask the Lord when anymore. I am going to put my full trust in the fact that those healings are coming, and I am going to plan what I will do when they do come. How will I celebrate with the individual people? How will I give the glory to God? How can I lift up and support those I know who are suffering while they are waiting for their miracle? How can I give them strength? How can I accompany them so they are not alone?
I am going to change my questions! If you can change your questions, I think it will make the wait more bearable. If you can go all in on believing your miracle is on the way, then it might make the wait a bit easier. However, even if you can’t shift your mindset. Even if you are still angry with God, that is okay. Just make sure to talk with Him about it. Don’t shut Him out. Don’t be afraid to be honest with Him. He already knows your feelings, probably before you even do. If you still need to ask why, that’s ok. You are in good company, as many of those in the Bible asked why. Many questioned, doubted, and struggled with God’s plan, yet God did not withdraw His favor from them. He did not take away His good plan or their good future. He will not take away yours either. Your miracle will still come, even if you question, even if you get frustrated and angry. Just don’t shut God out. He is there with you in all of this. He hears your prayers, and He is working all things for your good!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, you are amazing. You are so good, and I am sorry when we get frustrated and angry because you are not doing things in our timing. Lord, we want to trust you, we want to believe our miracle is coming, and yet it feels so hard at times. Our life feels so far from our dreams at times. Help us to persevere. Give us the strength we need to keep on hoping and believing. We love you, Lord, and we ask all this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you love this podcast and you have not left a review of it, can I ask you to do that today? Reviews help the podcast be seen by more people. They help people find the podcast more easily. Thanks so much for your help! I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I. God is on your side, and we are both rooting for you! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in September 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “The ox knows his master. The donkey, its owner. But my people do not know me, says the Lord.”
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Welcome to Witness Wednesdays here on the Walk Boldly With Jesus Podcast. Each Wednesday I will have a guest give their witness of how God is working in their lives. Hearing how God is working in other people’s lives shows us how deeply He cares for each one of us individually. Listening to these experiences will help your faith grow. I am so blessed to be able to share these with you. Our first witness if from Peggy K. Today she is going to share with us how God has revealed His love to her throughout her adult life. She even shares a few miracles with us. I hope after you listen to this you can see some ways in which God has been working in your life as well. God loves you just as much as He loves Peggy. He will work miracles in our lives too, we just have to notice them. www.findingtruenorthcoaching.comCLICK HERE TO DONATECLICK HERE to sign up for Mentoring CLICK HERE to sign up for Daily "Word from the Lord" emailsCLICK HERE to sign up for my newsletter & receive a free audio trainingabout inviting Jesus into your daily lifeCLICK HERE to buy my book Total Trust in God's Safe Embrace
I Will Restore You to Health and Heal Your Wounds
Jeremiah 30:17 “But I will restore you to health and heal your wounds,’ declares the Lord, ‘because you are called an outcast.”
I was looking for a verse about restoration because one of my dear friends received a word from the Lord about it, and I wanted to share it with you. I know many of you who are listening are struggling. You have been struggling with your physical health for a long time, and you are wondering why the Lord hasn’t healed you yet. You know He can, and you might even believe He will. Yet He hasn’t yet, and you are wondering why and when.
Some of you have been struggling financially for a long time, and you wonder when the struggle will end. You trust God to provide, yet you are really struggling right now. Your bills need to be paid, and there is no money. You are wondering when the provisions are going to show up and how much of yourself you are going to have to give away before reinforcements come. You might be struggling in your marriage or with parenting. It feels like the waves keep coming, and although you know the Lord is not going to let you drown in those waves, some days you come very close.
I have been talking to a lot of people lately who are so tired of the struggle. They don’t expect life to be easy, but they can’t take all that is going on. They don’t understand why God is not helping them. They don’t understand why he is not taking this from them. They don’t understand why he is not protecting them from some of this. They are tired and confused. They feel like they are running out of the strength and energy they need to keep fighting.
I am in a Wednesday morning prayer group run by Rosa Rivas. She is also a wonderful friend of mine who agreed to read the Spanish Translation of the podcast so God’s Word and His love can reach more people. Rosa started a WhatsApp chat for those in the prayer group. In this group, people place their prayer requests, support each other, and place any resources they have found that build their faith. Last week, many people in the group were struggling, so Rosa listened to the Lord and held a group call so we could all pray together. It was beautiful and definitely needed. I just want to pause to let you all know that you need people in your life like this. You need community, so when you are down, they can build you up!
While Rosa was praying, she received this word, and I think it is not just for that group but for everyone who needs it. She heard the Lord say:
“ I am restoring broken dreams
I am restoring broken promises
I am restoring broken plans
I am restoring broken relationships
I am restoring broken friendships
I am restoring broken memories
I am restoring broken hearts
I am restoring the brokenness of all the things that have hurt you in your life
I am restoring all the brokenness of your past and your childhood
I am restoring broken health
I am restoring everything just as I did with Job..”
And then she said Declare this:
In Jesus Name, I am restored
In Jesus Name, all that has been lost and taken away from me has been restored, and I will receive double what was taken
In Jesus Name, my wounds have been healed
In Jesus Name, my joy is restored
In Jesus Name, my strength is renewed
In Jesus Name, I am whole
If you are tired. This message is for you. If you are struggling with broken dreams, broken promises, a broken heart, past trauma, current trauma, your health, your past, your childhood, your finances, whatever it is, this is for you. God is restoring you!
I know it may not be in the way you want Him to. I know it may not be your timing. I know you feel you can’t go on. I promise you, He will help you go on. I promise you, when you make it to the other side of this hill, the other side of this mountain, the other side of this ocean or cavern, it will be worth it. I am talking with many people who have been struggling for a long time. Most of them are really struggling to hold on to any hope that things will change.
Is this you? Have you been down for the count so long that you can’t even picture things getting better? Have you been so sick that you can’t imagine a brighter future, one where you are healthy and can do all the things you want to do? I am not even talking about huge things. Some people I know have been so sick for so long that they can’t even imagine a world where they can even go for a walk around the block without pain. They can’t imagine a day that doesn’t include all the medical appointments or treatments. Have you struggled with money so long that you can’t imagine a time when you will be able to pay all your bills? If this is you, I want to assure you that there is nothing wrong. This doesn’t mean you don’t trust God or that you don’t have enough faith. It means you are tired. You are worn down. You are weary. It is ok. I also want you to know you aren’t alone. So many are suffering right now.
This is why community is so important. Sometimes we need someone else to be praying for us when we just can’t anymore. We need someone else to keep hoping for us when we are losing hope. Sometimes hope can be painful. It can hurt to keep hoping for something good, and yet we never see it. It is hard to hope for a husband when you don’t have a boyfriend. It can be hard to hope for a healing when you just seem to be getting worse and worse. It can be hard to hope for provisions when your bills keep piling up.
Hope take vulnerabitlity. Hope is believing in something that you can not see, and this is not easy when what you do see is overwhelming. It is not easy to have hope when you feel like the waves keep knocking you over. This is when it is important to have a community around you. Get involved in a Bible study or something else at your church. Or, if you can’t get out of your house, find an online community. I am in two prayer groups, one at 6:30 on Wednesday morning and one at 10:00 on Thursday mornings. Both are on zoom and both are filled with powerful prayer warriors who would be happy to pray with you. I also have a Walk Boldly With Jesus Facebook group where wonderful people would be happy to pray for you.
If you don’t have a community and don’t want to find one, at least find one person who can be your prayer partner. Someone who can hold you in prayer and who can hold onto that hope for you. Also, you can pray for them. Sometimes, it is easier to pray for others than for your own situation, because we are too close to it. Also, praying for someone else will give you a sense of purpose and, at least while you are praying, distract you from your troubles. I would like to challenge each of you to check out a Bible Study or a prayer group, or to find at least one person and ask them to be your prayer partner. We were not meant to do life on our own. God built us for community.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode. Lord, we thank you so much for Your Word above. We thank you for restoring us and healing us. We thank you that you love us so much that you meet us where we are, but then you don’t let us stay there; you lift us up. Lord, we ask for that restoration and healing you promised above. We ask for the strength and perseverance to wait for it as we are growing weary, Lord. Help us to hang in there. Lord, I ask that you help each person listening find their community. Help them to find a prayer partner. Help them to not feel so alone. Bring the perfect person into their life, Lord! We love you, and we ask this in accordance with Your Will and in Jesus’s Holy Name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you would like more info on either prayer group I mentioned earlier, please reach out. Also, if you are looking for a community, I invite you to join my mentoring community. We meet on Tuesday nights at 8 PM. There is a link for it in the show notes if you would like to join us. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in September 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “There are Jerichos in your life, in your family, in your ministry, in your neighborhood, in your world today, and in my church today. The walls will tumble. Obey me—Intercede for the graces that you will need. Use all the graces I have given you. My mother is at your disposal.”
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Fix Your Eyes On Jesus
Ephesians 2:8-9 “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.”
This verse is an important one. It is something I think we forget more than we remember. At least I know I forget this often. I do know I am saved because Jesus died on a cross for my sins. I know I am not saved because of my own actions. I know there are no works that I could do to save myself because Jesus already paid the ultimate sacrifice. I know all of this, and yet sometimes I still try to do it all myself. Sometimes I try to fix things myself. Instead of immediately turning to the Lord when things get tough, I try to fix them myself. I do all that is humanly possible to do, and then when that doesn’t work, I turn to the Lord. Do you know why it doesn’t work when we try to do things on our own? Because we were trying to do it on our own. We can’t do anything on our own, and why would we want to when we have a heavenly Father who wants to do it with us?
This morning’s devotional was about this same message. The daily devotional I am reading this year is called “Jesus Calling” by Sarah Young. I am really enjoying this one because the devotionals are not super long, and they are written as if they are a direct message to you from Jesus. It’s great to get a personal message from Jesus each morning. I’m going to read you the message from this morning because I think it illustrates this verse well.
"I want you to experience the riches of your salvation: the joy of being loved constantly and perfectly. You make a practice of judging yourself based on how you look, behave, or feel. If you like what you see in the mirror, you feel a bit more worthy of my love. When things are going smoothly, and your performance seems adequate, you find it easier to believe you are my beloved child. When you feel discouraged, you tend to look inward so you can correct whatever is wrong. Instead of trying to “fix” yourself, fix your gaze on me, the lover of your soul. Rather than using your energy to judge yourself, redirect it to praising Me. Remember that I see you clothed in My righteousness, radiant in My perfect Love.”
This gives some great examples, I think we can all relate to. It is easier for us to feel loved when we like what we see in the mirror or when we feel we are doing a good job. It is easier to think we are God’s beloved children when we are attending church, showing up for our prayer time, and helping others. However, what about when we aren’t? What about when we are snoozing through prayer time and missing church on Sunday? What about when we are not being kind and loving, but we are being irritable and grumpy? Do we still know we are God’s beloved child? Do we still believe we are loved? Or, do we struggle to believe it because we haven’t earned his love or earned our spot as His beloved child?
I can’t answer that for you, but for me, I know I struggle with feeling like I have to earn it. The thing that bugs me the most is that I don’t even know I am doing it. If you ask me if I have to earn God’s love, I would say, “No.” I truly know I am loved no matter what. However, if you look at my actions, they say something else. Why is that? It is so frustrating when you know something on one level and yet your actions reveal that you might not know or accept it on all levels. This, I am sure, is a trick from the enemy. As mentioned in the letter from Wormwood in the Tuesday episode, the enemy wants to keep our brains in a fog. He wants to keep us from thinking clearly and asking too many questions. We need to resist this fog. We need to try to live as intentionally as we can. We can so easily go through our day on autopilot. We do the things we did yesterday; every day is similar, and we aren’t even really thinking about what we are doing. We are just doing what we always do. However, what if what we always do isn’t the best for us? What if we could do better if we lived more intentionally?
In this message from the daily devotional, Jesus is calling us back to Him. He is calling us to stop trying fix ourselves and instead fix our eyes on Him. Hebrews 3:1 says, "Therefore, holy brothers and sisters, who share in the heavenly calling, fix your thoughts on Jesus, whom we acknowledge as our apostle and high priest.” We need to stop turning our gaze inward and fix our gaze on Jesus. Look towards Him and then never take your eyes off Him! I love where it says in the devotional, “Rather than using your energy to judge yourself, redirect it to praising Me.” That is such a great piece of advice. Judging ourselves does take so much energy. Praising God will uplift your spirits, also. I love to praise God; I always feel so loved afterwards.
Psalm 34:5 says, “Those who look to him are radiant; their faces are never covered with shame.” When we are looking to God, we are radiant. We don’t feel ashamed; we feel as though we are God’s children because we know we are. I love it when God gives us the answers to the questions we are asking. If we want to know how we can experience the riches of our salvation and the joy of being loved constantly and perfectly, we need to fix our eyes on Jesus and redirect our energy to praise. Imagine if you could feel the joy of being loved constantly and perfectly? You can just turn your gaze to Jesus and praise Him.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we are so grateful that you gave the ultimate sacrifice for us. We know we don’t have to earn it, and yet we still try. Help us to stop that, Lord. Help us to accept your love and acceptance that is freely given. Help us to know in our inmost being that you love us no matter what, and we don’t have to do anything to save ourselves. Your grace has already saved us. Help us accept your grace, Lord, and use it to praise you! We love you, Lord, you are so amazing. You are the best, and we are so grateful for you. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
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Mercy Is So Important
Jude 1:20-23 “But you, beloved, build yourselves up in your most holy faith; pray in the holy Spirit. Keep yourselves in the love of God and wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. On those who waver, have mercy; save others by snatching them out of the fire; on others have mercy with fear, abhorring even the outer garment stained by the flesh.
This is a great verse because it tells us to build ourselves up in the most holy faith. It tells us to pray in the Holy Spirit and to keep ourselves in the love of God and wait for His mercy to lead us to eternal life. However, it doesn’t just stop there. It doesn’t stop with God telling us to take care of ourselves. It goes on to talk about how we should have mercy on those who waver in their faith. It tells us to snatch others out of the fire. This is a pretty vivid image. I think it paints an accurate picture of how important it is that we save others as well.
I think mercy is something that we need a whole lot more of in the world today. Mercy and Grace seem to go hand in hand, and this world seems to be in short supply of both of them. This world, or at least this country, the United States of America, seems to be so divided. If someone doesn’t believe the same way that we do, we tend to want nothing to do with them. Or, we want to argue with them and tell them all the reasons why their opinions are wrong. Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t think things can change without us talking about our differences. However, these need to be respectful, calm conversations where both sides are listening to the other with the goal of understanding where each side is coming from.
These are not the conversations that I have seen happening in our country for a long time now. I did see a conversation like this last summer at my nephew’s wedding. My brother-in-law and my husband had a respectful conversation about their thoughts on a bunch of different issues going on right now. They couldn’t have been further apart on some issues, but they both listened respectfully and actually learned that they agreed on some things. I think they also cleared up some misunderstandings about some issues. It was nice to see and a welcome change to the conversations I am used to hearing.
Sometimes we can get so caught up in what we believe. We think that we are right and that must mean that the other person is wrong. Something I have been learning a lot about over the last few years is that two opposing things can be true at the same time. You can love your parents, and you can also feel like you hate them for some moments. You can be super happy that you got a promotion and also sad that you are leaving your old job, or the friends at your old job. In most circumstances, neither side is 100% correct. There are pros and cons to both sides. There are facts that are misunderstood or taken out of context on both sides. Also, our emotions always enter into the arguments, and for good or bad, this makes us less objective.
Our feelings for the people we are talking to or arguing with can get caught up in our feelings for what they are saying. We can start to think that they are bad people just because we don’t like the things that they are saying. The day that this reading was given at the prayer group, the following word or prophecy was also given. “What I hear the Lord saying to me is that whether you believe it, whether you like them, whether you understand them, God tells us to love them. Love them in their misunderstandings, love them, pray for them, don't be like them.” I think this is important for us all to hear. God is not asking us to just pray for those that we love or those that we agree with. He is asking us to pray for everyone. He is asking us to even pray for those that we don’t agree with and those we don’t like. He is asking us to pray for those whom we don’t understand.
I think in this verse God is explaining to us that everyone is at a different place in their journey. He is saying to have mercy on everyone, but in very different ways. He is saying to pray for everyone and to love everyone, but also he is warning us not to get so close that we become like those who do not follow God’s ways. He says to “snatch them out of the fire,” but he also says “on others have mercy with fear, abhorring even the outer garment stained by the flesh.” To me, this means that some people we can save, with God’s help, and others we need to have mercy, and pray for them, but we need to be careful that we do not become like them. I love how the word that was given this day was about how we needed to love everyone. This is something that is so hard to do sometimes.
Actually, all of this is hard to do most of the time. It is hard to love someone who is saying and doing things that you don’t agree with. Possible things that are hurting you or your loved ones. It is hard to have mercy for people whom you feel are wrong in so many ways. It is hard to have mercy for those who don’t seem to have any mercy themselves. It is hard to pray for people who have caused you harm. It’s hard to pray for people who seem so different, who seem like they don’t care about anyone or anything. God understands that this is hard. I believe this is why he started the verse with, “But you, beloved, build yourselves up in your most holy faith; pray in the holy Spirit. Keep yourselves in the love of God.”
Have you ever been on an airplane before? Before you take off, the flight attendant goes over all of the safety precautions. One of the first things that they tell you is that if the cabin air pressure drops you oxygen masks will drop down from the ceiling. They warn you to put your mask on before you help someone else. Why is this so important? This is important because if you help others first, by the time you get around to helping yourself, you may not have the energy. I believe this is similar to what God is telling us. He is telling us to make sure that we are taking care of ourselves. He is telling us to build ourselves up in our faith, to pray, and keep in the love of God. This will fortify our faith and strengthen us so that we can go out and snatch others from the fire.
If we are not keeping our faith strong, we may have great intentions to go out and to help others, and yet we find ourselves being pulled down instead. God tells us to love others and to pray for them, but not to become like them. This is a hard task. It is difficult not to give in and become like others in the world today. Especially if you are surrounded by sin in the world. However, if you are strong in your faith, if you are praying and staying in God’s love, you will have all the strength you need to resist these temptations. The next time you are in a situation with someone that you don’t agree with or that you feel is not a great person, remember that God is calling you to have mercy on them. Instead of arguing with them, say a quick prayer for them. The next time you pass by someone and you don’t understand them or what they are doing, instead of judging them, say a quick prayer for them. We are all going through something. We have no idea what someone else is going through, what experiences led them to where they are. We need less judgment in this world and more understanding and love.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. We ask that you help us to have more mercy and grace for others. We ask that you help us to judge less and seek to understand more. Lord, we ask that you strengthen our faith and understanding. We ask that you help us to stay in your love, so that we may be strong enough to offer love and mercy to others. Lord, we ask that you help us to remember in the moment that we are your ambassadors of love and mercy. The only experience that some people will have with you, Lord, is through us; help it to be a positive experience. Help your love and mercy to shine through us! Father, we are so grateful for all you do for us. We love you, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
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God Has Compassion For You!
Isaiah 54:10 “For the mountains may depart, and the hills be removed, but my steadfast love shall not depart from you, and my covenant of peace shall not be removed, says the Lord, who has compassion on you.”
We received this scripture verse at the Watchmen Prayer Group that I go to on Wednesday mornings. It is at 6:30, and it lasts about half an hour. If you are up early in the morning and would like to start your day off praising the Lord and hearing what He has to tell us for the day, then let me know, and I can add you to the email list. It is a Zoom meeting, so no matter where you are, you can attend. Although if you are not in the Eastern time zone, it might be a bit too early. We do record it, though, so if it is too early, you could always get on the email list and then listen to the recording. I am telling you that it is a wonderful way to start your day.
Now back to the scripture. It begins with, “For the mountains may depart and the hills be removed, but my steadfast love will not depart from you.” There are a couple of nice things about that part. First, I think we all have some mountains that we wish would depart from our lives. Sure, we love it when we are on the mountain top. We love the high we get when we make it to the top of the mountain, and we can see all the land. We can see the sun rise or the sun set. We can see the valley, and we might even be able to understand a bit more about the valley when we are on the mountain top. However, wouldn’t it be great if we didn’t have to climb that mountain? I guess that is a good question. Would we wish away the mountain if it meant we didn’t have our mountain top moment?
As I was writing that last part, I felt the Holy Spirit stir inside of me. I felt like He prompted that last question. As I was writing about the experience at the top of the mountain, I realized that if we wished our mountains away, we wouldn’t get all the comes along with making it to the top of a mountain. There is so much that we gain from going through hard times. We gain perspective. We gain wisdom and knowledge. We gain perseverance and resilience. We learn so much about ourselves. We also learn so much about God if we are looking. I look back at all the really hard times that I have had, and I don’t think I would wish them away. They made me who I am today.
I have so much compassion for others because I received so much compassion when I needed it most. I do not judge people because I know what it is like to walk through hard times. I know what it is like to be doing your absolute best and still have children who act out. I know what it is like to try so hard to save your marriage and yet nothing works. I have been to enough events where other people share their stories to know that no matter what we look like on the outside, we are all going through something hard. We all have things in our lives that are hurting us. We all have thoughts in our heads that tell us we are not enough or we are not loved. We all have something that we are struggling with. I am a better person because of all the hard times I have been through.
What is great about this verse is that it says, even if our mountains do depart and the hills disappear, God’s steadfast love will not depart from you. This is amazing because if God is telling us that His steadfast love will not depart from us, then that means we have His steadfast love. This may seem like an obvious statement, and yet I am not sure we all knew this already. Did you know that God’s steadfast love is ALWAYS with you? Do you know what steadfast means? According to the internet, it means firmly loyal or constant; unswerving. It also means fixed or unchanging, and can also refer to fixed or unmovable. This is pretty awesome. Have you ever thought of God’s love that way? I hope you have, but I am guessing most of us haven’t.
I am not sure most of us spend much time thinking of God’s love at all. We probably spend most of our time thinking we are not worthy of God’s love. We listen to the lies our brain tells us about how we are sinners, and we aren’t worthy of God’s love. We have done so many terrible things in our lives that there is no way God could love us. We will be the first to tell others that God loves them no matter what, and yet we feel like we are the exception. God’s love just doesn’t extend to us. We are wrong.
Yes, we are sinners; that is not a lie. We all do things we aren’t proud of, and we all do things that aren’t in line with what God wants from us. And God loves us anyway. Just as our parents love us even though we mess up. Actually, not just like our parents because our parents’ love is flawed. We live in a broken world, and so even though we are all doing the best we can, we all fall short. However, God’s love is perfect. It is 100 % uncondiltional. We can mess up in the worst way, and He will still love us.
Let’s review that definition again. Steadfast love means firmly loyal or constant; unswerving. Constant and unswerving, did you hear that? That confirms just as the verse said, that God’s love never leaves us. It is constant. No matter what you have done, it is still there. You wake up with loads of regret over your drunken night last night, and God’s love is still there. You let down your loved ones, and you have no idea how to make it right. God’s love is still there. You cheat on your spouse, God’s love is still there. You fight with your kids, God’s love is still there. You disobey your parents, but God’s love is still there. You murder someone, God loves is still there. It is always there.
Steadfast love also means fixed or unchanging, and can also refer to fixed or unmovable. It is fixed or unchanging. Do you realize what this means? It means God’s love never changes. Not only does it never leave us, but it never changes. That means God doesn’t love us a lot when we are doing something good and loves us just a little when we mess up. He loves us for exactly who we are 100% of the time. We have all His love all the time. He loved us before we were even born, and the level of that love has never changed. It’s always there, it’s always full. It’s always amazing.
The verse ends with, “and my covenant of peace shall not be removed, says the Lord, who has compassion on you.” This is something that I feel I could talk forever about. Yet this episode is already getting a bit long. However, I didn’t want to not address it as I don’t think many of us know this. God’s covenant of peace shall not be removed. Did you know God made a covenant of peace with us? Did you know you have a covenant of peace with the Lord? You may wonder how this could be when you are so anxious or worried all the time. This is not the life God has planned for you. He does not want you to be worried and anxious all the time.
God tells us over and over again in the Bible to have no fear. He tells us He is our protector and our provider. Sometimes we can block that peace when we forget to turn to the Lord. Or when we focus so much on how big our problem is that we forget how big our God is. If we want the peace God has for us, then all we have to do is look for it. This verse said that his covenant of peace never leaves. It’s always there; we just forget sometimes. Or, we just can’t see it. If we look for peace, we will find it.
The very last thing the verse says is that the Lord has compassion for us. It is important that each one of us hears that. God has compassion for you. He is not judging you. He is not just waiting for you to screw up. He is not expecting you to screw up. He is not just waiting to punish you. God is rooting for you. He is on your side. He has compassion for you. He sees you. He sees you doing all you can to change. He knows your heart. He knows you. He sees you in ways you don’t see. Here me when I say, “God has compassion for you! He has a covenant of peace and steadfast love for you! He is rooting for you, and He is on your side!”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each person listening to this episode. Lord, we want to experience your steadfast love. Please help us. Please help heal and renew our hearts so we can accept the love and peace that you have for us. If there is anything we are doing to block that love or peace, please help us to realize it and to stop doing it. Help us to understand that you are for us, you are rooting for us, and you love us. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you’re ready to stop living your faith cautiously and start walking boldly with Jesus, I want to invite you into my Christian mentoring community. This is a space for women who love God but feel stuck, unsure, or tired of repeating the same patterns. Together we grow in confidence, learn to hear God’s voice, build strong spiritual habits, and step into who we truly are in Christ. If you’re ready to renew your faith and live with boldness through the power of the Holy Spirit, I’d love to walk with you. There is a link for mentoring in the show notes. I look forward to meeting with you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just asyou are, and so do I! God is on your side, and we are both rooting for you, always! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in September 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I have an image of the walls of Jericho, showing how the army marched around the walls of Jericho. And the Lord is saying, “You are the army that will walk around the walls of Jericho and break them down, and the enemy will be defeated. It is through prayer, through love. Because remember, I am love.”
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Today’s Witness is from a very dear friend of mine. It is her testimony of how she forgave someone who did the unthinkable to her. She is a wonderful woman who has such a strong love for Jesus. She is a mother of two kids and a wife. She is a photographer, a karate champion, and so much more! You can hear in her voice just how excited she is for this breakthrough. God is so good! We have all seen God working in our lives. However, we might not all be aware it is God working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences, the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience of how God has worked or is working in your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or click here. It won’t take up much of your time, and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story, and the world needs to hear them. Music:"Adding the Sun"fine us. It is not fun, Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ www.findingtruenorthcoaching.comCLICK HERE TO DONATECLICK HERE to sign up for Mentoring CLICK HERE to sign up for Daily "Word from the Lord" emailsCLICK HERE to sign up for my newsletter & receive a free audio trainingabout inviting Jesus into your daily lifeCLICK HERE to buy my book Total Trust in God's Safe Embrace
The Lord Rescues You From Them All!
Psalm 34:19 “Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord rescues them from them all.”
I saw this verse, and I wanted to share it with you. In mentoring, we are learning how not take offense at things. In other words, how to not let things bother us as much. The beginning part of this verse is something that doesn’t really seem fair. It says, “Many are the afflictions of the righteous.” Why? Why do we have to suffer if we are righteous? Can’t God keep us from that? If we are following the Lord and we are doing all the things He wants us to do, why do we have to suffer?
Do you ever feel this way? Do you ever cry out to the Lord, asking why? Why me? Why now? Why my child or my loved one? Why, Lord, why? I know I have done this before. Actually, the question I find myself asking a lot is why this again? I thought we were over this or through this. Or I ask, when will this be over? How long do we need to stay stuck in this? I am sure you have asked the Lord similar questions.
We can fall into a trap of thinking that if we are righteous. If we follow the Lord, then our problems will all go away. Especially if we find Jesus at the bottom of a pit. If we are at our worst when we discover Jesus, then we think after finding Him, we are going to coast through life. Yes, we may hit some bumps, but the worst is over. I would love to tell you that it was always the case. I wish I could say once you find Jesus, you are home free. However, it says right in the verse, many are the afflictions of the righteous.
My parents always knew Jesus. There was never a time when they weren’t going to mass and spending time with the Lord. Even when they were in High School, dating, they would meet before school and go to mass together. I would think, with that kind of dedication, the Lord would bless them and protect them from harm, and yet they did not have a struggle-free life. They had 11 children, and my mom stayed home to watch the kids when they were little. With 11 children, someone is always little for at least the first 25 years or so. My dad had a pretty good-paying job, and yet we still struggled with money. There just is not enough to go around when you have 11 kids.
We not only struggled with money, but our family suffered many medical crises. Like when my grandfather’s throat was cut with a screwdriver by an intruder who wanted his money. My grandpa didn’t have any money. One sister had a fever for several days, and we were told that if it didn’t break by morning, she might not make it. I had a brother who was pulled through a machine in a factory that makes chicken wire. There were plenty of other illnesses and car crashes. I had a sister who loved the Lord, and then at college got swept up in a cult and has suffered severely over the years trying to recover from that. We have had divorces in our family.
I say all of this to let you know that no family is above troubles. You or your loved ones are not struggling because God is punishing them. God was not punishing my family, and He was not punishing Job in the Bible either. God is a good Father, and like all good Fathers, He sometimes allows us to suffer so that we can be stronger on the other side of it.
The second part of this verse is so important, and it is something we can’t forget. This verse does not just say that the righteous will have a lot of trouble and then end there. It goes on to say, “but the Lord rescues them from them all.” The Lord will rescue you from all your troubles. If He has not rescued you yet, He will. Keep waiting, keep seeking, keep asking. It will happen. God will not abandon you. Let me tell you some of the ways God rescued my family.
Whenever my parents were struggling financially, God took care of them. One time, they needed money for something, and they prayed about it and told God if He wanted them to do it, then He would need to provide the money, and the next day, they got a check in the mail for the exact amount. When they didn’t have food to feed us kids, they prayed, and a neighbor knocked on our door with groceries. When my dad’s car broke down, a neighbor gave my dad a car. My dad didn’t ask, He just gave it to him. When my grandpa was attacked and his throat was cut, he should have died. However, he not only made a full recovery, but the doctors said he healed in miraculous timing. My sister’s fever, which was so high, finally broke, out of the blue for no reason, the doctors said. But we know it was God! My brother, who was pulled through a machine that makes chicken why came through with only a shoulder injury. The Lord definitely rescued him. What about your life? Can you look back and see times in your life when the Lord has rescued you? Can you look back at times when you were homeless, and God found you a place to live? When you were sick, and God healed you? When you were scared, and God protected you?
I know it stinks that we have to go through afflictions. I know God could save us from them, and it is hard to see why He doesn’t. However, if we really think about it, we will see how it would not do us any good if He saved us from everything. I know you may have suffered a terrible affliction, the loss of a child, spouse, sibling, parent, or friend. I know it doesn’t make sense. I am not going to pretend to have all the answers, and I don’t know if I buy that everything happens for a reason. However, I do believe that God can use all things for our good. When I don’t understand what is going on. When I am stuck in the middle of a situation, and things look dark, I hold onto that promise. I talk to God about how much I can’t wait for him to use this awful situation for good. Even though I can’t see a way where he can, I know He can because there is nothing He can’t do! The Lord will rescue you!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask you to help us turn to you in our afflictions. We ask you to rescue us, Lord, just as it says in this verse. Lord, it is hard to keep waiting for your rescue, especially when it is taking so long. We thank you for all that you do for us, and we are sorry if we get impatient while we wait. We ask for strength and perseverance to make it through all the afflictions that we have to go through. We ask for peace as well, Lord! We love you, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If today’s episode spoke to you, and you’ve been carrying hurt, resentment, or just feeling tired of holding everything together, I want you to know you don’t have to walk through that alone. I host a weekly mentoring community where we slow down, seek God together, and learn how to live lighter and freer in our faith. If your heart is longing for support, healing, or simply a safe place to grow, I’d love for you to join us. You can find the link in the show notes. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I. God is on your side, and we are both rooting for you! Have a blessed day.
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in September 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Beauty can be seen with the eyes of the heart. And when I look at each of you, my children, I see beauty. I see with eyes that see clearly, distinctly, lovingly. I see you for who you truly are. And I am pleased with who you truly are, for you resemble Jesus, my Son, your Savior.”
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And They Laughed At Him
Mark 5:38-40 “When they came to the house of the leader of the synagogue, he saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. When he had entered, he said to them, “Why do you make a commotion and weep? The child is not dead but sleeping.” And they laughed at him. Then he put them all outside, and took the child’s father and mother and those who were with him, and went in where the child was.”
We are back to the story of a little girl who was restored to life. Last week I replayed a devotional that my friend Catherine did on this Bible story. Then on Friday, I felt the Holy Spirit wanted me to focus on two other parts of the story. However, I only got to focus on one part on Friday. Today, we will finish up with this story. I really felt strongly that these verses were important enough that we shouldn’t gloss over them. I felt they were important enough to slow down and really examine what they are saying.
In case you missed last Tuesday and Friday and you don’t know this story, let me briefly fill you in. There was a synagogue leader whose daughter was dying. He asked Jesus to come and heal his daughter. Jesus was on his way when someone touched his garment and was healed. Jesus felt power leave his body and asked who touched Him. The lady confessed, and he told her that her faith had healed her. While he was talking to this lady, someone came and told the synagogue leader that his daughter had died, so there was no need to bother Jesus anymore. Jesus told the man, “Do not fear, only believe.” This is where today’s verse picks up.
Mark 5:38-40 says, “When they came to the house of the leader of the synagogue, he saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. When he had entered, he said to them, “Why do you make a commotion and weep? The child is not dead but sleeping.” And they laughed at him.” When Jesus gets to the house, he asks everyone why they are crying and making a commotion. He tells them that the little girl is not dead; she is just sleeping. Then it says, “And they laughed at him.” This is the first thing that I want to focus on.
I get why they might have laughed. People were just beginning to know who Jesus was. They didn’t know Him as we know Him. They didn’t have the benefit of reading all the Gospels and hearing all the amazing things He did while He walked the earth. I am not sure if they had ever seen someone raised from the dead yet. They may have heard about Jesus's miracles, but many synagogue officials stayed away from Him because they weren’t sure what to think of Him.
What I want you to know is that people may laugh at you, too! If you intend to walk boldly with Jesus and you intend to step out and use the power of the Holy Spirit that is living inside of you, then people may laugh at you, too. If you offer to pray for someone’s healing, they may laugh and tell you that there is nothing you can do because the doctors said there is no hope. You may try to tell someone that with the power of the Holy Spirit, they can forgive the murderer who killed their loved one, and they may laugh at you. You may tell someone that even though you don’t know how, you have hope that God will provide them the money to pay their bills or the food to put on their table, and they may laugh at you. When this happens, I want you to remember that they laughed at Jesus, too.
When you are laughed at for your beliefs or for being bold and stepping out in faith to pray for amazing things, try not to take offense. They don’t know any better. They believe what this world is teaching. They are “drinking the kool-aid” so to speak of this world. They don’t have to believe what you are saying is true. They don’t have to believe to receive the healing. Remember in the Bible when those people lowered their friend down from the roof so that Jesus would heal him? Jesus said, their faith healed him. You can have enough faith for them. Do you know how I know it is true that the person being healed doesn’t have to have faith? Because Jesus raised people from the dead, and if you are dead, you don’t have faith, you don’t have anything, you are dead.
It is also not our job to try to convince people that what we believe is true. Jesus did not spend time talking with the people who laughed at Him. The next part of the verse is the second thing I want to focus on. It says, “Then he put them all outside, and took the child’s father and mother and those who were with him, and went in where the child was.” Jesus put all the non-believers outside while he prayed for this little girl. It is important to know that you can do this. If you are praying for healing for someone and you are surrounded by non-believers, or worse, people who are openly mocking you, it is ok to ask if you can have a few minutes alone with the person you are praying over. It is important that we block out all the negative voices, and that can be really hard to do at times.
I have a friend who was talking about how she had a loved one who died, and she was praying for the Lord to bring him back to life. She knew God could do it as He had done it before, and God is the same yesterday, today, and always. (Hebrews 13:8) If you have read about God doing something amazing in Scripture, then you know He can do that today, too. Isn’t that amazing! So, my friend was praying for God to bring her loved one back, but she had another family member in the room who didn’t believe that was possible. She said, looking back, she wished she had asked the other loved one to wait in the hall for a bit while she prayed.
You may never be praying for someone to be raised from the dead, although I hope you do someday, but that doesn’t mean you won’t be laughed at. This world is a crazy place right now. People might laugh just because they think it is crazy that you would believe in a “mysterious guy who lives in the sky and grants wishes.” This is something some have said to me before. Whatever it is they are laughing at you for, just remember, they laughed at Jesus, too! Also, remember how Jesus responded. He did not defend himself. He did not yell or get upset. He did not try to explain and reason with them. He just asked them to leave while he prayed, and then He let the power of God convert their hearts.
This is what we are being called to do as well. God doesn’t need us to defend our position. He doesn’t need us to convince anyone of His Power. God is the one who does the miracles, and he is the one who changes hearts. The best way we can point people to Jesus is by loving them. I would say it is that easy, but loving people who are laughing at us is not easy. So instead, I will say it is that simple. It is not complicated. Jesus told us that if we love God with all our hearts and we love our neighbors as we love ourselves, then we will fulfill all the commandments. Simple doesn’t mean easy, but it does mean that if we know what to do, we can practice it and get better and better at it. We can do this. If we want to live boldly, then we need to develop thicker skin. We need to learn that people are not rejecting us; they are rejecting Jesus, and they have been doing that since He was born. Jesus is tough. He can take it. We just need to learn not take offense and instead just love all people, even those who want to persecute us. It may not be easy, but it is definitely worth it. We will have so much more freedom when we learn not to care what others think of us and to only focus on what God thinks of what we are doing.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening today. Lord, help us to be bold and step out in faith. Help us to be brave enough to ask those who are laughing at us to give us a few minutes alone while we pray. Help us to be strong enough to not let those who are mocking us or laughing at us derail us from the mission you have given us to walk boldly with Jesus. We love you so much, Lord, and we only want to do your will. Help us to keep our eyes focused on you! We ask all of this in accordance with Your Will and in Jesus’s Holy Name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember if you want to learn more about not taking offense to those who mock you, or to anyone really, check out mentoring! Being Unoffendable is the theme for this month and so far it has been really good. CLICK HERE for info on mentoring. You can also get one of the two books I have read that are both amazing. One is Unoffendable by Brent Hansen and the other one is called Bait of Satan by John Bevere. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow, Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! God is on your side and we are both rooting for you! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in September 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, I dealt with much temptation in my earthly life. You read about it in the Gospels. Think about that when you are tempted. Daily, daily, daily, you are tempted. You are tricked into following something lesser than my wonderful word, than my wonderful love, than my forgiveness, my compassion. But I let these temptations come upon you to exercise you, so that you’re turning back to me in faith, your turning back to me in asking for my help, strengthens you, strengthens your love, and your ability to follow me in your human life. They are actually graces, although I know you don't like them. But I ask you to bear with them and to turn quickly to me, for I am ever ready, ever ready to be at your side.”
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Do Not Fear, Only Believe
Mark 5:35-36 “While he was still speaking, some people came from the leader’s house to say, “Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?” But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the leader of the synagogue, “Do not fear, only believe.”
I know we covered this story on Tuesday with the devotional that my friend Catherine wrote. However, I can’t help but think the Holy Spirit wanted me to focus on a different part of these verses. I felt strongly that I was supposed to go back and point out some things about this ending part of the story. So, let’s pick up at verse 35. It says, “While he was still speaking, some people came from the leader’s house to say, ‘Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?” But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the leader of the synagogue, “Do not fear, only believe.”
It is important that we hear this, not just with our ears, but with our hearts, minds, and souls. Jesus says, “Do not fear, only believe.” How many times have we been in a situation where we could have used Jesus sitting right there with us, or standing next to us, and telling us not to fear but only believe? This is the secret, people. This is what we need to know. The Lord mentions the word fear in the Bible over 300 times, depending on the version you are reading. God knows we are a fearful and anxious people, and he is trying to get us to understand that we don’t need to be fearful.
You might be thinking that surely there are some instances when fear is ok. When we should be afraid. However, when we can learn not to fear, no matter the circumstances, then we will truly be living a free and bold life. I think something that is important to know about our feelings vs. emotions. We often use them interchangeably. However, there is a difference. Emotions are our quick, instinctive response to something that happens. For example, someone comes up behind us, and we jump because we were startled. Our heart jumps when we hear a loud noise. We smile when our kids say something really cute. These are emotions; they are physical reactions in our body, and we can’t control these.
Feelings are different. Feelings are how we experience or interpret the emotion. This is what you have control over. You might not have control over your feelings right now, but you can have control over your feelings. Our feelings are based on the story we are telling ourselves. For instance, if someone is supposed to call you and they don’t, you may feel differently about that depending on what you are telling yourself. If you tell yourself he or she is probably busy and will call when they have time, you feel fine about the situation. If you are telling yourself he or she is ignoring you because he or she is mad for some unknown reason, then you will probably feel anxious and worried about the situation. If you tell yourself he or she must be hurt because they always call back, you will probably feel afraid in that situation. Do you see how the story you tell yourself is so important and is something you have control over?
The thing about the stories we tell ourselves is that they are just that, stories. We don’t know why the person hasn’t called us back, and we won’t know until they do. So we can never be sure whether what we tell ourselves is true. If this is the case, and either of those scenarios above could be true, then why wouldn’t we tell ourselves the one that serves us better? The one that gives us peace about the situation? I assure you that if they are mad or sick, there will be plenty of time to worry, be anxious, or be scared once you find out. Why waste time on it before you know it’s true?
Hopefully, all that made sense. I said all of that to show you that while you may not be able to control the emotion of fear in your life, you can certainly decide if you are going to allow the fear to stay or not. Jesus is telling us in this verse, and so many others in the Bible, not to fear. I know this sounds easier than it is, but it is possible to surrender your fear. It is possible to go through really hard things and yet not be fearful of the future. I know you might be skeptical, as you are probably going through some really hard times right now. I want to share with you some really hard times I went through, and although they were hard, I wasn’t afraid. I didn’t know how they would turn out, but I knew God was working and He would protect all those I cared about.
When my children were younger they were times when they were physically and verbally abusive to each other and to Tony and me. There were years when I would allow myself to be scared, and I would worry about the future. I would think that if they are hitting me, then they would hit their wife or their children. Then I learned how to turn those fears over to the Lord. I talked with God about my fears, and then I let them go. I changed the story that I told myself. If I ever started to feel scared about the future, I would consciously say to myself, “God’s got this. God uses all things for good. I don’t know how things will change. I don’t know when things will change. But I know that God is a good, good father, and He is in control of this situation. When I ask, he answers, and I have asked plenty, so all is good.” This may sound too simple, but I assure you it works. If you change your story, you change your feelings.
Sometimes things can be simple but not easy. This is one of those things. It is a simple concept to change your story, but it is not a simple practice. Most of our thoughts are subconscious. We don’t know we are thinking them, we just feel the emotion. If you want to take control of your feelings, you have to stop when you get angry, worried, anxious, or scared and ask, “What am I telling myself right now?” It takes time to learn to do this, but I promise you it is a game-changer once you do. Imagine how much more peace you would have if you could release all the anger, fear, and anxiety you have by changing the story you are telling yourself.
In case you want another example of something really hard that I was able to go through without fear, let me share one more with you. When my son was 16 years old, he overdosed a few times. Eventually, he had to go into rehab and miss his whole Junior year of high school. It would have been easy to be scared for his future. It would have been easy to go down the fear path of all the what-ifs. I can honestly tell you that I was at peace with it all. Now, that doesn’t mean I wasn’t sad, and I didn’t miss him. It does mean that I wasn’t full of fear, and I didn’t ask myself any “what-ifs.” I knew with 100% certainty that God was in this whole situation and that even though I didn’t know how or when this situation would end, I knew it would end. I know God would use it for good. That this was not the end of my son’s story. I knew my son would have an amazing testimony whenever he made it through all of this.
Jesus told a man who thought his daughter had just died not to be afraid, but to believe. He is telling you and me that, too. He is telling us that things aren’t what they seem, and we just need to believe, even if it makes no sense to believe. God can do amazing things. He can do things that we can’t even imagine. Keep trusting. Keep believing. Hope in the Lord does not disappoint. (Romans 5:5) Change the story you are telling yourself. Change the questions you ask. Instead of all the bad what-ifs. What if he dies? What if his life is ruined? What if he is never the same? Change it to What if God saves him? What if God delivers him from this addiction? What if he is healed? What if my spouse comes home? How could changing the story you are telling yourself, and changing the what-ifs from negative questions to positive ones, change your life?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, you are amazing. You are so good, and we want to have no fear and to believe. Please help us! Help us to change our stories. Help us to take captive our thoughts. Please help us to remember that you are all-powerful and you use all things for our good. We love you, Lord, and we ask this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I am surprised at where the Holy Spirit took me this morning with this devotional, as it was not the topic I thought I would be teaching about. However, I know there was a reason, and one of you really needed to hear this message today. Someone needed to know that they can take control of the feelings they have been having. I look forward to meeting you here again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! God is on your side and we are both rooting for you! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in September 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Arise, arise, arise. You are my shining lights. Fear not. Even in this present darkness, you have nothing to fear as you align with me and my good plans for you, your family, and your nation. Arise and shine, my beloved ones.”
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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Why We So Often Feel Justified—and Why Anger Steals Our Peace
1 Peter 2:23 “When he was abused, he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly.”
Offense usually begins with something real, but staying offended slowly costs us our freedom.
When we’re offended, it’s not because we’re imagining things. Someone said something hurtful. Someone dismissed us. Someone didn’t see us, respect us, or protect us the way they should have. Our bodies react before our faith does. That reaction—tightness, anger, defensiveness—feels justified because it is trying to protect us. The problem isn’t that offense shows up. The problem is what happens when we let it stay.
Offense convinces us that holding onto anger is necessary for self-respect, safety, or justice. It whispers, “If I let this go, I’m saying it didn’t matter.” But over time, instead of protecting us, offense begins to imprison us. It narrows our thinking, drains our peace, and keeps us emotionally tied to the very thing that hurt us.
Today, I invite us to gently notice this pattern without shame. Not to rush into forgiveness. Not to minimize pain. Just to ask an honest question: Is what I’m holding onto actually helping me live free?
Jesus never promised that we wouldn’t be hurt. But He did promise freedom—freedom from bitterness, from constant reactivity, and from carrying wounds longer than necessary. Jesus reminds us:
“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world, you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)
And He also promises:
“So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” (John 8:36)
Today isn’t about fixing anything or forcing forgiveness. It’s about awareness—learning to notice how offense quietly operates in our hearts and recognizing that something can feel justified even when it doesn't actually lead us toward peace or life. When we’re hurt, our body reacts first. Before we can think theologically or spiritually, our nervous system scans for danger. A sharp tone, a dismissive comment, or a betrayal registers as a threat, and anger shows up quickly because it’s one of the body’s built-in protection responses. Anger creates energy. It gives us clarity. It helps us draw boundaries. In that sense, it feels helpful.
This is why offense feels justified. Anger convinces us that we’re doing something necessary—that we’re standing up for ourselves, protecting our dignity, or guarding our hearts. It often feels morally right, especially when real harm has occurred. We tell ourselves, “I’m not just upset—I’m right.” And because something truly wrong may have happened, that belief can feel deeply convincing.
But what the book Unoffendable by Brent Hansen gently reveals is that feeling justified is not the same as becoming free. Anger is excellent at getting our attention, but it’s terrible at leading us toward peace. When we hold onto it, anger doesn’t just respond to the moment—it begins to shape our inner world. It keeps our minds alert and our hearts guarded. We replay what happened, brace for future harm, and stay emotionally on edge. Over time, that vigilance becomes exhausting.
This is how anger tightens its grip on our peace. What started as a moment of protection turns into a posture of defensiveness. Instead of resting, we stay watchful. Instead of trusting, we stay reactive. And slowly, without realizing it, offense begins to occupy more space in our thoughts, prayers, and relationships than we ever intended.
Letting go feels risky because anger has convinced us it’s keeping us safe. Releasing it can feel like saying the hurt didn’t matter—or like leaving ourselves unprotected. But Jesus offers a different way. He never framed righteousness as reacting quickly or holding onto offense. He modeled righteousness as trust, surrender, and love rooted in truth rather than impulse. He promises that we don’t need to carry the weight of offense to be whole. “When he was abused, he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly.” (1 Peter 2:23)
I am not asking us to deny pain or rush forgiveness. I simply invite us to ask an honest question: Is what feels right actually leading me toward life and peace—or is it quietly becoming a prison?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Help us to look at our own lives and see where offense might be keeping us prisoners. Helps us to notice where anger might have been justified at first, and now holding onto that anger is just hurting us. Help us to see why it itsn’t helpful to keep replaying the hurt that we felt over and over again in our minds. Help us to let go, Lord. Help us to forgive. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you are interested in learning more about how to go through life being Unoffendable, I invite you to join the mentoring this month. I will be exploring the main concepts of the book Unoffendable by Brent Hansen. It is a really good book that explains how much more peace and freedom we will have in our lives when we learn how to be unoffendable. CLICK HERE to check out mentoring. It is just $25 a month if you join this week. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! God is on your side, and we are both rooting for you, always! Have a blessed day.
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in September 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Sometimes I have to remind you because I see you slipping, and I won't allow you to fall. I will steady you. I will return your balance to you. When the world is encroaching, when the world is pressing in on you, I'm right there. I’m right there.”
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If you would like to share your witness or your story about how God is working in your life, please send me a message. It does not take much time and could make a real difference in someone's life. Email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or (click here).
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Praise Series #30 To Him Be The Glory Forever!
Romans 11:36 “For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever. Amen.”
I thought this would be a great verse to end this praise series because it is an excellent reminder of all we have to be thankful for. I looked this verse up on the Enduring Word Commentary website, and this is what I found…
“Of Him and through Him and to Him are all things: “All these words are monosyllables. A child just learning to read could easily spell them out. But who shall exhaust their meaning?” (Meyer)
i. It is all of Him: This plan came from God. It wasn’t man’s idea. We didn’t say, “I’ve offended God and have to find a way back to Him. Let’s work on a plan to come back to God.” In our spiritual indifference and death, we didn’t care about a plan, and even if we did care, we aren’t smart enough or wise enough to make one. It is all of Him.
ii. It is all through Him: Even if we had the plan, we couldn’t make it happen. We couldn’t free ourselves from this prison of sin and self. It could only happen through Him, and the great work of Jesus on our behalf is the through Him that brings salvation.
iii. It is all to Him: It’s not for me, it’s not for you, it’s all to Him. It is to the praise of the glory of His grace (Ephesians 1:6). It’s for His pleasure that we are created, and we find our fulfillment in bringing Him glory and honor.
d. To whom be glory forever: The fact that Paul can’t figure out God makes him glorify God all the more. When we understand some of the greatness of God, we worship Him all the more passionately.
I love this because it reminds us that God had to do what He did to Adam and Eve. He had to banish them from the garden, but it also reminds us that He never wanted that separation. God didn’t want to be separate from us. He didn’t want us to have to go through someone else in order to have a conversation with us. God wanted us to live in communion with Him.
This verse is a reminder that the plan of our salvation came from God. He came up a plan to save us from ourselves. He came up with a plan for us to right this terrible wrong of our first parents. He came up with a way to bring us back into the fold so that we didn’t have to live apart from Him. While we were going about our business and thinking all was lost, God had a plan, and we didn’t know it. He had a way to save us. The plan came from the Lord.
The plan also came through the Lord. None of us is worthy enough to be the sacrifice. None of us is a lamb without blemish. This is why the Lord had to send His only son to die on a cross for us. He is a spotless lamb. He is without sin, and therefore a worthy vessel to take our sins to the cross with Him. Jesus was able to defeat evil once and for all, and as a result, we can walk with the Lord again.
There used to be a curtain (or veil) that was a thick, heavy barrier in the Temple that separated the Holy Place from the Holy of Holies, the most sacred space where God’s presence dwelt. Only the high priest could enter beyond the curtain, and only once a year on the Day of Atonement, offering sacrifice for the sins of the people (see Exodus 26:31–33 and Leviticus 16).
When Jesus died on the cross, the curtain was torn in two from top to bottom (Matthew 27:51), showing that it was God’s action, not man’s. This signified that through Jesus’ sacrifice, the separation between God and humanity was removed. Access to God was no longer limited to one priest or one day a year—all people could now come directly into God’s presence through Christ.
This in itself is reason to praise the Lord for the rest of our lives. We now have direct access to God. Did you know that? Did you know you can talk to the Lord anytime you want to? You don’t have to ask others to tell God something for you. You don’t have to ask a priest to talk to God for you. You, just as you are, can talk to the Lord any time you like. I often ask others to help me pray for something. However, that is not because I don’t think I can go to the Lord on my own. I ask others to help me pray because I think the more people praying for something, the better.
Think about when you were little, and you asked your mom or dad for something. Did you usually get what you wanted if you just asked one time, or was it more likely if you asked multiple times? Also, did you get it sometimes if you asked, or was it better if one of your siblings asked? My sister used to always ask me to ask for her. She would say, “They like you more.” This was not true, but it did persuade me to ask when she didn’t want to. My point in telling this story is that if I have a prayer request that I really need answered, I will enlist the help of others to pray for it as well. Intercessory prayer, praying for others, is a great thing to do, and it is super powerful.
The Lord tells us over and over again in the Bible to be persistent. Sometimes this can mean that you don’t give up and you don’t lose hope. It can mean that you go back to the Lord over and over again, and you keep asking for the thing that you want or the thing that you need. Sometimes, it can mean that you ask others to pray with you, and you all keep asking the Lord over and over again until He answers your prayers. God is telling us to be persistent, and I believe he rewards our persistence.
The final part of this verse says, “and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever. Amen.” God is the one who deserves all the Glory. When we pray, and people are healed, it is thanks be to God. All we did was ask. He did all the hard work. When we ask to forgive others, we make a choice, and then God comes in and changes our hearts. God is our protector, our provider, our healer, and the one who deserves all the Glory. If we ever feel like we don’t have any reason to praise the Lord, we can remember what He did for us. We can think about how He gave His only son to die on a cross to save us. Think about how hard that must have been. That in itself, even if He did nothing else for us, would have been enough. God is so good, and He deserves all the glory and praise!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone who is listening to this episode today. Lord, you are amazing, and we are so grateful you came up with a plan to save us. We are grateful that you sent Jesus here to die for our sins so we could be reconciled with you. We are sorry that we don’t think of this often enough. We ask that you continue to help us see all the reasons we have to praise you and to give you all the glory. We love you, Lord, we really do! We ask this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Tomorrow night, I will start a new theme for Mentoring. If you have been thinking about joining, I encourage you to join today! The theme for this month is focused on anger and forgiveness. These topics are near and dear to my heart, and I think we underestimate how important they are. I hope you will consider joining me. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! God is on your side and we are both rooting for you! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in September 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Would any of you forsake your children? I don't think so. And I will never forsake you or the mission you have been given through my father, myself, and the Holy Spirit. You each have a mission. And I will help you complete your mission.”
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Praise Series #29 The Song of Moses
Exodus 15:1 “Then Moses and the Israelites sang this song to the Lord: “I will sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; horse and rider he has thrown into the sea.”
I thought this was a good verse to remind us that praise and worship is not just good when we are in need of God’s help. It is also really important to praise and worship the Lord when He comes through and answers our prayers. Exodus 15:1-21 is all about Moses and the Israelites singing to the Lord for saving them from the Egyptians.
In case you are unfamiliar with the story, God asked Moses to lead the Israelites out of captivity from Egypt, as they were slaves there. The pharaoh finally said they could go, and then, when they left, he changed his mind and set out after them. The Israelites got to the Red Sea and had nowhere to go as they could not cross it. God parted the Red Sea so that the Israelites could cross it on dry ground. As soon as they were through it, the Egyptian army started to cross it, and God released the water, and they all drowned.
This is where Exodus 15 picks up. The beginning part is called “The Song of Moses.” Let’s look at the words of the song.
Then Moses and the Israelites sang this song to the Lord:
“I will sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; horse and rider he has thrown into the sea. 2 The Lord is my strength and my might, and he has become my salvation; this is my God, and I will praise him, my father’s God, and I will exalt him. 3 The Lord is a warrior; the Lord is his name.
Let’s pause and look at these few verses. They acknowledge what the Lord has done; He has triumphed gloriously; horse and rider, He has thrown into the sea. However, it then goes on to talk about God and how great He is. It says that the Lord is my strength and my might. He has become my salvation. These are all things that you can say when you are looking to praise the Lord. They are also great things to remember when you are struggling to think of reasons to be grateful. You can be grateful that God is your strength and your might. He is your salvation. You can trust Him to come through and help you every time. It goes on to say,
4 “Pharaoh’s chariots and his army he cast into the sea; his picked officers were sunk in the Red Sea. 5 The floods covered them; they went down into the depths like a stone. 6 Your right hand, O Lord, glorious in power— your right hand, O Lord, shattered the enemy. 7 In the greatness of your majesty, you overthrew your adversaries; you sent out your fury, it consumed them like stubble.
Again, these few verses are a mix of stating what the Lord did and praising Him for how amazing He is. It says the Lord’s right hand is glorious in power and that it shattered the enemy. Do you have enemies that need to be overthrown? The Israelites couldn’t have seen this coming. I am sure that when they reached the Red Sea and saw how high and fast-moving the water was, they thought they would be captured. I am sure that not a single one of them could have predicted what God would do next. The same is true for your situation. Just because you can’t see a way out doesn’t mean there isn’t one. Just because you feel as though your time has come doesn’t mean it will. I have seen God deliver people I know and love from very difficult situations. Ones that seemed like there was no way out. Your situation is not hopeless. God is in it, and if He is not saving you from it, then He will help you through it.
8 At the blast of your nostrils, the waters piled up, the floods stood up in a heap; the deeps congealed in the heart of the sea. 9 The enemy said, ‘I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil, my desire shall have its fill of them. I will draw my sword, my hand shall destroy them.’ 10 You blew with your wind, the sea covered them; they sank like lead in the mighty waters.
These verses are good because they show us that it does not matter what our enemies say. It doesn’t matter how badly they threaten us. All we need to remember is how great our God is. These verses talk about how the enemy was saying things that were probably scary to hear. No one wants to hear that they will be overtaken and that the enemy will have their fill of our goods. However, the Israelites didn’t have to worry because God took care of the enemy. He drowned every single one of them. It does not matter how great your enemy is; God is greater. It doesn’t matter what your enemy is, either. It could be a physical illness, a mental illness, a financial problem, or a legal problem. Your enemy might be someone or something you can see, and it might be something you can’t see, like an illness. Whatever your enemy is, trust me when I say that God can either save you from it or help you through it.
11 “Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in splendor, doing wonders? 12 You stretched out your right hand, and the earth swallowed them.
13 “In your steadfast love, you led the people whom you redeemed; you guided them by your strength to your holy abode.
These verses are great because they show the Lord that they know how amazing He is. They are showing the Lord that they know that there is none greater than the Lord. In the time they lived, there were other gods that people prayed to and worshiped, and so the Israelites were letting God know that they know He is the one true God. That no one and nothing compares to Him. I also love that the last verse in this section reminds us that God’s love is a steadfast love. Steadfast means firmly loyal or constant; unswerving. That is God’s love for you. His love is firmly loyal, constant, and unswerving. We might think when we do something wrong, God stops loving us, or that he loves us less than he did. This is not true. He may not like what you did, but His love for you is steadfast. It does not change. It is constant, even if you don’t return His love. Even if you turn away from Him or reject Him. His love is still always right there. It doesn’t go anywhere, and this verse is a good reminder of that. 14 The peoples heard, they trembled; pangs seized the inhabitants of Philistia. 15 Then the chiefs of Edom were dismayed; trembling seized the leaders of Moab; all the inhabitants of Canaan melted away. 16 Terror and dread fell upon them; by the might of your arm, they became still as a stone until your people, O Lord, passed by, until the people whom you acquired passed by.
These verses show us that when we allow God to save us. When we call out to the Lord, He saves us, and we tell people about it, they learn about the power of God as well. The Israelites had many enemies all throughout the ages. Had they been traveling from Egypt on their own, they may have been attacked by many other nations. However, all the land heard about their God and how he had parted the Red Sea so that they could pass by, and then had released the waters when their enemy tried to cross the waters on dry ground.
Sometimes you will have enemies that know God is on your side, and they won’t engage. They might try to hurt you in a roundabout way, but they won’t come straight at you because they know how powerful God is. It says in these verses that their enemies trembled. They were dismayed, and terror and dread fell upon them. Isn’t it amazing what God can do when we let Him? 17 You brought them in and planted them on the mountain of your own possession, the place, O Lord, that you made your abode, the sanctuary, O Lord, that your hands have established. 18 The Lord will reign forever and ever.”
19 When the horses of Pharaoh with his chariots and his chariot drivers went into the sea, the Lord brought back the waters of the sea upon them; but the Israelites walked through the sea on dry ground.
It ends by restating what God did for them and to their enemies. It is proclaiming for all to hear that God is the reason they are alive. God is the one who brought them safely through the Red Sea. He allowed them to walk through on dry ground and yet brought back the waters of the sea upon the enemy.
God can do this for you, too. Whatever your struggle is, turn it over to the Lord, and he will help you through it. While you are in it, praise the Lord. The more we praise the Lord, the more our lives will change. I know that may seem like a crazy statement. You may wonder how praise and worship can change your life. However, since we are almost to the end of our praise series, I pray that you don’t wonder how your life will be changed. I pray that you have seen over the course of this series that praise and worship are capable of changing your life in the best kind of ways. I love you, and I am rooting for you!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, I want to thank you for helping us through this praise series. I want to thank you for all the scriptures you have given me and for all the help you have given me in writing each devotional. Lord, we want to turn to you. Why is it so hard? We want to praise you in the good times and the bad. We just get distracted with all that is going on. We get overwhelmed, especially if we have been in this situation for a long time. Please help us avoid feeling overwhelmed. Help us to not feel hopeless in our situation. Remind us of your goodness and your steadfast love, Lord! We ask all of this in accordance of your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I!. God is on your side, and we are both rooting for you, always! Have a blessed day.
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in September 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I know each struggle that you have, but remember, your struggles are the refiner's fire. Don't let those struggles drown you. They are a passageway to a better future. They are the path that I have laid before you. The path will always have obstacles, but don't let them take you down. Remember, I'm there. I lift you up. ”
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He Worshiped
Judges 7: 15-18 “When Gideon heard the telling of the dream and its interpretation, he worshiped; and he returned to the camp of Israel, and said, “Get up; for the Lord has given the army of Midian into your hand.” After he divided the three hundred men into three companies, and put trumpets into the hands of all of them, and empty jars, with torches inside the jars, he said to them, “Look at me, and do the same; when I come to the outskirts of the camp, do as I do. When I blow the trumpet, I and all who are with me, then you also blow the trumpets around the whole camp, and shout, ‘For the Lord and for Gideon!’”
We have been talking about times when praise and worship have won battles, broken chains, and set captives free. This is no exception. In Judges 6, Gideon is introduced as a reluctant and fearful man, threshing wheat in a winepress to hide it from the Midianites. When the Angel of the Lord appeared to him and called him a mighty warrior, Gideon doubted the message, pointing out that his clan was the weakest in the tribe of Manasseh and that he was the least in his family. Despite Gideon’s doubts, God assured him of His presence and called him to deliver Israel from its enemies.
Chapter 7 begins by discussing a battle where Gideon went into battle with thousands of troops and yet was still outnumbered. Then God told Gideon that he had too many troops and he should send home any who were scared. A good majority of them went home. I think there were 3,000 left. Then God told him there were still too many and how to decide who else should leave. Now Gideon was down to 300 soldiers, and God was pleased. However, Gideon was not sure how this was going to work out. They were vastly outnumbered. It says in Judges 7:12 “The Midianites and the Amalekites and all the people of the east lay along the valley as thick as locusts; and their camels were without number, countless as the sand on the seashore. And Gideon had 300 and God on his side.
One thing I love about this story is that it shows us that God knows us. He knows our weaknesses, and He loves us anyway. God knew that Gideon would be scared and would need some reassurance before going into battle. Judges 7:9-12 says, “That same night the Lord said to him, 'Get up, attack the camp; for I have given it into your hand. But if you fear to attack, go down to the camp with your servant Purah; and you shall hear what they say, and afterward your hands shall be strengthened to attack the camp.” Then he went down with his servant Purah to the outposts of the armed men that were in the camp. While he was there, he overheard one of the enemy soldiers explaining a dream he had and talking about how great Gideon was. This gave Gideon all the confidence he needed to go into war trusting the Lord.
Do you see how God knew Gideon would be scared? Do you see how God didn’t discount Gideon because he was afraid to trust God and enter this seemingly unfair battle with just 300 men? God didn’t walk away and find someone else who was more qualified, or someone who would trust him without fail or without question. God saw Gideon’s fear and gave him what he needed to push past it. God is so good. He will do the same for you. God isn’t asking you to never be afraid of what He is calling you to do. He is asking you to trust Him and to do it anyway. If you feel you need confirmation or some sort of sign to know God is asking you to do it, then ask Him for that. He is faithful to answer when we ask.
I thought this story was great for our praise series because of the verses I picked for today. “When Gideon heard the telling of the dream and its interpretation, he worshiped;” When Gideon heard the enemy talking about how powerful he was, He got the courage to push past his fear. However, before waking the army to tell them to go into battle, it says two very powerful words. He worshiped. You might even just gloss over those two words in the grand scheme of the whole story. However, the Lord highlighted them for me. He wanted me to not only see them, but to point them out to you. He doesn’t want us to miss it. Gideon knew where his strength came from. He knew who was going to win this battle for him, and it wasn’t those 300 soldiers. It was the Lord our God.
Gideon worshiped the Lord. Did this change the outcome of the war? I have no idea. Did it change how God won the war for them? Again, I have no idea. What I do know is that nothing is put in the Bible accidentally. Every word in the Bible has a meaning. There is a reason God wants us to know that before going into a war where he was incredibly outnumbered, Gideon worshiped. How about you? Are you in a war that seems unfair? Are you in a war where you seem outnumbered? Have you worshiped yet? Have you come to the Lord and asked for his help and then worshiped Him even though you might not have seen that help yet? If you are in a battle, whether it is medical, physical, financial, or some other kind of battle, and you don’t know what else to do, might I suggest worship? It seemed to work for Gideon; it could work for you, too!
I am not sure if you know this story, so let me go on to explain what happened. The verse says, “After he divided the three hundred men into three companies, and put trumpets into the hands of all of them, and empty jars, with torches inside the jars, he said to them, “Look at me, and do the same; when I come to the outskirts of the camp, do as I do. When I blow the trumpet, I and all who are with me, then you also blow the trumpets around the whole camp, and shout, ‘For the Lord and for Gideon!’”
These 300 soldiers were going into battle against an enemy with so many soldiers they couldn’t be counted, and instead of putting swords and shields in their hands, Gideon put trumpets and jars with torches in them. This is the amazing thing about letting God fight your battles: He rarely does what you think He will do. When they blew the trumpets and shouted, God threw the Midianite army into confusion, and the enemy turned on itself. Israel won the battle without fighting by strength.
God is not asking you to fight your battle alone. He is not asking you to figure out how to win the battle on your own. God is calling you to trust Him. He is calling you to invite Him into your struggle and then to listen to Him when He asks you to do something. God will solve your problem in ways you can’t even imagine. I know you can’t see a way out, and that is ok, you don’t have to. God can make a way out. Do you think those soldiers had any idea that all they had to do to win the war was to blow on a trumpet, smash a jar, and shout “For the Lord and for Gideon!” I am sure they probably thought the plan was crazy, and yet this plan saved them from having to fight at all.
God can do the same in your life. He can cure your disease without you doing anything. He can solve your problem in ways you can’t even conceive. God is calling us to praise and worship, and he will do the rest. If you are like me, you have been trying to solve your own problems and those of everyone around you for far too long. How has that been going? Why not give God a shot? I guarantee he can do better than we can.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to trust you. We want to push past our fear and do the thing you are calling us to do. Please help us. Lord, help us trust you and help us turn our battles over to you. Your plan is better than our plan. Please help us release all the control and hand it over to you. We love you, and we ask this in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus! I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I. God is on your side, and we are both rooting for you—always. Have a blessed day.
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in September 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I have chosen you. I have anointed each one of you. Never, never forget that. You did not just wander here. You were led here. You are my children, my anointed children, my chosen children. Always, we will be together. We will walk together. We will decide together. Remain in my love.”
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Today’s Witness Wednesday is from a friend named Gisele. We were in a prayer group last Wednesday morning, and she was sharing a testimony about how the Lord came and helped her out of a jam when she was on vacation. God is so good! Take it away, Gisele!We have all seen God working in our lives. However, maybe not everyone is aware that it is God who is working within us. That’s why it’s so important for us to start talking more about it. The more we share our experiences, the more people will understand how God acts and how much He truly loves us. If you’re willing to share an experience of how God has worked or is working in your life, please send me an email at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or click here. It won’t take much of your time, and your story could be just what someone needs to hear today. Consider praying and sharing. We all have a story, and the world needs to hear it.Music: "Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 Licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ www.findingtruenorthcoaching.comCLICK HERE TO DONATECLICK HERE to sign up for Mentoring CLICK HERE to sign up for Daily "Word from the Lord" emailsCLICK HERE to sign up for my newsletter & receive a free audio trainingabout inviting Jesus into your daily lifeCLICK HERE to buy my book Total Trust in God's Safe Embrace
He Played His Lyre, and The Evil Spirit Would Leave!
1 Samuel 16:23 “Whenever the spirit from God came on Saul, David would take up his lyre and play. Then relief would come to Saul; he would feel better, and the evil spirit would leave him.”
When I heard about this verse, I loved it because it shows us another example of the power of music. When David played his lyre, the evil spirit would leave Saul. Did you know that music could set you free from evil spirits? Are you starting to see the power of praise and worship? Are you starting to see the power of music and singing? Praise and playing musical instruments have been setting captives free for a very long time.
God instructed Joshua to have the Israelites march around the city of Jericho once a day for six days, with priests blowing trumpets and the people remaining silent. On the seventh day, they were to march around the city seven times. When the priests sounded the trumpets, Joshua commanded the people to shout, and the walls of Jericho collapsed. God allowed the Israelites to take this city. (Joshua 6:1–20)
God reduced Gideon’s army from thousands to just three hundred men so that Israel would know the victory came from Him alone. At God’s instruction, the men carried trumpets and torches instead of swords. When they blew the trumpets and shouted, God threw the Midianite army into confusion, and the enemy turned on itself. Israel won the battle without fighting by strength, showing that obedience, proclamation, and trust in God released His power. (Judges 7:1–22)
When King Jehoshaphat faced a vast enemy army, he sought the Lord, and God declared that the battle belonged to Him. Jehoshaphat sent singers ahead of the army, praising God as they marched into battle. As they worshiped, the Lord caused the enemy armies to turn on one another, and Judah did not have to fight at all. The victory came through praise, revealing that worship invites God to act powerfully on behalf of His people. (2 Chronicles 20:1–30)
While imprisoned in Philippi after being beaten and chained, Paul and Silas prayed and sang hymns to God in the middle of the night. As they worshiped, a sudden earthquake shook the prison, opening the doors and loosening everyone’s chains. Rather than escaping, Paul and Silas remained, leading the jailer and his household to salvation. Their praise not only brought physical freedom but also opened the way for lives to be saved. (Acts 16:22–34)
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego stood before King Nebuchadnezzar and refused to bow to the golden image, declaring their unwavering faith in God. They proclaimed that God was able to deliver them from the fiery furnace, but even if He did not, they would not worship any false god. Their words were an act of praise rooted in trust—honoring God above fear, outcome, or survival. Their worship was not expressed through song, but through bold confession of God’s power and faithfulness in the face of death. (Daniel 3:16–17)
I like this example because it shows us that there are many ways to praise. If you don’t like music, if you don’t like singing, that doesn’t mean that you can’t be set free by praise and worship. There are so many ways to praise the Lord. Music happens to be my favorite, and for me, one of the easiest, because if I don’t know what to say, there are plenty of others who have written beautiful songs who do know what to say. However, if you don’t like music or singing, don’t count yourself out. You can praise the Lord with your writing, with your words said outloud. You can praise the Lord with gratitude or in the things you say to others. There isn’t just one way to praise the Lord. I pray that by the end of this series, you understand that there are so many different ways to praise. There is a way for everyone.
When King Hezekiah received a threatening message from the Assyrian king, he took the letter to the temple and spread it before the Lord. In prayer, Hezekiah praised God as the one true Lord over all kingdoms and asked Him to act so that all would know His power. God responded by promising deliverance, and that very night the Assyrian army was defeated without Judah having to fight a single battle. Hezekiah’s prayerful praise and trust in God’s sovereignty led to a decisive victory and public recognition of the Lord’s supremacy. (2 Kings 19:14–37)
Again, this is a different kind of praise. King Hezekiah went in front of the Lord and presented the letter from his enemies. He then praised God as the one true King and asked God for help. Do you see how easy it can be to praise the Lord at times? All it says that he did was to praise the Lord as the one true King over all kingdoms. This is why I have placed a link in the previous episode for the praise sheets that I received at my prayer group. However, you don’t even need those sheets. You can simply tell the Lord how great you think He is. I tend to say, “You are the Lord of Lords and King of Kings. You are the Almighty One. We worship you. We adore you, and we glorify you.” You can say whatever it is you think about the Lord.
My homework for you today is to stop and think about 5 things you can say to the Lord to praise Him. What is it you think of Him? What do you know to be true about Him? Once you have these 5 things, you can have fewer or more; I just randomly decided on 5. Once you have these, then I want you to say them every single day to the Lord. It doesn’t matter when you say them, but try to say them every day and watch how your life changes. Watch how your trust in the Lord begins to grow because you are reminding yourself every day how amazing He is. If you have to ask the Lord for something, start with these few praise statements and then ask Him. Watch to see if there is any difference in the number of answered prayers, or in the way they are answered.
This is just one tiny way to add more praise into your life without going overboard or taking up a lot of extra time. Just give it a try. What have you got to lose? What could you gain? Trust me, more praise and worship in your life is exactly what you need right now. I know I may not know you, but I know this is what we all need right now. We need to replace the worry and anxiety of this world with praise and worship, and we then watch our lives feel a bit easier.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening today. Lord, I ask you to show them the power of praise and worship. I ask that you bless them with graces when they are praising you. I ask that you open their eyes to the ways that praise and worship are changing their lives. Help us to see with your eyes, Lord. Help us to notice more of you in our lives. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus! If you know there’s more to your faith than routine and rules, I’d love to stay connected with you. You can join my email list to receive scripture-rooted encouragement and reflections to help you walk boldly with Jesus in your everyday life. You can sign up through the link in the show notes (CLICK HERE)—I’d love to have you with us. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I. God is on your side, and we are rooting for you—always. Have a blessed day
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in September 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, you are precious to me. I took each of you with me to the cross. You were there with me that day, each of you.”
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Praise Series #26 Johan Saved From Deep Dark Pit!
Jonah 2:7-9 “When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you, Lord, and my prayer rose to you, to your holy temple. “Those who cling to worthless idols turn away from God’s love for them. But I, with shouts of grateful praise, will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed, I will make good. I will say, ‘Salvation comes from the Lord.’”
I was looking online for some Scripture verses that showed people who were in trouble and relied on the Lord, or were able to praise the Lord when they were in trouble, and they were saved. I know that praise helps in a bad situation. I have been in so many bad situations, and praise always helps. However, I know some of you don’t know me. Maybe you just started listening to the podcast, or maybe you have been listening for the last 5 years, and yet you only know what you hear in the podcast. I don’t want to just use my story because my story might be different than your story. We all have a story; we are all going through something. None of us is just skating through life with no hardships.
This is why I am doing this series on praise. We all have stuff going on. Yes, someone may be struggling more than you, but that does not minimize your struggle, and that doesn’t mean God doesn’t have time for your struggle. God is not bound by space and time like we are. He can help all of us at the same time. Since all of our stories are different, I want to give you different types of examples. Also, I want you to know that even if your story isn’t exactly like any of the examples I give you, the basics still apply. God will help you, just as He has helped all those who have turned to Him in times of trouble.
I want to read all of Jonah chapter 2 because it is not that long, and yet it is so great.
Jonah 2:1-10 “From inside the fish Jonah prayed to the Lord his God. He said: “In my distress I called to the Lord, and he answered me. From deep in the realm of the dead, I called for help, and you listened to my cry. You hurled me into the depths, into the very heart of the seas, and the currents swirled about me; all your waves and breakers swept over me. I said, ‘I have been banished from your sight; yet I will look again toward your holy temple.’ The engulfing waters threatened me, the deep surrounded me; seaweed was wrapped around my head. To the roots of the mountains I sank down; the earth beneath barred me in forever. But you, Lord my God, brought my life up from the pit. “When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you, Lord, and my prayer rose to you, to your holy temple. “Those who cling to worthless idols turn away from God’s love for them. But I, with shouts of grateful praise, will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed, I will make good. I will say, ‘Salvation comes from the Lord.’” And the Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.”
The reason I wanted to read the whole chapter to you is that it shows us how deep in a pit Jonah was. Jonah wasn’t just upset and crying out to the Lord. Jonah was in dire straits. Jonah was dying, or at least he felt like he was. There are three times in this short 10-verse chapter that Jonah talks about God saving him. First, he said, “In my distress I called to the Lord, and he answered me.” Then he continued on by saying, “From deep in the realm of the dead, I called for help, and you listened to my cry.” And later in the chapter, he also said, “But you, Lord my God, brought my life up from the pit.”
In three different places and three different ways, this chapter is telling us that when we cry out to the Lord, He answers us and that when we need him, he will bring us up out of the pit. Have you been crying out to the Lord? Are you in a deep pit with no way out? God hears your cries. He is in the pit with you, and He is your way out. Call out to Him. Pray to Him for a rescue. You are no different than Jonah. When you call out to the Lord, He will answer you. When you call for help, he will listen to you, even if you feel you are calling from the realm of the dead. That’s the thing with God, it is NEVER too late. God will bring you up out of the pit. It may not be how you think it will happen, and it may not, probably not be in the time you think it should. He will save you from the pit, though. All you have to do is ask!
You might be thinking your problem is greater than Jonah’s. You might believe that God helped Jonah, but he won’t help you. Let’s look at the situation Jonah was in. The scripture says. “From inside the fish Jonah prayed to the Lord his God.” So, Jonah was inside of a fish. That does not seem good. Then it says he called from deep in the realm of the dead. So Jonah was, or felt like he was in the realm of the dead. Then it says, “You hurled me into the depths, into the very heart of the seas, and the currents swirled about me; all your waves and breakers swept over me.” I am sure many of us have felt like this before. Maybe not in this exact situation, or I hope not anyway. I hope none of you have been swallowed by a giant fish. However, many of us have probably felt like we have plunged or were plunged into the deep end. We are lost in the depths of grief, loss, sickness, financial trouble, parenting or marriage trouble, or work issues. There are a number of things that could make us feel as though we are in the deep end and we are about to drown.
Next, it says, “I have been banished from your sight.” How many of us have felt like God has abandoned us at one time or another? How many of us have felt lost and thought God couldn’t find us? It goes on to say, “The engulfing waters threatened me, the deep surrounded me; seaweed was wrapped around my head. To the roots of the mountains I sank down; the earth beneath barred me in forever.” Is this how you have been feeling? Do you feel as though you have gone as low as you can go? Not just to the bottom of the mountain, but to the bottom of the roots of the mountains. This is pretty low. And it also said seaweed was wrapped around my head. What that makes me think is that he felt like he couldn’t breathe. Have you ever been so far in a pit, so completely destroyed that you felt like you couldn’t really breathe? Jonah was in a really dark place, and he thought he was going to die.
It even says, “When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you.” As Jonah watched the life drain out of him, He remembered the Lord. Do you see how it is never too late? I know your situation may seem dire. It may seem like it’s all over. You might have doctors telling you that there is nothing they can do for you. You might have loved ones who are telling you not to get your hopes up or that things will never change. I refuse to accept that. This story, and so many others in the Bible, show us that it is NEVER too late!!
Jonah acknowledges that when he turned to the Lord, the Lord answered Him. God saved him from out of the pit, even as he felt his life drain away; God still saved him! Then Jonah said, “ But I, with shouts of grateful praise, will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed, I will make good. I will say, ‘Salvation comes from the Lord.” And the Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.” Jonah, even in a really difficult time, was able to turn to grateful praise and was saved by the Lord. If Jonah can turn to the Lord with grateful praise, with all that he was going through, so can you. It won’t be easy, but Jesus didn’t promise us easy. He did promise us salvation, and He did promise that when we ask, He will answer. So keep asking and keep looking for his answer, I am sure it is coming!
Dear heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode. Lord, we want to call out to you in times of trouble. We just feel so lost at times. Sometimes we feel like the water we are in is so dark and so thick that there isn’t a way out. Forgive us for forgetting you are always our way out. Forgive us for forgetting that praise is one way to help get us out of difficult times. We love you, Lord, and we want to count on you. We are sorry for all the times we let ourselves believe that you had abandoned us. We know you never leave our side. Please help us to never forget this! We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s Holy Will, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I hope those of you who are getting hit with this snowstorm are staying inside and staying warm. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I, and we are both rooting for you! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in September 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “There is a large set of eyes looking down on us, and the Lord says, “I see you, but do you see me? Do you really see me in your life, or only partially? I want to be fully in your life, because my eyes are full of you, always.”
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Praise Series #25 Delight In The Lord
Psalm 37:4 “Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.”
Have you ever thought about taking delight in the Lord? I am sure this is not the only time this idea is presented in the Bible. Actually there are more than 10 instances in the Bible where it talks about taking delight in the Lord or in His law. I have never thought of taking delight in the Lord before. I mean, I love him, and I spend time with him, but to be honest, when I read this verse, I wondered how I would even take delight in the Lord. I literally typed into the search bar on my computer, “How does one delight in the Lord?” I tell you this because I don’t want you to think that because I am doing this podcast, I have everything figured out. I don’t want you to think when I speak I am speaking with any authority as if I was an expert. I am on the same journey you are on. We could study the Bible our whole lives and still not have it all figured out.
When I read a scripture verse, I listen to what the Holy Spirit has to tell me about the verse. I also think about what I have learned up until this point, and sometimes, many times, I go to the internet to see what others say about this verse. My goal with this podcast is for us to be on this journey together to discover God’s Word more fully and to see how we can apply that Word to our daily lives. I am not choosing verses that I already understand. Actually, I am not really choosing the verses. I am using the verses from my prayer group that people feel inspired by the Holy Spirit to share. This means that often I get a verse and don’t completely understand what it means. Sometimes the Holy Spirit gives me understanding, and sometimes I find it through research.
I do know that it is important to read the scripture and to try to understand it. This was confirmed at my prayer group the other day, someone felt strongly that the Lord wanted to tell us that His word is as pertinent today as it was then. We have the Lord right in our tabernacle, and he is right there with us in adoration and in everything. His word is still as powerful today as it was. That is why it is important to read his word and fill us so that we can fill ourselves with what God wants to tell us. God will speak to you directly through the scriptures if you let Him.
Ok, back to today’s verse. How does one delight in the Lord? I found two really good articles and I will put a link to them in the show notes. One of them was titled, “What Does It Mean To Take Delight In The Lord?” and was written by Tracy Kulwicki. In this article Tracy talks not only about this verse, but the verses we discussed yesterday. Psalm 37:3-4 “Trust in the Lord and do good. Then you will live safely in the land and prosper. Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you your heart’s desires.” The author said that before you get the desires of your heart, you need to trust in the Lord, do good, and take delight in the Lord. She says the reason we need to do these things first is not that we need to win God over or because we need to work hard to get things from God. The reason we need to do these things is that when we do these things first, then our desires become His.
We talked a lot yesterday about how to trust in the Lord and do good. Today we will talk about how we delight in the Lord? Here is what Tracy says about how we can delight in the Lord.
“When I take delight in my children, I spend time with them. I watch the things they do. I notice who they are. I notice their features and character. I laugh at the funny things they do. I hold them close. I talk with them. I listen to them. I recognize the unique things about them that make them who they are. I think about them often. I focus on the great things about them that I love. I remember the words they’ve said that melt my heart, the great memories we’ve created together, and the times when we overcame something challenging together.
She went on to say, “We can do the same things with God. We take delight in God by spending time with Him, watching the things He is doing in our lives. We can notice who He is, learn about His features and characteristics. We can laugh at the funny moments in our lives that come from His hand. We can hold Him close, talk with Him, and listen to Him. Recognize who He is, think about Him all throughout our day, and focus on His greatness and love. We can remember the times He has moved in our lives, the things He has done for us, and the prayers He has answered.”
I think this is both a great description of how we already delight in things and also how we can apply what we are already doing to God. Just listening to that description of how we delight in our children made me smile. It made me think of how much I love my children. If you don’t have children, I bet you do have something that you delight in as she described above. It might be a pet, friends, nieces and nephews, cousins, friends. Whatever it is that you delight in, that was a pretty good description of how we go about doing it. Then thinking about how I could apply that to our Lord made me smile as well. I love our Lord. I am sure you do too, or you wouldn’t be listening to a podcast titled, “Walk Boldly With Jesus.” Thinking about all the ways we can delight in him makes me smile and warms my heart. Let me break down some of the things she said so we can really remember them.
Spend time with Him. This is something we talk about a lot. However, in this context, we are not talking about it as if spending time with the Lord is one more thing on your to-do list. Spend time with Him with the intent to delight in Him. Set aside time for Him and then look forward to that time in the same way you would look forward to spending time with anyone or anything that you delight in.
Watch the things He is doing in your life. Take notice throughout the day of what the Lord is doing in your life. Focus on the big and small ways that God is showing up for you each and every day. He is there and you will notice where He is if you look for Him. The more you look, the more you will see Him. “Seek, and you shall find.”
We can notice who He is. We can learn about His features and characteristics. There are a number of ways we can do this. If we read the Bible, we will learn a lot about who God is, who Jesus is, and who the Holy Spirit is. Reading God’s word is a great way to get to know Him. It is also not the only way. You can read books written by Saints, theologians, and people who have studied the Bible and history. You can listen to podcasts or watch movies about God. We live in an age where all the knowledge you want is right at your fingertips. Whatever way you learn best is great. It doesn’t have to be just one way. There is no right or wrong way to learn about the Lord. Do what is best for you. There are many roads all leading to the same place.
Laugh at the funny moments that God brings us. I am sure we have all had funny moments in our lives. I am sure we have had times when we knew how things were going to go and they went horribly wrong in our eyes, and perfectly right in the Lord’s eyes. When we are no longer in that situation, we can look back on it and see how funny it actually is. God has a great sense of humor. The ladies at the prayer group get to witness this frequently when God gives them a vision. Think of any of these funny times that God has given to you. Humor in our lives is a gift.
We can hold Him close, talk to Him, and listen to Him. These are all possible. You may be wondering how we can hold Him close when He is not physically here. I can think of two ways. First, if you are Catholic, then you can receive the Eucharist, and He literally couldn’t be any closer to you. Second, you can hold him close to your heart in the same way that you hold those that you have lost close to your heart. If you have ever lost someone close to you, then you know that is not just a figure of speech. You are literally holding those people close to your heart. I think we all know that we can talk to Him, but do we do it? How often do you talk to the Lord? He is always available and ready to listen. If you are not doing this often, maybe it is time to do it more. You may know that you can talk to the Lord, but did you know that you can listen to Him as well? I don’t think we do this often enough. God wants to talk to us, but how many of us give Him the time to listen?
Recognize who He is. When I read that, I think of praising Him. Not just recognizing that He is God, but recognizing all that entails. Recognizing that He is the creator of all things. He is the Lord God Almighty. There is so much to who He is, and taking some time to explore that and to celebrate that would definitely help you delight in Him.
Think about Him all throughout the day and focus on His goodness and His Love. This is a great one to end with. Try to turn your thoughts to Him all throughout the day. I believe she mentioned in the article to set reminders on your phone until you are trained to do it automatically. Also, focus on His goodness and His love. When we focus on those two things, I don’t know how we can do anything else but delight in the Lord. God’s goodness and love are so amazing. They are unsurpassed by anything else. If we keep these in mind, we are guaranteed to delight in Him.
There is so much more in Tracy’s article. I urge you to read her full article. (click here for article) You can click on the link in the show notes or even just Google “What does it mean to take delight in the Lord?” Her website is workingmomsbalance.com. It was a great article, and it went into more detail than I could in this episode.
I just want to leave you with the question, “What can you do today to delight in the Lord?”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those who listen to this episode today. Lord, we love you, and we want to delight in you. Lord, help us to get to know you better and help us to spend more time with you. Help us to notice where you are in our lives, Lord, and help us to remember all the funny things you have done. You are amazing Lord and we are so very thankful for all that you do for us every day. You keep showing up for us even when we aren’t the best at showing up for you, and we are grateful for that, Lord. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in August 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “He's sharing another vision here. This one is for those who are on Zoom and think they’re not really here. And what the Lord is showing me is that the angel that stands behind them, their guardian angel, has not disconnected from any one of our angels because there's no time and space. So those out in Zoom are still in the circle of His love as we speak, even though sometimes they feel like they're not really participating. But he's saying, No, this is not true. You're participating even more because the distance is shorter.”
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Praise Series 24: There is Joy in Our Trials
James 1:2-4 “My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance; and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing.”
This verse doesn’t talk about praise, but it does say we should consider our hard times nothing but joy, because the testing of your faith produces endurance. In other words, we are not going through this hard time for nothing. We won’t get to the other side and be the same person that we were before the hard time. This verse shows that it is okay to praise the Lord during hard times because something good will come of it. After we make it through this impossible time, we will have more endurance. Then endurance will lead us to becoming mature and complete, lacking nothing. All that sounds pretty good to me.
The question is, how do we praise the Lord in these difficult times? I know a lot of you who are listening to this episode are struggling right now and have been for a long time. Your struggles are intense and real, and some days you feel like you can’t take it for another moment. You are tired of feeling so sick you can’t get out of bed. You are tired of feeling as though you are going to lose your house or your car because you don’t have any money to pay your bills. Some of you are depressed and don’t even want to get out of bed. Understanding that this is about building endurance isn't going to be what gets you out of bed.
However, what if praise could be that thing that gets you out of bed? What if you just need one thing to start changing things for you? What if you just need to have a different outlook? What if this verse could help you switch from a “why me” mindset to a “thank you” mindset? You might be wondering what you have to be thankful for in this hard time that you are in. However, there is always something to be thankful for. Things could always be worse. I know it doesn’t seem like it at times. I know it doesn’t feel like things could be any worse, but they can always be worse.
Another thing that can be helpful is to remember that you will be so much stronger when you get through this. When you make it to the other side of this hard time. I know if you have lost someone, then there isn’t really another side to this. The grief you feel will always be with you. However, you will learn to cope with the grief. You will learn to live with it, and I promise you that joy will come back into your life someday. You will begin to feel joy again, little by little. It won’t erase the pain and sadness, but they will both be there. Some days grief will be stronger, and some days joy will be stronger.
Praise and worship can help bring light into the dark place that you are in. Especially if you feel you are under a spiritual attack. When we are suffereing and we praise God anyway, that confuses evil spirits. They don’t understand why we would still praise the Lord even when things feel overwhelming, and it seems like nothing is going right for us. Remember, this is how Job ended up suffering. The devil told God that Job was only faithful because God had blessed him. So God allowed the devil to take away the things that Job loved the most so that the devil could see what it really meant to be faithful to the Lord. Even after he had lost everything, Job was still faithful to the Lord. Even after Job got sick and was in agonizing pain, Job was still faithful to the Lord.
I am sure when the devil made this deal with God, he was sure he had it in the bag. I am sure he thought he knew what he was doing. I am sure he was 100% positive that Job would turn on the Lord. And yet he didn’t. I want to be clear that God knew Job wouldn’t. God wasn’t just taking a gamble with Job’s life. God knew what would happen. He knew how it would all work out. God knows everything. However, this is a lesson the devil still gets wrong a lot. He still tries to take our family away, take our health away, take our financial security away, in hopes that we will turn on the Lord. That is not what we are going to do.
Instead, we are going to praise the Lord all the more when times are hard. We are going to sing to the Lord, yell to the Lord, talk to the Lord, whatever it is we can do to let God know we are still with Him and we want Him with us. When we feel we are under spiritual attack, we don’t have to be eloquent with our praise. We can simply say the name of Jesus, and the enemy will flee. We can simply be grateful to God for the small things until we are ready to be grateful for the big things. And just in case you are wondering if I actually do the things I tell you to do. Yes, I do.
The other day, I was having a really rough day with my boys. It was one of those days when I just wanted to throw in the towel. One of those days where I wonder and ask how much longer until this gets better, and will it ever get better. No one is immune to those kinds of days. When I was in the thick of it, I reminded myself that I needed to praise the Lord. Even though I didn’t feel like it, I turned on praise music and looked for the words and sang along. There were some songs I had to skip because they were too sad or too upbeat. Whatever you are feeling in the moment, someone else has not only felt that way, but has also sung a song about it. You just need to find those songs.
One great thing to do that I just thought of and will begin working on is to create different playlists of Christian songs. For instance, a worship list when you are so grateful for all God has done for you. Another playlist for when you are really struggling, and you need to hear songs about how this won’t take you down, or how they struggled and yet came through it all. There are all types of songs out there. You just have to find the ones that resonate with you. You can find joy in the struggle if you are looking for it.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each person listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you, and we want to praise you. We just struggle when everything feels so heavy. Please help us to remember that even when things feel heavy, there is always something we can praise you for. Even if the only thing is what today’s verse taught us, that we can find joy because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance. We won’t be the same afterwards, we will be stronger! Lord, we ask that you give us the strength to get through these hard times. The strength to get out of bed on the days we really don’t want to. The strength to keep showing up for those who need us. The strength to keep putting one foot in front of the other until things get better!! Thank you, Lord! We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you just as you are and so do I! We are both rooting for you! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in August 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “You think you're not enough? Don’t you know how much I love you? Can you not feel my presence in many, many moments of your life? Don't fear because there's only one or two. I could use a stone if I wanted to. But I chose you.”
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Today’s Witness Wednesday is a story I read on Facebook today. I felt it was a great example of how God works through people and brings them together in the most unusual ways. We might not always understand what God is doing, or why He has brought certain people into our lives, but He always has a plan. The plan might not unfold for years, but one day it will make sense. I am sure the biker in this story had no idea his weekly visits to the Children’s hospital would end the way they did. But I am sure it all makes sense to him now. Here is his story.
I'm a 58-year-old biker named Mike. I've got tattoos covering both arms, a beard down to my chest, and I ride with the Defenders Motorcycle Club.
I volunteer at the Children's Hospital every Thursday, reading books to sick kids. It's something our club started doing fifteen years ago after one of our brothers' granddaughters spent months in pediatric oncology.
Most kids are scared of me at first. I get it. I'm big and loud and look like I should be in a motorcycle gang movie, not a children's hospital. But once I start reading, they forget about how I look. They just hear the story.
That's what I thought would happen with Amara.
I walked into room 432 on a Thursday afternoon in March. The nurse had warned me this was a new patient. Seven years old. Stage four neuroblastoma. No family visits in the three weeks she'd been admitted.
"No family at all?" I'd asked.
The nurse's face had gone tight. "Her mother abandoned her here. Dropped her off for treatment and never came back. We've been trying to reach her for weeks. CPS is involved now but Amara doesn't have any other family. She's going into foster care once she's stable enough to leave."
"And if she's not stable enough?"
The nurse looked away. "Then she'll die here. Alone."
I stood outside room 432 for a full minute before I could make myself go in. I've read to dying kids before. It never gets easier. But a kid dying completely alone? That was a new kind of hell.
I knocked softly and pushed open the door. "Hey there, I'm Mike. I'm here to read you a story if you'd like."
The little girl in the bed turned to look at me. She had the biggest brown eyes I'd ever seen. Her hair was gone from chemo. Her skin had that grayish tone that means the body is struggling. But she smiled when she saw me.
"You're really big," she said. Her voice was small and raspy.
"Yeah, I get that a lot." I held up the book I'd brought. "I've got a story about a giraffe who learns to dance. Want to hear it?"
She nodded. So I sat down in the chair next to her bed and started reading.
I was halfway through the book when she interrupted me. "Mr. Mike?"
"Yeah, sweetheart?"
"Do you have any kids?"
The question hit me hard. "I had a daughter. She passed away when she was sixteen. Car accident. That was twenty years ago."
Amara was quiet for a moment. Then she asked, "Do you miss being a daddy?"
My throat tightened. "Every single day, honey."
"My daddy left before I was born," she said matter-of-factly. "And my mama brought me here and never came back. The nurses say she's not coming back ever."
I didn't know what to say to that. What do you say to a seven-year-old who's been abandoned while dying?
Amara kept talking. "The social worker lady said I'm going to go live with a foster family when I get better. But I heard the doctors talking. They don't think I'm getting better."
"Sweetheart—"
"It's okay," she said. Her voice was so calm. Too calm for a seven-year-old. "I know I'm dying. Everyone thinks I don't understand but I do. I heard them say the cancer is everywhere now. They said maybe six months. Maybe less."
I set the book down. "Amara, I'm so sorry."
She looked at me with those huge eyes. "Mr. Mike, can I ask you something?"
"Anything, honey."
She looked at me with those huge eyes. "Mr. Mike, can I ask you something?"
"Anything, honey."
"Will you be my daddy… until I die?"
The room went still. Even the monitors seemed to hush. I felt every one of my fifty-eight years settle on my shoulders like lead.
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out at first. All I could see was my own daughter’s face at sixteen, laughing in the rear-view mirror the last time I ever saw her alive. All I could feel was the hole that had lived in my chest ever since.
Amara didn’t blink. She just waited, small and brave and impossibly calm.
I wanted to say yes. God help me, I wanted to say yes so badly my bones ached. But I was just a rough old biker who showed up once a week with picture books. I rode loud, drank hard, and still woke up some nights yelling my dead daughter’s name into an empty house. What did I know about being anyone’s father again, even for a little while?
I swallowed the rock in my throat. “Honey… I’d be honored. But I gotta be honest with you—I’m not very good at this daddy thing anymore. I might mess it up.”
Her whole face lit up like sunrise. “That’s okay. You can practice on me.”
And just like that, I had a daughter again.
The nurses cried when I told them. The social worker cried harder when I said I wanted temporary custody, medical guardianship, whatever paperwork existed that would let me take her home if she ever got strong enough, or stay by her side every single day if she didn’t. The club showed up in force—twenty-five Harleys rumbling into the hospital parking lot, scaring the security guards half to death until they saw the stuffed animals strapped to every bike.
We turned room 432 into something that didn’t look like a hospital room anymore. One of the guys brought a pink bedsheet set his old lady had bought by mistake. Another brought a tiny leather vest with “Daddy’s Girl” stitched on the back. Somebody hung fairy lights. Somebody else smuggled in a puppy that definitely wasn’t allowed (just for ten minutes, but Amara laughed so hard she had to go back on oxygen).
Every Thursday became every day. I read her the giraffe book until we both had it memorized, then we moved on to Charlotte’s Web, then Harry Potter. When her hands got too weak to hold the book, I held it for both of us. When the pain got bad, I climbed into that little bed and let her fall asleep on my chest while I hummed old Johnny Cash songs my own daughter used to love.
The doctors kept shaking their heads, saying they couldn’t explain it. Her scans weren’t getting better, exactly—but they weren’t getting worse as fast as they should have. Six months became nine. Nine became a year.
On the morning of her eighth birthday, Amara woke up and said, clear as day, “Daddy, I dreamed I was running. My legs worked and everything.”
I kissed the top of her fuzzy head. “Then we’re gonna make that happen, baby girl.”
Two weeks later the oncologist called me into his office, eyes wide, holding films up to the light like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “The tumors in her spine… they’re shrinking. I’ve never—” He stopped, cleared his throat. “We’re seeing significant regression. I don’t know how to explain it.”
I knew how. It was love. Plain, stubborn, loud, tattooed love.
Eighteen months after the day she asked a scary biker to be her daddy “until she died,” Amara walked out of that hospital on her own two legs, holding my hand, wearing her tiny leather vest and a grin bigger than the sky.
The club threw her a welcome-home party that shook the neighborhood. There were ponies. There was a bouncy castle. There was cake the size of a Harley wheel. And when the sun went down and the firepit was roaring, Amara climbed into my lap, looked up at the stars, and whispered, “Daddy?”
“Yeah, baby?”
“I don’t think I’m gonna die for a long time now.”
I held her tight enough to feel both our hearts beating. “Good,” I said, voice cracking like an old man’s should. “Because I’m just getting started being your dad.”
She’s fifteen now. Still cancer-free. Still calls me Daddy every single day. Still sleeps in those same pink bedsheets we took from room 432.
And every Thursday, rain or shine, we ride back to Children’s Hospital together—me on my Harley, her on the back holding on like she’s been doing it her whole life—and we read stories to the new kids who are scared and hurting.
Because some things are worth more than the years you get.
I am so grateful that this man said yes to the little girl’s questions and that God brought them together. I am grateful that God is in every situation and that he saved both of these people from all the loneliness they were feeling. I am grateful to God for her miraculous healing. God is so good. He is in every situation. If you can’t find the good in your situation, that just means God’s not done yet.
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Praise Series #23 Garment of Praise Instead of a Spirit of Despair
Isaiah 61:3 “And provide for those who grieve in Zion—to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor.”
What drew me to this verse is the part that says, “a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.” I know a lot of you are struggling and have been for a long time. You are struggling medically and can’t understand why you haven’t been healed yet. You know God can heal you, you truly believe that, and so it can be depressing when you know God can do something and yet He doesn’t seem to be doing it. Or, at least not in the way you would like, or even a way you can see. Some of you are struggling financially and don’t understand why your prayers about your financial situation seem to go unanswered. You know God could “make it happen,” and yet it doesn’t seem like He is. Some of you are struggling with depression, anxiety, family issues, and all sorts of other things.
This whole praise series is to help us realize that the best way through the hard times is not to wallow in them, but to praise God through them. God doesn’t mind if you are upset with Him. If you need to yell or scream at God for your circumstances, that is ok. He is tough, He knows your heart, and He can take it. However, if you want your atmosphere to shift. If you want to stop being sad all the time. If you are tired of feeling like you have been feeling for such a long time. Then it is time to switch from despair to praise. Praise the Lord for whatever it is you can praise the Lord for.
I heard a speaker at a conference once, and I can’t remember her name, but I remember that she said she hurt her back at one point. She was newly married, she hurt her back, and she ended up addicted to painkillers. She didn’t see it at the time; she just knew she needed them for the pain. She started to just stay in bed all the time because of the pain. I think she eventually lost her husband. He just couldn’t take it anymore. She said she didn’t blame him; he really tried, but she was so wrapped up in herself and her pain, and she had nothing to give him. She eventually moved back home with her mom. She finally got tired of feeling like she was feeling. She was tired of being so sad all the time.
She said she started off slow. She would make herself go sit outside and let the sun shine on her face for 5 minutes a day. That was it, just five minutes a day. She said that when she was sitting in the sun, she would ask herself what one thing she could be grateful for. Some days, the only thing she could think of was getting outside and sitting for 5 minutes. Eventually, she started to look around, and she could appreciate the grass, the flowers, the butterflies, whatever it was around her. Five minutes turned to 10, to 20, and so on. She finally felt herself coming back to life, to reality. She found she wasn’t just sad all the time. And it wasn’t a fast process, and yours might not be either. However, she did get back to her old self again. She was happy again. She did regain her life again. Part of gratitude is praise. You are thankful for the things God has given you. Even if they aren’t perfect. You will be surprised how much your attitude and outlook on life have changed when you switch from complaining to gratitude.
Here are some simple shifts in what you are telling yourself. Instead of saying, I can’t believe I didn’t wake up till 1:00 today, you can say, I am so grateful God gave me another day of life. Some people didn’t wake up this morning, and their families will never see them again. Instead of saying that your back and side and head hurt, you can say I am grateful my feet don’t hurt. Instead of saying, I can’t believe my kid is acting out again, you can say, I am grateful I have kids and I am grateful for all the strength God has given me to deal with all the kids dish out. I am not trying to downplay what you are going through. I know it is hard. I have been through really hard times.
I have kids who were verbally and physically abusive, I have had marital trouble and almost got divorced, I have had kids who overdosed on drugs and alcohol, a child in rehab more than one time. My kids have struggled with mental health and trouble with the police. My life has not been a cakewalk either. However, I truly believe what got me through it all, well, not all the way through it yet, was my reliance on God and my gratitude for everything, the good and the bad. The bad things I have gone through have made me the person I am today. I would not understand other parents struggling as I do had I not been through it. I would not be able to reassure other parents that it is not their fault and that they are doing the best they can if I hadn’t been through all I went through. God is using me to let other parents not feel so alone. To let them know they haven’t failed. I do not judge other parents now, and I definitely did before I had children, and even when I was a young mom and didn’t know better.
I am so full of grace for others at this point in my life. When I look at a child throwing a fit in the grocery store, I do not think, “They need to get that kid under control.” I say a quick prayer for strength and peace for the parent and child. When I am brave enough, I tell my mom she is doing a great job. I have been there, I know how hard it is. When I hear about how a kid is being very disrespectful to his parents, I don’t blame the parents. I have no idea what their home life is like and what they or their children are going through. I have been there. When someone cuts me off in traffic, I say a prayer to bless them because I don’t know what their day has been like. Honestly, we have no idea what people are going through. I am not saying this to toot my own horn. I am saying this because I wouldn’t be like this if I hadn’t experienced what I have. This is why I can be grateful for the hard times. It made me who I am today. The same is true for you.
I am constantly surprised when I am in a group setting, and the most put-together people share the stories of all they are going through. We all struggle, we all have our crosses to bear. We all need to give each other grace. We need to stop judging and just love each other. Realize there is probably a reason for the behavior you are seeing, and even though you don’t know what it is, you can give grace because you know there is a reason.
I feel like that last part was a bit of track, but that is where I felt the Holy Spirit was leading me so I went with it. Back to praise. The verse above says, “And provide for those who grieve in Zion—to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor.” Don’t you want all of that? Do you want a crown of beauty instead of ashes? Do you want the oil of joy instead of mourning? How about a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair? These are possible. God has all of this for you; you just have to claim it. What would you give to not be so sad all the time? What would you give to not be in this deep, dark pit that you are in? What would you give to find some joy in your life again? I promise you all of that is possible. You have to decide you want the beauty more than the ashes, the joy more than the mourning and the praise instead of the despair.
Change is hard, and you know what else is hard? Staying the same, not changing, living your entire life in the pit of despair. They are both hard. I know it may be hard for you to even get out of bed. What is one tiny thing you can do to praise God today? What is one tiny thing you can do to let God know you appreciate Him today? Again, tiny. You don’t have to go from where you are now to being Suzy Sunshine. Life is a journey we are all on, and it is not linear. It has many twists and turns. It has many hills and valleys. The way to start down the road to feeling better is to take one tiny step in a different direction, any road other than the one you have been going down. Honestly, take a minute and think about it. Ask yourself the question, “What is one tiny thing I can do to praise the Lord today?” Then do that thing every day for 30 days, and let me know if you feel any better. Many of you may discount this because it seems so easy and insignificant. But I guarantee if you do one tiny thing to praise the Lord daily, you will see a difference. God rewards the faithful. Matthew 25:21 “His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, you are amazing, and we want to praise you. Please help us to praise you even when it is hard. Please give us the courage and the strength to begin to praise you even when we feel we can’t. Please help us to find one tiny way to praise you each day. Please give us the resilience and the perseverance to keep praising every day. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus! I pray you all have an amazing weekend! For many of us in the United States, it is a long weekend as it is a federal holiday on Monday. I pray you enjoy the day off! I look forward to meeting you here again next week! Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in August 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Seek first the kingdom of God, and all else shall be added to you.”
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Praise Series #22 His Love Endures Forever
Psalm 136 “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good. His love endures forever.
Give thanks to the God of gods. His love endures forever.
Give thanks to the Lord of lords: His love endures forever.
To him who alone does great wonders, His love endures forever.
Who, by his understanding, made the heavens, his love endures forever.
who spread out the earth upon the waters, His love endures forever.
Who made the great lights—His love endures forever. The sun to govern the day, His love endures forever. the moon and stars to govern the night; His love endures forever.
To him who struck down the firstborn of Egypt, His love endures forever. and brought Israel out from among them. His love endures forever.
with a mighty hand and outstretched arm; His love endures forever.
to him who divided the Red Sea[a] asunder His love endures forever. and brought Israel through the midst of it, His love endures forever. but swept Pharaoh and his army into the Red Sea; His love endures forever.
to him who led his people through the wilderness; His love endures forever.
To him who struck down great kings, His love endures forever. and killed mighty kings—His love endures forever. Sihon, king of the Amorites, His love endures forever. and Og, king of Bashan—His love endures forever. and gave their land as an inheritance. His love endures forever. An inheritance to his servant Israel. His love endures forever.
He remembered us in our low estate. His love endures forever.
And freed us from our enemies. His love endures forever. He gives food to every creature. His love endures forever.
Give thanks to the God of heaven. His love endures forever.
I know this verse is a lot longer than I usually do. I usually pick a verse or two, and this is all 26 verses of this Psalm. Psalm 136:6 “who spread out the earth upon the waters, His love endures forever” was the verse that led me to this Psalm in the first place. I decided to read the whole Psalm as I felt perhaps this was a small part of something bigger. When I read the whole thing, I instantly felt like I should share the whole thing. Since the phrase “His love endures forever” is repeated throughout the whole Psalm, I thought I would just take that out to make it shorter and just repeat it after each section. However, when I had that thought, I immediately got the sense God wanted me to leave it in there. I felt He was saying to me that we need to have that reminder over and over again today.
This Psalm today has two purposes. First and foremost, to remind you over and over again, so many times, that there is no way you can forget that God’s love endures forever. Forever is a very long time. It means it never goes away. God’s love lasts forever; it doesn’t say it lasts a lifetime, it says forever. It doesn’t say that His love lasts until you do something He doesn’t like, it says forever. It doesn’t say that it endures until you get sick or are in a seemingly impossible situation, and then it goes away. It says it endures forever. It also doesn’t say that His love endures forever as long as you don’t walk away, as long as you do all the things you are supposed to do, or as long as you get it right all the time. No, it says His love endures forever, and that’s it. There are no conditions placed on it; there is no requirement for you. God has loved you from the beginning of time, and He will continue to love you forever, regardless of circumstances. That is pretty amazing when you really think about it. Who else can you say that about? Whose love will endure forever, regardless of your actions and regardless of time?
The second purpose of this psalm today is to remind us of some of the remarkable things God has done for us over the years. The sense I am getting this morning is that some of you listening to this episode may be struggling with feeling God’s Love right now. Maybe you are sick, and you feel as though He is not answering your prayers. Maybe you are feeling stuck in a family situation that seems impossible and feel as though He is not hearing your prayers. Maybe nothing in particular is wrong; you just don’t really feel a sense that God is with you right now. Whatever your particular circumstance is, God wants you to know that He is speaking directly to you today. He hears you, He is answering your prayers, He loves you, and most importantly, He is right there with you through it all. This Psalm is for you. This is your heavenly Father letting you know that His love endures forever, and just as he did all these things for His people in the past, He will do just as much for you. He is moving mountains in your life. He is preparing you for amazing things, you just can’t see it yet. Hang in there, your miracle is coming!!
“Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good. Give thanks to the God of gods. Give thanks to the Lord of lords: to him who alone does great wonders, who by his understanding made the heavens, who spread out the earth upon the waters, who made the great lights— the sun to govern the day, the moon and stars to govern the night;” Can you imagine how powerful God must be to create the whole universe. He made the heavens, the earth, the sun, the moon, and the stars, just for us. Every time you look at the sun, the moon, or the stars, you can think of how much God loves you. Hopefully, after hearing this verse, when you look at them, it will be a reminder to you that His love endures forever. When you can’t feel God’s love or His Presence in your life, look to the sun, moon, or stars and remember His promise that His love endures forever.
“To him who struck down the firstborn of Egypt and brought Israel out from among them with a mighty hand and outstretched arm; to him who divided the Red Sea asunder and brought Israel through the midst of it, but swept Pharaoh and his army into the Red Sea; to him who led his people through the wilderness;” Imagine if God can do all of this for His people, what He will do for you. God did not just strike down the firstborn of Egypt; He gave the Pharaoh multiple chances to let the Lord’s people go. He also told His people what to do so that their firstborn children would not be lost. He divided the Red Sea for His people. They felt lost; they could not see a way out with the Red Sea on one side and an army closing in on the other. I am sure many of them felt as if God had led them to their death. Yet, God made a way where there wasn’t one. He did not just lead them to freedom; he also destroyed their enemies, the army that was pursuing them. God will do the same for you! He will make a way where you don’t see one. He will make a way back from this illness, out of the family situation, out of the work situation, and out of any other situation you find yourself in, no matter how impossible it seems. He is the Waymaker. He always finds a way.
“To him who struck down great kings, and killed mighty kings—Sihon king of the Amorites and Og king of Bashan—and gave their land as an inheritance, an inheritance to his servant Israel.” The Lord gave His people an inheritance. The people entering these fights did not always think they would be victorious. Sometimes, many times, over the years, God’s people were outnumbered. They would go into battle knowing that they were not only outnumbered, but also had fewer weapons, fewer resources, fewer everything. They definitely wouldn’t have been favored to win if people were betting based on appearances. However, what they did have was the favor of God. That is all they needed. No matter how hopeless your situation seems, God has the power to fix it, to save you from it, and to bring you out of it. We just have to keep relying on Him and waiting for His time, now our time. He has struck down kings; he can surely take care of what is in your way. God’s got you! He will save you.
“He remembered us in our low estate and freed us from our enemies. He gives food to every creature. Give thanks to the God of heaven.” God remembers you always, not just when everything is going great, and you are high on life. He remembers you when you are at your lowest as well. He has freed His people from so many enemies, and He will free you, too. If there is one thing we have learned from reviewing all these things the Lord has done for us, it is that nothing is too great for Him. There is no enemy too powerful, no situation too complicated for the Lord our God. The verse ends with “Give thanks to the God of heaven.” I think you will be surprised by how far the smallest amount of gratitude will get you. The Lord has done so many incredible things, and He really loves it when we acknowledge that. Who doesn’t like to be appreciated, right? We owe everything to the Lord. We have no idea how many things He has saved us from throughout each day, and then when you add in all the things He has done for us. We could never repay Him, and He is not asking us to. However, we can thank Him. We can let Him know how grateful we are. If you want to see God more at work in your lives, I challenge you to take 5 minutes or less out of your day and intentionally thank the Lord of all you have seen Him do in your life that day. I bet, if you do this, you will begin to see more and more. I am not sure if God is actually doing more and more when we intentionally thank Him, or if He is doing the same, but we are just noticing more. Either way, you will see the Lord more at work in your life when you begin to be grateful for each thing you notice. I want to leave you with the phrase we have heard most today, “His Love endures forever.”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, you are amazing, and we are so grateful for all the things you have done for your people throughout the ages. We are so grateful that you love us so much. Lord, thank you for giving us a love that endures forever. Thank you for taking care of our enemies and protecting us from all things. Thank you for being more powerful than everything else. Thank you for making a way when we can’t see one. We are so grateful that your ways are higher than our ways and your thoughts higher than our thoughts. We would be lost without you, Lord. Father, help us to be more grateful for all that you do. Help us to take time out of our days to intentionally try to see you at work in our lives. We love you so much, Lord, help us to feel your love. You are truly awe-inspiring, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in August 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My words are the best seed. They do not return empty or barren.”
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We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click on the link below. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Have a blessed day
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I Will Rejoice In The Lord
Habakkuk 3:17-18 “Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.”
Talk about a bad day. This verse is from a time when the people relied very heavily on crops and animals for survival. This verse states that they have reached rock bottom. That nothing is going right for them. If their crops are not producing any food and they have no meat in their stalls, then not only do they have nothing to eat, but they also have nothing to barter with. Have you ever felt this low? Have you ever been in a situation where you couldn’t really imagine it getting any worse? That is where this person was when they wrote this. Even if you haven’t been in a situation this dire before, I am sure you can imagine how they must have felt.
Please take a minute and try to put yourself in their shoes. Close your eyes and imagine you are walking through your fields. You look from vine to vine just praying for some grapes that you may have missed, or that miraculously grew overnight, but you find nothing. Now imagine you are walking by your fig tree. This tree that was once full of figs is now empty. Next, you walk through the olive crops and pray that there will be some source of food, but again, you find nothing. You think, at least you have your animals to provide you with food. However, when you go past the sheep pen, there are none. When you walk through the cattle stalls, they too are empty. You realize you have nothing; you have somehow lost it all. What are you feeling right now? What are you thinking? How do you think you would react? Would you be angry at God? Would you blame Him for not providing for you?
I am not sure how I would feel or what I would think, but I do not think that my first thought would be to rejoice in the Lord. The verse says, “yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.” I am thinking that I would struggle to find anything to be joyful about. I am joyful in God my Savior. He is amazing, and I love Him so much. However, when I am at my worst, I am not sure that I would think of that. I do think I would turn to Him. I believe I would ask God for His help and for the strength and courage to make it through this difficult time. But would I rejoice in the Lord?
Honestly, I can’t picture it. I can’t picture how that would work. I do know that when life is going against us, and we can’t see a way out, that is the perfect time to praise the Lord. We don’t have to see the way out. We can praise the Lord for being so awesome that He can see a way out even when we can’t. We don’t have to praise Him for the situation; we can praise Him for who He is and for what He does for us.
Ok, so now that I am writing this, I am starting to see how this could work. I guess we wouldn’t have to rejoice in being in this dire situation, but we could rejoice that God was in it with us. However, would we think to do this? Would it occur to us when the chips are down that we should rejoice and praise the Lord? My first thought is no, not without someone reminding us, or without some practice ahead of time. Several things I have been reading over the last few years have been saying that the best thing you can do when you are struggling is to praise the Lord. The fastest way out of a difficult situation is to praise the Lord while you are still in it, even when all seems lost. So then, how do we do this? How do we try to practice ahead of time so that when we really need to remember this, we can?
I have a couple of suggestions, some you may have heard before. Some I probably even mentioned before on this podcast. However, I think that’s how God works. He tells us something again and again until we get it. My first suggestion would be practicing gratitude. When you are focused on being grateful for things, you can’t also be feeling sorry for yourself or feeling miserable at the same time. Even if you can find just one small thing to be grateful for. For instance, you have to go to a funeral, and you are really sad, but you can be grateful that the weather is at least holding out for you. Or maybe the weather had been raining all day, but on the way to the cemetery, the rain stopped, and now you can see a rainbow. I promise you, no matter how bad things are, there is at least one small thing you can be grateful for. Practice finding that thing, focusing on it, and thanking God for it. I promise if you give this a try, you will find more joy in your life.
Another suggestion would be to find a few verses that talk about praising the Lord, or rejoicing in the Lord, and either memorize them or post them around your house where you will see them often. You could put one on your mirror so you see it every time you look in the mirror. Or, maybe on your fridge, so you read it every time you get something out of the refrigerator. You could put a note like that on the lock screen of your phone, so when you look at your phone, it reminds you to praise the Lord or rejoice. Why should you do this now, when everything seems to be going well? First, if you can get in the habit of praising God all the time, when times are good and when times are bad, I think you will see less and less of the bad times. I think God loves to reward his children for appreciating Him and thanking Him. Second, if you don’t intentionally get into the habit when things are going good, and it feels easier to praise the Lord and to rejoice, then the chances are a lot less likely that you will do it when everything feels hard.
Another suggestion is to listen to praise music. I think many of us listen to music. Maybe it's when you are driving the car, cooking dinner, cleaning the house, whatever the reason, most of us listen to music. What I am suggesting is that some of the music you listen to is praise music. What you listen to affects your mood. You could be in a perfectly good mood, and then an angry song comes on the radio, and if you don’t change the channel, you can notice yourself starting to get in a bad mood. If kids listen to a lot of rap music, they may start to feel negatively towards the police for no other reason than the lyrics that they are constantly listening to are telling them that the police are bad. Those are examples of how music can negatively affect your mood, but the opposite is true as well. You can be in a really bad mood, and then an upbeat song can come on the radio, and your mood can change for the better. If you are listening to praise music about how great God is, then those will be the thoughts flowing through your head. The music can not only change your mood, but it can also change your outlook on life or your current circumstances.
Some of my friends are really struggling right now. When all seems lost, it can take a daily or sometimes hourly reminder to praise God in the struggle. Praise God for any slight sign of improvement. Praise God for the things that do go right in the day. Maybe you got up, and everything seemed to go wrong. But, you know what? You got up that day, and not everyone can say that. You are able to walk, and not everyone can say. There is always something you can praise God for. Try your best to focus on those things and just keep turning over the other things to God and trust that He will take care of them for you. It is not easy to praise God and to rejoice when all seems lost; however, it is possible. If you take the time to learn how to praise God, even in the difficult times, I think you will be amazed at how different you feel. I think you will be amazed at how much more at peace you will feel, even when it feels like things can’t get any worse. Give it a try, what do you have to lose?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you pray for everyone listening to this episode today. Dear Lord, we ask that you help us to praise you. You do so much for us, and we don't deserve any of it. You don't do it for any other reason than the fact that you love us completely. Lord help us to see all the things that we can rejoice about, even when we're struggling. Jesus shines a light on all the things we have to be grateful for when we can't see them. Lord, it must be difficult for you when you see us struggling. We ask that you help us through the struggle, that you help us lean into you and praise you for all that you do for us. Sometimes we feel like all is lost and that there is nothing anyone can do to change the situation. And you know what, that may be true. But you are not anyone, Lord God, you are the Lord of lords and the King of kings. There isn't anything that you can't do. Help us to remember this Lord. Help us to rejoice when all seems lost because nothing is too big for our God to fix. We love you, lord, you are so amazing, and we are so very grateful for you and all that you do. We thank you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus' holy name, amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I can't tell you how happy I am to have you along for the journey. Tonight is the last day to sign up for mentoring at the lowest price. After today, it will go back up to $30. Which is still an amazing deal. However, if you get in today, it will just be $25 a month, less than a dollar a day. CLICK HERE for mentoring info or go to my website walkboldlywithJesus.com, and get all the details.I look forward to seeing you tomorrow. Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in August 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I appreciate your love, and any seed that you sow will never end. I will grow every seed that you sow. Stay close to me. As I will always be with you, know that no matter what, I'm here, I'm here with you always.”
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Praise Series #20 Rejoice in the Lord Always!
Philippians 4:4 “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!”
Rejoicing in the Lord is one of my favorite things to do. Praise and Worship are so critical in our faith journey. Rejoicing in the Lord is a great way to foster joy. This is something that I love to use to get me out of a funk or a sad place. This works anywhere and everywhere that you are. It is best if you can listen to music because if you are in a sad, angry, or depressed state, you might have trouble worshiping. You might not be in a place where you feel you have anything positive to say to the Lord, or about the Lord. However, when a song that you love comes on the radio, it is hard not to sing along and get into that song. Or, at least, it is not hard for me, as I love music.
I love singing along as loudly as I can in my car and in my shower. I listen to Christian music, which, honestly, I didn’t even know existed until 5 years ago. Well, I knew we sang Christian songs in church, but I didn’t know they had contemporary Christian music, pop songs, rap songs, and rock songs, among various other genres. I am so in love with all of it. I love upbeat songs. It’s like my body wants to dance along to the beat, even when I am out walking or running. Even when I am not somewhere where dancing is appropriate.
If you don’t know what I am talking about right now, I invite you to download the KLOVE app on your phone. It is the radio station I listen to all the time now, and it has so many good songs. You might be hesitant at first, but give it 30 days, and you will know all the words and love all the songs. You can also go onto the Spotify app on your phone, and I have created a playlist called Walk Boldly With Jesus Favorites, and it has all my favorite upbeat songs. Actually, there may be a few slower songs, but they are all good songs!
If you are having a really hard day, put on a playlist of upbeat songs that sing of the glory of God. I am telling you, it is really hard to be sad and to think that God has abandoned you when you hear all these singers reminding you of how great God is and how He has been there for them in their hard times. A real-life example of how powerful music can be is the day when I was at the courthouse. I had to go there to do something really hard, and I was really sad. I remembered that I had my earbuds in my purse, so I put them in my ears and put on some worship music. I was sitting there feeling sad, and then one of my new favorite songs came on. The song is called My Promised Land and it is sung by Josiah Queen. Here is the beginning verse and chorus:
You had me standing on a mountain
Walking through barren lands
You took my hand and You said
You can have this world
But I won't go with you
Oh, I won't go with you
[Pre-Chorus]
But I ran out of places
And feelings I was chasing
All I have is You and You alone
And I said
[Chorus]
Hold on, wait a minute
I don't want what You ain't in, and
I don't wanna go unless I'm going there with You
It's You there, rain or shining
You're the sun on my horizons
You are my everything
My promised land is You!
The music is so upbeat, and I love it! Whenever I hear these songs, they remind me that God is my everything. If He is not in it, then I don’t want it. It reminds me that He is there with me, rain or shine. I like to play my playlist on shuffle, and I like to believe the Holy Spirit is choosing the order of my songs. I am sure the Lord knew I needed this song the other day at the courthouse. I honestly considered going outside of the courthouse and dancing my sadness out. However, I didn’t want to miss my name when they called it, so I just sang in a whisper voice and imagined myself dancing it out.
I can't emphasize enough how critical praise and worship can be in changing your mood and lifting you out of a pit. The enemy gets so confused when we praise the Lord when we are struggling. They don’t understand why we would praise God when we are hurting, sad, or angry. Also, the enemy can’t stand the name of Jesus. All you have to do is say the name Jesus, and the enemy flees. I heard a speaker once who asked his friend, who is a Catholic priest and exorcist, what the most powerful prayer is when it comes to fighting the evil spirits and demons, and he said the most powerful thing we can say is, “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” That is pretty simple and yet powerful.
If music is not your thing, that is ok, you can still praise the Lord. When I joined the Charismatic Prayer Group, they taught me to praise the Lord out loud by using various names for the Lord. For instance, you can say, “You are Lord of Lords and King of Kings. You are a miracle worker and a way maker. You are the prince of peace and the lion of Judah.” The prayer group gave everyone a piece of paper filled with praise phrases to help us out until we got comfortable coming up with our own. There is no right or wrong way to praise. You can praise the Lord in any way you choose. You can thank Him for all the things in your life, for all the ways He has saved you, and for the desires of your heart. You can praise Him for all he did for his people in the Bible.
You do not have to do or say the right thing. The reason I mentioned the praise sheets is that you might not be able to think of good things when you are struggling. You might be looking at your life and believing that God has abandoned you. Your situation might seem like there's nothing to praise God about. If this is the case, I would like to review the praise sheet and simply read what is on it. It doesn’t matter if I feel it or not; I just read it, and it helps lift me out of whatever I am feeling. Give it a try! I will put a link for the praise sheet I use in the show notes in case you want to have a cheat sheet like I do.
I really want to encourage you to consider making praise and worship a regular part of your daily life if you're having a hard time finding joy. You can add it to something you're already doing, so it won’t take up more time each day. For instance, you can listen to praise music while driving. Or, you can praise the Lord out loud in your car while driving. You can put on 20 minutes of praise music in the morning while getting ready, or while having your morning cup of tea or coffee. I invite you to give this a try this week and let me know what you think. You can reach me at Catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com. I would love to hear from you about how much praise and worship are changing your life. I would love to hear about your experience, good or bad. Let me know!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode. Lord, we want to rejoice with you, and we want to rejoice in you. We want to praise you, Lord, not just when things are going well, but we want to be able to praise you in the struggle as well. Please teach us how, Lord. Please show us how to have joy when we are struggling. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I am closing the founding members' launch for my mentoring group tomorrow evening. If you have been thinking about joining but have been putting it off, I encourage you to give it a try. If you don’t like it, you can cancel. However, if you do like it, you will be able to lock in this one-time-only price of $25 a month. After tomorrow, it will go back up to $30. This means if you lock in at $25, you will be saving $60 a year. CLICK HERE for mentoring info. If you are loving this podcast, mentoring is a way to go a bit deeper and to join a community so we don’t feel we are alone on this journey. I look forward to seeing you here again tomorrow. Click Here for the Praise Sheets. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day.
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in August 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, each one of you is so so precious to me. There is no replacement for any one of you. I love you so much. And I'm so pleased to hear you praising me, loving me, walking with me, and trying to follow me.”
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Chocolate Milk
John 20:21-22 “Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.
This verse takes place after Jesus has been crucified. The apostles are all locked up in the upper room because they are afraid that if the Jewish people knew where they were, they would be crucified, too. I am sure this was a very confusing time for the apostles. They had been living life with Jesus for the last few years. Every day, extraordinary things happened. Then they find out that Jesus is going to be crucified. I mean, they knew Jesus had enemies, but I don’t think they understood what was truly going on. How could they? How is it possible to comprehend the man they had been following, the man they knew was the one true king, was going to be crucified? The Messiah was supposed to come and deliver them from their captors. Yet Jesus hadn’t defeated the Romans yet. How could He be leaving them?
I am sure this thought was going through so many people’s minds at the time. It must have been very confusing. They had read or been taught that when the Messiah comes, He will save them. They assume this means He will save them from the Roman occupation. They don’t realize that Jesus is here for much bigger things. Jesus has come to save their souls.
The apostles are locked in the upper room, and Jesus appears to them. I wonder if they were frightened at first. I wonder if they asked Him if it was really Him. Take a minute, close your eyes, and try to picture what it was like for them in that upper room. The man they thought was the Lord was crucified, and then they felt they needed to lock themselves in a room for fear of death, and then Jesus appeared to them in this locked room. I wonder if they thought He was a ghost? I wonder what they were thinking, what was going through their mind.
It says in the verse above this one that Jesus showed them his hands and feet, and then they rejoiced that He had risen. The first thing that Jesus did, even before showing them His hands and feet, was to impart peace to them. The first thing He said in that room was, “Peace be with you.” I think this makes perfect sense because they probably weren’t very peaceful. They were scared and unsure of what to do next.
After Jesus shows them his wounds, and they rejoice that He has returned, Jesus talks to them. “Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” Jesus knows they are confused about what just happened and what is going to happen. They had been following Jesus. That was their job, their life for the last several years. They had to have been wondering what they were going to do now that Jesus was gone. Then Jesus appeared and told them what to do. He told them that He was sending them out to do the works that He did. This gives them some direction and some guidance.
However, how could they go out and do the things that He did when they were scared of persecution? The next line answers this. It says, “When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, 'Receive the Holy Spirit.” Jesus gave them the Holy Spirit to build them up and give them strength. The Holy Spirit gave them a holy boldness to go out and proclaim the good news about Jesus Christ. It gave them the courage to come out of the locked room and say all the things they had been taught to say. They witnessed all they had seen and heard over the several years they were with Jesus. They had the courage to leave the room, and that very same day, they baptized 3,000.
This is the same Holy Spirit that each one of us has living inside of us. We each, you and I, have the Spirit of Christ living inside of us. We have the potential to have this same holy boldness that the apostles exhibited. We have the potential to do all the signs and wonders that they did. The reason for this is that they were only capable of doing signs and wonders because Jesus gave them the authority, and He gave the Holy Spirit. Jesus didn’t just give these gifts to the apostles, and then they died with them 2,000 years ago. When Jesus gave them to the apostles, He was giving them to all those who were to follow after them as well.
If you have been baptized, you have received the Holy Spirit. This means you have all the power and all the courage that the apostles had living inside of you. You just have to access it. There is an analogy that I heard in Encounter Ministries, and I have also heard it at the Life in the Spirit seminars. I am not sure exactly how it goes, but it basically compares our lives to a glass of chocolate milk. Our life before the Holy Spirit, before baptism, is just plain milk. However, when you add the Holy Spirit, it is like you are adding chocolate sauce to the milk. Now that we have added the chocolate sauce, do we automatically have chocolate milk? No, we need to stir the milk to spread the chocolate sauce all around. This is similar to the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit can give you the power and the courage to do many things, but you need to call up it. You need to step out in faith and believe that it will be there to help you. Once you start calling upon the Holy Spirit to help you, then you will begin to see extraordinary things start to happen all around you. All you have to do is read the book of Acts in the Bible to see all the amazing things the apostles accomplished once they had the Holy Spirit living inside of them. Check out the book of Acts and then decide what amazing things you are going to do with this beautiful gift of the Holy Spirit that Jesus gave us.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening today. Lord, thank you for giving us the Holy Spirit. You are amazing. Thank you for giving us the authority to do the works that Jesus did and even greater works now that He is with you in Heaven. Lord, we ask that you help us to see the ways you want us to use the power of the Holy Spirit in our own lives. Help us to see what you want us to do. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with our will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed weekend!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in August 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, I give you the grace to see the uncut diamond in the burdens of your life, which appear to be just a hard, cold rock. I shine like a diamond within them. I bless you through them. I get you through them. I have much joy for you. I have much planned for you. Trust and come through the burdens.”
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Kingdom Mindset (Replay)
Mark 8:17-21 “And becoming aware of it, Jesus said to them, “Why are you talking about having no bread? Do you still not perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Do you have eyes and fail to see? Do you have ears, and fail to hear? And do you not remember? When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you collect?” They said to him, “Twelve.” “And the seven for the four thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you collect?” And they said to him, “Seven.” Then he said to them, “Do you not yet understand?”
This verse comes after the feeding of the four thousand in Mark’s gospel. Right before this verse, the Pharisees came and began to argue with Jesus and were asking Him to show them a sign. Then Jesus got on the boat and warned the disciples about the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod. They did not understand and were wondering if Jesus was talking about the fact that they forgot to bring bread. Jesus hears them talking, and this is where the verse picks up. Jesus is upset with them because they still don’t seem to understand who they are with. Right before getting on the boat, Jesus fed four thousand people with just 7 loaves of bread. Then they get on the boat, and the disciples are worried because they only have one loaf of bread. The first thing Jesus asks is, “Do you still not perceive or understand?” I think this is a really important question. It shows us something that is so important. If we want to follow Jesus, we need to have a renewal of our minds. We can’t filter the things we see the Holy Spirit do through our worldly brains. They just won’t make any sense to us.
What we can see in this verse is that the disciples haven’t quite developed what they called in my class the “kingdom mindset.” Jesus even asks them, "Do you have eyes, and fail to see? Do you have ears, and fail to hear?” The disciples just saw Jesus feed 4,000 people, and yet they didn’t really understand what they saw. They weren’t able to understand it as well as they could if they let go of their worldly mindset and took on a kingdom mindset. In our worldly mindset, we understand that some things can and can’t be done. We understand the laws of nature, and we honor them. We know from experience and everything we have been taught that some things are just impossible to do. We know this to be true. A kingdom mindset is one where we understand that nothing is impossible for our God. When we have a kingdom mindset, we understand that God can do more with less. He can feed 4,000 with 7 loaves. He can feed five thousand with five loaves. God can do the impossible. He can heal the leper and cure the blind. He can solve any problem that comes His way.
A kingdom mindset is not something that is easy to develop. It is something we can work towards, and it is also a gift from God. First, I say we can work towards it because we can spend time going over the miracles Jesus performed, not just Jesus, but the disciples, too. We can read and reread them so that we know them like the back of our hand. We can read them so many times that they seem normal to us, because that is the thing. When you have a kingdom mindset, when you are with Jesus, a supernatural lifestyle is normal. You will see miracles everywhere you look once you are able to see them. Once your eyes are opened and the film is removed from your eyes, you will be amazed at all the things God is doing in your life and the lives of those around you. Secondly, I say it is a gift from God because Faith is a gift from God. We can read about more and more miracles, and that will definitely increase our faith, but to get the kind of faith we need to move mountains, that is not something we can manufacture on our own. That mountain-moving faith is a gift from God for those who are seeking it. The more we trust God, the more He allows our faith to grow. However, we need to do our part also by renewing our mind and working toward developing a kingdom mindset.
It says in 1 Corinthians 2:12-13, “Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the gifts bestowed on us by God. And we speak of these things in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual things to those who are spiritual.” Through our baptism, we have been given the Spirit of God. We have this Spirit living inside of us. This Spirit is the one who helps us interpret what we see and what we hear. Although He can only help us if we listen to Him. That still small voice you hear inside of you, that is the Holy Spirit. The thing is, the voice inside is so soft, and the voice of the world is constantly screaming at us. Sometimes it is hard to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit. If we want to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit, we need to practice. We need to intentionally set aside time to sit and quiet our minds and ask the Holy Spirit what He thinks. The more you practice, the louder the voice of the Spirit will become. The more you listen to the Holy Spirit, the less you listen to the world. The more you listen to the Holy Spirit, the more your mind will be transformed.
Our teacher said something in class the other day that really resonated with me. She said You know your mind is beginning to be renewed when you start to lose the fear of man. Do you ever worry about what others think of you? Do you ever worry what someone might say or do? I know I would love to be more open with my prayer. I would love to walk up to every single person I see who is struggling in some way and ask if I could pray over them. If I see a physical injury, I instantly want to pray over that person for a healing. What is holding me back? Fear. I am afraid of what they might say, what if they say no, and I feel rejected. I am afraid of what I might say. What if I say the wrong thing? What if I pray for them and they aren’t healed? What if they get upset? All these things hold me back from living the life I know God has called me to live. What about you? What fears are holding you back?
Our teacher said, “Everything changes when we lose that fear of man.” I want to lose that fear so badly, and yet I don’t think it is something I can will away. As mentioned earlier, I truly believe developing a kingdom mindset is partly my job and partly God’s job. I think faith is a gift from God and that He will provide the wisdom I need to strengthen my faith. I also think the more I expose myself to His miracles, through reading about them, maybe watching them on TV or YouTube, and telling others about them, my faith will grow. The more we expose ourselves to the supernatural, the more normal the supernatural will become to us. When I heard our teacher say that everything changes when we lose that fear of man, I instantly asked God, “How do I lose that fear of man?” Later in the class, the answer I heard was, “Turn your eyes to me.”
Did you notice that when I was listing my fears, it was all about me? I might say the wrong thing, I might feel rejected, and so on. What if I fixed my eyes on Jesus? What if I trusted He was prompting me to pray over the person, and therefore He would give me the words to pray. When we pray over people, we are not the ones healing them; God is, so the results or the fruit of my prayer, whether they are healed or not, are not up to me. I worry about whether I will feel rejected, but if I were focused on Jesus, I would worry more about whether he feels rejected because He asked me to pray over someone and I didn’t.
If we want a transformation of our mind, we need to turn our eyes to Jesus. We need to focus on Him. We need to listen to that small voice inside of us. We need to give that voice time to talk. If we want to develop a kingdom mindset, then we need to remember all the miracles we have seen and heard about. We need to look at all God did through the disciples and realize that God wants to do that through us, too. He wants to work through us; we just have to let Him. Do you want a renewal of the mind? Can you keep your eyes fixed on Jesus? Whenever we start to worry about what the world might think, we just need to turn our eyes back to Jesus. Whenever we start to think too much about ourselves, we can turn our gaze back to Jesus. A renewal of the mind is not only possible, but it is also necessary!
Dear Heavenly Father, we ask you to bless all those listening to the episode today. Lord, we love you, and we are so grateful for all you do for us. Lord, we ask you to fill us with the gift of faith. We want to be able to see all your miracles through a supernatural lens. We want to see what is truly right in this world. We ask you for a renewal of our minds. We ask you for the faith we need so we can move mountains. We ask you for the faith needed to heal the sick and cure the blind. Lord, we believe, help our unbelief. Give us all we need to do your will, Lord Jesus! You are the almighty one. You are Lord of Lords and King of Kings. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. The founding members' launch is going to be closing up this weekend. If you have been thinking about checking out mentoring, this is a great time to join, as the monthly fee will never be this low again. I will open membership to mentoring again, but it will be more expensive. Also, if you join during this time, then your monthly price will never go up for as long as you are a member. CLICK HERE for mentoring info. Just check it our, what do you have to lose? I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I. Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in August 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Continue to be joyful in me and continue to come to our garden and share that secret with others, that it may no longer be a secret, for the way that each and every one of my children will be with me forever.”
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We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click here. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed day!
Thank you so much for sharing your witness. What an amazing testimony of how much freedom you can get from inner healing. Unbound is a remarkable model of inner healing. Unbound deliverance ministry is a model of prayer developed by Neal Lozano. It is the model for deliverance most widely endorsed by Catholic bishops and priests throughout the world. Unbound guides people to surrender more fully to Jesus and encounter the truth that sets them free.UNBOUND is a safe, loving, effective prayer model that helps people respond to the good news of the gospel. UNBOUND ministry teaches how to listen and respond in Five Key areas as people seek greater freedom in Christ and help others to do the same. If you would like to learn more about unbound, Click Here. I have personally been trained in the unbound prayer model as well as having gone through at least two unbound sessions of prayer myself. It is an incredible method that truly frees people from bondage. The freedom felt afterward is amazing. I highly suggest everyone check into it. If you would like more info on Unbound or if you would like Rosa to pray with feel free to email her at janet0042009@icloud.com. Thank you again, Rosa, for your powerful testimony. I hope you will share more testimonies about all the ways the Lord is working in your life. We look forward to hearing from you again.
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Praise Series #19 Can We Worship Through The Struggle?
Job 1:20-21 “20 Then Job arose, tore his robe, shaved his head, and fell on the ground and worshiped. He said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”
I thought this was an interesting verse in Job. This verse came right after Satan’s first attack on Job. Job has just learned that all of his oxen and donkeys were taken away from him, and the people who took them struck down the servants with swords. Then he learned that his sheep and the servants who took care of them were burned to death. As if that wasn’t enough, another servant came in and told them all his camels had been captured and his servants had been killed with a sword. And then, to top it all off, a servant came and told him that his sons and daughters were eating and drinking in the older brother’s house when a powerful wind swept in and struck the four corners of the house. It collapsed on the young people, so they died.
This is one of the amazing things about Job. He is so faithful. I am not sure about you, but if I learned that I had lost everything, my first instinct would not be to worship. I do love to worship, but I don’t feel like I would be able to worship immediately. He had just found out that not only did he lose all physical things, but he lost all of his children as well. I feel like I would need to go through a period of being angry at God. I would also be angry in general. I would be sad, which I am sure Job was sad.
I don’t think my first thing to do would be to worship the Lord and say, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” Can you believe Job was blessing the Lord just minutes after finding out that his children had died? I knew he never blamed God; that is why he got into this predicament in the first place. He was such a good servant, and the enemy tried to tell God it was because God blessed him so much.
I wonder if we would be this faithful. I wonder if we worship the Lord for all the blessings he gave us. Are we what some would call fair-weather friends with the Lord? We are there for Him when all is going well, and yet we blame Him at the first sign of trouble. Do we get angry and scream at Him when we lose our job or our car? What do we do when we lose our children?
Job didn’t just lose one of his children to a deadly disease. He didn’t just lose one of his children to suicide or murder. He lost all his children at the same time. Job went from being the father of seven sons and three daughters to being childless. I can’t imagine the pain he must have been feeling, and yet the first thing he did was worship the Lord. Not only did he worship the Lord, but he also said, “What the Lord gave, the Lord can take away.” He is acknowledging that God is the almighty one and that everything Job had came from Him. He is acknowledging that all we have comes from the Lord.
I just can’t get over Job’s faith. Satan did not stop here with this first attack. Satan came back and infected Job with terrible boils from the soles of his feet to the top of his head. Job was still worshiping the Lord. His wife told him he was a fool. She said to him, “Are you still holding onto your integrity? Curse God and die!” Job replied, “You speak as a foolish woman speaks. Should we accept only good from God and not adversity?” Throughout all that Job went through, He did not sin once with what he said.
This is remarkable. I can totally understand what Job is saying when he says that God gave us everything we have, and so He has a right to take it away. I also agree that if we accept the good from God, we must accept the bad, too. However, I agree with Him in the place I am at right now. I haven’t lost any children. I haven’t lost my home or all my belongings. I don’t know what I would do if I had to go through what Job had to go through.
Job truly loved the Lord. He trusted the Lord fully. I love that the first thing he did was to worship the Lord. I have talked with you many times about how important praise is, and I think this is such a good example of how praise and worship can help us get through anything. I don’t think that Job understood what was going on. I don’t think He knew God’s plan, and I don’t think He knew how blessed he would be afterward. It would have been easier for Job to go through all he went through if he knew there was an end in sight and that he would be so blessed afterward.
However, God doesn’t always reveal His plan to us. He leaves us guessing and wondering, and this is where we can lose hope. We can lose hope, or we can praise Him and worship HIm and trust that even though we don’t know what His plan is, we trust He has one and that it is for our good. Jeremiah 29:11 says, “For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.” We can stand on this promise. We can rest assured that even though we may be going through a terrible time right now, God has got us in the palm of His hand and He will work all things for our good in His time.
I love that Job worshiped the Lord, but he wasn’t always happy. My sister pointed out the other day that when people usually talk about Job, they make it seem like he was full of joy while he was suffering. This is not the case. He was frustrated and confused. He called out to the Lord for help and expressed his confusion to the Lord. He even told the Lord it would have been better if he had never been born.
I am talking about Job today, not to make you feel bad about how you are handling your difficult situation. I am telling you about Job today to remind you that even though you are in a difficult situation, even though you are angry, frustrated, and confused with the Lord right now, you can still worship Him. You can be angry with Him and yet not blame Him. You can be angry with Him for what you are going through and yet praise Him for the unknown way He will work this for your good.
Romans 8:28 says, “We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose.” We can rest on this promise, too! We can stand on it and declare it in those times when we aren’t sure how God will save us from our situation or how He will bring us through it. God is good. If we can find a way to worship him in the hard times, as Job did, then we will find those hard times just a bit easier. One way to do this is to make a worship playlist, and when the enemy starts trying to get you to blame God for your troubles, listen to the playlist and remind yourself of how good God truly is. Remind yourself of all the times He has blessed you in the past. One great song to listen to when the enemy is trying to whisper lies in your ear is “The Devil Is A Liar” by Colton Dixon. If you aren’t sure what praise and worship songs would be good, you can check out my playlist called Walk Boldly With Jesus Favorites on Spotify. It has many great songs for whatever you are walking through right now.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone listening to this episode. Lord, help us praise you in the hard times. Help us to trust that You are good and that You have good things planned for us, even when we can’t see them, even when we don’t understand why we have to walk through this really hard time. Help us to believe you will restore us double on the other side of this hard time, just as you did for Job. Lord, help us to see you in all the little things while we are going through a hard time. Help us not to feel abandoned. Help us to feel your presence and to know you are walking through this hard time with us. We love you so much, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and Jesus’s holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If this podcast is a blessing, would you consider sharing it with others? If you want to share it, you can click on the three dots at the top of the screen, and it will say share episode. You can text it, email it, or send it via Facebook Messenger. Whatever is easiest for you. I truly appreciate your help and your support. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in August 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Help them to open their hearts to come into the garden that I have created just for them. To the place where I can be one with them as I am one with each of you.”
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Praise Series #18 Christian Music Can Be Life Changing
Psalm 35:1-3 “Praise the Lord! Praise the name of the Lord, give praise, O servants of the Lord, you that stand in the house of the Lord, in the courts of the house of our God! Praise the Lord, for the Lord is good; sing to his name, for he is gracious!”
I have shared personal experiences about praising God through the hard times on this podcast and at my prayer group. During prayer, we have a quiet time when we listen for words from the Lord, similar to the ones I share at the end of each episode. This day, the Lord kept guiding us with scriptures about praise, like the one above. The Bible is filled with instances of praise. King David, for instance, was a great example of praise. Some of the most powerful Psalms of praise we have from David were not when everything was going well for him. Some of the most impactful ones came from him when he was hiding in a cave from his son or from Saul.
One reason I suggested that we listen to praise and worship music often is that it is what you will have running through your head. Whatever you surround yourself with is what you will think about; it is what will contribute to the thoughts running through your head, and it will have an effect on how you act. Think about how different things could be if you were constantly listening to music that told you how great God is, how He is always there for you. If you heard stories of how He has helped others, then He will help you, too. What if you heard every day that God loves you and doesn’t make mistakes?
This is the transformative power of Christian music. It doesn’t just uplift us, it changes us. When we listen to it, our hearts open up a bit, and our hearts soften a bit. When we listen to Christian music frequently, we begin to believe in an even deeper way that Jesus loves us and that we are His. We start to believe the things they talk about. We begin to believe that we don’t have to be perfect to come to Christ. We believe that we can be forgiven. We believe He died for us, you and me.
My husband used to listen to the WAAF radio station. The station number on the radio was 107.3. It has been around since I was a kid. It was a rock station, and they also had a morning show that he liked. However, now 107.3 is KLOVE radio, which is a Christian radio station. I have never heard of a Christian radio station before. It is amazing. If you don’t have KLOVE near you, although it is all over the United States, I believe, then they have a website and an app. So, even if you can’t get them on the radio where you live, you can still get their music. They also have all sorts of events. They have a section of their website where you can submit prayer requests, and they let you know when someone prays for you. They have pastors you can call and talk to when needed.
Another reason listening to this music can be so beneficial is that they often use words in the songs that are right out of the Bible. When I first started listening to Christian music, I remember being so surprised when I would hear the words to the songs in the readings at church. It helped me connect more to the readings because I had already heard the words before. This can happen when you read the Bible, too, but that wasn’t where I started. I wasn’t there in my faith journey yet.
One final benefit I will talk about today is the fact that the music can reach people that the church can’t. There are many people who have either been wounded by the church or have preconceived notions about the church, and so they have no desire to ever step through the doors of a church. However, they could be flipping through radio stations and happen to hear a song about Jesus that really touches their heart. Music is a great way to touch hearts because people aren’t usually on the defensive while listening. If you start talking to someone about Jesus, they might instantly go on the defensive. They might sense that you are going to preach to them. However, with music, people tend to listen without feeling like that. Music finds a way into people’s hearts and souls that is different than anything else.
The radio station KLOVE is fundraising this week. They are listener-funded, so every quarter, they do a week of fundraising on the show. I will be honest: this is not my favorite week to listen because I don’t like how much they're asking for money; I would rather listen to music. However, what I do like about their fundraising weeks is that they read so many testimonies about how KLOVE and the music they provide have changed so many people's lives. They talk about the power of the music they play and give real-life examples of how it has brought people to Jesus. I have heard some amazing testimonies from this radio station. I have taken a few from their website so that I can show you how powerful music can be. Here are a couple of the ways KLOVE and the music they play have affected others.
I enjoy listening to K-LOVE every morning on my way to work. When I am feeling down and out, a song starts playing, and it is just the song I needed to hear. Thank you, everyone at K-LOVE, for doing what God wants you to do. God bless you all.
My husband passed away in May. It has been rough, to say the least. One of the things we did was talk when I was driving home from work. K-LOVE has filled that void. I listen to K-LOVE all the time in my car. Thank you for your ministry.
A few years ago, I went through a difficult breakup, and I found that it wasn’t helpful to keep listening to regular radio stations. They only reminded me of the pain I was going through. That’s when I switched to K-LOVE, and I never went back.
I had been praying and thinking about something for a while, and finally just asked God to tell me what to do. Then I heard the verse of the day: Psalms 37:7 Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for Him. At that moment, God was talking to me.
This is not an ad for the KLOVE radio station. I just want to let you know how important and beneficial it can be to listen to Christian music. You can also go on Spotify. This is an app and a website, and they have a ton of amazing Christian music on there, too. There is a playlist on there called Walk Boldly With Jesus Favorites. This has several of my favorite songs on it. I will place a link for this playlist in the show notes. I pray that each of you will spend some time this week listening to some Christian music. You can find a ton on YouTube as well. Just put in the search bar, praise and worship songs with lyrics. That way you can sing along with them!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each person listening to this episode today. Lord, thank you for encouraging us to praise you and for creating us to praise you. Lord, please continue to increase our desire to praise you and teach us how to praise you more and more. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. “As we’re at the beginning of a new year, I want to share something I’m launching that feels especially timely. I’m opening a Founding Members launch for my mentoring community. It’s a faith-filled, judgment-free space where we grow together, pray together, and walk through real life together. The start of a new year is often a beautiful time to try something new or take a gentle step toward deeper connection. Founding Members receive a $25 a month rate that will never increase and help shape this community from the very beginning. If this speaks to your heart, CLICK HERE” I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day! Click Here for the Playlist.
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in August 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I give you this life that you might truly walk with me in our special garden, where we can share only what we two can share together. And I ask that you take this wonderful gift that I give you and share it with others.”
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Praise Series #17 The Joy of the Lord is Your Strength
Nehemiah 8:10 “Then he said to them, “Go your way, eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions of them to those for whom nothing is prepared, for this day is holy to our Lord; and do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.”
Right before this verse, Ezra the priest and scribe had gathered all the people together so he, along with the Levites and the governor, Nehemiah, could read the law of the Lord. All the people wept when they heard the words of the law. This is where our verse for today picks up. “Then he said to them, 'Go your way, eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions of them to those for whom nothing is prepared, for this day is holy to our Lord; and do be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.”
I decided to go to the Enduring Word Bible Commentary as I wasn’t quite sure what this verse meant. I wasn’t quite sure why the people were crying when they heard the words of the Law. This is what I found on the Enduring Word Bible Commentary page, “All the people wept, when they heard the words of the Law: The word of God was doing its intended work. 2 Timothy 3:16 tells us two things that the word of God is profitable for: reproof and correction. Sometimes it hurts to be reproved and corrected, and these tears were evidence of some of that pain.
b. Do not mourn nor weep: Ezra, Nehemiah, and the Levites did not want the people to mourn, even though it is a good thing to be sad under the conviction of the Holy Spirit through the word of God. Yet if the sense of conviction is greater than the sense that God is doing a good and holy work, then tears are not good.
Our knowledge of our sin should never be bigger than our knowledge of Jesus as our Savior. We are great sinners, but He is a greater Savior.
Therefore, the joy of the Lord is your strength – even when you are being convicted of sin. When we are convicted of sin we know that God is doing a work in us, so we can be glad and take joy.
c. Do not sorrow, for the joy of the LORD is your strength: The people felt sad because they were aware of their own sin. But they could walk in joy because God was doing a great work. Our emotions are not beyond our control; we can do God’s will even when we don’t feel like it.
They didn’t want the people to be sad because even though they may not have been perfect in carrying out the law, it is ok. God is still with them. Those in charge wanted them to know that it is good to stop everything every now and then and remember the law. It is good to stop and examine your behavior and how you are living, and see if it is in accordance with how God wants you to live. However, if it isn’t, they didn’t want them to be sad and to focus on how much they were messing up. They wanted the people to focus on how great God is and how, no matter how much we mess up, He can still redeem us.
The same is true for us. It is important that we examine our behaviors, the way we live our lives, and how we treat others, to see if we are living according to the Lord's will. Are we following His commandments? Are we loving Him above all else? Are we loving our neighbors as we love ourselves? If we aren’t, what should we do? We should bring it to the Lord. We can apologize for getting off course again, and then let Him know how sorry we are, and then we can just try again. God does not expect us to be perfect. He knows we will mess up. He knows we won’t always get it right. He is ok with that as long as we always repent and turn back to Him!
Let’s look at the aspect of joy in this verse. This verse said, “For the joy of the Lord is your strength.” How is the joy of the Lord our strength? In this verse, we can find joy in the Lord because He always redeems us. I love it when it said in the commentary that, “Our knowledge of our sin should never be bigger than our knowledge of Jesus as our Savior. We are great sinners, but He is a greater Savior.” This is such a great reminder that no matter how bad our sin is, our Savior is greater than it. No matter how bad we have messed up, Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross still covers it. We can take joy in the fact that there is nothing we can do that is not covered by Jesus’s sacrifice. It is ok to be sad that we have hurt our relationship with the Lord. It is ok to be sad that we think we might have let God down. However, we can’t stay there. We need to then find the joy that God has given us by sending his son to make up for our sins. God sacrificed His only son so that he could repair the closeness that Adam & Eve lost. This is something we can celebrate. This closeness is something to be joyful over.
Another thing I love that the commentary said was, “Do not sorrow, for the joy of the LORD is your strength: The people felt sad because they were aware of their own sin. But they could walk in joy because God was doing a great work. Our emotions are not beyond our control; we can do God’s will even when we don’t feel like it.” This is something we all need to know. Our emotions are not beyond our control. We get to decide how we feel. In the moment, we can’t always control our emotions. For instance, if you see something, you might instantly feel something. For instance, when you see someone acting a certain way, you may get upset. That first reaction/emotion, you may not be able to control. However, you can choose whether to keep feeling that emotion.
You get to decide what emotions you are feeling based on what story you are telling yourself. For instance, I could be sad about what is going on with my son right now, or I could be grateful because he is getting the help that he needs. Or I could be both. I get to decide. The same is true for you with whatever you are going through. You get to decide how you will feel. Will you find your strength in the joy of the Lord, or will you wallow in your misery? Will you turn to the Lord and repent, or will you sit in your shame and let it eat at you? The enemy does not want us to know that we get to decide how we will feel. He wants us to just sit there and listen to all he is whispering in our ears about how things won’t ever get better. He wants us to believe that if God wanted us healed, he would have done it already. If God wanted to lift us from this place, He would have. The enemy wants us to believe our case is too far gone.
The enemy is a liar. He doesn’t know what God’s plan is any more than we do. He does not realize the importance of our thoughts. If he can persuade us to spend more time worrying about the “what ifs” rather than focusing on the joy of the Lord and all that God can do, he will have won the war for our hearts and minds. He knows that if we're listening to him, we're letting him steal our joy. Joy in the suffering is possible, but only when our focus is on the Lord and all that good He is doing, even if we can’t see it. The joy in the Lord is our strength because we can always find joy in the Lord, even when all seems lost. We won’t always be happy, but we can always have joy.
Dear heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you, and we ask you to be with us in this hard time. Lord, please show us how to have joy in the hard times. Please help us to focus on you and all you are doing for us. Please help us to be grateful in the hard times. Please help us know Jesus’s sacrifice was enough to cover all we have done and will ever do. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in August 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I am the light of the world. He who follows me will never walk in darkness but have the light of life.”
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Thank you so much for sharing your story with us. Did you all notice that before she received the healing she took a leap of faith and started testing out to see if she was healed? Sometimes, that is when we are healed, when we step out in faith to test the healing. Testing the healing means trying to do something you couldn’t do before. Like in Caitlyn’s case, she tried to see outside without her sunglasses on. This would have normally induced a headache, but she tried it anyway, and she did not get one. She also put her feet in hot water, which again would have usually been really painful, but there was no pain. She trusted that God gave her the healing she asked for, and He gave her the healing she asked for. St. Augustine said, “Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.” Caitlyn believed she was healed despite no evidence of that healing. She stepped out in faith and tested the healing that was granted to her. I know praying for healing, even just hoping for healing, can be scary because what if we are let down? However, Romans 5:5 says, “ and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” I am so proud of Caitlyn. I am proud she was brave and went to the healing service. I am proud that she took the leap of faith to test her healing when nothing indicated she had been healed. I am proud of her for signing up for the class to learn to be the Lord’s instrument and help heal others. I can’t wait to watch her light get brighter and brighter and to see all the amazing things God has planned for her. I am so grateful he brought the two of us together. I know he has great plans for us and all those at the Encounter School of Ministry Boston Campus. Look out, Boston Diocese, a revival is coming, and we are here for it!
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Praise Series #16 Bless The Lord, O My Soul
Psalm 103:1-5 “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and do not forget all his benefits—who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the Pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good as long as you live so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.”
Yesterday I couldn’t get a song out of my head. It is such a good song. I wanted to share that song with you this morning. The song is called “10,000 Reasons (Bless the Lord).” It was written by Matt Redman and Jonas Myrin and is based on Psalms 103:1-5. It explores how we can never run out of reasons to worship and praise God. On Monday of this week, Episode #1036, we talked about how vital praise and worship are to our faith journey. This song and this Psalm remind us that there are so many reasons we can be grateful to the Lord.
Let’s first look at these verses. They begin with “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name.” This is exactly what we talked about on Monday. Praising the Lord is so important. Even when we are in a really difficult season of life, there are many reasons we can be grateful to the Lord, and we can praise Him.
In the verse, it says, “who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the Pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good as long as you live so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.” Those are some pretty amazing things to thank God for. You might not have experienced all of them, but I bet you have experienced some of them. Have you felt God’s steadfast mercy and love in your life? Have you experienced His forgiveness? Some of you have even experienced his healing touch. I know some of you have been redeemed from a pit as well. I love the line that says your youth is renewed like the eagles. We could all use our youth to be renewed.
Can you see all the amazing things God has done and will do for us? Can you see how there are endless possibilities when it comes to praising the Lord? The song for today also talks about praising the Lord. I invite you to listen to the song sometime today. You can look it up on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Music, wherever you usually listen to music. The reason I would like you to listen to the actual song, instead of just this podcast, is that it is really good. Here are the words to the song.
[Chorus]
Bless the Lord, O my soul, O my soul
Worship His holy name
Sing like never before, O my soul
I'll worship Your holy name
As you can see, this chorus comes almost directly from the Psalm. I love it when artists do this. I love it when they use the Bible verses in the songs. It helps get the Lord’s word out to more people.
Next is Verse 1:
The sun comes up, it's a new day dawning
It's time to sing your song again
Whatever may pass and whatever lies before me
Let me be singing when the evening comes
This is something we can always be grateful for: that we got to wake up to a brand new day of life. I love how this verse says, whatever may pass and whatever lies before me, let me be singing when the evening comes. Wouldn’t it be great if we could be singing to the Lord at the end of the day, no matter what happens to us throughout the day? How great would it be if we got so used to praising the Lord that we could praise Him no matter the circumstances?
Verse 2:
You're rich in love and you're slow to anger
Your name is great, and Your heart is kind
For all Your goodness, I will keep on singing
Ten thousand reasons for my heart to find
We tend to have a perception of God that he is angry at us all the time. We look at some parts of the Old Testament, and we think God is full of Vengeance and Wrath. This is not what He is constantly telling our prayer group. He always tells us how much He loves us. God is rich in love and slow to anger. Does he get angry? Probably, we all do. However, He loves us so much more than his anger. I love how the verse says, “For all your goodness, I will keep on singing ten thousand reasons for my heart to find. If you are looking, there are always reasons to be thankful to God. Even in your most difficult season, there are things you can praise the Lord for; you just have to look for them. Or, as I mentioned on Monday, you can put on praise and worship music and let the artists praise the Lord for you!
[Verse 3]
And on that day when my strength is failing
The end draws near, and my time has come
Still, my soul will sing Your praise unending
Ten thousand years and then forevermore
Forevermore
It is beautiful to think about praising the Lord when our time on this earth is ending. When we can feel our strength failing. How great would it be to get to the end of our lives and still want to sing the Lord’s praises? I like how it says ten thousand years and then forever more. Once we are in heaven, all will make sense. We will understand all the things that we don’t understand now. Then we will get to praise the Lord for all eternity.
[Chorus]
Bless the Lord, O my soul, O my soul
Worship His holy name
Sing like never before, O my soul
I'll worship Your holy name
This song is such a great song to play when you want to worship the Lord. As I listened to it last night at prayer group I knew I would be listening to it, more often. It's a great way to praise the Lord!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode. Lord, we love you, and we are so grateful for all you do for us. We are sorry we don’t always appreciate all you do. We are sorry that we don’t always know how to praise you. Please help us with this, Lord. Please stir our hearts and help us to learn to praise you more often. We want to always be telling you how much we appreciate you. We ask all this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you all here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed weekend!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in August 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “You are my people, anointed under my blood. I walk with you and talk with you and guide you through my Holy Spirit.”
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Praise Series #15 God Has A Plan
Acts 16:25-28 “About midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly, there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken. At once, all the prison doors flew open, and everyone’s chains came loose. The jailer woke up, and when he saw the prison doors open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself because he thought the prisoners had escaped. But Paul shouted, “Don’t harm yourself! We are all here!”
This story actually begins a few verses before this. In Acts 16:16-24, it says, “Once when we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a female slave who had a spirit by which she predicted the future. She earned a great deal of money for her owners by fortune-telling. She followed Paul and the rest of us, shouting, “These men are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved.” She kept this up for many days. Finally, Paul became so annoyed that he turned around and said to the spirit, “In the name of Jesus Christ, I command you to come out of her!” At that moment, the spirit left her. When her owners realized that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace to face the authorities. They brought them before the magistrates and said, “These men are Jews and are throwing our city into an uproar by advocating customs unlawful for us Romans to accept or practice.” The crowd joined in the attack against Paul and Silas, and the magistrates ordered them to be stripped and beaten with rods. After they had been severely flogged, they were thrown into prison, and the jailer was commanded to guard them carefully. When he received these orders, he put them in the inner cell and fastened their feet in the stocks.”
This is where our verse takes place. They have been beaten with rods and are now chained up in prison. You would think after a day like that, they would feel defeated. You would think that they would be questioning God and asking Him why they have to suffer so much when they are just doing what He asked them to do. You might also think that they were passed out in pain and sleeping. Is this what they were doing? No, the verse says it was midnight, and they were still praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them. This is something that always amazes me about the apostles and other believers in the faith, such as the Saints. I am always amazed by their strength. I know that God underwent extreme suffering in the 24 hours before He was crucified. He sweats drops of blood. If that is not suffering, I don’t know what is. And yet, I think we can downplay it sometimes and think, well, He is fully God and fully human, so of course He can withstand it; he is God. However, countless other Saints have gone through extreme suffering and have done it with joy.
Paul & Silas had just been beaten with rods, and yet they were not questioning God. They were praising and singing to Him. This is something that I think we can hear sometimes and not pause and think about how truly amazing it is. I don’t know if we glaze over it because we don’t understand it or because we don’t think we are capable of it. I don’t know the reason, but I wanted to pause and take a moment to recognize how remarkable these two are for how they endured their suffering. We could all learn a lot from them and how they lived, not only when times were good but also when times were tough.
The verse says that at midnight, while they were praying and praising, they were set free. The door opened, and their chains came loose. What strikes me about this verse is that they were set free yet did not leave. They stayed there until morning, when the guard woke up. What I hear the Lord saying to me about this verse is that everything He does is for His glory and the good of His kingdom. If Paul & Silas had left at midnight, they could have escaped. However, it would not have been known how they escaped. People could have said that someone broke in and freed them. God would not have gotten the Glory. However, by waiting until morning, they not only converted the guard and his whole house to believers, but they were also set free and did not have to worry about being caught for escaping.
Sometimes, the things we are going through or the things others are going through make no sense to us. If we had been there in that jail cell, it would have made no sense to us that when they were freed, they didn’t leave the cell. I can’t imagine sitting in that cell and just waiting for the jailer to wake up when we could have escaped and been hours away by the time the jailer woke up. Luckily, Paul and Silas were good at listening to the Lord and trusting in Him. They were not scared in that jail cell. They praised the Lord and trusted that the Lord would get them out of the situation. They were patient and waited on the Lord’s timing, and by doing so, they saved the jailer and his whole family.
Do you see how if the apostles had left at midnight, they would have escaped and would have been free? Do you also see that they did not leave at midnight, yet they were still free? We never know how God will work things out for us. Sometimes, we can only see things in black and white. We can see only two choices. For instance, we could see that if we left the cell when the door was open, then we would be free. However, if we stay there, then we would be stuck in jail forever. Sometimes, we are so angry, upset, scared, and afraid that we can’t see all the possibilities. We only see the two. Sometimes, we may not see all the options because we have limited information, whereas God has all the information He would ever need. It seems as though the apostles waited for God to tell them what to do next. They trusted that God would take care of it even though they didn’t know what would happen next.
This may be the same in some circumstances in our lives, too. We may not understand why God asks us to wait a little longer. We know God can save us now, but we don’t understand why He isn’t. We don’t understand why we are going through all of this in the first place. Maybe God is using this thing you are going through to save someone else. Maybe by watching your strength in the face of your situation, someone will decide to give God a try. Maybe after watching how you were saved from your circumstances, someone else has also decided to be saved. We don’t know what God’s plan is or why He does what He does. There is one thing that we can be sure of, and that is that God has a plan, and He has a reason for everything. God can use all things for His glory. We may think that some things are a coincidence. However, if you look back over the last 5 or 10 years of your life, I bet you will see how those things you felt were coincidences were actually things that God timed out perfectly for a specific reason. It is amazing to me how detailed God’s plan is. He has every tiny detail planned out.
The next time we get tired of waiting for our suffering to end, maybe we can remember this verse, pray, and praise him even when we are struggling. We can remember that if He has not saved us yet, it is for a reason, and that a greater good will come from our situation. I know that doesn’t always make it easier for us when we are in the moment. However, I felt God wanted me to share with you that even when we don’t know His plan and don’t understand it, we should still know that He has a plan, and it is for our good and the good of his whole church.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. We ask that you give us the strength of Paul and Silas when we suffer. Lord, we ask that you give us the strength and the wisdom to pray and sing praises to you when we are suffering. Help us know that you have a plan even when we don’t see or understand it. Help us to know that we are never suffering in vain. You will always use our suffering for your glory. We love you, Lord, and thank you for all you do for us. You are amazing, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and Jesus’ holy name. Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed weekend.
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in August 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Don't let the negativity slip in. Remove it. Rejoice in me. Pray to me so that your joy may return.”
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Mary Liked to Ponder
Luke 2:1-20 "In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn. In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!” When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.” So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.”
There are two things about this verse that I would like to focus on today. The first is how Jesus was born in a manger. Growing up I didn’t understand this. I felt like if Mary was giving birth to the Son of God, then the least He could do is provide her with a comfortable bed to deliver the baby in. I felt like it was all so disorganized and I really didn’t understand why God didn’t plan better. Now that I am an adult, or actually more accurately, now that I know more about God and the story of Jesus I am able to understand that it was all very well planned out. God always has a plan. God had been preparing His people for this birth for a very long time. He had given very specific details and He was ensuring that all the details were accurate so that His people would know that His son was the Savior.
Jesus was not born into luxury because He was not going to be that kind of king. He was going to be an amazing leader and yet He would also be a servant. I have a rosary app on my phone and I like how they describe Jesus’ birth. Jesus enters the world in poverty to teach us the detachment from earthly things. I have also heard others describe that he was born in the stable to teach us humility. I am not sure why Jesus was born in a stable, but I think it set Him on the path for what kind of person He wanted to be. If we have a lot of stuff, we don’t need to rely on the Lord as we feel we can provide for ourselves. We also get distracted by all that stuff and then sometimes don’t think about God or don’t want to give up that time we spend doing other stuff to spend with Him. When you experience poverty you are also more grateful for the things that you have. I now know that Jesus’ birth happened exactly as it was supposed to and was very well thought out.
The second thing I would like to talk about are the word at the end of this section. Luke 2:19 says, “But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.” I think Mary does this a lot. I remember Father Michael Gaitley talking about Mary’s heart pondering in his Book 33 Days to Morning Glory. When the magi, or the shepherds visited Jesus they told Mary and Joseph all that the Angel’s said about Jesus. Mary did not get overwhelmed, she did not freak out, she treasured all they said and she pondered them in her heart. I am not sure what I would do if I were in her circumstance. I think I would feel that was a lot of pressure, but it doesn’t seem like she felt that way.
At the end of chapter 2 in Luke it mentions Mary pondering again. Do you remember the story of when Mary & Joseph went to Jerusalem for the festival of Passover and then when it ended they started the return home and Jesus wasn’t with them? They were traveling with friends and family and assumed He was with them, but He wasn’t. They were a whole day’s journey away before they found out. When they found Him and asked Him where He was. In Luke 2:49-51 Jesus said to them, “‘Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?’ But they didn’t understand what he said to them. Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them. His mother treasured all these things in her heart.” I find it interesting that the verse says that Mary and Joseph didn’t understand what he said to them. I wonder if this happened a lot? At this point Jesus was 12 years old. I remember watching this scene in the show The Chosen. I remember Mary looked up to the Lord and said, “Not yet,” or “I’m not ready yet,” or something like that. I can imagine that is how she felt.
I can imagine how difficult it is when our kids grow up and move out of the house. I have several friends whose kids went to college over the last few years and they are sad they don’t see them every day. I can imagine Mary being concerned that Jesus was going to grow up and have to leave home to fulfill his destiny too soon. I don’t know how much of Jesus’ life and destiny was revealed to Mary, or when it was revealed. She new from before His conception that He would be the Son of God, but was she able to understand what that meant? Was she given an understanding of all He would have to go through? I wonder if she knew from the beginning that he was going to have to sacrifice himself for us?
Do you see why Mary would have a lot to ponder. I can imagine when others told her things, like the shepherds, she might not have understood the gravity of the situation. The definition for ponder is to think about something carefully, especially before make a decision or reaching a conclusion. A synonym for it is to meditate. It makes sense that Mary would spend a lot of time pondering things. As I said the other day, it is hard enough being the parent of any child. I can imagine the pressure would be so much greater if we were parenting God’s child.
There are so many things about Mary that we could look up to. Pondering is one of them. Instead of making decisions or leaping to conclusions before we have all the facts, maybe we can slow down and do some pondering. We could take some time and ask God what He thinks we should do, or how we should think about things. When we hear something that is upsetting or overwhelming, maybe we could ponder it for a bit before we react. I know this won’t always be easy. I don’t think it was always easy for Mary either. I think it is something to consider, though. Think about what normally happens when you get upset. For me, I hear something upsetting, and if I react right away, I am not reacting as my best self. I may say unkind things, or maybe I am sarcastic or rude. However, after I react and I have time to calm down and really think about it, I realize that I should have done things differently. What if we all took time to ponder more this year? How would our relationships be different if we pondered more before we reacted? I wonder if we would grow in wisdom if we took the time to ponder why things were happening and the meaning behind them?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask that you help us to ponder more this year. Help us to slow down and not let life just pass us by. We ask that you help us to ponder the things that happen to us and why they are happening. Help us to be willing and mindful participants in our own lives. Don’t let us just sleepwalk through life on autopilot. Help us to take it all in and enjoy it. Lord, we ask that this Christmas season be amazing for all of us and that you bless those who need your blessings, Lord. Please help those who are struggling and help them to feel loved. We love you, Lord, you are amazing. We are so very grateful to you, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus, and this week for joining me in preparing our hearts and minds for celebrating the coming of our Savior, Lord Jesus Christ. I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and I will be here to spend time with you again on Monday. Have a blessed weekend!
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Today, I want to replay my witness about Christmas 2023. I felt like with this Christmas being Christmas Eve, a Christmas witness would be good. In 2023 it was the year my sister Dee moved back to CT and bought a new house. She had a Christmas Eve party because my aunt used to have one each year, but she is now moving to FL. I went to Dee’s house on Christmas Eve alone as my family wanted to chill out at home. Well, Sam & Noah were both working. It was great to see my parents, Dee, my sister Suzy & her husband John, two of her boys and her granddaughter, and then my sister Theresa and her husband Glenn. We ate dinner together and talked. Some played games. It was a really great time.
Then, when I got home, Sam & Noah were in the kitchen talking, and then Ryan came down. The boys and I stayed in the kitchen talking for over 2 hours. This in itself is a Christmas miracle as they are teenagers, and so they don’t love talking to their parents. We talked about all kinds of things, and it was so great. Of course, sometimes they were arguing, which I didn’t love, but it was awesome to see them interacting with each other. I feel like 2024 is going to be a great year. I think they are starting to come out of their rooms a bit more. They are starting to talk a bit more and hang out with friends a bit more. I am really looking forward to this upcoming year. Noah is a senior and is planning to go far away for college in the fall, so I am hoping to get to spend some good family time with him before he leaves.
On Christmas day we always go the Duggan’s house. The Desilets, my family, always celebrate on a different day, so we are lucky, and we don't have to alternate. I like that we get to do the same thing each year. I love that we get to see his entire family. His brother and wife, their two girls, my mother and father-in-law, and Tony’s aunt. Usually, when we go, our boys are on their computers, and their cousins are, too. Occasionally, we will play a game or two, but I would say the majority of years, we just hang out. It is nice to get a chance to catch up. They don’t live far away, but we don’t really see them too much. They have kids, we have kids, they work, we work. Life gets busy, and we don’t schedule time to visit.
It’s funny because when we lived in NJ when the boys were younger, we saw them a lot more. We would come up for all the holidays, and so they would come up and visit as well. It has been dawning on me more and more lately that we saw family more when we lived further away than we do now. We are only one and a half hours from Tony’s parent’s house and an hour and 10 minutes from my family, and yet we don’t see them that much. This is something I will change in the New Year as family is important. You never know when the last time you will see someone is.
Regret is something that is difficult to live with. I try to live my life so that I don’t have any regrets later. We can’t ensure this, but we can do our best to live in a way that we will be proud of later. I don’t want to wish I would have spent more time with people when they were alive. I want to actually spend more time with people when they are alive. This is something we can all work on. Do you have people you are unhappy with? Are you waiting for someone else to make the first step or the next move? Don’t wait on others. If someone is hurting you, let them know. What have you got to lose? If they don’t respond well, at least you gave it a try.
We only have one life, and I, for one, do not want to have regrets. Make amends, say the thing you have been wanting to say, and forgive the person you are angry with; you might not get the chance later. I know you may be waiting for them to do the right thing, but what if they never do? Are you ok with things never being said? What if you just confronted them? What if you just said you wanted to get past this? What if you said the thing that hurt you?
Ok, back to Christmas this year. I just want to thank God for it because it was really great. We had to wake our boys up because they are teens, and so they sleep late. I asked the night before, and they agreed to get up at 10. We didn’t actually know what to get the boys this year for Christmas as they didn’t give us too many ideas. We got them some practical gifts, and we weren’t sure how that would go over. They all had a great time opening the gifts, and they all seemed not only happy but appreciative, which you don’t always get with kids. Or at least we don’t always get it. Then we asked if we could change plans and leave earlier than we agreed, and no one got upset. They were all ok with it.
I had bought myself and the boys matching pajamas so we could do a family photo. They were all okay with it, and we wore the pajamas all day. When we got to the Duggan’s house, I realized none of the boys had brought their computers. They were sitting around the table, talking and playing on their phones. I asked if they wanted to play a card game, and they all said yes. So Joanie, the boys, and I all played Monopoly Deal. Then, when Tony’s brother and family arrived, we had dinner. It was great that even those who weren’t eating were sitting at the table. Everyone seemed to be engaged in good conversations and having a good time. After dinner, the kids opened presents and were really happy with all they received. Tony’s mom, Joanie, played piano, and then later Kaylee, his niece, also played piano. It was a great day. I hope you had an amazing Christmas too!
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Saint Joseph’s Faithfulness
Matthew 1:18-25 “This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit. Because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly. But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”). When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. But he did not consummate their marriage until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.
I thought since Christmas is coming, I would focus on that this week. Today I want to focus on Saint Joseph. I think he is someone that we don’t talk about enough. Everyone I know who has read or learned more about Saint Joseph just keeps talking about how incredible he was. Let’s talk about the different things in this verse.
The verse begins by describing how they were pledged to be married, but before they were together, he found out that Mary was pregnant. Joseph now finds himself stuck because it says he is faithful to the law. He wants to follow the law, and yet, according to the law, back in the day, if a woman was caught cheating on her husband, she was to be stoned to death. Joseph didn’t want to disobey the law, and he also didn’t want to publicly disgrace Mary. He was a good man, and so he was going to quietly divorce her to keep her from all of that. However, he was visited by an angel in his dream before he could do anything. This angel explained what was going on and told Joseph to name the baby Jesus.
Can you imagine being visited by an angel in your sleep? When I was little, I used to imagine what it would be like to have an angel come and visit me, like Mary or Joseph. I wondered what it would feel like. I wondered if I would believe what I was seeing. I wonder how Joseph felt when he woke up from that dream? Did he know it was a visit from a real angel and not just a normal dream right away? I wonder why the angel came to Joseph in a dream, but to Mary when she was awake. I think it is hard for us to imagine what it would feel like, as it is so foreign to most of us. I like to think things were different back then. It was easier for them to believe because they lived in a time when there weren’t so many distractions or when the faith was stronger. However, I don’t think, even back then, it was a common occurrence to be visited by an angel. I don’t know that those around them would have any easier time believing it than we would. Yet, Joseph did believe, and he did obey.
Joseph had a choice, just like Mary did. Joseph could have decided that it was all just a dream. He could have believed that Mary had cheated on him, and he could have left her. However, he made a choice to stay. He chose to listen to the angel and to name the baby Jesus. He was faithful to the Lord, and he raised Jesus as his child. Did you know that Joseph was visited by an angel a second time in a dream? This time was right after the Magi visited baby Jesus. Matthew 2:13-15 recounts, “ When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.” So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called my son.”
Again, Joseph had a choice to make. His wife had just given birth recently. He had a baby, and I am sure they were all tired as she gave birth in a manger. I can’t imagine they were getting great sleep there. Then the angel of God tells Joseph to get up in the middle of the night and take his wife and baby to Egypt. Remember the first time the angel visited he was told that what he was asked to do was to help fulfill the Lord’s word through a prophet, “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” Now the angel is asking Joseph a second time to fulfill the Lord’s word, “Out of Egypt I called my son.” The benefit that Joseph has over many of us is that he would have been well-versed on the Old Testament prophets since he was a Jewish man. The Jewish males went to school/class to study the Jewish scriptures.
I wonder if knowing about all these scriptures or words from the prophets made it easier or harder to say yes? I wonder if knowing what he was getting into made it harder or easier. I am not sure I would want to know the fate of my child if it were to suffer as Christ suffered. I wonder if knowing all he knew about Jesus and what he was to become added pressure on Joseph as a father. I think most parents feel pressure to be a good parent. We feel like we don’t want to mess our children up. When they are babies, they are completely dependent on us, and as they grow, they want to become more independent. However, I don’t think that sense of responsibility for our children ever goes away. I can just imagine the pressure that I felt not to mess my kids up too badly would be multiplied by 100,000 if I knew I was raising God’s child.
I am hoping it wasn’t like this for Mary and Joseph. I am hoping that they didn’t feel constant pressure to measure up or to be perfect. I like to think that they were able to be a somewhat regular family at the time. Although I am sure it was super stressful when Jesus stayed back in the temple to talk to the teachers when they left. I can’t imagine not knowing where my child was for that long. I did actually lose my child at a fair once, and although it was less than 5 minutes real time, it felt like a million years. I can’t imagine if I had to have that feeling for days. I know things were always perfect for them, but I hope that they were able to raise Jesus without too much pressure to be perfect parents, and also without feeling that they weren’t worthy. The bible doesn’t share many interactions with Joseph in the bible, but you can tell by the reverence that Jesus had with Mary that he was very respectful to his parents.
Joseph had two more dreams where an angel appeared to him. These are described in Matthew 2:19-23, “After Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, 'Get up, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who were trying to take the child’s life are dead.” So he got up, took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning in Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. Having been warned in a dream, he withdrew to the district of Galilee, and he went and lived in a town called Nazareth. So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets, that he would be called a Nazarene.” Again, Joseph had a choice, and he said yes.
Joseph had several chances to say no, to refuse his destiny or fulfill his purpose, and yet he didn’t. Each time he was given a task, he completed it. He did not ask questions; it doesn’t appear that he argued or did it begrudgingly. Joseph had four dreams where an angel of God appeared to him and told him to do something, and he said yes. They were not easy things that the angel was asking him to do, and yet he did them anyway. I wonder if we would have the same strength? I wonder if we could stay when we thought we should go? I wonder if we would move to another country after just having a baby, and then move back. Joseph was so faithful to do what God wanted him to do. There is very little that I know about Joseph, but what I do know, I admire. He had so much strength and so much faith. I think we could all benefit from getting to know Joseph a little more.
Dear Heavenly Father, I pray that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we thank you for choosing Joseph to be Jesus’ earthly father. He was so faithful to your word and your commands. Help us to be more faithful. Help us to do what you want us to do, whether we feel like it or not. Help us to be willing to listen more to Your word, Lord. We thank you for giving us Mary, Joseph & Jesus. You are so amazing, and you love us so much to have sacrificed your son for us. Lord, we ask that you help us keep our hearts and minds focused on you this week and not on the commercialized version of Christmas. Help us to remember the reason for the season. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in August 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “And when they see you, they see me, and they feel my love for them where they are in the condition that they are in.”
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Honestly, I Think We Just Need Jesus!
Acts 2:40 “And he testified with many other words and exhorted them, saying, 'Save yourselves from this crooked generation.”
I chose this episode to replay for you today for two reasons. The first is because if you are listening to this on the day I released it, then we celebrate Jesus' coming into the world in just four days, and we need Jesus more than ever! The second is because there was a loss in our family last Thursday, and so many people are hurting, and they just need Jesus right now to help them through it. There is a song that I have heard on the radio more and more recently, and these last few days, it has been running repeatedly in my mind. I can’t seem to get it out of my head. I am not sure I want to get it out of my head, as the words that are running through my head are. Honestly, I think we need Jesus by Terrian. Since I can’t seem to shake this song, and then I read the verse above this morning, I think the Lord wants me to share it with you. I will place a link for the song in the show notes, as she does a much better job singing it than I do. I also love that she is young and yet can still see that we need more Jesus. I will go over the lyrics of the song with you today.
The song starts with:
I got a front-row seat to the madness
I pick up my phone every mornin' out of habit
I've been fiendin' for the drama, yeah, I said it
I'm addicted to the rush, need a medic
How many of us pick up our phones or turn on the news first thing when we wake up? How many of us want to know what is going on in the world before we even stop and spend our time with God? I use my phone for an alarm, so I would turn off my alarm, and then I would check my messages, emails, and Facebook before I would sit down with the Lord and spend time with Him. I have gotten better; now, I just check my messages, mostly to make sure my kids got home safely. Sometimes I still check my emails, but I am getting better and usually save that for later.
I love how the songwriter points out that we usually pick up our phones out of habit. This isn’t just the first thing in the morning. We do this all throughout the day. I bet we all spend more time than we would like on our phones. I also like how they bring our attention to the fact that we are “Fiendin’ for the drama” and “addicted to the rush.” It seems we are drawn to the conflict and the drama more than the good things that are happening. I don’t know if that is because we crave drama or because that is all the news tends to show us. Either way, there is good and bad going on in the world, and it is up to us to choose which we seek out and focus on.
The song goes on to say:
When I take a step back, I can see it
All the pain, all the fear we've been feelin'
Losin' sight of the thing that we're needin'
That we're needin’
This is a great reminder that sometimes we need to take a step back. When we do, we see that we are focusing on all of our pain and fear that we are feeling instead of focusing on the one who can take all that pain and fear away. When we watch the news or listen to all that is going on in the world, we tend to get overwhelmed. We can also start to feel a sense of hopelessness. We can feel a sense that the world is going crazy, and there is nothing we can do about it. However, we are never hopeless because we are children of God, and we can always turn to Him, and He can save us. There is nothing too hard for God to handle.
Next, the song says:
Honestly, I think we just need Jesus
Honestly, I think we just need Jesus
Have we all gone mad? Have we lost our minds?
What used to be wrong, we say that it's right
Honestly, I think we just need Jesus
This is the part that gets stuck in my head. I can’t think of a truer statement. I can see how our country is falling apart because we keep removing God from more and more things. This country was founded with God. He was a part of the government; yes, Church and State were separate, and yet God and State weren’t. God was invited into the Constitution; he was invited into the pledge of allegiance. He was invited into our courtrooms. God was welcome everywhere. Now, it seems He is welcome nowhere.
I also love how the song says, “Have we all gone mad? Have we lost our minds? What used to be wrong, we say that it’s right.” We have all thought this for a long time now, and it is nice to hear it in a song, so we know we aren’t the only ones who think it. This world does seem to have gone mad, and it does seem like we are all losing our minds. Some of the things that seem to be ok in the world today still shock me. I think this song points out very real and honest questions. Have we all gone mad? Have we all lost our minds?
Take a good, long look in the mirror
Search my heart and soul, make it clearer
Help me take your love, trade the bitter
Leave it in the dust, help me leave it in the dust, Lord
I think it would be a great idea if we all stopped and took a good look in the mirror. What are we doing? Not what is the world doing, but what are we doing? Are we staying true to God in this crazy world? Are we staying above all the drama and walking in the light of Christ? Are we showing love and hope to everyone we meet? We are all called to be “little Christs” to all we meet. Are we doing so? Are we loving everyone, even those who aren’t like us? Even those who aren’t living their lives the way we think they should? Even those whom we don’t like. God said to love our enemies. Are we doing that?
The next line says, “Search my heart and soul, make it clearer.” Do we want God to search our hearts and souls? What would He find? I do like how it says to make it clearer. With all that is going on in this world, and all this world says is ok, the water we wade into can get muddy. I don’t think the world makes it easy or clear how we should live our lives. We need to focus on God and ask God to help make it clear to us what He wants from us and how He wants us to live.
It also says, “Help me take your love, trade the bitter. Leave it in the dust, help me leave it in the dust, Lord.” It can be easy to become bitter. We live in a broken world, and people offend us all the time. Things aren’t fair, and sometimes good things happen to bad people, and bad things happen to good people. This can make us bitter. We need God to come in and replace our bitterness with His love. We need His help to walk away from the bitter and leave it in the dust.
We've been preachin', we've been drinkin' in the vanity (in the vanity)
Now it's got us questionin' our sanity (sanity)
And we wonder how we get all this anxiety
It's clear to me
Yep, I think we have all probably questioned our sanity at some point over the last few years. I definitely think there is a lot of vanity in this day and age as well. With everyone having phones and taking photos every moment of every day, we have become obsessed with how we look and what we have. We want to make sure our life looks as good online as everyone else’s life does. This leads us to do and say things that aren’t always true. We act online like our lives are perfect, and yet so many of our children and adults are hurting inside, but don’t reach out and get help because everyone else seems like they are doing so well. This definitely makes us question our sanity because our lives are falling apart, and everyone else seems to have it all together. I love the line that says, “And we wonder how we get all this anxiety.” Exactly!! All of the things I just talked about, along with the news, the decline of our country, and the division in our country, we wonder why everyone is so anxious.
After the song repeats the chorus about us just needing Jesus, it goes on to say:
We turn away (we turn away)
We're running back to you (oh-oh)
Covered in grace (covered in grace)
God, You can make us new (make us new)
Yes! We are like a revolving door. We turn away from the Lord and then turn back to Him, then we turn away, and then we turn back. I love how the author of this song understands that even when we do this, we are covered in grace. God will always accept us back in. He is not angry with us that we have turned away. He is happy that we have turned back. God is always there with open arms, waiting for us to turn back to Him. God is the only one who can make us new. We may think we have done too much, we have really messed up this time, and there is no hope for us. There is always hope in the Lord. He can make us new, He can make our country new, He can make our world new. We just have to invite Him in and ask Him.
The song ends by repeating the chorus. I will leave you with those words.
Honestly, we need, we need You, Jesus (we need You, oh)
Have we all gone mad? Have we lost our minds?
What used to be wrong, we say that it's right
Honestly, we need, we need You, Jesus
Oh, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus
We need You, Jesus, Jesus
Oh, Jesus
Jesus, Jesus (we're running back)
(We're running back to You) Jesus
We're runnin' back to You, oh (Jesus)
Yeah, Jesus, Jesus
Make us new
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you, and we are sorry we turned away; please help us to turn back. We are sorry our country is falling apart. Please show us how we can help to bring you back into our country. Please put in our hearts what you are calling us to do. Please help us to stop searching for the drama and start searching for you. Help us to be your love and light to others instead of spreading the drama and the worry. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I would like to ask a favor. I have been talking about my mentoring program for a while now. It is on Tuesday nights at 8 PM EST on Zoom, and I record it, so if you aren’t able to make it live, you can watch the recording. Maybe mentoring is not for you, and yet you may know someone who might benefit from it. My favor is that you pass the information along to them. I have put a link in the show notes. You could just copy it and then paste it into a text message or email. Also, you could just direct them to the walkboldlywithjesus.com website, and the link is right on that first page. If you would like to join mentoring, but just don’t have the $30 per month, please reach out to me. I don’t want a lack of money to hinder the ability to grow closer to the Lord. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day.
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in July 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My spirit burns deeply within each of you, my children. It burns away the things that you no longer desire to have because you know me and you know my love. And it fires up the gifts and the graces that I give you so that you become a lamp, a light to those around you.”
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Praise Series #14 I Keep My Eyes Always On The Lord
Psalm 16:7-8 “I will praise the Lord, who counsels me; even at night my heart instructs me. I keep my eyes always on the Lord. With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken.”
When I read this, my first thought was, I wish my eyes were always on the Lord. I wonder if sometimes, in the Psalms and actually in any part of the Bible, they are saying what they know they should do instead of what they are actually doing. The person writing this Psalm, were their eyes always on the Lord, or were they saying this as a reminder to themselves of what works best? The beginning of this verse says I will praise the Lord, and you guys know that is one of my favorite things to do. Praising the Lord is something I tend not to forget to do too often. Luckily, I am in a prayer group that knows how important praise is, so even if I didn’t do it regularly on my own, we praise God every Thursday for an hour. That is one of the great things about surrounding yourself with other people who love God; they help you remember what is truly important.
“I will praise the Lord, who counsels me; even at night my heart instructs me.” This is a great verse because it reminds us who is leading us through this crazy thing we call life. The Lord is there to counsel us. Are we seeking His guidance? Are we stopping to ask Him what He thinks of all the plans we are making in our heads? When is the last time you slowed yourself down long enough to run something by God before you did it? Has it been a while? Have you been running into a lot of dead ends lately? Have you noticed that things aren’t bad, but they aren’t great either? Maybe that’s because you are going so fast, you haven’t had time to listen to God's counsel. He really does have some pretty great advice if we slow down and listen to it.
Things just go more smoothly with the counsel of the almighty one. You can tell just from His name that He knows what He is talking about. He has seen your entire life, He knows what turns you will make, and He knows how to help you get to the life you want faster than you could ever do on your own. So, why don’t we listen to His counsel then? We don’t listen because we are too busy. One luxury that Covid afforded us was the gift of slowing down. There was so much bad that came from COVID, and I am not disputing that. However, COVID also allowed us to clear our calendars. To just stay home and be with our family for a little while. The amount of time we were all home with family varies by person, but we all had some time when our schedules were completely clear. No one was going to work or school; grocery stores and other stores weren’t open for a bit. The whole world slowed almost to a stop.
This was not good for many reasons, but the fact that it allowed many people to stop and consciously choose what to add back into their schedules was a benefit. Some people found out they liked the less busy schedule. Some people decided they liked spending more time with their kids. Some families were so busy they went from one activity to the next without any time to even eat a meal together. However, with the forced time to slow down, they were able to spend that time together. People were able to spend more time in quiet with God because they no longer had a long commute to work each day. There was a brief period in time when life slowed down, and we all had the chance to check in with God and ask for His counsel. I am sure not everyone used this time to check in with God, but they had the chance.
When I read the second half of that first line, “even at night my heart instructs me,” I thought of how it was dark at night. I am not sure if this verse is talking about at night, meaning, even when I am asleep, my heart instructs me, or even through the dark parts of my life, my heart instructs me. However, I think, regardless of what the Psalm is saying, both of these are true. God doesn’t guide us sometimes, and then other times leaves us on our own to fend for ourselves. He is always there, guiding us. He is always there in that “still small voice” down deep inside of us. However, we can’t always hear him because we aren’t always listening. If you are going through a difficult time right now and you feel like you could really use some direction, take some time and sit with the Lord. Ask Him for direction, then wait and listen until you receive it. We tend to ask God a lot, but we don’t really ask expecting a reply. God wants to talk with you; He wants to guide you. If you ask Him a question, sit expectantly, and He will answer you.
The last line in this verse is awesome, if we can remember it. It says, “I keep my eyes always on the Lord. With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken.” There is so much anxiety in the world, and I think there wouldn’t be if we could remember this verse. If we kept our eyes on the Lord instead of on the news, our friends' Facebook pages, celebrity tabloids, politics, and all the other things we keep our attention on, we would not be so anxious. It says with the Lord at our right hand, we will not be shaken! The Lord is our shield and our refuge. We do not need to be afraid, and yet we often lose sight of this fact. We take our eyes off the Lord, and we forget He is there for us; we forget He promises to always be there for us.
This is why when I read this verse, I instantly thought, “I wish I kept my eyes always on the Lord.” It is so easy to take our eyes off the Lord. It is so easy to get wrapped up in what we're doing and forget to stop and ask the Lord what He thinks about it. It is easy to turn to the news, our friends, and other things in the world for answers. We expect answers from these things, but for some reason, we don’t expect answers from God. Maybe we think He is too busy to talk to us. Perhaps we feel we aren’t good enough for God to speak to us. Whatever the reason is, we take our eyes off the Lord because we don’t expect Him to talk to us. If you notice you are getting anxious or feeling scared by the things around you, it is time to turn your eyes back to the Lord. It is time to let Him guide your steps. It is time to ask the Lord what you should do and then wait with an expectant faith that He will give you an answer.
In episode #13 of this praise series, I talked about how to have a conversation with God. I talked about how I started journaling with the Lord and how it changed my life. The problem is not that God is not talking to us; the problem is that we are not listening when He does. We are too busy to listen. Think about your week this week. When could you find time to listen to the Lord? Schedule it into your day or your week. I am sure if you started doing this, scheduling in time to sit and listen to the Lord, you will be amazed at what you hear Him say. Give it a try this week and let me know how it goes.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, I ask for you to help us listen to you. Please show us where in our schedules we can take the time to sit with you. Put it upon our hearts, Lord, so that we take this ever-important time with you. Lord, we want to keep our eyes on you. We don’t want to be shaken by the things we encounter. We want to know and trust that you have everything under control. Lord, we trust in you! You are amazing, and we are so grateful for all you do for us. We are amazed that you would talk to each of us individually, and we thank you, Lord. We love you, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you back here tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in July 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Love is the only one true weapon that heals, converts, and ministers. It is all you need with your friends. It is all you need with your enemies. It is what the world desires, even if it can't identify it. My love will fall upon you, and you will love with my love.”
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Today’s Witness Wednesday is about my trip to Ecuador. Let me explain in a bit more detail how and why I decided to go to Ecuador. My brother-in-law, Daniel’s best friend, has been in the hospital for a month now. He had a heart attack and then a stroke. Daniel sent me a message asking me to pray for his friend Anival. I then sent this prayer request out to all those I know who could pray for him. Everyone started to pray for him, and I asked Daniel for an update. He said he was still in a coma and they were waiting for him to wake up so they could do the CT scan. However, they were decreasing the sedation, and he wasn’t waking up.
Then Daniel asked me for more prayers as they did the CT scan, and it said that there was more damage than they thought. It showed that he still had oxygen bubbles in his brain. When I got this text message from Daniel, I relayed it to all those who were praying for him, as I feel the more specific we can pray for someone, the better, as it shows all the more glory to God when he answers our specific prayers. Then I got another message from Daniel a week or so later, saying that Anival got worse and they need him to start breathing on his own so that he can start eating, as he is not getting enough nutrients.
When I got this message from Daniel, I also felt like I got a message from the Holy Spirit asking me to go to Ecuador to pray over Anibal in person. I thought this sounded a bit crazy, so I did what everyone should do when they feel like the Holy Spirit is telling them to do something that seems crazy. I discerned it with my spiritual director. I told her what I thought I heard, and I asked her to pray about it and see what the Holy Spirit says to her about it.
She said the first thing she heard was “go” and then she asked Him to confirm it for her. The way this usually happens for her is that she sees the word she heard other places throughout the day. In this instance, she saw what looked like “go” on two different license plates throughout her day. She felt that was the confirmation she was looking for. As I was walking into the prayer group on Thursday morning, I asked the Lord to let me hear something at the meeting that confirmed that He wanted me to go. I was surprised because I didn’t really hear anything during the meeting. Then, at the end, while we were cleaning up, one of our members, who just went to the national conference for Charismatic Catholics in the United States, said, “The main message of the entire conference was to Go Out. Don’t just stay in the comfort of praying within your prayer group, but be bold and go out into the world and pray with others.” I took this as the confirmation that I had asked the Lord for.
Now it was time to talk to my husband about it. It was not a good time for me to go to Ecuador, as he works for the government, so he is not getting a paycheck right now. Also, he was going out of the country to visit our son Noah since he is away in Scotland for school and happened to have a week off for his Birthday. Tony is not working and has a free travel credit. They were staying with a friend, so it would not be an expensive trip, and the timing was great for that trip. Another reason the timing wasn’t great for this call to go to Ecuador is that in order for me to go with my sister, Daniel, and their daughter, I would have to leave before Tony got back. This isn’t a big deal, as our kids at home are 17 and 21. They would be fine without us for a night, but it would have been better if we didn’t have to leave them alone for a night.
Anyway, I talked with Tony about the trip, and he wasn’t thrilled with the idea of me going, especially since he is not getting paid and we would both be out of the country at the same time. However, he didn’t say I couldn’t go, and I felt strongly that I was supposed to go, so I looked at getting a ticket. Before going to dinner, the tickets were $576. When I got home from dinner and tried to buy the ticket, it had gone up to $698. I went back and forth between Expedia and Travelocity, and I couldn’t find a ticket for less than $600 now. I sent my sister a message explaining that the tickets were too much, and so I didn’t think I could go. Then, I had a chat with God. I explained that there was no way I could spend $700 on a ticket when Tony wasn’t thrilled about me going in the first place. I told him that if he wanted me to go He was going to have to do something about these ticket prices. I switched back to Expedia one last night before giving up for the night, and there was one ticket for $540. Thank you, Jesus!! I bought it and was excited that I would be on my way to Ecuador in just one week.
There were lots of things that were trying to get in the way of my going on this trip, which is another way I knew I was supposed to go, and that God was going to move powerfully. Whenever we are about to do some amazing work for the Lord, the enemy tries to put up a million roadblocks. I fought through each one of them. I discerned them to make sure they weren’t legitimate reasons why I shouldn’t go, and ultimately decided it was ok if I went.
I got there last Friday night, and so it wasn’t until the next morning that we got to go to the hospital. They have a much different visitation schedule than we have in the States. They are only allowed to visit their loved ones for 15 minutes twice a day, and it can be only one person at a time. Also, sometimes they switch up the times. One day, we waited for over an hour and a half before I was able to go in and pray over him. The first day, we missed the visitation time as they did it early that day, around 11. However, they talked with the staff, and they allowed me to go in and pray for a few minutes. I wasn’t really sure what to say, but I just let him know that he was loved by the Lord, by Jesus, and by Mother Mary. I prayed commands over his body to be healed. I asked the Lord for a healing. I begged the Lord for a healing. I said all I could think to say.
Someone came and knocked on the door and told me my time was up. I went out into the hallway and waited with the family. Then the doctor came and talked with Daniel, Anival’s sister, and his daughter. They said there was an infection in his finger, and they needed to amputate the finger or it would spread to the other fingers. They also said most of the brain area was dead, so that he would never walk again. He would be paralyzed from the neck down. This, of course, made the family very upset. I sent out an updated prayer request, letting everyone know the new details.
After leaving the hospital on Saturday, I asked the Lord for a sign that He would heal Anival. I saw what appeared to be the shadow of a chalice with the Eucharist on it. I also saw a bumper sticker that said Nothing is impossible for God. Nada es imposible para Dios. I knew those were both signs from the Lord that He would work in this situation.
We weren’t in that town on Sunday, so the next time I could pray was Monday. We went on Monday morning and Monday evening. When we went in the morning, they talked to the doctor on call, and he said they do not need to amputate the finger. Thank you, Lord, prayers answered!! Daniel also asked if they could do another CT scan of the brain, as we saw Anibal cry and smile, and they hadn’t seen this. They said they would do another one.
I have not heard if they have done it yet or not, but the family was in a much better place on Monday than they were after the news on Saturday. I really felt as if Anibal could understand what I was saying on Monday, not as much on Saturday. Saturday, he did seem to smile and look at me a bit. However, on Monday, especially the second time, his face seemed to come alive. He had tears coming out of at least one eye when I told him how loved he was and that God was there with him. I told him he was never alone and no matter what, he could always talk to the Lord and ask for whatever he wanted. I told him God loves to do impossible things, so ask big! I explained it didn’t matter what he had done in the past; the second we tell God and ask for forgiveness, we are forgiven. I asked him to fight hard to stay with his family and he seemed to respond. I commanded his body to heal. I explained that God had asked me to come all the way from America to tell Anibal how much he is loved by God.
I got home late Tuesday night, and my brother-in-law, Daniel, checked in on Wednesday to see how I was doing. I told him that this is the part I have a hard time with; we all probably do. Now is the time to trust in the waiting. Now is the time to thank the Lord for the work we haven’t yet seen and to keep hoping that, in His time, He will heal Anival. I believe He will heal him. Around dinner time on Wednesday, Daniel sent me another text message that was like music to my ears. It said that I just got news and that Anibal woke up! He finally regained consciousness after over 30 days. He also said he responded to the order of the doctor when they said to open the mouth and other things with the face. Thank you, God! Thank you, Jesus! You are so good!!! Praise God!! When I checked in on Sunday, they said he is better. He is actually getting a bit anxious because he knows where he is, but doesn’t know what happened. This is good. Not that he is anxious, but that his brain is recognizing where he is and that it is thinking. They also said he is feeling more pain. Which again, we don’t want him to be in pain, but it could mean he is not paralyzed and his limbs are trying to respond.
Whatever all of that means, I believe Anibal will get to walk out of the hospital and be reunited with his family and dance with his daughter again someday. I am not a fan of waiting, but sometimes it is necessary, as God knows the best time to work His miracles. God is in all of this. That is something I know with my whole being. I am 100% sure God is in this, and I am so excited to see how it all unfolds.
Thank you, Lord! Thank you for calling me to go on this trip and for allowing me to be part of this miracle. Thank you for the amazing time I got to spend with family. I made some wonderful memories this weekend. Thank you for the miracles you are working in this situation. Thank you for the results of this next brain scan. Thank you for whatever progress in healing is made before the scan. If it's not all the way healed, Lord, please make sure they do another one. Lord, thank you for the full restoration of his mind and body. Thank you, Lord, all the Glory is yours!!
Don’t worry, I will keep you updated as I know so many of you are also praying for Anibal! We can all celebrate together when he gets to go home and resume his life again.
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Praise Series #13 Let’s Have A Conversation With Our Heavenly Father
Psalm 145:8 “The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.”
I heard this as the verse of the day on KLOVE radio, and I instantly knew it was one I wanted to talk about because I have been thinking a lot about God lately and who we think He is. I have heard several people say lately that they think of God as a task master in the sky who is watching us carefully and is just waiting for us to mess up so he can punish us. I can’t say that I ever thought of God in this way. However, I used to think I needed to do the right thing or say the right thing in order to make God happy, in order to earn his love or his approval. I can also see how one can look at God like He is up there waiting to judge us. I mean, we are taught to fear God, and yet I don’t think we are taught what that actually means. When it says we should fear God, it actually means to have reverence for God. Our fear of God is not negative but a positive attitude of reverence that helps us ascribe to God His due: Omnipotence, Sovereignty, and Supremacy.
I now think God is Love. I know God loves me. I know He delights in me and that He is pleased with me. I know I am His beloved daughter. I know I don’t have to do anything to earn these feelings; they are freely given. I know he is not up there waiting for me to mess up so that he can punish me, although he is waiting with open arms for me when I mess up so that I can come back to Him. When I try to think about how I know this, I am not too sure. When I was on the Big Life New Year’s Retreat, I was reading one of my journal entries to two of the ladies there, and I felt like the Holy Spirit said to me, “This is how you know. This is where your confidence in yourself and in my love for you comes from.” I took a minute to think about it, and I knew He was right. I mean, He is the Holy Spirit, so of course he was right. But I could see how He was right. I learned about writing letters to God in my journal and then asking Him to write back to me using my pen in 2019, when I was learning to be a life coach and a spiritual coach. I started doing this regularly sometime in 2020.
I was listening to the Bible in A Year Podcast, and Father Mike was talking about how if we want a more intimate relationship with God, we could start by speaking to Him more intimately. I don't know what he said exactly, but that is what I heard. I started writing in my journal as if it were a letter to God. I began addressing it, Dear Father, because Dad felt too informal, and I wanted to make sure I was being reverent. However, over the days to come, I experimented with other terms: Dad, Daddy, Papa. It felt strange at first, but the more I did it, the more comfortable I felt with it. I was growing closer to Him. I went back and looked in my journal. I am not sure which journal I used before this one, but his one starts May 1, 2020. I was writing pretty often during this time. That is probably because it was during COVID, and so the world kind of slowed down, and we had more time. The first time that I can see in this journal that I asked God to answer me through my pen was June 2, 2020. This is what I felt He said to me:
“Dear Holy One, I love you! I do not feel you lack trust. You are a good and faithful servant. Thank you for getting the prayer group online. I missed you, ladies, and the praise and worship. I am here for you, lean into me. I love you, my daughter. I love what you are becoming. I will mold you if you let me. Help the leaders of the prayer group, as the leaders are tired. You can bring new energy into the group. The workshop is a good idea.”
Can you see how hearing words like this from your heavenly Father would help you see that God is love? How would it help build your confidence and help you better understand who He is and who you are in His eyes? It is not always super positive. It is not as if the letters are always filled with compliments, and that is it. Sometimes we need correction and guidance, and sometimes we don’t want to hear that. However, when it comes from God, correction is given with love and grace. When you spend time listening to what God is actually saying, you realize He is not a mean task master waiting for us to screw up. He is a loving Father who wants to help and protect us. Here is an example from June 24, 2020. This is the second time in this journal that I have asked to hear from God. This is just a portion of what I felt He was saying:
“You will do a great many things. I will show you when you are ready. Stay the course. Your work pleases me. Your effort pleases me. Notice the good more in Tony. Point out the light you see. Live by “will this matter in 5 years?” Help bring more light into your family, not darkness. No sarcasm, no teasing, just building each other up. You are better than that. Be a good listener, put first things first. You are doing great, keep going. I love you, my daughter, and I am with you. I know your name. I love you.”
Again, can you see the love in His words? I know that not every word might be from God. Sometimes our own thoughts can get mixed in as well. However, I asked God to answer me, and when we ask God, He answers, so I trust most of this is from God. Another way you can tell when you are writing that the words are not primarily from you is that we are not this kind to ourselves. We are our own worst critics, and we don’t believe in ourselves as God does. We don’t say nice things to ourselves as God does.
God loves you, and He wants to tell you how much. We are just too busy to listen. I have found that sometimes, even when I do sit down and find quiet time to listen to God, I can’t hear anything. I think for me, this is because I get too much in my head. I tell myself I won't hear anything, or I question everything. This is why, for me, writing letters to and from God helps me listen to him better. When I am writing, I am not thinking too much. I am not questioning or overanalyzing. I am just writing down all that comes to mind. Sometimes it was a few things, and sometimes it was longer. There were times when we had a conversation back and forth. I would write something, then write what I felt God said in reply, then write again, and so on. It was amazing! Have you ever wanted to sit down and talk with God? A real back-and-forth conversation, you can. All you have to do is start it and then listen for God’s reply. If you are listening and can’t hear Him, try writing down what comes to mind. We don’t usually hear God’s voice as a loud booming voice from the sky. Usually, He sounds more like your own voice in your head. It is more like a thought than an audible voice.
Writing these letters to God and having Him write back has been amazing. I truly think it has helped to cement my knowledge of who I am in His eyes. I have less stress and anxiety because I don’t just think God is looking out for me, I know He is because He tells me often. I don’t just believe that God loves me, I know he does because He tells me often. I don’t wonder if He is proud of me or if I am doing a good job, I know I am because He tells me often. He is longing to tell you too. All you have to do is ask and then listen for His response. Give it a try, I know you will be blown away by the love He gives you. If you try it and nothing happens, please reach out to me. I would love to help you with this, as I know God is longing to talk to each one of us individually. He tells me often, and also tells us at the prayer group, that His people aren’t listening to Him. If you struggle to see God as a loving Father, start writing letters to Him and ask Him to reply. You will see just how much He loves you, and who couldn’t use more love in their life?
The reason I decided to include this in our praise series is that part of the reason it can be hard to praise the Lord is that we struggle believing that He is a loving Father. We struggle to believe He has our best interest at heart. However, when we are constantly hearing from the Lord, and we realize how intimately He knows us, then we might find it easier to praise Him. If you are struggling to see God as a loving Father, bring that struggle to Him. Talk to Him about it, and He will help you. He is a good good Father.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, I ask you to show each person listening who they are in your eyes. Thank you for all the times you have answered my letters, and I ask you to encourage others to write to you as well. Lord, I pray that each person listening begins to listen more to what you have to say. I pray that your words will fill their soul and they will see just how amazing you are. I pray they will know that you are not waiting for us to screw up so you can punish us, you are waiting to welcome us back with open arms. You are a good, good Father, and I pray that every person listening will be able to see that for themselves, not just take my word for it. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I. Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in July 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I enrobe you with My power, with My love, with My strength. You are my creation. You are the heart of My heart. Open yourselves up like the petals of a beautiful flower and receive all I have to give you.”
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Praising Through Hard Times
Matthew 10:29-31 “Are not two sparrows sold for a cent? And yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So do not fear; you are more valuable than many sparrows.”
It is essential to praise God in Hard times. I recall a time when I was going through a particularly challenging period, raising my boys, and in my marriage, and I found solace in praising God. It was a powerful reminder that my problems were not insurmountable and that God was with me. It is important to praise God even when we don’t feel we have any reason to. One of the most important reasons to praise God in a difficult situation is that it puts the focus back on God rather than on our problem.
One piece of advice I love is: “Instead of focusing on how big our problem is, we should focus on how big our God is.” I have never forgotten this, and it is so true. God is bigger than any problem we might be facing. There isn’t anything too big or too hard for Him. When we praise the Lord, we bring our focus back to Him.
Also, when we praise God, we are reminded of all the things He has done for us in the past. It reminds us that if He did it for us before, He would do it again. God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. (Hebrews 13:8) If we are in a difficult situation, we can look back to other times when we were struggling, and we can see how God helped us out of or through that situation. Sometimes God helps us out of a problem we are in. Sometimes, He helps us through the situation. What I mean is that he doesn’t remove us from the situation; he gives us all we need to get through it. He gives us the strength, perseverance, and peace to get through each day.
While studying about praise from my mentoring group, I read an article that mentioned something I hadn’t really thought of before. It said that praise reminds us that God is in control. While reading this article, I came across a line that made me laugh. The article said, "As I praise God during the difficult times, I am reminded that God is still in control. God is never surprised by the things that come into my life. God never says, “Wow, I didn’t see that coming. I hope Billy makes it through this.” This made me laugh because it is so true, yet we don’t really think about it. We can praise God in the difficult times because He knew we would be in this season of waiting. And because He knew we would be in it, He has a plan to get us either out of this season or through it.
It is funny to me that we would think we could ever catch the Lord off guard. It’s weird to think something could happen that He wouldn’t know about. Jesus says in Matthew 10:29-31 “Are not two sparrows sold for a cent? And yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So do not fear; you are more valuable than many sparrows.” God knows everything about you. He knows about your situation and what you are waiting for.
Praising the Lord during a hard season is telling Him that we trust Him and know He has a plan for us. Our job is to wait and to keep trusting that God is in control. It is hard for us to let God be in control. We want things done our way and in our time. I saw a video on Facebook the other day of a woman who was showing what it is like when we try to let God be in control. She was all excited and told Jesus to take the wheel. However, she wasn’t happy when He didn’t take the exit she wanted Him to take. She wasn’t pleased when he wasn’t driving as fast as she wanted him to. She tried to stop and pull over for a snack, but Jesus wanted to keep moving. Then she finally said, “I just thought that when I said Jesus take the wheel, we would take turns. You know, you would drive a little, I would drive a little. I thought this would be a little more collaborative.”
It is hard to let Jesus take the wheel. It is hard to let God be in control, but it is always worth it. Have you ever tried to take the wheel, tried to run things your own way, and then had it not turn out so good? Abraham and Sarah tried to take things into their own hands, and Sarah had Abraham sleep with her handmaid so they could have a baby. It worked, and then Sarah got jealous of her handmaid and sent her away. God told them He would give them a baby, but Sarah got tired of waiting. We get into trouble when we grow weary of waiting and take things into our own hands.
This is why praising can be so beneficial. While we are waiting, we praise God for all he has done in the past, all that He has planned for our future, and all that He is in control of, so that we don’t have to be. When we praise God, we keep ourselves busy, focused on God, and remind ourselves that God is in control.
The article I read had some practical suggestions for praising God in difficult times. Here they are:
It may not seem natural, and you may feel uncomfortable, but go ahead and praise God. Don’t fake it, be honest. God already knows your heart, so if you don’t feel like praising Him, tell Him, but praise Him anyway.
Verbalize your praise. Praise is meant to be heard. Don’t praise Him silently. Praise Him openly and verbally. There is something powerful about hearing our own voice praise and worship the Lord.
Use fear and worry as indicators of when to praise the Lord. When fear and worry raise their ugly heads, use them as reminders to praise the Lord. Counter fear and worry, praise and worship.
Allow God to teach you as you walk through the situation. God never wastes any event in our lives; He wants to grow us to be more like Christ through every problem we face. As you praise Him, ask what you can learn from this experience.
Review God’s work in your life in the past and praise him for it. Part of praise is reviewing God’s faithfulness in the past. As you review His goodness and provision in the past, you will find new strength to face the problems of today.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each person listening to this episode. Lord, help us praise you. If we are uncomfortable praising you out loud, give us the courage to step outside our comfort zone and do it anyway. Lord, remind us that when we start to be filled with fear and worry, we can use that as an indicator to begin to praise. Teach us how to praise you, Lord. Each one of us can praise you in a different way; put that on our hearts, Lord. Help us to praise you when times are hard, when times are good, all the time. Help us to develop a habit of praise so we are praising you regularly whether we feel, like it or not. Lord, we love you. We are so grateful for all you have done for us, and praising you is one small way we can show our appreciation. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. If you are enjoying this podcast, please consider rating it in whatever app you're listening to and leaving a review. The more ratings a podcast has, the more people will see it. Also, please consider sharing it with a friend or two. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in July 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “If today you hear Me call my children, if today you hear Me whisper your name, open yourselves up like the petals of beautiful flowers. Remember that they, in their beauty, are not arrayed in such beauty as I, your Father, your Savior, and your Spirit can bring to you.”
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Why Praise Is So Important
Psalm 103:22 “I will bless and praise the Lord with my whole heart! Let all his works throughout the earth, wherever his dominion stretches—let everything bless the Lord!”
My top 3 favorite topics to talk about are praise, forgiveness, and God’s love, not necessarily in that order. These are my favorites because I think they are some of the most important. God has really been showing me over the last few years how important praise is to Him. He often gives us a word of prophecy at our prayer group that talks about how much He loves that we come together to praise Him each week. Here is one example from June 2025: “Praise me with your whole heart and soul. I long to know you from the depths of your very being. Sing praises to me, for I am your God who loves you.”
He has also been telling me over the last few years that praise is a big part of the reason I have been able to grow in my faith so much and that I am able to trust so much. When I ask what I am doing differently, He tells me that I am praising more. I am praising God, not just when I feel like it, and not just when all things are going my way. I am praising God every single day, whether it is a good day or a bad day. I actually praise Him more on bad days sometimes because listening to praise music can help me change my mood.
If you have not discovered any really good praise music, go to Spotify and search through Christian music. My mentor, Pamela Crim, put together an awesome playlist called The Big Life Mornings playlist. It is a public playlist on Spotify, and if you type "Big Life Mornings" into the search, it will come up. I also have one called “Walk Boldly With Jesus Favorites,” which you can also find on Spotify. Some of my favorite artists, in case you are not into playlists, include for King and Country, Lauren Daigle, Elevation Worship, Phil Wickham, TobyMac, Cory Asbury, and so many more on that playlist. There are several reasons that I recommend you find some great Christian music that you like.
First, listening to Christian music has helped me learn even more about how much God loves me. I have included some of my favorite songs in various episodes over the years. However, if you have not heard the song Reckless Love by Cory Asbury, you are really missing out. If you do not use Spotify, you can check out YouTube as well. There is actually a playlist on my channel, “WalkBodlyWithJesus”, on YouTube called Prayer Group, and it is a great list of praise songs. It would be a great place to start. Whether you are on Spotify or YouTube, you can save songs to a playlist and listen to it whenever you need to.
Another reason I recommend you find some good Christian music is that it can change your mood or your focus. Anytime we are anxious, angry, scared, mad, frustrated, or any other feeling, it is because of the story we are telling ourselves. If we are anxious, we are probably focusing on what may or may not happen. If we are angry or frustrated, we might be looking at a situation we can’t change. Listening to this music can help shift our focus from our problems, our worries, and our situation to our God. There is a saying that says that instead of looking at how big our problems are, we can focus on how big our God is. Music can help us do this. If you are listening to songs about how God is a miracle worker and a way-maker, it shifts your focus and helps you praise God in tough times.
A third reason I recommend listening to praise music is that it fills your head with God. God will be on your mind more because the things you listen to become the thoughts in your head. Have you ever noticed that when you hang around someone a lot, you start to talk like them? This is because you spend so much time with them and constantly hear how they talk, so your brain picks it up. This can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on what they are saying. When I first learned this, I was discouraged because the people in my house, with whom I spent the most time, were very negative and used very bad language. I did not want to start talking like they did. I needed to figure out a way to surround myself with different voices. This is when I started listening to Christian podcasts and found more Christian music. Imagine if you were listening to songs each day that talk about how much God loves us, how much He forgives us, and who God is. If you are hearing this over and over again, these will be the thoughts that fill your mind, and these will be the thoughts that come to your mind in times of trouble.
I feel I could go on and on about why I love listening to praise music. However, I will end with this last point. Praising God helps us become more grateful people. I know sometimes it doesn’t feel like we have much reason to praise God. It is not as if my life has been perfect over the last few years; that is why I have been able to praise God. I have had some really difficult times over these past few years, actually over the past 20 years. There have been lots of ups and downs in my marriage and in my parenting. My kids have really struggled over the years, and there have been several times that I could have gotten really depressed and lost hope. However, I didn’t, and I truly believe it was because I have learned to praise God even in the hard times. I was able to do this because there are so many songs out there about people who have made it through really dark times, and God brought them through to the other side. I was able to do this because the thoughts in my mind from constantly listening to praise music are that God is there for me, He will always be there for me, and He can make a way where there is no way.
God is so good. He is there for us in good times and bad. There is always a reason to praise Him. When we are in a tough time and can’t find a reason, we can look back on all the times He has provided for us in the past. We can look forward to all the good things He will bring from this hard time. We can look at all the beauty around us and praise Him for that. You don’t have to praise God for your situation; you can praise Him for other things. If you want to, you can praise Him for the good that will come from your situation at a later date because we know God can use all things for our good. (Romans 8:28) I challenge all of you to begin to praise God more, and then let me know if you find that your trust in Him is also growing. I know it did for me, and I know I am not the only one. It can help you trust more, too. If you are in a season when praising God seems too difficult because of your circumstances, find some good Christian music to listen to and let it praise God for you while you listen. It will change your life, I am sure of it.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each person listening to this today. Lord, I ask that each person listen and find some music that praises you that they really like. There are so many different genres of Christian music out there, and I pray that each person who listens finds the ones that make their heart happy. Lord, I pray they find songs that fill their soul. I pray this music helps us to praise you when we don’t feel we can. I pray this music helps us to shift our focus from our problems to you and how big you are. Lord, help us to find that music that speaks to our hearts, minds, and souls. We want to praise you, Lord, please show us how. We love you, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in July 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Remember, remember to look up at his face, for He smiles down with great love and goodness on all of you.”
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Why Take The Longer Path?
Exodus 13:17-18 “When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them by way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near; for God said, “Lest the people repent when they see war, and return to Egypt.” But God led the people round by the way of the wilderness toward the Red Sea. And the sons of Israel went up out of the land of Egypt equipped for battle."
I was listening to a sermon on the Elevation podcast. The pastor of Elevation church, Steven Furtick, gave a great sermon called “This May Be Plan C.” When I heard him talking about one part in particular I felt like the Lord wanted me to share it with all of you. There were many things about the sermon that stood out to me but it was almost an hour long so I can’t go into all of it. However, I do recommend you check out the whole sermon as it was really good. I am just going to talk about the part that has to do with this verse.
Pastor Steven was talking about how God didn’t take the Israelites on the shortest path out of Egypt. The verse says, “When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them by way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near.” This makes us think that there was a way to the promised land that was shorter. And if God is explaining why He didn’t take them that way, then that leads us to believe that way would have made more sense. If we are taking the quickest, easiest way, we usually don’t explain why we are going that way. Everyone knows why. However, if we are taking an unexpected path, or one that is longer, we might explain why.
So, why did God take them on a longer path? The verse says, “Lest the people repent when they see war, and return to Egypt.” God knew the people were leaving Egypt but if they ran into trouble and had to fight their way out of Egypt, they might turn around and go back. Also, God knew that the Pharaoh was going to change his mind and come after them. God knew the way of the Philistines would lead them into a situation they were not ready for yet. He also knew what was coming after them and He knew that they would need the Red Sea.
I wonder if you have had a time, or maybe many times in your life when you felt like God took you on the round about way to get to where you were going? You feel like there must have been an easier and quicker way to get to where you ended up. What if we trusted that God knew what He was doing? What if we look back and try to see how God might have been protecting us from taking the easy or most quickest path because we might have encountered something we weren’t ready to encounter? What if God took us the way He took us because He knew we would need something from that journey or that other path.
Pastor Steven talked about how sometimes the problem we are trying to wish away is actually the answer to our prayer we have be asking from God. When the Israelites got the the Red Sea, I am sure they thought it was a problem. I am sure they saw the water on one side of them and heard the army coming up behind them and they questioned why God would lead them to this body of water when there were other paths they could have taken. I am sure they were wishing they were anywhere but in front of the Red Sea at that moment. Yet God used this perceived problem to answer their prayers. He parted that sea and allowed them to walk across it on dry ground. And then he used that water, the one they thought was a problem, to swallow up their enemy.
Do you have any problems in your life that might be the answer to your prayers? It may not look like it at first. You may just look at the problem and see it as a problem. However, what if you looked at it and explored how it might be an answer to your prayers? What if you look at the path that the Lord has taken you down and try to see why that path makes sense? Is there a reason God didn’t take you down the quickest easiest path? Is there something you needed to go through so that you could be the person He created you to be? Is there something you needed to survive so that you could show others they will survive it too? Was there something on that other path that the Lord knew you weren’t ready to face yet?
When I asked the Lord what He wanted me to teach today this is what I felt like I heard, “Teach them about how they may not be where they thought they would be. They may not have taken the path they thought they would have but if they keep walking with Me and trusting in Me then they will get there in the end. Show them I am walking with them and leading them. There is a reason I led them on the path they are on. I will help them get to where they are going. It’s never too late for Me to grant your heart’s desire. Don’t give up asking for what you truly want. I do hear you. I am working all things for your good.”
I know some of you are disappointed with the way things in life have turned out. I know some of you have been asking for some pretty big things for a long time. I know some of you really need a healing or some direction. I feel the Lord wants you to know it is coming. Your healing is coming. Your trip to Africa is coming. Your heart’s desires will be fulfilled. Yes, you might be on the long road to get here, but there is a reason for that. God is putting you on the road you need to be on. Trust in Him and keep walking with Him and He will lead you to where you want to go. I really feel like He wants me to emphasize that it is NEVER too late. Don’t give up. Don’t feel you are too old, too young, too sick, to inexperienced, to anything. It is NEVER to late for God to fulfill your dreams. Keep asking, keep walking with Him, He won’t let you down.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to the podcast today. Lord, please give us the strength to keep asking. Please help us never to give up. Please help us to walk the path you put us on, not the one we think we should be on. Please help us keep walking with you and trusting you. Please help us to trust even when we don’t understand. We love you Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with Your Will and in Jesus’s Holy Name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you still have some last-minute gifts to buy, why not get your loved ones a copy of my book? CLICK HERE to order an autographed copy. It could be a great way for them to start out the New Year, learning about how much God loves them and who He says they are. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in July 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Everything he has created is good in his sight. And his blessings and his mercies pour out each morning anew on every creature and part of his creation.”
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Witness Wednesday #187 Summoned to Pray
Today's witness is from Chicken Soup of the Soul, A Book of Miracles by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hanson, and Leanne Thieman. The title of this story is Summoned to Pray.
Matthew 11:28 “Therefore, I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it and it will be yours.”
“Honey, I'll leave as soon as duty is over. That should be right after midnight,” my new husband promised. I hung up the phone, a newlywed anxiously anticipating our every other weekend reunion. At that moment, I questioned the sanity of our decision to spend our first year of marriage apart as I completed my teaching degree at UT Arlington, and he completed his last year of service at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.
I straightened up our tiny one-bedroom apartment, then went to bed to await his arrival. In spite of my anxiety, I still managed to fall asleep, dreaming about our weekend together. Suddenly, I was awakened from my sound sleep with a summons to pray, as real as if it had just been delivered by a mailman.
It was accompanied by an urgent knowledge of what to pray for. My husband's immediate safety. I thought back to another instance just the year before, when I had felt an urgent need to pray for Jim in Vietnam.
Later, I received a letter he wrote, telling me about a late-night trip back from taking a shower when he nearly stepped on a bush viper. Miraculously, he had seen it just in time. He was not wearing his glasses at the time, and the only light was from a friend's tent where a prohibited candle burned.
I wrote back telling him about my urgency to pray for him on that very same night. We both knew it was the Lord's doing. So now, I fell out of bed on my knees. I cried as I prayed to the Lord. Then, as quickly as the summons had come, it was gone. My tears dried, and I fell back asleep, remarkably peaceful despite the traumatic awakening.The last thing I remembered was glancing at the clock on the nightstand. It was 2.50 a.m.
There was a knock at the door. I sat up in bed and looked at the clock again, 6 a.m. I thought to myself, Jim must not have been able to leave when he originally planned. Then I remembered the urgent call to prayer. I rushed to the door, opened it, and there stood my young husband, a bit disheveled, his right eye covered with a black patch.
He quickly answered my questions. A car going only 30 miles per hour, with no lights, pulled out of a bar onto the highway just outside Fort Worth. My husband was driving 70 miles an hour on the highway, and there was a collision. Our new car was totaled. The officer at the scene said the other man had been drinking. The only injury was broken glass in one eye.
For some reason, I felt that I needed to buckle my seatbelt right before getting to Fort Worth, Jim said. He'd never done that before. Back then, in 1969, there were no seatbelt laws. Thank God I gasped, hugged him tighter. What time did this happen? I'd just checked the time. It was 2:50 A. M. By: Sharon L. Patterson.
I thought this was a really good Witness Wednesday for today because I know a lot of you get woken up in the middle of the night, and you're not sure why, and you're not sure what to do. So I just wanted to share this with you and to tell you if you do get woken up in the middle of the night, ask the Lord if there's something specific or someone specific He wants you to pray for. Your prayers could make all the difference in the world. And thank you to Sharon for sharing this story in the book so that we can all learn from it.
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Are We Underestimating Praise?
2 Chronicles 20:21-22 "After consulting the people, Jehoshaphat appointed men to sing to the Lord and to praise him for the splendor of his holiness as they went out at the head of the army, saying: “Give thanks to the Lord, for his love endures forever.”As they began to sing and praise, the Lord set ambushes against the men of Ammon and Moab and Mount Seir who were invading Judah, and they were defeated.”
In this chapter of Chronicles, God’s people have armies coming to attack them from three different places. Things were not looking good. Then the Spirit of the Lord came upon Jahaziel, son of Zechariah, as he stood in the assembly. He told the king and all the people of Judah that they shouldn’t be afraid because this was not their fight. It was God’s fight. He told them to march down against the invading armies, but that they would not have to fight the battle. This is where the verse picks up. “After consulting the people, Jehoshaphat appointed men to sing to the Lord and to praise him for the splendor of his holiness as they went out at the head of the army, saying: 'Give thanks to the Lord, for his love endures forever.”
Jehoshaphat and his army were headed into what seemed like a hopeless battle. There were three different armies waiting to destroy them and take their land. You would think they would have the soldiers lead them in this battle. Even if they trusted God, you would think that just to be on the safe side, you would have the soldiers go first. However, King Jehoshaphat appointed men to sing to the Lord and to praise Him for the splendor of his holiness as they went out to face the armies. “As they began to sing and praise, the Lord set ambushes against the men of Ammon and Moab and Mount Seir who were invading Judah, and they were defeated.”
Did you catch that last part? It doesn’t say that once they started fighting, the Lord gave them victory. It doesn’t say their enemy was defeated by their mighty hand. It says that as they began to sing and praise, the Lord set ambushes against their enemy, and they were defeated. They didn’t even have to fight a single person. They didn’t have to lift their hands at all in this fight. They just needed to lift up their voices. Do you have enemies that you need to defeat? Are you praising God now while you are in the middle of it, or are you waiting until you get out of it?
Sometimes we are trying to fight our enemies on our own. We know we need God, and yet we ask Him for so much that we feel we should try to do this one on our own. Yet, instead of leading with praise, we lead with anger, frustration, sadness, jealousy, and whatever other emotions we are feeling at the moment. Can you think of a time when you have charged into a situation with your emotions leading the way? How did that work out for you? For me, it never works out. When I go into a situation on my own without inviting the Lord to come with me, it never works out as I intended it to. However, when I do think to praise the Lord while I am in the middle of a difficult situation, it always turns out well.
There are times when we think God has abandoned us. We are praying and it does not seem like He is with us. Maybe we are the ones who have abandoned God. We may be praying, but are we praying with a hopeful heart? Are we trusting God will come through for us when we pray? Are we praising God for all He does for us? God is working in our lives every single day. Are we praising Him for that? I talk a lot about gratitude because I think it is so important to go through life being grateful for what we have. I think when we are grateful for what we have, God blesses us with more. Being grateful is also a great way to shift our mood if we are feeling sad or having a bad day. Sometimes, all it takes is a perspective switch, and we can turn our whole day around.
Praise is different from gratitude. Sometimes, we can be praising God for what we have and what He has done for us, and yet praise is so much more than that. We can also praise God for who He is. Sometimes we are in a situation where we may not want to or be able to praise God for the situation. For instance, in this verse God’s people were not praising God for the situation they were in. They were not grateful they had three armies coming after them. They were praising God for “the splendor of His Holiness.” They were praising God for who He is. He is the Fountain of Life. He is the great “I AM.” He is the Just One, and He is the King of kings. He is the Lord of Lords, and He is the Light of the world. He is the Lord our God. He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
How often are you praising God for simply being God? How often are you spending time in prayer thanking and praising God for being everything you need Him to be? Maybe the next time we are in a hard situation, instead of charging into the situation with our guns blazing, we can lead with our praise. Instead of leading with our anger, frustration, and sadness, we can lead with our praise. God is always there for us. Let’s be there for Him. Let’s give God the praise that He so rightly deserves. The thought just came to me that not everyone knows how to praise God. There is no specific way. I love to listen to praise and worship music, which is really any Christian music. I am also part of a prayer group, and we praise out loud to the Lord, thanking Him for all He has done and all He Is. I say phrases such as those listed above, things such as, you are the Light of the World, You are the Word made flesh, You are the King of the Kings. You can also think back to all you have and thank God for that one by one. You can thank God for everyone He has brought into your life. Praise is time spent with the Lord when you are either thanking Him for something or you are talking about all the reasons He is awesome!! I challenge you to find some time in your day-to-day and praise the Lord. You can do it silently within your own heart, or you can shout it from the rooftops and everything in between. Whatever you feel comfortable with. The more you praise the more comfortable it will feel to you. Also, the more you praise the more you will see God working in your life.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to praise you more. Put praise for you on our hearts so we long to do it. Give us a thirst for praising you Lord. It is so amazing how you defeated Judah’s enemy when they started to praise you. Lord, we have many enemies, and we need you to defeat them. Help us to praise you first instead of trying to fix it all our selves. We love you, Lord; you are so powerful. You give Light to our lamps. You straighten our crooked path. You are always by our side, and we are so grateful. I ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed weekend.
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in July 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “If you don't have the strength to stand firm, just desire it, and I will be firm in you. I desire you.”
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Praise Series #9 Praise & Thanksgiving
Psalm 145:1-3 “I will proclaim your greatness, my God and king; I will thank you forever and ever. Every day I will thank you; I will praise you forever and ever. The Lord is great and is to be highly praised; his greatness is beyond understanding.”
I read this and thought it was a great verse for this series. I was talking to a friend on the phone, and she mentioned that she was talking to a family member and they had a great discussion on gratitude. She said they talked about being thankful for this day, the sun, and all the little things. She was explaining to him how important gratitude is.
I was talking with another friend after mass, and she also happened to mention gratitude. She suggested picking one night of the week and having the kids think of at least one thing they can be thankful for and then talking about how important gratitude is. There are so many benefits to gratitude and no downside. One benefit of gratitude is that it can help you shift your mood. You can take any circumstance that you are in and find something in that moment to be grateful for. No matter how bad the situation is, if you can find something to be grateful for, then it will help shift your mood.
For example, if you have lost a loved one recently, you can be grateful that you had that loved one to lose; some people don’t. If you broke your arm, you can be thankful that you still have your arm, or that it will heal eventually. Some people lose their arms and have to figure out how to live life without them. Although even in that circumstance, you can be grateful that you didn’t lose more than your arm, or you can be grateful that although you lost your arm, at least you didn’t lose your life. These are examples of how you can find something to be grateful for in any situation, even the bad ones.
However, what about the good times? It is important to be grateful in the good times as well. Sometimes, when things are going well, we don’t take the time to stop and be grateful for it. Why is this? Is it that we are just too busy? Is it that we don’t think of it? Is it because we don’t want to jinx it? I’m not sure why we don’t do this more. Maybe it is a combination of all those reasons. The reason why isn’t really important. What is important is that we start doing it now. If we want God to trust us with more, then we need to show him that we appreciate what we already have. What can you be thankful for today? Can you pause this episode and list five things that you are grateful for today? They don’t have to be big things; it could be as simple as the changing of the leaves or the snow falling. I find myself so much more grateful this time of year. I drive around in awe of God’s magnificent beauty, and it makes me so grateful to be alive. What makes you smile, brings you joy, and makes you grateful to be alive? Have you thanked the good Lord above for it yet? Why not? You wouldn’t have it without Him.
“I will proclaim your greatness, my God and king; I will thank you forever and ever. Every day I will thank you; I will praise you forever and ever. The Lord is great and is to be highly praised; his greatness is beyond understanding.” I just talked about gratitude and how we should be grateful to God for all that we have. Now, I want to talk about praise. This is why I read the verse to you again. It is so beautiful. I will proclaim your greatness, my God and king, I will thank you forever and ever. Do you see how the two sentiments go together so nicely in this verse? First is the praise, talking about how great the Lord is. Then it ends with I will thank you forever and ever. The author is taking time to stop and thank the Lord for all that He has done for him.
Then it says, Every day I will thank you; I will praise you forever and ever. Do you see how both of these things are so important to the Lord? He wants us to thank Him every single day and also praise Him forever. Praising the Lord can be something else that we forget to do. We don’t usually forget to pray to the Lord when we need something; however, praising him is not something that we think to do. What if you started adding praise into your prayers? What if, at the same time as you are asking God for something, you were also telling Him how great He is? For instance, “Dear Lord, I ask that you be with my son as he has a contest at school today. Please help him to be calm and remember what he has learned. Please help him to be gracious, whether he wins or not. Lord, you are truly amazing. You do so much for us, and we are so very thankful. I love you, Lord, and I ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Did you see how easy it is to praise the Lord? It could be as simple as adding a line or two to the prayers you are already saying. Another time we seem to forget to praise the Lord is after He has answered our prayers. This may sound strange, as you would think the first thing we would do when our prayers are answered is thank the Lord. However, sometimes, we don’t realize our prayers have been answered. Sometimes we see good things happen and think we are lucky. Or we know something great happened, but we don’t remember that just so happens to be the exact thing that we were praying for. It is not that we are trying to forget about God; we just don’t see the miracle He gave us.
I have been noticing God’s miracles much more often ever since I started writing down my prayers. I have been making a conscious effort to write down the things I am asking God for and those that others ask me to pray for. I write them down in a notebook, and then I leave space underneath so I can go back and write notes when they have been answered. Here are a few answered prayers:
My friend's eye was healed!
A young severely depressed girl found a treatment center after being told all the beds were filled.
My friend is raising more than $20,000 for her mission cause in Haiti.
A woman who was losing hope that her baby would ever get to come home, as he was in the hospital for over a year, got to take her baby home.
Someone else’s toe was healed.
A woman who had several miscarriages was finally able to get pregnant again and have a healthy pregnancy.
A friend who was really ill with COVID and then had a blood clot and was in the ICU for a while is now home with his family.
A church was starting a new UNBOUND ministry and wanted prayers for its success. Their first session was awesome.
A friend had to have eye surgery and was very anxious. She had a very successful surgery and was able to sleep through it all.
A friend’s brother needed to find a new residential facility. He was living on the other side of the state, and it was hard for my friend to get to see him. Now he is living just minutes away.
God is so good! He is there answering our prayers. If you can’t see how God is working in your lives, then may I suggest you start writing down your prayers? Keep a list of all the things you have asked God for, and periodically review it to see if any have been answered. It’s not really if they have been answered as much as it is noticing when they are answered. Because God tells us, “Ask and it will be given to you.” He does answer our prayers; we just need to pay attention. I believe the more you can praise the Lord and thank the Lord, the more you will be aware of His presence in your life. I don’t think that if you praise and thank the Lord, He will show up more; He is already showing up. I just think if you are praising Him and thanking Him, you will see it more. Will you take the time to notice Him?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to praise you and thank you. We repent for all the times that you answered our prayers, and we did not thank you or praise you. Lord, we are sorry for all the times that you answered our prayers, and we didn’t even recognize that you answered them. Lord, help us notice this more. You are so great, and you always answer our prayers, help us to see this every time, Lord. We love you so much, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in July 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “When My love covers you, you know you are covered. You feel My presence, but when you fall, and you think you have messed up, you think that My love is gone. No, My love is more, so get up and start again, for I never cease to teach and I never fail to love. Stand firm even if you fall. Stand firm.”
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Praise The Lord, Both Now And Forevermore
Psalm 113:1-2 "Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord, you his servants; praise the name of the Lord. Let the name of the Lord be praised, both now and forevermore.”
This verse was given at the prayer group last week, and when I first looked it up, I was hesitant. I had a little conversation with God about how I have already talked about praise a lot and that maybe I should use a different scripture. I still think it is so crazy how I always try to talk to God about how my ideas might be better than His, or try to tell him something like He doesn’t already know everything. Anyway, while I was trying to convince God about how I wasn’t sure praise was the topic I should talk about today, he reminded me of what I learned while listening to Father Mike’s Catechism in a Year podcast.
This podcast is so great. I know I have talked to several of you who started it and couldn’t really get into it, and so you stopped. I just want to say that I get it. It was not super interesting like the Bible in a year was when it first started. Now, I love it. I thought it was going to be just a litany of rules that I didn’t really want to listen to, but that I would because I want to be able to defend my faith to others, especially my loved ones, and also because I truly want to know why Catholic’s believe what we believe. I was so wrong. It is not at all a litany of rules. It is an explanation of so much. It talks about who God is, who Jesus is, who the Holy Spirit is, and who they are in relationship to one another. That part was beautiful. Recently, we have been talking about the mass and why, where, when, and how we meet. I had no idea about most of the stuff he was talking about. It helps me to see the mass in a whole new light. A much-needed new light.
I have always liked being Catholic. I mean, I didn’t always love going to mass every single week, even when on vacation. I didn’t love getting picked up early from a friend’s house so I could go to mass. However, I did like the mass. I like how I know what to expect; I like how every mass is the same all over the world. I love that we have the body and blood of Jesus at Mass. I love all the prayers and sacraments. I love being Catholic, and yet after listening to the Catechism for a year, I am falling even more in love with our faith. It is not just about our faith, either; it is about so many things. I thought it would be a bit like the 10 commandments, a list of what we can do and what we can’t do. However, it explains in so much detail not only what we believe, but why we believe it, and where in the Bible you can find reference to it. It has been amazing.
This week was about the mass, and it was talking about praise, specifically praise music. The church says that out of all of the art, out of all of the things that can help us pray well, singing and music are of inestimable value, greater than that of any other art. That is from CCC #1156. The reason music and praise songs are so important is that they combine sacred music and words. Many praise songs use words right out of the Bible. I remember when I first noticed this, I was so excited. After I went to a retreat with the Military Council of Catholic Women, I picked up a CD of Anne Trufant's music. I had no idea that Christian music was a thing. I mean, I knew we sang songs at church, but I didn’t know there was a Christian artist in all genres of music. It was the greatest discovery ever! While I was listening to this music all the time and starting to learn the words, I would then begin to see or hear the words when I was reading or listening to the Bible, or when I was in church.
Over the last few years, when I talk with God about the growth in my prayer life, the deepening trust I have in Him and His plan, and the calm I am able to have in the storm, He repeatedly tells me it is due to my praise. I truly feel praise can deepen our faith more than we know. The more we praise, the more we can see the amazing things God does for us, even in the hard times. When we are focused on praise, we are focused on finding the good, even in a bad situation.
Praise can be hard at times. There can be times when we feel as though we don’t have any reason to praise God. There can be times when it feels like everything is against us, and everything we try fails. When it is hard for us to praise, I think this is a sign that we need to praise all the more. The good thing about praising God is that you can do it through listening to music. You don’t even have to say anything if you don’t want to. You can let the words of the music just wash over you. The songwriters and singers of Christian music do such a good job of praising God. They have taken lyrics right from the Bible and put them to music. Not only is this good because we get to hear God’s words, but also because it helps us learn them.
Matt Maher took the Our Father prayer and made it into a song with a nice beat. He did this because one of his friends texted him one day and said that he thought it would be a great way for kids to learn the Our Father. Just picture kids hanging out and singing along to that song. I am betting more people have prayed the Our Father through singing that song than they did before. “He who sings,” said St. Augustine, “prays twice.” The holy Bishop of Hippo meant that singing adds to our praise and worship of God—that our voices are gifts, with which we can make music to the Lord.
Another thing praise is good for is to pull you out of a dry season of prayer or an attack of Spiritual Warfare. If you are trying to pray and yet nothing is coming, or if you are feeling oppressed by the enemy, put on some praise music. The enemies don’t understand why we praise God, especially when we are struggling. It confuses them, and they leave. If we can praise God when we are struggling to pray, we will be rewarded. We will see fruit from our praise.
I know I have said this before, but I will keep saying it because I know it is hard to hear. You can always praise God, even in tough times. You don’t have to praise Him for that hard time; you can praise Him for the small ways He is showing you He is there. For instance, a beautiful sunrise, a text from a concerned friend, a really great cup of coffee, a small step in the right direction. Whatever it is, no matter how small it is, just stop and praise God for it. I truly believe that things get better faster when we can praise God in the middle of the storm. Take a second and look at your life. Where could you add a little praise to it? Could you listen to praise music while you clean up, or while you drive? Could you spend 2 minutes while you drink your morning cup of coffee or tea and thank God for 3 things He did yesterday? Can you wake up and thank God for letting you wake up to a brand new day before your feet ever hit the floor? How can we praise God today? How can we add it to our daily routine?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to praise you, we want to thank you, please show us how. Lord, we are so grateful for all you do, and we are sorry if we haven’t said so lately. We are sorry if we let the overwhelming world and our situation prevent us from seeing your glory at times. We know you are amazing. We know you are the Lord of Lords and the King of Kings. You are the beginning and the end, and we are so grateful for you. We are grateful that you have chosen us to have a relationship with. We are grateful you redeemed us. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you would like an autographed copy of my book with a personal message just for you, CLICK HERE. If you get a message that says it is unavailable, that will go away as soon as you pick regular or personalized. Also, if you would like to receive my weekly newsletter, CLICK HERE. I look forward to bringing you a witness tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
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Praise Series #7 Great Is The Lord, and Greatly to Be Praised
Psalm 145:1-3 “I will extol you, my God and King, and bless your name forever and ever. Every day I will bless you, and praise your name forever and ever. Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised; his greatness is unsearchable.”
This is a great verse. I think if you know me at all by now, you know that I love to praise the Lord. I think He is truly amazing, and I think it is so important to tell Him that. Our Lord does so much for us every day. He gives us so much mercy and so much grace. He forgives us again and again, even though we don’t really deserve it. His love is unconditional and unending. How many people can you say that about? He performs miracles for us, just to make us happy. He doesn’t need anything from us in return. Again, how many people can you say that about? How many people do you know who will do things for you without expecting anything in return? I hope you do know at least one, because there are people out there like that, but they are certainly not the majority.
This is why I love praising the Lord so much. There is little that we can give God to repay Him. There is nothing He needs from us. He is complete and totally perfect just as He is. Even though He doesn’t need anything from us, He does like it when we praise Him. Praising the Lord is something that costs us nothing but our time and is easy to do. Once you start to incorporate praising the Lord into your daily routine, you will wonder why you weren’t always doing it. It feels so good to say thank you to God for all that He does for us. The more you praise Him, the more you realize how amazing He truly is.
When I attended a Life in the Spirit seminar, they gave us praise sheets so that we could participate in the praise part of the meetings. You do not need a praise sheet to praise the Lord. There is no right or wrong way to do it. However, if you are new to praising the Lord, it may feel intimidating, especially if you are in a room full of people who have been doing it for a long time. If this is your first time intentionally praising the Lord, it may feel strange. That’s normal, just keep doing it. If you are like me and most people who have never really spent time praising the Lord before, you are not really sure what to say. I understand this. I had no idea what to say at first, and even though I have been doing it at least every Thursday for the last 3 years or so, I still use the praise sheet. I like the things that are written on the sheet. I do praise on my own, with my own words at home sometimes, but I really like using the sheet.
Here are some of the things that are on the praise sheet I was given.
Praise you our Lord and our God, Praise your holy name, we rejoice in your presence oh Lord, Jesus you are my strength, Jesus you are my rock, Jesus you are my fortress, Jesus you are my deliver, Jesus you are my refuge, Jesus you are my shield, Jesus you are my strong hold, Jesus you are my salvation, Jesus you are my healer, Jesus you are my teacher, Jesus you are my savior, Jesus you are my advocate, Jesus you are the great amen, Jesus you are the author of life, Jesus you are the beginning in the end, Jesus you are the blessed and only ruler, Jesus you are the breath of life, Jesus you are the captain of salvation, Jesus you are the good shepherd, Jesus you are the healer, Jesus you are hope and glory.
You are the Messiah, you are the fountain of life, you are the vine keep us attached to you Lord, you are the holy one of Israel, you are the Christ, the power and wisdom of God, you are the Lamb who was slain you are the word made flesh, you are the holy one who sits up on the throne, you are the living word, you are Emmanuel, you are the son of God, you set my feet are dancing, you are truth, you are loved, you are power, you are wisdom, you are the faithful one, you are our redeemer, you are the great “I AM” The list goes on, but those are several examples of the kinds of things you would find on a praise sheet.
There is a great little book called “Opening The Gates of Praise” by Father John M. Capuci. The reason I say little book is because it is just 38 pages long. However, in this book, Father talks about five things. First, why do we praise? Second, what are our obstacles to praise? Third, ways to praise. Fourth, how to develop a spirit of praise. Fifth, He takes you through the steps so you can write out your own string of praise. This was a great book for explaining praise.
In this book, Father has 10 great reasons why we should praise God. I am not going to read them all to you, as it is not my book; it is his. I will list a few that you may find surprising. One that I didn’t know is that praise breaks down the walls that are barriers to God’s grace. Father Capuci says, “When we praise, the walls of arrogance, self-hatred, and low self-esteem begin to be broken down. God begins the healing process in us as we go before Him, praising His most awesome power!” Another reason we should praise God is that praise allows us the freedom to be ourselves before God and the community. Father Capuci says, “When we can praise God for an extended time, on a regular basis, areas of being overly concerned with how people will look at us begin to be healed. When a person can praise God out loud, in the midst of the community, we can be assured that healing of self-image is taking place. The last reason I will touch on is that praise breaks down negativity in our lives. Who couldn’t use a little less of that right now? There is so much negativity everywhere we look. If praise can break that down, I say it is worth it. Father Capuci says, “There is no such thing as a negative personality. Instead, many people struggle with the temptation to fall into negativity. What happens is this: it becomes increasingly difficult to see God’s goodness and action in our lives or even around us. So, we begin to develop a spirit of negativity. Praise binds the spirit of negativity, setting us free from its hold. The more we praise the Lord, the more we will see the effects of negativity lose its grasp, and we will move toward the power of the Holy Spirit.
I don’t want to relay everything in this book to you, as it is not my information to share. I would highly recommend you get a copy of this book if you can. If you would like a copy, I will put the info from the back of the book in the show notes. I do want to go over quickly the four different types of praise that Father Capuci talks about. First, praise God for being God. An example of this type of praise would be the phrases I mentioned earlier from the praise sheets. The second type of praise is praise God for your history, for example, your faith, family, being born, your faculties, and your life. The third type of praise is praise God for your present, your here and now. What is God doing right now in your life? Did He help you find your keys? Did you give yourself a nice sunny day, a green light? What can you praise God for right now in the moment? The fourth type of praise is praise, God for what the Spirit is doing right now, for instance, healing a headache, a sore shoulder, an outpouring of the Spirit, receiving new gifts, or perhaps healing your self-image. Is there anything the Spirit is doing within you right now that you can praise? Father Capuci talks about how if you string these four categories together, then you have a “string of praise.” He encourages us each to sit down and write down at least five things in each category and then start to use this list to praise God more often. If you would like the praise sheets that I was talking about earlier, just send me an email at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com, and I will send you a copy.
I would be remiss if I didn’t also mention my favorite way to praise, which is to listen to praise and worship music. If you are listening to this podcast and you have a smartphone or a computer, I recommend you go to an app or website called Spotify. It is free to make an account, and you can listen to all the Christian music you want for free. It is a great way to try out a bunch of different artists and see who you like. You could do the same thing on YouTube if you like that better. Listening to praise music can lift your spirits instantly. There is a playlist on Spotify that was created by my mentor called “Big Life Mornings,” and it is a great compilation of upbeat Christian songs. I have discovered so many new great songs. Maybe give it a try? What have you got to lose?
Dear Heavenly Father, please bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you, and we want to praise you. Please show us how. Please put this upon our hearts, and if we are not already praising you, help us to start. Help us start. Give us the courage to praise you silently and also out loud. Help us to push through the feelings of awkwardness until we get comfortable praising you, Lord. You are so amazing, you do so much for us and expect nothing in return. Help us to do this for you with no expectations. Lord, we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus' holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Thank you for continuing to show up and listen. Thank you to all of you who have given me your feedback. I really appreciate it. If you are able to go to the rate this podcast, that would be great to help others see it more. Also, if you have a friend or loved one you could share it with, that would be great too. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in July 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Enter my children, enter into the secret place. The secret place of the Most High is where you hear My heartbeat under My feathers. Be still and know that I am God, I am Your God.”
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Today I have two witnesses or you. One is from a friend of mine that recently went on a vacation to see her daughter and she shares how the Lord was with her the whole time. The second one is from Matthew West’s website, called popwe.org. If you don’t know who Matthew West is, he is a singer, songwriter, and storyteller. This website is for the non-profit that he has with his father, a pastor. Matthew and his father encourage people to share their stories. They have various categories of stories. Today, I chose one testimony from the Anxiety/Depression Category. I know so many people who are struggling with anxiety and depression right now. Suicide seems to be increasing as well. Often, we can hear our own story in someone else’s story. When we listen to others tell their story, it helps us see that we are not alone. When we hear how God worked in their situation, it gives us hope that He will work in ours, too! I pray that when you hear these testimonies, you get the faith and hope to believe that miracles can happen in your situation, too. I pray you know that God is there with you, and if you invite Him into your anxiety and depression, He can help.
First up, my friend from the prayer group.. She realized once she got to FL that she had lost her passport. She didn’t really have any other current form of ID, and so she had no idea how she would get on her plane back to MA. This is the message she wrote after she got back from her trip.
I want to thank everyone who prayed for me during my trip to Florida. God showed me that He was God and that He was taking care of me. I was not supposed to board the plane without my passport, but I did. My daughter Maria and I arrived early at the airport on Monday, 11/24/25. I had a late flight. The plane was supposed to arrive at Logan at midnight. We went directly to security. When I saw the security officer, I immediately asked the Holy Trinity to soften his heart. He took my expired license. He photographed me and then let me go. He asked Maria to obtain a pass so she could stay with me. JetBlue changed my flight to an earlier one and upgraded my seat to 6F. A male passenger helped me with my bags until the wheelchair assistant arrived to help me. He brought me directly to where my ride was parked.
The perfect moment arrived when I listened to my phone messages on my landline. I heard JetBlue say, "We have found your passport. Please call us at this number. I could hardly believe it. I had to set up a FedEx number so JetBlue could mail me back my passport. I received a phone call today regarding the tracking number. I should get my passport back this coming Monday. While I was in Florida, someone charged my credit card for an unauthorised transaction, but my bank caught it and prevented it from going through. They froze my card. I had to go to the bank yesterday to obtain another credit card. I can testify that the Lord is taking excellent care of me!
I was mostly sick throughout my trip, but I will always be grateful to God for showing me His love and care.
Brianna: From the age of 10, I was stuck with the label “child prodigy,” winning piano competitions, featured in local newspapers, and recognized as a passionate, fiery recitalist. Yet, even as a youth, I was severely depressed. I was insecure, seeking affection, and perpetually in pursuit of attaining “good enough.” Right before my 16th birthday, my world suddenly turned upside down. In an unexpected turn of events, I faced a close encounter with death, had my innocence taken, and watched helplessly as my mother’s health began to rapidly fail. Too ashamed to ask for help and blaming myself for the situation, I despairingly turned to self-harm, eating disorders, and eventually, planned my own suicide. One day, I heard the song ‘Broken Pieces’, and I found something onto which I could cling to – Truth, even when I could not feel it and it failed to make sense.
Through involvement with an organization called Csehy Summer School of Music, I came to personally know Christ. For the first time in my life, I experienced peace, hope, and true joy. Dedicating my life to God, I went back home with a different perspective. My life was still intense – balancing high school and conservatory studies, living between home and the hospital, while being a full-time caretaker for my undiagnosed mother. By the grace of God, I managed to graduate as Salutatorian and get accepted into music school. However, shortly before college began, my mother passed away.
I started my B.A. in piano at Charleston Southern University, using every spare moment to pour my heart out into the keys as a wordless prayer. Yet, a lingering pain in my right hand soon became constant. A few months after my mother’s funeral, I was diagnosed with severe damage in my right hand, incited by the physical strains from being a caretaker. The only option left was surgery, followed by excruciating therapy, without a guarantee of returning to the keys. My doctor strongly advised me to quit and choose a different career path. But I fought back.
Over the next several years, I fought through recovery from both surgical and emotional scars. I realized that though I had given my life to Christ, I hadn’t fully “surrendered” it. In those precious years of undergrad, I experienced the freedom found in surrendering to the grace of God, the beauty of vulnerability, and the power of learning to fly again.
Then, nearly four years to the day the doctor said it was over, I found myself sitting onstage, performing at Carnegie Hall. When I turned to the audience to see a standing ovation, I burst into tears, because I remembered the words, “With You I can attack a barrier, and with my God I can leap over a wall.”-Psalm 18:29
Today, despite the formalities infused in classical music, I get to use the concert stage as a platform to share my story and encourage others to seek help and experience the peace of God. I perform and travel internationally as a soloist and chamber musician, frequently being sought after to premiere avant-garde piano works, and I am actively involved in youth and collegiate ministry. Although healing is an ongoing process, by the hand of God’s work in my life, the label of “Victim” has been replaced with “Victorious,” “Hopeless” has been covered by “Confidence,” and what was “Impossible” is now a living, breathing, walking “Miracle.”
Thank you both for sharing your stories so that others might see how the Lord is working in their lives too!
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Praise Series #6 Praise the Lord
Psalm 117: “Praise the Lord, all you nations; extol him, all you peoples. For great is his love toward us, and the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever. Praise the Lord.”
Praising the Lord is so important. It is important not only when things are going well, but when things are not going so well. God can and will use all things for your good. It may feel impossible to see that when you are in it, but he will take what the devil means for harm and use it for good. I was going to say that praising God when things are going well is easy. But actually, that is not always true. A lot of times, when things are going well, we don’t think about God. We are busy just living our happy lives, and unless something comes into our lives to upset the good things we have going, we often don’t think of God.
I don’t think the problem is that we don’t want to thank God for all the good he has given us; I just think that it doesn’t occur to many of us. We think more of God when we need something. When things are bad, we are quick to blame God, or to ask Him why this is happening, but when things are good we don’t think to ask God why it’s happening. What did we do right to deserve all this happiness? Why did God allow the great things to happen? Those are not questions we usually ask Him. However, he is the first to be blamed when things go wrong. Why is that? Why do we give him none of the credit when things are going right and all of the blame when things go wrong? God is there in the good and in the bad. We would be nothing, have nothing, without him.
It would be so great if we could learn to praise in both good and bad situations. That probably sounds strange, praise Him in the bad situations? What am I supposed to say, thank you so much that my baby boy is sick? No, that is not what I am saying. You don’t have to thank him, but you can praise. You could say something like, “Lord, you are all-knowing, you are the great physician, and I know that you can heal my son. You are all-powerful, and your ways are better than my ways. I don’t know why this is all happening, and I know I may not understand this side of heaven. What I do know is that you love us and you want the best for us. We ask that you heal our son. We thank you so much for answering our prayers. As you have said in Matthew 7:7, “Ask, and it will be given, seek, and you will find, knock, and the door will be opened.” So, Lord God, we are grateful for your hearing our prayers and answering them. We thank you for the strength you have given us, the strength to get out of bed in the morning. We love you, Lord, and we praise you for being you.”
Do you see how there are ways to praise God even in an impossibly bad situation? There are plenty of bad things that happen. God does not want all these things to happen; they are not his perfect will. I don’t know why he allows bad things to happen. However, I believe, if we start praising God more in our own lives, then we will see fewer bad and more good things happen. If we can learn to praise God when we are struggling, and also remember to praise him and thank him when things are going well, I truly believe that is the way to a happier life.
I have been listening to Father Mike Schmitz read the Bible in a Year podcast. We have spent quite some time now listening to the story of King David. Actually, David was discussed long before he became king. When he was just a young boy, he took a slingshot and four flat stones and defeated the giant that no one else would go near. The whole army was afraid of the giant, Goliath, but David knew God could do anything, so he was not afraid. David had a complicated life. He did so much good, and yet, he also did some really terrible things.
One thing that David did really well was praising God. He thanked God when he was being blessed. He remembered to thank God when things were going well. He pointed out to all who would listen that God was the reason for his success. However, even when things were bad, he praised God. That doesn’t mean he didn’t question God. He definitely did that. He definitely asked why he had to go through things, why God was allowing them to happen, and how long the hard times would last. Then, after questioning, he usually ended up praising. The Psalms in the Bible are full of David’s praises and his questions to God. In one minute, David will be asking God how long he will have to endure this suffering, and then in the next verse, David will be praising God and thanking God for all that He has done to bless him and provide for him.
I think when we start praising God more, we start to see more good things happen. I believe this happens for two reasons. First, I think God blesses us more when we remember to take a minute to thank Him and praise Him for all He has given to us. Second, I think we see more because we are looking for the good. When we stop to praise God when something good happens, then we are taking the time to notice it. It is similar to when you start a gratitude practice. If you stop and take 10 minutes in the morning, or even just 2 minutes, and write down a few things you are grateful for, then you will start to notice more and more things you have to be grateful for. Is it because more great things are happening, or is it because you are noticing more good things?
Where you put your focus is so important. If you focus on all that is going wrong, you will start to see more bad things in your life. Where you are putting your focus is something that you have control over. There are plenty of things happening in our lives that we don’t have control over. However, the focus of your thoughts is not one of those things. If you do not believe what a difference this can make, I ask you to give it a try. For one week, try focusing on noticing the good things that are happening throughout your day. Try at the beginning or end of your day to write down 10 things that you can be grateful for or that you can praise God for. If you know you are going to have to come up with 10 things, then you will spend your day looking for good things. When you are on the lookout for good things, you will start to see them. Trust me. I will leave you with Psalm 118:1, “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever.”
Dear Heavenly Father, I thank you for all that you do for us. I ask that you show us how to praise you, Lord. I pray that we will remember to praise you in the good and the difficult times. I pray that we can all find something to be grateful for each and every day. Lord, I don’t know why bad things happen. I do know that you love us and work all things for our good. I know you are leading this journey and that we are just along for the ride. I ask that you lead our journey. Lord, I ask that you bless all those who are listening right now. Lord, I pray all of this in accordance with your holy will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much or joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Have a very blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in July 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “You are my children, and I love each and every one of you, and I meet you where you're at. So you can bring me your muck and mire, and your brambles. You can bring them to me, and I will fix them. I will heal them. I will lift you out of them. ”
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Praise Series - Praise Is The Way Out Of The Darkness
Psalm 150 “Praise the Lord! Praise God in his sanctuary; praise him in his mighty firmament! Praise him for his mighty deeds; praise him according to his exceeding greatness! Praise him with trumpet sound; praise him with lute and harp! Praise him with timbrel and dance; praise him with strings and pipe! Praise him with sounding cymbals; praise him with loud, clashing symbols! Let everything that breathes praise the Lord! Praise the Lord!”
There is so much power in praising God, and the enemy knows that. One day, I was talking with some of the ladies in my Encounter class about dryness in prayer and when we feel we are in the darkness. Have you ever felt like that? Have you ever felt like you are doing your part, praying to God, and yet you can’t feel Him, you can’t seem to find Him? Have you ever felt like He has abandoned you? You are not alone; this happens to everyone at some point. We had a speaker at our conference who said that when we feel like God is pulling away, that is not a bad thing; it is actually a good thing.
Damian Stayne said during his talk that when we feel like God is pulling away from us, He is actually just stretching our heart muscle. If we want to grow in our faith, in our trust, in our love of God, our heart muscles must grow too. God is helping it to do that by gently pulling away at times and then coming closer. During a discussion with my friends and classmates, we talked about what we do in the dark times. One woman said she just had a few days where she felt alone. In the previous days, she had felt very close to the Lord, and it felt amazing. Then she entered a few days where she couldn’t feel the Lord. She felt alone. She said she remembered hearing somewhere that when you are in the darkness, you should praise the Lord. She decided, even though she didn’t feel like it, she would praise the Lord, and in a few days, she came out of the darkness.
I may have mentioned this before, but in case you haven't heard it, Mother Teresa was known for her love of Jesus. She had a very personal, intimate encounter with Jesus on a train once, and it fortified her faith beyond words. She loved Him. When others met her, just by being around her, they came to love Jesus too. Her love for Jesus was overflowing. Mother Teresa also went through a dark time. She would go into prayer time, and she couldn’t pray; she didn’t feel God anywhere. There were times when she questioned if He existed. She knew He did, because she had seen Him, yet she didn’t feel as if He existed. This dark period for her wasn’t just a year or two; I believe it was more like 50 years. I saw one place online that said, “For nearly 50 years, Mother Teresa endured what the church calls a 'dark night of the soul' — a period of spiritual doubt, despair, and loneliness that many of the great mystics experienced, her namesake St. Therese of Lisieux included.”
Can you imagine that? Fifty years of spiritual doubt, despair, and loneliness, and those around her did not know. She did share this information with her spiritual director, but most of those around her would have said she was a happy person, so full of the Light of God. She smiled often and spread God’s joy to many others. It makes me sad to think she didn’t have that joy inside of her. I pray that none of you listening to this podcast have to endure 50 years of suffering as she did. You will probably have to endure some times of darkness, times when you feel lonely, you think God has abandoned you, and so on. When this happens, remember this episode and praise God through it.
I believe that praising God more is the answer to so many questions. It is the solution to so many of our problems. I was praying one time while I was out for a run, and I asked God to tell me what I was doing that was different than others. I asked Him to tell me why I was able to have such a deep trust in Him, and I really felt like He said it is because I praise Him so much. I love to listen to praise and worship music. Ever since I discovered Christian music, I have been in love with it and listen to it whenever I get the chance. Spending all this time praising God has definitely increased my faith. I have also had a practice of daily (or as close to daily as I can get) gratitude. This has really made a difference, too. I think both of these help train my mind and keep it focused on the things that are important. They keep pointing me back to Jesus.
If you find yourself enduring what the church calls the “Dark night of the soul,” try praising God through it. I don’t know a lot about the “Dark Night of the Soul,” but I don’t think it is typical for it to last as long as it did for Mother Teresa of Calcutta. I believe Damian said his lasted about 10 years. However, you can also have dark periods of isolation that last just a few days, as my friend had a few weeks ago. The timing of it all is up to God. God has a purpose for this period of isolation, and only He knows when it has done its job.
I don’t know that praising God while you are in the Darkness will get you out of the darkness any faster because God has His own timing. I do believe that it will help you endure the darkness better. I believe praising God is a great way to step outside your thoughts and focus on Him and all He has done for you.
I am going to read Psalm 150 to you again so you can hear the intensity with which the author of Psalm believes in praising the Lord. I think the words of the Psalm are the best words to leave you with today.“Praise the Lord! Praise God in his sanctuary; praise him in his mighty firmament! Praise him for his mighty deeds; praise him according to his exceeding greatness! Praise him with trumpet sound; praise him with lute and harp! Praise him with timbrel and dance; praise him with strings and pipe! Praise him with sounding cymbals; praise him with loud, clashing symbols! Let everything that breathes praise the Lord! Praise the Lord!”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to praise you and love you forever. Lord, we ask that you be with everyone, even those going through that dark night of the soul. I pray that you give them the strength they need to make it through to the other side. We know that on the other side of that darkness is light. We know it is not just light, but also growth and new treasures that you have for us on the other side. We thank you, Lord, you are truly remarkable. We know you never abandon us, and we love you for it! We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in July 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Resting is the word, from your worries, from your thoughts, from your concerns. Rest. All is well. Trust. Know that I am the Great I Am of all things. So rest.”
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Today’s Witness Wednesday has two stories I read on Facebook. They are stories of people giving of themselves when they didn’t need to. The first one starts with one young girl's selfless acts and ends with a whole lot of people. The next one is about a man who made a lot of mistakes and yet at the end of his life does something remarkable for a little girl he didn’t even know. I pray that when you hear them, you can see God moving in the world. I pray that when you hear them, you can see that yes, there are a lot of bad things going on in the world, but there is also a lot of good. We need to focus more on the good.
”My name's Walter. I'm 69. I'm the night custodian at Lincoln Middle School. Been mopping these halls for 11 years. Most folks don't even know my name. I'm just "the janitor guy' who empties trash and fixes broken lockers.
But I notice things. Like locker 247, every morning, I'd find food wrappers stuffed in the vents. Candy bars, chip bags, cracker boxes. At first, I thought it was just messy kids. Then I realized someone was hiding food.
One night, I stayed late. Around 8 p.m., I heard the side door creak. A girl, maybe 13, sneaked in with a backpack. Went straight to locker 247, stuffed it with grocery bags, then left quickly.
The next morning, the food was gone.
I didn't report it. Instead, I watched. For two weeks, the same pattern. She'd stock it at night. By morning, empty.
Finally, I left a note in the locker, "You're not in trouble. I just want to help. -Walter, the custodian."
The next night, she came to my supply closet. Terrified. "Please don't tell anyone," she begged. Her name was Sarah. She'd been sneaking food to three younger kids, brothers whose dad worked double shifts and forgot to buy groceries. "They're too embarrassed to ask anyone," she whispered. "So I use my lunch money and... borrow from my mom's pantry."
My heart shattered.
"What if," I said slowly, "locker 247 just... had food in it? And nobody asked questions?"
Her eyes went wide.
I started small. Spent $30 of my paycheck on peanut butter, bread, juice boxes. Left it in the locker overnight. By morning, gone. So I added more. Granola bars. Apples. Crackers.
Then something unexpected, I found money taped inside the locker door. $5 and a note, "I'm a teacher. I know what you're doing. Here's for more food."
Then $20 from someone else. "My kid graduated from Lincoln. This school saved him. Keep going."
Within a month, other staff knew. The nurse donated. The librarian brought canned soup. The gym teacher left his Costco card. "Buy in bulk," he said. "I'll cover it."
Locker 247 became legendary. But quiet. No announcements. No assemblies. Just... there. A place where hungry kids could take what they needed without shame.
Sarah graduated last year. Came back to see me during finals week. "Walter, I'm studying social work now," she said. "Because of you. You taught me something. Hunger hides in plain sight. But so does kindness."
She handed me a photo. Locker 247, but at a different school. Across town. "My college volunteer project," she smiled. "We're putting them everywhere."
I cried in my supply closet that night. Sixty-nine years old, crying over a locker.
Now? Seventeen schools in our county have them. They call it "The 247 Project." Stock the locker. Ask no questions. Feed the invisible kids.
I'm just a janitor. I mop floors and unclog toilets. But I learned this: Sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is notice. And then quietly make space for dignity.
So look around. At school, work, your neighborhood. Someone's hiding their hunger. Their struggle. Their shame.
Leave something behind. Food, money, hope.
Locker 247 isn't just metal and paint. It's proof that caring doesn't need permission. Just action.
And it starts with seeing what everyone else walks past."
Let this story reach more hearts....
Please follow us: Astonishing
By Mary Nelson
The Death Row Donor
At County General Hospital, 6-year-old Maya's kidneys were failing. Nine months on the transplant list, and her rare blood type meant no matches. Her tiny body was shutting down.
Two hundred miles away, Marcus—a number, not a name anymore—sat in a Death Row cell. Twenty years he'd been there, waiting for an execution date for a crime that destroyed lives, including his own.
In his cell, he kept one possession: a faded photo of his daughter, who died at six from sudden illness. That was 25 years ago, before everything fell apart.
When the prison chaplain mentioned a public plea for Maya's rare blood type, Marcus recognized it immediately—the same type he and his daughter shared. He volunteered for testing, knowing it wouldn't change his fate. The prison board suspected manipulation. The media called it a publicity stunt.
He was a perfect match.
After brutal legal battles, officials approved the donation as his "final act." Yesterday, handcuffed and flanked by guards in his green jumpsuit, they brought him to meet Maya before surgery.
The little girl, told only that this man was "her helper," looked up at him with those wide, trusting eyes. "I want to give him a hug," she whispered.
"Ma'am, that's not—" a guard started, hand moving toward his weapon.
But Maya, despite her weakness, slid off the bed and wrapped her arms around the kneeling inmate's neck.
Marcus, untouched by kindness for two decades, closed his eyes. His cuffed hands rose gently to hold her back.
"You don't gotta thank me, little one," he said, voice breaking. "Just get better, alright?”
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I hear people saying all the time that this world is a terrible place. There are terrible things happening in this world. There are also beautiful things happening. Let’s not overlook the good things, no matter how small they are. Let’s look for more stories like these and then let that be the stories we are spreading. Instead of giving in to the fear-mongering, let’s spread the good news. Will you join me with that today?
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Praise Series—God Provides In Mysterious Ways
Psalm 145:14-18 “The Lord upholds all who fall and lifts up all who are bowed down. The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food at the proper time. You open your hand and satisfy the desires of every living thing. The Lord is righteous in all his ways and faithful in all he does. The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth.”
There are so many good things in this passage. “The Lord lifts up all who are bowed down.” How often do we need the Lord to lift us? It is so great to know that the Lord lifts us when we pray to Him and ask Him to. When we are bowed down to the Lord, we are praying and worshipping Him. When we spend this time with Him, He can lift us. This verse helps us to see the power of praise. When we praise and worship the Lord, He lifts us to higher heights. I heard a saying once that I absolutely love and placed on the door in front of my treadmill. It says, If you complain, you remain. If you praise, you will be raised.
I have seen this time and time again. I have seen the difference between people who sit and complain about their circumstances and those who can be grateful. Those who spend all their time thinking about what they don’t have and those who focus on the little that they do have. We have a choice in every situation. Are we going to turn to the Lord? Are we going to ask Him and rely on Him for all that we need? Are we going to be grateful for what is going right or focus on all that is going wrong? I promise you, if you start to focus on the good. If you start to praise the Lord for what you do have, you will get more of it.
Next, the verse says, “The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food at the proper time.” This one is a hard one for many of us. We do not want to wait for the proper time. We want things to happen on our timeline, or maybe we think our timeline is the proper time. Then we struggle when God disagrees. My dad told me a story once that shows how God will give food to those who look to him at the proper time. My mom & dad have 11 children. They also had a friend who had several children, I think at least 7. This friend called up and asked my parents if they could watch their kids, as something important had come up. My parents said yes because they were always there for those in need. However, my parents had just been talking about how they had no idea how they were even going to feed their own children dinner that night, and now they had seven more mouths to feed. So, they did what they always did in these situations: they turned their eyes to God and asked Him to provide.
Shortly after their prayer, they received a knock at the door. It was a neighbor holding bags of groceries. It turns out the neighbor's father had to move in unexpectedly, and they needed to combine his father’s household with his. They had just gone grocery shopping, and so they did not have room in their cabinets for all the food from his Dad’s place. So, they asked my folks if they could use any of the food. My parents graciously accepted. When looking through the bags they notice that there was plenty of pasta. My parents prayed, “Lord, if we only had some meat, then we could serve spaghetti to all these kids.”
Guess what? There was another knock at the door. It was a different neighbor. He had a cooler full of meat. He said that he and his friend had been hunting and they had too much meat. He explained that he and his friend had already stuffed their fridge and freezer, and still they had no room for this leftover meat. Again, my parents graciously accepted. Then, when they looked in the cooler, there was ground meat for spaghetti. They were so thankful. This was not a one-time thing for my parents. My parents were faithful in their prayers, not just when they were in need, but even when things were going well. God was faithful in answering them. My parents did not have a lot, and yet I didn’t hear them complain a lot. My parents knew that God was their provider. They knew that all they had came from Him, so they praised Him and thanked Him for all He gave them.
Next, it says, “You open your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing.” This is another great verse. I believe that God puts our desires in our hearts. I am talking about our deep desires, not the desire to eat ice cream at midnight. The desires I am talking about are the desires to have a specific job, the desire to be married and have children, the desire to sing, or act, or whatever it is you feel you are called to do. As this verse states, God wants to satisfy the desires of every living thing. I know this can be hard to believe if you have a desire that you have been waiting for God to satisfy. Maybe you have been waiting for the right man/woman to come along so that you can be married and have children. I know it is hard when we want something, and we have to wait a very long time. Isaiah 55:9 says, “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
God has a plan for our lives, and it is better than our own. I know this can be frustrating because God does not always let us in on His plan for our lives. Sometimes we can be left wondering what His plan is and when we will understand it. If you have been thinking these things, I want you to know that you are not alone. Many of us do not understand God’s plan or why the things we have been praying for have not happened yet.
It's easy to lose hope when our prayers aren’t answered immediately. It can be frustrating when we pray for something and don’t seem to get any answers. I found this definition of hope online, and I really like it. In the Bible, hope is the confident expectation of what God has promised, and its strength is in His faithfulness. We know God is faithful to His children. We know He keeps His promises. Therefore, we can confidently expect that He will answer our prayers.
It says in Hebrews 13:8, ”Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today, and forever." Jesus has kept all of his promises in the bible. If He did it then, He will do it now. If you are getting frustrated waiting for your desires to be fulfilled, I ask that you turn to the scriptures and either use the ones in this episode or find other ones that show you how faithful your Heavenly Father is. He will come through. Please don’t give up asking for what you want. Saying that makes me think of the story in Luke 18:1-8 of the persistent widow. “Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. He said, “In a certain town, there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’ “For some time, he refused. But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care what people think, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually come and attack me!’”
And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”
Jesus told this parable to show his disciples that they should pray and not give up. If He was worried his disciples would stop praying and give up, and they lived with Him day and night for 3 years, then I think He will cut us some slack for wanting to give up. I am sure He gets how frustrating it is to wait for the Lord’s timing. If you are tempted to give up and stop praying for something that you genuinely desire, I ask you to pause and remember this woman in the parable. What if she had stopped bothering the judge? What if she had not kept going back? Would she have her justice? We never know when the answer is right around the corner. What if you pray for 3 years, then stop, and God wants to give it to you the next day? Don’t stop praying for your deepest desires. He gave you those desires, and he will bring them into being if you let Him.
We need to thank the Lord for fulfilling our desires even before we have proof that He is fulfilling them. Praising Him for things unseen shows the Lord that we trust Him to keep His promises to us just as He did to His people in the Bible. God did extraordinary things in Scripture, and He is still doing extraordinary things today. Are we going to be able to see those extraordinary things? Are we going to praise Him for those extraordinary things even before we see them? Are we going to trust that God keeps His promises and that if He has done it before, He will do it again? You get to choose how you respond.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all of those listening to this podcast today. Lord, we ask that you help us to praise you, even as we wait for answers. We ask that you fill us with hope for those desires that we've been praying for. Lord, we pray that you give us perseverance to keep praying even when there's no end in sight. Lord Jesus, we ask that you give us strength to keep praying when we don't have any answers. Give us strength when we're weak, and we don't think we can go on. Lord, we know that you are the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. We know that you've kept your promises in the past and you will continue to do so. Lord, we ask that you fortify our hope and faith in you. We ask that you increase our faith. Lord, if there is a desire that we have given up on that you want to give to us, we ask that you renew that desire in our hearts, Lord Jesus. We ask that you keep whispering it louder and louder until we can no longer ignore it. Lord, we thank you for fulfilling these desires, as we know you keep your promises, and so these desires will be fulfilled. We thank you for helping us stay persistent and for giving us the strength to keep asking. Lord, we thank you for listening to all of our prayers every time we ask. Lord, we love you so very much, and we ask all of this in accordance with Your Will and in Jesus ' Holy Name. Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I want to invite you all to sign up for my newsletter. It is just a once-a-week newsletter that has a brief teaching on the mentoring topic for the month, and then any news on my life and what is upcoming for the podcast or mentoring. I do have some very exciting news about the podcast that I will be sharing shortly. If you would like to sign up, you can CLICK HERE or head over to my website, findingtruenorthcoaching.com.
I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in July 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, I come to you as a gentle rain. I come to you as a torrential waterfall. I come to you at every moment of your life in the way you need me at that moment.”
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Praise Series- Praising in the Wait
Psalm 40:1 “I waited and waited and waited some more, patiently, knowing God would come through for me. Then, at last, he bent down and listened to my cry.”
My friend gave me this verse above, and I instantly loved it. I love that it captures our reality at times and also captures the love of the Father. Sometimes, we feel like we are asking and asking the Lord for something, and yet we wait and wait and see no answers to those prayers. Have you been in a season of waiting? Have you been asking the Lord for something, and yet you are still waiting for the answer to those prayers? This can be really hard. We pray to the Lord, and we want Him to help us right away, or at least I do. I really struggle at times with waiting to see the results of my prayers. This is especially true if I am praying over someone for healing.
I struggle because I know how powerful God is, and I know He can heal anyone at any time. I struggle because I don’t believe he wants to see anyone struggle, and yet He doesn’t heal everyone, and He definitely doesn’t heal everyone the second we pray for healing. So, we end up doing what this verse says: we wait, and we wait, and we wait. Sometimes we wait patiently, as this verse says, and sometimes, not so patiently. It all depends on our circumstances at the time. One thing I like about this verse is that it says I waited patiently because I knew God would come through for me. This is important for us all to remember. God will come through. It is also important to remember that His ways are not our ways, and His thoughts are not our thoughts.
If I can remember this, I could wait more patiently. I need to remember that God knows what He is doing and that His plan is better than my plan. He is the creator of the Universe; of course, His plan is better than my plan. If he is not healing someone right away, there is a reason for it. I don’t have to know that reason, I just have to know that He has one.
One way to remind myself that God has a plan and to trust that God will come through is to think back to all the times He has come through in the past. When did the Lord come through for you? When in the past did you wait on the Lord, and then he answered your prayers? I know for me, He has always come through, and sometimes I ask for some pretty big things. When I asked the Lord to heal my niece and let her live, He did, and we didn’t even have to wait very long. Well, I am sure it felt like a long four months in the hospital before she could come home. When I asked him to help my son get off of drugs, He did. When I asked Him to take away my dad’s pain, He did. When I asked Him to take away my sister’s pain, He did. When I asked Him to save my marriage, He did. God has come through for us more times than I can count, and this is why I can wait patiently. I know He will always come through for me. He will always come through for you, too! We just have to wait longer than we would like at times.
I love that this verse says, “Then, at last, he bent down and listened to my cry.” I love this because it shows the Father as a loving father. It shows that He cares about us. It doesn’t just say they finally heard us. I love that it says he bent down and listened to my cry. What I picture is a loving Father who bends down to listen to me cry. He doesn’t just stand there and let our cries go up to his ears. He bends down to show us we have His attention. I picture Jesus; since we don’t really know what God looks like, bending down, and I picture us as little children whispering our requests into his ear. It's almost like we are telling Him a secret, one that no one knows.
I love to picture the Father like this. I think if we read more verses like this, we begin to see God as our loving Father rather than a stern Father figure who is judging us and just waiting to call us out on everything we are doing wrong. God loves us, and He wants to answer our prayers. However, like a loving Father, He also knows that when we ask for something that is not good for us or that we are not quite ready for. He knows this, so he either gives us something else or waits until we are ready. God is so good!
One thing that I have found really helps in the waiting is praising the Lord. If we are going to have to wait anyway, then how are we going to spend that time? We could spend it complaining about the wait and how miserable we are, or we can spend it praising the Lord for the good He does every single day and for the good we know He will do when He answers our prayers. Which would serve you better? Which would be a better way to pass the time? God is good. If you look back over your lives, I am sure you can see many ways in which He has come through for you. It might not always be exactly how you would like or when you would like, but He does always show up.
If things have been bad for a really long time and you honestly can’t think of a time when God has come through for you, then praise Him for what He has done for others. Or, you can praise Him for things like a really good cup of coffee, or a sunny day just when you needed it. When I remember to focus on praise, my whole day gets better. When I am focusing on praise, I can see God more throughout my day. When I am looking for reasons to thank Him, I always find them. I find the green lights are just long enough for me to get through them. I find that my day seems to stretch so I can get everything done.
Praising in the waiting isn’t always easy, trust me, I know that. I was praying for peace in my house for over 15 years, and I still have to pray for it some days. I can promise you that it is worth it. I can promise it will make the wait more bearable. Praising in the wait can even allow you to have joy in the midst of really hard times. Finding things to be grateful for in the wait shows you that there are good things mixed in with the bad. Life is not all bad, even when it seems like most of it is bad. There can always be joy if you choose to look for it. Will you join me in praising the Lord today?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each and every person listening to this episode today. Lord, help us wait patiently for your timing. Help us to understand that your timing is best. Help us to see that you know what is best for us. Help us to have faith that you will come through for us. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I would like to invite you all to join my email list. I will not overwhelm you with emails. It is usually one email a week with an article on the mentoring topic for the month. Then I include any other info about what is coming up with Walk Boldly With Jesus. If you would like to join my email list you can go to my website FindingTrueNorthCoaching.com or you can click on the link below. That will sign you up for my emails, and it will also get you an awesome free audio training. I look forward to meeting you all here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in July 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Walk with faith. Believe that all is possible. David slew Goliath, the giant of his time. David crippled him with one shot from his slingshot, a child's weapon at best, but whose power came from me.”
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Praise Series — God Is Not Punishing You!
Psalm 103:8-10, “The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever; he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities.”
Praising the Lord when we are in a good place is one thing. It is a completely different story when we are struggling. One reason is that we might think we are going through this hard time because God is punishing us. I was praying for someone who was suffering from tinnitus. While I was praying with him, he mentioned that he thinks he has tinnitus because God didn’t want him to listen to so much music and wanted him to pray silently more. If you lose your job or even if you lose a loved one you may believe that these bad things are happening because of something bad you have done in the past. We are all sinners and we may feel like God is punishing us for our sins.
I want to reassure each of you that God is not punishing you! I am 100% sure of this! God does not punish us. God is only good. If you want proof that God does not punish us, you can look at today’s Psalm. Psalm 103:8-10, “The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever; he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities.” God does not create the bad things that are happening in our lives. You did not get cancer because you had an affair. You did not have a miscarriage because you don’t go to church. God is not punishing you. God did not do this bad thing to you.
God is all-powerful and all-knowing. If he wants you to learn a lesson, he can teach it to you in a million different ways. He doesn’t have to have you get sick before you turn to Him. Just because God can use this awful tragedy or the illness for your good doesn’t mean He gave it to you. God does not create illness. He is a healer. God is love and mercy. God blesses people; He does not curse them.
If you need another scripture verse, look at Romans 8:1, “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Condemnation (punishment) is not for those who belong to Christ. God does not punish His children—He saves and restores them. John 3:17 states, "For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. The central message is that Jesus's mission was not to judge and punish humanity, but to offer a way to be freed from sin and its consequences.
It is easier for many of us to believe that Jesus wouldn’t punish us, but harder for us to believe that God does not punish us. God is a good and loving Father. Regardless of what our own father was like, God is always good and always loving. It is hard for us to believe things if we have no frame of reference for them. I think part of the reason I can believe that God is a good Father who loves me and doesn’t want to punish me is because my own father was a good example of God’s love to me. I am not saying I never got into trouble as a kid. I did occasionally do things that weren’t ok. I did get in trouble. But my parents did not condemn me or make me feel shame for what I did. They gave me consequences so I would learn not to do it again, but they didn’t punish me.
I know that I am lucky and that so many kids don’t grow up with a loving, caring example of a Father. In the United States, 1 in 4 kids grows up without a dad in the home. That means 25% of kids in America are growing up without a dad. In the 2020 Census, there were 18.4 million kids who were living without their biological dad. It is easy to see how the view of God got so distorted. We are living in a world of broken people. We are all just doing the best we can, and yet the best for so many of us is not good enough. These are just the kids who grow up without a dad. We also have the kids who grow up with an abusive dad. If so many people have no reference for a father who loves you unconditionally and who would never hurt you, then how are they supposed to understand that God could actually love them like that?
If none of those other scripture verses convinced you that God is not punishing you, hopefully this one will. Isaiah 53:5 “But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.”Jesus took the full punishment, so we don’t have to. What we receive now is peace, not wrath. Do we deserve to be punished? Absolutely. Every single one of us has done something wrong, deserving of punishment. However, that is why God sent Jesus to us. Jesus came to save us from the punishment we deserved. "Jesus died the death we deserved, so we might live the life he earned.”
Why would God send his only Son to earth to die a gruesome death if he was just going to punish us for all we did anyway? If God is punishing you for your sins, why did Jesus die on a cross? When you are wondering if God is punishing you. When the enemy is whispering in your ear that you deserve this because of all the things you have done, I want you to take a look at a crucifix and ask yourself this question: “If that is true, if God is punishing me for all I have done, then what did Jesus die for?”
We must know that God is not punishing us, because once we know this, praising becomes a bit easier. I know it is still not easy to praise in difficult times. I know there are many circumstances where the idea of praising God or being grateful for anything while you are in that circumstance seems unthinkable and impossible. That is why I am doing this series. My prayer is that by the end of this series, you know how vital praise is, you know how to praise, and you can praise, even in the challenging times. I genuinely believe that praise is the secret answer to so many of our problems.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those who are listening to this episode. Lord, please help us in the wait. Help us to believe you are not punishing us. Help us to believe you are with us while we wait. Help us to keep faith and hope that things will get better and that we won’t be in this forever. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with Your Will and in Jesus’s Holy Name, Amen!
Thank you for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you have been enjoying this podcast and you are looking for more, I want to invite you to join my mentoring group. If you are enjoying this series on praise, this might be the perfect month to join the mentoring program. It is Tuesday nights at 8 PM Eastern Time on Zoom. If you can’t make that time, no worries, you can always watch the replay. I would love to help you grow closer to the Lord. Click on the link in the show notes for more info. I could meet you live on Zoom on Tuesday. I would love to get to know each one of you. I look forward to meeting you here again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day.
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in July 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Have no fear about how you will respond or how you should respond. Because my Holy Spirit given to each of your hearts deep inside of you, will respond as you see more and more clearly what it is that I wish to pour out on my people for healing, for goodness, for mercy, for forgiveness.”
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Praise Series-Sacrifice is the Heart of Worship
Psalm 95:6-8 “O come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker! For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. O that today you would listen to his voice!”
This verse was received at the prayer group yesterday, and when I read it this morning, I thought it would be a great one for today’s devotional. It talks about worshiping the Lord and hearing the Lord’s voice. These are both things I love to talk about, so it seemed perfect. I also think they are great topics to end the week with. I believe the world could be a much better place if more of us were worshipping the Lord instead of all the things in this world that we worship.
I was listening to Father Mike Schmitz's sermon from Sunday, October 27th, yesterday on Spotify, and I really enjoyed it. He talked about how the heart of worship is sacrifice. He said you can tell how important something is to someone by what they are willing to sacrifice for it. I thought this was interesting and also challenging at the same time. Everything involves a sacrifice or at least a giving of something. For instance, if you want to eat healthily, you need to give up your soda, your junk food, and your comfort foods. If you want to watch TV, you need to give up that time that could have been spent doing something else. If you want to worship God, you need to give Him your time.
Father Mike talked about one of the most important times to worship the Lord in Jewish culture: Passover. He described how the Jewish people would sacrifice a lamb to the Lord at Passover. However, they wouldn’t just buy a lamb and then sacrifice it. They would buy a lamb the Sunday before Passover, and they would bring this lamb into their home. They would live with this lamb for a week. They would begin to care for this lamb, and they may even love this lamb by the end of the week, as they have just spent the week taking care of it. Then, they would carry this lamb upon their shoulders and bring it to the temple to sacrifice it to the Lord. They would do this every year. All this talk about sacrifice being the heart of worship really challenged me. It challenged me because I am in a season where sacrifice is hard for me. Well, true and meaningful sacrifice is hard for me. These days, it seems I am all too happy to sacrifice my productive time so that I can watch TV. However, what am I getting from the TV? What is that saying about what I am worshipping? I am really struggling with sacrificing for the Lord. My heart wants me to fast, and my brain finds all these reasons why I can’t. My heart wants to spend more time alone with the Lord, and yet I find myself watching TV instead.
I am not sure why sacrifice is so hard for me right now. Sometimes, it comes much easier. I used to be pretty good at fasting or not watching TV. I am not sure why it is more of a struggle these days, other than the fact that life is not always linear. I heard this term when I was teaching about the dark night of the soul, and I think it not only applies to that, but it applies to all of life. Sometimes, we can think that life is like a mountain we are climbing, and we climb this mountain slowly and steadily, and then we reach the top. However, have you ever really climbed a mountain or seen someone climb a mountain? Yes, slow and steady is a good pace, but you aren’t always moving forward. Sometimes, you slip and fall. Sometimes, you catch yourself right away, and other times, you slide down a bit before getting back up again. Sometimes, there will be a big cliff you can’t climb directly, so you need to take another path, which might not be headed up the mountain, but rather around the mountain until you find a safe way up the mountain.
Do you see how walking up the mountain is probably not just a straight path up? Life is like this. It is not linear, meaning we go from one step to the next to the next. Sometimes, we go to the next step, and then we regress back three steps, then we take the next right step. Life is a process. It is one we all go through, and I am sure if you look over your life, you will see that it didn’t always feel like you were moving forward. Sometimes, it felt like you were moving backward.
I think going into this weekend, we can remember what Father Mike said about the sacrifice being the heart of worship. How can we worship the Lord better this weekend? What can we sacrifice in order to show our love for the Lord? If we look at what we are already sacrificing in our lives, that will show us what we are worshiping right now in our lives. What are you worshiping? For me, I think it is food and TV, but I wish it was the Lord. This weekend I will spend some time talking with the Lord and seeing what He thinks I should be sacrificing.
Which brings me to the second part of this verse. The last line of this verse says, “ For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. O that today you would listen to his voice!” We are the sheep, and the Lord is our shepherd. Sheep can hear their shepherd. There have been studies done where they put a bunch of different herds of sheep together, and they disguised the shepherds so they were wearing different clothes and smelled different, and then they had the shepherds call out to the sheep. The sheep went with their shepherd because they recognized the voice.
We can hear the Lord’s voice, too! I like that the verse says, “O that today you would listen to his voice!” This is the desire of the Lord. He wants to talk with each one of us, and yet we are not listening to His voice. I think for most of us, we are not listening because we didn’t know we could hear the Lord’s voice. This is why I love talking about listening to the Lord. The more we talk about it, the more people will understand that we all have this gift. They will know that they, too, can listen to the Lord. This is such an amazing gift, and it is so important for us all to know that we have it. It is not set aside for a select few special people. It is a gift God wants to share with each and every one of us.
Let me briefly go over the ways that we can hear the Lord’s voice. You might already be hearing Him, and you didn’t know it was Him. We can hear the Lord in four main ways. First, you may hear a voice in your head, which usually sounds a lot like your own voice. Second, you may have a thought that just pops into your head. Third, you might have a feeling about something. It is not a word or a thought, but you know something because of a feeling somewhere in your body. The fourth way is through a vision. You might see something, almost like a dream. The vision can either be like a dream, where it plays sort of like a movie, or it could just be an image, almost like a picture that you see. God can speak to you using one of these methods, a few of them, or all of them. Usually, He uses the one that He knows we will be most comfortable with because He doesn’t want to scare us.
You may be hearing the Lord already. Have you ever asked Him a question and then felt like you knew what the answer was? You didn’t understand how you knew, but you definitely knew the answer to the question you asked the Lord. If you have not spent any time trying to hear the Lord, I invite you to spend some time this weekend practicing hearing the Lord. The reason I say practicing is because it can be hard sometimes. We don’t always believe we can hear the Lord, and so sometimes, it takes a bit to get over ourselves. It can take a while to convince ourselves that we aren’t crazy and that the Lord really does want to talk to us.
One way that helped me was to journal our conversations. I would write a letter to the Lord, then I would ask the Lord to answer my letter using my pen, and I would write a letter back to myself. Now, I have started asking the Lord specific questions and then writing down whatever comes to mind right afterward. I don’t question it while I am writing it down. I just write down all that I hear, and then I reread it the next day to see if I think the Lord could have said that. The Lord will never contradict Scripture. That is His written word, and so if you hear something that tells you to do something you know is wrong, that is not the Lord. Also, the Lord is gentle, and He does not condemn us. If you are receiving words that make you feel shame, regret, or just overall bad feelings, that is not the Lord either. The Lord may convict you of something while He is talking to you but never in a way that leaves you feeling shame.
I hope you will try to hear the Lord’s voice this weekend. I hope you will spend time with Him in conversation. Maybe ask Him a question you have always wanted to ask Him. I also hope you spend some time thinking about how worship is the heart of sacrifice. So, what are you currently worshipping with your sacrifice and how can you shift your worship more towards the Lord?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you, and we want to worship you. Please help us. Show us where we are worshiping other things instead of you. Help us to sacrifice for you, Lord. We also want to hear your voice, Lord. Help us to hear your voice. Give us the confidence we need to know you are talking to us. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. We completed our “Come As You Are Series” the other day, and I thought we might take a break from doing series. However, I talked with the Lord this morning and came up with Praise at the end for our next series. It is something that is so powerful and yet overlooked. I saw a quote I had placed in front of my treadmill several years ago that says, “If you complain, you will remain. If you praise, you will be raised!” I believe this with my whole heart, and so I decided to start the new series this morning. I hope you enjoy it. Remember, if you liked the series on Identity, all the “I AM statements," I put it all together in a book, and you can find that on Amazon. It would be a perfect gift for someone you care about for Christmas. If we are firm in our identity as a Child of God, our lives can look so much different. I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in July 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Open the eyes of your heart, for they are the eyes that see with the clarity of my Holy Spirit who lives within you. They are the eyes that show you the depth of my love, not just for you but for all my people. When you open those eyes, you will see things that perhaps you wish you did not see. But I will fill your heart with my forgiving, merciful love so that when you see things that disturb you, that upset you, you will know my heart and you will have the grace to respond with my fullness of mercy.”
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Today’s Witness is from a very dear friend of mine. It is her testimony of how she forgave someone who did the unthinkable to her. She is a wonderful woman who has such a strong love for Jesus. She is a mother of two kids and a wife. She is a photographer, a karate champion, and so much more! You can hear in her voice just how excited she is for this breakthrough. God is so good! We have all seen God working in our lives. However, we might not all be aware it is God working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences, the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience of how God has worked or is working in your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or click here. It won’t take up much of your time, and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story, and the world needs to hear them. Music:"Adding the Sun"fine us. It is not fun, Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ www.findingtruenorthcoaching.comCLICK HERE TO DONATECLICK HERE to sign up for Mentoring CLICK HERE to sign up for Daily "Word from the Lord" emailsCLICK HERE to sign up for my newsletter & receive a free audio trainingabout inviting Jesus into your daily lifeCLICK HERE to buy my book Total Trust in God's Safe Embrace
Matthew 18:21-22 “Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?” Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.”
A few of the ladies from my prayer group and I attended a bootcamp to teach us about the unbound method of deliverance. Unbound is a method of setting people free from the things that weigh them down. Sometimes we open doors to the enemy in ways we didn’t know and Unbound helps us close those doors. There are 5 Keys in the Unbound program. The five keys are: Repenting of sin and expressing faith in Jesus; forgiving oneself and others; renouncing the lies, spirits, and tactics of Satan; taking authority over the works of Satan; receiving the Father's blessing. When you go through an Unbound session you meet with someone and they walk you through each of these keys.
In our first night of training we covered an intro and then we learned about the first two keys. The first one was repenting of sin and expressing faith in Jesus. We all sin, it is a part of our daily life, and yet when we sin in hurts our relationship with God. When we sin we are opening a door for the enemy to come in. Repentance for our sins is a big part of our freedom. If we truly want to be free we can’t have our sins hanging over us. One way our sins can invite the enemy in is because He will then use that sin to make us ashamed of what we did. Shame is straight from hell, it is not from God. Once we start to feel ashamed then we pull away and we tend to isolate because we feel as though we aren’t worthy of anything. Once we repent we bring our sins out of the darkness and into the light and they no longer have hold over us.
The second key we talked about is forgiveness. This is the one that left the biggest impression on me. This is the one that I don’t think we realize how important it is. I remember when I was at a Bible study and they were talking about forgiveness. We were talking about Matthew 6:14, “For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.” When they said that God forgives us the same way we forgive those who trespass against us I was so surprised. I had no idea what they were talking about. Now, I have been a Catholic for my whole life and this was only about 10 years ago. I have probably said the Our Father prayer more times than I can count and yet I never really put two and two together.
Have you ever had a time when you heard something or realized something and it was life changing for you? I can remember two times this has happened for me with scripture. The first one was when I discovered Romans 8:11, “And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you.” When I discovered we have the power of the one who raised Jesus from the dead, the same power Jesus had, that was life changing for me. The second time was when I discovered what I am really saying when I say the Our Father prayer. “Forgive us O Lord as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Did you know that is what you are saying? How many times do you say that prayer, have you said that prayer? If you say the rosary every day you have said it at least 6-5 times daily.
When I heard this I was determined to learn how to forgive better. I was determined to not hold things against people. I have done my best to do this. Over the course of the last 10 years have a learned quite a bit about forgiveness in my quest to become better at it. First I learned what forgiveness is and is not. Forgiveness is making a decision that you are no longer going to give the thing that happened any space in your brain anymore. You are not going to think about it and you are not going let it dictate what you do and how you act. Forgiveness is an act of the will, it is not a feeling. You can, not feel like forgiving someone and yet you can still forgive them. You can forgive someone and yet not feel like anything has changed. Forgiveness is not saying the thing that the other person did was ok, it was not. When you forgive you are not letting the other person off the hook and condoning their behavior. Forgiveness is making a decision to turn the judgement over to God. Forgiveness is making a decision that you are no longer going to let the unforgiveness eat you up inside. The person you are refusing to forgive probably has moved on and your unforgiveness is not bothering them at all.
The analogy that I have heard time and time again about forgiveness is that it is like taking a little sip of poison every single day with the expectation that the other person will die. I know you are angry, hurt, sad, I am sure you have every right to be and also, as long as you keep thinking about it and refusing to forgive, you can’t really heal. I talk to people I know about unforgiveness all the time since learning we will be forgiven as we forgive. I can’t help it, I understand what is at stake and I know it is not worth it. Whoever you are refusing to forgive has probably taken enough from you, are you really going to let them take you eternal salvations too? What they did to you, is not forgiving them worth the risk of God not forgiving you?
Our teacher on Monday told us about a preacher/minister who had died and found out he was on his way to hell. He said he saw how horrible it was. In hell this man saw another man on all fours on fire from head to toe. He had a collar around his neck attached to a chain and a demon was holding the chain. Our teacher told us that this man went to hell because he had unforgiveness in his heart. I was curious to hear the exact story so I looked it up online. I will put a link to the article in the show notes. It turns out is was a priest who had a heart attack and must have flatlined at some point. CLICK HERE for the article.
Here is what priest said, "I thought I was going upward because I thought I had done so much good in this lifetime trying to help so many people and made so many decisions that were godly decisions, but as opposed to me going up, I went down.” This priest was very angry as he said he did so much good in his lifetime. Then he said he saw Jesus and Jesus gave him a personal message. "He said, 'You have been secretly upset with the people who have hurt you. You had been hoping that I would punish the people that hurt you. These are not your people. These are my people.' He said, 'I only want you to focus on the assignment I am giving you.’ The priest explains, “Although I did good, the thing I had in my heart was the unforgiveness to the people who wronged me. A person that can't forgive is a person that has forgotten how much they have been forgiven of.”
This example is probably not what we want to hear. I know it scared me when I heard it and yet we must hear it. We have to know what will keep us from spending eternity with our Father. This is why God sends people to share these messages with us. Mary gave the little children of Fatima an image of hell and told them that more people than we know are ending up there. Forgiveness is not easy, I know that. I know that I don’t understand some of the things that have happened to you. I know people can be terrible and they do terrible things. If you are struggling to forgive I ask you to review what forgiveness is and is not again. You don’t have to forgive and forget. You don't have to forgive the person and invite them over for Christmas. It is perfectly ok to forgive the person and never see them again, never tell them you forgave them, never talk to them again. Forgiveness is for you, it is not for them.
The last line the priest said really hit me. “A person that can’t forgive is a person that has forgotten how much they have been forgiven of.” What if all the people we wronged refused to forgive us? What if God held original sin against us and refused to forgive us? What if he refused to send His only son to save us? Forgiveness is so much more important than we think it is. I know so many people who are refusing to forgive because they say the other person doesn’t deserve forgiveness. You might be right and also, forgiveness is about them, it is about you. It is about setting yourself free from the spirit of unforgiveness. Unforgiveness can block so much from the Lord. It can block healing, it can block graces, it can block your forgiveness from the Lord. Is it really worth it?
I want to take a minute to add some hope to this episode as if you are harboring unforgiveness it might be very scary to think of the consequences. You might have had some truly terrible things done to you and you want the Lord to forgive you and yet you have no idea where to even begin forgiving the other person or people. Here is the thing, the Lord doesn’t expect you to forgive on your own. We can’t actually forgive on our own. All we can do is say, yes Lord, I want to forgive, and the Lord can change your heart for you. If you are at a point right now where you really can’t even say, Lord, I want to forgive, please help me, that’s ok, the Lord meets us where we are at. Can you say I want to want to forgive? Can you say, Jesus, can you give me the grace to want to want to forgive? If so, Jesus will help you get to that point and then you can move to actually forgiving.
My teacher told a story about a woman who was doing an Unbound session and the woman who she was working with refused to forgive her sister. Well, this is the first key, you can’t move on to the rest of the keys if you can’t first get through forgiveness. The woman was adamant that she would not forgive or even pray for her sister. The woman leading the session asked if she would be able to ask Jesus to help her want to want to forgive. She said yes and she asked Jesus. She said ok, now she wanted to want forgive, but she still couldn’t forgive. The leader asked her if she would be willing to do 1% of the work to forgive if Jesus could do the other 99%. She said she thought she might be able to do that and so she forgave her sister 1% and Jesus did the rest.
Remember, forgiveness is an act of the will, it is not a feeling. She might not have felt any different after she forgave her sister that 1% but she was willing to do it. God will meet you where you are at too! If all you can say right now is, “Lord please give me the grace to want to want to want to forgive.” That’s ok, just say it. God is the one who does the forgiving. We just need to say the words and God does all the hard parts. God is asking us to let Him in, to not refuse to let Him work on any area of us. Can we do that? Can we give God even a tiny little crack of a window where He can come in and transform our heart? Don’t let the unforgiveness of what others did dictate the level of forgiveness you get from God. Haven’t then done enough, don’t let them continue to have an effect on your life and definitely not your eternity.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, today’s topic was a hard one. I ask you to open people’s hearts and minds and let them hear the word that you want them to hear. Holy Spirit I ask you to convict each person listening to this of any unforgiveness that they may have so we can all work to forgive. Sometimes our unforgiveness is hidden and so we ask for you to show us any areas we need to forgive in Lord. We say yes to you coming in and helping us forgive. We say yes to you forgiving us as we forgive others. We say yes to loving your children as you love them. We love you Lord and we are sorry for closing you out and not letting you heal our hearts by guarding them with unforgiveness. We need your help Lord and we are so grateful you always come when we call. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you hear again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed weekend!
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Come As You Are Series -- Mary
Luke 1:38 “I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled.” Then the angel left her.”
I have been hesitant to talk about Mary in our Come As You Are series. I am not sure why. Part of it was that there was so much you could say about her. Another part of it was that we may feel we can't relate to Mary. She is amazing and so brave, and is the Mother of Jesus. What could we possibly have in common with her?
I went online to learn more about Mary before she became the Mother of Jesus. Scripture does not tell us a lot about her before the Angel Gabriel visited her. There are a few things they do tell us and then there are a few things that we can learn from historical context. We know she was a woman living in her time.
Here are a few things we know about Mary.
1. She lived in Nazareth
Luke 1:26 says the angel Gabriel was sent “to a virgin in Nazareth.”
Nazareth was a tiny, poor, obscure village — maybe 200–400 people.
Nothing “good” came from there (John 1:46 “Can anything good come from Nazareth?”)
This tells us: Mary was from a humble, ordinary, overlooked place.
2. She was a virgin engaged to Joseph
Luke 1:27 “to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary.”
Engagement (betrothal) in Jewish culture was legally binding — more serious than a modern engagement.
This tells us: She was likely between 13–16 years old, a normal age for betrothal.
3. She was deeply faithful and knew Scripture
Mary’s song, the Magnificat (Luke 1:46–55), is filled with: Quotes from Psalms, Echoes of Hannah’s prayer (1 Samuel 2), Old Testament theology about God’s mercy, justice, and covenant
This tells us: She had a heart soaked in God’s Word long before Gabriel appeared.
4. She was humble
Her response to Gabriel: “I am the servant of the Lord…” (Luke 1:38)
Her song: “He has looked on the humble state of His servant” (Luke 1:48)
This tells us: Humility wasn’t something she learned after meeting Jesus — it was already who she was.
5. She found favor with God before she was chosen
Luke 1:28: “You are highly favored.”
Luke 1:30: “You have found favor with God.”
This tells us: She already lived a life that pleased God — long before she carried Jesus.
Now that we know a bit more about Mary, we can see that there may be some similarities.
Here is a summary of the things we know about Mary. She was a young teen, living in an obscure, poor town. She had little earthly status, but had a deep love for God. She was humble, faithful, and obedient. She really knew her Scripture. God already favored her at a young age.
Some of this we might relate to, and some of it we might not. Many can relate to growing up in an obscure place or feeling out of place in our community. We talked about this when we talked about Gideon. He was a man from the weakest clan in Manasseh and, by his own admission, the least in his family. Yet the angel of God called him a “mighty warrior.” What about you? What do you call yourself? What does your family call you? Do they see the amazing person that God sees, or do they just see you as a friend, a mom, a dad, a sibling? I know my kids are always surprised when I know something they don't think I should know. To them, I am just mom. They don't see me as someone who has her master’s degree or someone who has written books and started her own business. They just see me as mom.
I doubt many people from Mary’s town would have looked at her and said, “She is going to be the mother of our Savior one day.” I doubt they looked at her and saw anything special. If the days when she lived were anything like when I was young, then she was probably an outcast, as those who love God tend to be outcasts. People don’t understand why we love God so much. They don't understand why we would choose Him over all the “fun” things to do in this world.
I was told by a priest one time how Mary and Joseph got engaged. He said that Mary had made a vow to the Lord to remain a virgin. The unmarried men in the area gathered to see who would marry this young woman who wanted to remain a virgin. They all threw their staffs in a pile, and when Joseph threw his in the pile, flowers grew out of it. This is why you will often see Joseph depicted with a staff with flowers growing out of it. When I looked up this story online, I found that this story is from the apocrypha (ancient books not considered reliable enough to be included in the Bible). There, the Protoevangelium of James claims that when young Mary wanted to dedicate herself as a perpetual virgin at the Temple, the high priest prayed for direction. An angel then told him to gather all of the unmarried men of the area, and have each one bring his rod (generally thought to be a walking stick or staff) to the temple “and to whomsoever the Lord shall show a sign, his wife shall she be…and Joseph took his rod last; and behold, a dove came out of the rod, and flew upon Joseph’s head. And the priest said to Joseph, ‘You have been chosen by lot to take into your keeping the virgin of the Lord.’”
Isn’t this beautiful to know that God picked Joseph out for Mary? Who better to arrange your marriage than the Lord your God? I also heard that Joseph may have also made a similar vow, so it worked out well for both of them. Imagine that God knew what He was doing when her put Mary and Joseph together. I have a friend who is getting married, and he was praying about the marriage one day, and he heard the Lord tell him that it was an arranged marriage and that God had arranged it. Can you imagine? What better proof that you are meant to be together than the Lord telling you that He arranged your engagement?
Notice, God did not arrange for Mary to be with someone who wanted to change her. He didn’t arrange for her to be with someone who was unkind to her and criticized everything she said and did. He brought someone in her life that loved her for who she was and supported her, even when she was pregnant and they weren’t married yet. Even when she was pregnant, and he didn’t know how she could be. He supported her and raised Jesus as his own son. That is truly a God arranged marriage.
God loved Mary. He knew her wishes and how much she loved Him. He arranged for her to be married to a good husband. He asked her to do an incredible thing, and she said yes. I am not sure if Mary understood all she was saying yes to, and yet she said yes anyway. What if we could do this? What if we could say yes, even though we don’t have all the details? What if we could say yes, even when we don’t quite understand the call? What if we just said yes because we know God and we trust that if He is asking us, then we will be able to handle whatever comes our way.
God wants us to come to Him just as we are, and He will give us all we need just as He did for Mary. He gave Mary a loving spouse. One who would find her a safe place to have her baby. One who would listen to the angel from his dreams and wake them up in the middle of the night and move them to Egypt until they were the same. Then he would move them back once they were safe. God will give you all you need to do what He is calling you to do as well. God is calling you to do something. It might not be as extraordinary as carrying the Savior of the World, but it will still be an important call. Will you say yes? Will you come as you are and trust that you are exactly who God needs for this particular call? God loves you, yes, you, just as you are! I hope that if you get nothing else out of this series, you will believe that God loves you more than you could ever imagine and that He wants you to come to Him just as you are. You don’t have to change anything to come to Him! He just wants you!!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening today. Lord, we love you and we want to believe you love us. Please help us believe that we don’t have to do anything for you to love us. Please help us to believe we don’t have to change before we come to you. Lord, this whole series has been about how you want us to come as we are. I pray that every person listening has come to realize that they can come to you just as they are and that you will help them become the person they want to be. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. This episode concludes our Come As You Are series. If you have any ideas of what you would like to see for our next series, please reach out and let me know. It could be a topic like forgiveness, love, mercy, joy, or it could be something like a specific book of the Bible that you have always wanted to understand better. It could also be on the various people of the Bible. The options are endless, as there is so much in the Bible. Please let me know what you are interested in learning more about. I want this podcast to be for you! I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in July 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Yes, I am your victory, my children. But I am not a victor as you picture in a battle. I am the victory that brings your heart closer and closer to mine. My victory reigns in your heart. My victory doesn't have ticker tape parades, loud shouting, or gracious singing. My victory has gentle, peaceful love and joy placed deeply in your heart because you know beyond all knowing that I am yours, and you are mine.”
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Though We Stumble, We Shall Not Fall
Psalm 37:23-24 “Our steps are made firm by the Lord, when he delights in our way; though we stumble, we shall not fall headlong, for the Lord holds us by the hand.”
I have read that verse several times today and yet this time when I read it I got the image of toddler walking along the sidewalk while he is holding his daddy’s hand. When we are just learning to walk we definitely stumble and sometimes we even fall. We fall because we are learning something new. We fall because we are letting go of the safety of the wall, couch, or coffee table and venture out on our own. It is not a bad thing when we fall as long as we get back up and try again. It is expected to take time to learn something new. It is part of the journey. If we never let go of that safety net we will never learn what we are capable of.
What I love about this verse though is that it says we will stumble, but we will not fall because God hold us by the hand. God allows us to venture out into the unknown, but we are not alone. He doesn’t send us out alone, he holds our hand. He allows us to stumble, but we don’t fall headfirst into the ground. We stumble and He steadies us. To me that is a great image.
The beginning line of this verse says, “Our steps are made firm by the Lord, when he delights in our way.” I found the word “when” an interesting addition to this sentence. I was wondering why it was there. I know the words in the Bible are chosen carefully so what does that first sentence mean? The first thought that came to me was maybe when our steps are unsteady and weak, we aren’t doing what the Lord wants us to do. Maybe we are like a child venturing out on our own. We aren’t waiting for the Lord to hold our hand, we are just heading out without him. Have you ever done this? Saw something you wanted and went after it. You didn’t stop to ask God if it was right for you? You didn’t stop to weigh the pros and cons, you didn’t really give it much thought at all. It all seemed too good to be true and so you ran after it. Yep, me too. How did it work out for you? Was it all you thought it would be?
The thought that keeps coming up in my mind is, “Not every opportunity is from God.” If something feels too good to be true, this is a great time to pause and examine the situation. I am definitely an optimist so you won’t find me raining on your parade. Maybe it is exactly what you have been praying for. Maybe God gave this opportunity to you as an answer to your prayers. God does do amazing things. Often times God’s plan do seem too good to be true. This is not me telling you if it seems too good to be true it probably is. What I am saying is if the opportunity is from God He won’t mind if you pause to consult Him about it. He will like it if you take time to pray about it. Even if that time is 5 minutes. A job may come up and you may not have a lot of time to consider it, that’s ok. Take a few minutes, catch your breath and ask God what He thinks. Ask Him for guidance and see what he says, or how you feel about the job after you have talked to God about it.
Have you ever rushed into the perfect opportunity because you thought it was the answer to your prayers and it wasn’t? This can happen when we don’t stop and invite God into our decision making. For instance, we have been praying for more money and then a promotion becomes available. We decide, without talking to God, this promotion is the answer to all of our prayers. However, when we get the promotion we find out it has a lot of travel attached to it, or longer hours and now we never get to spend time with our family. Not every opportunity is from God. Sometimes the enemy offers us things that seem like what we want but aren’t actually good for us. For instance we want to be rich and powerful and we achieve it and yet we are not happy. These opportunities, or maybe the desires, might be from the enemy. We live in a fast paced world and sometimes it seems like we have to do everything so quickly. We feel as though we don’t have 5 minutes to stop and think. If you don’t have time to pause and consult the Lord then I don’t believe that opportunity is from the Lord. I think that is the enemy trying to get you to make decisions based on your feelings instead of your thoughts.
Our feelings can betray us. When we are acting solely upon our feelings we are letting go of God’s hand and telling Him we can walk on our own. We are telling God we don’t need Him. Our feelings don’t have our overall best interest at heart. Our feelings are based on our temporary happiness. Their goal is to make us feel good in the moment. For instance, we might eat some macaroni and cheese for dinner because are feeling sad today and want to feel happy. However, how is that macaroni and cheese going to make you feel when you no longer fit into your clothing. We might take a job that seems good and pays a lot of money because we feel scared that we won’t have enough money to pay the bills. However, how much are you going to enjoy that job when you find out you never get to see your family. Do you see how your feeling can betray you.
The verse says, “Our steps are made firm by the Lord, when he delights in our way; though we stumble, we shall not fall headlong, for the Lord holds us by the hand.” When we stop and consult God, ask Him what He wants us to do, invite Him into the situation, our steps are made firm. When we pause and grab hold of God’s hand He will lead us. This doesn’t mean everything will be perfect. We will still stumble, but we won’t fall. God hold’s tight to our hand. Yes, he allows us to stumble, and that is because when we stumble we learn, when we stumble we become more resilient, when we stumble we learn to lean on Him more. However, He does not allow us to fall headlong. He catches us and sets us on solid ground once again.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we are so grateful that you make firm our steps. We are grateful you allow us to stumble because that is where we grow and yet you don’t allow us to fall. You are there to catch us. You hold our hand gently guiding through these uncharted waters. Lord, we are sorry for all those times when we run off without you and do the things we want to do. We are sorry for the times when we don’t consult you. We know you know better than we do. We know your ways are higher than our ways. Help give us the strength to pause and invite you into our decisions. Help give us the patience to wait on your timing. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Have a blessed day!
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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Come As You Are Series - The Woman Who Anointed Jesus’ Feet
Luke 7:47 "Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little.”
I usually don’t have a scripture verse for these episodes in advance. I usually ask God to give me one right before I write it, or I look in my Encounter Ministry notes, or my prayer group notes. However, yesterday, when I was listening to another podcast, this story from the Bible came to me clear as day. This is not necessarily strange because, as you know, I sometimes get my episode ideas from other podcasts like The Big Life Devotional, Elevation, or Father Mike’s podcasts. However, this time the podcast I was listening to was not talking about this story at all. The story just popped into my head, and I felt as if that was definitely the verse I was supposed to use today.
I chose Luke 7:47 as the main verse because that was the main point I felt the Holy Spirit emphasized when I got the verse; however, it probably won’t make any sense without the context of the whole story. The story is called “Jesus Anointed by a Sinful Woman,” and it is found in Luke 7:36-50. “When one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, he went to the Pharisee’s house and reclined at the table. A woman in that town who lived a sinful life learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee’s house, so she came there with an alabaster jar of perfume. As she stood behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them, and poured perfume on them. When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is—that she is a sinner.” Jesus answered him, “Simon, I have something to tell you.” “Tell me, teacher,” he said. “Two people owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he forgave the debts of both. Now, which of them will love him more?” Simon replied, “I suppose the one who had the bigger debt forgiven.” “You have judged correctly,” Jesus said. Then he turned toward the woman and said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet. Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little.” Then Jesus said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.” The other guests began to say among themselves, “Who is this who even forgives sins?” Jesus said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”
Actually, now that I am writing, I see why this came to me while I was listening to the other podcast. The Big Life Devotional Podcast with Pamela Crim was talking about loving other people yesterday. As soon as she said Do we love others, this story came to mind. I think the point the Holy Spirit wanted me to make is about forgiveness. In this verse, Jesus is forgiving this woman of her sins. The reason she was crying and was washing Jesus’ feet with her tears and anointing them with perfume is that she knew all of her sins. She didn’t come into that house pretending to be anything different. She knew she was full of sin and that she was in the presence of the Lord. She knew she had a lot to repent for, and she knew Jesus could forgive her sins. She wasn’t afraid to approach Jesus. She didn’t let her sins keep her from coming into the presence of God. She approached him, bowed at his feet, and washed his feet. She humbled herself with the faith that she would be forgiven.
Today’s verse says, “Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little.” The person who owned the house was thinking in his head that Jesus didn’t know all of her sins. He was thinking if Jesus were a prophet, he would know her sins, and he would not let her touch Him. What Jesus is saying here is that if she weren’t a great sinner, if she didn’t really have many sins, she wouldn’t have humbled herself, she wouldn’t have sat at his feet and washed them with her tears. She loved Jesus so much because she knew how much sin she had and how great a thing it was for Him to forgive it all. She loved Him so much because she had so much sin.
What the Holy Spirit was saying to me yesterday was that we should be more loving to others because we have been forgiven so much also. I feel like I am struggling to get you to see what the Holy Spirit was showing me, and yet I am trusting what He wants you to hear; you will hear. What he showed me was that we struggle to forgive others, even when they had done little offenses to us. Sometimes, they haven’t done anything to us, and yet we don’t love the person because we don’t like how they look, how they think, how they believe, or how they talk.
We judge others so much, and God is saying, “Why are you judging them when I am not judging you? Why are you acting as if you have done nothing wrong? Why are you judging my creations? I created each person, who are you to judge them? You have been forgiven of so much, I have overlooked so much for you, why can’t you do the same? I love you, my children, with an everlasting love and unconditional love, and I am asking you to do the same. I know you don’t all look alike, sound alike, dress alike, or believe the same things, and that is ok. I still call you to love one another unconditionally. I know you can’t do this on your own, and yet if you only say the word, I can help you. If you strive to love everyone, I will make your efforts fruitful. First, you must make that choice. You must choose to love others, even those you don’t agree with. When you wish to judge someone, imagine me up in heaven using those same standards to judge you. Is it worth it? Do you want me to use your standards to judge you? Remember all you have done, remember all your imperfections, and remember that I have forgiven them all, and I ask you to do the same towards others. Spread my love like wildfire. I promise that if you start to lead with love, your whole life will change. You will be friends with people you never expected. You will learn things you never expected. Trust me, my children, and start loving more and judging less.”
Well, I did not expect the Holy Spirit to speak directly to us, although I did pray for this episode to be His words, not mine, and I did let Him know I was struggling to get His point across, so thank you, Lord, for your amazing words this morning. I will end with that because He has said it all.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we can’t thank you enough for showing up and speaking to each one of us directly. Help us to ponder your words, Lord. Please help us to see how we can live into those words. Give us the grace to lead with love, let that be our default, Lord!! Help us to stop judging, help us to love first. Lord, we need a lot of help in this area. We ask you to rain down your love, your grace, and your strength on us so we can follow your command to love all. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to seeing you again soon! Remember, Jesus loves you, and He wants you to share that love with others. I love you all too! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in July 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “As my love is poured out upon each and every one of you, breathe it in, receive it, rest in this moment of love. I am pouring through you so that you can pour it out of you into others.”
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Today's Witness Wednesday is from Chicken Soup for the Soul "A Book of Miracles" 101 True Stories of Healing, Faith, Divine Internvention, and Answered Prayers by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, and LeAnn Theiman. Today's witness is about a woman who found out she had 5 weeks to live and yet God had other plans.We have all seen God working in our lives. However, we might not all be aware it is God working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences, the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience of how God has worked or is working in your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or click here. It won’t take up much of your time, and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story, and the world needs to hear them.Music: "Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 Licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ www.findingtruenorthcoaching.comCLICK HERE TO DONATECLICK HERE to sign up for Mentoring CLICK HERE to sign up for Daily "Word from the Lord" emailsCLICK HERE to sign up for my newsletter & receive a free audio trainingabout inviting Jesus into your daily lifeCLICK HERE to buy my book Total Trust in God's Safe Embrace
Words Have Power to Bless or to Wound
James 1:19 “You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger.”
This verse really hit home with me this morning. It was the subject of the daily devotional I am reading, “Jesus Calling.” Actually, it wasn’t even today’s message. I am behind because I was on vacation and I wasn’t doing my normal morning routine. This morning I got up and decided I would do two devotionals so I can try to catch up to where I should be. This book is so good. I always really enjoy the devotionals. The reason I say this morning's devotional hit home for me is that I know how important words can be, and I know how much what we can say can hurt others.
I just got back from a family vacation with my husband, all three of our boys, and my husband’s whole family, his mom and dad, his brother and his wife, and their two girls. This is one of our favorite times of the year. It is so nice to get to spend a whole week with family. We get to hang out and talk. We get to play lots of games, especially with his mom and dad. My youngest two boys love to play with their two girls. They play all different board games and card games. It is music to my ears to hear them talking and laughing. The place we go to is a campground in Maine. We stay in a cabin with no internet. There is internet at the lodge, which is open 8-7, but not in our cabins. There is a TV, but it doesn’t have cable; you can just watch movies on it. I love this because it means we have so much more time to talk and to visit. However, as you can imagine, my kids do not love this.
Two of them really enjoy playing games with their cousins, playing chess with their Pop (Tony’s dad), and playing Parcheesi with both Tony’s parents. They also really enjoy it when we rent a boat and they get to go out in the boat and go fishing, or when we pull them behind the boat on a boogie board. However, that still leaves a lot of time when they are bored. They do not enjoy the fact that there is no Wifi. They miss talking with their friends on the computer and playing video games with their friends. Also, this year was super hot, and the cabins are not air-conditioned. Since our house is air-conditioned, they are not used to sleeping in such hot temperatures. Some parts of the trip were difficult for them.
Our oldest really did not enjoy the vacation. He really liked spending time talking with Tony’s brother, and he got to play chess with Pop a few times, but most of the time, he was unhappy. I did go out and get him a fan at one point, and he was much more comfortable after that, but he still was very unhappy. He is the reason this verse hit home today. When he is unhappy or angry, he says things he doesn’t mean. He is really struggling right now, and being away from his friends and his work for a week was more than he could take. Each day, at least once a day, he would start to say very unkind things. Not because he really thinks those things were true, but because he was upset, and that is how he acts when he is upset. I don’t know why he does this. It is not something new; he has done this ever since he was little. In the moment, when he is angry, he does not care what he is saying or who he is hurting. However, afterwards, he feels really bad about it. I wish he could hear this verse and adopt this principle. I am going to write it on a sticky note for him, because I know he doesn’t want to do this. He doesn’t want to feel this way; he doesn’t want to say unkind things and then feel bad about it later. He needs help learning to control what he says, and it is not human help he needs. He needs the Lord’s help. I know my son is not the only one who says things they don’t mean when they are angry. We have all done this before. I thought I would read you the devotional I read this morning because it really explains this verse well and how important it is to watch our words.
“Watch your words diligently. Words have such great power to bless or to wound. When you speak carelessly or negatively, you damage others as well as yourself. This ability to verbalize is an awesome privilege, granted only to those I created in my image. You need help in wielding this mighty power responsibly. Though the world applauds quick-witted retorts, my instructions about communication are quite different: “be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry.” Ask my spirit to help you whenever you speak. I have trained you to pray – "Help me, Holy Spirit" – before answering the phone, and you have seen the benefits of this discipline. Simply apply the same discipline to communicating with people around you. If they are silent, pray before speaking to them. If they are talking, pray before responding. These are split-second prayers, but they put you in touch with my presence. In this way, your speaking comes under the control of my spirit. As positive speech patterns replace your negative ones, the increase in your joy will amaze you.”
I love the advice in this short devotional. Imagine how much different our interactions would be if we all paused before replying and said, “Help me, Holy Spirit.” Also, if you need to start a conversation with someone, you just quickly pause and say, “Help me, Holy Spirit.” The Holy Spirit is within us. He is waiting for us to ask Him to help us. What if we got into the habit of doing that more often? I wonder how different our days would be? I wonder how much smoother our conversations would be? I love how it says, “In this way, you’re speaking comes under the control of my Spirit.” Wouldn’t you love that? I know I would. I would love it if everything that came out of my mouth was under the control of the Holy Spirit. I know I say the wrong things sometimes. I have gotten so much better than I was because I have spent a lot of hard work and time learning to say the right things and to say kind things. And yet, I still mess up, I still say the wrong things. I wish I had heard this before or thought of this before. I have prayed things like, “Lord, guard my mouth.” However, I never thought to say a quick half-second prayer every time I open my mouth. This sounds like it could be a great way to become better at my interactions with others.
The other thing I wanted to quickly touch on, because it really touched me this morning, was the last three words, “slow to anger.” This touched me because sometimes I can be quick to anger. Sometimes I can take offense at small things. Sometimes I can get upset over things that weren’t intentional or weren’t really a big deal. I know I can’t be the only person who does this. When I read them, it was as if the Holy Spirit shone a light on my actions. It was as if He was gently reminding me God wants us to be slow to anger. God doesn’t want us to take things so personally. He doesn’t want us to walk around taking offense and getting angry at everything we encounter. He wants us to be slow to anger. Is that you? Are you slow to anger, or are you quick to anger? If we are quick to anger, it doesn’t mean we are bad. It just means we need to ask God for help. We need to ask Him to show us how to be slow to anger. It means we need to invite the Holy Spirit into more of our interactions. Maybe each morning when we get up, we can hand our day over to the Holy Spirit. Maybe we could say a quick prayer like, “Holy Spirit, come into all my interactions today. Help me be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger. I give you permission to take control.” That would take not more than a second or two, and yet you are inviting the Holy Spirit into your daily interactions. You are handing over control to the Holy Spirit. I bet we would find this practice very powerful.
Let’s start now. “Holy Spirit, come into all my interactions today. Help me be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger. I give you permission to take control.”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, you are amazing, and we are so grateful for all you do for us. Lord, please help us to be quick to listen and slow to speak and to anger. Help us not to take offense at everything. Help us to see that our loved ones aren’t intentionally trying to hurt us. Helps us to hold our tongue when we get angry and not lash out. Help us to invite the Holy Spirit into our interactions before we even open our mouths to say anything. When we do speak out rashly and possibly unkindly, help those we offend to forgive us and to heal from what we said. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
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We Are More Than Conquerors Through Him Who Loved Us
Romans 8:35-39 “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
This scripture verse is letting us know that there is nothing that we can do that will separate us from God’s love. It is also telling us that we should not interpret the bad things that are happening in our lives as proof that God has stopped loving us. God will continue to love us forever. There is nothing that we can do to change this. The verse is asking us if hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword will separate us from Christ. This is a tough question because these things can separate us if we let them. One really important part of this verse is when it says, “No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” Do you need to hear that again? “We are more than conquerors through him who loved us.”
If this is the case, then why do we feel so defeated at times? Some of the things listed above can absolutely separate us from Christ if we let them. Have you ever gone through a hardship and instead of feeling closer to God, you felt farther away? Have you ever struggled to see where God was in all of your pain? This can happen to a lot of people. I just heard about a couple that lost one of their 6-month-old twins. Loss of a child is something that can really strain your relationship with God. Losing a loved one is always hard. However, losing a child has got to be one of the hardest things to understand. It makes no sense to us. Why did she have to die? Why would God do this to their family? Why wouldn’t God heal her, as we know that He can? When we are hurting, we tend to lash out and we try to find someone to blame. God is a good candidate as He is strong and He can take our anger. God doesn’t mind when we yell at Him, as He understands what we are going through.
The problem is when we don’t process our anger and our grief, and we stay mad at God. If we are able to lean into God instead of turning away from Him in anger, God can give us the strength to get back up again after we have been knocked down. God can ease our pain and help us to get out of bed in the morning. God can help us find a reason to go on. We can do all things through Christ, who strengthens us. We can defeat the grief we feel if we turn to God and ask Him to help us. The same is true with any hardship you are going through. Maybe you have lost your job, and you don’t know how you are going to provide for your family right now. Turn to God, and He will help you provide. He will provide for you if you ask Him to. He is amazing!
What about persecution and famine, could that separate you from Christ? I can see how it could. If you are being persecuted for your beliefs, you may start to hide your beliefs more so that you fit in with the crowd. You may even compromise your beliefs just so that you do not get persecuted anymore. Today, when I was listening to the Bible in a Year podcast, Father Mike read from 2 Maccabees 6. It told the story of a wise old man named Eleazar. The Greeks were trying to get the Jews to become more like the Greeks. They were trying to force Eleazar to eat pork, which was against Jewish laws. His friends were telling him that it would be ok, he could eat whatever meat he wanted to eat, but it would look like he was eating the pork. The Greeks wouldn’t know the difference, and Eleazar wouldn’t have to die.
However, Eleazar refused, saying that if people saw him eat the meat and thought that he had gone against the Lord’s law, then they too might sin, and He couldn’t do that. Eleazar was able to withstand the persecution, but what about those who didn’t? Persecution and famine can definitely mess with your head. Most of us don’t want to die, especially if that dying involves torture and a painful death. We also don’t want to starve to death. When you don’t have anything to eat and you haven’t had anything for a very long time, you will do something that you normally wouldn’t. The same goes for how you act when your life is on the line.
These things don’t have to separate us from the Lord. If we turn to Him and ask Him for help, we will get the help we are looking for. Remember, it says right in this verse that, “We are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” We can conquer anything with Christ. He is there for us, and He will help us get through whatever it is we are going through. The only thing we need to do is ask for this help and then accept when He offers it to us. I know accepting help can be hard. We think we need to be strong and do it all ourselves. I am telling you, accept the help. Accept the help, even if it looks different from what you thought it would. You never know how God will reach out and help. Sometimes it is through a complete stranger, sometimes it is exactly what you asked for, and sometimes it is nothing like the help that you asked for. The thing is, God knows best. If he is sending you help, it is because that is exactly what you need right now. Accept it. Trust that He knows what He is doing. I will end with the end of the verse, as I think it sums it up nicely, and it doesn’t really need any explaining. “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Dear Heavenly Father, I pray that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to lean into you in times of distress and not turn away. Lord, give us the strength to not let anything separate us from your love. Give us the strength to get back up again when life knocks us down. Help us to process our grief in a way that does not blame you for all that is going wrong. Help us to see that you are with us through all the bad and the good. We love you, Lord. You are so amazing. Help us to never forget that. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow, have a blessed day!!
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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Come As You Are Series - The Prodigal Son
Luke 15:20-24 “So he set out for his father’s house. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion. He ran to him, threw his arms around him, and kissed him. Then the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ “But the father said to his servants, ‘Quickly bring out the finest robe we have and put it on him. Place a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Then bring the fatted calf and kill it, and let us celebrate with a feast. For this son of mine was dead and has come back to life. He was lost, and now he has been found.’ And they began to celebrate.”
I really like hearing other people talk about the various aspects of the Parable of the Prodigal Son. It seems like such a straightforward story to me, at least at first glance. For those who are not aware of the story, let me read it to you.
Luke 15:11-32 “The Parable of the Lost (or Prodigal) Son. Then he said: “There was a man who had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of your estate that I will inherit.’ And so the father divided the property between them.
“A few days later, the younger son gathered together everything he had and traveled to a distant country, where he squandered his inheritance on a life of dissolute living. When he had spent it all, a severe famine afflicted that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the local inhabitants who sent him to his farm to feed the pigs. He would have willingly filled his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.
“Then he came to his senses and said, ‘How many of my father’s hired workers have more food than they can consume, while here I am, dying of hunger. I will depart from this place and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me like one of your hired workers.” ’
“So he set out for his father’s house. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion. He ran to him, threw his arms around him, and kissed him. Then the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’
“But the father said to his servants, ‘Quickly bring out the finest robe we have and put it on him. Place a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Then bring the fatted calf and kill it, and let us celebrate with a feast. For this son of mine was dead and has come back to life. He was lost, and now he has been found.’ And they began to celebrate.
“Now the elder son had been out in the fields, and as he returned and drew near the house, he could hear the sounds of music and dancing. He summoned one of the servants and inquired what all this meant. The servant replied, ‘Your brother has come home, and your father has killed the fatted calf because he has him back safe and sound.’ The elder son then became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him, but he said to his father in reply, ‘All these years I have worked like a slave for you, and I never once disobeyed your orders. Even so, you have never even given me a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours returns after wasting his inheritance from you on prostitutes, you kill the fatted calf for him.’
“Then the father said to him, ‘Son, you are with me always, and everything I have is yours. But it was only right that we should celebrate and rejoice because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and now he has been found.’ ”
I have heard many people talk about this one parable. Some have focused on the younger son, who took his father’s money and left. Some focus on the father and his willingness and eagerness to forgive. Others focus on the older son who stayed and worked his father’s land. Every time I listen to someone explain this story, I always learn something new. No matter how many times this story is explained, there is a whole new level I didn’t know about. It truly amazes me. Today I want to explain one small part of it that Father Mike explained on day #319 of the Bible in A Year podcast. I thought it was so great, and I think everyone should hear how he explains the interaction between the younger son and his father when he comes home. Father Mike explains that when the younger son is leaving, he is saying he doesn’t want anything to do with his father. He takes the inheritance and leaves. Then he comes home because he is starving. Father Mike and Stephanie Parks, who work for Focus, created this retreat called the Prodigal Son Retreat, and it focuses on the four things the father said when the son came home.
First, what does it mean that the father gives him the best robe? In the ancient world, one had only a couple of robes and a single best robe. This son just took half of his father’s money and squandered it away. He is not a good son. He is a failure, and yet the father says Give him the best robe. This represents giving him the glory of the Father. Next, the father says, Put a ring on his finger. On that ring would be a signet of the father, a sign of the father’s authority. So, not only is he clothed in the father’s glory, but he is also putting on his hand the father’s authority. He is fully restoring him to sonship. Thirdly, he is saying to put shoes on his feet. Why? Because the son is free. He is free to leave again if he wants to. Lastly, the father says, “Kill the fatted calf.” There are not a lot of fatted calves lying around. You get one. Not only does he get the best robe, but he is also clothed in the father’s glory, then he gets the ring to show the father’s authority, and he is restored. Not only does he get shoes and is free to leave if he wants to again, but then they kill the fatted calf because he is relentlessly pursued. We know he is relentlessly pursued because his father didn’t wait for him to get home. His father was already looking for him, and when he saw him, his father ran after him. The master of the house did not run at the time this took place. This would have been out of the ordinary, and yet that is how excited the father was to see his son. Once his son was home, he was ridiculously celebrated.
I haven’t heard anyone explain the four things the father gives to the son before. I knew that the father was accepting the son back as is, but I didn’t realize the significance of those four things. This story is a parable to explain what it is like for us when we come home. Jesus told us so we could try to understand how loved we are by our Heavenly Father. The son is coming home, just as he is. He didn’t get all cleaned up before coming home. He didn’t wait till he earned back all the money or became successful. He was at the bottom of the bottom, and he still summoned up enough courage to come back home to his father. Can we be brave too? Can we summon up the courage to come to the Lord, even though we don’t feel worthy? Can we come to the Lord just as we are? God loves us. Can we accept that love? Please close your eyes and picture your Heavenly Father running up to you and putting his arms around you and picking you up and spinning you around like you are a little kid. How amazing does that feel?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, you are amazing. I love that you teach us in parables. I love that you reveal the truth to us slowly so we don’t get overwhelmed. Thank you for showing us your love for us by demonstrating it in the Father of this parable. You are so forgiving, and you welcome us with open arms. You don’t even wait for us to get up to the door. You see us from afar and you run out to greet us. We are so lucky you love us so much. We love you, Father, and we are so grateful that you forgive us for our sins. We are grateful you welcomed us back in and restored us to sonship and daughterhood. You are amazing, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in June 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “There is a long and winding road that leads to love, to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. It leads you to places you wouldn't go on your own. As you navigate this road, you will meet many difficult and unsuspecting challenges. I am beside you, close enough to you to direct your steps, to nudge you to the right or to the left, lest you get lost along the way, or perhaps rest too long in one place.”
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Come As You Are Series - Bartimaeus
Mark 10:46-52 “Then they came to Jericho. As Jesus and his disciples, together with a large crowd, were leaving the city, a blind man, Bartimaeus (which means “son of Timaeus”), was sitting by the roadside begging. When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Many rebuked him and told him to be quiet, but he shouted all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” Jesus stopped and said, “Call him.” So they called to the blind man, “Cheer up! On your feet! He’s calling you.” Throwing his cloak aside, he jumped to his feet and came to Jesus. “What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus asked him. The blind man said, “Rabbi, I want to see.” “Go,” said Jesus, “your faith has healed you.” Immediately, he received his sight and followed Jesus along the road.”
How many of us have the faith of this man that Jesus healed? He was sitting on the side of the road, and when he heard Jesus was passing by, he called out to him. The crowd of people told him to be silent, but he continued to call out. How many of us listen when others tell us to be silent? Or worse yet, we don’t feel worthy enough to speak up in the first place, or we are too nervous to speak out and ask for help, fearing rejection. Bartimaeus did not listen when others told him to be quiet. He kept calling out. He believed that Jesus could heal him, and he was not going to let the chance pass him by. Once Jesus heard him calling out, Jesus told the crowd to call him over. When the crowd told Bartimaeus that Jesus would see him, the bible says, “He threw aside his cloak, sprang up, and came to Jesus.” How great is that? How many of us are jumping up at Jesus’ call? I know it’s different. Jesus was right there, and he got to see him and talk to him. However, we can also talk to Jesus at any time we want to. Even though we cannot see him, he is calling us to him. He wants to invite us into a deeper relationship with him. Do we hear this call? Do we jump up, throw our cloak aside and run to him when we are called?
I love the faith that Bartimaeus had. He knew Jesus could heal him. He did not seem to have any doubt that Jesus could cure his blindness. He also didn’t seem to doubt that Jesus would want to help him or to question whether he was worthy enough. He saw Jesus walking by and called out to him. Do we do this? Jesus is here for us; he wants us to call out and to rely on Him. Are we doing that? It seems each week at my Prayer Group, God is showing up for us, and he is telling us to come closer. He keeps telling us to rely on him, that he is our protection and our refuge. Why are we not calling on him more? When Jesus healed Bartimaeus, He said, “Go your way; your faith has made you well.” How great would it be to hear those words from Jesus?
One scripture verse that I think is amazing and that I struggle with is Mark 11:22. This verse is Jesus’ reply to the cursed fig tree. Jesus said to them in reply, “Have faith in God. Amen, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it shall be done for him.” This is the type of faith that I strive for, yet I sometimes wonder if it’s possible. I wonder if there are humans who can have this type of faith? I know that God can do anything. I truly believe this. And yet, when I think of myself commanding a mountain to be lifted up and thrown into he see, I can’t seem to wrap my head around that. I have searched for this type of faith for a very long time now. Probably since the first time I actually heard this scripture and let it sink in.
The very next verse is Mark 11:23, “Therefore I tell you, all that you ask for in prayer, believe that you will receive it and it shall be yours.” This again just blows me away. All that you ask for shall be yours if you believe. That seems like a lot of pressure, and at the same time, a huge promise on God’s part. As I mentioned earlier, ever since I heard scripture like this, I have sought out this type of faith. I would love to believe without a shadow of a doubt that God can do all the things I ask Him to do, that He will answer all of my prayers. I find it a struggle to believe as much as I would like to, and I wonder if this is because I have a human brain and we were trained from an early age not to believe in things that we can’t see or prove. We were mostly taught that there are certain things that can be done and things that can’t be done. I think as humanity grows, we are learning to question that more and more. But it takes time to overcome years of that type of thinking.
I thought I would share one way I have been able to deepen my trust and faith that God can do all He says He can do. I read books about all the miracles God has done and continues to do. I love reading books about healing. God is truly amazing, and He performs miracles every single day. If we were just on the lookout for them, we would see them. If we can’t see them in our lives, we can read about them in others’ lives. Harold Hill’s book, “How to Live Like a King’s Kid,” is an excellent example. If you read all the amazing things that God did in his life, you can’t help but start to believe he will do it for you as well. Harold Hill also discusses his faith journey and how he reached a point where he began to see God do amazing things in his life.
Additionally, I have read books on healing by Francis McNutt, Randy Clark, Mary Healy, Matthew & Dennis Linn, which have been particularly beneficial. When you read about God’s healing of others and how there are people out there today who are calling upon God to heal people every day, then it strengthens your faith that he will answer your prayers as well. Hebrews 13:8 says, "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” We all know that Jesus performed miracles while he was alive and walked the earth. He raised people from the dead, he cured numerous illnesses, he turned water into wine, and he did many other remarkable things. This verse from Hebrews lets us know that these miracles were not just something he did in the past. “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” He is still performing these miracles today, and if we struggle to believe this, then we need to seek out the testimony of it, because it is out there. Another thing I pray often is Mark 9:24, “Lord, I believe, help my unbelief.”
This story goes well with the Come As You Are series because Beartimaeus did just that. He knew he wasn’t worthy to talk to Jesus, yet he called out to him anyway. He heard everyone telling him to be quiet, and yet he continued to call out, not because he thought he deserved the healing, but because he wanted it so badly. Is there something that you want so badly you are willing to call out to Jesus even though you don't feel worthy? Is there something you want so badly that you are willing to jump up and answer Jesus’s call? Ask Jesus for whatever it is; what have you got to lose?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask that you increase our trust in you. Lord, we believe, help our unbelief. Lord, we need you to show us the way. We would like nothing more than to have the faith to move mountains, and we know that you are the only one who can give us that faith. So we're asking you, Lord, we are asking for the faith to move mountains. Lord, give us the courage to ask when we need healing or when someone else needs healing. Help us to turn to you first and ask you to heal them. Lord, we give you permission to use us as your instruments of healing, as you used countless people before us. Jesus, you are the great physician, and we ask that you continue that work through us. There are too many people dying in the world today. Let us help you help them. Let us be your hands of healing, Lord Jesus. We love you, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in June 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, I tell you that I love you. I want you to be fully convinced of it. The more you are convinced of it, the more you will convince others that I love them, too. Again, I tell you, be bold, be courageous, be mine, and make me known.”
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Today’s Witness Wednesday is about my trip to Ecuador. Let me explain in a bit more detail how and why I decided to go to Ecuador. My brother-in-law, Daniel’s best friend, has been in the hospital for a month now. He had a heart attack and then a stroke. Daniel sent me a message asking me to pray for his friend Anival. I then sent this prayer request out to all those I know who could pray for him. Everyone started to pray for him, and I asked Daniel for an update. He said he was still in a coma and they were waiting for him to wake up so they could do the CT scan. However, they were decreasing the sedation, and he wasn’t waking up.
Then Daniel asked me for more prayers as they did the CT scan, and it said that there was more damage than they thought. It showed that he still had oxygen bubbles in his brain. When I got this text message from Daniel, I relayed it to all those who were praying for him, as I feel the more specific we can pray for someone, the better, as it shows all the more glory to God when he answers our specific prayers. Then I got another message from Daniel a week or so later, saying that Anival got worse and they need him to start breathing on his own so that he can start eating, as he is not getting enough nutrients.
When I got this message from Daniel, I also felt like I got a message from the Holy Spirit asking me to go to Ecuador to pray over Anibal in person. I thought this sounded a bit crazy, so I did what everyone should do when they feel like the Holy Spirit is telling them to do something that seems crazy. I discerned it with my spiritual director. I told her what I thought I heard, and I asked her to pray about it and see what the Holy Spirit says to her about it.
She said the first thing she heard was “go” and then she asked Him to confirm it for her. The way this usually happens for her is that she sees the word she heard other places throughout the day. In this instance, she saw what looked like “go” on two different license plates throughout her day. She felt that was the confirmation she was looking for. As I was walking into the prayer group on Thursday morning, I asked the Lord to let me hear something at the meeting that confirmed that He wanted me to go. I was surprised because I didn’t really hear anything during the meeting. Then, at the end, while we were cleaning up, one of our members, who just went to the national conference for Charismatic Catholics in the United States, said, “The main message of the entire conference was to Go Out. Don’t just stay in the comfort of praying within your prayer group, but be bold and go out into the world and pray with others.” I took this as the confirmation that I had asked the Lord for.
Now it was time to talk to my husband about it. It was not a good time for me to go to Ecuador, as he works for the government, so he is not getting a paycheck right now. Also, he was going out of the country to visit our son Noah since he is away in Scotland for school and happened to have a week off for his Birthday. Tony is not working and has a free travel credit. They were staying with a friend, so it would not be an expensive trip, and the timing was great for that trip. Another reason the timing wasn’t great for this call to go to Ecuador is that in order for me to go with my sister, Daniel, and their daughter, I would have to leave before Tony got back. This isn’t a big deal, as our kids at home are 17 and 21. They would be fine without us for a night, but it would have been better if we didn’t have to leave them alone for a night.
Anyway, I talked with Tony about the trip, and he wasn’t thrilled with the idea of me going, especially since he is not getting paid and we would both be out of the country at the same time. However, he didn’t say I couldn’t go, and I felt strongly that I was supposed to go, so I looked at getting a ticket. Before going to dinner, the tickets were $576. When I got home from dinner and tried to buy the ticket, it had gone up to $698. I went back and forth between Expedia and Travelocity, and I couldn’t find a ticket for less than $600 now. I sent my sister a message explaining that the tickets were too much, and so I didn’t think I could go. Then, I had a chat with God. I explained that there was no way I could spend $700 on a ticket when Tony wasn’t thrilled about me going in the first place. I told him that if he wanted me to go He was going to have to do something about these ticket prices. I switched back to Expedia one last night before giving up for the night, and there was one ticket for $540. Thank you, Jesus!! I bought it and was excited that I would be on my way to Ecuador in just one week.
There were lots of things that were trying to get in the way of my going on this trip, which is another way I knew I was supposed to go, and that God was going to move powerfully. Whenever we are about to do some amazing work for the Lord, the enemy tries to put up a million roadblocks. I fought through each one of them. I discerned them to make sure they weren’t legitimate reasons why I shouldn’t go, and ultimately decided it was ok if I went.
I got there last Friday night, and so it wasn’t until the next morning that we got to go to the hospital. They have a much different visitation schedule than we have in the States. They are only allowed to visit their loved ones for 15 minutes twice a day, and it can be only one person at a time. Also, sometimes they switch up the times. One day, we waited for over an hour and a half before I was able to go in and pray over him. The first day, we missed the visitation time as they did it early that day, around 11. However, they talked with the staff, and they allowed me to go in and pray for a few minutes. I wasn’t really sure what to say, but I just let him know that he was loved by the Lord, by Jesus, and by Mother Mary. I prayed commands over his body to be healed. I asked the Lord for a healing. I begged the Lord for a healing. I said all I could think to say.
Someone came and knocked on the door and told me my time was up. I went out into the hallway and waited with the family. Then the doctor came and talked with Daniel, Anival’s sister, and his daughter. They said there was an infection in his finger, and they needed to amputate the finger or it would spread to the other fingers. They also said most of the brain area was dead, so that he would never walk again. He would be paralyzed from the neck down. This, of course, made the family very upset. I sent out an updated prayer request, letting everyone know the new details.
After leaving the hospital on Saturday, I asked the Lord for a sign that He would heal Anival. I saw what appeared to be the shadow of a chalice with the Eucharist on it. I also saw a bumper sticker that said Nothing is impossible for God. Nada es imposible para Dios. I knew those were both signs from the Lord that He would work in this situation.
We weren’t in that town on Sunday, so the next time I could pray was Monday. We went on Monday morning and Monday evening. When we went in the morning, they talked to the doctor on call, and he said they do not need to amputate the finger. Thank you, Lord, prayers answered!! Daniel also asked if they could do another CT scan of the brain, as we saw Anibal cry and smile, and they hadn’t seen this. They said they would do another one.
I have not heard if they have done it yet or not, but the family was in a much better place on Monday than they were after the news on Saturday. I really felt as if Anibal could understand what I was saying on Monday, not as much on Saturday. Saturday, he did seem to smile and look at me a bit. However, on Monday, especially the second time, his face seemed to come alive. He had tears coming out of at least one eye when I told him how loved he was and that God was there with him. I told him he was never alone and no matter what, he could always talk to the Lord and ask for whatever he wanted. I told him God loves to do impossible things, so ask big! I explained it didn’t matter what he had done in the past; the second we tell God and ask for forgiveness, we are forgiven. I asked him to fight hard to stay with his family and he seemed to respond. I commanded his body to heal. I explained that God had asked me to come all the way from America to tell Anibal how much he is loved by God.
I got home late Tuesday night, and my brother-in-law, Daniel, checked in on Wednesday to see how I was doing. I told him that this is the part I have a hard time with; we all probably do. Now is the time to trust in the waiting. Now is the time to thank the Lord for the work we haven’t yet seen and to keep hoping that, in His time, He will heal Anival. I believe He will heal him. Around dinner time on Wednesday, Daniel sent me another text message that was like music to my ears. It said that I just got news and that Anibal woke up! He finally regained consciousness after over 30 days. He also said he responded to the order of the doctor when they said to open the mouth and other things with the face. Thank you, God! Thank you, Jesus! You are so good!!! Praise God!! When I checked in on Sunday, they said he is better. He is actually getting a bit anxious because he knows where he is, but doesn’t know what happened. This is good. Not that he is anxious, but that his brain is recognizing where he is and that it is thinking. They also said he is feeling more pain. Which again, we don’t want him to be in pain, but it could mean he is not paralyzed and his limbs are trying to respond.
Whatever all of that means, I believe Anibal will get to walk out of the hospital and be reunited with his family and dance with his daughter again someday. I am not a fan of waiting, but sometimes it is necessary, as God knows the best time to work His miracles. God is in all of this. That is something I know with my whole being. I am 100% sure God is in this, and I am so excited to see how it all unfolds.
Thank you, Lord! Thank you for calling me to go on this trip and for allowing me to be part of this miracle. Thank you for the amazing time I got to spend with family. I made some wonderful memories this weekend. Thank you for the miracles you are working in this situation. Thank you for the results of this next brain scan. Thank you for whatever progress in healing is made before the scan. If it's not all the way healed, Lord, please make sure they do another one. Lord, thank you for the full restoration of his mind and body. Thank you, Lord, all the Glory is yours!!
Don’t worry, I will keep you updated as I know so many of you are also praying for Anibal! We can all celebrate together when he gets to go home and resume his life again.
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Come As You Are Series - Ester
Esther 4:14 For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?”
I think the story of Esther is a good one for this series. Esther was a young Jewish woman who found favor with the king and became the queen. Her uncle Mordecai adopted her as his own when she was young, as both parents had died. Mordecai had instructed Esther before she met with the king not to reveal that she was Jewish, and she followed his advice. This story tells about how a powerful vizier to the king, named Haman, wanted to kill all the Jews living in the Persian Empire on one day. You see, he was angry because Mordecai refused to bow down to him. Mordecai explained he only bows down to God, and this angered Haman, who told the king that there were people living throughout his kingdom that did not obey the same laws of the king and that he should not tolerate them. He convinced the king to issue a decree that would destroy the Jews, and upon doing so, Haman agreed to put ten thousand silver talents into the royal treasury.
When the Jewish people heard, they went into mourning with prayer and fasting. Mordecai got word to Esther and explained the situation. He asked Esther to talk to her husband, the king, and beg for the lives of her people to be spared. Esther explained that if anyone goes in front of the king while he is in the inner courtroom without being summoned, they will suffer immediate death unless he offers them the end of the scepter. Mordecai wrote back the following in Esther 4:14 “For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?”. Esther risked her life to go in front of the king, and because of her bravery, she saved her people, God’s people.
We do not usually know why we end up where we end up or why we go through the things that we go through. God is a mystery, and only he knows what he is doing. He can see the whole picture, past, present, and future. We can only see the past and present. I once heard a quote that I really liked and found comforting during some difficult times. The quote said, “You were assigned this mountain to show others it can be moved.” I found it comforting to think that by making it through the situation, I would show others that they could make it through, too. I also used the quote in reverse and thought, “Ok, then I just need to look for someone who has made it through this type of situation to show me that I could make it through as well.” There is a song by Christina Perri called "I Believe." In that song, she says, “I believe that you fell so that you would land next to me.” Have you ever been in a situation where you could just tell that God arranged it? Sometimes, we can tell what God is doing. Sometimes, we can feel it in our bones that we are exactly where we were meant to be at that precise moment.
The reason I think Esther’s story goes well in this series is that she had to go to the Lord and ask Him to save her people. She needed God on her side if she was going to be able to walk into the inner room where her husband was and not suffer immediate death. She was living as a queen and pretending that she wasn’t Jewish. I can imagine it might have been hard to go to the Lord and ask for something, when she was pretending she wasn’t Jewish. I can imagine she might have wondered if God would answer her prayers. Would he be mad at her for not being honest with those around her? Would he want to punish her for not practicing her religion? I can see how she might not have felt worthy to go to the Lord and ask for help.
Esther knew the Jewish people needed her, and so she rose above her insecurities. She rose above her fear of dying, and she stepped out in faith that God would not let her and her people perish. She stepped out in faith, and she saved her people. Can you relate to Ester? Have you stepped away from God? Have you pretended that He is not there, or that you weren’t His child? It’s ok. Come back to Him, just as you are, and He will welcome you with open arms. I know this is hard to believe, as that is not how those we know in this world behave. This world is broken, and so are the people living in it. We often struggle to forgive and forget. We hold onto things and resent people for the things that they do.
God is not like us. He is for us, not against us. He loves us unconditionally and is just waiting for us to come to him so he can pick us up in His arms and give a giant hug. If you ever wonder what it will be like when you turn back to the Lord. If you ever wonder what God's response will be, you can look in the Bible at Luke 15:20. “ So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him.” You don't even have to walk all the way back to the Father. As soon as God sees you headed in His direction, He will run towards you, put his arms around you, and kiss you. That is how much He loves you and wants you to come to Him, just as you are!! Trust that God is for you. Trust that He wants you to come to Him. Trust that no matter what you have done, you can still come to Him.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this podcast today. Lord, we thank you for making us who we are meant to be. We thank you for placing us in this time of need. We ask that you be with everyone who is struggling right now. Lord, we ask that you give us the strength and perseverance to keep going. We ask that you show us those who have come before us, who have overcome similar circumstances, and give us the knowledge that we, too, can overcome the circumstances. Lord, help us believe that despite all we have said and done, we can still come to you and you will still be waiting for us with open arms. Lord, you are amazing, and we're so very thankful for all you do for us. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus ' holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus! I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Especially because I get to bring you my Witness Wednesday from my trip to Ecuador, and I can’t wait to share all the miracles with you. It was a truly blessed time, and I am so grateful that God let me share in these miracles. I hope you will listen in tomorrow and continue to pray for Anibal. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in June 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, I keep telling you, do not fear. I keep telling you, I am right next to you and I am all-powerful. You may be weak, but I am strong. Move forward in trust. Move forward in my will. Move forward. ”
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Come As You Are Series - The Man With Leprosy
Matthew 8:1-4 “When Jesus had come down from the mountain, great crowds followed him; and there was a leper who came to him and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, if you choose, you can make me clean.” He stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, “I do choose. Be made clean!” Immediately, his leprosy was cleansed. Then Jesus said to him, “See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer the gift that Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.”
This story of the man with leprosy is an excellent example of someone brave enough to come to the Lord, despite the religious and social laws that forbade him from doing so. Back when Jesus walked the earth, “The person with such an infectious disease must wear torn clothes, let his hair be unkempt, cover the lower part of his face, and cry out, ‘Unclean! Unclean!’... He must live alone; he must live outside the camp.” (Leviticus 13:45–46) While it wasn’t a civil crime to be around people, it was a religious and social violation that carried serious consequences — it cut you off from worship, fellowship, and daily community life.
This man would have known the consequences of coming up to Jesus and talking with Him. He would have known it was forbidden, and yet he was willing to risk it all for the chance that Jesus might heal him. Can we be that brave? Can we approach Jesus with all of our baggage, with the chance that He might be able to heal us, too? What if Jesus could heal your heartache? What if Jesus could heal all of your physical ailments? What if you didn't have to keep feeling whatever you are feeling?
Life doesn’t have to get worse before you come to the Lord. Life doesn’t have to get better before you come to the Lord. This man came to Jesus just as he was. He knew he shouldn’t. He knew he wasn’t good enough to go up to Jesus and ask for anything. He knew he could get in trouble for asking Jesus for anything. And yet, he knew he needed Jesus to make him clean. He was willing to take the chance that Jesus could change his whole life. And guess what? Jesus did! He will do the same for you if you ask Him.
The man said to Jesus, “Lord, if you choose, you can make me clean.” He was showing Jesus that he knew how powerful he was. He was trusting in Jesus’s ability. He had the faith he needed to ask Jesus to heal him. Do you remember what Jesus said? He said, “I do choose. Be made clean!” Jesus will say the same for you. He wants all of us to be clean. He wants all of us to be healed and whole. He wants all of us to come to Him and let Him help change us. Can we do that? Can we be brave and ask Jesus?
Perhaps some of our hesitation to ask Jesus is that He might say no. I mean, the man with leprosy said, “If you choose, you can make me clean.” What if Jesus doesn’t choose to? What if we ask and He says no, what then? Asking Jesus for a healing takes a level of vulnerability that isn’t always easy, especially if others have hurt us in the past. If we feel we aren’t worthy, then it makes sense we would be nervous to go and ask Jesus for help. What if He says no, and then we are embarrassed that we even asked in the first place?
I used to be someone who hated to ask for something unless I knew the answer was yes. I had a somewhat irrational fear of being told no. I would refuse to return things to the store if they didn’t fit me or if I didn’t like them. I would always have Tony do it because I would be afraid they might tell me no, and I would feel stupid for even asking. I would be afraid to go up and ask if my kids could exchange their Happy Meal toy for another one, because what if they said no? It affected so many parts of my life, and yet I just couldn’t do it. It’s one of those things where you have a fear, and then shame about that fear, and then it just adds up.
For instance, I would want to just go ask if my kids could exchange their toys, but I was afraid they would say no, and then I would feel embarrassed. Then I would probably start to cry because that is what I do when I am nervous or when I feel embarrassed. Then I would feel even worse because I would be crying for no reason, and so I would cry even more. Then I would also feel bad because my kids really wanted the other toy, and I just couldn’t go up and ask.
Eventually, I learned to just ask. It is not a big deal if they say no. You just say, Ok, thanks anyway. I didn’t cry when they said no. I didn’t feel stupid when they said no. Actually, I doubt anyone ever said no. Who cares which toy the kids have? It is very rare that anyone at a store will say you can’t return something. So, most of my fears were not really necessary. Yet, they were very real and kept me from things that I would have liked to do.
I get why it might be hard for you to come to the Lord as you are, especially if you fear rejection. I want to assure you that the Lord is different than anyone you have met in this world. He doesn’t reject His children. He welcomes us with open arms anytime we turn back to Him. You might think you are different because you have turned away from him or turned your back on him too many times to count. It’s okay, he still loves you and is still waiting with open arms for you to come back to him.
What I love about this story of the man with leprosy is that leprosy is contagious. That is why those who had it needed to be separate from the community. However, when the man encountered Jesus, instead of the leprosy infecting Jesus, Jesus made the man clean. The good in Jesus, His love, peace, and healing touch, can make you clean too. All you have to do is be around Jesus, and you start to become like Him. He is infectious in all the good ways. His peace, love, and joy spread to all those around Him. When you are in His presence, you can’t help but start to feel all those things.
I understand that it is hard to come to Jesus like we are and ask Him for anything. We feel unworthy and unclean. Yet, it is worth the risk. Think about the outcome. In business, they always talk about your ROI (return on investment). If you can be brave and step out and come to the Lord just as you are, the return on that investment of trust is paid back a million times over. That first step of trust is hard, and there may be other times in your life when it is hard. Unfortunately, God doesn’t promise us an easy and stress-free life. He does promise us that He will always be there for us and that He will protect us and deliver us from our problems. He does promise us eternal life and all the provisions and strength we need to get through this life. He promises to use all things for our good. He promises so many things. We just have to be willing to take that first step and invite Him into this mess that we call our life. Can you be brave today? Can you ask the Lord into your life, even if you are afraid he might not come? I promise He will not reject you.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each person listening to this episode. Lord, we love you and we want to come to you as we are. We want to be brave like this man with leprosy and just walk up to you and ask you to make us clean. Lord, help us to trust that we can come to you and that you will not reject us. Please help us to believe the truth that you are always ready to welcome us back with open arms. Help us come to you Lord! We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you have not checked out my book yet, CLICK HERE! If you would like a signed copy, please reach out to me, and I will be happy to sign a copy and mail it to you. I look forward to meeting you all here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in June 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, a vision “In every room, in every house, wherever you're sitting, you are filled to the capacity with angels. You are surrounded. Ceiling, floor, round, and round, as well as this room. As we were singing in tongues, as we were praising, they were marching in to surround us. And they were praising the Lord with us.”
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Come As You Are Series - The Broken Ones Are Beautiful Too!
Romans 7:19-20 Paul said, “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within me.”
God knows we are broken. He knows we struggle. He doesn’t get disappointed. Instead, He celebrates every time we don’t give in to temptation. Every time we mess up, we can bring that to God with the assurance that He welcomes us with open arms and celebrates because we came home instead of being upset we messed up.
We live in an age where social media lets us see what everyone is doing. Social media has many benefits. I get to see photos of friends I haven’t talked to in years. We can notify everyone with one post about the biggest things in our lives. We get to post all the amazing things happening in our lives. It also has downsides, and one of them is that people tend to post all the amazing things and leave out all the bad stuff. Which in itself isn’t bad. I mean, who wants to read about negative things? However, when we see all the good and none of the bad, our brain tells us stories about how everyone else has it all together. Everyone else can do all the things, so why can’t we? Why are we struggling when no one else is? Our mind starts to play the comparison game. Comparison is the thief of joy. We can go on Facebook for 20 minutes, then feel terrible, and we can’t figure out why. It’s because we compare ourselves to others and decide everyone else has so much more than we do, they are so much further along than we are, they are happier than we are, and so on. We may not even realize we are doing it. Do you ever notice your mood change after spending time on social media? That could be why.
We can do the same thing when we look at the various saints or we look at the people of the Bible. We can look at how God used them and get discouraged. We can tell ourselves He will never use us like He used them. We put them on a pedestal and assume that they were so holy, which is why God used them. We look at all they did for God and are sure they were much holier than we are. We tell ourselves they had it all together; they must have said their prayers perfectly, always worshiped God, and were always perfect. We do this with people we see in church, too. We see the Deacon, the Priest, the minister, and his wife; we think they must be so holy. They must not have the struggles that we have. Let me tell you a little secret: they struggle just like we do. No one is exempt from struggling. No one has this life figured out.
I found an article titled' The Bible Heroes Who ‘Failed Forward’ by Greg Laurie. I just want to read you the beginning part, as it shows us that these people came just as they were. They didn’t change before God used them. God knew who they were, and he chose them anyway.
Pastor Levi Lusko tells the story of collecting shells on the beach with his daughter Clover. Levi was looking for the nice shells that were in good condition. Meanwhile, Clover was picking up all the broken shells.
When her little hands couldn’t hold any more shells, she turned to her father and said, “Daddy, the broken ones are beautiful too.”
I think God sees things the same way.
The New Testament book of Hebrews includes a collection of great heroes of the faith, men and women whom God used and blessed. I find that interesting because these people messed up. They weren’t perfect examples.
But the funny thing is that chapter 11 of Hebrews mentions only their victories and not their mistakes. That is because God sees what we will become, not necessarily what we are.
In fact, a lot of people we read about in the Bible messed up. Abraham, the father of faith and of the Jewish people, lied about his wife twice. His son Isaac did the same thing. Sarah, Abraham’s wife, laughed at the promise of God and then denied that she laughed.
Jacob lied and connived. Noah got drunk. Samson was immoral. Gideon was fearful. Rahab was a prostitute. David had an affair and then had someone murdered to cover it up. Elijah was deeply depressed and didn’t want to live. And Jonah ran from God. The disciples fell asleep when they should have been praying, and Simon Peter openly denied the Lord. Then there was Moses, who killed a guy.”
This article shows us that these amazing people in the Bible weren’t perfect. Could God have selected perfect people to do these things? Yes, absolutely. He is God. He can do whatever He wants. Yet He didn’t. He chose people who had made mistakes. He chose people who had done things that we might think are unforgivable. He chose people who probably didn’t feel up to the task. He chose people who failed more than once. Do you know what these people all had in common? They said yes. Not all of them said yes the first time they were asked, but God wouldn’t have used them if they didn’t cooperate with Him. I love that Greg said in his article that God sees what we will become, not necessarily what we are.
The same is true for you. If you want God to use you, all you need to do is say yes. There is a song I love titled Nobody by Casting Crowns. The lyrics confirm that God uses the unlikeliest of people to do the most amazing things. God isn’t looking for perfect people. Just like we talked about in previous devotionals in this series. Jesus didn’t come for the righteous; they do not need a savior. God is looking for ordinary people to do extraordinary things. The song starts out:
Why You ever chose me
Has always been a mystery
All my life I've been told I belong
At the end of the line
With all the other not-quites
With all the never-get-it-rights
But it turns out they're the ones You were looking for All this time
Is this you? Have you always been on the outside looking in? Have you always been told you wouldn’t amount to anything? Have you always struggled to feel worthy or part of the crowd? Have you always felt different or less than? Have you been told you are either not enough or too much? Have you been told no one would ever love you? Well guess what? You are the one God has been looking for all this time.
The song goes on to say:
'Cause I'm just a nobody
Trying to tell everybody
All about Somebody
Who saved my soul
Ever since You rescued me
You gave my heart a song to sing
I'm living for the world to see
Nobody but Jesus
This is great because it says, I’m living for the world to see nobody but Jesus. Would you relate as much to those in the Bible if they were all perfect? If they were perfect from birth and never made the wrong choice? I know that is how we see them in our eyes. Yet, when we learn they weren’t perfect, don’t we feel better? Isn’t it somehow comforting to know they aren’t perfect? If God only used perfect people, then we might say, Of course, they could do that; they were perfect. However, when we hear about some ordinary person doing something extraordinary, we know it had to have been God. No one is looking at the ordinary little shepherd boy, David, and saying that He killed Goliath because he is just that good and he is that strong. It is clear that God was with Him, and He could only kill the giant because He was with him. The song points out people that God chose and why they probably wouldn’t have been our first choice.
Moses had stage fright
When David brought a rock to a sword fight
You picked twelve outsiders nobody would have chosen
And You changed the world
Well the moral of the story is
Everybody's got a purpose
So when I hear that devil start talking to me saying
"Who do you think you are?” I say
I'm just a nobody
Trying to tell everybody
All about Somebody
Who saved my soul
I want you to remember this when the devil starts talking in your ear, too, because he will. I am not even talking about if you have some big mission for God. Even if you try to come to God in prayer, the devil will get in your ear and ask, “Who do you think you are?” “Why would God want to hear from you? Remember that thing you did last week? Do you think he will ever forgive you for that?” “God has more important people to talk to.” “God has better things to do than to listen to you complain about the same pain you have been complaining about all month.” The enemy can be relentless. When this happens, not if, but when, you need to be armed with truth. That is what this series is all about. During this devotional series, we have been finding the truth in the scriptures, in songs, and in the lives of those who came before us. My prayer is that by the end of this series, we will be so confident in our ability to go to the Lord just as we are when the enemy asks us, “Who do you think you are?” We will be able to say I am a child of God. I am a son or daughter of the one true king. I am worthy because Christ died on that cross for me. I can come to God just as I am because of God’s mercy and grace. God doesn’t want me to wait till I am perfect to come to Him. He wants me to go right now, right where I am. I know you might not be there yet, but we are done with this series yet!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those who are listening. Lord, I ask you to show us how wonderful we are in your eyes. Please help us to really believe that you want us to come to you just as we are. We love you, Lord, and we want to believe it! We want to believe you love us even though we are deeply flawed. We want to believe you love us even though we sin. Please help us Lord! We ask all of this in accordance with Your Will and In Jesus’s Holy Name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. We are coming to the end of this Come As You Are series. If you have an idea of a topic you would like me to cover next, please reach out and let me know. Also, please check out my book; it is on Amazon right now. Walk Boldly With Jesus Devotional: Who I Am: Discovering God’s Truth About Me. If you do get the book, I would be really appreciative if you could leave a review on Amazon. It doesn’t have to be long, and it doesn’t have to be glowing. Just leave an honest review, even if it’s just one sentence; it will be helpful. I need to have a certain number of reviews before I can run ads, and that would help more people find the book. I look forward to meeting you here again on Monday. Remember Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed weekend.
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in June 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I saw their ways, but I will heal them and lead them. I will give comfort to those who mourn for them. I, the creator, who gave them life, peace to the far and to the near, says the Lord, and I will heal you.”
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Come As You Are Series - Your Sin Did Not Cause Your Illness
John 9:1-3 "As he walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.”
Another reason we might struggle to come to the Lord is that we think our sickness is somehow a punishment for something that we did. We were awful teenagers, so God is repaying us with this chronic pain that we have. We think that our sins from the past are catching up to us, and that is why we got cancer or why our child is sick now, why our loved one is sick. If we look to the Bible, Jesus addresses this for us in today’s verse.
You are not sick because of your sins or because God is punishing you? What if you are sick so that God’s works might be revealed in you? What if God is going to use this illness for something amazing? God did not cause you to be sick. God does not cause illness. God is a healer, it says so in Exodus 15:26, which says, “He said, “If you listen carefully to the Lord your God and do what is right in his eyes, if you pay attention to his commands and keep all his decrees, I will not bring on you any of the diseases I brought on the Egyptians, for I am the Lord, who heals you.” However, God can use your illness for all kinds of reasons.
I heard a story in a book written by Heidi Baker and her husband. They were trying to heal a man from the Middle East. I can’t remember where exactly she said he was from. Her friends asked them to come because they had had great success in praying over people and having them be healed. The man whom they were praying for was muslim, and so were all of his family members. Heidi and her husband thought that the man would be healed when they prayed over him, and it would be a lot of Glory for God because all those in the room would see him healed and know it was God who did it. They prayed and they prayed, but the man was not healed. They had a trip planned, so they had to leave. However, when they got back, they heard that the man was still alive. They went to visit him, and this time he had twice as many people to visit him because they were sure he was going to die. So all his relatives came, even those from out of town. Their friends asked them to come and pray one more time. So then they prayed over him again, and this time he was healed, and all of his family members became Christians. God used his illness, and he healed him, but he healed him in his timing, not our timing, not like when we thought he would have healed him. And so the same can be true for us.
Another saint who had to deal with a lot of illness was St. Teresa of Lisieux, who is another doctor of the church. And yet she died at age 24. She had tuberculosis. Again, she was very dedicated to the Lord. She loved Jesus. She spent so much time in prayer, and she really wanted to be a missionary. That was her goal. That was her dream for how she thought God would use her to take her all over the world to spread the love of God. And yet she never got to go anywhere because she was so sickly.
And yet she is the patron saint of missionaries because she prayed for all the missionaries who were there. And her writings and her work are now spread throughout the whole church. So even though she wasn't able to go herself and spread the word, God used her, even with her illness, to become a doctor of the church and to spread the word of the Lord.
I just want to encourage all of you that if you're thinking that you can't come to the Lord because you have too much sin, or you're thinking you're sick because of something you did, or you're thinking that God can't use you because of what you've done or because of your illness, I just want to assure you that none of that is true. You're not sick because of your sins. You're not counted out because of anything you've done. God still wants to use you. And all the sins or the illness that you feel have discounted you, God could use them for good. Don’t give up on your hopes and dreams. Don’t let anyone tell you they won’t happen. You have a miraculous God who can make anything happen. Just keep bringing it to the Lord! Just keep coming to the Lord, and He will be there for you!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to the episode. Lord, you are the almighty one. I ask that you help us realize we are not the cause of our illness. I ask you to help us know that you are not punishing us. Our illness is not from you and is not because of our actions. Help us to know how loved and wanted we are, just as we are. Help us to know how much you truly love us! We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I am sorry I didn’t bring you an episode at the beginning of this week. I was in Ecuador. I got back very late Tuesday night. I look forward to sharing about the trip with you next Wednesday. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in June 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Build up, prepare the way. Remove the stumbling blocks from my people's path. For thus says He who is high and exalted, living eternally, whose name is the Holy One, on high. Indwell in holiness, and with the crushed and the dejected in spirit, to revive the spirits of the dejected, to revive the hearts of the crushed.”
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Are We Underestimating Praise?
2 Chronicles 20:21-22 "After consulting the people, Jehoshaphat appointed men to sing to the Lord and to praise him for the splendor of his holiness as they went out at the head of the army, saying: “Give thanks to the Lord, for his love endures forever.”As they began to sing and praise, the Lord set ambushes against the men of Ammon and Moab and Mount Seir who were invading Judah, and they were defeated.”
In this chapter of Chronicles, God’s people have armies coming to attack them from three different places. Things were not looking good. Then the Spirit of the Lord came upon Jahaziel son of Zechariah as he stood in the assembly. He told the king and all the people of Judah that they shouldn’t be afraid because they was not their fight, it was God’s fight. He told them to march down against the invading armies, but that they would not have to fight the battle. This is where the verse picks up. “After consulting the people, Jehoshaphat appointed men to sing to the Lord and to praise him for the splendor of his holiness as they went out at the head of the army, saying: “Give thanks to the Lord, for his love endures forever.”
Jehoshaphat and his army were headed into what seemed like a hopeless battle. There were three different armies waiting to destroy them and to take their land. You would think they would have the soldiers lead them this battle. Even if they trusted God, you would think just to be on the safe side you would have the soldiers go first. However, King Jehoshaphat appointed men to sing to the Lord and to praise Him for the splendor of his holiness as they went out to face the armies. “As they began to sing and praise, the Lord set ambushes against the men of Ammon and Moab and Mount Seir who were invading Judah, and they were defeated.”
Did you catch that last part? It doesn’t say once they started fighting the Lord gave them victory. It doesn’t say their enemy was defeated by their mighty hand. It says as they began to sing and praise, the Lord set ambushes against their enemy and they were defeated. They didn’t even have to fight a single person. They didn’t have to lift their hands at all in this fight, they just needed to lift up their voices. Do you have enemies that you need defeated? Are you praising God now while you are in the middle of it, or are you waiting until you get out of it? I have known that praise is important for some time know. I have even done other episodes on how important it is to praise through the storm, not just after it is over. However, I didn’t know about this story. I didn’t know about God destroying three armies with praise alone.
Sometimes we are trying to fight our enemies on our own. We know we need God and yet we ask Him for so much we feel we should try to do this one on our own. Yet, instead of leading with praise we lead with anger, frustration, sadness, jealousy and whatever other emotions we are feeling in the moment. Can you think of a time when you have charged into a situation with your emotions leading the way? How did that work out for you? For me, it never works out. When I go into a situation on my own, without inviting the Lord to come with me, it never works out as I intended it to. However, when I do think to praise the Lord while I am in the middle of a difficult situation, it always turns out well.
There are times when we think God has abandoned us. We are praying and it does not seem like He is with us. Maybe we are the ones who have abandoned God. We may be praying, but are we praying with a hopeful heart? Are we trusting God will come through for us when we pray? Are we praising God for all He does for us? God is working in our lives every single day, are we praising Him for that? I talk a lot about gratitude because I think it is so important to go through life being grateful for what we have. I think when we are grateful with what we have God blesses us with more. Being grateful is also a great way to shift our mood if we are feeling sad, or having a bad day. Sometimes all it takes is a perspective switch and we can turn our whole day around.
Praise is different from gratitude. Sometimes we can be praising God for what we have and what He has done for us and yet praise is so much more than that. We can also praise God fro who He is. Sometimes we are in a situation where we may not want to or be able to praise God for the situation. For instance, in this verse God’s people were not praising God for the situation they were in. They were not grateful they had three armies coming after them. They were praising God for “the splendor of His Holiness.” They were praising God for who He is. He is the the Fountain of Life. He is the great “I AM.” He is the Just One and He is the King of kings. He is the Lord of Lords and He is the Light of the world. He is the Lord our God. He is the Way, the Truth and the Life.
How often are you praising God for simply being God? How often are you spending time in prayer thanking and praising God for being everything you need Him to be? Maybe the next time we are in a hard situation, instead of charging into the situation with our guns blazing, maybe we can lead with our praise. Instead of leading with our anger, frustration, sadness, we can lead with our praise. God is always there for us. Let’s be there for Him. Let’s give God the praise that He so rightly deserves. The thought just came to me that not everyone knows how to praise God. There is not specific way. I love to listen to praise and worship music, which is really any Christian music. I am also part of a prayer group and we praise outloud to the Lord thanking Him for all He has done and all he Is. I say phrases such as those listed above, things such as, you are the Light of the World, You are the Word made flesh, You are the King of the Kings. You can also think back to all you have and thank God for that one by one. You can thank God for everyone He has brought into your life. Praise is time spent with the Lord when you are either thanking Him for something or you are talking about all the reasons He is awesome!! I challenge you to find some time in your day today and praise the Lord. You can do it silently within your own heart, or you can shout if from the roof tops, and everything in between. Whatever you feel comfortable with. The more you praise the more comfortable it will feel to you. Also, the more you praise the more you will see God working in your life.
Dear Heavenly Father I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to praise you more. Put praise for you on our hearts so we long to do it. Give us a thirst for praising you Lord. It is so amazing how you defeated Judah’s enemy when they started to praise you. Lord, we have many enemies and we need you to defeat them. Help us to praise you first instead of trying to fix it all our selves. We love you Lord, you are so powerful. You give Light to our lamps. You straighten our crooked path. You are always by our side and we am so grateful. I ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed weekend.
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Come As You Are Series - Can A Leopard Change Its Spots?
Jeremiah 13:23 “Can an Ethiopian change his skin or a leopard its spots? Neither can you do good who are accustomed to doing evil.”
What really struck me when I read this was kind of like an aha moment: we tell ourselves we can't come to God until we have it all together. And yet, we can't get it all together without him.
I think that's why the enemy tells us we don't need to go to God. We're not good enough to go to God. Wait a little while, get it all worked out, and then you can go to God. The enemy is putting this in our minds because he knows that on our own, we can't do anything.
But through Christ who strengthens us, we can do all things. It really struck me when I read that verse that, yeah, we can't change on our own. So why do we think we can't go to God until we have it all together, until we've figured it out, until we've perfected this or that? When we actually need him to help us, we need him to change our hearts, we need him to change our lives, we need him to show us the way.
As I talked about in one of the other devotionals, we need to attach our yoke to God and to Jesus and let them show us the way. All these scriptures are pointing out that we don't have to have it all together. We don't have to know how to pray. We don't have to pray perfectly before we come to God. God wants us to come to him as is, just as we are, and he will help us figure all the rest of it out. He will help make our struggle easier, but we have to come to him.
The Lord honors our free will. If we want to go at it alone, if we want to do this life on our own, God's going to let us, and that's because he loves us and because he wants us to love him, truly love him. And you can't have true love if you don't have a choice in it.
And so it's very important that we invite God into our struggles, that we invite God into our mess, that we come to God even when we're a mess, and we ask him to help us. Because if we don't invite him in, he's not coming in. He's going to let us do it on our own if that's what we think we want. He's not going to take away our free will.
There was an article I read about coming to God as you are, and they had this passage from “Steps to Christ,” and I want to share it with you. "With the rich promises of the Bible before you, can you give place to doubt? Can you believe that when the poor sinner longs to return, longs to forsake his sins, the Lord sternly withholds him from coming to His feet in repentance? Away with such thoughts! Nothing can hurt your own soul more than to entertain such a conception of our heavenly Father. He hates sin, but He loves the sinner, and He gave Himself in the person of Christ, that all who would might be saved and have eternal blessedness in the kingdom of glory. What stronger or more tender language could have been employed than He has chosen in which to express His love toward us? He declares, in Isaiah 49:15, “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you!”
I want you to take a moment and think about your own children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, or friends' children. Think about any kids that you've ever been close to. What would you do if they came to you when they had just messed up, when they had done something really bad? Would you turn away from them? Would you want them to have to figure it out on their own before they brought you the situation? Or would you want to be there with them? Would you want to walk through the situation with them hand in hand? One month in mentoring, I was talking about praise and worship, and I was thinking of David and how he always turned back to the Lord, and it's amazing to me. I mean, he murdered someone, and he repented and turned back to the Lord. When he had an affair with Bathsheba, he turned back to the Lord. David was always turning back to the Lord, and I don’t remember ever reading anything where it says he was too ashamed to turn back to the Lord or he felt like he wasn't good enough to turn back to the Lord.
When I really thought about David always turning back to the Lord, I just thought, Wow, that is a man who knows his identity in Christ. That is a man who knows his Heavenly Father, and he knows the love that the Father has for him. David was so sure of who God was and the love he had for his people. I mean, David went up against a giant when he was a child because he was sure God had his back. Don’t you just wish you had that faith? Don’t you just wish you knew without a doubt that God was always going to be there for you? Even when you were in danger, in trouble, running for your life, you still knew God was working all things for your good.
This is my prayer for myself, each one of you, and honestly, the whole world. I want nothing more than for each person to know how ridiculously loved by God they are and that he is right there with them. I wish everyone knew they could rely on the Lord for all their wants and needs. Yes, wants, not just needs. God cares about all the things that are important to us, not just the things we need. That doesn’t mean that God is going to give us everything that we want because we want some pretty silly things sometimes.
Also, not everything we want is good for us. For instance, my son wants a motorcycle. Just because he wants it doesn’t mean it is good for him. Sometimes, we may want something, and yet God knows that if we got it, it wouldn’t be good for us. So, he closes those doors sometimes, and it hurts in the moment, but He wouldn’t be a good Father if He just gave us everything we wanted, even if He knew it would hurt us in the long run. For instance, you have this promotion that just came up at work, and you didn’t get it. You are really upset, and then you find out more about the job, and you learn that you would have had to travel a lot more, and then you are relieved because you didn’t want to be away from your family.
God knows us better than we know ourselves. God formed us in our mother’s womb. He has seen our whole lives from beginning to end. He not only knows what is good for us and what isn’t, but he knows what is best for us. He knows our innermost desires before we even know them. Come to the Lord, just as you are, and let Him change you in all the best ways!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode. Lord, you are amazing. We are so grateful for all the love you give to us. Please help us to accept that love more Lord. Help us to realize we are helpless without you. We don’t need to wait until we change to come to you because we can’t change without you, but we can do all things through you! Lord, we love you and we ask all of this in accordance with Your Will and in Jesus’s Holy Name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I would like to ask you all for prayers for me. I am headed to Ecuador to pray for my brother-in-law’s best friend, who is not doing so well. His name is Anibal. If you could keep us all in your prayers. I am praying for safe travels and also for healing miracles. I am praying he will be completely healed and all mental and physical functioning will be completely restored. I am praying for peace, strength, and love for him and his family. Please join me in these prayers. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in June 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Most ears will be open. Most ears are waiting. They're waiting to hear that I love them, that I cherish them, that they are precious to me. They need that word. The world is falling down upon them.”
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Today, I am bringing you three witnesses from my prayer group. Each week, we take 10 minutes at the end of our prayer meeting, and we thank God for all he is doing in our lives. We share the various ways we have seen God show up in our lives. Each week, people share, and what is amazing is that He shows up in our lives in so many different ways. Sometimes healings, sometimes an outpouring of love or peace, sometimes provisions. So many different ways. If you are looking at ways He is showing up in your life, you will see them too.
I wanted to share something about last week's prayer meeting. When we lifted up the basket, I had some really important, not that any of our intercessory prayers or requests are unimportant, just a couple of really big ones, and it was the Feast of the Holy Angels. So I said to my guardian angel, Guardian angel, I can't be there. I know everybody's praying for my things, even though they're not in the basket, but would you take them and put them in the basket?
This is in my imagination. And while you're there, would you get all the other guardian angels, all the angels in that room, to lift the basket up to God? There we go. So I'm picturing this. I'm imagining this. But as I see them, or as I'm imagining them lifting it up, all of a sudden, the basket turned golden. Because the prayer meeting was running late, I didn't get to share that. But there's more to it now, because one of my petitions was for a wonderful priest I know who was going for a biopsy that afternoon. And I figured I wouldn't hear from him until I saw him for Mass this coming week. But I got a text message from him that afternoon saying they didn't do the biopsy. They couldn't find the tumor.
Last week, I took somebody to one of these places for cancer treatment. And while I'm out in the lobby, I had the opportunity to share with a variety of people of different faiths some of the wonders that God has done, and also share some psalms and stuff. And one particular lady didn't have any hair. She had had a double mastectomy a couple of years ago and had a very severe infection in her chest cavity. Didn't have any teeth and had some major other ailments going on. And I asked her, were you brought up in a faith? And she says, No, no faith at all in the home. And I said, Well, could I share some psalms with you? And I shared like 91. She had tears in her eyes. I shared 100. And when she gets called in, she gets about 15 or 20 feet away, and she turns around and says, This is the first time in two and a half years I've felt peace.
Saturday night, I was in an adoration. The same person who told me about the Eucharistic Rosary by Wording Knowledge came in. And I said to her, You've been telling me about all these healings wherever you go. I wonder if you'd want to just pray for me now. I'm not asking for a healing on demand, but, you know, whatever the Lord wants. And I explained to her that chiropractors for years have told me that there's a rotation and a tension in my pelvis so that one leg is twisted up higher than the other, and that throws my gait off balance, and at least our leg isn't bowed down. And I don't want to go back to chiropractors and have them give me a little relief and take a lot of money, you know? I'm just tired of that. And so if the Lord wants to do something about that.
First, I felt tingling in one foot, and then tingling in the other foot. But then all of a sudden I felt weak. I couldn't hold myself up. And she said, Oh, the presence of the Lord is so strong, isn't it? And then when she stopped, it was because she had a confirmation that it was done. And so I was standing, I went a little way, and I'm walking like I'm drunk. So that was my sign that the Spirit had been there. So I said, Okay. I wonder how that's going to manifest in my body. Thank you, Lord. It's been so long, part of my lack of faith and all that. Bless her, and just get me home because I drove there.
I got on my bed, and I said, Well, let's just see about this. Because if I, on my back, put my legs out straight, my ankle bone here is usually about this far from the other ankle bone. Those ankle bones line right straight up. Thank you, Jesus.
Thank you, Lord, for all the amazing ways you are working in the lives of those in the prayer group. Thank you to all of those in the prayer group who are willing to share the ways the Lord is working in their lives, so that it can build the faith of all those who hear it. We love you, Lord, you are amazing!
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Come As You Are Series - I Have Not Come To Call The Righteous
Luke 5:30-32 “But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect complained to his disciples, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?” Jesus answered them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”
The theme for the devotional is “Come As You Are.” I chose this because too many of us feel we aren’t worthy to come to God as we are. We think we need to get it all together before we come to God. We believe we have to clean up our lives, and then we can come to God. I can see why we might think this, as that is what society tells us. That is what it looks like on Social media. It seems like everyone else has it all together, so we need to get it together before we're ready to ask God for anything. We can’t attend mass or church service because our kids don’t behave, or we don't have the right clothes, or because we make bad choices.
I love a song called Truth Be Told by Matthew West. Let me read you some of the lyrics because I wish we all knew the truth.
Lie number one, you're supposed to have it all together
And when they ask how you're doing
Just smile and tell them, "Never better."
Lie number 2: everybody's life is perfect except yours
So keep your messes and your wounds
And your secrets safe with you behind closed doors
Truth be told
The truth is rarely told, now
I say I'm fine, yeah I'm fine, oh I'm fine, hey I'm fine, but I'm not, I'm broken
And when it's out of control, I say it's under control, but it's not, and you know it
I don't know why it's so hard to admit it
When being honest is the only way to fix it
There's no failure, no fall
There's no sin you don't already know
So let the truth be told
How true is this song? We think that we need to keep it all together because everyone else is keeping it all together, but that’s the thing, they aren’t holding it together either. We are all just pretending. I love it when it says, There is no failure, no fall, there’s no sin you don’t already know. Why do we think we need to keep our mess from God when He already knows about all of it? There isn’t anything we can keep from Him, so why are we so ashamed to admit it? The song goes on to say…
There's a sign on the door that says, "Come as you are," but I doubt it
'Cause if we lived like it was true, every Sunday morning pew would be crowded
But didn't you say the church should look more like a hospital
A safe place for the sick, the sinner, the scarred, and the prodigals
Like me. Well, truth be told, the truth is rarely told
This is where Matthew West reminds us what Jesus said in the verse above. Not what the world says, but what Jesus says. Come as you are. Imagine how full churches would be if everyone knew they could truly come as they were. If we all knew that God wants us, even when we don’t have the right clothes or do the wrong thing. Even when we yelled at our kids or our spouse, even when we stayed out too late drinking, God wants us just as we are. No matter what it is, you can come to the Lord. The song ends with…
Can I really stand here unashamed, Knowin' that your love for me won't change?
Oh God, if that's really true, then let the truth be told
This is the truth that I wish everyone knew. The truth is that God loves us completely and fully before we are even born, and that love never changes. It doesn’t matter what we do or even what we don’t do. He still loves us the same. We can do nothing to make Him love us more or less than he already does. When we see how the world sees us, we think God is the same. We think that we're not worthy of his love until we get it all together.
However, in the verse above, Jesus tells us something different. God sent Jesus to die on the cross for us while we were still sinning. If you want to know how much God loves you, it says in Romans 5:8, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Hear that again: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
This is how God demonstrates his love for us. This one statement shows us that we don't have to be perfect to come to God. Jesus didn’t wait for us to have our lives together before he died on the cross for us, so why should we wait until we figure things out to come to Him?
The verse above says that those who are well have no need of a physician. Those who are righteous, those who are not sinning, those who are praying perfectly, and those who are getting it all right have no need for Jesus. Jesus died for us, for you, and me, and he did it strictly because he loved us. He did it because the Lord wanted us to come to him. The Lord didn't want anything to be in between us. When Adam and Eve sinned, there had to be a separation, and God hated that. He hated that we couldn't be with him.
He hated that they brought this upon themselves and wanted to redeem them. God could have done that in any number of ways, and the way he chose to do it was to become human and to take all of our sins upon himself, and when he did that, when Jesus died on the cross, the veil between us and God was broken, and that means we don't have to be perfect to come to God. We don't have to get it right before we come to God. We can come to God just as we are, and God loves us just as we are.
If we look through the scriptures, we will find God repeatedly telling us that we don’t have to have it all together to come to Him. He is calling us to come to Him just as we are, in our brokenness and woundedness, and He can fix us and heal us. When we look at the people that Jesus was drawn to in the Bible, it wasn’t the most religious people or the people who were doing everything right. It was the tax collectors and the sinners. If Jesus can use those he chose to use in the Bible to do amazing things, then we can come to God and lay our problems at His feet, and He will help us. All He wants is for us to invite Him into our mess. Will you invite God in today? Even in the mess?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each person listening to this today. Lord, we are sorry we don’t come to you more often. We are sorry we let our shame and our guilt put up a wall between us. Lord, we invite you into our mess right now. We invite you to sit with us in the mess and help us clean up our mess. Lord, we want to be with you, and we want to come to you. Please help us. Show us how you think of us instead of how the world thinks of us. Lord, we ask you to take away our shame and our guilt. We ask you to remove anything that is getting in the way of us coming to you. We love you so much, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If this podcast has been blessing your life, would you consider sharing it with someone today? I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, just as you are, and so do I. Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in June 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I have called you to be my witnesses. I have called you to talk of me to others. I have called you to bring the broken and the weak. I am here for them, and I will breathe upon them. If you carry my love to them.”
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Come As You Are Series - Come All Who Are Weary
Matthew 11:28-30 “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
This is not the verse I was planning to talk to you about today, but after the night I just had, I am hoping that the Holy Spirit will talk to me as He talks to you tonight. I remember hearing a teaching on this verse once, where they explained why farmers would use a yoke. A yoke is a wooden crosspiece that is fastened around the neck of two animals and then usually hooked to a plow or a cart. This yoke allows them to pull loads that they would not normally be able to pull on their own. I think I also remember the person explaining that a younger animal is usually paired with a more experienced animal. This way, the more experienced animal can set the pace and teach the younger one. This seems to fit so perfectly with this verse.
The Lord is calling us, all who are weary and carrying heavy burdens. I don’t know about you, but this evening I am feeling pretty weary, and my burdens are feeling pretty heavy. The Lord is calling us, and it says He will give us rest. God is calling us to take up His yoke and to learn from Him. That is such a great visual for me. I got an image of this giant wooden yoke on the ground. I go up and put my head in it, and God puts His head in, and my burdens are suddenly weightless. I wish it were that simple. I wish we could just hand God our troubles, and then we would feel this enormous weight off our shoulders instantly. I think it can be this simple sometimes. I think we get in our own way sometimes. We want to hand our problems over to God, and yet we also want to hold on to them. We don’t want to completely release them, because then we wouldn’t be in control anymore.
Have you heard of the expression, “Hitch your wagon to the right cart?” or “Don’t hitch your wagon to the wrong horse?” Both of these came to my mind when I started talking about what a yoke meant. I was thinking that if I had my choice of anyone to hook my yoke to, it would be the Lord. There is no one else that I would rather rely on and no one more powerful. I love the idea of taking His yoke and learning from Him. The Lord has so much to teach us. Even in this verse, He says, “I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your soul.” How awesome would it be to find rest in your soul? Can you imagine what that would feel like? When I imagine rest in my soul, I imagine peace about all things in life. I imagine I am stress-free and have no anxiety. I imagine I am filled with hope and joy.
I really feel as though the Holy Spirit is reminding me of Rick Warren’s definition of joy and wanting me to share it. I have talked about it before, but right now I feel the Holy Spirit telling me that I am not the only one who needs this refresher right now. Rick Warren’s definition of joy is as follows: “Joy is the settled assurance that God is in control of all the details of my life, the quiet confidence that ultimately everything is going to be alright, and the determined choice to praise God in every situation.” Wow, yes, I did need to hear that tonight. For me tonight, this is a reminder that joy doesn’t mean I am always happy about everything. This to me means that it is ok that I am sad tonight about things going on, and that doesn’t mean that the situation has taken away my joy. I do know that God is in control of all the details of my life. I am sure of it. I am grateful for it because He does a much better job than I could do.
When I think about it, truly think about it, I do have a quiet confidence that ultimately everything is going to be alright. Does that mean that I know how it is all going to turn out? No, no at all. Does that mean that I know when it will get better? Nope, I don’t know that either. However, I do know that eventually everything is going to be ok. Will it be exactly as I wish it would be, probably not. But that is ok, because God’s plan is better than my plan and His ways are higher than my ways. The last part of this definition is the part that we forget about a lot. It says, “the determined choice to praise God in every situation.” Wow, that is not something I always think of. Then, even when I do think of it, I don’t always want to do it. For instance, tonight was a rough night. Do I want to praise God for tonight? Not really? This is where I think we get confused. We think that praising God is about thanking Him for the situation we are in. There are many ways to praise God without thanking Him for the specific situation.
For instance, even though it was a rough night, I am thankful that I have kids to argue with. Some people don’t, and I realize that even when parenting them is difficult, I am still blessed beyond measure that I have them. I am grateful to the Lord for giving me amazing friends. Friends who dropped everything they were doing to say a quick prayer just because I said I needed some. If it wasn’t for the argument tonight, I wouldn’t have had the amazing gift of peace that I felt immediately after they prayed. That is something that I am not sure I have felt before. I have heard people say that I felt your prayers, and I always thought that was nice, but I didn’t truly understand what they meant until this evening. Not even 5 minutes after I asked my friends for prayers, this immediate sense of peace came over me. That is definitely something to praise the Lord for. We can also praise the Lord for being amazing. He does so much for us, and even if we don’t want to praise Him for the current circumstances, we can praise Him for being awesome and for the amazing outcome that we know He is working on as we speak.
In all the books about miracles and faith, the authors always talk about how important praise is. I think this could be the secret ingredient that many of us are missing. How often do we praise the Lord? I mean, truly spend time thanking the Lord for all He does and praise Him for being our almighty Lord and Savior? What if we all tried to praise Him more this week and see how much better our week goes? When you start to feel down or get in a bad mood, think of 10 things you are grateful to God for. The bible verse Luke 16:10 came to mind just now. The verse says, “Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much.” If we appreciate what we have and praise the Lord for it, God will entrust us with more. What if the Lord is waiting for us to be grateful in our current circumstances before He moves us out of them? Can we spend just 5 minutes today praising the Lord? When I am finished with this episode, I am going to listen to 5 minutes of praise and worship music. That is another great way to praise the Lord. If you can’t think of anything to say, you can always just listen to music. I have heard many people say that singing is praying twice. So if you feel as though you just don’t know what to say, sing a song; they have amazing songs out there that say all the things you want to say.
Remember, all of us who are weary and those of us carrying heavy burdens, come to the Lord and we will find rest. Take up His yoke and let Him help you carry your load. Wouldn’t it be so much easier if you weren’t the only one carrying it all? You are not alone. God is there, He is offering you His yoke, reach down and pick it up! Through the Lord, we can find rest for our souls. Whose soul could use a little rest? I know mine could. How about yours?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that You bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, the devil is having a heyday with our families, and we ask that you intercede for us. We ask that you show us how to kick him out of our lives once and for all. Lord, we ask for your protection over our families and give us the strength to keep fighting another day. Lord, we love you so much, you are so very amazing!! You have given us all so much, and we are so very grateful. Lord, we ask that you fill us with your love, peace, and joy. I ask that you wrap your arms around each person listening to this today and give them a squeeze. Help them to feel your love a little extra this week, Lord. I sense that I am not the only one who needs this week, Lord. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I am so grateful to have you here. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Have a Blessed Day.
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in June 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Continue on your road. You have been called to a divine purpose. Walk with your spirit. Use the gifts given to you by the Spirit. I have called each one of you by name. I have called you here.”
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The God of Hope
Romans 15:13 “ May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”
The God of hope, what a great way to refer to the Lord. He is the God of hope. All hope can be found in Him. I like the thought of God filling me with joy and peace as I trust in Him, don’t you? I feel as though that would be reassurance that we were doing the right thing. Actually now that I just said that I can see how this is the case. When we are trusting in the Lord, we are filled with peace and joy. Can you think of a time when you had a decision to make and you felt completely at peace with it? Can you think of a time when you were so happy and filled with complete joy? Think about these circumstances. Can you see how you were trusting the Lord in them?
The second half of 2020 and the first half of 2021 were really tough on our family. Actually they were tough on most families as we were in the middle of a pandemic, and we were stuck in our houses for a lot of it. It was not an easy time for anyone. However, on top of all of this we had a lot of other things going on that made it even more difficult. Probably some of the hardest parenting issues we will ever have to face, and we have faced a lot of parenting issues. Although it was a really difficult time, I was filled with joy and peace for much of that difficult time because I was trusting that the Lord knew what was best. We were encountering situation after situation that we had never encountered before. We didn’t know what to do or how to handle most of it. What do you do when you are in a situation and you don’t know what to do? You turn to the Lord. I spent a lot of time in prayer. I asked the Lord at every turn which way He wanted me to go. I relied on Him to get us through it. I am not saying this to boast at how great I am for turning to the Lord. I turned to Him because I did not know what else to do. This is usually why we turn to the Lord. When we have tried all we can think of on our own and nothing worked.
However, I would love to change this. I would love to turn to God first in every circumstance, not just when I feel stuck and don’t know what to do. This is what the Lord wants too. He is always there for us and He is happy when we turn to Him in times of trouble. However, I am sure He would also love it if we turned to Him in our every day decision making. Or, what about when you do know what you want to do? What about stopping to ask God what He thinks about you taking that job you want or buying that car you want. You may already know what you want to do, but what if we stopped to run it by the Lord and see if He thinks it’s a good idea? Sometimes our decisions can be clouded by superficial things or we have the wrong motivation driving our decision making and we don’t realize it until it is too late. Invite the Lord into all your decisions. Wouldn’t it be great to feel that peace and joy of trusting the Lord all the time?
This verse ends with, “so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” I don’t know anyone that would turn down the chance to be overflowing with hope. This verse also tells us where hope come from, the power of the Holy Spirit. If we want to have more hope, we just have to ask for it. Jesus tells His disciples in John 16:23-24 “ On that day you will ask nothing of me. Very truly, I tell you, if you ask anything of the Father in my name, he will give it to you. Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be complete.” If we want to have more hope in our lives all we need to do is ask the Lord for it and we will receive it by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord we ask that you fill us all with joy and peace as we trust in you. We all want to overflow with hope, please show us how. Please fill us with the power of the Holy Spirit. Please help those that have given up on hope, or have forgotten how to hope. We love you Lord, you are so amazing. You give us so much to hope for. We are so grateful for all you do for us. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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Come As You Are Series- Mary Magdalene
Mark 16:9 “Now when He arose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons.”
Mary Magdalene is mentioned several times in the Bible. She is mentioned in all four Gospels. That is unusual, as most stories are mentioned in one or two of the Gospels, but very few are mentioned in all four. This shows us how special Mary was to Jesus. It shows what an important role she played in His life. The Bible doesn’t tell us much about who Mary is as a person, but it does tell us a few things.
First, it tells us in today’s verse and also in Luke 8:2 that she was delivered from 7 demons. Second, we know she was present at the crucifixion. Third, we know she went to anoint Jesus’s body in the tomb after his death. Lastly, as today’s verse tells us, Jesus appeared to her first after He was resurrected. Of all the people in the world that Jesus could have first shown himself to, He chose Mary Magdalene. That is pretty cool. Again, Jesus is showing us that our ways are not his ways and his ways are not our ways.
If we had to choose someone to be the first person who saw Jesus, I don’t think we would have chosen Mary Magdalene. I think if it were me, I would have chosen Mary, his mother. Or what about Peter? He was chosen to be the rock on which the church would be built. Why wasn’t he the first? Jesus is constantly doing things in the Bible that we don’t understand. He is doing and saying things that shake things up. I am sure Jesus had His reasons for choosing Mary Magdalene to be the first to whom he revealed his risen self. I am sure Jesus has his reasons for choosing you, too.
Jesus saved Mary Magdalene from 7 demons. Do you feel like you need to be delivered from some demons? Do you feel like you are struggling in an uphill battle? If so, you are not alone. We are all fighting something. One great thing about this story is that it shows us that Jesus doesn’t just heal us or free us from our demons and then walk away. He stayed with Mary Magdalene, and she stayed with Him. She became one of His followers. Are you one of his followers? Do you stay close by Him and listen to all He says? Do you try to get to know Him and to spend time with Him?
Mary did. She put in the work. She was so grateful for the freedom that Jesus gave her that she stuck by His side, trying to learn all that she could from Him. We can do this too. We can’t follow Jesus around as one of His disciples anymore, but we can listen to all He says by reading scripture. The New Testament is full of Jesus’s actual words. We don't have to guess who He is, or what He said. It’s all in the New Testament. There are actually verses in the Old Testament that talk about Jesus as well. As you can see, even though Jesus is not walking on earth, we can still be His followers and we can still get to know Him.
Even though we don’t know why Jesus chose Mary Magdalene to be the first person to see him alive, we do know that He did choose her. Jesus is choosing you, too. I don’t know what He is choosing you for, but I know that He is. I know you don’t think you are worthy, and you might not even feel up to the challenge, but He is calling you anyway. You might worry that no one will listen to you or that no one will believe you if you try to share the message of the Gospel with others. Guess what? You wouldn’t be the first person they didn’t listen to. The very next verse after today’s verse says, “She went and told those who had been with him, as they mourned and wept. But when they heard that he was alive and had been seen by her, they would not believe it.”
Just because Jesus chooses us doesn't mean everything is going to fall into place and be easy. We live in a broken world, and not everyone will see what Jesus sees in you. Not everyone will believe what you have to say. Not everyone will support the calling God has placed on your life. That is ok. Jesus also appeared to two other disciples, and when they told everyone, no one believed them either. Just because others didn’t believe them doesn’t mean what happened wasn’t true.
Of all the people in Jesus’s life, He chose the one who had been delivered from demons as the one to reveal His risen self to. He didn’t choose the one we would have chosen. He didn’t choose the one who was perfect and blameless. He didn’t surround himself with people who were perfect and blameless. He surrounded himself with regular, everyday, ordinary people like you and me. We don’t have to clean ourselves up to be around Jesus. We don’t have to heal ourselves of all our demons before we come to Jesus. Jesus healed Mary of her demons. She didn’t wait until she was healed to come to Him. She couldn’t have healed herself of her affliction. She needed to come to Jesus as she was, and He healed her. He will do the same for you. Come to Him with all your baggage. Bring your demons. Bring your fears and your worries. Bring all that you have to the foot of Jesus, and He will heal it. He will take all of that from you, and He will replace it with love and with peace. Come to Him just as you are, and He will take care of everything else!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode. Lord, we want to come to you as we are. We want you to free us from our demons. We want you to choose us when you could choose anyone. Lord, we ask for you to help us come to you. Help us get to know you. Help us turn our demons, fears, and worries over to you. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in May 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “We have a steed, a fine horse, and on that horse is the Lord with a big flowing cape, and as he rides by us, he scoops us up with one arm, tucks us under the shield of his armor, and he says, “I may not swoop you up every time and deliver you from your discomfort.” Then the image changes, and he's on his feet, and he's walking behind us, and he gets closer and closer to us, and then he hides us under the cape he has. He says, “But I may walk with you through all your distress, so fear neither being scooped up nor walked with. I am always there.”
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I have two witnesses for you today. One is from a member of my charismatic prayer group and one is from YouTube. It is from the 700 Club. I will place a link for the video in the show notes. Both of these show how good our God is. The first witness shows how God never forgets our hearts' desires and the second one is a miraculous healing after a heart attack. Let’s begin…
Well, when I hit my 30th anniversary, my husband and I went to Italy. Now, when we got married, we got married in front of the Virgin Mary, the side altar, and it was just family because the wedding was too expensive for me, so that's how we did it. We did have a nice meal afterward, but it was simple. And the thing that I wanted most was to hear the Ave Maria sung by this beautiful vocalist at the church, but she was extremely expensive, so I was very disappointed. I had to forgo it because of the price. So then, when I was in Italy, we were in the dining room
One morning, having breakfast, I kept getting this message from God to get up and to go to the next table where there was a little four-year-old boy sitting with his mother and father, and sing, Santa Claus is coming to town. And I said, well, I couldn't get over it, so it was his birthday. So I put some money in an envelope or whatever I had, and I got up, and my husband was looking at me, and when I started singing, he was like, and I was singing, Santa Claus is coming to town in this dining room with all these people sitting around. So the mother, when I finished, I gave him the envelope, and I said, Happy birthday. So the mother looked at me, and she said,
Wow, that is his favorite song in the whole world. Well, okay. So that night, when I entered the big sitting room that they had in this hotel, the woman came over to me, and she said, Oh, you made my son so happy. I want to do something for you. And I said, well, unless you can sing the Ave Maria, because I happen to be thinking about it, I said, really, I'm fine. And she said, Well, as a matter of fact, I'm an opera singer, and I can sing the Ave Maria. And so I went into the dining room for the acoustic part, and she sang me the Ave Maria.
Wow. Thank you, Lord. You would have missed it, had you not sung. If I had not sung Santa Claus is coming to town. What time of year is your anniversary? June. You're singing Santa Claus is coming to town in June? June 29th, almost the last day of June, yeah. And my husband was like, Are you kidding me? I would have been so embarrassed. What's
wrong with you? Apparently, I don't know. Yep. You're obedient, Mary. Yep, you got what you wanted. He never forgets us. God never forgets the tiniest thing, and He rewards us for our obedience.
Miraculous heart healing (CLICK HERE to watch on YouTube). As the band began to start the worship music, I stood and raised my hand in worship. And a woman that I didn't know, I had never seen her before, she walked past me, turned around, and came back and stood nose to nose with me. She said, Fear not, for the Lord your God says you will surely live and not die. I think both of us were a little concerned.Obviously, you'll live and not die. It kind of tells you something is going to happen soon. So both of us were quite concerned and just kind of, Okay, what's going to happen next? Monday came. I just didn't feel quite right. I just felt kind of out of sorts, tired, and not feeling my best. I was sitting on my sofa with my husband, and something's not right. I can't breathe. I said, I need to go to the hospital. We took her immediately to the emergency room. They came out with a wheelchair, wheeled her inside. The whole time, I'm saying to God, Have your hand on her. My vitals are slipping, and I'm saying, Lord, forgive me for everything I’ve ever done.Anything, Lord, that's not pleasing to you. And I saw our pastor lean down and whisper, Remember, Dale, you shall live and not die. They came back, and they said, You've had a heart attack, and it looks like a bad one. And she's going to have to have a stent put in. They did the stent, and the cardiologist said, You should be dead right now. 90% of the people who have the kind of heart attack you've had don't even make it to the hospital, or they die in their sleep at night. The heart attack was so bad that it severely damaged my heart. My heart was functioning at only about 20%. They were so worried that I could have another heart event that they fitted me with a life vest. It's actually a defibrillator that they strap around you with all kinds of monitoring devices on it.Coming back to the house was tough. The only way to get her around was in a wheelchair. My husband had to pretty much just kind of take over whatever was needed. He would not leave my side. And when we got home, every night, every night, he served me communion and prayed. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't bend over. I couldn't do anything. All I could do was just get up, go to the bathroom, and go back and lie right back down because I was terribly, terribly, terribly weak. With the amount of damage that I had in my heart, they told me, You need to get used to this life because your life as you have known it is never going to be the same. My daughter had a friend who came over to visit with me.He had gone to seminary under this well-known pastor, and he called him. He said, We have a friend, and she's had a heart attack, and her heart is severely damaged. She's very weak, and she needs a miracle. And this man said, Have her at my church Sunday morning at 930 because God is going to heal her. You know, I mean, we had to wheel her in. She was so weak. And then lifting her up, two people on each side of her, lifting her up. They lifted me out of the wheelchair, and I stood there in front of him. And when he put his hand on the top of my head, it felt like a bolt of electricity just shot through my body. And when it did, it set off the siren on my defibrillator. I mean, the noises and the bells and whistles, everything's happening, you know, and I'm thinking, What is going to happen now? And she was able to get around there and cut it off before the thing, you know, went off. It hit me right then that something special was going on here.The very next day, I had a preset appointment for a follow-up with my cardiologist. No wheelchair. He looks at me and he says, How are you doing? I said, I'm doing great. And I said, But I don't like this life vest on. I want to take it off. He said, Oh, no, you can't take off the life vest. And I said, I want another test. I want to prove to you that God healed me. After the test, he said, Take that defibrillator off because you don't need it anymore.Your heart is back to normal. He said, You've had a miracle. My heart was back to normal, but it was the low end of normal. they show us the love of God. So this young man calls that pastor back again, and he said, You have her back here Sunday morning. I think God's going to finish what he started. We wound up going back in and kicking it up a notch.He touched her, and I could tell God healed her. Then we went back to the doctor. He said these words after the test, Dale, not only is your heart back to normal, but your heart is at the high end of normal. The Lord had given me a brand-new heart, a brand-new heart. I feel better now than I did 20 years ago. I have more strength. I feel healthier than I ever did. Keep walking and keep believing and hoping and praying and hanging on to God. Sure enough, he came through. There is nothing that he can't do.I love both of these because even though they are different,
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Come As You Are Series- Jonah
Jonah 1:1-3 “The word of the Lord came to Jonah, son of Amittai: 'Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.” But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the Lord.”
Jonah is a great person to discuss this morning because we can all relate to him for several reasons. The first one is displayed in this verse. The Lord came to Jonah and asked him to do something, and Jonah ran away from the Lord. How many of us have done that before? Maybe not physically run away like Jonah did, but we do not do what God asks. We tell Him no, with a whole host of reasons why we can’t do it. Or, maybe we ignore the Lord, busy ourselves with work and other things, and pretend that he didn’t ask us to do anything. Both of these are similar to Jonah. The Lord asked Him to do something He didn’t want to do, and so He left.
This didn't work out so well for Jonah. He got on a boat headed in the other direction, and God sent a storm to the ship. The other people on the boat asked what was going on. They drew lots to see who was behind this storm, and Jonah drew the short lot. They asked Jonah what they should do, and he said to throw him over the side of the ship into the water. They were afraid to do this, as they knew he was a man of God. They tried to row back to safety, but did not have any luck. So they prayed God would not hold it against him if they killed this man, and then they threw him over the side of the ship.
As soon as they threw him over the side of the ship, the raging sea grew calm. “At this, the men greatly feared the Lord, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows to him.” (Jonah 1:16) These men all became God fearing after God calmed the sea. Even though Jonah was trying to run away from the Lord, God still used that circumstance to bring about the conversion of hearts. God can do the same with our actions. He can take our actions and their consequences and use them for good. He can take them and use them for the conversion of others in ways we can’t even imagine.
When they threw Jonah over the side of the boat, he was swallowed up by a whale or some giant sea creature. While he was sitting in the belly of the sea creature, he was praying to the Lord, and the Lord heard his prayers and had the fish spit him out on dry land. Then the Lord tells Jonah to go to Ninevah to give them the message that God gave to Jonah. So, this time, Jonah goes and does what is asked of him. Jonah tells Nineveh that it will be overthrown in 40 days if they do not repent and change their ways. As soon as the king heard this, he declared a fast in the land, and all of Ninevah repented and turned back to the Lord. When the Lord saw how they repented and turned from their evil ways, He relented and did not cause destruction.
You would think, after all that, Jonah would be happy. He did what the Lord asked him to do, and the people actually listened to him. Yet, Jonah wasn’t happy. Jonah was upset that God spared the people of Ninevah. He thought that they deserved to die, and he wasn’t happy that they took the second chance and turned from their evil ways. We have all been here in one way or another before. Have you ever been upset that someone got away with something that you think they should have been punished for? Have you ever seen someone do something and then wished they would get in trouble for it? One common example I can think of is when we are driving and see someone else driving unsafely, and we hope they get pulled over by a police officer. It is not our place to decide what should happen to others.
God chose Jonah for this task, and Jonah ran from it. How many of us have done that? How many of us have run from a task because we didn’t want to do it? Jonah ran because he knew how good God was. He understood that if Ninevah repented, God would save them, and he didn’t want them to be saved. He didn’t think they deserved it. How many of us have run from a call from the Lord because we disagreed with Him? It might not be the same situation as Jonah, but we disagreed that we were the right people or that we had the skills it took to do what He wanted us to do. We might all have different reasons for running from what the Lord calls us to do.
However, Jonah’s story reminds us of a few things. First, just because we ran doesn't mean God gives that call to someone else. He is still waiting for you to do what He called you to do. Second, he can use bad consequences for good, like when Jonah ran from God, and the others on the ship almost died in the storm until they threw him off the ship. God used that to convert the hearts of all those on the ship. Whatever bad came out of you running from the Lord, He can redeem it. He can use it for good. The important thing is that we turn back to the Lord and that we answer that call. God doesn’t make mistakes. If He is calling you to something, then He will help you do it. If he is calling you to it, then you are the perfect person for the job, even if you don’t see how or why.
Jonah’s story also reminds us that God is sovereign. We don’t know all the things that He knows. Just because what God is doing doesn’t make sense to us, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t make sense. God knows the whole picture. He knows all the details. We only know the few tiny things we can see from the outside looking in. We need to trust that God knows what He is doing. We need to understand that He sees things we don’t see. He knows what we can and can’t do. He knows us better than we know ourselves. So, if God says you can do it, then you can do it. Stop running and face the task He is asking you to do!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each person listening. Lord, we all want to be able to do what you are calling us to do. We want to trust you and believe we can do it. Please help us, Lord. Lord, help us not to run from you but to run towards you. Please help us not to think we know better than you do. You are the almighty one. You are Lord of Lords and King of Kings. You know all things, and we love you. Please help us to continuously come back to you. We pray all this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Thank you for all your prayers for the retreat this weekend. It was an awesome weekend. I also want to remind everyone that my new book is out. It is called Walk Boldly With Jesus Devotionals: Who I Am: Discovering God’s Truth About Me. I am very excited about it. CLICK HERE if you want to check it out! Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in May 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I got the image of Jesus as a carpenter coming into our hearts and stripping away all the old wallpaper, layers and layers of crud, and then just replacing it with brand new, shining, you know, immaculate white paint and welcoming the Holy Spirit in.”
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Storm-Battered and Unconsoled
Isaiah 54:11-14 “O afflicted one,* storm-battered and unconsoled, I lay your pavements in carnelians, your foundations in sapphires; I will make your battlements of rubies, your gates of jewels, and all your walls of precious stones. All your children shall be taught by the LORD; great shall be the peace of your children. In justice shall you be established, far from oppression, you shall not fear, from destruction, it cannot come near. If there be an attack, it is not my doing; whoever attacks shall fall before you.”
When I read this verse this morning I knew this was the one. So many are struggling right now. This verse is to show you that God understands. “O afflicted one, storm-battled and unconsoled.” He gets it. He understands how you are feeling. He’s showing you that He sees you. You haven’t somehow escaped His attention. He knows you are suffering and he knows that you are unconsoled.
Once He has your attention and lets you know He sees you, then He is telling you that he has laid the way before you with precious stones. “I lay your pavements in carnelians (a semi-precious stone), I lay your foundations in sapphires; I will make your battlements of rubies, your gate of jewels, and all your walls of precious stones.” Actually the Lord is not just talking about laying the road before you, He is talking about building all around you. He talks about the pavements, which I was thinking was the path ahead. However, then He talks about your foundation, your walls, your battlements, and your gates. We all know that if we wish to get anywhere in life, we need to have a firm foundation. If our foundation isn’t firm, it won’t support us.
This reminds me of Matthew 7:24-27, “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.” If we don’t build our house on a firm foundation it will slip away.
Next, the Lord talks about our battlements made of rubies. I was not sure what battlements were, so I looked it up. Battlements are the parapets at the top of a wall, especially of a fort or castle, that have regularly spaced squared openings for shooting through. Also, our walls are make of precious stones and our gates of jewels. These are how we defend ourselves. God is building these things for us out of the finest materials. He is our protection and He will make sure we are safe.
The next part of the verse says, “All your children shall be taught by the Lord; great shall be the peace of your children.” This might not be your experience right now. You may hear this and wonder when that peace is going to come. I know when I read that line, I thought that is not true for so many children I know these days. I have heard several people say over the last few months that it seems like the enemy is really attacking God’s faithful ones through their children and their marriages. There are so many children struggling right now with so many things. The mental health of our kids is under attack for sure. Also, with social media and constant access to their phones, our children are being bullied in ways we don’t even know.
I am surprised at the number of young kids who are willing to send inappropriate photos over the phone because it doesn’t feel like a big deal. It feels like everyone is doing it. I think social media also allows kids to say things that they would never say to someone’s face because they just have to type it into a phone. It gives them a sense that they are somewhat removed from it. I have three teenagers, and I get how hard it can be. If you are listening to this and you either have teenagers or maybe you have teenager grandkids or nieces and nephews, I would say pray for them definitely and also remember this promise from God. “All your children shall be taught by the Lord; great shall be the peace of your children.” God always keeps his promises. He doesn’t tell us when they will have peace, but he tells us they will. Our job is to keep them going through the hard times until they have this peace.
The next part may be hard to understand as well.“ In justice shall you be established, far from oppression, you shall not fear, from destruction, it cannot come near.” You will be established in justice, far from oppression, destruction cannot come near. If you are struggling right now, this may be hard to take in. It may be hard to see how you are far from oppression. It may seem like oppression is all around you. You may feel beaten down at every turn. If this is you, remember the ending of that line, destruction cannot come near. Although you may be struggling, this will not destroy you! You will make it though this. Whatever it is, you will come out on the other side being better, stronger, and more faith filled. God is with you through this difficult time. He is building this protective house around you. Keep hanging in there.
The ending of this verse may be the most important to hear for some of you. “ If there be an attack, it is not my doing; whoever attacks shall fall before you.” This is so important for us to realize. “If there be an attack is it not my doing.” I bet we have all wondered or even ask God, “What have I done to deserve this?” If you have thought this, you are not alone. The apostles also thought this way. In John 9:1-3 it says, “As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” "Neither this man nor his parents sinned," said Jesus, "but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.”
God is telling in both these verses, we didn’t do anything. This is not His doing. He did not give you cancer, He did not take away your loved one, He did not cause your spouse to leave, it is not His doing. I love the last sentence. He says, whoever attacks shall fall before you. He is showing us that evil will not win in the end. Evil will not get the last word. He will protect us and He will defeat evil. Whoever attacks shall fall before you.
There are several promises in this scripture verse today. If you are struggling, if you feel storm-battered and unconsoled, maybe write this verse down and read it again. Try sitting with this verse and see how God wants to use it to talk to you. The things I said about the verse today, actually any day in this podcast is just the way God is talking to be about the different verses. However, He wants to make each verse personal to you. If you spend some time after you listen to the podcast to reread the verse, it’s in the show notes, and then ask God what He wants to say to you about the verse, I am sure you will be surprised at what you start thinking about. If you ask Him, He will answer, you just have to give Him the time to listen.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we thank you for showing us that you see us in our struggles and that you are there for us. Thank you for building us a beautiful house of protection. Thank you for promising peace for our children. Thank you for letting us know that it is not you that is attacking us and that whoever does attack us will fall before us. Lord, you are so loving and so merciful and we are so very lucky to have you in our lives. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Please keep me and those attending the retreat in your prayers this weekend. I pray it is a fruitful retreat for all who attend. I will be doing the retreat on zoom too. If you want to check it out on zoom, email me at Catherine @findingtruenorthcoaching.com and I will get you the zoom link. I look forward to meeting you here again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in May 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is,“I will fill you with everything that you need. But you must learn to listen. Listen and then act upon it. I just don't want you to listen and do nothing about it, my children. I speak so that you, in turn, may help others, encourage them. ”
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Could You Perform Miracles?
John 14:12-13 “Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these, because I am going to the Father. And whatever you ask in my name, I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything of me in my name, I will do it.”
This is one of my favorite verses in the Bible. It is one that I read, and when I heard it, I believed it right away. Some verses are like this in the Bible. When you read the Bible, some things are easy to take in and others are difficult. These easy and difficult things are different for everyone. We all have different experiences when we read the Bible because we have all had different experiences throughout our lives. There is a quote by Steven R. Covey that I really like. Steven R. Covey said, “We see the world, not as it is, but as we are.” This is true for the Bible as well. We look at and interpret the things we read in the Bible through our own unique lens. For instance, if we had people letting us down our whole lives, we may read the parts of the Bible that talk about trust and struggle to believe we can trust God because we haven’t been able to trust anyone on earth. If we have grown up in a very unloving environment, we may struggle with the parts of the Bible that talk about unconditional love. Other things may come easier to us.
I instantly loved this verse. I know the Bible is God’s Word and that God chose His words very carefully. Sometimes, when we are reading the Bible, there may be a question in our minds about why they used this word vs. that word. One thing I have learned from doing Bible studies is that there is always a reason why certain words were chosen. Also, if you have done Bible studies, you have had the benefit of hearing all about the original Greek or Hebrew words that were used in the original translation and what those words meant. Sometimes, when translated, we don’t have an exact word to mean what they were saying. I find Bible studies fascinating because you gain so much more insight into what the verses are really saying. Anyway, back to the verse. I heard this verse, or read this verse, and I believed Jesus’ word to us. I have never really been one to struggle with trust. I grew up in a loving family, I had great friends growing up, and I am blessed to be able to say I was not let down by those I know and care about, often growing up. Therefore, I trust pretty easily.
But what if you don’t trust easily? What if you look at that verse and say there is no way we could perform the works Jesus did, Jesus was God, of course, He performed miracles. Also, the apostles were right there with Him for 3 years during His ministry; of course, they could do miracles too. We can all usually agree that Jesus did miracles when He walked the earth, and we can also usually agree that the apostles were sent out and they performed miracles, too. Where we run into trouble is trying to believe we could do signs and wonders in the world today. Who are we? We are not holy enough, we are not worthy of that power and authority. I agree with both of those statements, and yet Jesus still says we will do the works that He did and even greater works than He did. How is this possible?
It is possible through the Holy Spirit. Did you ever realize or notice that there is not a single miracle recorded in the Gospels before Jesus was baptized? Jesus was fully human and fully God the entire time He walked the earth. There was nothing stopping Jesus from performing miracles during the first 30 years of His life. However, He chose to wait until after He was baptized and received the Holy Spirit to start performing miracles. This is something I recently found out and found fascinating. It was not a surprise to me that Jesus did miracles in the Bible; He is God after all. What I didn’t know is that Jesus didn’t use his divinity to perform miracles. He used the Holy Spirit, working through Him, to perform the miracles. He chose to put his divinity aside and act from his human nature, with the help of the Holy Spirit, because it would be greater glory for God.
St. Lawrence of Brindisi explains it like this:
"Christ came into the world to do battle against Satan, to do away with idolatry, and to turn the world to faith and piety and the worship of the true God. He could have accomplished this by using the weapons of his might and coming as he will come to judge, in glory and majesty… But in order that his victory might be the more glorious, he willed to fight Satan in our weak flesh. It is as if an unarmed man, right hand bound, were to fight with his left hand alone against a powerful enemy; if he emerged victorious, his victory would be regarded as all the more glorious. So Christ conquered Satan with the right hand of his divinity bound, and using against him only the left hand of his weak humanity.”
Is this new to you, too? Did you know that God performed these miracles and defeated satan without using his divinity? He relied on the power of the Holy Spirit working through Him. Do you know why this changes everything? It changes everything because Jesus gave us the Holy Spirit to dwell within us as well. If you are baptized, then you have the Holy Spirit living inside of you. If you have the Holy Spirit living inside of you, then you have the power to defeat Satan and to perform works like Jesus did. Another one of my favorite verses is Romans 8:11: “ The Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from the dead, lives in you…” I wish we all knew how much power we actually have inside our frail human bodies.
This verse can be scary to many people. Wait, if I can perform works like Jesus did, does that mean I have to travel all over the world and be a missionary like the disciples were? No, you don’t have to travel anywhere if you don’t feel called to do that. What they talked about in my class is ministering to your sphere of influence. You can start small. Be an example to your family, your friends, and your coworkers. Let’s read the verse again, “Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these, because I am going to the Father. And whatever you ask in my name, I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything of me in my name, I will do it.”
If you were able to believe and adopt this verse as your own personal truth, how much greater would your life be? How great would it be to do works like Jesus did? How great would it be to be able to heal a loved one? Did you know there are people doing this every day? Did you know there are lots of people who have read this verse, decided to believe it, and are now living out a supernatural lifestyle with the power of the Holy Spirit? The last line of the verse says, “If you ask anything of me in my name, I will do it.” How awesome a promise is that? God has so much more for us, and we aren’t asking for it. We aren’t going to God to ask Him what He has for us. Why are we choosing to live a normal life when God is offering us a supernatural one of signs and wonders?
You might be thinking, That is great for you, Catherine. I am glad you believe this verse and you want that life, but I am happy with mine as is. If this is what you are thinking I challenge you over this next week or so to bring this to prayer. I challenge you to be brave enough to just talk to God about it. Tell Him how you are feeling about this verse and ask Him if He has anything to say to you about it. When we do signs and wonders, we build up people’s faith. Don’t you think this world needs some faith-building right now? Look at the day of Pentecost, 3,000 were baptized on that day. I know this verse can be scary. I know the thought of us healing or performing miracles is strange to most of us. I know it is way outside of our comfort zone. I also know God is calling us all to it. I also know that this world really needs people who are willing to step outside their comfort zone. God needs people who will step out in faith, knowing they have the Holy Spirit living inside of them and that He will guide them.
If this verse is something that you struggle with, write it down and look at it often over the next month. Bring it to God and ask Him to show you how this applies to your life. Ask God what He wants you to do with this verse? Be brave, be bold. If you ask the Holy Spirit for help, He will help you. Just start small. Step out in faith and ask a loved one if they want you to pray for them. If you spend time with God, He will guide this journey for you. He will lead you to where you need to go. We just have to be brave enough to say three small words, “Use me, Lord.” Can you be brave enough to say those words? Can we be Christ’s hands and feet here on earth? Remember, we have a good good Father. He is going to ease you into this lifestyle. He is going to meet you where you are at and build your faith along the way. Trust Him and give Him permission to work in your life, give Him permission to use you, and He will.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask you to send your angels to prepare the way for everyone listening to hear this message today. We pray you give us the courage to believe this verse and to step out in faith, knowing you have given us the power of the Holy Spirit to help us do your work here on earth. Lord, the world needs you more than ever, and if we can bring you to others, please show us how. Show us what you want each of us to do. Reveal to us what this verse means for each one of us in our individual lives. We love you, Lord. You are incredible. We are so grateful you gave us the Holy Spirit. Lord, you are the almighty one, you are the king of kings and the Lord of Lords. You are the light of the world. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I. Have a blessed weekend!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in May 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, hear my whispers of love that I speak to you each day. Take the time to be quiet. Hear them. Hear my whispers of love. I speak with whispers of love throughout the day. You only need to listen. The more you listen, the happier you will be.”
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Welcome to Witness Wednesday. Today’s witness is from the KLOVE.com website. I love their radio station. Their Music and their DJs are the best. I have been hearing them mention for a while now that they have a tab on their website that is titled God Stories. I thought I would bring you one of these stories today. It is about a woman who started an organization called HER campaign. Here is what I found about this organization on their website.
HER Campaign began with a simple but profound mission: to help survivors of human trafficking heal, grow, and find purpose. Since our founding in 2016, we have walked alongside survivors and their families, offering a continuum of care that includes crisis intervention, emergency stabilization, and transitional living programs.
Our roots are in Billings, Montana, where we started with a single safe house. Over the years, we’ve expanded to include emergency stabilization programs and advocacy efforts. We believe every survivor has inherent worth, and we are committed to serving them with dignity, respect, and love.
Today, I am sharing with you part of a podcast episode she did. CLICK HERE for the link to the website. You can also just go to KLOVE.com and click on God stories. Here is her story.
Britney Higgs is one determined woman and a determined follower of Jesus Christ. On foot, she traveled nearly 600 miles from Billings, Montana, to Denver to raise awareness and support for the fight against human trafficking - and the important need to care for those who have been trafficked.
“Walking that route was significant on many levels. That interstate corridor is a well-known trafficking route. Traffickers exploit highways and transportation systems for control, from recruitment to moving victims across state lines, especially in areas like Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado, where remote roads and interstate access offer anonymity and opportunity for those who traffic people in darkness. And so, this walk for me wasn't just between two cities. It was to take back ground and prayerfully asking that the Lord would stop the trafficking that is happening between these two areas.”
Britney rates the severity of human trafficking in the U.S. as an eight-out-of-ten “It's more widespread than most people realize. It happens in cities, suburbs, and rural areas. But the encouraging part is that God is raising up his church every day, believers to answer this issue in their own communities.”
She explains the route she walked and prayed over “is between our two HER Campaign locations, two sanctuaries of healing connected by a road that sadly sees human lives treated like commodities. So, we just made sure that we were walking and partnering with the Lord to say, ‘this will not happen here anymore!’”
Britney is deeply involved in the ‘take back’ process as founder of the HER Campaign, which has created two safe homes, one in Billings, the other in Denver, with plans for another location in the Nashville area. The non-profit provides a critical gap service: emergency stabilization programs that offer survivors immediate safety, medical care, counseling, and holistic support.
“The first thing a survivor experiences in one of our safe homes is safety. Imagine a woman stepping into a home where, for the first time in a long time, she has a community that is working towards her safety in the mind, body, and spirit to where she can truly rest for the first time… in usually years. We meet her immediate needs. We provide food, clothing, and medical care, and then we surround her with counseling, case management, full body health practices, and prayer. We are at the cutting edge of a program that looks at survivors comprehensively, providing those medical, clinical, and spiritual aspects to really come alongside her and help her to heal, grow, and find purpose.”
"HER Campaign is my ‘yes’ to him [God] that is creating safe places for women to experience his healing love," Britney explained the origins and core mission of her organization as a response to a personal call from God.
HER Campaign Mission: Bridging the gap between rescue and freedom
"We do hear that there is an estimated 300,000 children who are trafficked every year in the United States, and that is not even hitting the adults who are being trafficked. So, we know that this is a huge issue, but that is one that we are called to come alongside right now."
She highlighted a severe lack of resources in communities, noting there were only about 2,600 beds available nationwide specifically for trafficking survivors.
Combating human trafficking requires collective action and awareness from the entire community, particularly the church, explains Britney.
At HER Campaign's safe homes, there are numerous success stories. “One mom came to us broken, having been trafficked since she was a teenager. She went through her emergency stabilization program and a drug recovery program, and today she's reunited with her children and has stepped into a job she loves. Another woman stabilized in our emergency shelter down in Denver, Colorado, and then she entered into a long-term program and is thriving as she works on healing. Through that continuum of care, we have seen so many women graduate from our programs who get married, have children, and build careers they are passionate about. These stories remind us that these women are made in the image of God and that nothing is wasted and he is seeking after each and every one of them to remind them of who they truly are and to help them walk into the destiny that he set before them before the beginning of time.”
“I am a firm believer that God speaks to us today, whether that is through his word or the way that he speaks to us personally. And since the moment that we started on our own healing journey, God has shown up in the most miraculous ways to help us keep us on this path. And it is in the moments of turmoil when we ask the Lord and we start to doubt God, ‘Did you really ask me to do this?’ I can go back to those pillars of knowing that he spoke in that moment. And it was undeniable. We have seen God provide dollar for dollar what we needed exactly when we needed it. Miraculously, we've had people show up at our doors with checks who have never met us before, but knew that because God told them we needed provision for something.
We've had divine appointments with just the right person at just the right moment, and at the very beginning of the HER Campaign, we were walking out in the hills in eastern Montana with our kiddos and out of nowhere I felt like I had this lightning strike in my heart and I got this vision of what a safe house would look like and I just knew that we needed to start it!”
(Richard asks) Going back to the very long walk, the 580 miles, I understand your husband was with you for protection with the RV, but you also had a 'friend' named Freedom?
(Britney) "Yes. Freedom is a miniature Nigerian goat. And when we were sitting down talking about this walk and how to really raise up a nationwide movement to get people's attention, somebody jokingly shot out, 'Hey Brit, I think you should carry a baby goat.' And we've had goats at our residential programs before. I absolutely love goats. We've raised them. And so what became a joke actually became reality or what was a joke became reality. And so yes, I had freedom walk with me. We took major precautions to make sure that she only walked what her little legs could handle during the day, but we trained her to follow me. And I can tell you that she is thriving, she's doing great. Now that the walk is over, she is just grazing and living her best life at her property in Denver.”
Thank you so much to Britney and her organization for doing such important work and for making such a difference in so many people's lives. Thank you for being a light when all they have seen is darkness. Thank you to KLOVE for sharing this and other God stories with the world. We all need to have a little more light in our lives and you are doing your part! Thank you!
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Come As You Are Series - The Hemorrhaging Woman
Mark 5:25-34 “Now there was a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years. She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had; and she was no better, but rather grew worse. She had heard about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, for she said, “If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.” Immediately, her hemorrhage stopped, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, “Who touched my clothes?” And his disciples said to him, “You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, ‘Who touched me?’” He looked all around to see who had done it. But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling, fell down before him, and told him the whole truth. He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”
I don’t usually use a whole story for the verse of the day. However, it seemed right this morning. This is a powerful story for this series because it not only shows how powerful this woman’s faith was, but it also shows us how much she needed Jesus. This series is all about how Jesus wants us to come to Him just as we are. I am trying to help you see that you don’t have to get all cleaned up and fix all that is broken before we come to Jesus. Jesus wants us to decide to come to Him just as we are, and then He can help us change. He can help us fix all that is broken. He can help put us back together again.
The woman in this story had been bleeding for 12 years. According to Jewish Law, if you are bleeding, you are unclean and therefore must be separated from other people. You could not participate in worship or be a part of the community. Normally, this would just be for a few days during a woman’s menstrual cycle. However, this woman had been bleeding straight for 12 years. That meant she was cut off from the community for 12 years. Imagine all the lies the enemy was telling her. I am sure she felt unworthy, alone, dirty, not pretty, not feminine, and not wanted. She had been to all the doctors, and they kept taking her money but could not find a cure for her. She was tired and alone and felt hopeless.
Then she heard about Jesus and how He was healing people. She heard about Jesus and knew He could help her. She needed a healing so bad that she believed even if she just touched his clothes, she would be healed. Imagine that? We, or at least I, get all caught up in what prayer to say, how to word it, what to do before and after I pray. I get all caught up in what I am doing instead of the power that Jesus has. She was focused on the power Jesus had and that if she could just touch His clothes, she would be healed.
Have you ever needed Jesus that badly? Have you ever been so desperate for a healing or for love, or for something that you felt you could come to Jesus and all would be well, you would instantly be healed? I know a lot of people who are desperate for healing right now. They would do anything for it and I think if Jesus were walking the earth today, they would have the faith to touch his garments. However, He is not walking the earth today, so now what do we do? That is a great question. How can we be like this woman who touched Jesus’s garments, when He is not physically here.
It is important for us to remember what Jesus said to her. He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.” Her faith made her well. He didn’t say, Daughter, your actions have made you well; go in peace and be healed of your disease.” She wasn’t healed because she touched his garments. She was healed because she knew with her whole being that she would be healed if she could just get close enough to touch Jesus.
She wasn’t thinking about how she wasn’t worthy enough to touch Jesus. She wasn’t thinking about how it was against the rules to touch Jesus. She wasn’t thinking about all she “should” do before touching Jesus. For instance, all the rituals to purify herself. The only thing she was thinking about was that Jesus had what she needed and that He was so powerful; if she only touched his garments, she would be healed. When is the last time we believed we didn’t have to do anything but be near Jesus for us to be healed? Have we ever thought that? Have we ever believed that we didn’t have to do anything except be near Jesus in order to be healed?
I don’t know about you, but I often feel like I have to do the right things. I have to pray the right way. I have to go to church each Sunday. I have to go to confession. I have to read my Bible. These are not bad things. These are great things, and I do believe they will help me be closer to Jesus. However, I don’t think they are required to have a relationship with Him. I don’t think we need to be doing things perfectly in order to come to Jesus and ask for His help. The church has hurt many people, and therefore, attending Mass each week only makes some people angry or resentful. That is not what God wants. However, what if instead of going to church, you brought your hurt straight to God and started talking to Him about it? Don’t wait until you work out all your problems with God, religion, and the world before you come to God. Come to Him now and let Him help you work all that out.
Are you desperate for something right now? Are you lonely and desperate for a friend? Are you sick and desperate for a healing? Are you searching for a job and can’t find one? Are you in need of a car, an apartment, anything? Have you come to the Lord and talked to Him about it? Have you asked the Lord for whatever it is you need? He is a good father, and He will give you what you need. He may just be waiting for you to come and ask. Come today. Don’t wait! He is waiting there with open arms to give you a big hug and listen to all you have to say. Just give it a try. Just start talking to Him and see what happens. Don’t worry about all the reasons why you don’t think you should talk with Him. Forget all the reasons you don’t think you are worthy or that He won’t want to talk to you. Push through all of that and just start with a conversation. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode. Lord, we are sorry we are not coming to you. We are sorry we let the lies of the enemy keep us away. Please help us to recognize those lies and come to you just as we are. Help us to come to you with the faith of the woman in today’s verses. Help us to come to you with that urgency and that conviction that if we are just near you, then you can help us. We love you so much, and we are sorry if we let our need to do things get in the way of trusting that we don’t have to do anything but be near you for you to heal us. We believe, Lord, help our unbelief. We ask all of this in accordance with Your Will and in Jesus’s Holy Name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I wanted to share with all of you that my book is out on Amazon now. At the beginning of the year, I did a series of podcasts on who God says we are. I have taken those episodes and put them all in a book called “Who I Am: Discovering God’s Truth About Me.” If you are interested in checking it out, you can search Walk Boldly With Jesus devotionals on Amazon. CLICK HERE for Amazon link to the book. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day.
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in May 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “When times feel like you're not gaining, it is my love that is purifying you. So fear not. Call on my love. You will never be burned. You will only be closer to me.”
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Come As You Are Series - The Centurion
Matthew 8:5-8 “When he entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him, appealing to him and saying, “Lord, my servant is lying at home paralyzed, in terrible distress.” And he said to him, “I will come and cure him.” The centurion answered, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; but only speak the word, and my servant will be healed.”
When asking the Lord who to talk about next in this series, the story of the centurion’s servant came to mind. The story is short, so I will read it to you in case you aren’t familiar with it. Matthew 8:5-13:
“When he entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him, appealing to him and saying, 'Lord, my servant is lying at home paralyzed, in terrible distress.” And he said to him, “I will come and cure him.” The centurion answered, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; but only speak the word, and my servant will be healed. For I also am a man under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes, and to my slave, ‘Do this,’ and the slave does it.” When Jesus heard him, he was amazed and said to those who followed him, “Truly I tell you, in no one in Israel have I found such faith. I tell you, many will come from east and west and will eat with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the heirs of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” And to the centurion, Jesus said, “Go; let it be done for you according to your faith.” And the servant was healed in that hour.”
This story is similar to the one we previously discussed, the Canaanite Woman. What is interesting about both stories is that the faith that healed their loved ones came from people who weren’t even Jewish. This is important for us to see because oftentimes we think we are not holy enough to pray for healing for our loved ones. In my family, everyone goes to my dad for prayer. Actually, it isn’t even just in my family. Everyone who knows my dad will ask him for prayer, even if they aren’t Catholic, and sometimes they don’t even believe in God, but if they need a miracle, they will ask my dad. It seems as if my dad has a direct connection to God. He and my mom are both powerful prayer warriors. I think they go to do my dad more than my mom because he is a deacon in the church. We tend to think that priests and deacons have more clout than we do. We tend to think their prayers are heard more than ours.
This story is showing us that we don’t have to be super religious for God to work miracles in our lives. It shows us God is not only healing the loved ones of those who are in church every single Sunday. This story is showing us that anyone can come to God. The centurion soldiers weren’t always kind to the Jewish people, and yet Jesus still healed his servant. We can come to the Lord, no matter where we are in our faith, and He will help us. We don’t have to wait until we go to church every week. We don’t have to wait to come to the Lord until we know exactly what we think and what we believe.
This soldier knew that Jesus had authority and that if Jesus said that the servant would be healed, his servant would be healed. The Jewish people were struggling to see that Jesus had authority. They had expected the Savior to look a certain way and to do things a certain way, and Jesus was not what they had expected. The centurion and the Canaanite woman hadn’t heard all the prophecies of what the Savior would look like, where he would come from, and what he would do. They didn’t have expectations. They saw what Jesus was doing for others, and they wanted Him to do it for them, too.
This is an important lesson for us too! What if we let go of our expectations of who we think God is, what we think we need to do, and who we think we need to be before we come to God? What if we let go of our expectations of how we think God can help us and when He will help us? What if we accept the fact that God has authority and can do anything whenever He chooses? He doesn’t need us to say the right thing or to do the right thing. He doesn’t need us to ask the right people to pray. We can go to Him, just as we are, and we can ask Him ourselves. We can decide to trust that if God has done it before, He will do it again. If He has done it for others, He will do it for us.
We don’t have to worry if our faith is enough. Jesus said we just need the faith of a mustard seed. Think about the Canaanite woman and this centurion. They did not know the Bible. They did not know Jewish law. They didn’t really know anything other than what they saw Jesus do and maybe some things they heard Him say. You don’t have to be a Bible scholar for God to heal your loved ones. You don't have to have all the answers to come to the Lord. He will give you the answers you seek when you come. You don't have to figure things out on your own. He is here to help with all of that. We just have to come to Him and He will do the rest.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone listening. Lord, we want to come to you. We want to believe that you want us just as we are. We want to believe we don't have to do anything before we come to you. We believe, Lord, help our unbelief. Lord, please help us to come to you. Please help us to trust that you are who you say you are and that you do what you have always done. Help us to truly know that you love us as we are. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with Your Will and in Jesus’s Holy Name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in May 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “When you feel tested, my little ones, and things are going wrong, without the fire or the flame of my love to put it out, you cannot go further with me. So draw closer to me.”
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Come As You Are Series - The Canaanite Woman’s Faith
Matthew 15:28 “Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed instantly.”
I have heard this story in the Bible many times and I am sure you have too. Right before this verse is the story of the woman who was asking Jesus to heal her daughter. Here is the story found in Matthew 15:21-28 “Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.” But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, “Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.” He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” He answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed instantly.
I have heard several sermons on this story. The focus always seems to be on why Jesus spoke to her the way that He did and why He said the things that He said. I think those are important things to discuss because it sounds like He is being very rude. If you have not heard any sermons or any explanations of why Jesus said the things He said, I recommend you look them up, as it is very interesting. However, what the Holy Spirit highlighted for me for this series is the very last line in this story. Jesus said, “‘Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.’ And her daughter was healed instantly.”
This came right after the woman said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” What the Holy Spirit told me is that we don’t have to be perfect to receive healing. This woman was not one of the chosen people, and yet she believed that even the crumbs left over after the chosen people had been healed would have enough power to heal her daughter. She knew she wasn’t one of the chosen people. She knew she didn’t have a right to speak to or ask Jesus for anything, let alone a miracle, and yet she was brave enough to ask anyway.
It’s interesting, when I read the words, “even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the master’s table,” I heard the Holy Spirit say, you are like the crumbs. I had no idea what he meant by this. Then I felt like he was saying, we think we need to be perfect to either ask for healing or pray for others for healing. The Holy Spirit was telling me we don’t have to be perfect. This woman was not perfect, and yet she knew she needed a miracle, and although she didn’t really know Jesus, she believed in His power and knew He could heal her daughter. She knew, without a doubt, that He could heal her daughter. She even said when she called out, “Lord, son of David.” Even his apostles were struggling to see who He truly was, and yet this woman could see.
If we want to be used by the Holy Spirit to pray for others, then we don’t need to be perfect; we just need to be willing and humble. This woman humbled herself and knelt before Jesus. She begged Him to heal her daughter. She did not get caught up in what she should or shouldn’t do. She didn’t get caught up in what He was saying or how He was saying it. She needed Him to heal her daughter, and she kept asking and persisting until He did. We can all learn a lot from this woman. Her faith was so powerful that it saved her child.
Whom do you know that could use some prayers like this? This woman knew she had nothing to lose and everything to gain by begging Jesus to heal her daughter. Are we playing it too safe with our prayers? Are we holding back when we ask Jesus for healing, or not even asking Him to heal our loved ones, because we don’t want to bother Him, or we don’t feel we are worthy? Are we asking for things, but not the big things, not the things we really want, because we are afraid we won’t get them? Are we protecting ourselves from the letdown of our prayers not being answered, so we don’t ever ask?
I know this is for someone today because it is very strong in my thoughts right now. God wants me to tell you to stop holding back and stop playing it small with your prayers. God has some amazing blessings for you, and yet He is waiting for you to ask. He is waiting for you to trust that He will answer your prayers, even if they seem a bit impossible, even if they seem extremely impossible. God is telling us to ask Him anyway! I feel as though He really wants us to understand that we are not bothering Him with our prayers. We honor Him when we pray to Him and ask Him for help, especially when we ask Him for big, bold, audacious things. That is not a word I use often, but I felt that was the word I was supposed to use there.
Wouldn’t it be great one day to be sitting there, or standing there with Jesus, and then He turns to us and says, “Woman, or man, great is your faith!” I long for that day. That image, that vision, is enough for me to do all I can to increase my faith. The image of Jesus saying that to me gives me the strength and fortitude to pray the litany of trust and the litany of humility often. That image gives me the strength to call on the Lord whenever I need Him. The woman in the verse today had great faith. She believed He was who He said He was, she believed in His power, and she wasn’t afraid to ask Him for help. How about us?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless each and every person listening to this episode. Lord, we want to have great faith. Please help us. We want to come to you when we are in need. We want to ask you the big, bold, audacious prayers. We believe, Lord, help our unbelief. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again on Monday! Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in May 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is,“Life swiftly moves by like a shadow, my children. It's like a vapor that swiftly goes away. Think more of me, and you will act differently.”
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Come As You Are Series (The boy who gave up his lunch)
John 6:9 “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so many people?”
This verse is just before the Lord does something amazing! Jesus is speaking to his disciples, and a large crowd has followed Him. They saw all the amazing things Jesus was doing with curing the sick and wanted more. Jesus told his disciples to have everyone sit down and asked how they would feed them. One of the disciples said there was no way they would have enough money to feed that many people. There were 5,000 in all. Then another disciple said that there was a boy who had five barley loaves and two fish. Jesus took those five barley loaves and two fish and broke them up and instructed the disciples to hand them out, and when everyone had their fill, the disciples gathered what was left over, and it filled 12 baskets.
I am sure most of us have heard that story before. If you haven’t, you can read the beginning of Chapter 6 in the Gospel of John. It is great. Today, since this series is Come as You Are, I want to focus on the boy who gave up his lunch. We know very little about this boy. They do not talk about him other than that he gave us his lunch, and yet, he was the only one. I wonder why this boy was there that day. Was he with family or friends? How old was this boy? I would think if he were with his parents, they would have said, There is a family with five barley loaves and two fish. So, it doesn’t seem like he was there with family.
I wonder if his mom made him that lunch. I wonder why he wanted to go see Jesus. Did he need a healing? Did he have a loved one who needed a healing? Did he just really like what Jesus had to say? Was he drawn to Him? There is so much I would like to know that I never really thought of before now. This story is mostly focused on the miracle, as it should be. Jesus took a very small amount of food and fed 5,000 people with 12 baskets to spare. That is truly incredible!
Jesus did not need the boy’s lunch to make this miracle. He could have made bread out of thin air. He made the whole universe. He could certainly have made food for everyone to eat. What I love is that Jesus included this boy in his miracle. He didn’t do it all by himself. He allowed the boy to take part in it by offering his lunch. Imagine how special that boy felt? I am sure that is a day he will never forget. I am sure no one there will forget that day, but this boy especially. He willingly gave up his lunch so that Jesus could feed everyone.
Jesus uses people like you and me every day to help Him with miracles. Not because He has to, but because He wants to. He does not use people who are ideally suited for what he needs to accomplish. He uses people who are willing to be used by Him to build up His Kingdom. This boy was not perfectly suited to help Jesus. We don’t know anything about him. He could have been Jewish, but he also could have been a Samaritan or some other nationality. We don’t know. The Bible doesn’t tell us. We don’t know if he was a sinner or not. All we know is that when Andrew asked what the boy had for food, he gave him all he had.
The boy said yes. That is all that Jesus requires of us. He just wants our yes. I know you think that you are not who God is looking for. I know that you feel you are too old or too young for God to use you. I know you think you are not enough or too much for God to use you. I know you feel you are not smart enough or holy enough. I know you think there are a million other people out there who are more qualified than you are to do what you believe the Lord is calling you to do. I know you are nervous, and you don’t feel like you know how to do what He is calling you to do. I know because I feel all those things too. We all do.
This is the reason I am doing this series. I am praying that by the time we are done with this series, you will begin to see that you are exactly the kind of person God uses. You are perfectly suited for what He is calling you to do. He knows your strengths and weaknesses. He knows what you can and can not do. He actually knows much better than you do what you can and can’t do because He created you. We don’t always know what we can and can not do because sometimes we have had other people telling us that we can’t do something our whole lives, and yet they were wrong. We actually can do it. Or, maybe we have been telling ourselves we can’t do something even though we have never tried it.
If God is calling you to it, He will equip you for it. God knew Jesus was going to need to feed 5,000 people on the mountain that day. It was not a surprise to God that all those people followed Jesus. Why do you think that boy was there at the specific moment in time? Why do you think, of all those people, he was the only one to bring food. I wonder if his mom packed him that lunch? I wonder if he argued, as my kids would. No, Mom, I don’t need food. I will be fine. It's just a talk, I’ll get food with my friends after. I will figure something out. I don't want to carry that around all day, and so on. Whatever happened, the Lord allowed the boy to have that food and to donate it to the cause. He allowed that boy, who isn’t even named in the Bible, to be part of that miracle.
What about you? Will you be a part of God’s miracles? Will you say yes and allow Him to use you even though you don’t feel like you are worthy? Even though you don’t seem like you have anything to give. I am sure when asked, the boy thought to himself, What can my five barley loaves and two fish do to feed all of these people. I am sure he felt like his contribution was not enough. Yet, with Jesus, He can always make our little into enough. He just needs our “yes” and He will do the rest. Will you give Jesus your “yes” today?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening today. Lord, we love you and we are so grateful you use us even though we don’t feel worthy. We are grateful you allow us to participate in your miracles even though you could do them without us. Lord, we ask for you to reform our hearts and help us to be more willing to say “yes.” We ask that you give us the holy boldness we need to step into all you are calling us to be. We ask that you give us the strength to pursue you relentlessly just as you pursue us. We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with Your Will and in Jesus’s Holy Name! Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in May 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Expect the unexpected. I am doing amazing things in each one of your lives. Look for those amazing things. Focus on the things I'm doing. Look for the things that I might be doing. Expect the unexpected.”
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Today’s Witnesses are both from the Encounter Ministries YouTube Page. The first one I just learned about today, and the second one I have had on here before. However, someone in my Big Life mentoring group was asking for prayers for her daughter, who has stage 4 cancer. It is easy to believe the doctors when they say there is nothing they can do about it and that stage 4 is terminal. However, only God gets to decide when we enter and exit this world. I wanted to find some testimonials of people with stage four cancer who have been healed, as it is easier to believe God will do it for us and our loved ones if we hear how he did it for someone else and their loved ones. God is still healing today. We need to keep believing. He needs to keep hoping. Hope in the Lord does not disappoint. (Romans 5:5) I pray that after hearing these testimonies, your faith will grow, even just a little. All we need is the faith of a mustard seed.
Hi, my name is Roxanne, and I was healed of inoperable ovarian cancer. I had excruciating pain in my abdomen, and they rushed me to the emergency room. I had emergency surgery. I woke up and I asked my husband, Okay, how did it go? And he just said, You have cancer. The doctor came in and they said, No, it's not colon cancer, but it's ovarian cancer. That spread. That had spread. I'm like, okay, well, there's still hope. And she looked at me, and she's like, No, you have stage four cancer. There's no hope.There were some big tumors, but it actually kind of looked like there was
confetti of all the tumors. It wrapped around the colon, which is what caused the pain initially, and then wrapped itself around other vital areas like blood supplies, was very close to the pancreas, the stomach, everything. Her husband was in a really, mentally, a really bad place, really negative, very, very angry. And we thought, okay, let's just lean into this. Let's go to the healing service.
It was November 3rd or 4th. At the healing service, the priest said, “Keep your eyes fixed on Jesus because in his eyes is the history of his passion for you.” And, you know, he calls out different ailments, and then he called out cancer. Stand up if anyone has cancer. I stood up, and it felt like everybody in the church came over and prayed over me. And then we got in line to do individual healings, and we ended up with Father Jason, another individual. We didn't know Father Jason. I've never seen him before. So he did start praying over me, and then Eric started praying over me. And as he was praying over me, I felt this burning in my side, which was where the inoperable tumor was. Father Jason said, “So when Roxanne and Eric came for prayer, I was like, God's got this, you know, let's go for it. And so we prayed for the Holy Spirit to come down. I prayed that the Holy Fire of the Holy Spirit would consume the cancer in Roxanne's body. And she said that she felt heat. And when I heard that, I was very encouraged. And I said, that's a good sign. And let's press into that. Let's keep praying more, Lord, more Holy Spirit, more fire.”
Father Jason continued to pray, Holy Spirit, burn the cancer out. It really got intense with the Holy Spirit, burn that cancer right out. You know, all the anger and where her husband’s head was at before that, it seemed like it cleared out. He felt like God has this in some way. I don't know how, but just stop being angry about it. And then December 12th was the Feast of the Holy Day of Guadalupe, which we're having surgery on your feast day for a reason. Please, you know, help, help, help us, right? Help us get through this. Help Roxanne get through this. And then I just sat in the waiting room and prayed.
And nine hours later, uh, the surgeon actually comes out. But good news. We were able to reverse everything. And I said, What do you mean? And she said, Well, yeah, we didn't, we didn't see any visible cancer in Roxanne's body. Sorry. We didn't see any visible cancer in Roxanne's body. So we were able to reverse everything. Anything that looked suspicious or like scar tissue, we removed it. They called it dropped all the ostomies, so her bag was gone. The colorectal surgeon comes in. She's like, yeah, it was very successful. And all we saw was a lot of scar tissue. That's why they took hours and hours just to pull, pull apart, and separate the, uh, the bowels because they were trying to search and find anything. Right. They spent hours just searching, and all the scar tissue made it difficult. She's like, yeah, we always saw a lot of scar tissue and burned-out tumors. And I was like, what? What did you say? Yeah, scar tissue and a burned-out tumor. And immediately I thought, well, you know, the words had come out during the healing service. I just couldn't comprehend it at that point. I was blown away. Right. A gynecology oncologist came in, and she's like, Did you see the pathology report? No. She's like, I wanted to come down and tell you. We didn't see any cancers or any of the biopsies or anything. Everything came out negative. How is that possible? Right. Because when you first heard that it spread throughout your, uh, your abdomen, like confetti or like rice at a wedding, you know, it’s a, you may hear like all the biopsies they did. I don't know how many they did, but they said there were all negative. Again, just floored by that. She was very surprised. Father Jason said, "And I was just like, thank you, Jesus. What a testimony to our prayer and the power of the Holy Spirit, His Holy fire consumed that cancer and just left the scar tissue as evidence of his power.”
Hi, my name is Angel Fox, and I was fully healed of stage four esophageal cancer. I was basically told by my doctors that I didn't have much time. I had attended an encounter conference, and I waited in line for Father Matthias. I get up there, and Father Matthias at this Encounter conference says, Angel, you should have the children pray with you. Very resistant because I just waited in line for him. Uh, but I listened, and I went, and they had a kids' track where they had taught children how to pray with others. And I found these little kids, they were like six, seven, eight years old, nine. And I was like, Hey, you know, could you offer me some prayer? I've got really bad cancer, and
the doctors say they can't do anything about it. And this little nine-year-old, I'll never forget her face. She looks up and she goes, well, they just don't know who Jesus is.
And they all, all these little children, they put their hands up and they are just praying away. I literally felt this heat up in my lungs. I shared that with them, and they just started laying that prayer on Lord Jesus, heal, heal angel in the name of Jesus. We called the Holy Spirit. I mean, they were just bringing it. It was so beautiful. A couple of months later, I was scheduled for my CT scan. The doctors were looking, and he started stuttering; he couldn't believe it. He stands up. He's like, What is going on? This is all new territory. I was just like, we are in Holy Spirit territory. The CT scan was completely clear, and it has been clear for years. They kept me on chemotherapy for the longest time. Finally, they were just like, We're taking you off chemotherapy. So no more palliative care. And I've been off any kind of cancer treatment for over three years now. And my scans keep coming back clear. There's no medical explanation.
And I'm telling you, the only explanation is the power of the Holy Spirit and the power of prayer. So I just offer you the same blessing. I'm just going to ask the Lord to open up the heavens and to bring full healing, full healing to his loved child, to his beloved.
That's who you are, and you are worthy. And that you be fully, fully healed and fully restored of any affliction that you are suffering. And I pray this in Jesus' name.Amen.
Thank you both so much for sharing your stories! When we share our story, it helps others know that if God can do it for us, He can do it for them.
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Come As You Are Series - Hagar
Genesis 16:7-8 “Now the angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, by the spring on the way to Shur. He said, “Hagar, Sarai’s slave woman, from where have you come, and where are you going?” And she said, “I am fleeing from the presence of my mistress Sarai.”
God promised Abraham that he would be the Father of nations. His descendants would be more numerous than the stars in the sky. Yet Abraham was 86 years old at this point in his life, and he still had no children. His wife was getting impatient. She was 75 years old and still had no children. One day, she told Abraham that she wanted him to sleep with her handmaid. She thought maybe that was the way she was going to get the children that God promised her.
We might think this is crazy, as we don’t really live in a culture where this is normal. Unfortunately, it was more normal back then. Even though we might not be able to identify with Sarai giving her handmaid, Hagar, to her husband so that she could have some children, we can definitely relate to being impatient waiting for God to fulfill His promises. We want everything in our time, and when it doesn’t happen, we try to make it happen.
Have you ever done this? Have you ever gotten tired of waiting for the Lord to do what He said he would do, so you took matters into your own hands? I know I have. I am sure we all have at one point or another. We are human. God’s ways are higher than our ways, which means we don’t understand them. We don’t know why God told Abraham he would be the father of nations 25 years before his only son would be born. We don’t know why God said He would be the father of nations and His descendants would outnumber the stars, yet He only had one child. We don’t always know what God is doing.
What we do know is that when we try to take over for God and do it our own way or in our own timing, then we create a mess. Sarai thought she could give her handmaid to her husband, and all would be fine. The handmaid would have children, but Saria and Abraham would raise them as their own. However, once the handmaid Hagar got pregnant and realized she was pregnant, she looked at her mistress with contempt. Sarai became upset and started mistreating her. Isn’t this just like us? We do something we think will fix the situation, and surprise, surprise, our idea wasn't actually better than the Lord’s idea, and it all just backfires. Now Sarai is mad at her Hagar because she is acting like she is better than Sarai. After all, she could get pregnant, and Sarai couldn’t. However, it was Sarai’s idea in the first place. This is exactly how this world operates. We take things into our own hands and then get upset when it doesn’t work out.
Hagar got tired of being mistreated and ran away. However, an angel appeared to her. Let’s stop right there. Hagar is a maidservant who married her mistress’s husband so that they could have a baby. Does that sound like someone an angel would visit? Do you see how God doesn’t choose the people we would choose? Hagar was put in a bad position and yet did what she was told to do. Everything worked out exactly like her mistress wanted, and then her mistress began to treat her badly.
God didn’t forget her or forsake her, though. He could have let her run away. The baby she was carrying was not the baby that God had promised them. However, he sent an angel to have her go back and have the baby with her husband. The angel told Hagar that she would have a boy and that he would be called Ishmael. The angel said to her that God had heard her affliction. Imagine what it would be like to have an angel appear to you and tell you that God has heard you? How many of your prayers right now do you wish you knew if God heard or not? Wouldn’t it be great if an angel came down and told us that God has listened to our affliction?
Sometimes it feels like we are talking to ourselves because we are waiting and waiting for an answer, and it doesn’t seem to come. God hears all our prayers. It says this in many places in the Bible. We know this, and yet it would still be nice if God sent an angel to reassure us. The angels would be pretty busy if they needed to come and reassure us every time we doubted that God heard our prayers. God did send an angel to visit Hagar another time, too. After Isaac was born and weaned, Sarah told Abraham to send Hagar away. Abraham was sad as Ismael was his son. However, God told him to do as Sarah wanted.
Here is another instance where we might not understand why God would want Abraham to send Hagar and his son away. We trust that God’s plan is better than our plan. Hagar sleeping with Abraham was never part of God’s plan. He told Abraham and Sarah that they would have a baby and that God would make Abraham the father of nations. Yet, when it didn’t happen soon enough for them, they took matters into their own hands. God wanted to fulfill his promise to Abraham through Isaac, not Ismael.
Hagar left, but she was not abandoned by God. She was in the wilderness with her son, and an angel spoke to her from heaven. Most people go their whole life never seeing an angel, and Hagar gets visited twice. God sent an angel to let her know that she was not alone. He wanted her to know that God had heard the cries of her son and that He would be taking care of both of them. God told her that He would make a great nation of him. God was with the boy as he grew up in the wilderness, and he became an expert with a bow.
God did not forget or forsake Hagar and Ismael even though they were not really part of His original plan. God won’t forget you either. God knows that we will try to take things into our own hands. He knows we might get impatient and do something we wish we hadn’t done. It’s ok. He still allowed Abraham and Sarah to have their child. He still blessed Hagar and Ismael. He won’t take away your dream either, just because you got tired of waiting and tried to do it on your own. God is looking out for you just as He was looking out for this maid servant who was doing what she was told to do, and then was sent away
God sees the injustice in your life, too. He sees the ways you have been treated by this world, and He has not abandoned you. He is with you in the wilderness the same way he was with Hagar and Ismael. He is protecting you and blessing you. God never leaves your side. He is making all things for your good. Not just for those special few, but for all of us.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening. Lord, we love you, and we ask you to help us be patient and wait for your timing. Help us not to take matters into our own hands. Lord, have mercy on us when we do wrong and help us navigate the mess we often get ourselves into when we try to take matters into our own hands. We love you, Lord, and we know your plan is best. It can be challenging for us to be patient and wait at times. Please be patient with us as we do our best. We ask all of this in accordance with Your Will and in Jesus’s Holy Name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus—just a few more days to register for the retreat. CLICK HERE FOR RETREAT INFO! I will give my numbers to the retreat house on Friday. I can't believe the retreat is next weekend already! Additionally, I have exciting news: my devotional book is almost ready to be published as well. I am so excited, and I ask for your prayers that all goes well and it gets printed in time to have it at the retreat. Additionally, if you could all join in prayer for the retreat and those attending, that would be greatly appreciated. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in May 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Give me your hand so I can lead you. You will not fall astray if you hold on to my hand. You are not meant to walk alone. I am with you. There is no need to fear. I guide each step of your way.”
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Testing of Faith Produces Perseverance
James 1:2 -4 & 12 “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him.”
This is a pretty tall order. This verse asks us to consider it pure joy whenever you face trials of many kinds because we know that testing of our faith produces perseverance. I understand what the verse is saying. I understand the concept. I am just not sure I understand how to do this. I’m not sure joy would be the word I would use when I am undergoing trials. I would say words like sad, frustrated, mad, angry, annoyed, scared, lonely and defeated seem more like what I feel when I am going through trials. So, why is this verse telling us to feel joy?
We often ask why we have to struggle? We ask why we have to face various kids of trials? I have learned from Father Mike that there isn’t just one reason why we find ourselves in trials. Father Mike states several times in his Bible in a Year podcast that sometimes we do find ourselves in difficult trials because of something we have done. Sometimes we go against what the Lord wants us to do and there are consequences for that. Other times, the situation we are in is not of our own doing and does not mean that we did anything wrong. For instance, Job, he was a righteous in the eyes of the Lord, yet he suffered terribly. Not all suffering is a result of sin. Another example, of this is found in John 9:1-3 “As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” "Neither this man nor his parents sinned," said Jesus, "but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.”
Do you see the reasons for your trials can vary. I think a lot of us think if we are struggling, then we must have done something to deserve it. God must be punishing us in some way. I have heard that one a lot. Jesus is telling us right here in the Bible, your trials are not always because of sin. Sometimes your trials are to show the work of God in your life. It is rare that you know the reason for your struggle while you are in it. However, even if you did, I am not sure it would make it easier. Take this verse for instance. It says that when our faith is tested we gain perseverance. Perseverance is great. It is often times the thing that gets us through our trials. I find it interesting that in order for our perseverance to grow we need to go through trails, yet our perseverance is what helps us get through those trials. I am glad that I have gained a lot of perseverance over the years. Even though I know that I will gain perseverance when I go through a hard time, it doesn’t make that hard time easier.
The rest of the verse says to “Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him.” That all sounds wonderful. I definitely want to be mature and not lacking in anything. I also definitely want to receive the crown of life. The problem is, I don’t know how to remain steadfast under trial. I don’t know how to consider it joy that I have trials. I know what the Lord wants me to do, I am just not sure how to do it. I love how the Lord always gives us answers. I was just thinking that it would be nice if I could give you guys some tips on how to stay steadfast under trials and I did a quick internet search and found some. The article I found is titled Six ways to remain steadfast during trials and it is written by Dan Panetti. (CLICK HERE for article) I will post a link to the article in the show notes, but I will list Dan’s six ideas here as well.
Focus on what you can control—not on what you can’t (Prov. 3:5–6 “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.”)
Live in the moment—refuse to be anxious about tomorrow (Matt. 6:34 “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.”)
Look for ways to break up the monotony—tackle a home improvement project or learn to play a new card game. One of my sons proposed that I come up with a question for each family member to be researched and presented around the dinner table. It has sparked some of the best conversations we have ever had.
Relax and take a walk—meditate on the ways that God has provided for you, delivered you from death, given you a purpose, and equipped you for his service (Psalm 116:7–9 “Return, O my soul, to your rest; for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you. For you have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling; I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living.”)
Bathe in a book of the Bible—not just read through it, but sit and soak in it! Think of Naaman going down into the Jordan again and again. Read and re-read a passage, chapter, or book—dive deep(er) into the Word!
Memorize and meditate on Scripture—both of which are under appreciated spiritual disciplines. My oldest son and I are currently focusing on memorizing at least one verse from each book of the Bible.
Just knowing that we grow in perseverance anytime our faith is tested might not be enough to help us find joy in our trials. However, maybe some of these ideas can help us to be steadfast in our trials. I like how the author even provided a few scripture verses to back up some of his suggestions. I have not done a lot of scripture memorizing in the past. However, I did try scripture writing for awhile and I thought it was great. If you want to give that a try, or even if you want to do the scripture memorizing and are not sure where to start, I started with an internet search of scripture writing plans. When you type that in you will get a whole list of scriptures, usually with a certain them, such as “wisdom,” “freedom,” “being bold,” all sorts of themes, whatever you might be struggling with the most. If you want to bathe in a book in the Bible, and you are not sure where to start, I have always been told a great place to start is in at the beginning of the new Testament, in the Gospel of Matthew, or the Psalms is another great place to start.
I hope each of you will write these ideas down so that next time you are going through trials, they can help you remain steadfast. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be mature and not lacking in anything. If so, we need to let perseverance finish it work in us. In order to do this, we must make it through all the trials. In order to do this we must figure out a way to remain steadfast in our trials. I know it is difficult going through a difficult time and not understanding why you have to go through it. However, this verse gives us a little hope. One reason we are going through it is to test our faith. Are you going to remain steadfast? Do we want the crown of life? The choice is ours.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you and we ask that you are with us in our times of trial. We ask that you give us the grace to find joy in our trials and that you help us to stay steadfast also. Lord, we want all you have to give us and that includes the crown of life. Help us to not drown in our difficult time. Sometimes it feels like we are drowning and we are asking that you save us before that happens. Lord, even if it is not the right time while we are going through it for us to know why it is all happening, please give us the grace to understand that if its not the reason, we will grow in perseverance while we make it through to the other side. Also, help us to feel your presence while in the trial and know that you are with us. We love you Lord, you are truly amazing. We are so very grateful for you. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on your journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
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Come As You Are Series- Joseph
Genesis 37:3-4 “Now, Israel loved Joseph more than any other of his children, because he was the son of his old age; and he made him a long robe with sleeves. But when his brother saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him and could not speak peaceably to him.”
When I was thinking about what to write about Joseph, I thought about how we all get stuck in family drama. I really don’t think there is any escaping it. If we have siblings, then we have either been the favorite child, been jealous of the favorite child, or both at different times in our lives. I remember when I was young, I thought my little brother was spoiled. I felt my mom did everything for him. In my eyes, she went to watch all his football games; she would even watch his practices when he was younger. She would go to all his plays. Yet there was at least one or two times when she didn’t pick me up from practice. She said she figured someone else would bring me home. Which they would have had I known she wasn’t coming.
What I can see now, that I couldn’t see then, is that it wasn’t because she didn’t want to be at my things too. It was that she had three little ones at home. Of course, she could go see my youngest brother's stuff because she didn’t have any other little ones at home to take care of. She did have to try to concentrate on watching him while three little ones ran around, making her crazy. I am sure we all have stories of how our parents treated our siblings differently from how they treated us. However, this family drama is documented in the Bible.
It was true that Israel loved Joseph more than his brothers. Israel had 12 sons, and he gave Joseph a special coat to let him know how special he was. I can’t fault the brothers for being angry; I would be angry, too. Joseph didn’t help himself out either because he had a dream, and when he told his brothers, it only fueled the flames of hatred. Here is what he told them, “Hear this dream which I have dreamed: behold, we were binding sheaves in the field, and behold, my sheaf arose and stood upright; and behold, your sheaves gathered round it and bowed down to my sheaf.”
His brothers were so angry that they decided that they were going to kill him. But one of his brothers decided they shouldn’t kill him; they should throw him in a pit in the wilderness. After they threw him in a pit, they saw a caravan of Ishmaelites coming and decided to sell him to them instead of having him die. That way, they get something out of the deal. Things were not looking good for Joseph.
Joseph was taken down to Egypt and was sold to an officer of the Pharaoh, the captain of the guard. However, the Lord was with Joseph, and he became a successful man. His master saw that the Lord was with him and put him in charge of all that he had. Joseph was very handsome, and his master’s wife wanted to sleep with Joseph. Joseph refused day after day, and one day she trapped him, and when he still wouldn’t sleep with her, she lied and said he tried to take advantage of her, and Joseph was thrown in prison. Again, things were not looking good for Joseph.
However, the Lord was with Joseph in prison, and the prison keeper put Joseph in charge of all the prisoners, and whatever was done in prison, Joseph would do it. Whatever Joseph did prospered, even in prison. There were two prisoners who had dreams they didn’t understand. Joseph was able to interpret them, and the prisoners were grateful. One of those prisoners was released from prison, and Joseph said not to forget about him. However, he did forget for two whole years. Then the Pharaoh had a dream and no one in the land could interpret it, so the prisoner who was released remembered Joseph and told the Pharaoh about him, and the Pharaoh called on Joseph to interpret his dream, and Joseph did. Pharaoh was so impressed that he put Joseph in charge of all that he had. Joseph was second only to Pharaoh in Egypt.
While I was writing this, I kept asking the Lord, Why are we going into all of this when this is a series about come as you are. I believe the Lord wants us to see how Joseph did not try to change himself for others. He did not try to hide who he was from his brothers. He was honest with them. We might see this as bragging, and maybe it was. Joseph was just a kid. What if it wasn’t bragging, though? What if Joseph was just trying to talk to his brothers about his dream? Maybe he was looking for help interpreting it. We don’t know why Joseph told his brothers, but what we do know is that Joseph never tried to hide who he was from his brothers. If he had tried to pretend to be someone else, maybe they wouldn’t have hated him so much and sold him into slavery. Have you ever pretended to be someone else just so your family would like you more?
When the wife of his master approached Joseph, he could have slept with her. He might have been able to avoid prison if he had. However, that is not who he was. He appreciated all his master had done for him, and he didn’t want to betray him. The Lord was also with Joseph, and it would have been wrong in the eyes of the Lord, so Joseph said no and ended up in prison. Have you ever done the wrong thing to avoid a bad consequence? How did it turn out in the end? How did you feel about yourself afterwards?
Often, we think that if something bad happens to us, then God is not with us. We believe He has abandoned us and left us. God shows us in this story that it is not true. God was with Joseph always, even when he was sold into slavery and in prison. God didn’t save Joseph from slavery or prison, but He was with him in it and helped him to prosper in it. Did you know you could prosper in a bad situation? Did you know God sometimes lets us stay in those situations for a while because He is aligning the rest of our lives? He is moving pieces around the board of our lives and aligning circumstances for us to live into our destiny.
We think God won’t use us. We have a million excuses why God doesn’t want us. We are the least in our family. We are in prison. We don’t have a job. We don’t have a home. We aren’t liked by many. We aren’t enough. We are too much. There are so many reasons why we don’t come to the Lord. Why we think the Lord has abandoned us. This story shows us that God doesn’t care about all of that. Joseph was the most loved in his family, and something bad still happened to him. Joseph was faithful to his master and to God, and something bad still happened.
God used those bad things for good, though. After all of that, Joseph became second only to Pharaoh over all of Egypt. He saved Egypt from 7 years of famine. He saved his family, the one who threw him away, from starving to death. God reunited him with his father and his brothers. God will use the evil that the enemy unleashes on your life for good. You just need to come to him and ask. Joseph did not wait until he was successful to come to the Lord. Joseph went to the Lord as a slave. He went to the Lord as a prisoner. He came to the Lord, just as he was, and the Lord was with him and helped him prosper.
Is that what is keeping you back from prospering? You are waiting until you figure it all out before you come to the Lord. This story tells us that the Lord helped Joseph prosper while he was a slave. The Lord helped him prosper while he was still in prison. The Lord wants to help you prosper while you are stuck in bed with an illness. He wants to help you prosper while you are looking for a job. He wants to help you prosper while you are stuck in this pit of despair. Don’t wait another minute! Come to the Lord, just as you are, and he will help you prosper.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each person listening to this episode today. Lord, we are so grateful you never leave our side. We are sorry we have to wait to come to you. Please help each person listening to this episode come to you today. Please help us to see that we can’t change without you, and you don’t want us to. Please help us to see that you love us and accept us just as we are. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. There is just one more week to sign up for my retreat. It is two weeks from tomorrow! I look forward to seeing all of you who have signed up. I am going to be offering a virtual option for the retreat since some people live far away but would like to attend. If you would like more information on that, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com. CLICK HERE for the retreat info and registration. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in May 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I am ready to fill you with all my graces, with everything that you need. It should not be that difficult to come. I invite you each day. Can you not hear my whispers? My whispers of love, my whispers of hope, my whispers of joy. I am full of love for you, so just drop in and come.”
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Good morning everyone! I am so sorry that I completely forgot yesterday was Wednesday and yet I didn’t want you to miss out on Witness Wednesday this week. Today I will be reading to you the story of Sophia. She is a 12 year old student who was shot and nearly killed during Mass at the Annunciation Catholic School in August. First I will read the prayer request I recieved from several people and then the article a friend sent about her recovery.
A friend whose brother-in-law teaches at Annunciation is passing along an urgent prayer request from the dad of Sophia, who's still in intensive care...
Sophia's brain swelling needs to stop now and recede.🙏 Half her skull has been removed thus far to relieve pressure and the remaining will need to be removed unless the swelling stops. Sophia's dad asked to share this with as many people as possible for prayers.
Now here is the article
Sophia Forchas, who was shot and nearly killed during Mass at Annunciation Catholic School in August, has made significant progress in her recovery, said an update from her parents.
Sophia Forchas, the 12-year-old student from Annunciation Catholic School whose doctors feared could become the third victim of the mass shooting committed during her school's Mass in August, will soon be moving to inpatient rehabilitation to continue recovering.
"Sophia is winning! Your Prayers are working," said a September 22 statement from the Forchas family posted on a GoFundMe fundraiser page.
Sophia is the last Annunciation Catholic School student still hospitalized after the shooting that killed two of her classmates and injured nearly two dozen others.
The family thanked everyone for their "continued prayers, the outpouring of love, and the tremendous support for our precious Sophia. We are humbled by the countless individuals across the globe who have lifted her up in prayer, including His All-Holiness Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew and His Holiness Pope Leo XIV."
The Forchas family attends a Greek Orthodox parish in the Minneapolis area.
"Your prayers have been powerful. Sophia surviving this horrific attack is a miracle. Her healing progress is nothing short of miraculous; an undeniable testament to the mercy and intervention of our Lord Jesus Christ," said the family's statement.
Each day, the Forchas family has received "new revelations of moments and circumstances that kept her alive and made her recovery possible."
"There are simply too many to be dismissed as coincidence. God has heard our prayers and wrapped Sophia in His healing embrace," said the family.
Inspiring hope
Since the shooting, Sophia has continued to make "steady progress" and has shown "promising signs of neurological recovery."
Her doctors, who once thought she was not going to survive, are now "cautiously optimistic," and she is set to move this week from an acute care setting to an inpatient rehabilitation program, said the family.
"Though she still has a long journey ahead, filled with extensive therapy, her resilience continues to inspire hope at every step," said the Forchas family. The family asked that people "continue to pray for her as she walks this road to recovery."
"It is by God’s will that she has come this far. We are eternally grateful to our loving Father, who hears and answers prayers. We also extend our heartfelt thanks to the extraordinary staff of Hennepin Healthcare at HCMC for their tireless dedication and world-class care."
Echoing the words of Annunciation Catholic School's Principal Matt DeBoer, the Forchas family asked that people keep praying for their daughter and for the world.
"Please continue to pray. Pray for peace and when you pray, move your feet," said the family.
"Let us worship God together and walk forward in Faith, Hope, and Love. Together we can create a better tomorrow."
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Looking Foolish For Jesus
Numbers 11:23 “The LORD answered Moses: Is this beyond the LORD’s reach? You shall see now whether or not what I have said to you takes place.”
I have been reading two books lately that have really got me thinking about how I pray. One is called The Circle Maker by Mark Batterson, and the other is called The Cross and the Switch Blade by David Wilkerson. Both books have similar themes. One central theme seems to be praying boldly and specifically. They both talk about how if we want to see extraordinary things, we need to be willing to look foolish sometimes. Here is a short excerpt from the book The Circle Maker.
“Faith is the willingness to look foolish. Noah looked foolish building a boat in a desert. The Israelite army looked foolish, marching around Jericho, blowing trumpets. A shepherd boy named David looked foolish charging a giant with a sling shot. The Magi looked foolish tracking a star to Timbuktu. Peter looked foolish getting out of the boat in the sea of Galilee, and Jesus looked foolish wearing a crown of thorns. But the results speak for themselves. Noah was saved from the flood, the walls of Jericho came tumbling down, David defeated Goliath, the magi discovered the Messiah, Peter walked on water, and Jesus was crowned king of kings. Foolishness is a feeling that Moses was very familiar with. He had to feel foolish going before the pharaoh and demanding that he let God's people go. He felt foolish raising his staff over the Red Sea, and he most certainly felt foolish promising meat to eat for the entire nation of Israel in the middle of the wilderness, but his willingness to look foolish resulted in epic miracles: the exodus of Israel out of Egypt, the parting of the Red Sea, and the quail miracle.”
The quail miracle is what I want to talk to you about today. God had saved the Israelites from Egypt; he was providing a miracle for them every single day by providing manna, and yet they were not happy. They were complaining about not having meat to eat. They were talking about all the good things they had to eat when they were in Egypt and reminiscing as if those were good times because they had so much free food and fish. But they're forgetting that the food was free because they were not; they were slaves. In Numbers 11:10-15, Moses hears the people complaining and asks God why he treats him so badly as to give him the responsibility of all these people. Then in Numbers 11:18-21 God says, “To the people, however, you shall say: 'Sanctify yourselves for tomorrow, when you shall have meat to eat. For in the hearing of the LORD you have cried, ‘If only we had meat for food! Oh, how well off we were in Egypt! Therefore, the LORD will give you meat to eat, and you will eat it, not for one day, or two days, or five, or ten, or twenty days, but for a whole month—until it comes out of your very nostrils and becomes loathsome to you. For you have rejected the LORD who is in your midst, and in his presence you have cried, ‘Why did we ever leave Egypt?’”
This is one of those times I talked about earlier when sometimes faith requires you to look a little foolish. Moses did not understand how there could be enough meat to feed all these people for a whole month. He even questioned God about this. In Numbers 11:22, Moses asks, “The people around me include six hundred thousand soldiers; yet you say, ‘I will give them meat to eat for a whole month.’ Can enough sheep and cattle be slaughtered for them? If all the fish of the sea were caught for them, would they have enough?” I find this remarkable and comforting. After all the truly extraordinary miracles Moses has seen, he still questions the Lord when he tells him something. I find it remarkable because I would think by now, he would know to just trust God. I find it comforting because if someone who is as close to the Lord as Moses was can question or doubt the Lord, then I don’t have to be so hard on myself when I do it. Moses could not see how this could happen; the math did not add up.
Then the next verse is one that we should ask ourselves often, especially when we are facing a situation that seems impossible. Numbers 11:23 says, “The LORD answered Moses: Is this beyond the LORD’s reach? You shall see now whether or not what I have said to you takes place.” Wow, is this beyond the Lord’s reach? What a great question! And I hope we all know the answer is No, nothing is beyond the Lord’s reach. I wonder what Moses was thinking in that moment when God said that to him. He was probably feeling the same way we feel when our parents ask us a question that we ought to know the answer to.
After this talk with God, Moses had a decision to make. Was he going to trust God and go out in front of his 600,000 soldiers and tell them that God would provide them with meat for a month? Would he put his reputation on the line to say something that he himself had trouble believing? I think a lot of us find ourselves in this situation more often than we would like to admit. We all know the power of the Holy Spirit and of God, and yet, we are hesitant to voice our prayers loud enough for others to hear. Or we are afraid to go out on a limb and pray a specific prayer out loud because what if God doesn’t come through? What if we look foolish? What will people think? Luckily, Moses did go out and tell the people what God had said. And you know what, God showed up. He always does.
In Numbers 11:31-32, it talks about this miracle, “There arose a wind from the LORD that drove in quail from the sea and left them all around the camp site, to a distance of a day’s journey and at a depth of two cubits upon the ground. So all that day, all night, and all the next day, the people set about to gather in the quail. Even the one who got the least gathered ten homers* of them. Then they spread them out all around the camp.” Not knowing what a cubit is, or how much a homer is, I had trouble picturing how magnificent this miracle actually was. I did not understand how much of a miracle this was until I heard it explained in the Circle Maker book. I thought I would explain it as the author Mark Batterson explained it. The area which was filled with quail was 10 times larger than Washington D.C., and the quail were piled 3 feet high. Each person collected at least 10 homers. If you multiply 10 homers by the 600,000 soldiers, you get 6 million homers of quail. Which means that the day it rained quail, it rained down at least 105 million quail. I had no idea it was so many. That seems so crazy to me. Can you even imagine what that must have looked like?
God provided this miracle for Moses and the people; however, he did not provide the miracle until after Moses went out and told the people what God had promised to them. What if Moses had decided not to stand up and tell the people what God had said? Would they still have gotten the miracle? Oftentimes, if we want to experience a miracle, we need to be willing to do something first. Take some action in faith. Oftentimes, that action on our part may make us look foolish or feel uncomfortable. Faith definitely asks us to step outside of our comfort zone at times. If we aren’t willing to risk looking foolish, we may not get our miracles. You may be nervous to pray to God for certain things because you are worried that your prayers won’t get answered. But remember this, 100% of the prayers never prayed don’t get answered. If we don’t ask for it, then we don’t give God the chance to answer it. We don’t give him the chance to show off his power and glory. The next time you are unsure how God could answer your prayers, remember these words from God: “Is this beyond the Lord’s reach?”
Dear heavenly father, I ask that you bless everyone listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask that you give us the courage and boldness we need to do as you ask. Lord Jesus, we ask that you give us a holy boldness to look foolish or step outside of our comfort zone if that's what you're asking us to do. We ask that you help us take a chance on you, Lord. We know you always show up, and we know you always come through. Lord, we believe, please help our unbelief. Lord, give us the faith of Moses and Noah and Joshua and all those who came before us. Lord help us to have unwavering faith in you, help us to ask you for whatever it is we need without hesitation. Lord Jesus, you are amazing, and we're so thankful for all you do for us. We love you so very much, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus' holy name, amen.
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Come As You Are Series - Elijah
1 Kings 19:3-4 “And he was afraid, and got up and ran for his life and came to Beersheba, which belongs to Judah; and he left his servant there. But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a broom tree; and he asked for himself to die, and said, “Enough! Now, Lord, take my life, for I am no better than my fathers.”
Elijah is someone we can relate to. He is so real and down to earth. He is a good example to us of real faith. In 1 Kings 18, Elijah gets word from the Lord that he is to go show himself to King Ahab. At this time, God’s people were worshiping Baals, the false Gods, and the Lord was not happy. God sent Elijah to show His people He was the one true God. Elijah asked the priest to call all the prophets of the false Gods to the top of Mount Carmel. He called all the people of Israel as well.
Once they were all gathered, Elijah told them to build an altar to their God, and he would build an altar to his God. They would take two bulls and each sacrifice one. They would get the sacrifice ready, but would not light it on fire. They would call upon their gods to consume the sacrifice with fire. The false prophets did as they were told, and they called upon Baal all day, but he did not answer them. There was no fire.
Then Elijah called the Israelites closer to him, and he rebuilt the altar that used to be there. He also built a trench around the altar. He told the people to get four buckets of water and dump them on the offering and the wood. He had them do this three times. There was so much water that the wood was drenched, and it filled the trench. Then Elijah said, “Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, today let it be known that You are God in Israel and that I am Your servant, and that I have done all these things at Your word. Answer me, Lord, answer me, so that this people may know that You, Lord, are God, and that You have turned their heart back.” (1Kings 18:36-37) The Lord sent fire so hot that it consumed the offering, the stones, and even all the water in the trench.
The people of Israel immediately fell to their faces and said, “The Lord, He is God.” Elijah had them gather all the false prophets, and he killed them. When Jezebel, Ahab’s wife, heard this, she vowed to kill Elijah. This is where today’s verse comes in. It says, “And he was afraid, and got up and ran for his life and came to Beersheba, which belongs to Judah; and he left his servant there. But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a broom tree; and he asked for himself to die, and said, “Enough! Now, Lord, take my life, for I am no better than my fathers.”
The reason I said earlier that Elijah was someone we can all relate to is that even though he was just able to call down the fire of the Lord, he is still scared when he finds out his life is in danger. Sometimes we think that if we get scared of something, it must mean that we don’t trust God. This story is a great example to show us that it is not true. Elijah called all the people of Israel up on the mountain to see God show His power. He also called 450 false prophets there to tell them to call on their God to consume their sacrifice. This requires a great deal of trust in the Lord. He had to trust that he was really hearing from the Lord. He had to trust that God would show up and consume the sacrifice. He also had to trust that the false God would not show up.
God was speaking directly to Elijah. Elijah heard God, did what God told him to do, and then saw God show up in a powerful way. Elijah knows how powerful God is. He knows there is nothing God can’t do. Yet, right after this amazing demonstration of his faith and God’s power, someone threatens his life, and he is afraid and runs for his life. He not only runs for his life, but he also asks to die. It is crazy how quickly our emotions and feelings can change. I would say that the experience on Mt. Carmel would have had Elijah on a high for days or weeks. He literally called down fire from the Lord. How cool is that? However, almost immediately after that he is running for his life and asking to die.
This is how it can be with us as well. Some days we see God do incredible things and know without a doubt He is our Lord and Savior. We trust Him completely. Then something awful happens, and we don’t know what to do. We forget to turn to the Lord. We forget how powerful He is. We just get so stuck in the moment and the fear of the situation. Being afraid doesn’t mean we don’t trust God. We all have weak moments; we are all human. Elijah knew God in a special way. They had a relationship, and Elijah could hear the Lord when He talked to Him.
Elijah had just called down fire from heaven. I would think if Jezebel was threatening his life, he could call on the Lord to protect him. Reading this, you wouldn’t think that he had any reason to be scared. The Lord is for him, and the Lord is powerful. However, that is not what happened. Instead of turning to the Lord and asking him for protection, Elijah ran for his life. We tend to think when we do this, when we forget to turn to the Lord, or when it looks like we don’t trust the Lord, that the Lord is angry with us. We think He turns away from us when we turn away from Him.
That is not what this story shows us. Elijah ran for his life. It doesn't say he asked the Lord for help; it just says he got scared and fled for his life. He also asked to die. Many of us have been there before. Things in life felt so scary that we thought that if we died, everything would be better. If we died, our loved ones would be better off, or we would be better off. We think God is mad at us when we have those thoughts. Here is what it says that God did for Elijah when he asked to die. 1 Kings 19:5-8 "Then he lay down and fell asleep under a broom tree; but behold, there was an angel touching him, and he said to him, “Arise, eat!” And he looked, and behold, there was at his head a round loaf of bread baked on hot coals, and a pitcher of water. So he ate and drank, and lay down again. But the angel of the Lord came back a second time and touched him, and said, “Arise, eat, because the journey is too long for you.” So he arose and ate and drank, and he journeyed in the strength of that food for forty days and forty nights to Horeb, the mountain of God.”
Was God angry because Elijah ran instead of coming to Him? No. Did he punish him for not having faith that He could protect him and take care of Jezebel? No. God let him take a nap and then sent an angel to wake him up for a snack. Then he let him go back to sleep for a bit longer and then gave him another snack. Does this fit with the idea of what you think God is? If it doesn't, I invite you to take another look at all that God has done for His people in the Bible.
God doesn’t need you to be perfect all the time. Having fear, worry, or anxiety doesn’t mean you have lost your faith or that you don’t trust God. We are all human. We are often influenced by this world. We can see a miracle one minute and then wonder if God will come through for us in the next minute. It is important to know that you are not alone when this happens to you. It happens to all of us. Elijah was an amazing prophet, and yet he struggled with feeling like he wanted to die. He knew the Lord, they had a relationship, and often talked, and yet he was not shielded from those emotions. Following God and trusting God does not mean that we will never encounter difficulties again. It means that when we do, He will be there for us even if we don’t know that He is.
My prayer for you is that by the time we are done this series you would have seen yourself in at least one, but likely several, of these stories and you can see that you are not alone and that no matter what you think you have done, or how bad you think you are, God still wants you to come to Him just as you are. You are never too far gone for the Lord. He can always bring you back. He can always use you. He ALWAYS loves you!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each person listening today. Lord, you are amazing, and we are so grateful. Lord, thank you for looking out for Elijah and giving him rest and a snack. Lord, we ask that you help remind us to take a rest and a snack when we are upset and feel as though we want to die. Lord, we ask that you send an angel to the side of each and every person who asks to die. Lord, we ask that your angel protect them and help them make it through that moment to the next. Help them see that things will get better if they can just hang on. Help them to see that you love them and are right next to them. Help someone in their lives see them and help them. Lord, I ask that you help each person listening to this realize that you want them to come to you just as they are. Lord, help us see through the enemy's lies that no one cares about us, and let us see and feel how much you care about us. We love you, Lord. You are King of Kings and Lord of Lords. You are the almighty one, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you have a person in the Bible that you turn to in certain trials because of all they have been through, I would love it if you would reach out on social media and let me know, or email me at Catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com. Who do you relate most to in the Bible? I would love to know. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in May 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Are you the same as you were 10 years ago? 50 years ago? No. You are always new. You are always living. You are always growing. And because you open yourself to my grace, you grow in my way. You grow in likeness to me. And it pleases me.”
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Come As You Are Series - David
1 Samuel 16:12-13 “So he sent word and brought him in. Now he was reddish, with beautiful eyes and a handsome appearance. And the Lord said, “Arise, anoint him; for this is he.” So Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the midst of his brothers; and the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon David from that day forward. And Samuel set out and went to Ramah.”
We have been talking a lot about how God doesn’t always choose the people we think He would choose. If we were in charge, we would probably choose other people as the ones God chooses are flawed, and they make mistakes.They are not the people who get it all right. They are not the people who have it all figured out. They are not the people who look like they fit the part. This is David. He is not the one who looks like he would fit the part. Although this verse does say that he had beautiful eyes and he had a handsome appearance, his brothers looked like they would fit the role of king better. This is not my opinion; this is what it says in the Bible.
In 1 Samuel 16, God sent Samuel to the house of Jesse to anoint the next king, as the Lord had rejected Saul. Listen to what happened when Samuel arrived at Jesse’s house. 1 Samuel 16:6-11 “When they entered, he looked at Eliab and thought, 'Surely the Lord’s anointed is standing before Him.” But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look at his appearance or at the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for God does not see as man sees, since man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” Then Jesse called Abinadab and had him pass before Samuel. But he said, “The Lord has not chosen this one, either.” Next Jesse had Shammah pass by. And he said, “The Lord has not chosen this one, either.” So Jesse had seven of his sons pass before Samuel. But Samuel said to Jesse, “The Lord has not chosen these.” Then Samuel said to Jesse, “Are these all the boys?” And he said, “The youngest is still left, but behold, he is tending the sheep.” So Samuel said to Jesse, “Send word and bring him, for we will not take our places at the table until he comes here.”
Samuel thought he knew who God had chosen because when he saw Eliab, he thought he looked kingly. He had the stature of a king. One thing that I think is so telling is that God says, “Do not look at his appearance or at the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for God does not see as man sees, since man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” David lived 3000 years before Jesus, who lived 2000 years before now, and people were still judging by the outward appearance, while God is looking at our hearts. You would think after 5,000 years, we might learn to look at people’s hearts instead of their outside appearance, and yet, we haven’t learned that yet.
God chose David to be king even though he had seven other brothers who could have been chosen. David was chosen even though his brothers looked like they fit the part better. His brothers, at least some of them, were soldiers in the military. David didn’t have that training. When Samuel asked Jesse to present his sons to him, he didn’t even invite David. That is how sure his family was that he would not be chosen. Does this sound familiar? Has your family counted you out so many times you can’t even count? Have they just assumed you couldn’t do it or that you weren’t the right person for the job?
I am sure the reasons for each one of us are different, but I think we all have a story of a time when others decided we couldn’t do something. Don’t let others tell you what you can and can’t do. Don’t count yourself out, or let others count you out, because you don’t think you look the part. If God chose you, it is because you are the best person for that job. Don’t let others talk you out of it.
Sometimes it is not others that count us out, but we count ourselves out. We didn’t think we could do it, and yet someone asked us to do it anyway. Someone saw something in you that you didn’t see in yourself. I doubt David thought he was qualified to be anointed as king. I doubt he felt ready and yet he was anointed anyway. He wasn’t called to be king right then. David was anointed when he was around 15 years old. He was out in the fields tending to his dad’s sheep. He became king over Israel around the age of 30. God saw something in David that even his family didn’t see. The same is true for all of us. God sees something in us that no one else can see.
God called David to do extraordinary things that no one would have seen coming. David was asked to bring his brother's lunch on the battlefield one day. When he got there, he saw everyone very scared, and no one was fighting. He saw a giant soldier from the other side, whom everyone was afraid of. David didn’t understand why they were afraid, as they were God’s army. They were God’s chosen people; why would they be scared if they knew God would save them? David offered to fight this giant. The king said no at first, but David persuaded him. The king wanted him to use armor and fight like the soldiers did. However, he was too small for the armor. He needed to do it with his weapons, a sling shot, and a few rocks. Do you see how this is an unlikely pairing? A small shepherd boy going against a giant soldier in full armor? It is an unlikely pairing and yet one ordained by the Lord. David had been anointed, he had the Holy Spirit, and he knew the Lord was all-powerful. He knew the Lord would fight for him and that all he needed to do was show up. He showed up, he said yes to the Lord, and he defeated the giant.
The same is true for you. You may find yourself in some uncomfortable situations. You may find yourself paired up with a giant, a bully, someone, or something that you don’t see any way you can defeat. That’s ok, you don’t have to know a way, you can trust that the Lord is there fighting this for you. He will help you win, he will help you defeat your giant, whatever that may be. You don’t have to fight your battles the way others do. You don’t have to take the advice of every person who wants to “help” you. Be brave like David. Do things your way with the confidence that God is on your side, and if He is for you, who could be against you? (Romans 8:31)
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those who are listening to this episode right now. Lord, you are amazing. We are so grateful you look at our heart and not our outside appearance. Lord, help us to be more like you. Please help us look inward and try to see other people’s hearts instead of judging them based on their outward appearance. Lord, please give us the courage to stand up and do what you are calling us to do, even if those around us don’t think we are qualified. Help us to say yes, even if we don’t feel we are qualified. Help us to be brave and not to count ourselves out of anything that you are calling us to, Lord. Help us have the courage David had when he faced Goliath and all the other times in his life where he did really brave things. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Just another week or so to sign up for the retreat. I hope you can join us. CLICK HERE to get all the details. If you are wondering who you are in this world, come and listen to who God says you are. I guarantee you will be amazed at the amazing things God says about you. He loves you and thinks you are so much more special than you know. Remember, Jesus loves you, just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in May 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, I pour living waters upon you today. Waters that have never penetrated you before. I have new gifts for you. I have new life for you.”
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Come As You Are Series - Saul (Old Testament)
1 Samuel 9:18-21 & 1 Samuel 10:1 “Saul approached Samuel in the gateway and asked, “Would you please tell me where the seer’s house is?” “I am the seer,” Samuel replied. “Go up ahead of me to the high place, for today you are to eat with me, and in the morning I will send you on your way and will tell you all that is in your heart. As for the donkeys you lost three days ago, do not worry about them; they have been found. And to whom is all the desire of Israel turned, if not to you and your whole family line?” Saul answered, “But am I not a Benjamite, from the smallest tribe of Israel, and is not my clan the least of all the clans of the tribe of Benjamin? Why do you say such a thing to me?” Then Samuel took a flask of olive oil and poured it on Saul’s head and kissed him, saying, “Has not the Lord anointed you ruler over his inheritance?”
When I was reading over the scriptures for the week, this one caught my eye because Saul says something I can picture each one of us saying. Saul has set out in search of these 3 donkeys that are missing. This interaction picks up when he gets to Samuel’s house. He is looking for Samuel because he is a seer. A seer is a perceiver of hidden truth, according to one site I found online. Samuel says Saul is to eat with him and then will go on his way in the morning. Samuel then drops this crazy idea on Saul that Israel's future lies in his hands. Saul answered, “But am I not a Benjamite, from the smallest tribe of Israel, and is not my clan the least of all the clans of the tribe of Benjamin? Why do you say such a thing to me?” This is where I think we can all relate.
Saul has just been told, “And to whom is all the desire of Israel turned, if not to you and your whole family line?” Basically, the future of Israel lies in Saul’s hands, and he instantly questions his worthiness. Have you ever done this? Have you ever wanted to go for a promotion at work and yet worried you weren’t good enough for it? Have you ever had someone tell you that you would be perfect for some position, whether paid or volunteer, and you wonder what they see in you that made them think that? I know I have. I went to a retreat once, and they were looking for people to be on the executive board for the European region. It was my first retreat with the group. I had been a part of the local groups for a few years. The women I had met at the retreat were saying that if no one else wanted the positions, maybe we should help out.
I instantly wondered if I could do it. Didn’t you have to be pretty holy to be on the executive board of a large Catholic organization? What if they knew how flawed I am? What if they realized I don’t know nearly as much as anyone else does about our faith? What if’s kept running through my head. When we were talking about it at dinner, we were discussing what experience we had either in a job setting or in a volunteer setting. I mentioned I had several years of experience volunteering on the executive boards of several spouses' groups. I had pretty much done all the various roles. I will never forget one of the women said, I could have guessed that. I wondered what about me made her think that. To me, I just saw myself as a mom of three boys. Someone who helps out wherever needed. I didn’t think I did anything too important. I mean, I know mothering is important. It's just that sometimes in the grand scheme of things, when mothering is your full-time job, it can start to feel like you aren’t important. I am not sure if that makes sense to everyone, but I know some of you have probably felt that way before. It was nice to have someone else affirm that she knew I could do it.
I had only spent two days or so with this woman, and she could see things in me that I couldn’t see. Why is it that others can see things in us that we can’t see? Why do others see the best in us, and we not only can’t see it, but we often struggle to believe it when they call it out in us? Saul was struggling to believe he was worthy of this amazing thing Samuel called out in him. He answered, “But am I not a Benjamite, from the smallest tribe of Israel, and is not my clan the least of all the clans of the tribe of Benjamin? Why do you say such a thing to me?” All Saul could see was where he came from. He saw his family status, he saw his place in the clan, he saw all he lacked. He didn’t come from the best family, he didn’t have the status, and he didn’t see what Samuel saw in him. However, Samuel was a seer; he could see the hidden truths. Samuel was able to see what God had in store for Saul. He was able to look to the future and see all Saul was capable of doing.
I know Saul didn’t have the benefit of the Bible. I am sure some of the stories of God had been passed down through the generations, but he didn’t have the benefit of the complete Old and New Testaments. If he did, he would have been able to realize that God rarely, if ever, uses those with perfect family bloodlines. He rarely, if ever, uses the person you or I would pick for Him to use. God tends to choose the broken to do His work. God chooses people not based on how we see them, but on how He sees them. God chooses people for a particular purpose, and your status, your family, your job, your reputation, none of that will exclude you if God wants you. I was mentioning to Tony yesterday about how Saul was on his way to capture and put in jail anyone who believed in Jesus Christ, and God gave him a vision, and he was baptized just a few days later. Saul consented to the stoning of Stephen, a beloved follower of Jesus, and he was not excluded from God’s glory. He was not excluded from helping to build up the kingdom of God here on earth. Saul is just one example, but there are so many. Even within the 12 apostles, there was Matthew, who was a tax collector, Simon, who was a zealot, and Judas, who was a thief.
I know you don’t think you are worthy of the call God is placing on your life, but answer that call anyway. God will be there every step of the way to give you all you need. I know you don’t feel comfortable believing the great things people call out in you, but believe them anyway. I know it can be uncomfortable to call out the wonderful things you see in others, but call them out anyway. You never know how much it could mean to that person. You never know if that thought that you had about that person is something God put in your mind for you to share with Him. We need to build people up. This world does a great job of tearing people down. What if we did a great job of building people up? What if we called out the good we see in others, even if we think they already see it? What if God is using us to tell that person something that He has been telling them, and yet they just couldn’t hear it? God loves you. He is choosing you for something right now. Can you say yes? I asked God one time, Why me, and he said Why not you. He sees incredible things in each one of us. He is choosing you, and He has His reasons. Trust that the One True God, the God Almighty, the Maker of Heaven and Earth, did not get it wrong. Trust He knows what He is doing and say “Yes Lord, Yes, Lord, Yes, Yes, Lord.”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you, and we are sorry to question you. We are sorry, we struggle to believe you would really use us. We are sorry we struggle to see how wonderfully you made us. We say yes, Lord, even if we don’t understand why you chose us, we say yes. We say yes even if we don’t think we are worthy because we know if you call us for something, you will also equip us for it. Lord, please help us to call out the wonderful things we see in others. Please give us the boldness to follow your promptings and share them with others. We love you, Lord. You are amazing. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in May 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Raise your hands high, little one. Raise your hands high and I, your God, will unmute you. I will unmute you in ways that you have never experienced before. I pour down upon you this morning the grace of an unmuted heart, a heart open to me, a heart open to my life living within you. A heart full of grace and mercy and forgiveness.”
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Come As You Are Series - Matthew
Matthew 9:9 “As Jesus went on from there, He saw a man called Matthew sitting in the tax collector’s office; and He said to him, “Follow Me!” And he got up and followed Him.”
Before watching the chosen series, I didn't understand why it was so unusual for Jesus to choose Matthew. I knew the Jewish people did not like tax collectors, but I didn't realize just how much the Jewish people hated them. I also didn't realize how hard it was for a Jewish person to take that job. I didn't know that their entire family would disown them, and all the Jewish people would dislike them.
When you watch The Chosen, a series about the life of Jesus, you can see how hard it was for Matthew and how hard it was for his family. In this series, Matthew didn’t really seem to understand why his family was so upset. To him, it was a job and one he was very well suited for. He was very good with numbers and someone needed to collect the taxes. It paid very well and he was able to afford nice things. He wanted to share those things with his family and to help his family out.
However, his family wanted nothing to do with that money and nothing to do with him. There were several reasons why the Jewish people hated the tax collectors. Here are five of them.
1. They Worked for the Romans. Israel was under Roman occupation, which many Jews saw as a constant reminder that they were not free. Tax collectors were Jewish people who collaborated with the Roman government to collect taxes from their own people. Many Jews saw this as betrayal — essentially siding with the oppressor.
2. They Collected More Than Required. Tax collectors often used a system called tax farming: they paid Rome a set amount upfront for the right to collect taxes, and then charged people more than what Rome required in order to profit. This meant they were often greedy and corrupt, getting rich at the expense of their fellow Jews.
3. They Were Considered Ritually Unclean. Because they worked closely with Gentiles (Romans) and handled money with images of Caesar on it (which some Jews considered idolatrous), they were considered ceremonially unclean and unable to fully participate in religious life. They were lumped in with “sinners” in society — seen as spiritually dirty and morally compromised.
4. They Contributed to Oppression. Paying Roman taxes meant funding Rome’s army and empire — which included pagan temples and the oppression of Jewish people. Tax collectors were seen as helping the enemy, adding to the suffering of their own nation.
5. They Represented Injustice. Many people were already living in poverty, and tax burdens could be crushing. Tax collectors were the face of that injustice, the ones knocking on doors, demanding payment, and sometimes taking people’s property.
As you can see, this opinion of tax collectors went a lot deeper than just the fact that they were upset they had to pay taxes to a ruler they didn’t believe in, and they didn’t really have that money. There were a lot of reasons why the tax collectors were mistrusted, disliked, and in many cases, hated.
This is why it is so shocking that Jesus chose Matthew to be one of His 12 chosen apostles. In the show, you can see that the other apostles don’t understand Jesus’s choice and don’t really want to spend time with Matthew. However, they all come around in the end. They all learn to trust that Jesus has a plan, and they get to know Matthew, not for what he does, but for who he is.
The same is true for you. You might have a job that people don’t understand, or you might be doing things that go against God and all He wants for us, and yet God decides He is going to choose you to follow Him. Other people might not understand this. They might think you are the last person who should be doing this, and they may tell you that. It’s ok. It doesn’t matter what others think. What matters is that God has told you. God is calling each one of us. He is calling us to follow Him, and He is calling us to something greater as well. He is not calling us each to the same thing, but I promise God has placed a calling on your life, and He is just waiting for you to come to Him and ask Him what this calling is.
It may be something He is putting on your heart to do immediately, and it may be something that He is calling you to in the future. Either way, ask Him to tell you all about it. Ask Him to prepare you for it. Ask Him to equip you for it. This series is called Come As You Are because that is precisely what God wants from us. Just say yes, right where we are. He doesn’t want us to change first. He wants us to come to Him just as we are, and then He will change us in the most beautiful way!
God didn’t tell Matthew to find a new job, repent of all his sins, and then come and follow Him. He saw him at work and said Follow Me! and Matthew did. Imagine the courage and trust it must have taken Matthew to walk away from everything he knew to follow Jesus. Imagine how hard it must have been to not give two weeks' notice, not give his boss a heads up, just to stand up and leave all he knew for a life full of unknowns.
One thing that amazes me about all those to whom Jesus said, “Follow Me.” They never asked any questions. It doesn’t say that Matthew stopped and asked Jesus a bunch of questions. It just says that He said Follow Me, and Matthew got up and followed Him. Matthew 4:18-22 says, “Now as Jesus was walking by the Sea of Galilee, He saw two brothers, Simon, who was called Peter, and his brother Andrew, casting a net into the sea; for they were fishermen. And He said to them, “Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of people.” Immediately, they left their nets and followed Him. Going on from there, He saw two other brothers, James, the son of Zebedee, and his brotherJohn, in the boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets; and He called them. Immediately, they left the boat and their father and followed Him.”
Do you see how, at least in these two instances, Jesus said Follow Me and they just followed Him. There were no questions like, For how long? How much will we be paid? What about our families? What about our bills? What should we take with us? I feel like I would have a ton of questions, and they immediately left their nets and followed Him.”
God did not ask any of these people to change before they followed Him. Were they all perfect men? No, I am sure they were not. Did they have their own issues and problems? Yes, I am sure they did. Yet Jesus didn’t care. He knew everything about them, and He still called them. He knew all of their flaws, all of their sins. He knew what was in their hearts, and He still called them. He is calling you, too!
He is calling you with all of your sins. He is calling you with all of your imperfections. He is calling you with your addictions and with your hangups. He is calling you even though you aren’t sure what He is calling you to. He is calling you even though you have a thousand questions. He is calling you just as you are. So, go ahead and say yes. Say yes, you will follow Him wherever He leads you. Say yes, you will follow Him and allow Him to change you. Say yes, now, not after you change, because let's be honest, without Him, there is no changing.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, you are amazing. You call us even though we are not perfect, and we are so grateful. Lord, please help us to hear that call. Help us to believe you want us just as we are and that you will help us to be the person you created us to be. Help us to say yes to the call you are placing on our lives, even if we don’t know what that call is or everything it entails. Helps us trust, Lord. We love you, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus's holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Two more weeks to sign up for the retreat. CLICK HERE for all the details. I hope to see you there. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day.
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in May 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “a vision of a little child who's just learning to walk, raising their hands up, and the parents grab those hands. That's the Lord grabbing our hands as we praise him with lifted hands. And walking us through.”
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Today's Witness I am reading from the book, Chicken Soup for the Soul, "A book of Miracles: 101 True Stories of Healing, Faith, Divine Intervention, and Answered Prayers." My mother-in-law bought me the book for my birthday this year, and I thought it might be good to share a story with you here and there for Witness Wednesday. We have all seen God working in our lives. However, we might not all be aware it is God working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences, the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience of how God has worked or is working in your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or click here. It won’t take up much of your time, and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story, and the world needs to hear them. Music: "Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ www.findingtruenorthcoaching.comCLICK HERE TO DONATECLICK HERE to sign up for Mentoring CLICK HERE to sign up for Daily "Word from the Lord" emailsCLICK HERE to sign up for my newsletter & receive a free audio trainingabout inviting Jesus into your daily lifeCLICK HERE to buy my book Total Trust in God's Safe Embrace
Come As You Are Series - Moses
Exodus 4:10-13 “Then Moses said to the Lord, “Please, Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither recently nor in time past, nor since You have spoken to Your servant; for I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.” But the Lord said to him, “Who has made the human mouth? Or who makes anyone unable to speak or deaf, or able to see or blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Now then go, and I Myself will be with your mouth, and instruct you in what you are to say.” But he said, “Please, Lord, now send the message by whomever You will.”
This chapter starts with Moses questioning God. God had just told Moses he wanted him to go to Egypt and talk to God’s people. He said he wanted Moses to speak to the most powerful person at the time, the pharaoh of Egypt, and tell him he needed to let the Israelites go. He needed to release his entire workforce, as the Israelites were slaves in Egypt. Also, Moses has been on the run for 40 years after he killed a man. Moses was concerned no one would believe him if he did as God asked Him to do.
In Exodus 4:1-9, God tells Moses exactly what to do if they don’t believe that God spoke to him. God said he would turn Moses's staff into a snake when he threw it on the ground, and then, when he picked it back up again by the tail, it would become a staff again. This way, the Israelite people will know that God sent him. Furthermore, if that didn’t work, the Lord told Moses two other signs he would do so that they would believe that the Lord sent him.
In verses 10 & 11, it says, “But Moses said to the Lord, 'O my Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor even now that you have spoken to your servant; but I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.” Then the Lord said to him, “Who gives speech to mortals? Who makes them mute or deaf, seeing or blind? Is it not I, the Lord?” The Lord is telling Moses, I know you, I made you. I know what you can and can’t do. However, I am the Lord, and I can do all things. If God can make the deaf hear or the blind see, then don’t you think He could give you whatever you need to do whatever He is calling you to do?
Just before this verse, God was telling Moses that He wanted Moses to go to Egypt and free the Jewish people. Moses, like many of us, had lots of reasons why he was not qualified to do the job God asked him to do. What if they didn’t listen to him? What if they didn’t believe God had sent him? God gave Moses all sorts of answers to these questions. Every excuse Moses gave him, God responded with an answer.
It makes me think of my kids when I ask them to do something, and they have a million excuses for why they can’t. It doesn’t matter if you shoot down 1 million excuses; they will always have just one more. It is so frustrating, and I can imagine it would be even more frustrating for the Lord. I mean, He is God. He knows everything. If He says you can do something, you can do it.
Moses started right in with the what-ifs. What if they don’t believe me is the only one he mentioned, but I wonder if it was the only one? I wonder if this one “what if” spiraled into a bunch of “what ifs?” Has that ever happened to you before? You start wondering what if this happens, and what if that happens, and before you know it, you’ve imagined 50 different scenarios, and most of them are bad. Did you ever notice your mind doesn’t usually go through all the positive what-ifs? When is the last time your brain asked What if I win the lottery? What if everything works out perfectly? What if I do get that job with the pay raise? What if I do meet the man of my dreams? If your brain has done the what-ifs with a positive spin, then you are lucky; that is not how it usually goes.
God was going to use what Moses already had, the staff, to convince the people that Moses was telling the truth. If God sends you to do something, he will give you all you need to do it. We don’t have to question Him. This aligns with one of my favorite sayings, which is that God doesn’t call the equipped, He equips the called. If God is calling you to do something, you can rest assured knowing He has already given you all you need to fulfill that calling.
When we ask “What if,” we are thinking about the future, we are going through all the scenarios of everything that could go wrong with our day. What if it isn’t really God calling me to do this thing? What if other people think I am crazy for doing this thing? What if I am too old or too young to do this thing? What if I try it and I fail? Do you see how one thought can then spiral into a lot of thoughts, each one seemingly more and more serious? I would like to say this type of thought pattern was unusual. It isn’t. If you tend to start to head down the what-if road often, you are not alone. Many of us do this.
However, when we do this, we are worrying needlessly, and we are probably missing out on whatever is happening at the moment because we are too wrapped up in our thoughts. We are too wrapped up in what might happen, and so we are missing out on what is actually happening. For instance, let's say you have a calling from the Lord. Your mind may start down the what if road. What if I can’t so what He is asking me to do? What if I try, yet I can’t do it? What if my family disagrees with what I am doing? What if I let people down? What if I make people angry? Do you see how our thoughts can spiral quickly? Do you see how these thoughts are based on the future? They are also based on things I don’t have any real control over.
The Lord is the Lord God Almighty. He is not going to ask you to do something that you can not do. He created you. He knows everything about you. He knows your weaknesses, and He knows your strengths. If He is calling you to do something you feel you aren’t very good at, then that means He is going to help you get better at it. I remember about 8 - 10 years ago, I asked the Lord, “Why is it that everyone in my family can write but me?” My dad and two of my brothers have published books. I am one of the five youngest in my family, and the other four are very gifted writers, especially with poems. So, I was curious why I wasn’t a good writer. The Lord reminded me that although I can’t seem to write poems, I always did very well writing papers in school.
I had no idea that 5 years later the Lord was going to call me to write a different devotional 5 days a week for several years and also to write two books. When asked to write the blogs first, then these podcast episodes, and finally the books, I definitely talked to the Lord about how I wasn’t the best writer. However, I also told the Lord that I would show up to write if He would show up and tell me what to write, and so it all began. Now I have over 1,000 episodes that I have written, numerous blog posts, and two books. If I can obey the Lord’s call, so can you.
He isn’t asking you to know how to do it. He isn’t asking you to do it perfectly. He isn’t asking you to be good at it. He isn’t asking you to have all the provisions to make it happen. All God is asking you for is your yes. He will do the rest. All you need to do is take the next right step and trust that if you need something, God will provide it.
God had a pretty amazing call for Moses’ life, and once Moses accepted it and stopped complaining and trying to get out of it, they did some pretty awesome things together. Moses got to experience miracles he never would have gotten to experience if the Lord had bought his excuses and let him off the hook. We should all be thankful that God loves us enough to listen to our excuses but not let us off the hook because of them.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this podcast today! Lord, help us to stay in the present moment. Please help us leave the what-ifs to you. You are our Lord and our Savior. You can take care of all the what-ifs before we even get to them. You are bigger than anything that could come our way. Help us to trust the Lord. Please help us to trust you have already thought of all the what-ifs and you have prepared us for them. We love you, Lord. You are truly amazing. We are so grateful we have you looking out for us and preparing the way. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Just two more weeks to sign up for the retreat, as I have to get the numbers in to the retreat house a week in advance. If you are thinking about coming, I invite you to click on the link below and check out all the details. I look forward to spending time with you again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed weekend!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in May 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I've called you to be holy. I've made each of you a sacred creation. Put your game on all the time, and put on your Sunday best, even when you're alone and you think that I am not watching you.”
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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Come As You Are Series: Rahab The Prostitute
Hebrews 11:31 “By faith the prostitute Rahab did not perish along with those who were disobedient, after she had welcomed the spies in peace.”
This series is to remind us that God wants us to come as we are. He doesn’t expect us to wait until we have cleaned ourselves up or changed our habits before we go to Him. He wants us to come to Him as we are, and then He can help bring us to where He wants us to be. I love the quote, “God meets us where we are and He loves us too much to let us stay there.” We don’t need to change before we go to God; we need God to help us change.
Today, we are talking about Rehab the prostitute. You might wonder why we are talking about a prostitute. If you don’t know Rahab’s story, let me summarize it for you. God told the Israelites that He would give them Jericho as their promised land. Joshua sent two spies to check out that land. The Bible says, “So they went and entered the house of a prostitute whose name was Rahab, and rested there.” (Joshua 2:1) Why would these holy men go to rest at the prostitute’s house? Could it be because she was an outcast, and so there wouldn’t be a bunch of people at her house? Is it because she is used to hiding men in her house? We don’t know exactly, as it doesn’t say why they went there, just that they did go there.
I heard Steven Furtick of Elevation church talking about this, and he said something that I thought was really good. He said sometimes God will use what you think is a weakness as part of His plan. Joshua’s men chose to stay with Rehab, maybe for the very reason she would have thought God couldn’t use her. I know if I were a prostitute, I would have counted myself out by being used by God. I would have thought that my sins were too great for God to have used me in any way. However, God used Rehab to hide these two men who went to check out the land for Joshua.
These men stayed with Rahab, and then the king found out there were spies in his land, and he told Rahab to turn them over. Luckily, she had already hidden them, again, something her job would have taught her to do, and so she said that they had stopped by, but they left before the gates closed for the night. Rehab knew that God had sent these two guys and that He had planned to give Jericho to His people. She helped them so that they would spare her life when they came in to take the land. These men agreed to spare her and her family as long as they were inside her house with her. They gave her a scarlet cord to put in her window so they could tell all the troops to stay out of her home.
Rahab used her talents to hide these men and, therefore, gained safety for her whole family. I bet her parents never saw that coming. I bet they never expected the skills she had learned because of her profession would wind up saving their lives someday. God’s ways are a mystery to us. We don’t understand His plan, and yet, with His plan, He shows us time and again that He is not choosing the perfect people to carry it out. He does not choose who we would have chosen.
We talked about Tamar and how she dressed like a harlot to seduce her father-in-law to sleep with her so that she could have a baby. We discussed how, out of all the lineages of Jesus listed in the Gospels, Tamar, even after tricking and sleeping with her father-in-law, is only one of five women mentioned in the lineage of Jesus. Now we have Rehab, who is a prostitute, and she is another one of the five women listed in the lineage of Jesus. It says in Matthew 1:5, “Salmon fathered Boaz by Rahab, Boaz fathered Obed by Ruth, and Obed fathered Jesse.”
In Jewish culture, when listing someone's lineage, it is customary to include the father's name. However, in the case of Jesus, it is mostly just the father’s listed. However, there are five of the mothers listed. Just five in all those years. Matthew 1:17 says, “ So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations; from David to the deportation to Babylon, fourteen generations; and from the deportation to Babylon to the [o]Messiah, fourteen generations.” There are 42 generations from Abraham to the Messiah listed in the Gospel of Matthew, and of those 42 generations, He only mentions 5 of the mothers. Those five women must have been pretty special for God to use them to help bring forth the Messiah.
Did they feel special? Did they feel abandoned? With Tamar, we know she lost her husband and was promised that his brother would be given to her when he was of age, but he wasn’t. Her father-in-law betrayed her, and so she took what she felt was hers. I doubt she felt special taking it, though. I suspect she didn’t feel holy enough for the Lord to use her in an incredible way like He did. With Rehab, we don’t know her story. We don’t understand why she became a prostitute. We don’t know any back story that would provide us insight into her career choice. However, I am willing to believe she didn’t feel special. I am sure she was an outcast because of her profession. The women in town probably hated her, as some of their husbands probably went to see her.
Why did God choose these women to help bring about His plan to save us with Jesus? Why are these women listed in the lineage when others are not? I believe it is because God wants to show us that you don’t have to be perfect to be used by God. You don’t have to be doing all the right things. You don't have to get it right all the time. Life is hard, and God knows that. He understands if we get lost and follow the wrong path in life. He is not condemning us or holding it against us. He is just patiently waiting for us to come back to Him.
We mustn’t count ourselves out. God can use us, no matter what we have done in the past. God will love us, no matter what we have done in the past or what we are doing now. He still loves us more than anything. Rehab was a prostitute, and yet her name made it into the lineage of Jesus. She is also mentioned two other times in the New Testament. One of those is the verse above. “By faith the prostitute Rahab did not perish along with those who were disobedient, after she had welcomed the spies in peace.” Rahab was not one of the chosen people of the time. She didn’t see God part the Red Sea so she could walk through. She didn’t see the manna sent from God every day to feed his people.
She didn’t see any of these miracles, but she did hear about them. She heard about them, and she believed them so much that she was willing to risk her life to hide the men of God so that they might spare her and her family’s lives when they came back to conquer the land. Her faith in a God she didn’t know was so great that she was willing to risk it all. There are many lessons we can learn from Rahab. One is that we don’t need to be afraid to take risks when God is involved. Second is that God can use anyone for His plan. Third is that God may want to use that very thing that you feel is your greatest weakness, that very thing that fills you with so much shame. God can turn that shame into something you can be proud of if you let Him. Don’t shut God out because you don’t feel worthy. Ask Him to come into the messiness and allow Him to love you right where you are!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode. Lord, we love you, and we ask you to help us know that you love us, too. Help us to believe that just as you did for Rahab, you can redeem us too. You can use us even though we are not perfect and we have made a lot of mistakes. Please help us to believe that we are exactly the type of person you could us to help bring your kingdom to earth. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. My daily devotional on Identity will be available on Amazon in the near future. Hopefully by the end of this month. I will keep you posted. Thank you for all your support, too! I really appreciate all your kind emails and text messages. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in May 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Try to focus on the reality of me and our connection every day, and you will see that my love is always there for you. Tell yourself every day, the Lord loves me.”
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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Come As You Are Series - The Samaritan Woman at the Well
John 4:39-42 “Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me all that I ever did.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of your words that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world.”
I like this verse because it shows how important it is that we talk about our faith and how much God is doing for us. The opening sentence in this verse says, “Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony.” What if she didn’t tell anyone what had happened? What if she was too afraid of what others might think to talk about it? She was already an outcast because of her lifestyle. She had five different husbands over the years, and when she met Jesus, the man she was currently living with was not her husband. The reason she was getting water at the hottest time of day was that she was too ashamed to get water in the morning when the rest of the women got their water. She did not want to be the center of attention. She didn’t want everyone looking at her, and yet she ran to town to tell everyone about Jesus.
I wonder if all those people would have been saved if she had been too afraid to tell her story. If she was too afraid to share her excitement over Jesus and what He did for her. The reason I ask is that I sometimes feel afraid to share. Sometimes I get a prompting from the Holy Spirit to say something to someone, and all this fear and doubt go through my mind. I wonder what that person will think of me if I say it. I wonder if I will sound crazy or stupid. I wonder if they will even listen or if they will just walk away. I wonder if they will be mean. It sounds like this woman did not think about it at all. She had a conversation with Jesus and then ran right to town to tell everyone about it. I want her courage, her boldness, her humility. Or maybe her impulsiveness, if she ran off without even thinking about it. Maybe I need more of that when it comes to Jesus. Maybe I just need to act first and think later when it comes to following the promptings of the Holy Spirit.
Have you ever wondered if something you say or do could have this effect on people? It can. It might have already. A lot of times, it is for us to plant the seeds but not to see the harvest. We have no idea how our words and actions can affect the course of someone’s life. Sometimes we say something, and the person we say it to doesn’t really think much of it, but then down the road, they see the significance of it. Think back to all the people who have been influential in your life. Did you know at the time they were going to be so influential? Did you know that the advice they gave you was going to shape the kind of person you would become? Are those people still alive? Could you tell them now how influential they were? They may not know.
We don’t usually see the good in us as much as others do. It is an interesting experiment to ask those who know you well to tell you what they see in you, what they feel your strengths are, and what your weaknesses are. I was reading a book titled “The Miracle Morning” and the author Hal Elrod suggested sending an email to those closest to you, this can include family, friends, and coworkers. He suggests you email them and ask them to tell you the top 2-3 areas of weakness you may have, and then also some areas of strength. He said it is a great way to see if you are living life intentionally and if you are giving off the vibe you want to give off. At the end of the book, he gave a sample email to send out. I think if you asked others how they see you, you would be surprised. They will see things in you to admire and look up to, and you may not see them.
The verse ends by saying that although the people in the town started to believe in Jesus because of her words, now they believe because they heard Jesus for themselves. I love this part too because I feel it takes the pressure off of me. I just have to tell my story, I just have to talk about what Jesus has done for me, and hopefully that will be enough to lead people to find Jesus. It is not my responsibility to make them Christian, to save their soul, to teach them everything they need to know about Jesus. Jesus will do that. It is just my job to tell them about my encounter. If I tell people how God is working in my life, that will be enough to get them to seek God so they can find out more. I truly believe our stories are powerful enough to bring others to Christ, and this verse is a great witness to that.
Sometimes we think our story is not big enough, interesting enough, or important enough to tell others. We feel we have lived a boring, normal life, and so others won’t want to hear about it. This is a lie from the enemy. He knows how important our stories are, and he knows others need to hear them. There isn’t a single person who gets through this life without hardships, without struggles. Maybe you feel your struggles are small compared to others, and yet someone else might be having the same struggle you had, and they feel like it is so overwhelming. God might be doing big, amazing things in your life, and that is awesome. Tell people about it. God might be doing small, almost unnoticeable things in your life, and that is amazing too; tell people about it. There are some people, a lot of people, who don’t know God. They don’t know that the reason everything went so well and things fell into place so nicely is because of God. However, if you tell them about the little ways you see God showing up in your life, they will start to see Him in their life as well.
I know it is hard to speak up sometimes. I know this world doesn’t seem to be super friendly to people who want to talk about Jesus. I know there are a million reasons we can come up with for why we shouldn’t share our story. I know the enemy is whispering in your ear that you don’t have anything to share. He is saying your life is too boring, and no one wants to hear about your life. I know all of that, and yet if you read this verse, hopefully you can see the importance of sharing your story anyway. What if your story was the story someone needs to hear today to find Jesus, or to come back to Jesus? Can we join together and be brave enough to share our story so that we can bring others to know Jesus? Can we do that for God? If you feel like you are not brave enough, I know I am not some days, then ask God for help. He gives us what we ask for, especially if we are asking for things that will help us build up the kingdom of God. How is God working in your life, and who can you talk to about it today?
Another thing I thought of when I was thinking about this story is the fact that Jesus chose this particular woman to reveal his identity to. She was a Samaritan, and Jews were not supposed to associate with Samaritans. She was a woman, and men weren’t supposed to talk with women they didn’t know. Yet God chose this Samaritan woman to be the first person to whom He revealed his true identity. God chose her, and He is choosing you, too!
God has a purpose for each one of us. I was going to say, “If God wants to use you, He will.” However, I don’t believe it is a matter of “if”. God definitely wants to use you; He wants to use all of us to help Him build up His Kingdom. Whatever you feel God putting on your heart, know that He chose you for a reason. Maybe that thing you feel is a weakness is the exact reason God chose you. Maybe he is going to use that weakness to help you talk to others with that same weakness? Maybe your addiction to alcohol makes you perfectly suited to bring his good news to others with an addiction to alcohol. God will use all our mistakes, all of our pain, all of our sins, for good if we let Him. Don’t listen to that inner voice that tells you God wouldn’t use you. That is the voice of the enemy trying to keep you down because he knows God has powerful plans for you, and the enemy is worried about what will happen if you step into those plans. God knows you are not perfect, and that is exactly why He wants to use you. Let Him. Say Yes. Surrender to God, and He will use you. You are exactly who He wants.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Please help us see how you are working in our lives. Please open our eyes to all you do for us and help give us the boldness to share it. Dad, we are asking you to help us spread our story to all those we meet so they can start to see you working in their lives. We ask that you help us not to believe the enemy's lies that our story is boring or that we don’t have anything to say. We love you, Lord, you are working in our lives, and we want to share that with others. We just need your help to do that. Thank you, Lord! We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Just two more weeks to sign up for retreat. Check out the link in the show notes for details. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in May 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is,Come As You Are Series - The Samaritan Woman at the Well
John 4:39-42 “Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me all that I ever did.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of your words that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world.”
I like this verse because it shows how important it is that we talk about our faith and how much God is doing for us. The opening sentence in this verse says, “Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony.” What if she didn’t tell anyone what had happened? What if she was too afraid of what others might think to talk about it? She was already an outcast because of her lifestyle. She had five different husbands over the years, and when she met Jesus, the man she was currently living with was not her husband. The reason she was getting water at the hottest time of day was that she was too ashamed to get water in the morning when the rest of the women got their water. She did not want to be the center of attention. She didn’t want everyone looking at her, and yet she ran to town to tell everyone about Jesus.
I wonder if all those people would have been saved if she had been too afraid to tell her story. If she was too afraid to share her excitement over Jesus and what He did for her. The reason I ask is that I sometimes feel afraid to share. Sometimes I get a prompting from the Holy Spirit to say something to someone, and all this fear and doubt go through my mind. I wonder what that person will think of me if I say it. I wonder if I will sound crazy or stupid. I wonder if they will even listen or if they will just walk away. I wonder if they will be mean. It sounds like this woman did not think about it at all. She had a conversation with Jesus and then ran right to town to tell everyone about it. I want her courage, her boldness, her humility. Or maybe her impulsiveness, if she ran off without even thinking about it. Maybe I need more of that when it comes to Jesus. Maybe I just need to act first and think later when it comes to following the promptings of the Holy Spirit.
Have you ever wondered if something you say or do could have this effect on people? It can. It might have already. A lot of times, it is for us to plant the seeds but not to see the harvest. We have no idea how our words and actions can affect the course of someone’s life. Sometimes we say something, and the person we say it to doesn’t really think much of it, but then down the road, they see the significance of it. Think back to all the people who have been influential in your life. Did you know at the time they were going to be so influential? Did you know that the advice they gave you was going to shape the kind of person you would become? Are those people still alive? Could you tell them now how influential they were? They may not know.
We don’t usually see the good in us as much as others do. It is an interesting experiment to ask those who know you well to tell you what they see in you, what they feel your strengths are, and what your weaknesses are. I was reading a book titled “The Miracle Morning” and the author Hal Elrod suggested sending an email to those closest to you, this can include family, friends, and coworkers. He suggests you email them and ask them to tell you the top 2-3 areas of weakness you may have, and then also some areas of strength. He said it is a great way to see if you are living life intentionally and if you are giving off the vibe you want to give off. At the end of the book, he gave a sample email to send out. I think if you asked others how they see you, you would be surprised. They will see things in you to admire and look up to, and you may not see them.
The verse ends by saying that although the people in the town started to believe in Jesus because of her words, now they believe because they heard Jesus for themselves. I love this part too because I feel it takes the pressure off of me. I just have to tell my story, I just have to talk about what Jesus has done for me, and hopefully that will be enough to lead people to find Jesus. It is not my responsibility to make them Christian, to save their soul, to teach them everything they need to know about Jesus. Jesus will do that. It is just my job to tell them about my encounter. If I tell people how God is working in my life, that will be enough to get them to seek God so they can find out more. I truly believe our stories are powerful enough to bring others to Christ, and this verse is a great witness to that.
Sometimes we think our story is not big enough, interesting enough, or important enough to tell others. We feel we have lived a boring, normal life, and so others won’t want to hear about it. This is a lie from the enemy. He knows how important our stories are, and he knows others need to hear them. There isn’t a single person who gets through this life without hardships, without struggles. Maybe you feel your struggles are small compared to others, and yet someone else might be having the same struggle you had, and they feel like it is so overwhelming. God might be doing big, amazing things in your life, and that is awesome. Tell people about it. God might be doing small, almost unnoticeable things in your life, and that is amazing too; tell people about it. There are some people, a lot of people, who don’t know God. They don’t know that the reason everything went so well and things fell into place so nicely is because of God. However, if you tell them about the little ways you see God showing up in your life, they will start to see Him in their life as well.
I know it is hard to speak up sometimes. I know this world doesn’t seem to be super friendly to people who want to talk about Jesus. I know there are a million reasons we can come up with for why we shouldn’t share our story. I know the enemy is whispering in your ear that you don’t have anything to share. He is saying your life is too boring, and no one wants to hear about your life. I know all of that, and yet if you read this verse, hopefully you can see the importance of sharing your story anyway. What if your story was the story someone needs to hear today to find Jesus, or to come back to Jesus? Can we join together and be brave enough to share our story so that we can bring others to know Jesus? Can we do that for God? If you feel like you are not brave enough, I know I am not some days, then ask God for help. He gives us what we ask for, especially if we are asking for things that will help us build up the kingdom of God. How is God working in your life, and who can you talk to about it today?
Another thing I thought of when I was thinking about this story is the fact that Jesus chose this particular woman to reveal his identity to. She was a Samaritan, and Jews were not supposed to associate with Samaritans. She was a woman, and men weren’t supposed to talk with women they didn’t know. Yet God chose this Samaritan woman to be the first person to whom He revealed his true identity. God chose her, and He is choosing you, too!
God has a purpose for each one of us. I was going to say, “If God wants to use you, He will.” However, I don’t believe it is a matter of “if”. God definitely wants to use you; He wants to use all of us to help Him build up His Kingdom. Whatever you feel God putting on your heart, know that He chose you for a reason. Maybe that thing you feel is a weakness is the exact reason God chose you. Maybe he is going to use that weakness to help you talk to others with that same weakness? Maybe your addiction to alcohol makes you perfectly suited to bring his good news to others with an addiction to alcohol. God will use all our mistakes, all of our pain, all of our sins, for good if we let Him. Don’t listen to that inner voice that tells you God wouldn’t use you. That is the voice of the enemy trying to keep you down because he knows God has powerful plans for you, and the enemy is worried about what will happen if you step into those plans. God knows you are not perfect, and that is exactly why He wants to use you. Let Him. Say Yes. Surrender to God, and He will use you. You are exactly who He wants.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Please help us see how you are working in our lives. Please open our eyes to all you do for us and help give us the boldness to share it. Dad, we are asking you to help us spread our story to all those we meet so they can start to see you working in their lives. We ask that you help us not to believe the enemy's lies that our story is boring or that we don’t have anything to say. We love you, Lord, you are working in our lives, and we want to share that with others. We just need your help to do that. Thank you, Lord! We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Just two more weeks to sign up for retreat. CLICK HERE for details. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in May 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Fear not, my children. I bear you up on eagle's wings. I lead you in ways of righteousness. We are friends. Both heaven and earth shine upon each of my children.”
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Come As You Are Series - Peter
Matthew 16:18-19 “And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”
I want you to imagine for a moment that you are Peter. Can you even imagine what it would feel like for Jesus to tell you that you were going to be the rock on which He would build his church? Can you imagine Jesus saying He was going to give you the keys to heaven? I can’t even imagine it. I can imagine there were a lot of different emotions swirling around in Peter’s brain. He was probably excited, honored, proud, scared, confused, and honestly, not sure what to think. You may be having similar feelings about the calling that God has placed on your life. This entire devotional series addresses these concerns.
Sometimes we think that if we ask questions or if we doubt that we are the right person for the job, then it means we have lost faith or that we don’t deserve the job. There were plenty of people in the Bible who questioned if they were the right person for the job. There were plenty of people in the Bible who doubted they had what it took. They did not feel worthy. They did not feel like they knew what they were doing. I am sure Peter had no idea how to run a church on the day that Jesus called him to be the head of the church. I am sure you won’t feel prepared to do the thing He is calling you to do the first time you hear it, either.
I was talking with a friend yesterday who has started a non-profit for women in recovery. She felt the calling and decided to answer the call. That doesn’t mean she instantly knew what she was doing. She needed to research how to write grants. She needed to run a capital fundraising campaign. She needed to learn how to do a whole bunch of things she didn’t already know how to do. The latest thing she encountered was that everyone was telling her that she should open a sober living house. She instantly said no, that is not something I would be good at. However, she also took it to prayer, and after resisting for some time, she finally realized that God was calling her to that. Even though she still doesn’t feel like she is the right person, she knows if God is calling her, then He is equipping her with all she needs.
This series is also about showing us that God doesn’t use the perfect to fulfill his plan; He uses regular, ordinary, flawed people to do some of His most significant works. Peter was a fisherman. The first time we meet Peter in the Bible, he had been fishing all night, and they hadn’t caught anything. Peter and the others were washing their nets, and Jesus told them to go back out and cast their nets. Peter explained they had been fishing all night and didn’t catch anything, but agreed to do as the preacher said. They let the nets down and caught more fish than they could handle. Then Jesus called them to come and follow Him, and they would become fishers of men.
What just occurred to me, which I have never thought of before, is that the night was probably their biggest catch ever. They probably have never caught so many fish at one time before. That was their most successful catch, and yet Jesus was calling them away from that lifestyle. The same might be true for you. You don’t understand why God is calling you away from what you are doing now because you are doing it really well. You are finally where you wanted to be. You are finally successful at what you are doing. Why would God want you to leave when things are going so well?
I don’t know if Peter, Andrew, John, and James struggled with this or not. It doesn’t seem like it. It says Jesus called, and they left their nets and followed Him. It doesn’t tell us what they were thinking in their heads. What we do know is that they followed Jesus, and the things they experienced were exponentially better than what they experienced while they were fishing. God used them in powerful ways. The same is true for you. If you answer the call and follow Jesus, you will experience amazing things, and God will use you in powerful ways.
Another way we are all similar to Peter is that He did not always do the right thing. He was not always perfect. There are several I can think of. We might think that because Peter was chosen to lead the church, He never doubted in Jesus and never wavered in His faith. However, when Peter asked Jesus to call him out of the boat so he could walk on water, Jesus did. Peter was brave and got out of the boat and walked on the water. However, then he looked away from Jesus, got scared about the wind and the waves, and started to sink. Even if you waiver sometimes, even if you struggle to believe God can do extraordinary things at times, you can still be used powerfully by the Lord. God just needs a mustard seed of faith.
We might also think that if we are weak and fail to stand up for the Lord when talking with others, then the Lord can’t use us. We live in a world where being Christian is not the cool thing to be. Some people are downright mean to us if we are Christians in America. And what we go through in America is nothing compared to so many other countries, where they will kill you if they know you are a Christian. If you think that you aren’t worthy of being used by God because sometimes you are afraid to stand up for Him when talking to others, remember Peter. Peter, who was the rock of the church, denied Jesus three times. He loved Jesus. Just hours earlier, he was saying he would die for Jesus, and yet in the moment, when he was confronted with the possibility of dying because he knew Jesus, he denied Jesus.
I hope you are beginning to see that God is patient. God knows who we are. He created us to be who we are. He knit us together in our mother’s womb. We think God made a mistake and that He didn’t know what He was doing when He chose us. Think about that for a minute. Does that really make sense to you? Do you really think the God of the universe, the one who knit you together in your mother’s womb, doesn’t know you? Do you really think God makes mistakes? Does that really make more sense to you than the possibility that God could use you for something amazing?
I don’t know what God is calling you to, and I don’t have to know. I do know that if He is calling, then He is already equipping you for that job. Your calling doesn’t have to be something like Peter’s calling. God may not be calling you to leave your current life to follow Him. He may be calling you to stay in your current life and be the face of Christ to all those you meet. He may be calling you to be the best mom, dad, brother, sister, aunt, uncle, grandparent, friend, and/or coworker you can be. Whatever it is you feel God is putting on your heart, say yes with the knowledge that He knows what he is doing. He knows everything about you, and if he chose you, there is a reason. Just say Yes!!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to say yes, but we're just scared; please help us. Please help us to trust you and to accept that if you say we are worthy, then we are worthy. If you say you want us to do something, then you will give us all we need to do something. Please help us to grow in trust, Lord. Please help us to be bold, Lord. We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you are enjoying this podcast can I ask you to share it with at least one person today. There are so many out there that don’t realize God could use them for amazing things. Let’s all help them see that they are enough! I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in May 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, look high, look at me every day. I have a work for you to do. I have love to fill your soul. I have love I want you to give to the world. What I call you to is unique to you. Don't look at each other and wish you had this or that. Look to me because I have a call for you. I have a mission for you. I have love for you. Look at me and do as I ask.”
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Today's Witness I am reading from the book, Chicken Soup for the Soul, "A book of Miracles: 101 True Stories of Healing, Faith, Divine Intervention, and Answered Prayers." My mother-in-law bought me the book for my birthday this year, and I thought it might be good to share a story with you here and there for Witness Wednesday. We have all seen God working in our lives. However, we might not all be aware it is God working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences, the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience of how God has worked or is working in your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or click here. It won’t take up much of your time, and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story, and the world needs to hear them.Music: "Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 Licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ www.findingtruenorthcoaching.comCLICK HERE TO DONATECLICK HERE to sign up for Mentoring CLICK HERE to sign up for Daily "Word from the Lord" emailsCLICK HERE to sign up for my newsletter & receive a free audio trainingabout inviting Jesus into your daily lifeCLICK HERE to buy my book Total Trust in God's Safe Embrace
Come As You Are Series: Tamar
Genesis 38:26 “Then Judah acknowledged them and said, “She is more righteous than I, inasmuch as I did not give her to my son Shellac.” And he did not lie with her again.”
The purpose of this series is to show you that God doesn’t pick the perfect people to fulfill his plan. This is what we tell ourselves, or what the enemy tells us. We tell ourselves that God can’t use us because we are not good people, and we have done bad things. If, by some miracle, we can believe that God wants to use us, then the enemy comes in and starts whispering lies in our ears. He tells us that we aren’t enough and that God would never pick us. He reminds us about every bad thing we have ever done and tries to tell us that because of these things, God can’t use us.
I have been hearing this so much more from people lately, and that is what prompted this series. You may get tired of me saying the same thing over and over again. However, it is an important enough message that it is okay if I convey the same message 31 different ways. We need repetition. We need to hear things over and over again. Research suggests that we need to listen to things between 5 and 7 times before we remember them correctly. I think when we are trying to correct negative thinking, the number is much higher.
Over and over again in the Bible, God uses ordinary people to do extraordinary things. He uses people who have sinned to show us that our sins don’t count us out. He uses people who think they are better than others to show us that even if we feel that way, God can still use us. He uses people with unfavorable professions to show us that even if that is us, we can still be of use. God made you, He created you, He knows you. He can use you no matter what your circumstances are.
Today, we will talk about Tamar. You can find her complete story in Genesis 38. I will summarize it for you. Tamar was married to one of Judah’s three sons. His oldest son is named Er. But Er was wicked, in the sight of the Lord, so the Lord killed him. It was the custom when they lived that if your husband died before you got pregnant, it was the job of his brother to sleep with you and give you an offspring. So, Judah told his next son, Onan, to sleep with Tamar and give her a child. Onan slept with Tamar, but he withdrew before getting her pregnant, as it would not be considered his child. God did not like this, and he slew Onan too.
Judah’s younger son was too young to produce a child, so Judah told Tamar to go live as a widow in her father’s house, and as soon as his younger son was old enough, he would give her to his youngest son. Over time, Judah’s wife died, and Tamar saw that the younger brother had grown up, and Judah did not keep his promise. Tamar really wanted to have a child, so she dressed up like a harlot and slept with her father-in-law. He did not recognize her as she was covered. She asked him before they slept to gather to give her something so that he could go into her.
Judah said he would send a goat. Tamar asked for his signet ring, cord, and staff as a pledge until he sent the goat. Judah agreed and went into her. Then, when he got back home, he sent his friend back with a goat for this harlot, but he could not find her, as Tamar was back to living as a widow in her father’s house. Judah felt foolish, so he let it go. Then he heard, three months later, that Tamar had played the harlot and was with child as a result of this harlotry. Judah said to bring her out to be burned. However, when she came out, she brought the ring, cord, and staff and said, “By the man to whom these belong, I am with child.” This is where today’s verse picks up. “Then Judah acknowledged them and said, “She is more righteous than I, since I did not give her to my son Shellac.” And he did not lie with her again.”
When Tamar gave birth, she had twins, one named Perez and one called Zerah. The next time we hear about Tamar is in Ruth 4:12. Her name is mentioned in the blessing at Boaz and Ruth’s wedding: “ and, through the children that the Lord will give you by this young woman, may your house be like the house of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah.” By mentioning Tamar, the people are saying: Even out of broken, unexpected circumstances, God can bring blessing and a great family line. Perez Became a Symbol of Strength and Growth. Perez’s name means “breaking out. He became the ancestor of a large, influential tribe in Israel. The blessing is basically saying: May your descendants “break out” in number, influence, and strength like Perez’s did.
Tamar was not an extraordinary person. She did not do anything spectacular. She was married and wanted to be a mom. However, God knew her husband was wicked and killed him. Then her brother-in-law was being selfish, and God killed him. However, God did not abandon her, and He did not forget her desire to have a baby. I am not condoning how she had that baby, and I have no idea if there was another way for her to have a baby or not. I don’t think that is the point of the story.
What I do know is that God used Tamar and her child to bring about Jesus Christ, the Messiah. After the mention in Ruth, we hear about Tamar in Matthew 1:3 when he is recounting the lineage of Jesus. “and Judah the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar, and Perez the father of Hezron, and Hezron the father of Aram.” I did not list the whole genealogy, but as you can see, Tamar is listed. There were 14 generations listed from Abraham to David, and from David to deportation to Babylon, there were 14 generations, and from the Deportation of Babylon to Christ, there were 14 generations. In all these generations listed in the genealogy, there are only five women listed. All the rest are men.
Tamar, who dressed as a harlot to seduce her father-in-law to sleep with her so she could have a baby, is one of only five women listed in the lineage of Jesus. Are you starting to see what I am saying? Are you starting to believe me when I say God can and will use anyone He wants to use for His purpose? I know you feel like God can’t or won’t use you. You feel too old, too young, too sick, too busy. You feel as if your sins are too great. You feel as if you have done too much, and your sins can’t be redeemed. In this story, there is no shame towards Tamar. There are so many people God could have used to bring forth Jesus. I am sure some people were going to the temple as they should have, following all the laws and doing everything right, and yet that is not who God chose.
God wants to use you. I don’t know what He wants to use you for, but I know He wants to use you. He is just waiting for your yes. He will use all you have been through as a beautiful testimony for whatever He is calling you to do. Don’t be afraid to say yes, I promise He won't abandon you. He will be there with you each step of the way.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each person listening to this episode today. Lord, thank you for all you do for us. Thank you for redeeming us. Thank you for using us, even though we aren’t even close to perfect. Thank you for allowing us to be part of your grand plan. Thank you for accepting us, flaws and all. Lord, we ask that you help us to believe you want to use us. Please help us to believe that whatever we have done it does not count us out. Please help us understand that you are bigger than anything we might have done. We love you so much, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you are really enjoying these podcast episodes, I invite you to check out my mentoring group. It is the same great information, but with the longer sessions, it allows me to go deeper. There is also time for questions and answers, or small group discussions, so that we can learn to apply what I am discussing to our daily lives. I will place a link for more information in the show notes. You could always come and check it out for a month and see if it is a good fit for you. There is no contract, and it is easy to cancel if you don’t love it. Give it a try, invest in your spiritual life, you won’t be sorry you did.
I look forward to seeing you all here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in May 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I have your crowns waiting, each specifically designed for each one of you. Though I have many children, I want you to know that I remember each and every one of your names. As your parents do not forget your names, nor do I. Know that I love you, every one of you. My heart burst with pride and love for all of you.”
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Come As You Are Series: Paul (God Wants You!)
1 Timothy 1:12-16 “I am grateful to him who has strengthened me, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he considered me trustworthy in appointing me to the ministry. I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and an arrogant man, but I have been mercifully treated because I acted out of ignorance in my unbelief. Indeed, the grace of our Lord has been abundant, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. This saying is trustworthy and deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. Of these, I am the foremost. But for that reason I was mercifully treated, so that in me, as the foremost, Christ Jesus might display all his patience as an example for those who would come to believe in him for everlasting life.”
Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. This is something that the Pharisees and Sadducees could not understand. Actually, many people couldn’t understand this. Jesus was the savior; the Jewish people thought He was coming to save them from the Roman Army. They did not know that He was coming to save them from something much more important. He was coming so that we would have eternal salvation. He came to walk among us so He could save us from ourselves. God had a perfect plan, and Adam and Eve, being human and not perfect, messed up that plan. God sent His son to us so that He could set things right again.
The beginning of this verse talks about “him who strengthened me.” This sounds an awful lot like Philippians 4:13, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” It is true that we get our strength through Jesus Christ. Paul is thankful in this verse because Jesus considered him trustworthy in appointing him to the ministry. He talks about how he was once a blasphemer, a persecutor, and an arrogant man. If you were designing this world, if you got to choose who was going to lead God’s people, is this the type of man you would choose? Does Paul sound like the ideal candidate? He was a blasphemer, a persecutor, and an arrogant man. He is not who I would pick. And yet He is exactly who God chose.
Why do you think He does this? Why do you think God chooses to use less-than-perfect people for his ministry? I believe He does it because of exactly what He says to us in Isaiah 55:8-9, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” God knows us better than we know ourselves. He knows that if he only uses "perfect people,” we won’t listen to them. It is tough to connect with someone that you can’t relate to. Also, we tend to believe what we see more than what we hear.
It is one thing to have someone who has never struggled with an addiction come and tell you that Jesus can heal your addictions. It is quite another to see someone that you know had an addiction problem and is now cured of it. Which would you rather, someone to tell you that Jesus can forgive your sins, or to see Jesus sitting with those who have sinned? As people, we don’t like listening as much as we enjoy seeing. Jesus took a man who was not a very good person, someone who didn’t even believe that Jesus was who He said He was, and used him to do extraordinary things. This is because of God’s mercy. I bet that every time Paul told the story of his conversion, he won over more people than the leaders in the church preaching about God’s mercy without ever having experienced it.
It even says in the last sentence of this verse why Jesus chose Paul. He said, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. Of these, I am the foremost. But for that reason I was mercifully treated, so that in me, as the foremost, Christ Jesus might display all his patience as an example for those who would come to believe in him for everlasting life.” Paul was chosen, not despite his past sins, but because of them. He was selected to be an example of Jesus’ patience to all those who would come to believe. Don’t you find it easier to believe that God will forgive your sins when you know that He forgave Paul’s sins?
If the Lord can use Paul, who was a blasphemer, a persecutor, and an arrogant man, don’t you think He can use you? Sometimes we count ourselves out, and we don’t listen when God calls us because we don’t believe we are good enough to serve the Lord. He is almighty and powerful, and we are tiny and useless. He is perfect, and we are full of sin. How could He possibly use us when there are others out there that are so much better than we are at everything? God doesn’t want better, God wants you. If you are willing, God wants to use you. He is calling every single one of us to serve Him. Are we worthy of serving Him? Nope, and yet He still calls us to serve Him. He does not call us despite our past sins; He calls us because of our past sins. He calls us because His ways are higher than our ways. He knows that there is someone out there who needs to hear our witness about how God saved us. He knows that we are good examples of His love and mercy. Others need to hear about all the graces that we have received, even though we didn’t deserve to receive anything.
So many people think miracles only happen for those who are really faithful. God only forgives sins for other people, but not for them. They find it easy to believe God forgives minor sins, but surely He won’t forgive their sins, they are too great. This is why God needs us. God wants us to be living examples of all He can do with those who are willing. If you need further examples of when God has used people that you would never have chosen, all you have to do is look in the Bible; there are so many examples. God doesn’t use perfect people to carry out His mission. He came to save the sinners, and He uses us sinners to do that. I want to leave you with a word of prophecy that was received at my prayer group because it shows that the Lord understands that we question our calling and our usefulness, and like a good Father, he reassures us of His love.
“My children, you are an integral part of my plan. Yes, you, you may see yourself as little, and that is good, you are little, but my grace is strong and powerful within you. I have placed you where you are, in the times that you are, in the circumstances that you are. And I am with you. I am with you to use you to spread the joy of knowing me. To spread my word, to spread knowledge of my goodness. I love you. You are an essential part of my plan. Please work with me, for I am working with you. “
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to answer your call. Please help us to see that you know we are not worthy, you know of all of our sins, and yet you call us anyway. Remind us often that your ways are higher than our ways, and we don’t have to understand why you do the things you do. They don’t have to make sense to us because our thoughts are not your thoughts. Please help us to trust you. Please help us to see in us what you see in us. Help us to take that step forward, even if we don’t know why we are doing it. Lord, we say yes to serving you, yes to all you want us to do; we just need your help, your grace, your strength. We love you, Lord. You are so amazing, and we are so grateful that you accept us exactly as we are, that you love us exactly as we are. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
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Come As You Are Series: Jacob-Don’t Count Yourself Out
Genesis 28:10-15 "Jacob left Beersheba and set out for Harran. When he reached a certain place, he stopped for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep. He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. There above it stood the Lord, and he said: “I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying. Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring. I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”
The theme of this episode is don’t count yourself out. Do you ever do this? Do you ever hear about someone doing something and count yourself out because you don’t think you are strong enough, or you don’t believe you are good enough, or you are not sufficient in some other way? Do you ever hear about someone receiving a blessing and count yourself out of receiving a blessing because you are not good enough or you are not holy enough? I think we all count ourselves sometimes. We hear about people receiving blessings and good things from God, and we tell ourselves they are holier than we are. They are better Christians than we are. They are closer to God, so of course He is blessing them. We then proceed to think of all the ways in which we are falling short. We think of all the things we are doing wrong and how God couldn’t possibly bless us.
In my Encounter class, we talked about the verse above, and when I heard her talking about it, I knew some of you needed to listen to it as badly as I did. In the verse above, God is bestowing upon Jacob an amazing blessing. He is promising to give him and his descendants the land on which Jacob lay. God is also promising Jacob that his descendants will be like the dust of the earth and will be spread out to the east, west, north, and south. Then he says all people on earth will be blessed through Jacob and his offspring. God promises to be with Jacob, to watch over him, and to bring him back to that land. I am not sure if you're familiar with the story of Jacob. If you aren’t, you probably assume Jacob is a great guy. It is easy to think he is a very holy man who was doing everything right. However, this is not the case.
In Genesis 27, the chapter right before this, Isaac, Jacob’s dad, asked Esau, Jacob’s brother, to prepare him some food, and then he would give him the blessing he deserved because he was the oldest. However, Jacob’s mom persuades Jacob to get the blessing instead. Jacob dressed up like his brother; they even put goat skin on his hands so he would be hairy like his brother’s hands. Then he brought food to his father and pretended to be his brother. His father doubted, but Jacob convinced him and stole his brother's blessing. When Esau came home, he was really angry. He begged his father for a blessing, but there wasn’t really one to be had. He had already given it to Jacob.
Esau was so angry that he decided he would kill Jacob once his father passed away. Their mother heard about Esau’s plan and told Jacob to run away. She told him to go and stay with her brother until Esau’s anger calmed down. It was on his way to her brother’s house that Jacob had this dream. Jacob was not doing everything right. He was not the ideal person we would think God would choose to bless, and yet God blessed him tremendously. Do you know what that means? That means He can bless you tremendously, too. It means you don’t have to count yourself out from whatever it is you think you want to do or whatever it is God wants to do for you.
If we look back through scripture, we will see plenty of examples of where God used people we would have never chosen to do the things he wanted to get done. God chose Tamar, a woman whose husband died. Because her father-in-law refused to give his other younger son to her so she could conceive a child, as was the custom back then, she pretended to be a harlot and tricked her father-in-law into sleeping with her so she could conceive a son. Tamar was definitely not doing everything right, and yet God used Tamar as part of the lineage that brought about David, the king, and therefore our savior Jesus as well. There is also Ruth, who was not even a Christian; she was a Moabite woman, a foreigner. Even though she was not a Christian, she was the great-grandmother of David.
I know it feels like we are getting it all wrong sometimes. I know it feels like we can’t possibly be doing enough to earn God’s blessings. I know it feels like we are never good enough. I know. And yet, God isn’t asking us to be good enough. God isn’t asking us to do enough. God isn’t asking much from us at all. He isn’t expecting us to get it all right. He isn’t expecting us to be perfect. He is just expecting us to show up each day as we are and to spend some time with Him. He does the blessings, not us. There isn’t a way to earn blessings. God gives them freely to all who ask and to all who seek them.
The next time you are counting yourself out because you think you are not enough or because you think you have done too much wrong, think of Jacob. Think of how he first stole his brother’s birthright by telling Esau he could only have a bowl of soup if he gave up his birthright. Esau was starving, so he agreed. Then Jacob went in and pretended to be Esau to steal his blessing, too. Whatever it is you did, God can still bless you. He is not counting you out, so don’t count yourself out. I heard a phrase in class, and it really stuck with me.
The teacher said, “When we believe the lie, we empower the liar.” I love this. The enemy is the father of lies. When we believe these lies, we are empowering him and giving him authority in our lives. God loves you, he loves you just as you are. He made you, and He is our good, good Father. Don’t count yourself out. God will use you if that is what you want. God will bless you. God isn’t looking for perfection. If you don’t believe me, go back and look at almost every bible story written. David was blessed beyond belief, and yet he had an affair and then had the girl’s husband killed in battle. I could go on, but I will leave the rest of the stories up to you. Hopefully, you can already see that whatever you did is not enough to count you out of God’s blessing. There is nothing you can do that would exclude you from God’s blessings. God is always waiting with open arms for us to turn back and repent. Don’t count yourself out!
Dear heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to realize you love us right where we are. Help us to see that you don’t need us to be perfect, you just need us to be us. Help us not count ourselves out. Lord, please bless us as abundantly as you blessed Jacob. Please bless our perfectly imperfect lives, Lord. We love you, Lord, you are truly amazing. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Just a reminder that there are only three more weeks to sign up for the retreat in October. I hope you will CLICK HERE and check out the details. It will be a great opportunity to meet some amazing people. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in May 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, I long to heal you, to heal you in every way. When you think I delay, don't. I am using every moment to bring a greater, deeper health to your mind, your soul, your body, your spirit, your relationships, everything that might be in need of my healing touch, because I am the healer.”
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Come As You Are: Intro
Acts 9:15 “But the Lord said to him, “Go, for he is an instrument whom I have chosen to bring my name before Gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel.”
This verse comes just after Saul has seen a vision of Jesus, and Jesus asked him why He was persecuting Him. Then Saul loses his sight and is told to go into the city and wait to be told what to do. Then the Lord asked one of his disciples to go to Saul. There is a conversation between this disciple and the Lord in Acts 9:10-16: “Now there was a disciple in Damascus named Ananias. The Lord said to him in a vision, “Ananias.” He answered, “Here I am, Lord.” The Lord said to him, “Get up and go to the street called Straight, and at the house of Judas look for a man of Tarsus named Saul. At this moment, he is praying, and he has seen in a vision a man named Ananias come in and lay his hands on him so that he might regain his sight.” But Ananias answered, “Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints in Jerusalem; and here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who invoke your name.” But the Lord said to him, “Go, for he is an instrument whom I have chosen to bring my name before Gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel; I myself will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.”
There are several themes that I see coming across in these verses. First, I always find it interesting when the disciples of God, those who get to have a conversation with Him, argue with Him or question Him. I always think I would respond differently, and yet, I do get to have conversations with God, and I do still question Him. We are all human, and questioning and doubting are natural human behaviors. In these verses, Ananias is given a task to do. God wants him to go and restore Saul’s sight. I wonder if Ananias ever healed anyone before? Would this be his first time? Also, Ananias has heard rumors about this person, whom he is supposed to go and heal. Saul’s reputation preceded him. He was not a nice person. He was in that town to collect any believers of Jesus and bring them to jail, essentially. He approved the stoning to death of Stephen, one of Jesus’ followers. I can totally understand why Ananias would question this plan. Why he might even be scared. If he goes to heal this man in Jesus’ name, then Saul will know he is a Christian. What if there are ramifications of that?
There are many reasons why we might question the Lord’s plan. I think worrying about our own safety and the possible risk to our lives is a pretty big one. It’s interesting how I can silently judge Ananias for questioning God when he is dealing with someone who has stoned fellow believers, and yet I question God when I am completely safe, and just being asked to step outside of my comfort zone. My life is not in danger, and yet I still question God’s plan. I still hesitate to do what I know He is asking me to do. So, why do I always think it is crazy when others question God’s plan? I am the first to say God has a plan. I am the first to encourage someone to step out in faith and do the scary thing God is asking you to do. I am also the first one to hesitate when God asks me to do some things. I am the first one to question and to wonder if I am really the best person to do that. I question if He really knows what He is doing, asking me to do that.
In this verse, Ananias is actually not questioning his own ability; he is questioning Saul’s worthiness of being healed. This is another thing that we can be quick to judge. We can all question God’s decisions on who He heals, saves, and works through. Maybe you know someone really great who died from cancer, or was killed in a car accident when they were a teenager, and you also know some pretty terrible people who beat cancer and seem to have everything going for them. In our eyes, these things can seem very unfair, and we don’t understand them. They make no sense to us. I don’t understand them either, so I will not be giving you any answers to those questions today. However, I do know that God has a plan, and He can use anyone for that plan. I do know when it comes to the question of worthiness, none of us is worthy on our own merit. We can’t judge others because we don’t know their heart; only God can judge, as He knows what is in our hearts. You can have someone who seems as lovely as can be in public and yet is awful in their private life. You can have someone who is not very nice to people, and yet that is because they were wounded and they don’t know any other way.
I saw the movie and read the book called The Shack. If you have not read the book or seen the movie, you should check it out; it is so good. Of course, the book is better, but the movie does a pretty good job explaining why we shouldn’t judge others. It discusses how we often don’t see the whole picture. We can judge the man who is abusing his wife and child, but would we judge that child? What about when that child grows up to abuse his wife and child? We only see a tiny part of who a person really is.
God can use anyone, and He often chooses the most unlikely candidate. He tends to use imperfect people —those who have messed up, seem broken, struggled, or sinned. God uses people who can easily be judged for their faults. These people, people who aren’t perfect (no one is perfect, by the way), people who have really struggled, are actually the ideal people to use because they can speak to those who are also struggling. They are someone you can look at and say, If they could do it, so can I. If someone who grew up with nothing can make something of themselves, then I can too. If someone who has been abused was able to get away from that abuse, then so can I. If someone who was an alcoholic can give up alcohol, so can I. If God can use someone who is a sinner to do amazing things, He can use me too.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those who are listening to this episode today. Lord, let them hear precisely what they need to hear today. Lord, help us not to judge others. Give us your heart and your eyes for others, Lord. Please help us to be compassionate and recognize that there is always more to a person than what we can see. Lord, give us the boldness to do whatever you ask us to do, even when we are scared, even when we don’t understand it, even if you are asking us to heal a really scary person. Please give us the strength and the grace we need to follow your commands, no matter how hard we think they are. We can do all things through you who strengthen us! We love you so much, Lord. We are grateful you have a plan and you don’t let our questioning it get in the way. We are thankful that you use all things for our good and you don’t let us mess up your plan. We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I invite you all into my mentoring group. CLICK HERE for the details about mentoring. It is on Tuesday nights at 8 PM on Zoom. You can just come to listen; you don't have to have your mic or your camera on if you don’t want to. You can come in your PJs if you like. No judgment here. You don’t have to drive anywhere. It’s perfect. The theme for this month is Why Forgiveness is Essential. I will go over what forgiveness is and is not, along with why it is so important that we do it. And I assure you, it is more important than we know. Why is it we spend so much time and money on so many areas of our lives, and yet we don’t invest in our spiritual life the same way?
I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in May 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I am the Lord your God. I am the one who loves you most of all. Come, my children. Come and know the joy and love of being my children.”
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Today’s witnesses are from an email my friend in the Prayer Group received. She gets a daily email from www.dailyrosarymeditations.com Every day, it gives five snippets, each to encourage reflection on praying one mystery of the rosary. She found this day’s snippets particularly powerful and wanted to share it. They are all about how Mary will conquer, and they are written by Mike Scherschligt.
One - The Bishop
I have become friends with Bishop Oliver Doeme Dashe, the Bishop of Maiduguri in North East Nigeria. In 2009 the Muslim terrorist group Boko Haram, which means “Western Education is Evil” began to attack Christians in his diocese. In 2014 Boko Haram completely overran his diocese. The Nigerian military dropped their weapons and fled like children. Thousands of Catholics were killed, two hundred Church structures were burned, and one hundred thousand Catholics fled for their lives to neighboring countries. Fr. William, a priest from the diocese, told me as he drove from parish to parish to celebrate Mass, that the roads were littered with dead bodies. At any moment, he could be surrounded by Boko Haram, dragged from his car, and shot.
In October of 2014 Bishop Oliver went before Our Lord Jesus in Eucharistic Adoration, traumatized and trembling, and began to pray the Rosary. Suddenly, Jesus appeared to the Bishop in a vision, holding a very long sword in his hands. When he saw Jesus, the Bishop said, “Lord, what is this?” He didn’t answer, but he stretched out his arms and put the sword into the hands of Bishop Oliver. When he received the sword, it turned into a Rosary. Then Jesus spoke these words three times: “Boko Haram is gone! Boko Haram is gone! Boko Haram is gone!” And the vision ended.
The message was clear, with the Rosary we shall conquer!
At that time Boko Haram had complete control of the diocese. If anyone was seen or caught in public as a Catholic, Boko Haram would instantly kill them. Yet, despite the danger, Bishop Oliver began to go village to village and organize public Rosary processions. From the moment the people began public Rosary processions, Boko Haram has been driven out of his diocese. The Churches are being rebuilt, all of his parishioners have come back, and 97% of his diocese go to Mass every Sunday. Most importantly, the Church in his diocese is growing from strength to strength. At one parish alone, Bishop Oliver brought five hundred new adults into the Church.
Mary came down through the Rosary and sent Boko Haram packing!
Two - Austria
As we sat together and Bishop Oliver told me of these miraculous events, he said to me, “Michael, this is not the first time Our Mother has sent evil forces packing by the power of Rosary processions. Do you remember what took place in Austria after World War Two? Did you know that much of Austria was under the Iron Curtain after World War Two?” I did know, but I loved hearing it again from Bishop Oliver, so I didn’t let on.
After World War Two, Austria was divided up by the Allies. The Eastern half of the country and Vienna came under the control of the Soviets. Until 1991, the Soviets never lost a nation, but something different happened here. Fr. Petrus Pavlicek was inspired by the words of Our Lady at Fatima. She asked us to pray the Rosary every day because only she could help us.
From 1947 to 1955, Fr. Pavlicek began gathering people in villages, towns, and cities across Soviet controlled Austria on the 13th of each month to pray the Rosary together in public. He called it the Rosary Crusade. Many people gathered at first, but they could not sustain their spiritual practices, so the Rosary Crusade ebbed and flowed. But Fr. Petrus persevered in his confidence in Our Lady.
By 1955, eight years later, half a million Austrians had pledged to pray the Rosary, begging for the conversion of sinners, peace in the world and freedom in Austria. The Cold War intensified as the Soviets crushed the Hungarians. However, on March 24th, 1955, Eve of the Annunciation, to the world’s surprise, the Soviets announced they would withdraw their troops from Austria in just three months. On May 15th, 1955, the Soviets signed a treaty guaranteeing the independence of Austria. In October of 1955, the month of the Rosary, the last Russian soldier left Austrian soil.
Mary came down through the Rosary and sent the enemy packing!
Three - Brazil
In 1964, the president of Brazil, João Goulart, wanted to make Brazil a Communist country. The archbishop of Rio de Janeiro, Cardinal de Barros Camara, in an address on national radio, called the people to resist publicly by praying the Rosary. President Goulart was so enraged that he insulted the people of Brazil in a public speech. He ridiculed the rosary, saying that it was his Marxist ideas that would reform and save Brazil, not the rosaries of simple women. That was a big mistake!
Twenty thousand women hit the streets with their rosaries. They marched right into the midst of the Communist rally and prayed the rosary so loudly that it shut the rally down. On March 19th, more than 600,000 people marched through the streets of São Paolo praying the rosary in the famous “March of the Family with God toward Freedom.” President Goulart was so intimidated by the Rosary that he fled the country!
Once again, Our Mother came down through Rosary and sent the enemy packing!
Four - Philippines
Ferdinand Marcos was an evil dictator who oppressed the Filipino people for twenty years. In 1986, hundreds of thousands of Filipinos rose up in a non-violent protest against the dictatorship. They filled the main highway and knelt before tanks and soldiers to pray the Rosary. President Marcos commanded the soldiers to run over the people with their tanks. Then Our Lady appeared to soldiers and to the entire crowd. She commanded the soldiers to stop their tanks and to do no harm to the people because she was the Queen of Heaven. That night, President Marcos fled the country.
Once again, Mary came down through the Rosary and sent the enemy packing.
Five - The Danger of Comfort and Complacency
Bishop Oliver said, “Michael, you must come to Nigeria!” But I said, “No way! It’s too dangerous, you might be dead before I get there.” Then I said, “Bishop Oliver – we are facing a more dangerous enemy in the West. We are not facing an enemy that can kill the body, but an enemy that is killing the souls of our loved ones with Materialism, comfort, isolation, and loneliness. We have everything we need, so we think we don’t need God or each other.”
Then Bishop Oliver said to me, “Let your people know that being close to Mary is the solution to all their challenges in this world. They should consecrate and reconsecrate themselves and their families to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Did not Mary say at Fatima, “God wants to establish in the world devotion to My Immaculate Heart – wanting to save it by this means.” Pray the Rosary every day and invite someone to pray with you, even if it means you have to change your routine. Finally, live the First Saturdays of Reparation as Mary requested, that on the first Saturday of five consecutive months, go to Mass, pray the Rosary, and go to Confession.”
Bishop Oliver ended by saying very passionately, “Mary will conquer! But she needs your cooperation.”
If you would like to receive these daily emails, you can go to www.dailyrosarymeditations.com. I will place a link for this specific day in the show notes in case you want to go back and read it again. https://www.dailyrosarymeditations.com/p/mary-will-conquer-september-1-2025
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Come As You Are: Gideon
Judges 6:12-16 “The angel of the Lord appeared to him and said to him, “The Lord is with you, you mighty warrior.” Gideon answered him, “But sir, if the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all his wonderful deeds that our ancestors recounted to us, saying, ‘Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt?’ But now the Lord has cast us off, and given us into the hand of Midian.” Then the Lord turned to him and said, “Go in this might of yours and deliver Israel from the hand of Midian; I hereby commission you.” He responded, “But sir, how can I deliver Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family.” The Lord said to him, “But I will be with you, and you shall strike down the Midianites, every one of them.”
I really like this story because it is one that most of us can relate to. Well, not the first verse probably. I doubt too many of us have been visited by an angel. The verse starts off by telling us that an angel appeared to Gideon and told him the Lord was with him, and then called him a mighty warrior. I find it interesting how Gideon answered the angel. I feel that I would be in shock and probably speechless if the angel of God were to speak to me. If he told me that God was with me, I think I would say thank you or be in awe. Gideon is not speechless, and it doesn’t sound like he is in awe. He questions the angel. He says, “But sir, if the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all his wonderful deeds that our ancestors recounted to us, saying, ‘Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt?’ But now the Lord has cast us off, and given us into the hand of Midian.”
Those are some pretty gutsy things to say to an angel. The angel said The Lord is with you and Gideon basically said, “Oh yeah, how? We don’t see it. What has He done for us lately?” With this being written text, we don’t know the tone or volume this was said with. I picture Gideon being angry and almost yelling it at the angel. However, I could be wrong; he could have matter-of-factly stated it to him. Either way, Gideon did not believe what the angel said, and he wanted an explanation, or some sort of proof that God was for them.
Next the angel says, “Go in this might of yours and deliver Israel from the hand of Midian; I hereby commission you.” The angel does not answer his question as to where God has been. The angel looks at Gideon and then tells him to go and lead the fight with Midian to deliver his people. Gideon’s response is a response that I think most of us have when God commissions us for a task. We question it, we tell Him we aren’t ready, we aren’t good enough, we don’t know how, we aren’t strong enough. We question God as if He, the one who created us, did not know all these things about us when he commissioned us for that task. When Gideon was told that he was commissioned to defeat Midian, he said, “But sir, how can I deliver Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family.”
Gideon was counting himself out before he even got started. He looked at his family and his place in that family and judged his abilities on that. He felt God must have made a mistake. How could he be a mighty warrior when his family was the weakest and he was the least in his family? Does this sound familiar? Do you ever count yourself out of things because of your family or your history with your family? I can understand a bit of what Gideon was feeling. I am from a large family, and we didn’t have a lot of money growing up. When I was in school, if there was a big field trip, I immediately counted myself out. There was no way my parents could afford the cost of the trip when they could barely afford their bills. In seventh grade, my French class was taking a trip to Quebec for a few days. I think the cost was $450 or something like that. I knew I wouldn’t be able to go. I am not even sure if I asked my parents or if I just counted myself out. One day after school, the French teacher talked with me and asked if I wanted to go on the trip. I explained I did, but my parents couldn’t afford it. She said there was a scholarship, and so if my parents could afford some of it, the school could pay the rest. Somehow, my parents were able to pay whatever part they had to pay, and I was able to go.
Another way I can relate to Gideon is when he said he was the least of his family. I don’t think I was the least of my family, and yet, having a large family, you are bound to be compared to your siblings. Others are bound to compare you as well. I remember one Christmas Eve party at my aunt's house, one of my uncles saw me and was trying to figure out which child I was. My mom is one of 10 children, and I am one of 11, so you can imagine how many kids were at this Christmas Eve party. He said Oh, you are the smart one who is going to Yale, right? Nope, that is Virginia. Oh, you are the one who just got that cheerleading award, nope, that is Elizabeth. Got it, you are the one that is having open heart surgery, nope, that is Theresa, Oh, who are you then? He said. I wasn’t really sure how to respond to that one. I didn’t know which distinguishing characteristic might have been used to describe me.
We can all get stuck thinking we are who our family says we are. We can get stuck thinking we can’t do certain things because of our history. We know God is calling us to something, and yet we don’t answer that call because we don’t think we can do it. Instead of giving God our whole-hearted yes, we give Him a list of reasons why we are not the right person for the job. In the very beginning of this verse, the angel of God addresses Gideon as a mighty warrior, and yet he questions that. What name is God calling you that you are dismissing? Is it son/daughter of the one true King? Is it Beloved? Is it Mighty Warrior? Is it Gifted Healer? Is it Disciple? Is it Preacher/Teacher? Is it Worthy or Enough? What name do you hear God calling you, and yet you struggle to accept? God does not make mistakes. He is the Lord God Almighty. If He calls you something, it is because that is your name to Him. That is who you are in His eyes!
What task is God commissioning you for that you are resisting? Is there something you feel called to do, and instead of telling God yes, you are giving him a whole host of reasons why you cannot do it? Is he asking you to do something, and you are explaining to him why anyone else would be better for the job? I get it, I do the same, and yet God is telling us here in this story of Gideon that we need to believe what the Lord says about it and just go out and do it. Stop trying to tell God who you are; He knows who you are better than you do. Stop trying to find all these excuses why you can’t do the thing God is telling you to do. Start trying to figure out how to do the thing God is leading you to do. Stop and ask God, What would you like me to do today? If you don’t know how to do what He is calling you to do, then ask Him how He would like you to do it. Our God is a wonderful God, and He will answer us when we ask. Answer the call God is placing on your life today with a resounding Yes! Trust that if He gave it to you, He will help you fulfill it!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode. Lord, we are so grateful that you know us better than we know ourselves. Thank you for loving us so much and being the best dad out there. Thank you for calling us by our true identity, even when we struggle to see it. Lord, help us to see ourselves and the world through your eyes. Father, thank you for commissioning us to certain tasks. We are sorry we don’t always say yes. It is not because we don’t want to, it is because we are afraid. Please replace that fear with courage and strength. Make us bold so we can say yes to whatever you ask. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I am starting a new series for the next 31 days. It is called “Come As You Are” and we will take a look at 31 different characters in the Bible who did not look like anything special to the rest of the world, and yet the Lord used them powerfully. I keep telling you, at the end of almost every episode, that Jesus loves you, just as you are. Yet, if you are like me, it can still be hard to believe that at times. Often we feel we have to change first before Jesus loves us. I am hoping that after this series, you will be able to believe me more when I say that each day. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in May 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My word, Jesus, is my power, a power of grace, of goodness, of forgiveness, of mercy, and of great peace. Call upon my power in the name of my son Jesus.”
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Keep Waiting, Your Answered Prayers Are Coming
James 5:7-8 “Be patient, therefore, beloved, until the coming of the Lord. The farmer waits for the precious crop from the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains. You also must be patient. Strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is near.”
When I read this today, I thought it was a good verse because, let’s be honest, who doesn’t need more patience? However, I also thought it was a good word because so many of us are going through something that we wish we weren’t. We wish God would take it from us, or heal us of it. We are tired of waiting, and we feel ready to move forward.
This verse says to be patient until the coming of the Lord. It can also apply to your situation. Be patient, beloved, until you are healed from whatever is ailing you. Be patient, beloved, until I answer those questions for you. Be patient, beloved, until I find you that job or approve the disability claim. Be patient, beloved, until your loved one is healed. Be patient, beloved, until I make you healthy enough to answer my call.
Did you know that God calls you beloved? Did you know that you are the one that Jesus loves? In the Gospel of John, he refers to himself as the one that Jesus loved, or the beloved apostle. Did you know you can refer to yourself this way as well? You are beloved in the eyes of the Lord. You are the one that Jesus loves. John was not being conceited when he said this. He was just that sure of Jesus’s love for him. We would all be in a better place if we were all that secure that we are at the one that Jesus loved.
I think this verse is a beautiful illustration of what it looks like to have patience. Imagine how hard it is for the farmer to plant a crop and then just wait for it to grow. Imagine planting a seed in the ground and then watering it and just waiting with patience, even though you can’t see anything growing. Seeds typically take a few days to a couple of weeks to germinate and start growing, depending on the type of seed and the conditions provided. After germination, the growth phase can last from a few weeks to several months before the plant is fully grown. Can you imagine having to wait that long to see something grow?
Some of you have been waiting a lot longer than a few months for God to answer your prayers. Some of you have been waiting for years. You have been waiting so long that it's hard to remember a time before you were sick, depressed, or injured. You can barely remember a time when you weren’t struggling with money or having enough food to eat. I understand how frustrating this is. I struggled for over 10 years with my kids and my husband. There was constant fighting and anger in our home. Every day, there would be at least one fire to put out, and some days, most days, there were many. It was exhausting, and patience was something I didn't always have.
I didn’t know how long this would last. I didn’t know how much more I could take. I felt like I was at the end of what I could handle many, many times. Yet the Lord always helped me to keep moving forward. He helped me to get up each morning with renewed strength. A strength I needed and one that was always enough, even when it didn’t feel like it would be. The Lord is with you in your situation as well. He is right there with you. He is protecting you and comforting you. He is giving you untold strength.
I heard a testimony yesterday at a prayer group that is an excellent example of what God can do for us in difficult situations. My friend was in a lot of pain, and she was offering that pain up to the Lord. For an hour, she was talking to the Lord and letting Him know that she wanted to offer up this suffering for anyone who needed it. After an hour, she cried out to the Lord and told her that she couldn’t take this pain anymore. She wanted to endure it for those in need, but the pain was too great. Immediately, the Lord helped her to fall asleep, and when she woke up, the situation causing the pain had resolved itself.
He has done this for me, too. About 6 weeks after Noah was born, my appendix burst, and I needed to go to the Emergency Room. After they discovered it was my appendix, they said I would need surgery. This occurred around 3 am, and the surgeon was not scheduled to arrive until 5 or 6 am. I started to have what I think was a panic attack. I wasn’t sure how to describe what was happening, but I knew I needed to stop thinking about the surgery. I prayed that God would help me fall asleep until it was time for the surgery, and that is precisely what happened. I fell asleep and did not wake up until right before they wheeled me into the surgery.
God sees you. He knows what it is you need. He hears you crying out. He hears you telling Him, “This is it, this is all I can take. I can’t go on anymore.” God hears you, and He knows it is not true. You feel you can’t go on, but he knows how strong you are, and He knows you can do all things through Him. He knows the perfect time to lift you from this. He knows the consequences of rescuing too early. He knows what will happen if he pulls you out of a pit that you were meant to climb out of on your own.
I know it is hard to have patience and that it feels like God has abandoned you. He has not. Just keep crying out to Him. Just keep believing that He will bring you out of this. He will save you. He will give you the strength to make it to another day. He is in this. You can do this! You can hold on. You have the power of the Holy Spirit, the one who raised Jesus from the dead, living inside of you. You can hold on!!
Dear Heavenly Father, please give each person listening the courage and the strength to keep moving forward. Lord, help us to wait with patience, just as farmers do. Help us to know and believe that you will answer our prayers at the perfect time. Lord, give us renewed hope. Help us to remember all the times in the past that you have answered our prayers. We love you, Lord. You are so faithful. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you have not checked out the details for my retreat in October, please CLICK HERE for all the info. I look forward to seeing you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in May 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Words are not all I have to give you, my children, though my words have power. My word, Jesus my son, has great power. Call upon his name in every circumstance. Call upon his name for he is standing there beside you to lead you, to guide you, to help you, to fill your heart with his love.”
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Episode NotesMatthew 6:34 “So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.”
Wow, this is a great verse for all of us to write down and place around us. The thing is, when we read this, it sounds so simple. Don’t worry about tomorrow, you will have time for that later; you have enough to worry about today. Don’t you wish it were that simple? Don’t you wish you could just tell yourself not to worry, and then you actually don’t worry? Life would be so much simpler if it worked that way. I don’t think this verse is telling us anything that we don’t already know on some level. We know that we don’t need to worry about the future because we don’t even know what will happen in the future. We also know that there is plenty to worry about in this moment without borrowing worries from another day. So, if we already know all of this, why do we still worry about tomorrow?
We still worry for the same reason that we still eat candy and drink soda, even though we know eating vegetables and drinking water is better for us. We still worry for the same reason that we watch TV instead of working out, even though we know working out is better for us. We worry because that is what we have trained our brains to do. We worry because that is what we have done in the past. We worry because that is our habit. We worry because it is an automatic response, and changing automatic responses takes work.
Is it possible for you or me to change how much we worry, yes. I know this is hard for some of you to believe. I know so many people who identify with the identity of being a worrier. They say things like “It’s just who I am,” or “I have always been a worrier, I can’t change it now.” Is this you? Be honest with yourself, have you said these things? Do you believe that you are a worrier and that will never change? I get it, if you have always done something, then you assume you will always do it. You don’t know anything different. However, this doesn’t need to be the case. You may be a person who worries, but that is not your identity. I used to be someone who hated to get up in the morning, and then I started to get up at 5:30 in the morning so I could get prayer time and workout time in before the kids woke up. Was it easy to make this switch? Not at all. Was it worth it? Absolutely. You can change. Who you are is not set in stone.
There are two different mindsets that we can have. If you have a fixed mindset, then you believe that intelligence, talent, and other qualities are innate and unchangeable. Basically, you are who you are. If you are not good at something, you typically believe you will never be good at it. However, a growth mindset means you believe these things can be developed with practice. You believe that just because you can’t do something yet, it doesn’t mean that you won’t ever be able to do it. I think if you look around you, there are a lot of examples to prove that just because you are not good at something, it doesn’t mean you will never be good at it. Did you know that Michael Jordon was cut from his high school basketball team before he went on to win 6 championships, 5 MVP awards, and 2 Olympic gold medals? Did you know that Steven Spielberg, the only director to have made over 10 billion dollars at the box office from his films, was rejected 3 times from USC’s film school. Michael Jordon was not born an amazing basketball player. He had to work hard to become an amazing basketball player. He made a goal of getting 100 free throws in a row. This meant if he got to 75 and missed one, he would start all over again. He also spent the entire summer doing two practice sessions a day, six days a week, shooting at least 500 jump shots in each practice. That's more than 6,000 practice shots each week!
I know many of you listening to this may not be basketball fans. I am not a basketball fan either. I tell you this story to show you that just because you can’t do something now, it doesn’t mean you will never be able to do it. Also, just because you do something now, like worry, doesn’t mean you always have to do. Hopefully by now, some of you who were skeptical at first are starting to believe that you can change if you want to. It was pretty simple for Michael Jordon to become an excellent basketball player. He knew what skills he needed to develop, and then he practiced them over and over again until he got really good at them. It wasn’t easy, it took a lot of work, but it was simple.
In this same way, worrying less is simple, but it is not easy. If we want to worry less, then we need to take control of our thoughts. It says in 2 Corinthians 10:5, “…and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” You can take your thoughts captive. You can be in charge of what you think and what you don’t think. This may seem impossible, and I understand why you would think that. We live in a society where we don’t really have to think for ourselves if we don’t want to. There are news networks that tell us what to think, there are movies and TV shows that influence how we think, and there are social media “influencers” that tell us what we should and shouldn’t like. If we look at commercials, magazines, books, radio shows, and podcasts, we are constantly being told what to think. So, I get that you don’t think you can help how you think or what you think about. However, it is possible.
I read an article titled “Radical Trust” by Laura Fleetwood (Seeking the Still). Laura mentioned that a friend sent her this verse in an email, and it was a much-needed reminder. She said that although there is so much in this world that we can’t control, we CAN control our thoughts. After reading this verse, every time her mind wanted to worry about something, she would take captive that thought and hand it over to Jesus. This is what she said, “Literally, in my mind, I snatch it and give it to Jesus. And then I tell myself, I trust you, Jesus. I trust you. I trust you.” She also says, “Take this fearful thought, Lord. Take the what-ifs, should haves, and could haves. I give them to you again, and again, and again.” When she gets a fearful or worrisome thought in her head, this is what she does, “Snatch…Hand it over…I trust you, Jesus. Snatch…Hand it over…I trust you, Jesus. Snatch…Hand it over…I trust you, Jesus.”
If Laura can do this, so can you. It won’t be easy, but if you get in the habit of doing it then it will become easier. Starting a new habit is always difficult; however, isn’t worrying all the time hard too? Do you like how you feel when you spend so much time worrying? What would you give in order not to have to worry so much? If it feels like you worry about everything all the time, know that you are not alone. It is pretty common. Do you have one thing that you always worry about? One situation or topic that you worry about more than others? For instance, your children, your car, your abilities? If you are someone who seems to worry about everything, then even just thinking about capturing your thoughts may feel overwhelming. This is why I just asked if there was one thing you worry about more than the others. Maybe just start with one area. Try to pay attention and listen to yourself saying things about that one topic. When you do hear it, snatch the thought, hand it over, and say Jesus, I trust you. Once you get that area down, you can move on to another. You can do this! We can do this!
Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for all those listening to this episode today. Lord, please bless them. Lord, we ask that you help us control our thoughts. When the enemy starts whispering his fancy lies into our ears, help us to snatch the thoughts and hand them over to you. Lord help us all to worry less and trust more. Lord, even if we are worried, help us to still move forward with faith in you. Lord you are truly amazing and we are so lucky that you love us and do so much for us. We thank you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your scripture and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
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Patience Is A Virtue
Sirach 1:23 “Those who are patient stay calm until the right moment, and then cheerfulness comes back to them. They hold back their words until the right moment; then the lips of many tell of their good sense.”
Have you ever heard people say, Patience is a virtue? I have heard it frequently, and it is usually said when someone is struggling with patience. What is a virtue? According to my quick internet search, virtue has been defined as “conformity of life and conduct with the principles of morality.” The virtues are thus the practical attitudes and habits adopted in obedience to those principles. It seems there is much discussion online about whether patience is actually a virtue or not. However, most agree that it is not a virtue. The saying patience is a virtue " shows how important and good having patience is. Have you ever known someone who seemed to have an unlimited amount of patience? That was my mom.
She was the oldest of 10 children growing up, and being the oldest meant that she had to help raise them. It also meant that if my grandmother was sick, she needed to step in and take care of everyone until she got better. This happened one time, I forget how old she was, although I know she was still in school. My grandfather was away as he was in the Navy, and my grandmother got very sick. My mom had to miss, I think, about 3 months of school so she could take care of the kids while my grandma was sick. You might think, after being the oldest of 10 kids, she wouldn’t want any kids, or maybe she might want one or two, but definitely not too many. You would be wrong. My parents got married, wanting 12 children. Now, I can see how a Catholic couple could have 12 kids, but going into the marriage wanting that many, after having just helped raise 9, is beyond me. My husband thought I was crazy wanting four kids. My mom and dad had 11 kids.
Now, you would think that after helping to raise 10 kids and then raising 11 kids of your own, you would be done with children by the time your kids were grown. You would think my mom would be kinda tired of kids at that point. Not that kids are bad. I love children. I just know how much work it is to raise children, and I have no idea how hard it is to raise 11 children, but I can imagine it is harder than raising 3. My mom did not take a break. When my youngest brother was in school, I’m not sure what age, she went to work at a Montessori school for 3-5 year olds. She was in her glory. She just really loves children. The reason I am telling you all of this is that my mom had so much patience. Now, I am not saying she never lost her cool, because she did, she is human after all. However, she could be faced with immensely difficult situations and stay very calm. Because we had a lot of kids growing up, we didn’t really have a lot of money. Thankfully, my dad had a very good job; however, it still wasn’t enough money most of the time because of the number of kids they had. My mom would see that we had more bills than money, and she would stay calm. I am sure it probably stressed her out, but some people get really angry when they get stressed. She did not. She remained calm and just called the places and set up payment plans.
I was a child who did not like to get up in the morning, which is funny to me now, as I was up at 4 am this morning. However, when I was in school, I hated waking up. Oftentimes, I would not get out of bed until about the 6th time of being woken up. Yet, I can’t remember my mom yelling at me once for it. Even if I was late to the car, she was just patiently waiting for me. My siblings, not so patient, but who could blame them? I wasn’t intending this episode to be about my mom, although I am not surprised that is where the Holy Spirit took me, because I have always admired my mom’s patience. I have had to develop a lot of patience over the years. Well, I guess I didn’t have to, but I chose to do that instead of being angry and frustrated all the time. Do you know that you have a choice? You can choose to develop more patience. It is not as if there is a finite amount of patience, and it is not as if you either have it or you don’t. You can work on it, and you can become more patient if you want to.
The verse says, “Those who are patient stay calm until the right moment, and then cheerfulness comes back to them. They hold back their words until the right moment; then the lips of many tell of their good sense.” There are two parts to this verse. The first one is “Those who are patient stay calm until the right moment, and then cheerfulness comes back to them.” This is so true. Can you picture a time when you stayed calm in a situation? Didn’t it feel less stressful? Were you able to be happy in the difficult situation? When there is at least one person who is being patient and remaining calm, then it usually helps others to do the same. We tend to mirror other people's emotions. This is why they say not to make a big deal when your children are little and they fall down. If you freak out, they freak out. If you remain calm, they may remain calm. The mirror reflects our emotions, especially when we are younger.
Another reason to become more patient is that being impatient never helps a situation. It usually has the opposite effect. Have you noticed that when you are in a hurry, everything goes wrong? You can’t find your shoes, your keys, your jacket, whatever it is you need. Or you walk out of the house and forget things because you were in a hurry. Also, if you are in a hurry and you are waiting on others, being impatient usually starts a fight, and there definitely aren’t those cheerful feelings the verse is talking about. When we are impatient with those we are trying to get out of the house, they often get angry, and then it slows us down even more. This was a big lesson that God showed me over and over again when my kids were little. If we were late, rushing the kids, nagging the kids, and being frustrated with the kids, it was not going to get them out of the house any faster. I had to learn to remain calm, patient, compassionate, and helpful. Instead of yelling at them to get their shoes on, I would place their shoes by the door, ask if they needed help putting them on, or sometimes, just put the shoes in the car for them so they could do it in the car. When I was able to be patient and remain calm, we definitely had a more cheerful car ride.
The second part of this verse says, “They hold back their words until the right moment; then the lips of many tell of their good sense.” Have you ever noticed that when we are impatient, we don’t always say the nicest things? Even if they are things that need to be said, we don’t say them at the right time if we are not remaining calm. For instance, it would have been completely appropriate for my mom to sit me down when I was younger and talk with me about how important it was to get up in the mornings and how if I got to the car late, I was making everyone late. And she might have, I just don’t remember. However, yelling at me in the morning when I am half asleep and when we are trying to get out the door is not the right time. I know when I was impatient with my kids because we needed to get somewhere and we were late, I would slip into lecture mode. You have to get up earlier, I told you to make sure you had everything the night before, we are going to be late now because you can’t be bothered to hurry, and whatever else I used to say. Those were definitely not my finest hours. Although I know we all have those moments as parents. It would have been appropriate after the fact, not in the moment, to talk about why we were late and what we could do differently next time. The verse doesn’t say they hold back their words forever. It says they hold their words for the right moment. This is so important. There is a time and place to say things, and learning to know when that is will serve you well.
There is a challenge that I learned about in my mentoring group. It is called the Zip It Challenge, and it is based on a best-selling book by Karen Ehman. You can look it up online, and you will find the book. I haven’t read it, but it looks really good, so I may have to get it. She said she covers eight major topics: taming our tempers, sarcasm, gossip, gracious speech, sweet and salty language, asking for forgiveness, whether to speak up or remain silent, and how God’s word can alter our words. I could use some help in all those areas. However, the zip-it challenge is when you are more intentional with your words. It is where you spend the next 40 days, or 20 days, or even just one day, realizing that you don’t have to say every thought that comes into your mind. Before saying something, stop and ask yourself, Does this need to be said? Will this still matter to me in 5 years? I have heard of numerous people taking this challenge, and they are reporting that it has really helped their relationships, whether with their kids, spouse, or parents. There are lots of things we say that just don’t really need to be said. We think we are helping our loved ones, but many times, we are just nagging or telling them something they already know. Maybe this week, we could all try to be a little more patient and a little more intentional about our words. Being patient may not be easy, but it will make you happier. Being intentional with your words is also not easy, but it's really worth it when you see the change in your relationships. Words are powerful. Choose them wisely.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, you are amazing, and we love you. We ask that you help us grow in patience. Please help us learn to be calm in difficult situations. Help us to be patient with our loved ones. Help us to guard our tongue and to hold back our words until the right moment. Lord, help us discern what needs to be said and what doesn’t. Help us be more intentional with our words and to think before we speak. Lord, we are so grateful that you are always with us. We are also grateful that you are so forgiving, as we mess up a lot. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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For More Info on the Retreat Info in October CLICK HERE!
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Road Trip
Psalm 144:7-9 “Stretch out your hand from on high; set me free and rescue me from the mighty waters, from the hand of aliens, whose mouths speak lies, and whose right hands are false. I will sing a new song to you, O God; upon a ten-stringed harp I will play to you.”
When I read this verse, I thought it was appropriate as I talked with a friend this morning, and she is going through a difficult time right now. I wish I could say she was my only friend going through a hard time right now. I wish I could say that those I know who are suffering right now are in the minority. Unfortunately, it is hard for me to think of someone that I know who isn’t suffering in some way or another right now. I know so many people who have asked for prayers because they or a loved one has cancer. It is out of control how many people have cancer right now. Also, after a year and a half of staying inside, a lot of families are struggling. Children don’t want to be back in school, or they are more anxious or more depressed.
I don’t want to be all doom and gloom, and I’m not meaning to sound like that. I just know that there are so many people suffering right now. I am on a few different prayer lists, and the requests for prayers are non-stop, and those who need them are really suffering. I long for the days when the worst people have to worry about is whether they will pass their English or Math test at school. However, I don’t know if those days will come. I think as long as we are on this side of heaven, there will always be tough times, and we will always have struggles. I do think that we get a break from it. I don’t think the struggle is constant, although I know it can feel that way when we are in it. I think we just truck along doing life, and sometimes we encounter circumstances that are really difficult, and then sometimes we don’t.
I view it as a long road trip. If you have ever been on a long road trip, you know that some stretches of road are easy. The traffic is flowing, the road is well taken care of, the weather is nice, and maybe there is nice scenery to look at out the window. There are some parts of the road trip that you really enjoy. Then there are some parts that are not great. There are parts of every long road trip that aren’t fun; there might be more traffic than we like, it might be a really long and boring stretch of road without much to see, or you may even have weather that is not great. Then there are times in a long road trip that can be awful. You can be stuck in traffic for hours and not move far at all, or you can be stuck in a torrential downpour or a snow blizzard. Your car could even break down while you are on a road trip.
This is similar to our journey through life. Sometimes, time is going to go by quickly, and you are going to enjoy the ride and the view. Other times, life will feel like it is crawling by, and you aren’t getting anywhere. And sometimes nothing great will be happening, and also, nothing bad will be happening. You will just be coasting through. Thinking of my journey through life like this has helped me to remember, in the hard times, that they will not last forever. This is just a season I am in, and brighter days are coming.
I think our attitude and our thoughts play such a huge role in how we feel during the difficult times. When we are going through a difficult time, we get to choose what we focus on. We may not know that at the time, but we always get to choose what we focus on. In every scenario, there are many different things happening, and which you decide to focus on, or what you decide to tell yourself about that situation, will play a huge part in how you feel and your attitude towards it. For instance, if I am struggling with my boys, there are many things in that struggle that I can focus on. Let’s say I am unhappy that my son got a D in algebra. I can focus on the fact that he got a D and that he may fail that class for the semester if he doesn’t try harder this quarter. I could focus on the fact that he attended school more this semester than last. I could focus on the fact that he did really well in his other classes. I could focus on the fact that last year was really hard and he is doing better this year. Do you see how there are numerous things that I could focus on?
I get to choose which one I am going to focus on. I can choose to focus on a negative one that will make me angry and keep me upset, or I can focus on one that is more positive and will help me to see that this one D is not the end of the world. I am not saying that you can’t care about the problem you are facing. Of course, you can care, and I am also not saying don’t think about it. What I am saying is that if you are going through a hard time, try to find something positive in the situation and focus on that instead of obsessing about the negative things in the circumstance. This is especially important if you can’t do anything about the negative things. If I chose to focus on my son’s D, what would that change? Would my being angry about it change the grade? Would my being angry at him make him want to study harder? I can think of many reasons why focusing on something that makes me angry will hurt me, but I can’t see how it will change the situation.
The verse above says, “Stretch out your hand from on high; set me free and rescue me from the mighty waters, from the hand of aliens, whose mouths speak lies, and whose right hands are false. I will sing a new song to you, O God; upon a ten-stringed harp I will play to you,” This is something that I think we have all been praying for lately. At least all those that I have been talking to. They would love for the Lord, our God, to stretch out His hand and rescue them to set them free. I have several friends who feel like they are sinking in the mighty waters and are waiting and praying for God to save them. I like how in this verse, immediately after they ask God to stretch out His hand to save them, they then say they will sing a new song to Him, and upon a ten-stringed harp they will play to Him. Immediately after they ask for help, they start to praise Him. This is where a lot of us struggle. We wait for God to help before we praise Him. We wait to see God show up and fix things before we begin to praise.
What if we began to praise immediately after asking? What if we thanked God and praised Him for helping us before we saw Him help? I wonder if anything would be different? I wonder if we would see help sooner? I wonder if we would feel any different? In John 20:29, “Jesus said to him, 'Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” I wonder if we would strengthen our faith if we not only believed that God would answer our prayers, but we thanked Him and praised Him before we saw any proof that He was going to? I am going to try this and see what happens. I invite you to do the same. Let’s join together and thank God and praise Him for answering all the prayers we have asked Him to answer right now, before He has answered them. Let’s not wait until after our prayers are answered to thank the Lord. Let’s show Him that we believe in Him as He believes in us.
Dear Heavenly Father, I pray for all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask that you help us to know that we will make it through this difficult time. Lord, give us a supernatural sense of peace and comfort, knowing that you are here with us always and that you will help us through whatever we are facing. Lord, we ask that you help us to see that we can choose what we focus on. Help us to focus on the good and the positive in each situation. Help us to remember to thank you and to praise you, Lord. Help us not to wait until we see your answers to our prayers. Help us to thank you and praise you now, while we are still waiting for those answers, because we trust that you will answer them. We love you, Lord, and we know that you are amazing. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
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God’s Mercy Is Endless
Psalm 36:7-9 “How precious is your mercy, O God! The children of men take refuge in the shadow of your wings. They feast on the abundance of your house, and you give them drink from the river of your delights. For with you is the fountain of life; in your light do we see light.”
I love the imagery in this verse. I love how it talks about God’s mercy. This is something I don’t think we talk about enough. We talk about God’s love, but not always His mercy. I think the reason for this is that we have a hard time believing in His mercy. We have a hard enough time believing that God loves us. Believing that and believing that he forgives us for our sins, all of our sins, is just too much to believe for some of us. Why is it so much easier to believe these things about other people than it is to believe them about ourselves? I can believe that God will forgive my kids for all their sins. That comes easily to me. I can believe he loves them with his whole heart, no matter what they do. I find that easy to believe because I know I love them with my whole heart, no matter what they do. If I can do it in my broken state, surely God can do it.
I know that God’s mercy is endless. This made me think of a prayer that is part of the Divine Mercy Chaplet. Here is the prayer, “Eternal God, in whom mercy is endless and the treasury of compassion inexhaustible, look kindly upon us and increase Your mercy in us, that in difficult moments we might not despair nor become despondent, but with great confidence submit ourselves to Your holy will, which is Love and Mercy itself.” I think the Holy Spirit brought this to my mind right now because it talks about God’s mercy. Is this something you believe for others, but not yourself? Is it something that you think you believe, but then when you examine your actions, you realize you are not quite there yet? This is where I am at most of the time. I know God is merciful. I know God loves me and forgives all my sins, and yet at times I act like I am not forgiven. I strive to do all I can to earn God’s love when, in actuality, there is nothing I have to do because I already have all His love. Do you do this too?
The beginning of this verse says, “The children of men take refuge in the shadow of your wings.” Isn’t that a beautiful image? When I hear that verse, I picture a giant Eagle just standing on the ground, and I am standing next to it. I am holding on to his little leg, and He has His giant wing wrapped around me in protection. We can take refuge in the Lord. Did you know that? There are many places in the Bible where it talks about God being our refuge. When you need protection, when you need a safe place to rest, rest in the Lord; He will be your refuge.
The next line says, “They feast on the abundance of your house, and you give them drink from the river of your delights.” Sometimes we can think of God in terms of giving things up. We can think that if we want to be a good Christian, then we have to sacrifice all we have. We think we need to go without. This is not the case. God is a God of abundance. Yes, we are called to give and to sacrifice, but God will not be outdone in generosity. The more you give, the more God gives to you. God knows what things you like, He knows the things you need, and He is taking care of them for you. He is a God of abundance. He is not just taking care of the things you need, but the things you want as well. It says, You give them drink from the river of your delights. God is so good. He isn’t just in the big things in life, He is in all the little details of your life too. He shares His delights with you.
This verse ends with, “For with you is the fountain of life; in your light do we see light.” God is our fountain of life. Everything we have flows through Him. We would have nothing without Him, and we are nothing without Him. God is also our light. He lights the way for us, and He is the light in the world that we see. What would be great is if we could get to a point where we can shine light for others. If we got to a place where God’s light shone so brightly through us that we could be that light for others. Now that I am saying that, I think we can be a light for others, even if we aren’t quite where we want to be. I am not sure we will ever be at a place where we think we have finally arrived. I don’t think this life is all about getting to the perfect place in life. I think this life is more about our journey to become the best versions of ourselves. I am not sure we ever arrive at that destination while we are here on earth. I think it is something we can continually work towards.
What came to my mind just after I wrote that we could be a light for others is all the ways we help to spread God’s love around this world. When you are talking about God or Jesus to those you meet, that is spreading God’s light. When you pray for someone, you are being a light to them. When you do something kind for someone, you are spreading God’s light to them. I know we probably don’t think of ourselves as spreading God’s light to others. We don’t think of ourselves as being a light to others, and yet, that is exactly what we are doing when we are talking about God, spreading His message, spreading His love. Sometimes we can spread God’s love without even opening our mouths. There is so much darkness in the world, so much hatred and division. When we are the opposite of that, when we are love and light, people can’t help but notice. We can be the light to others just by being different, just by being positive and not letting the world take our joy away. If we can do that, others will notice and they will want what we have.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Dad, we want you to be our light, we want to drink of the river of your delights. Dad, please help us remember that you are a God of abundance. Help us not to be afraid that if we give to others, we will be left with nothing. Help us to remember that you will not be outdone in generosity. Father, your mercy is endless, and we are so grateful. Please help us to remember and to believe this in our day-to-day life. Help us to believe that you truly do forgive our sins and that you love us always. We love you, Dad, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
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I Know Waiting Is Hard!
Psalm 138:7-8 “Though I walk in the midst of trouble, you preserve me against the wrath of my enemies; you stretch out your hand, and your right hand delivers me. The Lord will fulfill his purpose for me; your steadfast love, O Lord, endures forever. Do not forsake the work of your hands.”
I read this verse at a prayer group yesterday, and it reminded me of all those I know who are struggling right now. The devil is having a heyday with so many people right now. There are so many I know that are struggling with health issues, money issues, addiction, or a place to live. Those that I know who are struggling with health issues are so tired of struggling. All they want to do is work for the Lord. They want to be able to attend Mass and participate in adoration. They want to be able to evangelize to everyone they meet. Yet, because of their illnesses, they are stuck in bed or in their house. Due to their illnesses, they are unable to attend Mass or participate in adoration. Or, maybe it is not the illness, but they don’t have a working car to get to mass.
Everyone I talk to these days is struggling with something or another. I believe the Lord is bringing these people into my life so I can pray with them and for them. I think there may also be a lesson in here, as I am really struggling to understand why He is not healing them already. I mean, we said the things you are supposed to say and do, and yet they are still sick. I struggle with the parts in the Bible that say, “Whatever you ask in my name will be given to you,” and then I ask in the name of Jesus, and it is not given to me.
The thing the Lord is trying to show me, or at least I think He is, is that just because it is not given to me immediately, it does not mean it will not be given to me. I am discovering that I tend to be a bit impatient when it comes to the Lord answering my prayers, especially if they are prayers for others who are suffering. I want answers now, and I don’t want to wait. I realize I probably sound like a child right now, and yet, I doubt I am the only one who thinks this way. You know you want answers to your prayers immediately, too.
What the Lord is showing me is that His timing is perfect, and just because I don’t understand it does not make it wrong. He is the Lord of the universe. I think He probably knows better than I do. The how and the why are not always for us to know. This morning, the thought that he gave me was that of taking silver or gold out of the fire too early, before it has been fully purified. Well, I have no idea what happens when you do this, so I had to look it up. Here is what I found. “If silver or gold is removed from the fire before it is fully purified, impurities will remain in the metal, affecting its quality and appearance. This can result in a less valuable product that does not shine as brightly or reflect the desired image of the goldsmith.”
God does not want us to keep our impurities. He wants us to learn the full lesson so that we can shine as brightly as He made us to shine. We can’t have all these impurities messing up our shine. God knows what He is doing. He knows the exact right point to pull us out of the fire. I love the last thing the explanation said. “Or reflect the desired image of the goldsmith.” Guess who is our Goldsmith? Jesus. So, when we accurately reflect Jesus, then God will pull us out of the fire. Trust in His timing. Yes, I am definitely saying that to myself too because I know it is hard, and yet He will give you all you need to wait and trust if you ask Him to.
So, while we are all waiting, as I am sure everyone listening is waiting for some prayer to be answered, then we have today’s verse to give us comfort and encourage us. “Though I walk in the midst of trouble, you preserve me against the wrath of my enemies; you stretch out your hand, and your right hand delivers me. The Lord will fulfill his purpose for me; your steadfast love, O Lord, endures forever. Do not forsake the work of your hands.” God is preserving us against our enemy. God knows we are walking in the midst of trouble, and He is not worried because He is walking right next to you. He knows you are feeling lost, abandoned, ill, tired, frustrated, angry, and so many other things. He knows because He is right there in the middle of this whole mess with you.
His right hand will deliver you. It is delivering you. I know you want deliverance now, so do I. I know you want healing now, and I want that for you, too. I don’t know why God is not saving you now, why He is not lifting you out of this now, but I do know He has a plan, and it is much better than my plan or your plan. Trust that He is there preserving you from the wrath of your enemies. He has got this. While you wait for Him to save you, ask for all that you need to persevere. Ask Him what you can do to serve Him in the circumstances you are in. He will tell you if you ask.
I also don’t want you to forget the last part of this verse. “The Lord will fulfill his purpose for me; your steadfast love, O Lord, endures forever. Do not forsake the work of your hands.” God will fulfill his purpose for you. If you wonder why you are so sick and yet feel a calling to help others, just know that God will fulfill His purpose for you. Just because you can’t do it today doesn’t mean you won’t be able to do it ever. When I first moved to MA, I asked the Lord why I was the only one in my family who couldn’t write. Now I write almost every day. Trust that if the Lord put it in your heart, He has every intention of fulfilling it when you are ready in His timing, not yours.
God’s steadfast love will endure forever. We talked about this on Monday’s episode. God couldn’t love you any more than He does right now. He loves you completely and perfectly in every moment of your life. Actually, probably before you were even born and long after you are gone from this world. The verse says His love endures forever. Not just for a little bit, not just when you are doing and saying the right thing, not when you are a good boy or girl, forever. Like forever forever. Like never-ending. It is always there. So, when you feel like He has abandoned you or left you in this mess alone, remind yourself that His love endures forever. He is still loving you through all of this! Keep leaning into Him because He has not abandoned you and He knows the exact right second to pull you up out of this fire.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening. Lord, help us to be patient and wait for you to heal us. Please help us to continue to trust that a healing is coming. Please help us to believe you will fulfill the purpose you have for our lives. Please help us to feel your love, as sometimes it feels so far away. Please help us to believe that your love endures forever. Please help us, Lord!! We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Remember to CLICK HERE for all the retreat information. I promise it will be an amazing time, and you will love it. People are always nervous to go on a retreat; however, I have yet to meet a single person who regrets going. The enemy will try to tell you all the reasons why you shouldn’t go because he knows how powerful it will be for you. I look forward to seeing everyone on Monday. Remember how much Jesus loves you and so do I! You are loved!! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in January 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “During my greatest trials, the word was all I needed. It defeated the devil. Despite how hungry and thirsty I was, the word rescued me. When you speak it out loud, my angels gear up to come to your aid. Use it in your daily lives. Always speak it. There is power in the word.”
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Godly Friends Speak Truth, Even When It's Hard
Ephesians 4:15 – “ Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ.”
On Tuesday, I talked about Godly friendships and how they are faithful. Today I want to talk about another character trait of a Godly friendship. It is Honesty in Love: Godly friends speak truth—even when it’s hard. This is something that can be difficult for all of us. Well, maybe not all of us. We all know at least one person who does not have a problem saying that thing that needs to be said. However, for many, it is hard. I can think of at least two ways this could be hard. First, we don't want to hurt someone's feelings, so we refrain from telling them the truth. Second, we do tell them the truth, but we don't do it with love.
I struggle with the first one. I don't want to hurt someone, and so I don’t always say the thing I know I should say. Even though I am coming from a place of love, this is not helping my friends or my loved ones. For instance, it might be not very comfortable for them if you tell them they have spinach in their teeth. However, how much more embarrassed do you think they will feel if they find out by looking in the mirror at the end of the night? Also, sometimes we can see things about what others are doing that they can’t know because they are too close to the situation.
You might not want to tell a friend what you see in the way they are acting, but they might not realize how they are sounding or the effect of what they are doing. Sometimes, we are blind to the impact of our actions. Sometimes we can’t see that the job is wrong for us because we are so excited about it. Our emotions can cloud our judgment, and it is helpful if someone who is not emotionally involved can help us see what we can’t see.
Ephesians 4:15 tells us that we need to speak the truth in love so that we can grow, and our friendships can grow as well. I remember I felt embarrassed to tell a classmate in high school that her period had leaked through her pants. I thought she might be upset with me or I would embarrass her. However, looking back now, I am sure she was much more embarrassed walking through the hallways like that. If I had spoken up, she could have gotten a change of clothes before walking through the hallways, as we were in gym class when I noticed.
We do our friends and anyone we interact with a disservice when we are not honest with them. If we want Godly friendships, then we need to be a reflection of Christ to all those we meet. Jesus told people the truth, and yet he did it without judging them or condemning them. I do not think it is our job to go up to everyone we know and tell them when they are doing something God doesn’t agree with. I am not someone who believes that nagging our children will get them to do the things we want them to do. This is not what I am talking about.
However, if you have Godly friends and you are all trying to point each other to God and help each other be holy, and you see that one of your friends is doing something that could hurt their relationship with God, you can tell them with love. It doesn’t have to, and shouldn’t be in a way that hurts them or makes them feel shame. It can simply be a gentle shift in another direction.
I recall a story my mentor shared about when her friends came to visit. She went to pick them up at the airport and couldn’t wait to tell them all about the fight she had gotten into with her husband that morning. She was ready for them to join in and agree that she was right and he was wrong. However, they had a Godly Friendship. Instead of joining in with her in talking badly about her husband and agreeing that she was right and he was the worst. Her friends gently reminded her about her commitment to him and to the Lord. They reminded her of the kind of relationship she wanted to have. They asked her which was more important, her relationship or her need to be right?
They were not mean; they were not calling her out or condemning her for talking badly about her husband. They were just reminding her of the person she wanted to be. That is a great example of Godly friends. If you have a close relationship with your friends, then even though they may say something that might sting a bit, you know it is coming from a place of love, and that makes it easier to hear.
We all know those people who can’t wait to tell you what you are doing wrong. Their goal is not to try to help you get to Heaven. Their goal is to act like they are better than you or to make themselves feel better. If you have people in your life like this, they are not acting like Godly friends. Jesus had every right to act as if He were better than everyone else because He truly was. However, He never did. He washed the feet of his friends. If your friends are acting as if they are better than you, then they are not reflecting Christ to you.
I still remember when I was going through a hard time with my husband, I would think about how there were some things I didn’t feel I could talk to him about. Or there were some things I would be embarrassed to do in front of him. Then, one day, I got to thinking about it. This is the man that I chose to spend the rest of my life with. He should be the person I trust above all else. I realized that I should be the most confident around him because he chose to spend the rest of his life with me, too. He loved me, and if I couldn’t be myself around him, who could I be myself around?
These same principles should also apply to your Godly Friendships. You should be able to be yourself around them and know that they will love you anyway. You should be able to tell them the truth and know that even if they don’t like it, they will still love you for being honest. They will be grateful that you felt you could be honest with them. Speak the truth, and always do it with love!!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening. Lord, please help us to examine our friendships and see if those friendships are honoring you. Please help us identify any friendships that we need to work on and any that we should let go of. Lord, please help us to be a Godly friend. Please help us to be a reflection of you to all we meet. Please help us to show more love and acceptance than judgment. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. 7 more weeks until my retreat. It may be the last retreat in this beautiful location. You won’t want to miss out! It will be held at the Holy Cross Retreat House in Easton, MA. It is only $200 for one night’s accommodations, 5 meals, retreat talks, and fellowship! CLICK HERE to see all the details. I hope you can join us. It will be an amazing weekend!! I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. Remember how much Jesus loves you, just as you are,
and know that I love you too! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in January 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “The devil would bind you if he could. But you all have the power of my word. Use it like I did in the desert.”
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Today’s witnesses are from a website called Ashandpri.com. (CLICK HERE for article) The article where I found these miracles is called 10 Real-Life Miracles in the 21st Century That Will Have You Believing in a Higher Power. The article is written by Annika Stepanov. I put a link to the article in the show notes, and I invite you to check it out. I hope you enjoy hearing about these miracles as much as I did.
In 2003, the city of Los Angeles, California, bore witness to an extraordinary event that left medical professionals astounded and the faithful rejoicing. Dafne Gutierrez, a young girl diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of leukemia, stood at the precipice of a dire prognosis. Her family turned to faith, seeking solace and healing through prayer. However, it was an unexpected visit from none other than Pope John Paul II that would become the catalyst for an astonishing turn of events. After the Pope’s visit and a continuation of fervent prayers, Dafne experienced an unexpected and complete remission of her illness. Many regarded this healing as a divine intervention, a testament to the profound impact of faith on the human condition.
On October 13, 2010, the world held its breath as the story of thirty-three miners trapped deep underground in the San José Mine in Copiapó, Chile, unfolded. A devastating mine collapse had left them entombed for an astonishing 69 days. As rescuers worked tirelessly to reach the miners, the world watched in collective hope and prayer. When the day of rescue finally arrived, the successful extraction of all thirty-three miners was hailed as nothing short of miraculous. The “Miracle at the San José Mine” not only showcased the resilience of the human spirit but also left many believing that divine intervention played a pivotal role in the miners’ survival and ultimate rescue.
In 2007, in the Indian city of Aligarh, a heart-wrenching tragedy transformed into a miraculous event that defied medical explanation. A newborn baby, declared lifeless by medical professionals, was prepared for her funeral procession. As the grieving family carried her lifeless body to the cremation ground, an astonishing turn of events occurred. The baby reportedly came back to life, drawing gasps of amazement and disbelief from the mourners. This astounding occurrence left many to consider it a miracle and an affirmation of the mysteries of life and death.
In 2009, the city of Palermo in Italy bore witness to a miraculous event intertwined with the fight against organized crime. Lucia Borsellino, the daughter of a prominent anti-Mafia judge, faced a grim diagnosis—she was stricken with a rare and highly aggressive form of cancer. Desperate for a lifeline, her family turned to faith and embarked on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint Pio, a revered figure associated with miraculous healings. What followed was nothing short of remarkable—Lucia experienced a miraculous remission, leaving medical experts and the faithful alike awestruck. This event, occurring in the shadow of the fight against the Mafia, was seen by many as a symbol of hope and a divine intervention in the face of darkness.
In the year 2005, the city of Aix-en-Provence in France became the backdrop for a miracle that would have profound implications. Sr. Marie Simon-Pierre, a French nun, faced a debilitating and incurable ailment—Parkinson’s disease. Her prayers and devotion led her to seek solace and healing through the intercession of Pope John Paul II, who himself had battled Parkinson’s. In an extraordinary turn of events, Sr. Marie Simon-Pierre claimed to have been miraculously cured of her ailment. Her healing played a pivotal role in the eventual canonization of Pope John Paul II, sparking discussions about the mysteries of faith and divine intervention.
In 2010, the devastating earthquake that struck Port-au-Prince, Haiti, left unimaginable destruction and loss in its wake. Amid the rubble and heartbreak, a remarkable story emerged—one of a young Haitian orphan named Kiki. Trapped for an astonishing eight days under the debris of a collapsed building, Kiki’s survival seemed miraculous. Her rescue, against all odds, was hailed as a beacon of hope amidst the tragedy, prompting discussions of divine protection and the resilience of the human spirit.
The city of Naples, Italy, is known for its rich history and cultural heritage, but it also became the site of a remarkable healing in 2008. Anna Santaniello, a woman grappling with multiple sclerosis, turned to faith and embarked on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint Pio in San Giovanni Rotondo. What followed was an unexpected and dramatic improvement in her condition. Anna Santaniello claimed to have experienced miraculous healing, leaving many to attribute her recovery to divine intervention and underscoring the profound connection between faith and healing.
In 2015, the city of Dallas, Texas, became the backdrop for a modern-day miracle that defied the odds of medical science. A couple struggling with infertility faced daunting challenges on their journey to parenthood. They turned to prayer and embarked on a pilgrimage to a religious shrine, seeking divine intervention. Their faith was rewarded with a natural conception, a joyous occurrence that left them and many others believing in the extraordinary power of faith and the miraculous.
The city of Minneapolis, Minnesota, witnessed a phenomenon in 2006 that left many contemplating the mysteries of faith and preservation. A fire engulfed a mosque, reducing it to ashes, and the devastation was apparent. However, amid the charred remains, a Quran was discovered remarkably intact and unburned. This event was widely regarded as a miraculous preservation of the holy book, prompting reflections on the sanctity of faith and the unexplained forces that shape our world.
In 2019, the lush and challenging wilderness of Maui, Hawaii, became the stage for a modern-day survival tale that captured the world’s attention. Amanda Eller, a hiker, went missing in the rugged terrain for an astonishing 17 days. Her disappearance and the subsequent search efforts transfixed a global audience. When Amanda was found alive, despite the harsh conditions and prolonged exposure, many hailed her rescue as a miracle. This remarkable event highlighted the extraordinary resilience of the human spirit and prompted discussions about faith, hope, and the enduring power of the miraculous.
I am grateful to the people who run this website and all others who let us know about the miracles that are going on in the world. Many times we can think that miracles happened when Jesus was alive, but they are not happening today, and this is not true. Miracles are happening every day, all around us. We just aren’t seeing them. If we look for miracles, we will see them!
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Godly Friends Are Faithful
Proverbs 17:17 “Friends love through all kinds of weather, and families stick together in all kinds of trouble.”
The theme for this month’s mentoring is Godly Friendships. I wanted to share with you that one of the characteristics of a Godly Friend is Faithfulness. Today’s scripture states, “Friends love through all kinds of weather, and families stick together in all kinds of trouble.” The main point of this scripture is that true friends remain loyal to you through every season. If you have a Godly Friend, they are faithful. I am guessing that we have all had friends whom we thought were really good friends, and then we found out that they were talking about us when we were not around, or they were there in the good times, but not there when we really needed them.
I remember reading this somewhere once, and I thought it was so true. It said that you should be careful about talking with your friends about someone who isn’t there, because if they talk about them when they aren’t there, then why wouldn’t they talk about you when you aren’t there? Additionally, if you are the one initiating the conversation, they may not trust you because they might think you're talking about them when they’re not there. Gossip is not good. It destroys friendships; it does not bring people closer. If you have friends who enjoy gossiping, that is not a Godly friendship. Or, that part of it is not Godly anyway. I have some friends who are wonderful people and they do help me become more holy. However, we are also human so we can get sucked into gossiping occasionally. The difference is that we notice it and we remind ourselves that is not who we want to be. That is not who God wants us to be.
There is a significant difference between sharing information with people out of concern and wanting them to pray for that person, and gossiping. The main difference is your motive. Why are you saying something about someone? Are you saying it because you care about that person and want to help them, or are you saying something because you want to feel superior to that person, or you want to be the one to contribute some gossip to the group? I have realized that even if you think you are doing a good thing by sharing something with others so that they can pray for that person, sometimes it is better to ask them to pray for a private intention. God knows what the person needs, and it is not your story to tell.
Another way to determine if you have Godly friends is to see if they are there for you during all seasons, as the verse suggests. Sometimes we can have friends who love to hang out when things in our lives are going really well. They want to go out and have a good time. They want to go to dinner or drinks and talk about how great things are. However, when things aren’t going so well, they don’t want to be there to listen. They are not calling you when you are sick or dropping soup off. When things are tough, they hang out with their other friends who are doing well.
Also, when things are going well for them, they can’t wait to tell you about it. They brag about all the good that is happening in their life while you are suffering in your life. Godly friends will pick you up when you are down. They will continually point you back to God. Godly friends will meet you where you are at, they will comfort you when you are struggling, and they will love you too much to let you stay there.
It is not a Godly friendship to sit and complain about everything together. I am not saying you always have to be positive; there are times when you can lament your situation. However, Godly friends will help pull you out of the negative mindset instead of joining you in it. They will listen to your problems and then remind you of how great our God is. They will pray with you and for you. They will remind you of all that God has done in the past and will do again. God is the same yesterday, today, and always. (Hebrews 13:8) If He did it for those who came before us, He will do it for us too!
Godly friends will also help you out when you need something. They will offer you a ride to the airport or to work. They will help out when you are sick by bringing food over or watching the kids so you can go to the hospital. There are many ways that friends can help out when you are in need. Something else that is really nice with Godly friends is that they won’t wait for an invitation. They won’t wait until you ask them to bring a meal over. They are the first ones to offer. They will also sometimes drop by with it. They won’t ask because they know you won’t want to be a bother, so you would say no even though you could really use the help.
I had a friend when we moved to Germany that we had known from a previous base we were stationed at. My friend was really struggling with the move to Germany. She had so much to do, and her husband had to have a minor surgery right when we got there. It wasn’t a bad surgery, but he couldn’t do any lifting. This meant she had to do most of the unpacking. She was tired, and her youngest was about 2-3 years old, so they were right in the thick of toddler years. She was exhausted from the move and from having two young kids. I called one day to see if she wanted to take the kids out somewhere, as I had three little ones at the time, too.
She broke down. She was crying and tired and said she couldn’t go anywhere because she was so overwhelmed. Luckily, it was a weekend, and Tony was home, so he stayed with our boys, and I went over to her house to watch her kids while she took a nap. We were good friends, so she knew I wasn’t going to judge that her house wasn’t completely unpacked yet. She knew I wasn’t going to judge her for needing a nap. She would have never asked me to do that, and yet she so needed it and was so grateful when she woke up and felt a bit more refreshed.
We are called to be a reflection of Christ to our friends, and we are called to find others who will reflect Christ back to us. So, when you are wondering if you are in a Godly friendship, you can ask yourself, “Is this person a reflection of God?” Another great question to ask is, “When I am with this person, am I a reflection of God?” Because sometimes, if it is not a Godly friendship, then they might bring out the worst in you, instead of the best. I have definitely had friendships where they brought out the worst in me. I wanted to join in their conversations, so I needed to have something negative to say about everything. That was not a Godly friendship. Godly friendships always point you back to God!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode. Lord, help us to find Godly friends. We know you did not create us to be alone, so please help put the right people in our path. Please help us to know whether someone is a Godly friend. Please help us stay away from those who will just hurt us—those who will drag us down instead of lifting us up. Lord, point us to the friends who will help us grow in holiness, and we can help them grow too! We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. For more information on Godly Friendships, you can join the mentoring session on Zoom every Tuesday at 8 PM Eastern Time. There is a link in the show notes, check it out! I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day.
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in January 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, "I am the master. I know all. I know what is best to give each one of you. I only ask that you open the door of your heart so that you may receive all my goodness, all that is good, all my understanding, but you need only open your heart.”
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God Couldn't Love You Anymore Than He Does Right Now!
Titus 3:4-5 “But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy.”
Today I want to share with you a song that I heard this weekend. I was driving home from spending time with some of my family, and this song came on. It stuck with me, and I wanted to share it with you. What I heard from the Lord was that we need to focus on His love. Even after all these podcast episodes and all these years of people sharing their witness on Witness Wednesday, it is still hard for some of us to fathom the love that God has for us. We know He loves us on some level, but thinking about how much he loves us is not something we do.
Often, we let negative thoughts overwhelm the positive ones. We can start to let the way the world views love creep into our thoughts about how God loves us. We can begin to think that God’s love is based on our performance, because most worldly love is. We can start to believe that God’s love is based on our behavior, because we have been taught from an early age that we are loved when we are good and when we are not causing trouble.
This song reminds us that God loves us for who we are, not what we do or how we behave. It reminds us that even when we feel unworthy, God still loves us. It reminds us that no matter how crappy we feel or how bad we think we are, or how many times we have messed up, God could not love us any more than He does right now. God loves you fully and completely before you are even born and will always love you perfectly, no matter what you do. It doesn’t matter if you feel you deserve it or not. God will still love you perfectly. Always! Let me share the lyrics of the song titled, “Any More” by Cain.
1st Verse:
You got a voice in your head
The same old guilt and regret
You heard a thousand times before
After the choices you’ve made
You’re waiting for me to say
I couldn’t love you anymore
Is this you? Are you just waiting for the Lord to say that He doesn’t love you anymore? Have you been expecting it for a while now? Are you sure that with all you have done, the number of times you have turned away or messed up, He surely has given up on you. He has decided He doesn’t love you anymore, it is just too much work loving you. That is something many of us think. It’s too hard to love us, we are too much and God has said enough is enough. If this is what you think, listen to the rest of this song.
The Pre-Chorus says:
The enemy has lied to you
But listen to me, here’s the truth
Chorus:
I couldn’t love you any more
Than I do right now
There’s nowhere I wouldn’t go
To get to you my child
Take a look at the cross
Then you’ll know it for sure
I couldn’t lovе you
I couldn’t love you any more
Any more
Any morе
Than I do right now
Any more
Any more
That is pretty amazing, don’t you think? If you think this is just a song and it doesn’t mean anything, let me remind you of the verse above. “But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy.” God did not save us because of anything we did or anything we deserved. He saved us because of His love and His mercy. God loves us. He loves you. He loves you more than you can even imagine. He couldn’t love you any more than He already does, than He always has. God’s love is unchanging. Our human love tends to be fickle. We may love someone more when they are being kind to us, or not love them as much when they are being brats to us. However, God’s love is not like our love. God loves us with a perfect love. He loves us with a truly unconditional love that is unchanging, no matter what we do or do not do.
The song goes on to say:
2 Verse:
When the sin and the shame
Try to lock you away
My grace is breaking down the door
Yeah
You’re the one that I’m running after
You’re mine, and you matter
Your life’s worth dying for
The Lord is telling us in this song that we don’t have to be stuck in sin and shame. God’s grace is breaking down the door to sin and shame. We just have to let Him. I love the next line because I think it is something we don’t think of often. It says, “You’re the one that I’m running after.” It is hard for many of us to believe that God would be running after us. I have heard this in many songs, and I love the imagery. It reminds me of the story of the Prodigal Son from the Bible. The father sees his son when his son is still a long way off, and he goes running to his son. The head of the household back in that day and time would not run. It would not have been proper. Yet, this father did not care. He saw his son, and he ran to him.
That is what our Heavenly Father does for us as well. He not only runs to us when He sees us coming, but He runs after us when we are going in the other direction. He runs after us to save us from ourselves and to save us from this world. God never stops loving you. He is always loving you, protecting you, and wanting you to come back home, no matter how far you've strayed or how long you've been gone.
The last verse of the song says:
3 Verse:
The past doesn’t own you anymore
The grave doesn’t hold you anymore
Yeah
I say that you’re worth dying for
And I couldn’t love you anymore
This verse reminds us of three very powerful things. First, it says your past doesn’t own you anymore. This is a fact. Jesus died on the cross for our sins, forever defeating the evil in this world. However, we have to live in this truth. We have to believe it. We have to refuse to let the enemy hold us hostage with our past. God has forgiven you; now you have to forgive yourself and move forward, move past it. If your past is full of trauma or if really bad things happened to you, then you may need therapy to help you move past that trauma. I promise you, though, if you put in the work, there is freedom beyond your past. You don’t have to let it keep you stuck anymore. Your past doesn’t have to own you anymore. There is a way out, and that way is Jesus!
Next, it says the grave doesn’t hold you anymore. You are not stuck in the grave you have dug. Jesus died so our sins would be forgiven and we would have eternal life. Some of us are walking around as if we have a death sentence on our hands. We are acting as if we are already dead. You are not. God is life, not death. That grave you think you are in is just an illusion. God can save you; He has saved you. You just have to accept his help and then walk right out of that grave.
The last important thing that this song reminds us of is that “We are worth dying for.” We often say we are not worthy. However, the creator of the entire universe has sent His only son to die on the cross for you. If God Almighty says that we are worth dying for, who are we to argue? We are not worthy because of anything we did or said. We are worthy because we are made in the image of the one true king and because Jesus made us worthy when he took all of our sins to the cross with him. Believe that and you will start to live with more freedom.
I pray you hear this episode today and you allow yourself to take it all in. I pray you allow yourself to feel God's love and believe that He couldn’t love you any more than He does right now. You, yes you, are incredibly special to the Lord, and He loves you so much. He knows all you are going through, and He is right there by your side, loving you through it all. Even if you can't see why He would love you, it doesn’t change the fact that HE does.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening. Lord, thank you for loving us so perfectly. Thank you for loving us even though we might not feel like we deserve it. Thank you for hanging in there and loving us in even our worst moments. Thank you for the times when you laughed with us and cried with us. Thank you for believing in us when I don’t believe in ourselves. Lord, please help us to feel your love more. Help us to truly believe in our hearts that you love us no matter what. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. There are just six more weeks to sign up for my retreat. It is October 11-12, and it is in Easton, MA. The theme is Identity, and it is going to be a great weekend. If you have never gone on a retreat before, I want to encourage you to give it a try. It can be scary to do something you haven’t done before, but I promise you will not regret it. It will be so life-giving. It will be that thing that you didn't even know you needed, but you did. CLICK HERE for all the information and to sign up. I look forward to seeing you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in January 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I knock at the door of your heart, my children. Will you open the door for me? Will you accept the new wine that I am offering you? Will you also be my new skins that will hold my goodness, my joy, my hope, everything that is good? I want you to hold it so that you may share it with the world.”
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God’s Love For Us
Ephesians 3:16-19 “I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”
I love this verse. I probably say that about a lot of these verses. I think when I am reading through the whole Bible, one chapter at a time, I miss a lot of the information that is contained in each verse. I get the idea of the chapter, and I understand the lesson and the main things I am supposed to learn, and yet even as I write this, I am not sure I do get all the things I am supposed to learn, as it seems like there is so much in each verse. I am really enjoying taking a look at each verse or a couple of verses individually and trying to see what they are telling us and how they apply to our lives.
I think this verse is particularly special, as I read it today, as I have a friend who is struggling with inner strength. Her situation is so difficult right now, and she is trying so hard to be the strong one. She was trying to hold it together for her family. I bet if you are a parent, you find yourself doing this a lot. We feel all the weight of the family on our shoulders. No matter if you are a mom or a dad, you feel the weight. We try to stay strong because we feel that if we fall apart, our family will fall apart. We stay strong because we want our kids to feel secure and know that we have it all together. We want them to know we are there for them. We all do this; you are not alone.
My friend said something today that made me think, if she is feeling this way, maybe others are too. Then, when I read this verse, I thought it could help me explain why we don’t need to feel this way. My friend said she tries to stay strong because she doesn’t want God to be disappointed in her. I am guessing that she is not the only one of us who feels this way. It can be tough because we know that we have a lot to be grateful for, and we don’t want God to think we are ungrateful for all the things that are going right. We love God and we want to please Him. We want to do what we can to make Him happy. He is our Heavenly Father, and it makes sense that we don’t want to disappoint Him.
My first thought was that we can’t disappoint Him. He loves us more than we could even imagine. However, I don’t think that is true. I think that He is probably disappointed when we sin, especially if it is something that we know better than to do and yet we do it anyway. We know how He wants us to live, and so if we are continually breaking his commandments, He probably does get disappointed with us. Short of this, I do not think He gets disappointed with us. God is the one who made us who we are. He made us with our unique personalities and all of our feelings. He knows that we are not perfect. I don’t think that He gets disappointed in us when we feel weak. God said in 2 Corinthians 12:9, “But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” God’s power is made perfect in our weakness. It is when we can admit our weakness that God can move in and give us power.
“I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.” This is a powerful statement. The Holy Spirit lives in each one of us. And God gives us power through this Spirit in our inner being. Through this power of the Holy Spirit, Christ dwells in our hearts as well. Think about that for a minute. You not only have the power of the Holy Spirit strengthening your inner being, but you also have Christ dwelling in your heart. You can handle anything that comes your way. God has you covered. He is there every step of the way. This is something that He is repeatedly telling our Prayer Group. I am there for you, in good times and in bad. I will lift you up when you fall. Lean on me in times of trouble.
When we are weak, God is not disappointed; He expects it. He knows we can’t do it all on our own, and He doesn’t want us to. He wants us to lean into Him. He wants us to ask for help. His Glory shines when we ask for help. Think about your children or your pets. What do you feel inside when they ask for help, or when they are sad? Are you disappointed or frustrated with them? No, you love them, and you would do anything to help them. This makes me think of a verse in Matthew 7:11: "If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!” In this circumstance, it would be more like “If you have compassion on your children when they are sad and feeling weak, how much more compassion would your Heavenly Father have on you?” He loves you!
The second verse from above describes this love. “And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” Did you catch it? It talks about being able to grasp how wide and long and high and deep the love of God is. I wonder if we are even capable of this? The Lord is also repeating this message over and over again to our prayer group. This is a word that was given at one of our meetings, “I love you so much. You cannot understand the depth of my love. If I let the power of my love loose and hugged you, I would crush you. My love for you is that great. It consumes you.” Can you imagine this kind of love? Think of the biggest bear hug you have received from someone, or maybe given to someone. Now times that by a million. That is how much God loves us.
I really liked this image. I think it helps me to imagine how much God loves us. It also helps me to remember that He loves us more than we are capable of loving others. You can see examples of God’s love all throughout the Bible. There were so many times when he gave grace to people who didn’t deserve it. When you read about all Jesus’ interactions with people, they were full of love. When I am struggling with thoughts that I might be letting God down, I remember this word and how much He loves me. I truly believe that He looks down on us and is so proud of us for all of our efforts. I will leave you with another word that was given at our prayer group. “My children, you strive hard to follow me. But I am asking you to simply lean into me. When doubts assail you and enemies crowd near; when your own thoughts rise in rebellion against my goodness; praise me and watch me work.”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask that you help us to feel your love today. We pray as it said in the verse that we are able to grasp how wide and long and high and deep the love of Christ is. Heavenly Father, we love you so much, and we know our love is just a fraction of how much you love us. Remind us of this, Lord. When we are struggling and we feel we are letting you down, remind us of your love. We are grateful, Lord, for all you've given us, and we know that you are with us even in the hard times. Help us lean into you. Help us to praise you, Lord, even when we're sad and even when it's difficult. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will, and in Jesus’s holy name, amen
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God Created Doctors Too!
Sirach 38:12-14 “Then give the physician his place, for the Lord created him; do not let him leave you, for you need him. There may come a time when recovery lies in the hands of physicians, for they too pray to the Lord that he grant them success in diagnosis and in healing, for the sake of preserving life.”
This week I got the opportunity to go to the beach with a few friends. I don’t often go to the beach, especially not in the middle of the week, and it was a really great time. What made this trip to the beach extra special was that we started our day at the beach with some faith sharing. The theme for mentoring this month is Godly Friendships, and so I want to take a minute to thank the Lord for these ladies. Ours truly is a Godly friendship. We pray together, we pray for each other and our families, we build each other up, we encourage each other, and we help each other become more holy. We always point each other back to Jesus.
It is so important that we all have people in our lives like this. We all need others to pray for and with us. We need people we can talk to about anything, especially our faith journey. We need people we can be open and honest with about our faith journey. Those who won’t judge us, but will encourage us and help us when we are struggling. On that beach, we each took 10 minutes or so and talked about what is going on in our faith journey. We talked about our blessings and our struggles, and then we prayed into those struggles. It really was beautiful.
While we were talking, someone mentioned this verse in Sirach. The Lord brought it to my mind this morning during Adoration, and so I thought I would share it with you. I know several people right now who are struggling with physical ailments. They have been to all the doctors, and either the doctors can’t figure out what is wrong with them, or they do know, but they haven’t come up with a suitable treatment plan. There are also some who know exactly what is wrong, but there is no human cure for it, and so they are waiting for the Lord to miraculously heal them.
Today, I want to talk to those of you who are fed up with the doctors and just want to be healed already. I know some of you are so frustrated because you have been praying for the Lord to heal you for a long time now, and you haven’t seen any fruit from those prayers. You have been asking for a miraculous healing, and those prayers seem to have gone unanswered. If this is you, then this message is definitely for you today. If you have been praying for someone who has been struggling for a very long time and has not seen answers to prayers, then this is for you, too!
The verse above says, “Then give the physician his place, for the Lord created him; do not let him leave you, for you need him. There may come a time when recovery lies in the hands of physicians, for they too pray to the Lord that he grant them success in diagnosis and in healing, for the sake of preserving life.” We would all like to be miraculously and instantaneously healed by Jesus. However, this verse is telling us that the Lord created physicians, and sometimes we need them. The verse tells us that we should not let them leave us because we need them. It says that there may come a time when recovery lies in the hands of the physicians.
I know this is not what some of you wanted to hear from the Lord today. I know many of you are frustrated with the physicians you are seeing. You are frustrated with the lack of answers, or you are frustrated with the answers they are giving you. You don’t like their plan. Some of you are also scared. You have a long history with doctors or surgeries, and you do not want to try again.
If this is you, I am so sorry. I am sorry for all your past trauma with doctors or surgeries. I am sorry for all the current pain you are experiencing or the circumstances you are facing. You may have a good reason to mistrust your doctor. I am not trying to second-guess you. If you need to find a new doctor, pray that the Lord points you to the right one. All I felt like the Lord wanted me to share with you today was that he created everything, including doctors.
I like where the verse says, “for they too pray to the Lord that he grant them succession diagnosis and in healing, for the sake of preserving life.” We tend to think we need to be for medicine and doctors or for God. Often, we put them on opposing sides, and we say that if we really believed in God, we wouldn’t need to go to the doctor because our faith would heal us. Did you know that two things can be true at the same time? For instance, you can be happy and sad at the same time. I am happy that my son is starting a new year of college. I am happy that he is going to college in Edinburgh, Scotland, and is taking advantage of this wonderful opportunity to travel, grow more independent, and get a good college education. And also I am sad because it means I will not get to see him for 3 and a half months. Both things are true.
The same is true with faith and medicine. You can have faith that God will heal you and still take that medicine, still see that doctor, still do the treatments prescribed. You don’t have to choose one or the other. I think God is reassuring us of this in Sirach 38. He wants us to know that he created doctors, and he uses doctors to heal people. We will ask others to pray over us for a healing, right? Why do we do that? We ask others to pray over us because we know that God can use anyone to heal us. He can use a priest with the anointing of the sick. He can use your mom, dad, or even a friend. He can use someone from the church or someone who has a healing charism. God can use literally anyone, or no one, to heal you. He could just heal you in your sleep without anyone praying over you. If we have enough faith to believe that God can use anyone to heal us, then why are we sad or disappointed when He uses a doctor?
It can still be a miraculous healing even if it was done through a doctor or through medicine. Go back and listen to the Witness Wednesday from yesterday, August 13th, 2025. I believe it is Witness Wednesday #172. There was a man in the article who had stage 4 cancer. It was a particularly treatment-resistant type. The doctor wanted to try a hormonal treatment along with the chemo to shrink the tumor. He took the medicine, and in three months the tumor was gone. That is still a miracle, no matter how you look at it. It doesn’t matter that it was through medicine, and it doesn’t matter that it was by a doctor. The tumor went away. Hallelujah!! God is so good!
I pray that when you hear this episode today, you stop and take a minute to thank God for the doctors and all medical professionals in this world. I pray that you thank him for your doctors, and if you think you need new ones, now is a perfect time to ask Him to bring the right doctors into your life. I also pray you cut yourself some slack and realize that you don't have to do anything to heal yourself. Just keep asking God for what you need, and I promise HE WILL PROVIDE! He always does!!
Dear heavenly Father, I ask that you be with all those listening. Lord, please come to the rescue of all those who are suffering. Lord, if you want to heal them through a doctor, please put the right doctor in their path. If you want to heal them miraculously right now, we are good with that, too! Lord, you know the plans you have for us. Please help us hold on until those good, good plans you have for us come into fruition. Lord, we love you so much, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Reminder: Click here for all the information on my retreat in October. It is going to be a great weekend! I hope you will join me. It won’t be the same without you! Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in January 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My holy and beloved children. Yes, I call you holy, for that is who you are in my eyes. You are beloved beyond anything you can imagine.”
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Today’s witnesses are from a website called ThoughtCatalog.com. (CLICK HERE for article) It is a list of several miracles that happened to different people. I do not know any of the people who wrote in with these miracles. Dr. Dakota Fox wrote the article. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.
1.) My father once was traveling along a country highway. It was early morning and he was at the front of a long line of traffic. Along his way he spotted a hitchhiker with a hiking backpack and being the kind person he was, he stopped for them and lost his place at the front of traffic. The guy seemed really friendly, dad chatted with him about his family and work, told the guy how he wanted to have a kid, the guy was super friendly and nice and supportive.
All of a sudden he asked my dad to drop him off. Dad was confused as this was right next to a field in the middle of nowhere. The guy said don’t worry about it and got out which weirded my dad out. My dad turned to leave and noticed the guy left his bag and went to let the guy know but he was gone. Nowhere to be seen. Dad says he searched for him but it made no sense where he went or how he could hide. Upon getting back in the car he looked in the bag to find it to be empty. Also weird. He decided to continue on his way and joined back in traffic. He came to the first set of lights eventually and noticed an accident had happened to the car that was behind him in the line of traffic originally and he realized had he not picked this guy up he would’ve been in that accident. That guy saved him.
2 weeks later his wife was pregnant with me. My dad still has the bag and carries it with him in his car at all times hoping to eventually run into the guy and thank him.
TLDR: dad was saved by weird guardian angel hitchhiker guy. Still has momento from occasion. Doesn’t understand what happened to this day.
2.) My wife and I tried having a baby for a couple of years with no luck. Got to the point of IVF, which is what finally worked. We both were excited that it was actually happening, and made it the point where you can see a heartbeat flicker.
Shortly after she bled to the point where she passed what looked bigger than a clot and was assumed to be the baby. We went to the doctor and they confirmed no more heartbeat, come back in a couple days to check if all passed or if surgical removal was necessary.
Started checking her out and the tech called the doctor in the room, turns out they saw flickering again that they didn’t before. Everything appeared to back in order but threatened that a miscarriage could still happen. Fast forward to 30 weeks, wife’s blood pressure rises and gets diagnosed with preeclampsia. She wasn’t allowed to leave the hospital until the baby was out.
After a week and a half they move her to a different floor because she’s stable. The morning after the move she has a seizure and an emergency c section is needed. Baby was born and taken to the NICU, which she started out strong. The second or 3rd day her lungs were collapsing and needed chest tubes to expand the lungs. 45 days later after learning to eat from a bottle she came home at 5lbs.
Now she’s almost 3 and other than being skinny you couldn’t tell what she went through other than 2 scars and respiratory colds taking a little more effect on her.
3.) My grandfather had a heart attack while driving and crashed into a tree. He was without oxygen to his brain for 25 minutes. The hospital did everything they could to revive him, actually trying to revive him for 3+ hours because it was a veterans hospital and he was a decorated green beret.
I was called to this hospital and was told he was brain dead. he was without oxygen for too long. I cried and cried, and all the while my family was around his bedside talking to him. The doctors told them that he might be able to hear them.
They were going to take him off of life support that night but my uncle for San Diego missed his flight and couldn’t come until morning so they decided to wait. Well, good thing.
A few hours later I was next to my grandpa and his hands started twitching. I called the nurse in and she told us that these were just spasms, and that its normal. The twitches kept getting more severe and more frequent.
After a while, the doctors started to get a little concerned and checked his vitals, they seemed shocked. After a while, he opened his eyes. We were all in shock. Complete disbelief. They told us he was brain dead and we were going to take him off of life support. He couldn’t talk for hours, but asked for a pen and notepad to write something. The first thing he wrote was “energizer” and “bunny”. It took him about 2 days before he could speak and now 4 years later, he is a fully functioning 62 year old man.
4.) I was 18 and driving down the 5 (freeway) towards San Diego. I was on the far right lane going about 65 and there was an old chinese driver who was going about the same speed as be on the lane to my left. There was a bunch of other cars around us going at a steady pace. He didn’t realize that I was right next to him and tried to merge into my lane, I freaked out and I swerved to my right, my car (96 Accord) broke out and I ended up doing two 360’s through 4 lanes and I stopped facing the on coming traffic.
There were absolutely no cars around me when it happened and when I stopped the cars were a really good distance from me, it was as if something pushed all of them back when my car broke out. I didn’t hit anyone and after I stopped I was shocked, took a second to catch my breath and pulled off to the right lane.
Then I bawled like a baby and called my mom.
5.) Had cancer that was slow to respond to even Red Devil chemo. The doctor switched me to Ibrance plus a hormonal drug. I took it for three months and the tumor went from being the size of a very large grapefruit to one too small to be measured. The doctors never saw anything like it.
After 3 months, I needed a refill on the hormonal drug. I called the oncology nurse, named the drug. She said it was never prescribed for me. The MD prescribed something else.
The records indicated the drug I was on was one no one gave me. But it was the combo that tamed the tumor. No one knows where that prescription came from. They were joking that well, there’s a blind study we can’t discuss.
6.) My dad was in a bad car accident around 1994 and had to walk with a cane because of herniated discs. The doctors did back surgery on him and fused part of his spine with titanium rods. He was bed ridden a good amount of the time. I was really little and believed that Jesus would heal him if we would just go to one of those places on TV I saw (Benny Hinn crusades).
My mom heard that a local church was bussing people to one of them and she called and got us seats. We were seated in the nose-bleed section and it came to the part of the night where people started walking on stage and reporting that they were healed. I looked at my dad and said “don’t you want to be healed? You should go down there.” At that time my little sister said the same thing to him (she was around 5 years old).
My dad gave my mom his cane and wobbled out of the row of seats. There were at least 6 flights of stairs to get to the bottom of the arena. My dad took the first step down without his cane and I thought he was going to fall down the stairs. He took the second step and the next thing I remember, we were racing each other down the stairs to the bottom. When we got to the bottom, a lady grabbed my dad by the shoulder and said “God told me to wait for you.”
She took his hand and lead us straight to the side of the stage. One of the ushers started asking him what God had done for him and he quickly told him what had happened. The next thing I knew we were on the stage and my dad was running back and forth with no cane (something I hadn’t seen my dad do for over 6 years at the time). The rest was a blur.
Long story short, my dad has been walking fine ever since, 16+ years. He went back to the doctors afterwards and they couldn’t explain what happened. Even though that happened when I was younger, it’s hard to not have doubts as an adult that some people are phonies when it comes to those types of church programs. At least for my dad (one confirmed case) it was 100% real. Jesus literally healed my dad and there is real life evidence to show for it. Crazy.
After all these years of listening to my dad’s homilies about the miracles that have happened in my family and all these years of participating in Witness Wednesdays, I am still surprised by the miraculous ways God works in our lives. I am not sure if I am surprised or just in awe of the miraculous ways He works. I wish everyone knew that he was still working today as He did back in the day of the apostles. If you are in need of a miracle, keep asking, keep believing, and keep hoping! Your miracle could be right around the corner!
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Live Unashamed of the Gospel of Jesus Christ
Romans 1:16-17 “ For I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written, “The one who is righteous will live by faith.”
I first read this verse in the Passion Translation this morning, and it says, “I refuse to be ashamed of the wonderful message of God's liberating power unleashed in us through Christ! For I am thrilled to preach that everyone who believes is saved – the Jew first, and then people everywhere! The gospel unveils a continual revelation of God's righteousness – a perfect righteousness given to us when we believe. And it moves us from receiving life through faith to the power of living by faith. This is what the scripture means when it says: "We are right with God through life-giving faith!”
I love how these verses emphasize that God’s power is for everyone who believes. The message we are tasked with spreading is not just for the Jewish people, or any group of people. It is for anyone who believes. This is important to remember because at times we can get very selective about who we do and do not give the message too. Sometimes we can avoid sharing the message with some people because they may not fit our idea of what a Christian should be. We might look at them and immediately judge them by what they look like or how they are dressed.We were tasked with bringing the message to every single person in all corners of the earth. It is not up to us to decide who is worthy or not worthy of hearing the word. We never know who needs to hear the Gospel.
I recall a story about a group of people in Ireland who were learning to use the evangelization tool called 'Jesus Knocking'. They were taught how to use it, and then they were sent out on the streets to knock on doors and begin telling people about Jesus. These two men, who were particularly shy, knocked on this one guy's door. When the man answered, they could see he was a biker, part of a gang, and he looked kinda scary. The first thing he did was tell them they had to come inside because he couldn’t be seen. He had a warrant out for his arrest. They were very nervous to go inside this guy’s house, but they did. They were certain that he would not want to hear what they had to say, but they asked him anyway. He said, “Sure, I will listen.” Then, when they got to the part where they asked if he wanted to have a personal encounter with Jesus, he said yes. They were so surprised.
It turns out he was very nice and that Jesus was just what he needed in his life. Once he turned his life over to Jesus, everything changed for him. A few weeks later, he happened to be in a car with fellow gang members when the car got stopped. He thought about lying about who he was so that he didn’t get arrested because he still had a warrant out for his arrest. Although now that he had found Jesus, he knew he couldn’t lie. When they asked what his name was, he told them. They looked him up in the system and said he was free to go. He has no idea what happened to the warrant, but he was so grateful to God for saving him.
The verse also says, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith.” I love to think about the power of God that we have living inside of us. However, this reminds us that the Gospel is also the power of God. I think we forget how powerful the Gospel can be. I think we can take it for granted sometimes and forget that not everyone knows how great God is. Not everyone has heard that Jesus died on the cross for their sins. Jesus loved them so much they he took every bad thing they ever did and will ever do to the cross with Him.
The amazing thing about the Gospel is that even if people have heard it before, they may hear it again, and it hits them in a different way. Maybe something they have gone through in their life has prepared them to hear it differently this time. Maybe life has been rough, and the idea that Jesus loves them and would do anything for them is exactly what they needed to hear that day. Being Catholic, we get to hear the Gospel every Sunday at Mass. The Gospel is not something new to us, and if we are honest, probably not always exciting. We can let it become mundane and ordinary if we are not careful, because we do have ready access to it, and we do hear it all the time at Mass.
However, we must never forget the power of the Gospel. When the apostles first started bringing the Gospel to all parts of the world, people were hungry for it. They were baptizing several people everywhere they went. The world is just as hungry for it today. We just don’t think to spread it because we live in a culture that seems to be open to everything except Christianity. Nowadays, we are afraid of talking about the Gospels and about Jesus because we don’t want to offend someone, or we don’t want to be attacked for our beliefs.
The time when Jesus lived, the time after he died, when the apostles were spreading the Gospel around the world, it was not a friendly place for Christians either. I mean, we might get rejected, or maybe even yelled at for trying to share the Gospel. However, the apostles were stoned to death or crucified for sharing the Gospel. Over the last 2000 years or so, there have been times when it was dangerous for your life to share the gospel. It still is in some countries.
I remember when I lived in England, we went to visit a historic house, and when we took the tour, they showed us the hidden hole in the wall where the Catholic priest would hide if the police came to search the house. In 1559, it became illegal in the United Kingdom to practice mass. It did not become legal again until 1791.
We might not live in a particularly friendly culture when it comes to sharing the Gospel, and yet, if the apostles can do it at the risk of being stoned to death, surely we can do it with the risk of rejection? There are people still in this day and age who are risking their lives to bring the Gospel to people in countries that do not allow freedom of religion. I don’t think we are all called to do that. I do believe we are all called to be an example of the Gospel to all those we meet.
We are all called to live our lives as an example of Christ and His love for us. We are meant to live out the Gospel in our day-to-day lives. You know all those parables found in the Gospels, those are to show us how to live our lives so that others will see how we live, what we have, and they will want it. I don’t mean what we have, as in possessions, I mean what we have, as in the love of God, the peace of Christ, and the power of the Holy Spirit. How are we doing with this? Are we being brave? Are we asking the Lord for a Holy Boldness so we can live our lives unashamed of the Gospel of Jesus Christ?
You all know how much I love a good song. I have had the chorus of a song going through my head this whole time, and yet I couldn’t quite make out the words. Has that ever happened to you? You know a song, and yet you can’t think of it when you want to. Well, writing that last sentence in that last paragraph finally jogged my memory. The song is called Unashamed, and it is by Matthew West. I know we are a bit on the longer side today, but I really want you to hear the lyrics.
Three brothers in a fire
Willing to die for their faith
But You were with them in the fire
And they walked out the next day
And Daniel met a lion
Because he chose to pray
But You shut the mouth of that lion
And he walked out the next day
[Pre-Chorus]
So what's gonna be said of me when it's all said and done?
Will I stand for my beliefs or will I turn around and run?
Well, let the whole world hear me say
[Chorus]
I'm unashamed
Of the gospel of Jesus Christ
And the truth that changed my life
For the name above all names
I'm unashamed
And I will live my faith out loud
Take a stand and stand my ground
For the One who took my shame
I'm unashamed
[Verse 2]
I don't answer to the crowd
I answer to a king
So the louder they shout
Oh, the louder I sing, yeah
[Pre-Chorus]
So what's gonna be said of me when it's all said and done?
Will I stand for my beliefs or will I turn around and run?
Well, let the whole world hear me say
[Chorus]
I'm unashamed
Of the gospel of Jesus Christ
And the truth that changed my life
For the name above all names
I'm unashamed
And I will live my faith out loud
Take a stand and stand my ground
For the One who took my shame
I'm unashamed
[Bridge]
At the name of Jesus
Every knee will bow
And every tongue confess
So let it start right now
Before you come back, Lord
Before the rocks cry out
I will lift my praise
Let it start right now
[Chorus]
I'm unashamed
Of the gospel of Jesus Christ
And the truth that changed my life
For the name above all names
I'm unashamed, yeah
And I will live my faith out loud
Take a stand and stand my ground
For the One who took my shame
I'm unashamed
(I'm unashamed)
Oh, I'm unashamed (I'm unashamed)
I want the world to hear me say
I'm unashamed
(I'm unashamed)
Oh, I'm unashamed
For the One who took my shame
I'm unashamed
[Outro]
Lord, I will stand for You
I tell the world about You
I'm unashamed
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all of those who are listening to this episode. Lord, you are amazing, and we are so grateful to you for all you have given us. We are grateful for the Gospel. Help us to be bold and to live out the Gospel in our lives. Help us to share the Gospel with all we meet. Please help us to be unashamed of the Gospel of Jesus Christ! Let it be said of us one day that we lived as an example of Jesus to all those we met. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. There is a link in the show notes for the upcoming retreat in October. Please check out the link and consider joining me. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in January 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I am your God and I am telling you, I am pouring down my outpouring of love and joy. I am filling you with me.”
CLICK HERE FOR 2025 RETREAT
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God Can Send An Angel
Tobit 3:16-17 “At that very moment, the prayers of both of them were heard in the glorious presence of God. 17 So Raphael was sent to heal both of them: Tobit, by removing the white films from his eyes, so that he might see God’s light with his eyes; and Sarah, daughter of Raguel, by giving her in marriage to Tobias, son of Tobit, and by setting her free from the wicked demon Asmodeus. Tobias was entitled to have her before all others who had desired to marry her. At the same time that Tobit returned from the courtyard into his house, Sarah, daughter of Raguel, came down from her upper room.”
I decided to start reading Tobit this morning. I thought I had remembered the story, but I wanted to read through it as a good refresher. There are so many little things in the various books of the bible, and you can’t remember all of them. This is why it is good to keep reading through it and to keep refreshing your memory, as there are so many good things in the Bible. Today I read about Tobit and how he was a righteous man who did not sin against the Lord, even when those around him were.
Tobit was part of a group of God’s faithful who were taken into captivity and were forced to go and live in Ninevah among foreigners. Even though Tobit was not in his own land, he still followed the ways of the Lord. He still kept as many traditions as he could. He even took time, at great cost to himself, to bury fellow brethren that the king had killed in a fit of anger. This made the king mad, and at one point, the king ordered Tobit to be put to death, and Tobit had to run, leaving his wife and child behind. The king took all his possessions but did not kill his wife and child.
Eventually, that king was killed, and Tobit’s nephew was appointed second in command to the new king. He went to bat for Tobit and got his wife and child restored to him. However, one day a Tobit was sitting outside by his wall, and the fresh droppings of a sparrow fell into his eyes, and he became blind. Tobit cried out to the Lord and asked the Lord to “command my spirit to be taken up, that I may be released from the face of the earth and become dust.” At the same time as Tobit was praying this prayer, there was a woman named Sarah who was praying a similar prayer.
Sarah had a demon that was in love with her. So, every time she got married, the demon would kill her husband before they could even spend one night together. The rumors were going around that she was killing these men. She wanted to go into her father’s upper room and hang herself. However, she was her father’s only child, so she didn’t. She did cry out to the Lord and say, “Command that I be released from the earth that I hear reproach no more.” Sound familiar. Both Tobit and Sarah wanted the Lord to release them from their situation.
Then comes today’s verse. “At that very moment, the prayers of both of them were heard in the glorious presence of God. So Raphael was sent to heal both of them: Tobit, by removing the white films from his eyes, so that he might see God’s light with his eyes; and Sarah, daughter of Raguel, by giving her in marriage to Tobias, son of Tobit, and by setting her free from the wicked demon Asmodeus. Tobias was entitled to have her before all others who had desired to marry her. At the same time that Tobit returned from the courtyard into his house, Sarah, daughter of Raguel, came down from her upper room.”
Raphael is one of the archangels. His name means "God has healed," reflecting his role as a healer and protector. God dispatched Raphael in response to Tobit and Sarah’s prayers. How amazing is that? Raphael came down to earth and appeared as a man to help Tobias find and marry Sarah, and then to help heal Tobit of his blindness. Tobit decided to tell Tobias about some money he had left in another land. He wanted Tobias to go and get the money, and he wanted to pay someone to go with Tobias to keep him safe. The archangel Raphael came down to take this job and lead Tobias where he needed to go.
Raphael leads Tobias where he needs to go and keeps him safe along the way. At one point, they stopped by a stream and a fish almost swallowed Tobias, but Raphael told him to catch the fish, and he did. Inside of this one fish was the answer to both Sarah’s & Tobit’s prayers.
I thought this was a great verse for today because it serves as a powerful reminder that God hears our prayers. He hears when we cry out to him. He not only hears our prayers but He answers them. God cared so much about Tobit and Sarah that he sent one of his most important angels down to answer their prayers. I think what struck me most about this verse is that if God did this for them, He can do this for you, too!
I know several people who are suffering from illnesses right now. They are in pain every day, and this is causing them to become depressed because they want nothing more than to go out and be a servant to God. They want to go out and help others. They want to go and evangelize to everyone. They want to shout from the rooftops about God’s love and God’s mercy. And yet they can’t because they can barely get out of bed in the morning.
I can understand how this could be so frustrating. Those I know who are suffering are like Job and Tobit. They are faithful people who love the Lord and are upright and righteous in the eyes of the Lord. So, why do they have to suffer so much? Why aren’t they getting the relief they so desperately need? I wish I had the answer to these questions. I wish I understood God’s timing and God’s plan. I wish I had some words of wisdom for all those I know who are waiting for this miracle that God has promised them. Some of them had talked to the Lord, and He had said they would be healed, and as amazing as that is, I am not sure how much it helps on the days when they wake up in so much pain they can’t get out of bed.
They need help now, Lord. They need to see your powerful hand in their lives. They need the strength to get up out of bed. They need to feel your love because right now, they feel abandoned. If this is you, if you are suffering with no end in sight, I want to invite you to ask the Lord to send Raphael to answer your prayers. Maybe you already have. If so, keep asking. God likes it when we are persistent. I will ask also. I will join you in your prayers for answers and for healing. We will do this together!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each person listening. Lord, we ask that you send down your angels to help all those in need. Lord, there are so many listeners who truly need your healing. There are those listening who have heard your promises and are just waiting for you to follow through on those promises. There are some who are listening who are falling deeper and deeper into a pit while they await their healing. Lord, please help them. Please heal them. Please give them the strength to wait for that healing. Lord, at the very moment you heard Tobit’s and Sarah’s prayers, you sent Raphael. Lord, we are asking today, at the very moment you hear this prayer, that you dispatch angels to heal Joanne, Suzanne, Danielle, Rosa, Bruce, Peggy, Melissa, and all those who are listening and need a healing. Lord, you are so good. You are a miracle worker, and we know you can do all things. We thank you in advance for all these healings, and we promise to give you all the Glory for these healings. Lord, I look forward to hearing from each and every one of these people about how much better they feel. If you are listening to this episode and you need a healing, I invite you to see if you have been healed. Test it out and try to do something you couldn’t do before. Take a moment and evaluate the pain. Is it less than it was before? Sometimes we are healed when we step out in faith and test something. Try to walk when we previously couldn’t. Try to see if we previously couldn’t. God is going to be working powerfully in your lives over the next few days. Please reach out to me when you receive your healing, as I do believe it is coming. You can reach me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or 860-481-0959. I can’t wait to hear your testimonies. Thank you, Lord, we love you!! We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I want to invite all of you to my retreat in October. I know we all live busy lives and this is a chance to get away. It is just two days, one overnight. It is all about our identity in Christ and will be an amazing weekend. You will leave refreshed and more firm in who you are. I hope you will join me. It is from October 11-12th. So exactly two months from today. Check out the link in the show notes or head over to my website Findingtruenorthcoaching.com. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you, just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in January 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Be still and know I am your Lord. It is in quietness that you will hear me speak to you. Where I will give you rest, I will give you comfort. I will give you guidance. I will give you peace. It is in quiet that you are to hear me.”
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Guilty Enough To Go Into The Fiery Hell?
Matthew 5:21-22 “You have heard that the ancients were told, ‘You shall not commit murder’ and ‘Whoever commits murder shall be liable to the court.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court; and whoever says to his brother, ‘You good-for-nothing,’ shall be guilty before the supreme court; and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell.”
Yesterday, the Gospel at mass was the beatitudes found in Matthew 5:1-12. While listening at Mass, I felt I was supposed to teach on those today. However, while reading them this morning, I felt the Holy Spirit nudge me to read further in the chapter. As soon as I got to these verses, I was told I could stop. What struck me about these verses is the importance of what they say and how easy it is for us to do. How easy is it for us to get mad at someone? Frequently, I would say. Mostly, I would say I get angry with people most when I am driving. I am not an angry driver and am usually pretty calm when driving.
Lately, I am still calm; however, I have noticed myself commenting on other drivers. It seems that people are driving worse and worse as the days go by. However, it could just be that I am getting old and less patient. I am not sure. However, I have noticed lately when I am driving, and someone cuts me off or drives in and out of the lanes, I think they are driving like an idiot. Sometimes, I might even say they are an idiot. This is exactly what I was thinking of this morning when I read this verse. The verse ends with, “And whoever says,
‘You fool’ shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell.”
Did you catch that? If we call someone a fool, we will be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell. I was talking to my dad one time about heaven and hell. We were discussing how Jesus died for our sins. We were discussing how some religions believe you have to believe that Jesus is our Lord and Savior and you get to go to heaven, and we were talking about how Catholics believe it is not just believing in Jesus, but it is your works as well. I have always believed that you will go to heaven if you are primarily a good person. My dad reminded me of what Mary told the little children of Fatima. She gave them a vision of all the suffering in hell, and she said to them that more people than we know are going there.
This concerned me, and I have spent some time thinking about it. Then, when I went to an Unbound training, I heard the story of the priest whose heart stopped. He died for a few minutes, and instead of going to heaven like he thought he would, he went to hell. When he saw Jesus, he was told he went there because he had unforgiveness in his heart. He wished God would punish those who had hurt him. I know we hear often that we must forgive, but I am not sure we understand what is at stake if we don’t forgive. The stakes are pretty high. The Our Father prayer says that God will forgive us as we forgive those. I think many of us don’t realize what we are saying when we say that prayer.
I believe God is highlighting these things for me because I am searching. I want to spend eternity with the Father, and God knows our thoughts. He knows our hearts. If we seek the truth, He will provide it for us. I don’t want to be writing about things on this podcast that might be leading you down the wrong path, or that might be false information. Before writing each episode, I pray that the words that come out are the Lord’s words for you, not mine. We will gain understanding if we seek to understand the Word of the Lord. The Lord said in Matthew 7:7-8 “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.”
I often think of this phrase when I am asking for something. However, the Lord reminded me of its last part: seek and you will find. Let’s start seeking the truth. Let’s take our concerns to the Lord. Not just our prayer requests but also our concerns. Concerns such as, am I loving my neighbor? Do I love you, God, with my whole heart, mind and soul? Did you know you can ask the Lord to show you how you are falling short in your life, and He will? He won’t show you in a condemning way. He will guide you in a gentle yet convicting way. He also won’t show you a hundred things at one time. I believe the Lord will show you one or two things you can work on, and when you prove to be faithful in working on those, He will show you a few more ways.
When we make a conscious effort to live the way God calls us to, I believe God rejoices in heaven. I think it makes Him so happy that we care enough about Him to stop and ask, will this bring me closer to the Lord or further away from Him? A few months ago, I was talking with my mother-in-law about whether we would go to heaven. She had a conversation with a friend, and they discussed what it takes to get into heaven, like my conversation with my dad. Actually that is why I was having the conversations with my dad. He is a deacon in the Catholic Church, so if I have questions on theology or what the Church says, I ask him. I also talked with a friend from Encounter Ministries, and she said she had just had a conversation with God about this the other day. Isn’t it funny how we tend to go to books, friends, or religious leaders, and my friend goes straight to the source?
She said she felt the Lord told her we were asking the wrong question. The question shouldn’t be, “Am I going to Heaven.” The question should be, “Do I love God.” This might seem like an easy question. Of course, I love God. Yet, do our actions show that we love God? If we love God, then we need to love each other. Jesus is inside each one of us. At Bible study this week, someone said they were listening to a talk, I am not sure who the talk was by, and the speaker said there are not two great commandments. There is only one. He said the two listed in the Gospels, Love the Lord your God with your whole heart, mind, and soul and love your neighbor as yourself, are actually one commandment.
He went on to explain they are equal to each other. Picture you have a math equation. 2 + 3 = 5 or 4 + 3 = 7. The speaker explained that if we love the Lord our God with our whole heart, mind, and soul, we will also love our neighbor. If we love our neighbor as we love ourselves, we will also love our God. We can’t do one without doing the other. If we attempt to do one without the other, we fall short. We are not truly loving God if we are treating His children with hatred and unforgiveness. Think about a sibling or a friend who has children, and you really don’t like how the children behave. Maybe you think they are spoiled brats. Are you loving your sibling well when you feel evil thoughts about their child? Are you loving your parents well when you are treating your siblings poorly?
I think the Lord is slowly revealing what is most important to Him. I know for sure that forgiveness is so essential, and this keeps getting confirmed the more and more I learn. Now that I know that deep in my soul, I believe he is moving on to the next thing: kindness and how we treat his beloved children. We can’t genuinely love Him if we are treating His children poorly. What I love about this verse is that it breaks it down so specifically. I don’t love what it says, as it is hard to hear. However, I would rather listen to it now and have the chance to change my ways than not hear it and inadvertently end up in a place I definitely don’t want to be for all eternity. Let me leave you with the Lord’s words today. I know it is a hard teaching, and it will take time to stop doing it. I also know we can stop doing it if we rely on the Lord to help us. All we need to do is say, Yes, Lord, come in and transform my heart and mind. Lord, I need you. Please give me the strength to stop doing these things. The Lord’s power is made perfect in our weakness. We have to humble ourselves and ask for help. Listen to these words and ask the Lord to let these words change your heart.
“You have heard that the ancients were told, ‘You shall not commit murder’ and ‘Whoever commits murder shall be liable to the court.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court; and whoever says to his brother, ‘You good-for-nothing,’ shall be guilty before the supreme court; and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell.”
Dear Lord, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, thank you for caring so much about us. You are willing to tell us what we don’t want to hear. Lord, help us to change our ways. Lord, help us to understand the gravity of our actions. We think it is no big deal to call someone an idiot, and yet you are saying we will be guilty enough to go to hell. Lord, help us change. We want to spend eternity with you. That is all we want, which is most important to us. Help us, Lord. We love you very much and ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. My new coaching program starts in just 5 days. Make sure to go to my website and get all the details. www.walkbodlywithjesus.com I hope you will consider joining me so we can all go a little deeper in our relationship with the Lord. I know doing something new can be scary. You don’t know what to expect and aren’t sure you will like it. What if everyone else is further along on their journey? What if they know more than I do? What if you ask the wrong question? What if you hate it? All of these are everyday thoughts. First of all, we are all on our own spiritual journey. I personally love it when everyone else is further along because I learn so much from them. I have always been nervous about joining a new group, but I can honestly say I have never regretted it. Being surrounded by others who share the same beliefs and have the same desire to grow closer to the Lord is such a fantastic feeling. It is not something I can explain. It is something you have to experience for yourself. If you don’t like it, you can quit. Just because you sign up for the first month does not mean you have to stay forever. You can quit at any time. There is no long-term commitment required. You can just come and see what it is all about. If you have any questions or concerns, I am happy to answer them. catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day.
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Ask Again
Acts 9:1-6 “ Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples. He went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem. As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” “Who are you, Lord?” Saul asked. “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” he replied. “Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.”
If you are not familiar with the story of Saul I suggest you read acts chapter 9:1-19. I did not want to take up too much of your time recounting the whole story but I will summarize it later. When I was thinking of what to write about I got to thinking about how many people I talk to, that are worried about their children. They are worried because their children are not attending mass, or are no longer Catholic/Christian. They worry that they, as parents, are not making a difference in their child’s faith, or that their example is not enough. I have these same thoughts as well. I thought I would share something that I feel God pointed out to me that has given me a lot of comfort. People have always told me that if I pray for my children God will answer my prayers. And that they will come back to the church in His time, not mine. However, I still worried because I know that God gave us free will. I always thought that meant that the boys needed to at least be open to him, or maybe the needed to be looking for him in order for them to be saved. And I wondered if they would be open to Him. I wondered what would happen if they weren’t ever looking for Him. However, one day God gave me a thought, “What about Saul?”
In Acts 9:1-19, we learn about Saul. Saul was someone who was persecuting anyone who believed in Jesus. When he was on his way to another town, with the intent of finding anyone who believed in Jesus and bringing them back to Jerusalem in chains, he was blinded by a vision of Jesus. Jesus asked him why he was persecuting him. Saul was instructed to go into town and wait for someone to come and visit him. When Saul tried to open his eyes, he was blind. A disciple of God went and cured his blindness, and he was immediately baptized. This is, of course, the abbreviated version. I suggest you read the full version, as it is a great story. So, if God can completely convert Saul, who was not open to Jesus, or looking for him, but was murdering and persecuting others who believed in him. Then just think how easy it will be for God to win our children back when he decides they are ready. I hope that this can put your mind at ease at least a little. A second part to this is that sometimes I think that we get tired of asking for the same thing over and over again. We assume the answer is no because God hasn’t answered our prayer yet. However, when we read Luke 11:5-8 “And he said to them, “Suppose one of you has a friend to whom he goes at midnight and says, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, for a friend of mine has arrived at my house from a journey and I have nothing to offer him, and he says in reply from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door has already been locked and my children and I are already in bed. I cannot get up to give you anything. I tell you, if he does not get up to give him the loaves because of their friendship, he will get up to give him whatever he needs because of his persistence. I know I have talked to you before about the woman who was persistent in going to the judge and asking for justice. She did not receive it because he was kind; she received it because of her persistence. We must keep asking. God will reward our persistence. If we need to reach out and have someone else ask on our behalf when we are weak, then we should do that. However, we should not give up asking just because God hasn’t answered yet. He will in his time! I am going to read a piece of writing that beautifully illustrates the “Ask Again” idea. I first heard this on the Big Life Devotional Podcast, and then I went to Facebook and found it on her page titled Tera’s Online Christian Journey. I will put a link to her page in the show notes. To visit her Facebook Page, click here. ASK AGAIN By: Tera Elness I know, I know, you’ve already asked Him a million times. I see those eyes rolling. But today, ask Him a million and one. Yes. Ask Him AGAIN. Ask him again for that child to come home. That marriage needs to be healed. That mountain to move. Ask him again for that friendship to mend. That work to begin. That end-of-tunnel light is to appear. Ask Him again for the one who needs rescue, the one who needs healing, the one who needs new direction, new guidance, new focus. Yes. Even if that ‘one’ is you. Ask him again for what you need. For what you want. For joy in the sorrow. Help in the struggle. A sip of living-water in the heat of your schedule...and the time to just sit at the well, amen? Ask him again. Ask Him again to provide springs in your land; and while you’re at it, give thanks for that land, no matter how dry it is now, knowing He’s given it to you with good purpose. Yes. Ask him again. Ask him again to dig up the soil and plant the seeds. Ask Him again to stir up and settle, make and remake, pour out His peace that passes all understanding, because frankly, you could use a hefty dose about now. Yes. And Amen. Ask Him again for all that seems lost and all that seems nowhere, even near the city of possible...and ask Him believing He can. Yes. Ask him again. Not because you don’t think He heard you the first million times, but because you are realizing the longer you {truly} live, that persistence is a pretty strong faith-builder; not to mention how close it keeps you to Him for whom all things are possible and nothing is too hard, and because faith-based strength to persevere and closeness with your Creator is what you REALLY need. Whew. Yes. Absolutely. Ask him again. With fresh eyes and a renewed spirit and a passionate resolve that He can, and if it’s His Will...He will. And if it’s not, you will keep on asking. You will keep on seeking. You will keep on believing just like Steve Perry says. Because persistent faith is where it’s at. It fastens its gaze on hope. The hope that is always three steps {Father, Son, Holy Spirit} ahead, providing the perfect focal point. Yes. And it never disappoints. Amen. So today, bow low, look up, and ask Him AGAIN.
Dear heavenly father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, I ask that you bring peace and comfort to all of us who are worried about our children or nieces and nephews. Lord, we worry because we know how great you are, and we want so badly for our children to know this. Lord, reassure us that you were in charge and that you have claimed our children and that we don't have to worry about them. Lord, give us the strength and persistence to keep on asking even when we're tired. Lord, if we don't have the strength to keep asking, give us the wisdom to ask her friends to pray with us or for us. We love you, Lord, and we're going to keep asking because we have faith and hope in you every single day of our lives. Heavenly Father, we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus ' holy name, amen.
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Patty's Website
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Praying in the Spirit, What Does That Even Mean?
Jude 20 “But you, my delightfully loved friends, constantly and progressively build yourselves up on the foundation of your most holy faith by praying every moment in the Spirit.”
I decided to read through the book of Jude today, as it is a very short book. It is only one chapter. The author of this book begins by stating that he fully intended to write to them about our amazing salvation that we all participate in, but felt the need instead to challenge them to defend and contend for the beliefs that we cherish vigorously. He then warned them against false teachers and the fate of the apostates, and subsequently discussed Enoch’s prophecy. He ended with a call to remain faithful.
When I read the call to remain faithful, two verses jumped out at me. When I started writing this episode, the verse above immediately caught my attention. I felt that the Holy Spirit wanted me to discuss praying in the Spirit. The translation I used today is the Passion translation. It says that we are delightfully loved friends. It goes on to say that we should constantly and progressively build ourselves on the foundation of our most holy faith by praying in the Spirit at all times.
I am sure we all want to build ourselves on the foundation of faith. With a firm foundation, nothing can shake us. Nothing can knock us off course. When our feet are planted on a firm foundation, we know we will be ok, we will feel safe. So how do we get this firm foundation we so desperately want? Today’s verse says that we can pray in the Spirit all the time. Some of you may be asking, “Pray in the Spirit, what does that even mean?” Praying in the Spirit is another way to say praying in tongues.
Praying in tongues is something that many people have heard of but few people understand. Praying in tongues is when the Holy Spirit is praying through you. It is when you surrender your vocal chords to the Holy Spirit. I know this probably sounds weird to you, and if so, I get it. When I was a high schooler, I accidentally went to one of my dad’s charismatic prayer group meetings. I thought I was going to a sweet 16th birthday party, but that was in a different part of the building. When I heard them praising the Lord out loud and speaking in tongues, I thought they were all a little bit crazy. I had never heard anything like it before.
Later in life, I heard a speaker talking about how she also thought speaking in tongues was crazy. She said she would pray to God to give her all the gifts of the Holy Spirit, except that one, because that one seemed crazy and she didn’t want to be crazy or have people think she was crazy. Then life happened, and she had a really intense experience with a high schooler she was counseling at the time. She realized that she needed all the power of the Holy Spirit. She realized that it was crazy to limit God and not want all that He had to offer. God is only good. He is not going to give you a bad gift. His gifts will only build you up and bring you closer to Him. There are no bad gifts of the Holy Spirit.
Let me take a minute to explain the gift of tongues. You can receive the gift when you are baptized in the Holy Spirit, which occurs when you are baptized, when you make your confirmation, and anytime you go through a life in the Spirit seminar. There can be other times as well; these are just the most common. Sometimes you will just be overcome by the Holy Spirit and receive this gift and start speaking in tongues like the apostles on the day of Pentecost. They all started speaking in different languages so that all those in the crowd could hear what they were saying in their native tongue.
However, this is not everyone’s experience. Many people who participate in a Life in the Spirit Seminar who wish to have the gift of tongues do not receive it right away. They need to practice saying sounds that do not sound like words. This is not easy to do, as most of us are afraid of looking stupid in front of other people.
One of the ladies in the prayer group told a story about how she first learned to pray in the Spirit. The leader of her Life in the Spirit seminar had told her to practice in the shower, where no one else could hear, or down in the basement while doing laundry. She said she would go downstairs, and when the laundry was going, she would practice stringing random consonances together. During one life in the Spirit seminar, the leader described it as if you were talking to baby Jesus. You know how when we talk to babies, we always say things like goo goo gaa gaa. This is how you can practice trying to talk in the Spirit. It is not easy, as you have to surrender your voice to the Lord. Also, you have to be ok looking silly while you do it.
If you decide to give this a try at home, I want to encourage you to keep trying it even if you feel silly. You don’t have to do it all day every day, just a few minutes each day. Go somewhere private and practice saying nonsense words, or talk like a baby. For me, I just said the same thing over and over again. Ta, Ta, Ta, Ta, Ta…. I knew I wasn’t speaking in tongues for the longest time, but I was willing to keep practicing. Then, one day I was on a retreat and I told the Lord, I wasn’t going to leave the chapel until I was speaking in tongues because He had told me on a walk that He had given me the gift, so it wasn’t Him standing in my way, it was me. After saying that word over and over again for a while, something shifted, and I knew it was no longer me saying it but the Holy Spirit praying through me. It was amazing! I was so excited.
You might be asking yourself, What is the point of going through all of this just to pray in the Spirit or praying in tongues. Praying in tongues is a powerful kind of prayer. Do you ever struggle with what to say to God or what to ask God? Especially when things are really bad, or you are so far in the darkness you can’t see any light? Praying in tongues is great when you don’t know what to say. When you are praying in tongues, you don’t even know what you are saying. It is a special prayer where the Holy Spirit relays the deepest desires of your heart to the Lord in a perfect way. It is the Holy Spirit speaking directly from your heart to the Lord. Wouldn’t it be worth being a little uncomfortable and putting in a bit of work if it meant that you would be able to pray the perfect prayer to the Lord?
Romans 8:26-27 says, “ Likewise, the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.” The Holy Spirit knows what you need; He knows how to pray to God for all your needs. Why not let Him? If speaking in tongues is foreign to you, if you have heard of it but think it is weird, or you think you are not “holy” enough for that gift, I want to encourage you to bring your thoughts and feelings to the Lord. At least have a conversation with him about it. You wouldn't be listening to the podcast if you didn’t want me to help you walk more boldly in your faith, and I know this would help exponentially. Most of the gifts are for the building up of the faith of the whole community. This one is for you and your faith journey. It can help others, too, but primarily it is to help you along your faith journey. Just think about it, pray about it, and reach out if you have any other questions.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, you are amazing, and you bless us with so many gifts. Thank you! Lord, I ask that you speak directly to the hearts and minds of all those who are listening who cannot speak in tongues. I ask that you give them the courage to talk to you about it. I ask that you help them see that they have nothing to lose and everything to gain by asking for this gift. Lord, I ask that you bless all those who want this gift with it. You are a dad who gives lavishly to your children. You give us so many blessings and gifts, and we are so grateful. We love you so much, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I want to remind everyone that my retreat is just two months away, so CLICK HERE and check out all the details. I look forward to meeting you here tomorrow. I have a special witness tomorrow from Patty Schneier. She is a lifelong Catholic, housewife, and mother of three from the Archdiocese of St. Louis. She and her husband, Larry, are active members of their parish, where Patty serves as a cantor at Sunday Mass. During her 19 years of work in Catholic Radio, Patty hosted weekly radio shows, conducted countless interviews, and produced a daily podcast for Covenant Network Catholic Radio. She has been a guest on EWTN, Ave Maria Radio, Catholic Answers Live, and numerous radio affiliates across the United States. She was nice enough to share a testimony with us, and I can’t wait for you to hear it tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in January 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Have wisdom for yourselves and for those who hate you. Do not turn away from the words of my mouth. I delivered you. Walk in my wisdom.”
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Why Self-Control Is So Important!
1 Corinthians 9:25-27 “Every athlete exercises discipline in every way. They do it to win a perishable crown, but we, an imperishable one. Thus, I do not run aimlessly; I do not fight as if I were shadowboxing. No, I drive my body and train it for fear that, after having preached to others, I myself should be disqualified.”
Yesterday I was talking about the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and I mentioned the book set my mom bought me. I grabbed one of the books to get the list of gifts from it, and later, I noticed I happened to grab the Self-Control book. I don’t think that was an accident, as that is the one I probably see the least in my life. I opened it up and started reading it and found this really amazing story of self-control in it. I would like to relay that story to you before I talk about the verse above, although they are all connected.
The author Robert Strand wrote the devotion series on the Nine Fruits of the Holy Spirit. I found this story in the Self-Control book. However, it is originally from Rober Schuller’s book Move Ahead with Possibility Thinking. It is about a polio victim who required an iron lung to breathe and learned how to breathe without it, even though every muscle below his Adam's apple is paralyzed. Karl Dewayne Sudekum, through discipline, has learned how to breathe like a frog. Here's the story.
In 1953, while Carl was a lieutenant in the US Navy, he contracted polio. For six years, he could breathe only in an iron lung or on a tilt bed. Then he got mad — really angry. He decided he would breathe. He stopped the rocking motion of his bed and remembered how he used to breathe like a frog as a young boy in Nashville, Tennessee. It was a trick almost all kids knew. He would take air with his tongue and force it down his windpipe. When he exhaled, his lungs let out the air like a deflating balloon. He's been breathing this way ever since. "Science doesn't really know how it's done,” he said. "It's a two-cycle pumping action that some people can do and some people can't. Some people can whistle through their teeth, but I never could. It's like that." He could stay away from the iron lung as long as he remained awake. With his first real independence, Sudeckum decided to become an attorney.
In 1959 he entered the University of San Diego. His wife, Emerald, drove him to school and wheeled him into class. He couldn't take notes, and a tape recorder was too awkward. He simply listened and remembered. Then he was told he had diabetes. That under control, the doctors discovered an ulcer. For a year, he lived with a mysterious high fever, a reaction to medication. Still, he got his diploma and passed the bar exam.
He is practicing now and signs documents, K. D. Sudeckum. It is too much of a task to write his full name with a pen in his teeth. When he talks too long in court, his face gets very red, but it's nothing to worry about. A cold is something else. It could be fatal. So what does he do? "I don't get colds." If he falls asleep or faints while out on his own, frog breathing, he will die unless someone who knows his condition administers artificial respiration. What does he do about that? "I try to think about it as little as possible.”
Wow, there are no words to describe this man’s self-control. It makes my day seem not so bad anymore. My challenges with self-control seem so small compared to his. Yet, I still have them, and they are challenging for me. I am sure your challenges with self-control are hard for you as well. We need not compare ourselves to each other. That is not why I told you this story. I told you this story so you could see what is possible for our self-control. If he can do it, we can do it. We just have to figure out what our motivation is. His started out as anger. I am not sure if that remained the whole time or if it switched. It doesn’t matter too much. However, it is clear that something was motivating him.
This is where I think this verse can be helpful. It can be our motivation if we let it. I remember the first time this verse had a profound impact on me. Father Mike was talking about it on the Bible in a year podcast, and He was talking about the self-discipline the athletes must have to win an Olympic medal, or for that matter, even to be able to compete in the Olympics. It is an unbelievably hard training schedule. They have to exercise, practice, and watch what they eat and what they drink. It is a lot, and yet they do it because they love it, hopefully, and also because they want to win the medal. The medal that they win is a big deal. It is something to be honored and something that not many people can say they have done. The odds of winning a gold medal at the Olympics is 1 in 662,000. Yet they train, and they work hard for it.
The race that we are all running, whether we know it or not, is the one for our salvation. The stakes are so much higher, and yet our efforts are so much lower. This is not the exact wording of how Father Mike said it, but whatever he did say left me with that thought in my head. I remember thinking about this for days afterward. I wonder if we realize what is at stake. Why aren’t we trying to do all we can so that when we get to heaven, God will not say to us, as he said to those in Matthew 7:21-23? “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. On that day, many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ Then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; go away from me, you who behave lawlessly.”
Wow, that is definitely something that I never want to hear. However, am I making time to sit with Jesus every day to talk? Do I have the self-control and the self-discipline to pass up sleeping in on a Sunday morning so I can go to church? Do I have the self-control to put first things first? Why is it I can muster the self-control to work out regularly at times, and yet the self-discipline to say the rosary daily or write in my prayer journal daily escapes me? I think I need to put this verse up somewhere that I will see it daily. When I read it, my heart is convicted to do something, and yet I quickly get distracted and forget about it. How about you? Are you doing all you can do to foster your relationship with God, Jesus, and/or the Holy Spirit? Are you using self-control to help you put first things first? This is definitely something I will need to take to my prayer time, and I hope you will join me in this. I hope you will ask the Lord to show you the various ways you are struggling with self-control and then ask Him what you should do about it. He will help you out if you ask Him. I want to train as hard as an athlete does to develop my relationship with my one true King.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, please help us to develop our self-control. Help us to put first things first and help us to grow closer to you. We never want to hear the words, “I never knew you.” Lord, we want to know you. We want to be close to you, please help us. We thank you, Lord, for all the ways you are already helping us and all the time you have spent with us. We are sorry we don’t always put you first and that so often, other things get in the way. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. CLICK HERE for retreat info. I hope you will join me for an amazing weekend. It will be a time to get filled up and refreshed. If you have any questions, please reach out. I look forward to meeting you here tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I. Have a blessed day!
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You Have Authority!
Romans 12:2 “ Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.”
Last night I attended the Encounter School of Ministries Summer Intensive at the Boston Campus. If you have never attended an event from Encounter Ministries, I highly recommend checking them out. They are amazing and filled with the Holy Spirit! The summer Intensive is an overview of the curriculum for the first year. There are four quarters in a year of the Encounter School, and there are 8 weeks in each quarter. First, it starts with a quarter on Identity because you need to understand who you are in the Kingdom of God and why you have the authority that you have. The next quarter is on the prophetic word and hearing God’s voice. In the third quarter, you learn how to be God’s instrument for physical healings. In the fourth quarter, you learn all about inner healing and how to lead people to freedom.
The summer intensive is four nights, and it provides an overview of each quarter over those four nights. Last night, we were learning about identity. Who are we in the Kingdom of God? What authority do we have here on earth, and where did we get that authority? Everything we have and everything we are is a gift from God. God gave us life. He formed us, and He brought us into this world. He sent His only Son to die on a cross so that we might be free from our sins and our sinful nature.
What I would like to discuss with you today is how we use that authority, and I would like to review some scripture verses that demonstrate our call to a renewal of the mind. Let’s look at today’s scripture verse. “ Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.” This verse shows us that we need to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. What does that mean, though? How do we renew our minds?
God is the only one who can help us have a renewal of mind. God wanted to bring His kingdom down to earth, and he wants to do that through us. He doesn’t want us to sit by and watch as He does everything. He also doesn’t want us to just pray for the things we want and not do anything about them. Praying is great, and we should all be praying. And also, there are times when we can ask the Lord to allow us to be His instruments here on earth. Wouldn’t it be awesome if, instead of asking God to heal someone, you prayed for their healing and he did it through you? Did you know that Jesus gave us the authority to do things like that?
If we look at John 14:12, it says, “Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. Jesus went to be with the Father, and when He did, He asked the Father to send us the Holy Spirit to live inside of us. If you are baptized, then you have the Holy Spirit living inside of you. This means you can do the works that Jesus did and even greater works. Jesus did not perform all his miracles using his divine powers. He performed all those miracles using the power of the Holy Spirit. The same Holy Spirit that you have living inside of you.
If you don’t believe someone could do greater works than Jesus did look at Acts 5:12-15. It says, “Now many signs and wonders were done among the people through the apostles. And they were all together in Solomon’s Portico. None of the rest dared to join them, but the people held them in high esteem. Yet more than ever believers were added to the Lord, great numbers of both men and women, so that they even carried out the sick into the streets, and laid them on cots and mats, in order that Peter’s shadow might fall on some of them as he came by.” There is no record in the Bible of people being healed by Jesus’s shadow and yet they were healed when Peter’s shadow fell upon them. In Acts 19:11-12, “God did extraordinary miracles through Paul, so that when the handkerchiefs or aprons that had touched his skin were brought to the sick, their diseases left them, and the evil spirits came out of them.”
God wants to use you too! He wants us to help him bring heaven to earth. During the talk at Encounter they talked about how when Jesus did the miracle of feeding the multitudes, He didn’t pray over the bread and fish and suddenly there was this giant mound of bread and fish. The multiplication happened over and over again once the apostles started handing the food out. Jesus wanted them to partake in the miracle as well. When it says in the Bible that those who believe will do even greater works than He did, it is not just talking about the apostles. It would be easier for us if He was because then it would take the responsibility off of us. However, He is sending us all out to help bring heaven to earth. In Matthew 10:1 it says, “Then Jesus summoned his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to cure every disease and every sickness.”
It is true that Jesus did send the apostles out to go do mighty works in His name. However, we know that Jesus didn’t reserve doing these mighty works to the apostles because in Luke 10:1-2 it says, “After this the Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go. He said to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore, ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” Those 70 represent all God’s faithful. Are you baptized? Do you believe in Jesus. Then you are called to go out and help bring others into the kingdom. You have the power and authority living inside of you to carry out mighty works in Jesus’s name!
The devil doesn’t want you to know this. He wants you to believe that you are powerless. He whispers in your ear that you should leave the mighty works to those more qualified. He says you should leave the miracles up to the priests and religious brothers and sisters. He tells you that others may be able to heal but that you are not worthy. He goes on and on about how you have no power. The devil is a liar. (Side note: if you don’t know that song, The Devil is a Liar by Colton Dixon, you should definitely look it up and give it a listen). He knows all about the authority God has given you and yet he hopes that you won’t ever realize the power you have living inside of you. He will do all he can to keep you feeling stuck and powerless and unworthy.
Don’t give the devil that satisfaction of thinking he has won. Fight back. Learn more about the authority you have and then start living in it. As simple way to do this is to spend time in the Acts of the Apostles. If they could do it, so can you. There was nothing special about them other than they believed Jesus when He gave them the authority. They were brave enough to step out, even though they were scared, and give it a try. The other simple way to do this is to start talking to the Holy Spirit living inside of you. Ask the Holy Spirit to show you what authority you have. Ask Him to show you how powerfully God wants to use you.
I said earlier that God is the one who renews our minds. Allow Him to do that. Invite Him into your heart and mind and ask Him to renew them for you. You can do all things through Christ Jesus. So ask Jesus to help you become the person He wants you to be. Ask Jesus to show you what He is calling you to and how He wants to use you. Let the Lord know that even though you might be scared, you are willing and available for Him to use you as His instrument. You are more powerful than you think. Don’t come into agreement with the lies of the enemy. Live in the authority and power that God has given to you!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening. Lord, please help us to understand this authority and power that you have given us. Help us understand how to live in that authority and power. Lord, we don’t understand, and we need you to teach us and guide us. Please give us the strength to do the things you are calling us to do, even if we do it scared. We love you so much, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I will be sending info out in a newsletter about the upcoming retreat. If you are not currently receiving my newsletter, I invite you to sign up below the show notes. It is a great way to keep up to date on any offers I might have as well as some great information.
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in January 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I am your God. Surrender yourself fully to me so that I can use you in my ways. Only if you are used in my way will you become far more productive.”
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Today for Witness Wednesday, I am going to share with you what some of the people in my prayer group shared last week about how God is working in their lives. Each week, we save 10 minutes at the end to share how God is working in our lives. Some weeks we don’t have too many people sharing, but last week we had quite a few. I wanted to share them with you because they are all different. Some are big and some are small, and yet all show that God knows us, loves us, and knows what we need. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.
First up is Anna. God has gently, in the past couple of weeks, shown me a great character flaw that I didn't know I had, but I've had it all my life. But he's so gentle with me, I'm amazed. And of course, I felt really bad. I brought it to him because I knew I couldn't fix it. And I felt badly about it for a couple of weeks. And then the priest, the other day at morning mass, in his sermon, said, Don't focus on the negative, heaven knows we know how to do that. So the Lord lifted my spirit. And now I'm still trying to let it go. But anyway, he's so good. And he's so gentle with me. I hope he's as gentle with the rest of you, too.
Next, we have Mark. This was his first time at our meeting. I'd like to share something that happened a couple of weeks ago, if you don't mind. It's brief. I suffer from something called atrial fibrillation. It's a heart arrhythmia, and I go in and out of it sometimes. And they usually have to do something called a cardioversion, which is a procedure where they shock your heart. I went into it about two weeks ago, and I went into the hospital in the emergency room, and I got admitted. And I did the normal things that I’ve done every other time this has happened. The only thing I did differently was that the priest came and visited me in the morning, anointed me, and brought me communion. And I prayed the rosary and asked God to take me out of it. And the next day, my heart went back to a normal rhythm. On its own, without medical intervention. I've had this happen. I'm 52. This has happened three other times in my life. Every single time it's required medical intervention to fix except this time. And the only thing I did differently was pray and ask for God to help. Praise God. Thank you, Jesus.
Next is Nancy. I have a witness. One of the parishioners in our collaborative has leukemia. The good kind, the doctors say, but it still takes a toll. And it is still leukemia. So anyway, he and his wife were on a vacation touring Ireland, and they went to Our Lady of Knox. And they just happened to walk into the meditation chapel. And there was a little teaching by one of the sisters there. And he said that he and his wife were sitting there. And for five seconds, he says, for five seconds, I don't know where I was. It was like, just totally black, everything. I was just nowhere. I was somewhere but nowhere. And then when he came out, he said to his wife, I can't believe how good I feel. I feel 20 years younger. He touched his lymph nodes in his throat. And he said, I can't believe it. These lymph nodes that are swollen with this particular type of leukemia are not swollen. And he touched another part that’s usually swollen and it wasnt’. And he knows these parts because the doctor is always touching them. And he goes, My spleen isn't as big as it usually is, either.
So anyway, he claimed that healing from the Lord, he came home, he went to his doctor, and his doctor said, I can't believe it. Your lymph nodes aren't swollen, your spleen is down, and your blood count is good. I'd say you're in remission. He says, Well, let me tell you about this experience. And he told the doctor what happened. The doctor said, No, no, no, that can't be. However, this is very unusual; enjoy your remission. And we'll keep watching you. Anyway, He is claiming it as a gift from the Lord. We claim with him. We thank with God. Thank you, Lord.
Next up is Agnes. I’ve probably shared this before, but it just, well, I just brought it to my mind when somebody said, Bring me all your broken, even your broken toys, you know, everything broken, bring to me. Well, my son, when he was in his early teens, I mean, maybe 12. He had a 10-speed bike, and he couldn't get it to work right, I guess. I don't know anything about that. So he came into me crying. Not really crying at that point. But he said, You know, I don't have a father to help me. You've got to help me. His father died when he was five.
I said, You do have a father, you have a Holy Father. And he loves you very much. And he'll help you. And he said, How? And I said, Well, we'll just pray. Go out there and pray. And the Holy Father is your father, and he's going to help you. So he went out there, and I said, Oh, my God, what have I done? So I sat down and I prayed at the kitchen table. And I said, God, I trust in you. And I know that you are his father, and that you will help him.
And I prayed for a while. And then I just kind of went about whatever I was doing. And I happen to look out a little later, and he's riding the bike around. So, I thought Somebody came by and helped him. Praise the Lord. So when he came in later I asked, Who helped you fix your bike? He said, Oh, no, I did what you told me. I sat down, I put all the pieces around me. And I just asked my heavenly father to help me. And my son said it was as if somebody was picking up the pieces. And he said, I put it together. I didn't have anything left over. And it worked. You know, there's been so many times in my life when I really had the faith to move a mountain. And I think that was one of them. Thank you, Lord.
Next up is Carolyn. Once upon a time, when my children were little, and I was doing some teacher aid work, I guess, I took a bath and got ready and got to work, and I noticed the diamond in the middle of my engagement ring, which was a family heirloom on my husband's side, was gone.
I got back down in the bath water, but it was never found. And it was never replaced. It wasn't big, it was a quarter carat and had two side diamonds. Well, this past week, I got to the dining room table, and there on my place mat there's a ring that looks about a quarter carat, with two side diamonds are embedded in it. And it was just lying there. It's not the one I lost but looks similar.
I picked it up. I thought that it must be some kind of cheap costume jewelry that got lodged in the pillow somewhere. We got secondhand furniture, you know, whatever. I'll just see if it fits. It fits. So I showed it recently to my friend, Terry. Oh, that's definitely a diamond.
Agnes then shared another story with us. My daughter, when she was, I don't know how old she was, maybe six or seven. She was quite young. She came home, and she wanted me to get her a wall-to-wall carpet for her bedroom. And we have beautiful hardwood floors because the house was only two years old. But she wanted a wall-to-wall carpet, which I couldn't afford. I mean, I was on a very, very strict budget, being a widow with two little kids.
I didn't want to say no, because I had to say no to so many things. Well, I don't know what came over me, but I gave her a yardstick, a piece of paper, and a pencil. I said, Go in and measure your room, knowing she couldn't do it. But I did that anyway. And I said, well, then we'll figure out if we can get it or not. So she went into a room, she wasn't there very long, when she came out, and gave everything back. She said, I'm going to go out and play for a while. So she went out to play. And then later that night, when she was getting ready for bed, she was quiet.
And she came running out to me. She said, You'll never believe what just happened. And she said, I knew I had forgotten to do something very important today. And so I asked God to help me to remember. And she had a little Good News for Modern Man, a little book of just the Gospels. She said, I opened it up. And this is what I opened it to. And it was in Revelations. And it said, and the angel took the golden measuring stick to measure the city, the gates, and the walls. She remembered then what she had forgotten, but that was it. She never asked about the carpet again.
I hope you enjoyed these as much as I did. God is working in all of our lives. If you aren’t seeing how He is working in your life, then you need to look closer. I promise you, He is doing amazing things in your life. Thank you to all of those who shared at the prayer group this week and every week. It is an awesome group of people. If you would like more info on how you can join us on Thursday mornings in person or on Zoom, please email catholiccharismaticprayergroup@gmail.com. Or you can just reach out to me with the link below, and I can send you the Zoom link. I invite you to join us. You will experience a peace you may not have felt before.
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Is God Your First Choice or Last Resort?
Matthew 8:23-27 “And when he got into the boat, his disciples followed him. A wind storm arose on the sea, so great that the boat was being swamped by the waves, but he was asleep. And they went and woke him up, saying, “Lord, save us! We are perishing!” And he said to them, “Why are you afraid, you of little faith?” Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the sea; and there was a dead calm. They were amazed, saying, “What sort of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him?”
This is an interesting story. Jesus was in the boat with all of his disciples, and there was a windstorm. The boat was being swamped by waves, and everyone on it was afraid. Everyone except Jesus was asleep. When I hear this story, I wonder why Jesus was asleep. I mean, I am sure He was tired as He was teaching so much. Everywhere He went, He was swarmed by people who wanted to hear Him teach and wanted Him to heal themselves and their loved ones. I guess it makes sense that He would be asleep.
I guess I am more wondering how He could sleep through all the craziness of the storm. I am sure it was probably loud on the boat with the disciples doing all they could to save the boat. As I wrote that, I felt as though the Holy Spirit said, “And there in lies the problem.” I was questioning when I first read this verse why Jesus said, “Why are you afraid, you of little faith?” I didn’t understand why Jesus would have said they had little faith. And then, when I just said, the disciples were doing all they could to save the boat it hit me. They were relying on themselves to fix their problem. They weren’t praying to God and asking Him to help them get out of the situation. And actually, in their case, it wouldn’t even be just praying to God. They had God right there on the boat with them. They could have, at the first sign of trouble, asked Jesus to fix the situation. Why didn’t they?
This is something we all know a lot about. We do this all the time. Or, at least I know I and many people I know do. We know we have a problem, and instead of turning to the one solution guaranteed to fix it, we try a million solutions on our own. We try to rely on ourselves to get ourselves out of the situation. This is a message that God has been trying to get me to see for a long time now. I have had my fair share of storms over the years. I have prayed about these storms, and I have asked God to help, but I didn’t turn to Him to fix the situation as soon as the storm came. First, I read a million books on the subject matter, I asked everyone who knew anything about anything what they thought I should do, and I came up with plan after plan to fix the situation on my own. Does this sound familiar to anyone? Have you ever had a storm in your life and instead of turning to God, you tried to solve it or fix it on your own? I know I can’t be the only one who has ever done this.
This is probably what the disciples were doing on that boat. They were probably looking to the fisherman they had with them, or anyone else who knew anything about boats. They were probably all putting their heads together to come up with a plan to save the boat. They were relying on their own knowledge and their own abilities. Proverbs 3:5 says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.” I wasn’t there, and I am only guessing, but I don’t think that they would have thought what they were doing was a demonstration of little faith. They could have had the best intentions. Maybe they didn’t go to Jesus first because they knew He was tired and they didn’t want to bother Him. I get that. Jesus worked hard, and I can see wanting to let Him rest and not bother Him unless you had to. It makes sense in our minds. Maybe this is why God tells us not to rely on our own understanding.
As I write this, I am gaining a new understanding, which I assume is coming from the Holy Spirit. Even though we may not go to God first because we have good intentions, it still shows Him a lack of faith. Maybe not a lack of faith that we don’t think He can help us, but a lack of faith that He would want to help us. Perhaps a lack of faith that we are important enough for Him to help. Also, it shows that we think God can’t do all things at the same time. Our actions are telling God that we think He is too busy to help us.
I was at a conference once, and there was a priest speaking at the conference who was assigned to a college or university. He mentioned he always said a rosary at the football games, praying that his team would win. He said they captured a photo of him one week, saying the rosary, and he got a lot of negative comments from people who saw the photo. They said comments like, “a Catholic priest spending time praying about a football game when there are people dying of cancer.” I remember he told us that they were upset that he was wasting God’s time over a silly football game when there were bigger, more important things that God should be spending His time on. I remember he said, “My God is bigger than that.” He explained that we shouldn’t feel bad about asking God for all of the things that we need because other people might be worse off than we are. This priest said that our God can do all the things we are asking for, as well as the things that others need too. He is not limited by the same things that we are limited by. Actually, He is not limited by anything.
I remember coming home and writing a sticky note on my fridge that said, “My god is bigger than that.” It reminds me that God should be the first place I turn to in times of trouble. It reminds me that I don’t have to feel bad asking God to help me out of a problem because He may have other, more important things to do. This is not true. God thinks I, and my problems are just as important as anyone else's. He can help us all. He has no limitations. He is the almighty one, creator of all things.
The next time we are in a storm, we should go straight to God. We don’t have to waste time trying to rely on our understanding or our own abilities. He is there for us. When the disciples woke Jesus up, He rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a dead calm. If Jesus can do this to the winds and the sea, what do you think He can do to the storms in your life? I know it is hard, and I am right there with you, trying to solve my problems on my own. Let's join together and make a decision to turn to God to calm the storms. Let’s not save God for a last resort; let’s make him our first line of defense. When we get in the habit of doing that, I bet we will see the storms calm down a lot quicker.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to trust in you more. Help us to turn to you first instead of waiting until you are our last resort. Lord, help us to believe that you can help everyone and that when we come to you, we are not taking your time away from others. Help us to see that you have infinite amounts of time for each and every one of us. Help us not to rely on our own understanding. Help us to see the bigger picture, Lord. We are so thankful for all that you do for us. We are thankful that you are merciful and loving. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
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Am I Just Being Honest or Ungrateful?
Matthew 11:28 “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.”
I was working on my mentoring notes for this week. This month, I am answering commonly asked questions about finding joy in the struggle. One of the questions I am answering this week is “How do I know if I'm being ungrateful or just honest about my pain?” As I was working on it, I thought it might be something that we are all asking ourselves. I know when I talk to people who are struggling, I often hear them say, “I know others have it so much worse.” I think we need to stop saying this. I know it is true, and yet when we say it, we are minimizing our pain.
Our God is a big God. Our struggles don’t take away from anyone else’s struggles, and I think we all know that. The people we feel comfortable enough opening up to are not thinking that we don’t care about others’ struggles. They know us. They know we are thinking and praying for others. It is ok to ask for prayers for ourselves, too. It is ok to vent about our struggle, too.
I have also heard people say that they shouldn’t complain because they have so much to be grateful for. They should be more grateful for what they have and less upset about their struggle. I understand the sentiment behind this thought, and yet I feel that if we don’t express how we truly feel and we just keep stuffing down the feelings we are actually having, then we will explode someday. Also, God can handle our real feelings.
I don’t know who we think we are fooling, but God knows EVERYTHING. He knows your heart, He knows what you are feeling, probably better than you do. So, just be honest and allow yourself to feel all the feelings without judging yourself. You will be able to move through your feelings quickly if you don’t judge yourself and allow yourself to feel them all.
While researching the answer to this question I found 4 ways that we can discern the difference between being ungrateful or just honest about your pain
1. Honesty and Lament Are Not Ingratitude- Scripture is full of faithful people who loved and trusted God deeply—and who also expressed deep sorrow, frustration, and even anger. That’s called lament, and it’s not only permitted in the Bible—it’s modeled.
Examples:
David in the Psalms weeps, questions, and complains—even while declaring his trust in God.
Job curses the day he was born and demands answers—but God says Job spoke rightly.
Jeremiah (the "weeping prophet") says things like “You have deceived me, Lord” (Jer. 20:7), and yet he was one of God’s most faithful voices.
So if you're saying things like:
“God, this hurts.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Why aren’t You helping?”
“I feel alone.”
You are not being ungrateful—you are lamenting. And lament is a sacred form of prayer, because it keeps you talking to God rather than shutting Him out.
God would rather hear your honest cries than your fake praise.
2. Honesty says, “This hurts.” Ingratitude says, “God isn’t good.”
The difference is in your posture and direction.
Honesty keeps the conversation with God open, even if it’s messy. It still clings to some sliver of trust: “I’m hurting, but I know You’re still there.”
Ingratitude, on the other hand, closes itself off. It often sounds more like accusation or bitterness rooted in resentment: “God doesn’t care. He never shows up for me. Why should I trust Him?”
Think of it this way:
Honesty invites God into your pain.
Ingratitude pushes Him out because of your pain.
It’s okay if you’re frustrated, angry, or exhausted—but how you bring that to God makes all the difference.
You can be disappointed with God and still devoted to Him.
3. Gratitude and Grief Can Coexist
Gratitude doesn’t mean pretending everything is okay. It means looking for God’s presence or goodness even when nothing is okay.
You can say:
“I’m so tired… but thank You for still being near.”
“This hurts more than I can express… but I’m grateful I’m not alone.”
“I feel lost… but I’m thankful for this one moment of peace today.”
Even the tiniest glimmer of thanks—a sunset, a song, a deep breath—can anchor you in joy while you’re still grieving.
In hard times, gratitude isn’t a feeling—it’s a habit of noticing the small ways God hasn’t left you.
Grief says: “This is painful.” Gratitude says: “And still, God is here.”
4. God Doesn’t Want Perfection—He Wants Your Heart
We often feel like we need to clean ourselves up before coming to God. But that’s not how He works. Over and over, the Bible shows us:
God meets people right in their mess, questions, and brokenness.
David ran to God with his tears.
Elijah sat under a tree and asked to die—but God met him with rest and nourishment.
Jesus wept at Lazarus’s tomb—even though He knew resurrection was coming.
God never says, “Come back when you’re grateful.” He says, “Come to Me, weary one. I’ll carry this with you.” (Matt. 11:28) We tend to forget this scripture. We tend to want to fix ourselves before coming to God. This is crazy talk. It’s like trying to fix a painting before bringing it to the painter. Or trying to fix your car before bringing it in to the mechanic. You may have some ideas of how to fix it, but they are the expert. They know the correct way to fix it and they will fix it so much faster than we will. Bring your mess to the Lord, let Him help you clean it all up. He is so good at that. He can heal broken hearts. He can heal physical ailments. He can do all things, all we need to do is ask. God is telling us “Come to Me, weary one. I’ll carry this with you.” Why are we trying to go at it alone when He is asking us to come to Him?
And here’s something beautiful: the very act of bringing your pain to God is an expression of faith. If you were truly ungrateful, you wouldn’t be turning to Him at all.
Final Reminder
Being honest about your pain is not the opposite of faith—it’s often the purest form of it. Gratitude and grief can walk hand-in-hand. And your vulnerability is not a failure—it’s a prayer.
God isn’t looking for perfect words—He’s looking for your real heart.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening. Lord, we want to trust you. We want to bring all our struggles to you. Please help us! Please help us open up to you and let you know how we are really feeling. Even if we can’t be open with anyone else, Lord, please help us to be open with you. We love you so much, and we want to turn to you in our struggles. Please help us to be gentle with ourselves and to give ourselves grace. Help us to see the difference between being honest with you and being ungrateful. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you would like more info on finding joy in your struggle, I invite you to check out mentoring on Tuesday nights. It’s not too late to get in on this series. If you join now, you will get the replays for all the sessions that you missed in this series. Click on the link below to find our more about mentoring. I look forward to meeting you all here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in January 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given unto you.”
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Bless The Lord, O My Soul
Psalm 103:1-5 “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and do not forget all his benefits—who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the Pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good as long as you live so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.”
Yesterday I couldn’t get a song out of my head. It is such a good song. I wanted to share that song with you this morning. The song is called “10,000 Reasons (Bless the Lord).” It was written by Matt Redman and Jonas Myrin and is based upon Psalms 103:1-5. It explores how we can never run out of reasons to worship and praise God. On Monday of this week, Episode #1036, we talked about how vital praise and worship are to our faith journey. This song and this Psalm remind us that there are so many reasons we can be grateful to the Lord.
Let’s first look at these verses. They begin with “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name.” This is exactly what we talked about on Monday. Praising the Lord is so important. Even when we are in a really difficult season of life, there are many reasons we can be grateful to the Lord and we can praise Him.
In the verse, it says, “who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the Pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good as long as you live so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.” Those are some pretty amazing things to thank God for. You might not have experienced all of them, but I bet you have experienced some of them. Have you felt God’s steadfast mercy and love in your life? Have you experienced His forgiveness? Some of you have even experienced his healing touch. I know some of you have been redeemed from a pit as well. I love the line that says your youth is renewed like the eagles. We could all use our youth to be renewed.
Can you see all the amazing things God has done and will do for us? Can you see how there are endless possibilities when it comes to praising the Lord? The song for today also talks about praising the Lord. I invite you to listen to the song sometime today. You can look it up on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Music, wherever you usually listen to music. The reason I would like you to listen to the actual song, instead of just this podcast, is that it is really good. Here are the words to the song.
[Chorus]
Bless the Lord, O my soul, O my soul
Worship His holy name
Sing like never before, O my soul
I'll worship Your holy name
As you can see this chorus comes almost directly from the Psalm. I love it when artist do this. I love when they use the Bible verses in the songs. It helps get the Lord’s word out to more people.
Next is Verse 1:
The sun comes up, it's a new day dawning
It's time to sing Your song again
Whatever may pass and whatever lies before me
Let me be singing when the evening comes
This is something we can always be grateful for: that we got to wake up to a brand new day of life. I love how this verse says, whatever may pass and whatever lies before me, let me be singing when the evening comes. Wouldn’t it be great if we could be singing to the Lord at the end of the day, no matter what happens to us throughout the day? How great would it be if we got so used to praising the Lord that we could praise Him no matter the circumstances?
Verse 2:
You're rich in love and You're slow to anger
Your name is great and Your heart is kind
For all Your goodness, I will keep on singing
Ten thousand reasons for my heart to find
We tend to have a perception of God that he is angry at us all the time. We look at some parts of the Old Testament, and we think God is full of Vengeance and Wrath. This is not what He is constantly telling our prayer group. He always tells us how much He loves us. God is rich in love and slow to anger. Does he get angry? Probably, we all do. However, He loves us so much more than his anger. I love how the verse says, “For all your goodness, I will keep on singing ten thousand reasons for my heart to find. If you are looking, there are always reasons to be thankful to God. Even in your most difficult season there are things you can praise the Lord for, you just have to look for them. Or, as I mentioned on Monday, you can put on praise and worship music and let the artists praise the Lord for you!
[Verse 3]
And on that day when my strength is failing
The end draws near and my time has come
Still, my soul will sing Your praise unending
Ten thousand years and then forevermore
Forevermore
It is beautiful to think about praising the Lord when our time on this earth is ending. When we can feel our strength failing. How great would it be to get to the end of our lives and still want to sing the Lord’s praises. I like how it says ten thousand years and then forever more. Once we are in heaven, all will make sense. We will understand all the things that we don’t understand now. Then we will get to praise the Lord for all eternity.
[Chorus]
Bless the Lord, O my soul, O my soul
Worship His holy name
Sing like never before, O my soul
I'll worship Your holy name
This song is such a great song to play when you want to worship the Lord. As I listened to it last night at prayer group I knew I would be listening to it, more often. It's a great way to praise the Lord!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask to you bless all those listening to this episode. Lord we love you and we are so grateful for all you do for us. We are sorry we don’t always appreciate all you do. We are sorry that we don’t always know how to praise you. Please help us with this Lord. Please stir our hearts and help us to learn to praise you more often. We want to always be telling you how much we appreciate you. We ask all this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I have opened the registration for my retreat, so please CLICK HERE to check out all the details. I hope you can join me! I look forward to meeting you all here again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed weekend!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in January 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus. Bless and care for those who will touch your life today. Today is all you have, and it will require all your love.”
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Where You Are From Doesn't Dictate Where You Can Go
John 7:40-41 “ When they heard these words, some in the crowd said, “This is really the prophet.” Others said, “This is the Messiah.” But some asked, “Surely the Messiah does not come from Galilee, does he?”
When I was looking for a scripture verse today, I opened my Bible and just started reading. I was reading about how Jesus was telling people if they were thirsty, they could come to Him. He was talking about living waters flowing from the hearts of those who believed in Him. Then I read these two verses. “ When they heard these words, some in the crowd said, 'This is really the prophet.” Others said, “This is the Messiah.” But some asked, “Surely the Messiah does not come from Galilee, does he?” As soon as I read that last line, I felt like the Holy Spirit stopped me and said, “That right there, that is what you need to talk about today.”
Have you been feeling called to do something and yet not feeling qualified to do it? Did you know Jesus couldn’t perform any miracles in his hometown? Not because He didn’t have the ability, but because no one would believe that Jesus, the little boy that grew up in their town, could be the Messiah. The town Jesus grew up in wasn’t special, and Jesus was just a carpenter’s kid. He wasn’t special. There is no way that the Savior of the world could be born in Bethlehem or grow up in Nazareth, a small village in the region of Galilee.
What I feel the Holy Spirit putting on my heart is that some of you are letting other people’s opinions of you hold you back or keep you down. You know you are made for great things, and yet you are allowing the voices of others to get in your head. You are allowing your family to decide who you are. Your family has always seen you one way, and no matter how much you change, they can’t change how they see you, so you stay stuck. The same can be true with your friends or with your work. They know you as one person, and no matter how much you have changed, they still see you as that person.
I remember I was doing this to my friend Kath. Not intentionally, but when I knew her, she was Kathleen. Then at some point, she started going by Kath. I knew her as Kathleen, so I called her Kathleen for the longest time. I am not sure if someone said something to me, or if I just came to my senses, but I realized that if she wanted to be Kath now, I should call her Kath. I know this may be a silly example, but it is to demonstrate how we might not be letting those we know change in ways that they want to. Look at those around you. Are you allowing them to change and grow, or are you treating them the same way you did 20 years ago or 10 years ago?
Jesus fulfilled so many prophecies. Jesus did all the signs and wonders. People knew just by hearing Him talk that He was the Messiah. Everyone knew there was something different about Jesus. Yet, even with all that evidence, some people couldn’t get past the fact of where He grew up. This might happen to you. You might be doing all the things Jesus is asking you to do. You might be giving all the talks or praying over all the people and yet some people might not be able to get past the fact that you are just so and so’s son or daughter. They might not be able to get over the fact that you did not come from some spectacular place or that your family wasn’t super religious when you were growing up.
We live in a world that tends to judge us by arbitrary standards. They want you to have these credentials, or this upbringing, or their socioeconomic class or background. People don’t want to listen to you unless you have a doctorate in whatever it is you are talking about. However, if you are called by the Lord to teach on something, then He will give you all the knowledge you need on that subject. When my mind starts to tell me that I am not qualified, which it definitely tries to do, I look to the Saints. When I am telling myself that I need a theology degree to talk about the Bible, I am reminded of St. Catherine of Sienna, who is a doctor of the Catholic Church, and yet she could not read and write for most of her life. She had no formal education, at least not past grade school.
She spent time with the Lord, and He told her everything she needed to know. St. Terese of Lisieux is the patron saint of missionaries, even though she was too sickly to ever go on a mission trip. Don’t let those negative voices in your head try to convince you that you are a nobody, so God couldn’t possibly use you. Don’t listen when those around you tell you that you are not special enough to have a calling from God. Imagine how different life would be for us if Jesus had given up when those in his hometown didn’t believe in Him. Imagine if he had listened to all those who said nothing good comes from Nazareth.
Where you are from does not dictate where you can go. There are endless possibilities as to where you can go and what you can do. Just follow the Lord, and He will take you wherever you want to go. You don’t have to know the way. He is a Way Maker. All you have to do is say yes to his calling and then take the next right step. God will guide you to where He wants you. Your job is just to keep listening to the Lord and ignoring all the negative comments and those who wish to slow you down or stop you from fulfilling your mission. Trust the Lord and His plan for you. You are special in His eyes, and He picked this mission specifically for you!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode. Lord, help us to listen to you and block out those who wish to discourage us or stop us from doing what you are calling us to do. Lord, give us the grace to see ourselves through your eyes. Help us to love ourselves the way you love, unconditionally and without judgment. Please help us to see in ourselves what you see in us, what you put in us. Help us to be strong, persistent, and resilient enough to fulfill our mission. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I want to remind everyone of my upcoming retreat in Oct. It is 11 weeks away, which means there is still plenty of time to plan for it and yet it is not so far away that we need to wait forever. In case you missed the discription, here it is again. In a world that constantly tells us who we should be—based on status, appearance, success, or past mistakes—it's easy to lose sight of who we truly are. This retreat is an invitation to step away from the noise and return to the heart of your Creator. Through Scripture-based teaching, worship, journaling, and authentic community, you'll begin to uncover the truth of your identity—not as the world defines it, but as God declares it. You are not your past. You are not your failures. You are not what others have said about you. You are who God says you are: loved, chosen, redeemed, and called for a purpose. Whether you're seeking healing, clarity, or simply a deeper understanding of your worth in Christ, this retreat is a sacred space to rediscover your God-given identity and walk boldly in it. The retreat is October 11-12th. I hope you can join me. CLICK HERE for all the details. I look forward meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day.
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in January 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Today is the day the Lord has made. Today is the day the Lord is blessed with his mercy and love. Abide in and live from this mercy and great love.”
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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Today I will be doing the witness. I have been thinking a lot about how God is working in my life and the life of my family. I often tell people to be specific about what they want. I think the more we know what we want the more likely we are to achieve it. The more specific we are with our prayers, the more likely we are to recognize and give God the glory when our prayers are answered. If we pray that things get better, how will we know when that prayer has been answered? It might get better in some ways and not in others and so we might be constantly waiting for God to answer that prayer. However, if we ask for something specific, like please help my son get a job. Then you know exactly when God has answered that prayer and you can give God all the glory.
In 2021 I decided to come up with a specific prayer for our family. This way, I would know when the prayers had been answered. A thought just popped into my head so I want to clarify something. I do not think that we need to direct God or tell Him what to do or how to solve our problems. Being specific in our prayers is not about that. God is free to answer our prayers in any way He sees fit as He knows best. The idea of being specific with our prayers is that we can be more intentional with noticing when prayers are answered and therefore more intentional with our praise and giving God all the glory. I hope that makes sense.
I decided to go back and look at the specific family prayers I had written in the past few years. I will not read them all to you because some of the stuff may be a bit personal for the boys. However, will share with you the parts that have been answered. First, we can look at a prayer I wrote in 2021. I asked the Lord that each of our boys do well in school that year, as they haven’t always in the past, and they did! We were asking for the Lord to line up next steps for Sam for when he came home from Cushing house. We weren’t sure what he needed or how we could set him up for success so we didn’t ask for anything specific but we did ask for God to open a door for Sam. Before he even left Cushing House he had a job interview with Target and he started the next week after he moved back home.
For Noah, we asked that he get out of the house more and experience more of the good things that High School has to offer. Noah ended up getting a job that he really liked and started hanging out with a good group of friends. Mostly, they would play online, but there were a few from our town, and so they would get together and do things, especially after they got their licenses.
For Ryan, we asked that he be able to transition out of the Lighthouse school, as that was something he had expressed interest in. However, it wasn’t really that motivated to go back in 2021. In 2024, Ryan transitioned out of the Lighthouse School and back into the Groton Dunstable Regional School District. He will finish his last two years of school in our home district. He is very happy to be at that school. It is a lot bigger and was a bit overwhelming at first, but he has settled in and I think he really likes it.
We asked for the Lord to give our kids more confidence to venture out and try new things. Noah ended up applying to colleges that were abroad and is currently attending Napier Edinburgh University in Scotland. I am sure that took a lot of confidence not only to apply there but to move to another country for college. Ryan started boxing, which he had no previous experience in, and also got a job at Chick-fil-A. Sam is constantly filling in for people in different areas of Target, even if he was not trained in that area. He does what he is asked to do, even if it is new to him. Sam also started a new day program even though he was nervous and didn’t know what to expect. I would say we can give God the glory for answering their prayer of giving the kids more confidence.
For Tony and me, we prayed that God would help us to become the parents he created us to be and that our relationship with the boys would grow with love and respect. I believe God is in the process of answering this one. I don’t think we will ever arrive at being perfect parents. I believe we will continue to grow and get better at it our whole lives. I believe God is helping us figure it out in this season. We have learned to lean into one another, instead of away from one another. We have learned to pray together when we aren’t sure what to do. We have learned to communicate more respectfully with each other and with the boys. My relationship with the boys has definitely grown in love and respect. We communicate much better now and we seem to have much more of a mutual respect than we did before. I make sure to give the boys, at least the ones who are at home, a hug before they go to bed at night. If they are not home, I make sure to send them a text message letting them know that I love them.
Last summer, August 2024, I decided to write a new prayer when I looked back and saw that most of our prayers from the first prayer had been answered. I want to also stop and be fully transparent with you. Because some of you might be saying to yourself that these prayers were answered because I am different in some way. I am not any more special than any of you. I promise you God is answering your prayers too. The reason I am seeing the answers more is because I wrote down specifically what I wanted, and so it is easy to see if it was answered or not. Also, I probably prayed this prayer every day for a week or two. That is usually my level of consistency, although it might have been less. I am sure it was not more. Then I might have prayed it every now and then if I happened to see it or remember it.
I did not pray this prayer consistently from 2021-2024. I would be shocked if I even prayed it for 30 days total. I tell you this because sometimes we can hear people say that they did something, and we can think they did it perfectly or that they were so much more consistent. Consistency is great, and also, God can answer your prayer even if you only ask Him once. So don’t get caught up in your failure to be consistent or your inability to write an eloquent prayer. My prayer was not eloquent, and I definitely wasn’t consistent saying it, yet it was answered. Yours will be too!
Back to 2024. I decided we should write a new prayer as our last prayer had worked out pretty well. Not everything was answered, and some answers we received were not the way or how we wanted them to be, but it was time to update our prayer. In this new prayer, we asked that Sam would form meaningful friendships with positive individuals who serve as good role models. He now has a best friend, and although I don’t know all that they do, I do know he is encouraging Sam not to drink, and that is great! The other things we were praying for are still in the works. However, one thing was that he would be able to quit smoking. I don’t know if he has quit for the long term or not, but there is no smoking where he is. So, for the next 45 days or so, he has quit smoking and vaping all things. These are all prayers answered!
For Noah, we prayed he had an amazing time at Edinburgh Napier University. We prayed his roommates all got along and became good friends. We prayed there was no ill will or strife with any of them. We prayed he met amazing friends and stepped out with courage to try new things on his own. We prayed he would have the opportunity to travel and see many different places. Noah did get along with his roommates, and as far as I know, there was no strife. They did go out and do stuff together as well as hang out in the loft. I know he met friends while he was there who were not his flatmates. Noah had the courage to walk all around the city and go on hikes in different parts of the city or surrounding cities. He learned how to take the bus anywhere he wanted to go in the city. He hopped on the train several times to go to concerts in Glasgow. He also got a membership to a rock climbing gym.
Noah did have the opportunity to travel and see different places. He flew by himself to Portugal to stay with friends of ours, and he explored their town and surrounding area on his own. That was a big step outside of his comfort zone. He also got to explore Copenhagen with dad and his grandmother. Then Tony flew back out a few weeks later to explore Norway with Noah. He also had some of his friends from high school fly over to visit him in Scotland. I would say all of our prayers for Noah were answered.
For Ryan, we prayed that he would meet great people in his new school and that he would meet good friends who live nearby whom he enjoys hanging out with. We prayed he either got back into boxing or found another hobby that he likes. We prayed he did well in his classes and that he is happy in life. Ryan is really enjoying being at his new school. He has met a group of kids that he really likes hanging out with. He has them over to our house often as we have a pool table and video games in the basement. He seems genuinely happy with life right now.
Two of his friends have a band, and they have invited Ryan to be a part of it. This is his new hobby. It is a metal band, so he practices singing all the time and is hoping to start voice lessons very soon. He has started writing lyrics and is so excited about this new hobby. I haven’t seen him this happy in a very long time. It is so nice to see him having fun with friends and to hear him laughing. It is so nice to see his eyes light up when he talks about his lyrics or shows me a video of him practicing to do the metal screams. Our prayers for Ryan have all pretty much been answered as well.
Tony and I prayed that we have more quality time together. We prayed we continued to grow closer to the Lord and closer to each other. We prayed we would continue to love each other more and more each day. We prayed that God helped us to understand each other better and that we would respect and support each other more. We are not perfect at this, but we are in such a good place right now. I am so happy, and I do feel we are growing closer to each other each day. I am so grateful that the Lord brought Tony into my life 27 years ago and that we just celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary. Like any relationship, we have had ups and downs, but I am so grateful the Lord helped us stay together through those hard times and get to where we are today!
I hope after listening to this witness you sit down and take some time to write a prayer for yourself, your family, or your friends. I pray that you take some time to think about exactly what you want from the Lord this year. Where do you want to be this time next year? Where do you want your family to be this time next year? The Lord doesn’t mind when we ask for specific things. That is the best way to make sure He gets all the glory!! It is not telling God what to do; it is just asking for what you want, and like any parent, He can say no if that is not what is best for you. I love all of you listening, and I know the Lord will answer your prayers just as he has done with mine. I would love to hear about any answers to prayer that you have received. Feel free to email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or reach out on Facebook, Catherine Duggan.
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Jesus Set Us Free
Isaiah 61:1-3 “The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion—to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor.”
While searching for verses on joy, I came across Isaiah 61:3. However, upon reading it, I could tell it was missing context. When I started with verse 1, I knew we all needed to hear all three of these verses. Let’s start at the beginning. The prophet Isaiah is prophetically speaking for the Messiah, and the Messiah is letting the people know that he is blessed and empowered by the Spirit of the Lord God. I looked up these verses on enduringword.com's commentary page. I am so glad I did because it gives such a deeper understanding of this verse. I didn't know this was talking about Jesus.
Reading this verse on its own, I did not remember that this was the verse Jesus read in Luke 4. In Luke 4:16-22, Jesus spoke in the synagogue of Nazareth, His hometown. He opened up the scroll to Isaiah 61 – perhaps an assigned reading, perhaps chosen by Him – and read from the beginning of the chapter through the first line of verse 2. When He sat down, He simply said Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. Jesus is the person described in Isaiah 61:1-3, and He is the one the Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon.
The commentary goes on to say that “as Christians under the New Covenant, we also have an anointing: But you have an anointing from the Holy One (1 John 2:20). In the New Testament sense, anointing has the idea of being filled with, and blessed by, the Holy Spirit. This is something that is the common property of all Christians, but something we can and should become more submitted and responsive to.” This is reminding us that we all have the Holy Spirit living inside of us. This means we are all anointed and we have an anointing on our lives. How many of us know this? How many of us are attentive to the Holy Spirit living inside of us? Are you listening to it? Are we responding to it? Are we letting it lead us in our everyday lives?
We do not all have the same anointing on our lives. We are all called to do different things. We are all blessed with different talents and different personalities, and God uses us accordingly. However, He sometimes also uses us for things that don’t align with our talents or personalities. Like when He asked Moses to lead his people out of Egypt, even though Moses wasn’t good at public speaking. If God is calling you to do something, he will equip you with all you need to do it.
The next part of these verse is showing us the ministry or mission of the Messiah. Jesus came to:
To preach good tidings to the poor. Jesus came to announce that he is hear to heal the damage that sin brings. Sin has done a lot of damage over the many years since Adam and Eve, and so there needs to be a great work of redemption.
He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted because sin breaks hearts, when he redeems us he will heal the brokenhearted.
To proclaim liberty to the captives, And the opening of the prison to those who are bound. Jesus sets us free from the captivity that we find ourselves in when we sin. Jesus takes that sin to the cross with Him. Freeing us from the chains of the evil one. I had at first written forever freeing us, but then I thought about it. Jesus definitely defeated evil once and for all; however, it may still be a daily battle for us. We still need to choose to live in that freedom. The devil is really good at convincing us not to live in that freedom. He convinces us that we don’t deserve that freedom, and when we let the enemy convince us that we don’t deserve this freedom, then we live in captivity. We live in the prison that Jesus died on the cross to save us from.
To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD, And the day of vengeance of our God. This part I will read right from the commentary as I am learning right along side you. It says, “Significantly, Jesus stopped reading before this sentence. He stopped in the middle of the prophecy, because to proclaim…the day of vengeance of our God is relevant to His Second Coming, not to His first coming. The comma in year of the LORD, and the day of vengeance has stood for almost 2,000 years. This shows us something of the nature of Biblical prophecy: it may “shift gears” and time frames quickly and without warning.
ii. We can compare a whole year of grace to a single day of vengeance.”
One thing I do want to point out is that this is a Jubilee Year. It talks about how Jesus came to proclaim it an acceptable year to the Lord, or a year of the Lord’s favor. Well, the year I am writing this episode has also been declared a Jubilee year. A Jubilee year is a holy year of the forgiveness of sin, conversion, and joyful celebration. Jubilee years typically come around every 25 or 50 years. This is a special year and we are called to participate in it.
Here is what the commentary says about this last part. “The extent of the comfort and restoration is beautifully described. Instead of the ashes of mourning, He gives His people beauty. Instead of the mourning itself, He gives His people the oil of joy. Instead of the spirit of heaviness, He gives His people the garment of praise. Why do we sit in the ashes? Why do we mourn? Why do we indulge the spirit of heaviness when Jesus gave us something so much better?
The word "beauty" evokes a beautiful crown or head ornament. It is translated exquisite hats in Exodus 39:28 and headdresses in Isaiah 3:20. In mourning, ashes would be cast upon the head (2 Samuel 13:19). Here, the ashes are replaced with a beautiful crown.
That they may be called trees of righteousness: The restored place of God’s people is glorious. They are as strong, beautiful, and useful as trees – and trees of righteousness at that. Most wonderfully, when people look at the trees, they see they are the planting of the LORD.
Well, that certainly wasn’t what I thought I would be talking about today. However, I think we all needed this reminder as to why Jesus came to us. It is good to be reminded of what His mission was because we are all tasked with that same mission. What can we do to help carry out His mission? Is there a way we can set someone free today? Is there some way we can remind them that Jesus has already set them free and all they need to do is accept his gift? Can we remind people they are loved and they have already been set free from their sin? They no longer have to be held captive by what they did or didn’t do. All they need to do is remind themselves that Jesus’s sacrifice was enough to cover all they have done.
I love when the commentary asks, “Why do we sit in ashes? Why do we mourn? Why do we sit in the spirit of heaviness when Jesus gave us so much more? I will leave you with these questions to reflect on and pray about today.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode. Lord, we love you and we ask that you bless us and remind us that you have already saved us. Lord, help us to understand that this is a jubilee year and that we can make the most of it. Lord, help us to accept your forgiveness and to live in the freedom that you won for us. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I think I forgot to add the link to register for my retreat in the show notes yesterday. CLICK HERE to check out all the details about the upcoming retreat. I hope you can join me. This may be the last year at this location, and it is a great location. I hope you don’t miss out. I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in January 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My word is powerful, life-giving, eternal, changing hearts. It will not return to me void. Spread my word.”
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Rejoice in the Lord Always!
Philippians 4:4 “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!”
Rejoicing in the Lord is one of my favorite things to do. Praise and Worship are so critical in our faith journey. This month in mentoring, we're discussing finding joy in the struggle. Rejoicing in the Lord is a great way to foster joy. This is something that I love to use to get me out of a funk or a sad place. This works anywhere and everywhere that you are. It is best if you can listen to music because if you are in a sad, angry, or depressed state, you might have trouble worshiping. You might not be in a place where you feel you have anything positive to say to the Lord, or about the Lord. However, when a song that you love comes on the radio, it is hard not to sing along and get into that song. Or, at least, it is not hard for me, as I love music.
I love singing along as loudly as I can in my car and in my shower. I listen to Christian music, which, honestly, I didn’t even know existed until 5 years ago. Well, I knew we sang Christian songs in church, but I didn’t know they had contemporary Christian music, pop songs, rap songs, and rock songs, among various other genres. I am so in love with all of it. I love upbeat songs. It’s like my body wants to dance along to the beat, even when I am out walking or running.
If you don’t know what I am talking about right now, I invite you to download the KLOVE app on your phone. It is the radio station I listen to all the time now, and it has so many good songs. You might be hesitant at first, but give it 30 days and you will know all the words and love all the songs. You can also go onto the Spotify app on your phone, and I have created a playlist called Walk Boldly With Jesus Favorites, and it has all my favorite upbeat songs. Actually, there may be a few slower songs, but they are all good songs!
If you are having a really hard day, put on a playlist of upbeat songs that sing of the glory of God. I am telling you, it is really hard to be sad and to think that God has abandoned you when you hear all these singers reminding you of how great God is and how He has been there for them in their hard times. A real-life example of how powerful music can be is the other day when I was at the courthouse. I had to go there to do something really hard, and I was really sad. I remembered that I had my earbuds in my purse, so I put them in my ears and put on some worship music. I was sitting there feeling sad, and then one of my new favorite songs came on. The song is called My Promised Land and it is sung by Josiah Queen. Here is the beginning verse and chorus:
You had me standing on a mountain
Walking through barren lands
You took my hand and You said
You can have this world
But I won't go with you
Oh, I won't go with you
[Pre-Chorus]
But I ran out of places
And feelings I was chasing
All I have is You and You alone
And I said
[Chorus]
Hold on, wait a minute
I don't want what You ain't in, and
I don't wanna go unless I'm going there with You
It's You there, rain or shining
You're the sun on my horizons
You are my everything
My promised land is You!
And I know I am probably crying while I am saying it, but the music is so upbeat and I love it! Whenever I hear these songs, it reminds me that God is my everything. If He is not in it, then I don’t want it. It reminds me that He is there with me, rain or shine. I like to play my playlist on shuffle, and I like to believe the Holy Spirit is closing the order of my songs. I am sure the Lord knew I needed this song the other day at the courthouse. I honestly considered going outside of the courthouse and dancing my sadness out. However, I didn’t want to miss my name when they called it, so I just sang in a whisper voice and imagined myself dancing it out.
I can't emphasize enough how critical praise and worship can be in changing your mood and lifting you out of a pit. The enemy gets so confused when we praise the Lord when we are struggling. They don’t understand why we would praise God when we are hurting, sad, or angry. Also, the enemy can’t stand the name of Jesus. All you have to do is say the name Jesus, and the enemy flees. I heard a speaker once who asked his friend, who is a Catholic priest and exorcist, what the most powerful prayer is when it comes to fighting the evil spirits and demons, and he said the most powerful thing we can say is, “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” That is pretty simple and yet powerful.
If music is not your thing, that is ok, you can still praise the Lord. When I joined the Charismatic Prayer Group, they taught me to praise the Lord out loud by using various names for the Lord. For instance, you can say, “You are Lord of Lords and King of Kings. You are a miracle worker and a way maker. You are the prince of peace and the lion of Judah.” The prayer group gave everyone a piece of paper filled with praise phrases to help us out until we got comfortable coming up with our own. There is no right or wrong way to praise. You can praise the Lord in any way you choose. You can thank Him for all the things in your life, for all the ways He has saved you, and for the desires of your heart. You can praise Him for all he did for his people in the Bible.
You do not have to do or say the right thing. The reason I mentioned the praise sheets is that you might not be able to think of good things when you are struggling. You might be looking at your life and believing that God has abandoned you. Your situation might seem like there's nothing to praise God about. If this is the case, I would like to review the praise sheet and simply read what is on it. It doesn’t matter if I feel it or not; I just read it, and it helps lift me out of whatever I am feeling. Give it a try! I will put a link for the praise sheet I use in the show notes in case you want to have a cheat sheet like I do.
I really want to encourage you to consider making praise and worship a regular part of your daily life if you're having a hard time finding joy. You can add it to something you're already doing, so it won’t take up more time each day. For instance, you can listen to praise music while driving. Or, you can praise the Lord out loud in your car while driving. You can put on 20 minutes of praise music in the morning while getting ready, or while having your morning cup of tea or coffee. I invite you to give this a try this week and let me know what you think. You can reach me at Catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com. I would love to hear from you about how much praise and worship are changing your life. I would love to hear about your experience, good or bad. Let me know!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode. Lord, we want to rejoice with you, and we want to rejoice in you. We want to praise you Lord, not just when things are going well but we want to be able to praise you in the struggle as well. Please teach us how, Lord. Please show us how to have joy when we are struggling. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I am so excited to share with you that I have my October retreat site up and running. The retreat will be from October 11-12, 2025, with a possible extra night stay. It will be from Saturday morning to Sunday night. The retreat theme is identity. In a world that constantly tells us who we should be—based on status, appearance, success, or past mistakes—it's easy to lose sight of who we truly are. This retreat is an invitation to step away from the noise and return to the heart of your Creator. Through Scripture-based teaching, worship, journaling, and authentic community, you'll begin to uncover the truth of your identity—not as the world defines it, but as God declares it. You are not your past. You are not your failures. You are not what others have said about you. You are who God says you are: loved, chosen, redeemed, and called for a purpose. Whether you're seeking healing, clarity, or simply a deeper understanding of your worth in Christ, this retreat is a sacred space to rediscover your God-given identity and walk boldly in it. I hope you will consider joining me. It will be held at the same place as last year, North Easton, MA. CLICK HERE for more details. I look forward to seeing you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day.
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in January 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I get this image of a heart that's all stitched up at the seams, and yet it is so full it wants to burst. And I get this overwhelming feeling of love that God has for us.”
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Can Your Faith Heal You?
Mark 10:52 “And Jesus said to him, 'Go your way; your faith has made you well.” And immediately he received his sight and followed him on the way.”
How many of us have the faith of this man that Jesus healed? He was sitting on the side of the road, and when he heard Jesus was passing by, he called out to him. The crowd of people told him to be silent, but he kept calling out. How many of us listen when others tell us to be silent? Or worse yet, we don’t feel like we are worthy to speak up in the first place, or we are too nervous to speak out and ask for help for fear of rejection. Bartimaeus did not listen when others told him to be quiet. He kept calling out. He believed that Jesus could heal him, and he was not going to let the chance pass him by. Once Jesus heard him calling out, Jesus told him to call him over. When the crowd told him that Jesus would see him, the bible says, “He threw aside his cloak, sprang up, and came to Jesus.” How great is that? How many of us are jumping up at Jesus’ call? I know it’s different. Jesus was right there, and he got to see him and talk to him. But we can also talk to Jesus anytime we want to. Even though we cannot see him, he is calling us to him. He wants to invite us into a deeper relationship with him. Do we hear this call? Do we jump up, throw our cloak aside, and run to him when we are called?
I love the faith that Bartimaeus had. He knew Jesus could heal him. He did not seem to have any doubt that Jesus could cure his blindness. He also didn’t seem to doubt that Jesus would want to help him or to question whether he was worthy enough. He saw Jesus walking by and called out to him. Do we do this? Jesus is here for us; he wants us to call out and rely on Him. Are we doing that? It seems each week at my Prayer Group, God is showing up for us, and he is telling us to come closer. He keeps telling us to rely on him, that he is our protection and our refuge. Why are we not calling on him more than? When Jesus healed Bartimaeus, He said, “Go your way; your faith has made you well.” How great would it be to hear those words from Jesus?
One scripture verse that I think is amazing and that I struggle with is Mark 11:22. This verse is Jesus’ reply to the cursed fig tree. Jesus said to them in reply, “Have faith in God. Amen, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it shall be done for him.” This is the type of faith that I strive for, and yet sometimes wonder if it’s possible. I wonder if there are humans who can have this type of faith? I know that God can do anything. I truly believe this. And yet, when I think of myself commanding a mountain to be lifted up and thrown into he see, I can’t seem to wrap my head around that. I have searched for this type up faith for a very long time now. Probably since the first time I actually heard this scripture and let it sink in.
The very next verse is Mark 11:23, “Therefore I tell you, all that you ask for in prayer, believe that you will receive it and it shall be yours.” This again just blows me away. All that you ask for shall be yours if you believe. That seems like a lot of pressure, and at the same time, a huge promise on God’s part. As I said above, ever since hearing scripture like this, I have searched for this type of faith. I would love to believe without a shadow of a doubt that God can do all the things that I ask him to do, that he will answer all of my prayers. I find it a struggle to believe as much as I would like to, and I wonder if this is because I have a human brain and we were trained from an early age not to believe in things that we can’t see or prove. We were mostly taught that there are certain things that can be done and things that can’t be done. I think as humanity grows, we are learning to question that more and more. But it takes time to overcome years of that type of thinking.
I thought I would give you one way that I have been able to deepen my trust and faith that God can do all he says he can do. I read books about all the miracles God has done and continues to do. I love to read books about healing. God is so amazing and he is performing miracles every single day, and if we would just be on the lookout for them, we would see them. If we can’t see them in our lives, we can read about them in others’ lives. Harold Hill’s book, “How to Live Like a King’s Kid,” is an excellent example. If you read all the amazing things that God did in his life, you can’t help but start to believe he will do it for you as well. Harold Hill also talks about his faith journey and how he got to a point where he began to see God do amazing things in his life.
Also, reading any books on healing, Francis McNutt, Randy Clark, Mary Healy, Matthew & Dennis Linn are just a few that I have read that have been really good. When you read about God’s healing of others and how there are people out there today who are calling upon God to heal people every day, then it strengthens your faith that he will answer your prayers as well. Hebrews 13:8 says, "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” We all know that Jesus was performing miracles when he was alive and walking the earth. He raised people from the dead, he cured so many illnesses, he turned water into wine, he did all the things. This verse from Hebrews lets us know that these miracles were not just something he did in the past. “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” He is still doing these miracles today, and if we struggle to believe this, then we need to search out the testimony of it because it is out there. Another thing I pray often is Mark 9:24: “Lord, I believe, help my unbelief.”
Dear heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask that you increase our trust in you. Lord, we believe, help our unbelief. Lord, we need you to show us the way. We would like nothing more than to have the faith to move mountains, and we know that you are the only one who can give us that faith. So we're asking you, Lord, we are asking for the faith to move mountains. Lord, give us the courage to ask when we need healing or when someone else needs healing. Help us to turn to you first and ask you to heal them. Lord, we give you permission to use us as your instruments of healing, as you used countless people before us. Jesus, you are the great physician, and we ask that you continue that work through us. There are too many people dying in the world today. Let us help you help them. Let us be your hands of healing Lord Jesus. We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
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Offer God Your Everyday Ordinary Life
Romans 12:1 “So here is what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life-your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking around life- and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for Him.”
When thinking and praying about what to talk about today I look back at scripture verses God has given to my prayer group recently. The first one that I saw was this one. I went to the Bible app on my phone as I did not bring my Bible with me today. It was set for the message translation and when I read this verse I felt the the Lord confirmed this is what He wanted me to talk about.
This verse is likely one that you would recognize in another translation, as it is one that I definitely recognized. However, it seems very different in the message translation. In the New American Bible Revised Edition this verse says, “I urge you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to offer your bodies as al living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, your spiritual worship.” Does that sound familiar?
I have heard many people do talks about this verse and yet the message translation seems to come at it from a bit of a different point of view and that is what I felt the Lord wanted me to focus on today. I felt God wanted me to focus on the part that says, “Take your everyday, ordinary life- your sleeping, eating, going to work, and walking around life and place it before God as an offering.” What struck me with this is the thought that this is probably harder for many of us than to offer many other sacrifices.
Many of you listening are wanting to live your lives walking boldly with Jesus. You are trying to pray every day, you may be saying the rosary often, if not daily, you may be fasting or do something other things as a sacrifice to the Lord. Praying isn’t always easy, but it is familiar to many of us. Scripted prayers, especially if you are Catholic, are easy because you know all the words, you don’t have to think about it, you could say those prayers from mass anywhere. You have them memorized. Sacrificing your time to pray, or to talk about God with others, or even to fast isn’t that difficult because you know how to do it. You feel holier, or closer to the Lord when you are doing these things.
However, what about the regular, every day parts of your life? Can you offer those to the Lord as an offering? Can you stop before you begin your day and offer your day up to the Lord? Can you invite Him into your day? I saw a YouTube video about this a few years ago and it has always stuck with me. It was a video with Father Mike Schmitz. I will summarize that video for you now. It was called “3 Steps to Unceasing Prayer,” Father Mike Schmitz. If you google this you can watch the video yourself. It is just over 5 minutes long. In the YouTube video, Father Mike Schmitz lists three steps, he learned from St. Francis DeSales, that you could do to transform everything you do into a prayer.
Ask God to be present. Yes, God is always present and attentive to you, but by asking him to be present you are letting him know you will be present too.
Offer this moment to God. Offer him all the joy, the suffering, whatever you may be feeling, offer it to God.
Accept –Resolve to accept whatever comes out of this moment
This will not only transform how you have a relationship with God, it will transform how you live. This is because when you are asking God to be attentive to you, you are allowing every moment to be a sacrament. You are inviting God into that moment which makes it a channel of Grace. Then, when you offer the moment up to him you make each moment a sacrifice. When you choose to accept the outcome you are making every moment a moment of surrender. For instance you can do this when you are going to bed at night. God, I ask you to be attentive to me and I am attentive to you. I offer this night’s sleep to you as a sacrifice, as a gift to you and I accept whatever comes out of it.
God is not just with us when we are praying or when we are at church. He is not just with us when we are calling upon Him or calling out to Him. God is always with us. He really wants us to know that He is in the ordinary mundane parts of our life as well as the glorious parts where we are praying or participating in mass. He want us to know that He is not judging you for not making the time to pray. He is with you in all that you are doing.
Yes, He would love for you to spend time sitting down with him one on one and talking together. However, He is also happy when you talk with him while you are driving into work or when you are doing the dishes or the laundry. He is not demanding your full attention. He just wants to be with you in all the ways He can. Can you offer your suffering to God? Can you offer your joy to God? Can you offer it all to God? Why is it so hard for us to believe He is with us in the everyday things we do? Why do we strive so hard to Do so much for the Lord when He would much rather we Be with Him? He wants you to know you can invite Him into the simple everyday parts of you life too. He is already there anyway but when you offer it to Him then you are partnering with Him in all these parts of your day. How great would it be to partner with the Lord more throughout your day?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode. Lord, please help us to invite you into every part of our day. Please help us to remember that you never leave our side. You are with us in everything we do, even the everyday parts of our life. Help us offer our entire day, all that we do to you. Help us to recognize you more as we go throughout our day. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk Boldly with Jesus. I want to remind everyone that I have a newsletter that I send out on a weekly basis that has an article on various topics and then also any updates on things like my retreats or books or any other news. There is a link below the show notes if you are not already getting my newsletter I invite you to sign up now. I look forward to seeing you here again tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in January 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I can see the Lord, and he's smiling, and he's pouring down. It's almost like a gentle liquid on people, and he's saying, “I am empowering you. There's no reason to say that you can't. I am empowering you. Accept what I am giving with joy and gratitude. I am your Lord. Go and make me known. I have empowered you. This day, I have empowered you.” And it's just falling on certain people, and you have to say yes or no. Some people are saying no, while others are rejoicing.”
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Today’s witnesses are from Matthew West’s website, called popwe.org. If you don’t know who Matthew West is, he is a singer, songwriter, and storyteller. This website is for the non-profit that he has with his father, a pastor. Matthew and his father encourage people to share their stories. They have various categories of stories. Today, I chose three testimonies from the Healing Category. Often, we can hear our own story in someone else’s story. When we listen to others tell their story, it helps us see that we are not alone. When we hear how God worked in their situation, it gives us hope that He will work in ours, too! I pray that when you hear these testimonies, you get the faith and hope to believe that miracles can happen in your situation, too. I pray you know that God is there with you, and if you invite Him into your situation, He can help. I hope you enjoy these testimonies.
Christine and Darrell Thank you for your prayers for my bestie, June, who had a four-hour brain surgery on Monday in Omaha, NE. She had no side effects. She came home Thursday afternoon. She has 100 stitches in her head and 20 staples. She is almost 80 years old.
The doctors were floored by her fast recovery. I’m not! I thank God so much for popwe and all who prayed for her! She told me she cries often with her thanks to God for all He did for her and is in such gratitude for all who prayed for her. She has such appreciation for all who have shown love, caring, and concern for her.
I saw her yesterday, and you would never know she had surgery unless you saw the back of her head. God is still in the miracle business. As Matthew says in his song, Don’t Stop Praying, “Mountains move with just a little faith.”
We just thank God for giving Juney back to us and for popwe praying!
God bless you!
My name is Caleb, and I wanted to share my story of healing. In 2017, I had some tests done after I had developed symptoms of lightheadedness, extremely painful headaches and a few other symptoms. One of the tests was a brain scan, where they found an anomaly. My parents and I were kept mostly in the dark with the whole situation. We only found out how serious it was when they rang us and asked for us to send the scans to one of the big hospitals in Sydney, Australia.
A few weeks passed with back and forth phone calls and doctors appointments, when we found out what it was. It was a tumor, which the doctors couldn’t work out if it was cancer or an abnormal growth of cells. The doctors said that surgery was an option due to the tumor possibly being cancerous. They declared the date for my operation was the 13th of December, 2017. I was 13 at the time, and scared, as I knew the risks and how quickly things could go wrong. While family, friends, and strangers prayed for me and healing, I couldn’t work out why God was putting me through this.
A week or two before the surgery, my mum had a fight with my nan (her mum), after my nan accused her of having no faith or trust in God. Mum did trust in God and had faith, but she was looking at the other possibility of losing me. I remember turning to mum after my nan left and said ” Yes, we must trust in God for healing, but we also must remember to account for the possibility of me not coming out of the surgery”. I know it’s a bit of a grim thought, but I wanted to comfort my mum, just in case.
The surgery came and went. I woke up a bit groggy the first day, but by the second, I wanted to get up and run around, go outside and try new things. But the tubes and cables attached to me stopped me. My parents bought me a Lego Technic set to build while I recovered, which was meant to last more than a day, if I rested (which I did not, despite multiple nurses and doctors asking me to). When the day finally came when the results of the tumor came back, we were relieved that it wasn’t cancer. The same day the doctor came for the results, he also checked the stitching on where they operated and was astonished to find it had healed faster than he had ever seen. We were given the all clear to go home a few days later.
Later that year, I developed symptoms of migraines and epilepsy, which were confirmed. It was hard with new restrictions on what I was allowed to do. I was banned from getting a license to drive, I was banned from rifle shooting with my Grandfather and wasn’t to be left alone. I became very depressed, I became angry with God and blamed Him for my misfortune. I turned from God. To be honest, I believe that was the worst thing I did. My life became even darker without His light to guide me. Eventually I had thoughts of ending my own life. I went to see a counselor, but it didn’t make a difference.
One morning I woke up, in the middle of the first COVID lockdown, extremely depressed and went to attempt to end my life, when something stopped me. It felt like a presence, and like a voice telling me to stop. I felt like I could see again and I realized what I nearly did. I eventually worked through it, opening up more to my family about how I felt. I now pray to God, read the Bible and watch movies about God’s miracles. More healing from God came after developing a relationship with Him. I was cleared to drive, and am able to help others in ways I wouldn’t have, especially without this experience. During my depression, God showed me a way to create with my hands. He gave me the skills of woodworking. Every time I work with wood, I feel God giving me the wisdom and strength to help create something amazing. I have learnt a few lessons from my past- the biggest is taking one day at a time and trusting God. And I thank God for leading me to music when I needed it the most, especially Matthew West’s music and Casting Crowns. Thank you for the music.
Savannah: This story isn’t about me, but my brother. It was August of 2020 when he was admitted to the hospital with COVID. We were told right from the beginning that it didn’t look good. What followed was a long battle for his life. He needed a form of life support that had extremely limited availability. He needed so much blood. His wife and children couldn’t come to see him. At one point, his heart stopped for 8.5 minutes. The only thing we could do was pray. It was nearly spring when he finally went home to his family. He’s alive, and nobody can deny that a miracle has taken place. We prayed without ceasing, and God has answered our prayers.
Thank you all for sharing your stories with us! It is not always easy to be vulnerable and share your story, and yet when you do, it helps so many other people. May God bless you and keep you and your loved ones healthy.
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The Joy of the Lord is Your Strength
Nehemiah 8:10 “Then he said to them, “Go your way, eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions of them to those for whom nothing is prepared, for this day is holy to our Lord; and do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.”
The theme for mentoring this month is Joy in the suffering. Several bible verses came up while researching this topic. I had already written at least one episode about most of them. However, I had not covered this verse yet. Right before this verse, Ezra the priest and scribe had gathered all the people together so he, along with the Levites and the governor, Nehemiah, could read the law of the Lord. All the people wept when they heard the words of the law. This is where our verse for today picks up. “Then he said to them, “Go your way, eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions of them to those for whom nothing is prepared, for this day is holy to our Lord; and do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.”
I decided to go to the Enduring Word Bible Commentary as I wasn’t quite sure what this verse meant. I wasn’t quite sure why the people were crying when they heard the words of the Law. This is what I found on the Enduring Word Bible Commentary page, “All the people wept, when they heard the words of the Law: The word of God was doing its intended work. 2 Timothy 3:16 tells us two things that the word of God is profitable for: reproof and correction. Sometimes it hurts to be reproved and corrected, and these tears were evidence of some of that pain.
b. Do not mourn nor weep: Ezra, Nehemiah, and the Levites did not want the people to mourn, even though it is a good thing to be sad under the conviction of the Holy Spirit through the word of God. Yet if the sense of conviction is greater than the sense that God is doing a good and holy work, then tears are not good.
Our knowledge of our sin should never be bigger than our knowledge of Jesus as our Savior. We are great sinners, but He is a greater Savior.
Therefore, the joy of the Lord is your strength – even when you are being convicted of sin. When we are convicted of sin we know that God is doing a work in us, so we can be glad and take joy.
c. Do not sorrow, for the joy of the LORD is your strength: The people felt sad because they were aware of their own sin. But they could walk in joy because God was doing a great work. Our emotions are not beyond our control; we can do God’s will even when we don’t feel like it.
They didn’t want the people to be sad because even though they may not have been perfect in carrying out the law, it is ok. God is still with them. Those in charge wanted them to know that it is good to stop everything every now and then and remember the law. It is good to stop and examine your behavior and how you are living, and see if it is in accordance with how God wants you to live. However, if it isn’t, they didn’t want them to be sad and to focus on how much they were messing up. They wanted the people to focus on how great God is and how, no matter how much we mess up, He can still redeem us.
The same is true for us. It is important that we examine our behaviors, the way we live our lives, and how we treat others, to see if we are living according to the Lord's will. Are we following His commandments? Are we loving Him above all else? Are we loving our neighbors as we love ourselves? If we aren’t, what should we do? We should bring it to the Lord. We can apologize for getting off course again, and then let Him know how sorry we are, and then we can just try again. God does not expect us to be perfect. He knows we will mess up. He knows we won’t always get it right. He is ok with that as long as we always repent and turn back to Him!
Let’s look at the aspect of joy in this verse. This verse said, “For the joy of the Lord is your strength.” How is the joy of the Lord our strength? In this verse we can find joy in the Lord because He always redeems us. I love when it said in the commentary that, “Our knowledge of our sin should never be bigger than our knowledge of Jesus as our Savior. We are great sinners, but He is a greater Savior.” This is such a great reminder that no matter how bad our sin is, our Savior is greater than it. No matter how bad we have messed up, Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross still covers it. We can take joy in the fact that there is nothing we can do that is not covered by Jesus’s sacrifice. It is ok to be sad that we have hurt our relationship with the Lord. It is ok to be sad that we think we might have let God down. However, we can’t stay there. We need to then find the joy that God has given us by sending his son to make up for our sins. God sacrificed His only son so that he could repair the closeness that Adam & Eve lost. This is something we can celebrate. This closeness is something to be joyful over.
Another thing I love that the commentary said was, “Do not sorrow, for the joy of the LORD is your strength: The people felt sad because they were aware of their own sin. But they could walk in joy because God was doing a great work. Our emotions are not beyond our control; we can do God’s will even when we don’t feel like it.” This is something we all need to know. Our emotions are not beyond our control. We get to decide how we feel. In the moment, we can’t always control our emotions. For instance if you see something, you might instantly feel something. For instance, when you see someone acting a certain way, you may get upset. That first reaction/emotion, you may not be able to control. However, you can control if you want to keep feeling that emotion or not.
You get to decide what emotions you are feeling based on what story you are telling yourself. For instance, I could be sad about what is going on with my son right now, or I could be grateful because he is getting the help that he needs. Or I could be both. I get to decide. The same is true for you with whatever you are going through. You get to decide how you will feel. Will you find your strength in the joy of the Lord, or will you wallow in your misery? Will you turn to the Lord and repent, or will you sit in your shame and let it eat at you? The enemy does not want us to know that we get to decide how we will feel. He wants us to just sit there and listen to all he is whispering in our ears about how things won’t ever get better. He wants us to believe that if God wanted us healed, he would have done it already. If God wanted to lift us from this place, He would have. The enemy wants us to believe our case is too far gone.
The enemy is a liar. He doesn’t know what God’s plan is any more than we do. He does not realize the importance of our thoughts. If he can persuade us to spend more time worrying about the “what ifs” rather than focusing on the joy of the Lord and all that God can do, he will have won the war for our hearts and minds. He knows that if we're listening to him, we're letting him steal our joy. Joy in the suffering is possible, but only when our focus is on the Lord and all that good He is doing, even if we can’t see it. The joy in the Lord is our strength because we can always find joy in the Lord, even when all seems lost. We won’t always be happy, but we can always have joy.
Dear heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you and we ask you to be with us in this hard time. Lord, please show us how to have joy in the hard times. Please help us to focus on you and all you are doing for us. Please help us to be grateful in the hard times. Please help us to know Jesus’s sacrifice was enough to cover all we have done and will ever do. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in January 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, my blessings are with you. I don't give you just human happiness. I give you so much more. My blessings in your joyful moments and when you are in sorrow. My blessings when you struggle and even when you feel lost. I am with you with my blessings.”
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Calm The Waters
Psalm 89:9 “You rule the raging of the sea; when its waves rise, you still them.”
There are several instances in the Bible when the sea was raging and God calmed it. One of the times was when God asked Jonah to go to Ninevah and preach repentance. Jonah did not want to do this and instead of going to Ninevah he went in the opposite direction and got on a boat going elsewhere. While they were at sea the waves began to rise up and a great storm came upon them. They called Jonah to see if he had any ideas as they had all prayed to their gods and nothing had happened. Jonah told them to throw him over the side of the boat into the sea. He explained that God was mad at him because he disobeyed God’s orders. Once they threw Jonah off the boat, the seas calmed, and those that were on the boat offered a sacrifice to God and made vows to him. You can read more about this in the Bible in the book of Jonah.
Another time that God calmed the storm is recounted in Matthew 8:23-27. “Then he got into the boat and his disciples followed him. Suddenly a furious storm came up on the lake, so that the waves swept over the boat. But Jesus was sleeping. The disciples went and woke him, saying, “Lord, save us! We’re going to drown!” He replied, “You of little faith, why are you so afraid?” Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the waves, and it was completely calm. The men were amazed and asked, “What kind of man is this? Even the winds and the waves obey him!”
The third time I was thinking about was when Jesus was walking on water to get to the boat. This can be found in Matthew 14:22-33. “Immediately Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowd. After he had dismissed them, he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray. Later that night, he was there alone, and the boat was already a considerable distance from land, buffeted by the waves because the wind was against it. Shortly before dawn Jesus went out to them, walking on the lake. When the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified. “It’s a ghost,” they said, and cried out in fear. But Jesus immediately said to them: “Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.” “Lord, if it’s you,” Peter replied, “tell me to come to you on the water.” “Come,” he said. Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!” Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. “You of little faith,” he said, “why did you doubt?” And when they climbed into the boat, the wind died down. Then those who were in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”
I think each of these instances can teach us a lesson about what we should do when we are in a storm and the waves are rising and we need God to come and quiet them. In the first story, Jonah was trying to avoid doing what God asked him to do. God gave him a direct order, and he didn’t want to do it, so he thought he could run away from the problem. I am not sure if you know the story of Jonah or not, but running away did not solve his problem. In fact, as soon as he was thrown overboard he was swallowed whole by a giant fish and there he stayed until he agreed to go to Ninevah. Has this ever happened to you? No, I don’t mean have you ever been swallowed by a giant fish. I mean have you ever tried to run from your problems, or responsibilities, only to end up in a worse situation than you could have imagined. I am not sure exactly what Jonah was running from. At first I thought he was scared of the people in Ninevah hurting him, as they were terrible people. Then I read that he was running away because he knew they would repent and he didn’t think they deserved forgiveness. Either way, his situation did not improve by avoiding this responsibility.
Running from our problems don’t make them go away. Jonah still had to go to Ninevah and preach repentance but he ended up first having to get thrown into the sea and spend a really long time all alone in the belly of a giant fish. Sometimes we are called to do things we don’t want to do. You may feel that you have a completely logical reason for not wanting to do it. Maybe you feel you aren’t qualified for the task or maybe you are afraid, whatever the reason is you don’t want to do it. Running from this task or avoiding it is only prolonging the inevitable. I think what this first story teaches us is that we should just do the task God is asking us to do. We may not think we are capable or qualified to do it but God wouldn’t ask us to do it if he wasn’t going to equip us for the task. If we are doing what the Lord is asking us to do, we can’t fail. He won’t let us.
The second story teaches us that we should trust in the Lord. Jesus was on the boat with them. He is the son of God. They could have just asked him to calm the waves and He would have. They could have prayed to God, and He would have calmed the waves as well. Every time I hear the words “you of little faith” in the Bible I wince a little. I wonder how many times God has said this in heaven when he watches me do something, or when he hears my thoughts. We all find ourselves in situations when we feel like the waters are rising and we can’t see a way out. I think this second story is teaching us to turn to God. Trust that he will take command of the situation. This is not easy. Sometimes the way out seems so impossible and though we know that God can do anything, we have trouble imagining that He would do that. Also, sometimes we may feel alone as if God is not with us during the storm. This second story also teaches us that God is always there. We don’t have to be afraid because God is right there in the storm with us. He knows what we need and is just waiting for us to ask Him for it.
I think the third story is maybe a little more subtle. I think the lesson from the third story can be found when we look at Peter’s interactions with Jesus. Everyone on the boat was afraid of this man walking on water towards them. They thought he was a ghost. “Lord, if it’s you,” Peter replied, “tell me to come to you on the water.” “Come,” he said. Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!” Peter was walking on water, even though he had never done it before, even though it was windy. Jesus told Him to come and Peter did. So, what happened? Peter looked away from Jesus. He shifted his focus. Once he looked away and started thinking about something else, other than Jesus, he started to sink. Isn’t this what happens to us?
If you look at the storms in your life, the times when you felt like you may not survive, where was your focus? Was your focus on all of your problems and all of the ways that you felt like you were drowning? If you are like most of us, yes, that is exactly what you were focused on. It's so easy to get wrapped up in our problems and spend all of our time trying to come up with a way to get ourselves out of the storm. This third story teaches us where our focus needs to be. We need to turn our focus toward Jesus. He is the solution to all of our problems. God already has the answers worked out for every problem or situation that you can get yourself into. We just have to turn to Him and ask Him to save us. If He can command the waves in the sea to settle down, then he can certainly calm the waves in your life. If we keep our focus on the Lord, we will walk right through the storms in our lives. God will calm the storms if we just ask.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, I ask that you help us do the things you ask us to do without trying to avoid them. Lord, I ask that you help us not run from my problems, as it never makes the problems go away. Heavenly Father, help us to keep our focus fixed on you. Help us to turn to you when the storm is raging and the waves are rising. Lord, we know you were always there with us in the storm, and we thank you for that. We know that you can fix all of our problems. Please help us remember this when we forget. Lord, help us to be like Peter and jump out of that boat to walk towards you. We thank you so much, Lord, for all you have done in our lives. We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus' holy name, amen!
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Today’s witness is from a news clip I saw on YouTube. It was a segment that aired on CBN. This witness is about a man who got a diagnosis that seemed like it was a life sentence. The doctors said there was nothing they could do to help this man. The family knew even if the doctors couldn’t do anything, God could. When you listen to this witness I hope you don’t treat it like a nice story. I pray that you hear it and you recognize the power of God working in this story and that you know in your heart that God can do the same in your impossible story story!!
When you're going to the doctor and you hear nothing encouraging, that's when your faith is going to have to stand. In November 2020, Gerilyn Baker's husband David started having constant nosebleeds. Doctors removed a polyp from his sinus cavity, but soon after, things got worse.
When his face began to swell, his wife thought he had an infection, and she told him they needed to contact the doctor quickly. The results of a CT scan shocked the family. David's brother-in-law, Chuck Denny, was there.
They told him he had stage four nasal cavity melanoma. The options they gave him, they said surgery wasn't an option because the facial disfigurement would be too massive. They told us that there was really nothing that they could do.Chemo wasn't for that type that he had. I'd never seen anybody healed of cancer. Every time I heard the word cancer, it was a death sentence.
And I felt like unless God moved, David wasn't going to make it. My first thought was that, from my teaching, we need to move into a fast and seek God and see God heal him. David's face rapidly swelled to the point where he couldn't eat or see out of his right eye.
Pastor Mark Gilbert remembers the many prayers from multiple church locations and beyond. Both church families were praying for David, and there was a multitude of other people. It wasn't just our churches.
David used to be a pastor himself, so there are a lot of people that he knows that was praying for him in different areas of the country, just believing God for the turnaround in his life. Several times a day, we would pray together, and there were times when you felt like you were just lost for words. You felt like you were only repeating yourself because you were worn out.
He was worn down from this sickness. His condition just kept getting worse, but the prayers at that point we didn't see much. This was swelling inside of his mouth as fast as it was on the outside, and he couldn't hardly eat.
It was just terrible, and we knew that we were facing a horrible storm in life. On Easter morning, Dr. Tom Renfro and his wife Sid were visiting their church for a special prayer service. Remembering her husband's own miraculous healing from cancer, Sid was moved with compassion to pray for David.
When I prayed for David, I don't touch people's head. I normally just touch their shoulders, but I did touch his face because I wanted to be very specific and very direct. The wife remembers standing there, and she thought, it's going to come off in her hand because you could feel such a presence of God's Spirit.
Sid prayed a prayer that her dad had prayed. By this time tomorrow, this side of your face will look like this side of your face, because that prayer had worked for her dad. The day after Easter, something amazing happened.
David said, There's a change in my face. Do you see it? His wife said, I've already seen it. He looked at his wife and I said, I see a change in my face.
She said, I do too, but I was afraid to say anything. So they decided to go eat with their family again. They said, well, let's just see what they have to say.
And they all saw him, and they said, that thing's shrinking. And it was just a matter of days, it was gone. David's tumor vanished, and doctors later confirmed he is now cancer-free.
The Bakers are forever thankful to God for answering their prayers. The wife said, “There are many people who have a diagnosis like David, and I feel like they saw death. Maybe they prepared for death. But I'd say, don't give up. I'd say, take His Word into your spirit, and I'd say, believe it with everything you've got because that's what we've done.
His brother said, “When I witnessed David up close and personal with him, I mean, it just boosted my faith. I mean, I know that God can do anything, big, little. It don't matter.”
Sid said, “God can move in anything. I felt jubilant when I saw the picture, and the tumor was gone, and he had a normal face.”
Someone else said, “When I see David now, I think about the benevolence of God, the mercy of God, that God in this state of David's life, in his older years, that God has proven His faithfulness to him.
Well, I'm thankful that, you know, what happened, that God healed me. I'm thankful for that. I've never doubted what God was capable of doing. I've always believed that He's the healer, that He can heal cancer, He can heal heart attacks, He can heal anything that's affected man. He can take care of it if we'll just believe Him and walk in His Word and not let doubt and unbelief, because that stops the hand of God. But I'm very thankful.
Thank you to David, his family, and everyone else who is sharing their story about the miracles in their lives. We need to hear these miracles to be reminded that nothing is too great for God. We need to be reminded that there is always a way, even when we don’t see one. This is a great reminder that even cancer is not too big for our God!
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I Will Be Joyful In God My Savior
Habakkuk 3:17-19 "Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.”
The theme for mentoring this month is Finding Joy in the Struggle. I was looking through some scripture verses that had to do with finding joy in the struggle this morning, and this verse came up. This verse is a favorite of mine because there is a lot going wrong for the people in this verse, and yet they chose to find joy in the Lord anyway. The things mentioned here are not small things. It might not seem like a big deal to us, as how many of us eat figs anyway? However, it was a big deal at the time. The people who wrote this depended on those crops not just for food, but also for their livelihood. If they did not have figs, grapes, or olives, what would they sell at the market to get the other things they needed? The verse says the fields produced no food. What could they eat if they had no fruits or vegetables? Normally, I would say at least they have animals to eat. However, the verse also says, no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls.
I can’t even imagine what I would do if I were in their circumstances. This verse is basically saying that they had nothing. They had no food, they had no animals, and if they didn’t have any of that, then they didn’t have anything to trade with to get the other things that they needed. I know that we often think our situation can’t really get any worse; however, for these guys, I would say that it really couldn’t get much worse. How did they react to these dire circumstances? Did they yell and scream at God? Did they question Him and ask Him how dare He take it all away? Did they turn away from God? No, they didn’t do any of those things. In that very same sentence, they said, “Yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.”
Wow, that is incredible. Don’t you wish you had their strength? Don’t you wish you felt the same way on your worst days? I will rejoice in the Lord. Not, I will trust the Lord, not I will be ok with the Lord, I will rejoice in the Lord. What did they have to rejoice about? Then it goes on to say I will be joyful in God my Savior. I was about to ask you what they had to be joyful about, and then the words “in God my Savior” rattled around in my head. They weren’t joyful because of their circumstances; they were joyful because of God, their Savior. They knew God was going to save them. They didn’t know when and they didn’t know how, but they relied on the fact that God was their savior and if He saved them before, He would do it again.
Why is it so hard for us to remember this? What came to mind was, maybe we haven’t seen Him save us before. What if we have never needed saving before, and so we don’t know that He will save us this time. If this is what you are thinking, rest assured that whatever God has done to those who have come before us, He will do to us. If He has saved His people in the Bible, then He will save us. Those are our people. Remember Hebrews 13:8 says, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.” Because Jesus saved His people in the Bible over and over again, we know He will save us. We also know that because of His promise in Jeremiah 29:11, which says, “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
God will use all things for our good. The problem is, we don’t want to wait for it. We want things to happen when we are ready, or when we think we are ready. When are we going to come around to the fact that God’s timing is perfect? If things are going wrong for us, God’s got a plan. He might not have planned for you to get yourself into this trouble, but as soon as He saw you headed there, He came up with a plan to fix it. That is what He does. We mess up, and He fixes it. I truly hope He doesn’t get tired of doing that. We would be lost without Him.
Let’s say that we are able to come to grips with our situation. We acknowledge that God is doing His thing, and although we don’t know how it will work out, we know it will work out. Then what do we do? We still need to figure out a way to lessen our pain so we can live to make it through to the other side. The people in this verse decided that, although these terrible things were happening, they were going to rejoice in the Lord. Do you think you could persevere in this difficult time? Do you think you could not only keep hope in the Lord, but also rejoice in the Lord?
I am currently reading a new book titled Built Through Courage by Dave Hollis. In this book, Dave talked about something that I thought was a really cool idea to help us get through some really difficult times. I know some of you are either really struggling, or you have loved ones who are. Dave was talking about how he and Rachel, his wife at the time, had a couple that mentored them at the beginning of their relationship. This couple had a very strong faith. The wife in this couple had a massive stroke after just having a baby. She survived it but was now confined to a wheelchair. Dave asked her how they could still have so much faith after something so tragic had happened. They said they relied on a scripture verse. That scripture verse is the same as today’s verse, Habakkuk 3:17-19. This woman, who was now struggling with so much, took this verse and made it her own. Here is what her version of the verse said:
“Though I cannot walk, and I am confined to a wheelchair. Though my face is paralyzed, I cannot smile. Though I am extremely impaired and cannot take care of my own baby boy, yet I will rejoice in the Lord. I will be joyful in God my savior.”
The author of the book I am reading, Dave Hollis, had not heard this scripture before. When he heard this story, he was in the middle of a divorce he did not ask for and was transitioning out of a company he ran with his ex-wife. Everything he knew to be true about his identity was changing, and he didn’t know what to do about it. Dave decided to also adopt this verse and make it his own. Here is Dave’s verse:
“Though my marriage has come to an end, and my future looks different than I thought it would. Though this blank paper I have been handed to imagine what’s next fills me with equal parts fear and excitement. Though my identity both at home and at work is shifting under my feet, yet I will rejoice in the Lord. I will be joyful in God my savior.”
What is it that you are going through? Whatever it is, would it help you to write your own version of this verse? Would it help you to read that verse daily to remind yourself that God is your Savior? Let’s not forget that important part of the verse. I will be joyful in God, my savior. Reading this every day can give you a reminder that you are not alone and that you are not in charge of fixing everything yourself. God is your savior.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to your episode today. Lord, we thank you that we have food and the things we need to get through the day. Lord, we thank you for these beautiful verses, and I hope we all get to rewrite them to fit our own lives. You are our Savior, Lord God, please help us to remember! Lord, help us to rejoice in you during the hard times. Help us lean into you and not turn away from you. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in January 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I had a prophetic image of us being in a great flood of his divine mercy, being carried forward into this new year, and just surrounded by this great rising tide of his glory and his grace going forward.”
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Discipline Yourselves
1 Peter 1:13-16 “Therefore, prepare your minds for action; discipline yourselves; set all your hope on the grace that Jesus Christ will bring you when he is revealed. Like obedient children, do not be conformed to the desires that you formerly had in ignorance. Instead, as he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct; for it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”
I really like the first line of the verse. It says to prepare our minds for action. This can be hard for some of us. We can have a lot of ideas, but then we get stuck wanting them to be perfect, and so we spend a lot of time thinking about them and how we should do them, but then we don’t do them because we aren’t quite sure how. Does this sound familiar? I know I can’t be the only person who does this. I can’t be the only one who wants to do things perfectly, and so I get stuck and don’t end up doing as much as I know I could be doing.
I want to follow the Lord’s will and I want to follow His commandments, and yet sometimes I don’t do something because I am not sure exactly how He wants me to do it. The thing is, most of the time, I don’t think He cares how we do it, as long as we are doing it with the right frame of mind and with our heart. If we let the Holy Spirit guide us, then we can’t go wrong. Why do we worry so much, then? I think it is because we love the Lord so much that we want to be perfect for Him. I think it is because we struggle to believe that He truly loves us just as we are. We are used to human love, which is fallible and conditional at times. We feel as though we must earn the Lord’s love, and so we want to do things perfectly for Him. I don’t think we even realize we are doing this. I know I wasn’t aware. I was talking to my spiritual advisor about how I felt like I needed to do all these things, and she pointed out that I was feeling like I needed to earn God’s love. We don’t need to earn God’s love! He loves us more than anything, and He has loved us long before we were born, and He will love us long after we die. I know I have probably said this a lot, and I will keep saying it because we struggle to believe it. We do not have to earn God’s love; He gives it freely and abundantly.
The next two words are words that we don’t always like: discipline yourselves. This is not easy. This is one thing that we get to work on during Lent. We get a chance to discipline ourselves by fasting from things that are important to us, or doing things that we don’t normally do. During Lent, we get to step outside of our comfort zone and stretch ourselves in the area of discipline. I remember watching a YouTube video of Father Mike talking about why we fast during Lent. He explained it in a way that made me enjoy fasting a little more. He discussed how fasting is a way of demonstrating our love for. Fasting is an act of love. It’s kind of like that question, what do you get the guy that has everything? Well, God has everything; He doesn’t need anything. He loves us completely, and one way to show Him our love is to fast, or give something up, or start doing something we normally don’t do. The thing is, it isn’t really an act of love if we complain and grumble the whole time. If we go through the motions and we do it just because we have to, then that is showing obedience, but it is not showing love. How can you show God your love? What can you fast from? What can you start doing?
The next line says, “set all your hope on the grace that Jesus Christ will bring you when he is revealed.” To be honest, I almost skipped over this line. I was not really sure what it meant or how to explain it. Then I figured if I didn’t know, maybe you don’t either. Also, the point of this podcast is for us to grow on the journey and for us to understand scripture a little more and figure out how we can apply it to our lives, so I looked up the meaning of this line to see if anyone else had already explained it. The consensus seems to be that we are to hope in the grace that Jesus will bring us, instead of hoping in things of this world, like money, material objects, or even people. I think we have a tendency to hope in the things of this world instead of looking towards Jesus.
I found an article titled, Two Ways to Fix Your Hope on Future Grace by Jen Wilkin. (Click Here for Article) It is definitely worth reading. She talks about how we need to place our hope in the day that Christ is coming because the days we are currently in may be filled with trial and sorrow. The two ways she talks about in the article to fix our hope on future grace are to prepare our minds and be sober-minded. It is a very good article, and I would do it a disservice to try to summarize it for you in a few short lines. I recommend you take a look at the article if you wish to get a better understanding of this verse and how you can put it into practice in your own life.
The next line says, “Like obedient children, do not be conformed to the desires that you formerly had in ignorance.” This is an interesting line. God is often telling us to be like children, or to have a childlike faith. It doesn’t just say to not give in to your desires. It says not to conform to the desires you formerly had in ignorance. If you are listening to this podcast, then you are trying to grow in your faith. You are trying to learn more about the Lord and His Word. As you grow, you will gain a better understanding of what the Lord is calling us to. What His commandments are and what He expects from us. As you grow, you may learn that some things you are doing are not in alignment with what God expects from you or how he is calling you to live. This part of the verse is telling us that it is not ok to continue to do these things because now we know they are wrong. Once you know, if you continue to do that, then you are choosing that thing over the Lord. One of the conditions of something being a sin is that you have to know it was wrong. You have to have freely chosen to do it. Once you know something is wrong, God is calling us to no longer do it.
Being completely honest with you, I have hesitated on my journey to grow before because of this very reason. In the past, I have stopped to think, “Maybe I don’t want to learn more, because when we learn more, we are held to a higher standard.” If I don’t know something is wrong and I am doing it, God is not holding it against me. However, once I know it is wrong, then He is. Maybe you have never thought about this, but in case you have, I have two things to share. First, growing closer to the Lord is worth any hardship you may perceive by learning what He expects from us. As you grow closer to the Lord, you find you don’t want to do anything that might get in the way of your relationship. You find yourself wanting to please Him more than you want to do those things you used to do.
Second, God is calling us to all grow closer to Him. The very next line in this verse is “ Instead, as he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct; for it is written, 'You shall be holy, for I am holy.” We have a responsibility to learn about God’s Word and what He is calling us to do. We are all called to Holiness. God is not ok with us just living in ignorance of His ways and continuing to do whatever we like. He is calling us to read His Word, study His Word, and live in a way that is in alignment with this Word. If we purposely refuse to learn because we don’t want to have to live as He is calling us to live, then that is not ok, and I don’t think we can claim ignorance. We all have a choice to make. God is calling us all to holiness. That may mean something different to each of us. I think if you want to know what God is calling you to, then all you need to do is ask Him. He will tell you. I think the one thing that is the same for all of us is that He is calling us to read and study His Word, and also to love Him and love our neighbors. Will you accept His call?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this podcast today. Lord, we love you and we want to live in alignment with you. Help us, show us how. Lord, help us to set our hopes in Jesus and the graces He will bring when He is revealed. Lord, I ask that you give us a better understanding of the verse. Please speak to us this week and help us understand it better. Help us to set our minds towards action and help us to discipline ourselves. Lord, we love you so very much. You are amazing, and we are grateful for all you do for us each and every day. Help us to show you that gratitude with our actions. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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The Peace of God
Philippians 4:6-7 "Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
The other night was very hard. I knew it was going to be a long night, and so I decided, while it was quiet, I would write a devotional. I only got as far as asking the Lord for a scripture verse that would get me through the night. One that was just what I needed for the situation I was in. When I have done this before, I have had my Bible with me, and I would ask the Lord a question, then ask Him to show me the answer in His Word. Then I would randomly open the Bible and read the pages until I found my answer.
Tonight I didn’t have my Bible. I mean, I could have gone upstairs to get it, but honestly, I didn’t really have the energy to move. So, I wondered how I could randomly search an online Bible, as I did have my computer. I decided to type into the search bar “A scripture verse to help me make it through the night.” And I told the Lord that He knew my exact circumstances, and I asked if He could give me the verse I needed to read or hear.
Today's verse is the one that appeared in the search results. "Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” I laughed at first because I thought that was a pretty tall order. Not to be anxious in this situation was definitely difficult, as one of my sons was making poor choices, and there wasn't much we could do about it. However, when I really thought about it, I realized I wasn’t anxious. I was mad and I was sad, but I wasn’t anxious.
This reminded me of a conversation I was having with a friend the day before. When I told her all that was happening, she asked how I was dealing with it all. She asked how I was getting out of bed in the morning. I stopped and thought about it, and the answer was through the grace of God. This is not just something I was saying because I didn’t know what else to say. I truly mean it. I can look at the situation and know that God’s grace is helping me through it. I can see His hands all over this situation and that makes it easier for me to turn it over to Him.
I could absolutely be worrying about my son all day, every day. I could be trying to fix it and trying to make sure all goes smoothly, and I may be doing that more than I need to. I could let this get to me so much that I stay in bed with fear of what might happen or sadness of what has already happened. Yet I am not, and I know that is because God prepared me for this moment. He prepared me for difficult times. There have been so many really hard things that have happened in the last 21 years, and I know that they were all preparation for this moment.
I know God will get me through this hard time because He has gotten me through so many other hard times.I know that this addiction will not destroy my son because God has promised me that it won’t, and I can trust in His promises. I can wait for God’s timing on this because I have waited a really long time for things in the past, and although the wait was never easy, it was always worth it in the end. I always say that I don’t know how I developed a deep trust in the Lord. I don’t know why I am not more worried about my son. I think this is because we all expect it to be complicated. We expect some difficult formula to show us how to trust in the Lord. I think it is actually so simple that we don’t want to believe it. Kind of like the story of Naaman in 2 Kings 5.
Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Aram, was a great man and in high favor with his master, because by him the Lord had given victory to Aram. The man, though a mighty warrior, suffered from leprosy. He found out about a prophet in Samaria who could cure him. Long story short Naaman came to Elisha’s house. Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, “Go, wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored and you shall be clean.” But Naaman became angry and went away, saying, “I thought that for me he would surely come out, and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, and would wave his hand over the spot, and cure the leprosy! Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them, and be clean?” He turned and went away in a rage. But his servants approached and said to him, “Father, if the prophet had commanded you to do something difficult, would you not have done it? How much more, when all he said to you was, ‘Wash, and be clean’?” So he went down and immersed himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God; his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was clean.
We think it must be complicated to follow the Lord. It must be complicated to hear his voice and to know what He wants us to do. It must be complicated to figure out how to hand things over to him and how we can get Him to answer our prayers. We search for the perfect formula or what to do and what to say to make God happy. We search and search for the next thing we can do to earn his love. And yet, it is not complicated. God tells us so simply what to do and yet we don’t listen. Jesus told in Matthew 22:37-40, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” Love is the answer.
I say it is simple, but I don’t think it is easy. Loving others is hard, I get that. I know that, trust me, I do. I have loved some people who were doing some pretty terrible things for a very long time. However, the breakthrough didn’t happen when I followed all the steps laid out to me in all the various books that I read. A breakthrough also didn’t happen when I did all the things the experts and counselors said I needed to do. The breakthrough happened when I did what Jesus said to do, and I poured so much more love into the situation.
This verse gives us a formula for peace, and yet I think many of us dismiss it because it isn’t more complicated. Let’s review the verse again, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” In every situation where you are struggling right now, are you doing all that this verse tells us to do? Are you praying to God about it? Have you asked God for exactly what you need? Have you talked with Him about it? Yes, God knows what you need, and yet He also wants us to turn to Him and ask. What about the Thanksgiving part of it? Have you been grateful in this situation? Not necessarily appreciative of the problem, but while going through hard times, there is always something for which we can be thankful. Then it says to present your requests to God. Don’t be afraid to ask God for help. Your request is neither too big nor too small. Bring it to Him!
The verse ends with “And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” This is how I get out of bed in the morning. This is how I can watch my kids struggle and yet not let it take over every thought in my mind. This is how I can make it through hard times. That doesn’t mean I don’t have hard days. That doesn’t mean I didn’t spend a week watching TV recently, just to take my mind off the situation. I am not doing this perfectly, I know that. Yet, I firmly believe with 100% of my being that this will not be forever. This addiction will not get the best of my son. There is a whole, amazingly bright future for him, and God’s timing is better than mine. So by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, I will present my requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard my heart and mind in Christ Jesus.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all of us today. Lord, help us to come to you with prayer and petition. Help us to know that you are the creator of the universe, so whatever our problem is, you can handle it! Help us to obey your simple commandments to love God and Love one another. Help us to open our ears, minds, and hearts to you and to truly hear what you are saying to us. Help us not dismiss it because it is too easy. Help us be obedient, Lord. We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. I pray you all have an amazing Fourth of July tomorrow for those of you who live in America! Remember, Jesus loves you, just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day.
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in January 2025 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful. And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day approaching.”
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Today’s witnesses are from Matthew West’s website, popwe.org. If you don’t know who Matthew West is, he is a singer, songwriter, and storyteller. This website is for the non-profit that he has with his father, a pastor. Matthew and his father encourage people to share their stories. They have various categories of stories. Today, I chose a few testimonies from the Addictions and Deliverance Category. Often, we can hear our own story in someone else’s story. When we listen to others tell their story, it helps us see that we are not alone. When we hear how God worked in their situation, it gives us hope that He will work in ours, too! I pray that when you hear these testimonies, you get the faith and hope to believe that miracles can happen in your situation, also. I pray you know that God is there with you, and if you invite Him into your situation, He can help. I hope you enjoy these testimonies.We have all seen God working in our lives. However, we might not all be aware it is God working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences, the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience of how God has worked or is working in your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or click here. It won’t take up much of your time, and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story, and the world needs to hear them.Music:"Adding the Sun"fine us. It is not fun, Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ www.findingtruenorthcoaching.comCLICK HERE TO DONATECLICK HERE to sign up for Mentoring CLICK HERE to sign up for Daily "Word from the Lord" emailsCLICK HERE to sign up for my newsletter & receive a free audio trainingabout inviting Jesus into your daily lifeCLICK HERE to buy my book Total Trust in God's Safe Embrace
God's Heart is Not Hesitant—It's Joyful
Luke 15:10 “There is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
We are closing out out month on Repentance in mentoring and I think this verse is an important one for us all to know about. God's Heart is Not Hesitant—It's Joyful
When we think about coming back to God after failure or sin, we often imagine Him standing at a distance—arms crossed, disappointed, waiting for us to prove we’re really sorry. But that is not the God of the Bible. God doesn’t forgive reluctantly. He doesn’t roll His eyes when we repent. He rejoices. He celebrates. He runs to meet us.
Repentance isn’t just about our sorrow. It’s about God’s joy.
1. Heaven Celebrates When We Return
Luke 15:7 “I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.”
This verse is from the parable of the lost sheep, part of a trio of parables Jesus tells in Luke 15: the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son (or prodigal son). In each story, something precious is lost, then found—and each time, there's celebration. Jesus wants us to know that repentance isn’t the end of joy—it’s the beginning of it. God is not waiting to shame us. He’s waiting to rejoice over us. He loves us and wants us to come home. He is so happy when we come home. He is not thinking about what we did when we went away, He is happy that we made the decision to turn back to Him and to come home.
2. The Father Doesn’t Just Accept the Prodigal—He Runs
Luke 15:20 “But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.”
In the culture Jesus was speaking to, fathers didn’t run. Running was undignified. But here, the father represents God Himself, and He breaks cultural norms to embrace His child who is coming home. The verse says that while he was still a long way off…God doesn't wait for us to do all the hard work and then come to us. He sees us trying and making the effort, even if that effort is very small, and He comes running!! He sees us turn to Him, even if it is just the slightest turn, and He comes running. The father doesn’t wait for the son to finish his apology speech. He sees his heart, and that’s enough.
We might think we must explain ourselves and jump through hoops to be accepted back into the family. We, like the prodigal, don’t even think we are worthy to be let back into the family. So we come up with a whole justification of why we are asking for forgiveness and explaining why it is ok if we aren’t fully forgiven. It is ok if our loved ones want to keep us at a distant.e
God’s joy is not based on how perfect your repentance is, but on your desire to return. He knows the moment your heart turns toward Him—and He moves first.
3. God's Joy is Greater Than Your Guilt
Many people struggle to believe God can be happy to see them after what they’ve done. They may think: “Sure, He’ll forgive me—but He won’t be happy about it.”
But Scripture paints a different picture.
Zephaniah 3:17 “The Lord your God is with you… He will take great delight in you; in His love He will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.”
God delights in you. He doesn’t just tolerate you. He doesn’t forgive you because He has to—He does it because He wants to. His joy is rooted in love. And repentance restores that relationship, which is cause for celebration.
4. God’s Kindness is What Draws Us to Repent
Romans 2:4 “Do you show contempt for the riches of His kindness, forbearance, and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance?”
God’s mercy is not weakness—it’s a strategy of love. He’s not trying to trap you in guilt. He’s trying to lead you back with compassion, knowing His joy will become your healing.
5. Joy Is Mutual: God Rejoices, and So Do We
When we repent, God rejoices—but we’re invited into joy, too.
Psalm 51:12 “Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.”
True repentance leads to freedom, not fear. The weight of sin is lifted. Relationship is restored. Joy is revived. God’s joy becomes your joy.
What Does This Mean for Us Today?
If you’ve wandered, God is not angry—He’s waiting with joy.
If you feel ashamed, know that God’s delight is greater than your past.
If someone else is returning to God, don’t question their worthiness—celebrate with heaven.
If you’re leading others, reflect God’s posture: compassion, welcome, and joy over repentance.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless each one of us today. Lord, we want to believe that you rejoice when we repent. Please help us. Please soften our hearts towards you and allow us to see you as the loving father instead of the angry judge. Help us to turn to you when we mess up. Help us come back to you every time. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I want to thank you also for your patience as I navigate this difficult season we are in right now with one of our sons. Things are stressful and unpredictable, and I appreciate your patience if I need to replay an episode instead of recording a new one or if I miss a day here and there due to all that is going on. I am doing my best to release new episodes, and when I’m unable to do so, I use ones from when the podcast first came out, as many of you weren't listening back then. Hopefully, they are still new to you. I also wanted to mention my annual retreat in October. It will be at the same place we had it for the last two years. It will be the same weekend, the second weekend in October. However, this year it will be from Saturday morning until Sunday night. Just one overnight. People hit a lot of traffic coming in Friday night last year so this year we will hopefully avoid all that traffic. I will get the registration site up and running soon so you can check out all the details. I will let you know when it is ready! I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day.
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in November / December 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “There are lights everywhere, but I ask you to be my light, to share me with others. Tell them how much I mean to you. ”
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What’s Your Story?
Psalm 28:7 “The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and he helps me. My heart leaps for joy, and with my song I praise him.”
The Lord is my strength and my shield. This is something that I am not sure we always realize. I think most of the time, we know that the Lord is our strength. Or, at least we know that we can ask Him for strength and He will give it to us. I think when we think of the Lord, we most often think of Him as our strength vs. our shield. But, did you know that He is your shield as well. This is the part of the job that probably goes most unseen and most unrecognized. If we are weak and God gives us strength, we can usually tell. We are usually aware that He is helping us.
But, what about the times when He shields us from things that we didn’t even know about? This is when we don’t know how to thank Him because we didn’t even know that He did anything. I think about this when I get stuck in traffic or hit a red light when I am running late. I wonder what God is protecting me from. I wonder what would have happened if I had left 5 minutes earlier that day. I’m not saying that every time you get stuck in traffic, God is shielding you from something, but sometimes He might be. Have you ever had a morning when no matter what you did, you could not leave the house on time? Have you ever had a series of strange things happen that caused you to switch up your routine?These could be times when God is shielding you from something.
The next time that you have an experience where everything seems to be going wrong and you don’t know why, try thanking God for it. I know that may sound weird, but you will be surprised how much better you feel. Having a day or even just part of a day when everything is going wrong is very frustrating. We can get into a really bad mood, dwelling on the fact that nothing is going right for us. Our mood can start to spiral downward quickly. However, if you view this terrible start to the day as a gift from God, your mood will change. Instead of thinking that everything is going wrong and the world is conspiring against you, you can thank God for protecting you from something worse happening.
You probably will never know whether God was protecting you from something or not. However, the mindset change will be great. Most of the time, our mindset is based on our view of things. There is a saying that we view things not as they are, but as we are. This means that we view everything through our own lens. This lens is made up of our past experiences. Everything that you have been through up until this point is what makes up how you view the world. Two people with different experiences in life can go through the same experience and yet view it very differently. My husband and I often encounter that. We have different views on life and different experiences. We can both be experiencing something at the same time, and yet we feel very differently towards it. For instance, we can both be in the same car, stuck in traffic. He can be angry and frustrated, and I can be happy and grateful, same situation, different mindset. Also, we can both be sitting at the same football game, and he can be happy and cheerful, and I can be bored and frustrated. What we are feeling in any given situation is based on the thoughts that we are telling ourselves about that situation. I am not sure what you think of all of this. Maybe it makes sense to you, and maybe it doesn’t. I know when I learned about it, I was slow to believe it. However, the more I read about it, the more it made sense. Also, the more I read, the more I paid attention to my feelings and my thoughts. I played around with my thoughts and observed whether they affected my feelings or not.
How about you give it a try and see what you think. Think about a circumstance where you recently got upset. Think about why you were upset. What were the thoughts in your head when you were upset? Can you remember the story you were telling yourself? Let’s use the example of traffic for me to try to explain what I would like you to do. I would think about the last time I was upset. It would be when I was stuck in traffic. I was upset because I was going to be late for work. The thoughts in my head were: I should have left earlier. I shouldn’t have taken that extra-long shower. My boss is going to be so mad at me. How stupid I am for leaving late for work. I might get fired for being late. I think you can get the gist of my thoughts. The story I was telling myself was that I was wrong for taking a long shower, and now I was going to lose my job. Can you tell how this story was driving my feelings? Can you see how these thoughts would inevitably lead to upset feelings?Now, what about if I changed my thoughts? What if, when I saw traffic, I told myself a different story? What if I told myself that this was the perfect time to get caught up on that podcast I loved? What if I told myself that the traffic was a small price to pay for the happiness that a longer shower brought me? What if I reminded myself that I am always on time to work and that being late one day is not the end of the world? I could change my story to one where I give myself grace for being late and enjoying a longer shower.
Do you think this story and these thoughts would make me feel differently towards the traffic? What about your situation that made you upset recently? Can you change those thoughts and that story to feel better about it? The thing about the stories we tell ourselves is that we make them up, and we have control over them. Most of the time, these stories are not something we are consciously thinking about. Our stories tend to default to whatever we are used to thinking or what our past experiences have taught us about a certain circumstance. However, when you become aware that your stories are controlling your emotions, then you can pay attention and consciously choose to change your stories. It is not easy, but it is so great when you are able to do this. One reason knowing this is so powerful is that a lot of times, we can’t change our circumstances. When you are stuck in traffic, you can’t change that. Most of the time, you can’t do anything about the traffic except wait it out. Your attitude and emotions while you wait it out can make all the difference in the world. If you had a choice, would you rather wait in traffic, be upset, or be happy? Would you rather spend the time thinking about how much you hate traffic or how much you love the song on the radio?
Once you realize that your emotions are a choice, a whole new life opens up to you. One where you are in charge of your emotions instead of your emotions being in charge of you. It is an awesome feeling!!I was not intending to talk about this when I started writing this episode. I thought this episode was going to be about Joy, which I love talking about. However, it’s funny what happens when you let the Holy Spirit take over. I will address the second half of this verse in tomorrow’s episode. For today, take some time and think about your emotions, the story you are telling yourself, and how you can change that story to one that better serves you.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone listening to this episode today. I ask that you fill us with love today. We ask that you help us to recognize the stories we are telling ourselves that are unhelpful and not serving us. Lord, we ask that you help us replace those stories with better stories. We ask that you help us change our mindset and outlook on life. Help us to see the ways in which you are our strength and our shield. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the million ways that you protect us every single day that we don't even know about. Lord, we know that you are amazing, and we're so very thankful for all that you do for us. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus ' holy name, amen.
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Today's witness is from the Encounter Ministries Website. Patrick Reis and Father Mathias Thelen of the Diocese of Lansing, Michigan, founded Encounter Ministries (www.encounterministries.us). They say the ministry’s purpose is “to unleash the transforming power of the Holy Spirit in the world through teaching, equipping, and activating disciples to demonstrate the love of God through the power of the Holy Spirit.” Its work has been endorsed by many bishops in the U.S. and elsewhere. The ministry offers a two-year training program, the Encounter School of Ministry (www.encounterschool.org). I graduated from this program in May of 2024. It was an amazing 2 years of life. The people teaching my class and my classmates were amazing. I learned so much in two years and have been able to put what I learned into practice. That is one of the most amazing things about the Encounter School of Ministry: they teach you something new each week, but then you immediately put it into practice with something they call activations.Encounter Ministries' healing services are like nothing I have ever been to before. They start with praise and worship for a good hour before the service. Then they have a Gospel teaching about healing and give some real-life examples. Next, they have the team come up and give words of knowledge. This means that the team asks the Lord for what He wants to heal that night, and anyone who hears something goes up and shares it. Oftentimes, people are healed just by the word of knowledge. They hear that God wants to heal them, and they are healed. It can be that simple. Next, they do corporate healing. This means that the leader names a part of the body, and anyone suffering from that raises their hand. Those sitting around this person pray over the person. The leader tells them what to say, and the whole audience repeats it. There are so many healings that occur during this section of the healing service, which is amazing because it is just regular, everyday people praying over them. It is not people with special training, it is not people who are super holy and pray all the time. It is just whoever happened to sit next to that person for the service. It is such a good reminder that we are not the ones doing the healing; the Lord is. It is also a good reminder that God can use anyone.
The healing services usually end with individual prayer for those who were not healed earlier in the service. These healing services are so powerful, and they even host them on Zoom sometimes. The witness for today, Gabriella, is from their website. Gabby suffered from Lupus, Endometriosis, and Ulcerative Colitis. She happened to be attending an Encounter Conference online when she heard Father call out the words of knowledge for her particular body parts that she was struggling with, and she knew she would be cured. Here is her story. I will put a link to the original testimony in the show notes. Click Here to watch the orignial video of Gabby's testimony.
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The Lord Rejoices When You Repent!
Luke 15:7 “Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.”
The topic for tonight’s mentoring session is God’s joy over repentance. This verse is an excellent example of how much God loves us and how happy He is when we repent. Many of us think God is just waiting for us to mess up so he can say, “I told you so,” and then punish us. The truth is that God is waiting there for us with open arms, just waiting for us to repent. When we do, He rejoices.
The verse says there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance. I think it is essential to know this because we tend to put righteous people on a pedestal. We look at people who seem to be doing it all right and think that God likes them more than us. We believe they are highly favored, and we are not. We could never compare to them, so why bother trying to be as good as they are?
This verse is telling us that this is not true. It tells us that God rejoices more over us sinners who repent and turn back to Him than He does over the 99 that didn’t need to repent. God loves you in the middle of all of your mess. He loves you even when you mess up. He loves you even when you don’t feel lovable. He loves you even when you are sure you finally did it this time. You finally did something that is so bad, He will never be able to forgive you. He loves you even then and is just waiting for you to repent so he can forgive you, pick you up in His arms, and give you a big hug. God loves all of his children, even those of us who mess up and sin. Even if we mess up and sin a lot, He still loves us.
This is such an important thing for us all to know. Actually, not just know, but to fully embrace. The enemy loves to take up space in our heads. Did you know another name for the devil is the accuser? Revelations 12:10 says, “Then I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, “Now the salvation, and the power, and the kingdom of our God and the authority of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren has been thrown down, he who accuses them before our God day and night.” Satan is constantly telling God how bad we are and accusing us of all the things he thinks are so terrible that God shouldn’t forgive us. Even satan doesn’t understand the Lord. He doesn’t understand why the Lord would forgive us. It makes no sense to him. And I kinda get it. I mean, we can be pretty awful to the Lord sometimes. We can say and do some pretty mean things, especially when we are mad.
I mean, think about how we feel when our kids do unkind things to us. My sister and I were just talking yesterday about how we don’t understand how kids can go from being so sweet one minute to saying the most cruel things the next. This can be us with God sometimes. When things aren’t going our way, when we are stressed out, when we are frustrated, or when we feel like we are at the bottom of a deep, dark pit, we may lash out at the Lord and say very unkind things. We don’t usually mean them, but in that moment, we say them anyway.
We can also hurt the Lord when things are going well. We do this by taking credit for all the good in our lives. We do this by thinking we can do things by ourselves and that we don’t need God. We only call upon him when we need him and forget about Him when things are going good. I am sure this is also painful to the Lord. I know it is painful to me when my kids only come to me when they need something. He wants to be there celebrating with us in the good times, too. He wants to give us a revelation about how we got to where we are, but we need to go to seek Him. We need to look back at where we were and where we are and see all that God has done to get us where we are today.
God is so good and so faithful. He patiently waits for us to see the error of our ways and repent and turn back to Him. And when we do, he rejoices, and so does the rest of heaven!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening today. Lord, we are grateful that you love us and that you forgive us. We are sorry that we offend you so often and are grateful that you never give up on us. We are grateful you keep patiently waiting for us to get it together and repent and turn back to you. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in November / December 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I am here with my joy, my children. Come and have your fill. Let the rhythm of my joy spread to one and all. Announce to the world that the Lord has come.”
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There is Light, Even In The Darkness!
Isaiah 9:2 “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness— on them light has shined.”
This verse was received at my prayer group on Thursday. I thought it would be a good one because several of you have felt like you are in the dark lately. You feel like the waves keep coming, and you can’t seem to get your head above water. I know many of you are suffering from illness and are waiting on the Lord to fix them. You have done all you can do, and now it is up to the Lord. You know He is capable of healing you, and so you are trying to hold on to the hope that He will. Yet, each day that goes by without the healing, you find it harder and harder to hold onto that hope.
I know some of you listening are struggling financially. You are praying that you will be able to pay your bills at the end of the month. You are worried because someone is coming out to repossess your car any day now. I am sure that is a really scary feeling and one that you don’t want to have anymore. I know growing up, my parents struggled financially. I remember my mom calling the water company and the electric company and letting them know that she wanted to pay her bills, but she just didn't have the money. The best she could do was send them $20 now and pay the rest at a later date. I am sure there were times when my mom felt like she was in the dark because they went so long without having any money.
Others are not struggling financially or medically, but you have loved ones who are, and that is really tough too. This is where I am at right now. One of my sons is really struggling, and I am working hard to figure out how to help him without enabling him. I am trying to find my boundaries and still be there for him with all that he needs. You may be taking care of a spouse, a child, or a parent. Caring for aging parents can be really tough.
I wish I knew what to say to you to make your situation easier. I wish I knew what to say to heal you or your loved one. I wish I could say some magic words and you would instantly have all the provisions and money you needed for the month. I do not know what to say. However, I do know what this verse says and what it promises us. The verse for today says, “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness— on them light has shined.” You may be walking in darkness, but you have a light shining on you. God is shining a light on you. You may feel like it is too dark to see that light, but it is there. God is always right there with you, trying to light your way. We just need to be looking for His light.
This light doesn’t have to literally be a bright shining light, although for some it might be. I have a friend, Bruce, who has gone blind slowly over the last 10 years. He had a conversation with the Lord back in August. He cried out to God and told Gold that he was so tired of being in the dark all the time. He just couldn't take it anymore. Guess what God did next? He did not heal him of his blindness, but he did provide him with a light in that darkness. It was truly remarkable. If you have some time, you can go back and listen to his testimony on episode #836. You won’t be sorry you listened. It is a great witness to how good our God is and shows what can happen if we are brave enough to ask.
For some of you, the bright light might be feeling good enough to get out of bed today. It might be getting a chance to sit outside and feel the sun on your face. It might be feeling good enough to eat something or to sit up and watch TV. Your bright light might be different than my bright light. However, the verse says that the people who have walked in darkness have seen a great light. So, what does your great light look like? Where can you see light in your darkness? If you don’t know what that great light is, that is ok. You are not alone. There are many of us who can only see the dark, especially if we have been in it for a long time.
One way to start to see some light is to look for things you can be grateful for each day. It’s ok to just start with one thing. If all you see is the bad stuff all around you, then try to take a moment each day to intentionally find something good around you. It doesn't have to be something good about your situation, it could just be that you are grateful for the sun shining, for a good cup of coffee or tea. You could be grateful for a nice text message from a friend or the perfect song coming on the radio when you needed it the most. Gratitude is a great way to start to bring a little light into your situation.
The verse also says, “those who lived in a land of deep darkness— on them light has shined.” If you are feeling like you are living in the land of deep darkness, the verse says that a light has shone on you, too. There is light in every situation. God is light, and He never leaves your side. No matter how dark you feel your situation is, God is promising us that there is light in it. It is not pitch black. There is always some light because God is right there with you. Sometimes the light is hard to see, and that is why I suggested the habit of looking for things to be grateful for each day. The more you look, the more you will see. It can be easy to tell ourselves that we have nothing to be grateful for. However, the more we look for things to be grateful for, the more we will see, and then the more light we will see in our situation. There is light in every situation, we just have to look for it and we will find it!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each person listening to this episode. Lord, so many of us feel we are in the dark, please help us! Please help those who are in the dark find even just a glimmer of your light, Lord! We know you are in every situation, and yet sometimes it is so hard to see you. Please help us see you in every situation. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in November / December 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Surrender all the worries, anxieties, tests, and demands of this world during this season to Me. The most important thing you can do is surrender to Me, my sacred heart. This is the most important gift to Me, to yourselves, and to others.”
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Find The Gold In People
Romans 2:1-4 “You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things. Now we know that God’s judgment against those who do such things is based on truth. So when you, a mere human being, pass judgment on them and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God’s judgment? Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, forbearance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance?”
We spent a lot of time in class discussing this topic of judging others and calling out other people's sins last night, and it was such a great conversation. I wanted to share the idea with all of you as well. We all know we shouldn’t judge others. Did you know the extent to which you judge others is the extent to which God will judge you? For me, finding that our, taking a minute to let that sink in, was a game changer for me. If I expect perfection from others and don’t cut anyone any slack, will God do the same? I don’t know if that is precisely how it works, but that was enough for me to double down on my efforts not to judge. I know I am not perfect. I know I have many flaws. I know I need God to be very gracious with me, which means I must be gracious with others. To me, that seems like a small trade-off.
If I am gracious with others here on earth, how does that hurt me? It may be inconvenient. I may have to be nice to those I don’t like, and I may have to put up with annoyances. I may have to watch them make bad choices and not judge them for it. However, if you compare that to the alternative, it doesn’t compare. If you compare those inconveniences to what might happen if God judged me the way I was judging others, I would suffer a lot more than inconveniences after I leave Earth. I want to spend eternity with my heavenly father. Our time in this world is limited when we compare it to eternity. Romans 8:18 says, “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.” Is it hard not to judge others? Yes. It is worth it in the end, absolutely.
When I talk about judging others, most of you are probably thinking about how we judge strangers. How we judge those we see on the streets, or in the grocery stores, maybe even those at work. Those we judge when there is really no reason to judge. We might judge someone’s outfit or their decisions, but they don’t affect us. Our judgment does not really affect them. However, what about when we view our judgment as necessary? For instance, we all want our children, siblings, or family members to be successful. We want them to have a good life. When we worry they are headed down the wrong path, we feel it is our job to correct their course. We are only trying to help them be more responsible, be healthier, be whatever it is we think they should be. Sometimes, if our children, our loved ones, or our friends are doing something that we know is a sin, we feel as though it is our duty to tell them. We feel we are helping them to their salvation if we call out their sin. We are only trying to help. I get it, and yet, are we really helping?
In class, we took a look at how Jesus dealt with sin in the Bible. Sometimes, he did call it out, but only if needed and only with love. For instance, the woman at the well, He let her know that she was living with a man who was not her husband, but he never once made her feel ashamed for it. He was letting her know that He saw her, He knew her, all of her, and yet still loved her. The woman caught in adultery, he didn’t scold her, he didn’t tell her she needed to get her life together, he didn’t lecture her on why what she was doing was wrong. He showed her kindness, He saved her life, and he told her to sin no more. What about Luke 19:1-10? Zacchaeus was a chief tax collector who wanted to see Jesus. Jesus called out to Zacchaeus and said, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” The scripture says others around were muttering that the Lord would dare to eat with a sinner. Jesus never called out all Zacchaaeus’ sins. He called him by his name, showing that He knew him, and then He showed love for Zacchaeus by going to his house for lunch. Then in Luke 19:8 it says, “But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, 'Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”
Why did Zacchaeus have a change of heart? Why did he change his ways? Why did the woman at the well change her ways? Both of them had a renewal of the mind through an encounter with the love of Jesus. Our goal in life, all of us, should be to lead people to encounter the transforming love of God. I know we worry about our families and friends. I know we love them, and we just want what is best for them. I also know that God loves them more than we ever could. God wants more for them than we could ever imagine. So, why do we think it is up to us and us alone to set them on the right path? Why do we think it is our job to call out their sins? Have you ever met someone or had someone in your life who pointed out all you did that was wrong? Have you ever been around someone who made you feel like nothing you did was ever good enough? How did that make you feel? Did it make you want to work really hard to get that person’s respect? Did it make you want to not even bother to try because there was no way they would be happy? Did you feel any love from that person?
The reason for the title of this episode is that our teacher kept saying we needed to look for the gold in people. When you are mining for gold, you don’t always find gold. Sometimes you pull up rocks, mud, sludge, or whatever else, mixed in with the gold. However, you don’t keep that stuff. You sift through all the junk and you only keep the good stuff. What if we did that with all we meet? Yes, we see all the junk, the uncleanliness, the immature decisions, the sinfulness, and much more. However, what if we were to sift that stuff out and just look for the gold? Look for that one thing they are doing right, that one thing they have going for them, that one thing we can be proud of. I think we definitely underestimate the power of our words and, more importantly, the power of positive words.
Fear is gripping this society today. There is so much fear, worry, and anxiety. We must fight it. We must believe that our God is bigger than anything this world has to throw at Him. We must believe that God has the power to change our loved ones, to change us. If there is one thing God has told me so many times over the years, it is to be patient with the process. He continues to tell me, because it takes multiple times, that the change I am looking for is coming, but it is not coming through my nagging. My nagging only slows God’s plan down. My nagging only closes the hearts and minds of those I want the best for. God continues to tell me I just need to love the people, and He will do the rest. Sometimes this is counterintuitive. I know you don’t see how affirming a person when they are making terrible choices can help the situation, but it can. We need to come alongside our loved ones. Instead of acting like we have it all figured out, we can sympathize with their situation. We can let them know we love them right where they are. They don’t need to change for us to love them. They don’t need to be a certain person, so we can love them. We already love them and we are here to help when they are ready for help. Every single person in this world, whether they know it or not, is just looking to be loved, respected, and accepted.
We are called to be like Jesus. We are called to act like Jesus. We are called to think like Jesus. We can’t do this on our own, but with Jesus, we can do all things! What if we put our worry aside for a moment and just lead with love? What if we sifted through all the crap and called out that one thing they were doing right? What if we just met people where they were and led them to an encounter with God’s transforming love? I promise you, if you lead with love, you will be surprised at the changes you will see. St. Augustine said, “Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.” I think this applies to finding the gold in others. You may have 101 reasons why this won’t work, why focusing on the positive won’t change anything, why your correcting them is necessary. I get it, and yet I am asking you to have faith. Have faith that God can change the situation, change the person, change you. Have faith that love is what is needed. You will be surprised how different people act when they know they are loved and they don’t have to fight for love. How about we all commit to trying this for the rest of the month? Can you spend the next 10 days leading with love? Can you stop the criticizing, judging, and nagging for the next 10 days and try to find the gold in all those you meet? Not just find it, but point it out and celebrate it. God’s love is the most powerful tool for change!
Dear heavenly Father, please bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, forgive us for judging others; we don’t mean to. Forgive us for nagging our loved ones; we only want the best for them. Forgive us for making others feel unloved or unwanted; that was not our intent. Lord, show us how to lead with love. Jesus did it so perfectly, show us how to imitate Jesus. We just want our loved ones to be successful and happy, whatever that looks like for them. If this means we need to change or renew our minds to see them in a different light, then we give you permission to change us, too, Lord. Mold us and transform us to your likeness and image, Lord. We love you, Lord, you are truly amazing. We are grateful you love our loved ones more than we ever could. We are grateful you are in charge, and we are sorry we keep forgetting that. You are amazing, Lord. You are the almighty one, the prince of peace. We bless you, we adore you, and we glorify you. We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldy with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here on Monday. I have finalized the details for my retreat this year. Here is the description for this years retreat. In a world that constantly tells us who we should be—based on status, appearance, success, or past mistakes—it's easy to lose sight of who we truly are. This retreat is an invitation to step away from the noise and return to the heart of your Creator.
Through Scripture-based teaching, worship, journaling, and authentic community, you'll begin to uncover the truth of your identity—not as the world defines it, but as God declares it. You are not your past. You are not your failures. You are not what others have said about you. You are who God says you are: loved, chosen, redeemed, and called for a purpose.
Whether you're seeking healing, clarity, or simply a deeper understanding of your worth in Christ, this retreat is a sacred space to rediscover your God-given identity and walk boldly in it.
Come ready to shed the labels the world has placed on you and embrace the truth of who you are in Him. The retreat will be Oct 11- Oct 12th. This year, it will just be one overnight. In the days to come, I will put a link for more information. I pray you will consider joining me for that weekend. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! I pray you have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in November / December 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I feel the Lord is saying to us, be ready for the unexpected grace.”
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Are You Living Up To Your Potential?
Jeremiah 29:11 “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
The Lord has planned out your life. Before you were even formed, He had a plan for your life. Isn’t that crazy to think about? His plans for your life are good plans. He tells us directly, we don’t even have to guess, “Plans to prosper you and not to harm you.” If we know that God has plans for us to prosper, then why do we sometimes run away from these plans? God’s plans are to give us hope and a future, so why do we question these plans? Why is it so hard for us to believe that God has plans for us?
I have been doing a lot of personal development, and I am in a Christian mentoring group called Big Life Mentoring. In all of the personal development books, as well as the mentoring, they talk about how we have a God-given potential. They talk about how we were all created to live an exceptional life. God wants nothing but the best for us. Does this mean that we will never have challenges? Nope. It does mean that He will be with us in those challenges and He will use those challenges for our good, not for our harm. I have talked with numerous people over the last several years about my belief that God created us all to live a big life. It is usually met with some opposition. I have been told that some people were created for a big, amazing life, and some people were not. Some people were created to have an “ok” life. Where they just go about their day, and nothing special happens. They were not created to do great things.
I disagree with this. I do not think that God created any of us to just go through our days, day in and day out, just existing. I do not believe He wants that for any of us. I am also not saying that every person was created to be a movie star or make some huge impact on the whole world. I do think that we all have the same potential for doing great things with our lives. How we use that potential could look very different for everyone. Someone could use that potential to be a movie star, a priest, a mom, a lawyer, a doctor, anything you desire. I don’t think it’s the career you choose or the role you play that defines you. I think it is more about how you are showing up in that career/role.
You do not have to go on a mission trip to another country to change people’s lives. If you are a parent, you are impacting lives every day with your parenting. People are always watching you, and you could be changing lives in the grocery store when someone watches you handle a complaint respectfully. There are many ways that you could have a positive impact on the world. The opposite of this is true as well. If you are walking through life angry and taking it out on all that you see, this will also be observed by others and could be changing lives, but not for the better. If that is you, that is not the life that God has planned for you.
I wonder sometimes how many of us are actually living up to our potential. Are you living up to the potential that God has placed within you? A lot of people that I talk to are settling for mediocrity. They are not truly happy with their life, and they think that is just how life is. They don’t seek to change anything because they don’t feel they deserve more, or maybe they don’t think there is anything better out there, or perhaps they don’t feel they’re capable of having more. I want to tell you right now that if you are unhappy with where you are in life, there is more. God has more planned for you. Where you are now does not have to be a final destination. It could be a resting place until you are ready for the more that God has planned for you.
What is it that you really want to do? What is it that makes your heart light up when you talk about it? This could be something big, like start a non-profit, write a book, change careers, or it could also be as simple as seeing my grandkids more, being in nature, going to daily mass, or spending more time in prayer. Whatever it is deep inside that you’re longing for, go get it. God has given you the potential to achieve all your dreams. Are you living up to your potential? Is there more you could be doing?
You may be listening to this and thinking that I am wrong, that not everyone was made for an extraordinary life. That you were made for an ordinary life and nothing more. I would argue that your outlook might be the difference between an ordinary life and an extraordinary life. Two people may have very similar lives, as far as marriage, kids, career, income, etc. Yet one may be living an extraordinary life, and one may be living an ordinary life. What is the difference? The one living an extraordinary life has a positive outlook on their life. They are on the lookout for the miracles that occur every day and are willing to acknowledge them. They are also looking for ways that they can excel in the roles that they have. They are looking for opportunities to improve the life they have. The one living an ordinary life is on the lookout for all the ways his/her life is ordinary, and so that is all they see. They do not see opportunities to improve their life and assume that what they have is the best it is going to get.
God wants amazing things for you and your family. It is not too late. You are not too young. You are not too old. You have not been out of the game too long. You are not too inexperienced. You are strong enough. You are smart enough. You have so much potential. That thing that you have always wanted to do, it is not too late. Philippians 4:13 says, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” You can do all things through Christ. Do that thing, that thing you have been putting off, that thing that you have been too scared to do, that thing that you are convinced you can’t do. Why do you think you have that desire deep inside of you? Who do you think put that desire there? And if God put that desire there, don’t you think he will equip you with all you need to achieve it? Are you living up to your potential?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless everyone listening to this episode today. Lord Jesus, we ask that you help us live up to our potential. We thank you for putting these desires in our hearts and for equipping us to achieve them. Lord, we ask that you give us the motivation and strength we need to live the life you want us to live. Lord, if we are not living the life you want us to live or if we're not living up to our potential, we ask that you shine a light on this and convict our hearts on what you want us to do. Lord, we want all that you have to offer, and we willingly accept it. You are amazing, Lord, and we are so very thankful for all that you do. We love you very much and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
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Today’s witnesses are from Matthew West’s website, called popwe.org. If you don’t know who Matthew West is, he is a singer, songwriter, and storyteller. This website is for the non-profit that he has with his father, a pastor. Matthew and his father encourage people to share their stories. They have various categories of stories. Today, I chose three testimonies from the God Stories Category. Often, we can hear our own story in someone else’s story. When we listen to others tell their story, it helps us see that we are not alone. Hearing how God worked in their situation gives us hope that He will work in ours, too! I pray that when you hear this testimony, you get the faith and hope to believe that miracles can happen in your situation, too. I pray you know that God is there with you, and if you invite Him into your situation, He can help. I hope you enjoy these testimonies.
First is Diane: I run a Christian camp for people who have developmental and physical disabilities, or as I like to say, “diversabilities.” Because isn’t that who we all are? We experienced great tragedy in September of 2020 when we lost many of our physical buildings, including our activity spaces, bunkhouses, and gymnasium, in a fire. Many of which had been built in the 1940s.
Our campers were devastated. Many have been coming to camp for over 40 years, but without indoor facilities and bunkhouses to serve and host our campers, the future looked bleak. That said, we dutifully signed up for FEMA support to rebuild and began the process of determining eligibility in early 2021.
After much prayer and consideration, we made a commitment to continue serving campers someway, somehow. And we were overwhelmed by the blessing of grants, private donations and many volunteers. We cleared our 18-acre property of fire debris, established and activity meadow, purchased 18 beautiful bell tents and opened our gates to 10 campers a week for 6 weeks. We had only a few doors left after the fires and that first year, all activities and meals were outside. Before the fires and COVID we were serving 25 campers a week, but we promised we would do what we could, and God provided everything we needed!
Fast forward 4 ½ years and here we are, still providing camp with temporary facilities. We continue to work with FEMA and have only just begun to receive money to begin the process of rebuilding.
We were gifted a master plan through the assistance of the Christian Camp and Conference Association (CCCA) in 2021, and now we are working with an incredible architecture and design firm of which 90% is being paid for through FEMA funds. For us 10% is a significant funding gap, but we trust our Father in heaven to pave a way for us to continue moving forward with rebuilding. If all goes well, we anticipate breaking ground on our new buildings later this year.
And finally, to the reason for this long explanation. Our campers love those VBS songs you mention in some of your devos, and I like to re-introduce a few of them every year, so when I read your post this morning, I knew it was time to bring this old chestnut back to our campfire songs, “This little light of mine.” As we rebuild Upward Bound Camp we stand on the firm foundation of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, sharing and rejoicing in His love for all of us!
Second is Heather: My story is about meeting my husband at the warehouse we where we worked, marrying him and then losing him to cancer after twelve life changing years of marriage and seven kids later.
He came to me one day asking, “is this a pimple?” I said,” No love, you should get that checked.” He wasted no time, and the test came back as Melanoma. Within a year of that diagnosis, he went to be with Jesus.
He fought really hard and had a heart of gold the whole way through. He said these words to me towards the end” I am at peace with this.”
Those words will stay in my heart always. He loved Jesus so much and trusted him. I believed before I met Doug, but I honestly believe that he was put on this earth to prepare me and the kids spiritually for what was ahead. For things we did not know were going to happen.
He served God in many ways, but if not for him I believe our lives would have taken a much different path. With him rooting me in the Catholic faith and me coming to truly believe it, allowed me to have the strength to carry on and keep the kids rooted in their faith.
He was an amazing man. I thank you God for blessing us with him if even for a short time. We love you Daddy/ Douglas.
Third is Roy: Last night, my family and I were at your concert here in Lincoln. What a beautiful evening of worship! Seeing my family laugh, sing, and worship together was a powerful reminder of God’s faithfulness and goodness.
Matthew, we met about 15 years ago at a Parenting Simulcast. I was the parenting manager running point that day. It was such a joy to work with you during that event, and I still treasure the memories of that experience.
I’m reaching out to tell you how deeply your song, The God Who Stays, has impacted my life. It became an Ebenezer for me during one of the most broken seasons I’ve ever experienced.
In 2014, I left that organization due to downsizing and took over a struggling Bible and youth camp in New England. After six difficult years of ministry, the camp had to close during COVID, and the board dissolved it. I was devastated.
It felt like I had failed everyone—including God. After closing the doors and letting the staff go, my wife took our kids away for a weekend and told me, “You need to do business with God.”
I went to a place we called “One Tree Hill,” a beautiful hillside at the base of Mount Monadnock, and I listened to The God Who Stays on repeat. I cried like I’ve never cried before. It was there, in my brokenness, that I encountered Christ in such a profound way.
I felt His warmth and embrace, even in the midst of my pain and failure. I was ready to give up leadership entirely, but in that moment, Christ whispered to me: I am not done with you yet. I have been preparing you for what’s next.
Within 48 hours of that encounter, I connected with the ministry I serve today. This January, I will celebrate four years stewarding this organization, which serves vulnerable families through foster care, family preservation, and ministry to families impacted by incarceration.
These last four years have brought so much healing and restoration. Not only in my ministry but in my marriage and family. My wife and kids (25, 21, and 17) have endured so much over the past 15 years, through four major moves and countless challenges. But God has been faithful. To sit together last night in worship reminded me how far He has carried us. Thank you, Matthew, for allowing God to use your music to minister to so many, including me. The God Who Stays will forever be a reminder of His steadfast love and presence in my life.
Thank you all so much for being brave enough to share your stories. I know these stories are going to touch the lives of so many people.
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Evidence of True Repentance
Matthew 3:8 “ Produce fruit in keeping with repentance.”
Repentance is the theme for mentoring this month. This week, we are focusing on Evidence of true repentance. When researching this, I came across this verse. I dismissed it as a very short verse, and I didn’t think it said too much. However, it kept coming up, so I sat with it and asked the Lord what He wanted to share with you about this verse. Repentance is not about just saying sorry. It is about truly being sorry, returning to the Lord, and changing our ways. If we go to confession one day and then return to living our lives the same way we had before, then is that really repentance?
I know there are some sins we struggle with, sins we might confess week after week or month after month. We can be genuinely sorry for something and yet struggle to change it. However, we do need to be trying to change it. God is very patient, and He knows our hearts. He will help change our hearts, habits, or whatever we need to change, as long as we invite him into that struggle.
The verse above says to produce fruit in keeping with repentance. Matthew 17:15-20 says, “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thorn bushes or figs from thistles? Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Therefore, by their fruits you will know them.” It says twice in these verses, you will know them by their fruit. What does your fruit look like?
Is everything going wrong in your life right now? Is it one bad day after another? Do you feel a lot of anger, unforgiveness, and anxiety? Have you repented lately? Have you turned away from sin and back to God? God does not cause bad things to happen in our lives. I am not saying that God is causing these bad things because you have not repented. What I am saying is that our choices can definitely cause bad things to happen in our lives. Our choices can make us miserable, and sometimes we can end up blaming God for the bad results of our choices instead of taking responsibility for them and examining our lives to see where we might need to repent and turn back to the Lord.
We ask the Lord why we are so unhappy, and then we decide to drink all night because we are so sad. Then we wake up the next day feeling like crap and so we are unhappy that day too. This cycle repeats over and over again until we stop, repent, and turn back to the Lord. We ask the Lord why our family is falling apart, yet we choose to watch TV and numb our feelings instead of hitting our knees and praying about the situation. We are turning everywhere for answers except for God, who has all the answers.
One of the people in mentoring gave an example last week of a sin she had been struggling with. She repeatedly confessed this sin each week during confession. She desperately wanted to get rid of this sin in her life, and yet she continued to struggle with it. She felt so embarrassed and so ashamed every time she had to go and confess this same sin, week after week. However, she continued to bring it to the Lord and confess it. Because she continued to repent of this sin and tried to change it, and invited God in to help her change it, she no longer suffers from this sin. He has healed her of it. God changed her heart and her mind. He is so good. He can do this for you, too! But first, you have to bring it to Him. First, you need to repent and invite Him into it.
If things are particularly hard in your life right now, take some time, sit with the Lord, and ask Him if there is any unrepented sin in your life. Ask God to show you where you might need repentance. This can be hard to do, as we might be afraid God might tell us to change something we don’t want to change. God has our best interests at heart. He knows what is best for us, even when we can’t see it. He knows the whole picture, even the things we can’t see.
Think about all you did when you were a kid. Did you always know what was best for you? Did you always do what was best for you? I am sure in the moment you thought you were doing what was best, but really, you were doing what felt best. What feels good in the moment isn’t always what is best for you. I am struggling with this with my boys. They think some of the things they are doing are not that bad. Everyone does them, and it’s no big deal. What they can’t see is the long-term effects or the long-term damage. Yes, smoking probably feels really good in the moment, yet how good do you think lung cancer will feel when you are older? They can’t see the future, but God can.
The same is true for us. We can’t see the results of everything we are doing now. Just because something feels good in the moment doesn’t mean that it is good for us in the long run. This is why it is important to take time to examine our life, our actions, and ask the Lord to show us anywhere that we might need to repent. God knows more than we do. God sees more than we do. God knows our hearts, and He doesn’t want to lose a single one of his children. He can’t help us if we don’t let Him. He can’t help us if we don’t ask for help. If we don’t search our own hearts, lives, and actions and see where we might be sinning. Where we might need to repent.
I read something this morning that said real repentance shows up in your lifestyle: humility, growth, peace, love, and ongoing transformation. Look at these things in your life. Are you growing in humility, or are you very prideful? Are you growing in your relationships, life, job, etc, or are you stuck where you have always been? Are you growing in peace, or are you anxious, worried, angry, fearful, always? Are you growing in love, or are you closed off, refusing to trust, or let others in? Is there an ongoing transformation where you are constantly evolving and trying to be more holy, trying to live more and more like God is calling you to live?
Can people look at us and tell by our lifestyle that we have real repentance? The verse from Matthew 17 said, “You will know them by their fruits.” What do the fruits of our lives say about us?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening today. Lord, help us to repent of our sins. Please help us to know how to repent. Help us see our sins, not so we can feel shame or regret, but so that we can bring them to you and help us repent and turn back to you. Please show us the ways we have turned away from you. Please show us the ways we need to repent. Lord, help us to look at the fruit of our lives and see where we need to make changes. Help us to see where we can grow more in humility, growth, peace, love, and ongoing transformation. Please help us to invite you into all of it, Lord! Help us to invite you into the mess because that is the only way things will change. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I am looking forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in November / December 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I am your strength of every day. I am your hope. I am all that you will ever need. The more you trust, the more you will grow in my ways, for I am the Lord your God who loves you till the very end. Take my hand and never let it go. Come to me, for I love you so.”
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Submit Yourselves to God (Replay)
James 4:7-8 “Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.”
This is another one of those things that sounds much easier to do than it actually is. Submit ourselves to God. That doesn’t sound too hard, right? It doesn’t sound hard, but have you tried it? It is not easy to submit to God. What does it even mean to submit ourselves to God? Google's dictionary defines submission as "the action or fact of accepting or yielding to a superior force or to the will or authority of another person.” I think there are two parts to this. First, the action of accepting or yielding to a superior force. This means that we would accept that God is in control. We would do as He tells us to do because He is our superior force. He created all things, and He gives us a set of rules to live by, so we must live by them.
The second part of this definition is accepting or yielding to the will or authority of another person. Submitting to God would be accepting His will as our will. It would mean that we accept His will for our lives. There are times when this is very easy. When we get the job we really want, it is easy to accept it as God’s will. When we meet the love of our life, we can accept that it is God’s will for us to be with this person. However, what about when things aren’t going our way? What about when God’s will differs from our will? What about if we don’t get a job because He has something better in mind for us? Can you think of a time when you really wanted something to happen and it didn’t? What about when you didn’t want something to happen and it did? How easy was it for you to submit to the Lord’s will?
This verse tells us to submit ourselves to God. If we want to do this, we need to figure out where we are struggling and then ask God for help. We can ask Him to help us submit. He will always help when we ask. If we are struggling to see how God wants us to submit to Him, then we can always just ask Him. My spiritual director told me one time to model St. Teresa of Lisieux and explain to God that I am just a little child and I need Him to show me the way. I need Him to show me or tell me what He wants me to do. I want to follow His will, I just need directions, just as a child would. This really spoke to me. I sometimes, oftentimes, if I am being honest, I think I need to know what God wants from me. I think I am just supposed to know. It seems like everyone else knows, but why don’t I know? So, I try to guess, I try to listen, and I try to do all the things just in case that is what He was wanting.
However, what I try to do now is to ask the Lord to help me understand. I ask Him to explain it to me as though I were a child. I ask Him to make it clear to me and to give me the courage and strength for whatever He wants me to do. We are all just little children in the eyes of the Lord. In Matthew 18:3, Jesus said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” God wants us to become like children. I think he wants us to be like children because there is something so pure about a child’s faith. Children don’t get caught up in understanding every little detail. They don’t ask all the questions. Miracles are miracles because there is no explanation. If there were an explanation as to exactly how it happened, it wouldn’t be a miracle. Adults don’t really like to believe in things that they can’t see. Children, on the other hand, love to play make-believe. They have no problem believing in things they can’t see. If you are struggling to submit to God, ask Him to show you how. He has assured us that if we ask, He will answer, so let’s ask.
The next part of this verse says to resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Again, something that sounds so easy and yet is so difficult. I would love to say I resist the devil. The problem is, the devil is always disguised as something else. For instance, he will be disguised as temptation. You know that you should spend time in prayer or in silence, and suddenly your favorite TV show is having a marathon and showing episodes all day. You decide to give up sweets for Lent, and someone drops cookies off at your house. You decide you are going to start running, and it rains for a week straight. Do you see how it is hard to resist the devil in these circumstances because you don’t know it is the enemy attacking you?
Another way the enemy might show up is through distractions. You decide you want to spend more time with your children, and suddenly everyone in the family has something else to do, or your work suddenly gets really busy. You may want to spend more time with your parents, but something comes up to prevent you from spending more time with them. We find it hard to resist the other things that are getting in our way, and so family time gets put off or pushed aside. The enemy might also show up as anger. We want to be peaceful and to not get upset over little things. Then the enemy comes along and presents one little thing after another until you can’t take it anymore and get angry and you lose it.
The enemy doesn’t want us to grow in holiness. He will do whatever it takes to prevent this from happening. He certainly does not want to flee. If we want the devil to flee, we have to figure out a way to resist him, all his temptations and lies. How do we resist something that we don’t know is there? One way we can resist the devil is to keep turning our eyes to the Lord. We can keep asking Him what He wants us to do and asking Him to help us do it. We can ask the Lord to open our eyes to see the devil and all his tricks. We can try to be on the lookout for different ways the enemy may be interfering in our lives. If things are not going well and you are not acting like you want to, the devil is probably involved. If you feel you are growing further from the Lord, the devil is probably involved.
Another way to resist the devil is to do what the verse above says, “Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.” In my prayer group every week, the Lord calls us closer to Him. He is calling all of us closer to Him. If we come closer to God, He will come closer to you. Then the verse says, Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. I wasn’t sure what double-minded in this verse meant. When I looked it up, it meant that our heart is split between God and the things of this world. This is the devil’s way in. This is his back door. If we love the things of this world as much or even more than we love God, then that is all the devil needs to attack us. The more we release our attachment to the things of this world, the less of a hold the devil has over us. If we want to resist the devil, we can ask God to help us, we can turn to Him and grow closer to Him, and we can try to release our attachment to the things of this world.
Releasing our attachment to things of this world is not easy. We all have our favorite TV shows or our favorite foods we like to eat, and that is ok. I am not saying that you can’t like anything that is of this world. I am saying that our priorities should be God first and then everything else. If anything is getting in the way of us doing the things we know we need to do, then that is the devil at work, and we need to resist. I have been attacked by the spirit of distraction lately. I will have time to write this book I am writing, or work on my podcast, and the spirit of distraction will come and show me all these other more fun things to do. I must resist.
Did you know, in a weird way, when the devil attacks you, it is sort of a compliment. It is confirmation that you are walking on the right path. The reason I say this is because the devil doesn’t mess around with the lukewarm; he doesn’t mess around with those who are already headed to see him. He only concerns himself with those who are headed to see the Lord, those who are favored and are trying to walk the right path. If you are feeling like the devil is attacking you, take comfort in the fact that you are doing something right, or he wouldn’t bother with you. Then turn to the Lord and keep trying to do the next right thing. God is on your side, and He will be your refuge and your shield if you ask Him to. Come in close to the Lord, and He will come in close to you. He will put his arm around you and protect you from all harm.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to resist the devil, and we want him to flee. Please help us. Please protect us, Lord, and shield us from all harm. Help open our eyes to see the devil and all of his tricks in our lives. Lord, we want to put you first, help us to see what is getting in our way. Open our eyes to anything that is preventing us from growing closer to you. Help us to know what you want us to do and help us to become like children. Lord, you are amazing, and we love you so very much. We are grateful that you are our God and that you take such good care of us. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
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The Holy Spirit Lives In You
Acts 2:38 “Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins. And you will receive the Holy Spirit.”
I think when most of us read this, we focus on the repent and be baptized part of this verse. Repentance is so important, and it is something that we can read about all throughout the Bible. God is always calling His people to repentance, and sometimes they repented and other times they did not. In the case of Sodom and Gomorrah, they were a wicked people and they refused to repent. God sent fire down to destroy the towns. However, when God sent Jonah to Ninevah to tell them they needed to repent, they did, and God saved them.
Did you know that Jonah was angry at God for saving Nineveh? We read in Jonah 4:1-2, “But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. And he prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord, is it not this what I have said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster.” Jonah ran from the Lord when the Lord asked him to go to Ninevah. I had always thought he ran from the Lord because he was afraid of the people in Ninevah. However, this verse says that he ran because he knew God would have mercy on them, and he didn’t want them to be saved.
This is a somewhat common thing for us to do. Maybe not running from the Lord, but definitely wishing people get what they deserve. Have you ever wished that someone got what they deserved? Have you ever seen a car speed by you, or weave in and out of traffic, and think to yourself, “I hope there is a cop ahead.” Or do you see someone cut in line and hope that someone notices and that they get kicked out of the line? Why do we do this? Why do we wish ill on other people? Maybe you are thinking that you are justified in thinking that you want the driver to get pulled over because you want them to learn their lesson and drive better. But, what if they did get pulled over and they just got a warning, would you be ok with that?
Sometimes we can do this with our kids as well. Jonah felt that these people needed to be punished, and he knew that God would have mercy on them. Sometimes we can default to the thinking that when our children do something wrong, they need to be punished, and maybe that is true sometimes. But do we take the time to think about the situation first? Do we even consider giving them mercy? Sometimes our children need our mercy. Sometimes they messed up, did something they weren’t supposed to do, and they know it was wrong. They are truly sorry, and they learned a lesson from it. Times like these are times when we should consider mercy. Sometimes we think our kids will only learn if we punish them; however, I think they can learn a lot from mercy as well.
As I said earlier, we tend to focus on the first part of this verse, Repent and be baptized. However, I wonder how many of you also think of the ending of the verse? How many of you truly know what it means? The verse ends with “and you will receive the Holy Spirit.” I am not sure that everyone, or even most people, knows how powerful a statement that is. Did you know that the power of the Holy Spirit is what raised Jesus from the dead? Did you know that the same power resides in you? Romans 8:11 "If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.”
When you are baptized, you are baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. This means that when you are baptized, you receive the Holy Spirit. If you are Catholic, then you receive the Holy Spirit again when you are confirmed. This is all amazing to me. The power that raised Jesus from the dead lives in me. I just can’t get over that. I think if we all knew the power that we had through the Holy Spirit, and then used that power for good, the world wouldn’t know what was going on. Jesus said in John 14:12-14, “Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes in me will do the works that I do and will do greater ones than these, because I am going to the Father. And whatever you ask in my name, I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything of me in my name, I will do it.”
Did you catch that? Jesus said we will do greater works than He if we believe. This is only possible because of the Holy Spirit. We have the Holy Spirit inside of us; we just need to call on Him. We need to believe in Jesus and believe when He tells us that He sent us the Holy Spirit to guide us. The Holy Spirit raised Jesus from the dead. That same spirit lives in you. What are you going to do with it? Are you going to just sit around and let all that power pass you by, or are you going to use your newfound power for good? Who do you know that could use some extra blessings? I am sure that I have talked before about how important repentance is, and yet this will likely not be the last time you hear me talk about it. Repentance is so important for so many reasons. This verse just mentions one of the many: if you repent and are baptized, you will receive the Holy Spirit. Now, after talking for a bit about how awesome the Holy Spirit is, wouldn’t you do anything to be close to Him?
Most, if not all, of you listening already have the Holy Spirit inside of you. Call upon Him and you will see how powerful He is. Don’t be afraid to talk with Him and ask Him for things. That is why God sent Him to us, to help us. Anything that happens as a result of the Holy Spirit glorifies God. Jesus is with the Father, so when we ask God for things in Jesus’ name, the Holy Spirit comes through for us, and the results glorify the Lord. It is a win-win for everyone. One of the easiest prayers to remember, and yet one of the most powerful, is, “Come, Holy Spirit, come.” When you ask, God answers. Anytime you are in need of a little assistance, or even a lot of assistance, pray, “Come, Holy Spirit, come.” I truly feel you will be surprised at all the ways He comes through for you.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, I ask that you send the Holy Spirit to everyone listening to this podcast. Lord, we ask that you open our eyes to how the Holy Spirit is working in our lives. Lord, we ask that you remind us to call on the Holy Spirit when we forget. Lord, we are so very thankful that you sent down the Holy Spirit to guide us in your ways. Lord, help us to see the places in our lives where we need to repent, and then give us the courage to do so. We want to receive the Holy Spirit, Lord Jesus, we are open to it. Lord God, you are amazing. We are so very thankful for all you do for us. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will, and in Jesus’ holy name, amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I want to let you know that there may be more replays in the upcoming weeks. A few things are going on in our family that are requiring more of my time. However, I don’t want to not post something for you, and many of you were not listening at the very beginning. So, hopefully it will still be new to you! I will still post a new one when I can, and a replay when I don’t have the time. I appreciate your patience and your support during these next few weeks. I also appreciate your support in listening to this podcast. I am honored you listened. I look forward to meeting you here again on Monday! Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in November / December 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Today is a new day, my people. Today is the day I renew all my mercies and my graces, and I pour them out freely on each one of you, on your families and your friends and your co-workers and your churches and all the world. Today is a day in which you need to praise and worship me from your heart for the many gifts that I have given you so that I can continue to pour out on you grace upon grace upon gift upon gift, that you may be my ambassadors, that you may be the signs to the world that I am alive, that resurrection is real, that it is a grace that I give to each one of you. All you need to do is call upon my name. Call upon the name of Jesus, the Lamb of God who gave his very life, that you might have life forever and ever. My greatest desire is to love you forever. Listen to me, my people. Listen to me and share that good news with those you meet. I love you. My heart is always yours, and you are always mine.”
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You Are Loved By Jesus
John 13:23 “One of his disciples, the one whom Jesus loved,* was reclining at Jesus’ side.”
This scripture verse was given at my prayer group, and the following words of prophecy were given: “You are also the one whom Jesus loves. So, your place is to be listening to his heartbeat when you pray. So, put your head on his chest and listen to his heartbeat. Say I love you and be at peace.” Is there anything more calming than putting your head on someone’s chest and listening to their heartbeat? I pictured when I was little and if I was scared and I went to lie with my parents. Just putting my head on their chest and listening to their heartbeat would make me feel better. It seemed so rhythmic and soothing.
“You are also the one whom Jesus loves.” How many of you believe this? Like truly in the depths of your heart believe this? You are also the one whom Jesus loves. Sometimes, it is easy to say that Jesus is love. It is easy to say that Jesus loves everyone. And yet, even as we are saying it, we are discounting ourselves from that love. We know He loves everyone and yet we don’t believe that he loves us? We don’t feel that love or even understand why He would love us. Who are we to be loved by Jesus?
You are the son or daughter of the one true king. That is who you are. You were made in the likeness and image of God. You are deeply loved by Him. Why do you discount yourself from that love? Or maybe you put a lot of pressure on yourself to be worthy enough of God’s love. Maybe you think if you just do things perfectly, then God will love you. If you attend weekly mass and volunteer for every fundraiser, you will be worthy of God’s love. Are you constantly feeling like you are not good enough for God’s love?
Guess what? None of us are. None of us are worthy of God’s love, yet he lavishes it freely anyway. You do not have to do anything to earn God’s love. Well, as I wrote that, what came to mind was we do have to accept it. God can tell us all day long that he loves us, but if we don’t accept it, then it doesn’t matter. Yesterday, I talked about abiding in God’s love and how abiding means acceptance. Can you accept God’s love? Can you accept that he loves you just as you are, with no strings attached?
This is a new kind of love for so many. Some people have never had someone in their lives who loved them completely, with no strings attached. Unconditional love is not a thing they even new. If you are struggling to believe that Jesus loves you, just as you are, think about your childhood and your past relationships. What do you think of when you think about love? Did you have to earn love growing up? What did you feel you had to do to be loved? For instance, did you have to get good grades, be a certain weight, be quieter, etc? Did you feel like your parents' love was conditional on your behavior? If so, don’t worry. You are not alone.
We live in a broken world and don’t know how to love each other unconditionally like our heavenly father does. I think everyone is doing the best they can. We can only love others to the extent that we are loved. If your parents do not know unconditional love, they can’t pass it on to you. The good news is, that you can learn to let Jesus’s love in. The good news is that Jesus does love us unconditionally. If we can learn to accept Jesus’s love, then we can learn to pass this love on to others, even if that is not the love we were raised with.
If you struggle with accepting God’s love, I would love to give you some practical tips for how to begin to accept God’s love. I went online to see if others had already written about his subject. I found an article written by Kara J. Lovett called “5 Keys to Accepting God’s Love.” I would highly suggest you read this article. I will put a link for it in the description of this episode, but you can easily find it by googling 5 Keys to Accepting God’s Love. https://karajlovett.com/5-keys-to-accepting-gods-love/ In the article she goes into what God says about love and then a section on understanding God’s love.
Her article mentions five was you can accept God’s love. They are as follows: Accepting God’s love with scripture, prayer, grace, and quietness & in unexpected places. Kara says in her article that “by digging deep into Scripture and spending time with God in prayer, I realized that I need to stop striving for love and instead strive to accept God’s love, which He has already graciously bestowed on me.” As I mentioned yesterday, reading the bible is a great way to get to know God’s love. You can see all sorts of examples of God’s love in the bible. 1 John 4:7-10 is a great example of love. It says, “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God because God is love. In this, the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”
The second way she mentions is prayer. When we turn to God and ask for His help, he wants to help us and is just waiting for us to ask. God knows what we are going through and what are struggles are, and yet he loves it when we talk to Him about them. Just sit down with a cup of coffee or tea and talk to God like you are talking to your best friend at the kitchen table. You will be surprised how much closer you get to God when you start having chats with Him regularly. They can be informal chats about your day, your struggles, and your successes. God wants to share in all of that with you.
The third way she mentions is Grace. Learning about grace over these last few years has been huge for me. Learning to be graceful with yourself is so important. Kara says that grace is the free, unearned gift of salvation that God has bestowed upon us. When I looked up the definition online, it said 1a: unmerited divine assistance given to humans for their regeneration or sanctification. b: a virtue coming from God. c: a state of sanctification enjoyed through divine assistance. We are saved and redeemed through God’s grace. It is unmerited, meaning we don’t deserve it; we can’t do anything to earn it; it is just bestowed upon us. How amazing is that? The third definition is a state of sanctification enjoyed through divine assistance. We can’t forget this. We are made holy through divine assistance. God is always there to help us. We can’t do any of this on our own. It is always a partnership. God has so much grace and mercy for us. He doesn’t expect us to be perfect, so cut yourself some slack.
The fourth way to accept God’s love is through quietness. Spend some quiet time with God. There are so many ways that you can do this. Maybe you are someone who likes to meditate every morning. That is wonderful! Maybe you are like me, and every time you try to quiet your mind, all it wants to do is talk to you. That’s fine, too. Maybe your quiet time is spent in nature, going for a walk, or sitting outside listening to the sounds of nature. Maybe your quiet time with God is spent journaling all your thoughts. There is no right way to spend quiet time with God. Your relationship with God is like any other relationship; the more time you spend together, the closer you will be.
The fifth key to accepting God’s love for Kara was letting go of control. Even though we know at some level that we don’t have to earn God’s love, we still try to prove to Him that we love Him. We put all these rules and regulations on ourselves about how we have to do this, and we have to do that. We tend to put a lot of pressure on ourselves. Once Kara was able to let go of control and remember that Jesus already secured our freedom on the cross, she decided to let go of all the pressure she put on herself and just tried to abide in Jesus’s love.
God loves you! He truly does. I hope that if you are not currently able to accept God’s love, you will spend some time working on learning how to. I can’t tell you how amazing it is to know that I am always loved. To know that there is nothing I can do that would make my heavenly father stop loving me. It gives me so much more confidence in life. It brings me so much joy. It breaks my heart when I talk with people who don’t know how much God loves them. I know it is hard to let love in sometimes. I have been there before. It can be hard, it can take a lot of work, and it is so worth it. There is so much more waiting for you once you accept and really come to know God’s love for you. It is there for the taking, free, with no strings attached. All you have to do is say yes and accept it!
Dear Heavenly Father, I am so thankful that you love us unconditionally. You love us so completely. Lord, some of us are struggling to feel this love. We ask you right now to come into our hearts and fill them with your love, perfect love. We ask that you begin to break down any walls that we have put up to keep love out. Lord, we want all the love that you have for us. Lord, I ask that you bless everyone listening to this with a supernatural feeling of love today. That the Holy Spirit descends on all of them and that they can physically feel you giving them a hug today. Lord, you are so amazing. We are in awe of all that you do each and every day. We pray that you help our loved ones to open up and feel your love. Lord, we pray that you shower your love on all the teenagers. Being a teen is so difficult, and many do not feel any love. Please show them how amazing your love is, Lord. We ask all of this in accordance with your holy will and in Jesus’s name, Amen.
Thank you for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you are enjoying this podcast, please share it with a friend. If you would like to subscribe or leave a review, that would be great also. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
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Today’s witness is from my friend Bruce. Bruce reached out to me randomly back in November. He found my podcast and wanted to send in his testimony for witness wednesday. His testimony was about how he went to a healing service and regained his sight and then lost it again when he woke up. I offered to pray with Him, and he agreed. We have prayed together three times now. Bruce has not regained his sight, but something amazing happened each time we prayed together. You can find the testimony from the last two times we prayed together on the Witness Wednesday playlist on YouTube. You can also find them on whatever podcast app you are listening to right now. Today’s witness is about when Bruce and his lovely wife Alice came from Canada to visit Gloucester, MA, and my friend and I got to pray with them in person instead of over the phone. It was a great time, and I am so grateful the Lord brought Bruce, Alice, and me together. I know you will enjoy this witness as much as I enjoyed it. God is working in such miraculous ways!
Dear Catherine,
It is two months from today that we met with you and Nancy in Rockport. In the meantime, you have been to Scotland and back and I have had a new experience which I will tell you about. You may use it in your Witness Wednesday if you would like to. On July 23rd, my wife Alice and I had the pleasure of meeting with Catherine and her friend Nancy for lunch. This vacation had been planned well in advance before we met Catherine. It turned out that Nancy's home was just down the road from where we were staying. Sitting outside by the ocean, the four of us chatted and also prayed together for healing. There was no major change in my eyesight at that time, but I realized that the floaters and shifting debris that I normally saw, were gone. It felt like I had more life in my eyes - just a feeling. This visit was a real blessing and encouragement for us before heading for home a couple of days later.
For some time I had been without any sight in my left eye and was able to see light and shadows in my right eye. After this recent change my right eye went completely dark but the movement of floaters was gone. I couldn't tell the difference between day or night. I couldn't see if there were any lights on in the house. Things were the same whether my eyes were open or shut. I had to make an adjustment to this. I found the darkness heavy and depressing. I also felt spiritually let down and more isolated. I heard someone talking about God's light of the world and I thought, we often ask the Lord to shine His face upon us in the Benediction. It was a Monday in August and I told the Lord how I felt. I wanted to somehow have more communication with Him. I didn't want to be in the dark anymore, and would He please shine His light upon me. The next day, Tuesday, I listened to Catherine's podcast which was about Jesus the Light of the world. This felt like my prayer was going somewhere and I became vigilant. That night I went to bed about 1:00 a.m. I was laying on my back in the dark. A small white light appeared in my head space. It seemed to sparkle and it began moving. It became brighter and larger and closer, shining with the brightness of lightning. I felt the light overtake me and I put my face in the pillow. The light was still there and I realized it was within me. It was beautiful and exciting. I began thanking and praising the Lord for this joyful experience. This light would move and pulse brighter then lower going on for an hour and a half until I fell asleep. I wanted to wake Alice but I didn't want to interrupt her sleep or the light. When I awoke in the morning, the light was gone. I figured this was a one time experience. Later that morning, I began telling Alice about it. I stopped and said, It's happening again right now. There was an arch of brilliant white light before me. Beautiful as ever. It stayed with me for a couple of hours, coming and going into the night. This continued daily much to my joy. I noticed whenever I sat at the table it would appear. Whenever I listen to my audio Bible or even thought about the Lord or spiritual matters, it would appear. I found myself talking with the Lord in this light. If I was praying it would appear. It was always with me when I went to sleep. I soon realized I could call on it by asking it to appear. I was quite amazed by the way this all happened, by the communication which took place , and the overwhelming feeling of God's love. There was nothing to do but simply enjoy the moment with the Lord and His light. As I write this, the Lord still shines his light upon me, every day and every night. This has been an unexpected and thrilling blessing for me, far better than I hoped for. I can't help but feel this is leading me somewhere good. My hope and faith has never been more confident than it is now. It is so easy for me to trust the Lord to love me and walk me where He wants to take me. He really is my guiding light. I have in the past had close encounters with Jesus which have been marvelous. But this encounter in His light seems to never end. How wonderful is this. It lifts my heart to look back and see how God works in our lives. Alice and I had planned our trip to Glouchester long before we knew Catherine. Her podcast came out of the blue one night on my google home and caught my attention. Her faithfulness and prayer support is so appreciated. Through Catherine and the prayer group she attends, I have also met Nancy and talked with Robert and learned that they have also prayed for me. These friends in prayer and support have inspired me and I am privileged to know them. My visit in July was meant to be some sort of breakthrough. That's what I had prayed for. As often is the case, I felt things didn't go as I had hoped. As it turned out, I received a blessing I never expected along with new found faith and hope. A few years ago I heard a story told by an Anglican minister in England. He was known for his healing ministry. He told the story of a women who had lost her sight in both eyes. The women related how she started seeing a white light. This light would come and go from time to time and would vary in intensity. She said this went on for some time. One day she heard about a special healing ministry near her. The light continued to be with her. She made her way to the healing service in Blackpool. After preaching the gospel of Jesus, the minister invited people to come forward for healing prayer. Many people went forward and she waited in her seat where she was healed.
I thank the Lord every time I see his light. I thank the Lord for my friends in Massachusetts.
May the Lord bless you Catherine and your ministry.
Bruce and Alice
Thank you so much for sharing your testimony with us and for allowing me to share it on my Witness Wednesday. I know your story will give hope to so many others out there who are also waiting for some pretty big answers to some pretty big prayers. Your faithfulness will help them trust in the Lord more. Thank you again for sharing and we can’t wait to hear your testimony when your sight is fully restored for good this time!
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God Provides In Mysterious Ways
Psalm 145:14-18 “The Lord upholds all who fall and lifts up all who are bowed down. The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food at the proper time. You open your hand and satisfy the desires of every living thing. The Lord is righteous in all his ways and faithful in all he does. The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth.”
There are so many good things in this passage. “The Lord lifts up all who are bowed down.” How often is it that we need the Lord to lift us up, especially over this last year? It is so great to know that the Lord lifts us up when we pray to Him and ask Him too. When we are bowed down to the Lord is when we are praying and worshipping Him. When we spend this time with Him He is able to lift us up.
“The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food at the proper time.” This one is hard one for many of us. We do not want to wait for the proper time. We want things to happen on our time line, or maybe we think our time line is the proper time. Then we struggle when God does not agree. My dad told me a story one time that demonstrates how God will give those that look to him food at the proper time. My mom & dad have 11 children. They also had a friend that had several children, I think at least 7. This friend called up and asked my parents if they could watch their kids as something important had come up. My parents said yes because they were always there for those in need. However, my parents had just been talking about how they had no idea how they were even going to feed their own children dinner that night, and now they had 7 more mouths to feed. So, they did what they always did in these situations, they turned their eyes to God and asked for Him to provide.
Shortly after their prayer, they received a knock at the door. It was a neighbor holding bags of groceries. It turns out that the neighbors father had to move in with him unexpectedly and they needed to combine his father’s household with his. They had just gone grocery shopping and so they did not have room in their cabinets for all the food from his Dad’s place. So, they asked my folks if they could use any of the food. My parents graciously accepted. When looking through the bags they notice that there was plenty of pasta. My parents prayed, “Lord, if we only had some meat, then we could serve spaghetti to all these kids.”
Guess what? There was another knock at the door. It was a different neighbor. He had a cooler full of meat. He said that him and his friend had been hunting and they had too much meat. He explained that he and his friend had already stuffed their fridge and freeze and still they had no room for this left over meet. Again my parents graciously accepted. Then when they looked in the cooler, there was ground meat for spaghetti. They were so thankful. This was not a one time thing for my parents. My parents were faithful in their prayers, not just when they were in need, but even when things were going well. God was faithful in answering them.
“You open your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing.” This is another great verse. I believe that God puts our desires in our heart. I am talking about our deep desires, not the desire to eat ice cream at midnight. The desires I am talking about are the desires to have a certain job, the desire to be married and have children, the desire to sing, or act, or whatever it is you feel you are called to do. As stated in this verse, God wants to satisfy the desire of every living thing. I know this can be hard to believe if you have a desire that you have been waiting for God to satisfy. Maybe you have been waiting for the right man/woman to come along so that you can be married and have children. I know it is hard when we want something and we have to wait a very long time. Isaiah 55:9 says, “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
God has a plan for our lives and His plan is better than our plan. I know this can be frustrating because God does not always let us in on His plan for our lives. Sometimes we can be left wondering what is His plan and when am I going to understand it? If you have been thinking these things I want you to know that you are not alone. Many of us do not understand God’s plan, and do not understand why the things we have been praying for have not happened yet.
It can be easy to lose hope when are prayers aren’t answered immediately. It can be frustrating when we are praying for something, and we don’t seem to get any answers. I found this definition of hope online and I really like it. In the Bible hope is the confident expectation of what God has promised and its strength is in His faithfulness. We know God is faithful to His children. We know He keeps His promises. Therefore we can confidently expect that He will answer our prayers.
It says in Hebrews 13:8 it says, ”Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today, and forever." Jesus has kept all of his promises in the bible. If He did it then, He will do it now. If you are getting frustrated waiting for your desires to be fulfilled I ask that you turn to the scriptures and either use the ones in this episode or find other ones that show you how faithful your Heavenly Father is. He will come through, please don’t give up asking for what you want. Saying that makes me think of the story in Luke 18:1-8 of the persistent widow. “Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. He said: “In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’ “For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care what people think, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually come and attack me!’”
And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”
Jesus told this parable to show his disciples that they should pray and not give up. If He was worried his disciples would stop praying and give up and they lived with Him day and night for 3 years, then I think He will cut us some slack for wanting to give up. I am sure He gets how frustrating it is to wait for the Lord’s timing. If you are tempted to give up and stop praying for something that you truly desire I ask you to pause and remember this woman in the parable. What if she had stopped bothering the judge? What if she had not kept going back? Would she have her justice? We never know when the answer is right around the corner. What if you pray for 3 years and then stop and God wanted to give it to you on the next day? Don’t stop praying for your deepest desires, He gave you those desires and he will bring them into being if you let Him.
Dear heavenly father I ask that you bless all of those listening to this podcast today. I ask that you fill us with hope for those desires that we've been praying for. Lord we pray that you give us perseverance to keep praying even when there's no end in sight. Lord Jesus we ask that you give us strength to keep praying when we don't have any answers. Give us strength when we're weak and we don't think we can go on. Lord we know that you are the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. We know that you've kept your promises in the past and you will continue to do so. Lord we ask that you fortify our hope and faith in you. We ask that you increase our faith. Lord if there is a desire that we have given up on that you want to give to us we ask that you renew that desire in our heart Lord Jesus. We ask that you keep whispering it louder and louder until we can ignore it anymore. Lord, we thank you for fulfilling these desires as we know you keep your promises and so these desires will be fulfilled. We thank you for helping us stay persistent and for giving us the strength to keep asking. Lord we thank you for listening to all of our prayers every time we ask. Lord, we love you so very much, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus ' holy name. Amen
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in November / December 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Call on me. Spirit to spirit needs to be strong. It will not be strong until you use it. I'm calling you to a deeper, more fruitful walk with me. But your spirit must grow, too.”
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God’s Mercy & Forgiveness
Psalm 51:10-12 “Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.”
These verses come within a series of verses addressing God. The person talking to God in this psalm is David. This psalm takes place after David had been visited by the prophet Nathan. Nathan came to him after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba. This psalm includes a lot of David asking God to forgive him for his sins. One thing I love about David is that he is so good at realizing he did something wrong and then turning back to the Lord. He messed up pretty badly sometimes. It was not as if he was anointed, and so he always followed the Lord and never strayed. He broke some pretty big commandments. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, thou shalt not commit adultery, and thou shalt not kill, being a few of them.
No matter how big the sin was, David never seemed to feel too ashamed to turn back to the Lord. This is so great. This shows such a deep level of understanding or trust, or both. I think he was never afraid to turn back because he knew how much he was loved by God. I wish we all knew and could trust God’s love like David did. How great would it be to know with every fiber of our body that no matter what we did, God would still love us and welcome us back?
Have you ever done something and then not turned back to the Lord because you didn’t think you deserved forgiveness? Have you ever thought that you did something so bad that there was no way that God would forgive you?
I think that most people have probably thought this at one time or another. I wonder if we would still think it if we remembered in that moment all the things that God has forgiven over the years? David saw a woman bathing on the roof of another house in his town and called for her to be brought to him. Then he had relations with her. I doubt she had much to say about it, as that was not really the culture back then. After he did this, she was pregnant, and he was worried her husband would find out what he had done. He tried to trick her husband, and when that didn’t work, he sent him to the front lines to be killed in the war. Then he took Bathsheba for his wife.
Take a moment and think of the thing that you have been trying to hide from God because you think there is no way he will forgive it. Is it worse than what David did? If God could forgive David, He will forgive you. What if it is worse than what David did? What do you do then? Is it worse than what Saul did when he was going around stoning to death those who believed in Jesus? Was it worse than what the soldiers did when they whipped Jesus and hung Him on a cross? Because if Jesus can forgive them, He will forgive you.
Why is it that we worry so much about God forgiving us? We know He loves us, and yet we don’t want to turn to Him when we mess up because… why? Maybe we are ashamed and we don’t want Him to see that we messed up? Guess what, he has already seen your mess-ups and already loved you through them. Maybe we don’t want to bother Him with our mess-ups because we feel we should have known better in the first place. Guess what? He loves it when we turn to Him and ask Him for help to clean up our messes. Maybe we don’t feel like we are good enough to turn back to the Lord. Guess what? He is your Heavenly Father, and He made you in His likeness and image. You are better than good enough; you are perfect just as you are.
In the verse, David asks the Lord to create a pure heart in him. He knows what he did was wrong, and he wants to do what is right. I think we all want to do what is right. I don’t think that any of us walk around all day wondering how we can sin against God. I don’t believe it is our intent to damage our relationship with God in any way. If we want to do what is right in the eyes of the Lord, we can all pray for the Lord to create a pure heart in us. God knows what is in our hearts. As much as we may try to purify our own hearts, God is the one who can help us with this.
It goes on to say, “Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me.” I think this statement can be an example of David’s humility. It shows us that even though David was brave enough and trusted God enough to turn back to the Lord, even after David did some pretty awful things, David was humble enough not to assume God would forgive him. In this verse, David is asking the Lord to please not cast him away or take the Holy Spirit from him. God loves humility. It says in James 4:10, “Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.” This is what David was doing. He was humbling himself and asking the Lord not to depart from him.
After David asks the Lord not to abandon him, he goes on to say, “Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.” David knows that he is doing the things he does not want to do and not doing the things that God wants him to do. This is why he is asking the Lord for a willing spirit to sustain him. He knows that following the Lord’s word is the way to go, and he also knows that he can get off track sometimes. David did a lot of good things, and he spent a lot of his time following the Lord; however, when he veered off course, he did it in a big way. If you feel like this is you, I hope that David’s story can bring you a little bit of comfort. I hope that if you are feeling like you did something wrong and that it was so bad you can’t turn back to the Lord, that you will remember David and how he was able to turn back to the Lord even after he did some truly terrible things. And you know what, God always forgave him and kept loving Him. He does this for you, too. God will always love you, no matter what it is you do. He will always be hoping, no matter how much you think that you messed up, that you will turn back to him. He is your Heavenly Father, and you mean the world to Him!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask that you help us to remember to turn back to you every time we mess up. No matter how bad a thing we think we did, help us to know that you still love us and forgive us. Help us to know that you are always there for us. Lord, create a clean heart in us and grant us a willing spirit. Lord, we want to follow you, and we don’t know why we get off course sometimes. If you create a willing spirit in us, we hope to use that spirit to follow you more closely. Lord Jesus, you are amazing, and we are so thankful that you always forgive us and that you continue to love us, even with all of our faults. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Tomorrow night will be week #2 of mentoring. This week we are address this very topic, God’s Mercy & Forgiveness. I hope you will join us! I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in November / December 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Come to me. I have given you a gift, spirit to spirit. You use it less and less. I want you to be strong in my love. Use your gifts.”
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A Conversation With The Lord About Mercy (replay)
Isaiah 55:6-7 “Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake their way, and the unrighteous their thoughts; let them return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.”
Today I have something a little different for you. Yesterday at prayer group, my good friend Louise did a teaching on God’s mercy and Justice. She talked about something she had heard in a sermon years ago. The priest said something his spiritual director told him, “God’s Justice is God’s mercy.” After the Lord brought the sermon back to her mind, they had a little back-and-forth conversation, and I am going to share that conversation with you as I feel God was giving us a glimpse into how He thinks and who He is. God’s ways are not our ways, and His thoughts are not our thoughts. So, when He gives us a glimpse into his ways, I feel we should all pay attention. Here is what she shared with us.
“I am merciful. I pour out mercy and forgiveness in torrents upon all of you, my children. I rain down mercy on every one of my children with no exceptions.” At that point, I found myself getting an image and looking at torrential rain. We've all seen torrential rain, and when it comes down, it comes down in buckets. It is heavy, and the Earth doesn't really have time to soak it all in. What can happen if it's a lasting rain is that things will accumulate, and it can create a little river and start really moving with a swift current. That is what I was picturing when the Lord said to me, “My children who love and praise me, honor me by their lives of holiness, know how to flow with the swift current. By the power of the Holy Spirit, they abandon their attempts to fight this current. And flow freely with it. Its power and speed may seem frightening, but they remain afloat by practicing the gifts of the Holy Spirit. The Isaiah gifts can be found in Isaiah 11:2-4a. “The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear; but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth.” and the charismatic gifts can be found in 1 Corinthians 12:4-11, “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.”
Those who don't know me or refuse to accept my existence. Those who no longer have faith in me, those who believe worldly philosophies are the way to live, and those deeply embedded in sinfulness struggle in this river. They fear they will drown. They fight the current of mercy and forgiveness, trying by their own strength and power to stay afloat. I need you to help them, my children. So I asked the Lord how do we do this? What are you asking of us? And he gave me two things. First, he said, "be an example of them of how to float in this current. Show them lives abandoned to God and his love and power, especially in your interactions with them." Then second thing he said to me was, and this I found way more challenging was, "Reach out your hand to them as they pass by you in this current. Help them to stop struggling in this current of mercy and forgiveness. Help to steady them by companioning to them as you float together to the large lake of my calming love that is the river's end.
Wasn't that powerful? There is more I want to say about listening to the Lord’s voice, but I don’t want to detract from His message on Mercy, so I will talk about hearing the Lord’s voice on Monday. Today and this weekend, I hope you re-listen or re-read the Lord’s word and really let it sink in. There is a transcript of the message in the show notes, so you can read through it slowly and really absorb what God is telling us about His mercy.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless each and every person listening to this episode today. Lord, I thank you so much for the blessing Louise is to me personally, to our prayer community, and to all who know her. I thank you for her faithfulness, not only in listening to your word and writing it down but also in sharing it with others. Lord, help us all to hear your message today. Help us to take this message to our hearts and to apply it in our lives. Lord, help us to reach out our hand to those drowning in your mercy. Help us to steady them. Lord, show us how to be an example to them. Help us to be an example of your calming love. We love you, Lord, and we are so grateful you don’t give up on a single one of us. We are grateful for your mercy for each and every one of us. Lord, we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to Walk Boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed weekend!
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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Confess & Be Forgiven (Yes, it is that simple!)
1 John 1:9 " If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”
This week, we have been talking about repentance. On Monday, we talked about how God is calling us to repent and turn back to him. The verse said, “Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out.” The verse tells us that if we repent and turn back to the Lord, our sins will be wiped out. God literally forgets about your sins when you repent of them. I feel as though if everyone knew this, we would be more likely to repent of our sins.
Today’s verse tells us that God will forgive and purify us if we confess our sins. I think these are two very important things, so I will address them individually. First, the verse says if we confess our sins, God is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins. That is something to pause and really take in. If you confess, you will be forgiven. Can you hear that? Can you believe that? I mean, really believe that? If you confess, you will be forgiven.
This goes against what we tend to believe. This definitely goes against what the enemy tells us. We are accustomed to thinking that our sins are too bad to be forgiven. The enemy tells us that although it is true that God does forgive sins, He won’t forgive our sins because they are too bad, or they are too many in number. This we can believe. The world is always telling us how bad we are and how perfect God wants us to be. There are impossible standards set, and so we fail them time and time again. All this so-called failure makes us give up on trying to be good. We figure we will never make it, so what is the point?
We know we have messed up. We know that even if we confess our sins, we will just mess up again, so why bother even trying? This is all the enemy talking. He is trying to convince us that God wants us to be perfect, and if we stray from that, then we might as well give up because God won’t forgive us. We are not worthy of forgiveness. We keep messing up, and we aren’t changing. We will always be the same person who did that bad thing. We will keep doing the same things forever. Does any of this sound familiar? Do you find these thoughts going through your head? Yeah, me too.
The good news is that we don’t have to listen to them. We know that God does forgive us because it says it right here in this verse, and we can believe all we read in the Bible because it is the Truth. It is not even complicated. It doesn’t say that if we jump through three hoops, stand on one foot, hop up and down, and then run around the building twice, we will be forgiven. It doesn’t say if we promise God we will never do it again, and then we are perfect from now on, we will be forgiven. It doesn’t say that you will be forgiven as long as you are a first-time offender. The only condition put on our forgiveness is that we confess our sins.
I know it can be hard to confess our sins. The enemy makes us feel so much shame about things we have done. Then there is also our pride, which tries to convince us that we don’t have to admit what we have done, God saw it, He already knows, and if He wants to forgive us, He doesn’t need us to do anything. The enemy is good at using half-truths to confuse us and to take our focus off God. Yes, it is true that God already knows what we have done. However, that doesn’t mean we don’t have to ask for forgiveness. If we ask, God forgives us. It is that simple. However, we do need to ask. We do need to be sorry for what we have done. But that is it. That is the extent of the conditions put on our forgiveness. If you ask me, that is a small price to pay for my sins to be forgiven. I just have to tell God, that’s it? That seems pretty simple.
However, depending on what we did, it could be hard for us to confess. God is patient with us, and He will wait until we are ready. If we need His help, He will help us. We can ask the Lord to come in and help us confess our sins. We can ask Him to help us know and see our sins, as we might not even know all the ways we have offended Him or others. This is a big one. Sometimes we might do or say something to someone, and we have no idea the effect it has on them. We have no idea what is going on in their own life that may cause them to take offense at something you did, even though you didn’t mean it. It is good to check in with the Lord sometimes and ask Him if there is anything you need to confess.
The verse next says that God will purify us from all unrighteousness. How great would it be to be purified? Imagine if all your sinful or wicked ways were purified. I would love to be free of my wicked and sinful ways. Those ways that get me stuck in sin. Those ways that get me stuck in choosing the wrong thing. Being purified sounds pretty nice to me. Again, this verse says God will do this if we confess our sins. Even though it may be hard, it seems like the good far outweighs the bad. So, what are we waiting for? Let’s confess our sins today and be forgiven and purified!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening. Lord, we want to confess our sins. Please help us to have the courage to do so. Please help us ignore the enemy's voice. Please help us to believe that if we confess our sins, you will not only forgive us but also purify us. We want to be forgiven, Lord! We need to be purified, Lord! We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus! I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Know this, my children. As your praises rise up to meet me, my blessings are poured out upon you to protect you, to help you to grow closer to me.”
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Today’s witnesses are from the Encounter Ministries Healing page on their website. Encounter Ministries has healing services that are different than all the other healing services that I have been to. I love them, and I am so honored that I was able to attend the Boston Campus for two years to become equipped and activated in the gifts of the Holy Spirit. I invite you to go to the Encounter Ministries website and check out some of the testimonies. They will often have people try to do something they couldn’t do before. It is incredible. Today, I have several of their healing testimonies for you. However, they have so many more! The testimonies below are from several different videos they have on their site.
There was a man who went to the Encounter Conference in a wheelchair and then, after being prayed over, could walk out of the conference without his wheelchair. They asked him who Jesus was, and he said, “Jesus is the Saviour!”
Next are testimonies from a healing service in Akron City. There was a woman who was in an accident 25 years ago. She had her back that had been hurting this whole time and was progressively getting worse. She had been going to the chiropractor but did not get relief. She went to the healing service with a knot in her neck. She said the condition is 80% healed after prayer, and the knot is gone! The next woman, Rose, fractured her humerus and cracked the ball of her shoulder. It didn’t ever heal right, and she couldn’t raise her arm high, and she couldn’t put it behind her back. But after prayer, she could do both. Also, the tendons and ligaments were always sore, but after prayer, she couldn’t feel them at all. Next is Matt, and he had a pinched nerve in his hand a few months ago. The doctor said it would get better, but it hasn’t. The team prayed over him several times, and it improved. Then Father Mathias came over and asked what was wrong, and prayed over him again, and it was completely healed. Next is a woman named Janice who walked up to the microphone holding her right hearing aid. She said she could hear without it, and she couldn’t believe it because she had been wearing it for a long time. Then Patrick prayed over her left ear and asked her to take her left hearing aide out and he whispered into her ear and she could hear him and she could hear the crowd cheering for her.
Victoria was in a car that spun for half a mile going 80 miles per hour. She was then flying through the air. She prayed to God, and he appeared in her car next to her. She landed and hit a pine tree. Her body aches with pain, but I don’t want to take medicine all the time. My pain level is always about an eight, and I am pain-free after the prayer. Ellen has had a stiff neck for 4 years. Sometimes it is really bad, and sometimes it is better. I have right hip and back pain. I have been praying that she could see him work and heal. She has relief from all the aches, and the pain is almost all gone. Michael has been having pain in his heel for weeks. Right now, the pain is gone, and he can not make it work. Victoria, Ellen & Michael were all healed before they even did individual prayer. They hadn’t even touched anyone yet, they were healed just through worship & the Gospel teaching.
Lyme disease causes constant pain from head to toe. It comes and it goes. I was sitting here thinking I wouldn’t make it through the rest of the healing service because I had so much joint pain. While I was sitting there, it felt like every joint was filled with the Lord. He filled me from head to toe. Then all the joint pain was gone. Another woman had something wrong with her shoulder. When she would move her arm, she would hear a bunch of cracks and noises. However, now she only has one little tiny click. She also has had a headache for as long as she can remember, and now she no longer has a headache. She couldn’t bend down and touch her toes before without doing it really slowly and being in pain. However, she demonstrated reaching down and touching her toes without any issue. She was in zero pain. Another woman lost my sense of smell 6 months ago. One time, the gas on the stove was on, and she didn’t know it because she couldn’t smell it. Luckily, her son came in and let her know. After prayer, now she can smell!
Next was a man who had a problem with his lungs; every time he breathed, it hurt. He also had trouble with his knees. He had bad pains, and when he sat down, they were stiff. The pain is all gone. There is no pain in my knees. I can walk straight with no pain and no issue. I can breathe again with no pain. Then a woman talked about how her arm was so painful she couldn’t even move it, and then she raised her hand above her head with no pain!
Thank you so much for sharing your testimonies. Your stories will help build the faith of others. Thank you to Encounter Ministries for continuing to hold these healing services and for helping people discover the love of Jesus!
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How Do I Repent?
Ezekiel 18:30 " Therefore I will judge you, O house of Israel, all of you according to your ways, says the Lord God. Repent and turn from all your transgressions; otherwise, iniquity will be your ruin.”
This first sentence is letting us know that we will be judged based on our own actions. At one time, it was believed that we would be judged based on the actions of our ancestors. This verse corrects this thought. When I looked up this verse on the Enduring Word Commentary, it said, “The error in believing in communal or family salvation or damnation is so serious and dangerous that God unmistakably emphasized the individual’s responsibility before God.
“It may be true that in my physical being I have inherited tendencies to some forms of evil from my father, but in the fact of my essential relation to God, there are forces available to me more and mightier than all these tendencies. Neither righteousness nor evil is hereditary.” (Morgan)
This is important for each of us to understand. We are not bad because our parents were bad. We are not good because our parents are good. We are responsible for our own actions. This is good news. This means we don’t have anyone to blame but ourselves. This also means all the responsibility falls on our own shoulders. I want to take a minute to look at one line in particular in the Enduring Word Commentary. It said, “In the fact of my essential relation to God, there are forces available to me more and mightier than all those tendencies we might have inherited.” In other words, we don’t have to do this on our own. Even though we will be judged on our actions, we don’t have to have the strength to make the right choices all on our own.
Because we are children of God, we can call on Him to give us strength and to help us make the right choices. The second part of the verse above says to repent and turn from all your transgressions. The verse I discussed in yesterday’s episode told us to repent and return to the Lord. Today’s verse is telling us to repent and turn away from our transgressions. When I was trying to think about what to talk about in this episode it dawned on me that we might not all know how to repent. Repent is one of those words that we all kinda know what it means but we don’t necessarily know how to define it or how to do it. Repentance is more than just saying “I’m sorry.” It’s a heartfelt turning away from sin and turning toward God. Here’s a biblical and practical step-by-step understanding of how one repents:
- Recognize the Sin
Repentance begins with awareness. We often live unaware of how our choices, attitudes, or habits go against God’s will.
Ask God for clarity. Sin can be obvious (like lying or cheating) or subtle (like pride, bitterness, or fear that blocks faith). Ask the Holy Spirit to search your heart.
Listen with humility. Sometimes God uses other people, Scripture, or conviction during prayer to expose what needs to change.
Psalm 139:23-24 “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.”
Reflection prompt: Where in my life am I resisting God’s way? What attitudes, habits, or relationships might be leading me away from Him?
- Feel Godly Sorrow (Not Just Guilt)
This isn’t about shame. It’s about recognizing how our sin hurts our relationship with God and others, and it grieves us deeply—not just because of consequences, but because of love.
Worldly sorrow says, “I’m sorry I got caught or hurt someone.”
Godly sorrow says, “I’ve grieved the heart of the One who loves me most. I want to be changed.”
2 Corinthians 7:10 “ For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation and brings no regret, but worldly grief produces death.”
Reflection prompt: Do I feel sorrow because of what my sin cost, or just because it was exposed?
- Confess the Sin to God
Confession is honest communication with God. It’s naming the sin and agreeing with Him about its seriousness, without hiding or blaming.
Openly admit your sin to God in prayer. Be specific and honest. No excuses or blaming.“God, I’ve been dishonest in my work,” or “I’ve held unforgiveness toward ___."
Confession is not groveling—it's returning to a loving Father who already knows and still welcomes you.
1 John 1:9 “If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
Reflection prompt: What do I need to confess out loud to God today, trusting in His mercy?
- Turn Away from the Sin (Change Direction)
This is the literal meaning of repentance: to turn. It means letting go of the old and moving toward a new way of living.
Make a conscious decision to change direction.
You may need to delete contacts, change your routine, stop certain conversations, or set up boundaries. This part is hard—but repentance without change is just regret.
Acts 3:19 “Repent therefore, and turn to God so that your sins may be wiped out,”
Reflection prompt: What do I need to let go of today so I can move toward God?
- Turn Toward God (Restore Relationship)
Repentance isn’t just about stopping sin—it’s about renewing intimacy with God. When we turn from sin, we turn to grace, peace, purpose, and healing.
Pray, even if you feel unworthy. God is not holding your sin against you—He’s welcoming you home.
Dive into Scripture, worship, community, and His promises.
James 4:8a “ Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.”
Reflection prompt: How is God inviting me to return to Him—not in fear, but in love?
- Bear Fruit That Shows Repentance
This is the outward evidence of an inward change. You don’t earn God’s love by being good—but real repentance produces visible fruit.
Fruit might look like changed speech, different choices, seeking reconciliation, or serving others with a humble heart.
This fruit grows over time—don’t rush it. Stay connected to God and He’ll transform you.
Matthew 3:8 — “Produce fruit in keeping with repentance.”
Reflection prompt: What new actions or habits is God inviting me to develop that reflect a changed heart?
Summary: True Repentance Involves…
Head (Recognizing the wrong) Heart (Feeling sorrow over it) Hands & Feet (Turning around and walking in a new direction)
Repentance is not about being perfect—it’s about being real before God. It’s how you return home to His love, over and over again. He’s not angry; He’s ready to embrace you.
Luke 15:20 “But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.”
Dear heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening. Lord, help us to understand repentance more. Move our hearts and show us where we need to repent. Show us where we have sin in our hearts and in our habits. Please help us to recognize sin in our lives and to repent and turn back to you. Please help us to repent and turn away from that sin. Give us the strength to ask you to show us the sin in our lives and the courage to change our habits so that we can walk away from that sin. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Today’s episode was an example of what I teach in mentoring. Tonight I will go deeper and give more detail into each one of those six steps to repentance. At the end of each mentoring session, I give 2-3 reflection questions to help us stop, talk to the Lord, and really reflect on what we just learned and how it relates to us personally. We look at how we can use what we just learned to make lasting changes in our lives. I invite each one of you to join the mentoring tonight. There is a link below or you can go to the mentoring tab on my website, walkboldlywithjesus.com. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Tuesday: Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Do not be afraid to go forward. I am with you each step of the way. Do not go in the shadows, I keep telling you. Come to me. Come, and I will reveal my light. I will make you a light to others, so that they may come to me and know my love.”
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Repent & Have Your Sins Wiped Away
Acts 3:19 "Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out”
Peter is preaching repentance in this verse. He is not the first to preach about repenting and turning back to the Lord. There were many prophets in the Old Testament who preached about repentance. The one that comes to my mind first is Jonah. He knew the power of repentance, and he was asked to go and preach this message to Ninevah. However, Jonah didn’t want to preach this message to Ninevah because he didn’t think they were worthy of God’s mercy. He didn’t want God to save them. He thought they were too far gone for God to save.
Have you ever felt like this? Have you ever felt like you were too far gone for God to save? Maybe you have felt like someone else was too far gone for God to save. Jonah knew how great God was. He knew if they repented and turned back to the Lord that He would save them. Yet, he decided that they didn’t deserve this. He decided they were terrible people and they deserved what they had coming to them, so he fled this calling. He tried to run from the Lord. As much as I would love to judge Jonah and say how wrong he is, I think we can all relate to him.
I think we have all had times when someone has done something and we don’t think they deserve forgiveness or mercy. We almost don’t want them to say sorry because we don’t want to have to forgive them. I think we have all also been in a place where we feel God is calling us to do something, and we don’t want to do it, so we try to run from that calling. We might try to hide from that calling. We know on some level that we can’t really hide from God, but on another level, we really don’t want to do what we are feeling called to do, so we try to hide anyway.
Hiding from God won’t get us anywhere we want to be. When Jonah tried to run away from his calling and hide from the Lord, he was thrown overboard from the ship he was on, swallowed up by a huge fish, and stayed in the belly of that fish for three days before he was spit out onto shore. I don’t think the same would happen to us, but as you can see, nothing good will happen, that is for sure. A better idea is to talk with the Lord. Explain to Him why you don’t feel you can do what He is calling you to do, and then listen to what He tells you. God is smarter than we are. He sees everything, and we only see a small fraction of things. If he is calling us to do something, there is a very good reason, and who are we to judge it? Who are we to question it?
Let me get back to the verse, “"Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out” There are three things this verse is pointing out to us. The first is to repent. What does this even mean? According to the Oxford language, Repent means to feel or express sincere regret or remorse about one's wrongdoing or sin. The word repentance in the Bible literally means “the act of changing one’s mind.” True biblical repentance goes beyond remorse, regret, or feeling bad about one’s sin. It involves more than merely turning away from sin. Eerdmans Bible Dictionary includes this definition of repentance: “In its fullest sense it is a term for a complete change of orientation involving a judgment upon the past and a deliberate redirection for the future.”
As you can see, when Peter is talking about Repentance, he is not just talking about saying I’m sorry for my sin. He is talking about changing our minds. He is talking about realizing that what we did was wrong and then changing our behavior so we don’t do it again. It doesn’t do us any good if we apologize to God for our sin and then go back to doing the same thing. It also doesn’t do any good if we say sorry, but we don’t actually think we have done anything wrong.
I feel a prompting from the Holy Spirit to take a quick moment to talk about what happens when we feel the Church has rules that we don’t believe in. Maybe you don’t agree with all of the Church’s teachings. You do your best to follow most of their rules, but some you don’t understand or don’t agree with, so you ignore those. You don’t bring them up in confession because you don’t feel you are sinning, because you don’t agree with that rule or that teaching. At my retreat in April, we had a speaker who was in this boat. She was a devout Catholic and followed all the rules and teachings. However, she did not agree with the teaching on contraceptives. She felt that the church had no right to tell her what she could do with her body.
If you want to hear her talk, you can find it on her website, pattyschneier. It is called Prove it God… and He did. I put a link to it in the show notes. Click Here. I don’t have time to recount her whole talk to you, although I really encourage you to listen because it was so good! Even if that is not the thing you don’t agree with, her talk gives you a way to talk to God about the things you don’t agree with and let him teach you. Patty was set in her ways and was convinced of her stance. However, over several days, or maybe weeks, God came in and gave her an understanding she couldn’t ignore. He completely changed her life, her marriage and her family in just a short time once she was ready for Him to show her the truth.
God will do this for you, too! If there are teachings you don’t understand, bring them to the Lord. Ask Him to show you why, help you understand, and renew your mind. You will be surprised at How He works. You will be surprised by the way He responds to you. God doesn’t want our empty promises to change. He doesn’t want us to say what we think He wants to hear. He wants us to truly repent, and if we think we have no reason to repent, then bring that to Him and ask Him to show us where we need to repent. If you ask, He will answer.
He will show you where in your life you need to repent, or what in your life needs to change. An amazing thing about God is that He will show you where you need to change, but He will do it in such a gentle and loving way. He doesn’t usually show you all the places at once. He will begin change in one area, and as you grow in that area, He might show you change in another area. Also, He won’t make you do all the work on your own. If you ask God to help you make the changes, He will. What just came to mind was one of the saints. The Lord told him that He needed to change, and he told the Lord he would change, just not yet. The Lord still used him powerfully when he was ready to change.
Be honest with the Lord. He knows your heart. You can’t hide anything from Him. If there are things you are struggling with, bring them to Him and ask for help, knowledge, or guidance. He will help you. You don’t have to do this alone. He will be happy to help you and to guide you. He is not asking for perfection. God is just asking that you try to do your best. He has so much mercy. He is so patient and so forgiving. All He wants is for us to try and for us to invite Him into the struggle so He can help us.
The second thing the verse is asking us to do is to turn back to the Lord. This can be hard if whatever we did was so bad that we think we don’t deserve to turn back to the Lord. God is always waiting for us to turn back to Him. He is waiting for us to come back to Him, and He is waiting with open arms. There is nothing you can do that would prevent you from coming back to the Lord if you want to. If you are sorry for what you have done, He forgives you. It is that simple. It is not complicated with the Lord. Maybe in the Old Testament, it might have been a bit harder because there were all these rules about what you needed to sacrifice in order to be forgiven. That is not the case anymore.
When Jesus died for our sins, He paid the ultimate sacrifice. He fulfilled all the requirements for sacrifice. We no longer have to do anything except be sorry, change our ways, and turn back to the Lord. Some might be wondering what “turn back to the Lord” means. Does that mean I have to instantly follow all the rules and the teachings of the church? I think my answer may vary from others, but what I feel the Lord has put on my heart is no. If you are far from the Lord, if you have been away from the Church for a long time, if you aren’t sure what you believe, but you want to know more. I think it is ok to invite God in and then ask Him to lead you to where you need to be.
Many of us think we need to be perfect to invite God in. Many of us feel we aren’t ready to go to church each week. We aren’t prepared to be all in, so we can’t invite God in. We think we will just disappoint Him because we aren’t ready to do everything yet. God knows your heart. He knows where you are at and He is very patient. Please don’t wait until you are ready to be all in before you invite God in. He wants you to invite Him into the mess. He can help you grow. He can help you overcome all the things that are standing in the way of you being with Him. He can help you, but only if you invite Him in, only if you give Him permission to work in your life. God is a gentleman, and He will not come in where He is not invited.
The last thing this verse talks about is that when you repent and turn back to God, your sins will be wiped out. Did you know that God does not remember your sins once you have repented of them? Hebrews 8:12, "For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.” God is merciful towards us, and He does not remember our sins. Isn’t this amazing? I know you may not be able to forget all you have done, but God wipes them away. He does not remember them. Wouldn’t it be great to have your slate wiped clean? Wouldn’t it be great to just start fresh?
This is exactly what happens when you repent and turn back to the Lord. When you go to confession, or when you sit with the Lord and tell Him all you have done, and let Him know you are sorry for all the ways you have hurt Him. In the Catholic Church, after we confess our sins, we say an Act of Contrition, and there is one line that always gets me. Here is one version of the Act of Contrition, “O my God, I am sorry and repent with all my heart for all the wrong I have done and for the good I have failed to do, because by sinning I have offended you, who are all good and worthy to be loved above all things. I firmly resolve, with the help of your grace, to do penance, to sin no more, and to avoid the occasions of sin. Through the merits of the Passion of our Savior Jesus Christ, Lord, have mercy.”
The line that gets me every time is when it says, “but most of all because they offend you, my God, who are all good and deserving of all my love.” There is another version that says, “But most of all because they offend you, my God, whom I should love above all.” Every time I say that, I am reminded of how much love God has for me and how, when I sin, I am choosing something else above God. It is a pretty powerful reminder to me to choose God first. To put God first. That doesn’t mean I always do, because I am human and I mess up a lot. But I love going to confession and saying the act of contrition to remind myself.
Whether you go to confession with a priest or you take your sins directly to the Lord, He wants us to repent, He wants us to turn back to Him, and as soon as we do, He forgets our sins. He wipes the slate clean. It can be scary to go to confession. It can be scary to sit and think of the ways we have offended the Lord, especially if it has been awhile, or if we have never done it, and yet, once you do, you will feel this weight lifted off your shoulders. Wouldn’t it be nice to have that stuff wiped clean? What are we waiting for?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening. Lord, help us understand repentance more. Help us to see all the ways we are hurting you, and help us to change. Help us to have a renewal of our minds. Help us to turn back to you, Lord. Give us the strength to turn back even if we don’t feel we are worthy. Help us to repent Lord. We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I want to invite you all to mentoring this month. The theme is “Repentance.” We will dig deep and talk about God’s call to repentance, God’s mercy and forgiveness, Evidence of true repentance, God’s joy over repentance, and how repentance leads to new life. There are five Tuesdays in June, so it is a great month to join because there is a bonus week! If you have been thinking about joining for a while, or you have been wondering what it is all about take this as your sign that you should click on the link below and check it out. Or go to the website WalkboldlywithJesus.com and click on the mentoring link. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, do not live in the shadows. Come into the brilliance of my light, and you will see life as it is.”
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A Place Of Abundance
Psalm 66:10-12 “For you, O God, have tested us; you have tried us as silver is tried. You brought us into the net; you laid a crushing burden on our backs; you let men ride over our heads; we went through fire and through water; yet you have brought us out to a place of abundance.”
This month in mentoring, we have been talking about what to do when we have to wait a long time for the answers to our prayers. I know a lot of people who have been sick for a long time, and there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight. I know others who have been struggling for a long time, and there is no deliverance from that suffering in sight. Yesterday’s podcast addressed this, and I feel as though the Lord gave me a deeper understanding as to why sometimes our prayers aren’t answered immediately.
Then I saw this verse this morning, and I thought it was a good one because of the imagery and because of the message. It begins with, “For you, O God, have tested us; you have tried us as silver is tried.” The first thing that comes to mind is that not everything is a test from God. You are not sick because God is testing you. You did not get divorced because God is testing you. God does not create bad things in our lives so that He can test us. This is important to remember. Just like if you have children and they are going through hard times, you may let them struggle a bit so they can learn from the situation, but you did not cause the situation.
God is for you; He is not against you. This is an important fact that can be easy to forget when all seems to be going wrong in our lives. If you are struggling to believe this, I urge you to write it down on a piece of paper or a sticky note and place it somewhere where you will see it multiple times a day. It is the truth. God is FOR you, He is NOT against you. He does not create illness, He is not the author of bad things happening in your life.
All of that being said, God does allow us to go through illness; he allows us to go through hard times because He knows we will be stronger on the other side. He knows we will become different people in that struggle. Who we become in the struggle is up to us. We have to make a choice, or many choices, throughout our struggle to become who we want to be. Going through a really difficult season can help us rely on the Lord more. It can help us become more compassionate to others who are struggling. It can teach us patience and resilience. It can teach us to slow down and to pray more. A lot of good can come out of having to struggle. We have to choose that, though.
Going through a really difficult season can also have the opposite effect. Some people turn away from the Lord when they are struggling. They are angry, they don’t understand why it is happening, and instead of leaning in, they turn away. It can also harden people’s hearts and make them angry and bitter. It can make them resentful because they are suffering and others aren’t. They might be frustrated that they can’t do all the things they want to do and they take it out on others.
As I said, if you want to come out better on the other side, you have to make a choice. Actually, you will need to make a lot of choices throughout the difficult season. All day, every day, you will be faced with choices to lean into God or to turn away. You will be faced with choices of developing more compassion towards others or hardening your heart towards others. You can search for things to be grateful for, or you can find reasons to be jealous of those more fortunate. You can be bitter or you can be joyful.
I want you to know that I am not saying any of this will be easy. It is not easy to choose to believe in God when you feel like He is taking everything away from you, or you feel as though He made you sick. It is not easy to be joyful when you are stuck in bed and are in so much pain, and you have been this way for months with no end in sight. It is not easy to find joy in the pain. It is not easy to be grateful when you feel like your whole life is falling apart. I know this, I have been in really difficult seasons when I had to make these choices too.
Do you know what, though, it is also not easy to be miserable. It is not easy to be bitter and resentful. It is not easy to have everyone avoid you because you can’t seem to be kind to anyone. It’s not easy to have everyone avoiding you because you are so negative, and all you do is complain. It is not easy to turn away from the Lord and block all the healing, strength, and love He has for you. Life is not easy. No matter what choices you are making, life is not easy. You just have to decide if you are going to make the hard choices that will benefit you or the hard choices that will hurt you. What will you choose?
The ending of the verse today is the part that I wanted you to hear the most. It says, “You brought us into the net; you laid a crushing burden on our backs; you let men ride over our heads; we went through fire and through water; yet you have brought us out to a place of abundance.” We can all probably relate to this verse. We are either in a time like this right now, or we can remember when we have been. We have been in a situation where we felt like the burden was crushing us. The weight alone of what we were going through was too much to bear. Maybe you felt like you had gone through water and fire.
What I want you to know is that God will bring you out of where you are now and He will bring you into a place of abundance. Can you look back on some difficult times that God has already brought you through and see that time of abundance? Abundance means a very large quantity of something. So, it doesn’t mean that you will come out of a difficult situation and suddenly win the lottery. It doesn’t have to be an abundance of money. Maybe you will come to the other side of this hard time, and you will have an abundance of faith or patience. Perhaps you will have an abundance of understanding, love, wisdom, and strength. Maybe you will come out of all of this with an abundance of gratitude or an abundance of people surrounding you. I am not sure what your “place of abundance looks like, but I know it will be there waiting for you. If it is in the Bible, then it is true. If you are still in a difficult place, you can look forward to the place of abundance. If you have been through a hard season and have made it to the other side, look back and try to remember or see that place of abundance.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening. Bless them and bless their families. Lord, please help us to choose the right path. Help us to make good choices in our suffering and in our pain. Please help us all make good choices throughout the day, even if we aren’t suffering right now. Lord, help us choose you and only things that bring us closer to you. Please help us to focus on the positive and not the negative. Please help us grow closer to you and not turn away. Please help us to be grateful and not bitter. Please help us, Lord! We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Yesterday, I mentioned my newsletter email list, where you will get all the information about upcoming retreats, books, and other news. Today, I want to remind you that you can sign up for the Word of the Day emails. Every day, I email the Word from the Lord that I post at the end of each podcast to the email list. I create an image for the word, and then I send it out 7 days a week. Wouldn’t it be great to start your day with a word from the Lord? CLICK HERE to sign up for Daily "Word from the Lord" emails. You can unsubscribe at any time by just clicking the unsubscribe button at the bottom of the email. I look forward to seeing you again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, let not fear take hold of you. Let it not paralyze you. Move beyond your fear, for I am there. I will help you overcome.”
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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What Is Expectant Faith?
Galatians 6:9 “And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.”
I heard this verse on the Elevation Podcast this morning. It was not this week’s sermon; it was from May 4, 2025. The episode was titled, “All You’ve Got To Do Is Don’t.” It was a really great sermon, and I invite you to check it out. There were a lot of things that he covered today, but one of them, especially this verse, spoke to my heart and answered a question that I had just been talking to God about while I was at Eucharistic Adoration. I was sitting there talking to the Lord about my disappointment when prayers aren’t answered when I think they should be. This is something I think we all deal with. Yet, I am not sure we all know it is ok to be disappointed.
I am going to share my struggle with you this morning in case anyone else has been struggling with a similar issue. I have spent a long time getting to know God and learning about all of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. I have spent a long time trying to understand what it means to have the Holy Spirit living inside of me. Trying to understand how to use the power that God sent to us with the Holy Spirit. I have been learning about the gifts of the Holy Spirit and how to use them for at least 7 years now in the Charismatic Renewal. I have just spent 2 years becoming equipped and activated to use those gifts through the Encounter School of Ministry, Boston Campus.
I tell you all of this to say that I have come to know God well over the last 8 years. I have come to know how much He loves us and how he wants us all whole and healed. He doesn’t want any of His children to suffer. He doesn’t want a single one of us to be lost or separated from Him. I know all of this, and so when I pray with someone for healing or for something else, and I don’t see results, I get confused. This may seem prideful, and this may seem like I am trying to take credit for the healing. I am not sure what this says about me. I am just being honest with you and letting you know how I feel.
Here is what I wrote in my journal this morning when I was coming to the Lord for answers. “Lord, why do I get so upset waiting for your timing? Why do some people have to wait so long for relief? Why does my friend still need to have nightmares, and why is my other friend still blind? Why lord? What am I missing? I feel we do believe. I feel we are coming to you in expectant faith. We are asking in Jesus' name. So why the delayed answers? Why isn't everyone healed? Am I doing something wrong? Am I not doing something I should be? Is something else getting in the way? Please help me to understand.”
Here is what I felt like the Lord said back to me. "My dearest daughter, it is not you. You are not the one healing. I am. I can heal through imperfect people. I can heal even if you don't say or do the right thing. I can use you even though you weren't perfect.”
I replied in my journal, “What about when Jesus ' apostles couldn't get the demon out of that man's son, and Jesus said Oh, faithless generation, how long will I be with you? This is confusing to me because it does seem like it was the disciples' fault, almost. It seems like Jesus was saying that they didn't have enough faith or they didn't pray enough. What am I missing, Lord? Please help me to understand this better.” I also wrote down two verses from this section. Mark 9:23 “Jesus said to him, ‘If I can! Everything is possible to one who has faith.’” and Mark 9:24 “The boy's father said, ‘I do believe, help my unbelief.”
This is when my hour of adoration ended, and I needed to get home to wake Ryan up for school. I figured I would talk to the Lord about this later, as I was still not sure what I was missing. Then I heard this verse on my way home; I felt like the Lord was speaking it directly to me. Here is the verse again, “And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.” The words that the Lord highlighted for me were IN DUE SEASON. I felt like the Lord was telling me that only He knows when it is the right time for something to happen. I know his timing is best. I know He knows all, and that He can do all. I know all of this, and yet when I am praying for someone, I am expecting immediate results because I know God wants everyone healed. I know He doesn’t want to see His children suffer.
I know all of this, and that is why I get so confused. I don’t understand why He won’t just take this from them. I know He can use it for good, and yet I also know He can do anything, so He could teach them what He wants to teach them in a different way. I just don't want to see people suffering. I want God to take this from them. I feel the Holy Spirit putting on my heart that this is the same in my own life. I want to take the suffering away from my kids or my loved ones, and yet sometimes that is not what they need. Sometimes they need to go through it to get to the other side. Sometimes, when we keep people from suffering, we are robbing them of the lessons and the blessings they will gain by going through the suffering.
God doesn’t need my friend to have the nightmares in order for her to learn a lesson or gain the blessings, yet this might be better than the alternative. Or the blessings might be greater than if she didn’t go through this. For instance, maybe He will use this experience to help her be a more powerful intercessor for others who are tortured in this way. My friend doesn’t need to be blind in order for God to accomplish what He is doing, and yet God has a plan, and as much as I don't understand it, it is much better than my plan, and it will all make sense one day.
Let’s look at the verse again. "And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.” Let us not grow weary of doing good. This is something that Steven Furtick addressed in the sermon he gave, and it really spoke to me. What he said can help us not to grow weary and not to give up. He said it is not the work, or the doing good, that makes us weary. It is the expectations. Man, this hit me right in the heart. Praying for people does not make me weary. My expectations of the outcome of those prayers can sometimes make me weary.
I feel as though the Lord was speaking to me about expectant faith this morning with this message. I mentioned in my journal entry that my friends I mentioned above and I are coming to the Lord with expectant faith, we know God can heal them, and we are asking in Jesus’ name, so why aren’t they being healed? First, as I wrote, I realized that they are being healed in so many ways, just not the way I thought they should be healed. He is working on so many things with them. They feel His presence so much more than they did before all the prayer. He is working. Second, I feel the Lord was convicting me that expectant faith isn’t attached to a timeline. For instance, expectant faith doesn’t mean that I wake up expecting to be healed today. Expectant faith is knowing that my healing, or their healing, is coming in due season. Knowing that we have asked for it, and when we ask, God answers. I feel as though the Lord was convicting me this morning that expectant faith is knowing that God will heal me or them at the right time, and that until that healing comes, He will continue to give me all I need to make it through this difficult time. Expectant faith is knowing that God has this all under control, and although I want it to be over today, I know that God’s plan is better than my plan.
I feel strongly that God is telling me that my expectations of time are what I need to let go of. God’s ways are higher than my ways, and I won’t understand them, and I don’t need to understand them. I feel as though He is telling me to let go of my expectations of time. I feel He is telling me that expectant faith is praising him for the healing, even though I don’t see it yet. Praise Him for delivering my friend from her nightmares, even though she hasn’t been delivered yet. Not because I see proof of that delivery. Not because I see proof of that healing. Praise Him because of my expectant faith that the healing and the deliverance are coming on His timeline and that if we don’t give up, if we don’t grow, we will reap the harvest.
I pray this is for someone else besides me this morning. I pray that if you are waiting for answers to your prayers, this will bring you some comfort. I pray you will join me in releasing the expectations of “when” and start praising the unseen answers. I pray you will start praising the Lord with expectant faith that He will answer your prayers, in due season, and that you will eventually reap the harvest of all those prayers and all that expectant faith!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening. Lord, please help us to have expectant faith and to release our expectations of timelines. Lord, help us to know that your time is better than our time and your plan is better than our plan. Help us to be humble and to release our expectations of when and how. Lord, let us praise you for answering our prayers in any way you want. Let us not grow weary of doing good, and let us not give up. Let us trust that you will give us whatever it is we need to get through this hard time. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in the name of Jesus! Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I am trying to get my devotional book about Identity out into the world by the end of June, so be on the lookout. If you are not already signed up to get my email newsletter so you can stay informed of any books, retreats, talks, etc., please click on the link below. I don’t send a lot of emails, just one per week with all the info. CLICK HERE to sign up for my newsletter & receive a free audio training about inviting Jesus into your daily life. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “The pillar of fire by night was not only to enable my people to move forward. As they moved forward, it was also a shield impenetrable by their enemies.”
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Today’s witnesses are from Matthew West’s website called popwe.org. If you don’t know who Matthew West is, he is a singer, songwriter, and storyteller. This website is for the non-profit that he has with his father, a pastor. Matthew and his father encourage people to share their stories. They have various categories of stories. Today, I chose two testimonies from the Salvation Category. Often, we can hear our own story in someone else’s story. When we listen to others tell their story, it helps us see that we are not alone. When we hear how God worked in their situation, it gives us hope that He will work in ours, too! I pray when you hear these testimonies, you get the faith and hope to believe that miracles can happen in your situation, also. I pray you know that God is there with you, and if you invite Him into your situation, He can help. I hope you enjoy these testimonies.
Denice: My grandson, Elijah (age 19), was an unbeliever his entire life. I’ve been praying that he would find God. He was invited to a Bible study that 2 of his good friends started. He was resistant at first, but his friends never stopped inviting him. And finally, he gave in and went. I wept with joy.
A few months into this study, Elijah asked me if he could host the study at my house. I couldn’t say “Yes!!” fast enough!
25 kids, aged 15 to 29, showed up that Wednesday night and filled my entire living room. I was so proud of this group telling them they are disciples on the ground – that we are living the year of the Lord’s favor today. I told them the Gospel is still moving, and they are a part of it. They are no different that the 12 disciples they are reading about in the Bible. Discipleship is still happening through you and me, and the Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed. The Kingdom will spread in you and through you. The Gospel works because of who Jesus is; not because of us. I am proud to be a seed.
These young people take turns leading the study and I have had the pleasure to sit in on several of their studies. It blows my mind. My oldest grandson, Justus (age 29) has also joined this group and has never missed a Wednesday night. I can see the changes in both of them. God is so good… And to witness this is powerful. These young people, dedicated to the Lord, are now getting together on Thursday as well!
They were studying sin, and I reminded them that the Living God does not hate sin because you broke a rule. He hates sin because it breaks you. Sin weakens you. And that sometimes we pray for our circumstances to change when maybe God wants YOU to change in the circumstance.
I am so proud of this group of young people. It has become a great opportunity to share my faith and to watch God move in their lives.
This is what prayer can do…. So don’t stop praying!
Next is Brad:
Hello West Family,
I would like to share with you my testimony of opening my heart to Jesus Christ and how He completely changed my life.
My mom left my father when I was around one year old. She soon remarried my stepfather, who she is still married to today. He had two daughters and one son. His son stayed with us more often than the daughters did, so I instantly gained a brother who I grew up with. He became like a blood brother to me.
We were raised going to church, but as time went on, we attended less and less due to constant fighting between my mother and stepfather. My biological father was barely in my life and lived in California, while I lived in Kansas. As we stopped going to church, it felt like my mom and stepfather became increasingly strict with us, and discipline became harsh—belts and paddles, being slapped in the face, soap shoved down our throats, etc.
Time passed, and we went through the typical phases—Boy Scouts, sports, family activities—and while at times it seemed harsh, there were good times as well. I was diagnosed with depression in my early teens and was quickly put on medication, as that seemed to be the only solution at the time.
As we got older, my brother moved out after graduating from high school. For his 21st birthday, he invited me to the lake with his friends. But at the last minute, he told me they weren’t going to the lake anymore and that I couldn’t hang out with them, probably because they planned on going to bars and drinking. That hurt me deeply.
So, on the night of my brother’s birthday, I ended up staying at a friend’s house. Strangely, I couldn’t sleep at all. I felt as if something wasn’t right. As I was tossing and turning, I heard my friend’s phone ringing in the middle of the night, which struck me as odd. His mom called downstairs to me, saying the phone was for me. I answered, and it was my mom. She told me something had happened, but she couldn’t talk and handed the phone to my sister. I was told that my brother Jason had been in an automobile accident and didn’t make it. My brother and his friend had both decided to leave an Applebee’s restaurant after drinking heavily and get into my brother’s friend’s brand-new Firebird. They made the tragic decision to drink and drive. They were traveling at a high rate of speed when they hit a telephone pole. My brother died instantly, and his friend barely made it out alive.
In an instant, my whole life changed. From that moment on, my life spiraled. I struggled with uncontrolled drinking, sleeping with different partners, failed relationships (one of which resulted in a child), and on-and-off jobs. Nothing seemed to be going right.
I prayed to God for someone to come into my life, and He gifted me with Elisabeth, who is now my ex-wife. I jumped into that relationship quickly. We lived together within three months, married soon after, and had two children. She essentially became the mother to my first child, as her mother was in and out of jail and struggling with drugs.
We bought a house, had three kids, and life seemed good. I opened my heart to God, and we attended church. But then, I wanted to live life my own way instead of following the path God had planned for me. Ultimately, I lost everything. Elisabeth and I divorced and ended up selling the house.
For the past 10 years, I tried living life on my terms. My mental health deteriorated, I was drinking excessively, and I even started taking pills. I slept with multiple women, and everything spiraled out of control. I treated my children poorly, and my anxiety, stress, and worries were overwhelming.
However, a couple of months ago, I made the decision to open my heart fully to Jesus Christ once again. I’ve completely changed my mindset and behavior. I am now more mindful of how I interact with people, especially at work, and I’m committed to not treating people poorly or gossiping about them. I’ve started reading the Bible every day and am trying to live by its teachings.
My children and I now go out and write Bible verses and encouraging messages on sidewalks with sidewalk chalk. We listen to Christian artists like you and sing along together in praise to Jesus. I even took my children to their first Winter Jam.
Jesus Christ is alive and can change anyone.
Thank you for your time.
Your Brother in Christ,
Brad
Thank you so much to both of you for sharing your stories. I appreciate you being vulnerable and sharing your story so that others know they are not alone. It also shows them that if God got you through it, he will get them through it too! Thank you so much for sharing!
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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Oh Death, You Are Dead To Me!
Isaiah 25:7-8 "On this mountain he will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples,the sheet that covers all nations; he will swallow up death forever. The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces; he will remove his people’s disgrace from all the earth. The Lord has spoken.”
This morning, I was thinking about using a song that I have heard a lot lately, which I thought would be really good and go with the theme of mentoring for this month. Then, while I was driving my son to school, this other song came on the radio, and I felt like it was a song we all needed to hear. The song is called “Oh Death” and is sung by MercyMe. I will go into the song in a bit, but first, let’s talk about this verse.
It begins by saying, “On this mountain He will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers the nations.” It was believed that there was a veil of sorts over the whole land that prevented people from seeing and following the Lord and living the way He wants us to live. I would say this is still true today. The enemy tries to put a veil in front of us so that we don’t want to live the way God wants us to live. He tries to separate us from the Lord.
Before Jesus died on the cross, there was a veil separating us from the Lord that was put there by God. After Adam and Eve ate from the tree, they could no longer have free access to God. From then on, only certain people could see God and talk with the Lord. However, once Jesus died on that cross, that veil was torn in two, literally. (Matthew 27:51). Now we have free access to the Lord. There is nothing separating us from talking with him. He did not want that separation anymore.
However, the enemy likes to put up walls and make us believe that the Lord is too busy for us or that God is too great and we are not worthy to talk with Him. There is definitely some sort of veil over the world that tries to dim God’s light and separate us from Him. The enemy wants us to feel separate from God because when we feel apart from Him, fear can creep in and try to turn us away from God. This verse is reminding us that God will destroy that veil just as he did the other one.
The next line is the one that reminds me of the song. It says that the Lord will swallow up death forever. I know so many people who are afraid to die. And that makes sense because we don’t want to leave our loved ones and our friends. We aren’t ready to say goodbye yet, or maybe we aren’t sure our loved ones are ready. Will they be ok without us? Will they be ok on their own? These are all questions that go through our minds when we think about death.
We also might be worried about death because no one knows for sure what it is all about. No one knows quite what to expect. We hope that we will be in heaven with God, but then we have the enemy whispering in our ear, telling us we won’t be. He reminds us of all that we have done wrong and tells us there is no way that we will get to be with God, not with what we have done. The enemy is a liar! Don’t believe him. Yes, you may have done some pretty bad things, we all have. Yet, Jesus took all of that to the cross with Him, so don’t let the enemy pile it onto your shoulders again.
The verse above also says, “The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces; he will remove his people’s disgrace from all the earth.” God is so gentle and caring that He wipes away the tears from our faces. He not only takes away our pain, but he wipes our tears too! He also removes all disgrace that we have. The devil wants us to keep our disgrace and our shame. He reminds us of it so often that it seems like we will never forget. However, verses like this remind us that God does not hold onto the things we have done after we repent for them. So, if God isn’t holding on to it, why are we?
I wanted to share this song with you today because I know a lot of people who are pretty sick. Several people listening to this podcast are chronically in pain. There are several who are listening who worry about loved ones who are sick. What I love most about this song is the upbeat music and the lyrics. When you feel down, or when you feel like you might be scared of death, or scared that the enemy might be winning the fight, listen to the lyric video of this song and sing along with it. I bet your fear will disappear.
The song begins:
You said my fate was sealed, you said my days were numbered
Case closed with no appeal, my future six feet under
Messin' with my head in ghost fashion
My heart was holdin' its breath (holdin' its breath)
Terrified of takin' my last one
Oh death, you scared me to death
This is what the enemy does. He whispers all these lies in our ears and he does it so often that we start to believe them. This is why it is so important to spend more time reading the scriptures, and surrounding ourselves with people who speak light and truth into our lives. If we hear the lies more often then we hear the truth, of course we are going to believe it. We have to make sure we are hearing the truth more often!
Whoa, you ain't my king though
Whoa, where did your sting go?
Oh death, I will not be afraid
In the end, you will lose
I will dance on your grave with the one who buried you
You ain't nothin' but a stone that my savior rolled away
Set you straight and set me free
Oh death, you are dead to me
(Oh dear, you are dead to me)
This chorus is great because it shows the enemy that we are not afraid. God is our King; He is the one who decides everything. The enemy has no say. If we can stop thinking of the enemy as this giant thing that can take us down and start thinking of him like it talks about him in this song, I am sure we would feel stronger. This song says, “I will dance on your grave with the one who buried you. You ain't nothin' but a stone that my savior rolled away. Set you straight and set me free.”
God already defeated death and sin when He sent His only Son to be sacrificed for us. We don't have to be scared of death. Death was already defeated when Jesus rose again. We don’t have to be scared of it! God already won the war of good vs. evil and death vs. life. I love how the song says that we will dance on the devil’s grave with the one who buried him!
My faith don't flinch, it's alright
Devil, come get off of my shoulder
You thought you had the last laugh
You thought this song was over
Whoa, you ain't my king though
Whoa, where did your sting go?
Oh death, I will not be afraid
In the end, you will lose
I will dance on your grave with the one who buried you
You ain't nothin' but a stone that my savior rolled away
Set you straight and set me free
Oh death, you are dead to me
Oh death, you are dead to me
The enemy always thinks he has the last laugh or the last word. He refuses to accept that he has lost the war. We need to be on guard to protect ourselves from the enemy but we don’t need to be afraid of him. If we are constantly turning back to the Lord. If we are rooted in the Lord and His love for us, then the enemy doesn’t stand a chance!
The song goes on to say:
Yeah, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of you
I know I'm just passin' through, oh yeah
Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of you
I know I'm just passin' through, oh yeah
Oh death, I will not be afraid
In the end, you will lose
I will dance on your grave with the one who buried you
You ain't nothin' but a stone that my savior rolled away
Set you straight and set me free
Oh death, you are dead to me
I like this last verse too because it reminds us of something very important. It says, “Yeah, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of you. I know I'm just passin' through.” This is important for us to know. Yes, we will be in the valley sometimes. Yes, the enemy will attack us sometimes, and yet the Lord is always there with us. He will always be there to save us. We are stuck in that valley, and no matter how much it feels like it, you aren’t going to stay there forever. You are just passing through to pick up whatever you need for your next adventure in life. Maybe you need more perseverance, resilience, strength, peace, healing, whatever it is that this valley is teaching you. You are just passing through to level up so you can make it through the next season of your life.
I pray this song makes you smile. It makes me smile when I hear it on the radio. It makes me smile when I imagine myself dancing to this song on top of the devil’s grave with Jesus. It makes me smile when I think about how God rolled away the stone and rose so we could be forgiven. It makes me smile to remember I am just passing through this valley, and even though it seems like I have been here forever, I will get out of it. I invite you to look up this song on YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you listen to music and hear this song today. It really is a great song with a great beat.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today! Lord, we love you. Please help us to remember we are just passing through this valley. Please help us to see that you have already defeated death, and we have nothing to be afraid of. Please help us to walk in your light and not in the darkness. Please help us to stand firm in the truth that you are our Lord and you have defeated evil. We thank you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Be bold. Be not afraid to speak my words to those you meet. Be courageous in times of trouble. I am your God, and I am there to help you.”
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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God Never Forgets Us!
Psalm 10:12&14 “Arise, Lord! Lift up your hand, O God. Do not forget the helpless. But you, God, see the trouble of the afflicted; you consider their grief and take it in hand. The victims commit themselves to you; you are the helper of the fatherless.”
I like these verses because they remind us that God does not forget us. He sees the trouble we are in. He considers our grief, and He knows how to help us. It reminds us that we need to commit ourselves to the Lord, that He is our helper. It can seem like God forgets us because the enemy makes us feel alone. It can also seem like God forgets us when we have been asking for the same thing for a really long time, and yet it seems like our prayers are going unanswered.
There is a song that came on the radio the other day, and I knew I wanted to share it with you. It is what reminds us that God doesn’t leave our side. It reminds us that He always hears our prayers and He is always working for our good. God is for us, not against us. This can be something that is hard for us to remember for some reason. When we look at this broken world that we live in, it can be easy to believe the lie that God is working against us. He is punishing us for something. He is ignoring us. This is easy to believe at times because that is how we treat each other. That is not how God treats us. He treats us way better than we deserve. The song I am talking about is titled “Never” by Tasha Layton. Here are the words.
When this broken world is breaking me down
When my tears and knees both fall to the ground
When my questions make me doubt You more than ever
You remind me that Your answer is always never
When I first heard this song, I had no idea what she meant. We usually hear that God is a yes God. We usually hear that God will give us what we need, and a lot of the time, He gives us what we want as well. So, when I heard that God’s answer is always never, I was confused. Then I kept listening.
Never forgotten, never forsaken.
Never abandoned, not for a second
I am safe in Your hands always and forever
You're never not working, my heart is the proof
There's not a broken, too broken for You
Will there ever come a day when You're not holding me together?
You say never (oh-oh, oh-oh)
After hearing this chorus, it all made sense! We are never forgotten and we are never forsaken. God is always with us. He never leaves our side. God does not just walk away and leave us up to our own devices. He does not throw His hands up and say that there is nothing He can do here. God is always working on our behalf. We might not see it because he might be arranging things in a way that takes time. But He is never not working. I love the line, “There’s not a broken, too broken for you.”
We can definitely forget this fact all the time. Or, maybe we aren’t forgetting it, perhaps we aren’t believing it. Do you think that you are too broken for God? Do you believe He can fix a lot of things, but He can’t fix you? If you feel this, you are not alone. Many people think that they are too broken for the Lord to fix. We ask why he would want to fix us. Why would he bother when there are so many other worthy people in the world? We think we are a lost cause, and He should spend His time on other people who aren’t as far gone as we are. God created the entire universe with his words. If he can do that, why would we think we are too far gone for Him? Nothing is impossible for the Lord!
I like the next line too. It says, “Will there ever come a day when you’re holding me together? You say never!” You are not going to wake up one day to find out that God has moved on. Maybe you have had that experience with people, but god is not a person. He is not going to leave you and there will never be a day when He is not holding you together. He will always be there with you. Even when you feel like you are broken into a million pieces, He will hold all of those pieces together for you. He is that good!!
Next the song says,
Every single time I look back, I see
There's never been a promise You didn't keep
You don't waste the wounds, You use them for the better
When it comes to You, Your answer is always never
That first line in this section is some good advice. When we feel like God might be abandoning us or leaving us, we can look back over our lives and ask ourselves if He was there. Was there a time when he had abandoned us or left us to our own devices? I am not saying that you can always feel God’s presence, but can you look back and see all the ways he arranged things for you in the past? Can you look back and see that even though it felt like God wasn’t there, He actually was there working in all those situations, too? If you can, this will help you have hope that He is there for you now, too!
The rest of the song repeats the verses above, so I won’t read them all to you. I do think this concept is something that we really need to remember. I will just leave you with the chorus today. If this is something you struggle to believe, take out a piece of paper or take out a sticky note, write down this chorus, and read it often! God says, you are:
Never forgotten, never forsaken.
Never abandoned, not for a second
I am safe in Your hands always and forever
You're never not working, my heart is the proof
There's not a broken, too broken for You
Will there ever come a day when You're not holding me together?
You say never (oh-oh, oh-oh)
Dear heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening. Lord, help us to truly believe that you will never forget us. You will never abandon or forsake us. Please help us to believe we are always safe in your arms. Help us remember that and run back into your arms whenever we are in trouble. Help us truly internalize the words “there is no broken too broken for you!” Help us to bring our brokenness to you, Lord, instead of trying to hide it. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I had a podcast listener reach out to me for prayer yesterday, and she mentioned it took her a while to reach out. I want to reassure all of you that when I say I would love to pray with you, I truly mean I would love to pray with you. Nothing makes my heart happier than praying with people and trying to bring them some relief from whatever they are struggling with. My email is Catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com. There is also a contact me link below the show notes. If you need prayers, I am happy to pray with you! I look forward to meeting you here again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, when I hear you call me, I come running. I don't just walk slowly. I come running. And I run. And I run, and I run. I am never out of breath with my running, so when I arrive, I have all the strength that I need to help you.”
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MY 1,000TH EPISODE!!!
Good Morning! Today’s Witness is about me and my journey with this podcast. Today is my 1,000th episode. I can hardly believe it! Back in 2019, I decided I wanted to change my career. I had my undergraduate degree in psychology and my Master’s degree in Special Education. I was a teacher at a DoD school in Turkey for 2 years when our son Sam was born. Tony and I had both decided before having kids that I would stay home with them when we did have them. So, from Turkey we moved to New Jersey, where we stayed for 5 years, and we had two more boys, Noah & Ryan. I stayed home with the boys through our stay in New Jersey, our move to Germany, and our move to England. When we moved back to Massachusetts, our boys were in 6th grade, 4th grade, and 2nd grade. I decided to try to go back to work.
I was a licensed teacher in NJ, but needed to take the tests in MA to get my license. While I studied for the tests, I decided to substitute teach. Once I got my license, I applied for a few jobs, but all of my teaching experience was now at least 10 years old. I also realized that although our boys were in school they were struggling with things and I couldn’t really get a traditional teaching job because I never knew when I would have to go to school to pick our son up from school, or when one of our kids would refuse to go to school and I would need to stay home to watch him.
I started trying to figure out what I wanted to do. I had done a lot of personal development stuff in the years from 2015, when we moved back to the states, to 2019, when I decided what I wanted to do besides being a wife and mother. I had been talking to a lot of people who were unhappy with some aspects of their lives, and yet they felt stuck. They felt like there was nothing they could do about it. I knew this wasn’t true. I knew there was always something you could do to either change the situation you are in or change who you are in the situation. I decided to become a life coach so I could help people get unstuck. I wanted to help them overcome their challenges so they could live a happy and fulfilling life.
I looked through several programs. One day, I found the Life Purpose Institute. They had a program where you could become a life coach and a spiritual coach. This was perfect for me as my heart really lies in the spiritual coaching, but I also still wanted to help people who were stuck with life issues as well. The program consisted of 60 hours of training. I took the 5-day intensive with four follow-up classes. After doing peer coaching, practice coaching, and taking a final exam, I was finally certified in December of 2019. I made my marketing plan and I was all set to go out and do workshops at local churches and local libraries. I was all set to build this business, and then three months later Covid happened and we were all stuck inside. No workshops, not speaking engagements, my marketing plan went out the window.
It was also difficult because as I was learning how to have my own business and work from home, I also had my husband and three kids at home with me. I figured it out, I got some clients, and I was on my way. In June of 2020, I started a blog. Each week, I would write an article, sometimes about life coaching, but they mostly turned out to be Spiritual in content. I found out that writing about Jesus and my faith came pretty easily to me, much to my surprise. I say I was surprised because just a few years earlier, I was asking the Lord why I was the only person in my family who couldn’t write. My siblings are all great writers. I have two siblings who have published books. My younger siblings are all really good at writing poems. It was just me who felt like I couldn’t write. Either God changed that, or I just hadn’t found what I liked to write about yet.
In 2020, in the month of May, I decided to go on Facebook Live every day. I thought if I can’t go out and get the word out about my business, maybe I could do it on Facebook. At this time, my brother Danny reached out to me and said if I wanted to speak in Public, I should join the Toastmasters Club, which teaches people how to do public speaking and also gives you lots of opportunities to practice. I was nervous, but I decided to give it a try and found out I really liked it. I even won awards in their annual speech contest three years in a row.
For Christmas in 2020, my brother Danny and his wife Jess gave me a Blue Snowball iCE microphone so that I could have it if I wanted to go online or if I wanted to do a podcast. I was so excited. I spent the next few months trying to figure out what to call my podcast, what type of podcast it would be, and so on. My friend Kim helped me come up with the logo for it. I was so excited to see that it was actually happening. At this point, I have been listening to the Big Life Podcast with Pamela Crim for over 3 years now. She does a daily devotional podcast, and it is amazing. You should definitely check it out. I decided that I wanted to do this too. I decided each day I would take a scripture verse and relate it to real life somehow. I was all set to go.
Except for the fact that I had no idea how to start a podcast. I didn’t know what website to use, what program to use to record it or edit it, how to upload it, or get it out to all the podcasting websites. Luckily, my brother John and his wife Rebecca had been doing a League of Legends podcast for about a year at this point. They actually had another podcast about movie reviews. So, I asked if they could get on a Zoom call with me and teach me. They were happy to help. So, after some help from them, I was able to find some free music on the internet to use to begin and end my podcasts. I wrote my intro and outro, and I was ready to go.
My first episode was released on June 16, 2021. That was a Wednesday. It is funny looking back because I remember thinking I should start on a Monday, but at the same time, I didn’t want to wait any longer. I just wanted to start. Now, almost four years later, I have reached my 1,000th episode. It has been such a fun journey. The podcast has evolved over time. During February 2022, my prayer group decided to do an online Life in the Spirit Seminar. The people who attended said that what they liked best about the seminar was listening to everyone’s experiences about certain topics.
This is when I decided to add “Witness Wednesdays” to the podcast lineup. Every Wednesday, I was hoping to get a different person who would talk about how God was working in their lives. At the beginning, I got a lot of different people. I have also given a lot of the witnesses myself, which was great because it helped me to look at the various events in my life and see how God was working in all of them! Then I discovered the PopWe website from Matthew West and his Father, along with the Global Awakening website and the Encounter Ministry’s website. God is definitely still working powerfully in this world, and so there is no shortage of testimonies out there talking about it.
The next change came when I felt the Holy Spirit prompting me to add the words of prophecy that we receive in my prayer group to the end of each episode. I felt like the Lord wanted me to get His word out to more than just those in our prayer group. I also hope that if we get used to hearing what the Lord’s voice sounds like and the types of things he usually says, we can better discern when it is not the Lord’s voice speaking to us. We will hopefully be able to block out or ignore the enemy's voice more easily. If you want to receive a daily email with these Words from the Lord, email me at Catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com. They really are amazing. It really helps us to get to know the Lord in a different way. It helps us to see him in another light. It also usually happens to be just what you needed to hear that day.
I want to take this time to thank every single person who has listened to even just one of my episodes. It means the world to me that you would take the time out of your day to listen. Thank you to those who have reached out over the years to share your testimony for Witness Wednesday or have just reached out to encourage me and let me know you like the podcast. I am so grateful to God for each and every one of you. Sometimes I will write a podcast, and I think it doesn’t even make any sense, and then someone will reach out and say that the podcast really spoke to them. The Holy Spirit is good like that. He knows what people need to hear and speaks through me. I am well aware that it is not I writing these podcasts alone. I am aware that the Holy Spirit is working through me, and I am so grateful that God is willing to use me.
My goal when starting this podcast was that I could help those who listen walk more boldly in their faith. My goal is to help everyone learn more about what it means to have the Holy Spirit living inside of you. I want everyone to discover the power they have living inside of them. The devil doesn’t want you to know. He wants you to feel alone and weak. This is not the case. You are never alone as God never leaves your side and you are not weak. You have the same Holy Spirit that Jesus had living inside of you. The same one that empowered Jesus to do all of the miracles. The same one that raised Jesus from the dead.
Did you know that Jesus didn’t do any miracles before He was baptized? That is because He chose to only use the human part of himself, along with the Holy Spirit to do miracles. That means that you have that same power living inside of you! What are you doing with it? How are you using it? How could you be using it? John 14:12-14, “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.”
Did you hear that? “Whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.” Think of the most amazing thing that Jesus did. That thing that you just can’t believe He could do. Then reread that verse. Do you believe in Jesus? Yes, then you can do the things he did and even greater things. This is the whole point of this podcast. I hope that if you have been with me for a while now, you are starting to realize this to be true. I hope you are starting to understand how powerful you really are. The enemy doesn’t want you to know this, and I am hoping that enough of us start using the power the Lord has given us, and then others see us and they join in, and before we know it, we are all living in the power of the Holy Spirit. Can you imagine how different this world would be if we were all aware and living in the power that the Lord gave us?
I love each and every one of you. I am beyond grateful for your support. If you are listening and I don’t know you, I would love to get to know you. Please reach out to me through email at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com. If you would like to give your testimony, send me an email. It really doesn’t take a lot of time and could really help someone else out. If you would like prayers, send me an email. It would be my pleasure to pray with you over the phone or add your prayers to my list of prayer requests. Thank you again for listening and for celebrating this momentous occasion with me!!
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There Is Still Good Ahead
1 Kings 19:3-9 ““Elijah was afraid and ran for his life. When he came to Beersheba in Judah, he left his servant there, while he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness. He came to a broom bush, sat down under it, and prayed that he might die. “I have had enough, Lord,” he said. “Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors.” Then he lay down under the bush and fell asleep. All at once, an angel touched him and said, “Get up and eat.” He looked around, and there by his head was some bread baked over hot coals, and a jar of water. He ate and drank and then lay down again. The angel of the Lord came back a second time and touched him and said, “Get up and eat, for the journey is too much for you.” So he got up and ate and drank. Strengthened by that food, he traveled forty days and forty nights until he reached Horeb, the mountain of God. There he went into a cave and spent the night.”
I heard an episode of the Big Life Podcast last week, and it reminded me of the story about the prophet Elijah that I just read to you. As soon as I heard it, I felt the Holy Spirit wanted me to share it with all of you this week.
What came to mind when I heard this verse is that it might be helpful to know that Elijah wanted to give up. In case you don’t know who Elijah is, let me summarize who he was. Elijah was a prophet of God in the Old Testament, known for his bold faith, miraculous acts, and deep emotional struggles. He lived during the reign of King Ahab in 9th century B.C. Israel, a time when the nation had turned away from God to worship false gods like Baal.
Here are some Key Highlights of Elijah’s Life:
Confronted King Ahab and Jezebel
Elijah boldly declared a drought as God’s judgment (1 Kings 17:1) and later challenged the corrupt leadership promoting idolatry.
Miracles by God’s Power
Multiplied flour and oil for a widow (1 Kings 17:14–16)
Raised her son from the dead (1 Kings 17:22)
Called down fire from heaven to prove God’s power on Mount Carmel (1 Kings 18:36–38)
Ran for His Life and Struggled with Despair
After his great victory, Queen Jezebel threatened his life. Elijah fled, became discouraged, and asked God to take his life (1 Kings 19:4).
God met him in a gentle whisper, showing that God’s presence isn’t always dramatic—it’s personal and close (1 Kings 19:11–13).
Taken to Heaven
Elijah never died—God took him to heaven in a chariot of fire (2 Kings 2:11), making him one of only two people in the Bible (with Enoch) who didn’t experience death.
Symbol of the Prophets
Elijah later appears with Moses during Jesus' Transfiguration (Matthew 17:3), representing the prophets alongside the law (Moses).
Elijah did a lot for the Lord. He was close to the Lord, and the Lord used him to do amazing things! He knew how mighty the Lord was, yet he felt he wanted to die. He felt like what the Lord asked him to do was too great. Sometimes, when we feel like giving up, we feel weak. We feel like we have failed or let the Lord down because He trusted us, yet we feel we can’t go on anymore. If you feel this, I want you to know that you are not alone. There are several people in the Bible—deeply faithful, even heroic people—who reached a breaking point and felt like they couldn’t go on. Some even asked God to take their lives. These moments show that God isn’t afraid of our despair—He meets us in it, and He restores. Here are some of those people and where you can find their stories in the Bible in case you want to look them up and read more about them.
Throughout Scripture, we see that even God’s most faithful servants reached moments where they felt like they couldn’t go on. Elijah,1 Kings 19:4 “He came to a broom bush, sat down under it and prayed that he might die. ‘I have had enough, Lord,’ he said. ‘Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors.’” Elijah, after boldly confronting false prophets, fled in fear and isolation, collapsing under a tree and begging God to take his life. He felt completely alone—yet God met him not with punishment, but with rest, nourishment, and a quiet whisper of presence. Like Elijah, when we are drained and overwhelmed, God offers compassion, not condemnation.
Moses, Numbers 11:14–15 “I cannot carry all these people by myself; the burden is too heavy for me. If this is how you are going to treat me, please go ahead and kill me…” Moses, exhausted by the emotional and logistical burden of leading a complaining people through the wilderness, cried out to God, saying he’d rather die than continue carrying the weight alone. God didn’t take his life—He sent help. For us, this reminds us that we don’t have to carry everything ourselves; God provides support in community.
Job, Job 3:11 “Why did I not perish at birth, and die as I came from the womb?”
Job, who lost everything—his children, health, and livelihood—wished he’d never been born. He poured out bitter questions and deep grief. And yet, God patiently listened, answered with presence and power, and ultimately restored him. Like Job, our suffering doesn’t disqualify us from God's love.
Jeremiah 20:14, 18 “Cursed be the day I was born! … Why did I ever come out of the womb to see trouble and sorrow and to end my days in shame?”
Jeremiah, known as the weeping prophet, was mocked, beaten, and ignored. He cursed the day of his birth, feeling like his life was wasted. But God never revoked his calling—He reassured Jeremiah that his voice still mattered. When we feel like our lives have no impact, God sees eternal value in our faithfulness.
Jonah, Jonah 4:3 “Now, Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.” Jonah, bitter that God showed mercy to his enemies, sulked under a plant and asked to die. God responded not with wrath, but with a question, inviting Jonah to see the world through a lens of compassion. This shows us that God works with us even when our attitudes fall short.
Finally, Paul, 2 Corinthians 1:8 “We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself.” Paul confessed that he and his companions were burdened beyond their ability to endure—so much so that they "despaired of life itself." And yet, this deep despair drove Paul to deeper reliance on God. His story reminds us that feeling overwhelmed is not the end—it can be the beginning of a deeper trust. In every story, God meets brokenness not with rejection, but with grace, purpose, and presence, offering the same to us today.
The point of the Big Life podcast that I listened to is that there is life after this hard season that you are going through. None of the people listed above stayed in the difficult season forever, even thought it might have felt like they were going to. They had moments when they called out to the Lord saying they couldn’t make it any longer, and yet they all made it through the hard time. God showed up for each one of them and showed them how loved they are. He will do the same for you.
After their breaking points, each of these men went on to live with renewed purpose, proving that God can bring beauty out of despair. Elijah, after begging God to take his life, was gently restored by God’s presence and went on to train Elisha, his prophetic successor, leaving a lasting legacy. He even became one of only two people in Scripture who never died—he was taken to heaven in a chariot of fire.
Moses, after pleading for death under the burden of leadership, received help through 70 elders and continued to lead Israel toward the Promised Land. He experienced God’s presence in deeper ways, even speaking to Him “face to face,” and was honored at the end of his life for his faithfulness.
Job, after cursing his birth, encountered God in a deeply personal way. God didn’t just restore what Job had lost—He blessed him with double what he had before and gave him a new chapter of joy, family, and peace.
Jeremiah, though weary and rejected, faithfully kept speaking God’s truth. His words endured, and we still read his laments and prophecies today—proof that even painful obedience has eternal value.
Jonah, despite his anger and desire to give up, still completed his mission. The entire city of Nineveh repented and turned to God, one of the greatest mass revivals in Scripture, even if Jonah struggled to celebrate it. God still used him, flaws and all.
Paul, after saying he “despaired of life itself,” continued his missionary journeys, wrote most of the New Testament, and encouraged countless believers, many while in chains. His despair didn’t disqualify him—it became the soil on which deeper trust and greater impact grew.
These stories remind us that our lowest moments are not the end of the story. God doesn’t discard us when we’re weak. Instead, He draws near, strengthens us, and leads us into a future still full of purpose, impact, and hope. There is life after the breaking point—and with God, it can be more meaningful than before.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone listening. Lord, I ask you to come in a special way to all those who feel like they can’t go on. To all those who feel like life is too hard, or what you are calling them to do is too hard. We ask you to send the Holy Spirit to strengthen them and renew their hope. Show them that there is life after this challenging season. Please show them you are there with them and that they can do everything through you. Lift them, Lord, and help them persevere through whatever they are going through until they get to the other side. Help them climb this mountain they are facing. We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. It is that time of year again when I start to mention the retreat I will be holding in October. It is not open for registration yet, but I would like to mention it early so people can start thinking about it. It is always the second weekend in October. This year’s theme will be Identity: Who does God say you are? It will be great, and I hope you can join me! More details to follow. I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Give yourself to me always. I will renew you each day. You are mine and I love you.”
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A Personal Relationship With God
Psalm 91:4 “He will cover you with his feathers. He will shelter you with his wings. His faithful promises are your armor and protection.”
I love this image. I picture the Lord as a giant eagle and He puts his wing over us like we would put our arm around a child. When I think of this I am filled up with a sense of love that I just can’t explain. Sometimes I think we think of the Lord as this all mighty being that is so magnificent and is so busy that He doesn’t really have time for us. I guess I don’t really mean that he doesn’t have time for us. I think that we all know that He is listening to our prayers. I think we know that He spends lots of time on us. I guess what I mean is that we don’t really think that He knows us personally, if that makes sense.
I don’t know, maybe I am wrong. Take a minute and think about your impression of God. What comes to mind when you try to picture Him. Do you think of a loving father, do you think of an almighty God that is kind of intimidating, do you think of someone that answers your prayers, but does not know you personally? How do you picture God? I think the reason I am asking this is because I think that many of us think of God as someone that is unapproachable. Yes, we can pray to Him and He will answer our prayers, but that is the extent of the relationship. I wonder how many of us know that God longs to have a personal relationship with each and every one of us.
Yes, even you. God wants to have a personal relationship with you. When I first heard this, I thought, what does that even mean? How does one have a personal relationship with someone that they can’t see, hear, touch, talk to, etc. This is when I began my journey to have a personal relationship with our Heavenly Father. (Actually with all three members of the Trinity) So, how does one begin something when they have no idea how to do it? Lots of ways I guess. What I did was try to learn what it means to have a personal relationship with God. I read some books and talked to lots of people. Here is what I have learned so far. Although I am still very much in the learning phase.
First, you can talk to Him. You can talk to God anytime you want to. He is always willing to listen. You can talk to Him about anything. Sometimes I think we feel as though God is busy and so we come to Him when we really need Him, but we don’t want to bother Him with our day to day stuff. Or at least that’s how I felt. God has time for you whenever you want. He is not bound by the same limits we are when it comest to time or attention. He can be there for each of us all of the time. He is not only willing to listen, but He wants to listen. He loves to hear about your day. If you are a parent, think about how happy you are when your children, no matter what age they are, take the time to tell you about their day. This is how God feels when you take the time to just sit and talk with Him about whatever is on your mind.
Second, get to know who God is. If you are trying to develop a personal relationship with someone one you would learn as much about that person as you can. The same is true with God. The best way you can learn more about God is to read the Bible. Reading scripture and spending time in God’s word is a great way to feel closer to Him. The more you read about and learn about our Heavenly Father, the more you will begin to see Him in a different light. You will begin to see how much He truly loves His people. How much He has done and continues to do for us, even when we don’t deserve it. Reading scripture will help you to get to see several different sides of God. You will get to learn so many different things about Him. Yes, God is all mighty and He is also very compassionate. Trust me, if you want to feel closer to the Lord, spend time daily in scripture.
Another way you can develop a personal relationship with God is to listen to what He has to say. Once you start to talk with God and tell Him all about your day, then you can also spend some quiet time just listening to what He has to say. You will most likely not get an audible voice that you can hear, however, some people have had this extraordinary gift. What I hear about most often is that you get a sense or a thought that comes to mind. For instance you are sitting there quietly and you tell God that you are available and listening. Then sometimes you will get a thought in your head from God. A sentence, a statement, some people get visions. It could be whatever you are open to. God is not going to force this on you. He will talk with you if you want to listen but only when you are open to it. I have had words of prophecy come to me in this way occasionally. How I usually listen to God is that I write Him a letter in my journal and then I tell Him that am listening and then I write down any thought that comes to my mind. I do not sensor it, I do not ask myself if this is really God talking, I just trust that I have told Him I am listening and so He is talking. That being said, I understand that I am new to listening to God and also that I may have heard something wrong or added something I wanted to hear. So, I do not take everything I write down as gospel, but I have found it is a great way for me to take time to listen to the Lord. I learned this letter writing technique from Fern Gorin at the Life Purpose Institute.
Those are just a few ways you can develop a personal relationship with God. I had no idea I was going to talk about that today. I thought for sure it was going to be about how God is our shield and our refuge. The Holy Spirit is funny like that. We think we have a plan but He knows best and so He just takes over. I love it when that happens. I think it is important that we develop a personal relationship with God so that we can truly understand how much He loves us. Also, so that we can truly understand how much he knows us personally. We are not just another person to Him. We don’t get lost in the shuffle. He calls each of us by name. I will leave you with a word of prophecy from my prayer group that shows you just how much God wants to have a personal relationship with you. “I have called you by name into life. I have called you every day by your name because I know you, I love you, because you are my friend.”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask that you help us develop a personal relationship with you. We pray that you help us to understand how much you love us and how much you know each one of us personally. We thank you so much, Lord, for that personal attention. We thank you for all the countless times you have listened to us, and we pray that we can teach us how to quiet our minds and listen to you. We love you, Lord, and we long to have a personal relationship with you. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to Walk Boldly With Jesus. I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I. Have a blessed day.
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Choose me all the time. Choose my light, choose my truth, choose my word. There is no trial greater than me. I conquer all things. Choose me.”
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What If I Don’t Want To Forgive?
Matthew 19:26 “Jesus looked at them and said, ‘With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.’”
Jesus is our guide. He came down to earth to show us how we should be acting. He came down to teach us that the Lord our God is love. He is trying to guide us to springs of the water of life, but we keep wanting to do our own thing. We don’t want to follow in his foot steps. Why don’t we? Because it is hard. Jesus said to love everyone, even our enemies. Is this even possible? Jesus wants us to forgive, but aren’t there some people that just can’t be forgiven? Shouldn’t be forgiven?
I wonder if we all realize what forgiveness is? Forgiveness is not telling the other person that what they did was right, or ok. It was not ok what they did. It is not forgetting what happened or excusing it in anyway. Forgiveness is admitting to yourself that this terrible thing did happen, that you can’t change it, so you are releasing any hold that it has over you. I know forgiveness is hard. In some cases it seems impossible. However, it is so necessary. God tells us right in the Our Father Prayer, Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. God is going to forgive us to the same extent that we forgave others. Think about the things or the people that you are unable to forgive. Do you really want the inability to forgive them to get in the way of God forgiving you? There are some things that no matter how hard we try, we can not forgive. This is ok, we don’t have to do this on our own. God can step in and help us forgive. The only thing we must do is to ask him. To give Him permission to work in your heart to forgive. We had a word or prophecy given at our prayer group that I feel is so important to share.
“I ask you to forgive my children. I know that is a difficult command and at times may seem very impossible for you to do. But I remind you that I am with you always, and with me nothing is impossible. Bring your inability to me. Allow me to work with my grace through you, so that you can be my forgiving heart for all the world.”
In this word, the Lord is asking us to forgive. He is reminding us that even though we feel it is impossible, nothing is impossible in Him. In Matthew 19:26 Jesus said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” It also says in Philippians 4:13 “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” We are not in this alone. We have God on our side and with that we can do anything. I love how God always shows up to remind us of things when we forget. I like how God is reminding us that He is always with us and then asking us to bring our inability to him. He is asking us to allow Him to work with His grace through us, so that we can bring His forgiving heart to all the world. How beautiful is that? How great is it that God not only wants to use his grace to heal our heart, but he wants us to be His forgiving heart for all the world.
God gave us free will. Can you imagine how frustrating it must be for Him to sit by and watch us squander all that he has provided for us? He would love nothing more than to rain down graces on us and yet we can’t be bothered to let him. God is not going to step in if we do not ask Him. He does not want to force us to love Him. The only way to ensure it is true love is to give us the choice to love him or not. Every day we have a choice to make. Are we going to choose God or are we going to choose something else? God has so much grace and so much mercy to give. He does not leave us alone to make these decisions. He is there for us every step of the way.
But we do need to make that choice. Once we do make that choice, He will be there to help us overcome all of the obstacles. And there will be obstacles. The life that God is asking us to live is not an easy life. Especially in this world right now. Forgiveness and love are two things that we are being called to do that are not the norm in society today. We live in a culture that does not want to forgive. We want to stay angry, blame other, and not even talk to someone that doesn’t think as we think. This is not what Jesus wants for us.
Jesus did not come to earth to be with people just like Him. He did not just hang around with those that believed like he believed. He didn’t find all the people that were getting it right in life. He came for those that were struggling. He came for those that needed Him. When he met these people, he did not meet them with judgement and unforgiveness. He met them with love and forgiveness. He accepted them as they were and encouraged them and helped them to become better.
How great would it be if we could do the same. If we could greet everyone we meet with the same love and acceptance that Jesus had. You may be thinking that you are different. Jesus could do that because he was man and God, so he had the Holy Spirit inside him to help him make the right choice. Guess what? So do you. You have the Holy Spirit inside of you and if you let Him, He will guide you to make the right choices as well. Just remember what Jesus said in Matthew 19:26, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” You can do this! It is possible! Just take a moment and ask God for help.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we really want to forgive and yet we also don’t really want to forgive. Please help us. We give you permission right now to come into our lives, into our hearts and help us to forgive anyone we are struggling to forgive. Lord we want to be free to be forgiven by you. We want nothing in the way of that forgiveness. Dad, Abba, Father, please come to our aide and help us. Show us how to forgive. Prepare our hearts to forgive. Give us the strength and the grace to forgive. We trust you Lord. We love you! We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk Boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
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Jesus Came To Seek & Save The Lost!
Luke 19:10 “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”
I felt led to share with you this morning a quote from our new Pope. It was one week ago today that the Holy Spirit chose a new Pope. Tony was asking me last week about the Pope. What do we know about him and his beliefs? What kind of Pope will he be, etc. I explained he had only been Pope for a few hours, and we should maybe let him get settled in a bit before we start trying to decide what kind of Pope he will be. The other day, I read this quote on Facebook, and I fell in love with it. This is exactly the message I feel the Lord wants to get out there. This is the message I think He wants us all to share. One that many may not like. Here is what Pope Leo XIV. said:
" Brothers, sisters…
I speak to you, especially to those who no longer believe, no longer hope, no longer pray, because they think God has left.
To those who are fed up with scandals, with misused power, with the silence of a Church that sometimes seems more like a palace than a home.
I, too, was angry with God.
I, too, saw good people die, children suffer, grandparents cry without medicine.
And yes… there were days when I prayed and only felt an echo.
But then I discovered something:
God doesn't shout. God whispers.
And sometimes He whispers from the mud, from pain, from a grandmother who feeds you without having anything.
I don't come to offer you perfect faith.
I come to tell you that faith is a walk with stones, puddles, and unexpected hugs.
I'm not asking you to believe in everything.
I'm asking you not to close the door. Give a chance to the God who waits for you without judgment.
I'm just a priest who saw God in the smile of a woman who lost her son... and yet she cooked for others.
That changed me.
So if you're broken, if you don't believe, if you're tired of the lies...
come anyway. With your anger, your doubt, your dirty backpack.
No one here will ask you for a VIP card.
Because this Church, as long as I breathe, will be a home for the homeless, and a rest for the weary.
God doesn't need soldiers.
He needs brothers.
And you, yes, you...
are one of them."
Robert Prevost (Leo XIV)
I felt like the Lord wanted me to read this to you today as a reminder that God is merciful. His mercies never end. God wants us to call back His children. He wants them to know His love. He wants them to know how special they are. He wants them to know how much they are wanted. We live in a culture that always wants the newest and the best things. We live in a throw-away culture. We live in a world that thinks it is ok to sell people. Men, women, and children are stolen and sold into slavery. Marriages and families are under attack. Our children are sold drugs. Children at younger and younger ages are vaping nicotine. Before they are even out of middle school, they are addicted to Nicotine, and they don’t even want to stop because they are in love with the flavors, cotton candy, and sour apple.
The world is searching for God. They just don’t know that He is the answer. The world is searching for love, and yet they can’t seem to find it. We need to show them the love they are searching for. We need to show them the unconditional love that God shows us. The love that does not judge. The love that accepts them for who they are, right where they are. This is what we are called to. We are called to be the face of Christ to those we meet. Are we doing this? Are we letting those who are not perfect know that they are welcome at church? Are we letting those who are struggling know that God is with them through it all?
Do we let others see our flaws? Are we real with people? Sometimes we don’t want others to see that we aren’t perfect. We put on a good front. We let others see only the very best of us. We never let others see that we struggle. We never let anyone know that we have questioned God, or that we wrestle with some of the teachings of the Church. We don’t let anyone know that there have been times when we have felt abandoned by God, or that He wasn’t hearing our prayers.
Jesus didn’t have a perfect life. He didn’t have an easy life. Sometimes I think we can get caught up in thinking that we have to be a perfect example of a Catholic in order to be an example of Christ. We have to show everyone how much we pray and how much we go to church and how religious we are, so that they can see we love Jesus. People don’t need to see our perfect lives to know we love Jesus. They need to see that we can still love Jesus when things are hard. They need to see that we can turn back to Jesus when we mess up, when we fall away, when we do things we are not proud of.
People need to know the church is not full of perfect people, but that it is filled with people who are trying to be better. People who get back up when life knocks them down, not because they are strong but because God lives inside of them and He is their strength. They need to see that even the priests struggle with trusting the Lord, or understanding His plan. They need to see that even people who go to church every single day still go to confession because they still sin. They are not getting it all right.
One thing I love that the Pope said that I think a lot of people might not like is, “I'm not asking you to believe in everything. I'm asking you not to close the door. Give a chance to the God who waits for you without judgment.” We can sometimes get caught up in what those around us believe or don’t believe. We can nag them about not believing what we believe. We do this with the best intentions. We do this because we want them to be up there in heaven with us. We do this because we love them. I love how Pope Leo is giving us permission to not worry so much if our loved ones believe all the things that the Catholic Church teaches. He is giving us a starting point to reach out to them and just show them love. That statement can be an open door.
Maybe your loved one doesn’t believe all that the Catholic Church, or any Church, teaches. That’s ok, but can they at least open the door to the possibility that there is a God that loves them? Are they open to learning more about a God who loves them and waits for them without judgment? Is there a way that instead of harping on the things we wish our children were doing right in the Church, we could focus on just reassuring them that God loves them? He loves them even if they aren’t going to church. He loves them even if they are living with their boyfriend or girlfriend before marriage. He loves them even if they are drinking too much or doing drugs. He loves them even if they are in prison, have hurt people, or have done terrible things. God still loves them and is waiting for them without judgment.
What if we all looked at how we are living our lives, how we are interacting with others, and asked ourselves if we could change anything we have been doing to be more open to others? Is there anything we could do differently to help others know that we are not perfect and they don’t have to be either? What is one thing you can do today that will show someone how loved they are by a God who is waiting for them without judgment?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening. Lord, thank you so much for giving us a new Pope to take over for Pope Francis. Lord, you are so good to us. Please help us to be your face to others. Help us let others know how loved they are by you. Help us to make people feel welcome at church. Help us to be real with people so they can be real with us. Help us to help people see that you are waiting for them without judgment. You love them just as they are and you meet them right where they are. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Come, beloved children of mine, come. Come to me and be mystified by what I will tell you. Only if you come will you know the deeper secrets of life.”
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Today’s witnesses are from Matthew West’s website, called popwe.org. If you don’t know who Matthew West is, he is a singer, songwriter, and storyteller. This website is for the non-profit that he has with his father, a pastor. Matthew and his father encourage people to share their stories. They have various categories of stories. Today, I chose two testimonies from the Marriage/Family Category. Satan is attacking our families, and I think it can help us to see that God is looking out for us. Satan wants to destroy families, but God wants to preserve them. Often, we can hear our own story in someone else’s story. When we listen to others tell their story, it helps us see that we are not alone. When we hear how God worked in their situation, it gives us hope that He will work in ours, too! I pray that when you hear these testimonies, you get the faith and hope to believe that miracles can happen in your situation, also. I pray you know that God wants to be there with you, and if you invite Him into your family issues, He can help.
Zachary: 2016 started out as one of the most exciting years for me and my wife, Amanda. We were living in Calcutta, India; working at Calcutta School of Music and starting our own company to support local artists and musicians in the city. Amanda was expecting our first baby, Chloe West Ray, and she was due to arrive at the beginning of December. Amanda was in her third trimester when she became very sick one night. We admitted her into the hospital in Calcutta, India on a Monday night. Tuesday morning Amanda was feeling better and Chloe seemed to be doing ok too. Wednesday morning, before we were about to leave the hospital, we went in for one more ultra sound. I can still hear the doctor say, “We can’t find a heart beat” as if it was today. We found ourselves sitting in that hospital room broken and confused, with no idea of what the next steps would be.
There were very few words of comfort that helped. Although people were praying and offering their words of comfort, it felt like a season of being abandoned by God. The dreams of holding our little girl were stolen and shattered. Grief is a funny thing. The initial sting and pain becomes dull over time, but the memories and dull ache continues. I don’t think our hearts are created for this world to overcome “grief” from tragedies or loss of loved ones; it becomes a part of our story, our life. We become a different person. The beautiful thing is that God stays the same and meets us where we are. I can honestly say God tangibly became my refuge in one of the darkest times in my life. He brought a healing into my soul like no earthly person could. We may never be the way we were before, but He shapes us into a new and often stronger person. I don’t think we get over grief until we leave this world.
We found out the following year that we were expecting another baby. Due to the loss of Chloe, it was difficult to not allow our fear and worry to overwhelm our joy. We simultaneously jumped for joy, and breathed a sigh of relief when our son was born.
Karina: When I think of my story, I think of pain, grief, overwhelming sadness, hurt, and betrayal. Then I think of hope, redemption, love, grace, miracles, and my salvation in Jesus.
Five years ago, my entire world turned upside down. I experienced betrayal in my marriage after 12 years. I was in so much pain. My life seemed to have been one episode after the next of unfortunate events.I was so broken and so alone. I was in severe depression and taking depression and anxiety meds and using alcohol with it. I was doing anything I could to dull the pain I was in.
I’m so thankful that God loved me so much that He pursued me in ways I’d never experienced before. I was blessed to become a part of a church. At a time when I was deeply hurting, I was shown the love of Christ over and over again. My pastor would say during his messages (and he still does) that I MATTERED to GOD. Honestly, I didn’t even know that I did. God never left my side and He revealed Himself and His love to me. I had never known love like this before and he poured it out on me in waves and waves. He walked with me through the trials and the storms and he saved me and restored me. Then God led me to become a part of a women’s group that has encouraged me, prayed with me and laughed with me. These women have become my sisters. We’ve shared a bond stronger than any blood relationship I’ve ever had. Words can’t describe the love in my heart that I have for each of them. God has healed me in ways I couldn’t see possible five years ago or even three years ago. He resurrected my dead marriage which is a miracle in a way because there was no way I could see this being restored or if reconciliation was even an option. That’s the God I serve. He is full of compassion, LOVE, mercy, and GRACE… He pursues us even when we turn our backs on Him. He loved me even when I didn’t love myself; He showed me I was His, that I was never forsaken; that I was chosen, a daughter of the One True King. He healed my heart, renewed my mind and made me brand new! The only way I can end this is by saying “Thank You, JESUS” ❤️
Thank you all so much for sharing your stories. I pray you continue to rely on the Lord and that He continues to bless your families. I know it can be hard to share your story with the world, and yet when you do, it helps others see God working in their life as well. Thank you again!
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Catch Me When I Fall
Psalm 13:4-5 “How long, Lord? Will you utterly forget me? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I carry sorrow in my soul, grief in my heart day after day? How long will my enemy triumph over me? Look upon me, answer me, Lord, my God! Give light to my eyes lest I sleep in death, Lest my enemy say, “I have prevailed,” lest my foes rejoice at my downfall. But I trust in your mercy. Grant my heart joy in your salvation, I will sing to the Lord, for he has dealt bountifully with me!”
The theme for mentoring this month is “How Long, Lord?” I chose this title because I know so many people who are suffering right now and who have been for quite some time. They have been sick for so long, and they can’t see an end in sight. Some have been going through struggles with their family, and they can’t see a resolution. It feels like things might always be like this. Many I know are struggling with a prodigal child, and they are waiting for them to come home, but feel like it may never happen.
In today’s verse, David addresses this same sentiment. It begins with “How Long, Lord? Will you utterly forget me? How long will you hide your face from me? How much I carry in my soul, grief in my heart day after day? How long will my enemy triumph over me?” I am sure that is exactly what my friends who are suffering are asking the Lord. I am sure they are struggling to understand why they are still suffering, what the purpose is, and when they will be through it. In mentoring this month, each week, I am going to examine a song that deals with these exact feelings. I really like music; it speaks right to my soul. I also like to use songs because you can always go back to them and listen to them and hopefully they will bring you comfort.
"When I Fall" by Katy Nichole is a song written out of desperation, reflecting a time when Nichole felt mentally, spiritually, and physically drained. She describes the song as a desperate prayer, expressing her exhaustion with trying to be "okay" and her desire to be honest with God. I think this is great. We should all be honest with God. I don’t know why we think we can hide things from Him. He is all-knowing. That thing you are too afraid to tell Him about, He already knows. That thing you don’t want to bother Him with, He already knows. There isn’t anything we can hide from God. Here are the lyrics for the song:
Lord, I can't find You right now
And everything is crashin' down
I'm losin' faith and fallin' into my doubts
How long will I have to fight
Just for me to stay alive?
This is a true and honest song. This is something that I know those who suffer with chronic pain are asking the Lord. I am sure at times we all wonder where God is. We wonder why He is letting us go through the things we are going through, and when He is going to pull us out of it. It is hard to keep having faith and fighting, not to let our doubts get the best of us when we are so tired from all the fighting we have already done.
I know You're there, God, please
Just meet me here tonight
My God, I'm tired of tryna be okay
I've prayed all the prayers I have to pray
Please don't leave me lonely
My God, I need You to hold me
This is the desperate plea of so many of us. We know God is there. We just need Him to hold us, even if it’s just for a minute. We are all tired of trying to be okay. We are tired of having to pretend to everyone that we are ok. One of my favorite sayings is, “It’s ok to not be ok.” I wish more people knew this. I wish more people would speak out and let others know they are not ok. I know so many people who seem so happy on the outside and yet are not ok on the inside. This world is a lonely place. Which may seem weird, as there are so many ways to keep in touch with friends and family. However, a lot of the relationships we have these days are superficial. We “like” or “love” people’s posts on social media, but we aren’t reaching out and having meaningful conversations. And, if we are being honest, we probably aren’t making posts that accurately reflect how we feel inside or what life is like on a day-to-day basis.
My God, I'm losin' all the hope I got
I'm far beyond the point of bein' lost
I've tried, but I can't let go
'Cause God, You catch me when I fall
You catch me when I fall
This is like so many I know. They don’t want to lose their hope, but it is hard day after day when it feels like their prayers aren’t being answered. When you look around, and no matter how hard you try, you can’t seem to find God. What is really good is that she knows that God will be there to catch her when she falls. If she can let go of all that she thinks is supporting her and holding her up, and just fully surrender to God, then He will catch her. He will always be there to catch us when we fall.
There's hardly air in my lungs
With all the damage that's been done
Lord, please sustain me now
I know You are enough
My God, I'm tired of tryna be okay
I've prayed all the prayers I have to pray
Please don't leave me lonely
My God, I need You to hold me
The thing to remember about God is that He can repair the damage that is done. We think we need God to act now, before it is too late. However, it is never too late for God. God can replace your damaged lungs. He can repair your kidneys. He can do whatever needs to be done. God is our provision. He is our rock. Katy says in the song that she knows God is enough and is asking Him to sustain her. He will sustain you, too. I know it may feel like you just can’t keep your head above water right now. God’s got you. He is your arm float. He will not let you drown. He hears your prayers.
The last line of today’s verse says, “But I trust in your mercy. Grant my heart joy in your salvation, I will sing to the Lord, for he has dealt bountifully with me!” Sometimes we need to sing to the Lord before the breakthrough. Sometimes we need to thank God for all the unseen work He is doing. Praising when we don’t feel like we can will actually make us feel better, and it will make the enemy flee. Praising can lift us up out of the darkness, even if it is only for a little while. David was asking the Lord to give him joy in his heart. He was asking for the Lord’s help. We can do the same.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode. Lord, you are so good. Help us to remember that when we feel lost in our own pain or our own troubles. Help us to remember how good you are. Lord, help us to remember you do catch us when we fall. Help us to remember you never leave our side. Lord, we need you to come and let us know you are here with us. We love you so much, and we need you now, Lord. Help us to hang in there, help us to never give up hope. Please provide us with the strength and provision we need for today Lord. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you love this podcast and want more, join me in mentoring and see how much more there is to learn. How much deeper you can go. The Lord is calling you closer. Will you answer his call? I look forward to seeing you here again tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I call you each by name, my children. I invite you constantly to come to me. The more you come, the more I will reveal my secrets. You will know the deeper things in life.”
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He Will Answer
Psalm 20:6-7 “Now I know that the Lord will help his anointed; he will answer him from his holy heaven with mighty victories by his right hand. Some boast of chariots, and some of horses; but we boast of the name of the Lord our God.”
I am increasingly realizing that this is hard for many of us. I know a lot of people who have lost loved ones lately. They prayed for their loved ones, they had expectant faith, they asked in Jesus’ name, and yet their loved one still died. Has this happened to you, too? I was telling a friend that I would pray for her, and she said that it didn’t work for her friend who died, so why would it work for her? She is not the only one who feels this way.
I also had another friend who said she almost felt like she wanted to tell people to stop praying for her because she felt like things got worse every time someone prayed for her. She is not alone either. God is a mystery to us. We don’t understand why He does the things He does. We don’t understand why He allows the things He allows. There are some very specific things in the Bible that tell us how to pray and even what will happen when we do. For instance, John 14:12-14 says, “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I go to the Father. Whatever you ask in my name, I will do it, that the Father may be glorified in the Son; if you ask anything in my name, I will do it.”
When I read this, I think that anything I ask, “In the name of Jesus,” will be done. Jesus healed people when He was on Earth. So, when I read this, and it says that I will do the works that Jesus did, and even greater works than that, I believe that if I ask in Jesus’ name, then God is going to heal the person I am praying for. Yet, sometimes that doesn’t happen. Sometimes the person I am praying with and praying for still dies. This can be hard to accept and hard to understand.
I am very much a follow-the-rules, follow-the-recipe, follow-the-directions kind of person. I like to do things correctly, even if there isn’t one correct way. I don’t like it when my mom tells me to put a little of this or a little of that into the recipe. I want to know exactly how much to put into it. I didn’t like it in my Dance Club when they would tell us to improvise for these next eight beats. I wanted someone else to tell me what to do. Our God is so good, and He has been gently working on this with me. I do better now with adding new things into my recipes or adding a little of this and a little of that. The other day, I was at a “Paint & Sip” event where we were supposed to ask the Lord what to paint and then paint it. I got the words “Heart on Fire,” so I looked it up online and found a great image to paint. However, I couldn’t get it to come out the same. My painting does not look like the original, but I can see what I was trying to accomplish when I look at it.
I love that the Bible tells us things like this verse from John 14, which says, “Whatever you ask in my name will be given to you.” I like it because it gives me a framework of how to ask for things. However, I also get stuck at times because when I ask for something in Jesus’ name and it doesn’t happen, I get so confused as to why. I did what you asked me to do, and it didn’t work. Why not? I did what I was supposed to do, but why didn’t God do what He said He would do?
The truth is, I don’t know. The truth is, God is so much smarter than we are. Sometimes we ask for things that won’t be good for us, or won’t be good for our loved ones. God knows the bigger plan. He knows better than we do what we need and what our loved ones need. For instance, we might not be ready for our loved one to leave us, but maybe they are ready. Maybe they are tired of fighting this disease. Maybe there are worse things coming for them down the road, and God is preventing them from that suffering. Maybe they are just holding on for us.
My grandfather had a stroke at a young age. He was bedridden for a long time. He was alive, but I don’t think he could even talk. On Valentine’s Day 1996, my grandmother told my grandfather how much she loved him. Then she told him that he didn’t have to hold on for her. She told him that she would be ok and that if he wanted to stop fighting, it was ok. My grandpa died that day.
Today’s verse says, “Now I know that the Lord will help his anointed; he will answer him from his holy heaven with mighty victories by his right hand. Some boast of chariots, and some of horses; but we boast of the name of the Lord our God.” I think what the Lord wants to tell us today is that He does answer our prayers. He doesn’t always do it in the way we want him to, and so sometimes we can miss the fact that He has answered our prayers. When we wish someone to be healed and they die anyway, this doesn’t look like an answer to prayers. However, there is no illness in heaven. So, even though they were not healed this side of heaven, they were definitely healed. They are no longer in pain, and they are in a better place.
I know that doesn’t make it easier on our end. We are still left with the pain. We are left with the loss of a loved one. We are lonely. I think God wants us to know today that you are not alone in this grieving process. He is right there with you. This verse reminds us that even though at times we could turn to other things for the answers to our problems, God is the one true God, and He is the answer to all of our problems. He will help us, and He will answer from His holy heaven with mighty victories by his right hand.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening today. Lord, we love you and we thank you for all the answers to our prayers. We are sorry that we get so angry and confused when you don’t answer our prayers like we want you to. Please help us to see things through your eyes. Please help us to trust in you and your ways, even when we don’t understand them. Please give us more and more understanding of your ways, Lord. Please be there to strengthen us when our prayers are not answered the way we thought they would be. We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. This month’s theme for mentoring is “How Long, Lord?” It is perfect for anyone who feels they have been waiting for a long time for answers to their prayers. This month, we will learn some things we can do while we are waiting for the answers to our prayers, and we will gain a deeper understanding of why we need to wait sometimes. I hope you will join us! I look forward to seeing you here tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I see Jesus on the cross and He is crying. He is crying and He is saying, “Who is hear with me? With my last breath I think of you and I call you by name because I know you would help me.”
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Wake Up!
Revelation 3:1b-3 “I know your deeds; you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Wake up! Strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have found your deeds unfinished in the sight of my God. Remember, therefore, what you have received and heard; hold it fast, and repent. But if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know when I will come to you.”
Yesterday I started to read the book of Revelation. Over the last few months, I have heard people reference it, and I don’t remember ever reading it. I know I have at least listened to it because I have been through the Bible in A Year Podcast with Father Mike twice, and about 12 years ago, I did a study program with my friend called Read the Bible in 90 days. We read the Bible, I listened a lot as I bought the audio Bible, and then each week we would meet and watch a video explaining all about the part we had just read. Because of all this, I know I have heard Revelation before, and yet I had no idea what my friends were talking about when they mentioned things in Revelation. So I decided to check it out this week.
A little side note here, if you have never done a Bible Study, can I invite you to give one a try? There are online ones, and I am sure there is a church in your area that also has one going on right now. Bible Studies are amazing for so many reasons. The Bible is complex, and it is deep. There are so many layers to everything you read in the Bible. It can also be confusing because of the language it uses and because of the difference in Biblical times vs now. I love learning about the Bible and what is actually being said in the various chapters. A lot of times, the people who are doing the Bible study will also tell you what the various words meant in Hebrew or Greek. It is fascinating!
Back to today’s verse. I chose this verse because it scared me a little. The first line in today’s verse says, “You have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Wake up!” This really hit me. I think it hit me because I think most people think they are pretty good people. I think if we asked most people if they thought they were going to heaven or hell, they would say heaven. I want to believe that most people are going to heaven. Yet, in the Bible, that is not what it says. Matthew 7:13-14 says, “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate, broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate, and narrow is the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”
I don’t think it would be good to constantly be thinking about whether we will be going to heaven or hell or not. I do think we should think of it from time to time and evaluate our lives. There are a lot of different opinions about what you need to do to get into heaven. Some believe you need to receive the Eucharist in order to go to heaven. Some believe you need to say out loud that Jesus Christ is your Lord and Savior. Some believe you need to be born again. These are all found in different parts of the Bible. There is so much found in the Bible, and I definitely am not an expert.
All I know is what the Lord is putting on my heart. I feel the Lord wants me to tell you today to remember what Jesus said in Matthew 22:36-40, “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” Are we doing this? Are we loving God with our heart, mind, and soul?
That question is much easier to answer than the second question. Are we loving our neighbor as we love ourselves? This is something to think about. We must remember that when Christ says love your neighbor, he doesn’t just mean the person who lives to the right and left of you. He means, do you love everyone else in the world? Do you love those in your town and your state? Do you love those who run the country? Do you love those who run the churches? Do you love those who are hard to love? Luke 6:32 says, ““If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them.”
This verse made me sit up and take notice this morning because plenty of people in the past have had a reputation for being a good person, a holy person, and yet later it comes out that they were not. This could be all of us. Maybe we haven’t done some truly terrible things, but are we harboring unforgiveness in our hearts? Are we despising some people who live in this world? Do we struggle to love those who are hard to love? Struggling to follow the Lord’s word is ok. We can bring Him that struggle and He will help us with it. I think we run into trouble when we aren’t struggling with it because we have decided not to pay attention to it, or we have given ourselves permission not to follow certain things the Lord says.
God is always available for us to talk to. He is available for us to ask questions to and for us to receive guidance from. However, often we think or we assume that we know what God is thinking, even though we haven't asked him. We assume that God is ok with us not forgiving the person who attacked us or our loved one because He knows how hurt we were and how hard that would be. God wouldn’t want us to forgive someone like that anyway. We think God is ok with us not forgiving our family members because He knows all they put us through. He knows how terrible they were to us, and he couldn’t possibly expect us to forgive them.
God is calling us to love our neighbors, all of them. Even the ones who have hurt us. Even the ones who did terrible things. Even the ones we disagree with. Loving them doesn’t have to mean we spend time with them. Loving them doesn’t mean letting them back into our lives to hurt us again. Loving them means you don’t wish ill for them. Loving them means forgiving them. Forgiving them isn't about condoning someone's actions or saying "it's okay." It's about releasing the burden of resentment and anger, and entrusting the consequences of their actions to God. It's a decision within you to let go, not a declaration that their actions were acceptable.
If you struggle to forgive someone, I want you to know you are not alone. You don’t have to do it alone either. If you struggle to forgive someone, bring it to the Lord and ask Him to help you. Ask Him to soften your heart. Forgiving someone is not a feeling; it is a decision. You may decide to forgive someone, yet you might not feel any different. That is OK! If you are willing to say yes to forgiving someone, God will do all the hard work in your heart to help you forgive that person. He just needs your yes and your willingness.
Today’s verse says, “I know your deeds; you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Wake up! Strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have found your deeds unfinished in the sight of my God. Remember, therefore, what you have received and heard; hold it fast, and repent. But if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know when I will come to you.” This verse is telling us to wake up! Sometimes we can go through life on autopilot. That is what the enemy wants. He wants to lull us into a false sense of security. He doesn’t want us to question our behaviors. He doesn’t want us to examine our lives or hearts.
However, the last line in this verse will hopefully give us cause to wake up. It says, “Remember, therefore, what you have received and heard; hold it fast, and repent. But if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know when I will come to you.” None of us is guaranteed tomorrow. We don’t know when we will take our last breath. What if we never get the chance to forgive or love that person? We are called to love everyone. Look at your life, are you doing that? Search your heart, have you said unkind things about people this week? If so, don’t dwell on it, repent, and start over. If there are people you don’t like, ask the Lord to give you his heart for them. If there are people you can’t seem to forgive, or you don’t want to forgive, bring it to the Lord, tell him your struggles, and ask Him for help.
We don’t know when the Lord will come like a thief, and we want to be ready. We want to always be prepared. If today were the last day on earth, would you be ready to go and meet our Heavenly Father? God doesn’t just want us to be good people. He wants us to be good people who love Him with our whole hearts, minds, and souls and who love all of His other children as well. Can we do that? Can we work on that? Can we search our hearts and ask the Lord where we need to work in this area? We can ask God to show us anything that might be blocking us from Him. Anything that might be getting in the way of us going to heaven.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening. Lord, we want to be with you for all of eternity. If something we are doing or something we have deep in our hearts is going to keep us from that time with you, please show us. Lord, it is hard to love others in this crazy world. We all bring our own baggage and our own wounds to the relationship or to the encounter. Please help us to love others like you want us to. Help us to forgive others, not because they deserve it, but because we deserve to be free from the pain, guilt, shame, and anger they have left us with. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
`Friday: Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “The time is now for a change in your lives. Come to me. Know that I am ready to help you at all times in your life.”
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Do Not Quench the Spirit
1 Thessalonians 5:19-22 "Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise the words of prophets, but test everything; hold fast to what is good; abstain from every form of evil.”
I was looking through my prayer group notes this morning to see which Bible verses from the prayer group I had already used in a previous devotional. When I looked, I could see that I used 1 Thessalonians 5:18 in one episode and 5:21-22 in another. However, I have not used 19-20 before. When I looked at it, I saw that it said, “Do not quench the Spirit.” I figured I didn’t use it because I didn’t understand it. I tend to skip over things I don’t understand or avoid things I don’t know how to do. Do you ever do this? I am sure I am not the only one.
However, when I started doing this podcast, I promised myself that I wouldn’t skip over Bible verses that I didn’t understand because if I don’t understand it, then other people probably don’t understand it either. This podcast isn’t about me telling you all the things I know about God, scripture, and everything else. It is about us learning about those things together and encouraging each other to keep walking boldly with Jesus.
I was intimidated by this scripture verse because of the word "quench." The only context I have ever really heard or used that word in is when talking about thirst. We want to quench our thirst. It is a good thing. So, when I saw that the verse said, “Do not quench the Holy Spirit,” I was confused and skipped over it. Then I reminded myself that I don’t do that anymore. I pause and take a few minutes to look up the things I don’t understand online. There are plenty of people out there who have made it their life’s mission to study the Bible and to have a deeper understanding of what it says. Luckily for us, some of them have decided to share their findings online.
There are many ways that technology is bad and not good for us. This is an exception. This is one of the fabulous things about technology. It took me less than a minute to understand what this verse was saying. And now that I know what it means, it makes so much sense. I guess I just didn’t stop and think about what that word meant. The word quench has two meanings. The first one, according to Oxford language, is to satisfy (one’s thirst) by drinking. This is the definition I was thinking of, and didn’t understand how that applied to the Holy Spirit. However, the second definition is to extinguish (a fire). This makes sense in the context of the verse above. Basically, it is telling us not to extinguish the fire of the Holy Spirit. Or another way you can look at it is to not stifle the works of the Holy Spirit.
How can we stifle the works of the Holy Spirit? Was that your next question? I am such a rule follower. When I read something in the Bible that tells me not to do something, I instantly want to know how to avoid doing that thing. I think the answer to this question is found in the rest of the verse. The verse says, “Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise the words of prophets, but test everything; hold fast to what is good; abstain from every form of evil.” If we want to make sure that we are not quenching the Holy Spirit, then we need to pay attention to what the prophets are saying. We can’t ignore what they are saying because we don’t like it or we don’t agree with it. We can’t ignore what they are saying because it might be hard.
For instance, this morning I was reading the first two chapters of Revelation in the Bible. In these chapters the Lord is giving John a message for the 7 churches. He is praising them, but he is also telling them what they are doing that is wrong and calling them to repentance. Repentance and changing our ways can be hard. And yet if we don’t then we could stifle what the Holy Spirit wants to do in us and through us.
In the verse, it says, “Do not despise the words of the prophets, but test everything.” This means that while believers should be open to receiving prophetic messages, they should also discern if those messages align with God's word and are edifying for the church. Paul is advocating for a balanced approach: respect for the Holy Spirit's guidance through prophecy, but also a discerning heart that evaluates the validity and authenticity of those messages. "Do not despise prophecies" (1 Thessalonians 5:20): This emphasizes the importance of valuing prophetic utterances, which are understood as words of instruction, exhortation, or warning from God. It cautions against dismissing prophecies as silly or unimportant. "Test all things" (1 Thessalonians 5:21): This instruction highlights the need for discernment. Believers are not to blindly accept all prophetic words, but rather to examine them carefully.
Why test prophecies? There's a potential for false prophets or messages that are not aligned with God's will. Testing helps to ensure that the prophetic messages received are authentic and edifying to the church. How to test prophecies? Several approaches can be used, including:
Aligning with Scripture: Prophecies should not contradict established biblical teachings.
Spiritual discernment: A believer's spiritual understanding can help identify if a message is of God.
Edification: A true prophecy should build up the church and encourage believers.
Seeking confirmation: Seeking guidance from church leaders can help in discernment.
The verse ends with, “hold fast to what is good; abstain from every form of evil.” Once you have discerned if a prophet's word is true and is of God, we need to hold fast to all that is good and abstain from every form of evil. This might not seem that hard, yet we live in a world constantly making evil things seem good. Tony and I just finished a series about a serial killer. However, the way the killer was portrayed, we almost found ourselves rooting for him in the end. Actually, we also watched Dexter, which is also about a serial killer. However, this man is only killing people who have done terrible things, and the police don’t have enough evidence to arrest them.
I know murder is never ok, and I know that God should be the only one who gets to decide who lives and who dies. Yet, watching this TV show, you find yourself rooting for Dexter and not wanting him to get caught. TV is not the only time this happens. You can read books, magazines, or listen to podcasts where you know something is bad, and yet, the way they are spinning it, you start to believe it is not bad. This is probably what happened in the church throughout the years as well. We look at the world around us, and there is so much evil and evil is so commonplace, we start to forget that it is evil. In the book of Revelation, the Lord reminds the churches of what is right and wrong and calls for repentance. This verse reminds us that we need to remember what is right and wrong. If something is in the Bible, it is true and right, and we need to obey it even if we don’t want to.
If we want to obey this verse and not quench the fire of the Holy Spirit, we need to pay attention to what we are doing. We need to not just coast through life on autopilot. We need to examine what we are doing, what we hear the Lord say to us, and then pay attention to all of it. The Lord is talking to us, and He will guide us and show us when we are doing something we shouldn’t be, but we will only hear it if we are listening. Let’s all try a little harder this month to “hold fast to what is good; abstain from every form of evil.”
Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for all those listening. I am so grateful you brought each one of them here today. Lord, I ask you to bless them. I invite you to open our spiritual ears so we can hear you. I ask you to soften our hearts so that we want to do what is right and avoid what is wrong. I invite you to help us, Lord. Please show us right from wrong and help us to choose wisely. Please help us not quench the fire of the Holy Spirit that is at work in us and through us. Lord, we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Yes, my children, you will work hard. And at times you will work as to what you perceive is in the dark. But I am the light, and there is no darkness in me. And I will help you to continue to reap the harvest that I have assigned for each of you, even in what you perceive as dark, because I am the light of the world.”
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Today’s witnesses are from Matthew West’s website, called popwe.org. If you don’t know who Matthew West is, he is a singer, songwriter, and storyteller. This website is for the non-profit that he has with his father, a pastor. Matthew and his father encourage people to share their stories. They have various categories of stories. Today, I chose two testimonies from the Anxiety/Depression Category. I know so many people who are struggling with anxiety and depression right now. Suicide seems to be increasing as well. Often, we can hear our own story in someone else’s story. When we listen to others tell their story, it helps us see that we are not alone. When we hear how God worked in their situation, it gives us hope that He will work in ours, too! I pray that when you hear these testimonies, you get the faith and hope to believe that miracles can happen in your situation, too. I pray you know that God is there with you, and if you invite Him into your anxiety and depression, He can help.
Blair: Every story has a beginning. Even God’s Word says “In the beginning” Genesis 1:1. So here’s how my beginning led me to where I am now. I was born into a “Christian” home. We went to church, we went to Youth Group, and we participated in missionary activities at the church. But there was not a Bible to be seen in our whole house. I’m the first of three children, the Type A, do everything right, be the perfect kid. That’s great, but try being that way with a mother who was emotionally, psychologically, verbally, and sometimes, very rarely, physically abusive.
I didn’t have a traditional mother-daughter relationship doing things together. I was a good student- no- I had to be a perfect student. When my brother was born, the last child, it was made very clear who the favorite child was. My sister and I were knocked out of place because we were girls. So, in the beginning, I was not the gender my mother wanted me to be. As the years went by, it was more of the same treatment with little in the way of any faith journey or building a relationship with Jesus. When I began having children, the stress of that sent me over the edge. The depression and anxiety were debilitating. I felt like I was in a valley and didn’t know how to climb out. My husband was a pastor and even then my faith was very shallow.
Things continued to spiral out of control and I ended up in the psychiatric ward of the hospital three times. Sadly, some of those times were because of suicide attempts. The whole of 2011 I basically spent in bed. I felt hopeless, useless, exhausted, unworthy, scared, anxious, and I could go on. I finally got a doctor who tweaked my medication so that I could go about “normal” life. Two weeks after my last stay in the hospital, my husband of 18 years passed away at the age of 44 on Christmas Eve. My boys were 17,15, 11, and 9.
This is where the story of my new life in Christ began. Just like there were medication changes, there were also church changes that led to soul changes. I could actually hear God. I wanted to learn everything about Him. The more I began leaning into Him, the more He leaned into me. I lost my dad two years before my husband and my mom three years after my husband. But I was as ok as ok could be given the circumstances life has, is, and will be. That’s life. I am so thankful for the valleys because then I was able to enjoy the mountain tops. God has a reason for me being here. Understand that my life still hasn’t been perfect. I’ve had many financial difficulties. I’ve had difficulties being a man to four boys not knowing what it means to be a dad. But I know 100% that all of these “tragedies” and “valleys” led me to “triumphs” and “mountain tops” because God has a plan that I can’t see. He is with me ALL the time. He puts people in my life that help me grow- friends, pastors, and family. He inspires me through music. The words hit me in just the right place and at just the right time. I’m thankful for the music of Matthew West, Chris Tomlin, Mercy Me, Toby Mac, Zach Williams and so many other talented musicians that bring God to me. I love music but I love my Savior even more. And so my story continues until God takes me home to live with Him in glory. My past doesn’t dictate my future and my past doesn’t change my relationship with Jesus Christ. I’m so very loved by a God who loves me unconditionally. Guess what? He loves you that much, too.
Jenna: I grew up in a Christian family. We went to church every Sunday and Wednesday and were a part of almost everything; Awana, Elevate teen group, and even school there. Two and a half years ago, I lost someone who I was close to because she felt the need to commit suicide. I was heartbroken and I felt like I lost everything. 2022 was a challenging year for me. I had daily panic attacks and felt like I was worthless. My eating habits went down significantly, and I was stressed all the time. As exams neared, I was super stressed and ended up passing out.
Months passed and I still felt worthless. I planned to commit suicide when I got a text from a friend, and it was like a text from God. She said she heard I was going to camp and hoped to see me there. I thought if I waited til after camp, and then committed suicide it would be okay. So I went to camp and it changed my life. I met so many new people and was able to share my hurt with my church and they told me that I was not alone. Camp was my blue couch moment as I sat there in service Thursday night, I realized that I needed God in my life more than ever. I had already been saved, but I realized I hadn’t been living like Christ wanted me to. I have had friends come and go in my life some that have stuck around for a while God will not let you down and he will always have someone in mind who will help you grow in faith and support you through it all. They can also help you overcome the hardships in your life.
I still deal with anxiety and eating habits, but they have gotten so much better since camp and I am so thankful for all that my church has done for me. Also, I have my three closest friends with me right by my side and the Lord has blessed me with an amazing boyfriend who I love and who has helped me through a lot.
GOD’S NOT DONE WITH YOU OR YOUR STORY! HE STILL CARES A LOT AND WILL NEVER LEAVE YOU. YOU HAVE A PURPOSE – TURN TO GOD TO FIND THAT PURPOSE AND YOU WILL BE FOUND.
Thank you to Jenna & Blair for sharing their stories with us. I know it can be hard to be vulnerable and share your story; however, when you share your story, you are showing someone else that God is there and that if He worked in your life, then He can work in their life too. You are showing them that if you could make it through the hard time, they can too. Thank you so much for sharing!
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God Is Not Punishing You!
Psalm 103:8-10 “The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever; he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities.”
This month’s theme for mentoring is “How Long, Lord?” The reason I feel the Lord gave me this theme is that I know a lot of people who have been waiting a very long time for their prayers to be answered. Some of them are in excruciating pain while they wait. I am really struggling to understand this. I am struggling to understand why they have to wait so long. I don’t think I am the only person who is struggling with the question and other questions like it. I asked ChatGPT what kids of questions people were asking when they are feeling like their prayers aren’t being answered and over this month in mentoring I will answer some of those questions. Today’s episode is about the first question I addressed. That questions is:
Is God punishing me? I might not know the answers to all the questions that come up throughout this series, but I am 100% sure of the answer to one. The answer is No! God does not punish us. God is only good. If you want proof that God does not punish us, you can look at Psalm 103:8-10, “The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever; he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities.” God does not create the bad things that are happening in our lives. You did not get cancer because you had an affair. You did not have a miscarriage because you don’t go to church. God is not punishing you. God did not do this bad thing to you.
God is all-powerful and all-knowing. If he wants you to learn a lesson, he can teach it to you in a million different ways. He doesn’t have to have you get sick before you turn to Him. Just because God can use this awful tragedy or the illness for your good doesn’t mean He gave it to you. God does not create illness. He is a healer. God is love and mercy. God blesses people, He does not curse them.
If you need another scripture verse, look at Romans 8:1, “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Condemnation (punishment) is not for those who belong to Christ. God does not punish His children—He saves and restores them. John 3:17 states, "For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. The central message is that Jesus's mission was not to judge and punish humanity, but to offer a way to be freed from sin and its consequences.
It is easier for many of us to believe that Jesus wouldn’t punish us, but harder for us to believe that God does not punish us. God is a good and loving Father. Regardless of what our own father was like, God is always good and always loving. It is hard for us to believe things if we have no frame of reference for them. I think part of the reason I can believe that God is a good Father who loves me and doesn’t want to punish me is because my own father was a good example of God’s love to me. I am not saying I never got into trouble as a kid. I did occasionally do things that weren’t ok. I did get in trouble. But my parents did not condemn me or make me feel shame for what I did. They gave me consequences so I would learn not to do it again, but they didn’t punish me.
I know that I am lucky and that so many kids don’t grow up with a loving, caring example of a Father. In the United States, 1 in 4 kids grows up without a dad in the home. That means 25% of kids in America are growing up without a dad. In the 2020 Census, there were 18.4 million kids who were living without their biological dad. It is easy to see how the view of God got so distorted. We are living in a world of broken people. We are all just doing the best we can, and yet the best for so many of us is not good enough. These are just the kids who grow up without a dad. We also have the kids who grow up with an abusive dad. If so many people have no reference for a father who loves you unconditionally and who would never hurt you, then how are they supposed to understand that God could actually love them like that?
If none of those other scripture verses convinced you that God is not punishing you, hopefully this one will. Isaiah 53:5 “But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.”Jesus took the full punishment, so we don’t have to. What we receive now is peace, not wrath. Do we deserve to be punished? Absolutely. Every single one of us has done something wrong, deserving of punishment. However, that is why God sent Jesus to us. Jesus came to save us from the punishment we deserved. "Jesus died the death we deserved, so we might live the life he earned.”
Why would God send his only Son to earth to die a gruesome death if he was just going to punish us for all we did anyway? If God is punishing you for your sins, why did Jesus die on a cross? When you are wondering if God is punishing you. When the enemy is whispering in your ear that you deserve this because of all the things you have done I want you to take a look at a crucifix and ask yourself this question, “If that is true, if God is punishing me for all I have done, they what did Jesus die for?”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those who are listening to this episode. Lord, please help us in the wait. Help us to believe you are not punishing us. Help us to believe you are with us while we wait. Help us to keep faith and hope that things will get better and that we won’t be in this forever. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. As you heard earlier in this episode, this month's theme is “How Long, Lord?” If you are suffering, if you have been waiting a very long time for your prayers to be answered, this might be the perfect month for you to join mentoring. If you have a loved one who has been waiting for a long time for answers to prayers, and you don’t understand why they need to wait so long. This might be the perfect month for you to join mentoring. It is Tuesday nights at 8 PM Eastern Time on Zoom. I hope to see you there. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day.
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Sing, my children. Sing as you have never sung before. You say, Oh, Lord, I don't have any voice. I can't sing. I tell you, you can, because the very air you breathe that fills your lungs is filled with power and grace from on high. And when you open your mouth, you will sing. The words that come forth from your mouth will bring harmony and joy and a song of restoration and healing to all those that you will sing my name to.”
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Give Someone Else A Chance
Acts 5:38-39a "So in the present case, I tell you, keep away from these men and let them alone; because if this plan or this undertaking is of human origin, it will fail; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them—in that case you may even be found fighting against God!”
I read this verse in the daily readings today, and it reminded me of the time I spent at retreats at the Schoenstatt Retreat Center in Vallendar, Germany. Here is a bit of background on Schoenstatt. Schoenstatt is an apostolic Movement of renewal, born in the bosom of the Church. Its spiritual center is the Schoenstatt Shrine, where Mary shows herself in a special way as the Mother and Educator who gives birth to Christ in us, conforming us according to her image.
The Schoenstatt Movement encompasses various communities that form the Schoenstatt "Family". As a renewal movement, it has a marked apostolic and lay character; its pedagogy and spirituality are particularly suitable for those who live in the world and must face an increasingly de-Christianized and materialistic environment. Its purpose is to form a new community based on a new person who overcomes the massification of our times and forges a new culture permeated by the spirit of Christ.
The reason today’s verse reminds me of Schoenstatt is that this principle was applied to the founder. His name is Fr. Joseph Kentenich. He was exiled from the church for a while, and from what I was told, it was similar to the thinking of this verse above. From what I understand, the church wanted to see if the Schoenstatt movement was of God or not. They figured if they removed Father Kentenich from the head of the movement, and it was not of God, then the movement would dissolve and go away. However, if it was from God, then even though the leader was gone, the movement would still continue to grow and flourish. This is what happened: the movement started spreading to other countries. In 1965, Pope Paul VI restored him to leadership, just as the Second Vatican Council was drawing to a close.
I am not sure why the Holy Spirit reminded me of this story today. I do know that this verse can apply to our individual lives as well as the Church as a whole. In our lives, we can look at the things we are doing and we can ask if they are from God or not. Is God in all that we do? We can use this verse as a good measure to see if the things we are doing are from God or not. Do you often over-commit yourself to helping out? Do you sign up for things you don’t really want to do because you think, or maybe you know, that if you don’t sign up, then no one will? If this is you, then this verse might be life-changing for you.
If you struggle with over-scheduling, I want you to reread the verse above. “If this plan or this undertaking is of human origin, it will fail; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them.” I know that you are worried that if you don’t sign up or if you don’t volunteer, then no one else will. If you don’t say yes, the project or the event will not happen. However, that is putting a lot of responsibility on your shoulders. It is not your job to ensure every event goes off without a hitch. If the plan or the undertaking is of God, then He will make sure to get the people needed to make sure it happens. If it is of God, then it will not fizzle out because of a lack of participation.
Also, maybe our always saying yes is hindering someone else from saying yes. I had a project once, and we needed to have a leader. We were all just sort of looking at one another, and no one really said anything, so I said I would be the leader. I had zero desire to be the leader for this project, as the leader had to submit all the paperwork. However, I assumed no one else wanted to do it as no one else was speaking up. I then found out that someone else wanted to do it, but felt funny saying they would do it. To them, it felt like nominating themself, and they felt that was wrong. So luckily they mentioned it in a roundabout kind of way, and I didn’t have to lead the group, and they got to lead the group. I am sure this is happening more than we think.
I think there are people who would volunteer more, but they don’t feel they have anything to offer. They need others to call out what they see in them. They need other people to reassure them they can do the job, especially if they are stay-at-home moms. Often, we, as stay-at-home moms, tend to forget that we did lots of stuff before we were moms. Since being a mom is our full-time job, we tend to see ourselves as “just moms.” When someone looks at us and personally invites us to volunteer in a position that they think we will be great at, that means a lot.
Who do you know that you could be inviting to join you in your tasks? What job do you know you have to give up, but are afraid no one else will take it on? Trust that God has a plan. Trust that He has the perfect person in mind. Then ask God to highlight someone for you that you could invite to take over your position. Or, you can just invite them to give it a try and see how they like it. Whether they take the position or not, I believe they will be honored that you believed they could do it. Just by noticing them and inviting them, you will have made them feel seen and more confident. We all need to be seen.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone listening. Lord, we want to trust that you will find the people to replace us, but why is it so hard? Why do we feel we have to do it all? Lord, we ask that you help us see that you don’t want us to do everything. Help us to see that you have the perfect person lined up when we step aside. Help us to train up a new generation. Help us to pass the love of you and serve you onto others. Help us to step aside and let others know the amazing feelings that come along with doing your work. Help us to trust that if it is of you, then we can’t break it. You will always provide. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I am the God of joy, love, and wonder. Go out there and spread it to one another.”
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God Made You On Purpose
Psalm 139:13 “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.”
God created everything about us. I like this verse, though, because it reminds us that He created even our inmost being. I like the visual of God knitting me together. One stitch at a time. I am not someone who knits, but I have family and friends that do. When you are knitting something you can make it look however you want to. If you are the person doing it, you get to pick the colors; you get to pick the pattern, and you even get to pick which stitch or combination of stitches you are going to use. You are the creator of whatever you are knitting.
Now, imagine that God is knitting you together. He chose all the specifics about you. He got to choose what color hair you have and what color eyes you have. Do you ever take time to think about this, to think about the fact that God created everything about you? I was at a personal development conference this week, so that may be why it is on my mind more than usual. I love attending these conferences because it is so great to be gathered in a room with like-minded people. I don’t mean that we all think the same way or even believe the same things, but in this instance, we were all there because we knew God had a bigger plan for our lives, and we wanted to figure out what that plan was.
It was an amazing weekend, and I learned so much. This happened to be a women’s conference, and there were so many women gathered together, all wanting to improve themselves in some way or another. This is a beautiful thing. One of the things that usually comes up when you have so many women gathered together is the idea of insecurities. Insecurities are something that I believe everyone has. We don’t all have them about the same things or to the same extent, but I do think we are all insecure about something. We all have that one thing, or some of us have more than one thing that we wish we could change about ourselves. That thing that we really don’t like about ourselves. Some of these things affect our lives in a big way, and some do not.
When you look at yourself and your life, what are your insecurities? What are the things about you that you don’t like that may be getting in your way of living your best life? Maybe you are struggling because you are living the life that everyone around you wants you to live, but inside, you feel like it's not right for you. For instance, you have a really good job, and you are making good money, but in your heart, you really want to be doing something else. Maybe you have insecurities based on your appearance. This is a big one with women. We feel too tall, too short, too thin, too fat. Or we feel our hair is too long, too short, too light, too dark. It seems like no one is happy in their own skin these days.
I wonder why this is. I wonder if people throughout the ages have always felt like this, or if this is new. I don’t think it is new that people don’t like something about themselves. I am sure that has always probably been a thing. However, I wonder if it was as widespread and commonplace as it is today. I am not sure if I know a single woman who is so happy with her appearance that she wouldn’t change anything if you asked. I wonder if all this unhappiness has to do with social media and marketing. Once upon a time, before TV, magazines, movies, etc., you didn’t have so much access to everything. You could compare yourself to those who lived around you, and maybe those in paintings or in books. However, you didn’t have the kind of access you have today.
Today, you could spend five minutes online and you could scroll through hundreds of images of whatever you want to look at. Also, if you have social media, you can just scroll down your feed, and you will see plenty of posts from people. The internet can be a very dangerous place for those who have insecurities and are looking for proof that those insecurities are real. If you think you are too heavy and then you search for proof of that online, you will find it. That is how the internet works. You ask a question and it searches all the data and gives you an answer to the question that you just asked it. Your brain is the same. If you have an insecurity and you ask your brain to find proof of it, your brain will. The awesome thing about your brain is that the opposite is also true. If you ask your brain to prove to you that your insecurity is not true, it will do that as well. For instance, if you ask your brain why no one at work likes you, it will search all your memories and come up with reasons why your co-workers don’t like you. However, if you ask your brain to prove to you that people at your work do like you, your brain will come up with an answer to that question as well. If you do not like the answers you are coming up with then you need only ask better questions.
The main speaker at the conference said something this weekend, and I think it would be great if everyone in the world heard it. She said that when she was sitting in the audience at her first personal development conference, she had a realization wash over her. She felt it was divine intervention. The realization was, “What if I was on purpose? What if God made me exactly like I am for a reason?” I think this is so important because I think so many of us feel like there is some part of us that is wrong. We feel like we would be better if that part of us didn’t exist. I always wished that I wasn’t so emotional. I have thought this more times than I can count. I cry at happy things, I cry at sad things, I cry at spiritual things, I cry for someone else’s happy times and someone else’s pain. I am just a mess sometimes. I always thought this was a character flaw. However, now I know that God gave me that ability. I don’t know why He made me that way, but God doesn’t make mistakes. So, there must be a reason.
The same goes for you. You were made on purpose. God knew what he was doing. He designed each part of you for a reason. He pays attention to detail. How would your life be different if you could hear this and really take it in? How would you feel about yourself if the next time you started to feel insecure about something, you reminded yourself that God made you this way on purpose? You are perfect, just as you are. You are loved just as you are. Your are enough just as you are.
Dear Heavenly Father I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord help us to see ourselves through your eyes. Help us to see everyone through your eyes. Lord help remind us when we feel insecure that you made us on purpose. Remind us Lord that you created our inmost being. You knit us together perfectly and completely. And if you made us on purpose Lord then that means we can't be a mistake. That means our hopes and desires aren't a mistake. That means our character isn't a mistake. We love you Lord Jesus and we thank you for making us who we are and we ask that you help us learn to love who we are. We thank you for making us in your likeness and image. You are amazing and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus holy name amen.
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Because Somebody Prayed
1 John 5:14–15 “And this is the boldness we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have obtained the requests made of him.”
I love this verse because God is reminding us that we can trust Him. He reminds us that if we ask anything according to his will, He hears us, and if we know that he hears us, then we know we have obtained the request made of him. I don’t know about you, but I can get caught up in the part that says, according to his will. I have asked the Lord for many things, and I don’t think that he has given them to me. I get frustrated when I am praying for someone, and I remember that God said if we ask in Jesus’ name, then anything we ask for will be given to us.
I know that God’s ways are higher than our ways and his thoughts greater than our thoughts, and yet it is still frustrating when we can’t understand what is going on. It is frustrating when we think we know exactly what we need or what we want and we ask the Lord, we beg the Lord and it just seems like He is not listening. If you have struggled with this, let me share with you what has helped me understand it a little better.
Have your kids, your nieces/nephews, or your friends' kids ever asked for something that seemed really important to them? They asked for something that they really want, and to them, it is something that they have to have. They have given it thought, and they know it is the best thing for them. Yet, you know it is not good for them at all. You only know this because you have been where they are and things didn’t end well. You have seen where this thing will take them, and it isn’t anywhere good.
For instance, your child, or a child you are close to, wants to drop out of school. They have given it thought, and they will get a job at the local grocery store or fast food restaurant. They are tired of all the work they need to do at school and don’t want to do it anymore. However, you can see that it is not the best choice for them. You can see how that one choice will limit so many other choices about their future. They are begging you to let them drop out, and yet you know it is not really best for them.
This is what I think of when I think of God answering our prayers. Good thing He doesn’t give us everything we ask for because sometimes, just like our kids, we ask for some things that are not good for us. We ask for things that we think we want, but God knows we don’t really want them. For instance, we might think we want a new job, but then we find out the new job has a lot of travel, or the boss isn’t a nice person. God shields us from so many things that we aren’t even aware of because he is shielding us from them. He does this because He is a good Father.
I heard a song on the way to adoration his morning, and you know how much I love songs. I wanted to share the lyrics of this one with you today because it talks about how important prayer is. The song is titled “Somebody Prayed,” and it is sung by Crowder. The song begins:
Every night there by your bed
You fold your hands and bow your head
Throwing out another prayer in faith
When you're wondering if He's hearing you
Look at me, I'm living proof
I'm only right where I am today
Because somebody prayed
These lyrics remind us that when we pray and do not see results, we can look at those around us and be confident that if God answers their prayers, He will answer ours, too. I think it is vital to remember that the answers to our prayers may not look like we want them to and may not come in the timing we want them to. I like how Crowder can realize that the reason he is where he is today is because his mom prayed for him a lot.
So I hit my knees 'cause I've
Seen all Heaven move (don't matter if you hit rock bottom
My God pick you up when you call Him.)
I pray, "Father, please" 'cause I've
Seen what He can do (don't matter if the storm cloud coming
My God come through when you call Him)
I love this verse too because it says that it doesn’t matter if you hit rock bottom because God will pick you up when you call Him. This reminds us that we are never too far down for God to pick us back up again. It also says it doesn’t matter if the storm cloud is coming because God will come through when we call Him. Crowder says he has seen all heaven move, and he has seen what our heavenly Father can do.
You might be in a storm right now, or you might be at your lowest point yet. Either way, you can rest assured that when you call on the Lord, He is going to answer that call. He is going to lift you up out of that pit or get you safely through that storm. That is just who He is. If you wonder if this is true, look around you at all the people you know who are struggling, or the ones who were struggling and have made it through to the other side. They were not alone. God helped them, and if he helped them, he can help you too!
These hands have no power
There ain't an hour He don't come through
That's why when mountains move, I say
"Looks like somebody prayed”
This verse is reminding us that we can do nothing without God. He is our source of power. He is our Savior. This is why, when something amazing happens in our lives, we should automatically know that someone was praying for us. Our default should be to thank God and to thank whoever was praying for us. Sometimes we think that because we didn't pray, then it wasn’t God who helped us. However, there are so many people praying all the time. There were many saints who would send up prayers for anyone who needed them. Or they would pray for those who had no one else to pray for them. You might have a whole army of people praying for you, and yet you might not even know it.
For instance, when someone asks me for prayer I usually ask my parents to also pray for them because I know my parents are mighty prayer warriors. I also ask my prayer group to pray, my Encounter Ministry fellow students, and the prayer line at my church. Then sometimes I would also add their request to these three online prayer requests websites, one of which is the Lourdes website. Do you see how someone could have a whole army of people praying for them and not even know it?
For the child of God that's far from home
The one who thinks they're too far gone
I'm throwing out another prayer in faith (prayer in faith)
Worn-out altars, tear-stained pews
Still I won't give up on you
I believe that anything can change
When somebody prays
I love this verse because he is talking to anyone who feels like they are far from home. Anyone who feels like they are too far gone. Then he tells them that he is praying for them. We all need to be praying for those who are far from home and think they are too far gone. There is no too far gone with the Lord. He is always willing to take us back. He is always waiting for us to realize that and to come home. I love it when he says he won’t give up on us because he believes that anything can change when somebody prays.
This is an important thing for us all to believe. It is so true. Anything can change when somebody prays. The enemy often tries to make us believe that our situation is too bad and that there is no solution. He tries to convince us that we don’t need to pray because there isn’t anything God can do for anyone. There isn’t anything anyone can do. This is ridiculous! God can do anything! We might not see a way out, we might not think things can get better, but God can always make a way, even when we can’t see how. It is always worth it to say a prayer. It can make all the difference in the world. Sometimes God is just waiting for you to ask. He is waiting for you to invite Him into it all. Why wouldn’t we want God to be in all of it?
I've seen miracles come from feeble words
I've seen hospital rooms turned into cathedrals
I've seen freedom come to the prisoner
You can't tell me that prayer don't work
The first line says, “I’ve seen miracles come from feeble words.” Do you know why I love this? I love it because it reminds us that we don’t have to know what to say. We don’t have to pray these long, eloquent prayers. We don’t have to ask for the exact thing or say the exact right words in order for our prayers to be answered. It’s not like in all those movies about making a wish on a genie in a bottle. If you don’t get the wording perfectly, then something bad happens. God is not like that. We don’t have to know the perfect thing to say. We just have to call upon his name and ask him for what we want.
It goes on to say, “I’ve seen hospital rooms turned into cathedrals.” I think what he means by this is that hospital rooms can be a powerful place for prayer. Sitting by a loved one's bedside can prompt people to pray more. It can also help us to be bold and ask for more from the Lord. Desperation to save our loved ones can be a powerful motivator. He also says, I’ve seen freedom come to the prisoner. This is another great result of prayer. You might know someone who is stuck in their past. They may be an actual prisoner in jail, or they may be a prisoner to guilt, shame, and unforgiveness. Either way, prayers can free them from their prison. I have seen it happen many times!!
The song ends with:
So every night there by your bed
When you fold your hands and bow your head
Not a single word you've ever said in vain
'Cause He hears everything
I like this verse too because it reminds us that not a single word you’ve ever said is in vain. When we pray to God, He hears us. We can be confident in this, just as the scripture verse for today reminds us. God hears it all, whether you are in church praying or you are crying out to him in your car. Wherever you are, no matter how far gone you think you are, He always hears every word of it, and none of it was said in vain. He hears you and He will answer your prayers according to his will and according to His timing.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening today. Lord, we love you, and we want to bring all of our requests to you now. Lord, we ask that you give us some understanding of your ways and why our prayers appear not to have been answered for so long. Help us be patient, Lord. Help us to keep coming back and asking the Lord. Help us to see where in our lives you have answered prayers. We love you Lord and we are so grateful for all you do for us. We are sorry if we take you for granted. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I. Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Be the one that spreads my love and my joy. Be the one who brings comfort and is a source of peace for all. If you but listen carefully to my voice that calls you each and every day.”
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Today’s witnesses come to you from the Global Awakening Website. If you are not aware of Randy Clark or Global Awakening, let me read you the description from their website. For all believers everywhere, we present an opportunity to receive power from God. We offer ourselves as evidence that God uses the unqualified when we’re willing to take a risk. We strengthen each other through community & theology, and we call out to all those who feel ill-equipped, isolated, and hungry, saying: you belong. To the sick, we offer a community of faith that will believe in your healing. To the skeptic, we offer our stories and our lives as fruit of Jesus’ work. Come receive from God what you need, come learn how to take risks in your faith, and come join us as we each fulfill God’s dream for us. We are a global community of believers empowered to awaken the world. On their website, they have various types of testimonials. Today, I chose to bring to you the physical healing testimonies. They also have Impartation, Emotional Healing, Activation, and Prophecy. I will share the others with you another day. Today, you will get to hear about physical healing. I pray that when you hear these testimonies, it builds your faith to know that you can be healed, too!
First we have – Gineff | Woodbridge, VA – “I took a step of faith and came to the conference being released from the Hospital on the previous Friday. I was radically healed at VOA. My tribe(VOA attendees) were encouraging me and praying over me. I received multiple healings. The first was the ability to walk(Bookstore Bob was there), inner healing with the Agape Freedom Fighter team, and the word of knowledge from Dr. Clark about lower left abdominal pain(this specifically was for me, as I had left the hospital with a drain tube in my lower left abdomen). I will tell you that I was in shock when He said my condition. My niece and those around me were like That’s you. When Dr. Clark called up those to share their testimonies, I ran up to the stage. While I was on stage, something amazing happened. I felt like I was being straightened and felt this rod on the right side of my body, it was amazing!!! I left there healed and I write this looking forward to my appointment tomorrow when I get to see the doctor's face!!”
Next is – Michael | Richmond, VA “I stood after Randy had a word of knowledge that God was healing hearts. I had been treated for afib for over 14 years and on medication. I believe God has healed my heart. I am 72 years old and am no longer on any heart medication. My heart rate is normal, I go to the gym regularly and have no problems doing yard work or any other activity. God is Good!
Next is – Beverly | Birmingham, AL “I was healed of a voice infirmity known as spasmodic dysphonia (SD), identified by a Word of Knowledge as a sharp twisting of the muscles around the larynx. I knew the Word was for me because the disorder is very rare. I actually experienced a creative miracle. The nerve from the brain to my larynx was regenerated. It grew back!!!! SD is a neurological condition in which the nerves affecting the muscles around the larynx deteriorate and stop working. Loss of the nerve stops the muscle flexibility of the laryngeal muscles, thereby preventing ordinary identifiable speech/language sounds. The voice quivers and has spasms. I had reached a point in my life where I was ashamed to even talk. People could not understand my speech. I happen to be a preacher and trainer… so, needless to say, I became so discouraged that I stopped preaching and became afraid to teach. SO PRAISE BE TO GOD for the healing. I had been experiencing progressive deterioration for 14 years!”
Last, but not least, we have – Darenda | Harrisburg, PA “I sat next to a blind man on the plane on the way over who was also going to the conference. He was called out by Bob Hazlett and prophesied over in his main session. Then on the way back, I was again seated next to the same man, still blind. Have you ever been seated next to the same person twice on two different airplane trips? Well, I never have. So I prayed for him to receive his sight, and progressively over the two hours, he did. He has been completely blind for 4 years (diabetic retinopathy) in his right eye and has some light shadows in his left. Before deboarding, he could see his hands, some things in front of him, my eyes, and my hair. He mostly wants to see his 4-year-old grandson’s face, whom he’s never been able to see. In a follow-up text this week, he said his grandson’s face is getting clearer and clearer. Praise God for this wonderful, creative miracle, so amazing to witness.”
Weren’t those testimonies amazing! Thank you to all who have been brave enough to share your testimony. It is because of people like you that other people’s faith is built up. It is not always easy to be vulnerable and share your testimony. It is not always easy to put into words what the Lord has done for you. Yet, when you can, it helps so many people trust God all the more.
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John 17:11-12 “And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one. While I was with them, I protected them in your name that you have given me. I guarded them, and not one of them was lost except the one destined to be lost, so that the scripture might be fulfilled.”
I love this passage because it is Jesus talking to God. It is Jesus talking to His Father and our heavenly Father. I love how Jesus is asking God to protect us. He is also letting His dad know that things went well while He was here on earth. At the beginning of this chapter in the Gospel of John, Jesus told his Dad how we heard what He was telling us, and we believed Him. He is telling God about how we believe where He came from and the messages He gave us.
Jesus also lets His Dad know that He did a good job protecting His disciples and that He didn’t lose a single one, except for Judas, who was destined to be lost, so that scripture may be fulfilled. I love that Jesus is talking to His dad just like we might talk to our dad. He is letting Him know He did what He was supposed to and did a good job with all He was supposed to do.
Jesus was going to be with God up in heaven, but we needed to stay here on earth. The disciples couldn’t join Jesus in heaven; they had a mission here on earth, and so do we. Their mission was to take the Gospel to the ends of the earth, to make sure that the whole world knew about Jesus and his love and forgiveness. Our mission is the same, and yet we don’t have to travel to the ends of the earth. We can start here in our own families with our siblings, spouses, and children. We can start with our friends, neighbors, and those around us.
You would think that in the day and age we live in, everyone would already know about Jesus. With the access to technology that people have in this country, we might think that everyone has already heard all we have to say about Jesus. However, this is not the case. Many people have been hurt or offended by the church, and so they no longer go. Many times, instead of just quitting the Church, they walk away from Jesus and God, too. This often means they don’t pass down anything they know about God to their children. My friend was raised by two parents who both went to Catholic School. They didn’t like it, so they decided not to teach their children anything about God.
This is more common than you think. In this day and age, we can not assume that anyone knows about God or Jesus. Even if they know something about them, we can’t be sure that what they know is true. My kids tell me all the time they are not Catholic because they don’t believe this or that. However, what they say they don’t believe isn’t something I believe either. There is a lot of confusion as to what the Catholic Church actually teaches. I think a lot of people who have a problem with the Catholic Church aren’t actually upset with something we do; they are upset with something they think we do. For instance, many are upset that Catholics worship Mary. However, we don’t worship Mary; we only worship the one true God.
What we really need to share with everyone we know and everyone we meet is that God loves them. Jesus loves them too! God is love. He loves each one of us so much, and I don’t think people realize this. I don’t think people believe this. There is such a lack of love in this world, and if people knew how unconditionally God loved them, I truly think this world would start changing. I think people feel a void in their lives and try to fill it with all the wrong things. The only thing that can fill that hole is God.
We cannot show people how much God loves them just with our words, though. We will have to be an example of that love to them. We will have to love like Jesus loved, and then they will feel that love. They will see that love and know it is possible to be loved in our messiness. It is possible for someone to love us even when we feel unlovable. This is not the kind of love that we are used to finding in the world. The world is full of broken people, so we love in broken ways because that is all we know. However, if we pray for God to give us the ability to love others with His love, we can begin to change the world one person at a time.
Back to today’s verse. Jesus is asking God to protect us. If we look at all the apostles had to go through to spread the word of God, we could see why Jesus would be praying for their protection. Most of the apostles of that time were killed in some way for their beliefs and for passing on the Word of God. They needed God’s protection. However, we still need God’s protection today as well.
We are fortunate in our country that it is not illegal to talk about God, at least not yet. However, it is illegal in many parts of the world. According to Asia News, a Vatican-affiliated news agency that reports on Christian communities, more than 800 people, including women, children, and priests, were slaughtered in their homes solely because they were Christian. On February 13, 2025, militants rounded up 70 Christians in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), took them to a church, and then killed all 70 of them. People are still being persecuted, and we need God to protect us.
We don’t know why these things happen. Why would God allow these things to happen? His ways are not our ways, and His thoughts are not ours. We do know that God is in control and that Jesus asked God to protect us, so He is doing that. We can be sure of it because God always keeps his promises. Those who have died are in a much better place right now. It is tough for us who are left here on earth. It is hard for any loved ones they may have left behind, but it is not hard for those who have died. Their dream has come true. They get to be with their heavenly Father and all those who have come before them. God did protect them by bringing them home to Him.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening. Lord, we want you to protect us. We want to help others know your love. We want to be a witness to that love. We want to be an example of that love. Please help us. Help us to see others through your eyes, help us to be your love to them. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you all here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day.
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “In the silence of your heart, my children, I speak to you. Listen carefully to my voice. It is meant to guide you, to instruct you, to lead you to where I want you to be. Only if you listen will you profit fully of what I tell you."
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Fearless Confidence
Acts 4:29-31 “And now they’re at it again! Take care of their threats and give your servants fearless confidence in preaching your Message, as you stretch out your hand to us in healings and miracles and wonders done in the name of your holy servant Jesus.” While they were praying, the place where they were meeting trembled and shook. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak God’s Word with fearless confidence.”
I love how this verse ends, “They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak God’s Word with fearless confidence. How great would it be to speak God’s work with fearless confidence? How great would it be to just say what you wanted to say without feeling like you had to censor it for the world? How many times have you thought something and then not said it because you weren’t sure what others would think? How many times have you not mentioned God because you didn’t want to be different or because you didn’t want to be ridiculed? I love how the disciples weren’t afraid. The stakes were high for them, and yet they couldn’t be silenced. For them, it wasn’t a case of worrying if someone would be angry. They were threatened and told they could not speak about Jesus to anyone. They were thrown in jail, and they were beaten. One of Jesus’ disciples, Stephen, was stoned to death for his preaching.
I was drawn to this passage for two main reasons. The first is because I love that they prayed for fearless confidence. I pray for a holy boldness a lot, and now I can pray for this too! The second reason is because of something Father Mike pointed out that I didn’t really notice. Does that ever happen to you? Something is right there in front of you, and yet you don’t realize it until someone points it out? Father Mike was talking about how remarkable it was that these disciples asked God for fearless confidence instead of asking God to take away the danger. As I mentioned earlier, at this time in the early church, it was really difficult to preach about God. There were rules and laws against it. People were told that if they talked about Christ Jesus, they would go to jail. They were beaten, they were put in jail, they were stoned to death. They did not have the religious freedoms many of us have today.
They could have prayed for the threat to their safety to be removed. They could have asked God to protect them from all dangers. They could have asked him to change the situation they were in. They could have asked God for anything, and instead, they asked God for fearless confidence in preaching His message. Wouldn’t it be awesome if we could all make this our prayer? Wouldn’t it be great if instead of praying that God changes our circumstances, we ask God to change us? We can ask God to give us more strength, more courage, more love, more patience, more whatever it is we need to make it through our current circumstance, instead of asking God to change that circumstance. Tony was talking to his friend once when I was pregnant with one of our boys. We didn’t find out the gender of our baby until they were born. We wanted to be surprised. Tony was telling his friend that he didn’t care if it was a boy or girl, he just prayed our baby was healthy. Tony said he will never forget what his friend replied, “I used to pray for a healthy baby, now I pray for the strength to take care of whatever baby God gives me.”
Tony was moved by this statement. He thought it was great that his friend was bold enough to pray a prayer like that. When we are able to pray something like Tony’s friend prayed, or like the apostles prayed, we are truly trusting in the will of God. We are trusting in the sovereign power of God. We are asking God to equip us for whatever circumstances He has laid out before us. A lot of times, we want to take the easy way out. Sometimes everything in life is so overwhelming that we can’t help but ask God to take it away, and that is ok. It’s not bad to ask God to remove your heavy burdens. Turning your worries and cares over to God should be the first thing we all do. I think asking God to take away your struggles is a good thing. I think praying for God to change you, instead of asking Him to change your circumstances, is a deeper level in your relationship with the Lord. I long for that close of a relationship with my heavenly dad. I long for the type of relationship where I have complete trust in God and His plans. I long for a relationship with Him where my will and His will line up perfectly. How awesome would that be?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, you are amazing. Please help us desire for you to transform us instead of us asking you to take away our circumstances. Help us to be open to your will, Lord. Please give us the words to say when we pray. We love you, Lord, you are the almighty one and the Lord of all. We are so grateful, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. It is so great to know I am not on this journey by myself! Thank you also to all of you who have purchased my book, Total Trust in God’s Safe Embrace! I truly appreciate it. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “When you are overwhelmed by my love, when you feel it flowing through you, asking you to do something, then you will know that you have heard my voice, because my voice is always rooted in love.”
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Live Unoffended By God
Matthew 11:6 “And blessed is he who takes no offense at me.”
This is a tiny sentence in a great big bible. You may have heard it many times before and not even noticed it because it is so small. Also, you may have heard and it not understood what it meant. This had definitely happened to me before. I have read something and for one reason or another I did not understand what it meant. Sometimes I will look at the footnotes and will get a better understanding of what the statement meant. To be honest, I am not sure if I heard this verse before or not. I know that I definitely did not understand what it meant or take any notice of it.
That is, until I read about it in that book I keep talking about The Circle Maker by Mark Batterson. You really must read that book, it is so good! Anyway, as soon as I heard about what this verse meant, I knew I wanted to share it with people because I had never thought of it before and I know it is something that we can all do. In the book Mark talks about this couple he knows that are prayer warriors or prayer giants. You know the kind of people I am talking about, right? The people who seem to have a direct line to God. All of their prayers seem to get answered. My mom and dad are prayer warriors. They have had so many answered prayers and witnessed numerous miracles. If you know my parents, they are the first people you call when you are in need of prayers.
Mark talked about how the couple’s prayers for others were often answered, however, prayers for their own lives went unanswered. He said they took a leap of faith and went into the world of filmmaking and they lost their life savings because the financial backing promised to them never came through. They lost their home in a fire. The lost three out of four parents in four years. And a rare genetic condition has taken a toll physically, emotionally and financially. It seemed like God was answering everyone else’s prayers, except their own. Have you ever felt this way? Have you ever felt like God was answering the prayers of everyone around you, but yours were going unheard for some reason? This couple said there had been moments when they have been tempted to throw in the towel, but the promise above has kept them going. “And Blessed is he who takes no offense to me.
Here is the context of that promises as Mark Batterson explains it in his book The Circle Maker:
Jesus is doing miracles right and left. He is healing diseases driving out demons and restoring sight to the blind, but John the Baptist misses the miracle train. It seems like Jesus is rescuing everybody except His most faithful follower, who is in prison. And John is his cousin, nonetheless. It seems like Jesus could have, and maybe should have, organized a rescue operation and busted him out before he was beheaded. Instead He sent a message via John's disciples. He tells them to tell John about all the miracles He is doing, and then He asks them to relay this promise: "Blessed is the one who is not offended by me.”
I had never thought of this before. I had never thought about how John the Baptist might have felt seeing his cousin performing miracles all around him and yet he was stuck in jail. I wonder if he did feel offended? My first instinct is to say that he didn’t because he seemed like he was so close to God and I think we tend to put anyone who we think is that close to God on a pedestal. We think that because they were devoted to God that they have it all together and that that following God and His ways comes easy to them. When I start to think like this, I need to remind myself that they are human and we all struggle with our thoughts and actions. I don’t know if John the Baptist felt offended by Christ or not. I do know that this is a completely normal human response.
If you are feeling offended because God is answering the prayers of all those around you and not yours please know that this is completely normal and understandable. We can be happy for others and sad for ourselves at the same time. I know I may keep mentioning that you can feel two things at the same time, but that is because I keep talking to so many people that are feeling guilty for being upset about something because they should be feeling grateful. Or, they feel guilty because they should be feeling happy that their friend just got pregnant, but they feel sad that they have not gotten pregnant yet. You don’t have to feel guilty about your feelings. It is ok to have two competing emotions at the same time. It is not just ok, it is completely normal.
I wanted to share this verse because I know some people that have been feeling offended by God lately. They are wondering why everyone else seems to be more favored or more deserving. If this is you, I hope you take comfort in this passage. “Blessed is the one who is not offended by me.”
God does not favor others more than you. God is a mystery. We don’t know why He does what He does. We know He has a plan for our lives and we also know He is not super forthcoming with what that plan is. He is more of a “reveal one step at a time” God. One thing we know for sure is that He keeps His promises. So, if God is not answering your prayers it doesn’t mean that He doesn’t care for you as much as others. You know Jesus had to have cared for His cousin. You know God had to have been proud of His faithful servant John who lived in the woods and baptized people and preached repentance. And yet, John the Baptist was beheaded.
God loves you! He loves each one of His children equally and more than we could ever imagine. If your prayers aren’t being answered, I know it is hard. I know it is hard to see others receive their miracles while you are still waiting. I know it may feel like you are never going to receive your answers. Please don’t give up asking. Please don’t give up expecting them to be answered. Try to rely on this promise that you are Blessed. My hope is this shift in perspective will help you not throw the towel in. Instead of thinking God must not like you or favor you because your prayers aren’t being answered, you can know that you are blessed. You can know that you are in good company.
Dear Heavenly Father I ask that you bless everyone listening to this episode today. Lord we ask that you help us be an offended by you. We thank you for all the miracles you're doing in the world today and all the prayers that you have answered. Lord we don't know why our prayers may be going unanswered and that is really difficult for us. Lord we ask that you help us with this. If our prayers haven't been answered yet we pray that you give us the perseverance to keep asking and to not give up. We ask that you give us wisdom and clarity if you want us to stop asking for something. As with Paul when he asked for you to heal the thorn in his side and you told him your grace was sufficient for him. If we are asking for something that we don't need or you don't want us to have please take that desire from us. Lord we are so thankful for all you were doing in the world today. Please help us to be happy for others when you answer their prayers. Please help us to not be offended by this and to know in the depths of our hearts that you love us and you have a wonderful plan for our life. Lord we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
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With God All Things Are Possible! (Replay)
Revelations 7:17 “For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”
Jesus is our guide. He came down to earth to show us how we should be acting. He came down to teach us that the Lord our God is love. He is trying to guide us to the springs of the water of life, but we keep wanting to do our own thing. We don’t want to follow in his footsteps. Why don’t we? Because it is hard. Jesus said to love everyone, even our enemies. Is this even possible? Jesus wants us to forgive, but aren’t there some people who just can’t be forgiven? Shouldn’t be forgiven? I wonder if we all realize what forgiveness is? Forgiveness is not telling the other person what they did was right, or ok. Forgiveness is telling yourself that this terrible thing did happen, that you can’t change it, so you are releasing any hold that it has over you. I know forgiveness is hard.
In some cases, it is impossible. However, it is so necessary. God tells us right in the Our Father Prayer, Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. God will forgive us to the same extent that we forgive others. Think about the things or the people that you are unable to forgive. Do you really want the inability to forgive them to get in the way of God forgiving you? There are some things that no matter how hard we try, we cannot forgive. This is okay; we don’t have to do it on our own. God can step in and help us forgive. The only thing we must do is to ask him. To give Him permission to work in your heart to forgive. We had a word or prophecy given at our prayer group last October that I feel is so important to share.
“I ask you to forgive my children. I know that is a difficult command, and at times may seem very impossible for you to do. But I remind you that I am with you always, and with me, nothing is impossible. Bring your inability to me. Allow me to work with my grace through you, so that you can be my forgiving heart for all the world.”
In this word, the Lord is asking us to forgive. He reminds us that even though we feel it is impossible, nothing is impossible in HIm. In Matthew 19:26, Jesus said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” It also says in Philippians 4:13, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” We are not in this alone. We have God on our side, and with that, we can do anything. I love how God always shows up to remind us of things when we forget. I like how God is reminding us that He is always with us and then asking us to bring our inability to him. He is asking us to allow Him to work with His grace through us, so that we can bring His forgiving heart to the whole world. How beautiful is that? How great is it that God not only wants to use his grace to heal our hearts, but he wants us to be His forgiving heart for all the world.
God gave us free will. Can you imagine how frustrating it must be for Him to sit by and watch us squander all he has provided us? He would love nothing more than to rain down graces on us, and yet we can’t be bothered to let him. God is not going to step in if we do not ask Him. He does not want to force us to love Him. The only way to ensure it is true love is to give us the choice to love him or not. Every day we have a choice to make. Are we going to choose God, or are we going to choose something else? God has so much grace and so much mercy to give. He does not leave us alone to make these decisions. He is there for us every step of the way.
But we do need to make that choice. Once we do make that choice, He will be there to help us overcome all of the obstacles. And there will be obstacles. The life that God is asking us to live is not an easy life. Especially in this world right now. Forgiveness and love are two things that we are being called to do that are not the norm in society today. We live in a culture that does not want to forgive. We want to stay angry, blame others, and not even talk to someone who doesn’t think as we think. This is not what Jesus wants for us.
Jesus did not come to earth to be with people just like Him. He did not just hang around with those who believed as he believed. He didn’t find all the people who were getting it right in life. He came for those who were struggling. He came for those who needed Him. When he met these people, he did not meet them with judgment and unforgiveness. He met them with love and forgiveness. He accepted them as they were, encouraged them, and helped them to become better.
How great would it be if we could do the same? If we could greet everyone we meet with the same love and acceptance that Jesus had. You may be thinking that you are different. Jesus could do that because he was man and God, so he had the Holy Spirit inside him to help him make the right choice. Guess what? So do you. You have the Holy Spirit inside of you, and if you let Him, He will guide you to make the right choices as well. Just remember what Jesus said in Matthew 19:26, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
You can do this! It is possible! Just take a moment and ask God for help.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you come into our hearts and soften them. I invite you in, and I turn over my inabilities to you. I want to forgive, and I want to let go of all unforgiveness. I want to forgive completely so that you are able to forgive me completely. Lord Jesus, some people and some things are so difficult to forgive. We live in a broken world, and some pretty awful things happen here. We are so very grateful that you are here to help us. We are grateful that we don’t have to do this on our own. Lord, we ask that you help us. Even though it seems impossible, we believe you when you say that all things are possible with you. Lord, you are truly amazing, and we love you so very much. Father, we ask all these things in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I am attending the Northeast regional retreat for the Military Council of Catholic Women this weekend. I decided to replay one of my first episodes of this podcast today. Many of you listening now were not listening back then. I encourage you to review old episodes and see if any titles speak to you. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Be not afraid, my children. I fortify you. I encourage you. I know you can do it, so just act upon whatever I tell you, and you will have an inner joy that no one can take from you.”
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Today’s witnesses are from Matthew West’s website, called popwe.org. If you don’t know who Matthew West is, he is a singer, songwriter, and storyteller. This website is for the non-profit that he has with his father, a pastor. Matthew and his father encourage people to share their stories. They have various categories of stories. Today, I chose two testimonies from the Marriage/Family Category. Satan is attacking our families, and I think it can help us to see that God is looking out for us. Satan wants to destroy families, but God wants to preserve them. Often, we can hear our own story in someone else’s story. When we listen to others tell their story, it helps us see that we are not alone. When we hear how God worked in their situation, it gives us hope that He will work in ours, too! I pray that when you hear these testimonies, you get the faith and hope to believe that miracles can happen in your situation, too. I pray you know that God wants to be there with you, and if you invite Him into your family issues, He can help.
My name is Becky, and I want those struggling to know there is hope where there is faith, even if it’s a small flicker of faith. I always believed in God, but didn’t go to church. When my son was in his teens, he was in an accident and injured his back. Fast forward to his late 20s, he was given pain medication and eventually progressed to stronger pain medications, leading him to addiction. His addiction became my addiction in the fact that I kept trying to help, but was only enabling him. He went through several treatment programs only to relapse, but I was always there for him, good or bad, and there was a lot of bad. He was my son, and I loved him unconditionally, just as God loves us unconditionally.
I remember picking him up one time, and I was afraid to be in the car with him, so when we stopped for gas and he was done pumping, I drove off and left him there. I will never forget the look on his face when I looked in the rearview mirror and drove away. What kind of mother does this? I drove straight to the church by our house and just went to sit inside and talk with God. A pastor came up to me, and I broke down. He sat with me and prayed. I was a complete wreck. On the way home, I heard Matthew West’s “Truth Be Told,” and I couldn’t stop crying. This was me, saying I was fine and I wasn’t. Things were definitely out of control. I believe God spoke to me through this song. I played the song for my husband, then I spilled my faults and all the things I had done to try to get our son sober to my husband. Later, even though God heard me with my husband, I confessed the same to God privately, and then some.
I was broken and ashamed. I read scriptures, started going to church, and created a Christian playlist. My son got to a point where he did get sober, went to church, and Bible study with his daughter. He was baptized as a baby, but chose to be baptized as an adult, making a conscious effort to follow God’s plan in April 2021. On June 7, 2021, I left for work, hugged him, told him I loved him, and was glad he was my son, not realizing this would be the last time. He relapsed that day with an accidental overdose that turned out to be 100% fentanyl. We had to make the decision to remove him from life support on June 12, 2021. In the beginning, I questioned why God would allow this, but I know in my heart God knew that if my son had survived, he would have been back suffering again, and that was not His plan. My son always said if anything ever happened, not to blame myself, that everything I had done, both good and bad, had kept him alive longer than he had anticipated. I was planning his 40th birthday, but he never made it. I gained some comfort that he was able to donate his kidneys- one to a 70-year-old grandmother and one to an 18-year-old named Luke, who wrote the most beautiful letter explaining his gratitude and sympathy for our loss. My depression spiraled the remainder of 2021, and the only thing that kept me going was the songs from Matthew West and my fumbled prayers with God. I am not perfect, I make mistakes, I fall down, but I get back up. I tell God I am not perfect, I neglect to pray some days, but I try to be sincere and get back on track. I recognize when God puts people in my life to share my story and experience. To this day, the words of “Truth Be Told” remind me of where I started and how far I have come on my journey. I am forever grateful.
I just listened to your song “Untold” and was greatly moved by emotion. As a young girl, I was raped at 18 by the boy I was dating (whom I met at church). I was so naive, I didn’t even know what was happening to me at the time. It took me four months and a few trips to the library to figure out I was pregnant. My greatest fear was having to tell my parents. When I did, my father refused to speak to me for weeks. I never told anyone the circumstances of the pregnancy, and my father never let me forget how I shamed the family.
Since my mother made it clear that I could not stay at the house if I chose to keep the baby, I thought I would give it up for adoption, but by that far in the pregnancy, I began to feel the baby move. I had always wanted to be a mother, just not so soon. So, I decided to marry the person who did this to me so I could keep my baby and save embarrassment. Abortion was not an option. I had always supported the pro-life movement and never wavered from my stance, even in my current condition.
After five years and a second child, we split. Shortly after, I remarried and had two more children, but marriage to an abusive alcoholic proved impossible. At 29, I was single with four children, but I was committed to raising the best children possible. That one decision to keep my baby laid the path for a life of struggle, but with blessings along the way. I have never regretted that decision. I gave birth to a strong-willed, independent baby girl who became a teacher, principal, and leader who has affected the lives of so many people, particularly children. She says she wouldn’t change our life of financial struggles and other challenges, as it has made her the person she is today. She has greater compassion for other children experiencing similar challenges in their lives. I often think of what life would be like for the many if she hadn’t been born. She is a strong Christian continuing to affect lives all around her.
This decision was so much better to live with than if I had terminated the pregnancy. Life IS sacred, from the moment of conception. Creating and bearing a child is one of the greatest gifts God has given women. And for a female friend of mine who couldn’t carry a child, I did it for her.
Thank you both so much for sharing your stories. Thank you also to Matthew West and his Father for creating a website where people can share their stories with others. It is always so nice to hear other people’s stories because we know we aren’t alone. No matter what it is you are going through, I guarantee someone else has been through it and they have made it to the other side. Once we know we are not alone, it somehow makes it easier for us to get through it. So, thank you both again!
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God Has A Watering Can (Flowers)
Psalm 5:1-3 “Give ear to my words, O Lord; give heed to my sighing. Listen to the sound of my cry, my King and my God, for to you I pray. O Lord, in the morning you hear my voice; in the morning I plead my case to you, and watch.
This was another verse from my prayer group. I picked it today because I know so many who are struggling with what feels like unanswered prayers. Although they trust God will answer those prayers, they find it harder and harder to trust. They want to believe that God has a good plan for them. They want to believe God is going to put an end to this suffering on this side of heaven. Yet they haven’t seen it yet. They still have to suffer with the pain every day, or the heartache every day.
Last night, I went to an Encounter Ministries Alumni event at the Boston Campus, and my friend Hugh and I were praying over another friend of ours. She has been struggling with something for over 30 years, and it has been daily for over 10 years. I was telling them that I don’t understand this. I don’t understand why someone would have to go through something like that for so long. She has prayed for God to take it away. She has had lots of people pray over her for God to take it away, and although he has made the problem less severe, He has not taken it away from her.
She is coming to Him each day with expectant faith also. I feel like she has checked all the boxes of what God has told us to do, and if we do, He will answer our prayer, yet they seem to go unanswered. Why is that? Do you feel like this, too? Like you have done all you can do, and yet your prayers still haven’t been answered? You aren’t alone. I wish I could say that I had the answer for you. I talked to the Lord about it this morning, and He put this song on my heart. I believe He is trying to help me understand His ways more with this song. I pray that this song and the words He gives me today to share with you will give you the strength you need to keep asking God for whatever answer you have been waiting for. He hears you, keep asking!!
"Flowers" by Samantha Ebert was written during a period of intense physical and emotional pain caused by Lyme disease. Ebert, bedridden and feeling like her hope was fading, found inspiration in the "get well soon" flowers on her nightstand, realizing that beautiful things can grow in the darkest places. The song became a reflection on faith, gratitude, and the idea that God can turn even the hardest parts of life into something beautiful. Here are the words to the song:
Well, blue skies and hillsides feel so far away
And I wrote in my notebook that I've seen better days
Than the ones as of late
I can't bear the weight
The rain won't stop pouring out my windowpane
And I haven't left my bedroom in 76 days
I wish something would change
'Cause I'm losing faith
I think many of us have been in a situation where it went on for a lot longer than we wanted it to. I think we all have had a time when we felt like things would never change, never get better, never go away. We have felt like we would never be healed, we would never get out of that relationship, we would never find a job. Whatever you never were, we have all had one. It is easy to lose faith when it feels like God is ignoring your prayers. When we are tired and worn out, it is harder and harder to resist listening to the lies of the enemy. He is a liar, and yet he uses half-truths, so that they seem to make sense to us when we are tired and feel like we can’t fight the darkness anymore. When we feel like the weight of our problem is too great for us to bear any longer.
Next, the song says:
So I brought it up in a desperate prayer
Lord, why are you keeping me here?
Then He said to me, "Child, I'm planting seeds
I'm a good God and I have a good plan
So trust that I'm holding a watering can
And someday you'll see that flowers grow in the valley”
I am sure we have all brought our situation up to the Lord in a desperate prayer. Probably many desperate prayers, however, this time she heard an answer from the Lord. I want to pause and reinforce this point. The Lord is talking to you. I know I say this all the time, and that is because I don’t think many of you believe me. You may believe He talks to people, but you don’t believe He is talking to you. I promise you, He is, you just have to listen. So, if you are in a desperate place, ask the Lord why. Ask the Lord what He wants you to do. Maybe he will just say Wait. But what if He tells you something you can do while you wait? God is talking to you, I promise you that!
In the song, the person struggling cries out to the Lord. She asks why He is keeping her there, and He tells her. He answers her question. He will do the same for you. God said, "Child, I'm planting seeds. I’m a good God and I have a good plan. So trust that I'm holding a watering can. And someday you'll see that flowers grow in the valley.” Isn’t that amazing? This is not only true for her, but it is true for you too. Our God is a good God, and He has a good plan. If you don’t believe me, look at Jeremiah 29:11, “For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.”
God has good plans for you. You will get out of this situation. He will not leave you in suffering forever. He will save you. He is answering your prayers. What you are going through now is preparing you for where He is taking you. I know when you are in the thick of it, this might not be comforting to you. I know when I was in the middle of my situation, I didn’t want to hear this. I just wanted to hear when it would all be over and I could move on to the better times, the joy-filled and happy times.
If you are in that place, I want you to know you are not alone and that it is ok to feel that way. It is ok to be angry that it has been going on for this long. Take those feelings to God; He is the only one who can help you through them. God can handle your anger. He can handle your frustration! My friend said that the Lord told her that when she is hurting, He is also hurting. The same is true for you. God doesn’t want to see you hurting. And also, like any good dad, He knows sometimes we have to go through hard things to become the person we are meant to be. We shouldn’t shield our kids from every bad thing that will ever happen to them, because that is how they learn. We also have to learn from our mistakes and experience some of that pain.
But what is amazing is that there are flowers in the valley. It is so hard when we are going through hard times. However, every time we go through them, we can look back and see positive things about them. It doesn’t mean we are always glad they happened. If we lost a loved one, even though we might be able to see a few good things, like the fact that they get to be with Jesus now, or they are no longer suffering, it doesn’t mean we are happy they passed away. Our struggles change us and we can be grateful for the lessons we learned without being grateful for the situation.
Next the song says:
So whatever the reason, I'm barely getting by
I'll trust it's a season knowing that you're by my side
Every step of the way
And I'll be okay
'Cause I brought it up in a desperate prayer
Lord, why are you keeping me here?
Then He said to me, "Child, I'm planting seeds
I'm a good God and I have a good plan"
So trust that I'm holding a watering can
And someday you'll see that flowers grow in the valley
This is a hard step for most of us, and it is one that brings us the most relief. It is where we can finally get some peace. In this verse, she is surrendering. She is accepting that even though she doesn’t know the why, she knows the who. She knows that God is in control and that He will use all of this for her good. (Romans 8:28) Most of the time, when we are in a hard season, we won’t know the why. God’s ways are higher than our ways, and we don’t understand them. However, if we can keep reminding ourselves that this is just a season, and seasons don’t last forever. If we can remind ourselves that God is with us every step of the way and that we will be okay, then it can make the journey a bit better.
Next the song says:
When I'm on the mountain and looking down below
I'll see a valley of flowers that needed time to grow
And I'll thank you for the rain
The hurt and days of pain
And I'll bring it up in a grateful prayer
Thank you, Jesus, for keeping me there
You know just what I need, and you've planted seeds
'Cause you're a good God with a real good plan
And you hold my world in a watering can
So I can have peace 'cause flowers grow in the valley
Man, when we get to the other side, it is so good! We tend to see the flowers, maybe not right away. We see that all that lying around in bed gave us the chance to pray more, intercede more, and grow closer to God. Or we see that all that struggle gave us levels of patience, resilience, and perseverance that we would never have otherwise. We see that fighting to break that addiction gave us the strength we needed for the next chapter of life. We see that because we went through that hard time, we can now be a witness to others that they can make it through that hard time, too.
I love this song because it shows us that God is good and He really does have a good plan. Yes, it is hard waiting for that plan. I have a friend who really wanted to meet the man of her dreams and get married and have a family together. She did finally meet the man of her dreams a lot later than she wanted to. It was hard for her to wait that long. It was a lot of years of heartbreak, losing hope, and feeling like it may never happen. However, now that she is on the other side of it, she can see that if they had met earlier, it might not have worked out. They both needed to grow and become the people they are now.
If you are in a really hard season right now, I am so sorry. Trust me when I say I know how hard it is to wait for prayers to be answered. I know how hard it is to struggle for a very long time. I struggled for so very long with parenting and in my marriage. I cried out to the Lord over and over again. And although it was a very long road, I knew I wasn’t in it alone. I know God was there helping me along the way. I am now able to thank God for those hard times because they made me who I am today. They made it so I can help other struggling parents. I can empathize with kids who are struggling. I can help others grow closer to God. I can help others develop a deep trust in the Lord because I have a deep trust in the Lord, and a lot of that grew out of necessity because of the hard times I was in.
I’m sorry this episode is longer than usual, but I know many of you are struggling, and I felt like God wanted you to hear this today and wanted you to know that it won’t last forever. He is a good God and has a good plan for your life. Trust that in this difficult season, and just keep looking forward to the flowers you will see in the valley when you reach the top of the mountain. Just keep looking forward to the day when you will want to thank God for all you have been through. I love you and I am rooting for you and I am always here for you to reach out to if you need help keeping up your hope. Sometimes when we are in the middle of it, we need other people to hope for us because it is too hard and painful for us to keep hoping. If you are at that point, please reach out and I will keep the hope alive for you! Email catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or go to the website walkboldlywithjesus.com and click on the contact me page. I would love to hear from you and pray with you!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening. Lord, we know you are a good Father and you have good plans for us. However, sometimes it is hard to believe this with all the bad we see in our lives. Please help us. Help us to remember that you will bring good out of this. Help us to remember this is a season and won’t last forever. Help us to remember that you are with us in the hard season, that you never abandon us. You are there giving us all we need to make it though that day. Thank you Lord, you are amazing! We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I want to invite you all to click on the link below and check out my mentoring program. It is similar to the podcast, but you get to hang out with me on Tuesday nights and go a bit more in-depth on certain topics. It is also a great way to set aside some time to grow closer to the Lord each week. Tonight will be week four of our For Such A Time As This series. I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, I am yours and you are mine, and I direct the way each day. The more you come to me, the more you will experience my joy and mercy, so you, in turn, can share it with others.”
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In Parched Places
Isaiah 58:11-12 “The Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail. Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in."
This scripture verse was given at a prayer group meeting recently. This morning, I was looking through my prayer group notes since we have finished the Be Bold Series, and I thought I would get back to using those verses for a bit. When I read today’s verse, I knew it was perfect because I know so many people who are struggling right now. I know so many people who have been praying for relief from physical ailments and feel as though their prayers have not been heard. Or maybe they have been heard, but they are not sure they have the strength to wait for God’s timing.
This scripture verse tells us that God is continually guiding us and that He will satisfy our needs in parched places. How many of us feel like we are in parched places? How many of us feel as though we are in a desert and relief is nowhere around? We look out as far as we can see in all directions, and there is nothing. We are all alone with no end in sight. Sometimes we feel as though there is no hope in sight either. We want to be hopeful, we want to believe that God is going to heal us, and yet each day that goes by, we struggle more and more to believe it might happen.
I have a friend who has a son who lost his job. We prayed for her son for a very long time. He struggled to pay his bills. He had to move out of his home. He had to give his dogs away because he had to move in with a friend and sleep on their couch. I am sure he struggled believing that a job was coming his way. I am sure he had moments when he doubted he would ever find a job again. I am sure he questioned where God was in all of this. He knows his mom was praying for him that whole time, so what was taking so long? Why wasn’t God answering the prayers that he knew people were praying for him?
He now has a job and things are going well. God did answer his prayers and those of all who were praying for him. The thing that is hard for us all to understand is why it took so long. I am sure you have your own version of this story, too. Maybe you have many versions of this story. Why did the adoption process take so long? Why did it take so long to get pregnant? Why did I have to struggle so long with cancer? Why did I have to suffer in pain for so many years? Why, Why, Why?
If you are asking God why for something right now, I want you to know that it is ok, and that you are not alone. None of us understands God’s ways. No one here on earth knows why He does what He does and why His timing is what it is. The one thing we do know is that he is all-knowing and all-powerful. We can be assured that He does have a plan. We don’t understand the plan because we don’t have all the facts. We don’t know what is to come. We know our story, but we don’t know anyone else’s story. We don’t know how God might use what we are going through to help someone else. We don’t know how God will use what we are going through to help us become the person we need to become.
When we are confused, when we feel lost, we can turn to Scripture to find answers, to find promises. If it is in scripture, then you know you can rely on it. You can stand on it as truth. Today’s verse says that, “The Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong.” How many of us needed to hear that today? How many of us needed to hear that even though we feel like we are in a desert, God is actually there with us, and we are not alone. God is not only there with us, but He is forever guiding us, and He will satisfy our needs. I know this verse was meant for me to use today, too, because the next line is oddly specific. He will make your bones strong. How many of us feel like that is exactly what we need today? I know several of you listening are struggling with your bodies. You are struggling with physical ailments, and you definitely need God to make your bones strong. Some of you feel you are fading fast and can’t fight anymore. If that is you, I hope you hear God talking to you specifically today. I hope you hear Him telling you that He will give you the strength you need, the nutrients you need, the healing you need. He will make your bones strong so you can continue to stand and fight whatever it is you are fighting. HE IS THERE WITH YOU!!
Then it says, “you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail.” I feel as though this is God reassuring us that even though we feel as though we have nothing left to give, we will never run out. He will give us exactly what we need for that one day, that one hour, that one minute. When you feel like you have nothing left to give, remember this promise from the Lord: “You will be like a spring of water, whose waters never fail.” The enemy will tell you that you have nothing left to give. He will tell you that your water has dried up and you are failing fast. He is a liar. The Lord only speaks the truth. So when He says that you are a spring of water, whose water never fails,” then you can take that to the bank. You can stand on that promise. You may feel empty, but God is there giving you whatever you need to keep moving forward, even if it is at a really slow pace.
I almost didn’t include the last verse, as I usually try to just focus on one verse at a time and go deep. However, I thought this last verse was something we all needed to hear. It says, “Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.” I felt this was important to include because I didn’t want to leave you with the thought that God meant for your story to end where you are. He is saying that He will give you what you need to get through the parched place you are in right now, but He doesn’t leave you there. I feel as though if I ended with that last paragraph some of you might be thinking that although it is reassuring that God will give me what I need in this difficult time, I still don’t want to be stuck in this time forever. I still need relief.
This last verse shows us that God will not leave us here. He has a plan. Our ancient ruins will be rebuilt. The sense I got when I read this was that our lives would be rebuilt. We will not be the same person we were before we went through this. We will be stronger. We will be more resilient and persistent. We will be made new. This is how God always leaves us. He doesn’t leave us broken and weak. We may feel weak, but when we are weak, God is strong. God can work through us powerfully when we admit our weakness and ask Him to step in and help us. We look at all we have lost and think it is lost forever. God can restore anything we have lost. He can give us back lost time, He can give us back lost loved ones, He can give us back everything. We see this when we look back at the story of Job. We often think of Job as the suffering servant. We think of all he had to go through and how he remained faithful. However, I don’t think we spend enough time thinking about how God repaid him for his suffering. God restored all he had lost. He gave him back everything he had lost two times.
Maybe in the really hard times. The times when it feels like you will never get better, you can think about how God will reward you for your suffering as well. What might He give you back? What might he bless you with that you didn’t have before? How might God be using your suffering? My dad tends not to request prayers for himself because he knows that God is using his suffering to help others. He also knows God will give him what he needs to bear the suffering. I agree with both of these, although I do think we should always ask God to heal our suffering and have others pray over us. I am sure the thought of how God might be using his suffering brings comfort to my dad, and it can bring comfort to you, too.
The very last line says, “You shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.” You can repair the breach. You can restore the streets. Your story, your testimony, can bring someone back to the Lord. Your story of how you made it through the hard time by the grace of God can let someone else know that they can make it through, too. It might be just what someone needs to hear to return to the Lord and ask Him for help. God was with you in your parched places; others may need to know He will be there for them, too!
Dear Heavenly Father, please bless everyone listening. Lord, we love you and we are sorry we get so frustrated waiting for your timing. We don’t understand it, Lord, which is hard for us. We want to believe your plan is better than our plan, and yet our plan seems so great to us. Please help us see your plan more and more. Please help our will align with your will. Please fill us with the strength and patience to wait for your timing. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I pray you all had a great Easter weekend and a wonderful Easter Season to come. This morning, Pope Francis passed away. He got to go be with our Heavenly Father, which is wonderful for him and yet sad for us. I pray for the repose of his soul, and also for the selection of the new Pope. May the Holy Spirit lead that selection process, and may the perfect person be selected! I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. I pray you remember how much Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, sometimes I ask you to step forward. Sometimes, I ask you to step back. Sometimes I want you to run. Sometimes I want you to walk. Sometimes I want you to sleep. What I want most is for you to be docile to whatever I ask.”
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You Are Loved By Jesus
John 13:23 “One of his disciples, the one whom Jesus loved,* was reclining at Jesus’ side.”
This scripture verse was given at my prayer group, and the following words of prophecy were given with it: “You are also the one whom Jesus loves. So, your place is to be listening to his heartbeat when you pray. So, put your head on his chest and listen to his heartbeat. Say I love you and be at peace.” Is there anything more calming than putting your head on someone’s chest and listening to their heartbeat? I picture when I was little, and if I was scared, I went to lie with my parents. Just putting my head on their chest and listening to their heartbeat would make me feel better; it seemed so rhythmic and soothing.
“You are also the one whom Jesus loves.” How many of you believe this? Like, truly, in the depths of your heart, believe this? You are also the one whom Jesus loves. Sometimes it is easy to say that Jesus is love. It is easy to say that Jesus loves everyone. And yet, even as we are saying it, we are discounting ourselves from that love. We know He loves everyone, and yet we don’t believe that he loves us. We don’t feel that love or even understand why He would love us. Who are we to be loved by Jesus?
You are the son or daughter of the one true king; that is who you are. You were made in the likeness and image of God. You are deeply loved by Him. Why do you discount yourself from that love? Or maybe you put a lot of pressure on yourself to be worthy enough of God’s love. Maybe you think that if you just do things perfectly, then God will love you. If you attend mass every week and volunteer for every fundraiser, then you will be worthy of God’s love. Are you constantly feeling like you are not good enough for God’s love?
Guess what, none of us are. None of us are worthy of God’s love, and yet he lavishes it on us freely anyway. You do not have to do anything to earn God’s love. Well, as I wrote that, what came to mind was we do have to accept it. God can tell us all day long that he loves us, but if we don’t accept it, then it doesn’t matter. Yesterday I talked about abiding in God’s love and how abide means acceptance. Can you accept God’s love? Can you accept that he loves you just as you are, no strings attached?
This is a new kind of love for so many. Some people have never had someone in their lives who loved them completely, with no strings attached. Unconditional love is not a thing they even knew. If you are struggling to believe that Jesus loves you, just as you are, think about your childhood and your past relationships. What do you think of when you think about love? Did you have to earn love growing up? What did you feel you had to do to be loved? For instance, did you have to get good grades, be a certain weight, be quieter, etc? Did you feel like your parents' love was conditional on your behavior? If so, don’t worry, you are not alone.
We live in a broken world, and we don’t know how to love each other unconditionally like our heavenly father does. I think everyone is doing the best they can. We can only love others to the extent that we are loved. If your parents did not know unconditional love, then they can’t pass it down to you. The good news is that you can learn to let Jesus’s love in. The good news is that Jesus does love us unconditionally. If we can learn to accept Jesus’s love, then we can learn to pass this love on to others, even if that is not the love we were raised with.
If accepting God’s love is something you struggle with, I would love to give you some practical tips for how you can begin to accept God’s love. I went online to see if others had already written about his subject. I found an article written by Kara J. Lovett called “5 Keys to Accepting God’s Love.” I would highly suggest you read this article. I will put a link for it in the description of this episode, but you can easily find it by googling 5 Keys to Accepting God’s Love. https://karajlovett.com/5-keys-to-accepting-gods-love/ In the article, she goes into what God says about love, and then a section on understanding God’s love.
Her article mentions five ways you can accept God’s love. They are as follows: Accepting God’s love with scripture, prayer, grace, quietness & in unexpected places Kara says in her article that “by digging deep into Scripture and spending time with God in prayer, I realized that I need to stop striving for love and instead strive to accept God’s love, which He has already graciously bestowed on me.” As I mentioned yesterday, reading through the bible is a great way to get to know what God’s love is like. You can see many examples of God’s love in the bible. 1 John 4:7-10 is a great example of love. It says, “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this, the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”
The second way she mentions is prayer. When we turn to God and ask for His help, he wants to help us, and is just waiting for us to ask. God knows what we are going through and what our struggles are, and yet he loves it when we talk to Him about them. Just sit down with a cup of coffee or tea and talk to God like you are talking to your best friend at the kitchen table. You will be surprised how much closer you get to God when you start having chats with Him on a more regular basis. They can be informal chats about your day, your struggles, and your successes. God wants to share in all of that with you.
The third way she mentions is Grace. Man, learning about grace over these last few years has really been huge for me. Learning to be graceful with yourself is so important. Kara says that grace is the free, unearned gift of salvation that God has bestowed upon us. When I looked up the definition online, it said 1a: unmerited divine assistance given to humans for their regeneration or sanctification. b: a virtue coming from God. c: a state of sanctification enjoyed through divine assistance. We are saved and redeemed through God’s grace. It is unmerited, meaning we don’t deserve it, we can’t do anything to earn it, it is just bestowed upon us. How amazing is that? The third definition said a state of sanctification enjoyed through divine assistance. We can’t forget this. We are made holy through divine assistance. God is always there to help us. We can’t do any of this on our own. It is always a partnership. God has so much grace and mercy for us. He doesn’t expect us to be perfect, so cut yourself some slack.
The fourth way to accept God’s love is through quietness. Spend some quiet time with God. There are so many ways that you can do this. Maybe you are someone who likes to meditate every morning. That is wonderful! Maybe you are like me, and every time you try to quiet your mind, all it wants to do is talk to you. That’s fine too. Maybe your quiet time is spent in nature, going for a walk, or sitting outside listening to the sounds of nature. Maybe your quiet time with God is spent journaling all your thoughts. There is no right way to spend quiet time with God. Your relationship with God is like any other relationship; the more time you spend together, the closer you will be.
The fifth key to accepting God’s love for Kara was letting go of control. Even though we know at some level that we don’t have to earn God’s love, we still try to prove to Him that we love Him. We put all these rules and regulations on ourselves about how we have to do this and we have to do that. We tend to put a lot of pressure on ourselves. Once Kara was able to let go of control and remember that Jesus already secured our freedom on the cross, she decided to let go of all the pressure she put on herself and just tried to abide in Jesus’s love.
God loves you! He truly does. I hope that if you are not currently able to accept God’s love, you will spend some time working on learning how to. I can’t tell you how amazing it is to know that I am always loved. To know that there is nothing I can do that would make my heavenly father stop loving me. It gives me so much more confidence in life. It brings me so much joy. It breaks my heart when I talk with people who don’t know how much God loves them. I know it is hard to let love in sometimes. I have been there before. It can be hard, it can take a lot of work, and it is so worth it. There is so much more waiting for you once you accept and really come to know God’s love for you. It is there for the taking, free, with no strings attached. All you have to do is say yes and accept it!
Dear Heavenly Father, I am so thankful that you love us unconditionally. You love us so completely. Lord, some of us are struggling to feel this love. We ask you right now to come into our hearts and fill them with your love, perfect love. We ask that you begin to break down any walls that we have put up to keep love out. Lord, we want all the love that you have for us. Lord, I ask that you bless everyone listening to this with a supernatural feeling of love today. That the Holy Spirit descends on all of them and that they can physically feel you giving them a hug today. Lord, you are so amazing. We are in awe of all that you do each and every day. We pray that you help our loved ones to open up and feel your love. Lord, we pray that you shower your love on all the teenagers. Being a teen is so difficult, and many do not feel any love. Please show them how amazing your love is, Lord. We ask all of this in accordance with your holy will and in Jesus’ name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I felt this was a good episode for Good Friday today, more than any other day, Jesus shows his love for us. He died on the cross for us. He died on the cross for you. He loves you. Will you let Him in? I look forward to meeting you here again on Monday. I hope you have a very blessed Easter weekend. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in October 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I have a picture in my mind of Jesus and Mary holding each of our hands, and we're like a little child skipping away, skipping along, and it's a white path and they say, “Stay with us, and we will lead you to home.”
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Be Bold & Say Yes!
1 Timothy 1:12-16 “I am grateful to him who has strengthened me, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he considered me trustworthy in appointing me to the ministry. I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and an arrogant man, but I have been mercifully treated because I acted out of ignorance in my unbelief. Indeed, the grace of our Lord has been abundant, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. This saying is trustworthy and deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. Of these, I am the foremost. But for that reason, I was mercifully treated, so that in me, as the foremost, Christ Jesus might display all his patience as an example for those who would come to believe in him for everlasting life.”
Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. This is something that the Pharisees and Sadducees could not understand. Actually, many people couldn’t understand this. Jesus was the savior. The Jewish people thought He was coming to save them from the Roman Army. They did not understand that He was coming to save them from something much more important. He was coming so that we would have eternal salvation. He came to walk among us so He could save us from ourselves. God had a perfect plan, and Adam and Eve, being human and imperfect, messed up that plan. God sent His son to us to set things right again.
The beginning of this verse talks about “him who strengthened me.” This sounds an awful lot like Philippians 4:13, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” It is true that we get our strength through Jesus Christ. Paul is thankful in this verse because Jesus considered him trustworthy in appointing him to the ministry. He talks about how he was once a blasphemer, a persecutor, and an arrogant man. If you were designing this world, if you had to choose who would lead God’s people, would this be the type of man you would choose? Does Paul sound like the ideal candidate? He was a blasphemer, a persecutor, and an arrogant man. He is not who I would pick. And yet He is exactly who God picked.
Why do you think He does this? Why do you think God chooses to use less-than-perfect people for his ministry? I think He does it because of exactly what He says to us in Isaiah 55:8-9, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” God knows us better than we know ourselves. He knows that if he only uses perfect people, we won’t listen to them. It is hard to connect with someone you can’t relate to. Also, we tend to believe what we see more than what we hear.
It is one thing to have someone who has never struggled with an addiction come and tell you that Jesus can heal your addictions. It is quite another to see someone who you know had an addiction problem and is now cured of it. Which would you rather, someone to tell you that Jesus can forgive your sins, or to see Jesus sitting with those who have sinned? We as people don’t like listening as much as we like seeing. Jesus took a man who was not a very good person, someone who didn’t even believe that Jesus was who He said He was, and used him to do extraordinary things. This is because of God’s mercy. I bet that every time Paul told the story of his conversion, he won over more people than the leaders in the church preaching about God’s mercy without ever having experienced it.
It even says in the last sentence of this verse why Jesus chose Paul. He said, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. Of these, I am the foremost. But for that reason, I was mercifully treated, so that in me, as the foremost, Christ Jesus might display all his patience as an example for those who would come to believe in him for everlasting life.” Paul was chosen, not despite his past sins, but because of them. He was chosen to be an example of Jesus’ patience to all those who would come to believe. Don’t you find it easier to believe that God will forgive your sins when you know He forgave Paul? What about Saint Peter? Peter loved the Lord, he followed Him for three years, and yet when Jesus needed him the most, he abandoned Jesus. He not only abandoned Him, but he also denied even knowing Jesus. And yet, knowing all of this, Jesus chose Peter to be the rock upon which His church would be built.
If the Lord can use Peter, who denied Him three times in His time of need, and He can use Paul, who was a blasphemer, a persecutor, and an arrogant man, don’t you think He can use you? Sometimes we count ourselves out, and we don’t listen when God calls us because we don’t think we are good enough to serve the Lord. He is almighty and powerful, and we are little and useless. He is perfect, and we are full of sin. How could He possibly use us when others out there are so much better than us at everything? God doesn’t want better, God wants you. If you are willing, God wants to use you. He is calling every single one of us to serve Him. Are we worthy of serving Him? Nope, and yet He still calls us to serve Him. He does not call us despite our past sins; He calls us because of our past sins. He calls us because His ways are higher than our ways. He knows that someone out there needs to hear our witness about how God saved us. He knows that we are good examples of His love and mercy. Others need to hear about all the graces we have received, even though we didn’t deserve anything.
So many people think miracles only happen for those who are really faithful. God only forgives sins for other people, but not for them. They find it easy to believe God forgives small sins, but surely He won’t forgive their sins, they are too great. This is why God needs us. God wants us to be living examples of all He can do with willing people. If you need further examples of when God has used people you would never have chosen, you have to look in the Bible. There are so many examples. I will point you to a few in case you aren’t quite convinced. What about Moses? Moses was a murderer and yet God chose him to lead the people out of Exodus. Jacob stole his brother’s birth rite and then stole his blessings and God chose him to be the father of the 12 tribes of Israel. There are many other stories like this in the Bible. God doesn’t use perfect people to carry out his mission. He came to save the sinners and He uses us sinners to do that. I want to leave you with a word of prophecy that was received at my prayer group because it shows that the Lord understands that we question our calling and our usefulness and like a good Father, he reassures us of His love.
“My children you are an integral part of my plan. Yes, you, You may see yourself as little and that is good you are little but my grace is strong and powerful within you. I have placed you where are you are, in the times that you are, in the circumstances that you are. And I am with you. I am with you to use you to spread the joy of knowing me. To spread my word, to spread knowledge of my goodness. I love you. You are an essential part of my plan. Please work with me for I am working with you. “
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to answer your call. Help us to see that you know we are not worthy, you know of all of our sins, and yet you call us anyway. Remind us often that your ways are higher than our ways and we don’t have to understand why you do the things you do. They don’t have to make sense to us because our thoughts are not your thoughts. Help us to trust you. Help us to see in us what you see in us. Help us to take that step forward even if we don’t know why we are doing it. Lord, we say yes to serving you, yes to all you want us to do, we just need your help, your grace, your strength. We love you Lord, you are so amazing and we are so grateful that you accept us exactly as we are, that you love us exactly as we are. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
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Today’s witnesses are from Matthew West’s website called popwe.org. If you don’t know who Matthew West is, he is a singer, songwriter, and storyteller. This website is for the non-profit that he has with his father, a pastor. Matthew and his father encourage people to share their stories. They have various categories of stories. Today, I chose three testimonies from the Broken Chapter Category. We all have times in our lives when things don’t go as we thought they would. I think we have all had tragedy strike in one way or another. Some are worse than others but I don’t think anyone has had a tragedy-free life. The witnesses today are no different. They have had some truly terrible things happen and yet they are able to testify to how God was with them through it. Often, we can hear our own story in someone else’s story. When we listen to others tell their story, it helps us see that we are not alone. When we hear how God worked in their situation, it gives us hope that He will work in ours, too! I pray when you hear these testimonies, you get the faith and hope to believe that miracles can happen in your situation also. I pray you know that God is there with you, and if you invite Him into your situation, He can help.
April: I was saved when I was 10 years old. There have been times in my life when I was walking closer to Jesus and times when I have drifted from Him.
I’ve done a lot of things in my life that I’m ashamed of and I have a lot of regrets. I’ve felt that God has punished me for my sins, especially on the night of September 24, 2021.
My oldest son Cole was killed by a drunk driver. Nothing “bad” ever happened to my family and this was totally unexpected. My husband and I were doing everything “right”, raising our kids in church and feeling like we were leading them in the way they should go.
When Cole was killed, it was and is still the worst pain I’ve ever experienced. I felt it was my fault. I felt God was punishing me for all the shameful things I’ve done. I still struggle with this.
I know Cole is with Jesus because God shows me and tells me all the time that Cole is with Him. He does this in many different ways. I’ve learned to be looking for Him and listening to His voice, because if I don’t I start to believe the lies of the enemy.
I know that what happened to Cole isn’t my fault because Jesus took my punishment for me when He died on the cross. I’ve asked God so many times “why did you let this happen? “Why did it have to be my Cole?” “Why not me?” Well, the answer is that as Christians, we’re not called to understand why. We’re called to trust. I choose this every day.
My faith has grown stronger since Cole went to Heaven. I have more joy in my heart than I had before. I know that sounds weird and I do wish that my Cole was still here with me, but I know that given the choice to come back here, Cole would say “no.” It gives me joy knowing that Cole is with Jesus and that one day I will be there too.
I am working on forgiveness, forgiveness for the man who killed Cole. I don’t want to live in a cage of anger, so I have to choose forgiveness. It hasn’t been asked of me by this man, but it has been required of me by God. “Father forgives them, for they know not what they do.” Please pray for me to forgive as my Father forgives me.
Many times, when I’m driving down the road I will be crying and feeling sorry for myself and then “Don’t Stop Praying “will come on the radio. This is not a coincidence; it’s God telling me to keep trusting in Him and to continue to bring everything to Him and lay it at His feet. He goes before me. If He is for me, who can be against me?
Thank you, Matthew, for being obedient to what the Lord calls you to do. Your songs are reaching many people for Jesus and giving Him all the glory.
Robin: My entire life is one broken mess after another. I grew up abused and broken and then I married someone who left me even more broken. I have struggled with depression and anxiety and often thought that the world would be better off without me. And so would my kids. I never wanted them to walk away even a little broken; if I was not there, I couldn’t hurt them. I was on the edge and ready to break and I just stopped and gave in. For years people tried to lead me to God and all his promises and I would not, could not believe them, no one had ever kept a promise before and God doesn’t have time for this broken-down sinner. I looked at my aunt and sister-in-law and saw the peace and love I longed for. So I gave in. I listened. I prayed for really the first meaningful way. Then I understood. I am not broken, just cracked but I was still whole. I picked myself up and God led the way to my next chapter. I am still cracked and I always will be, but now I know I will not fall apart.
Wendy: When I was 17 yrs old, I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life so I took a year off from college to volunteer while I figured it out. I found a mission organization out of San Diego called Amor Ministries that takes youth groups into Tijuana, Mexico to build homes for families there. I found what I wanted to do for life there!! It’s my favorite thing to do. I volunteered for years. Even when I went back to college, I took time off to go every year. After I got married, my husband came with me a couple of years, but we were broke and he only got a week’s vacation each year, so I had to stop for a few years. It was heartbreaking for me to not go to help during their busiest seasons. Then after I had our second girl, I had a disc in my back burst and it was pinching a nerve to my left leg, so I was losing the ability to lift my foot. I thank God to this day for the spinal surgeon that was able to remove the disc from my spinal canal. Those years after the surgery were depressing as the pain wore on and I was sure I would never get to go back to Mexico again. BUT God!! When my girls were 2 and 3 yrs old I was finally able to start going back to volunteer again. My husband and parents took care of the kids every year so that I have never missed a year again except for when Covid closed the borders. This last year I was honored by the organization and given a staff shirt for all my years of volunteering. I started taking both my girls with me to volunteer about 8 yrs ago as well. I leave in March for my 30th year volunteering! Your song “Do Something” is my anthem for life.
Thank you all for sharing your testimonies. When we share how God is working in our lives it helps others. It is not easy to be vulnerable and share about a time when things were so hard. We appreciate you opening up and sharing you struggles. It is really important that we all know we are not alone. Thank you!
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Be Bold & Be Obedient
Luke 1:38 “Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.”
This month in mentoring, the theme is “For Such A Time As This.” Last week, I talked about Joseph and Moses and how they were in the perfect place at the perfect time. It wasn’t an easy road for them to get there. They were both broken and then they were positioned. Then I talked about Mary and Deborah. I explored how they went from being obedient to Empowered. This morning, we will look at how saying yes to God can change everything.
“Obedience isn’t about perfection. It’s about saying yes to God—even when it doesn’t make sense.” Often, God will ask us to do something, and we have no idea why he is asking us to do it. We don’t feel qualified. We don’t understand the plan, and sometimes, we just really don’t want to do it. Also, God often asks for our 'yes' before He reveals the full plan. This is why obedience is so important. Our yes allows God to work within us and through us.
Obedience is the bridge between calling and empowerment. So what this means is that being called to do something isn’t enough—you don’t just instantly arrive at empowerment. The way to get from calling to being empowered to carry it out is through obedience: taking steps in faith, even when it’s hard, unclear, or uncomfortable. In other words, “You may have a purpose, but your obedience activates the power to walk in it.”
Let’s talk about Mary first. Mary was a young, willing vessel. Let’s listen to Mary’s Yes to the Lord in Luke 1:26-38. “In the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom, there will be no end.” Mary said to the angel, “How can this be since I am a virgin?” The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore, the child to be born[c] will be holy; he will be called Son of God. And now, your relative Elizabeth, in her old age, has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.” Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then, the angel departed from her.
To Summarize:
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God chose a young, ordinary girl to carry the Savior of the world.
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Mary responded in faith, not fully understanding. Do you think if Mary had known the complete story, she would have said yes? This could be why we don’t always know the full story before we have to answer, either. The person we are when we say Yes to the Lord is probably not the same person we will be at the end of the story. Mary was young when she said yes to all the Lord had planned for her. She was not the same young girl when she was sitting at the foot of the cross. She had many other experiences in her life that prepared her and trained her to be the woman she was at the foot of the cross.
Mary's obedience unlocked the miracle of Jesus entering the world. Mary had free will, just like the rest of us. What if she had said no? Where would we be right now? Thank goodness for Mary’s obedience!
Now, we will talk about Deborah. Deborah was a prophetess and the only female judge mentioned in the Bible. Her story is found in Judges 4–5. She led Israel during a time of oppression under the Canaanite king Jabin and his army commander Sisera.
Her position was that of Judge and Prophetess of Israel during the era of the Judges before Israel had kings. She provided wisdom, judgment, and spiritual leadership. People came to her for decisions and guidance. She summoned Barak, a military leader, and told him God commanded him to go to war against Sisera. (Judges 4:14) Barak agreed—but only if Deborah went with him. She did.
Israel defeated the Canaanite army, and Sisera was ultimately killed by a woman named Jael. Deborah was a worshipper and Poet: Judges 5 records the Song of Deborah, a victory hymn celebrating God's deliverance and the bravery of those who fought.
To Summarize:
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She was a prophetess and judge in a time when women had little influence.
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Her obedience in speaking and leading brought victory.
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She led with courage, wisdom, and worship (Judges 5).
What Obedience Looks Like
1. Saying Yes in the Unknown****
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Mary didn’t have all the answers. Yet she said yes anyway.
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Obedience requires trust more than clarity. Mary could say yes because she knew it was the Lord asking, and she knew she could trust the Lord.
2. Speaking When It’s Risky****
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Deborah spoke with authority even when it challenged norms. I am sure it was frowned upon at that time for a woman, even if she was a judge, to tell a military captain to go to war. Yet she did it anyway. Can you think of other people in the Bible who spoke up even when it was Risky?
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Your voice can unlock someone else’s breakthrough. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine having the courage to speak up, even when risky, could unlock someone else’s breakthrough? Has this happened to you before? Have you said something, and then someone else has had a breakthrough because of it? This happens a lot when praying over people for the prophetic word. Speaking the prophetic word to people takes courage because you aren’t sure if what you are hearing is from the Lord or if it is just your own voice getting in your head. We tend to dismiss what we hear because it is far easier to believe that we are making stuff up than to believe that God is talking to us.
However, God does talk to us. When we are brave and step out in faith and tell someone the prophetic word we hear from them, the word we hear may cause them to have a breakthrough. It is so beautiful to witness this, to see them realize how much God loves them and how much He really knows them.
3. Moving Despite Fear****
- Courage isn’t the absence of fear; it’s action in the face of it. My brother has this quote at the end of all of his emails, and I remember the first time I read it, I loved it. There will be times you want to quit every good thing you do in this life, persist. Courage is not the absence of fear; it is the mastery of it. If God is asking you to do something, trust that he will give you the courage you need to do it!
4. Worshiping Through the Process****
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Both Mary and Deborah responded with songs of praise.
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Worship shifts our focus from fear to faith.
When We Obey, God Empowers
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Obedience invites the Holy Spirit to move through us.
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Empowerment is not about control or power but about being vessels of God’s glory.
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God equips those He calls—He never asks for a yes without backing it up with power. You may not feel qualified to do the thing God is asking you to do. However, He wouldn’t be asking if He wasn’t going to give you all you needed to do the job. If you feel unqualified, join the club. I don’t remember reading a single story in the Bible where the person felt qualified to do what they were called to do. Except David when fighting Goliath, and this was only because he knew that he wasn’t fighting Goliath alone. He knew the Lord was on his side and would defeat Goliath. Imagine how braver we would all be if we knew that, too.
I want to leave you with these last thoughts.
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You don’t need to have it all figured out.
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God honors your yes.
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He turns willing hearts into powerful instruments.
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Your obedience today could be the key to someone else's miracle tomorrow.
I am also going to give you some questions to think about. I gave these to those in mentoring but they are great questions for all of us to think about today.
1. What is God asking you to say yes to?****
2. Where do you need to trust more and understand less?****
3. Who might be waiting for you to rise up like Deborah?****
4. What can you praise God for in the middle of your obedience?****
If you have some time today, sit with the Lord and answer these questions together!
Dear Heavenly Father, thank you to all those listening to this episode. Lord, I ask you to bless them and their families. Lord, we want to be obedient. Please help us. Help us to get out of our own heads. Help us to remember that if you are for us, who could be against us? Help us remember that you will give us the strength and courage to get everything done. If you call us, you will equip us. You will help us find the time, strength, and whatever else we need to do this thing you are calling us to do. We love you, Lord, and we are so grateful you never leave us alone to do these things. You are always there to do them with us. Thank you. We pray all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you liked this episode, you will love mentoring. Click on the link in the show notes to check it out, or you can go to my website, walkboldlywithjesus.com. If you want to join mentoring this evening, it is not too late. Just sign up below, and you will get the Zoom link. It is tonight at 8 PM Eastern Time. I hope to see you there.
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in September 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Every moment of your life, can you remember it? Every moment from the day you were conceived in your mother's womb, I have tenderly held you in my arms. I'm there now as much as I've always been. I will be there at every moment until finally, I grasp you and take you into heaven with me forever.”
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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Be Bold & Let Your Light Shine!
2 Timothy 1:5-6 “I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, dwells in you as well. For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands.”
I was listening to some praise and worship songs this morning and I was looking for one song in particular because I just love it. I couldn’t remember the name but I remembered which playlist it was on, so I searched through and found it. It is called Start a Fire, and it is by Unspoken. I love this song so much because I feel like it speaks to my soul. I feel it expresses how I feel so deeply. I love many praise and worship songs for this reason. I find the artist's ability to capture how I feel about God and put it into words is remarkable. This is why I love listening to Christian music so much. I will hear a song and find myself nodding my head and saying, yes, that is exactly it. Sometimes, I didn’t even know that was how I felt; I just couldn’t put words to it, but as soon as I heard them, I knew it was true.
I want to share the words of this song with you:
This world can be cold and bitter
Feels like we're in the dead of winter
Waiting on something better
But am I really gonna hide forever?
Over and over again
I hear Your voice in my head
Let Your light shine; let Your light shine for all to see
Start a fire in my soul
Fan the flame and make it grow
So there's no doubt or denying
Let it burn so brightly
That everyone around can see
That it's You, that it's You that we need
Start a fire in me
You only need a spark to start a whole blaze
It only takes a little faith
Let it start right here in this city
So these old walls will never be the same
Over and over again
I hear Your voice in my head
They need to know
I need to go
Spirit won't You fall on my heart now
You are the fire; You are the flame
You are the light on the darkest day
We have the hope; we bear Your name
We carry the news that You have come to save
Only You can save
There are so many things I love about this song. I love the part where it says over and over again I hear your voice in my head, let your light shine, let your light shine for all to see. I feel God is telling all of this. He wants us to let our light shine. It even says in the Bible, don’t hide your light under a bushel. Put it on the table for all to see. I love the part where it says, am I really going to hide forever? As if we can hide from God. He sees us, He sees all of us, and guess what? He loves us just as we are. I love the part where it says, “Start a fire in my soul. Fan the flames and make it grow, so there’s no doubt or denying. Let it burn so brightly that everyone around you can see that it’s you, that it's you that we need.” This is what God wants from us. He wants His light to shine so brightly in us that everyone can see it. He wants us to be a reflection of Him and to pass His light on to others. This is my prayer for each one of you listening. I pray God starts a fire in your soul. Actually, I pray He fans the flames on the fire He has already started. You would not be listening to this podcast if there wasn’t already a fire in your soul. I also love the part that says, “You are the fire, You are the flame, You are the light on the darkest day.” This is so true. I hope you know that. I hope you know that God is that fire you feel inside, He is the flame. God is the light on the darkest day. Your darkest day, that one where you felt alone, that one where you feel sad, mad, angry, or depressed. God is there, and He is your light. He will light a way where you didn’t think there was one.
The verse above starts by saying, “I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, dwells in you as well.” I met with some of the ladies in my prayer group yesterday to review what we had learned at a recently attended conference. During the conversation, we started talking about the faith that was passed down to us from our parents, who received it from their parents. Your faith came from somewhere, and I think we underestimate how important it is that our parents passed our faith down to us. Maybe some of you listening didn’t have that. Maybe you found your faith on your own. Well, maybe God led you to your faith in another way. That is great if you were able to find your faith despite the lack of faith in your childhood.
For those of you who grew up going to church, I would like you to take a minute to appreciate how great that is. Maybe you didn’t appreciate it at the time because, let’s be honest, most kids don’t enjoy the fact that their parents made them go to church. However, if you look back now, can you see what a gift that was? Can you see how your parents were giving you a firm foundation on which you can rely for the rest of your lives?
I really don’t know if I would have made it through I made it through if I didn’t have my faith, if I didn’t have God right there with me. I don’t know if I would have had the strength to keep fighting, to keep searching for answers, to keep trying. Our family of origin, the family we grew up with, has a large impact on who we become. Sometimes we can get caught up in seeing all the negative things that came from our family. Maybe today, we could take a moment to think about all the good things that came from our family. Maybe we can think about what a gift it is that our parents passed down the faith to us. We can think back to how many other generations have kept the faith alive in our family so that we could have the foundation we have today. If you didn’t have that firm foundation, if you had to find it on your own, maybe think about how important it is to pass that along to the next generation so that they aren’t lost, and so they don’t have to find God on their own. What a gift that would be.
The verse above ends with, "For this reason, I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands.” It reminds us that God is a Gift. Not everyone knows God, not everyone has received this gift. This verse is telling us to fan the flame of that gift. Fan the flame of the fire inside of us. As the song says, “Fan the flame and make it grow, so there's no doubt or denying. Let it burn so brightly that everyone around can see that it's You, that it's You that we need.” What if your love for God burned so brightly that there was no way to deny it? What if it burned so brightly that it spread like wildfire to all those you meet? Have you ever been with someone who had an infectious laugh? They are filled with so much joy, and when you are around them, you can’t help but laugh too. What if we were like that with the Holy Spirit? We were so filled with the Holy Spirit that when others were around us, they couldn’t help but be filled with the Holy Spirit too. What if we made that our goal? What if our goal was to fan the flame of our faith so that it grew so brightly that all could see it? This is my goal, will you join me?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you, and we want to fan the flame. Will you help us? We want to be so full of your love and goodness that it spills out on all those we meet. We want the fire inside of us to be like a wildfire that spreads to each and every person we come in contact with. We don’t want anyone to have to go another day without knowing your love, your mercy, your glory, and your grace. You are so amazing, Lord. We are so grateful for those who came before us and passed on your faith to their loved ones. Please help us to pass on our faith to our loved ones as well. Give us the strength and the willpower we need to do this, Lord. We love you, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in September 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “There is a well of love that you can come and fill your heart with daily. That well will never run dry. Come and drink from my well of love.”
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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Be Bold & Start With Love
Psalm 63:1 “O God, you are my God, I seek you, my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.”
When I read this verse, I thought it did a great job explaining our yearning for God. We all need God in our lives. We are desperate to have him in our lives. This verse shows this in a way I don’t think I could. It also helps me realize how much I need God. Have you ever read something and then realized that was exactly how you felt, and you didn’t really know it before you read it? I knew I loved God, and I knew I longed for God. However, I couldn’t describe it until I read this verse. My soul thirsts for Him. My flesh faints for Him as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. There is no water if God is not in my life. My life is a dry and weary land when I don’t call upon God.
Carrie Underwood has a song called “What I Never Knew I Always Wanted.” I have not heard this song before and yet I found it today while looking up something. This song was not written about Jesus. I believe it was written about her child, judging from the other words. However, the chorus speaks to how many of us feel about Jesus. The chorus says:
I finally found what I never knew I always wanted
I couldn't see; I was blind 'til my eyes were opened
I didn't know there was a hole
Something missing in my soul
'Til you filled it up with your love
I think so many people are walking around this world right now, and they don’t know God is what they have always wanted. They know they have a hole; they know something is missing in their soul, and yet they don’t know what it is. I like the line; I couldn’t see; I was blind ’til my eyes were opened. How can we help them open their eyes? The next line in this chorus might be giving us the answer to that very question. I didn’t know there was a hole, something missing in my soul, ‘till you filled it up with your love. What if we worked on filling people up with love? What if we showed people so much love that they realized that it was what they had been missing in their lives?
We can’t fill them up with our love, though. Our love is broken and judgmental. Our love is not perfect love; it is flawed, and it can hurt others, even when we don’t want to. However, if we filled them up with God’s Love, the love of Jesus, they would feel an unconditional love that would fill the hole in their soul. I know you are already asking yourself, how do I do that? How do I love with Jesus’ love and not my own love? I know you are asking this because I am asking this, too. We are all called to be a reflection of Jesus. We are called to love like He loved. How did Jesus love? We can’t be expected to love like Jesus if we don’t know how He loved. The best way to know this is to look back at scripture.
Jesus Christ set a perfect example of kindness and love. Throughout His earthly ministry, Jesus showed His love for others by blessing and serving the poor, the sick, and the distressed. Jesus did not run away from the leapers as most people did at the time. He touched them, and He healed them. He did not turn away anyone who needed help. How can we show Jesus’ love to others like this? How can we bless and serve the poor, the sick, and the distressed? Some people listening to this can go out and volunteer at a soup kitchen or a food pantry. Maybe you would rather volunteer at a hospital or somewhere you can help out with people who are sick. Maybe you would like to be a hospice volunteer and sit with those that are dying and have no one to be with them. However, others are listening, and you are thinking your days of helping the poor or the sick are over because you can’t get out of the house to volunteer anywhere. I assure you, your days of helping are not over. They have just changed. Now, instead of going and doing the volunteer work by hand, you can pray for those in need, and you can pray for people to answer God’s call to go and help. St. Terese of Lisieux is the patron saint of missions, even though she was never healthy enough to go on one. She didn’t let her health stop her from praying for everyone who could go on missions.
Jesus also showed his love for others by not making people feel bad for their actions or who they were. God didn’t condemn the tax collectors or the Roman soldiers. He didn’t condemn the woman who was caught in adultery or the woman at the well who had been married several times and was living with a man she was not married to. In the beginning, the Love Jesus had for everyone brought people to Christianity. People found a love they had not known before when they found Jesus. They were used to rules and judgment. They were used to following God, which required so much of them. They found this new religion fascinating. A religion where God just wanted to love you and to be loved. He did not require much on your part. People could come as they were. They were not expected to be perfect because Jesus set the bar when he said in Mark 2:17, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.”
The apostles were not going out and only talking to the Jewish people who knew God and were already following the laws. They were talking to everyone who would listen, and they were preaching about God’s love. Who doesn’t want to be loved? Who doesn't want to be accepted? I think we have lost this idea of talking about God’s love somewhere along the way. Somewhere along the way, we started talking more about the legalistic side of Christianity, especially Catholicism, than we do about the love Jesus had for everyone. Yes, there is a right and a wrong way to live. God tells us what the right and wrong way is in His Scripture. However, we will never get a chance to show people the benefit of living God’s way if we don’t start loving them right where they are at first. People want to be accepted for who they are and they want to be met where they are at. Jesus didn’t tell the tax collectors He would have dinner with them when they changed their life style. He loved them while they were sinners and told them He had so much more for them.
If people feel loved and accepted, they will be open to hearing what you have to say. We want people to know all the things Jesus says. We want people to live according to God’s ways, and we want this because we care about their souls. This is a great thing. I am not saying we are wrong to care about the way people are living their lives. I am saying if we want to save their soul, we need to start with loving them just as they are. The way to get people to want to save their own souls, which is the only way anything will change, is by being a reflection of God’s love. Love them as Jesus does. Love them in all their imperfections and all their messiness of life. Do not continually tell them they need to change who they are, shower them with so much love, tell them about Jesus and how much He loves them, just as they are, and pray for them. Your prayers will do so much more than your nagging will. If people feel judged, they will not ask questions, they will not be open to hearing anything we have to say. I believe what God needs most from us is not us judging others and trying to talk them into changing their behaviors. What He needs most from us is our loving others like Jesus did. He needs us to love them so much they ask themselves, “How can I love as much as that person does? How can I love so unconditionally? How can I be so accepting of people? How can I love so freely?” When they ask those questions, then they will be open to hearing about the Gospel and about a God who loves them completely. Can we do that? Can we love others like Jesus did? Can we lead with love first?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord we long for you just as the verse says. Our souls thirst for you as one would thirst for water in a dry land. Lord, we love you and we want to bring others into a personal relationship with you. Help us do this. Please help us to understand how to love others like you did. Show us where in our lives we are falling short of this Lord. Give us the strength to hold our tongue and to not nag our loved ones to do what we want them to do. We are coming from a loving place Lord, we want to save their souls. Yet we know you are the only one to do that Lord. Help us to learn to say less to the person and pray more to you. Help us to truly turn them over to your loving care Lord. You care more about their souls than we ever could. Help us Lord, we are trying. We are so grateful for all you do. You give light to our lamps and you brighten the darkness about us. You are the word of God, and you are the word of life. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with you will and in Jesus holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in September 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Do not forget my children. I bid you come closer, ever closer. I promise you, I wait for you. I am everywhere. You needn't look far. I am in your smile, a kind word, a sacrifice of any kind, if needed, guiding you as to where you should go.”
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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Be Bold & Keep asking!
1 Samuel 9:16 “Tomorrow about this time I will send to you a man from the land of Benjamin, and you shall anoint him to be ruler over my people Israel. He shall save my people from the hand of the Philistines, for I have seen the suffering of my people because their outcry has come to me.”
The very last line stood out to me when I read this verse. In this verse, God talks to Samuel right before Saul shows up. God said that He will save His people from the hands of the Philistines because He has seen the suffering and because their outcry has come to Him. That is the part that stood out to me. He heard their outcry. I have been encountering more and more people who don’t pray for what they need unless it is a huge deal. They aren't asking God for anything if they don’t need a miracle.
I understand this sentiment. I mean, God is busy; He is doing important things, and we don’t want to waste His time with our small issues. When we do this, we are saying that God has a finite amount of power. We are assuming that He won’t have enough time or enough power to deal with the more significant issues and our smaller issues. God’s time and power are infinite. There are no limits to time or power for God. We never have to worry that our request will take God away from someone else. He is with each one of us 100% of the time.
Not only can God take care of the little things, He wants to. He cares about every aspect of our life. When we ask Him to help us and take care of things, we show Him that we trust Him. We show Him that we want Him in all aspects of our life. There are so many areas where I see people suffering, and they aren’t asking God for help. I understand and believe that redemptive suffering is a thing. I believe our prayers can be more powerful when we are in the midst of great suffering. I believe that if we can offer our suffering up for others, that is a powerful and beautiful thing. I don’t believe that God wants us to suffer for the rest of our lives. I don’t believe that if we have asked God for healing once or twice and it hasn’t happened, then that means that God isn’t going to heal us.
I don’t know why some people have chronic pain and have been suffering for a very long time. I don’t know why it seems like God heals some people, and yet it seems like He doesn’t heal others. His ways are higher than ours, and His thoughts are higher than ours. I do believe God wants us to ask for healing. I believe He wants to hear the words coming out of our mouths. God believes in free will. If we aren’t asking Him for healing, He will probably not be healing it. From all that I have learned, God wants us to actively engage in our relationship with Him. He doesn’t just want us to sit back and have a hands-off relationship with Him. I don’t believe He wants us to hold anything back from Him. I don’t believe He thinks anything is too big or too small for Him.
We have been told in our Encounter Ministries class that God cares just as much about our hang nail as He does about someone else’s cancer. It is not one or the other with God. It is everything. At the Encounter summer intensive, a woman was saying that she had pain and stiffness in her hips. When she sits for any length of time, she has a hard time getting back up and a hard time walking afterward. For a year now, she hasn’t been able to wear shoes with laces because of the stiffness in her hips. She couldn’t bend down to tie them. She was prayed over at the end of the healing night for the summer intensive, and the next day, she could bend down and tie her shoes again. Do you see? God even cares about what kind of shoes you want to wear.
In the verse above, God sent Saul to save His people from the Philistines. He did this because He heard them crying out. Are you crying out? Are you asking God for help? I am not saying that we need to sit around and always cry out to the Lord. I am not saying we should be complaining about our pain or our circumstances either. I am saying that we don’t have to be afraid to ask God for something. We don’t have to feel like we are bothering Him. When we don’t ask Him, we deprive Him of the opportunity to help us.
Think about how good you feel when you help someone out of a difficult situation. Think about the satisfaction and the joy you get when you help others. Now, think about how God might feel when He gets to be your savior and when He gets to save you from whatever it is you are going through, big or small. If you have chronic pain, you may be praying to God all the time, and yet you are not seeing healing. If this is the case, I am so sorry. I wish we could understand why God does what He does. However, if you are in chronic pain and you used to ask for God to heal you and now you have given up asking, I ask you to start again.
I don’t know why He hasn’t healed you yet. I don’t know His plan or when He wants to heal you. I believe with all my heart that He wants to heal you. I do believe He wants you to keep asking for the healing. I believe he wants you to keep believing that healing is possible, that you deserve healing, and that He loves you more than anything else in this world.
I am not sure I believed healing of chronic pain was possible. I think I truly believed it in my heart, yet there was still doubt. If He wanted it healed, He would have done it already, right? Then I prayed with my aunt. She had pain in her legs for over 5 years. She couldn’t walk without pain. It had gotten so bad that she had to quit her job 9 months earlier, and she was basically bedridden as when she walked, her pain was level 11. I told her we could pray together and that I believed God wanted to heal her. This was true, yet I didn’t know what it would be like. I mean, she has had pain for so long. Surely, if God wanted to heal her, He would have. We prayed, and she saw no change. We kept praying for a while. She didn’t have much change that night or the next day. However, a few days later, she got out of bed and was completely pain-free. How amazing is God? He could have healed her at any time, yet He chose that specific day. We don’t know why, and we may never know why this side of heaven. We are happy that my aunt kept asking Him. She didn’t give up or accept this illness as her fate. She could have said no to me praying with her. She could have thought there was no point. But she said Yes, and God came through for her.
He can do this for you too! Please don’t stop asking. Please don’t think things are too big or too little for God. Please don’t feel like anything you ask would ever be an inconvenience to God or that you would bother Him. I don’t think anything makes Him happier than when we turn to Him, and when we show Him, we trust Him by entrusting our petition to Him. Another important piece to this, which I won’t go into but want to mention, is that we should not just ask God for things; we should praise Him daily as well. Thank Him for all He has done and continues to do for you. Show God you are thankful for what He has done, and He will continue to do more. God loves you. He wants to be there for you. Trust Him and share everything with Him.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to bring things to you. Please help us. Help us eliminate our feeling of not enough and our feeling that we would be bothering you with our requests. Please help us to see that you are there for us in the big and the small ways. Please help us to see that you care about all the details of our lives, even the little ones. Lord, give us the strength and the courage to keep asking, even if it is something we have asked for many times before. Help us to keep asking, Lord. We love you, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in September 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Rest in my love right now. Feel the presence. Relax your mind and heart. I touch, each and every heart. Receive more. Receive more. Let your spirit rest with me. As I feed it, more of me.”
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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Today’s Witness if from my friend Jess. Yes went to a healing room at Faith Worship center recently and she received an amazing healing. I will read to you what she posted on Facebook because she was there and can describe it much better than I can. Here is her testimony.
Ok so now everyone at church knows what happened! I AM GOING TO TELL EVERYONE!!!!!
I went to healing rooms at Faith Worship Center yesterday, there were some AMAZING HEALINGS yesterday, but I am going to give my Testimony to the GLORY OF GOD AND WHAT HE DID FOR ME YESTERDAY! I went in for healings of different things and BY GODS GRACE WALKED OUT WITH A SUPERNATURAL HEALING!!!!
So I need to give a back story:
In December I hurt my arm and my right arm, bc of me not going to therapy, was a bit shorter than my left arm. Basically my fingers on my right hand were about an inch shorter than the left, they didn’t meet tip to tip. So I went to healing room yesterday, and after the ladies prayed with me and then left me to soak in the prayer I was given, I had my eyes closed. My palms were facing up on my lap, and I could feel my right arm being dragged across my leg. I opened my eyes and no one was near me, the closest person was three or four rows in front of me, or all the way on the opposite side of the room. So I closed my eyes again and began soaking again. I had a sweatshirt on, and it felt like someone held my hand, my right hand and pulled it. I opened my eyes again right after this! Still no one around me, in fact less people than before! I ran to the closest bathroom and tried something. I measured the way I measure for archery, put my hands straight out in front of me, when I looked at my hands, MY FINGERTIPS WERE EXACTLY THE SAME LENGTH! I was able to put them together and the tips of ALL fingers matched up perfectly!!!!! God had healed me!!!! I was so excited and filled with the Holy Spirit I was literally shaking for HOURS after this (Holy Spirit shaking- the good kind)! I literally felt like a little kid at Christmas! I was so giggly and bubbly and to the point of being so excited I could hardly get the words out straight! I was so excited and happy I literally said I feel like getting on the floor and making snow angels!!!!
So today at church when Pastor Daryl Nicolet asked about being whole and imagining what that would feel like, I turned to my friend behind me and said “JUST LIKE MAKING SNOW ANGELS ON THE CAFE FLOOR!”
So I Just want to Give thanks to God and Jesus for this unexpected, and incredible healing that they honored me with! I lost my voice this morning before church because of all the people I told and all the praising I have been doing and continue to tell in the last 29 hours! Thank you Jesus! Thank you for reading my testimony on the amazing love of God! May you also be blessed in ways you don’t expect!!!!!!
Thank you so much, Jess, for sharing your testimony. I think it makes God so happy when we share the miraculous ways he touches our lives with everyone. God is amazing, and it's great when we remember to give Him all the Glory!! If you are in need of healing, you can check out the Faith Worship Center in Pepperell, MA, on the first Saturday of the month from 10 am to noon.
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Be Bold & Be Like Daniel
Daniel 6:10 “Although Daniel knew that the document had been signed, he continued to go to his house, which had windows in its upper room open toward Jerusalem, and to get down on his knees three times a day to pray to his God and praise him, just as he had done previously.”
This verse may not make much sense if you don’t know the context. Once you do, you can see Daniel's bravery in continuing to pray. This situation boils down to greed and envy, which is the cause of so many bad decisions. Daniel 6:1-5 says, “ It pleased Darius to set over the kingdom one hundred twenty satraps, stationed throughout the whole kingdom, and over them three presidents, including Daniel; to these, the satraps gave account, so that the king might suffer no loss. Soon Daniel distinguished himself above all the other presidents and satraps because an excellent spirit was in him, and the king planned to appoint him over the whole kingdom. So the presidents and the satraps tried to find grounds for complaint against Daniel in connection with the kingdom. But they could find no grounds for complaint or any corruption because he was faithful, and no negligence or corruption could be found in him. The men said, “We shall not find any ground for complaint against this Daniel unless we find it in connection with the law of his God.”
Daniel was a good man. He loved God and was faithful to God. He was also faithful to the king. God was blessing Daniel, and so Daniel was excelling at his job, and the king noticed it. He was about to give Daniel a promotion and put him in charge of the whole kingdom. However, the others were jealous, and they wanted to discredit Daniel. However, they couldn’t find anything that he was doing wrong. Has this ever happened to you in your life? Have you ever had people who were jealous of you or what you have tried to discredit you? It is not a very good feeling. I remember hearing a story once of a woman who my dad worked with. She made an advancement towards my dad, but he was happily married with several kids, and he said he was not interested. She was upset and felt rejected, so she made up lies about my dad to the boss. Luckily, God was looking out for him, and the truth came out.
The people who wanted to get Daniel in trouble went to the king and convinced him to sign something saying that whoever prays to anyone, divine or human, for thirty days, except to you, O king, shall be thrown into a den of lions. They knew Daniel was faithful to his God and that he would continue to pray, even when told not to. The king did not know this. He probably wasn’t even thinking of Daniel when he signed this into law. Once he found out, he was so upset and tried to rescue Daniel, but it was a law he could not revoke.
Daniel was thrown into the lion’s den, and the king was so upset he fasted that night, hoping that Daniel’s God would save him from the lions. And, in case you don’t know the end of the story, God did! Let me read it to you in Daniel 6:19-23. “Then, at break of day, the king got up and hurried to the den of lions. When he came near the den where Daniel was, he cried out anxiously to Daniel, “O Daniel, servant of the living God, has your God whom you faithfully serve been able to deliver you from the lions?” Daniel then said to the king, “O king, live forever! My God sent his angel and shut the lions’ mouths so that they would not hurt me because I was found blameless before him; and also before you, O king, I have done no wrong.” Then, the king was exceedingly glad and commanded that Daniel be taken up out of the den. So Daniel was taken up out of the den, and no kind of harm was found on him because he had trusted in his God.”
Can you imagine what a witness Daniel is, not only for the king but for all those in the kingdom, as well as all those who hear the story later? Can you imagine the bravery Daniel must have had? He knew if he prayed to God during those 30 days, he would be thrown in the Lion’s Den. Or, at least, he knew it was a possibility, and yet he did it anyway. I wonder if I would have done the same. I wonder if I would have been brave enough or if I would have convinced myself that praying to the Lord in secret was ok. That God would understand because he wouldn’t want me to die, either. And this might be true. I am sure God would understand. And yet, Daniel didn’t pray in secret. He did pull down the curtains. He could have gone into his bedroom to pray or to any other room that might not have had windows. However, he didn’t. He continued his prayer routine as though nothing had changed.
When I think of how brave Daniel was, I wonder if I would have been that brave. We live in a society right now where being Christian is not popular. When many people talk about Christians, especially Catholics, they say we are intolerant, unloving, judgmental, and hypocrites. It is sad that this is how Christians are portrayed. Sometimes, it is easier not to stand up for what we believe because we know it will cause conflict. We know others may judge us and say rude things to us. Fortunately, in the country I live in, we will not be put in jail for what we believe, but this is not the same for other countries.
I remember when we lived in England, there was a historic home near us, and we took the kids there one time to explore it. We learned that back in the day, it was illegal to be Catholic. The only acceptable religion was that of the king, the Church of England. The house that we were exploring was owned by Catholics. Priests used to do house calls to provide the sacraments to the Catholics who wanted them. However, if they were caught they would be in serious trouble. According to the internet, During the English Reformation, when Catholicism was outlawed in England, Catholic priests who were caught faced severe penalties, including execution by hanging, drawing, and quartering, or imprisonment.
The house that we went to visit had a priest’s hiding space. It was this hole in the wall where the priest could hide if the British police decided to do a raid. It was a tiny space, but it was a safe space. Can you imagine continuing to attend mass if it meant you might be executed by hanging, drawing, and quartering or put in prison? I know it seems like many of our rights are in jeopardy, even in the United States. There is a lot going on right now, and some of it can seem scary and overwhelming. Life can feel overwhelming if we are constantly watching the news and focusing on the bad things. However, we need to do what Daniel did and keep our focus on the Lord and what He wants us to do.
God is the one who can protect us. He can save us from a lion’s den, and he can also save us from a fiery furnace. If we are doing what the Lord wants us to do, He will protect us. If you are particularly scared about what is happening in this country, I want you to turn your gaze to Jesus. If you hear unsettling things in the news, bring them to the Lord. Ask Him to explain what is going on right now. Ask Him for peace of mind. Ask Him to see the situation through His eyes and with His heart for all who are involved.
God is our savior. End of story. There is no coma, there is no but, God is it. He is all we need. However, when we take our eyes off Him. When we look to the world for our answers, we will always be more scared and more confused. We can look to the Lord for our answers, and sometimes, we don’t have to know how it will all turn out or what we are supposed to learn from this situation. Sometimes, just knowing God is in control of it is enough.
Can we be brave like Daniel? Can we pray even though others may not like it? Can we be different than everyone else? Can we show love, even when others can’t? Can we give mercy and forgiveness even to those who haven’t earned it and don’t deserve it? Can we love God in this crazy world where everyone seems to be telling us not to? Can we look at the terrible things happening in the world and still be faithful to God? Can we still trust that God has a plan, even when we can’t see it? Daniel was willing to risk being thrown in a lion’s den. What are we willing to risk to follow the Lord?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone listening to this podcast. Lord, we want to follow you no matter what. Please help us. Help us not to be afraid. Help us stand up for our beliefs, no matter the consequences. Help protect us from anyone who wishes to hurt us just because we love you. Help us not shy away from you because of fear. Help us to love you more and more with each passing day. Help us to pass that love on to others. Lord, fill us with the holy boldness you gave the apostles. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you are enjoying these episodes and feel like you want to go deeper, then I invite you to join us in mentoring. It meets tonight at 8 PM Eastern Time on Zoom. There is a link below to join. If you would like to check it out before joining, just email me, and I will send you the Zoom link for tonight’s session. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in September 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “When you fret, and you do fret over things that really are not things that you should fret about, I ask you, I beg you, I plead with you. Call upon my Holy Spirit. Just say, Holy Spirit, come take this fret that I have. I give it to you. He will fly in in a flash.”
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Be Bold & Listen To God!
Acts 18:9-10 “One night, the Lord appeared to Paul in a vision and said, “Do not be afraid. Continue with your preaching, and do not be silent, for I am with you. No one will attack you or try to harm you, for there are many in this city who are my people.”
I always get a bit jealous when I hear verses that say the Lord appeared to so and so in a dream or an angel visited them. Then I remembered that although I am not getting visited by angels, that I am aware of, although if you listened to the episode on angels last week, you know we aren’t always aware when we are visited by an angel. Although I am not aware of any visits from angels or the Lord in my sleep, the Lord does show up and talk to us each and every Thursday during prayer group. He also talks to me during my prayer time, so I really have no reason to be jealous. I don’t know if you ever felt like I did. Have you ever been jealous that some people seem to hear the world of the Lord and you can’t? If this is the case, I want to assure you that He wants to talk to you. God is always talking to His people; we just struggle to listen sometimes.
If you are struggling to hear the Lord. If you wish you could ask Him a question and really hear an answer I want you to know you can. It is possible. If you cannot hear Him, it is not because He is mad at you or because He is punishing you. There could be a number of reasons why you can’t hear Him. Maybe you are harboring unforgiveness to others, which can block all kinds of graces. Maybe you don’t believe you can hear Him, so you are afraid to sit in the silence and give Him time to talk. Maybe you don’t have any quiet time in your day? Think about how hard it is to hear someone that you are intentionally trying to hear when you are in a crowded restaurant or on a subway train. Look through your day. If someone was following you around trying to talk to you all day, would there be any times when you would hear them?
The world we live in is busy and noisy. It is not often that we sit and listen to the Word of God. This can change. If you want to start hearing from God, all you have to do is listen. He is already talking to you. I know that this may sound weird to some of you, and yet I think it is important to tell you. I often talk with the Lord. I write Him a letter, and then I write one back to myself and let the Holy Spirit lead what I write in the one back to myself. I feel the Lord is constantly telling me, “Thank you for listening; not many do.” God is not mad; He is not punishing you, He is patiently waiting for you to come to Him and ask Him what He thinks. He is waiting to tell you how much He loves you until you take a minute to listen. Can you give God 5 minutes of your time today to just listen? If you are quiet, if you are asking the Lord to talk, and you can’t hear anything, then you can command the spirit of deaf ears to leave immediately. You can command your spiritual ears to open. You can ask God again and expect that He will answer as He always does!
I am not sure that had a lot or anything to do with the verse, and yet when I feel led by the Holy Spirit, I just agree and go along for the ride. Back to the verse. It says, “One night, the Lord appeared to Paul in a vision and said, “Do not be afraid. Continue with your preaching, and do not be silent, for I am with you. No one will attack you or try to harm you, for there are many in this city who are my people.” I think this verse is a testament to God’s love for Paul. He knew He was afraid and He came to talk to him and to reassure him. It sounds like Paul wanted to leave the place where he was. Paul was in Corinth and that was not a nice town. Its nickname is “Sin City.” I have heard Father Mike liken it to parts of Las Vegas. Paul was preaching at the synagogue to the Jews & the Greeks, but they didn’t really want to hear what he had to say.
When they started to oppose him and hurl insults at him, he decided to leave the synagogue and search out the gentiles. In case anyone listening is like me, and you are not sure who the gentiles were or what that word means, let me explain. You were considered a gentile if you were not Jewish. It was not a certain race of people or a certain tribe of people; it was all people who were not Jewish. God came to Paul in his dreams and told him not to be afraid, that He was with him, and that he would not be attacked or harmed. God is saying this to us, too! He is with each one of us, and He is protecting us from all evil. I was typing up the minutes for my prayer group, and we had several prophecies that seemed to confirm this. There were two that I thought were especially good to go with this verse.
The first one says, “I watch over you, my children. All of you are my children. I break the sword of the enemy who would come against you. You have nothing to fear, for I am there for each and every one of you in each and every trial. I will never forsake my children or leave my children. I will defend you in battle. I have sent you the power of the Spirit, and He will give you all that you need to do what you have been called to do.” Isn’t that amazing? God is telling us that He is here for us. He will defend us in battle and any other situation. You may be thinking you are not in a battle; you are not in the military. Each one of us is in a battle whether we know it or not. Each one of us is in a spiritual battle, and sometimes, the enemy can take it out on our family members. We need to stand firm and hold onto this word from God and all the other words He has given us. God will not let the enemy win. He will protect us. All we need to do is turn to Him.
The second word I thought went along with this verse says, “My children take my hand. Realize that I am with you. Go into the world without fear. I am holding onto your hand. There is no need to fear I am your God. I will protect you. I will defend you. Smile that you are mine. Smile my children. I am with you till the end of time. Come closer, my children, come closer so that I can reveal my mysteries to you so you, in turn, can share them with the world. I am your Lord, I am your God, and I am all-powerful. I hold onto your hand. Move forward, move forward with joy, for you are mine.”
I love how gentle God can be. He is talking about protecting us, and He is doing it in this last verse as any Father would. Think back to when you were little. When you were walking with your dad, you were probably holding his hand. If you weren’t holding it all the time, you at least know it is there if you need it. God is giving us this visual of walking with Him through life and asking us to take His hand and walk side by side with Him; what an amazing visual that is for me. Yes, please, Lord, I would love to walk alongside you! I would love to hold your hand so you can protect me and defend me against this crazy world. I also like how he ended the word with, “Move forward with joy, for you are mine.” We are His children, isn’t that amazing!! God is so good!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to protect and bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we are so grateful you are protecting us! We are so grateful you are a loving Father who wants to hold our hand and walk through this life with us. Lord, we ask that you help us to be able to hear you when you are talking to us. We ask that you open our spiritual ears and allow us to converse with you. I ask that everyone listening to this episode hear your word just as they do in the prayer group meeting. Lord, we thank you for the words above, and we ask that you help them take route in our hearts. If anyone listening to this episode had a difficult relationship with their father, I ask that you let these two messages go deep down in their hearts and take route. You are a good and loving Father to all your children! We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus! I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in September 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My little ones, nothing, absolutely nothing, can separate you from me. When I tell you that I hold you in the palm of my hand, I tell you the truth. No matter what happens, no matter what you're facing, no matter what you're worried about, what you fret about, no matter how anxious you get, I hold you in the palm of my hand. My hand is cupped around your life in a gentle, strong, loving way.”
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Be Bold & Experience Signs & Wonders
Matthew 10:7-8 “As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Cure the sick; raise the dead; cleanse those with a skin disease; cast out demons. You received without payment; give without payment.”
I saw this verse this morning, and I thought it was a great verse for today. As you can tell from a lot of the verses I have been sharing with you lately, the class I am taking talks a lot about the supernatural gifts of the Holy Spirit. I would love to share this information with you because I am not sure how many of us really know or believe that the Holy Spirit is still working in a supernatural way in this world. I am sure we all believe in the signs and wonders that occurred when Jesus walked the earth and the ones the apostles saw and did. However, it seems most people do not believe these things are still happening today or that they have been happening ever since Pentecost.
Through the ages there have been times when the supernatural signs and wonders were less and less. However, there was never a time when there weren’t any signs and wonders. If you read about the Saints, you will see the miracles they performed all throughout the ages. I think because the Saints are attributed to a lot of the miracles that we hear about we assume that only Saints can perform miracles. Do you want to know a secret about Saints? They weren’t always Saints. At one point, every saint was just a regular human like you and me. They didn’t always know they were going to be a Saint. You may be on your way to Sainthood and you might not even know it. All they knew was that they loved Jesus and wanted to do all they could to follow Him. Do you love Jesus? If so, you are well on your way!
In the verse above, Jesus tells us what we need to do. Remember, the Bible is a living document; what we are reading in the Bible is just as much for us today as it was for the apostles 2000 years ago. Jesus is telling you and me to go and proclaim the good news, “The kingdom of heaven has come near.” People need to hear this, even today. Today, the enemy wants to fill us with worry and anxiety. He wants us to spend our time looking around the world and seeing what a mess it is. He wants us to look around the world and feel like things are hopeless because that is what it looks like right now. There is so much violence, so much hatred, so much craziness. It is easy to get lost in worry and anxiety when we are looking at the world. This is why we need to affix our eyes to Jesus. He is our savior. He is our peace. Only when we take our eyes off of Him that we get wrapped up in worry and even fear.
It seems more and more people are giving in to fear and anxiety these days. They are taking their eyes off of Jesus and turning them to the news, to social media, and to the newspapers. We need to be proclaiming the good news of Jesus. We need to be helping people turn their eyes back to Jesus, and what better way to do that than to show them signs and wonders? Signs and wonders will not necessarily be enough to change the hearts toward Jesus. However, signs and wonders might get their attention, and once we have their attention, we can tell them all about Jesus’ love. I think a lot of people are disillusioned with the Church these days. They see all the division and the scandal, and they think that is all the church is. The Church is made up of people, and since we are a fallen people, there will always be people who don’t do as they are called to do. This isn’t a reason to take our eyes off Jesus; if anything, it should be more of a reason to keep our eyes fixed on Him so He can help us not make those same mistakes.
Be honest, when I mention signs and wonders, do you instantly count yourself out? Do you think the Saints could do them because they were Saints, but that isn’t something we ordinary humans can do? Me too! I used to think like this, too. Well, actually, if I am being honest, I still have doubts, but they lessen with each step out in faith that I take. If you are like me, you don’t have doubts that God could do miracles through you; God is God; he can do anything. However, when I think of God doing signs and wonders through me, I think, “Why me?” The enemy gets in my mind, and he tells me God wouldn’t use me. He tells me I am too boring, too weak, too sinful, not holy enough, not good enough, and so on. The thing is, Jesus doesn’t usually use those who are perfect. He didn’t come to find “perfect” people to start His church. He used 12 people who most of us wouldn’t have picked. One of the reasons the Gospels start with the lineage of Jesus is to show us that Jesus did not come from a perfect line of people. There were plenty of people in Jesus’ lineage who weren’t holy enough, weren’t good enough, weren’t even close to perfect by the world’s standards, and yet they were chosen out of everyone to be part of the lineage of Christ.
Besides proclaiming the good news, Jesus is calling us to “Cure the sick; raise the dead; cleanse those with a skin disease; cast out demons.” This is a pretty tall order. However, Jesus will not call us to do something and not equip us for the call. John 14:12 says, “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these because I am going to the Father.” When Jesus went to His Father, he sent us the Holy Spirit, the power we need to do even greater works than Jesus did. It says in this passage, “Whoever believes in me.” This is a tricky statement. I say that because the faith required to do signs and wonders is not something we can manufacture on our own. That type of faith is a gift from the Holy Spirit.
This type of faith can be built up by reading the scriptures and seeing all the signs and wonders Jesus and the apostles performed. It can also be built up by witnessing or hearing about miracles that are happening today. The more you witness these miracles, the more your faith will be built up. This is another reason for doing Witness Wednesdays. Hearing about how God is still working miracles today helps you believe it could happen in your life. When you see it happening to regular, every day people like you and me, you start to think, “If it could happen to them, why couldn’t it happen to me.”
There is a documentary called “Fearless,” and this is what the executive producer said about the movie, “We have come to realize it is more than a movie. It is more of a movement that the Holy Spirit is using to spark an awakening among ordinary Catholics, like you and me, to be able to live their Catholic Faith in an extraordinary way, in an extraordinary, fearless way. It has launched thousands and thousands of people on their own God adventures. You can watch this documentary for free by going to fearlessdocumentary.net. You can also watch it on YouTube. I will put links for both in the show notes. If you get a chance, check it out.
I will continue to talk about signs and wonders, and I pray that something I say will be the one thing you need to hear to get you started on your journey to discovering what signs and wonders God wants to give you. God wants to call us to greater things. No matter who you are, where you are, or how old you are, God has more for you. That will look different for each of us, but He is calling you. Abraham was 100 when He had Issac. Whatever age you are, you are not too old to build the kingdom of God. However young you are, you are not too young to build the kingdom of God. There is a young boy from Italy who was only 16 when he died, and He is blessed and is being considered for sainthood. This is the first millennial to be venerated. God can use you for His purposes. All you have to do is say yes. It may feel scary to say yes to something when you don’t understand it completely, but He will use you in amazing ways if you say yes to the Lord.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone listening to today's episode. Lord, we are so grateful for all the signs and wonders you have done and are still doing. We ask you to show us how you want to use us, Lord. We ask you to give us the strength to say yes even if we don’t understand what we are saying yes to. We ask you to give us the courage to step out in faith and trust that we are doing what you called. Lord, if we can’t hear your call, we ask that you help open our ears, hearts, and minds to whatever you call. We ask that you help us be open to you and your will. Confirm our will to your will, Lord. We love you. You are amazing. We are so grateful for all you do for us, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I. Have a blessed weekend!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in September 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Let my glory shine through the darkness of this world. I send you as my messengers. Let your light shine so all may see that you belong to me. Be not afraid to confront the enemy. Do not be afraid, for I am with you, and I am powerful. I am your God, and I will defend you.”
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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Be Bold & Do the Works Jesus Did!
John 14:12-13 “Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these, because I am going to the Father. And whatever you ask in my name, I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything of me in my name, I will do it.”
This is one of my favorite verses in the Bible. it is one that I read, and when I heard it, I immediately believed it. Some verses are like this in the Bible. When you read the Bible, some things are easy to take in, and others are difficult. These easy and difficult things are different for everyone. We all have different experiences when we read the Bible because we have all had different experiences throughout our lives. There is a quote by Steven R. Covey that I really like. Steven R. Covey said, “We see the world, not as it is, but as we are.” This is true for the Bible as well. We look at and interpret the things we read in the Bible with our own unique lens. For instance, if we had people letting us down our whole lives, we may read the parts of the Bible that talk about trust and struggle to believe we can trust God because we haven’t been able to trust anyone on earth. If we have grown up in a very unloving environment, we may struggle with the parts of the Bible that talk about unconditional love. Other things may come easier to us.
For me, I instantly loved this verse. I know the Bible is God’s Word and that God chose His words very carefully. Sometimes, when we are reading the Bible, there may be a question in our minds about why they used this word vs. that word. One thing I have learned from doing Bible studies is that there is always a reason why certain words were chosen. Also, if you have done Bible studies, you have had the benefit of hearing all about the original Greek or Hebrew words that were used in the original translation and what those words meant. Sometimes, when translated, we don’t have an exact word to mean what they were saying. I find Bible studies fascinating because you gain so much more insight into what the verses are really saying. Anyway, back to the verse. I heard this verse or read this verse, and I believed Jesus’ word to us. I have never really been one to struggle with trust. I grew up in a loving family; I had great friends growing up, I am blessed to be able to say I was not let down by those I know and cared about often growing up. Therefore, I trust them pretty easily.
But what if you don’t trust easily? What if you look at that verse and say there is no way we could perform the works Jesus did? Jesus was God; of course, He performed miracles. Also, the apostles were right there with Him for 3 years during His ministry. Of course, they could do miracles too. We can all usually agree that Jesus did miracles when He walked the earth, and we can also usually agree that the apostles were sent out, and they performed miracles, too. We run into trouble by trying to believe we can do signs and wonders in today's world. Who are we? We are not holy enough; we are not worthy of that power and authority. I agree with both of those statements and yet Jesus still says we will do the works that He did and even greater works than He did. How is this possible?
It is possible through the Holy Spirit. Did you ever realize or notice that no single miracle was recorded in the Gospels before Jesus was baptized? Jesus was fully human and fully God the entire time He walked the earth. There was nothing stopping Jesus from performing miracles during the first 30 years of His life. However, He chose to wait until after He was baptized and received the Holy Spirit to start performing miracles. This is something I recently found out and found fascinating. It was unsurprising to me that Jesus did miracles in the Bible; he is God, after all. I didn’t know that Jesus didn’t use his divinity to perform miracles. He used the Holy Spirit, working through Him to perform the miracles. He chose to put his divinity aside and act from his human nature, with the help of the Holy Spirit, because it would be greater glory for God.
St. Lawrence of Brindisi explains it like this:
"Christ came into the world to do battle against Satan, to do away with idolatry, and to turn the world to faith and piety and the worship of the true God. He could have accomplished this by using the weapons of his might and coming as he will come to judge, in glory and majesty… But in order that his victory might be the more glorious, he willed to fight Satan in our weak flesh. It is as if an unarmed man, right-hand bound, were to fight with his left hand alone against a powerful enemy; if he emerged victorious, his victory would be regarded as all the more glorious. So Christ conquered Satan with the right hand of his divinity bound, and used against him only the left hand of his weak humanity.”
Is this new to you, too? Did you know that God performed these miracles and defeated satan without using his divinity? He relied on the power of the Holy Spirit working through Him. Do you know why this changes everything? It changes everything because Jesus also gave us the Holy Spirit to dwell within us. If you are baptized, then you will have the Holy Spirit living inside of you. If you have the Holy Spirit living inside of you, then you have the power to defeat Satan and to perform works as Jesus did. Another one of my favorite verses is Romans 8:11: “ The Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from the dead, lives in you…” I wish we all knew how much power we actually have inside our frail human bodies.
This verse can be scary to many people. Wait, if I can perform works like Jesus did, does that mean I have to travel worldwide and be a missionary like the disciples were? No, you don’t have to travel anywhere if you don’t feel called to do that. They talked about ministering to your sphere of influence in my class. You can start small. Be an example to your family, your friends, and your co-workers. Let’s read the verse again, “Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these, because I am going to the Father. And whatever you ask in my name, I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything of me in my name, I will do it.”
If you could believe and adopt this verse as your own personal truth, how much greater would your life be? How great would it be to do works like Jesus did? How great would it be to be able to heal a loved one? Did you know there are people doing this every day? Did you know there are lots of people who have read this verse, decided to believe it, and are now living out a supernatural lifestyle with the power of the Holy Spirit? The last line of the verse says, “If you ask anything of me in my name, I will do it.” How awesome of a promise is that? God has so much more for us, and we aren’t asking for it. We aren’t going to God to ask Him what He has for us. Why are we choosing to live a normal life when God is offering us a supernatural one of signs and wonders?
You might be thinking, that is great for you, Catherine. I am glad you believe this verse, and you want that life, but I am happy with mine as is. If this is what you are thinking, I challenge you over this next week or so to bring this to prayer. I challenge you to be brave enough to talk to God about it. Tell Him how you feel about this verse and ask Him if He has anything to say to you about it. When we do signs and wonders, we build up people’s faith. Don’t you think this world needs some faith-building right now? Look at the day of Pentecost; 3,000 were baptized on that day. I know this verse can be scary. I know the thought of us healing or performing miracles is strange to most of us. I know it is way outside of our comfort zone. I also know God is calling us all to it. I also know that this world needs people willing to step outside their comfort zone. God needs people who will step out in faith, knowing they have the Holy Spirit inside them and that He will guide them.
If this verse is something that you struggle with, write it down and look at it often over the next month. Bring it to God and ask Him to show you how this applies to your life. Ask God what He wants you to do with this verse. Be brave and bold. If you ask the Holy Spirit for help, He will help you. Just start small. Step out in faith and ask a loved one if they want you to pray for them. If you spend time with God, He will guide you on this journey. He will lead you to where you need to go. We must be brave enough to say three small words, “Use me, Lord.” Can you be brave enough to say those words? Can we be Christ’s hands and feet here on earth? Remember, we have a good, good Father. He is going to ease you into this lifestyle. He will meet you where you are and build your faith along the way. Trust Him and give Him permission to work in your life; give Him permission to use you, and He will.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask you to send your angels to prepare the way for everyone listening to hear this message today. We pray you give us the courage to believe this verse and to step out in faith, knowing you have given us the power of the Holy Spirit to help us do your work here on earth. Lord, the world needs you more than ever, and if we can bring you to others, please show us how. Show us what you want each of us to do. Reveal to us what this verse means for each of us in our lives. We love you, Lord; you are incredible. We are so grateful you gave us the Holy Spirit. Lord, you are the almighty one, the king of kings and the Lord of Lords. You are the light of the world. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I. Have a blessed weekend!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in September 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “When I told you to walk the extra mile with the soldiers, their sacred duty was to only have a person walk a mile. If you walk another mile, they don't know what to do. It throws them off their game. Respond in love, and they will not know what to do, except understand where my word is coming and the special gifts that I have given to you.”
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Today’s Witnesses are from the Encounter Ministries NorthEast Regional Conference that I just attended this past weekend. I had the privilege of being on a prayer team with someone who I had never met before. This is how they usually do it. If you are selected for prayer teams, you are assigned a partner that you do not know. I like this because you get to meet someone new and also because you get to learn from that person. We all pray a bit differently, and we all hear the Lord differently. it was really great to experience praying with my partner, Lynn.
We were asked to pray in three different ways. The first time we prayed, it was for a baptism in the Holy Spirit. I have done this type of praying before but not very often, and I was nervous I wouldn’t know what to say. However, the Holy Spirit came through, as He always does, and it was great. The first person we prayed over was slain in the spirit. I had never prayed over anyone who was slain in the Spirit before. If you don’t know what that means, it means that they are so filled with the Holy Spirit that they can no longer stand, and they fall backward and lay on the ground. Of course we have people catching them so they do not get hurt. They are not passed out, but they are not really awake either. Those who I have talked to who have been slain in the Spirit said it is really peaceful. When they get up, they are so full of peace and the love of the Father.
When we asked people how they were feeling at the end of our prayer, most said either “really good” or “very peaceful.” God is so good. He gave each person exactly what they wanted. There were over 600 people attending the conference, and there were only about 30 prayer groups. So, we prayed over a lot of people each time.
The next section was the Prophetic Sections. So when someone would come up to us for prayer, we would ask if they had anything specific they would like us to ask God about for them. Many of them said that they didn’t have anything specific, and then some of them did. What we do when we pray for a prophetic word is we ask the Lord what He would like to say to the person, and then we are quiet and listen. Then we tell the person what we heard the Lord say, and then we ask them if what we said resonates with them or makes sense to them. This last part is mostly to help us grow in our gifts. The more we know about how accurate our prophetic words are, the more we can know what is the Lord’s voice and what is not.
It was exciting because everything we said seemed to resonate with the people we prayed with. God is so good, too, because He must have known that we were nervous that we might not hear His voice, so oftentimes, He would give me and my partner very similar messages so that we were able to be confident it was from the Lord. We also had several people who said that the word we gave them Friday morning during the prophetic part actually confirmed what their prayer team had told them the night before during the Baptism in the Spirit section.
We had one person who told us He wanted God to confirm something for Him. He wanted us to pray that God would give him a message that would confirm either something he heard the other night or something he had been thinking about. He did not tell us what he wanted to be confirmed. He didn’t have to because the words we were getting were coming from God, and he knew what this young man wanted to hear. We said we would ask the Lord and then tell him what we heard. We couldn’t guarantee it would be what he wanted to hear.
I closed my eyes, and I immediately got an image of a cross on a hill. At first, I couldn’t tell if it was Jesus’s crucifixion or not. Then I saw Jesus on the cross, and I heard very clearly, “Even if you were the only one, I would have still died for you. That is how much I love you.” The young man was shocked and started to cry. He said that did confirm what he was thinking. He said for some reason, this whole conference, he had been running away from God’s love. He wasn’t sure why. He felt God was trying to tell him how much he loved him, and he seemed to be running away. But now he was sure that God loved him. How amazing is that? We had no idea what this young man wanted to hear, but God did!
We had so many beautiful experiences just like this. It is such an honor to witness people hearing what the Lord wants to say to them. It is an honor to be used as an instrument for the Lord to pass along His words, His encouragement, and his love to each and every person we prayed with. Each person left our prayer session feeling loved and seen. That is another superpower of the Lord. When you receive prophetic words, you are able to feel seen, truly seen, and known in a way that you have never felt before. God is so good!!
The last thing we prayed over was for physical healing. There was a healing service first, and then we did individual healing. During an encounter ministry healing service, they always start with corporate prayer. During this section of the healing service, everyone is involved in prayer for those who need it. The person in charge of leading the healing service calls out a part of the body, and those who need healing for that part of the body raise their hand. Then those who don’t need healing for that particular part of the body stand up and go find someone with their hand raised, and they pray with them.
The leader of the healing service calls out what we are to say, and we all repeat after him or her. He or she calls our commands to our body, such as, “In the name of Jesus, I command all bones, ligaments, joints, and muscles associated with this pain to be healed now.” or “In the name of Jesus, I command all pain to leave now.” Everyone who is praying with someone will repeat what the leader says. Then, the person who was receiving prayer will take a moment and check it out and see how they are feeling. They check if the pain is gone. They check if they can do something they couldn’t do before. Often, this is when we see the breakthrough. Once they step out in faith to “check” and see if they were healed, they notice they were healed.
During the corporate part of the night, there were so many people who were healed at least 75% or better. There were two people who had stage 4 cancer who said their cancer hadn’t been healed but that they did have healing from some of the symptoms. One woman, Rolanda, has stage 4 cancer. It started as breast cancer but is now in her bones. She was in a lot of pain, but after the prayer, she said her knee pain and her back pain were completely gone. She still had some pain in her neck, but all the other pain was gone. Praise God! I prayed with Rolanda during the prophetic, and I am praying that she is completely healed of her cancer and that she doesn’t have to leave her children. Please, Lord, heal her!!
During the corporate prayer, there were several college students sitting in front of us. One was healed when we prayed for all legs, hips, ankles, knees, toes, and anything else in that area. She had pain in her ankle, and after prayer, it was gone. She was so surprised she was crying. She couldn’t believe the Lord loved her enough to heal her ankle. Next, two other college students suffered from TMJ in their jaw. One of the young ladies said it was very painful, and she had a constant click in the jaw. She was stunned that after prayer, she had no pain and almost no clicking. She decided to test it out by chewing a piece of gum. She said for a few seconds that her jaw would have usually locked up by now, but it didn’t! She claimed healing, and when I saw her the next day, she said she was doing great!! The young man who suffered from the TMJ was also healed. He no longer had any pain or clicking. He was the boyfriend of the young woman whose ankle was healed!
Another healing happened with a friend of mine who attended the Boston Campus of the Encounter Ministries. His name is Hugh, and he had surgery on his knee sometime last year in the spring. He is out of the cast and has been doing much better. However, earlier that day, we went to pick up pizza for our whole group. He was carrying some of the pizza down the few stairs in the park, and he said his knee was bothering him. He requested prayer during the corporate prayer section, and the pain was gone. He tested it out by showing us he could walk up the altar stairs without pain!! There were so many other people who were healed. It was amazing!!
God is so good! He healed so many people that evening, whether it was when we were all praying in a group or when they went to the individual prayer teams. The whole weekend was amazing, and I am so glad I went I am so glad I volunteered to be on the prayer team. It was a truly wonderful experience. I can’t wait until the next time I get to go!
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Be Bold & Do It Anyway
Esther 4:14 For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?”
I think we can all agree that the world is a pretty crazy place right now. In America, there is so much disagreement and arguing going on right now. I am not sure there has been a time when the country was more divided. Although, as I say that, I am reminded of the Civil War, and I think that was probably a time when this country was more divided. In the world, there are wars going on in several countries. There is famine; there are still 1 in 4 people who do not have access to safe drinking water. How is that possible with all the technology we have today?
Thinking about how crazy this world is can lead us into an emotional spiral, especially if we feel there is nothing we can do about it. I want to encourage you not to get stuck in negative thoughts and to watch less news if you find yourself starting to spiral or getting stuck in those negative thoughts. If you read the stories of the Saints, you will see that all of them mention how the times they are living are the worst that they have ever been. I think we all feel this way because we live in a broken world, and when we compare that to the world God wants us to be able to experience, we see such a stark contrast.
However, what if God has been preparing us for such a time? There is a story in the Bible about Esther. She was a young Jewish woman who found favor with the king and became the queen. Her uncle Mordecai adopted her as his own when she was young, as both parents died. Mordecai had told Esther before meeting the king not to reveal that she was Jewish, and she listened. This story tells about how a powerful vizier to the king, named Haman, wanted to kill all the Jews living in the Persian Empire in one day. He was angry because Mordecai refused to bow down to him. Mordecai explained he only bows down to God and this angered Haman—who told the king that there were people living throughout his kingdom that did not obey the same laws of the king and that he should not tolerate them. He convinced the king to issue a decree that would destroy the Jews, and upon doing so, Haman agreed to put ten thousand silver talents into the royal treasury. When the Jewish people heard, they went into mourning with prayer and fasting. Mordecai got word to Esther and explained the situation. He asked Esther to talk to her husband, the king, and beg for the lives of her people to be spared. Esther explained that if anyone goes in front of the king while he is in the inner courtroom without being summoned, they will suffer immediate death unless he offers them the end of the scepter. Mordecai wrote back the following in Esther 4:14: “For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?”. Esther risked her life to go in front of the king, and because of her bravery, she saved her people, God’s people. We do not usually know why we end up where we end up or why we go through the things that we go through. God is a mystery, and only he knows what he is doing. He can see the whole picture: past, present, and future. We can only see the past and present. I once heard a quote that I liked and found comforting when I was going through some hard times. The quote said, “You were assigned this mountain to show others it can be moved.” I found it comforting to think that by making it through the situation, I would show others that they could make it through, too. I also used the quote in reverse and thought, “Ok, then I just need to look for someone who has made it through this type of situation to show me that I could make it through as well.” There is a song by Christina Perri that’s called "I Believe." In that song, she says, “I believe that you fell so that you would land next to me.” Have you ever been in a situation where you can tell God arranged it? Sometimes, we can tell what God is doing. Sometimes, we can feel it in our bones that we are exactly where we were meant to be at that precise moment. God placed us here in this moment, and what if everything we have done up to this moment has been getting us ready for whatever is going on in our lives right now? What if all the scripture readings we have done, bible studies and prayer groups we have attended, and all the praying we have done were specifically to help us get through these tough times? What if all those days at the gym, long walks, or yoga classes were to prepare us for the mental and physical challenges of these past few months? What if all the past experiences we have had with friends, families, and coworkers were to prepare us for this extraordinary time in history? Take a few minutes and think of all the experiences you have had in your life that have taught you persistence and resilience. Can you see how they may have prepared you for all of this? Consider your qualities, strengths, and what you have to offer in this difficult time. If God placed you here and made you exactly who you are for this time, why did he do this? What is it that you, with your unique background and experiences, can offer to others at this time? Maybe you are great at reaching out to people and making sure they are ok, or maybe you write great poetry that can help give people hope and make them smile right now. Maybe you are really great at praying for others and can hold us all in prayer right now. I don’t know what your circumstance is, but I do know that if we lean into God during this difficulty, he will lead us through it. Look at the circumstances the Israelites were facing when God led them out of Egypt. There are so many examples in the Bible of really hard times, yet God saved them when his people called. So, let’s call out for him, and while we are waiting, let us ask ourselves why God has put us here at such a time.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless everyone listening to this podcast. Lord, we thank you for making us who you made us to be. We thank you for all of the training you've given us up until this point in everything you help us to learn in the future. Lord, we ask that you show us what we are good at and what we can contribute in this difficult time. We ask that you be with everyone who is struggling right now. Lord, we ask that you give us the strength and perseverance to keep going. We ask that you show us those who have come before us they have overcome similar circumstances and give us the knowledge that we too can overcome them. Lord, you are amazing, and we're so very thankful for all you do for us. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus's holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. We are starting a new series in mentoring tonight, “For Such A Time As This.” Have you ever wondered why you had to go through the things you have had to go through? Why does God put you in certain places at certain times? Or in certain people’s lives at a certain time? We are going to explore that this month and see why God made us “For Such A Time As This” and what we have to bring to the table. I pray you will join us and see if mentoring is a good fit for you. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in September 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My little one. My children come and stay for just a short time only. I give you much to do, but I support you every step of the way. You are my mighty ones. I rely on you every day.”
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Be Bold & Be An Ambassador For Christ!
2 Corinthians 5:20-21 “So we are ambassadors for Christ since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake, he made him to be sin who knew no sin so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
I love this verse because it reminds us that we are all ambassadors for Christ. This is true whether we want to be or not. The fact is that when you are Catholic and when you are Christian, people are always watching you. They are watching what you are doing and what you are saying. They are watching to see how “Catholics” or “Christians” act. If you are a Christian, your life is a witness to Christ. What type of witness are you?
Everything we do and say is evaluated. I had a friend who said she stopped going to church because she was tired of going for fellowship after mass, and it would just turn into a gossip session where they would talk about all those who weren’t there. Or sometimes, those who were there but just not in earshot of their conversation. She got tired of these people who said they were Christian and went to church each week and yet were so full of judgment and gossip.
Unfortunately, my friend’s story is not all that uncommon. There are plenty of people who have left the church for things that have either happened in the church or at the church. I know several people who have left the church because of the abuse scandal that was going on within the church. I do not blame those who left. The priests and those who follow Christ are held to a higher standard. This is because we represent Christ. We are His followers and also his ambassadors.
It is our job to represent Christ. When people look at us, we want them to see Christ. We want them to look at us and say, “I want what they have.” Instead, a lot of times, others will see us getting angry and lashing out, gossiping, or treating others disrespectfully, and instead of saying, “I want what they have,” they say, “If that is what it is like to be Christian, then I don’t want any part of it.” We are all human, and we all make mistakes. However, the more we can be Christ-like, the more others will recognize that there is something different about us, and they will want to see what that is.
I had the opportunity to witness the peace of Christ this weekend at a conference I went to. I was in charge of booking the Uber to get us to and from the conference. It was a somewhat easy job, and I didn’t mind at all. The conference went from Thursday after until Saturday night. We didn’t really have any issues Thursday. Friday morning, the Uber came as scheduled, and our day was off to a great start. Each time we got out of the Uber, we asked the Uber driver if he needed us to pray for anything for him, and they always thanked us and told us what prayers they needed. Mostly, they just said for their health and or their families.
This morning was no different. As I gave the Uber driver the tip money, I asked what he wanted prayer for, and he said for his health, he was having some problems. We said we were headed into the church and we would pray for him. He thanked us and drove away. As soon as we got into the church, I looked for my phone and realized I must have left it in the back seat of the Uber. This is typically not too much of a problem as Uber has a great way to let them know you forgot something in the car. However, it was my Uber account we were using, and I didn’t have my phone.
I couldn’t just report it on the app because I didn’t have my phone. I tried to sign into the app on my friend's phone, but Uber sent a code to my email to ensure it was me. I tried to sign into my email on my friend’s phone, but they sent a code to my phone number to ensure it was me. So, long story short, I could not get ahold of Uber without my phone. Then, I remembered, I am sure the Holy Spirit reminded me, that I had my computer back at the hotel, and I was signed into Uber and my email both on that. So, I just let go of all the worry and stress and reached out to Uber when I returned to the hotel that night.
I also asked those around me to pray that I get my phone back. However, the rest of the day, I just let it go. I did not really worry about it or stress about it. There wasn’t anything I could do to change it, so I turned it over to God. When I returned to the hotel, I contacted Uber through their website. They contacted the driver, and he called the following day. He had to drive to an airport not too far away, so he dropped my phone off at the hotel at 9 AM Saturday morning. I was already at the conference for the day, but I got it when I got back to the hotel at 11 PM that night. Aside from being without it for two days and the fee I needed to pay for having the driver come and return it, it all worked out.
I am telling you this story because I could have freaked out about losing my phone, yelled, screamed, and cried, letting it ruin my entire two days at the conference. I could have gotten angry and lashed out at those around me. However, I didn’t. I accepted the situation I was in. I accepted that there was nothing I could do to change it until I returned to the hotel. I turned it over to God, the only one who could do anything about it, and I let it go. I was at the conference with about 13 other people. They all mentioned how well I was handling the situation. They mentioned that they didn’t think they would have been that calm. I could say that I could do nothing and that God would take care of things. I was able to be a witness to Christ through that circumstance.
We all have difficult circumstances in our lives. How are we responding to them? Do we remember that God is in control and uses all things for our good? Do we remember that we are children of God? Do we remember that there is someone bigger than ourselves at work in our situations? Do we remember that others are watching to see if what we say is really true? They are watching to see if we truly believe what we say. If we tell others that things will be ok and that all they need to do is trust in God, and then when something falls apart in our lives, we don’t trust in God. Then, of course, they are not going to believe us.
We need to be bold and stand by what we say. We need to be bold and live the Gospel. We need to trust in the Lord, even when it is hard. We need to forgive others even when it is hard. We need to love our neighbors even when we don’t want to. Whether we like it or not, God is counting on us to be His face to the world. He is counting on us to be His ambassadors and His examples. If we, the ones who love God and know how much he loves us, can’t live the Gospel, how can we expect others to? Be Bold and be the face of Christ to others.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone listening to this episode. Lord, we love you, and we want to be your ambassadors. Please help us! We want to be the face of Christ to all those we meet. We want others to look at us, see all the gifts You have given us, and want what we have. We want to bring others to you, Lord; show us how. Help us to live the Gospels in a way that encourages others to live the Gospels, too! We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to seeing you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in September 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, you may look like a ragtag bunch, but there's a glow coming from your face. And when you assemble together, that glow is brilliance. And that glow is still there when you walk into your individual lives. That is me. And you are touching people just by being yourself. You are my tool for reaching others. I send you forth. I am always with you. Be courageous.”
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Be Bold!
Deuteronomy 31:7-8 “Then Moses summoned Joshua and said to him in the sight of all Israel: “Be strong and bold, for you are the one who will go with this people into the land that the Lord has sworn to their ancestors to give them; and you will put them in possession of it. It is the Lord who goes before you. He will be with you; he will not fail you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed.”
I thought it was interesting that this was a verse that I read this morning. Yesterday at prayer group, we stayed after and did our monthly bookmark meeting. What this means is that we take a look at the bookmark for the month, and we each say what stands out to us. The bookmark is the discerned word for a particular month. Each week at prayer group, we get several words of prophecy from the Lord. We record these words that are given, and there is a team that discerns the words given and picks one: Call, Proclamation, Promise, and Directive for the month. One of our members then types them up and puts them on a bookmark so we can share them with the entire prayer group.
Yesterday we did the bookmark from February 2023. That was almost a year ago, and yet the bookmark was similar to the words that we received yesterday. For the most part, the Lord is not saying new things to us. He is saying the same things we have heard time and time again. Sometimes, He says those things in a new way, and sometimes, He uses very similar words. What is striking to me today is how this passage says, “Be strong and bold,” and this is the same thing He was telling us last February and the same thing He told us yesterday.
In the February bookmark, the Lord said, “Do all to make me known and proclaim my Name. Be bold and step out. Serve me with all you are each and every day. Go now. Do not delay.” The passage talks about being strong and bold so they can take over the promised land. The passage in the bookmark talks about being bold so we can proclaim the Lord’s name. The apostles prayed for this boldness to preach the word of the Lord at a time when it was very dangerous to preach about Jesus. In Acts 4, Peter and John talk to people about Jesus and His resurrection. The rulers, elders, and scribes didn’t like what they were teaching, and they threatened Peter and John as to what would happen to them if they didn’t stop talking about Jesus.
Instead of cowering and obeying when they were told to stop talking about Jesus, they prayed for more boldness to do it anyway. Acts 4:29-31 says, “And now, Lord, look at their threats, and grant to your servants to speak your word with all boldness, while you stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus.” When they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken; and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God with boldness.” They asked for boldness, and they were given it. It is the same for us. All we need to do is ask. God is calling us to be bold in our faith. We sometimes worry that we will be alone in this boldness. Sometimes, it can feel like it is us against the world, and when we think about being brave, we aren’t sure we can do it.
In the verse above Moses reminds Joshua that God will be with Him when they go into the promised land. It says, “It is the Lord who goes before you. He will be with you; he will not fail you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed.” This is reminding Joshua that God will not let them down. He is reminding them that they do not have anything to be afraid of. It is not up to them to defeat the enemy. God will be with them, and He will help them! In the February bookmark, before God told us to be bold, he reminded us, “I am the Lord of the universe.”
God is not calling us to be bold on our own. He is right there with us. He goes before us to prepare the way. For instance, if God is calling you to be bold and step out in faith and pray over someone, then He has already prepared that person’s heart to accept that prayer. If God is asking you to be brave and ask for something then He has already softened hearts and prepared them for you. God says 365 times in the Bible, some version of “do not be afraid.” This is another way to say, “Be bold.”
My friend Peggy at prayer group yesterday was saying she has learned to be bold just by hearing the title of this podcast. She said it reminds her that she can be bold with Jesus by her side. She said she has gotten much bolder since listening. She gets a daily devotional from another friend of ours. She forwards it to many people. She was brave and took a step in faith and gave her grandson a Max Lucado book called “Fearless.” She wasn’t sure how he would respond. He is a teenager and, in the past, has been resistant to faith. However, recently he said he has been reading the Bible. She took this book off of her shelf and said she thought he might like it and gave it to him. Her grandson sent her a text message when he got back home to FL saying that he read the book the entire plane ride and he really liked it.
Do you see how God works? He is helping us to be brave by preparing those we encounter to receive us. I don’t think that means it will always work out as well as it did when Peggy gave her grandson the book. We may encounter some opposition when we step out in faith. We may encounter some people who say no to what we are asking. That is ok. The apostles saw this too. Our job is not to allow these times when people say no to deter us from our mission. That mission is the same for each one of us. That mission is for us to bring the love of Jesus to each and every person that we meet. We can do this because we have Jesus. He is on our side! He is leading the way. Be bold and step out in faith. Bring Jesus’ love to someone you know and love today!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each and every person listening. Lord, help us to be brave. Help us to look for opportunities to share your love with others, and then give us the courage to do so. We love you, Lord, and we ask this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I hope over these last two and a half years of listening you have been able to walk a bit more boldly in your faith. I look forward to seeing you here again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Do not let the news of the times you live in wear you down, upset you, depress you. I am a God of victory. I have conquered all by giving my life on the cross and allowing the gift of my Father to raise me from the dead. A gift that He has given you through me. Do not be afraid. Do not be afraid no matter what things look like, no matter how they feel. Trust, Trust in me. Trust in the Father’s tremendous love for all of you and for all of His creation. Trust in the power that can be given to you through the Holy Spirit. Continue daily, daily, every moment you breathe to worship, to praise, to adore, for we are your God, One in three. Holy, undivided, blessed, glorious God. And we love you and give you the victory that is in us
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Be Bold & Turn To God (Be Bold Series)
Psalm 138:7-8 “Though I walk in the midst of trouble, you preserve my life. You stretch out your hand against the anger of my foes; with your right hand, you save me. The Lord will vindicate me; your love, Lord, endures forever—do not abandon the works of your hands.
When I read this passage, I got the picture of a football player holding the ball in his right hand, with his body turned away from the opposing player and his other hand out to block. However, instead of being a football player, it is God. He has His right arm around me, shielding me from danger, and His left hand out to shield me from the anger of my enemies. To me, this is a beautiful image. I am so thankful that I know that God is out there protecting me. I have heard some incredible stories of this protection. I think that sometimes we can think that God can protect us from things by helping us avoid them or making sure we are in the right place at the right time. And He does do this. However, He can also protect you from danger at the moment as well.
The verse above starts with the statement, “You preserve my life.” I would like to tell you a story that is an excellent example of this. The story is from the book “How To Live Like A King’s Kid." by Harold Hill. If you have not read this book, I can’t recommend it enough. It is so good and will definitely boost your faith. Here is a short excerpt of how God can save you from real physical danger at the moment.
“Recently, I was driving down a divided highway to a meeting. The dividing strip was maybe 20 feet wide. Suddenly, a car coming from the other direction, going about 70, the same speed I was traveling, started to cross the strip. It was headed straight for me. A 140 mph impact was in the making, with me in the middle. Mincemeat.
I was glad I didn't have to wait to get into the high gear of praise and Thanksgiving because I wouldn't have had time. It all happened so fast. Walking in the light has to do with all circuits being tuned up by praise and Thanksgiving all the time – in everything, giving thanks for everything. I have been walking in the light all day. So I thanked God and prayed in the spirit for the people in the other car all in the same breath, realizing it could be my last one. But I was singing the songs of Zion, knowing that King's kids don't have to graduate on Satan's terms.
The car hurtling at me was less than 20 yards away when suddenly it shot straight up in the air and turned upside down. It was a convertible, the top was down, and people flew in all directions. Then, the car crashed flat right alongside me.
"Lord, do you want me to stop?" I asked him then. “No. Don't stop. You intercede,” was is the message I got. In my rearview mirror, I could see other cars and trucks stopping. They wouldn't need my physical presence there, but God needed me to be an intercessor. And so I kept on praying, praising God, praying in tongues. I was aware of raw power, rivers of living water, flowing from my innermost being directly to the throne of grace as I interceded in the spirit.
Before I was half a mile down the road, I had God's assurance that he had taken care of everything, and I went to my meeting satisfied. That was Friday. On Sunday morning, I was invited to speak at the Kent Island Methodist church near where the accident occurred. I shared my experience from the pulpit and said that if anyone present knew the outcome of the accident, I'd like to hear about it. I knew something good had taken place. Sure enough, three people came to me at the church door after the service and said they were at the scene just a few minutes after the accident happened because they lived close by. The car had blown a tire, going at high speed, and had gotten completely out of control. The people in the convertible had fallen clear of the car, and everyone had walked away from the accident! The car was demolished, but no person was injured. It was a miracle.
A car coming straight at you on a level Road does not suddenly jump straight up in the air. From straight forward motion to vertical motion is impossible unless you hit something curved to change the course. And that's what happened in that accident. The car's course was changed when it hit a curved surface – the curved circle of light that prevented darkness from entering to annihilate a king's kid. There were millions of foot-pounds of energy involved, but that's nothing for an angel of the Lord. Hallelujah! When we call upon the king, he works supernaturally to deliver us from trouble.”
I always get emotional when I hear stories like this because I am reminded of how much God loves us and that He will go to any lengths to save us. I also get emotional because of how touching it is. These people all seemed to be headed for death. Their lives could have been over in an instant. And they weren’t. Satan meant for that tire to go out and for the situation to end badly. If Satan had gotten his way, those people would have died. You and I don’t know the state of their souls, but even if they went to heaven, what about the effects of their deaths on those still living? Unexpected death of a loved one often brings with it anger. It can cause some to question God and why He would let such an awful thing happen. Some people get angry with God and they don’t let it go. However, it says in Genesis 50:20, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.” God takes Satan’s plan for evil and uses it for good.
Harold Hill has sold over 1,000,000 copies of his book. He has also probably told that story to thousands of people or more. Instead of this story ending in tragedy, it is a story that has probably given people faith that they did not have before and definitely strengthened the faith of those who were already believers. How incredible is that?
Dear Heavenly Father, I pray that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we thank you for your protection. We thank you for all the miracles you make happen every single day, the big and the small ones. Lord, we thank you for all the times you protected us from something that we didn’t even know about. Lord, we ask that you help us learn to make a habit of praising you so that if we are in a situation like Harold was, we will be prepared. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus! I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in September 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Continue to be humble before me, letting my power be your strength. Letting my power and my wisdom guide you and guard you. The victory is mine. And I give it to you. I raise a victorious people. Keep your eyes on me, for I am the victory.”
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Welcome to Witness Wednesdays here on the Walk Boldly With Jesus Podcast. I am your host Catherine Duggan, however, each Wednesday I will have a guest give their witness of how God is working in their lives. Hearing how God is working in other people’s lives shows us how deeply He cares for each one of us individually. Listening to these experiences will help your faith grow. I am so blessed to be able to share these with you. The title of Today’s Episode is The Lord Doesn’t Have Favorites, He Has Intimates. Our guest speaker today is Tina and she is going to talk about her journey to forgive. We all struggle with forgiveness, some more than others, but it is not easy for any of us. Listening to how others learned to forgive helps us on our journey toward forgiveness. While you listen to Tina’s amazing witness try and see how it may apply to your own journey. Thank you Tina for being willing to share your difficult journey! We have all seen God working in our lives. However, we might not all be aware it is God working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences, the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience of how God has worked or is working in your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or click here. It won’t take up much of your time, and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story, and the world needs to hear them.Music:"Adding the Sun"fine us. It is not fun, Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ www.findingtruenorthcoaching.comCLICK HERE TO DONATECLICK HERE to sign up for Mentoring CLICK HERE to sign up for Daily "Word from the Lord" emailsCLICK HERE to sign up for my newsletter & receive a free audio trainingabout inviting Jesus into your daily lifeCLICK HERE to buy my book Total Trust in God's Safe Embrace
Be Bold & Be Content!
Philippians 4:11-13 “Not that I am referring to being in need; for I have learned to be content with whatever I have. I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me.”
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we all learned this invaluable lesson? Paul said that he has learned to be content with whatever he has. If we could all learn this, there would be so much less fighting in the world today. A lot of fighting seems to begin when someone has something and someone else wants it. It can be a material thing, like oil, food, or water, or it can be something else, like power, fame, or good fortune. When we see others with these, we tend to get jealous and want what others have. Some people feel they deserve to take what others have and try to take what they want.
Can you imagine a world in which we are all content with what we have? I think it is hard in this country because we have access to so much, and the American dream seems to be wanting more and more. Climbing that ladder of success no matter what it means for you personally or in your relationships. It seems that there are few people in this country who are content with what they have. I think social media makes it even harder to be content with what you have because everyone is always posting photos about their new car, their vacation, their house, or whatever exciting new thing just happened to them. Back in the day, if your neighbor got a new car, you would see it outside their house, but you wouldn’t be reading about it online. You probably wouldn’t always see everyone’s photos of their vacations. It would be if you happened to be at their house when they developed their film.
However, with digital cameras and phones in everyone’s hands all the time, we tend to document our lives and live more publicly than we used to. This is not necessarily a bad thing as I am very happy that I get to keep in touch with my friends from all over the world. I like that I can spend 30 minutes on social media and catch up on most major events in my friends' lives instead of having to email, snail mail, or call all of them. Technology has been a lifesaver in many instances. Especially when we couldn’t leave our houses during the pandemic. My family had many Zoom calls during that time, and it was great to be able to see everyone's faces.
As much as technology can be a lifesaver, it can also be a major source of envy for many people. It can be hard when you are going through a particularly hard season of parenting, and all you see on social media are these posts that make it seem like everyone else seems to be a superstar parent. Maybe you have been struggling with health, yet everyone you look at online seems so healthy, and it appears to come so naturally to them. Maybe you just lost your job. I know this is a very real possibility for many people today with all that is happening. It is hard if you lost your job not to be jealous of those who have jobs and are posting about their jobs.
You can tell people are not content with what they have when you hear them constantly complaining. When you are content with what you have you don’t complain much. You are happy with the way things are, and you are grateful for what you do have. The definition of being content is being in a state of peaceful happiness. This does not mean that you never strive for more, but it does mean that you are happy with what you have at the moment. One thing we can do that could help us be more content is to focus on the things we do have instead of the things we don’t have. It can be easy to get stuck in a rut thinking about all the things that we want and yet don’t have yet. However, if we shifted that focus to thinking about all the things God has blessed us with, we would be much more content. We may even be grateful. I think being grateful is one of the keys to being content.
You may be complaining about something that you have while someone else is begging God to have that thing. For instance, you may be complaining because your hair is too thick, too thin, too long, or too short, all the while someone who is going through chemotherapy is praying for God to give them hair again. You may be complaining because your car is older than you would like, and someone else is praying for a car so that they can get to work. You may complain because your spouse or children drive you crazy. Meanwhile, there are so many out there who are still struggling to find a spouse or to have children. Thinking about what we have in this manner makes it much easier to be content with what we have.
I have heard stories of people from other countries that have far less available to them than we do, yet they are completely content and grateful for all they have. I have heard of people going on mission trips to other countries and bringing candy to the children. It is not a lot of candy, but they said the children are so excited just for one piece of candy. I have also heard that they bring pens and paper and the children are so excited. I don’t think my children would be excited if I gave them a pen and paper. These are things we take for granted. Think about how much time and anguish we would save ourselves if we could be content with what the good Lord has given us. If we could view everything, we have as a gift from the Lord.
In this verse St. Paul says, “In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me.” What is this secret that St. Paul found? He found that he can do all things through Christ, who strengthens him. When we rely on the Lord, He will give us the strength we need to get through any circumstance. Whether we are hungry or not, whether we have all we think we need or not. When Jesus Christ is by our side, we will be strengthened to face the circumstances, no matter what they might be. St. Paul knew this, and he is sharing it with all of us.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us be like St. Paul and content with what we have. Help us not to be envious of what others have. Help us appreciate and be grateful for what you have given us. If we strive for more, let us do so with a gracious and humble heart. Let us not complain but instead shift our focus to gratitude. We are grateful Lord, help us to show you. We love you, Lord, you are awesome, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I am headed down to St. Nicholas of Tolentine church this weekend for the Encounter Ministries North East Regional Conference. I just want to let you know that I will bring all of you with me in my prayers to the conference. I leave on Thursday afternoon, so please keep me and all those traveling to the conference in your prayers. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in September 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Continue to follow me. Continue to bring love, healing, goodness, forgiveness. Because those weapons cannot be defeated. Those weapons will bring the love of my Father. Those weapons will bring the peace to the world that it so seeks.”
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Be Bold & Be Purified (Be Bold Series)
1 Peter 1:6-7 "I know how great this makes you feel, even though you have to put up with every kind of aggravation in the meantime. Pure gold put in the fire comes out of it proved pure; genuine faith put through this suffering comes out proved genuine. When Jesus wraps this all up, it’s your faith, not your gold, that God will have on display as evidence of his victory.”
In Tuesday’s episode, we talked about 1 Peter 1:6-7. This verse ends with, “The Day is coming when you’ll have it all—life healed and whole.” This is where today’s verses pick up. I had to go back and look because today’s verse begins with, “I know how great that makes you feel,” and I couldn’t remember what made us feel so great. Now that I look back, I agree that thinking about a day when we have it all—life healed and whole- makes us feel great. Today’s verse talks about why we have to go through some of the things we need to go through. Or, maybe not why we have to go through them, but the result of going through them.
The verse says, “Pure gold put into the fire comes out proved pure; genuine faith put through this suffering comes out proved genuine.” I remember I was at a prayer group meeting once, and the leader was talking about the process of refining silver. I am unsure if the process is the same for refining gold. I think this story will give you a good idea of why we must all go through a refining process. Here is the story:
The Refiner’s Fire
As she watched the silversmith, he held a piece of silver over the fire and let it heat up. He explained that in refining silver, one needed to hold the silver in the middle of the fire where the flames were hottest so as to burn away all the impurities. The woman thought about God holding us in such a hot spot; then she thought again about the verse that says: ‘He sits as a refiner and purifier of silver.’ (Malachi 3:3) She asked the silversmith if it was true that he had to sit there in front of the fire the whole time the silver was being refined. The man answered that yes, he not only had to sit there holding the silver, but he had to keep his eyes on the silver the entire time it was in the fire. If the silver were left a moment too long in the flames, it would be destroyed. The woman was silent for a moment. Then she asked the silversmith, ‘How do you know when the silver is fully refined?’ He smiled at her and answered, ‘Oh, that’s easy — when I see my image in it.’
I love this story because it explains why we have to go through some of the things we have to go through. My favorite part is the very last part. I love that the silversmith said it is done when he can see his image in it. Isn’t that beautiful? Isn’t that the same with us? God is refining us and helping us to become not just better versions of ourselves but actually to become more and more like Jesus. God can tell when He is done refining us because he can see his reflection in us. I think that is a beautiful thought.
Today's verse says that when gold is put in the fire, only the genuine gold remains. It also says that when genuine faith is put through suffering, it proves genuine. Can you see how this would be true? Can you think of a time when your faith was tested? A time when you were sure you believed God worked all things for good. A time when you felt you really trusted in the Lord. Then, it seemed like your whole world came crashing down. Maybe you lost your job? Maybe you lost your house? Maybe you lost a spouse or a child? Maybe you lost your parent?
Whatever it is that happened, it shook your world and tested your faith. You struggled to understand how the God you loved so much could allow this terrible thing to happen to you and your family. You struggle to trust that He will be there with you through it all. This is hard for all of us. It is easy to have faith when all is going well. It is easy for someone who is doing great in life to tell you to trust in the Lord, to turn to Him, and He will help you. Those are easy words to say to others when all is going well. However, it is very different when you are the one going through it.
This is what this verse is trying to tell us. When we go through a difficult struggle, we can keep our faith through it. Our faith is proven when we can turn to the Lord in our confusion and anger and talk with Him. That is how we can prove our faith is genuine. This isn’t just proving it to the Lord either; it is also proving it to us. We may wonder if our faith is true and genuine, and when we have a hard time, we get to see if it is.
The last line of this verse says, “When Jesus wraps this all up, it’s your faith, not your gold, that God will have on display as evidence of his victory.” This can be a very important thing for us to remember because it is so contrary to how the world thinks. The world only seems to care about how much stuff you have. Do you have the nicest house, car, job, etc? However, this verse tells us that it is our faith, not our gold, that God will display as evidence of his victory. We tend to think we will know we have been successful in this life if we have given our family everything they wanted. We think our status in life will show how successful we have been; when we think like this, we are missing the point. We are missing what makes us great. It is not our stuff. It is our God and our faith in our God.
There is one part that I didn’t really notice until I wrote that last line. It says God will have our faith on display as evidence of his victory. It will not be our victory. It will be his. I think I will take this to prayer and ask the Lord to go deeper into this. I didn’t understand why it would be his victory. If we messed up and didn’t have faith, would it be considered His failure? I know with kids, they tell us not to internalize our kid's wins and losses. It is not our fault if they lose; it is not because of us if they win. What came to me when I just prayed about his was that our faith is evidence of God’s victory over evil. When we were in those difficult times, evil attacked us. We could have given in but didn’t because God is on our side. God will always triumph over evil. When Jesus died on the cross for us, death and evil were defeated once and for all. When we turn to the Lord, believe in the Lord, and trust the Lord, He will deliver us from our hard times. It just might now be at the time that we would like.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you, and we want to trust you. We want our faith to be strengthened, yet we don’t want to have to go through the trials. Lord, give us the strength and the fortitude to believe even when we are tested. Help us go through the testing and come out stronger on the other side. Help us care more about our faith than we do about our status or our material things. We love you so much, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in September 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, I am raising up an army. You are that army. But you are not dressed in conventional gear. Your weapons are weapons that will change hearts. Your weapons are humility and love and healing and forgiveness. Don't be afraid that you don't seem to be clothed in protective army gear. Because my protection covers you each and every day.”
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Be Bold & Accept God’s Love
Romans 8:35 “Who could ever divorce us from the endless love of God’s Anointed One? Absolutely no one! For nothing in the universe has the power to diminish his love toward us. Troubles, pressures, and problems are unable to come between us and heaven’s love. What about persecutions, deprivations, dangers, and death threats? No, for they are all impotent to hinder omnipotent love.”
This is the passion translation again. I decided this morning to open it, read some of it, and see what jumped out at me. I really liked all of chapter 8, but I thought it best to limit it to a verse or two. It was tough to decide between this verse and the verses at the end of this section. This section in Chapter 8 is called “The Triumph of God’s Love.” Can you tell just by the title why I loved all of it? The end of this section was similar to this verse, yet it said it in a different, equally compelling way. I will probably use those verses on Thursday or Friday, so stay tuned.
I decided on this verse today because it drives home something that I try to help people see. Something I wish everyone in the world knew down deep in the depths of their hearts. God loves us ALWAYS, NO MATTER WHAT WE DO! The verse starts by asking us a question. “Who could ever divorce us from the endless love of God’s Anointed One?” I like that it uses the word divorce, which is a word where, unfortunately, everyone knows the meaning. The verse answers that question with an, “Absolutely no one!” There is so much in that one sentence. That one sentence tells us that no one could ever divorce us from Jesus’ love. Divorce means to separate something from something else. The verse is saying no one can separate us from the endless love of God’s Anointed One. This tells us that the love is endless. It is not fickle like human love. It doesn’t come and go with the changing of the winds or the changing of our moods. God’s love is endless.
The next line says, “For nothing in the universe has the power to diminish his love toward us. Troubles, pressures, and problems are unable to come between us and heaven’s love.” The first part was saying no one could come between us; now this verse says nothing can come between us. We might agree that no person could come between us and God, and yet we struggle to believe that nothing can come between us. We think our failures make it so God can’t love us. We think our sins make it so God can’t love us. This verse shows us that NOTHING in this universe has the power to diminish His love towards us.
It even says that troubles, pressures, and problems are unable to come between us and heaven’s love. I think it is really important to know this because what it doesn’t say in this verse is no one, and nothing will try to come between us and heaven’s love. You will find plenty of people that want to come between you and heaven’s love. You will find plenty of things that the devil will use to try to come between you and heaven’s love. If we know these things aren’t strong enough to block God’s love for us, we won’t worry so much. We won’t pay them so much attention. The enemy tries to convince us that every little thing we do makes us unworthy of God’s love. He tries to convince us that God could never love us; look at all we have done. This is why it is important to read God’s Word. It is important to know what the Lord is actually saying to us so we can stand up to the enemy and know when He is lying, which, by the way, is always!
The last line in this verse says, “What about persecutions, deprivations, dangers, and death threats? No, for they are all impotent to hinder omnipotent love.” This last part is interesting. You might think, why would these things hinder God’s love? I am not doing them; they are being done to me. For instance, persecution is hostility and ill-treatment, especially based on ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or political beliefs. Why would someone being hostile to me get in the way of God’s love? The reason we think this is because of the things they say to us. Their primary purpose is to make us feel like we are not good enough. They want us to think God could never love us. This verse confirms that even if we might feel far from God because of deprivations, dangers, and death threats, He is still right there with us, and He is loving us no matter what.
I love the language the last line uses. It says that all these enemy tactics are impotent to hinder God’s love. Impotent means unable to take effective action; helpless or powerless. I love to think about how powerless the enemy and His tactics are to separate us from God’s love. The only thing is, we have to know this, we have to believe this, and we have to live this. If we don’t know this, we will believe the enemy's lies and think we are unloved. We will feel like we are unloved. When we believe the lie, we empower the liar. The enemy convinces many people that the Lord couldn’t love them. We have to get His word out. We have to share what we know: that the Lord’s love is endless and unconditional. Nothing we can do or anyone else can do can take it away from us. He loved us before we were born and will always love us!!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening today and all of their families. Lord, help us hear this message today and let it take root down deep in our hearts. Let us know that we know that we know that you love us always, and nothing can change that. We love you right back, Lord, just not quite as perfectly as you love us. We ask all of this in accordance with our will and in Jesus’ holy name. Amen!!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in September 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “While you wait for me, I am still at work being fertile in you. Making things happen, setting the stage. Be patient with yourself. Be patient with me. I am patient with you.”
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Be Bold & Fix Your Eyes On Jesus (Be Bold Series)
Matthew 14:26-31 “ When the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified. “It is a ghost,” they said, and they cried out in fear. At once, [Jesus] spoke to them, “Take courage, it is I; do not be afraid.” Peter said to him in reply, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” He said, “Come.” Peter got out of the boat and began to walk on the water toward Jesus. But when he saw how [strong] the wind was, he became frightened, and, beginning to sink, he cried out, “Lord, save me!” Immediately, Jesus stretched out his hand, caught him, and said to him, “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?”
I love this story. I remember the first time I remember someone talking about it was a speaker at a retreat in England. The theme of the retreat was Radical Trust. I loved that theme from the moment that I heard it. I instantly knew that was what I wanted. I wanted to have radical trust in the Lord. The speaker talked about how she loved Peter because he was always ready to follow the Lord. It seemed as though he didn’t always think before he did things, but that was part of what made him so special.
Just before the disciples were on this boat, they had just been with Jesus as he spoke to a large group of people, and they got to be a part of the miracle of feeding the 5,000 men with five loaves of bread and two fish. They witnessed a miracle and got to be a part of it. Afterward, Jesus told them to get in the boat and go ahead to the other side while he dismissed the people. Once the crowds of people had left, Jesus climbed the mountain to be alone to pray with his Father. He stayed there late into the night. Once he was done, He decided to catch up with His disciples on the water. However, it was the middle of the night, and all they saw was someone walking towards them on the water. They didn’t know who it was and they were afraid.
I think we all would have reacted this way if we saw someone walking on the water towards us. However, when they called out to Him, He answered them and told them they had nothing to fear, that it was Jesus. Then I love what Peter did next. He told the Lord if it is really you, command me to come out on the water with you. Jesus said, Come. What happens next is remarkable. Jesus invites Peter out onto the water, and Peter gets out of the boat onto the water. I wonder how many of us would have the courage to ask the Lord to invite us to join Him, and then when He did, how many of us would actually be brave enough to get out of the boat.
I have asked the Lord for many things. I have asked Him to use me for healing, and then I have absolutely had times when He said ok, and yet I was too afraid to do what He called me to do. Has this ever happened to you? You asked the Lord for something, and then when he said yes, you were surprised and afraid? I love that Peter just stepped out of the boat and was walking on the water with the Lord, at least for a bit. That is amazing. Imagine the opportunity Peter would have missed out on if he hadn’t asked or if he hadn’t gotten out of the boat. I wonder if all the other apostles were sad they hadn’t asked the Lord to call them out of the boat?
The next part is a part I think we can all relate to. Peter got out of the boat. He was walking on water to the Lord, and all was great, and then he took his eyes off of Jesus and looked at the world around him. Instead of keeping his eyes fixed on Jesus, he looked around and saw how [strong] the wind was. He became frightened and began to sink. I think we have all been here before, too. We had our eyes fixed on Jesus. We knew we were doing what He called us to do, all was going great, and then we started to look around us. We noticed others talking about us, we noticed the circumstances around us were different, we got enticed by our surroundings, and we stopped doing what we knew we should do.
God is not always calling us to do something easy. He is not always calling us to do something that will feel good or that will please others. Remember, Paul was thrown into prison while he was doing the work God called him to do. He was not in prison for disobeying the Lord; he was following the Lord’s directions and was imprisoned for it. You may know that you are doing the right thing, and yet if you take your eyes off Jesus and look around you, it may seem like the circumstances around you are overwhelming. If you start to listen to those around you, you may start to sink, just as Peter did.
I think it is important for us all to remember what happened to Peter so that if we are in a similar circumstance, we will know what to do. When Peter took his eyes off Jesus and started to sink, he cried out to the Lord, who saved Him. It says in the verse above, “He cried out, “Lord, save me!” Immediately, Jesus stretched out his hand, caught him, and said to him, “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?” It does not say that Jesus took His time to walk over to Peter and help him. It says that Jesus immediately stretched out His hand and caught him. Jesus will do the same for you.
We should try our best to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus. When we do, we will not stray from the path God has laid out for us. We will not feel stressed or overwhelmed because we know that God is there to lead and help us. However, when we take our eyes off Jesus, which we will because we are human and make mistakes, it is important to know that all we need to do is call out to the Lord, and He will be right there, stretching out his hand to us. God will always be there for us! That we can count on.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone who is listening to this episode today. Lord, you are amazing, and we are so grateful you are calling us all to something amazing. We are sorry when we pull back or are too scared to step into that calling. We are sorry when we step into it and fall down because we take our eyes off you. Please help us to keep our eyes fixed on you. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I am excited because I made a lot of progress on my 31-Day Devotional on Identity. I am hoping that I will be able to publish it by the end of April. I will let you know once it is done so you can be on the lookout for it. Thank you so much for all of your support. I truly appreciate you more than you know! I look forward to meeting you here tomorrow! Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in September 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My Children, most of the time, you are in a rush, but I am a God who takes His time. I am time. I have time. I am a God who is constantly at work. I work in time. But in my Godly time, not your time.”
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Today’s Witness is from a friend of mine named Ed. Ed is a part of my prayer group and a student at Encounter School of Ministry Boston. The same program I graduated from last May. Ed went to Belize on a mission trip with the Encounter School. There were 37 of them that went to Belize. They went out on the streets to pray for those who wanted it. Ed talks about the amazing experience it was and some of the miracles they saw! I will let him explain.We have all seen God working in our lives. However, we might not all be aware it is God working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences, the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience of how God has worked or is working in your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or click here. It won’t take up much of your time, and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story, and the world needs to hear them.Music:"Adding the Sun"fine us. It is not fun, Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ www.findingtruenorthcoaching.comCLICK HERE TO DONATECLICK HERE to sign up for Mentoring CLICK HERE to sign up for Daily "Word from the Lord" emailsCLICK HERE to sign up for my newsletter & receive a free audio trainingabout inviting Jesus into your daily lifeCLICK HERE to buy my book Total Trust in God's Safe Embrace
Be Bold & Have Radical Trust (Be Bold Series)
Daniel 3:17 “If our God, whom we serve, can save us from the white-hot furnace and from your hands, oh king, may he save us! But even if he will not, know, O king, that we will not serve your god or worship the golden statue which you set up.”
Radical Trust was new to me when I attended a conference in March 2011. I had seen radical trust in action many times, but I don’t think I had ever heard it called that. I was instantly in love with the phrase. I loved the idea of having Radical Trust in our God. I really enjoyed learning about that concept over the weekend. The speaker, Anne Trufant, asked us, “Do you trust God?” Not do you trust in God, but do you trust God? Do you truly trust what he says to you, what he tells you? It was a different way to look at it. Do I trust everything God tells me when I read the bible? Do I trust that he is saying those things to me? Do I trust God? I definitely took some time to ponder that and pray with that thought. After that retreat, I started to pray for radical trust a lot more often. I also tried to implement radical trust in my life. It’s not just about saying, “Of course I trust God,” it's about truly believing that with your whole being. Wouldn’t it be great if when we got a bill that we did not have the money to pay, we could say and truly believe, "God’s got this?" "I don’t need to worry because He’s got this." What about when we see that our kids are doing something that we know is wrong, and we can see all the ways they can get hurt if they continue down that path? Can we truly say, "God’s got this," and not worry about it? Ever since this retreat, I have prayed so many times for radical trust because, in my experience, it does not come overnight. And it is not always universal. Over the years, I have found myself having radical trust in one area but not in another. However, every day, I see the benefits in my life of praying for radical trust. I am much better about radical trust now. I have a supernatural trust that all will be ok. I do not tend to feel stressed out about the future because I know that God is in charge, and I am not. Why should I worry when he is the one in control?
I enjoy reading books about radical trust because every example I read strengthens my trust a little more. So, I thought I would give you a few examples. The next two examples I have heard from people close to me. My mom and dad had 11 children. My mom stayed home with the kids, and my dad worked. He had a good job, but money was always tight because of the number of kids in our family. One day, my parents’ friends had to go out unexpectedly. They asked my parents to watch their kids. They had 10 kids. My parents said, “Yes, of course we will.“ Then they thought about how to feed all those 21 children when they had no food in the house. They had a radical trust and prayed to God, trusting that he would come through. They trusted even though they did not know how he would show up or come through for them. A few minutes later, there was a knock on the door. It was a neighbor with bags of groceries. The neighbor’s father had just moved into their house unexpectedly, and they had nowhere to put the food from the dad’s house as they had just gone shopping. So my parents gratefully accepted the food. They looked through and noticed that there was some pasta and sauce in the bags. They then thought they could feed everyone spaghetti if they just had meat. A few minutes later there was another knock at the door. A different neighbor had a cooler full of meat. They had just gone hunting and stocked their freezer and fridge with all the meat they could hold, and they did not know what to do with what was left. Again, my parents gratefully accepted it. Then, they immediately thanked God for providing for them as he always does. Another time, a friend was sitting in her car. She was at the store trying to buy groceries for the week. She had three small children. Her daughter was with her. The store had not opened yet, and they were the only people in the parking lot. As she made her list of what she needed, she realized she did not have enough money to buy all the necessities. She prayed to God then, “God, if I just had an extra $50, I could buy all I needed for the week.” At that moment, her daughter saw something fly past the car on the ground of the parking lot. Before her mom could tell her not to, she jumped out of the car to get it. She got back in the car and gave it to her mom. It was a $50 bill.
When reading a few articles about radical trust online, one of them talked about how radical trust is trusting God even when he doesn’t come through. This is probably the hardest thing to do. If you always see ways that God is coming through, it is easier to have radical trust. I think it may be easier for me to have radical trust because I have seen and heard many examples of how people have trusted and God has shown up in big ways. But what about if you have a lot of examples of when he has not shown up? Can you have radical trust when you want a family and don’t have one, lose your job, pray for your loved one to be healed, and die or be given a life-threatening diagnosis? That is when it is even harder to have trust. Our friends from the bible, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, give us an outstanding example of how they had radical trust when all seemed lost. Daniel 3:17 “If our God, whom we serve, can save us from the white-hot furnace and from your hands, oh king, may he save us! But even if he will not, know, O king, that we will not serve your god or worship the golden statue which you set up.” Imagine the trust they must have had to say that to the King in the face of death.
I read about a practical way to grow in radical trust from an article from Laura Fleetwood. She said as soon as a fearful thought enters her mind, she takes it captive and hands it over to Christ. In her mind, she snatches it and gives it to Jesus and says I trust you, Jesus. It looks something like this…
Snatch…hand it over…I trust in you, Jesus. Snatch…hand it over…I trust in you, Jesus. Wouldn’t it be great if we could all do this a little more often and have a little less stress and worry in our lives? My challenge is to practice turning your worries and scary thoughts over to Jesus and let him handle them. After all, he is the almighty one, not us.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you and want to have radical trust in you. We want to believe that you can do anything. We want to have the faith of Peter when he first got out of the boat. We want to have faith like Daniel in the lion’s den. Lord, we know you can do everything with our minds; help us know it with our mind, body, and soul. Help us to know it deep in our hearts. Lord, help us take our thoughts captive and redirect them to you. Help us not to take our eyes off of you. We are so grateful to you for all you do for us. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I want to let you all know that I have started sending out a daily email called Today’s Word from the Lord. This email will have one of the words of prophecy that was received from a member of my prayer group during one of our meetings. I pray that by sharing these Words from the Lord, we will all start to recognize how the Lord talks to us, and then we will start to see Him talking to us in our own lives. My other prayer is that if you can recognize the Lord’s voice, you will also be able to recognize when it is not the Lord’s voice talking to you. I pray you will hear the enemy start talking, realize it is not God talking, and stop listening. If you would like to receive this daily email, you can sign up using the link in the show notes or email me at Catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com. No worries if your email mailbox is full and you don’t want to get any more emails. I will read the Word from the Lord at the end of each podcast, as I did last month. I look forward to meeting you here tomorrow. Remember, Jesus and I love you! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in September 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “You can always hear my voice. You may question it. You may wonder, is it really me talking to you like that? If you are unsure, ask the Holy Spirit to come. To come into your heart and assure you, and He will.”
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Be Bold & Praise While You Wait (Be Bold Series)
Acts 16:25-28 “About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly, there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken. At once, all the prison doors flew open, and everyone’s chains came loose. The jailer woke up, and when he saw the prison doors open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself because he thought the prisoners had escaped. But Paul shouted, “Don’t harm yourself! We are all here!”
This story actually begins a few verses before this. In Acts 16:16-24 it says, “Once when we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a female slave who had a spirit by which she predicted the future. She earned a great deal of money for her owners by fortune-telling. She followed Paul and the rest of us, shouting, “These men are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved.” She kept this up for many days. Finally, Paul became so annoyed that he turned around and said to the spirit, “In the name of Jesus Christ, I command you to come out of her!” At that moment, the spirit left her. When her owners realized that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace to face the authorities. They brought them before the magistrates and said, “These men are Jews and are throwing our city into an uproar by advocating customs unlawful for us Romans to accept or practice.” The crowd joined in the attack against Paul and Silas, and the magistrates ordered them to be stripped and beaten with rods. After they had been severely flogged, they were thrown into prison, and the jailer was commanded to guard them carefully. When he received these orders, he put them in the inner cell and fastened their feet in the stocks.”
This is where our verse takes place. They have been beaten with rods and are now chained up in prison. You would think after a day like that they would feel defeated. You would think that they would be questioning God and asking Him why they have to suffer so much when they are just doing what He asked them to do. You might also think that they were passed out in pain and sleeping. Is this what they were doing? No, the verse says it was midnight and they were still praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them. This is something that always amazes me about the apostles and other believers in the faith, such as the Saints. I am always amazed by their strength. I know that God underwent extreme suffering in the 24 hours before He was crucified. He sweat drops of blood. If that is not suffering, I don’t know what is. And yet, I think we can downplay it sometimes and think, well, He is fully God and fully human, so of course He can withstand it; he is God. However, countless other Saints have gone through extreme suffering and have done it with joy.
Paul & Silas had just been beaten with rods, and yet they were not questioning God. They were praising and singing to Him. This is something that I think we can hear sometimes and not pause and think about how truly amazing it is. I don’t know if we glaze over it because we don’t understand it or because we don’t think we are capable of it. I don’t know the reason, but I wanted to pause and take a moment to recognize how remarkable these two are for how they endured their suffering. We could all learn a lot from them and how they lived not only when times were good but also when times were tough.
The verse says that at midnight, while they were praying and praising, they were set free. The door opened, and their chains came loose. What strikes me about this verse is that they were set free yet did not leave. They stayed there until morning, when the guard woke up. What I hear the Lord saying to me about this verse is that everything He does is for His glory and the good of His kingdom. If Paul & Silas would have left at midnight, they could have escaped. However, it would not have been known how they escaped. People could have said that someone broke in and freed them. God would not have gotten the Glory. However, by waiting until morning, they not only converted the guard and his whole house to believers, but they were also set free and did not have to worry about being caught for escaping.
Sometimes, the things we are going through or the things others are going through make no sense to us. If we had been there in that jail cell, it would have made no sense to us that when they were freed, they didn’t leave the cell. I can’t imagine sitting in that cell and just waiting for the jailer to wake up when we could have escaped and been hours away by the time the jailer woke up. Luckily, Paul and Silas were good at listening to the Lord and trusting in Him. They were not scared in that jail cell. They praised the Lord and trusted that the Lord would get them out of the situation. They were patient and waited on the Lord’s timing, and by doing so, they saved the jailer and his whole family.
Do you see how if the apostles left at midnight, they would have escaped and would have been free? Do you also see that they did not leave at midnight, yet they were still free? We never know how God will work things out for us. Sometimes, we can only see things in black and white. We can see only two choices. For instance, we could see that if we left the cell when the door was opened, then we would be free. However, if we stay there, then we would be stuck in jail forever. Sometimes, we are so angry, upset, scared, and afraid that we can’t see all the possibilities. We only see the two. Sometimes, we may not see all the options because we have limited information, whereas God has all the information He would ever need. It seems as though the apostles waited for God to tell them what to do next. They trusted that God would take care of it even though they didn’t know what would happen next.
This may be the same in some circumstances in our lives, too. We may not understand why God asks us to wait a little longer. We know God can save us now, but we don’t understand why He isn’t. We don’t understand why we are going through all of this in the first place. Maybe God is using this thing you are going through to save someone else. Maybe by watching your strength in the face of your situation, someone will decide to give God a try. Maybe after watching how you were saved from your circumstances, someone else has also decided to be saved. We don’t know what God’s plan is or why He does what He does. There is one thing that we can be sure of, and that is that God has a plan, and He has a reason for everything. God can use all things for His glory. We may think that some things are a coincidence. However, if you look back over the last 5 or 10 years of your life, I bet you will see how those things you felt were coincidences were actually things that God timed out perfectly for a specific reason. It is amazing to me how detailed God’s plan is. He has every tiny detail planned out.
The next time we get tired of waiting for our suffering to end, maybe we can remember this verse, pray, and praise him even when we are struggling. We can remember that if He has not saved us yet, it is for a reason and that a greater good will come from our situation. I know that doesn’t always make it easier for us when we are in the moment. However, I felt God wanted me to share with you that even when we don’t know His plan and don’t understand it, we should still know that He has a plan, and it is for our good and the good of his whole church.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. We ask that you give us the strength of Paul and Silas when we suffer. Lord, we ask that you give us the strength and the wisdom to pray and sing praises to you when we are suffering. Help us know that you have a plan even when we don’t see or understand it. Help us to know that we are never suffering in vain. You will always use our suffering for your glory. We love you, Lord, and thank you for all you do for us. You are amazing, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and Jesus’ holy name. Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk Boldly with Jesus. This month’s theme for mentoring is “I Am Made New.” I invite you to join us on Tuesday night and learn how you are made new through Christ. You can find all this information at walkboldlywithjesus.com or click on the link below. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in September 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “In the silence of your hearts, I speak to you. I am not a loud, clanging, noisy voice that distracts you. I am just a small whisper telling you, “Turn to the right - go here. Turn to the left - see that person; they need your help. They need your prayers”.
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Be Bold & Step Forward in Faith ( Be Bold Series)
Hebrews 11:1-2 “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the men of old received divine approval.”
I have done the Bible in a Year podcast with Father Mike for two years. This year, he is doing the Catechism of the Catholic Church in a Year. The Catechism aims to summarize in book form the main beliefs of the Catholic Church. I have owned this book for several years now and yet have never read the whole thing. I did find some things highlighted today when looking through it, so I have looked through it, but never read through it all. I was excited about this new podcast Father Mike is doing because I think it is important to be able to understand your faith completely and also to be able to explain it to others when asked. People tend to have many questions as to why Catholics believe what they believe.
The other day, when I was listening, Father Mike touched on something that I thought was important to share with you because it is something that we have all run into many times in our lives. The Catechism talked about how God sometimes reveals things to people to invite them into His company. The adequate response to this invitation is faith. It goes on to say in paragraph 144 that Sacred Scripture calls this human response to God, the author of revelation, “the obedience to faith.” It says to obey in faith is to submit freely to the word that has been heard because its truth is guaranteed by God, who is Truth itself. Abraham is the model of such obedience offered us by Sacred Scripture. The Virgin Mary is its most perfect embodiment. Paragraph 145 says The Letter to the Hebrews, in its great eulogy of the faith of Israel’s ancestors lays special emphasis on Abraham’s faith; “By faith, Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place which he was to receive as an inheritance; and he went out, not knowing where to go.” He lived as a stranger and pilgrim in the promised land by faith. By faith, Sarah was given to conceive the son of the promise. And by faith Abraham offered his only son in sacrifice.
Father Mike pointed out that all three people mentioned here, Abraham, Sarah, and Mary, acted in faith. This was not the part that surprised me as I have heard the story of Abraham and Sarah many times, and I know everyone knows that Mary acted in faith when she said yes to carrying the Son of God. What Father Mike said that makes sense when you think about it, but I guess I never really thought about it before, was that God didn’t give these three people all the information before they answered in faith. He didn’t lay out every step they were going to take. He didn’t tell them every bump in the road they would run into. He didn’t give them a five-year plan or a 10-year plan. He didn’t even give them a one-year plan. He gave them the initial invitation with very little detail. Abraham knew he couldn’t stay where he was and that God was inviting him to leave his homeland. He said yes without knowing where he was going and how all would turn out.
Sarah knew she would conceive a son but was not given any other information about when or how since she was advanced in age. Mary was invited to conceive the son of God, and she asked one clarifying question: How was that possible when she had not known man? She was told the Holy Spirit would overshadow her, and she would conceive the son of God. However, that was about all the information she got. She also was not told everything she would go through. She wasn’t told she would leave him in Jerusalem when he was 12, and she would be worried he was lost for 3 days. She wasn’t told about his suffering and crucifixion. She was told about just that first step.
This is the part that I think we can all relate to. God is calling us all to something, and He calls us to it without giving us all the details. He shines just enough light on our situation so we can see the next right step. This can be scary for us. We tend to want to know what is coming next. We want to make sure we will be safe and secure. But what if we knew everything we would go through and were scared we couldn’t do it? Everything we go through in life prepares us for the next thing we will go through. If you knew it all in advance, you might not say yes. It is believed that Mary was very young when she got married and had Jesus. Do you think a teenager could have said yes to having a child that was going to be tortured and killed? Would she have had that kind of strength as a teen? I think Mary was able to be with Christ through all that because of all the things that came before that. Everything we go through, good or bad, prepares us for the rest of our lives.
What about Abraham and Sarah? Do you think they would have been all excited about having a child if they knew they would have to offer him up in a sacrifice? Probably not, but God had been so faithful to His word that Abraham knew if God was asking him to do it, then He had a plan of how to make it right again. Has God been faithful in our lives? Can we look back and see where He has been with us the whole way? Can we look back and see how things that didn’t make sense at the time now make sense with the benefit of hindsight? Has God gotten you through some pretty tough spots? Do you have things that you have done and looking back you can honestly say you wouldn’t have done them if you had known all they would entail? God is so good. He knows human nature. He knows that we get scared easily. He knows we tend to choose the easy route and try to avoid pain and discomfort at all costs.
God’s ways are higher than ours, and His thoughts are higher than ours. He knows that if we knew the whole picture, we might not accept the call He is calling us to. Can we say yes in faith, like Abraham, Mary, and Sarah did? Can we say yes to whatever new thing God calls us into without knowing all the details? Can we trust that God has the details worked out and that if we are faithful and take the next step, he will shine a light forward to the next right step? I also feel prompted to mention that God’s timing is not ours. God told Abraham he would have a child, and then I believe they waited 25 years for that to happen. They did not wait perfectly; they tried to make it happen independently, but in the end, God was faithful. I guess I felt prompted to mention that because I know some of you are waiting for your answered prayers. I know some of you have been waiting for a long time. I want to encourage you and let you know you are in good company. Sometimes we can think God doesn’t like us as much if we keep waiting almost like God is taking care of those more important to Him before He gets to us. This is not the case. God promised Abraham everything, yet he also had to wait a long time.
Have faith to take the next step, even when you can’t see where it leads. Take that step even if you don’t know the final outcome or all the details. Move towards wherever God is calling you, knowing that if He called you there, He will shine a light on each step until you arrive. Referring back to the verse, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." St. Augustine said, "Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.” God rewards us when we step out in faith. Where can you trust God and step out in faith today?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask that you help us to know what you are calling us to. We ask that you help us to have the faith to step out in that call even though we don’t have all the details and don’t know what will come next or when it will come. Lord, give us the perseverance we need to wait for your call and to not try and manufacture it on our own. We love you, Lord. You are amazing. You know what is best for us, and we pray that we can listen to you and wait for your plan. We are so grateful that You have a plan for each of us and that You light our steps so we can follow Your plan. We are sorry for all the times we didn’t follow your plan; we are trying, Dad. We love you and ask all of this per your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in August 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “You must trust me fully. Let go of that humanness that keeps you away from me. Offer it to me. Nail it to the altar. The cross that I give you is not always the best. But I am bringing you to glory with your yes.”
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Be Bold & Fight Your Battles (Be Bold Series)
Hebrews 12:1-2 "Therefore, since we are encompassed with such a great cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us. Let us look to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.
Two years ago, I was away on a retreat with 20 other Christian women who are all dedicated to starting their year off right and turning their focus to God. Each year in Big Life Mentoring, shout out to Pamela Crim, we each pick a word and mantra. Our word and manta is what we say every day to help remind us of the commitments we made to ourselves to live as the best version of ourselves. This New Year’s retreat that I was on for the last 5 days was a chance to talk about what we want to get out of this year and also to form a great bond and friendship with several other ladies. These ladies can be our accountability group and support throughout the whole year. We know what each and every lady on this retreat wants this year, and we can pray for them and their goals.
This was my first year going to this retreat. It was an amazing weekend. I love it when women who love Jesus get together to talk and get to know each other. We played worship music and walked to the beach at night to look at the stars and thank God for all He has done. We all talked about our strengths and our areas for improvement. We discussed where we are struggling and what we want from this upcoming year. We discussed what we would do to help make those wants a reality. It was really good girl bonding time, and everyone loved it.
While I was on this retreat, several ladies talked about how they have that negative voice in their head so often. You know the voice I am talking about, the one that says you are not enough, the one that says God would never forgive you, the one that makes you feel awful about yourself. That voice that makes you question every decision you have ever made. That voice that makes you feel like you don’t belong. We all have our own version of the mean voice inside our head.
This verse tells us that we can look to those around us as witnesses. I saw so many witnesses that weekend on the New Year’s retreat. The women who were on the retreat were truly amazing. We all struggle with different things and are all good at other things. We can look to each other for help with our struggles. Who in your life could be a witness? Who in your life could you look to for an example of how to live? The people in my prayer group are also great witnesses. They are all excellent examples of how to be the face of Christ to others. In the 6 years I have been in this prayer group, they have taught me much about God and His love. Look to those around you and learn all you can from them!
This next line is the one that really made me think this was the verse for today. It says, “Let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.” That is a powerful statement and one that we all need to remember when we have so many burdens in life. We have so much that can go wrong each day. If we can lay aside everything weighing on us and run the race with endurance, life will be much easier. The verse also asks us to lay aside the sin that so easily entangles us. This is a very true statement of how sin works. We tend to get entangled in it. We make one bad choice and then another; before we know it, we are wrapped up in sin, regret, and shame.
This verse is telling us to lay our burdens and sins aside. The question is, “How do we do that?” How do we lay our burdens aside? How do we avoid getting entangled in sin? The answer is right in this verse. “Let us look to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.” Jesus is the author of our faith. He can show us the way. We can learn much just by looking at Jesus and how He lived. We can also look to Jesus when we are trying to find the strength to lay our burdens aside. We can look to Jesus when we are trying to find a way to make it through the day. That weekend, there were at least two ladies who said they were afraid that the enemy was stronger than they were. This is a real fear that many of us have. The truth is, the enemy probably is stronger than we are, but he is definitely not stronger than God is. God has already won that battle and come out as the victor.
When we start to get scared that the enemy might be getting stronger than we are, we can remember Romans 8:31 “…If God is for us, who can be against us?” This is the truth that we need to keep reminding ourselves. If God is for us, who can be against us? God is for you and me and each one of His children. Yes, you, you are His child. Even when you don’t feel worthy, even when you don’t feel you deserve it, even when you feel like you can’t possibly be good enough to be his son or daughter, He is for you. God doesn’t need us to feel good enough for Him to love us. He always loves us! He is always our Father, and we are always His children.
One thing we did several times this weekend was listen to worship music. We listened when we were in the hot tub, when we were at the beach, and while we were getting up in the morning. We surrounded ourselves with worship music. One song played several times and is one that I think is a great song for us all to remember when we are struggling with the thoughts that the enemy might overtake us. This song is called “Surrounded (Fight my battles)" by Michael W. Smith. What I love about this song is the way it tells us how to fight our battles and then reminds us that God is there with us. Here are the main lyrics:
… The word says
"For the spirit of heaviness
Put on the garment of praise"
That's how we fight our battles (yeah)
… This is how I fight my battles
This is how I fight my battles (yeah, yes)
This is how I fight my battles (what we're doing tonight)
This is how I fight my battles
Just when you think you're lost
… It may look like I'm surrounded but I'm surrounded by You, hey!
It may look like I'm surrounded but I'm surrounded by You
It may look like I'm surrounded but I'm surrounded by You
It may look like I'm surrounded but I'm surrounded by You
This is a great thing to remember. When we feel overwhelmed by the attacks of the enemy, we can remind ourselves that although it feels like we are surrounded on all sides by the enemy, we are actually surrounded by the Lord our God. The song repeats these verses over and over again. It is so relaxing and peaceful when I listen to this song. I hope you take the time to listen to it because I know it can bring you peace, too!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, be with us and help us feel you surrounding us. When we feel the enemy is greater than we are, help us remember that we aren’t in this alone. Help us to remember you are there, surrounding us and protecting us. Spiritual warfare is real, and we are in a battle, whether we realize it or not. We will fight that battle, lifting up praise to You as You surround us. We love you so much, Lord; you are amazing!! You are so powerful, and we are so grateful that you already won the war over evil. You conquered death, and sin no longer has dominion over us now. Thank you, Lord! We praise you, and we thank you. You are awesome, and we are in awe of you. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow! I just want to take a minute to let you know what amazing things I have coming up. First, I am working on getting my audio book done for the Total Trust in God’s Safe Embrace Book finished. Second, I am going to be compiling all of the identity series podcast episodes into a daily devotional book. And third I will be sending my Abandon Anxiety Book to various publishers to see if one of them will publish it. I would appreciate your prayers for all of the endeavors and know I am praying for you as well. If there is anything specific you need prayers for you are always welcome to reach out on Facebook or email me at Catherine @Findingtruenorthcoaching.com. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a Blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in August 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “You are my precious ones. You have been precious to me since you were in the womb. You are called to this time, to this place. But I need your permission to take you deeper. And I also need you to trust that I will do what I say.”
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Witness Wednesday #150 911 Miracle
Today’s witnesses are actually two things I read on line and really wanted to share them with you. The first one is about how good God is, even in a tragedy. It is a story about what happened to one family on the terrible day of September 11, 2001. The second one is about a little boy who had extraordinary courage to speak up against someone a lot older than he was in order to defend someone he didn’t even know. They are both amazing stories of how God is working in our world.
A man from Norfolk , VA called a local radio station to share this on Sept 11th, 2003, TWO YEARS AFTER THE TRAGEDIES OF 9/11/2001.
His name was Robert Matthews. These are his words:
A few weeks before Sept. 11th, my wife and I found out we were going to have our first child. She planned a trip out to California to visit her sister. On our way to the airport, we prayed that God would grant my wife a safe trip and be with her. Shortly after I said 'amen,' we both heard a loud pop and the car shook violently. We had blown out a tire. I replaced the tire as quickly as I could, but we still missed her flight. Both very upset we drove home.
I received a call from my father who was retired NYFD. He asked what my wife's flight number was, but I explained that we missed the flight.
My father informed me that her flight was the one that crashed into the southern tower. I was too shocked to speak. My father also had more news for me; he was going to help. 'This is not something I can't just sit by for; I have to do something.'
I was concerned for his safety, of course, but more because he had never given his life to Christ. After a brief debate, I knew his mind was made up. Before he got off of the phone, he said, 'take good care of my grandchild.' Those were the last words I ever heard my father say; he died while helping in the rescue effort.
My joy that my prayer of safety for my wife had been answered quickly became anger. I was angry at God, at my father, and at myself. I had gone for nearly two years blaming God for taking my father away. My son would never know his grandfather, my father had never accepted Christ, and I never got to say good-bye.
Then something happened. About two months ago, I was sitting at home with my wife and my son, when there was a knock on the door. I looked at my wife, but I could tell she wasn't expecting anyone. I opened the door to a couple with a small child.
The man looked at me and asked if my father's name was Jake Matthews. I told him it was. He quickly grabbed my hand and said, 'I never got the chance to meet your father, but it is an honor to meet his son.'
He explained to me that his wife had worked in the WorldTrade Center and had been caught inside after the attack. She was pregnant and had been caught under debris. He then explained that my father had been the one to find his wife and free her. My eyes welled up with tears as I thought of my father giving his life for people like this. He then said, 'there is something else you need to know.'
His wife then told me that as my father worked to free her, she talked to him and led him to Christ. I began sobbing at the news.
Now I know that when I get to Heaven, my father will be standing beside Jesus to welcome me, and that this family would be able to thank him themselves ..
When their baby boy was born, they named him Jacob Matthew, in honor of the man who gave his life so that a mother and baby could live.
Please take time to share this amazing story. You may never know the impact it may have on someone. God doesn't call the qualified, He qualifies the called.
“I was on my usual running path when I heard an older man yelling loudly enough for me to hear through my headphones. "Sexy lady, hey hey hey sexy lady!" He kept screaming it and I decided to just ignore him and keep running.
This ignoring seemed to piss him off so he lashed out and said "eff you, dumb B****!" Now let's keep in mind he was well-dressed and appeared to be on his lunch break from an office job.
That was my trigger point. The B word. I ripped off my headphones prepared to stand up for myself when this little boy who was walking alongside his mother and little sister in a stroller looked at the guy and said, "Hey. That is not nice to say to her and she didn't like you yelling at her. You shouldn't do that because she is a nice girl and I don't let anyone say mean things to people. She's a girl like my sister and I will protect her."
The man was immediately embarrassed and started gathering his lunch to leave. I asked the mother if I could hug the little boy (his name is James) and I told him how grateful I was for him. He just shrugged and said "Well I just wanted to make sure your heart was okay."
According to his mother, this is a typical day in the life of James. Thank you so much to the mothers and fathers who are raising the next generation to be brave and courageous, and to be little earth angels for all. I am so touched.”
Weren’t those two stories amazing! The first one is a good one to remember when you are delayed for some reason and you feel like being angry. Maybe God orchestrated that delay for some reason or another. The second one reminds us that there are still good people in this world. If that little boy could stand up to a grown up for someone he didn’t even know, maybe we could have the courage to stand up for someone too. If we see someone being treated badly, we should stand up for them. God wants us to help those who can’t help themselves. It is our duty as Christians. We don’t want to be knocking at the door of heaven one day and hear God say, “I never knew you; depart from me, you who practice lawlessness” Matthew 7:23.
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Be Bold & Fear Not (Be Bold Series)
2 Timothy 1:7 “For God did not give us a spirit of cowardice but rather of power, love and self-control.”
There is a lot of fear in the world today. There was a lot of fear during the pandemic, but now there may be even more. It seems as though everyone is afraid of something, and some people live in fear all day. People all over the world are fearful. There is so much violence in the world right now. So many people are fighting. In America, there is a lot of fear with the change in government. There are people afraid for their lives, afraid to get sent back to unsafe conditions in their countries. People fear losing their jobs, health care, and benefits like food stamps and social security. People are afraid of losing their rights as American citizens, and many are afraid of losing democracy altogether.
There are a lot of reasons to be fearful. These reasons are real; the threat is real, and it makes sense to be cautious. However, we need to remember who we are. We are children of God. He tells us in Matthew 6:27, “Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?” Worrying won’t get us anywhere. However, knowing this does not make our fear any less real. I was doing Jeff Cavin’s Walking Towards Eternity bible study during the pandemic. One of the chapters addresses fear. One thing that I think is important to point out is that there is a difference between healthy fear and unhealthy fear. The difference is that a healthy fear keeps you safe and helps you make good choices. For instance, having a healthy fear of God can help you make choices that keep you from sinning. Having a healthy fear of COVID-19 or any disease can help you practice good hygiene and make other choices to prevent spreading the virus. An unhealthy fear is one that keeps you trapped in some way. For instance, you are so afraid of COVID-19 that you don’t leave your house even when necessary or spend every moment of the day afraid you might catch the virus. One of the questions I found in the chapter that I thought would be especially relevant for everyone right now was, “What practical steps can be taken to overcome fear?” Did you know that fear, all on its own, triggers more than 1,400 known physical and chemical responses and activates more than 30 different hormones? Here are several practical steps you can take to conquer your fear.
1. Turn your fear over to God. “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” 2 Corinthians 10:5. As soon as you notice you are having a fearful thought, take a moment and hand that thought over to God.
2. Ask yourself if this fear is a legitimate fear/scenario. Is it likely that the thing you are afraid of will happen? Oftentimes, we worry about things that never happen. Mark Twain once said, “I… have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.”
3. Educate yourself: “Prudent education teaches virtue; it prevents or cures fear … The education of the conscience guarantees freedom and engenders peace of heart.” (Catechism 1784) Learn your faith, learn to know God, the more you know and understand the word of God the less you will be afraid.
4. Understand your fear: Some fears are based on personal experience, and some are a result of culture and past experiences. Understand how your fears came to be. Understand how it comes on, how it makes you feel, and what level of intensity it is.
5. Visualize Courage: What would it look like if you did not have this fear? What would it look like if you overcame this fear? What if this fear did not exist in your life?
6. Act as if: If you act courageously in a gradual way, you will overcome the limiting story you tell yourself. For instance, if you are afraid to give a presentation, one way to start overcoming this fear is to give a short presentation to a family member. When you are comfortable with that, you could give the presentation to a close friend and then to a not-so-close friend. The point of this is to step outside of your comfort zone slowly and then gradually expand your comfort zone.
7. Move towards your fear: Instead of running away from your fear, turn around and face it. Write down 5-10 ideas of ways you can face your fear in some small way, and then act on these ideas daily .
8. Don’t live in Denial: It is important to examine how your fear is limiting you. Sometimes, we are so used to our everyday routine that we don’t see the ways our fear has us trapped.
9. Fortitude: “The virtue of fortitude enables one to conquer fear, even fear of death, and to face trials and persecutions. It disposes one even to renounce and sacrifice his life in defense of a just cause. ‘The Lord is my strength and my song.’ ‘In the world you have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.’” (Catechism 1008) Keep going, even when you don’t want to, even when you are afraid.
10. Channel your spirituality: When you are feeling afraid of something, lean into your spirituality even more. Read God’s word, say a prayer, talk to the Lord, do something to help you connect with God, and remember that he is your refuge.
“God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea; though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble with its tumult.” ~Psalm 46:1-3
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask you to help us trust you more and have less fear. Lord, we know you are protecting us. We know you are strength and our refuge. If we know this, we have nothing to fear. Help us know this more, Lord. Help us understand with you, nothing can harm us. Help us to focus on how big you are instead of how big our problem is. We love you, Lord. You are amazing. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I wanted to take a minute to let everyone know, in case you are new to listening, that I have a book that I wrote called TOTAL TRUST In God’s Safe Embrace. It is a book that teaches the 15 ways in which I developed a really deep trust in God and a more intimate relationship with Him. I have been through a lot of stuff over the last 18 years of my life, and yet through it all, I knew God was there with me and that things would be ok. I discovered it is possible to have peace, even in the middle of chaos. If life is hard right now, check out my book if you are struggling with something. It could help you find God in the middle of the chaos. Also, if you want to reach out to me through my website or with an email to catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com, then I can even send you a signed copy of my book. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day.
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in August 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I have come that you might have life, life to the full. I came also to give you an example of how to live your life. Follow my example, and you will have greater peace. I am your God, and I love you.”
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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Be Bold & Be Strong & Courageous (Be Bold Series)
Joshua 1:9 “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and of good courage; be not frightened, neither be dismayed; for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”
I saw this verse on my refrigerator this morning. A few years ago, someone gave me one of the desk calendars. Each day, a new page features a new picture of amazing scenery worldwide. The calendar also includes a different Bible verse. I hung this one on the fridge because I needed the reminder. Today, I know several of you need this reminder, too!
This is a great reminder to be strong and courageous. A lot is happening in the world right now, both in our own families and our own houses and the world at large. I know people who are scared because their loved ones had major surgery, and their recovery is going slow. They are worried that things won’t get back to normal or that it will be a long and painful road back to normal. I know someone living in her car right now who is tired of not having a safe place to sleep at night. I know someone else who is always scared, and she is unsure why. As you can see, there are many reasons why I thought this would be a great verse for today’s devotional.
In this verse, the Lord reminds us not to be afraid or dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go. Do we know this already? I wonder if we are scared even though we know the Lord is with us always or if we forget this and that is why we are scared. It can be one thing to know the Lord is always with you and another to know He will take care of everything. I was talking with a friend the other day, and she knows the Lord is with her always, and yet she can’t help but be scared of things. This fear that she has did not just develop overnight. She has carried it with her from childhood and is only now finding some freedom from it.
Isn’t it amazing how things from our childhood or past can have such a strong influence on our present and future? Often, we don’t even realize our past is creeping into our present. We know we are scared of something but don’t know what. Maybe we are scared of our boyfriend or husband leaving us. We don’t know where this fear is coming from, and yet, if we look back at our past history, we have had loved ones leave us. We might be afraid that our loved one will not recover completely from surgery, and when we look back, we see that in the past, we knew people who had surgery and didn’t recover.
Our past can creep in and try to make us afraid of the future. This is one of the enemy's favorite tricks. He loves to use our past against us. He loves to point out all the places where we messed up in the past and try to get us to believe we will do it again. He loves to point out all the places where people have hurt us in the past and get us to believe they will do it again. We are not our past. Just because something has happened in the past does not mean it will happen again.
It is not easy to be strong and courageous. If it were, everyone would be doing it, and this world wouldn’t be such a scary place. However, it is possible. It says in 2 Timothy 1:7, “For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity but of power, love, and self-discipline.” We were not born with a spirit of fear and timidity. God created us with a spirit of power, love, and self-discipline. However, sometime in the course of our lives, a lot of us have lost or forgotten about the spirit that God created us with. We have become afraid and timid. It is time to reclaim our true nature, our true spirit.
The question is, how do we do that? How do we reclaim our spirit of power, love, and self-discipline? I think we can do it by remembering what this verse tells us. We must remember that the Lord is with us wherever we go. I think sometimes we think that we can go places that the Lord won’t follow. For instance, we are stuck in a pit of despair, and so there is no way the Lord would be with us there. Guess what? He is right there next to you in that pit. We think He won’t follow us into the hospital or home from the hospital. He is right beside you as you do your best to help your loved one. God does not leave your side, no matter where you go. If you are sleeping in your car, God is sleeping right there next to you.
God is always by our side, and the more we can remember this, the more we will be able to be strong and courageous. The more we believe that God is right there with us, the more we will trust in His protection. I have heard many stories of people who have been scared and cried out to the Lord, and miraculous things have happened. For instance, one time, a woman was about to walk down an alley and saw a man who looked pretty scary at the end of the alley. She asked the Lord for protection. The next day, she read in the paper that a woman was attacked in that same alley that same night. She went to the police station to help ID the man she saw in the alley. When she asked him why he did not attack her when she walked by, he said it was because of the tall guy she had walking with her. She didn’t have anyone but God with her that night. Isn’t that amazing?
God will protect you. He will give you the strength you need. I know some of you need an extra dose of strength today, and He can give it to you. I know some of you need an extra dose of hope today. He has that for you, too! The Lord is always with us, and He has whatever we need. He can give us courage and strength, He can give us love and hope, He can give us whatever we need. We just have to turn to Him and ask Him! If you feel scared, hopeless, or a little lost today, I want to encourage you to remember that the Lord is ALWAYS with you, even if you can’t feel His presence. Call upon Him, and He will be there with whatever it is you need.
Dear heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we need your strength today. We need your hope and your love today. We need to feel your presence today, Lord. We love you, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. The theme for mentoring this month is I Am Made New. Click on the link below to get all the information on mentoring. It might be a great way to spend your lent. I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in August 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, I have told Peter and you in scripture to forgive 70 times 7. That's a huge number. It's not a number that you can even imagine. And I give it to you as good advice for your life. But I want you right now to remember that I forgive you many, many, many, many, many more times. I forgive you as many drops there are in the ocean. Do you know, could you possibly count that? Count on my forgiveness, believe in my forgiveness, and share my forgiveness with others.”
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Be Bold & Be Christ-Like
Philippians 1:20 “No matter what, I will continue to hope and passionately cling to Christ so that he will be openly revealed through me before everyone’s eyes. So I will not be ashamed! In my life or in my death, Christ will be magnified in me.”
I have really enjoyed reading through Philippians this week. There were so many good verses. I started at the end and worked my way forward. I am unsure why it worked out that way, but it did. I read this verse yesterday, and it stuck with me, so I wanted to share it with you today. This is something for which we can all aspire. We can all continue to have hope and passionately cling to Christ so that when others see us, they see Him.
Paul says, “In life or in my death, Christ will be magnified in me.” How great is that? How great would it be to know that you have helped to bring others to Christ, not only in life but in death, too? This makes me wonder, what am I doing to magnify Christ? When people look at me and how I live my life, do they see Christ?
I will always remember what Father Mike said on the podcast Catechism in a Year. He said to take a minute and imagine it is illegal to be Christian. Luckily, this is not the case in America, but pretend it is. He said to imagine now that you are on trial for being a Christian. Besides going to Mass or your church service on the weekend, would they have enough evidence to convict you? I don’t know why this has stuck with me over the past two years, but I think it is a compelling question.
Many of us go to church on Sunday. We love God, and we think that is all we really need to do. However, we are all called to be Christlike. We are called to be Jesus's face to all we meet. Jesus said we need to love the Lord our God with our whole heart, mind, and soul, and then He also said we need to love our neighbor as ourselves. I think this is the part that we often forget. I think we all remember to try to love God, although I am unsure if we try to do it with our whole heart, mind, and soul. I think we try to love God when it benefits us. We all remember God when times are hard; I hope we remember Him when times are good, too.
We often forget to love our neighbors. This doesn’t just mean the person living next to us; it means everyone we interact with. If we had a private investigator following us for a week to look at our behavior and try to gather evidence that we were a Christian, would they find any evidence? Would they see you being compassionate to all those you interact with, whether you know them or not? Would they see you being patient and considerate when you are driving around? Would they see you being kind and helpful to the poor? Would they see you were a Christian when interacting with the various people you met throughout your day? How did you treat that one co-worker who always gets on your nerves? How did you treat that person who cut you off in traffic? How did you treat that person who cut you in line just as you finally reached the front? What about the homeless person who asked you for money?
How we treat others matters. We can’t simply focus on our relationship with God and disregard the rest of the world. We can’t claim to love God and then treat others unkindly. Our actions toward others reflect our faith and our commitment to living a Christlike life. When others look at our lives, they should be able to see Christ in all that we do. Jesus addresses this in the Gospels. God would not have ensured this was in the Bible if it didn’t say something we should pay attention to. The following verse shows us how important it is to care for everyone we meet.
Matthew 25:31-46 “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left. Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers,[f] you did it to me. “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?’ Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
This verse shows us that God requires more of us than just showing up at mass or service on Sunday mornings. It also shows us that we are called to be Christ-like and should view everyone we meet as Christ-like. Instead of seeing a random person you don’t know asking you for money on the street, see Jesus asking you for money on the street. Imagine how different our experiences would be if we pictured Jesus’s face on each person we saw throughout the day. Imagine someone stops you and asks you for help in the grocery store, and you see Jesus in that person. Wouldn’t that be such a gift? What if we tried to be that gift for others? What if we loved Jesus so much that His love and light spilled out from us onto all those we meet? Wouldn’t that be amazing? Isn’t that something worth striving for?
Dear Heavenly Father, please bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, please help us to be your face to the world. Help us to be Christ-like in all that we do. Help us to see you in others. Help us to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. Lord, show us what we need to do to be more Christ-like. Show each one of us where we are struggling with this. Show us where we could be doing better and how. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to seeing you here again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed weekend!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in August 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Come and accept my freedom. Accept it and you will be transformed. You will have greater stability. You will be able to reach out to others and proclaim the freedom that I have given you so that they in turn can accept the freedom that I have given them also.”
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Be Bold & Trust (Be Bold Series)
Psalm 56:3-4 “But in the day that I'm afraid, I lay all my fears before you and trust in you with all my heart. What harm could a man bring to me? With God on my side, I will not be afraid of what comes.”
Today, I decided to read from the Jesus Calling Devotional. I have not done that in a while; I am unsure why. For those of you who don’t know, this is a devotional book written as if God is speaking to you each day. It is really good and often says exactly what you need to hear for that day. Today’s spoke right to me. It reminded me how important it is to trust God in all times with all things. It is just as important to trust Him with the small things as it is to trust Him with the big things. I will read today’s devotional for you, as I think it will speak to you just as much as it spoke to me.
“TRUST ME with every fiber of your being! What I can accomplish in and through you is proportional to how much you depend on me. One aspect of this is the degree to which you trust me in a crisis or major decision. Some people fail miserably here, while others are at their best in tough times. Another aspect is even more telling: the consistency of your trust in me. People who rely on me in the midst of adversity may forget about me when life is flowing smoothly. Difficult times can jolt you into awareness of your need for me, whereas smooth sailing can lull you into a stupor of self-sufficiency.
I care as much about your tiny trust-steps through daily life as about your daily dramatic leaps of faith. You may think that no one else notices, but the One who is always beside you sees everything — and rejoices. Consistently trusting in me is vital to flourishing in my presence.”
Do you see what I mean when I say it often says exactly what you need to hear for the day? I love that it is written as if God is saying it directly to you. This is truly how God talks to us. I am not sure how many of you listening have taken the time to sit and listen to what God has to say to you. If you have not, give it a try today. God wants to talk to each one of us, and yet the world around us is so noisy it is hard to hear him. However, if we sit down and take the time to listen, we will hear what He wants to tell us. This can take time and also practice. The more time you spend trying to hear God talking to you, the more clearly you will hear Him. The more you will begin to recognize what He sounds like to you.
I have a journal, and I try to write in it as often as possible. In 2020, I changed the way I write in my prayer journal. I used just to write God about my day and what was going on in my life. I still do this, but I don’t just do this. Now, I try to stop and take the time to listen to what God has to say back to me. This has been amazing. I have spent a lot of time listening and have given the Lord time to speak into my life, and it has been life-changing. You would be surprised what the Lord wants to say to you if you only gave Him the time to say it. He is so gentle and affirming.
Sometimes, we think we wouldn’t want to hear what the Lord has to say because we feel we aren’t doing a very good job, and He probably wouldn’t have anything nice to say to us. This is not true. That is what the enemy wants you to think so that you don’t stop and give the Lord time to speak love, light, and truth into your life. When you give Him the time and you listen, you will be surprised at how nicely He talks to you. You will be surprised at how much He loves you. Even in our brokenness, even in our sin, He still speaks so much love to us. It is truly amazing.
This is why I started ending each episode with the Word from the Lord that He gave to our prayer group. The more we all start hearing the way He talks to us, the more we will start to recognize it when we hear Him talking in our own lives. Here is what I do when I write to the Lord. I write Him a letter, and then I ask Him to answer me using my pen, and then I start to write a letter back to myself. I don’t question what comes to mind; I don’t overthink it; I write everything that comes to mind. Does that mean that everything I write down is from the Lord? No, probably not. However, I asked Him to answer me, and when we ask, He answers, so I trust that what I am writing down is from Him.
After you are done writing it down, you can re-read it and see what you wrote and how it makes you feel. If you wrote anything down that makes you feel bad, shameful, or guilty, that is probably not from the Lord. That is not how He talks to us. Sometimes, He will convict us of something if we are doing something wrong. However, He doesn’t use shame and guilt to do it. God does not condemn us. He lovingly points us in another direction and then gives us the strength to go in another direction. Anything you are not sure of, you can take to discernment. You can ask the Lord to clarify; you can ask the Lord to explain more, and you can always go deeper with what you got in the letter. If you do this often enough, you will recognize patterns. You will see that He tends to say the same things repeatedly because we tend not to listen. Yet, He keeps saying them until we do listen.
The verse above says, “But in the day that I'm afraid, I lay all my fears before you and trust in you with all my heart. What harm could a man bring to me? With God on my side, I will not be afraid of what comes.” This is a good verse for today because I know many people are staring down some pretty big fears. Whether they are worried about losing their job, getting sick, or finding a new job, it is all scary. Several people I know are sick and worried they won’t be healed. It can be very scary to think you will have to live with this illness for the rest of your life. This is why today’s verse is so important.
The verse says, "I lay all my fears before you and trust you with all my heart.” I hope we are all doing this. I hope that when something scary comes our way, our first instinct is to turn it over to the Lord. Give Him our cares, and He will help us carry them. He will even carry them for us if we can be brave enough to let go and let Him carry them for us. Often, we want to pick them back up again. But if we can fully let go, He will take care of them for us. If we can trust Him to do this, our worries and cares become so much lighter.
My favorite part of the devotional from Jesus Calling is, “Another aspect is even more telling: the consistency of your trust in me.” I also love, “I care as much about your tiny trust-steps through daily life as about your daily dramatic leaps of faith.” These both remind us that although it is important to trust the Lord when things are going wrong in our lives, it is just as important to trust Him when things are calm and there isn’t a crisis. Do we do this? Do we trust that God cares for all things or just the big things? When things are going well, do we still turn to the Lord, or do we try to fix those things on our own?
I think this devotional gives us something to think about this weekend, especially going into the new year. What could we be doing differently? Do we need to be more consistent with our trust in the Lord? What are those tiny trust-steps in our daily life that God is talking about? What if you took 20 minutes sometime today or this weekend and sat down and asked God these questions and then wrote down whatever you think you hear Him say back to you?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to trust you. We want to trust you not only with the big things but the small things, too. Please show us how; please guide us. Help us learn how to take those tiny trust-steps into our daily lives. Lord, we ask that you help us hear your voice in our head. We ask you to open our spiritual ears to hear you more. Lord, I ask you for a special blessing for each person as they enter this new Year. I ask that you bless them and their families. I ask that you bless their jobs, their ministries, whatever it is they do. I ask for you to help them enter this new year with renewed hope and love. We love you so much, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. The theme for mentoring this month is “I am made new.” It is important that we all know that we are not who we once were. We are not just a sum of our mistakes. We are made new in Christ. I pray you will join us this month and learn about how you are made new! I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow! Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in August 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, I have given you freedom, but you must accept it. Do not keep telling yourself I am not worthy. I, your Lord, have died on the cross for you, so you are worthy.”
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Witness Wednesday #149 Day of Reflection
Today’s Witnesses are from a Day of Reflection that I went to last Saturday. The Charismatic Renewal Service of Boston put it on, and some Encounter Ministry students ran it from the Boston Campus. Year 2 students at Encounter need to do a project before they graduate to show they have learned what they were taught. It was a really special day filled with praise and worship, adoration, mass, and fellowship, and we had a section where people could receive individual prayer for impartation and prophecy. We asked the Lord what call he had placed on their life and what gifts they might need for that call. Any gifts he has given us that they may need, we imparted our gifts on them. It was really amazing, the things that the Lord showed us. The group I participated in ran very smoothly, and the Lord was so good to confirm most of what we were hearing. The participants said they were moved and that what was said really resonated with them. There was a time for large group sharing towards the end, and these witnesses were shared during that time.
One woman named Nancy said that they did the project so they could give back to the community. “And when I see three people from my prayer community that gave the Life in the Spirit seminar, that was my introduction to faith-filled Catholics. And it was my gateway to be reconciled to the Lord, to come back to the faith. The Life in the Spirit seminar is a series of talks; they kind of lay out the gospel message. I had such an experience of the presence of Jesus at that seminar. And it just changed my life.
And I've had such a beautiful life since. So I was so happy that in some way, I hope, I could give back to Gail, Carolee, and my husband Mike for all the years that they've accompanied me on my faith walk. And so I'm enjoying it.
Next, Mike spoke and said, “Today has been a blessing to me. Just a flood of beautiful blessings and memories since I've been in the Spirit. It started off right when I walked through the door and was given a book a book by Father Ralph Diorio, who died recently.
I had been to one of his healing services. And I heard he's going to be in Franklin, the next town from us, in that way. And for healing services, a big deal, St. Mary's Church, you have to get tickets. You want to sit in the upstairs church. I wasn’t going to go, but then they said, there's a bunch of women, from one of the senior housings, they want somebody to drive them there. All right I guess I will go. So we're down in the basement. Beginning of the service, Father had some kind of word of knowledge thing and announced a few ailments that he felt the Lord wanted to heal. If you had the problem he was talking about he wanted you to come up to where he was.
He started talking about a man who had this and that. I started to think, I have those problems. Then he said a man who recently had back surgery. I said, I'm getting a throbbing throat. He's talking about me. And so I went up, and they had about five of us sitting in the sanctuary when he went through his healing service.
And then he prayed with the other ones, one, two, three, four. Then he got to me. Now, what are you here for? Well, I'm the back person. He said, Okay. You can sit down. I'm going to look at you. He said, Did you know your one leg is shorter than the other? I said, Not really, because it wasn't significant. So he said, Stretch out your legs. And the way this ran, it was like a closed circuit TV. So the people in the basement in the lower church could see what was going on.
And so the camera behind me was focused right on my feet. The people in the upper church couldn't see what was going on. But some of my neighbors and their friends down there, they could see. We saw your leg grow. Yes. Now, frankly, it was just a little bit shorter. And nothing had ever bothered me. But I said, you know, I always wear out the heels of my shoes faster. So that was true, I guess.
So it was nothing that even fascinated me. So okay, well, that's interesting. But it turns out my neighbor, who was also there, had a son who was a little older than the toddler. He had some kind of growth, I don't know what you'd call it, abnormally, where one of his legs was growing less than the other. At his next doctor's appointment, the doctor told my neighbor’s son, “Oh, you're okay now.” So I said, I think mine was just a sign for what was going on with my neighbor’s son.
Next we heard from another Nancy:
As I was preparing to be on the team today, you know, I took a day and I fasted. And I prayed that I could hear Him for each person that I was going to pray over. I get nervous. And God, in his faithfulness, is easy. He gives us the graces so easily that in praying over people, a word would just come. Not that I had prepared it or thought about it or whatever. And so, God is faithful. And I have learned over and over again and still need to learn over and over again to just trust in him to relax and step back and watch him show up.
Next was another man named Mike. My name is Mike, and I have been for more than 20 years. I am dealing with an issue that really began several years ago. But last April, I had to have my jaw replaced. It had actually died. And in order to do that, they had to take a bone from my leg and put it in where my jaw was. And part of the outcome of that is that I have been completely unable to swallow, much less sing or do many other things immediately after that. So I really have not sung a note, hardly, in almost 10 months. And today, during the praise portion, I sang song number one and song number two, and then my voice was just gone. It was nothing. My diaphragm told me, don't bother, because there's nothing here.
And so I sat down and started to get really discouraged. But God said, No, I don't care what you sound like. Just stand up and sing. And when I did that, my voice came back. I have been unable to stand up and sing in almost a year. And let me tell you, God is just incredible. Thank you.
Someone else got up and said, “Thank you, Jesus. I have to say, I didn't have a chance to tell you how beautiful your voice was. You were singing right behind me. I was like, who is that? Who is that incredible voice?”
Next, Matteo got up and said, “Mike and I have sung a lot together over the last 10 years. And we always sing at a men's conference. Mike has been singing with our chapter for a while and has sung for our retreats. And this year, he was unable to do that. There was a really big hole. And it's just been breaking his heart. So, for me to see Mike be able to sing today was powerful. Thank you.”
Someone else shared a vision they received. “So I got this a couple of times. So I want to share. What I saw was a giant field. And I saw a bunch of little campfires and people sitting around the campfires. And in the middle of the field, there was this enormous construction of wood, like enormous. And I saw Jesus just sitting beside it. And everybody's really kind of happy around their own little campfires. And then I saw Jesus say now. And everybody took their torches from their little fires, and they brought them into the middle of the field. And they set a bonfire that could be seen from space. And I feel like us coming together here, that God is doing so much more than we realize by us coming together.
I am so grateful for all those who worked hard to put on this amazing event. I am grateful to all those who came to the event, and I am grateful to all those who were brave enough to get up and share their experience at the event. I hope you enjoyed hearing these witnesses about how God was working that day. Maybe next year you can join us for this event. It happens every year around this time. It was an amazing day!
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Be Bold & Ask For More! (Be Bold Series)
Isaiah 40:28-31 “Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom. He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall, but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.”
“He will not grow tired or weary.” I thought of two things when I read this. The first was, wouldn’t that be nice? Wouldn’t it be nice not to grow tired or weary? I know a lot of us have been feeling tired and weary lately. A lot is going on in our world, and we are ready for a break. This is why my first thought was, wouldn’t that be nice. My second thought was, do we believe this? Do we believe that God doesn’t grow tired and weary? I wondered this because I feel as though often times we treat God as though this is not true. We treat God as if He is not the almighty and powerful Lord that does not grow tired or weary.
I say this because we tend to be cautious with our prayers. We save up our prayers for the really important times, as if we only get so many, and we don’t want to run out. This may sound silly, but you know you have all thought that at one time or another. Maybe you didn’t think that exact thought, but you did hold back from asking God for something because it wasn’t that important, and He had bigger things to think about. We have all done this. We want to pray that our child wins the football game, but then we feel guilty because there are people with real problems, and we are taking God’s attention away from them to ask Him to help our kids win a football game or to help me find a parking spot. This verse is telling us something that we already know on some level but have trouble believing. God does not grow tired or weary. God can help you with your small request and help someone else with their giant request all at the same time. He can do it all and still not grow tired or weary. He is that amazing.
The next line in the verse says that no one can fathom his understanding. We can’t even begin to understand all that the Lord knows. We see how he is working in our lives, and we think He is a little crazy, or we think He is upset with us because things aren’t going our way. We don’t understand that all these things are happening so that His plan for us to have ridiculous goodness can come to fruition. We needed to lose that job to get this better one. We needed to lose that sense of security to appreciate it when we regained it. We needed to go through that hard time to show someone else they can get through it, too. We can’t fathom the Lord’s understanding. It’s just like it says in Isaiah 55:8: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord.” The Lord knows what He is doing. It is ok if we don’t understand. It will all make sense one day
The next line says, “He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak.” This is something that can help us if we can remember it. He gives strength to the weary. How long have we been weary for? Did we know that God would give us strength? Did we ask for it? If a lot is weighing down on your heart, I want you to know I am right there with you. There isn’t a single person I know right now who is coasting through life with no troubles. We are all weary. I think it is a condition of living in a broken world. We are imperfect; we all hurt each other, sometimes without even knowing it. We have fallen into an age where our own pleasure and our own wants trump all else. We don’t want to hurt our loved ones, and we also don’t want to give up the things that we want. We are weary because we are trying to exist in a world that doesn’t understand the Christian way of life. We are weary because we rely on the world to give us our strength when our Lord sits by, watching and trying to offer us the strength we need. However, we are so busy trying to do it all ourselves that we don’t see him there handing it out.
What is coming to me right now is that we need to stop turning to the world to get our strength and our power. Yes, the world does offer us power, and it might feel good for a while to have that power. However, if you find your power from he world, you will never be fulfilled. You will always be searching for more. You will have this part of you that will always feel empty. However, if you turn to the Lord and ask him for your strength and power, He will fill you up completely. You will be lacking nothing. It says in 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 “But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” God’s power is made perfect in our weakness. How great would it be if we could be like St. Paul and delight in our weaknesses, insults, hardships, and persecutions? How often will we need to hear that God will give us strength when we are weary and power when we are weak before we actually believe it? How long will we turn away from God and look elsewhere to find our power before we return to Him and ask Him? He is standing there ready to give us all we need for the day, and we are too busy looking everywhere for it that we don’t see it.
The verse ends with a great visual. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall, but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.” First, it tells us that everyone grows weary. It is not just those who have been around for a long time; even the youth grow weary. Actually, our youth, in particular, these days, seem to be growing weary. None of us are exempt, yet it says, those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. When we are weary and weak, it is hard to hope. When we are weary, it is usually because the enemy has worn us down, and we are fresh out of hope. However, this verse tells us that if we hope in the Lord, he will renew our strength. There it is again. This verse repeats that the Lord is our strength. Maybe this time will be the time that we truly hear it. Maybe today we will believe that the Lord does not grow weary and He doesn’t grow tired. Wouldn’t it be great if today is the day that we finally start turning to the Lord and asking him for that strength and power that he is just waiting to give us?
I heard these two phrases a few times over the last few days, and they just came to mind again, so I would like to share them with you. The first is the phrase, “more Lord more.” The Lord has so much more for you. We don’t want to ask for more sometimes because we don’t want to be greedy. We settle for little answers to our prayers because we don’t want to push our luck or feel we should just be happy with what we get. The Lord wants us to ask for more. Yes, be grateful for what you receive and still ask for more. In the book “The Circle Maker,” the author, Mark Batterson, talks about a man praying for rain as they hadn’t had rain in a very long time. This man drew a circle in the ground and told the Lord he would not leave that circle until the rain came. It finally started to sprinkle. Everyone started to rejoice, and the man started to pray harder. He said that was not the rain he was praying for. He was praying for more rain, and it began to rain harder. He still said that was not the rain he was praying for. Finally it started to rains so hard that everyone had to run for cover. The Lord wants to do this in your life as well. Start saying, “Thank you, Lord, and more, Lord, more.” Be open to more, and be willing to ask the Lord for more.
The other phrase I heard was in the Life in the Spirit Seminar video. David Mangan was talking about the gifts of the Holy Spirit. He talked about how we should all be open to whatever gifts the Holy Spirit wants to give us, particularly the gift of speaking in tongues. This is one that people often don’t want as they find it weird. David said he is open to any gifts the Lord is passing out, and he is getting in line twice. Then he said, “It’s not that I am greedy; it’s that I am needy.” I love this because it is so true. We don’t have to feel as though we are greedy when we say “more Lord more.” We are needy; we all are. We can’t do anything without the Lord, which makes us pretty needy. I keep feeling as though the Holy Spirit really wants you to hear that the Lord has so much more for each and every one of you. Our prayers are too little. He is bigger than we give Him credit for. Stop playing little with your prayers. Step out in faith and ask for what you truly want; God has more for you. He does not grow weary or get tired. Keep asking, don’t limit yourself, Our God is a Big God who can do Big things. He is standing by, waiting for you to trust that and for you to step out in faith and ask for the miracle you have been wanting but are too afraid to ask for.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone listening to this episode today. Lord, you are amazing. I love it when you speak to me, and you give a specific message for everyone listening. Lord, help us to believe and truly accept that you don’t grow weary or tired and that you love when we come to you. Help us to turn to you for all we need, Lord. Help us to look to you for our strength and power, Lord. Help us to say “more Lord more” with the expectant faith that you want to give us more, that you have more to give. Lord, I know you were speaking to some people individually when you said we needed to step out in faith and ask for more. I pray that those individuals hear that message deep in their hearts and that You give them the boldness and trust they need to pray those big prayers. Help us all to pray those big prayers, Lord. Give us the grace of a more expectant faith, Lord. We believe, help our unbelief. Lord, I especially want to pray for those who are weary and need your strength. Help them, Lord, give them more. We love you, Lord; you are so amazing. We are so grateful that with all you give to us, you are telling us to ask for more. We will take all you have to offer, Lord, not because we are greedy, but because we are needy. We ask all of this in accordance with your word and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed weekend!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in August 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Come, all my children. Come to drink heartily from the cup of my eternal love. I have much to share with you, much to give to you.”
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Be Bold & Persevere
Hebrews 10:36 "You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised.”
This was one of the verses I typed for our August discernment notes for the Prayer Group. The message translation came up when I looked up the verse on biblegateway.com to check out different versions. I love the message translation because it puts it in our current terms. It takes what the Bible says and uses common everyday language to tell us what they are talking about. Another thing it does is group verses together. So, instead of having verse 36, it had verses 32-39 all lumped together. This way, you don’t take any verses out of context. I don’t always use this translation when writing the devotional, but I frequently look at it to ensure I understand what is being said. Today, I didn’t intend to look up the message translation; it just came up, and the verses blew me away. When I get a verse, I often read it before and after it. When I do this, I sometimes switch to those verses. The verses before this one give us much more context into what this verse means.
Here is the message translation for Hebrews 10:32-36, “Remember those early days after you first saw the light? Those were the hard times! Kicked around in public, targets of every kind of abuse—some days it was you, other days your friends. If some friends went to prison, you stuck by them. If some enemies broke in and seized your goods, you let them go with a smile, knowing they couldn’t touch your real treasure. Nothing they did bothered you, nothing set you back. So don’t throw it all away now. You were sure of yourselves then. It’s still a sure thing! But you need to stick it out, staying with God’s plan so you’ll be there for the promised completion.”
I loved these verses because they explain how hard it can be to stick with something. When we start something new, we are excited and go all in, or at least I do. I always want to do it because it is new and exciting. Even if it is hard work, it can still be exciting, and we can still be motivated. However, what about when it is not new or exciting anymore? Think about a hobby you started. You were so excited about it that you bought all the things to go with it and did it all the time. When I got married, my neighbor started selling Creative Memories scrapbooking supplies. To support her, I started a scrapbook for Tony and me. Then, when I had kids, I got more into scrapbooking. I would stay up late doing it. My fellow moms and I would have scrapbooking nights going well into the mornings. I bought more and more stuff, and I loved it. Then, as I had more kids and they got to ages where they were into more stuff, I slowly got away from scrapbooking. Now, I have two bookshelves full of supplies, and I rarely ever scrapbook. I also got into running during COVID-19, and I was excited to go out and run. Not excited every day, but excited enough to get myself out there. I don’t think I ran much at all this past year. Our interests come and go. Our relationship with the Lord should remain a constant in our lives.
The letters to the various communities in the New Testament addressed the people of the early church. Jesus came here to set up a new kingdom in this world. This religion was new and exciting. It was familiar in some ways and radically different in other ways. People were excited, and they were all in at first. People were excited about this new religion, and yet it was not an easy life for those who believed in Christ. Nowadays, if you believe in Christ, you may have some persecution, but nothing like they received back at the beginning.
Right after Christ died, there was a lot of persecution. Many could not openly worship, and if they were caught, they were put in jail or they were killed. Peter was crucified, Paul was beheaded, Andrew was also crucified, Thomas was pierced through with spears, Philipp was arrested and cruelly put to death, Matthew was stabbed to death, Bartholomew was a martyr for the Gospel, James was stoned and then clubbed to death, Simon, the zealot, was killed after refusing to sacrifice to the sun god, Matthias was burned to death, & John was the only one to die of natural causes. It was not easy to be a Christian when these letters were being written. This is why the early church fathers wrote letters to their people. They wanted to encourage them to keep believing.
These verses do just that. “Remember those early days after you first saw the light? Those were the hard times! Kicked around in public, targets of every kind of abuse—some days it was you, other days your friends. If some friends went to prison, you stuck by them.” This reminds them of how they felt when they first came to know Christ. They are reminding them that times were hard even from the beginning, and yet they followed Christ anyway. They were kicked around, and they were abused in all sorts of ways, and yet the Lord was still with them, and they were still with Him. It also reminds them that they stuck together. If their friend were in trouble, they did not desert them. They were right by their side.
Next, the verses remind them how they felt when they were full of the Lord. “If some enemies broke in and seized your goods, you let them go with a smile, knowing they couldn’t touch your real treasure. Nothing they did bothered you. Nothing set you back.” This verse reminds them of where the source of their joy is. Our joy is not found in our possessions. It is found in the Lord. If we have the Lord in our hearts, we don’t care about worldly possessions because we know we can’t take those with us. We know that we have the best gift, the Spirit of Christ. No one can take that away from us.
The verse says, “So don’t throw it all away now. You were sure of yourselves then. It’s still a sure thing! But you need to stick it out, staying with God’s plan so you’ll be there for the promised completion.” This part reminds them that the time has not yet come. We need to stay in the fight. We have done so well for so long and must keep moving forward. We need to keep relying on God and defending God. We need to keep resting in the Lord. The verse reminds them that we can be just as sure of God today as we were when we first found Him. God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He was there for us then and will be there tomorrow. We can count on that.
The verse I chose for today states, “You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised.” This is a powerful reminder that we are all called to do something. What is God calling you to do? It also reminds us that God has made promises to us. When we have done the will of God, we will receive what He has promised us. That is pretty amazing! We just have to persevere. When it gets tough, and we feel we can’t keep going, we need to ask the Lord to help us. His power is made perfect in our weakness. We are never in this alone. The Holy Spirit lives inside of us, and that means we have the power of Jesus Christ living inside of us.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you and want to persevere in following you. We want to not only follow you, we want to bring you to all those we meet. Please help us, Lord. Please help us to stand up when we are persecuted. Help us to defend you, even when it is hard. Help us to keep going when we think we can’t. Lord, I ask you to help bring wisdom and clarity to your children. We pray especially for your children who have left the church because of the actions of some involved in the church. Lord, help them to see that the church is made up of broken people, but that does not make it a broken church. Bring them back to your loving embrace, Lord! We also pray for all those with mental health disorders, Lord. Please break through the enemy's lies and tell them how loved they are! We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. We start a new month of mentoring tomorrow night. I hope you will join us! I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in August 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, I have led you out of darkness, out of fear, out of bondage, into the light. I have freed you to walk with me always. I am your shepherd and I will not let you go astray.”
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Be Bold & Pray (Be Bold Series)
Ephesians 6:18-20 “Pray in the Spirit at all times in every prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert and always persevere in supplication for all the saints. Pray also for me, so that when I speak, a message may be given to me to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it boldly, as I must speak.”
Pray in the Spirit at all times in every prayer and supplication. Praying in the Spirit, to me, means praying in tongues. It says in Romans 8:26, “ Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.” In other words, we don’t know how to pray, but if we allow the Spirit to take over for us, then He can pray what we really need to pray. I am not sure how many of you listening to this podcast have prayed in tongues before or even believe that praying in tongues is something people do. I thought I would take a moment to explain what happens when you pray in tongues. When you are praying in tongues, your mouth and vocal cords are making sounds that most of the time do not sound anything like real words. You do not know what you are saying when you are praying in tongues. It is a conversation between the Holy Spirit and the Lord. The Holy Spirit is speaking what it finds in your heart and sharing that with the Father.
When looking up the meaning of this verse, two different sites talked about how living and praying in the Spirit was about more than just our thoughts and our desires. Praying in the Spirit also has to do with our submission to God. We need to realize that we are dependent on the Lord for all things. It is about turning to God and asking Him to help us, and then we also trust that He will help us and His help will be whatever is best for us.
Then the verse says to keep alert and always persevere in supplication for all the saints. When I first read this, I thought it was asking us to persevere in asking the Saints for their help. However, upon research, this verse is actually asking us to persevere in supplication for the saints, not from the saints. It is asking us to pray not only for the things that we need but also for the needs of other believers. It talks about how we are to pray persistently and about all matters. Although we might not be able to pray out loud every second of every day, it is important to develop the habit of praying consistently. When something comes up, no matter how big or how small, our first thought should be to share it with the Lord. We need to turn to Him no matter how small the matter is.
The second half of this verse talks about St. Paul. St. Paul was imprisoned because he was sharing the good news of Jesus Christ. Now, in this message, he is asking for prayers so that he may speak boldly about the message of the Gospel. He is still in prison when he writes this, and that is why he is saying that he is an ambassador in chains. How many of us would be willing to continue to proclaim the Gospel if we were sitting in jail for doing that very thing? Take a minute to think about it, would you? I have prayed for a holy boldness ever since I knew that was a thing. I don’t remember when I learned about holy boldness or where I first heard that term, but I instantly loved it.
If you don’t know, let me share something with you: I am a crier. I cry when I see a sad movie or TV show. I cry when I see a happy movie or TV show, especially if I didn’t expect the happy ending. I cry when I am upset, I cry when I am nervous, and I cry when I am happy. Sometimes, I don’t even know why I am crying. I can feel the tears falling down my cheeks, but I don’t feel sad, and so I don’t know why I am crying. I have been told that tears can be a gift from the Holy Spirit. They have never felt like a gift. I know some people who can’t cry. Due to their upbringing, things that have happened to them in their past, or some other reason, they can’t cry. No matter how hard they try. So when they see me cry, they feel that it is a gift. I guess it all depends on how you look at it.
The reason I mention this is because this is a big part of the reason I never really talked about my faith to people unless they started the conversation. I was afraid that if I got nervous and started to cry, they would think I was crazy. I still don’t really like to walk up to someone that I don’t know and start a conversation. However, I am getting better at this as I have been asking God to help me with this for a very long time now. I remember the first time I felt called to ask someone if I could pray over him. It was a silent retreat, and I had just been given the gift of speaking in tongues. This guy was really suffering, and I felt the Holy Spirit tell me to pray over him. I didn’t know this guy. I hadn’t ever talked to him. The only reason I knew he was hurting was because he shared that on the first night of the retreat. Then, the rest of the retreat was silent, so I never talked to him again. I remember hearing the Lord ask me to pray over him and telling the Lord if He wanted me to do this, then He would have to give me the courage because I was scared to do that kind of thing.
I remember the Lord gave me several opportunities, and I let each one pass me by. I was just so nervous. Each time I repented and told the Lord that I wanted to, I just couldn’t, and that if He kept giving me chances, I would keep trying. Finally, I asked the guy if I could pray over him. He said I could and was thankful. Even though he was thankful, I was still nervous, and I did start to cry. Not ugly-face cry, just tears streaming down my face as I prayed. I felt foolish for having cried, but I was really proud of myself for stepping out of my comfort zone and asking the man in the first place.
This is why I can’t imagine being as brave as St. Paul, who was willing to proclaim the Good News even from his prison cell. Maybe this is why he asks us to persevere in supplication for all believers. We all need strength from the Lord. Maybe what you need is different than what I need. Maybe you don’t need a holy boldness. I know several ladies in my prayer group who proclaim the Word of God for the whole world to hear. They may not need boldness, but maybe they need strength for trials they face, maybe they need help not worrying, we all need something. Let us keep praying for ourselves and for our fellow believers. Let us pray that God gives each one of us exactly what we need to help bring others into a personal relationship with Him.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask that you help all your saints and give us whatever it is we need to help spread your word and help bring others into your glorious kingdom. Lord, we ask you to help us be alert as St. Paul asked of us. We ask that you help us persevere in supplication for your saints. We ask that you give each and every one of us a holy boldness to proclaim your word. Lord, you are so good, and you always give us everything we need for the day. I ask that you help us see this each and every day. Lord, you are amazing, and we love you. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name. Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. We will be starting a new month of mentoring soon, and I hope you will join us! Mentoring is on Tuesday night at 8 P. M. Eastern time on Zoom. If you aren’t available on Tuesday nights, you can always watch the replay. There is a link below, or you can always go to my website, walkboldlywithjesus.com Remember, Jesus loves you so very much, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in August 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Life is a complex mix of many things, my children. Sometimes, I know that you do not know which way to turn. Always turn towards me. I have brought you into this existence. You are mine, mine alone. ”
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Be Bold & Spread The Gospel (Be Bold Series)
Ephesians 3:7-13 “Of this gospel I was made a minister according to the gift of God’s grace which was given me by the working of his power. To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to make all men see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things; that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places. This was according to the eternal purpose which he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and confidence of access through our faith in him. So I ask you not to lose heart over what I am suffering for you, which is your glory.”
It was tough to pick a verse this morning. I have been reading Ephesians, and there are so many good verses in there. I kept reading and re-reading chapters 1 and 2, and so many things were jumping out at me, but I didn’t feel like any of those verses were the ones I was supposed to talk about today. Then I went on to chapter 3, and this verse jumped out at me. I felt the Lord wanted me to speak to you about evangelization today. If you are like me, that word might scare you a bit.
When I hear that word, I want to look around and see who else the Lord might be talking to. When I hear that word, I instantly feel inadequate. Why is this? I know several Gospel stories and parables, so it is not as if I don’t know what’s in the Gospel. I know that God is love, which is the most important word to get out there. I know it is essential that people discover the love God has for them. I know these things, so why do I feel so afraid when I hear someone say that we are all called to share the good news with everyone we meet?
St. Paul was an extraordinary man and a great evangelizer. He is credited with writing about half of the books in the New Testament. Yet, in this opening verse, it says, “Of this gospel, I was made a minister according to the gift of God’s grace which was given me by the working of his power. To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, to preach to the Gentiles.” St. Paul knew he was called to be an evangelist as well. He knew his calling was to spread the word of the Gospel to all he met, but he really didn’t feel qualified.
I take comfort in this. I take comfort in knowing I am not the only one who gets nervous when I look at the call the Lord has placed on my life. I also hate to be the bearer of bad news, but God has also put this call on your lives. We are all called to bring the Gospel to all we meet. Does your stomach feel funny when I say that? Do you get nervous when you realize God calls you to spread His word? If you do, you are not alone. I don’t know anyone who is only excited and not nervous to go out and share the Gospel. Don’t get me wrong, I know people who are excited to share the Gospel with others; however, they are nervous about doing it and feel inadequate to do it. I don’t know anyone who sets out to evangelize, thinking they know everything and that it will be easy.
This is why the next line is so important. It says, “This was according to the eternal purpose which he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and confidence of access through our faith in him.” This verse says we have boldness and confidence of access through our faith in him. Jesus can give us the boldness we need. Let me read you this part in the message translation. “I have been made a messenger of this wonderful news by the gift of grace that works through me. Even though I am the least significant of all his holy believers, this grace gift was imparted when the manifestation of His power came upon me. Grace alone empowers me so that I can boldly preach this wonderful message to non-Jewish people, sharing with them the unfading, inexhaustible riches of Christ, which are beyond comprehension.”
I love that this translation says, “by the gift of grace that works through me.” Grace is a gift from God. Grace can help us do things we could never do on our own. The verse also says, “Grace alone empowers me so that I can boldly preach this wonderful message.” God is calling us all to share the Gospel with all we meet. This means that He will equip us with all the grace we need to do so. If you feel inadequate to share the Gospel, join the club; we all feel inadequate. However, that doesn’t mean we get to excuse ourselves from doing it. How we feel doesn’t stop us from fulfilling our calling.
There is a podcast I used to listen to called “Do It Scared.” This is what we are called to do. We are called to step out in faith even when we don’t think we are the best person for the job. Who are we to question God’s judgment? We are called to step out in faith even when we are scared. We are called to trust that God’s grace is enough to empower us to do what He has called us. We are called to step out with a holy boldness. Sometimes, that boldness won’t come before you step out, but it will help you say what He wants.
If you are like me, you may think, “That is great, Catherine. I get that God’s grace is enough. Yet, I still feel inadequate and need something more practical to help me step out in faith on this journey.” If this is you, I have you covered. In one of our Encounter Ministry classes, they gave us a list of declarations that we can say each day to help us begin to believe that we can go out and evangelize. If you say or write these declarations often, they can help build your confidence. They can also replace your negative self-talk around the word evangelization and your ability to do it. Declarations work best if said daily, out loud, and while looking in a mirror. However, if that doesn’t work for you, do what does. I write these declarations most mornings. Writing seems to work well for me, although now that I say that, I will probably start saying them out loud and writing them. Here are the declarations:
Everywhere I go, I am overwhelmed by God's love for people, and that motivates me to share the gospel.
It is easy and normal for me to articulate the gospel.
I have an anointing for evangelization.
Today, my mind and spirit will tune in to the people around me and find those who desire to be saved. I will lead those people to Jesus.
I am fearless and courageous, and I live with an understanding that people are hungry for Jesus.
I am creative in my evangelization and I adapt well to bring powerful God encounters to different kinds of people.
I love evangelizing!
It is easy to share the gospel with others because they want to know the God that is inside of me.
When I feel afraid to share the gospel with someone I will remind myself that on the other side of fear is a testimony.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you so much. You are amazing. We thank you for giving us the grace we need to fulfill our mission. We are sorry we question you and feel inadequate for all you call us to do. We believe you will equip us, Lord. Help our unbelief. Please help us feel more confident in the call you have given each of us. The call to share your Word and love with everyone we meet. Help us step out in faith and try to do this, Lord. Help each one of us try to let one person today know that Jesus loves them. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Can I ask you a favor today? Would you forward this podcast to someone you know today who would be blessed by it? I would really appreciate you helping me spread the Word of God to more people. If you don’t think this would be the right episode to send to someone, then pick your favorite one and send that one to them. Thanks so much! I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! May the grace and favor of our Lord Jesus Christ be upon you. Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in August 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, let your mind open, open to me. Let it open so much that you are full of me, and you know all that I want you to do. Ever be open to me, my children. Know that I love you and that I commission you to go out there and make me known. To each one you meet, you can do it, for I have commissioned you. Fear not. Move forward. And I will be there for you all the way.”
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Today’s Witness is actually from the Encounter School of Ministry Website. The Encounter School of Ministry has healing services in person and also online. Gabriella was watching this healing service on Zoom. She was suffering from Lupus and had a lot of inflammation. Her story is miraculous and so exciting. It is exciting not just for Gabriella and her family but for us, too. It is exciting for us because if God will do it for Gabriella, He will do it for you, too!! Anything is possible with the Lord! No matter what you are struggling with, don’t give up! Keep praying for the Lord to heal you!! Here is Gabriella’s testimony.We have all seen God working in our lives. However, we might not all be aware it is God working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences, the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience of how God has worked or is working in your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or click here. It won’t take up much of your time, and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story, and the world needs to hear them.Music:"Adding the Sun"fine us. It is not fun, Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ www.findingtruenorthcoaching.comCLICK HERE TO DONATECLICK HERE to sign up for Mentoring CLICK HERE to sign up for Daily "Word from the Lord" emailsCLICK HERE to sign up for my newsletter & receive a free audio trainingabout inviting Jesus into your daily lifeCLICK HERE to buy my book Total Trust in God's Safe Embrace
Be Bold And Ask God (Be Bold Series)
Acts 4:29-31 “And now, Lord, look at their threats, and grant to your servants to speak your Word with all boldness, while you stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus." When they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God with boldness.”
Last night, I attended the East Coast Encounter Ministry Conference. I was so happy to be there. I love being in a room that is full of the Holy Spirit. Have you ever had the privilege? Have you ever been in a room where you could feel the Holy Spirit? I am not even talking about when you have a sense that the Holy Spirit might be there. I am talking about when you walk into a room, and you can feel the Holy Spirit is there in a big way. It is a feeling I can’t quite describe. There is so much joy in the room. It is truly amazing. Last night was one of those nights. The conference started with worship, which is how we should start anything. Even your own personal prayer time will be more meaningful if you start it with praise. God loves when we praise Him. There isn’t one certain way that we need to praise Him. He leaves the how up to us. My favorite way is to listen to Christian music and sing along. Maybe you would prefer to tell God how great He is or call out various names for Him. The choice is yours.
After worship, we had prayer time, where a Deacon spoke words of prayer and words of prophecy over the whole group. Next, we had a speaker talk to us about the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. It was a wonderful and funny talk. I am sure I will pass along some of what I learned at a later date. Right now, I am just letting it all sink in. After the talk, there were prayer teams that were set up to do individual prayers over people. It was so beautiful. There were people who were overcome with the Holy Spirit everywhere you looked. It was amazing. The Holy Spirit definitely showed up there last night. However, I wasn’t surprised as He always shows up when we call on Him. He is so good like that. He wants to give us all He has, His gifts and His fruits; we just aren’t usually asking for them.
The speaker went through several scriptures tonight, one of which was the scripture above. I liked how this verse begins because the person writing this verse is telling God to “look at their threats,” talking about the Jews that killed Jesus. It’s as if the speaker is telling God something He didn’t already know. There is nothing that goes on that God does not know about. He not only knows about it while it is going on, He knew about it long before it started. He knows everything, from the beginning of time until the end. It wasn’t necessary for Peter or John, whoever was speaking at that time, to make that statement and yet it speaks to their human nature. It is tough for us to wrap our heads around the fact that God knows everything. So, sometimes, oftentimes, we feel the need to remind Him of what we are going through.
What Peter and John are looking for in this verse is boldness, along with signs and wonders to be performed in Jesus’ name. They understand what they are up against. They are trying to spread the Gospel to people who lived the same time Jesus lived and yet still don’t believe. They are trying to spread the Gospel at a time when they could be put in jail, stoned to death, or crucified just for saying Jesus’ name. They know if they want to have any chance at being successful in their mission, they will need to preach with a holy boldness. They know if they expect people to believe them they need also to have signs and wonders to back up their teaching. It would be so great if we could all believe without seeing, but that is not how a lot of us work. We need to see first and then believe. The apostles knew this.
What happened after they asked for boldness, signs, and wonders? “When they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken; and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God with boldness.” What happened? God answered their prayers. He always does! He is good like that. I know there may be a lot of people in your life that you can’t count on. We live in a fallen and broken world. However, God is not one of these people. You can count on God to answer your prayers every time you ask. He will never let you down. I feel like I should say something about that last statement. Every time I write that statement, I wonder if this is true. When I say He will never let you down, I mean He never says He will do something and then fails to do it. He never breaks His promises. He never leaves us. He is always with us. He always answers your prayers. There is never a time when you are asking for something and He is ignoring you. He always comes through.
I think why I get this funny feeling when I write that God never lets us down because I know people who feel God has let them down. I think anyone who has lost a loved one probably feels let down by God when it happens. I know when we lost a member of our prayer group, a young member who was in her 40s, I felt let down. I didn’t understand why He didn’t save her when I knew that He could have. If you have lost a loved one, you may have had similar feelings. So, I think that is why I am hesitant to say God never lets us down. Although what I feel the Holy Spirit is saying to me right now is that God didn’t let us down, we were disappointed with His decision. We asked for our loved ones to be saved, and they weren’t, and we are understandably upset with God for that. However, God did answer our prayers; it just wasn’t how we wanted Him to. Our expectation was that He would save our loved ones here on earth, and He decided to save them by bringing them to heaven. God didn’t do what we wanted Him to do, and we are disappointed, and that is OK. God can handle our disappointment. He can even handle our anger. As long as we are turning to God in our time of need, He will be there to help us through all of our emotions.
I may have gone on a little tangent there, but every time I write that God won’t let us down, I get a funny feeling, and the Holy Spirit let me address that feeling today in case any of you were listening and feeling like the Lord has let you down. We may not always like the answers to our prayers, but He does always answer them, and He is always there with us to provide us with the strength to get through another day. He gives us the strength to get through the circumstances we are presented with. He is a good, good Father.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this podcast today. Lord, we want the holy boldness that You gave to your apostles. We want the signs and wonders also. Lord, we want all your Holy Spirit wants to give us. We are open to the gifts and the fruits of the Holy Spirit. If there is someone listening to this episode who does not know about the Holy Spirit and how amazing He is, I ask that you put a desire to learn more in their hearts. I ask for you to put a desire to grow more in the Holy Spirit on every person listening, Lord. I pray for a revival of the Holy Spirit in this town, in this state, in this country, and in the world. Lord, help everyone know you, your son, and your Holy Spirit. Lord, we love you, you are truly amazing. We are so grateful you gave us your Holy Spirit. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow! I will see some of you tonight on mentoring. Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed weekend!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in August 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “At times, people hurt you, but their intentions weren't as bad as you think that they are. Give them a chance. Give them the benefit of the doubt, my children. Be compassionate as I am compassionate with you.”
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Be Bold & Sprinkle Love Like Confetti
2 Corinthians 3:4-6 “Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. Not that we are competent of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our competence is from God, who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of letter but of spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
I liked this verse when I read it for a couple of reasons. The first reason was that it says, “Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God.” I liked the phrasing of it. The verse is saying that they have confidence in God through Christ. They are acknowledging that Christ is the reason the have confidence in God. It is through Him that all things are possible. I like this because it means that all the responsibility for trusting God is not on my shoulders. If I ask, Christ will help me with my confidence in God.
The next line says, “Not that we are competent of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our competence is from God.” I like this because, again, it takes some of the responsibility off of us to have to know how to do it all and to be good at everything. If God asks us to do something, then He will give us all we need to do it. This is sometimes hard to believe. Imagine God asking you to build an orphanage in a foreign country. One where you have never been before. It is difficult to say yes to this when you have no idea how any of the pieces will come together. Maybe you don’t even know how to build anything, and you are not a fan of travel. Maybe you don’t have any money and you don’t have the first clue how to do fundraising. It would be hard to step into this calling when you don’t have any answers. And yet, some people do.
God asked Noah to build an arc. He asked him to build an arc in the middle of a drought. Noah had no idea how to build an arc. He was a farmer. Noah had never built an arc before. I don’t think that Noah had all the supplies to build the arc before he said yes to the Lord. God asked Noah to build an arc with very specific dimensions, and Noah said yes. He said yes, not because he knew what he was doing and not because he had all the answers. He said yes because he loved God, and God asked him to. He said yes and relied on the Lord to give him what he would need to complete the project.
I wish we all had this kind of trust in the Lord. I wish that when God asked us to do something, we all just said yes. We didn’t think about it, we didn’t weigh the pros and the cons, we didn’t worry about whether we were good enough or not. I wish we just said yes. If God wanted to erase everyone except Noah off the face of the earth, then it seems like the world was in a pretty bad place. The world is in a pretty bad place right now. It seems as though you can be anything you want today except for Christian. You have to be tolerant of everyone else’s beliefs, but no one has to be tolerant of Christian beliefs. Don’t get me wrong, I think that we should be tolerant of other people’s beliefs. I just expect that same respect, and it doesn’t seem to be happening these days. I believe that God is calling us all to action. I believe He wants us to spread the gospel and to live His word every day.
This brings me to the next line in this verse, “our competence is from God, who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant.” God made the apostles competent ministers of the new covenant. He will do the same for us. If we just say yes, he will equip us with the knowledge and power that we need to spread the good news. If you are anything like me you shrink away from the responsibility to spread the good news. You think to yourself, “Who am I to talk about God? What do I know?” or you say, “There are others much better suited to talk about Jesus. Others that have studied harder or paid attention more.” There are any number of things we tell ourselves to convince us that God may be calling some people, but He isn’t calling me. I am not worthy to serve the Lord. I am not good enough, smart enough, educated enough, or whatever your version of “not enough” is.
This is the enemy talking! He has convinced us that we aren’t enough, so God couldn’t possibly use us. All the proof you need to know this isn’t true can be found in the Bible. God never used the most educated men, the most holy people, the people who got everything right. He used normal, everyday people to be his instruments in the world, and He wants to use you. Do not believe the enemy that you are not enough. Are you worthy? No, none of us are worthy, and yet God loves us and wants to use us anyway. God made us in His likeness and image, so we can’t be all that bad.
The last part of this verse is a really important part. It is one that I find really interesting and want to dive deeper into. I will touch on it today to draw your attention to it, and then, if you want to dive deeper to understand it better, you can do that. The last part of this verse says, “Who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of letter but of spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” This talk of a new covenant is what I would like to dive deeper into. The things I found regarding this particular scripture say that the letter of the law is the mosaic law. Before Paul was converted, he used to enforce the laws of the old covenant. The reason this verse says that the letter kills is because it is impossible for us to follow all the laws on our own. We are a sinful people, and we can’t live a life without sin without the Holy Spirit. When Paul teaches the new covenant, he teaches those who trust in Jesus to live by the Holy Spirit.
I think this is where many of us go wrong. We want to help everyone find Jesus, and we have noble intentions. However, we go about it by preaching the letter of the law instead of the spirit of the law. Instead of starting out letting everyone know how much they are loved by our heavenly father, we tell them that they are living in sin if they live with someone they aren’t married too. Instead of loving people right where they are and trusting the Holy Spirit to convict them of any wrongdoing, we judge them and treat them according to how we feel they should be treated. The Holy Spirit has really convinced me over the years that Jesus is love and that He wants me to be an example of that love to all that I meet. I fall short, and I don’t always do this. However, I never stop trying, and I know that when I do fail, God forgives me, and then he gives me the grace I need to do better next time.
If we truly want to help people find their way to Jesus, then we need to be a reflection of Jesus to all we meet. When Jesus ate with the tax collectors and the prostitutes, he did not lecture them about what they were doing and how they needed to change. He just loved them right where they were, and they saw a love and a peace in Him that they wanted. Our words will not be the thing that changes people. Our actions will. It seems like people are starving for love and connection these days. This may sound weird because, with social media, it seems like everyone has so many more friends. However, it is rare to get true connections with others online. There is definitely a shortage of love these days. Even with all these ways to communicate, people are feeling more alone than ever. What if we spread love around to everyone we meet? I heard this saying, and I love it. The saying is, “Sprinkle love like confetti.” What if we all made this our goal? Imagine how much better the world around us would be if we all sprinkled love like it was Confetti. Imagine if we were all brave and bold enough to love more freely.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to love you and to have confidence in you. Lord, help us to say yes to whatever it is you are calling us to, even if we don’t understand how or why you are calling us to it. Help us to say yes, even if we don’t have any of the answers we think we need. Please give us the grace to trust You and rely on You for all we will need to carry out the mission You give us. We want to be competent ministers of the new covenant. Help us to lead by example and to teach the spirit of the law instead of focusing on the letter of the law. We love you so much, Lord; help us sprinkle that love like confetti to all those we come in contact with. Thank you so much for all you do for us. You are truly spectacular, and we are so grateful. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in August 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, as I am merciful, so must you be. I do not hesitate to pardon you. I do not hesitate to give you a chance. You must do so with other people.”
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I Am Saved! (Identity Series)
2 Samuel 22:1-6 “David sang to the Lord the words of this song when the Lord delivered him from the hand of all his enemies and from the hand of Saul. He said: “The Lord is my rock, my fortress, and my deliverer; my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield and the horn of my salvation. He is my stronghold, my refuge, and my savior— from violent people, you save me. “I called to the Lord, who is worthy of praise and have been saved from my enemies. The waves of death swirled about me; the torrents of destruction overwhelmed me. The cords of the grave coiled around me; the snares of death confronted me.”
I heard this verse while typing up the minutes for my prayer group yesterday. I was just going to use the first part, the part that ends with “my refuge and my savior —from violent people you save me.” That was where I was going to stop, and yet I felt the Holy Spirit tell me to include the next few verses, too. The thought came to me, “What if the Lord hasn’t saved them yet? What if they are still stuck in a rough time? They will want to hear the next few lines. They will want to see that David knew the real dangers.
I will start at the beginning. “David sang to the Lord the words of this song when the Lord delivered him from the hand of his enemies and from the hand of Saul.” If you don’t know the story of David’s life you should read it sometime, he had a truly fascinating life. Most people know about David and Goliath, and maybe that David is the author of many of the Psalms, and that’s about it. If you only know about David and Goliath, you might think that David has a pretty great life. It seems like if he did something that amazing, he would be instantly famous. In today’s day and age, he would become an influencer and go all over the world talking about how we can all slay our giants. However, this wasn’t David’s fate.
David killed the giant and then went back home to tend to his dad’s sheep. One day, the prophet Samuel got the word from God that he needed to go and anoint one of Jesse’s sons as the next king. Samuel saw David’s older brothers and thought for sure they would be the anointed ones because they “looked like kings.” God told Samuel that He will not judge by outside appearance but by inside appearance; he will judge by what is in their hearts. David was not home when Samuel first got there to pick up a son. Once the Lord ruled out all the other sons, Samuel asked if Jesse had any other sons and they sent someone to go get David. David was now anointed with oil to be the next king.
After being anointed as the next king you would think that David’s life was not going to get really interesting. Maybe he would go to the palace and learn from the present king. You might think that he was to become king right away. Neither of these is what happened. I believe David went back to taking care of his father’s sheep. From the time that David was anointed King to when he became king was 15 years. During that time, David went to play the Lyre for the current king, Saul, got banished by Saul, hid in the desert, lived on the run, was forced out of the nation, and fought many battles. This was all in the 15 years before David became king. I didn’t intend to go into so much detail about David, and yet I think the Holy Spirit wanted to let us know that life is not linear. It is not that things in life always work out at the time that we want them to. It is not always moving forward. Sometimes you will get great news, like a job promotion is coming and yet that promotion might be three years in the future. You might pray for God to save you from your current boss, and He is, just not yet. You might take three steps forward and two steps back. This is how it was for David. He would have something amazing happen and then nothing. He would be doing great and then find himself hiding in a cave.
I feel what the Holy Spirit is trying to tell us this morning is that this verse is absolutely true. The Lord is our rock, our fortress, and our deliverer; Our God is our rock, in whom we take refuge, our shield and the horn of our salvation. He is our stronghold, our refuge, and our savior. This is all true and on good days, in good times, we know this, we say this, we tell others this. What about the bad times? Do you still know this? Do we still tell others that God is our rock and our savior when we are in the middle of a really hard time? Do we tell ourselves? Is there a way to rely on the Lord in these hard times?
You might be thinking when you first hear David’s songs to the Lord, as he has many, that David is different because he was anointed. Of course, he can rely on God, or, of course, he is taken care of by God; he is anointed. I’ve got news for you my friend, so are you! You were anointed in your baptism as priest, prophet, and king. David was anointed as king, you’ve been anointed for all three. One thing I really admire about David is that he was never too proud to turn back to God. If you read about David, you can see how much he was loved by God and how much he loved God. God loved David and anointed him to be king and yet did not spare him from hardships. David did not have an easy life. He struggled a lot. Just look at how David describes the hard times in his life, “The waves of death swirled about me; the torrents of destruction overwhelmed me. The cords of the grave coiled around me; the snares of death confronted me.”
How many of us know exactly what David is talking about here? How many of us hear that and are brought right back into a really difficult time in our past, or maybe this describes what we are going through right now? This is a pretty descriptive language, and it lets us know exactly how bad things were for David. It shows us that he did not have an easy life. God loves us just as much as he loved David and yet he is not going to spare us from trial. Trials are where we grow. Trails are when we turn to God the most. These trials are what transformed David from a shepherd boy into a king. The same is true for us, for you and me. The trials we go through transform us into the person we need to become.
There is one line in the verse that I haven’t talked about yet and I think it is the key to how David was able to persevere for so long without losing his faith in our Lord God and Savior. “I called to the Lord, who is worthy of praise, and have been saved from my enemies,” David called out to the Lord every single time. We might think because David was anointed and because he was so loved by God that, he was a really good person and didn’t really mess up too much. It was easy for David to call on the Lord because the Lord loved him and because he followed the Lord’s ways, so, of course, the Lord would help him. Yes, David did try to follow the Lord’s ways, just like we do, and yet he messed up a lot, just like we do. One of David’s biggest mess-ups that I know of is when he saw a woman bathing while he was on top of his house and had the woman brought to him. She was married, and he had his way with her anyway. Then he later found out that she was pregnant and knew that everyone would know it was not her husband’s because he was a soldier away at war, so he had her husband killed and took her as his wife. Ok, you may have done some pretty bad things, but do they compare to that?
We often think we can’t go to the Lord; we can’t call on the Lord because we have sinned and we are not worthy of His help. This is garbage, and it comes straight from the enemy. The reason God helped David so much was because David asked. I believe it is that simple. When David disobeyed the Lord when he messed up, he always repented, said sorry, and then went to the Lord to get him out of the situation he found himself in. David knew he could always go to the Lord. He knew God wouldn’t always be happy with him, that is why he repented but he trusted that he could always go to Him when needed. God is there for you, too. There is nothing you can do that would cause God to turn his back on you. There is nothing you could do that would make you less loved. There is nothing you can do that would make it so you can’t go to the Father for help. Go to the Lord; look how much trouble David got out of by simply calling to God.
One last thing I want to remind you of is that praise is so important as well. If you are feeling unworthy, if you are feeling stressed or worried, if you are feeling spiritually empty or dry, praise God through it. When we praise God, the enemy flees. He can’t stand to hear us worship God. You don’t have to know the right things to say, and you don’t even have to say anything. You can just put on Christian music and listen to the words. Let the words penetrate your heart and mind. I know you will feel increasingly better the more you praise the Lord in the tough times!
Dear heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those who listen to this episode. Lord, we love you, and we praise you. You are worthy of praise. We ask you to be our rock and our stronghold. Lord we ask you to help us turn to you, even when we don’t feel worthy, even when we don’t think we deserve your help. Lord, if we have done something to offend you, please put it on our hearts, and please help us to repent. We thank you, Lord, for always being there for David, and we thank you for always being there for us. Help us to see how you have been there for us over the years. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. My book is for sale on my website right now. If you buy from my website I will write a personal message and sign it before sending it to you. I will put a link for my website and book in the show notes. Click Here for the book and Click Here for my website in the show notes. Thank you for all your support, I really appreciate it! I look forward to meeting you hear again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed weekend!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in August 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Love. Love is the light within you.”
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I Am Confident (Identity Series)
1 Peter 2:9 “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, that you may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”
This is one of the verses that was covered in my class last night. In case I didn’t mention this before, I have enrolled in a two-year program with the Encounter School of Ministry. This school was designed and established from the heart of Encounter Ministries. This school draws from the richness of our Catholic heritage as we seek to teach, equip, and activate disciples to demonstrate the love of God through the power of the Holy Spirit in their spheres of influence. In conformity with the teachings and traditions of the Catholic Church, we offer students a dynamic 2-year training program designed to take them to the next level in their ministry. I am really loving the class so far. I truly believe that Jesus gave us all the authority to do signs and wonders here on earth when He gave us the gift of the Holy Spirit. I am sure I will be using a lot of the Bible verses from class in the podcast so that everyone can see how powerful the Holy Spirit is.
This first quarter is all about Identity and Transformation. Last night, I heard something, and I knew I wanted to share that with all of you. Our teacher asked us a question. What is the devil most afraid of? Do you want to take a guess? Maybe you already know, but I don’t think I did. The enemy is most afraid of confident sons and daughters of Christ. Did you know that already? What does that mean? What she meant by confident sons and daughters is that we are confident in who we are as sons and daughters of Christ. We have talked before about how the enemy loves to steal our joy with half-truths. He takes a kernel of truth and then twists it into a lie that we believe hook, line, and sinker. Why do we believe it? Because we are insecure in who we are, and He knows that.
Remember when Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, and then the Holy Spirit came upon Him, and He went into the wilderness for 40 days? This can be found in Matthew 3 & 4. In Matthew 3:16-17 it says, “And when Jesus was baptized, he went up immediately from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and alighting on him; and lo, a voice from heaven, saying, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” Immediately after this, Jesus went into the desert for 40 days. In Matthew 4:1-3 it says, “Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And he fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterward he was hungry. And the tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” Do you see how the devil was trying to get Jesus to question His identity? God had just said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” Now the devil is coming in 40 days later when Jesus is hungry and trying to get Him to question His identity. The devil says, “If you are the Son of God.” Luckily, God had just affirmed who Jesus was, and Jesus was confident in who He is. He was not tempted by the devil. I wonder if we can say the same?
Are we confident children of Christ? Do we let the enemy get in and twist the truth of who we are? Let's look at this verse and see who we actually are. The verse says, “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, that you may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” It starts out by saying we are a chosen race. Did you know you were chosen? God chose you, yes you, to be one of His children. It says so right here in this verse. If this is something you struggle to believe, post it somewhere you can read it multiple times a day. We are a chosen race. You are His chosen child. Next, it says we are a royal priesthood. I was not sure exactly how to explain this, so I looked it up and found the answer on lavendervines.com. “We are a royal priesthood, which means we have direct access and fellowship with God like a priest but are also called to expand the Kingdom of God and influence the world like a king.” I will post a link to her article as she goes into a lot more detail in her article. Basically, we have direct access to God; there is nothing in between us like there was in the Old Testament. The moment Jesus died on our cross, the veil at the temple was torn in two. (Matthew 27:51) This veil in the temple was meant to keep the Holy of Holies apart from the people. Only Priests were allowed to go in there. However, when Jesus died on the cross, that veil was torn in two, and we were granted direct access to the Lord. That is another thing I learned somewhat recently and something that still amazes me. We now have direct contact with the Lord. We don’t have anything standing between us.
Next, the verse says, “A holy nation, God’s own people.” We are holy, which means to be set apart or different. We are not the same as everyone else. We belong to God, and that makes us different. We don’t have to do things on our own or rely on our own strength. We have the power of the Holy Spirit on our side to help us do what we need to do. Also, Philippians 4:13 says, “I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.” We have a loving father who has set us apart from the ways of the world, and He gives us the power to resist the ways of the world if we call upon it. Do you believe this? Do you believe that God has set you apart and that we are called to live differently?
The last part of the verse is one I think we forget often and maybe even the thing we have the most trouble believing or remembering. It says, “That you may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” Do you struggle to believe you've been called out of the darkness and into His marvelous light? Right now, it may feel like you are stuck in the darkness. That is a lie the enemy wants you to believe. Yes, things may seem pretty bleak right now, but you have already been called into the light, and you are not stuck in the darkness. God is shining His light into that darkness you feel. Can you see it? Are you looking for it? Or are you just falling for the lies of the enemy? If you struggle to believe who you are in Christ, you are not alone. We all struggle sometimes. However, the reason I wanted to share this with you today is because we are so much more powerful when we can believe these things, and we can be confident in who we are.
When we know who we are, when we are confident in who we are and whose we are, the enemy can’t touch us. Being confident in who you are doesn’t mean you will never be tempted by the enemy; you will. He will do all he can to get you to doubt who you are. However, when you are confident, you don’t fall for his lies. He still tries, but you don’t give him the time of day. You don’t even listen to His lies because you know he is a liar. If you go back and read Matthew 4, you will see Jesus didn’t get upset at the devil, He didn’t get flustered, He just answered the questions of the devil with scripture. This is one reason why it is so great to get familiar with the Scripture. If we truly know what the Bible says, it is a lot harder for the devil to use it against us. It is hard for him to twist it into something it is not if we know what it says. However, even if you don’t know scripture, you can still ignore the enemy if you just remember this one verse. This verse above says all you need to know.
“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, that you may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” Write this somewhere you will see it often. Memorize this one scripture if it helps you to believe more in your identity as a child of Christ. Know who you are and whose you are, and the enemy won’t be able to get into your heart. He won’t be able to make you doubt. He will be afraid of you because he knows how much power a confident child of God has. He knows how powerful we become when we step into our identities. He knows that when we fully step into our true identity, we are lost to him forever.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you, and we accept our place as your sons and daughters. Lord, please help us to step into this identity fully and not to believe the lies of the enemy. Help protect us against these lies. We want to be confident children, Lord; please show us how. Give us the strength we need to do this. We are so grateful you have adopted us, Lord; we are thankful you have chosen us and set us apart. Help us to live in this glorified state. You are the almighty one. You are Lord of Lords and Kings of kings. We are so very grateful for all you do for us, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I. Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in August 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “When you look at anyone, see me. They would not exist if I were not giving them life, giving them breath at that very moment. When you look in the mirror, see me. I give you breath. I give you life. I give you food. I give you a kiss.”
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Today’s witnesses are from Matthew West’s website, popwe.org. If you don’t know who Matthew West is, he is a singer, songwriter, and storyteller. This website is for the non-profit that he has with his father, a pastor. Matthew and his father encourage people to share their stories. They have various categories of stories. Today, I chose a few testimonies from the Addictions and Deliverance Category. Often, we can hear our own story in someone else’s story. When we listen to others tell their story, it helps us see that we are not alone. When we hear how God worked in their situation, it gives us hope that He will work in ours, too! I pray that when you hear these testimonies, you get the faith and hope to believe that miracles can happen in your situation, also. I pray you know that God is there with you, and if you invite Him into your situation, He can help. I hope you enjoy these testimonies.
Jim: The story I have is 100% God!!! In the darkest days of my opiate addiction, I went to jail. Then, I received a three-year sentence. I had never been in trouble as a teenager or a young adult.
At one point, I overdosed and if God had not put air in my lungs, I would have died. Nobody was around and nobody would have been there for days.
God knows our hearts and I went to Greater Cleveland Teen Challenge and completed that phase. Then, I went on to Cape Girardeau Missouri where I completed an additional ten-month program.
Jesus Christ set me free from the bondage of drugs and alcohol!
Thank you, Lord, for your sovereignty and for calling me out of the darkness and into Your marvelous light!
Thomas: For years I was struggling with what everyone else thought about me. I was also struggling with a bad pornography addiction. But then I moved to Florida and during the North Florida Youth Revival I got saved.
But after that, for years I bounced between that line of doing what God wanted me to do, and I wanted to do. I realized that I needed to stay on the path of righteousness.
Then God brought my amazing girlfriend into my life. With her help I was able to crush my addiction and live a happy life with her and God by my side.
But I also want to share a message we all need to hear and that is, God’s not dead.
He is alive. Through God anything is possible.
Now I know at times it’s hard to see it. But trust me God will do everything He promised us in time. We just have to be patient. God will do everything through his Son Jesus.
Jennifer: I wanted to share some of my testimony, since Matthew’s music has been a crucial part of my story. I met his father 3 years ago in Dallas and told him how much Matthew’s song “Strong Enough” had an impact on my life. In November 2013, I was facing my 3rd DWI and time in prison. I constantly had this song playing because I didn’t know what God had in his plans for me, but I didn’t think I could handle prison. I would cry, work out, and praise God while listening to this song. I shouldn’t even be alive with all the abuse I put my body through. But here I am, praising God through it.
My attorney told me I was looking at 6-9 months prison time, and I had my 2 year-old son at home. I finally submitted to the Lord. While driving home from the attorney’s office, I told God that if his plan was prison, then “Ok.” I completely submitted for the first time ever. Within 10 minutes of being home, my attorney called me and told me that he’s not sure how, but the district attorney called him and said, he’d give me drug court, which meant tons of counseling and self work, but no prison time!!! I know now, that was GOD stepping in!!!
This was the start of me changing EVERYTHING! I was able to become a sober mom, a sober wife, and a beacon of light for others who feel that darkness is all they can see. I started a blog and a website to help others and I now am over 6 years sober, with two sons and a wonderful marriage!!
So many of Matthew’s songs touch my heart as they talk about forgiveness, grace, and our amazing God, who saves us no matter what. Even when we feel like we are lost, He doesn’t feel that way.
Matthew, this is only a very, very small portion of my story, but I wanted to share how much of an impact you and your songs have made in my life. Thank you for expressing my heart and my words in all of your music. Now I can share your songs with my sons and they can feel the Lord through them as well. Thank you for sharing your heart and God’s spirit in all you do.
Brandy: My God moment was over 17 years ago. It started with a bad drug addiction my husband had to cocaine. He was so hooked that when he would finally come home, it was with no money left from his paycheck, and with people he owed money to knocking on our door. He had bad asthma, so when doing the drugs, many times he would have an asthma attack, until one day it was much worse.
We had no house phone or cell phone, so I would have to go across the road to my neighbor’s house to use a phone. This particular time he was having trouble breathing. He tried using the breathing machine, but he noticed it wasn’t working. He said “call 911.” We had 3 little kids asleep at the time, so I took our littlest one with me across the road, beating on our neighbor’s door. When I got back to my house, I saw my husband lying on our kitchen floor with the breathing machine still hooked to his face. His bowels had moved, he had vomited on the floor, and his lips were blue. “Scared” is an understatement, but I knew I had to push through the tears and pray for the Lord to help him. God stepped in and saved his life.
The drug problem wasn’t gone. Once again we would face this same situation. When the ambulance got to our house, they told my husband “if it wasn’t for your wife standing out on the porch flagging us down, you probably wouldn’t have made it.” I take no credit. I’ve always told him, and will continue to say it was God and God only. I wish I could say that was enough to get his attention, but it didn’t. He just got better at hiding it.
Part of our story is adultery, leaving, coming back, then making the decision not to leave again. I decided to trust God, and to fight for my marriage and deliverance for my husband. I started praying over him, sometimes when he was sleeping. I wasn’t going to give up on something I knew God could do. It didn’t come easy, but little by little he was set free from all drugs. In the process, God not only delivered him from drugs, but he also healed our marriage.
Fast forward – we are in church, serving the Lord. Over the years, God has used what brought so much hurt and pain to encourage and show others that if God can heal, restore, and deliver us, He can do it for them as well.
Thank you all for sharing your stories. I am sure your story is going to help others know that they are not alone and that wherever they are right now, that doesn’t have to be their ending.
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I Am Heard (Identity Series)
Isaiah 38:5 “Go and tell Hezekiah, ‘This is what the Lord, the God of your father David, says: I have heard your prayer and seen your tears; I will add fifteen years to your life.”
When I read this verse this morning, my first thought was of a friend of mine. She is really struggling right now, and I felt like God was talking to her when He said, “I have heard your prayers and seen your tears.” Then I got to thinking, and I actually have several friends that are struggling right now. Struggling with some really difficult issues.
For all of you who are struggling right now, I want you to know that you are not alone. Life is difficult for so many people right now. On top of all that the world is going through right now, you have had added levels of difficulty. I am so sorry that life has been so hard. Life is not perfect for us either, and yet I can see how the Lord has been with us through it all.
What if you can’t see that? What if you don’t know where God was in all of it? You can be someone who loves God and has a close relationship with God, and you can also question where God is and his plan. King David was anointed, and he had a very close relationship with God, yet even He questioned God. Psalm 13:1-3 “How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me?” Have you had these thoughts before? Have you, or are you going through something, and you are wondering how long you have to endure the suffering before God will save you and answer your prayers?
If this is your first time, I want to let you know that this is okay. Sometimes, we can make our pain worse because on top of the pain of the situation, we feel guilty because we are questioning the Lord, or we are mad at the Lord. Sometimes our minds say things like, “If I were a good Christian, I would just trust God,” or “I’ve had a relationship with the Lord a long time, I shouldn’t be worried or questioning.” God can handle our questioning and our anger. He is strong enough for anything you have for Him. He wants you to turn to Him in times of need. You are not the only person angry with God and questioning how long you will have to suffer. Trust me. There are many people in the same boat. Please let the guilt go. Please do not judge yourself for questioning. David questioned often, just read the psalms and you will see just how often, and yet God chose David’s lineage to bring forth the savior of the world.
Second, I want you to know that this scripture verse is for you. God wants to talk directly to you right now when he says, “I have heard your prayers, and seen your tears.” He is there with you, even when you can’t see Him or feel Him. He is there every moment of your life. I know it is sometimes a struggle to understand why you had to go through some of the things you had to go through. I know that not knowing is sometimes the hardest part. I want to assure you that things will get better. I don’t know how, and I don’t know when. I do know that God wants ridiculously good things for you. It says in Jeremiah 29:11, “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” God will get you through these difficult times, and there will be great times on the other side of this hardship. Just hang on. Just keep putting one foot in front of the other, and you will endure this hard time.
I want to give you two things that may help you through this difficult time. First, it is from the same psalm that I read from earlier. In Psalm 13, David questioned the Lord and asked how long he would have to suffer. Then he ended the Psalm with verses 5-6: “But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. I will sing the Lord’s praise, for he has been good to me.” David does question the Lord, and then he turns back to praising the Lord. Praising the Lord in a difficult time can really be helpful in getting out of that difficult time quicker. Now, I can already hear some of you saying, “But what if I am struggling to trust in God’s unfailing love?” or “What if I don’t know what to say?” This is ok. God knows this. When I struggle to believe in something, I go to Mark 9:24, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!”
Sometimes, we get to a place where we can’t pray. Has this happened to you? If so, I want you to know you are in good company. I am unsure if you know this, but Mother Teresa had this happen to her. She was so close to the Lord, she was doing His work every single day, and yet she went through really long, like several years long, dry spells where she could not pray. She would enter into her prayer time, and nothing would come. The enemy makes us feel like we are the only ones that these things happen to and that we are awful people because of it. I want you to know that YOU ARE NOT ALONE.
I think that is part of the reason why God raises up Saints. I think we usually put them on pedestals, and when we do, I think we are missing the point. I think the Saints are actually to show us very real people that are not perfect; they made mistakes, in some cases big mistakes, and yet still were capable of carrying out God’s work. God does not use perfect people. He takes broken, imperfect people and makes them perfect through His grace. I think the Saints are showcasing God’s redemption. If you read about the saints, you will quickly take them off the pedestal, and you will be able to see parts of yourself in them. If God could turn their lives around so completely, He could do it for all of us.
The second thing is to read scripture. If you are going through a difficult time and you are questioning if God is there, reading scripture can be helpful. Seeing how God has shown up for others in the past can help you see how He may show up for you. If you struggle to trust in the Lord, read passages that talk about God’s faithfulness. If you struggle to believe God loves you, read passages on God’s love. I have recently learned of something called scripture writing. I had no idea what this was. Obviously, I could deduce what it meant, but I didn’t know how to do it. How do you know what scripture to write? How much to write? I had several questions.
The truth is, there is no one way to do it. The point is to familiarize yourself with scripture, and you remember things better when you write them down. However, I like it when things have directions that I can follow. So, if you are like me, here is what I do. I go online and Google scripture-writing plans. There will be tons of images that come up. Most of them have a theme, so I pick one that I feel resonates with me for that month. One month, I picked Be Bold; another month, I picked Repentance & Renewal. Then the plan tells you which verses to write each day. It is usually just a verse or two. I just got a notebook, and I write the verse for the day each day. It has been really great, and I enjoy those 5-10 minutes with the Lord.
If you are struggling right now, maybe give scripture writing or praising the Lord a try and see how you feel afterward. If you are not sure you would know what to say for praising the Lord, you could always listen to Christian music and let the artists praise for you. If you are unsure what to pray, you can pray the scriptures. The Book of Psalms is also a great place to praise the Lord. You can borrow David's praises if you feel like you can’t praise the Lord in your circumstances.
You will get through this hard time. God is with you! You are not alone. He may let you fall, but He will be there to catch you and put you back on even stronger ground. You are amazing, and God loves you more than you will ever know.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you be with everyone listening to this today. I ask that you let them see where you are in all of this. Sometimes, we don’t understand Your plan or why we must endure the hard times. We ask that you bless us with a supernatural trust in you. We ask that you help us feel you in those hard times. Lord, we ask that You fortify us with strength and protect us when we are weak. Lord, some of us are going through really difficult times and can’t see the way out. I ask that you shine a light on each step of the way and fill us with assurance that you are there and are leading us out. Lord, thank you for being strong enough to handle our questions and anger. I thank you for your mercy that when we are angry with you or questions where you are, you do not get angry with us. I thank you for the graces you give us each and every day. Lord, we love you and are constantly amazed by you. Father, we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen
Thank you for joining me on this journey to live boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in August 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I kiss you all. Each of you receive my kiss. My kiss, my eternal promise of my love for each one of you.”
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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I Am Rescued (Identity Series)
Psalm 103:4 “You've rescued me from hell and saved my life. You've crowned me with love and mercy.”
I think most of us can say that God has rescued us from hell at one point or another. Of course, this hell looks different for each one of us. Your hell might look like years of depression that seem overwhelming. Your hell might be years of anxiety too much to deal with. Your hell might be an abusive relationship that you can’t seem to leave. Your hell might be money troubles that keep getting worse and worse. We all have something we are dealing with. Mine was family trouble for a very long time. It was really difficult to parent my children, and my marriage was not going well. This went on for a very long time. Maybe yours has gone on for a long time, too.
When our difficult times go on for a long time, it can be difficult to believe that God will rescue us from them. Understanding why God hasn’t rescued us from these difficult times can be challenging. However, He always does rescue us from them. Not only does he rescue us from them, but he walks with us while we are in them as well. God never leaves our side. He is right there with us each step of the way. In my Encounter Ministries class, they taught us an exercise to help heal wounded memories. The first step is to stop and ask Jesus, “Where were you when this occurred?” Did you know you could ask God questions like this? Did you know asking where He was when you were struggling was okay?
Did you know that if you ask and truly listen, He will tell you where He was? That may seem strange to you if you are not used to listening to or hearing the Lord’s voice. Well, actually, it’s not usually the Lord’s voice you hear. It is usually more like you hear your own voice in your head or you get a thought in your head with no voice. But you will get an answer if you listen for one. I remember volunteering to do this exercise in front of the class so the teacher could demonstrate how it works. When I asked Jesus where He was during a specific experience with my boys, He explained that He was right there, giving me the strength to keep getting up each morning. He gave me strength and perseverance, so I never felt like giving up. He was with me through it all.
He is doing the same with you. You might have had some truly terrible experiences. Know that Jesus was right by your side through them. I don’t know why He didn’t prevent them from happening. That is something for Him to answer. I know He was there with you; no matter how alone you felt, you were not alone. He was there, walking by your side. God is so good like that!
The next part of the verse says, “You've crowned me with love and mercy.” These two things can be challenging for us to understand. We might be unable to believe that the Lord loves us for many reasons. If no one on earth has truly loved us, then it can be hard to believe anyone could love us, let alone someone as magnificent as the Lord. If we have had a hard life and done many things we are not proud of, then we struggle to believe someone could love us. The Lord’s love is unconditional. It is not dependent on what you do or say. It is not dependent on whether you love him back. You do not need to earn God’s love. It is freely given. This can be hard to understand, especially if we had to earn love as a child. We live in a broken world, so we don’t all love unconditionally.
The second part of this line also says we are crowned with mercy. The definition of mercy is “compassion or forgiveness shown toward someone whom it is within one's power to punish or harm.” This is why we struggle to believe in God’s mercy. We know He has the power to punish us. We know we deserve that punishment, yet God wants to shower us with His mercy. That doesn’t make much sense to us because that is not how the world thinks. We live in a day and age where we seem to be back to an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. It seems like if someone does something to you, you have to do something back to them.
For instance, when we are on the highway, and someone cuts you off, you have to blare your horn at them. You have to show them they did something wrong. My question is, “Why?” Why do you have to let them know they did something wrong? Can’t we have mercy on them and let them go on their way? I was driving with one of my sons the other day, and he wanted to get into a lane, but the driver wouldn’t let him in. He passed him on the right, and then my son got into that lane. However, my son was so angry that this man passed on the right and didn’t let him in. Where is the mercy? Where is the forgiveness?
People seem to get so angry at the slightest offense or at the slightest wrongdoing these days. This makes understanding how God can show us mercy when we have done some pretty big things more challenging. We are a flawed people, and we turn away from God often. So, how can he keep forgiving us when we don’t want to forgive those around us? These are all legitimate thoughts. However, we need to consider that we are not dealing with another human. We are dealing with the Lord God Almighty. He can do all things. There is nothing too great for Him. We are His children, and He crowns us with love and mercy, not one or the other, both. He is a good and loving Father!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to believe that you crown us with love and mercy. Help us to feel that down in our hearts! Thank you, Lord, for rescuing us from Hell. Thank you for all you did to get us out of that place and all you did to try to keep us out of it in the first place. We are sorry we don’t listen better. Help us learn to follow you more. Help us to hear your voice above all others. Help us to follow your path and no one else’s. We love you, Lord, you are amazing! Thank you for all you do for us. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ mighty name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I haven’t mentioned it in a while, so I want to remind everyone that if you want to receive my newsletter and any information on my coaching program or upcoming retreats, you can sign up on my webpage, walkboldlywithjesus.com. Or you can CLICK HERE and you will be signed up for the newsletter and receive a free audio training on how to invite Jesus into your every day.
I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day.
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in August 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “We live in fear. We allow fear to creep in. I hear the Lord saying, every time a negative thought, a fear creeps in, send it to the feet of Jesus. Do not allow it to consume you for one second and when you've done that, call the Holy Spirit into your life to show you how to combat the enemy faster.”
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I Am Part of Something (Identity Series)
1 Corinthians 12:26 “ If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.”
I am listening to the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) podcast with Father Mike this year. The last two years, I did the Bible in a Year, and this year, when he started this one, I thought it would be a good one to listen to. The Catechism is basically a rule book for the Catholic Church, and I am definitely a rule follower. Also, I have a lot of friends who are not Catholic, and they wonder why we do a lot of the things we do or why we believe a lot of the things we believe. I don’t want to have to say that is a good question; I have no idea. I love to learn why we believe what we believe. I did not really expect it to be too interesting. I mean, if you read the terms and conditions booklets of any of your appliances, you wouldn’t think that was interesting reading. However, I was wrong; I love listening to the CCC. It’s not just a list of rules. It explains exactly what we believe and why we believe it. I am learning so much from it. It really is beautiful.
I came across this verse the other day when listening to the CCC and knew I wanted to share it with you. I am sure I have heard this verse before. I agree with this statement. If one person in your family is suffering, you all suffer together. If one person is honored, you all rejoice together. This makes sense. I can see how this is true. Think about a time when someone in your family was suffering. Did your whole family suffer with them? What about when they were honored? Did the whole family rejoice? I know this is how our family works. Not too long ago, my sister sent a text message that her son was accepted into one of the top High Schools in the United States, and we all rejoiced with her. Another sister found out she was having medical problems, and we all suffered with her. I am sure you will be able to think of many examples in your own family as well.
I learned from listening to the CCC that we are all part of the communion of saints. We are all members of the body of Christ. We are members of the communion of saints, and that means that what we do is for everyone; it's not just for us. The CCC says, “In this solidarity with all men, whether living or dead, founded on the communion of saints, the least of our acts done in charity redounds to the profit of all.” Whenever we do something good, it is not just for our grace; it’s not just for our good; it is for the good of the whole communion of saints, for the whole body of Christ. Father Mike put it like this: “Every good thing we do, even the smallest thing, is for the community. If you're homebound right now, if you do nothing in the sense that the world would say that's productive or that's important, if you simply unite your prayers and your heart to Jesus and your suffering to Jesus, that doesn't just help you and purify your heart; it helps the entire body. If you just offer that suffering up in love and say, “Jesus, use the suffering, take my suffering and use my suffering, that doesn't just make you holy or sanctify you; it helps everyone. There is no such thing as private virtue or grace. It belongs to all of us.
This was really inspiring for me to hear. What are your thoughts on it? The reason I think it is so inspiring is twofold, I think. First, it lets me know that I am part of something bigger than myself. I am part of a community we all are. Sometimes, the world can feel like a scary and lonely place. Knowing we are part of a communion of saints can help us feel less alone. The second part of it is that it helps me see that what I do matters. It matters if I pray because my prayers, as small as they may be, are building up the whole body. My good deeds are not just my good deeds. They help everyone. It makes me realize I am not just part of a community, but I also have a responsibility to do my share in that community.
As inspiring as I thought this first part was, the CCC goes on to say in the very next line something that is pretty convicting. It is something that really makes you think. It says, “Every sin harms this communion.” This is not as inspiring, and yet it makes you stop and think. It makes sense. If we are part of a communion of saints, and every good thing we do builds up this communion, then it would make sense that every bad thing we do tears down the communion of saints. It makes sense, and yet it is not really something we want to think about. We like to think about how much our good deeds help everyone else out because it makes us feel good, and yet thinking about how our sins affect others is not something that makes us feel good.
Father Mike said there is no such thing as private sin. There is personal sin, sin that I have done on my own, but there is no such thing as private sin because our sin belongs to everyone. In the same way that our good deeds build up the church, our sins tear down the church. Our sins weaken the entire communion of saints. Wow, that seems like a lot of pressure. I think it does us good to know this information, though. I think knowledge can be powerful at times. I feel as if knowing that every good thing I do doesn’t just purify my heart but helps to purify everyone’s hearts will encourage me to do more good things. I also feel as though knowing my sin isn’t just my sin but that it affects the entire community may encourage me to sin less or at least try harder.
It’s an interesting fact I have been learning over these last few years about people. Oftentimes, we will show up for others in a way we won’t for ourselves. For example, you say you will work out each day, but then you hit snooze and don’t get up. However, if you set a time to meet someone at the gym, you will show up more consistently because you don’t want to let the other person down. I am not sure why we do this, but we do. Knowing this about people, I think the information above could help us. If we can’t manage to sin less for ourselves, maybe knowing that our sins are affecting others will be just the thing we need to motivate us to try to sin less. Also, if we are struggling to pray or do acts of service, maybe knowing others benefit from our good work will be just the motivation we need. How about you? Does knowing this information change anything for you?
Dear Heavenly Father, I pray that You bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to spend some time thinking about this concept today. All of our good deeds build up the whole body of Christ, and all of our sins damage the body of Christ. We can either see that as a lot of pressure, or we can see it as the motivation we need to try and live a good life. We can think of this every time we do something kind or something to build our faith. We can also remind ourselves before we sin that it is not just us we have to worry about; we are part of something bigger. Also, Lord, help those who struggle with feeling alone know that they are not alone; they are part of the communion of saints. We are never alone. Lord, we thank you, and we love you. You are truly amazing. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in August 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Watch and see the great things I will do for each of you, my children. I love you. I bore you in love, perfect love, love that is unchanging, non-negotiable love. I care not what anyone else condemns you for or judges you.”
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I Am Redeemed!
Isaiah 44:22 “I have swept away your transgressions like a cloud, and your sins like mist; return to me, for I have redeemed you.”
“I am redeemed” is something I think we all need to hear. We tend to live in our mistakes. We tend to think about our transgressions a lot. We look at all we have done over our lifetimes, and we decide that God can’t possibly love us because we are a bad person. We judge ourselves so often. I have discovered this is not something that just a few of us do. It is something that all of us do. The more I pray with people, the more I see that we are all struggling with the same things. We struggle with thinking we are enough. We struggle with thinking people don’t like us. We struggle with thinking we are ugly. We struggle with self-hatred.
You might be surprised how many people hate themselves. I was at a personal development conference once, and the speaker, Rachel Hollis, said she asked the audience at her last conference to raise their hand if they hated their body. Not if they didn’t like one part or another, but if they hated their body. She said that over 90% of the people in the audience raised their hands. If you hate something about yourself, I hope you know that you are not alone.
The problem with hating our body or hating something about ourselves is that God created us. He made us in his likeness and image. He loves us just as we are. He wouldn’t change a thing about us. This is really hard for us to believe. Actually, what just came to my mind is our sin. He would change that, I am sure. I am sure God does not love when we sin. However, that doesn’t mean He doesn’t love us. Have you ever said that to your children? I love you; I just don’t love your behavior. I have said that lots to my kids. It is actually something they have repeated back to me. My sons have told me that they know I will love them no matter what they do.
If we, as humans, can say this to our children, why don’t we believe the same could be true for God? God loves us more than we can imagine. He loves us no matter what we do. It says in Matthew 18:12-14 “What do you think? If a shepherd has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray. So it is not the will of your Father in heaven that one of these little ones should be lost.”
God doesn’t love when we mess up, but he knows we are going to mess up. He knows everything about us. When we mess us up, God leaves the 99 to come and find us and bring us home. He doesn’t abandon us. He doesn’t give up on us. He just gently comes to find us and bring us home. The verse ends with, “It is not the will of your Father in heaven that one of these little ones should be lost.” I have heard many describe God as an old man sitting in heaven just waiting for us to screw up. I can tell by this passage and so many others that this is not what God is like at all. He is rooting for us. He is rooting for me. He is rooting for you!
Today’s verse says, “I have swept away your transgressions like a cloud, and your sins like mist; return to me, for I have redeemed you.” In today’s verse, the Lord is calling us back to Him. He is telling us not to worry about all we have done. He has swept away our transgressions like a cloud and our sins like mist. This is a great visual. We can imagine our transgressions, and then we can picture them sitting on top of a cloud and blowing away in the wind. Take a minute, close your eyes, and picture some situation, transgression, or interaction that you are not proud of. Most, if not all, of us have situations or interactions that we look back upon from time to time and wish we would have acted differently. Maybe we wouldn’t have said that thing or done that thing.
Think about those interactions that you have had that you wish you could change. Now, close your eyes and imagine you can put that situation, interaction, or transgression on a cloud and just watch the Lord sweep it away. That seems so peaceful. Do you feel any lighter? Were you able to let those things go? Let’s hand them over to God; they aren’t doing us any good.
Next, the Lord says that our sins turn to mist. This is another great vision. You can picture the sins you have committed. The ones you think could never be forgiven. Those that you confessed at confession and are still holding on to because it is so hard to believe the Lord can forgive you for them. Close your eyes and picture those sins. Then picture them exploding into a very fine mist. It doesn’t have to be a huge explosion. I picture the sin as bubble letters describing the sin, and then I picture the letter popping and turning into a mist. What are you picturing? Are you able to see your sins turn to mist? Why are you struggling to forgive yourself? The Lord has redeemed you. You are no longer your sins.
There is another verse, Galatians 3:13, which also reminds us that we are redeemed! It says, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, 'Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.” The reason we know we are redeemed is because Christ took our sins with Him to the cross. When we refuse to accept the Lord’s forgiveness for our sins, we are telling the Lord a few things. First, we are telling Him that His son’s sacrifice was not enough. We are essentially saying, “We know Jesus died for our sins, but my sin is too great. His sacrifice is not enough to cover my sins.”
Is this something you believe? Do you believe Jesus’s sacrifice was not enough? If this is not something you believe, then why is it so hard for you to accept His forgiveness? Why do you hold onto your sins and your mistakes when God has already redeemed them? He has already redeemed you! God loves you! He created you. He knew all you would do before He even created you, and yet He still chose to create you. I heard Father Mike say something in a podcast one time that really struck me and it is something I think we all need to hear.
Father Mike is The Director of Youth and Young Adult Ministries in the Diocese of Duluth, Minnesota. He said that he often asks the students in his campus ministry if they know that God loves them. He said they can kind of blow him off or minimize it and say things like, “Yeah, yeah, I know God loves everyone.” Father Mike agrees and affirms that is true and then goes on to say, “But do you know that God loves you individually?” He explains to them that there was a time when God made the conscious decision to make you and to bring you into this world. He decided the world would be a better place with you in it. He didn’t have to create you; He didn’t have to create any of us. Yet He did. He created you just as you are, in his likeness and image. He not only created you, but he redeemed you long before you were even born. You are Redeemed!! No matter how checkered your past is. No matter what you have done, God has redeemed you. You are not your sins. You are not the same person you were. You do not have to live in hatred and shame. You are Redeemed! If you struggle to believe this, write it down on a sticky note somewhere that you will see it often. Then read it every single day, multiple times a day, because it is a truth and a promise that you can stand on. YOU ARE REDEEMED!!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those who are listening to this episode. I ask that you come into our hearts and help us believe that we are redeemed. Help us to forgive ourselves. Help us to accept your forgiveness. Help us to release anything that is keeping us stuck in our sin and shame. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with our will and with Jesus’s holy name. Amen!!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you are enjoying this podcast, please share it with a friend. Also, if you could leave a review, that would help more people find this podcast. I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in August 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Trust in my word. Trust that what I say is true, and go about your way and make me known, my children. How many times must I tell you? You can because I send you and because I am your God. I provide the power. Be not afraid to move and do what I tell you.”
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Today’s witness is my brother-in-law Billy. On Thanksgiving, he did not show up at his mom’s house for dinner. His family was concerned. He lives right next door, so they went to check on him. He wasn’t there. When they still hadn’t heard from him after some time, they went to check if he was at a friend’s house down the street. This is where they found out that he had fallen down the stairs and hit his head.
They called an ambulance, and he was rushed to the hospital. At the hospital, they found out that he had a brain bleed. He had surgery, and they were able to repair the bleeding. However, they said he had been lying there for at least 12 hours before he was found. They were unsure how much damage the bleed had done to his brain. Billy needed to be on a ventilator, and he was in a medically induced coma while the swelling went down. We instantly sent out a request for prayers from everyone we knew. They tried to wake him a few times from the coma, but it didn’t go too well.
When I checked in with my sister on December 4th, she said Billy was not worse, but he wasn’t any better either. He was still on the vent. He was still heavily sedated. When the nurses would lighten up the sedation, Billy would respond to cues. They find out that he can move both of his legs and his arms. The next update I had was on December 10th. Billy was still in the coma and still not the vent. However, they were trying to wean him off the vent.
The doctors were predicting that he would be in the hospital for at least a week and then he would be in a nursing home, then after the nursing home, when he was strong enough medically, he would need to go to Rehab to relearn how to walk, talk, possibly even have to relearn how to swallow and eat. The doctors were predicting his road to recovery would take at least 2-3 years, and even they couldn’t promise he would ever be able to leave the nursing home. They did not know how severe the damage was and if he would ever be able to do anything for himself.
I went to the hospital with my sister on December 15th to pray over Billy for healing. When I was there he was awake, but had the breathing tube in, so he could not talk. He was definitely tracking you when you walked in the room. He seemed to be aware of what was going on. He seemed to react to things going on. For instance, the nurse was doing something, and you could tell he didn’t like it. He seemed to be doing better. However, he did look a bit like he was trapped in his body. His eyes seemed to be trying to communicate, but I am not sure what they were saying.
Billy did finally wake up out of the coma, but he was still on the ventilator. The doctors wanted to take the ventilator tube out and put in a trach. My sister knew from previous talks with Billy over the years that he would not want a trach. She remembered sitting with him and looking at photos of people who had to get a trach because of cancer due to chewing tobacco, and he had said he wouldn’t want that. The doctors were really pushing for it as they said that it is not good to have the breathing tube in that long.
As you can imagine, with any tragedy, the family did not all agree as to how they should proceed. My sister knew what Billy would want as they had been married for over 25 years at this point. However, others were worried that if he didn’t get the trach, he would die, and they, of course, were not ready for that. No one is ever ready for this. My sister was also worried that if they put the trach in, Billy would be alive but not be able to do anything. She did not want him stuck in his own body for the rest of his life; she knew Billy wouldn’t want this either, and the doctors couldn’t tell her the extent of the brain damage. At this point, they did not know if he would ever talk again, get out of bed again, or remember anything. They had no idea of the extent of the damage.
The doctors told my sister they wanted to have a family meeting on December 20th to know whether they could put the trach in or not. My sister knew she didn’t want it and that the rest of the family did. She knew it was going to be a hard meeting and that she was going to be the enemy, the one everyone was mad at. However, she really felt like that is what Billy would want. I called her, and we prayed for clarity and for God to help me make the decision. We prayed for peace in the meeting and for everyone to get along for Billy’s sake. Before the meeting, tensions were high, and people were already fighting and being unkind before even going into the meeting.
However, at the meeting, everyone was able to get along. Tensions were calmed, everyone apologized for the bad blood between them, and they all hugged and prayed at the end of the meeting. My sister agreed to taking the breathing tube out the next day and see if Billy could breathe on his own. If he couldn’t, she would allow him to put the trach in and then reevaluate how he was doing in three weeks. Everyone was on board with this plan.
She went to the hospital the next day, and they took the breathing tube out, and Billy was able to breathe on his own. Hallelujah! Praise God, He is so good! This was on December 20th. Once they took the breathing tube out, Billy was able to talk, and they were able to see how he was doing mentally. For the most part, he seemed to be doing pretty well. He knew who people were when they came to visit. He would be able to have conversations with people. Sometimes, he gets confused as to where he is or gets mixed up in conversations. However, he is returning more and more to his old self.
He is now able to walk. He is unsteady and needs some support, but he can do it! He is able to move around. He is able to eat by himself. He is able to do things for himself that they thought he might not ever be able to do. It is now February 12th, 11 weeks after he was found at the bottom of the stairs, and the doctors are sending him home. They said he does not need to go to a nursing home because he is medically ok. They said he didn’t need to go to rehab because he could do all the things by himself. (walk, talk, feed himself, etc).
Mentally, there are still prayers needed. Although he can do all those things himself, he still gets confused as to where he is and what he is doing. He will need someone to stay with him 24 hours a day to make sure he is safe. He can not drive. However, he has made amazing strides in his health, and I have no doubt that God is going to continue to heal him. I am sure God is not done healing his brain, his memories, and all of his cognitive functioning.
I want to praise God for all he has done so far in this situation. I want to praise God for healing Billy physically and for helping him to go home, as I know how much Billy hates hospitals and hates being away from his home. I am so grateful to God for bringing Billy home to his parents, his sister, and his children and grandchildren. I thank You, Lord, for giving them their son, brother, father, and grandfather back. I thank you for all the healing you have already done, and I pray for more. We pray that you continue to restore his cognitive functioning. We pray you heal him completely. We pray he is able to live on his own again, work again, drive again, and do all the things that he could do before. We love you so much, Lord, and we thank you for this miracle. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen.
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I Am Never Alone (Identity Series)
Genesis 2:18 “Then the Lord God said, 'It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.”
I wholeheartedly agree with this verse. We were not meant to be alone. This doesn’t mean that we all need to be married or have kids. It just means that we are all meant to have people we do life with. I often talk about how important community is to a fulfilling life. There are very few people who are meant to go through life alone. I know there are hermits out there who dedicate their whole lives to being secluded and spending all their time with God. Most of us are not called to this life. Actually, St. Catherine of Sienna wanted to live this life when she was just a little girl. She ran away from home to live alone in the caves outside her town. An angel appeared to her and told her she was meant to be a light in the world, not separate from it. The same is true for most of us.
However, living in the world can be hard because it is often filled with heartache. How we deal with heartache is the key to our success. We need to turn to the Lord for help when we are struggling. It also helps to turn to our friends for support. They can build us up and speak truth and light into the lies and the darkness. However, instead of turning to our friends for support, we tend to separate ourselves from others. We tend to pull away because we don’t want to talk about it or we know others won’t understand.
A while back, my heart was hurting for several struggling ladies I know. Actually, every time I look at Facebook, I see messages from people who are struggling. However, that week specifically, there were two ladies who did not know each other or live near each other who had 15-year-old children who had to go to court. There are two other women who are not able to spend the holidays with their children for one reason or another. Then, I saw a post about a friend who was really hurting because she could not see her oldest child graduate college. While thinking about all the people who are hurting right now, I wish everyone knew, like in the depths of their hearts, that they are never alone. So many of us think we shouldn’t talk about what is happening because no one will understand or no one else is going through the same thing. People think that they will be judged or deserve the bad thing happening to them. This is not true!
There are 7 ½ billion people in this world. Whatever it is that you are going through, someone else is going through the same thing right now at this same time. There are also people who have gone through it already and can shine a light into your darkness. They can show you one way to get through your situation. They can also give you hope because if they got through it, you can too! Talking about the difficult things you are going through with people you know and trust can be so therapeutic. Sometimes, we don’t want to talk about our problems because we don’t want to bother people, especially if they have their own troubles. Our friends and loved ones want to help us. It is not a bother for them to hear how you are suffering. Sometimes, it can even help them with their troubles as well. You will be amazed how much stronger your relationships can get when you are able to open up and let people in to help. Another reason talking about your struggles can be helpful is that you may be further along in your journey than someone else who has the same struggles. You may be talking with someone with the same issue but are afraid to talk about it. Hearing you talk about it can show them that it is ok to talk about what they are going through. I have seen this happen in numerous Facebook groups. Someone is vulnerable and shares their story; then, someone else reads it and feels the courage to share it.
I truly feel that it is the work of the enemy to make us feel so alone. He is there whispering in our ears all the reasons we should not talk about what is bothering us. He wants us to keep our troubles to ourselves because when we feel alone, we feel hopeless. I am unsure if you have read or seen Harry Potter, but there was a scene where the main character, Harry, was struggling with feeling alone. Every time Harry was with his friends, he would push them away. Harry would tell them they just didn’t understand. They wanted desperately to be there for him, but he would not let them. Harry then went for a walk and ran into another friend. He explained that he felt like he was alone and no one believed him. She said, “I don’t think that is true. Although, I suppose that is how he wants you to feel.” When Harry asked what she meant, she said, “Well, if it's just you all alone, then you aren’t that much of a threat.” I believe it is the same with our enemy. If we are alone and not talking with our family and friends about how we are feeling, then the only voices that we have are the enemy’s whispers. However, if we reach out and tell our story to those who love us, they can speak truth into our darkness. The enemy is the father of lies, and he speaks half-truths and lies into our ears so that we believe there is no one that can help us.
Be vulnerable, open up, and share your struggles with someone. You will feel better just saying it out loud. Don’t go through things alone when you don’t have to. Seek out people you can trust to talk to. You may not even know that someone else is experiencing the same thing until you have the courage to raise your hand and admit that you are going through it. If you find yourself in a situation where you honestly feel you don’t have anyone to talk to, you can always talk to God. Ask God to show you someone in your life you could talk to about your situation. Request that God bring someone into your life who can help you through this. Pray for the strength to navigate your current circumstances. Ask God for the courage to address what is bothering you. God hears our prayers; He listens when we ask Him for the things we need. He is always with us, providing strength when we feel we have none.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, you are truly amazing. Lord, help us to realize we are not alone. Help us to see that you made us to live in a community with others. Help us recognize the enemy's trick to isolate us and speak lies into our hearts and minds. Lord, please put people into our lives who will recognize when we are pulling away and call us back. Help us to open up and share our troubles with others. Help us to hear others when they are trying to speak truth into our darkness. Help us, Lord! We love you, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Mentoring is tonight, I hope to see you there. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in August 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, all I tell you to do know that you can. My spirit empowers you. It puts my words into your mouth so that you can reach the hearts of others. It's not you. It is my spirit empowering you to say what I wish you to say.”
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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I Am Treasured (Identity Series)
Exodus 19:3-6 "As Moses went up to meet God, God called down to him from the mountain: “Speak to the House of Jacob, tell the People of Israel: ‘You have seen what I did to Egypt and how I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to me. If you will listen obediently to what I say and keep my covenant, out of all peoples you’ll be my special treasure. The whole Earth is mine to choose from, but you’re special: a kingdom of priests, a holy nation.”
One of my friends sent this verse in a Facebook messenger chat. Her mother just had heart surgery, and she is in the hospital with her, waiting for her to recover. Her mom’s levels were all elevated, and she needed to go onto a breathing machine. I am sure my friend was worried for her mom, and I am sure the mom was worried too. I met this woman in my mentoring group. We went on a retreat together. Everyone in our mentoring group picks a word and mantra for the year. This is just a way to help keep us focused on where we want the year to go and help us remember what is important to us throughout the year when things get busy. Life can happen so quickly sometimes that we don’t live it intentionally; we just get swept up in it and almost go on autopilot. There can be so many people or things calling our time, and it can get hard to prioritize if you don’t have a focus and/or you don’t prioritize.
This is why we pick a word and mantra and try to say it every day. I was going to say that we do say it every day, but I am sure we forget sometimes, or at least I know I do, especially on the weekends. However, even if I don’t say it everyday, I know I have one, I have it memorized and so when I have to make a decision about something I can think about that word and mantra in my head and then the decision is easy because usually only one aligns with my focus for the year.
My friend chose the words “Be Still” this year. It’s funny how when we pick a word, God helps us grow into that word over the year. It’s the same with you, even if you didn’t pick a word. If you have a desire in your heart or have prayed for help to grow in a certain area, God will help you. When we pick a word, it not only reminds us of how we want to grow over the year but is also the filter with which we look at the year. Let me explain what I mean. If my friend’s word is Be Still, then her focus is on being still and how she can learn to grow in that. So, when she is reading her Bible in the hospital next to her mom, and she gets the Bible verse above, she then looks at this experience in the hospital as a reminder to be still.
God is amazing! If we are looking, if our eyes and ears are open, he will give us little signs, and sometimes big signs, that He is right there with us in all of our situations or circumstances. This bible verse in the hospital was a little reminder from God to my friend just to Be Still and know that He was taking of it all for her. If you are aware that God does this, if you are on the lookout for this, you will see that He is doing the same for you. God is not just doing this for some of His children. He is sending us all signs that He is there with them. The problem is that if we don’t know that He is doing this, we don’t notice them when we see them. Let’s start being on the lookout for these messages from God, letting us know He is in it, all of it, with us!
I love how today’s verse begins with God reminding us what He has done for us in the past. It says, “As Moses went up to meet God, God called down to him from the mountain: “Speak to the House of Jacob, tell the People of Israel: ‘You have seen what I did to Egypt and how I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to me.” This is a great reminder that God is a miracle worker. He saved the Israelites from Egypt in a miraculous way. Also, it wasn’t just one miracle. It was miracle after miracle. He did all those signs to convince Pharaoh to let them go. He parted the Red Sea so they could pass, then He rolled it back to destroy their enemy. He miraculously provided manna for food every single morning. He rained down quail on them when they complained about not having meat to eat. It was miracle after miracle.
When we are struggling, we need to be reminded of all God can do. There are many times when we are in a situation and can’t see a way out. We have $500 worth of bills and $200 in our bank account. That math does not add up, and we know we will be unable to pay our bills. And yet the math also did not add up when Jesus only had five loaves of bread and two fish, and there were over 5,000 people to feed, and yet He fed them all with plenty to spare. When our loved one is in the hospital or on hospice and the doctors tell us there is nothing to do, we need God to remind us of what He has done in the past, so that we can have hope that we don’t have to worry because even if there is nothing the doctors can do, there is ALWAYS something our God can do. I love that God knows we need this reminder, even before we do. He is so good!!
The second half of this verse is, “If you will listen obediently to what I say and keep my covenant, out of all peoples you’ll be my special treasure. The whole Earth is mine to choose from, but you’re special: a kingdom of priests, a holy nation.” This is also great because it reminds us that we are special and we are treasured. God could choose any person on the entire Earth, and yet He is choosing you. If we listen obediently to what He says and keep His commandments, then we will be set aside. We will be His holy nation. How great is that? I love that this translation says we will be His special treasure. What would you give to be God’s special treasure? I feel as though I would give anything to be considered God’s special treasure. God is giving us the instructions, and although they seem easy, they can be harder than they sound.
The first thing it says is to listen obediently. It can be hard to listen if we aren’t hearing Him. This means we need to spend some time listening to what God is telling us. Let’s all stop for a moment and see when we could do this? When could we make time, even if it's just 5 minutes, in our day to sit quietly and listen to God? Could you spend 5 minutes sometime in your day sitting quietly with God if it meant you got to be His special treasure? God is asking us to keep His covenant, which is to love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and love your neighbor. Can we do that? What is one thing we can do to love others more? God doesn’t just mean your neighbor next door. He means, how can you love everyone, even those you don’t like?
That is something to spend some time pondering. Is this dislike, this hatred I have in my heart for others, worth not being counted as God’s special treasure? If you have a hard time loving others, take that to God. Spend some time talking with God and asking Him to help you through it. God wants us all to be His special treasure. We don’t have to be perfect or follow Him perfectly; we just have to really want to be His special treasure with our whole heart, and then listen to Him, and He will guide us there. He wants it for us more than we want it for ourselves. We just have to give Him permission to work within us and then let Him gently guide us there!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, I ask you to show each one of us where in our day we can spend some time with you. I ask you to show everyone that we all have the time, even if we are very busy. Show us that you can talk to us anywhere, in the shower, in the car, while they are drinking coffee, while they are doing housework, anytime we are willing to listen, you are willing to talk. Lord, we thank You for always reminding us of all You have done in the past at the perfect time. Lord, we are sorry we always forget and are so grateful when we need to remember that You are there. Lord, thank you for loving us. Thank you for treasuring us. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you have not signed up for mentoring yet, you can click on the link below or head over to my website, Walkboldlywithjesus.com. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed week!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in August 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email, “My children, all I tell you to do know that you can. My spirit empowers you. It puts my words into your mouth so that you can reach the hearts of others. It's not you. It is my spirit empowering you to say what I wish you to say.”
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
CLICK HERE TO DONATE
CLICK HERE to sign up for Mentoring
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CLICK HERE to buy my book Total Trust in God's Safe Embrace
I Am Loved (Identity Series)
John 13:23 “One of his disciples, the one whom Jesus loved,* was reclining at Jesus’ side.”
This scripture verse was given at my prayer group, and the following words of prophecy were given: “You are also the one whom Jesus loves. So, your place is to be listening to his heartbeat when you pray. So, put your head on his chest and listen to his heartbeat. Say I love you and be at peace.” Is there anything more calming than putting your head on someone’s chest and listening to their heartbeat? I pictured when I was little and if I was scared and I went to lie with my parents. Just putting my head on their chest and listening to their heartbeat would make me feel better. It seemed so rhythmic and soothing.
“You are also the one whom Jesus loves.” How many of you believe this? Like truly in the depths of your heart believe this? You are also the one whom Jesus loves. Sometimes, it is easy to say that Jesus is love. It is easy to say that Jesus loves everyone. And yet, even as we are saying it, we are discounting ourselves from that love. We know He loves everyone and yet we don’t believe that he loves us? We don’t feel that love or even understand why He would love us. Who are we to be loved by Jesus?
You are the son or daughter of the one true king. That is who you are. You were made in the likeness and image of God. You are deeply loved by Him. Why do you discount yourself from that love? Or maybe you put a lot of pressure on yourself to be worthy enough of God’s love. Maybe you think if you just do things perfectly, then God will love you. If you attend weekly mass and volunteer for every fundraiser, you will be worthy of God’s love. Are you constantly feeling like you are not good enough for God’s love?
Guess what? None of us are. None of us are worthy of God’s love, yet he lavishes it freely anyway. You do not have to do anything to earn God’s love. Well, as I wrote that, what came to mind was we do have to accept it. God can tell us all day long that he loves us, but if we don’t accept it, then it doesn’t matter. Yesterday, I talked about abiding in God’s love and how abiding means acceptance. Can you accept God’s love? Can you accept that he loves you just as you are, with no strings attached?
This is a new kind of love for so many. Some people have never had someone in their lives who loved them completely, with no strings attached. Unconditional love is not a thing they even new. If you are struggling to believe that Jesus loves you, just as you are, think about your childhood and your past relationships. What do you think of when you think about love? Did you have to earn love growing up? What did you feel you had to do to be loved? For instance, did you have to get good grades, be a certain weight, be quieter, etc? Did you feel like your parents' love was conditional on your behavior? If so, don’t worry. You are not alone.
We live in a broken world and don’t know how to love each other unconditionally like our heavenly father does. I think everyone is doing the best they can. We can only love others to the extent that we are loved. If your parents do not know unconditional love, they can’t pass it on to you. The good news is, that you can learn to let Jesus’s love in. The good news is that Jesus does love us unconditionally. If we can learn to accept Jesus’s love, then we can learn to pass this love on to others, even if that is not the love we were raised with.
If you struggle with accepting God’s love, I would love to give you some practical tips for how to begin to accept God’s love. I went online to see if others had already written about his subject. I found an article written by Kara J. Lovett called “5 Keys to Accepting God’s Love.” I would highly suggest you read this article. I will put a link for it in the description of this episode, but you can easily find it by googling 5 Keys to Accepting God’s Love. CLICK HERE for the article. In the article she goes into what God says about love and then a section on understanding God’s love.
Her article mentions five was you can accept God’s love. They are as follows: Accepting God’s love with scripture, prayer, grace, and quietness & in unexpected places. Kara says in her article that “by digging deep into Scripture and spending time with God in prayer, I realized that I need to stop striving for love and instead strive to accept God’s love, which He has already graciously bestowed on me.” As I mentioned yesterday, reading the bible is a great way to get to know God’s love. You can see all sorts of examples of God’s love in the bible. 1 John 4:7-10 is a great example of love. It says, “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God because God is love. In this, the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”
The second way she mentions is prayer. When we turn to God and ask for His help, he wants to help us and is just waiting for us to ask. God knows what we are going through and what are struggles are, and yet he loves it when we talk to Him about them. Just sit down with a cup of coffee or tea and talk to God like you are talking to your best friend at the kitchen table. You will be surprised how much closer you get to God when you start having chats with Him regularly. They can be informal chats about your day, your struggles, and your successes. God wants to share in all of that with you.
The third way she mentions is Grace. Learning about grace over these last few years has been huge for me. Learning to be graceful with yourself is so important. Kara says that grace is the free, unearned gift of salvation that God has bestowed upon us. When I looked up the definition online, it said 1a: unmerited divine assistance given to humans for their regeneration or sanctification. b: a virtue coming from God. c: a state of sanctification enjoyed through divine assistance. We are saved and redeemed through God’s grace. It is unmerited, meaning we don’t deserve it; we can’t do anything to earn it; it is just bestowed upon us. How amazing is that? The third definition is a state of sanctification enjoyed through divine assistance. We can’t forget this. We are made holy through divine assistance. God is always there to help us. We can’t do any of this on our own. It is always a partnership. God has so much grace and mercy for us. He doesn’t expect us to be perfect, so cut yourself some slack.
The fourth way to accept God’s love is through quietness. Spend some quiet time with God. There are so many ways that you can do this. Maybe you are someone who likes to meditate every morning. That is wonderful! Maybe you are like me, and every time you try to quiet your mind, all it wants to do is talk to you. That’s fine, too. Maybe your quiet time is spent in nature, going for a walk, or sitting outside listening to the sounds of nature. Maybe your quiet time with God is spent journaling all your thoughts. There is no right way to spend quiet time with God. Your relationship with God is like any other relationship; the more time you spend together, the closer you will be.
The fifth key to accepting God’s love for Kara was letting go of control. Even though we know at some level that we don’t have to earn God’s love, we still try to prove to Him that we love Him. We put all these rules and regulations on ourselves about how we have to do this, and we have to do that. We tend to put a lot of pressure on ourselves. Once Kara was able to let go of control and remember that Jesus already secured our freedom on the cross, she decided to let go of all the pressure she put on herself and just tried to abide in Jesus’s love.
God loves you! He truly does. I hope that if you are not currently able to accept God’s love, you will spend some time working on learning how to. I can’t tell you how amazing it is to know that I am always loved. To know that there is nothing I can do that would make my heavenly father stop loving me. It gives me so much more confidence in life. It brings me so much joy. It breaks my heart when I talk with people who don’t know how much God loves them. I know it is hard to let love in sometimes. I have been there before. It can be hard, it can take a lot of work, and it is so worth it. There is so much more waiting for you once you accept and really come to know God’s love for you. It is there for the taking, free, with no strings attached. All you have to do is say yes and accept it!
Dear Heavenly Father, I am so thankful that you love us unconditionally. You love us so completely. Lord, some of us are struggling to feel this love. We ask you right now to come into our hearts and fill them with your love, perfect love. We ask that you begin to break down any walls that we have put up to keep love out. Lord, we want all the love that you have for us. Lord, I ask that you bless everyone listening to this with a supernatural feeling of love today. That the Holy Spirit descends on all of them and that they can physically feel you giving them a hug today. Lord, you are so amazing. We are in awe of all that you do each and every day. We pray that you help our loved ones to open up and feel your love. Lord, we pray that you shower your love on all the teenagers. Being a teen is so difficult, and many do not feel any love. Please show them how amazing your love is, Lord. We ask all of this in accordance with your holy will and in Jesus’s name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. The reason we can walk boldly with Jesus is because we have the power of the Holy Spirit living inside of us. Join me for mentoring this month as we talk about this power and what we can do with it. Once we discover the power and the authority Jesus gave us when he left this world, we will be so much better equipped for all life has in store for us. I pray you will join me. I look forward to seeing her here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in August 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “The spirit will lead and guide you, teaching you in things that you do not know. You will not always have a complete vision or full understanding, but I will lead you step by step.”
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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I realized after posting yesterday’s podcast episode that I missed Witness Wednesday. I was away for the weekend, and coming back on Monday must have thrown me off. However, I didn’t want you to miss out on Witness Wednesday, so I am just doing it a day late this week. Today’s witnesses are from Matthew West’s website called popwe.org. If you don’t know who Matthew West is, he is a singer, songwriter, and storyteller. This website is for the non-profit that he has with his father, a pastor. Matthew and his father encourage people to share their stories. They have various categories of stories. Today, I chose two testimonies from the Salvation Category. Often, we can hear our own story in someone else’s story. When we listen to others tell their story, it helps us see that we are not alone. When we hear how God worked in their situation, it gives us hope that He will work in ours, too! I pray when you hear these testimonies, you get the faith and hope to believe that miracles can happen in your situation, also. I pray you know that God is there with you, and if you invite Him into your situation, He can help. I hope you enjoy these testimonies.
My name is Cyndi. My broken story started before I was even born. I was the last of my bio mom’s seven kids. Unfortunately, she was an alcoholic who drank during her pregnancy, so I have Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder.
When I was born in 1971, I weighed about 3 lbs. I was adopted at age 1. Unfortunately, the family I was adopted into was dysfunctional. I suffered all manner of abuse, including sexual abuse. This hurt me so bad that I wanted to die for many years.
I was diagnosed at twenty with Bipolar Disorder. But I didn’t take the medication because I just didn’t want to. I got pregnant at twenty-one. I literally had my son on my twenty second birthday. I married his dad four months later.
But my husband was abusive, mentally, emotionally, and verbally. And because I had never dealt with my previous abuse, I believed his abuse was my fault. Not only did I stay with him and raise my son, but I also had another child, a daughter, when my son was six years old.
Even though I thought our problems were my fault, I still knew how ridiculous that sounded because I knew I didn’t really want to live like that. I separated from him when my daughter was three and tried to take the kids.
He used lies and insinuation to get them back. I ended up being divorced and having visitation with my kids. It wasn’t easy, but we managed to survive. You may wonder about my faith throughout all of this. Don’t worry, I’m getting there! I was raised Catholic but got into the Jehovah’s Witnesses in 1996. I stayed that in that group until November of 2022, when I learned it wasn’t what I had been led to believe.
I was a lost soul for a little while but came back to Christianity the next November and have been loving it since. I’m quite happy these days. I do take meds. I have two spectacular kids and a wonderful granddaughter. I’ve been through more therapy than I care to admit and I’m still in it. But I’ve learned that it’s okay to not be okay sometimes.
Because I spent twenty-seven years not doing any holidays or birthdays, I take care to do them all and really celebrate them. I really appreciate and enjoy my friends and family. So, I guess I have a pretty good ending to my broken story.
But it’s all because of Jesus. I do wish that my kids would love Jesus like I do, but they have to get to know him from a different perspective now. Just like I did.
Ben: I grew up in a Christian home going to church every Sunday, being involved in AWANA and Youth Group, and going to Bible camps based on the Bible. The broken chapters of my life started before age 14. I was a Christian then. I believed hard on God, He was my Savior and He loved me. In 2017, when I was in the 6th grade, the garage of my house went up in flames. That was really tough for me and my whole family to go through. I hated God through that. It was about a year of moving around, and not being in my own neighborhood. Further into my life starting around age fourteen is when I fell apart from God. I got introduced into pornography. That was my biggest struggle. A lot of changes happened. I hated God and felt like I didn’t belong with Him. Satan took me over and I felt what he could do to me. Just to be living through that, though, is how I saw God. I became an addict to pornography and that was really harsh. Going though that, plus still going to church was a struggle. I believed that God didn’t want me and that He left me. I hated God for writing my life like this. And yet, I prayed almost every day for Him to bring me out of this hell, out of Satan’s world.
Skipping forward in my life, I am now two months from my 16th birthday. In late February 2021, I moved from my hometown of Naperville, IL to South Nashville, TN. This was the biggest move of my entire life. I was confused and scared of moving so far away, but during this time I was doing better with God. I felt Him closer to me and with me more often. As life moved on during February, I came to realize that God has made my life for a purpose and He has drawn my path. So I just had to trust God that He knew what He was doing in my life. In June 2021, me and my family took a trip back up to my hometown to see friends and family and the community. About halfway through the trip, I was fishing at one of my favorite lakes and started to talk to God. I fished there that day for about 2 1/2 hours and during that time I was having a conversation with God. I felt really close to Him and loved Him. I poured out my fears and thoughts.
During week three of the trip, I was in bed one night thinking of my strong fear of death. It scared me so bad, something happened between me and the Lord that I fell apart again. That time was one of the closest times I came to taking my own life, but I never did because of God. He came into my thoughts and blocked that idea. I was so scared of death, I couldn’t do it.
In week 4 of June, my family and I made our way to Gull Lake Ministries, in Hickory Corners, Michigan. The Friday of that week, I was out on the fishing dock at night about 10:30pm and was listening to my Christian music playlist and the song ‘Way Maker’ came on. I poured out my heart to The Lord Jesus Christ asking for forgiveness. After that night, I asked God to come back to my heart. I prayed and I cried happy tears knowing I had been saved.
The week before school started, I joined my school’s marching band…lots of hard work balancing that with my studies and with God. A month later, I was greatly in line with God. A month after that I met this girl who was in my instrument section for marching band. She is a very strong believer and a true Christian. She is one of the main people that brought me back to Christ. We prayed together and we both shared music, verses and Bible plans to know Jesus more. Finding a church is one of the harder struggles along with finding a youth group that can be of fit for me to be more connected. One week, she invited me to her youth group and I liked it. I was able to become closer to the Lord and know that community.
Two days later, the thought of killing myself and hurting myself came back. I fell apart from God again. I talked to my friend about this, and she seemed really worried. She tried to talk me out of it. She talked to her parents and gave me music and Bible verses about how God wants me, loves me, and knows me. This lasted about two weeks which is the longest I have had in my life yet. The struggle with the aftermath –going through that was the hardest. Reconnecting myself with God, I found this song by Matthew West called ‘The God Who Stays.’ I put this song on repeat and listened to it about 100+ times. The lyrics of the song are really powerful and meaningful. After about a week, I grew closer to Christ, and during worship in a church service, I poured my heart out to the Lord. I felt him right next to me and knew that He was with me. Over the last couple months, I have been in line with Jesus, asking for forgiveness, talking openly to friends about Him, and being involved with church leaders. Now I see and consider myself a Christian, after three years of on/off with God. I am back.
I got baptized on February 18, 2022. I love Jesus and I never want to lose Him again. Amen!
Thank you so much to both of you for sharing your stories. You have both had such a hard journey. I appreciate you being vulnerable and sharing your story so that others know they are not alone. It also shows them that if God got you through it, he will get them through it too! Thank you so much for sharing!
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I Am Fearfully & Wonderfully Made (Identity Series)
Psalm 139:14 “I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.”
The I praise you part first stood out to me in this verse. Praise is one of my favorite things to talk about. I love praising the Lord. Also, I have read a lot of books, and so many of them point out that praising the Lord is a great way to increase your faith, get more answers to your prayers, have more strength when in a difficult situation, and have more joy in your life. I was all set to begin with talking about praise when something, I think the Holy Spirit, told me to pause and read the whole sentence. So I did. “I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” I did not see anything jump out at me. So, I decided to see what exactly that means.
I was thinking maybe I wasn’t being moved by the sentence because I didn’t understand what was being said. I was right! That is a very powerful statement if you know what those two words mean. Let’s take the first word, fearfully, first. Fearfully, when translated from Hebrew, means with great reverence, heart-felt interest, and respect. I understand why we would have great reverence for God. He is our Father, and He created us. It makes total sense that we would have great reverence for Him. However, this is talking about us. This sentence is praising God for making us with great reverence, heart-felt interest, and respect. Did you know that’s how you were made? Did you know God put all those things into making you? Do you feel a little bit better about yourself now?
Let's take the next word wonderfully. I bet we all think that we know what that word means. We may also be thinking that although it is a pretty word, it is used so often that when we hear it, we don’t necessarily feel wonderful. The word wonderful, when translated from Hebrew, means unique and set apart. I am sure that it has occurred to everyone before that we are all different from each other. But I wonder if it occurred to you that that means you are unique? You are one of a kind. So, the next time you are trying to judge or compare yourself to someone else, remember that you are unique. There is no one like you on this entire earth. There are people who are going through the same things as you, and there are people who have similar struggles as you, but there is no one exactly like you. You are not alone in your struggle, but you are one of a kind in how you were made. You are also set apart. I like the sound of that. Instead of being lumped in with everyone else, we are set apart. God set us apart from others.
Does knowing this change the way you think about yourself? Does it help you fight off that voice inside of you that tells you that you are not enough or that you are not loved? Think about how amazing God must think you are to have made you with great reverence, heart-felt interest, and respect. Did you know that God had reverence for you? Did you know that He respected you? Maybe this is not news to you; maybe you knew this all along. This is the first time that I slowed down long enough with this passage to ask myself what that even means.
This is one of the things that I love about doing this podcast. I am not reading whole chunks of the Bible at a time. I am reading a verse or two. When you break it down into bite-size pieces like this, you get to examine those pieces more carefully. I have also discovered that I am not the only person who does not know what those two words mean. I think sometimes we don’t ask questions because we assume that we are the only ones who don’t know the answer. Then we start to tell ourselves that if everyone else knows it, then there must be something wrong with us because we don’t, and then we don’t ask because we don’t want to feel stupid. Come on, you know you have done this before. I can’t be the only person this has happened to. Anyway, it turns out that the Bible's language is confusing for many people. In the course of writing the episodes for this podcast, I have searched for many answers, and I have always found them.
If I were the only person who was confused, someone else wouldn’t have taken the time to research my question and put the answer on the internet. The internet is also an amazing thing. I am not sure how many of you use it to answer your questions, but I highly recommend it. First, you can ask it anything. You don’t have to remember where you can find something in the Bible because you can type it into the search bar, and the internet will find it for you. You can type part of a verse into the search bar, and the internet tells you where you can find it in the Bible. What I do is type my question exactly how I would ask a person, and I always come up with great answers. I don’t just put a word or two. I put the whole sentence in the search bar. Second, you don’t have to feel silly asking a question that you’re sure you are the only person who doesn’t know the answer to because no one knows you are asking the question. You are asking for the computer, and it is not going to tell anyone. It doesn’t talk, so it won’t make you feel silly.
When reading through the Bible, asking questions is great. It was written a very long time ago in a different language and to a people living in a different time and a different culture. There are things in it that are not going to make sense to us. However, if we ask questions when we have them, we realize that even though they were written so long ago to very different people, they are still just as relevant today. It is still talking to us today; when we just read through it and gloss over the parts or pass over the parts we don’t understand, we miss an opportunity to know what God is trying to tell us. This verse above is well written and has beautiful language, but if I hadn’t asked, “What does fearfully and wonderfully made mean?” I wouldn’t have learned that this verse is so much deeper than it seemed. Ask your questions! You deserve to know the answers.
Dear Heavenly Father, I pray you bless everyone listening to this episode today. Lord, we thank you that we are fearfully and wonderfully made. You are so gracious, and we love you. Lord, we ask that you help us to understand the Bible when we read it. We ask that you give us the courage to ask questions when we don’t know what something means. Lord, we ask that you help us take in the meaning of the words fearfully and wonderfully made. We ask that you let those words sink into our hearts and help us to know how special we are. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name. Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I would like to invite you to another journey. The journey of mentoring. This month, I am teaching all about the Power of God Within Us! We all have power living inside of us, and the more we learn about the power and authority we have inside of us, the stronger we will be in this crazy world. I pray you will join me and learn about the power you have because Christ died for us and send us the Holy Spirit. Remember, Jesus loves you so much, just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in August 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I am your God. My light will shine brightly in you because you have been with me.”
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I Am Blessed (Identity Series)
Ephesians 1:3-6 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.
What beautiful scripture verses! These definitely seem like good ones to write down and re-read any time we are having a bad day. God has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly place. I can’t even imagine how much blessing that is. God must really love us if he is blessing us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly place.
Then, it goes on to say that He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world and that we should be holy and blameless before him. He chose us before the foundation of the world. That seems so crazy to me. It is crazy to me that God knew everything that was going to happen, and yet he still chose to create us. He made us to be holy and blameless in His sight and yet we have failed at this over and over again.
Oftentimes, we say hindsight is 20/20. Meaning we can only see things perfectly when we are through them and looking back at them with he knowledge we gained through the experience. For instance, when we are going through a difficult time, we don’t really understand it, and we make our decisions based on the info that we have at the time. However, when we are through that difficult circumstance, and we know how things ended, then we realize we perhaps should have made a different decision.
It is not the same for God. He knows everything. Nothing is a surprise to Him. I find it remarkable that even though He knew how often we would turn our backs on Him or do the exact opposite of what He wanted us to do, He still went ahead and created us. He not only decided to create us knowing all the times we would mess up, but He also kept forgiving us. Time and time again, we do the things we know we are not supposed to do; God keeps forgiving us.
I wonder if we would do the same? Many people say that they learned a lot after going through something really difficult. However, I wonder, even knowing all that we learned or gained from the difficult experience, how many of us would choose to go through it all over again. Think about a really difficult time in your life. Think about how hard or how painful it was. Then, think about what you learned from it or gained from it.
Everything that we go through teaches us something if we are open to seeing it. We can find a lesson in every experience. For instance, going through a really hard time in a relationship can teach you resilience, and/or how to be persistent and to work hard at something. It can also teach you to be stronger. If the relationship ends, it can be difficult, and you can learn something from that, too. It can teach you what to look for and what to avoid in your next relationship. Do you see how there is always something you can learn?
However, even knowing all the benefits you have gained from this experience, I wonder how many of us would choose to do it again. What about a friendship that ended badly? Imagine you had a really good friend for several years, and then something happened, and that friendship ended. You felt really hurt when it was over. Do you wish that you had never met that person? If you could go back in time to when you met that person, would you go meet them? Would you spend all those years building up good memories if it meant that you had to go through the pain of losing that friendship again?
I think that many of us would choose not to go through difficult times if we could. We would choose to stay in our comfort zone and not venture out of it. Not try new things because we could get hurt or we could fail. We would and often times we do tend to play it safe. The thing is, we do not grow when we are in our comfort zone. We do not grow without challenges. Do those challenges often bring difficult times? Yes. Do we grow immensely in those difficult times? Yes. Well, if we allow ourselves to grow, then we do. This is what God wants for us. He wants us to grow and become stronger. He wants us to lean into Him when things get hard and to be open to growth during these times.
God chose to go through all the pain just for us. He knew all the things we would do, He knew all the ways that we would hurt Him, and yet He still chose us. He still chooses us every single day. Is that not incredible to you? I honestly find it difficult to believe some days with the way the world seems to be going. It seems as though the world as a whole is trying to remove God from more and more things. And yet, He keeps hanging in there. He keeps performing miracles and blessing His children.
The next part of the verses listed above says, “In love, He predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ.” He predestined, that just verifies that He knew all that was going to happen and yet had a backup plan. He knew we would need saving and yet still predestined our adoption through His son, Jesus Christ. He loved us so much that He sent his son to be crucified for our sins.
One thing that we may not often think about is the fact that God not only knew all we were going to do, but He knows how our story ends. He knows how all of this ends. By sending His son to be crucified on the cross for our sins, He has already redeemed us and granted us salvation if we choose to accept it. It says in 1 Corinthians 15:57, “But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” God has already won this fight for us. We don’t have to worry about how things will turn out. Romans 8:28 tells us, “ and we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to His purpose.”
God has predetermined that we would be his adopted children. Because of this we know that He will work all things for our good. He knows the mistakes we will make, and he loves us anyway. Yes, you heard that correctly, and yes, I am talking to you. God loves you and accepts you for who you are, flaws in all. God knew you were going to do that thing that you keep thinking about, and he made you in His likeness and image anyway. Remember the beginning of this episode: God has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. God has blessed you with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. What an amazing Father we have!
Dear heavenly father, I ask that you bless everyone listening to this episode today. Lord, we thank you for blessing us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. I am sure we can't even imagine how many blessings that is. Lord, we love you so very much. It is crazy for us to think about how you knew all the ways we were going to mess up, and yet you decided to create us anyway. Lord, we can never thank you enough for sending down your son to die on the cross for our sins. Lord, we thank you for taking us in as your sons and daughters. We thank you for using all things for our good and for helping us be victorious in the end. Lord, we thank you for being patient with us while we make these mistakes and for always forgiving us when we ask. Lord, you are amazing. We ask all of these things in accordance with your will and in Jesus's holy name, amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Today, we kick off our new February Series for Mentoring. This month’s series will be “The Power of God Within Us.” I hope you will join us to learn all about the power of God that you have living inside of you all the time. You are more powerful than you know, and once you learn about that power, you can begin to use that power to help you wherever you need help. I pray you will join us this evening. There is a link below with all the details. If you email me, I can also send you the link to see what it is like before you join. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in August 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I will shower you with blessings, with my love, my comfort, my strength, my peace. Then you will be able to go out in the world and share it with others."
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I Am Holy (Identity Series)
Ephesians 1:3-4 “Every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realm has already been lavished upon us as a love gift from our wonderful heavenly father, the Father of our Lord Jesus—all because he sees us wrapped into Christ. This is why we celebrate him with all our hearts! And in love he chose us before he laid the foundation of the universe! Because of his great love, he ordained us, so that we would be seen as holy in his eyes with and unstained innocence.”
When I read these two verses this morning, I thought they were so beautiful. They begin with “Every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realm has already been lavished upon us as a love gift from our wonderful heavenly father.” Isn’t that beautiful? Did you know that your heavenly Father is lavishing spiritual blessings on you? The word blessing in this verse is a translation of the Greek word eulogy, which means “to speak well of.” Since God is acting in this verse, we can say that God has spoken good things about us or pronounced good things for our benefit. The good things that God has decreed for us are probably beyond our ability to number.
Can you imagine your heavenly Father showering you with blessings? Did you know that is what He is doing? I know sometimes it doesn’t feel like you are getting any blessings, but this might be because you are in the middle of a hard time. You might not be able to see the blessings because you are so focused on the hard thing that is happening. You might think there is no way God could be blessing you because of all you are going through.
This isn’t true. God can bless us in the middle of a hard time. He can bless us whenever He wants to. You might be wondering what that may look like, what it would look like to have a blessing while in the middle of a hardship. That could look like someone you know checking on you to see if you need anything. It could look like your friends and family bringing you meals when they know you have no time to cook. It could look like you getting a job promotion right when you need it the most! Have any of these ever happened to you? What about when a stranger says something to you out of the blue and it is exactly what you needed to hear?
God is not just blessing us, He is lavishing spiritual blessings upon us. This can go against our picture of God. We all have a picture of God in our head and for some of us, probably a lot of us, it is not a picture of a wonderful heavenly Father. Many of us picture the heavenly Father similar to our dad growing up. So if you had a loving Father growing up the idea that our heavenly Father is loving is easier to grasp. However, if our earthly Father was not outwardly loving and was hard on you, maybe expected a lot out of you, then this is how you might see our heavenly Father too. But God's love is beyond our earthly understanding, and He cherishes each and every one of us.
I know a lot of people who picture the Lord as an old man with a white mustache and beard sitting up in heaven, looking down on us and judging us. They picture God as someone who is just waiting for them to screw up so He can punish them. They are sure they are disappointing Him all of the time. I think this is why I chose these verses and why I like these verses so much.
The second verse for today dispels this myth that God is up in heaven just waiting for us to mess up. It says, “And in love he chose us before he laid the foundation of the universe! Because of his great love, he ordained us, so that we would be seen as holy in his eyes with and unstained innocence.” First, it says that God chose us before He laid the foundation of the Universe. God chose you. Let that sink in for a moment. God chose you before He even created the universe. Does that sound like the act of a Father that is sitting up in heaven waiting for you to screw up so He can punish you?
Next it says, “Because of His great love, he ordained us, so that we would be seen as holy in his eyes with unstained innocence.” Listen to that last part again, “so that we would be seen as holy in his eyes with unstained innocence.” God doesn’t look at us as if we are a wreck waiting to happen. In His eyes, we have an unstained innocence about us. God doesn’t want us to mess up. He doesn’t want us to sin or to fall away from Him. He loves us. He chose us. He wants us to be right there with Him for all eternity.
God loves us. He looks down upon us as a loving Father would. Once we realize this our relationship with the Heavenly Father will become so much closer. If we haven’t really experienced true love in this world, then it might be hard to understand how much our heavenly Father loves us. One thing I am finding that can help with this is to read the scriptures. Read the Psalms, read the New Testament. Last week I read Philippians and this week I am reading Ephesians and they are just beautiful. The Bible is a living document. It is not just a book of words that the Lord told His people back in the day. The Bible is speaking to each one of us right now. When you read the Bible you will realize it is just as relevant to what you are going through today than it was back then. God is so good, His Words are timeless.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask that you help us to understand your love for us. We ask you to help us understand how loved we are. We ask that you help us to change our hearts and are minds about who you are and what you want from us. We want to see you as you truly are not as we picture you in our minds. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! May the grace and favor of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your Spirit!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in August 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email, “I use all things for good. Trust in me. I am directing your life. Every change, every movement in your life is set on me, and I pull you, pull you towards me.”
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I Am Changed (Identity Series)
Romans 3:23-24 “For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard. Yet God, in his grace, freely makes us right in his sight. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty of our sins.”
We have all done things in the past that we are not proud of, and sometimes, we get stuck thinking about those things. We replay them over and over again in our minds and think about how different our lives would be if we had not done them. Some of us think that the things we did were so bad that there is no way God could ever forgive us or love us. Regret is a terrible thing. It sucks the life out of the present moment if you let it. Our minds are powerful, and we will believe what they tell us. We may know in our hearts that God will always forgive us if we truly repent. We know in our hearts that God will always love us no matter what we do and that we do not have to earn his love. However, sometimes, that little voice inside of us will listen to the enemy, and our brain will believe the lies that he tells us. Romans 3:23 says, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” The evil one likes to take this phrase and use it to whisper things in our ears like, “See, no one is good enough,” or “No matter what you do, you will always fall short of God’s standards.” He tells us that we shouldn’t even bother because we are not enough. Do you ever feel that way, like you are not enough? What many of us may not know is what the very next verse, Romans 3:24, says, “Yet God, in his grace, freely makes us right in his sight. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty of our sins.” Yes, we all sin, but God’s grace “makes us right in his sight.” Another way the enemy likes to get to us is to tell us that we will never change. That we are still the same person who did that thing we regret. If we strive to change, he tells us that we can’t change. He reminds us of the things we have done in the past and whispers that we will do it again. There is a song I heard for the first time on the Big Life Devotional, and it is “Slave to Nothing” by Zach Williams. In this song he says:
You can tell me what I did You can show me who I was before Where I fell short Hang it over my head But I'm not the same anymore One thing's for sure The shackles have fallen So I'm showing shame to the door Make no mistake I'm a slave, to nothing
If you get a chance to listen to this song, I highly recommend it. click here
Just because you have acted a certain way in the past does not mean that you have to act that way forever. You can decide to repent and change your ways at any point in time, and God will be there to forgive you and welcome you in with open arms. Think about the many saints that have had beginnings that were not so great. One of the most illustrious saints, I think, is St. Augustine of Hippo. He was a man who was known for having not one but two mistresses. He ran around for years before having a change of heart and settling down at 31. St. Augustine went on to become a Doctor of the Church. Then there is also Saint Mary of Egypt, who ran away from home at 12 and spent a dozen years living on the street as a seductress. According to Craughwell in an article in Live Science, “Nothing made her happier than corrupting innocent young Christian men.” Saint Mary went to Jerusalem looking for young Christian boys to seduce. At the doors to the church, she felt a strange force repulsing her, and she immediately changed her ways. There was also Saint Camillus de Lellis, a priest from Italy that founded one of the first healthcare organizations for the needy. He started out as a cardsharp, con man, and mercenary.
There are also lots of modern-day examples of people who had a rough start. Jennifer Aniston, who is one of the most famous actors because of her role in the sitcom Friends, had 4 failed sitcoms in a row before she landed the role on Friends. Tim Allen, who starred in Home Improvement, is now starring in Last Man Standing and was also the voice of Buzz Lightyear in the Toy Story Movies. In 1979, he was caught with many illegal substances and went to jail for over 2 years. Then he got his life together and became the actor we know and love today. Oprah Winfrey grew up in poverty and did not have the best childhood. She was molested during her childhood and early teens and became pregnant at 14; her son was born too early and died in infancy. Can you imagine the things the enemy was trying to tell her? What was he trying to tell all of these people? What if these people would have believed the lies that they could not become anything different? If they believed that the version of themselves that was not enough or prone to sinning was all they could ever be? What if they stopped reaching for more because they believed they could never achieve more?
What lies do you believe? How much more could you accomplish or become if you stopped believing the lies? You may have made mistakes in the past. You may wish that you could change certain things. Do not let those things hold you back from being who you are today. Do not believe the lies that you are not enough, lazy, selfish, greedy, etc. Just because you may have been those things in the past does not mean that you have to be those things in the future. You can be whoever you want to be because God has redeemed you with his grace!
~ The blog this week was inspired by The Big Life Devotional by Pamela Crim. If you have time to listen to the original episode that inspired me, I highly recommend it. You can reach that episode by clicking here. The episode was called A Slave To Nothing.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, you are amazing, and we love you. We ask you to help us guard our minds and help us not to believe the enemy’s lies. We ask that you help us believe we can change and that we are not who we once were. Change is possible. We ask all this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed weekend!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in August 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Be not afraid to go out and share my love, my light, my hope, my joy. All that I share with you, I keep saying, share it with the world so that they may know me and get to love me.”
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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I Am Victorious (Identity Series)
Ephesians 6:13 “Because of this, you must wear all the armor that God provides so you're protected as you confront the slander, for you are destined for all things and will rise victorious.
I looked at several different scriptures for this morning's devotional. There are so many good ones in Ephesians. I don’t know why I never saw them before. Or maybe I did, and the Lord is just showing me them again in a different light. I am not sure, but I love it! I saw this verse first this morning, and then I went back and forth on a few others, but my eyes kept being drawn back to this one. I know a lot of you are going through some really hard things right now, and what I felt when I kept being drawn back to this verse was that God wants you to know that you will rise victorious!
He wants you to know that this thing you are going through, the situation you are in, will not take you down. This illness will not be the end. These financial matters won’t be the end. Your estranged loved ones, this is not the end. You will be victorious. You will be healed. Your loved one will be healed. The Lord will provide for you to pay your bills. You won’t be estranged from your loved one forever. Whatever it is you are struggling with this morning, I feel the Lord wants me to tell you you will rise victorious.
The last part of this verse made me think of a song I saw in a movie called Pitch Perfect 2. The song was sung by a group of Germans who were competing in an a cappella singing competition. This song came into my mind because their performance was so powerful. They projected such strength when they performed this song. This is what we must do when we are dealing with the enemy.
The verse says that we must put on the armor that God provides us so that we are protected when we confront the slander. Make no mistake, the slander is the devil. Of course, he won’t look like the devil. He will look like someone who cut you off in the traffic. He will look like the person spreading lies about you. He will look like your co-worker or your boss. He might look like your children or your siblings. Whoever is causing strife in your life, the enemy is working through them. I want to read you the words to the song that popped into my mind, as I know it is not a coincidence that when I read this verse, this song came to mind. If you want to see the video on YouTube, you can type in Das Sound Machine Car Show, and it should come up. Here are the lyrics:
They will not control us. We will be victorious
[Verse 1]
Paranoia is in bloom
The PR transmissions will resume
They try to push drugs that keep us all dumbed down
And hope that we will never see the truths around
Come On!
[Verse 2]
Another promise, another seed
Another packaged lie to keep us trapped in greed
And all the green belts wrapped around our minds
And endless red tape to keep the truth confined
Come On!
[Chorus]
They will not force us
They will stop degrading us
They will not control us
We will be victorious
At first, these lyrics might not seem to make much sense. However, if you think about them in terms of what the enemy is trying to do to us, they make much more sense. The first line goes perfectly with the verse. They will not control us; we will be victorious. The enemy and his evil henchmen will not control us. We are God’s children, and we are protected. However, we must put on our armor of protection. We must call on the Lord. We need to give Him permission to protect us. We need to read the scriptures so we know when the enemy is lying to us. We must stand in truth.
The next verse in the song says Paranoia is in bloom. The PR transmissions will resume. They try to push drugs that keep us all dumbed down. And hope that we will never see the truth around. Come On! This may not fit perfectly, but when we really think about it, we can see that the enemy is trying to make us feel paranoid. All we have to do is listen to the news for a few minutes, and we can see all the craziness going on in the world today. Also, it says they try to push drugs that keep us all dumbed down. And hope that we will never see the truth around us. How many of us know someone who has struggled with drug or alcohol abuse? We know it is all around us, yet do we know that the enemy is the one who is pushing it on us. Do we know he is trying to keep us on drugs so we don’t see the truth all around us? When we use drugs, when we drink, it alters our state, and we don’t see things as they really are.
The next verse of the song says, “Another promise, another seed, another packaged lie to keep us trapped in greed. And all the green belts wrapped around our minds. And endless red tape to keep the truth confined. Come On!” How many people in our lives have promised us promise after promise and yet not kept them? How many times have people in the government, or in any authoritative power, promised something, and yet it never happened? I like how it says, “another packaged lie to keep us trapped in greed.” This is so true in the world today. The enemy will tell us anything we want to hear to keep us trapped in greed. The world is all about how much we have and how much we can get. It is not about giving to others. It is about making sure we have what we need despite others.
Next, the song says, “And all the green belts wrapped around our minds. And endless red tape to keep the truth confined.” Do you ever feel like this? Do you feel like the information we get from the news, social media, and YouTube are all just feeding us what we want to hear? Sometimes, I feel like the truth is impossible to find. It is always hidden in someone else’s opinion about what happened. It is very hard to find the facts about the actual incident. The truth is harder and harder to find these days.
The chorus of this song is one that I recommend we use as a mantra anytime we are having a rough day or anytime the enemy seems to be overtaking our thoughts. It says, “They will not force us. They will stop degrading us. They will not control us. We will be victorious.” We know this is true because the Lord tells us this in Ephesians 6:13. We will be victorious. The enemy can not force you. This is one of those things that the enemy doesn’t want us to know. If God is willing to be bound by free will you better believe the enemy is also. He likes us to think he can do whatever he wants to us, and yet if we tell him to leave, he must leave. That is a fact he doesn’t want us to know.
You are so much more powerful than you know. The enemy is trying to keep this from us because He knows the game will be over if all of God’s children start living in the power that the Lord gave us. If we all stood up to the enemy and said, “No more! I am done with your games. I know you can’t hurt me because I am a child of the one true God. I know you have no power over me. I know you are a liar, and I refuse to believe your stupid lies anymore.” Can you imagine what type of world we would be living in if we were all able to do that? It would be glorious!
I don’t want to leave this verse today without addressing the beginning part of the verse. My eyes first went to the part that says, “You will be victorious,” and I think that message was what God wanted me to focus on today, yet I also want to make sure you all heard the first part, too, so I will end with that today. The verse above says it is important to wear the armor that God provides because “You are destined for all things.” You have a destiny and it is an amazing one. Do you know how I know it is an amazing one when I might not even know you? Because the enemy is attacking you. The enemy doesn’t care about those who are lukewarm or those whose souls he thinks he has already won. The enemy attacks those who he is worried will do great things for the kingdom of God. The enemy only attacks those who are powerful warriors for the Lord.
You, my friend, have an amazing destiny, and you will be victorious. I know things are hard right now. I know you can’t see a way out and you think all is about to come crashing down on you. You don’t see how your loved one will come back to you. You don’t see how the cancer will be defeated. You don’t see how you will pay your bills when your paycheck can’t possibly cover it all. I get it. We can’t always see how, and we don’t need to. All we need to do is believe the Lord when He says we will be victorious. We can just thank Him, praise Him and wait for Him to work all things for our good.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, I ask you to protect our minds from the enemy. I ask you to help us to believe that we will be victorious. Show us how to put on the armor of God, Lord. Show us how to protect ourselves from the slanderer. Help us walk in our victory, Lord. Help us have hope that even though we don’t see how you will arrange all things for our victory. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus! I have enjoyed this month of Identity, and I pray you have learned a lot about who God says you are! I will be putting together a book of 31 different scripture verses about identity and making it a 31-day devotional. I hope you will look out for it in the coming months. My prayer is that it will help you grow in your identity as a child of God. I look forward to seeing you tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in August 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I am love. I am joy. I am hope. You must go out to the world and share all that I share with you. You are my children, and I love you so dearly.”
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Today’s witnesses are from Matthew West’s website called popwe.org. If you don’t know who Matthew West is, he is a singer, songwriter, and storyteller. This website is for the non-profit that he has with his father, a pastor. Matthew and his father encourage people to share their stories. They have various categories of stories. Today, I chose two testimonies from the Healing Category. Often, we can hear our own story in someone else’s story. When we listen to others tell their story, it helps us see that we are not alone. When we hear how God worked in their situation, it gives us hope that He will work in ours, too! I pray when you hear these testimonies, you get the faith and hope to believe that miracles can happen in your situation, also. I pray you know that God is there with you, and if you invite Him into your situation, He can help. I hope you enjoy these testimonies.
Karen: In 2004 my mom suffered kidney failure and started dialysis at 75. It was very hard on her while my older sister tested to be a donor and was ruled out. Then my older brother tested and was unable to donate. It’s important to note that they are both biological children and I was adopted. I was also a single mom raising two kids at 37, so needless to say I was scared to donate, but I prayed and my growth group prayed with me. Come to find out, a man sitting beside me had donated his kidney to his daughter and was doing great 18 years later. I also kept seeing signs to remind me that “greater love hath no man than to lay down his life for another,” so I stepped up and was deemed acceptable but had to lose 40 pounds to do so.
Mom was getting more drained by the day. I lost the weight in 8 weeks and surgery was scheduled for October, but mom suffered a hematoma and surgery was put off till February for her healing. The waiting was tough. It made me second guess but I still did it. In February 2005, she was able to stop dialysis after I donated my kidney to her and my prayer was that God would take care of us. It’s because of seeing the toll mom and my grandma went through on dialysis I knew I could never do that. Lesson learned. Never tell God what you can’t do!
Fast forward 14 years. I got kidney cancer and had a partial nephrectomy in September of 2019. Unfortunately surgery had complications and I had a collapsed lung, respiratory distress, and internal bleeding that resulted in a 34 day hospital stay including a medically induced coma for 2 weeks. My family was unsure if I would make it or not. I remember asking God to take me as I was on a ventilator and unconscious, but He said it wasn’t my time yet, He had great plans for me. My kids still needed me so I asked Him to heal me. Within 2 days I was awake, and the next day the ventilator came out. A few days after that I left ICU for a regular room. That only lasted 2 days before being discharged to rehab for 2 weeks where I learned how to walk again.
Unfortunately, my kidney never woke up after that surgery even though I still had 78% left, but they think the medications they gave me for the coma were too strong and could have damaged it further. Thus began my time on dialysis and boy was it miserable. Three times a week I would go in and be hooked up to a life-saving machine for 3 hours, then be exhausted after with muscle cramps, nausea, high blood pressure, headaches, and overall feeling miserable. I had numerous surgeries for peritoneal dialysis but it never worked. I had numerous hospital stays for high blood pressure, headaches, abdominal pain, and bowel obstructions. It was the roughest 33 months of my life.
I was finally approved for a transplant in April of 2022 and on Mother’s Day May 8, 2022 I got a new kidney! Praise God for only He could schedule that! After giving my mom a kidney in 2005, He gave me one on Mother’s Day- amazing! It’s now several months later and although it hasn’t been a picnic I am so thankful to be on the road to health and healing. Blessed be the name of the Lord!
We celebrated my parents 69th wedding anniversary this past Sunday and I’m so thankful for all that God has done and continues to do on a daily basis for me! To God be the glory!
Emily: Hello, I’m Emily. I’m a 10 time Breast Cancer Survivor. Yes, you read that right, ….TEN.
It all began with a stomach ache in 2008. As I went to my doctor for a routine exam, she found the Cancer! Of course, I had to go through an ultrasound and mammogram first, but my doctor had saved my life by detecting this early, I thought.
I was 33, had 3 kids, (ages 6, 2, and 8 months) and a full-time job teaching 1st graders at a public school. Cancer? Who has time for Cancer? I was told it is an aggressive form and difficult to treat, because doctors don’t know much about it. I have Triple Negative Breast Cancer. I fought with everything I had through chemo, radiation and a lumpectomy.
God and I spent a lot of time talking about how I was going to win this battle and with His help, I did, for 4 1/2 years.
The Demon itself returned in March of 2012, just before my 5 year clear mark. I was devastated, scared, angry, frustrated and MAD at God. Why was this happening to me again? Why do I have to go through this again? This isn’t fair! God carried me through the second battle, just as He did the first with just as much grace and comfort.
Fast-forward to 2022. I’ve now had TWO double mastectomies, a lumpectomy, ten biopsies, a DIEP flap reconstruction surgery, 3 more rounds of chemo (78 total treatments), 3 different types of radiation (67 total treatments), and Proton therapy (35 treatments) to try and kill this cancer. It has reared its ugly head 10 times and this is going to be the last!!!
Just a month and a half ago, I learned about a new drug that people were having success rates with. It was a Godsend and true miracle. An email delivered to my inbox revealed something we’ve been waiting for for 15 years!!!! The product is working and I will have another scan in February to hear that there is NED (No evidence of disease)!!! I am positive after reading the success stories!
I tell my story to say this… God is the only reason I am still here!!!! Nobody survives Cancer 10 times without God. Period. If you are battling Cancer of any kind, just know that God is on your side and He is the ultimate healer!!!! Without Him and our faith, we are nothing!! I’m still standing AND teaching for 15 years and 10 battles later!
God is so good and Matthew West, you’re my favorite!!! Your music inspires me and the children in my class from rough homes every single day!! Our favorite is “How Good Of God!”
Thank you both so much for sharing your stories. I know it can be hard to be vulnerable and share your story with other. When you are able to do so though it helps other people see they are not alone. It provides hope to those who hear it. Thank you!
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I Am Anointed (Identity Series)
Psalm 23:5-6 “You prepare a feast for me in the presence of my enemies. You honor me by anointing my head with oil. My cup overflows with blessings. Surely your goodness and unfailing love will pursue me all the days of my life, and I will live in the house of the Lord forever.”
There is a lot to like about this verse. First, it starts out by saying that God will prepare a feast for me in the presence of my enemies. I don’t have to be worried about my enemies as God has got me. He is my shield and my refuge. Now he is saying we will prepare a feast for me. When someone is preparing a meal for us, they are not usually stressed out about it. They don’t worry about all the things going on around them. Picture this: there is chaos all around you, and yet in front of you is this beautifully set up dining room table. You have a seat, and God is bringing you a feast, one course at a time. He is not concerned with your enemies because He knows they can’t touch you. You are not concerned either because you just feel so at home, so taken care of. Isn’t that a beautifully relaxing image?
Next, the verse says that God honors us by anointing our heads with oil. Did you know that you have an anointing in your life? We all do. Did you know through your baptism you were anointed to be priest, prophet, and king? It’s true, just as Christ was all three of these, you are also anointed to be these three things to your community. What does that mean for us?
Let’s start with the priest. Drawing on the priesthood of the Old Testament, a priest is one who offers sacrifices (see Genesis 14:18; Exodus 29:38- 42; Leviticus 23:6,8). Some sacrifices are personal, and some are on behalf of others. These sacrifices will look different for each one of us, depending on our circumstances. However, sacrifice, to some degree, should be a part of our everyday life. I have tried to embrace this a little more this year, so I am fasting from one thing each month. I will switch it up each month, but there will always be something I am fasting from. I think this will help me to appreciate things more and it will also show me that I am not a slave to that thing. For instance, if I feel like I just can’t stop eating chocolate, then I will fast from that for a month. By the end of the year, I will have shown God and myself that I do not need these things. I will have also made a small sacrifice each month for 12 months.
Next, we have a prophet. A prophet is a spokesperson for God or one who speaks on God’s behalf (see Exodus 4:30; Deuteronomy 18:18; Isaiah 42:19). In the Old and New Testaments, prophets called people to a different way of life. Can we be a spokesperson for God by how we live our lives? Can we live in a way that when people see us, they think to themselves, “I want what they have?” Can we call others to a different way of life, not necessarily with our words, but with our love? Can we love others as Jesus did? Can we speak love and light into the world, into people’s lives? Can we be prophets?
Lastly, we are anointed as kings. What are kings called to do? Usually rule over others. We are called to rule over ourselves first and foremost. We are all responsible for making sure we are living our lives according to God’s laws. Most kings are called to rule over others; however, as Christians, we are called to servant leadership. A servant leader leads by serving others. In other words, servant leaders place the interests and needs of their followers ahead of their own self-interests and needs. Generally, they value the development of their followers, building their communities, acting authentically, and sharing power.
Now that we know what each one of these means, hopefully, we can apply this to our everyday life. God has anointed us in our everyday tasks, too. For instance, I was anointed to be a mother and a wife. That was where God called me, and that is what He set me apart to do. Maybe you are anointed to be a doctor, a lawyer, a pharmacy tech, a garbage collector, a grandmother, a teacher, whatever it is, God has anointed you to do it. Your baptismal anointing is not meant to replace any of those other calls on your life. You are anointed to be a priest, prophet, and king in the life you are already living. Think about your day-to-day life; how can you incorporate sacrifice into your days? How can you be more of a prophet spreading the Lord’s Word in your daily lives? How can you be more of a servant leader right now, right where you are?
The verse then goes on to say my cup overflows with blessings. This is also great imagery. I love to picture a teacup as we grew up drinking tea in my family. Although I don’t picture a regular tea cup, the image I am getting is an English fancy tea cup from a china set. The tea is being poured into it with a steady stream, and the cup is overflowing and running all over the table and even onto the floor. This is how many blessings God has for you. He wants to rain down blessings upon blessings on all of His children. Sometimes, we get in the way of God’s blessings. Sometimes, we don’t appreciate the blessings that we have, so why would God give us more? Sometimes, we find ourselves complaining about all that is going on in our lives instead of praising God and giving thanksgiving. God has ridiculous blessings for you. All you have to do is believe that and then praise God for any blessings, even if they are small. If you can be faithful to the small, He will increase your blessings. He is a good, good Father!
The ending of this verse is beautiful. “Surely your goodness and unfailing love will pursue me all the days of my life, and I will live in the house of the Lord forever.” We had this word pursue the other day. I love that word. This verse is saying that God’s goodness and unfailing love will pursue us all the days of our lives. Isn’t that wonderful? We don’t have to chase after God because He is already chasing after us. All we have to do is let ourselves be caught by God’s goodness and unfailing love. Unfailing love is not like any love we can find here on earth. It is an incredible love that knows no limits, that knows no boundaries. God’s love never leaves us. No matter how much we may try to run from it. No matter how much we try to reject it or send it back. No matter how much we might mess up. God’s unfailing love will pursue you every single day of your life. How incredible is that?
And the very last part of the verse says, “I will live in the house of the Lord forever.” Yes, please! I want to live in the house of the Lord forever. I think we all do. It is so amazing to me that God has an open-door policy to heaven. All are welcome. Come as you are in your broken and wounded state. You do not have to earn your way. You don’t have to do anything to get there. Jesus has earned you your right to be there. All you have to do is surrender to God and let Him help you. Let Him give you the strength to follow Him. Following God is not always an easy road but it is a rewarding road and one that leads to spending eternity living in the house of the Lord.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening today. Lord, we thank you for loving us like you do. We thank you for preparing us for a feast in the presence of our enemies. We thank you for the ridiculous blessings you want to give us, and we are sorry if we get in your way of doing that. We thank you for anointing us priests, prophets, and kings, and we ask for your help in discovering what that means for each one of us and how we can incorporate that anointing into our lives. We love you, Lord, and we can’t wait to live in your house forever! We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I hope to see you this evening on mentoring. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in August 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, I call you by name. I know each and every one of you. Let your light shine so that you can help remove the darkness.”
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I Am Not A Mistake
Psalm 139:13 “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.”
God created everything about us. I like this verse, though, because it reminds us that He created even our inmost being. I like the visual of God knitting me together. One stitch at a time. I am not someone who knits, but I have family and friends that do. When you are knitting something you can make it look however you want to. If you are the person doing it, you get to pick the colors, you get to pick the pattern, and you even get to pick which stitch or combination of stitches you are going to use. You are the creator of whatever you are knitting.
Now, imagine that God is knitting you together. He chose all the specifics about you. He got to choose what color hair you have and what color eyes you have. Do you ever take time to think about this, to think about the fact that God created everything about you? I was at a personal development conference this week, so that may be why it is on my mind more than usual. I love attending these conferences because it is so great to be gathered in a room with like-minded people. I don’t mean that we all think the same way or even believe the same things, but in this instance, we were all there because we knew God had a bigger plan for our lives, and we wanted to figure out what that plan was.
It was an amazing weekend, and I learned so much. This happened to be a women’s conference, and there were so many women gathered together, all wanting to improve themselves in some way or another. This is a beautiful thing. One of the things that usually comes up when you have so many women gathered together is the idea of insecurities. Insecurities are something that I believe everyone has. We don’t all have them about the same things or to the same extent, but I do think we are all insecure about something. We all have that one thing, or some of us have more than one thing that we wish we could change about ourselves. That thing that we really don’t like about ourselves. Some of these things affect our lives in a big way, and some do not.
When you look at yourself and your life, what are your insecurities? What are the things about you that you don’t like that may be getting in your way of living your best life? Maybe you are struggling because you are living the life that everyone around you wants you to live, but inside, you feel like it's not right for you. For instance, you have a really good job, and you are making good money, but in your heart, you really want to be doing something else. Maybe you have insecurities based on your appearance. This is a big one with women. We feel too tall, too short, too thin, too fat. Or we feel our hair is too long, too short, too light, too dark. It seems like no one is happy in their own skin these days.
I wonder why this is. I wonder if people throughout the ages have always felt like this or if this is new. I don’t think it is new that people don’t like something about themselves. I am sure that has always probably been a thing. However, I wonder if it was as widespread and commonplace as it is today. I am not sure if I know a single woman who is so happy with her appearance that she wouldn’t change anything if you asked. I wonder if all this unhappiness has to do with social media and marketing. Once upon a time, before TV, magazines, movies, etc., you didn’t have so much access to everything. You could compare yourself to those who lived around you, and maybe those in paintings or in books. However, you didn’t have the kind of access you have today.
Today, you could spend five minutes online and you could scroll through hundreds of images of whatever you want to look at. Also, if you have social media, you can just scroll down your feed, and you will see plenty of posts from people. The internet can be a very dangerous place for those who have insecurities and are looking for proof that those insecurities are real. If you think you are too heavy and then you search for proof of that online, you will find it. That is how the internet works. You ask a question and it searches all the data and gives you an answer to the question that you just asked it. Your brain is the same. If you have an insecurity and you ask your brain to find proof of it, your brain will. The awesome thing about your brain is that the opposite is also true. If you ask your brain to prove to you that your insecurity is not true, it will do that as well. For instance, if you ask your brain why no one at work likes you, it will search all your memories and come up with reasons why your co-workers don’t like you. However, if you ask your brain to prove to you that people at your work do like you, your brain will come up with an answer to that question as well. If you do not like the answers you are coming up with then you need only ask better questions.
The main speaker at the conference said something this weekend, and I think it would be great if everyone in the world heard it. She said that when she was sitting in the audience at her first personal development conference, she had a realization wash over her. She felt it was divine intervention. The realization was, “What if I was on purpose? What if God made me exactly like I am for a reason?” I think this is so important because I think so many of us feel like there is some part of us that is wrong. We feel like we would be better if that part of us didn’t exist. I always wished that I wasn’t so emotional. I have thought this more times than I can count. I cry at happy things, I cry at sad things, I cry at spiritual things, I cry for someone else’s happy times and someone else’s pain. I am just a mess sometimes. I always thought this was a character flaw. However, now I know that God gave me that ability. I don’t know why He made me that way, but God doesn’t make mistakes. So, there must be a reason.
The same goes for you. You are not a mistake. You were made on purpose. God knew what he was doing. He designed each part of you for a reason. He pays attention to detail. How would your life be different if you could hear this and really take it in? How would you feel about yourself if the next time you started to feel insecure about something, you reminded yourself that God made you this way on purpose? You are perfect, just as you are. You are loved just as you are. You are enough just as you are.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to see ourselves through your eyes. Help us to see everyone through your eyes. Lord, help remind us when we feel insecure that you made us on purpose. Remind us, Lord, that you created our inmost being. You knit us together perfectly and completely. And if you made us on purpose, Lord, then that means we can't be a mistake. That means our hopes and desires aren't a mistake. That means our character isn't a mistake. We love you, Lord Jesus, and we thank you for making us who we are, and we ask that you help us learn to love who we are. We thank you for making us in your likeness and image. You are amazing, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus' holy name, amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Tomorrow is Week #4 for the Identity Series in Mentoring. If you have been enjoying the I Am series in the podcast, you will really enjoy mentoring, where we go deeper into who God says we are. When you join, you will have access to all previous weeks as well. Click on the link below to check out mentoring and see if it is right for you!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in July 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Stop, my children, and think. You've been set apart. You are separated from many because I have a plan for this body to be my honorable presence in the lives of others. Go forth and be the word.”
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I Am A Child of God (Identity Series)
1 John 3:1 “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.”
This verse is so powerful. What great love the Father has lavished on us, isn’t that powerful? Can’t you just picture the Father lavishing us with Love? Or maybe you can’t. Maybe you struggle to believe that you are a child of God. Maybe you struggle to believe that the Lord loves you, and the thought that He lavishes love on you is something that you just can’t wrap your head around. If this is you, you are not alone. Love in this world is so complicated, and a lot of things can get in the way of us loving and feeling loved. There is a song by Matthew West called “Hello, My Name Is.” This song has the beginning line of the verse above in the lyrics, along with some reasons why we can’t feel this love. I want to go over some of those lyrics with you. Also, there is a link to the song in the show notes if you want to listen to it.
The song starts out by saying:
Hello, my name is Regret
I'm pretty sure we have met
Every single day of your life
I'm the whisper inside
That won't let you forget
This is true for so many of us. We struggle to feel God’s love because we have so many regrets. Regrets over things we have done or things we have said; regrets over things we didn’t do and didn’t say. When we have regrets, the enemy takes those, and he whispers them to us over and over again so that we feel like we aren’t worthy of God’s love. The enemy doesn’t let us forget about them.
Next, the song goes on to say:
Hello, my name is defeat
I know you recognize me
Just when you think you can win
I'll drag you right back down again
Till you've lost all belief
Does this sound familiar? Things are going well and then we start to get a voice in our head telling us that things will go wrong. Sure, it seems like all is going well, but things always get messed up in the end. Things have gone wrong so many times in the past that you start to think you don’t deserve to win. You don’t deserve the happiness or the love that God has planned for you. When this happens, we can start to self-sabotage. We don’t even know we are doing it. The enemy just keeps telling us that we have failed in the past, so we will fail again. He drags us back down over and over again until we have lost all belief in ourselves and sometimes in God.
Then the song goes on to say:
Oh, these are the voices; oh these are the lies
And I have believed them, for the very last time
Hello, my name is child of the One True King
I've been saved, I've been changed, I have been set free
Amazing Grace is the song I sing
Hello, my name is child of the One True King
This is a verse that we may want to write down and read often. I know I say this about a lot of verses from scripture, and you may have a lot of Post-it notes or index cards. I really think this one could help us all when we are feeling defeated or when the enemy is telling us lies. As much as we want to believe that God loves us and that we are His children, sometimes, the things of this world get in our way. Sometimes, we let the enemy's lies get to us and convince us that we are not worthy, that we are not loved, that we are unlovable, and so many other things that are not true. For me, when I heard this song, I loved it. I have listened to it a million times or so. Well, that may be a slight exaggeration, but I have listened to it a lot. And guess what? Now I hear this chorus run through my head when I need it to. When I start to feel down on myself, I literally tell myself, “Catherine, you are a child of the one true king!” When I hear this, I can’t help but smile. When I start to doubt myself, when I start to have regret, or when I feel any of the enemy’s tactics, I tell him, sorry, but I am a child of the one true king. You’ve got nothing on my God; He is my one true king. I have even started saying this to my friends when they are struggling. When they are feeling down and also when they are feeling attacked, I remind them who they are and who they are. They are a child of God, the one true King, and He won’t let the enemy hurt them. He won’t let the enemy win.
The song goes on to say:
I am no longer defined
By all the wreckage behind
The One who makes all things new
Has proven it's true
Just take a look at my life
We all have things in our past that we are not proud of. We have all said and done things that weren’t great. Whether we did them on purpose or not, none of us are perfect. We live in a broken world, and this means that we hurt people sometimes. Regardless of what you have done in your past, you do not have to be defined by it. I think it is good to reflect on any areas that you are not proud of. If there are things you regret in your past, then take stalk of them and hand them over to the Lord. Ask Him to help you forgive yourself. Ask Him to help you move past them. We can not change the past, no matter how much we want to. If we want to find peace with our past mistakes, we need to turn them over and ask God for help. As these lyrics say, He is the one that makes all things new. I also like how the lyrics say that he Has proven it true: just take a look at my life. I think if we all took a look at our lives over the years, we would see plenty of examples of how God showed us His love, how He protected us from things, how He saved us from things.
The song ends with:
What love the Father Has lavished upon us
That we should be called His children
Hello, my name is child of the One True King
I've been saved, I've been changed, I have been set free
Amazing Grace is the song I sing
Hello, my name is a child of the One True King, yeah
These are the words from the scripture verse above. Can you imagine how much the Lord loves us to call us His children? Think about how much love you have for your children. Now, multiply that by a bazillion, and that is how much our heavenly Father loves us. My hope is that when you start to doubt this, you remember this song, you remember this scripture verse, and you remember that you are a child of the one true king. You remember that you’ve been saved, you've been changed, you have been set free. You are not who you were, and you don’t have to let your past mistakes define you. God has saved you, changed you, and set you free from everything. All you have to do is live in this freedom. Don’t let the enemy drag you back to your old self. Anytime he starts to whisper lies in your ear, just tell him, “I am a child of the one true king, I am not listening to you.”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we are so grateful for all the love that you lavish on us. We are sorry if we find it hard to accept it sometimes. Please help us with this. We want to accept all that you have to offer us freely. We want to live in the freedom you have given us. We don’t want to live with any chains that the enemy tries to weigh us down with. Please help us release anything that we need to release to live in your freedom. You are so amazing and you give us so much, help us to accept it. Help us to know that we are your children and that you love us. Help us not to believe the lies of the enemy. We are grateful for all you do for us, Lord. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day.
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in July 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “The day is washed in Light, my children, washed and bathed through your hand, an extension of my hand. My hand is kind and full of compassion and love. You are all the extension of me. You are not separate from me. Never do you move alone. I am your guide.”
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I Am Protected (Identity Series)
Psalm 18:32 “God gives me strength for the battle. He keeps my way secure.” This verse came to me from a challenge that we received in Big Life mentoring this past week. Pamela Crim gave us a list of 14 Bible verses that tell us who God says we are. Our job was to read one verse each day and to pray with it. Read it out loud and really think about what it says. She encouraged us to go online to look up the verse in many different translations. Have you done that before? Have you taken a verse and then checked the other translations to see what words they use? I do this often, and I am always surprised by the words the various translations use. I know they are all saying the same thing, and yet some just hit me more than others. If you haven’t tried this before, or you haven’t done it often, might I suggest you give it a try? I think you will find you like reading the various translations. The website I use to do this is Biblegateway.com. However, there are several different ones you could use.
Today’s verse tells us that we are protected. It begins with the sentence, “God gives me strength for the battle.” This is important to know, as God does give us strength for our battles. Sometimes, we look at the fight we have ahead of us, and we are sure that we don’t have the strength to fight it. We might be looking at a really long custody battle, divorce proceedings, a long medical journey, whatever it may be, and we know we aren’t strong enough for it. Have you ever felt like this, like the road ahead is too hard, too long, too steep, too painful, and that you just don’t have the strength for it? I get it. Life is hard. I know so many who are struggling right now. So many who have way more to handle than any one person ever should.
The important thing to keep in mind is that we are not in this alone. You are probably right. Your situation is more than you can handle on your own, which is why you are lucky that you are not on your own. You have your heavenly Father, who is providing you with the strength you need each day. I know sometimes it doesn’t feel like He is giving you enough strength. Sometimes, it doesn’t feel like you have enough to keep fighting, and yet with each new day comes a renewed strength. He is constantly filling you up so that you can fight your battles. You might not feel as if you are full of strength, and yet you do keep going; you do keep fighting so you can see He is giving you strength.
He keeps my way secure. I think this means that God always makes sure there is a way. God is a way maker and so we don’t have to worry about coming to a point where we are stuck at a dead end where there is no way out. I know it feels like we get to this point sometimes. I know we can reach a point where we can’t see a way out. The way out is not always one that we can see or that we can understand. God can make a way where there isn’t one. This can happen in several different ways.
I read about a person who was getting sued because he did not read the contract carefully, and he was going to lose everything. He knew he didn’t really have a leg to stand on as he did sign the contract and yet he prayed for God to intervene anyway. The lawsuit just went away. It was like it never happened and he never heard anything more about it. There have been people who have been told they or their family members were going to die. They had some illness, like cancer, and there was nothing else the doctors could do for them. Their family members prayed anyway, and God healed them. He took away their illness completely. That is a way forward that we didn’t see ahead of time and we might not have even believed it before seeing it.
I have heard many stories of people who were stuck in a situation and couldn’t see any way out of it. There have been numerous times when my parents were in situations where they couldn’t see a way out, and yet they trusted that God had one, and he never let them down. One time I remember my dad telling me about when God protected him was when a neighbor wanted to fight him. My dad had invited a neighborhood friend to church with our family. She came to church with us, and she was touched by the Lord. She started going regularly and decided she wanted to change her whole life to be in alignment with God.
At the time, she was living with a guy that she was dating, and she no longer felt comfortable with the relationship as it was. She didn’t want to be living with someone she wasn’t married to. I am not sure if she broke up with him or just moved out until they were married or what the exact situation was. I do know that her boyfriend blamed my dad and was really upset with him. We lived in the projects at the time, and so everyone lived very close together, and everyone knew everything about everything. My mom called my dad at work to let him know she heard that this guy was going to fight my dad when he got home from work. My dad got home at the same time every day.
My dad wasn’t really sure what to do about this news, so he prayed the Lord would protect him. When he got home, he could see there was a group of people on our front lawn. The guy who wanted to beat my dad up was there, and then a bunch of kids who wanted to see the fight. My dad paused in his car before getting out and asked the Holy Spirit to come into this situation. He asked God to give him the words to say to these guys to defuse the situation. My dad certainly couldn’t see a way out of this situation. He had no idea what to say or what to do. He needed God’s protection and His wisdom.
My dad got out of the car. He walked up to the man who wanted to fight him, and words just came flowing out of his mouth. He didn’t even know what he was saying. This is what he said, “I know you are in a lot of pain. I know you are hurt, and you feel like punching me will make you feel better. If you think that will help you, then go ahead and punch me. I think what you really need is someone to listen to you. So, let's go inside, and we can talk, and I will listen.” The guy started crying, and they went inside and talked for hours. My dad definitely couldn’t have seen that ending.
This is not something he could have seen coming. The path was not neatly laid out in front of him. He knew he was in trouble that only God could get him out of, and so He asked God to protect Him. I think God likes it when we step out in faith, knowing that He keeps His promises. I don’t know if my dad knew this specific verse or not, and yet I do know they trusted God to protect him and to show him the way out of this situation. You can do the same. You can trust that God is protecting you. He is giving you strength for the battle and keeping your way secure. That is a promise you can stand on.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to know we are protected by you. Help us to feel that protection. Help us lean into you and not to worry about what might happen. Lord, help us to trust that you have secured our way. Help us to step out in faith, knowing you will provide a way, even if it is one we can’t see ahead of time. Help us to trust you, Lord. We love you. You are amazing! You have always come through for us in the past, and we know you always will. We are so grateful, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk Bodly With Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Just a reminder: if you want to receive my newsletter, you can sign up on my website, walkboldlywithjesus.com. I will also put a link in the show notes. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I. Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in July 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I am the God of love. I am the God of joy. I am the God of hope. Spread all that I tell you to the world. Be not afraid to proclaim that I am your God. Make me known, make me loved. Decide today that you will start now.”
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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Today’s Witness is from a very dear friend of mine. It is her testimony of how she forgave someone who did the unthinkable to her. She is a wonderful woman who has such a strong love for Jesus. She is a mother of two kids and a wife. She is a photographer, a karate champion, and so much more! You can hear in her voice just how excited she is for this breakthrough. God is so good!We have all seen God working in our lives. However, we might not all be aware it is God working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences, the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience of how God has worked or is working in your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or click here. It won’t take up much of your time, and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story, and the world needs to hear them.Music:"Adding the Sun"fine us. It is not fun, Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ www.findingtruenorthcoaching.comCLICK HERE TO DONATECLICK HERE to sign up for Mentoring CLICK HERE to sign up for Daily "Word from the Lord" emailsCLICK HERE to sign up for my newsletter & receive a free audio trainingabout inviting Jesus into your daily lifeCLICK HERE to buy my book Total Trust in God's Safe Embrace
I Am Made New (Identity Series)
2 Corinthians 5:16-18 “From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh; even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.”
When I read this verse, I really liked it. I love how it says we regard no one according to the flesh. The verse acknowledges, “ok, we know, we did this with Jesus,” but we learned our lesson, and we don’t do that any longer. I really like reading the message translation because it puts these verses in terms we would use today, and sometimes, I think it helps me understand the passage more or gives me a different understanding of the verse. It helps me to think of it in a way I might not have thought of on my own. It’s kind of like these podcasts. It takes the Word of God and then it shows how it applies to us in our everyday life. Sometimes, it is hard, with some of the language in the Bible, to understand what exactly they mean. If I have a verse that I don’t quite understand, I will usually go to the message translation and see what that says. That is usually enough to help me understand it. I want to read today’s verse from the message translation.
“Because of this decision we don’t evaluate people by what they have or how they look. We looked at the Messiah that way once and got it all wrong, as you know. We certainly don’t look at him that way anymore. Now we look inside, and what we see is that anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start and is created new. The old life is gone; a new life emerges! Look at it! All this comes from the God who settled the relationship between us and him and then called us to settle our relationships with each other. God put the world square with himself through the Messiah, giving the world a fresh start by offering forgiveness of sins. God has given us the task of telling everyone what he is doing. We’re Christ’s representatives. God uses us to persuade men and women to drop their differences and enter into God’s work of making things right between them. We’re speaking for Christ himself now: Become friends with God; he’s already a friend with you.”
First, I want to say I wish this first sentence were true. I truly wish people didn’t judge others by what they have or how they look. How great would it be to live in a world where we don’t have to worry about what we have or how we look? How great would it be to know others weren’t judging us? Also, how great would it be to be able not to judge others or compare yourself to others? I have heard the quote, “Comparison is the thief of joy.” I know this to be true. I know so many people who are feeling great, and then they hop on social media and see how well everyone else is doing, and they start to feel bad about themselves. They are judging others based on the small snapshot of their life they post on social media. When they compare their life to the lives of others, they decide they can’t measure up. They decide their life isn’t nearly as good as everyone else.
As much as I know this first sentence isn’t true for the majority of people in this world, what if we made it true for us? What if we stopped judging people by what they have and how they look? What if we started to be the change we want to see in the world? What if we prayed and asked God to work on us from the inside out? What if we asked God to help us stop judging others? When we read this verse, we see this is what God is calling us to. He is calling us to no longer judge people according to the flesh. It goes on to say, “Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. When Jesus was alive, he was judged by this world’s standards. He was mocked for his claim to be a king because He didn’t look like a king. However, He is no longer judged in this way. We now look at Jesus for who He truly is.
The verse goes on to say, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come.” I love the way the message translation says, “Anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start, is created new. The old life is gone; a new life emerges!” How many of us have felt that at some time in our lives? How many of us have felt we just needed a fresh start? This is possible through Christ. We don’t have to be the same people we always were. We don’t have to do the same things we have always done. We can start again. We can recreate ourselves. We might think this is a one-time thing. We found Jesus and now we get to start fresh. I don’t think this is true. I think we can choose at any point to start new, to say goodbye to our old life, our old ways and say hello to the new life that is made possible through Christ. What things in your life need to go so you can have a closer life in Christ? What things from your past are you carrying around when God wants you to let them go and let your new life emerge? Is it greed, anger, past hurts, jealousy, or judgment? Whatever it is, you can let it go now. God doesn’t want you to keep holding on to it.
Next, the verse says, “All this comes from the God who settled the relationship between us and him, and then called us to settle our relationships with each other. God put the world square with himself through the Messiah, giving the world a fresh start by offering forgiveness of sins.” Adam and Eve corrupted the bond we had with God. Humanity had to live with the fact for a very long time and its consequences. However, God fixed this when He sent Jesus to die on the cross for our sins. God made it so we could be close to Him again, so the veil between us could be dropped. So why aren’t we closer to Him? According to this verse, God gave us a fresh start by offering forgiveness of sins. This is how we get that fresh start I was talking about earlier. When we bring our sins to God, He forgives them, and we are made clean again. The problem is we aren’t always bringing our sins to God. There may be many reasons for this; we may be scared He won’t forgive them, or we may be embarrassed or have shame around those sins. Shame is a huge weapon the enemy uses against us. If we feel ashamed of something, we probably aren’t going to want to talk about it, even to a priest, in some cases, especially to a priest. The enemy knows this keeps us stuck in our old life. The enemy knows if you won’t confess it, even just to God, then that sin still holds power over you. If you feel as though you could really use a fresh start right now, confess your sins and repent. God wants you to have a fresh new life. He wants to restore His relationship with you.
One of the last things this verse says is, “God has given us the task of telling everyone what he is doing. We’re Christ’s representatives. God uses us to persuade men and women to drop their differences and enter into God’s work of making things right between them.” We are told this so often. We are Christ’s representatives. What we do matters. People are watching us and judging Christ by what we do. We are a reflection of Jesus. What if we were more cognizant of this fact? What if we examined our own behaviors and asked ourselves, “Am I doing a good job reflecting Christ to the world?” The verse also says God uses us to persuade men and women to drop their differences and enter into God’s work of making things right between them. Are we doing this? Are our words and actions helping to bring others together or drive them apart? Do we get sucked into the gossip and join in instead of trying to stop the gossip? Do we get swept up in talking about all our differences instead of finding ways we are similar? Are we passing along the message of reconciliation, or are we condemning those that have sinned or are sinning?
I think one area that is hard for a lot of people is when they see their children doing things they know God does not condone. In this instance I think it is important to remember a fresh start is always available. Although we don’t need to condone these behaviors, I also don’t think pointing them out over and over again is helpful. We want to bring people together and not drive them away. If we could look at people through a Godly lens instead of a worldly one, I am sure we would see the world differently. God doesn’t love everything we do all the time, and yet He does love us all the time. Even when we are acting in ways God doesn’t like, He still showers us with love. We could learn a lot if we echoed this type of love. The only way to do this is to pray and ask God to teach us how.
I love the very last line of the message translations. It says, “We’re speaking for Christ himself now: Become friends with God; he’s already a friend with you.” How great is that? How awesome is it to know God is friends with us? Are we friends with Him? Think of your relationship with God. Is it like a friendship? Is it give and take? Do you listen as much as you talk? Is your relationship with God one in which you could sit and talk for hours with Him? Or, is it one where you feel He is the ever-judgmental Father and He is just looking for ways to punish you? This is not what God is all about. Does He believe in justice, absolutely and also, He believes in Mercy. God’s mercy is much bigger than His judgment. God wants to be your friend, will you let Him in? Will you accept his forgiveness of sins and get a fresh start in your life? Will you try to stop judging others for what they look like and what they have? Let’s join together to be Christ’s representative and share the Good News with all those who will listen.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to be your friend, show us how. Put on our hearts anything getting in the way of this, and then give us the strength and wisdom to change it. Lord, help us to no longer regard others according to the flesh. Please help us to accept your forgiveness of sins and start fresh again. Help us to be your representatives to bring people together instead of encouraging this divisiveness. We love you, Lord, you are so amazing! You are the Messiah, You are the fountain of life, you are the Holy One of Israel. We are so grateful for all you do, and we ask all of this in Jesus’ holy name and according to your will, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in July 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, I call you all by name. I know each one of you. You are to move with confidence when times are hard. Always believe that I am there for you.”
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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I Am Known (Identity Series)
Psalm 139:1-4 "O Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away. You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, you know it completely.”
I read a post on Facebook yesterday that pointed me to Psalm 139. It was about different verse in the psalm, but when I read the whole thing I realized it was a really good one. They all probably are great. I have heard if you are going to start reading the Bible for the first time you should start with the Gospels, or with the Psalms. That must mean they are pretty good. These verses stood out to me in particular because they talk about how well God knows us. Being Known is one of the six stages of Attachment developed by psychologist Gordon Neufeld. His model presents six stages of attachment that create the foundations for virtually every relationship your children will ever have. Since we are God’s children, This is important to us as well. I will list the six stages and then will focus on Being Known. The stages are Proximity, Sameness, Belonging or Loyalty, Significance, Love & Being Known.
Reading through those I think this verse may touch on more than one of them. However, let’s begin with Being Known and go from there. Every single one of us longs to be known. This is why we get upset when our loved ones get us a gift we don’t like. It is not necessarily the gift that upsets us, it is the fact that they didn’t know us well enough to know we wouldn’t like it. God isn’t like that. God is omniscient, which means he has infinite awareness, understanding, and insight. Another definition is that He possesses universal or complete knowledge. God knows everything about you. He can read your thoughts, he knows your actions and He also knows your heart behind your actions. God knows why you did all the things you did.
This can be scary for some people because they feel they don’t want God to know everything about them. They feel they are not worthy of being known. Some people might worry that God knows all they have done because they have done some things they are not proud of. This is all of us actually. I am sure there is not a single person who has gone through their whole life without doing some things they are not proud of. We all say the wrong thing sometimes. We all do the wrong thing sometimes. We all hurt people intentionally or unintentionally. The thing to remember is that God is not surprised by our behavior. He has searched us and He knows us. This means He knows all of us. He doesn’t just look at the things we did that we wish we hadn’t done. He looks at everything we have done. He knows our motives behind all we have done. He looks straight into our heart.
This is a good thing because He sees what we can’t see. He knows that when we acted out and yelled that we hated our parents, we didn’t really hate them. He knows that when we yelled at our spouse or our friend it was really because we were hurting inside, or because we had an awful day at work and needed a safe space to let off steam. He knows that when we yelled at our children when we caught them doing drugs or something else dangerous it was because we were really scared. He knows that when we were unkind to the person in line it was because of all the stress and pressure at work. God Knows Everything! He gets it. He understands that our actions aren’t who we are. He knows that, but do we know that? Do we give ourselves the grace of examining our behavior after the fact? Do we allow ourselves forgiveness when we factor in our motives? I am not saying the things I listed above are good reasons to do those things. I don’t think we should take our frustrations out on our spouse, friends, or kids. I am not excusing the behaviors, I am explaining them though. If your friend was super stressed at work and then you called and asked a question and they yelled at you, would you be angry with them? Would you want to stop being friends with that person? Would you realize that was out of character and try to find out what was wrong with your friend? We tend to have so much grace for other people and yet not very much for ourselves. I would love it if we could change that. I would love it if we could all start to see ourselves a little more through the Lord’s eyes.
The next line says, “You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, you know it completely.” God knows all your ways. He knows that you are grumpy before coffee in the morning. He knows you don’t like change. He knows you don’t like to stay up late. He knows you are irritable if you get hungry. He also knows you are a great mom, dad, friend. He knows you are a great employee, He knows you are a great spouse or partner. He knows the good, the bad and the ugly and you know what, He still loves you. He loves you not despite all of it, but because of all of it.
The verse says He knows our words even before we say them. I wish sometimes He would guard my mouth and prevent me from saying some of them. How about you? Have you ever wished you hadn’t say something? Have you ever just blurted something out that felt right in the moment and yet you instantly regretted it? I know I have. God knows our thoughts and He knows our words. Again, he knows the thoughts and feelings behind our words. He knows the feelings that we might not even know. Sometimes we may feel angry and yet we are just worried or anxious. God knows this. God knows our heart, even when we don’t.
We are known and loved by God. We are accepted and loved by God. God knows us better than anyone we have ever known and He loves us. I need everyone single one of you to hear that on an individual level today. You are known by God. God knows your inner most thoughts and desires. God knows the why behind your actions. God sees through all the BS that we put up to protect ourselves and He sees you, the real you. God loves you! He loves you right this very second, right as you are. He isn’t waiting for you to become something else, He isn’t waiting until to you do this or that, He isn’t waiting for you to be perfect. He knows you and loves you just as you are. He loves all you imperfections, He loves all the ways you spread His love and His light. Yes you do, you spread His love and His light just by being you! God loves you, all of you!!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today! Lord, I ask you to open everyone’s hearts and minds so they can really hear this message today. Help each and every listener hear how much you know them and how much you love them. Help them to feel it down to their core Lord. We ask you to guard our thoughts and our words. We pray that our thoughts conform to your thoughts. Lord you are so amazing. You know everything about us and you still love us. Help us to do the same. Help us to know ourselves and still love ourselves. Soften our hearts o Lord! We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with you will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus! Remember tomorrow is week #3 of the Identity Series in Mentoring. I hope you join me on zoom. It’s not too late, Just head over to my website, walkboldlywithjesus.com or click on the link below. I look forward to seeing some of you tomorrow night on zoom and the rest of you you I look forward to meeting you here again again tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in July 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “You must trust me, and allow me to do my work in you and through you. My love is for everyone. You will be sanctified as you obey me.”
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I am Guided (Identity Series)
Isaiah 30:21 “And your ears shall hear a word behind you: “This is the way; walk in it,” when you would turn to the right or the left.”
This is a great verse because it explains that we are guided throughout our lives. However, it can also be misleading. Unfortunately, we can’t really take this verse literally. We do not have someone whispering into our ears each step of the way. Although that would be pretty cool. Imagine if you didn’t have to wonder if you were taking the right steps. Imagine if you didn’t have to worry about making the wrong decision because you had the Lord whispering in your ear telling you whether you were to turn left or right.
Although we don’t have someone behind us whispering in our ear at each turn, the Lord will lead us in the right direction if we take the time to ask Him and then listen to what He has to say. This can be tricky because many times, we will be good about asking God what we should do but then not take the time to listen to His answer. Other times, we are so excited about one of the choices that we jump in and choose that one without even pausing to ask God what He thinks. When we do either of these things, we are not giving the Lord a chance to guide us into the life He has planned for us.
Hearing the word of God is something we can all do. We just have to know how to do it. In my Encounter Ministries class last night they went over the various ways that you might “hear” God’s word. There are four ways:
See it: Sometimes people see visions, and that is how they get their answers. Sometimes, you might see a word above someone's head. You might see something that is not actually there in the natural world. I know when learning inner healing our teachers told us sometimes God may ask us to do a prophetic act. You might be praying over someone for inner healing, and while praying, you see that they have a spear through their heart. You might feel as though God is asking you to take it out. You are likely the only person who sees this spear. That doesn’t make it any less real. When you are looking for an answer from the Lord, ask Him the question and then close your eyes and see if He wants to reveal anything to you through your sight.
Hear it: Usually, when we hear God, it is not God’s voice. My teacher last night said she had heard the voice of God once, so that is pretty cool. However, I think it is rare that you hear the actual voice of God. In my experience, when I hear the voice of God, He sounds just like my voice. It is that “still small voice” in your head or in your heart that helps you know what you should do. I am sure you have heard this voice before. However, you might not have known that it was God talking to you. When you are seeking answers from the Lord, ask your questions and then sit quietly and listen to see what He has to say. If you ask, He will answer.
Feel it: Sometimes, the Lord speaks to us with our feelings. There is a woman in our prayer group who feels things from the Lord very frequently. She will get a word of prophecy and then will go on to say that she is getting this strong feeling from the Lord that He is sad and wants us to turn to Him more or that He has this deep longing. Last night, at the Encounter Summer Intensive, we were doing a guided meditation using the parable of the prodigal son, and she said she could just feel this overwhelming love that the Father has for us. She said she had never felt a love like this before. It was such a strong feeling. When you are looking for answers from the Lord, they may come in the form of a feeling, so pay attention to how you are feeling when asking the Lord what He thinks.
Think it: This is when a thought just pops into your head. Sometimes, it can be when you are sitting trying to listen to the Lord, and other times, it can just be out of the blue. Have you ever been going about your day, and all of a sudden, you get this thought to reach out to an old friend? Yep, me too! This is the Lord prompting you. A lot of times, we ignore these thoughts. However, when we obey and reach out to the person we find out that was exactly what they needed. I had been thinking about reaching out to someone I had met on retreat for several months and I just never did. I am not sure why I didn’t, but eventually, she reached out to me, and she was having a rough time. I bet she would have really appreciated it if I had reached out when the Lord first told me to. Last night, this woman was walking out the door to come to the summer intensive, and she got the thought to bring this specific prayer card with her, so she threw it in her purse. The prayer card was a prayer about entrusting your children to God and not worrying if they will come back to the church. Then, at the Summer Intensive, one of the ladies shared that she was worried about her kids never coming back to the church, so the woman gave her this prayer card. God has a plan, and sometimes, He will put thoughts in our heads to help Him with that plan.
The teacher who was talking about these four ways to hear God’s voice last night was saying that she was sitting in church one day, and the Lord brought a thought out of nowhere about a funeral she was at where there was a teen suicide. She did not understand why she would have this random thought in the middle of mass. Then God revealed to her that the teenage boy behind her was contemplating suicide. Sometimes, you never know the impact of what you did for someone else. Sometimes, you might get a prompting to call someone, and you do. You could have a very nice conversation and yet you don’t feel like there was any great purpose in the call. However, we don’t know the effects it might have had. There was a purpose for God putting that thought in your head, that I am sure of!
I hope that you find these four ways of hearing the Lord’s voice helpful. If we want to grow in our ability to hear the Lord’s voice, we need to practice, just like anything else in life. If you want to be better at a sport, you need to play that sport. If you want to be better at cooking, you need to cook. If you want to become better at hearing the Lord’s voice, you need to sit down and listen often. I promise you the Lord wants to talk to you. God didn’t just pick a few of His children to talk to. He wants to talk to all of His children. He wants to sit down with you as you drink your morning coffee or tea and have a chat with you. A real back-and-forth chat. Your heavenly Father loves you, and He longs to communicate with you. Why not give it a try? What do you have to lose?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to hear you communicating with us. No matter the method, Lord, we just want to have a relationship with you. We want you to whisper in our ear and lead us down the correct path. Tell us whether we should turn right or turn left, Lord. Help us to make time for you, to listen to you. We want to hear your Word, Lord; please help us. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in July 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, my love follows you always to wherever you go. If you fall into darkness, I am there with you. If you rejoice with me, I delight with you. Nothing can break our union. For my love, the love of your good, good God is the bond.”
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I Am Strong (Identity Series)
Philippians 4:13 “ I can do all things through him who strengthens me.”
This is truly one of my all-time favorite verses. I keep a list of all the verses I used as the central point of each episode as there are 31,102 verses in the Bible and I want to make sure that I am not always speaking about the same few that we all already know. I try not to repeat a verse I have used already as the main verse of the episode. However, sometimes if I learn something new about a verse or something fascinating I will repeat a verse. I am sure I have used this verse several times before within the episode, so I was surprised to see I hadn’t used it as a main verse. We will finish the “I Am What God Says I Am” series this week. If you haven’t listened in a while we have already done: I am protected, I am forgiven, I am courageous, and I am His. This week we will cover I am strong, I am guided, I am healed, and I am whole.
I love this verse because I think if we all embraced it, life would get easier. If we all accepted this, and let it settle into our hearts, we wouldn’t struggle so much. It is also a great reminder that we can do anything if we are doing it with the strength we get from Christ. This verse came from Paul in a letter to the Philippians. Paul has an amazing story. He has lots of amazing stories. The way He became a believer in Jesus was amazing. God wanted Him and one encounter with Jesus changed his whole life. Paul did not have an easy life, especially after He started traveling around and preaching about Jesus.
Sometimes we can think we are supposed to have an easy life. We believe in God and God will protect us so we get to just sit back and relax on easy street. That is not what God promised us. God promised He would be with us. He promised He would send an advocate to guide us, but He never promised our life would be easy. Actually, He said the opposite. In Matthew 16:24, “Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” He is calling us to take up our own cross. Our crosses will look very different from Jesus’ cross, thank goodness. Your cross will look different from my cross. Just because our crosses look different, doesn’t mean we don’t have crosses.
Paul was the Pope at one point. We might think if He is that close to the Lord, then his life was easy. Sometimes, oftentimes, the closer we get to the Lord the harder our life seems. The enemy hates when we get close to the Lord, so he will try to block you every chance he gets. The devil will make your life a living hell, and then try to convince you it is God’s fault, or if God loved you, why would He let this stuff happen to you? The enemy can be really convincing too. He can sound like He knows what he is talking about because He might through some scripture in there, or he will include just enough truth in his lies so that they seem credible. This is a trick, don’t fall for it. God is not the reason you are suffering and yet He can be the reason you make it through all that suffering.
Paul says right before the verse above in Philippians 4:10-13, “I rejoiced greatly in the Lord that at last, you renewed your concern for me. Indeed, you were concerned, but you had no opportunity to show it. I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well-fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength.”
The word that jumps out to me first is the word content. Many of us struggle to be content. If we are struggling financially, we wish we had more money. If we are successful then we still strive for more, or we feel lonely at the top. We live in a society that wants more and more. I rarely talk with someone who is content with where they are in life. Paul said he learned to be content in whatever the circumstances. You might think this was easy for Paul because He was the Pope. It was not, here are a few things Paul went through in his lifetime since turning his life over to God. Here is a list from 2 Corinthians 11:23-28 about all that Paul went through:
“Are they ministers of Christ? (I am talking like an insane person.) I am still more, with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, far worse beatings, and numerous brushes with death. Five times at the hands of the Jews I received forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, I passed a night and a day on the deep; on frequent journeys, in dangers from rivers, dangers from robbers, dangers from my own race, dangers from Gentiles, dangers in the city, dangers in the wilderness, dangers at sea, dangers among false brothers; in toil and hardship, through many sleepless nights, through hunger and thirst, through frequent fastings, through cold and exposure. And apart from these things, there is the daily pressure upon me of my anxiety for all the churches.”
Can you imagine? I can’t imagine even going through a fraction of what Paul went through, and yet I have walked through some very difficult times and I am sure you have too. I was not showing you all Paul went through so you could look at your life and compare it. Comparison is the thief of joy. I don’t believe we should look at our troubles and compare them to others because then we start to feel guilty for being upset about our problems when they seem so small compared to others. You still have a right to be upset about your circumstances, even if someone else’s circumstances are worse.
The thing to remember about Paul is that he was able to endure so much because he had the strength of Jesus, and so do you! We all have the Spirit of Jesus living inside of us. That was a gift the Father gave us when Jesus went to join Him in Heaven. The verse today says, “ I can do all things through him who strengthens me.” It says, all things. It doesn’t just mean the easy stuff. I know you feel like what you are dealing with is too much. I know you feel like you are alone and no one is there fighting with you. I know you might not feel the strength of Jesus and yet He is right there with you. When I look back I can see how the strength of Jesus got me through the hard times.
When things were really bad in our house I never gave up hope. I didn’t wake up each day feeling defeated or depressed, well, not on most days anyway. I woke up feeling ready to try a new strategy. Just the fact that I got out of bed was proof of Jesus’ strength. There were long periods, years actually, where it was crisis after crisis in my house. I would put out one fire and another one would be right there waiting to spring up. It was a lot and I had times when I wanted to throw in the towel. I definitely wondered what would happen if I ran away from it all. And yet, I made it through. I not only made it through but I changed the dynamics in our family. It was super hard work and work I know I couldn’t have done on my own.
You have the strength of Jesus inside of you and you are stronger than you think. You can do this thing you are going through right now! You can beat cancer, you can raise your kids to be great adults, you can fix your marriage, you can help your loved one recover from injury/illness, and you can make it through this financial crisis. Whatever it is, you can make it through because you can do all things through Christ who strengthens you. You are strong. There is a Winnie the Pooh quote that I think we should all embrace as truth, "You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.” You are stronger than you seem. You can do this hard thing, even when it feels like you can’t! You’ve got this, you have the power and strength of Jesus inside of you. You can do all things with Him!
Dear Heavenly Father, thank you so much for every person listening today. I ask you to bless each of them. Lord, help us to feel your strength. Help us to see the times in our life when we have relied on the strength of Jesus to get us through. Show us the times when you were there lifting us and we didn’t know it. Help us to turn to you for strength Lord. Help us not to rely on our own strength but to look to you and surrender our problems to you Lord. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I am so grateful to know that I am not on this journey alone. If you feel you are alone on this journey, I invite you to join the Walk Boldly With Jesus Facebook group, where you can be surrounded by other people who also love Jesus! If you want more than that, you can join mentoring as well. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in July 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My strength is sufficient for you. No matter what trial or tribulation you are walking through. I am with you. I will not abandon you. Remain in my love.”
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I Am His (Identity Series)
Isaiah 43:1-2 “But now, this is what the Lord says—he who created you, Jacob, he who formed you, Israel: “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.”
When I was looking at the sheet of verses titled “I Am Who God Says I Am,” I saw that it said Isaiah 43:1 for today, which makes sense. I am His is what God is saying when He Says, “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name, you are mine.” We are the Lord’s. There are several places in the Bible where it talks about how we are His people, He formed us in our mother’s womb, He knew us before we existed, and so on. That might even make a great Bible study, just looking at all the places where God says that we are His. However, when I was reading that verse this morning I decided to read the verses that come after this verse as well.
What I realized is that the very next verse tells us not to fear, which I found interesting since that is what we talked about yesterday. I didn’t want to talk about verse 1 without also talking about verse 2 because I think they go hand and hand. I think verse 2 explains what verse 1 means for us. In verse one, God is telling us that we are His. He is saying that he has redeemed us and summoned us by name and that we are His. Let’s stay there for a moment. First, God says that He has redeemed us. Redeemed in the Bible means having been saved or delivered from sin or its consequences. I wonder if we understand what that means. I wonder if we are even capable of grasping the vastness of that statement. God has redeemed us. This means that the mistake that you made, the one that you keep beating yourself up for, God has already redeemed it. This means that those sins that you have committed, you have been delivered from them. All those negative things the enemy keeps whispering in our ears about ourselves, the Lord has already redeemed them; he has redeemed us, all of us. He has delivered us from ourselves, from our sinful nature.
The next part says He summoned us by name, in other words, He called us. Do you know what this means? It means that God knows our name. He knows your name, and He knows my name. He is calling us, not as a group, not as a whole, He is calling each one of us, by name, to Him. Almost every week in Prayer Group, we get at least one word of prophecy that says, “Come closer my children, again I say, come closer my children.” God is calling us to be close to Him. He is calling us to sit with Him daily and have a conversation, pray with Him, and tell Him what is going on in our lives. He is calling us to Him because He wishes to have a relationship with us.
Earlier I said I think verse 2 explains what verse 1 means to us. What I meant by this is that verse 2 tells us all the ways God will protect us because we are His. He gives us an idea of the lengths He will go to so that He can protect His children. That is what you are, you are a child of God. The second verse starts by saying, “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you.” This tells us that God is with us always. Even when we are passing through waters, He will be there. He will not only be there but He will protect us from these waters. He will make sure they do not sweep over us.
I think this is important to remember because how many times in life have you felt like you were treading water? How many times have you felt like you were going to drown? This verse is meant to reassure us. It is telling us no matter how high those waters get, we won’t drown. We belong to God and He is here protecting us always. We heard all those words of prophecy yesterday telling us not to fear anything because God is right there with us. Now, today, we hear the same thing. I get the feeling some of us are fearful about something now. I am not sure what you are going through or what you might be afraid of, and yet I know that God is trying to reassure you that whatever it is, He is right there with you and that you don’t ever have to be afraid because He will never leave your side.
The last sentence in this verse is an even more dramatic statement of God’s love for us, His people. The verse ends with, “When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.” This is a pretty vivid picture and yet I think we can all think of a time in our lives when we felt like we were walking through fire. God is reassuring us that although we may feel like we are in a fire, we may feel the heat of the flames all around us, He will not let the flames set us ablaze. I am sure we hear this, and we take it figuratively. We think about the things going on in our lives and how it feels like we are walking through fire. However, I want you to know that God saved three of His children from a literal fire. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were three of God’s children. They loved God, and they wanted to serve Him and only Him. Then King Nebuchadnezzar created a statue made of gold and said everyone needed to bow before it. These three young men refused as they said they would only bow to the one true king, our Lord God. King Nebuchadnezzar ordered these three young me to be thrown in the fiery furnace. God saved these men from being touched by the fire.
When King Nebuchadnezzar looked through the window to make sure they had died, he saw four people in the furnace instead of three. God had sent one of His angels into the fiery furnace to protect them. There is one line in the story of these three young men that I just love. This story can be found in Daniel 3. My favorite line, though, is found in verses 14-18, " King Nebuchadnezzar questioned them: “Is it true, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, that you will not serve my god, or worship the golden statue that I set up? Now, if you are ready to fall down and worship the statue I made, whenever you hear the sound of the horn, pipe, zither, dulcimer, harp, double-flute, and all the other musical instruments, then all will be well; if not, you shall be instantly cast into the white-hot furnace; and who is the God who can deliver you out of my hands?” Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego answered King Nebuchadnezzar, “There is no need for us to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If our God, whom we serve, can save us from the white-hot furnace and from your hands, O king, may he save us! But even if he will not, you should know, O king, that we will not serve your god or worship the golden statue which you set up.”
Wow, can you imagine saying that? Can you imagine the faith they must have had? They knew God could save them from the flames of that furnace, and yet even if God didn’t save them, they would still be faithful to Him. I wonder if we can say the same. I wonder if we would be willing to stake our lives on our faith in God. God is telling us with this story, as well as with the verses today, that He will be there for us, no matter what. He will protect us from drowning in the waters in our lives and He will protect us from burning in the fires in our life. We belong to God, and He will protect us from all that we encounter. He is there with us each step of the way, even in those really hard times. God wants us to come closer to Him and have a relationship with Him. He wants us to share with Him all that is going on in our lives so He can help us with it all. God loves you, and You are His!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we thank you for protecting us from the water and the fire in our lives. Thank you for calling us by name, thank you for redeeming us. We love you, Lord. Help us to draw closer to you. Help us to learn how to have a relationship with you. Help us not to fear anything because we have you in our lives protecting us. We are so grateful for you and all the ways that you protect us. You are so powerful, and we are so grateful we are Yours. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ mighty name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk body with Jesus. Tonight is mentoring if you have night signed up yet, I encourage you to check it out and sign up today. If you want to see what it is all about before joining, send me an email, and I will send you the link. If you would like to join mentoring but don’t have the $30 a month, send me an email, and I will send you the link. I hope you will consider joining us. I look forward to meeting you here again on tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed weekend!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in July 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My dear children, I love you. I will never stop loving you, no matter what you have done. My love is never-ending. My love is inexhaustible. Come and drink of the fountain of my love.”
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I Am Chosen (Identity Series)
John 15:16 “God has chosen you and has set you aside for a special purpose.”
God has chosen you, yes, you! Sometimes, it is hard to believe that statement. We can clearly see why God chose some people, but cannot see why he would choose us. We are broken, we’re not worthy, and we are not enough. We believe that the saints were extraordinary people, and so, of course, God chose them. We see movie stars, musicians and speakers and think that they have an incredible life because that is just how they were made. Something I am constantly hearing in the personal development world is that you should not compare your beginning to someone else’s ending. This means that you should not compare where you are at in your journey to someone else who is further along in his or her journey. If you look at the beginning of some of the saint’s lives I think you would be surprised where they started.
I have been watching a series on YouTube lately that is called “The Chosen.” It is a portrayal of Jesus’s life during his three years of ministry. You get to see the apostles in their lives before they were called to follow Jesus. It is amazing to me to see the apostles as regular people, people like you and I. I believe we tend to put famous people up on a pedestal. We think that we could never be like them. But the thing is, they were not always like they are now. They made a choice to say yes and to follow Jesus. Jesus is the one who transformed them into who they are now.
While watching the series, I saw Simon, who was a fisherman, argue with his wife, try to cheat his in-laws in a fight, and turn in fellow Jews who were fishing on Shabbat, and he was very behind on his taxes. He did not seem like the type of person that one would pick to be the leader of God’s Kingdom on earth. Jesus saw Simon and Andrew fishing and asked them to come and follow him. Matthew 4:19 “And he said to them, ‘Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” What I like best about watching this on screen is that you get to see how the apostles reacted. Both Andrew & Simon looked at each other and then followed Him. They did not think for more than a minute before they left all that they knew to follow this man they had just met. Later, they are retelling the story, and they admit that they have no idea what it even means to be fishers of men, yet they are all in. There are many different translations of this verse, but they all have the phrase “I will make you…” I think this is important to note because it reminds us that the apostles did not become changed men on their own. They made the choice to follow Jesus, and then, through him, they were changed.
I know some of you may be thinking that whatever the apostles or saints did before they became saints could not be as bad as some of the things you have done. I mean, they are holy people, so how bad could they have been? Whenever I think like this, I am reminded of Paul. There are 13 books in the New Testament that are attributed to Paul. Not to mention, he was one of the most important figures of the Apostolic Age. But do you know the story of Paul? I find it an amazing story of how God can choose anyone to do his work. Paul was originally named Saul. The story of his conversion is found in Acts 9:1-19. If you don’t know the story, you may want to read it. Saul was not nice to Jews who were calling on Jesus. He was actually on his way to Damascus to bring back in chains any men or women he found that might belong to Christ. On his journey, he was struck by a light and a voice asking him, “Why are you persecuting me?” Jesus told Saul what he must do. When Saul got up, he could not see, and for three days, he remained this way. Then, the Lord sent Ananias to go and restore Saul’s sight. “So Ananias went and entered the house; laying his hands on him, he said, ‘Saul, my brother, the Lord has sent me, Jesus who appeared to you on the way by which you came, that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.’ Immediately, things like scales fell from his eyes, and he regained his sight. He got up and was baptized, and when he had eaten, he recovered his strength.” Saul was not looking for Jesus. Actually, he was actively persecuting him and everyone that believed in him. If God can take Saul and make him into a man who is known worldwide as one of the greatest Christian missionaries, then just think what he can do with you.
Every single one of us has a past, and there is not a single thing you may have done or had done to you in your past that is too great for God to overcome. He chooses you! He gave you the same invitation that he gave to Andrew & Simon. Come and follow me. All you have to say is, “Yes, I will follow you,” and then hold on, and God will take you on an amazing ride.
Dear heavenly Father, I ask that you bless everyone listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask that you help us to say yes to following you. We ask that you help us to see ourselves through your eyes. Lord, sometimes it is easy for us to see the good in others and for us to believe that others are good enough to follow you or to be used as your instrument. However, it is so much more difficult to see that in ourselves. Lord, fill us with love for ourselves. Help us to say yes to you even when we don't understand what we're saying yes to. Lord, you are amazing, and we trust that if you are choosing us, you have a reason. Give us the courage to say yes and to follow you. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of that in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus! I want to remind you that it is not too late to join our Identity series in mentoring. We will have week #2 for the series tomorrow night. I hope you will join us. It is at 8 PM EST on Zoom. There is a link below with details. I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I. Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in July 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “As we give our hearts to the Lord, I just get a sense he's healing them.”
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I Am Healed (Identity Series)
Isaiah 53:5 “But he was pierced for our sins, crushed for our iniquity. He bore the punishment that makes us whole; by his wounds, we were healed.”
I love talking about the Lord’s healing. I love talking about it because it is so amazing and also because I am not sure people believe He is still healing today. I was at the Encounter Ministries Boston Campus’ summer intensive Tuesday night. That night, the topic was the Prophetic Word. Wednesday night was going to be all about physical healing. I was talking with a friend from the prayer group at this event and her neck was really bothering her. She mentioned she would have to have the girls from the prayer group pray over her the next night at the healing service. I told her we didn’t have to wait until tomorrow, let's do it now. Just then, one of our teachers came up to us, so she joined in as well. We prayed a few times with little change. Then my teacher asked my friend if she believed Jesus could heal her right now. My friend said absolutely! My teacher said, “Pain be gone now!” We were praying quietly for a minute and my friend said, “Wait a minute,” and she tried to move her neck all around in circles and side to side. She said the pain was all gone! Praise God.
God is still healing people today. He is miraculously healing people quickly and He is also miraculously healing people over time. For instance, someone Tony works with had a stroke and was not expected to recover. Now, 2-3 months later, he is leaving rehab and going home. Is he 100% healed yet? No, but I truly believe he will get there. Not every healing God does is instantaneous and also He does not heal everyone that we ask Him to heal. I am not sure why this is. When I ask Him He always tells me, “His ways are higher than my ways, and His thoughts higher than my thoughts.” We aren’t meant to understand everything He does in this world.
Aside from physical healing, what I feel the Lord wants me to remind you of today is that he heals us from our sins and our brokenness. Because of original sin, we had a brokenness about us. We live in a very broken world, and yet we don’t have to be broken. God died for our sins so that we could be healed. God wants us to live in that light. He wants us to realize our identity in Christ and not continue to live with this idea that we are broken. Yes, the world is a broken place. There are many broken people, but we don't have to be one of those broken people. We know Christ, and we can be in a relationship with Him. The verse above is very graphic. “But he was pierced for our sins, crushed for our iniquity. He bore the punishment that makes us whole; by his wounds, we were healed.” He was pierced for our sins. Take a minute and think about that. Picture the Roman soldiers hammering nails into his hands. Think about how much that must have hurt. Then it says He was crushed for our iniquity. Take a moment to think about the scourging. Think about how much that must have hurt. How much He must have wanted to scream out in pain. I wonder if he wanted to say, “But it wasn’t me, I didn’t do it?” He was not being scourged because of anything He did. He took on our sins and our broken relationship with the Father and died on that cross so we could be free.
What just came to my mind was that there is no way to repay Jesus for what He did for us. There is no way to repay the debt that He paid for our sins, and He doesn’t want us to. Jesus has forgiven that debt to Him. He saved us, knowing we would still sin. He saved us, knowing we would turn away probably 100 times before we got it right. I don’t think this bothers Him as much as it does when we don’t accept His forgiveness. When we don’t live in the freedom that He sacrificed to gain for us. Jesus died so you could be healed. You, yes, You!
You, who are going through an abusive relationship right now. You, who are living with or dealing with an addict right now, You who are getting a divorce, You who can’t have children, You who are struggling to parent the children you do have. Jesus died for each one of us, and He wants us to live in that freedom. He is there to help us through our circumstances. He is there to lift us up when we need Him too. All we need to do is to lean into Him.
He died to heal us, but we are the ones that need to accept that healing. It’s kinda like if we had an illness and there was a medicine that could cure our illness, and yet we refused to take the medicine. The medicine is sitting right there on the counter, right next to the water, and yet we refuse to take it because we don’t believe it will help. We believe that our illness is worse than the doctor said it was. We know that medicine can’t possibly help us because our case is too severe. Does that sound silly to you? Are you rolling your eyes and wondering why I think I know more than the doctor does?
The same is true for us and our forgiveness of sins. Jesus died so our sins could be forgiven, so we could be healed physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Jesus was repairing the relationship with our heavenly Father that original sin had broken. He died for you. Yes, he died for all of us, but He also died for each of us individually. If you were the only person on Earth, He still would have gone through all of that for you. Jesus knows what we have done. He knows what we will do. He did not die on the cross for some of our sins. He died on the cross for all of our sins. There is nothing you can do that He won’t forgive. There is nothing that has happened to you that He can’t heal.
When we do something and then don’t accept forgiveness for it, we are offending the Lord. We are telling Him that His sacrifice was not enough. Is this what you believe? Do you believe that Jesus dying on the cross was not a big enough sacrifice to cover whatever it was that you did or that was done to you? It does not make you greedy to accept God’s sacrifice. It does not make you greedy to accept the forgiveness that God offers. His forgiveness is freely given. You don’t have to do anything to deserve it or to earn it. It is already yours through your baptism. He had you and your sins, your troubles in mind when He was on that cross. Accept the healing. Accept the forgiveness of sins.
One thing that has helped me accept God’s Word into my heart is to personalize it to me. I will put my name in or switch words from “our” to “my”. Sometimes, we believe scripture is true. We just don’t think it applies to us for some reason or another. Here is how I might read this scripture if I was struggling to believe it was for me personally. “But he was pierced for my sins, crushed for my iniquity. He bore the punishment that makes me whole; by his wounds, I, Catherine, was healed.” If you struggle to believe, you are healed. If you struggle to believe all your sins, yes, even that one can be forgiven. If you struggle to believe Jesus died for you personally and individually, I ask you to write this scripture down on a sticky note and place it on your computer, your bathroom mirror, your shower, or wherever you will see it daily. Make it personal and put it in your own name. Even just changing the “our” to “my” will really change the feel of it. “But he was pierced for my sins, crushed for my iniquity. He bore the punishment that makes me whole, by his wounds I, Catherine, was healed.” You can add your name, or just take the name out. Whichever feels best for you. Jesus loves you, He died for you, don’t lessen that sacrifice by refusing to accept the healing that comes from it. You are healed, all you need to do is live into that healing!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you and we accept your forgiveness. We accept your healing. Please help us. Lord, we ask that you come into our hearts and minds and clear any blocks we might have in accepting your healing and forgiveness. Lord, we give you permission to work on our hearts please soften them. We love you Lord, we are so grateful you sent your son to heal us and we are sorry if we haven’t been accepting that healing. Lord we can do nothing without you and yet all things with you. Please help us. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus! I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in July 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My beloved, I am yours and you are mine. Come away with me so I can speak to your heart. Come away with me into that intimate place where I can speak to your heart alone. Come with me, my beloved. I want to fill you with my joy, my love, and my mercy.”
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I Am Courageous (Identity Series)
Joshua 1:9 “I command you: be strong and steadfast! Do not fear nor be dismayed, for the Lord, your God, is with you wherever you go.”
Today is another verse that tells us who God created us to be. God created us to be strong and steadfast. Do you know what steadfast means? Steadfast means resolutely firm and unwavering. This verse is telling us that we can be courageous because God is with us wherever we go. God is telling us in this verse that we don’t have to fear anything and we don’t have to be dismayed. God tells us not to fear quite often in the Bible. The phrase “fear not” is in the Bible 365 times. That is one time for each day of the year. I think this is something that God wants us to get and yet we still all struggle with it.
I can’t think of a single person who is not afraid of something. I think if we took the bravest person we know we would still discover they were afraid of something. There are people who are afraid of everything, there are people who are afraid of almost nothing and then there are those in between. Even if someone says they aren’t afraid of anything I bet if you asked them if they were afraid something might happen to their children, their pets, or any of their loved ones, I bet most would say yes. If you asked them if they were afraid of not being able to provide for their family I bet most would say yes. We are all afraid of something. I think this is why the Lord has said “fear not” so many times in the Bible.
He is still saying it to His people today. He is saying it to you and me. We are constantly getting words of prophecy at prayer group that tell us not to be afraid and that God is with us. Here are several words that we have received, and these all came within the same month. I would love for you to listen to these words as if your heavenly Father was saying them to you personally. Also, if any of them stand out to you or you feel like they are speaking to you pause the episode and write them down. I pray that God speaks to each one of you through these words. I pray that He highlights at least one of these for each individual person listening. All of these either speak to us not being afraid or they explain how and why we know God is with us.
I just got the feeling that we don't need to fear because He is the one that is in charge and He will make things happen in whatever way that He wants. He keeps telling us we're not God He is God. He is saying He can use whoever He wants. Whoever is willing to be used he can use.
You are the anointing I send to the world my children. Smile that I send you. I send each of you. Be not afraid I am with you. My spirit will speak through you the words that I wish you to say. Just be the anointing I wish you to be. All can be. When I say you can, don't tell me you can't. Praise me, praise me, praise me, my children. Smile that today I send you.
I watch over you, my children. All of you are my children. I break the sword of the enemy who would come against you. You have nothing to fear for I am there for each and every one of you in each and every trial. I will never forsake my children or leave my children. I will defend you in battle. I have sent you the power of the Spirit and He will give you all that you need to do what you have been called to do.
My children take my hand. Realize that I am with you. Go into the world without fear. I am holding onto your hand. There is no need to fear I am your God. I will protect you, I will defend you. Smile that you are mine. Smile my children. I am with you till the end of time. Come closer my children, come closer so that I can reveal my mysteries to you so you in turn can share them with the world. I am your Lord, I am your God and I am all-powerful. I hold onto your hand. Move forward, move forward with joy for you are mine.
My children you are like little sheep. You wander off for that next patch of juicy grass and I call you back. You wander over the top of the hill and you get caught in the briars and I find you. I know where your traps are. I will always search for you. I will always find you and I will always bring you back. But I ask you frequently, many times, to look over your shoulder and check on me to make sure you are near me. Often during the day look at me, listen for me, watch me. Stay near me and you will grow strong and healthy and you'll be my cherished one and you will do my will.
This verse came to mind as we are praying and all I could see is the real fullness of God's glory. He doesn't give us dim glory, He gives us blazing glory. He doesn't give us a weak Spirit, He gives us a courageous Spirit. He doesn't give us a dim light, He gives us a blazing light to bring to this world that God is so great and so full and he shares ALL of his fullness with us. With Him there's plenteous redemption so let's not just expect little let's expect a lot, more than our minds can possibly comprehend because He is big.
And my children, my darlings you think you are what your roles in life have made you be. You think you are what people have called you and told you you were. But please come to me in prayer and silence and listen to what I call you. I call you beloved, cherished, friend, child. You are my sheep, you are precious. You are my warriors, you are my disciples, you are my voice in the world right now, you are my hands, you are my feet. You have such a noble call and you don't realize it. You have so much power at your disposal and you don't use it. Don't be stuck in what the world has told you but be liberated in what I tell you.
Wow, those were all-powerful. What I feel the Holy Spirit telling me right now is to leave you with those so you can read through them or re-listen to them again. There is so much in there and yet I feel the Holy Spirit is saying that we don’t have to focus, understand or read through all of it. Listen again and see what stands out to you. There is plenty in there that speaks to the fact God made us courageous. Which word speaks to you the most? Which one did you really need to hear today? I would love it if you would reach out to me through an email at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or through social media and let me know which of the words from our heavenly Father touched you the most today. You are courageous because you have the Lord God almighty right there by your side every step of the way!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Wow, Lord, you are amazing. After all these years, I still cannot get over the fact that you want to talk to your children. When I think about all the ways we turn away from you and all the terrible ways we treat you, I would think you would want to ignore us. You not only take care of us and protect us, but you also want to have a relationship with us. Those were some pretty powerful words you gave to the prayer group and that you gave to me to share with everyone. I pray everyone listening truly hears Your words and I pray they find a home in their hearts. I pray they don’t just hear them with their ears, I pray they hear them with their heart, mind, and soul. I pray there is something for everyone in those words above. I pray people listen and re-listen to them until they become a part of them. I pray they copy them down from the show notes and re-read them anytime they feel they need to be courageous or they need the reminder that they are not alone and you are right there with them.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. We had our first session of the Identity Series in mentoring on Tuesday, and it was great. If you would like to join us for week two, there is a link for mentoring below. You can always check out my website, too, at walkboldlywithjesus.com. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in July 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I will carry you in your trials, and I will party with you in your celebrations. Lean on me. I am constant.”
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Today’s witnesses are from Matthew West’s website called popwe.org. If you don’t know who Matthew West is, he is a singer, songwriter, and storyteller. This website is for the non-profit that he has with his father, a pastor. Matthew and his father encourage people to share their stories. They have various categories of stories. Today, I chose two testimonies from the God Stories Category. Often, we can hear our own story in someone else’s story. When we listen to others tell their story, it helps us see that we are not alone. When we hear how God worked in their situation, it gives us hope that He will work in ours, too! I pray when you hear these testimonies, you get the faith and hope to believe that miracles can happen in your situation, also. I pray you know that God is there with you, and if you invite Him into your situation, He can help. I hope you enjoy these testimonies.
Brande: I have been dealing with back problems for a while and couldn’t figure out what was going on. I was overweight so I thought that maybe that was the problem. But the more weight I lost the worse my pain became.
In April of this year, I had an MRI done and found out I have Degenerative Disc Disease, Arthritis and Spinal Stenosis. I also have a tear in one of my discs and my L5 is pushing on my S1.
So, in July I had an injection, and it didn’t work. I went back to the doctor in August, and he had set up another injection for Sept 20th. But a week before, the doctor office called and said that my insurance would not approve another injection until I see the nurse practitioner. After I hung up the phone that day, I was upset. We were busy at work, and I was in a lot of pain. After work, I sat in my car and cried, feeling defeated. I wanted to give up.
Then, as I was driving home from work, “Don’t Stop Praying” come on and I started bawling. I knew that was God telling me not to stop praying.
I shared this at church, and someone there works for SSDI. She called me and helped me start the process of filling for that assistance.
I know this is all an answer to my prayers. That song means more to me than anyone could ever imagine not just for this situation but others as well.
My name is Suzie, and this is my testimony of God’s strength.
Three months ago, I was faced with a dark season. This is a season I never asked for and never thought in a million years I would ever have to go through. I was lied to, and almost broken. My heart was shattered, and I felt numb to everything. I had no clue how this could happen. How could someone who is supposed to be my life partner do something like this?
Being a recovering alcoholic, I could have easily fallen back to drinking to forget everything that was happening. But instead, I choose to turn to God, my Bible, and my pastor. You could say I choose the high road instead of the lonely, dead-end road. I thought I was doing well, and I was trying my hardest to keep my head up and be as strong as I could. Yet, it hurt, and I was emotionally tired. In reality, I was spiraling and not doing well at all. I felt like I was in tunnel vision and couldn’t get out. I then took the first step in healing by admitting to myself I needed help and reached out to talk with a counselor. Admitting out loud that I needed help emotionally and mentally and that I was not ok, was a huge step in getting through this. In all this
I was getting signs that I needed to let go of everything I was holding onto. Which I really thought I had done. But in truth I was not listening to what God was saying to me. Until one Saturday morning. I got a message from a friend checking in on me to see how I was doing. After talking with her I felt God telling me I need to let go of everything I am holding on to so I could start to really heal. So, I said a simple prayer that morning before getting ready for the day. After saying the prayer, God started working in my heart. During different times throughout the day, I wanted to leave where I was. But God said “No, you need to stay put. You need to be with others around you.” I soon realized I was right where I need to be, and I am stronger than I realized. I also realized that I was truly holding onto some parts, and I needed to let go and let God work through me to heal.
I am blessed beyond words that I have an awesome support system that knows when I am having a rough time or trying to fake it. I realize that I don’t have to be strong all the time. It’s ok for me to show my emotions and show that I am human. And it’s “ok” to not be “ok” and most importantly it’s “ok” to have bad days.
I am thankful to God and His guidance and the love He has shown me. He has put people in my path through all of this storm for one reason or another. I am grateful for the little reminders He is showing me to keep my head up. I know my path of healing is going to be a long journey and it is not going to be easy. There are going to be tough days and easy days. If it was meant to be easy, then it wouldn’t be called a storm. I am ready to see what God has in store for me no matter how long it takes.
Psalm 27:14 “Wait patiently for the Lord. Be brave and courageous. Yes, wait patiently for the Lord.”
Thank you all for sharing your stories. I know it can be hard to be vulnerable and share what you have gone through. Yet, when we do, it helps others who are in a similar circumstance know there is hope that the same can happen for them. Please continue sharing your story.
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I Am Whole (Identity Series)
Colossians 2:9-10 “ For in him dwells the whole fullness of the deity bodily, and you share in this fullness in him, who is the head of every principality and power.”
This episode will conclude our “I am who God says I am” series. I am whole is a struggle for many to believe. We have all sinned before; we all sin frequently, probably. It can be easy for us to think that sin makes us less than especially if we have had a really difficult past. Maybe we have had a lot of relationships in the past, and we didn’t show up as our best selves in them. Maybe we haven’t had a lot of relationships, but we have slept with a lot of other people. I think many people in this society feel used. I think we feel used by the other sex, used by our bosses, and used by big companies to sell more products. There is just this brokenness instead of the feeling that we are whole.
What just popped into my mind was all the teenagers right now and how easy it is to feel broken when you are a teen. You don’t look the right way, your hair isn’t perfect, your clothes aren’t perfect. Life can be really hard when you are young. A therapist told me the other day that 15 was the most volatile age for emotions. At this age, you feel your emotions more intensely than you ever will again. Our minds are so easily persuaded by the enemy. Why is it so much easier to believe the negative than it is to believe the positive?
I read a great article about this called “Finding Spiritual Wholeness" by Leanne Payne. Click Here for the article. I recommend you read the whole thing. What Leanne was talking about in this article is that God is perfectly whole, and we are made in his likeness and image. She said, “When “sin” (That which is against God’s character) entered the world, so did our brokenness, along with our broken ideas about how we view ourselves, God, and others. There is an intuitive knowledge of our personal brokenness that we are constantly attempting to fix, deny, or protect.” Isn’t this so true? We are always trying to fix, deny, or protect our brokenness.
You might be wondering why anyone would want to protect their brokenness. I have talked with plenty of people who want to protect their brokenness because they have become comfortable with that brokenness. They have lived with that brokenness, so they have come to identify as a broken person. Changing that image would be hard and not something they believe they can do. One thing we don’t realize is that life is hard. Yes, it is hard to change, and yet, isn’t living a sinful life also hard? Eating healthy can be hard, yet isn’t being overweight and struggling to get around hard, too? Standing up to our loved ones and putting boundaries in place is hard, yet so is living without those boundaries in place. Quitting vaping is hard, yet so is living life addicted to nicotine and not being able to concentrate because you are thinking about the next time when you will get to hit your vape.
The article I read talked about how sin distorts how we look at things. Here are a few examples she gave:
Sin perverts our perception of God:
God is angry with me - “He hates my sin, he must hate me.”
God is disgusted with me - "I’m too dirty and damaged for Him to accept me”
God is distant from me - “Why would he want to be with me when I’m like this?”
God is unfair - “This is just one big setup...I couldn’t stop if I tried.”
God is unhappy - “All the fun things are off limits!”
Sin warps our self-perception:
We become foolishly great in our own eyes when we hide from the reality of our sin, like the emperor with no clothes.
We become worth - less in our own eyes when we become hyper-focused on our sins.
Sin degrades or elevates (to unhealthy levels) our perception of others:
We tend to do the same thing with other people that we do with ourselves - We make them out to be greater or less than we are. We serve them like gods or treat them like dogs.
Payne goes on to say, "Sin brings disintegration of self while righteousness (living congruently with the character of God) brings integration of self or spiritual wholeness. This is one reason God hates sin so much - He doesn’t want our disintegration because He loves us! It must be said that any and all “righteous living” apart from God doesn’t get us to wholeness; it gets us to self-righteousness - a horrible disease that many Christians live with and perpetrates on others.”
Now that we have talked about why we think we are not whole let's look at what makes us whole. Do our actions determine if we are whole? Nope! Payne says, “Spiritual wholeness is not dependent on our actions but on an acceptance of God’s acting on our part in the life/death/resurrection of Christ. Because of our faith in Christ and what He’s done on our behalf, God can pronounce us whole and remain a just God even though we often go on acting broken.” Jesus died to make us whole again. He took our sins to the cross with Him. We are no longer broken. Yes, we still act like we are broken at times, yet God has redeemed us and made us whole.
So, if God has redeemed us and made us whole, why don’t we feel whole? I think we don’t feel whole because we struggle to believe that He can forgive us for what we have done. We don’t accept that forgiveness for ourselves. We will be the first ones to convince a friend or loved one that Jesus loves and forgives ALL their sins; we just struggle to believe He will do it for us. I talked with a woman recently who had been to confession about a time in her life when she wasn’t proud of how she was living. Even though she had been to confession, the enemy was still not letting her move past it. She kept thinking about it and believing that she was her past mistakes. She believed that she was stuck in her past. Things won’t change because she is still that person. She wasn’t believing in the healing that took place during confession.
So many of us do this same thing. We believe we are our past mistakes. We believe if we did it once we will do it again. We struggle to believe things will change, and we struggle to believe that God could forgive us. To reiterate what the author of the article said, “Spiritual wholeness is not dependent on our actions but on an acceptance of God’s acting on our part in the life/death/resurrection of Christ.” It is not our actions that make us whole; it is Jesus’ actions. Jesus knew when He decided to die on that cross for us that we would keep sinning. He didn’t die for us because we were blameless or because He knew we were going to stop sinning. He died for us to make us whole, and His sacrifice was complete.
The verse above says, “ For in him dwells the whole fullness of the deity bodily, and you share in this fullness in him, who is the head of every principality and power.” We were made in the likeness and image of God. We share in the fullness of Him. However, when sin entered the world, so did our brokenness. God sent His only son to repair that. He died on the cross to make us whole, let’s live our lives in honor of that. Let’s live into this truth that we are whole. We are no longer broken. Christ made us whole!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you and we thank you for giving us your son to die on the cross so we could be made whole. Help us to live in that wholeness, Lord. Help us to accept your forgiveness and help us make it more about you than about us. Help us to stop listening to the enemy. Help us to be strong enough to reject his stupid lies. Open our eyes to his lies and give us the strength to renounce them and take away any authority they have. Lord, when we believe the lies, we empower the liar. We are done empowering the liar, Lord. We want you to be the only one that has any power in our lives. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Tonight is our first night in the Identity series. I hope you will join us! Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed weekend!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in June 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Listen, all you need is to be quiet and hear me. My children, all your thoughts are not your own. Some come from the devil. Discard them. You know right from wrong. Remember, always remember me and what I've done for the love of all of you. I love you. Keep going, my Christian soldiers.”
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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I am Forgiven
1 John 2:12 “I am writing to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven on account of his name.”
I decided to stick with some of the verses from the “I Am Who God Says I Am” Challenge from my Big Life mentoring group. I have talked about many of the verses; however, the next one that I had not talked about before is 2 John 2:12. I particularly liked this one because I am not sure this is one that most of us would agree with. Do you believe you are forgiven? I recently learned something that I thought was so interesting. I was at a meeting, and we were talking about the difference between Redemption and Salvation.
The way they explained it was to picture that you are in jail. Redemption means someone has been paid for your freedom. This means you have been redeemed. You are now free to go, free to leave the jail in which you were held captive. However, the salvation doesn’t come until you leave the prison. You need to be the one to accept that redemption and walk out of the door. That is the hard part, that is the part that we struggle with a lot. We might understand on some level that Jesus died for the sins of the world, and yet we struggle to believe that he died for our sins in particular.
Do you believe that Jesus died for your sins? Do you believe there is nothing you can do that won’t be forgiven if you repent? Do you believe you don’t have to earn your forgiveness? This is something else that we struggle with. We think we have to be good enough to be forgiven. We mess up, and then we think we need to fix everything before we turn to the Lord and ask for forgiveness. This couldn’t be further from the truth. There is nothing you have to do to be forgiven other than to be sorry for what you have done. You can’t earn your forgiveness, Jesus already paid the price for you. He paid a high price, and when we try to earn our forgiveness, we are essentially saying what He paid wasn’t enough.
Father Mike was just talking about this idea of earning our forgiveness the other day on the Catechism in a Year podcast when he was talking about the sacrament of reconciliation. When Catholics go to confession, we confess our sins, we say we are sorry to God for having sinned against Him, we receive absolution for our sins, and then the priest gives us penance. Sometimes, when we get penance, we think that it is not severe enough. For instance, we confess we committed a mortal sin, and the priest says that we should say 5 Hail Marys and 5 Our Fathers. We don’t see how that could possibly atone for our sins. That’s the thing: we are not atoning for our sins, our forgiveness is freely given to us because Jesus died on the cross. He already atoned for our sins. Penance is meant to help us turn our hearts back to God. Just as our sin was an active choice of turning away from God, penance is an active choice of turning back to God.
What penance is meant to do is to help us get back on track. In an ideal world, your penance would have something to do with what you were struggling with at the time of confession. For instance, if you are struggling with being kind to your family, your penance might be to say three kind things to each one of them before going to bed that night. If you are struggling with pride, your penance might be, to say, the Litany of Humility. This would be in an ideal world. However, there are not enough priests, and the priest might not always be able to come up with a creative penance that has to do with your specific struggle or your specific sins. If you are given a penance that doesn’t seem to “fit the crime,” so to speak, remember that you are not earning your forgiveness; you are not trying to buy it, it has already been purchased for you. I read an article about doing penance after confession, and it said, “Just as sin wounds (or breaks) our relationship with God and makes our souls sick, penance is medicine that helps us turn our hearts back towards our Creator. Confession removes that sin from our shoulders. Penance helps us move towards a more holy future."
The verse above says that our sins are forgiven on account of his name.” I mentioned earlier that sometimes we think we need to fix things before we confess what we have done. We think we need to be perfect before we approach God and tell Him what we have done. Romans 5:8 tells us, “But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” He didn’t wait till we stopped sinning. He didn’t wait until we had all our ducks in a row, He didn’t wait until we had life all figured out. He died for our sins while we were still sinners. This shows us how much God loves us and also shows us that He doesn’t want us to wait until we are perfect because that day will never come. God told Paul that His power is made perfect in our weakness.
We think we need to be perfect for God, and yet God doesn’t require that of us. He would rather we come to Him in our weakness and our brokenness. If we are perfect, we don’t need God. If we could do it all ourselves, we wouldn’t need God. God is not there to watch us do all the work ourselves and then forgive us or love us after we have figured it all out. He is there to help us figure it out. He is there to guide us and to lead us in the right direction. We can’t change the really hard stuff without God’s help. We can’t forgive others without God helping us change our hearts. We can want to forgive, and yet God is the one who is in charge of the conversion of hearts. He is the one who forgives us and helps us forgive others. We need him all along the process.
The one thing I want to leave you with today is that your sins were forgiven when Jesus died on that cross. You don’t have to earn your forgiveness; you just have to accept it. You have to walk in that freedom that comes with forgiveness. If God has forgiven your sins and yet you are still walking around in a prison of your past mistakes, then what do you think that says to the Lord? It says that you don’t believe Jesus’ sacrifice was enough to cover your sins. It says you think you know more than God does because He has said you are forgiven, and you aren’t accepting that forgiveness. God has already paid your debt; He has already unlocked the door to your prison, all you have to do is walk out the door and live in that freedom. Can you do that today? Can you finally walk out of your prison and accept God’s forgiveness?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you, and we ask you to help us accept your forgiveness. We are tired of living in our own prisons Lord, show us the way out. Change our hearts and our minds so we can accept that you love us so much that you sent your only son to die for our sins, even while we were still sinning. Help us to walk in that freedom you bought for us. Help us to forgive others as well. You are the best Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I want to remind everyone that mentoring starts back up tomorrow night. The theme for January is Identity, and it is one that we all need to hear. I hope you will prayerfully consider joining me. There is a link below with all the details. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in June 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I want my children to be still. Quiet yourselves so that you can hear me. I do put people situations and circumstances on your hearts and in your past. Don't discard my urgings. Do as I ask. I know that you hear me. I have made it so that you do.”
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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I Am Accepted by Christ
Romans 15:7 “Therefore, accept one another, just as Christ also accepted us to the glory of God.”
I thought this one was especially important for us to know because it is one that might be hard for us to believe. It is also something that we are all desperately searching for. We all want to be accepted. We all need to be accepted. Sometimes, we will go to extraordinary lengths to change who we are just to feel accepted. This is not the kind of acceptance that we want. I think we all wish, down deep in our hearts, that we could just be who we truly are. Yet, we feel if we are our true selves, then we won’t be accepted. We fear to be ourselves because we worry that if we are, people will think we are too much or not enough.
They might say we are not kind enough, silly enough, joyful enough, pretty enough, or anything else we might struggle with. They may also say that we are too loud, too excited, too peppy, too old, too young. Whatever our insecurities are, whatever the enemy is whispering in our ear, that is what we fear people will think of us. I know for me, I always think I don’t make an impression. I sit more on the outside of the circle and observe. I am always surprised when someone says that they remember me or that I did something that touched them in some way. If you know me, that may seem weird to hear. I think we all have these inner thoughts that our loved ones would be surprised to know we felt.
I just read my word and mantra to a friend the other day. My mantra is a statement about who I want to be at the end of 2025, and I say it every day, well, at least all three days so far this year, to remind me of who I want to become. When I read it to my friend, she said it was funny to her because I already seemed like I was that person in her eyes. I understand what she means, as when I am talking to people and listening to their struggles, I am often surprised to learn what they are struggling with. Beautiful people who have no idea how beautiful they are. Kind people who have no idea how loved they are by others. Faith-filled people who have no idea what a beacon of light they are to others.
This tells me that the enemy’s lies are working, and we need to change the game. We need to stop listening to him and listen to our Heavenly Father and listen to our friends and family. Why do we dismiss what our friends and family say as if they are just saying what we want to hear? Can’t both things be true? Can what they say be true and what we want to hear? We need to be able to believe the good things more than the bad things. Why are the bad things so much easier to believe?
I pray at the end of this month you will start to believe some of the good things more than the bad things. I pray by the end of this month, you will begin to see yourself through the eyes of the Lord instead of through the eyes of this world.
When we look at today’s verse, it is twofold. It tells us we are accepted by the Lord, and it also tells us to accept others as He accepts us. Listen again, “Therefore, accept one another, just as Christ also accepted us to the glory of God.” When I looked this verse up on the Enduring Word website, this is what the pastor had to say:
Therefore, receive one another: (In other translations, it says to accept one another) Instead of letting these issues about disputable things divide Christians (especially making a division between Jew and Gentile), we should receive one another just as Christ received us – in terms of pure grace, knowing yet bearing with our faults.
It goes on to say: Spurgeon on just as Christ also received us: “Christ did not receive us (or accept us) because we were perfect, because he could see no fault in us, or because he hoped to gain somewhat at our hands. Ah, no! But, in loving condescension covering our faults, and seeking our good, he welcomed us to his heart; so, in the same way, and with the same purpose, let us receive one another.”
God doesn’t accept us because we are perfect. He doesn’t accept us because we are getting it all right, and we are doing all He asked us to do. None of us here on earth are getting it all right, or at least, not many of us. Most of us, even those who seem the more put together, are just doing the best we can. We all have things we struggle with and things we wish we could be better at. We all think everyone else is doing so much better than we are. They aren’t! We are all struggling. Just because you don’t see it doesn’t mean it is not there. Do you let everyone see your struggles? No, most of us hide our struggles. Although, do you know what makes the struggle easier? Sharing it with others makes it easier to carry because we aren’t doing it by ourselves. It also makes it easier because sometimes others can see our situation with new eyes and may shed some light on it.
You are accepted by Christ. You are also accepted by God. Some may think that is something I wouldn’t have to say. Of course, if Jesus accepts me, then God accepts me as they are one. However, for many of us, it is much easier to believe that Jesus is loving and accepting and God is not. Kind of like how your dad can be a loving and forgiving friend but not always a loving and forgiving dad. It is important that we start to see God as a loving Father. It is important that we stop letting the enemy tell us who God is and we look for ourselves. God loves us. He always has. If you look back over the Bible, you will find more stories of God’s love than of his judgment. Are there harsh stories in the Bible? Absolutely. Has God done some things that we don’t understand? Definitely, yet if we look at all the things God has done in the Bible, there will be way more good than what we perceive as bad.
Many of us find it very easy to believe that God accepts others. We can look at someone struggling with so much more than we might be struggling with, and we might tell them they are loved and accepted by God, and we believe it with our whole hearts. It is so much easier to believe that He accepts others with all their faults, and yet we just know He can’t accept us. We have too many faults. We have done too many bad things. We aren’t worthy. We aren’t enough. We haven’t earned His acceptance yet. If this is where you are at, you are not alone. So many of us, even those you look at and think they are so religious. They are struggling with knowing God loves them and accepts them, too.
There is so much I want to say to everyone who doesn’t believe God loves them. Those who don’t believe God accepts them for who they are, faults in all. There is so much I want to say, and yet I am not sure if you will be able to hear it all at once. The only one who can change our hearts is God, and although He can do that in an instant, it usually takes time. It takes time for our hearts to soften. It takes time for the wounds in our hearts to begin to heal. It takes time for us to begin to be open to the idea that God may love us and even like us. I know it takes time, and that is why I will keep talking about this all month long, and I pray each day your heart softens a little more to the idea of who you are in God’s eyes. Feel free to go back and listen to these episodes as many times as you need to in order to start to really believe who God says you are in His eyes. Listen until you really believe it!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode. Lord, we pray that you help soften our hearts to all the things we hear this month about our identity. Lord, we invite you to come in and heal our wounds. Lord, we ask that you allow us to see ourselves through your eyes, even if just for a moment. Lord, we ask that each day this month, our minds and ears open up a little more to hear who you say we are. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I have decided that after this month is over, I will compile all these episodes about who God says we are, and I will put them in a devotional book that I will publish on Amazon. That way, if you want to read them over and over again until you believe them, you can. Also, I encourage you to re-listen to any of them that you have a particularly hard time believing. Also, I did an “I Am” series a while back on the podcast. So, if you have trouble believing you are whole, healed, guided, strong, his, courageous, or forgiven, you can go back and listen to episodes 540-548. And remember, if you want to join me in mentoring this month, I will go deeper into who God says we are. Knowing our identity is important. There is a link for more info on mentoring below. God loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in June 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I am the flame of love that runs through you, and I purify all that is not of me. Seek me more, seek me more each day.”
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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I Am A Friend Of Jesus
John 15:15 “No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you.”
This month in mentoring, the theme is identity. I think it is so important that we know who God says we are because this world is so crazy, and it tries to tell us all sorts of lies about how we are. The devil also whispers in our ears who he thinks we are, or at least who he wants us to believe that we are. These are all lies. God is the one who created us, and He is the only one who can tell us who we truly are. This month, on the podcast, I will be going through different scriptures that show us who God says we are. The more we know, the easier it is to dismiss the enemy's lies.
In today’s scripture, Jesus calls us friends. Did you know God thinks you are His friend? I don’t know how many of us actually know that. Many people I have talked to think of God as more of a disciplinarian. They see Him as an old man looking down on us from heaven and judging us for all we are doing wrong. We picture Him just shaking His head at all that we are doing. We think He is up there waiting for us to screw up like we always do so that He can punish us. Is this how you think of God? If so, you are not alone, I have heard this from many people.
Maybe this isn’t the view you have of God. Maybe you know that He is kind and merciful. Yet, you still don’t think of yourself as His friend. I mean, He is God, and you are….well, you. You are just a human. What could you possibly have to offer to God or to this friendship? In this verse, God is telling us that he no longer calls us slaves, for slaves don’t know what the master is doing. In the time when the Bible was written and in the language it was written, the word that was used is similar to servant. This is a term we tend to be more comfortable with. It is easier to think of ourselves as God’s servants. We owe Him everything and we want to serve Him. We are happy to serve Him.
However, Jesus tells us in this verse that we are not servants; we are His friends. In Jesus’s day, a slave or servant was somebody who repaid a debt to their master by serving them. Slaves didn’t necessarily make major decisions on important matters. They were workers who just did what their employer told them to do. They were not considered equal, and they were not told why they were doing what they were doing. They were just told what they needed to do. In today’s verse, Jesus tells us that he has called us friends because He has shared with us all things that He heard from His Father. Jesus is not calling us to do whatever He tells us blindly. He is telling us all the Father is telling Him, and then He is inviting us to help Him in His mission of spreading the Gospel to the world.
I was a bit confused with the beginning of this verse because it says, “You are no longer slaves.” I was wondering what this meant. When were we slaves? What I found when I researched it a bit is that we were slaves/servants because Jesus sacrificed His life so that we might be set free. He took our sins to the cross for Him. That is a debt that we will never be able to pay back. As I said earlier, a servant was someone who repaid their debt by serving them. Jesus didn’t want us serving Him out of a sense of obligation. Jesus did not want to leave us in this Master/Servant relationship. Jesus invited us to be His friend. He invited us to follow Him and to be a part of all that He was doing. Not because we have to but because we want to.
What does it mean to be a friend to Jesus? When I looked this up online, I found the following: To be a friend of Jesus means to love and obey Jesus and to love and be good to others. There, it listed four attributes of a friend of Jesus.
Loyalty and obedience - Jesus said, "You are my friends if you do what I command you" (John 15:14).
Love others - Jesus said, "But I am giving you a new command. You must love each other, just as I have loved you" (John 13:34-35).
Live a holy life - This means living a life that glorifies God, worships Christ, and rejects Satan.
Serve your community - You can serve your neighborhood or community together with your church or a local ministry.
I also an article (CLICK HERE for article) about a woman who was saying that she had forgotten how important friends are to a Christian. For a while, she forgot this, and she forgot who she was in a basic way. She was fully immersed in survival—moving four times in 5 years, having twins, homeschooling older children—she had no bandwidth to be concerned with anyone outside her immediate family. Then one day her daughter signed up to be in a production of the Wizard of Oz and this came with a mandatory 12 hours of volunteering from the parents. She resented this mandatory commitment, but soon realized how much she needed friendship and connection with other people.
She states in the article that she learned that friendship expresses principles of Christ’s own affection for me. Friendship is a form of communion, where we meet Christ's own love for us. This is why friendship is not extra for the Christian. She then listed the things she has learned from making friends as a grown-up.
Friendship reminds us that we are not alone, but that love is at the core of our identity.
Friendship is a mirror. Friendship reminds us of who we are. Her friends refuse to see her as the sum of her weaknesses and failures. They literally tell her, “I see that you are more than that.”
Friendship reminds us that we are acceptable, that we are lovable. Acceptance liberates us to face the truth about ourselves, the full truth about who God has made us to be.
Friendship reminds us that love is gratuitous and surprising. God gives us to one another and He knows what will bless us. Some friends you wouldn’t have picked for yourself are given to you as gifts.
The author invites you to ask the Lord, over the next few days, to show you why friendship matters so much to Him. Then, step forward in faith. Perhaps you can simply start by adding a friend event to your calendar. Perhaps you could shift your energy from social media friendships to one or two actual, embodied friendships. Dare to believe that Jesus desires the joy of friendship for you, that His “joy may be in you and your joy may be perfect” (John 15:11).
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, I ask you to help us accept that you want to be our friend. I ask you to help move that knowledge from our heads to our hearts. Lord, we love you, and we are happy to serve you. However, we struggle to believe you want to be our friend. We struggle to believe we are worthy to be your friend. Please help us, Lord. Please help us to see that you are inviting us into a partnership with you. Please help us to accept that partnership, that friendship. We ask this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus! I want to wish you a Happy New Year! If you did not listen to the last episode, I want you to invite to give it a listen. It talks about how to live this upcoming year more intentionally. It is good to have a plan as to how we will grow closer to the Lord this year instead of just hoping it will happen. One opportunity to grow that is available to you is my mentoring group. It is a way to spend an hour each week intentionally learning and growing closer to the Lord. Maybe give it a try and see what you think. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in June 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “This longing I have given you, it is my gift to you. It is a longing I have promised from of old, from ancient times, and it is a longing that I promise into the future. It is a promise that I keep. You have nothing to fear, for the God who keeps this promise is your Lord and Savior.”
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Choose Carefully!
Romans 6:16 “Don't you realize that Grace frees you to choose your own master? But choose carefully for you surrender yourself to become a servant – bound to the one you choose to obey. If you choose to love sin, it will become your master, and it will own you and reward you with death. But if you choose to love and obey God, he will lead you into perfect righteousness.”
The bookmark in my Passion Translation Bible happened to be in Romans today. Although now that I see the verse, I can see it wasn’t an accident. This is a great verse to end 2024 and begin 2025. I love the end of a year and the beginning of a new year. I get so excited to think about what this year has in store for me. I go through a process with God to select a word and mantra for the year. I am part of Big Life Mentoring, and Pamela Crim has put together some great worksheets that guide you in a conversation with the Lord to figure out your word and mantra.
I believe my word for this year is going to be STEP. After praying with the Lord and asking what I want for next year and what is getting in my way, I feel as though the Lord is telling me this is the year to step out in faith more. This is the year to stop thinking about what I want to do and actually do it. Also, I would like to respond more when He asks me to do something instead of being too afraid of what others may think of me. This has been a problem in the past and I would like to overcome it this year.
Here is my mantra for 2025:
STEP- Every day I STEP out in Total Trust that God is leading the way. When He calls me to do something, I do it BOLDLY, without hesitation. I am FOCUSED and INTENTIONAL with my time because I know it is a gift from God. I have so much potential, and this year, I will PARTNER with God in a NEW way to achieve all he has planned for me!
I mention my word and mantra for the year because I feel it is important to live intentionally. I think the beginning of the year is a great time to spend some time with the Lord and ask what He has planned for you this year. What would He like you to do? It is also a great time to let Him know what you would like to do and see if He is on board. Setting goals for the year is a great idea because it gives you focus and it gives you direction. If you set a goal and you don’t hit it, you will at least have gotten closer than you would have if you didn’t set a goal.
I love goals. However, you may not be a goal-setting person, and that is great. We are who we are. If you are not someone that likes to set goals can I invite you to at least sit with the Lord and ask Him where your focus should be this year? How are you going to grow in your faith this year? Are you going to work on your connection with others? Are you going to grow in your love of others? Are you going to pray more? Are you going to read more? Are you going to say the rosary daily? Are you going to try to be less judgmental? Are you going to try to love your enemies? Are you going to work on forgiveness? Do you see how many different ways you can grow this year?
However, a lot of times, we don’t focus on how we will grow. We aren’t intentional with our faith and how we live it out. Today’s verse is telling us to be careful about living without intention. It is telling us to choose carefully and not just go about our day without consciously making a choice. Did you know that you make about 35,000 decisions a day, and most experts say that the majority of them are made automatically or subconsciously? Some experts say up to 95% of our decisions can be made subconsciously. That means we aren’t actually even thinking about them. We just make them without thinking. Can you imagine that?
The decision in this verse is so important. The verse says,“Don't you realize that Grace frees you to choose your own master? But choose carefully for you surrender yourself to become a servant – bound to the one you choose to obey. If you choose to love sin, it will become your master, and it will own you and reward you with death. But if you choose to love and obey God, he will lead you into perfect righteousness.” Who doesn’t want perfect righteousness? If we are making 95% of our decisions subconsciously, then what are the odds we are going to choose to love and obey God instead of choosing sin? It seems like most of our day we aren’t even consciously making the choices.
This can actually be good or bad. This is where living intentionally comes in. If you are intentionally living your life as if you love God, then your brain is more likely to default to loving God. If you are staying close to God throughout the day, then your mind is likely to default to loving God. For instance, think about those who have given their lives for the Lord. I have often wondered how they did that. I wondered how they were strong enough to not waiver in their faith even when presented with death. And, it was not always a quick and easy death. Sometimes, it was a long, drawn-out, or very painful death. How could they willingly choose that?
I was talking with a priest about this one day, and he said for them, it wasn’t a choice. They had developed such a deep relationship with the Lord, and they loved Him so much. There wasn’t a way they could renounce the Lord or say anything bad against Him. They felt so strongly about what they believed that they couldn’t deny it. They couldn’t reject the Lord. For them, there was no other choice but to die for their love of the Lord. I don’t know if I am saying that right or if that makes sense, but when he told me that, it made a lot of sense to me.
What do you believe in so strongly that you would be willing to die for it? That is another great question for the new year. Let’s take some time this New Year’s Eve and think about how we lived in 2024 and how we want to live in 2025. I am not saying we need to come up with a hundred New Year’s Resolutions that we will forget all about next week. I am suggesting that we think about how we can set ourselves up for success. How can we ensure that our default decision will be loving the Lord instead of loving sin? What in our lives would need to change in order for us to love the Lord instead of sin intentionally?
The reason behind a word and mantra is that our brains believe what we tell them. I may not currently be stepping out boldly and without hesitation every time the Lord asks me to do something. However, after 365 days of telling myself that I am, I believe I will be, and I can’t wait for that day. I actually don’t think it will be one day. I think there will be a lot of little moments when sometimes I do, and sometimes I don’t, and yet, over the year, I will begin to see more days when I do step out boldly and without hesitation than when I don’t. What are you going to be telling your brain this year?
I invite you to sit with the Lord and ask these questions today. How will I intentionally grow in my love for the Lord this year? What will my focus be for this year? What is one thing I would like to be able to say on December 31, 2025, about my relationship with the Lord and how it has grown over the last year? Then, if you are really brave, you can say, “Lord, I want to partner with you this year; what should we do together?” and really listen to what He wants to do with you!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening today. Lord, I ask for a special blessing for everyone for the New Year. May you bless them and their family and friends. May you rain down your graces and mercy upon them this year. May each one of us grow closer and closer to you. Lord, please help us to choose to love you and not to love sin. Please help us to live intentionally and not just go through our days, letting our subconscious make all of our decisions. We love you, Lord, and we want to love you more and more each and every day of 2025. We need your help though, Lord. Let’s partner together. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me for another year of walking boldly with Jesus. Can you believe another year is over already? Time flies, and it is not unlimited, so let’s enter today intentionally. I would like to invite you to join me for mentoring in January. The topic will be identity, and it is something I think so many of us struggle with. The world tells us who they think we are, and we just believe them without stopping to ask God who He thinks we are. Come join me as we explore who the Lord says we are and our identity as children of God. My prayer is that after this month of mentoring, you will have a better understanding of how amazing you are. I pray you will join me. Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in June 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Think of me when you have problems. Come to me. I should be the first one that you come to, for I can help you in all things, my children. I love you, and I want what is best. So when you have any type of problems, come to me first and I will help you.”
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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The Furnace Of Affliction
Isaiah 48:10 “See, I have refined you, though not as silver; I have tested you in the furnace of affliction.”
This is a verse that most of us probably don’t like. No one wants to be tested in the furnace of affliction. No one wants to face affliction at all, and yet this is where we grow the most. Do we need to have affliction and trouble in our lives to grow? No, God could just give us all that we need without affliction. God can do whatever He wants. However, He knows if He gives it to us, then we won’t appreciate it; we will take it for granted, and we will waste it.
This is true with most things. If we are handed everything we ever need and want from our parents, then we won’t appreciate what we have, and we probably won’t appreciate all they do for us. We will take it for granted because we don’t know anything else. How do I know that God knows this? First, He knows everything. Second, He has seen it in his people time and time again. Remember the Israelites that were saved from Egypt? God saved them in a miraculous way from the years of slavery that they had endured. He saved them, and then he provided food for them every single day. However, because it happened every single day, they started to take it for granted. They decided they would rather be in captivity and have more variety in food than continue to be free and eat this miraculous bread from heaven.
Can you think of a time in your life when you didn’t have to work for something, and you took it for granted? What about the opposite? You had to work really hard for something, and you appreciated it so much more. Another example that just came to mind was water. In America, everyone I know has more water than they know what to do with. Some pay for water, and some have a well. Either way, they don’t work super hard for their water. Because of this, I have seen a lot of waste when it comes to water, especially in my family. We don’t understand the value of water because we have never gone without water. It has always been right at our fingertips. We currently don’t pay for water either because we have a well. I have seen my kids turn the water on to heat up and then not get in it for 10 minutes or more. Can you imagine how much water we are wasting, just letting it run down the drain?
I know we are not the only people to do this, either. What about all the water bottles we start to do but then don’t finish? I can just imagine what the people in Africa would say or think if they could see all the ways we waste water in America. Globally, more than 1 million people die each year from a lack of access to safe water and sanitation. Unsafe water is a leading risk factor for infectious diseases, including Cholera, Diarrhea, Hepatitis A, Typhoid, and Polio. I find it so hard to understand how there can still be this many people without safe water around the world. I think it can be so easy to think that everyone has the things that you have because you have always had them. You have never known anything different.
I think if we lost power in our houses for a week, or if we lost water for a week, we would have a new appreciation for these things. If we had to grow our own fruits and vegetables instead of just buying them at the store, then we might appreciate them a bit more and not waste them. How many of us buy fresh vegetables with every intention of eating them and then wind up throwing them away because they went bad before we could eat them? I think if we had to do without them for a while, or if they were harder to get, we might appreciate them more.
The same is true with the afflictions we encounter in our lives. Affliction means any pain or suffering we have had to endure. Today’s verse tells us that we are refined through the furnace of these afflictions. We all want to be refined. We want to grow closer to the Lord. We want to grow more into who the Lord is calling us to be, and yet we don’t want the afflictions. Who wants to endure pain and suffering? Who wants to be in a furnace? Can’t we just be refined without all that? Yes, but this is how God has chosen to refine us. This is for our own good.
I was just listening to a sermon by Steven Furtick from Elevation Church the other night while driving home. He said that there was a false article written about their church a few years ago saying that they fake Baptisms. He was not happy about the article, and it was a really stressful time for him and the church. However, now that they are through it, He said he is glad it was written. The reason he said this is because the church was refined through this adversity. When the article was written, they were doing Baptisms at their church once or twice a year. Since that article was written, they now do Baptisms every single week. Was the affliction they had to go through fun? No! But they did grow from it, and God brought a blessing from their church out of it.
Think back to some of the hardest times in your life. Are you different now because of them? Are you stronger in some way? Can you see how God used that affliction to refine you? God most likely didn’t cause the affliction, yet He allowed you to go through it because He knew He could use it to refine you. He knew He could use it to make you a better person, a better parent, spouse, partner, son, daughter, sibling or wherever else He wanted you to grow.
I know adversity and affliction is hard. I know it is not something we look forward to. However, I wonder how differently we would handle affliction if we were able to shift our mindset about it? I wonder how different of an experience it would be if we went into curious and even excited about how God was going to use this to help us grow. If we were able to keep our eyes on Jesus while in the middle of the pain and the suffering and try to find where He is using it to help refine us. Things tend to be easier if we can find meaning in them. Maybe that meaning isn’t coming from the situation, but how God is using the situation to refine us make us better?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening today. Lord, help us see how you are using our painful situations to refine us. Help us to look at our situation with new eyes. Help us to be curious and excited, not for the pain and suffering but for the new growth in us that came because of this suffering. Lord, help us to remember we are never alone, and you are always right there with us as we go through any adversity. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Mentoring for the new year starts one week from tomorrow. The theme for January is Identity, and you won’t want to miss it. I pray it will change how you see yourself. I pray you will understand who you are as a child of God. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in June 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, I am with you always. Come to me. Do not be afraid. I am always with you.”
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Unity
Romans 10:11-13 "The scripture says, “No one who believes in him will be put to shame.” For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him. For “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
When I read this verse this morning, I knew it was the one I should talk about. It talks about something very important that I think we forget about a lot. This verse shows us that the Lord does not get caught up in race or religion. It says, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” It says everyone, not just some. This was a letter written to the Romans in the early church. Back in the day, Jews definitely thought that the Savior was coming to save them. Even those who were followers of Jesus were stunned when He was ministering to everyone and when He would talk to anyone.
Do you remember the woman at the well? Jesus made it a point to talk to her even though Jews and Samaritans were not allowed to talk, and men certainly weren’t supposed to talk to women they did not know. When Jesus came, it seemed like He turned everything upside down. He showed the apostles and the world that there was a new way of living. He wanted them to know they were no longer governed by a whole long list of rules. Now, they were governed by the Holy Spirit. If they weren’t sure what they should or should not do, they could consult the Holy Spirit, and He would lead them in the right direction. He would remind them of all that Jesus said and did while He walked on Earth.
The same is true for us. We have the Holy Spirit living inside of us, and He will guide us to doing what is right, and He will convict us when we are doing something wrong. The only problem with this is that we need to listen to Him, and sometimes we don’t want to. We all have that still small voice inside of us that tells us when we should do something or when something doesn’t feel right. Yet, we don’t always listen to it because sometimes we don’t want to do what we know we should do, and sometimes we want to do something we know we shouldn’t do.
Before the Holy Spirit came down to live in them, the Jewish people were bound by a large number of commandments. When I looked it up online, it said 613 commandments, but then it said there is no universally agreed-upon number. It doesn’t matter how many, you get the idea that it was a lot of commandments that they were responsible for upholding. However, when Christ came, He said in Matthew 5:17, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.” Jesus was showing his apostles that things had changed. It seemed like He was showing them that it wasn’t as important to focus on all the little things but more on the big things. It seems like Jesus was making it easier for people to understand what is important.
For instance, in Matthew 15, the phrases and scribes came to Jesus and asked why the apostles broke the tradition of the elders by not washing their hands before eating, and Jesus asked them why they broke the commandment of the Lord to honor thy mother and father. Here, Jesus is pointing out that the commandments were given to us by the Lord. None of our laws or our traditions should go against what the Lord has told us in those commandments.
Going back to today’s verse, "The scripture says, “No one who believes in him will be put to shame.” For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him. For “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” This reminds us that Jesus didn’t just come to save one group of people. He didn’t just come to save the Jews. I think in our day and age, we can also extend this to He didn’t just come to save the Catholics, the Jews, and the Protestants. I think we can get caught up in the differences of our religion and forget all that we have in common. God wants all of His children saved. That means, no matter your race, religion, age, sex, God wants you to know and believe about Him.
Do you believe in God? Do you call upon Him? It says right here in this verse that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. I have had many discussions with many people about whether we know that we are going to heaven. This verse seems to say that if you believe in God and you call upon Him, then you will not be put to shame. There are more verses like this in the Bible. There are also verses that say you are not saved on faith alone, but faith with works. This does not imply that you have to earn your way into heaven. It is saying that you can’t just believe in the Lord and ignore all those around you, like the poor and needy. It is dangerous when we take verses on their own and don’t read them in the context of the whole Bible.
I truly believe that none of us knows who is and is not getting into heaven because we do not know what is inside anyone else’s heart. We also might not know what is in our own hearts. For instance, do we have unforgiveness hiding in our hearts and masquerading as something else? Only God knows our hearts, and that is why He is the only one who gets to judge us.
I remember I was talking about this with a friend of mine from Encounter one day, and she said she was having the same conversation with the Lord. I can’t remember if she was asking the Lord if she would get to go to heaven, or maybe she was asking about a loved one. I don’t remember what exactly she was asking, but the Lord told her she was asking the wrong question. The question shouldn’t be, will I get into heaven one day? The question should be, am I loving God? What a great question for each of us to ask ourselves today and every day. Am I loving God today? Are my actions and words showing me loving God today? Is the way I am treating others showing God that I am loving Him today? What can I do today to show God how much I love Him?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening. Lord, help us to take our focus off of the laws and put our focus on you. Help us keep our eyes on you this upcoming year. When we look away help us to turn back to you a lot quicker this year. Lord, help us to listen to the amazing gift of the Holy Spirit you have given us to us. He will guide us if we let Him. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Some of you have been with me since the beginning, and I am so grateful. No matter when you started listening, I am grateful that you have made me a part of your day, and I pray the Lord blesses you in this upcoming year. I also want to invite each of you to join my mentoring group. We meet on Tuesday night on Zoom. You do not have to have your camera on if you do not want to, and you do not have to talk if you do not want to. Also, if you can’t be there Tuesday nights on Zoom, you can always watch the recording. January’s theme is Identity. It is going to be a great month, and you won’t want to miss it! I look forward to meeting you here again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I. Have a blessed day.
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in June 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My Holy Spirit is bringing you my peace. The peace of the Father, and the peace that only we can give you. Open your hearts to that peace, my children. It is a peace that you do not understand but a peace that your God gladly gives you and wishes to bring into your hearts right now.”
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Kind Mercy Wins Over Harsh Judgement Every Time!
James 2:12-13 “Talk and act like a person expecting to be judged by the Rule that sets us free. For if you refuse to act kindly, you can hardly expect to be treated kindly. Kind mercy wins over harsh judgment every time.”
That was the message translation. When I first read this verse this morning, it was in the passion translation. This is what it says, “so we must both speak and act in every respect like those who are destined to be tried by the perfect law of liberty and remember, that judgment is merciless, for the one who judges others without mercy. So, by showing mercy, you take dominion over judgment.“ I like both of these translations. The reason I thought it was so important to share this verse with you today is because it’s so easy for us to judge. It’s so easy for us to look at someone else and think they’re doing everything wrong.
It’s easy for us to judge. It’s easy for us to look from the outside and see you so clearly that they should be doing this or that. It is perhaps most easy to judge our family as we think we know them very well. The thing I’ve discovered over the years is that we only know what people want us to know. I think the Lord has been really showing me this a lot lately. I’ve met so many people over the last year or two, and they look perfectly happy on the outside. They seem so close to the Lord, and it is clear that he loves them. Then, when I talk to them, I find out they feel so far from the Lord. I find out that even though they are beautiful and kind and loving, they’re insecure and feel ugly, unwanted, and not enough.
I know it is cliché to say you can’t judge a book by its cover, and yet the Lord keeps showing me over and over again this year that you don’t know anything about someone just by looking at them or examining their life from the outside. I think this is true even with our family. We think we know what’s best for them because we think we know them. We grew up with them. We were around them all the time, and we knew who they were. The thing I am finding out is that people are not always their true selves around family or around anyone. Sometimes, we act like who our family thinks we are. We act in a way we know they will approve of or a way we think we want us to act. I have discovered this can start at a really early age. I wonder what would happen if we stopped assuming we know what someone else is thinking. We stopped assuming we knew what they liked or who they were, and we started asking questions.
I wonder if we made it a point to be less judgmental if others would feel free to be themselves around us. I wonder what would happen if we stopped assuming intentions or motivations and just asked people what we were thinking. What if we stopped thinking we knew what was best for everyone? What if we trusted there was a reason they were doing what they were doing? What if we trusted God knew what he was doing with them and in them? What if instead of telling them all the reasons we think what they’re doing is wrong, we talk to God about it instead? No matter how much we want to and no matter how much we think we can. We cannot change people. The only one who can do that is God. So why do we waste so much time trying to convince someone to change? Wouldn’t that time be better spent talking to God about it?
Take a minute and think about where all your advice (a.k.a. Nagging) has gotten you. Has it changed the other person? Has it improved your relationship with that person? Has it damaged your relationship with that person? There are very few relationships that improve as a result of nagging. Even if the person finally changes, they may feel resentful of you for making them change, or they may try to change, but it doesn’t last long because they didn’t want the change.
Most of the time we don’t know the reason people do what they do. They might do something that makes no sense to us. For instance, we know someone, and they always push others away. We judge them, and we don’t understand why it seems like they ruin every relationship they find. However, if we could see inside them we would understand they have been hurt over and over again by loved ones. We would see all the important people in their lives have left them, and so now they always push others because they figure they will leave anyway, and they don’t want to get attached.
We might look at someone who has a lot and doesn’t share well with others. We may think they are greedy and selfish. Yet when we look at their childhood, we see they grew up without anything, and we’re taught that there is never enough in this world. They worry if they share what they have there won’t be enough for them. We might look at someone and judge that they are mean and cruel. However, if we could see inside, we would know the truly terrible things they endured over their lifetime. We would see that the world has shown them over and over again that there is nothing to be happy about. The world has shown them nothing but cruel people and that if you are nice to someone, they will just take advantage of you.
I like something different in both versions of this verse this morning. In the message translation, I really liked that it said, “Kind mercy wins over harsh judgment every time.” I wish we all knew this was true. Think about how much different this world would be if we just treated people with kind mercy instead of harsh judgment. Think about how much better people would feel if they were treated with mercy. It seems like the default these days is harsh judgment. At the Christmas dinner table yesterday, the kids were talking about. This guy named Luigi killed a billionaire healthcare executive. They said everyone is talking about this guy like he is Batman, or some kind of hero because he killed a billionaire. When did we decide that all billionaires are evil? When did it become OK to take judgment into our own hands?
In the Passion translation, I liked it when it said, “Remember, that judgment is merciless, for the one who judges others without mercy.” I really like this because it reminds us that we have a responsibility to show mercy if we expect God to show mercy on us. I think we can’t hear this enough. It is so easy for us to judge and not even think twice about it. This is a trick of the enemy. He knows exactly how God feels about judgment. He knows everything in the Bible. He knows that God will judge us as we judge others but the enemy doesn’t want us to know that. He wants us to think it’s no big deal. He helps us minimize the evil in our judgment because he doesn’t want us to go to heaven. He wants God to judge us harshly. Is that what you want? Think about how you judge others. Think about the things you say about them and the things you feel about them. Is that the way you want God to judge you? Are those the things you want God to feel and say about you?
I feel like this can’t be overstated because of the way the enemy is trying to hide it. We say it right in the Our Father Prayer, “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” The Lord will forgive us. As we forgive others. The Lord will judge us as we judge others. Maybe as we think about Jesus’s coming, which we just celebrated yesterday, and the upcoming year that we are about to enter, we can take a look at how we judge others and how we can offer mercy instead of judgment in this upcoming year.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this podcast. Lord, help us to be more merciful and less judgmental. Help us to see how important this is to our eternal salvation. Help us to see others as you see others. Help us to see with your eyes, Lord. Give us a new eye sight. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I want to invite you to join mentoring for the month of January. The topic is identity and it is such an important topic. I hope you will join us. Remember, Jesus loves you, just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day.
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in June 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Mark 10:16 “Then he embraced them and blessed them, placing his hands on them.” “I could almost see him with the children and the look on his eyes when he was blessing them.”
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Jesus’ Birth Foretold
Isaiah 9:6 “For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”
We received this scripture verse on Thursday during prayer group. I was researching how many years, before the birth of Jesus, this prophecy was given to Isaiah. While researching, I found this article that explains this verse very well. So, I thought I would read the article to you for today's episode. The article can be found on The Master’s University Website. It does not say who wrote it. CLICK HERE for the article.
The Christmas story in the Bible begins several hundred years before that night in Bethlehem. One Old Testament prophecy after another promised a coming Savior—the Messiah, the Anointed One—who would redeem the people of God. The centerpiece of all the Christmas prophecies, Isaiah 9:6, was written nearly six hundred years before Jesus’ birth. Isaiah promised it would be a miraculous event unlike any the world had ever known, and the details Isaiah gave were fulfilled precisely by Jesus.
For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us, and the government will rest on His shoulders; and His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.
Isaiah 9:6 is the most familiar of all the Old Testament prophecies about the birth of Christ. Handel included it as one of the great choruses of his Messiah oratorio. Chances are you either sing it or hear it several times every Christmas season.
Consider the rich truths in this one short verse and the attributes given to this extraordinary child. To the Jewish nation, Isaiah’s prophecy was news of a coming King. To the unsuspecting world, the prophecy promised a Savior, God incarnate, whose coming would dramatically and forever alter human history.
Son of Man
“A child will be born to us” is a statement about His humanity. He began life like any other human—as an infant. Isaiah doesn’t say more about this here, but we know from the New Testament that Christ experienced every temptation common to humanity, but He never sinned (Hebrews 4:15). As a man, He felt everything we feel, hurt like we hurt, wept like we weep, and in His death He even felt the weight of sin as He took ours upon Himself.
Son of God
“A son will be given to us” speaks of the Savior’s preexistent deity. By saying “given,” not “born,” Isaiah suggests that Jesus existed before His birth. He was already God, the second Person of the Trinity, before He was given to us to be our Savior (Philippians 2:6-7). He came as the Son of God—God in a human body—to conquer sin and death forever. He is the perfect Son of God, the promise of the ages, the Holy One of Israel, the desire of nations, the light in darkness, the only hope for our lost world.
King of Kings
“The government will rest on His shoulders” looks beyond that first Christmas to a time still in the prophetic future when Christ shall reign over a literal, earthly, geopolitical kingdom that encompasses all the kingdoms and governments of the world (Zechariah 14:9; Daniel 2:44). In that day, the government of the whole world will rest on His shoulders, and He will reign as sovereign over a worldwide kingdom of righteousness and peace. In the meantime, His government operates in secret. His kingdom and sovereign rule are manifest within those who trust Him as their Lord (Luke 17:20-21).
Wonderful Counselor
Messiah’s kingdom has the answer to the world’s confusion. During His incarnation, Christ demonstrated His wisdom as a counselor. When people came to Him, He always knew what to say, when to reach out to a seeking heart, and when to rebuke an impetuous soul. The testimony of those who heard Him was, “Never has a man spoken the way this man speaks” (John 7:46). Christ is the source of all truth (John 14:6), and it is to Him that we must turn to make sense of life’s confusion. Jesus is the Counselor who knows everything. He knows all about you; He knows the needs of your heart; He knows how to answer those needs. And He always gives wise counsel to those who will hear and obey Him.
Mighty God
The King is the Mighty God and His kingdom is free from all chaos. “God is not a God of confusion but of peace” (1 Corinthians 14:33), which means chaos is antithetical to who He is. Christ the King loves to step into a life of chaos and not only provide wonderful counsel, but also display His divine power by bringing order. He not only tells His subjects what to do as a wonderful Counselor, but He can energize them to do it—because He is the Mighty God. In Jesus we have a sovereign Master who can forgive sin, defeat Satan, liberate us from the power of evil, redeem us, answer our prayers, restore our broken souls, and reign over rebuilt lives, bringing order to chaos.
Eternal Father
We tend to cringe at the word “government,” picturing an administrative labyrinth. But our Messiah’s kingdom is not like that. He requires no bureaucracy; He shoulders His government by Himself. He can do it because He is the eternal Father, or as the phrase in Isaiah 9:6 is literally translated, “the Father of Eternity.” Christ is Creator of heaven and earth. According to God the Father’s own testimony, the Son—Jesus—was the Person of the Godhead who created time out of eternity and fashioned the universe from nothing (Hebrews 1:10-12). Nothing is too difficult for the Creator and Sustainer of everything. Infinity and all its intricacies are nothing to Him who is the Alpha and Omega, the First and Last, the Beginning and the End—the Father of Eternity. He declares the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:10). He is in complete and sovereign control, He sees the end of everything, and He guarantees that all things will work together for the ultimate good of all His kingdom’s subjects (Romans 8:28).
Prince of Peace
In Messiah’s kingdom there are no conflicts because He is the Prince of Peace. He offers “peace from God” (Romans 1:7) to all who receive His grace. He makes “peace with God” (Romans 5:1) for those who surrender to Him in faith. And He brings the “peace of God” (Philippians 4:7) to those who walk with Him. As we hear so often at Christmas, the beginning of His earthly life was heralded by angels who pronounced peace on earth (Luke 2:14). There never really has been peace on earth in the sense we think of it. Wars and rumors of wars have characterized the entire two millennia since that first Christmas, as well as all the time before it. The announcement of peace on earth was a two-pronged proclamation. First, it declared the arrival of the only One who ultimately can bring lasting peace on earth (which He will do when He returns to bring about the establishment of His earthly kingdom).
But more importantly, it was a proclamation that God’s peace was available to men and women. Read the words of Luke 2:14 carefully and note this emphasis: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men with whom He is pleased.” God is pleased with the people who yield their lives to Him. “The Lord takes pleasure in those who fear Him, in those who hope in His mercy” (Psalm 147:11 NKJV). When the angels proclaimed peace on earth, they were speaking primarily of a very personal, individual application of God’s peace that grows out of a firsthand knowledge of the Prince of Peace.
The prophetic message of Christmas is the good news of God’s answer to all the confusion, chaos, complexities, and conflicts of life. It is the gift of the newborn infant, who is also the Father of all eternity. He is an innocent child, yet He is a wise Counselor and mighty King. He is God with us. Immanuel.
This Christmas, consider the wonderful promise of Christ and how He has fulfilled these rich prophecies in your life through His saving, sanctifying, and sustaining work.
Dear Heavenly Father, I thank you for each and every person listening to this episode. Lord, I ask you to bless them and their families this holiday season. Lord, we thank you for sending Jesus to us and for saving us. We thank you for all the ways you are still saving us every day, not just from the world but from ourselves, too. Lord, we love you, and we are so grateful for you. You are amazing! We ask that you be with those who are all alone during this holiday season. We also pray in a special way for all those who are living on the streets during this holiday season. We pray all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I will not be posting a new episode tomorrow since it is Christmas. I will be back on Thursday though. I pray you have a blessed Christmas that is full of joy! I am so grateful I get to be part of your day. I love you all!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in June 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I've asked for the Spirit. We've all asked for the power of His Holy Spirit. We've all asked for His love. His love is there for us. He's not giving us false stones that look like bread to eat. He's going to give us the bread of life.”
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Do You Have Questions Too?
Romans 5:5 “And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love.”
Hope in the Lord does not disappoint has been a verse I have had to come back to over and over again. It is one that honestly I don’t really understand. I mean, I know plenty of people who have hoped in the Lord that their loved ones would be healed on this side of heaven, and they weren’t. They were surely disappointed. I have known people who were praying to get a certain job and they didn’t. I am sure they were disappointed. What about those who really want to be married and haven’t met their spouse yet, or those who want children and yet can’t conceive? I am sure they are hoping in the Lord to answer those prayers, and it hasn’t happened yet, I am sure they feel disappointed.
I have discovered that the Holy Spirit has been asking me to go deeper when I read something I don’t understand, which is a lot. I will be reading a scripture and then a question will pop into my head. At first I thought it was the enemy trying to get me to doubt my faith, or doubt what the scripture says. However, upon more prayer I have come to believe that the Holy Spirit doesn’t want me to just question something and then move on without an answer. I think He is calling me to work with people who have left the faith, and left the Lord. He is calling me to work with those who have been hurt by religion and want nothing to do with it and so they also have given up on the Lord. Or, maybe they have just grown apart from Him, or never really knew they could have a relationship with Him.
I think the Lord is trying to show me that if I am asking these questions, so are they. The answers that I have always been given don’t do it for me anymore. The Lord is asking me to go deeper. He is asking me to truly understand who He is and why He does what He does. I mean, we will never understand most of what He does until we join Him in heaven, as our brains are so limited as to what we can actually understand and comprehend. However, I do feel He is telling me to go deeper when a question comes up, like the ones today, and ask Him to help me understand. You can do the same with your questions. You can bring them to the Lord, and He will answer them. Do you struggle to believe that? I know I do sometimes. I am hesitant to ask the Lord a direct question because I always think I won’t get an answer, and then I will feel rejected. However, He always answers. Maybe not right away, and maybe not how you thought He would. I have one friend who said she always asks God questions, and she hears nothing. Then, later in the week, as someone is talking to her, she realizes that is the answer to the question she asked God. Sometimes, she will get an answer through the scriptures that are read at mass. I have another friend who said she doesn’t receive a lot of answers during her prayer time, but then when she is in the shower is when her questions are answered. If you are asking the Lord questions and feel He is not answering you, I want to assure you that He definitely is. It just might be in a way you are not recognizing. Be on the lookout for it, be expecting an answer in unexpected ways, and you will find them
Back to today’s verse, “And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love.” I went back to read the verse before this because this verse starts with “this hope,” so I thought, what hope? What does “this hope” mean? The verse before today’s verse says, “But that’s not all! Even in times of trouble we have a joyful confidence, knowing that our pressure will develop in us patient endurance. And patient endurance will refine our character, and proven character leads us back to hope. And this hope is not a disappointing fantasy because we can now experience the endless love of God cascading into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who lives in us!” That was the passion translation, so today’s verse sounds a bit different in that translation.
The hope we are talking about in this verse is one that we have earned. It is one that was hard fought. It is one that was forged out of the fires of difficult situations. It is a hope that we gain after we have developed patience and character. God never told us we wouldn’t have disappointments in life. He never promised us that our lives would be easy. He actually told us it would be hard. Yet He does promise that He will never leave us or forsake us. He will be there with us in our disappointing moments. Ones where we cry out to the Lord and ask why He is not answering our prayers, why He took our loved one from us, why He put these desires into our hearts and now is not bringing them to fruition.
I think we have all asked the Lord at least one of these questions, and I think we were probably justified in doing so. I don’t think God minds when we ask questions. I think He minds when we ask questions and then don’t wait to hear the answers or go elsewhere to seek the answers. How many times have we done that? We cried out to the Lord and then tried to fix it ourselves or looked for some earthly solution to try to fix it. God wants us to go to Him and then sit with Him and listen to what He has to say. He has the most simple answers to the most complicated questions if we allow Him to answer. He can turn things around in a moment, but often, we are too busy trying to do it ourselves to let Him fix it. We tire ourselves out trying one thing after another, and I bet He is looking down at us the same way we look at any kids in our lives who are trying to do things themselves when you know if they just asked for help, you could do it so much quicker.
Sometimes, kids need to do something themselves so that they learn how to do it. Other times, they need to do something themselves so they can learn a lesson. We are the same. No matter how old we get, we are never too old to learn a lesson. God will allow us to learn the same lesson as many times as it takes for us to truly learn it. He will allow us to solve our problems on our own if that is what we want. I am sure it breaks His heart to see us wearing ourselves out doing everything ourselves when He knows if we just partnered with Him, it would be so much easier. Yet, He loves and respects us enough to let us decide when we invite Him in and when we want to partner with Him. The best news, it is never too late. You might be 20 years old, and you might be 80 years old. It is never too late to invite the Lord in and watch your life changee.
I don’t think I answered the questions from earlier or talked about the verse too much; I guess the Holy Spirit had a different idea this morning. However, I do want to look at the verse a bit more because I think that will help answer the questions. “And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love.” The verse says that hope will not lead to disappointment because we know how much God loves us because He has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with His love. The message translations said, “And this hope is not a disappointing fantasy because we can now experience the endless love of God cascading into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who lives in us!”
Did you know the Holy Spirit lives inside of you? If you have been listening to this podcast for a while, you probably know that, as I say it often. However, if you didn’t know this, it is true! Maybe you did know that already, and yet you don’t really know what that means. It means that the spirit of Christ lives inside of you. It means that all of that power that Jesus had when He lived on earth, the power He used to do all His miracles, that lives inside of you. It means the Holy Spirit, the one that raised Jesus from the dead, lives inside of you! Did you know you had so much power living inside of you? Guess what else you have? According to the Passion Translation, you have the endless love of God cascading into your hearts through the Holy Spirit that lives in you! The other translation says that the Lord has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with His love.
We have power and love filling our hearts because of the Holy Spirit that lives inside of us. Isn’t God remarkable? This is why hope in the Lord does not disappoint. It is because He is constantly filling our hearts with love. This verse does not mean that we will never be disappointed, we will, probably often. However, it means that if we hope in the Lord, He will come through for us. Maybe not in the way we wanted Him to, but whatever we are going through, He will use it for our good. I have heard this in many songs, and it has brought me comfort. I hope it will bring you comfort too. If you are struggling, if you are in a dark place right now, if all seems lost, then know God is not done with you yet. He allows us to go through trials, but He never leaves us there, and He never leaves our side while we are in them. If your life is not as you want it to be, if it is not as you had hoped it would be, then God is not done yet. Keep turning to Him, keep inviting Him in, and then watch as He transforms your life. Expect it; be on the lookout for amazing things, and you will find them!
Dear Heavenly Father, wow, I wasn’t expecting all that today. Please bless all those listening to this episode. Please help us to really hear what you said today and to allow it to take root in our lives and bear fruit. Help us to better understand what it means to have the Holy Spirit living inside of us. Help us to gain a better understanding of what it means to believe that hope in you does not disappoint. Help us to turn to you instead of the world when we need answers. Help us to invite you in today, instead of going through one more day on our own. Help us to surrender, Lord. Help us to accept your love. We love you, Lord, and we ask this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I pray something I said today touched your heart and helped you to see things in a new light. I want to invite you all to join me in January for mentoring. It is on Tuesday nights at 8 PM EST on Zoom. I know some of you are far away, and 8 PM EST is the middle of the night for you. If this is the case, you could still join mentoring and watch the recording. I promise you will still get a lot out of it. January’s theme is Identity, which we all seem to struggle with. I hope you will consider joining me. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day.
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in June 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I felt like the Lord was reassuring me that all I've asked for, especially because I was having a little struggle with ministry and ministering and stuff last night, all I've asked for, he's not going to give me a stone. His love is there.”
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In Returning and Rest, You Will Be Saved
Isaiah 30:15 “For thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel: In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength. But you refused.”
This verse was given at the prayer group yesterday. I really like this verse because it says, in returning and rest, you shall be saved. Have you heard this before? I don’t think that I have heard it at all. The world tells us that we will be saved when we save ourselves. It tells us that we will be saved if we do enough. If we figure out the right thing to do, then we will be saved. If we figure out how to be perfect, then we will be saved. If we figure out who God wants us to be and become that person, then we will be saved. This verse is a welcome change. It is telling us that if we return and rest we will be saved. How great would it be to just rest in the Lord and be saved? How great would it be to finally stop doing so much and yet still be saved?
I had my Message Translation Bible out to look up a verse for someone else, and so I thought I would share with you what this verse says in the message translation. “God, the Master, the Holy of Israel, had this solemn council: "Your salvation requires you to turn back to me and stop your silly efforts to save yourselves. Your strength will come from settling down in complete dependence on me – the very thing you've been unwilling to do.” When I heard this, it rang true in my soul. How many of us are trying to save ourselves or our loved ones? How many of us are wearing ourselves out, trying so hard to do all we can do? We are so tired, we feel so weary, and yet we feel like we are just running in circles. Nothing is really changing.
This verse may be our answer. God Himself is telling us if we return to him and rest, we shall be saved. The question just came into my mind that I never really left the Lord, so why do I have to return to Him? If you were wondering the same, I think the returning is returning the issue to Him. We tend to pray about our problems, we hand them over to the Lord, and then we take them back. We get frustrated, we run out of ways we can help ourselves, and we turn back to God. Then we think of a new way we can help ourselves, so we take our problem back from God. Then we fail, and we give it back to God. Rinse and repeat over and over again. God is telling us to just rest in Him. He will save us.
I love how the message translation says, “Stop your silly efforts to save yourselves.” I know it doesn’t feel like our efforts are silly. We are just doing all we can to save ourselves or our loved ones. Who could blame us? However, if we really think about it, isn’t it kinda silly to think we could do a better job than God? Isn’t it kinda silly to think we might have a better plan than he does? He is the Lord of the whole universe. He not only knows everything about us, including our innermost thoughts, but He knows everything about everything. It stands to reason that He would be about to come up with a better plan because He has more information.
The verse also says, “In quietness and in trust shall be your strength.” It seems as if we are trying to find our strength in our own ability to save the situation. However, in this verse, the Lord is telling us that when we rest in him, we can find strength in that quietness and trust. Have you ever found strength in quietness before? Have you ever been really worried about something and just sat in silence with the Lord? If you haven’t done this before, I invite you to give it a try. You would be surprised how much comfort and strength you can get when you sit in silence with the Lord. God has told our prayer group several times that it is in the silence that He is healing us. This is when He is ministering to us. This is when He is comforting us and building us up.
Matthew Kelly always talks about the “Classroom of Silence.” He talks about how much you can learn when you sit in the classroom of silence. It is a time when we don’t have to be thinking. We don’t have to be planning. We don’t have to know everything or do everything. We can just sit there and be with the Lord. I invite you to sit with the Lord today, even if it is only five or ten minutes, and see if you feel any different. Whenever I do it, which is not as often as I would like, I feel a lot more peace than I had before. It is as if the worry of the world melts away, and I am filled with peace. Sometimes, it is a lasting peace that I carry with me into the day. Sometimes, it is peace while I am with the Lord, and then I allow all the worries of the world to creep back in. Either way, I have peace for at least those few moments, and it is great!
We can also find our strength in trust. When we trust the Lord, we feel so much stronger because we understand that He is in control and that we know that He is looking out for our best interests. Think of someone in your life that you trust completely. Maybe it is your spouse, or your best friend, or a sibling, or your parents. Who is someone that you trust? Do you feel more confident when you talk to that person? Do you feel like they are giving you good advice or leading you in the right direction? Now, imagine you had that kind of trust in the Lord. What would that feel like? What would that look like? When we know without a doubt that the Lord is in control, then we can feel stronger in our decisions because we know that even if we mess up, God will use it for good. We know that every decision we make isn’t life or death. God is a good Father, and He allows us to make the wrong choice, but then He uses that wrong choice for our good.
Today’s verse ends with, “But you refused.” What if we stopped refusing? What if we decided we were going to turn back to the Lord and accept His help? What if we made the decision to stop trying to fix everything on our own and just rested in the Lord while He saved us? Wouldn’t that be so much better? Wouldn’t it feel so good to just finally rest and let someone else handle it all? Aren’t you tired of trying to do it on your own? I know I am! God is telling us to rest in Him, and He will save us. We know God is not a liar, so why is this so hard? He is telling us we will find our strength in quietness and trust. I think we could all use more strength. So, what if we just rested in the Lord and received all the strength He wants to give us in the quietness, trusting God is in control and He knows best?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we are sorry we always try to save ourselves. Please help us. Please show us how to sit with you in the silence. Please show us how to rest in you and trust in you. Lord, you are amazing. You are King of Kings and Lord of Lords. We want to trust that Your plan is better. Please help us. We love you, Lord, and ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus! I look forward to meeting you here again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed weekend!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in June 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I come with my joy. I come with my love. I come with everything that is good. So be not afraid to come. Be not afraid to share all that I share with you, with others, so you can enrich them in my way.”
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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Why We Love Mary So Much!
Today I thought I would do something different. Instead of starting with a scripture. I decided to talk to you today about my mentoring topic for this month. It is Why We Love Mary So Much! “Why do Catholics love Mary so much?” This is a question that I have been asked a lot by Catholics as well as other Christians. I have also been often asked, “Why do Catholics Worship Mary.” Let’s address that one first; it is a much simpler answer. We do not worship Mary. We only worship the Lord. We have a deep love and devotion for Mother Mary because of her unique role in God's plan for salvation, virtues, and intercession. Today, I will review some key reasons Catholics love Mary so much. Here are some key reasons for this devotion to Mary:
1. Her Role as the Mother of God****
Mary is honored as the Theotokos, or "God-bearer," because she gave birth to Jesus Christ, who is both fully God and fully man. This makes her central to the mystery of the Incarnation—the event through which God became human to save humanity. Catholics view her as the mother of not only Jesus but, in a spiritual sense, the entire Church.
2. Her Yes to God’s Will****
Mary's willingness to say "Yes" (Fiat) to God at the Annunciation (Luke 1:38) is seen as a model of perfect faith and obedience. She trusted God's plan, even without fully understanding it, and her example inspires Catholics to follow her in surrendering to God's will.
3. Her Role as a Spiritual Mother****
From the Cross, Jesus entrusted Mary to all humanity when He said to the Apostle John: "Behold your mother" (John 19:27). Catholics believe that Mary is a spiritual mother who cares for all believers, interceding for them and guiding them closer to Jesus.
4. Her Sinlessness and Purity****
Mary’s Immaculate Conception (her being conceived without original sin) and her sinless life make her the perfect model of holiness. Catholics honor her purity and strive to imitate her virtues, especially humility, love, and faithfulness.
5. Her Intercessory Power****
Catholics believe that Mary, being close to Jesus, has a unique role in interceding for humanity. Asking for Mary’s intercession is like asking a trusted and holy friend to pray on one's behalf. This belief is rooted in her role at the Wedding at Cana (John 2:1-12), where her intercession led to Jesus performing His first miracle.
6. A Deeply Personal Connection****
For many Catholics, Mary is not only a figure of reverence but also a source of comfort, understanding, and maternal love. Devotions like the Rosary help foster this personal connection, allowing the faithful to meditate on Jesus' life through Mary's perspective.
7. Her Title as Queen of Heaven****
Mary is honored as the Queen of Heaven because of her close association with Christ, the King. This title emphasizes her exalted place in heaven, where she continues interceding for the Church.
The title "Queen of Heaven" is one of the many honorary titles given to Mary, reflecting her unique role in salvation history and her exalted position in heaven. This title is deeply rooted in Scripture, tradition, and theology. Here's an explanation of why Mary is called the Queen of Heaven:
1. Mary as Mother of the King (Queen Mother)****
In biblical tradition, the mother of the king in the Davidic kingdom held the role of the queen mother (Gebirah in Hebrew), a position of honor and influence. For example:
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In the Old Testament, the queen mother often interceded on behalf of the people (e.g., Bathsheba in 1 Kings 2:19).
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Since Jesus is the eternal King of the universe (Luke 1:32-33), Mary, as His mother, is honored as the Queen Mother in His heavenly kingdom.
2. Scriptural Foundations****
The title is not explicitly mentioned in Scripture but is supported by several biblical themes:
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The Annunciation (Luke 1:32-33): The angel Gabriel tells Mary that her son will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and His kingdom will have no end. If Jesus is King, Mary is logically the Queen Mother.
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The Woman Clothed with the Sun (Revelation 12:1): In this passage, Mary is symbolically depicted as a woman crowned with twelve stars, representing her royal dignity and role as the Queen of Heaven.
3. Tradition and Early Church Fathers****
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From the earliest centuries, Christians recognized Mary’s special status as the mother of the King. Titles like “Queen of Heaven” and “Queen of Angels” began to appear in Christian prayers and hymns.
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Saints like St. Ephrem and St. Augustine wrote of Mary’s royal dignity, associating her with Christ’s kingship and her role in the divine plan of salvation.
4. Mary’s Coronation****
Catholic tradition holds that, after her Assumption into heaven, Mary was crowned as Queen by Christ. This is often depicted in Christian art and is the subject of the Fifth Glorious Mystery of the Rosary: The Coronation of Mary as Queen of Heaven and Earth.
5. Her Role in Intercession****
As Queen of Heaven, Mary is believed to intercede for humanity before her Son, Jesus Christ. This is similar to the role of the queen mother in the Davidic kingdom, who acted as an advocate for the people.
6. Papal Affirmations****
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Pope Pius XII, in his encyclical Ad Caeli Reginam (To the Queen of Heaven) in 1954, formally proclaimed Mary as Queen of Heaven and Earth, affirming this title as a reflection of her close relationship with Christ and her role in the Church.
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He declared that Mary’s queenship is rooted in her divine motherhood and her unique participation in Christ’s work of redemption.
7. Symbolism of Her Queenship****
Mary’s title as Queen of Heaven underscores her:
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Exalted dignity as the Mother of God.
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Role as intercessor and advocate for the faithful.
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Victory over sin and death, as she shares in her Son’s triumph through her Assumption.
8. Devotions to Mary as Queen****
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The Litany of Loreto includes the invocation “Queen of Heaven, pray for us.”
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Feasts like the Queenship of Mary (celebrated on August 22) honor her royal status.
Marian hymns, such as "Hail, Holy Queen" (Salve Regina), reflect this devotion.
Ultimately, Catholics love Mary because she leads them closer to Jesus. Her life and example remind believers of the transformative power of grace and the importance of trusting in God's plan.
I hope you enjoyed this explanation about Mary and why we love her so much. I hope it cleared up any confusion about whether or not we worship Mary. We don’t. I hope listening to all this makes you a bit more curious to study Mary on your own. She is really a remarkable woman. Her yes to the Lord is so incredible. She always points us back to her son or to the Father.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone listening to this episode. Lord, thank you so much for sending your son to Earth to save us. Thank you for giving us Mary as our spiritual Mother. We couldn’t have asked for a better example. Lord, we ask that you help us be more like Mary. We ask that you help us to say yes, even when we don’t quite understand all you are calling us to do. Give us the strength to say Yes to all you ask us to do, Lord. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. You can see the whole mentoring session on my YouTube channel if you liked this teaching on why we love Mary so much. It talks about the Immaculate Conception and explains what it means to do a Marian Consecration. It also has some little-known facts about Mary. I think you will enjoy it. I would also like to invite you all to join mentoring for this upcoming year. The first month’s theme will be Identity, and it is so needed. If we stand firm in our identity as children of God, then the enemy won’t be able to attack us as much. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in June 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, open more fully to my grace. Open to my love. Open your ears to everything I tell you. The more you are open, the more you are likely to receive, my children.”
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Witness Wednesday #141 Healing of Fibromyalgia
Today’s witness is from the internet. This morning in a prayer group, the leader talked about how her sister-in-law struggled with Fibromyalgia and suffered from migraines and the treatment wasn’t working. I felt the Holy Spirit wanted me to do a witness on a healing of Fibromyalgia so that her sister in law could believe that if God did it for his person, He will do it for her too. Hope is such an important part of faith and it can also be so easy to lose it when you are in chronic pain for so long. Here is the miraculous story of Teresa’s healing of Fibromyalgia. Remember, God is the same yesterday, today and always. If He has done it before, He will do it again. We believe Lord, help our unbelief.
In the fall of 2002, my wife Teresa started experiencing some pain symptoms in her back that we could not find an explanation for. Over the next few years, it spread over her whole body. After going to many different doctors, she was finally diagnosed with Fibromyalgia. The diagnosis was confirmed by more than one doctor.
Fibromyalgia has different levels of severity in different people. My wife’s condition was particularly severe, and her health deteriorated to the point where she was only able to walk about 50 feet or so, and she could only be on her feet for about 90 seconds. The pain was getting worse and worse.
Three years later, in December of 2005, she was struck with another condition in her arms that was eventually diagnosed as Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (also known as RSD). Because of the intense pain, she lost use of both arms and hands, and was no longer able to care for herself at all. Her arms hurt so badly that it was painful even for air to blow on her skin sometimes. Over time, not using her arms, and not being able to walk very well, she became weaker and weaker, and her hands actually started to close up into a fist.
It was a very bad situation, and that is putting it lightly. And, it was getting worse day by day, month by month.
The next year, in August of 2006, I found out about a prayer email list at the company I work for. I joined the list, and sent out this email:
—–Original Message—–
From: Neal
Sent: Friday, August 18, 2006 11:07 AM
To: *
Subject: Prayer Request
Hi everyone. I have a prayer request.
Over the past four years, my wife Teresa has developed some chronic pain conditions that have baffled many doctors. The pain has become increasingly debilitating, and has left her very limited in what she is able to do physically.
God has faithfully brought us through it this far, and sent many people to help us along the way. He has blessed us in many ways, and we are very thankful. He has also led us to some good physicians, and we hope and pray that she is on the road to recovery.
I would like to ask you all to pray for her complete healing, and that God would use our testimony to bless others.
Thank you
Neal
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Someone replied to that email inviting me to a lunchtime study in one of the conference rooms at work. It was a study on divine healing. It was being led by a man named Bill Alsop. I came to the study. After it was over, I spoke to Bill briefly. He didn’t know me, but I asked him about praying for my wife. He invited me to his home that Friday night, August 25.
So, that Friday after work I picked up Teresa and we drove to his home. On the way there I remember that I was somewhat excited, and I was expecting that we would receive encouragement and strength to go on. There had been many people praying for us over the years. We had a few times where people came by to pray with us, and there were other times when we had gone to different places for prayer. I know there were lots more praying for us that we were not always aware of. It always helped us to keep going, and that was pretty much what I was expecting.
When we arrived, we talked with Bill and his wife Cathy for a short while, and then we started praying. Teresa was actually lying down on the floor at this point, and we were all praying in the name of the Lord Jesus. Some of the time they were praying in tongues, some of the time they were praying in English.
After a few minutes, he told my wife to stand up. He took her to the front door, and he told her to walk to the end of his street, turn the corner, walk up the hill to the mailboxes, touch one of them, then walk back. He told her to talk to God while she walked. (Bill later shared with us that the Holy Spirit had instructed him to do all of that in a vision he received while they were praying).
In my mind, I was thinking “What? She can’t even make it to the end of the driveway”…but before I could say anything, she took off walking out the door and down the street. I knew that unless something supernatural happened, she would collapse within two minutes of walking out the door.
However, before I had time to object, Bill turned to me and said this: “You have been praying to receive the Baptism with the Holy Spirit and speak in tongues.” That shocked me because I had not mentioned anything about that, even though it was absolutely true. God was getting my attention…to help me believe. He succeeded. I stood up, Bill put his hand on my chest, and I began speaking in tongues for the first time…just like they did in the Bible. I received the Baptism with the Holy Spirit right there in his living room, while at the same time my wife was walking down the street receiving a miraculous healing from God.
For a few minutes as I was speaking, I was somewhat overwhelmed in a flood of God’s presence, and I forgot that Teresa had gone out walking without me and without her wheelchair. Before long, I looked towards the door and she was standing there talking to Bill.
She made it! She walked all the way to the mailboxes and back. That is about four blocks. She was healed as she walked, and it was a miracle!
Bill told us to go buy her some walking shoes, and to go walking every day. We talked a little while longer, and then drove home. On the way home, I remember feeling like I just came out of a whirlwind, and wondering to myself “what just happened to us…” The pain was gone from Teresa’s body. She made the comment in the car that she was able to “feel her skin again.”
We got home and went for our first walk together in years. We walked halfway to the end of our street and back, and she made it with no pain. The next day we walked farther and still no pain. No more need for the prescription pain medications for Fibromyalgia…and she has not taken one of those since then.
We continued walking farther and farther each day, and she was regaining her strength now that all of the terrible pain and fatigue were gone. After about a week, she was able to walk for a mile. Not long after that, it became two miles. We donated her wheelchair to charity. She was able to use her arms again, and feed herself and dress herself and everything else you do with your arms and hands.
She had a previously scheduled appointment coming up with the main Fibromyalgia doctor, and we decided to keep the appointment and tell him the good news. After that appointment, I sent this message to the prayer email list:
—————————————————————
From: Neal
Sent: Wednesday, November 29, 2006 3:06 PM
To: *
Subject: Testimony Update
Hi everyone.
I am the person who sent out the testimony back in August about Christ healing my wife Teresa from Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (FM/CFS).
I just wanted to send out a little story that I hope will build your faith. This is a story about what it is like to tell a doctor that Jesus healed you.
Last Wednesday, I took Teresa back the specialist she has been seeing for FM/CFS. His name is Dr. Charles Lapp, and he’s in Charlotte, NC. He is one of the top experts on for that condition in America, and he is absolutely the finest medical professional I have ever dealt with.
Teresa hasn’t been back to seen him since God healed her on August 25, so we were very excited to tell him what happened. The last time he saw her she was in constant severe pain. She was only able to stand up for about two minutes before feeling like she was going to collapse, and even sitting up was difficult.
This time was a completely different story, because now she walks about a mile or two for exercise every day, and all the pain and suffering is gone
Here’s how the appointment started:
Dr. Lapp: “You look great! How are you doing?”
Teresa: “Have you ever heard of someone getting healed from Fibromyalgia?”
Dr. Lapp: “No I haven’t. (he looked surprised and excited).”
Teresa: “Well, I have a story to tell you. On August 25, God healed me…”
Then she told him the story of what happened. He looked to be both amazed and excited at the same time.
He did all of his tests on her, and he just kept laughing because everything was negative. He said he had never seen anything like this before. We said “we haven’t either, but it sure is awesome!”
Then, he gave her a hug, told her how happy he was for her, and wrote up his report. Here’s what he wrote at the end of the report…and I quote:
“Assessment: CFS/FM – miraculously resolved!”
There’s nobody like Jesus.
I hope this will help you to believe that God is still doing miracles, and healing people.
—————————————————————
And now, years later, Teresa is an athlete. She is at the gym every day doing some extreme workouts that would would put most men in the world to shame. She is one of the most physically fit people that I know, and that is not an exaggeration.
The experience we had the night she was healed started us on a journey. We began learning more about the Holy Spirit and how He wants to work through natural people to do supernatural things…and set people free from whatever conditions are holding them back.
The rest of the writings on this blog are mostly a collection of things that we have learned over the last few years as we began stepping out in faith and ministering to others. I hope this blesses you and brings encouragement. God loves you!
Neal
CLICK HERE for Neal & Teresa's Blog
I am so grateful to Neal & Teresa for sharing their story so that it can build the faith of so many others. God was so good to them and will be so good to you, too. Keep asking for healing, whether it is for you or a loved one. God hears your prayers. He doesn’t always heal when we want Him to or how we want him to, but He always answers our prayers.
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Heal Our Lands
2 Chronicles 7:14 “ If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, pray, seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.”
I was at an Encounter Alumni event last night, and my friend Theresa was sharing with the group about her new book that she just published on Amazon. His book is called Weapons of Our Warfare. In this book, she identifies thirteen spiritual weapons and how to use them, as well as some amazing results she has seen when these spiritual weapons are employed in the present-day spiritual battle we face. I am excited to read her book and I hope you will get a copy and check it out as well.
When Theresa was giving a talk last night, she mentioned 2 Chronicles 7:14, and when she did, I felt the Spirit prompt me to write it down and check it out for today’s episode. She received this verse while she was driving around Boston after the Boston Marathon Bombing had taken place. She felt like the Lord told her that if we prayed for 1 hour a day in the Spirit, then the Lord would protect our land from attacks. I know that everyone listening to this podcast does not have the gift of tongues and some may not even want this gift.
First, let me just say that I was right there with you at one point. I wanted nothing to do with the gift of tongues. I had heard people in my dad’s prayer group who had that gift, and it just sounded weird, and I didn’t want to be weird. Then I heard a speaker, Anne Trufant, talking one time, and she said how she felt the same way. She would pray for the Lord to give her all the gifts of the Holy Spirit, but not that one because that was weird. Then she said she was counseling troubled teens, and one of them backed her up against the wall one day with his hand on her throat. She said after he left the room, she prayed to the Lord to give her all He had for her, even the gift of tongues.
I would also like just to take a minute to talk about the gift of tongues. When you are speaking in tongues, you are just praying in another language, a language that only God can understand. So, God and God alone will hear and understand whatever you are saying. Unless you are speaking in tongues with a group and someone asks for God to interpret what was said. What I love about praying in tongues is that it is I don’t have to know what to pray for. When you are speaking in tongues, the Holy Spirit is praying straight from your heart to God the Father. How many times have you been in a situation where you didn’t even know what to pray for or what to say? When you speak in tongues, the Holy Spirit prays a perfect prayer for you.
In case you were wondering where this idea of tongues came from and if it is backed by scripture, it is. There are several references to speaking in tongues in the Bible. Romans 8:26-27 says, “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.” This explains that we don’t know how to pray as we should. However, the Spirit can intercede on our behalf, and the Holy Spirit will intercede for us according to the will of God. The Holy Spirit doesn’t just know what we want, it knows what God wants as well and can intercede for us according to that will. How amazing is that?
Now that I have explained a bit about the gift of tongues let's get back to the verse. “If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, pray, seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.” this verse is saying that if we humble ourselves, pray, seek the Lord’s face and turn from our wicked ways, then He will hear us and will forgive our sin and heal our land. How badly do our sins and our lands need healing right now? When I think of our lands, I think of our houses, our cities, our states, and our country. Our country especially needs healing. It is so divided and so angry. That is the United States of America, at least. I know not everyone listening is from the United States. What about your country? Does it need healing? What about our cities and states, do they need healing?
What about our families, do they need healing? I know mine does. I think the whole world needs more Jesus. We need more love in the world. I am sure you can agree with that. The verse says, “If we humble ourselves, pray, seek His face, and turn from our wicked ways.” Can we do that? Can we turn from our wicked ways? Can we say sorry to the Lord for all we have done? What about humbling ourselves? Can we admit we don't know everything? Can we admit we can't do everything on our own? Only you can answer these questions. I am just pointing them out so that we can stop and answer them. I know a lot of us complain about how bad our country is right now and how we need someone to come in and change it. That is a good thought, and maybe the right president can make a lot of changes. However, whoever the president is, he is still human. This means we are putting a lot of our hope in the right person coming in to fix everything when we could be putting our hope in the Lord to fix everything. The Lord is not limited like humans are. He can do things that we can’t even imagine.
I often say, “I would do anything…” regarding things I have been praying about for a long time. For instance, I used to say I would do anything to have peace in my house. I would do anything to eliminate all the anger in my home. I would do anything for my kids to feel better. How about you? Have you ever said this? When we look around the United States, we see high grocery prices. College tuition is ridiculously high, along with the interest rates on homes. When we look around, we might be tempted to say, I would do anything to change all this in the U. S. We also had another school shooting yesterday. We probably think we must do all we can to prevent this. This is a normal response. Anyone would want to change this situation. We turn to legislation, we turn to the president, we turn to the states, and who we should be turning to is God.
God is telling us in this verse how we can heal our lands. We can pray for all that worries us and all that needs to be changed. We can seek Him. Is He the one we are seeking, or are we seeking answers from the world? It makes a difference. We can be humble and we can turn from our wicked ways. God will forgive not only our sins but he will heal our lands as well.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening today. Lord, please help us to hear your words and abide by them. Help us to turn to you for answers instead of turning to the world. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Tuesday: Today’s Word from the Lord was received in June 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Each of you needs a different measuring stick. I know what to do with each of you. I will dig deep into the parts of you that you cannot find. I know each of you intimately.”
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Still Waters (Psalm 23)
The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul. He leads me in the right path for his name’s sake. Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff— they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long.”
I've been hearing this song called Still Waters (Psalm 23) by Leanna Crawford on KLOVE Radio a lot these past few days. Before leaving for Prayer Group, I saw that the leader was using the song Psalm 23, although it was a different version of it, as one of the songs for the meeting. Yesterday afternoon, I got this deep feeling that that's what I was supposed to talk to you about it because there's a lot of anxiety and worry going around these days. And I just talked to someone who lost her husband, and she said she's paranoid these days. She's worried about all the financial aspects of your husband dying. She's worried about her future. She is worried about a lot of things.
And I know she's not the only one. I know that we all have fear and worry over different kinds of things in our lives. I was really struck by the beginning part of the Still Waters song when it said, “Great Aunt Maurine said at a hundred and three, write scripture on your heart for when you need it.
And it also really struck me when she said, “Cause anxiety hates Psalm 23. So just say it to yourself 'til you believe it.” And I just thought, isn't God so good? Isn't it amazing how he gives us exactly what we need found right there in the scriptures? I have to be honest, I don't know a lot about the Psalms. I know Robert from our morning prayer group always asks people what their favorite Psalm is because he's memorized a bunch of them. And I think what a beautiful thing.
And also, I have no idea what my favorite Psalm is. And also, I didn't know that some of the Psalms have a specific purpose. I knew there were Psalms of praise and Psalms of lamentation. But I didn't know that there were Psalms that anxiety hated. And I didn't know that there were Psalms of protection like Psalm 91. And so I wanted to talk a little bit about Psalm 23 today because I think it's one that we've heard often. And yet, I don't know if we really know how powerful it is. I know I didn't know how powerful it was. And honestly, I didn't even really understand what it meant.
I never found it super powerful when I would read it, or even when I would hear it. “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul.” I didn't know what that meant. And I don't know if I still know completely what it means. But what the Lord pointed out to me when I was listening to the song today was he leads me to still waters. Even in the storm, there's still water. Even in the valleys, when you're at your lowest, he can lead you through that valley right next to still waters. To me, this verse is telling us that no matter what we're going through, if we let the Lord lead us, he'll lead us by still waters. He won't lead us into the eye of the storm.
He won't lead us by chaos and confusion. If our eyes are fixed on him, and if we follow his path through the storm, there will be still waters that we can follow. And don't we all need some still waters in the craziness of the storm? Also, what stuck out to me today was when it said, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
I think we all want for things. I've heard from people in my prayer group, and from my parents, as we get older, we want for less. But I think there are all things we want, even if those things are peace, health, safe passage, or maybe it is material things. Whatever it is, we all want for things.
And yet this is saying, the Lord is our shepherd, we shall not want. We can rely on him to give us all that we need, and all that we want. The Lord knows the desires of our hearts. He knows what it is we want. And he not only cares about the things that we need, but he cares about the things that we want too. He cares about the little requests, just as much as he cares about the big requests.
I know sometimes we don't want to feel greedy, and we don't want to ask God for the little things, because we love him, and we know that he's already given us so much. So why should we ask for more? And yet the Lord tells us in our prayer group, in the words of prophecy, over and over again, “I have so much more for you, but you're not asking.” So ask the Lord, we shall not want, he will give us what it is we need, he will give us what it is we want.
I feel like the Lord is saying there is no “too much.” Just ask. It can't hurt to ask. And that he wants to give us so much more. And we're not asking. And so I just want to invite you all to invite the Lord in, to ask for the big things, to ask for the little things. And to trust that when you ask, the Lord answers. Trust that the Lord will lead you to still waters. If you're especially worried about something right now, hand it over to the Lord and ask him to show you the still waters in the situation.
Everything that's written in the Bible is true. And so when it says the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want, he leads me to still waters. That's not saying he led the Israelites to still waters, but you, well, you're on your own. He leads us all to still waters. So if you're struggling for still waters right now, if you're struggling to find the peace in the situation you're in, if you've been in this situation for a long time and you're thinking, there are no still waters. You can see to the horizon, and there are no still waters. Then, I just invite you to look beyond the horizon and to know that God isn't bound by the horizon. He could take a storm and calm it in a second to have still waters.
He doesn't have to find different waters that are still. He can still the storm just as Jesus did when he was in that boat. Someone said at prayer group today that the Lord was telling her that somebody had an anxious heart or an anxious spirit, and He wanted them to hand it over to Him.
And so I encourage you, if that's you, if you are anxious about something, if you're worried about something, if you're worried about money, if you're worried about family issues, if you're worried about family members who are sick, I invite you to hand that over to the Lord. I invite you to read Psalm 23 over and over again, or to listen to the song on repeat until you have it flowing through your mind and until it brings you peace. Because I believe what the songwriter said when she said, “Anxiety hates Psalm 23.”
I don't think it was just a rhyme. I think it was the truth. Anytime we can have scripture to rely on, it’s a good thing. Anytime anxiety comes up, and we can stop our thought pattern in our tracks and recite a Psalm, recite a song that reminds us that God is stronger than that thought, then I know that we'll see our anxiety lessen each time we do this.
I know when we invite God in, he comes in. He doesn't saunter in. He doesn't meander in. When we call on the Lord, he comes running. He sends his angels flying at the speed of light to be by our side. And the more we can learn his scripture, the more we can memorize it and recall it at a moment's notice. Man, that makes the devil worried. When we have a firm grasp on scripture, the devil knows he can't trick us. The devil knows he can't use that scripture against us like he tried to do with Jesus.
Another thing the song says is to say it to yourself until you believe it. And I think that can be one thing we often overlook. We read these scriptures, and we might believe them on a surface level, but do we believe them in the depths of our hearts? Do we truly believe them? And do we believe them to be true for us? Sometimes, it's easy to believe that something can be true for someone else, and yet we struggle to believe that it's true for us.
We believe that God forgives other people’s sins, but we hold on to ours. We believe that God loves all of his children, but we don't believe he loves us or we struggle to believe he loves us. So when I'm saying learn these scripture verses, I don't mean read them once and kind of know what they say.
I mean, live in the scripture verses. Pick a verse or two and say it, memorize it, believe it, believe it to be true with your whole being, and then move on to a different scripture verse. I don't think we have to have the whole Bible memorized, but if you're struggling in an area like love, anxiety, worry, or whatever it is you're struggling with, find scripture verses that address that area and read them. If one touches your heart, if one stands out to you, if you read a scripture verse and it gives you strength, write it down, memorize it, and then when you're feeling those feelings, recall that scripture verse. This is why I love Christian music so much, because I just feel it in my soul.
I'm not really one who feels the Holy Spirit in a physical way often. A lot of people will say, oh, I could feel the Holy Spirit so strong in this room right now. I can’t. I usually don't feel that. I don't feel what they're saying. But when I listen to Christian music, I feel it with my whole soul, and it speaks right to my heart.
If there are songs that speak to what you're going through, I say the same thing that I said about scripture. Listen to it on repeat over and over again. Memorize it so that when you're in a tough spot, you can recall it. These songs remind us how much Jesus loves us, and how much God's there for us. Oftentimes, they have scripture verses built right into the song, like Psalm 23, Still Waters. This is why I love the music so much.
If you're struggling right now, I invite you to listen to some Christian music. I invite you to Google some scripture verses that have to do with whatever it is you're going through.
I guarantee you if you put in scripture verses for anxiety, worry, financial issues, marital trouble, parenting, whatever it is, scripture verses will come up. And I invite you to read them, to go over them, and to find ones that speak to you, that strengthen and encourage you. And I invite you to recall these when you are struggling.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you. We thank you for always being there for us. We thank you for being our shepherd and leading us to green pastures. We thank you for all the time you have led us to still waters throughout our lives. You are the best Lord and we love you tons!!
Thank you all for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. The theme for mentoring in January is Identity. You can’t imagine how much more freedom you have when you are sure of your identity in Christ. It is going to be a great month of mentoring, and you will learn some really important things. I hope you will consider joining me either on Tuesday nights for the live Zoom call or to watch the replays. Even if you can’t be on the live mentoring calls, I guarantee you will get a lot out of watching the recordings. I look forward to seeing you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day, and may the grace and favor of our Lord Jesus Christ be upon you.
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in June 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I am always watching, interacting with each one of you, my precious children. Never fear, never. No matter the situation, the severity of anything, know that I know that I am handling it.”
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God Is For You, Not Against You!
Psalm 139:5 “You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.”
I heard this verse at the prayer group yesterday, and I instantly liked it. It made me think of when I was little, and my dad would tuck me into bed at night. He would make the covers all tight around me so I felt safe and warm. It was such a cozy feeling, and all those feelings came flooding back when I heard this verse yesterday. God is our heavenly Father. He is always there for us in a way that our real fathers might not have been. I am lucky enough to have had a great father growing up. And I am lucky enough to have him still around to be a part of my life. However, even if you didn’t have a great father growing up or in your life right now, you have a heavenly Father who is amazing.
I know sometimes it can be hard to believe that our heavenly Father is amazing, especially if we didn’t have a great earthly father. It can be hard when we look at the Old Testament and see all the things God did to see God as a caring and loving Father. I know my kids always get stuck in the book of Noah with God flooding the whole world. There were times when God’s judgment required him to do some things that I am sure He didn’t want to do. It is hard, at least for me, to reconcile that God with the God of the New Testament. The God who sent His only Son to save the sinful world. The God who would have sent His son even if it was only to save one person.
When I talk with people about how they picture God, often it is not as a loving Father. They see Jesus as loving and kind and pretty easy to talk to. However, they see God as the disciplinarian. They see Him as an older man who is sitting up in heaven on his thrown, feeling pretty high and mighty and looking down on us and waiting for us to screw up, so He can say, I told you so! It breaks my heart to hear that because I know how much God loves us. I know how much He wants us to succeed. He is not waiting for us to mess up. He is routing for us to be wildly successful. He is up there cheering us on. When we do mess up, He is there to help us through it. His heart breaks when our heart breaks.
God is rooting for you. He wants you to win. He wants you to be successful. He wants you to be able to spend eternity with Him. I think this is something many of us have trouble believing because I have heard many songs lately that have the words, “He is for you, not against you.” I don’t think it would be in so many songs if people didn’t have a hard time believing it. Songs usually speak to common areas of struggle. I promise you God is rooting for you. He wouldn’t have sent his song to die a horrible, painful death just so He could sit up in heaven and judge you, waiting for you to mess up so He can say, “I told you so.”
There are many songs that I love that show us how much God loves us. One of my favorite’s is Cory Asbury’s Reckless Love. If you don’t know that song, I highly recommend you look it up. You can even google the version with his testimony in it. He explains the Bible verse for that song and why he wrote that song. It is so beautiful. However, the song I feel the Lord wants me to share with you today is another favorite called Drops in the Ocean by Hawk Nelson. It is the song that came to mind when I wrote that God is for you, not against you. Here are the words to that song.
I want you as you are, not as you ought to be. Won’t you lay down your guard and come to Me? The shame that grips you now is crippling. It breaks My heart to see you suffering.
God does not need us to wait until we are perfect to come to Him. He is not waiting for us to be someone else, some better version of ourselves. He wants us just as we are. I love how it is asking us to lay down our guard and come to Him. How many of us struggle with that? We have our guard up, and maybe it is for a really good reason. Maybe we have been hurt a lot in this world by people who should have loved and protected us. God knows why we have our guard up, and yet, with Him, we don’t need it. He is asking us to let down our guard and just come to Him as we are. He can see the shame that has a hold on us and it breaks His heart to see us suffering so much. It breaks His heart to see us holding onto shame when He could take it all away if we just let Him.
The song goes on to say: Cause I am for you. I’m not against you. Why do we think God is against us? Why do we think He is hoping we fail? Where did this idea come from? If we look at the Bible as a whole, there is far more in there about God being a loving God who saves his people than there is about God rooting for His people to fail. Even when it comes to Sodom and Gomorrah, He was willing to save them if even ten of them were righteous, and yet none were to be found. God does not want even one of His children to perish. He is not wanting us to fail. He is for us, not against us. He is for you, not against you! Don’t believe the lies of the enemy. God is for you!!
My very favorite part of this song is:
If you wanna know how far My love can go, just how deep, just how wide. If you wanna see how much you mean to Me. Look at My hands, look at My side. If you could count the times, I'd say you are forgiven; it’s more than the drops in the ocean.
This part took my breath away the first time I really heard it. If you want to know how far my love can go, just how deep, just how wide. If you want to see how much you mean to me, look at my hands, look at my side. Man, it really hit me. God sent Jesus to save me. If I was the only one on earth, He would have still sent Jesus. Look at his hands; He has the wounds of the cross. Looks at His side, where they pierced him with a spear. He did that for me. Does that not help you to see how much God loves you?
I also love that it says, If you could count the times I’d say you are forgiven, it’s more than the drops in the ocean. Could we even count the drops in the ocean? We think God is up in heaven waiting to catch us doing something wrong, and yet this song is saying that he is up there forgiving us every time we do something wrong. He has forgiven us more times than we can even count. How amazing is that?
The song also says, “Don't think you need to settle for a substitute. When I'm the only love that changes you.” Did you know that God’s love could change you if you let it? The love that we get from others here on earth does not change us. God’s love is the only love that changes us. When we realize how much we are loved by God. When we realize He is for us and not against us, our whole world can change. We will have a confidence that those around us can’t understand. It is a confidence in who we are because of who God created us to be. It is a confidence that no matter what we have done or will do, God will always love us. He is always rooting for us and wanting us to succeed.
God is always around us. If we look back to today’s verse, it says, “You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.” God goes before us and behind us. He lays His hand on us and guides us. We can count on Him to always be there. We can count on Him to show us the path he wants us to take. He hems us in, behind, and in front. He is there, creating a barrier of protection around us. He is for us, not against us.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each of us listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you, and we thank you for always being there for us. We thank you for being for us and not against us. We thank you for forgiving us so often. We thank you for wanting us as we are, not as we ought to be. You are amazing. We ask you to help give us a renewal of the mind when it comes to how we see you. We ask that you help conform our minds to who you really are instead of who we might think you are. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in June 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I had a vision of Jesus, and we were following him, and we were just dancing along this road and rejoicing, following him. And he was dancing, and we were having a grand old time. The sense that I got was that no matter what we go through or the burden we have to carry, He does bring us through it. And he always gives us the joy back, and we know our joy is in him. So we'll dance our way into the kingdom someday.”
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Don’t Stop Praying
Jeremiah 29:12 “Then when you call upon me and come and pray to me, I will hear you.”
I heard this song on KLOVE this morning called Don’t Stop Praying by Matthew West. I was wondering if I should use it for my podcast this morning, and then I saw on Facebook the verse above, and I figured it was the Holy Spirit telling me you should use it. A week ago today, I did an episode about how we don’t have to fear and we don’t have to despair because God is always there for us. He will bring us back from faraway places, and He will bring our children back, too. I know this brought people some comfort as they are really struggling right now and that episode was definitely words of encouragement for them.
This morning, when I heard this song, I thought that it goes well with the episode about not fearing as Jesus hears our cries and answers our prayers. He tells us this often: I think we just struggle to either hear Him or maybe we just struggle to believe Him. I am not sure which, but I think this song can help build us up especially if we are feeling down this holiday season. If this is your first holiday season without a loved one, then you are probably trying to figure out how to navigate feeling so many emotions at one time. Feeling happy for the holiday season with the family you do have but sad you can’t share it with the ones you have lost. Feeling angry that they are not still here with you and yet grateful they get to be with Jesus. There can be so many other emotions as well.
I thought this song seemed to touch on a lot of the things we may be feeling right now, so I wanted to share it with you. The song starts off by saying:
What's your impossible? Your "I need a miracle"
What's got you barely hanging by a single thread?
What looks so hopeless now? What weighs down your heart with doubt?
What is your impossible? What is that thing you are praying for that you just can’t see a way out? You can’t see a way through. You can’t see any solution, and yet you really need a solution. What is that thing that you are looking at and saying, “I need a miracle.” What has you barely hanging on by a single thread? What are you so upset about that you are ready to give up? You are trying not to; you are trying to hold on, but it is getting too heavy, and you are afraid you will have to let go. What looks so hopeless, and what is weighing your heart down? We all have things in our lives that we struggle with. I do believe some have it harder than others, but none of us have it easy. We all have something we struggle with. We all have heavy burdens; some are just heavier than others.
The song goes on to say:
You beg for a breakthrough, but no sign of breakthrough yet
When you've cried, and you've cried 'til your tears run dry
The answer won't come, and you don't know why
And you wonder if you can bow your head even one more time
If this is you, know you are not the only one. God’s timing can take a really long time sometimes. We beg for a breakthrough, and yet we don’t see any signs of any movement in the situation. God is working in your situation; you just haven’t seen it yet. It reminds me of the story of Bamboo. A Chinese bamboo tree is planted, watered, and fertilized daily, but there are no visible signs of growth for the first four years. In the fifth year, the bamboo tree grows rapidly, reaching heights of up to 90 feet in just six weeks. Sometimes, our breakthroughs are like that: there is no progress, and then all of a sudden, we have a huge breakthrough.
Have you been crying and crying so much that you feel you can’t cry another drop? Have you looked for answers, and yet they don’t seem to come? Do you feel like you can’t pray anymore? Like you can’t even bow your head just one more time? Do you try to pray, and yet no words come? You are not alone. If this is you, don’t give up. As the song says:
Don't stop praying
Don't stop calling on Jesus' name
Keep on pounding on Heaven's door
And let your knees wear out the floor
Even when all seems pointless, even when you feel like your prayers aren’t being heard, don’t stop praying. Don’t stop calling on Jesus’s name. Jesus promised us that whatever we ask for in His name will be given to us so that His Father in Heaven will be glorified. So, don’t stop asking. We are told over and over again in the Bible: ask, and you shall receive. We don’t know when, where, or how we will receive, but God promises us when we ask, we shall receive. I love how it says, “Keep pounding on Heaven’s door and let your knees wear out the floor.” This paints the picture of someone who is desperate for their prayers to be answered. How badly do you want your prayers answered? Are you asking the Lord every now and then, or are you pounding on Heaven’s door and letting your knees wear out the floor?
Don't stop believing
'Cause mountains move with just a little faith
And your Father's heard every single word you're saying
So, don't stop praying
Don’t stop believing, and He will come through for you. Don’t stop believing he can move the mountain in front of you. Don’t stop believing He can fix your situation or heal your pain, sorry, and grief. Don’t stop believing He will find you that spouse you are looking for or give you that baby you are wanting so badly. You don’t need a lot of faith, just a mustard seed size, so don’t stop believing. I promise you God has heard every word you are saying. He hears you and He is working all things for your good in His timing. I know that is the hardest part, waiting on his timing, and yet His timing is perfect.
The song goes on to say:
He's close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit
The Alpha and Omega knows how your story ends
When you've cried, and you've cried 'til your tears run dry
The answer won't come, and you don't know why
And you wonder if you can bow your head even one more time
Oh, do it one more time
And don't stop praying
God is close to the brokenhearted. I have learned recently that sometimes, when you feel the farthest from the Lord, it is actually when the Lord is closest to you. You may not be able to feel Him there for one reason or another, but He is right there with you. The Alpha and the Omega knows you, He knows how your story ends and not just in a general sense. The creator of the universe knows you so personally that He knows how your specific story ends. Sit with that for a minute and realize how amazing that is. God is close to you, even when you are brokenhearted. He is with you, don’t stop praying!
Don't stop praying for the prodigal
Don't stop praying for the miracle
Hallelujah, hallelujah, and amen
Don't stop praying that addictions end
Don't stop praying for deliverance
Hallelujah, hallelujah, and amen
Oh, don't stop praying for the sickness healed
Don't stop praying for His power revealed
Hallelujah, hallelujah, and amen
No, don't stop praying for the Kingdom come
Don't stop praying that His will be done
Hallelujah, hallelujah, and amen
Don't stop praying
Wow, how does Matthew West know exactly what you are praying for? I don’t know about you, but I am praying for almost every one of the things listed here. I love this encouragement to keep praying, don’t stop. No matter how pointless it may seem at times, you are making a difference with your prayers. Keep asking the Lord to intervene. He hears all your prayers and He loves persistence. He has at least two parables about persistence in the Bible.
The verse for today’s episode says, “Then when you call upon me and come and pray to me, I will hear you.” God is promising us right here in this verse that when we call upon Him and pray to Him, He will hear us. God always keeps His promises. So, if we call upon Him and come to him and pray, then He will hear us. He will hear our prayers for our prodigal to come home. He will hear our prayers for the miracles we really need. He will hear our prayers for the addiction to end and our prayers for deliverance. He will hear our prayers for the sickness to be healed and for His power to be revealed. He will hear us praying for His kingdom to come, and His will be done. God hears your prayers; I promise you they are not falling on deaf ears, and He is not ignoring you. He is working in your situation in the perfect way and in His perfect timing. Don’t stop praying!!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to keep praying, and yet we get weary sometimes. Can you help lift us up and put us back on our feet when we fall down? Lord, can you give us the strength and perseverance we need to keep praying even when we feel like we can’t even bow our heads one more time? We love you; we know you can do the impossible, and yet, at times, the voices of the world drown out those thoughts and make us think our problems are too big. Help us to see you are bigger than any problem we might have. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in June 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I surround you with my comfort. All you go through, I will use to help others. I hold your hand. I will not abandon you. Move forward. I will empower you.”
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Today’s witnesses are from the Encounter Ministries website. Encounter Ministry has healing services as well as several conferences throughout the year. These testimonies are all from people who attended either a healing session or their conference. I love that Jesus is still healing today. I don’t think everyone knows this or believes this. This is why I think it is so important that we are constantly reminding people of that amazing fact. Nothing is too hard for Jesus to heal. It is also important that we remember it is not just physical healing but emotional and mental ones, too! If you have a loved one suffering right now, it is not too late, and it is not too severe. God is the God of the impossible. He can heal them, just ask.
Diana- In June 2017, I was diagnosed with Relapse Remitting Multiple Sclerosis. My symptoms started in December of 2016 when I got my first lesion in my neck. From that day until the healing session, I had not had a single moment without extreme discomfort from itching, burning, shocks, buzzing, twitching, weakness, etc. Since the healing, I have had none of those. I have been able to reduce my medications to the levels they were pre-MS. I am scheduled for MRIs and am looking forward to seeing if the lesions are still there or if they’ve been healed, as well as my symptoms. I will admit I was highly skeptical going into the session, having been anointed by a priest and several other healers praying over and for me throughout the years. Praise God, I agreed to try. He has worked a miracle. I am not 100%. You try laying in bed all day, every day for 6 years, and see how much stamina and strength you have. I had to relearn how to walk without my previous balance issues from MS. I still fall down occasionally, but I get back up with a laugh and a joke.
Joan- During the Healing Session with Father Mathias, he mentioned Autoimmune Disease. He also mentioned eyes. At that precise moment, my eyes were flooded with moisture. Previously, I have been treated for chronic eye dryness from Raynaud’s Disease. My eyes were so dry that I instilled drops 6-8 times a day. I was not asking for that, but that is what happened to me. I’m so grateful. God is good and faithful. It was an unforgettable conference!
Karen- Before attending the North West Encounter Conference in 2019, I had a vision while praying of Jesus on his knees, washing my feet, and looking up at me with a look of completeness (meaning total absolute or fully carried out, thorough). Jesus then stood up and placed a white heavenly cloak/mantle around my shoulders. I had this vision several times during the weekend conference. While this was going on, during the sessions on Saturday, I was suffering greatly from a migraine. I have suffered migraines since I was a little girl. (I am currently 58). Sometimes lasting 2 to 5 days and up to 7 days at a time. It had been a miserable experience. However, it was especially challenging at the Conference as I was trying to stay focused and open to the Lord. By the time Saturday night came, I was physically sick and in tremendous pain from my migraine. While being prayed over earlier by the Encounter Team, I saw Jesus declaring over me that I no longer need to carry two crosses. One of the crosses was that of my own, and the other was that of my daughter, who is in a wheelchair. The vision allowed me to see two crosses lying side by side. Immediately, I felt lighter by recognizing this! Also, I was taken back to a childhood memory of falling, and I thought, perhaps this is the root of my migraines. Having talked to one of the team members, I was encouraged to consider staying until Saturday night instead of going home because of the pain. I believed that Jesus had something more in store for me. I decided to stay and press through the pain. During a time of praise and worship, Fr. Mathias came through and placed hands on my head, and prayed for more of the Holy Spirit. I knew then I was to receive Grace upon Grace from Jesus. I began to experience chills while also experiencing an inner warmth. Even after I went home that night, I continued to experience the presence of God in my body for some time. And, then I noticed it – my migraines disappeared and have not returned since that day in June 2019. I am writing this Testimony of Healing nearly a year to the day later to testify and give all the Glory to God for my personal healing, both physically and for the special love that he has for me and you! Though I do get headaches occasionally, they are less frequent and short-lived as I continue to pray and claim Jesus’ healing over my life, and sure enough, they go away in his precious name. Praise God for the Grace of Jesus living in us! Many Blessings and Love to and for the Encounter Ministries.
Jeremiah 17:14. Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved, for you are my praise.
Alexis- I had an incredible encounter with God! I was physically healed, internally healed and spiritually filled. Praise the Lord! I came to the Summer Intensive not really knowing what to expect. I was invited by some ladies at Church. I am a Pentecostal to Catholic convert, and I came from a very charismatic evangelical church. At this conference, I started raising my hands in worship again. I had done this before, but not since I became Catholic seven years prior.
On the third night, the physical healing night, the speaker asked if anyone was in physical discernible pain. There was a storm that had passed through earlier that day, and my body ached. I was in a car accident in 2005, and I injured the cervical vertebrae C5 in my neck from whiplash. I had been living with headaches and pain for years. I have been going to the chiropractor more than once a week for the last fifteen years. The second major injury to my spine occurred in the summer of 2019 while I was strawberry picking with my son. I had bulged a disk in my lower back L5. I had to go to physical therapy for six weeks after that to help strengthen my back. The physical therapist had told me to think every time that I bent down that I had about one hundred thousand more bends left for the rest of my life and to use them carefully. My middle back was also aching, most likely from picking up my forty-pound son. I have also had lung issues for years and had trouble taking deep breaths. Each of these physical ailments was healed one at a time. The women praying over me were amazing, and they began to pray fervently. My middle back was healed first. Then, it felt like something was removed or lifted off from my chest, and I could easily take a deep breath. Then, something was released in my lower back. I bent down, expecting the familiar twinge, but it was gone. I could move freely. Lastly, I felt something being removed from my neck, and I felt the release. Everything that I had asked to be healed was healed. I was no longer in physical discernible pain. The most amazing part for me was that I could sense the presence of my deceased husband, so I knew he was praying for me. This was confirmed when one of the women who was praying for me shared a vision of the heavens opening up and my husband’s hand touching me in all the places that I was healed.
The fourth and last night was the internal healing night. I have suffered a lot of loss in my life. When I was seven years old, my little sister died, and my parents divorced. I became very good at building an internal wall to protect myself. My husband died in 2016, three days before our only son was born. But the most recent loss that hit me like a ton of bricks was the loss of one of my students. I am a high school science teacher, and one of my Physics students died in a car crash in March 2019. The day after she got the highest grade on the Unit Test in my class, I was so excited to tell her that all of her hard work had paid off. Then I got the news that she had died that morning from complications from the accident, and it hit me harder than I expected. When the prayer team came around to pray, I sank to the floor and cried. Then I received a vision of a dam blocking the flow of water that was starting to crack, and it was preventing the source of the water from pouring out abundantly. They began praying for me, and I felt the dam burst out of me. The wall was gone, and the fountain of life and joy was free to pour out of me. I just kept saying AMEN in confirmation! I was really moved by the last speaker of the night, Sarah. Through praying with her, I had an image of myself as a child sitting on Jesus’ lap, loved and safe. Jesus spoke to me in this place and said, “Come here often, and I will give you rest.” I had found the source of healing, strength, joy, peace, comfort, and so much more. I came to the conference very defeated, empty, and angry as a Catholic. I did not want to be Catholic anymore. I left the conference healed, refreshed, renewed, and filled with the Holy Spirit!
Thank you all so much for sharing your stories, and thank you to Encounter Ministries for displaying them on your website so that all of our faiths can be built up by them. Thank you also for hearing the call to Teach, Equip, and activate the world with the gifts of the Holy Spirit. You are changing the world.
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Do I Know Who I Am?
John 8:14 “Jesus responded, “Just because I am the one making these claims doesn’t mean they’re invalid. For I absolutely know who I am, where I’ve come from, and where I’m going. But you Pharisees have no idea about what I am saying.”
This was not the verse I thought I would be using this morning. I first went to look at John 8 for verse 12, which says, “Then Jesus said, “I am light to the world, and those who embrace me will experience life-giving lights, and they will never walk in darkness.” Is that a great verse, or what? I think we all know Jesus is the light of the world. We have probably even said that before. However, I am not sure we all know that means we will never walk in darkness. Some of us may feel like we are walking in darkness right now. However, this verse is telling us that if we embrace Jesus, we will experience life-giving lights and will never walk in darkness.
Why do we feel like we are walking in darkness, then? Is the enemy blocking out this life-giving light? Are we looking for this light in all the wrong places? Why isn’t this life-giving light shining through into our darkness? I know some people who are very close to the Lord, and yet this year has been really tough for them. They feel they are walking in darkness right now, and they feel like they can’t even pray. Maybe you are in this place too? If so, I want to assure you that the Lord is with you, even in this darkness.
I have studied something called the Dark Night of the Soul in depth this year as some of the women in my mentoring group really wanted to learn more about it. One big thing that I learned is that even though the Lord seems really far away from you when you are going through it, He has actually never been closer to you. I learned sometimes it is necessary for us to go through a dark period where we receive no consolation from the things that used to bring us consolation so that we can learn to rely only on the Lord and not on the feelings we get from Him. We need to continue to have faith in doing the things we are used to doing, even when they don’t bring us great joy, comfort, or even peace.
The people who have gone through a Dark Night of the Soul all have at least one thing that helped them: being faithful in their prayers and their spiritual habits, even when they received nothing back from them. People who are going through a Dark Night of the Soul feel extremely far from the Lord. They can’t feel His presence, they don’t hear His voice, they don’t feel any consolation. Yet, God is right there by their side, giving them the strength to persevere, and when they come out of it, they will be so much stronger and closer to the Lord.
I thought that was what this whole episode was going to be about. They I read on a bit further, and I saw the verse for today. When I read it, the words just pierced my heart immediately. Let me read it to you again. “Jesus responded, “Just because I am the one making these claims doesn’t mean they’re invalid. For I absolutely know who I am, where I’ve come from, and where I’m going. But you Pharisees have no idea about what I am saying.” the words that pierced my heart were, “For I absolutely know who I am, where I’ve come from, and where I’m going.” As soon as I read it, I heard that voice inside me say, do you? Do you absolutely know who you are, where you’ve come from, and where you are going?”
I knew those questions were ones that I needed to share with all of you because they are great questions. I was praying with some youth over the weekend, and identity seemed to be something they struggled with, too. There is so much confusion and chaos in the world today. That is from the enemy. God is not the author of confusion and chaos. He is the author of peace. The enemy wants us to question who we are. He wants us to question where we came from and where we are going. If we are looking to the world to help us define who we are, then, of course, we would be confused. Our identity doesn’t come from the world; it comes from God. He is our creator. He knows exactly who He created us to be.
We tend to associate our identity with our vocation or our jobs. For instance, I am a mom and a wife. I might think that is my identity. However, my most important identity is that I am a child of God.
There are so many songs out there that remind us of who we are in God’s eyes. They remind us of our identity. There is a Lauren Daigle Song called I Believe. The chorus of that song says, “ You say I am loved when I can't feel a thing. You say I am strong when I think I am weak. And you say I am held when I am falling short. And when I don't belong, oh You say I am Yours, And I believe (I). Oh, I believe (I). What You say of me (I). I believe. The only thing that matters now is everything You think of me. In You, I find my worth, in You, I find my identity.
As you can see in this song, God’s truth is contrary to most of what we hear from the world. God says we are loved. He says we are strong. He says we are held; we are never alone. The world tells us we are on our own. It tells us we aren’t good enough, and it tells us no one will love us unless we pretend to be someone that we aren’t. Those lies are not from the Lord. I bet it makes Him so sad when we believe those things about ourselves. Kind of like how we feel when we hear our kids say they don’t like things about themselves.
One of my sons used to say that he hates how he looks. He said he looks in the mirror and hates how the person looking back at him looks. He is now starting to love the way he looks. He has found a style of clothes that he likes. He has found out how to wear his hair. I am not sure if he likes it because others are starting to notice him more or if people are starting to notice him more because he is more confident in who he is. It makes my heart so happy that he likes who he is right now. I imagine that is how the Lord feels when we are loving on ourselves too. When we are secure in who He says we are.
One of my newest favorite songs is called The Truth by Megan Woods. The chorus of this song says: “The truth is I am my Father's child. I make Him proud, and I make Him smile. I was made in the image of a perfect King. He looks at me and wouldn't change a thing. The truth is I am truly loved by a God who's good when I'm not good enough. I don't belong to the lies; I belong to You. And that's the truth.” I love the song because it reminds us of the truth that we are children of God. He is our Father, and he is proud of us. He looks down at us and smiles. He made us in His image, and He loves us just as we are. He wouldn’t change a thing. God is good, even when we aren’t. He makes us good if we let Him.
We do not belong to the lies of this world. We belong to God. If we wonder who we are, we can look to the Bible to see who God says we are. You can search the internet with the key words who does God say I am in the Bible and you will find lots of scripture verses. I will put the link to one article I found in the show notes. (Click Here for the article) Here are a few to get you started.
I am a child of God. (John 1:12)
I am a friend of Jesus (John 15:15)
I have been justified and redeemed (Romans 3:24)
I will not be condemned by God (Romans 8:1)
I have been called to be a saint. (1 Corinthians 1:2; cf. Ephesians 1:1; Philippians 1:1; Colossians 1:2)
I am a new creature in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17)
I have been set free in Christ (Galatians 5:1)
I am chosen, holy, and blameless before God. (Ephesians 1:7)
There are so many others, but I don’t want to keep you here all day. I invite you to click on the link below and read all the different parts of your identity in Christ. It really is amazing. We think we don’t know who we are, but then, when we read the Bible, it tells us very specifically who we are. Can you imagine how different your life would be if you absolutely knew who you were, where you’ve come from, and where you’re going? You can find those answers in the Lord. He will show you if you just spend some time with Him and ask Him. What have you got to lose? I promise you will find better answers than you have been getting from the world.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to learn who we are to you. Help us to learn our true identity. Help us to know, like Jesus did, who we are, where we came from, and where we are going. Help us turn to you for those answers. We love you, Lord. We are tired of believing the lies of the enemy. Help us to believe the truth of who we truly are. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I felt convicted as I was doing today’s episode that next month’s theme for mentoring will be identity. Why not start the year off knowing who we truly are and who God created us to be? I hope you will join us as I think it will be amazing to finally be able to replace the lies of who the world says we are with the truth of who God says you are. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in June 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Leave all behind that is troublesome to you. I will heal it. I will fix it.”
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What is the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception?
Today, I decided to do something a little different. I usually begin by sharing a scripture verse with you. However, today is a very special day, at least in the Catholic Church. There is a lot of confusion about this day and so I wanted to explain what we are actually celebrating today and why we are celebrating it. Today, in the Catholic Church, we celebrate the Immaculate Conception. When I was growing up I never understood how Mary could have immaculately conceived Jesus on the 8th of December and then delivered him on December 25th. It didn’t make sense to me and yet I didn’t really question it. It was not until I was an adult, I am not sure how many years ago, that I learned what we were truly celebrating. I found this great article that explains what we are celebrating and why. It is called, “8 Things You Need to Know About the Immaculate Conception,” by Jimmy Akin. I will put a link for the article in the show notes. (Click Here) for the article. This is where I found the information for this episode.
The Immaculate Conceptions is not referring to Jesus’ conception, it is referring to Mary’s conception. Mary has a human mother and father, her conception was not the same as Jesus’. However, it was special in another way. Here is how the Catholic Church explains it:
CCC490 To become the mother of the Saviour, Mary “was enriched by God with gifts appropriate to such a role.” The angel Gabriel at the moment of the annunciation salutes her as “full of grace”. In fact, in order for Mary to be able to give the free assent of her faith to the announcement of her vocation, it was necessary that she be wholly borne by God's grace.
CCC491 Through the centuries the Church has become ever more aware that Mary, “full of grace” through God, was redeemed from the moment of her conception. That is what the dogma of the Immaculate Conception confesses, as Pope Pius IX proclaimed in 1854:
The most Blessed Virgin Mary was, from the first moment of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of almighty God and by virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, Saviour of the human race, preserved immune from all stain of original sin.
This means that Mary was not only free from original sin, but she was also free from person sin as well. The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains:
CCC493 The Fathers of the Eastern tradition call the Mother of God “the All-Holy” (Panagia), and celebrate her as “free from any stain of sin, as though fashioned by the Holy Spirit and formed as a new creature”. By the grace of God Mary remained free of every personal sin her whole life long. “Let it be done to me according to your word. . .”
The next question Akin asks is, “If Mary was free from sin, does that mean she didn’t need Jesus to die on a cross for her?"
He answers, “No. What we've already quoted states that Mary was immaculately conceived as part of her being “full of grace” and thus "redeemed from the moment of her conception" by "a singular grace and privilege of almighty God and by virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, Saviour of the human race."
The Catechism goes on to state:
CCC492 The “splendour of an entirely unique holiness” by which Mary is “enriched from the first instant of her conception” comes wholly from Christ: she is “redeemed, in a more exalted fashion, by reason of the merits of her Son”. The Father blessed Mary more than any other created person “in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places” and chose her “in Christ before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless before him in love”.
CCC508 From among the descendants of Eve, God chose the Virgin Mary to be the mother of his Son. “Full of grace”, Mary is “the most excellent fruit of redemption” (SC 103): from the first instant of her conception, she was totally preserved from the stain of original sin and she remained pure from all personal sin throughout her life.
The next question Akin asked is, “How does this make Mary a parallel of Eve?” His is answer is: Adam and Eve were both created immaculate--without original sin or its stain. They fell from grace, and through them mankind was bound to sin. Christ and Mary were also conceived immaculate. They remained faithful, and through them mankind was redeemed from sin. Christ is thus the New Adam, and Mary the New Eve.
The Catechism notes:
CCC494 . . . As St. Irenaeus says, “Being obedient she became the cause of salvation for herself and for the whole human race.” Hence not a few of the early Fathers gladly assert. . .: “The knot of Eve's disobedience was untied by Mary's obedience: what the virgin Eve bound through her disbelief, Mary loosened by her faith.” Comparing her with Eve, they call Mary “the Mother of the living” and frequently claim: “Death through Eve, life through Mary.”
Another question Akin asked was, “Was it necessary for God to make Mary immaculate at her conception so that she could be Jesus' mother?”
Akin writes, “No. The Church only speaks of the Immaculate Conception as something that was "fitting," something that made Mary a "fit habitation" (i.e., suitable dwelling) for the Son of God, not something that was necessary. Thus in preparing to define the dogma, Pope Pius IX stated:
And hence they [the Church Fathers] affirmed that the Blessed Virgin was, through grace, entirely free from every stain of sin, and from all corruption of body, soul and mind; that she was always united with God and joined to him by an eternal covenant; that she was never in darkness but always in light; and that, therefore, she was entirely a fit habitation for Christ, not because of the state of her body, but because of her original grace. . . .
For it was certainly not fitting that this vessel of election should be wounded by the common injuries, since she, differing so much from the others, had only nature in common with them, not sin. In fact, it was quite fitting that, as the Only-Begotten has a Father in heaven, whom the Seraphim extol as thrice holy, so he should have a Mother on earth who would never be without the splendor of holiness [Ineffabilis Deus]."
Many of you listening may have already known all about this special day. However, I felt it was important to explain as I remember when I first found out what we were celebrating I was confused. I didn’t really understand at first and I would have loved to have had this article back then. I know there are some people who don’t understand that we aren’t celebrating Jesus’ immaculate conception and so I wanted to clear up any misunderstandings about this day. For those of you who are Catholic, just in case you don’t know, the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conceptions is a holy day of obligation. I hope you all enjoyed this little explanation and I hope you check out the article for more information.
Dear Heavenly Father, we are so grateful you gave us Mary so she could say yes to having your one and only son. We are so grateful you came up with a plan to save us. We are grateful for all you have done for us over the years. We don’t deserve anything and yet you give us so much. We thank you Lord. We love you and we celebrate and honor your beautiful daughter Mary today. We honor you and your plan for her life. You are so amazing how you plan everything out in advance. You are the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. You are truly remarkable and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed day!
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Let’s Not Sleepwalk Through Life
1 Thessalonians 5:4-8 "But friends, you’re not in the dark, so how could you be taken off guard by any of this? You’re sons of Light, daughters of Day. We live under wide open skies and know where we stand. So let’s not sleepwalk through life like those others. Let’s keep our eyes open and be smart. People sleep at night and get drunk at night. But not us! Since we’re creatures of Day, let’s act like it. Walk out into the daylight sober, dressed up in faith, love, and the hope of salvation.”
Just before these verses, St. Paul was talking about how no one knows when Jesus will come again. The time is not for us to know. However, he is saying that we are not in the dark because we know that He is coming, so how can we be taken off guard by any of this? We know the Lord will come again to judge the living and the dead. We say this each week in the Nicene Creed. This should not be a surprise to us. What Paul is saying in this first part of the verse is that we are at an advantage. There are people who do not believe; they do not go to church, and they do not follow God and all His ways. We are not those people. Even though we don’t know exactly when the Lord will return, we believe He will return at some point. This means we can always be ready for His return.
The when He is returning is not as important as the fact that He is returning. We know this to be true, and so we can be prepared. We can make sure whenever that day comes, we are ready to go. The verse goes on to say that we are sons of light and daughters of day. We live under wide, open skies and know where we stand. I am such a big fan of the light. I love thinking of God as the light. I like thinking about how we are children of light. We walk in light and not in darkness.
I know some of you feel like you are walking in darkness right now. You feel like you can’t see the light. If this is you, I want you to remember that you are a child of the light. The enemy can try and hide the light from you. He can try to cast shadows, so you think you are living in the darkness. However, He can’t take all the light away because the light lives inside of you. You have the Spirit of God living inside of you, and that is all the light that you need. When you feel like you are surrounded by so much darkness, call on the Holy Spirit to light your way.
I love the next line in these verses, “So let’s not sleepwalk through life like those others. Let’s keep our eyes open and be smart.” This is such great advice. How many of us have been sleepwalking through life? I am part of Big Life mentoring with Pamela Crim, and this is a big reason many people join this group. They feel they are sleepwalking through life. We are meant to live life to the fullest. It says in John 10:10, “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” God does not want us to waste this life that we have. He doesn’t want us to go about our days in a fog. If we are not careful, we can just fall into a routine and go through life on autopilot.
Did you know that 40-45% of your decisions are automatic based on your habits? That is almost half of all our decisions. That is a lot. What if we don’t have good habits? Does that mean we are not making good decisions? Frequently, yes. For instance, I used to be in the habit of eating pretty healthy. That meant when my husband took out the package of Oreos, I didn’t instinctively reach over and grab one. I knew that was not going to be good for me, so I didn’t take any. However, right now, I am not in the habit of eating healthy, and so when he takes out the Oreos, I grab one, ok, more than one.
St. Paul is warning us about doing this in our spiritual life. We need to be intentional in all of life, but especially in our spiritual life. It can be too easy to put things off and think we will just take care of them later. You know you need to spend time with the Lord, but he will always be there, and this movie you want to go see won’t be. You know you need to go to confession, but you could go to confession anytime, but your friends want to meet for lunch today. We know we need to love our neighbor, but that is hard, so we figure we love the next neighbor that comes along. Do you see how easy it is to “sleepwalk” through life, as St. Paul says?
We know God is coming. We need to be ready because He could come at any moment. The only thing the Bible assures us of in regard to His coming is that no one will know when He is coming and that we will be surprised and taken off guard. The verse says to let us keep our eyes open and be smart. This is great advice. Let’s not sleepwalk through life. Let’s live our lives intentionally with passion and purpose for the things we care about. The things we know are important.
The verses end with, “People sleep at night and get drunk at night. But not us! Since we’re creatures of Day, let’s act like it. Walk out into the daylight sober, dressed up in faith, love, and the hope of salvation.” I love this last line of the verse. Walk out into the daylight sober, dressed up in faith, love, and the hope of salvation. Imagine how different this would be if all of God’s faithful from all denominations walked around dressed in faith, love, and the hope of salvation. Imagine if you didn’t have to be afraid of offending someone when you mentioned the Lord because you knew just by looking at someone if they knew God or not.
Sometimes, when I hear people talk about their faith in God, they are not filled with faith, love, or hope. They are filled with hate, anger, disbelief, and dread. There are also so many people who are living in hopelessness and despair right now. I know people who know God; they have a personal and intimate relationship with Him, and yet they feel very much in despair and even hopeless at times. Hopeless that things are going to get better for them. But what about the rest of us? What about you? Could you be dressed with faith, hope, and love as you go out into this world? Could I be dressed with faith, hope, and love as I go into this world?
I remember I was listening to Father Mike Schmitz one time, and he was talking about how we act in the world. He said he had heard a question one time, and it stuck with him. It has stuck with me, too. If being Christian were illegal. If it were against the law to be Christian, and you were accused of being Christian and you were on trial, would they have enough evidence to convict you? In other words, can people tell, just by looking at you and talking with you, that you are Christian? We live in a world where we are afraid to offend anyone or get in trouble, as it is not popular to talk about God these days. However, who should we be more afraid of offending, God or those around us?
Jesus is coming back one day to judge the living and the dead. What if that day were today? Would you be ready? He is not going to wait for us to be ready. This verse in the Bible was written about 2,000 years ago, give or take. If we can’t be ready with 2,000 years of lead time, we will never be ready. Stop procrastinating. Stop saying you will spend time with the Lord tomorrow. Do it today! Even if it is just 2 minutes to say, “Hey God, it’s me. I just wanted to say hi and see how you are doing.” Or you can even say something like, “Hey God, I have no idea what I am doing, but I know, or I think I want more of you in my life. Please show me how.” It doesn’t matter what you say as much as it does that you say something. Don’t put it off. We are children of the light. We have the advantage of knowing Jesus is coming back. Do something with that knowledge; don’t just waste it!
Dear Heavenly Father, please bless all of those listening to this episode. Lord, we want to prepare for your coming, please help us. Please show us one thing we can do this Advent season to help us not only get ready for your coming as a baby on Christmas day but also as you're coming again at the end of time. Help us to live in a way that people know we are Christians just by knowing us. I want others to know just by looking at me or spending time with me that I am completely, madly, and deeply in love with you! Please help me, Lord. I ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again on Monday. Remember, it is free to join mentoring this month. We will focus on Mary this month. I hope you will join us on Tuesday nights at 8 P. M. EST. Remember Jesus loves you, just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in June 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My precious ones know that I walk with you. That I am not even a breath away. I am part of you.”
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Have No Fear, Don't Despair
Jeremiah 30:10 “‘So fear no more, Jacob, dear servant. Don’t despair, Israel. Look up! I’ll save you out of faraway places, I’ll bring your children back from exile. Jacob will come back and find life good, safe, and secure.”
There are several things I like about this verse. Do you remember a while back when I talked about how you can personalize scripture? You can put your name in Scripture verses so you can see that God is talking to you, too! When I was first taught this, I was told whenever you see the word “Jacob” or “Israel,” you can replace it with your name. Today’s verse has both of these words right at the beginning. I love this because it helps make it more personal when we substitute our name. Let’s try that with the first two lines of today’s verse.
“So fear no more, Catherine, dear servant. Don’t despair, Catherine.” Now you try it.
“So fear no more, Joanie, dear servant. Don’t despair, Peggy.”
“So fear no more, Jo, dear servant. Don’t despair, Nancy.”
“So fear no more, (insert your name), dear servant. Don’t despair (insert your name).”
Did that make it more personal for you when you put your own name in? I know it always does for me. How many of us really needed the Lord to give us that personal message today? How many of us needed the Lord to tell us not to fear anymore? How many of us needed the Lord to tell us not to despair?
The holidays are such a happy time for so many people. They are a time to celebrate and a time to be grateful for all that we have. It is a time to see our loved ones and hug them tight. It is a time to eat too much food and share presents. It is a time for decorating Christmas trees and watching Hallmark movies. It is a time to celebrate the amazing miracle of God sending His only son down to earth to save us. The birth of Christ is something to celebrate for sure. There is so much good this time of year. People are generally filled with the giving spirit and you will see a lot more acts of kindness if you are on the lookout.
The holidays are also a really sad time for a lot of people. I have a friend whose daughter just died from cancer a week or two before Thanksgiving. She was in her 30’s with two small children. I can’t imagine the sadness these holidays will bring for her. My nephew’s dad is in the hospital and may have brain damage; they won’t know until he wakes up. I can’t imagine the sadness they will have this holiday season as they wait to find out if their dad will be home to celebrate with them. If their dad will ever be the same again. What about all those on the streets? All those who don’t have family or don’t see their families.
As happy of a time as it is for some of us, those lucky enough to have friends or family to celebrate with or a warm home to celebrate in. It will be just as sad for so many others. I am not sure why the Lord put that so strongly in my heart this morning. I guess because the verse was telling us to fear not and to not despair. If you are someone who is having a really difficult time this holiday season for whatever reason, I hope you know the Lord is talking to you, too! Fear not; do not despair. He is there with you. He knows this is a really difficult time for you. He is right there in the hard times with you.
I was looking through all the words of prophecy that my prayer group received in the month of August this morning, and this one just came to mind. I think the Lord wants me to share it with you. “I hear your cries, my children. Come to me, come to me in your brokenness. Do not be afraid to come. I will help you. But in my time. Wait patiently, and I will show you a way out. Know that all is possible when you trust and believe. I am here. Do not doubt it. I do hear your cries. I do feel your pain. Continue to trust, continue to believe, and I will help you.” God hears your cries, and he feels your pain. Don’t ever doubt that. There is always hope with the Lord. We just need to wait on His timing, which I know is really hard. You can do it, though, because you can do all things through Christ who strengthens you.
I also love the end of this verse, and I don’t want to leave you today without discussing it. The verse goes on to say, “Look up! I’ll save you out of faraway places; I’ll bring your children back from exile. Jacob will come back and find life good, safe, and secure.” The first two words are so important. “Look up!” Are we doing that? Are we looking up, or are we looking all around, trying to find the solution ourselves? Are we too busy looking at how big our problem is, or too busy looking down in shame to look up and see where our help comes from? God is our answer; He is our help. He always has been so stop looking around, stop looking down, and just look up!!
Next, it says, “I’ll save you from faraway places; I’ll bring your children back from exile.” Yes, please, to both of these. Sometimes, I feel so far away from the Lord. This promise to bring me back from those faraway places is such a source of comfort to me. I hope it is comforting to you, too! I hope you know that the Lord will bring you back, no matter how far away you go. All you have to do is ask, and He will come and get you. No matter how far you feel, no matter how deep a pit you think you are in, God will come and get you out of it. He will bring you home every single time you stray.
Probably my favorite part of this verse is one that I bet you really like, too. I’ll bring your children back from exile. How many hours, days, months, and years have you been praying for this exact thing? How many times have you been on your knees begging the Lord to bring your children back from exile? Back from the crazy things they have gotten themselves into. Back into the church. Back to the Lord. Back to your family. Back to your loving arms. Back to loving themselves. Right here in this scripture verse we have a promise from the Lord that He will bring our children back from exile. It doesn’t say that one day you will bring your children back from exile. It says that God will bring them back.
This is what we often forget. We forget that we are not the savior. It is not our job to bring our children home. It is our job to pray for them. God tells us in prayer groups all the time that we can pray our loved ones into heaven. So, yes, continue to pray for your children, always. However, you don’t have to fear, and you don’t have to despair that they are never coming home. God promises us that He will bring them home. However, He also told us in the word of prophecy from my prayer group that It will be in His time and that we need to wait patiently.
Yes, I know how hard it is to wait patiently. I was praying for God to work miracles in my family for over 15 years, and it was a long wait. It was heartbreaking for so long. As hard as I tried, I could not fix the problems in our family. It was a God job. He needed to work on all of our hearts. He needed to fix all the places we had been hurt so we could figure out how to love better. He needed to teach us so much before we were ready for all He had in store for us. He worked miracles I could never have imagined, never expected, and I am so grateful. He will do the same for you. He will bring your children home from exile. Have no fear; do not despair. Know all is possible when you believe and then wait patiently for God’s timing. I promise you, He hears your cries, He feels your pain. Continue to trust, continue to believe, and He will help you!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, you are amazing, and we are so grateful to you for bringing our children home whenever you decide to do so. Lord, we ask you to be with all those who are really struggling this holiday season. We ask you to fill them with the peace of Christ, which surpasses all our understanding. We ask you to comfort them at a time when they don’t even know what comfort they need. Lord, you know each of our needs, and you meet them perfectly. We thank you for that. We love you, Lord! You are amazing, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus! I’m sorry there was no episode on Tuesday. I was very sick and did not get out of bed unless I had to. I am better now. I also had to cancel mentoring that night, so if you were hoping to join in this month, you haven’t missed anything yet. I hope you will consider joining us this upcoming Tuesday night at 8 P. M EST. you can find the link on my social media page, Catherine Duggan, or you can email me at Catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com. I hope to see you there! I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in June 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, I hear the whisperings of your heart. I hear the moanings of your heart. They are precious to me. I hear them, and I attend to them.” Isn’t it amazing how the Lord works? I did not know this was the word for today and yet it is the Lord confirming the message above that He hears our cries and He answers them. God is so good!
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Witness Wednesday #139 More PopWe Stories (Healing)
Today’s witnesses are from Matthew West’s website called popwe.org. If you don’t know who Matthew West is, he is a singer, songwriter, and storyteller. This website is for the non-profit that he has with his father, a pastor. Matthew and his father encourage people to share their stories. They have various categories of stories. Today, I chose three testimonies from the Healing Category. Often, we can hear our own story in someone else’s story. When we listen to others tell their story, it helps us see that we are not alone. When we hear how God worked in their situation, it gives us hope that He will work in ours, too! I pray when you hear this testimony, you get the faith and hope to believe that miracles can happen in your situation, also. I pray you know that God is there with you, and if you invite Him into your situation, He can help. I hope you enjoy these testimonies.
Diane: I have been a Christian since the age of 16 when I accepted Jesus into my heart. I got breast cancer in 2009. I was having a lot of pain in my right breast, and I thought I was having a heart attack. My husband told me to make an appointment with my doctor he sent me for a mammogram. It came back that everything was okay, but I knew that it wasn’t. The pain continued and grew stronger than ever. I called my doctor and told him that there was something terribly wrong with me. I kept praying to God to please let the doctors find out what is wrong. The doctor sent me to a surgeon who did a biopsy. He called me the next day and told me to come in and see him and bring someone with me. I knew it was bad.
When my husband and daughter and I arrived, the surgeon told me that I had stage 4 breast cancer. We then went to an oncologist who told me I had 16 weeks to live and that I had to have surgery to remove my right breast. I also went through chemo radiation. I never stopped praying and believing in my God. I had a clinical trial and in 2011 I was told that my cancer was gone and I had reconstructive surgery.
Now it’s 2024 and Matthew West his songs helped me so much. I recently lost my husband and Matthew’s song, “Don’t stop praying” has brought me through.
Diane: On April 2, 2024, I awoke at 5am, on the floor in terrible pain. I could not get up. It felt as if my hip was broken. I laid there for 12 hours until my family came home. I was taken to the hospital by ambulance. Tests showed that nothing was broken. However, the muscles in my leg were all torn. They also discovered that my kidneys had stopped functioning. Also, my potassium was dangerously high and causing an erratic heartbeat. The doctors asked me if I wanted CPR if my heart stopped. But I refused three times. Each time I refused, I closed my eyes and prayed God’s will over my life. I was filled with peace that truly is beyond understanding. The doctors have no explanation for me surviving that night. Six days after my fall, I returned home. My kidney function’s higher than it had been in the past three years. I know God spared me. I have work to do for His kingdom!
Honey: My husband was hospitalized in 2021 at the age of 40 for severe COVID. He nearly died. We have 3 children who were at the time 13, 11, and 4. He was in the hospital for 3 ½ months. Fortunately, I was the only one working at the time, so we didn’t lose income. However, driving to see him 60 miles every other day used a lot of money.
And since I was basically a single parent, any time my kids had appointments or got sick I had to miss work. God in His infinite wisdom had blessed me with a job at a Christian school, so I didn’t have to worry about losing my job. But He didn’t just stop there. Throughout the almost 4 months of emotional struggle, God provided for our every need. God provided Christmas by having one of the members of our church take me to the store and told me to pick out 3 gifts per kid and stocking stuffers. God provided tires by having someone gift me a $300 Walmart gift card just before my tire went flat. But He didn’t just provide financially.
I live in rural Kansas where hitting deer at night is a very real issue. Neither of our cars would have survived if we had hit a deer. But God protected me the entire time by always allowing me to see the deer and stop in time with no damage to me or my vehicles. He protected me from speed traps and tickets by either slowing me down or having the cop busy with someone else when I passed speeding by to get back home to my children.
He strengthened me day after day and showed me almost every day that He was with me through the darkest time of my life. My husband’s miracle is his healing, but my miracle was an everyday occurrence. I never would’ve had the strength to go to work every day, go to the hospital and hear bad report after bad report, and be home present and active with my kids if it weren’t for God’s never-ending strength and peace. He showed me His presence in songs that played, friends at church, kids at work, strangers in my town, sunsets, and His perfect timing in all things.
While I was in it, it would at times feel overwhelming and I had to hold so tightly to each loving reminder no matter how small just to get up and get going. But after my husband came home, God allowed me to feel some of what He has protected me from. The weight of the ordeal would hit me in tiny bits here and there and I would praise God that He had protected me from that while I was in it. He has allowed me to process the grief and anxiety in snap pieces that I could handle. After seeing how He loves me, I know now that even if my husband had died, God would’ve taken care of me.
Thank you all for sharing your stories with us! It is not always easy to be vulnerable and share your story, and yet when you do, it helps so many other people. May God bless you and keep you healthy.
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Keep Your Eyes Fixed On Jesus
Matthew 14:26-31 “When the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified. “It is a ghost,” they said, and they cried out in fear. At once, [Jesus] spoke to them, “Take courage, it is I; do not be afraid.” Peter said to him in reply, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” He said, “Come.” Peter got out of the boat and began to walk on the water toward Jesus. But when he saw how [strong] the wind was, he became frightened, and, beginning to sink, he cried out, “Lord, save me!” Immediately, Jesus stretched out his hand caught him, and said to him, “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?”
I love this story. I remember the first time I remember someone talking about it was a speaker at a retreat in England. The theme of the retreat was Radical Trust. I loved that theme from the moment that I heard it. I instantly knew that was what I wanted. I wanted to have radical trust in the Lord. The speaker was talking about how she loved Peter because he was always ready to follow the Lord. It seemed as though he didn’t always think before he did things, but that was part of what made him so special.
Just before the disciples were on this boat, they had just been with Jesus as he spoke to a large group of people, and they got to be a part of the miracle of feeding the 5,000 men with five loaves of bread and two fish. They just not only witnessed a miracle but got to be a part of it. Afterward, Jesus told them to get in the boat and go ahead to the other side while he dismissed the people. Once the crowds of people had left, Jesus climbed the mountain to be alone to pray with his Father. He stayed there late into the night. Once he was done, He decided to catch up with His disciples on the water. However, it was the middle of the night and all they saw was someone walking towards them on the water. They didn’t know who it was and they were afraid.
I think we all would have reacted this way if we saw someone walking on the water towards us. However, when they called out to Him, He answered them and told them they had nothing to be afraid of, that it was Jesus. Then I love what Peter did next. He told the Lord if it is really you, command me to come out on the water with you. Jesus said, Come. What happens next is remarkable. Jesus invites Peter out onto the water and Peter gets out of the boat onto the water. I wonder how many of us would have the courage to ask the Lord to invite us to join Him, and then when He did, how many of us would actually be brave enough to get out of the boat.
I have asked the Lord for many things. I have asked Him to use me for healing, and then I have absolutely had times when He said ok, and yet I was too afraid to do what He called me to do. Has this ever happened to you? You asked the Lord for something, and then when he said yes, you were surprised, and also you were afraid? I love that Peter just stepped out of the boat, and He was walking on the water with the Lord, at least for a bit. That is amazing. Imagine the opportunity Peter would have missed out on if he hadn’t asked or if he hadn’t gotten out of the boat. I wonder if all the other apostles were sad they hadn’t asked the Lord to call them out of the boat?
The next part is a part I think we can all relate to. Peter got out of the boat. He was walking on water to the Lord, and all was great, and then he took his eyes off of Jesus and looked at the world around him. Instead of keeping his eyes fixed on Jesus, he looked around and saw how [strong] the wind was, he became frightened and began to sink. I think we have all been here before, too. We had our eyes fixed on Jesus, we knew we were doing what He called us to do, all was going great, and then we started to look around us. We noticed others talking about us, we noticed the circumstances around us were different, we got enticed by our surroundings, and we stopped doing what we knew we should do.
God is not always calling us to do something that is easy. He is not always calling us to do something that will feel good, or that will please others. Remember, Paul was thrown into prison while he was doing the work God called him to do. He was not in prison for disobeying the Lord, he was following the Lord’s direction and was imprisoned for it. You may know that you are doing the right thing, and yet if you take your eyes off Jesus and look around you, it may seem like the circumstances around you are overwhelming. If you start to listen to those around you, you may start to sink, just as Peter did.
I think it is important for us all to remember what happened to Peter so that if we are in a similar circumstance, we will know what to do. When Peter took his eyes off Jesus, and he started to sink, he cried out to the Lord, and the Lord saved Him. It says in the verse above, “He cried out, “Lord, save me!” Immediately, Jesus stretched out his hand, caught him, and said to him, “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?” It does not say that Jesus took His time to walk over to Peter and to help him out. It says that Jesus immediately stretched out His hand and caught him. Jesus will do the same for you.
We should try our best to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus. When we do, we will not stray from the path God has laid out for us. We will not feel stressed out or overwhelmed because we will know that God is there to lead us and help us. However, when we do take our eyes off Jesus, which we will because we are human and we make mistakes, it is important to know that all we need to do is call out to the Lord, and He will be right there, stretching out his hand to us. God will always be there for us! That we can count on.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each one of you listening to this episode today. Lord, you are amazing, and we are so grateful you are calling us all to something amazing. We are sorry when we pull back or are too scared to step into that calling. We are sorry when we step into it and then fall down because we take our eyes off of you. Please help us to keep our eyes fixed on you. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I have decided that for the month of December, mentoring will be free for anyone who would like to give it a try and see what it is all about. I know this is a busy month for everyone but if you have time on Tuesday night at 8 EST I invite you to join us for mentoring. If you would like the zoom link please email me at Catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you, just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in May 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I surround you with my love, I surround you with my joy, I surround you with my hope, I surround you with everything that's good, and you in turn need to do the same with others. I surround you, I fortify you, I give you everything so that you can go out and proclaim my name to those you meet.”
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Be Ready At All Times
Luke 12:40 “So keep being alert and ready at all times. For I promise you that the Son of Man will surprise you and appear when you don’t expect him.”
This verse reminded me of a conversation I had with my confirmation kids one year when I was teaching the confirmation class. We were talking about confession and why it is so important to go to confession. We were also talking about how God always forgives us when we ask for forgiveness. No matter what we have done or how long ago it was. The kids were asking, what if someone sinned their whole life, they did really bad things, and then on their deathbed, they asked for forgiveness? Would God forgive them? I said yes. They said that didn’t seem fair.
Then I asked them, “If someone was sinning their whole life. If they did one bad thing after another. Did they think that person would actually ask for forgiveness in the end?” They said probably not. The thing about sin is that it drives a wedge between you and the Lord. It fractures your relationship. The more you sin, the further away you feel. You might start off with a plan to sin as much as you like because you know that at any point, you can ask God for forgiveness, and He will give it to you. And yet, the more you sin, the more you harden your heart. By the time you get to the end of your life, you don’t care if God forgives you because you are so far away from Him, you forget what it is like to feel His love.
This verse is telling us to be alert and ready at all times. I think we can all slip into a comfortable feeling where we know we may need to go to confession at some point, but it's okay to put it off a bit. Or we know we need to give something up or stop doing something, and yet we figure there is always tomorrow. Guess what? There might not be tomorrow. None of us know the day and the time that we will die. None of us know when the Son of Man will return. What the Bible tells us in more than one place is that it will be when we least expect it. Today’s verse says, “For I promise you that the Son of Man will surprise you and appear when you don’t expect him.”
It doesn’t say you might be surprised, or I think the Son of Man’s coming might be a surprise. It says, “For I promise you that the Son of Man will surprise you and appear when you don’t expect him.” This is a promise. Jesus is coming, and we have no idea when, but we do know that we won’t expect it. This means we should always be ready for it. We shouldn’t put things off until tomorrow. If we truly lived this way, I believe our lives would be transformed!
Imagine a life where you didn’t procrastinate. Where you didn’t put off calling that person you have been meaning to call but haven’t. Imagine a world where you didn’t hold a grudge because if you did, it meant God was going to hold a grudge against you. You do know that is what the Bible says, right? Do you know that is what it says in the prayer Jesus taught us to say? “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” God is going to forgive us to the same extent that we forgive others. Learning that truly was life-changing for me.
As soon as I learned that, I made a decision to learn how to let things go. I made a decision to no longer stay or hold onto a grudge. Whatever it is that someone did to me, it is not worth my eternal salvation. Forgiveness is not easy, especially if someone hurt us deeply. However, missing out on eternal salvation or spending eternity in hell because of that unforgiveness would be a lot harder. I have heard stories of people going to hell because of unforgiveness in their hearts, and I don’t want that to be me.
Today’s verse is a great reminder not only of how we should live our lives in order to get into heaven, but it is a good reminder that none of us know when we will leave this earth. It is a good reminder to not leave things unsaid and not wait for our loved ones to make the first move. What if we all lived our lives like this was our last day on earth? What would our day look like? What would our lives look like? How much more fully would we live our lives if we knew we wouldn’t see our loved ones again?
Yesterday was Thanksgiving and I love Thanksgiving. It is one of best holidays with my family. My siblings and I gather at my mom and dad’s house the day before to help cut up the veggies and make all the desserts. It is a time of so much fun, love, and laughter. Then we get together on Thanksgiving and eat amazing food and talk, laugh and usually play games or watch movies. I love it. It is probably my favorite holiday. I was really looking forward to it.
Wednesday night, one of my sons got in trouble at the mall. We were unsure what that meant for his job as he works at the mall. Thursday morning, he was really upset and wanted to go for a bike ride, and we said no because it was pouring rain out. He went anyway. Then Tony and I fought about whether we should go to CT or not while he was out on his bike ride. I decided I didn’t want to miss out on my favorite holiday with my family, and I left.
I was praying with the Lord while I drove, and he put on my heart that I should be home with Tony and Ryan. They were both upset, and I wouldn’t have any fun at my mom’s if I was thinking about them. Also, I really wanted to be there for them to support them. So, instead, I stopped and got Tony’s favorite drink, a French Vanilla cappuccino, and some soda for the boys at Cumberlands and some pizza at Dominoes since I didn’t have Thanksgiving food to cook at home, and we just chilled out for the day. Sam watched a movie with us, which doesn’t happen much anymore, and it was a good day.
The reason I tell you this is because, in the past, I would have just gone to CT and spent the time with my mom and dad and then come home still angry at the fight I had with Tony. God has been working on my heart, though, and I knew I wanted to be there with Tony to talk things out and not stew over anything we might have said to one another. I might have started learning how to forgive because of fear of not being forgiven by the Lord, but now I forgive because it provides a freedom that I never knew before.
Today’s verse reminds us that we need to be ready. When our time is up, our time is up. Most of the time, there are no second chances. This verse is a gift to us. It is reminding us that we can strive to live each day like it is our last and then we will be ready for the Lord when He comes. We all know Jesus is coming back to judge the living and the dead. This verse promises us that we won’t know when until He gets here. So, knowing that, what are were going to do about it? Are you going to keep putting things off, or are we going live more intentionally and fully today!
Dear heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening today. Lord, we want to live more fully, please help us. We want to be able to forgive. Please help us. We want to not procrastinate and we want to say what is on our mind when it is on our mind. Please help us! Lord, we are a mess and we need your help. Put on our hearts any ways in which we need to be ready for your coming. Change us Lord. Mold our hearts to be one with your heart! We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in May 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “We're all at different places. Some just sit on the shore and look at it and think it's beautiful, but they're afraid to go in. Some go in and learn how to maneuver in it, learning how to swim or stay afloat in that water. Then there are others who've gone on, and they're now much more at ease in that water. They're frolicking. They're playing ball. They're doing whatever.”
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Today, I have two witnesses that I have heard about from friends in this last week. The first one is from my friend who has been struggling with hearing loss. I did a witness about her last year also. She had a ringing in her ears, and she said it had gotten pretty bad. I reminded her that we were at Encounter School of Ministry, where they teach us and encourage us to pray over people for healing and where we see a lot of healing. I prayed over her for healing that night, and then later in the night, two other people prayed over her, and there was no change. However, when she woke up the next morning, the ringing was 90% gone. Praise God! She said it was the quietest her mind had been in a long time.
My friend also found out that she has a tumor in her ear. They said they are going to need to operate. The operation will leave her with permanent hearing loss. The last time she had her hearing tested, the intelligibility in that one ear was 39% when someone was yelling. That means that even when someone was yelling or speaking loudly into her ear, she could only understand 39% of what they were saying. We have been praying over her ear for over a year now. Besides the ringing that stopped she had not seen much change.
When she was on the way home from an Encounter School of Ministries event the other day, she felt something weird going on with her ear. It felt strange, and I don’t remember if she said she heard a noise in it or what. I do remember she said she felt like her hearing was suddenly improving. When she got home, she decided to test it out. We have learned in Encounter School of Ministry that often, the healing doesn’t come when the person is praying, but it comes when the person takes that leap of faith and tests it out to see if a healing has occurred. In order to test it, you would try to do something you couldn’t do before, or you stop and evaluate the pain and see if it's less than it was before the prayer started.
For my friend, she decided to put YouTube on her phone on a song that she didn't know the words to. She turned her volume all the way down until it was just one bar away from being on silent. She put the phone up to her ear and hit play. She could understand all of the words. Even the words in the commercial at the beginning. When she called me to tell me, she had the phone up to that ear that previously wasn't able to hear very much at all. In the past, when talking on the phone, she would have to have the phone to the other ear in order to hear the person on the other line. Praise God! He is so good! My friend's hearing is not perfect. It's not back to normal. And that's OK she's happy with the healing that God has done so far, and she knows and has faith that God's not done yet! Thank you Jesus!
The next one I heard was at the prayer group last week. Recently, there was a Men’s March for Life in Boston. It was peaceful; they were just walking the streets with signs in support of saving babies from abortion. Here is what the woman said.
Well, a dear friend of mine went on the walk and took her 11 year-old son. He was wearing a black suit, and carrying a sign the whole way saying, Why should we kill our babies? They encountered resistance. There were hate-filled faces all around them.
There were knives. There were guns. There were people being thrown on the ground. There were people throwing urine-filled balloons. It was awful. There were police around, but the police couldn’t keep up with the amount of people who were against the march. The people who were marching were scared for their safety. My friend's son got hit with one of these urine-filled balloons.
So my friend turned to her little son, who is, like her, very anointed and said, What do we do? He said, We call on Michael. He was, of course, talking about Saint Michael the Archangel. He started yelling, Michael! And people all around started chanting, Michael! And they were already doing the rosary. Some people kept on saying, Mother Mary, you're going to help us. As many were calling out to Michael there was a flash overhead. There was a flash. And then there were sparks of light, people were getting out their cameras to document the flash of light and the sparks. They knew St. Michael had heard their calls and came to answer them. The next thing they knew, they were completely surrounded by a blockade of military looking police. The police were standing shoulder to shoulder, and there were enough of them to surround everyone marching in the parade. The march was able to continue because everyone now felt safe and there were suddenly enough people to protect them. Thank you, St.Michael.
I'm not saying these were angel warriors because the report online said that the police did call for reinforcements. But it was a miracle that they were immediately after the flash in the sky and the sparks.
Thank you to both of my friends for sharing their miracles with me so I could share them with you! I am so grateful, especially with this being Thanksgiving week, for all the healing that God is doing in our world. I am grateful for all the miraculous ways He provides and protects His children. Thank you, Lord! I am also grateful for each and every one of you who gives your time to listen to this podcast. It truly means the world to me that I get to spend each morning with you. I pray for those of you in America that you have an amazing Thanksgiving weekend. For those of you not in America, I pray you have an amazing weekend, too! I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I!
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I Sought The Lord, And He Heard, And He Answered!
Psalm 34:4-5 “I sought the Lord, and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears. Those who look to him are radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed.”
When I saw this verse this morning, I thought of an elevation song that is on the KLOVE radio station a lot. I know I have mentioned it before, but if you haven’t checked out KLOVE, you really should. You can google what the closest station to you is, or you can get the KLOVE App and listen from there. Not only do they have great Christian music, but the DJs are great, too, and they are always talking about uplifting stuff and not the news or politics. It is great!
Anyway, I thought I would share this song with you as the Lord does answer us when we seek Him out. He can deliver us from all of our fears if we let Him. I also like how the verse says that those who look upon him are radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed. Imagine if you could live your life never being ashamed. Did you even know that was possible? All things are possible through Christ!
The song is called Trust In The Lord and is sung by Elevation Worship. Here are the words:
… Blessed Assurance, Jesus is mine
He's been my fourth man in the fire, time after time
I love this line. He’s been the fourth man in the fire, time after time. Do you know what they are talking about here? Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are three Jewish men from the Bible's Book of Daniel who were thrown into a fiery furnace for refusing to worship a golden statue set up by King Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon. King Nebuchadnezzar had his servants turn the furnace up so that the fire was white hot. These three men were bound up and thrown into the fiery furnace. The king was watching the whole thing. But after they were thrown in, those watching didn’t hear screams or anything. When the king looked in, he saw that the three men were standing in the fire, untouched by the flames and that there was a fourth man in the fire there with them. This is such a great story of God’s power.
My favorite part of that story is that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego didn’t seem to be afraid at all about going into this fiery furnace. I love what they said before going into the furnace. Daniel 3:17-18, "If it is so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king. But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.” Can you imagine how brave these men were? They weren’t afraid to die for what they believed in. I love that they knew God could save them and yet they also knew that might not be what God had in store for them and yet were willing to risk it all anyway. What an incredible faith and trust in the Lord!
Next, the song says,
Born of His Spirit, washed in His blood
And what He did for me on Calvary is more than enough
I just had a conversation about this yesterday with a friend. Do we believe this? Do you believe that what Jesus did on Calvary is more than enough? We tend to get caught up in our sins and our past, and we can’t seem to forgive ourselves. My friend said she had a conversation with the Lord once. He asked her three times if she believed He died on the cross for her. Each time, she said yes. Each time, God said that she didn’t believe that was true. Finally, she asked the Lord why He kept saying it wasn’t true, and He said that if she did, she would forgive herself. Isn’t that powerful? God wants this freedom for all of us. He died to free us from our sins, our past mistakes, and all we have done. When we hold onto those mistakes, when we hold onto that sin, when we can’t forgive ourselves, we are telling the Lord that what He did for us on Calvary wasn’t enough. Is that what we really believe? If it was enough, why can’t we forgive ourselves?
Next the song says
… I trust in God, my Savior
The one who will never fail
He will never fail
We can trust in the Lord. He will never fail us. This can be hard for us to believe because people fail us all the time. However, God is not a person. He will never fail us. We can count on Him to be there for us. He is there in the good times, and He is there in the bad times. He is always there. He never leaves your side!
Next, it says
… Perfect submission, all is at rest
I know the author of tomorrow has ordered my steps
Did you know that God is the author of tomorrow? He is helping you write your story. He has ordered your steps. Does that mean you will never take a wrong step, no. God has laid out our steps before us, but we have free will, and sometimes we take the wrong path. However, God can always turn us around and get us on the right path again. If we are looking to God for direction. If our eyes are fixed on Him, we will see the path He has laid out for us, and we will follow it. We get lost when we take our eyes off the Lord.
Next, the song says,
So this is my story, and this is my song
I'm praising my risen King and Savior all the day long
I know I say this all the time, but this is the key to so much happiness and joy. We need to praise the risen King and Savior all day long! We need to praise the Lord when we are on the top of a mountain, and we need to praise Him when we are in a valley. It may be more important to praise Him when we are in a valley because we tend to forget how good He is when we are in a valley. We tend to turn away or feel lost when we are in a valley, and if we are praising the Lord, it will help remind us of His goodness. Another benefit to praising, especially when we are in the valley, is that it confuses the enemy. He doesn’t understand why we would praise the Lord when we are feeling down, lost, or abandoned and so when He sees us doing this, He flees. Also, anytime evil spirits hear the name of the Lord, or especially the name of Jesus, they flee.
Next, the song repeats, … I trust in God, my SaviorThe one who will never fail. He will never fail. A few times and then it says,
… He didn't fail you then
He won't fail you now
This is a reminder of something we can do when we are scared the Lord won’t come through. We can look back at our lives and see all the times God has come through for us in the past. If He didn’t fail you when you called out to Him the last time, He won’t fail you now, either. If you are struggling to believe this, look back to some previous times when you called out to the Lord. Did He fail you? Did He abandon you when you needed Him? The Lord is the same yesterday, today, and always. If He didn’t abandon you then, He won’t now either!
The rest of the song repeats this chorus several times and then repeats some of the words from about.
… I sought the Lord and He heard and He answered
I sought the Lord and He heard and He answered
I sought the Lord and He heard and He answered
That's why I trust Him, that's why I trust Him
What about you? Have you sought the Lord? Did He hear? Did He answer? That is how you know you can trust Him. God tells us in several places in the Bible that when we ask, He answers. This means that He hears us when we ask. Trust in Him!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening! Lord, we love you, and we want to trust you. Please help us. Why is it so hard for us to trust you at times? Lord, we ask that you help us remember all the times you were there for us. Highlight the times that you answered our prayer, and yet we have forgotten. We love you, Lord, and we thank you for always being that fourth man in our fire time after time. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!
Thank you all for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to bringing you a new witness tomorrow morning. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in May 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “It was urgent that we try to see everything from God's perspective. I felt like the Lord was holding me and saying, don't be afraid to say it because I want people to do things in my way and not be afraid. Forget what other people think when you do a certain thing. ”
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Never Let Anxiety Enter Your Hearts
Luke 12:22-23 “Jesus taught his disciples, saying, “Listen to me. Never let anxiety enter your hearts. Never worry about any of your needs, such as food or clothing. For your life is infinitely more than just the food you eat or the clothing you wear.”
Wow, Jesus could not be more direct with us. He is not calling us to a fear-free life; He is commanding us not to fear. He is not telling us that sometimes anxiety is ok and sometimes it is bad. He is telling us to never let anxiety enter our hearts. Never is a pretty strong word. He is telling us never to worry about any of our needs, like food or clothing. I don’t know if you ever had to worry about these things before. If you haven’t, then I can see why it would be really hard not to worry. I mean, you have to eat to survive, and you need clothes to get through the day. At least now we do. Before the fall, we didn't even need clothes, Adam and Eve walked around naked and were perfectly content. They saw nothing wrong with it. It wasn’t until sin entered the world that shame entered the world. Before sin, there was no shame.
When I was growing up, we did have to wonder sometimes about where our food or clothes would come from. I still, to this day, do not know how my mom was able to pay for all the special shoes and socks that we all needed to go with our cheerleading, football, color guard, or band uniforms. I am 100% sure that I don’t even know a fraction of the sacrifice my parents made for us 11 kids while we were growing up. They are probably still making sacrifices. I am sure there were countless times when they went without so we could have what we wanted. I am so grateful to them.
I feel extremely lucky because my dad is a Deacon in the Catholic Church, and one of their responsibilities or jobs is to give the Homily/Sermon at Mass about once a month or so. My dad often used stories from our home life in his homilies because my dad knew that people learned best when they had real-life examples to help them understand the scripture. I feel lucky because I am not sure if I would know half of the stories that I have heard if it weren’t for my dad recounting them for the church.
My mom and dad were very faithful in counting on the Lord to provide for all of our needs. I am not sure if they prayed, trusted, and worried or if they just prayed and trusted. Either way I do know that the first thing they did when they were in need is they turned to the Lord. Most of the time, they had little choice as they were desperate for food, clothing, or money. However, there are many people who are desperate, and they still don’t turn to the Lord. My parents always turned to the Lord, and He always showed up in such big ways.
We were one of the biggest families in our small town. There was one family about the same size that had older kids, and there was another family that was the same age as our family. One of my best friends in school was in the other large family in my town. That was it, just 2-3 large families. This meant that we frequently had clothes and other things dropped off at our house. If people had clothes that their kids outgrew, they would drop those clothes off at our house as they knew we probably had a kid that was just that size. Most of us were just a year or two away from the next sibling, so if they didn’t fit one of us, they would fit another one. We never had to worry about where our clothes would come from; the Lord took care of it.
We also never really had to worry about where our food would come from either. God always took really good care of us. I am still astonished at how many grilled tuna melts my mom can make with two cans of tuna! One of my favorite stories is when my mom and dad were talking one morning about how they didn’t have any food in the house, and they weren’t sure how they were going to feed all of us kids. Then they got a phone call, and it was their good friends from a few towns over. They had an emergency come up, and they wanted to know if my parents could watch their kids. Now my parents had about 10 kids at this time, and this family had ten kids as well. My parents had no food in the house, but they knew they needed to help their friends out. They said yes and then immediately started praying to the Lord. They were asking the Lord what He wanted them to do for food. They were telling Him that they were counting on Him to provide the food as they knew He could.
Before they were even done praying, their next-door neighbor knocked on their door. She said that her father-in-law had to move in with them unexpectedly. He had just gone grocery shopping and so he brought all of his food with him. However, they had just gone grocery shopping, too, and they didn’t have room for all of this food. They were wondering if we could use some food. My parents were so grateful, and they said yes, that would be nice. They looked through the bag, and they found several packages of pasta and tomato sauce.
They decided they would have pasta and sauce that night for dinner to feed all those kids. They had the thought that it would be even better if they just had some meat to go in the sauce, but I am not sure if they prayed for it, or if they just thought it. The next thing they know, another neighbor is knocking at their door. He and a friend had gone hunting recently, and they just got all the meat back from the butcher. He said he and his friend had filled their fridges and freezers, and they just had no more room, and they were wondering if my parents could use some of the meat they had left over. My parents gratefully accepted the meat and were able to provide dinner for all 20 of us kids. God is so good!
As I said earlier, if this is not something that you have experienced before, then it might be harder for you to believe that God will provide for you. One thing I have done to help me have more trust in the Lord, especially in the hard things, is to read stories of miracles the Lord has done in others' lives. I love to read about the amazing things God has done for others. It is a fact that if God can do it for them, He can do it for you. That is a promise you can count on. So, if you are allowing fear in your life because of a specific reason, then read stories of how God has helped people through the thing you are struggling with.
For instance, if you are really fearful because of a medical problem start reading all sorts of miracle stories of people God has healed, people God has helped out of impossible situations. I think one thing we forget is that doctors are not God. They are giving you the prognosis based on science and their experience. I am not saying that you should believe what the doctor is telling you. I am saying that God is the only one that has the final say. The doctor may not see any way out, but with God, there can always be a way out.
God is a Way Maker. He doesn’t have to take a path that is already there; He can make His own path. We don’t have to see the way for there to be one. My favorite example of this is the Israelites at the Red Sea. They had this raging sea on one side of them and the Egyptian army on the other side of them. They could not see a way out. Does that mean there wasn’t one? Does that mean they had to choose between drowning in the Red Sea or going back into slavery with the Egyptian army? NO! God made a way where there was no way. God parted the Red Sea and let the Israelites cross over on dry ground. When the Egyptian army tried to cross over, God released the Sea, and the Egyptian army drowned.
What just occurred to me now, which I never thought of before, was how close that means the Egyptian army was to the Israelites. It doesn’t say that Israelites crossed over, and then God kept the sea parted for days, waiting for the Egyptians to try to cross over. The Egyptians must have been right on the heels of the Israelites. What just came up for me was that this is a great example not only of how God is a Way Maker but also of how it is never too late. The Israelites must have felt like they were running out of time. They must have felt like it was only a matter of hours before the army caught up to them. I bet they felt hopeless. I am guessing they were worried and probably not trusting God to get them through, even though He had just done some amazing miracles to get the Pharaoh to allow them to leave. However, God did save them. It wasn’t too late. It is never too late with the Lord!
Dear Heavenly Father, please bless all those listening to this episode. Lord, show us how to not let anxiety enter our hearts and minds. Help us block those anxious thoughts that keep showing up. Help us rely on you for all we need and not worry about where our provisions will come from. Help us look back at all the ways you have helped us in the past and know that you will help us again. We love you, Lord! You are the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. You are the Lord of Lords and the King of Kings. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. With this being Thanksgiving week, I want to let you all know how grateful I am for you taking the time out of your busy day to listen to this podcast. I pray you have an amazing Thanksgiving week!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in May 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I had this deep sense of urgency that it is so important that we forget about ourselves and that we see to the needs of others. And the more we do for others, the more it will instill in them a sense of gratitude that they will come closer to the Lord because they see that other people care what happens to them”
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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Thanks so much for that amazing teaching, Tina. I told you guys that you were going to like it! I don’t know about you, but I don’t know a ton about the angels, and I always jump at the opportunity to learn more about them.
Thank you for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again on Monday. Remember Jesus loves and accepts you just as you and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in May 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is more of a vision from the Lord, “As we were singing the songs, I saw us in a huddle with Jesus. We're all in this huddle, we're all surrounding each other, and He says, okay, and He points to each one of us, and He's given us the play, so what He wants us to do, you go do this, you go do this, you go do this”
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Be Carefree in the Care of God!
Luke 12:24-27 “Take the carefree birds as your example. Do you ever see them worry? They neither grow their own food nor put it in a storehouse for later. Yet God takes care of every one of them, feeding each of them out of the abundance of his love and goodness. Isn’t your life more precious to God than a bird? Be carefree in the care of God! “Does worry add anything to your life? Can it add one more year or even one day? So, if worrying adds nothing but actually subtracts from your life, why would you worry about God’s care of you?”
This is a verse that we often hear when we talk about how God will provide for us, and we don’t have to worry about anything. There is a lot in these short verses. First, it tells us to take the carefree birds as our example. We don’t ever see birds worry about where they will get their next meal or if they will be able to eat that day. They don’t grow their own food; they don’t store food. Each day, the bird goes out and looks for what it will eat that day. If it has babies in the nest, it will look for food to feed them every day as well. However, they don’t seem to be worried if they will find food.
What I read in this verse that I don’t remember seeing before is that it says, “Yet God takes care of every one of them, feeding each of them out of the abundance of his love and goodness.” I am not sure if I haven’t seen that before because that is only included in this translation or if I just never noticed it before. However, I think it is a really good thing to think about. God feeds the birds out of the abundance of his love and goodness. Did you know God had an abundance of love for all of His creatures?
This world tends to operate from a scarcity mindset. The world teaches us that we should get what is ours now before it runs out. We should strive to make more and more money because what if we don’t have enough for all we need? When we approach things from a scarcity mindset, we won’t be grateful for the things we have because what we have will never seem like enough. When we approach God with a scarcity mindset, we may think He does not have enough for us. That might be enough love, enough provisions, enough mercy, enough grace. Whatever it is that you think you need.
I like how this verse reminds us that God doesn’t scrimp together all he can to provide for us. He provides for us out of His abundance and His goodness. God will not ever run out of provisions for us. He won’t ever run out of mercy, grace, or love for us, either. God has an abundance of all things. Next, the verse says, “Isn’t your life more precious to God than a bird?” If God is providing for the birds every single day out of His abundance, don’t you think He will provide for you, too? Humans are God’s greatest creation. He likes us the best. If He is making sure the birds don’t go without, then He is making sure you won’t go without, also.
The last part of the verse says, “Be carefree in the care of God! “Does worry add anything to your life? Can it add one more year or even one day? So, if worrying adds nothing but actually subtracts from your life, why would you worry about God’s care of you?” I think we all know this on some level, and yet we aren’t really sure about how we can change it. The verse reminds us that worry won’t add anything to our lives. It won’t add another year or even one day. So, if it adds nothing to our lives, why do we do it? I think we do it because we live in a society that trains us to worry. All of the news that we watch on TV is designed to get a reaction out of us. It is designed to make us worry so that we will keep watching it. It is also designed to keep us worrying so we will vote for a certain candidate, or vote a certain way on a bill, or anything else they want us to do.
Even advertisements have capitalized on the fear, worry, and anxiety of our world today. When people are trying to sell us something, they tell us how bad life will be if we don’t buy their product. Instead of leading with all the good things their product will do, they lead with all the bad things that happen if you don’t buy the product. I was listening to one of my life coaching teachings the other day, and they said fear of the consequences if people don’t change is a much stronger motivator than the positive rewards they will get when they do change. The world is full of fear, and yet you don’t have to be. You can learn to trust the Lord and know that He will protect you. He will provide for you. He will always come through for you. God has an abundance of love for you that you can count on.
Lastly, something I don’t know if we realized is what it says about worry adding nothing but actually subtracting from your life. How does worry subtract from your life? How many times have you missed out on important moments because you were stressing about something instead of enjoying the moment? How much of your life has been taken away because of panic attacks? When you look back over your life, can you see places where worry or anxiety has stolen your joy, taken away some fond memories, spoiled some great times?
I know trusting in the Lord is hard; isn’t being anxious all the time hard, too? I will never forget the first time I heard someone from the personal development world say to me that life is hard. Change is hard, not changing is hard. If it is going to be hard either way, which way makes it worth the hard? Would you rather it be hard and yet you are happy, or would you rather it be hard and you be miserable? I know it seems like we don’t have much choice in things, but that is a trick of the enemy. He wants us to think we are stuck where we are. He wants us to think we can’t change. He wants us to think we have to be worried and anxious all the time. This is a lie! You can find freedom from this worry and anxiety. You can find ways to trust the Lord. You don’t have to live an anxious life. The Lord will provide you with all you need; we just have to ask and then trust He will answer.
Dear Heavenly Father, please bless all those listening to this today. Lord, we don’t want to worry, we just don’t know how not to. Please help us. We want to trust you completely. We want to believe you won’t let us down, but we have been let down so many times by those around us. Lord, please show us how to trust you. Please give us the strength to believe that you will always be there for us. Fill us with hope, Lord! We are tired of this worry and anxiety, please take it from us and replace it with the peace of Christ. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you are really struggling with trusting the Lord, check out my book Total Trust in God’s Safe Embrace. Each chapter is a different way that I built up my trust in the Lord. You can get a signed copy from my website, or you can also find it on Amazon. I also have a book coming out soon called Abandon Anxiety. I will let you know when that one is out as well. If you would like to read it before it is published, I can send you the pdf version of it. Just reach out to Catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com. I am happy to send it to you ahead of time. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in May 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Turn to me for life. Help my people see that they will not find life in the dead words that the world gives them. They will only find life in me.”
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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This morning’s witness is about my day last Saturday. I had the privilege of joining a group of young adults in the Boston area who belong to a ministry called Encounter. This is different than the Encounter School of Ministry that I attended. This ministry is a group of Catholic young adults that get together as a large group on the third Saturday of the month. They meet at a church in Boston, and they gather for Mass. Then, they head downstairs to the church hall for breakfast and fellowship. After breakfast is over, they gather in groups. One group is for those who have been there before and they meet and do formation. They learn a topic or something that will help them when they go out and minister. Last week they talked about Mother Theresa I believe. They also have a group for newcomers where they explain all about the ministry. They talk about what you should and should not do while you are out there. They give you tips about what works and what doesn’t. Then, they show you a video about the group in Colorado that they designed their group after. This group is called “Christ in the City.”
When you go to their website, the first thing you see is a quote from Mother Theresa that says, “Many people talk about the homeless, but few talk to them.” Mother Theresa talks about something called the Poverty of loneliness. The approach of “Christ in the City,” and also this Encounter Ministry in Boston, is Healing through Relationship. These two ministries spend time each week building relationships with the homeless on the streets. It is through seemingly small interactions—the disarming power of eye contact, a genuine smile, stopping to say hello and learn someone's name—that the seeds of friendship take root, and a journey of healing begins.
There are lots of homeless ministries in Boston, and they are all a little different. I know two people from my class who go out on Saturday mornings in Boston and pray over people. They head to Mass Ave and another place where there is a large homeless population, and they pray with them for healing and for conversion. They pray for an end to their addiction, and whatever it is they need prayer for. There are also other groups that bring the homeless food, clothing, or other material things they may need. Encounter’s primary goal is to build a relationship with the homeless. They walk the same paths each week so that they really get to know the people on their path. They become friends with them, and then they pray for their friends during their prayer time.
After this group time, they meet up in the church again to break into small groups. They usually only have 2-3 people in a group, and they try to have at least one male and one female in a group, as males and females both offer something unique to any situation. Before heading out, the priest will say a prayer. Then, everyone heads out to their specific section of Boston to minister for about two hours or so.
This weekend was my first weekend joining this group. Mostly because I did not know about it before but also because it is for young adults, and I am no longer a young adult. However, I have had the privilege of spending time with 6 of the ladies in this group lately, and so I wanted to see what it is they do for ministry. They invited me to join in this week. I was in a group of four going out for ministry. We decided to walk to our area. As we walked, we talked and got to know each other a bit. Once we got to our area, we decided to split up into groups of two as larger groups can be intimidating, and also, we can reach more people if we split up.
I was with a young man named Duke. He had been doing this ministry for a few years, I believe. He was great at initiating conversations with those we met. I was nervous because I had never done this before and also because I am not always great at starting conversations or keeping them going. However, it was a great day. We first met this man who Duke has seen around a lot. We talked with him for a while, and he seemed happy to have the company and to have someone listen to him. He said he always has a goal each day for what he will spend the money that he makes on, this way, he doesn’t waste it on just cigarettes. I thought this was a great idea. Saturday, he was trying to make enough money to buy a cheap watch as he doesn’t have a phone anymore, and it is really hard getting through the day without knowing what time it is. Especially if he has to be back at the shelter at a certain time.
What I loved about the first man we talked to is that he seemed happy. He talked about how he knew God was always looking out for him. He was thankful to God for all he had. He was grateful that he wasn’t sleeping on the streets and that he had a shelter to stay in. He said he was sleeping on the floor at the shelter, but that was better than the streets so he was grateful. He said he was waiting for disability to go through so he could maybe get an apartment. He seemed very optimistic and that was heartwarming to see. He had hope and that is always nice.
Next, we talked to a woman who seemed sad. She didn’t really want to talk to us until she found out that we were not social workers. Then she opened up a bit. She had a really hard childhood, and that was hard to hear. She had unspeakable things happen to her from the time she was young, and it was so sad to hear her talk about it. She also seemed to be a bit confused as she said a lot of things that didn’t make sense. We stayed with her for a little while, but conversations were hard as she didn’t really answer any questions and just repeated the same things over and over again. We left after a bit. I think she liked that we stopped and said hi, though. I think she liked having someone listen to her.
The next guys we walked by, we almost didn’t stop. I am not sure why, I think it was probably because he was smoking a cigarette, and he didn’t really look homeless. Although you never really know who is homeless. Not all homeless people look a certain way. I am not sure why we didn’t seem to be stopping. I do know when we looked at him and he gave us a big smile, we knew we should stop and say hi. He was very friendly and talkative. He told us how he used to be homeless, and he used to sleep on the street corner right next to where we were. He said he had a good job and was doing well, but then his drinking took over, and he lost everything. He said he was pretty sick from living on the streets. He had to have his toes amputated because he had diabetes. He said it got so bad he could barely walk. He had a walker, and if he walked for more than a few feet, he would be winded.
He had serious health issues, and one day, it all got to be too much for him. He said he got down on his knees and cried out to the Lord for help. The Lord helped him. He went into rehab and gave up all drinking and substance use. The only thing he does now that he doesn’t like is smoking. He said he knows the Lord will help him give that up one day also. He got a social worker who was able to find him an apartment within 3 months. Previously, he had been on a list, but he was too busy with alcohol to go in and check on where he was on the list. He is also taking classes at some centers in Boston. They give him a stipend for transportation so he can get to and from the center. He is learning how to use computers and how to troubleshoot if they aren’t working. It is a 12-week class, and after that, he will enter an Intensive Outpatient Therapy class where they will reinforce what he learned at rehab and help him develop more strategies to stay sober.
He said he has met friends through the center and through rehab who are also trying to stay sober. If any of them are having a rough day or are thinking about having a drink, they will call each other and go out for coffee and encourage each other on their journey. It was so beautiful talking to this man. He also said as soon as he went into rehab, he got on Facebook and reached out to his family, and they were all happy he was in rehab. They were super supportive and happy to hear from him. They were willing to help him in any way they could. He was calling his older brother that day to see if they could have coffee together as he works in the city.
This man said he gets up each morning and stands on the street he used to sleep on, and he talks with the people who walk by or the homeless on that street. He said he does this for the Lord. He wants to thank God for all He has done for him. He also does it so that he can be an example to those on the street who are still addicted to drugs or alcohol. He can be an example of what can happen when you call out to the Lord. He is living proof that things can change, that help is available when you are ready, and that life can get better.
He said he stands on the street for several hours, and then he goes to mass and confession. Then, he will make his way home. He said he is so grateful for his life. He is grateful for God helping him. He is grateful for his apartment, which used to be not that great, but then they started fixing it up, putting rules in place so people can’t be drinking in the hallways and such, and they hired security. He feels safe and secure there now. He has contact with his family again. He is so happy, and you can see it just by looking at him. His smile was so big you could see that he was full of the Holy Spirit!
Then, as we were talking to him, there was another man that came by. We talked to him for a bit. He didn’t seem too interested in talking with us, but he liked talking to the guy we were talking to. The guy that came up to us gave the man we were talking to a pair of brand-new socks. It was nice to see how they cared for each other.
After everyone was done with the ministry time, then they all made their way back to the church. They spend a few minutes in the church individually praying. I thanked God for all the encounters that I had that day. I prayed for each one of my new friends. I asked the Lord what was one thing he wanted me to learn from this experience. This is what I felt the Lord told me, “Remember that we can learn just as much from our friends as they can from us. The people you met today are my beautiful children, whom I love dearly. I am doing good work in them, too, but sometimes it takes longer because they are resistant and they are blocking me. That doesn't mean I can't work, but it does sometimes take longer. I will use all they have been through for their own good. Thank you for your prayers for them. You may be the only one praying for them, so don't forget them. I don't want to see a single one of my children perish. I am grateful to you for going out with Encounter today.”
After they pray in the church, they go downstairs and eat lunch with their group and debrief about their experience for that day. While we were debriefing, God gave one of the ministers in our group a beautiful gift. When we were talking about the man who went to rehab and was doing so great, one of the women in our group was so happy. She had prayed with this man the night before he went to rehab, and she hadn’t seen him since. She had never stopped praying for him and wondering what happened to him. She was overjoyed and so grateful when she heard how well he was doing.
The reason I said God gave her a gift is because it is not often that you get to see the fruit of your prayers. Often, it is our job to plant the seed or say the prayer, but we don’t get to see the seed bloom or the prayers bear fruit. She had prayed with this man, they had formed a special bond, and to hear the Lord not only saved him from his addiction but saved him from living on the streets and reunited him with his family in some way was amazing. She wanted to go right back out and talk with him, but unfortunately, she wasn’t able to. However, I know she will be looking for him the next time she goes out. This provided encouragement for the whole group, too. God is hearing their prayers, their work is not in vain, and they are making a difference. Next, they get in a big circle, and each group talks about one way their life was impacted by the people they met that day. Then, they end with a Thanksgiving Rosary. This is not where they say the rosary. It is where they say one thing they are faithful to on each Hail Mary bead. It was beautiful to hear what everyone was thankful for. I am so grateful I got to be a part of this ministry for a day.
The third Saturday is when the whole group of young adults go out and minister. However, several of them go out a couple of times a week in small groups. I know the ladies I have been fortunate enough to spend time with actually live in community with each other so they can help each other grow closer to the Lord, and they also go out a few times a week for ministry. It is amazing to spend time with young adults who are so in love with Christ and who give their time to make sure the homeless have someone to talk to. They do extraordinary work, and if you are a young adult listening to this, reach out to me, and I can tell you how you can get involved. If you are not a young adult and are interested in homeless ministry, I am sure there is something that would fit your needs, too.
Thank you very much to all those involved in Encounter Boston for letting me join you and for all the amazing work you are doing. You are making a difference in the lives of all you encounter!
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Our Heavenly Bank
Luke 12:33-34 “Now, go and sell what you have and give to those in need; you will be making deposits in your account in heaven, an account that will never be taken from you. Your gifts will become a secure and unfailing treasure, deposited in heaven forever. Where you deposit your treasure, that is where you fix your thoughts—and your heart will long to be there also.”
Yesterday after school, I went to the church near me as it is always open. I wanted to sit there with the Lord and ask Him what he wanted me to teach about in mentoring tonight. I took out my Bible and asked Him to give me a scripture verse. I don’t do this too often, but I asked for a verse. I told the Lord I was going to just open the Bible, and I asked Him to show me a verse on the page I just happened to open up to that would either be relevant for mentoring or for life in general.
I picked a random part of the Bible to open up to, and it happened to be Luke 12. What is amazing to me is that there is a whole section on the page I opened up to that is called in my Passion Translation, “Don’t Worry.” the theme for mentoring this month is “Be Not Afraid.” I love it when the Lord does that. He just has you open up the Bible to the perfect page. What was interesting to me is that I have heard and read that section several times before, and yet today, a few things stood out to me that I don’t remember ever hearing or reading before. One of those things is the verse above.
I have heard before that Jesus wants us to sell what we have and give to those in need. He tells this to the young man who asks what he needs to do to get into the Kingdom of Heaven. However, I have never heard of it as making deposits into our account in heaven. I love that imagery. It reminded me of when I was reading a book one time. I think it might have been The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families, but I am not sure. Whatever book it was, it talked about how we need to make emotional deposits into our loved ones. The idea of "making regular deposits into our loved ones' emotional banks" means consistently building a positive relationship with your loved one through kind gestures, praise, and supportive actions so that when you need to say something negative or critical, they are more likely to trust your intentions and not feel overly hurt because of the strong foundation of positive interactions you've already established; essentially, it's like having a "reserve" of positive experiences that can buffer against occasional negative feedback.
This is what I thought of when it comes to our heavenly bank. We can store our treasures up there as they won’t do us any good down here. We can’t take our treasures with us. We can’t take our material possessions with us. It makes sense that we could sell those things to make a deposit into our heavenly bank. To be honest, after having this thought, I started to wonder if it was the same as with our kids. We make regular deposits into our heavenly bank so that when we do something bad, we are still ok because we have all the other deposits to cover this thing we just did. However, I don’t think this is what the Lord is talking about. If this was the case, then it would be as if we were earning our way into heaven. It would be as if we needed to do more good than bad, and there was a scale in heaven that was making sure we put in more good than the withdrawal due to the bad behavior.
I know this is not the case because we don’t have to earn our way into heaven. Jesus died on the cross for us so that we may be saved. Our getting into heaven isn’t based on how many good things we do on Earth vs. how many bad things we do on Earth. After realizing this, I wondered why the Lord highlighted this section for me and why he brought that story up about depositing into our loved ones’ banks. First, I think he reminded me of that story because I think we all needed that reminder that it is important to continually be investing and depositing into our loved ones banks. Second, I think God highlighted this section for me because of the last line.
The last line of the verse above says, “Where you deposit your treasure, that is where you fix your thoughts—and your heart will long to be there also.” I think God wanted us to take some time today and think about where we are depositing our treasures. Where we deposit our treasure is where you fix your thoughts. So, where are your thoughts fixed? Are they fixed on the Lord, or are they fixed on the world? Are they fixed on all God has done for you, or are they fixed on all the things going wrong in your life? What about our time? Time is the most valuable resource we have. Where are we spending our time? Are we making regular deposits of our time with the Lord, or are we spending our time elsewhere? For me, I feel as though I am not spending as much time as I would like to with God. I am allowing myself to be distracted by TV and other things.
The verse above says, “Where you deposit your treasure, that is where you fix your thoughts—and your heart will long to be there also.” So, if we are depositing our time elsewhere, then that is where our thoughts will be and, subsequently, where our hearts will long to be. Where does your heart long to be? I believe my heart longs to be in heaven with God, and yet that is not what my actions would do. That is not where I seem to be making most of my deposits of time. Maybe today, we could all look at our time and examine where we are spending the majority of it. We can look to see where our thoughts are and where our hearts are. Is there anything we need to change to be more in alignment with this verse and with the will of the Lord?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening. Lord, help us to focus our eyes, hearts, and minds on you. Help us to put our treasures into the heavenly bank where they will be safe. Help us to make regular deposits of our time into that same bank. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Remember, if you want to check out mentoring tonight for our Be Not Afraid series, you can just email me, and I will send the Zoom link. I look forward to meeting you here again with a witness tomorrow morning. Remember, Jesus loves you, just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in May 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My people need to know that they should not seek the living among the dead. My word alone is life. The word that the world gives brings no life.”
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Sanctify Them In The Truth
John 17:17-18 “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sakes, I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth.”
The beginning part of this was the verse of the day today. I liked this verse because it talks about sanctifying them with the Lord’s truth. I wasn’t exactly sure what this verse meant, so I turned to the “Enduring Word Bible Commentary.” I always learn a lot when I look to the people who write Bible commentary for more information.
The verse above starts with, “Sanctify them in the truth.” Sanctify means to be set apart for God’s special pleasure and use. It implies holiness, being set apart from the corruption of the world and for God’s use. We have all been set apart from this world. Yes, we are all meant to live in this world, but we are not meant to be of this world. I know that probably just sounds like fancy rhetoric that you hear people say but don’t really know what it means. What it means is that although we are living in the world, we must not conform to its ways.
The world’s view and the Lord’s view are very different, and we must be careful not to get lazy and just start believing what the world believes. It can be hard not to fall into the trap of believing what the world believes because what the world believes is so much in our faces. We are surrounded by it. They try to convince us that the things they are doing are not as bad as we think they are. The world will try to normalize all the things that the Lord says we should not be doing.
The world tells us that it’s ok to tell “little white lies” because they really aren’t hurting anyone. The world tells us that it is ok to take what is ours, even if it doesn’t technically belong to us. The world tells us so many things that just aren’t true. Yet their justification seems to make sense to us. This is why I said earlier that we have to be careful not to get lazy and just start believing what the world believes. It takes work to examine their reasoning and their justification and see right through it.
Another thing that just came to mind is that we need to know why God says what He says. We need to know why the church says what it says. Before I started learning more about my Catholic faith, I would have people ask me why I believed what I believed, and they would quote scripture to me and tell me why I was wrong or why the Catholic Church was wrong. Their arguments seemed to make sense, and I would start to question what I believed. This is when I started learning all I could about my beliefs and why the Church teaches what it teaches. I learned so much, and I began to realize that most of the things that my friends were saying about the Catholic Church were not actually true. They had issues with what they thought we believed or what they thought we were doing, but that wasn’t what we believed or what we were doing.
One instance is when they asked why we worship Mary or the Saints. We don’t do either of these things. We definitely give Mary the respect she is owed as Mother of our Lord and Savior, but we don’t worship her. We also don’t worship the saints. We do talk with the Saints, and we do ask them to bring our requests to the Lord, but this is no different than when anyone would ask you to pray for their family. We aren’t asking the Saint to fix our situation; we are asking them to bring out a request to the Lord. The more people praying for our situation, the better!
Back to the verse. Jesus didn’t just leave the disciples to sanctify themselves. He prayed for their sanctification. This process is not left to us alone; it is a work of God in us and through us. Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth: The dynamic behind sanctification is truth. The word of God is read, heard, understood, and applied. “Sanctification is not effected apart from divine revelation.” (Morris) “The more truth you believe, the more sanctified you will be. The operation of truth upon the mind is to separate a man from the world unto the service of God.” (Spurgeon)
The verse goes on to say, “As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world.”Jesus gave us a mission to go out into the world. The reason Jesus asked for our sanctification was not primarily for personal holiness, although that is included, more so being set apart for God’s service and mission. “He does not merely leave them in the world, but sends them into it, to witness to this same truth of God.” (Alford) “The word ‘mission’ comes from the Latin verb mitto, mittere, misi, missum, which means ‘to send’ or ‘dispatch.’ A mission is a sending forth.” (Boice) Jesus gave us each a mission, and we need to start living out this mission. “Christ was the great Missionary, the Messiah, the Sent One; we are the minor missionaries, Sent out into the world to accomplish the Father’s will and purpose.” (Spurgeon) “Christ’s commission is on a higher scale than ours; for he was sent to be a propitiation and covenant-head, and so came into positions which it would be presumption for us to dream of occupying. Still, there is a likeness, though it is only that of a drop to the sea.” (Spurgeon)
Think of how Jesus came, and connect it to the way that He sends us into the world:
· Jesus did not come as a philosopher like Plato or Aristotle, though He knew higher philosophy than them all.
· Jesus did not come as an inventor or a discoverer, though He could have invented new things and discovered new lands.
· Jesus did not come as a conqueror, though He was mightier than Alexander or Caesar.
· Jesus came to teach.
· Jesus came to live among us.
· Jesus came to suffer for truth and righteousness.
· Jesus came to rescue men.
The verse then says, “And for their sakes I sanctify Myself:” One should not think that Jesus was unsanctified up to this point. Yet now He was about to enter a new aspect of being set aside for God the Father and His purpose: to complete the work of the cross. It was through that finished work that the word of God and the work of God would become fully effective in the lives of the disciples (that they also may be sanctified by the truth).
Christ died on the cross for us. He gave His life for us, and now we are called to go out and complete his mission. We are called to spread the truth of the Bible to all those we meet.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Jesus, we love you, and we thank you for walking the Earth and showing us how to live. We thank you for showing us how to complete the mission you have given us. We thank you for sanctifying us and for not leaving us alone to do your mission but for sending the Holy Spirit to be with us as we go out into the world. We ask that you continue to be with us always and you continue to lead us on our mission. We ask this in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. If you enjoy this podcast and these teachings and think you want more, I invite you to check out my mentoring program. This month’s theme is “Be Not Afraid.” Who doesn’t need to learn more ways to trust the Lord and have less worry in their lives? I hope you will join me tomorrow night for week #3 of our “Be Not Afraid” Series. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day.
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in May 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, when you are struggling, call my name. Remember there's power in my name. Fall upon me, and I will help you.”
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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You Are Chosen!
John 15:16 "You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name.”
This was the verse that the praise leader talked about at the prayer group yesterday. Her talk lined up so much with yesterday’s episode of the podcast. Then we had a bookmark yesterday at a prayer group, and her talk and my episode both lined up perfectly with the bookmark. Our bookmarks are a compilation of the Lord’s Word for the month. The month we happened to be going over was October 2023. I love how God does that. He takes His word that we have discerned from a year ago, and he fits it right in with what we are talking about today. God is so good. I guess that is a good reminder that God’s word is timeless. It is always relevant, no matter when He gives it to us.
What I love about this verse is that it reminds us that we are chosen. We didn’t choose God; He chose us. We are the chosen ones. How great is that? Even if you feel rejected by everyone else in your family or all those who surround you, you can rest assured that you are chosen by God. You are chosen by the one true King. You are chosen by the creator of the universe. God could have chosen anyone, and He chose you. That is something to hold onto. That is something to remind yourself of when you are struggling. God chose you!
The praise leader did an excellent job of explaining what it means to be chosen and what it means to bear lasting fruit. I would like to share this with you today. The audio quality is not great because I recorded it on my phone in a room full of people. However, it is too good of a teaching not to share just because of the audio quality. Here is Louise giving her teaching on the verse above.
Do we really know what it means to be chosen? I did a little bit of background reading in my commentaries, and a particular person that I read mentioned a few things about being chosen, and one of the things that he mentioned was that when Jesus chose us, He chose us for joy, and joy we find in doing the right thing, and joy we find and exhibit when we recognize that yeah, we're sinners, we make mistakes, we do things wrong, but we are redeemed sinners, and that brings joy, that allows us to be joyful in the midst of us making a mess. We are chosen for love.
Jesus wants us to live in such a way that we show love to our fellow men and women, and that's not an easy task, but what we can remember is if we look at Jesus, His whole life, He lived that. He always was showing love to men and women, always. They came first.
He focused on them. He met their needs, whether they needed healing, whether they needed forgiveness, whether they needed a word of encouragement, He met their needs, and that's the kind of life He wants us to live. He's also called us to be His friends, and one of the things this commentary shared, which I've never thought about is, you know, when back in the Old Testament, when He said this to His disciples, this would have really struck home with them, because the Old Testament way of thinking was that to be a slave of God, to be a real servant of God, that was one of the highest honors you could have.
That was one of the highest honors you could have. You know, people strung for it. The prophets, they were called, you know, servants of God, slaves of God.
Well, Jesus then takes it a step further and says, I no longer call you slaves, I call you friends. And being friends and not being a slave means that you know what the Master is about. A slave doesn't. A slave just does what he's told. He doesn't know the intimacy of a relationship with his Master. He doesn't know his Master's thinking. He doesn't know why his Master wants to do something. He doesn't understand. He just does what he's told.
Well, Jesus wants us to be friends. He wants that intimacy with us. And one of the things, too, that I read was Abraham was called a friend of God. He wasn't just called a servant of God. Abraham was a friend of God. And why was Abraham a friend of God? Because he intimately talked with God and listened to God and followed God even when he didn't understand what God meant and how things could happen.
So one of the things we need to remember is that you know what? Jesus didn't choose us for a series of tremendous privileges. Although he does give us those. Joy and peace and you know, they're all ours. He gives them to us. But that isn't the main reason he chooses us. He chooses us to be partners with him. That, when you think about it, is phenomenal. I know I'm not what I consider a good partner with Jesus. But I believe that God looks at each one of us and says, you are a great partner. And you're a great partner because you have an intimate relationship with me. And you try to listen to me. And you praise me when you can. And you try to do what I'm telling you. And yeah, okay, you mess it up. But you're still a great partner. And that's what he wants from us.
He also calls us to be ambassadors. When you think about an ambassador's job in the government, they're there to represent the country that they come from. And to keep things peaceful and to keep things flowing. And that's what Jesus wants for us. We’re ambassadors of him, of his way, of the gospel. And to try to keep things peaceful and keep things flowing and help people when they need the help. Whatever it is, a word, a prayer, whatever.
This one I like too. He said, he calls us to be advertisements. And sometimes I'm not the best advertisement of the gospel. And I have to admit that. You know, there's lots of times we lose our cool. We get impatient. We don't do the loving thing. We don't think of others first. We're caught up in our own. I do it more sometimes in the way I drive, because I have to get somewhere, and you're in my way. It’s like, you know, you're not going fast enough. Or you're going too fast, and so I'm criticizing you. It doesn't matter. But I'm not always the best advertisement.
But he calls us to be an advertisement. And advertisements are to attract. They're there to attract you to a product, to something, to whatever, to a cause. And Jesus wants us to advertise Him and His love. And so we do the best we can. And as ambassadors and as advertisements, He wants us to bear fruit. And this I was struck with. I appointed you to go and bear fruit. Fruit that will last. When He appoints us to do something, He gives us the anointing to do it also. And He wants us to bear fruit.
So if we keep our intimacy and our relationship with Him, we're going to bear fruit. And He's promised that that fruit will last. That really struck me when I read this this time. It was like, oh, He didn't just say, okay, for today, you're going to bear fruit, and that's it. It's, you know, this fruit, you're going to bear fruit, but it will last. And it will last because it is the fruit of His Spirit of work in us. You know? So that whatever we ask of the Father in His name, the Father will give us. And it just reminds us that there's a prayer of faith. We have to believe that the Father will give us what we ask. Because we're asking in the name of His Son, Jesus. We ask in the name of Christ. And we ask never selfishly.
That's one of the things we can get caught up in. You know, when He tells us that whatever you ask the Father in my name, He'll give you, it doesn't mean God's going to answer every prayer. Especially sometimes, when we ask for things that we believe are what we need or what someone else needs, this would be the best way for the church to do it, so anoint these people, God. And Jesus says, we need to pray; thy will be done. And then the biggest thing is to accept the answer God gives us.
That sometimes is the hardest thing for all of us. But these are all parts of being chosen. And I felt like the Lord gave me this because we're going to honor our brothers and sisters who've gone on before us. They were also chosen. And now they're at home and at rest and at peace in Jesus. They bore fruit that lasted.Touched their families. Touched their communities. Touched our hearts. God is asking us to do the same, but He's also giving us the grace to do it. He will make us holy. We don't have to make ourselves holy. He will make us holy. And that holiness is the fruit that will last. That people will see. That people will be attracted to. So we'll be those ambassadors. We'll be those advertisements. We will be the partners Jesus wants.
Wasn’t that an amazing teaching! Didn’t it go so well with yesterday’s episode where I invited you to be the face of Jesus to all those you meet? God is so good in how He aligns everything. I just want to share the bookmark with you from yesterday too as it went perfectly with both yesterday’s episode and this teaching and yet God gave us these words a whole year ago. The Word’s from the Lord for the bookmark in October 2023 that we read at yesterday’s meeting are, “When you are ruffled, when you are anxious, call on my peace. Don’t let it stay dormant. It is not a feeling; it’s an inner peace that only I can give. It comes only from the heart, not the mind. I am the song within you and gently my message must go out to the world. Let it be a melody that touches each heart that you meet. I am the song, the joy and the hope. I am the entire well- being of your soul. I am with you until the end of time and my peace will be ever with you. A peace so deep within your being; that it will affect everything you do and transform those around you. See with my eyes the world around you. I have placed in all of my creation a mark that is truly connected to me. In some, it’s like a dying ember. I need you with the gift of the spirit, to breathe on that ember so it will become a flame.
These words remind us of our call to go out and touch the hearts of all those we meet. Just as the verse today and yesterday are calling us to do.
Dear Heavenly Father I ask you to bless all those listening. I pray you put on our hearts how we can be the face of Christ to all those we meet. I pay you show each one of us at least one way we can love someone better today. I pray you show us how we can partner with Christ to bring the message of your love to all those we meet. I pray you show us how to light the ember in other’s hearts so that it will become a flame. I pray all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed weekend!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in May 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, I have given you everything. I have given you my father. I've given you my death and resurrection and my teachings. I've given you my spirit. I've given you my mother. I've given you the communion of saints. I've given you my church. I have given you everything. You have everything. Will you give me your everything?”
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God Knows You, The Real You!
John 1:47-48 “When Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him, he said of him, “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!” Nathanael asked him, “Where did you get to know me?” Jesus answered, “I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.”
If you have not seen the chosen, I invite you to watch it. The series is amazing, and it helps you to understand the various things in the Bible. I love how it takes something that may seem small in the Bible and helps you to remember it forever. In Season 2 Episode 2, The Chosen depicts the story of Nathanael. Because it is a show and is also for entertainment, they added things that I don’t know if they are factual or not.
In the show, Nathaneal was a contractor, and he finally got his big shot, He was helping build something, I think maybe a temple, but I don’t remember what he was building. His dreams were coming true, and then something happened, and he got fired. He was sitting under a fig tree, crying out to the Lord. He was doing what we all do when something bad happens. He was asking the Lord, “Why?" He was asking the Lord, “Where were you?” He was asking the Lord, “Why have you abandoned me?” He was lost and sad and searching for the Lord, and he couldn’t find him. He truly felt alone and abandoned by God. Who hasn’t been there before?
I love this scene in The Chosen because it brings these verses to life. The story of Nathanael in the Bible is told in just nine verses. It is something that could easily be overlooked or read and forgotten. However, watching it unfold on the screen, you can see what a powerful encounter it was between Jesus and Nathanael. You can see the love the Lord has for him. The Lord has that same love for you! The Lord sees you in your dark times, too. He knows who you are.
I love when Jesus sees Nathanael coming up and says, “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!” Can you imagine someone you have never met saying something so nice about you? Can you imagine someone you have never met searching for you and seeing the truth of who you are? I can imagine Nathanael was confused, and I bet he probably had trouble believing what this man was saying to him. We always have more trouble believing the truth than believing the lies. Jesus saw right through Nathanael to the heart of who he was and then called it out.
Jesus knows who you are, too! Jesus knows the real you. Not the you that you want everyone else to see. Not the you that you pretend to be so that you can protect yourself from getting hurt. Not the you that you pretend to be so that you can fit in with others. Jesus knows who you really are, the you that you keep hidden for fear of getting hurt. The you that you keep hidden because you are afraid people won’t like you or they will tell you that you are too much or not enough. Maybe they have already said that to you, and that is why you hide the real you so deep down inside.
I wish Jesus was walking around on earth today calling out our identity. I wish when we met Him He would state our identity so matter of factly like He did with Nathanael. What popped into my head when I wrote that is that we can be the face of Jesus to others. What if we called out the good that we saw in people? We had a meeting with the leadership team of my prayer group the other day. I mentioned how great it felt when I first got involved and someone in the group would call out something that they saw in me and invite me to grow in some way.
For instance, they would ask me to join the discernment team because they thought I would be good at it. That meant the world to me. It felt so good for someone to notice something good about me. At the time I joined the prayer group, my family was in turmoil. Everyone was angry all the time, and all I heard at home from my kids and my husband was what I was doing wrong. I heard how everything was my fault; I was an awful mom, an awful wife, a terrible person, and so on. I know they didn’t mean it, and they were just angry, and yet it still hurt.
However, at the prayer group, people would notice the good things in me, and that felt amazing. Have you ever had someone call out the good in you? Have you ever had someone say something about you that you didn’t know or realize before? Has someone ever told you that you were good at something? Have you ever had someone ask you to do something and felt honored that they thought you were capable of doing it? It is an amazing feeling when other people show their faith in us when they believe in us.
What if you were that person for someone? What if we all started trying to be the face of Jesus for those around us? There are enough people in the world to tell us what we are doing wrong. What if we all focused on calling out the good we see in people? What if we had a goal to say one nice thing about each person we interact with throughout the day? I wonder how different our day would be? I wonder what an impact we would make on other’s lives.
I was in the car talking to one of my sons the other day. He has a friend who comes and asks for free food while he is at work. He always says yes because he wants to be nice. However, he only gets one free meal, so if he gives it away, he doesn’t get to eat. Sometimes, that is ok because he isn’t working too long anyway. However, sometimes, he has a long shift and needs to eat. The other day, he told the girl he was sorry but that he had a long shift and he needed to eat. I told him I was proud of him for standing up for himself and making sure his needs were met. He said it was the first time he heard me say I was proud of him in a long time, and it felt weird. I was shocked, but I was glad he said it because now I know to be more intentional about telling the boys I am proud of them because I am proud of all of my boys.
It can be easy to think of nice things and not say them out loud for one reason or another. Maybe we don’t want to embarrass someone, maybe we don’t want to feel embarrassed ourselves. Maybe we are afraid they will reject our compliment, I am sure we all have our reasons. Maybe we just don’t think to say it out loud. I want to invite each one of you to start saying the nice things you are thinking out loud. If you like someone’s shirt, hair, scarf, whatever, tell them. If you see something good about someone, tell them. I invite you to go out of your way to find something nice to say to each person that you meet.
I have a friend named Kimberly, and this seems to come so naturally to her. I am in awe of how she tells perfect strangers all the time that she likes their shirts or their smiles or that they are beautiful. Whatever it is, she doesn’t hesitate, she just says it. I wish there were more Kimberly’s in the world. We tend not to hesitate to speak up when we notice something annoying about someone or something they did that was wrong. Let’s follow the advice of Mahatma Gandhi: “Be the change that you wish to see in the world.” If we wish the world to be a nicer place, let that start with us! I challenge you to find five people today that you can compliment in some way. You get bonus points if you know them and can call out something about who they are down deep inside! If you can show them that you really see them!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode. Lord, I ask you to speak to each person’s heart today and show them one thing about themselves that you love about them. I ask that you either speak to their heart or speak through someone else and let them know something that they are doing right. Lord, I ask you to help us inspire others. Help us to see others through your eyes and share your joy in them with them. Help us express what you love about your children. Help us be your mouth here on earth. Help us to focus on the positive and not the negative. You tell us that often at a prayer group. Help us to listen. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you know someone else who could benefit from this podcast, please pass it on. Also, if you are on Facebook and have not joined the Walk Boldly With Jesus Facebook group, I invite you to do so. I will post the episodes and the daily word from the Lord. It is great to have a community of people surrounding you who love Jesus too! I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in May 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I just asked God what he was saying to us, and he said, “Right now, I am singing in your souls.”
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The witnesses today are from the Global Awakening Website. Randy Clark is An international itinerant minister birthed from a 4-day meeting in Canada; Randy Clark illustrates perfectly the aphorism, “Don’t despise small beginnings.” The son of an oil field worker, Randy, like most from his generation, learned the importance of perseverance. After his miraculous healing from a car accident when he was eighteen, he felt led to go into the ministry.
Since that day, November 20, 1970, Randy’s involvement in ministry soared. Shortly after graduating with a Bachelor of Science in Religious Studies in 1974, Randy went on to receive his Master of Divinity from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY, in 1977.
Randy Clark travels all over the world to conduct healing services and teach people the power of the Holy Spirit. This morning, I went to his website and pulled some witness testimonies to share with you. There are so many; I just chose a few that I thought you would enjoy. The Lord truly is still miraculously healing today, and the more we hear about it, the more we will believe it. I pray when you hear these witnesses, you will know it is possible for you and your loved ones to be healed, too.
Lucas was blind in the left eye. completely blind. He was at a healing service, and there was a word of knowledge. He closed his eyes and said Jesus, please open my eyes I want to see. Then, when he opened his eyes, he didn't feel anything, but he could see. They checked back in four years later, and they were told this healing really caused ripples not only there in that state in Brazil but in other states as well,
Another man was shot in the chest, and then he had a problem with his spine, and he couldn't walk. He was in a wheelchair. He went to a healing service on a Friday night with Randy Clark. The man prayed over him, and he couldn't feel anything. And then he just stood up and gave them a hug, and now he's walking again. He hadn’t walked for 2 months. When I was healed, I was relieved because I could stand.
There was a woman at a healing service with Randy Clark. He had a word of knowledge about a motorcycle. He asked if that meant anything to anyone, and a woman raised her hand. Randy went over to her to pray for her and she was shaking and shaking. She had been in a motorcycle accident, and her foot was so bad the doctor said in one week they would need to amputate it. Her foot was healed. She was up on the stage dancing and jumping around.
There was a young girl who was run over by a motorcycle a month and 8 days before the healing service. The paramedics said she was dead for 30 minutes. Everybody around the girl said she was done, and prayer wouldn't help. The mom refused to believe it. She touched her daughter's chest and said I rebuke the spirit of death. She touched her daughter's hand and commanded the Spirit of life to come back into her. Her mom asked the Holy Spirit to please breathe life into her again. As soon as she said that, her daughter took a breath and came back. When the girl went to the healing service, she came in a wheelchair. She had an open wound on her head, she had pain in her head, and she had double vision. After prayer, the wound and her head closed up. She had no more pain in her head; she had no more double vision. She was also able to walk again without the wheelchair.
Next, Randy Clark interviewed a man who has seen over 100 resurrections. He talked about the last one he saw. He and his wife went into the hospital, and they saw a woman who was lying there with her eyes open. She had her mouth open too, and she had food in her mouth that she had eaten two days ago, and there were worms all in the food and coming out of her mouth. The man and his wife prayed over her. Then, just as the man was about to go get someone to move this woman's body to the morgue, she coughed out all the food and worms and was alive again.
Beverly | Birmingham, AL said, “I was healed of a voice infirmity known as spasmodic dysphonia (SD) identified by a Word of Knowledge as a sharp twisting of the muscles around the larynx. I knew the Word was for me because the disorder is very rare. I actually experienced a creative miracle. The nerve from the brain to my larynx was regenerated. It grew back!!!! SD is a neurological condition in which the nerves affecting the muscles around the larynx deteriorate and stop working. Loss of the nerve stops muscle flexibility of the laryngeal muscles thereby preventing ordinary identifiable speech/language sounds. The voice quivers and has spasms. I had reached a point in my life such that I was ashamed to even talk. People could not understand my speech. I happen to be a preacher and trainer… so needless to say I became so discouraged that I had stopped preaching and became afraid to teach. SO PRAISE BE TO GOD for the healing. I had been experiencing progressive deterioration for 14 years!”
Darenda | Harrisburg, PA – Physical Healing said, “I sat next to a blind man on the plane on the way over who was also going to the conference. He was called out by Bob Hazlett and prophecied over in his main session. Then, on the way back, I again was seated next to the same man, still blind. Have you ever been seated next to the same person twice on two different airplane trips? Well, I never have. So I prayed for him to receive his sight, and progressively, over the two hours, he did. He has been completely blind for 4 years (diabetic retinopathy) in his right eye and all but some light shadows in his left. Before deboarding, he could see his hands, some things in front of him, my eyes, and my hair. He mostly wants to see his 4-year-old grandson’s face, whom he’s never been able to see. In a follow-up text this week, he said his grandson’s face is getting clearer and clearer. Praise God for this wonderful creative miracle so amazing to witness.”
Michael | Richmond, VA, , “I stood after Randy had a word of knowledge that God was healing hearts. I had been treated for AFib for over 14 years and on medication. I believe God has healed my heart. I am 72 years old and am no longer on any heart medication. My heart rate is normal, I go to the gym regularly, and I have no problems doing yard work or any other activity. God is Good!
Gineff | Woodbridge, VA “I took a step of faith and came to the conference being released from the Hospital on the previous Friday. I was radically healed at VOA. My tribe(VOA attendees) were encouraging me and praying over me. I received multiple healings. The first was the ability to walk(Bookstore Bob was there), inner healing with the Agape Freedom Fighter team, and the word of knowledge from Dr. Clark about lower left abdominal pain(this specifically was for me as I had left the hospital with a drain tube in my lower left abdomen). I will tell you that I was in shock when He said my condition. My niece and those around me were like that’s you. When Dr. Clark called up those to share their testimonies, I ran up to the stage. While I was on stage, something amazing happened. I felt like I was being straightened and felt this rod on the right side of my body. It was amazing!!! I left there healed, and I write this looking forward to my appointment tomorrow when I get to see the doctor's faces!!”
I am grateful to Randy Clark and everyone else who goes around the world, showing people that Jesus is still healing today and bringing the Lord’s love to them. I am grateful to all these people for giving their testimony so it can help build the faith of everyone around them and all those who hear it.
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God Is Holding My Hand
Isaiah 41:13 “For I am the LORD your God who takes hold of your right hand and says to you, Do not fear; I will help you.”
Since the mentoring theme this month is “Be Not Afraid!” I thought I would look up some verses along these lines and talk about them. Today, I found the one above. “For I am the LORD your God who takes hold of your right hand and says to you, Do not fear; I will help you.” I think we hear this a lot. Either from church or from our loved ones, we hear that God will help us, so we don’t need to be afraid. I wonder how many of us believe this. How many of us believe God is there for us and will help us when we need help?
Today’s verse says that He is the Lord our God who takes hold of our right hand and tells us not to fear because He will help us. I like this because it is so gentle. The Lord our God is taking us by the hand and protecting us so that we don't have to be afraid. This morning, I was reminded of a word of prophecy that we received at our prayer group about the Lord holding our hand. The word was received in January 2024. Here is the word, “I am He who can help you each step of the way. You need only to hold my hand, and I will pull you through everything that bothers you in life, no matter what it is. Continue to trust, for I am your God.”
God is there for us each step of the way. We don't have to worry about anything. We just need to hold His hand, and He will take care of everything else. God tells us this again and again, but we struggle to believe it. Today, instead of me talking about why we should not fear, I am going to let the Lord tell you. The following words were all received in the same month at my morning prayer group. These were received in May of 2024. My prayer is that one of these words will speak to your heart about whatever it is you are afraid of right now.
We all fear something, but it is not the same for each one of us. In these messages, God addresses many different things we might fear. If one or more of these words from the Lord speaks to you, feel free to pause the episode and write them down. There is a transcript of this episode, so you could go there and read them and copy down whichever ones speak to you. Here they are:
“Trust more, surrender more, love more, and I will make you stronger.”
My Holy Spirit falls upon all peoples of all times. My Holy Spirit seeks a resting place. Open your hearts and souls to provide fertile ground for my Spirit to plant and bring forth fruit for your times. Let go of your wounds and hurts. They are covered by my Spirit who is doing new works in you and for your world.
Sacred children made in my image, I love you so desperately. You can never understand the depths of my love. You are mine, mine. I am here with you in this room, in this moment, in this day, hour, minute and second. All will come, I promise you, all will come. You will see. Never feel abandoned, never. It's not possible. I am with you every step. Remember every step. I am a complete God, complete. Fear nothing. My Spirit is your warrior, your strength.
Fear not, my children. Move forward. My Spirit will lead the way and He will tell you what to say and what to do. If you move forward, you will find joy. Do not be a coward. Do not lay back. Know that I am the Lord and my Spirit is there to bring joy as you do what He says. Be convinced that I am with you. Fear not. Again, I say, move forward.
I got the impression that there are people the Lord is telling them to do something, but they are timid and they are afraid. But the Lord is telling them that He will be their strength and that the Spirit will guide them and there is nothing to fear if they do what the Lord says.
I am your daily bread, so you can also be the bread for others. I use you so they may come to me, become the bread of hope, joy and peace to others. Fear not to be broken in pieces so that you can bring my unity to all. My children, I love you and I count on each one of you to become the bread of life to others. As I give life to you, you in turn must share this life with all those you meet.
Some of you are too hard on yourselves. Immerse yourself in my all-encompassing love. Walk in confidence. Walk proud. You are children of the King, the sons and daughters of the Most High God. You've nothing to fear. You are sealed in the blood of the Lamb. Your Father loves you. He loves you. You're His babies. His. His. Remember that always. No matter what you face, you are my sweetness. My sweet song of love. Precious children, remain in my love.
I keep getting, you are the blessing that I send to the world. Spread my joy. Fear not to partake of all that I offer you so you in turn can share it with others. Again, I tell you, you are my blessing to the world. If you do not move forward, others will not receive the blessing that I wish to partake with others through you.
I got the impression that we each, in our way, a blessing. And there are certain things that he wants to use each one of us to bless others. But if we stay in our own little cocoon and don't do anything, other people will not receive this blessing that God has given each one of us. We don't have the same blessing, but each person has a certain blessing that God has given that we are to share with the world. And we have to not be afraid. He keeps telling me not to be afraid to move forward so that we can be of use to others. Others may not grow if we don't do our part.
The Lord is so good. He keeps reassuring us that He will be there for us. He doesn’t just tell us every now and then. He tells us almost every week, and I think this is because He loves us, and He knows how hard it is for us to believe. It is so hard for us to believe because it is so contrary to what the world is telling us. The world is telling us that we should be anxious, that we should be worried, and yet the Lord is telling us that we don’t have to fear because He is with us, and He will protect us and guard us from our enemies. He will even protect us from ourselves. He is that good! I pray you enjoyed listening to the Words from the Lord today. If you want to start your day each day with a word from the Lord, you can sign up below to receive it in your email inbox each morning. I also post them on my Facebook Page, Catherine Duggan, and my Facebook group, Walk Boldly With Jesus. If you would like to join that group, you can find it on Facebook. It is great to be surrounded by other people who also love Jesus, and that is what the group is all about.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone listening to the episode today. Lord, we thank you for reassuring us again and again that you are there for us, that you are holding our hands, and that you are protecting us. Lord, we ask that you help us to believe this with our whole hearts. We ask that we not only know it in our mind but that you help us move that knowledge to our hearts. We want to trust in you, Lord. We want to believe you will be there for us and protect us. Please show us what is getting in the way of that trust and how we can overcome it. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. This month in mentoring, we are focusing on the theme Be Not Afraid! I would love to invite each and every one of you who is listening to this episode to join us for mentoring. We meet on Tuesday nights at 8 P. M. on Zoom. However, if you are unavailable to meet on Tuesday nights, you could still join mentoring and watch the replays. If you would like to check out what mentoring is all about, you can click on the link below. Also, I will include a link in the show notes to last week’s session in case you want to check it out. Click Here for Week #1 of "Be Not Afraid." I look forward to seeing some of you tonight on mentoring and the rest of you here tomorrow for a new Witness Wednesday. If you have a witness you would like to share, I invite you to contact me at Catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in May 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Be open. Open your hearts. Open your minds. Open all that you are. Come before me. I want to continue to rain down my Spirit upon you. I want to continue to pour out the life-giving water and refreshment of my Holy Spirit within you. Please come. Please accept this gift. I so want you to be fully and completely mine.”
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Don’t Worry, I Will Explain It
1 John 3:8 “Everyone who commits sin is a child of the devil; for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The Son of God was revealed for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil.”
I read this verse and thought, “Nope, I don’t want to go there.” Actually, I read this verse and then read the next two verses after it. 1 John 3:8-10 says, “Everyone who commits sin is a child of the devil; for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The Son of God was revealed for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil. Those who have been born of God do not sin, because God’s seed abides in them; they cannot sin, because they have been born of God. The children of God and the children of the devil are revealed in this way: all who do not do what is right are not from God, nor are those who do not love their brothers and sisters.” Ok, after hearing all that do you see why I didn’t want to touch this verse?
First of all, I didn’t really understand it. If I sin I am a child of the devil? What does that even mean? We all sin, don’t we? Then it says Those born of God do not sin. But wait, I am born of God and yet I do sin? It is definitely confusing and not something I felt qualified to talk about. Secondly, I didn’t want someone to hear this verse , or read it in the transcript and then think they weren’t a child of God because they sin. Because let's all be honest, we all sin. So, I was happy to skip this one and go on to find another verse. I felt the Holy Spirit stop me and ask, what does this verse mean? What if someone already read it and didn’t stop to ask what it means? What if someone is walking around thinking they are no longer my child just because they sin?
I am always humbled when the Holy Spirit reminds me of the purpose for this podcast. It is not to talk about all the things I understand. It is not to talk about things I really love talking about. It is to help myself and you, all those listening, to understand scripture a little better. My purpose is to help you walk a boldy with Jesus one verse at a time. The only way to do this is to take difficult scriptures, ones I don’t understand and figure them out, examine them, research them, and then share that with you. I may not alway get it right, but I do try my best and I ask the Holy Spirit to take care of the rest.
I am sure I will keep needing to be reminded to stop and examine a verse if I don’t understand it because the enemy loves to try and stop me by telling me I am not qualified to talk about the scripture. He tells me I don’t know what I am doing and so I can’t help others. Do you see how he takes a kernel of truth and twists it? He is right, I am not qualified and I don’t always know what the scriptures mean. However, the way he twists it is because I am not sharing just my thoughts on it. I am researching and looking to those that do know the answers. I am taking the time to explore the meaning and then sharing what I learned from those that are qualified so that you don’t have to take that time. If something I say is confusing, or you still don’t understand the verse, I urge you to reach out and let me know. I would be happy to explore it in more detail with you. Or you can explore it on your own as well. I just type “What is the meaning of 1 John 3:8” or whatever verse I am looking at in the search bar on the internet and usually a list of articles come up. Whatever it is in the Bible we are trying to understand, there are probably plenty of other people that have come before us that have asked the same question. Look for the answers they found. I will put the links to two of the articles I read in the show notes in case you want to read the full articles.
Now that I explained all that, what did I discover? What does this confusing verse mean? From what I found, I understand it to mean that when we are sinning we are a child of Satan, meaning he is influencing those behaviors. When we are following God’s ways, God is influencing those behaviors. I feel the Holy Spirit just gave me an analogy that made me smile. It is one that if you have kids you have probably said it and even if you don’t you probably heard your parents say it. When our kids are not behaving I tell Tony they are his kids and when they are behaving I say they are my kids. Of course they are all both of our kids all the time. However, when I say that I am implying that his DNA is what is influencing the kids misbehavior and my DNA is influencing their good behavior. It made me smile when this thought came to me because I could just picture God up in heaven shaking his head, looking at Satan and saying, nope, they are your kids today. I know He doesn’t do this, but it made me smile remember all the times, Tony and I went back and forth, nope, these are your kids.
One thing everything I read agreed on is that this verse is not determining your salvation. This verse is not saying because you sin you are a child of Satan and you are going to Hell. That is not the case. It is not saying if you want to go to heaven you can’t sin. It is not talking about your salvation in any way. We are all born with a sinful nature. Ever since sin enter the world, it has plagued us. Sin entered the world because of Satan. He brought it here and when we sin it is because of His influence. It is because we are allowing his influence to shape our behaviors. We are cooperating with him. However, the ending of this verse says, “The Son of God was revealed for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil.” This means that although we were born with original sin and a sinful nature, Jesus was sent to destroy that. If you have been baptized you are received the Holy Spirit living inside of you. Even though we have the Holy Spirit living inside of us we also have Satan trying to influence our behaviors, trying to get us to go against what God says. One example I found in one of the articles talked about Matthew 16:23 when Jesus said to Peter, "Get behind Me, Satan!” He was revealing the source of Peter's rebuke of Christ by which Peter demonstrated that he was representing Satan's purpose, not God’s.
I pray this explanations clears up some of the confusion surrounding this verse. The verse is not saying you will go to hell if you sin. It is not saying you belong to Satan if you sin. It is saying that while you are sinning you are under the influence of Satan. It is a good reminder as sometimes we can write off little sins. We can say, that wasn’t so bad. We can question, is that really a sin, does it really matter. I think when we read this verse, it can speak to those situations. If you are sinning you are cooperating with the enemy. Does it matter if it is a little cooperation or a lot of cooperation, let me ask you this question. If one of your loved ones was being influenced by someone who was sent here to steal, kill and destroy, would it matter to you that they were only being influenced a little? God cares deeply about even our smallest decisions. Instead of being offended by this verse, let’s take it as a warning to try harder not to be influenced by the devil.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those who are listening to this episode today. Lord we want to follow your ways, please help us. We want to only be influenced by you. Please help shield us from the influence of the enemy. Please help us put on your armor Lord. Lord, I ask you to help each one of us understand what this verse is saying and I ask that if we don’t understand it you will inspire us to go deeper. Lord, we want to understand your Word. We thank you for your word and thank you for giving it to us. You are truly remarkable. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. I just want to remind all of you, if you haven’t gotten a chance to check out my book yet, I invite you to do so. Or if you have checked it out I invite you to leave a review on Amazon or suggest it to a friend. If you didn’t know I wrote a book, you can find it on Amazon. It is called Total Trust, in God’s Safe Embrace. Thank you for all of you that have already purchased it I truly appreciate it! Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed day!
Q. Does 1 John 3:9 Teach that Christians Must Be Sinless?
Can a Christian Be of the Devil? - 1 John 3:8, 10 (GraceNotes - no. 60) by Dr. Charlie Bing
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Mutual Affection
Romans 12:9-10 “Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor.”
This was not the verse I thought I would be using today. I was planning on using the next two verses in this chapter. However, when I clicked on the whole chapter and read these two verses, the last part jumped out at me. Has that ever happened to you? When you are reading a verse, it just jumps off the page or sticks in your head. Honestly, it doesn’t happen that often to me. This is how I knew the Lord was trying to talk to me about this specific verse today.
What stood out to me was where it says, “Love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor.” I think this part jumped out at me because I have been really thinking a lot about how Tony and I interact, especially when other people are around. I have been noticing lately that he has changed. It used to be that the two of us were pretty sarcastic towards each other and would kinda give each other a hard time. We argued all the time. Sometimes, I think we argued just to argue because it was rarely over something important.
I used to think that those who spent time with us must have wondered how long we would stay together. We love each other; I guess we just liked to argue, too. Anyway, lately, in the last several years, I have noticed that we don’t argue as much over silly things. I have also noticed that Tony has changed the way he talks about me to others as well. For the most part, when he talks about me to others, he is very kind and loving. I noticed when I went out with Tony and the people from his work a month or so ago I was still very sarcastic, and it did not come out very lovingly.
The reason I am telling you all of this is because I doubt I am the only person who could speak nicer to my spouse or loved one. Maybe for you, it is not your spouse. Maybe you need to work on how you speak to your parents, your siblings, your co-workers, your children, or whoever it is in your life that you spend a lot of time with. The Lord has been putting this on my heart a lot lately, so I wanted to share it with you as well if you are struggling with this.
Let’s look at this verse and see what the Lord is telling us. It begins, “Let love be genuine.” This is harder than it may seem. In order to let love be genuine, we have to be our true selves. This means not hiding behind any facade that we may have put up to protect ourselves. This means being the real you with those you love, including God. Why do we try to hide things from the Lord? He already knows everything about us and loves us anyway. People can’t genuinely love us if they don’t truly know us. Genuine love also means that we are honest and truthful.
The verse goes on to say, “Hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good.” This can be really hard. The world teaches us to love sin. It teaches us that what we want is good and that we can have all that we want, even if it is not according to what God wants. The Bible tells us differently. the Lord says to “hate what is evil.” Do we do this? Do we hate sin? Do we hate the things that the Lord says are wrong, or do we just accept them as good because the world tells us that they are good?
The verse says to hold fast to what is good. What is good? God is good. The things He tells us are good. Loving the Lord our God with our whole heart, mind, and soul is good. Loving our neighbor as ourselves is good. There is a lot of good in the world; we just need to look for it. We need not be seduced by the evil in the world, and we need to look past it to see all of the good.
Next it says, “ love one another with mutual affection.”Are we doing this? I know I talked about this one a bit earlier. I also want to say that this is not just talking about your spouse. God wants us to love everyone with mutual affection. The second greatest commandment is to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. Are we doing that? Are we loving our neighbor as we love ourselves?
I think this commandment gets overlooked a lot. We love God, but we struggle to love Him with our whole hearts, minds, and souls. We also have to love our neighbor, but there are a lot of not nice people out there. How can God expect us to love them? Surely God doesn’t mean I have to love my co-worker who is always throwing me under the bus? Surely, God doesn’t mean I have to love my neighbor who is always stealing my paper and talking about me behind my back. Guess what? It says in Matthew 5:44, “ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” So, yes, God wants us to love everyone, even those we would consider our enemies. Can we love those we meet in life with mutual affection? Can we at least work on it? I am sure we all know a few people in our lives that we struggle to love. God is not asking for perfection. He is asking for progress. Can we at least try to be nicer to them even if we aren’t quite ready to love them yet?
The very last part of this verse says, “outdo one another in showing honor.” This is part of what struck me that I don’t think I talked about earlier. What if we made it our goal to outdo one another in showing honor? What does this mean? What if we pointed out what people were doing that was right instead of all they were doing that was wrong? What if I stopped being sarcastic with Tony, especially in public, and instead talked about all the amazing things he does at home for the kids and me or at work for his employees? I give Tony a hard time but I know how lucky I am to have him. He does all of the outside lawn work, which I hate to do. He fixes our cars, not just the little things like changing oil, but he can fix pretty much anything on the cars. He works very hard to provide for this family. What if I honored him with my speech each time I talked about him?
How are you? Who do you struggle to honor? What if we started honoring our friends and family? What if we started pointing out all they are doing right instead of what they are doing wrong? What if we told them how much we love them and how proud we are of them? You would be surprised how powerful those words are, “I am so proud of you.” Those words can go a long way in honoring someone. My challenge to you today is to begin to be more aware of your speech. Begin to ask yourself if your love is genuine. Ask yourself if you hate what is evil and hold fast to what is good. Ask yourself if you have a mutual affection for others and if you are outdoing others in showing honor. It would be great if we all spent some time pondering that today. I think for most of us the answers would be no, we aren’t doing the best we can at this. If this is the case, ask yourself, “What is one thing I can do differently today to honor someone better, or to love in a more genuine way?” How can I honor those I love better today? If we start at home we can move on to our enemies once we have mastered loving our loved ones better! Mother Theresa said, “Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do... but how much love we put in that action.”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all of those listening today. Lord, show us how to love others. Show us how to honor others. Show us where in our life we are falling short with this. Show us where in our lives we are not hating evil and loving what is good. Lord, this world has us all mixed up. It tells us what is bad is really good, and it can be hard to know what to believe. Help us turn to you. Help us listen only to your voice, Lord. Help your voice be louder than all the others. We love you Lord, you are amazing. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I know the world might seem like a scary place right now. This is why I decided the theme for mentoring this month would be “Be Not Afraid.” I invite you all to join me next Tuesday for the week #2 of this series. The recording of Week #1 is on my Facebook page. If you want to watch it to see what mentoring is all about, feel free to reach out and I will email you the link to watch week #1 ahead of time. If you want more information on mentoring, please click on the link below or go to my website walkboldlywithJesus.com and click on the mentoring tab. I look forward to seeing you again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you, just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in May 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I got the impression that we are each in our way a blessing. And there's certain things that he wants to use each one of us to bless others. But if we stay in our own little cocoon and we don't do anything, other people will not receive this blessing that God has given each one of us.”
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The Fruits of the Spirit
Colossians 1:9-10 “For this reason, since the day we heard it, we have not ceased praying for you and asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as you bear fruit in every good work and as you grow in the knowledge of God.”
I was at a conference this weekend on Saturday, and the speaker, Walter Matthews, talked about this verse. He started with verse 10, “So that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as you bear fruit in every good work and as you grow in the knowledge of God.” I like this verse as it talks about bearing fruit in every good work as you grow in the knowledge of God. However, I thought verse 9 was important as it says that they were praying they would all be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding. I think this is the key to the verse 10. If we don’t have wisdom and knowledge, then I believe we will struggle to bear fruit with our work.
Do you know what it means to bear fruit in your life or in your work? I am fairly new to this concept, so in case anyone else listening is like me, I will explain. Bearing fruit is another way to look at the outcome of the things you are doing. Are they good vs. bad? Are you getting good results at work? Do you feel good, do others around you feel good after interacting with you? What about at home? Are you happy with who you are at home? Are others happy with who you are at home? Is your home and your family growing in a positive way? These would all be good fruits.
When we want to judge if something is truly from the Holy Spirit, we look for the fruits of the Spirit in our work. There are nine fruits of the Holy Spirit. These are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. My mom actually got me a box set of books that talked about each of these fruits of the Spirit. It was cool to read about them each in more depth. One day when I was talking to my spiritual director, actually the first day with this spiritual director, he said something that helped me realize I could use these fruits as a gauge to see how I was doing in life. I can’t remember what he even said, and yet I remember a lightbulb went off in my head.
I am constantly wondering if what I am doing is pleasing the Lord. Am I getting this thing called life, right? Am I hearing what He is saying to me, and am I doing the things He is asking me to do? These are questions we should all ask ourselves from time to time. I tend to ask myself this often. After speaking with my spiritual advisor, I realized I could look at my life and see where the fruits of the Holy Spirit are showing up. For instance, where in my life can I see love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control? If I am seeing the fruits of the Holy Spirit, then I am doing something right.
When I look at my life, I do see the fruits of the Holy Spirit. The extent to which we see them in our lives can be an indication of how well we are doing walking with God if we have a lot of love in our lives, a lot of peace and joy, if we have a lot of patience in our lives, along with kindness and goodness. If we have faithfulness, gentleness & self-control, then we are probably doing pretty good. There are things that can also show us the areas we need to work on improving. For instance, lately, I have been struggling with self-control. I used to be doing pretty well, and now I struggle more with it.
The fruits of the Spirit are not something that we can earn with our own efforts.
The fruits of the Spirit increase when we live according to the Holy Spirit. The more we listen to the Holy Spirit, the more we do as we feel the Holy Spirit is leading us to do, and the more we will exhibit these fruits. So, what does this look like for us practically, that is the question I am wondering right now. How can we increase in these fruits of the Holy Spirit if it is not through our own efforts? First, we rely on the Holy Spirit more. We stop before we do something and ask the Holy Spirit if that is the path we are supposed to go down. Or we ask if there is a problem going down that path. Second, we remember we have the power of the Holy Spirit living inside of us, and it can give us courage and strength to do things we might not do otherwise. For instance, we might speak up against the injustice that we see a little more if we remember that the same power that raised Jesus from the dead lives inside of us.
Another way to grow in the gifts of the Spirit is to help others. Jesus told us what we have done for others, you have done for me. In Matthew 25, Jesus said, "Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” Jesus wants us to help the poor, feed the hungry, and clothe the naked. If we want to grow in the gifts, we can do these things as well.
It says in Matthew 7:18, “A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit.” To me, this is reassurance that even if I am not seeing all of the gifts of the Spirit in my life, or I am not seeing them to the degree that I would like or that I strive for, I am still a good tree. The same is true for you. You are a good tree. Whether you have very little fruit growing on your tree or you have tons of fruit growing, it doesn’t matter as much as it does that you have some fruit. If you are like me and you wonder how you are doing following the Lord, look at your life. When you see love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control in your life, celebrate it. That is the Lord’s goodness showing up in your life.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, I ask you to help people hear what they need to hear in this episode today. I feel I did not explain it well, and yet I think it is important for people to understand the fruits of the Spirit. Please help each person to hear exactly what they need to hear in the way they need to hear it. Please help it to make sense and not to be confusing. We love you, Lord. We want to follow you. We want to be led by the Holy Spirit. Please help us. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. Remember, signed copies of my book are still for sale on my website. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. If you have a witness you would like to share for this Wednesday, please let me know. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
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Today’s witnesses are from Matthew West’s website called popwe.org. If you don’t know who Matthew West is, he is a singer, songwriter, and storyteller. This website is for the non-profit that he has with his father, a pastor. Matthew and his father encourage people to share their stories. They have various categories of stories. Today, I chose three testimonies from the God Stories Category. Often, we can hear our own story in someone else’s story. When we listen to others tell their story, it helps us see that we are not alone. When we hear how God worked in their situation, it gives us hope that He will work in ours, too! I pray when you hear this testimony, you get the faith and hope to believe that miracles can happen in your situation, also. I pray you know that God is there with you, and if you invite Him into your situation, He can help. I hope you enjoy these testimonies.
Sarah-Jane: I’ve been going through many trails the past several months. I faced a breakdown in my marriage due to mental and financial abuse. I was depressed and life in general was getting a hold on me. I started to shut down and isolate from people and life. Best to do things on my own, or so I thought. But it didn’t work out great.
I eventually shared my struggles with my close friends and family. They were the ones who cared for me and loved me. I was so ashamed and embarrassed of the situation that I was in.
But I am fortunate to have a loving church community that has been on my journey with me. I have handed everything to God. I have forgiven people that have hurt me.
I believe that since I’ve opened my heart more to God, He has filled me to overflowing with the Holy Spirit just at the times I needed it. Whether it was through a worship song, a sermon or a Bible verse. He has the spirit pour over me in the past few weeks. One day at church, we were invited to come to the front before the mercy seat, I couldn’t speak, but within seconds, I just lost it and was crying tears of joy and trembling with laughter.
God has shown me so much mercy and grace and it is good to know that I’m never alone. I’m forever blessed to have such a loving God who has made me whole, and He has given me peace and comfort in my trials. If God wasn’t in my life, I don’t know where I’d be today. He has opened many closed doors. He provided a nice home and my children visit often. He has helped my anxiety and depression to be manageable. I am a much stronger woman and I’m grateful for God’s love.
1 Thessalonians 5:23-24 – “May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it.”
Jenelle: I had the next chemotherapy treatment today. It was number 4. I had a PET-CT scan last week which showed that the metastatic ovarian cancer has reduced in size, and nothing new has grown since the last scan in June. This is the 7th time I have had chemotherapy in 13 years. It has been quite a journey.
Because of my experience I can speak with authority to others who are experiencing metastatic cancer and encourage them that God has not forgotten them, and that He always has a purpose for us.
Kathie, a fellow traveler, needs prayer. She has metastatic bowel cancer and is questioning not only her doctors, but God. I keep encouraging her to trust God. I have told her that most people don’t consider what will happen when they die. I’ve sent her Bible verses to encourage her. We are the privileged ones because God has given us time.
I’ve had 13 years to plan my funeral! This life is just the shadow. We look forward to the real world that will go on for eternity.
For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain! For me, Kathie, and everyone who submits their lives to Jesus, cannot lose! It’s definitely a win-win situation! And I for one cannot wait to get to heaven!
Jon- My name is Jon, and I want to tell you a story about how the Lord challenged me to trust Him during trials where I frankly thought it would be easier to just end my life. About 15-16 years ago, I blew out a disc in my lumbar spine. At the time, I had never experienced that type of pain, yet I didn’t know it that God was giving me a practice session for what was to come. I was treated and it got better but then it came back with a vengeance, and I was taking pain medication like they were Tic Tacs, just to stay functional.
I ended up having surgery and praised the Lord when I woke up, because the pain was gone… Again, the Lord was just giving me a break, before the big game started.
Six months later, I was diagnosed with severe Rheumatoid Arthritis. I was in a blue funk for a long time. RA is incurable. They don’t really know what causes it and all the different medications were only to prevent more damage from happening.
But God… He used this time to take someone who really had little patience with people and change that. God made me thankful for the blessings that I had previously not really paid a lot of attention to, and He compelled me to share those blessings. For a long time, my life verse has been Psalms 119:71 “It is good for me that I was afflicted, so that I may learn Your statutes.”
Just recently, I was really depressed because I knew I was about to be laid off for the second time in a calendar year. That’s when my wife introduced me to Matthew’s song “How good of God.” We had been praying for direction in what to do when I found out that I was right and that I was laid off.
But “How Good of God!” People I haven’t talk to in years came out of the woodwork to help me find a new job. A lot of folks will say, “sure I’ll keep an eye out,” but then never do anything. One person I had never met paid for a tool that helped me make my resume better. How good of God! More importantly, I’m saved! My wife is saved! My kids are saved! He has blessed me beyond measure, so I hope that if you’re suffering or challenged that you’ll remember how good God is. You may not understand but you can always trust Him.
Thank you so much for sharing your stories. You may not think it is a big deal but the more we hear how God is working in other people’s lives, the more we will see him work in our own lives. Your testimony is helping build the faith of others. Thank you! God is so good!!
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God Is In The Practical Things Too!
James 1:5 “If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.”
I read this one and I really liked it because I think wisdom is something that we might not think to request from God. I think we all feel pretty comfortable praying to God when we are sick or when a loved one is sick. I don’t know if it is because we know God can heal people or if it is because we know there is nothing we can do and so we hope God can do something. I think we tend to go to God as a last resort. We try to solve things on our own, and then if we can’t, we turn to God. Why do we save him for last?
God can do anything. He created this whole Universe; he can surely help us with whatever it is we need help with. Yet, we don’t always think to ask him unless it is something we know we can’t do ourselves, like healing a sickness. It’s interesting because when you have to rely on God for more, you see him more. My husband and my boys didn’t really see a lot of miracles from God when our kids were growing up. Luckily, my husband had a great job, and he is really good with money. We never really struggled with money, and my kids never lacked anything with regard to food, clothing, or a roof over their heads. We always had great medical insurance. We were blessed with being able to live in other countries and travel to see things. I am grateful that we didn’t have to struggle with those things.
I am grateful, and yet, at times, I wish we did not have to struggle. I know that probably sounds strange, and I understand why it sounds strange. Why would anyone want to have to struggle? I don’t think I truly wanted to struggle; I did want the faith that comes with having to struggle, though. I wanted my kids to be able to see that God will always provide for us. I wanted them to know that God would always be there to take care of their needs. My parents struggled when I was growing up. I mean, they had 11 kids to take care of, and my dad had a great job, and yet money only goes so far. Imagine paying the mortgage, electric, and heating bills for a house that fits that many children. Imagine the food bill and then the clothing and the shoes. Think about how much it costs for you to have one child play a sport, do dancing or theatre, and then multiply that by 11.
My parents sacrificed a lot to have all of us kids. There were months when they had to decide which bill they were going to pay and which one could wait until next month. My mom was constantly on the phone with the bill collectors, telling them she could send $5 a month or whatever it was she had. I know it was hard on them, and I don’t wish that on anyone. And yet, I do wish everyone could have the faith that they have that God would take care of what they need. They knew without a doubt that they could call on Him for big things and small things. They knew He would help with practical things, like food and a car, just as much as he would heal my sister of a mysterious illness.
I know, and God knows, that I didn’t really want to experience the pain of not having enough, but I did want the faith that comes with it. I feel the Holy Spirit is pointing out to me that although I did not have to worry about resources like food, shelter, or clothing, I did have to struggle. My boys were pretty difficult at times and I did learn how to trust that God would be there in all the different ways. I had to trust that God would save my child from being hit by a car when he would run down the middle of the street. I had to trust that God would save my children from each other when they were at their worst. I had to learn to trust that God would not let my children take their own lives. I did have plenty of ways to build my trust, and you do, too.
Maybe you don’t have such drastic things in your lives, but we are all struggling with something. What causes you the most struggles, and how can it help you trust God more? Has your faith grown because of those struggles? Can you look back at the past few years and see how God was there for you in the struggles? I can look back and see that God placed the perfect people in my life at each and every base where we were stationed. I was never alone. I may have felt alone in my house, but I always had really good friends who would listen to me, build me up, and support me. They would also take the boys when I needed a break, or they would take me away for the weekend, and Tony would keep the boys. God also provided me with a strong Catholic women’s group or the strength to start one if there wasn’t already one. If you are not part of a Christian woman’s group or men’s group, you should find one. I cannot tell you the strength you get from seeing others living their faith. It is incredible.
God can use your struggles to help build your faith; you just have to let Him. If you look closely over your struggles, you will see Him there. You will see He has always been there, and He will always be there! Getting back to this verse, in particular, says, “If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.” I wanted to share with you a quick story of a time when my dad really needed some wisdom, and he got it! My dad got a call from my mom one day from work. She told him that one of their neighbors was upset with him because my dad had talked to his girlfriend about going back to church again. Once she started going back to church, she decided she couldn’t be with her boyfriend anymore. I am not sure of the exact circumstances of the breakup, but that is why the man was mad at my dad. My mom told my dad that the man said he was coming over tonight as soon as my dad got home from work to beat my dad up. When my dad drove up to the house, he saw the man waiting for him in our front yard and all the neighborhood kids, including my siblings, standing around to watch the fight.
As my dad got out of the car, he started praying to God for wisdom regarding this situation. He prayed that God would tell him what to say. He prayed God would give him the words, and He did! He walked up to the man and said, “I know you want to punch me, and I understand why. I know how much you are hurting inside, and if punching me will take that hurt away, then I will gladly accept that pain.” Or something to that effect. Then he closed his eyes, bracing for the punch. Instead, the man started crying. My dad gave him a hug, and they went inside and talked for a few hours. My dad knows there is no way he would have come up with that on his own. He asked God, and God came through, just like He always does! I wish we all stopped to ask God what we should say before we said it. Imagine what a kinder place this world would be if we all just stopped and asked God what we should say or if we should even say anything before we said it.
If you take one thing away from this episode, I hope it is that God is in the practical. You can ask God for wisdom. You can ask God for help making your decisions. You can ask God to find you a new place to live. You can ask God for the huge healing miracle you need. You can ask God for food or for money to pay your bills. You can ask God for anything. It doesn’t have to be big; it doesn’t have to be something you can’t do on your own. God isn’t just for last-resort types of prayers. He wants to be in everything with you! Invite him into the ordinary of your day. Ask Him for the practical things you need and you will be surprised how He shows up. Look for Him, and you will find Him!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to look back and have the Holy Spirit open our eyes so we can see where we were through all of our struggles. Help us to see that you were there the whole time. Help us to give you permission to use our struggles to build our faith. Help us to turn to you, not just for the impossible things but for the practical things as well. We love you, Lord, you are so incredible. You are there for the big and the small. Help us to see this, Lord. Help us to truly know this and help us come to you more. Help us to remember to consult you when we have a difficult situation and we don’t know the words to say. We are so grateful to have you on our side, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name; amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I. Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in May 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “You've nothing to fear. You are sealed in the blood of the Lamb. Your Father loves you. He loves you. You're His babies. His. His. Remember that always. No matter what you face, you are my sweetness. My sweet song of love.Precious children, remain in my love.”
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Be Not Afraid!
Jeremiah 30:10 “‘So do not be afraid, Jacob my servant; do not be dismayed, Israel,’ declares the Lord. ‘I will surely save you out of a distant place, your descendants from the land of their exile. Jacob will again have peace and security, and no one will make him afraid.”
This morning, when I read this verse, the words that jumped out at me were, “Do not be afraid.” The Lord is constantly telling us this, and yet it seems we can’t seem to help ourselves. I get it; there is a lot of scary stuff going on in the world right now. There are countries at war, with no end in sight. They just seem to be escalating. In America, we have an election coming up. It seems no matter what side you are on, Republican or Democrat, you are terrified that the other person will win, and if that happens, it is the end of the world as we know it.
If we aren’t worried about politics, we are worried about something. There is so much that we tend to worry about. Many of us have children or marriages we worry about. Some don’t have children or a spouse, and they worry about that, and they worry if that will ever happen. Some worry about their jobs and whether they will lose their job or they worry about changes within their job. Others worry about growing older and all that entails. I know some people who are sick and are worried about what will happen. Will they get better? Will they die? Will they be sick for a long time? Can they handle all the pain and the not knowing how long it will last? As you can see, it seems like we have plenty to worry about.
However, The Lord is constantly telling us not to be afraid. He tells us “Fear not” a lot in the Bible, and He also tells us almost every week in our Prayer Group. Here are some examples of what the Lord is telling us in our prayer group. These were all received in just one month, August of 2024.
“My children, all I tell you to do know that you can. My spirit empowers you. It puts my words into your mouth so that you can reach the hearts of others. It's not you. It is my spirit empowering you to say what I wish you to say. Do not fear to go out, I keep telling you, fear not. My spirit is with you, and He will provide whatever you need to succeed. I am your God. I am all powerful. There is nothing that I cannot do. Trust in my word. Trust that what I say is true and go about your way and make me known, my children. How many times must I tell you, you can because I send you. You can because I am your God, and I provide the power; whatever you need, I provide. It is as simple as that, my children. Be not afraid to move and do what I tell you.”
The very next week, We received the verse that I picked for today, and then we received the following words and scripture.
“I just had a deep sense from the Lord that he's saying to us. Well, I guess what he's always said to us is that we have nothing to fear and that we need to put our hope in His word and what He has promised us. No one will put an end to us. He has come to save us. And He will save all of our offspring as well. He's going to call them back from their lands, and we need to keep that in the forefront of our thoughts and our thinking as we thank Him every day for what he's doing because He is the victor of the world.”
Then some else said, “I just want to confirm all that's been said so far because I come up with three psalms and each one said the same thing that everyone has said in a different way.”
Psalm 91:9-16 “Because you have the LORD for your refuge and have made the Most High your stronghold, No evil shall befall you, no affliction come near your tent. For he commands his angels with regard to you, to guard you wherever you go. With their hands they shall support you, lest you strike your foot against a stone. You can tread upon the asp and the viper, trample the lion and the dragon. Because he clings to me I will deliver him; because he knows my name I will set him on high. He will call upon me and I will answer; I will be with him in distress; I will deliver him and give him honor. With length of days I will satisfy him, and fill him with my saving power.”
Then someone different received the word, “There is no fear. We live in fear. We allow fear to creep in. I hear the Lord saying, every time a negative thought, a fear creeps in, send it to the feet of Jesus. Do not allow it to consume you for one second, and when you've done that, call the Holy Spirit into your life to show you how to combat the enemy faster.”
Then, another week in the same month, someone received this Word, “I hear your cries, my children. Come to me, come to me in your brokenness. Do not be afraid to come. I will help you. But in my time. Wait patiently, and I will show you a way out. Know that all is possible when you trust and believe. I am here. Do not doubt it. I do hear your cries. I do feel your pain. Continue to trust, continue to believe, and I will help you.”
All of these Words from the Lord and the scripture verses were given in the same month. This is not unusual. The Lord tells us all the time not to worry, and yet we continue to worry, why is that? Why can’t we take the Lord at His Word? Why don’t we believe that He will be there for us? I wonder, if we look back over our lives, would we find more evidence to support that the Lord will be there for us or that the Lord won’t be there for us? I know when I look back over my life, I see how many times the Lord has shown up for me and saved me from things, sometimes big things and sometimes small things. I look back, and I can’t find a time when I called upon the Lord, and He didn’t answer that call. I can find a few times where I look back and realize I didn’t call upon the Lord until I tried to fix it myself for a really long time. However, when I did finally call upon the Lord, He always came.
What about you? What if you take a few minutes right now and look back on your life? Do you see all the ways God has shown up for you in the past? Can you find times when you called upon Him and He wasn’t there? God is so good. He always answers when we call. So, why are we afraid all of the time? Why do we struggle so much with believing the things that the Lord tells us? Why do we struggle to believe that He can save us, even from ourselves? If you look through the Bible you will find so many times when God saved His people from incredible things. You will find stories where the Lord’s people were few in number and going up against vast armies, and yet when they were listening the Lord He delivered them even though the odds were against them.
I know the odds don’t look good in your situation right now. I know the doctors are telling you there isn’t anything they can do for you. Or, maybe you are facing a different situation where you just don’t know what to do, and you don’t see any positive solution. Maybe you are frozen and fearful and don’t know how to move forward. Maybe you have been dealing with the same situation for a long time, and although you want to trust God, you don’t see any end in sight. Instead, all you see is the other person who is against you winning at each turn. If this is you, the Lord wants to encourage you to keep your trust. I hear Him saying, even in your circumstance, “Be Not Afraid, I’ve got you in the palm of my hand. You don’t have to figure all things out on your own. I will guide you. I will lead you. When you rely on me, I will show you the way, and things will be easier. Life won’t suddenly be easy, but when I am truly leading your steps, things will come together more easily. Trust if I want you to move or take a step in a different direction, I will make that clear to you. I love you, my children.”
I pray that those words or any of the other words in this episode speak light into your situation. I pray that they help you to be less afraid and trust the Lord a little more. He is there for you. He is protecting you, and He does not want us to be afraid!
Dear Heavenly Father, please bless those listening to their episode. Lord, thank you so much for always being there for us. Lord, I ask you to help show us all the times in the past when you have been there for us. Lord, when we are fearful, help us to remember all the beautiful things you said to us in this episode. Help us to remember you don't want us to be afraid and that you are there for us. Show us how not to be afraid, Lord! We love you, and we ask all of this in accordance with your word and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I just decided this morning that the theme for this month’s mentoring will be “Be Not Afraid.” I hope you will join us this month for mentoring. If you have been listening to this podcast for a while now and would like more or would like to go deeper, I encourage you to check out mentoring. It is a place where we can go deeper when exploring the topics. It is also a chance to see how to apply them to your everyday lives. If you are interested in checking out mentoring, please let me know, and I will send you the Zoom link for tomorrow night’s session, and you can check it out for free. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in May 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Some of you are too hard on yourselves. Immerse yourself in my all-encompassing love. Walk in confidence. Walk proud. You are children of the King, the sons and daughters of the Most High God.”
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Sacrifice Is The Heart of Worship
Psalm 95:6-8 “O come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker! For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. O that today you would listen to his voice!”
This verse was received at prayer group yesterday, and when I read it this morning, I thought it would be a great one for today’s devotional. It talks about worshiping the Lord and hearing the Lord’s voice. These are both things I love to talk about, so it seemed perfect. I also think they are great topics to end the week with. I believe the world could be a much better place if more of us were worshipping the Lord instead of all the things in this world that we worship.
I was listening to Father Mike Schmitz's sermon from Sunday, October 27th, yesterday on Spotify, and I really enjoyed it. He talked about how the heart of worship is sacrifice. He said you can tell how important something is to someone by what they are willing to sacrifice for it. I thought this was interesting and also challenging at the same time. Everything involves a sacrifice or at least a giving of something. For instance, if you want to eat healthily, you need to give up your soda, your junk food, and your comfort foods. If you want to watch TV, you need to give up that time that could have been spent doing something else. If you want to worship God, you need to give Him your time.
Father Mike talked about one of the biggest times to Worship the Lord int he Jewish culture was Passover. He described how the Jewish people would sacrifice a lamb to the Lord at Passover. However, they wouldn’t just buy a lamb and then sacrifice it. They would buy a lamb the Sunday before Passover and they would bring this lamb into their home. They would live with this lamb for a week. They would begin to care for this lamb, they may even love this lamb by the end of the week as they have just spent the week taking care of it. Then, they would carry this lamb upon their shoulders and bring it to the temple to sacrifice it to the Lord. They would do this every year.
All this talk about sacrifice being the heart of worship really challenged me. It challenged me because I am in a season where sacrifice is hard for me. Well, true and meaningful sacrifice is hard for me. These days, it seems I am all too happy to sacrifice my productive time so that I can watch TV. However, what am I getting from the TV? What is that saying about what I am worshipping? I am really struggling with sacrificing for the Lord. My heart wants me to fast, and my brain finds all these reasons why I can’t. My heart wants to spend more time alone with the Lord, and yet I find myself watching TV instead.
I am not sure why sacrifice is so hard for me right now. Sometimes, it comes much easier. I used to be pretty good at fasting or not watching TV. I am not sure why it is more of a struggle these days, other than the fact that life is not always linear. I heard this term when I was teaching about the dark night of the soul, and I think it not only applies to that, but it applies to all of life. Sometimes, we can think that life is like a mountain we are climbing, and we climb this mountain slowly and steadily, and then we reach the top. However, have you ever really climbed a mountain or seen someone climb a mountain? Yes, slow and steady is a good pace, but you aren’t always moving forward. Sometimes, you slip and fall. Sometimes, you catch yourself right away, and other times, you slide down a bit before getting back up again. Sometimes, there will be a big cliff you can’t climb directly, so you need to take another path, which might not be headed up the mountain, but rather around the mountain until you find a safe way up the mountain.
Do you see how walking up the mountain is probably not just a straight path up? Life is like this. It is not linear, meaning we go from one step to the next to the next. Sometimes, we go to the next step, and then we regress back three steps, then we take the next right step. Life is a process. It is one we all go through, and I am sure if you look over your life, you will see that it didn’t always feel like you were moving forward. Sometimes, it felt like you were moving backward.
I think going into this weekend; we can remember what Father Mike said about the sacrifice being the heart of worship. How can we worship the Lord better this weekend? What can we sacrifice in order to show our love for the Lord? If we look at what we are already sacrificing in our lives, that will show us what we are worshiping right now in our lives. What are you worshiping? For me, I think it is food and TV, but I wish it was the Lord. This weekend I will spend some time talking with the Lord and seeing what He thinks I should be sacrificing.
Which brings me to the second part of this verse. The last line of this verse says, “ For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. O that today you would listen to his voice!” We are the sheep, and the Lord is our shepherd. Sheep can hear their shepherd. There have been studies done where they put a bunch of different herds of sheep together, and they disguised the shepherds so they were wearing different clothes and smelled different, and then they had the shepherds call out to the sheep. The sheep went with their shepherd because they recognized the voice.
We can hear the Lord’s voice, too! I like that the verse says, “O that today you would listen to his voice!” This is the desire of the Lord. He wants to talk with each one of us, and yet we are not listening to His voice. I think for most of us, we are not listening because we didn’t know we could hear the Lord’s voice. This is why I love talking about listening to the Lord. The more we talk about it, the more people will understand that we all have this gift. They will know that they, too, can listen to the Lord. This is such an amazing gift, and it is so important for us all to know that we have it. It is not set aside for a select few special people. It is a gift God wants to share with each and every one of us.
Let me briefly go over the ways that we can hear the Lord’s voice. You might already be hearing Him, and you didn’t know it was Him. We can hear the Lord in four main ways. First, you may hear a voice in your head, which usually sounds a lot like your own voice. Second, you may have a thought that just pops into your head. Third, you might have a feeling about something. It is not a word or a thought, but you know something because of a feeling somewhere in your body. The fourth way is through a vision. You might see something, almost like a dream. The vision can either be like a dream, where it plays sort of like a movie, or it could just be an image, almost like a picture that you see. God can speak to you using one of these methods, a few of them, or all of them. Usually, He uses the one that He knows we will be most comfortable with because He doesn’t want to scare us.
You may be hearing the Lord already. Have you ever asked Him a question and then felt like you knew what the answer was? You didn’t understand how you knew, but you definitely knew the answer to the question you asked the Lord. If you have not spent any time trying to hear the Lord, I invite you to spend some time this weekend practicing hearing the Lord. The reason I say practicing is because it can be hard sometimes. We don’t always believe we can hear the Lord, and so sometimes, it takes a bit to get over ourselves. It can take a while to convince ourselves that we aren’t crazy and that the Lord really does want to talk to us.
One way that helped me was to journal our conversations. I would write a letter to the Lord, then I would ask the Lord to answer my letter using my pen, and I would write a letter back to myself. Now, I have started asking the Lord specific questions and then writing down whatever comes to mind right afterward. I don’t question it while I am writing it down. I just write down all that I hear, and then I reread it the next day to see if I think the Lord could have said that. The Lord will never contradict Scripture. That is His written word, and so if you hear something that tells you to do something you know is wrong, that is not the Lord. Also, the Lord is gentle, and He does not condemn us. If you are receiving words that make you feel shame, regret, or just overall bad feelings, that is not the Lord either. The Lord may convict you of something while He is talking to you but never in a way that leaves you feeling shame.
I hope you will try to hear the Lord’s voice this weekend. I hope you will spend time with Him in conversation. Maybe ask Him a question you have always wanted to ask Him. I also hope you spend some time thinking about how worship is the heart of sacrifice. So, what are you currently worshipping with your sacrifice and how can you shift your worship more towards the Lord?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you, and we want to worship you, please help us. Show us where we are worshiping other things instead of you. Help us to sacrifice for you, Lord. We also want to hear your voice, Lord. Help us to hear your voice. Give us the confidence we need to know you are talking to us. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to seeing you again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed weekend!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in May 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I am your daily bread, so you can also be the bread for others. I use you so they may come to me, become the bread of hope, joy, and peace to others.”
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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No More Masquerade
Colossians 3:7-9 "That's how you once behaved, characterized by your evil deeds. But now it's time to eliminate them from your lives once and for all – anger, fits of rage, all forms of hatred, cursing, filthy speech, and lying. Lay aside your old Adam self with its masquerade and disguise.”
There were two things I liked about these verses this morning. The first is that they tell us it is time to eliminate certain behaviors from our lives once and for all. These behaviors are anger, fits of rage, all forms of hatred, cursing, filthy speech, and lying. I was drawn to this because those are things I think we would all get rid of if we could. I don’t think any one of us likes being angry or having fits of rage. Many would love to give up hatred, cursing, filthy speech, and lying too. However, it is what we know. We might think it is who we are. If this is the case, then how do we give these things up? How do we stop doing something that we feel has become part of who we are?
The first step in changing anything is acknowledging the need for change. If we don’t think anything needs to change, then nothing will change. Once you realize something needs to change, your brain will subconsciously start to think of ways it can help you change. However, that doesn’t mean you will implement these new changes immediately. It often takes us a while to make changes, especially if there are changes in things that we have done or have not done for a while. For instance, I know I need to work out every day. I want to work out, and yet I can’t seem to fit it into my schedule.
It takes time to change things about ourselves. We can’t just stop doing the thing we want to change. We need to replace that behavior with another behavior. For instance, if we usually curse when we are mad, we will need to find something else to do instead. This will be much more effective than just trying to stop doing it altogether. My dad used to tell us this when we were younger. He would try to tell us that we should pick a replacement for the bad words we would get into trouble for saying. Then, when we would say the bad word, immediately after saying it, we would say the word we wanted to replace it with. This seemed to work for us, at least a little.
How do we stop getting angry, though? How do we stop experiencing rage? I don’t think the people who experience them do it because they want to. I think the people want to act this way; they just can’t help it. I think the solution to this is to live more intentionally. We need to be proactive instead of reactive. We need to go through life deciding how we want to act instead of just reacting to everything that happens.
My kids used to push my buttons like it was their job. They knew just what to say to make me yell or get really upset. I would get so mad and occasionally would say things I didn’t mean but felt like I couldn’t help it. However, I finally learned how to resist reacting negatively to their words or their actions that were meant to upset me. If I can do it, you can too. It was not easy, but it is doable! Which thing listed in this verse is something you need to stop doing?
The second thing I liked about these verses is when they say, “Lay aside your old Adam self with its masquerade and disguise.” Adam and Eve brought sin into this world, and it was shared with all of us. However, Jesus brought that sin to the cross so that we could be a different person. Why are we still acting like our old selves, full of sin and shame? Also, why are we hiding ourselves? When I saw the last line in this verse today, it made me think of a song. I know you are not surprised, as I tend to always think of songs. However, there is a song that talks about how we are all masquerading and what if we just took our masks off. I believe that is what this verse is calling us to do.
The song I thought of is called Cages by We the Kingdom. Here are the lyrics.
What if I got real honest?
What if I took a risk?
What if I opened up my heart
And let you see in?
What if I took my mask off?
Trying to fit in
I don't wanna be a mannequin
What if we took our masks off? What if we were just who God created us to be? What if we let go of all the anger, fits of rage, hatred, cursing, filthy speech, and lying? Why do we do those things anyway? Do we enjoy them, or is it so that we will fit in with those around us? Do we do it so we will feel normal?
What if I let my guard down?
What if I took a breath?
What if I wasn't perfect?
What if I was just a mess?
What if I bled my soul out
Givin' all I could give?
What if we let our guard down? What if we weren’t always trying to be perfect? What if we just let the world see us for the mess that we really are? Would that really be so bad? Can you imagine how freeing it would be to just feel comfortable being yourself? That is what this verse is calling you to do. Stop pretending and just be you.
I'm so tired of pretending
I'm comin' out of my cages
I'm steppin' down from my stages
I'm sick and tired of faking it
What I wouldn't give to be known
What I wouldn't give to be known
How great would it be to be known just as you are? How great would it be to have people really see you, the you that you truly are?
What if I got new armor?
What if I swung my sword?
What if I face my demons
Like I've never done before?
What if I hung my banner?
What if I chose a side?
What if I knew I couldn't lose this time?
What if this new armor the song is talking about is your new way of living? What if this new armor is the armor of God? What if you stopped all the things that God doesn’t want you to do and embraced this new way of living? This way of living where you get to be you, and you don’t feel you have to fit in anymore. God created us to live in this world but not be of this world.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone listening to this episode. Lord, we want to eliminate the behaviors of our old selves and live the life you want us to live. We need your help, Lord. Some of these behaviors we have done for a long time now, and we feel as though we can’t give them up. However, we know all things are possible through you, so we ask for your help. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow! Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in May 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, reflect. What do you have to lose? What do you have to gain?”
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Today’s witnesses are from Matthew West’s website called popwe.org. If you don’t know who Matthew West is, he is a singer, songwriter, and storyteller. This website is for the non-profit that he has with his father, a pastor. Matthew and his father encourage people to share their stories. They have various categories of stories. Today, I chose four testimonies from the Addictions and Deliverance Category. Today's witnesses are about how people who were addicted to drugs and, through the intervention of God, their lives were changed. I know people who are really suffering right now because of drugs or addictions, and so I thought these witnesses might give all those affected by addiction some hope and encouragement. God is not done in your situation or your loved ones' situation. If it’s not good, God’s not done! Often, we can hear our own story in someone else’s story. When we listen to others tell their story, it helps us see that we are not alone. When we hear how God worked in their situation, it gives us hope that He will work in ours, too! I pray when you hear this testimony, you get the faith and hope to believe that miracles can happen in your situation, also. I pray you know that God is there with you, and if you invite Him into your situation, He can help. I hope you enjoy these testimonies.
First we have Jim: The story I have is 100% God!!! In the darkest days of my opiate addiction, I went to jail. Then, I received a three-year sentence. I had never been in trouble as a teenager or a young adult. At one point, I overdosed and if God had not put air in my lungs, I would have died. Nobody was around and nobody would have been there for days. God knows our hearts and I went to Greater Cleveland Teen Challenge and completed that phase. Then, I went on to Cape Girardeau Missouri where I completed an additional ten-month program. Jesus Christ set me free from the bondage of drugs and alcohol! Thank you, Lord, for your sovereignty and for calling me out of the darkness and into Your marvelous light!
Next is Jane: God hears you when you cry out to Him, and I can tell you that it’s true! When I was deep in the trap of addiction to alcohol and cocaine, I would cry out to God in desperation to remove it from me because it was literally killing me. He heard my cries, and in perfect timing, through a car accident, He released me from my addiction! The night of the accident, I wasn’t under the influence of any substances, and the accident was caused by the other driver. We were both injured, but God took away my addiction that night and at that moment! It was a true miracle, and I hope that someone who has these struggles will be encouraged by my story. God is a way-maker, and He will remove your addictions if you keep crying out and believing in the power of Jesus! There have been many more miracles in my life, but I chose this one in hopes of helping a brother or sister in need!
The third one there is a story of a girl whose family did not protect her. I grew up in an abusive home where I was sexually trafficked by my mother to other family members. I told my pastor, my teachers, doctors, and nurses. No one did anything. So I grew to believe that I was unworthy, unlovable, and useless unless the person had an ulterior motive. I became seriously depressed to the point that I was diagnosed with medically-resistant depression. I was suicidal and thought of ways to kill myself daily. I sought counseling but it always failed to benefit me. I attended a depression and anxiety recovery program in November 2018. I had a gun in one hand and pills in the other and told God if He didn’t get me in the program that I was done. I met a man named Paul with a ministry called “Straight 2 the Heart” who taught me about Jesus’s suffering and being tempted with my negative thoughts. In the prayer process, receivers listen for God’s still small voice and encouragement. So often that encouragement has come in Matthew West’s songs as God reminds me of my identity and value. I’ve been sober and off of narcotic prescriptions and hard liquor for just over 2 years. Thank you for letting me share.
Last but not least we have Karryn: I grew up in a good family, but I’d never felt loved. I didn’t know why. I was also a very good liar since I was young, and I never understood why about that either. I have been listening to Matthew West’s music since the first time I went into rehab in 2015. That was the first time I was introduced to Christianity. I was a bad methamphetamine addict. After rehab, I had my ups and downs. I had two beautiful sons, Jaz and Lucas, but I never put them first. In 2019, I went back into rehab, a Christ centered facility. But, I ended up leaving to be with my boyfriend, Dallas, whom I really loved. He was about 700 miles away from me. I got pregnant soon after we reunited, but we continued to use drugs. We lost everything. We were living in a tent, and were hurt both physically and mentally by the people in that scene. This is when I found out that Dallas had been raised in a foster home and his parents were strong in their faith. I began to pray. God opened up a door and we were blessed by St. Vincent’s, a place here in Australia that helps those in need. That’s where our lives changed, and I believe it was our Lord who changed all of this. I was still struggling with how to handle this pregnancy. The only thing keeping me from terminating the pregnancy was the fact that I had just begun to grieve a previous abortion. On my Spotify, randomly the song “Unplanned” began to play. Dallas and I cried and cried. It was a massive turning point for us. We have been clean for months now. We are off all substances. Our new son, Aleksandr, (Alek) has arrived and is a very healthy boy. We are just so grateful to the Lord and to Matthew for his music and especially for the song, “Unplanned.” It was a moment in our lives that we will never forget.
Thank you all so much for being brave and vulnerable and sharing your stories. So many others will receive hope just by hearing your story! I pray God continues to bless you along your journey!
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How Fleeting Life Is
Psalm 39: 4-6 ““LORD, make me to know my end, And what is the measure of my days, That I may know how frail I am. Indeed, You have made my days as handbreadths, And my age is as nothing before You; Certainly every man at his best state is but vapor.” Selah “Surely every man walks about like a shadow; Surely they busy themselves in vain; He heaps up riches, And does not know who will gather them.””
This was a verse that was received during my prayer group last week. I wanted to get a deeper understanding of what the verses meant, so I went online to the Enduring Word Bible Commentary that I learned about not that long ago. I believe it is a minister who has compiled a commentary on the different books of the Bible. He helps to explain it so we can all understand what is being said in a little more detail. Sometimes it is nice to know what certain things meant back in the time when they were written. Yes, the Bible is a living Word that is just as true today as it was the day it was written.
However, sometimes it is nice to be able to understand why they chose to use certain words or if those words had a different meaning back when the Bible was written. Also, the Bible was not originally written in English, so sometimes the word that was used in the Greek or Hebrew edition is not an exact translation into English, and I love to hear what the word they actually used meant and how it is different than the English word. This stuff is discovered by theologians who study scripture and the ancient times and fill us in on all that they learn. I love learning more in-depth explanations of what the Scripture is really telling us. Today I will share with you the explanation I found on the enduring Word Commentary website as I think He explained it very well.
First, it says, LORD, make me know my end: David’s silence was broken in the best way – by humble prayer to God. He would not speak his fears and doubts before the wicked, but he would pour them out before His God. Here, David asked God for wisdom – specifically, the wisdom to know the shortness and the frailty of his life (that I may know how frail I am).
We might have expected David to break his silence by telling off his enemies or by defending his own righteousness. He did neither; he sought God for wisdom. “It is well that the vent of his soul was Godward and not towards man. Oh! if my swelling heart must speak, Lord let it speak with thee.” (Spurgeon)
Next it says, Make me to know my end: “This was not a prayer inspired by a desire to know when life would end; it was not a request to be told the date of death. It was a prayer for an accurate apprehension of the fact that life quantitatively – that is, as to the number of its days – is as nothing.” (Morgan)
Then, You have made my days as handbreadths: “He compares it to a ‘handbreadth,’ one of the smallest units of measurement in ancient Israel. It is equivalent to a couple of inches.’” (VanGemeren)
“Life is very short, but a great deal may be done. Our Lord Jesus Christ, in three years, saved the world. Some of his followers in three years have been the means of saving many and many a soul.” (Spurgeon)
Next, Certainly, every man in his best state is but a vapor: David was a champion, an accomplished Special Forces warrior, a leader, a celebrity, a skilled poet, a musical genius, a survivor, and a king. If anyone might have thought more highly of himself, David had the right to. Yet he understood that he, like every man, is – at his best state – merely a vapor, a puff of steam or smoke.
“He learns that, since life is short, the only real meaning of a man or woman’s existence must be in his relationship to God, for God is eternal.” (Boice)
Next, the word Selah: The idea in Hebrew for this word (occurring 74 times in the Old Testament) is for a pause. Most people think it speaks of a reflective pause, a pause to meditate on the words just spoken. It may also be a musical instruction for a musical interlude of some kind.
This Selah is an appropriate call for each one to pause and think of the shortness and frailty of his life. It should drive us to great dependence upon God and great earnestness about life and doing good in the short time we do have.
It goes on to say, Surely they busy themselves in vain. Sounding very much like the later Book of Ecclesiastes, David thought about the mass of humanity who lived, ignoring the shortness and frailty of life.
· Each of them walks about, but like a shadow, living a life with no substance.
· They are busy but in vain, being blind to eternal things.
· Each of them works hard and heaps up riches, yet does not think beyond his own short and frail life.
This is the land of shadows. Heaven is the land of reality, of true high definition.
“Every man that exists is vanity. All his projects, plans, schemes, etc., soon come to nothing. His body also molders with the dust, and shortly passes both from the sight and remembrance of men.” (Clarke)
I know today was a bit more technical than I usually do, and yet I thought it was a good explanation of what David was saying in this verse. I think all too often, we go about our days as if they are unlimited. We act as if we don’t have an end to our timeline here on earth. I am not saying we should constantly be thinking about when we will die or the fact we only have so many days, weeks, months, or years left on Earth. I do, however, think we live more intentionally when we know that our time is coming to an end. We don’t have to wait until we get a bad prognosis to start living our lives intentionally. The Lord showed me this in my prayer time this morning. He told me that I was accomplishing all I needed to get done, and yet there is a whole lot of stuff that I want to do but am not doing simply because I am not sitting down and planning out my day or my week. I end up wasting time because I have “free time” and I didn’t have anything scheduled during that time so I don’t really know what to work on and I spend the whole time trying to decide. Or even worse, I get caught up in scrolling on the internet or playing a game and don’t get anything done.
I don’t think the Lord was scolding me in our time this morning. I think it was a gentle reminder that a little planning goes a long way. I want to pass that message on to you today, too. What is it that you really want to do and yet don’t think you have time to do? Take a few minutes, look at your schedule for the week, and find a place where you could do that thing, even if it is just for a few minutes. You will be much happier when you are living more intentionally. The alternative is to allow life to dictate how you go about your day, and you just show up and do it. This has some appeal, but I think it is a trick from the enemy to keep up from accomplishing the amazing things we could accomplish with a bit more planning. One of my favorite lines in a song is from the song What Are We Waiting For by For King and Country. The line I like in the song says, “What are we waiting for? Why are we wasting all the time like someone's making more?” I love this because it is a great reminder that we have a finite amount of time. The time that we waste, we don’t get that time back. It is gone forever. I would love to encourage you to take a few moments today to pause reflectively, as mentioned above, and think about how short life is and then think about how you could be living this one life that we get more purposefully. Let’s live it with more intention. What do you want to do that you have been putting off for another time? Is not the right time to do it?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, you are amazing, and we would be lost without you. Lord, help us to live our lives more purposefully. Help us not just to float through life but to live it with intention. Help us to see how short life is and yet not let that worry or overcome us. Help us to use that knowledge to fuel our passion for living. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day.
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in May 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Do not be a coward. Do not lay back. Know that I am the Lord, and my Spirit is there to bring joy as you do what He says. Be convinced that I am with you. Fear not. Again, I say, move forward.”
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Keep A Tight Rein on Your Tongue
James 1:26-27 “Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless. Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”
There were two things that really stood out to me in this morning’s verses. The first one is when it says, “Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless.” I think we all know people who claim to be religious and yet say all sorts of unkind things about other people. Sometimes, I don’t think they even know what they are saying is wrong.
They may think they are just saying things that are true, so it is not a big deal. However, sometimes that is gossiping about others. We need to stop and ask ourselves, does this person need to know this thing about the other person? Why am I telling them them? Is it so they know this person a bit better? Is it because I don’t agree with it, and I want others to reassure me that I am right and this other person is wrong? Am I just talking about this other person because it makes me seem like I know things others do not know?
We might get caught up in gossip not because we want to but because everyone around us is gossiping, and we don’t know how to avoid it. I have been in this situation before where those around me were talking about someone, and I didn’t want to participate, and yet I also felt like I didn’t have a choice. I didn’t want to seem like I thought I was better than anyone else, and I didn’t want to speak up and then make them feel judged. However, what I am realizing right now is that it is more important for me to think about how God is thinking about me than it is about those who are around me. Also, I am doing them a disservice if I don’t speak up, as God is not happy when we gossip. If we love our friends and family, we should do all we can to get them into heaven. This means if we see that they are gossiping, we can let them know that we don’t want to participate and that God doesn’t want us to gossip.
I do think how we tell them this is important. I think whenever we see something, and we feel called to speak up, we must always speak up out of love and genuine concern for their soul. We should speak with nothing but love in our voices. We shouldn’t be filled with judgment or condemnation. When Jesus was here on Earth, He saw all sorts of wicked things, and yet he didn’t condemn people; he convicted them, and many of them changed their ways. He did not talk down to them, although He could have because he was fully God and fully human. He did not make them feel bad about what they were doing. He made them feel loved. Jesus loved them completely just as they were, and that was something people had never felt before. They did not change because He yelled at them and told them what they were doing was wrong. They did not change because of his judgment or condemnation. They changed because of His love for them. Those around you deserve the same. They need your unconditional love for where they are right now, and then they will begin to move towards where the Lord wants them to be!
The second thing that stood out to me in this verse is the last line. “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” I love this because it reminds us that religion is not just a set of beliefs. It is a way of life. It is not just a set of words and prayers, but it is action as well. We can’t just talk a good game and not live it out. We can’t talk about how important it is to take care of those who don’t have anything and yet do nothing to help those in need.
The verse says, “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by this world.” We have to take care of the orphans and the widows in distress. What does this mean? Does this mean if we see a homeless kid on the street we need to pick him or her up and take them home? No, but it does mean we should do something, not just walk buy and pretend we don’t see them. That seems to be what most of us do. It is too hard to look at them. We don’t have to give them money because we heard that is bad because they will just use it for drugs. So, we don’t know how to help them, and so we ignore them and pretend we don’t see them. This hurts them. Have you ever had someone walk right by you and pretend not to see you? It is not a good feeling.
There are plenty of ways we can help those in need. We can physically go out and help them. For instance, I have a few friends who go out to the streets and talk with the homeless. They learn their names, spend time with them, and get to know them as people. Who were they before they ended up on the streets? What is their story? They might bring them some snacks of something else they might need.
I know another few friends who go out and minister to the homeless living in Boston. They meet with them, and they offer to pray over them for whatever it is they need prayer for. It is a beautiful thing. However, even if you feel like you can’t go out and take care of their physical or spiritual needs yourself, you could always donate to an organization that helps provide for those in need. There are so many good ones. There are a lot of organizations that are looking to help take care of God’s forgotten people. It is up to us to figure out how we can help them.
We can’t just talk about how Jesus was there for everyone and that he took care of the poor and the lame, and yet we just ignore them. We need to figure out how to put our faith into action. We need to figure out how to keep a tight reign on our tongue so we are only saying things that bless others. We need to take captive our thoughts so we are only sharing nice things about others. Then, we also need to find a way to do as Jesus did. We need to help those in need.
The other thing the verse says that I didn’t really touch on is that we need to keep ourselves from being polluted by this world. This one is not that easy. The Lord is calling us to live in this world but not be of this world. He wants us to remember that we belong to Him, and so we need to protect ourselves from the many ways that the world would like to corrupt us. One of those is by not keeping a tight reign on our tongues. Our words can corrupt us and those around us. We must watch what we say. We must watch what we do and who we do it with.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each one of us here today. Lord, we love you, and we thank you for showing us the way you want us to live. We ask that you help us to live in a way that shows the world that we are your followers. We ask that you help us to keep a reign on our tongue as that is not easy to do. We need your help, Lord. We also ask that you help us figure out how we can help the orphans and the widows. Lord, put it on our hearts to help more. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you just as I am, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in May 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Fear not, my children. Move forward. My Spirit will lead the way and He will tell you what to say and what to do. If you move forward, you will find joy.”
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The Lord Is My Refuge
Psalm 91:9-13 “Because you have made the Lord your refuge, the Most High your dwelling place, no evil shall befall you, no scourge come near your tent. For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways. On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone. You will tread on the lion and the adder, the young lion and the serpent you will trample under foot.”
These verses were given at one of our evening prayer group meetings last month. When I saw it in my notes and looked it up this morning, I thought it was a great verse to talk about today. The first line is great. “Because we have made the Lord your refuge, the Most High your dwelling place, no evil shall befall you, no scourge come near your tent.” This is amazing. Yet it also makes me wonder, have I made the Lord my refuge? I feel like I have had evil befall me, so what does that mean? Does that mean that I haven’t made the Lord my refuge?
I think when we read certain passages in the Bible, we can wonder things like this. This is why it is super important not to take verses out of context. It is also important to look at everything the Bible says as a whole when trying to understand scripture. Psalm 91 speaks about God's protection, but it doesn't suggest that believers will never face hardship or experience evil. Instead, it emphasizes God's presence, care, and protection in the midst of difficulties. Verses like Psalm 91:2-3 declare:
"I will say of the Lord, 'He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.' Surely he will save you from the fowler's snare and from the deadly pestilence."
However, this protection doesn’t mean that nothing bad will ever happen. Instead, it points to God being a refuge during difficult times and offering ultimate protection, even when facing dangers or evil. The psalm uses symbolic language to show how God can shelter and protect from harm, but that doesn't imply that no adversity will ever come into a believer's life. In fact, other parts of Scripture acknowledge that faithful people can suffer (e.g., Job, Jesus' teachings, and the Psalms of lament).
Psalm 91 reminds believers that even when evil befalls them, God is their refuge, and they can trust in Him for strength, comfort, and, ultimately, deliverance. It also speaks of spiritual protection—preserving the believer's soul, even when physical or material harm occurs. Therefore, facing adversity doesn't mean God is not your refuge, but rather it may be a time to deepen your trust in Him.
Next, the verse says, “For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways. On their hands, they will bear you up so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.” Can you even believe that God commands his angels to guard us in all our ways? I have heard many stories of when people have been saved by angels. One of them was from someone in my prayer group. She was out driving her school bus in a snowstorm when her windshield wiper stopped working. She pulled over to the side of the road. She didn’t have any kids on the bus because she was about to park the bus for the night at the bus lot. She didn’t know what she was going to do because she couldn’t drive without windshield wipers, and the snow was really coming down. She prayed for the Lord to help her.
Right after she finished praying, she saw lights in her rearview mirror. Another bus had pulled in behind her. The driver got out and fixed her windshield wipers. They both got back on their way. When my friend got to the lot to park the bus, she asked them who the driver was and who stopped and helped her. They said there were no other drivers. She was the only one still out. She said she knew it was an angel that helped her. Here are a few that I found online:
A young woman was saved from a home invasion when something prevented the attacker's hands from touching her. A hospice social worker was able to avoid a large van with a metal ladder on top after hearing a voice say, "Both hands on the wheel." A mother was praying in her room when she read a verse that said, "And the Lord will provide your wages." A young lady knocked on the door and handed her an envelope containing a good amount of cash. A couple were about to miss their flight to Bermuda when an attendant found a packet of landing papers on the counter. The attendant called the plane back to the gate, and the couple was able to board. A man on a bicycle almost hit someone walking down a hill in Jerusalem, but his bike seemed to hit an invisible wall, and he fell over.
I think sometimes we think our problems are too practical for God. We don’t ask for things because we can’t see a way that He could help us. We think He is up in heaven, and sure, He can orchestrate big things to happen, but He can’t really help me with my practical problem of needing $50 right now so I can pay my bill. I believe He can help me find a job, but how is He able to make sure my car doesn’t get repossessed while I wait for that job? We think of God as capable of doing all the big things, but we tend to either count Him out for the little stuff or don’t even bother to ask Him because we think He has better things to do. God wants to be in all parts of our lives, not just the big ones. He wants to be in all the little details as well.
The verse ends with, “You will tread on the lion and the adder, the young lion and the serpent you will trample underfoot.” When God is our refuge, we don’t have to fear the enemy because we are stronger than anything the enemy has to throw at us. 1 John 4:4 says, “Little children, you are from God, and have conquered them; for the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.” We don’t have to fear what is in this world because Jesus already defeated evil. Evil will not prosper against us. We have the Spirit of the Lord living inside of us, and He is greater than anything else. So, when it comes to us coming up against the lion or the serpent, we don’t have to worry because we will defeat them. We can trample them under our feet. This verse, actually this whole Psalm, is meant to remind us of God’s protection over us. It is meant to help us feel safe and remind us of where our strength comes from.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone listening to this episode. Lord, thank you for the reminder that you are our strength and you are our refuge. Thank you for sending your angels to guard our way also. Lord, you are so amazing! You do so much for us, and I wish there was something we could do for you. Lord, we ask that you help us turn to you in times of trouble. We ask that you remind us of your strength and protection when we forget. Which is probably more often than you would like. Thank you for being so patient with us. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I. Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in May 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My Holy Spirit falls upon all peoples of all times. My Holy Spirit seeks a resting place. Open your hearts and souls to provide fertile ground for my Spirit to plant and bring forth fruit for your times. Let go of your wounds and hurts. They are covered by my Spirit who is doing new works in you and for your world.”
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Today, I want to tell you about the retreat I had a few weekends ago. I felt like I would have more people at this retreat than last year. I did have many more people I invited who said they were interested in coming. However, most said they wanted to go but could not make it for the weekend that I booked the retreat house. Three weeks before the retreat, I asked the retreat director, Nancy, a question, and at that time, I only had four people signed up. She told me that she could not pay her staff to come in for just four people. I totally understood this and yet was devastated that I may have to cancel the retreat.
Nancy was super sweet and said that I could still use the retreat house to have the retreat, I would just need to provide the food. She said she would reduce the amount of money that I needed to pay to use the retreat house and that she and her husband would take care of reheating the food, picking up takeout, or helping with whatever we decided to do for food for the weekend. She said she didn’t want me to have to cancel on those who had already signed up. I prayed about it and felt like the Lord still wanted me to have the retreat, even if it was just for four people.
Over the course of the next few weeks, I had four more people sign up, so we were up to 8. Then, two of them had things come up, and they were unable to come. We were down to 6, but with me, that was seven, and I thought that was an ok number. I had wanted more to come, but I understood that people had things going on that weekend. About a week before the retreat, I talked with a friend of mine, and she said she was able to come. This brought us up to 8, including myself. I thought that was a pretty good number. Then, the Wednesday before, another friend asked if she could come. She said she didn’t originally sign up because she needed to cover for someone at church, but that person came home from her trip early, and she was free to come. Then, on Friday morning, another friend called up and asked if it was too late for her to come. She really needed a retreat weekend and was wondering if she could come. I checked with the retreat house, and Nancy said it was not a problem. So, the final count was 10 of us at the retreat.
I thought this number was small, but those in attendance were happy that there weren’t too many people because it meant they didn’t have to be nervous spending the weekend with 40 other women that they didn’t know. They all got to know each other pretty well. By the end of the weekend, they were hugging each other, exchanging numbers and Facebook profiles, and promising to keep in touch. It was such a great weekend, and it was really great to see the beginning of what I know will be some amazing friendships. I think that is part of the magic of retreat. There are so many nice parts about the retreat: the talks, the activities, and the food, but one of the best is the fellowship with others going through the same kind of stuff. We may not all be going through the exact same stuff, but we are all going through stuff, and to get the opportunity to spend a weekend with other people who are going through stuff and who also love Jesus is a great thing!
Remember above when I said Nancy said I could still use the retreat house, but I would need to provide the food? I was trying to think of what I should do for food. I thought maybe I could do takeout, like pizza and pasta, or maybe grinders. However, now there were ten people, and takeout would get expensive. And what would I order that everyone would like? I decided it would be good to do casseroles. This way, I could make them ahead of time throughout the week, and it wouldn’t be a lot of work for Nancy and her husband. They could just put them in the oven to reheat them.
I spoke with my sister Liz, who is a master party planner. Well, her day job is as a counselor, but her passion is party planning, and she is so good at it. She also loves meal planning and meal prep. She said she could come over the weekend before, and we could make stuff and freeze it. She and another sister, Dee, came over the Sunday before, and we made four quiche, two nondairy egg casseroles, beef stew, chicken noodle soup, and two ranch chicken and potato casseroles. It was amazing because it only took a few hours, and yet we had both days of breakfast taken care of; we had one dinner and one lunch taken care of. I had decided the other dinner would be a chicken and stuffing casserole that I couldn’t make in advance because it is not great to freeze stovetop stuffing. I was also going to cook up some hamburger meat for the second lunch so we could have tacos. What seemed like it was going to be really difficult turned out to be really easy, and everyone ended up really happy with the food.
When it finally came time for the actual retreat, it was amazing! Everyone hit a lot of traffic, so we started late, and yet no one seemed to mind. We started with introductions, and then we ate dinner together. Over the course of the weekend, I gave four talks on the theme’s topic, which was “Come as you Are,” and then I gave two other talks. One was on the reckless love God has for us, and one was on how endless God’s forgiveness is. We also had some free time, Confession and Mass were also available for those who wanted to go. We did an illuminated Rosary where we had tea light candles laid out in the formation of rosary beads, and we lit each candle, well, turned each candle on, as we said each prayer. It was beautiful.
We also had three people who were healed of pain during the retreat. My sister’s back had been hurting her the whole car ride to retreat and for the whole night at retreat. She mentioned it before going to be, so I asked if I could pray over her for healing. She agreed, and God healed all the pain in her back. She was able to go to sleep with no pain, and it did not return. Another woman had fallen several months ago and hurt her elbow. She also had a brace on her wrist because she was told it was bone on bone in her wrist. I asked if I could pray over her for healing, and she said yes. After a few minutes of prayer, God took away some of her wrist pain. She was hesitant to move the wrist too much to test if it was pain-free because if she moved it a certain way, it was pretty painful. However, 30 minutes later, she was moving it all around pain-free! Hallelujah, God is so good!!
Finally, my niece was also on retreat. She came up to me on Sunday morning and said that she needed me to pray over her foot. She said it had been sore for several weeks now, and it wasn’t going away. She was wearing support in her shoe, and that was helping, but she just wanted the pain gone. It was funny, too, because when I pray using the Encounter Ministries model, I always begin by asking them to ask Jesus if He wants to heal them. When I asked her, she didn’t even hesitate. She immediately said, “Yes, I know He wants to heal me. He said it's time to end this,” or something like that. She was so confident God would heal her, and I thought that was such a beautiful thing. I prayed for a few minutes over her foot, and then she walked around to test it out. The pain was gone. Her foot was healed. It was amazing and wonderful. She was so happy! We all just marveled at how good God was throughout the whole weekend. Several of the ladies said that they had breakthroughs while they were journaling through the various info they learned on retreat.
God is so good. If you have never been to a retreat, I invite you to find one and to go. I know many of us think retreats are just for holy people. Yet, the reality is they are for everyday people who love the Lord and just want to have some time away from other people who love the Lord. Regardless of what the retreat topic is or what is planned for the retreat, just that time away from life where you can focus on God is enough to make it worth it. Give it a try, what have you got to lose? I hope you will consider joining me on my next retreat. I will keep you posted on when that is. I am hoping to find somewhere to have one in the springtime.
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Consider Life's Challenges A Gift
James 1:2-4 “Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. So don’t try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way.”
I love how God works. Sometimes, I just laugh at how he orchestrates everything and how He just knows what we need to hear. It’s like He keeps telling you something in a bunch of different ways until we get it. If you have been listening to this podcast for any amount of time, you probably know how much I love talking about healing. I love praying for people for healing. I believe with my whole being that God can heal everyone, and I will pray with anyone who will let me for God to heal them. As you can probably imagine, not everyone I pray with for healing is healed. This confuses me as I don’t understand why this is.
I know that God’s ways are higher than our ways and that God’s thoughts are higher than our thoughts. I know that God knows infinitely more than we do and that He sees the whole picture when we only see a tiny part of the picture. I know that He knows the future and that He knows what He is doing. I know all of this, and yet I still don’t understand why some people have healed on this side of heaven and some are not. I don’t understand why some people are healed instantly and some take months or years. God and I chat about this often, and He keeps trying to explain it to me, and I don’t seem to be getting it.
This month’s theme is the dark night of the soul. If you are unfamiliar with this, the "Dark Night of the Soul" refers to a spiritual crisis or period of deep inner struggle and desolation, where a person feels distant from God or disconnected from their sense of purpose and meaning. It often involves intense feelings of doubt, confusion, and loss but is ultimately seen as a necessary stage in spiritual growth or transformation. The term originates from the writings of the 16th-century mystic St. John of the Cross, who described it as a painful yet purifying experience that leads to a closer union with God. I had heard of this before. However, I did not know much about it. However, this is what a few people in mentoring wanted me to cover, so I did some research and learned a lot about it.
Yesterday, I decided to get an audiobook by Thomas Moore called, “Dark Nights of the Soul: A Guide to Finding Your Way Through Life’s Ordeals.”
In this book, Thomas Moore talks about how we are always trying to end difficult times quickly. If we are sick, we want to be healed immediately. If we are struggling emotionally, we want the struggle to end quickly. If we are uncomfortable in any way, we want to do whatever we need to do to get comfortable as quickly as we can. Thomas said in his book that we are doing ourselves a disservice when we do this. Instead of trying to escape our misery, what if we approached it with curiosity? What if we tried to understand it and what it was trying to teach us? This seemed to stand out to me because I was just talking to a friend the other day about how I just wanted her trouble to end. She was saying that she could see how she would be so much stronger when she was on the other side of this, and I was just thinking, God, can you stop these bad dreams now? Why wait, why keep struggling?
Now, to be clear, although God could stop these bad dreams now, He hasn’t chosen to do so. It is not as if she hasn’t prayed for them to stop. It’s not as if plenty of people haven’t prayed for them to stop. So, it got me thinking maybe Thomas Moore is on to something here. Maybe I am just in a rush to have God heal these people because then they will be more comfortable or out of pain or misery, and yet God knows that the uncomfortable feelings that they feel now are nothing compared to the glory they will feel if they just hold out a little longer.
I have been talking to the Lord for a long time now to try to understand why He does what He does, especially with regard to healing. When I heard this explanation from Thomas Moore, I felt like the Lord was talking directly to me. Then I went to a meeting at Encounter last night where about 16 of my graduating class got together. We try to do this once a month. The topic for last night was a renewal of the mind. We all asked Jesus to show us one place where He would like to renew our minds. This is what I felt like I heard the Lord say, “I would like to renew your mind around healing. Not every person needs to be healed. Sometimes, I do work within the illness I will highlight those I want to be prayed over.” Next, I asked Jesus how He wanted me to think about this mindset. This is what I thought I heard, “I want you to think like I do I want you to know I have my own ways of thinking and reasons for healing that have nothing to do with your ability to pray over people. You are not doing anything wrong, and you are not the reason they are not healed.
Then today, I turned to James in the Bible to look for a verse, as I recently heard someone recommend James as a great place to start if you are new to reading the Bible. I thought I would check it out and see why James was a good place to start. Then, the very first line I read confirmed what God has been telling me lately. I know that was a roundabout way of explaining how I got to this verse and why I thought it was special, but that is what I felt led to share.
I think what this verse is telling us and what God has been trying to tell me is that we can learn from the hard times we are going through. God doesn’t make us sick. He doesn’t hurt us or break our hearts. He doesn’t make us lose our job or lose our loved ones. God is not the cause of our pain and yet He can use our pain for our good. He can take this difficult time you are going through and use it to form you into a stronger, more resilient person.
I know suffering is uncomfortable. I know life can through some pretty crappy things at us, and we just want to escape all of it. We want to be comfortable and skate through life with minimal issues. I get this, and it makes sense. What I feel the Lord is trying to teach me is that God knows how long we need to be in something before it has sufficiently changed us. If we leave a situation too early, we may not have reaped the full benefit from it. Do you know what is even worse than having to go through years of agony? Having to go through years of agony and not reaping any benefits from it.
God knows what we need. He knows our future, He knows our past, He knows our innermost being. He knows how much we can handle, and He knows the perfect time to take us out of the fire so we are pure gold with no more impurities. He has also made it clear to me that this doesn’t mean we need to stop asking for the healing or the relief of the situation. He tells us over and over again in the Bible to be persistent and that He rewards persistence. What He is telling us is that while we are waiting on His perfect timing, we don't have to be frustrated and discouraged. As this verse says, we can “consider it a sheer gift” when life’s challenges come upon us. It is giving us a chance to grow more into the person God is calling us to be. Our challenges help us to become more mature in our faith.
I pray that the Lord continues to renew my mind in this area. I pray He shows me how to be patient in the wait. I pray He shows me how to approach my struggles with curiosity and allows me to have the strength to sit in my struggles without trying to wish them away before they are done doing good work in me. I pray He gives you a renewal of mind also!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each person listening to this episode today. Lord, you are amazing, and we find it so hard to understand how you work sometimes. We don’t understand why you do the things you do, and so we are asking for a renewal of the mind, Lord. Renew our minds and help us think more like you think. Help us to understand a bit more about how you work and why you do the things you do. Help us to see our struggles and building blocks to becoming the person you made us to be. Give us the strength to hold out when we feel like we can’t hold out any longer. Be with us, Lord, every step of the way! We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you want more information on the Dark Night of the Soul, please email me at Catherine @findingtruenorthcoaching.com, and you can join us for mentoring tonight. Tonight, I will summarize Thomas Moore’s book, John of the Cross’s book, and St. Theresa of Avila’s books on the Dark Night of the Soul. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in May 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, I am giving you at this moment a greater capacity to see my presence and my gifts to you in each moment of your life. Don't miss the gifts I give you in your sufferings and your struggles. Don't miss the gifts I give you in your joys and your fulfillment. I am always blessing you. I am always gifting you. You will have grateful hearts because you will recognize my love for you.”
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Set Your Minds On Things Above
Colossians 3:1-3 “So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”
When I read this verse this morning, what stood out to me was when it said, “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.” This seemed to jump off the page for me. I think the reason for this is because Tony and I have been watching a new series lately. Well, it is actually an old series, but we just started watching it together recently. It is called The Mentalist. It is a really good show that we both really like. The problem with me getting involved in watching a series that I really like is that is all I want to do. I just want to watch the show all the time. However, that isn’t good when I have a job and a house to take care of. Tony and I did a good job of getting out of the house and doing yard work on Saturday. But then we were exhausted and watched about 4 hours of TV after that.
I don’t think watching TV is bad.I think we could all use a break from life at times to just sit and watch something that takes our mind off of life. However, I wish TV was like it was back in the old days when you could watch one episode a week and then you had to wait a week for the next episode. I feel like that lends to moderation much better than streaming does. If you are streaming a show, it is so easy to get addicted and just watch that show and do nothing else for a week or longer. This last time I got COVID, I was stuck in my room for more than a week just to make sure I didn’t get the rest of the family sick. Tony was super sweet and made all the meals and took care of driving the boys to wherever they had to go
The first few days, I was pretty sick, and I had to sleep a lot. I was able to watch some TV, but mostly, I needed to sleep. However, once the first few days passed, I felt better, and I could have used that time in quarantine to get a lot of work done on my book or on something else. I could have cleaned the attic, which always seems to need cleaning. However, I just watched TV the whole time.
I had gone to visit my brother in FL a few weeks earlier, and he and his wife were watching a TV show that looked really good. I thought it was just a few seasons, and I thought it had about 10-12 episodes a season. However, I was wrong. It has six seasons, with most seasons having 20-22 episodes. Each episode is 45 min long. Once I get started in a show, I get so involved all I want to do is watch the show. So, instead of doing something productive while I was sick, I just watched TV from when I woke up to way after I should have been asleep.
I say all of this to explain why I think the words “Set your mind on things that are above” jumped off the page at me. Although I don’t think there is anything wrong with watching TV in moderation, I do feel binge-watching TV for hours upon hours is not good for us. Also, I think what we watch is important too. For instance, if I was binge-watching The Chosen or some TV show/movie about the Saints, then I think it would be better because it would help me grow closer to the Lord. Tony and I went to see the first few episodes of The Chosen, season 4, in the movie theater. We both really enjoyed it and yet we have yet to finish watching Season 4 because we are busy watching other things. Things that are not helping bring us closer to the Lord.
There was a time several years ago when I was very disciplined. I made up my mind on something, and I would follow through. I seem to struggle with that these days. However, back then, I had decided I was watching too much TV, and it wasn’t helping me to be the person I wanted to be. The person God wanted me to be. So I decided I wouldn't watch TV or movies unless it was helping me grow closer to the Lord or unless it was spending time with my family.
This was hard for me as our family was going through some very hard times and there were lots of times when I wanted to escape life and just veg in front of the TV. However, I had made a promise to myself that I wasn’t going to do this. I started watching movies, or episodes on the streaming platform called “Formed.” It is like Netflix, but it only has religious movies or shows. A lot of parishes will purchase a subscription for their whole parish so that all the parishioners can get a code and use it for free. I listened to some great audio teachings, and I watched some great movies about the Saints. It was a really good use of my time and it helped me grow closer to the Lord.
What is the thing that is keeping you away from the Lord? Or, maybe it’s not keeping you away from Him, but it is keeping you from being as close as you could be to Him. Is it keeping busy, filling your schedule with so much stuff that you don’t have time to spend with the Lord? Is it Facebook or other social media platforms? Is it spending too much time out and about with friends and family that there isn’t time left for God? I think this verse is a good reminder for us today that our focus needs to be on things above and not on things of this world. The things of this world will all perish one day, and they will no longer exist. This world is fleeting when we compare it to the eternity we have after we leave this world. Let’s focus on what matters, the things above.
I know that my thing is probably not your thing. The thing that gets in the way of me coming to God is probably something different from what is getting in your way. However, I am willing to bet there is something getting in your way, something distracting you from growing closer to the Lord. Something taking up your time so that you don’t have as much time with the Lord as you would like. Today might be a great day to spend a few minutes to stop and talk to the Lord about what is getting in the way of your relationship with Him. Ask Him what is coming in between you or what is distracting you. If you sit and listen, He will answer you. He will help you to see what is getting in between you two. Then, ask Him what He would like you to do about it. Ask Him how He would like to help you overcome this thing that is getting in the middle of you two. For me, I can already feel Him telling me to stop trying to escape with TV. I can feel Him telling me to spend that time with Him instead. So, I am going to do my best to obey. How about you? What is He calling you to do or to stop doing?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, you are amazing, and we are sorry that we are focusing on things of this world instead of focusing on things above. We are sorry we are letting things of this world come in between us or distract us from you. We ask for your help, Lord. We ask you to show us anything that is coming in between us, and we ask that you help us to correct it. We want to grow closer to you, Lord. We want to be in union with you, help us figure out how. Help us put you above all else. We love you, lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you want to join us for mentoring tomorrow night, check it out and see what it is all about, email me and I will send you the Zoom link. Catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in May 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Trust more, surrender more, love more, and I will make you stronger.”
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My Help Comes From The Lord!
Psalm 121:1-2 “I lift up my eyes to the hills—from where will my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.”
I was going to do another part of this verse this morning, and then the song The Lord woke me up happened to be all about the beginning part of this verse. I will cover the other verse in a later episode. I really like this song because it reminds us of where our true strength comes from. It reminds us that no matter the situation we are in, our Lord is there, and He is looking out for us. We can often look to the world for the answer to our problems. We can look to the world for strength, and yet that is not where our strength is found. It says in Philippians 4:7, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” The Lord is where our strength comes from, not anything of this world. This is what the song reminds us. The song is called “Shoulders” by For King and Country.
It begins by saying:
… I look up to the mountains
Does my strength come from the mountains?
No, my strength comes from God
Who made heaven and earth, and the mountains
This reminds us that our strength doesn’t come from the mountains it comes from the one that made the mountains. The one who made heaven and earth. Our strength comes from God, who is always there for us. He created everything, including us, and He is always with us.
Next the song says:
… When confusion's my companion
And despair holds me for ransom
I will feel no fear
I know that You are near
God is always near us. The enemy likes to use tactics like confusion on us because it can get us thinking about everything else other than God. He likes to get us focused on specifics and lost in all the weeds instead of focusing on what is most important. Which is that the Lord loves us and just wants us to love Him back. How we love Him can be different for each one of us. The enemy wants to get us confused and focused on all the wrong things. I like how the verse says, “And despair holds me for ransom.” Isn’t that a great visual of how despair works? When you feel despair, you feel hopeless. You feel like nothing will ever change, and you feel like you are held hostage by your feelings and your thoughts. However, you aren’t hostage. That is a trick from the enemy. The Lord wants you to be free. We don’t need to fear. We just need to remember that the Lord is always near us and that He is where our strength comes from. Whenever we are struggling, we can turn our eyes to the Lord and He will give us the strength that we need.
The song goes on to say:
… When I'm caught deep in the valley
With chaos for my company
I'll find my comfort here
'Cause I know that You are near
How many of us have been caught deep in the valley? It wasn’t one we thought we would be in, it just kind of snuck up on us. I think we have all been in a valley at one time or another. Some valleys might be deeper than others, but we have all been in a valley. When we were in that valley, we had chaos for our companion. We were so confused because we knew God, we loved God, and yet we were in this valley and didn’t understand how we were there if we knew God.
If you are in a valley right now, I want you to know that God is right there with you in this valley. I am not sure why He is allowing you to go through this valley, but I do know you are not alone in the valley. I know you may feel alone; that is what the enemy wants you to think, but you are never alone. God is walking right there by your side. In the chaos and the confusion of the enemy, you may not see or hear God, just know that He is there. Reach out to Him and talk with Him. I guarantee He is there with you! You are never alone! Not even for a second.
Next the song says:
… My help comes from You
You're right here, pulling me through
You carry my weakness, my sickness, my brokenness
All on Your shoulders
Your shoulders
This reminds us that God is our help. He is the one who is right there by our side, pulling us through when we don’t think we can make it another day. Have you ever made it through something and wondered how you made it through? It was because God was pulling you through. He was making sure that the thing He was allowing to happen did not swallow you up and take you out. He knew you needed to go through it, but not so you could get lost in it or be defeated by it.
It says, “You carry my weakness, my sickness, my brokenness all on your shoulders.” God does this for us. He doesn’t make us carry it alone. He takes our problems, our illness, and our brokenness and carries it on His shoulders to make our burdens a bit lighter. If you haven’t invited God into your current situation can I invite you to do so right now. You will be surprised how much lighter your burdens feel when you invite the Lord in to help you carry them.
… My help comes from You
You are my rest, my rescue
I don't have to see to believe that
You're lifting me up on Your shoulders
Your shoulders
Again, this is reminding us that God is our rest and our rescue. God can give us rest. He can provide all the rest we need if we let Him. Sometimes, we don’t see the rest the Lord wants us to take, and He has to force rest upon us. Sometimes, He provides rest just when we need it the most. God is so good, and He knows what we need. If we won’t take the rest we need voluntarily, sometimes He creates a situation where we need to take a rest and recuperate.
I like how it also says, “I don’t have to see to believe that you are lifting me up on Your shoulders.” I wish this was the case all the time. However, sometimes we do need to see it to believe. We know God is with us, and yet we long to see Him to believe it. I love the visual of God lifting us up on His shoulders. It reminds me of when we were little kids and we got tired of walking, so our dad picked us up and put us on his shoulders. Are you tired of walking? Are you tired of how hard everything is in life? Do you wish things were simpler? Ask the Lord to pick you up and place you on your shoulders. Invite Him into your situation and He will take your burdens from your shoulders and place them on His.
Next the song says:
… You mend what once was shattered
And You turn my tears to laughter
Your forgiveness is my fortress
Oh, Your mercy is relentless
Did you know God could mend what once was shattered? You may have situations in your life that seem like they are beyond repair. They aren’t; the Lord can fix them. You might think your situation is hopeless and that you will be sad forever. You won’t be, the Lord can turn your tears into laughter. I love that it says, “Your forgiveness is my fortress.” We can find so much comfort and even protection in the Lord’s forgiveness. The enemy can try to use the things we have done against us. However, if we hide behind the walls of the Lord’s forgiveness, the enemy can’t get us there. If we remind ourselves of the Lord’s forgiveness, we can be protected from this.
It also says, “your mercy is relentless.” God’s mercy is relentless. It will chase us down. The Lord does not want to lose a single one of His children. He will fight of us. He will come running after us. His mercy can find us in the pit of despair, it can find us on top of the mountain. Wherever we are, God’s mercy and grace can find us and help us.
The song ends with:
… My help is from You
Don't have to see it to believe it
My help is from You
Don't have to see it, 'cause I know, 'cause I know it's true
This is so true. We don’t have to see it to believe it. Sometimes, God works in ways that we can’t see. And yet, we know He is there. We can’t see Him, but we can see the fruit of His work. We can feel the fog lifting. We can feel the depression lifting. At times, we can feel something, and even though we don’t know exactly what it is, we know it is a gift from the Lord. He is so good! We can just believe that the Lord is true to His promises and that He will be there for us when we need Him because He is always right there with us.
I hope this song helped you feel a bit stronger this morning. I hope it reminds you of where your true strength comes from. I hope if you are going through a difficult time or you feel like you could use a bit more strength these days that you hear this song and are reminded of all the ways God can help us. I invite you to go to YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you go to listen to Christian music, and you listen to this song today. It is called Shoulders by For King and Country.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, you are amazing. We thank you for always being there for us. We ask that if we have forgotten to invite you into our situation, we will do that now. We ask that if we have taken our eyes off of you, you would help us place them back on you. Lord, we love you, and we ask all this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day and may the grace and favor of our Lord Jesus Christ be upon you.
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in May 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I am thankful for the gift of praise that you sent to me this day. ”
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Be Strong & Courageous, for the Lord is With You
Joshua 1:9 "Have I not commanded you? Be strong and of good courage; be not frightened, neither be dismayed; for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”
I saw this verse on my refrigerator this morning. A few years ago, someone gave me one of the desk calendars. Each day, there is a new page with a new picture. The photos are of amazing scenery worldwide, and each day has a different Bible verse on it. I hung this one on the fridge because I needed the reminder. Today, I know several of you need this reminder, too!
This is a great reminder to be strong and courageous. A lot is going on in the world right now, both in our own families and our own houses and in the world at large. I know people who are scared because their loved ones had major surgery, and their recovery is going slow. They are worried that things won’t get back to normal or that it will be a long and painful road back to normal. I know someone who is living in her car right now and is tired of not having a safe place to sleep at night. I know someone else who is scared all the time, and she is not sure why. As you can see, there are a lot of reasons why I thought this would be a great verse for today’s devotional.
In this verse, the Lord reminds us not to be afraid or dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go. Do we know this already? I wonder if we are scared even though we know the Lord is with us always or if we forget this, and that is why we are scared. It can be one thing to know the Lord is always with you and another to know that He will take care of all things. I was talking with a friend the other day, and she knows the Lord is with her always, and yet she can’t help but be scared of things. This fear that she has did not just develop overnight. She has carried it with her from childhood and is only now finding some freedom from it.
Isn’t it amazing how things from our childhood or past can have such a strong influence on our present and future? Often, we don’t even realize our past is creeping into our present. We know we are scared of something, but we don’t know what. Maybe we are scared of our boyfriend or husband leaving us. We don’t know where this fear is coming from, and yet, if we look back at our past history, we have had loved ones leave us. We might be afraid that our loved one will not recover completely from surgery, and when we look back, we see that in the past, we knew people who had surgery and didn’t recover.
Our past can creep in and try to make us afraid of the future. This is one of the enemy's favorite tricks. He loves to use our past against us. He loves to point out all the places where we messed up in the past and try to get us to believe we will do it again. He loves to point out all the places where people have hurt us in the past and get us to believe they will do it again. We are not our past. Just because something has happened in the past does not mean it will happen again.
It is not easy to be strong and courageous. If it was, everyone would be doing it, and this world wouldn’t be such a scary place. However, it is possible. It says in 2 Timothy 1:7, “For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity but of power, love, and self-discipline.” We were not born with a spirit of fear and timidity. God created us with a spirit of power, love, and self-discipline. However, sometime in the course of our lives, a lot of us have lost or forgotten about the spirit that God created us with. We have become afraid and timid. It is time to reclaim our true nature, our true spirit.
The question is, how do we do that? How do we reclaim our spirit of power, love, and self-discipline? I think we can do it by remembering what this verse tells us. We just need to remember that the Lord is with us wherever we go. I think sometimes we think that we can go places that the Lord won’t follow. For instance, we are stuck in a pit of despair, and so there is no way the Lord would be with us there. Guess what? He is right there next to you in that pit. We think He won’t follow us into the hospital or home from the hospital. He is right there next to you as you do your best to help your loved one. God does not leave your side no matter where you go. If you are sleeping in your car, God is sleeping right there next to you.
God is always by our side, and the more we can remember this, the more we will be able to be strong and courageous. The more we believe that God is right there with us, the more we will trust in His protection. I have heard so many stories of people who have been scared and cried out to the Lord, and miraculous things have happened. For instance, one time, a woman was about to walk down an alley, and she saw a man who looked pretty scary at the end of the alley. She asked the Lord for protection. The next day, she read in the paper that a woman was attacked in that same ally that same night. She went to the police station to help ID the man she saw in the alley. When she asked him why he did not attack her when she walked by, he said it was because of the tall guy she had walking with her. She didn’t have anyone but God with her that night. Isn’t that amazing?
God will protect you. He will give you the strength you need. I know some of you need an extra dose of strength today, and He can give it to you. I know some of you need an extra dose of hope today. He has that for you too! The Lord is always with us, and He has whatever we need. He can give us courage and strength, He can give us love and hope, He can give us whatever we need. We just have to turn to Him and ask Him! If you are feeling scared, hopeless, or a little lost today, I want to encourage you to remember that the Lord is ALWAYS with you, even if you can’t feel His presence. Call upon Him and He will be there with whatever it is you need.
Dear heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we need your strength today. We need your hope and your love today. We need to feel your presence today, Lord. We love you, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. The retreat this weekend was amazing! We had 10 of us all sharing life together and exploring how much God loves us and wants us to come to Him just as we are. I hope you will be able to join us for the next one. I look forward to meeting you hear again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in April 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Praise and mention my name wherever you are when you're taking care of someone. ”
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Today’s witnesses are from Matthew West’s website called popwe.org. If you don’t know who Matthew West is, he is a singer, songwriter, and storyteller. This website is for the non-profit that he has with his father, a pastor. Matthew and his father encourage people to share their stories. They have various categories of stories. Today, I chose a recorded testimony from the God Stories Category. Today's witness is about how two people met on an airplane and their lives were changed forever. God is so good when he orchestrates meet ups like this. Often, we can hear our own story in someone else’s story. When we listen to others tell their story, it helps us see that we are not alone. When we hear how God worked in their situation, it gives us hope that He will work in ours, too! I pray when you hear this testimony, you get the faith and hope to believe that miracles can happen in your situation also. I pray you know that God is there with you, and if you invite Him into your situation, He can help. I hope you enjoy this testimony.We have all seen God working in our lives. However, we might not all be aware it is God working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences, the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience of how God has worked or is working in your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or click here. It won’t take up much of your time, and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story, and the world needs to hear them.Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ www.findingtruenorthcoaching.comCLICK HERE TO DONATECLICK HERE to sign up for Mentoring CLICK HERE to sign up for Daily "Word from the Lord" emailsCLICK HERE to sign up for my newsletter & receive a free audio trainingabout inviting Jesus into your daily lifeCLICK HERE to buy my book Total Trust in God's Safe Embrace
Wisdom for Beginners (Part 5)
Sirach 2:10-11 “Consider the generations of old and see: has anyone trusted in the Lord and been disappointed? Or has anyone persevered in the fear of the Lord and been forsaken? Or has anyone called upon him and been neglected? For the Lord is compassionate and merciful; he forgives sins and saves in time of distress.”
This is the last verse in the section called Wisdom for Beginners. I think that it is fitting that it reminds us of how faithful our Lord has been. It begins with “Consider the generations of old and see: has anyone trusted in the Lord and been disappointed?” This is such a great thing to get in the habit of doing. When we are worried, stressed, or think the Lord has abandoned us, we can look back at our own lives and those who came before us and see if the Lord ever abandoned them. Has He ever abandoned us in the past?
Has there been a time when we trusted in the Lord and He let us down or disappointed us? Has there been a time when we trusted in the Lord and yet after we did we realized that we shouldn’t have put our trust in Him? Romans 10:11 says, “No one who believes in him will be put to shame.” You can trust in the Lord. You can believe His promises. You can trust that He will always be there for you.
Next, it says, “Or has anyone persevered in the fear of the Lord and been forsaken?” We just talked about fear of the Lord the other day and how that doesn’t mean that we are afraid of the Lord; it means that we look up to the Lord with awe and reverence. It says in Psalm 111:10: "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” It also says in Proverbs 14:26-27: "He who fears the Lord has a secure fortress, and for his children it will be a refuge.” When we have fear of the Lord, we are protected by Him. He is not only looking out for us, but He is looking out for our families as well. Our faithfulness and fear of the Lord will bear fruit for many generations.
Next, it says, “Has anyone called upon Him and been neglected?” What about this one? Have you ever called out to the Lord, and He just ignored you? Have you ever needed Him, and He left you abandoned? The Lord does not do that. When we call out, He comes running. He sends His angels to fly to us at light speed. He does not leave us out in the cold. He does not hear us call out to Him and yet ignores us because He has more important things to do. God has nothing more important to do than to come when you call.
I want to take a minute to talk about something because we must realize this. God is not limited by the same constraints of time as we are. I have been talking with someone recently who doesn’t ever want me to pray over him for healing. I was saying that I didn’t think this person believed that they could be healed by someone praying over them. They said that wasn’t true. They said it was just that they didn’t feel worthy and that God had other more important people to heal.
I understand what this person was saying, and if this is what you are thinking too, then I want you to hear me when I say, “God has nothing more important to do than to heal you, or be with you, or answer your prayers.” God can be with each one of us fully and completely, and it won’t take away from anyone else. I first realized this when I heard a priest tell a story at a retreat one time. He said he was at a football game, and someone took a photo of him saying the rosary at a football game. The caption for the photo was something like, “Father is praying for the football game when there are bigger things we need to pray for, like people dying of cancer.”
The priest said that if we think our God can’t be there at the football game and healing people with cancer at the same time, then our view of God is too small. When we limit God like this, we are putting Him in a box and saying that we don’t believe He is all-powerful. Either He is omnipotent and omnipresent, or He isn’t. An omnipresent god is a god with the ability to be everywhere all at once. If we believe that God is omnipresent, then He can be everywhere all at the same time. He can be healing you or answering your prayers wherever you are located, and He can be on all the other continents, healing people and answering your prayers, too! An omniscient God is a God who knows everything. Such a God would have the power to know the future, the present, and the past. God knows what you are going through, He knows what you have been through, and He knows what you are going to face in the future. God knows everything about you. An omnipotent God is a God with unlimited power. This means God has the power to heal you and everyone else that needs to be healed. It means that healing you doesn’t take away from anyone else’s healing.
I think it is so important to understand this because we might think we are being humble by not asking God for healing. We think we are being selfless and giving up our healing so that someone else who needs healing can get it. However, what we are actually doing is just missing out on our healing because we don’t want to ask for it. We are missing out on our healing because we are placing God in a box and telling Him that we don’t really believe that he is omnipotent or omnipresent. We are telling God that His powers are limited, and so we want Him to save His strength so He can heal someone else who needs it more.
Don’t miss out on all God has to offer you because you feel you are unworthy. We were all unworthy and then Jesus died on the cross to make us worthy. God loves you more than you know. You mean more to Him than you could ever know. He does not want to watch you suffer just because you think you aren’t worthy. He wants to heal you, let Him!
The last line says, “For the Lord is compassionate and merciful; he forgives sins and saves in time of distress.” This last line is important for us all to remember. God is compassionate and merciful. He sees you. He sees the situation you are in, and He can help you. He wants to help you. He knows the pain you are feeling, and He can relieve that pain if you just ask. The Lord can forgive sins. Don’t be afraid to bring your sins to Him. He can forgive them! Just come to Him and admit what you have done. He will forgive you, and you will feel so much better. I know you feel like what you have done is too bad to be forgiven. Yet, nothing is too bad to be forgiven in the eyes of the Lord. He is compassionate and merciful. He forgives sin and saves in times of distress. All you have to do is come to Him.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each person listening today. Lord, we love you, and we trust you. We trust that when we call, you will answer. We trust our lives to you. We trust our sins to you. We trust all to you, Lord. We ask you to help us in all areas of our lives. We invite you in and ask you to help us, Lord. Lord, I ask that you help each person listening truly understand how much you love them and how much you want to heal them or answer their prayers. We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Mentoring is tonight if you would like to join us there is a link below. This month’s theme is the dark night of the soul. Remember Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day and may the grace and favor of our Lord Jesus Christ be upon you!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in April 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Speak my name often so that it just rolls off of your lips, no matter where you are and what you're doing, no matter who you are taking care of, no matter who you are touching, no matter what you are involved in. ”
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God’s Foolishness Is Wiser Than Human Wisdom
1 Corinthians 1:25 “For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.”
When I read this verse this morning I thought it was very interesting and so very true. It is something I don’t thing we often think about. It is one of those things that when you hear it, you know it is true, but it might never have occurred to you. I think it is pretty obvious that God is wiser than we are and we know he is stronger than us. It would not be hard to find evidence to support this and yet I still don’t know if I would have thought of it like this before. His foolishness is wiser than human wisdom and his weakness is stronger than human strength. When I find a verse to use, I try to look at the verses around it to get the context and too see what else God wants to tell us. The verses right after this one are pretty good too.
1 Corinthians 1:26-31 says, “Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God. He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, in order that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” One of my favorite verses/sayings is that God’s ways are higher than our ways and His thoughts greater than our thoughts. God does not think like we do and He does not do the things that we would do.
If we really need a prayer answered, or a healing to occur, who do we tend to ask first? I tend to ask my dad first, as I know he prays a lot and I feel his prayers are answered quickly. I also tend to ask the ladies in my prayer group because again, I feel their prayers are heard. Many would go to a priest first. We tend to go to the people that we think are “holier” than we are. When someone needs a healing, they tend to want a priest to pray over them as they are very “holy.” We want the best of the best as we know the stakes are high for some of our prayers. What I felt the holy Spirit tell me when I began this verse is that is not how the Lord thinks. Jesus did not come to earth and ask all the teachers, or the priests at the time to be his apostles. He was not looking for the best and the brightest. He came and called many who were considered foolish, outcasts, or weak to the rest of the world.
Some of us may feel we have a calling and then we start to think about all the ways we aren’t good enough to answer that call. We aren’t smart enough, we aren’t strong enough, we aren’t old enough, we aren’t young enough, we aren’t holy enough and so on. We list all the reasons why we can’t do the thing that God is calling us to do. Did you hear that last part, the thing God is calling you too. Why do we question our call when God is the one doing the calling? Don’t we know He is smarter than we are? If he says we are good enough, then we are good enough. If He says we aren’t too young, too old, to foolish, to sinful, then we aren’t. It’s crazy how if you asked us if God was wiser than we were we would say yes without any hesitation. Yet, when we question our worthiness of the call He has given us we are saying the exact opposite. We are saying that He must be wrong and that we know better than He does.
When we start to question our calling and when we start to think of all the ways we are not enough, we should stop and think about all those that came before us. Were they the smartest people around? Were they the most holiest people around? Were they the ones you would have chosen? St. Catherine of Sienna is a doctor of the church and yet when she was a child she had great difficulty learning to read and did not learn to write until she was an adult. There were plenty of religious leaders at the time that Jesus came and yet He did not call the religious leaders to be his disciples, he called every day normal people like you and me. He also called people like Matthew, who was a tax collector. That is not someone any of the other apostles would have chosen. God knows what He is doing. He has placed a call on each and every one of us and it is a call He chose specifically for us. It is perfectly suited for our strengths and weaknesses. He knows us better than we know ourselves. Trust in Him and his ability to know you and what you can and can’t do.
Right at the beginning of writing this episode I felt like the Holy Spirit was telling me that this is a two way street. He wants us to believe in our calling and also to believe in other’s calling as well. The same things I just said about your calling apply to others as well. Trust in the Lord’s ability to call others as well. Sometimes we may see a priest at the pulpit and we might thing they don’t seem the most qualified to be giving a sermon, or we see someone on the street talking about God and we might think they are not qualified to be talking about God. We might see our loved one volunteering at a soup kitchen and think they aren’t qualified, or a friend who wants to be in a healing ministry and yet you know they aren’t qualified. My question to you is, “who are we to judge their qualifications?” God gave them the calling, not us. Why do we think we know better than He does?
I felt like the Holy Spirit was telling us not to dismiss the answer to our prayers because it didn’t come in the package we thought it would. For instance, a young kid makes a profound comment and yet you blow it off because he is too young to know what he is talking about. A person in the line at the grocery store asks to pray for you and you say no because how powerful could her prayers be anyway. Someone offers to pray over you for healing and they are not a priest so you say no. God did not come to use the best of the best. Yes, those he used did become the best of the best, but that was only after they agreed to be used by God for whatever He called them too. The power of prayer, the wisdom, the strength that we have, that all comes from God. This is what the verse is trying to tell us when it says, “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God.” God chose the ones that He chose because that way all would know that it was Him and not the person.
If someone that is not well educated, has not gone to fancy schools, has not studied theology and yet they can speak eloquently, wisely and authoritatively about the church and its teachings, that person can not boast in their own abilities as those abilities are through the power of God. If you want a greater example of this go back into the Old Testament and read Judges 7 about Gideon and His army. Gideon was severely outnumbered with his army of 30,000. However, God had Him send almost everyone home and just had him keep 300 men. He wanted to make sure the Isrealites knew it was God who was winning the war. If we rely on our own strength, wisdom and power, we would claim all the glory, that is our fallen, broken, nature. However, if we have no power, no strength and no ability, then we know it was all God who accomplished the impossible thing. All the glory goes right to God where it rightfully belongs!
The next time you need help, remember to turn to God first. Also remember that He can send help through anyone. Don’t judge the person or the way God decides to help you. Remember that God can use anyone at anytime for anything. They don’t have to already know how to do the thing, they don’t have to be full of natural wisdom or talent. One of my favorite sayings I ever heard is, “God doesn’t call the equipped, He equips the called.” If you say yes then God will give you all you need to succeed. The same is true for every person that He calls. When He calls you don’t worry if you are enough, He will give you all you need to be enough.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we know you are wiser than we are and stronger than we are. Help us not to forget it! Help us to lean into you and to trust that when you call us to something we don’t have to be afraid to say yes because you will be right there with us giving us all we need to succeed. Lord, help us to look at others in the same way. Help us to not judge others or to question their call. We love you Lord, you are amazing. I am seeing so many answered prayers around me and I am so grateful!! We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you would like to purchase an autographed copy of my book there are still some available on my website. I want to thank you all for your support and ask if you wouldn’t mind sharing my podcast or my book with just one person over the next week. It would really help me out. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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Truth, Wisdom, Instruction & Understanding
Proverbs 23:23 “Buy truth, and do not sell it; buy wisdom, instruction, and understanding.”
Well, this is an interesting verse. I wonder how we would sell truth? I wonder why God needs to tell us to buy truth and do not sell it? Then He also says to buy wisdom, instruction and understanding. I was stumped on what this verse meant or what God was trying to tell us with this verse. However, when it is put into context of our prayer group it makes a little more sense to me. During prayer group the leader talked about how sometimes we think about all that we are lacking and we may even ask God what it is that we lack. This is because we are looking to ourselves to gain eternal life. We are looking to see what it is that we can do to get ourselves into heaven.
The leader talked about how we need to trade our self reliance in for reliance on God. There isn’t anything we can do to get ourselves into heaven. We will get into heaven only through God’s grace. After the beginning part of our meeting we also had several words of prophecy that talked about how we are looking for God in all the wrong places. We are looking for Him in places that He does not dwell. He dwells deep within our hearts. He also said that He is there for us, but we are not looking to Him to solve our problems, we are looking to ourselves to solve our problems. He is asking us to turn our problems over to Him instead of trying to solve them on our own.
In this context I can see how God would want us to buy truth, wisdom, instruction and understanding. We need to see the truth that we can’t do anything on our own and yet we can “do all things through Christ who strengthens me” Philippians 4:13. We need to not sell this truth for all the things the world tells us. We need to not sell this truth in order to believe that we can do things on our own. We need to not believe that God is too busy to help us. We need to not believe that God helps others but not us. We need to buy the truth and not sell it for any of these other false truths that the world is trying to sell us.
Next, we need to ask God for Wisdom to know the difference. Wisdom is a gift from the Holy Spirit and according to the Catholic Church wisdom is the first and highest gift of the Holy Spirit. We believe that wisdom leads to an intimate understanding of God’s Word and His commandments. When we develop an intimate understanding of God’s Word and His commandments then we can better live out our faith. I believe this is why the verse above mentions truth and then puts wisdom, instruction and understanding in the same line. I believe wisdom leads to instruction and understanding. God has given us a lot of instruction in the Bible on how He wants us to live.
There is no question as to what He says in the Bible. I think the question comes in when we try to interpret what He says in the Bible. The Bible was written almost 2,000 years ago. Well, the old testament was written long before that I believe. So, reading the bible is not like reading something that was written 10 years ago. Times have changed a lot. Although as I write that I wonder, have they? I mean yes technology has changed a lot, circumstances may have also changed a lot, but have we as people changed a lot? That I am not sure of. I think we tend to struggle with the same basic things as people struggled with back then. The same underlying sins are there, we just have a different spin on them. That is just my opinion.
So, when it comes to reading the Bible, sometimes we can get caught up in the actual words of the Bible or the situation that they are talking about. We can read something and think that it doesn’t pertain to us because our situation is so different than that of the person of the Bible. We can’t really see any connection between how they are living and how we are living. This is why we need wisdom, instruction and understanding. We need wisdom to see how the situations in the Bible relate to our own situation. We need instructions on how we are to live our life right now in this century. We need understanding to know what is meant for us to read literally and what is meant as a story to teach us a lesson.
There are different writing styles in the Bible. There are things that are a historical recount of what happened during that time. However, Jesus also teaches a lot of lessons through parables. There are also stories meant to teach us a lesson. If we have a deeper understanding of God’s work we would know the difference. Wisdom can come in many different ways I think. For instance, we don’t have to gain this understanding all on our own. There are many people who have studied the Bible for years and are happily sharing all they know about it. You can learn from them.
I don’t think anyone gains the wisdom to understand everything all at once. For instance, I don’t think you will go to bed one day and then wake up the next day with all the wisdom you have ever wanted. I think the Holy Spirit opens your mind up to wisdom and then guides you to this wisdom. You may be praying for wisdom and understanding and then you get an email or notice an advertisement for a Bible study in your area. That is the Holy Spirit prompting you to gain the wisdom you are asking for. Or, maybe you hear about a podcast that you hadn’t heard of before. There are several podcasts that have really helped me gain understanding about God’s Word and about the Catholic Religion in general.
If you are looking for additional podcasts some of the ones I have tried are Father Mike Schmitz Bible In A Year Podcast, he also has another one that talks about all things Catholic. The Jeff Cavins Show is a good one. The Big Life Devotional with Pamela Crim is also good. All Things Catholic with Edward Sri, I haven’t listened to this one a lot, but I have heard him talk and he is really good. The Elevation Church with Steven Furtick is good. He is a minister that posts his sermons on this podcast. I have never heard one that I didn’t like. Abiding Together is one that talks about three woman’s journey in their faith. That is also informational. Your Catholic Life Podcast with Jon Leonetti is also a good one. He is someone that loves his Catholic Faith so much and you can just hear it in his voice. And last but not least Exploring My Strange Bible. This one is so good. Each episode is like a mini Bible study. He takes all the stories and goes into a lot more detail so that you understand the Bible stories in a whole new way. You get such a deeper understanding.
I didn’t mean to deviate there, but I do think that understanding the Lord’s Word is an essential part of Wisdom. Not just His word but His instruction as well. This is why I listed all those podcasts. They will definitely help with understanding and wisdom. I know it was a long list. I don’t intend for you to listen to them all, or any of them right now if you plate is full. I have listened to different ones at different times. This is why I am saying the Holy Spirit leads you to the wisdom you need. If you are feeling you need more wisdom or understanding say a quick prayer and ask the Holy Spirit to guide you to the wisdom your seeking. This list of podcasts is listed in the show notes so you can come back at any time and look through it. Remember, rely not on yourselves and what you can do, but what God can do through you.
Dear Heavenly Father I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. I ask that you help us to buy truth and not sell it and buy wisdom and instruction and understanding. Lord we ask that you lead us to your wisdom and not the ways of the world. Lord we ask you for instruction and understanding in how to live life the way you want us to. Lord we ask for a supernatural wisdom, a gift from the Holy Spirit, that will help move your word and instruction from our brain to our heart. We're asking for an intimate knowledge of your word and instruction so that we can live it with our actions. We thank you so much for all you do for us Lord you are amazing. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus holy name amen.
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Today I decided I would do the Witness Wednesday as it has been a while since I have done one and God has definitely been working in my life. I think it is just as important to talk about the little ways God is working in our lives as it is to talk about the big ways He is working in our lives. Today I will give you an update on how I can see Him blessing me and my life.
First, I will start with Noah going off to school. Noah applied to schools pretty late in the year compared to when I remember applying to schools. He also didn’t apply to a lot of schools. He knew where he wanted to go, so he just applied to a handful of schools. Noah’s dream was to go overseas, and so most of the schools he applied to were in the United Kingdom. (England, Scotland, & Wales). Noah decided to go to Edinburgh Napier University in Scotland. He found this out at the beginning of June. This meant we had three months to get all of the stuff in order so he could get there on time.
Going to school in another country is a lot of work, at least initially. We had so many hoops to jump through. We had to do all the regular stuff like find a place to live and register. However, it just seemed so much harder than I remember it being. He also needed to do things I didn’t have to do when I went to school in the states, like get a visa. It was a long and tiring procedure, but the Lord was with us through all of it.
For instance by the time we figured everything out and were able to apply for his visa it was August 14th. However they said the visa could take up to 15 working days to come in. If it took 15 working days then he wouldn’t be able to arrive in country until his first day of classes. This would have been ok, but he would likely have missed at least one day of classes while we got him settled in. However, thanks to the Lord, and the good people at the passport place, we got his visa back in about one week. We were not able to buy plane a plane ticket until we had it back. So once it came were were able to find pretty affordable tickets as well.
I got to go with Noah to get him settled into school. I was nervous about leaving Noah in another country where he didn’t know anyone. I am sure most moms feel this way when their kids go off to school. However, I had the added worry of it being in another country. Thanks to the Lord, I was able to mostly focus on the fact that this was an awesome adventure for Noah and that he was going to have such a great time. However, I still hated that he was all alone. The second day we were there we went to their “Walmart” like store where they have a post office. We had to go here to try and pick up Noah’s residency permit. While we were shopping around we met another student there. He happened to also be going to Napier.
He and Noah talked and they are both engineering majors. Not the same type of engineering, but that meant they would both be walking to the same campus from their dorms. They also found out of all the doors they have at Napier they would be living in the same building, just one floor apart. It was pretty cool! We also met his parents and exchanged info. Now, suddenly I wasn’t doing all of this alone. They were there to help along the way. We both sent text messages at the end of the day with what we had accomplished that day and any new information we found out. It was super helpful. Thank you Lord.
Noah moved into his dorm on a Saturday and I went home on Monday morning. Saturday morning we took and Uber over to the dorm and moved his clothes and stuff he brought from home in. Then we spend the day shopping and getting the rest of what he needed. Then we went out and got some food also as he is living in an apartment and there is no meal plan there. The next day we went to lunch and more grocery shopping. Then I had to say goodbye. That was hard, and yet I know the Lord is with Him and that this is going to be an amazing year for him, and I am so excited for all he will get to experience.
Next I want to tell you all about my new jobs. It is funny how the Lord works, because I knew this fall was going to be some kind of breakthrough. I knew something was going to change, I just didn’t know what. I had been praying about going back to work outside of the home. I decided I would go back to substitute teaching a few days a week. It would be a way where I could help contribute to the family income more than I have been and with Noah in school and Sam having his license, I only really have to drive Ryan around these days.
One morning I was out to breakfast with a friend of mine and she mentioned she was looking to hire more coaches at her job. She told me about the job and it sounded great. I would be coaching people with autism. It was perfect for me as I love coaching and I love helping people. It felt like an answer to prayers as I really didn’t want to give up coaching and get having your own coaching practice takes a lot of time to build and over the last few years I decided I wanted to spend more time with the kids while they were still at home with me. This was perfect because I still get to coach but I don’t have to find my own clients. This means I will have more time to spend with my family.
I was excited about both of these jobs and felt like the Lord had really taken care of all my needs. I did feel like I would still like to do some more ministry type work but that I would figure that out once both my jobs started and I could see how much time I would have left. I begin my coaching job in two weeks, so we will see what kind of time commitment that is. It is supposed to be 5-20 hours of coaching per week, but depending on how much I am driving it could be more than that. I was happy with how things were going.
One day out of the blue a friend from my Encounter Ministries class reached out and said she had a possible job offer if I was interested in hearing more about it. She said it would be working with women who have a homeless ministry. They live together and go out and do this ministry together. Their is a priest that overseas the ministry, however, they were looking for a woman who could be like a house mom or a spiritual mother to these young women. I was so excited when I heard about this opportunity. I love helping people along on their spiritual journey and I love that they do homeless ministry as the Lord has put that on my heart as well.
I talked with my friend all about it and then she passed my name onto the priest in charge. He gave me a call and we both felt like it would be a great opportunity for me and for the young women. I wondered it if would be too much with the jobs I had just taken and the priest said he was thinking about 3 hours per week. It sounded perfect. One of my passions is healing ministry. I am sure if you have listened to several of my podcast episodes you have heard me talk about healing in one way or another. The priest said he is going to do a study with the ladies in the home using the Bob Shutes “Be Healed” prayer model. This is about healing the whole self. I read the book for my Encounter Ministries quarter on inner healing and it was amazing. So, not only do I get to do what I love, which is walk spiritually with these women, but I also get to sit in on this study and learn more about healing. God is so good. He knew not only what I need, to stay coaching and yet make money, but also what I longed for, which is to walk with people on their spiritual journey.
The last thing I want to witness to is what happened when I was lucky enough to meet these women on Monday. They invited me into their home for evening prayer, mass, dinner, and the start of the Bob Shutes video series. It was such a beautiful time and these ladies are so kind and caring. They made me feel so warm and welcomed. They were happy to see me and that felt so great! They didn’t even know me and yet were so so kind.
After dinner was over while they were clearing the dishes somehow we got on the topic of healing. I mentioned how I prayed over my aunt and the Lord healed the pain in her foot. One of the ladies said she had just been thinking about the pain in her foot and asked if I would pray sometime for her. I told her we could do it before I left. Another one of the ladies said the doctor just confirmed that she had a sprained ligament in her left wrist. It was funny to me as it was the same sort of pain that my son Ryan is having in his left wrist.
First I prayed over her foot. I prayed for just a minute or two and asked her what she was feeling. She said tingling in her hands. I asked her to move her foot around, to walk on it and see if there was any change. She said the pain was gone. She was in awe at the power of God. She really couldn’t believe it was gone. She said it was a really weird feeling. Next, I prayed over the sprained wrist. I prayed for a few minutes and asked what she was feeling. She was honest and said she was feeling skepticism in her heart. I asked if she wanted to renounce that the spirit of doubt and she said yes. then I ask if anything else was coming up. She renounced the belief that Jesus didn’t care about something as little as her sprained wrist. I asked her to ask Jesus where He was right now, and she felt like He said, “in your wrist.” I asked her to test out her wrist. To move it around in the way that previously hurt her. She did and the pain was completely gone. She was in awe, all the ladies were. It was so hard to believe that God cares about our little pains as it wasn’t super painful. Both ladies said the pain was about a four out of ten. So, not unbearable and yet, when we ask God, He answers.
It was such an amazing experience meeting these ladies and getting to spend a few hours with them. In just a few hours I could tell what extraordinary women they all are. I could see Christ shining through them and I could see how much the love the Lord. I am not sure what is in store for me and these ladies and yet I know I will be seeing them again and that God has something amazing planned for all of us. I can see that He is blessing their ministry and blessing them and it is beautiful.
I hope when you hear this you can see how God as working in all of this. I hope this helps you see how God is working in your life as well. It doesn’t have to be in big ways, like getting to witness God healing. It can be in the little things, like getting the visa back in time so we could get plane tickets so Noah could be there for the start of classes. I am grateful for all the ways God is working in my life. There have been so many things even just over the last few months. I will do another witness Wednesday soon, as I have forgotten how great it feels to look back over your life and see all the ways God is working in it. He is such a good good father. Thank you Lord!
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Wisdom For Beginners (Part 4)
Sirach 2:7-9 “Fear the Lord. His mercy is never far away. Don't wander off and get lost. Fear the Lord, but believe in him; your reward is safe with him. Fear the Lord, but look on the bright side; there'll be blessings and mercies galore. You who fear the Lord, love him. He'll light your candles.”
This is a continuation of the section called Wisdom for Beginners in Sirach. I was going to do this verse yesterday, and then I felt prompted to use the line right before this and talk about the various ways the Lord is speaking to all of us. I hope you will spend some time this week talking with the Lord and listening to what He has to say to you. Today I want to talk to you about fearing the Lord. Do you know what that means?
I was confused for a long time because I didn’t fear the Lord, and I didn't want to. He is my father, why would I fear Him? Why is the Bible telling me to fear Him? It didn’t make any sense to me. However, when I joined the Charismatic prayer group, they did a teaching on this one day, and I have talked about it several times since then. Fear of the Lord means having awe in the Lord. We are in awe because of who He is and what He does. When I googled what “fear the Lord” means, one of the things that came up said that “Fear of the Lord” is a virtue that results in humble, loving obedience to God because of who he is. That sounds pretty good, too!
When the verse above is talking about fearing the Lord, it is talking about having awe and reverence for God. It is not talking about actually being afraid of Him. We don’t have any reason to be afraid of God, and that is not what God would want either. However, we have plenty of reasons to be in awe of God and the amazing things He does every single day!
The verse above starts out by saying, “Fear the Lord. His mercy is never far away.” I wish everyone knew this. God’s mercy is never far from you. I know AI had it’s downsides, but I am loving its ability to search the whole internet and answer a question in just a few seconds. Here is what it says about God’s mercy “God's mercy is God's compassionate and loving nature to act on behalf of those in need, even when they may not deserve it. The Bible describes God's mercy in many ways, including: God withholds punishment that people deserve for their sins. God provides what people need, such as food, forgiveness, and discipline. God shows mercy by healing and comforting those who are suffering. God's greatest example of mercy is sacrificing his son, Jesus Christ, on the cross to pay the price for people's sins. Could you use some of God’s mercy today? It is right there, ready for you to come to the Lord and ask.
Next, the verse says, “Don’t wander off and get lost.” I love this because it is such a good reminder. Don’t we just love to wander off and get lost? We like to go down all these random paths even though we don’t know where they lead. We might follow this new idea or that one. Maybe something gets our attention and we don’t think it will lead us away from the Lord and then before we know we are lost and need to find our way back. It’s always nice to have the reminder to not wander off.
Next, it says, “Fear the Lord, but believe in him; your reward is safe with him.” In another version, it says, “Your reward will not be lost.” We can trust the Lord with everything. We can trust that what we are not rewarded for in this lifetime will be in the next. We can trust that God sees everything. He knows all that we are doing, even the things we think no one saw. He knows how hard you are working. He knows how much you are struggling. He saw you help that person who was in need. He sees you and your reward is safe with Him. We can trust Him!
Next, the verse says, “Fear the Lord, but look on the bright side; there'll be blessings and mercies galore.” The Lord has so many blessings in store for us. He has so much mercy for us. God is always telling our prayer group that He has so much more for us, but we are not asking. So, maybe a part of wisdom is asking the Lord for what you need. I talked with someone last night who said he has so many areas in his life where he could use the Lord’s help, and yet He just isn’t asking Him. This is all of us. We know the Lord can help us, and yet we figure He will just jump right in whenever He wants to.
From what I have learned about the Lord, this is not the case. He waits for us to invite Him into a situation before He will jump in and take care of it. If you want to do things on your own, the Lord will let you. Would it be easier and quicker if we asked for help, absolutely! Would we feel better if we asked for help, yup! And yet, for some reason, we don’t. It is the same with God’s blessings and mercies. We don’t ask for them because we don’t want to bother God. He is busy and has much more important things to do. It may also be that we think we don’t deserve His mercy or His grace. There are so many others out there that are more deserving. This is bogus. We deserve His mercy and grace just as much as anyone else does. Also, saying we don’t want to bother God because He is busy with more important things, is saying that there is a limit to God’s power. When we are doing this, we are saying that God can’t take care of everything at the same time, and this is not true. God can be there for you 100% and also for everyone else. He is not bound by the same limitations we are. God has no limitations. Remember this line, there are blessings and mercies galore. Are you asking the Lord for any?
The verse ends with, “You who fear the Lord, love him. He'll light your candles.” We need to love the Lord. It is not enough to just be in awe of Him; we need to love Him with our whole hearts, mind, and soul. This is the greatest commandment. Are we doing it? Are we loving Him? Are we in Love with Him? This can be a hard concept if we have had a complicated relationship with love in the past. It can be hard if we really don’t know how to love. However, if we desire to love God we can ask Him to show us how to love as His love is perfect love.
I also like that the verse ends with “He will light your candles.” I love this! He will light our candles. He will light the spark inside of us that longs to share Him with others. He will light the path for us to follow. He will light our candles so we can be a light to the rest of the world. If you feel like your candle has been blown out, ask the Lord to relight it. He will light our candles, all we need to do is ask. To me, that is amazing! I love the image of him lighting my candle, and then I use my candle to light the next person’s candle, and so on. God is so good! He never leaves us wanting.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode. Lord, you are amazing, and we are so grateful for your blessings and mercy. We are sorry for all the times we should have come to you, but we didn’t. We love you, and we ask that you help us turn to you each and every day. We ask you to help us ask you for your blessings and mercy, Lord. We ask that you help us to develop a stronger “Fear of the Lord.” We ask that you help each one of us understand what that means to us. You are amazing, and we love you so much!! We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus! Retreat is this weekend, so please keep me and those joining me in your prayers. Mentoring is tonight! If you would like to join in, the theme for this month is Dark Night of the Soul. You can email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com if you would like to join us tonight. Have a blessed day, and may the grace and favor of our Lord Jesus Christ be upon you!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in April 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, you are here to please me, not the world. Fear not what the world says about you. All that counts is what I think of you, my children. Spread my love, spread my joy, spread my values, walk in righteousness, and I will bless you all the days of your life.”
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God Is Talking To You, Are You Listening?
Sirach 2:6 “Respect God and expect one beautiful friendship.”
I love the first sentence in this verse. Respect God and expect one beautiful friendship. Did you know you could have a beautiful friendship with the Lord? Did you know you could sit and talk with Him, and you can listen to Him as well? I think this is something we should spend some time talking about today as I think this is something many people struggle to believe. God is talking to each one of us. I have been told that I am lucky because the Lord talks to me. I want you to hear me when I say He wants to talk to you, too. I know that is hard to believe. I know you are saying to yourself, “Who am I that God would talk to me?” You are a son or daughter of the one true king, that is who you are! Can you imagine having a son or daughter and not wanting to talk to them? God loves you and He wants to have a relationship with you. He wants to have a beautiful friendship as this verse says.
Let’s take a look at some ways you can hear the Lord because I know if you try to hear the Lord, you will hear the Lord. I also know that we can get very caught up in our own heads and dismiss ourselves from hearing the Lord because we don’t think we are worthy or we don’t think we are holy enough. Jesus died on the cross to make us worthy, and we don't have to be holy to hear the Lord, but we do become more holy when we spend time listening to Him. He leads us to holiness.
The first way I will talk about is how many people “hear” the Lord, and that is by getting a thought in our heads when we are talking to the Lord. For instance, you might be sitting and talking to the Lord, and you ask Him a question. If you stop and expect Him to answer you, the next thought you have in your head is probably from the Lord. It won’t sound like the Lord, and I mean this in two ways. First, most people do not audibly hear the Lord. Some have, and if you do, that is amazing! However, most don’t hear an audible voice it is more of a thought/answer that pops into their head when they have asked the Lord a question. Second, the answer that comes to you might not be in the language you think the Lord would use. It might sound like something you would say. For instance, when the Lord is talking to me, sometimes He will say things are amazing or awesome. It is ok if what you hear sounds a bit like something you would say. The Lord is communicating with you in a way you will understand. It is normal.
A second way that the Lord may communicate with you is through visions. For instance, you ask Him a question, and then a picture comes into your mind that answers your question. Sometimes, it is just a still image, and sometimes, it is like a scene in a movie where things are movie, and it is not just a quick screenshot but rather a scene that plays out for a few seconds. Many people in my prayer group get visions and it is amazing to listen to them describe what they are seeing. I have gotten a few visions but that is not they way I usually communicate with the Lord.
A third way the Lord may communicate with you is through your feelings. You may be trying to make a decision about something, and you ask the Lord which thing you should do. Then you notice that you feel strongly about one over the other. That could be the Lord guiding you. Also, sometimes the Lord will fill you with peace about a certain decision, whereas the other one you don’t have peace about. The Holy Spirit we have living inside of us is often the still small voice we hear when we are trying to make decisions. Take a minute and think back to a time when you “just had a feeling” about something. It is likely that it wasn’t just a feeling, it was the Holy Spirit leading you to where you needed to be.
Another great way that the Lord talks with us is through Scripture or other things that we read. Did you ever have something weighing on your mind, and then when you read your Bible, you had more clarity on it, or you felt better about it? We can find answers in scripture. The Bible is a living document. You can read the same passage today, two months from now, and two years from now, and each time you read it, you will get something different from it, depending on what is going on in your life at the time. God is so good; He can personal it for each one of us. The next time you have a question or you want to spend some time talking with the Lord, open up your Bible and ask the Lord what He wants to tell you. I know you will be amazed at what He shares with you when you are open to hearing Him!
The last way I will talk about today, although there are probably others, is that God can talk to us through other people. Have you ever been talking with someone, and something they say feels like an answer to something you have been talking to the Lord about? Isn’t that crazy when that happens? I have a friend, Anne, who knew the Lord was calling her to move, but she didn’t want to move. I mean, she wanted to move eventually, but she was pretty happy where she was at the moment, and this move didn’t seem to fit nicely into her plan. She told the Lord that if he really wanted her to move then He would need to make it very clear to her that it was Him orchestrating this move.
The next day, Anne’s friend told her that the Lord wanted her to share a scripture with her. Then, she was at a store, and a random person gave her the same verse. Finally, later that day or the next day, the UPS driver dropped off a package. He handed it to her and started to walk away. Then he turned back to her and said does this scripture verse mean anything to you? He gave her the same verse the other two had given her. She had never talked to the UPS driver about religion or God before. She knew that verse was from the Lord and that He really did want her to move.
You can ask the Lord questions and expect that He will answer you in any one of these ways. Let me just give you one more tip: if you are just sitting there trying to hear the Lord talk to you, it can be a lot of pressure, and it may seem very quiet like you can’t hear anything. What I do to get beyond this is I ask the Lord a question, and then I start writing whatever comes into my mind. I don’t question it, I just write all that comes into my mind. This way I am not just waiting around to hear something. Also, this shows that I have expectant faith. If I am ready to write down whatever the Lord wants to tell me. I promise you He is not going to leave you hanging. Ask the Lord a question and then be on the lookout for the answer in one of the ways I discussed above.
The Lord wants to have a beautiful friendship with us, and that is hard when we are the ones doing all the talking. We want to grow closer to the Lord but don’t believe that He will really talk with us. Trust me when I say He will. God does not talk with me because I am special. God talks with me because I regularly make time to talk with Him and also to sit and listen to what He has to tell me. I ask Him questions and expect that He will answer them, so He does. If you begin to sit and listen to the Lord, I know you will discover how loving He is. How gentle He is. He tells us what we need to hear in the most loving way. He will build you up in ways you never thought possible. Having the Lord of the universe tell you that you are His beloved son or daughter and that He loves you is like nothing else I have ever experienced. You need to put in the time, though. You won’t hear Him if you aren’t even trying. Do you have even just 5 minutes today while you are alone in the car, or in the bathroom even, or where you can get 5 minutes alone and ask the Lord what He wants to tell you today?
Dear Heavenly Father I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, I ask that you open their spiritual ears and allow them to hear your voice. Speak to the Lord, they are listening. Lord, help them find time to sit and listen to all you want to tell them. Help them be open to hearing you and to set the perfect time aside to spend with you. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in April 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My generosity knows no bounds, my children. My generosity, you have not even begun to ask for or receive. The depth of it is so deep, you cannot begin to fathom. And it is there for you, available, waiting. All you need to do is ask. ”
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Wisdom For Beginners (Part 3)
Sirach 2:4-6 “Accept whatever is brought upon you, and in changes that humble you be patient. For gold is tested in the fire, and acceptable men in the furnace of humiliation. Trust in him, and he will help you; make your ways straight, and hope in him.”
I thought I would continue on in Sirach and cover the whole Wisdom for Beginners Section. It’s interesting because today, I was going to use the Message translation. However, It is not great about numbering the verses; it gives more of a range, and I wanted to let you know exactly what verses I was using. I went on biblegateway.com and it happened to be set for Revised Standard Version (RSV). This translation does not call this section “Wisdom for Beginners,” It calls it “Duties toward God.” I like the first title better so I am glad I started out with the Message Translation!
This verse begins with “Accept whatever is brought upon you, and in changes that humble you be patient.” That first part is very broad and very difficult. It is not easy to accept whatever is brought upon you. Especially if what is brought upon you is different than what you thought would be happening. If you prayed for children and yet you have been unable to have them, this is very difficult to accept. If you prayed for a promotion at work and yet you didn’t get it, that is very difficult to accept as well. I can see how it would be wise to accept whatever is brought upon us and yet I wish it gave a bit more instruction. This is one of those times when we need to look at the whole verse and not just part of it. I will explain how and why it is so important to accept whatever is brought upon you in a few minutes.
First, let's look at the rest of this first sentence. It tells us to be patient in changes that humble us. This is really not easy. I looked up what “changes that humble us meant,” and this is what I found. "Things that humble you" means things that make you realize you are not as important or special as you thought. For example, you might describe an experience as humbling if you work with talented people and feel a sense of awe or admiration. Here are some other examples of things that can humble you: Seeing people be positive about life when they have little, finding someone's heroism humbling, being rejected from jobs and realizing you need to start at the bottom, realizing that your charisma doesn't always cut it in a business, realizing that you need to improve your knowledge base. Do you see why I said this can be really hard. Patience is a virtue that most of the world needs to grow in. It is not one of the easier virtues. Well, I am not sure there are any easy virtues, but most of us struggle with patience. Especially in this fast-paced world we live in. We always want to be going somewhere fast.
Also, any kind of change is really hard. However, if it is a good change, it is a little easier. For instance, if you are moving to a house you really like or a job you really like. Those are both good changes and so it makes the difficulty of moving easier because you know you will be happier in the long run. However, changes that humble us aren’t always good changes. They may be good for us in the long run, but they certainly don’t feel good at the moment.
So, how do we accept whatever comes our way and be patient with the changes that humble us? This is where the next part of the verse comes in. It says, “For gold is tested in the fire, and acceptable men in the furnace of humiliation. Trust in him, and he will help you; make your ways straight, and hope in him.” The first part doesn’t tell us how to do it, but it does tell us why we should do it. “For gold is tested in the fire, and acceptable men in the furnace of humiliation.” We need to accept what comes our way because God is testing us and helping us grow into the person we are supposed to be.
When gold is tested in the fire, it is melted down to separate it from any other metals or impurities. How does that relate to us? God might be helping us to separate from other false Gods, idols, or any other things that might be getting in our way of being closer to Him. Humility is a great way to grow closer to the Lord! If we are humble, then we realize that all we have is because of God. We give Him all the glory. However, often, we put other things above God, and we crave all the things of this world instead of craving the Lord and all He has to offer us. Also, when we are not humble, we can think that all we have is because of us. We might think we are successful because of our good fortune. We might think we are the reason for all we have.
This is dangerous thinking because if we think we don’t need God, we will stop inviting Him into our lives and into our situations, and that is when things get really hard. The last line of this verse says, “Trust in him, and he will help you; make your ways straight, and hope in him.” That right there is the answer we have been looking for. The first part of that line helped us to see why we need to go through what we need to go through. Gold is tested in fire, and we are tested through the furnace of humiliation. This can be very painful at times, and yet it is so necessary if we are going to become the person God wants us to be. However, that doesn’t tell us how we are supposed to accept the things that come our way, or be patient when things humble us.
This is found in the very last sentence. “Trust in him, and he will help you; make your ways straight, and hope in him.” If we want to do what we are being asked to do in this verse, we have to Trust in the Lord. We need to trust that He will do what He says He will do. We need to trust that He loves us as much as He says He does. Trusting in the Lord isn’t always easy. It can be hard to trust in what you can not see. However, I am willing to bet if you look back at your life, you will be able to see the Lord working. You will see times when life was hard, and yet you made it through and have no idea how. It was because of God. You will see times when you or your loved ones were sick, and the Lord healed them. You will see times when you thought all was lost, and yet God saved you. It is hard to believe in that which we can’t see, but when we can, it will change our lives!
St. Augustine said, “Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.” How great would it be to go through life seeing amazing things happen just because we believed they would happen? The verse also said to make straight your ways and hope in Him. This can help us through hard times because if we are doing things that are wrong in the eyes of God, then we are blocking the graces we could be getting from Him. We can trust in the Lord and also place our hope in Him. Hope in the fact that He cares about us and that He will answer our prayers. We can hope in Him because He is our Father, and He will always do what is best for us. He knows us, and He knows what is truly best for us. He wants more for us than we could ever imagine. We can place our hope in that!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode. Lord, we want to trust you and place our hope in you, please help us. We want to accept whatever comes our way and be patient in those things that humble us. Please show us how. We love you so much Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you want to come to the retreat next weekend, I need to know by the end of today. I look forward to meeting you here again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed weekend!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in April 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Prepare for the worst, expect the best.”
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Wisdom For Beginners (Part 2)
Sirach 2:1-3 “So, my child, you want to serve God? Then get your life in order, respect others, and prepare your soul for the trial that will surely come. Tell your heart what to think; don’t go to sleep on the job. Bend, your ear; listen to your mind. When times get rough, keep your cool. Take a tip from God. Join hands with Him. Don’t slip-slide. Don’t go it alone. Do the wise thing; make wise choices.”
Today, we are going to continue to look at the verse we looked at on Tuesday. We didn’t really have time to look at all of it up close, and it had a lot of good things to say. Wisdom is a great thing, and if we can get some tips on how to grow in it, then it’s worth slowing down and taking the time to examine them. Starting where we left off yesterday, the verse says, “Bend your ear; listen to your mind.” I hear that we need to open our Spiritual ears and listen to what the Lord is telling us. We talked yesterday about telling our hearts what to think. This is because our emotions can sometimes lead us astray. Sometimes, we may not want to do the right thing and yet if we listen to our minds we know we should.
The Lord can talk to us in any number of ways. The most prevalent way for me is in my mind. I ask Him a question, and He answers it by putting the thought in my mind. For instance, I may ask him how I should pray for my kids better. Then I sit quietly, and all of a sudden, there will be all these thoughts as to how I can pray for my kids better. You might hear the Lord this way, or you might ask Him a question, and then you might get a strong feeling in your body that you know the answer, but you didn’t hear anything. You might also be led to Scripture after you ask the Lord a question, and you realize that the Scripture is the answer to your question. God is trying to talk with you, your job is just to listen. And sometimes that means listening to your mind.
Next, it says when times get rough, keep your cool. This can be much harder than it sounds, depending on how rough things get. One great way to keep your cool when things get rough is to pray for the peace of Christ. You can actually ask the Lord to fill you with the peace of Christ. I have prayed this over many people, and you would be surprised how peaceful they felt. Some of them were in situations where you wouldn’t think peace was even possible.
That is what is so amazing about the peace that we get from the Lord. It says in Philippians 4:7, “And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” God’s peace surpasses all understanding. I like how it also says it will keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. This is so important. If we can keep our hearts and minds focused on Jesus, we are all set. It’s when we take our focus off of Jesus and we start to think more about how big our problem is. We spend our time thinking about all the ways things can go wrong instead of thinking about all the things that could be right.
We think about the fact that we can’t see a way out instead of focusing on the fact that God doesn’t need us to see the way out or that fact that God doesn’t need there to be a way out. He is a way maker. He can make a way even if there is no way out. He can blast a hole right through your problems. We have a God that can do impossible things. Nothing is too big for Him. Just yesterday, during witness Wednesday, we learned about how God gave a brand new heart to someone. His heart was damaged, and he needed to have stents put in or maybe even a bypass, they weren’t sure. Yet, when they went in to take a closer look, he had a brand new heart. God is bigger than you think He is, and He is definitely bigger than your problems. We can remain cool when things get rough if we keep our eyes fixed on the Lord.
Next, it says, “Take a tip from God. Join hands with Him. Don’t slip-slide. Don’t go it alone.” This is super important. I know I say this all the time, and you may be sick of hearing it, but it is true, and I don’t think we all understand the necessity of inviting the Lord in. If you want to go at this life alone, the Lord will let you. He believes in free will, so He doesn’t enter situations that He is not wanted or invited into. I love how this verse says to take a tip from God. How do we take a tip from God? I can think of two ways. First, stop and listen to Him like I talked about earlier. The second way would be to read scripture and apply it to your life. Scripture is God’s love letter to you. He is speaking to us through His Scripture. It is a living Word that answers our questions and can speak to us if we listen to it. I know many people who find their answers to life’s questions in the Bible.
I also love how the verse says to join hands with Him. I love that visual. I envision myself as a little girl, and I grab hold of Jesus’s hand, and we are just walking through a green field. This line shows us that God is not a distant God. He is a personal God and He loves us and wants to walk hand and hand with us. Why do we shy away from intimacy from the Lord? Why do we try to keep our distance? Jesus died on the cross so that there would not longer be a barrier between us and God. We have full access. Let’s take full advantage of that and join hands with Him. Think about how much easier life would be if we walked through it hand and hand with our Lord and Savior.
Don’t slip-slide to me means try not to veer off course. Try not to be wishy-washy with your beliefs. Try not to be all in one minute and then nowhere to be found the next minute. We don’t want to give our problems over to the Lord and then take them back again, either. We don’t want to listen to the enemy either. Sometimes, we can slip and slide when we let the enemy get into our head, and we start to believe his stupid lies. Let’s just do our best to keep our eyes focused on the Lord. I also just got the idea that if we are holding the Lord’s hand, He will keep us steady so we don’t slip. Thank you, Lord!
This verse ends with, “Do the wise thing; make wise choices.” This is something every mom or dad has probably said to their child, and so it makes sense that the Lord would say it to us, also. Especially since we are His beloved children. He loves us and I am sure it breaks His heart when we make bad choices. I was just talking with someone yesterday about why God hasn’t stepped in when it comes to the mess that is our government. I explained my thoughts on that. I feel God is not stepping in as much as we would like because we are working hard to exclude him from so many areas of life and because we are not inviting Him into these types of situations.
I was explaining that because of free will, God does not “make” us listen to Him. I am sure He is in heaven shaking His head because He knows if we would just listen, we could be in a much better place. However, He is a gentleman, and if we want to handle things without Him, He will let us. I was saying it is like our own children. We may know what is best for them. We may be able to see that they are making a big mistake. We can even see all the ramifications down the road if they continue on the road they are on. Yet, they are adults, and we can’t make them listen, no matter how badly we want to. This is similar to the Lord. Although He could make us listen if He wanted to, He doesn’t want to force us into it. He wants us to make wise choices on our own, and one of those wise choices that He is hoping we will make is to invite Him into the situation, grab His hand, and, as the verse says, “Don’t go it alone!”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone listening to this episode. Lord, we love you so much, you are amazing! We are so grateful that you teach us about wisdom. We are grateful you don’t leave us alone and that you are willing to grab our hand and walk through life with us. Lord, we ask you to help us invite you in. We ask that you help us do all the things mentioned in the verse above. Lord, we want more wisdom, we need more wisdom, please help us. We ask all of this in the mighty name of Jesus, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Today is the last day to sign up for the retreat next weekend! If you have been thinking about it make sure you decide by end of day today. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in April 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “There will be moments in time that you will reach out for me. You will not feel my presence or see me in the circumstances, no matter. I am there. I am there. You never walk alone. I am your God, your shepherd.”
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Today’s witness was found online. Someone close to me is having some issues with his heart and so I wanted to find a healing story that had to do with the heart. When we can hear that others have been healed of a similar thing that we are praying for then our faith is built up that we or our loved ones will be healed too. Today I am sharing the story of David and what happened when he went to the doctor for his heart.I pray this story gives you hope that God will answer your prayers too! Here is his story in his own words.
I don’t know if you have personally experienced a miraculous healing, but I have. I was fifty-six years old, and every Friday afternoon that autumn, I worked out with a trainer. Like many personal trainers, Vileka Fisher started each session by checking my weight and blood pressure. Some variations are normal. My blood pressure, however, climbed for seven weeks straight, topping out at 203/143. At that point, she fired me. Literally.
“I’m not going to have you die on me,” Vileka told me. “You have to go to your doctor immediately.” In turn, Dr. Guesly Dessieux quickly ordered two sets of tests. The next day, they took extensive, continuous images of my heart at rest. The following day, they took extensive, continuous images of my heart after a lengthy and very fast-paced run on an industrial-sized treadmill.
The Dreaded Post-Exam Phone Call
On Friday, October 23, 2015, I received the proverbial day-after phone call. On Tuesday, October 27, I met with my “new best friend,” interventional cardiologist Dr. Barath Krishnamurthy, to find out how extensively my heart was damaged and what next steps were ahead for both of us. The damage to the front middle and front lower-right areas of my heart, he said, was significantly worse than expected for a man my age.
Dr. Krishnamurthy scheduled me to report to Salem Hospital as soon as possible. He said he would start with an angiogram. If the damage wasn’t too severe, he planned to insert stents. Then again, if the damage was severe, he planned to perform double bypass surgery.
“When would you do that bypass surgery?” I asked, feeling more anxious and nervous than I’d felt in a long time.
“Right then and there,” he replied. “There’s no time to waste. You could have a heart attack any day.”
That last comment wasn’t reassuring, but he had my attention!
Afterward, I remembered how good it is that we can thank God daily for His sovereignty (greatness), providence (goodness and guidance), holiness (glory), love (graciousness), and mystery (“God alone knows”).
Most of the time during those next few days, I was prayerful and at peace. Then again, I couldn’t forget Dr. Krishnamurthy’s comments that recovery from an angiogram and stents would take a few days. Recovery from double bypass surgery, though, could take six to eight weeks, maybe longer.
By phone, Facebook, and e-mail, my wife (Renée) and I asked those close to us to pray for a routine, boring, and ultimately successful angiogram.
A couple of hours after checking into Salem Hospital on November 5, 2015, I was wheeled into surgery. According to plan, I lost consciousness shortly after meeting the five members of my cardiologist’s team.
Miraculous News Came after Surgery
When I woke up in recovery, my cardiologist walked in looking stunned. “This never happens,” he said. “You heart looks great. I couldn’t find any damage anywhere. Not even plaque.” It rarely happens, he explained, that two separate days of radioactive imaging would clearly, and yet incorrectly, show substantive damage in two separate areas of the heart.
Bottom line: no damage, no stents, and no double bypass surgery.
Renée was quick to call it a miracle. When I confided that I wasn’t ready to use that word, she asked why. “Well, I had just woken up in recovery. What if I misunderstood what Dr. Krishnamurthy told me?”
On November 25, I returned to Salem Cardiovascular to meet with my cardiologist. He had been called away for an emergency heart procedure and asked one of his associates, Masen Martin, to meet with me. I explained the purpose of my visit. Then I told Masen (as she prefers to be called) that when Dr. Krishnamurthy talked with me in recovery, he looked pretty much stunned.
“Stunned?” she exclaimed. “You were the surprise of the year!”
She paused and then went on. “Frankly, it left all of us here pretty rattled. The imaging is proof positive that you needed either stents or double bypass surgery. But the angiogram imaging a few days later is proof positive that your heart has absolutely no damage anywhere. Not even a trace of plaque anywhere in or around your heart.” I had the heart of a teenager again. Medically and scientifically, that’s not supposed to be possible.
In other words, Renée was right. It truly was a miracle. Then again, it was a miracle that caught me by surprise. Yes, hundreds prayed, but not for this outcome.
Louise the Prayer Warrior and Her God-Sized Prayers
That next Sunday, November 29, a super quiet, very introverted, yet lovely older friend of mine named Louise came up to me before church. I was talking with the oldest member of our congregation when Louise walked up, smiling from ear to ear. Radiating pure joy, she said, “It was me!” I didn’t know what she meant, so I didn’t say a word.
Louise told me, “I was the one who prayed for your complete heart healing. I even asked God to prove it was a miracle because they couldn’t find even one speck of plaque anywhere in your heart.”
I felt like jumping up and giving Louise a big hug, but I simply said, “Thank you! Thank you so much!” with a huge smile on my face.
Later that day, though, I wrestled with two tough and troubling questions: Why could Louise pray that God-sized prayer and fully expect Him to answer? And why didn’t I pray for my own heart healing?
My prayer of faith that afternoon has been life-changing: “Lord, please help me to pray like Louise. It’s scary, and I don’t know why that is, but I want to learn how to pray God-sized prayers like her.”
After this experience, God’s grace became much more real and powerful to me. I was and am deeply grateful to God and my dear friend, Louise. Since then, I have been empowered by God and determined to positively impact other lives by sharing my experience and encouraging others to pray more boldly. I tell this story wherever I’m invited to speak. I also take time to pray for and keep in touch with audience members who request prayer for healing.
Yes, sometimes I’m nervous. Sometimes I wonder, “Who am I to pray in this way for this person’s healing?” Then I remember Louise and seek to pray a God-sized prayer the way she would. I then stay in touch to find out what God does. The results have been amazing! There is no question in my mind that we can stand on God’s promises and expect miracles.
Thank you, David, for sharing your story with the world so that we can all see the miraculous powers of the Lord at work in the world. Thank you for learning to pray God-size prayers. Thank you for being brave and praying those God-sized prayers over your audience and over those you meet. The world needs more people brave enough to pray God-sized prayers! I pray blessings on your ministry and I pray that God will answer your God sized prayers in Jesus's name, Amen!
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Wisdom For Beginners
Sirach 2:1-3 “So, my child, you want to serve God? Then get your life in order, respect others, and prepare your soul for the trial that will surely come. Tell your heart what to think; don’t go to sleep on the job. Bend, your ear; listen to your mind. When times get rough, keep your cool. Take a tip from God. Join hands with Him. Don’t slip-slide. Don’t go it alone. Do the wise thing; make wise choices."
The title of this episode is the title of the section where this verse is found in the Message Translation of the Catholic Bible. It immediately resonated with my heart. I definitely feel like I am a beginner when it comes to wisdom. I thought this verse laid things out so easily and helped us to see what sort of things we can do if we want to serve God. I felt as though they are good reminders as to what we should be doing everyday anyway.
Let’s look at them individually. First, it says that if we want to serve God, we need to get our lives in order, respect others, and prepare our souls for the trials that will surely come. When it says, “get our lives in order,” to me, that means we need to know what we are doing. We need to be living intentionally and not just going about our day haphazardly with no plan and no idea of how the day will unfold. If we say yes to the Lord He will use us and when He does it will take time to do what He is calling us to do. If we are not living intentionally it might be hard to find the time to do all He is calling us to do.
I also think it means that we should get our lives in order before we can go out and make a difference in other people’s lives. If we are struggling to take care of our house, our family, and our friends, then it might not be the right time to go out and try and take care of other people. Sir Thomas Browne said, “Charity begins at home.” Mother Theresa says, “Love begins at home.” It’s not ok to be unkind to your family and then go to church on Sunday and treat everyone else as sweet as pie. If we want to serve God first, we must get our own lives in order. Then the Lord will send us out to help others.
Next, it said, respect others. It makes me sad that we would still need to be saying this. There is such a culture of disrespect right now, and it makes me so sad. When I listen to not only my own kids but the kids at the various schools where I sub, or I read comments on social media from other adults, I am in shock at the lack of respect. If we want to serve the Lord, we need to respect all of His children, not just the ones who look like we do, believe as we do, and love as we do. God made all people, and we must respect all people, whether we agree with them or not. We are called to love our neighbors, and that begins with respect.
This next one was something I was a bit worried about when I was going through the Life in the Spirit seminar for the first time. The people who had been in the Charismatic Renewal told us to be careful what we asked for because if we asked for the Holy Spirit to use us, He would, and we might use it in some ways we didn’t expect. They said sometimes it is a wild ride when the Holy Spirit is leading. The verse above says, “Prepare your soul for the trial that will surely come.” This would also frighten me. I didn’t want to endanger myself or my family by working for the Lord. Although the enemy will indeed attack you when you are working for the Lord, you also have the Lord protecting you.
You have the Lord building you up and giving you the strength to make it through whatever the enemy is throwing at you. Sometimes, He will allow the enemy to come at you, but He will never let you face it alone. He is always right there with you, helping you withstand it. Give you what you need. It says in 1 John 4:4, “Little children, you are from God, and have conquered them; for the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.” Yes, the enemy may come after you or your family but the Lord won’t let Him destroy them.
I feel the enemy has come after my family because He knew I wouldn’t believe His lies. He knew I had the armor of God on, and when we know who we are in the Lord’s eyes, the enemy can't hurt us. However, I do feel he has attacked my family with drug addiction, depression, anxiety, anger, and so much more. However, I know that the enemy will not win. My children will be saved, my family and my marriage will be saved. My marriage was already saved. We were so close to splitting, and the Lord came in and gave us renewed minds and hearts for one another. God can do this for you too!
We don’t have to be afraid of what the enemy might do to us or our family if we are serving the Lord, but we do have to prepare for it. We do need to be on the lookout for it so that when we see something happening to us or those around us, we can call upon the Lord to come and protect us and give us the strength to get through all that is happening.
Next, it says, “Tell your heart what to think.” I love this because our emotions are a product of the story we tell ourselves. We need to be careful of our thoughts, and this is where the enemy can gain access to our hearts. He can tell us lies, and if we believe them, they can start to turn our hearts cold. He tells us things like, “God doesn’t love you, your family doesn’t really like you, you shouldn’t forgive that person, they don’t deserve it, and so on.” We need to tell our hearts what to think. We need to remind it of how loved we are by God and those around us.
Next, it says, “Don’t go to sleep on the job.” This is a good one: when the Lord is calling us to do something, we need to do it. I was just thinking about several things I felt the Lord said I could do to increase prayer for my boys that I haven’t done yet. I feel like this line might be for me personally today, although I am sure I am not the only one who is sleeping on the job. We may think we have all the time in the world to do what God is calling us to do, and yet none of us know if we will even have tomorrow. Tomorrow is not promised to any of us. Do what the Lord is asking you to do when He asks you to do it. This is a great reminder that I really needed to hear today!
I think I will finish this verse tomorrow as this is getting long, and I don’t want to rush through the rest and miss anything the Lord wants me to say. I think we all long for wisdom and so if we can get some tips and tricks from scripture to help us learn about wisdom then that is great. I wouldn’t want to rush it.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone listening today. Lord, you are amazing, and we are so grateful for all you do! Lord, thank you for sharing with us about wisdom. Thank you for teaching us what we need to do if we want to serve you. Help us to listen, Lord. Help us to learn to serve you better, Lord! We love you, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus! Three more days to sign up for the retreat! I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you, just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in April 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Look at the cross where once there hung a man beaten and bruised and condemned. It is now empty. It can no longer hold me. Remember that, my friends, when your cross seems too heavy for you, when your cross seems unbearable, it cannot hold you any more than it held me. Victory is ours.”
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All The Guilt And Power Of Sin Has Been Cut Away
Colossians 2:11 “Through our union with him we have experienced circumcision of heart. All of the guilt and power of sin has been cut away and is now extinct because of what Christ, the anointed one, has accomplished for us.”
I really like this verse and thought it was a great reminder for a Monday morning! Who wouldn’t want to start their week off with the reminder that all of the guilt and power of sin has been cut away and is now extinct because of what Christ, the anointed one, has accomplished for us? That is amazing. Christ is so good. He came down and died a horrible death just so that we could be free from sin and shame.
What keeps coming to my mind is, then, why do we all have so much sin and shame in our lives? This verse doesn’t say that there will no longer be any sin in this world. We are human, we are flawed, and we will continue to sin. However, this verse says that the guilt and power of sin have been cut away. The verse starts by saying that through our union with him, we have experienced circumcision of the heart. This means that our hearts have been changed. They are no longer like they once were. Before Jesus died on the cross, we had shame and guilt for our sins. Before He died on the cross, we were separated from the Lord because of our sins. After He died on the cross, we were reunited with the Lord.
The verse goes on to say that all the guilt and power of sin has been cut away and is now extinct because of what Christ did for us. You may be looking at your own heart and seeing that you still have some guilt from past sins and may be wondering why. Why do I still have guilt when Jesus cut it away with His sacrifice? Why do I feel guilt and shame over my sins when Jesus took that guilt and shame to the cross and then to the grave with Him? The reason for this is that we need to let go of it. We need to release this guilt and believe that Jesus truly died for our sins and that His death was enough to cover our sins.
God gave us free will. He did not want to create creatures that had to love Him. If we didn’t have a choice whether or not to love Him, then it wouldn’t truly be love. He wanted us to choose freely to love Him. Some of us think that is where free will stops. We think we have the choice to love God or not, and he governs all of our behavior outside of that. This is not the case. God takes our free will seriously. This means He does not come into a situation that He is not invited into. If you want to handle everything yourself, He will let you. Not because He likes to see you suffer because He doesn’t. I am sure it breaks His heart when He has to watch us suffer when He knows it would be so easy for Him to help us. The reason He lets us do things on our own is because He doesn’t want to overstep. He doesn’t want to enter a situation He hasn’t been invited into.
Giving us free will and watching how we use it must be so hard for the Lord. I think back to when my kids were little, and they were in that stage where they wanted to do everything on their own. Watching them is painful sometimes because you know it would be so much easier to do it for them, and yet you know they want to do it by themselves. Especially when they are learning how to walk. You know they are going to fall down several times before they get the hang of it, and yet you let them because you know it is the only way they will learn to walk on their own. However, we are usually right there by their side so if they do reach out their hand we are there to grab it and help them.
This is similar to the Lord. He watches us, walks right next to us, and yet He waits patiently for us to reach out our hands and ask for help. I think this must be especially hard for Him when it comes to our guilt and shame over sin. I can imagine it breaks His heart when we allow sin to have power over us. God sent His only son to earth to die a painful death for us, and yet instead of embracing this freedom, we act as though His sacrifice wasn’t for us. We don’t believe the Lord when He says that sin has no power over us anymore.
What it really should say is that sin has no power over you anymore unless you let it. If you let guilt and shame live in your heart, then it will gain power over you. The enemy is going to try to get us to believe the lie that we should feel guilt and shame for our sins. He is going to try to get us to believe that we are unredeemable and that our sins are too bad. The enemy won’t deny that Christ died on the cross for the sins of humans, but He will try to convince us that our sins are too bad. Yes, He died for some people’s sins, but not for ours. He tries to convince us that we can never be forgiven. And unfortunately, we often buy into these lies.
I learned a saying in Encounter that I love because it is so powerful and it is so true. When you believe the lie, you empower the liar. When you believe the lies of the enemy, you give Him power over your life. When you believe that your sins weren’t counted in the ones that Jesus took to the cross, then you allow guilt and shame to creep in. You allow sin to have power over your life. This is not what God wants; this is what the enemy wants. Do you know how to fight against the lies of the enemy? You fight lies with the truth.
The truth is Jesus’s sacrifice was big enough for my sins and your sins. The truth is that God loves us whether we deserve it or not. The truth is that God wants us to be close to Him, and before Jesus came and set us free, there was always a barrier between us. The truth is right here in this verse. “Through our union with him we have experienced circumcision of heart. All of the guilt and power of sin has been cut away and is now extinct because of what Christ, the anointed one, has accomplished for us.”
If Jesus took all of the power and guilt of sin with Him to the cross, why do we still cling to it? Why do we still let it have power over our lives? Sin will always be a part of our lives, and yet, through Christ, our sins can become less and less. Through Christ, we can release all the guilt associated with our sins. We can just come to the Lord, repent for what we have done, and allow Him to forgive us. This part is the hard part, but the Bible tells us that our sins are forgiven, so we need to believe that and release them to the Lord. Whenever we start to feel sin have power in our lives, or we start to allow the guilt to creep in, we can repeat this verse and watch the enemy flee. “All the guilt and power of the sin has been cut away!”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, you are amazing! Thank you so much for cutting away all of the guilt and power of our sin. Thank you for sending Jesus to take our sins to the cross. Thank you for being such a loving Father that you allow us to make our own decisions. Lord, we invite you into all aspects of our lives. We want your help. We want you to intervene. We know that your ways are higher than our ways, and we need you, Lord! We ask you to help us to release all the guilt we feel from our sins. We ask you to help us break free of any power we have given sin over our lives. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen.
Thank you for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you want to come to the retreat, you are running out of time to sign up. Just a few more days, and then I have to close registration. I hope you will join us; it is going to be an amazing time! I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in April 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My friends, I call you my friends, for you are my friends. Even as I train you to become my soldiers in battle.”
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Tapestry of Love
Colossians 2:2-4 “ I want you woven into a tapestry of love, in touch with everything there is to know of God. Then you will have minds confident and at rest, focused on Christ, God’s great mystery. All the richest treasures of wisdom and knowledge are embedded in that mystery and nowhere else. And we’ve been shown the mystery! I’m telling you this because I don’t want anyone leading you off on some wild-goose chase, after other so-called mysteries, or “the Secret.”
I chose this verse for today because it is sort of a continuation of yesterday’s verse. Yesterday, we talked about the secret surprise and how that secret was Jesus living within us. Today, we are talking about Jesus again. I also chose this verse because I loved the language used in it. I was going back and forth between this translation, which is the message translation, and the passion translation like I used yesterday. I think, overall, this translation explains this in a way that is easier to understand. The first sentence is the one I loved the most. Here is what is said in the passion translation, “I am contending for you that your hearts will be wrapped in the comfort of heaven and woven together into love’s fabric.” Isn’t that a beautiful image? Our hearts are wrapped up in the comfort of heaven. That is wonderful.
The message translation says, "I want you woven into a tapestry of love, in touch with everything there is to know of God.” I loved this one, too, as picturing a tapestry of love is great imagery. It was also similar to the passion translation, which said, “woven together into love’s fabric.” So, besides nice language and fancy imagery, what does this all mean? It begins by saying that we are in touch with everything there is to know about God. So, no big deal, right? I don’t think he means that we need to actually know everything there is to know about God, as that is impossible. None of us could possibly know everything there is to know about God.
The next line clarifies this a bit. It says, “Then you will have minds confident and at rest, focused on Christ, God’s great mystery.” Do you know who God is? Have you spent time in the scriptures, have you paid attention at church when they are reading the sacred Word of God? When you know who God is, you can be confident and at rest with the knowledge you have. You are confident because you know the truth. You can be confident because your eyes are focused on Jesus Christ. God has revealed this mystery to you and you are confident in this knowledge.
This verse confirms that God’s great mystery is Jesus. Just like we heard yesterday. The next line says, “All the richest treasures of wisdom and knowledge are embedded in that mystery and nowhere else.” This is an important one for us to hear and remember. All the richest treasures of wisdom and knowledge are embedded in Jesus and nowhere else. This is important because we tend to look everywhere else. How many times have we looked to the world for wisdom and knowledge? How many times have we read books that have nothing to do with Jesus in search of wisdom and knowledge?
I have found in my own life that I go to the Lord if I need prayers for something. If I need a miracle to happen, a mountain to be moved, someone I love to be healed, or things to go smoothly, I turn to the Lord and pray for His help. However, when I need wisdom and knowledge, I turn to books, and my go-to is not usually scripture. I will search online for books that have to do with the topic I’m struggling with. I ask friends or family what they think I should do. I didn’t know that I could go to the Lord when I needed knowledge or wisdom. That may seem silly to you, and yet I don’t think I am the only one that didn’t know this.
It wasn’t until I went to the Encounter School of Ministry that I realized that if you needed wisdom and knowledge, you could go and sit with the Lord, and He would give it to you. What really cemented this in my mind was when I started to examine some of my favorite Saints. Saint Catherine of Sienna is a doctor of the church, and yet she did not have any formal education. She was one of the most brilliant theological minds of her day, and through her personal influence, thousands of people returned to the church. She did not spend time studying theology. She didn't spend time online researching all she could about the Lord and about Jesus. She went right to the source. She spent time with Jesus himself in her prayer time. She spent a long time in her room, just her and the Lord.
St Thérèse of Lisieux was unable to attend a university or engage in systematic study. She died young; nevertheless, from this day forward, she will be honored as a doctor of the Church, an outstanding recognition that raises her in the esteem of the entire Christian community far beyond any academic title. She loved Jesus; she spent time in prayer with Him. She went to the Lord to gain all the wisdom and knowledge she needed. She relied on Jesus for everything, and He, in turn, gave her everything. She died at age 24. Can you imagine contributing so much to the world in your short 24 years here on earth that you become a doctor of the church? I barely knew who I was at 24, never mind being so sure of who God was at that time.
These are just two examples of so many examples. If you look at a lot of the Saints, they weren’t necessarily the most educated people, and yet they had so much knowledge. The verse above ends with, “I’m telling you this because I don’t want anyone leading you off on some wild-goose chase, after other so-called mysteries, or “the Secret.” The Lord is where we can get our wisdom and knowledge. The world may try to convince us otherwise. They have plenty of things they are trying pass off to us as knowledge and wisdom. I think what this verse is telling us is that we can know if someone is leading us off on a wild goose chase if they are trying to tell us something that goes against Jesus and what He is telling us. If all knowledge and wisdom can be found in Him, then if something we learn contradicts what He is saying or what He stood for, then we know it is not the truth.
If you need more wisdom and knowledge in your life, and let’s be honest, who doesn’t, then the answer is to spend more time sitting with the Lord and ask Him to give you the answers you are looking for. I have started a journal where I just ask the Lord, what would you like to tell me about… and then I usually pick a topic to put in. For instance, I have asked Him to give me more knowledge about His love and forgiveness. I have also asked about what He wanted to tell me about the sacramental graces in a marriage. I ask the Lord what He wants to tell me, and then I just write down whatever comes to my mind. I have really enjoyed it. I invite you to give it a try. If you have unanswered questions or you wish to have more knowledge in a certain area, sit with the Lord and ask Him to help you understand it better or fill you with more knowledge in that area. I am sure you will be surprised by what you hear when you sit and listen.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we thank you for being all we need. We thank you for filling us with wisdom and knowledge. Lord, we ask for more. We ask for more wisdom and more knowledge. We ask that you help us to come to you when we are struggling and when we are searching. Lord, we ask that you help us to open our spiritual ears so that we can hear you. Help us to be open to your wisdom and your knowledge. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again on Monday. Remember Jesus loves you, just as you are, and so do I! May the grace and favor or our Lord Jesus Christ be upon you. Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in April 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Move in my ways and you will grow at the speed of light. Only if you move with what I tell you will you grow. Come, my children, and I will show you my love.”
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A Secret Surprise!
Colossians 1:26-27 “There is a divine mystery – a secret surprise that has been concealed from the world for generations, but now it's being revealed, unfolded and manifested for every holy believer to experience. Living within you is the Christ who floods you with the expectation of glory! This mystery of Christ, embedded within us, becomes a heavenly treasure chest of hope filled with the riches of glory for his people, and God wants everyone to know it!”
Have I mentioned lately how much I love the passion translation? It brings out the passion in the Scriptures. I love how this begins by saying there is a divine mystery- a secret surprise that has been concealed from the world for generations, but now is being revealed.” Doesn’t that make you sit forward a bit more in your seat so you can pay better attention? Doesn’t it make you wonder what this secret surprise is and why haven’t you heard about it before? I can’t imagine it is just me that feels this way. Who doesn’t like a surprise? Who doesn’t like to feel like they know something that others don’t know? I love to feel like I am on the inside. Like I am “in the know” as some would say.
I remember this is how I feel sometimes when I am sitting in Church and I hear a reading that I learned about in a Bible study. I love it when I learn more about Scripture in Bible study. I love when the person leading the Bible study tells us what the words were in their native language like the Hebrew word for peace is Shalom. Or when they explain that even though the word in the Bible has this meaning to us, back when the Bible was written it really meant this other thing. When I am sitting in Church and I hear a scripture verse that I learned more about in a Bible study I instantly want to share what I know with all those around me. I want to tell them all the extra info I learned. I feel like I have a secret and I want to share it with everyone else. I don’t want to keep it to myself. Have you ever felt this way, or is it just me?
This is probably why I loved this first line so much. It is setting us up with excitement that we are going to learn something that has been concealed from the world for generations. Not just from a few people but from the world. Not just for a little while, but for generations! We get to know the secret. Aren’t you excited? I like how is says, “but now it's being revealed, unfolded, and manifested for every holy believer to experience.” I like this because it shows the gentleness of God. He is not just dumping this big secret on us. He is slowly revealing it. He is allow it to unfold in our lives and He is manifesting it for each one of us to experience.
What is this secret surprise? “Living within you is the Christ who floods you with the expectation of glory!” Jesus Christ is living within you. Did you know this? We are lucky because we have the Scriptures to read about. We get to learn all about Jesus and what he did while He was here on earth, what He did for us, and who He sent to us after He left. However, what about the early church? They had to learn about Jesus slowly. They had to have the stories and testimonies told to them over time. I am sure it took time for the news of Jesus to spread. I am sure it took time for the apostles to spread the Gospel to all the corners of the earth.
I feel like the Holy Spirit is telling me that even though we have the Bible, even though we have heard about Jesus, and we know who He is and what He has done, this secret is still being revealed to each one of us slowly and more fully over time. God is revealing Christ within us individually to each one of us. He is allowing this discovery to unfold and manifest it in each of our lives in a different way and on a different timeline. Even for those in the Bible, each one had their own experience. Peter was learning more and more about Christ over the three years He was walking with Him. It took Him time and there was some back and forth with His belief. One minute He understood what Christ was saying and the next minute He wasn’t sure. However, with Paul, He knew immediately after his blindness was cured who Jesus was and that He wanted to follow Him.
Every one of our experiences will be different. We are all on a different journey and we will all discover Jesus and the truth that He lives inside of us. In God’s timing, this secret and what it means for us and for our lives will be revealed to us and manifested in our lives. I was confused about the meaning when it says, “The Christ who floods you with the expectation of Glory,” I had no idea what this meant. I had the inclination to skip it and move on. Every time I have that feeling I have learned to stop and look it up as I think we all really want to understand all of scripture. I think we want to really understand what it means, not just kinda get it. Here is what I found when I looked it up. A believer can be confident of eternity with Christ in heaven when he or she knows that Christ is already in them. When it says that Christ floods up with the expectation of glory it is talking about living in eternity with God and Jesus in heaven. Without Christ within this is not possible. Without Jesus going to the cross eternity with God is impossible. However, Christ is within us so we can be filled with the expectation of spending eternity with Him!
The last sentence says, “This mystery of Christ, embedded within us, becomes a heavenly treasure chest of hope filled with the riches of glory for his people, and God wants everyone to know it!” The mystery that Christ lives within us becomes a heavenly treasure of hope. How awesome is that? Can’t you just picture a heavenly treasure chest of hope? How many of us need a treasure chest of hope? We might have some hope, we might think we have a lot of hope, but do we have a heavenly treasure chest of hope? This hope is found within us because we know that Christ lives within us. It says the treasure chest is filled with the riches of glory for his people. When I looked this up it confirms what it said in the last sentence. This treasure chest of hope is full of hope that we will one day come face to face with Jesus. A hope that we will be spending forever living with the Lord, praising Him, and loving Him. No longer from afar, but right there in heaven with Him. Can you imagine that glory?
I love the very last few words of this verse. They are, “And God wants everyone to know it!” It is no longer a secret. We can shout it from the rooftops. We can tell everyone we know. Jesus Christ lives inside of you and He lives inside of me. With this knowledge comes a heavenly treasure chest of hope, filled with glory. Now that we know this, why wouldn’t we want to share it? Why wouldn’t we want all those we know to receive this treasure chest of hope filled with glory? Who do you know that could use a little more hope and glory in their lives? Do they know who is living inside of them? Do they know the power living inside of them? Do they know this divine mystery, this secret surprise? If not, why don’t you tell them today? We know from this verse that God wants everyone to know it!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone listening today. Lord, we love you so much. We thank you for the perfect way that you are revealing this secret to us. We thank you for all the ways you are manifesting Christ within us in our lives. We ask you to give us a holy boldness to share this truth and this secret with all those we know. We ask you to take away any hesitation we have to share this with those we know, those we love, and even those we don’t know. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you haven’t signed up for the retreat, you just have 9 more days! I hope you will consider joining us! I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I. Have a blessed day and may the grace and favor of our Lord Jesus Christ be upon you.
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in April 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Walk in my ways, my children. I tell you each and every day that I love you. It's as easy as that. Do not be confused if I tell you I love you. Believe me.”
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Today’s witness is from my friend Bruce. Bruce reached out to me randomly back in November. He found my podcast and wanted to send in his testimony for witness wednesday. His testimony was about how he went to a healing service and regained his sight and then lost it again when he woke up. I offered to pray with Him, and he agreed. We have prayed together three times now. Bruce has not regained his sight, but something amazing happened each time we prayed together. You can find the testimony from the last two times we prayed together on the Witness Wednesday playlist on YouTube. You can also find them on whatever podcast app you are listening to right now. Today’s witness is about when Bruce and his lovely wife Alice came from Canada to visit Gloucester, MA, and my friend and I got to pray with them in person instead of over the phone. It was a great time, and I am so grateful the Lord brought Bruce, Alice, and me together. I know you will enjoy this witness as much as I enjoyed it. God is working in such miraculous ways!
Dear Catherine,
It is two months from today that we met with you and Nancy in Rockport. In the meantime, you have been to Scotland and back and I have had a new experience which I will tell you about. You may use it in your Witness Wednesday if you would like to. On July 23rd, my wife Alice and I had the pleasure of meeting with Catherine and her friend Nancy for lunch. This vacation had been planned well in advance before we met Catherine. It turned out that Nancy's home was just down the road from where we were staying. Sitting outside by the ocean, the four of us chatted and also prayed together for healing. There was no major change in my eyesight at that time, but I realized that the floaters and shifting debris that I normally saw, were gone. It felt like I had more life in my eyes - just a feeling. This visit was a real blessing and encouragement for us before heading for home a couple of days later.
For some time I had been without any sight in my left eye and was able to see light and shadows in my right eye. After this recent change my right eye went completely dark but the movement of floaters was gone. I couldn't tell the difference between day or night. I couldn't see if there were any lights on in the house. Things were the same whether my eyes were open or shut. I had to make an adjustment to this. I found the darkness heavy and depressing. I also felt spiritually let down and more isolated. I heard someone talking about God's light of the world and I thought, we often ask the Lord to shine His face upon us in the Benediction. It was a Monday in August and I told the Lord how I felt. I wanted to somehow have more communication with Him. I didn't want to be in the dark anymore, and would He please shine His light upon me. The next day, Tuesday, I listened to Catherine's podcast which was about Jesus the Light of the world. This felt like my prayer was going somewhere and I became vigilant. That night I went to bed about 1:00 a.m. I was laying on my back in the dark. A small white light appeared in my head space. It seemed to sparkle and it began moving. It became brighter and larger and closer, shining with the brightness of lightning. I felt the light overtake me and I put my face in the pillow. The light was still there and I realized it was within me. It was beautiful and exciting. I began thanking and praising the Lord for this joyful experience. This light would move and pulse brighter then lower going on for an hour and a half until I fell asleep. I wanted to wake Alice but I didn't want to interrupt her sleep or the light. When I awoke in the morning, the light was gone. I figured this was a one time experience. Later that morning, I began telling Alice about it. I stopped and said, It's happening again right now. There was an arch of brilliant white light before me. Beautiful as ever. It stayed with me for a couple of hours, coming and going into the night. This continued daily much to my joy. I noticed whenever I sat at the table it would appear. Whenever I listen to my audio Bible or even thought about the Lord or spiritual matters, it would appear. I found myself talking with the Lord in this light. If I was praying it would appear. It was always with me when I went to sleep. I soon realized I could call on it by asking it to appear. I was quite amazed by the way this all happened, by the communication which took place , and the overwhelming feeling of God's love. There was nothing to do but simply enjoy the moment with the Lord and His light. As I write this, the Lord still shines his light upon me, every day and every night. This has been an unexpected and thrilling blessing for me, far better than I hoped for. I can't help but feel this is leading me somewhere good. My hope and faith has never been more confident than it is now. It is so easy for me to trust the Lord to love me and walk me where He wants to take me. He really is my guiding light. I have in the past had close encounters with Jesus which have been marvelous. But this encounter in His light seems to never end. How wonderful is this. It lifts my heart to look back and see how God works in our lives. Alice and I had planned our trip to Glouchester long before we knew Catherine. Her podcast came out of the blue one night on my google home and caught my attention. Her faithfulness and prayer support is so appreciated. Through Catherine and the prayer group she attends, I have also met Nancy and talked with Robert and learned that they have also prayed for me. These friends in prayer and support have inspired me and I am privileged to know them. My visit in July was meant to be some sort of breakthrough. That's what I had prayed for. As often is the case, I felt things didn't go as I had hoped. As it turned out, I received a blessing I never expected along with new found faith and hope. A few years ago I heard a story told by an Anglican minister in England. He was known for his healing ministry. He told the story of a women who had lost her sight in both eyes. The women related how she started seeing a white light. This light would come and go from time to time and would vary in intensity. She said this went on for some time. One day she heard about a special healing ministry near her. The light continued to be with her. She made her way to the healing service in Blackpool. After preaching the gospel of Jesus, the minister invited people to come forward for healing prayer. Many people went forward and she waited in her seat where she was healed.
I thank the Lord every time I see his light. I thank the Lord for my friends in Massachusetts.
May the Lord bless you Catherine and your ministry.
Bruce and Alice
Thank you so much for sharing your testimony with us and for allowing me to share it on my Witness Wednesday. I know your story will give hope to so many others out there who are also waiting for some pretty big answers to some pretty big prayers. Your faithfulness will help them trust in the Lord more. Thank you again for sharing and we can’t wait to hear your testimony when your sight is fully restored for good this time!
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Still Waters Psalm 23 (Part 3)
Psalm 23 "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his name’s sake. Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff— they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long.”
Today I will talk about the last part of this Psalm. There is a lot to like about this ending. First. It starts by saying that God will prepare a feast for me in the presence of my enemies. I don’t have to be worried about my enemies as God has got me. He is my shield and my refuge. Now he is saying we will prepare a feast for me. When someone is preparing a meal for us, they are not usually stressed out about it. They don’t worry about all the things going on around them. Picture this, there is chaos all around you, and yet in front of you is this beautifully set up dining room table. You have a seat and God is bringing you a feast one course at a time. He is not concerned with your enemies because He knows they can’t touch you. You are not concerned either because you feel so at home and taken care of. Isn’t that a beautifully relaxing image?
Next, the verse says that God honors us by anointing our heads with oil. Did you know that you have an anointing on your life? We all do. Did you know through baptism you were anointed to be priest, prophet, and king? It’s true, just as Christ was all three of these, you are also anointed to be these three things to your community. What does that mean for us?
Let’s start with the priest. Drawing on the priesthood of the Old Testament, a priest is one who offers sacrifices (see Genesis 14:18; Exodus 29:38- 42; Leviticus 23:6,8). Some sacrifices are personal, and some are on behalf of others. These sacrifices will look different for each one of us depending on our circumstances. However, sacrifice to some degree should be a part of our everyday life. I have tried to embrace this in different ways over the years. At times I did a bread and water fast one day a week. Other times I would fast from one thing for a whole month. I would switch it up each month, but there will always be something I am fasting from. I believe that this helps me to appreciate things more and it will also show me that I am not a slave to that thing. For instance, if I feel like I just can’t stop eating chocolate, then I will fast from that for a month. By the end of the year, I will have shown God and myself that I do not need these things. I will have also made a small sacrifice each month for 12 months.
Next, we have prophet. A prophet is a spokesperson for God or one who speaks on God’s behalf (see Exodus 4:30; Deuteronomy 18:18; Isaiah 42:19). In the Old and New Testaments, prophets called people to a different way of life. Can we be a spokesperson for God by how we live our lives? Can we live in a way that when people see us they think to themselves, “I want what they have?” Can we call others to a different way of life, not necessarily with our words, but with our love? Can we love others as Jesus did? Can we speak love and light into the world, into people’s lives? Can we be prophets?
Lastly, we are anointed as kings. What are kings called to do? Usually rule over others. We are called to rule over ourselves first and foremost. We are all responsible for making sure we are living our lives according to God’s laws. Most kings are called to rule over others, however, as Christians, we are called to servant leadership. A servant leader leads by serving others. In other words, servant leaders place the interests and needs of their followers ahead of their own self-interests and needs. Generally, they value the development of their followers, building their communities, acting authentically, and sharing power.
Now that we know what each one of these means, hopefully, we can apply this to our everyday life. God has anointed us in our everyday tasks too. For instance, I was anointed to be a mother and a wife. That was where God called me and that is what He set me apart to do. Maybe you are anointed to be a doctor, a lawyer, a pharmacy tech, a garbage collector, a grandmother, a teacher, whatever it is, God has anointed you to do it. Your baptismal anointing is not meant to replace any of those other calls on your life. You are anointed to be a priest, prophet, and king in the life you are already living. Think about your day-to-day life, how can you incorporate sacrifice into your days? How can you be more of a prophet spreading the Lord’s Word in your daily lives? How can you be more of a servant leader right now, right where you are?
The verse then goes on to say my cup overflows with blessings. This is also great imagery. I love to picture a teacup, as we grew up drinking tea in my family. Although I don’t picture a regular tea cup, the image I am getting is an English fancy tea cup from a china set. The tea is being poured into it with a steady stream and the cup is overflowing and running all over the table and even onto the floor. This is how many blessings God has for you. He wants to rain down blessings upon blessings on all of His children. Sometimes we get in the way of God’s blessings. Sometimes we don’t appreciate the blessings that we have so why would God give us more? Sometimes we find ourselves complaining about all that is going on in our lives instead of praising God and giving thanksgiving. God has ridiculous blessings for you. All you have to do is believe that and then praise God for any blessings, even if they are small. If you can be faithful to the small He will increase your blessings. He is a good, good Father!
The ending of this verse is beautiful. “Surely your goodness and unfailing love will pursue me all the days of my life, and I will live in the house of the Lord forever.” We had this word pursue the other day. I love that word. This verse is saying that God’s goodness and unfailing love will pursue us all the days of our lives. Isn’t that wonderful? We don’t have to chase after God, because He is already chasing after us. All we have to do is let ourselves be caught by God’s goodness and unfailing love. Unfailing love is not like any love we can find here on earth. It is an incredible love that knows no limits, that knows no boundaries. God’s love never leaves us. No matter how much we may try to run from it. No matter how much we try to reject it or send it back. No matter how much we might mess up. God’s unfailing love will pursue you every single day of your life. How incredible is that?
And the very last part of the verse says, “I will live in the house of the Lord forever.” Yes, please! I want to live in the house of the Lord forever. I think we all do. It is so amazing to me that God has an open-door policy to heaven. All are welcome. Come as you are, in your broken and wounded state. You do not have to earn your way, you don’t have to do anything to get there. Jesus has earned you your right to be there. All you have to do is surrender to God and let Him help you, let Him give you the strength to follow Him. Following God is not always an easy road but it is a rewarding road and one that leads to spending eternity living in the house of the Lord.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening today. Lord, we thank you for loving us like you do. We thank you for preparing us for a feast in the presence of our enemies. We thank you for the ridiculous blessings you want to give us and we are sorry if we get in your way of doing that. We thank you for making us priests, prophets, and kings and we ask for your help in discovering what that means for each one of us and how we can incorporate that anointing into our lives. We love you Lord and we can’t wait to live in your house forever! We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to bringing you another witness tomorrow. It will be an update from my friend Bruce. I have shared his story at least twice, and we have a new update coming tomorrow. Mentoring is tonight, so email me if you would like to check it out! Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day, and may the favor and grace of our Lord Jesus be upon you!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in April 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Trust me. I know what I'm doing. I know that sometimes trust is like pulling yourself through an eye of a needle. Those are the times when you need to trust the most. Because that's when I loom the largest. I love you, my children. Trust me.”
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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Still Waters Psalm 23 (Part 2)
Psalm 23 "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his name’s sake. Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff— they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long.”
I only really talked about the first few lines of this Psalm in my last episode and there are some other powerful parts to this Psalm. I want to make sure I go through the whole thing so when you are using it against your anxiety you can understand all the various aspects of it. Today I want to look at the very next line. “Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”
I was attending a conference once, and the speaker mentioned this verse. It was not a spiritual conference, so when I heard it, I figured it was a sign that I should talk about it. The verse says though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. This is hard. It seems like there is so much to fear these days. There is fear surrounding these elections. There is fear surrounding the future of our country. There is fear surrounding so many things.
When we read this scripture we wonder how it is possible to fear no evil. How is it possible to fear no evil when you are surrounded by death, or the possibility of death? If you read on it says “for thou are with me; they rod and thy staff they comfort me.” God is with us, we all know this, we repeat this and tell others this, but do we really believe this? Do you believe that God is right there with you when you are in the valleys? We all know how all-powerful God is, so if we believe that He is there with us, it makes sense that we wouldn’t be afraid. How could we be afraid when He is there? He is the Almighty One.
So, why do we have so much fear? Are we afraid that He won’t help us? Are we afraid He won’t show up? Are we afraid to die? What is it that we have been so afraid of? Maybe you find yourself worried about a lot of things. Maybe you worry every time there is a storm coming. Maybe you worry about your finances. Maybe you worry about your children, parents, siblings, or spouse. Worry may be a part of your everyday life. I am hoping to change that. It probably won’t change overnight, and it may not be easy, but it is possible. The bible mentions “fear not” 365 times. This is definitely something that God wants us to get.
I will be honest, I didn’t get the last part of this verse. “Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.” I looked up the meaning of this because I wondered if there was something that I was missing. I am glad I did because there is a great article called “Understanding Psalm 23: What Does the Staff and Rod Actually Mean?(Click Here for article) I highly suggest it as it is good. I will not retell the article, I will just touch upon the few descriptions of the rod and the staff. First, the author says that the staff symbolizes rest, as shepherds used to lean on their staff for rest. Next, the staff can symbolize rescue because shepherds used to use their staff to rescue sheep from the thick brush. Third, the staff can symbolize a guide as the shepherd used it to guide sheep across open fields.
This all seems to make a lot of sense to me. It seems like we are much happier and less afraid when we are able to just rest in the Lord. To just sit with Him and turn over all of our worries and fears to Him. Also, God rescues us from difficult situations when we need Him. He doesn’t abandon us. He is always there for us in good times and in bad. Lastly, He is definitely our Guide. How many times have we needed God to guide us through the rough parts of our lives? We need Him as a guide for the easy parts as well.
The article goes on to say that Rod is Our Protection. When shepherds were herding sheep they used their rods to defend against anything that wanted to attack the sheep. This is what God does for us. He protects us from our enemies. The Rod is also a symbol of Love. The shepherds used to use their rods to count the sheep. You might be wondering how this is a symbol of Love. This is an act of love because the shepherd is making sure that all of his sheep are present and accounted for. God is doing the same thing for us. He does not want a single one of His sheep to get lost. He loves us too much.
Now that I understand what the words rod and staff mean in the context of this verse and in the time that it was written, I feel as though I understand the verse as a whole better now. I can’t believe how much the Lord is saying to us with just a short sentence or two. I am also in awe sometimes thinking about how much God loves us. It amazes me how He can be all these things for us, for each and every one of us. Understanding that His staff is our guide, rescue, and rest; and that his rod is our protection and love helps me understand why we should have no fear. We don’t need fear when we realize all that He has already done for us. We don’t need fear when he is there to protect us, guide us, and rescue us. He has got us. We can rest in the knowledge that His staff and His rod are enough for us. They are more than enough for us.
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.” Is it any different hearing that verse again after hearing the description of the rod and the staff? Does it make you want to trust in the Lord more? Does it help you fear a little less? I hope that it has helped. I hope that we can all get to a place where we don’t have so much fear. It is so freeing when you can let go of your fears and learn to lean into and trust God. You won’t regret it. I will leave you with Matthew 6:27 to think about. “Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask that you help us to have no fear in times of trouble. We ask that you help us to feel loved. Lord, I ask that you help all those who are feeling anxious or worried today and every day. Help them to hand their worry over to you and not take it back again. We thank you, Lord, for guiding us through our lives. We thank you for protecting us and for being our place of rest. Lord, we thank you for rescuing us every single time we need you to. You are the best! We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you wish to sign up for the retreat, you are running out of time. I have to let the retreat house know my numbers on Oct. 4th. That means you have just under two weeks to register. It is going to be an amazing time; I hope you will join us! Mentoring is tomorrow night as well if you want to join in, there is a link below with all the information. You could also email me, and I can send you a link if you want to check it out before joining. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day, and may the grace and favor of our Lord Jesus Christ be upon you!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in April 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Trust me. I am worthy of your trust. I gave all for you because I loved you. I do not abandon my children. Whatever comes your way, remember I'm there.”
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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Still Waters (Psalm 23)
Psalm 23 "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his name’s sake. Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff— they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long.”
I've been hearing this song called Still Waters (Psalm 23) by Leanna Crawford on KLOVE Radio a lot these past few days. Before leaving for Prayer Group I saw that the leader was using the song Psalm 23, although it was a different version of it, as one of the songs for the meeting. Yesterday afternoon I got this deep feeling that that's what I was supposed to talk to you about it because there's a lot of anxiety and worry going around these days. And I just talked to someone who lost her husband and she said she's paranoid these days. She's worried about all the financial aspects of your husband dying. She's worried about her future, she is worried about a lot of things.
And I know she's not the only one. I know that we all have fear and worry over different kinds of things in our lives. I was really struck by the beginning part of the Still Waters song when it said, “Great Aunt Maurine said at a hundred and three, write scripture on your heart for when you need it.
And it also really struck me when she said, “Cause anxiety hates Psalm 23. So just say it to yourself 'til you believe it.” And I just thought, isn't God so good? Isn't it amazing how he gives us exactly what we need found right there in the scriptures? I have to be honest, I don't know a lot about the Psalms. I know Robert from our morning prayer group always asks people what their favorite Psalm is because he's memorized a bunch of them. And I think what a beautiful thing.
And also, I have no idea what my favorite Psalm is. And also, I didn't know that some of the Psalms have a specific purpose. I knew there were Psalms of praise and Psalms of lamentation. But I didn't know that there were Psalms that anxiety hated. And I didn't know that there were Psalms of protection like Psalm 91. And so I wanted to talk a little bit about Psalm 23 today, because I think it's one that we've heard often. And yet, I don't know if we really know how powerful it is. I know I didn't know how powerful it was. And honestly, I didn't even really understand what it meant.
I never found it super powerful when I would read it, or even when I would hear it. “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul.” I didn't know what that meant. And I don't know if I still know completely what it means. But what the Lord pointed out to me when I was listening to the song today was he leads me to still waters. Even in the storm, there's still waters. Even in the valleys, when you're at your lowest, he can lead you through that valley right next to still waters. To me, this verse is telling us that no matter what we're going through, if we let the Lord lead us, he'll lead us by still waters. He won't lead us into the eye of the storm.
He won't lead us by chaos and confusion. If our eyes are fixed on him, and if we follow his path through the storm, there will be still waters that we can follow. And don't we all need some still waters in the craziness of the storm? Also, what stuck out to me today was when it said, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
I think we all want for things. I've heard from people in my prayer group, and from my parents, as we get older, we want for less. But I think there are all things we want, even if those things are peace, health, safe passage, or maybe it is material things. Whatever it is, we all want for things.
And yet this is saying, the Lord is our shepherd, we shall not want. We can rely on him to give us all that we need, and all that we want. The Lord knows the desires of our hearts. He knows what it is we want. And he not only cares about the things that we need, but he cares about the things that we want too. He cares about the little requests, just as much as he cares about the big requests.
I know sometimes we don't want to feel greedy, and we don't want to ask God for the little things, because we love him, and we know that he's already given us so much. So why should we ask for more? And yet the Lord tells us in our prayer group, in the words of prophecy, over and over again, “I have so much more for you, but you're not asking.” So ask the Lord, we shall not want, he will give us what it is we need, he will give us what it is we want.
I feel like the Lord is saying there is no “too much.” Just ask. It can't hurt to ask. And that he wants to give us so much more. And we're not asking. And so I just want to invite you all to invite the Lord in, to ask for the big things, to ask for the little things. And to trust that when you ask, the Lord answers. Trust that the Lord will lead you to still waters. If you're especially worried about something right now, hand it over to the Lord and ask him to show you the still waters in the situation.
Because the Lord, everything that's written in the Bible is true. And so when it says the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want, he leads me to still waters. That's not saying he led the Israelites to still waters, but you, well, you're on your own. He leads us all to still waters. So if you're struggling for still waters right now, if you're struggling to find the peace in the situation you're in, if you've been in this situation for a long time and you're thinking, there are no still waters. You can see to the horizon and there are no still waters. Then I just invite you to look beyond the horizon and to know that God isn't bound by the horizon. He could take a storm and calm it in a second to have still waters.
He doesn't have to find different waters that are still. He can still the storm just as Jesus did when he was in that boat. Someone said at prayer group today that the Lord was telling her that somebody had an anxious heart or an anxious spirit and He wanted them to hand it over to Him.
And so I encourage you, if that's you, if you are anxious about something, if you're worried about something, if you're worried about money, if you're worried about family issues if you're worried about family members who are sick, I invite you to hand that over to the Lord. I invite you to read Psalm 23 over and over again, or to listen to the song on repeat until you have it flowing through your mind and until it brings you peace. Because I believe what the songwriter said when she said, “Anxiety hates Psalm 23.”
I don't think it was just a rhyme. I think it was the truth. Anytime we can have scripture to rely on it’s a good thing. Anytime anxiety comes up and we can stop our thought pattern in our tracks and recite a Psalm, recite a song that reminds us that God is stronger than that thought, then I know that we'll see our anxiety lessen each time we do this.
I know when we invite God in, he comes in. He doesn't saunter in. He doesn't meander in. When we call on the Lord, he comes running. He sends his angels flying at the speed of light to be by our side. And the more we can learn his scripture, the more we can memorize it and recall it at a moment's notice. Man, that makes the devil worried. When we have a firm grasp on scripture, the devil knows he can't trick us. The devil knows he can't use that scripture against us like he tried to do with Jesus.
Another thing the song says is to say it to yourself until you believe it. And I think that can be one thing we often overlook. We read these scriptures and we might believe them on a surface level, but do we believe them in the depths of our hearts? Do we truly believe them? And do we believe them to be true for us? Sometimes it's easy to believe that something can be true for someone else, and yet we struggle to believe that it's true for us.
We believe that God forgives other people’s sins, but we hold on to ours. We believe that God loves all of his children, but we don't believe he loves us or we struggle to believe he loves us. So when I'm saying learn these scripture verses, I don't mean read them once, and kind of know what they say.
I mean, live in the scripture verses. Pick a verse or two and say it, memorize it, believe it, believe it to be true with your whole being, and then move on to a different scripture verse. I don't think we have to have the whole Bible memorized, but if you're struggling in an area like love, anxiety, worry, whatever it is you're struggling with, find scripture verses that address that area and read them. If one touches your heart, if one stands out to you, if you read a scripture verse and it gives you strength, write it down, memorize it, and then when you're feeling those feelings, recall that scripture verse. This is why I love Christian music so much, because I just feel it in my soul.
I'm not really one that feels the Holy Spirit in a physical way often. A lot of people will say, oh, I could feel the Holy Spirit so strong in this room right now. I can’t. I usually don't feel that. I don't feel what they're saying. But when I listen to Christian music, I feel it with my whole soul, and it speaks right to my heart.
If there are songs that speak to what you're going through, I say the same thing that I said about scripture. Listen to it on repeat over and over again. Memorize it so that when you're in a tough spot, you can recall it. These songs remind us how much Jesus loves us, how much God's there for us. Oftentimes they have scripture verses built right into the song, like Psalm 23, Still Waters. This is why I love the music so much.
If you're struggling right now, I invite you to listen to some Christian music. I invite you to Google some scripture verses that have to do with whatever it is you're going through.
I guarantee you if you put in scripture verses for, anxiety, worry, financial issues, marital trouble, parenting, whatever it is, scripture verses will come up. And I invite you to read them, to go over them, and to find ones that speak to you, that strengthen and encourage you. And I invite you to recall these when you are struggling.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you. We thank you for always being there for us. We thank you for being our shepherd and leading us to green pastures. We thank you for all the time you have led us to still waters throughout our lives. You are the best Lord and we love you tons!!
Thank you all for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Remember if you have not signed up for the retreat yet, you are running out of time. I have to give the retreat house my numbers on Oct. 4th, that is in just two weeks. If you know someone who may want to join this retreat, please invite them. People are more likely to come if they have a personal invite from a friend. I look forward to seeing you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day and may the grace and favor of our Lord Jesus Christ be upon you.
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in April 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Why do you stand at the open tomb? You know, I have risen, and I am there among you.”
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Today, I have a special guest giving the devotional. My friend Catherine was asked to give the devotional to our mentoring group, and I loved her message, and I wanted to share it with all of you. I am sure you will love it to. It was given to a group of women, so she may say girls in the devotional, however, it is for everyone listening. Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/www.findingtruenorthcoaching.comCLICK HERE FOR RETREAT INFOCLICK HERE TO DONATECLICK HERE to sign up for Mentoring CLICK HERE to sign up for Daily "Word from the Lord" emailsCLICK HERE to sign up for my newsletter & receive a free audio trainingabout inviting Jesus into your daily lifeCLICK HERE to buy my book Total Trust in God's Safe Embrace
Today’s witnesses are from Matthew West’s website called popwe.org. If you don’t know who Matthew West is, he is a singer, songwriter, and storyteller. This website is for the non-profit that he has with his father, a pastor. Matthew and his father encourage people to share their stories. They have various categories of stories. Today, I chose two testimonies from the Addictions & Deliverance Category. Our family has been touched by addiction and I don’t think we are the only ones. One of my sons is desperately trying to quick vaping nicotine, which he was addicted to before he was really old enough to understand how addicting it is. I think these stories will offer some hope and encouragement. Often, we can hear our own story in someone else’s story. When we listen to others tell their story, it helps us see that we are not alone. Hearing how God worked in their situation gives us hope that He will work in ours, too! I pray when you hear these testimonies, you get the faith and hope to believe that miracles can happen in your situation also.
Adrienne: In 2014, I began praying to God to remove these addictions from me. My life was a mess and all I cared about was my cigarettes and alcohol. God led me to the right resources, and I did manage to quit smoking and drinking (although not at the same time and I experienced some slips.)
In 2018, with the help of God and a stop-smoking community, I gave up cigarettes for good. Then on June 23rd, 2020, God helped me once again and both my husband and I stopped drinking. The freedom and joy I feel from having both of these substances out of my life is amazing and like nothing, I’ve ever known. The “buzz” I get now from a life well lived is so much better than any buzz I received from cigarettes or alcohol. I am so incredibly grateful to be free of those chains. If you are struggling with overcoming an addiction, my advice to you is don’t give up on yourself and trust God. You may not break free immediately but with patience, perseverance, and the love and help of our Savior, you can overcome even the toughest addiction.
With God, ALL things are possible!
Chris: My name is Chris, I’m 32 years old and I’m from Houston, TX. I’m married to my wife, Keyla. We have 2 daughters Kaylee and Madison and a dog, Charlie Boy. As a child, I grew up in a loving home. I’m the youngest of 5 siblings. I grew up with mom and dad at home. We always had a tight bond. The thing is we didn’t know Jesus. Our lifestyle was that of sinners. Alcoholism and drug addiction were creeping around my family. At the age of 7, I was molested by a family member who was on drugs at the time. Years later, he committed suicide. But I forgave him. Mentally and emotionally it messed me up. At the age of 13, I myself started using drugs. I tried cocaine in the 7th grade, then started smoking marijuana. This was the beginning of a drug addiction that would last for a period of 18 years. At the age of 17, I went into a restoration home by the name of Outcry In The Barrio, founded by Pastor Freddy Garcia. By this time I was now using pills. My father was an alcoholic, my older brother, Jr., was selling drugs and was also addicted to drugs as well as my brother, Jerry, and sister, Brenda. My brother, John, was the only one in my family (along with my mother) who didn’t care for drugs or alcohol.
So, I walked into this small duplex 1 bedroom house with about 15 guys living there. The leaders and the Pastor of the church told me Jesus would change my life if I would only surrender. As I began my journey of sobriety, every day for the next 6 months was hard and I wanted to leave. But I started to notice something- I noticed my family was coming to church. My brother, Jr., was the first in my family to give his life to Jesus and decided to make a change within himself. He was tired of the lifestyle he was living. Little by little my entire family got saved. By the fifth or sixth month, we were all getting baptized and living for Christ. As I graduated my program at the age of 18, I wish I could tell you that was it- that I have lived a clean sober life. But that would be a lie.
The next 13 years were a battle, but it was no one’s fault but mine. After meeting my wife and getting married and having children, I thought that would help. But unfortunately and sadly it didn’t. I was selfish, stuck in my own ways, or addicted. My wife had enough. She moved out and went back to live with her parents, along with my daughters and Charlie Boy. By this time I couldn’t keep a job and I lost my house. I wrecked my car, lost my job, and found myself homeless on the streets and now addicted to crack. I literally lost everything. I was alone, in the streets, at times cold, at times wet because of the heavy rain, I lived like this for 3 long weeks. During the last week, after 6-7 days straight without food or anything to drink, I found myself in a prodigal stage. I cried out to the Lord and said, “Lord!!!!! What have I done? Look at me!! I have nothing!!! I’m alone in the streets. I have a beautiful wife and 2 beautiful daughters and I’m not there for them.” This was the rock bottom point in my life. It couldn’t get any lower than this. As I was walking, talking to the Lord it was late, sometime around 4 am. I began to tell the Lord I was tired and very hungry. I wanted something to eat. Before I could even end my sentence, I saw 2 birds picking at a fry and it was then that The Lord spoke to me and said, if I feed the birds of the earth, how much more you that I call my son? I wept and thanked the Lord because I knew I was about to get something to eat. A few hours passed. I walked into a restaurant by the name of Shuttle Burger and asked for a cup of water. The owner looked at me and said, “Mijo, are you hungry?” I looked down and nodded my head “Yes, ma’am”. Some tears ran down my face as I whispered in a soft voice, “Thank You, Jesus.” Because I knew it was Him. After the meal, this lady sat next to me and said, “I’ve seen you walking around here lately. You’re new around here, aren’t you?”
I said, “Yes, ma’am. I am. I’ve lost my way due to addiction, and now I’m in the streets.”
She looked at me and said, “Well son, you know what you need to do. Surrender your life to Jesus and He can set you free!”
I said, “Amen. He sure can. I’ve seen and tasted of His goodness before.”
She said, “You can again.”
As I left this restaurant, I walked a few more hours and was able to work up the nerve, humble myself, and call my brother, John. He answered, happy to hear my voice. I said, “Bro, I’m tired, I need help, man. I’m homeless and I don’t wanna live like this anymore.”
He said, “Okay, bro. Where are you? I’m picking you up.”
He picked me up and took me back to his house. I showered, got some rest, and decided the next day to go to rehab. I was there for a month, got cleaned up, started working, bought a car, got an apartment, and my wife started to see the change in me. She and my daughters moved back in. I was attending church and everything seemed fine until I found myself getting tempted and falling into temptation. There’s a scripture in the Bible where Jesus tells the disciples to pray they won’t get tempted by Satan. That’s exactly what happened. My prayer life was not consistent. The very next day, May 24, 2020, I got on my knees and prayed, asking God to please forgive me, to please give me another chance. I said, “Lord, I know what will happen if I continue. I’ll lose everything and end up in the streets.”
I finally surrendered my life to Christ on that day 5/24/2020 and praise God, I’m going on 18 months of sobriety!! I give Jesus Christ all the honor and glory for the salvation of my soul and the forgiveness of my many sins. I now live a life of prayer, consistently praying, thanking, and praising the name of Jesus. In these 18 months, many things have happened. My wife and I bought our first home, I’ve been able to keep the same job, and I’m now writing music for God. I’ve learned that surrendering your life to Christ really works. He really loves us and wants the best for us. So with all that being said, this is my story. I hope it encourages and brings hope to everyone who reads and listens to my music. Amen.
Thank you so much for sharing your stories. I am sure it wasn’t easy, and yet it will help so many people know that they are not alone. I hope that anyone struggling with addiction hears your testimonies and believes that God can help them just as He has helped you! Thanks again for sharing!
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We Are Saved By God’s Grace
Ephesians 2:3-5 “The corruption that was in us from birth was expressed through the deeds and desires of our self-life. We lived by whatever natural cravings and thoughts our minds dictated, living as rebellious children subject to God’s wrath like everyone else. But God still loved us with such great love. He is so rich in compassion and mercy. Even when we were dead and doomed in our many sins, he united us into the very life of Christ and saved us by his wonderful grace!”
I love verses like this because when the Bible points out the things I am doing wrong, I know I am not the only one doing them. If I were the only one, or if only a few of us were living by whatever natural cravings and thoughts our minds dictated, then God wouldn’t put it in the Bible. The verse starts by saying, “The corruption that was in us from birth was expressed through the deeds and desires of our self-life.” We were all born with original sin. Adam and Eve were born into a perfect world. There was no sin; there was only love, and they got to stroll through the garden at night with the Lord. Their heavenly Father would come to visit them and talk with them.
However, they were tricked by the serpent and ate the fruit from the tree of good and evil. I don’t know if they were misled or just enticed. The devil was laying out a pretty good picture of how God was trying to control them by telling them not to eat that fruit. The serpent told them they would be like God if they ate the fruit. Who wouldn’t want to be like God, right? So they ate the fruit. The interesting thing is that they were already like God. God made us in His likeness and image. They were already like God. However, once they ate that fruit, sin entered the world, and it didn’t want to leave.
This is the corruption from birth that the verse is talking about. We are all born with original sin, and that is why Catholics believe you should be baptized as soon as you are born. Once you are baptized with the Holy Spirit, sin can’t say, it must leave. However, because we are human, our choices can allow sin to creep back into our lives. This sin that creeps back into our lives is expressed through our deeds and desires of our self-life. When sin creeps back in, we tend to live for ourselves instead of for God.
I was listening to an Encounter Ministry talk yesterday, and the teacher talked about how she had a niece or a friend’s child whom she spoke to often. When the girl was little, my teacher would say things like, “How did you get to be so beautiful?” or “How did you get to be so nice?” and the little girl would say, “That’s just the way God made me.” There is such an innocence in this response. However, once we get a bit older and the world corrupts our thinking, and our sin crowds our minds, then we forget that this is how God made us and that He made each one of us just as we are for a reason.
Once we allow sin to creep back in with our deeds and desires, our thoughts get distorted. We start to hate who we are, what we look like, what we sound like, and everything else about us. I was at a women’s conference once, and the speaker said that she asked everyone in the audience who hated their body to stand up, and 90% of the women stood up. She didn’t ask, who would change something about their body if they could? She didn’t ask, who dislikes something about their body? She asked who hated their body, and 90% of them stood up. This is the work of the enemy. We are not born hating our bodies. We are born with so much love, and then this broken world pollutes our minds and bodies.
The line in the verse says, “ We lived by whatever natural cravings and thoughts our minds dictated, living as rebellious children subject to God’s wrath like everyone else.” This pretty much sums up my struggle. I have so many cravings and thoughts in my life that seem to dictate my life. Some things seem like they are not really a big deal, but when we really examine them, we see that they are not good for us. Do you have any cravings that take your focus away from God? You have thoughts that take up all your focus and that you are thinking about all the time. If you have ever had an addiction, you know exactly what I am talking about. I am lucky in that the addictions I have had have not been life-threatening, like drugs or alcohol. I am lucky that my addictions have not affected my life in ways like losing my family or losing my job. However, that doesn’t mean they were damaging.
When I was addicted to TV, while I still am, but now I manage my addiction, I would watch TV all day long. I would not get anything done while the kids were at school, and I wouldn’t do anything after they went to bed, either. I would watch hours of TV a day. I can only imagine how different my life would be if I had spent that time growing closer to the Lord, growing my spiritual life, reading books to further my knowledge, or really anything else that would have been productive. The enemy kept me sitting there watching TV because he knew what would have happened if I had spent that time with the Lord. He knew how different my life would be if I weren’t addicted to TV.
Now, let's look at the last part of this verse because I don’t want to leave you today thinking about all you may be doing wrong or all you could have done differently. This is not the point of today’s episode. The point of this episode is to let you know that even though we have all sinned. Even though we don’t live perfect lives, we are all saved by God’s grace. The ending of this verse says, “But God still loved us with such great love. He is so rich in compassion and mercy. Even when we were dead and doomed in our many sins, he united us into the very life of Christ and saved us by his wonderful grace!”
It is so important that we all know this. No matter what we are struggling with, God loves us with such great love. All those reasons the enemy is telling you that God can’t possibly love you are complete garbage. God still loves you with such a great love. There is nothing you can do to stop Him from loving you. There is no losing that love. I know I say that a lot, and I will keep saying it until every single one of you believes that God loves you just as you do, and there is nothing you can do to lose that love. It is your forever. Whether you want it or not, whether you deserve it or not. God is so rich in compassion and mercy. He knows why you did what you did, and his mercy covers it, covers you. His mercy is enough to cover anything you have done.
The last line is awesome, too. “Even when we were dead and doomed in our many sins, he united us into the very life of Christ and saved us by his wonderful grace!” This means that even though God knows all we have done. Even though we did some pretty terrible things, God united us with Christ and saved us by his grace. God’s grace is enough for you and all your sins. Jesus’s sacrifice was big enough to cover all your sins. God loves you with such a great love. He is full of compassion and mercy. That is what I want to leave you with today. God saved us by His wonderful grace!
Dear Heavenly Father, please bless each person listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you so much. We don’t want to be dead and doomed in our many sins. We want to be free of them. Please help us. We want to put you first and to show you our love by our actions. Please help us. We want to be able to live by the Spirit and not the flesh. Please help us. Help us to see where our sin is getting in the way of our relationship with you, and then give us the strength to change. We love you, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! May the grace and favor of our Lord Jesus Christ be upon you. Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in April 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “You say I have no more to give, I am tired, I don’t know what I can do. I say, "Stop worrying, you don’t have to do anything but trust in me, lean on me, realize it’s me in you that gives you strength, trust in me, I will give you what you need, trust. Move forward in my love.”
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He Gives All The More Grace
James 4:6 “But he gives all the more grace; therefore it says, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”
Continuing on with our grace series, I wanted to share this verse with you. This is a pretty popular saying. I have heard it often. So let’s explore what this verse is telling us. First. God gives us all the more grace. If we are trying to live the way the Lord wants us to live, He will give us the grace to do so. Remember, grace is the power to do the right thing. Grace teaches us the right thing to do and then allows us to do it. So, why does the it mean for God to oppose the proud and give grace to the humble. Sometimes I know what a word means, like I could use it in a sentence and yet I don’t understand exactly what it means.
In case this is you too, I want to break this verse down and share with you what I have learned about it. When the verse says God opposes the proud it is talking about those who strive to live by the world’s standards instead of the ones He has given to us. Do we strive to live our life according to the life God has set out before us, or do we strive to live the life the World tells us that we want? The world says that we should care about how much money we make and how much stuff we can accumulate. The world tells us that we should look out for ourselves first and everyone else second. The world tells us family values are a thing of the past. We are being good parents by providing for our family, we don’t have to spend time with them. It tells us that our children don’t want to spend time with us anyway.
The world tells us who we are and who we should be. It tells us that we don’t deserve God’s love, we aren’t good enough for his mercy and grace, so why even bother trying to obtain it? Or it tells us that we have to strive and strive in order to earn God’s love. I know those are two contradicting things, but that is because the enemy is smart, and he will tell you whatever he thinks you need to hear. If you are someone who feels you have to earn love and affection, the enemy will tell you that you need to earn God’s love on your own merit. He will tell you that you have to work harder and harder, and yet you will never really feel like you have worked hard enough. If you are someone who feels like you are never good enough, the enemy will convince you that you shouldn’t even bother to try to earn God’s love because it is too far out of your reach. You simply aren’t enough, good enough, worthy enough, whatever it may be.
What I have learned about this verse is that the proud are the ones who feel they have to earn God’s love on their own. They do not turn to the Lord and ask for His grace to help them change. They feel they can change independently, and then they will come to the Lord. This is prideful. Thinking we can do anything on our own is pretty prideful. We need the Lord to do all things. Well, we need Him to do all things correctly. We can do things on our own, but they definitely don’t turn out how they could if we invited the Lord into everything we do. Does this sound familiar to you? Have you ever thought you needed to do it all on your own? Have you ever felt like you needed to earn God’s love and acceptance? I am pretty sure we have all gone through times when we felt like this.
Hopefully, we have also gone through times of humility. Being humble means that we come to God just as we are. We acknowledge that we are sinful and prideful, and yet we know that because He is all-powerful, He can help us change. We come to the Lord in our weak and broken state with the confidence that His grace can redeem us. God has already redeemed us. He sent His only Son, Jesus, to die on the cross so that we may be redeemed. Humility is accepting this forgiveness and turning to the Lord to help us change.
I would like to say that being humble is something you decide to do and then that is the end of it. You decided to be humble so now you are a humble person. Being humble is something that you need to continually decide. You will be faced with many choices as you go throughout the day and you must keep making the choice that will help you grow in humility instead of pride. The enemy is good and he will try to trick you into choosing things that will actually help you grow in pride instead of humility.
This is where grace comes in. Remember, grace is the power to do the right thing. Even in the face of evil, grace has the power to help us do the right thing. So, how do we call upon this grace? We just ask for it. We just come to the Lord and let Him know we need His grace. It can be as simple as, “God, I know I need you to come into this day with me and help me make the right choices.” It could be as simple as “Come, Holy Spirit, come.” What you say is nearly as important as it is that you do say something. You must acknowledge your reliance on the Lord. Let God know that you invite Him in and that you need Him and His grace.
Without God’s grace, without the Holy Spirit living inside of us, we would be lost. Many of us are lost because we don’t know the power we have living inside of us. We don’t know that we have this grace that we can tap into. We just go through our days relying on our own power and strength and wondering why we are struggling. We wonder why things are so hard.
God is not withholding grace until we become worthy. We are worthy now. He made sure of that when he redeemed us. God has filled each one of us with a reservoir of grace, and all we need to do is call upon that grace. All we need to do is realize that we need that grace, and it is ours. We need to constantly be turning back to the Lord and relying on His grace to help us get through whatever we need to get through.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask that you help us to rely on your grace. We ask that you help us realize the grace we have inside of us. We ask that you help us overcome our pride and to be more humble. We ask all of this in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Mentoring this month is all about trusting in the waiting. If you would like to join us, CLICK HERE. Mentoring sessions are on Tuesday evenings at 8 PM EST. on Zoom. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I. Have a blessed day and may the grace and favor our of our Lord Jesus Christ be upon you.
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in April 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Vision: We were all in a group, in a circle, doing praise and worship with the tree of life in the center. And the more we prayed and worshiped the Lord, the tree of life grew taller and taller and just became more brilliant and bright.”
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Where Sin Increased, Grace Abounded All The More
Romans 5:20-21 “Law came in, to increase the trespass; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that , as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Today’s episode is one I wrote over a year and a half ago and yet goes perfect with this series on grace so I will re-read it for you today. When I read this verse this morning I knew it was the one to talk about because one of the speakers mentioned it in their talk last week at the conference and I thought he made a really good point. I will see if I can help you see the beauty in the time we are living in. Let me begin with the first line of this verse because I didn’t understand it. It was one of those lines that I just want to skip over to get to the part I can explain at least a little better. However, my commitment to you is that we will really examine these scriptures and we will gain a better understanding of what they mean. We can not do that if I skip over the ones I don’t understand. So, instead I decided to see what those who do Bible commentary have to say about this verse.
The reason I don’t understand it is because it sounds like it is saying God gave us the law so that we might sin more. Do you see why that would be confusing to me? Why would God want us to sin more? Figuring out what scriptures like this is really saying is why I love doing this podcast. A few years ago, if I was reading that on my own, I probably would have just moved on, I don’t know that I would have looked it up to see what it was saying. This is another reason I am grateful for each of you listening to this podcast. You push me to learn and to grow because you are willing to learn and grow with me. Thank you!
What I found out about this verse is that ever since Adam and Eve took and ate of the apple, sin came into the world. It is not that people were sinning more, it was that they were noticing their sin more. In this verse, Paul is not saying that God introduced the Law because He wanted to make us sin more, but that He wanted us to be more aware of our sins and the fact that we had a totally sinful nature. We were already sinning, we just didn’t realize what we were doing was a sin. The analogy I read said its like accusing a kid of stealing a cookie before you even tell him what stealing is. If there is no law against taking a cookie then he is not stealing it. However, once there is a law and once he understands it, then any cookies he takes after that is willful disobedience. God was helping us to see all the ways we were not living how we were meant to live. They say the first step to change is acknowledging that you need to change. How could the Israelites be expected to change if they did not know what they were doing was wrong? This was the point to the law, to show them their sins, not to make them sin more.
The next part of the verse above says, "but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.” This line explains to us that God didn’t just give them the law, but He gave them grace as well. Here is a quote from an article titled, "Pastor: What the grace of God does in us” by Rev. J. Patrick Street. I will place a link for it in the show notes (click here for article). This is what the pastor said about grace:
“You see that the grace of God is more than salvation but also everything we need for life and godliness. The definition of grace could be “God's life, power and righteousness given to us by unmerited favor.” It is through grace that God works effective change in our hearts and lives. Grace gives us a new life which is not condemned by God. Through God's grace we are forgiven, transforming our thinking, resulting in the renewal of our mind and heart. Through grace we live the kind of life that God would like every one of His children to experience.” The grace of god is essential for us to live the way God wants us to live. We need God’s grace.
One of the speakers at the conference was talking about how the world is crazy right now. He was talking about how the devil is having a hay day with the world and that sin is running rampant. He also said we shouldn’t be afraid because where sin increased, grace abounded all the more. God’s grace is alive and well and is within all of us. We received a word of prophecy almost six months ago in our prayer group and I think it fits well with what we are talking about today. Let me read it to you:
"How often I tell you my people to listen. To listen to my word, to not harden your hearts, but to listen to my voice. How often I tell you parables, parables that compare to life, to the life you live. You look around you and you think the world has never been in worse shape than it is now. For you that is true for others that have come before you they felt the same. But the world is in the best shape it has ever been in because I was born into this world and I gave my life for each one of you and redeemed you and set you free. So do not look at the world, look at me and do not listen to the world, listen to me, to my voice. I am faithfulness itself and I am faithful from the beginning until the end of time. You have nothing to fear. You have NOTHING to fear. You have a grand and glorious God who has fought the battle and won the victory. Listen to what I tell you. Do not look at the world, look at me. Open your hearts, listen to my Word, and I give you life.
Grace is abounding today just as it has so many times before. God knows all that will happen. He is not surprised by any of it. He will give us grace according to our need. God knows what we need and when we need it. We can trust Him to take care of us. I think it is important to know what is going on in the world. I think we should be walking through life with our eyes wide open, and at the same time I don’t think we need to be scared of what is coming. God is prepared, and He is preparing us. It can be daunting to see all the craziness that surrounds us, all the mayhem. There is so much we could worry about and yet God is calling us not to worry. He is calling us to trust him and to rely on His grace. I believe the reason we are seeing so many people that God is using in miraculous ways right now is precisely because of all the evil in the world right now. God’s grace is all around us and we just have to rely on that instead of relying on the world.
God is telling us in the word of prophecy that He gave to my prayer group that we need to not look at the world, but look at him. He does not want us listening to the world, but He wants us listening to His voice. He is telling us we have nothing to FEAR, so why aren’t we listening to Him? Why are we so fearful and anxious all the time? Why are we so worried about the future when we know the ending to the story? We know what happened, death was defeated, sin was defeated, the enemy was defeated. It doesn’t matter what it looks like here on earth. It doesn’t matter who seems to be winning. God has already won the war and He as already defeated the enemy. I will leave you with the Lord’s words today, “You have nothing to fear!”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this podcast today. Lord, we know you are amazing and we know you have already won the war, so why are we so anxious and scared. We ask you to take this anxiety from us Lord. We ask you to fill us with your grace and help us to live the life you want us to live. We are so grateful for the grace you have already given us and we ask you for more Lord. Lord, we ask you to help us to see the world through your lens. Helps us to see what you see. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you haven’t signed up for the retreat yet, please do so soon, time is running out and you don’t want to miss out on all the fun! I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are and so do I! Have a blessed day and may the grace and favor of our Lord Jesus Christ be upon you.
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in April 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Unbind yourselves from your past ways. Although this world may try to bind you, do not be afraid. I have unbound you from sin and death so that you may walk with me in my kingdom.”
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What Does Grace Even Mean?
Titus 2:11-12 “God’s marvelous grace has manifested in person, bringing salvation for everyone. This same grace teaches us how to live each day as we turn our backs on ungodliness and indulgent lifestyles, and it equips us to live self-controlled, upright, godly lives in this present age.”
I had someone reach out to me and ask me about God’s grace. I talk about it a lot and so I thought I would take the next few days and look at what Scripture has to say about God’s grace. The verse above is a great place to start. It begins with God’s marvelous grace has manifested in person brining salvation for everyone. Jesus was God’s grace manifested in person. Jesus came to bring salvation to all of us. He died on the cross so that we would be saved. He took all of our sins, all of our shame, all that is not right and brought it to the cross with Him. He healed us from our sinful nature. He saved us from ourselves. He set us free from the hold the enemy had over us ever since sin entered this world.
He saved us and set us free and yet it is our job to walk in that freedom. How does one do that? How do we walk in our freedom? The second part of today’s verse addresses that. This same grace that brought us salvation also teaches us how to live each day as we turn our backs on ungodliness and indulgent lifestyles. If Jesus was the grace that set us free then how can that same grace teach us how to live our lives? Jesus is not longer on earth. He went to be with the Father. In John 14:18 Jesus said, “I promise that I will never leave you helpless or abandon you as orphans—I will come back to you!” Then in verse 26 it says, “But when the Father sends the Spirit of Holiness, the One like me who sets you free, he will teach you all things in my name. And he will inspire you to remember every word that I’ve told you.”
Jesus was here on earth and yet His time teaching us was not very long. He did a lot of teaching while He was here. He gave a lot of hard teachings that shaped the way we understand God and what God actually wants from us. He also did a lot of signs and wonders while he was here teaching. However, His main purpose for coming was to set us free. His main purpose was to redeem us so we no longer have to be separate from the Father. Once He did that, His job was over and He went to be with the Father. However, you can see in John 14:18 & 26 that He did not leave us alone to our own devices. He asked His Father to send the Holy Spirit to dwell within us.
The Holy Spirit was sent to us to help us walk in our freedom. He was sent to us to teach us all the things that we need to know and to inspire us to remember all that Jesus taught us. I don’t know exactly how to define grace. However, I do know that the verse above says, “This same grace teaches us how to live each day as we turn our backs on ungodliness and indulgent lifestyles, and it equips us to live self-controlled, upright, godly lives in this present age.” I wonder if Grace is the Holy Spirit?
The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) defines grace as a free and undeserved gift from God that enables people to respond to God’s call to become children of God. The CCC also describes grace as a participation in the life of God. The CCC distinguishes between two types of grace. One is habitual grace: A permanent disposition to act and live in accordance with God’s call. Second is actual grace: God’s intervention, such as when someone is tempted to do something wrong, but God sends actual grace to help them choose what is right.
It sounds to me like grace is a power that God gives us to resist what is bad and to do what is right. Who doesn’t need more of that in their life? It also sounds like grace teaches us right from wrong. We don’t need to look to the world for that, as the world often teaches us the opposite of what God teaches us. Isn’t it great to know that we don’t have to remember everything on our own? Isn’t great to know that when we aren’t sure what to do, which is the right thing to do and what is the wrong thing to do then we can rely on the Holy Spirit and God’s grace to show us what to do.
I find it comforting to know that I don’t have to do the right thing in my own power. In personal development, you often hear a lot about a person’s willpower. Do they have the willpower to stick to the diet? Do they have enough willpower to keep going to the gym? It’s all about a person’s willpower. I love that it is not all up to me. I know that I am weak and if we are just relying on my power, not much will get done. Yet, we aren’t just relying on our own power. We have the power of the one who raised Jesus from the dead living inside of us. This power was given to us so that we could be taught right from wrong. This power was given to us so we could overcome our challenges, our weaknesses, and our chains.
Jesus died on the cross to redeem us. Then He sent the Holy Spirit to be with us to help us walk in that freedom. That means we are no longer captives. We are no longer slaves to sin. We, you and me, have the power to stand up to sin and say we will no longer be letting it run our lives. This is because of God’s grace. This is because God wants us to live in the freedom he sacrificed so much to achieve.
I don’t know if grace is different than the power of the Holy Spirit living inside of us or not. I don’t know that it matters. I do know that grace is freely given to us by God. That means that we don’t have to earn it. We don’t have to do all the right things to get it. We don’t have to be strong or perfect to get grace. Grace is given to us freely because we need it. Grace is something you can request from God. Grace is something you can rely on. You can trust that if you need the grace, then God will give you the grace. You can also trust you already have that power living inside of you because we all have the Holy Spirit living inside of us. That is the same power Jesus had inside of Him. Next time you feel like you aren’t sure what to do, look inward and ask the Holy Spirit to guide you and teach you. I simply say, “Come Holy Spirit Come.” You can also ask God for the grace to do the right thing. Next time you feel like you can’t overcome the enemy, remember about the power you have inside of you and all the grace God wants to give you and call upon it. We are no longer slaves to sin. Jesus died to set us free, lets live in that freedom!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to understand more about your grace. Help us to lean in and rely on your grace more. Help us to be ok with being weak because when we are you weak you are strong. Help us to rely on the Holy Spirit to teach us right from wrong instead of this world. Rain down your graces on us, Lord, not because we are greedy, but because we are needy! We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Remember I am hosting a retreat from Oct. 11-13th. If you would like to join me you are running out of time to register. I have to the let the retreat house know a count of how many are attending in three weeks. There is a link below if you would like more information. I know going to new things can be scary. I promise you won’t regret going to this retreat. Also, retreats aren’t just for super holy people. There is nothing you need to know before coming on this retreat. I promise you won’t be the only person there who things they aren’t holy enough, religious enough, worthy enough to be there. Everyone is welcome and will feel right at home. CLICK HERE for retreat info.
I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day and may the grace and favor of our Lord Jesus Christ be upon you.
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in April 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “You must come, and once you come, and I share with you, go out and share with others. Make me known in love. I count on each one of you, my children. Do not delay to come.”
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Today’s witnesses are from Matthew West’s website called popwe.org. If you don’t know who Matthew West is, he is a singer, songwriter, and storyteller. This website is for the non-profit that he has with his father, a pastor. Matthew and his father encourage people to share their stories. They have various categories of stories. Today, I chose three testimonies from the Broken Chapter Category. We all have times in our lives when things don’t go as we thought they would. I think we have all had tragedy strike in one way or another. Some are worse than others but I don’t think anyone has had a tragedy-free life. The witnesses today are no different. They have had some truly terrible things happen and yet they are able to testify to how God was with them through it. Often, we can hear our own story in someone else’s story. When we listen to others tell their story, it helps us see that we are not alone. When we hear how God worked in their situation, it gives us hope that He will work in ours, too! I pray when you hear these testimonies, you get the faith and hope to believe that miracles can happen in your situation also. I pray you know that God is there with you, and if you invite Him into your situation, He can help.
Jasmyn: Matthew, I loved getting your letter years ago when I wrote to you! Your music is so awesome! “Me On Your Mind” touches my heart because I was in a near-death experience 2 years ago when I was hit by a car crossing the street with my long white cane since I’m blind and Jesus had me on His mind. I suffered some injuries such as a fractured pelvis, abrasions on my stomach, arms, and legs from where she dragged me on the pavement, a fractured wrist, that were non-life threatening, along with high blood pressure and fatty liver. I had to stay in the hospital for a day to make sure my injuries weren’t life-threatening. I was lying in my hospital bed asking Jesus why did this older lady decide to drive if she didn’t know how to and why me? I had anger towards this older lady for taking away part of my independence, since walking was my only thing I could do because of my visual impairment from glaucoma which means I can’t drive at all. The hospital said I had to be on bed rest and get physical therapy to strengthen my pelvis since it was fractured. I was depressed and angry at this woman for putting me in this situation because I couldn’t go anywhere according to the doctor’s orders . I felt worthless, “Great! Not only can I not drive if I want to get out of the house, now, I can’t walk around independently because I have PTSD that this will happen. Again!”
I was even asking Jesus, “why did you rescue me? I am worthless now that I can’t walk around and my family has to drive me everywhere because of this accident. What good am I now that I’m blind and physically impaired now?” But I could feel Jesus telling me, “Jasmyn, there is a reason why you didn’t die from being hit by a car, you have a mission to complete on earth which is helping children who are blind and visually impaired to be everything they’re supposed to be through me. I will use you to do this and your story of your accident to help other people in your shoes to get to know me.” I’m glad that I listened to the voice of my Lord and Savior who rescued me because He wasn’t done with me yet. I have been blessed with a new church where I volunteer with children teaching them about Jesus, I am a volunteer Braille teacher at my blind center here in Pennsylvania, I go to the gym and library to take care of my physical and mental health, and I’m in grad school studying to be a teacher for the visually impaired. Last year, my church let me share my experience with God about my accident. My speech touched a lot of hearts in church and I even had some people that were crying. I have had the opportunity to share my story with my blind center to get donations to make it better. My pastor has told me that my accident is a great opportunity to get more people to Jesus and tell people what He could do for them like He has done for me! I feel like I’m living. I feel like I’m letting Jesus use my story for His glory!
Susan: My story is a story of healing and restoration. I accepted Christ at the age of 19 and floated along until I was three days from a divorce. The Lord restored our marriage and we have been married for 35 years. He called my husband to preach and we went to seminary and have been in the ministry since 1998. We have been hurt multiple times by different church members but we have gotten back up.
My mother passed away in 2018 and that tilted my world in a way that I never could have imagined. If only I would have known that my world would totally fall off the axis when my 6 month old granddaughter was shot and killed by her own mother who then shot and killed herself. My son was on the phone with his wife when it happened. I did not see the Lord through that time but I know He was there holding my family up. I see Him in every single moment of my story and I know that no matter what He is there.
It has taken months and months of counseling and anger and tears and crying out to the Lord to get to this point but I have no doubt that He is all I need. He is my story and everything I go through is for His Glory!! Thank you Jesus!
Chloe: My story is also the story of my town. We are a small town of around 1,500. A few miles away, a small village sits. No one would have ever heard of us, unless you had a reason to hear about us. I have always had a fear of storms, although it was getting better. The evening of April 4th, 2023, I heard my parents discussing the chance of storms. I didn’t think anything of it, as I slept safely in the basement until 3:30 A.M when my family came rushing down the stairs, the dreaded alarm sound ringing. Upon further investigation, a tornado warning had been issued. A tornado had been spotted in the village, just miles from my house, and looked to be heading straight for my town. It missed us, but hit three small villages. Grassy, Scopus, and Glen Allen, MO. 5 people died, all from Glen Allen.
Jesus worked in many ways from our town, broken from this disaster. Despite the hurt, people came to Christ. My church helped to rebuild, to clean up the debris, to fix the broken villages, as well as spreading Jesus’s name. But the story isn’t done. On August 14th, 2023, the creek that runs through Glen Allen and my town flooded. Houses filled with water within inches of the ceiling fans. No one was hurt, thankfully, though there were a few close calls. Now, this mess we had just fixed was broken once more. We’re still working, 2 months later. Still praying. Still believing that God will help us through this. Despite the hardships, God has worked through these duo disasters, bringing people back to church, back to Him. We have touched lives that might have never heard Christ because of it. I have found a renewed faith because of the work that has happened because of God.
Thank you all for sharing your testimonies. When we share how God is working in our lives it helps others. It is not easy to be vulnerable and share about a time when things were so hard. We appreciate you opening up and sharing you struggles. It is really important that we all know we are not alone. Thank you!
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He Sees You As Holy, Flawless, and Restored
Colossians 1:21-22 “Even though you were once distant from him, living in the shadows of your evil thoughts and actions, he reconnected you back to himself. He released his supernatural peace to you through the sacrifice of his own body as the sin-payment on your behalf so that you would dwell in his presence. And now there is nothing between you and Father God, for he sees you as holy, flawless, and restored."
There was no way that I could read a verse like the one above and not share it with you. This is something I think God wants us all to know. We usually assume the opposite. We believe when God looks at us all He sees is our mistakes and our failures. We are sure that when He looks at us He finds us unworthy and not enough. How many times have we thought that? How often have we thought negatively about ourselves and assumed God felt the same way? We all do it. Yet this verse says something very different.
I love the word choice in this verse. First, it says, “Even though you were once distant from him, living in the the shadows of your evil thoughts and actions, He reconnected you back to himself.” I love this part because it emphasizes our role in our redemption. It doesn’t say that if we do everything right and fix our relationship with the Lord, He will welcome us back. It says He reconnected you back to himself. God does the hard part. All we need to do is say yes and let Him in.
We don’t need to fix ourselves. This is where we go wrong a lot of the time. We want to do it all on our own. We want to fix ourselves up all nice and pretty before we come to the Lord, and what He is telling us is that He already sees us all fixed up and beautiful. The verse says, “He released his supernatural peace to you through the sacrifice of his own body as the sin-payment on your behalf so that you would dwell in his presence.” Due to original sin we were no longer allowed to dwell in the Lord’s presence. Now, because of His sacrifice we are allowed to. His sacrifice made us worthy. Are we going to accept that worthiness, or are we going to continue to tell the Lord that His sacrifice wasn’t enough to make us worthy?
The last part of the verse says, “And now there is nothing between you and Father God, for he sees you as holy, flawless, and restored.” This part blows my mind. I know the Lord loves me. I know He thinks I am special. I know this because I take the time to sit and talk with Him. You could know this too if you take the time to listen to all He wants to say to you. However, reading this verse in this translation hit me in a new way.
God, the all-powerful, the King of Kings, and the Lord of Lords, sees me as holy, flawless, and restored. Can you believe that? I imagine not. I imagine that is not what the enemy wants us to believe. He whispers lies in our ears all the time about how unworthy and not enough we are. He tells us God couldn’t possibly love us or forgive us because what we did is too bad, it’s too much. The devil is a liar. God sacrificed his only son for you! Jesus died on the cross for you! Are you telling me there is something you could have done that is too big for this sacrifice to cover?
There is a song called Flawless by Mercy me and I think the lyrics really get across what the Lord is telling us today. Here are the lyrics:
There's got to be more
Than going back and forth
From doing right to doing wrong
Cause we were taught that's who we are
Come on get in line right behind me
You along with everybody
Thinking there's worth in what you do
This is what we think. We think we need to be good enough to earn God’s love, to earn his mercy and his forgiveness. We think we need to fix ourselves. We need to clean ourselves us and get all pretty before we come to the Lord. This is hard on our own and we do good for a bit and then we mess up again. As the song says, there has to be more than this back and forth. Then the song says:
Then like a hero who takes the stage when we're
On the edge of our seats saying it's too late
Well let me introduce you to amazing grace
Amazing grace, this is what we don’t count on. This is what we many not even know a lot about. I am going to be doing a series on grace soon. I will be using scripture verses to explain what grace even is and why we should all know all about it. I love this part of the song because it reminds us that even when we think it is too late, it is never too late for God. No matter how far gone we think we are, we are never too far gone for God. There is no darkness to dark for Him. There is no place to distant for Him. Wherever you are, however far away you think you are listen to the words of the verse above, “he reconnected you back to himself.” Just call out and He will reconnect you back to Himself! The song goes on to say,
No matter the bumps
No matter the bruises
No matter the scars
Still the truth is
The cross has made
The cross has made you flawless
I know you think I don’t understand. I know you think you have too many scars and too many bumps and bruises to be redeemed. You absolutely believe that God looks at some people and sees them as “holy, flawless, and restored.” However, He knows the truth about you and that is that you are too damaged, to far gone. This is the enemy lying to you. He tells you these lies because He knows you will believe them. He tells you these lies because He knows the truth is too crazy to believe. The truth is that God loves you, scars in all. He allowed those scars so because they made you stronger. He allowed those scars because He knew he could use them to make you into the person you are today. He loves the person you are today.
He doesn’t see the damaged person you see when you look in the mirror. He sees someone who has weathered the storm and is still standing. He sees someone who has had so much trauma in his or her life and yet is still persevering. He looks at you, yes you, and sees his son or daughter whom He loves so much. This scripture verse gives us all the proof we need to see that God doesn’t see us as broken, He sees us as redeemed! The last verse of the song says:
No matter the hurt
Or how deep the wound is
No matter the pain
Still the truth is
The cross has made
The cross has made you flawless
I know this is hard to believe. It is contrary to what the world wants us to believe. The world wants us to think we have to earn everything and that we are only loved and adored when we deserve it. When we do things that earn these feelings or this respect. The enemy tells us the opposite as well because he knows it is easier to believe. He knows it doesn’t take any effort to believe we are worthless and not enough. He has convinced the world to reinforce this over and over again with the media.
However, God’s ways are not our ways. He never meant for us to be like the rest of the world. He created us to be set apart. He created us to live in this world, but not be of this world. He sacrificed His son for us and all we need to do is accept this amazing grace that He lavishes upon on. All we need to do is allow Him to come and reconnect us back to Him. I want to leave you with the verse today as it is powerful and I hope you write it down somewhere and read it often. I hope any time you start to feel like God doesn’t like you, or that He feels you are unworthy or not enough, you will read this verse and be reminded of the truth of how God really sees you!
“Even though you were once distant from him, living in the shadows of your evil thoughts and actions, he reconnected you back to himself. He released his supernatural peace to you through the sacrifice of his own body as the sin-payment on your behalf so that you would dwell in his presence. And now there is nothing between you and Father God, for he sees you as holy, flawless, and restored.”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone listening to this episode. Lord, I ask that you help each one of them understand how loved they are by you. I ask you that you help them move this information from their head to their heart. I ask that you help us to see ourselves through your eyes. I ask that you help us to know how you really see us. I ask that you help us to understand your amazing grace more! We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I am happy to be back safely from my trip to Scotland. I am sad I had to come home without Noah, but I know this will be an amazing adventure for him! I am grateful we ran into another young man studying over there while we were at a store. They are both engineering majors and both in the same dorm, so I felt a bit better leaving. I just sent out the September newsletter with a photo of Noah and me with all the details about our trip and the various ways I can help you grow in your faith. If you are not on the list to get my newsletter you can click on the link below or email me at Catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching and I can send you that newsletter and you can stay up to date with all that is going on in my world. I want to remind everyone that the retreat is coming up soon. If you have not registered please do so as I have to give the count of how many are coming to the retreat center a week ahead of time. There is a link below for more information on the retreat as well! I look forward to bringing you a Witness tomorrow for Witness Wednesday. Remember Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day and may the grace and mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ be upon you!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in March 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My dear children, I would love for you to see yourself as I see you. I have forgiven you. Now it's time to forgive yourselves. I have made you whole, righteous, pure, and given you dignity. See yourself as I see you, full of love, joy, compassion. See yourself as I see you.”
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Dance Like No One Is Watching
2 Samuel 6:14-16 “And David danced before the Lord with all his might; and David was belted with a linen ephod. So David and all the house of Israel brought up the ark of the Lord with shouting, and with the sound of the horn.”
I like this verse because it shows how happy David was that the Arc was coming back home. It says that David danced before the Lord with all of his might; and that David was belted with a linen ephod. I am not sure how much you know about David, so let me give you a quick recap. David is the King. He is usually dressed as a King in splendid garments. However, in order to bring the Arc of the Covenant back into Jerusalem David had set aside his royal robes and was “wearing a linen ephod”—a clear indication that he was not naked. The ephod David wore was a garment usually reserved for priests and those ministering before the Lord. As David led the procession of the ark into the city, he humbly laid aside his royal garments and worshiped the Lord, in ecstatic joy, as the representative of God’s “kingdom of priests.”
There is so much in these 3 short verses. First, David was dancing before the Lord with all his might. When is the last time you danced in front of the Lord with all your might? When is the last time you did anything in front of the Lord with all your might? What amazes me is that David was the leader, he was the king and yet he humbled himself and set aside his royal robes to welcome the Arc of the Covenant back into the city. David was the king and yet he didn’t care what others though of him. He didn’t care that he was wearing very little clothing. He didn’t care that he might look silly dancing around like a fool. In fact, in a later verse one of his wives sees him leaping and dancing before the Lord; and she despised him in her heart. When he got home she called him on his behavior and he didn’t try and defend it, he didn’t feel he needed to explain himself to her, he simply said in 2 Samuel 6:21, “It was before the Lord, who chose me above your father, and above all his house, to appoint me as prince over Israel, the people of the Lord—and I will make merry before the Lord.” He is basically saying that he doesn’t care what she thinks. The Lord has done amazing things for him, so he will praise him any way he likes.
I wonder what it would be like to have that kind of courage. Actually I don’t think it took courage for David. I don’t think it even occurred to him to stop and think about what others would think. I bet his love for God was so great, he couldn’t help but be filled with joy! I love that David was filled with joy. I have heard it said that martyrs, those who die for the faith, don’t really have a choice. Their faith is so strong, their love and belief is so strong that the option to stay alive as long as they denounce their faith, is not an option at all for them. They couldn’t do it. I think it similar with David and the way he worships. I think his heart is over flowing with joy of the Lord and so the option to “tone down” his praise, it not really an option for him. It is not something that would enter his mind. I don’t think he is thinking of others at all. I think his eyes are fixed on God and that is all he is thinking about when he is praising.
I wish this was me. I wish I could freely praise God without worrying what the person next to me is thinking. I wish I could just throw my hands up in the air or dance around the room without the fear of being judged. I pray for a holy boldness all the time. However, maybe I need to pray for a deeper faith, or a less distracted faith? Maybe I need to pray for God to help me keep my eyes fixed on Him so I am not thinking of what others might be thinking. It seems crazy to me that I would care more about what other people think than I would about what God thinks. I know God would be smiling down at me if I was to let loose and just worship with a childlike sense of abandonment. If I know God would be smiling, why do I care what others will think? This is my great mystery. This is the thing I keep trying to tell myself and yet I still get nervous about what others will think.
I am working on this and I hope to get to David’s level of praise someday. I pray I will be able to just let the Holy Spirit lead me however He wants to. I pray I will be able to give up that control and just follow the Spirit as He leads me in praise. I pray I will have so much joy, like David did, that I can’t help but dance and leap for joy. I pray I have so much joy I can’t contain it. Sometimes I stand in the back of the church during praise and worship in my class. This way I don’t have to worry about being judged because everyone else’s eyes are straight ahead focused on Jesus. I don’t know why I think people will judge me, I am not judging them, my eyes are fixed on Jesus too.
The last verse says, “So David and all the house of Israel brought up the ark of the Lord with shouting, and with the sound of the horn.” This is another thing I have been working on over these last few years. I am learning to praise God out loud. At prayer group I still use the praise sheets. They are sheets of paper with a bunch of praise sayings on them. When I first started going I had no idea how to praise and so these sheets were very helpful. I still find them helpful, although I also think of them as a crutch sometimes. I now know that Jesus talks to me. I know how to praise Jesus and so sometimes when I use these sheets I think I am using it as a crutch instead of listening to see what praise things the Holy Spirit brings to mind. I like all the things these sheets say and so I keep using them because I figure I am still new to praising out loud. However, sometimes I do try to “wing it” so that I can practice doing it on my own as well. I like both ways, but I prefer to read the sheets until I have more of them memorized.
The thing that stands out in my mind the most about these 3 verses is the joy of David. He was filled with so much joy it spilled out of him. He danced so freely. I just got a sense that the Lord was saying, “He wasn’t worried about what others thought of him because He knew who’s he is. He knows that he belongs to the Lord God almighty and if God is pleased, then that is all that matters. What can we do this week to be a little more childlike in our praise and worship?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all of those listening to this episode today. Lord we ask you to help us all to approach praise and worship in a child like manner with no fear of judgement. We ask you to help us care more about what you think of us than what other people think of us. We ask you to fill us with the joy that David had. We ask you to fill us with so much joy that it spills out of us and onto others. We love you Lord, you are amazing. You are worthy of all our praise. You are the King of kings and Lord of lords. We thank you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Remember Jesus loves you, and so do I. Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in March 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, you judge yourself as little, broken, sinful, useless, and you are. And it's a wonderful gift because it makes you rely not on yourself but on me. For I am great and loving and powerful and present and working. I am in you. Let me do my work.”
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Matthew 10:7-8 “As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Cure the sick; raise the dead; cleanse those with a skin disease; cast out demons. You received without payment; give without payment.”
I saw this verse this morning and I thought it was a great verse for today. As you can tell, from a lot of the verses I have been sharing with you lately, the class I am taking talks a lot about the supernatural gifts of the Holy Spirit. I love to share this information with you because I am not sure how many of us really know or believe that the Holy Spirit is still working in a supernatural way in this world. I am sure we all believe in the signs and wonders that occurred when Jesus walked the earth and the ones the apostles saw and did. However, it seems most people do not believe these things are still happening today, or that they have been happening ever since Pentecost.
Through the ages there have been times when the supernatural signs and wonders were less and less. However, there was never a time where there were’t any signs and wonders. If you read about the Saints you will see about the miracles they performed all throughout the ages. I think because the Saints are attributed to a lot of the miracles that we hear about we assume that only Saints can perform miracles. Do you want to know a secret about Saints? They weren’t always Saints. At one point every saint there is was just a regular human like you and me. They didn’t always know they were going to be a Saint. You may be on your way to Sainthood and you might not even know it. All they knew is that they loved Jesus and wanted to do all they could to follow Him. Do you love Jesus, if so you are well on your way!
In the verse above Jesus is telling us what we need to do. Remember the Bible is a living document, what we are reading in the Bible is just as much for us today as it was for the apostles 2000 years ago. Jesus is telling you and me to go and proclaim the good news, “The kingdom of heaven has come near.” People need to hear this, even today. Today the enemy wants to fill us with worry and anxiety. He wants us to spend our time looking around to the world and seeing what a mess it is. He wants us to look around the world and feel like things are hopeless because that is what it looks like right now. There is so much violence, so much hatred, so much craziness. It is easy to get lost in worry and anxiety when we are looking at the world. This is why we need to affix our eyes to Jesus. He is our savior, He is our peace. It is only when we take our eyes off of Him that we get wrapped up in worry and even fear.
It seems more and more people are giving into fear and anxiety these days. They are taking their eyes off of Jesus and turning them to the news, to social media and to the newspapers. We need to be proclaiming the good news of Jesus. We need to be helping people turn their eyes back to Jesus and what better way to do that than to show them signs and wonders. Signs and wonders will not necessarily be enough to change the hearts towards Jesus, however, signs and wonders might get their attention and once we have their attention we can tell them all about Jesus’ love. I think a lot of people are disillusioned with the Church these days. They see all the division and the scandal and they think that is all the church is. The Church is made up of people and since we are a fallen people there will always be people that don’t do as they are called to do. This isn’t a reason to take our eyes of Jesus, if anything it should be more of a reason to keep our eyes fixed on Him so He can help us not make those same mistakes.
Be honest, when I mention signs and wonders, do you instantly count yourself out? Are you thinking the Saints could do them because they were Saints, but that isn’t something us ordinary humans can do? Me too! I used to think like this too. Well, actually, if I am being honest I still have doubts, but they lessen with each step out in faith that I take. If you are like me you don’t have doubts that God could do miracles through you, God is God, He can do anything. However, when I start to think of God doing signs and wonders through me I think, “Why me?” The enemy gets in my mind and he tells me God wouldn’t use me. He tells me I am too boring, too weak, too sinful, not holy enough, not good enough and so on. The thing is, Jesus doesn’t usually use those who are perfect. He didn’t come to find “perfect” people to start His church. He used 12 people who most of us wouldn’t have picked. One of the reasons the Gospels start with the lineage of Jesus is to show us that Jesus did not come from a perfect line of people. There were plenty of people in Jesus’ lineage that weren’t holy enough, weren’t good enough, weren’t even close to perfect by the world’s standards, and yet they were chosen out of everyone to be part of the lineage of Christ.
Besides proclaiming the good news, Jesus is calling us to “Cure the sick; raise the dead; cleanse those with a skin disease; cast out demons.” This is a pretty tall order. However, Jesus is not going to call us to do something and then not equip us for the call. John 14:12 says, “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.” When Jesus went to His Father, he sent us the Holy Spirit and this is the power we need to do even greater works than Jesus did. It says in this passage “whoever believes in me” this is a tricky statement. I say that because the faith required to do signs and wonders is not something we can manufacture on our own. That type of faith is a gift from the Holy Spirit.
This type of faith can be built up by reading the scriptures and seeing all the signs and wonders Jesus and the apostles performed. It can also be built up by witnessing or hearing about miracles that are happening today. The more you witness these miracles the more your faith will be built up. This is another reason for doing Witness Wednesdays. When you hear about how God is still working miracles today, it helps you believe it could happen in your life. When you see it happening to regular, every day people like you and me, you start to think, “If it could happen to them, why couldn’t it happen to me.”
There is a documentary called “Fearless” and this is what the executive producer said about the movie, “We have come to realize it is more than a movie, it is more of a movement that the Holy Spirit is using to spark an awakening among ordinary Catholics, like you and me, to be able to live their Catholic Faith in an extraordinary way, in an extraordinary, fearless way. It has launched thousands and thousands of people on their own God adventures. You can watch this documentary for free by going to fearlessdocumentary.net (click here) You can also watch it on Youtube (click here). I will put links for both in the show notes. If you get a chance check it out.
I am going to continue to talk about signs and wonders and my prayer is that something I say will be the one thing you need to hear to get you started on your journey to discovering what signs and wonders God wants to give you. God wants to call us to greater things. No matter who you are, where you are, how old you are, God has more for you. That will look different for each one of us, but He is calling you. Abraham was 100 when He has Issac. Whatever age you are, you are not too old to build the kingdom of God. However young you are, you are not too young to build the kingdom of God. There is young boy from Italy that was only 16 when he died and He is blessed and is being considered for sainthood. This is the first millennial too venerated. God can use you for His purposes, all you have to do is say yes. I know it may feel scary to say yes to something when you don’t understand it completely, but if you say yes to the Lord, He will use you in amazing ways.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to the episode today. Lord, we are so grateful for all the sign and wonders you have done and are still doing. We ask you to show us how you want to use us Lord. We ask you to give us the strength to say yes to you even if we don’t understand what we are saying yes too. We ask you to give us the courage to step out in faith and trust that we are doing what you called us to do. Lord, if we can’t hear your call we ask that you help open our ears, our hearts and our minds to whatever you are calling us to. We ask that you help us be open to you and your will. Confirm our will to your will Lord. We love you, you are amazing. We are so grateful for all you do for us and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in March 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Know that I delight in you, my children, that I love you so very much. It's the time to grow. It's the time to take a risk. It's a time to take a leap of faith in me.”
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God Will Make A Way Where There Is No Way
John 16:33 “I have said this to you, so that in me you may have peace. In the world you face persecution. But take courage; I have conquered the world!”
This is something that we can all take heart in knowing. We will all face persecution, but Jesus has conquered this world. We don’t have to worry that the persecution will be the end of us. Sometimes it feels like it will. There are times when the persecution seems like it is too much, like we are drowning and we can’t possible come up for air. This is when it is important to remember this verse. The enemy will definitely try to make you feel like he is winning. He will make you feel like you are in a losing situation and no matter what happens you can’t win.
This is actually his specialty. He loves to make us feel like we are in a hopeless situation. He whispers in our ear that there is no way out. No matter what you do, you hurt someone, you lose someone, you end up getting hurt, whatever it is. I have had several friends that have been in this type of situation lately. When we are in those situations the enemy may be right, there is no way out that we can see. It is those last words that I want you to focus on. No way out that we can see. The thing is, we don’t have to see a way out. God can see things that we can’t see. He can make a way where there is no way. God is really good at making a way in times when people thought for sure there wasn’t a way.
I am sure when the Israelites were leaving Egypt and they were being pursued by the Egyptian army they thought there was no way out. The army was gaining on them and all they saw in front of them was the Red Sea. There was no possible outcome that they could see where they lived. If they tried to cross the Red Sea they would drown. If they turned back they would be caught and surly be killed for fleeing. It seemed like they were in an impossible situation. However, God made a way where there was no way. In Exodus 14:15-18 it says, “Then the Lord said to Moses, “Why do you cry out to me? Tell the Israelites to go forward. But you lift up your staff, and stretch out your hand over the sea and divide it, that the Israelites may go into the sea on dry ground. Then I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians so that they will go in after them; and so I will gain glory for myself over Pharaoh and all his army, his chariots, and his chariot drivers. And the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord, when I have gained glory for myself over Pharaoh, his chariots, and his chariot drivers.”
I am 100% sure that there wasn’t a single person in that group of people that saw that way out. God can make a way where there is no way. Maybe you are in a situation where you can’t see a way out, hang in there, God has a plan. Maybe you are in a situation where there is no good choice, God will show you which to choose if you ask Him. If you are stuck in a situation and you can’t see a way out, I urge you to read Isaiah 43. I found Isaiah 43:15-16, “I am the Lord, your Holy One, the Creator of Israel, your King. Thus says the Lord, who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters,” when I was searching for a verse about God making a way where there wasn’t one. However, when I went to the verse I decided to read the whole chapter and it is really good. It talks about various things that the Lord has done for us over the years. Isaiah 43:19 says, “I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.”
The Bible is full of stories where God did the impossible, where He did something that no one saw coming. Remember Daniel in the lion’s den? Daniel continued to pray to our Lord, even when it was outlawed and so he was thrown in the Lion’s pit. God sent and angel to keep the Lion’s mouths closed so they wouldn’t eat Daniel. This can be found in Daniel 6. There was also Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego that refused to bow to King Nebuchadnessar’s golden statue and were thrown in the fiery furnace. God sent an angel into the furnace to keep them from burning up. This can be found in Daniel 3. I am sure no-one involved in these two circumstances could have seen these two outcomes. However, Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego all had the courage to stay in the fight. They had the courage to trust God would get them out of the situation even when they couldn’t see how. Can we be more like this guys? Can we keep doing the next right thing, even when we don’t see how it will all turn out? Can we keep going when it seems like all is lost?
This bible verse reminds us that all is not lost. Yes, the enemy might be making your life miserable, just he was with Job. Remember Job? He lost everything. His crops, his animals, his children, and eventually his health. He could not see any way forward that wasn’t filled with misery. And yet, he stayed in the fight. He didn’t give up on God. If you ever feel like your life can’t get any worse and you are sure that no-one understands what you are going through, read the book of Job. Talk with Job, he understands what you are going through. He understands what if feels like to suffer day in and day out with no relief. He knows what it feels like to lose everything. He will understand. And if you are struggling to see any light at the end of your tunnel, read the ending of the book of Job. Spoiler Alert, Job doesn’t end up dying in his misery. The story ends with Job receiving his wealth back several fold, having another 10 children and living for another 140 years. The enemy doesn’t win? Why not? Because God has already conquered this world. He is in charge, He is the winner.
You may feel beaten down, but you will not be broken. You may feel as though you have been stuck in this impossible situation for a long time and you see no way out. Hang in there, God will make a way out. You may even wonder if God is hearing you or if God is there with you. He is. He is always right there with you. He will not always take our struggles away from us or even prevent us from our struggles and we learned yesterday why that is. In Romans 5:3-5 we learned that our struggles produce endurance, and endurance produces character and character produces hope. We need to have struggles in our lives. This is how we grow, this is how we learn. This is how we learn to lean into and rely on God. Think about the really great times in your lives. Did you feel really close to the Lord? Did you rely on Him and thank Him for all that good that you have? If you did, awesome! I bet you would be in the minority. Many times when things are good, we forget about God. We think we don’t need to rely on Him because all is going well. Often times we feel the closest to God when we are in a place of suffering because this is when all other comforts are stripped away and we remember to turn to Him. If you remember nothing else from this episode today I hope you remember God can make a way where there is not way. You are not defeated, keep going, this struggle will not overcome you! You can do this! You are strong with the Lord by your side. Philippians 4:13 “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to know in the depths of our heart that you can make a way where there is no way. Help us to trust that you have already conquered this world. We will not be defeated. When we forget help us to remember these incredible stories of those that came before us that trusted you would save them when they didn’t see a way. Help us to not listen to the enemy who tells us that we are not strong enough, that there is no way out and that you will not save us. Help us to only listen to you Lord. Give every person listening to this episode a desire to read Your Word and find comfort in it. You have done so much for us Lord and we are so grateful. We thank you for giving us strength when we have none. You are so wonderful. You have done the impossible time and time again and we couldn’t be more in awe if we tried. We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in March 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I am the font of life, my children. Draw closer to me and drink of my rich treasures that I give each and every day. Just the fact that you wake up is a bonus. Think of me during the day. Spend time with me. The more time you spend with me, the more you will grow.”
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Today’s guest speaker is a very special guest because he is my dad, Pierre D. Pierre is a deacon at his church, he is a husband and father to 11 children and numerous grandchildren and great grandchildren. My mom and dad raised us all in the Catholic faith and I am so very grateful to them. They didn’t just send us to religious education classes and bring us to church on Sunday, they lived the faith all day every day. They were so faithful and they showed us how to rely on the Lord. Having 11 children means there is never enough money for all your needs and yet we never went without all that we needed. God was so good to my parents and I am excited to have my dad share some of his experiences with you. Today he will be talking about how a life in the spirit seminar changed his life. I know you will enjoy this as much as I did! We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click on the link below. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Have a blessed day!Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/www.findingtruenorthcoaching.comCLICK HERE FOR RETREAT INFOCLICK HERE TO DONATECLICK HERE to sign up for Mentoring CLICK HERE to sign up for Daily "Word from the Lord" emailsCLICK HERE to sign up for my newsletter & receive a free audio trainingabout inviting Jesus into your daily lifeCLICK HERE to buy my book Total Trust in God's Safe Embrace
Struck Down, But Not Destroyed
2 Corinthians 4:8-9 “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.”
I saw this verse written on a page in my book today and thought to myself, man if there was ever a time that we needed to hear this. The world is crazy right now. There is so much tragedy and pain. It seems like it all keeps coming in waves. It is like one thing after another. Life seemed like maybe it was beginning to calm down a bit and then all the violence in Afghanistan and now the hurricane in Louisiana. It seems to be nonstop these days. If you watch the news a lot you can easily get overwhelmed and scared. I think it is important to stay inform and I also think that we need to protect ourselves at the same time.
If you find that watching the news makes you anxious and fearful then maybe watch less of it. You can be informed without having the news on 24 hours a day. Remember that we are in charge of protecting our thoughts. We get to decide what we allow to influence our mind. There needs to be some balance between the craziness of the world and the grounding influence of God. For instance, if you are watching an hour of the news, maybe watch an hour of something that makes you remember all is not bad. Maybe listen to a podcast or read a spiritual book.
Anyway, back to this scripture. It does seem right now like we are “hard pressed on every side.” It seems like bad things are coming at us from all sides. Like in those movies when the walls start closing in and the room gets smaller and smaller. Life can often feel like that. It can be hard to breathe sometimes because we feel squeezed on all sides. It is important to remember when we feel like this that although we feel pressed, we are not crushed. We are still here, the trouble has not gotten the better of us. God will not let that happen. He may let us fall down with the weight of it all, but he will not let is crush us and he will be there to pick us back up again if we do fall.
The next part says perplexed, but not in despair. I don’t think there is a single person in the world, or at least in this country that is not perplexed right now. Trying to understand what is going on in the world right now leaves us all confused. A global pandemic, how does that happen? Why does that happen? All the systemic racism in this country, how did we let that happen? How do we begin to change it? Why all the natural disasters, the wild fires, the hurricanes & earthquakes, the flooding? What is going on in this world? Although this is all very confusing, hopefully we are not in despair.
What is despair? Despair is the complete loss or absence of hope. I can see how it could be easy these days to fall into despair. I could see how many could be starting to question if we have hope. What about the people that are in Louisiana right now. The last two years have been awful for everyone and I feel as though our country was just starting to come back to life a little. People seemed to be looking towards the future with a little more light and hope. Then this hurricane comes and devastates so many people. Or what about those that have lost people in Afghanistan, or what about the refugees of Afghanistan. It is easy to understand why people might be falling into despair. We must fight these feelings of despair. Yes, times are incredibly hard right now. Yes it seems like it is coming at us from all angles and we can’t seem to catch a break. But there is always hope. If God brought you to it, He will bring you through it.
The last part of the verse says persecuted but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. Is this how you are feeling? Are you feeling persecuted? I know many in this country are feeling this right now. If this is you, know that you are not abandoned. God never leaves your side. He is there with you even when you are feeling persecuted. God actually told us in the bible that we would be persecuted. Matthew 5:10-12 “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” God is there with you through this all and He even states that your reward is great in heaven.
If you are feeling struck down right now, know that God will not let this situation destroy you. It may feel like you are destroyed, but God won’t let that happen. You may be down, but you are not down for the count. God will help you get back on your feet again. Trust that He is there for you and lean into Him when you feel like you don’t have the strength to do it on your own. He is strong. He can handle the weight of your problems. Sometimes we don’t have to lean on God because we feel like He is too busy or because we don’t want to bother Him. He is your heavenly Father, He would like nothing more than for you to “bother Him” with your problems. He is up there just waiting for you to do just that.
You may be thinking to yourself, that all sounds well and good, but you don’t know my situation. You don’t know what I have been through, or what I am going through. How can I not be in despair when I have lost someone, or I have lost my home, my job, my health, etc. You would be right. I don’t know your situation. I don’t know what you are feeling. I do understand how easy it is to fall into despair and lose hope that things will change. I can tell you a few things I did to keep myself from despair when things seemed really bad. Hopefully you will find something useful in these ideas to either keep you from despair, or help you climb out of it if you already find yourself in despair.
First, I prayed a lot. I kept a journal and I wrote to God a lot telling Him all the things I was thinking, wondering, praying for, wishing for, all the things.
Second, I listened to praise music that reminded me of God’s promises and that He is always there for me. It was uplifting praise music that would lift my spirits when I was sad.
Third, I didn’t dwell on the situation. I did not spend a lot of time thinking about what may or may not happen in the future. I dealt with the immediate problem at hand and tried to plan for what may come up but I did not focus on all the ways things could go wrong. There is always time to deal with that if it happens. Although, most of what we worry about never happens. Even if it seems like you know where the situation is headed, things may change. So much can happen in a short amount of time. I did not try to predict the future.
The fourth thing I did was to study scripture and I was reminded about all the things the people in the Bible went through and how God was always there for them. If He did it for them He will do it for me. After all, "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever” Hebrews 13:8.
The last thing I did was I chose to be hopeful. I don’t think hope is just something that you either have or you don’t have. I think Hope is a choice. Actually at our prayer group we were giving a word that said just that. I think I will leave you with these words from our Heavenly Father. "Trust in Me, do not be afraid. You must choose to hope and trust in Me. It is a choice, it is not a feeling. When darkness comes choose hope, love, and trust. Choose me.
Dear Heavenly Father I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord we ask that you bless everyone that is struggling right now. Lord we ask you to help us know that we may be persecuted but we are not abandoned. We may be stuck down but we are not destroyed. Lord Jesus, please keep us from despair. When darkness comes help us to choose you Lord Jesus. Help us to choose hope and love and trust. We can do all things through Christ who strengthens us. Help us to feel that strength Lord. Help us to not feel defeated. Lord we pray for all those affected by the natural disasters going on in the world right now. We also pray for those in war torn countries. Lord our world is hurting and we need your help. We thank you for all that you are doing for us Lord. We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in March 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My beloved children, let me transform your minds. Let me change your ways of thinking. I am pouring into your minds my graces. As I do, your minds will start shifting from old ways of thinking to new ways of thinking.”
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The Tree House
2 Corinthians 1:20 “For all of God’s promises have been fulfilled in Christ with a resounding “Yes!” And through Christ, our “Amen” (which means “Yes”) ascends to God for his glory.”
All God’s promises have been fulfilled in Christ with a resounding “yes!” How great is that? All God’s promises have been fulfilled. There is not one thing that God promised that He has not followed through on. That is amazing. I wish I could say the same. There is a house down the street from us that just got renovated. The new owners built a whole new second floor to this house. They also did a lot of renovations on the outside of the house and in the yard. One thing they built in the yard is a beautiful tree house. It looks so awesome and even has a climbing wall on one side so if they didn’t want to take the stairs, they could take the more difficult way up.
I feel like life is like this. I feel like God provides us the stairs to make it to the top, but often times we choose the climbing wall. We could choose the path that was pretty well laid out for us where we just need to put one foot in front of the other and climb one step at a time. We know the next right step and we continue to take each step until we reach the end. However, sometimes we choose the difficult path. Sometimes we choose the climbing wall. We chose the path where we don’t know what the next step is. We need to feel our way through and look for where each new step is. We can’t find the next step until we take the first step. And depending on where we step, we will have limited options for our next step.
The reason I thought of this tree house when the reading was talking about promises is because we told our middle son, Noah, that we would help him build a tree house. And yet that never happened? Has this ever happened to you? Have you ever told someone, promised someone, that you would do something, and then not done it. It is an awful feeling to not keep a promise and to let someone down. I am not sure why it never got done. I am sure I can find a whole list of excuses. However, none of them make me feel better when I see the beautiful tree house this family built.
Regret is a terrible feeling. I am definitely not a fan. It is definitely an opening for the enemy to get in and destroy some people. I have seen it numerous time on TV and movies. Can you think of anyone you know that just can’t let go of something that happened in the past? Sometimes we can get stuck on something in our past and we let it bother us for far too long. I am not saying we shouldn’t feel bad if we broke a promise to someone. I wish we were like God and we could keep every promise that we make. Unfortunately, we are a broken people and so occasionally, we will break promises.
What is important is what we do after we break a promise. Do we repent and ask the person for forgiveness? Do we forget about everything and start over again? Do we pretend it never happened and just move on? What is the right protocol in this scenario? I would say we should go back to the golden rule. How would you like someone to act towards you in this scenario. I think repentance is important. Tell the person you are sorry you did not follow through with the action you promised you would do. Try to make it up to them in some way. If you can’t make it up to them then apologize and move forward from there.
What is not a good idea in this situation is to sit and think about what you did over and over again. Regret is not good because it eats away at you slowly from the inside. I read a book once called Miracle Mornings. It is a book by Hal Elrod. It is an excellent read in case you have not heard of it before. It is a book about how to start a really helpful morning routine. Anyway, the author talks about a 5 minute rule that I feel could be really helpful here. He used to see Cutco knives. He would get really upset when someone would cancel their appointment with him because he worked off commission. His boss told him about the 5 minute rule. This is a way to not get stuck in the negative feelings. He said when something upsets you take a minute and think about whether or not you can change the thing that just happened? For instance, someone calls up to cancel and appointment with you at the last minute. Can you change the fact that this customer canceled? No. In this case, where there is nothing that you can do to change it, you set a timer for 5 minutes and that is how long you allow yourself to be upset. You have 5 minutes to yell, scream, cry, etc and then you need to move on.
Hal found this 5 minute rule to be very helpful in his life. At first he said it took longer than 5 minutes. He said after 5 minutes if you still can’t let the emotions go, set the timer for another 5 minutes. Eventually you will train yourself to let things go sooner. If there is nothing you can do about a situation then there is no reason to keep dwelling on it.
This is what the enemy wants. He wants us to dwell on what is going wrong in our lives. He wants to keep us in a state of unhappiness. Unhappiness with who we are and what is going wrong. When we are thinking about all that is going wrong, then we are not praising God for all that is going right. When we are focusing all our energy on what we did and who we let down then our focus is inward on ourselves instead of our focus being on God, which is a much better place for our focus. The next time you are regretting something you did or did not do, take a minute and think about the 5 minute rule. Can you change the situation? If not, give yourself some time to be upset and then move on.
Dear Heavenly Father, I know you love us and don’t hold our mistakes against us. Lord, I ask that you help us to forgive ourselves. Why is it that we can forgive others more quickly than we can forgive ourselves. Lord, we ask that you teach us to not regret past mistakes. We ask that you help us learn any lessons we need to learn from it and then move forward. Father, we ask that you help anyone that is suffering from regret right now. We ask that you free them from this feeling. Lord, we know the enemy is looking for any way to get into our lives and we don’t want to give him an open door. Close all doors of regret and cover us in your protection oh Lord. Lord we thank you for being so amazing and wonderful. You are the God of all things and we are nothing without you. Living a life without regret is not easy, but we know it is possible because all things are possible through Christ who strengthens us. We love you Lord and we ask all these things in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in March 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I take you in my arms as a father caresses his child. I find so much joy just being near you. I whisper in your ear, I love you.”
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God Will Fulfil Every Need!
Philippians 4:19 “I am convinced that my God will fully satisfy every need you have, for I have seen the abundant riches of glory revealed to me through Jesus Christ!”
This was in a letter from St. Paul the Philippians. When I read it this morning I wondered, are we convinced? I know St. Paul was convinced, he had seen God come through time and time again for him and his followers. However, what if we haven’t seen God come through? What if we have never really been in a situation where it felt like we needed God to come through? How do we become convinced that God will satisfy our every need?
What comes to my mind first is that if you haven’t seen God provide for you then you aren’t looking hard enough. I would argue if you have never had a time when it felt like you had to rely on God then God has blessed you even more because you never went without. I do think if you have little and you have no idea where your next meal or the money to pay the bills is going to come from, then you learn to rely on God more and you get to see Him work more in your lives. That does not mean that He is working more, it just means that you see it more.
God is working in each one of our lives. There isn’t a single one of us that He puts on earth and then just forgets about. He knows everything about each one of us. He not only knows your needs but He knows your wants and your desires too. He put them in your heart. He will take care of providing for you all that you need. However, He will also help you get the things you want as well. Oftentimes it is not in the time that we want.
For instance, we may have wanted to get married when we were 20 and instead, it happened when we were 40. I don’t know why this happens but what is coming to mind right now is two different scenarios. First, maybe we weren’t the person we needed to be earlier in life. Maybe if we had gotten married earlier it wouldn’t have worked out because we weren’t ready. The second is that God allows us to make our own choices so maybe we weren’t listening to Him and we were doing our own thing. God's ways are higher than our ways so I have no idea why things don’t happen in our timing. I wish I did. I wish I had an answer for every person who wanted a child and didn’t have one, or wanted to be married and hasn’t found the right person yet. I wish I could tell you why sometimes you have desires that weren’t realized. I honestly don’t have answers for that.
I do know it says in Romans 5:5, “Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” Hope in the Lord does not disappoint so we don't have to be scared or afraid to hope in the Lord for our dreams and desires to come true. I don’t think we have to be afraid our dreams are not His dreams for us either. I believe He put our dreams in our hearts and as long as we are close with Him, as long as we are doing our best to listen to Him, then we don't have to be worried about them not being His dreams for us too.
I just spent some time talking about how God will provide all we need for our heart’s desires. What I want to talk about now is something that I am not sure many people know or believe. God can and will provide for your everyday needs too. Did you know that God can give you money, food, cars, or whatever you need in miraculous ways? We tend to put God in a box and we think He has the same constraints that we have. We look at our situation and we don’t see a way and we assume there isn’t a way. However, God is a way maker. He doesn’t need to follow a path, He can create His own path. Just as He did for the Israelites when he parted the Red Sea.
However, it doesn’t have to be that dramatic. Sometimes He can create a miraculous answer to your prayer without a big show, without fanfare, without you even realizing it is Him doing it. My dad is a deacon and so I got a front-row seat to hear him talk about all the ways God helped our family. Honestly, I feel like he could talk about them all day every day and we would never run out of miracle stories. I don’t think my family is unique in this way. I think God is working miracles in many of our lives. I think there are two differences with my parents that others may not be doing.
First, they always went to God with their needs. They didn’t try to solve it first on their own. They didn’t save prayer for the last resort. Luckily they both knew the power of prayer and so it was their first response to a problem. Second, they were on the lookout for the miracle. They have this faith that they are absolutely sure God will provide. It is amazing to watch. They never told us growing up that we should pray and that if we were lucky, God would provide for us. They never told us God might come through. They taught us that God is a God who provides and if we ask He answers. I am more grateful for that lesson than for anything else they taught me. Sitting in the pews at church listening to my dad tell miracle story after miracle story, this belief was cemented in my mind.
In case you weren’t lucky enough to see or hear about all the miraculous ways God works in the everyday stuff, let me share a few so you can start to believe in his miraculous answers to our prayers. I know I have probably told these before but in my mind you can never talk about God’s glory too much!
One day my dad's car broke down on the way to work. He needed that car to get to work in order to make money to provide for the family as my mom stayed home with the kids because there were so many of us. My dad got home from work and decided to tell my mom after dinner so we could have a nice dinner together. In the middle of dinner a neighbor knocked on the door. My dad knew this man, but they were not friends. They had actually exchanged words over some thing the kids had done. This neighbor handed my dad a set of car keys. My dad asked what these were for and he said you need a car right? My dad agreed that he needed a car but asked how the guy knew as he hadn't even told my mom yet. The guy said he just got this feeling he was supposed to give my dad the car. His wife can't drive anymore so she doesn't need it. He's not lending it to my dad and he's not selling it to my dad he just is giving it to him with no strings attached. That is a miracle only God can do.
My parents were looking in the cupboard and realized they didn't know what we were going to eat for dinner that night. Then Friend called up and said there was an emergency and asked if my parents would watch their 10 kids. My parents said yes even though they didn't know how they were going to feed everyone. They knew God would provide and so they asked him for the food needed for all these kids. They were barely done the prayer when the neighbor knocked on the door and asked if they needed any groceries. He said his father-in-law moved into their house over the weekend but it was unexpected and so he had just gone grocery shopping at his house and so had they. There was no room in the cupboards for all the food and so my parents gratefully accepted. They noticed there is spaghetti and sauce in the bags, enough for everyone at the house. They were so grateful. They thought to themselves if we just had some meat it would be perfect. Another neighbor knocked on their door just after they had that thought and asked if they needed some meat. The neighbor had just gone hunting. He stuffed his fridge and his freezer and there just wasn't room for all the meat so he offered it to my parents and they gratefully accepted. Do you see how God works? If we are not looking sometimes we may miss the miracle.
Another time a friend of mine was sitting in her car with her daughter. She was making a shopping list sitting outside the dollar store. She only had $75 for a whole weeks worth of groceries for her family of five I think. She was writing down what she needed and realized if she only had 50 more dollars she could actually get all that she needed. I'm not even sure if she prayed about it or if she just thought about it. The next thing she knows her daughter open the door runs out into the parking lot and then comes back to the car. Luckily the store was not open yet and there was not another single car in the parking lot. When she asked her daughter why she got out of the car she said she saw something fly by the window so she got out to get it. When she gave it to her mom it was a $50 bill.
God created the entire universe with his words, he can create a $50 bill out of nowhere and send it to you when you are in need. I love these recounts of God's miracles because they show us that sometimes he uses regular every day things like other people to provide for us and other times he can do it just out of thin air. One of my witness Wednesdays I think it was Jasmine talked about how she didn't have enough money to pay her bills one month. She had checked her bank account and there was no money in it. She prayed and asked the Lord to provide and something inside of her told her to check her bank account again and she did and there was money in it. She called the bank and they didn't know who put the money in that account. It just showed up. God can do the same for you.
I am telling you about these miracles today so that if you don't have any miracle stories now you do. You have now seeing how God can work in your life. God is the same yesterday today and forever. You can look at the miracles written about in scripture and know that he can do that in your life too. It is true that God will fulfill every need! We just need to ask. Yesterday at the end of prayer group people were sharing the little ways God is working in their life. One lady was saying her grandson wanted to switch from flag football to tackle football now that he is in high school. She was nervous for him and just prayed that God would find a way for him not to be hurt in this new sport. She went to dinner with her family the other night and her grandson said he decided to do golf instead of tackle football. Do you see how God cares about every little prayer we send to him, even the things we might consider little.
I could go on and on as I love to talk about God’s miraculous power to provide for us. However, I know you all have things to do and this episode is already on the longer side. I want to invite you to take a look at the things that have happened in your life, in the light of these miracle stories and see if you can recognize God’s hand in them. I want also to invite you to be on the lookout more going forward to see how God is orchestrating all things to help provide for you.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone listening to this episode. Lord, you are amazing and we are so grateful for all the ways you provide for us. We ask that you help open our eyes to these ways. We ask that you help us to see all the ways you are working in our lives. Help us to be more aware Lord! I ask that you reveal at least one miracle you have done in the lives of each person listening to this episode. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day and may the favor and grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be upon you!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in March 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, I reward the little things done with great love. It's the great love that I look for. People think they must do grandiose things for me to notice. I notice even the littlest things that you do out of great love.”
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The Example of Jesus Christ
Philippians 2:6-8 “He existed in the form of God, yet he gave no thought to seizing equality with God as his supreme prize. Instead, he emptied himself of his outward glory by reducing himself to the form of a lowly servant. He became human! He humbled himself and became vulnerable, choosing to be revealed as a man and was obedient. He was a perfect example, even in his death—a criminal’s death by crucifixion!
What jumped out at me in this verse was the line that says, “He emptied himself of his outward glory by reducing himself to the form of a lowly servant.” Jesus did not just enter existence when He was born into this world. I guess I never really thought of that before. Have you noticed that God reveals things to us slowly? Or maybe it is just that it takes us a while to come around to being curious enough to be taught. I am not sure. I do know that I am always learning new things. You would think being Catholic my whole life, going through all the religious education classes as a kid, teaching them as an adult and even participating in RCIA, I would know all there is to know. However, I am always learning something new.
I am sure it is the same with you. The Bible is so vast, our Catholic religion is so rich, there is no way anyone can know everything. Even if we think we have it all figured out, the Lord opens up an old favorite scripture in a new way. That is so amazing to me. God is so good!!
It says in John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” This is true. What is also true is that Jesus volunteered for the job. I sort of had it in my mind for the longest time that there was God, and he was alone. Then he decided to give us Jesus through Mary and the Holy Spirit. But I never thought about Jesus existing before He walked the earth. I never thought of the fact that He had a say in the matter. We read about Jesus in the garden the night before he was crucified. We read about how He was in agony because He knew what He had to go through and yet was willing to do it anyway. However, we don’t really talk about how it was His choice to live this life. Yes, God gave Him to us, but not without His permission.
Can you imagine, Jesus was up in heaven with God. He was/is God. He is sitting up there surrounded by the angels. He is being praised and worshipped all day and night. Everything is great, everything is perfect. There is no illness, there is no anger or hate, there is only love. Can you imagine sitting up in heaven and looking down at Earth and seeing how much we are struggling? Not only that though, He could see the brokenness of the world. He could see how cruel people were. He could see how much greed and jealousy there was. He could see all the pain and suffering. He could see all the violence. He could see all of that and yet His desire to save us was greater than His desire to stay in Heaven where all was perfect.
He decided to enter into a broken world. He decided to come down and join a world that He already knew would hate Him, mistreat Him, and eventually crucify Him. Can you even imagine that? I can’t. I know some people have died and gone to heaven but then were brought back to life. I can’t imagine being that close to heaven and then having to come back to this broken world. Heaven was His home. He was at home with His dad and the Holy Spirit and agreed to leave all that behind to save us.
We live in a world that emphasizes fame and fortune. Everyone wants to be on top and many are not afraid to step on others to get there. We definitely don’t see a lot of humility. We don’t see a lot of people who are willing to let others take the credit for the things they have done. But Jesus didn’t want the glory. When He first started healing people He would tell them to go in peace and not to tell anyone what He had done. He was happy to live in the shadows and not get credit for the work He had done.
I am not a big Olympics fan. I am not sure why I never really got into it. Maybe because my parents weren’t into it. Or maybe they were but we didn’t have a TV for a lot of years when I was growing up so we couldn’t have watched it if we wanted to. I did not watch the Olympics this year unless I happened to be out and about and it was on the TV. For instance, I was at a retirement celebration at a restaurant and they had the Olympics on the TV. It was a trampoline competition which I had no idea was even an Olympic event. They were awesome though. Most of what I learned about the Olympics this year came from my children filling me in or clips I saw on YouTube when I was uploading my podcast episodes.
There were so many good stories that I heard. One was about the second and third-place gymnastics winners bowing to the first-place winner to show her respect and show they honor her. Another one was not at the Olympics but at a different race. There was a runner from Kenya who mistook a line on the track for the finish line and he stopped running. The next runner came up behind him and instead of passing him showed him the finish line and allowed him to finish first. He could have easily passed him and took first place for himself but he didn’t. Everyone was shocked. What does that say about our world if everyone was surprised he did the right thing?
How about us? Are we going through life wanting to be in the limelight? Do we get upset when someone else gets credit for something we did? Do we want to be served or are we willing to be the servants? The verse says, “He existed in the form of God, yet he gave no thought to seizing equality with God as his supreme prize. Instead, he emptied himself of his outward glory by reducing himself to the form of a lowly servant. He became human! He humbled himself and became vulnerable, choosing to be revealed as a man and was obedient. He was a perfect example, even in his death—a criminal’s death by crucifixion!”
Jesus didn’t want his perfect existence up in heaven if it meant we couldn’t be with Him. He was willing to sacrifice it all and suffer immensely on our behalf so we could join Him in heaven one day. When I think about that, I mean really think about that, it makes my suffering less. It makes me want to be more humble. It makes me want to follow Christ’s example. I want to empty myself and become a lowly servant as Jesus did. I want to risk being vulnerable and I want to be obedient. I want to be able to follow God’s will even if it is the opposite of my will. I want to follow God’s will even if I don’t understand it. I want to follow God’s will even if I may suffer. What is one thing we could say yes to today that we have been avoiding because of our own will?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone listening to this episode. Lord, we want to follow your example, please show us how. Please give us the resilience and perseverance it takes to be humble and be a lowly servant instead of the one who is served. Change our will Lord, help our will be more and more like your will. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I want to remind everyone that retreat registration for the Oct. 11-13th retreat is open. Also, the theme for September Mentoring is “Trusting in the Waiting.” If you feel you have been waiting for a long time then this may be the month for you to join mentoring. Click on the link below for more information on the retreat and about mentoring. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day and may the grace and favor of our Lord Jesus Christ be upon you!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in March 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Oh, my heart burns that the good news of my love for everyone will be inflamed throughout the whole world.”
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God is Good,
All the time.
All the time,
God is Good.
This very popular saying of ‘God is good all the time and All the time God is good’ has come up many times recently. Many people have embraced this and taken this thought as their own. And for good reason – God is the ultimate Good and He does it all the time and in every situation. We all know there is evil, and we question where God is when something bad happens. The answer is: He is there helping us in some manner to get through it. Sometimes the “Footprints” story comes to mind. But we know the ultimate evil of Christ being cruelly beaten and even more cruelly killed on the cross was changed from being evil to being our redemption. God has a way of doing this in every evil that happens if we accept the Graces that He wants to give us. Even that grace of Redemption we must accept if we want to go to Heaven. God the Father’s answer to evil is that He sent us His Son. His Son lived, suffered, died and rose to replace or remove the effects of what is evil with what is good- He saved us! He saved us from evil.
Another way of saying ‘all the time‘ or on all occasions is the word always. So, our God is a God of Holiness and takes every bit of time and any occasion to ultimately make something Holy come from it. And He does. All the time. He makes Holy moments. All the time God is with us. This was his promise. See Matthew 28:20 “teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.” It is different with everyone because we are all different. God will take an evil; a bad accident or a sickness, and thru His grace for us He somehow makes a Greater Good come from it. Most of the time we do not see this or find out why until we are on the other side of the vail but if we continue in our beliefs and accept Gods graces, we will be as fortunate as Job. If you are unfamiliar with the story of Job and how all of his great blessing were taken away from him and then given back twice as much because of his great belief, please see the Book of Job in the Bible.
There is another ‘always’. "All ways" or "all the ways" means every manner possible. What happens when we think the same thing with God with this ‘all ways’. It is now a more complete picture of what God is. God is all the time good and every possible good. Can we say, “God is good all ways and all ways God is good”? God is in every manner possible good and in every manner possible God is good. God constantly is pouring out Graces on us. Does He ever give us something bad? No, He gives us everything we need. This is why we find that the saints had Joy no matter what. They say Saint Francis of Assisi was one of the saints most like Jesus. Not only was St. Francis poor like Jesus but he was Joyful like Jesus to a point of Loving Lady Poverty. He felt this great joy in his state of life because of the Blessings he received from God. In every manner possible God took care of him as he does now with us.
Joy is the work of the Holy Spirt. The Holy Spirit has many Fruits. St Francis and Jesus have the Holy Spirit. Jesus gave His Holy Spirit to St Francis and now He gives Him to us. The same Holy Spirit that filled Jesus and the Saints fills us today if we ask Him and accept His graces. Ask for many graces. Ask all the time for Graces for every possible need. Ask for all the graces Jesus wants us to have so we and the others we pray for get all graces always and all ways. We ask for too little. Ask for more. More Jesus, More Jesus. All of Jesus, all of His body, blood, soul and Divinity. It is ours; we receive all of Him in Communion. We receive these graces in Adoration.
More Jesus, More Jesus,
Shalom
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Making Scripture Personal
Habakkuk 3:17-19, “Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.”
Have you ever personalized scripture before? Have you ever replaced the word Israelites for your name? Have you ever just inserted your name into scripture to make it more personal to you? What do you think about this idea? If you haven’t done it before, why haven’t you? Is it because you never thought of it before? Is it because you think it is wrong to add your name to the holy scriptures? Is it because you can’t see how the Bible and the scriptures apply to you in your life? Take a moment and really think about this idea of personalizing scripture. I will be honest with you, I haven’t done it a lot. I have heard of this idea before and I though it sounded like an awesome idea, and then I just never really did anything with it.
When I was reading a book titled Built Through Courage by Dave Hollis, the author talked about something I think can really help us not to worry so much. Dave talked about his mentors and how they had tragedy hit and he said they relied on a specific scripture verse to get them through it. He said they took a scripture verse and personalized it to their specific circumstances. That scripture verse is Habakkuk 3:17-19, “Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.”
There is a lot going wrong for the people in this verse. The things mentioned here are not small things. It might not seem like a big deal to us, as how many of us eat figs anyway? However, it was a bid deal at the time. The people who wrote this depended on those crops not just for food, but also for their lively hood. If they did not have figs, grapes or olives, what would they sell at the market to get the other things they needed. The verse says the fields produced no food. What could they eat, if they had not fruits or vegetables? Normally I would say at least they have animals to eat. However, the verse also says, no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls.
I can’t even imagine what I would do if I were in their circumstances. This verse is basically saying they had nothing. They had no food, they had no animals, and if they didn’t have any of that, then they didn’t have anything to trade with to get the other things they needed. I know we often think our situation can’t really get any worse, however, for these guys I would say that it really couldn’t get much worse. How did they react to these dire circumstances? Did they yell and scream at God? Did they question Him and ask Him how dare He take it all away? Did they turn away from God? No, they didn’t do any of those things. In that very same sentence, they said “yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.”
Wow, that is incredible. Don’t you wish you had their strength? Don’t you wish you felt the same way on your worst days? I will rejoice in the Lord. Not, I will trust the Lord, not I will be ok with the Lord, I will rejoice in the Lord. What did they have to rejoice about? Then it goes on to say I will be joyful in God my Savior. I was about to ask you what they had to be joyful about, and then the words “in God my Savior” rattled around in my head. They weren’t joyful because of their circumstances, they were joyful because of God their Savior. They knew God was going to save them. They didn’t know when and they didn’t know how, but they relied on the fact that God was their savior and if He saved them before, He would do it again.
Why is it so hard for us to remember this? What came to mind was, maybe we haven’t seen Him save us before. What if we have never needed saving before and so we don’t know He will save us this time. If this is what you are thinking, rest assured whatever God has done for those who have come before us, He will do for us. If He has saved His people in the Bible, then He will save us. Those are our people. Remember Hebrews 13:8 says, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.” Because Jesus saved His people in the Bible over and over again, we know He will save us. We also know that because of His promise in Jeremiah 29:11 which says, “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
God will use all things for our good. The problem is, we don’t want to wait for it. We want things to happen when we are ready, or when we think we are ready. When are we going to come around to the fact God’s timing is perfect? If things are going wrong for us, God’s got a plan. He might not have planned for you to get yourself into this trouble, but as soon as He saw you headed there He came up with a plan to fix it. That is what He does. We mess up and He fixes it. I truly hope He doesn’t get tired of doing that. We would be lost without Him.
Let’s say we are able to come to grips with our situation. We acknowledge God is doing His thing and although we don’t know how it will work out, we know it will work out. Then what do we do? We still need to figure out a way to lesson our pain so we can live to make it through to the other side. The people in this verse decided although these terrible things were happening they were going to rejoice in the Lord. Do you think you could persevere in this difficult time? Do you think you could not only keep hope in the Lord, but to rejoice in the Lord?
What is it you are going through? Whatever it is, would it help you to write your own version of this verse? Would it help you to read that verse daily to remind yourself that God is your Savior? Let’s not forget that important part of the verse. I will be joyful in God my savior. Reading this every day can give you a reminder that you are not alone and that you are not in charge of fixing everything yourself. God is your savior. Here is an example of how I rewrote this verse to fit my particular circumstances at one point in my life:
Habakkuk 3:17-19, “Though my marriage is falling apart and there doesn’t seem to be a way we can stay together, though the children are really struggling at school and at home, though our home is filled with anger and violence, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.”
Personalizing scripture can not only help you get through a difficult time, it can help you grow in your faith. The Bible is not just a collection of words or a collection of stories that are nice to read. The Bible is one of God’s ways of communicating with us. Using the Bible God is teaching us how to act, how to interact with each other, what to do, and what not to do. He is also teaching us about Him and His ways. He is teaching us about His love and His forgiveness. He is communicating with us and if we can make that communication more personal then we will connect to it more. When you were in school did you pay more attention when the teacher was talking to the whole class, or when she was talking to you individually? What about at a work meeting? Would you pay more attention if your boss said your name before he started talking, or if he was addressing the whole audience? I think we can all agree that we would pay more attention if someone was talking to us directly. It is the same with the Bible. If you put your name into the Bible verse you will pay more attention because it will feel as though that verse was written directly for you.
There are many ways you can personalize scripture. Rick Warren, author of A Purpose Driven Life, suggests that we can replace any pronouns or nouns in scripture with our name. For example, if he were personalizing John 3:16, He'd write something like this: 'For God so loved Rick, he gave his one and only Son so that Rick would not perish but have everlasting life.” Or, "Or, for Philippians 1:6: 'He who began a good work in Rick Warren will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.’" Warren went on to note that if one uses the "personalize-it method," the results will "strengthen your faith and encourage yourself. Do this, and many passages of Scripture will literally bring tears to your eyes. You'll start to read the Bible as God's love letter to you," continued Warren.
There are articles out there that can give you more examples of how to do this. I just wanted to introduce you to the idea today. If you think it sounds like something you would like to try I say you just go for it. There is no right or wrong way to do it. Take a scripture verse and see how it can apply to your exact circumstances. Instead of reading the Bible as if it is a collection of stories completely unrelated to your life, start reading it as if God is talking to you, right where you are, in the circumstances that you are in. I bet the Bible will come to life in a whole new way. Give it a try, if you don’t like it, no worries. However, what if you do try it and it is life-changing? Don’t let this opportunity pass you by.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone listening to this episode today. Lord, you are amazing and we are so grateful for all you do for us. Lord, I ask you to increase our desire to read the Word of God. Help us to read Your Word and see ourselves and our situations in what we read. Don’t just let it be words to us, help it take root in our hearts. We ask this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I pray you will take some time the next time you read your Bible and try adding your name in, or personalizing the scripture in some way. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow with another witness. Wednesday. Remember Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day and may the favor and grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be upon you!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in March 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Every single time you come to me in prayer. I kindle that fire. I feed it with new fuel. I make it burn bigger and brighter. That fire is my Holy Spirit, which I share with you.”
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Today’s episode is a bit different. I will be reading a chapter from my book, Total Trust in God’s Safe Embrace. Today’s chapter is called The Power of The Saints. I hope you enjoy it!
I love the saints! We can learn so much from them. I think we tend to put the saints on a pedestal and think that they were perfect and that we can’t really learn anything from them because they weren’t like ordinary people. We tend to think their lives were easy and they didn’t struggle with the things that we struggle with so we can’t relate to them. I am not sure how much you know about the saints, but I am not sure any of them had it easy and I know for sure that none of them were perfect because no one on earth is perfect. We are all human and we all struggle with human behaviors and sins. No matter what you are going through, there is probably a saint that has gone through the same thing in their life.
If you are struggling with parenting, or if you have a child who has turned away from the faith, and/ or is getting into all sorts of trouble you could look to Saint Monica. She is the mother of St. Augustine. Saint Augustine is a doctor of the Church now, but before the age of 31 he was known for running around with women and having mistresses. His mother would not give up on him and his conversion. She prayed for him and his conversion everyday.
Saint Monica was a Christian, but her parents married her off to a pagan. He husband wasn’t all bad, but he did have a violent temper and he was promiscuous. Saint Monica also had a mother in law that lived with them that was bad tempered and uncooperative. Even though her husband criticized her for her faith, she never gave up on praying for him and his mother. Her prayers finally proved fruitful and her husband and mother in law both became Christians. Her husband died one year after his baptism.
If you are struggling with a past that you are not proud of you could look to St. Augustine, or Saint Mary of Egypt who ran away from home at 12 and spent her years living on the streets as a seductress. She did her best to sleep with as many young Christian boys as she could. One day she went with some men to Jerusalem. They were on the way to see the life-giving Tree of the Cross that was being shown at the temple. She pushed to the front of the line, but when she tried to step over the threshold she could not get in. It was as if there was an invisible barrier was preventing her from getting in. She tried this several times and the same thing would happen.
Mary was too tired to keep trying to get in. She stepped aside and just stood there. She wondered why she could not get in. Suddenly she felt the word salvation and it occurred to her why she was not allowed into the temple. Her unclean lifestyle was the reason she could not enter the holy place. Upon realizing this she because to cry and was filled with grief and sorrow.
While she was standing there she looked up and saw an icon of Mary, the mother of Jesus. She begged Mary to let her into the temple to see the Tree of the life-giving Cross. She promised Mary as soon as she had seen the cross she would no longer take part in her unclean lifestyle and that she would renounce the world and its temptations. Mother Mary allowed her to enter and once she left that temple she crossed the Jordon and lived by herself in the dessert.
Maybe you are the mother of boys and you are not sure how to lead them with love through all their difficulties. You can turn to St. John Bosco who took care of all the boys in his town, most of them lived on the streets. He had them in church every Sunday. He never yelled at the boys he just loved them.
If you are struggling to forgive someone who has hurt you unforgivably you can turn to St. Maria Goretti. She was a child of about 12 I think when her neighbor tried to rape her. She tried to convince him that God did not want him to do that to her. He took out a knife and stabbed her several times because she refused to let him rape her. She was rushed to the hospital and before she died, she forgave him.
Are you struggling with a lack of faith? Do your prayers feel unanswered, or maybe you can’t even pray right now? Maybe you feel a complete lack of faith, and feel as though there may not even be a God. You could look to Mother Teresa. Most people do not know a lot about her story. She had a deeply personal encounter with Jesus on a train early in her religious life. She had a vision of Jesus and she told Jesus that she would do whatever he asked of her.
As time went on she began to feel this deep darkness. Almost as if she were in a pit. She did not feel the love of Jesus, she did not feel anything. She was such a powerful ambassador for God’s love, and yet she did not feel any of that love. This did not just go on for a year or so it went on for a very long time. She experienced this darkness for over half her life. She knew that there was a God because of her encounter on the train. However, she did not feel this for such a long time. She would go to her spiritual advisor and tell him she felt nothing. If you are struggling with your faith, you are not alone. Look to St. Teresa of Calcutta to see what she did and how she dealt with her struggles.
I was listening to The Jeff Cavins Show Podcast one day and he was talking about how everyone should have a saints posse. A group of saints that you can really get to know well. You can read about them and get to know who they really were, the good and the bad. They could be a like a group of friends that you rely on. You can talk with them, maybe start your mornings with them.
He said he got a small medal for each one of the saints in his posse and that he wears them around his neck so that they are always with him. That necklace can also serve as a reminder throughout the day of the person that you want to strive to be. I have photo cards of the saints in my posse on the wall by my desk. I see them every morning. Sometime I say hello and ask them to help me throughout the day and sometimes I forget. I also have a necklace with several medals on it as well.
I love this idea of having a group of saints that you can pray too. There are more than 10,000 saints that are recognized by the Roman Catholic Church. That would be a lot to learn if you learned about each one of them. However, if you focused on the saints that had similar struggles as you, that number would be more manageable. I have already talked about a few saints at the beginning of this chapter, there is not enough room in this book to talk about all my favorite saints, so I will finish with three of the saints in my posse.
St. Maximillion Kolbe is my patron saint, meaning he died on my birthday. I was told, that whether we know it or not, we have a special connection with the saint that is honored on your birthday. Before learning this, I had already been introduced to St. Maximillion Kolbe through the Marian Consecration that I participated in. Kolbe dedicated himself to bringing the whole world to know God through Jesus under the guidance of Mary. He started a newspaper called the Immaculate that was widely distributed throughout Poland.
St. Maximillion Kolbe was not always a well behaved child. One time when he was young he got into some some trouble at school. His mother told him that “She did not know what would become of him.” This shook him to the core. He went into their home prayer area and prayed. Mother Mary appeared to him holding two crowns, the white crown of purity and a red crown of martyrdom. She asked him which crown he wanted and he chose both.
He did a lot of amazing things in his life. One of the most amazing was when St. Maximillion Kolbe was put into a concentration camp. One of the prisoners in his cell block escaped. In order to deter that from happening again, the guards randomly picked 10 prisoners left in that block and sentenced them to death by starvation. One of the men that they picked was a husband and father and he begged for mercy. St. Maximillion Kolbe volunteered to take his place. It is reported that he sang songs and praised God the whole time he was waiting to die. Kolbe lasted more than 14 days in a starvation bunker with no food or water. The Nazi’s finally killed him on August 14, 1941 by lethal injection.
Saint Teresa of Liseux is know as the little flower. She was always saying that she was too little to do anything on her own. She told Jesus that she would do anything that he wanted her to do, but that she would need Him to lift her up. She said it was as if she was at the bottom of a huge staircase and that she was too little to even climb up one step. But that if she could climb in Jesus’s hand and he could be her elevator and lift her to the next step.
A lot of people relate to Saint Teresa of Liseux because it is easy to feel like we can’t do much. It is easy to relate to someone who was called to do more, but felt she wasn’t capable. Saint Teresa is known for her “little ways” of trusting in Jesus to make her holy and relying on small daily sacrifices instead of great deeds. I think people like this idea because it is a way to holiness through your ordinary life. Saint Teresa did not go on mission trips, she was a cloistered nun, she did not go out into the community to help the poor. She made lots of small sacrifices throughout the day and she did it without complaining and often without recognition.
Saint Rita of Cascia, I just love her. Saint Rita is known as, “The Saint of the impossible.” Saint Rita wanted to become a nun, but her parents did not like that idea. Saint Rita got married to a man from a prominent family in her town. He was not a nice man and she struggled with not wanting to stay in the marriage. However, she kept praying for him and eventually he left that lifestyle. The two of them moved away from his family and they had twin boys. They were finally living a happy life, when her husband was murdered. Saint Rita forgave her husband’s attackers publicly at the funeral because she was afraid her sons would seek revenge.
Saint Rita ended up sending her boys away to try to keep them safe. However, they got sick where they were and they died. She was very sad that they had died, and also relieved that they died of natural causes and did not have the stain of murder on their souls.
Rita wanted to joint the Augustinian convent but her applications were always denied. She was not able to join until God stepped in and cleared a way an obstacles. Saint Rita once asked for a rose from the garden to be brought to her. The only problem was that it was the middle of winter. The person she requested it from went down to the rose bush and to her surprise she found a rose in full bloom. This same thing happened one time when Saint Rita requested a fig from the fig tree.
Saint Rita loved the Lord and she never gave up her faith in him. She had plenty of heart ache in her life and she certainly did not have an easy life. She had plenty of reasons why she could have given up her faith in God. She had plenty of chances to blame God for the terrible things that happened in her life. She did not do either of these. She continued her pursuit to follow His will with all that she had.
As I said earlier, I could go on about the saints for an entire series of books. I just love them. I love how much they loved the Lord. I love how dedicated they were to their mission. I know we could learn so much from them if we took the time to read about them. I remember how uncomfortable it felt to read in the Marian Consecration book that we are all called to be saints. I was not sure I was up to that challenge. However, reading about the saints gives me hope that if I just keep doing the next right thing, I can get there some day. What saint are you going to start learning about?
Thank you for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you would like to buy my book you can get it on Amazon or on my website walkboldlywithjesus.com. If you would like me to write you a personalized message you can order it from my website and I will sign it before I send it out to you. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow! Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day and may the favor and Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be upon you.
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in March 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, I say to you, here I am. And oh, how I love to hear you respond, here I am, back to me.”
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Live A Cheerful Life Without Complaining
Philippians 2:14-16a “Live a cheerful life, without complaining or division among yourselves. For then, you will be seen as innocent, faultless, and pure children of God, even though you live in the midst of a brutal and perverse culture. For you will appear among them as shining lights in the universe, holding out the words of eternal life.”
When I read this verse this morning, the part that jumped out at me was that it says, “For you will appear among them as shining lights in the universe.” I had re-written this part in the margins of my Bible. I started doing that a few years ago. Whenever I am reading a book or my Bible, and there is something I really like, I will underline it, but then also write it in the margins, so if I am flipping through the pages, I can see it more clearly as sometimes I underline a lot. Then, the essential stuff can get a bit lost.
After I read that part of the verse, I decided to go to the beginning of the paragraph and see what else it said. That is when I read the first line, “Live a cheerful life, without complaining or division among yourselves.” I instantly thought, “Yep, we need to hear that today.” And by we, I mean me and probably you too. Complaining is so easy to fall into. A lot is wrong with the world today, and we notice it daily. I have noticed I am complaining more in the car lately. I am talking to the other drivers. Yes, I know they can’t hear me.
However, I comment, “Really, you couldn’t get over?” or “You are not a very good driver.” I don’t think I used to do this, and I believe the Holy Spirit has been bringing it to my attention lately, as when I notice it, I don’t like that I am doing it. I feel I am focusing on the negative instead of the positive. Also, if I have kids in the car, they will hear me say these things about other drivers. I realize the things I say aren’t terrible and could be much worse, yet they are still not kind. Sometimes, I call the driver an idiot. They can’t hear me, so why am I doing it?
I don’t know why we feel the need to complain so much. Some of the people I spend the most time with complain about everything. They complain about drivers, co-workers, fast-food workers, and apps. They are never really happy. This is no way to live. I know a lot is wrong with the world right now, and I also know there are things to be cheerful about. There is a saying, “Where focus goes, energy flows.” The kind of energy we have is based on where our focus is. If we are focused on all the negative things happening in the world, then we will be negative. If we are focused on the positive things going on in our lives, we will be positive.
God is asking us to be his shining light in the world. We can’t do this if we focus on everything wrong with the World. Instead of focusing on all that is wrong, the enemy's work, let’s focus on all that is right, God’s work. The way we can be a shining light in the world is to be a representative of Jesus. Jesus had a lot to complain about in His life. His dad died; we don’t know how old he was, but we know it was before he was 30 years old. Many people hated him and wanted to kill him. He was put to death for no reason. He was whipped and beaten. He was mocked and made to wear a crown of thorns. He was hung on a cross even though He was blameless. He had a lot to complain about, and yet He didn’t complain.
If we want to be a shining light in the world, which the world definitely needs, then we need to do things differently than the world does. We need to focus on the good in the world. We need to spread hope, not fear, worry and anxiety. There is a lot of uncertainty in the world, especially with an upcoming election. The country is worried about who will be running this country in a few months. I understand that this is important. Yet, worry never changes anything. We can change our focus from worrying about who will get in to the fact that the true ruler of this world is God, and He is all-powerful. He created this world with words and has power over every aspect. There is nothing too great a feat for our God.
What our country needs right now is hope. Hope that God is here for us. Hope that regardless of who gets in, we will be OK because God is on our side. Hope that no matter what we are going through, God can and will use it for our good. This is not the end. Whatever situation you are in right now, if it is not good, it is not the end. Keep going, keep moving forward, and there will be a happy ending for all of us. We don’t know when that happy ending is coming, but we are assured it with God.
The best way to be the shining light that God asks us to be is to live our lives so that people will see us and say to themselves, “I want what she has, or I want what he has.” People will notice if we can be filled with joy, no matter our circumstances. They will see when we are filled with peace, no matter the circumstances. They will notice if we love all those around us, even those considered “unloveable” to the world. They will notice if we are cheerful and not complaining. Joy, peace, and love are all gifts of the Holy Spirit. They are not dependent on our circumstances. I have had incredible peace and joy in tough circumstances.
If you are wondering how to have this peace, joy, and love in impossible circumstances, the answer is simple: ask the Lord. Pray for peace, the peace of Christ. Pray for a loving heart. Pray to see those you struggle to love through the Lord’s eyes. Pray for joy in all circumstances. Joy doesn’t mean you are laughing and having a grand old time when everything is falling apart. Joy means you have the joy of the Lord in those circumstances. Joy is often hard to explain. It is a feeling you get inside, knowing all will be ok. The dictionary defines joy as a feeling of great pleasure and happiness. Pray for joy; you will see how amazing it is and how hard it is to describe.
The verse above says, “Live a cheerful life, without complaining or division among yourselves. For then, you will be seen as innocent, faultless, and pure children of God, even though you live in the midst of a brutal and perverse culture. For you will appear among them as shining lights in the universe, holding out the words of eternal life.” Live your life so that when people look at you, they want what you have. What we don’t want is to be a negative example of Christ. We don’t want people to look at our lives and think, if that is what our lives are like with Jesus in them, then I don’t want Him. If we are constantly complaining and miserable, why would someone want what we have? Whether we like it or not, we are all representative of Jesus. If people know we are followers of Christ, then they will look at our lives to see the fruit of following Jesus. What is the fruit of your life? Is it peace, joy, and love? Is it complaining, worry, anxiety, and hate? If it is any of the negative things, how can you begin to change that so you can be a shining light to the world?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone listening today. Lord, you are amazing, and we want to be a shining light to the world. We want others to look at us and see you. We want to bring people to you. Please help us. Please put on our hearts all the ways we are not doing this now. Please purify us, Lord, so that some can be entirely yours. Help us to focus on your beauty in this world instead of the destruction of the enemy. Help us not to complain, Lord. Help us to talk about your miraculous ways. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If this podcast is helping you in any way can I ask that you share it with at least one person today? It would really help getting these devotionals to more people. I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day and may the grace and favor of our Lord Jesus Christ be upon you!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in March 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, hear my whispers of joy and love. Hear everything I say to you and then go out and put it into practice. It is not enough that you hear. You must obey. It is so important to obey.”
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Letting Go Of Our Past
Philippians 3:7-8 “Yet all of the accomplishments that I once took credit for, I’ve now forsaken them, and I regard it all as nothing compared to the delight of experiencing Jesus Christ as my Lord! To truly know him meant letting go of everything from my past and throwing all my boasting on the garbage heap. It’s all like a pile of manure to me now so that I may be enriched in the reality of knowing Jesus Christ and embracing him as Lord in all of his greatness.”
This verse stood out to me this morning. The words, “To truly know him meant letting go of everything from my past,” really stuck with me. I got to thinking about how great it is when we discover Jesus. At first, I thought that it must be so great for people who don’t know Jesus at first and then come to discover Him later in life. There must be such a stark contrast in their lives. I wonder if it is easy to tell what moment Jesus came on the scene in their life. I wonder if it was as if one day they were one person, and the next day they were completely changed? Or, maybe it was more gradual, and they slowly changed their lives as they got to know Jesus more and more. I am sure this journey is different for everyone.
I was a bit envious of people who didn’t just grow up knowing Jesus because they seemed to be more on fire for Him. It's like when you enter into a new relationship, whether a friendship or a romantic one. Everything is new and exciting; you can’t wait to learn more about the other person. You make time for that person and you ask questions, you get to know them and what they like, what they don’t like.
Those of us that have know Jesus our whole lives don’t seem to have that same awe and excitement about it. I know that is a generalization and I know plenty of people who have know Jesus their whole life and still have amazing awe and wonder about Him. They still spend time with Him daily and they learn more and more each day through conversations with Him and through reading His written Word. But that’s the thing, they are putting in the times. They are working at their relationship with Him. Are we?
I had a colonoscopy at the end of July. I work up during the procedure and the medical staff were talking about the difference between Catholics and other Protestants. I heard one of them say that the difference is that Catholics don’t read the Bible and Protestants do. I spoke up and let them know that wasn’t true, but then they put me back to sleep as I was not supposed to be awake. However, as much as I wanted to complain that they thought this, this is not an uncommon belief. When I first joined the Catholic Woman’s groups on the military bases we moved to, there were not a lot of Catholic Bible Studies. Sometimes we would join up with a study the Protestants were doing.
As Catholic’s we get to hear the Bible every week at church. Every three years, the Church has covered almost the whole Bible. So, to say Catholics don’t know the Bible is not true at all. However, I think Catholic Bible studies is fairly new, at least in my experience. However, this is a great way to get to know the Lord. To develop a deeper relationship with the Lord. If you want to get to know someone, you learn all you can about that person. The Bible is a great way to get to know who God is and what He is all about. You get to see all the various parts of His personality and the many ways He loves us and has saved us over the years. This is important because if He did it then, He will do it now.
I said earlier that I was envious of people who newly discovered Jesus because they seemed more on fire for Him. Then, one day, I realized we all had that turning point. Whether we have been going to Church our whole lives or we have just learned about Jesus today at the grocery store, we all have a point where our relationship with Him changes. There comes a time when we realize we need more Jesus in our life. There comes a time when we don’t just know about Jesus, but we know Jesus. We enter into a relationship with Him. This is where the fire comes from.
Those who just learned about Jesus aren’t on fire because Jesus is new to them, they are on fire because they have been personally touched by Jesus and they know what it is to be with Jesus. They know Him on a personal level and that makes you hungry for more. You want to read scripture because you want to know and understand Jesus more. You want to know what makes Him happy. You want to see how He has helped others so you can see how He can help you too!
Whether you have know Jesus your whole life and now have discovered a personal relationship with Him, or you have just found him, the verse above is the same. “Yet all of the accomplishments that I once took credit for, I’ve now forsaken them, and I regard it all as nothing compared to the delight of experiencing Jesus Christ as my Lord! To truly know him meant letting go of everything from my past and throwing all my boasting on the garbage heap. It’s all like a pile of manure to me now so that I may be enriched in the reality of knowing Jesus Christ and embracing him as Lord in all of his greatness.” Once you know Jesus on a personal level, you no longer care about all you have done.
If we want to truly know Jesus we need to let go of all that is in our past that is holding us back. This means our past beliefs of who we thought Jesus was and what it meant to be a follower of Jesus. This means all of our past hurts. This means anything in our past that might get in the way of our future. When we first start to grow closer to the Lord, the enemy is going to attack us. He will tell us that we are not good enough to have a relationship with Jesus. He will remind us of all the bad things we have done in the past that make us unworthy. It is important that we don’t listen to Him. Jesus took our past sins to the cross with Him so that they would no longer have hold over us. Don’t let the enemy drag them back up again.
The person writing this verse was St. Paul. His name used to be Saul, and he used to persecute Christians. He would lock them up in jail or, worse, have them stoned. He had a past that would have been easy for the enemy to use against him. However, he didn’t allow it. He threw his past on the garbage heap. All he had done before was nothing compared to the reality of knowing Jesus. You can do this too. No matter where you are in your relationship with the Lord, you can grow closer to Him. It’s straightforward: read His word and spend time with Him. I know that may seem too simple, but think of all those you spend time with, whether you want to be with them or not. You will inevitably learn more about them when you spend time with them. Jesus is no different. If you want to know the Lord truly, give up your past and focus on Him. He is your future.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone listening. Lord, we love you and we want to put you first. We want to have a more intimate relationship with you. We want to know you more and more with each passing day. Help us make time for you. Help us to make time to read Your Word. Help us to let go of our past so we can focus on our future with you. You are amazing Lord. You are so powerful and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I want to encourage all of you to check out the website for the upcoming retreat. I know many of us think retreats are for holy people. This retreat is for you and me. It is a time to get away from life and focus on Jesus for a bit. There were several people who had never been on a retreat before who came last year and they loved it. It will be laid back and fun and you will leave so refreshed and ready to get to know Jesus more. I hope you will consider joining us! I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you, just as you are, and so do I! May the peace and favor of our Lord Jesus Christ be upon you. Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in March 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I will always work in and through my children. I will never abandon you, not for one minute ever. You are my flock, and I love my flock.”
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Thank you so much for sharing your story with us. Did you all notice that before she received the healing she took a leap of faith and started testing out to see if she was healed? Sometimes, that is when we are healed, when we step out in faith to test the healing. Testing the healing means trying to do something you couldn’t do before. Like in Caitlyn’s case, she tried to see outside without her sunglasses on. This would have normally induced a headache, but she tried it anyway, and she did not get one. She also put her feet in hot water, which again would have usually been really painful, but there was no pain. She trusted that God gave her the healing she asked for, and He gave her the healing she asked for. St. Augustine said, “Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.” Caitlyn believed she was healed despite no evidence of that healing. She stepped out in faith and tested the healing that was granted to her. I know praying for healing, even just hoping for healing, can be scary because what if we are let down? However, Romans 5:5 says, “ and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” I am so proud of Caitlyn. I am proud she was brave and went to the healing service. I am proud that she took the leap of faith to test her healing when nothing indicated she had been healed. I am proud of her for signing up for the class to learn to be the Lord’s instrument and help heal others. I can’t wait to watch her light get brighter and brighter and to see all the amazing things God has planned for her. I am so grateful he brought the two of us together. I know he has great plans for us and all those at the Encounter School of Ministry Boston Campus. Look out, Boston Diocese, a revival is coming, and we are here for it!
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Light To My Soul
Ephesians 5:11-14 "And don't even associate with the servants of darkness because they have no fruit in them; instead, reveal truth to them. The very things they do in secret are too vile and filthy to even mention. Whatever the revelation-light exposes, it will also correct, and everything that reveals truth is light to the soul. This is why the scripture says, "Arise, you sleeper! Rise up from your coffin. The anointed one will shine his light into you.”
I liked today’s verse because it talks about the light. I love to talk about the light. However, you can’t talk about the light without talking about the darkness as well. This is why I included the first part of this verse. It says, “And don't even associate with the servants of darkness because they have no fruit in them; instead, reveal truth to them. The very things they do in secret are too vile and filthy to even mention.” I like that the verse tells us not to associate with the servants of darkness. We spend too much time associating with the servants of darkness, and I am not talking about people you know who might be doing something you don’t like.
This verse is talking about the evil forces at work in this world. How often do we engage with that voice in our heads that fills us with worry and anxiety? That voice that tells us this bad thing will happen or that bad thing will happen. How often do we listen as the enemy tells us lies about not being worthy enough and the lie that no one likes us? This verse tells us that we should expose the lies and the darkness. This includes the lies the enemy is telling us. These consist of all of our thoughts that are unkind to ourselves. We must bring our thoughts into the light and see if they still hold up.
My favorite line in this verse is, “Whatever the revelation-light exposes, it will also correct, and everything that reveals truth is light to the soul.” Could your soul use a little more light right now? I know mine could. When we hold our thoughts up to God’s light, they don’t hold up. Have you tried bringing your thoughts to the Lord and asking if they are true? The enemy wants us to keep our private thoughts private because he knows we can see how ridiculous they are when exposed to the light.
The enemy tells us we are unworthy, yet when we shine the revelation-light on that lie we know it is not true because Jesus died on the cross to make us worthy. We are worthy, not because of our merit but because of what Christ did for us. The enemy tells us that we are not loved, yet when we hold that up to the light, we know it is not true because God repeatedly proves His love for us in the Bible. Especially in John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” And Romans 5:8, "But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.” There is no doubt that God loves us.
In the darkness of our mind, the enemy can get in and tell us the lie that, yes, God loves most of his children, but he does not love you. Your sin is too great. We need to hold this up to the light, and we will see that it is a lie. When we examine this statement in the light of day, we can see it is an absurd thought. If this statement were true, that would mean Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, all he went through, was not enough. Do you really believe that? Do you believe there is anything you could do that is so big that Jesus’s suffering on the cross isn’t enough to cover it?
This is why the enemy whispers this stuff to us in the darkness of our minds and why he makes us too ashamed to voice these thoughts out loud. He makes us feel as though we are all alone, and if we share our thoughts with others, they will make fun of us, yell at us, or whatever it is you think will happen if you share your vulnerable thoughts with others. The enemy knows his lies start to fall apart when you bring them out into the light. This is why he makes us afraid to say them out loud. This is why he whispers them instead of shouting them. He doesn’t want anyone to overhear them and shine light on them.
I think it is essential to focus on the part of the verse that says, “Whatever the revelation-light exposes, it will also correct.” When we bring the enemy’s lies to light, they will be corrected. Once we know the truth, the lie is harder to believe. Once we know the truth, we can ask the Lord for the strength and courage to replace that lie with the truth. We know He will do this because the verse says that whatever the light exposes, it will also correct. Wouldn’t it be great not to have all those lies in your head anymore? What if you just said them out loud and then asked the Lord what truth he would like to replace those lies with? This activity does not take very long, yet the rewards can last a lifetime.
Take a moment, quiet your mind, and ask the Lord, “What lies am I believing right now?” Then, write down all those lies. Then, go through each lie individually, saying, “In the name of Jesus, I renounce the lie that…” Once you have renounced all the lies, take a moment to sit with the Lord again. This time, you will ask him, “Lord, what truths do you want to replace these lies with.” Then, write down whatever comes into your head. Once you have a list, you can go through the truths like you did with the lies. You can say, “In the name of Jesus, I declare the truth that…” and you list each truth individually.
I did this activity with several people, and they each felt more free afterward. The enemy wants you to feel stuck, like you will always feel how you feel right now. You don’t have to feel like this forever. You don’t have to believe the lies forever. If you let the revelation light into your mind and your situation, it will reveal what needs to change and help change it. The Lord is the one who changes our situation, and yet he often requires us to help. How can we let more light into our lives?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone listening to this episode. Lord, we want to let more light into our lives. Please help us. Help us figure out what lies the enemy is whispering to us, and help us expose those lies to your truth. Help put on our hearts the desire to sit and list our lies for you so that we can renounce them and then ask you to replace them with Your truths. We love you, Lord, you are amazing. You are the king of Kings and the Lord of Lords. You are the almighty one, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Tonight is week #3 of our Grief Series in mentoring. I hope you will click on the link below to learn more about it and join us for tonight’s session. It is on Zoom at 8 P. M. EST. I hope to see you tonight. If not, I look forward to bringing you a new witness tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day, and may the grace and favor of our Lord Jesus Christ be upon you.
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in March 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “It is you that I say, share all that I tell you. Share of my love. Share of your time, your joy, and your hope. It's all you share that will also bring these people to my banquet. But you must dare to share, to step out in faith, to proclaim my name to all those you meet. Thank you!”
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God’s Armor (Part 2)
Ephesians 6:17-18 “Embrace the power of salvation’s full deliverance, like a helmet to protect your thoughts from lies. And take the mighty razor-sharp Spirit-Sword of the spoken word of God. Pray passionately in the Spirit as you constantly intercede with every form of prayer at all times. Pray blessings of God upon all his believers.
Today, we are finishing up the discussion on the armor of God. In case you missed last week’s episode on Thursday, we were told we would be victorious if we put on all the armor God has given us. However, we can’t put something on if we don’t know what it is. So, on Friday and today, I am going over what the armor of God is and how we can put it on so we can be ready for the enemy when he comes. And make no mistake, he is coming.
Today we are discussing three things that I am passionate about. First, we are delving into the profound concept of protecting our thoughts. The reason I am so fervent about this is because I understand its transformative power. It may sound like an exaggeration, but if you can master the art of guarding your thoughts, you can truly change your life. This is not just a claim but a truth I stand by. I wish everyone could grasp the significance of our thoughts. In 2 Corinthians 10:5, Saint Paul says, “ We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” This verse is a powerful reminder of the control we have over our thoughts, and the potential for transformation it holds.
We have the power to take captive our thoughts. You have the power to take captive your thoughts. The enemy doesn’t want us to know this. He wants us to be a slave to our thoughts. He wants our worry and anxiety, or anger and resentfulness, to get the best of us. He wants us to sit and let those thoughts take over our minds. He wants us to act out of that fear instead of acting out of the truth of who God is and what we know He can do in our lives.
God knows how important our thoughts are, so he tells us to take control of every thought and put on a helmet to protect them. In the verse above, God tells us to “Embrace the power of salvation’s full deliverance.” Deliverance is something I have learned a lot about in the last two years of encounter. Did you that God wants to deliver you from any hold the enemy has over you? Did you know that He has given you this power as well? You do not need someone else to deliver you from the hands of the enemy. You don’t need someone else to deliver you from the worry or anxiety that you have. You don’t need someone else to chase away the demons in your life. God has given you all the power you need to deliver yourself from the enemy.
This is something the enemy is for sure trying to hide from us. He wants us to remain helpless and dependent on him and his lies. He wants us to think there is nothing we can do. He wants us to believe we are just anxious people; it is who we are, and we can do nothing about it. This is a lie straight from hell. God did not create us to be anxious or worried. This is why it tells us over 365 times in the Bible not to be worried and not to be anxious. God created us in His likeness and image, and we have a right to stand by that identity.
What the devil doesn’t want us to know is that we have the power to banish him from our thoughts, and not just our thoughts, but from our lives. The enemy is bound by free will. He needs our permission to be in our lives. Sometimes, we don’t realize all the ways we can give the enemy access to our lives, and yet regardless of what open door he walked through, if we tell him to leave, he has to go. There are no “ifs,” “and,” or “buts” about it. If you tell the enemy to leave, he must leave.
So, what might that look like? It can be as simple as, “In the name of Jesus, I command worry to leave now.” “In the name of Jesus, I command anyone or anything not of God to leave now.” “In the name of Jesus, I command sadness to leave now.” “In the name of Jesus, I command fear to leave now.” Whatever thoughts or feelings are taking over your mind, you can command them to leave, and they must go. Then, you can ask the Lord to replace them with peace, love, or hope. Whatever you need, you can replace the unwanted thoughts with the thoughts you would like to have. I invite you to try this and see how it can change your life. Don’t believe the enemy’s lies that you don’t have control over your thoughts. You are more powerful than you know because you have the Holy Spirit inside you. The enemy knows how powerful you are, and it is time we all start realizing it as well.
Next, the verse tells us, "Take the mighty razor-sharp Spirit-Sword of the spoken word of God.” This is something I talk about a lot. It is so important that we read the world of God. We must not only read it but also study it and know what it says. The enemy is full of half-truths, and he will take the very word of God and try to twist it and use it against us. Or, at least, use it to try and convince us of something that isn’t true. He tried this with Jesus in the desert, and Jesus knew the scripture and put him in his place. We can do the same, but we must be armed with God's Word.
There is so much in sacred scripture. If you haven’t read it before, you might think it is just a book full of rules. Something to tell us what we can and can’t do. However, that is not it at all. The Bible is full of so much. It has love stories; it has mystery and adventure. It does have some rules, but it also has tales of heartache and tales of miraculous things happening. The Bible is full of every kind of story you can think of. You can read the actual words of God and Jesus in the Bible.
If you have tried to read the Bible before and you started at the beginning and you didn’t get too far, you are not alone. This is what trips many people up. May I suggest, if you want to read the bible cover to cover, that you read along with someone, like Father Mike, and his bible in a Year podcast? I suggest that because there are many interesting things at the beginning of the Bible, but you might miss them if you are reading through it on your own. I know that when I read through it with Father Mike, he explained everything, making it much more enjoyable. Even the things I had previously found boring now had more meaning because I knew the significance and why it is in the Bible.
If you would like to begin reading the Bible on your own, may I suggest you begin with the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, or any other New Testament books? The Psalms can be a good place to start as well, especially if you like poetry. It honestly doesn’t matter where you start. What matters is that you start. You could even start by just looking up the verse of the day. I have also seen various scripture-writing plans. This is where you would write one scripture verse in a notebook or journal daily. Often, the scripture writing plans have themes. For instance, in one month, all the verses would be about joy, love, peace, and other topics. I did this for a while, and I really enjoyed it. At the beginning of the month, I just searched for scripture writing plans and then picked the one I liked the best. However you decide to do it, I hope you dive deeper into scripture. You will see a change in you and your life.
The last thing mentioned in the verse is prayer. The verse says, “Pray passionately in the Spirit as you constantly intercede with every form of prayer at all times. Pray blessings of God upon all his believers.” I don’t have time this morning to go over how to pray in the spirit. However, I would like to mention that everyone who wants to pray in the Spirit can pray in the Spirit. It just takes a little practice, which can be challenging, as giving up control of our voice while doing it can be scary. Praying in the Spirit means the Holy Spirit is praying straight from our hearts to the Lord’s heart.
Praying in the Spirit is great because it is a direct conversation with the Lord. It is straight from the heart, so none of our human impure motives get in there. It is the most perfect prayer we can pray. However, it also says in this verse that we should constantly be interceding with every form of prayer at all times. This means we can use our voice; we can pray scripted prayers, we can pray unscripted prayers, we can pray the rosary, we can pray novenas, and we can pray however we like. God wants us to be praying all the time.
This may sound like an overwhelming call as we have to eat, sleep, and care for others. We tend to think that praying unceasingly is for those cloistered nuns and monks who dedicate all day to the Lord. This is not true. The Lord is calling us to pray without ceasing as well. This doesn’t mean we must be in an audible prayer with the Lord 24 hours daily. It means we are called to invite the Lord into every aspect of our day. We can offer each activity we do throughout the day up for the intercession of someone. We can think of people who need prayers as we vacuum the floors, do the dishes, or do the laundry. We can talk to the Lord while driving to and from wherever we go. We can turn our everyday tasks into prayer. I did an audio training on this, including some ways to turn the things you are already doing into prayer. If you would like to hear it, sign up for my newsletter below, and it will be sent automatically to your email.
As you can see by the three pieces of armor we covered today, the Lord is not sending us into battle without the tools we need to win. However, God can give us all we need, and it still won’t help us unless we put on the armor and learn how to use it. When David went into battle against Goliath, he didn’t put on the King’s armor because it was too big, and he didn’t know how to use it. He used what the Lord gave him, and he defeated the enemy. Take time to discover the armor the Lord has given you, and then make sure you wear it into battle. We are all in a battle right now between good and evil, and we will be victorious if we put on all the armor God gave us!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone listening to this episode. Lord, help us put on your armor. Help us to gain a greater understanding of what each piece of armor is and how it can help us protect ourselves against the enemy. Help us take captive our thoughts, Lord. The enemy has been in control of them for far too long. Help us to intercede for others more. Help us to understand what that means. Help us to pray unceasingly. Help us hear that as a call from you and not as a judgment that we aren’t doing enough. We love you so much, Lord. You are King of Kings and Lord of Lords. You are the almighty one, and we will be forever grateful to you. We love you, and we ask all of this in accordance with your word and Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you are enjoying this podcast and think you want more, I invite you to join me for mentoring on Tuesday nights on Zoom at 8:00 PM Eastern time. This month’s mentoring series is all about Grief. If you would like more info, you can click on the link below.
I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I. Have a blessed day, and may the grace and favor of our Lord Jesus Christ be upon you!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in March 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Come, my children, and prepare for the banquet that I have prepared. I have prepared it especially for each one of you. But before you come, you must make me known to each person that you meet. ”
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God’s Armor (Part 1)
Ephesians 6:14-16 “Put on truth as a belt to strengthen you to stand in triumph. Put on holiness as the protective armor that covers your heart. Stand on your feet alert, then you'll always be ready to share the blessings of peace. In every battle, take faith as your wrap-around shield, for it is able to extinguish the blazing arrows coming from the evil one!”
Yesterday, I talked about how we will be victorious and how important it is to put on all the armor that God has given us. Today, I thought I would go over what that armor is because it can be hard to put something on if we don’t know what it is. The verse above tells us to put on truth as a belt to strengthen us to stand in triumph. We have truth on our side. God is truth, and the enemy is a liar. We must stand in that truth. We must know the truth, and we must also tell the truth. Our actions can either make it possible for the enemy to gain a foothold in our lives or keep him out, and it is up to us to decide. I said yesterday that the enemy is bound by free will. He can’t come in unless we open a door for him. Sometimes, we leave a door open by accident. Sometimes, we do wrong things, and we don’t know that by doing so, we are making an opening for the enemy to come in.
We not only need to stand in the truth, but we also need to tell the truth always. Lying will open a door to the enemy in so many ways. If you lie about something, the enemy will call you a liar. He will use that lie to make you think you are a liar. He will make you nervous that someone will learn about that lie. He will make you feel bad about that lie and then start telling you lies. He will tell you you are not good enough for God’s love because you are a liar. He will tell you God won’t forgive you because you are a liar. He will tell you others will find out you lied, and then they won’t like you either. He will tell you that the person you lied to will find out, and they won’t like you either. Do you see how we are opening a door to the enemy when we lie? The enemy is the liar. He is the one who is not worthy of God’s love. We need to put on the belt of truth because telling the truth will not only strengthen us but also protect us from opening the door to the enemy.
The next piece of armor is the breastplate. The scripture instructs us to wear holiness as the protective armor that shields our hearts. We must guard our hearts. The enemy takes pleasure in assaulting our hearts with his deceitful lies. He revels in telling us we're unworthy, inadequate, unloved. He spins so many falsehoods. But your heavenly Father loves you unconditionally, regardless of your actions. Even if you weren’t worthy, He would still love you. But you are worthy because Jesus made you worthy when He died for you. This is the power of holiness, a shield that assures us of God's unwavering love and protection.
So, what does it mean to wear holiness as a breastplate to protect our hearts? Does this mean we need to be perfect? No, it means we need to be close to God. We should do what we can to grow closer to the Lord daily. We must strive to do the right thing and live the right way. Remember, our actions give the enemy a way into our lives. He will take any opening, no matter how big or small. We don’t want to give him an opening. If we stay close to the Lord, He can protect us. If we try to grow in holiness more each day, the breastplate protecting our hearts will grow stronger and stronger.
I just looked up at the wall in front of me, and I have post-it notes and pictures hanging on that wall. When I looked up, I saw a post-it note that said, “Holiness is saying yes to the will of God.” We are all called to live a life of holiness, and sometimes we can shy away from that because we think that means it is calling us to a life of perfection. It isn’t. God asks us daily to learn to say yes to His will instead of our own. He knows we are not perfect and that it will be a lifelong goal, and yet he is still asking it of us. He is not expecting us to get it right each time. He is just asking that we try to say yes to Him more than we say yes to ourselves. Since He is God and knows what is best for us, can you see how if we grow in holiness, saying yes to His will, His perfect will, then we will protect our hearts?
Next, the verse says, “Stand on your feet alert, then you'll always be ready to share the blessings of peace.” It is important to be alert. The enemy will come more easily if we are sleepy, distracted, or not paying attention. I like this one because we get to share a blessing of peace. Did you know you had the power to impart peace to other people? This is one of my favorite things to do. I pray for peace over people. There is so much worry and anxiety in this world, and peace can combat it. It is not a worldly peace but the peace of Christ that surpasses all understanding. If you see a loved one struggling, pray that the peace of Christ fills them up. If you see a stranger and you can see they could use some peace, pray for them. The peace of Christ is unlimited. It will never run out. We don’t have to conserve it or use it sparingly. There is an endless supply, and if you see someone that needs peace, pray for them.
Next, it says, “In every battle, take faith as your wrap-around shield, for it is able to extinguish the blazing arrows coming from the evil one!” Faith is important. Faith can make all the difference. I just looked up the definition of faith to make sure we are all on the same page. The first definition I found was “complete trust or confidence in someone or something.” Do we have complete trust in God and in His promises? If we do, we can wrap that faith around us, and the enemy won’t be able to get in. As we talked about yesterday, God says we will be victorious. So, if we have complete trust in what God says, then the enemy can’t touch us because we know that God has us covered.
The second definition I found is found in Hebrews 11:1 – “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” This is similar but goes into a bit more detail. This means that we have complete trust that God is in the things that we hope for and also that we can believe even if we can’t see. We can believe in God, even if we can’t see Him. We can assume that our hopes and dreams will come true even before they do. This is so powerful against the enemy because He doesn’t understand why we would believe without seeing. He doesn’t know how we can have faith when all looks like it is going wrong if we wrap that faith around us like a blanket and trust the Lord, no matter what, then the enemy's flaming arrows will bounce right off of us.
When I started this episode this morning, I was going to go over all the armor of God today. However, this episode is getting long, and I really don’t want to have to rush through the last two verses, as they are also significant. I will end here for today and pick back up on Monday morning with the last pieces of armor. On Monday, I will cover the helmet, the sword, and prayer.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each of us listening to this episode. Lord, show us how to put on this armor and defeat the enemy. Teach each of us in a way that we can understand how each piece of armor fits in our lives. Show us how we need to change. Lord, help us grow in holiness. Help us to say yes to your will more than we say yes to our own will. Help us spread Christ's peace to all who need it. Lord, help us to be truthful. Put on our hearts anywhere in our lives that we are being less than truthful and help us remedy the situation. We love you so much, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I am so excited that some of you have already clicked the link below and signed up for the “Come as You Are” Retreat in October. Registration just opened on Wednesday, and it is exciting to see people signing up. It will be a fantastic weekend, and I hope you will join us. There is a link below with all the details.
I look forward to meeting you here again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day, and may the grace and favor of our Lord Jesus Christ be upon you.
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in March 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Living water I give to you, my children. You call me font of all holiness. And that is true. That is who I am. And I give to you the water that flows from that font. For you truly are a holy people. A people set apart to be different. Not that you may boast of your difference, but that you may share your difference. Because your difference will lead people to my heart, to my font of holiness, of life-giving water. And that I long for more than you can ever imagine or dream about. I once again this morning pour out upon you my living water. I ask only that you open your hearts and allow it to flow freely to others.”
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You Are Destined For All Things And Will Rise Victorious
Ephesians 6:13 “Because of this, you must wear all the armor that God provides so you're protected as you confront the slander, for you are destined for all things and will rise victorious.
I looked at several different scriptures for this morning's devotional. There are so many good ones in Ephesians. I don’t know why I never saw them before. Or maybe I did, and the Lord is just showing me them again in a different light. I am not sure, but I love it! I saw this verse first this morning, and then I went back and forth on a few others, but my eyes kept being drawn back to this one. I know a lot of you are going through some really hard things right now, and what I felt when I kept being drawn back to this verse was that God wants you to know that you will rise victorious!
He wants you to know that this thing you are going through, the situation you are in, it will not take you down. This illness will not be the end. These financial matters won’t be the end. Your estranged loved ones, this is not the end. You will be victorious. You will be healed. Your loved one will be healed. The Lord will provide for you to pay your bills. You won’t be estranged from your loved one forever. Whatever it is you are struggling with this morning, I feel the Lord wants me to tell you you will rise victorious.
The last part of this verse made me think of a song I saw in a movie called Pitch Perfect 2. The song was sung by a group of Germans who were competing in an a cappella singing competition. This song came into my mind because their performance was so powerful. They projected such strength when they performed this song. This is what we must do when we are dealing with the enemy.
The verse says that we must put on the armor that God provides us so that we are protected when we confront the slander. Make no mistake, the slander is the devil. Of course, he won’t look like the devil. He will look like someone who cut you off in the traffic. He will look like the person spreading lies about you. He will look like your co-worker or your boss. He might look like your children or your siblings. Whoever is causing strife in your life, the enemy is working through them. I want to read you the words to the song that popped into my mind as I know it is not a coincidence that when I read this verse this song came to mind. If you want to see the video on youtube you can type in Das Sound Machine Car Show and it should come up. Here are the lyrics:
They will not control us. We will be victorious
[Verse 1]
Paranoia is in bloom
The PR transmissions will resume
They try to push drugs that keep us all dumbed down
And hope that we will never see the truths around
Come On!
[Verse 2]
Another promise, another seed
Another packaged lie to keep us trapped in greed
And all the green belts wrapped around our minds
And endless red tape to keep the truth confined
Come On!
[Chorus]
They will not force us
They will stop degrading us
They will not control us
We will be victorious
At first, these lyrics might not seem to make much sense. However, if you think about them in terms of what the enemy is trying to do to us, they make much more sense. The first line goes perfectly with the verse. They will not control us; we will be victorious. The enemy and his evil henchmen will not control us. We are God’s children and we are protected. However, we must put on our armor of protection. We must call on the Lord. We need to give Him permission to protect us. We need to read the scriptures so we know when the enemy is lying to us. We must stand in truth.
The next verse in the song says, Paranoia is in bloom. The PR transmissions will resume. They try to push drugs that keep us all dumbed down. And hope that we will never see the truths around. Come On! This may not fit perfectly, but when we really think about it, we can see that the enemy is trying to make us feel paranoid. All we have to do is listen to the news for a few minutes, and we can see all the craziness going on in the world today. Also, it says they try to push drugs that keep us all dumbed down. And hope that we will never see the truth around us. How many of us know someone who has struggled with drug or alcohol abuse? We know it is all around us, yet do we know that the enemy is the one who is pushing it on us. Do we know he is trying to keep us on drugs so we don’t see the truth all around us? When we use drugs, when we drink, it alters our state, and we don’t see things as they really are.
The next verse of the song says, “Another promise, another seed, another packaged lie to keep us trapped in greed. And all the green belts wrapped around our minds. And endless red tape to keep the truth confined. Come On!” How many people in our lives have promised us promise after promise and yet not kept them? How many times have people in the government, or in any authoritative power, promised something, and yet it never happened? I like how it says, “another packaged lie to keep us trapped in greed.” This is so true in the world today. The enemy will tell us anything we want to hear to keep us trapped in greed. The world is all about how much we have and how much we can get. It is not about giving to others. It is about making sure we have what we need despite others.
Next, the song says, “And all the green belts wrapped around our minds. And endless red tape to keep the truth confined.” Do you ever feel like this? Do you feel like the information we get from the news, social media, and YouTube are all just feeding us what we want to hear? Sometimes, I feel like the truth is impossible to find. It is always hidden in someone else’s opinion about what happened. It is very hard to find the facts about the actual incident. The truth is harder and harder to find these days.
The chorus of this song is one that I recommend we use as a mantra anytime we are having a rough day or anytime the enemy seems to be overtaking our thoughts. It says, “They will not force us. They will stop degrading us. They will not control us. We will be victorious.” We know this is true because the Lord tells us this in Ephesians 6:13. We will be victorious. The enemy can not force you. This is one of those things that the enemy doesn’t want us to know. If God is willing to be bound by free will you better believe the enemy is also. He likes us to think he can do whatever he wants to us, and yet if we tell him to leave he must leave. That is a fact he doesn’t want us to know.
You are so much more powerful than you know. The enemy is trying to keep this from us because He knows the game would be over if all of God’s children started living in the power that the Lord gave us. If we all stood up to the enemy and said, “No more! I am done with your games. I know you can’t hurt me because I am a child of the one true God. I know you have no power over me. I know you are a liar and I refuse to believe your stupid lies any more.” Can you imagine what type of world we would be living in if we were all able to do that? It would be glorious!
I don’t want to leave this verse today without addressing the beginning part of the verse. My eyes first went to the part that says, “You will be victorious” and I think that message was what God wanted me to focus on today, yet I also want to make sure you all heard the first part too, so I will end with that today. The verse above says it is important to wear the armor that God provides because “You are destined for all things.” You have a destiny and it is an amazing one. You know how I know it is an amazing one when I might not even know you? Because the enemy is attacking you. The enemy doesn’t care about those who are luke warm or those whose soul he thinks he has already won. The enemy attacks those who he is worried will do great things for the kingdom of God. The enemy only attacks those who are powerful warriors for the Lord.
You, my friend, have an amazing destiny and you will be victorious. I know things are hard right now. I know you can’t see a way out and you think all is about to come crashing down on you. You don’t see how your loved one will come back to you. You don’t see how the cancer will be defeated. You don’t see how will pay your bills when you paycheck can’t possibly cover it all. I get it. We can’t always see how and we don’t need to. All we need to do is believe the Lord when He says we will be victorious. We can just thank Him, praise Him and wait for Him to work all things for our good.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord I ask you to protect our mind from the enemy. I ask you to help us to believe that we will be victorious. Show us how to put on the armor of God Lord. Show us how to protect ourselves from the slanderer. Help us walk in our victory Lord. Help us have hope that even though we don’t see how, you will arrange all things for our victory. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus! I am so excited to announce that the registration site for the retreat is now open and ready for you to register. I will put a link for the registration below the show notes. (Click Here) The link will have all the information. The retreat is October 11-13. Columbus Day weekend. It will be Friday to Sunday this year. It will be $250. That will include a two-night stay at the Holy Cross Retreat House. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner on Saturday, and breakfast and lunch on Sunday. It also includes tea, coffee, and water throughout the whole retreat; there will be mass, retreat talks, and so much more. I hope you will join us. It was an amazing retreat last year, and I pray it will be even better this year. The theme this year is come as you are. We tend to think we need to wait to turn back to the Lord or to sit and pray with the Lord until we are all cleaned up. This isn’t what the Lord wants. He said come to me all who are weary and burdened, not all who are perfect. Come and spend the weekend learning about how much the Lord loves you. Learn to sit and talk with Him and hear Him talk back. I hope you will give it a try. Retreats are not just for those who are super holy, they are for those of us who want to be closer to the Lord. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day and may the grace and favor of the Lord Jesus Christ be upon you!
Thursday: Today’s Word from the Lord was received in March 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Arise, I say, arise. Declare my works, declare my love, declare my glory and majesty. For as my majesty is, so is my tender mercy. Arise and stand and declare my love and mercy to all you meet.”
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Today's witness was from the book "From Grief to Grace" By Jeannine Ewing.
Click here to check out the book.
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
REGISTER FOR THE RETREAT HERE!
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Don't Let The Passion Of Your Emotions Lead You To Sin!
Ephesians 4:26-27 “But don't let the passion of your emotions lead you to sin! Don't let anger control you or be fuel for revenge, not even for one day. Don't give the slanderous accuser, the devil, an opportunity to manipulate you!”
I know we have already talked about anger recently and how even God got angry at times. However, I really liked today’s verse because it is something many of us struggle with. The passion of our emotions can be so strong that it can often lead us to sin. Not just anger, but a lot of our emotions can be strong.
We live in a world that tells us we should follow our passion and that the most important thing is that we are happy. This is not true. Yes, it would be great if we were all happy. God would love for us to be happy, but not in ways that would put our eternal salvation at risk. If you have children or have spent time with them, you know you can not always say yes to them. Children ask many questions, and sometimes, they don’t know what is good for them and what is not.
For instance, they might want to eat cookies every day for breakfast. Occasionally, you might be able to say yes to them, but every day would not be a good idea. They want to stay up late and watch TV every night, and yet you know that they will be tired the next day and be super cranky and unhappy. They probably know this, too, but the passion with which they want to stay up overrides the part of their brain that knows they need sleep. They rely on us to set boundaries so that they aren’t cranky and miserable the next day.
God has done this for us as adults, too. We are not exempt from the passion of our feelings. Our passion can get us into a lot of trouble. This is why when the Israelites were led out of captivity, the Lord gave them the Ten Commandments. They had been living outside their culture for so long that they weren’t living in the way God had asked them to live. He gave them the Ten Commandments so that they would have guidelines. They would have something to think about when their passions told them they should do something.
Even today, our passions can get the best of us. The divorce rate is 42 %, which is actually down. It used to be that 1 in every two marriages would end in divorce. The reason that 75% of the individuals and couples cited for their divorce was lack of commitment. This comes back to passion. If we think that we deserve to be happy above all things and we are not happy in our marriage, then we start to look outside of our marriage for that happiness or that passion. We are always looking for that thing that will fulfill us, that will make us happy, and that will make us excited to get out of bed each day. It can be easy to put that responsibility on our spouse. It can be easy to expect the person we married to fulfill all of our needs and desires. That is not their job.
We all have a place in our hearts that can only be filled by God. He can bring us the joy that we seek and give it to us in all situations. You might not be feeling fulfilled in your marriage or in your job because you haven’t let God into those areas of your life. Have you invited Him in? Have you asked Him to be a part of your life? He is a gentleman and does not go where He is not invited. If you feel you are missing something in your life, in your marriage, or in your job, ask the Lord to come in and show you what you are missing. Ask the Lord to fill that empty space inside of you, or in your marriage or your job. God will always come where He is invited.
There are other ways when the passion of our emotions can lead us to sin. It is not just in marriages. We can also let our emotions control our behavior in all different circumstances. The most prevalent, I think, is probably anger. We have talked about anger before. Anger is not universally good or bad. It has its place and its purpose. Notice this verse doesn’t say don’t feel all your emotions. What it says is don’t let the passion of your emotions cause you to sin. It also goes on to call out anger specifically. It says, “Don't let anger control you or be fuel for revenge, not even for one day.”
I can see how anger can get in your head and make you do or say horrible things. One of my sons is angry most of the time. Anger has a real hold on him right now, and he hates it. When I listen to him talk, I can hear the anger in his voice—not usually at me but at most of the people he interacted with that day. This can happen to all of us to some degree. I know when I get angry, sometimes my voice gets louder, and I find myself yelling. I have worked hard on this, and I have gotten so much better at not letting the passion of my anger take over. Yet, sometimes, I still yell. It is a process and God is not looking for perfection, but he is looking for progress. He does expect us to notice when we need to work on something and then actually work on it.
I invite each of you to pay close attention to the passion of your emotions this week. Are you letting the passion of your anger cause you to sin? Are you letting the passion of your loneliness cause you to sin? How are you doing with your emotions? Are you controlling them, or are they controlling you? If they are controlling you, reach out. I can send you the mentoring sessions where I talked about emotions and how we can get better control over them.
I love the last line of this verse. “Don't give the slanderous accuser, the devil, an opportunity to manipulate you!” I love this because it reminds us that the devil is a slanderous accuser. He will accuse you, and he will accuse others just to get you to sin. He will tell you all sorts of lies about yourself and about others. He will tell you that the person who cut you off in traffic did it on purpose because he thinks you are a loser who will not do anything about it. Just so that you will get mad and do something about it.
It is important to remember the devil wants the opposite of what we want. He is never trying to help us get to heaven. Even if he seems to be saying something that makes sense and doesn’t seem too bad, it is always designed to make us lose eternal life with God. Remember when he was talking to Jesus in the desert, and he was quoting scripture and seemed to be saying things that weren’t too bad? It was scripture, so he wasn’t lying. However, they were half-truths, and he took things out of context. He will do the same for you. He will tell you things that seem true, he will pretend to be nice, he will pretend to be looking out for you. However, if he is leading you to sin, and he is not looking out for you. This is why it is so important to know what the scriptures say. Then, when he says a half-truth, like he did to Jesus, you will know he is lying.
It is important to know that our emotions are not bad. Yet, we can let our emotions get the best of us. When this happens, we may even allow them to lead us to sin. We must stay in control of our emotions and not vice versa. This is impossible if we are doing it on our own. However, with Jesus, all things are possible. Invite the Lord into all the areas you are struggling with and ask Him to help you. Ask Him to help you put Him first. Ask Him to help you control your passion so it doesn’t lead you to sin. Invite Him into your situation, and He will come. He is waiting there for your invitation.
Dear heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, you are amazing, and we love you so much. We invite you into our mess, Lord. We invite you into our emotions. Help us gain control, Lord. Help us to see where the passion of our emotions is leading us to sin and help us gain back control. Help us put a stop to sinning, Lord. You are the almighty one. You are the all-powerful, and we can do all things through you! We love you, Lord, you are amazing! We ask all this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. I will be opening up registration for the retreat soon. If you are not on my mailing list you can sign up below. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day and may the grace and favor or our Lord Jesus Christ be upon you!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in March 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Life is short, my children. Now is the time to prepare. Don't wait until tomorrow. You do not know if that day will be yours. I tell you again, now is the time to prepare.”
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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Be Imitators of God
Ephesians 5:1-2 "Be imitators of God in everything you do, for then you will represent your father as his beloved sons and daughters. And continue to walk surrendered to the extravagant love of Christ, for he surrendered his life as a sacrifice for us. His great love for us was pleasing to God like an aroma of adoration – a sweet, healing fragrance.”
I was looking back over Ephesians this morning. I reviewed Chapters 5 & 6 and decided I couldn’t move on yet as there are several things I want to talk about. I may have talked about them before; I am unsure, but even if I did, they are worth repeating. Every time in the past, I have repeated a scripture because the Holy Spirit revealed something new about it, so hopefully, these next few days will be the same.
I love today’s verse because it reminds us to be imitators of God in all that we do. It reminds us that because everyone knows that we are Christians, then they will be watching what we do to see how “Christians” act. We essentially represent Christians to those we know—especially those who are not Christians. Our actions matter, and so do our attitudes and words. I had a friend who stayed away from attending church for a long time because she didn’t like how those at her church acted. She said on Sunday, they would come to the service and praise the Lord, then sit around and talk about the latest gossip. This did not give her a good picture of what we should do as Christians.
She is not alone, and neither are the people sitting around gossiping. We all fall short of the call to live a holy life. That doesn’t mean we can stop trying, though. This verse is a good reminder of our call. We should be trying to imitate God in all we do. What is the best way to imitate God? What is the simplest way to imitate God? To love our neighbors as we love Him. I think we can all agree that we love God. Now, we just have to figure out how to love those around us and those we meet, and we will be all set.
Loving our neighbor is not easy. People are difficult. They aren’t always nice, and they are sometimes downright mean for no reason. Jesus encountered these people, too. He had people that hated Him for no good reason. They hated Him for who He was and what He stood for. It wasn’t anything He did; they didn’t like who He was. We can’t change who we are, and God wouldn’t want us to. You will encounter people who don’t like you simply because of who you are, which is ok. You don’t have to try to be friends with this person, yet we are called to love them. Can you show love in your interactions with them?
When I wrote that, I got this overwhelming feeling in my stomach that we all need to hear that today. There may be people that we don’t like. There may be people who drive us crazy, like we talked about the other day—those who get under our skin like no other. I really feel like the Lord is calling us to love them more today.
I feel like He is asking us how we could interact with them more lovingly. He is asking us to stop venting about them to others. Stop complaining about them. Stop focusing on how much they annoy us or make our lives harder. I feel as though the Lord is calling us to bring that to Him instead of to others. He is asking us to think about how we can love them more. How can we be an imitation of Christ to them? Think about this, you may be the only interaction with Christ they ever have.
I was praying with someone the other day, and she asked what prayer requests I had. I told her I prayed that my boys would each have an intimate encounter with Jesus. She said she used to pray this for her children, too, and the Holy Spirit told her one day that she was that encounter with Jesus for her kids. They are encountering Jesus through her. I thought this was a beautiful reminder to pay attention to our actions as they may be the only encounter those we meet have with Jesus. Are we being good representations of Jesus? How could we work on this so we can do better? How can we spread love to all we meet and interact with?
The verse says, “And continue to walk surrendered to the extravagant love of Christ, for he surrendered his life as a sacrifice for us. His great love for us was pleasing to God like an aroma of adoration – a sweet, healing fragrance.” This is great because it reminds us of how much Jesus loved us. He loved us so much that He gave his life for us. God is not asking us to give our lives to those we meet. He is not asking for that kind of sacrifice, but he is asking for sacrificial love. A love that cost us something. Maybe that something is getting over what we want to be there for someone else. Maybe that means we need to forgive someone for something. Maybe that means we need to stop getting so defensive when those who irritate us talk to us. Maybe we need to stop taking offense so easily. I think God was talking to me for those last two. I have been defensive and taking offense a lot lately, and that is not what God wants. What about you?
I can’t tell you what God is calling you to. Well, He is calling us all to holiness. I don’t know where you are struggling with that. That call to holiness is a call to love God and to love others. Sit with the Lord today for a bit and ask Him how He would like you to love others more. Ask Him where you are struggling and how He wants to help you change that. We must do it with God; we can’t do it alone. Just sitting and asking Him how we can change will make Him happy. Just admitting we are struggling with loving some people is a big first step. God doesn’t ever expect us to change things on our own. He just wants us to come to Him, admit we need to change, and then ask Him to help us. It sounds simple because it is simple. God is constantly calling us to Him. When we come, He answers our prayers.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you, and we want to come to you. We want to be good imitators of you, please help us. We want to be your face to all we meet, and we really struggle with this. We struggle to love the unloveable. Please ask Jesus to show us how. Please give us the strength to overcome our weaknesses and to love others as we love you. Help us on our path to holiness, Lord. Show each one of us where we are struggling, and then help us change. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day, and may the grace and favor of our Lord Jesus Christ be upon you!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in March 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “For the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. Rely on me.”
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Humility & Quiet Patience
Ephesians 4:2 “With tender humility and quiet patience, always demonstrate gentleness and generous love toward one another, especially toward those who may try your patience.”
This is a profound reminder of the challenging path we are called to walk. We are summoned to be gentle and generous towards others, a task that is far from easy. People can be difficult, and they can test our patience. St. Paul, in his letter to the Ephesians, was well aware of this. Hence, he emphasized, “Especially those who may try your patience.” St. Paul's intention was to underscore that our love should not be limited to those who are easy to love or reciprocate. We are called to love everyone and treat everyone with gentleness, a challenge that requires our utmost dedication.
If we take a minute to think about those who try our patience, I am sure we will all have several people who come to mind. Now, let’s take a minute to think about how we interact with those who try our patience. When we are annoyed, we tend to be short with people. It is not easy to demonstrate gentleness when we feel people are annoying us. I think the key to being gentle and loving with people who try our patience is what it mentions in the beginning of this verse.
We need tender humility and quiet patience if we want to demonstrate love and gentleness to one another. Why humility? Humility allows us to get past ourselves, think of others more, and avoid offending too easily. Humility is not easy. It is something that we need to pursue actively. What does humility even mean? When you look in the dictionary, humility means a modest or low view of one's own importance. However, I like what Rick Warren said about humility. “Humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less.” I think we need to be careful when we read the dictionary definition is we may read it and think that humility means we are supposed to have a low view of ourselves. I don’t think God would want us to have a low view of ourselves especially since we are made in His likeness and image. But what the definition is actually saying is that we have a modest or low view of our importance.
This is why I resonate with Rick Warren's perspective on humility. It's not about thinking less of yourself but about thinking of yourself less. This challenges the misconception that humility means having a low opinion of oneself. Instead, it suggests that true humility is about shifting our focus away from ourselves and toward others. It conveys that genuine humility involves selflessness, empathy, and an orientation towards serving and caring for others. It inspires us to transcend self-centeredness and egocentric thinking and cultivate a mindset of humility that prioritizes the well-being of others. It's a powerful transformation that can reshape our hearts and lives.
C. S. Lewis also talks about humility. According to Lewis, the first step in pursuing humility is recognizing and admitting how proud and conceited you are. A solid second step would be to confess this to God and ask God for help. The third would be to cultivate the practice of praying for other people. Don’t pray for others like you’re reading over a laundry list to God, but offer deep, imaginative, caring, and concerned prayers like you are holding someone else’s life, their existence, their well-being in your hand and holding that person up to God. Pray for others like you pray for yourself or your children and see what God does in your heart.
That last line is powerful. “See what God does in your heart.” I think we would all be amazed at what God will do in our hearts when we start trying to be more humble, when we try to put the needs of others before our comfort. I am not saying to never think about your needs but often we put the needs of others behind our wants and desires. For instance, someone asks us if we can help them with something important on Thursday night, but that is when our team plays an important game. They need us, and we don’t need to see the game; we could watch the replay, but we want to see it.
We often talk about the importance of self-care, and rightly so. If we don’t take care of ourselves, we can’t take care of others. However, we can’t be solely focused on ourselves and ignore the needs of others either. I believe God created us to look out for one another. He wants us to care for the poor, the hungry, the thirsty, and so on because He tells us so in the scriptures. When we shift our focus away from ourselves and towards those in need, we can grow in humility.
The verse says, “With tender humility and quiet patience, always demonstrate gentleness and generous love toward one another, especially toward those who may try your patience.” If you are struggling with this, as I think we all are, it's okay. God doesn’t expect us to be perfect or to get it all right. However, now that we know what we are called to do, we also can’t keep going on like we were without changing anything. Once the Holy Spirit points out that something needs to change, we must set about to change it. Once we are aware, we can no longer claim ignorance.
If you want to change the way you interact with those around you, especially those who get under your skin, you must work on cultivating patience and greater humility. Once you do that, it will be easier to love and be gentle with those around you. If we follow C. S. Lewis’s advice and have a conversation with God about our current level of self-centeredness and then ask Him to show us how to be more humble and more patient, I think we will be surprised at the ways He will show up for us. God is so good!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those who are listening to this episode right now. Lord, we love you tons! We ask that you help us grow in humility in a gentle way. We ask you to help us grow in quiet patience as well. We thank you for showing us how you want us to live and then helping us live that way. We thank you more than words can express for sending each one of us the Holy Spirit as our guide. Help us to invite the Holy Spirit into our situations more and help us to rely on His power more. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you have experienced loss in some way and are grieving right now, I invite you to join mentoring this month as we cover the topic of “Grief.” I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just the way you are, and so do I! May the grace and favor of our Lord Jesus Christ be upon you. Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in February 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Arise, my people. Do not be afraid to arise from wherever you are, in whatever circumstance you're in. I am with you. As the Father has raised me, so I raise you.”
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The Supernatural Fruit of His Light: Goodness, Righteousness, and Truth
Ephesians 5:8-10 “Once your life was full of sin’s darkness, but now you have the very light of our Lord shining through you because of your union with him. Your mission is to live as children flooded with his revelation-light! And the supernatural fruits of his light will be seen in you-goodness, righteousness, and truth. Then you will learn to choose what is beautiful to our Lord.”
Have I told you recently how much I enjoy reading through Ephesians, especially in the passion translation? Everyday I find myself underlining almost the whole section. Yes, I am aware that if I underline all of it, then there is not much point to it because nothing will stand out. Yet, I can’t help myself. There is so much wisdom in this book. I am sure they are all probably like that. I am pretty sure I said the same thing while reading Philippians.
There were many things that stood out to me today while reading Chapter 5. It was hard to choose one thing to talk about today, so I may stay in Chapter 5 for tomorrow’s episode to. We will see. I chose this verse for today for a few reasons. First, I love how it begins. “Once your life was full of sin’s darkness, but now you have the very light of our Lord shining through you because of your union with him.” This is a great reminder that we are not who we were.
Yes, we might have sinned in the past and been filled with the darkness of sin, but that is in the past now. That is no longer who we are. The verse says that because of our union with the Lord, we have His very light shining through us. How amazing is that? God’s light shines through you. His light shines through me, too—not because we are special but because we chose to be in union with him.
Sometimes, we can get caught up in our past and be tempted to live there. We can take on our sins and that darkness as our identity. We can forget that God has already set us free from that darkness. No matter how bad we think our past is, not matter how bad of a person we think we are, God is bigger than all of it. If you have accepted God, if you have repented for yours sins, then God has already forgotten about them, so why do we hold onto them? I know it is hard to believe that God can forget our sins, but it says so right in the Bible. Actually it says it more thank once in the Bible. Isaiah 43:25 says, “I, I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.” And Hebrews 8:12 says, “For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.”
Scripture is truth. You can hang your hat, as some would say, on anything you find in scripture. You can stand firm on scripture. When scripture says that God does not remember our sins, then you can believe it. I know you don’t think you are worthy, none of us do. However, that is what the cross is for. By holding onto our sins, we are basically telling Jesus that we don’t believe His sacrifice was big enough to cover our sins. Is this how we feel? Do we feel Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross was enough? Was it enough to cover all of our sins? What it enough to cover other’s sins, but just not yours? What will it take for us to believe we are forgiven and that God has already forgotten all that stuff we are carrying around with us?
The next line says, “Your mission is to live as children flooded with his revelation-light!” I love the idea of living as children. Children are so carefree and full of energy, and they are also full of God's light. Kids tend to shine so much brighter than adults do. I know some kids have had a pretty hard life, and you might not see the light shining as brightly in them because this world has tried to snuff that light out. However, kids can hope and believe in a way that is different than adults. They can believe with an innocence that is hard for us a adults.
Children can believe with wonder and awe. They can look at the world and see all the good things, they can see the beauty, the can see the potential. As adults, our view of the world is filtered through the lens of all of our experiences over the years. I think in this verse, God is calling us to come back to Him as little Children. I think he calls us to live in His light and let his light shine into all the dark parts of our lives. The verse tells us that our mission is to be flooded with this light, His light.
The final line in this scripture says, “And the supernatural fruits of his light will be seen in you-goodness, righteousness, and truth. Then you will learn to choose what is beautiful to our Lord.”
God is not just telling us to live as children but He is explaining what will happen if we obey. If we live like children and allow ourselves to be filled with the light, then the fruit of that light will be seen in us. The supernatural fruit of God’s light is goodness, righteousness, and truth. Who couldn’t use more of those in our lives? Do you long to see goodness, righteousness, and truth in your life? If so, how could you live more as a child who is flooded with the Lord’s light?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those who are listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to live as children who are flooded with Your revelation-light. Help us to choose what is beautiful to you Lord. Help us to realize our lives are not filled with the darkness of sin. Help us remember that we now have the very light of our Lord shining through us because of our union with You. We love you Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed a day and may the grace and favor of our Lord Jesus Christ be upon you.
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in February 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I raise you to be my people. Waging war under my standard, and my standard is the cross. It seems very foolish to so many, but it is power, and it brings great glory to my Father—a glory I share with you, a glory that is yours for all eternity with us together in heaven.”
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Witness Wednesday #122 More PopWe Stories (Anxiety/Depression)
Today’s witnesses are from Matthew West’s website called popwe.org. If you don’t know who Matthew West is, he is a singer, songwriter, and storyteller. This website is for the non-profit that he has with his father, a pastor. Matthew and his father encourage people to share their stories. They have various categories of stories. Today, I chose three testimonies from the Anxiety/Depression Category. I know so many people who are struggling with anxiety and depression right now. Suicide seems like it is increasing as well. Often, we can hear our own story in someone else’s story. When we listen to others tell their story, it helps us see that we are not alone. When we hear how God worked in their situation, it gives us hope that He will work in ours, too! I pray when you hear these testimonies, you get the faith and hope to believe that miracles can happen in your situation also. I pray you know that God is there with you, and if you invite Him into your anxiety and depression, He can help.
Jenna: I grew up in a Christian family. We went to church every Sunday and Wednesday and were a part of almost everything; Awana, Elevate teen group, and even school there. Two and a half years ago, I lost someone who I was close to because she felt the need to commit suicide. I was heartbroken and I felt like I lost everything. 2022 was a challenging year for me. I had daily panic attacks and felt like I was worthless. My eating habits went down significantly, and I was stressed all the time. As exams neared, I was super stressed and ended up passing out.
Months passed and I still felt worthless. I planned to commit suicide when I got a text from a friend, and it was like a text from God. She said she heard I was going to camp and hoped to see me there. I thought if I waited til after camp, and then committed suicide it would be okay. So I went to camp and it changed my life. I met so many new people and was able to share my hurt with my church and they told me that I was not alone. Camp was my blue couch moment as I sat there in service Thursday night, I realized that I needed God in my life more than ever. I had already been saved, but I realized I hadn’t been living like Christ wanted me to.
Around late February early March, my friend introduced me to someone…we immediately hit it off and became great friends. A month or two later, it was revealed that he liked me. We started dating in June and have been together ever since. I tell you that little story because sometimes when you need it most, God has someone in mind who will help you grow in faith and support you through it all. They can also help you overcome the hardships in your life.
I still deal with anxiety and eating habits, but they have gotten so much better since camp and I am so thankful for all that my church has done for me. Also, I have my three closest friends with me right by my side and the Lord has blessed me with an amazing boyfriend who I love and who has helped me through a lot.
GOD’S NOT DONE WITH YOU OR YOUR STORY! HE STILL CARES A LOT AND WILL NEVER LEAVE YOU. YOU HAVE A PURPOSE – TURN TO GOD TO FIND THAT PURPOSE AND YOU WILL BE FOUND.
Brianna: From the age of 10, I was stuck with the label “child prodigy,” winning piano competitions, featured in local newspapers, and recognized as a passionate, fiery recitalist. Yet, even as a youth, I was severely depressed. I was insecure, seeking affection, and perpetually in pursuit of attaining “good enough.” Right before my 16th birthday, my world suddenly turned upside down. In an unexpected turn of events, I faced a close encounter with death, had my innocence taken, and watched helplessly as my mother’s health began to rapidly fail. Too ashamed to ask for help and blaming myself for the situation, I despairingly turned to self-harm, eating disorders, and eventually, planned my own suicide. One day, I heard the song ‘Broken Pieces’, and I found something onto which I could cling to – Truth, even when I could not feel it and it failed to make sense.
Through involvement with an organization called Csehy Summer School of Music, I came to personally know Christ. For the first time in my life, I experienced peace, hope, and true joy. Dedicating my life to God, I went back home with a different perspective. My life was still intense – balancing high school and conservatory studies, living between home and the hospital, while being a full-time caretaker for my undiagnosed mother. By the grace of God, I managed to graduate as Salutatorian and get accepted into music school. However, shortly before college began, my mother passed away.
I started my B.A. in piano at Charleston Southern University, using every spare moment to pour my heart out into the keys as a wordless prayer. Yet, a lingering pain in my right hand soon became constant. A few months after my mother’s funeral, I was diagnosed with severe damage in my right hand, incited by the physical strains from being a caretaker. The only option left was surgery, followed by excruciating therapy, without guarantee of returning to the keys. My doctor strongly advised me to quit and choose a different career path. But I fought back.
Over the next several years, I fought through recovery – from both surgical and emotional scars. I realized that though I had given my life to Christ, I hadn’t fully “surrendered” it. In those precious years of undergrad, I experienced the freedom found in surrendering to the grace of God, the beauty of vulnerability, and the power of learning to fly again.
Then, nearly four years to the day the doctor said it was over, I found myself sitting onstage, performing at Carnegie Hall. When I turned to the audience to see a standing ovation, I burst into tears, because I remembered the words, “With You I can attack a barrier, and with my God I can leap over a wall.”-Psalm 18:29
Today, despite the formalities infused in classical music, I get to use the concert stage as a platform to share my story and encourage others to seek help and experience the peace of God. I perform and travel internationally as a soloist and chamber musician, frequently being sought after to premiere avant-garde piano works, and I am actively involved in youth and collegiate ministry. Although healing is an ongoing process, by the hand of God’s work in my life, the label of “Victim” has been replaced with “Victorious,” “Hopeless” has been covered by “Confidence,” and what was “Impossible” is now a living, breathing, walking “Miracle.”
Bubby: Hey, I just wanted to thank Matthew for his book, “Hello My Name Is” and for all he does for us! I’ve met him a handful of times and he is such an awesome child of God. On page 58, I believe, he talks about the story of the 11-year-old who asked for the hug and shared about his anxiety. It took me back to my childhood. I didn’t come to faith until I was 14. A man!! (Lol. I thought…) But I can remember being 5-10 and suffering through anxiety and panic issues every night and throughout the day. I won’t go into it, but it was messed up. Family life was messed up. When I read how this little boy thinking of God holding him when listening to Matt’s song, it brought tears to my eyes. I’m 58 and still have memories of my childhood that can hurt if I dwell in them, but I very seldom do…only when things like reading or seeing or hearing someone else’s experiences. I looked back at how God was there for me all along even though I was not His child yet. His love is so totally encompassing!! It fills every void in my soul. At 12 I was prescribed some medicine that helped, but it was addictive, and when my mom took me off them abruptly, I turned to drinking and drugging heavier then I had already started a year or so earlier. It was a long road I went through, but thank God, I will have 19 years of sobriety this month. My name is “Saved,” in so many ways.
Thank you all for sharing your stories with the world. It can be hard to be vulnerable and talk about the hard things we have gone through.Yet when you are brave and do it even when its hard then we help others who are suffering know that it is ok for them to talk about it too! I am so grateful God saved each of you and thank you again for sharing your story!
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Let’s Build Each Other Up Instead!
Ephesians 4:29 “And never let ugly or hateful words come from your mouth, but instead let your words become beautiful gifts that encourage; do this by speaking words of grace to help them.”
I love this version of this verse because so much of what I hear coming from people’s mouths these days is ugly or hateful. The NRSVCE says, “Let no evil talk come out of your mouth.” That is pretty accurate, too. Why is there so much hate in the world right now? I am sure there always was hate. All you need to do is look back at all the awful things that happened over the years, and you will see that hate. However, right now, I feel like there is so much more.
It seems as though it is ok to say whatever is on our minds, even if it is ugly or hateful. I think most people had a filter once upon a time. They may have thought ugly or hateful thoughts, but they didn’t share them with everyone. They didn’t just blurt them out. However, now I feel as though people feel they can say whatever they want and do whatever they like. I don’t know what has changed, but it is still not ok to treat people badly just because you don’t agree with them.
I am not a fan of politics. I don’t like the division it causes, and I don’t like how it tends to bring out the worst in people. The last two elections especially. I am glad that people really like the candidate they are voting for, and yet that doesn’t give the license to say ugly or hateful things about the other candidate. I have seen some of the worst signs, shirts, and hats about some of the candidates. I wonder if people even care about the example they are setting. There is a house that I used to pass by a lot when I was running more. They have two signed up. I can’t remember them both but I do remember they are both very unkind. One of them says F*** Biden.
I get it; you don’t like Biden. You are entitled to your opinion. You may not like him as a person, or you may not like what he is doing in his presidency, and that is your right. You can like or not like whoever you want. However, when you post a sign like that out in your yard for all to see that is just wrong. You might think you are just expressing your opinion, but you are also being a terrible example to all who pass by and see your signs. You are showing others that it is ok to say whatever we want, even if it is ugly or hateful. You are showing everyone that we don’t have to have self-control over our emotions. It’s ok to say whatever we think.
President Biden, Former President Trump, Kamila Harris, and J. D. Vance are all just people like you and me. Yes, they chose politics and that means they are in the limelight. That doesn’t mean that it is open season for us to say or do whatever we want. They deserve respect whether we like them or not. With social media the way it is today, one little mess up can be turned into a meme for all to see. One misstep, and you are mocked endlessly. I think we tend to forget that politicians are real people with real feelings. When dealing with all people, politicians or not, the words in this verse are great words to live by. “And never let ugly or hateful words come from your mouth, but instead let your words become beautiful gifts that encourage; do this by speaking words of grace to help them.”
Let’s discuss the second half of this verse. Instead of saying ugly or hateful words about others, what if we let our speech be filled with words that bless others? Let our words be gifts that encourage others, not tear them down. I saw a beautiful post on facebook yesterday. My friend had reposted something from the page Shower Arguments with Emily Solberg. Let me read it to you now.
Simone Biles and Jordan Chiles literally bowed down to Brazilian gymnast Rebeca Andrade on the podium as she claimed first place in the gymnastics floor final.
Apparently Simone said that Jordan asked Simone, "Should we bow to her?" And Simone replied, “Absolutely." “It was just the right thing to do.”Can you just imagine?
Can you just imagine if women ALWAYS cheered for each other so enthusiastically, so boldly, so unapologetically, so joyfully, so selflessly? Can you just imagine if women didn’t feel threatened by each other’s successes and used them instead as motivation?
Can you just imagine if women supported other women, simply because “it was just the right thing to do?”This. Is. Everything. And this is why I love the Olympics—because we don’t look to them just as an example of what we could be as athletes, we look to them as an example of what we could be as humans.
Isn’t this a great post? I thought it went perfectly with today’s verse. I think we can apply it to all people, not just women. Can you imagine what the world would be like if we didn’t have jealousy? Can you imagine what the world would be like if we had healthy competition where everyone was respected? Imagine how different politics would be if we did what it said in this verse and did not let evil come out of our mouths. Imagine how different it would be if, instead of saying unkind things about the other candidate, everyone just told us their plan and what they plan to do. Wouldn’t it be a breath of fresh air if everyone worried about their own campaign and wasn’t saying ugly and hateful things about those running against them?
Wouldn’t it be great if the signs people put in their yards supported their candidate instead of insulting the other candidate? This isn’t just in politics, either. You get this everywhere. It is the same with music artists, movie stars, and anyone who is well-known by a large group of people. There is a pastor that I really like listening to, and people even have really unkind things to say about him. Why can’t we focus more on using our words to build people up instead of tearing them down? My boys used to make fun of me because when they were being unkind to each other, I would say, “Is that build-me-up language?” I know we can’t change the whole world by ourselves. What if we just started with ourselves? What if we just made sure that our language was good and kind and full of encouragement? What if we used our words to build people up instead of tearing them down? Those who we are building up will see how good it feels and will hopefully start to return the favor. We can change the world one person at a time.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each person listening today. Lord, help us guard our words. Help us to pause before we say anything and ask ourselves if it will be passing on your goodness or if it will be spreading evil. It is so easy to get sucked into spreading evil. Protect us from this, Lord! Help us to build each other up and encourage each other. Help protect us from jealousy and hate. We love you so much. You are pure love; help us to be like you, Lord! We love you so very much, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I will be sending retreat information out soon. If you are not on my email list, click on the link below and join so you don’t miss out on any of the information. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day, and may the favor and grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be upon you.
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in February 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, always remember I am your one constant in this life. I never change. I am your rock.”
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15 Promises to those who say the rosary.
Today’s episode is a bit different. Today there is not a scripture verse. Instead I am going to explain about what the rosary is and then list the 15 promises given to those who pray it regularly. There is a lot that is going on in the world right now. In our country and all around the world. Our country is pretty divided. We are kicking God out of this country one decision at a time. During this truly difficult time, I look to strengthen my faith and lean into God’s grace, strength, and protection. Who couldn’t use a little more grace and strength right now?
I have found a number of structured prayers that have really helped strengthen my faith. The first of these is the rosary. When I moved to New Jersey, one of the wives in Tony’s squadron had started a home rosary group. I did not know what that even meant, but I had just moved to a new place and I did not anyone. I thought it would be nice to get out of the house and meet some new people. I also knew I needed something more, as I had a new born baby and was just learning how to be a mom. A home rosary group is a group of people that gather at someone’s home and say the rosary together. One person leads either the whole rosary, or you can switch leaders each decade, whichever you prefer. Whoever is leading the rosary says the first half of the prayer and then everyone else says the second half of the prayer. It was so nice to be gathered with a group of women that all wanted to say the rosary each week. The rosary is a group of prayers that you say, usually using a set of rosary beads.
I knew there were many benefits to saying the rosary. I have read them before. There was a time, probably after I first read these promises, that I was saying it every day. However, the enemy has a way of putting things in the way so that you are suddenly “too busy” to say the rosary, or he convinces you that if you can’t do it perfect, then you shouldn’t bother. Remember that the enemy is a master at half truths and lies. He does not want us saying the rosary because he knows how powerful it can be. As soon as you begin to say the rosary faithfully you will notice that things will begin to come up during the time you set aside for rosary, or you will find yourself forgetting about the commitment. I decided to talk with you about the Rosary today because I came upon the promises that Mary gave to us and I remembered why I was saying the rosary every day. I know the rosary is a longer prayer than most of us might be use to, but it is only 20-30 minutes out of your day. If you get a full 8 hours of sleep at night, that means you are still awake for 16 hours. That is 960 minutes in your day. The rosary takes 20-30 of them.
The Blessed Virgin Mary promised to Saint Dominic and to all who follow that “Whatever you ask in the Rosary will be granted.” She left for all Christians Fifteen Promises to those who recite the Holy Rosary. They were imparted to Saint Dominic and Blessed Alan.
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Whoever shall faithfully serve me by the recitation of the Rosary, shall receive signal graces.
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I promise my special protection and the greatest graces to all those who shall recite the Rosary.
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The Rosary shall be a powerful armor against hell, it will destroy vice, decrease sin, and defeat heresies.
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The Rosary will cause virtue and good works to flourish; it will obtain for souls the abundant mercy of God; it will withdraw the hearts of men from the love of the world and its vanities, and will lift them to the desire for eternal things. Oh, that souls would sanctify themselves by this means.
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The soul which recommends itself to me by the recitation of the Rosary, shall not perish.
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Whoever shall recite the Rosary devoutly, applying himself to the consideration of its sacred mysteries shall never be conquered by misfortune. God will not chastise him in His justice, he shall not perish by an unprovided death; if he be just he shall remain in the grace of God, and become worthy of eternal life.
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Whoever shall have a true devotion for the Rosary shall not die without the sacraments of the Church.
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Those who are faithful to recite the Rosary shall have during their life and at their death the light of God and the plenititude of His graces; at the moment of death they shall participate in the merits of the saints in paradise.
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I shall deliver from Purgatory those who have been devoted to the Rosary.
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The faithful children of the Rosary shall merit a high degree of glory in Heaven.
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You shall obtain all you ask of me by the recitation of the Rosary.
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All those who propagate the Holy Rosary shall be aided by me in their necessities.
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I have obtained from my Divine Son that all the advocates of the Rosary shall have for intercessors the entire celestial court during their life and at the hour of death.
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All who recite the Rosary are my sons and daughters, and brothers and sisters of my only Son Jesus Christ.
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Devotion of my Rosary is a great sign of predestination.
I cannot believe all that is promised to us if we say the rosary. I read through those this morning and just kept saying to myself, yup, I need that too. Who couldn’t use help destroying vices, or for their good works and virtue to flourish? Mary, the Mother of Jesus, promised special protection and the greatest graces to those that say the rosary. I don’t know about you, but I could definitely use some special protection and all the graces I can get. I know that I probably won’t start saying the rosary every day without fail, because I am human and I often fail. I have been reminded today what a blessing it is to say the rosary and I am going to do my best to incorporate it into my daily routine. After all 20 minutes a day is less than the time it takes me to watch one episode on TV. I have the time, I am just using it doing other things. You do not have to say the rosary every day, even if you say it once a week, or once a month, or one decade a day, I bet you would see a change in your life. Give it a try, what do you have to lose?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord we love you and we ask you to help us in our time of need. We ask you to put on our hearts a desire to say the rosary. Lord, help us to see the importance of it. Help us to understand the importance of Mary in your plan for redemption. Help us to find time in our schedules to set aside to say the rosary. Thank you Lord, we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you would like to join me for mentoring this month we start our new series tomorrow night at 8PM ET. There is a link below if you would like to sign up for mentoring or get more information. I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed day and may the grace and favor of our Lord Jesus Christ be upon you!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in February 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My beloved ones, your desire for me unlocks my heart of bounties for you. Your desire overcomes your weakness. I am delighted in your desire for union with me. Feed that desire for me.”
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God Will Exceed Your Wildest Imagination!
Ephesians 3:20 “Never doubt God’s mighty power to work in you and accomplish all this. He will achieve infinitely more than your greatest request, your most unbelievable dream, and exceed your wildest imagination! He will outdo them all, for his miraculous power constantly energizes you.”
Wow, I think this is something we should all put on a sticky note and put it on our bathroom mirror. Actually, put it on several sticky notes and place them all around your house. It is such good advice. “Never doubt God’s mighty power to work in you and accomplish all this.” This is something we do often, or at least I do often. I doubt God can work in me. I don’t doubt it because I doubt God’s mighty power. I doubt it because I know I am broken. I know I sin. I know I am not worthy. I know I am not enough, and all the other things we tell ourselves when we hear that God wants to use us.
What just came to me is that when we think like this, our focus is on ourselves. Listen to what I said above again and try to count how many times I say I. “I doubt God can work in me. I don’t doubt it because I doubt God’s mighty power. I doubt it because I know I am broken. I know I sin. I know I am not worthy. I know I am not enough, and all the other things we tell ourselves when we hear that God wants to use us.” I used the word “I” 12 times within those six sentences. Yes, when our focus is on us, or when our focus is on the task we are being asked to do, we will always fall short in our minds. We won’t believe it can be done because we know our limitations.
However, if we focus on God and how powerful He is, it is easier to believe He can use us because He is God, and He can do anything. There was a woman at the Encounter Summer Intensive yesterday and she had a problem with her leg. She hurt it in a skiing accident when she was younger, and the doctors glued it all back together. However, it started hurting again. She is now 83 years old. The doctor told her the fix they did when she was younger was all disintegrating, and there was nothing they could do. I reminded her that although there might not be anything that the doctors could do, there is always something God can do.
This verse is a great verse for anyone who has a great ambition to do something great someday. Maybe you want to be an extraordinary painter, or maybe you want to start a non-prophet to help people. Maybe you want to climb mountains all over the world. Maybe you want to be the best mom, dad, grandma, or grandpa you can be. Whatever it is that you would like to do, it is important to know that God can work in you and through you. It is important we don’t doubt this because God is powerful, and He can do anything!
The next line in the verse is just amazing. It says, “He will achieve infinitely more than your greatest request, your most unbelievable dream, and exceed your wildest imagination!” Can you believe that? This gives us permission to dream big, to ask for big things from God, and to let Him help us accomplish our dreams. This verse shows us what a good, good father God is. He doesn’t just give you the bare minimum. He doesn’t just give you what you need to survive. He is not stingy with His mercy and His blessings. He lavishes them upon His children.
The last sentence is great, too. It says, “He will outdo them all, for his miraculous power constantly energizes you.” This is definitely something we forget, or maybe we never knew it in the first place. God’s miraculous power constantly energizes you. Did you know that? Did you also know you can pray for supernatural energy when you don’t feel like you have any? I prayed this with my friend of mine, and she said she felt so much more energized for the rest of the day.
We need to stop putting God into a little box. We need to stop telling Him what He can and can’t do. We tell Him He can’t use us because of this reason or that. We tell Him we can’t do this or that because we lack energy. We give up on our dreams because we figure they are not going to come true. We don’t doubt God’s power, but we doubt our ability to be a part of His plan; however, by doubting that, we are also doubting God’s power. We are putting a limitation on that power. We say, “Yes, you are all-powerful, and you can do all things, but you can’t use me.” Do you see how that is a contradiction? Either God is all-powerful, or He is not. Either He can do everything, including using you, or He can’t do any of it. We don’t get to pick and choose what God can and can’t do.
God tells us so often in my Charismatic Prayer Group that we have to stop doubting Him. He constantly says, “If I tell you that you can do something, believe that you can do it.” If he says this each week, then you would think we would listen. However, our pull to not believe in ourselves is great. If we want to change this, we must shift our focus away from us. We need to focus more on the power of God and less on our own feelings of unworthiness. God is more than enough!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone listening to this episode today. Lord I ask that you help us to turn our focus on you. Please help us to believe everything in this verse. Please help us believe that you will achieve infinitely more than our greatest request, our most unbelievable dream, and exceed our wildest imagination! Thank you that your miraculous power constantly energizes you.” Thank you for being so amazing. Thank you for constantly energizing us. We love you so much and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I hope you have an amazing weekend and I look forward to meeting you here again on Monday. Remember Jesus loves you, just as you are, and so do I! May the grace and favor of our Lord Jesus Christ be upon you!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in February 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My little children, come and sit with me awhile. And I will teach you all you need to know. Give me all your fears. Give me all your burdens. Give me all that bothers you. I am the Lord. I will take care of it all. You only need to sit with me. I am the Lord. I will bless you each in my will. It is as easy as that. Sit with me. I'll give you each the treasures you need for yourselves. Just come.”
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God’s Endless Love
Ephesians 3:18-19 “Then you will be empowered to discover what every holy one experiences – the great magnitude of the astonishing love of Christ in all its dimensions. How deeply intimate and far-reaching is his love! How enduring and inclusive it is! Endless love beyond measurement that transcends our understanding – this extravagant love pours into you until you are filled to overflowing with the fullness of God!”
Man, I am truly in love with the passion translation right now. It helps me understand the Word of God in a deeper way. Last night, I was talking to Deacon Joe, the director of the Boston campus of Encounter’s School of Ministry, and I told him that I feel like my mission is to bring God’s love to others. I want every person in the entire world to know and understand how incredibly loved they are by their heavenly Father.
Love is lacking in this world. It is absent in so many areas. The love that we do have is nothing like the love of our Heavenly Father. People are desperate for love these days. Maybe we always were; I’m not sure. I do know that people feel unloved and unwelcome right now. Most people don’t feel comfortable in their own skin. They wish they were different in many ways.
With social media and how easy it is to see what everyone else is doing, it is easy to compare yourself to what they look like, what material possessions they have, what vacations they take, and how many friends they have. When we start to compare ourselves to others then we start to be unhappy with who we are and what we have. Yet, who we are is who God created us to be. He gave each one of us unique strengths and weaknesses. How many of us can only see our weaknesses?
Matthew 22:36-40 says, “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” I think we all know this first one and find the first one of these two commandments the easiest. It is easier to love God than it is to love others, at least most of the time. If you are going through a really hard season then you might be angry at God, but for the most part, we can get on board with loving God the Father with all that we have.
However, the second commandment listed here is one that many people struggle with. First, loving our neighbor doesn’t just mean loving the person next door. It means loving everyone we meet. It means loving our enemies or those who have wronged us. There seem to be a lot of unlovable people in the world—people who are angry or unkind. How are we supposed to love people who treat us badly? How are we supposed to love people that we don’t even really know? How are we supposed to love people who know exactly what to say to get under our skin?
In order to understand how to love others, let’s take a closer look at how the Lord loves us. The verse above starts with, “Then you will be empowered to discover what every holy one experiences- the great magnitude of the astonishing love of Christ in all its dimensions.” When I looked up the word astonishing, it said, “causing a feeling of great surprise or wonder.” That is the Lord’s love for us. It is full of surprises and wonder. Have you ever been surprised by God’s love?
I spoke with a young woman last night at an Encounter event who was blown away by God’s love. She had been suffering from concussions and a condition where her feet couldn’t sweat. She had gone to a healing service a while back and did not see a lot of relief from her symptoms. Then, after a day and a half or so later, she was completely healed of both conditions. She just couldn’t believe the love of her Heavenly Father. She couldn’t believe that He healed her of not just one condition but of both of them at the same time. She definitely felt the astonishing love of God that evening.
Next, the verse says, “How deeply intimate and far-reaching is his love! Wow, this is incredible, too. God’s love is far-reaching. I have seen this far-reaching love in my life. My husband and I had been struggling for a long time in our marriage. It got to the point where I felt like we needed to get a divorce. I do not believe in divorce but us living in the same house just wasn’t working. We have three boys, and the constant fighting was not good for anyone. Although there was no doubt in my mind that we needed a divorce or at least a separation, I still didn’t want it. I went to God often, and I asked Him to fix our marriage. I asked Him to change our hearts. I asked Him to keep our family together. This was for sure a far reach as we were pretty broken. Yet, God fixed us. He changed our hearts and helped fix not just our marriage but our family, too. There is no questioning God’s love for you when you can see Him work so powerfully in your life.
Next, it says, “How enduring and inclusive it is!” This is something I think we often forget. God’s love is inclusive. Jesus did not come to save the righteous. He came to save the sinners. Jesus ate with the prostitutes, the tax collectors, and the sinners. Jesus met everyone right where they were, and He showered them with love and respect, and then He told them to sin no more. He didn’t meet people with condemnation and judgment. His love was and is inclusive. His love is also enduring, which means long-lasting, which seems like an understatement as His love is forever; it never goes away. You could live to be 500 years old, and He would still love you.
Next, it says, “Endless love beyond measurement that transcends our understanding.” Do you ever wonder why God loves you? I mean, none of us are perfect. We all mess up, we all make mistakes, and we all hurt God in a variety of ways. So, why does He love us? The answer is that His love transcends our understanding. His love is not dependent on us understanding it. Also, as I mentioned earlier, his love is endless. It is like a circle. There is no beginning or end to God’s love. He has always loved us, and He always will. Isn’t that incredible?
Do you see now why I love this translation of the Bible? It has this amazing way of describing things. I love how it describes God’s love. It puts into words what really can’t be put into words. It helps me understand God’s love at a whole new level. I mentioned above how we are called to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. It is easier to love ourselves if we understand how loved we are by our heavenly Father. If we love ourselves then it is easier to love others. I invite you to take some time today and reread this translation of the verse above. You can look it up online or go to the Bible app on your smartphone. This is the passion translation. I invite you to sit with the Lord and thank Him for loving you so well. If you struggle to feel the Lord’s love, then I invite you to sit with Him and ask Him what is getting in the way of you feeling His love because I assure you His love is there.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone listening to this episode today. Lord, help us understand how much you love us. Help us learn to love ourselves and our neighbors. Thank you, Lord, for being such an amazing example of love. Thank you for the way you love us so unconditionally. Help us do the same with all those we meet. We love you, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I will be opening registration to my October retreat soon, so be on the lookout for an email in your inbox. If you are not on my email list you can click on the link below to sign up and I will send you an audio training on how to invite God into your everyday life. I know we are all busy and feel like we can’t add one more thing into our schedule. In this audio training I teach you how to add prayer into the things you are already doing so it is not adding anymore time to do you day but adding a lot of value. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I. May the favor and grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be upon you! Have a Blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in February 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Nothing will ever separate us. Nothing—no suffering, no sin, no pride, no willfulness—can undo the bond of our love except unbelief. Believe in my words to you this day. Remember my love and mercy for all. For this is the day that I have made. Be glad and rejoice in it.”
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Witness Wednesday #121 More PopWe Stories (Marriage/Family)
Today’s witnesses are from Matthew West’s website called popwe.org. If you don’t know who Matthew West is, he is a singer, songwriter, and storyteller. This website is for the non-profit that he has with his father, a pastor. Matthew and his father encourage people to share their stories. They have various categories of stories. Today, I chose three testimonies from the Marriage/Family Category. Satan is attacking our families and I think it can help us to see that God is looking out for us. Satan wants to destroy families but God wants to preserve them. Often, we can hear our own story in someone else’s story. When we listen to others tell their story, it helps us see that we are not alone. When we hear how God worked in their situation, it gives us hope that He will work in ours, too! I pray when you hear these testimonies, you get the faith and hope to believe that miracles can happen in your situation also. I pray you know that God wants is there with you and if you invite Him into your family issues He can help.
Zachary: 2016 started out as one of the most exciting years for me and my wife, Amanda. We were living in Calcutta, India; working at Calcutta School of Music and starting our own company to support local artists and musicians in the city. Amanda was expecting our first baby, Chloe West Ray, and she was due to arrive at the beginning of December. Amanda was in her third trimester when she became very sick one night. We admitted her into the hospital in Calcutta, India on a Monday night. Tuesday morning Amanda was feeling better and Chloe seemed to be doing ok too. Wednesday morning, before we were about to leave the hospital, we went in for one more ultra sound. I can still hear the doctor say, “We can’t find a heart beat” as if it was today. We found ourselves sitting in that hospital room broken and confused, with no idea of what the next steps would be.
There were very few words of comfort that helped. Although people were praying and offering their words of comfort, it felt like a season of being abandoned by God. The dreams of holding our little girl were stolen and shattered. Grief is a funny thing. The initial sting and pain becomes dull over time, but the memories and dull ache continues. I don’t think our hearts are created for this world to overcome “grief” from tragedies or loss of loved ones; it becomes a part of our story, our life. We become a different person. The beautiful thing is that God stays the same and meets us where we are. I can honestly say God tangibly became my refuge in one of the darkest times in my life. He brought a healing into my soul like no earthly person could. We may never be the way we were before, but He shapes us into a new and often stronger person. I don’t think we get over grief until we leave this world.
We found out the following year that we were expecting another baby. Due to the loss of Chloe, it was difficult to not allow our fear and worry to overwhelm our joy. We simultaneously jumped for joy, and breathed a sigh of relief when our son was born.
Pam: My husband and I had 7 kids – he had 3 and I had 2. Then we got custody of our 2 nephews. Less than a month after we received custody papers, our nephews’ dad passed away. Their mom lived nearby, but didn’t have much to do with the children. That has always caused its own set of problems.
When we were going to get the boys out of foster care, we had no idea how we’d provide for 2 more, except for the fact that God had always provided for the 7 of us! We were fully trusting in Him to provide for all 9 of us. He did just that! We always attended church with the kids. We served in the church and paid our tithes. God never let us down.
Recently, we had been praying for a job that would allow us more time together and get a lot of debt off of us. Biblically, we felt this was right. God is answering our prayers through a job we now have. We can work closer together and prayerfully begin to make more money and to pay off our debt.
Even though life with a triple blended family was tough, and there were times we wanted to give up, we didn’t. God saw us through. He is faithful and trustworthy. We hope and pray that our kids will remember that we gave and served, and that God was faithful. We are thankful!
Most of our kids are grown now and one is in the service. We pray they will always remember that their relationship with God is most important!
Theresa: In my past relationship, I walked on eggshells, was hyper-vigilant, and lived in fight or flight mode every day. His behavior was a constant up and down. He would ignore me, then act nice to make me think everything was okay, then abruptly follow it with rage. He would manipulate and gaslight me, keep me exhausted, and criticize me frequently. He’d make excuses for his behavior, never took accountability, and blamed me for everything. Nothing I did ever seemed right, and I slowly lost confidence in myself. I was lonely, unloved, and felt like a nobody. Any sign of me leaving resulted in violence. I was trapped in a trauma bond and I didn’t see a way out. Some nights I would pray just to make it through another day.
For years I endured financial, physical, mental, verbal, and emotional abuse. I had lost all hope but God had other plans for me. When I began focusing on the word of God and reading the Bible every day, I gained a newfound confidence that gave me the courage to seek help and find freedom. For the first time in a long time I am safe, hopeful, and looking forward to my future. I am blessed that God is giving me a second chance in life. Trials and tribulations are a part of this life, but with Christ, you can do all things!
Thank you all so much for sharing your stories. I pray you continue to rely on the Lord and that He continues to bless your families. I know it can be hard to share your story with the world and yet when you do it helps other’s see God working in their life as well. Thank you again!
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Even God Gets Angry
Exodus 4:14-15 “Then the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses and he said, “What of your brother Aaron the Levite? I know that he can speak fluently; even now he is coming out to meet you, and when he sees you his heart will be glad. You shall speak to him and put the words in his mouth; and I will be with your mouth and with his mouth, and will teach you what you shall do.”
In mentoring this month I have been teaching about our emotions and how our emotions aren’t universally good or bad. This is something that is easy to say and hard to believe. There are definitely some emotions we think are good, and some we think are bad. For instance, we don’t think it is “Christian-like” to be angry. When we are angry, we are probably not going to share that with our Christian friends because being angry isn’t what God wants from us. It isn’t just anger, either. There are a whole host of emotions that we struggle to reconcile with our faith.
We might think, how can I be disappointed in this situation when God has given me so much? How can I be angry when God has blessed me and my family? How can I be impatient when I know God’s timing is best? How can I be sad and grieve the loss of a loved one when I know they are in a better place now? Do you get the idea? We struggle to understand how we can feel what we are feeling. We also tend to feel guilty for some of our feelings, and then, on top of our original feelings, we now add guilt and shame to them.
Emotions can be tricky. I am not trying to say they are easy. I do believe we should let ourselves feel all of our emotions. Emotions are our body’s way of warning us of something. They bring something to our attention so we can deal with it. However, if it is an emotion we don’t like or that makes us feel uncomfortable, instead of exploring it to see what it is trying to tell us, we ignore it, stuff it down, and pretend it is not there. Stuffing our emotions down can be bad for a few reasons. One of them is that when we stuff our emotions down over time, they build up, kind of like the pressure in a volcano. Then, one day, they explode all over someone, and usually, it is not the person who gave you those unwanted feelings. It is usually some innocent bystander who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and said the wrong things. Unfortunately, I think we have all been in that situation at one time or another and we have all regretted it.
Another reason stuffing down our emotions can be bad is that if we ignore them, we can’t hear what they are trying to tell us. Our emotions might be telling us we need to get out of a situation, that something needs to change, or any number of other things, and yet if we ignore them, we are not getting any of their messages.
This can be avoided in part by not stuffing down our emotions. We can give ourselves permission to feel whatever feeling comes up. We can examine our feelings and see what they are trying to tell us. We can bring our feelings to the Lord and ask Him to help us understand our feelings. Our feelings are not bad. It is ok to feel all the different ranges of feelings. God felt a wide range of feelings, and so did Jesus. God is only good. If he felt angry, then how could anger be bad?
It says in the verse above that “the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses.” Just before this verse, God was telling Moses that He wanted Moses to go to Egypt and free the Jewish people. Moses, like many of us, had lots of reasons why he was not qualified to do the job God asked him to do. What if they didn’t listen to him? What if they didn’t believe God had sent him? God gave Moses all sorts of answers to these questions. Every excuse Moses gave him, God responded with an answer. Then Moses continued to ask God to send someone else, and God got angry.
I love this because I can relate to God’s anger in this situation. It makes me think of my kids when I ask them to do something, and they have a million excuses for why they can’t. It doesn’t matter if you shoot down 1 million excuses; they will always have just one more. It is so frustrating, and I can imagine it would be even more frustrating for the Lord. I mean, He is God. He knows everything. If He says you can do something, you can do it. So, I can see why He would be angry that Moses didn’t trust him.
In verses 10 & 11, it says, “But Moses said to the Lord, “O my Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor even now that you have spoken to your servant; but I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.” Then the Lord said to him, “Who gives speech to mortals? Who makes them mute or deaf, seeing or blind? Is it not I, the Lord?” The Lord is telling Moses, I know you, I made you. I know what you can and can’t do. However, I am the Lord, and I can do all things. If God can make the deaf hear or the blind see, then don’t you think He could give you whatever you need to do whatever He is calling you to do? That is a lesson for another day, though.
Today we are talking about how God was angry at Moses. This is not the only time that God got angry in the Old Testament and Jesus also got angry in the New Testament as well. If you are struggling with shame or guilt for feeling certain emotions, look them up and see if they appear in the Bible. You could do a quick search on the internet for what verses in the Bible talk about anger, sadness, guilt, shame, joy, happiness, jealousy, or whatever emotions you are feeling. You will see you are not alone.
I did want to mention that although our emotions aren’t universally good or bad, our actions definitely can be. It is ok to be angry, it is not ok to sin in that anger. It is ok to be sad, it is not ok to sin in that sadness. We must learn to deal with our emotions in an appropriate way. It is not ok to stuff them down and not think about them. It is also not ok to act out of them and hurt others or to sin against God. There are many ways to feel our emotions and then deal with them without hurting others. This is something God can help us with if we take the time to invite Him into the situation. I invite you all to sit with the Lord this week and ask Him to show you where in your life you might be avoiding your feelings and then ask Him to help you change that. Ask Him to help you begin to deal with those feelings in a healthy way.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone listening to this episode. Lord, please help us to learn to feel all the feelings, even the uncomfortable ones. Help us to learn to process our feelings and emotions more appropriately and in a healthy way. Lord, help us to feel free to share our emotions with others so that we are not alone. Help us to release any feelings of guilt surrounding our emotions. We ask you to help us to not sin because of our emotions as well. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Our last session for the July mentoring series, Our Emotions is tonight. We will be going through the Bible and examining the wide range of emotions that God & Jesus felt. It is not too late if you would like to join us! If you want to see what it is all about before joining, just email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com and I will send you the link to join the zoom tonight. I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day and may the favor and grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be upon you!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in February 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “You must trudge the earth as I did, bringing hope and blessings to those I send you. You continue my incarnation. I feed you in my Eucharist each day. You must be me now.”
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We Are Saved By God’s Grace
Ephesians 2:3-5 “The corruption that was in us from birth was expressed through the deeds and desires of our self-life. We lived by whatever natural cravings and thoughts our minds dictated, living as rebellious children subject to God’s wrath like everyone else. But God still loved us with such great love. He is so rich in compassion and mercy. Even when we were dead and doomed in our many sins, he united us into the very life of Christ and saved us by his wonderful grace!”
I love verses like this because when the Bible points out the things I am doing wrong, I know I am not the only one doing them. If I were the only one, or if only a few of us were living by whatever natural cravings and thoughts our minds dictated, then God wouldn’t put it in the Bible. The verse starts by saying, “The corruption that was in us from birth was expressed through the deeds and desires of our self-life.” We were all born with original sin. Adam and Eve were born into a perfect world. There was no sin; there was only love, and they got to stroll through the garden at night with the Lord. Their heavenly Father would come to visit them and talk with them.
However, they were tricked by the serpent and ate the fruit from the tree of good and evil. I don’t know if they were misled or just enticed. The devil was laying out a pretty good picture of how God was trying to control them by telling them not to eat that fruit. The serpent told them they would be like God if they ate the fruit. Who wouldn’t want to be like God, right? So they ate the fruit. The interesting thing is that they were already like God. God made us in His likeness and image. They were already like God. However, once they ate that fruit, sin entered the world, and it didn’t want to leave.
This is the corruption from birth that the verse is talking about. We are all born with original sin, and that is why Catholics believe you should be baptized as soon as you are born. Once you are baptized with the Holy Spirit, sin can’t say, it must leave. However, because we are human, our choices can allow sin to creep back into our lives. This sin that creeps back into our lives is expressed through our deeds and desires of our self-life. When sin creeps back in, we tend to live for ourselves instead of for God.
I was listening to an Encounter Ministry talk yesterday, and the teacher talked about how she had a niece or a friend’s child whom she spoke to often. When the girl was little, my teacher would say things like, “How did you get to be so beautiful?” or “How did you get to be so nice?” and the little girl would say, “That’s just the way God made me.” There is such an innocence in this response. However, once we get a bit older and the world corrupts our thinking, and our sin crowds our minds, then we forget that this is how God made us and that He made each one of us just as we are for a reason.
Once we allow sin to creep back in with our deeds and desires, our thoughts get distorted. We start to hate who we are, what we look like, what we sound like, and everything else about us. I was at a women’s conference once, and the speaker said that she asked everyone in the audience who hated their body to stand up, and 90% of the women stood up. She didn’t ask, who would change something about their body if they could? She didn’t ask, who dislikes something about their body? She asked who hated their body, and 90% of them stood up. This is the work of the enemy. We are not born hating our bodies. We are born with so much love, and then this broken world pollutes our minds and bodies.
The line in the verse says, “ We lived by whatever natural cravings and thoughts our minds dictated, living as rebellious children subject to God’s wrath like everyone else.” This pretty much sums up my struggle. I have so many cravings and thoughts in my life that seem to dictate my life. Some things seem like they are not really a big deal, but when we really examine them, we see that they are not good for us. Do you have any cravings that take your focus away from God? You have thoughts that take up all your focus and that you are thinking about all the time. If you have ever had an addiction, you know exactly what I am talking about. I am lucky in that the addictions I have had have not been life-threatening, like drugs or alcohol. I am lucky that my addictions have not affected my life in ways like losing my family or losing my job. However, that doesn’t mean they were damaging.
When I was addicted to TV, while I still am, but now I manage my addiction, I would watch TV all day long. I would not get anything done while the kids were at school, and I wouldn’t do anything after they went to bed, either. I would watch hours of TV a day. I can only imagine how different my life would be if I had spent that time growing closer to the Lord, growing my spiritual life, reading books to further my knowledge, or really anything else that would have been productive. The enemy kept me sitting there watching TV because he knew what would have happened if I had spent that time with the Lord. He knew how different my life would be if I weren’t addicted to TV.
Now, let's look at the last part of this verse because I don’t want to leave you today thinking about all you may be doing wrong or all you could have done differently. This is not the point of today’s episode. The point of this episode is to let you know that even though we have all sinned. Even though we don’t live perfect lives, we are all saved by God’s grace. The ending of this verse says, “But God still loved us with such great love. He is so rich in compassion and mercy. Even when we were dead and doomed in our many sins, he united us into the very life of Christ and saved us by his wonderful grace!”
It is so important that we all know this. No matter what we are struggling with, God loves us with such great love. All those reasons the enemy is telling you that God can’t possibly love you are complete garbage. God still loves you with such a great love. There is nothing you can do to stop Him from loving you. There is no losing that love. I know I say that a lot, and I will keep saying it until every single one of you believes that God loves you just as you do, and there is nothing you can do to lose that love. It is your forever. Whether you want it or not, whether you deserve it or not. God is so rich in compassion and mercy. He knows why you did what you did, and his mercy covers it, covers you. His mercy is enough to cover anything you have done.
The last line is awesome, too. “Even when we were dead and doomed in our many sins, he united us into the very life of Christ and saved us by his wonderful grace!” This means that even though God knows all we have done. Even though we did some pretty terrible things, God united us with Christ and saved us by his grace. God’s grace is enough for you and all your sins. Jesus’s sacrifice was big enough to cover all your sins. God loves you with such a great love. He is full of compassion and mercy. That is what I want to leave you with today. God saved us by His wonderful grace!
Dear Heavenly Father, please bless each person listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you so much. We don’t want to be dead and doomed in our many sins. We want to be free of them. Please help us. We want to put you first and to show you our love by our actions. Please help us. We want to be able to live by the Spirit and not the flesh. Please help us. Help us to see where our sin is getting in the way of our relationship with you, and then give us the strength to change. We love you, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I hope to open up registration for my retreat in October on August 1st. Stay tuned for details. It is going to be a great retreat. The theme is “Come As You Are.” I hope you will join me! I will have more information soon. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! May the grace and favor of our Lord Jesus Christ be upon you. Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in February 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Cast your net into the sea when I tell you because I tell you. Your obedience pleases me. Your fruitfulness of the cast is mine to give or not to give each time.”
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Be An Advertisement of God’s Immense Power
Ephesians 1:19-22 “I pray that you will continually experience the immeasurable greatness of God's power made available to you through faith. Then your lives will be an advertisement of this immense power as it works through you! This is the mighty power that was released when God raised Christ from the dead and exalted him to the place of highest honor and supreme authority in the heavenly realm!”
I love this verse and the translation. I am really enjoying reading the passion translation. There is so much passion in what is said. I try not to use the same verse more than once as I think there are over 31,000 verses in the Bible, so it will take us a long time to get through them all. However, when I read this translation of this verse, I felt called to use it. This verse might just be my life verse. It is definitely one I will write down on a sticky note and look at often. This verse sums up the goal of this podcast and my life. I want my life to be an advertisement of God’s immense power. I want everyone in the world to know and understand what it means to have the Holy Spirit living inside of them.
Can you even imagine if just 10% of the people in the world knew the power they had living inside them? If just 10% of the world’s population knew the power they had living inside of them, that would be 790 million people. Can you imagine that? Now imagine every Christian in the world knew the power they had living inside them. That would be over 2.4 billion people. Can you imagine how much change could happen if we had 2.4 billion people walking around experiencing the immeasurable greatness of God’s power made available through their faith?
But we don’t need to start with 2.4 billion people. Let’s start with you. Do you truly understand the power you have residing within you? Do you comprehend that the Holy Spirit dwells within you? The verse states, this is the mighty power that was released when God raised Christ from the dead and exalted him to the place of highest honor and supreme authority in the heavenly realm. If you have been baptized in any Christian denomination, then you have the Holy Spirit within you. If you have doubts, you can read all about it in Acts 2:1-13. When Jesus was preparing to ascend to his Father, He promised to send us a guide.
I don’t know if you know this or not because I didn’t know it for the first 40 years or so of my life, but the Holy Spirit that Jesus asked the Father to send to us is the same Holy Spirit that Jesus had inside of Him when He walked the earth. It is the same Holy Spirit that helped Jesus heal all those people. It is the same Holy Spirit that helped Jesus multiply all that food. It is the same Holy Spirit that helped Jesus perform all the miracles He performed. It is also the same Holy Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead. This verse reminds us of that. It says, “This is the mighty power that was released when God raised Christ from the dead.”
Can you believe that? I don’t know about you, but when I first heard that, my brain kept repeating it as I tried to wrap my head around this idea. I found it so hard to believe that I had the same Holy Spirit that Christ had flowing through my body. The same Holy Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead lives inside of me and it lives inside of you too! How amazing is that? The next thing that came to mind is a question I want to invite you all to ask yourself. What am I doing with that power? How am I using the Holy Spirit? Or, I should say, how am I allowing the Holy Spirit to use me? It's a personal responsibility we all have, to utilize this incredible power within us.
Have I given the Holy Spirit permission to work in my life? Have I invited the Holy Spirit into my life? Have I asked the Holy Spirit to guide my thoughts and my words? Have I asked Him to guide my actions? God believes so strongly in free will that He won’t push His way into our lives. He waits to be invited, and He comes where He is welcomed. Some of the things we may be blaming God for may be things that happened because we didn’t invite God in. Some things may happen because we thought we could do it all on our own. Or, maybe you didn’t know you needed to invite God in. Either way, I want you to know now so you can ask Him from now on.
I said earlier that my goal for my life is to be an advertisement of the immense power of God as it works through me in my life. For me, this means being used by God to heal people, to be His instrument to restore the blind and open deaf ears. To be His instrument to heal cancer, MS, fibromyalgia, and all sorts of diseases, for there is no cure. I pray the Lord uses me for creative miracles such as growing arms and legs. I pray the Holy Spirit works through me to multiply food, resources, and any other way the power of the Holy Spirit wants to work through me. I pray the Holy Spirit tells me what to do, and I do it.
However, this doesn’t have to be everyone’s goal. You can have the power of the Holy Spirit working in your life without a goal of performing all sorts of miracles. We can all aim to be an advertisement of the immeasurable greatness of God’s power without having to go out and pray over people to be healed.
Can we all just start by inviting the Holy Spirit into our lives? Can we just give the Holy Spirit permission to work in our lives? This can be a straightforward statement. Holy Spirit, I invite you to work powerfully in my life. I give you permission to guide all my thoughts and actions. Holy Spirit, lead me. We can be an advertisement for the power of the Holy Spirit whenever we show restraint. When we are in traffic and get angry, we can ask the Holy Spirit to come and give us peace. We can ask the Holy Spirit each morning when we get up to protect us from any plans the enemy has for us that day. We can ask the Holy Spirit to help us to see others through His eyes. We can ask the Holy Spirit to help us love the unloveable. We can ask the Holy Spirit to show us who needs prayers, and we can pray over or with those people.
We don’t have to make grand gestures to be advertisements of the greatness of God. We live in a world right now where kindness and love are not the default. We can simply ask the Holy Spirit to help us show kindness and love to the world right now. Our simple acts of kindness will show the world the power of the Lord living inside us. I invite you all to talk with the Holy Spirit this week. Ask Him to show you where you could use more of His power in your life. Ask Him where in your life you have not invited Him into. Ask Him for any situations or circumstances in your life that you have not invited Him into. Invite the Holy Spirit into all aspects of your life and see how your life changes.
There is one more thing that just popped into my mind that I didn’t mention. The Holy Spirit comes where He is invited, welcomed, and expected. I talked about the first two, but I didn’t talk about the last one. We need to expect that He will show up when we ask the Holy Spirit to show up. I am sure the Holy Spirit will show up each time I pray with someone. Now, that doesn’t mean I always get the outcome that I want; it doesn’t mean everyone I pray over is healed in the way I want them to when I want them to. God has His plan, and I know it is better than mine. However, the Holy Spirit always shows up and leaves things better than they were. For instance, when people weren’t physically healed the way I wanted, they still felt something, whether it was a partial healing, a peace coming over them, the love of God, or many other things.
We need to expect the Holy Spirit to show up. He always comes when invited, so invite Him in and expect changes. Be on the lookout for changes. What is different since you invited Him in? They might be subtle changes at first, but if you are on the lookout, you will see them. Are you more loving towards your family? Are you more patient in traffic or at work? Are you more patient with your kids? Are you more joyful? Do you have more compassion for those in need? Be on the lookout for what changes when you invite the Holy Spirit into your life. Remember, it’s the same Holy Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead, so yes, He can handle whatever you are going through!
Dear Heavenly Father, please bless all those listening to this episode. Lord, we want the Holy Spirit in our lives. We want the power of the Holy Spirit to work through us. Lord, we ask you to help us to see this power at work in our lives. Please help each person listening understand the power of the Holy Spirit and help them to invite that power into their lives. Help us to expect that power to work in our lives. Give us a hunger for more of you and the Holy Spirit in our lives. Give us a hunger to be an advertisement of your power, Lord. We love you so much, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you, just as you are, and so do I! May the grace and favor of our Lord Jesus Christ be upon you! Have a blessed weekend!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in February 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Many of you say, I want more of you, Lord. And you long for more. But you do not ask for more. Longing and wanting will get you nowhere. Ask, and you shall receive. But then believe that you have received and move on. Don't stay stuck. Move on and believe that I have given you more when you have asked for it. But you must ask. And I wait and long for you to ask. I call you now. Ask, and it shall be given. But believe that it is given.”
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I Am The Least Of All The Saints
Ephesians 3:7-13 “Of this gospel I was made a minister according to the gift of God’s grace which was given me by the working of his power. To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to make all men see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things; that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places. This was according to the eternal purpose which he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and confidence of access through our faith in him. So I ask you not to lose heart over what I am suffering for you, which is your glory.”
It was tough to pick a verse this morning. I have been reading Ephesians, and there are so many good verses in there. I kept reading and re-reading chapters 1 and 2, and so many things were jumping out at me, but I didn’t feel like any of those verses were the ones I was supposed to talk about today. Then I went on to chapter 3, and this verse jumped out at me. I felt the Lord wanted me to speak to you about evangelization today. If you are like me, that word might scare you a bit.
When I hear that word, I want to look around and see who else the Lord might be talking to. When I hear that word, I instantly feel inadequate. Why is this? I know several Gospel stories and parables, so it is not as if I don’t know what’s in the Gospel. I know that God is love, which is the most important word to get out there. I know it is essential that people discover the love God has for them. I know these things, so why do I feel so afraid when I hear someone say that we are all called to share the good news with everyone we meet?
St. Paul was an extraordinary man and a great evangelizer. He is credited with writing about half of the books in the New Testament. Yet, in this opening verse, it says, “Of this gospel, I was made a minister according to the gift of God’s grace which was given me by the working of his power. To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, to preach to the Gentiles.” St. Paul knew he was called to be an evangelist as well. He knew his calling was to spread the word of the Gospel to all he met, but he really didn’t feel qualified.
I take comfort in this. I take comfort in knowing I am not the only one who gets nervous when I look at the call the Lord has placed on my life. I also hate to be the bearer of bad news, but God has also put this call on your lives. We are all called to bring the Gospel to all we meet. Does your stomach feel funny when I say that? Do you get nervous when you realize God calls you to spread His word? If you do, you are not alone. I don’t know anyone who is only excited to go out and share the Gospel. Don’t get me wrong, I know people who are excited to share the Gospel with others; however, they are nervous about doing it and feel inadequate to do it. I don’t know anyone who sets out to evangelize, thinking they know everything and that it will be easy.
This is why the next line is so important. It says, “This was according to the eternal purpose which he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and confidence of access through our faith in him.” This verse says we have boldness and confidence of access through our faith in him. Jesus can give us the boldness we need. Let me read you this part in the message translation. “I have been made a messenger of this wonderful news by the gift of grace that works through me. Even though I am the least significant of all his holy believers, this grace gift was imparted when the manifestation of His power came upon me. Grace alone empowers me so that I can boldly preach this wonderful message to non-Jewish people, sharing with them the unfading, inexhaustible riches of Christ, which are beyond comprehension.”
I love that this translation says, “by the gift of grace that works through me.” Grace is a gift from God. Grace can help us do things we could never do on our own. The verse also says, “Grace alone empowers me so that I can boldly preach this wonderful message.” God is calling us all to share the Gospel with all we meet. This means that He will equip us with all the grace we need to do so. If you feel inadequate to share the Gospel, join the club; we all feel inadequate. However, that doesn’t mean we get to excuse ourselves from doing it. How we feel doesn’t stop us from fulfilling our calling.
There is a podcast I used to listen to called “Do It Scared.” This is what we are called to do. We are called to step out in faith even when we don’t think we are the best person for the job. Who are we to question God’s judgment? We are called to step out in faith even when we are scared. We are called to trust that God’s grace is enough to empower us to do what He has called us. We are called to step out with a holy boldness. Sometimes, that boldness won’t come before you step out, but it will help you say what He wants.
If you are like me, you may think, “That is great, Catherine. I get that God’s grace is enough. Yet, I still feel inadequate and need something more practical to help me step out in faith on this journey.” If this is you, I have you covered. In one of our Encounter Ministry classes, they gave us a list of declarations that we can say each day to help us begin to believe that we can go out and evangelize. If you say or write these declarations often, they can help build your confidence. They can also replace your negative self-talk around the word evangelization and your ability to do it. Declarations work best if said daily, out loud, and while looking in a mirror. However, if that doesn’t work for you, do what does. I write these declarations most mornings. Writing seems to work well for me, although now that I say that, I will probably start saying them out loud and writing them. Here are the declarations:
- Everywhere I go, I am overwhelmed by God's love for people, and that motivates me to share the gospel.
- It is easy and normal for me to articulate the gospel.
- I have an anointing for evangelization.
- Today, my mind and spirit will tune in to the people around me and find those who desire to be saved. I will lead those people to Jesus.
- I am fearless and courageous, and I live with an understanding that people are hungry for Jesus.
- I am creative in my evangelization and I adapt well to bring powerful God encounters to different kinds of people.
- I love evangelizing!
- It is easy to share the gospel with others because they want to know the God that is inside of me.
- When I feel afraid to share the gospel with someone I will remind myself that on the other side of fear is a testimony.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you so much. You are amazing. We thank you for giving us the grace we need to fulfill our mission. We are sorry we question you and feel inadequate for all you call us to do. We believe you will equip us, Lord. Help our unbelief. Please help us feel more confident in the call you have given each of us. The call to share your Word and love with everyone we meet. Help us step out in faith and try to do this Lord. Help each one of us try to let one person today know that Jesus loves them. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Can I ask you a favor today? Would you forward this podcast to someone you know today who would be blessed by it? I would really appreciate you helping me spread the Word of God to more people. If you don’t think this would be the right episode to send to someone, they pick your favorite one and send that one to them. Thanks so much! I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! May the grace and favor of our Lord Jesus Christ be upon you. Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in February 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I can turn all who oppose you and all your enemies. I can turn their hearts of stone into hearts for me alone, but it is through you, my children, that I choose to use as instruments to turn those hearts.”
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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Witness Wednesday #120 More PopWe Stories
Today’s witnesses are from Matthew West’s website called popwe.org. If you don’t know who Matthew West is, he is a singer, songwriter, and storyteller. This website is for the non-profit that he has with his father, a pastor. Matthew and his father encourage people to share their stories. They have various categories of stories. Today, I chose two testimonies from the Healing Category. I know so many people who are looking for a healing right now and I think these stories will offer some hope and encouragement. Often, we can hear our own story in someone else’s story. When we listen to others tell their story, it helps us see that we are not alone. When we hear how God worked in their situation, it gives us hope that He will work in ours, too! I pray when you hear these testimonies, you get the faith and hope to believe that miracles and healing can happen in your situation also.
Allison: At the age of 23, I looked back at my life and I couldn’t think of a time when I felt healthy. I had struggled with chronic illness ever since I could remember, and I still didn’t have a name for all the symptoms that I was experiencing. It was years of trying to explain what I was feeling but not getting any answers. I felt alone and misunderstood.
At times, I wondered if God even cared about me at all. The summer before I turned 23, things took a turn for the worse. I got into a car accident which left me feeling overwhelmed with guilt as it was my fault. On top of that, my symptoms were getting worse. Fatigue, aching joints, nausea, anxiety, depression, memory loss…the list goes on and on. I didn’t think I was going to make it. In fact, I asked God to just take me home because I didn’t want to endure the pain any longer.
I met with one of my pastors for prayer about the car accident a few weeks later, (at least that’s what I intended on discussing.) But God. He had different plans. Somehow the whole meeting ended up being about my health. Towards the end of the meeting, my pastor looked at me and said “Allison, I think you have chronic Lyme Disease.” I would be lying if I said I wasn’t annoyed. I spent years of my life trying to get to the root of my health problems and no doctor could even give me a diagnosis, so how would a pastor know anything about my health? The next day I cried out to God. I asked Him to show me if it was true, and if it was, to lead me to the right doctor.
He answered. Loud and clear. Multiple times over the following weeks He confirmed it. Through a stranger, I was given the name of a doctor in my town who specializes in treating Lyme. I had an appointment with him, and it turns out my pastor was right. After years and years of waiting, I had an answer. Today, 6 years later, I am healed. I ended up getting treated by that doctor, and God used him to save my life. I know I wouldn’t be here today if God hadn’t intervened.
Through this journey, God has shown me His faithfulness. I know now that He heard me every time I cried out to Him. He is the God that sees me. He sees you, too!
Emily: Hello, I’m Emily. I’m a 10 time Breast Cancer Survivor. Yes, you read that right, ….TEN.
It all began with a stomach ache in 2008. As I went to my doctor for a routine exam, she found the Cancer! Of course, I had to go through an ultrasound and mammogram first, but my doctor had saved my life by detecting this early, I thought.
I was 33, had 3 kids, (ages 6, 2, and 8 months) and a full-time job teaching 1st graders at a public school. Cancer? Who has time for Cancer? I was told it is an aggressive form and difficult to treat, because doctors don’t know much about it. I have Triple Negative Breast Cancer. I fought with everything I had through chemo, radiation and a lumpectomy.
God and I spent a lot of time talking about how I was going to win this battle and with His help, I did, for 4 1/2 years.
The Demon itself returned in March of 2012, just before my 5 year clear mark. I was devastated, scared, angry, frustrated and MAD at God. Why was this happening to me again? Why do I have to go through this again? This isn’t fair! God carried me through the second battle, just as He did the first with just as much grace and comfort.
Fast-forward to 2022. I’ve now had TWO double mastectomies, a lumpectomy, ten biopsies, a DIEP flap reconstruction surgery, 3 more rounds of chemo (78 total treatments), 3 different types of radiation (67 total treatments), and Proton therapy (35 treatments) to try and kill this cancer. It has reared its ugly head 10 times and this is going to be the last!!!
Just a month and a half ago, I learned about a new drug that people were having success rates with. It was a Godsend and true miracle. An email delivered to my inbox revealed something we’ve been waiting for for 15 years!!!! The product is working and I will have another scan in February to hear that there is NED (No evidence of disease)!!! I am positive after reading the success stories!
I tell my story to say this… God is the only reason I am still here!!!! Nobody survives Cancer 10 times without God. Period. ✝️ If you are battling Cancer of any kind, just know that God is on your side and He is the ultimate healer!!!! Without Him and our faith, we are nothing!! I’m still standing AND teaching for 15 years and 10 battles later!
God is so good and Matthew West, you’re my favorite!!! Your music inspires me and the children in my class from rough homes every single day!! Our favorite is “How Good Of God!”
Thank you both so much for sharing your stories. God is so good and yet if we don’t share our stories with people then they won’t know just how good he is. I thank you for being willing to be vulnerable and share you stories. I know they will bring hope and joy to many. I am so very grateful God brough you both heeling. I pray you have a healthy and full life. I pray all of this in Jesus’s holy name.
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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Treasures of Redemption
Ephesians 1:7-8 “Since we are now joined to Christ, we have been given the treasures of redemption by his blood—the total cancellation of our sins—all because of the cascading riches of his grace. This superabundant grace is already powerfully working in us, releasing all forms of wisdom and practical understanding.”
As soon as I read that verse this morning, I knew it was the one I needed to use, as this is something we all get stuck on. We all know and understand that Jesus died on the cross for our sins, but when we look at our sins, we think they are too bad for Jesus to forgive. I love that the verse says, “Since we are not joined to Christ, we have been given the treasures of redemption by his blood.” I love how it reminds us that redemption is a treasure. It is something of great value, and it wasn’t easy to give that to us. It is important to remember what Christ went through to provide us with our redemption. He had to die on the cross for us to have this treasure of redemption.
Next, the verse says, “the total cancellation of our sins-all because of the cascading riches of his grace.” Let me read that last part again for those of us who get stuck here. It says the total cancellation of our sins. It does not say the partial cancellation of our sins. It doesn’t say the cancellation of the sins that aren’t too bad. It doesn’t say the cancellation of some of your sins. No, that is not what it says. It says the total cancellation of our sins. That means even that one sin that you feel like He could never forgive, He already has.
When we decide that our sins are too big for God to forgive, we are telling Him that we don’t think Jesus’s sacrifice was big enough to cover our sins. Do you know what a slap in the face that is? Jesus went through agony to provide us with redemption, and we are essentially saying no thank you to that redemption. We are saying we appreciate what you did, but it just wasn’t enough for the gravity of my sins. When we do this, we are letting our pride get in the way of the love that the Lord has for us. Is this what we want?
Trusting in the forgiveness of sins requires faith. It requires us to believe the Lord’s Words. It requires us to believe in the Lord’s love for us. Why else would He send His son to die on the cross for us? God’s unconditional love for us cannot be separated from what Jesus did on the cross. If God didn’t care about us so much, if He didn’t love us so much, then there wouldn’t have been a cross. He would have let us deal with the consequences of Adam and Eve. God did not create sin and He certainly didn’t create a world full of sin. God created us to live in Harmony with Him in the garden of Eden. Can you imagine what that would have been like? Eating anything we want except that one tree. Taking a stroll through the garden with God at night. That must have been paradise.
I don’t want to forget to talk about the ending of this verse either. It says, “all because of the cascading riches of his grace. This superabundant grace is already powerfully working in us, releasing all forms of wisdom and practical understanding.” Did you know God gives us graces? I love that this translation says, “cascading riches of his grace.” I think this is a great illustration to show how generous our God is. He is not holding back His grace and rationing it out in case He runs out one day. He knows He will never run out and He pours His grace down on those who ask for it. Do you ever wonder why it seems like some people have more favor with the Lord, or some people receive more grace? I believe it is because they ask for it. When is the last time you asked God for some grace in your life? When is the last time you asked God for some favor?
God is a good good Father and if we ask He will give it to us, unless we are asking for something that is not good for us. Don’t be afraid to ask the Lord for anything you need. I believe He loves it when we come to Him and make big requests becasue it shows him that we believe He can do it. Sort of like when we need to open a jar. We don’t ask someone to help us unless we think they are strong enough to help us. We ask them because we believe they can open that jar. The same is true with God. We are not going to ask Him to find a way to help us pay our mortgage if we don’t believe that he can do it. So, by asking Him for big things, we are actually showing Him how much we believe in Him and I think He loves that!
Now, back to His Superabundant Grace. We all have this grace working powerfully in us. How do you think you do all the hard things that you are able to do. Through God’s grace. I love that it says in the verse that His grace is already releasing all forms of wisdom and practical understanding. I didn’t realize or know until fairly recently that God gave us wisdom or knowledge. I mean I might have read it in the Bible and I might have known it on some level, but I didn’t actually know we could ask God for wisdom and that He would give it to us. That is pretty cool. I also didn’t realize we could ask for practical understanding but I have done this over this past year also and He has always answered. God is amazing! His grace is amazing! I believe God pours His graces out freely over all of us and yet I think if you want more graces, all you need to do is ask and he will give you more. Don’t be afraid to ask God for anything. He loves His children and would do anything for us. Even if you aren’t sure if He can do what you are asking for, just Ask, There isn’t anything He can’t do.
Dear Heavenly Father I ask you to bless everyone listening to this episode. Lord, we love you so much. We thank you for the treasures of redemption you have given to us. Lord, we thank you for all you do for us. We thank you for all the graces you shower upon us and we ask for more Lord. We ask for more not because we are greedy but because we are needy. We need you Lord and we know that. We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I hope you will check out the link below to join mentoring. Tonight is week #3 of the Our Emotions series and it will be great! I hope to see you there. I look forward to bringing you a new Witness Wednesday tomorrow. May the grace and favor of our Lord Jesus Christ be upon you.
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in February 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, I am the love that binds you all. It is that love that can transform each one of you and remove whatever walls that are in the way. It's love that removes the wall. It removes as you forgive others, the walls gently start falling and it transforms your heart and the hearts of those around you.”
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Unstained Innocence
Ephesians 1:3-4 “Every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realm has already been lavished upon us as a love gift from our wonderful heavenly father, the Father of our Lord Jesus—all because he sees us wrapped into Christ. This is why we celebrate him with all our hearts! And in love he chose us before he laid the foundation of the universe! Because of his great love, he ordained us, so that we would be seen as holy in his eyes with and unstained innocence.”
When I read these two verses this morning, I thought they were so beautiful. They begin with “Every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realm has already been lavished upon us as a love gift from our wonderful heavenly father.” Isn’t that beautiful? Did you know that your heavenly Father is lavishing spiritual blessings on you? The word blessing in this verse is a translation of the Greek word eulogy, which means “to speak well of.” Since God is acting in this verse, we can say that God has spoken good things about us or pronounced good things for our benefit. The good things that God has decreed for us are probably beyond our ability to number.
Can you imagine your heavenly Father showering you with blessings? Did you know that is what He is doing? I know sometimes it doesn’t feel like you are getting any blessings, but this might be because you are in the middle of a hard time. You might not be able to see the blessings because you are so focused on the hard thing that is happening. You might think there is no way God could be blessing you because of all you are going through.
This isn’t true. God can bless us in the middle of a hard time. He can bless us whenever He wants to. You might be wondering what that may look like, what it would look like to have a blessing while in the middle of a hardship. That could look like someone you know checking on you to see if you need anything. It could look like your friends and family bringing you meals when they know you have no time to cook. It could look like you getting a job promotion right when you need it the most! Have any of these ever happened to you? What about when a stranger says something to you out of the blue and it is exactly what you needed to hear?
God is not just blessing us, He is lavishing spiritual blessings upon us. This can go against our picture of God. We all have a picture of God in our head and for some of us, probably a lot of us, it is not a picture of a wonderful heavenly Father. Many of us picture the heavenly Father similar to our dad growing up. So if you had a loving Father growing up the idea that our heavenly Father is loving is easier to grasp. However, if our earthly Father was not outwardly loving and was hard on you, maybe expected a lot out of you, then this is how you might see our heavenly Father too. But God's love is beyond our earthly understanding, and He cherishes each and every one of us.
I know a lot of people who picture the Lord as an old man with a white mustache and beard sitting up in heaven, looking down on us and judging us. They picture God as someone who is just waiting for them to screw up so He can punish them. They are sure they are disappointing Him all of the time. I think this is why I chose these verses and why I like these verses so much.
The second verse for today dispels this myth that God is up in heaven just waiting for us to mess up. It says, “And in love he chose us before he laid the foundation of the universe! Because of his great love, he ordained us, so that we would be seen as holy in his eyes with and unstained innocence.” First, it says that God chose us before He laid the foundation of the Universe. God chose you. Let that sink in for a moment. God chose you before He even created the universe. Does that sound like the act of a Father that is sitting up in heaven waiting for you to screw up so He can punish you?
Next it says, “Because of His great love, he ordained us, so that we would be seen as holy in his eyes with unstained innocence.” Listen to that last part again, “so that we would be seen as holy in his eyes with unstained innocence.” God doesn’t look at us as if we are a wreck waiting to happen. In His eyes, we have an unstained innocence about us. God doesn’t want us to mess up. He doesn’t want us to sin or to fall away from Him. He loves us. He chose us. He wants us to be right there with Him for all eternity.
God loves us. He looks down upon us as a loving Father would. Once we realize this our relationship with the Heavenly Father will become so much closer. If we haven’t really experienced true love in this world, then it might be hard to understand how much our heavenly Father loves us. One thing I am finding that can help with this is to read the scriptures. Read the Psalms, read the New Testament. Last week I read Philippians and this week I am reading Ephesians and they are just beautiful. The Bible is a living document. It is not just a book of words that the Lord told His people back in the day. The Bible is speaking to each one of us right now. When you read the Bible you will realize it is just as relevant to what you are going through today than it was back then. God is so good, His Words are timeless.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask that you help us to understand your love for us. We ask you to help us understand how loved we are. We ask that you help us to change our hearts and are minds about who you are and what you want from us. We want to see you as you truly are not as we picture you in our minds. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. Remember, there is mentoring tomorrow night for anyone who wants to join us. This month's theme is our emotions and how to feel them without letting them control our actions. Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! May the grace and favor of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your Spirit!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in February 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Do you see me in the downcast, the repulsive, the weak and the needy, the arrogant and the brash? Do you see me in your crosses and afflictions, troubles and conflicts? I am the incarnate one. I am in all things and people, working for the salvation of all. See me, help me, praise and love me in all people and in all ways.”
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Be Christ-Like
Philippians 1:20 “No matter what, I will continue to hope and passionately cling to Christ so that he will be openly revealed through me before everyone’s eyes. So I will not be ashamed! In my life or in my death, Christ will be magnified in me.”
I have really enjoyed reading through Philippians this week. There were so many good verses. I started at the end and worked my way forward. I am not sure why it worked out that way, but it did. I read this verse yesterday and it stuck with me so I wanted to share it with you today. This is something for which we can all aspire. We can all continue to have hope and passionately cling to Christ so that when others see us, they see Him.
Paul says, “In life or in my death, Christ will be magnified in me.” How great is that? How great would it be to know that you have helped to bring others to Christ, not only in life but in death, too? This makes me wonder, what am I doing to magnify Christ? When people look at me and how I live my life, do they see Christ?
I will always remember what Father Mike said on the podcast Catechism in a Year. He said, take a minute and imagine it is illegal to be Christian. Luckily, this is not the case in America, but pretend it is. He said to imagine now that you are on trial for being a Christian. Besides going to Mass or your church service on the weekend, would they have enough evidence to convict you? I don’t know why this has stuck with me over the past two years, but I think it is a compelling question.
Many of us go to church on Sunday. We love God, and we think that is all we really need to do. However, we are all called to be Christlike. We are called to be Jesus's face to all we meet. Jesus said we need to love the Lord our God with our whole heart, mind, and soul, and then He also said we need to love our neighbor as ourselves. I think this is the part that we often forget. I think we all remember to try to love God, although I am unsure if we try to do it with our whole heart, mind and soul. I think we try to love God when it benefits us. We all remember God when times are hard; I hope we remember Him when times are good, too.
We often forget to love our neighbors. This doesn’t just mean the person living next to us; it means every single person we interact with. If we had a private investigator following us for a week to look at our behavior and try to gather evidence that we were a Christian, would they find any evidence? Would they see you being compassionate to all those you interact with, whether you know them or not? Would they see you being patient and considerate when you are driving around? Would they see you being kind and helpful to the poor? Would they see you were a Christian when interacting with the various people you met throughout your day? How did you treat that one co-worker who always gets on your nerves? How did you treat that person that cut you off in traffic? How did you treat that person who cut you in line just as you finally reached the front? What about the homeless person who asked you for money?
How we treat others matters. We can’t simply focus on our relationship with God and disregard the rest of the world. We can’t claim to love God and then treat others unkindly. Our actions towards others reflect our faith and our commitment to living a Christlike life. When others look at our lives, they should be able to see Christ in all that we do. Jesus addresses this in the Gospels. God would not have ensured this was in the Bible if it didn’t say something we should pay attention to. The following verse shows us how important it is to care for everyone we meet.
Matthew 25:31-46 “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left. Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers,[f] you did it to me. “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?’ Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
This verse shows us that God requires more of us than just showing up at mass or service on Sunday mornings. It also shows us that we are called to be Christ-like and should view everyone we meet as Christ-like. Instead of seeing a random person you don’t know asking you for money on the street, see Jesus asking you for money on the street. Imagine how different our experiences would be if we pictured Jesus’s face on each person we saw throughout the day. Imagine someone stops you and asks you for help in the grocery store, and you see Jesus in that person. Wouldn’t that be such a gift? What if we tried to be that gift for others? What if we loved Jesus so much that His love and light spilled out from us onto all those we meet? Wouldn’t that be amazing? Isn’t that something worth striving for?
Dear Heavenly Father, please bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, please help us to be your face to the world. Help us to be Christ-like in all that we do. Help us to see you in others. Help us to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. Lord, show us what we need to do to be more Christ-like. Show each one of us where we are struggling with this. Show us where we could be doing better and how. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I want to read all of you the description of my upcoming retreat. The retreat is October 11-13th, the same weekend as last year. I will be opening registration soon, however it is not opened yet. I wanted to let you know the theme and the description so you can start praying about if you can attend.
Come As You Are Retreat (October 11-13, 2024)
Many of us feel we must be perfect before coming to the Lord. We feel as though we are not worthy enough to approach God. We looked at all we’ve done and know God can't possibly love us like this. We think we will go to church, pray, and sit before the Lord once we have changed, once we have cleaned ourselves up, and once things in our lives get a little better. We will come back to the Lord once we feel worthy.
This is not what God wants. He wants us to come to him just as we are right now. Matthew 11:28–30 says, "Are you weary, carrying a heavy burden? Come to me. I will refresh your life, for I am your oasis. Simply join your life with mine. Learn my ways, and you’ll discover that I’m gentle, humble, easy to please. You will find refreshment and rest in me. For all that I require of you will be pleasant and easy to bear.” (TPT)
This retreat is a safe place to come to the Lord, just as you are. You don't have to be far along on your spiritual journey. You don't have to have it all figured out. You don't have to have any of it figured out. This retreat is a judgment-free zone. All are welcome to come as we are and spend some time talking with our heavenly Father. It will be a time to discover God’s unconditional and unwavering love for you, yes you! It will be a time to finally let go of some of those lies the enemy has been holding over you and replace those lies with the truth of God. My prayer for you for this retreat:
You will experience the overwhelming love of God.
You will be liberated from the shackles of the lies you have believed for so long.
You will go home walking in the confidence of who God says you are.
Be more comfortable sitting and having a conversation with your heavenly Father. This is a unique opportunity to deepen your relationship with Him, to feel His presence more strongly in your life.
I hope you will consider joining me for this wonderful weekend away. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I. Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in February 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Pray for the salvation of souls. Now is the right time for the harvest. Pray for your estranged family members. I see some of you have given up hoping they will find their way. I put them as your family members because I trust in your faithfulness.”
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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First I just want to apologize. I totally forgot that yesterday was Wednesday so I gave you a regular episode instead of a witness Wednesday. However, I know many of you love to hear the testimonies, so I didn’t want to skip it this week. So today I am bringing you a witness Wednesday, just a day late on a Thursday. Today’s witnesses are from Matthew West’s website called popwe.org. If you don’t know who Matthew West is, he is a singer, songwriter, and storyteller. This website is for the non-profit that he has with his father, a pastor. Matthew and his father encourage people to share their stories. They have various categories of stories. Today, I chose two testimonies from the Relationship Category. Relationships are hard. I don’t think we are sailing through life full of perfect relationships. Often, we can hear our own story in someone else’s story. When we listen to others tell their story, it helps us see that we are not alone. When we hear how God worked in their relationships, it gives us hope that He will work in ours, too! I pray when you hear these testimonies, you get the faith and hope to believe that miracles and healing can happen in your relationships also.
Karina: When I think of my story, I think of pain, grief, overwhelming sadness, hurt, and betrayal. Then I think of hope, redemption, love, grace, miracles, and my salvation in Jesus.
Five years ago, my entire world turned upside down. I experienced betrayal in my marriage after 12 years. I was in so much pain. My life seemed to have been one episode after the next of unfortunate events.I was so broken and so alone. I was in severe depression and taking depression and anxiety meds and using alcohol with it. I was doing anything I could to dull the pain I was in.
I’m so thankful that God loved me so much that He pursued me in ways I’d never experienced before. I was blessed to become a part of a church. At a time when I was deeply hurting, I was shown the love of Christ over and over again. My pastor would say during his messages (and he still does) that I MATTERED to GOD. Honestly, I didn’t even know that I did. God never left my side and He revealed Himself and His love to me. I had never known love like this before and he poured it out on me in waves and waves. He walked with me through the trials and the storms and he saved me and restored me. Then God led me to become a part of a women’s group that has encouraged me, prayed with me and laughed with me. These women have become my sisters. We’ve shared a bond stronger than any blood relationship I’ve ever had. Words can’t describe the love in my heart that I have for each of them. God has healed me in ways I couldn’t see possible five years ago or even three years ago. He resurrected my dead marriage which is a miracle in a way because there was no way I could see this being restored or if reconciliation was even an option. That’s the God I serve. He is full of compassion, LOVE, mercy, and GRACE… He pursues us even when we turn our backs on Him. He loved me even when I didn’t love myself; He showed me I was His, that I was never forsaken; that I was chosen, a daughter of the One True King. He healed my heart, renewed my mind and made me brand new! The only way I can end this is by saying “Thank You, JESUS” ❤️
Trent: Theme songs are an important part of our world. As individuals, I feel that we each have a personal theme song for our life. My name is Trent, and I am 19 years old. By no fault of my own, I was born into a family filled with extreme dysfunction. My earliest years were filled with domestic violence, extreme neglect, and extensive sexual abuse. I truly struggle to find the words to adequately describe the daily pain and suffering that I endured during my earliest years. I was hurt in every way imaginable. My theme song was one of fear.
I feared for my safety. I feared that I would starve. I feared that I could not protect my younger brother. I feared that the pain would never end. I feared that I would never have anyone to love me.
After a few traumatic years with those who gave birth to me, I was taken into the foster care system. I spent my early childhood traveling from one foster home to another. My theme song of fear amplified as I cried myself to sleep each night fearing that I would never have a family to call my own.
I would like for you to think for just a moment about how difficult it is each time you experience a change in life. Now imagine that you are asked to gather your few pathetic belongings, place them in a trash bag, and get in a car to be taken to the home of a complete and total stranger. This happened to me not once, but 5 times over the course of my first 8 years. Fear was the theme that dominated my existence. Although my foster placements were not exactly ideal, I was introduced to God very early on and was able to cling to the hope that He had a plan for my life. I was young, but I kept hearing about this God who loved me no matter what. I was given a dog tag with Jeremiah 29:11 engraved on the front. There were many times in my early years that I began to doubt that I would ever have a family of my own, but I pressed into God and prayed as I repeated Jeremiah 29:11 as a reminder that He was in control, despite the fact that my theme song of fear resonated loudly.
“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
That verse is still my favorite and served as a constant reminder that God was in control despite the fact that my world was filled with uncontrollable chaos and uncertainty. My only hope was found in God as I prayed each night that I would somehow find a family to love me and keep me safe.
By the grace of God, my life that had been consumed by fear and uncertainty changed in 2010. My prayers were answered and my younger brother and I were adopted by two amazing people who are now my Mom and Dad in every sense of the word. After being adopted I am so happy to say that my theme song began to change. I no longer spent every day in fear; instead I had HOPE for the first time in my life. If you asked me how those changes came about, I can answer in one single but very powerful word. LOVE. It sounds like such a simple concept, but being in a place where I knew I was loved by my family, and most importantly, by God was the key to healing. My new theme song became one of love.
The Lord delivered me to a forever family who never once wavered in their unconditional love and support as they walked my healing journey by my side and led me to the healing that can only be found in God. They cried with me as I mourned the loss of my siblings, held me as I exposed details of my sexual abuse, and allowed me to mourn the loss of my childhood. Over time, I began to trust that they were going to stand by me no matter what. That feeling of safety and security opened the doors to healing. The truth is, early trauma changes who you are and you can either let it take you, or decide to fight… and I was determined to fight. We pressed into the pain as a family unit and asked God each and every day to help heal me from my past trauma. I was not going to allow my traumatic start define my future. My self esteem was restored and I began to realize that God had a purpose for my life. Jeremiah 29:11 repeatedly entered my mind as I watched my life unfold. It may sound crazy, but I thank God for the pain and suffering I endured.
Every painful moment provided a learning experience that I can now use to help others. I am not a victim. I am not damaged goods! I am a strong Christian young man who has found his way home to a family who will love me unconditionally. Healing from my past trauma was the most painful experience of my life, but I am now able to see that God used my pain for His purpose. I began sharing my story at the age of 10 and published my autobiography “Shattered No More” at the age of 14. I do not share these accomplishments to boast in any way, but to break misconceptions about those who have experienced trauma. At the age of 17 I started a speaking and support ministry to provide hope to others who have experienced trauma (watchmerise919.org). I have had the true honor of walking this healing journey with others through mentoring, Bible study, support groups, and specialized trainings. In addition, I share my story of hope to others through our Watch Me Rise podcast. I am currently in college and on my way to becoming a licensed Clinical Counselor. Over time I was able to see the beauty that is found in the ashes. The Lord has transformed me and made me new. I strive each day to be more like Jesus and to bring others to the true healing that is only found in Him. I give God all the glory for my journey! That is HIS story.
Please reach out through our website if we can encourage you in any way, pray for you, support you in your healing journey or share our story. Thank you to popwe for allowing those who have experienced pain to use our pain for a purpose!
Thank you so much to Karina and Trent for sharing your stories. I know it is hard being vulnerable and sharing your story, and yet it helps so many people. I am sure your testimonies are helping others see the possibilities for their own relationships. I am grateful for the miracles you received and I am sure God is so happy you are sharing them with others.
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We Are All On Our Own Journey
Philippians 1:6: “I pray with great faith for you, because I’m fully convinced that the One who began the gracious work in you will faithfully continue the process of maturing you until the unveiling of our Lord Jesus Christ!”
I have always really liked the idea that if things aren’t good then God’s not done yet. I have heard this many places, yet I was surprised to see it in the Bible. I think this a great reminder that we are all on a spiritual journey. I was talking to someone last night who was saying we tend to compare ourselves to others often. We tend to look at someone else and want what they have. She was saying we do with our spirituality also and I hadn’t really thought of it like that. Now that I am thinking about it, I can see how that is true.
We look at others around us in church and we compare ourselves to them. Whether we mean to do it or not. We look at the person saying the rosary before mass and we think he/she is so much holier than we are. We look at the person who is coming into mass late or leaving early and we think we are definitely holier than they are. However, we don’t know anyone’s story. That person in church saying the rosary, that might be their first time saying the rosary, or they may have just lost someone or are going through something really difficult and they know they needed something more. The person coming in late or leaving early my have a job nearby and are spending their lunch hour coming to church, but they only have an hour.
We can’t compare our journey to someone else’s. We have all been through different things in our lives, and that helps to shape who we are. We have all had different upbringings in the faith, and so we may have different habits, but that doesn’t make one of us more holy than another. God is not calling us all onto the same path. If you look at the saints they all took different paths and yet they all arrived in the same place.
Sometimes we can think, or at least I sometimes think, that if I get the formula right I will become a Saint. If I can figure out how many Our Father’s and Hail Mary’s I need to say then I will be set. God is forever telling me this is not the case. He is telling me there is no one way to get to heaven. There is not special formula or checklist of things that we need to do to get there. Jesus said we need to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, and mind and to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. Jesus said all the law of the prophets hang on these two commandments. Jesus did not tell us how we should love God, just that we should love God. If we want to show Him our love by praying all day, we can do that. If we want to show Him our love by working with the poor, we can do that. If we want to show Him our love by treating our family and loved ones with love, we can do that.
Sometimes we can also compare our lives to others and think that people who aren’t struggling must be holier than we are. They must be close with God. In other words, we believe we are struggling because we are not faithful enough, or we don’t trust enough, or we don’t love God enough. This is not true. We don’t have to look any further than Job in the Bible to see this is not true. Job was the most faithful and righteous person on earth and yet Satan gave him a really hard time. Job was miserably sick and lost everything he cared about, except his wife. We don’t have to look further than job and yet the Lord didn’t stop with Job, he points out a few times in the Bible that we are not sick or going through a hard time because we are not faithful.
If you look at anyone who is doing the will of God an proclaiming his word in a powerful way, they have all been through some tough times. One way that we build our faith and trust in God is by going through experiences where we have to have faith and trust in God. Faith can be like a muscle. The more you use it the stronger it gets. God doesn’t allow things to happen to us because we aren’t holy enough, He allows things to happen to build us up and to prepare us for whatever He has in store for us.
Comparing ourselves to others will not do anything good for us. It will steal our joy and make us feel “not good enough.” This is not what God wants for us. He wants us to remember that we are all on our own journey and that we have no idea what someone else’s journey has been. We can’t know just by looking at someone what they are going through. They may look fine, but their whole world might be falling apart. We just never know. I remind you of this so you can hopefully stop comparing yourself to others. I also tell you this so that when you see someone being unkind, or acting a way you don’t like, remember they could be going through something.
I remember a story of a man on a subway. He had several kids and they were acting up and super hyper on the train. They were starting to annoy the people around them and the father wasn’t doing anything about it. The father just sat there in a daze. The person telling the story was thinking to himself, “Why doesn’t this father do anything?” However, instead of saying that, he decided to ask the man if he was ok. He found out that the man was on his way home from the hospital. He has just lost his wife and he was trying to figure out how to tell his children their mom died. You never know what other’s are going through.
To get back to the verse from today, “I’m fully convinced that the One who began the gracious work in you will faithfully continue the process of maturing you until the unveiling of our Lord Jesus Christ!” St. Paul was speaking to those in Philippi and he is talking to you too. God will faithfully continue the process of maturing you until the unveiling of our Lord Jesus Christ. Sometimes that process will feel great, and sometimes that process will be painful. Just know it is an ongoing process. There will never be at time on this side of heaven when we can say, we have reached the end. God is finished with me. I am perfected. It is a process, it is a journey and it is one we are on for the long haul. This is meant to be reassuring. This is meant to remind you this is not a sprint, it is a marathon. I know you may feel like you are no where near where you want to be on this journey. That is ok, its a long journey and you have time. Just know that you are where you are supposed to be. You are right where God knew you would be.
If you want to be further along, have a conversation with God. Ask Him what He would like you to do. Ask Him how you can grow closer to Him. The Lord is always inviting us into a deeper relationship with Him. He is always inviting us closer, but not in an impatient way. He patiently invites us into a closer relationship with Him and then guides us at the pace we set. God is a gentleman, and He lets us choose our speed. If you aren’t happy with the speed at which you are growing, talk to the Lord about it. He will help you adjust your speed.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone listening to this episode. Lord, help us to learn not to compare ourselves with others. Help us to remember when we are tempted to judge others that everyone is going through something, and we might not know the whole story. Please help us to give people the benefit of the doubt. Lord, we want what you want for us. If your will differs from our will please help us change our will. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you have been wondering what mentoring is like or have been thinking about checking it out I want you to know I have posted a link to last week’s mentoring, Week #1 of the Emotions series on my personal and work Facebook pages, Catherine Duggan or Finding True North Coaching if you would like to check it out. I will also place a link for it in the show notes. (Click Here to watch the mentoring session) I hope you check it out and then join us for the rest of the series. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! May the grace and favor or our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in February 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I am the potter. You are the clay. You are the clay. Each of you I have made a unique vessel. My favorite vessels are those that are still on my wheel. I kiss them with my own breath as I turn the wheel. They are my babies. I let the wheel stick in one place until I need to pick up again. The pauses are necessary for them to learn and grow in the spot I have left them in. I have not abandoned them.”
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Don’t Be Selfish
Philippians 2:4-5 “Abandon every display of selfishness. Possess a greater concern for what matters to others instead of your own interests. And consider the example that Jesus, the Anointed One, has set before us. Let his mindset become your motivation.”
This week, I have been spending some time in the book of Philippians. I have just been reading one chapter a day, and it is only four chapters. I am not sure how I ended up in Philippians 4 last week, but then I decided to stay in this book and read a chapter a day. There is so much in there that I could probably read less than a chapter a day and then just sit and talk to the Lord about it.
Today’s verse I chose has meaning as I feel the Holy Spirit lead me to this verse. This week, our youngest son really wanted to go to a concert, and it was on a day when I had mentoring, so I could not drive him. Tony checked his work schedule and did not have to be in the office. He said he would drive him, but he really didn’t want to. It would mean driving into Boston, sitting in a lot of traffic, dropping him off, and coming home again. Boston is about an hour from us without traffic, and you rarely get there without traffic. Tony would have been driving him right when everyone was trying to get home after work. This would be after Tony had worked a full day. It would not have been a great ending to his day. Instead of relaxing after a long day of work, he would have been sitting in traffic for at least two hours.
However, at the time, I didn’t see the situation like this. I just saw that Ryan really wanted to go and that Tony didn’t want to take him. I felt like Tony was being selfish as it was something Ryan really wanted to do. It meant a lot to him, and as I said, I didn’t think about all it would cost Tony. I thought it was just driving him; it’s not a big deal. I wasn’t thinking about how tired Tony might be after working a full day and probably wanting to relax and not sit in traffic.
When I went for a walk yesterday and I was listening to the Big Life mentoring Session for July. Pamela Crim was talking about we should enjoy this time we have during the summer. She talked about how she used to think that being too busy meant she was important. Then someone explained that is not the case. Being too busy has nothing to do with whether you are important or not. Being too busy means you have an imbalance somewhere. She told us not to be too busy to do things with our kids or with our spouse this summer. Our kids will be grown up and out of the house before we know it and then we would give anything to have them be little and ask us to play with them. Pamela gave an example of one of the people in Big Life mentoring who just lost her husband and they have young kids. The woman told the group that her husband invited her to do stuff all the time but she always said no. She was too busy cleaning the house, or taking care of the kids, or whatever it was. She told the group she would give anything to just get one more change to go watch her husband play golf.
After hearing this mentoring session, the Holy Spirit got me thinking about my life and about the argument I had with Tony over Ryan going to the concert. I got to thinking about how Tony would regret not taking Ryan someday, and the Holy Spirit turned my attention to myself. He is so good at doing that, isn’t He? We want to condemn others and judge others, and the Holy Spirit takes out a mirror and shows us where we may need to change too. The Holy Spirit put on my heart that I needed to stop being busy and saying no because it is not something I want to do.
Tony asks if I want to go to concerts with him and Noah pretty often. They tend to go to a lot of concerts. I usually say no because I am only really a fan of concerts if I know every song they are going to sing and can sing along. Otherwise, I find the concerts boring. I am sitting there, not knowing the music, and usually, I am tired. Did you see how many I’s in that statement? I am just thinking about what I want and how I feel. However, each time I said no, I was giving up a chance to hang out with Tony and Noah. Our boys are teens now; well, actually, Sam is already 20. They mostly do their own thing with very little interaction with us. This is somewhat normal teen behavior, but had I said yes to the concerts, I would have gotten to spend more time with Noah, which is especially important this year as he is going away to college in another country soon, and I won’t get to hug him each night before bed.
The verse above says, “Abandon every display of selfishness. Possess a greater concern for what matters to others instead of your own interests. And consider the example that Jesus, the Anointed One, has set before us. Let his mindset become your motivation.” I feel as though the Holy Spirit was pointing out that I need to abandon my selfishness and pay more attention to what matters to others. If there is a concert that Tony really wants to go to, I could care more about the time I would get to spend with him than I do about the fact that I don’t typically like concerts. If my kids really want to do something and I don’t want to do it, I could put their needs first and do the thing.
The verse tells us to consider the example Jesus set before us. Jesus made the ultimate sacrifice. He went to the cross for us. Any sacrifice we make in our lives pales in comparison to that. When we look to Christ as an example, it is easier to put others first. When we realize what He has sacrificed for us, it is a bit easier to sacrifice for others. It also makes it easier when we realize what we will be gaining. Yes, I may end up doing some things I don’t really like doing, but I will be gaining time with my family, of which there is never enough. By not going, I am letting time pass by with my boys. Every time Tony and Noah go to a concert, they go to dinner first. Even if I didn’t like the concert, I would like dinner with Tony and Noah.
What is the Holy Spirit calling you to? In what ways can you possess a greater concern for what matters to others instead of your own interests? How can you abandon every display of selfishness? Deacon Joe, the director of my Encounter School of Ministry class, often says, “Don’t hear what I am not saying.” When he says this, he means, don’t put words in my mouth or don’t misinterpret what I am saying. I feel the Holy Spirit wants me to make it clear that self-care, taking care of yourself, is not selfish. It is a necessity. That is not what this verse is talking about. It’s not saying never to put yourself first; sometimes, you need to do what is right for you. What I am asking you to consider today is where in your life you have been saying no a lot lately. Not because you had to, but because you wanted to? Could you say yes a little more than you have been?
Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for everyone listening and I ask you to bless them and their families. Lord, help us to be less selfish. Help us to care more about what others want than what we want. Help us to view each situation as you see them. Help us to put fist things first. Help us to prioritize family and spending time with them above our own wants. We love you so much Lord. Help us to look to Jesus as our example. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name! Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I am going to be opening registration for my fall retreat very soon. I hope you will join me. It will be the weekend of October 11-13th. I believe the theme will be Come As You Are, but I am still working out all the details. I will let you know as soon as I open registration. Remember, Jesus loves you, just as you are, and so do I! May the grace and favor of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.
Tuesday: Today’s Word from the Lord was received in February 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My heart overflows and is ready to burst from the love and desire you have to come closer to me. I thank you, chosen ones. I love you.”
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Don’t Limit Your Joy
Philippians 3:1a “My beloved ones, don’t ever limit your joy or fail to rejoice in the wonderful experience of knowing our Lord Jesus!”
I like this verse because it is a good reminder. Paul is writing this letter to his friends in Philippi. He wants them not to limit their joy or fail to rejoice in the beautiful experience of knowing Jesus. This can be easy, especially if we are surrounded by other people who don’t know how excellent Jesus is. When Paul wrote this, it was a dangerous time for Christians. You couldn’t freely talk about Jesus or preach the Gospel. It was in Philippi that Paul was arrested for preaching the Gospel. He was thrown into a prison cell and beaten. Paul knew the difficult times they were living in firsthand, yet he still told them not to limit their joy or fail to rejoice in the wonderful experience of our Lord Jesus.
We live in a time when we are free to talk about Jesus. Well, at least in America, we are able to speak of Jesus, yet Jesus is not popular in today's culture. Today's culture is tolerant of everything except for Jesus. It can be hard to show our excitement for Jesus when those around us tell us He is not real or who He said he was. We have people who try to steal our joy. We need to be aware of this and fight against it.
I know many people who live in homes or have family members who don’t believe the way they do. They are the only Christian in their family or in their friend circle. This can be hard. I believe that we are not meant to do life alone. This doesn’t mean you need to be married and have a bunch of kids. It means that we all need to live in a community with other Christians. This means that we shouldn’t live our lives by ourselves without others around us. We shouldn’t isolate ourselves.
I know this can be tempting because the world can be a scary place, and there are some pretty awful people in it. People can be so cruel, and I know it feels easier sometimes to hide away. It feels easier not to share our joy of Jesus with others because we fear rejection. I feel this way, too. I feel prompted by the Holy Spirit to speak up to someone about Jesus, and yet I don’t do it because I am afraid they will be upset or they will reject me.
However, what the Lord has been putting on my heart lately is that I should be more concerned about what He thinks of me than what the world thinks of me. I don’t always say what I want to say because I wonder what the person will think of me all the while I am not even thinking about what Jesus is thinking about me. It’s ok if the world rejects me, but it is not ok if Jesus does.
Where do we want to spend eternity? Is it with Jesus or is it with the people we meet here on earth? Jesus can fill us with so much joy. Did you know Joy is a fruit of the Spirit? Galatians 5:22 states that these are the fruits of the Holy Spirit, “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” So joy in the Lord is something the Holy Spirit can gift to us. However, even if we receive it, it is up to us to share it with others. To display it for all to see.
It is our job to bring Christ to others. Do you think people are likely to want to follow Christ if we walk around with an angry look on our face or a sad look on our face. If we walk around all upset and angry they will look at us and think to themselves, “If that is what Christ gives us then no thank you.” People are always watching us, for good or bad, and how we react in situations matters.
We are always a representation of Christ. We are called to be “Little Christs” in this world. If people see us gossiping they will think that is what all followers of Christ do. If people see that we are going through a hard time they are going to be watching to see if we have hope in the Lord, if we lean on the Lord, and if we trust in the Lord. Also when good things happen they will be watching to see if we are thankful to the Lord for all He has done. Our focus must always be on Christ.
I love that Paul is reminding them and urging them not to ever limit their joy of fail to rejoice about knowing Jesus. It is our joy and our rejoicing that will bring others to Christ. It is our joy and rejoicing that will become contagious and people will want what we have. They will see how full of joy we are and they will want that joy. They will ask what is causing our joy and we will have an opportunity to share Jesus with them. We worry, or at least I do, about going up to strangers and talking to them about Jesus.
However, if we walk around so full of joy, people will approach us and ask us what we are so happy about. Why are you smiling so much? How is it that you love so easily? People will come to us to find out what we have that makes us so full of joy. People will want whatever it is that we have. When people see us full of joy in a difficult situation, they will want to know why. When people see that we have hope when the world tells us we should feel hopeless, they will want to know why.
I know this world has a way of sucking the joy out of everything, but as St. Paul said in this verse, don’t limit your joy. Don’t let this world get you down. Keep your eyes fixed on Jesus, and let Him fill you with joy!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone listening to this episode. Lord, we ask that you fill us with joy and help us display that joy for all to see. Lord, help us stand up to those who wish us harm. Help us guard our joy so that no one can steal it. We thank you so much for all you have done for us. You are amazing! We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If this podcast has blessed you in any way, please consider sharing it with others and leaving it a review. This helps to ensure other people get to hear it as well. You can also make a donation towards the cost of producing the podcast. This week’s theme for mentoring is Our Emotions. I will post the recording from a week on my Facebook account and have a link in the show notes. If you are curious about what a mentoring session would look like, I invite you to watch the session and see if you are interested in joining. I look forward to seeing you tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! May the grace and favor of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your Spirit! Watch Week #1 of Our Emotions Series in Mentoring Click here
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in February 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I put my Word In your hearts and mouths. It pierces the darkness, like a mighty trumpet blast. Nothing evil, or any strongholds, can stand before it.”
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Psalm 104 The Lord’s Majesty (Part 9)
Psalm 104:33-35 “I will sing my song to the Lord as long as I live! Every day, I will sing my praises to God. May you be pleased with every sweet thought I have about you, for you are the source of my joy and gladness. Now, let all the sinners be swept from the earth. But I will keep on praising you, my Lord, with all that is within me. My joyous, blissful shouts of “Hallelujah” are all because of you!
We have spent the past eight episodes talking about the Lord’s majesty. We talked about all the parts of nature and how amazing God is to have created all of it. We talked about how powerful He is. Today, we are talking about praising the Lord. This is one of my favorite things to discuss and do. Praise is such an essential part of our relationship with the Lord. There have been many times when I have asked the Lord what has helped me grow so much closer to Him, and he always replies, praise, you praise me so often.
If we want to grow closer to the Lord, it helps to let Him know how much we appreciate all He has done and continues to do for us. God loves it when we show our appreciation to Him. It is so easy to take Him for granted if we are not careful because there are so many things He does for us that we don’t even see. It is easy to be grateful to the Lord when He saves us from the dangers we know about, the ones we can see. However, what about all the dangers God has prevented from harming us before seeing them?
The verse begins with, “I will sing my song to the Lord as long as I live! Every day, I will sing my praises to God.” I hope I can say the same. I hope every day I take time to sing praises to the Lord. He does so much for us. The Lord has protected my family from some pretty scary things. I have had two kids who overdosed on drugs, and yet both are still living with no lasting effects. Our family was falling apart, and the Lord put it back together. I can’t even count the number of times we needed something to work out, and God arranged the solution perfectly. God deserves my praise, and I hope I never forget that!
Next, the verse says, “May you be pleased with every sweet thought I have about you, for you are the source of my joy and gladness.” This is expressing a sentiment I think we all have. We all want the Lord to be pleased with us. I also like how the verse reminds us that the Lord is the source of our joy and gladness. This means we can have joy no matter our circumstances. Happiness and joy are two different things. Happiness is usually based on our circumstances. If something good and fun is happening, we are generally happy. However, Joy is different. I love Rick Warren, the author of A Purpose Driven Life's definition of Joy. He says, “Joy is the settled assurance that God is in control of all the details of my life, the quiet confidence that ultimately everything is going to be alright, and the determined choice to praise God in every situation.”
Let’s look at this definition a bit more closely. First, it says joy is the settled assurance that God controls all the details of my life. Can you see how we can have more joy when we realize God controls all the details? Everything is not up to me. I don’t have to be perfect. I don’t have to get it all right. God is in control, not me. Then, it says the quiet confidence that, ultimately, everything will be alright. Can you see how it would be possible to have joy in a difficult situation if you knew that everything would be alright in the end? Things might be crappy right now, but ultimately, eventually, things will be alright, and that makes the joy in the hard times possible. The last part of it ties right in with the verse of the day. It ends with the determined choice to praise God in every situation.
Did you know you get to choose whether to praise the Lord? Praising the Lord doesn’t have to be based on your feelings. There may be times when you are in the middle of something really difficult and you don’t feel like praising the Lord, yet you can choose to praise Him anyway. You could be in a period of dryness with prayer or under spiritual attack, and you don’t want to praise the Lord. Yet this is a great time to praise the Lord because it can lift you out of both situations. Praising the Lord when you are under spiritual attack from the enemy is a great way to make the enemy flee. Evil spirits will not stick around when you are proclaiming the name of Jesus Christ. They hate that name. Praising the Lord can bring you joy when you least expect it.
Today’s verse ends with, “Now, let all the sinners be swept from the earth. But I will keep on praising you, my Lord, with all that is within me. My joyous, blissful shouts of “Hallelujah” are all because of you!” The person who wrote this Psalm asks for all the sinners to be swept form the earth. This would be nice, except that we are all sinners. I am unsure who wrote this and if they had the extraordinary gift of not being a sinner, but I believe that right is solely reserved for Mary. I can see why the person would want all sinners to be swept from the earth. I am sure it breaks God’s heart when we sin repeatedly. I have indeed wished that all evil could be removed from this world. However, I think removing all evil and removing all sinners are different. Each one of us sins, so we are sinners, yet I don’t think we all need to be wiped off the face of the earth. Who are we to decide who is a sinner and who is not? That is for God to judge. We can only do the best that we can each day.
I love how the last thing the verse says is, My joyous, blissful shouts of “Hallelujah” are all because of you!” Let that be true for each of us. Let us all have joyous, blissful shouts of “Hallelujah” because of all God does for us. Let us continue to sing out our praise to the Lord for all our days. Let us show the Lord how much we love and appreciate Him.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each listening to this episode. Lord, we want to praise you in all circumstances. Show us how. Lord, we want to understand the difference between happiness and joy. Please help us. Lord, help us to see that you are with us in good times and in bad times. Help us to have joy in all circumstances. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. The theme for mentoring this month is emotions. If you wish you had emotional freedom. If you are tired of your emotions running your life, please join me this month in mentoring. Tuesday nights at 8 pm ET on zoom. There is more information if you click the link below or go to walkboldlywithjesus.com and find the mentoring tab. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! May the grace and favor of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your Spirit!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in February 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “The more you're able to live with and in me, the more you're going to be able to set my people free. Because I am the freedom they seek. I am the life they seek. But you are now my eyes, my ears, my mouth, my hands, and my feet walking among my people.”
Psalm 104:33-35 “I will sing my song to the Lord as long as I live! Every day, I will sing my praises to God. May you be pleased with every sweet thought I have about you, for you are the source of my joy and gladness. Now, let all the sinners be swept from the earth. But I will keep on praising you, my Lord, with all that is within me. My joyous, blissful shouts of “Hallelujah” are all because of you!
We have spent the past eight episodes talking about the Lord’s majesty. We talked about all the parts of nature and how amazing God is to have created all of it. We talked about how powerful He is. Today, we are talking about praising the Lord. This is one of my favorite things to discuss and do. Praise is such an essential part of our relationship with the Lord. There have been many times when I have asked the Lord what has helped me grow so much closer to Him, and he always replies, praise, you praise me so often.
If we want to grow closer to the Lord, it helps to let Him know how much we appreciate all He has done and continues to do for us. God loves it when we show our appreciation to Him. It is so easy to take Him for granted if we are not careful because there are so many things He does for us that we don’t even see. It is easy to be grateful to the Lord when He saves us from the dangers we know about, the ones we can see. However, what about all the dangers God has prevented from harming us before seeing them?
The verse begins with, “I will sing my song to the Lord as long as I live! Every day, I will sing my praises to God.” I hope I can say the same. I hope every day I take time to sing praises to the Lord. He does so much for us. The Lord has protected my family from some pretty scary things. I have had two kids who overdosed on drugs, and yet both are still living with no lasting effects. Our family was falling apart, and the Lord put it back together. I can’t even count the number of times we needed something to work out, and God arranged the solution perfectly. God deserves my praise, and I hope I never forget that!
Next, the verse says, “May you be pleased with every sweet thought I have about you, for you are the source of my joy and gladness.” This is expressing a sentiment I think we all have. We all want the Lord to be pleased with us. I also like how the verse reminds us that the Lord is the source of our joy and gladness. This means we can have joy no matter our circumstances. Happiness and joy are two different things. Happiness is usually based on our circumstances. If something good and fun is happening, we are generally happy. However, Joy is different. I love Rick Warren, the author of A Purpose Driven Life's definition of Joy. He says, “Joy is the settled assurance that God is in control of all the details of my life, the quiet confidence that ultimately everything is going to be alright, and the determined choice to praise God in every situation.”
Let’s look at this definition a bit more closely. First, it says joy is the settled assurance that God controls all the details of my life. Can you see how we can have more joy when we realize God controls all the details? Everything is not up to me. I don’t have to be perfect. I don’t have to get it all right. God is in control, not me. Then, it says the quiet confidence that, ultimately, everything will be alright. Can you see how it would be possible to have joy in a difficult situation if you knew that everything would be alright in the end? Things might be crappy right now, but ultimately, eventually, things will be alright, and that makes the joy in the hard times possible. The last part of it ties right in with the verse of the day. It ends with the determined choice to praise God in every situation.
Did you know you get to choose whether to praise the Lord? Praising the Lord doesn’t have to be based on your feelings. There may be times when you are in the middle of something really difficult and you don’t feel like praising the Lord, yet you can choose to praise Him anyway. You could be in a period of dryness with prayer or under spiritual attack, and you don’t want to praise the Lord. Yet this is a great time to praise the Lord because it can lift you out of both situations. Praising the Lord when you are under spiritual attack from the enemy is a great way to make the enemy flee. Evil spirits will not stick around when you are proclaiming the name of Jesus Christ. They hate that name. Praising the Lord can bring you joy when you least expect it.
Today’s verse ends with, “Now, let all the sinners be swept from the earth. But I will keep on praising you, my Lord, with all that is within me. My joyous, blissful shouts of “Hallelujah” are all because of you!” The person who wrote this Psalm asks for all the sinners to be swept form the earth. This would be nice, except that we are all sinners. I am unsure who wrote this and if they had the extraordinary gift of not being a sinner, but I believe that right is solely reserved for Mary. I can see why the person would want all sinners to be swept from the earth. I am sure it breaks God’s heart when we sin repeatedly. I have indeed wished that all evil could be removed from this world. However, I think removing all evil and removing all sinners are different. Each one of us sins, so we are sinners, yet I don’t think we all need to be wiped off the face of the earth. Who are we to decide who is a sinner and who is not? That is for God to judge. We can only do the best that we can each day.
I love how the last thing the verse says is, My joyous, blissful shouts of “Hallelujah” are all because of you!” Let that be true for each of us. Let us all have joyous, blissful shouts of “Hallelujah” because of all God does for us. Let us continue to sing out our praise to the Lord for all our days. Let us show the Lord how much we love and appreciate Him.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each listening to this episode. Lord, we want to praise you in all circumstances. Show us how. Lord, we want to understand the difference between happiness and joy. Please help us. Lord, help us to see that you are with us in good times and in bad times. Help us to have joy in all circumstances. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. The theme for mentoring this month is emotions. If you wish you had emotional freedom. If you are tired of your emotions running your life, please join me this month in mentoring. Tuesday nights at 8 pm ET on zoom. There is more information if you click the link below or go to walkboldlywithjesus.com and find the mentoring tab. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! May the grace and favor of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your Spirit!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in February 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “The more you're able to live with and in me, the more you're going to be able to set my people free. Because I am the freedom they seek. I am the life they seek. But you are now my eyes, my ears, my mouth, my hands, and my feet walking among my people.”
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
CLICK HERE TO DONATE
CLICK HERE to sign up for Mentoring
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Psalm 104 The Lord’s Majesty (Part 8)
Psalm 104:31-32 “May God’s glorious splendor endure forever! May the Lord take joy and pleasure in all that he has made. For the earth’s overseer has the power to make it tremble; just a touch of his finger and volcanoes erupt as the earth shakes and melts.
Wow, this verse has a lot of powerful language that helps to visualize what the verse is saying. First, it says, “May God’s glorious splendor endure forever!” God’s splendor is displayed so often when we look at nature. When we slow down and take the time to admire nature, there is no way we can deny God’s splendor. Look at the beauty of the sunrise and sunset. Look at all the beautiful flowers and trees. Look at the birds and all the animals. Even if you don’t find some animals beautiful, you must admire how God created them to work together. Each one has its purpose and its place in the world and in the food chain. It is truly remarkable.
Next, the verse says, “May the Lord take joy and pleasure in all that he has made.” I hope this is the case. I hope God looks down on the world and takes pleasure in it. I know we have messed many things up, and He probably is not a fan of all of that. However, I hope He can at least enjoy the parts He made that we have not messed up yet. There is still so much beauty and majesty in the world. I have a friend who is on a cruise right now, and the other day, she visited Iceland and said it was beautiful! There is so much to see in this world, it is impossible to see all of it.
Then the verse says, “For the earth’s overseer has the power to make it tremble; just a touch of his finger and volcanoes erupt as the earth shakes and melts.” This part of the verse serves as a stark reminder of the power of our Lord. With just one touch of His finger, He could make volcanoes erupt, and the earth shake. Yet, we know God wouldn’t even have to touch it; He could make anything He wants with His voice. God spoke the whole world into existence. He can certainly speak other things into existence.
We can look at this line in the verse in two ways. We can view it as something to worry about. We can read that verse and get scared that God could reach out and touch a volcano, and it would erupt. We could fear that God will get mad at us and do something like this. I mean, if we are honest with ourselves, we have been taking God out of more and more of our lives. We have done our best to take Him out of the school, the government, and most places. That can’t feel good to Him. I can’t imagine He is looking down upon us and thinking we are doing great things right now, especially in this country.
It's important to remember that not everyone is turning away from God. Many good people are doing good things, and I am sure that pleases the Lord. There are people fighting to include God more in schools and the government. However, it's also true that many are doing terrible things, not just to God but to one another. Boston held a Satanic Conference this past year, and I doubt that made God happy. However, God promised after the flood with Noah that He would not do that again. This promise of mercy is a source of comfort and reassurance for us all.
The second way we can look at this part of the verse is to recognize the power that God has and to apply that to our lives. If God has the power to reach out and touch a volcano, and it erupts, then what could He do in your circumstance? Could he make a way for you to pay your rent and car payments? Could He heal that cancer or that sore back? Could He take care of your tenant who is not paying rent or fix your car that needs to be fixed? We can look at this verse and realize that the power of God has no limits. He can do ANYTHING!
Once we realize this, once we truly believe this in the depths of our hearts, then we start praying bigger prayers. Once we realize there is no limit to God’s power, we start to ask for the things we really need. We start to ask for our loved ones to be healed, even though the doctor said there isn’t a way. We ask for a car because ours just died and we need a car to get to work to pay our bills. We ask for supernatural provisions because we know that we do not have enough money in our account to pay our bills or enough food in our cabinets to feed our family.
Sometimes, we look at the faith of those who live in other countries, and we are so envious. We wish we could have the faith they have. They trust the Lord so much, and we feel like we would give anything to trust the Lord that much. However, I have discovered that they trust the Lord that much because they truly need Him. They know they can’t feel their family on their own. They know they are powerless without Him. They can’t save their children. They don’t have the medicine we have here in the United States. Their trust in God is necessary because life would be much harder if they didn’t believe.
I know my parents love the Lord, and listening to their stories in High School and meeting up each morning so they could do daily mass together, I know they trusted Him even back then. My mom was the oldest of 10 children, so I am sure she had plenty of chances to rely on the Lord. There is never enough time, money, or resources when you have a big family. Like those in other countries, you must learn to lean on the Lord and trust He will help you. When you are looking at your bare cabinets and your ten children, you hit the floor on your knees, and you pray for God to help. When you are looking at your sick child, and you know there is no medicine to save her, then you hit the ground on your knees and pray to the Lord to save her.
We say we would give anything for that kind of faith, but would we really? Would we give up the comforts and security of our lives now to see the Lord working in our lives more? People who have to rely on the Lord get to see the Lord working in their lives more because they know they need the Lord. If we have all that we need and feel we can provide for ourselves all that we need, then we generally see God working in our lives less because we are taking care of everything, so we feel we don’t need Him as much. This doesn’t mean that God is working less in our lives. It just means we have a harder time seeing it because we have learned to rely on ourselves instead of God.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to see you working in our lives. Please open our eyes to see where and how you work in our lives. We love you so much, and we know we need you. We know we have nothing and can do nothing without you. We believe, Lord. Help our unbelief. Lord, show us where in our lives we can rely on you more. Show us how we can trust you more. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I have exciting news, I have booked the same retreat place as I did last year to hold a retreat that same weekend. It will be the second weekend in October at the Holy Cross Retreat House in North Easton, MA. I pray all of you listening will consider coming to join for a weekend of fun and spiritual growth. The theme for the weekend will be Come As You Are. Most of us feel we must be perfect before approaching the Lord. We need to shed our past, our sins, our bad habits and then we will be worthy to come to God. This is not true. God tells us several place in the Bible that He wants us to come just as we are. Come to Him and He will help us become the person we want to be. More details to come soon. Right now I just pray that you think about coming to this retreat. I know when I first started hearing about retreats I thought I was not holy enough to go to a retreat. That is for really religious people. I couldn’t have been further from the truth. Retreats are for anyone who wants to grow closer to the Lord, no matter where they are on the journey. Once you experience one retreat, you will want to go on another. Even just being around other people who love the Lord is amazing. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, just as you are, and so do I! May the grace and favor of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your Spirit! (Philippians 4:23)
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in February 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Come to me. Come, no matter where you are, no matter how short the time you have, no matter what you feel, come to me. I am your life. I will give you life.”
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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Witness Wednesday #118 More PopWe (Healing)
Today’s witnesses are from Matthew West’s website called popwe.org. If you don’t know who Matthew West is, he is a singer, songwriter, and storyteller. This website is for the non-profit that he has with his father, a pastor. Matthew and his father encourage people to share their stories. They have various categories of stories. Today I chose four testimonies from the Healing Category. I know so many people who are praying for a miraculous healing right now. Oftentimes, we can hear our own story in someone else’s story. When we hear others tell their story it helps us to see we are not alone. When we see that others were healed it gives us hope that if God could heal them then He can heal us too! I pray when you hear these testimonies, you get the faith and hope to believe that you and your loved ones could be healed too!
Savannah: This story isn’t about me, but my brother. It was August of 2020 when he was admitted to the hospital with COVID. We were told right from the beginning that it didn’t look good. What followed was a long battle for his life. He needed a form of life-support that had extremely limited availability. He needed so much blood. His wife and children couldn’t come to see him. At one point, his heart stopped for 8.5 minutes. The only thing we could do was pray. It was nearly spring when he finally went home to his family. He’s alive, and nobody can deny that a miracle has taken place. We prayed without ceasing, and God has answered our prayers.
Deborah: I grew up in an extremely dysfunctional family. I wasn’t allowed to listen to music, watch animated movies, or basically like any food or activities that my father did not like. I was often told that if I asked for help I was bothering people, that I was stupid, and that a “good guy” would never like me so I would have to settle for a “bad one.”
I’ve gone to counseling for awhile and with God’s help, I have begun to heal in many ways. However, there was one thing that I had not been able to do and that was to let myself cry. Crying when I was young was dangerous and was always met with the words, “Jesus doesn’t love you if you cry.” Intellectually, I knew this wasn’t true and that it was okay to cry but it didn’t feel safe. I had taught myself not to cry for so long that I wasn’t sure if I could. It was as if the tears were broken.
Last night, I was at the concert in Gadsden, AL, and I began to feel emotional as I listened to dad jokes and as Matthew West talked about being a girl dad. Memories of my childhood and the things I was told began to pop into my mind. Still I did not cry. I sat on the front row wondering if anyone could tell that I was fighting tears. Then something changed. John 3:16 was read and everyone was told to insert their own name. As I was fighting tears, I was saying the words “God loves me.”
Suddenly I didn’t just know that intellectually it is okay to cry, I knew it in my heart. God loves me even when I cry. During the next song, I felt something on my face and I reached up and there was a tear. For the first time in probably thirty years I was letting myself cry and I felt safe while doing it. I am not who my family told me that I am. I am a child of God. I am safe in his arms and loved when I’m happy and smiling and even when I’m sad and crying.
Kathleen: Not the healing I wanted…thank goodness, God knew better what I needed. In late 2016 and 2017 I was suffering from a crippling case of Bi-Polar disorder.
My doctor prescribed me several different antidepressants, however, all of them left me with feelings of deep depression and high anxiety. By mid-January, my husband and I agreed to discontinue all medication and look for a more holistic treatment. I was on antidepressants for a total of SIX WEEKS when I began the withdrawal process. By mid-April, I was finally feeling free from the effects of the medication and 30 pounds lighter. My anxiety was greatly reduced and my depression was almost a non-issue. Then a week later, after a nice hot soak in the tub, I started experiencing weird “pins and needles” in my left leg, from the knee to my ankle. I tried rubbing, slapping it, walking around the house-nothing worked and I ended up going to bed hours later with the buzz still going strong.
Within a month, the buzz had moved to my entire left side, from the neck down. Another month down the road and it was on my right side also. Trips to my doctor, the neurologist, MRI, CAT scan, EEG, EMG proved fruitless- except now I had a name. Spontaneous Paresthesia. You know when your foot falls asleep and in the “waking up” process you get the feeling of pins and needles? By the middle of June, paresthesia was affecting my entire body. One day, while working around the house with my husband, I became completely unglued when I started feeling my stomach, intestines, internal organs, all buzzing. Everywhere I have nerve endings I felt buzzing. By July, 2017, I felt like I had bugs crawling in my ears, fleas stuck up my nose, lice crawling around my scalp, and the force of buzzing was starting to hurt. Every night before going to bed I only had one prayer, “Jesus, please take me home. I don’t want to wake up in this bed again.”
Soon, I was no longer able to sleep at night because of the violent buzzing. I listened exclusively to Christian Radio (KLOVE) and one day I heard a song that spoke to the heart of my fear. Toby Mac’s “MOVE” said it better than I was able to articulate: “I know your heart’s been broke again, I know your prayers ain’t been answered yet. I know you feel like you’ve got nothing left. But just lift your head… It ain’t over yet.”
Within a month I would find another neurologist who still didn’t have a clue as to what the cause of my paresthesia was, but he did have medication that might be helpful. –IT WAS! Within a few days I was sleeping again. I could sit down again. I could think clearly again. Paresthesia ceased to be the center of my universe. Do I still have paresthesia? YES. I stopped touching my face long before covid because I hate the numb/tingling feeling I get every time I touch my nose, ears, chin, eyes. Within a year, my prayer each night changed from “Jesus, take me home” to “Thank you Lord for paresthesia.”
My relationship with my God was good, now it’s deep. I am 67 years old and I know…”it ain’t over yet.” I just got back from my second mission trip to Amman, Jordan where I had the privilege of teaching Iraqi refugee women sewing skills. I didn’t get the healing I wanted- what I got was so much better. I haven’t had another bi-polar incident since January 2017. By experiencing paresthesia, God was giving me a crash course to knowing and trusting Him.
Devon: I’m a living, breathing, walking miracle. My friends call me Lazarus!
In 2014, I was a single mom to a 6 year-old son. I went to get some blood work done on a Friday afternoon, because I was feeling run down. Monday morning, I got a call saying I needed to get to the nearest emergency room, that my blood levels were critical.
I ended up having Acute Myeloid Leukemia, the worst possible case. I was immediately hospitalized and given chemo. After my 2nd round of chemo, all my organs shut down, I had congestive heart failure, and slipped into a coma. My hands and feet turned black in the dying process. The doctors told my parents I had days, possibly hours to live with zero chance of survival. My little boy was brought to my bedside to say goodbye to me. My friends and family surrounded my hospital bed and prayed for a miracle.
On the 30th day, I woke up. All my organs went back to normal, and I was able to get a stem cell transplant. This was seven years ago this week. Thank you, Jesus, for healing me.
Thank you all for sharing your stories with us. We must share our healing stories because it gives others the hope that they will be healed. It is also important to share healing stories because it ensures that God gets all the glory!! Thank you for being brave enough to share your story so others can see what is possible.
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Psalm 104 The Lord’s Majesty (Part 7)
Psalm 104:27-30 “All the creatures wait expectantly for you to give them their food as you determine. You come near and they all gather around, feasting from your open hands, and each is satisfied from your abundant supply. But if you were to withhold from them and turn away, they all would panic. And when you choose to take away their breath, each one dies and returns to the dust When you release your Spirit-Wind, life is created, ready to replenish life upon the earth.”
The Psalms are so beautiful. If you have always wanted to start reading the Bible but have no idea where to start, may I suggest the Psalms? In today’s verse, we hear about how the creatures wait expectantly for God to give them their food. It says they all gather around Him and feast from His open hand. Every one of them is satisfied with God’s abundant supply. There are a couple of things just in the first few sentences.
First, it says all the creatures wait expectantly for God to give them their food. Are we included in this? I mean, it does say “all the creatures.” Yet, are we waiting expectantly? Do we know for sure that God will provide all that we need? I think sometimes we pray, and yet we don’t expect to see results because we aren’t really sure results are even possible. For instance, Yesterday I prayed over a woman who has breast cancer. She is starting chemo today. I wonder if she expected to be healed when we prayed over here. I wonder if she was expecting big things. I know with cancer it is hard to test out and see if you are healed. You usually won’t notice anything until you go to a doctor's when they do some test. I wonder if that makes it hard to have expectant faith.
When I first started praying over people for physical healing, I thought I had expectant faith, yet I was afraid to ask people how they were feeling or if they were feeling any manifestations of the Holy Spirit. I was scared to ask because I wasn’t sure what to do if they said no. Since taking the Encounter Ministries class, I learned that often the miracle doesn’t take place until the person steps out in faith an tests to see if they still have pain or if they could do something now that they couldn’t do before. Like in the story of the man with the withered hand. This story can be found in 3 out of the 4 Gospels. I will read the account from Luke’s Gospel. This takes place in Luke 6:6-11.
“ On another sabbath, he entered the synagogue and taught, and there was a man there whose right hand was withered. The scribes and the Pharisees watched him to see whether he would cure on the sabbath so that they might find an accusation against him. 8 Even though he knew what they were thinking, he said to the man who had the withered hand, “Come and stand here.” He got up and stood there. Then Jesus said to them, “I ask you, is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to destroy it?” After looking around at all of them, he said to him, “Stretch out your hand.” He did so, and his hand was restored. But they were filled with fury and discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus.”
The man’s hand was restored after he stretched it out. He had to have expectant faith to stretch out his hand. Jesus had to have expectant faith to ask the man to stretch out his hand. We need to have expectant faith, too. It is not just about healing, although that is important, it’s about everything. We need to expect that God will provide for us just like He does the other creatures. We need to come to Him believing that He will answer our prayers and He will provide all we need.
Next, it says, "They all gather around, feasting from your open hands, and each is satisfied from your abundant supply.” I like this sentence for two reasons. The first is because it says they were feasting from God’s open hand. Can you picture that? Can you picture being so close to the Lord that you are eating out of His open hands? That would be amazing!! I also love when it says that each is satisfied from your abundant supply. We tend to have a scarcity mindset. We think that there is not enough to go around. We worry there won’t be enough money to pay all the bills. We worry there won’t be enough food for all the people. We worry if we ask God for something small He won’t have anything left for something big when it comes along.
However, this verse reminds us that God is one of abundance. He has more than enough of everything we need for each one of us. He has more than enough provisions, more than enough love, more than enough grace, more than enough mercy. God has more than enough. Don’t be afraid to come to Him with expectant faith and ask Him for whatever it is. The next part talks about how God has the power to take life away and the power to give life. The verse says that if God were to turn away from the creatures, they would panic. Is this us, too? Do we panic when we think God has turned away from us? God never leaves us. He doesn’t turn away from us, even when we deserve it. He doesn’t turn away from us when we turn away from Him. He waits with open arms waiting for us to turn back to Him. We don’t have to worry about Him turning away from us.
It is amazing to think about how He can release His Spirit-Wind, and life is created, ready to replenish life upon the earth. God is so powerful. When I think about this it makes me wonder why we question the abundance of God. This is someone who can speak the whole universe into existence. Surely He can give you whatever it is you need. Can we practice coming to the Lord with expectant faith today?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone listening to this episode. Lord, we love you and we ask you to help us develop expectant faith. We ask that you help us believe you are a God of abundance and we don’t have to worry that you don’t have enough because you have more than we could ever need. We love you Lord and we thank you for always being there for us. We ask all of this in accordance with our will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Reminder that we start our new topic for mentoring this evening. July’s topic is our emotions. We are going to look at why all of our emotions can be helpful and also we will learn how to not let our emotions control our lives. I hope you will join us tonight at 8 ET. There is a link to sign up below or you can go to my website walkboldlywithjesus.com. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! May the grace and favor of our Lord Jesus Christs be with your Spirit!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in February 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Like gentle rain, my mercy falls. It gently falls on each of you. Come, just come and be touched by Him. Allow it to flow on you. Allow it to soften you. Allow it to embrace you. Allow it to transform you. It is my mercy that I give each one of you.”
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Psalm 104 The Lord’s Majesty (Part 6)
Psalm 104:24-26 “O Lord, what an amazing variety of all you have created! Wild and wonderful is this world you have made while wisdom was there at your side. This world is full of so many creatures, yet each belongs to you! And then there is the sea! So vast! So wide and deep—swarming with countless forms of sea life, both small and great. Trading ships glide through the high seas. And look! There are the massive whales bounding upon the waves.”
It feels so good to be back! Please explain if you have been wondering where and why I have been doing replays. I tested positive for Covid two weeks ago. I woke up and completed a new episode, but I wasn’t feeling well. I took a COVID at-home test, and it was positive. I went back to bed and slept for most of the following week. After my 10-day quarantine in my room, I went on a family vacation with my parents and many siblings. It was a lot of fun, and I am so thankful to the Lord for getting me better in time to enjoy that! I am happy to be back writing new episodes. This week, we will finish up the series on Psalm 104.
I like this verse because it praises the Lord for being so amazing. I believe the Lord loves it when we praise Him. Who doesn’t want a little acknowledgment? It begins with, “O Lord, what an amazing variety of all you have created!” Have you ever thought about that? Have you ever taken the time to slow down and look at all the nature around you? Have you ever really thought about the variety of things the Lord has created? He created humans, all the animals, all the vegetation, all the rock formations, the seas, the skies, the stars. When we take the time to think about it, the variety of things He has created really is amazing.
There are 400,000 types of flowering plant species all around the world. Over 1.5 million living animal species have been described, of which around 1.05 million are insects, over 85,000 are molluscs, and around 65,000 are vertebrates. It has been estimated there are as many as 7.77 million animal species on Earth. There are around 1,097 different vegetables around the world. God didn’t need to give us all of that. We don’t need that much variety. Plants provide us with food, oxygen, and energy. However, we don’t need 400,000 different types of flowers. However, God wanted to give us variety. We also don’t need over a million different kinds of animals, but God gave them to us anyway. Let’s take a minute and appreciate all God did for us.
The verse says, “Wild and wonderful is this world you have made while wisdom was at your side.” This verse reminds us that God did not accidentally create anything. He knew what He was doing, and each thing He made had a purpose. He thought about everything. He didn’t leave anything out. He made sure that every living thing had something to eat. This includes the plants, the insects, the animals, everything. Take a minute and imagine how much thought it would take to not only create all that God created but also to make sure they had the right environment to live in, the right resources, and the food they needed to survive. It really is remarkable.
Next, it says, “This world is full of so many creatures, yet each belongs to you!” Each creature on this earth belongs to the Lord our God. The animals don’t have to worry about where their food will come from. They know they are creatures of God and that He will take care of them. We are also God’s creatures, and He will take care of us too! We don’t have to worry either. Worry is something that comes pretty naturally to most of us, and yet it is not necessary. This morning in Philippians 4:19, I read, “I am convinced that my God will fully satisfy every need you have, for I have seen the abundant riches of glory revealed to me through Jesus Christ. This was Paul talking to the Philippians, but He is speaking to us too! God will take care of all we need. He has abundant riches, and he wants to shower upon us. He has so much glory, grace, love, forgiveness, and mercy. We don’t have any reason to be anxious; God will take care of all of our worries!
Next, it says, “And then there is the sea! So vast! So wide and deep—swarming with countless forms of sea life, both small and great.” This is just reiterating the vastness of the Lord’s creation. Think of how many different sea creatures there are. There are known to be more than 260,000 different species living in the seas, and we know that there are many yet to be discovered. Some scientists believe there are more than a million species in the seas. How amazing is that? Each one of them has everything they need to survive. I wonder if it would be helpful to remind ourselves of this when we get anxious. Hundreds of thousands of species live in the seas, including species of plants. There are millions of species of animals, and God provides for all of them. If he can provide for the plants and animals, how much more will he provide for us?
The verse ends with, “Trading ships glide through the high seas. And look! There are the massive whales bounding upon the waves.” This reminds us that besides all the creatures in the sea, we also use the sea for trading. It provides fish for us to eat and can also be used for our livelihood. This version says that there are massive whales bounding upon the waves. However, the New Revised Standard Catholic Edition says, "There go the ships and Leviathan that you formed to sport in it.” When I looked this up, it said that Leviathan is a sea monster. The commentators said Leviathan was included in this Psalm to show us that even the sea monster is under God’s control.
God created all things, and God does not make mistakes. God created all the plants and animals and makes sure they all have what they need to survive. Doesn’t it make sense that if God provides for the plants and animals, He will provide for us, too? We are His children, made in His likeness and image. He made us to be above all plants and animals. He gave us dominion over the plants and animals. So, why are we the only ones worrying about where our next meal will come from or if we will have enough money to pay our bills? God has got us in the palm of His hand. He will provide for us. All we need to do is trust Him!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone listening to this episode. Lord, we ask you to help us notice all your creations around us. Help us to believe that you provide for all their needs so you will provide for our needs, too. Help us not to be anxious about anything. Lord, help us to appreciate the variety of your creation. Bring our attention to your majesty in this world. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you find this podcast helpful, if you are learning and growing from listening to it, then you might want to check out my mentoring group. We meet once a week on Zoom on Tuesday nights at 8:00 P. M. Eastern Time. Each month there is a theme and we dive deep into each theme. There is about 30 minutes of teaching and then some small group time. If you can’t make it on zoom, you can always watch the replay. I also have a private Facebook group that you could join. There is a link below if you would like to check out mentoring. You can also go to walkboldlywithjesus.com and click on the mentoring link. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! May the grace and favor of our Lord Jesus Christs be with your Spirit!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in February 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Mercy, my mercy, I desire you to show to all those that you meet each day. Let them all know my mercy. ”
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An Unexpected Handstand
Jeremiah 29:11 “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
This is a great scripture verse to memorize or to put up somewhere where you will see it often. Sometimes it does not feel like God is for us. Actually sometimes it can seem like He is against us. We can go through long periods of life where it feels like everything is against us. This is when it is good to have this scripture verse to look at to remind you that God is for you. Someone in my prayer group asked for prayers for a friend the other day. She said this couple is really struggling to see God’s plan in everything that is going on. The couple has been trying to have a baby for a long time. The wife has had several miscarriages and is really starting to wonder if she will ever have a baby. They turned their struggle over to God and they asked Him for help. They asked what they could do and for God to reveal anything that might be getting in the way of them having a baby. The other day they found out that she was pregnant and they are very much praying this is the time they get to carry their baby to term.
When you are in one of these really difficult stretches of time, it can be really hard sometimes not to lose faith. You may ask yourself, what is even the point of continuing to believe when it seems like God has forgotten about you. I promise He is still with you, even in this hard time. If you continue reading after this passage in Jeremiah 29:12-14 it says, “Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” The couple that was trying to have a baby, they continued to pray, even though they didn’t understand why this was all happening. They continued to seek where God was in all of this and they found Him.
I know that depending on your situation and how long it has been going on, it may be difficult to pray. You may want to, but just aren’t sure what to say at this point. Or, maybe you feel like you have been praying for so long that God is not listening anymore. I assure you, He is still listening. He always listens to us and wants good for us. The Lord is always truthful and always keeps His promises. So, when He says that His plans for us are to prosper and not for harm, then He means it. If you are struggling to pray, reach out and ask a friend, co-worker, priest, minister, family member, anyone to pray for you, maybe even to pray with you. It says in Matthew 18:20 “ For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”
There is power in praying with fellow believers. If you are praying for something and not seeing the results that you wanted to see, ask others to pray with you. I went to a healing service the other night and instead of having one or two people pray over those wanting healing, the priest had everyone sitting around that person put their hands on the one needing healing and pray for them. It was very powerful to see all the people that needed healing surrounded by fellow believers praying for them.
God wants good things for you. He wants you to have a future and to have hope. So, why don’t we, what gets in our way of seeing this future that God wants us to have? There are several things that can get in the way. Sometimes, we get in our own way. Even though we know how God is calling us to live, we deviate from that because it is really hard or because it is not the norm in society today. Living the way Jesus wants us to live can go against what we are taught in society. We can look foolish when we follow the promptings of the Holy Spirit. Have you ever had a still small voice in your head that was telling you to do something that didn’t make sense at the time? Did you listen to it?
The Holy Spirit is inside each of us and He tries to guide us to the right path. But sometimes we can’t see where He is leading us. Sometimes He asks us to do things and we don’t because they seem crazy or we don’t understand where it will get us. I heard a story in a book I read called “The Cross and the Switchblade” by David Wilkerson about a woman who had learned to listen to that voice inside her. One morning she was heading out to work when she felt prompted by the Holy Spirit to bring her fuzzy socks to work with her. She thought this was a very strange request, but since she had learned to listen, she went and grabbed her fuzzy socks and threw them in her purse. When she got to work, there was a prostitute on her front step and she was passed out. She brought her inside and warmed her up. They got to talking and this woman asked the prostitute if she could have anything, what would it be. Do you know what she said? Fuzzy socks. The woman was so surprised and gave her fuzzy socks to the prostitute. The prostitute was so happy and said, “They even match my outfit.”
There is another story I heard from a person in a leadership course I was taking. They were talking about how a woman in their group at church had made a commitment to the Holy Spirit that she would follow any prompting she received, no matter how crazy it seemed. One night she was driving home and she felt the Holy Spirit asking her to do a hand stand. Now, this definitely seemed crazy. She was no spring chicken and she had not done a hand stand since she was a child. However, she couldn’t shake this feeling. She pulled over to a gas station where no one was around and went under the one light, and did a hand stand. When walking back to her car, the clerk came out of the store and thanked her. She asked him why he was thanking her and he said they have cameras in the store and he saw her hand stand. He had been feeling very low and abandoned lately and had wanted to kill himself. He made a deal with God that if he saw someone do a handstand that day he would not do it. He never dreamed that he would actually see someone do a handstand and he was so thankful he did.
Even when we get in our own way, God can use our mistakes for good. He is that amazing. Most of the time when we are in a difficult situation we can’t imagine how any good can come from it. It is usually many years down the road when we are out of the difficult situation that we can look back and see some good coming out of it. Often times that good might just be the growth or the strength we gained from the situation. Sometimes it can be the experience or the knowledge we gained from that situation that enabled us to get the job of our dreams or the relationship we always wanted.
If you are struggling right now I hope Jeremiah 29:11 brings you some comfort. If you are struggling to pray I urge you to find someone to either pray for you or to pray with you. God is always with you. He hears every one of your prayers. He will carry you through this difficult time and He will bring you out even better on the other side of it. When you are really struggling remind your self that God has promised good things for you and God never breaks His promises. Hang in there, I promise amazing things are headed your way if you just keep asking for them.
Dear Heavenly Father, I pray that you are with all those that are struggling right now. I pray that you give strength to those that find themselves in a really difficult situation. Lord, I know so many people are struggling with a lot right now. I know several ladies that are really hurting. Lord, I ask that you comfort them and you let them know that you are with them. I ask that you give the strength to make it through this hard time and the knowledge that you don’t want them to suffer. I ask that you help them to believe your promise of a future and of hope. I ask that you help them feel loved and take away any feelings of abandonment that they may have. Lord I ask that you bless all those that are struggling and all those that are listening to this right now, whether they are struggling or not. I ask that you bless them and strengthen them for all they are facing. Lord Jesus, we love so you much and we know how much you do for us. You are truly amazing and we thank you for loving us so much that you make all things for our good. Lord, we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
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If You Only Knew The Power Living Inside Of You…
Matthew 8: 16 “When evening came, many who were demon-possessed were brought to him, and he drove out the spirits with a word and healed all the sick.”
I was talking with a friend last night and we got on the topic of the Holy Spirit. I love to talk about the Holy Spirit because I am still in awe over the whole thing. I am in awe that God gave us the Holy Spirit. I am in awe that we have the Holy Spirit living inside of us. I wish each and every single baptized person on planet earth knew how powerful they were with the Holy Spirit living inside of them.
The verse above says, “When evening came, many who were demon-possessed were brought to him, and he drove out the spirits with a word and healed al the sick.” Jesus was able to chase away demons with a word. He was able to heal the sick just by saying be healed. Actually there are many different ways that Jesus healed people. If you read the many healing stories in the Bible you will see there wasn’t just one way that Jesus healed the sick. Sometimes he said “be healed” sometimes he just told them to do something like “take up your mat and go.” Other times he did a physical action like when he put mud on a blind mans eyes or put his fingers in a deaf man’s ears. I think there was so much variety so that Jesus could show us it is not what we do that heals people, it is who we ask. We come to God in faith and He does the healings.
I was talking to my friend last night because we were doing an inner healing session. Part of the process I was using for inner healing was to renounce the lies that we tell ourselves. I was explaining that we can do that at anytime. She can do that on her own even when I am not on the phone with her. When she starts to get anxious she can sit down and ask Jesus to help her figure out what specific lies she is telling herself. For instance, my car will break down and I won’t be able to get to work. Something bad will happen to me if I go out on my own. My children might get hurt if I let them do what they want. I am not sure what it might be for you. We all have things we tell ourselves that are not true. Things like I am unworthy of love, I am unloved, I am stupid, I am a bad driver. Whatever it is that you are telling yourself, you can renounce that lie once you realize what that lie is.
If you aren’t sure if you are telling yourself any lies, take a minute and think about what that inner voice is saying to you. Maybe take a minute and ask God to reveal any lies you are telling yourself. Once you have the lies it is easy to renounce them. It is a simple sentence, “In the name of Jesus I renounce the lie, and then you state the lie.” For instance, “In the name of Jesus I renounce the lie that I am not good enough, I am not pretty enough, I am not enough.” Ideally you would repeat the sentence for each lie. I just named a few so you would get the idea.
Once you renounce the lie you can ask God to replace that lie with the truth. It is amazing what you will hear when you ask God what truth He wants to give you in place of that lie. You will see just how much God loves you. You will see a tenderness that you probably didn’t know was there. My friend was saying that although renouncing lies is so simple, she didn’t know she could do that. I explained that she was not alone! So many of us don’t know we can do that. I definitely didn’t before enrolling in the Encounter Ministries class I am taking.
Another part of the inner healing session is to renounce any evil spirits. For instance, the spirit of anxiety, the spirit of depressions, the spirit of unworthiness. When Jesus sent the 12 apostles out to spread the word that the Kingdom of God was at hand He gave them the power to do signs and wonders. When He sent out the 72 He did the same. Jesus made us all, each one of us part of the great commission. He tasked us all with spreading the news of Him and all the things that happened in the Gospel. He wants us to make sure that every person on the planet has had a chance to hear about Him. To do this He gave us all the Holy Spirit. With the Holy Spirit we have the power living inside of us to cast out demons in Jesus’ name. We have the power to heal the sick in Jesus’ name. Well, we are not healing the sick but God is healing the sick through us when we are brave enough to step our in faith and to ask.
Did you know demons don’t have any power of you unless you give it to them? It’s true, you have to consent to them being there. Now, it’s not as if they ask you and you say yes or no. They find ways in through the sins we commit and often times we didn’t know that we opened a door or that we let them in. However, whether we knew we were doing it or not, if they find an open door they enter. However, they can’t stay once you tell them to leave. You, yes you, have the power to tell them to leave. If you notice you have a persistent feeling, such as anxiety, depression, worry, anger, irritability, loneliness, unworthiness, etc, this could be a spirit causing this persistent feeling. If you want to kick that spirit out all you have to stay is, “In the name of Jesus I renounce the spirit of …. and I command it to leave right now in Jesus’ name.”
Once you command it to leave, it must leave. It cannot stay, it has officially been evicted. God honors our free will and the enemy must do the same. He just does a good job at making us unaware of the power we have. I was telling my friend that I think that has been on of the enemies greatest tactics. I think the enemy has done a good job of either making us forget how much power we have living inside of us, or he has twisted the truth so much in the world that we don’t believe it. I am not sure what has happened, how he did it, and yet, we don’t seem to know that we have any real power.
Can you imagine how different the world would be if every baptized person was walking around in the full authority that Christ gave them? Can you imagine how different the world would be if we all knew that Jesus gave us the power to heal the sick, cast our demons, raise the dead and so much more! It says in John 14:12-14 “ Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.” Do you believe that scripture speaks the truth? Do you believe that God is honest and keeps His promises? If so, then you can see why I know that we each have so much power living inside of us.
This verse does not say that a select few will do the works that Jesus did. It does not say that priests and ministers will do the works that Jesus did. It says, “You, whomever believes in me.” Do you believe in Jesus? If so, then He is talking to you? I know it doesn’t feel like you have any power. I know you don’t feel worthy of any power. I know you probably don’t want any power, because as Aunt May says in Spider Man, “With great power comes great responsibility.” And yet, if you believe in Jesus you have this power anyway, so why are we wasting it? Why are we going around with aches and pains and not asking God in Jesus’ name to heal them? Why are we living under the oppression of spirits when we have the power to demand that they leave? Because we don’t know or we don’t believe we have this power. I hope after hearing this episode you go to your Bible and you look for the scripture verse John 14:12-14. I hope you underline it, I hope you write it on an index card and I hope you ask the Lord to show you how this applies in your life. Ask God to show you what He is calling you to do.
Don’t worry, God is gentle with us. He will not call us to move to another country when He knows we really don’t want that. He may call us to ask for healing in our own lives, He may call us to church more, to daily mass, to pray for someone we know, to pray over someone we know if that is something we aren’t too uncomfortable with. Imagine what this world would be like if we all started living in the authority that Jesus gave us. We are all so worried about what is happening in the world around us and yet we feel so powerless. That is a trick of the enemy. We are not powerless. We are more powerful than we know. He knows how powerful we are when we live into that power, when we realize what it truly means to have the Holy Spirit, the same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead living inside of us. Matthew 17:20 says, “ He replied, “Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” Did you hear that last line, “NOTHING WILL BE IMPOSSIBLE FOR YOU.”
One main goal of this podcast is to help us all start to believe that a little more. I know if we started to believe this the world would start to change. We wouldn’t be as scared all the time because we would know we have the power living inside of us to change things. We wouldn’t be living in so much pain because we would know we have the power inside of us to set ourselves free and to help set others free. We wouldn’t just accept the aches and pains we get as a given thing that come with getting older, we would pray for healing because we know the power of God to heal is living inside of us. I know the world would change, it has already started, if more and more of us realized the power laying dormant inside of us. The Holy Spirit’s ability to work through us is confined by our free will, by our belief in His power. If we want to have access to that power, we need to first know and believe that we have the Holy Spirit living inside of us. We have to learn what that means and the best way to do that is to read the Scriptures. Read the book of Acts in the Bible. Read all about what the apostles did with the Holy Spirit living inside of them. It is incredible and if they could do it, so can you because we have the same exact Holy Spirit, there is only one!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to understand the power and authority you have given to us, please help us. We want to live in that authority. We want to be able to cast out demons and heal those around us. Please build our faith, please show us how. Lord, we thank you for giving us your Son and then when He left you gave us the Holy Spirit. We are so grateful. Help bring an awareness in each person listening as to what having the Holy Spirit living inside of us means for us. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I have so exciting news, I have found a place to hold a retreat this fall. I have been feeling called to host a retreat and everywhere I called was so expensive. I just wanted to find a place that most people could afford to come if they wanted to. I was getting discouraged and God is so good and He knew that I just needed to keep calling places. I finally found one. I will have more details in the upcoming weeks but I am excited to announce that I will be hosting a retreat in October for anyone who would like to get away for a weekend and spend some time with Jesus. It will be a weekend full of praise and worship and thanksgiving to God. It will also be a time when we talk about some ways to develop a more intimate relationship with God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. It will be amazing because the Holy Spirit is the one leading the charge on this one. I hope you will consider joining me! I look forward to meeting you hear again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus love you, he really does, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
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Today’s witnesses come from the bethel.com/testimonies website. I found the first testimony because I have a friend who is struggling with Fibromyalgia. I believe that Jesus can heal even chronic diseases that have no human cure and, I know testimonies build faith. I searched specifically for a testimony about a miraculous healing of Fibromyalgia so my friend would know it is possible and hopefully she would keep asking and believing she can be healed too. On that same website I saw the second two witnesses, which are actually the same event just from two different people who were involved. The second witness is about curing of cerebral palsy. If you know anyone who needs a healing pass this witness Wednesday along to them and maybe it will give them the hope they need to believe that God can heal them too!
Healing of Fibromyalgia
January 5, 2021
A woman is healed of the pain and symptoms of fibromyalgia.
When I was only 12, I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia. I have heard that about 85 % of women with fibromyalgia have had some kind of severe childhood trauma, and that was the case with me.
I had it for 17 years. I could hardly walk or stand. My pain level was ten. I was on 16 medications, 86 pills a day for six or seven years. I received very limited help. In those 17 years, I probably received prayer about 700 times. I had seen other healings. I believed in healing.
On December 6, 2009, I was at a church service call for prayer, but I wasn’t going to go up. I told the Lord I knew He could heal me, but I didn’t have the energy to hope that He would.
A friend said to me, “You are going up for prayer.”
I said, “No, I’m not.”
My friend added, “Either you are going up yourself, or I’m dragging you up there.”
I went up, and they laid hands on me, and I knew 95% of the pain had already gone down. I don’t know if they got two or three words out of their mouth before all the pain left.
Before that, I went back to my doctor, who was a Muslim and asked to be taken off all my medications. He was skeptical. I told him I believed in Jesus, and Jesus had healed me.
On my medical chart, it says “spontaneous remission.” Those words don’t actually exist for fibromyalgia. Doctors are limited in what they can say because it doesn’t go away for them. There are pressure points for fibromyalgia, and they were not there anymore for me.
Two first-year BSSM students experienced a miracle when one prayed for the other, and breakthrough from a lifelong affliction resulted.
Karina’s Story
On December 1, 2022, I went to our activation, Healing and Pastoral Care. The leader, Roy, was talking about The Chosen, a Season 3 episode in which a disciple spoke to Jesus and wanted healing, and Jesus said He wanted to heal him but it would glorify Him more if he stayed with his infirmity. That was uncomfortable for me because I really liked The Chosen and did not want to criticize it, but that scene was disturbing to me, too. As we discussed this in our class, we decided, “Let’s pray the actor gets healed!” He has cerebral palsy, and we thought that maybe they wrote that in the script because of that. We said we did not want to change our theology according to our experience, but to model our theology to fit who God is. We prayed for that actor to be healed so they would have to change the storyline.
We came to worship afterward. I usually don’t go to the front, but Payton (my friend) always does. That day, I was in the front with her. I turned around and said to her, “Healing on your body!” Payton said, “Yeah!” She receives so easily. I thought, Maybe I can be a little more intentional. I turned to her and said, “Hey, we just talked about cerebral palsy this morning. And we prayed. Can I pray for you?” I had already prayed for her before because she had told me she had cerebral palsy.
I just put my hand on her and prayed for realignment in her body and for every cell to vibrate to the frequency of heaven. I asked her to test it out. To be honest, I was expecting, but not expecting at the same time. She straightened and said, “Oh, my back just cracked.” She held her arms out and said, “Are my arms the same length?” Her right arm was about an inch shorter than her left arm before. She started crying because she realized they were the same length. I started crying, too.
I asked her to try out her leg which would always hurt. I understood that her whole life, her foot would spasm every time she stretched it. It would hurt when she stood on it the whole day, and she would drag her foot a little behind her at the end of the day. She took her foot out of her slippers and stretched her leg out, but it did not spasm or hurt. She kept crying. I said, “You have to go up on stage and share!”
The next day, I thought, Is she still healed? I was happy I experienced this, but I wanted it to be permanent. I texted her and asked if she was still healed, and she said yes.
Her brain is now able to control her right side properly. I was so overwhelmed with joy and so honored to be the one that got to pray for her!
Payton’s Story
I was born with cerebral palsy. I had a stroke in the womb that caused a blood clot and scarring on my brain. For the first five years of my life, I would walk on my tiptoes. My biological dad did that, too, so they did not think anything of it at first. I started doing sports, and I would say, “My leg hurts.” It would spasm. So they did an MRI, and it showed cerebral palsy. I started going to PT and wore a cast to correct my foot because my bone structure was off because of how I walked. I had to wear a plastic foot brace when the cast came off to keep my foot trained. I wore that for six months to a year. After that, I could not do sports.
You could not tell by looking at me that something was wrong but as I got older, I noticed more things because it progressed. I understood what was happening but did not think about it. I was not concerned about getting healed, and my family are not yet Christians. When I came to BSSM, Karina asked me about my limp. People would say to me, “I’m praying for you.” I did not think I needed healing because it had become part of my life.
We got to the worship set in December. When Karina laid hands on me and said, “Be healed,” I felt something right then. I could feel that I did not have pain in my calf from jumping, and I always have pain. Then she prayed for me, and my back was the first thing that I noticed was different. I could crack my back. My arm did not extend normally, so a nerve would pinch if I turned it the wrong way, and pain would shoot down to my thumb. I put my arms out after she prayed because I could feel something had shifted in my leg. The most obvious thing I could think of to test it was to put my arms out. At that moment when someone’s hand was there and my fingers touched it, I heard God say, “It’s done.” I could feel it from my head to my toe. All my fingers had a different feeling. I could now hold a pen correctly. I used to have to hold it like a little kid in my fist. I pointed my foot and that was the craziest thing because it was not uncomfortable. The next couple of days after, I could feel my whole body in a different way.
The next morning, I woke up and thought, I hope it’s still there. He’s God, so it should be there. I wrote my name the next morning with my right hand. I told all my roommates. For the next four days, I could feel the weirdest sensation. It was like two wires clicking all over my body. I cracked my back every two seconds because I could not do that before. I could rotate my arm without it clicking. The smallest thing like being able to hold a pen is the biggest joy. It was hard to explain that to my friends growing up.
My eyes would droop when I was tired. My muscle function would give out. I did not realize how much I missed until I had it. I went on a walk, and my leg wasn’t tired afterward. If I jumped, I did not have pain in my calf.
My mom is a nurse. I told her what happened, and she said, “You need an MRI.” When I went home for Christmas break, I pointed my foot for her. She said, “OK. I don’t know what’s going on, but I am happy.” I went to a youth group that I used to work at. I told a girl with a broken foot, “I am going to release this over you.” In the middle of the service, she stood up and looked at me. Then she jumped on her broken foot, removed her cast and it was healed. I asked her what clicked for her. She said she felt the Lord tell her to close her eyes for a second. She saw the clip of The Chosen when Jesus healed the paralytic. She thought, If Payton was healed, I could be healed! I think it’s ironic that the same show that sparked the discussion that led to my healing God used in her healing as well!
Thank you all for sharing your stories. God is amazing, and He is still doing miraculous healing every day. However, we won’t ever know about them if people aren’t brave enough to talk about them. Thank you for being vulnerable and sharing your story so that others can hear your testimony, which can help strengthen their faith. They can hear your testimony and see that if God can heal you, He can heal them, too!
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Backseat Driver
Phil 4:8 “And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable--if anything is excellent or praiseworthy--think about such things.”
“Peace of God, which transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” Peace that transcends all understanding. Have you ever had this? Have you ever felt at peace in a situation that was not peaceful? Have you ever had peace about something that you didn’t understand? There are so many things to be anxious about, especially in the world today.
However, God can give us a peace that transcends all understanding if we ask him too. If we trust that he is in control. We don’t have to worry about everything because we are lucky and we have Him taking care of everything and working all things for our good. Romans 8:28 says, "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” God is working for our good if we just let him work. If we just rely on him to come through for us. There are some situations that seem impossible. I get that. Some of you may be thinking that God offer’s peace to some, but not to others. Maybe you haven’t felt that peace before and you are wondering if God has forgotten about you. I assure you, he has not. God is offering his peace to all who want it. The thing is, we need to accept it. We need to step out in faith and hand our troubles, no matter how big or small they are, to God and let him take the wheel.
There is a song by TobyMac called Backseat Driver. It is a really great illustration of how we tend to want to take control back from God. God wants to go through this life with us and He wants to be the driver. He wants us to rely on him to get us to where we are going. There is one part of this song that says: “I'm putting my trust in You, putting my trust in You. It’s a little bit overdue, but I'm putting my trust in You” Isn’t this so true! We put our trust in God, when we have no choice, when we tried everything we could to fix it on our own and nothing has worked. Then, finally, when all else has failed we put our trust in God. We finally realize that nothing we have done has fixed our situation and so we turn over control to God. What if we could begin to do this sooner? What if we did this at the first sign of trouble? Imagine how great it would be to save all that time that we usually spend trying to fix things ourselves and the countless hours we spend worrying about things? Imagine how nice it would be if we could turn everything over to God, before we waste that time.
There is another part in the song that says, “Silly me, silly me, aye. Reverting back to my old ways. Them got to be in control days. Jump before I pray, Yo, I am heading out the doorway. But I want Your way, Yahweh.” Does this sound familiar? Have you ever found yourself stuck in a situation you didn’t want to be in? Have you ever found yourself wondering how you got there and promising that the next time you had a decision to make, you would pray about it first? And you did, at least for awhile, but then things were going good again. Everything seemed to be working out and you started spending less and less time in prayer? What if we consulted our heavenly Father before making any of our decisions? What if we took a few minutes at the beginning of our day and asked God what he wanted us to do that day?
Reverting back to our old ways is something that we all do. I have heard a lot of my mentors say over the years that “it is not a knowing problem, it is a doing problem.” Usually when we revert back to our old ways it is not because we don’t know better. We usually know what is best for us and what produces the best results. However, we tend to slip back into doing what is easiest, or what comes most naturally instead of what is best.
Letting God take the wheel and lead us is the best way to go through life. He knows what is best for us and can save us so much time and pain. Often times we think we know what we want in life and we are upset when we don’t get it. In times like these, as hard as it is, it will help to remember that God is the driver. His ways are greater than our ways. Isaiah 55:8-9 says, "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” If a door that you wanted to open, didn’t open, its because your heavenly father has something much better in store for you. It is not always easy to see that and I know in the moment of disappointment it is hard to remember. Think about when you were little and you wanted to watch tv, or eat the candy, or do something else that would not have been great for you and your parents wanted more for you. If you have children, think about how many times you have to say no to them because of something better you have in store. If we could do this for our children, think of how much more our father in heaven wants for us.
Where in your life have you been taking back control? Where have you been reverting back to your old ways? Is there somewhere in your life where you could put your trust back in God?
Are you being a backseat driver?
Dear Heavenly Father, please be with us each and every day. Please help us to turn control back over to you. Please help us to turn our worries and fears over to you as well. Lord, we want you to direct our lives. You want more for us then we could possibly want for ourselves. We thank you for protecting us from ourselves and from things that we don’t even know about. We thank your for all of the doors that you have closed for us in order for us to walk through even better doors. Lord you are truly amazing and we are sorry for all the times we forget to turn our trust over to you. You are our first choice and we ask that you help us to remember that each and every day. Lord we love you and we thank you for all that you do. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name. Amen.
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Jesus is bigger than the Facts
Luke 8:50 “While Jesus was still speaking, someone came from the house of Jairus, the synagogue leader. “Your daughter is dead,” he said. “Don’t bother the teacher anymore. Hearing this, Jesus said to Jairus, “Don’t be afraid; just believe, and she will be healed.”
Pastor Steven Furtick gave an excellent sermon on this passage a few weeks ago. If you want to listen to it you can check it our on the Elevation with Steven Furtick Podcast. The title of the Episode is The Facts aren’t Final. Steven Furtick explores this passage in a lot more detail then I can do in this short amount of time as his podcast is close to an hour long. However, I really liked his messages surrounding this verse. There are usually several messages in his sermons. They are really good. The main message for this episode is revealed in the title, Facts are not Final.
This verse is about a man who went to see Jesus because his daughter was dying. He found Jesus and he fell down on his knees and asked Jesus to come to his house and to save his daughter. Then in Luke 8:50 it says, “While Jesus was still speaking, someone came from the house of Jairus, the synagogue leader. “Your daughter is dead,” he said. “Don’t bother the teacher anymore. Hearing this Jesus said to Jairus, “Don’t be afraid; just believe, and she will be healed.” Can you imagine being in this circumstance? Have you heard those words before, “Just believe and she, he, they will be healed?” This can be so hard. It can be so hard to believe on a good day, but when you are faced with facts that don’t give a lot of room for hope.
This man just received news that his little girl died. Not that she was sick, but that she had died. Imagine how hard it was for this man to believe. It says that Jairus was a synagogue leader. They synagogue leaders at the time of Jesus did not know what to make of Jesus. Even in this passage they refer to him as the teacher, no the son of God, not the healer, not the resurrected Christ, the teacher. Jairus must have wondered if Jesus was a healer because he did go to Jesus and ask Him to save his daughter. I wonder if he believed that he could heal his daughter or if this was just what some may call a “Hail Mary” attempt. A “Hail Mary” in case you don’t know is when you try something that you are pretty sure will not work, but you don’t have any other chance so you give it one last shot anyway. Hail Mary is actually a great name for that type of circumstance because she is definitely someone that we can rely on when all else has failed.
The facts of this case seemed bleak. Jairus wanted Jesus to save his daughter but according to the facts Jesus did not get there in time and his daughter died. Jesus was on his way to Jairus’ house when he got stopped by a large crowd of people. One of those people was the woman who had been bleeding for 12 years and no doctors could help her. She went up to Jesus in the crowd and touched his cloak and was immediately healed. Jesus stopped to acknowledge this and while He was still talking to this woman, who’s story is amazing and deserves a whole episode of her own, Jairus got new that his daughter had died. I don’t know about you, but I feel like I would be super angry at this point. I feel as the my grief would have over come me and I would have started to yell at Jesus. I would have told Him my daughters death was all His fault. If he hadn’t have stopped to talk to that lady, my daughter might still be alive.
Can you picture the scene? It seems when we are angry and hurt we lash out. It makes us feel better, even if just for a moment, if we can blame someone else. This is a normal reaction, however, there is no mention of any such reaction from Jairus. Jesus hears the man from Jairus’ house tell Jairus that his daughter died and Jesus says, “Don’t be afraid; just believe, and she will be healed.” The question is, “How do we believe when we are faced with facts that dispute that faith?” How does this man believe that his daughter will be ok when he was just told that she was dead? Do you have a circumstance in your life where the facts don’t leave room for much hope?
Do you have a situation where the facts tell you that there is no way out? For instance, maybe you have too many bills and not enough money. Maybe you have a diagnosis and the doctors are saying there is no cure for. Maybe your child is facing a situation and you don’t see a way out of it for them. Maybe your marriage is in trouble and your spouse has said there is no way to fix it. In all of these circumstances, the facts say that your situation is beyond hope. The facts say that you can’t change they things. If a doctor says you have a terminal illness, that is a fact. You can’t dispute that fact on merit, as you do in fact have an illness that there is no human cure for. If your spouse has made up their mind that divorce is the only way, then it will take divine intervention to save that marriage. So, how do we have faith when the facts are telling us there is no hope?
One great way is to look back at scripture. This Bible verse is not the only time it looked liked Jesus arrived too late. In John 11 Jesus’ friend Lazarus got sick and his sisters wrote to Jesus asking him to come home and heal their brother. Jesus stayed where He was and finished what He was doing and then He went back. By the time Jesus got back there, Lazarus had been dead and in a tomb for 4 days. The facts in this chapter would tell us that Lazarus was not coming back. He had already been dead for 4 days, his body was probably starting to smell and maybe decompose. However, Jesus came back and raised Lazarus from the dead. What about the woman who had been bleeding for 12 years? The facts told her she would never get better, there was no cure. The doctors couldn’t help her, they only made it worse. I am sure she had to fight her mind reminding her of these facts the entire way to see Jesus. She fought through the voices telling her the facts that she would not get better and that there was no hope. She stepped out in faith, touched His garment, the hem of his garment, and she was cured.
In the story above, the facts said Jairus’ daughter had died. He no longer had a need for someone to come and heal his daughter. The facts said it was too late. However, Jesus said, “Don’t be afraid; just believe, and she will be healed.” And Jairus went with Jesus to see his little girl. In Luke 8:54-55 it says, “ But he took her by the hand and said, “My child, get up!” Her spirit returned, and at once she stood up. Then Jesus told them to give her something to eat.” The facts said it was too late and Jesus said “Do not be afraid, just believe.”
Where do you need to hear that in your life right now. The Bible is not just a collection of stories that give us historical data but don’t really pertain to our lives. The Bible is just as relevant today as it was back in that day. When Jesus is telling these parables to the people in the Bible, He is also telling them to you. Where in your life are you struggling with the facts? Where in your life are the facts not leaving much room for hope? Where in your life do you need to hear these words, straight from Jesus’ mouth, “Do not be afraid, just believe.”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help those that are struggling to believe that the facts aren’t final. Help those facing some very scary facts. Lord, we know you are amazing and you are God of the impossible. Please give us the strength to not be afraid and to believe. Lord we believe, help our unbelief. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to seeing you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
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I Have Heard Your Prayers And Seen Your Tears
Isaiah 38:5 “Go and tell Hezekiah, ‘This is what the Lord, the God of your father David, says: I have heard your prayer and seen your tears; I will add fifteen years to your life.”
I thought I would take a minute at the beginning of this episode to explain how I get the scripture verses that I use at the beginning of each episode. Every Thursday I attend a Catholic Charismatic prayer group. During our meetings we begin with a 5-10 minute teaching, then we go into praise and worship. Then we go into speaking in tongues and quiet time where we are silent and listen for anything the Lord wants to share with us, often times that will include scripture verses. I use the scripture verses from these meetings as I figure if God is sharing them with us, they are probably good ones to share with you.
This morning, however, I am leading prayer group and I did not want to use a scripture verse that had just been used at the meetings. So, I prayed this morning that God would give me a verse. Now I have been part of this group for 3-4 years now. Every week God shows up and shares with us. And yet, I am constantly surprised when he does. Or maybe I’m not surprised He shows up, but how He shows up. This morning I was not sure how I would know what scripture to use. I thought I would maybe just open the Bible and pick one, or maybe one from my scripture writing would jump out at me. I was unclear and if I am honest, I am not sure I fully believed that God would show me what scripture to use. Then, right before I finished my prayer time the words Isaiah 38:5 flashed in my mind. It was as if it was written in the air. I could see it plain as day. This has never happened to me before. God has spoken to me, but not that plainly.
I share this story with you because I want you to know that God is there for you. He hears your prayers. Just as it says in Isaiah 38:5 “‘This is what the Lord, the God of your father David, says: I have heard your prayer and seen your tears; I will add fifteen years to your life.” Sometimes we wonder if God is really listening. When I read this verse this morning my first thought was of a friend of mine. She is really struggling right now and I felt like God was talking to her when He said “I have heard your prayers and seen your tears.” Then I got to thinking and I actually have several friends that are struggling right now. Struggling with some really difficult issues.
For all of you that are struggling right now, I want you to know that you are not alone. Life is difficult for so many people right now. On top of all that we went through over this past year, you have had added levels of difficulty. I am so sorry that life has been so hard. We have had many difficulties this past year as well. Remote learning was a challenge. The isolation from friends was really tough on our oldest son. It has been a crazy year. And yet, I can see God was with me through all of it.
What if you can’t see that? What if you don’t know where God was in all of it? You can be someone who loves God, someone who has a close relationship with God, and also you can question where God is and what his plan is. King David was anointed, he had a very close relationship with God, and yet even He questioned God. In Psalm 13:1-3 “How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me?” Have you had these thoughts before? Have you, or are you going through something, and you are wondering how long you have to endure the suffering before God will save you, before He will answer your prayers?
If this is you first, I want to let you know that this is okay. Sometimes we can make our pain worse because on top of the pain of the situation, we feel guilty because we are questioning the Lord, or we are mad at the Lord. Sometimes our minds say things like, “If I were a good christian I would just trust God,” or “I’ve had a relationship with the Lord a long time, I shouldn’t be worried, or questioning.” God can handle our questioning and our anger. He is strong enough for anything you have for Him. He wants you to turn to Him in times of need. You are not the only person angry with God and questioning how long you will have to suffer. Trust me, there are many people in the same boat. Please let the guilt go. Please do not judge yourself for questioning. David questioned often, just read the psalms and you will see just how often, and yet God chose David’s lineage to bring forth the savior of the world.
Second, I want you to know that this scripture verse is for you. God wants to talk directly to you right now when he says “I have heard your prayers, and seen your tears.” He is there with you, even when you can’t see Him or feel Him. He is there every moment of your life. I know it is a struggle sometimes, many times, to understand why you had to go through some of the things you had to go through. I know that the not knowing, is sometimes the hardest part. I want to assure you that things will get better. I don’t know how and I don’t know when. I do know that God wants ridiculously good things for you. It says in Jeremiah 29:11 “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” God will get you through these difficult times and there will be great times on the other side of this hardship. Just hang on. Just keep putting one foot in front of the other and you will make it through this hard time.
I would like to give you two things that may help get you through this difficult time. First, is from the same psalm that I read from earlier. In Psalm 13 David was questioning the Lord and asking how long he was going to have to suffer. Then he ended the Psalm with verses 5-6 “But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. I will sing the Lord’s praise, for he has been good to me.” David does question the Lord, and then he turns back to praising the Lord. Praising the Lord in a difficult time can really be helpful in getting out of that difficult time quicker. Now, I can already hear some of you saying, “but what if I am struggling to trust in God’s unfailing love?,” or “What if I don’t know what to say?” This is ok, God knows this. When I struggle to believe in something I go to Mark 9:24, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!”
Sometimes we get to a place where we can’t pray. Has this happened to you? If so I want you to know you are in good company. I am not sure if you know this or not, but Mother Teresa had this happen to her. She was so close to the Lord, she was doing His work every single day and yet she went through really long, like several years long, dry spells where she could not pray. She would enter into her prayer time and nothing would come. The enemy has a way of making us feel like we are the only one that these things happen to and that we are awful people because of it. I just want you to know that YOU ARE NOT ALONE.
I think that is part of the reason why God raises up Saints. I think we usually put them on pedestals and when we do I think we are missing the point. I think the Saints are actually to show us very real people that are not perfect, they made mistakes, in some cases big mistakes, and yet still were capable of carrying out God’s work. God does not use perfect people. He takes broken, imperfect people and makes them perfect through His grace. I think the Saints are showcasing God’s redemption. If you read about the saints you will quickly take them off the pedestal and you will be able to see parts of yourself in them. If God could turn their lives around so completely, He could do it for all of us.
The second thing is to read scripture. If you are going through a difficult time and you are questioning if God is there, reading scripture can be helpful. Seeing how God has shown up for others in the past can help you see how He may show up for you. If you struggle to trust in the Lord, read passages that talk about God’s faithfulness. If you struggle to believe God loves you read passages on God’s love. I have recently learned of something called scripture writing. I had no idea what this was. Well, obviously I could deduct what it meant, but I didn’t know how to do it. How do you know what scripture to write? How much to write? I had several questions.
The truth is, there is no one way to do it. The point is to familiarize yourself with scripture and you remember things better when you write them down. However, I like when things have directions that I can follow. So, if you are like me, here is what I do. I go online and google scripture writing plans. There will be tons of images that come up. Most of them have a theme, so I pick one that I feel is resonating with me for that month. One month I picked Be Bold, another month I picked Repentance & Renewal. Then the plan tells you which verses to write each day, it is usually just a verse or two. I just got a notebook and each day I write the verse for the day. It has been really great and I enjoy those 5-10 minutes with the Lord.
If you are struggling right now, maybe give scripture writing or praising the Lord a try and see how you feel afterwards. If you are not sure you would know what to say for praising the Lord, you could always listen to christian music and let the artists praise for you. If you are not sure what to pray, you can pray the scriptures. The Book of Psalms is also a great place to go for praising the Lord. If you feel like you can’t praise the Lord in your circumstances, you can borrow David’s praises.
You will get through this hard time. God is with you! You are not alone. He may let you fall, but He will be there to catch you and put you back on even stronger ground. You are amazing and God loves you more than you will ever know.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you be with everyone listening to this today. I ask that you let them see where you are in all of this. Lord, sometimes we don’t understand your plan or why we have to go through the hard times. We ask that you bless us with a supernatural trust in you. We ask that you help us to feel you in those really hard times. Lord, we ask that you fortify us with strength and protect us when we are weak. Lord, some of us are going through so really difficult times and can’t see the way out. I ask that you shine a light on each step of the way and fill us with assurance that you are there and are leading us out. Lord I thank you for being strong enough to handle our questions and our anger. I thank you for your mercy that when we are angry with you or questions where you are you do not get angry with us. I thank you for the graces you give us to each and every day. Lord we love you and are constantly amazed by you. Father, we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen
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Where The Spirit Of The Lord Is, There Is Freedom
2 Corinthians 3:17 “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.”
I saw this verse on Facebook today and thought it was a great one. I have been helping to lead a Life in the Spirit Seminar and each week we learn a little bit more about the Holy Spirit and about the beginning of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal. There is a video teaching about different subjects and then one of our prayer group members gives a witness about how they have seen God working in their lives. I have really been learning a lot. Not just from the talks, but also from other people’s experience of how they have seen God in their life.
The first week’s topic was God’s Love. The witness was about a woman who was told she couldn’t have children and yet had two healthy children. She was a woman who married the love of her life and even though the marriage ended, God was there with her through it all. He provided miracles all throughout her life small ones and big ones, like giving birth to her children when she was told she couldn’t have kids. This woman experienced a baptism of the Holy Spirit and she talks about how her life was changed after that. She had this love and closeness with the Lord that she never had before. She was filled with this sense of peace that although things weren’t always easy, she would be ok. God would be there with her through it all. The verse above says that where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. This woman definitely experienced freedom for her worries.
The second week the topic was salvation. The witness was about a woman who lost her father at a young age. He was only about 60 years old when he was hit be a teenager and killed. There was some speculation that the teen had been drinking but could not be proven. This woman could not forgive the teen. She was so angry that he took her father from his children and his grandchildren. She harbored this anger for 20 years. Forgiveness wasn’t even something she could think about. She went to grief counseling, and they recommended she write the teen a letter, but not send it. She couldn’t even think of doing this.
Many years later a former coworker of hers lost her husband to a teen driving accident. My friend attended this wake and asked her former coworker how she was doing. The former coworker said she thought she was ready to write the teenage a letter of forgiveness, as it had been four months. My friend burst into tears and asked how she could forgive so soon as it had only been four months. My friend’s dad died 20 years ago and she still harbored feelings of unforgiveness. Her former coworker told her she needed to forgive him, for herself as much as for the boy. How could she expect God to forgive her if she didn’t forgive others.
The Holy Spirit works in mysterious ways. If my friend hadn’t have ran into her former co-worker at this wake, who knows if she would have forgiven that young man. My friend didn’t even notice how much her unforgiveness had blocked her relationship with the lord. It took her another year to write the letter. When she read it out loud to her husband she felt so free. It was as if a huge weight she didn’t know she had been carrying had been lifted. It enabled her to have a closer and intimate relationship with God. She was finally free of the unforgiveness.
Last night’s topic was New Life. It talked about how we have a new life when we accept the Holy Spirit into our lives and give Him permission to work in our lives. When we surrender to God, amazing things happen. For some, it is so hard to surrender everything. For others, it is easy to surrender everything to God, and yet, when things get tough they take it back and try to do it on their own. The witness for last night was about a member who was doing her best to be a good Catholic. She attended mass and her kids went to Catholic school. She talked about how her priorities once she got married were her husband, her kids and God. However, about 14 years ago her husband had heart trouble and was give 3-5 years to live. She was told his heart would just stop and it would be sudden death. She didn’t know what to do with this. He was her best friend and her whole world. How could she think about a future without him?
She was upset with God and questioned what she did to deserve this. She allowed fear and anxiety to take over life. She begged God to save them from this medical prognosis. She cried out why have you forsaken me. There were many more years of hospital stays and ER visits. She felt as though God was waiting on her, but she didn’t know what to do. She started to go to daily mass and spent hours in the adoration chapel. One day she saw an advertisement for a Catholic Healing Service. She begged her husband to take her and he did. At this service she was taught about the power of the Holy Spirit and what can block us from the healing power of God and from hearing His voice. They were lead through prayers of forgiveness, renunciation of sickness, sin, diseases, and negative emotions. At this service her eyes were open to what had been blocking her. The Holy Spirit showed her that even though she had been praying all those years, she hadn’t truly believed that God was hearing her prayers and that He would take care of them. She realized that God had been suffering with her and He just wanted her to trust that He would take care of them. At this service everyone was invited to come up one at a time to be prayed over. When she went up she surrendered all to God and asked for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Suddenly she felt a gust of wind push her back, she was swept off her feet and knocked to the ground. The Holy Spirit came upon her and she was filled with tremendous peace, love and joy. Her sadness and stress were gone and she felt light as a feather. She was free, from all her worries, sadness, anxieties, and stress. She definitely was feeling the freedom that comes with the Holy Spirit.
The reason I wanted to share these three witnesses with you today is because I don’t think we talk about the Holy Spirit enough. We talk a lot about God and we hear a lot about Jesus and yet, the Holy Spirit remains a mystery to many of us. We don’t know a lot about Him and so we tend to stick to what we know. The Holy Spirit is available to all. It is not something that you need to do certain things for. It is not as if you earn the Holy Spirit by being extra Holy, or by jumping through all the hoops. The Holy Spirit is available to anyone that wants it. You can call upon the Holy Spirit at any time and it only takes a second. “Come Holy Spirit come” are among the most powerful words you could say. There are many prayers to the Holy Spirit. There is one that I used to say often, although I must say I have gotten away from it and I want to get back to it. I will end with that prayer today. If you are looking for a way to invite the Holy Spirit into your life, say this prayer daily and then buckle up and enjoy the ride. If you invite Him in, He will do amazing things in your life. He will give you a freedom that you have never experienced before. The power of the Holy Spirit will surprise you. Wouldn’t it be great if you knew what God wanted you to do? When you have a relationship with the Holy Spirit you will be able to hear God’s words more clearly. There is so much I could say about the Holy Spirit and the benefits of getting to know more about Him and inviting Him into your life. However, I don’t want to go on all day, so maybe I will do another episode later about this very important topic. I am sure I will do many over the years. I hope you enjoyed the witnesses. They were condensed, but I am hoping to bring you their full story in upcoming episodes. I will leave you with a prayer to the Holy Spirit.
Oh, Holy Spirit, beloved of my soul…I adore you.
Enlighten me, guide me, strengthen me, console me.
Tell me what I should do; give me your orders. I
Promise to submit myself to all that You desire of me
And to accept all that You permit to happen to me.
Let me only know your will.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
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Introduction
Today’s witness is from my new friend Bruce. Bruce found my podcast randomly, and when he heard the call for people to share their stories, he reached out to me through email and shared his story with me. I asked him if I could share it, and he said yes. Bruce has made a career for the past thirty years as a head scenic artist, art director, and designer in the professional theatre business. For the past five years, he has also had a studio on James St. N., where he produced his own artwork. He is known and loved by many in the community for his work teaching the PMC art class for over a decade, as well as a more recent class for seniors at the YWCA. This is his story of losing sight but finding a new depth of faith.
Backstory
I’ve been a believing Christian since the age of ten, but at some point in the past few years, I began to notice a growing sense of spiritual restlessness. I felt like I never had the kind of spiritual life that you read and hear about. I always felt there could be a better experience. I wanted that closeness to God and that shower of blessings that the scriptures describe, but I always figured I was not worthy of it—or else I would have known it by now.
A few years ago, pastor lane spoke about being “haunted by God.” This began happening to me. I would wake up in the middle of the night thinking someone was there. I was never afraid, even though it felt surreal or supernatural. It was as if someone was trying to tell me something, but no words were heard. Someone was there. It was the Holy Ghost haunting me.
This was a good haunting. I was quite moved by this and began to pray for something to happen that would make me a better person and Christian. I asked myself what I would want from God as a spiritual blessing or gift if I had the chance. I decided that my greatest spiritual weakness was a lack of courage, so that is what I prayed for. I honestly believe that my answer came in the form of the trial I would soon go through. I learned that when you ask God to do something, you had better stand firm and be prepared.
Spring 2016
In the spring of 2016, I started to notice my eyesight slipping. It was harder to focus. I got new glasses prescribed, and by the time I picked them up, they failed to work for me. The doctor determined that I had low eye pressure. The doctor tried some treatments, but every treatment failed. Sometimes, my vision would return, only to fail again shortly afterward. I was coasting up and down with hopes and disappointment.
Summer 2016
In the summer of 2016, Pastor Lane was teaching a series of sermons from the Book of Job. This was never a favorite story of mine because I always looked at Job as someone with special favor from God. Each Sunday, I would take my seat on the balcony and listen to the woes of Job while at the same time in noticing that my sight was diminishing a little more each week.
I’ve never been known to have a quick temper, but one night, lying in my bed, I felt a real anger at what was happening to me. I was never a person who got angry at God, but now I was asking God, “How could you let this happen to an artist?” I had just turned sixty-five. I was looking forward to launching into more painting, more teaching, and a rewarding time ahead. Instead, my retirement gift was blindness—received with some bitterness toward God.
August 16, 2016
Taking what I thought was the mature approach to my anger, I decided that anger was not the right path and that it would only lead to my own misery. As Christians, we are always taught to look for the good purpose in all things, including our troubles and trials. I struggled to see where there was any good in an artist losing his vision. I was at a dead end and could not imagine my life without sight or the ability to do my artwork. I was forced to challenge God.
I prayed, “Lord, I know I can’t be angry at you about this. I don’t believe you would allow this to be cruel or to punish me. I do believe you must have some purpose in these awful circumstances you have placed me in. I am helpless and unable to understand any purpose for goodness here. Show me what you want me to know."
August 17, 2016
The next morning, as I was checking my email, I saw a message from a man I had worked with in previous years in the theatre business. I was a little surprised because I didn’t remember getting any messages from him before, so I was curious what he had to say. There was no text in the email, just an image of a stone tablet with the words “Psalm 73” carved into it. I had never known this man to talk about God or scripture, so this was a surprising message.
At this time, my vision was poor but still good enough that I could read using a magnifying glass. I had a Bible in my studio, which Pastor Mike Mileski had given me. It was a special edition with beautiful abstract artwork and a very easy-to-read text. I read from it every day before I set to work on my painting.
On this day, I decided to read Psalm 73, hoping to discover why my colleague had sent it to me. I started reading about Israel and the ungodly prospering. This didn’t seem to have anything to do with my situation. Reading further, the Psalmist expresses frustration and admits his unworthiness to God. I could relate to that more. The next verse was one which I had heard and read many times before without too much notice:
“Nevertheless, I am continually with thee. You hold me by my right hand. You guide me with your counsel and, afterward, receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but you, Lord, and there is nothing on earth that I desire more. My heart and my flesh fail me, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. It is good for me to be near God...I will put my trust in the Lord God that I may tell of his works.”
I was reading while standing at my drafting table, but when I read these words, I slumped down into a chair because I felt my knees weaken. I was so overcome by the words I read; it was as if I had never read or heard them before. At that moment, as I sat in my studio, it felt like someone put a cloak around me. A wave of peace and reassurance washed over me. I felt peace I had never known before. This was the “peace that passes all understanding,” which comes only from God. This was the Holy Spirit answering my prayer. Psalm 73 told me what I needed to know.
The Lord is with me, always at my right side, holding my hand. He will guide my footsteps and prevent me from falling. When my life on earth is over, I will stand with him in heaven because I am just as worthy in God’s sight as Job. I have no doubt of all this because the Lord has given me the courage to believe it fully.
After reading and taking in the words of Psalm 73, I said out loud in my studio, “What more could I possibly want?” I re-read Psalm 73 several times right after. I had never had a verse that I might refer to as my “life verse.” Now I had my own life verse because Psalm 73 changed my outlook on life forever.
Fall 2016
In the days and weeks that followed, I read psalm after psalm. I discovered that I could listen to someone read the psalms on YouTube, which was easier than struggling with my sight. I was amazed that the theology that weaved its way through the psalms. Several of them bolstered my faith and my reverence for this great book. I always read the daily devotional reading and commentary by Charles Spurgeon. His insight into the human condition, combined with his knowledge of theology, is remarkable. Many days he would offer up a psalm which would prove to be exactly what I needed to have that day.
In the year that followed, there were many efforts to fix my sight. I underwent four surgeries and received countless injections in my eyes. With a newfound peace and courage, I was able to go through all these ordeals knowing that the Lord was always with me. With the help of excellent, caring doctors, I didn’t need to worry.
Spring 2017
By the spring, it seemed at first that the surgeries had succeeded. The relief was short-lived. The pressure problem had been fixed, but a new problem appeared in the form of calcium deposits on my cornea, which were clouding my vision. I was just ready to get new glasses after waiting a year, only to find out it was not possible until the calcium was dealt with. This involved another specialist and more delays. I had been dealing with my life very well up until this time, but the combination of everything seemed to drag me down ‘til I felt depressed and very discouraged. August 17, 2017
One particularly bad day, I went to see what my friend Charles Spurgeon had to say. I was really counting on something meaningful to help me see my way out of this depressed state.
Instead of a psalm, this day’s reading was from John: the story of Lazarus. “Why Lazarus?” I thought. That didn’t seem to offer any help on this day. Spurgeon told how Christ is telling us that our trials, troubles, and illnesses are not forever, that there is a time for these things to end. That promise from God changed my mood from discouragement to hope and promise. I now had the promise that my long series of troubles with my sight would have an end. That was good enough for me. I had made it through the past year, and I knew I was a better person than before. I don’t think the old me would have come through the year as well.
The story continues
In September of this year, I had an operation to remove the calcium from my cornea. It was successful, but the condition has quickly returned since then. Once again, I find myself unable to get new glasses, parked on the sidelines with hazy vision. I am disappointed, but not without hope. I have hope because of the many prayers on my behalf and the peace and courage that get from my Saviour, who holds my right hand.
I am in awe of what God has done for me this past year. I am in awe of how God has moved in my life since I asked him to do something for me. I am richly blessed with a loving wife, daughters, and a family who care about and for me. I have a church filled with caring people who have prayed for me. I have everything I need; I know not everyone is blessed the same way. I don’t know if I will have my sight restored to where I can read and write and create art again. Even if I don’t, I know that God will have a plan for me, and I will never be left without him.
I once asked what the Lord wanted me to do. I found my answer in Psalm 73, which says. “I will tell of thy works.” This is why I am telling my story. I have yet to meet a person who did not face some sort of trouble, trial, illness, fear, and so on. I want people to know that you can be deeply blessed and assured by just opening your heart and asking God to do something for you. If you read Psalm 73 and do what the psalmist says by putting your trust in the lord, your life will change more than you can imagine. Whoever you are—rich or poor, young or old, you and I can be as richly blessed and stand as worthy as Job in God’s sight.
I just read a blog post that Bruce wrote for his church in November 2017. The following is part of an email to me summarizing his story and explaining about a miraculous event that happened in 2018.
Hello Catherine, I listened to your podcast, " If You Only Knew The Power You Had In You", the other day. I came across it by chance and was so taken with it that I listened to several more of your podcasts. You asked people to send you their stories and prayer requests. I recently retired after 30 years as a professional artist in the Live theatre business. I had my own studio for painting and designing. I taught art classes for 13 years at my church as well as the YWCA seniors centre. For several years I was dealing with glaucoma which was under control. In 2017 after 14 eye operations I lost my sight and was told there was nothing more that can de done. In November 2018, I went to a healing service in Toronto, not knowing what to expect. I had a miraculous encounter with the Holy Spirit and recovered my eyesight. That was a Sunday night. However, Monday morning, when I woke up, I was blind again. I could have been angry but was not because I was so amazed at what happened and knew in faith that the Lord was with me on this. I have been to several healing services since then but have not received my sight. My faith is stronger than ever and I am unable to give up hope. However, I have had occasional times of real sadness. Lately, I told God I don't know what to pray or do anymore. I don't understand why I am left this way. I have asked Him to help me out of this state I am in. When this happens, God always answers my prayer. I have listened to hundreds of podcasts and sermons. Your messages have answered so many of my concerns at just the right time as none other have. I have felt so akin to your thinking and way of explaining things. I would so appreciate your prayers for healing and restoring my eyesight. I already know that God has done it once, and will do it again. With my thanks and blessing on your ministry. Sincerely, Bruce Repei
Once I received this email I wrote back and asked if I could pray with Bruce over the phone. Two nights later I talked with Bruce & Alice on the phone for quite awhile. Bruce explained all about the healing service he went to and how his sight was restored. He could see all around the church, he could see Alice, he just looked around in awe the whole way home because he could finally see again. He looked all around his house when they got home. He didn’t go to bed until 2 or 3 in the morning. As he stated in his email, his sight was once again gone when he woke up. Bruce and Alice were both very upbeat and positive about the journey. When praying over Bruce, he could definitely feel heat, which is a manifestation of the Holy Spirit. He did not regain his sight but we are all hopeful it will return. I will continue to keep him in my prayers and hopefully continue to pray with him over the phone. I ask you to keep Bruce & Alice in your prayers as well. I am looking forward to the Witness Wednesday when I get to have Bruce on here telling you in his own words what it was like to finally have his sight back once and for all. That is going to be a glorious day. Don’t worry; whatever day it happens, I will be sure to tell you all about it! I won’t wait for a Wednesday!
Thank you Bruce for being brave enough to reach out to me and share your story with me. I am so honored you allowed me to pray with you and I can’t wait to do it again! I hope I get to meet you both in person when you come to MA in July. I hope every single person listening now understands a little better why I always say it is important to share our stories. My faith has grown after hearing Bruce’s story. People need to hear your story too. As Bruce said in his article, everyone has gone through something. Sometimes just hearing that someone else went through it and was able to trust in God makes it a little easier for you to trust in God. Thanks again Bruce! I can’t wait to celebrate with you!
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Honestly, I Think We Just Need Jesus!
Acts 2:40 “And he testified with many other words and exhorted them, saying, “Save yourselves from this crooked generation.”
I chose this scripture verse today because where it says, “Save yourselves from this crooked generation.” There is a song that I have heard on the radio more and more recently, and these last few days, it is running repeat in my mind. I can’t seem to get it out of my head. I am not sure I want to get it out of my head as the words that are running through my head are Honestly, I think we need Jesus by Terrian. Since I can’t seem to shake this song, and then I read the verse above this morning, I think the Lord wants me to share it with you. I will place a link for the song in the show notes, as she does a much better job singing it than I do. I also love that she is young and yet can still see that we need more Jesus. I will go over the lyrics of the song with you today.
The song starts with:
I got a front-row seat to the madness
I pick up my phone every mornin' out of habit
I've been fiendin' for the drama, yeah, I said it
I'm addicted to the rush, need a medic
How many of us pick up our phones or turn on the news first thing when we wake up? How many of us want to know what is going on in the world before we even stop and spend our time with God? I use my phone for an alarm, so I would turn off my alarm, and then I would check my messages, emails, and Facebook before I would sit down with the Lord and spend time with Him. I have gotten better; now, I just check my messages, mostly to make sure my kids got home safely. Sometimes I still check my emails, but I am getting better and usually save that for later.
I love how the songwriter points out that we usually pick up our phones out of habit. This isn’t just first thing in the morning. We do this all throughout the day. I bet we all spend more time than we would like on our phones. I also like how they bring our attention to the fact that we are “Fiendin’ for the drama” and “addicted to the rush.” It seems we are drawn to the conflict and the drama more than the good things that are happening. I don’t know if that is because we crave drama or because that is all the news tends to show us. Either way, there is good and bad going on in the world, and it is up to us to choose which we seek out and focus on.
The song goes on to say:
When I take a step back, I can see it
All the pain, all the fear we've been feelin'
Losin' sight of the thing that we're needin'
That we're needin’
This is a great reminder that sometimes we need to take a step back. When we do we see that we are focusing on all of our pain and fear that we are feeling instead of focusing on the one who can take all that pain and fear away. When we watch the news or listen to all that is going on in the world, we tend to get overwhelmed. We can also start to feel a sense of hopelessness. We can feel a sense that the world is going crazy, and there is nothing we can do about it. However, we are never hopeless because we are children of God, and we can always turn to Him, and He can save us. There is nothing too hard for God to handle.
Next, the song says:
Honestly, I think we just need Jesus
Honestly, I think we just need Jesus
Have we all gone mad? Have we lost our minds?
What used to be wrong, we say that it's right
Honestly, I think we just need Jesus
This is the part that gets stuck in my head. I can’t think of a truer statement. I can see how our country is falling apart because we keep removing God from more and more things. This country was founded with God. He was a part of the government; yes, Church and State were separate, and yet God and State weren’t. God was invited into the Constitution; he was invited into the Pledge of Allegiance. He was invited into our courtrooms. God was welcome everywhere. Now, it seems He is welcome nowhere.
I also love how the song says, “Have we all gone mad? Have we lost our minds? What used to be wrong, we say that it’s right.” We have all thought this for a long time now and it is nice to hear it in a song so we know we aren’t the only ones who think it. This world does seem to have gone mad and it does seem like we are all losing our minds. Some of the things that seem to be ok in the world today still shock me. I think this song points out very real and honest questions. Have we all gone mad? Have we all lost our minds?
Take a good long look in the mirror
Search my heart and soul, make it clearer
Help me take your love, trade the bitter
Leave it in the dust, help me leave it in the dust, Lord.
I think it would be a great idea if we all stopped and took a good look in the mirror. What are we doing? Not what is the world doing, what are we doing? Are we staying true to God in this crazy world? Are we staying above all the drama and walking in the light of Christ? Are we being love and hope to everyone we meet? We are all called to be “little Christs” to all we meet. Are we doing so? Are we loving everyone, even those who aren’t like us? Even those who aren’t living their lives the way we think they should? Even those who we don’t like. God said to love our enemies. Are we doing that?
The next line says, “Search my heart and soul, make it clearer.” Do we want God to search our hearts and souls? What would He find? I do like how it says to make it clearer. With all that is going on in this world, and all this world says is ok, the water we wade into can get muddy. I don’t think the world makes it easy or clear how we should live our lives. We need to focus on God and ask God to help make it clear to us what He wants from us and how He wants us to live.
It also says, “Help me take your love, trade the bitter. Leave it in the dust, help me leave it in the dust, Lord.” It can be easy to become bitter. We live in a broken world, and people offend us all the time. Things aren’t fair, and sometimes good things happen to bad people, and bad things happen to good people. This can make us bitter. We need God to come in and replace our bitterness with His love. We need His help to walk away from the bitter and leave it in the dust.
We've been preachin', we've been drinkin' in the vanity (in the vanity)
Now it's got us questionin' our sanity (sanity)
And we wonder how we get all this anxiety
It's clear to me
Yep, I think we have all probably questioned our sanity at some point over the last few years. I definitely think there is a lot of vanity in this day and age as well. With everyone having phones and taking photos every moment of every day, we have become obsessed with how we look and what we have. We want to make sure our life looks as good online as everyone else’s life does. This leads us to do and say things that aren’t always true. We act online like our lives are perfect and yet so many of our children and adults are hurting inside but don’t reach out and get help because everyone else seems like they are doing so good. This definitely makes us question our sanity because our life is falling apart, and everyone else seems to have it all together. I love the line that says, “And we wonder how we get all this anxiety.” Exactly!! All of the things I just talked about, along with the news, the decline of our country, the division in our country, and we wonder why everyone is so anxious.
After the song repeats the chorus about us just needing Jesus, it goes on to say:
We turn away (we turn away)
We're running back to you (oh-oh)
Covered in grace (covered in grace)
God, You can make us new (make us new)
Yes! We are like a revolving door. We turn away from the Lord and then turn back to Him, then we turn away, and then we turn back. I love how the author of this song understands that even when we do this, we are covered in grace. God will always accept us back in. He is not angry with us that we have turned away, He is happy that we have turned back. God is always there with open arms waiting for us to turn back to Him. God is the only one that can make us new. We may think we have done too much, we have really messed up this time, and there is no hope for us. There is always hope in the Lord. He can make us new, He can make our country new, He can make our world new. We just have to invite Him in and ask Him.
The song ends by repeating the chorus. I will leave you with those words.
Honestly, we need, we need You, Jesus (we need You, oh)
Have we all gone mad? Have we lost our minds?
What used to be wrong, we say that it's right
Honestly, we need, we need You, Jesus
Oh, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus
We need You, Jesus, Jesus
Oh, Jesus
Jesus, Jesus (we're running back)
(We're running back to You) Jesus
We're runnin' back to You, oh (Jesus)
Yeah, Jesus, Jesus
Make us new
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you, and we are sorry we turned away; please help us to turn back. We are sorry our country is falling apart. Please show us how we can help to bring you back into our country. Please put in our hearts what you are calling us to do. Please help us to stop searching for the drama and start searching for you. Help us to be your love and light to others instead of spreading the drama and the worry. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I would like to ask a favor. I have been talking about my mentoring program for a while now. It is on Tuesday nights at 8 PM EST on Zoom, and I record it, so if you aren’t able to make it live, you can watch the recording. Maybe mentoring is not for you, and yet you may know someone who might benefit from it. My favor is that you pass the information along to them. CLICK HERE for mentoring. You could just copy it and then paste it into a text message or email. Also, you could just direct them to the walkboldlywithjesus.com website, and the link is right on that first page. If you would like to join mentoring, but just don’t have the $30 per month, please reach out to me. I don’t want a lack of money to hinder my ability to grow closer to the Lord. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Also, can I please ask for some prayers? My middle son Noah is going in for surgery today. Please pray for a successful surgery, healing of all headaches, and a speedy and pain-free recovery. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day.
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in January 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group or about these words, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is “I am here for each one of you, my children. I never abandon you. You are precious in my sight. You are my great delight.”
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Psalm 104 The Lord’s Majesty (Part 5)
Psalm 104:19-23 “You have made the moon to mark the seasons; the sun knows its time for setting. You make darkness, and it is night when all the animals of the forest come creeping out. The young lions roar for their prey, seeking their food from God. When the sun rises, they withdraw and lie down in their dens. People go out to their work and to their labor until the evening.”
It just amazes me how perfectly everything in nature flows. Everything in the world doesn’t flow nicely because we have created many things that mess everything up. However, if we look at nature, we can’t help but be in awe of God’s majesty. Today’s verses start our talking about the moon and how we have seasons. What is even more incredible is that the seasons aren’t the same worldwide. There is a season for everyone. There are places you can go and leave the cold winters if you don’t like the cold. There are also places you can go to leave the heat if you are not a fan. Whatever type of weather you are looking for, there is somewhere on this planet called Earth that you can move to.
Consider the sun, faithfully following its natural course. Each morning, it rises, and each evening, it sets as if it knows the perfect time. This, too, is a wonder. Each day brings a subtle change, a slight variation in the sun's stay. It's a testament to the ever-changing yet perfectly orchestrated nature of our world.
Next, it says, “You make darkness, and it is night when all the animals for the forest come creeping out. The young lions roar for their prey, seeking their food from God.” How great it is that the animals can hunt under the cover of night. They can come out while most humans are sleeping and get the whole night to themselves. Then, when humans are awake, they get to sleep and rest up. I like how the verse says, “The young lions roar for their prey, seeking their food from God.” It reminds us that God provides for all of us. God created this universe with everything we would need to survive. There is enough food for everyone.
Right after I said that, I thought about all the people that are starving to death every day. I looked it up, and one website said 25,000 people die every day due to hunger and related causes. This is a scary number. My first thought is, why isn’t God providing for these people? Why isn’t he giving them what they need to survive? Then He reminds me that we live in a broken world. There are many man-made reasons why they don’t have food. Here is what the actionagainsthunger.org website says, "The planet produces enough food to feed everyone on Earth. Yet more than 3 billion people can’t afford to eat a healthy diet. Why? Interconnected issues of poverty, inequity, conflict, climate change, gender discrimination, and weak government and health systems all play a role in keeping nutritious food out of reach for millions of families around the world.”
God has created enough food and resources for the world and all of the people he created to be in it, yet so many are still starving. This isn’t because God doesn’t care or is not generous. This is because we live in a broken world. We have people who take a lot more than they need and who use their power to prevent others from getting what they need. We have people who are selfish and keep the resources to themselves. All they care about is getting more and more power and wealth for themselves, and they don’t even care about what that means for others.
This is not how God created us to be nor how He created the world to be. However, once sin entered the world, so did this corruption. That doesn’t mean all is lost. God has placed good people in the way of the corrupt people. Yes, there are a lot of people in the world who do despicable things. There are also a lot of good people who are fighting against those people. I know it can sometimes feel overwhelming, and we can start to wonder if the whole world will fall apart. What we must do is to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus. If we keep our eyes on the Lord, we will see that He is bigger than anyone and anything that we run into in this world. God is sending people all the time to help those in need. Yes, I am sure it breaks his heart any time one of his children dies for any reason. I am sure it is particularly sad if it is for a lack of resources when He has ensured plenty of resources for His children.
This is why God sends missionaries and organizations who fight for the rights of people who are starving, who are being sold into slavery, who don’t have drinking water and anyone else who is in trouble. God sees all of His children. He sees their plight and He is sending people to help fix it. He didn’t create this mess, but you can bet He is not ignoring it. He sees it, and He is helping with it.
Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for how amazing you are. We thank you for providing all you have given us. Lord, we are sorry that some people are hogging all the wealth and resources you have given this world. We ask that you put on our hearts how we can help those who are starving or who do not have drinking water. Lord, put on our hearts where we are being wasteful and what we can do to change our wasteful habits. Lord, thank you for being so awesome and for creating nature the way you have. It is amazing how you created everything to work so smoothly. Everything has a time and a place, and that is great! We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen.
Thank you for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If this podcast has blessed you in some way, would you consider supporting the production costs of this podcast? There is a link to donate below. Also, tomorrow is our last night in the surrender series. There is still time to sign up, so you can join us tomorrow night for week #4 of the surrender series. I hope to see you live on Zoom Tuesday night at 8 PM ET. I look forward to meeting everyone else here tomorrow morning. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I. Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in February 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “But you must step forward and not step backward. When I call you, you will know. Don't doubt. Send that doubt to me. And know that I live in you as you live in me.”
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Psalm 104 The Lord’s Majesty (Part 4)
Psalm 104:14-18 “You cause the grass to grow for the cattle, and plants for people to use, to bring forth food from the earth, and wine to gladden the human heart, oil to make the face shine, and bread to strengthen the human heart. The trees of the Lord are watered abundantly, the cedars of Lebanon that he planted. In them the birds build their nests; the stork has its home in the fir trees. The high mountains are for the wild goats; the rocks are a refuge for the coneys.”
Today, we are given a window into the flawless design of everything. This, I believe, is what we have been exploring in the previous three parts as well. God's goodness is truly astounding. It is wondrous how He has considered every aspect. Today’s verses not only demonstrate that God's interest is not limited to our necessities, But also that He takes into account our happiness and comfort. This is a powerful reminder of the role of religious texts in inspiring and comforting us, a source of reassurance and upliftment.
The verse begins by talking about how the grass grows for the cattle and other plants grow for people to use to bring forth food from the earth. This is not a one-sided provision, but a comprehensive one. We need the plants to have food to eat, but we also need the cows. The cows provide milk, cheese, and meat for us to eat, and God is making sure we are both fed.
Next, it says He gave us wine to gladden the human heart. I know many people who are happy that we have wine to gladden our hearts. I do think we need to be careful that we don’t turn to this wine to gladden our hearts more than we turn to the Lord. What can start out as a small glass of wine at night to wind down can turn into a few glasses every night just to deal with the stresses of our day-to-day lives. This is when it can become a problem. Do you need to have a glass of wine every night? What if you took a break and fasted from it for a week or even a month? Would you be able to do that? I know someone who gives us wine and all alcohol every Lent. This is a great chance for her to remind herself that although she really likes a glass of wine here and there, she doesn’t need it. She is ok without it.
One reason it is good to take a look at your wine or alcohol consumption is that if you are regularly drinking more than a glass at night, then you might not be feeling your best in the mornings. I follow Rachel Hollis online, and I have read her books. She talked about how she used to have a glass of wine when she got home from work to help her unwind. However, the stresses of life increased, and one glass went to two glasses, and every now and then went to every single night. She said she noticed that every morning, she was waking up and starting her day out at a disadvantage because she wouldn’t feel great. She would feel crappy from the wine she had the night before. I don’t know about you, but if I start each day out feeling crappy, it doesn’t usually get better.
Have you noticed that you feel crappy when you wake up in the mornings? Do you have a headache or a stomachache? Do you just feel drained and worn out? You don’t have to feel this way. God does not want us to feel crappy. Instead of turning to alcohol to help you unwind, maybe put on some praise and worship music and dance it out. Maybe sit and read scripture and talk to the Lord. He is there for you, and He will listen to you for as long as you want to talk. He can even help you in your situation and He can show you a way forward. Alcohol can’t do that. It may feel like it is helping you in the moment but it is not helping in the long run and could even be hurting you.
I am not sure who needed to hear that this morning; that certainly wasn’t what I thought I would be talking about, but the Holy Spirit knew someone listening really needed to hear that. If you are listening to this episode and the Spirit makes you reconsider how much you are drinking, I encourage you to listen to a few episodes of my friend Catherine Cody’s podcast, “Meet Me At The Well.” Catherine is a recovering alcoholic and is real and honest about her struggle in her podcast. She gave her testimony on one of my first few Witness Wednesdays. If you want to hear her incredible story it is episode #236. She is so real and loving and she has a heart for anyone struggling with any addiction. If you need someone to talk to about where you are at please reach out to me, and I can put you in touch with Catherine. Or you can check out her podcast, and she probably has contact info there. If you question whether you drink too much, just listen to her podcast, Meet Me At The Well. What have you got to lose?
Next, the verse says, “Oil to make the face shine, and bread to strengthen the human heart.” Can you believe that God even cares about our faces shining? He also gave us bread to strengthen the human heart. I don’t know about you, but I am more excited about the bread than I am about the wine. I love bread. I also love how bread can be used as a sacrifice. There are many people that do bread and water fasts where that is all they eat for a day, or for a certain period of time. This is a great thing to add to your prayer life. Fasting and prayer are so powerful. If you have a prayer that you have been asking and you have not seen any answers yet, try praying and fasting and see if that helps. It doesn’t have to be a 40-day fast like Jesus did in the desert. It could be one day a week, or it could be fasting from something you really like, or it could be missing one meal a day for a week, or whatever you feel called to do. If you want to try adding fasting to your prayer, ask the Lord how, and He will give you guidance. He will tell you what is best for you. Currently, I am fasting from soda because I love it, and it is becoming an addiction again. Also, I have a prayer request I would like answered sooner rather than later and I am hoping God will look upon my fasting with favor.
Next it says, “The trees of the Lord are watered abundantly, the cedars of Lebanon that he planted. In them, the birds build their nests; the stork has its home in the fir trees.” Isn’t it amazing how God takes care of all of his creatures, not just the humans? He created so many creatures and yet He hasn’t lost track of a single one of them. He knows exactly what each one needs.
God created trees to have roots so they can have as much water as they need. Trees are good for so many reasons for us humans. They provide us with shade, fruit, wood for fires, wood for furniture and houses, and also paper. Trees were also used for weapons such as bows and arrows. However, trees are also useful for the animals. The verse talks about how birds build their nests in trees. They are not the only ones. I know squirrels live in trees as well. There are many animals that either live in or spend time in trees. Trees provide protection from many animals.
The verse ends with, “The high mountains are for the wild goats; the rocks are a refuge for the coneys.” I have no idea how goats can climb mountains. I have seen goats on mountains, but it makes no sense to me how they stay up there and don’t fall down. It is great of God to make the high mountains for them. I am sure they are protected up there, and they know their way around better than we would. It also says the rocks are a refuge for the coneys. I don’t know about you, but I had no idea what coneys are, so I looked it up. It looks like they are a type of rabbit. So this verse is saying that the rabits can hide for refuge in the rocks. This is great because their natural predators would be large cats, pythons, and eagles. If they can hide in the rocks, that will protect them from most of the animals trying to find them and eat them. God is our protector, and He protects the animals, too!
Dear Heavenly Father, we ask you to bless everyone listening to this episode. Lord, thank you for looking out for us and for knowing us so well. You anticipated our every need and the needs of all the animals, and you provided for those needs. You are truly amazing, and we love you so much! Lord, I ask you to pour your love into everyone listening and that you help all those who are listening who may be struggling with alcohol use. Lord, help them get help if they need it. We love you, Lord, you are so amazing! We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If this podcast has blessed you, please consider making a donation towards the cost of making this podcast. Also, if you could share and leave a review, that would be helpful as well. There is a link to donate below the show notes. I look forward to seeing you all on Monday morning. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed weekend!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in February 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, I am setting your hearts on me. I am riveting your hearts to my heart. If your heart is set on me, your words and your thoughts will follow.”
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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Psalm 104 The Lord's Majesty (Part 3)
Psalm 104:10-13 “You make springs gush forth in the valleys; they flow between the hills, giving drink to every wild animal; the wild asses quench their thirst. By the streams, the birds of the air have their habitation; they sing among the branches. From your lofty abode, you water the mountains; the earth is satisfied with the fruit of your work.”
Today, we are back with Psalm 104. If you missed Monday’s episode, I Have decided to stick with Psalm 104 and break it down into smaller sections. The reason I decided on Psalm 104 is because it shows us so many things we can be grateful for, and it shows us the many ways God provides and looks out for us. Psalm 104 also shows us His power and His majesty, and I think it is a good idea to stop and think about that often. Otherwise, it can be easy to take the Lord for granted because He is always there for us, and much of what He does for us goes unnoticed because we don’t really think about how much He is doing. We think it just happens.
For instance, we take for granted the sun coming up and going down because it just happens each and every day. However, it wouldn’t happen if God didn’t make it happen. If He wouldn’t have created the earth to spin the way that it does. Today’s verse starts out talking about how God makes the springs gush for the in the valleys and how they flow between the hills, giving drink to every wild animal. Did you ever think about how great it is that there is water spread worldwide? There is water in the mountains, there are oceans of water, but then there are also streams and rivers. Then there is water under the ground that you can tap into with a well if necessary.
It’s also interesting that where water is more scarce, the Lord created the things that live there to suit their environment. In a desert, plants like the cactus have water-storing characteristics. You also have camels in a desert, and they are extremely efficient with the amount of water they use daily. They can go for about a week without having to drink water. They can also drink a lot of water in a short amount of time. A typical camel can drink 53 gallons of water in three minutes. Isn’t it amazing how God thought of everything all the earth's creatures would need and then created us to meet those needs?
Next, it says, “By the streams, the birds of the air have their habitation; they sing among the branches.” Water is important to birds, just like it is to all animals. Birds build their habitation in many different places depending on what the bird needs. Some build them on the ground, and yet they know this makes the nest more vulnerable, so they camouflage them well. Many others build them high off the ground so they won’t be so vulnerable. They make the nests out of various different materials. It depends on what they can find and what their needs are. Isn’t it amazing that God always provides for them exactly what they need?
The verse ends with, “From your lofty abode, you water the mountains; the earth is satisfied with the fruit of your work.” This part reminds us of how easy it is for God to provide for us. He doesn’t have to lift a finger. He just spoke the world into existence, and it was so perfectly made. He can sit up in heaven and command things to happen down here. I like how the verse says, “The earth is satisfied with the fruit of your work.” The earth is satisfied with His work because He thought of everything when He created the world and all its creatures.
When I think about how easily God created the world and how He thought of everything, even the smallest detail, and then made sure to provide for that detail, I feel better about the things I ask the Lord for. When I take the time to think about His marvelous creations and how he just spoke the words and the whole universe was created then it reminds me that when I ask the Lord for things, I am not asking for too much. This is something we often think. We don’t bring our little cares and worries to the Lord because we don’t want to bother Him. We don’t ask Him for healing for every ache and pain because we know how busy He is.
The thing is, He is never too busy for anything you want to bring to Him. He is not busy because what would be impossible for us to do is easy for Him to do. He is not bound by the same worldly constraints as we are. God isn’t even bound by time. All things are happening at the same time for the Lord. That means it is ok if you did not say the prayer you wanted to say for someone before they left for travel. You can still say the prayer now and it will help them because God is seeing you say that pray at the same time they are going away. I know that is a lot to wrap your head around and we don't have to understand it perfectly. I don’t actually think it is possible to fully grasp or comprehend the majesty of God completely on this side of heaven. There is a lot that will remain a mystery and we may have many questions we want to ask God once we get to join Him for all eternity.
For now, I think it is important for us all to know that we are not asking God for too much. He is not too busy for us to come to Him with all the little things in our lives. He cares about the small things just as much as He cares about the big things. Also, there is nothing too hard for God. Sometimes, I think we hesitate to ask God for the things we really want because we think it is too big of an ask. It is too much to ask God for a complete healing of terminal cancer because the doctors said it is was possible. Guess what? All things are possible for God. It is not hard for God to cure terminal cancer. He can curse that cancer and can shrivel up and die. Did you know you can do this, too? You have the power of the Lord living inside of you. You have permission from God to speak with authority because of that power you have living inside of you.
God wants us to come to Him with everything. Good or bad, big or small, He is our Father, and He wants to hear all about it. He also likes it when we use the power we have living inside of us to help ourselves and others as well. Remember when I talked about how He created the camels and cactus with the ability to store water? God gave them what they needed to live in their environments. God did the same for us. He gave us the Holy Spirit to help us live in this world. This means we have all the power and the strength we need to survive this world. With the Holy Spirit inside of us, we have the wisdom and knowledge to do the right thing. We just need to ask. We have the power to heal. We just need to realize we have this power and use it. We have the power to resist sin. We just need to call on it.
God created us to be the people we are and He gave us all we need to live in this world that we live in. I know this world is crazy, and it seems to be falling apart. I know this world wants less and less to do with God. However, He knew this would happen. None of this is a surprise to the Lord, and He created you to live in this time. That means He knew all you would need, and He gave it to you. If you feel you lack anything right now, that is a lie from the enemy. Your Heavenly Father knew exactly what you would need and gave it to you. You have the same power that raised Jesus from the dead living inside of you. Rely on that power, call on that power. You are stronger than you think you are.
Dear Heavenly Father, we ask you to bless everyone listening to this episode today. We ask that you help us to see how perfectly you made us. We ask you to help us see how you meet all of our needs. Lord, you are amazing, you have thought of everything when you created the world. We are in awe of how perfectly you created nature to fulfill all of our needs. You are truly remarkable. Lord, we ask you to help us bring everything to you, big or small. We ask you to let us know that you want to help with everything. Help us, Lord, to discover the power we have living inside of us and help us to rely on that power more than we rely on ourselves. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If this podcast has blessed you in some way, would you consider making a donation towards the cost of production? Also, if you would share it with a friend or leave a review, that would also help. If you would like to grow closer to the Lord and would like some help, there is a link for more information about my mentoring group below. This month’s theme is Surrender. We are learning how to surrender all we have to the Lord. I hope you will join us. I look forward to meeting you all here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in February 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Keep your eyes fixed on me. Sit in my presence so that I may fill you so that you may reach out and touch others. This is my command to you. Listen to what I say and do.”
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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Today’s witnesses are from Matthew West’s website called popwe.org. If you don’t know who Matthew West is, he is a singer, songwriter, and storyteller. This website is for the non-profit that he has with his father, a pastor. Matthew and his father encourage people to share their stories. They have various categories of stories. Today, I chose 2 testimonies from the Healing Category. I love healing testimonies because I don’t think we all believe God is still healing people today. We read about how God healed people through Jesus and the apostles, and we love it. Yet, if we are honest with ourselves, we don’t believe God is still healing people through others in this day and age. I want you to know He is. I have seen it so many times at our Encounter healing services or even just when I am praying over people. God is good. He doesn’t want to see His people suffering. I pray when you hear this testimony, you can see not only how God has helped these two women in their lives but how He could help you in yours and in your loved ones’ lives, too. I pray you see the miracles in their lives and know miracles are possible in your situation, too!! There is always hope when you have the Lord.
Cathy: I was raised in a house with a mother who was and is mentally ill. She was very abusive to me, physically and emotionally. At a young age, before I started school, my great uncle moved in with us and he molested me for as long as he stayed. I think it was only a few months. I received Christ into my life when I was 6. Because of the abuse and what my mother constantly told me about how worthless I was, how I caused her illness, the problems in my parents’ marriage, and her unhappiness with life in general I became convinced there was something terribly wrong with me deep inside that kept anyone, including God, from really loving me. I carried this conviction throughout my life and I let it ruin and end my marriage, also affecting my children. I never abused my children in any way, but I was often absent emotionally because I lived in deep depression from my preteen years.
I’m 72 years old now and I’ve been divorced for 27 years. I thought my life was over and I was waiting to die. I was estranged from my sister, my mother is in a nursing home with dementia, I’m divorced, my daughter lives 400 miles away with my 2 grandsons and doesn’t need me for anything, and I lost my son to cancer under extremely difficult circumstances. I have PTSD from the childhood abuse and before my son died, that all came back and hit me so hard I was having panic attacks again from dealing with my daughter-in-law. That was when my son became ill and was placed in hospice care.
A friend invited me to move to a small town where she lives and I moved as soon as my son passed. God brought me completely to the end of myself there. I had no more defenses, all the walls I had built emotionally to protect myself through the years failed and I was teetering on a mental breakdown. I hunted for 5 years in the small town where I lived for a church and couldn’t find what I felt like I needed. One day, as I was walking through my living room I was so frustrated that I threw my hands up in the air, looked to heaven and prayed, “God, there has to be a place in Wellington I can go to church to be a part of Your family, to serve You and to learn about You. Please show me where it is!! Later in the week I was talking to my cousin, who is a minister, about not being able to find a church and she told me about a couple she knew well who had just started pastoring a church where I lived and that I needed to go. I told her I had been twice and didn’t like it. She told me to go one more time, so I went the following Sunday.
I walked in the door to the same very small crowd of about 10 or 12 people. I told God I didn’t like this. We sang old hymns, sitting down slowly and I reminded God I didn’t like this either. Then a woman got up to preach. Her sermon that morning was on holiness. Not 5 words into her message I began to have the most incredible experience of my life to that point. It felt like someone was above me pouring a pitcher of warmth, comfort, joy, peace and healing that started at the top of my head and slowly went down my whole body until it reached the tips of my toes! I don’t know how much time passed. I just know that was the most comforting feeling I had ever experienced. When the feeling reached my toes, I heard His voice over my right shoulder! I knew no one else had heard Him but I knew it was God speaking out loud to me. He said 5 words. “Here, Cathy. This is it.” I had cried out “show me where to go “ just a few days before and He answered my question directly, with 5 words!!! The creator of the entire universe, the One who placed the galaxies in the sky, hanging them in nothing, called me by name!!! “Here, Cathy. This is it.” My life changed in that moment.
I’ve spent the next 12 or 15 months on an incredible journey of healing and restoration and it’s not completely over yet. I have experienced God in my house where He miraculously healed me from depression through a song I was singing! I felt Him touch my heart! And He has talked to me- and I’ve spoken to Him in return. It has been the most magnificent experience I’ve ever heard of! I’m writing a book about it. All glory goes to Him! I’ve worked through many memories of abuse where God took me back in my mind to experience that pain of rejection and confusion one more time but this time He scraped out the infection of hurt and rejection and closed it up, healing it for all time. He asked that I apologize to my mother, which I did and He has restored that relationship in a different way. I can’t begin to tell you all that has happened in the time since then but I’m a new person at 72 years old!!! I am healed and restored! I am made whole! He loves me, more than I can possibly understand! Now, I want to share my story only to highlight what God has done for me and what He wants so badly to do for others who are hurting and crippled like I was from abuse. I hope I have been able to convey to you how incredible my story is! I know God wants me to share it.
My name is Sierra and I’m 27 years old. I’m from Kentucky. In 2023, When I was 26 years old, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. To say this diagnosis took me by surprise would be the understatement of the century. I have no history of cancer in my family. I found out through genetic testing that out of 77 breast cancer genes, I do not carry a single one. So, breast cancer?! What?! Not possible! Or so I thought. In the very early stages of this, I was struggling so much. I wasn’t sleeping, I wasn’t eating, I was pacing the floors at night, crying all hours of the day and night. My anxiety was at an all-time high. I was also very angry at God; I couldn’t understand why He would allow something like this to happen. I had so many doctors coming at me from every direction that you can think of. All needing to do different things regarding my cancer. And I felt like every single one of them was signing my death certificate for me. I believed my time on this earth was coming to a close. I firmly believed this was a death sentence, and you could not convince me otherwise.
Through all this anxiety, anger, and fear, all I could think about was my son. My sweet 5-year-old boy. I’ve been a single mother since I was 3 1/2 months pregnant. As much as that sounds like an “awe” thing, I promise it’s not. I was in a pretty abusive relationship at the hands of my son’s father. If I’m being totally honest, he almost killed me. So, in the grand scheme of things, it was a blessing that he left and never looked back. But in my current circumstances, it was so hard for me to still see that blessing. I felt like God was taking me away from my son and I didn’t understand why. Leaving him was my biggest fear, even before I received this diagnosis. I felt like that fear was coming true.
Fast forward to May, it was time for my first surgery. I had to get something called a porta cath., otherwise known as a port. They make you get these ports for treatment reasons. You are unable to get chemotherapy through your veins because the strength of the medicine destroys them. They surgically place this port. It goes through one of the main areas of your heart and through a vein in your neck. The day came for that surgery, and I sat back there in that pre-op room, alone and so scared, even shedding a few tears. I knew once this surgery was completed, it was “go” time. Chemo would start. I just didn’t know what my future was going to look like.
Again, it all terrified me. But in that moment of uncertainty, a peace overcame me. A peace that truly made and still makes no sense, A peace that surpassed all of my understanding. A peace I prayed SO hard for. I can’t tell you how many times I prayed for that peace, yet I never received it. That was something else I didn’t understand. But I will say although I didn’t get that peace when I wanted it, I got it when I needed it the most. And thankfully it has stayed with me ever since then. I have never felt safer than I did in that moment. I just KNEW He was there in that room with me. It still gives me chills to think about. Isn’t our God wonderful?! Part of me believes, that there is a part of all of us that thinks our prayers are to be answered with the prettiest things…all the rainbows & sunshine. But sometimes, it’s just not that way. Sometimes they’re answered through heartbreak, through darkness, through a storm or a bad chapter. The thing I’ve learned though, is how okay that is. There is nothing wrong with that. I think that’s a testament of God’s faithfulness. How He meets you exactly where you are and gives you what you need.
It took me walking this cancer road, it took this horrible, gut-wrenching chapter of my life for every tear filled prayer, that I’ve ever prayed to be answered. Everything from friendship, peace, a God centered loving church, and everything in between. God’s faithfulness has been evident in such abundance. Now here I am, 1 year and 1 month in. I am still standing, and I am stronger than I ever have been, mentally, physically, and spiritually. And now in I am in REMISSION! I’ve had two surgeries. My most recent one being a double mastectomy. I’ve had 5 chemotherapy treatments and 30 rounds of radiation. I’ve had 2 anaphylactic reactions to that chemotherapy. One of those reactions almost killed me. I’ve had sickness you wouldn’t believe. I was so sensitive to the chemo drugs. I lost all my hair, had some chemo rashes and even inflammation in the lining of my lungs. I had a blood infection, a handful of ER visits and scans, and a couple hospital stays. You name it and it’s unfortunately happened to me. It’s been the hardest year of my life. But I’ve let Him be my strength. I have leaned into Him. I’ve praised Him every single step of the way and the miracles came rolling in, in the process. He has still been so good to me!
I also realize now that what I thought was a death sentence was really a life sentence, in the best possible way. I have a new life in Christ. I was baptized 2 months ago, and I had the honor of my physician, who is a dear friend to me as well as the one who found my cancer, baptizing me! I’ve been open about my battle with cancer because I hope that through my struggles, I’ve helped people realize that God doesn’t cause our pain. But He uses that pain. There is no bad day, heartache, storm, or bad chapter that He can’t use for good. I also pray that I’ve shown that it’s possible to have peace in the middle of pain. But that’s only possible with God! But I wanted to share just a little bit of my story with you. God is good!
Thank you so much, Cathy & Sierra, for sharing your testimonies. All the glory goes to God when we tell others what He has done for us. It is not easy to be vulnerable and share your story with others. We are so grateful you were brave and shared it with us to we can celebrate the power of God with you. We are so grateful He healed you and set you free. Thank you again for sharing your story!
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Psalm 104 The Lord's Majesty (Part 2)
Psalm 104:5-9 “You fixed the earth on its foundation, so it can never be shaken. The deeps covered it like a garment; Above the mountains stood the waters. At your rebuke, they took flight; at the sound of your thunder, they fled. They rushed up the mountains, down the valleys to the place you had fixed for them. You set a limit they cannot pass; never again will they cover the earth.”
Today we pick up where we left off with Psalm 104. The verse starts by reminding us that the Lord fixed the Earth. He created all things, and He created the Earth on its foundation so it can never be shaken. That can be pretty reassuring if we let it. If we really let that sink in, The Lord has fixed the earth on its foundation so it can never be shaken. Some days, the earth seems like it is falling apart. It is good to be reassured that God is in control and that He won’t allow the world to be shaken.
Next, it says, “The deep covered it like a garment; Above the mountains stood the water. This sounds like it is talking about the flood. When Noah was living, the people of God had turned away from Him. Genesis 6:5-8 says, “Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. The Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. The Lord said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky; for I am sorry that I have made them.” But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.
Next, it says, “At your rebuke, they took flight; at the sound of your thunder, they fled. They rushed up the mountains, down the valleys to the place you had fixed for them. This narrative of the Lord's control over the water can invoke a sense of awe in us, reminding us of His power and sovereignty. The Lord created the whole universe with his words. When we stop to think about that, it is amazing. The waters fled at the Lord’s rebuke. How many of us can say that we speak to nature, and it listens to us?
Today’s verse ends with, “You set a limit they cannot pass; never again will they cover the earth.” Today’s verse shows us how powerful God is and that He controls all nature. God decides where the water will go and where it will not go. It is amazing how He made the oceans, rivers, and lakes. He contained the water in the places He wanted it. At one point, there was water everywhere. In Genesis 1:9-10 God said, “Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good.”
The last line of this verse also reminds us of God’s promise to us: “Never again will they cover the earth.” God made this covenant with us after He flooded the Earth. He promised He would not do that again, and He gave us a rainbow as a sign of that covenant. Rainbows are still a sign of that covenant. Sometimes, God will give us a rainbow when we are struggling to believe something will really happen. I remember I was in a car with some of my girlfriends once and we were talking about how one of my girlfriends really wanted to get married and have children and it had not happened yet. We talked about how it is hard to keep hoping for something when you have waited too long for it and still don’t see any signs of it on the horizon. All of a sudden, there was a beautifully full rainbow right ahead of us in the sky. We know that was God reassuring her that He knows her hopes and dreams and He will fulfill them. My friend is getting married in four days! God is so good!
God can do the same for your hopes and dreams. I know hope is hard, especially if you have been waiting for something for a long time. I know it can feel like it is never going to happen. I can feel like He has forgotten about you. You can be tempted to give up, hoping for what you want, and figure it just wasn’t God’s plan for you. I want to encourage you not to give up. I want to encourage you to keep hoping, even when it is hard and even when you feel like there is no point.
God rewards persistence. He tells us this through several stories in the Bible. God wants us to keep asking. I am not sure why some things take a long time, and others happen right away. I am not sure why it seems like God is ignoring us at times. I do know that is not true. God is never ignoring us. He is always right there by our side. His attention is always aimed directly at us. The problem is that His timing is not our timing, and that sucks! We feel we know what we want, and we even are pretty sure our timing is great. However, the Lord can see things we can’t see, and if we get what we want before we are ready, it won’t be as good.
My friend waited on God’s timing and has now found the man of her dreams. God brought her a guy who gets her. They have a similar sense of humor, they both love dogs, and they are so cute together. Does it stink that she had to wait this long to meet him? Yes. Does God have a plan that is bigger than our plan? Yes. My friend did not give up on her hopes and dreams, and I hope you won’t either, even if it seems impossible. Even if it seems like you missed your chance or you missed your window, if you want it, keep praying for it. God is a way maker. He can find a way where there is no way. As Matthew West would say in his new song, “Don’t Stop Praying!”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone listening to this episode. Lord, we are in awe of your majesty. We are in awe of how you speak commands over the earth, and it listens. We are in awe of keeping the water contained where you want it. Lord, you are incredible. I love looking at this Psalm to see your majesty on display. Thank you for your covenant with us, Lord. Thank you for reminding us of that covenant when we need it. Lord, we ask that you help us not to give up hope on our hopes and dreams. We ask that you help fortify us in faith that hope in you will not disappoint. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting some of you on Zoom this evening. It is not too late to join mentoring, and you can be on live tonight as well. We are in week #3 of our Surrender series. Tonight, we will discuss how we can surrender our hopes and dreams to the Lord. There is a link to sign up at the bottom of the show notes. Mentoring is $30 a month, and you get live mentoring on Zoom Tuesday nights at 8 ET. You will also get a recording of the session in case you weren’t able to come live or you just want to watch it again. I hope you will join us! Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in February 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “What do you have to lose if you step out and do the things that I do? What do you have to gain?”
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Psalm 104 The Lord’s Majesty (Part 1)
Psalm 104:1-4 "Everything I am will praise and bless the Lord! O Lord, my God, your greatness takes my breath away overwhelming me by your majesty, beauty, and splendor! You wrap yourself with a shimmering, glistening light. You wear sunshine like a garment of glory. You stretch out the starry skies like a tapestry. You build your balconies with light beams and ride as King in a chariot you made from clouds. You fly upon the wings of the wind. You make your messengers into winds of the Spirit, and all your ministers become flames of fire.”
For the next few days, we are going to look at Psalm 104. Someone mentioned it at prayer group last week, and it is a beautiful Psalm that shows us how majestic the Lord is and all the amazing things He does in the world. Nature can be such a powerful place to see God’s work. Sometimes, He shows off in incredible ways, and this week, we are going to take a look at some of those ways. I pray that by examining this Psalm and the ways the Lord shows off for us in Nature, we will begin to notice the Lord more in all the amazing things we see around us.
Today’s verse starts off by saying, “Everything I am will praise and bless the Lord! Is this how we are praising the Lord? With everything that we have? For me, I would say yes and no. There are definitely some songs that I sing, and when I am singing those songs, I sing with everything I am. I pour my heart and soul into singing that song. The reason for this is because I resonate with the words of the song. Whatever it is about certain songs, I sing them with my whole being. I love music, and I love songs like that.
How about you? Is it music for you, too, or is it something else that helps you praise the Lord with your whole being? Maybe it is nature. When you see an amazing sunset or you watch the wildlife, you become overcome with praise for the Lord. Or, maybe it is your family. Whenever you spend time with them, you are overcome with gratitude for the Lord. It seems David often became overcome with Gratitude for the Lord. It seems like King David understood how amazing the Lord is and praised Him with His whole being.
Next, it says, “O Lord, my God, your greatness takes my breath away, overwhelming me with your majesty, beauty, and splendor! Has this ever happened to you? The Lord has done something in your life, taking your breath away. It has definitely happened to me. There have been many moments in my life when my breath was taken away. When I got married and when I had my children, there were definitely times when the Lord took my breath away. I couldn’t imagine how lucky I was for the Lord to have blessed me with a husband who loved me so much and three handsome, healthy boys.
Looking at God’s majesty, beauty, and splendor over my lifetime has been amazing, too! I am lucky enough to have seen not only many parts of the United States but many other countries as well. There have been so many wonderful things that we have gotten to see. One time, when we visited Scotland, we got to take a boat trip out and see The Corryvreckan Whirlpool, which is situated off the west coast of Scotland between the islands of Jura and Scarba. It is one of the largest permanent whirlpools on earth and one of the most dangerous stretches of water around the British Isles.
I also lived in Turkey and visited many beautiful places there, especially Cappadocia. Cappadocia is known for its surreal landscape, sculpted over millennia by volcanic eruptions and erosion, and is a spectacle unlike any other. Towering rock formations, whimsically dubbed “fairy chimneys," dominate the horizon, creating an otherworldly atmosphere that captivates visitors. Other notable sites include Bronze Age homes carved into valley walls by troglodytes (cave dwellers) and later used as refuges by early Christians. The 100m-deep Ihlara Canyon houses and numerous rock-face churches. It was breathtaking.
Next, the verse says, “You wrap yourself with a shimmering, glistening light. You wear sunshine like a garment of glory. You stretch out the starry skies like a tapestry.” I like this part of the verse because it reminds us that God is light. No matter what type of darkness you are going through, God’s light can shine through it. The verse says that God wraps himself in shimmering, glistening light and that He wears sunshine like a garment of Glory. Sunshine is pretty bright, wouldn’t you agree? When the sun comes up, it chases away all the dark of the night. God does the same in our lives. When we let the sunlight in, when we agree to have God work in our lives, His light comes in and chases away the darkness.
I love how this verse also says, You stretch out the starry skies like a tapestry. To me, this reminds us that even when we are in the dark of night, there is still some light. God gave us the stars in the sky. This means even when we are going through a dark time, there are still some places of bright light in all that darkness. Just like the stars are a bright light in the dark of night. Have you seen this in your life? You have been in a deep darkness, and yet there were still a few bright lights here and there that kept the darkness from overtaking you. Were there a few stars that shined a light into your darkness?
Lastly, the verse says, "You build your balconies with light beams and ride as King in a chariot you made from clouds. You fly upon the wings of the wind. You make your messengers into winds of the Spirit, and all your ministers become flames of fire.” Honestly, I wasn’t sure what this last part meant. When I looked it up, it says that this part is to demonstrate God’s majestic authority. The verse says He builds His balconies with light beams and rides as King in a chariot made from the clouds. This is something only He can do.
The next line says, “ You make your messengers into winds of the Spirit, and all your ministers become flames of fire.” Again, I was not sure what this meant. However, when I looked it up, I was fascinated to learn that Hebrews 1:7 says, “Of the angels, he says: “He makes his angels wind and his ministers a fiery flame.” This last part of the verse shows us that the Lord has angels, and He can use them to carry out His missions. Whether He needs winds of the Spirit or flames of fire, the angels are there eagerly waiting to carry out His plan. Isn’t that amazing?
You will continue to see as this week goes on how amazing our Lord is! I look forward to spending this week reviewing Psalm 104 with you in more detail and looking at various ways the Lord shows off His glory to us. The Lord is amazing, and sometimes, we get so bogged down with the pressure and troubles of life that we forget to appreciate how awe-inspiring God really is!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone listening to this episode. Lord, please help us to notice your beauty and majesty in this world. Often, all we can see are the problems of our world. Help us to focus on your creations in the world instead of our mistakes and those around us. Help us to see how incredible you are and help us to gain back the awe we once had as children. If we never had an awe Lord, help us to learn how to live in awe of you. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. It’s not too late to participate in this month’s mentoring theme, surrendering to the Lord. Also, if you liked this episode, please share it with your friends and write a review. I look forward to seeing you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in February 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Be doers and promoters of my word. The more that you promote, the more you will draw others to me, my children. I count on you to be innovative in drawing others to me. You can do it. I am with you.”
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Today's Episode is about God's Love. In this episode my friend and prayer group leaders shares an excellent teaching on God's love and even has a call to action at the end. I know you will enjoy this as much as I did.Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/www.findingtruenorthcoaching.comCLICK HERE TO DONATECLICK HERE to sign up for Mentoring CLICK HERE to sign up for Daily "Word from the Lord" emailsCLICK HERE to sign up for free audio training about inviting Jesus intoyour daily lifeCLICK HERE to buy my book Total Trust in God's Safe Embrace
Today's episode is a bit different. My audiobook is going to be coming out on audible soon and so I today I will be reading the introduction to my book Total Trust in God's Safe Embrace so you can all hear what it is about. If you would like to purchase the book in paperback you can get it on Amazon.com or you can go to my website and order an autographed copy. I will let you know as soon as my audiobook is released.Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/www.findingtruenorthcoaching.comCLICK HERE TO DONATECLICK HERE to sign up for Mentoring CLICK HERE to sign up for Daily "Word from the Lord" emailsCLICK HERE to sign up for free audio training about inviting Jesus intoyour daily lifeCLICK HERE to buy my book Total Trust in God's Safe Embrace
Today’s witnesses are from Matthew West’s website called popwe.org. If you don’t know who Matthew West is, he is a singer, songwriter, and storyteller. This website is for the non-profit that he has with his father, a pastor. Matthew and his father encourage people to share their stories. They have various categories of stories. Today, I chose a testimony from the Salvation Category. This witness is from a teenager who felt life was not worth living anymore. Unfortunately, too many of our teens feel this way. The number of teen suicides is on the rise. If you know a teenager that has been struggling, maybe you can share this with them. Brooklyn was saved, and they can be, too. I pray when you hear this testimony, you can see not only how God has helped her in her life but how He could help you in yours and in your loved ones’ lives, too. I pray you see the miracles in her life and know miracles are possible in your situation, too!! There is always hope when you have the Lord.
Brooklyn: This is kind of a long one, but it’s a God story and it’s worth hearing.
My name is Brooklyn and I am 18 years old. This story took place over the course of my whole life (and is still in the process of being written).
This testimony of how God saved me from death and took me to Heaven happened when I was 13 years old. I know this will help and encourage you! I love you, and so does God!!! Biggest lesson: If God saved me, what makes you think He can’t save anyone else? God is so good. I just wanted to remind you of that!! He saved me from death literally.
When I was 13, I tried to kill myself with pills and medications. I woke up at midnight that night and just couldn’t stop praying to God, exclaiming, “I don’t want to die. I regret this. Please help me.” And that was the first time I prayed in years. I then saw myself out of my body. I was floating around in the room and saw my body lying lifeless and still on the bed. My dogs came over to lick me and check on me and all I could do was see this happening. I then saw a huge bright light and I was being pulled into it by an invisible force (which I know are angels). I couldn’t see anyone but I could hear people and their spirits and I was being brought up in like a wagon wheel. Suddenly, I was in front of these TALL golden gates (over 1,000,000 feet tall) and nothing like you’ve ever seen before. SO golden and radiant. On top of the golden gates were tens of thousands of people. All different ethnicities and looks but everyone being 30 years old (which is very significant for the fact that Jesus was in His 30’s when He was taken up to Heaven from the cross).
I remember seeing this one lady specifically. She had Afro hair and was African American. Next to her was a man who was of Spanish descent. I remember them specifically. I hope I’m going to meet them one day when I get there. And all of the tens of thousands of people up there kept cheering me on as I kept getting closer and closer to the gates like I had just won the biggest soccer game in the whole universe. It was so cheerful and awesome! Then suddenly as I got closer, I felt a sense of consciousness that said, “this isn’t my time yet. I don’t want to be here.” And out of nowhere, this LOUD, booming deep voice spoke from above me and all around me and it said, “You will be ok.” I even saw those words in my spirit in black bold letters. Then suddenly I was back in my own bed with my dogs laid up next to me. My one dog, Angel, had tears in her eyes as she kept one eye on me and the rest of her face buried in herself. She did a double take when I woke up and started talking to her. And my other dog, Maverick, was jumping up and down excited that I was alive and next to him. I believe they knew I had died for a split second. Dogs sense everything and these dogs… are NOT cuddle dogs, yet somehow they were right then. I told my mother about what I had tried to do the night before and I was in the hospital for 12 days. The actual hospital for 5 and the mental hospital for the rest. I was supposed to be in the mental hospital for longer but I hated being in there so much that I manipulated my way out of it, which either way was God’s plan because if He wanted me in there longer, I would’ve been in there for longer. I got home and thought everything would be cured. But from May 2017-November 2017, it was still hell and I hated it, but I knew very well then to not try and kill myself again because I was scared. I went through some tough things during that time and one night after a blowout with one of my teachers, I cried and thought, “I’m done living like this.”
I picked up the Bible I had since I was a 7 year old, and ever since then, I haven’t put it down. My walk with the Lord has not been perfect and hasn’t been the best every single waking second which is completely normal and fine because everyone’s walk is this way at one season or another. But ever since that moment when I gave up living my life on my own and started devoting my time to God and praying and reading the NLT version of the Bible (which I completely recommend to everyone who’s searching for a richer deeper meaning into scriptures), my life has truly not been the same. I’ve been through trials. I’ve been through hardships. I’ve been through the rough spots in life and I’ve seen the darkest of dark parts that you can see. I know what it feels like to be alone and to feel alone (because our feelings can also manipulate us to feel one way when it’s not fully that). I know what it feels to have the world fall around you. I know what it feels to have your world crumble with one single word and phrase or action someone has done. I know what it feels like to feel worthless and useless. I know what it feels like to want to kill yourself and die. I know what it feels like.
Without God, I don’t know what I’d be. I don’t know where I’d be. I should be dead. I should be dead and up there with Him in Heaven laughing and having fun for eternity. No pain. No anxiety. No suicide. No injustice. No society pressure. Nothing of that is in Heaven like what’s on Earth. Everything in Heaven is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, joyful parties, get-togethers!!!! Heaven is full of laughter and peace and a bringingness together. No anger. No manipulation. No fear. Trust me when I say that ALL of these things above that I listed are on the lists of “yes” and “no” in Heaven. TRUST ME. I literally went there. So much love, joy, and peace. It’s unlike anything any of us on earth has ever felt before, even on your happiest day… it’s NOTHING compared to what I felt in Heaven that day… what we will CONTINUE to feel when we spend our eternities in Heaven. One thing I want you to take away from this is… Heaven is real. I’ve been there. God’s love is real. His saving power is NOT only for biblical times. It’s for every time. EVERY SINGLE TIME. EVERY SINGLE DAY. It says in Ecclesiastes 3:11 – “Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end.” And Ecclesiasties 3:1 “For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven.” I did not ask for Him and He chose to save me when I could very well not even be here right now in this spot.
It’s valid to feel alone and sad. It’s real. The emotions suck. They come and devour you and take hold of you just when one second ago, you were dancing in a field of garden flowers. It’s like- BOOM. Everything’s all gone in a second and now you can’t even remember the last time you smelled flowers in your life. It comes when you least expect it. It’s not fun. It’s traumatizing. It’s painful. It’s hurtful. It’s invigorating. It’s sad. You can’t go on. You feel like you can’t. And so you give up because everything is going downhill and wrong in your life. Nothing you can do to change anything so why try…? But no. You are not going to be stuck in this place forever. You are NOT going to be tied up to the dock of hell anymore. You are NOT going to continue to sink lower and lower, deeper into the pit because God has been there the whole time. What you’ve been struggling with was a SPIRITUAL ATTACK. The enemy HATES you so much that He causes you to have your eyes blinded from the truth of God’s love and hope and joy for you. How does it feel to know the enemy knows more about the destiny and life you’re going to conquer than you even do? The enemy has attacked you for so long… you started believing it because it became real and it became comfort. But this isn’t forever. I was in that spot too and it felt like it. God changed me and transformed me completely into the woman I am today and I’m still not fully healed and perfect because we will NEVER be perfect in this life. Let that truth take pressure off of you. You will NEVER be perfect in this life, so STOP trying. You’re burning yourself out trying to pursue a lie. The Lord has you on His mind and in His heart all of the time, every single day. You can’t feel it but He LITERALLY created you. The fact you are alive right now is the sign you’ve been searching for. The Lord is on your side and loves you. I never thought He loved me and I thought I had to work towards His love but now I’ve realized how much God loves all of us right where we’re at. He is our rock and our shield and confidence and hope. God’s love NEVER fails. John 14:18 TPT “I promise that I will never leave you helpless or abandon you as orphans-I will come back to you!” That’s just one promise in the Bible. There are THOUSANDS. Joshua 1:9 NLT “This is my command—be strong and courageous! Do not be afraid or discouraged. For the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”” And then finally one of my very awesome favorite ones for right now- Romans 8:38 NIV – “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Nothing can separate us from God’s love. Let’s go confidently to the throne and remember He’s been there from the very beginning. We are not alone. He is here, and He is for us. God is alive and real, and so is Heaven. There is hope. There is a place for you and me and God in eternity. But I want you to remember that you must also CHOOSE to accept Him into your heart and life. You do not need to get baptized and be in a church to go to heaven. That’s not the full truth. That’s only the partial truth. And you want full truth, right? So do I, and so does God. The full truth is this: Romans 10:9 CSB – “If you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” That’s all you gotta do to know confidently that you’re going to Heaven. God is so good. He saved me to help save you. If He can do it to an ordinary person like me, He can do it to anyone. I just want to see your heart changed and transformed to follow Christ and see His goodness and glory in the Land of the Living. It is open for you and for everyone! It’s not limited to anyone. God’s got you so much. Don’t give up! Don’t you DARE give up. You are right on the edge of something amazing and beautiful. And I love you. He loves you. You are loved. Do not forget that.
I hope this changed you and if it did, please let me know so I can know God’s doing something good in all of this.
Thank you so much for sharing your story Brooklyn. I know it is going to help a lot of people. I know when people hear it they will see that they are not alone. I pray they will see if you can get through it, so can they. If God can save you, He can save them too! It is not easy to be vulnerable and share you story and yet the world will be a better place because you did! Thank you!
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Be The Light They Need
Matthew 4:16 “The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned.”
Recently I decided to start at the beginning of the New Testament and read a little bit each day of the New Testament. My Encounter Ministries class was big on evangelization and spreading the good news of the Gospel. They taught us various ways to do this. However, it is hard to spread the good news of the Gospel if you don’t know the Gospel. I do know the Gospel. I have been through the whole Bible several times through different Bible studies and Bible reading plans.
However, if we immerse ourselves in God's word, it will not only become a part of us, but it will transform us. The words, the stories, and the feelings will become ingrained in our very being, and we won’t be able to forget them. The central message of the Gospel is love. This love is not just a feeling, but a powerful force that can change lives and draw people closer to God. God's love for us, and our love for Him, is a concept that was revolutionary in its time. The Jewish people knew that God loved them because He had saved them time and time again and also because His Spirit was with them when they escaped Egypt.
Many people who lived at the time of Jesus didn’t believe in our God. They believed in multiple Gods who did not love them. The gods they prayed to also required a lot from them. They had to perform human sacrifices in some cases. They thought their gods received their power from the worship and sacrifices. The more people who worshiped them, the more powerful they were. Their God’s expected love and allegiance from them.
Then they discovered this God who loved them just as they were, and they didn’t need to do anything to earn that love, which was a game changer. This love is not a passive feeling but an active, unconditional, and sacrificial love. I believe this would be a game-changer for many of us if we truly believed it. If we truly understood that God loves us as His own adopted sons and daughters, we would live life differently. If we could truly grasp this concept that God loves us just as we are, then we could stop trying to earn that love; we could stop trying to live up to these impossible standards that we put on ourselves.
God loves you just as you are. He doesn’t need you to live up to any standards. He doesn’t need you to do anything to earn that love. His love is there for you when you are at your best and when you are at your worst. God is always there for you. That is the first part of the message found in the Bible, and it is one we must not only believe but also trust in and live our lives accordingly by showing the same love to others, forgiving as we have been forgiven, and serving as we have been served.
This brings us to one major message of the Gospel that we tend to overlook or ignore. That is, we are all called to love each other. This can be a challenging call a lot of the time. There are a lot of people in the world who are not very nice. Or at least they act in ways that are not loving. But we are still called to love them, just as God loves us. God is not calling us just to love our family or friends or those who are easy to love. He is calling us to love all those around us, even our enemies.
The verse above says, “The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death, light has dawned.” Jesus was a light to all who lived in the darkness. He brought this love that they had never seen before. God’s love is unconditional and unending, and Jesus shared this love with one and all. This love that Jesus shared was such a bright light in their darkness. Some of the people Jesus interacted with were people who were cast aside by society. They were outcasts, and they felt unloved.
Imagine how it was to be a leper in that day and age. They had to live apart from their whole community, and if anyone did walk near them, they needed to shout “unclean, unclean” So that people wouldn’t get too close to them. Can you imagine Jesus coming up to you and giving you a hug after you haven’t had any human contact in years for fear of infecting them or because of the laws? Imagine that light that Jesus brought into that situation when He healed them or even when he wasn’t afraid to touch them. He gave them their dignity back when he was around them. That is a bright light.
We can all agree that Jesus was a great light in the darkness. Do you know who is called to be that light now that Jesus is no longer walking around on this planet? You are, I am! We are all called to be “little Christs.” We are called to be a reflection of Christ to all those we meet. In John 13:35, says, “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples if you love one another.” Do you want to be a disciple of Christ? If so, we need to love one another. We need to be that light in the darkness. This doesn’t tell us exactly how we should do this, but if we follow Christ’s example, then this means we accept people for who they are. We love them exactly as they are without conditions. We don’t call people names. We don’t judge them and decide what we think of what they did. We simply accept them for who they are. This doesn’t mean you can’t lovingly point out when something is wrong, but first, you must love them unconditionally, or they won’t be able to hear your kind correction. You must always come from a place of love and not a place of chastisement or a place of wanting to be right.
If there was one thing that could change the world, it would be this one thing: If we could learn to love all the people around us, think about how much better the world would be. If we could love those around us, we could stop taking offense to everything they say because we know it is coming from a place of love. If we could help spread more love, then we would also be spreading more light. If we could spread more love and light into the world, there would be no room for hate. The light would chase that darkness away. Will you spread some light today? Who could you love today that you haven’t in the past? Even if you don’t approach the person, change your thoughts to loving thoughts. That would be a great start.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone listening to the episode today. Lord, we love you, and we thank you for all you do for us. We ask you to help us love more. Help us love everyone, even those who are difficult to love. Help us bring your light to all those sitting in the darkness. Help us see through appearances and see what you see. Give us your heart and your eyes for people, Lord. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Tonight is week #2 of our Surrender Series. There is a link below for my website. I invite you to check out the mentoring information and join us this evening on Zoom. I look forward to meeting some of you on Zoom this evening, and the rest of me will meet you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in January 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I am your God, and I can help you. No matter the problem, remember that I am God, and you need to rely on me for each step of the way.”
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We Were So Utterly, Unbearably Crushed
2 Corinthians 1:8-10 "We do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, of the affliction we experienced in Asia; for we were so utterly, unbearably crushed that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death so that we would rely not on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. He who rescued us from so deadly a peril will continue to rescue us; on him, we have set our hope that he will rescue us again.”
I like this verse because it shows us that even when we feel we are crushed more than we can take, we can still have hope that God will rescue us. This is a letter written from Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy, our brother, To the church of God that is in Corinth, including all the saints throughout Achaia.
The verse starts out letting them know that they didn’t want them to be unaware of how they were treated in Asia. It states that they were so utterly, unbearably crushed that they were despaired of life itself. It is great that Paul and Timothy shared their afflictions with their fellow brothers in the church in Corinth. Too many times, we keep our afflictions or ourselves. We pretend that all is ok and that we are fine. We act like we have no troubles, and then people believe us. The problem is that they start to hide their afflictions, too, because they think they are the only ones having any afflictions.
Can you see the damaging spiral this can cause? We all act like we are fine and that nothing is bothering us. We act like life is easy, or our jobs are easy. We act like the world is a wonderful place where nothing bad ever happens. This may make us feel better, but it doesn’t help those around us. We are not teaching those who look up to us for the answers how to deal with heartbreak, disappointment, or any other feelings associated with the afflictions we are hiding.
I actually don’t think it even makes us feel better. We might not feel humiliated that others know the pain we are going through, yet we feel all alone and figure no one else is going through the same thing we are going through. When we don’t share our troubles, we rob our friends and family of the graces that come from comforting us in our time and need.
The next part of the verse says, “ Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death so that we would rely not on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead.” This part has two interesting parts. The first one is that they felt they received this death sentence to teach them a lesson. This is something we all think more often than we would like to admit. When something bad happens to us, we wonder what we did to deserve it. We start to wonder why God is doing this to us. We question what lesson he wants us to get out of it.
God is not the cause of the bad things that happen to us. Yes, it is true that nothing happens to us that has not passed through the hands of God. That means that although he is not the cause, he has allowed it to happen. This does not mean that everything that happens to you is because God is trying to teach you a lesson. It doesn’t mean everything that happens to you is your fault or that it is punishment for something you have done. Sometimes, some things just happen. If we trip and fall down a few stairs, it probably doesn’t have a deep spiritual meaning. If our child or loved one gets sick, it doesn’t mean we are being punished for something.
This verse can comfort us by reminding us that we are not the only ones who feel this way. If the apostles Paul and Timothy felt their affliction was to teach them a lesson, then it is normal for us to think that, too. I also think sometimes this can be the case. However, not everything we go through is to teach us a lesson. However, God can use all things for our good, and sometimes, that comes as a lesson or wisdom gained when we make it through a really hard time.
The second interesting thing about this part of the verse is when it reminds us that God is the one who raises the dead. I love this part because it reminds us that no matter how far down we are, God can always save us. There is no pit deep enough for us to be out of God’s reach. Jesus went all the way down to hell to lead the righteous home. If He can travel to Hell, he most certainly can travel to whatever pit we find ourselves in and lead us to home, too!
Our affliction is hopefully not unbearable, crushing us. However, I do know several people who have loved ones who have cancer, and that may feel unbearable. I know some young adults who are suffering from anxiety, stress, and depression, and they feel that the weight of the world is crushing them. I know some young adults caught up in addiction, and the weight of that is crushing them as well. Whether your affliction is unbearable, crushing, an inconvenience, or somewhere in between, I want to pass this verse along to you to show you that God can still help you. No matter the level of affliction, God can save you. There is nothing too big or too small for God.
The verse ends with, “He who rescued us from so deadly a peril will continue to rescue us; on him, we have set our hope that he will rescue us again.” God will continue to rescue us. No matter how often we find ourselves in trouble or how often we are afflicted. He will continue to rescue us over and over again. All we have to do is set our hope in Him. When we feel the weight of our struggle becoming too much for us, we just turn to the Lord and ask Him to carry that weight for us. He is our Lord and our Savior. That means when we need saving, He will be there to save us.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone listening to this episode today. Lord, you are amazing, and we are so grateful for all that you do. We are grateful that we can rely on you to rescue us repeatedly and that you never let us down. We ask you, Lord, to remind us of this when we forget. We ask you to remind us when we get scared and frightened, and our problems seem to get bigger and bigger. Help us remember that you are bigger than anything we can encounter in this world! We love you so much, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you are struggling with something right now and are wondering how you could surrender your worries to the Lord, I invite you to join us for mentoring this month. The theme is Surrender, and we are learning how to surrender everything to the Lord. If you cannot make it Tuesday nights at 8, you will receive the recording. Although you miss out on the small group discussion, you still get all the teachings on Surrender. For a dollar a day, that is a pretty good value, even if you can’t attend live. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in January 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, be not afraid of the storms of life. I am here beside you. I will help you overcome. My power will break whatever is in the way. I will remove the obstacle because I am the power over the storm.”
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No Weapon Formed Against You Will Prosper
1 Samuel 2:4 “The weapons of the strong are smashed to pieces, while the weak are infused with fresh strength.”
I decided to read the story of Hannah this morning. This month in mentoring the theme is Surrender. One of the videos I watched talked about Hannah and how amazing it was that she prayed to the Lord and then surrendered the outcome to the Lord. She also surrendered the fruit of those prayers to the Lord. I kinda knew the story of Hannah. I knew she wanted a baby and yet didn’t have any children. I don’t know if I knew that her husband’s other wife taunted her often, but she did. One day, Hannah went to the temple and cried inconsolably. She cried out to the Lord, and she made a vow to Him that if He stopped neglecting her and gave her a son, she would give the son back to God unreservedly and completely.
Hannah did conceive, and she had a baby boy. She named him Samuel, and when he was three, she brought him to the temple and gave her son to Eli to be dedicated to the Lord and to serve the Lord with Eli. After she gave her son over to the Lord, she prayed a beautiful prayer. Hannah was rejoicing in the Lord and celebrating his goodness. When I think about this, I wonder how she was able to be so happy.
I understand being grateful to the Lord for conceiving a son, and yet she wasn’t going to get to raise that son. That seems so sad to me. In the past, whenever I would think about this, I would wonder why it was so important for her to have a baby if she was never really going to get to see the baby. This morning God just revealed to me something that I didn’t really think of before.
In the age we are living in today, we know that there are many reasons why a woman might not be able to conceive. Back when Hannah lived, there was just one reason, and it was that God had kept you from conceiving. It doesn’t say in the Bible why Hannah wanted to have a baby. It does say that the Lord kept her from conceiving. In 1 Samuel 1:4-7a, it says, “On the day when Elkanah sacrificed, he would give portions to his wife Peninnah and to all her sons and daughters; but to Hannah, he gave a double portion, because he loved her, though the Lord had closed her womb. Her rival used to provoke her severely, to irritate her, because the Lord had closed her womb. So it went on year by year; as often as she went up to the house of the Lord, she used to provoke her.”
It was customary for all to believe that if you couldn’t conceive, it was because God didn’t favor you or He had forgotten you. This could have been why it was so important for Hannah to have a child. She wanted to show everyone that God did not forsake her. She might have wanted to prove to everyone that she was favored by the Lord as well. It might have been less about being a mom and more about proving to everyone she was not forgotten by the Lord. It also could have been that she was tired of getting tormented each year by her husband’s other wife.
When we don’t understand something in our lives, we can surrender it to the Lord and ask for His help. Hannah was being tormented by someone for something she had no control over. She cried out to the Lord, and He helped her. He heard her cry and answered her prayers. He can do the same for you.
The verse above says, “The weapons of the strong are smashed to pieces, while the weak are infused with fresh strength.” This is from the message translation. It is from the prayer that Hannah prayed to the Lord after she dedicated her son to the Lord. She is stating that the weapons of the strong can’t stand against the Lord. Her rival tormented her about being unable to conceive, and her words hurt Hannah very much. However, Hannah is a daughter of God, and so the weapons formed against her will not prosper. Instead, God gave Hannah the strength to keep going on day after day. He gave her the strength to go to the temple and pray that God take this burden from her.
God can smash to pieces the weapons of your enemies, too. He can infuse you with a strength you didn’t even know you had. We need to go to Him and ask Him, though. We can’t just sit around in our misery and expect God to work. We need to ask Him, invite Him in and He will come in and help us. If you are struggling with something right now, if you need help right now, if you have prayers you really need answered, bring it to the Lord. You don’t have to make a vow like Hannah did. Just cry out to the Lord and tell Him all that is on your heart. Don’t hide anything from Him, as He already knows everything in your heart.
When you cry out to Him, He hears your cries, and He will intervene. We are not alone in our battles. We are never alone in our battles. God is right there with us, fighting alongside us. Yet sometimes, we don’t ask Him into the battle with us. He is a gentleman, and He wants to be invited in. If you want to fight your battle alone, He will be right there next to you, but He will let you fight it alone. If you want Him to fight alongside you, if you want Him to smash to pieces the weapons of your enemies, then invite Him into the fight. Give Him permission to work in your life, and then see what a difference there is when you invite Him in.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone listening to this episode. Lord, we want you to fight with us. We are calling out to you today from the deep recesses of our hearts. We ask that you hear and answer our cries. Lord, many people are listening who have some pretty big requests, and they are looking for some pretty big answers. However, we know nothing is too big or too hard for you. We thank you for hearing our cries and for destroying all weapons formed against us. We are grateful you are for us and not against us. We are grateful you are a waymaker and a miracle worker. We love you, Lord, and we ask all this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!
Thank you for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed weekend!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in January 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Use the power that I give you. Use it now. Use it faithfully each day. And you will bring many to me, your God who loves you.”
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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Can We Worship Through The Struggle?
Job 1:20-21 “Then Job arose, tore his robe, shaved his head, and fell on the ground and worshiped. He said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”
I thought this was an interesting verse in Job. This verse came right after Satan’s first attack on Job. Job has just learned that all of his oxen and donkeys were taken away from him, and the people who took them struck down the servants with swords. Then he learned that his sheep and the servants who took care of them were burned to death. As if that wasn’t enough another servant came in and told them all his camels had been captured and his servants had been killed with a sword. And then, to top it all off, a servant came and told him that his sons and daughters were eating and drinking over the older brother’s house when a powerful wind swept in and struck the four corners of the house. It collapsed on the young people, so they died.
This is one of the amazing things about Job. He is so faithful. I am not sure about you but if I learned that I had lost everything, my first instinct would not be to worship. I do love to worship but I don’t feel like I would be able to worship immediately. He had just found out that not only did he lose all physical things, but he lost all of his children as well. I feel like I would need to go through a period of being angry at God. I would also be angry in general. I would be sad, which I am sure Job was sad.
I don’t think my first thing to do would be to worship the Lord and say, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” Can you believe Job was blessing the Lord just minutes after finding out that his children had died? I knew he never blamed God; that is why he got into this predicament in the first place. He was such a good servant and the enemy tried to tell God it was because God blessed him so much.
I wonder if we would be this faithful. I wonder if we worship the Lord for all the blessings he gave us. Are we what some would call fair-weather friends with the Lord? We are there for Him when all is going well, and yet we blame Him at the first sign of trouble. Do we get angry and scream at Him when we lose our job or our car? What do we do when we lose our children?
Job didn’t just lose one of his children to a deadly disease. He didn’t just lose one of his children to suicide or murder. He lost all his children at the same time. Job went from being the father of seven sons and three daughters to being childless. I can’t imagine the pain he must have been feeling, and yet the first thing he did was worship the Lord. Not only did he worship the Lord, but he also said, “What the Lord gave, the Lord can take away.” He is acknowledging that God is the almighty one and that everything Job had came from Him. He is acknowledging that all we have comes from the Lord.
I just can’t get over Job’s faith. Satan did not stop here with this first attack. Satan came back and infected Job with terrible boils from the soles of his feet to the top of his head. Job was still worshiping the Lord. His wife told him he was a fool. She said to him, “Are you still holding onto your integrity? Curse God and die!” Job replied, “You speak as a foolish woman speaks. Should we accept only good from God and not adversity?” Throughout all that Job went through He did not sin once with what he said.
This is remarkable. I can totally understand what Job is saying when he says that God gave us everything we have, and so He has a right to take it away. I also agree that if we accept the good from God, we must accept the bad, too. However, I agree with Him in the place I am at right now. I haven’t lost any children. I haven’t lost my home or all my belongings. I don’t know what I would do if I had to go through what Job had to go through.
Job truly loved the Lord. He trusted the Lord fully. I love that the first thing he did was to worship the Lord. I have talked with you many times about how important praise is and I think this is such a good example of how praise and worship can help get us through anything. I don’t think that Job understood what was going on. I don’t think He knew God’s plan, and I don’t think He knew how blessed he would be afterward. It would have been easier for Job to go through all he went through if he knew there was an end in sight and that he would be so blessed afterward.
However, God doesn’t always reveal His plan to us. He leaves us guessing and wondering, and this is where we can lose hope. We can lose hope, or we can praise Him and worship HIm and trust that even though we don’t know what His plan is, we trust He has one and that it is for our good. Jeremiah 29:11 says, “For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.” We can stand on this promise. We can rest assured that even though we may be going through a terrible time right now, God has got us in the palm of His hand and He will work all things for our good in His time.
I love that Job worshiped the Lord, but he wasn’t always happy. My sister pointed out the other day that when people usually talk about Job, they make it seem like he was full of joy while he was suffering. This is not the case. He was frustrated and confused. He called out to the Lord for help and expressed his confusion to the Lord. He even told the Lord it would have been better if he had never been born.
I am talking about Job today, not to make you feel bad about how you are handling your difficult situation. I am telling you about Job today to remind you that even though you are in a difficult situation, even though you are angry, frustrated, and confused with the Lord right now, you can still worship Him. You can be angry with Him and yet not blame Him. You can be angry with Him for what you are going through and yet praise Him for the unknown way He will work this for your good.
Romans 8:28 says, “We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose.” We can rest on this promise, too! We can stand on it and declare it in those times when we aren’t sure how God will save us from our situation or how He will bring us through it. God is good. If we can find a way to worship him in the hard times, as Job did, then we will find those hard times just a bit easier. One way to do this is to make a worship playlist, and when the enemy starts trying to get you to blame God for your troubles, listen to the playlist and remind yourself of how good God truly is. Remind yourself of all the times He has blessed you in the past. One great song to listen to when the enemy is trying to whisper lies in your ear is “The Devil Is A Liar” by Colton Dixon. If you aren’t sure what praise and worship songs would be good, you can check out my playlist called Walk Boldly With Jesus Favorites on Spotify. It has many great songs for whatever you are walking through right now.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone listening to this episode. Lord, help us praise you in the hard times. Help us to trust that You are good and that You have good things planned for us even when we can’t see them, even when we don’t understand why we have to walk through this really hard time. Help us to believe you will restore us double on the other side of this hard time just as you did for Job. Lord, help us to see you in all the little things while we are going through a hard time. Help us not to feel abandoned. Help us to feel your presence and to know you are walking through this hard time with us. We love you so much, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and Jesus’s holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If this podcast is a blessing, would you consider sharing it with others or donating? There is a link below to donate, and if you want to share it, you can click on the three dots at the top of the screen, and it will say share episode. You can text it, email it, or send it to someone on Facebook Messenger. Whatever is easiest for you. I truly appreciate your help and your support. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in January 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I am all-powerful. So, move forward in faith and trust. My power can overcome everything. There is nothing for you to fear. I am your God. I love you.”
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Today’s witnesses are from Matthew West’s website called popwe.org. If you don’t know who Matthew West is, he is a singer, songwriter, and storyteller. This website is for the non-profit that he has with his father, a pastor. Matthew and his father encourage people to share their stories. They have various categories of stories. Today I chose two testimonies from the God Stories Category. The first story is of a woman who is in chronic pain and yet tends to say she is fine because that is just what we all seem to do. Her testimony is about how Matthew’s song “Truth Be Told” really spoke to her. The second one is about a woman who learned of a website that tries to help kids who live overseas and have severe medical problems get adopted. I pray when you hear these testimonies, you can see not only how God has helped them in their life but how He could help you in yours and in your loved ones’ lives, too. I pray you see the miracles in their lives and know miracles are possible in your situation too!!
Diane: I wanted to share this story with Matthew that I wrote during a particularly difficult time with my health. It’s about how his song “Truth Be Told” spoke to me.
“Lie number one you’re supposed to have it all together. And when they ask how you’re doing Just smile and tell them, “Never better.” Lie number two everybody’s life is perfect except yours. So keep your messes and your wounds and your secrets safe with you behind closed doors.” – From the song “Truth Be Told”
I was zooming with a college friend yesterday and when she asked how I was doing, I almost fell into my cookie cutter response, “Oh, I’m fine.” Usually when I say I am fine, I’m actually not. Yesterday, the truth came tumbling out. I had a very serious nerve pain issue on Friday and couldn’t stand without my husband lifting me out of bed under ten level pain. I would have gone to the emergency room if I physically could have. My lovely, caring, listening friend heard it all. Her sincere responses made me know she was truly interested in my situation and that I didn’t need to put on my happy face with her. I do tend to pretend all is well, especially if someone asks. Who wants to hear all my woes? Generally speaking, I think it’s a healthy practice not to tell everyone how you really are.
Those of us who suffer with chronic pain are never fine. And there’s not a lot of positive things that can come from dwelling on it. But there’s a fine line between being positive and stuffing your “I am not fine” feelings. I know “stuffing” to be lethal. The lightbulb moment came when she said, “You know saying we’re okay all the time is really a bunch of garbage.” I felt an immense sense of freedom hearing that. Like it was okay to shout, “I am really not okay right now!” When did I get to the place where I accepted the lie in Matthew West’s song that “I’m supposed to have it all together?” Or how about the rest of the telling lyrics……
“I say I’m fine, yeah I’m fine oh I’m fine, hey I’m fine but I’m not I’m broken. And when it’s out of control I say it’s under control but it’s not, and you know it. I don’t know why it’s so hard to admit it When being honest is the only way to fix it.”
Today, I’m getting honest. I am not fine. It’s all out of control. Sometimes things are just awfully bad. I for one am tired of holding it all together. And who says we have to? Sometimes, good things happen when we get real. Other people hear our struggles and don’t feel like they are alone in their pain. I’ve often given thanks for the courageous authors who have written books and songs about their pain and sufferings that have helped me feel less like I’m on an island of one.
I’ve considered it might be a bit prideful for me to suffer in silence, thinking I couldn’t possibly help someone else by opening up. I remember the day I first heard Matthew’s song. I was driving home from physical therapy and heard it on the Christian radio channel, The Message on Sirius radio. When a song truly speaks to you, it moves you to tears. That’s what happened to me. Did you ever feel like someone wrote the exact words that were in your heart? It’s a “stand still, block everything out” kind of moment. What if he never sang it? What if I never heard it? It would have been a loss I would have never known I’d missed. I’ve loved the song for a long time. Last night, when I was getting ready for bed, the refrain played in my head, strolling around my mind like an old companion paying a visit. I’m just so happy my friend’s words helped remind me of it when I needed it most.
“Truth be told, the truth is rarely told.” This may be my favorite line in the song. There can be great healing in the sharing of our truths if we are brave enough and strong enough to peel back the curtain and do it. I hope I’m one of the brave ones.
When my son, Ari, was 4, I came across this blog while staying up late at night searching for anything to help him, who was severely developmentally delayed. It was a family asking for prayer for their young daughter Chrissie who was facing open heart surgery. I began to pray for Chrissie and got connected to the family. Chrissie died. I was so heartbroken for them that I dug deep into their story and learned they had adopted her. I was in awe of this family with many children who went across the world at great expense to adopt a child with a very small chance of living. This family humbled me with their blind faith and commitment to living a radical Christian life. They shared a link to the place they found Chrissie.
I would look at the faces on that page for hours, crying and praying. I did this for months and then a new face appeared one day. A small brown boy with a scared face and a post that read “urgent, at risk of transfer.” I learned some awful truths that year; that orphaned children in Eastern Europe with Down Syndrome usually die before they turn six due to abuse, starvation, and neglect. It was something that had kept me up at night since my eyes were opened. I saw that little boy’s face and it haunted me. I felt in my heart that he had to be saved. As a single parent with a 4-year-old with significant special needs, as well as being a public school teacher at the time making less than $43,000 a year, I didn’t think there was anything I could do for this child. I prayed so hard, and I tried to find a wealthy Christian family to save him. No one came forward.
Months had passed and I knew that this child was soon to be “transferred” to the adult asylum in Russia where he was and that he would die soon after. The first photo I saw of him, his face was burned into my mind…and his name – Ian.
On July 4, 2010 I heard God call me. I knew it was me and Ari who were supposed to go and get Ian. I emailed the adoption agency and asked – can a single mother with little income adopt this boy with Down Syndrome in Russia? The answer was yes. It was also no. I was told time was out for Ian and that he would be transferred on his 5th birthday in April and there was not enough time to complete an international special needs adoption. There was also the issue of the nearly $65,000 it would take to save him. I did not have that; it was more than I made in a year and Ari’s expenses were great.
During this time, Matthew West’s song “The Motions” was being played on the radio. As I would be doing the dishes at night and scraping food we did not eat into the disposal, I would hear the words, “this might hurt, it’s not safe, but I know I’ve gotta make a change…and…I don’t wanna go through the motions, I don’t wanna go one more day, without your all-consuming passion inside of me.”
This song was like God speaking through Matthew directly to me, giving me the courage and will to do this hard thing. It wasn’t hard to want to save a life, but hard to fight the fears of all of the many things involved in trying to adopt this little boy. There were so many times listening to “The Motions” kept me on track over the 13 months it took to get Ian home. I didn’t have the money and my faith was so small at the beginning of what God had called me to. Our fight to save Ian was truly a fight to not live in that nothingness Matthew wrote about.
God brought every single penny of the nearly $65,000 it took to save Ian’s life and make him a part of our little family. 700 people donated to his adoption fund. Ari made the first trip to Russia for the first time we met Ian. People did extraordinary things to make sure Ian would not be transferred before we could get to him. I remember like it was yesterday, on my knees praying to God to help Ari and save Ian and I was so tired and worn. I would cry “The Motions”out onto the carpet at night while Ari slept, begging God to take us to the finish line of bringing Ian home. He did just that, and without one day to spare.
Ian arrived on US soil on August 26, 2011. From there, we went straight to the emergency room for malnourishment and a heart defect. He had open heart surgery on Thanksgiving Day 2016. He underwent two other surgeries to repair his eyes and internal organs. Ian could not speak the day I walked him out of the orphanage in Russia. He only made grunting sounds. Now, he speaks. He could not chew solid food at age 5.5 because he was bottle-fed till then. Now, he loves all foods, especially spicy things! He is the face of humanity and I see God each time I look at him, and very often too, “The Motions” will play in my mind as a clear reminder of how God changed me through a child and a song.
Thank you both for sharing your stories with us. Thank you to Matthew West and His father for providing a platform for people to share their stories so that God can get all the Glory. Hearing other peoples’ stories helps us to know that we are not alone and that everyone else is not living a perfect life while ours falls down all around us. Seeing the miracles in their lives helps us know that miracles are possible in our lives as well.
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Our Actions Matter
Matthew 3:7-10 “But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sad′ducees coming for baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit that befits repentance, and do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now, the axe is laid to the root of the trees; every tree, therefore, that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”
I was reading Matthew chapter 3 this morning, and this verse stood out to me. What stuck in my head is the part where John the Baptist says to the Pharisees and Sadducees, “And do not presume to say to yourselves, “We have Abraham as our father; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now, the axe is laid to the root of the trees; every tree, therefore, that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” What came to me when I read this was that we can’t just rest on the fact that we are children of God.
The Pharisees and Sadducees were secure in their positions in life. They knew they were children of God, and so they thought everything they did was right. They held on so tightly to the laws that they forgot about the spirit of the laws and forgot to take care of God’s people. For many of them, it became more about being in control and having status than it was about helping everyone get into heaven.
Being a child of God brings a certain level of comfort. We know that He will always love us and that He will never forsake us. I just looked up the word forsake because I know what it means, but I couldn’t tell someone else what it means, so I wanted to know what the dictionary says. Forsake means to abandon. God will never abandon us, and He will never stop loving us, and we find courage in those facts. However, what I felt God wanted us to hear today is not to just rest in those facts and forget about everything else.
Yes, indeed, God is always with us, and nothing we can do will make Him love us any more or any less than he already does. However, that doesn’t mean we can just go through life doing whatever we want to do. God has a certain way that he wants us to live our lives, and He definitely cares how we treat people. Let me remind you what it says in Luke 13:22-30.
“He went on his way through towns and villages, teaching and journeying toward Jerusalem. And someone said to him, “Lord, will those who are saved be few?” And he said to them, “Strive to enter by the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able. When once the householder has risen up and shut the door, you will begin to stand outside and to knock at the door, saying, ‘Lord, open to us.’ He will answer you, ‘I do not know where you come from.’ Then you will begin to say, ‘We ate and drank in your presence, and you taught in our streets.’ But he will say, ‘I tell you, I do not know where you come from; depart from me, all you workers of iniquity!’ There, you will weep and gnash your teeth when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, and you yourselves thrust out. And men will come from east and west, and north and south, and sit at table in the kingdom of God. And behold, some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last.”
This verse goes well with the verse above to remind us that we are not automatically going to heaven because we are a child of God. I know this is a controversial belief because it also says in the Bible that Jesus is the way to heaven, and if we believe in Jesus, we will go to heaven. I don’t think these two verses contradict each other. I think they help explain each other. Yes, we need to believe in Jesus and have to acknowledge that He is our savior. However, I think the verse for today and these other verses from Luke show us that our behavior also matters. We don’t have to earn our way into heaven, and yet we can lose heaven by the way we act here on earth.
The people in this parable thought they were headed to heaven. They thought they were sitting at the table with Jesus, and yet He said, “I do not know where you come from; depart from me, all you workers of iniquity!” If we couldn’t do something to lose heaven, why would Jesus put this in the Bible? Why would He share this parable?
Romans 10:9-10 “ because, if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For man believes with his heart and so is justified, and he confesses with his lips and so is saved.” I don’t think the verses above contradict this verse. I know that this verse is often used to confront Catholics. We are asked why we don’t know we are saved because Jesus says so in this verse. We are asked why we think we need to earn heaven. We don’t think we need to earn heaven. We do however believe that God gave us free will and He calls us to live a certain way. He loves us so much that He gives us the choice of whether we want to live that way or not. The reason I don’t think the verses are contradictory is because I believe that if you know that Jesus is Lord and you believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, then you will love God so much you will want to do the right thing.
The closer we get to God, the more we want to live in a way that honors Him. If we truly know who God is, then we will want to live the way He asks us to live. However, we need His help with this, as living a Godly life in the world today is very difficult. The world seems so contrary to our Godly way of life. The world teaches us to get ahead at all costs. The world teaches us that people don’t matter if they stand in our way. It teaches us it is ok to step on people to pursue our own happiness. It teaches us each person is to look our for themselves. This is not ok. This isn’t how God is calling us to live.
What I really want to get across to you today is that we can’t use the fact that we are Christians as a license to act however we want to. We can’t think we are all high and mighty because we just went to church and then go around judging people and being rude to everyone. God cares how we treat people. He cares about how we act and our relationship with Him. God knows everything; he can see into the innermost places of our hearts. We can’t just pay Him lip service. We can’t just tell Him we love Him and we want Him to be a part of our lives and then go about our day-to-day without inviting him in. Our actions matter. How we treat people matters.
Yesterday, we talked about living a virtuous life. If you are struggling to live a virtuous life, a life focused on the Lord, then I want you to know you are not alone. We all struggle with this. God is not looking for perfection. He just wants us to be aware of our actions and to repent and turn back to Him when we mess up.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone listening to this episode. Lord, help us to be aware of our behavior and our attitude. Help us to cultivate an attitude that is in alignment with you. Help us to become pure of heart. Help us to become “Little Christs” to all those we meet. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and In Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to seeing some of you on Zoom tonight for mentoring. If you would like to sign up, there is a link below. The theme for this month is Surrender. I will meet the rest of you here tomorrow morning. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in January 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, I hold you near to me all the time. You are intimate with me all the time. This is because I am divine. You and your humanness cannot fathom the depth of my love, the depth of my presence. But I will give you glimpses, and you will know, little by little, how much I love you. It will entice you to draw near to me. Someday you will know in the fullness how much we are one.”
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Self-Control Is Important To Living A Virtuous Life
2 Peter 1:5-7 “For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, virtue with knowledge, knowledge with self-control, self-control with endurance, endurance with devotion, devotion with mutual affection, mutual affection with love.”
Today’s verse came from the Ascension press app. They have a daily devotional, which I never listen to. However, today, the subject is about living with virtue. We don’t really hear much about this in this day and age, so it got my attention. The person who did the devotional was Hudson Byblow. He is a Catholic Speaker from Canada. He talked about how our faith proposes that we strive to live a life of virtue.
Hudson drew our attention to the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) paragraph 1803, which says, ”Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” A virtue is a habitual and firm disposition to do good. It allows the person not only to perform good acts but to give the best of himself. The virtuous person tends toward the good with all his sensory and spiritual powers; he pursues the good and chooses it in concrete actions. The goal of a virtuous life is to become like God.
I like how this paragraph tells us to focus our thoughts on the things that are honorable, just, pure, lovely, or gracious—anything of excellence or worthy of praise. I also like that the description defines virtue in a way that we can all understand. It says a virtue is a habitual and firm disposition to do good. Do we have a firm disposition to do good? Do we focus our thoughts on those things that are good, or do we focus our thoughts on the fears and worries of the world? Do we focus our thoughts on those we don’t like and what they are doing wrong instead of focusing on ourselves and everything we could be doing right?
The CCC says that when we have virtue, it allows us not only to perform good acts but to give the best of ourselves.
The other part about what it says in the CCC is that The virtuous person tends toward the good with all his sensory or spiritual powers; he pursues the good and chooses it in concrete actions. This part of what the CCC says ties back into the rest of the verse above.
Remember the verse above says, “For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, virtue with knowledge, knowledge with self-control, self-control with endurance, endurance with devotion, devotion with mutual affection, mutual affection with love.” It starts with how we should supplement our faith with virtue, which we just defined. Then is says virtue with knowledge. How can we focus our thoughts on what is good if we don’t know what is good? We need to spend time in God’s Word and learn what is good and what is honorable because the world is telling us to live the opposite of how the Lord wants us to live. We need to seek knowledge if we want to live a virtuous life.
Next, it goes on to say, “Knowledge with self-control.” Self-control is a big one. I don’t think we realize how big of an impact self-control has on our lives and our ability to live virtuously. l struggle with self-control. This is interesting to me because a few years ago, I did much better. I think it is always a struggle for us, but at some points in our lives, we do better than at other points in our lives. When I was doing great with self-control, I was listening to a lot of personal development podcasts I was listening to a lot of religious podcasts, and Bible studies. This truly helped me have more self-control. I was listening to people telling me every day that I didn’t need to give into my every whim. They were telling me I could do hard things. They were filling my mind with the truth and the light of God.
Lately, I have been filling my time with other things, and I have not been listening to those same podcasts. I have not been in scripture as much as I was, and so it is no wonder I am struggling with self-control. I can really see what this verse is saying about how we need to supplement our knowledge with self-control and our self-control with endurance. I believe the enemy is tricking us all into believing that self-control is not important.
I know he whispers in my ear that God doesn’t mind if I eat those cookies or if I drink that soda. He tells me God wants me to be happy. This is true; God does want us to be happy. This is why the enemy’s lies work so well. He tells us things that are half-truths or things that are true but not relevant to the situation. For instance, yes, God wants us to be happy. However, He doesn’t just want us to be happy. He is more concerned with the state of our soul than He is with our happiness. Also, God knows that eating a whole package of cookies and drinking soda all day won’t make us happy. We are searching for something to make us happy instead of turning to the Lord to make us happy.
God cares about our self-control because it is needed to help us become virtuous people. It said above in the section of the CCC, “he pursues the good and chooses it in concrete actions.” We can’t choose good in concrete actions if we have no self-control. Choosing the good isn’t always easy. Often it is hard to do the right thing. If we don’t have self-control, we will not be able to do the hard thing. I heard a saying, I am not sure who said it but the saying is about giving money to the church. They say, “If you don’t give 10% of a dollar when you have no money, you won’t give 10% of a million dollars when you do have money. I think the same is true with self-control. If we don’t practice self-control in the small things, like eating too many cookies, then we will struggle to have self-control in the big things like keeping our word to others or keeping the commandments. If we go throughout our life giving in to every whim and every desire it will be very hard to live a virtuous life.
This is why this verse is so important. It reminds us that we need more. It reminds us to supplement our faith with things that will help us grow closer to the Lord and also closer to heaven. Let me leave you with the verse. How about we all take some time today and ponder this verse? We can think about the life we are living and see if there is anything we can take away from this verse to help us live our lives better! “For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, virtue with knowledge, knowledge with self-control, self-control with endurance, endurance with devotion, devotion with mutual affection, mutual affection with love.”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each person listening to this episode today. Lord, you are amazing. We ask that you help us exhibit self-control. Strengthen us and give us the knowledge that through you, we can do all things. We ask you to show us what we need to learn from this verse and help us apply it in our lives. We ask you to help us live a more virtuous life. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. We are starting a new topic in Mentoring this month. We will be exploring what it means to surrender to the Lord truly. Surrender your problems, surrender your love, surrender all you have to the Lord. We tend to ask the Lord to fix our problems, then take them back from Him and try to fix them ourselves. This month, we will be looking at how to hand them over to Him and then not take them back again. If this is something you struggle with, I hope you will join us this month for mentoring. It is just $30 monthly with no commitment, so cancel anytime. Give it a try, what have you got to lose? I look forward to meeting you all here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in January 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “You are my sheep. I have clothed you with the finest of wool. Fear not, for I always go before you.”
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2 Timothy 1:5-6 “I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, dwells in you as well. For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands.”
I was listening to some praise and worship songs this morning and I was looking for one song in particular because I just love it. I couldn’t remember the name but I remembered which playlist it was on, so I searched through and found it. It is called Start a Fire and it is by Unspoken. I love this song so much because I feel like it speaks to my soul. I feel it expresses how I feel so deeply. I love many praise and worship songs for this reason. I find the artists ability to capture how I feel about God and put it into words is remarkable. This is why I love listening to Christian music so much. I will hear a song and find myself nodding my head and saying, yes, that is exactly it. Sometimes I didn’t even know that was how I felt, I just couldn’t put words to it but as soon as I heard them I knew it was true.
I want to share the words of this song with you:
This world can be cold and bitter
Feels like we're in the dead of winter
Waiting on something better
But am I really gonna hide forever?
Over and over again
I hear Your voice in my head
Let Your light shine, let Your light shine for all to see
Start a fire in my soul
Fan the flame and make it grow
So there's no doubt or denying
Let it burn so brightly
That everyone around can see
That it's You, that it's You that we need
Start a fire in me
You only need a spark to start a whole blaze
It only takes a little faith
Let it start right here in this city
So these old walls will never be the same
Over and over again
I hear Your voice in my head
They need to know
I need to go
Spirit won't You fall on my heart now
You are the fire, You are the flame
You are the light on the darkest day
We have the hope, we bear Your name
We carry the news that You have come to save
Only You can save
There are so many things I love about this song. I love the part where it says over and over again I hear your voice in my head, let you light shine, let your light shine for all to see. I feel God is telling all of this. He wants us to let our light shine. It even says in the Bible, don’t hide your light under a bushel, put it on the table for all to see. I love the part where it says, am I really going to hide forever? As if we can hide from God. He sees us, He sees all of us and guess what, He loves us, just as we are. I love the part where it says, “Start a fire in my soul. Fan the flames and make it grow so there’s not doubt or denying. Let it burn so brightly that everyone around you can see that it’s you, that its you that we need.” This is what God wants from us. He wants His light to shine so brightly in us that everyone can see it. He wants us to be a reflection of Him and to pass His light on to others. This is my prayer for each one of you listening. I pray God starts a fire in your soul. Actually I pray He fans the flames on the fire He has already started. You would not be listening to this podcast if there wasn’t already a fire in your soul. I also love the part that says, “You are the fire, You are the flame, You are the light on the darkest day.” This is so true. I hope you know that. I hope you know that God is that fire you feel inside, He is the flame. God is the light on the darkest day. Your darkest day, that one where you felt alone, that one where you feel sad, mad, angry, or depressed. God is there and He is your light. He will light a way where you didn’t think there was one.
The verse above starts by saying, “I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, dwells in you as well.” I met with some of the ladies in my prayer group yesterday to review what we had learned at a recently attended conference. During the conversation we started talking about the faith that was passed down to us from our parents, who received it from their parents. Your faith came from some where and I think we underestimate how important it is that our parents passed our faith down to us. Maybe some of you listening didn’t have that. Maybe you found your faith on your own. Well, maybe God led you to your faith in another way. That is great if you were able to find your faith despite the lack of faith in your childhood.
For those of you that grew up going to church, I would like you to take a minute to appreciate how great that is. Maybe you didn’t appreciate it at the time because, let’s be honest, most kids don’t enjoy the fact that their parents made them go to church. However, if you look back now, can you see what a gift that was? Can you see how your parents were giving you a firm foundation on which you can rely for the rest of your lives.
I really don’t know if I would have made it through I made it through if I didn’t have my faith, if I didn’t have God right there with me. I don’t know if I would have had the strength to keep fighting, to keep searching for answers, to keep trying. Our family of origin, the family we grew up with has a large impact on who we become. Sometimes we can get caught up in seeing all the negative things that came from our family. Maybe today we could take a moment to think about all the good things that came from our family. Maybe we can think about what a gift it is that our parents passed down the faith to us. We can think back to how many other generations have kept the faith alive in our family so that we could have the foundation we have today. If you didn’t have that firm foundation, if you had to find it on your own, maybe think about how important it is to pass that along to the next generation, so that they aren’t lost and so they don’t have to find God on their own. What a gift that would be.
The verse above ends with, "For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands.” It reminds us that God is a Gift. Not everyone knows God, not everyone has received this gift. This verse is telling us to fan the flame of that gift. Fan the flame of the fire inside of us. As the song says, “Fan the flame and make it grow, so there's no doubt or denying. Let it burn so brightly that everyone around can see that it's You, that it's You that we need.” What if your love for God burned so brightly that there was no way to deny it? What if it burned so brightly that is spread like wild fire to all those you meet? Have you ever been with someone who had an infectious laugh? They are filled with so much joy and when you are around them you can’t help but laugh too? What if we were like that with the Holy Spirit? We were so filled with the Holy Spirit that when others were around us they can’t help but be filled with the Holy Spirit too? What if we made that our goal? What if our goal for 2023 was to fan the flame of our faith so that it grew so brightly that all could see it? This is my goal, will you join me?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you and we want to fan the flame, will you help us? We want to be so full of your love and goodness that it spills out on all those we meet. We want the fire inside of us to be like a wildfire that spreads to each and every person we come in contact with. We don’t want anyone to have to go another day without knowing your love, your mercy, your glory, and your grace. You are so amazing Lord. We are so grateful for those who came before us and passed on your faith to their loved ones. Please help us to pass on our faith to our loved ones as well. Give us the strength and the will power we need to do this Lord. We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to bringing you another witness tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
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Jesus leaves the 99 (replay)
Matthew 4:1-11 “Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.” Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written:
“‘He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’” Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. 9 “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.” Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’” Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him.
Have you ever had a time like this? A time where you felt like the Devil was right there by your side attacking you? Did you know what to say? Did you know what to do? I remember reading this and wishing that I knew scripture as well as Jesus did. I wished I knew the right thing to say when the devil comes to tell me the lies. That is what he is known for after all. Satan is the father of lies. Usually they are not bold face lies. Usually they have some sliver of truth that is twisted to make you question something. But in this passage Jesus was not deterred from his faith. He did not get drawn into a debate, defending himself, or His God. He simply quoted scripture to the enemy.
This is one reason why it is helpful to read the Word of God everyday. The more we read God’s word the more we will know what to say to defend ourselves from the enemy. There are many reasons to read the word of God. Another one would be so that we know how God wants us to live. The Bible is full of stories, parables and laws that can help us govern how to live. Knowledge is power and if we know how God wants us to live, we can try to live in an upright manner. We can do our best to please Him. God does so much for us. The least we can do is try to obey his rules. We can try to live in a manner that honors Him and makes Him proud.
Do you struggle with this, with living in a way that honors God and makes Him proud? I know I do. I often think of the passage from St. Paul in Romans 7:15 “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” If St. Paul, who did amazing things for Christ struggled to live a holy life, then I think it is understandable that we may struggle at times as well. However, remembering this passages and turning over our struggle to God can help us struggle a little less. When we are struggling we need only repent and turn back to God.
God does not need us to be perfect, nor does he expect it. God knows every step you are going to take before you take it. Nothing you do is a surprise to Him. He is our creator, He is the creator of all things. He knows how your story ends before it even starts. He can see all the roads you will go down. He knows the windy road that is your life. And you know what? He loves you anyway. He loves you even though you are not perfect. He loves you even though you will turn away from Him from time to time. Maybe you have turned away from him a long time ago and have not come back yet. Guess what? He loves you anyway! And He is ready for you to turn back to him.
When you do, he will rejoice and celebrate. He won’t be thinking of all the things you did in the past. He won’t be holding your past sins against you. Once you repent and turn back to the Lord, He will rejoice that His son or daughter has returned home and He will welcome you with open arms. That is just one of the many amazing things about your Lord. He is filled with so much mercy and so much grace. He knows all of our flaws, all of our mistakes and yet He still loves us, flaws and all. There is nothing that you can do that is unredeemable in the Lord’s eyes.
I know people who don’t understand how valuable they are in the Lord’s eyes. They feel that because of their sins they are worth less than others. Or, maybe they feel they are worthless. If you are one of these people that is struggling with your self worth in God’s eyes, I ask you to picture that you have 2 pennies in your hand, one of them is shiny and new and the other one is old, dirty, and looks like it has been found in the gutter. What is the value of each penny? Is the penny that looks shiny and new worth more than the penny that is old and dirty? No, they are both worth the same. This is the same with God’s love. You are not worth less because you have made mistakes, made bad choices, or turned away from the Lord.
The Lord is our father and he is always there waiting with open arms ready for us to turn back to him. Nothing makes him happier than when one of his lost sheep find their way back home to him. In Luke 15:3-6 Jesus tells this parable, “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’ I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.”
I love this passage for a couple of reasons. First, I love the imagery of God leaving the 99 to come after me. He does not just let me wander away, but he comes to find me and guide me back home again. Another reason I love this passage is because it says that He will rejoice more over the one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent. If you are living you life righteously and you have no need to repent I admire you. That is not easy and it takes a lot of courage, especially in this day and age. However, if you are one that has turned away, or if you find yourself in the same boat with St. Paul, where you keep doing the things you don’t want to do and struggle to do the things you want to do, I hope you find comfort in this passage. “There will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.” Is that one repentant sinner going to be you? Is there some area of your life where you need to repent and turn back to the Lord? I can already hear the rejoicing in heaven.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you help us see in our lives where we could repent. Father, I ask that you shine a light on any darkness inside of us. We want your light to fill that space. I pray that you will put a love and desire for scripture inside our hearts. I pray that you help us to do what is right and help us to overcome the urges to do what is wrong. Lord, that is not easy and we cannot do it without your help. Lord we love you and we thank you for all you do for us. We want to repent and turn back to you, please just show us the way. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen.
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We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click here. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Have a blessed day!
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Great Is The Lord, and Greatly to Be Praised
Psalm 145:1-3 “I will extol you, my God and King, and bless your name forever and ever. Every day I will bless you, and praise your name forever and ever. Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised; his greatness is unsearchable.”
This is a great verse. I think if you know me at all by now, you know that I love to praise the Lord. I think He is truly amazing and I think it is so important to tell Him that. Our Lord does so much for us every day. He gives us so much mercy and so much grace. He forgives us again and again, even though we don’t really deserve it. His love is unconditional and unending. How many people can you say that about? He performs miracles for us, just to make us happy. He doesn’t need anything from us in return. Again, how many people can you say that about? How many people do you know that will do things for you without expecting anything in return? I hope you do know at least one, because there are people out there like that, but they are certainly not the majority.
This is why I love praising the Lord so much. There is little that we can give God to repay Him. There is nothing He needs from us. He is complete and totally perfect just as He is. Even though He doesn’t need anything from us, He does like when we praise Him. Praising the Lord is something that costs us nothing but our time and is easy to do. Once you start to incorporate praising the Lord into your daily routine, you will wonder why you weren’t always doing it. It feels so good to say thank you to God for all that He does for us. The more you praise Him the more you realize how amazing He truly is.
When I attended a Life in the Spirit seminar, they gave us praise sheets so that we could participate in the praise part of the meetings. You do not need a praise sheet to praise the Lord. There is no right or wrong way to do it. However, if you are new to praising the Lord, it may feel intimidating, especially if you are in a room full of people that have been doing it for a long time. If this is your first time intentionally praising the Lord it may feel strange. That’s normal, just keep doing it. If you are like me and most people who have never really spent time praising the Lord before, you are not really sure what to say. I understand this. I had no idea what to say at first and even though I have been doing it at least every Thursday for the last 3 years or so, I still use the praise sheet. I like the things that are written on the sheet. I do praise on my own, with my own words at home sometimes, but I really like using the sheet.
Here are some of the things that are on the praise sheet I was given.
Praise you our Lord and our God, Praise your holy name, we rejoice in your presence oh Lord, Jesus you are my strength, Jesus you are my rock, Jesus you are my fortress, Jesus you are my deliver, Jesus you are my refuge, Jesus you are my shield, Jesus you are my strong hold, Jesus you are my salvation, Jesus you are my healer, Jesus you are my teacher, Jesus you are my savior, Jesus you are my advocate, Jesus you are the great amen, Jesus you are the author of life, Jesus you are the beginning in the end, Jesus you are the blessed and only ruler, Jesus you are the breath of life, Jesus you are the captain of salvation, Jesus you are the good shepherd, Jesus you are the healer, Jesus you are hope and glory.
You are the Messiah, you are the fountain of life, you are the vine keep us attached to you Lord, you are the holy one of Israel, you are the Christ, the power and wisdom of God, you are the Lamb who was slain you are the word made flesh, you are the holy one who sits up on the throne, you are the living word, you are emmanuel, you are the son of God, you set my feet are dancing, you are truth, you are loved, you are power, you are wisdom, you are the faithful one, you are our redeemer, you are the great “I AM” The list goes on, but those are several examples of the kinds of things you would find on a praise sheet.
There is a great little book called “Opening The Gates of Praise” by Father John M. Capuci. The reason I say little book is because it is just 38 pages long. However, in this book Father talks about five things. First, why we praise. Second, what are our obstacles to praise. Third, ways to praise. Fourth, how to develop a spirit of praise. Fifth, He takes you through the steps so you can write out your own string of praise. This was a great book for explaining praise.
In this book Father has 10 great reasons why we should praise God. I am not going to read them all to you as it is not my book, it is his. I will list a few that you may find surprising. One that I didn’t know is that praise breaks down the walls that are barriers to God’s grace. Father Capuci says, “When we praise, the walls of arrogance, self-hatred and low self-esteem begin to be broken down. God begins the healing process in us as we go before Him, praising His most awesome power!” Another reason we should praise God is because praise allows us the freedom to be ourselves before God and the community. Father Capuci says, “When we can praise God for an extended time, on a regular basis, areas of being overly concerned with how people will look at us begin to be healed. When a person can praise God out loud, in the midst of the community, we can be assured that healing of self-image is taking place. The last reason I will touch on is because praise breaks down negativity in our lives. Who couldn’t use a little less of that right now. There is so much negativity every where we look. If praise can break that down I say it is worth it. Father Capuci says, “There is no such thing as a negative personality. Instead, many people struggle with the temptation to fall into negativity. What happens is this: it becomes increasingly difficult to see God’s goodness and action in our lives or even around us. So, we begin to develop a spirit of negativity. Praise binds the spirit of negativity, setting us free from its hold. The more we praise the Lord we will see the effects of negativity loose its grasp and we will move toward the power of the Holy Spirit.
I don’t want to relay everything in this book to you as it is not my information to share. I would highly recommend you get a copy of this book if you can. If you would like a copy, I will put the info from the back of the book in the show notes. I do want to go over quickly the four different types of praise that Father Capuci talks about. First, Praise God for being God, an example of this type of praise would be the phrases I mentioned earlier from the praise sheets. The second type of praise is praise God for your history, for example, your faith, family, being born, you faculties, and your life. The third type of praise is praise God for your present, your here and now. What is God doing right now in your life? Did He help you find your keys, did you give you a nice sunny day, a green light, what can you praise God for right now in the moment? The fourth type of praise is praise God for what the Spirit is doing right now, for instance, healing a headache, shoulder is heated, outpouring of the Spirit, Receiving new gifts, or perhaps healing your self-image. Is there anything the Spirit is doing within you right now that you can praise. Father Capuci talks about how if you string these four categories together then you have a “string of praise.” He encourages us each to sit down and write down at least 5 things in each category and then start to use this list to praise God more often. If you would like the praise sheets that I was talking about early just send me an email at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com and I will send you a copy.
I would be remiss if I didn’t also mention my favorite way to praise, which is to listen to praise and worship music. If you are listening to this podcast and you have an smart phone or a computer I recommend you go to an app or website called spotify. It is free to make an account and you can listen to all the Christian music you want for free. It is a great way to try out a bunch of different artists and see who you like. You could do the same thing on youtube if you like that better. Listening to praise music can lift your spirits instantly. There is a playlist on Spotify that was created by my mentor called “Big Life Mornings” and it is a great compilation of upbeat Christian songs. I have discovered so many new great songs. Maybe give it a try? What have you got to lose?
Dear Heavenly Father, please bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you and we want to praise you, please show us how. Please put this upon our hearts and if we are not already praising you help us to start. Help us to want to start. Give us the courage to praise you silently and also in out loud. Help us to push through the feelings of awkwardness until we get comfortable praising you Lord. You are so amazing, you do so much for us and expect nothing in return. Help us to do this for you with no expectations. Lord, we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Today is day 100 of that journey and I am so excited to get to share that with you. Thank you for continuing to show up and listen. Thank you for all of you that have given me your feedback, I really appreciate it. If you are able to go to the rate this podcast, that would be great to help others see it more. Also, if you have a friend or loved one you could share it with, that would be great too. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow, Have a blessed day!
To order Fr. John Capuci's book please send payment to
Rev. John M. Capuci
C/O H. O. M. Books
108 Aberdeen Stree
Lowell, Massachusetts 01850
**This is the info in the back of the book, however, I cannot be sure this is still where you would still order them. It might be good to send an email to Father Capuci at his new parish and just check with him. Here is the email for his parish. amin@sccwoburn.com
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“I Have Loved You With An Everlasting Love”
Jeremiah 31:3 “ the Lord appeared to him from far away. I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you.”
God loves us with an everlasting love. Did you know that? Did you know that there is nothing you can do to lose God’s love? Sometimes I know that we feel unlovable. Sometimes that’s after we have done something that we feel is wrong and sometimes that’s after someone else has done or said something to us. However, God never stops loving us. He loved us before we were even born and His love is everlasting, it never goes away.
I remember hearing a story once, I think it might have been Jeff Cavins, in the Great Adventure Bible Story, but I am not sure. Anyway, whoever was telling the story was talking about how God does not need anything from us. This was vastly different from the other Gods at the time. The other Gods got more power the more people worshipped them. They were almost fighting for people to worship them. Some of them even required human child sacrifices. However, our God was completely self sufficient and did not need anything from us.
I remember the person saying that this is the reason that some people turned from those other God’s to our God, the one true God. They turned to God because of His everlasting love. They turned to God because He loved them just for who they were. They did not need to do anything to earn that love. That love was just there. This was something they had not experienced before.
The next line in the verse is also an important line. “Therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you.” This is important because God is always faithful to His word. This is something we talked a lot about last week but I think it is important to touch on it again as it is amazing. I think sometimes we may think that God stops loving us when we sin in some way. Or that he stops answering our prayers when we have sinned against Him. However, this verse dispels that belief. God continues His faithfulness to us, even when we mess up.
Look how many times He was faithful to the Israelites after they messed up. In Matthew 18:21-22 it says, “Then Peter came and said to him, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.” If Jesus is telling us to forgive seventy-seven time, then how much more will our father in heaven forgive us?
There is a song called “Reckless Love” by Cory Asbury. It is a great song about how amazing God’s love is. The song first talks about how good God has been to him. The chorus says, Oh, the overwhelming, never-ending, reckless love of God. Oh, it chases me down, fights 'til I'm found, leaves the 99. And I couldn't earn it, I don't deserve it, still You give yourself away” When he mentions leaves the 99 is talking about Matthew 18:12-14 when Jesus tells the parable, “What do you think? If a shepherd has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray. So it is not the will of your Father in heaven that one of these little ones should be lost.”
God does not want to lose any of his sheep. He will not stop looking for us when we are lost. He will not stop loving us and hoping that we turn back to Him. Then the song goes on to say, “When I was Your foe, still Your love fought for me. You have been so, so good to me. When I felt no worth, You paid it all for me. You have been so, so kind to me” This is so true, when we have sinned and pulled away from God, or fractured our relationship with Him, He is still fighting for us and still loving us. When we don’t feel worthy, God is still there doing all He can for us.
This last part of the song is my favorite and it is a part I think we all need to hear because it the truth. “There's no shadow You won't light up, mountain You won't climb up, coming after me. There’s no wall You won't kick down, lie You won't tear down, coming after me.” There is nothing that God won’t do to chase after His children to try and save them. He gave His only son on the cross for us. There is nothing hidden in the darkness that will prevent him from finding you. There’s no wall He won’t kick down and lie He won’t tear down.
I think I like that part the best because when I think of it I think of a father searching everywhere for his child. Have you even seen the movie “Taken” with Liam Neeson? In the movie Liam Neeson is a father who’s daughter goes to Europe on vacation with a friend. However, in the movie his daughter is taken by sex traffickers. She calls her dad when she sees someone breaking into the house. Liam is some type of government spy in the movie and he stops at nothing to get his daughter back. He does whatever it takes to find her and get her back. If a mere human will go through all of that to get his daughter back, how much more do you think your Father in heaven will do to get you back?
I know people who have often wondered if they are worth loving. When I tell them the things I am telling you, they say that they know God feels that way about other people, but they tell me I don’t understand what they have done, or where they have been. If you are listening to this and you think that this is true for some people, but that it is not true for you, I want you to hear me. GOD LOVES YOU!! He loves you right where you are at. You don’t have to change in anyway for Him to love you. He loves your perfectly right now, right where you are at. Also, God’s love is everlasting. It never fades. It is always there no matter what we do or what happens to us. Also, God remains faithful to us. He keeps His promises. If we are lost He will come and chase after us and find us. He will be there for us whenever we decide to turn back to Him. He will welcome us home with open arms and he will say to us, “I have loved you with an everlasting love.”
Dear heavenly father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. We thank you for loving us with an everlasting love, with a reckless love that will chase us down and leave the 99 to come and save us. Lord God we're so very thankful that you love us so much and even though we can't earn your love and definitely don't deserve your love you give it to us freely anyway. Lord I ask that you reach out to anyone hearing this that has trouble believing you could love them. I ask that you surround them with your love, that you rain down love and grace on them. I ask that you open their minds and hearts to the idea of you loving them just as they are. Lord, I ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen
Here are the lyrics for Reckless Love by Cory Asbury:
Before I spoke a word, You were singing over me
You have been so, so good to me
Before I took a breath, You breathed Your life in me
You have been so so kind to me
Oh, the overwhelming, never-ending, reckless love of God
Oh, it chases me down, fights 'til I'm found, leaves the 99
And I couldn't earn it
I don't deserve it, still You give yourself away
Oh, the overwhelming, never-ending, reckless love of God
When I was Your foe, still Your love fought for me
You have been so, so good to me
When I felt no worth, You paid it all for me
You have been so, so kind to me
Oh, the overwhelming, never-ending reckless love of God
Oh, it chases me down, fights 'til I'm found, leaves the 99
And I couldn't earn it
I don't deserve it, still You give yourself away
Oh, the overwhelming, never-ending reckless love of God
There's no shadow You won't light up
Mountain You won't climb up
Coming after me
There's no wall You won't kick down
Lie You won't tear down
Coming after me
There's no shadow You won't light up
Mountain You won't climb up
Coming after me
There's no wall You won't kick down
Lie You won't tear down
Coming after me
There's no shadow You won't light up
Mountain You won't climb up
Coming after me
There's no wall You won't kick down
Lie You won't tear down
Coming after me
Oh, the overwhelming, never-ending reckless love of God
Oh, it chases me down, fights 'til I'm found, leaves the 99
I couldn't earn it, I don't deserve it, still You give yourself away
Oh, the overwhelming, never-ending reckless love of God
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We All Stand On The Same Ground Before God
Ephesians 3:4-6 “As you read over what I have written to you, you’ll be able to see for yourselves into the mystery of Christ. None of our ancestors understood this. Only in our time has it been made clear by God’s Spirit through his holy apostles and prophets of this new order. The mystery is that people who have never heard of God and those who have heard of him all their lives (what I’ve been calling outsiders and insiders) stand on the same ground before God. They get the same offer, same help, same promises in Christ Jesus. The Message is accessible and welcoming to everyone across the board.”
I really liked this verse when I read it in the Passion Translation, and then I read it in this Message Translation, and I felt like it expressed it in a way we could all understand. Let me read you the passion translations. “So that whenever you read it, you will be able to understand my revelation and insight into my secret mystery of the Messiah. There has never been a generation that has been given a detailed understanding of this glorious and divine mystery until now. He kept it a secret until this generation. God is revealing it only now to his sacred apostles and prophets by the Holy Spirit. Here’s the secret: The gospel of grace has made you, non-Jewish believers, into coheirs of his promise through your union with him. And you have now become members of his body—one with the anointed!
When I first read it I was wondering what the secret was. I was wondering if I knew the secret. They when I read that the secret is that we are all coheirs to the promises through union with Jesus it got me thinking. I don’t think we do all know that. This is why I like the message translation. It says, “The mystery is that people who have never heard of God and those who have heard of him all their lives (what I’ve been calling outsiders and insiders) stand on the same ground before God. They get the same offer, same help, same promises in Christ Jesus. The Message is accessible and welcoming to everyone across the board.”
What great news that is, especially for those of us who have loved ones that don’t know Jesus. Doesn’t it give you a bit more hope to know that even those who have never heard of God and those of us who have all stand on the same ground? Before the apostles it was believed that the Jewish people were God’s people and the rest were not. Then Jesus came to reveal that God’s wants all His children saved, not just one group of them. What I love about God is that He truly loves us all equally. He loves the sinner just as much as He loves the Saint. He loves those who don’t know Him just as much as He loves those who visit Him in church each and every day.
This is hard for us to wrap our heads around. We like to think that we are special because we go to church, we pray daily, and we do all the things we think God is calling us to do. We believe that this makes God love us more. One of the most freeing things I have learned is that there isn’t anything I can do to make God love me any more or any less than He already does. God doesn’t love me more because I go to church or because I spend time with Him each day. He doesn’t love me less because I eat too many cookies and sometimes choose to watch TV instead of spending time with Him. God loves our children who don’t go to church just as much as He loves us. This can be very freeing if we let it. This means we don’t have to strive to earn God’s love. We can rest in the fact that no matter what we do, God will still love us just as much as He did before we were born.
Another thing we tend to think is that God favors some people more than others. For instance, if we need prayers for something important, we all have that one or two people we will ask because we feel their prayers go straight to heaven. We feel their prayers are more powerful. Yet, we all have the same Holy Spirit living inside of us, and so we all have the same power living inside of us. The people we go to for prayer do not have more power to pray than you do. What they have is the confidence to go to God and ask for what they need. They have faith that God answers their prayers, and they have this because of the fact that they keep going to God and asking Him. We tend to think their prayers are answered because of how holy they are. I have heard testimonies of people who are brand new to the faith and yet obediently prayed over someone when asked and they were healed.
One instance was when a woman had breast cancer. She was at an Easter Vigil mass where the RCIA candidates were being confirmed. She felt like the Lord told her to get prayed over by one of the people who were just confirmed. She waited until after mass and then went up to a young woman, newly baptized into the faith, and asked her to pray for her healing of the breast cancer. She was cured right then and there. Another one was at an Encounter Ministries conference. This woman had stage four cancer in her throat, and the doctors said there was nothing they could do. She went to this conference and waited in line for the priest to pray over her. When she got up to the priest, he said he felt like she needed to have the children pray over her. She was discouraged as she felt like he would be better, more powerful. However, she was obedient and found a few 8-10-year-olds that had just learned that day how to pray over people. They started praying, and she started to feel all warm inside. She told them this, and they got all excited as they knew this meant the Holy Spirit was working. They started to pray more. The woman left the conference, and at her 3-month doctor's, they did a scan to see if the cancer had spread. They couldn’t find the cancer anywhere. She was completely cured! Praise God.
She was not cured because those children had special powers. She was cured because she was brave enough to ask for someone to pray over her and because those children were brave enough to say yes. If you need prayer, be brave enough to ask people to pray for you. If you know someone who is sick and needs healing be brave enough to pray over them. Taking that step out in faith is not saying you feel you have any special gift. It is saying that you trust the Holy Spirit is powerful enough to work through anyone, even you. The Holy Spirit is the one with the power. We are just the vessel. We can’t be a vessel if we don’t say yes. If we don’t try, if we don’t let Him use us.
You don’t have to know anything to pray for people for healing. You just have to understand that you are powerful not because you are special but because the power of the one who raised Jesus from the dead lives inside of you. Be brave. Pray over those who you know who are sick. God will reward your faithfulness, your boldness, and your trust. If you look through the Bible, God tends to use the broken people, those who have sinned, those who are not perfect. Is that you? Have you sinned, do you get it wrong more than you get it right? Yep, me too. Guess what? That means we are exactly the kind of person God will use.
I know several of you listening have family members who have cancer or other life-threatening illnesses. Step out and faith and pray over them. Ask the Lord what He wants you to say, and then just say it. If you don’t know what to say, just say, “In the name of Jesus, I command all pain to leave. In the name of Jesus, I command all sickness to be healed. In the name of Jesus, I command all cancer to be gone. In the name of Jesus, I command all organs to be restored. It doesn’t matter what you say. It just matters that you say it. I think it is best to say it out loud so the person can hear it so that the body can hear it, but if you need to start praying quietly, then do that. Just start. Can you imagine what this world would look like if we all started standing in our identity as children of God who have the power of the Holy Spirit living inside of us? Can you imagine how great it would be if we all just walked around with confidence that Jesus will heal the sick through us? We can, and He will. We just need to step out in faith. He might not heal every person you pray over, but that is all the more reason to pray over more people. Your odds go up with each person. Honestly, though, just start with that one person you can’t live without—that one person who needs healing today. Believe more in the power of God to work through you than you do in your inadequacy. It is not you who has to heal them. But it is you who can say the words.
This podcast is all about walking boldly with Jesus. If you have been listening to this podcast for any amount of time, then I believe you are braver now than you were when you started listening. I believe that the Holy Spirit has been working within you this whole time. Let’s take a risk and ask our loved ones if we can pray for them. I know not everyone listening to this episode feels called to the healing ministry. That doesn’t mean we can’t pray for our loved ones. That doesn’t mean we can’t step out and ask the Lord to heal those who need healing. You don’t have to feel like you can do it. You just have to trust that the Lord can work through you. If you do pray with someone, ask if they feel anything. If they don’t, it is not on you, as you are just the messenger. God is the one who is responsible for making our prayers fruitful. Sometimes, oftentimes, that is when the person is healed, when they test it out to see if they feel any different.
A great example of this is in Matthew 12:9-13 “He left that place and entered their synagogue; a man was there with a withered hand, and they asked him, “Is it lawful to cure on the sabbath?” so that they might accuse him. He said to them, “Suppose one of you has only one sheep and it falls into a pit on the sabbath; will you not lay hold of it and lift it out? How much more valuable is a human being than a sheep? So it is lawful to do good on the sabbath.” Then he said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and it was restored, as sound as the other.” The man’s hand was not healed until he trusted in faith and tried to stretch it out like the other one. If your loved one is in pain, ask them if the pain has decreased in severity. If there is a rash, check to see if it is gone. You won’t be able to test all things, but if there is something you can test, that will help.
I know this is a lot of information all thrown into this one episode. I had no idea I was going to go here today, but so many of you are on my heart because you are praying for loved ones who need healing. I guess the Holy Spirit wanted me to encourage you to pray not only for them but over them. Pray for healing over them. Also, I feel God wants you to know that He is in this with you. Whatever it is you are going through right now, He is in it with you, and you will be ok.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, please be with all those who are either struggling with cancer or who are praying for a loved one with cancer. We ask that you give us the courage to ask those loved ones if we can pray over them. We ask that you give us the words to say. We ask that you help us in our current situations. Lord, show us what to do, how to pray. Lord, we ask you to fill us with your hope, your love, and your peace. We ask that you take away all worry and anxiety and replace it with your peace and your assurance that with you, we can do all things. We ask all of this in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you need prayers for a loved one, if you want me to pray over your loved one, reach out on social media, my website walkboldlywithjesus.com or my email catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com I would be happy to do that. There is a link for my website at the bottom of the show notes. My prayers are with each of you listening. I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in January 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I am the all-powerful, the almighty. With me, you can do it. Just move. Move with my grace, move with my power, and miracles will happen."
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Today’s witness is a friend, Bruce & his wife, Alice, whom I met through email back in November of 2023. The Holy Spirit led Bruce to my podcast, and as he listened, he heard the call for people to share their stories, and he decided to do a Witness Wednesday. His first witness is episode #619. If you haven’t heard it, I invite you to listen to it today. It is really good. Bruce has made a career for the past thirty years as a head scenic artist, art director, and designer in the professional theatre business. For the past five years, he has also had a studio on James St. N., where he produced his own artwork. He is known and loved by many in the community for his work teaching the PMC art class for over a decade, as well as a more recent class for seniors at the YWCA.
In the first witness, Bruce talks about how he lost his sight sort of gradually, and then he went to a healing service and was healed. However, in the morning, he could no longer see again. After hearing his witness, I asked Bruce if I could pray over him. He said yes, and I called him and his wife and prayed with them. His sight was not restored, but he felt encouraged by the Lord. I continued to pray for Bruce, and we kept in touch.
Several months later, while talking to the Lord, I felt like the Lord told me it was time to pray for Bruce again. I had prayed that the Lord be with Bruce as he was frustrated and confused. I heard the Lord tell me that He would heal him, both his eyesight and his Spirit. He said that Bruce would have a personal encounter with Jesus, and then He would heal him, and He would go on to use his painting to bring God’s love to others. I asked the Lord if He could give me a word of knowledge, anything I could share with Bruce and Alice to build their faith. I heard that Bruce would wear blue pants and a red shirt.
The Lord went on to tell me about what Bruce could do if he gained his sight back and then lost it like the last time. The Lord told me several things to tell Bruce to help put his mind at ease that this wouldn't happen again, yet if it did, what Bruce could do to get it back. I shared all of that with Bruce, and he was very encouraged. Below is His testimony as to what happened the night that I prayed over him for healing. In March, Alice and I were on an evening phone call with Catherine. Previous to this call, a week or so earlier, I asked the Lord if there was any information or help he could reveal to me as I was feeling somewhat stuck spiritually.
I asked for something from scripture, a word of help, or knowledge from someone. I would then be open to receiving something in the near future. Within a few days, I received an email from Catherine in which she said she had received some knowledge to pass along to me. God had told her that I would have an encounter with Him regarding my healing.
He also told her what color I would be wearing as a means of verifying the truth of this knowledge. We agreed to have a follow-up phone call. My immediate thought was to wear a red tartan shirt during the phone call, but I changed my mind because I second-guessed that God would not choose such a shirt. I went with a green shirt instead. On the phone Catherine said " red" and I explained my change of mind to her. I should have trusted my first choice. We then prayed. Catherine called on the presence of Jesus. Alice and I were sitting in our living room. I felt a change in the atmosphere in the room. I knew Jesus was there in spirit, and I had a sense that He was in front of me. Catherine's praying faded away as I entered a meditated state. I sensed someone sitting beside me. I leaned my head and shoulder into this presence beside me. It felt like a cloak around me. I was overwhelmed by a feeling of peace and love and felt like I was leaning into the safest place of all. It seemed to last for several minutes before it faded, leaving me in a state of joy. Although God did not speak to me audibly, He gave me great assurance of faith and presence with me.
No, I was not healed of my blindness, but I have learned in faith to continue believing for healing with hope in the Lord. It is important for us to remember that God's ways and time are not the same as ours.
I have been so blessed by these demonstrations of faith and love, which God gives me just when they are needed. I wish this to be everyone's experience as well.
Wasn’t that an amazing witness? Imagine having the presence of Jesus sitting right next to you. Imagine being able to lay your head on His shoulder. I remember Bruce saying it was such an amazing experience that he didn’t want to move. He just wanted to sit right where he was. I was very happy for Bruce as he told me that he had always longed to have this sort of experience with the Lord. He knows God is always around, but he longed to feel his presence or to see him as others had. Tonight, that dream came true.
I am going to be honest with you. As happy as I was for Bruce, I was also disappointed. I truly felt like the Lord was going to heal his eyesight. I felt like the Lord had told me that he would, so I was upset that Bruce still could not see. The next morning, when the Lord and I were talking, I was honest with Him. I explained that I was disappointed because I felt like He told me that Bruce would be healed and He wasn’t, and I didn’t think that was fair. I felt like He let Bruce down because I told him he would be healed, and then he wasn’t.
God replied most gently. He said, Catherine, go back and read what I told you. I always journal our conversations so I can go back and re-read them. When I went back to reread, I saw that God had told me that Bruce would have a personal encounter with Him and he would be healed. I assumed the two would happen at the same time, but God did not say that. He assured me that Bruce would be healed but in God’s timing, not mine. This was reassuring, but I still wish it could have been at the same time. I know Bruce will see again. I know God’s timing is perfect, and yet I just want it to be now. I just want him to be able to see and paint again. I will continue to pray, and I ask all of you to join me in that prayer as well. Bruce and his wife Alice are coming to MA in the summer. I get to meet them in person for the first time in July, and I am so excited to get to meet them and hopefully get to pray over them in person. Thank you, Bruce and Alice, for reaching out and for staying in contact. Thank you for being amazing people and for spreading the light of Christ to all those you meet. I look forward to meeting you this summer! What I look forward to even more is when you give your witness as to how the Lord healed your eyesight! I can’t wait to celebrate with you on that momentous occasion!!
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Miracles Do Happen!
Joshua 3:13 “When the soles of the feet of the priests carrying the ark of the Lord, the Lord of the whole earth, touch the waters of the Jordan, it will cease to flow; the water flowing down from upstream will halt in a single heap.”
This is a story that I don’t remember from the Bible. I have gone through the Bible in a year twice with Father Mike, so I am sure I have heard it; I don’t remember it, so I thought we would take a look at it today especially because I know a lot of people who need some reassurance that miracles do happen. God will take care of you no matter what circumstances you find yourself in. God is not surprised you are in these circumstances. He knew you would be in them, and He has prepared you for them. He has a plan to help you through them. Trust Him.
This verse is taking place when Joshua is trying to get the Isrealites to cross the Jordon River to go into the promised land. Let me read to you this part of the story so you can see how it all unfolded. Remember Moses led the people out of Egypt but was not able to live to lead them into the promised land. This was left to Joshua as He was faithful and trusted God could conquer the people who occupied that land currently. I will read you Joshua 3:7-17 “Then the Lord said to Joshua: Today I will begin to exalt you in the sight of all Israel, that they may know that, as I was with Moses, so I will be with you. Now command the priests carrying the ark of the covenant, “When you come to the edge of the waters of the Jordan, there take your stand.”
So Joshua said to the Israelites, “Come here and listen to the words of the Lord, your God.” He continued: “By this you will know that there is a living God in your midst: he will certainly dispossess before you the Canaanites, Hittites, Hivites, Perizzites, Girgashites, Amorites, and Jebusites. The ark of the covenant of the Lord of the whole earth will cross the Jordan before you. Now choose twelve men, one from each of the tribes of Israel. When the soles of the feet of the priests carrying the ark of the Lord, the Lord of the whole earth, touch the waters of the Jordan, it will cease to flow; the water flowing down from upstream will halt in a single heap.”
The people set out from their tents to cross the Jordan, with the priests carrying the ark of the covenant ahead of them. When those bearing the ark came to the Jordan and the feet of the priests bearing the ark were immersed in the waters of the Jordan—which overflows all its banks during the entire season of the harvest— the waters flowing from upstream halted, standing up in a single heap for a very great distance indeed, from Adam, a city in the direction of Zarethan; those flowing downstream toward the Salt Sea of the Arabah disappeared entirely. Thus the people crossed over opposite Jericho. The priests carrying the ark of the covenant of the Lord stood on dry ground in the Jordan riverbed while all Israel crossed on dry ground until the whole nation had completed the crossing of the Jordan.”
Wow, the Israelites crossed on dry ground again! Remember, these are the ancestors of those who crossed the Red Sea on dry ground. These people were not actually there, but I am sure they heard all about it. So, why do you think God needed to show them again? Why do you think God parted the Jordan River for them to cross? It says above that it was to show the people that God was with Joshua the same way that He was with Moses. This miracle, like many others, is a testament to the power and faithfulness of our God. It amazes me how often we can see signs and wonders and yet still doubt the Lord will come through. The Israelites had seen miracle after miracle while they were in the desert. Their food miraculously showed up each morning. When they complained about not having meat to eat, Quail miraculously showed up. They walked across the Red Sea on dry land, and this is to name a few of the big ones.
So, why would they need to see another miracle? I think it is because we sometimes think it is the person doing the miracle instead of God doing the miracle through those people. God knew the Israelites knew God was with Moses because He was the face of most of the miracles they had received. However, God also knew they weren’t sure if God was with Joshua. He was young and new to leading them. God understood that these people would need a sign to show them that He was with Joshua.
How many times have we been like this? How many times has God called us to cross our own Jordan Rivers, and we have been hesitant because we don’t know that He is with us? How many times has He given us a sign, and yet we require another one? If we look back upon our lives, I bet we can all see how the Lord has been right here with us in each of the hard times. If we can see this, why do we still doubt He will be with us in this hard time? I am sure we have all seen miracles in our lives. If we haven’t, then we are not looking hard enough because the Lord is working in each of our lives.
The news doesn’t like to talk about the good stuff going on in the world as that doesn’t sell as much as the bad stuff. However, you don’t have to look too far to find the good things going on in this world if you want to. You can find articles and videos on the internet. We can actually be a beacon of light to those around us. If you see someone you know struggling, you can give them hope and peace in Jesus Christ. If someone you know needs a miracle right now, relay this one to them. Relay other ones from the Bible. Look on YouTube for testimonies from others who have been healed from what they have or gone through what they have gone through.
Sometimes, seeing is believing, so pray for God to show them a miracle. Pray for a miracle in your life. Miracles are not reserved for certain people. They are not reserved for perfect people, people who pray a lot, or those whom God loves the best. Miracles come to those who ask for them, those who seek them, and those who believe they will happen. We believe, Lord. Help our unbelief.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening today. Lord, we love you, and we know you are there with us in the hard times. We are sorry we sometimes forget. We ask you to be with all those struggling in a special way today. We ask you to give each one of us a renewed sense of awe and wonder. We ask that you give us a renewed faith and belief that miracles are not only possible but that they will happen in our lives. Open our eyes to the miracles that are happening in our lives every day! We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with our will and in Jesus’s holy name; amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Tonight is week 3 of our topic, “Come As You Are.” I hope you will join us live this evening on Zoom at 8 EST. If you haven’t joined yet, there is a link in the show notes. I also want to remind you that I send out a daily email with the words of prophecy included at the end of the episodes. I don’t include the words of prophecy on the Witness Wednesday episodes, and I don’t do weekend episodes, so if you are not receiving the emails, you are missing out on some of the words of prophecy. If you want to sign up for that, the link is in the show notes. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in January 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “There is no more time for looking back. Look only to what is ahead. Look up, and you'll see the glory of God.”
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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A Spirit of Sonship
Acts 1:8 “But you will receive power when the holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, throughout Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
Yesterday was Pentecost. I have often thought about It and what it would have been like to be in that upper room. Whenever I prayed the glorious mysteries of the rosary, I would ask the Lord for my own Pentecost. I can’t imagine being that overcome by the Holy Spirit. I can’t even imagine the excitement in that room and then spilling out of that room to all those they talked to. I do know I have the Holy Spirit living inside of me. I have definitely seen it working through me. I have seen it give me boldness when I needed it. Often I wish I had more boldness. I wish I could say and do all the things I want to do without my insecurities getting in the way. I will keep praying and asking for more, and I know the Lord will provide exactly the right amount of courage that I need to do what He has called me to do.
This morning I want to talk with you about something I just learned yesterday. In his homily yesterday, the priest explained the difference between the Holy Spirit of the New Testament and the Holy Spirit of the Old Testament. I thought this was really interesting because I knew the Holy Spirit was around in the Old Testament, and I thought some people were filled with it, but then I wasn’t sure. I wondered how the prophets could know what they knew without the Holy Spirit. But I also knew the Holy Spirit didn’t come upon all of us until Pentecost. It was confusing, and I never really understood it. So, in case you are like me, I thought I would give you the explanation the priest gave at mass yesterday as it was a great explanation. I will do my best to relay His message.
The priest explained that it was a Spirit of Assignment or a Spirit of Function in the Old Testament. In the New Testament, it is a Spirit of Sonship. He meant that in the Old Testament, everyone was not filled with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit was reserved for a select few people, such as the prophets who were spreading God’s messages. Those who were in charge of leading the Lord’s people, such as the kings and the judges. The Lord would give the Spirit to some people, and then He would also take it away. For instance, 1 Samuel 16:14 says, “But the Spirit of the LORD departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the LORD troubled him.”
Everyone wasn’t blessed with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit was only given to some; if they misused their power, it would be taken away. This is why in Psalm 51:13, King David says, “Do not drive me from before your face, nor take from me your Holy Spirit.” David is aware that He is who He is because of the Spirit of God. He knows without that, He would be nothing. He would not be an effective king or an effective warrior; he wouldn’t be able to do anything without the Holy Spirit within him.
In the New Testament, Jesus died on the cross for us. He took our sins to the cross, and there, He restored our relationship with the Father. Now we are adopted sons and daughters of God. When Jesus went to Heaven to be with Father, Jesus asked His Dad to send us the Holy Spirit, the advocate. An advocate pleads another's cause and helps another by defending or comforting him. Can you see why we would need this? Can you see what the apostles would need the Spirit? They were being sent out. Actually, we are all being sent out to proclaim Jesus to all those we meet. Can you see why we might need help defending our case?
The Holy Spirit emboldened the apostles. They were hiding in a locked upper room when the Holy Spirit came to them. They were afraid and unsure of what to do or say. They were afraid their lives would end just as our Lord’s life ended. Yet, after the Holy Spirit came upon them, they were not afraid of anything. They boldly proclaimed the good news of Jesus. The Holy Spirit not only gave them boldness, but they were able to speak in languages so everyone could understand them. They could do signs and wonders. They were given all the tools they needed to do the task the Lord gave them.
You and I, my friend, have this same Holy Spirit living inside of you—the same one Jesus has, the same one the apostles had, the same one that raised Jesus from the dead. It still boggles my mind when I try to wrap my head around it, but it is true. What can we do with this Holy Spirit living inside of us? I think a better question is, “What can’t we do?” The answer to that is nothing. There isn’t anything we can’t do when we rely on the Holy Spirit living inside of us. If you want the Holy boldness the apostles had, ask for it, and the Lord will give it to you.
Right now, I am asking for the gift of being able to speak Spanish so others will understand me. Actually, when I think about it, He was probably giving it to me because I was doing really well with Duolingo. But then I stopped. Whatever gift you are looking for from the Lord, He will give you if you ask for it. I remember hearing Mary Heli speak at a conference once, and it changed how I asked the Lord for things. I am not even sure what she said, but I remember how I felt after she said it.
I felt like nothing was impossible. She said something about how there are definitely people who are given the charism of healing, and they are really fruitful in it. However, even if you don’t have that charism, if you want to be used by God to heal others, ask Him for it. As the Lord for that gift, keep stepping out and praying over people, and you will see fruit in that area. From that moment on, I started to pray over anyone who would let me. I read all kinds of books on healing and what to say or do. I asked the Lord every day to help me be fruitful in some sort of healing ministry. I prayed over lots of people, and not too many felt much of anything when I prayed. However, I kept praying.
Now, I ask people how they feel before and after, and oftentimes, they feel better. They may not be all the way healed, but they feel better. I believe it is because of my persistence in asking the Lord to use me for healing. The Holy Spirit comes where He is wanted, invited, and expected. When I pray, I invite the Holy Spirit into that prayer and expect Him to come. Many times, if a physical healing didn’t occur, the person will still feel the presence of the Lord or will be encouraged in the Lord in one way or another. I am not telling you this because I think I am special. I am telling you this so you can see that if you ask, God will answer.
What is it that you want from the Holy Spirit? Is it more boldness in your life? Do you want the gift of wisdom or Knowledge? Do you want the ability to pray over others for healing? Do you want to help people know the Love of God? How do you want the Lord to use you? If you have never thought of that before or have never asked yourself that question, maybe spend some time today giving it some thought. The Lord has so much He wants to give to us, and we aren’t asking for it. He tells us that at prayer group all the time. He often says, there is so much more I have to offer, but you are not asking for it. Take time today and ask the Lord for whatever you would like. If you don’t know how you want to be used by Him, then give Him permission to decide for you. I know that may seem scary, but He is your Dad and knows you best. Trust me, you will not be sorry you opened up to Him and invited Him in.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone listening to this episode. Lord, we are so grateful you gave us the Holy Spirit. We are sorry so many of us just let it lie dormant and don’t use it. Lord, help us to rely more on the Holy Spirit and less on us. Help us turn to the Holy Spirit when we don’t know what to do. Lord, I want to pray for a holy boldness for all those who were listening. Lord, I ask that you show each and every one of them where you are calling them and how you want to use them. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name; amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If this podcast is blessing you somehow, please share it with others and consider donating. The link is below or on my website, walkboldlywithjesus.com. Tomorrow is week #3 in our May mentoring series, “Come As You Are.” I hope to see some of you tomorrow night on live. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I. Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in January 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, "My children, I come today to empower you, to enrich you, to make you realize that with me all is possible and with my help you can do whatever task that I ask you to do.”
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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Don’t Change! Become!
Today, I felt led to start with this poem I read the other day because it beautifully demonstrates that we don’t always understand what God is doing. We think we are a mess, we feel like we are falling apart, we feel like God has abandoned us, and yet God is ALWAYS right there in the middle of it all! He knows exactly what He is doing and wants us to trust Him in the process. This poem gives us some insight into that process. I feel it makes it a little easier to trust when we have a bit of understanding. This conversation is between someone and God.
Me: Hey God.
God: Hello.....
Me: I'm falling apart. Can you put me back together?
God: I would rather not.
Me: Why?
God: Because you aren't a puzzle.
Me: What about all of the pieces of my life that are falling down onto the ground?
God: Let them stay there for a while. They fell off for a reason. Take some time and decide if you need any of those pieces back.
Me: You don't understand! I'm breaking down!
God: No - you don't understand. You are breaking through. What you are feeling are just growing pains. You are shedding the things and the people in your life that are holding you back. You aren't falling apart. You are falling into place. Relax. Take some deep breaths and allow those things you don't need anymore to fall off of you. Quit holding onto the pieces that don't fit you anymore. Let them fall off. Let them go.
Me: Once I start doing that, what will be left of me?
God: Only the very best pieces of you.
Me: I'm scared of changing.
God: I keep telling you - YOU AREN'T CHANGING!! YOU ARE BECOMING!
Me: Becoming who?
God: Becoming who I created you to be! A person of light and love and charity and hope and courage and joy and mercy and grace and compassion. I made you for more than the shallow pieces you have decided to adorn yourself with that you cling to with such greed and fear. Let those things fall off of you. I love you! Don't change! ... Become! Become! Become who I made you to be. I'm going to keep telling you this until you remember it.
Me: There goes another piece.
God: Yep. Let it be.
Me: So ... I'm not broken?
God: Of course Not! - but you are breaking like the dawn. It's a new day. Become!!!
~Author John Roedel
I know many of you are struggling right now. Whether it is with health issues, money issues, or in the process of losing old friends and making new friends, I think this poem shows us that God can use these hard times to help us step into the person we are meant to be. The person He knows we are capable of being. There are several things I love about this poem. The first is the gentleness of God. He is so good. I think this poem demonstrates the love that God has for us. He didn't say no when she asked if God would put her back together. He said He would rather not. He then went on to explain why He felt that way. Notice how He didn’t get short with her. He didn’t seem irritated or annoyed with her. We often imagine God feels that way about us. We tell ourselves that He is tired of us coming and asking the same thing. We imagine He wondering why we can’t seem to get it together already. If we are honest, we have felt that way about our loved ones before. God is not us. He doesn’t have to wonder why we can’t get it together. He knows. He made us. He knows everything we have ever done and everything we will ever do.
I also love that God doesn’t tell her never again to pick up the pieces that fell off. He tells her to take some time and decide whether she needs them. Maybe you are going through this shedding process right now. Maybe you are losing friends, workers, loved ones, or even material things. God isn’t telling you that they are gone forever. He is saying take some time and see if you need them. Do they bring joy into your life? Do they make you a better person? Do they help you grow closer to the Lord? Are they helping you on your journey to heaven?
If the answer to some of these questions are yes, maybe you can pick them back up again. Take the time to ask questions. Pay attention to the answers. Don’t pick them back up again because it is hard without them. Don’t pick them up again because it is easier with them or you miss them. It is normal to want to. When you are tempted to pick back up the ones that are not good for you, remember what the poem said, “What you are feeling are just growing pains. You are shedding the things and the people in your life that are holding you back. You aren't falling apart. You are falling into place. Relax. Take some deep breaths and allow those things you don't need anymore to fall off of you. Quit holding onto the pieces that don't fit you anymore. Let them fall off. Let them go.
The last part that I want to draw your attention to is what the poem says about changing. Listen to that part again. “Me: Once I start doing that, what will be left of me?
God: Only the very best pieces of you.
Me: I'm scared of changing.
God: I keep telling you - YOU AREN'T CHANGING!! YOU ARE BECOMING!
Me: Becoming who?
God: Becoming who I created you to be! A person of light and love and charity and hope and courage and joy and mercy and grace and compassion. I made you for more than the shallow pieces you have decided to adorn yourself with that you cling to with such greed and fear. Let those things fall off of you. I love you! Don't change! ... Become! Become! Become who I made you to be. I'm going to keep telling you this until you remember it.”
Isn’t that just like God? He keeps telling us something until we believe Him. And for most of us, He has to tell us a lot. God is telling you, yes you, right now that He is with you in this. He tells you that He sees you, not for who you think you are, but who you really are. He sees the you that He created you to be even if you aren’t there yet. He knows your journey and isn’t frustrated that you aren’t there yet because He knows exactly when you will arrive there. He knows exactly what obstacles you are struggling with. We actually had a word or prophecy at my Thursday morning prayer group in June 2024. God assured us, “I am there among your trials and your joys. I am the God who loves you, who cares. I am never displeased or impatient with you. I place my hope in you.”
This message is not just for my prayer group. This is a message for all of His children. This is something I believe he really wants us to know. We get impatient with our children. We get disappointed with them. God is telling us He is not like that. He knows our innermost thoughts. He knows everything we are going through. He knows our hearts. He knows how badly we want to do the right thing, and yet we tend to do the wrong thing. This is not unique to you. That is all of us. If Paul, who is credited with writing about half of the New Testament books, can admit to this, we can be sure we all struggle with this problem. In Romans 7:19-20 Paul said, “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within me.” God knows we are broken. He knows we struggle. He doesn’t get disappointed. Instead, He celebrates every time we don’t give in to temptation. Every time we mess up, we can bring that to God with the assurance that He welcomes us with open arms and celebrates because we came home instead of being upset we messed up.
Dear Heavenly Father, we ask you to bless everyone listening to this episode. Dad, we thank you so much for loving us so much, for always being there for us, for helping us become who you created us to be, for your patience with us as we become that person, and for forgiving us again and again. You are so wonderful. You are our perfect father, and we are so grateful for all you do for us! Dad, could you give us the strength not to pick back up those pieces that have fallen that we don’t need? It is hard to leave them there when our life seemed easier with them. Give us the strength to keep moving forward without them. Dad, could you also fill us up to the tipitey top with hope that things will be ok because it doesn’t always feel like it will be. Help us to feel you right because of us. Maybe hold our hand as we walk side by side. That way, we know you are there. We love you, Dad, and we ask all of this in Jesus’s mighty name; amen!!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If this podcast has blessed you in some way, would you consider making a donation or sending it to others? Also, check out the link below for my mentoring group. Today’s devotional is a small part of last week’s mentoring session. Our topic for this month is Come As You Are. I would love to see your face on Zoom next Tuesday. I look forward to meeting you here again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed weekend!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in June 2023 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Continue to worship me each and every moment. Worship is your strength. I will give you the courage, wisdom, and power you need. I am with you until the end of your time and the beginning of our time together.”
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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Waiting At Wisdom's Doorway
Proverbs 8:34-35 “If you wait at wisdom’s doorway, longing to hear a word for every day, joy will break forth within you as you listen for what I’ll say. For the fountain of life pours into you every time that you find me, and this is the secret of growing in the delight and the favor of the Lord.”
Man, I really love the Passion Translation of the Bible. It really speaks to me. If we are paying attention, God will highlight things for us. This is something I didn’t really know much about until I went through this Encounter Ministries class. I can look back on my life and see that He was doing it all throughout my life. I just didn’t realize it. I didn’t know it was Him drawing my attention to things. When the Holy Spirit highlights things for you, it just means that He brings them to your attention. For instance, we could both be watching the same movie, and yet different things might stick out to you and other things to me.
I was surprised last year when a few of my fellow Encounter students and I got together after the conference to compare notes and talk about what we had learned. Listening to the ladies explain what stood out the most to them was interesting. It was as if I hadn’t even been to the talks they were discussing. Some of the things they felt were most impactful weren’t even in my notes, and the most impactful to me weren’t in their notes. I love how God does that. He can have an auditorium full of thousands of people and speak to each of us individually. He can speak right into our current situation. It is so amazing.
The Lord has been highlighting wisdom for me lately and how I need to be asking and searching for it more. We had two speakers in Encounter, and they were both amazing, and they taught us so many good things. Yet, I remember most when they said to keep asking God for wisdom. God has also been highlighting the Saints to me. I feel as though I need to read so many books so I can gain more wisdom. The Lord tells me to come to Him, and He will give me wisdom. He points to our Saints like Thérèse of Lisieux and Saint Catherine of Sienna. Both of these saints were doctors of the church, and yet they did not have a lot of formal education.
What they did have, was an amazing relationship with the Lord. They had an intimate relationship where they spent a lot of time in solitude with Him. I think this is what the Lord is calling me to, more time in solitude with Him. Yet, I don’t think this is just a call for me. I think He may be highlighting this for me so that I can share it with you too! Even yesterday in Witness Wednesday, the thing that was highlighted for me was when she said she is trying to get her knowledge for the Bible and not the world, social media, or personal development books.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I love personal development books. I have read most of them and probably almost all the parenting books ever invented. Personal Development and self-help books can be amazing and really helpful. I am not saying you shouldn’t read them. However, the Lord told me several years ago that I was relying on those books more than on Him. I would bring my problems to Him, ask Him for help, and then go try to solve the problem myself. What God was calling me to do was spend more time with Him. He wanted me and still wants me to come to Him with my problem and then actually sit and listen to what He thinks I should do.
I say He still wants me because I struggle with this, and maybe you do too. I struggle with listening to the Lord. I have been intentionally doing this for over 4 years now, so I am getting better at hearing Him, but I am not sure if I am better at listening to Him. I am grateful I can hear when God is talking to me. I am grateful I write down what He says so I can go back and look at it. Yet, I struggle with actually doing what He asks me to do, which is crazy to me because He has such good ideas, and they are solutions to problems I want solved. So, why don’t I do the things?
This is why I love the famous verse from St. Paul in Romans 7:15, “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” This is so true. I am not sure a truer thing has ever been said. I ask God what I should do, and then He actually tells me, and then I don’t do it. It amazes me every time I look back at my prayer journal and highlight things that God told me to do that I still haven’t done. These are not difficult things to do either. For instance, spraying holy water in my kids’ room while they are in school and blessing their rooms. I went to the store and bought the spray bottle months ago. Then I went to the church and filled it with Holy water a month or two after that. It has been sitting on top of my filing cabinet in my office for over a month, and I still have yet to do it.
I say all of that to let you know that you are not alone if you are struggling to do what the Lord tells you to do. If you are one who doesn’t struggle to do what the Lord tells you to do, please call me, and you can tell me how to get my act together. I have found a few things helpful in listening more often, so let me pass those along. First, I have started to ask my guardian angel to help me remember to do things. I ask my angel to nudge me if I am about to forget. I ask my angel to push me out of bed in the morning and not let me go back to sleep. I also invite the Lord into my day and ask Him to keep me on track. I ask Him to keep me focused and to keep away any distractions. I ask Him to give me the strength to ignore any distractions and to put first things first. Both of these are relatively new practices that I forget to do some days, but when I remember them, they have been really helpful.
I can’t believe I said all that and haven’t addressed the verse above yet. Although since I invited the Holy Spirit to write these episodes, I think all of that needed to be said. The verse above says, “If you wait at wisdom’s doorway, longing to hear a word for every day, joy will break forth within you as you listen for what I’ll say.” Why I think the Holy Spirit highlighted this verse to me is because He wants me and you, too, to wait at wisdom’s doorway, longing to hear a word for every day. He wants us to come to Him first.
Yes, you can read your books too, but first go to His Word. What does He say about it? Sit with Him in solitude and see what He has to say about your situation. I am not sure why I have it stuck in my head that God is great to talk with but that He won’t give me practical direction or exact answers to my questions. When I look back at my journals, I can see He gives very practical answers to my questions and sometimes very precise answers. God is telling me over and over again, come to me. I have all the answers you need. I know that is a message for me and also for you! The verse says joy will break forth within us as we listen to what He says. Who doesn’t need more joy?
I love that the verse above says, “For the fountain of life pours into you every time that you find me, and this is the secret of growing in the delight and the favor of the Lord.” I love that image of finding God. I also would love to have the fountain of life poured into me. Who doesn’t need more life poured into them? It ends with this is the secret of growing in the delight and the favor of the Lord. I don’t know about you, but I definitely want to grow in the favor and delight in the Lord. I love any secrets that help me grow closer to the Lord! Let’s make a pact, you and I. How about we both start turning to the Lord first and ask Him what He thinks we should do? How about we wait at wisdom’s door, longing to hear a word for every day? Imagine how much more amazing our world would be if our every step and every decision were guided by our heavenly Father. Now, that is something to work towards!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone listening. Lord, we want your wisdom. We want to seek you more and spend more time in solitude. We want this, yet we don’t make time for it. Please forgive us and help us to change. Lord, help us to bring all of our problems to you for your wise solutions. Help us to rely on you more than we rely on others. Give us the courage, strength, and perseverance to do the things that you tell us to do. Help us listen, Lord. Help us block out the noise and all the shiny things of this world that distract us and help bring our focus back to you. We love you so much, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If this podcast has blessed you in some way, would you consider making a donation or sharing it with others? Also, since the verse talked about seeking a word for each day, I want to remind you that I do have an email that goes out daily with a Word of Prophecy from the Lord. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard it was exactly what someone needed that day. There are links for that and a few more things at the end of the episode notes or you can find them at my website walkboldlywithjesus.com. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow! Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in June 2023 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I have ordained to work through you for the salvation of the world. Day by day, you empty yourself of your self-will, and I fill you with my will, my power and might. This is my way. I want to use you, and I will triumph.”
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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Today’s witness is another friend from the Big Life mentoring group with Pamela Crim. Laura has been through a lot over the years, including several unhealthy relationships in her search for love. She lived with a lot of shame for many years. Finally, someone she loved pointed her to the Big Life Devotional podcast by Pamela Crim. She started listening and then joined mentoring. She went on retreat where Pamela baptized her in the ocean and her faith was renewed. Listen to her testimony, and you will see how God transformed her life. He can do the same for yours. Just keep turning back. It’s ok if your path isn’t perfect. Just keep getting back on the road to salvation. Take it away, Laura.We have all seen God working in our lives. However, we might not all be aware it is God working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences, the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience of how God has worked or is working in your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or click here. It won’t take up much of your time, and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story, and the world needs to hear them.Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/www.findingtruenorthcoaching.comCLICK HERE TO DONATECLICK HERE to sign up for Mentoring CLICK HERE to sign up for Daily "Word from the Lord" emailsCLICK HERE to sign up for free audio training about inviting Jesus intoyour daily lifeCLICK HERE to buy my book Total Trust in God's Safe Embrace
Where the Spirit of the Lord Is, There Is Freedom!
2 Corinthians 3:12-18 “ Since we have such a hope, we are very bold, not like Moses, who put a veil over his face so that the Israelites might not see the end of the fading splendor. But their minds were hardened; for to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away. Yes, to this day whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their minds; but when a man turns to the Lord the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.”
This verse powerfully reminds us of the stark contrast between our lives today and the time of Moses. When Moses communed with the Lord, his face radiated with divine splendor, an overwhelming sight for those around him, prompting him to veil his face. However, when Christ came, this veil was lifted. There was always a curtain between God and His people in the Old Testament. They couldn’t have direct contact with Him. There was a separation. This separation was necessary because of the fall of man.
When Adam and Eve were created, God walked among them. Nothing was separating them. They were as close as they could be. However, when Adam and Eve ate the apple and betrayed God’s trust, they had to leave the Garden, and then there was a separation between us and God. This is not why God created us. He didn’t want there to be a separation between us. He didn’t want anything to keep us apart. This is why He sent Jesus to die on the cross in reparation for our sins so that there wouldn’t be anything between us and God.
This verse mentions that the Lord is the Spirit and that there is freedom where the Spirit of the Lord is. We all need to hear that again. Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. Guess where the Spirit of the Lord is? It is inside of you and me. It is inside of all of us. That means that there is freedom inside of us. So, why don’t we feel free? Why are so many of us living under the weight of our sins and judgments? Why do we feel like we are held captive by our past or those who surround us? Why aren’t we living in this freedom?
I wonder if we aren’t living in freedom because we aren’t cooperating with it? Is it possible that our chains are made by us? Is it possible that we aren’t free from our sins because we haven’t accepted that freedom? God makes it clear over and over again in the Bible that our sins are forgiven when we repent and turn back to Him. So why do we struggle so much to believe that? Why do we insist on holding onto our sins? Is God a liar? Does He tell us things that aren’t true? If God says we are forgiven, why can’t we accept that? Why can’t we believe Him?
God sent Jesus, his only son, to die on the cross for our sins. Then He raised Jesus from the dead and sent the Holy Spirit to live inside of us. God thinks we are worth it. He wouldn’t have done all of that if He didn’t want us to be free to have a relationship with Him. He wouldn’t have done all of that if he didn’t think we were worthy enough.
This verse goes on to say, “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.” The Lord is changing each one of us little by little. Looking around, it may seem that the transformation is happening quicker with some people than with others. I have found that the more we cooperate with what the Lord is doing, the more quickly the transformation happens.
When we fight God the whole way, it tends to take much longer. The process of becoming more and more like God means that we are becoming less and less like our worldly selves. God is trying to purify us, and that process can be painful. That process can consist of turning away from things we like that are not helping us grow closer to the Lord. It may mean we must walk away from situations or even people who are constantly leading us into sin. Or, maybe they aren’t leading us into sin, but they are definitely encouraging it.
It may also take longer because we are unaware that the Lord is trying to lead us. If we aren’t paying attention to what the Lord is saying, we might miss it. That is not to say the Lord can’t get our attention; he definitely can. However, he honors our free will. So, if we want to continue to ignore his requests, then He will let us. God has so much more available for each of us. He really does. We have to want it. We have to be looking for it. If we expect more, we will get more.
God is talking to you each and every day. Do you hear Him? Are you listening? How different would your life be if you turned to God more throughout the day and asked what He thought or what He wanted you to do? What if we paid more attention to the promptings of the Holy Spirit? The Holy Spirit is that still small voice inside of you. You know the one I am talking about. The one that tells you when you shouldn’t be doing something you know is wrong. The one that urges you to make that phone call to that friend. The one that prompts you to apologize when you really don’t want to. Yes, that one. I know each one of you listening has had an experience with the Holy Spirit, even if you didn’t know that was what was happening.
If you heard the verse above, especially the part that said, “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another;” and thought to yourself that you wanted to be changed faster into a greater degree of likeness, then you need to pay more attention to what the Holy Spirit is doing inside of you. It is not a question of if the Holy Spirit is working inside of me. This verse tells us it is. If we want the transformations to happen more quickly, we need to ask ourselves, “What do I need to do to cooperate with the Spirit more?”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone listening to this episode. Lord, we want to be transformed by you. Please help us. Show us how to follow your promptings. Encourage us to sit and listen to you more. Lord, we want to live in the freedom that comes with your Spirit. Please help us. Give us the strength we need to cooperate with your will more. Help us be more and less of you each day, Lord. We love you, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining us on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If this podcast has blessed you in some way, would you consider sharing it with others or making a donation? I have placed a link to donate below, or you can go to my website, walkboldlywithjesus.com. Also, mentoring is tonight! Week 2 of our Come As You Are Series. Come and learn what the Bible says about coming to the Lord just as we are. I look forward to meeting some of you tonight on live mentoring and the rest of you back here in the morning. Remember Jesus loves you, just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in June 2023 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. We meet in person and on Zoom. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “It is trust you must have with faith that never ends. I am the Lord your God. Do not fear. I am with you. I arrange everything in your life. I am in control. Do not obsess yourself with what happens.”
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Do We Trust Jesus?
Luke 5:4-5 “And when he had ceased speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.” And Simon answered, “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing! But at your word, I will let down the nets.”
I like this verse because it reminds me that I am not the only one who argues with the Lord. I am not the only one with a reply other than “Yes” when Jesus asks me to do something. Simon had been out fishing all night and had not caught any fish. He was tired and, I am sure, very discouraged. Then Jesus asked him to push his boat back into the sea a bit so that Jesus could stand on it and talk to all those on the shore. Simon did so.
Then, after Jesus had finished teaching those on the shore, He told Simon to go out into the deep and let down his nets for a catch. Can you imagine how frustrated Simon felt and how tired he probably was? He was washing his nets out to call it a day when Jesus climbed on His boat, and who knows how long Jesus preached before telling Simon to go out into the deep. Then He tells Simon to put his net out into the water again. Jesus is a carpenter, and Simon is a fisherman. I am sure He didn’t understand why He should do what this man said, and yet He did it anyway and yielded more fish than their nets could hold, and the nets began to break. There were so many fish that they filled both boats so full that the boats began to sink.
Have you ever been in a situation like this before? Have you ever felt like God or Jesus was asking you to do something you really didn’t want to? There could be many reasons why we don’t want to do what He asks us to do. Simon was tired and frustrated. He might have also felt that his efforts were in vain. But despite all these, he obeyed. This story reminds us that even when we are tired, frustrated, or feel like our efforts are in vain, we should still obey God's word, for He has a plan that we might not understand.
In this verse, the Lord knew that if Peter obeyed him, he would catch more fish than He could have imagined. God knows the same thing about you and me. He knows that if we obey Him, he will provide more than we need, whether in our jobs, families, or friends. Where is God calling you? What has He been asking you to do, and yet you have been ignoring Him because you have tried it before many times, and so you figure it won’t work this time either? What areas of your life are you desperate to see change?
In this verse, Peter is desperate to catch some fish and has tried all night with no luck. When he listened to the Lord and then saw how many fish they caught, he finally recognized Jesus for who he really was. Peter recognized Jesus as Lord. It says in verse 8, “But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” Has Jesus ever helped you come face to face with your sinfulness? Has He ever answered one of your prayers in a way that there was no question it was God who answered that prayer?
I have had this happen many times. I am grateful to my parents because they told us about times in their lives when this happened to them, and so I began to be aware of when it was happening in my life, too. We miss so much when we are not looking for it. When you intentionally try to see God working in your life, you will see God working in your life. Notice I didn’t say you might see God. I am 100% confident that you will see it if you intentionally look for where God is working in your life. This is the main reason why I do Witness Wednesdays on this podcast. If you hear how God works in other people’s lives, you will become more aware of how He works in your life, too!
I can see how God worked his miracles in my son Noah’s surgery and recovery. Actually, how we even discovered he needed surgery. Noah was having headaches, and they were treating them with medicine, and that wasn’t really working. The neurologist ordered an MRI to ensure it wasn’t too serious. If she hadn’t ordered the MRI, she would have never found out that he had a Chiari malformation. You can only see them on an MRI. Then we were supposed to have surgery at a hospital that was an hour and 40 minutes away from our house. The surgeon could not get Noah on his surgical calendar until July. Noah wants to go to college in Europe at the end of the summer.
We asked if they could put in a referral for Mass General Hospital, as it is less than an hour's drive. They put in the referral, and after we got the records transferred, they set up a pairing with a surgeon who does both pediatric and adult surgeries. They were able to get him scheduled within a few weeks. Also, they scheduled him for after spring break, so I was able to take Noah to England to look at some colleges. It was amazing timing that only God could have arranged.
Then, on the day of the surgery, Noah had an awesome nurse who happened to be his birthday twin. She was so kind and distracted him from thinking about the surgery. The surgeon said it was an excellent surgery, and he thinks Noah will be very pleased with it. Noah was in the hospital for four days and was not really in much pain at all. He could walk the halls, get up and use the restroom, talk to the nurses. He thought he would be in bed for the first week or two when he came home. But he has felt great. He has had to sleep more than he wanted also, yet he was happy he was able to sit up in his computer chair for long periods of time without pain. He said he felt much better than he thought he would and that he is glad they did the surgery as he can feel that there is more room in the back of his head now.
Praise God—He is so good. He not only helped arrange the surgery, the timing, and the doctor, but He also ensured a successful surgery and a painless and speedy recovery—just what we prayed for! I don’t know what you are praying for or what you are waiting for. Whatever it is, I want you to know that God knows what it is, and He is working on it for you. He is figuring out how to get that for you in His perfect timing and also in accordance with your plans as well.
God knew that Peter needed fish that day. He knew he was discouraged, tired, and probably angry. God cared about Peter’s needs and Peter’s wants. This miracle happened for two reasons. First, God cared about Peter and his needs and wants. Second, Peter let down the nets. Peter said yes. He didn’t understand why he was doing it. He didn’t know what Jesus knew. He did it because Jesus asked Him to, and because of that obedience, Jesus made it fruitful.
What is Jesus calling you to do? Has He given you the answer to your problem, and yet you are afraid to let down your net? What if the answer to your prayers is on the other side of your obedience to do what Jesus is telling you to do? What if the thing getting in the way of you catching all the fish is your reluctance to obey Jesus? What if you took that step today and did what He has asked you to do? What could you catch in your net?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone listening to this episode today. Lord, please show us what things you are calling us to do and then give us the grace to accomplish them. Help give us the courage to take that step of faith, trusting that you will fill our nets. We love you, Lord, and we are sorry for not doing as you ask. You are Lord of Lords and King of Kings, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Week 2 of our “Come as You Are” mentoring series is tomorrow. Last week, we looked at several scriptures showing that Jesus does not want perfection before He wants us to come to Him. He wants us to come to him just as we are. If you join mentoring today or tomorrow, you can join us for Week 2 of this series, and you will also get a link to watch previous mentoring sessions as well. I hope you will join us today! We had a great discussion after the mentoring session last week. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you, just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in June 2023 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, when you are full of worry and fear, come to me. Give me your hand in trust, and I will help you. All your cares that you give to me I take care of in my time, not your time.”
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Invite God Into Your Heart
Psalm 24:7-8 "Lift up your heads, O gates! And be lifted up, O ancient doors! That the King of glory may come in. Who is the King of Glory? The Lord, strong and mighty, the Lord, mighty in battle!”
Psalm 24 was given at Prayer Group last night. Then, afterward, someone gets a word or prophecy that goes along with it. The word of prophecy is, “The Lord was just saying, yes, He is the King of Glory, and He deserves all the praise, all the honor, adoration, all the worship, all the fanfare that we would give in worship. But that He desires something even a little more than that. And what He desires is that He wants each of us to invite Him to be the King that sits on the throne of our hearts.” Psalm 24 came at the beginning of the meeting, and this Word came a bit later. I honestly didn’t put the two together.
One of our other members confirmed this Word and said she didn't quite get those exact words, but she had a real feeling about that individual invitation to the Lord into our hearts. If the Lord takes the time to tell us the same message through three different people, we should probably pay attention to that message. The message the Lord wants us to hear is that we need to open the doors of our hearts and invite Him in. The Lord is a gentleman who will not come unless you invite him.
In my Encounter Ministries Class, we looked at this method of evangelization called Jesus at the Door. There is a picture of Jesus at the door, and yet there is only a door knob on the inside of the door. Jesus can not come through the door unless you open it. There is a heart around the picture. When we show it to people, we tell them that Jesus is knocking on the door to their hearts. We ask if they want to invite Jesus in. That image is really powerful, and it is also very anointed. Many people have accepted Jesus into their lives just by looking at this picture and answering the few other questions that are asked with the picture.
One thing we ask them to do after they see the picture is to imagine they have a backpack on their back. Now we tell them to imagine the backpack is filled with their sins. Would it be heavy? Most of us can say yes to that question. Then we asked them to imagine they owed the bank $100,000. What would happen if we gave them a check for $100,000 and they took it to the bank and deposited it? Their debt would be gone, right? This is what Jesus did with our backpack full of sins. He paid the price. He wrote a check out for our sins and signed it with His blood. Our sins have been forgiven, and we are no longer in debt.
Isn’t that an incredible way to explain how our sins are forgiven? Jesus paid our debt for us. He took our sins to the cross with Him. So, why are we so afraid to come to Jesus and invite Him into our hearts? We were talking about this yesterday at prayer group, and we said that sometimes we don’t want to invite Jesus into our hearts because we know that Jesus will call us to live our lives differently, and we may not be ready to do so.
If this is you, or if you know someone who might be struggling with this, you can take heart and remember St. Augustine of Hippa. He was an amazing Saint. He was also infamously known for saying, “Lord, give me chastity and continence, but not yet!” This infamous prayer of the young Augustine of Hippo (354-430) reflects the inner conflict of any soul who recognizes the virtuous thing to do yet fears the demanding struggle against human urges and passions.
The first step is to invite the Lord into our hearts. He will take care of the rest. God is gentle with us, and He will not instantly expect a 180-degree change from you. Or, if He does, He will give you the grace and the power to do it. Look at Saul from the Bible. One day he was headed to a town to round up any Christians and put them in jail. Then he encounters Jesus, is blind for a few days, and completely transforms. He is a completely different person. His name was even changed. I don’t think this is the way that it works for most of us, though.
Most of us struggle with the temptations of this world. We know what we should do, yet we don’t. God understands this. He knows that we get caught up in the wrong things and make the wrong choice more than the right one. He understands this, yet He calls us to invite Him into this struggle. He is calling us to invite Him into our hearts.
Last week for mentoring, I was studying what scripture says regarding coming to the Lord as we are and not feeling that we need to change before we can come to God. This is what I talked about yesterday in the devotional as well. One scripture verse I found goes well with this idea that we want to follow Jesus, but we don’t want to stop doing everything we want. Jeremiah 13:23 says, “Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? Then also you can do good who are accustomed to do evil.” What the Lord revealed to me when I heard this verse is, why would we think we could change without Him? In other words, we think we will wait until we want to give up our current lifestyle until we invite God in, and God is saying, you will need my help to give up that lifestyle. You will need my help to stop drinking. You will need my help to stop sleeping around. You will need my help to be a better mom or dad. Whatever it is you think you need to change before you invite God in, He is saying, it will go quicker if you invite me in first. You don’t need to change on your own. I can help you. I can give you the strength you need. I can be there for you.
The verse above says, "Lift up your heads, O gates! And be lifted up, O ancient doors! That the King of glory may come in. Who is the King of Glory? The Lord, strong and mighty, the Lord, mighty in battle!” The Lord is calling us to open the gates, the ancient doors we have closed in our hearts, and invite the King of Glory in. Who is this king of glory? He is the Lord. He is strong and mighty. He is mighty in Battle. God can help you fight your battles. He is not expecting you to invite Him into your life, and you instantly become a Saint who never does anything wrong. God knows us. He knows us better than we know ourselves. He isn’t expecting more from us than we can give Him. We are the ones who put crazy expectations on ourselves, not God. He wants us to come as we are and invite Him into the mess that is our life. Can we invite Him in today?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each one of us listening to this today. Lord, I know so many people who are afraid to invite you in. So many who know you and yet haven’t invited you into their hearts and lives. Lord, please help them trust you. Please give them an encounter with you that changes their lives as you did for Saul. Lord, so many of us think we have invited you in; we walk with you every day, and yet we still have secret places that we haven’t invited you into. Help us to invite you in Lord. Help us to see those places and those situations that we haven’t invited you into, and then give us the courage to invite you into them. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name; amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If this podcast has blessed your life in some way, would you consider making a donation? There is a link below in the show notes, or you can also go to my website, Walkboldlywithjesus.com. I appreciate you and your faithfulness in listening to this podcast. I look forward to seeing you tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in January 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group or about these words please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is “I ask you, bring them (your roots of brokenness) to me, so that my faith in you will grow, and people will see, not only hear, but see. You have more to do for me, but I want you whole. Come, ask, and we will grow closer and closer. I need my only strong part of my army. You are the captains that will show up. Give me more of you, and allow me to heal more of you.”
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Truth Be Told
Luke 5:30-32 “But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect complained to his disciples, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?” Jesus answered them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”
The theme for my Tuesday night mentoring group is “Come As You Are.” I chose this because too many of us feel we aren’t worthy to come to God as we are. We think we need to get it all together before we come to God. We think we need to clean up our lives and then we can come to God. I can see why we would think this because that is what society tells us. That is what it looks like on Social media. It looks like everyone else has it all together, so we need to get it together before we are good enough to ask God for anything. We can’t attend mass or church service because our kids don’t behave, or we don't have the right clothes, or because we make bad choices.
I love a song called Truth Be Told by Matthew West. Let me read you some of the lyrics because I wish we all knew the truth.
Lie number one you're supposed to have it all together
And when they ask how you're doing
Just smile and tell them, "Never better"
Lie number 2 everybody's life is perfect except yours
So keep your messes and your wounds
And your secrets safe with you behind closed doors
Truth be told
The truth is rarely told, now
I say I'm fine, yeah I'm fine oh I'm fine, hey I'm fine but I'm not I'm broken
And when it's out of control I say it's under control but it's not And you know it
I don't know why it's so hard to admit it
When being honest is the only way to fix it
There's no failure, no fall
There's no sin you don't already know
So let the truth be told
How true is this song. We think that we need to keep it all together because everyone else is keeping it all together, but that’s the thing, they aren’t keeping it together either. We are all just pretending. I love it when it says, There is no failure, no fall, there’s no sin you don’t already know. Why do we think we need to keep our mess from God when He already knows about all of it? There isn’t anything we can keep from Him, so why are we so ashamed to admit it? The song goes on to say…
There's a sign on the door, says, "Come as you are" but I doubt it
'Cause if we lived like it was true, every Sunday morning pew would be crowded
But didn't you say the church should look more like a hospital
A safe place for the sick, the sinner and the scarred and the prodigals
Like me. Well truth be told The truth is rarely told
This is where Matthew West reminds us what Jesus said in the verse above. Not what the world says, but what Jesus says. Come as you are. Imagine how filled churches would be if everyone knew they could truly come as they were. If we all knew that God wants us, even when we don’t have the right clothes or did the wrong thing. Even when we yelled at our kids or our spouse, even when we stayed out too late drinking, God wants us just as we are. No matter what it is, you can come to the Lord. The songs ends with…
Can I really stand here unashamed, Knowin' that your love for me won't change?
Oh God if that's really true Then let the truth be told
This is the truth that I wish everyone knew. The truth that God loves us completely and fully before we are even born and that love never changes. It doesn’t matter what we do or even what we don’t do. He still loves us the same. We can do nothing to make Him love us more or less than he already does.
When we see how the world sees us, we think God is the same. We think that we're not worthy of his love until we get it all together.
However, in the verse above Jesus tells us something different. God sent Jesus to die on the cross for us while we were still sinning. If you want to know how much God loves you, it says in Romans 5:8, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Hear that again while we were still sinners Christ died for us.
This is how God demonstrates his love for us. This one statement shows us that we don't have to be perfect to come to God. Jesus didn’t wait for us to have our lives together before he died on the cross for us, so why should we wait until we figure things out to come to Him?
The verse above says that those who are well have no need of a physician. Those who are righteous, those who are not sinning, those who are praying perfectly, and those who are getting it all right have no need for Jesus.
Jesus died for us, for you, and me, and he did it strictly because he loved us. He did it because the Lord wanted us to come to him. The Lord didn't want anything to be in between us. When Adam and Eve sinned, there had to be a separation, and God hated that. He hated that we couldn't be with him.
He hated that they brought this upon themselves and wanted to redeem them. God could have done that in any number of ways, and the way he chose to do it was to become human and to take all of our sins upon himself, and when he did that, when Jesus died on the cross, the veil between us and God was broken, and that means we don't have to be perfect to come to God. We don't have to get it right before we come to God. We can come to God just as we are, and God loves us just as we are.
If we look through the scriptures, we will find God repeatedly telling us that we don’t have to have it all together to come to Him. He is calling us to come to Him just as we are, in our brokenness and woundedness, and He can fix us and heal us. When we look at the people that Jesus was drawn to in the Bible, it wasn’t the most religious people or the people who were doing everything right. It was the tax collectors and the sinners. If Jesus can use those he chose to use in the Bible to do amazing things, then we can come to God and lay our problems at His feet, and He will help us. All He wants is for us to invite Him into our mess. Will you invite God in today? Even in the mess?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each person listening to this today. Lord, we are sorry we don’t come to you more often. We are sorry we let our shame and our guilt put up a wall between us. Lord, we invite you into our mess right now. We invite you to sit with us in the mess and help us clean up our mess. Lord, we want to be with you, and we want to come to you. Please help us. Show us how you think of us instead of how the world thinks of us. Lord, we ask you to take away our shame and our guilt. We ask you to remove anything that is getting in the way of us coming to you. We love you so much, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If this podcast has been blessing your life, would you consider making a donation to my ministry? Click Here to donate. I have placed several links in the footer of the show notes. One of them is to make a donation. Please pray about it, and if you are led to make a donation, I would really appreciate it. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, just as you are, and so do I. Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in January 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group or these words or would like to join our group, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is “Do you know that you were born for this time? Do you know that you are the first of many? Do you know that everything I do is for you, for the kingdom? Do you know how much more I'm going to do from the tip of your toe to the top of your head so that I can use all those little roots that are your brokenness?"
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We have all seen God working in our lives. However, we might not all be aware it is God working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences, the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience of how God has worked or is working in your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or click here. It won’t take up much of your time, and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story, and the world needs to hear them.
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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God Will Give You The Words
Luke 21:13-15 “This will be a time for you to bear testimony. Settle it, therefore, in your minds, not to meditate beforehand how to answer, for I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which none of your adversaries will be able to withstand or contradict.”
I like this verse because it assures us that we don’t have to have all the right answers. The verse right before this one says, “But before all this they will lay their hands on you and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors for my name’s sake.” People will persecute you. People you love will question your beliefs. Sometimes the people that give us the hardest time are those in our family. I have many friends who feel persecuted by their loved ones.
We expect our family to be loving and to treat us with respect. We expect that even if they disagree, they will still be kind and loving to us, and yet that is not what many people experience. Sometimes, our family members think they are doing us a favor. They think if they give us the cold, hard truth maybe we will forget our foolish ways and realize they were right. Sometimes they are just not kind people. We live in a broken world, and so just because someone is family doesn’t mean it is guaranteed that they will treat you well.
Right after the verse above it says, “You will be delivered up even by parents and brothers and kinsmen and friends, and some of you they will put to death; you will be hated by all for my name’s sake.” The Bible even tells us that some of our loved ones won’t understand. It says we will be betrayed by them. Most of the time our loved ones are not trying to hurt us. They do love us and they are doing what they think is best for us. They think they are saving us from delusional thinking, or false hope, or whatever else they are telling us. They think they know what is best.
The verse above is telling us that we don’t have to know what to say to our family members and those who persecute us. The verse tells us that the Holy Spirit will give us the words to say. The verse says, “This will be a time for you to bear testimony. Settle it, therefore, in your minds, not to meditate beforehand how to answer, for I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which none of your adversaries will be able to withstand or contradict.” Have you ever tried to defend your beliefs on your own without asking for the Lord to give you the words? How did that work out for you? I always seem to get drawn into an argument and end up getting upset. However, when I stop and ask the Lord to give me the words to say, things always go better.
God is telling us that we don’t have to spend time planning out what we will say to this person or that person. We don’t have to spend time figuring out what we will say when our brother asks about this aspect of the church or when our sister asks us why we believe Jesus is really present in the Eucharist. When our friend asks why we don’t believe we are saved or why we believe in purgatory. Or whatever it is that your family and friends always ask you about. We don’t have to plan our responses. What we need to do is to invite the Holy Spirit into our responses. When we are asked a question that we would normally get defensive about, we can ask the Holy Spirit to come and put the right words in our mouths. The words you use with your sister might not be the same words you would use with your brother or your friend.
I love where it says in the verse, “I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which none of your adversaries will be able to withstand or contradict.” How amazing would that be? How great would it be to talk with someone and have them not be able to contradict what you have to say? Most of the time, it is a back-and-forth, never-ending conversation where we each say the same thing over and over again, and neither one of us sees where the other person is coming from. I have had so many conversations like that with my boys. Conversations when they contradict everything I say. It would be great to have the words that they can’t contradict.
It’s interesting that the first line in the verse says, “This will be a time for you to bear testimony.” There was a speaker at one of my Encounter Ministry classes. She said one thing people can’t contradict is your testimony. If you experienced something, they can’t tell you that you didn’t. You are not saying it is true for everyone. You are saying what is true for you. When you are talking about Jesus you can tell people what He has done in your life. What He means to you? What He has done for you? They can’t contradict these things because they are your experiences.
The other important thing the verse said that I don’t think we realize is that God can give us wisdom. God can reveal things to us that we would have no other way of knowing. I remember a speaker who came to another one of my classes at Encounter said that someone asked him once where he got his PhD because he knew so much about the topic he was talking about. Most of the knowledge he had came from the Lord. He gave us a tip that has stuck with me, and I would like to do it more often. This speaker told us to ask the Lord, before we go to bed, to give us wisdom about whatever topics we would like more wisdom. He said the Lord can use our sleep to give us that wisdom.
There have been so many Saints who have spoken so profoundly about the church and yet did not go to school to study. St. Catherine of Sienna is a doctor of the church, yet she received very little education. You do not have to be well-educated to learn more about God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. You do need a desire to learn more, and you need to spend time with the Lord. You need to ask Him for what you want and then accept the information that He gives you. The Lord tells us in the verse above we don’t have to figure out what we will say, He will give us the words and the wisdom. We can rely on that promise. The next time you are confronted about your beliefs or about anything really, stop and invite the Holy Spirit into that conversation. Ask the Holy Spirit to give you the words to say, and then speak the words you are given.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we thank you for giving us the words to say when confronted or persecuted. We thank you for the wisdom you give us. Lord, we ask for more wisdom. We ask that you fill us with wisdom so we can go out and proclaim the good news to all we meet. We thank you that we don’t have to have the right words to say. We thank you that you are always equipping us for each and every situation that we find ourselves in. We love you so much, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. The theme or topic for this month’s mentoring is “Come as you are.” Too many of us don’t know that God loves us just as we are. He is not waiting for us to become perfect before he will love us. He does not want us to get our acts together before we come to Him. He loves us completely, just as we are. He waits with open arms for us to come to him just as we are. This can be really hard for us to believe. The concept of unconditional love and unconditional forgiveness can be really hard to wrap our heads around, especially if we have never experienced it before. This is why I am taking this whole month to explore this topic. My prayer is that by the end of this month, you will know how much God loves you, and you will feel confident coming to Him just as you are. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in January 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group or about these words, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Decree and declare boldly now. For the heavens are open, truth is coming, and truth is coming big. Keep on decreeing. Keep on declaring. I hear your voice. I am answering your call. The Holy Seraphim are all around you. Decree and declare boldly. For truth and justice to come now.”
www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com
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Grace Empowerment 101 Devotionals
Today’s episode will be a bit different. My friend and fellow Toastmaster has just published a book titled Grace Empowerment 101 Devotionals. You can find this book on Amazon, and I will place a link in the show notes if you would like to purchase it. I met Marina through The New Life Toastmasters Group. She started this Toastmasters group over 10 years ago, and I am so thankful for it, as I learned so much from it.
For those of you who don’t know, Toastmasters is an organization that trains people to do public speaking—or any kind of speaking. It is also really good for people who need to learn to communicate better at work or learn to be more calm giving work presentations. Marina is a volunteer work coach for many people, including college students just finishing up their degrees and looking to go out and find a job. Marina is also an integral part of her church family. She studied at the Chinese Semlink Theology Seminary College Certificate Program for four years and is now the Sunday School Coordinator at her church.
Marina is a talented woman who loves Jesus. She has such a passion to bring Jesus’s love to everyone she meets. She also runs Alpha courses at her church. Alpha emphasizes the essentials that all denominations agree on. Alpha creators believe that what unites us is infinitely greater than what divides us. I hope you enjoy her devotionals as much as you do. She is a phenomenal woman of God. If you are on Facebook and would like to follow her you can find her at Author Marina Grace: Life Lessons, Panda Flash Cards. I will place a link for that in the show notes as well. Today I will be reading 5 of her devotionals to you so you can get a sneak peak as to what you will find in her book.
#69: Just Believe
In Luke 8, a synagogue leader named Jairus came and fell down before Jesus. He pleaded with Jesus to heal his dying daughter. Without hesitation, Jesus rose and accompanied Jairus to his home. As they approached, someone informed Jairus that his daughter had already passed away, and there was no need for Jesus to see her. But Jesus comforted the grieving father, saying, “Don’t be afraid; just believe, and she will be healed.” Ultimately, Jesus miraculously restored the daughter to life.
Reflecting on this story, I realize that my faith in Jesus is essential for my job. When I encounter challenges in my projects, my heart sometimes feels overwhelmed. However, I remember that God, my heavenly Father, has a purpose for assigning these tasks to me—even when they are not easy. If the projects were straightforward, there would be no need for a Senior Principal Software Engineer like myself. This is my career journey.
Dear God, please grant me unwavering faith in You. Open doors to help me resolve the issues I face. I trust that You will never abandon me, even in the most challenging situations. Your purpose is to shape me into the likeness of Jesus Christ. Pray in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
# 70: My sole priority
"When Jesus taught His disciples how to pray, He said: 'This, then, is how you should pray:
‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.’ (Matthew 6:9, NIV)
This prayer sets the direction for my remaining life. Since God is my heavenly Father, He will provide all my needs on earth. I don’t need to worry about my possessions, my job, or my service for Him. My sole priority is to serve His kingdom so that His will is done on earth. May everyone hear His word and follow His teachings, leading them to be baptized in the name of God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit.
Dear God, please empower me through the Holy Spirit to speak the right words at the right time and be Your hands and voice. I pray in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
#71: Little faith
Jesus taught His disciples not to worry:
“Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds!” (Luke 12:24, NIV)
As I grow older, I find myself easily succumbing to worry. The realization that so much is beyond my control weighs heavily on my mind. I meticulously plan, fretting about work, time management, church responsibilities, and even my health.
Two weeks ago, I reached out to my church’s prayer team, seeking their intercession for three sequencing Sunday events: facilitating a Sunday school class, delivering a children’s ministry sermon, and hosting a Toastmasters Club meeting. But life took an unexpected turn—I tested positive for COVID-19 on Saturday. Suddenly, I was confined to my home, relying on online conference tools. Yet, remarkably, everything unfolded smoothly. My church family rallied, setting up laptops and equipment to ensure the events proceeded seamlessly.
In this experience, I learned a profound lesson: God anticipates our needs even before we voice them in prayer. He orchestrates every detail of our lives, weaving together circumstances beyond our comprehension. There’s no need for excessive worry; instead, we can trust in His providence.
Dear God, grant me unwavering faith to rely on You fully. As I strive to do my best, I surrender the rest to Your capable hands. In the name of Jesus Christ, I pray. Amen.
#72 Answered prayer
Jesus taught:
“So I say to you: Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you.” (Luke 11:9, NIV)
I am a mother of two daughters. Before they entered college and decided on their majors, I did not force them to choose any specific field. I provided them with one guideline: they needed to select a major that would lead to job opportunities after graduation. If they were interested in an art major, they had to choose a second major to enhance their employability.
After that, I sealed my lips and prayed for them every day. Now, my elder daughter has a business administration major with a concentration in operations management. My younger daughter followed our advice and pursued two majors: biomedical engineering and biology.
It is entirely by God’s grace and mercy that both daughters successfully graduated. They both found jobs within a few weeks after graduation.
Dear God, thank you for hearing our prayers. Please give us strong faith to pray to You for guiding and protecting my family. Pray in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
#73: Be a faithful servant
When the apostles asked Jesus to increase their faith, Jesus told them the story of a hardworking servant returning from the field. The master immediately instructed the servant to cook and wait on him. After the servant completed all tasks, they should humbly say, “We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.” (Luke 17:10, NIV)
Related to me: I recently worked from 6:00 AM to 5:00 PM. When I returned home, my husband asked me to cook, and I found myself resisting. How could I transform my attitude into that of a humble servant?
Reflecting on Jesus’ actions during the Passover feast, I am reminded of His profound love for us. He stood up, poured water into a basin, and washed His disciples’ feet. In doing so, He set an example for us—to serve one another with humility and love (John 13).
Dear God: Please grant me a humble heart to serve others for Your sake. Increase my faith, knowing that every task You assign has a purpose to shape me into the likeness of Jesus Christ. I pray in His name. Amen.
#74: Peaceful Heart
Jesus said: “Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?” (Matthew 6:27, NIV)
In this season of life, I’ve come to understand that very little is truly within my control. As a software engineer, my job demands quality results, and achieving that involves constant testing and ensuring everything meets the mark. Additionally, I strive to complete my work early, allowing room to handle unexpected surprises.
Yet, I despise last-minute surprises.
Recently, God has been teaching me to loosen my grip on life—to trust Him fully and embrace a more abundant existence. Each morning, I begin with a simple prayer:
"I ask God for success, as Jesus Christ did.
I seek good surprises from Him."
And remarkably, this practice has granted me a peaceful heart throughout the day. I can focus on my work without fear of uncertainty.
Dear God, grant me unwavering faith to pray to You each morning. Thank You for bestowing upon me a tranquil heart and entrusting the entire day to Your care. In the name of Jesus Christ, I pray. Amen.
Thank you so much, Marina, for sharing your expertise and your love of God with us. Thank you for being real and sharing your life with us. Thank you for all you do for Toastmasters, for your church, and for all those you career coach for free. You are remarkable! If you want Marina’s book, CLICK HERE to purchase the book. Please also follow her on Facebook or LinkedIn. CLICK HERE for her Facebook page.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone listening to the episode. Lord, I also ask you to bless Marina in a special way. I ask you to bless all she is doing to bring others to you so they can come to know your love. Lord, help us all have this deep desire to bring others to you. Help us share your love and light with others as well. We love you, Lord, and ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I hope you enjoyed hearing a few devotionals from my friend today. Also, thank you all for your prayers for Noah yesterday. It was a long day, but the doctor said the surgery was excellent. It went better than planned, and he thinks Noah will be very happy with the results. We know this is all thanks to God! Please continue to pray for a pain-free and speedy recovery. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in January 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group or about these words please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is “Come closer to me, my children. This year, come much closer, and I will reveal my heart to you. I will show you where you need to go.”
Honestly, I Think We Just Need Jesus!
Acts 2:40 “And he testified with many other words and exhorted them, saying, “Save yourselves from this crooked generation.”
I chose this scripture verse today because where it says, “Save yourselves from this crooked generation.” There is a song that I have heard on the radio more and more recently, and these last few days, it is running repeat in my mind. I can’t seem to get it out of my head. I am not sure I want to get it out of my head as the words that are running through my head are Honestly, I think we need Jesus by Terrian. Since I can’t seem to shake this song, and then I read the verse above this morning, I think the Lord wants me to share it with you. I will place a link for the song in the show notes, as she does a much better job singing it than I do. I also love that she is young and yet can still see that we need more Jesus. I will go over the lyrics of the song with you today.
The song starts with:
I got a front-row seat to the madness
I pick up my phone every mornin' out of habit
I've been fiendin' for the drama, yeah, I said it
I'm addicted to the rush, need a medic
How many of us pick up our phones or turn on the news first thing when we wake up? How many of us want to know what is going on in the world before we even stop and spend our time with God? I use my phone for an alarm, so I would turn off my alarm, and then I would check my messages, emails, and Facebook before I would sit down with the Lord and spend time with Him. I have gotten better; now, I just check my messages, mostly to make sure my kids got home safely. Sometimes I still check my emails, but I am getting better and usually save that for later.
I love how the songwriter points out that we usually pick up our phones out of habit. This isn’t just first thing in the morning. We do this all throughout the day. I bet we all spend more time than we would like on our phones. I also like how they bring our attention to the fact that we are “Fiendin’ for the drama” and “addicted to the rush.” It seems we are drawn to the conflict and the drama more than the good things that are happening. I don’t know if that is because we crave drama or because that is all the news tends to show us. Either way, there is good and bad going on in the world, and it is up to us to choose which we seek out and focus on.
The song goes on to say:
When I take a step back, I can see it
All the pain, all the fear we've been feelin'
Losin' sight of the thing that we're needin'
That we're needin’
This is a great reminder that sometimes we need to take a step back. When we do we see that we are focusing on all of our pain and fear that we are feeling instead of focusing on the one who can take all that pain and fear away. When we watch the news or listen to all that is going on in the world, we tend to get overwhelmed. We can also start to feel a sense of hopelessness. We can feel a sense that the world is going crazy, and there is nothing we can do about it. However, we are never hopeless because we are children of God, and we can always turn to Him, and He can save us. There is nothing too hard for God to handle.
Next, the song says:
Honestly, I think we just need Jesus
Honestly, I think we just need Jesus
Have we all gone mad? Have we lost our minds?
What used to be wrong, we say that it's right
Honestly, I think we just need Jesus
This is the part that gets stuck in my head. I can’t think of a truer statement. I can see how our country is falling apart because we keep removing God from more and more things. This country was founded with God. He was a part of the government; yes, Church and State were separate, and yet God and State weren’t. God was invited into the Constitution; he was invited into the Pledge of Allegiance. He was invited into our courtrooms. God was welcome everywhere. Now, it seems He is welcome nowhere.
I also love how the song says, “Have we all gone mad? Have we lost our minds? What used to be wrong, we say that it’s right.” We have all thought this for a long time now and it is nice to hear it in a song so we know we aren’t the only ones who think it. This world does seem to have gone mad and it does seem like we are all losing our minds. Some of the things that seem to be ok in the world today still shock me. I think this song points out very real and honest questions. Have we all gone mad? Have we all lost our minds?
Take a good long look in the mirror
Search my heart and soul, make it clearer
Help me take your love, trade the bitter
Leave it in the dust, help me leave it in the dust, Lord.
I think it would be a great idea if we all stopped and took a good look in the mirror. What are we doing? Not what is the world doing, what are we doing? Are we staying true to God in this crazy world? Are we staying above all the drama and walking in the light of Christ? Are we being love and hope to everyone we meet? We are all called to be “little Christs” to all we meet. Are we doing so? Are we loving everyone, even those who aren’t like us? Even those who aren’t living their lives the way we think they should? Even those who we don’t like. God said to love our enemies. Are we doing that?
The next line says, “Search my heart and soul, make it clearer.” Do we want God to search our hearts and souls? What would He find? I do like how it says to make it clearer. With all that is going on in this world, and all this world says is ok, the water we wade into can get muddy. I don’t think the world makes it easy or clear how we should live our lives. We need to focus on God and ask God to help make it clear to us what He wants from us and how He wants us to live.
It also says, “Help me take your love, trade the bitter. Leave it in the dust, help me leave it in the dust, Lord.” It can be easy to become bitter. We live in a broken world, and people offend us all the time. Things aren’t fair, and sometimes good things happen to bad people, and bad things happen to good people. This can make us bitter. We need God to come in and replace our bitterness with His love. We need His help to walk away from the bitter and leave it in the dust.
We've been preachin', we've been drinkin' in the vanity (in the vanity)
Now it's got us questionin' our sanity (sanity)
And we wonder how we get all this anxiety
It's clear to me
Yep, I think we have all probably questioned our sanity at some point over the last few years. I definitely think there is a lot of vanity in this day and age as well. With everyone having phones and taking photos every moment of every day, we have become obsessed with how we look and what we have. We want to make sure our life looks as good online as everyone else’s life does. This leads us to do and say things that aren’t always true. We act online like our lives are perfect and yet so many of our children and adults are hurting inside but don’t reach out and get help because everyone else seems like they are doing so good. This definitely makes us question our sanity because our life is falling apart, and everyone else seems to have it all together. I love the line that says, “And we wonder how we get all this anxiety.” Exactly!! All of the things I just talked about, along with the news, the decline of our country, the division in our country, and we wonder why everyone is so anxious.
After the song repeats the chorus about us just needing Jesus, it goes on to say:
We turn away (we turn away)
We're running back to you (oh-oh)
Covered in grace (covered in grace)
God, You can make us new (make us new)
Yes! We are like a revolving door. We turn away from the Lord and then turn back to Him, then we turn away, and then we turn back. I love how the author of this song understands that even when we do this, we are covered in grace. God will always accept us back in. He is not angry with us that we have turned away, He is happy that we have turned back. God is always there with open arms waiting for us to turn back to Him. God is the only one that can make us new. We may think we have done too much, we have really messed up this time, and there is no hope for us. There is always hope in the Lord. He can make us new, He can make our country new, He can make our world new. We just have to invite Him in and ask Him.
The song ends by repeating the chorus. I will leave you with those words.
Honestly, we need, we need You, Jesus (we need You, oh)
Have we all gone mad? Have we lost our minds?
What used to be wrong, we say that it's right
Honestly, we need, we need You, Jesus
Oh, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus
We need You, Jesus, Jesus
Oh, Jesus
Jesus, Jesus (we're running back)
(We're running back to You) Jesus
We're runnin' back to You, oh (Jesus)
Yeah, Jesus, Jesus
Make us new
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you, and we are sorry we turned away; please help us to turn back. We are sorry our country is falling apart. Please show us how we can help to bring you back into our country. Please put in our hearts what you are calling us to do. Please help us to stop searching for the drama and start searching for you. Help us to be your love and light to others instead of spreading the drama and the worry. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I would like to ask a favor. I have been talking about my mentoring program for a while now. It is on Tuesday nights at 8 PM EST on Zoom, and I record it, so if you aren’t able to make it live, you can watch the recording. Maybe mentoring is not for you, and yet you may know someone who might benefit from it. My favor is that you pass the information along to them. CLICK HERE for mentoring. You could just copy it and then paste it into a text message or email. Also, you could just direct them to the walkboldlywithjesus.com website, and the link is right on that first page. If you would like to join mentoring, but just don’t have the $30 per month, please reach out to me. I don’t want a lack of money to hinder my ability to grow closer to the Lord. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Also, can I please ask for some prayers? My middle son Noah is going in for surgery today. Please pray for a successful surgery, healing of all headaches, and a speedy and pain-free recovery. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day.
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in January 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group or about these words, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is “I am here for each one of you, my children. I never abandon you. You are precious in my sight. You are my great delight.”
Today is a short witness, however I think it is a very powerful one. This whole month in mentoring has been focused on Praise and Worship. I have gone to the Lord a couple of times over the last few years, asking Him what has increased my faith the most. What has increased my trust in the Lord? The answer He always gives me is praise. I am grateful He asked me to spend this whole month on praise because each week, I keep finding more and more reasons why we should praise the Lord. I was researching praise I found a miracle story of praise that shows us the importance of praise and that God really wants us to praise Him just as much as we pray to Him. I found this story on the Good Samaritan Health Center Website. I will post a link for it in the show notes.
Here is the story: (Click Here for original article)
“Miracles happen [when] we praise God. I once heard a story about a woman missionary in China many years ago. She contracted a deadly disease and was given up to die. For days she lay quarantined in her bunk, with no medical help—it was a hopeless situation.
The only thing she could do was pray. So hour after hour, she pled with God to heal her. Then suddenly, the Lord gave her a vision. She saw an old-fashioned scale, the kind often seen on justice statues, with a fulcrum and plates held by chains on each side. This scale she saw was heavily weighted on one side, while the other side was way up in the air because it was empty. The scale was clearly out of balance.
The Lord revealed to her that the heavy side was her prayers—she had certainly prayed many prayers—while the empty side was her praise. God quickened her that the praise side needed to be filled to outweigh the trouble she was facing. When the scale was balanced, her healing would manifest.
So this desperately sick woman stopped pleading for her healing and started praising God. She praised Him for His greatness. She praised Him for sending Jesus and for all His benefits. She praised Him for being her savior, her healer, her provider, and for everything He’d ever done for her.
At first, she was so weak that her praises were mere whispers. But as she continued to do nothing but praise and worship God all day and all night, she grew louder. As the people outside her room heard her fervent praises, they feared for her life, thinking that maybe she was delirious with fever. You can imagine how amazed they were several days later when she walked out of that room on her own, totally healed! She had taken “the praise cure,” and she was completely made well. There is power in praise! When we shift our focus from our troubles to God’s greatness by praising Him, miracles can happen.”
Isn’t that amazing? Doesn’t that give you a visual of how important praise is? When I read this, my first instinct was to share it with everyone I know. I think most of us know to pray to God when we need our prayers answered. If we are sick, I think most of us turn to the Lord. If you don’t pray to the Lord when you are sick, I want to encourage you to do so. He really is a miracle worker, and He wants to heal his children. Now, we have another thing we can do when we are sick, and that is praise the Lord. Actually, not just when we are sick but anytime we feel we need answers to prayers. If we got in the habit of praising the Lord daily, even when we didn’t need something from Him, I wonder how different our lives would be. I bet our faith and trust in the Lord would increase exponentially. Let’s give it a try.
The Ephesians 4 Gifts
Ephesians 4:7, 11-12 “But grace was given to each of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift. And his gifts were that some should be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors, and teachers, for the equipment of the saints, for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ.”
This was something we learned about in my Encounter Ministries class last week, and I wanted to share it with you this morning. We talked about what the nature of these gifts are and who gives them to us. Jesus is the giver of these gifts, and they represent the fullness of His ministry. He had all of these gifts. Jesus was the perfect example of all of these gifts. Let’s first look at what gifts I am talking about and go into a bit more detail on each of them. Then we can talk about the purpose of these gifts.
The verse above says, “And his gifts were that some should be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers. Let’s go through each one of these individually. The first one mentioned is apostles. Some of us are called to be apostles. Apostles are those sent by God and given a major mission to advance the kingdom, God’s kingdom. If you have been given this gift, often you have also been given the grace to break through opposition, as you will definitely encounter opposition to your mission. The enemy does not want us to advance the Kingdom of God. He will put every sort of opposition he can in your way. However, if you have been given the gift of apostles, then you will also be given the grace to break through that opposition.
The second one mentioned above is prophets. Prophets are those given a very strong prophetic anointing and operate at a high level of precision and accuracy. Peter Herbeck is one of our Modern-Day prophets. He has a prophetic gift and is often proved accurate. The Lord is talking to each one of us. We can all hear Him if we take the time to listen. However, that is not the gift of a prophet. A prophet is hearing words not only for himself or herself but they are receiving words to share with others, and those words are often proven accurate.
The third gift is Evangelists. Evangelists are those anointed with the grace to seek out the lost and bring them to salvation in Christ with great effect. I like this definition because it puts evangelization in such a good light. Before taking this Encounter Ministries class I would hide when I would hear the evangelization. The thought of going up to people and talking about God or Jesus would make me so nervous. I would be worried about how they would feel and what if I was bothering them. This is why I love this definition so much. It shows us the real results of evangelization. We are seeking out the lost and bringing them home, bringing them to Salvation in Christ. People with this gift are really good at this. What it means when it says “with great effect” is that when they talk with people to try to bring them to salvation in Christ, a majority of people they talk with do come to Christ.
The fourth one is Pastors. Pastors are those given the grace to disciple and accompany disciples into greater spiritual maturity. Again, we may all have some ability to disciple and accompany people into great spiritual maturity. However, that may not be our primary goal. If your gift is pastor, you will be more successful than most at this.
The fifth one is the Teacher. Teachers are those given a special grace to instruct others in the Word of God and bring a renewal of the mind. These would be people who know the Bible, they know the Word of God and they use it to bring about a renewal of the mind. If we want to be good followers of Jesus, we need a renewal of the mind. This world has us all crazy, and if we watch the news, we aren’t sure what to think these days. However, God is raising up teachers who can instruct us in the Word of God and, therefore, bring about a renewal of the mind.
Now that we have gone over what the gifts are let's talk about the purpose of these gifts. The verse above lists the two purposes of these gifts. We are given these gifts, for the equipment of the saints, for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ. The first purpose of these gifts is to equip the saints for the work of ministry. John 14:12 says, “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I go to the Father.” The 'greater works' here refer to the potential for each of us, through the empowerment of these gifts, to reach more people and have a greater impact than even Jesus did during His earthly ministry. We are all meant to do the work that Jesus did, and even greater works than He did. However, we need people to teach us and disciple us as Jesus did for His followers. This is one reason for the Ephesians 4 gifts.
The second purpose of these gifts is to build up the body of Christ. God wants to see all of His children saved. He wants us to help Him build up the body of Christ. These gifts can help us do that. For instance, a pastor may disciple a new believer, who is then equipped by a teacher to understand the Word of God, and then an evangelist may guide them in sharing their faith with others. These gifts work well together. It is a collaboration of these gifts to help build the kingdom of God. When they were explaining this to us in class, they said the way this works is that God pours out special gifts on some of us, and they equip the rest of us.
As I mentioned earlier, we all may have these gifts to varying degrees. However, the gifts I am talking about today are the gifts that are given to people who are then given the mission to teach them to others. They are given not only the gift, but the desire to help others be fruitful in the gift as well. If you want to know if you have received one or more of these gifts, you can sit with the Lord and ask Him these two questions. First, Is there a mature and demonstrated fruit in one of these areas? Second, Does your heart burn to see the church equipped to do the works of ministry?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each person listening today. Lord, we ask that you help us discern which gift you have given us and help us steward that gift. Lord, help us grow and be fruitful in any areas that you are calling us into. We want to be your disciples, Lord. We want to be used by you to further the kingdom of God here on earth. Let us be your hands and feet, Lord. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Week 4 of Praise and Worship mentoring is this evening. If you haven’t joined, it is not too late. CLICK HERE to sign up. I look forward to seeing some of you tonight on zoom and meeting the rest of you here tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in December 2023 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group or about these words, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is,“Bring my light and words to others. Do not hesitate to tell them that I am the way, the truth, and the life. In me, there will be no darkness. I am the light. I am their hope.”
Remember The Lord Is With You
Nehemiah 4:14 “And I looked, and arose, and said to the nobles and to the officials and to the rest of the people, “Do not be afraid of them. Remember the Lord, who is great and terrible, and fight for your brethren, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your homes.”
In case you are not familiar with this story, as I only recently learned more about it. Nehemiah felt the Lord called him to go and lead the rebuilding of the wall around Jerusalem. He got permission from King Ar-ta-xerx′es to go and to do this. But when Sanbal′lat the Hor′onite and Tobi′ah the servant, the Ammonite, and Geshem the Arab heard of it, they derided us and despised us and said, “What is this thing that you are doing? Are you rebelling against the king?” These people wanted to stop the rebuilding of the walls. They threatened to harm those building the wall. This is why Nehemiah is reassuring his people in the verse above.
What stood out to me most about the verse above is the statement, Remember the Lord, who is great and terrible. I thought this was an interesting word to describe God. I have never thought of God as terrible. I was thinking maybe it meant he is great for His children, but terrible for those who are against His children. However, when I looked this verse up in various translations, it says other words. The most common wording is “Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome. That I can totally understand this wording. God is definitely awesome.
I also looked up the wording from the translation we use at the Catholic mass and it said, “Do not fear them! Keep in mind the Lord, who is great and to be feared.” I can see this as well. There are actually two meanings to this phrase. First, we should all fear the Lord, meaning have awe and reverence for Him. We don’t need to fear Him as be afraid of Him, but we can look to Him with Awe. The second meaning of this phrase is the traditional meaning. Yes, those who are trying to hurt His children should fear the Lord. They should be afraid because He will stop at nothing to protect and take care of His children.
In the verse above, Nehemiah reminds the people of Jerusalem that they have no reason to be afraid. He is letting them know that they can rely on the Lord and that He will keep them safe.
This verse is a good one for us to look to when we need to be reminded that the Lord is fighting for us as well. He is on our side. Sometimes we can forget this. Sometimes we can think we are in this alone. I mentioned something in my episode last week that I think is worth repeating. God is not surprised by anything we go through. He doesn’t look at our situation and say, “Oh no, Catherine is struggling; what should I do?” He knew I was going to be struggling, and He knew how I would get out of it. He will help me out of the situation I am in just as He will help you out of your situation. He is a good, good father, and he will not leave us alone in our struggles unless we ask Him to. Unless we push Him away.
It is possible to close doors to God’s help. God respects our right to free will, and so if we decide we want to fight our battles on our own, He will let us. This is one reason it is so important to ask God for what we want or what we need. Yes, He knows what we need, but He is waiting for us to ask, for us to give Him permission. He is waiting for us to invite Him into the situation. God does not go where He is not wanted. He will not go against your free will.
This verse above says, “Remember the Lord, who is great and terrible, and fight for your brethren, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your homes.” This is a great reminder that we need to fight for our families. It is a great reminder that there is a war going on for our souls—not just our souls but those of our loved ones as well. We need to be on the lookout and on the offensive.
It is a great reminder that we are not in this fight alone. We have the Lord on our side. The Lord who is great and awesome, who is great and powerful. He is fighting with us. He is fighting for our children and for all of our loved ones. Whenever we feel like we are struggling, whenever we notice our loved ones are struggling, we can call upon His mighty name, and He will be there to fight for us. I first was going to write alongside us, and He will do that, but did you know He can fight our fights for us too? Did you know you can hand something over to Him, and He can take care of it? God doesn’t need your help to fight your battles.
That doesn’t mean we don’t ever have to do anything. Sometimes He is calling us to do our part while He does His part. However, sometimes, especially those times when it is too big for us to fix or when we don’t even know where to begin, He can fight those battles for you. He can either take care of it completely without our help, or He will lead us to the first step, then the next step and so on. All we need to do is remember to turn to Him and ask Him. If you are struggling today if you are in the middle of a battle right now, can you take a moment and invite God in? Can you ask Him to come and fight this with you or for you? Honestly, what have you got to lose?
Dear Heavenly Father, I love you and ask you to bless each person listening to this episode. Lord, we want you to fight our battles with us; please help us. Lord, we want you to fight for our loved ones with us. Lord, we invite you into all of our battles. We invite you into all of our struggles. We invite you in to protect our loved ones. Lord, we turn to you. We want your help. We want your protection. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I want to remind you all that mentoring is tomorrow night. I will be finishing up the series on praise and worship. Tomorrow we will discuss various places from the Bible where God shows us the power of praise and worship. I hope you will join us. I just want to encourage you if you have been on the fence about joining mentoring but aren’t sure you want to spend the money. I want to encourage you to invest in yourself. Invest in your faith journey. We are often so willing to spend money on everything else but not our faith journey. Why is that? If you are local and have not joined because you really don’t like Zoom, reach out to me. If I have a few people interested, I am happy to do an in-person mentoring group as well. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in December 2023 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group or about these words, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “You are the delight of my heart, my children. That is why I sent Jesus my son to you. I sent you my greatest gift. Treasure him always. Follow in his steps. Emulate him and you will continue to be my delight.”
Christian Music Can Be Life Changing
Psalm 35:1-3 “Praise the Lord! Praise the name of the Lord, give praise, O servants of the Lord, you that stand in the house of the Lord, in the courts of the house of our God! Praise the Lord, for the Lord is good; sing to his name, for he is gracious!”
Yesterday, I shared a personal experience about praising God through the hard times. I also shared this during my teaching at the prayer group. During prayer, we have a quiet time when we listen for words from the Lord, similar to the ones I share at the end of each episode. Yesterday, the Lord kept guiding us with scriptures about praise, like the one above. The Bible is filled with instances of praise. King David, for instance, was a great example of praise. Some of the most powerful Psalms of praise we have from David were not when everything was going well for him. Some of the most impactful ones came from him when he was hiding in a cave from his son or from Saul.
One reason I suggested yesterday that we listen to praise and worship music often is because then that is what you will have running through your head. Whatever you surround yourself with is what you will think about; it is what will contribute to the thoughts running through your head, and it will have an effect on how you are acting. Think about how different things could be if you were constantly listening to music that told you how great God is, how He is always there for you. If you heard stories of how He has helped others and so He will help you too. What if you heard every day that God loves you and doesn’t make mistakes?
This is the transformative power of Christian music. It doesn’t just uplift us, it changes us. When we listen to it, our hearts open up a bit, and our hearts soften a bit. When we listen to Christian music frequently, we begin to believe in an even deeper way that Jesus loves us and that we are His. We start to believe the things they talk about. We begin to believe that we don’t have to be perfect to come to Christ. We believe that we can be forgiven. We believe He died for us, you and me.
My husband used to listen to WAAF radio station. The station number on the radio was 107.3. It has been around since I was a kid. It was a rock station and they also had a morning show that he liked. However, now 107.3 is KLOVE radio, which is a Christian radio station. I have never heard of a Christian radio station before. It is amazing. If you don’t have KLOVE near you, although it is all over the United States I believe, then they have a website and an app. So, even if you can’t get them on the radio where you live, you can still get their music. They also have all sorts of events. They have a part of their website where you can place prayer requests, and then they let you know when someone prays for you. They have pastors you can call and talk to when needed.
Another reason listening to this music can be so beneficial is because, a lot of times, they will use words in the song that are right out of the Bible. When I first started listening to Christian music I remember being so surprised when I would hear the words to the songs in the readings at church. It helped me connect more to the readings because I had already heard the words before. This can happen when you read the Bible too, but that wasn’t where I started. I wasn’t there in my faith journey yet.
One final benefit I will talk about today is the fact that the music can reach people that church can’t. There are many people who have either been wounded by the church or have preconceived notions about the church, and so they have no desire to ever step through the doors of a church. However, they could be flipping through radio stations and happen to hear a song about Jesus that really touches their heart. Music is a great way to touch hearts because people aren’t usually on the defensive when they are listening to music. If you start to talk about Jesus to someone, they might instantly go on the defensive. They might sense that you are going to preach to them. However, with music, people tend to listen without feeling like that. Music finds a way into people’s hearts and souls that is different than anything else.
The radio station KLOVE is fundraising this week. They are listener-funded, so every quarter, they do a week of fundraising on the show. I will be honest, this is not my favorite week to listen because I don’t like that they are asking for money so much; I would rather listen to music. However, what I do like about their fundraising weeks is that they read so many testimonies about how KLOVE and the music they provide have changed so many people's lives. They talk about the power of the music they play and give real-life examples of how it has brought people to Jesus. I have heard some amazing testimonies from this radio station. I have taken a few from their website so that I can show you how powerful music can be. Here are a couple of the ways KLOVE and the music they play have affected others.
I enjoy listening to K-LOVE every morning on my way to work. When I am feeling down and out a song starts playing and it is just the song I needed to here. Thank you everyone at K-LOVE for doing what God wants you to do. God bless you all.
My husband passed away in May. It has been rough, to say the least. One of the things we did was talk when I was driving home from work. K-LOVE has filled that void. I listen to K-LOVE all the time in my car. Thank you for your ministry.
A few years ago I went through a difficult breakup and I found that it wasn’t helpful to keep listening to regular radio stations. They only reminded me of the pain I was going through. That’s when I switched to K-LOVE, and I never went back.
I had been praying and thinking about something for a while and finally just asked God to tell me what to do. Then I heard the verse of the day: Psalms 37:7 Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for Him. At that moment, God was talking to me.
This is not an ad for the KLOVE radio station. I just want to let you know how important and beneficial it can be to listen to Christian music. You can also go on Spotify. This is an app and a website, and they have a ton of amazing Christian music on there too. There is a playlist on there called Walk Boldly With Jesus Favorites. This has several of my favorite songs on it. I will place a link for this playlist in the show notes. I pray each of you will spend some time this week listening to some Christian music. You can find a ton on YouTube as well. Just put in the search bar praise and worship songs with lyrics. That way you can sing a long with them!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each person listening to this episode today. Lord, thank you for encouraging us to praise you and for creating us to praise you. Lord, please continue to increase our desire to praise you and teach us how to praise you more and more. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day! Click Here for the Playlist.
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in December 2023 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group or about these words, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Some of you were waiting. You are trying hard to believe that I am in your troubles. Part of you believe, yes, he is; well, the other half doesn't. It is hard sometimes to hang onto a thread when it feels to you that you have been believing in vain. I'll tell you I, as your father, forget nothing, not a single prayer that you have released and even those you have not.”
Praising Through Hard Times
Matthew 10:29-31 “Are not two sparrows sold for a cent? And yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So do not fear; you are more valuable than many sparrows.”
In my mentoring group this month, I have been focused on praise. The reason I decided to focus on praise this month is because praise is so important. It is especially important to praise God in the Hard times. I recall a time when I was going through a particularly challenging period raising my boys and in my marriage, and I found solace in praising God. It was a powerful reminder that my problems were not insurmountable and that God was with me. It is important to praise God when we don’t feel we have any reason to praise God. One of the most important reasons why it is important to praise God when we are in a difficult situation is because it puts the focus back on God instead of on our problem.
One piece of advice that I love is when someone says, “Instead of focusing on how big our problem is, we should focus on how big our God is.” I have never forgotten this, and it is so true. God is bigger than any problem we might be facing. There isn’t anything too big or too hard for Him. When we praise the Lord, we bring our focus back to Him.
Also, When we praise God, we are reminded of all the things He has done for us in the past. It reminds us that if He did it for us in the past, He would do it for us again. God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. (Hebrews 13:8) If we are in a difficult situation, we can look back to other times when we were struggling, and we can see how God helped us out of or through that situation. Sometimes God helps us out of a situation we are in. Sometimes He helps us through the situation. What I mean by that is that he doesn’t remove us from the situation but gives us all we need to get through it. He gives us the strength, perseverance, and peace to get through each day.
While studying about praise from my mentoring group I read an article that mentioned something I hadn’t really thought of before. It said that praise reminds us that God is in control. When I was reading this article I read a line that made me laugh. The article said, "As I praise God during the difficult times, I am reminded that God is still in control. God is never surprised by the things that come into my life. God never says, “Wow, I didn’t see that coming, I hope Billy makes it through this.” This made me laugh because it is so true and yet it is something we don’t really think about. We can praise God in the difficult times because He knew we would be in this season of waiting. And because He knew we would be in it that means that He has a plan to get us either out of this season or through this season.
It is funny to me that we would think we could ever catch the Lord off guard. It’s funny to think something could happen that He wouldn’t know about. Jesus says in Matthew 10:29-31 “Are not two sparrows sold for a cent? And yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So do not fear; you are more valuable than many sparrows.” God knows everything about you, He knows about your situation, and He knows what you are waiting for.
Praising the Lord during a hard season is telling the Lord that we trust Him and we know that He has a plan for us. Our job is just to wait and to keep trusting that God is in control. It is hard for us to let God be in control. We want things done our way and in our time. I saw a video on Facebook the other day of a woman who was showing what it is like when we try to let God be in control. She was all excited and told Jesus to take the wheel. However, she wasn’t happy when He didn’t take the exit she wanted Him to take. She wasn’t happy when he wasn’t driving as fast as she wanted Him to drive. She wanted to stop and pull over for a snack, but Jesus wanted to keep driving. Then she finally said, “I just thought that when I said Jesus take the wheel, we would take turns. You know, you would drive a little, I would drive a little. I thought this would be a little more collaborative.”
It is hard to let Jesus take the wheel. It is hard to let God be in control, but it is always worth it. Have you ever tried to take the wheel, tried to run things your own way, and then had it not turn out so good? Abraham and Sarah tried to take things into their own hands, and Sarah had Abraham sleep with her handmaid so they could have a baby. It worked and then Sarah got jealous of her handmaid and sent her away. God told them He would give them a baby, but Sarah got tired of waiting. We get into trouble when we get tired in the waiting and we take things into our own hands.
This is why praising can be so beneficial. While we are waiting, we praise God for all he has done in the past, all that He has planned for our future, and all that He is in control of so that we don’t have to be. When we praise God, we keep ourselves busy, focused on God, and remind ourselves that God is in control.
The article I read had some practical suggestions for praising God in difficult times. Here they are:
It may not seem natural, and you may feel uncomfortable, but go ahead and praise God. Don’t fake it, be honest. God already knows your heart, so if you don’t feel like praising Him, tell Him, but praise Him anyway.
Verbalize your praise. Praise is meant to be heard. Don’t praise Him silently. Praise Him openly and verbally. There is something powerful about hearing our own voice praise and worship the Lord.
Use fear and worry as indicators of when to praise the Lord. When fear and worry raise their ugly heads, use them as reminders to praise the Lord. Counter fear and worry, praise and worship.
Allow God to teach you as you walk through the situation. God never wastes any event in our life, He wants to grow us to be more like Christ through every situation we face. As you praise Him, ask what you can learn from this experience.
Review God’s work in your life in the past and praise him for it. Part of praise is reviewing God’s faithfulness in the past. As you review His goodness and provision in the past, you will find new strength to face the problems of today.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each person listening to this episode. Lord, help us praise you. If we are uncomfortable praising you out loud, give us the courage to step outside our comfort zone and do it anyway. Lord, remind us that when we start to be filled with fear and worry, we can use that as an indicator to begin to praise. Teach us how to praise you, Lord. Each one of us can praise you in a different way; put that on our hearts, Lord. Help us to praise you when times are hard, when times are good, all the time. Help us to develop a habit of praise so we are praising you regularly whether we feel like it or not. Lord, we love you. We are so grateful for all you have done for us, and praising you is one small way we can show our appreciation. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. If you are enjoying this podcast, please consider rating it in whatever app you're listening to and leaving a review. The more ratings a podcast has, the more people will see it. Also, please consider sharing it with a friend or two. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in December 2023 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group or about these words, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is “I come to be with you. Make room for me. Do not hold tightly to your wishes and desires and wants and things that keep you from me. Let them go and allow me to be held close to your heart, for I love you and will remake you in my own image.”
CLICK HERE for Kaila's Blog
Today I was going to share a few stories from the Popewe website again, and I found this one woman Kaila who wrote a story but then included a blog post she had written, I decided to share the blog post with you because it is so real and it is something a lot of people go through. This woman lost two of her children. She found out while pregnant with them that they would not be able to survive after birth. She had one son, and he died in her arms. Then she had a daughter and son, and then her fourth baby, a son, also died in her arms. In this blog, the author also talks about that pain. She talks about the difference between how she dealt with the first loss compared to the second loss. She talks about how real her relationship with God is. She talks about how it is ok to be mad with Him. He will wait for her to come back; she doesn’t need to rush it. This situation is very sad, and my heart breaks for anyone who loses a child, never mind two children. I pray while you listen to her testimony, you say a prayer for all those who have lost children and that together, we can pray for God to heal their hearts. Here is the blog titled “Relationship Status: It’s Complicated.”
"Tell me, what is the biggest difference between your grief journey with Sam and now with Gabriel?"
My therapist asked me this question last week. I sat in silence.
I think it's having Mira and Edward now...is it? Maybe it's not.
"It's my relationship with God."
When we had Sam, I couldn't wait to get out and share our story with the world. About how God had given us so much peace. How he had been there with us in the storm. How we didn't know how people could survive this much pain without him.
And now...
Now.
I don't know. I really don't know.
I wish I could say I still felt that way. I wish I could say I feel his presence strongly with me. I wish I could say I know that he is good and his plan is perfect, and that I know without a doubt he will redeem this great loss for the second time.
I envy 6 year ago me who was so sure of those things.
God gave his one and only son for me. That brought me so much comfort. Last time. I felt a kind of community with God that I hadn't really felt before. God is part of this child-loss community. He knows how I feel. He has the same sadness I do.
But now I've given two. I can't even say that, actually. I did not give them back. They were taken. My arms have been robbed of two boys. Two perfect boys that never were able to open their eyes and look at their Momma.
I know my loss is not unique. And there are people out there who handle it way "better" than I do. Their relationship with God is solid, they rest in his promises. They have peace. One day I hope to have that again, but today it is turmoil. My brow is furrowed at the wrongness and unfairness that is two dead babies. Two refrigerated bodies. Two tiny urns on my bookshelf. It makes no sense to me that two loving parents with a finally healthy marriage would have to do this even once, but twice?
I'm currently reading several books, and one author said something that I really liked. I'm paraphrasing here, but he said that as beings created in God's image, evil, loss, grief, injustice, and the unfairness of this world SHOULD perplex us. God is logical, and of course then so are we. And because evil does not make sense, we struggle greatly with the concept that it exists. Why does God allow evil to exist? Why? Why is he seemingly okay with all of this?
It is healthy to ask these questions. It okay to talk about doubt. It. Is. Okay.
Another book that I just finished echoed these sentiments, but the author warns to not stay stuck forever in the pit of "why"s. In her own testimony, she shares that she stayed there for years, but it wasn't until she asked her "how" that she started to climb out. "How will God redeem this? How will he use this for good?"
I'm not there yet. I'm not even close. And it may be months.
It may be years.
I cannot and I will not rush this for the sake of looking good. For the sake of being a "good Christian." I love Jesus and I know that he loves me, but I am telling you in total transparency...
I'm angry.
I'm bitter.
I feel abandoned.
And I do not need someone to save me. I do not need platitudes.
I just need to be loved.
Not one person on this earth can fix my brokenness. I don't even want it fixed right now. It wouldn't be genuine of me to say, "God is good and I have peace."
I said that last time. I meant it last time.
But right now, I do not feel those things. I'm hurting. I'm tired. I yell at my kids because they are little and they need me and I do not want to be needed right now. And then I feel crushing guilt because I yell at my kids and they're the only ones alive. Half of my children are dead and maybe it's because I'm an awful mother that doesn't deserve to raise all 4.
That last sentence? I know it's not true. I know. And I'm not asking for comments/compliments on why I'm a wonderful mother. I'm just openly sharing the lies that I hear each and every single day being whisper-screamed in my ear.
You're not good enough.
You don't deserve your living children.
You shouldn't be happy.
You don't deserve to be loved on or cared for.
You're alone. Suck. It. Up.
Some days I have enough energy to speak truth against those lies.
Some days I don't. Those days are hard.
But you know what gets me through?
You.
Just as much as I share with my therapist the lies I'm constantly fed, I tell her every time I see her just how much I'm loved. I share regularly with the people closest to me all of these ugly, awful thoughts, and you know what they do?
They listen.
In silence.
They thank me for sharing. They tell me they're struggling with God because of this too. They don't offer reassurance or advice. They don't try and fix this. They cry when they imagine their babies dying in their arms, and they sit with me in the sadness that mine have. They share my grief. With each tear I see falling from one of my friends' faces...I feel the heaviness of my heart lift just a little. It's like a literal weight that they take from me and carry it themselves. THAT is love. THAT is unconditional love.
I cannot believe that I am the recipient of so much amazingly beautiful love. I see Jesus in these people. I cannot sit with God in silence and pray right now, but I can certainly sit with a friend and cry with them. I cannot praise God in this storm but I know he has sent these people to love me. I cannot slap on a smile and say "God is good" but I can stand on my rock of faith and say, "Lord I'm mad at you right now. I am so freaking mad at you."
And he can take it. He will be there when I'm ready to stop stomping my feet, crossing my arms, and turning my back. He will wait for me.
I know he will.
Thank you Kaila for being so honest and real in your blog. Thank you for being vulnerable and sharing your journey so that others can see they are not alone. I know this will help a lot of people. I will place a link for her blog in the show notes so you can read more of her journey if you would like to.
Living A Supernatural Lifestyle
Acts 8:5-8 “ Now those who were scattered went about preaching the word. Philip went down to the city of Samar′ia and proclaimed to them the Christ. And the multitudes with one accord gave heed to what was said by Philip, when they heard him and saw the signs which he did. For unclean spirits came out of many who were possessed, crying with a loud voice, and many who were paralyzed or lame were healed. So there was much joy in that city.”
I love the Book of Acts. I love several books of the Bible, but I am particularly drawn to Acts because of its supernatural aspect. After Pentecost the apostles moved forward into a supernatural lifestyle. Jesus had equipped them twice before to go out and spread the Gospel message using signs and wonders. However, now they had the Holy Spirit living inside of them and they were forever equipped for this mission. It became a part of them. For instance in Acts 3:1-10 “Now Peter and John were going up to the temple at the hour of prayer, the ninth hour. And a man lame from birth was being carried, whom they laid daily at that gate of the temple which is called Beautiful to ask alms of those who entered the temple. Seeing Peter and John about to go into the temple, he asked for alms. And Peter directed his gaze at him, with John, and said, “Look at us.” And he fixed his attention upon them, expecting to receive something from them. But Peter said, “I have no silver and gold, but I give you what I have; in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk.” And he took him by the right hand and raised him up; and immediately his feet and ankles were made strong. And leaping up he stood and walked and entered the temple with them, walking and leaping and praising God. And all the people saw him walking and praising God, and recognized him as the one who sat for alms at the Beautiful Gate of the temple, and they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him.”
Peter and John were going about their life. They didn't make a big show or say a ton of words. They were simply walking by someone in need, and they stopped and healed him. It was so simple and so easy. The reason it was so easy is because they knew the power they had living inside of them. They didn’t ask God to heal this man; they knew they had the Holy Spirit living inside of them, and they could call on this Holy Spirit to heal this man in the name of Jesus. They commanded the man to walk, and he did.
You and I have this same power living inside of us. The biggest difference is that they knew the power they had. Can you see what amazing things we could be doing if we knew beyond a shadow of a doubt the power we have living inside of us? They didn’t wonder if they could do it. They didn’t wonder if God would show up and heal this person. They didn’t wonder if it was God’s will to heal that person. They simply knew that the person needed healing and that they could provide that for Him. I wish we could all live this type of lifestyle. I wish we all knew the power we have living inside of us.
This is the reason I named this podcast Walk Boldly With Jesus. Peter and John were walking boldly with Jesus. We can too. Each one of us has the power of the Holy Spirit living inside of us. Yet, how often do we call upon that power? How often do we step forward confidently knowing we have that power? How often do we ask the Lord to do things that He has given us the ability to do?
I am not saying we shouldn’t ask the Lord for things; we definitely should. However, we should also step forward with confidence that He has equipped us to help ourselves as well. For instance, we definitely should pray to God for healing for our friends and family. However, we can also pray over them for healing as well. We can command the illness to leave, we can command bones to be healed and we can command spirits to leave. We are not powerless. We often say, “All we can do now is pray.” I get the sentiment and yet prayer is the most powerful thing we can do. It is not a last-ditch effort. It is the best way to see results. It is the best way to move mountains. There is so much power in prayer.
Imagine what this world would look like if we all started living the supernatural life we were meant to live. Imagine if we all realized the power we have living inside of us. The power of the one who raised Jesus from the dead lives inside of you and inside of me. (Romans 8:11) Can you even believe that? That is so crazy to me that God would give us the Holy Spirit. I am not just talking about the supernatural power to heal people, although I do wish we could all realize we had that power. There are so many people dying of illnesses, and if more of us were operating with the confidence that Peter and John had that the power of the Holy Spirit would work through us, we could save more people. Not just from their physical illness, but we could bring them back to Jesus, which is the real reason for the signs and wonders.
The Holy Spirit is our guide, he is our comforter, he is our counselor. The enemy wants us to think we are powerless to change anything in this world. However, this is not true. The power of prayer can change anything. I have seen so many miraculous answers to prayers. Answers that no one thought would come. Answers that seemed so far-fetched at the time. Our prayers are powerful. We all tend to think we are a slave to our wants and our desires. We say we have no willpower or that we are weak. This is a lie from the enemy. The power of the Holy Spirit living inside of you can help you overcome any perceived weaknesses. We just need to call upon it. We need to give the Holy Spirit permission to work in our lives. We need to understand what it means to live in the power of the Holy Spirit.
The apostle Paul did not have an easy life after he started to follow Jesus. He was persecuted and spent a lot of time in jail. He wasn’t scared though and he didn’t feel hopeless because he knew the power he had living inside of him. He knew nothing could touch him without the Father’s consent. He knew he had God by his side every step of the way. Do we know this? Are we confident in this? How would our life be different if we started realizing the power we had inside of us? How would our life be different if we started using that power?
I want to go back to our verse for today as I just realized I didn’t really talk about it too much. The verse says, “ Now those who were scattered went about preaching the word. Philip went down to the city of Samar′ia and proclaimed to them the Christ. And the multitudes with one accord gave heed to what was said by Philip, when they heard him and saw the signs which he did. For unclean spirits came out of many who were possessed, crying with a loud voice, and many who were paralyzed or lame were healed. So there was much joy in that city.” This verse gives us another reason we were given the Holy Spirit. It wasn’t just to strengthen and guide us but it was also to do signs and wonders so that we can lead others to Jesus.
The verse also gives us some more examples of the things we are capable of when we walk in our identity as sons and daughters of Christ with the Holy Spirit. Philip proclaimed Christ to them, commanded unclean spirits to come out of many people, and healed many who were paralyzed or lame. The last line of the verse is one that shows us another benefit to living our supernatural lifestyle. It says, “There was so much joy in that city.” Joy is a gift from the Holy Spirit. Joy is so great because it is something you can have despite your circumstances. Happiness tends to be based on your current circumstances. However, joy is something you can have even when you are not particularly happy. It is a blessing and a gift from the Holy Spirit. Wouldn’t it be great to have a bit more joy in our lives?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each person listening to this episode. Lord, we ask that you help us to realize the power you have put inside of us. We ask that you show us how to step out in faith and live the supernatural lifestyle you want us to live. We ask for the courage and faith to live into the identity you have planned for us. We love you so much, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Mentoring is tonight at 8 EST if you want to sign up, Click Here! You still have time. I look forward to seeing you tonight on mentoring or meeting you here tomorrow for another episode. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in December 2023 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group or about these words please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is “My children, do not hold tightly to the things that are not going to bring you closer to me. I know your needs. I know what you need to live from day to day. I know your wants and your desires. They are all part of my plan for your life. But do not hold them so tightly to your heart that you don't have enough room to hold me closely to your heart.”
Who Are We To Judge?
Acts 10:44-46 “While Peter was still saying this, the Holy Spirit fell on all who heard the word. And the believers from among the circumcised who came with Peter were amazed because the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles. For they heard them speaking in tongues and extolling God.”
I think this verse is an important one to talk about because often, we can impose our own ideas on what God can and can’t do. This verse is a great reminder that we are not in charge; God is. This verse comes to us in a very interesting way. This story shows how God prepares our hearts and minds for what is coming. There was a man named Cornelius who was a centurion and he feared god with all his household. He gave alms liberally to the people and prayed constantly to God. One day Cornelius saw in a vision an angel of God telling him to send men to Joppa to bring Simon Peter to him. So Cornelius did as he was told and sent his men out to fetch Simon Peter.
At the same time as this is happening, Peter is on the housetop praying, and he becomes hungry. However, while they are preparing the food, he falls into a trance. While in the trance, Peter has a dream where the Lord tells him to eat animals previously thought to be unclean. While Peter is refusing to eat unclean animals, the Lord tells him, “What God has cleansed, you must not call common.” Peter was confused as to what this dream might mean, and while he was pondering it, Cornelius’s men showed up looking at him. The Holy Spirit told Peter to rise up and go without hesitation with the men.
When Peter gets there, he tells Cornelius that it is unlawful for a Jew to associate with or to visit any one of another nation but that God had shown him that he should not call any man common or unclean. Then he asked why Cornelius sent for him. Then Peter opened his mouth and said, “Truly I perceive that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. Peter went on to proclaim the Gospel, and then we get to the verses above. While Peter was still talking, the Holy Spirit fell on all who heard the word. And those who came with Peter were amazed because the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles.
This is a message of utmost importance for each one of us. Peter's words, “Truly I perceive that God shows no partiality, but in every nation, anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. (Acts 10:34-35), challenge the notion of exclusivity. It was unlawful for Jews to associate with or visit anyone from another nation. Yet, God showed Peter that this isn’t what he desires. God wants us all united. He doesn’t want us to separate ourselves from those groups of people because we have labeled them, out loud or in our heads, unclean and unworthy. Instead of focusing on bringing our loved ones back to the church, why not focus on helping them know and love Jesus more?
Why do we judge people and decide in our minds who is worthy of God’s love, grace, mercy, and forgiveness? Who are we to judge? We are not perfect. We don’t have it all figured out. I mess up every day, and I rely on God’s mercy and grace to help me make it to the next day. We can all learn a lot from this passage. God gets to decide who is ready for the Holy Spirit. God will lead us and our loved ones to the next step. Cornelius was a great man, and when he was ready for more, the Lord guided him to Peter. God will guide our steps to grow closer to Him as well. It might not be as clear as sending an angel, but He will show you what the next step is if you are open to his promptings.
God has really been putting it on my heart lately that we are so focused on bringing our family members back to the church when the church might not be the right place for them right now. If they have been wounded by the church, or offended by the church, then they may go to church but not be open to hearing the messages. What if we just started by trying to get our loved ones to know they are loved by Jesus? Let them know that He is always there for them. Let them know that He loves them just as they are. So many people are lacking love in their lives. They don’t know God as the loving Father He is. They see Him as someone who is sitting on his throne in heaven, just waiting for them to mess up so he can pass judgment on them.
What if instead of trying to bring everyone back to church, we started by just bringing Jesus to them? What if we just started trying to help everyone feel loved and accepted? Did you know you can accept someone for who they are even if you don’t like something they are doing? You don't have to agree with their choices or condone their behavior to love and accept them. God loves and accepts us for who we are. He doesn’t love everything we do. I am sure we break his heart often. Yet He still loves us just as much. He doesn’t continually point out all we are doing wrong that offends him or that He disagrees with. He just keeps lavishing His love on us until we realize how much He loves us, and we realize we don’t want to keep hurting Him.
We can do the same with our loved ones. They don’t need us to keep telling them all the ways they are letting us down. Trust me, they know. What if we just started pointing out all the reasons we love them? What if we keep telling them how much Jesus loves them? How about if we accept them for who they are instead of who we want them to be. If your loved ones are doing things that you feel are putting their soul in mortal danger. Bring it to God. He is the only one that can change their heart. That is not our job. Our job is to love them and show them the love of Jesus. How can they believe that Jesus loves them unconditionally when they have never known that kind of love? We must be Christ’s love to all we meet. If they encounter His love through us, it could change their whole life!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each person listening to this episode. Lord, we ask you to help us to show your love to all those we meet. We ask you to help us bring others to you. We ask that you show us how to love our loved ones in a way that shows them your love for them. Help us be an example that others want to follow. Help us to be so full of the Holy Spirit that others look at us and want what we have. Help us live with the joy of the Lord. Help us live with the peace of Christ. Help us live with a trust in you that is unlike anything in this world. We want to be your hands and feet, Lord; show us how. We love you, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I want to remind everyone that mentoring is tomorrow night. If you would like to join, I will place a link in the show notes. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in December 2023 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group or about these words, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I come into your humanity so that you may come into my divinity."
Today’s episode will be a bit different. Today I will be reading one of the chapters in my new book titled Abandon Anxiety: Techniques to take back control. Yesterday in prayer group a lot of the ladies were saying they knew people who were struggling with anxiety, so I thought I would read this chapter as it is called Calming Our Anxiety In The Moment. There are lots of things that go into anxiety, and there are ways to decrease it. Yet some of them take time to learn and implement and become habits. I wanted to give people strategies they can use when they are in the middle of an anxiety attack and need some immediate help. I hope you find them helpful.
I have talked a lot about our thoughts and the stories we tell ourselves. I discussed how important it is we shape those thoughts and are conscious of the stories that we tell ourselves. I have talked about the RAS, which serves as a filter for our brain, and how we can work on setting our filter so that we don’t worry so much. I have discussed scripture verses that you can turn to and different prayers that can help you both at the moment, such as the St. Michael prayer, and long-term in developing more trust in the lord, such as the Litany of Trust. However, all of these things, except for the St. Michael prayer, take time. You probably won’t change your thought patterns overnight. You won’t wake up tomorrow having forgotten these deeply held beliefs you have had for years. Worrying less is definitely possible, and I truly hope after reading this book, you are motivated to begin your journey to getting rid of your worry.
I also know some people reading this book have anxiety/panic attacks. I know that some of you reading this are looking for answers to what to do at the moment. You don’t have time to focus on changing your thoughts because, at the moment, when you are overcome with worry or anxiety, you can’t think about anything. I thought it was important to address this matter as well, as I have several friends who suffer from panic/anxiety attacks, and I know how debilitating they can be. I know how scary it can be, and if I can provide any help to make it easier at the moment, I want to do that.
I want to begin by saying I am not a mental health counselor. If you are having panic/anxiety attacks, it might be advisable to speak with a counselor, as they could help you out with your particular circumstances. I have seen a counselor for years, and I think everyone could benefit from seeing someone and talking about any issues. The techniques I am going to talk about in this chapter are techniques I have found over the years from research to help my friends. I also talked to my sister, who is a mental health counselor, to make sure I wasn’t steering you in the wrong direction or telling you something that wasn’t true.
I have been told the important thing is to try to get back to the present moment. There is no anxiety in the present moment. When you are anxious, you are thinking about what will happen or what has already happened, but there is no anxiety in the present moment. In order to do this, you can try a variety of different things, depending on what feels right to you and what you can remember to do in the moment. I would suggest if you are prone to attacks, you have a list of techniques you look at often and even practice when you are not having an attack. From what I understand, you will not be able to think of much in the moment, so the more you have prepared in advance, the more likely you will be to think of these strategies in the moment you need them.
This is similar to anything that you want to get good at. When you want to be good at something, you need to practice it. If you want to be good in a crisis, you need to practice the techniques when things are calm. Let’s think about it in terms of sports for a minute. If you want to be really good at baseball, you can’t wait until you are in the middle of a game to practice working on catching a ball or even throwing a ball. This is why athletes need to put in hours of practice before the game days. Think about surgeons. They need to go to school for a long time, and then they need to do a residency where they are under the supervision of surgeons who have been practicing for a while. We wouldn’t expect a surgeon to just walk into an operating room and know how to perform a surgery without lots of practice.
We do not expect people to be good at things without practicing them. And yet when it comes to mental health, we just expect people to know how to handle it. When our children are little, we expect them to be able to handle their anger without hitting others. However, how much time do we spend teaching them and practicing other methods with them? Often times, when they are acting out, we try to give them options of what they can do to express their anger. Has this happened to you? Have you had well-intentioned people try to give you all sorts of advice on how you should handle your anxiety when you are in the middle of it? How well did that work for you? I guess it worked as well as it did for my kids when I tried to help them with their anger in the middle of it.
The techniques I am going to talk about here can help you when you are in the middle of an anxiety attack, or they may even be able to cut it off right at the beginning if you think to use them. There is the key, if you can think to use them. You will not think to use them if the only time you try to think of them is when you really need them. If you do not practice these things when you are not in the middle of an attack then I doubt you will think to use them when you are. Think about your last panic attack. When you were experiencing it, how likely were you to use the logical part of your brain? How much of the attack was instinct, and how much of it was planned?
If you want to use these techniques out of instinct, then you need to practice them. You need to build up the muscle memory of the different activities. What comes to mind for me as I type this is my typing classes in High School. My teacher would always say we were working on our muscle memory so that, eventually, our fingers would just know which keys to press. I was very skeptical; however, now I type the fastest when I don’t think about it, and I just let my fingers do what they were trained to do.
If you always react the same way in a situation, then you teach your body that is the reaction to that circumstance. Your body will continue to act that way until you interrupt that thinking, and give it a new response for that circumstance. For instance, when my kids used to say inappropriate words to me, I would get angry and yell at them and then give them a punishment. They soon learned this was my reaction and so they would say those words even more. Eventually, I learned to ignore any words I didn’t like them saying, and eventually, they stopped saying them. It wasn’t easy. It was a process, and it took time.
This will take time too. I don’t want you to think I am giving you any quick fixes here. I also don’t want you to think I am saying this will be easy. If you have been having panic/anxiety attacks, then I am sure you are ready for some relief. I don’t want to mislead you to believe this is a one-and-done remedy for panic/anxiety attacks. I don’t know the cause of your panic/anxiety attacks. I don’t know the cure for them. What I am offering in this chapter, are a few techniques you might be able to use in the moment which will help the attacks end faster. My hope and my prayer for you is that you will give some of these techniques a try and see what you think.
I hope you will try them when you are not having a panic attack. If you are prone to having panic/anxiety attacks, I hope that you will practice them. Take a few minutes each day or a couple of times a day and practice these techniques. We never know when the enemy is going to strike. We need to be prepared at all times. If you think of this as training for when you need it, you will be much more prepared the next time you have an attack.
Trying to get yourself back to the present moment when you are anxious can be just the trick you need. However, how do you do that? There are several different activities that you can quickly do when you are noticing that you are starting to worry. Actually, even if you are in a full-blown panic attack, you may be able to do these activities to calm yourself down. I will go over some of these now.
1.) The first and probably easiest to explain is to count numbers out of order or backward. When you do this, you are shifting focus from one part of your brain to another, and it is harder to be anxious when you are using this other part of your brain. Let’s all practice this now. Everyone counts down backwards from 10. Awesome, nice job! You can also count numbers out of order. For instance, 3, 10, 15, 4, 8, 22, 17. Again, this forces your focus to start using another part of your brain.
2.) The next one is to enlist the help of your senses to pull you back into the present moment. The Mayo Clinic calls it the 5-4-3-2-1 Countdown to make anxiety blasts off. Here is how you would do it. You take a moment and look around at your surroundings. Now you would list:
5 things you can see: Your arm, a pen, your computer, the rug, the window.
4 things you can physically feel: Your face, the ground, your hair, your shoe
3 things you can hear: The rain outside, a car passing by, your fridge buzzing
2 things you can smell: your feet, a plant
1 thing you can taste: your chapstick, your drink, gum. These will obviously be different for everyone. It depends on the room you are in or the place where this occurs. It depends on what you are doing and what your surroundings are. However, this is something you can practice and get good at when you are not in the middle of an attack. You could silently do it in various familiar surroundings. For instance, when you are in your car on the way to work, or anyway, you could quickly run through this exercise. When you are making breakfast, lunch, or dinner, you could run through it. The more you practice it when you are not in the middle of a panic attack, the more likely you are to think of it when you are.
Going back to counting backward or counting numbers out of sequence. These two things require concentration, and when you are doing this, you are accessing a different part of your brain, and so they are distracting you from your thoughts. Again, this brings you back to the present moment. These may seem like something that you don’t have to practice. I am sure we all know how to count backwards or list numbers out of order. It is not the action that we are practicing. It is getting used to the idea that we can do this when we need to forget about our anxious thoughts.
This is another one I think you could easily practice when you are not in the middle of an attack. Just maybe try once or twice a day to count backward or to count out of order. If you have anxious thoughts a lot, but they aren’t to the level of a panic attack, then try to implement this technique right when you realize you’re thinking about something that is making you anxious. This doesn’t have to be something you do outloud. It doesn’t have to be something that anyone else is aware that you are doing. If you can get in the habit of recognizing the thoughts that are causing you anxiety, that would be the first step. Then, try counting backward or out of order to distract yourself from those thoughts.
The third one is extreme sensations. For instance, eating a fireball or a lemon head. This shock to the senses might be just enough to bring you back to the present moment. Also, the sensation of touching ice. This would be one that I am not sure you could practice when you are not in the moment. However, it is one that you need to prepare for. If you have tried the other two techniques, and you have not found the relief in the moment that you are looking for, you may want to try this one. In order to try this one, you would have to have something on hand. If you are at your house, you likely have access to ice. If you are thinking that you would like to try one of the other things you would have to buy those ahead of time so that you have them on hand when you need them.
This is another way we can help ourselves in the moment. We can be prepared for them when they come. If we know we are prone to panic attacks, what can we do to be prepared? What if it happens when we are out with others? What can we do in that situation? How would we want to handle it if we could plan in advance? What about if it happens when we are alone? What will our plan be? What if our kids are around? There are many different circumstances where panic attacks can come about. Can we come up with a plan for the different circumstances? Is it possible to run through these scenarios in your mind ahead of time so if you find yourself in one of these situations, it won’t be the first time? Almost like you are doing a dress rehearsal in your brain so that you can practice the best way to respond.
I have been told that our brains believe what we tell them and that the reason visualization works so well is because our brains can’t tell the difference between what we are visualizing we are doing and what we are really doing. For instance, the best athletes run over their plays or their movements in their heads, even when they are not at practice. A golfer will visualize holding the golf club; they will visualize swinging it, it hitting the ball, and then the ball going into the hole. They do this over and over again in their mind, and even though they are not actually doing it, when it comes time to do it on the course, their mind thinks they have been here before. Their mind feels like it has done this tons of times before, and they act as if they have.
Wouldn’t it be great if you could train your mind to react to these anxious thoughts in a more productive way? Wouldn’t it be great if your mind automatically started one of these techniques when you felt a panic attack coming on? Wouldn’t it be great if you were prepared for these attacks before they came? I believe these things are possible. It won’t be easy, and it will take work, but it can happen. You can gain some control in the midst of these attacks if you do the work to prepare ahead of time.
ACTION STEPS
- Practice these various techniques daily when you aren’t in the middle of an attack. Even if it is just once or twice a day, you will be more likely to think of them when you are in the middle of an attack.
- Visualize yourself reacting to how you want to react when you are having a panic attack. Don’t just do this once, do it often. Again, this doesn’t have to be all day, every day. Just take a few minutes a day and visualize yourself in great detail handling the panic attack in the way that you would want to.
- Try to notice the thoughts that are making you anxious and try to practice the techniques with these thoughts to try to calm them before they become full-blown anxiety attacks.
Thank you all for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I hope you enjoyed this chapter of my new book. If you know someone who suffers from anxiety, please send this to them. They might find something that works for them. I have not published this book yet, but if you know someone who is struggling and really needs some help with anxiety, I would be happy to send them the PDF or the e-reader version. I will not be posting the podcast next week as I am taking my middle son to England to look at colleges and I want to be fully present with him for that time. I still can’t believe he will be going off to college next year. There are plenty of episodes you could go back and listen to if you still want to start your day off with this podcast. I like just randomly picking one, and it is usually just what I need to hear that day. I feel like when I am doing it randomly then it is really the Holy Spirit picking it for me. I hope you all have an amazingly blessed week, and I look forward to meeting you here again on April 22nd. Please pray for safe and uneventful travels. Remember Jesus loves you, and so do I!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in December 2023 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group or about these words please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is “In my peace, children, you will find strength, courage, and boldness. It comes from peace."
The Certainty of God’s Promise (Part 2)
Hebrews 6:16-20 “ Human beings, of course, swear by someone greater than themselves, and an oath given as confirmation puts an end to all dispute. In the same way, when God desired to show even more clearly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it by an oath so that through two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible that God would prove false, we who have taken refuge might be strongly encouraged to seize the hope set before us. We have this hope, a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters the inner shrine behind the curtain, where Jesus, a forerunner on our behalf, has entered, having become a high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.”
I started talking about The Certainty of God’s Promise on Monday. Today I want to finish the section as I think it is important that we all know we can count on God and all of His promises. God can not lie. If He says something, it is true. Today’s verse starts out by talking about how humans swear by someone greater than themselves. I am sure you have done this before. You were telling someone something, and you really wanted them to believe you, so you probably said something like I swear on my life, I swear to you I am not lying, or something to that effect. This first sentence in the verse is saying that when an oath is given as confirmation, it puts an end to all disputes. This means the person no longer questions if you are telling the truth or not.
The next line is pretty long and covers a lot, so let’s break it down. The first part says, “ In the same way when God desired to show even more clearly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose.” This tells us that God is unchanging. It is not as if he was one God in the Old Testament, One God in the New Testament, and then a different God now. God is the same yesterday, today, and always. God’s character does not change. It also says that God wants to show us even more clearly this unchangeable character of His purpose. Change is not possible with God. He does not develop or grow. He always remains the same. Since God is an absolute perfection, no change for the better is possible since you cannot improve on perfection. Consequently, there is no inconsistency in God. The Scripture makes it clear that God does not change in his character or purpose, his fairness towards humankind, or in his promises.
Next, it says, “he guaranteed it by an oath so that through two unchangeable things.” When I read it, I was wondering, wait, what two unchangeable things? I am not sure if you had the same question. When I read through on my own, I tend to skip over things I don’t quite understand. However, since doing this podcast, every time I stop and look up the meaning of something, I am so glad I did. When I looked this up, the two unchangeable things were the promise and the oath. Here is what the website said:
“When God made His promise to Abraham since He had no one greater to swear by, He swore by Himself, saying, “I will surely bless you and multiply your descendants.” And so Abraham, after waiting patiently, obtained the promise. Then in the verse above it says, “Men swear by someone greater than themselves, and their oath serves as a confirmation to end all argument.” So when God wanted to make the unchanging nature of His purpose very clear to the heirs of the promise, He guaranteed it with an oath. Thus by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled to take hold of the hope set before us may be strongly encouraged. The author of this response also wanted us to “note that the oath to confirm the promise has validity because God does not change and His purpose does not change. Thus, the promise is confirmed by the oath which cannot change because that which it is sworn by is God Himself.” When God swears by Himself, it signifies the absolute certainty and unchangeable nature of His promise. God, being perfect and unchanging, is the most reliable and trustworthy entity, and His promises are, therefore, infallible.
That may have been a lot of words, but basically, it says that God is always the same and that He wanted to make doubly sure we would believe his promise, so He swore it in an oath as well. This goes to show how mistrusting we are as humans. You would think the Lord almighty promising us something would be enough for us to believe it, and yet He knew some wouldn’t, so He also gave us an oath. That is how much God cares about us.
Next, the verse above says, “In which it is impossible that God would prove false, we who have taken refuge might be strongly encouraged to seize the hope set before us.” We covered the first part above. The second part says that we should be encouraged to seize the hope set before us. We can all seize the hope that comes with God’s promises because we know that God will keep his promises. He is not like us. We make promises all the time that we don’t keep. We make promises to ourselves, we make promises to others and yet we don’t always keep them. God is not like this. If He says He will do something, He will do it.
The verse ends with, “We have this hope, a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters the inner shrine behind the curtain, where Jesus, a forerunner on our behalf, has entered, having become a high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.” This hope is a sure and steadfast anchor or the soul. One website I found said, “For the believer, it is possible to wander from faith, but the hope we have in Christ should be an anchor to our soul, keeping us from drifting from Him. An anchor is a weight; it keeps whatever object it’s attached to in place. An anchored ship cannot move. This hope, both sure and steadfast, keeps us firmly abiding in Christ in our daily walk.
It goes on to say, “A hope that enters the inner shrine behind the curtain, where Jesus, a forerunner on our behalf, has entered, having become a high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.” This is in reference to the curtain/veil that separated us from the Holy of Holies. Only one priest was allowed to go into the Holy of Holies, and I think even he could only go once a year. This part of the verse tells us that our hope goes behind that curtain. When Jesus came, He removed that curtain. There is no longer anything separating us from God. We have full access to God. Each one of us can go directly to God. God is so good!!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each person listening to this today. Lord, we love you, and we ask you to help us continue to hope in you. Help us to see that there is nothing keeping us from you. Jesus removed the veil separating us. Thank you for restoring that ability to have a close relationship with you. Lord, we ask that you heal our hearts and teach us to have hope in your promises. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in December 2023 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group or about these words, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Give me your hand this day. Give me your cares and all that bothers you, and you will be overwhelmed by the peace of the Lord who loves you. Loves you beyond your imagination. Come beloved, come and be close to me. Come and open more fully to me, to my love, to my hope, to my deep peace.”
Witness Wednesday #107 More PopWe (Depression & Anxiety)
Today’s witnesses are from Matthew West’s website called popwe.org. If you don’t know who Matthew West is, he is a singer, songwriter, and storyteller. This website is for the non-profit that he has with his father, a pastor. Matthew and his father encourage people to share their stories. They have various categories of stories. Today I chose four testimonies from the Depression and Anxiety Category. I know so many people who are struggling with this right now. Oftentimes, we can hear our own story in someone else’s story. When we hear others tell their story it helps us to see we are not alone. We are not the only ones who have struggled with depression and anxiety. We aren’t the only ones who struggle with wanting to be alive. Other people feel as we do and when they are willing to talk about it, we feel less alone. I pray when you hear these testimonies, you can see not only how God has helped them in their life but how He could help you in yours and in your loved ones’ lives, too.
Blair: My story begins in a very bad place, full of shame, regret, and sadness. I had a very overbearing mother who made my life miserable. There were many days of “walking on eggshells.” As I grew into a teenager, I started really feeling very low self-worth and self-esteem. I felt ugly. I was bullied and I felt like I had nowhere to turn. My family went to church but only to be seen. There was no Bible visible in my house and God and Jesus were not talked about. As my life progressed through college, getting married, and having kids, my faith remained surface level and weak. I developed depression and anxiety that I have battled with for 24 years! It’s taken many therapy appointments and appointments with the psychiatrist. It hurts me to say, but I spent several times in the hospital and had two suicide attempts before they finally got my medication right. My 4 children, all boys, were met with the most tragic event in all our lives. My husband and their father passed away suddenly in the ICU on December 24th, 2015. My boys were 17, 15, 11, and 9. Prior to his death, as well as after, I attended a contemporary service at a local church. The music was inspirational. I began listening to my local Christian music radio station. I began going to Bible Study. I felt like a sponge because I wanted to learn about Jesus and His life-giving strength, hope, and comfort. Along with doctors and medication, Jesus brought me out of the hole I was in and He led me to the Lord. If my life was going to end up like it has and I knew that it would, I wouldn’t change a thing, because it was that long and arduous valley that brought me to the mountain top with God. I still have days of sadness and grief, but with God’s unconditional love, grace, and mercy, I now know that every day my God empowers me to keep going step by step and minute by minute. I’m still on my faith journey as we all are, but through friends, my church, my pastor and the list could go on and on, I am stronger than anything that Satan tries to throw at me. The battle is the Lord’s and I am so happy that I let him into my broken world. All the trials led me to the Lord and He broke the chains of depression and anxiety, giving me hope for a brighter future and the knowledge that I am not alone. “There is another in the fire” with me and He will never, ever leave my side.
Kaitlyn My name is Kaitlyn, I am from the Houston area and I finally got to go to a concert for the first time Friday (March 17th, 2023). And of course, I went to a Matthew West concert! I have faced anxiety my whole life (all 18 years of it so far). In 2020 is when I finally realized I needed to get control of how to handle it. I was a freshman when covid hit, which can explain a little bit more about why I wanted to try and find coping mechanisms to help me.
I was on Spotify one day when Matthew West’s “Truth Be Told” started to play. Now at first, I was laughing because I was like, “wow, thank you for calling me out like that” but then I heard “Nobody” play and that is when I flat-out lost it. I couldn’t control the tears. I knew that I was struggling because when I had panic attacks at school, people just started to ignore me and made fun of me.
Because I couldn’t really explain what was happening, it got to the point of just not wanting to go anywhere, including church. I started to listen to more of Matthew’s songs when covid really shut things down because I ended up going through a lot of issues with my hip and it just felt like no one really heard me screaming in pain. I have always listened to Matthew West, he was one of the people that played on the radio when I was little, but I never really LISTENED to the words until I became a teen because I was little and liked to sing the songs back then. Now I like to hear the message inside the lyrics.
Jason: I wasn’t sure whether to put this under Broken Chapters or Anxiety/Depression but you now see which won. I spent 7 years in the army living through some unthinkable situations. Now don’t get me wrong- I loved the military and would gladly do it again. The truth is, the army broke me physically, mentally, and emotionally. Due to this, my body is broken due to the grueling training, my mental and emotional bodies broke after seeing the horrors of war. For years after and even still some today I have fought depression, anxiety, and anger issues. Since I met my wife, the issues have calmed substantially. Life seems bearable again. Don’t get me wrong- I still have issues but they are far less than what they were before. She brought me back to Jesus and that was the first step to recovery. Everyday is a new adventure now. I have been away from home for way too long now. Praise God Everyone. He is the Rock of Salvation.
Aidan: A while ago, I lost the will to live. I was broken. Days felt like years, and I could hardly stand the pain. I kept going, but I didn’t know why. Every week or so I would see a glimpse of hope and God working in the mess but my soul was just broken.
One day, I couldn’t handle the pain anymore and I just broke down and asked God to help me, save me. I just said it over and over again: “Help, help, help. Help me, please.” Sure enough, He came through. Later that day, like I normally do, I was wondering what would happen when we got to Walmart, wondering if my friend would be there and how he would get there, etc. I came to the conclusion that his sister would have brought him there. It was a strange thought so I put it out of my mind and told myself I was crazy. Just as I was about to break down crying in Walmart, there they were. My friend and his sister walking past. We didn’t talk, just said ‘hello’ to each other and walked on, but something in me had changed. No longer did I want to die. I just felt it in my bones to look to Jesus and I did. And while I’ve had moments of depression, pain, brokenness, and everything between since then, I haven’t gotten to that place again. That soul-wrenching place is no longer there. God came, and I know that for you He’ll do the same.
The road for healing is long, and I’d be lying if I said it was easy, but He has you in His hands. If He’s got you this far, He won’t let go now. Believe. Trust. And even if you can’t, that’s ok too. Remember: it doesn’t matter what you do, how you feel, or anything else. God’s taught me time and time again that you don’t have to be anything other than how you are at the moment for Him to work. He will. Love you all.
Thank you all so much for being vulnerable and sharing your stories. I pray you continue to turn to the Lord in your hard times and that He continues to keep you from the pit of despair. I pray you know how much He loves you and how proud He is of you. Thank you again for sharing!
Who May Abide In Your Tent, O Lord?
Psalm 15:1-5 "O Lord, who may abide in your tent? Who may dwell on your holy hill? Those who walk blamelessly, and do what is right, and speak the truth from their heart; who do not slander with their tongue, and do no evil to their friends, nor take up a reproach against their neighbors; in whose eyes the wicked are despised, but who honors those who fear the Lord; who stand by their oath even to their hurt; who do not lend money at interest, and do not take a bribe against the innocent. Those who do these things shall never be moved.”
This verse resonates with me as it directly addresses the question of how to stay in God's favor. I appreciate the clear instructions, as they allow me to ensure I am following them correctly. The Psalmist's inquiry to the Lord about who can abide in His tent sets the stage for the list of actions we can take to secure an invitation to the holy hill. Let’s explore these requirements to abide in the Lord’s tent.
First, there are those who walk blamelessly, do what is right, and speak the truth from their hearts. Is this you? Are you walking blamelessly? No, me neither. We all mess up, and we all sin. But when we do mess up and sin, are we going to confession? Are we turning back to the Lord and asking Him to forgive us, or are we just living in that sin? Are we taking that sin on as our identity and getting comfortable with it? If we want to be invited into the Lord’s tent we need to do our best to walk blamelessly and to do what is right. This means going to the Lord, confessing, and repenting so you can be reconciled with Him.
This first point also states that we must speak the truth from our hearts. How often are we doing that? How often are you speaking the truth from your heart? I know I get stuck at times. I want to speak the truth, but I get nervous, and I don’t say what I am thinking. I let peer pressure get to me at times and I don’t say the thing I really want to say. I even get sucked into gossiping at times. That is not speaking from the heart. When I just looked up what it means to speak from your heart, it said to speak from your soul. It is said to really know what the message you are saying means for you and for the person with whom you are talking. Are we stopping to think before we talk? Not thinking before we speak can get us into some real trouble, and we end up hurting people even when that isn’t our intention.
Second, the verse mentions those “who do not slander with their tongue, and do no evil to their friends, nor take up a reproach against their neighbors.” This can be a tough one. I have talked before about how devastating gossip can be. Our words have the power to make someone's day or ruin someone’s life. Our words are very powerful. We need to make sure we are using our words for good, to build people up, and not for slander or harm. I would hope it would be easy not to do evil to our friends. I mean, they are our friends, after all. However, sometimes the enemy can get in and spread seeds of discontentment and division. He can tell us things that are not true that make us lash out at our friends. I see if often with my oldest son and his friends. We need to be on the lookout for this and correct it as soon as we realize it.
The second point also points out that we shouldn’t take up a reproach against our neighbor. This one was a bit unclear to me. I looked it up; one place said it means to gossip, another place said it means disgrace, and another place said to say or show that you are disappointed, upset, or angry because they have done something wrong. I think what helped me understand this one the most was looking at synonyms for the word reproach. Those are blame, censure, condemnation, disapproval, and rebuke. Does this give you a better picture of the meaning of the word reproach? If we are following the commandment to love our neighbor, then we won’t have to worry about reproaching them, as none of those synonyms match up with love. They are more the opposite of love.
Third, those who are despised in the eyes of the wicked, but who honor those who fear the Lord. Those who stand by their oath even to their hurt. It is no secret to Christians that they may be despised for their beliefs. It seems like in the world today, it is perfectly acceptable to be anything you want to be, except Christian. If you believe in Christ, you are automatically in the wrong. You are automatically labeled as unaccepting of others and unloving. It is a really crazy time we live in right now. Jesus was despised in his day, so why should we be any different? Why should we suffer less than our Lord and Savior?
It also says, but those who honor those who fear the Lord. It’s ok if the world despises us, but we must not despise each other. We must not let our differences get in the way of loving and respecting our fellow Christians. There is only one Jesus. The same Jesus all Christians love. The same Jesus that died on the cross for ALL of our sins. Yours and mine alike. Let’s honor each other, even if we don’t have the exact same beliefs, because we all fear the Lord, and we all know that Jesus is our Lord and Savior!!
The third point also says those who stand by their oath even to their hurt. This one is a big one because I have seen the devastation it leaves when we don’t do this. Sometimes we can be tempted to lie about something because we don’t want to get in trouble. I remember a parent once lied to a child about what really happened because they didn’t want the child to get mad at them. However, that just taught the child that if I don’t want to get in trouble, it is ok to lie. Sometimes, we mess up, but it is just as important in these times to keep our oath. It is important to keep our promise even if it means we lose out in some way.
Fourth, the verse says those who do not lend money at interest and do not take a bribe against the innocent. If you are helping someone out, they don’t charge them interest on what you are letting them borrow. They are in need; they are struggling, and you are doing a kind thing for them. It is not a problem to ask them to repay you, but do not add anything extra on to what they owe. If you give someone $50, ask them to repay you $50. The last thing this verse talks about is taking a bribe against the innocent. If you know someone didn’t do it, don’t be bribed into lying about it. Bribes don’t just mean money, either. Someone could try to bribe you with objects, with power, with respect, with a job position. Whatever it is, it is a trick from the enemy, don’t fall for it. Don’t lie about the innocent.
The last line of this whole section says, “Those who do these things shall never be moved.” This means that if you do these things, you will never be moved from your faith. No matter what the circumstances are, your faith won’t be shaken. You won’t be removed from the sight of the Lord. You are in His presence, and you will remain there. Thanks be to God!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each person listening to this episode. Lord, we ask you to help us do each one of the things you are calling us to in these verses. Lord, we ask you to help us not do the things you ask us not to do. We want to be drawn closer to you, Lord; please help us. We love you so much and we want to abide in your tent and live on your holy hill. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting with you again tomorrow to bring you another witness. I hope to see some of you on live mentoring tonight. It is not too late to join. I will place a link in the show notes. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in December 2023 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group or about these words, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, I am your God. Release all your cares, your anxieties, your sorrow, your pain to me. The more that you release all that bothers you, that is when my peace enters deeply within you. I am the Lord, and I keep telling you that I love you. I love you, and I want the best for you, my children.”
The Certainty of God’s Promise (Part 1)
Hebrews 6:13-15 “ When God made a promise to Abraham because he had no one greater by whom to swear, he swore by himself, saying, “I will surely bless you and multiply you.” And thus Abraham, having patiently endured, obtained the promise."
I was going to talk about his whole section of the Bible today, and then when I got writing, I seemed to spend a lot of time on these first few verses. I will talk about the other verses in this section tomorrow. The title of this section in the Bible is called “The Certainty of God’s Promise.” This sounded like something we could all use. I know a lot of people who are not doing so well physically right now. They feel discouraged because their bodies seem to be failing them. I also know a lot of people who have financial struggles right now and could really use some help. I know a lot of people who are struggling emotionally also. If you are struggling in any way, or you know someone who is struggling in any way, this episode is for you.
This verse begins by saying, “ When God made a promise to Abraham because he had no one greater by whom to swear, he swore by himself, saying, “I will surely bless you and multiply you.” God is saying this to Abraham, and He is also saying it to us. He is saying it to Abraham and all of his descendants. I know many of you are waiting for God to bless you, and some are waiting for him to multiply you. You can count on this promise by God. It says he swore by himself. This means it is an oath, and God always keeps His oaths. It is like a promise from your heavenly Father, and unlike anyone we know here on earth, our Heavenly Father does not lie, and He does not break His promises.
The next line definitely stood out to me. It says, “And thus Abraham, having patiently endured, obtained the promise.” When I read it, I wondered two things. First, is this the key that many of us are missing? Are we missing out because we are not waiting patiently? Second, how does one wait patiently when they have so much on the line? For instance, what if they are really sick and they are waiting for a healing? What if they have been waiting to get married and have children their whole life, and now it is looking like they might be too old to have children?
Did you know that Abraham had to wait a long time for his answer to this promise as well? God told Abraham and Sarah that He would make his descendants number more than the stars in the sky. He promised they would be the parents of nations. Now, remember, he promised this was when Abraham was already 75 years old and Sarah was 65 years old. Can you imagine how hard it must have been for them to believe in this promise?
Abraham and Sarah had to wait 25 years for this miracle to happen. Can you imagine how long that must have felt to them without knowing the plan? Each year, wondering if this was the year. Each month wondering if she would be pregnant. 12 months a year for 25 years is 300 months. If you have ever wanted a baby before, you know how devastating it is to hope each month that you are pregnant, and then you find out you aren’t. This happened to Sarah 300 times after God promised her that he would bless her and multiply her. I don’t know why she had to wait so long, but I am sure that was one of the first things she asked God when she got up there in heaven with Him. I am sure you are asking yourself the same things as well.
One thing we can start to tell ourselves in the waiting is that God isn’t looking upon us, and/or He does not favor us because it has been so long, and we don’t see the answers we wanted. We aren’t seeing the answers that we feel God promised us. This is a lie from the enemy. He wants you to believe that God isn’t looking out for you. He wants you to stop believing God will answer your prayers. He wants you to take matters into your own hands.
If you have already taken things into your own hands and messed it all up and are now worrying about whether God will still bless you, the answer is yes. Abraham and Sarah took things into their own hands as well. It is hard to wait 25 years for the answer to a promise. The enemy gets in your mind and tells you all these lies. He tells you God doesn’t like you. He tells you if God were going to do it, He would have already. He tells you that you don’t have to wait for God. You can do it on your own. He is very convincing, and we want to believe that we can do it on our own because waiting is hard.
Sarah persuaded Abraham to try to have a child with her maidservant. They were successful, and Abraham and the maidservant had a child together. However, this was Sarah’s plan, not God’s plan and Sarah got jealous of the maidservant and was not very nice to her after that. Do you see how we can mess things up when we decide to stop waiting on God and do it ourselves without God?
However, even though they tried to take things into their own hands, God still kept His promise. Twenty-five years after he promised to make Abraham and Sarah the parents of nations, Sarah was finally pregnant with Isaac. They finally had their first baby, Isaac. Now, if you know the story of Abraham and Isaac, you know that waiting 25 years for this baby was not the end of the story. Several years later, Abraham was asked to sacrifice Isaac to the Lord. Can you imagine? God promised you would be the father of nations and then He only gives you one child, and then He asks you to sacrifice that child.
God required a lot of trust from Abraham. Abraham had to have trust over those 25 years that God was going to come through and give him a child. He had to have trust in God when God asked Him to sacrifice His only son. The verse above says that Abraham endured patiently. I wonder how this was possible. I can’t imagine waiting 25 years for something. Although, if I really think about it, I did wait a long time for my family life to get better. Our house was filled with anger and violence for a long time. I prayed for things to get better, and when I think about it, I probably waited for a good 7-10 years for things to get better.
I definitely endured, but I can’t say that I endured patiently the whole time. Although it doesn’t say Abraham endured patiently the whole time, it just says having endured patiently. There was that time when he gave in to Sarah’s plan to sleep with her maidservant. If you are enduring a hardship right now, if you are sick, or you are struggling in one way or another I want to assure you that God sees you and that He will keep His promise to bless you and multiply you. It may take a long time, hopefully not 25 years, but He will keep His promises. He always does! It may not look like you think it will. For instance, I am sure when told she would be the mother of nations, Sarah probably expected to have more than one child. However, God’s ways are not our ways, and He had His own plan. However, it happens. Be on the lookout for the answers to your prayers and the blessings God has promised because they are coming! Tomorrow we will continue in this passage as there is more to say about “The Certainty of God’s Promise.”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each person listening to this episode. Lord, we thank you for all your promises, especially your promise to bless and multiply us. We thank you for keeping those promises no matter how long it takes. Lord, we ask that you give us patience and perseverance in the wait. We ask that you help us keep hope in your promises and give us the strength not to take matters into our own hands. Help give us the trust we need to wait on your timing Lord. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Just a reminder tomorrow is week 2 of this month’s mentoring theme of praise. If you have been struggling with anything, praise could be the answer you didn’t know you needed. There is a link in the show notes if you want to join us for mentoring tomorrow night. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow to continue our discussion on “The Certainty of God’s Promise.” Remember Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in December 2023 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group or about these words please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is “My children, the world, and the people around you will try to steal that peace from you. Satan trembles when he sees you enter into My gift of peace. You can foil him in his efforts by living in that peace. And when you feel your knees shake and you tremble because of events and things around you grab deep within you because I am there and so peace is there. So, hope in me, trust in me, rely on me. Give up your self-sufficiency. I am strong, and I am within you.”
His Blessing for A Thousand Generations!
Exodus 20:4-6 "You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me, but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.”
I really liked this verse for today because it reminded me of one of my favorite songs. Originally I was just going to start with verse 5 as that is what was given at prayer group. However, it started with You shall not bow down before them or worship them and in my mind, I wondered who we were talking about. This is why I included verse 4 as well.
If we look at verse four, we see that God is telling us not to make idols. He is saying it doesn’t matter what we make the form/idol to look like. We just shouldn’t make them. Now, I remember hearing this and wondering about all the statues, pictures, and medals we have of Mary and Jesus nowadays. I mean, it says, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
I remember Father Mike talked about this during the Bible in a Year podcast. I couldn’t remember exactly what he said, and I didn’t want to give you misinformation, so I looked it up online this morning. I found an article called Do Catholic’s Worship Statues? It was found on the website Catholic.com. The author states, “People who oppose religious statuary forget about the many passages where the Lord commands the making of statues. For example: “And you shall make two cherubim of gold [i.e., two gold statues of angels]; of hammered work shall you make them, on the two ends of the mercy seat. Make one cherub on the one end and one cherub on the other end; of one piece of the mercy seat, shall you make the cherubim on its two ends. The cherubim shall spread out their wings above, overshadowing the mercy seat with their wings, their faces one to another; toward the mercy seat shall the faces of the cherubim be” (Ex. 25:18–20).” He gave a few other examples.
He goes on to talk about the religious use of Images. He said, “During a plague of serpents sent to punish the Israelites during the exodus, God told Moses to “make [a statue of] a fiery serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten when he sees it shall live. So Moses made a bronze serpent, and set it on a pole; and if a serpent bit any man, he would look at the bronze serpent and live” (Num. 21:8–9). One had to look at the bronze statue of the serpent to be healed, which shows that statues could be used ritually, not merely as religious decorations.”
Catholics use statues, paintings, and other artistic devices to recall the person or thing depicted. Just as it helps to remember one’s mother by looking at her photograph, so it helps to recall the example of the saints by looking at pictures of them. Catholics also use statues as teaching tools. In the early Church, they were especially useful for the instruction of the illiterate. Many Protestants have pictures of Jesus and other Bible pictures in Sunday school for teaching children. Catholics also use statues to commemorate certain people and events, much as Protestant churches have three-dimensional nativity scenes at Christmas.
I had no idea I was going to mention that today, but that is where the Holy Spirit led me. It is important to stop and explain things when they come up. If I had a question, I am probably not the only one who had the question. If you want more info on this topic or more detail, I will place a link for the article in the show notes. It was really interesting to read.
Moving on to verse 5, it says, “You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents to the third and fourth generation of those who reject me.” When I first read this, I was thinking how it didn’t seem fair that God would punish children for the iniquity of their parents. I looked up the meaning of this verse to see if someone else had the same thought that I had, and it turns out others thought the same thing.
Here is what BK Shiroma had to say in the article DNA of Sin. “Now, at first glance, this seems unfair. It seems as though God is saying he punishes children for their father’s (or mother’s) sins. But God makes it very clear later that this is not the case. In Deuteronomy 24:16, God commanded the people, “Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor children put to death for their fathers; each is to die for his own sin.” In Ezekiel 18, God rebukes the people who quoted a proverb that seemed to imply that God would punish children for their parent’s sins. So if God doesn’t punish people for their parents’ sins, what does he mean by punishing the children for the sins of their fathers to the third and fourth generations?
The author goes on to explain that sin and its effects tend to be passed on from person to person, especially in families. For instance, if we grow up in a broken family, then that is all we know. We tend to act the way our parents act. If our parents are divorced, we may end up divorced because that is all we know. If a child is abused by their parents, they may grow up and find they are doing the same thing to their children. A lot of children who have parents who are addicted to drugs or alcohol also become addicted to drugs and alcohol. The author states, “Each person is punished for their own sins which they commit, suffering the pain and heartache that comes from sin, and yet passing on their sins to the next generation for which they themselves will be punished.”
Hearing this may cause us to feel hopeless. We may feel like we are doomed to repeat our parent's mistakes, and that can feel overwhelming for us. However, the answer to this overwhelm, and hopelessness is found in verse 6, “But showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.” If we love God, and we keep His commandments, then he will show us, steadfast love, not only to us but to the thousandth generation. The author states, “If the cycle of sin is to be broken in our lives, we need a relationship with the living God. We need his transforming power in our lives. We need to say, “God, I need you. I need your healing. I don’t want to be a slave to sin in my life anymore. I can’t do this on my own. Help me.” And if we repent of our sins, reach out to Him, and let him take the throne of our lives, he will give us victory over the sin that is destroying us, and that cycle of sin will be broken. Instead of passing on sin to your children, you will pass on the love of God, which he shows to a “thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.”
This brings me to one of my favorite songs. If you have not heard it, I invite you to look it up on YouTube today, or Spotify probably has it as well. It is called The Blessing. I am not sure who originally sang it as I found it online from Elevation Worship and from Bethel Music with We The Kingdom. If you search for The Blessing, I am sure you will find it. All of these Lyrics are repeated several times. Just listing the lyrics loses so much of what makes the song great. However, I wanted you to hear them in case you don’t take me up on the invitation to hear the song. At least this way, you hear the words. I pray you listen to them and you take them in. God is talking to you right here. This is His blessing for you. I will pray these lyrics over each one of you today as our final prayer. Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, I pray these lyrics are a blessing to each person listening to this episode.
The Lord bless you and keep you
Make His face shine upon you and be gracious to you
The Lord turn His face toward you
And give you peace
Amen, amen, amen
Amen, amen, amen
May His favor be upon you
And a thousand generations
And your family and your children
And their children, and their children
May His presence go before you
And behind you, and beside you
All around you, and within you
He is with you, he is with you
In the morning, in the evening
In your coming, and your going
In your weeping, and rejoicing
He is for you, he is for you
He is for you, he is for you
He is for you, he is for you
He is for you, he is for you
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed weekend!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in November 2023 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group or about these words, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, when I tell you I want you to use you, do not tell me I am too small for you to use. Do not tell me to call someone else. It is you who I am calling, and I tell you I can enable you to do whatever task I ask. Take a step of faith. Take a step of trust. I am your God. I know what is best. If I tell you I want to use you, say yes, Lord, and do what I tell you, and you will marvel at all you can do. It is I who am God. It is I who enables anyone that I wish. Move forward in faith today, today, and every day. I am your God, and I love you.”
Proclaim The Message!
2 Timothy 4:2-5 “Proclaim the message; be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable; convince, rebuke, and encourage, with the utmost patience in teaching. For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths. As for you, always be sober, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, carry out your ministry fully.”
I was surprised when I read these verses this morning. I had just finished writing some declarations from my Encounter School of Ministry class. Last quarter was called Power Evangelization, and it was all about how we can go out and share the Gospel with our spheres of influence. We even had a street ministry practicum where there were at least 30 of us going out 2 by 2 or 3 by 3 onto the streets of the North End in Boston, MA. The declarations that I was writing were all about going out and sharing the Gospel, and then I read these verses, which were given at prayer group by someone who is not in the class with us.
It’s funny to me how God provides information even if we don’t want to hear it. He tends to tell us something and then reinforces it in many different ways. Even just this first line in the verse is something that He has been telling us in class and in Prayer Group. “Proclaim the message; be persistent whether the time be favorable or unfavorable.” This is telling us that it is not ok just to proclaim the message when it is convenient for us. Sometimes, we might hear the Lord telling us or urging us to share the gospel with someone, and yet we don’t want to because we already have plans, we are going to be late for something, or we don’t feel we know what to say. There could be lots of reasons why we tell the Lord, I am sorry; I just can’t do that right now.
However, this verse reminds us that when we hear God prompting us to do something, we need to do it when asked whether it is a good time for us or not. Another verse I always go back to is “God’s ways are not like our ways, and His thoughts are not like our thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8). God knows more than we do. Yes, you might be late to where you are going, but would it be worth it if you were saving this person’s life, or better yet, their soul? God knows what He is doing.
Deacon Joe, the director of the Boston Campus of Encounter, told us a story the other day. He has a friend who was out with his wife this past weekend. They were out of a walk and the Lord told him to go into McDonalds and buy this specific meal for the homeless person they just passed on the street. This man is used to listening to the Lord, so he told his wife what he thought he heard the Lord say, and she told him they better do it if the Lord said it. So they went into McDonald’s and bought the meal they were supposed to buy. As they were walking over to the man, he got excited when he saw the McDonald’s bag. He told them he loved McDonald’s. Then, when the homeless man looked inside, he said that was his favorite meal there! He was surprised that these strangers knew his favorite meal. This gave them the opportunity to tell him about Jesus and show him just how much God loves him. As the couple was walking away, the Lord revealed to this man that he was the 37th person God asked to buy that man a meal. What if he had been too busy to listen?
The verse above goes on to say, “Convince, rebuke, and encourage, with the utmost patience in teaching.” This can be hard for us. We can be so passionate about saving our loved ones that we forget to be patient. If you have been praying for your children or other family members for a long time, you might be frustrated with the lack of progress. You might be frustrated that after all this time, you don’t see any changes. In this frustration, you might try to rebuke their ways or what they are doing. God is reminding us in this verse that we must approach everyone with the utmost patience. If we are trying to convince, rebuke, and encourage when we are in a state of frustration or anger, they won’t hear us. If we expect to make a difference, we need to do it with patience.
The verse goes on to say, “ For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths.” I would say we are currently in this time. Maybe there have been other times in the past as well. However, this definitely speaks to our current times. People believe what they want to believe right now, whether it makes sense or not. As the verse says, people are looking for teachers who suit their own desires instead of listening to the truth. People are searching for someone to tell them that what they are doing is right, even when they know in their heart it is wrong.
The sad thing is that they are finding what they are looking for. They are finding people to tell them that what they are doing or what they are saying is right, even when it isn’t. There are so many people claiming to teach the truth, and yet it is not the truth of the Bible. It is not the truth from God. It is a man-made truth, and that is dangerous. We are all broken, and so truth based solely on what we think is right and wrong is not true truth. This is one of the reasons God gave us the Bible. The Bible spells out the truth of God, the truth of His promises to us, the truth of who we are to Him and in Him.
The verse ends with, “As for you, always be sober, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, carry out your ministry fully.” God is sending us out to evangelize to those around us. This means He wants us to bring the good news about God to one and all. He wants us to speak truth into people’s lives and to do it with the utmost patience. The Lord wants us to carry out our ministry fully. God has given us each a ministry, and this verse is reminding us to be all in. It says to carry it out fully. Don’t be half in and half out. Don’t do it sometimes and not others. Do it fully.
This verse also reminds us that there will be suffering. When we follow Christ, we will encounter suffering, just as He did. This is a good reminder because sometimes we can fall into the trap of thinking that once we decide we believe in Christ, our life will be easy. Once we decide to make Jesus our Lord and Savior, he will take the reigns, and life will be perfect. This is not the case. Jesus was fully God and fully human and even He didn’t have a perfect life. He faced ridicule, he faced danger, and was eventually crucified. Jesus said that if we want to follow Him, we must take up our cross too. What is that cross for you? What hardship do you have to endure? What hardship did you have to overcome?
Can we still spread the good news of the Gospel even through our hardships? This verse tells us to endure the suffering and do the work to evangelize our circle of influence. Your suffering might be the thing that brings people to you. They might see how you are suffering and yet still serving the Lord and ask how you do it. They might see your suffering and yet also see you are filled with joy, and they might want that same joy. One of the declarations we received about evangelization says, “It is easy to share the gospel with others because they want to know the God that is inside of me.” When you have God inside of you, others will see it, and they will want it. However, they won’t want it if you are impatient, frustrated all the time, grumpy or angry. They will want the God you have inside of you when you are patient, and you show them the love God has for them. Be filled with joy, and others will see it and want what you have.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode. Lord, help us to be persistent with your message, whether it is a good time for us or not. Help us to say yes to your call each and every time you ask. Help us to have the utmost patience when we are teaching your word. Lord, help us to endure the suffering and not to let is stop us from passing on the truth to others. Help us hear you, Lord. Help us to be so filled with the Holy Spirit that the Spirit comes spilling out of us onto all those we meet. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s mighty name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I hope you are all staying warm as we are getting snow and rain again here in Massachusetts. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in November 2023 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group or about these words please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is “My tongues of fire I place on you so I may enflame your heart so that you may share my love with each person that you meet. My children, my spirit is so powerful, so very powerful. Have no fear that all I want you to have I give to my spirit so he can help facilitate everything that I want for you to share. Be open vessels of my love; my children open vessels. Ready to be touched by the spirit. Ready to be guided by my spirit, ready to be innovated in a new way so you can find unique ways to share me with each and every person you meet. All can be my children when my Spirit touches you profoundly.”
Today’s witnesses are from Matthew West’s website called popwe.org. If you don’t know who Matthew West is, he is a singer, songwriter, and storyteller. This website is for the non-profit that he has with his father, a pastor. Matthew and his father encourage people to share their stories. They have various categories of stories. Today I chose four testimonies from the Salvation Category. I love to hear about how people found Jesus and what their journey was like. Oftentimes, we can hear our own story in someone else’s story. When we hear others tell their story it helps us to see we are not alone. We are not the only ones who have struggled with God, faith, and religion. We aren’t the only ones who have been mad at God, frustrated with life, and so on. I pray when you hear these testimonies, you can see not only how God has helped them in their life but how He is helping you in yours and in your loved ones’ lives, too.
Bob: My story is so trivial compared to those you share at concerts and on TV, but I wanted to share. In 2014, after 35 years of marriage, 2 grown boys, and several grandgirls, I faced an unexpected divorce. During those days, I relied on a long-distance friend I knew from my job who would listen to my daily drama and provide feedback. At one point, she asked if I listened to Christian Music radio. I told her I did a little around Christmas, but otherwise, I did not. She recommended your friends at K-LOVE for support and a lift. I’ve been obsessed with CCM and K-LOVE ever since.
Since then I’ve joined a new church, which included a new member class and presentation of my faith journey. I was preparing a small visual aid to use with my journey, and I turned on the TBN app, and the first icon was YOUR Ryman concert. The title of my presentation appropriately became “My Story-Your Glory”. WOW, what an experience to share my life with others I barely knew.
After attending your awesome concert in Grove City (Columbus), OH, in October, I had a southern trip on my calendar. When I saw you were going to be in Ashland, KY, I contacted that long-distance friend who helped me years ago, who lived nearby, and asked if she would attend the Paramount Theater with me. On November 2, together, we sang and prayed and had a great time with you and Micah! The prayers you and your father presented were perfect and your interaction with the crowd was amazing. Definitely different crowds in Columbus and Ashland!!!! Thank you for sharing your music. Blessings to you and your beautiful family.
Melissa, My testimony is that I finally believed God’s truth enough to receive the miracle I have been hoping for my entire life (and I’m already 42) : “To know God’s truth without a doubt and to clearly see the face of God in ALL things.” This happened while listening to the CD “My Story Your Glory” shortly after buying it at the Crystal Lake, IL concert. I was listening to “Miracle” in my car and realized for the first time God’s perfect goodness despite my traumatic sufferings (and that God makes all things good, and in turn, I was good enough to be HIS) and this knowledge was completely transformational, something that spoke of the “kind of healing that comes swiftly” and it drenched my soul with joy in Him. It was as if suddenly I knew God’s every word to be true and that I could clearly express it in writing. I felt compelled in a way I never could have guessed to forever display this holy love to others as best I could.
Awestruck, I wrote the following poem:
If only you knew the beauty I see, not just in you, but in everything, you’d come sit awhile and ask what it meant and I’d happily tell you it was heaven sent. Now, I’m just a girl, no one would guess, deserved such a treat to be so thoroughly blessed. And I’d tell you it’s true, cause I was way worse than you, just a wandering wanderer, not sure what to do. And here is the answer, the thing that you seek, to step into God’s power, you’ve gotta be weak. And so thoroughly so, you’ve got nowhere to go, but to sit in your mess, and just endlessly weep. You may not believe it, but trust me it’s right, that looking and looking, will never give sight. But there is sight for the blind, BUT God’s gotta speak. And as soon as you listen, you’ll find all that you need.
Thank you, Matthew West. Your music was the missing piece that gave me the wisdom I needed to finally put all the missing pieces together. I had been struggling to do so forever. I know others are sure to experience this beautiful shift from your wonderful songs as well. May all glory be to God, the author of all good things, and to the wondrous keeper of my heart, Christ Jesus our Lord!
Sammie: Ever since God entered my life, there has been healing, love, joy, celebration, restoration, peace, & His presence. The more that I’ve let Him into my life, the more of God I’ve gotten to see, know, experience, & share all of these things! This means through elementary school, middle school, high school, & now into college. When I asked God to come into my family, problems, sickness, friendships, relationships, and my heart, I got to see God save, heal, restore, & give. A lot of the time, it was so hard, but with or without God, life is hard.
I can say from experience though, with God, life is abundant, abundant with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, hope, and freedom. Without God, life is full of heartbreak, sin, emptiness, hopelessness, doubt, worry, anxiety, fear, lust, & it doesn’t get better. The enemy keeps stealing, killing, & destroying. Jesus came to earth, brought life abundantly & won a victory over the enemy and death & is offering right now and always to do the same in your life! The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophesy, and that means what He did for another, He can do it again!! He loved you, loves you, & will always love you for eternity! In Jesus’s name, Amen!
Bella: My name is Bella, and I’m 15 years old. I went to church when I was younger, but I questioned God. And I was like, ‘If other religions have a book like the Bible, how do I know Christianity is real?’ At Vacation Bible School (VBS) one year, I prayed to Jesus with a group leader for Him to save me and be my Savior, and she told me when somebody gets saved, all the angels start singing hallelujah. I went on living my life, and then I got baptized in the Methodist church, but not really for the right reasons. So I went on with living.
When I was in seventh grade, I started to have friend problems. During eighth grade the girls I thought were my friends had practically ditched me, all except for one who caught onto that friend group not really welcoming us anymore. That one girl became my only friend. The church I was going to on Wednesday nights got a new youth pastor named Emmett and I started going to church. There were some days when I didn’t want to go to church because I felt like I didn’t have any friends there, but I kept going. I downloaded the YouVersion Bible App on my phone for when we would read Scripture. I started looking on the app one night and saw all the devotionals and verse of the day things and I wanted to start doing that stuff, especially since it was Christmas time and I wanted to do Christmas plans.
Jesus found me and gradually had me cultivate a relationship with Him. I started to do devotionals, pray, and do the verse of the day. I started to live for Jesus. That summer, my youth group went to a church camp called Fuge. It was one of the greatest things ever because I started following Jesus, and I didn’t worry about friends because I can’t make them accept me. But Jesus calls me His child. Lord Jesus actually gave me friends on that trip and I now have a friendship with a girl in the grade below me. I rededicated my life to Jesus that summer. Then I started having sin problems, and I finally had to open up to my dad and just tell someone what I was struggling with. Things got better, so don’t keep things to yourself.
Later that summer, I felt like I needed to be baptized, and I asked God for a sign if I needed to be, and He gave me one. I ignored it and put it off for a while, but one day I had finally decided I wanted to be baptized. I didn’t want to have to go up to the front of the church, so my dad got me to talk to the Senior Pastor about getting baptized, and he wanted me to come up to the front of the church during the invitation when I was ready. And, finally, I was going to do it. I prayed to God for His Holy Spirit to be with me and help me to do it. Because of God, I was able to go up to the front of the church with my dad and tell the church I wanted to be baptized. It was one of the best feelings ever. I got to be baptized by my youth pastor on November 6, 2022. I got baptized for real that time- I got dunked and came up clean.
I hit a dark patch that Christmas with barely being able to believe God because my mind just denied so much, but I kept praying, and God eventually pulled me out of that season. Prayer became my lifeline, and God would answer my prayers. I thought I was all alone in what happened to me that Christmas, but earlier this year, I got a book called “Get Out of Your Head” by Jennie Allen, and she went through something very similar. We aren’t alone in our struggles.
Now, in 2023, I’m trying to live for Jesus each and every day, and I’m struggling sometimes with how to do that. But God has pulled me out of the unthinkable, and God has never left me. God really loves you. No matter what, Jesus loves you! Just keep praying. God is faithful; just trust Him. I went to a Matthew West concert (it was awesome!) and got to pray again for Jesus to come into my heart. I got to hear the song “Me On Your Mind” performed live, and that is one song that I can connect with and just sing. I learned from that concert that God loves to hear the sound of our voice no matter how long it’s been and that we just need to trust and believe in Jesus.
I’m proud to say I believe in Jesus, and I trust Him wherever He’s taking me. Let God define you, not your sin.
Thank you all so much for being vulnerable and sharing your stories. I pray you continue to walk with the Lord and that each day you grow closer and closer to Him. I pray you know how much He loves you and how proud He is of you. Thank you again for sharing!
Prayer For Victory
Psalm 20 “The Lord answer you in the day of trouble! The name of the God of Jacob protect you! May he send you help from the sanctuary and give you support from Zion. May he remember all your offerings, and regard with favor your burnt sacrifices. May he grant you your heart’s desire and fulfill all your plans. May we shout for joy over your victory and, in the name of our God, set up our banners. May the Lord fulfill all your petitions. Now I know that the Lord will help his anointed; he will answer him from his holy heaven with mighty victories by his right hand. Some take pride in chariots and some in horses, but our pride is in the name of the Lord our God. They will collapse and fall, but we shall rise and stand upright. Give victory to the king, O Lord; answer us when we call.”
I don’t usually do a whole Psalm. I usually just pick a verse or two. I went to this Psalm because Psalm 20:6 was used for teaching at my prayer group just before Easter. However, when I went to read it, I liked the whole thing, and I thought you would too. What I liked most about it is that it is a prayer for Victory. I feel as though we could all use a little victory in our lives right now. My mother and father-in-law came over for Easter, and my mother-in-law mentioned that she has 25 different people she prays for each morning. I bet she could use a little victory with those prayers.
Every time I go on Facebook, there are lots of people asking for prayer requests. In the Facebook group I am in, there are so many women who feel as though they are struggling. They feel as if they just can’t catch a break. It feels to them like the whole world is against them. They are experiencing one disappointment after another. There is one woman who has two young girls. Out of the blue, her ex-husband, their dad, died. Then she took her daughter to the ENT doctor to have her ears checked because the tubes came out. They said she has 10 % hearing loss in one ear and 20% in another ear. That is not what any mom wants to hear.
This Psalm is all about victory. It begins by saying, “The Lord answer you in your times of trouble. The name of the God of Jacob protect you! May he send you help from the sanctuary and give you support from Zion. May he remember all your offerings, and regard with favor your burnt sacrifices.” This is a great prayer. It is asking for the Lord to answer our prayers when we are in trouble and also to protect us. We could all use some of our prayers to be answered and some protection from our Dad in heaven.
Psalm 20 could be a great prayer when you don’t know what to pray. Have you ever had a time when you just didn’t really know what to ask for? Either things were so bad that you couldn’t see a way out, or you were so angry, sad, and upset that no words would come to your mind. If this happens to you again, you could keep Psalm 20 in your back pocket and pull it out when you don’t know what else to say. This Psalm touches on all the important things.
The next part is my favorite part. It says, “May he grant you your heart’s desire and fulfill all your plans. May we shout for joy over your victory and, in the name of our God, set up our banners. May the Lord fulfill all your petitions.” Yes, please! I pray he grants my heart’s desire and fulfills all my plans. I pray he grants yours too! I also love that it says, “May we shout for joy over your victory, and in the name of our God, set up our banners.” When I hear it, I picture a parade. I picture people waving around banners and flags and shouting for joy. It is important that we are joyful when our petitions are granted to us. It is important that we rejoice and we thank God for it.
The last part of the Psalm says, “Now I know that the Lord will help his anointed; he will answer him from his holy heaven with mighty victories by his right hand. Some take pride in chariots and some in horses, but our pride is in the name of the Lord our God. They will collapse and fall, but we shall rise and stand upright. Give victory to the king, O Lord; answer us when we call.” I like that it says he knows the Lord will help his anointed. It says He will answer from his holy heaven with mighty victories by his right hand. Who could use a mighty victory right now? Who is waiting, praying, and hoping for something important right now? This verse says that the Lord will help his anointed. Guess what? You are His anointed. The Lord will answer your prayers with mighty victories.
The verse also points out where our pride should be. It says some take pride in chariots and some in horses, but our pride is in the name of the Lord our God. We have a God who answers our prayers. We have a God who grants us great victories. We have a God who grants our heart’s desires and fulfills all of our plans. We definitely have a God we can take pride in. God has done so much for us. This psalm is definitely one to write down somewhere and remember where it is so we can take it out and pray it when we are in need of a victory.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode. Lord, we love you, and we are so grateful you answer our prayers, grant our heart’s desires, and fulfill all of our plans. Lord, help us to keep faith that a victory is coming. Help us to keep hoping when all seems lost. Help us to keep looking at you when things get bad. Help us to keep turning to you and trusting you are taking care of us. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. The theme for mentoring for this whole month is praise. I decided if we have a theme for a whole month it will allow me to go deeper into each topic instead of briefly touching upon a bunch of topics. Praise has made a huge difference in my life, and I can’t wait to share with you how much a difference it has made. If you would like to join us tonight in mentoring, CLICK HERE, or you can message me on Facebook. I look forward to seeing you tonight or tomorrow morning. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed night!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in November 2023 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group or about these words please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is “There is a river deep and wide, and it flows from my throne in heaven. It brings healing, wholeness, mercy, and holiness to all who bathe in its life-giving water. Jump in, my friends, and bring others with you. Frolic and play and enjoy this river of my deep-abiding love. Don’t be afraid of its depth, for I will help you stay afloat through its rapids, its turns, and its challenges. I long to wash you and cleanse you completely with my living water. Come. Come. Come and frolic with me.”
In The End, I Am Still With You
Psalm 139:17-18 "How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! I try to count them—they are more than the sand; I come to the end—I am still with you.”
This is a great verse! It reminds us that the Lord’s thoughts are not our thoughts. In this verse, David reminds us that God’s thoughts are worthy of spending some time pondering. He is also saying that if we were to count God’s thoughts, they would outnumber the sand. We could spend all day thinking about God’s thoughts and how much He knows. I mean, He is the God of the universe. There are over 8 billion people on the earth, and God knows each one of us by name. Can you even imagine that?
If we truly sit down and think about how amazing God is, we could get overwhelmed. When we think about all the thoughts He has to keep at one time, it can seem impossible. Over 8 billion people, and he knows your name. He knows everything about you. He knows about your marriage, your kids, your divorce, your struggles with your job, your struggles with your kids, the abuse you have received, and the successes you have achieved. God knows all of it. There isn’t anything about you that God doesn’t know.
He even knows about all the things we try to hide from Him. He knows about that shame we keep stuffing down deeper and deeper. He knows about that anger we are holding onto because He took our loved ones, and we can’t see the reason. He knows about the hurt that was caused by someone or something in the church. He knows about that thing that we did that we don’t want anyone to know about. He knows. There isn’t anything we can do that God doesn’t know about. And that is a great thing!
The reason we don’t want God to know certain things is because we think He will judge us. We think He will stop loving us if He knew the real us. Who we are down deep inside. The one that we don’t show anyone because we are afraid if we do show anyone, they won’t like us anymore. This might be true for some people, but this is not true for God. He made you who you are. He knit you together in your mother’s womb. He hand-picked you to be you. God doesn’t make mistakes.
I know there are parts of you that you wish you could change. This is true for all of us. Yet, God made us who we are, and he put those parts in us, and I am sure He had a reason for it; instead of looking for the reasons we want to change all the things we don’t like, how about if we ask the Lord why he gave us those things and how He wants us to use them. God has a plan, he has way more thoughts that we could ever imagine.
Nothing is ever by chance with God. God made you specifically like you are. There is a purpose for each and every detail about you. That is how magnificent God is. Even though there are 8 billion of us, God knows each of us individually and intimately. We could ponder all day and night and not truly understand or grasp that, and that is okay. I don’t think we are meant to understand everything God does. There are some parts of God and the things that He does that will always be a mystery, or at least they will be on this side of heaven. I believe when we get to heaven, the fullness of God will be revealed to us.
The second part of today’s verse says, “I come to the end—I am still with you.” This is a short sentence, and yet it is an important one. King David was secure in his relationship with the Lord. He knew he was never far from the Lord. If we look at the Psalms David wrote, He knew God was always with Him. He knew no matter what he did, God was still with Him. David excelled at repenting and turning back to the Lord. He knew God was always by His side.
The same is true for us. God is always right there by our side. He is helping us, loving us, and being there for us each step of the way. When we mess up, when we sin, when we do something to hurt our relationship with Him, He does not go anywhere. We are the ones who turn away. We turn our backs to Him because we don’t want Him to see us in our sin, our shame, or our guilt. We turn away, and yet He still stands there waiting for us to return. This is why I love this verse so much. It shows us the confidence that David had in his relationship with the Lord. It shows us the confidence we can have too.
“When I come to the end—I am still with you.” This can be true for each one of us. All we have to do is believe it, and then, when we mess up, repent and turn back to the Lord. He is there waiting for us with open arms. God never leaves us. He is always right there by our side. It is up to us to repent and turn back to Him. He is always right there, just waiting for us to come back to Him. Can we do that today? Can we turn back to the Lord and repent?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode. Lord, we thank you for never leaving our side. We thank you for knowing each one of us intimately. We thank you for knowing so much more than we ever could. We know we know so little compared to you in any given situation. Help us to see this and help us to rely on you to guide us and to point us in the right direction. Lord, we ask you to open the doors you want us to go through and to close the ones you don’t want us to go through. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to Walk Boldly With Jesus. I look forward to seeing you here again tomorrow. Mentoring is tomorrow night. If you would like to join, CLICK HERE. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in November 2023 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group or about these words please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is “I am taking your mind and giving you my mind.”
What About The Waiting…
1 Peter 2:24 “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds, you have been healed.”
Today is a very sad day. I know that without Good Friday, we have no Easter Sunday, and yet today is still a very sad day. Thinking about all the Lord went through for us is a bit overwhelming. To think about all he suffered and the fact that He never sinned. He was completely blameless, and yet He suffered immense pain for all of us. That can be overwhelming, too, if we really let it sink in that it was our sins that killed Jesus. My sins and your sins. That is a lot to take in.
I remember Father Mike saying that he was at an event once, and someone came up to him and asked him two questions. The first was, why do Christians blame all Jews for Jesus’s death, and the second one was, if you believe that Jesus’s death saved you from sin, shouldn’t you be thanking us? Father Mike wasn’t sure what to say, so he called upon the Holy Spirit. Then he explained that, yes, some of the Jewish people conspired with the Romans to put Jesus to death. However, the Catholic Church does not blame the Jewish people for Jesus’s death. Jesus would not have had to go to that cross if we were blameless. Jesus went to that cross for my sins and your sins. We are the reason Jesus was crucified.
This wasn’t news to me. Of course, I knew that Jesus died on the cross for our sins. However, it did hit me in a different way when Father Mike said that our sins are the reason Christ went to the cross. I don’t know if those sound exactly the same to you or not, but for me, they were slightly different. It was almost as if I was recognizing the redeeming factor of Christ going to the cross without realizing the blame I had for it. I don’t know if I can explain what I am thinking in a way that will make sense, but I am going to try, so please bear with me.
I know Jesus died from my sins. I am so grateful that because of his sacrifice, we have been set free from sin and bondage. I focused on that part of it in the past. Good Friday was about Jesus taking our sins to the cross. The focus was on Jesus and what He sacrificed for us. And the focus should be on Jesus. However, I don’t think I allowed myself, or I don’t know if I ever thought to think about my part in Jesus going to the cross. I don’t know that I ever really felt the guilt of sending Him to the cross. I don’t know that it really sunk in that it was my sins that caused Him to go to the cross. I am not sure if that makes sense, and it may be a subtle difference but it is an important one.
Another thing that I am reminded of each Good Friday is something I heard about at a conference in Germany. I unfortunately didn’t get to see it. I was at a conference in Ettal, Germany. This is not far from Oberammergau, Germany, where they hold the Passion play every 10 years. In 1633, the Oberammergau villagers promised to perform the suffering, death, and resurrection of Christ every tenth year, in so far as no one was to die of the plague anymore. God answered the villagers, and therefore, in 1634, the first Passion Play took place. The promise has been kept until today. During some free time at the conference, some of the people took a ride to Oberammergau to walk around the village.
One of my friends went to this town. Her friends walked into a church, and she was outside. She entered just a few minutes after them, and she walked in, and they were all crying. She wondered what she missed, what had happened. Then, they pointed to a display at the back of the church. It was Jesus waiting in a cell, and it hit her, too. Can you imagine what it must have been like for Jesus to wait in a cell for the time to arrive? We tend to think of the physically demanding times, such as the scourging at the pillar, the carrying of the cross, or the actual crucifixion. But what about all the times in between all of that? What about the times when He was all alone, left with His own thoughts?
We know that when He was in the Garden of Gethsemane, thinking about all He would have to endure, His sweat became like drops of blood. We know the pain of thinking about all of our sins was overwhelming to Him. What about when He is waiting to meet Pilate? What about after the scourging and before the crucifixion? Was He waiting alone in a cell somewhere? What was going through His mind? Did you ever take time to meditate on that? I know I haven’t because I never really thought of it before. The quiet part, the waiting part, isn’t really talked about.
I just looked up Jesus’s waiting to see if maybe it was talked about but I didn’t hear about it. I found an article from a woman named Christina. Christina has visited Israel and was telling about what she saw when she went. Here is what she said: (Click Here for full article)
"On our trip to Israel, we went to that courtyard where a statue of a rooster now stands. We then went to an underground prison beneath Caiaphas’s home, where Jesus was likely held the night of his arrest. It was a deep, dark pit. There was one light dimly illuminating the room for us, but I could easily imagine what it would have been like turned off. I thought about the time our family went on a tour of a cave in the mountains of Tennessee. At one point on the tour, the guide turned out the lights so we could experience what it was like for gold miners when their lights were extinguished. It was the darkest place I’d ever been. Complete darkness. That’s what I imagine the pit in Caiaphas’s dungeon would be like without electricity."
As we know from our own lives, sometimes waiting can be the hardest moment. I invite you into Jesus’s waiting today on Good Friday. I invite you to ponder what it was like for Jesus in the waiting. What was going through His mind? What kept Him going? What gave Him the strength to remain silent and not call out in pain? I invite you to ask Jesus what He wants to show you today. I invite you on this Holy and somber day to spend some time with Jesus. Thank Him for giving His life for us. It says in the verse above, “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds, you have been healed.” I invite you to spend some time with that verse today if you don’t know what else to ponder. “By his wounds, you have been healed.” That is a pretty powerful statement. Maybe spend some time with that one line.
Today is a day when we remember all Jesus sacrificed for us. We all have different ways of remembering Jesus today, and that is wonderful. It doesn’t matter how you remember Jesus today. What is important is that you spend time remembering Jesus and His sacrifice. I hope this has been a great lent for you this year. I hope it was challenging in all the right ways. I pray that you have an amazing Easter weekend and I will meet you back here on Monday!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each person listening to this episode. Lord, we are so grateful you sent your only son to die on the cross for our sins. We are forever grateful that you saved us and redeemed us. Help us to thank you for the way we live our lives. Help us never forget the price paid for the blessings we receive. We love you so much, Lord. Thank you! We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I pray you have a very blessed Easter! I look forward to meeting you here again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in November 2023 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group or about these words please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “All is possible when you come to me. There is no problem that needs to overwhelm you. I am with you always, ever ready to help you in your times of need. Your first response should be to me. I am the one you should seek first. I am your Lord. I am your God, your Savior. I send my spirit to guide you so that life can be easier for you. Please take advantage of the help that I send.”
"My God, My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me?"
Matthew 27:46 “About three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”).
I just opened the Bible to a random place this morning, and this is what I read. I found it fitting since it is Holy Thursday today. I also found it fitting because I am listening to the Catechism in a Year podcast again this year, and Father Mike just talked about this line in the episode I heard yesterday. Father Mike explained that although Jesus asked God why He had forsaken Him, it is essential to know that Jesus was not actually rejected by His Father. God never turned His face away from Jesus. Jesus always lived and continues to live in the eternal gaze of love with His Father. “At the same time, in the redeeming love that always united Him to the Father, He assumed us in the state of our waywardness to sin to the point that he could say in our name from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” He had such solidarity with sinners that he experienced what we experience when we are away from the Lord. He experienced what it was to be rejected, but he was never rejected. He experienced what it is to be cut off from the Father, although he never was cut off from the Father. His solidarity with us was so real, was so great that his experience and his humanity was that of he could say, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? But we recognize that he never, never, was away from the Father. He was never disconnected, just like in so many ways; I mean, we can have analogies here, right? We can experience this distance from the Father. We can experience the silence of prayer. We can experience dryness in prayer. That does not mean God is absent. His silence does not mean that His is absent. But we experience that. Jesus experienced what it felt like to have lost his Father, but He never lost the Father, and the Father never lost Him.”
Father Mike goes on to say, “God takes the initiative of universal redeeming love. He talks about paragraph 604 in the catechism and how it says by giving up his own son for our sins, God manifest that his plan for us is one of benevolent love prior to any merit on our part that is a mission of love. This is what God wants for us because he loves us. And so we just recognize that Christ’s redemptive death is in God’s plan of salvation. Yep, here’s God’s predestination and here’s God’s will working with our free will. Here’s our grace working with our brokenness. And yet grace still is operative and our free will is still operative. That Jesus Christ took upon himself the guilt of us all in such a way that he had this solidarity with sinners. He identified himself with sinners, although he himself never sinned, in order to reconcile us to God and that is God’s initiative. That is God’s prerogative that we did not deserve it, we did not do anything to merit it and we could never do anything to merit it. But God himself takes the initiative, which is just an incredible, incredible note.”
The Catechism has so much that I would love to share with all of you. It is so good! I recommend that you listen to this podcast if you have ever wondered what Catholics believe and why we believe it. I want to take a minute to read you paragraphs 604 and 605 in the Catechism, as I believe we all need to hear this, especially today, the day before Good Friday. It will give us more perspective tomorrow.
604 By giving up his own Son for our sins, God manifests that his plan for us is one of benevolent love, prior to any merit on our part: "In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins." God "shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”
605 At the end of the parable of the lost sheep, Jesus recalled that God's love excludes no one: "So it is not the will of your Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish." He affirms that he came "to give his life as a ransom for many"; this last term is not restrictive but contrasts the whole of humanity with the unique person of the redeemer who hands himself over to save us. The Church, following the apostles, teaches that Christ died for all men without exception: "There is not, never has been, and never will be a single human being for whom Christ did not suffer.”
Did you catch that last line? "There is not, never has been, and never will be a single human being for whom Christ did not suffer.” Do you know what that means? That means that the devil is a liar. It means that when he tells you that God forgives people but that your sins are too great, he is a liar. It means that when the devil whispers in your ear that Jesus died for other’s sins but not for yours, he is a liar. It means that when the devil whispers you couldn’t possibly be forgiven, accepted, or whatever else he is telling you, he is a liar. Jesus died for your sins, every single one of them. Tomorrow, on Good Friday, I invite you to offer your sins up to Jesus! I invite you to spend some time thinking about all the ways you have offended the Lord. I invite you to think of all the ways you haven’t been faithful to the Lord. Then I invite you to turn all of that over to the Lord. Tell Him you are sorry, and then release all of that to him and let Him take it all to the cross. Then I invite you to take some time to praise Him and thank Him for taking your sins to the cross. Thank Him for taking every sin you will ever commit to the cross in advance. Thank Him for the unending love He has for us. I want to leave you with the last sentence in paragraph 605 because I really don’t think we can hear it enough. “There is not, never has been, and never will be a single human being for whom Christ did not suffer.”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode. Lord, we ask you to remind us of any sins you want us to bring to you today. Lord, we ask the Holy Spirit to convict us of our sins, not so we can feel guilty, but so we can release them to Jesus and allow Him to take them to the cross for us. Lord, we thank you for loving us so much that you sent your only son to die for us so that we may be forgiven. You are amazing, and we are so grateful. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to Walk Boldly With Jesus. I am so grateful I am not on this journey alone! I pray each one of you has an amazing holy week. Tomorrow will be sad, but we know the ending, and we can all celebrate on Easter Sunday! I look forward to meeting you all here tomorrow morning. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in November 2023 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group or about these words please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Vision: “The Lord is calling us because when you feel the world is overflowing your boat and the waters are filling it up and you are bailing and bailing but you can’t stop the waters from rising. The Lord is saying Stop bailing. Let go and float; let Me do the work.
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Today’s witnesses are from Matthew West’s website called popwe.org. If you don’t know who Matthew West is, he is a singer, songwriter, and storyteller. This website is for the non-profit that he has with his father, a pastor. Matthew and his father encourage people to share their stories. They have various categories of stories. Today I chose the three they had on the front page. I don’t think they are all in the same category. The first one is about a young girl who had enough disappointment from her earthly Father but found her heavenly Father. The second one is about a mom who survived a car accident and her journey to find God. The last one is about a young man and his journey to find the Lord as well. I guess they are all about the journey to find God. However, they all have their different twists and turns. I pray when you hear them, you can see not only how God has helped them in their life but how He is helping you in yours and in your loved ones, too.
Reyna: My head fell into my hands and I was crying uncontrollably. I was about 6 years old when I learned what prison was. The guards had just brought my dad out and between the thick glass separating us I could see his hands and feet in shackles. I felt hopeless, and ashamed. I spent the rest of my childhood watching my dad go in and out of prison due to his alcohol and drug addiction. When I was about 10, someone invited me to church. It was there I learned about my Heavenly Father; the one who would never leave me and who had a purpose for my life. It was on a Sunday when the nice church people gave me a ride home that I found Christian music on the radio. The songs breathed life into my chaotic world and taught me the depths of God’s love. In my teen years I fell away from God and at 17 became a teen mom. A few years later my dad came out of prison and met my now 2 young daughters. I had high hopes that despite him not seeing me grow up, now he’d be the best grandpa to them. That dream was short-lived. A few years later he was back in prison and was handed a 35 year sentence. The pain became too much and I vowed to close that chapter of my life. I wrote my dad a final letter letting him know how much of a disappointment he was and that I would never visit him in prison again. Over the next few years God spoke purpose into my life. I rededicated my life to Him, and became the first in my family to graduate from college. I landed a good job and life was full. One day while I was thanking God for all he had blessed me with, I heard the still small whisper, “It’s time to go see your dad”. It had been 6 years. I went to see him and began telling him about Jesus and what he’d done in my life. After every visit we’d pray that God would allow my dad to come home, to our surprise my dad received a pardon. Today he’s home and has surrendered his life to God. As for me, the girl that vowed she’d never walk into a prison again, today I do prison ministry. I go to maximum security prison yards all over and tell prisoners about the freedom that can only come from a life fully surrendered to Jesus.
Tammy: In 2019, God saved me and my son from what should have killed us. We were in a really bad car accident that left me with a broken hip and a blood clot in my neck from the seat belt that all of the emergency personnel said I was “lucky” to have survived. I told them, no, I wasn’t lucky at all, I am “blessed” by a great Big God who loves me so much to save me! This accident had me off my feet for a few months, in which time I felt depressed, sad, and worthless. I felt like I didn’t deserve anyone’s love, especially the love of God. I felt like such a burden to my family and church family because of all they were doing for me to help me recover. During this time of recovery, I heard the song “Truth be Told” by Matthew West. I heard the lyrics and I related so much to this song. I was broken. Not just bone broken, but emotionally broken. Spiritually broken. I felt so far from God. Whenever anyone would ask how I was doing, I’d always say, “I’m fine” but deep down, I wasn’t fine, I was so broken. BUT GOD!!!!
God led me to listen to more of Matthew West’s music and the more songs I’ve listened to, the more I started to feel healed! To this day, Matthew’s music is on replay on my Spotify! 🙌 God picked me up from my deepest darkest thoughts and He took those thoughts of worthlessness and turned them into worthiness! I started reading my Bible more, I started praying more. I knew my healing was a gift from God! I am now almost four years from our car accident, and I’m still living my life with a great outlook on how far God has brought me and am so thankful for God’s protection that dreadful night. I may have lost my car, lost my job, and my sense of independence at the time, but I gained my relationship back from Jesus, and for that I will always be grateful for my car accident! God is good ya’ll! He just wants the best for us. He loves us so much! If you’ve turned your head from Him, look back! He is still there, and He still loves you! ❤️ God bless you for reading my story.
Luke: God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit healed my heart and healed my brain. Every time I had a seizure, God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit was there with me and He will always be there with me all the time. He will be there day in and out and what I say is it’s like chapters in a book, but with music. I know every single person has their own story to tell and decisions to make and it definitely happens to me. I listen to tons of music and Matthew West was on z88.3 when he released the song “More” and “Next Thing You Know.” When I got a chance to listen to the song, “Next Thing You Know,” it changed my music career life because Jesus put me in the right direction. There is this part in the bridge that says, “So, what’s your story about His glory? You gotta find your place in the history of grace. Yeah, what’s your story about His glory? Come on and find your place” and I concur with you, Matthew, because that bridge is definitely correct and it is definitely one of the coolest song structures to add to the bridge in the song. He changed my story and the decisions I make along the way. And that is My Story Your Glory.
I remember being baptized in 2019, and I felt like God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit was touching me and they heard my voice and it blew my mind when I got baptized in water. 💧 It changed my story around and helped me make good decisions instead of bad and that’s because God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit resurrected me.
Thank you all so much for being vulnerable and sharing your stories. I pray you continue to walk with the Lord and that each day you grow closer and closer to Him. I pray you know how much He loves you and how proud He is of you. Thank you again for sharing!
Just Ask, You Are Not Bothering The Lord
Mark 11:24 “So I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.”
I saw this was the verse of the day today, and then I heard a brief description of it, and the man talking said that Jesus said this to his disciples on the Tuesday before Good Friday. Since today is Tuesday before Good Friday, I thought it would be a good verse. It is a verse I rely on often, and it is just after a verse that I love and struggle with. It is just after verse 23, which says, “Truly I tell you, if you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and if you do not doubt in your heart, but believe that what you say will come to pass, it will be done for you.” I struggle with that one because I have a hard time believing I could have enough faith to throw a mountain into the sea. I have also prayed for things that I truly believed would happen, and they didn’t, or they didn’t happen the way I thought they might.
However, today’s verse says, “Whatever we ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” So, this verse is not much different than the verse right above it. Here the Lord is telling us in two different ways that if we pray with expectant faith, our prayers will be answered. What really piqued my interest about this verse today is when Brad, from Passion, the man who talked about the verse of the day on the Bible app, said this verse came right after Jesus was explaining why the fig tree that he cursed had shriveled up and died. In Mark 11:12-14 it says, “On the following day, when they came from Bethany, he was hungry. Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see whether perhaps he would find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. He said to it, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard it” When they passed by the fig tree the next day they noticed it had withered away to its roots. This is when Jesus started talking about our prayers being answered when we truly believe.
What this made me think of this morning is how powerful our words are. Actually, not just our words, but our prayers. Do you know you can ask for things that might seem impossible? Did you know you can pray for amazing miracles? Did you know that God loves it when we ask for big, amazing things? God is constantly telling our prayer group that we are not asking for too much we are asking for too little. This isn’t to say that God doesn’t care about the little aspects of our life. He cares about every detail. I think we get stuck in our heads too much when we are thinking about prayer. We don’t want to ask God about little things because we don’t want to bother Him. We don’t want to ask God for big things because we don’t want to ask Him for too much. I think we are too afraid of offending God or inconveniencing God.
What if we truly thought of God as our Dad? Is there anything too big or too small to ask your dad? I know we have all had different experiences with dads. Maybe yours was great, and you could ask him anything. This was my dad. I wouldn’t feel bad asking him to come over and fix a lightbulb, and I wouldn’t feel bad asking him to come watch my kids for a week. It’s not that I don’t know that would be inconvenient for him, but I know he would love to help in any way he can because he is my dad. Maybe you didn’t have that experience with your dad. Maybe you couldn’t rely on him to come through for you. If this is the case I want you to know our heavenly father isn’t the same.
He was not born with original sin. He was not a part of this broken world. He can be there for us in ways that no person ever could be. The closer we get to our heavenly Father, the more we will trust that we can ask Him anything. If you are still tentative with your prayers. If you are still thinking you are bothering the Lord with your prayers, you are asking for too much, or coming to Him too often, I invite you to take that to the Lord today. I invite you in this very holy week to ask the Lord what is getting in the way of your relationship with the Father. What is preventing you from trusting Him fully?
When I say trusting Him, I don’t just mean trusting that He will answer your prayers. I mean trusting that He wants to answer your prayers. Trusting that He loves you and that nothing you could bring to Him would be a bother because He loves you that much. Trusting that He cares about all the little details of your life. Trusting that you won’t be asking too much of Him if you ask for the impossible. Trusting that He isn’t too busy to deal with the things you consider little things in your life. God wants us to bring Him everything. He doesn’t get tired of us talking to Him. He could listen to us talk all day and not get bored, not get annoyed. When I just thought that I got this strong impression in my Spirit that some of you are thinking that very same thought. You think that because people you know have told you that you talk too much, God thinks the same thing. He doesn’t. He wants you to know He never tires of hearing your voice, of sitting and talking with you. He wants you to bring Him everything you have.
I feel like I can’t come up with the words to help you realize how important you are to the Lord. How powerful our prayers can be when we pray them with expectant faith. Expectant faith is when we pray like the verse says, believing that we have received what we asked for. My sister described it once as praying, not as if you are asking God for something, but praying like you know he will say yes. Praying like it is not a matter of if but a matter of when. When we can learn to pray like this, our lives will change. The power of the one living inside of us will be unleashed. I don’t think it is something that happens all at once, at least not from what I have seen. It is something that we practice, and over time, as we begin to see the power of this type of prayer, we begin to trust the Lord more, we begin to grow closer to the Lord, trust Him, and turn to Him more, and then we see our faith grow.
I pray I can help each one of you realize the power you have inside of you. I pray I can help you all believe that you can pray for miracles and see them happen. I pray that the Lord gives me the words and scriptures for these episodes that help teach each and every one of us to walk boldly with Jesus.
Dear heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each person listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask that you show us how to trust you more. We ask you to impress upon our hearts how much you love us. Help us believe that we are not inconveniencing you or bothering you with our prayers. Help us to truly believe you love when we come to you with our prayers. Help us to know there is nothing too big or too small a request for us to bring to you. Help us feel your love for us. Lord, I ask for you to put on our hearts anything that might be getting in the way of us growing closer to you and of us believing these things. We love you so much, Dad, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I will be on live for mentoring tonight at 8 EST, talking about the power of the Holy Spirit that we have living inside of us. If you would like to sign up for mentoring, you can click on the link below or go to my website, walkboldlywithjesus.com. If you want to check it out before joining, you can reach out to me on Facebook or email catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com, and I will send you the Zoom link. I look forward to seeing you tomorrow! Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in November 2023 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group or about these words, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, I want you to call out to me. I long to bless you, to bless your families, to bless your communities, to bless your world. When you call to me, you open the floodgates of my love and my mercy. Ask for more you are asking for too little. I have much to give you. I have much to bless you with. Trust in me.”
You, Too, Have The Power To Choose God’s Will
Luke 22:42 “Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me; still, not my will but yours be done.”
This is the beginning of Holy Week. We are getting closer and closer to the day Jesus died on the cross for our sins. In today’s verse, we see that Jesus struggled with this. If you have ever doubted Jesus’s humanity, this is a great witness to it. Jesus knew what was in front of Him. He knew the pain, the agony, the betrayal, the mocking, all of it. He knew, and He really didn’t want to go through it. He asked the Father if He was willing to take this cup from Him. He asked His dad to save Him if He was willing to. Yet Jesus said, “Still, not my will but yours be done.” Jesus, even though He knew what was coming, He still submitted to the Father’s will. This is the ultimate witness of obedience and of love. The reason I say obedience is because Jesus was still willing to be obedient to the Father’s will, even though the cost was great to Him. I say love because Jesus was doing this for not only love for his Father but also for His love for us.
He asked the Father to let this cup pass from Him because He knew how awful it would be. Yet, He also knew it was the only way to free us from our past mistakes, to put things right, and to repent for our original sin. Ellen G. White said, “Christ was treated as we deserve that we may be treated as He deserves. He was condemned for our sins, in which He had no share, that we might be justified by His righteousness, in which we had no share. He suffered the death which was ours, that we might receive the life which was His. “By His stripes, we are healed.”
When I read this verse, I immediately thought of how many times we are not willing to do God’s will. I thought of how many times we know what God wants us to do and choose to do something that we want to do. I am talking to myself as much as I am talking to all of you today. Take a moment to think about it. If you are honest with yourself, I bet you can think of plenty of times when you knew God wanted you to do something, and yet you chose to do something else.
I will give you some examples that come to my mind. When I was in college, I knew God wanted me to be at church on Saturday or Sunday, yet I wanted to be doing anything else but being in church. Or when I first got married and we would want to sleep in, even though we knew God wanted us to be in church. When it was a Friday during Lent, and someone invited us over for some sort of meat dish. Or, we decide to go out to eat, and the meat dish looks better than the fish dish. When I knew the Lord wanted me to fast an hour before communion, and yet I really wanted to drink a cup of tea or have a quick bite to eat before mass. These are just a few of the many examples that I can think of when I knew what the Lord wanted me to do and I didn’t do it. These are a few examples of many when I decided my will was more important than the Lord’s will. I am sure you have your examples too.
What I find amazing is that these are all instances where following God’s will really wouldn’t have cost me any great sacrifice. At most, I would have been inconvenienced or inconvenienced someone else. There would not have been anything more than a bit of discomfort on my part, and yet I still chose my will over the Lord’s will. I would like to claim that I was young and really didn’t know what I was doing. However, I can remember distinctly knowing what God wanted me to do and choosing to do what I wanted to do, so I can’t even claim ignorance.
Yet, Jesus, who knew exactly what was coming His way, was able to say, Yet, not my will but yours. This was at a great cost to Jesus. He was going to have to suffer pain; I hope none of us have ever known. He was going to have to suffer humiliation like I pray none of us have ever seen. I am sure he suffered heartache as well. I can’t imagine what it was like for Him to watch as one of His very own disciples betrayed Him. I can’t imagine what it was like for Him to watch as those who followed him now yelled crucify him. I can’t imagine what it was like for Him to know His beloved Peter, whom he made the cornerstone of the church, would deny Him 3 times.
Christ knew all of that was coming, and yet He was still able to say, not my will but yours be done. I think sometimes we can minimize this because we tell ourselves things like, “Of course, He could do God’s will; he is fully God and fully Human.” The thing is He did not use his divine powers while He was on earth. The only divine powers He used on Earth were those he received from the power of the Holy Spirit living inside of Him. And guess what? We have that same Holy Spirit living inside of us. Do you know what this means? This means we are capable of choosing to do the Father’s will also.
The only difference is that Jesus knew His identity and His authority in the Father. He knew He was the Son of God. We are still learning this. We tend to believe the enemy when he tells us we don’t have any willpower. When he tells us, we aren’t strong enough to say no to our wants and desires. He tells us we are weak, and we believe him because we don’t know the power we have living inside of us. However, if the Holy Spirit could help Jesus accept the cross because it was God’s will, He could surely help us give up the things we have been refusing to give up. He could help us make the small sacrifices God is calling us to make. We just have to realize the power we have living inside of us and start relying on that power instead of our own power. Can you do that today? Can you acknowledge that, yes, on your own, you are helpless to make the changes God is calling you to make? However, when you partner with the power of the Holy Spirit living inside of you, There isn’t anything you can’t do. Stop listening to the enemy telling you that you have to keep doing that thing you don’t want to do. You are stronger than you know. You have the same power that Jesus had living inside of Him. You have the same Holy Spirit He had. You are strong!!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us put your will first. Help us realize that you gave us the Holy Spirit to empower us. Help us see that you have already given us everything we will ever need to do whatever you ask us to do. Help us see that your will is for our best. Help us realize our identity and authority as your sons and daughters. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus! I look forward to meeting you again tomorrow. Mentoring is tomorrow night. I will be teaching on the Holy Spirit and the power we receive from it. I hope you can join me. I will put a link in the show notes. CLICK HERE for mentoring. Or you can go to my website, WalkboldlywithJesus.com. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in November 2023 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group or these words, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup. Today’s Word from the Lord is (Continued from yesterday’s image of the back of the washer) “In my mercy, I will reconnect you to the flow of my life-giving waters. When we are reconnected together, the power of our hearts flowing together will wash, cleanse, and make new many who are wallowing in the muck and mire of the world. Stay connected to me so that grace and mercy will flow out to all who need it.”
Stay Close To Christ, He Is The Living Water!
Jeremiah 17:7-8 “Blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought, it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit.”
I really like this imagery. I can see this tree being planted by the water and can envision it sending its roots out to get the water. It doesn’t have to fear when it gets hot because it has ready access to water. It is not worried when water is scarce as it has its very own supply. I think this is a great metaphor for our trust in the Lord.
When we trust in the Lord and trust the Lord, we have access to the Living Water that Jesus talks about to the woman at the well. Jesus is all the spiritual nourishment we will ever need for our souls to thrive. Yet, we need access to it; we need to be close to Him. The tree in this water was planted near the water. However, it still needed to send out its roots to get the water. We need to do the same if we want the nourishment that God is happily willing to provide for us.
We live in a time where access to Jesus is easily accessible, at least in the United States where I live. We are free to worship as we like. Bibles are not that expensive, and if you have a smartphone with apps, you can get the Bible App for free. This will not only give you the Bible, but it has almost all, if not all, the various translations. It also has the bible in 130 or so different languages. On this You Version Bible app, there are also countless Bible studies for free. Then you also have rosary apps to help you say the rosary. There is a Divine Mercy app that helps you say the Divine Mercy Chaplet. There are numerous apps to have prayers, meditations, talks, etc. There is no shortage of ways that you can connect with God through His Word and through prayer.
There are also daily masses where you can go and receive the body and blood of Christ every day. You can also go to Eucharistic Adoration when it is offered at your church. There are also more and more Perpetual Adoration chapels opening. Perpetual Adoration means that you can go and love on Jesus any time of the day. These chapels are open 24 hours a day. However, some have a policy only to let scheduled adorers go throughout the late night hours, so call ahead and let them know if you want to drop in during the middle of the night.
Then there are also YouTube and Podcasts. You can find someone talking about pretty much any subject you want to hear about on these two platforms. You can find podcasts where priests and ministers put their Sunday sermons for all to here. You can find podcasts that talk about Scripture, almost like a Bible Study. Exploring My Strange Bible is a great one for that! YouTube, you can just put the topic into the search bar, and you will find several videos to watch on each topic you type in the search bar.
As you can see, we have access to many ways to connect with God. It is not difficult, and yet we still need to reach out, just as the tree above needed to send out its roots. If the tree had just stood tall right where it was and hoped that the water would reach out to it, then it would have died. We can have all this free access to information and yet do nothing with it. The information is there but we need to read it, watch it, go to it, whatever it may be.
It doesn’t matter how often they offer masses if I am not going to them or how many translations of the Bible I can get if I am not even looking. We need to actively search for ways to connect to the Lord. He is our nourishment, our peace. He will provide us with what we need to get through the storms, but we need to be prepared. We need to have our roots set down deep, right next to Him.
We need to be in God’s Word, whether it is a printed Bible you hold in your hands or if it is in the Bible app. Or you could do the Bible in a Year podcast with Father Mike. He reads a bit of the Bible to you each day and then describes what he just read. He explains in a way that is easy to understand. I listened to that podcast for the first two years it was out, and then I switched to the Catechism of the Catholic Church. That is also a great one to help you learn more about the Catholic Faith. We need to be connected to the Word of God. We need to read it, study it, and memorize some of it. The Word of God helps us learn more about God; it helps us understand Him better.
We can’t trust His promises if we don’t even know what He promises us. One easy way to connect with God is to just talk with Him. Bring Him all your cares and worries. When you are trying to make a decision about something, bring it to the Lord and ask Him what you should do. Then listen for what he says you should do. If you ask God, He will answer; we just have to be ready to listen. You can talk with the Lord anywhere. You don’t have to talk out loud, although you can do that too. You can have a silent conversation with the Lord while you are in the grocery store waiting to check out or just while walking through the aisles. You can talk with God while you are driving to and/or from work or when you are stuck in traffic. I like to start my mornings talking with God. I don’t do it every morning, unfortunately, but I would like to.
However it is that you want to reach out and search for the Lord is great. Your way of reaching out can be different than my way. I just thought I would list a few ways in case you weren’t sure how you could do it. I know we are all busy, and it seems we don’t have enough time in the day to reach out to God. Trust me when I say everything gets easier when you take the time to reach out to God, kind of like the tree in the verse above. Its life was easier because it was planted close to the water, and it could just send out its roots to collect the water. What if it had been further away? What if it wasn’t anywhere near water? How hard would it be for this tree to get the nourishment it needed? This is true with us too. What if we aren’t anywhere near the Lord? What if we aren’t sending out our roots to gather that Living Water to nourish us? Where would we be then? How hard would it be for us to get the nourishment we need? Stay close to the Lord!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those who listen to this episode. Lord, we ask you to help us stay close to you. If we are struggling to fit this into our schedule, I ask you to give us clarity. I ask you to send the Holy Spirit to help us make this a priority in our lives. We need you, Lord; we know this. Help us to spend more time with you. We love you, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you are wondering how you can increase the time you spend with the Lord without adding anything else to your already busy schedule, CLICK HERE to get my free audio training on how to invite Jesus into the everyday things you are already doing. I look forward to seeing you on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in November 2023 from someone in my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group or the Words received, please email CatholicCharistmaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is “When you think you have nothing left, there is more. When you think you are at the end of it all, there is more. You are my warriors. You are my children. You are my love, and I honor you because you honor me, and with that, I give you more.”
Chapter 8 Pray without Ceasing
“Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18)
I don’t know about you, but I am sort of a perfectionist and rule follower. I like to do things the way they are supposed to be done. I am not a fan of recipes that say add a little of this and a lot of that. I like recipes that lay out the instructions step by step with exact measurements. I do not like to add things that are not in the recipe, and I don’t like to leave things out. I like to follow the instructions exactly. This is why, when I first heard this passage, I was stuck on the pray without ceasing part. How does one pray without ceasing? What about work, sleep, taking care of the kids? How can I pray all of the time and still do everything that needs to get done for my family? Have you ever had thoughts like these?
Over the years I have heard various ways to pray without ceasing and I thought I would share a couple with you to help encourage you, and to help you realize, especially any fellow perfectionists, you are probably already praying without ceasing. And if you are not already doing it you will see you could easily begin doing it.
In preparing for this chapter, I read a few articles and looked back at some sources I had seen before. They all pretty much agree it is not formal, audible prayer you need to do all the time. It is more of a “heart attitude.” Psalm 34:1 says “I will bless the Lord at all times; His praises will continually be in my mouth.” Isaiah 26:3 says “God will keep them in perfect peace whose minds focus on Him.”
Praying without ceasing is about shifting your thought process and turning every day moments into prayer. There was one analogy I found that said, “It’s like keeping the radio playing in the background.” It is not that you are audibly praying to God 24 hours a day. It is more that you are thinking of God, and he is in the background of all your thoughts throughout the day.
After reviewing all the things and getting ready to write, I reread the verse at the beginning and realized the answer is contained in the 1 Thessalonians verse. Rejoice always, is having an attitude of joyfulness, and in everything give thanks, is having an attitude of thankfulness. How do we rejoice and give thanks? Through prayer! Therefore, effective prayer is a proper heart attitude: a mental outlook of joyful thanksgiving.
Now some of you may hear that and instantly know you are already praying without ceasing. You may know you have a heart for God and you are praising and thanking him throughout the day with your thoughts and words. However, some of you may be like me and may be thinking, yes, that is great, but what exactly can I do to pray without ceasing. I am someone who likes exact steps to follow to make sure I am doing something correctly. This is why I will give you a few examples of ways you can pray without ceasing.
First, I will summarize a video I watched called “3 Steps to Unceasing Prayer” by Father Mike Schmitz. If you google this, you can watch the video yourself. It is just over 5 minutes long. In the YouTube video, Father Mike Schmitz lists three steps he learned from St. Francis DeSales that you could do to transform everything you do into a prayer.
Ask God to be present. Yes, God is always present and attentive to you, but by asking him to be present, you are letting him know you will be present too.
Offer this moment to God. Offer him all the joy, the suffering, whatever you may be feeling, offer it to God.
Accept –Resolve to accept whatever comes out of this moment.
This will not only transform your relationship with God, but it will also transform how you live. When you ask God to be attentive to you, you allow every moment to be a sacrament. You invite God into that moment, which makes it a channel of Grace. Then, when you offer the moment up to him, you make each moment a sacrifice. When you choose to accept the outcome, you make every moment a moment of surrender. For instance, you can do this when you go to bed at night. God, I ask you to be attentive to me, and I am attentive to you. I offer this night’s sleep to you as a sacrifice, as a gift to you, and I accept whatever comes out of it.
Another person I admire, Matthew Kelly, in his book Resisting Happiness, also talks about transforming every moment into a prayer. He suggests you pause for a brief moment before a new task or before another hour of work and offer that work to God as a prayer for a specific person. For instance, God, I offer you this task of doing the dishes as a prayer for my husband, or my parents, etc. He also mentioned if you are studying or reading, you could write the initials of those you know who need prayers on the top of each page, and before you read or study that page, you can offer it up for that person.
There is also something called the Jesus Prayer. This is something you can train yourself to have playing in the background of your thoughts. You can say as you breathe in, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God,” and say as you breathe out, “Have Mercy on me.” This is something you practice, and although it takes conscious thought while learning, it could become something so natural that you do it without thinking. Did you ever notice some things that seem strange at first can become a habit? One thing that comes to mind is counting my steps. When I joined the marching band, we had to learn to count our steps because while we were marching, we were making different shapes on the field. This was strange at first, but 20 years later, I find myself counting steps occasionally.
There are a few other ways you can pray without ceasing. You can begin each day with a conversation with God. You can just sit down with Him and talk to Him as if you were a close friend. Tell Him all about your day, what you have planned and what you are excited about, maybe what you need help with. Yes, I know God already knows about your day, and He knows what you are going to say before you say it. However, there is something intimate about you telling Him anyway. As your day progresses, you can continue this conversation and let Him know how your day is going.
You can incorporate prayer into your daily tasks. While you wash dishes, you could pray for a different person with each dish you wash, or you could offer up the task of washing dishes for one intention. This is also effective with any task you do throughout the day, especially if it is a task you do not like doing. Offering up one’s suffering for an intention is a wonderful way to pray. If you have something you feel needs a lot of prayer, then you can attach that intention to something you do a lot throughout the day. For instance, you could tell God that every time you wash your hands, you are offering it up as a prayer for your children. Think of how many times you would be praying for your children throughout the day.
You could use the time you are stuck in traffic or waiting in a long line at the store to say a prayer for someone or something. Another way to incorporate more prayer into your day is to listen to music. St. Augustine said, “To sing is to pray twice.” I used to put on praise and worship music while I was cleaning or if I was driving somewhere, and I would sing along. It made the task go by faster, and I was able to turn that time into prayer time.
Another way to pray is to admit it when we mess up and then move on. Sometimes we spend too much time focused on all that we do wrong. When we confess to God when we mess up, he forgives us, so we do not need to stay in that place of guilt and shame. It is important to take a moment to let God know we are sorry, but he does not want us to dwell there. This prayer does not eliminate the need to go to confession, but it helps us not to hold onto that sin and get stuck there.
Another way to pray without ceasing is to give up worrying. Worry is the opposite of faith. Philippians 4:6 “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” We waste so much time worrying. Next time you want to worry, just imagine yourself extending it up to the Lord our God and letting Him hold it for you. You can ask if you have a role to play, something He wants you to do, but do not take back the weight of that worry. Then start thanking God for who He is and all He has already done for you.
One last way I will share with you is to stop talking once in a while and just listen. The number or quality of words in your prayer doesn’t matter because prayer is about God, not about us. Spend some time just being, simply sitting and resting in His presence. You won’t hear anything if you never stop to listen. This is something I feel many of us struggle with. We find asking God for the things we need or even thanking Him for the things He has done for us, comes much easier than stopping and listening to what God has to say to us.
I have always struggled with hearing God and understanding what that even meant. This can mean different things to different people. Most people do not hear an audible voice; it’s more of a thought in their head or a sense about something. I have come to know that a small voice deep inside is the Holy Spirit guiding me. If we never stop to ask God to speak to us, how can we be surprised He doesn’t. If we don’t step outside the noise and chaos of the world to really listen, then how will we hear Him?
I will end with a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson “It is not only when we address our petitions to the Deity that we pray. We pray without ceasing. Every secret wish is a prayer. Every house is a church; the corner of every street is a closet of devotion.”
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you liked this chapter please check out my book at walkboldlywithjesus.com or amazon.com. If you enjoyed the ideas of various ways to include prayer in your everyday tasks, then I have a free audio training that goes into more detail on this idea. To get this free audio training, you can CLICK HERE, or you can go to my website walkboldlywithjesus.com. I look forward to seeing you tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day.
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in November 2023 by a member of the Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group during one of our meetings. For more information about the prayer group or these words, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. “My children, you are my heart. You are the song of the morning and sweetness of a spring day. Forget yesterday; it’s ok. I know you, every fiber of your being. I have knitted. I love my children, and I am gentle with them. Just don’t stop talking to me. We’ll work it out. “
Today’s witness if from my friend Jess. I have only known Jess for about a year and a half and yet it is clear to see how much the Lord loves her. She has a very intimate relationship with Him and spends a lot of time cultivating this. She spends time talking with Him, praying with Him, and in Adoration with Him. She has been a part of the unbound ministry for 20 years, which sounds crazy to me because she definitely doesn’t look old enough to have been doing it that long. I asked if she started Unbound when she was 10, she did not. Jess has a very kind soul and is a powerful prayer warrior. Her testimony reminds of of at least two very important things. First, everyone is going through something, and you never know what someone is going through. Just looking at Jess, or even spending time with her and getting to know her, you would never guess she has been through all that she has been through. The second is that we are never too broken for God to use. Sometimes, we think we have been through too much, we have done too much, and God can’t use us. God can and will use any of us if we are willing. Listen to this witness and how, even in really hard times, Jess knew God was looking out for her. I will read her testimony to you.
There has always been someone watching out for me, sometimes more than one person watching out for me. This is how I know God has big plans for my life and will be using me many times over.
I have always felt like I am on borrowed time, and maybe I am. Borrowed time to do the work of the kingdom and bringing it to earth. Before I was born, my nana had consecrated me to Mama Mary, that would explain why my birthday is a Marian feast day! My parents divorced when I was a few months old, and When I was about six months old, I was sitting in a chair at my Grammy and nano’s house in the living room. My nano was cleaning his gun, and it went off and missed my head by mere millimeters. I had fallen and split my head open on a brick fireplace by the time I was 1 year old. I started having seizures shortly thereafter. One seizure nearly killed me. My temperature 🤒 got to 104.5*F, at 105- your brain turns to green jello and it literally starts frying from overheating. I was thrown into a cold bath of ice 🧊. It took a long time to cool me down. At this point, I was too “young” to comprehend that I had a spiritual target on my back- because the devil didn’t want me to grow into my full authority and potential in Jesus! My life over the next 12-16 years was going to be a tug-o-war, a version of a real life Cinderella, physical, verbal, mental and emotional abuse. But I found out how to handle most of it, just let go and let God and Jesus take care of it! But my mom and I wouldn’t get along. My mom was Catholic, she remarried and had two more kids and I got pushed on the back burner. My biological dad was Protestant, and would eventually pass away when I was 19. My mom was the abusive one and still is to me, even as an adult. Some things my mom did to me were threatening my dad if he didn’t have me home by exactly 5pm on Sunday, I wouldn’t eat (there were many Sundays I didn’t eat because I was home at 5:01 or 5:02 pm), get into physical fights and make me bleed, went to school with bruises and hand prints on my face, walk 15 miles to school as a 13-year-old. There were more, but these were some biggies. They didn’t phase me; they didn’t bother me…. Why, you ask? I lived in the shadow of the most high… all the evil things my mom did to me didn’t affect me because I gave everything to Jesus! But some days, she got to me… and there were a few days that I tried to kill myself just to get away from her. The first time I tried to kill myself, it was a Friday night. I was on 300mg of a certain med. I researched this med, and I knew how much I had to take to make it kill me- I would basically have a seizure that I wouldn’t recover from, and I wouldn’t wake up the next day. In order to accomplish this, I took about 2550mg right before bed. And wasn’t planning on waking up. When I woke up the next day, disappointed, to say the least, that I “failed”, I felt like I was totally drunk. The room was spinning and turning sideways. I got up and walked into the living room, holding onto the wall and walking sideways down the hall. When I got to the living room, I saw my stepdad on the computer with headphones on, and my sisters were watching Barney on TV. I looked to my left and saw the clock on the stove; it read 10:32 am. The next thing I remember is my eyes rolled into the back of my head, and I blacked out and fell backward. I remember hearing a huge thud when I hit the floor. After that, I remember waking up, still feeling drunk. I saw my dad was still on the computer, and my sisters were still watching Barney. No one had noticed me; no one seemed to care if I lived or died… I looked at the stove, and the time was 11:32 am. ONE HOUR HAD ELAPSED! I crawled on all fours back to my room; I was a freshman in high school. The next year as a sophomore, I became a cutter. I cut my arms with glass, broken glass, to be precise. I cut my arms so deep they would bleed all over the place; no one knew. I always wore long-sleeved shirts, so no one knew what was really going on. One night I cut so deep that I could see a few inches down into my arm, and I don’t remember cutting that deep. The next day, there was blood everywhere! All over my sheets, my pillow, clothes, quilt- everywhere! I got nervous and made a promise to God that I wasn’t going to play God anymore, but I was going to make one. Final. Cut. So I would always remember where I came from and where I never wanted to be or go again. I made that Final Cut, and 22 years later, I still have that cut on my arm, and it has always served the purpose of being a reminder. But that day when I saw all that blood, I woke up and was scared, didn’t want to play God anymore, went to confession and mass, and never looked back! There is someone always watching out for me. I have a job that I need to accomplish before I leave this world. It’s a powerful job that the enemy doesn’t want me to complete. And this is why I have to keep going, why we all have to keep going. Every day is a spiritual battle. But every day that is given to God, the more He can use you in His plans for the kingdom! I have overcome much in my life, but without the help of Papa God, Jesus, Holy Spirit, Mama Mary, and all the angels and saints, I wouldn’t be here! My papa always had a saying that rings true; one just has to believe it is true! If God has ordained something for your life, there is nothing on earth, above the earth, or under the earth that can change that! What could be a more protective statement and guarantee than Jesus’ protection? Amen!
Wow, wasn’t that an amazing testimony? Thank you, Jess, for being vulnerable and sharing your story. I know it will touch the hearts of all who hear it. I pray that those who are in a similar situation hear your testimony and see that they are not alone and that they can make it through. I pray that everyone listening hears the message deep in their heart that God has ordained something for each of our lives and there is nothing that is going to get in the way of it. Thanks again for sharing. Feel free to share more of your testimony, as I am sure you have seen God at work in many areas of your life. We look forward to hearing from you again!
Trust & Thanksgiving In The Hard Times
Psalm 3 “Lord, how many are my foes! How many rise up against me! Many are saying of me, “God will not deliver him.” But you, Lord, are a shield around me, my glory, the One who lifts my head high. I call out to the Lord, and he answers me from his holy mountain. I lie down and sleep; I wake again, because the Lord sustains me. I will not fear though tens of thousands assail me on every side. Arise, Lord! Deliver me, my God! Strike all my enemies on the jaw; break the teeth of the wicked. From the Lord comes deliverance. May your blessing be on your people.”
Yesterday, I was listening to the Catechism of the Catholic Church in a Year podcast with Father Mike. He was talking about this Psalm. He was talking about how usually we are good at thanking God and trusting God when things are going really well in our lives. We thank God for giving us the answers to our prayers. We thank him when things go our way and when we are seeing success. However, how often do we praise Him, thank Him, and trust Him in the hard times?
David and God have a very intimate relationship. God chose David to be king when he was a very young boy. Even before he was chosen, David knew how powerful the Lord was. He used this knowledge to kill a giant named Goliath. He knew God was more powerful than anything on this earth. David was a great king most of the time, although he made some pretty bad choices as well. He was not a great father, and at one point, he was on the run from his son Absalom. It was at this point that David wrote this Psalm of Thanksgiving.
It wasn’t when he was safe in his castle, and God was giving him everything he wanted. It wasn’t when his armies were conquering all the other nations. It was when his own son was trying to kill him. He was fleeing his castle, his land, and his people, all so he could remain alive. This is when David wrote this Psalm. This is what David was saying about God when he was in trouble.
What do we say about God and to God when we are struggling or when we are in trouble? What about when our child is sick, and it feels like we haven’t had any prayers answered in quite some time? Are we still talking about how God is our protector? What about when we have been out of work for a long time, and there is no money coming in? Are we still talking about how God is our provider? How would we react if we were told that we needed to flee the country because a family member wanted us dead? I don’t think we could truly know how we would act until we were in that situation.
I would love to praise God and say how much he has done for me. I hope to be able to trust that the Lord will get me out of whatever circumstances in which I find myself. Let's take a look at the way David was praising and thanking the Lord. “Lord, how many are my foes! How many rise up against me! Many are saying of me, “God will not deliver him.” But you, Lord, are a shield around me, my glory, the One who lifts my head high. I call out to the Lord, and he answers me from his holy mountain. I lie down and sleep; I wake again, because the Lord sustains me. I will not fear though tens of thousands assail me on every side. Arise, Lord! Deliver me, my God! Strike all my enemies on the jaw; break the teeth of the wicked. From the Lord comes deliverance. May your blessing be on your people.”
First, David asks the Lord how many enemies he has. How many have risen up against him? Then David explains that these enemies are saying that God will not deliver him this time. I am sure this made God sad. He has saved His people time and time again, and there are some who still doubt that He will show up. David goes on to say, “But you, Lord, are a shield around me, my glory, the One who lifts my head high. I call out to the Lord, and he answers me from his holy mountain. This is a great part of the verse because it shows us that even though David is running for his life, he still believes that God will protect him. He still believes that God will answer his prayers.
I wonder if we can say the same. Can we still say that God is our shield when we feel we are under attack? What if it feels like we have been under attack for years now? Do we still believe that the Lord is our shield? Do we still believe that He answers our prayers? Next, David said, “I lie down and sleep; I wake again, because the Lord sustains me. I will not fear though tens of thousands assail me on every side.” David is showing us here that the Lord is sustaining him. I believe he is also showing us that he knows if he wakes up each day, it is because the Lord willed it. None of us are guaranteed to wake up each day. If we do, it is a gift from the Lord! David knew this. This part also shows us the trust David has in the Lord. He is being chased by an army led by his son. He has tens of thousands of people on every side of him, and yet he does not fear because he knows he has the Lord on his side.
Do you see how strong and fearless we are able to be when we understand the strength of the Lord and when we turn all things over to Him? David knows that God is in control of all things. He trusts God with his whole being, even to the point of death. He knows that if he dies, God has allowed it to happen. He is not afraid of his enemy.
The last part of this Psalm says, “Deliver me, my God! Strike all my enemies on the jaw; break the teeth of the wicked. From the Lord comes deliverance. May your blessing be on your people.” In this last part, David is asking God to act in a very specific way. He is not just asking for them to be defeated; he is asking for God to strike them in the jaw and break their teeth. I looked up online if there was a specific significance to this specific request of David. Here is what I found in the article: Break the Teeth of the Wicked (Part 3) (Click Here for the article)
“Consider the memorable prayer after which I’ve titled this series of posts: “Break the teeth of the wicked.” David makes this request twice in the Psalms (3:7; 58:6). Is David asking God literally to knock out the incisors of the wicked? Is he hoping that God will deliver a blow to the jaw of the wicked, literally shattering their canines and crushing their molars? The answer seems obvious.
We must remember that the book of Psalms is poetry. David is praying in metaphor. And what does the metaphor of God breaking the teeth of the wicked mean? It means God takes away the power of the wicked to bite and devour. Keep them from harming me and others. Thwart their plans to do violence. The second instance in which David prays this prayer makes the point particularly clear:
O God, break the teeth in their mouths; tear out the fangs of the young lions, O Lord! (58:6)
David envisions his enemies as young lions seeking to devour God’s people. His request is that God would defang these wicked men. In short, David is appealing to God to stop the wicked.”
As you can see, David trusts the Lord and is able to praise the Lord even in times of great difficulty. What if we tried this? What if, no matter what we were going through, we trusted that God had our best interests at heart? What if we truly believed this? Think about that for a minute. Would it be easier to trust the Lord if you knew without doubt that God had nothing but your best interests at heart? What if instead of being so angry at the Lord, we took some time to praise him in the hard times? Would that change anything? Would we be more equipped to handle the hard times?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those who listen to this episode. Lord, I pray your blessing on each and every one of them. Lord, we pray you protect us and you love us. We pray that you help us trust you even when times are hard. We pray that you help us praise you even when times are hard. Lord, we love you so much, and we ask all of this in accordance with our will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Tonight is mentoring! The topic for tonight will be why our forgiveness of others is essential. If you would like to join us send me a message and I will send you a zoom link! I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received by a member of the Catholic Charismatic Prayer group in November of 2023. If you have any questions about the prayer group or the words given please email Catholiccharismaticprayergroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word is, “My children, I long to give you my heart that weeps over this world. That weeps over those who are suffering needlessly because they do now know that they have a God who loves them.”
The Lord Will Fight For You!
Exodus 14:14 “The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to keep still.”
I heard this verse the other day, and I thought it would be perfect for an episode, as I know so many of you listening are going through some pretty hard stuff right now. Being still is not easy for most of us. We are doers, and we want to go, go, go. This is compounded by the fact that we live in a world that never stops. I know so many people who are doing so much, and they never have time to rest. They have jobs that are so busy they can’t finish all they are supposed to finish in the allotted 40-hour work week.
Being busy is not a bad thing in itself. Benjamin Franklin said, “Idle hands are the devil's playthings.” If we sit around doing nothing, we get bored, and who knows what we might get ourselves into. However, being too busy becomes a problem when we no longer make time for the Lord. Being busy becomes a problem when we stop recharging our batteries with the power of the Holy Spirit and start relying on our own power.
Something we have been learning in Encounter Ministries is that all fruitfulness flows from our intimacy with Christ. Fruitfulness means success. The success of all that we do flows from our relationship with the Lord. Think about this in terms of your other relationships. Let’s look at family life. Doesn’t it seem true that the fruitfulness or the success of your family depends on your relationship with those in your family? What if you never talk to your spouse, you never spend time with him or her, and you just go about your day? It is not necessarily that you don’t want to spend time with them, it is just you don’t seem to have the time. You don’t make the time because there are so many other things you have to do. How successful would that marriage be?
What if you never had time to spend with your children? They have sports games or dance recitals, but you don’t have time to go because you are always working. When you are at home, you don’t spend time with them because you are trying to catch up on all the things to do around the house. If you never make time to spend with them, if you don’t ever talk to them, how successful do you think your relationship with them will be?
The same is true with your relationship with God. We need to make time for Him, and He will take care of all of our worries. When we spend time with Him, we can tell Him all that is going on. We can give Him our stresses, our cares, and our worries. We can hand them over to Him and let Him take care of them. Who else can we entrust our cares and worries to?
The verse above says, “The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to keep still.” After we talk to the Lord about what is going on in our lives, we can sit there in silence and let Him come into our hearts and heal us. The Lord has told us many times in our prayer group that He is coming in during the silence and healing our hearts. It is great to talk to the Lord. It is great to pray to the Lord and to do the Rosary, the Divine Mercy Chaplet, and all the other devotions that we do to grow closer to the Lord. These are all amazing and will help develop a more intimate relationship with the Lord.
The Lord is also calling us to a time with Him that is spent in silence. He just wants us to sit with us and minister to us. God can do all things. He can minister to you anywhere and anytime. Yet, He likes to come in the stillness. He likes to come to us when we make the time just to sit and be still with Him. I know it feels like you don’t have any more time left in your schedule. However, if you spend quiet time consistently with Jesus, I am willing to bet you will see more time open up in your schedule. God can’t be outdone in generosity. If you give him 20 minutes, He will give you 10 hours. He is that good.
God's math is not the same as our math. It doesn’t make the same kind of sense that our math does. If he can feed 5,000 men plus women and children with 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish, then he can certainly replace the 15 or 20 minutes during the day that you gave to Him in quiet time. My sister Dee gave me a plaque once with a poem on it and I feel like it is the perfect poem for reminding us how important it is to start our day with the Lord. It shows how important it is to check in with God before starting our day. Here is the Poem:
The Difference By Alan Grant.
I got up early one morning and rushed right into the day;
I had so much to accomplish that I didn't have time to pray.
Problems just tumbled out about me, and heavier came each task.
“Why doesn't God help me?” I wondered. He answered, "You didn't ask.”
I wanted to see joy and beauty, but the day toiled on, gray and bleak;
I wondered why God didn't show me; He said, “But you didn't seek.”
I tried to come into God's presence; I used all my keys at the lock.
God gently and lovingly chided, “My child, you didn't knock.”
I woke up early this morning and paused before entering the day.
I had so much to accomplish that I had to take to take time to pray.
As you can see by this poem, God is ready to help us, He is just waiting for us to ask. Then, once we ask, He is waiting for us to give Him the time to work on us, to heal us. If you are going through a really tough time right now, I want to invite you to some quiet time with the Lord today. Sit with Him and ask Him what He wants you to do, and then listen for His answer. If you need to be filled up with energy, strength, hope, love, power, or anything else today, just ask the Lord and then sit there for a few minutes and receive it. The Lord says when we ask, He answers, so when you ask for something, expect to receive it.
I know sometimes, maybe most of the time, it feels like we are all alone in our battles. We feel like we are the only ones fighting our fights. This verse this morning reminds us that we are not in this alone. Not only is God in it with us, but He will fight our battles for us if we let Him. If we turn our battles over to the Lord, He will take care of them for us. Isn’t that amazing? This reminds me of 2 Kings 6:17. It says, "And Elisha prayed, “Open his eyes, Lord, so that he may see.” Then the Lord opened the servant’s eyes, and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.” Imagine all the Lord surrounds us with. There is so much we can’t see when it comes to the Lord.
We can’t usually see His angels, we can’t see the reason He allows some things to happen, and we can’t seem to make sense of things at times. We might be sad that we can’t see these things, and I often wish I could see into the spiritual world. However, we have to remember there are also evil spirits in the spiritual world, and I think we would be very frightened if we saw all that goes on in the spiritual world around us.
Even though we can’t see God’s horses and chariots of fire ready to fight for us, we can trust they are there because the Bible is the Word of God. It is fact, and it is God’s promises to us. So, when we read in the Bible, “The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to keep still.” We can take that to the bank. We can count on that. We can be still and watch as the Lord fights our battles for us. Can we be still and allow Him to do that today?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask that you help us to be still and allow us to fight our battles. We ask that you teach us how to be still and that you give us the power to do so because we really struggle with it. Lord, we thank you for all you do for us each day. We thank you for fighting our battles. We thank you for surrounding us with protection and an army to defend us. We want to call on that army, Lord. We want to hand over all of our struggles to you, Lord. You are the almighty one; you are the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. We love you so very much. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. This is a reminder that tomorrow is mentoring. If you want to join, you can click on the link below or go to the website at WalkBoldlywithJesus.com. I look forward to meeting you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in November 2023 by a member of the Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group during one of our meetings. For more information about the prayer group or these words, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word is, “My children, I long to give you my heart. I long to mold your heart to be like mine. That you may see your brothers and sisters and you may reach out to them, pray with them, give them words of hope, pray for healing, give them food if they are hungry. Give them shelter if they have nowhere to stay.”
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in November 2023 by a member of the Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group during one of our meetings. For more information about the prayer group or these words, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com). The Word is, “My children, I am the incarnate God. Incarnate in the person Jesus Christ, and I continue to be incarnate through the Eucharist in you. I am with you in your joys, in your sorrows, in your sufferings. Place your trust in me. I am full of mercy, love, and help.”
Mentoring Week #11 How to pray for your children (CLICK HERE for info on mentoring)
Welcome to this week’s Mentoring Session! Tonight I will talk about how to pray for your children. If you do not have children, you can use these suggestions to pray for nieces and nephews. your friend’s children, or all the children of the world. All children need our prayers. We can see how badly our own children or those close to us need prayers. Now, imagine they didn’t have anyone praying for them. There are so many children out there who have no one praying for them. Tonight, I will start with our kids, or those close to us, because I know many of our hearts our heavy with worry for our children.
First, let me begin by saying there is no right or wrong way to pray for your children. What I will be doing today is going over several things I have learned over the years while searching for various ways to pray for my boys. I have three boys who are 15, 18 & 19 right now. They are all stable compared to where they have been in the past, yet they could still all use prayers. I have learned over the years not to worry about them too much as I know God is looking out for them. This trust has come through growing closer to the Lord and also through counseling.
I say counseling because sometimes you need someone else to point things out to you. When my boys were younger I would stress about their future. One of them was physically abusive towards family members and I would worry that would mean he would be an abusive husband and dad. I had another son that did many unsafe behaviors and I was worried he would accidentally kill himself. You can see how that would be pretty stressful. I had a counselor who explained to me that it doesn’t do any good to worry about the future because so much could happen between now and then.
For instance, at the time, it would be at least seven years or more before my boys were adults. She said a lot can happen in those seven years. They could grow out of the behavior, get help for the behavior, or have someone come into their lives and change. Basically, why worry about something that may never happen? At the same time as I was learning this, I was also learning to trust the Lord more. When I let what my counselor was telling me really sink in and then I also realized God loves my boys more than I ever could imagine, I was finally able to release almost all the worry that I have for my children. It was truly freeing and I pray each of you listening learns how to turn your worry over to God and release it. If you want help, let me know.
Now, just because I don’t worry about my children’s futures doesn’t mean I am not praying for them. I am still praying for them and for the things I would like to see happen in their lives. Tony and I wrote a prayer for the boys about two years ago. We said it daily for a week or two, and then I said it on my own for a bit, and then we slowly forgot about it. I found the prayer the other day and looked through it to see if any of the things we prayed for had come true yet. Almost all of the prayers had been answered. We have seen many positive changes in the boys and many of them were listed in our prayer. I hope you can see the power of our prayers for our children. When we ask, God answers. So start asking specifically what you would like to see.
I am a big believer in praying specifically because then God gets all the more glory. It is much easier to see when God has answered a specific prayer than a generic prayer. For instance, if you are praying for your kid's behavior to get better, what is the measurement of better? How will you know if it is better, especially if the improvement is there, but small and you are around it all day? How about if you prayed that your child would go a whole hour or a whole day without doing a certain behavior? Then would you notice if that prayer was answered? What about praying that your child would make a really good friend at school? Would you know when that prayer was answered? Do you get what I am saying? The more specific we are with our prayers, the more we will be able to praise God when He answers them.
I also strongly believe that we should write down our prayer requests—not just those for our kids but those others have asked us to pray for as well. When we write down our prayers, we have a record of all the things we ask God for, and then, if we periodically go through the book we wrote them down in, we can see all the prayers He has answered for us. This is extremely helpful when we are going through a really hard time. When we are struggling, and it feels like God isn’t answering any of our prayers, we can look through our book or prayers and see all the ones He has answered for us in the past. Hebrews 13:8 says, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” If He did it before He will do it again.
A few years ago, I started a notebook with prayer requests in it. When I write a prayer request in the book, I leave several blank lines before I write the next request. These blank lines are so that I can go and update the request with a praise report when it is answered. I also highlight all the requests that have been answered so I can go back and look at them whenever I need to be reminded that God answers prayers. I also look back when I am feeling down and need a little pick me up.
Now that you know being specific in your prayers and writing down your prayer requests is important let's discuss specific prayer points. (SLIDE) I read a book called The Power of a Praying Parent by Stormie Omartian. This book really opened my eyes to the various things we can pray for our children. She prayed very specifically, and for things, I had never thought of before. I would highly recommend this book. At the end of each chapter, she has a specific prayer written out for the subject of that chapter. Here are the chapter titles so you can get an idea of what I am talking about. Releasing my child into God’s Hands, Securing Protection from Harm, Feeling Love and Protected, Establishing and Eternal Future, Honoring Parents and Resisting Rebellion, Maintaining Good Family Relationships. Attracting Godly Friends and Role Models, Developing a Hunger for the Things of God, Being the Person God Created, Following Truth & Rejecting Lies, Enjoying the Life of Health and Healing, Having the Motivation for Proper Body Care, Instilling the Desire to Learn, Identifying God-Given Gifts and Talents, Learning to Speak Life, Staying Attracted to Holiness and Purity, Praying through a Child’s Room, Enjoying Freedom of Fear, Receiving a Sound Mind, Inviting the Joy of the Lord, Destroying an Inheritance of Family Bondage, Avoiding Alcohol, Drugs, and Other Addictions, Rejecting Sexual Immorality, Finding the Perfect Mate, Living Free of Unforgiveness, Walking in Repentance, Breaking Down Ungodly Strongholds, Seeking Wisdom and Discernment, Growing in Faith, Getting Through the Teenage Years Successfully and Praying for Your Adult Children.
Did you hear any titles that took you by surprise? There were several that I would not ever have thought to pray about and yet when I did, I saw changes. One I can think of off the top of my head is the chapter on praying for my kids to have the motivation for proper body care. We had three teenage boys who weren’t that fond of showering, and with all the other issues we had going on in our house, this was the least of my worries. Yet, I didn’t want them to be the “smelly” kid in school. I wanted them to have friends, and that is difficult when you smell bad. Tony and I added this into our daily prayer for the boys for a bit and now they all take better care of their hygiene. I wouldn’t say they are where I want them to be, but they are doing much better and I didn’t have to nag them all the time. I just needed to pray for them. What specific prayers can you start saying to see changes in your kids?
Another suggestion I have received recently is to pray in my children’s rooms after they go to school. I was told to go into their room and bless it and to bind any spirits that might be there. You have authority over all spirits that are in your house. All Spirits, good and evil, are bound by our free will. If we tell them to leave, they must obey. Your prayer can be as simple as Lord, I bless this room, and I bind any evil spirits that might be here, and I send them to the foot of the cross. However, there is a prayer in the book I mentioned a few minutes ago for praying in your child’s room, and it is really good. You can part of it, or all of it depending on what fits for you. It says,
“Lord, I invite your Holy Spirit to dwell in this room, which belongs to (name of child). You are Lord over heaven and earth, and I proclaim that you are Lord over this room as well. Flood it with your light and life. Crowd out any darkness which seeks to impose itself here, and let no spirits of fear, depression, anger, doubt, anxiety, rebelliousness, or hatred (name anything you've seen manifested in your child's behavior) find any place here. I pray that nothing will come into this room that is not approved by you, Lord. If there is anything here that shouldn't be, show me it so it can be taken out. Put your complete protection over this room so the evil cannot enter here by any means. Fill this room with your love, peace, and joy. I pray that my child will say, as David did, "I will walk within my house with a perfect heart. I will set nothing wicked before my eyes" (Psalm 103:2 to 3"). I pray that you, Lord, will make this room a holy place sanctified for your glory. In Jesus's name, I pray.” I forgot all about this prayer, and yet I am definitely going to start saying it tomorrow when my boys get on the bus. Actually I will probably start today in the room of my oldest because he will be at work later today.
Another suggestion was to fill a spray bottle with holy water and bless your whole house with it. We do this before each prayer group meeting. One of us walks through the hallway and the empty rooms of the building we are using, and we ask the Lord to bless the house. We bind any evil spirits that are hanging out and we send them the foot of the cross. We also ask the Lord to protect the space we are in and to prevent anything that is not of Him from entering while we are using that space. You can do this in your house, and you can do this in your children’s homes if they are older and have their own place.
You might be wondering why I am suggesting to bless your house with Holy Water. Holy Water is a powerful spiritual armor in times of temptation. St. Teresa of Avila, whose temptations were as terrible as anyone’s, has left us these wise words of counsel:
“I have found by experience that there is nothing from which the devils fly more quickly than from Holy Water. They also fly from the Cross, but they return almost immediately. Certainly, the power of Holy Water must be great; for my part, my soul feels particular comfort in taking it, and very generally a refreshment and interior delight which I cannot express.”
Long before St. Teresa of Avila, Holy Water was a sacramental in the Catholic Church. Water, which as a symbol of purification held a high place in biblical times, has retained its rich symbolism.
According to the Apostolic Constitutions, a document dating back well over 15 centuries, the use of holy water is attributed to a recommendation issued by St. Matthew, the apostle and Evangelist. The lives of the saints are packed with instances of heavenly protection and blessing secured through the reverent use of holy water. If you want more information on holy water, just let me know. If you are interested in blessing your house with Holy Water, you can go into any Catholic Church and fill up your spray bottle or any bottle with it. It is free and there for all to use.
The next suggestion that I just learned about, so I have not tried it yet, is to pray over our children’s pillows. When you are blessing their room, spend a minute praying over their pillow. Pray that the Lord grants them good dreams, speaks to them in their dreams, and encounters them in their dreams. Pray that the Lord protects them from nightmares and any evil thoughts. (SLIDE)
Another really important thing that the book talks about that I didn’t even think of before is to pray for our children to follow the truth and reject the lies. The enemy is constantly speaking lies over our children. He is whispering in their ears that they are unloved, they are unwanted, they are not enough and so on. We need to pray that they will reject these lies. We need to pray that the Lord will protect their mind from believing these lies. We need to pray that the lies others tell them will not take root. We need to pray that the Lord will fill their mind with who they are in His eyes. We need to pray that the Lord will replace any lies they believe with His truth of who they really are.
We also need to pray that they know how much God loves them. Everyone is searching for love these days, and I don’t think it is any different for kids. We live in a broken world, so even if we have parents who love us, they aren’t always great at showing it, and we aren’t always great at accepting it. Kids feel more alone than ever these days; even though we live in a world where kids have constant contact with each other, they don’t tend to have meaningful relationships with each other. Also, with all the constant contact that means those who are mean to you also have constant access to you. We need to pray that our kids can feel our love, but more importantly, we need to pray that they feel God’s love. God’s love is perfect. If they knew how much God loved them, they would have all the love they needed. We can pray that they know no matter what they do, God will always love them. We can pray that they know they don't have to do anything to earn His love; they already have it and will never lose it!
Most of the things we have covered so far are geared more towards our younger children who are still living at our house. Now I would like to give you a few ideas of how we can pray for our adult children. I am just entering this stage, so I am new to this. My oldest is an adult, however, he is living at home with us. Many of the things I talked about earlier in this session apply to our adult children as well. Meaning that we can pray for them to know God’s love; we can pray God protects their minds from the lies of the enemy and fills them with His truth. You can spray Holy Water and bless their house if they say it is ok or if you are there when they are not home. However, there are some things you can pray over your adult children that you don’t necessarily have to do for your young kids.
For instance, you can pray over your children’s marriages. You can pray that they are loving and caring spouses. You can pray they are faithful and help each other grow closer to the Lord. You can pray that the Lord is part of their marriage. You can pray for specific things that apply to your children. For instance, if your adult child has a bad temper, you can pray they learn to control their temper. You can pray that the Lord fills them with the peace of Christ. When you go over to their house to visit, before walking through the door, you can say a quick prayer imparting peace on them. Dear Lord, I impart peace on this house and all who are in it. If there is a lot of anger, frustration, and so on in this house, you could walk around the outside of the house and just impart peace on the house and all the land around it. God gave Adam dominion over all created things. This means you can pray for peace into their house; you can pray for peace into the soil around the house, and you can impart peace all around their house, inside and out.
You can also pray for your adult children’s jobs. Pray that they have a job they love, one that lights them up inside. Pray that they have a Godly boss and coworkers who encourage them on their faith journey. If they don’t seem to be on any faith journey, pray that they encounter someone at their job who waters the seed you have planted and helps it to take root and bear fruit. You can pray they have a good work ethic.
I read an article about praying for our adult children. The author talked about how she used to pray generally for her kids. However, now that she knows the Lord more, she realizes how intimately He cares about every detail of our lives and our children’s lives. Here are some of the specific ways we can pray for our adult children, especially if they have fallen away from God.
- Ask God to show up in their lives in ways they can’t deny. Ask Him for big miracles and little miracles, but most of all, ask Him to open your kids’ eyes to what He’s doing.
- Ask God to give them peace that isn’t natural. In our world today, it seems like everything is stressful—from the price of groceries to going out in public. We are surrounded by news reports that feed our fears. Feeling a sense of peace in the midst of this is supernatural.
- Ask God to act specifically. If your child has a need, take that need to God on their behalf. Don’t prejudge if the request is too small or too large. Give it to God and watch what He can do.
- Ask God to bless them in an exact way. Are they struggling with finances? Ask God to act. Are they trying for a work promotion? Ask God to work that out.
- Use Scripture to pray for them. God’s Word is powerful. When we pray Bible verses for our children, we can be assured that God is listening.
- Ask God to show them something. Perhaps they didn’t get the work promotion they wanted; ask God to show them why that was a good thing instead of a bad one.
- Ask God to draw them to Him. We can ask God to make our children so uncomfortable without Him that they’ll come running back.
The article I read says letting our kids know we are praying for them is just as important as actually praying for them. The author states that it is important to be specific in letting them know how we are praying for them. Here is what the author said:
- Tell them you’re praying for an exact answer to something they’ve shared. Perhaps they’re worried about car repairs. Share that you’ll be asking God to provide all they need. By being specific, we’ve primed them to notice a specific answer.
- Share with them that every morning you pray for their safety. When we let them know when and what we’re praying it makes our prayers more real to them. This is also a great way to model the fact that you spend time with God every morning.
- Point out the answers to the things you’ve asked God for on their behalf. When your child shares that they received something you’ve prayed for, point it out. It’s not important to make a big deal about the answers, just mentioning how we’ve seen God work is enough. The impact comes when we do this consistently. As our adult children see God answering our requests regularly it can be life-changing. In addition, by letting them know we were praying for that exact answer, we show them how God answers prayers.
- Share specific verses from the Bible that you’ve been praying. If you’ve been praying for God to make your child’s next steps obvious and the Bible verse you’ve been praying is, “In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.” Proverbs 3:6, share that with them.
- Ask your adult children how you can pray for them. As they see the power that comes from spending time with God in prayer, they will often begin to open the spiritual door wider. When that happens, we can ask for ways they’d like us to pray for them.
It is hard to see our adult children heading down the wrong path. Sometimes we can get discouraged and feel helpless. We can say things like, “All I can do now is pray.” Prayer is more powerful than anything else you were doing on your own. Prayer is the most powerful thing you can do. Once you enlist the help of God, you no longer have to worry because He is in control, and He will make sure they end up on the straight and narrow eventually. It is all in God’s time, not our own. God’s ways are not like our ways, and his thoughts are not like our thoughts. (Isaiah 55:8)
I have noticed more change in my boys once I started to stop nagging them all the time and worrying about them all the time and started praying more and going to God with my fears. Nagging will not change our children. Telling them what they are doing is wrong will also not change our children. I did not see real changes in my kids’ behaviors until I started leading more with love and prayers. When I could see they were acting out, I stopped punishing them so much and started loving them more. I came alongside them and let them know I understood how they were feeling. I let them know what they did was wrong and yet they are still good kids. I loved them no matter what they did. If they were doing things that scared me or I started to worry, I would bring it to God and pray about it. He would always calm my fears and assure me that all would be ok. You can do this too.
I know you are sure you know what is best for your children, just as I am sure I know best for mine. However, the truth is that only God knows what is best. Often times we let our fears get in the way of what we want for our kids. For instance, we don’t want them playing video games because it won’t lead to anything, and yet God could be using that gift your child has to invent the next best-selling video game. You think he or she is wasting time and yet God is preparing him or her in the same way He is preparing you for your destiny. Turn your kids over to the Lord. Give Him your worries. When you are afraid your kids are making a mistake, bring it to God first. If he wants you to bring it to their attention, He will let you know. If He doesn’t, then He will let you know that too. Take the time to stop and turn to God first. I bet if you do this one small thing you will see your relationships begin to change. I bet your kids will start to seek you out for advice because you listen to them and because you aren’t nagging them. God will prepare their hearts to hear what you have to say if He wants you to say it. He will also tell you how to say it if you ask Him. God is so good!
This Week’s Questions:
How can I best pray for my children this week?
What areas are you calling me to pray over for my children? Some ideas:
Releasing my child into God’s Hands, Securing Protection from Harm, Feeling Love and Protected, Establishing and Eternal Future, Honoring Parents and Resisting Rebellion, Maintaining Good Family Relationships. Attracting Godly Friends and Role Models, Developing a Hunger for the Things of God, Being the Person God Created, Following Truth & Rejecting Lies, Enjoying the Life of Health and Healing, Having the Motivation for Proper Body Care, Instilling the Desire to Learn, Identifying God-Given Gifts and Talents, Learning to Speak Life, Staying Attracted to Holiness and Purity, Praying through a Child’s Room, Enjoying Freedom of Fear, Receiving a Sound Mind, Inviting the Joy of the Lord, Destroying an Inheritance of Family Bondage, Avoiding Alcohol, Drugs, and Other Addictions, Rejecting Sexual Immorality, Finding the Perfect Mate, Living Free of Unforgiveness, Walking in Repentance, Breaking Down Ungodly Strongholds, Seeking Wisdom and Discernment, Growing in Faith, Getting Through the Teenage Years Successfully and Praying for Your Adult Children.
Which one of the following ways are you calling me to pray for my adult children this week? Some ideas:
- Ask God to show up in their lives in ways they can’t deny.
- Ask God to give them peace that isn’t natural.
- Ask God to act specifically.
- Ask God to bless them in an exact way.
- Use Scripture to pray for them.
- Ask God to show them something.
- Ask God to draw them to Him.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those here tonight and those who are watching the recording. Lord, we need your help with our children, no matter how young or old they are. Lord, help us to release our fears and worries to you. Help us to turn our children over to you for your protection. Lord, you love them more than we ever could. You see the whole picture of their life where we only see a small piece of it. Show us how to pray for them. Lead us in prayer Lord. Holy Spirit teach us to pray as we should. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you want more info on mentoring click here. I look forward to seeing you tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day.
Today's Word from the Lord was received in November 2023 by a member of the Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group during one of our meetings. For more information about the prayer group or these words please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. "I am pleased with all of you, my children, more than you might think. I am your God. I love you with a love that you can never begin to feel the depths of here on earth. But you will know me as I know you one day, and we will rejoice together. We will rejoice together to be in the presence of all the saints and angels."
Witness Wednesday #103 ESM Boston Healing Service
Today, I will witness to you about the Encounter School of Ministry Boston Campus healing service that I attended this past Saturday. I love going to these healing services for many reasons. First, I love the praise and worship. We have adoration, so Jesus is there on the altar, and then there is a live praise and worship band that plays the most amazing music. You can tell the music is led by the Holy Spirit because it moves your soul. Then there is a proclamation of the Gospel, and who doesn’t love to listen to stories about Jesus and how He loved to heal all he came into contact with?
After that Deacon Joe called up anyone who received a Word of Knowledge about a condition that God wants to heal that night. Sometimes just releasing these Words of Knowledge is enough for someone to be healed. You will hear this later when I am sharing the various healing testimonies. After the words of knowledge, we do corporal prayer, which means that Deacon Joe names a few body parts or a condition, and if you have that condition, you raise your hand. Those who are not raising their hands are the prayer team, and they find someone with their hand raised, and they go over to pray with them.
This is awesome for a couple of reasons. First, it shows us that anyone can be used by God. Most people at the healing service have not been to the Encounter School to learn about healing. They are at the service because they either need healing or they know someone who does. Yet, they get to participate in the praying over of others. Second, it allows people to pay it forward. I know so many people who don’t want to ask for prayer because they don’t want to be a bother. However, if they have helped pray over other people, they don’t feel as bad asking people to pray over them. It’s also nice because there are always several people who need prayer for each thing so they see they are not alone in their suffering. They also aren’t the center of attention because everyone in the room is either receiving prayer or giving prayer.
Corporal prayer is also nice because no one has to know what to say except the leader. In Corporal prayer, the leader, in this case, Deacon Joe, says the prayer, and we all repeat after him. The leader usually has us pray over each body part or condition twice because healing can be instant and it also can take a few times of praying. After each time we complete a prayer, Deacon Joe stops to ask if anyone has anything to report. This is important because we want to test things out and see if we are better. Often the healing happens when we take that leap of faith and test out our condition to see if it was healed. Also, the testimony of those who are healed builds the faith of everyone in the room. Hearing the testimonies is my favorite part because the people are usually so surprised. I think that makes Jesus smile up in heaven too.
After corporal prayer, the ESM students line up in prayer teams of two around the church, and people who still need healing are invited to receive personal individual prayer. If you have never been to an Encounter School of Ministry healing service, I invite you to check one out. Even if you don’t need healing I guarantee you will have so much fun praying over the people that do need healing. God is so good and the Holy Spirit is so present at these services that you will come up with more faith than you had going in. If you are not local to MA, where I live, you can still probably find an Encounter Service to go to. They have 30 Satellite campuses. Also, I believe the main campus in Michigan has its healing services live-streamed, so you could join in that way as well. I am telling you, you want to witness one of these healing services for yourself. They are amazing and so alive with the Spirit.
I know that was a lot of lead-up to the testimonies. I felt it was important to describe what happened at the services before talking about all the testimonies, and there were a lot this past weekend. I recorded 17 healings, and these are just the ones that I was able to record. I am sure there were others. This also doesn’t include any healings that took place in the days to follow, as sometimes you can receive prayer one day, and then the healing comes a few days later. Here are the testimonies from last Saturday night.
- A woman walked into the healing service with sciatica pain she had for a few days. It made the ride up uncomfortable. She didn't receive any prayer for it but was healed during praise and worship. She didn't even realize she was healed until she was driving home at night and realized she wasn't in pain.
- During praise & worship, Deacon Joe got word that God wanted to heal someone’s calf. He asked anyone with leg pain to raise their hand, and a team would come and pray over them. There was a young woman who was hesitant to raise her hand. She said she had just come from soccer practice. She is a coach, and she was working with the kids and hurt her hamstring all up her leg. Her knee was hurting, and it was acting up, either locking or giving out. After prayer, the pain was completely gone; she was so surprised. The pain was gone, but the knee was still acting up. We prayed again, and she was completely healed.
- A woman was having issues all week with her right inner ear. As soon as the person said the Word of Knowledge for the inner ear, the pain was gone.
- A young man had pain in his neck. They prayed earlier in the day, and it went down to a 3 or 4. They just prayed now, and it went down to nothing. The pain is completely gone.
- The woman came in with pain in her rotator cuff. The pain was at a level 8 or 9 when she came in, and after prayer, it is down to a 2.
- A young woman came to the healing service with pain and restriction in her back. It was so bad she couldn’t sleep last night. The pain was about a level 7 before prayer; after prayer, it was like a 2.
- A young woman (Erin) had a whole bunch of tension on her shoulders. As soon as Malinda walked over to pray for her, the tension melted away. This young woman also followed up with us in class on Monday and said that she has a lot of arthritis and is in pain a lot. Playing guitar makes the pain worse. She said sometimes she is in so much pain she can’t get out of bed in the morning. However, ever since she was prayed over at the healing service, she has been pain free!
- A woman had back pain that was a level 8 before prayer, and after prayer, it was down to a 3 or 4. We prayed one more time, and the pain went down to zero. It was completely gone!
- There was a woman who was praying over someone else, and God completely healed her sciatica issue.
- Before prayer, a woman had tingling, pain, and burning in her feet at a level of 6. The pain went down to a level 2, and she can stand on her feet now without pain.
- A man who had ankle pain at level four before prayer was completely healed after prayer. There was no more pain!
- A woman’s (Kelly) knee has been bothering her for a while now. It was a three down to a one.
- A woman has a condition called drop foot, where the arch is completely fallen. She also has a lot of arthritis in her foot. The second time the team prayed, she began to receive a tingling sensation through the foot and around the arch.
- A young man had soreness in my legs before prayer and no longer does after prayer.
- A woman fell off her bed in the morning and came to the healing service with pain in her leg. After prayer, something was released in her leg, and the pain was gone.
- A young woman (Erin) gave a testimony of the healing she received at the Encounter Ministry Conference. Before going to the conference, she had a regular check-up with the eye doctor, and they told her she had a hole in the retina in her left eye. She received prayer at the conference. She went to see the specialist after the conference, and they did the exam and said I don’t know why you are here; there is nothing wrong with your eye. There was no longer a hole!
- A woman (Christina) came in with pain in both knees, and the pain left her left knee.
Isn’t that amazing? Can you believe all the healings that happened in just one night? I am still in awe of God’s awesomeness and all the ways He shows up and works. He loves us so much! I also want to thank Deacon Joe, Ceci, Malinda, Nick and our Worship Team for being so amazing. I want to thank them for saying yes when the Holy Spirit prompted them to bring Encounter School of Ministry to our part of the country. I am forever grateful for all they have taught us and sacrificed to make this school happen. I know the other students feel the same. Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!
You Are Not Alone
Genesis 2:18 “Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.”
I wholeheartedly agree with this verse. We were not meant to be alone. This doesn’t mean that we all need to be married or have kids. It just means that we are all meant to have people we do life with. I have talked a few times recently about how important community is to a fulfilling life. There are very few people who were meant to go through life alone. I know there are hermits out there who dedicate their whole lives to being secluded and spending all their time with God. Most of us are not called to this life. Actually, St. Catherine of Sienna wanted to live this life when she was just a little girl. She ran away from home to go live by herself in the caves outside of her town. An angel appeared to her and told her she was meant to be a light in the world, not separate from it. The same is true for most of us.
However, living in the world can be hard because it is often filled with heartache. How we deal with heartache is the key to our success. When we are struggling, we need to turn to the Lord for help. It also helps to turn to our friends for support. They can build us up and speak truth and light into the lies and the darkness. However, instead of turning to our friends for support, we tend to separate ourselves from others. We tend to pull away because we don’t want to talk about it or we know others won’t understand.
A while back my heart was hurting for several ladies who I know that are struggling. Actually, every time I look at Facebook, there are messages from people who are struggling. However, that week specifically, there were two ladies who do not know each other or live near each other who had 15-year-old children who had to go to court. There are two other women who are not able to spend the holidays with their children for one reason or another. Then, I saw a post about a friend who was really hurting because she could not see her oldest child graduate college. While thinking about all the people who are hurting right now, the one thing I wish everyone knew, like really in the depth of their heart knew, is that they are never alone. I think so many of us think we shouldn’t talk about what is going on because no one will understand or no one else is going through the same thing. People think that they will be judged or that they deserve the bad thing that is happening to them. This is not true!
There are 7 ½ billion people in this world. Whatever it is that you are going through, someone else is going through the same thing right now at this same time. There are also people who have gone through it already and can shine a light into your darkness. They can show you one way to get through your situation. They can also give you hope because if they got through it, you can too! Talking about the difficult things you are going through with people you know and trust can be so therapeutic. Sometimes, we don’t want to talk about our problems because we don’t want to bother people, especially if they have their own troubles. Our friends and loved ones want to help us. It is not a bother for them to hear how you are suffering. Sometimes it can even help them with their troubles as well. You will be amazed how much stronger your relationships can get when you are able to open up and let people in to help. Another reason talking about your struggles can be helpful is because you may be further along in your journey than someone else who has the same struggles. You may be talking with someone who is having the same issue but is afraid to talk about it. Hearing you talk about it can show them that it is ok to talk about what they are going through. I have seen this happen in numerous Facebook groups. Someone is vulnerable and shares their story and then someone else reads it and feels the courage to share their story.
I truly feel that it is the work of the enemy to make us feel so alone. He is there whispering in our ears all the reasons we should not talk about what is bothering us. He wants us to keep our troubles to ourselves because when we feel alone we feel hopeless. I am not sure if you have read or seen Harry Potter, but there was a scene where the main character, Harry, was really struggling with feeling alone. Every time Harry was with his friends, he would push them away. Harry would tell them they just didn’t understand. They wanted desperately to be there for him, but he would not let them. Harry then went for a walk and ran into another friend. He explained that he felt like he was alone and no one believed him. She said, “I don’t think that is true. Although, I suppose that is how he wants you to feel.” When Harry asked what she meant, she said, “Well, if it's just you all alone, then you aren’t that much of a threat.” I believe it is the same with our enemy. If we are alone and not talking with our family and friends about how we are feeling, then the only voices that we have are the enemy’s whispers. However, if we reach out and tell our story to those who love us, they can speak truth into our darkness. The enemy is the father of lies and he speaks half-truths and lies into our ears so that we believe there is no one that can help us.
Be vulnerable, open up, and share your struggles with someone. You will feel better just saying it out loud. Don’t go through things alone when you don’t have to. Seek out people that you can trust to talk to. You may not even know that someone else is going through the same thing until you have the courage to raise your hand and say that you are going through it. If you are in a circumstance where you honestly feel like you do not have a single person that you can talk to, then talk to God. Ask God to reveal to you in your life that you could talk to about your situation. Ask God to bring someone into your life that you can talk to that will help you through. Ask God for the strength to help you through your current circumstances. Ask God for the courage to talk about what is bothering you. God listens to our prayers, He listens when we ask him for the things we need, He is always with us, and he gives us strength when we don’t have any on our own.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, you are truly amazing. Lord, help us to realize we are not alone. Help us to see that you made us live in a community with others. Help us to recognize the trick of the enemy to isolate us and to speak lies into our hearts and minds. Lord, please put people into our lives who will recognize when we are pulling away and call us back. Help us to open up and share our troubles with others. Help us to hear others when they are trying to speak truth into our darkness. Help us, Lord! We love you, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Mentoring is tonight. I hope to see you there. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received by a member of the Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group; for more info about the prayer group or these words given, email catholiccharismaticprayergroup@gmail.com. Today’s word came in the form of a vision. Vision: We were singing in tongues of peace. Bits of peace, like confetti, falling down on the entire world because we have asked for it right here. Some of the confetti was falling into the mud and being trodden underfoot. Some of the confetti was being picked up by a young hand and put into a sweater pocket to be brought home. And some, I saw a man looking up at the confetti of peace falling, wondering what it was.
Pure Spiritual Milk
1 Peter 2:1-3 “So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation— if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.”
I really liked this verse when I heard it the other day. I loved the part where it encourages us to long for pure spiritual milk so that we may grow up into salvation. The message translation says, “So clean house! Make a clean sweep of malice and pretense, envy and hurtful talk. You’ve had a taste of God. Now, like infants at the breast, drink deep of God’s pure kindness. Then you’ll grow up mature and whole in God.” I know I want to grow up mature and whole in God. I liked reading this version as well as I wasn’t really sure what it meant to grow up into salvation. However, I think it just means that we grow and mature in God.
I also really liked the first part of this verse. How amazing would this world be if we could all put away all malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander? Can you even imagine a world in which those things don’t exist? What this verse is trying to tell us is that if we have tasted that the Lord is good, then we should be longing for more of that goodness.
Peter also warns them to watch what they consume. This is a great warning for us as well. If we want to grow into mature Christians, then we need to make sure we are consuming pure spiritual milk. This can be hard because the world likes to dilute teachings so that more people will like them. The world likes to take the things written in the Bible and interpret them any way they want to so that they feel ok about how they are living their life. However, the Word is the Word. We can’t change it or interpret it to fit our lifestyle.
Jesus was great when He walked the earth. He didn’t come to condemn people. He hung out with everyone. He ate dinner with tax collectors and sinners. He had plenty of chances to condemn people as well as judge people. He had all the authority to judge and condemn people, and yet he loved them instead. John 3:17 even says, “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” Jesus came to show us that God is love. Jesus came to teach us more about His Father.
However, even though Jesus didn’t come to condemn, He did come to convict us of how we should be living. He didn’t tell the adulterer that it was ok that she was sleeping around. He showed her unbelievable mercy, compassion, and love and also told her to go and sin no more. Jesus gave some pretty hard teachings, even though He knew they would be hard for people to accept. He stood by those teachings even when it meant that many of his followers would abandon Him.
One of these hard teachings was that we are to forgive our neighbor seven times seventy times. We have a hard time forgiving when they hurt us the first time, and now we are supposed to keep forgiving them. This was hard for people to accept. This is probably hard for many of us to accept. Especially if someone is continuing to hurt us over and over again, we might wonder why the Lord wants us to keep forgiving someone who keeps hurting us. One thing I want to make clear is that you can forgive someone and yet still not let them keep hurting you. The Lord is not saying that you need to keep allowing someone to continue to hurt you. For instance, if there is someone who hurts you, intentionally or not, each time you see each other, then it is perfectly ok to forgive that person and yet not spend time with them anymore.
Another really hard teaching was the teaching from John 6:48-51 which says, “I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” This teaching was very hard for many to hear and many of Jesus’ followers walked away.
Jesus let those who couldn’t believe it walk away. He didn’t try to rephrase it to make others accept it, backpedal, or take it back. He stated the truth and let it sit there for people to either accept or not accept. The Truth is the truth, whether people agree with it or not. We need to find the Truth and learn from that. We need to be careful about the information that we are consuming. We need to question things that don’t seem right to us. We need to get our information straight from the source instead of from the world and the news. We need to be in the Bible, learning straight from the source. The verse above says we need to drink pure spiritual milk, and that means we need to make sure the world does not dilute the things we are learning in any way. The best way to do this is to go straight to the source. If you hear something that sounds like it may not be true, look it up.
We live in an age of technology that can be bad or good, depending on how you use it. Fact-checking things you hear is pretty easy. You can type it in the search bar and see if it is actually in the Bible. You can read the verse surrounding it to see if it is taken out of context. We know that God is good, and we need to protect ourselves from all the negativity out there. We need to nourish ourselves with only the spiritually pure milk out there.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to notice when we are hearing things that are off from what we believe. Help us to question what we are learning. Help us to go straight to the source, your Word, for all that we learn. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Mentoring is tomorrow night. If you would like more information, click here or go to my website, walkboldlywithjesus.com. I look forward to meeting you all here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received by a member of the Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group; for more info about the prayer group or these words given, email catholiccharismaticprayergroup@gmail.com. “He calls us to call on His peace. When you are ruffled, when you are anxious, call on my peace. Don't let it stay dormant. It is not the world’s peace. It's not a feeling. It is my peace, and it's an inner peace that only I give. But call upon it, and you will learn to use it. But you must be steadfast and learn how to call upon my peace, and it will pass all understanding. It only comes from the heart, not the mind. (To receive the Word from the Lord in your email inbox daily Click Here)
Radical Trust
Daniel 3:17 “If our God, whom we serve, can save us from the white-hot furnace and from your hands, oh king, may he save us! But even if he will not, know, O king, that we will not serve your god or worship the golden statue which you set up.”
Radical Trust is something that was new to me when I attended a conference in March 2011. Well, I had seen radical trust in action many times, but I don’t think I had ever heard it called that. I was instantly in love with the phrase. I loved the idea of having Radical Trust in our God. I really enjoyed learning about that concept over the weekend. The speaker, Anne Trufant, asked us, “Do you trust God?” Not, do you trust in God, but do you trust God? Do you truly trust what he says to you, what he tells you? It was a different way to look at it. Do I trust all the things that God tells me when I read the bible? Do I trust that he is saying those things to me? Do I trust God? I definitely took some time to ponder that and to pray with that thought. After that retreat, I started to pray for radical trust a lot more often. I also tried to implement radical trust in my life. It’s not just about saying, “Of course I trust God,” it's about truly believing that with your whole being. Wouldn’t it be great if when we got a bill that we did not have the money to pay, we could say and truly believe, "God’s got this." "I don’t need to worry because He’s got this." What about when we see that our kids are doing something that we know is wrong, and we can see all the ways they can get hurt if they continue down that path? Can we truly say, "God’s got this," and not worry about it? Ever since this retreat, I have prayed so many times for radical trust because, in my experience, it does not come overnight. And it is not always universal. Over the years I have found myself having radical trust in one area, but then not in another. However, every day, I see the benefits in my life of praying for radical trust. I am much better about radical trust now. I have a supernatural trust that all will be ok. I do not tend to feel stressed out about the future because I know that God is in charge and I am not. Why should I worry when he is the one in control?
I enjoy reading books about radical trust because every example I read strengthens my trust a little more. So, I thought I would give you a few examples. One from the bible is about our friend Peter. Matthew 14:26-31 “When the disciples saw him walking on the sea they were terrified. “It is a ghost,” they said, and they cried out in fear. At once, [Jesus] spoke to them, “Take courage, it is I; do not be afraid.” Peter said to him in reply, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” He said, “Come.” Peter got out of the boat and began to walk on the water toward Jesus. But when he saw how [strong] the wind was, he became frightened, and, beginning to sink, he cried out, “Lord, save me!” Immediately Jesus stretched out his hand and caught him, and said to him, “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?” Peter had radical trust! He did not think twice before stepping out of the boat onto the unsteady water, which was blowing strongly. Peter was able to walk on water for a few steps. So what happened to Peter’s trust? He took his eyes off Jesus. He took his eyes off Jesus and looked around at the sea and the wind and became afraid.
The next two examples I have heard from people close to me. My mom and dad had 11 children. My mom stayed home with the kids, and my dad worked. He had a good job, but money was always tight because of the number of kids in our family. One day my parents’ friends had to go out unexpectedly. They asked my parents to watch their kids. They had 10 kids. My parents said, “Yes, of course we will.“ Then they thought about how they were going to feed all those 21 children when they did not have any food in the house. They had a radical trust, and they prayed to God, trusting that he would come through. They trusted even though they did not have any idea how he was going to show up or come through for them. A few minutes later, there was a knock on the door. It was a neighbor with bags of groceries. The neighbor’s father had just moved into their house unexpectedly, and they had nowhere to put the food from the dad’s house as they had just gone shopping. So my parents gratefully accepted the food. They looked through and noticed that there was some pasta and sauce in the bags. They then thought if they just had meat, they could feed everyone spaghetti. A few minutes later there was another knock at the door. A different neighbor had a cooler full of meat. They had just gone hunting and stocked their freezer and fridge with all the meat they could hold, and they did not know what to do with what was left. Again my parents gratefully accepted it. Then they immediately thanked God for providing for them as he always does. Another time a friend was sitting in her car. She was at the store trying to buy groceries for the week. She had three small children. Her daughter was with her. The store had not opened yet, and they were the only people in the parking lot. As she made her list of what she needed, she realized she did not have enough money to buy all the necessities. She prayed to God at that moment, “God, if I just had an extra $50, I could buy all I needed for the week.” At that moment, her daughter saw something fly past the car on the ground of the parking lot. Before her mom could tell her not to, she jumped out of the car to get it. She got back in the car and gave it to her mom. It was a $50 bill.
When reading a few articles about radical trust online, one of them talked about how radical trust is trusting God even when he doesn’t come through. This is probably the hardest thing to do. If you are always seeing ways that God is coming through, it is easier to have radical trust. I think it may be easier for me to have radical trust because I have seen and heard so many examples of how people have trusted and God has shown up in big ways. But what about if you have a lot of examples of when he has not shown up? Can you have radical trust when you want a family and don’t have one, lost your job, prayed for your loved one to be healed, and they died or been given a life-threatening diagnosis? That is when it is even harder to have trust. Our friends from the bible, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, give us an outstanding example of how they had radical trust when all seemed lost. Daniel 3:17 “If our God, whom we serve, can save us from the white-hot furnace and from your hands, oh king, may he save us! But even if he will not, know, O king, that we will not serve your god or worship the golden statue which you set up.” Imagine the trust they must have had to say that to the King in the face of death.
I read about a practical way to grow in radical trust from an article from Laura Fleetwood. (Click here for article) She said as soon as a fearful thought enters her mind, she takes it captive and hands it over to Christ. She literally, in her mind, snatches it and gives it to Jesus and says I trust you, Jesus. It looks something like this…
Snatch…hand it over…I trust in you, Jesus. Snatch…hand it over…I trust in you, Jesus. Wouldn’t it be great if we could all do this a little more often and have a little less stress and worry in our lives? My challenge to you is to practice turning your worries and your scary thoughts over to Jesus and let him handle them. After all, he is the almighty one, not us.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you, and we want to have radical trust in you. We want to believe that you can do anything. We want to have the faith of Peter when he first got out of the boat. We want to have faith like Daniel in the lion’s den. Lord, we know you can do all things with our minds; help us to know it with our mind, body, and soul. Help us to know it deep in our hearts. Lord, help us to take captive our thoughts and redirect them to you. Help us not to take our eyes off of you. We are so grateful to you, for all, you do for us. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I want to let you all know that I have started sending out a daily email called Today’s Word from the Lord. This email will have one of the words of prophecy that was received from a member of my prayer group during one of our meetings. My prayer is that in sharing these Words from the Lord, we will all start to recognize how the Lord talks to us and then we will start to see Him talking to us in our own lives. My other prayer is that if you can recognize the Lord’s voice, then you will also be able to recognize when it is not the Lord’s voice talking to you. I pray you will hear the enemy start talking and realize it is not God talking and stop listening. If you would like to receive this daily email, you can sign up using the link in the show notes, or you can send me an email at Catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com. If your email mailbox is full and you don’t want to get any more emails, no worries. I will be reading the Word from the Lord at the end of each podcast, as I was doing last month. I look forward to meeting you here again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word From The Lord was Received in October 2023 by a member of the Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group during one of our meetings. For more information about the prayer group or these words, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. “My children, I come daily to give you this peace. I am giving it to you, but you must be willing to receive it. Receive it in your mind, your heart, and your entire being. Peace has to start with you, my children. If you do not have peace, you cannot share it with others. You cannot give what you do not have, my children. So seek more of my peace. Receive the peace that I wish so very much to give you, my children. It is a gift that I give to you, so learn to accept it graciously.”
I Will Set Your Prisoners Free!
Zechariah 9:11-12 “As for you also, because of the blood of my covenant with you, I will set your prisoners free from the waterless pit. Return to your stronghold, O prisoners of hope; today, I declare that I will restore to you double.”
This verse was given in a Wednesday morning prayer group that I have joined. If you are an early riser and you are looking for an awesome way to start your mornings, I invite you to join in on this Zoom prayer group. It meets Wednesday mornings at 6:30 in the morning EST. The leader usually starts with a song of praise and worship. Then, sometimes we have a talk on a certain topic, sometimes we pray, and sometimes we share words of prophecy. The leader goes with whatever she feels the Holy Spirit is telling her to do. It is a great way to begin your day. Anyway, I will put the info for the prayer group in the show notes in case you want to check it out. It is on Zoom, so you don’t have to have your camera on if you don’t want to. You don’t have to talk if you don’t want to. You can just come on and see what you think.
Someone on the call yesterday morning typed Zechariah 9:11-17 into the chat. When I checked it out this evening, verses 11 and 12 jumped right out at me. I will set your prisoners free is something that I love to hear. It seems like something I have been hearing a lot lately, and that is usually a sign that God wants you to pay attention to something. This is a good thing to notice. When you start to see or hear the same thing over and over again, it is good to notice it and to stop and ask the Lord if he is trying to teach you something or tell you something.
I usually think the verses are pretty straightforward, but I felt the Holy Spirit nudge me to look up its meaning. Guess what? The Holy Spirit actually knew what He was doing. I know, right?! The Holy Spirit, one of the three persons of the Trinity, knew what He was doing when He nudged me to look up the meaning of the verse. When I looked it up, I had a clearer picture of what the verse was saying. The article I read, for which I will put a link in the show notes, did a great job of explaining why they used the words they used and what those words or meanings would mean to the Israelites.
For instance, the verses start off by talking about the blood covenant God made with us. I have done a few Bible studies in the past, so I have the benefit of knowing how important a covenant is and the difference between a covenant and a contract. However, not everyone listening has this information, and it is important that we understand why this statement God made is so important.
Covenants are something we often find in the Bible. A covenant (similar to a contract) was a binding agreement in which covenant members had certain obligations and could expect certain benefits in return. What differentiates a covenant from a simple binding agreement (a contract) is that a covenant implies meaningful relationships. So, the language used here in Zechariah assumes a relational covenant was made between God and his people-- there was a binding agreement between God and his people.
When a covenant was made, an animal(s) would have been slaughtered and cut in half. Both parties would then walk through the slaughtered animals, implying both parties saying, "May the same thing that happened to me that's happened to these animals if I break the covenant made today."
In Genesis 15, we find God entering into a covenant with Abraham, promising to make him a great nation. However, a deep sleep falls on Abraham, allowing only God to pass through the slaughtered animals. So, on that day, God promised Abram that he would build him into a strong nation that would eventually bless all of humanity. The shedding of blood validated this promise.
I have heard the reason God had Abraham fall into a deep sleep so that He wouldn’t have to walk through the slaughtered animals. Walking through the slaughtered animals would have been like Abraham saying, "May the same thing that happened to me that's happened to these animals if I break the covenant made today.” However, Abraham is human, and he is likely to break the covenant, whether on purpose or accident. If he doesn’t walk through the slaughtered animals, then he is not bound the same way God is bound. So, Zechariah is saying that their deliverance rests solely upon the shoulders of God's faithfulness to keep his covenantal promise.
The next part of the verse says, “I will set your prisoners free from the waterless pit.” This small sentence has two very important parts. First, it reminds us that God is speaking to fragile people. He's talking to people who have come out of Babylonian captivity in the past twenty years. The Lord is saying He will set them free. Most commentators agree that He is referring to those still stuck in Babylon as captives. So, God is promising deliverance and freedom to His people.
Now, a waterless pit would have been a familiar reference to God's people— it's what Joseph was tossed into by his brothers in Genesis 37. In Genesis 37, Joseph was initially thrown into a waterless pit to die. But, determined not to have Joseph's blood on their hands, they decided to sell him into slavery instead. If you fast forward Joseph's story, you will find that his "deliverance" from the pit was ultimately used to preserve the entire Israelite community. In Genesis 50, Joseph declares, "As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today."
So, similarly, God here is saying that the pit is not the end of the story for God's people. Although they're trapped in captivity, freedom and purpose are on the horizon. Just like he did with Joseph, God will soon free them from the pit of captivity, leading to the further preservation of his people.
The verse goes on to say, “Return to your stronghold.” I really didn’t know what this meant until I read this article. When we consult the Psalms, we see God consistently referred to as their stronghold. So, this is an invitation to return to walking with, trusting in, and finding refuge in their God. And it's an invitation directly tied to a promise of restoration (double restoration). Like Job, God will restore them twice as much as they once had whenever they return to him. He's promising them a hopeful future with him.
The article goes on to say, “On the one hand, this reminds us that a life with God is better than a life away from him. He is our stronghold, our protector, and our provider. When dwelling in a stronghold, you're protected in ways you don't know about. A stronghold protects you from dangers that you can't always see. Brothers and sisters, this past week, God protected you in ways you may never know.
On the other hand, this reminds us that the Christian life is a life of hope. We are prisoners of hope, which means that no matter how bad things may get in this life, we have hope that things will get better. In the same way, no matter how good things get in this life, we also cling to the hope that things will get better. We cling to the hope that God will restore to us double. The lowest sorrows and the greatest joys of this life will pale when compared to the joys we will experience one day in heaven with God. The Christian life is a life of hope.”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today! Lord, we love you, and we thank you for setting the captives free, for filling us with hope for a better life, for your covenant with us, for always being here for us, and for all the ways you protect us, especially for all the ways we don’t even know about. Lord, we love you and we ask this in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed day!
CLICK HERE FOR LINK TO TESTIMONY
Wasn’t that a beautiful witness of faith? What an inspiration to all of us on how to not lose heart in difficult times. You can tell how strong Jeanne was and how strong her faith was even after losing so much. Here is the written testimony that lead me to Jeanne’s testimony. The written one is from her brother in law. “Wonderful Life (the Matthew West song) is the same story as my brother and his wife, Jeanne. She passed away this past April 12 – Resurrection week! Jeanne and John both saw ALS as, ultimately, a gift from God. It afforded them an incredible opportunity to look at life differently and continue to talk about how God works in their life. It was incredibly painful, but for me it was probably the greatest act of love I have ever seen. My brother saw this as an opportunity to serve Jeanne. And he did nonstop for more than 3 years, the whole time with love and joy in his heart. Never saw him complain once; he always had a smile, grateful that the Lord gave him the time to be with Jeanne and serve her. John and Jeanne own Sola Coffee Shop in Raleigh Click Here for website – if you get a chance do stop by – unbelievable coffee and atmosphere – it is their ministry (don’t go on Sunday as they are closed). What an amazing story. Thank you Jeanne & John for showing us all how to rely on God and find joy in the middle of awful circumstances. Thank you for sharing your story and for being such great examples of Christ to others.
We have all seen God working in our lives. However, we might not all be aware it is God working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences, the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience of how God has worked or is working in your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or click here. It won’t take up much of your time, and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story, and the world needs to hear them.
Sowing Righteousness
Hosea 10:12 “Plant the good seeds of righteousness, and you will reap a crop of my love; plow the hard ground of your hearts, for now is the time to seek the Lord, that he may come and shower salvation upon you.”
I heard this verse with this translation, which is the Living Bible (TLB) translation yesterday as the verse of the day for KLOVE radio. The person who mentioned this as the verse of the day yesterday said that often, we think of people who have a soft heart in this hard world as weak. However, she said they are brave. It is not easy to have a soft heart, yet in this verse, we are being called to do just that. Being vulnerable in this world is risky because it is so easy to get your heart broken.
When I heard the DJ from KLOVE talk about being vulnerable I thought of Cory Asbury’s testimony is his song Reckless Love. In his song, Cory Asbury is talking about God’s Reckless love. He is talking about how God’s love chases us down and fights till we are found. It talks about how God loves us completely and would do anything to find us and bring us back to him, and yet we hurt Him over and over again. I will let him explain it since he does it best, and it is his song. Here is what Cory says about his song Reckless Love.
“Many have asked me for clarity on the phrase, “reckless love”. Many have wondered why I’d use a “negative” word to describe God. I’ve taken some time to write out my thoughts here. I hope it brings answers to your questions. But more than that, I hope it brings you into an encounter with the wildness of His love.
When I use the phrase, “the reckless love of God”, I’m not saying that God Himself is reckless. I am, however, saying that the way He loves, is in many regards, quite so. What I mean is this: He is utterly unconcerned with the consequences of His actions with regards to His own safety, comfort, and well-being. His love isn’t crafty or slick. It’s not cunning or shrewd. In fact, all things considered, it’s quite childlike, and might I even suggest, sometimes downright ridiculous. His love bankrupted heaven for you. His love doesn’t consider Himself first. His love isn’t selfish or self-serving. He doesn’t wonder what He’ll gain or lose by putting Himself out there. He simply gives Himself away on the off-chance that one of us might look back at Him and offer ourselves in return.
His love leaves the ninety-nine to find the one every time. To many practical adults, that’s a foolish concept. “But what if he loses the ninety-nine in search of the one?” What if? Finding that one lost sheep is, and will always be, supremely important.
His love isn’t cautious. No, it’s a love that sent His Own Son to die a gruesome death on a cross. There’s no “Plan B” with the love of God. He gives His heart so completely, so preposterously, that if refused, most would consider it irreparably broken. Yet He gives Himself away again. The recklessness of His love is seen most clearly in this – it gets Him hurt over and over. Make no mistake, our sin pains His heart. And “70 times 7” is a lot of times to have Your heart broken. Yet He opens up and allows us in every time. His love saw you when you hated Him – when all logic said, “They’ll reject me.” He said, “I don’t care if it kills me. I’m laying My heart on the line.”
To get personal, His love saw me, a broken down kid with regret as deep as the ocean; My innocence and youth poured out like water. Yet, He saw fit to use me for His kingdom because He’s just that kind. I didn’t earn it, and I sure as heck don’t deserve it, but He’s just that good. Oh, the overwhelming, never-ending, reckless love of God.”
Isn’t that an amazing way to think about God’s love? He doesn’t worry if He will get hurt, He opens himself up to us knowing we will hurt him over and over again. What if we were this bold. Maybe not with everyone we meet at first, but what if we just started with God? What if we were just able to open up and be honest with him? What if we let our guard down and invited God into the middle of our mess, into the depths of our hearts?
The verse above says, “Plant the good seeds of righteousness, and you will reap a crop of my love; plow the hard ground of your hearts, for now, is the time to seek the Lord, that he may come and shower salvation upon you.” If we want to reap a crop of God’s love, we need to plant some seeds of righteousness. How do we do that?? I saw an article from Bethel AG Church (click here for the article) that said, “Sowing righteousness simply means doing the right thing in the sight of God. It’s obeying the Word no matter what the circumstances may look like. It means showing kindness even when it’s undeserved. It’s walking in love and keeping the peace when you really want to say something different.”
The verse goes on to say that if we soften our hearts and seek the Lord then He may come and shower salvation on you! Who wouldn’t want to be showered with salvation? It’s the softening of the heart that is the hard part. We might have been through some traumatic things over the years and we have put up walls so that people can’t hurt us. The problem with walls is that although they are efficient at protecting our heart from the bad stuff, they also protect it from the good stuff. They are blocking all things from touching our hearts. This means they don’t let in the love, the light, the joy. The walls keep all of this from penetrating our hearts as well.
If you have walls up around your heart, and most of us do in some way, I ask you to spend some time today inviting the Lord in to show you where these walls are and what you can do about them. Ask the lord if it is safe to take the walls down now. Ask Him to come in and repair your heart, heal your heart. Ask Him to rain down His salvation on you! Give your heart fully to God today and see how your life changes. Be reckless with your love towards God as He is with His love towards you!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode. Lord, we thank you for your reckless love. We thank you that you love us so completely, so freely, with such little regard for your own well-being. Help us to love you in the same way Lord. Help us to love you with such freedom. Help us to care more about you than anything else, including ourselves. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Tonight is mentoring if you would like to join me click here or go to my website walkboldlywithjesus.com. Also if you want to check it out before joining send me a message (click here) and I will send you the zoom link. I look forward to seeing some of you this evening. I look forward to bringing you a special witness tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
When Prayers Seem To Go Unanswered
Jeremiah 32:27 “Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh; is anything too hard for me?”
I liked this verse for today because this idea has been on my mind lately. The Lord has been telling our prayer group a lot over the last several years that we are not asking for too much; we are asking for too little. Just last November, He said, "My children, I want you to call out to me. I long to bless you, to bless your families, to bless your communities, to bless your world. When you call to me, you open the floodgates of my love and my mercy. Ask for more; you are asking for too little. I have much to give you. I have much to bless you with. Trust in me.” Isn’t that amazing? The fact that God is telling us we are asking for too little. I have been thinking about this a lot lately because I don’t know about you, but I have been asking God for some pretty big things lately.
Just recently, I asked God to heal my friend miraculously. He had a surgery that seemed to go well but then when taking the instruments out the surgeons nicked an artery. Then he seemed to be doing better and then all of his organs shut down and he didn’t make it. I was really surprised as God said we were asking for too little, and this definitely wasn’t little. If I can be honest with you, I don’t understand this. I don’t understand when we pray and our prayers aren’t answered. I wonder if you struggle with this too? I wonder if you have some pretty big prayers that seem like they weren’t answered either.
When I asked the Lord about this, He told me my prayer was answered, just not in the way I wanted it to be. My friend Brian is completely healed now. He no longer has the disorder that was attacking his body and making life so hard for him. He no longer needs to be on oxygen and have surgery after surgery. He is no longer suffering. I understand that. I also know God could have healed all of that on this side of Heaven also, so that is where I get lost sometimes. I heard a speaker this weekend. Sister Tracy Dugas who is a nun with the daughters’ of St. Paul.
She said something during her talk that helped me understand this a little better. She brought our attention to 1 John 5:14, “And this is the confidence which we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.” Sister Tracy encouraged us to consult the Holy Spirit and ask Him how to pray for whoever or whatever we are praying for. For instance, before I prayed for my friend I could has stopped and asked the Holy Spirit how I should pray for this person. What should I pray for for this person? She reminded us that God knows so much more than we know. He can see the whole picture, whereas we can only see a tiny fraction of the picture.
She reminded us of Luke 11:11-13 “What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” The Lord knows what we need better than we do. If we try to give our kids the best we can in our flawed state, how much better will the Lord give us what is best for us?
God’s ways are higher than our ways, and God’s thoughts are not our thoughts. Sister Tracy said God is probably looking down at us and thinking we are asking for a whole lot of serpents. We don’t see all the twists and turns that are ahead of us. We don’t realize that if we get that job we want, then we will be working more than we thought or commuting more than we thought. We don’t know that if we buy that house that we thought we really wanted, we won’t actually be able to afford it and will end up stressed out with no money. We don’t know that if we go on that trip, we will get into a car accident. We can’t see the future; only God can.
When our prayers aren't answered in the way we want them to be, it is because God has something better planned for us, or because He is preventing us, or those we are praying for from something. God knows what He is doing. He is working all things for our good. That doesn’t mean that He doesn’t allow bad things to happen. That doesn’t mean that we have to like everything that is happening. It does mean that we don’t have to lose all hope and fall into despair when something happens or when our prayers aren’t answered in the way we want them to be. It means that we can be sad and also be assured that God is in the situation, working it for good in some way.
I heard an analogy once from Pamela Crim during an episode of the Big Life Devotional Podcast that really stuck with me. She said God uses all things for our good, but that doesn’t mean he makes that thing that happened good. Her analogy was using crap as fertilizer. It stinks and is not pleasant. Yet farmers use that crap to fertilize their land. It helps beautiful things grow. Fertilizers are applied to replace the essential nutrients for plant growth in the soil after they have been depleted. So, fertilizer replaces the nutrients that have been lost so crops, flowers, grass, and whatever you are trying to grow can grow better. However, that fertilizer is still crap. It doesn’t all of a sudden become a beautiful plant. It doesn’t all of a sudden smell better. The crap still remains crap, however the farmer is able to use that crap to make something good grow out of it.
This is similar to the crap that happens in our life. God isn’t turning that bad thing into good. However, he is able to help good grow from it. For instance, I do not look back at all the really difficult times with my boys and think they were good times. I still think they were really hard times. Yet, now I can see the beautiful fruit I got out of those hard times. I am a much more patient person. I can give control over to the Lord much more easily. I have a trust I might not have otherwise had. I have a persistence and determination that I might not have otherwise had.
I still don’t know why God didn’t heal my friend on this side of heaven. I think we aren’t necessarily supposed to understand everything God does. He says we should approach Him as little children. Little children don’t always need to know the why. I do know that although I am really sad that my friend lost her husband and my other friends lost one of their best friends. I know God did answer my prayer. My friend’s husband is healed and no longer suffering. I know God will use this situation for good, and there will be beautiful fruit that comes out of it.
I was talking to my friend the other day, and I said, “God, can’t you give her a break.” And she said He has been giving her breaks all along the journey. She said she could see Him all over this. So, I am looking forward to hearing her testimony as to where she saw God in all of this hardship. I honor her and admire how she can see God in the middle of all her suffering. I pray that we can all be that lucky!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode. Lord, help us to see you in everything. Help us to trust that if you don’t answer our prayers the way we would like, it is because you have something better in mind. Help us to ask for more, Lord, even when we don’t understand. When we feel you haven’t answered our prayers, help us to see how you have. Help us to keep asking for more, Lord. Lord, help us to stop and ask the Holy Spirit to show us how to pray in each and every situation. We love you, Lord! We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk Boldly with Jesus. Remember, if you would like to join mentoring it is Tuesday nights at 8:00 EST on zoom. You can click here or you can go to my website walkboldlywithjesus.com. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Have Mercy on Those Who Waiver
Jude 22-23 "And have mercy on some who are wavering; save others by snatching them out of the fire; and have mercy on still others with fear, hating even the tunic defiled by their bodies.”
I was looking up the meaning of these verses in Jude this morning and I found an article that explained it really well. I will read that article to you this morning. The name of the article is title Jude 22-23 A Call to Rescue the Wandering and the Lost. Matthew Breeden wrote the article. Click Here for the article.
Introduction
The letter of Jude is a letter of warning and of exhortation. The warning is that there are those within the church who are opposed to the truth. Jude spends much of the letter describing those who are threatening the church with their misuse and distortion of the Gospel. But Jude’s primary reason for writing is to exhort the church to stand strong and to contend for the faith.
After spending a good deal of time considering the opponents, in verses 17-23 Jude begins to give some attention to what it looks like to ‘contend for the faith.’ In verse 17-21 we saw that we are to remember the warnings that have been given regarding false teachers and then to keep watch on our own hearts; or to use Jude’s words, we are to remain in the love of God.
In vv. 22-23 we come to a third aspect of what it looks like contend for the faith. Jude issues this exhortation: Rescue those who are wanderingand lost.
How do we respond to those who are tempted to doubt or wander from the truth?
We must act with mercy toward the doubting (Jude 22)
The presence of doubt– The first thing Jude acknowledges is that there will be those who doubt. Of course, as false teachers infiltrated the church it would be natural for there to be those who would fall prey to their teaching. The same is true today. There will always be those who are tempted to question the truth or to wander from the faith.
Responding with mercy– Jude’s exhortation is to respond to those who doubt with mercy. As we consider what it means to show mercy, we should remember that this is the way God has dealt with us. We are all sinners who have rebelled against Him, and yet He has responded mercifully. God sent Jesus to come and die so that we can be forgiven. And even still, as we continue to sin He is mercifully sanctifying us.
Understanding this response– While showing mercy is characterized by compassion concern and patience, mercy can also include correction and even rebuke. Showing mercy does not mean that we ignore sin or justify doubts, but it does mean that we approach our erring brother or sister with meekness and love. In summary, we are to deal with others as God has dealt with: hating sin and calling for repentance – all the while showing compassion and care.
We must act with urgency on behalf of those who are walking toward hell (Jude 23a)
The consequence of unbelief– In order to understand Jude’s exhortation, we must first be clear on what he means by ‘fire.’ The Bible consistently describes the consequence for those who don’t believe as eternal fire (Jude 7, Matthew 5:21-22; Matthew 18:8-9). It’s this ‘fire’ that Jude is calling us to ‘snatch others from.’
The seriousness of the situation– While Jude has called for mercy, it becomes clear that our mercy must not negate or ignore the seriousness of the situation. The stakes are high. Those who reject God will be subject to His judgment.
The urgency of the situation– Jude’s use of the word ‘snatch’ is an indicator of the urgency of the situation. We must not be complacent or idle – souls are at stake and we must take our call to help them seriously.
Application: As a church we believe that we are called to watch out for one another and to help protect one another from the dangers and the deceitfulness of sin. Passages like Matthew 18:15-17 and Galatians 6:1-3 make it clear that we are to be active in helping those around us identify and repent of sin. We are also told that that God uses our efforts as part of His plan for ‘keeping us’ (James 5:19-20)
We must act with caution as we show mercy toward those who are committed to their sin (Jude 23b)
Garments stained by the flesh– The Scriptures refer to the natural man or the sinful man as ‘the flesh.’ When we are reconciled to God we are given ‘the Spirit’ (Galatians 5:17-21). In this verse Jude describes people who are living in the flesh and indicates that their opposition to God is so prevalent that even their garments are ‘stained by the flesh.’
Showing mercy with fear– While Jude has been clear that we are to go hard after those who are wandering and lost, now he adds this caution: show mercy with in fear. We are to be ever mindful of our own weakness and frailty. As we interact with the doubting and the one committed to sin, we must be watchful that we are not tempted (Galatians 6:1).
Summary – While Jude is clear that we are to contend for the faith and warns us about those who would distort the truth, here we also see that we are called to deal mercifully and wisely with those who err. Just as God the Father has been merciful toward us, we should be merciful toward others. And we should strive to see those who doubt or wander come to a place of repentance and restoration.
Dear Heavenly Father,I ask you to bless everyone listening to this episode today. Lord, please bless Matthew Breeden who wrote this article. Lord, we ask that you help us to be merciful with those who are struggling to find their way. Let us be patient with those who may have doubts. Let us also be brave enough to snatch out of the fire those who need to be saved. Lord, help us know the difference. We give you permission to direct our actions. Help us know when to be merciful and when to act quickly to snatch someone from the fire. Lord, help guide us. Help us hear the Holy Spirit who is our guide. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed weekend.
The Power of Solitude
Luke 5:16 “But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.”
The other day, I was listening to the Abiding Together podcast. The episode was called Living in Tension: Solitude and Community. This was a really interesting idea. It is important to keep in mind that we need both solitude and community. Today I want to talk to you a bit about why you also need time for solitude. No matter if we are an introvert or an extrovert, we all need both community and solitude. The solitude is not where we spend time by ourselves watching Netflix and eating ice cream. We all may need that sometimes too, but the solitude they were talking about on the podcast was that time when you go away from everyone and spend time with the Lord. Jesus did this often in the Bible. He fed the 5,000 and then went off to be alone with the Father. He did this so often in the Bible that people would go after Him and try to find Him. They wanted to know what He was doing.
No matter how close we get to the Lord, this solitude will always be necessary. There is always more with the Lord. We can always go further in with Him. We can always grow closer to Him. Encounter Ministries says you can always go further up and further in. This alone time with God is essential. This is the time when He can fill us up. This is a time when He can show us what He has planned for us. God will use us if we allow Him to. God will help guide us in our lives if we allow Him to. If we never stop and spend some time with God, just us and Him, when do we learn about His plan for our life? When do we learn about what He wants us to do?
Things in our life will go much better when we spend quiet time with God, asking Him what we should do before we do it. In order to recognize the Lord’s voice, we need to make sure we are spending time regularly with Him. In order to have an intimate relationship with him, we need to spend time with Him. Maintaining our relationship with God is similar to maintaining our relationship with others. We need to invest our time and our attention to it, or it will fizzle out. I found an article that talks about the 6 Benefits of Solitude with God by John (Click Here for full article)
Here are 6 benefits of solitude with God
1.) Exposure to God’s wisdom
God is all-wise and all-knowing. You can’t spend time alone with Him and remain ignorant. Acts 4:13 says that when the religious leaders saw the boldness of Peter and John and perceived that they were uneducated and untrained men, they marveled; and they realized that they had been with Jesus. You can’t spend time with the LORD and not be wiser than you are now.
2.) Recipient of divine perspective
Through Scripture and time with the Lord, God gives His people the capacity to see all of life from His vantage point. Having God’s perspective allows us to rise above the daily grind of life and the petty actions of others and realize there is a sovereign God who rules over His creation and directs the activities of mankind.
3.) Renewal of physical and spiritual strength
When you spend time alone with God, you not only gain renewal of physical strength, but you also enjoy spiritual refueling and refreshment. Isaiah 40:31 says “those who wait on the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”
According to Psalm 68:35a, the God of Israel is “He who gives strength and power to His people.” Spend time alone with God, and He will give you power and strength.
4.) Beneficiary of Godly guidance
God promises to guide us all the way through our lives. The psalmist writes, “For this God is our God forever and ever; he will be our guide even to the end.” (Psalm 48:14). But how do we receive this guidance? Psalm 48:9 says: “meditating on your unfailing love.” The secret of guidance is alone time with God – meditating on His word. Wow, what a gift we receive in our alone time with the Lord!
5.) Experience conviction and correction
Psalm 17:4-5 says: “I have followed your commands, which keep me from following cruel and evil people. My steps have stayed on your path; I have not wavered from following you.”
One of the great proofs that the Bible is really God’s inspired Word is its unique ability to convict men and women of their sins. Often God will use his word to correct us and lead us onto a steady path gently.
6.) God’s great reward
God rewards time spent alone with him in prayer. “And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners so that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father, who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” (Matthew 6:5-6)
God’s will, His nearness, His goodness, His love – rewards freely given to those who commune with him.
Make solitude a priority! All of the money in the world cannot buy the rewards God longs to give you as you commune with Him. As we get busy in this Lenten season don’t forget to prioritize alone time with God this year. It’s the best gift you will ever receive; one-on-one communion with your heavenly Father.
You might wonder, with all these benefits, why would anyone avoid solitude? We can avoid solitude because when we think of solitude, we think of being alone, and there are all sorts of reasons why we wouldn’t want to be alone. We might think that when we are alone, our mind will think of all the things we have been trying to avoid. Maybe we have trauma from our past. Maybe we have things in our lives right now that we are trying to avoid. We might be afraid if we have solitude, we might have to confront all the things we are trying to avoid.
However, when we avoid solitude, we are avoiding deep connection with the Lord as well. God is calling each one of us to make the choice to find time away from everyone else and to meet Him there in that silence. Almost all the main players in the Bible spend time in solitude with the Lord. I read an article that had three things for us to consider when practicing solitude. The article was called How to Practice Solitude. I didn’t fine an author. (Click Here for the full article)
Three things to consider when practicing solitude:
1. Solitude doesn’t require silence
Silence and solitude are complementary disciplines that aid our communion with God. But while silence almost always requires solitude, solitude does not necessarily require silence. We can use our time of solitude for prayer, verbal meditation on Scripture, singing psalms or hymns of praise, or any other form of “noisy” activity. Solitude doesn’t require either silence or a hushed solemnity.
2. Solitude requires planning
Our lives tend to be filled with people and events, making it unlikely we’ll accidentally stumble into solitude. Being alone with God requires planning. Choose a place where you can be intimate with God and free from distractions. This “special place” doesn’t need to be special — it just needs to be a place where you can remove yourself from the world for as much time as needed.
3. Solitude requires time
On most days, the best we can do is to get away alone for a few minutes or even an hour. We should cherish these times and guard them carefully. Yet while these solitary moments are necessary, they’re hardly sufficient to meet our need for closeness with our Creator. Commit to finding creative ways to be alone with God for extended periods of solitude, ranging from a few hours to a few days.
Three reasons solitude is necessary for spiritual formation
1. Solitude amplifies other disciplines
We can carry out almost every other discipline in the company of others. We can pray, meditate, and worship almost anytime and in any place. But practicing those disciplines in the context of solitude helps us achieve a greater focus and augments our efforts.
2. Solitude is not about being alone
Normally when we use the term solitude, we’re referring to the state of being alone. But solitude also has the meaning of “absence of human activity.” This is what we mean when we refer to the discipline; the purpose is not to be alone but to experience the absence of human activity so that we can more fully experience the presence of God.
3. Solitude exposes our idols
We might tell ourselves we prefer God’s company to that of any other person or thing in the world. Solitude puts that claim to the test. By being alone with God, we get a clearer view of the idols of our hearts, and we are presented with an opportunity to repent.
As you can see, there are many reasons why we need to make time to be in solitude with God. I pray you will find extra time during this Lenten season to be alone with the Lord and let Him fill you up.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to be with everyone listening to this episode. Lord, we thank you for wanting to be in a relationship with us. We thank you for wanting to spend time with us. We thank you for filling us up in that time alone with you. Lord, we ask that you show each one of us how you want to be in a relationship with us. Show us where and when you want to meet with us. Lord, if we are struggling to find time to be with you, we ask you to put on our hearts when in our schedule we can add more time with you. We want to be with you, Lord; we are just struggling to make it happen. Please help us. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to seeing you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
We have all seen God working in our lives. However, we might not all be aware it is God working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences, the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience of how God has worked or is working in your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or click here. It won’t take up much of your time, and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story, and the world needs to hear them.
Today’s witnesses are from Matthew West’s website called popwe.org. (Click Here) If you don’t know who Matthew West is, he is a singer, songwriter, and storyteller. This website is for the non-profit that he has with his father, a pastor. I will link it in the show notes: Matthew and his father encourage people to share their stories. They have various categories of stories. Today I chose from the Marriage/Family category as I think we all know someone whose family is struggling. There is definitely attack on our families these days.. I have chosen four stories to share with you this morning. Although they all deal with family and marriage, each one is unique. I hope when you hear them, you can see not only how God has helped them in their life but how He is helping you in yours and in your loved ones, too.
Janet: (Click Here) God has been so good to me and my family, even through my wrong choices. Quick story: I married someone I chose (not God). I have 2 beautiful daughters, now ages 37 and 34. Their dad walked out of our family when my oldest was 7 and my youngest was 4. He left for my girlfriend who lived next door who also was married. They were having an affair. Eventually he moved into her house and every day, my kids saw their dad pulling into her driveway, not ours. Of course I played the blame game and blamed God. I had a choice: Was I going to trust God or do this myself and walk away from Him? I chose God. I had to get a job, etc. That ride was not easy.
A couple of years later, we were in a horrific car accident and I said, “God, when will this end?” I am here to tell you I would not choose a different road. What God did and taught us is my story. I can write a book on miracles through the storm. You really may not see the miracles clearly at first but when you look back at your past.. I can only say, “wow God! You’re great.” By making that choice to trust God and raise my girls in church and pursue Him, my kids never got involved with drugs or alcohol. They were A+ students. They waited till marriage. I am so blessed with 5 beautiful grandchildren and 2 sons-in-law that are wonderful. My family lives right by me. I see them all the time. They are financially blessed.
Only God gets all the glory for this story, but the best thing about this story is how much my family loves Jesus. Thank you for allowing me to share a little bit about my story. God bless, Janet
Life is Sacred (Click Here)
I just listened to your song “Untold” and was greatly moved by emotion. As a young girl, I was raped at 18 by the boy I was dating (whom I met at church). I was so naive. I didn’t even know what was happening to me at the time. It took me four months and a few trips to the library to figure out I was pregnant. My greatest fear was having to tell my parents. When I did, my father refused to speak to me for weeks. I never told anyone about the circumstances of the pregnancy, and my father never let me forget how I shamed the family.
Since my mother made it clear that I could not stay at the house if I chose to keep the baby, I thought I would give it up for adoption, but by that far in the pregnancy, I began to feel the baby move. I had always wanted to be a mother, just not so soon. So, I decided to marry the person who did this to me so I could keep my baby and save embarrassment. Abortion was not an option. I had always supported the pro-life movement and never wavered from my stance, even in my current condition.
After five years and a second child, we split. Shortly after, I remarried and had two more children, but marriage to an abusive alcoholic proved impossible. At 29, I was single with four children, but I was committed to raising the best children possible. That one decision to keep my baby laid the path for a life of struggle, but with blessings along the way. I have never regretted that decision. I gave birth to a strong-willed, independent baby girl who became a teacher, principal, and leader who has affected the lives of so many people, particularly children. She says she wouldn’t change our life of financial struggles and other challenges as it has made her the person she is today. She has greater compassion for other children experiencing similar challenges in their lives. I often think of what life would be like for the many if she hadn’t been born. She is a strong Christian, continuing to affect lives all around her.
This decision was so much better to live with than if I had terminated the pregnancy. Life IS sacred from the moment of conception. Creating and bearing a child is one of the greatest gifts God has given women. And for a female friend of mine who couldn’t carry a child, I did it for her.
Thank you for this song.
Shelly: (Click Here) After I accepted Jesus to be my Savior at the age of 24, He laid it on my heart to be a storyteller. In 1996, I remember crying while listening to a pregnancy center’s director speak to the church I was attending. She was sharing God’s work at the center and of how they helped the teen girls who were pregnant. She asked for storytellers.
I was once a pregnant teen who placed my precious baby for adoption. I was 17, in an abusive relationship, with no means of supporting this little one. The father of the baby and I chose an open adoption. On May 18,1989, my beautiful daughter was placed in the loving arms of her forever parents. Fast forward to when she was 16, I reconnected with her through mail and social media. During that time I learned that she had a sister and a loving childhood. I also learned that she grew up living next door to my pastor. Understand that we live in a small New Jersey town outside of Philadelphia and they live about 2 hours away in a small Pennsylvania town on the other side of Philadelphia about 2 hours away. So, for God to plant my pastor and his family in New Jersey is a God story in itself!
In September of 2020, we were reunited in person at her baptism. She shared on Facebook that she and her husband had accepted Jesus as their Savior and were getting baptized. I reached out to her mom and arranged for my husband and I to surprise her. That day, I had also witnessed over 50 people get baptized at the same time (another God story). That day will be forever carved on my heart. God has so richly blessed me with a godly husband and 4 more beautiful children. They are all grown up now. My husband and I celebrated 25 years of marriage this year and I am so blessed! Since the day I heard the speaker from the pregnancy center, I have shared my story with youth groups and high school students encouraging them to wait for sex until marriage. God continues to write our stories for His glory. Thanks for the work that you and your family are doing! My favorite song is Truth Be Told.
Traci: (Click Here) In middle school, I was teased for being a petite black southern girl. I was not popular as a teenager. I have a love of writing and a gift of poetry, which became my voice and my outlet. When I share, I feel fearless and in control of my emotions. This love for poetry never went away even though challenges made me question my gift. I wrote through teasing in middle school, a violent domestic relationship at 16, and rape at 20. I did not realize it back then, but writing poetry was preparing me for my future.
By age 27, I experienced a great loss. I met a guy I thought I would marry. We talked about plans for the future. The last time I saw him was on my 27th birthday. He died from a brain injury. For the first time, I questioned my faith in God. I was torn inside. I was on an emotional rollercoaster.
For several months, I fought with God, but I finally ran towards him. I gave God all of me. I got closer to God. We grew closer than we ever had before. God reminded me of the poetry I wrote before my boyfriend passed away. The poems were about having a relationship with God. I read those poems during my grieving process. I learned how to be secure in God and in my life. After a year of being single, I met my husband at an open mic at a church. I shared my poetry in front of unfamiliar people. He was there to support a friend and we talked during intermission. We connected on social media. After our first date, we had an instant connection.
Within six months of dating, my husband proposed to me. It was on my 29th birthday. It felt like a fairytale. He proposed to me at a restaurant, and I was dressed in a beautiful gown with a crown on my head! My family and friends were all there. For a happy time like this, I continue writing poetry. By January 2020, I started the Traci Neal Speaker Poet brand. I took a leap of faith and focused on my poetry.
Within six months, I was on 22 radio shows, including iHeart and Voice America Empowerment. God allowed my letter to the editor to be in The New York Times on April 17, 2021. My husband does my videos and photography. We are a perfect match for each other and for the business.
God is faithful. I did not like my life over the years, but I am so glad my love of writing never went away. I am grateful for all God has done in a short amount of time. Trust the process. God knows best!
Thank you to Traci, Janet, Shelly and the person who share witness about sacred life. Testimonies are such a great way to share our faith, and yet they are not easy to share. It takes us to be willing to be vulnerable to share the hard parts of our lives. I am so grateful for those who share their stories because I know they will touch the lives of others. They will help build the faith of others as well. Thank you so much for being brave and sharing your story!
They Will Know Us By Our Love
John 13:34-35 “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this, everyone will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another.”
This is an excellent reminder of our calling. There are 10 commandments we are asked to follow, and yet, Jesus said in Matthew 22:37-40, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” Did you catch that last part? If you are doing these two great commandments, then you will be doing the rest. They all hang on to those two commandments. So, our calling is to love.
I just went to an awesome Lenten Day of Reflection on Saturday, and the theme was bringing God’s light into the darkness. Can you guess how we can do that? We can bring light into the darkness by being love to other people. This is what people are craving in the world, and they are looking in all the wrong places to find it. I believe behind every cranky, mean person is a child of God craving love. They don’t know how or where to find it, and they certainly don’t know how to ask for it.
Often we give love as we received love growing up. If we received a lot of love growing up, then we can give a lot of love. If we didn’t receive a lot of love, or if we needed to earn that love, then we might not have a lot of love to give, and people may need to earn that love. There is a saying “hurt people” hurt people, meaning if someone is hurt, they may lash out and hurt other people. They may not even know they are doing it. They are just doing what they are taught to do. It might be subconscious. They get into a relationship and act like they witnessed it growing up and don’t realize it is hurting others.
We need to love people. Not just the ones that are easy to love, but we need to love all those we meet. I was thinking we should think of everyone we meet as our brothers and sisters in Christ. However, I am one of 11, and I know brothers and sisters don’t always like each other. So, instead, let's think of everyone we meet as a child of God. I think we all know the love one can have for their child. Or, if you don’t have a child, I bet you still know the love you have for a niece, nephew, or best friend’s child. We love our children even when we don’t like their behavior. We love them even when they aren’t being kind. This is how God feels about His children.
I wonder if we think of everyone we meet as a child of God if that will help us love them more? It may help us see them as more than just what we see on the outside. My kids can seem pretty terrible on the outside at times. Well, they did when they were younger, anyway. However, I always knew they were kind, loving children on the inside somewhere. This is true with all of God’s children too. You may look at them, and all you can see is their sin. However, inside, maybe buried deep inside, is that loving child God created. Can we look past the outside and show them love?
The verse above says, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this, everyone will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another.” Jesus is not asking us to love one another. He is commanding it. Are we really going to say no to that command? Are we really going to keep doing what we want to do and ignore the commandment to love one another as Jesus loved us? How did Jesus love us? He loved us unconditionally. He loved us with a self-sacrificing love. He gave it all for us.
I don’t think Jesus is asking us to give our lives for others in the same way that He did. However, there are other ways we give to others. I think even if we start small and work our way up to loving others better. What if we just started with eye contact and a smile? People are craving love and to feel seen these days. What if we just started looking at people and smiling? This shows them they are seen. This shows them that somebody noticed them. I have heard that this is especially important when you pass a homeless person on the street. So many people walk past them and don’t even look at them. They act like they don’t even see them. What if you saw them? What if you made eye contact and smiled?
The verse says that everyone will know that we are Jesus’s disciples if we have love for one another. If people saw the way you interacted with those you meet in a grocery store, those you interact with in traffic, and those who live in your house, would they know you were a disciple of Jesus? There was an episode about this verse on the Big Life Devotional with Pamela Crim, and she talked about how this verse applies to us, too. If we always talk badly about others or about ourselves, do you think people are going to want to follow Jesus? If people know we are disciples of Jesus, and yet we are always grumpy and talking about how much we hate ourselves or our bodies, then do you think they are going to want to be disciples of Christ?
If we want others to know we are disciples of Christ, then we need to love people better. We need to love one another. Sometimes it can be easier to love strangers on the street than it can be to love our family. We need to make sure we are loving everyone. Those who live in our house, those we pass on the street, those we see in the grocery store, those who cut us off in traffic. We need to figure out how to love all of those people. One thing that may make it easier is to remember they are children of God, and He loves them. He wants our help to love His children. Can we do that? Can we help Him?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to love your children; please help us. We want to love all those we meet and yet we don’t know how sometimes. It is easier to love some more than others. We struggle to love some. It seems impossible to love everyone, and yet all things are possible in you. We ask for your graces so that we can do as you command. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting some of you live on Zoom tonight. If you would like to join mentoring, you can do so on my website, walkboldlywithjesus.com, or CLICK HERE. You can also come to check it out before you join. Just send me a message on Facebook or through email at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com, and I will get you the link. I look forward to meeting you all here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I. Have a blessed day.
Is There A Right or Wrong Way to Pray?
Luke 11:1 "He was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.”
Prayer has been part of my life ever since I can remember. When I was young, my mom or dad would come to my room at night and say prayers with me. We said the same prayer every night, as far as I can recall. “Dear God, please bless my mother and father, my brothers and sisters, my aunts and uncles, and my cousins and friends.” Sometimes, we would add, “Please also bless everyone we know and everyone we don’t know.” This was a very simple prayer, and yet it covered everyone. If you are wondering why we did not name our brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, or cousins, it was because I come from a very large family. There are 11 children in my family, and my mother is the oldest of 10 children. So, if we were to name everyone, I would have never gotten to sleep.
Growing up Catholic, prayer was also part of our mass. We say the same prayers at mass every week, so we have plenty of opportunities to learn several prayers to use even when we are outside of mass. These prayers were our staple, and it felt great to have them when we wanted to pray. However, they did not tell us how to pray for specific ailments one might have or specific needs people would ask us to pray for. Well, that is not entirely true. If someone asks you to pray for them, a Hail Mary or an Our Father is an excellent choice. They did not give us much room to personalize them. I would hear other people I knew that would spontaneously come up with a prayer off the top of their head, and I thought that was amazing. Also, when people would say grace, and it was personal and individualized, I loved it. I wished I knew how to do that.
I know there is no right or wrong way to pray. The definition I just found for prayer when I looked it up online is the following: Prayer: a solemn request for help or expression of thanks addressed to God or an object of worship. So, if we are requesting something from God, or expressing our thanks, how can there be a right or wrong way to pray? Do you wonder, when we are saying thanks to your friend if you said it the right way? I doubt it. Do you question if you requested your combo meal from the fast food worker the correct way? Nope. Then why do we question how to pray? I am asking this question as much to myself as I am to you. Until a few years ago, I felt really uncomfortable praying out loud unless it was a prayer I had memorized, like the Our Father. A few years ago, I joined a charismatic prayer group, and I remember the first time they asked us to put our hand on our neighbor’s shoulder and pray over that person. I felt bad for the person I was praying over because they had me praying over them. I felt like I was not good enough to pray over them and that someone else’s prayers would be better. This may sound silly, but I am betting that many of you know exactly what I was feeling that day. Why do we struggle so much with wanting to say the right thing? I take comfort in knowing that I am not the only one who feels as though I do not know how to pray. Even the disciples, who were in the presence of Jesus, were unsure how to pray. In Luke 11:1, the disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray.
I have been listening to people pray out loud at my prayer group for several years now, and I have realized that everyone prays differently. There is not just one way to pray, and there is no secret formula to say the correct prayer so that God will listen more closely. Do you ever feel that way, like God hears other people’s prayers more than he hears yours? No…it’s just me. In my family, we always say that my dad’s prayers go straight to heaven. We think that because he prays more often, that God hears his prayers more than ours. He is a prayer giant, and I am sure you know someone like this. I am sure you know what I am talking about. The truth is God is always listening. He listens to everyone’s prayers, not just those who are faithful to pray every day. It says in 1 John 5:14, " This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us." The Bible goes on to say in 1 John 5:15, “And if we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him." God is listening to your prayers, even if you did not word them eloquently, even if your prayer was quick, non-specific, etc. He hears you!
Now, having said all that, I do not expect that you will all of the sudden feel comfortable praying out loud just because someone told you that there is no right or wrong way to pray. Here are some of the ways that I became more comfortable praying out loud for people or even just praying to myself, but branching off from the prayers that I had memorized as a child.
· I started writing in a prayer journal. I started writing down what I wanted to pray for or how my day was. I started this at a time when I was struggling, and so sometimes it would just be me expressing to God my hurts, my confusions, my struggles. Other times I would be requesting help for others or myself. Sometimes I would thank him for all He has done. It was all very conversational; I started it as if I was writing Him a letter. I initially started with Dear Lord, but now I start it with Good Morning Dad.
· I started praying out loud for people when asked. Yes, I felt uncomfortable, and yes, I felt like I was doing it wrong. Then I reminded myself that there was no wrong way and no one was judging me. I believe God loves it when we step out in faith and step outside our comfort zone in order to show our love to others. The only way to grow is to step outside your comfort zone and try something new.
· I started reading the bible more. When you immerse yourself in God’s word, the words to pray over people come more easily. It is easier to call on God’s promises to us because you know what God has promised us. If you have tried to read the bible before and could not get through it, may I suggest you try again and start with the Gospels? They are more like stories than some of the Old Testament books.
These are a few ideas of things you could do to start praying more or to start praying differently. I hope you find them helpful. I will cover this topic again, as I know it is something many of us struggle with. Whenever I am praying or trying to serve God, and I think I may do it wrong or I may not be good enough, I think of a word that came to someone at one of my prayer group meetings. I will pass it along to you in case you find as much comfort in it as I have. Here is the word that was given, “My children, I love you to be with me. I do not need your efforts; I do not need your talents, for I alone will make you fruitful. Just relax, be empty, and be with me.” God does not need us to say the right thing; He wants us to come to Him and to be with Him, and He will make your prayers fruitful. It is not our efforts or talents that make our prayers come true. It is by the grace and goodness of God.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each and every person listening to this episode. Lord, help us learn to pray with our whole hearts. Help us not just to say words but to really believe what we are saying. Help give us the words to say when we don’t know what to say. Help us to know that even if we can’t say anything, you are still there with us, and you know what we need. Lord, help us take the pressure off of ourselves and realize you don’t care how we pray; you want us to spend time with you. We love you so much, Lord. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Get Up, Get Dressed & Follow Me!
Acts 12:6-8 “The night before Peter was to be placed on trial, he was asleep, fastened with two chains between two soldiers. Others stood guard at the prison gate. Suddenly, there was a bright light in the cell, and an angel of the Lord stood before Peter. The angel struck him on the side to awaken him and said, ‘Quick! Get up!’ and the chains fell off his wrist. Then, the angel told him, ‘Get dressed and put on your sandals.’ And he did. ‘Now put on your coat and follow me,’ the angel ordered.”
In this passage, God is telling us three steps we can take to break our own chains. I know some of you may be saying that this is great for some people, but my chains are too strong for such a simple solution. Although this may seem simple, I am not saying it was easy. Peter was asked to get up while he was still wearing the chains. His chains did not come off before he was told to stand. His getting up while he was still chained took courage and trust. He needed to trust that God was telling him to get up for a reason.
We all have some responsibility in getting out of our chains. Peter did not know what was coming next. He just knew that he had first to get up before anything else could happen. Can you do this step? Can you get up and get out of bed even if you don’t know what is coming next or what the next step is? Can you trust that God is there with you and that if you get up, he will take the chains off of you?
Next, the angel told Peter to get dressed and put on his sandals. When we are in the midst of a challenge, this may be the hardest step. It may take all our energy to get up out of bed and getting dressed is another step that may seem impossible. This is when we need to rely on God. He is there for us, and He is there to give us the strength to get up when we don’t feel like we can. Why is it important to get dressed? Getting dressed means that we are ready to go somewhere. We are ready for God to take us to a new place, a new situation. We need to be ready for anything to happen.
Just the act of getting dressed can help change our mood. Even if we accomplish nothing else the entire day, we at least accomplished that. Also, depending on what you wear, it can change your mood as well. Are you getting dressed in clothes that tell your body that you are ready to go for the day, or are you dressing in clothes that tell your body to go back to bed? I have heard many people say that we should dress like we want to feel, not as we do feel. If you want to feel beautiful, then do not wear your yoga pants that are worn and have lots of holes, dress as if you already feel beautiful, and that is how you will start to feel.
The last step the angel said is to follow me (God). We may not know how we can get out of our chains or what we can do to get out of the current situation. This is when it is important to be still and listen. Sometimes it is easier to hear God than other times. I have had times in the past when I rarely took the time to stop and spend quiet time listening to God. I talked an awful lot to him, but I struggled with the being still and just listening part. I have worked on this and grown in this area over the last several years. Often times we know what God is telling us by the little voice inside our head that tells us what we should do. Are you listening to that voice on a regular basis, or are you shutting it down?
I often do not listen to that voice and then always regret it as it usually knows the right choice. Once you are ready to go, stop and listen and see if you can follow God. Where is he leading you? What does he want you to do next? If we ask God to direct us and lead us, He will. Listen and see what step he is leading you to take. No matter how small that step is, if we take one step after another, we will break free from our chains. There were many instances in the Bible when people had to act first before seeing the results. At the wedding at Cana (John 2:1-11), they ran out of wine. Jesus told the stewards to fill up the wine jugs with water. Then, he asked them to take to the chief steward. They had to act in faith before they were sure of the miracle. They had to take this cup of what they thought was water to their boss and ask him to taste it. This required their action and their faith. In John 5:2-9 Jesus met a man at a pool, waiting for someone to help him into the healing waters. He had been an invalid for 38 years. Jesus asked the man if he wanted to be healed. This required the man to answer. Then he told the man to rise up and take up his mat. This man had not been able to walk for a long time. Before he was healed, he was told to rise and take up his mat. He needed to trust that when he tried to stand, he would be able to. His faith and action were required before the miracle took place.
God does amazing things every single day. Yes, God could save you without requiring anything from you, and sometimes he does. Sometimes, He saves people who do not even know they need saving. However, often times, God is asking us to take some responsibility for our own situation. What can you do to save yourself from this current situation that you are in? What is one small action you can take to show God that you are willing to help yourself? Absolutely pray to God and ask him to help you in any situation you are in especially the really difficult ones. I am not saying that we need to save ourselves from everything. What I am saying is that we should pray and have faith that God will save us and then act on that faith and take a step in the direction we want to go. I will end with one of my favorite quotes.“Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe. ~Saint Augustine
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to the episode today. Lord, we want to follow you; please show us how. Please show us the way. We want to get up and get dressed, and yet some of us are in circumstances that make that really hard. Please give us the strength to get out of bed and get dressed. Give us the strength to have faith that things will get better. Give us the faith to take that one step, that one small action, so that you know we want to help ourselves; we want to help you. We love you, Lord, and we need you; please help us! We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I invite you all to join me in mentoring. So far this year, we have learned about God’s reckless love, God’s forgiveness, Praying without ceasing, prayer journaling, our identity, setting intentions for the year, praise and worship, and replacing the lies we tell ourselves with the truth from God. When you sign up you will have access to all the recordings for these previous sessions. If you have any questions, let me know. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Walk In Love
Ephesians 5:1-2 “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”
This verse is calling us to a higher calling than we realize. I mean, it starts by telling us to be imitators of God. That is a very casual statement that carries a lot of responsibility. How are we supposed to imitate God? He is almighty; He is all-powerful. He is omnipresent. He is with each one of us all the time. How are we supposed to do that? It would be cool if we were completely present with each one of our kids at the same time. There might be a lot less sibling rivalry if the kids didn’t have to fight over their parent's attention.
However, we can’t emulate those qualities from the Father. We are not omnipresent, all-powerful, or almighty. However, the verse goes on to say that we should walk in love. That is something we can do. It might not be something we can do easily, but we can do it. Love is so important. Love is the way to someone’s heart; it can provide God with an opening He can use to go in and heal it.
How do we walk in love? Especially if we don’t know what love is or we are surrounded by people who are really hard to love. Walking in love is hard if we haven’t been shown love. Maybe we lived in a family whose parents struggled to love us. They were too wrapped up in their own issues to be able to love us. We might have a husband or a wife who is too wrapped up in what they want to love us. Or, maybe they were never shown love, and so they don’t know how to love either. There is definitely a lack of love in the world. I’m not really sure the reason for this, but if I had to guess, I would say it is because the focus of society these days seems to be personal pleasure. It is important that we are personally happy, and it doesn’t matter who we hurt for that happiness.
If we don’t know what love is, we can turn to God and ask Him. We can turn to Scripture and see what it says about love. We can read all about the life of Jesus and see what He did. Jesus definitely walked in love. Every time He interacted with people, He showed them love. He didn’t just show love to those who were upright citizens and those who were obeying God’s laws. Anyone could do that. He was nice, kind, and loving to everyone, even the sinners.
This is what the Pharisees and Sadducees couldn’t understand. They didn’t think He should be associating with sinners. Back then, they felt if you touched a leper or someone who was unclean, you would then become unclean. That probably was true for most people back then. If you touch someone with leprosy, then you might get it. However, when Jesus touched the unclean, instead of their disease spreading to Him, what He had inside of Him spread to them, and they were healed.
If we are going to be imitators of God, then we, too, need to love everyone, not just those who are easy to love. It says in Luke 6:32 “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them.” Verse 35 goes on to say, “But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.” Do you see how we have to love everyone, those who love us, those who are hard to love, even our enemies? Do you see why I say being an imitator of God is really difficult?
It is difficult, and yet it is not impossible. Nothing is impossible with the Lord. If we are willing to ask the Lord for help, He will help us discover how to love. He will teach us what love is and what it looks like. God is not expecting us to be perfect at this right out of the gate. He knows our hearts. He knows our history and where we are coming from. He knows what our family life was like growing up. He knows how much we have been loved and not loved over the years. He knows the trauma we might associate with love. God knows it all and is happy to work with us to get through all of it. All we have to do is say yes and be willing to do what He asks us to do.
Can we say yes to God? Can we invite Him into our hearts and show us how to love even our worst enemy? Can we say yes, even if it will be hard? Can we say yes and then watch as God changes our hearts? God can do all things. If He could change Saul’s heart in the Bible, He can change your heart. Saul was rounding up all those who believed in Christ, and he was locking them up in jail or worse. He had an encounter with Jesus and had a complete conversion of the heart. You can too.
The verse is asking us to walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us. That is a tall order. Can we sacrifice our needs and our wants to love others? This is something that is contrary to what the world is telling us right now. The world is saying we should take care of our wants first and then worry about everyone else. It is important to take care of oneself so that you can be able to take care of others. I am 100% behind self-care; it is not a luxury; it is a necessity. However, some have taken it a bit too far. They make sure their wants, not needs, are met, and the heck with the consequences of what that means for those around them.
Sacrifice is a real thing, and it gets real results. Sacrifices can be big or small. Jesus’s sacrifice is not something we could ever live up to, and we are not being asked to. However, I do feel many of us are called to make sacrifices for those we love. For instance, I would like to go to a prayer group meeting this evening to be filled up with the Holy Spirit. Yet, I am sacrificing that meeting and going to a concert with my youngest. The sacrifice is not spending time with my son; the sacrifice is going to listen to music that I don’t like at all because my son really loves it, and I really love him. What have you sacrificed lately? Would you be willing to sacrifice something you want for something a loved one wants more?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to walk in love; we just don’t know how; please help us. We want to not only love those who love us, but we want to love our enemies too. Please help us. Show us how we can do this. Show us how this is even possible. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I. Have a blessed day.
I want to begin today’s episode by thanking everyone who had done a Witness Wednesday for me and shared their story. Today is the 100th Wednesday since I started doing Witness Wednesdays, and it wouldn’t be possible without people being willing to share their stories. So, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I truly feel testimonies really do help people open their hearts to God, and then He comes in and changes hearts! Today I am sharing more witnesses from the popwe.org website. I love that Matthew West and his dad have this website where we can go and read all these testimonies of how God has changed people’s lives! Today, I chose to do healing testimonies because Encounter School of Ministry Boston Campus is doing a healing Service at St. Margaret’s Church in Burlington, MA, at 6:30. So I thought healing testimonies would be good for today. There are five different testimonies, and although they all have to do with someone being healed, they are not all the same. I hope as you listen to more and more testimonies, it will build your faith as to what God can do in your life too. He can heal your loved ones. He can bring your loved ones back to the church. He can take away that illness, that disorder, that anxiety, that alcoholism. Whatever it is, God can help. Bring it to Him and believe He can help. I hope you enjoy the testimonies this morning and if you get a chance, go on the popwe.org sight and read some of the testimonies. Share some on your social media pages so we can build other people’s faith too. God is doing so many good things, and people are not hearing about them.
GOD OF THE IMPOSSIBLE: When I was a baby, I was diagnosed with RSV. If you are unfamiliar with this disease, it is a cold for adults but can result in a baby’s death. After spending a long time on a ventilator in the hospital, the doctors said that there was no hope. They said I wasn’t supposed to live. They said I wasn’t supposed to breathe. They said I wasn’t supposed to walk. Well, guess what? Seventeen years later, I’m a living, breathing, walking miracle redeemed by His love, power, and grace! In the words of Matthew, “We serve a God who turns impossible into living, breathing, walking miracles!”
IMPERFECTNESS: Hi! I am a 15 year old (almost 16). I was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder when I was in 7th grade. Since then, I have had so many breakdowns and freak-out moments when I spiral and get into my own head and can’t get out. I have obsessive thoughts. I finally got out of counseling, and after much hard work, I have been able to shut off my thoughts. And that makes me very happy. I finally feel like I have some level of control over my life and my feelings.
Trusting God and learning about Him always makes me feel better. I turn to him in hard times and pray. He hears me and comes to help me. I listen to Matthew West's songs daily. Me and my twin brothers are big fans. We LOVE his songs, and as someone who wears her emotions on her sleeves, I really feel everything. From his song “Imperfections” to the first Matthew West song I ever heard, which was “Truth Be Told.” At the time, I was going through having obsessive thoughts and breakdowns and a lot of self-doubt. His music really helped. I’m a much healthier and kinder person to myself and others all thanks to fellowship and God and Matthew’s music. And I am always gonna be thankful for music and God.
KORINA: My life is one that I am truly grateful for. God, I know He has brought me through many turbulent times, and He has never failed me. I came from an abusive background as a child. I dealt with mental, physical, and sexual abuse. I made it through those years. I married and had my first child at 18. My son suffered a brain injury at birth. I did my best to raise him with little help.
I had another child at 21, and life just moved along. When I was 25, I had a lump in my neck that kept growing. I went in to have surgery to have my thyroid removed. They thought I had a goiter. Turns out I had a malignant tumor. Further tests showed that it was Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. Cancer! I had little support from my husband through my treatments. Other families tried to help when they could. After many surgeries and treatments, I was cancer-free.
I then divorced my husband and started over with my children. I met someone a few years later and had another baby. A girl that the doctors said I would not be able to have after my treatments. But God said, “Yes, you can!” Life moved on. Cancer struck again. I was 45 and was diagnosed with Nodular Malignant Melanoma. I was devastated. “Not again!” I screamed, I yelled, and I had a pity party for myself. I told God I couldn’t do this again. I had already been through enough! I couldn’t do treatments again. I then wiped my tears and moved on. The surgery was all I needed for this cancer. It hadn’t spread! Thank you, God. Today I am grateful for my life. My first cancer was found early enough for survival. It’s been 30 years now! I’m a grandma to 2 wonderful grandchildren. My 3 children are doing well. GOD is my rock. He never fails me. He has always shown me how to find the light in my darkest hours!
Heather: My husband John was in a car accident when he was 4 years old. He died three times on the way to the hospital and was revived. He was placed in a medically induced coma and was told he wouldn’t be able to walk again or live a normal life. He had a severe brain injury.
Today he is 31, walking and living a normal life. He was told he would have to graduate with a special education diploma, but he was able to get his regular high school diploma. He rides dirt bikes, drives semi trucks and we even have a new baby together. He beat all of the odds of the doctors, and we know it was only by God that he is completely fine today.
Jeffry: My name is Jeffry, and my story started 15 years ago. I was in my 12th recovery in-patient 30-day stay for depression and cutting myself. I hated my life as a drunk, but while I was drinking for years, I also would stay sober on my own for a year or 2, and I would run a marathon or 2. I have run 8 marathons, including Boston, 2 times (the 98th and the 100th).
So, I was in my 12th in-patient treatment center, and this lady that I didn’t know (I call her my guardian angel) gave me a church flyer for Kensington Church. I went the first Sunday, and in a one-hour service, God took away my complete desire to drink alcohol. On August 10, 2023, I will celebrate 15 years of complete sobriety from anything not prescribed by my doctor. Plus, I still volunteer at Kensington as a greeter, and I also volunteer as a coffee maker and other jobs at Celebrate Recovery. I also volunteer for contemporary Christian concerts; I have done 9 already this year, including Matthew West in Zeeland, MI. I love Jesus, and He is the head of my life today.
Thank you so much to Korina, Heather, Jeffry, and the first two people who shared their testimonies. I don’t know if you will ever hear this episode, but I hope you know how much your story and your testimony will help others deepen their faith enough to believe that God can help them, too. Your testimonies will give them hope that God can do for them what He did for you or for your loved ones. It isn’t easy to be vulnerable and share your personal stories with the entire world on the internet. Yet you were brave and did it anyway so that your story could help someone else. Thank you!
Can We Control Our Tongue?
1 Peter 3:10-12 “He that would love life and see good days, let him keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking guile; let him turn away from evil and do right; let him seek peace and pursue it. For the eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, and his ears are open to their prayer. But the face of the Lord is against those that do evil.”
I feel like today’s verse is a good lesson for everyone. Yesterday I was talking to a friend who is not really sure what she believes about faith. She has had a pretty traumatic history with faith, and so she is just finding her way back. Anyway, she asked what verse I was using yesterday for my podcast, and when I shared it with her, she said, “The Bible really does have some pretty good life lessons in it.” I thought this was funny because it is so true and yet I don’t think most of us think, “I should check what that Bible says about that,” when we are trying to decide what to do. There is so much wisdom and practical knowledge in the Bible.
Today’s verse is good because who wouldn’t want to love life and see good days? I think we can all agree those would be good things. So, let’s see what Peter has to say about how we can love life and see good days. First, he says to keep our tongues from evil and our lips from speaking guile—man, that right there. If we could just do that, I think all of our lives would be improved greatly. I wish my kids could hear this. I wish they could see how much better their lives could be if they talked better in general but also if they didn’t talk about others. They think that they are just venting about other people, but it puts them in a bad mood and affects their lives, too.
When we take the time to speak evil about people, then that puts our mind on evil. If we are constantly judging others, then that is where our mind will go to first. If we are constantly saying bad things about others, then those bad things are where our mind is going to focus. Soon, all you start to see is the bad in everyone around you. Imagine if we could control what we say. Proverbs 18:21a says, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue.” Did you know your words were that important? Our words affect people far longer than we think they will. Do you remember that old saying we heard when we were growing up, “Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” It is so misleading. Sometimes names can hurt more than any stick or stone could. If we are hit with a stick or stone, the wound will heal. Sometimes the wounds from things said to us when we are young never heal.
Our words have the power to change someone’s life. I still remember that my 8th-grade teacher told my mom I should be a lawyer because when doing a group project, I had a way of getting people to do what I wanted and making them think it was their idea. I still remember every teacher that was kind and built me up. I still remember some very unkind things that kids said to me when I was younger. If you believe in someone and you tell them how great they are, they will rise to the occasion. Likewise, if you don’t believe in them and you tear them down with your words or even your actions, they will live down to those expectations too.
We have to do better in this area. We have to stop and think before we say things. We, as a whole society, have to do better about what we are saying to people and how we are treating them. We will not change society with our words. The way that we have an impact on society is by living our life in a way that those around us notice the change and the grace God gives us for changing, and they decide they want that too. We need to lead by example, and we need to lead with love first and everything else second. If you take anything from this episode today, I hope it is that our words are so important, and we need to really think about what we are going to say and how it will affect the other person.
Next, it says, “Let him turn away from evil and do right; let him seek peace and pursue it.” We can probably all say that we know if we want to love life, we should turn from evil and do the right thing. However, in this world, it can be hard to know what the right thing is. Also, the world makes is seem like it is so great to do the wrong thing. If we listen to the world, all we hear is that if we want to love life, we need to do what we want to do. We need to do what makes us happy. We don’t need to be concerned about others; we just need to be concerned with our own happiness. It’s ok to have an affair if that is what makes you happy. It is ok to leave your family to pursue your dreams. The world is contrary to so many things the Lord is calling us to.
We need to turn away from evil and do what is right. If we aren’t sure what this is, we need to pray about it. We can ask the Lord to show us if there is any evil in our lives, and then we can work to change it. We can ask the Lord what he wants us to do to replace the evil in our lives. The second half of that line said we should seek peace and pursue it. How many of us would love more peace in our lives? How would you like your house to be filled with peace? Did you know you have the power to impart peace to others? Well, it’s not your power but the power of the Holy Spirit living inside you. You can pass peace onto others. You can walk into a house or even into a situation and ask the Lord to bring peace. You can ask the Holy Spirit to impart peace into that situation, or that home, or into that workplace. When Jesus sent the apostles out to go on a mission, He told them in Luke 10:5, “Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace be to this house!’” You can do the same.
The last part of this verse says, “For the eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, and his ears are open to their prayer. But the face of the Lord is against those that do evil.” That right there is enough for many of us to hear and want to change our ways. Do we want the Lord’s face to be turned away from us? Or do we want His eyes upon us and His ears open to our prayers? I bet we all know plenty of people who are sick. It seems like everyone is sick these days. I am constantly getting prayer requests from loved ones who are not doing so well or who have loved ones who are really struggling. I don’t know about you, but I can’t afford to have the Lord’s face turned against me right now. I need Him to hear my prayers. I need His eyes to be upon me so He can see how much I need Him. Therefore, I will do my best to be righteous and to turn away from evil and turn towards God. How about you?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each person listening to this episode today. Lord, you are the almighty one, and we need you. We want you to hear our prayers, and we want you not to turn your face against us. Lord, if there is any evil in our life, please help us change that. Please help us control our tongues so we are not hurting other people and so we are not spreading more evil around the world. Help us to really understand how much our words matter. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. The theme or mentoring tonight is The Power of Praying without Ceasing and how that is even possible. If you want to join me on Zoom for mentoring tonight, you can sign up on my website, walkboldlywithjesus.com, or CLICK HERE. Or, you can reach out on social media.I look forward to bringing you a witness tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Don’t Be Bossy!
1 Peter 5:1-5 “To the elders among you, I appeal as a fellow elder and a witness of Christ’s sufferings who also will share in the glory to be revealed: Be shepherds of God’s flock that is under your care, watching over them—not because you must, but because you are willing, as God wants you to be; not pursuing dishonest gain, but eager to serve; not lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock. And when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the crown of glory that will never fade away. In the same way, you who are younger submit yourselves to your elders. All of you clothe yourselves with humility toward one another because “God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble.”
Most of us have people under our care, whether our children, grandchildren, brothers and sisters, moms and dads, friends, or family. We also have people who aren’t necessarily defined as those under our care, but they do fall within our circle of influence. The way Encounter Ministries has described it is that your circle of influence includes those people around you that you interact with on a somewhat regular basis. Those who look to you for direction. Those who, when they see how you are living, might want to make some changes in their own life as well. These verses give us some instruction on how we are to behave with those under our care or in our circle of influence.
The first thing it says is to watch over them not because we have to but because we want to. This can be hard sometimes if you have a loved one under your care that is difficult. It might not even be their fault that they are difficult. Maybe you are caring for an elderly parent they have dementia, and they are difficult, but it is not their fault. They don’t understand what is going on, and they don’t have the mental capacity to remember what you are saying. When this is the case, sometimes it can be hard to want to care for this person. Not because you don’t love them but because it is hard to see your loved ones in that state. You would rather remember them how they were before they got sick.
It can also be hard when you are a new mom and you have a baby that cries all the time. You love that baby with your whole heart, but sometimes you are caring for that baby because you have to, not because you want to. What you really want to do is get some sleep. This is similar to the last scenario because, in both cases, the person you are caring for didn’t really have a choice. They weren’t trying to be difficult, and yet they were still difficult. God is asking us for a perspective switch when this happens. He is asking us to change our mindset, so instead of thinking that we have to take care of our loved ones, think of it as we get to take care of them. As difficult as it is to take care of them, we will miss it when they are no longer here with us.
Peter reminds us in this letter that we are not to take care of people for false reasons. For instance, we shouldn’t take care of our parents or our loved ones because we expect something in return. It also says we shouldn’t lord it over them, either. The message translations of this verse say, “Not bossily telling others what to do, but tenderly showing them the way.” I like that translation for two reasons. The first one is that it reminds us to be tender when we are caring for our loved ones. This can be especially important if we are dealing with our parents.
Our parents raised us, and they are used to being the ones to tell us what to do and doing everything for us. Then, as time goes by and they get older, they need to ask us to do things, or we may know how things work better. However, if we are bossy and tell them what they need to do, that doesn’t go over very well, and that doesn’t make them feel very good about themselves or about us. We need to be tender with them and not bossy.
The second reason I like that translation is that it reminds us to show them the way. Actually, the translation above is good for this reason too. It says to be an example. If we live our lives in a completely different manner than what we are saying to others, we wouldn’t be a very good example. It wouldn’t make sense to tell our children they are not allowed to do something and they we do it. It wouldn’t be good to tell our children to be kind to everyone they meet and then yell at the guy who cut us off in traffic and be rude to the person in the parking lot. Our words are important, but our actions are even more important.
The verses go on to say, “And when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the crown of glory that will never fade away.” All of the things I said are good reminders and yet can be very hard. However, when we get to this line, I think it makes all that hard work worth it. Can you even imagine a crown of glory that never fades away? God never promised us that life in this world would be easy. He did promise us we wouldn’t ever be alone in it, though. When things get really difficult, we can lean into Him, and He will help us and support us. He will lift us up when we think we can’t make it any further. I heard the song “Strong” the other day by Anne Wilson. Two lines of the song have stuck in my head. “Lord knows I’ve tried, but I’m good at falling down. Thank God you’re good at picking me up off the ground.” God is good at picking you up off the ground too. Just ask Him!
The verses also remind those who are younger that they should submit themselves to their elders. Then I love this next part. All of you clothe yourselves with humility toward one another because “God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble.” Humility is the key to all we do. If we are doing it with a humble heart, we will be doing it for the right reasons, and we will get it right. If we are doing it with a heart full of pride, it will be for all the wrong reasons, and we will get it wrong. God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble. This will go easier if you are a humble servant because God’s favor will be upon you. I feel like someone listening is really struggling with taking care of a parent whose health is declining, and I feel God wants you to know that you are doing a great job. Whether you are near or far, you are doing what you can. Just the fact that you are worried if you are doing enough shows how much you care.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to be a faithful, humble servant. Help us to take care of those in our care with gentleness. Help us to be tender examples and not be bossy or to lord our control over their hearts. Lord, help us serve for the right reasons. Purify us of any wrong reasons, Lord. We love you, and we want to do what is right in your eyes. Please help us! We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. In my quest to help you walk more boldly with Jesus, I have started sending out a daily email that contains the words of prophecy that I put at the end of each episode. My goal for sharing the words of prophecy that the Lord is sharing with my praying group in Chelmsford is that the more you hear how the Lord is speaking to us, the more you will not only begin to recognize the Lord’s voice in your own life but also learn to recognize when it is not the Lord’s voice. If you would like to receive this daily email, you can Click Here or in the comments section, or you can email me at Catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I watch over you. I protect you. I walk with you. I talk with you. You are my children, and I love you.”
In Old Age They Still Produce Fruit
2 Corinthians 4:16-18 “So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.”
Today’s prayer point for the healing service is prayer for our old and retired priests. While reading the passages, I got to thinking about all those I know who are getting older. My parents are getting older. They are in their 80’s, although if you looked at them, you would never guess that. They still go out dancing several nights a week; they are on the board of the square dancing group, and they do so much in church and out of the church. They have a busier schedule than most of their kids, who aren’t really kids anymore. I get the pleasure of being around the ladies in prayer group weekly, or sometimes many times a week, and many of them are getting older, too. Well, I guess we are all getting older. Many of them are feeling it more and more.
There were a couple of verses that I really liked this morning—the one above stuck out the most. I hear a lot of older people losing heart because their bodies can’t do what they used to be able to do. They are tired more easily, and they might even need to take naps. They used to be able to get up and go first thing in the morning. Now, even though they can’t sleep that well and are probably awake early, they can’t get moving and get out of the house too early. I liked this verse because it reminds us all that no matter what is going on with our bodies on the outside, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. It also says this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure.
Can you imagine that? An eternal weight of glory beyond all measure. There is no way to measure how much glory we will encounter if you think of your best day or if you think of your favorite thing. If you think of the prettiest thing you can think of or the most expensive thing you can think of, the glory of heaven is even greater than that. Tony and I are watching a show called Billions. The eternal weight of glory is greater than billions and billions of dollars and all that money can buy you. The verse says the weight of glory is beyond all measure.
I know that might not make you feel better about your aches and pains. You may be going through some really difficult medical stuff right now, and it is hard to think about eternal glory. It might be hard to hear the part of the verse above where it says, “slight momentary affliction,” when it feels like you have been sick forever. Or maybe you aren’t sick, but you can’t walk the way you used to, or you can’t get around the way you used to. I am sure it is hard to wake up one day and not be able to do something you could do the day before. I don’t know if this verse brings you any comfort or not, but I thought it was a great reminder that no matter how much our human body fails us, God is renewing our inner nature every day.
Another verse that I thought might be helpful to hear is Psalm 92:12-15 “The righteous flourish like the palm tree, and grow like a cedar in Lebanon. They are planted in the house of the Lord; they flourish in the courts of our God. In old age, they still produce fruit; they are always green and full of sap, showing that the Lord is upright; he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him.” I know some of the ladies question what they can still do for the community. The prayer group I am blessed to be a part of has been around for over 50 years. Many of them joined when they were young and they did all the things they could do. They led the prayer group; they were on all the different teams, they went to conferences, and they did it all. Now, it is hard to do any of it, and they feel bad they can’t do more. I wonder if you are feeling this way too. Your heart wants to help more, but your body won’t cooperate.
If this is you, I want you to really hear what Psalm 92:14 says, “They will still bear fruit in old age; they will stay fresh and green.” You will still bear fruit. Your prayers bear fruit; your efforts bear fruit, and you are still bearing fruit after all these years. We often say, I guess all I can do is pray as if prayer wasn’t the most powerful thing we can do. Prayer is more powerful than anything action we can do on our own. Mahatma Gandhi said, "Prayer is not an old woman's amusement. Properly understood and applied, it is the most potent instrument of action.” It is ok that you can not do all the things you once did. It is ok that you can’t go to all the things you once went to. It is not the time for that. You have moved on to a new stage. Not a better or worse stage, just a different stage. It is ok that you need to take naps. If we are all being honest with ourselves, we would all like to take naps. We don’t judge kids for taking naps. Why are we judging our parents, spouses, and friends?
Yes, your body is getting older, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t do anything. Yes, your body is getting older, but your inner spirit is getting renewed daily. Don’t waste that. The Bible tells us that we are still fruitful when we are older, so what are we doing with this fruit? I want to leave you with Psalm 73:26 today, “My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode. Lord, we pray in a special way today for the elderly and for all retired priests and ministers. Lord, we pray you are walking with all who are feeling their age, whether that is young or old. Lord, teach us to appreciate each season we are in. Teach us to be patient with ourselves and to be patient with you. Your ways are not our ways, and your thoughts are not our thoughts, and that can be really hard for us. We love you, Lord, and we want to want what you want; it can just be really hard for us to do that. Although we know we can do all things through Christ, who strengthens us, so we will keep trying. Lord, help us have an incredible Lenten season. We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I have been thinking about sending the word from the Lord out daily in an email. If you would be interested in having a daily Word from the Lord coming to your inbox, let me know. We all get a lot of emails, but it is often nothing we really want. I don’t want to be adding to your cluttered mailboxes if you are not interested. I look forward to hearing from you. You can email catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or you can go to my website and click on the contact me tab, or you can click on the link in the show notes. I will also make a post on my Facebook account today. I look forward to seeing you here again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed weekend! I get to spend the night with my niece tonight, so I know mine will be blessed.
Today’s Word from the Lord is in the form of an image one of our members had. “I could see many people were hesitating, and I could see his hand moving to tell them to come. I got the feeling that the Lord wants to use many people, and he will give them all the necessary gifts for whatever He asks. But people are still hesitant, so I could see both His hands telling them to come, and He was looking deeply and trying to convince them that this was the thing to do, and those who did not answer, I could see how sad that He was.”
We Have Been Set Free
1 Corinthians 6:12 “ All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are beneficial. “All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be dominated by anything.”
The prayer point for the healing service team today is to free the captives. This instantly made me think of my friend who I am praying for this week. I have asked those I know to give me a Bible verse, and I will assign a different verse to each week of the year. Then I will pray for that person during the week I have assigned their verse.
This week, I am praying for my friend, and instead of praying for herself, she has asked for prayers for an urgent ceasefire in Gaza and for food and medical aid to reach the sick and injured. When I read free the Captives this morning, I thought of all of those who were captured in the Gaza Strip many months ago. Then, when I started reading the scripture verses we were given, I realized there are many ways that we can be held captive. Some of us are physically held captive, like those in war-torn countries, those who were abducted and forced into human trafficking of all kinds. There are also many of us who are held captive by our own beliefs, addictions, or wants and desires.
This morning, while I was reading over the various verses, I asked the Lord to highlight the one he wanted me to talk about. I asked Him to make it clear to me. He actually highlighted two verses. The first one that jumped out was the verse above. 1 Corinthians 6:12 says, “All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are beneficial. “All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be dominated by anything.” I thought this was particularly fitting for today since yesterday was Ash Wednesday, and so Lent has just begun. Lent can be a difficult time of year because it is a time of sacrifice. It can also be a sad time of year as we remember all Christ went through to save us from our sins, to save us from ourselves.
Lent is also a great time of year to show ourselves that we don’t have to be controlled by our wants and our desires. We get the chance to show God that although we love chocolate, wine, alcohol, beer, swearing, desserts, TV, or whatever else we decide to give up, we don’t let them as much as we love HIm. We get to show ourselves that it is ok to deny ourselves something we want and that when we do we will be even more stronger for it. I have a friend named Sarah Jane. I remember she came over to my house one time, and I asked if she wanted a brownie. She said she gave up chocolate for the month. It wasn’t lent so I asked her why she gave it up. She said each month, she gives something up for the month to show herself she can and so that she does not get too attached to anything.
This is an awesome idea. I actually did this for a few months last year, but I don’t think I made it past May. I do think it is important that we know that just because we can do something doesn’t mean we should do it. It also doesn’t mean it is good for us. If we want to be holy, we must go beyond the letter of the law. This is what the Sadducees and Pharisees were doing. They were following the letter of the law but not the spirit of the law. They were so focused on doing things perfectly that they lost all sight of what God was really about. They forgot about the love God had for His people. They forgot about His mercy. They got caught up in all the laws and the rules and somehow got lost.
What I felt the Lord wanted me to remind you of today is that you do not have to become slaves to things of this world. The second scripture He highlighted to me is Galatians 5:1, which says, “For freedom, Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” This shows us that we have a choice. Before Jesus came to save us, we had less of a choice. Before Jesus came, we had the laws to tell us what we should do, but we didn’t have the Holy Spirit inside of us to give us the strength to resist the things that were not good for us. Then Jesus came, and He died on the cross to set us free from sin. Then He went to be with His Father, and they sent the Holy Spirit to be with us so we would no longer be left on our own. Because of this, we no longer have to accept the yoke of slavery. Because of this, we have been set free.
However, this does not mean that we are all free. We must make a choice to be free. We have to decide that our freedom in Christ is worth more than that cookie, that drink, that drug, that extramarital affair. Christ died so we could be free, but we still have to choose to be free. God has given us free will and He won’t force us to follow Him or to love Him. He won’t force us to choose Him. We have to do that on our own. Well, not really on our own because He gave us the power of the Holy Spirit living inside of us. We can rely on that power. We do need to make the choice, but then we can rely on the Holy Spirit to help us keep that freedom. We can rely on the Holy Spirit to help us stay on the path we want to be on.
When we feel like we want to be free of something and yet we don’t think we can, we can’t see a way to give it up. We can call on the Holy Spirit. We can ask the Holy Spirit to take away the desire for this thing. We can ask the Holy Spirit to come and give us strength. We can say, “Come, Holy Spirit, come.” The enemy wants us to think we don’t have a choice. He wants us to think we can’t do the hard thing. We can’t give up drinking. We can’t give up the drugs, the affairs, the food. The devil is a liar. Philippians 4:13 “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” It doesn’t say some things, and it says all things. You can do all things because you have the mighty power of Jesus living inside of you. All you have to do is call upon that power.
So, this Lenten season, let’s remember that we are no longer slaves to our desires. Whatever you gave up for lent, it may seem like it is going to be a long 40 days. You might be thinking about it and thinking there is no way you make it 40 days without that thing. If so, remember that you are not dominated by anything. You are a free son or daughter of Christ and of the one true God. You can do anything with Christ! You have been set free!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, you are truly amazing. We are so grateful you sent your son to set us free. We owe you a debt we could never pay, so we offer you these 40 days as a small token of our love for you. Please help us through these next 40 days. We ask that you help us every day. Lord, remind us when we forget that nothing will dominate us. Remind us when we forget that we do not have to accept the yoke of slavery. Remind us of your love and mercy each time we forget. We love you so much, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. If you are interested in receiving my monthly newsletter so you can be the first to know what is going on or when I am planning an event, please CLICK HERE or go to my website, walkboldlywithjesus.com. I will be sending out a newsletter in the next day or two, and it will have a link to watch the retreat I just did last Saturday on Zoom. I did a talk on God’s reckless love for us and I did a talk on God’s unfailing, never-ending forgiveness. I hope you check them both out! Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Be not afraid to say yes to the Lord. When the Lord calls, He equips. He will give you everything necessary to fulfill what He asks of you. Be bold. Do not fear to answer the Lord. He loves you, and He will take care of you. You are His children, and He is your God, so go in boldness and answer the Lord's call.”
Website where I found these witnesses: https://popwe.org/category/addiction-deliverance/
Katie: So it’s Sobriety Awareness Month, and I feel led to share a testimony. My drug of choice was methadone. I thought it was okay because it was prescribed. I got on it to get off opioids but ended up being on it for almost 6 years. So me, and my mother were in addiction together. A very toxic relationship. When the methadone got too expensive, she turned me to meth. I lost everything within two months…
On December 31, 2020, me and my mom were going through withdrawals pretty bad so she begged me to find something. I ended up getting some and split it with her and the last words I remember her saying was, “if this doesn’t help I’m going to sleep.” Two days later, I called 911 and they rushed her to the hospital and I had to make the hardest decision I ever made. I called and told my sister about my addiction and begged her to take my daughter so she would be happy and safe and I could get help. The hardest thing in my life was watching my baby girl get in that car with all her toys and clothes and drive away.
Fast forward to January 4, 2021. I was put in St. Bernard’s Behavioral Health and found out over the phone that my mom was on life support and wasn’t gonna make it. I would have to sign to remove care. The dope had cut the oxygen off to her brain. I was taken to see her. She had wires in her head, her hand was cold and stiff, her feet were purple and molded. I couldn’t stay 15 minutes with her. As soon as I got back to SBBH, they faxed me a paper to sign and on January 6, 2021 they removed care. She took one breath and died. Two days later I went to Restoration House Ministries and not only got sober but encountered God and I’ve never been the same. September 17th I’ll be 17 months clean from the bondage I thought I could never escape. This is so hard for me to share but I pray it opens someone’s eyes. I handed my mom her death sentence just for one more high. It ain’t worth it. The guilt, shame, self hatred you feel ain’t worth it. We do recover and it’s through Jesus.
“We do recover and it's through Jesus.”
Christopher: I was blessed to see you in Beaumont, Texas recently. I live in a town called Lumberton and my youngest daughter was my plus one that night. We got to be part of the blue couch and the meet and greet. The thing is, it never should have happened because I honestly shouldn’t be alive today.
For 37 years, I had a severe alcohol problem. I was drinking no less than 2 fifths of vodka a day. I sit here and cry because I can’t remember most of the childhood days of my kids. I have 3 daughters and one son that are all grown today. I got to the point that I could drink what is called Everclear (95% alcohol) straight from the bottle. Only by God’s grace I don’t have any issues or side effects today.
The day He turned me around, I had flown into New Orleans, Louisiana for work and landed around 11:00 AM. I bought a bottle of vodka in the airport and finished it before I had walked the 200 feet to the rental car location. At the rental car outlet they told me all they had left for me was a Dodge Challenger called a Hellcat, so I took it. Now here I am in a ridiculously fast car, drunk, and headed for a bad day. I was on the interstate and decided to see how fast this car was. I was driving in excess of 140 MPH and I lost control of the car. It went into a spin. After it came to a stop, I crawled out of the car without a scratch and a voice in my head said, “how much more proof do you need that I have plans for you?”
After that I called my wife and poured everything out to her. I was an alcoholic when we got married, so my wife and kids had never seen me sober. Now, today (4 years later) I have 3 beautiful daughters, 2 grandchildren and a son who is an amazing man and a decorated US Marine. I am an ordained minister and I love nothing more than talking to people about my life. If God could take a wasted case like me and do what He has done, there is nothing we can’t overcome with Him.
At your recent concert in Beaumont, Texas during the blue couch session I asked you to sing “Broken Things” and you did. You have no idea what that meant to me and my daughter that night. So much of your music centers around how God takes the broken and makes something amazing and you are such an inspiration to me. Sure, I have tough days and it would be so easy to slip back into those old ways, but then I remember my God uses broken things!
“God takes the broken and makes something amazing.”
Adrienne: In 2014, I began praying to God to remove these addictions from me. My life was a mess and all I cared about was my cigarettes and alcohol. God led me to the right resources, and I did manage to quit smoking and drinking (although not at the same time and I experienced some slips.)
In 2018, with the help of God and a stop smoking community, I gave up cigarettes for good. Then on June 23rd, 2020, God helped me once again and both my husband and I stopped drinking. The freedom and joy I feel from having both of these substances out of my life is amazing and like nothing I’ve ever known. The “buzz” I get now from a life well lived is so much better than any buzz I received from cigarettes or alcohol. I am so incredibly grateful to be free of those chains. If you are struggling with overcoming an addiction, my advice to you is don’t give up on yourself and trust God. You may not break free immediately but with patience, perseverance and the love and help of our Savior, you can overcome even the toughest addiction.
With God, ALL things are possible!
Cindy: I was molested as a young child. My way of coping was to self harm, which became an addiction for me. If I was stressed, anxious, sad, or mad I would hurt myself. The self harming behaviors escalated to cutting and burning myself. It was something I could control. I decided how often I cut, how deep the cut would be, and how many marks I would make. I believed that my control was stolen from me as a child and this was my way of taking control back. What I needed was to give that control over to God.
In 2012, I finally gave God control and surrendered my addiction to Him. I had given my life to Christ as a child, but I finally realized He never intended for me to carry that load all by myself. He didn’t need my scars, I needed His.
I am so thankful that God placed people in my life who supported me through that difficult time period of healing, but mental illness is still somewhat of a taboo subject. We aren’t supposed to show signs of weakness. I’m here today to share His-story for me. I am only here because of God’s mercy and grace. I tried multiple times to end my life, but today I try to offer hope to those who are struggling with self harm, depression, and mental illness. I want to share how great our God is. He can take a misfit like me and use my story to show He can take a mess and turn it into a message. My story isn’t over, it’s only the beginning.
“He can take a mess and turn it into a message.”
God Is Our Refuge
Psalm 46:1-3 “God, you’re such a safe and powerful place to find refuge! You’re a proven help in times of trouble— more than enough and always available whenever I need you. So we will never fear even if every structure of support were to crumble away. We will not fear even when the earth quakes and shakes, moving mountains and casting them into the sea. For the raging roar of stormy winds and crashing waves cannot erode our faith in you. Pause in his presence.”
Today we are praying for those with mental health challenges. This covers a wide range of things. It seems mental health challenges are everywhere these days. The world can be a pretty scary place at times. However, in these last few years, I would say it has gotten particularly scary. Most people were pretty anxious during the 2020 pandemic. Everything was so uncertain, and the news was not very helpful. I am not generally an anxious person. However, when I would watch the news during the first few months of the pandemic I could definitely see why so many people were so anxious. I do believe the news was at one time meant to inform the citizens of what was going on in the world. Now, it seems like its sole purpose is to appeal to people’s emotions in whatever way necessary. How else do you explain two competing news channels giving the complete opposite news?
The key to us staying sane in this crazy world is to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus. Whenever I see that, I am reminded of the scene in Matthew 14:22-33, which was depicted in the series The Chosen, where Peter steps out of the boat to walk on the water to Jesus. Peter is doing great and actually walking on the water while he is looking right at Jesus. However, as soon as he turns away, as soon as He looks at all the chaos around him, he starts to sink, and Jesus reaches out and saves him. It is when we take our eyes off Jesus that things start to go awry.
The first line of the verse states, “God, you’re such a safe and powerful place to find refuge!” God is our refuge. We can always turn to Him, no matter what we are going through. Even if it is something you think He would be disappointed in you for doing. Turn to Him. It says in the Bible that God will rejoice more in heaven over the one sinner who repents than the 99 righteous who don’t need to repent. We will worry less when we realize that we don’t have to be perfect to go to God. We can go to Him always, no matter what we have done.
Thinking we have to be perfect to come to God is something the enemy wants you to think. He wants you to think you aren’t good enough to talk to God because He knows how powerful you will be when you turn to God and allow Him to help you. Jesus didn’t wait for us to stop sinning and be perfect to die on the cross for us. He died on a cross for us while we were still sinners. No matter what you are feeling or thinking, you can bring it to God. He is our refuge. There will never be a time here on earth where you can go to the Father and ask Him for help. He loves when His children come to Him and ask for help.
The next line says, “You’re a proven help in times of trouble— more than enough and always available whenever I need you.” This reaffirms what I just said, God is available whenever you need Him. It also says you are a proven help in times of trouble. If you look back over your life, I bet you will be able to see this statement is true. Can you look back over your life and see all the ways God has helped in the past? Can you see that He has proven time and time again that He is a great help in times of trouble? When you call upon Him, He will be there.
I like how the verse specifies that God is more than enough. Sometimes I think we forget this. We don’t bring things to Him because we think they are either too big, and we can’t see how he would make it happen, or they are too small, and we don’t want to bother Him with it. Neither of these is true. Nothing is too big or too small for God. God wants us to bring everything to Him. He can make a way where there is no way. He is the God of the impossible. He also cares about all the little details of your life, so nothing is too small for Him.
The verse goes on to say, “So we will never fear even if every structure of support were to crumble away. We will not fear even when the earth quakes and shakes, moving mountains and casting them into the sea. For the raging roar of stormy winds and crashing waves cannot erode our faith in you.” This shows how deep our trust can go when we have our eyes fixed on Jesus. When it feels like every structure of support is falling away, keep your eyes fixed on Jesus, and he will be your refuge. When it feels like you are in the storm of a lifetime, keep your eyes fixed on Jesus.
It occurred to me that saying to keep your eyes fixed on Jesus might not be that helpful. What does that even mean? To me that means keep looking to Him for help. When you are feeling lost, read the Bible. Ask the Lord a question, and then you can open the Bible and read whatever you find. Another way would be to sit and talk with God. You can even yell and scream if you want to. I think sometimes we think we have to always be on our best behavior with God. We don’t. He can handle our anger and our yelling. He knows what we are going through. He knows what we are thinking even before we say it. Although I think He likes it when we say it because we are being honest with Him and trusting Him with what we are feeling.
Jesus got angry when He was in the temple, and they were using it to sell stuff and other things. He got angry, flipped over tables, and yelled at them. He wasn’t yelling at God, but I think God understands when we need to let off some steam. Isn’t yelling at God better than yelling at family or friends? At least we know God can handle it. Another great thing to do when all seems like it is falling apart is to listen to praise and worship music. There are so many songs out there reminding us of all that God does for us. There are so many people who have seen God turn things around, and they have written great songs about it to encourage us and remind us that God will be there for us, too. If He was there for them, He will be there for you!
The very last thing this verse says is, “Pause in his presence.” This is so important, especially in a hard time. Sometimes we just need to pause in his presence. In the quiet is when God enters in and heals us. If we are keeping so busy that we don’t think about our troubles, then we aren’t giving God any time to come in and heal us. Something I am just learning is that we don’t always have to be doing something when we are spending time with the Lord. He likes it when we invite Him into the quiet as well. He likes it when we sit there with Him and let Him do His thing. What if we each just spent 5 minutes in quiet with the Lord today?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, there are so many people anxious and worried these days. Please help us. There are so many who are struggling with mental health challenges, and we ask you to be our refuge. Lord, help all the suffering see that they can rely on you. Help them to see you and that you love them. Help them to feel your presence so they know that you are not alone. Help us to trust you and rely on you, Lord. Help us to come to you. We love you, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I hope everyone is staying warm and safe wherever they are listening. We are supposed to get more snow today. Schools and workplaces were canceled last night in anticipation of the story. It just started snowing now. I am hoping it is not too bad out but I do like the snow. Tonight is mentoring, so if you would like to join, CLICK HERE or go to my website, walkboldlywithjesus.com. You can also send me a message on social media if you would like to check it out before officially joining. I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Look, my children, look. See with My eyes. See the world around you. See those that I love who are living in a way that is not what I have come to deliver to them. Pray for them. Pray for them. Pray for them continually. I have placed in each of my beloved people all of my creation, a mark that is truly connected to me. They need to have that mark stimulated, excited, and brought forth. In some of them, it's like a dying ember. I need you with the gift of the spirit to breathe on that. To breathe new life on that, that the ember will not go out that the ember will become a flame. I need you to see my people in a way you have never seen before, and I alone can give you those eyes to see. I alone will give you a heart to feel. I alone will give you the grace that your Will will say yes because you will feel my love for them.”
For The Lonely, For The Ashamed, The Misunderstood, And The Ones To Blame
Psalm 102:1-2, 6-7, 27-28 “Hear my prayer, Lord; let my cry for help come to you. Do not hide your face from me when I am in distress. Turn your ear to me; when I call, answer me quickly. … I am like a desert owl, like an owl among the ruins. I lie awake; I have become like a bird alone on a roof. … But you remain the same, and your years will never end. The children of your servants will live in your presence; their descendants will be established before you.”
Today’s prayer point is to pray for those with a spirit of loneliness. It surprises me how we can live in an age with so much technology and yet have so many people who feel lonely. It is easier than ever to stay in touch with people. When my mom and dad were dating, my dad joined the military. They would write each other letters and then have to wait for them to arrive in the mail. Now, you can send an email, and the other person can get it instantly. You can also send a text message on your cell phone; you can send a Facebook message, an Instagram message, a Snapchat message, and so many more messages that people will get immediately. Our teens are on their phones all day, every day, and they are on social media often. They have hundreds of friends online, and yet they feel so alone. I was talking to someone the other day who said she can be in a room full of people yet feel alone. Why is this?
It is because that is how the enemy wants us to feel. He wants us to feel alone so that we pull away even more. He wants us to feel like no one will understand what we are going through and no one likes us. He wants us to feel like we are different, don’t fit in, and are awkward. He whispers these things in our ears even when we are in a room full of people. That way, we don’t take a risk and meet someone new. He persuades us not to talk about what we are going through for fear of judgment because he knows if we talk about it, we will find others going through the same thing, and then we won’t feel so alone.
Even though we have more ready access to communication, it is not meaningful communication. My kids have Snapchat, where you send messages, which they call snaps, back and forth to each other. The app has a streak system to count the days you “snap” back and forth with each contact. The kids obsess about getting and keeping these streaks. In theory, this might be good as it motivates the kids to stay in contact with their friends. However, they aren’t actually writing anything important. They can snap a photo of the wall, the ceiling, or the floor and send that. So, it is not actual communication; it is just something to keep the streak going. I think this is why they feel so alone. They see how many “friends” they have on social media, yet most don’t know them.
There has been a song in my head all morning since I read what the prayer point for today was. The song is called God Only Knows by For King and Country. I want to go over the lyrics with you. It begins with:
Wide awake while the world is sound asleep and
Too afraid of what might show up while you're dreaming
Nobody, nobody, nobody sees you
Nobody, nobody would believe you
This is what the enemy tries to get us to believe. He convinces us that we can’t talk to anyone about our feelings because they won’t believe us. And sometimes our loved ones can make us feel this way. It is hard when a loved one tells you they feel all alone and depressed. If they are good at hiding it, we might disagree with or downplay it. We might say they will be fine. We might tell them things will be ok and that they need some sleep. We might tell them things aren’t as bad as they think. We might tell them they have nothing to be sad about. I am not saying these are things we should say; I am saying these are things we do say at times, and they don’t help the situation. They make the person feel more misunderstood and alone. If someone comes to you and tells you they are sad, lonely, or depressed, then they have probably been suffering in silence for a long time before coming to you. Do all you can to take them seriously and get them the professional help they need.
Every day, you try to pick up all the pieces
All the memories, they somehow never leave you
Nobody, nobody, nobody sees you
Nobody, nobody would believe you
Those who are lonely and afraid try each morning to pretend they are fine. They try to get out of bed and put on a happy face so no one knows what they feel inside. They do their best to smile while around others. However, inside, they still have all the bad memories of what happened. They still have all those negative voices from the enemy telling them they aren’t good enough, don’t fit in, and don’t measure up. They truly feel like nobody sees them, and nobody would believe them.
God only knows what you've been through
God only knows what they say about you
God only knows how it's killing you
But there's a kind of love that God only knows
This is what we need to help our loved ones understand. God sees them. God knows what they have been through. He knows how they feel. God knows the depths of what they are going through, and He is there for them. We need to help them realize they are never alone. God is with them now, then, and forever. There was never a time when God wasn’t with them, and there will never be a time when He is not there. They can always talk to Him, and He will always listen. They can invite Him into any situation.
You keep a cover over every single secret
So afraid if someone saw them, they would leave
But somebody, somebody, somebody sees you
Somebody, somebody will never leave you
God sees them. God sees you. If you are listening to this and know exactly what I am talking about because you feel like you could be the person in this song, I want you to know that God sees you. That God will never leave you. He knows what you are going through. He hears you crying out, and He is working on your situation. He is right there by your side. We learned in Encounter School of Ministry that we can ask God to show us where He is right now. You can ask Him where He was during a particular memory. You can ask Him how He is loving you right now. You can ask God anything you want to ask Him, and if you are willing to listen, He will answer.
For the lonely, for the ashamed
The misunderstood and the ones to blame
What if we could start over?
We could start over
We could start over.
This part is great because it asks if we could start over. What if we could begin again? What if we did things differently? What if we spoke up? What if we didn’t pretend we were fine? What if we let people in? How would things be different? It is also a great question for those of us who have loved ones who are lonely, feel ashamed, misunderstood, and the ones to blame. What if we could start over, too? What if we believed them? What if we supported them? What if we got them the professional help they needed? What if we loved them through all of it?
God only knows where to find you
God only knows how to break through
God only knows the real you
There's a kind of love that God only knows
This last part is really important. God knows where to find you. You are never hidden from God. You may not want Him to see you. You may not want to share your innermost thoughts with Him, but nothing is hidden from God. He sees them, and He is crying with you. God knows how to break through to you and how you can break through the darkness to the light. Turn to Him, ask Him. If it is a loved one in the darkness, ask Him to give you the wisdom and knowledge to help your loved one break through. God is the answer!! God knows the real you. The enemy will try to get you to believe lies about yourself. He will try to convince you that God couldn’t love you. That God couldn’t forgive you. That God doesn’t like you. These are all lies. You are a beloved son or daughter of God, and He loves, forgives, and likes you. He knows the real you. Not the you that you show everyone else, the real you. Who you are down deep inside. He knows the real you and loves all of you!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask you to touch all the hearts of those listening today. Lord, we ask you to reach out in a special way to the lonely today. Lord, fill their hearts with love. Help them feel your presence today, Lord. Help them to see the lies the enemy has been telling them. Help them to know that you are with them and that they are never alone. Help them to see that it is never too late to start again. Help them know how loved they are. Lord, we ask you to show their loved ones how to be there for them. Show their loved ones what to say and how to support them. We need you, Lord; they need you, Lord!! We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Reminder: tomorrow is mentoring day. If you want to join, you can go to my website, walkboldlywithjesus.com, or click the link in the show notes. I hope to see some of you tomorrow night, Tuesday, at 8 P. M. EST. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord is in the form of an image someone received. “I saw a large pit, and thousands and thousands of people were around that pit. We, as believers, were surrounding the people who were headed for the pit, and we were trying to convince them not to go there. Not to go there. So, every prayer we say, every lifting up of a soul that we do, we actually turn them around and bring them back to the Lord instead of falling into the pit. No matter what you do, if it's a phone call if it's saying hello to somebody, you change their hearts in mind just by being in their presence because you are His disciples. So your presence is Magnificat to those who have fallen.”
Love Covers A Multitude Of Sins
1 Peter 4:8 “Above all things have intense and unfailing love for one another, for love covers a multitude of sins [forgives and disregards the offenses of others].”
Today’s prayer point for the healing service preparation is to pray to strengthen marriages. This is something that is so needed. Marriages are something that is definitely under attack. Satan is working hard to destroy our families. He is attacking our children, and he is attacking our marriages. I went to a marriage retreat in Germany when we lived overseas. The retreat was sponsored by the Military Arch Diocese but was put on by a German organization. I can not remember their name right now. They told us that Germany was trying to pass a law so that marriages would have a time limit or an expiration date. I don’t remember all the details, but I think they said it because they thought there would be fewer divorces if people just got married for 10 or 20 years, and then they could decide if they wanted to continue being married.
This is crazy. When we say “I Do,” we are saying it forever. However, this doesn’t tend to be the case these days. The divorce rate in America for first marriages is 33% within the first 10 years; for second marriages, it is 60-70%. That is pretty high. We definitely need to be praying for our marriages. The reason I say that Satan is attacking our marriages is because I believe he is behind all the pornography in the world. He is behind the normalization of many things that weren’t normal once upon a time. It seems like cheating on your spouse used to be something you did privately and hoped you didn’t get caught. Now, it seems as though “open” marriages are something that is accepted. In an “open” marriage, the couple can sleep with other people.
The act of sexual intercourse is no longer a special bond between a husband and wife. It is shared with others outside of the marriage. It seems more common to have an affair. I know adultery was happening long before Jesus came into the world. Back then, it was not something to be celebrated, though. Nowadays, it seems like it is normalized. It seems like if you hear someone is cheating on their spouse, it is hardly shocking. You almost expect it. It is really sad.
What I love about the verse above is that it reminds us to have intense and unfailing love for one another. This is something that takes intention and is not always easy to do. When we talk about love, we talk about falling in love. We talked about how we met and fell in love with our wife or husband. However, after you fall in love, you must stay in love; that is where the work comes in. When you first get married, everything is new and exciting. You are deeply in love and can’t imagine anything changing. However, as the years pass, you settle into a routine. You both get busy with work and if you have a family, that keeps you busy as well. If you are not careful, you start to grow apart. There is nothing major that happens and yet you are slowly growing apart.
It happens so slowly that you hardly even notice. Your schedules are different, so you don’t see each other as much. You are both working so much you are like ships passing in the night. You make sure one of you is home to be with the kids while the other is working or doing what they must do. You are both exhausted at night and so you go to sleep. There is no time for talking, let alone any intimacy of any kind. When this happens, the enemy gets in there and starts to point out all the annoying things about your spouse. All the things that didn’t really bother you before because you were so in love with this person. However, now you see all the flaws as if they were highlighted.
Everyone listening knows exactly what I am talking about. The reason I picked this translation is because of the language it uses. It resonated so much with me. It says, “Above all things have intense and unfailing love for one another, for love covers a multitude of sins [forgives and disregards the offenses of others].” Did you catch that last part? It says our intense and unfailing love for one another forgives and disregards the offenses of others. Did you notice when you first met your husband or wife that their little idiosyncrasies didn’t really bother you? You either didn’t even notice them, or you did, but you were so in love that you thought they were cute.
We are who we are. I doubt you or your spouse have changed that much since you married. It is more likely that we have forgotten to have intense and unfailing love for one another, which is normal if we are not intentional about it. We need to nurture our love for our spouse and even our kids with intention, just like we would nurture anything we want to grow. This verse is straight out of the Bible. God is showing us what is needed for a good marriage. God is showing us how important love is. Not just any love, either. We need intense and unfailing love. If you have noticed lately that you are taking offense to what others are saying to you, you may need to nurture your love for that person.
One way to do this is to ask the Father to give you his heart for that person. I have heard two stories in the last week of people who have been given the Lord’s heart for someone. They said it was strange because they didn’t really know this person well, yet they had this overwhelming love for that person. It was a love that made no sense to them. They couldn’t explain it, and yet it was there anyway. You can do the same for anyone in your life, especially if you are taking offense easily or if the little things they do annoy you. Just ask the Father to give you His heart for them.
Something else you can do to help rekindle this intense and unfailing love is to spend more quality time with your spouse. What do they like to do? Can you do that with them? What do you like to do together? What did you do while you were dating? When was the last time you had a real conversation with your spouse that was not about the weather or the kids? I have also found regular physical contact is so important in a relationship. I still remember one time when I was upset, and my neighbor hugged me. I had no idea that was what I needed, but I will never forget how it made me feel.
Sometimes, we get stuck in our routines and forget to make time for one another. We forget that intimacy is always important. When we were little, we used to be grossed out by seeing our parents kiss. As an adult, I see that has helped them stay married for over 60 years. We can’t let the little things like kissing, hugging, and holding hands slip away. When we do, we will grow apart even faster. We might think we don’t need these things, but we do! I notice that when Tony and I do those things regularly, we complain less. We are less nit-picky. This verse is a great reminder. “Above all things, have intense and unfailing love for one another, for love covers a multitude of sins [forgives and disregards the offenses of others].”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone listening to this episode. Lord, we ask you to bless all of our marriages. Lord, strengthen our love for our spouse, children, and loved ones. Lord, we ask you to give us your heart for our loved ones. Let us see them as you see them, Lord! Lord, help us to fall more in love with them. Help us not to take offense or get annoyed. Fill us with so much love for them, Lord! We love you, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I wanted to mention a retreat I am speaking at tomorrow morning. It will be on Zoom from 10-12 EST. The theme is God’s Reckless Love. If you aren’t busy tomorrow morning, what better way to start your day than learning about how much God loves you and how much He forgives you? It will be a great time. I hope you can join me. CLICK HERE for the Zoom link. I will put a link in the comments section if you watch this on YouTube. I look forward to meeting you here on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I! I pray you have a very blessed weekend!
Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I have a path. I have a direction for each and every one of My children. You will not wander in the desert. You will have My Voice and My Spirit to guide you. So fear not; I am present always.”
Topic: Watchmen Retreat God’s Reckless Love
Time: Feb 10, 2024 10:00 AM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82241775665?pwd=OU5oRzdTdG8rWC9lL0wzNzhIb2VpZz09
Meeting ID: 822 4177 5665
Passcode: 966517
Our Youth Need Prayers
1 Timothy 4:12 “Let no one look down on your youthfulness, but rather in speech, conduct, love, faith and purity, show yourself an example of those who believe.”
Today’s prayer point for our healing service prep is to pray for the youth. When I read this verse, I liked it for a couple of reasons. First, I like that it instructs our youth not to let people look down on them. We can often dismiss our youth and their contribution simply because of their age. We look at them as children and question what they could know about God or any situation. We sometimes exclude them from the conversation because we assume they don’t know as much as we do. We assume we are wiser than they are because of our years of experience. However, this is not always the case.
I also like this verse because it tells our youth to be an example of speech, conduct, love, faith, and purity. I love that it does not tell the youth to fight back or stand up to their elders. This verse does not tell them to argue and explain all the reasons why they are worthy or why they should be taken seriously. It tells them to show what they are capable of with their actions. I firmly believe that actions speak louder than words, so I love this idea.
Another thing I believe this verse is teaching our youth is humility. It shows them that they don’t have to justify their age. It is ok if people don’t see what God sees at first. It doesn’t matter what others think of them; what matters is what God thinks of them and what they think of themselves. This is hard because knowing others think you are too young can be hard. It is hard when others judge you on what they see on the outside when they don’t really know you.
I have run into this often over the years. I have always looked younger than I am. People would look at me and think I was a child, even as a young adult. People would think they knew me just by looking at me. When we were at meetings, people wouldn’t listen as much to me as they would to others because they felt I was so young. My suggestions weren’t always taken as seriously as others were. I did not yell and scream. I did exactly what this verse says. I showed them I knew what I was talking about with my actions instead of my words. Let’s take a closer look at his verse and how it tells our youth to be an example.
The verse says, “But rather in speech, conduct, love, faith, and purity, show yourself an example of those who believe.” So first, it says speech. We need to pray for our youth when it comes to their speech. Not speech, as in bad language, although I definitely need to pray for my kids to clean up their language. I think it is more important for us to pray for our kid's speech about themselves and to others. We can pray that the youth see themselves through God’s eyes. We can pray that they start to be kind to themselves. Our brains believe whatever we tell them. If we are constantly saying we are not enough, we are ugly, no one likes us, no one will ever love us, then that is what their brains will believe. If teens start changing how they talk to themselves, they will be an example to all of us, as this is not something just teens struggle with.
Also, we could pray that teens start paying attention to how they talk to others; how they talk to each other these days is awful. A common saying these days is, “Kill yourself.” They say it nonchalantly as if saying, hi, how are you? It just almost slips out of their mouth. I am sure this is a tactic of the enemy. He has made them think this is not a big deal. He has taken away the shock of this phrase so much that kids always say it and don’t even feel bad about it. Our youth are struggling and they need our prayers!
The next thing the verse says is conduct. We can definitely pray for our youth’s conduct. I would love to pray for a return of innocence to our youth. Too many of them are forced to grow up too early. I pray that kids can be kids. We can pray that they make good choices and have loved ones in their lives to help them make those good choices. We can pray for protection over our youth. We can pray their conduct and their actions don’t harm them. Suicide is on the rise in our youth, and we have to pray against this. More than 50,000 Americans died by suicide in 2023, more than any other year on record. These were not all youth, but it shows we have a real problem. We need to pray for our youth. We need to pray they do things to help themselves instead of things that harm them and those around them. We need to pray the find interests and hobbies they can join.
The verse next lists love. This is a big one with our youth. They want nothing more than to be loved and accepted, yet this world tells them they are neither. With social media, they are constantly comparing themselves to others. They have constant access to each other yet feel more alone than ever. We can pray they feel the love of God. We can pray they have a personal encounter with the Lord and never again feel alone because they know they always have the Lord with them! How great would it be if each teenager knew that no matter what friends or family they had, they were still never alone because God was always right by their side? This seems impossible, yet we know all things are possible through Jesus.
The fourth thing it says in this verse is faith. Yes, please. Lord, we pray that these youth find faith. Faith in the one true God. Faith that hope can be found. Faith that you can use all things for their good. Faith that God does not make mistakes, so they are not mistakes. Faith that people can be good. Faith that it is ok to love. Faith that not everyone will hurt them. Faith that they are good. Faith that God has a future planned for them full of hope and good things. Faith that things will be ok. Faith that they are loved and accepted for who they are. Faith that they don’t have to change who they are to be liked and accepted.
The final thing the verse talks about is purity. This is another one we really need to pray for. Lord, we pray for the purity of our youth. We pray that you protect them from the wickedness of the world. We pray that you help them see how valuable they are so they don’t give themselves away to try and gain value. Help our young people see they have so much more to offer than just their bodies. Help our young people to see the benefits of living in your kingdom far out weigh any benefits of sin. Help our young people to see that they are enough. Help them to see they are worthy. Help them to feel your love, Lord.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask you to protect our youth. We ask you to take back our youth from the grasp Satan seems to have on them. We know they are your children. Lord, protect our youth from suicide. Protect our youth from speech and conduct that will only lead them to trouble. Help them to find faith and love, Lord. That is what they are really searching for. They are trying to fill that God-sized hole they have. Help them find you, Lord! We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Today’s episode was a bit different. We are preparing for a healing service on February 18th from 3-6 at St. Jude’s in Waltham for local people. Today, we are praying for the youth, so I thought I would have you all join in. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord is, “How often would I have gathered you into my bosom, my children? Follow your elder John into my bosom. There I have consolations for you. There, I have whispers for your heart. There, I have easing of your burdens. There, I have a profound love to flood you with.”
CLICK HERE to read Jennifer's letter and see the photos.
We have all seen God working in our lives. However, we might not all be aware it is God working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences, the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience of how God has worked or is working in your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or click here. It won’t take up much of your time, and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story, and the world needs to hear them.
I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow, and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I. Have a blessed day!
Pride Is The Utmost Evil!
Jeremiah 9:23-24 “Let not the wise boast of their wisdom or the strong boast of their strength or the rich boast of their riches, but let the one who boasts boast about this: that they have the understanding to know me, that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness, justice, and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight,’ declares the Lord.”
The definition of pride, according to the Oxford Dictionary, is “a feeling of deep pleasure or satisfaction derived from one's own achievements, the achievements of those with whom one is closely associated, or from qualities or possessions that are widely admired." Do you see how it says you have a deep pleasure or satisfaction derived from one’s own achievements? We have no achievements that we have done completely on our own. Everything we have is because God is so good. We owe everything to Him.
Yet, we often try to take credit for the things that we do. We congratulate ourselves on a job well done, all the while forgetting to acknowledge the part that the Lord played in our success. God doesn’t want us to be unhappy with the things we have done; He just wants us to remember His part in all of it. When we start to take credit for everything we do, we start to think about God less and less. We put ourselves first and Him second, or maybe even further down on the list.
This can be dangerous. If we decide we want to do things on our own, God will let us. He is not about to force Himself on us. The reason things go smoothly in life is because God is working all things for our good. He is in the details. He is opening up some doors and windows, and He is closing others. You wonder why that meeting at work went so well. He was there preparing the hearts of the people in the meeting so they were ready to hear what you had to say. What if He hadn’t done that, though? What if we were truly on our own?
God is behind the scenes so much of the time. Sometimes, we are aware of what God has saved us from; however, sometimes, we have no idea the things He saved us from. Our teacher mentioned in class yesterday that she thinks she probably doesn’t praise God enough because she doesn’t know all the things He saved her from. She was talking about how joyful and praise-filled the 33 workers were when they were rescued from the mine in Chili back in 2010. They were buried 2 miles underground for 69 days. They truly knew what God had saved them from. They knew their rescue and their survival underground was not their own doing.
When we are just going about our everyday lives, we don’t realize all the things that God is doing for us, especially if nothing extraordinary is happening. If we have a disease or an illness, we might get to see the Lord working powerfully in that situation. There can be plenty of times when we can see the Lord working in our lives. However, in the good times, in the times when all seems to be working in our favor, these are the times when we can start to fall for the lies of the enemy that are in all of us. When we are killing it at work, we can start to get prideful and think that it is all because we are really great at what we do. When we are killing it as a parent, we can start to think that our children are doing so well because we are such great parents.
When things are going great, we tend to take our focus off of God and put it on ourselves. I don’t even know if we do it consciously or if it is just an unconscious thing we do. I think it is human nature, almost like our default setting. When things are bad, when we are struggling, and when we need something from God, we turn to Him and ask for help. When we receive the help we asked for, we can see it came from God, and so we find it easier to praise Him and give Him the Glory.
However, when we are in a good place, we tend to feel like we don’t need God. We feel as though we have it all under control. This is where our pride starts to rear its ugly head again. God is always in control. We always need Him in good times and in bad. It is important to stop and realize that the reason things are going so well is because God is working all things for your good. Yes, you can probably gain some success on your own, but not nearly as much success as you can have if you partner with God.
C. S. Lewis said, “According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride. Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere flea bites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind…… it is Pride which has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began.” Wow, that is quite the statement. What stood out to me about that statement was that unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that are mere flea bites in comparison. Can you imagine?
The article I found (CLICK HERE for the article) said that everyone should read the chapter called Pride in C. S. Lewis’s book “Mere Christianity.” The author of the article also said that C. S. Lewis was not stating his exaggerated view. Instead, he was summarizing the teachings of all the great Saints through the ages. Why do the great spiritual leaders, Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant alike, unite around this conviction? Because it is so clearly and solidly taught in Scripture. I will post a link for this article in the show notes so you can read how the author shows how this idea is solidly taught in scripture.
If pride is the root of all evil, what is the root of all that is good? John Chrysostom once remarked, “For just as pride is the root of all sin, so “humility is the root, mother, nurse, foundation, and bond of all virtue.” Humility is so important. Jesus is the best example to follow for humility. Andrew Murray captures it well, “Christ is the humility of God embodied in human nature; the Eternal Love humbling itself, clothing itself in the garb of meekness and gentleness, to win and serve and save us.”
The apostle Paul may well have been thinking of this very scene in the Upper Room when he urged the believers in Philippi: Have this mind among yourselves which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross (Phil. 2:5–8).
Humbling ourselves is not always easy, and we worry that if we humble ourselves, we might miss out on all the world has to offer. However, it says in Matthew 23:12, " Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.” We can be free to humble ourselves here on Earth, trusting God will exalt us. That sounds like a much better plan than to exalt ourselves and have to have God humble us. Don’t you agree?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask you to help us be humble. Show us where in our lives we need to grow more in humility. Be gentle with us, Lord. We want to learn. We want to wipe pride out of our lives once and for all. If we are not quite ready for this step Lord, we ask that you work on our hearts and you get them ready. We don’t want anything to stand in the way between you and us. We want direct, unobstructed access Lord. We love you so much! We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Just a reminder that mentoring is tonight. If you would like to join us tonight and just check it out, you can email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com, or you can reach out on Facebook and send me a message. Catherine Duggan is my Facebook profile name. CLICK HERE to register for mentoring if you already know you would like to join. I look forward to bringing you a witness tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, can you not see that I do all for you? I try to facilitate your way. Be grateful my children for all I do. The more you are grateful, the more I will pour down my blessings upon each of you."
Forgive One Another
Ephesians 4:32 “Has God graciously forgiven you? Then, graciously forgive one another in the depths of Christ's love.”
There is a healing service coming up for the Charismatic Renewal Service of Boston. The team for this healing service starts preparing two weeks in advance. The scripture verse I am using today is from that preparation. Today’s topic for the prayer team is “Dealing with unforgiveness.” I know I have talked about God’s forgiveness a lot and also how important it is that we forgive. The reason I repeat this often is because of how incredibly important it is.
It is important to know that God forgives us for all of our sins because if we don’t believe this, if we don’t know this, then we find it hard to let Him in. Instead of being able to talk freely about anything, there will be certain things we don’t talk about. We don't talk about them because we are ashamed of them. We don’t want God to know about them. We don’t think He would still like us or love us if He knew what we did. On one hand, it makes sense that we feel this way as the enemy is constantly whispering in our ears that God could never forgive that thing we did. The enemy whispers in our ears that God could never love us. He tells us we should keep that thing hidden in the dark so God and other people can never find out about it. However, on the other hand, God already knows; he has already forgiven you and will always love you no matter what you do!
It is also important for us to forgive others. This is the harder of the two. Actually, I am not sure if that is true. They can both be very difficult. The verse above says that because God has forgiven us, so we must forgive one another. How do we forgive one another, though, when those who have hurt us are not even sorry? How do we forgive them when they have already moved on and don’t give what they did to us a second thought? How do we forgive them when we are still hurting from what they did? These are all great questions.
Let me take a minute to explain what forgiveness is and what it is not. Forgiveness is acknowledging that the thing happened and that you can’t change it. It is deciding that you are no longer going to give that thing space in your brain. You aren’t going to think about it anymore. Forgiveness is turning the judgment over to the Lord. You don’t have to be the one to make sure that they pay for what they did. Hanging on to that idea will not help you move past it.
Forgiveness is not saying that what happened was okay; it wasn’t. Forgiveness does not mean forgetting. Yes, you are not thinking about it all the time, but it doesn’t mean you have to forget it ever happened or that you need to forget all you learned from it. Forgiveness also doesn’t always mean reconciliation. You can forgive someone for what they have done and still not let them back into your life. Forgiveness doesn’t mean you have to trust them ever again.
Forgiveness is not about the other person. It is about you. Forgiveness is a gift you can give yourself so that you aren’t holding onto all that anger, revenge, hate, and all the other emotions that go along with it. Unforgiveness eats you on the inside. Yet, the person you are not forgiving moves on with their life. Most likely, the thing you are not forgiving is not causing them any sleepless nights. They hurt you, and then they just moved on. Sometimes they don’t even know that they hurt you.
Now that we talked a bit about what forgiveness is and what forgiveness is not, we can go back to the verse above. The verse says, “Has God graciously forgiven you? Then, graciously forgive one another in the depths of Christ's love.” One thing we can do to help us begin to forgive is to accept the forgiveness that God has graciously given to us. When we realize all that God has forgiven us for, it makes it a bit easier to forgive others. A person who cannot forgive has forgotten how great a debt God has forgiven them. I heard this quote once, and it really hit me. Romans 3:23 says, “ Since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” We have all sinned, and if we want God to forgive us for our sins, we need to forgive others. It is that simple. It’s not that easy, but it is that simple.
Another thing we can do is ask God to help us forgive. We can’t forgive anyone on our own. We can just make a choice to forgive and then allow God to come in and do the hard work of changing our hearts. That reminds me of something I forgot to mention earlier. Forgiveness is NOT a feeling. Forgiveness IS a choice. It is totally possible for you to choose to forgive someone and yet not feel any differently at first. This is because, as I mentioned, God is the one who changes our hearts, and He doesn’t always do that instantly. Sometimes it takes time to feel the forgiveness. That is ok. We don’t have to feel it. We just have to decide to do it, and then God will help us with the rest.
I get so passionate about helping people see how important forgiveness is because I know that God is going to forgive us to the same extent that we forgive others. It says so right in the Our Father prayer. “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” We are literally asking God to forgive us in the same way we forgive others. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be held to my own standard. We are human, and forgiveness can be really hard for us. However, when we are talking about our eternal salvation, don’t you think it is worth trying to forgive others? Whatever they did has affected so much of your life here on Earth. Do you really want them to affect your eternal life as well?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode this morning. Lord, we want to forgive; please help us. Or, maybe we don’t yet want to forgive, but we want to want to forgive; please help us! Lord, we understand how important forgiveness is, and yet it is so hard. We give you permission to work inside our hearts to get us ready to forgive. We ask you to soften our hearts and help us to see people through your eyes instead of our own. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Remember, tomorrow night at 8 is mentoring. If you would like to join, click here or go to my website, walkboldlywithjesus.com. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Rest easy, my children; I am with you. When you place your confidence and trust in me, you will be at a great and beautiful peace.”
Friendship With God
Proverbs 27:9: “Sweet friendships refresh the soul and awaken our hearts with joy, for good friends are like the anointing oil that yields the fragrant incense of God’s presence.”
I heard this verse last night at my prayer group meeting. The leader was talking about different types of friendships. The first one was an association. You know people through work or your neighbors. You might wave to them or stop and talk to them. Your friendship with these people is not usually as deep. The second is association plus loyalty. These are people you would be willing to self-sacrifice for. The friends, you would offer to pick something up for them at the store or bring the soup when they are sick. You spend more time with them, and your friendship is probably deeper than that of mere association. You have a deeper level of connection. The third is association plus loyalty plus affection. This is often found in family love. It can also be found in other places. This is where you would have the deepest relationships because there is not only loyalty but also affection.
I also looked online and found an article titled Aristotle On the 3 Types of Friendship (and How Each Enriches Life) that explained Aristotle also has three “species” of friendship. (Click Here for the article) These are:
- The friendship of utility. These friendships are based on what someone can do for you or what you can do for another person. It might be that you put in a good word for someone, and they buy you a gift in return. Such relationships have little to do with character and can end as soon as any possible use for you or the other person is removed from the equation.
- The friendship of pleasure. These are friendships based on the enjoyment of a shared activity or the pursuit of fleeting pleasures and emotions. This might be someone you go for drinks with or join a particular hobby with and is a common level of association among the young, so Aristotle declared. This type of relationship can again end quickly, dependent as it is on people’s ever-changing likes and dislikes.
- The friendship of virtue. These are the people you like for themselves, who typically influence you positively and push you to be a better person. This kind of relationship, based as it is on the character of two self-sufficient equals, is a lot more stable than the previous two categories.
Friendships are important. Especially this last type of friendship. Aristotle says these are the people who typically influence you positively and push you to be a better person. This is why it is important to have friends who are striving to be holy. Friends who are striving to please God and who seek a close and intimate relationship with God. If you surround yourself with people who are moving in the same direction you are, it is so much easier to get to where you are going. You will see what others are doing to move ahead, and you can do the same.
Our friends can help make us or break us. If all of our friendships fall into the utility category, then our friends probably aren’t helping us get to where we want to be. If you surround yourself with people who just want something from you or you want something from them, then as soon as they get what they want, they will leave, and you will need to find new friends, or you will be left alone. If all your friends are in the pleasure category, then you may also lose them if your hobbies change, if your likes change. Maybe you always go out drinking with the same group of people, but then you give up alcohol. Do you still stay friends with this group of people? What if you have a group of ladies that you always knit with, and then you stop knitting? This has happened to me recently. I made several friends when I joined Toastmasters, a public speaking club. I haven’t been attending the meetings lately, so I have essentially lost those friends.
You are likely to do what your friends do. This is why I said if your friends are moving in the same direction as you, it will be easier to get there. It is hard to go against the grain. If your friends are all going out several nights a week to party, it will be hard for you to stay home and do what you want to do. Many of us wouldn’t want to miss out on the fun. If your friends are all going to brunch on Sunday morning at the same time you would normally be at Mass, you might be more likely to miss Mass because your friends are all going out. However, if your friends are all going to mass on Sunday morning, you will be less likely to skip because you will want to see them. If your friends are all joining a Bible Study, you will be likely to join, too. Do you see how who you are friends with really matters?
The other important thing the leader of the prayer group wanted us to know is that God wants to be our friend. Crazy, right?! Why would God want to be our friend? Did you know God wanted to be your friend? She cited many people in the Bible who were God’s friends. First, in St. James 2:23, it says, “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness”; and he was called the friend of God.” Next, in Exodus 33:12, “Moses said to the Lord, “See, you are telling me: Lead this people. But you have not let me know whom you will send with me. Yet you have said: You are my intimate friend; You have found favor with me.” Moses is talking with God and asking for what he needs. You can dialog with the Lord too! Finally, in Acts 13:22 it talks about David. “And when he had removed him, he raised up David to be their king; of whom he testified and said, ‘I have found in David the son of Jesse a man after my heart, who will do all my will.’”
God was friends with these men, and He wants to be friends with you too! One important thing to know about these men is that they were not perfect; they were sinners, just as we all are. They did not always do the right thing, yet God wanted to be friends with them. He wants to be friends with you as well. Yes, He knows all the things you have done, and He wants to be friends anyway. Are you willing to be friends with God? What does this even mean?
It means you treat God like He is your friend. How do you act around your friends? What do you do with your friends? What kind of friendship do you have with the Lord right now? I am going to guess it is the same for most of us. We probably have a friendship of utility. We talk with God mostly when we need something. We need prayers for ourselves and others, so we bring that to God and ask Him for help. We might try to do things for Him so that we feel we are more likely to get our prayers answered. It is all very transactional. I need something from you; let me try to do something for you.
If we want to move past this, we could start to spend time with God when we are not asking Him for something. We could just spend time talking with Him. This doesn’t have to be all day, every day. It could just be for your car ride to work, or the time you are in the shower, or getting ready for work. It could be while you do the dishes or the laundry. It could be whenever you want. Just spend that time telling the Lord about your day the same way you would if you were talking on the phone to a good friend. Also, you can’t have a solid friendship if you are always the only person talking. If you want to have a friendship with God, you also need to be quiet and listen to what He has to say to you. Quiet time can be hard because we tend to feel like we should be doing something or saying something. However, I assure you, it is totally worth it. God is speaking to each of us; often, we just can’t hear it because we aren’t taking the time to listen. If you take the time to listen, your friendship with the Lord will grow.
God wants this friendship; he is already there waiting for it. It is not as if it will be difficult to get His attention or difficult to get Him to participate. He is already in it. He has always been in this friendship. He has always been right there waiting to interact in a deeply personal way with you. He is just waiting for you to be ready. The first step is just so simple. Just say something like, “Hey God, it’s me,” and then go on to say whatever you like. God will guide you in this friendship. He just wants your desire and your yes. He will do the rest.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode. Lord, thank you so much for desiring a friendship with each of us. Thank you for always being there to listen to us. We are sorry we don’t spend more time listening to you. We are sorry if our friendship is one-sided. Please show us how to be better friends with you. Please increase the desire within us to be friends with you. Lord, this concept may be new to many of us; please help us understand what you are wanting from us. Show us how we can be friends. Show us where we can spend more time with you. Guide us, Lord. We love you, and we want to spend more time with you. We want to listen to all you want to say to us. Please help us! We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you would like to spend more time with the Lord but don’t have any idea how you would fit one more thing into your already busy days, go to my website, walkboldlywithjesus.com, or CLICK HERE and join my mailing list. I will send you a free audio training on how to invite Jesus into the things you are already doing. I look forward to seeing you here again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed weekend!
Today’s word from the Lord is a follow-up to yesterday’s vision. If you haven’t heard that one, you can listen to that episode, or you can find it on my Facebook page. “The Lord gave me a sense that sometimes that curtain we are trying to push is a stubbornness. We want our lives to go the way we would like them to go, and trying to push the curtain back to allow Jesus in is very difficult. It's a constant battle, and he is more or less saying to me in this passage, "Don't be stubborn and hard-hearted like the Pharisees were. They wouldn't believe it. They wouldn't reply to me. They knew that healing and my grace and forgiveness were what everybody needed. But they wanted things the way they were. They wanted their life the way they were comfortable." I get a sense that the Lord is saying just give me that part of you that’s holding onto, what you want in life that's comfortable, and I will open that curtain wide, and you will see incredible healing that will come from that, not just for you but for all those in your life that you touch.”
Forgiveness Is Hard But Necessary
Matthew 6:15: “But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”
I know a lot of people that are holding on to un-forgiveness. I get it. Forgiving people is hard! It is especially hard if they did something unspeakable to you, and they aren’t sorry and are not even asking for forgiveness. Here is the thing I have learned about forgiveness, though: it is not about them; it is about you. You are not forgiving them so that they feel better. You are forgiving them so that you feel better. You’re not forgiving them because they deserve it or because it is not bothering you anymore. You are forgiving them because each day that you refuse to forgive and hold onto that resentment, it eats you up inside. I heard a saying once that helped me to visualize and understand this so much better. “Un-forgiveness is like drinking poison every day and expecting the other person to die.” When you forgive someone, you are not saying that what they did was okay. It was not. What you are doing when you forgive someone is acknowledging that the event happened, that it is in the past and you are no longer going to let it have power over your emotions. You are moving on from it. Forgiveness is about acknowledging what happened, learning what you can from it, and moving forward so you can live your life in the present.
I know this is not an easy thing to do. I know that it takes work and it takes time. It is such an important thing to do, though. I remember the moment I learned that God forgives us as we forgive others. I was sitting in a bible study, and someone mentioned it rather nonchalantly. I was like, “What, hold the phone. What did you just say?” If I don’t forgive others, God won’t forgive me. Is that what you are saying? Matthew 6:15 says, “But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” The reason they said it as if everyone knew it was because any Catholic, or any person who has said the Our Father prayer, has said that exact statement. Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, they will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day, our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us…There it is, as plain as day. And yet, that thought had never occurred to me. I have said the Our Father almost every Sunday for my entire life. I have said that prayer thousands of times over the course of my life. How is it that I never really understood that line? I am writing this because I thought, what if that thought had never occurred to you either?
I don’t know about you, but I definitely need God’s forgiveness. I would love God to be very forgiving as I am human, and so I make all kinds of mistakes. So, if I need God to be very forgiving, then I must be forgiving to others. “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive others…” How do I forgive others? Am I very forgiving? Do I keep grudges? Am I too hard for people who have wronged me? We have all heard the saying, “Do unto others as you want them to do unto you.” But I feel like this brings it to a whole new level. Do unto others as you want God to do unto you. Wow, learning that was very powerful for me.
I set out to learn how to forgive better. If that was the standard I was going to be held up to, I had some work to do. As far as I can remember, I was not really one to hold grudges, at least not for long. However, I would get angry often, and sometimes it was for things that were not really a big deal. I am trying to think about what I did to learn to forgive more easily. I honestly am not sure. For me, I think that just knowing that God was going to hold me to whatever standards I had was enough of a push for me to start working on forgiveness. I prayed that God would help me with forgiveness. I went to confession and confessed when I felt I was not doing well with forgiving. There are lots of resources out there to help people learn to forgive better. I started looking for them and reading them. Forgiveness is something that most people, if not all, struggle with. No one wants to be hurt, and when someone hurts us, we want them to suffer like we suffered. We do not want to forgive them, and we do not want to let go of that pain because we feel like if we let go of the pain and anger, then we are saying that it either didn’t happen or that we are somehow ok with it happening. This is not what you are saying when you forgive. You are saying, yes, it happened; yes, it was awful, and no, it was not ok; and yes, I am going to stop giving it power over me. I am going to stop spending time thinking about the person who did it. I am going to forgive that person and move forward.
Forgiving also doesn’t mean forgetting. You do not have to forget what this person did. You should remember all that you learned from this situation. You also don’t have to be reconciled with this person to forgive. You can forgive someone, wish them no ill will, and still not want to be around them. Forgiveness is about you feeling better, not about making them feel better. I know this topic is sensitive, as many people reading this may have deep wounds, and forgiveness may feel far from reach. I heard a priest address this one time. There was a woman who was so badly hurt by someone that she could not forgive them. The priest asked her if she wanted to forgive the person. She said no. He asked her if she wanted to want to forgive that person, and she said yes. He said, just start there. If you are struggling to forgive someone and it seems like forgiveness is impossible, then just work on wanting to want to forgive them. Pray to God and ask him for the grace to want to want to forgive that person. Once you are able to want to forgive them, work on wanting to forgive, and then once you want to forgive, you can work on forgiving. It may seem impossible, but forgiveness is possible. The consequences for not forgiving seem too steep not to at least try.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to forgive others, but it is really hard at times. Please help us. Please help us understand what forgiveness is and what it is not. Please help us to turn it over to you and not hold onto that anger, hate, and resentment. Lord, put on our hearts anyone we need to forgive, and then we ask for the strength to forgive them. Show us how, Lord. We love you, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord is in the form of a vision someone had at our Prayer Group. I wasn’t going to use it, but I think it is important to demonstrate the various ways God might talk with you. "I had an image of trying to open a bifold curtain, and it's heavy. You know, the separators between rooms where they come together. It was really heavy, and I was really trying and having trouble pushing. I sensed the Lord saying to each of us there right now he would like us to take a few minutes and listen in the depths of our hearts because we each have a curtain right now. It's very heavy for us, and we are trying to push it away, but he has something he wants to say to us about it. I don't know what it is, but he wants us to listen and to know, and he will help us with that curtain. He will give us all the strength we need to push it aside.”
Today, I would like to witness to you about my Encounter Ministries project. If you have been listening for a while, you know I am in a two-year program with the Encounter School of Ministry. Year 2 students need to complete a ministry group project before they can graduate. I travel to class each week with 4 other ladies from my prayer group, so we thought it would be best to do our project together since we are always together anyway. We also had another student from class join us who lives close to where we met.
When we first got together to discuss what we wanted to do, we all had the same thing on our hearts. We wanted to do something to help teenagers. We had several people in our prayer group who were personally touched by teen suicides last summer. I think there were 6 people in a two-week period. We also have been getting a lot of words of prophecy at prayer group over the last year or two that are urging us to pray for the children of the world. With these two things combined, we knew we needed to do something to help teenagers have a renewal of their minds. We knew we needed to come up with some way to help them see how loved they are by the Lord.
This world is a rough place, and it is even harder for teens. With social media today, their bullies have easy access to them 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It used to be we might be bullied on the bus, at school, or right after school. However, if they wanted to call us up and bully us, they needed to go through our parents, and they weren’t likely to do that. Now, they can call, text, or send a message on social media any time of day.
Then they also have to deal with the need to compare themselves with everyone they see on social media. Social media portrays the best of the best. Very few people put the real stuff on social media. They take 20 photos and post the best one. They act like they just rolled out of bed and snapped a photo when, in reality, that was probably the 10th photo, and it had a filter to put makeup on and get the lighting correct. No one looks unhappy, and everyone’s life is perfect. I know people who seem to be knocking their lives out of the ballpark on social, and then when I am talking to them, they are sad, lonely, and really struggling.
I get it. No one wants to air their dirty laundry on social media for the world to see. However, making it seem like all is perfect, when it is the opposite, really messes with people's perception of how the world should be. Imagine if you are a teen and everyone in your social media feed, everyone in your life seems so happy all the time. How do you reconcile that with your life? How does it make you feel to know that your life is not perfect? You are not happy all the time. You don’t roll out of bed looking like a model. You don’t have it all figured out. Then you start to think, what is wrong with me? Why is everyone else so happy, and I am so messed up?
I know adults who struggle with comparison on social media. They see everyone posting about their kids, their spouses, their jobs, and their vacations, and they wonder why they don’t have those things. They wonder why they always feel like they are 5 steps behind and the rest of the world seems to have life all figured out. If it affects adults, imagine how much more it affects teens.
So, we knew we had to do something. We just weren’t sure what. We prayed about it and talked about it, and we decided to come up with a program to talk about their identity in Christ. We wanted to answer this question for them. Who does God say that I am? We talked with the confirmation formation team, and they were happy to have us come in and talk with the confirmation candidates and their sponsors. It all worked out pretty perfectly, actually. They were looking for a candidate/sponsor event, and we were looking for teens to present to.
We typed up a proposal for our teacher of how we wanted to run the event. We decided we would first let the kids know how ridiculously loved by God they are. Then we would talk about the lies that we all come to believe about ourselves. Lies like I am not a good mom. I am a loser. I am ugly. No one likes me. No one understands me. I can’t do anything right. I am not a good Catholic. God doesn’t love me. God will never forgive me. We all tell ourselves lies like this, and we thought it was important to show the kids that these are not true. The world doesn’t get to tell us the truth about who we are. Our identity comes from Christ.
Next, we decided we would have the students and their sponsors write these lies down on paper and nail them to the cross. We wanted them to know they don’t have to carry these lies with them. They can hand them over to Jesus, and then they can replace these lies with the truth of who God says they are. After they do this, we talk about the truth of their identity. We talk about where their true identity comes from and how they can learn more about their true identity. We go on to teach the teens and their sponsors how to listen to the voice of the Lord. We cover the various ways we might hear the Lord talking to us. In our original plan for the project, we would then move on to having the students ask the Lord to share with them what truths he wanted to replace the lies with.
However, when we turned our proposal into our teacher, he felt we should add an element of prophecy to the evening. At first, we weren’t sure how this would go over. We thought the confirmation formation team leaders, the teens, and their sponsors would all be uncomfortable with this. Sometimes people can just hear the word prophecy and get very uncomfortable. We weren’t sure how it would go over, but we really wanted to graduate from this program, so if our teacher said we needed to add prophecy, then we needed to add prophecy. I don’t think we really saw the wisdom in it at the time. I think we were doing it because we had to, but we were unsure how it would turn out.
Now that we have done the project once, we can see the wisdom in it. I think what our teacher saw, which we didn’t necessarily see at the time, was that words alone don’t change hearts. He knew the teens needed a personal encounter with the Lord. He knew they needed to hear directly from the Lord how much He loved them. We can teach them all day long, but until they have that personal encounter, it is still just words.
We decided that after we explained what prophecy was, we would form three teams of two, and the six of us running the project would speak words of prophecy over each student. We started with a moment of silence so we could ask the Lord what He wanted to say to each student, and then we spoke His words out loud to the student. We asked the sponsor to come up and stand behind the student to witness the words the Lord wanted to speak over their candidate. After we spoke the words of prophecy over them, we asked them to go back to their seat and reflect on what they had just heard. We asked them to write down anything that really spoke to them or touched their heart. The confirmation formation team had printed off a paper that asked the sponsor and their candidate to write down he thing that touched them the most about what was said.
After this, we moved on to talking about declarations and how important it is to take the truths they just learned about themselves and turn them into declarations that they can say every day. We gave them some examples of declarations of who God says they are and the Bible scriptures to go along with them. We had the sponsor and the candidate pick up to five declarations that would help them live into their true identity and then share it with one another. We thought declaring them out loud to their sponsor would help make an impact, and also having the sponsors say them to their candidates could be powerful.
However, after doing this event for the first time, we realized that we didn’t go into enough detail on why declarations are so important. We also think that although the examples we gave them were straight out of the Bible, we might need to write them in a way they can relate to more. From the feedback, we learned they didn’t really resonate with them like we thought they would. We will revamp this part for our next presentation.
We closed by recapping all we had gone over that night and reminding them of the key things to remember. We then played a song that went very well with digging all the roots of our lies up and replacing them with the truth. The song is called Look What You’ve Done To Me by Tasha Layton. That is one thing I didn’t mention earlier. All throughout the night, we had current, upbeat songs that went along with the various sections of the talk. We figured instead of just hearing our voices all night; they could hear the voices of some younger people singing about the things we were talking about. The last thing we did was ask for feedback on the evening and to see if anyone would be willing to tell us what they liked or didn’t like about the night. We had 13 students and their sponsors there that night.
The feedback we got was that they loved the music. They loved the songs that we had chosen and the message each song had. What they liked the most, though, was the part about the words of the prophecy. They really liked getting to come up and hear what the Lord wanted to say to them. Even the sponsors loved being able to hear the Lord say such great things about their candidate. One woman said she knew all those things to be true about her niece, but she knew her niece didn’t know they were true. So, it was nice to get to hear someone else tell her niece such nice things. Then someone else said they loved nailing the lies to the cross. The paper they used to write the lies on was red, and this candidate said it felt great to nail them to the cross. She said it felt like we were giving Satan a piece of his own medicine.
God was in every step of this project. He was there from the conception of the idea through the planning process, and we presented it all throughout the night. The whole time we were planning it, God kept reassuring us that it would touch hearts, and we believe it did. Not just the teens’ hearts but those of the sponsors as well. We are so honored that the Lord chose us for this project. We are honored that he chose us to take this class. We are honored that He put the six of us together and put this project in our hearts. We all listened to each other and worked well together to create an amazing event. Thank you, Lord, we love you! Thank you for all the hearts you intend to touch with this presentation. Thank you for showing up and speaking to the candidates through us.
What If We Just Met People With Love And Acceptance?
1 Corinthians 12:3 “Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking by the Spirit of God ever says “Let Jesus be cursed!” and no one can say “Jesus is Lord” except by the Holy Spirit."
I think this is a great verse because I think sometimes we can get too caught up in things that don’t matter. We can get caught up in the religion of it all and forget about the person. We can see someone who is of a different Christian denomination, and we don’t want to talk to them. We are cautious and skeptical of being friends with them because they don’t believe the same things we believe. However, if they are Christian, then they believe in the same God, the same Jesus, and the same Holy Spirit.
When Jesus walked the world, He did not just hang out with those who were similar to Him. He hung out with sinners, tax collectors, prostitutes, and anyone who wanted to hang out with Him. He came to save the lost, not the righteous. In Luke 5:31-32, “Jesus answered them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” We have to have a renewal of our minds if we want to be more Christ-like. We need to think more like He did and less like the world does.
The world tells us that we need to get our act together before we can go to Christ. We have to change our ways. We need to stop sinning. We need to be perfect, and then we can go to Christ. This is not the case. Christ wants us to come to Him now, just as we are. Yes, He wants us to repent, but we don’t have to do that before we come back to Him. Repentance is only possible through Him. Philippians 4:23 says, “I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me.” Jesus died on the cross for us while we were still sinners. He doesn’t need our perfection. He doesn’t need us to have it all figured out. He just wants us to come to Him with an open heart, and He will do the rest.
According to Matthew 22:37-40, the two greatest commandments are, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.” I think we put all of our attention on the first one of these and forget about the second one. However, it says all the laws and the prophets depend on these two commandments, not just the first one. We need to figure out how to see people the way Jesus saw people. If we want to love our neighbors, we need to figure out how to accept people for who they are. Jesus did not put conditions on his friendships. He did not say you could come to dinner with me if you promised to change the way you were behaving. He invited them to dinner and treated them with love and respect. He showed them the love of the Father, and they couldn’t help but change after an encounter like that. The love of our heavenly Father is more powerful than anything else. If we can give people an encounter with His love, He will do all the work.
What people are desperate for right now, maybe always, is acceptance. Jesus offered that. He accepted all those He met, even if they didn’t believe as He did. He loved them and accepted them. I think sometimes we think it is our job to correct people when they are living in a way that we don’t believe in or that is contrary to the way Jesus taught us to live. Jesus laid down some pretty hard truths while he walked the earth. It wasn’t as if He was a pushover who said whatever the people wanted to hear. He said some things that were so hard for people to hear that a lot of His followers left after He gave certain teachings, yet He still gave them. However, when He was dealing with people one-on-one, He loved and accepted them as they were. This is what changed people the most. When you feel loved and accepted, you want more love. When you have a personal encounter with the love of the Father, you realize it is like nothing you have ever felt before, and you would do anything to feel it again. To have that love surrounding you.
What if we could do this? What if we could be friends with those who are not like us? What if we could see people as the Lord sees people, as Jesus saw people? What if we saw people for who they are and not what they do? What if we started to look at each person we see as a beloved child of God? Would that change the way we interacted with them? What if we took a moment to think about how much we love our children, our nieces and nephews, or our friend’s kids and then realized God loves this person even more than that?
We don’t just love our kids when they are perfect; we love them no matter what they have done or how awful they have been. They are our children, and we still love them. The same is true for God. He loves His children no matter what they have done. So, shouldn’t we do the same? I think a lot of people are turning away from the Catholic Church and other Christian Churches as well because we are leading with all the things they are doing instead of loving them for who they are and accepting them for who they are. Love and acceptance are what people are craving, and it is what Jesus was offering. We are human, we can’t offer them the love and acceptance that He did, but we can try. We can offer respect. We can offer our time. We can offer our friendship.
We had a speaker in class last night, and he said he is friends with a witch. When he tells people that, they usually freak out, they ask if he is worried she will do something to him. He is not afraid of that, though, because he is completely secure in his oneness with Jesus. He knows that there is nothing on the outside of him that is stronger than that which is inside of him. 1 John 4:4 says, “Little children, you are of God, and have overcome them; for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.” We all have the Holy Spirit living inside of us. We don't have to be afraid of anything in this world because the Holy Spirit living inside of us is stronger than anything in this world.
The witch did try to do certain things when she first met him. However, he did not judge, and he did not react harshly. He calmly acted in the authority that He has because of the Holy Spirit. She had never known someone who was so knowledgeable and also so accepting of who she was. When she told him she was a witch, he told her that was a label from a world he was not a part of, and that was not how he saw her. Because he could be friends with her and accept her for who she is, they have been friends for 8 years now. She has come a long way, and parts of her are in the kingdom of God, and parts of her are still stuck in the other world. It is a process, and he is just loving her on her journey. Imagine what the world would be like if we led with love. If we didn’t care so much about all the division and we looked for unity. What if we looked for what we had in common instead of how we are different? What if we were happy for our friends and family who have a relationship with God or with Jesus, even if it doesn’t look like ours? What if we stopped caring if they went to the same church as we did and were just happy that they knew the same God that we did? How would our life change? How would our relationships change? How would the world change?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you, and we want to be more Christ-like. Please help us! We want to see others as you do; please open our eyes and allow us to see others as you do. Please help us to show your love and acceptance to all those we meet. Please place on our hearts where we might have good intentions and yet be getting it wrong. Please convict us, Lord, of how we can be more like you. We love you, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Tonight’s topic for mentoring is God’s Forgiveness, and I hope you can join me! If you would like to try it out before joining, send me a message at Catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com, and I will send you a Zoom link to join in tonight. I look forward to meeting you here tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s word from the Lord is, “I know you in and out, but I love you just the same, my children. I love you, my children. I keep telling you that. It is because I do love you that I say it to you each and every day. Open your ears more fully, and you will hear me. You will hear my whispers. You will hear everything I wish for you to know. I speak to you with hope. I speak to you with tender love. I speak all that you need to know and that you need to learn. Just open more fully to me.”
Be Specific In Your Prayers
Colossians 4:2-4: “Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains. Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should.”
This year I decided I was going to focus on one scripture verse a week during my morning prayer time. I asked my friends on Facebook to give me their favorite scriptures, and during the week that I focused on the scripture they gave me, I would pray for them in a special way. I was reviewing the verses I received this morning, and the one I chose for this week is John 1:5: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” I thought this would be a great verse for an episode, as I love reminding people that the enemy wants to keep us in the dark. However, if we bring his lies and tactics into the light, we see him for who he really is. I truly believe there is no darkness too dark for the light of Christ to break into. All we need to do is invite the light into the darkness. While I was thinking about this verse, I looked it up and found out I already did an episode on it. It was episode #568, titled “The Darkness Will Not Overtake You!”
After realizing that I had already used this verse, I moved on to the next verse someone gave me, which is the verse above. My friend Lela gave me this verse, which I think is perfect as she was such a great friend when we lived in England. She and her husband were some of the first people we met, and we got along right away. We hung out a lot on Friday nights as we had kids similar in age. We even went on vacations together. It was great! This verse talks about being thankful, and I am so very thankful for their friendship.
The verse above begins by saying, “Devote yourself to prayer, being watchful and thankful.” These three things are so important. Prayer is as simple as talking to God. You can do it formally, as in scripted prayers like the Our Father, or you can do it informally like you are having a conversation with your best friend. It doesn’t matter how you pray; it matters that you pray. That time you spend with the Lord is important. Whether it is 5 minutes or 5 hours, it doesn’t matter. Just spend time with Him.
After it says to devote yourself to prayer, it says to be watchful. I wasn’t sure what this meant, and I didn’t want to lead you astray, so I looked it up. I am glad I did, as this is something I talked about a few minutes ago, and yet it didn’t even occur to me when thinking about being watchful. We need to be watchful of the enemy. The devil is constantly trying to steal, kill, and destroy us. He doesn’t make a full-on frontal attack, though. He comes at us from all sides, and his attacks are usually masked with lies or with temptation. He temps us with things He knows we want, and he lies to us about things he knows we already questioning. In Matthew 26:41 it says, “Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” This is us. Our spirit is willing, but our flesh is weak. We fall for the enemy’s tricks more easily if we are not on the lookout for them.
Lastly, the first line says to be thankful. You would think this one would be easy. It isn’t. We often forget to be thankful when things are going well. When things are tough, we ask God to come in and fix them. Then, when He does, we often forget to say Thank You. Gratitude is something that can help us in many ways. If we have an attitude of gratitude, then we are more focused on the positive. We are looking for things that we can be grateful for, and so we naturally notice more good than bad. Our focus is important. Are we looking for all that is going wrong, or are we looking for all that is going right? What are three things you have to be thankful for this morning? I start off each day, well, most days, by writing 5 things I am grateful for. I tried to make them as specific as I could. For instance, instead of saying I am thankful for my boys, I write down I am thankful Sam made it home safely in the snow, I am thankful for the conversation I had with Ryan, I am thankful Noah got to see his friend he hasn’t seen in over a year. Do you see how specific I get? Now it’s your turn.
I didn’t want to just stop with this first verse, as I think the next two verses are important as well. They say, “And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains. Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should.” This is important because it shows us something important to pray for that might now have occurred to us. Did you ever think of praying for God to open a door for you to proclaim the mystery of Christ? It’s interesting to me the things others pray for that didn’t even occur to me. In this verse, St. Paul is in prison for proclaiming the Word of God, and yet He is asking for others to ask the Lord to open a door for him to keep proclaiming the Word of the Lord. I never thought of praying for that before. I do want to proclaim the Word of God. I want to help the whole world hear about God’s love and forgiveness. Yet, I never thought to pray specifically for God to open a door for that message.
This is why, when I read that part of the verse this morning, I wanted to share it with you. I wanted each one of you to know that it is possible to pray for the exact thing you want. I learned this about praying for our children as well. Yes, it is important to pray for our children, but are we praying specifically for what we would like? I read a book called “The Power of a Praying Parent.” It is a book full of specific prayers for our children. There are many versions. The other one I read was called “The Power of a Praying Wife.” These books taught me the importance of being specific in my prayers. They taught me to pray for all the things I want and not just leave them to chance or assume God knows what I want. He does know, but He also likes it when we ask.
You can pray for your children to get a good teacher, you can pray for them to have good, Godly friends, and you can pray for their future spouse or their future careers. These things may seem so obvious to you, and yet I never really thought of it before. Tony and I sat down last January, and we thought about where we wanted the kids to be by the end of the year. We thought about what things were important to us, not for the next 10 years, but what we would like to see from the boys in this one year, and then we wrote a specific prayer for those things. I am sad to say we didn’t continue to say it together for very long, but even writing it and praying it together for those few days/weeks made a huge difference. I think almost every single one of the things we prayed for came true.
We often say I guess all we can do is pray. When we say this, we are taking for granted how powerful prayer is. We are limiting it and treating it like a last resort. Our prayers are powerful. More powerful than we will ever know. I know I told this story before, but I will tell it again since it shows how powerful our prayers are. There was a man jogging by an ambulance, and a woman was being taken out of her house. He wanted to help but wasn’t a medical professional, so he kept jogging but decided he would say one Hail Mary prayer while continuing to jog. A few weeks later, he happened to be jogging by the same house, and the woman was outside. She called him, and when they talked, she told him that he had saved her life. She explained when she got to the hospital she saw the face of Jesus. He told her that she was going to die but that the prayer of this man, whose face Jesus had on the palm of His hand, had saved her. It was the face of the man who jogged by her. If one Hail Mary can save this woman’s life, think of all the amazing things that can happen when you dare to ask specifically for what you want. “Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful.”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask you to help us remember to pray and to be watchful. Lord, help us be grateful for all the big and small things you have done for us. Lord, help us learn how to pray more specifically for what we need or even what we want. We know you love us and want to give us even more than we desire. We ask that you help keep our hearts pure and only ask for good things. We love you, Lord, and we ask all this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, if you would like to sign up for mentoring, you can go to my website, walkboldlywithjesus.com, or you can click here. We meet on Tuesday nights on Zoom at 8 PM EST. If you are local and would be interested in an in-person mentoring group, please reach out and let me know. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord is: “My children, it is my Spirit of hope, love, and joy that is falling upon you. Let it sprinkle everyone that you meet. I am your God be not afraid to spread my joy. Be not afraid to spread my hope. It is all that I give that is worthy. Be aware that you will meet difficulties but I am always there with you. Take my hand, Take hold of it. I will not let you go. I am all that you need to succeed, for I am your God.”
God’s Way Is Perfect
Psalm 18:30 “This God—his way is perfect; the promise of the Lord proves true; he is a shield for all those who take refuge in him.”
I love this verse because it shows us the goodness of God. However, some of us may argue with the first line. “This God —his way is perfect. His ways might not seem perfect if we know someone who is struggling right now. His ways might not seem perfect if we know someone who is sick and whose prognosis looks dire. His ways might not seem perfect if you have lost a child, a spouse, or a family member way too young. My son’s girlfriend said she could not believe in a God who lets little children get cancer. Honestly, I get that. I don’t know what to say to her about that.
I do know that the Bible is the Word of God and that it is true. When the Bible says that God’s way is perfect, then I know it is true. The reason it doesn’t seem like it is true a lot of the time is because we can’t see all that God can see. We think God took a job away from us, but really, He was preparing us and freeing us up for a better job. We think God is responsible for our son getting kicked out of school, but really he is removing him from a bad situation.
It is also important to remember that in many circumstances, God did not cause the bad thing to happen. God did not give the children cancer. God did not give your loved one the thing that is causing their death. God did not cause you to lose your job. God did not cause you to fail that class or lose that friend. God does not need to make bad things happen to us. We are very good at doing that to ourselves. God does, however, take the bad things that we get ourselves into and use them for our good.
For instance, He may not have given you the cancer, but He can use it to make you stronger. He may not have taken your job away from you, but He might have allowed that door to close so you could walk through a better door. This happened with my husband Tony. He was in the Air Force, and for two years straight, he applied to every federal job he could find. It wasn’t that he didn’t like the Air Force; he just wanted to be a civilian and not have to move around so much. He really wanted to be a criminal investigator. However, he could not get hired as a civilian because there were so many others applying who had veterans' preferences. He would have had this if he had gotten out of the Air Force and then applied for these jobs. At the time, we had 2 small children, and I was pregnant with our third. there was no way he was going to quit one job before he had another job. How would we pay our bills? What would we do for medical insurance? Tony decided to stop applying and just stay in the Air Force. Our next assignment was to Germany.
We were only in Germany for a little over a year when Tony found out he needed to separate from the Air Force. They had too many majors in his career field. Tony was devastated. He had come to terms with staying in the Air Force and retiring after 20 years of service. Now, at 11 years of service, they are telling him he has to separate. This was devastating to him. However, He was able to pick up a civilian job that was right up his alley. It was actually the perfect job for him, and it was a promotion from where he was in the military rank-wise. We were able to rent a really nice house in England, and everything work-wise was great.
God knew what Tony wanted. He knew what would ultimately make him happy. He helped him get to where he wanted to be. He is not a criminal investigator, but he does have a civilian job that he really likes. Sometimes, oftentimes, God’s plan doesn’t look like we would like it to. Tony wanted a transition to civil service that was full of assurances and security. This is not what it looked like. He was let go with 4 months notice. They gave him 4 months to find another job. They also said he could keep medical insurance for up to either 6 months or a year. So, even though it didn’t look like Tony wanted it to, it did provide him with some security.
Did something similar happen in your life? Were you looking/searching for something, and you finally got there, but the road to get there looked nothing like you thought it would? Yep, me too. This verse tells us that God’s way is perfect and that His promises come true. God has said in Romans 8:28, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” We can get ourselves into some pretty interesting situations, and I, for one, am glad that God is there to turn those crazy situations into good ones. I am grateful that I don’t have to fix it on my own. I am grateful that his way is perfect. This takes the pressure off of us to be perfect.
The last line says, “He is a shield for all those who take refuge in him.” God can and will protect us. He is our shield. However, it is important to point out that this verse says, “For all who take refuge in Him.” It is our choice whether we want God to be our shield or not. If we want to be on our own in the world, God will let us. He does not go where He is not wanted. He gave us free will, and He takes it very seriously. If you want God to be your shield, you need to ask Him. You need to invite Him into your life and give Him permission to work in your life. A great way to start each day is to say, “Good morning God, Dad, Lord, Papa, or whatever your name you have for God. I invite you into this day with me. I give you permission to work freely in my day and to shield me from all I need shielding from. Thank you, Lord, I love you!” It can be as simple as that. If you have never done this before, I invite you to do it today and see how different your life could be with God shielding you from the hurt and the pain.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we thank you for working all things for our good. We are sorry we don’t come to you every time we need you. We are sorry we keep you on the outside looking in. Please forgive us, Lord. Please help us to remember to ask for your help and your guidance. Remind us to invite you in and to take refuge in you. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in the name of Jesus, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you are not on my email list I would like to invite you to click here or go to my website to sign up. When you do I will send you a quick audio training on how to incorporate prayer into the things you are already doing. We are all busy and might not be able to find the time to add even just 10 minutes of prayer into our schedules. However, in this audio training I will teach you to add prayer into your lives without any time to your schedule. Check it out! I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I am your Jesus who loves you. I love you so much that I gave my life for each and every one of you so that you may be free of everything. Free of your anxieties, free of your fears, free of everything that binds you. My children, I love you so much that I would go through it all again because of my love for you. My children, if you ask the Father anything in my name and you ask it and trust, He will give it to you. I am the all-powerful one. I am the almighty. I am your Savior. I am all that you need to succeed, my children. So come to me, for through me, all things are possible.”
God’s Anger Was Kindled On My Behalf!
Psalm 18:7-10 “The earth itself shivered and shook. It reeled and rocked before him. As the mountains trembled, they melted away, for his anger was kindled on my behalf! Fierce flames leapt from his mouth, erupting with blazing, burning coals as smoke and fire encircled him. He stretched heaven’s curtain open and came to my defense. Swiftly he rode to earth as the stormy sky was lowered. He rode a chariot of thunderclouds amidst thick darkness; his steed was a cherub, soaring on outstretched wings of Spirit-Wind.”
In the last two episodes, I talked about Psalm 18. I explained that God is our rock and that we call on Him when we are in a time of need, and He is there for us. Yesterday, we talked about how our cries go right up to heaven and pierce the Lord’s heart. Today we are talking about how He responds to that cry.
The first line says, “The earth itself shivered and shook. It reeled and rocked before Him. As the mountains trembled, they melted away, for His anger was kindled on my behalf!” Can you imagine that? Close your eyes and imagine the whole earth shaking and shivering. Imagine the mountains trembling and then just melting away. Can you picture it? Now, imagine that all happened just because you cried out to the Lord. His anger was kindled on your behalf. There are billions of people on this earth, and the Lord hopped in a chariot of thunderclouds because you cried out to Him. That is pretty amazing!
I think the fact that the Lord cares for each one of us individually escapes us a lot of the time. We think of how big God is and how many people there are in the world, and we think that God loves us in a general way. Kind of like how a priest might say he loves his parishioners. He probably does love the people who attend the church. He would also probably help anyone that came and asked for it. However, the priest probably does not know every detail of every person’s life. This is how we can think of God sometimes. Yes, He loves us. He is our heavenly Father, and also, he has billions of children, so he can’t possibly know me personally. The reason we think this way is because the reality of God is so far beyond anything our mind can comprehend. His vastness is too much for us to understand truly.
God created you. He knit you together in your mother’s womb. (Psalm 139:13) He knows every hair on your head. God acts for each one of us at the same time. He can be solving your problem at the same time He is helping someone else on the other side of the world. He is not bound by the same things we are. He doesn’t have to obey the rules around time and space. He made time and space. There was nothing before God; He created all of it, so He is in control of all of it.
One line in the verse above that I really like is the one that says, “He stretched heaven’s curtain open and came to my defense.” I like this because it gives me a good visual. The whole verse is pretty easy to visualize, actually. It is a pretty descriptive verse today. However, I love thinking about there being a curtain to Heaven. Kinda like in Wizard of Oz, when the Great OZ was behind a curtain. I like to think of a curtain that God can just pull back to come to our defense. It’s not a wall, it’s not a door, it’s a curtain. A curtain isn’t hard to pull back. It isn’t hard to get through. A curtain provides pretty easy access.
I have never seen God, but I like the thought of Him getting so angry on my behalf that he would do half the things listed in the verse above. I think this verse shows us how powerful our prayers are. We call out to God, and He acts on our behalf. This is also a good reminder that we don't have to seek revenge; we can turn that over to God, and He will do what is right. God knows all that is going on in our lives. He knows all that has gone on in the past. He knows when someone offends us or does something bad to us. It angers Him when His children are hurt or mistreated. All we need to do is call out to the Lord, and He will come to our assistance.
This verse is a great reminder that we can call on the Lord and that He responds. It is a great reminder that He cares about each of us individually. Yes, God loves us all, and also He loves each one of us. He cares about all the little things in our lives. He knows all about those things you didn’t want Him to know about. He saw that thing that happened to you that you were too ashamed to tell Him about. He sees you, and He loves you. He wants to be there for you. He wants to take care of you. He just needs you to let Him. He just needs you to cry out to Him, and He will come running! That is how much God loves you! I will reread the verses above again. Close your eyes and imagine the verse is talking about you and what God is doing for you.
“The earth itself shivered and shook. It reeled and rocked before him. As the mountains trembled, they melted away, for his anger was kindled on my behalf! Fierce flames leapt from his mouth, erupting with blazing, burning coals as smoke and fire encircled him. He stretched heaven’s curtain open and came to my defense. Swiftly he rode to earth as the stormy sky was lowered. He rode a chariot of thunderclouds amidst thick darkness; his steed was a cherub, soaring on outstretched wings of Spirit-Wind.”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we thank you for caring about us so much. We thank you for getting upset when we are wronged in some way. We thank you for responding so immediately at times. We thank you for responding so individually. Lord, we ask you to remind us to call out to you. We ask you to give us the strength when we don’t have it. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
The Word of the Lord for today is, “I am an emblem on your heart. Don't forget you are branded by my love from birth. I have marked you as mine. Give me permission to fill you with my divine presence. I need you, children. The harvest is many the workers are few.”
We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences, the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click here. It won’t take up much of your time, and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story, and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow, and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I. Have a blessed day!
You Are Not Who You Were
Romans 3:23-24 “For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard. Yet God, in his grace, freely makes us right in his sight. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty of our sins.”
We have all done things in the past that we are not proud of, and sometimes we get stuck thinking about those things. We replay them over and over again in our minds and think about how different our lives would be if we had not done them. Some of us think that the things we did were so bad that there is no way God could ever forgive us or love us. Regret is a terrible thing. It sucks the life out of the present moment if you let it. Our minds are powerful, and we will believe what they tell us. We may know in our hearts that God will always forgive us if we truly repent. We know in our hearts that God will always love us no matter what we do and that we do not have to earn his love. However, sometimes, that little voice inside of us will listen to the enemy, and our brain will believe the lies that he tells us. Romans 3:23 says, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” The evil one likes to take this phrase and use it to whisper things in our ears like, “See, no one is good enough,” or “No matter what you do, you will always fall short of God’s standards.” He tells us that we shouldn’t even bother because we are not enough. Do you ever feel that way, like you are not enough? What many of us may not know is what the very next verse, Romans 3:24, says, “Yet God, in his grace, freely makes us right in his sight. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty of our sins.” Yes, we all sin, but God’s grace “makes us right in his sight.” Another way the enemy likes to get to us is to tell us that we will never change. That we are still the same person who did that thing we regret. If we strive to change, he tells us that we can’t change. He reminds us of the things we have done in the past and whispers that we will do it again. There is a song I heard for the first time on the Big Life Devotional, and it is “Slave to Nothing” by Zach Williams. In this song he says:
You can tell me what I did You can show me who I was before Where I fell short Hang it over my head But I'm not the same anymore One thing's for sure The shackles have fallen So I'm showing shame to the door Make no mistake I'm a slave, to nothing
If you get a chance to listen to this song, I highly recommend it. click here
Just because you have acted a certain way in the past does not mean that you have to act that way forever. You can decide to repent and change your ways at any point in time, and God will be there to forgive you and welcome you in with open arms. Think about the many saints that have had beginnings that were not so great. One of the most illustrious saints, I think, is St. Augustine of Hippo. He was a man who was known for having not one but two mistresses. He ran around for years before having a change of heart and settling down at 31. St. Augustine went on to become a Doctor of the Church. Then there is also Saint Mary of Egypt, who ran away from home at 12 and spent a dozen years living on the street as a seductress. According to Craughwell in an article in Live Science, “Nothing made her happier than corrupting innocent young Christian men.” Saint Mary went to Jerusalem looking for young Christian boys to seduce. At the doors to the church, she felt a strange force repulsing her, and she immediately changed her ways. There was also Saint Camillus de Lellis, a priest from Italy that founded one of the first healthcare organizations for the needy. He started out as a cardsharp, con man, and mercenary.
There are also lots of modern-day examples of people who had a rough start. Jennifer Aniston, who is one of the most famous actors because of her role in the sitcom Friends, had 4 failed sitcoms in a row before she landed the role on Friends. Tim Allen, who starred in Home Improvement, is now starring in Last Man Standing and was also the voice of Buzz Lightyear in the Toy Story Movies. In 1979, he was caught with many illegal substances and went to jail for over 2 years. Then he got his life together and became the actor we know and love today. Oprah Winfrey grew up in poverty and did not have the best childhood. She was molested during her childhood and early teens and became pregnant at 14; her son was born too early and died in infancy. Can you imagine the things the enemy was trying to tell her? What was he trying to tell all of these people? What if these people would have believed the lies that they could not become anything different? If they believed that the version of themselves that was not enough or prone to sinning was all they could ever be? What if they stopped reaching for more because they believed they could never achieve more?
What lies do you believe? How much more could you accomplish or become if you stopped believing the lies? You may have made mistakes in the past. You may wish that you could change certain things. Do not let those things hold you back from being who you are today. Do not believe the lies that you are not enough, lazy, selfish, greedy, etc. Just because you may have been those things in the past does not mean that you have to be those things in the future. You can be whoever you want to be because God has redeemed you with his grace!
This episode was inspired by The Big Life Devotional by Pamela Crim. If you have time to listen to the original episode that inspired me, I highly recommend it. You can reach that episode by clicking here. The episode was called A Slave To Nothing.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, you are amazing, and we love you. We ask you to help us guard our minds and help us not to believe the enemy’s lies. We ask that you help us believe we can change and that we are not who we once were. Change is possible. We ask all this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. A reminder that tonight is mentoring night. We will be talking about God’s reckless love for us. If you would like to join us, it is not too late to join us. Just send me a message, and I will make sure you have the Zoom link. CLICK HERE to sign up for mentoring. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s word of the Lord is, “Today, my children, I send my love to all of you. I have placed you snuggly in my heart. Never doubt my children or my presence. It hurts my heart when you do. I do not leave my children out in the rain. You are living under my wings. Never ever forget that I am your refuge now and eternally. You, my children, remember who I am. I am the great I am, my children. Come to me first always. I am waiting. “
A Private Audience
Psalm 18:4-6 “The hangman’s noose was tight at my throat; devil waters rushed over me. Hell’s ropes cinched me tight; death traps barred every exit. A hostile world! I call to God. I cry to God to help me. From his palace, he hears my call; my cry brings me right into his presence—a private audience!"
I loved this verse because it is something most, if not all, of us can relate to. I also like it because it is in words and phrases that we can actually picture. Most of us can relate to a time when we felt like the hangman’s noose was tight around our throats. The situations could be different for all of us, but the feelings were the same. There could be many situations where we felt we were about to suffocate. Sometimes it is the people around us. They are choking all the life out of us, and we feel we may die. Sometimes, it is an illness that has us on the cusp of death, and we have nowhere to go. No matter the situation, it is still a feeling that is scary and unpleasant.
Then it says the devil's waters rushed over me. Which one of us hasn’t felt underwater before? This is such a strong feeling. Both the hangman’s noose and the devil’s water deal with us not being able to breathe. This is a common feeling. Things in our life get so crazy, and we feel like we can’t breathe. I just had the thought come into my mind, “Why do we let things get that bad?” Why don’t we turn to the Lord at the first sign of trouble, like we talked about yesterday?
This is a fair question for some of us. Some of us sit in our misery, and we complain, and we do what we can to fix it on our own, perhaps, but we do not bring it to the Lord. There are many reasons for this. We may not want to bother Him; we may think we aren’t worthy of His help, and we may be afraid of rejection. Whatever the thoughts are, we don’t bring our issue to the Lord, and we try to deal with it on our own. For all of us who do this, I would say, Yes, why did we let it get that bad? Why didn’t we turn to the Lord right away? Why didn’t we ask Him for help? Why did we suffer in silence for so long?
Oh, that is another thing we do. We are suffering, and not only do we not turn to the Lord, but we don’t tell anyone. We may think there are many reasons we don’t tell people what is going on, but there is really just one reason, and that is the enemy. He convinces us of all those reasons we think we aren’t talking about our suffering. The real reason we aren’t talking about it is because the enemy knows when we talk about it, we will be taking it out of the dark. When we talk about it, it will give others the opportunity to speak light into it. The enemy likes our suffering to stay hidden so he can heap on lie after lie. He speaks lies into our suffering. Lies that it won’t ever go away. Lies that no one cares about us. Lies that God must be mad at us, and that is why He is punishing us like this. Lies that God doesn’t love us. Lies that no one loves us. Lies that we are not worthy. Lies that we are not enough. The enemy stacks lies upon lies.
When we are struggling, it is easy to believe these lies. When we are struggling, we prefer to isolate and stay in the dark because the enemy convinces us the light will burn us. It is not our fault that we fall prey to the enemy; I mean, He has been torturing people since the beginning of man. However, we need to find a way to break out of the darkness. We need to prepare ahead of time for situations like this. When we are good, when things in our life aren’t as crazy, and we are living in the light, we need to build up our strength so that when the enemy comes, we can recognize the lies and dismiss them. Don’t even let them enter our brains.
Think about anyone who is good at their job. They have to anticipate problems that may come up and then prepare for them. What do you think would happen if a basketball player never practiced free throws until he needed to use them? He wouldn’t be very good. If we only call on God when we need Him, and the rest of the time, we ignore Him, how well do you think that will work out for you? He will come as it pains Him to see His children in trouble. It’s not that God won’t come whenever we call. However, if we are walking with Him in the good and the bad times, then He can help us steer clear of some of the wrong turns that we might make without Him.
The verse above talks about how death traps barred every exit. Have you ever felt like this? Have you ever felt as if there was no way out? Every way out seemed to end in death or at least defeat. I know I have felt like this. There was a point in my marriage where I really didn’t want to go, and I also knew I couldn’t stay. I had tried all things and couldn’t see any other way. I prayed to God often. I reminded Him of the covenant He had made with Tony and me. I begged Him for a better way. I had been Catholic my whole life. I knew the church’s stance, God’s stance on marriage. Matthew 19:6 “So they are no longer two but one flesh. What, therefore, God has joined together, let not man separate.”
I knew all of this, and yet I knew in my very being that I couldn’t stay how things were, and it didn’t look like things were going to change. I felt exactly as this verse says. Death traps barred every exit; if I stayed, it wouldn’t be good for anyone in the house; if I left, it would be breaking a covenant I made with God. The thing about God is that He is a waymaker. I couldn’t see a way to stay. I begged for one, but I couldn’t see one. God made a way, though. God completely changed Tony and I. He performed a true miracle in our marriage, and now we are doing great. Not perfect, as we are still human, but we not only love each other, but we want to spend time together and be with each other.
God can do this in your life too! It’s not just me that God did this for. You can read about God making a way for His people in Exodus 14. The Israelites were on the banks of the Red Sea with no way to cross it. The Egyptian army was pursuing them and about to overtake them. They looked around and had nowhere to go. All exits were blocked. They were doomed. Or, they would have been doomed if they weren’t God’s children. But God had promised to save them, and He wasn’t going to let something as small as the Red Sea get in His way. So he parted it, and His people walked across it on dry ground. God will do this for you too! All you need to do is ask and keep asking. God will rescue you as He rescued my family and as He rescued the Israelites. Just ask!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, you are amazing how you work all things for our good. It is miraculous how you always manage to save us from ourselves. We love you tons! We thank you for all you do for us. We are sorry we don’t always come to you first. We are sorry we suffer in silence for so long. I am sure that it breaks your heart to see us suffering like that. Please help us turn to you first from now on, Lord. We ask all this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I would like to ask for your prayers once more for a safe journey home today. I want to remind everyone of mentoring tomorrow night. If you would still like to sign up, you can do so at walkboldlywithjesus.com or CLICK HERE. I would love to see you on Zoom tomorrow night. Also, if you really are not a Zoom fan but would like to develop a more intimate relationship with the Lord and walk more boldly in your faith, I encourage you to sign up and then watch the videos. You won’t have the small group time, but you will get all the teachings, mentoring notes, and activities. Pray about it and see if it is for you. I look forward to meeting you here tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s word from the Lord is, “My children, I am the song within you, and gently, my message must go out to the world. Let it be a melody that touches each heart that you meet. Again I am the song within you. I am the joy that fills your heart. I am the hope that must be spread to one and all. My children, I am all that you need. I am the entire well-being of your soul. So go out there, my children, and spread the message of the song.”
The Bedrock Under My Feet
Psalm 18:1-2 " I love you, God—you make me strong. God is the bedrock under my feet, the castle in which I live, my rescuing knight. My God—the high crag where I run for dear life, hiding behind the boulders, safe in the granite hideout.”
Psalm 18 was brought up twice in prayer group today. It was not these verses; however, when I started reading the whole chapter, I fell in love, especially with the beginning. I will take a few days to focus on this Psalm. I am not sure how many, but at the very least, today and Monday, as it is so beautiful! This verse starts with, “I love you, God—you make me strong,” what a great opener. We can’t tell God enough how much we love Him. I don’t think He ever gets tired of hearing it from us. Also, what a great thing to remember. God is our strength. It doesn’t matter what kind of strength we need; it can be found in the Lord.
Next, it says that God is the bedrock under my feet. Bedrock is the solid rock underneath loose rock or soil. We may have other things that we rely on before God. There might be various ways that we try to protect ourselves; these things would be loose rock or soil. Maybe they work for a bit, but eventually, you will slip, or you fall on that loose grave. Underneath it all is our real protection. God is the solid rock that we stand on. With God as our bedrock, we can rest assured that our footing is solid and we will not fall.
It also says that God is the castle in which I live. God is a safe place for us to not only rest but for us to live. He is not just a stopping point, like a safe bench to sit on. We can live in his safety and security. It is always around us, just like the walls of a castle. If we are in a castle, we are surrounded by walls of stone so thick that we are safe from the enemy. The Lord protects us from all our enemies. We just have to live with Him. We just have to let Him surround us with His walls of protection. We just have to ask Him.
Next, it says God is our rescuing knight. How many times have you seen this in your own life? When we are struggling, God comes in and rescues us. He loves us that much. He doesn’t always come in right when we want Him to, and He doesn’t always save us in the way we want Him to. This is because He is so much smarter than we are. It is also because He sees the whole picture, and He thinks way bigger than we do. We definitely think our idea is the best idea. But what if what we are thinking is way smaller than what God is thinking? What if He has much bigger plans for us, but they require us to trust Him in these first few steps because we are not ready for the amazing life He has planned for us? We are still growing. We are still learning. If He had just plopped us into this new amazing life, we wouldn’t have been ready for it, and we might have ruined it. God knows what He is doing.
The last line in this verse says, “My God—the high crag where I run for dear life, hiding behind the boulders, safe in the granite hideout.” This is another way to show us how safe we are with the Lord. We can run to Him with anything, yes, even if our lives are in danger. This means when we are sick, when we are scared, when we are in danger. We can run to Him, and He will be there for us. He will ALWAYS be there for us, which makes me wonder why we don’t go to Him more often. Why don’t we run to Him at the first sign of trouble? Why don’t we hide behind His bolder and stay safe in the granite hideout?
I received a word last night at prayer group, and then at the end, we had a bit of a discussion about it. What my friend said might be the same reason we don’t always run to Him. The words I received were, “I want to be close to you, but you are keeping me at a safe distance. You are keeping me at an arm’s length away from you. What are you afraid of? What are you afraid of me seeing? Open it up to me. Let me in.” After the meeting, my friend said she thinks she is afraid of rejection. She is afraid if she lets the Lord into the innermost parts of herself, He won’t like what He sees.
She knows this is not true in her mind but is having trouble convincing her heart of it. She said she felt like she heard the Lord ask her, in a very gentle and loving voice, “Why would I reject you? I made you. I made every part of you. I have loved you since before you were born. I would never reject you.” Sometimes we feel like we want to hide things from the Lord. I don’t think my friend is the only one who fears rejection. We wonder what it would be like if God knew the REAL us. The one we don’t let anyone see. What if He knew the ugly thoughts we have sometimes? What if He knew about those things we did when we were younger? What if he knew the demons I was still struggling with? What if…
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but He already knows. He knows everything about you. Every thought you have, every single thing you have ever done, and yet He loves you anyway. He loves you just as you are. He wants to love and protect you just as you are. You don’t have to clean yourself up first. You don’t have to be perfect or have all the right answers. He loves you because He is your Dad, and He created you. He knows all the things you don’t like about yourself, and He thinks you are wrong; he loves those parts of you. He thinks you are handsome and beautiful and loves you with an unconditional, unending love that we can’t even comprehend.
Take a moment to think of the thing that you love most in the world. The thing you can’t live without. The thing that you would sacrifice all other things for. If you had to put a number on how much you loved that thing, what would that number be? Now take that number and multiply it by a million, and you wouldn’t even be close to how much God loves you. His love is overflowing for us. So, let’s take some time today in silence and answer God’s question. Let’s have a conversation with Him about “What are we afraid of?” Why aren’t we coming closer? Why aren’t we turning to Him at the first sign of trouble? Why aren’t we living in His safe castle?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each person listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to come close; please help us. Lord, we want to trust you and to let you into the secret places of our hearts; please help us. Show us what we are afraid of, and then help us overcome that fear. We don’t want anything preventing us from coming closer, Lord! We love you so much! You are the Best! Thank you for your love and your protection. Please open our hearts and soften our hearts so we can accept them both. We love you, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I would like to ask you to keep me in your prayers this weekend. I am traveling to Orlando, and I pray I can get to and from safely and without catching the cold everyone seems to have right now. Also, prayers for Tony as he holds down the fort while I am gone. I look forward to meeting you back here on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed weekend!
The Word of the Lord for today is, “I want to be close to you, but you are keeping me at a safe distance. You are keeping me at an arm’s length away from you. What are you afraid of? What are you afraid of me seeing? Open it up to me. Let me in.”
You Get Out What You Put In
2 Corinthians 9:6-8 “Here’s my point. A stingy sower will reap a meager harvest, but the one who sows from a generous spirit will reap an abundant harvest. Let giving flow from your heart, not from a sense of religious duty. Let it spring up freely from the joy of giving—all because God loves hilarious generosity! Yes, God is more than ready to overwhelm you with every form of grace so that you will have more than enough of everything —every moment and in every way. He will make you overflow with abundance in every good thing you do.”
I was planning to use a different verse today. Then, all of a sudden, this verse popped up in a notification on my phone as the verse of the day. The moment I read it, I felt as if the Holy Spirit said I want you to talk about the concept of “you get what you put into it.” When you first read this verse, you might think of money first. It sort of sounds like they are talking about how much money they will give to the church. In the verses before this section in the Passion Translation, they are talking about a donation they are going to give. I think the Lord wants me to touch on this, but this is not the main point of what He wants me to talk about today. So, let me begin with that to get it out of the way.
When it comes to how much money we give to the church, or to the poor, or whoever we are giving money to, this verse is very applicable. This can be a difficult decision to make because we want to make sure we are still able to pay all of our bills and buy all the things we want to buy. However, are we buying much more than we actually need? As the verse says, are we stingy with our giving to the church and yet have plenty of money to waste on things we don’t need? Giving to the church is part of our duty, even if we don’t want to, even if we disagree with all the church is doing. We are all obligated to give to the church. Many churches will recommend you give 5% of your income to the church and 5% to the poor.
This is where this verse comes in handy. It is a good thing to remember when you are deciding how much to give to the church. “A stingy sower will reap a meager harvest.” God cannot be outdone in generosity. We sometimes worry if we give too much, we won’t have enough for ourselves. There is no way that God lets you give so much that you don’t have enough for yourself. The more you give, the more God gives. God doesn’t want us to give just because we have to, though. He wants us to give freely, and He wants us to do it with a joyful heart. Think about how you are giving your money. Are you doing it with a joyful heart? Are you being stingy or are you being generous?
What I feel the Lord really wants me to talk to you about today is how much of You, you are giving to the Lord. How much are you putting into your relationship with the Lord? How much time? How much effort? How much vulnerability and openness? This is what jumped out at me when I read this verse this morning. If we are stingy with the time and effort in our relationship with the Lord, then our relationship will reflect that. We can not expect to have a close and intimate relationship with the Lord when we don’t put in any effort.
I always wondered what people meant when they said they wanted to have an intimate relationship with God or with Jesus. I mean, He is God; how can you have an intimate relationship with the Almighty God in heaven? The idea of it all seemed so foreign to me. I couldn’t even picture what that would look like. I couldn’t picture how that would work and how I could cultivate that. Yet, I still dove in. I joined a prayer group full of people who clearly knew the Lord intimately, and I learned from them. I would like to pass along what I have learned to you so you can have the same thing they have. Let me start by answering the questions that I had because if I had them, then some of you do too.
My first question was, what does it even mean to have an intimate relationship with God? For me, it means really knowing Him and for Him to really know me. It means I know without a doubt of His love for me. I can take any problem to Him, and I know He will be there for me. I know He will comfort me and protect me. I know He will help me solve all my problems if I let Him. I also know He will celebrate with me. When good things happen, we celebrate together. When I need a pep talk, He is ready to give it to me. In short, He is my go-to for all things, and He is never too busy and never too upset. He always receives me with loving arms.
My second question was, how do I cultivate this type of relationship? This was surprisingly simpler than I thought. The reason it was simpler than I thought is because this is the type of relationship God wants with each of us. The way you cultivate an intimate relationship with God is the same way you would with a person. Think about your person. The one you can always go to with anything. The one who will celebrate with you when you are happy and cry with you when you are sad. The one who will give you that pep talk you need when you need it because they believe in you way more than you believe in yourself. Think about how that relationship developed. Most likely, it started out by talking with each other and getting to know each other. Then you probably started spending more and more time together. Once you built up trust you started being more open and more vulnerable. Eventually, you grow to really love and trust each other. It’s the same with God.
It is ok if it is a gradual journey. It is ok if you don’t trust God enough to open up and share your deepest darkest secrets with Him at the moment. He is ok with starting at the beginning. He is ok with just chatting with you. Just talking about surface-level stuff if that is what you want to bring to Him right now. The important thing at the beginning is to make the time to sit and talk with Him. What you are talking to Him about is not as important.
The next step would be to get to know Him. You can do this in a couple of different ways. First, you can ask Him questions and listen to His answers. God wants to talk to us, and He will reveal things to us if we ask Him. Second, you can spend time in His word. God revealed all we need to know about Him through Jesus. If we want to get to know God, we can spend time in His word and read about the things He has done in the past. You can read stories on-line of the things He is still doing now. If you seek to know God, He will reveal Himself to you in many different ways. It says in Matthew 7:7, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” So, ask questions, seek knowledge and understanding, and knock on doors, and the Lord will help you.
Once you start to spend time with Him and you get to know Him better, you will start to trust Him more. You will see you can bring all things to Him, and He will take care of them. If you begin to listen to Him, you will get to know how He talks to you. You will see He is gentle and caring. You will feel His love in a very intimate and personal way. You will understand what people mean when they say yes, God loves all His children, but He also loves you personally and individually. The love of God is something that is like nothing else in the world.
What would you give to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that God loves you, forgives you, and accepts you? When I hear that question, my answer is, what wouldn’t I give? What about you? What is your answer? The verse above begins by saying, “A stingy sower will reap a meager harvest, but the one who sows from a generous spirit will reap an abundant harvest.” When it comes to your relationship with the Lord, you get what you give. If you invest heavily in your relationship with God, you will reap a great harvest. God already wants to have a close relationship with you, so you aren’t risking anything by asking Him for it. The last part of the verse above says, “Yes, God is more than ready to overwhelm you with every form of grace so that you will have more than enough of everything —every moment and in every way. He will make you overflow with abundance in every good thing you do.”
A notification just popped up on my phone as I was writing this episode. It was from the Amen app, and it said, “Do we have zeal and urgency to seek and follow Jesus?” Well, if that isn’t confirmation of what God wanted to tell us this morning, I am not sure what is. Spend time with the Lord, talk to the Lord, and learn about the Lord. You won’t be sorry that you did!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode this morning. Lord, I pray that each person who hears this episode desires a close and intimate relationship with you. I pray that over each and every one of them. I pray they seek you, Lord. I pray you let your presence known to them and that they know beyond a shadow of doubt your love for them. Help us find the time to spend with you, Jesus. Help us to be more positive in our thoughts. We love you, Lord, and we ask all this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I want to remind you about an audio training I did on how to invite Jesus into our everyday activities. Spending time with God, talking to God, and spending time in His word is a great idea, but finding the time for it can be a problem. This training shows you how to add these things to the things you are already doing. If you would like this training, just go to my website, walkboldlywithjesus.com, and click on the button to get the video, or you can CLICK HERE. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I. Have a blessed day!
Today’s word of the Lord was one I received yesterday at a prayer group. We were listening to a song by Tasha Layton called “Look What You’ve Done.” If you haven’t heard this song, I invite you to look it up on YouTube and listen to it. It is an amazing song. In the song, it was talking about the Lord digging all her roots up, and this is the word that came to me: “I want to do this in each one of you. I want to dig the roots up for every single stronghold you have. Jesus died for your sins, yes yours. Let them go. Why do you hold onto them when I have already forgiven them? Why do you listen to the enemy’s lies? Why do you let the shame in? I am stronger than the enemy. Is there anything too great for me? Let the shame go. Let my love in. You are blocking it. Open your heart with a few simple words. Come, Lord Jesus, come. I give you permission to come in and heal me. I love you, my children, believe that!"
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We have all seen God working in our lives; however, we might not all be aware that it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences, the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click here. It won’t take up much of your time, and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story, and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow, and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I. Have a blessed day!
Guard Your Heart and Mind
Proverbs 4:23-25 “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it. Keep your mouth free of perversity; keep corrupt talk far from your lips. Let your eyes look straight ahead; fix your gaze directly before you.”
I really like these verses. I don’t think we realize how important it is to do what they say. Did you know it was important to guard your heart and mind? Did you know when it talks about the heart in the Bible, it also talks about your mind? I just found this out the other day, although it does make sense to me. Our hearts and minds are interconnected. Our thoughts are actually what control our emotions. This is why it is so important to control our thoughts. I know a lot of people who feel they can not help how they feel. Perhaps you agree. I mean, when something happens, you just react. You can not help that. You instinctively feel a certain emotion depending on your past life experiences. However, we won’t all feel the same thing. For instance, you and I could be out for a walk together. We might see a dog walking on the other side of the street. You might be happy because you think dogs are cute and you love them. I might be nervous because I was attacked by a dog when I was younger, so they make me nervous.
This can happen with many emotions. My husband gets pretty angry when people cut him off or when we are stuck in traffic. However, most of the time, I don’t really mind either of those two things. So, let me go back to what I said earlier. I agree that when something happens, you may not have control over whatever emotion you immediately feel. However, you can do work so that you have more and more control over how you react to things. Even though you might not have control over the immediate emotion you feel, you do have control over whether or not you stay in that emotion. Your thoughts drive your emotions. We all have stories that we tell ourselves when something happens, and those stories can help us or hurt us. Too often, we allow them to hurt us.
For example, someone shows up late to a lunch that you had. They didn’t call and you are sitting there getting more and more mad. You are probably telling yourself a story like this, “I can’t believe they are late. They are always late. They are so selfish. They only think about themselves. They think there time is so much more important than my time. I can’t believe they are doing this to me. I can’t believe they don’t care about me or my time. Maybe I just shouldn’t have lunch with them anymore.” Do you feel the emotions that come along with this story? You are getting yourself more and more upset as you sit there telling yourself all these negative things. Take a minute and think about the emotions that story had you feeling. Now listen to this story you could tell yourself, “I wonder why they are late. I hope they are ok. This happens sometimes. They get caught up in something and lose track of time. I am sure they will be here soon. They have been late before, but they always come. I know how hard it can be getting out the door with 3 kids.” Did this story create different feelings? For me, I felt more compassionate when I told myself the second story. I was able to be more patient.
The reason we have to guard our thoughts is because the enemy is actively trying to take control of them. He wants you to have negative thoughts. He wants you to think you have no control over your thoughts or your emotions. He wants to destroy us, and that is the fastest way to do so. He can plant seeds in your thoughts and then walk away and watch those seeds ruin us. In John 8:44, Jesus says, “You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” The devil is the father of lies. Unfortunately, he doesn’t just straight-up lie; there is usually a kernel of truth in what he is saying, and yet he twists that truth to make you start doubting.
For instance, you called someone, and they didn’t call you back. The enemy will use this information to cause you to doubt your friendship. He will tell you that this person was home, and they just didn’t want to answer. He will tell you that they are mad at you, and that is why they didn’t answer. It all depends on what your insecurities are. However, the truth is, we don’t know why they didn’t call us back, and we won’t know until they do call us back. This is what I mean by guarding our thoughts. We need to shut the enemy down. It may be true that they didn’t want to talk to us, but until they tell us that, we have no way of knowing. So, wouldn’t it be better to tell ourselves a story that is just as plausible but that doesn’t make us upset? For instance, they are busy right now and can’t answer the phone. They are out running errands and will call back when they get home. These are also just as likely as the negative stories, and yet they don’t make me feel angry, hurt, or sad. I don’t feel the rejection the enemy wants me to feel when I tell myself a positive story.
The verse above says, “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it. Keep your mouth free of perversity; keep corrupt talk far from your lips. Let your eyes look straight ahead; fix your gaze directly before you.” We must guard our hearts and minds because all else flows through it. I told you that your emotions are a result of your thoughts, and I showed you why that is true. This is why we need to guard them. We need to focus on retraining our minds to not listen to the enemy. The negative stuff is so much easier to believe than the positive stuff. However, it is possible to believe the positive stuff too. It just takes more effort, and we need to be more intentional about it.
If we keep reading this verse, it gives us some ways that we can guard our hearts and minds. The very next line says, "Keep your mouth free of perversity; keep corrupt talk far from your lips.” There is a quote I really like from Lao Tzu that says, “Watch your thoughts, they become your words; watch your words, they become your actions; watch your actions, they become your habits; watch your habits, they become your character; watch your character, it becomes your destiny.” The enemy is sneaky. He starts with our thoughts because he knows they are the key to so many other things. We are lucky, though, because we are sons and daughters of the one true king, and so we don't have to let the enemy have control of us. Jesus died on the cross to break that control, and all we need to do is stand in that freedom and take authority over our thoughts.
If we watch our words and what comes out of our mouths, then it will be easier to be the person we want to be. If we are always saying negative or mean things about ourselves or others, then our thoughts will be negative as well. The last line is the one that can probably help us the most. It says, “ Let your eyes look straight ahead; fix your gaze directly before you.” To me, this means to fix our eyes on Jesus. Don’t look all around you at what others are doing. Look straight ahead. Kind of like when you are running a race, and they tell you to look at the finish line. Don’t worry about what the other runners are doing. Just look at your finish line. What is our finish line? It is eternal life with our heavenly Father. If that is what we want if that is our end goal, then we need to keep our eyes fixed on that goal, and we need to guard our hearts, our minds, and our words.
We can do this. The enemy thinks we are easy targets, but he doesn’t know the authority we have in our Lord Jesus Christ. We can just say that name, and the enemy flees. We don’t have to believe the lies. We can choose to believe the truth that we are children of God and that God loves us. We can choose to ignore the lies and tell ourselves better stories. If you would like to learn more about how important our thoughts are, you can join the mentoring session tonight; just email me or reach out on social media for the Zoom link. Also, you could go back and listen to episode #438, Our Thoughts Become Who We Are.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those who are listening to this episode. Lord, we need your help. The enemy is having a grand old time messing with our thoughts. We need your help to guard them. We need you to show us how to protect them. Show us how to guard our hearts and minds, Lord. Help us keep our eyes fixed on you. We love you! We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to seeing those of you who are in mentoring this evening at 8 PM EST. If you are not in mentoring yet but would like to give it a try, you can head to my website, walkboldlywithjesus.com, to sign up or to get more information. If you would like to check it out before signing up, email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com, and I will send you the Zoom link for tonight’s session. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I. Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I have made you fearless. The devil would have you full of fear. I have made you fearless. You are fearless because you live in me, and I am fearless. I am the Lord.”
First Things First
Genesis 4:3-5 “ In the course of time Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground, and Abel for his part brought of the firstlings of his flock, their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering, he had no regard. So Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell.”
I heard Father Mike talking about this story the other day, and it really made me think. The Bible really doesn’t say why the Lord had regard for Abel’s offering and not for Cain’s offering. However, many theologians or Bible scholars believe it is because Abel gave of the firstlings of his flock, and Cain did not. In other words, Able gave God the best of the best, and Cain didn’t.
This got me thinking, do I give God the best of the best, or do I give Him what is left over? Do I give Him the best of me, or do I give Him what is left over after I have poured out the best of me in my job and in my family? Usually, we fit God in when we can, if we can. We don’t give Him the best time of day to talk with us. We don’t always start our day off with Him. We don’t always offer Him the best parts of our day. Even when I do start my day off talking to Him, I am not usually at my best because I stayed up so late the night before I was just falling asleep during my time with Him.
What about our income? Are we giving the Lord the best of our income? Are we giving Him the top 10%, or are we paying all our bills, going out to eat, buying all the things we want for ourselves, doing all the online shopping, and then giving Him what, if anything, is left over? Are we giving the Lord what He wants or what we want? Father Mike told this story about his mother. One year, for her birthday, the kids asked what she wanted them to buy her. She said what she would really like is for them to clean the house for her, so she wouldn’t have to do it. That sounded like a lot of work and not something they wanted to do. So they asked her again, no, Mom, really, what can we get you? She said well, you could cut the grass and clean up the yard for me. Again, this was not something they had any desire to do.
The older sisters decided to borrow some money and the car from their Dad, and they went to the store and bought her a really nice gift. Father Mike and his brother, I think, took off on their skateboards, and they learned a cool new trick to show their mom for her birthday. So when it was time to give her the presents, the girls presented what they had bought for her, and the boys showed her the tricks they learned for her. She was very appreciative, said thank you, and didn’t complain. However, later in life, Father Mike realized that they didn’t really give their Mom what she wanted; they gave her what they wanted.
How many times have we done this to our Heavenly Father? How many times has he called us to do something, and we counter with something different? For instance, the Lord asks us to volunteer at church, and instead, we pretend we didn’t hear, or we offer to make a donation instead. How many times have we felt called to give money to someone or some organization, and yet we are worried we don’t have enough, so we don’t? Have you ever felt called to offer something up for someone, and yet it seemed like a lot of work, so you did something else instead? I will be honest with you: there have been a few times over the last few months when I have felt called to pray the miraculous rosary for someone and yet have resisted because that is a 54-day commitment.
It’s crazy to me to think about what I just said. The Holy Spirit prompted me to do something, and I didn’t. I thought it was too much work. Actually, I don’t know if I made the conscious decision not to do it. I think how it works with me, and maybe with you, is that I plan to do it, and I keep thinking about it and keep thinking I will do it, but then I never actually get around to doing it. I think we do this often. Maybe it isn’t always conscious, and maybe we don’t always want to admit it, but sometimes we just don’t want to do what God wants us to do. If it were easy to follow the Lord, everyone would be doing it. In Matthew 16:24, Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”
Are we doing this? Are we denying ourselves and picking up our cross to follow Him? When I examine my life, I don’t think that I am. I truly struggle with denying myself at times. Sometimes, I do great, and other times, I am not good at all. However, I think I know what the difference is. I think when I am trying to go at it alone, I don’t do well. However, when I invite Jesus into the struggle, I do much better. If we are being asked to do something that we think is going to be difficult, we can invite Jesus in to help us. We can pray for the strength, the fortitude, the perseverance to stick to whatever it is we are trying to do. This is true with all things. If we try to do anything on our own, it will never go as smoothly as it will when we stop before we do it and invite the Lord into it. Invite Him to help us and guide us.
I invite you to take some time with the Lord today and ask Him to show you where you are not offering Him your firsts, your bests? Ask Him where you could be doing better. What things could you be inviting Him into? Where in your life is He calling you to deny yourself and pick up the cross? Maybe ask these questions and then journal the answers. Remember, if you ask, He will answer, will you be there to listen?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone listening to this episode today. Lord, you are truly amazing, and we are sorry we don’t always put you first. We are sorry that, at times, we offer you what is left over instead of what is best. We are sorry that, at times, we offer you what we want instead of what you want. Please help us to change, Lord. Please give us whatever it is we need to get better. We love you, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I want to remind everyone about my new mentoring program that meets on Tuesday nights at 8 PM EST. If you would like to give it a try before joining, you can email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com, and I will send you the link to join us for the next session. If you know someone else who may be interested, please pass on the information. All info can be found at walkboldlywithjesus.com, and then click on the mentoring tab. CLICK HERE Also, if you know someone who might like this podcast, can you please share it as well? If you have not left a review and would be willing to, I would really appreciate it as that helps more people to find it. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord is: “There is no demon who can touch you. There is no one who can steal my children from Me. You are ALL My children. I have given you a package of seeds. Those seeds will be scattered by each of My children. Some in small ways, some in big ways but not one seed sown is insignificant. It is all part of My forever plan. I am a part of you. Rest in My love and in My peace. You are a chosen people. Chosen for me from the beginning of time. I cannot for the times. I cannot. You are whole in Me.”
Be Bold!
Deuteronomy 31:7-8 “Then Moses summoned Joshua and said to him in the sight of all Israel: “Be strong and bold, for you are the one who will go with this people into the land that the Lord has sworn to their ancestors to give them; and you will put them in possession of it. It is the Lord who goes before you. He will be with you; he will not fail you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed.”
I thought it was interesting that this was a verse that I read this morning. Yesterday at prayer group, we stayed after and did our monthly bookmark meeting. What this means is that we take a look at the bookmark for the month, and we each say what stands out to us. The bookmark is the discerned word for a particular month. Each week at prayer group, we get several words of prophecy from the Lord. We record these words that are given, and there is a team that discerns the words given and picks one: Call, Proclamation, Promise, and Directive for the month. One of our members then types them up and puts them on a bookmark so we can share them with the entire prayer group.
Yesterday we did the bookmark from February 2023. That was almost a year ago, and yet the bookmark was similar to the words that we received yesterday. For the most part, the Lord is not saying new things to us. He is saying the same things we have heard time and time again. Sometimes, He says those things in a new way, and sometimes, He uses very similar words. What is striking to me today is how this passage says, “Be strong and bold,” and this is the same thing He was telling us last February and the same thing He told us yesterday.
In the February bookmark, the Lord said, “Do all to make me known and proclaim my Name. Be bold and step out. Serve me with all you are each and every day. Go now. Do not delay.” The passage talks about being strong and bold so they can take over the promised land. The passage in the bookmark talks about being bold so we can proclaim the Lord’s name. The apostles prayed for this boldness to preach the word of the Lord at a time when it was very dangerous to preach about Jesus. In Acts 4, Peter and John talk to people about Jesus and His resurrection. The rulers, elders, and scribes didn’t like what they were teaching, and they threatened Peter and John as to what would happen to them if they didn’t stop talking about Jesus.
Instead of cowering and obeying when they were told to stop talking about Jesus, they prayed for more boldness to do it anyway. Acts 4:29-31 says, “And now, Lord, look at their threats, and grant to your servants to speak your word with all boldness, while you stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus.” When they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken; and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God with boldness.” They asked for boldness, and they were given it. It is the same for us. All we need to do is ask. God is calling us to be bold in our faith. We sometimes worry that we will be alone in this boldness. Sometimes, it can feel like it is us against the world, and when we think about being brave, we aren’t sure we can do it.
In the verse above Moses reminds Joshua that God will be with Him when they go into the promised land. It says, “It is the Lord who goes before you. He will be with you; he will not fail you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed.” This is reminding Joshua that God will not let them down. He is reminding them that they do not have anything to be afraid of. It is not up to them to defeat the enemy. God will be with them, and He will help them! In the February bookmark, before God told us to be bold, he reminded us, “I am the Lord of the universe.”
God is not calling us to be bold on our own. He is right there with us. He goes before us to prepare the way. For instance, if God is calling you to be bold and step out in faith and pray over someone, then He has already prepared that person’s heart to accept that prayer. If God is asking you to be brave and ask for something then He has already softened hearts and prepared them for you. God says 365 times in the Bible, some version of “do not be afraid.” This is another way to say, “Be bold.”
My friend Peggy at prayer group yesterday was saying she has learned to be bold just by hearing the title of this podcast. She said it reminds her that she can be bold with Jesus by her side. She said she has gotten much bolder since listening. She gets a daily devotional from another friend of ours. She forwards it to many people. She was brave and took a step in faith and gave her grandson a Max Lucado book called “Fearless.” She wasn’t sure how he would respond. He is a teenager and, in the past, has been resistant to faith. However, recently he said he has been reading the Bible. She took this book off of her shelf and said she thought he might like it and gave it to him. Her grandson sent her a text message when he got back home to FL saying that he read the book the entire plane ride and he really liked it.
Do you see how God works? He is helping us to be brave by preparing those we encounter to receive us. I don’t think that means it will always work out as well as it did when Peggy gave her grandson the book. We may encounter some opposition when we step out in faith. We may encounter some people who say no to what we are asking. That is ok. The apostles saw this too. Our job is not to allow these times when people say no to deter us from our mission. That mission is the same for each one of us. That mission is for us to bring the love of Jesus to each and every person that we meet. We can do this because we have Jesus. He is on our side! He is leading the way. Be bold and step out in faith. Bring Jesus’ love to someone you know and love today!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each and every person listening. Lord, help us to be brave. Help us to look for opportunities to share your love with others, and then give us the courage to do so. We love you, Lord, and we ask this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I hope over these last two and a half years of listening you have been able to walk a bit more boldly in your faith. I look forward to seeing you here again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Do not let the news of the times you live in wear you down, upset you, depress you. I am a God of victory. I have conquered all by giving my life on the cross and allowing the gift of my Father to raise me from the dead. A gift that He has given you through me. Do not be afraid. Do not be afraid no matter what things look like, no matter how they feel. Trust, Trust in me. Trust in the Father’s tremendous love for all of you and for all of His creation. Trust in the power that can be given to you through the Holy Spirit. Continue daily, daily, every moment you breathe to worship, to praise, to adore, for we are your God, One in three. Holy, undivided, blessed, glorious God. And we love you and give you the victory that is in us."
I Waited and Waited and Waited
Psalm 40:1 “I waited and waited and waited some more, patiently, knowing God would come through for me. Then, at last, he bent down and listened to my cry.”
This verse came from a good friend of mine in England. I posted on Facebook that I am trying something new this year. I decided I wanted to learn more Bible verses. So, what a few of my friends do is they pick a verse for each week of the year. Or, they have their friends and family give them verses for each week of the year, and then they write those verses in their planner, and they spend a week with each verse. They also pray for the person who gave them the verse for the week. I thought this was a great idea! I decided to take it a step further and write this verse at least once each day so it helps me commit it to memory. I made a post on Facebook asking friends and family to give me their favorite verses. If you have a favorite verse and would like to email it to me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or you could find me on Facebook, Catherine Duggan, and comment on the post and I would be happy to remember you and your loved one and any prayer requests that you have during the week I am praying with the verse you gave me.
My friend gave me the verse above, and I instantly loved it. I love that it captures our reality at times, and it also really captures the love of the Father. Sometimes, we feel like we are asking and asking the Lord for something, and yet we wait and wait and see no answers to those prayers. Have you been in a season of waiting? Have you been asking the Lord for something, and yet you are still waiting for the answer to those prayers? This can be really hard. We pray to the Lord, and we want Him to help us right away, or at least I do. I really struggle at times with waiting to see the results of my prayers. This is especially true if I am praying over someone for healing.
I struggle because I know how powerful God is, and I know He can heal anyone at any time. I struggle because I don’t believe he wants to see anyone struggle, and yet He doesn’t heal everyone, and He definitely doesn’t heal everyone the second we pray for healing. So, we end up doing what this verse says, we wait, and we wait, and we wait. Sometimes we wait patiently, as this verse says, and sometimes, not so patiently. It all depends on our circumstances at the time. One thing I like about this verse is that it says I waited patiently because I knew God would come through for me. This is important for us all to remember. God will come through. It is also important to remember that His ways are not our ways, and His thoughts are not our thoughts.
If I can remember this, I think I could wait more patiently. I need to remember that God knows what He is doing and that His plan is better than my plan. He is the creator of the Universe; of course, His plan is better than my plan. If He is not healing someone right away, there is a reason for it. I don’t have to know that reason I just have to know that HE has one.
One way to remind myself that God has a plan to trust that God will come through is to think back to all the times He has come through in the past. When did the Lord come through for you? When in the past did you wait on the Lord, and then he answered your prayers? I know for me, He has always come through, and sometimes I ask for some pretty big things. When I asked the Lord to heal my niece and let her live, He did, and we didn’t even have to wait very long. When I asked him to help my son get off of drugs, He did. When I asked Him to take away my dad’s pain, He did. When I asked Him to take away my sister’s pain, He did. When I asked Him to save my marriage, He did. God has come through for us more times than I can count, and this is why I can wait patiently. I know He will always come for me, though. He will always come through for you too! We just have to wait longer than we would like at times.
I love that this verse says, “Then, at last, he bent down and listened to my cry.” I love this because it shows the Father as a loving father. It shows that He cares about us. It doesn’t just say they finally heard us. I love that it says he bent down and listened to my cry. What I picture is a loving Father who bends down to listen to me cry. He doesn’t just stand there and let our cries go up to his ears. He bends down to show us we have His attention. I just picture Jesus; since we don’t really know what God looks like, I picture Jesus bending down, and I picture us as little children whispering our requests into his ear. Almost like we are telling Him a secret, one that no one knows.
I love to picture the Father like this. I think if we read more verses like this, we begin to see God as our loving Father instead of this stern Father figure who is judging us and just waiting to call us out on all that we are doing wrong. God loves us, and He wants to answer our prayers. However, like a loving Father, He also knows that when we are asking for something that is not good for us, or that we are not quite ready for. He knows this, so he either gives us something else or waits until we are ready. God is so good!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each and every person listening to this episode today. Lord, help us wait patiently for your timing. Help us to understand that your timing is best. Help us to see that you know what is best for us. Help us to have faith that you will come through for us. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you are on my email list, I sent out an email yesterday with a recording of Tuesday night’s mentoring session. It was on prayer journaling, and I think it will be very beneficial. Prayer journaling has made a significant impact on my spiritual life and brought me a lot closer to the Lord. I hope you enjoy it. If you are not on my email list but would like to be so you can get the recording of the mentoring session and any other info I send out about what is coming up with Walk Boldly With Jesus, then you can go to my website walkboldlywithjesus.com and click on the Free Audio Training to invite Jesus into your every day. That will sign you up for my emails, and it will also get you an awesome free audio training. I look forward to meeting you all here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord is, “Keep in my word. My word is your armor. It will help you defeat the enemy. It will guide you. It will help you be a light to others. Keep in My word. That is your armor. “
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We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences, the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click here. It won’t take up much of your time, and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story, and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow, and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I. Have a blessed day!
God Can Accomplish Far More Than We Can Imagine
Ephesians 3:20-21 “Now to him who is able to accomplish far more than all we ask or imagine, by the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”
Wow, that first line is something I think we all need to hear again. “Now to him who is able to accomplish far more than all we ask or imagine.” What have you been asking the Lord for lately? Does it seem like you are asking Him for some pretty big things? Does it seem like you are asking Him for more than He can give you? When we read this verse, we see that there isn’t anything we can ask for that is “too much” for Him. He is able to do far more than we can even imagine. I saw this yesterday when I was in class.
When I was in class last night at Encounter Ministries Boston Campus, we were praising and worshiping the Lord. Then Deacon Joe said he feels as though the Lord wants to heal people right now. I don’t know what people were praying for while we were praising and worshiping, but I don’t know that anyone was praying for immediate healing. I bet some people were praying for a healing, but I doubt anyone thought to pray for an immediate healing. Deacon Joe asked anyone who had any pain to raise their hands. Then he said if you don’t have pain go and find someone with their hand raised and pray over them.
First, I went to a friend in class who has had some heart issues in the past. He said he had a pain in his chest, and he didn’t know what it was from. There were two of us praying over him, and after the first time praying, he said the pain had decreased, and after the second time, he said he no longer had the pain anymore. Later, he shared with the class that he had been at the hospital with this pain over the weekend, and they couldn’t come up with a reason for it. Now, his pain was gone!
Second, I went to a friend who has been struggling with shoulder pain and range of motion for quite a while now. There were two of us praying, and then another two joined after a few minutes. We prayed for a restoration of her range of motion and for a release of all pain. As we prayed, she was able to lift her arm further and further. She was also able to put her arm behind her, which she hadn’t been able to do before we prayed. Thank you, Jesus, you are so good!
I believe both of these healings were above and beyond what they were asking for in class last night. Yet, that is how good God is; He likes to surprise us! What do you need right now, and yet you have been afraid to ask? Where have you been playing it little in your prayers? Where have you been wanting more than you asked for? Where have you been asking for less than you want because you don’t want to be greedy or you don’t want to bother God?
The verse says, “Now to him who is able to accomplish far more than all we ask or imagine, by the power at work within us.” I love that last part, too, “by the power at work within us.” I know I say this often, and that is because it is so important. We each have the power of the Holy Spirit living inside of us. We have power that is at work within us. This means that we don’t have to do things on our own. We don’t have to limit our prayers. We don’t have to rely on our own strength. We are not in this alone.
I believe this verse is daring us to dream big. To pray for those desires down deep in our hearts. When I say we are praying too small, I don’t just mean when we pray for healing or when we pray for others. I mean, even for those dreams that we used to think about and have now tucked away into that neat little box in the back of our mind so we don’t have to think about them anymore. I mean for that thing that you have always wanted, and yet you can’t see any way that it could happen, so you don’t even ask for it.
Maybe your sister is in hospice, and even though you are praying for a miracle, you can’t see how one could actually happen. That’s ok; we don’t have to see the way; we just have to keep asking, and God can work through us and in us. Maybe you have had a lifelong dream to do something, and as you get older, you see that dream slipping away. Hear me when I say it is not too late. God can give you more than you ever imagined. God can still make that dream come true. Don’t stop asking for it, and start asking for it if you haven’t already.
I know this can be hard to believe sometimes. I have some friends who are asking God for some pretty big things. I have a friend who has lost his eyesight, and he is praying he will get it back. I am sure in this tough time of waiting for God to answer that prayer, he is struggling to believe that God gives us more than we can imagine. I have a friend who is struggling with a sarcoma. She had had it for at least 3 years now. The doctors keep telling her that her condition is terminal, and yet she is still here; she is still going strong. She is able to believe that God can take this from her. She knows He can heal her. She is asking for big things and is trusting this verse to be true. She is trusting that God will give her more than she has asked for.
I just want to talk about the last line in this verse because it is important too. It says, “to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.” It is important that we remember who does the work and who is answering our prayers. It is important that we give all the glory to our Lord and Savior. We can get caught up in the moment when someone is praying over us, and we can thank them and praise them for the healing we received. It is ok to thank them as they did say yes, and they did show up. However, the real praise goes to the Lord, who is the one who did the healing. He is the one who does all the amazing things we see. He is the one who sent His Spirit to live inside of us to give us strength and to guide us. All glory goes to the Lord!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each person listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask that you help us ask for more. We ask that you help us truly believe that you will accomplish more than we could ask for or even imagine. Show us how to believe this Lord. Help us to give you all the praise and the glory Lord. We love you, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting some of you this evening in mentoring and the rest of you right here tomorrow on the podcast. Tonight’s topic for mentoring is prayer journaling. I will cover what it is and several different techniques I have used. Journaling is very beneficial, and prayer journaling can be even more so. Journaling is not only for holy people or for religious people; it is for all people. It is a great way to grow closer to the Lord. If you would like to join me this evening, it is not too late. Just go to walkboldlywithjesus.com and click on the mentoring page, or CLICK HERE. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
The word from the Lord for today is, “I love you, my children, and I walk with you every step of the way. I know some days you are looking for me, and it seems like you can’t find me. Just know I am there. I am right next to you, walking with you. I love you. I will always be right there, right next to you. Whether you can see me or not, whether you can hear me or not. I am speaking to you every day. Listen, my children. Listen to what I have to say. I will help you. I will give you the understanding and the wisdom that you seek. Just look at me. Listen to me. Don’t avoid the silence. Sit in the silence; that is where I can be found. Give me the time each day to sit with me, and I will talk to you. I will give you what you are searching for, just rely on me. Give me the chance. Sit with me.”
Inexpressible and Glorious Joy
1 Peter 1:8-9 “Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls.”
I asked my friend to choose a verse for me while I was at a retreat. She chose this one. I am not sure I knew this one, and yet I love it. I know I say that a lot. It is true God is so good, and there are countless verses from the Bible that I love. I love this one because it ends with the salvation of our souls, and who wouldn’t love that? As much as I love this verse, I know it is a hard verse to accomplish.
It can be hard to believe in something we can’t see. When I first read this verse, I thought it was pretty easy because I was thinking about how many of us haven’t seen God before, and yet we love Him. The retreat I was at was filled with women who all believed in God, and yet we had not ever seen God. We all had different degrees of faith and possibly even different beliefs in God. However, we all believed that God was looking out for us and that He was our Lord and Savior. How is this possible?
When I got to thinking about it, I wondered if it is true that many of us haven’t seen God before. Yes, it is true that we have not seen God in person, like those who walked with Jesus did. However, I think many of us see God in our lives often. Maybe not every day unless we are specifically looking for Him, but we do see Him working. Even if it was only once, we have probably seen God. The question is, did we know it was God when we saw Him?
Did we know that the kind person who paid for our coffee was the face of God? Did we know the person who held the door of the elevator was the face of God? Did we know the person who was in front of us at the store was the face of God? Did we know the stranger who said a kind word was the face of God? Did we know the breakthrough we received at work was a gift from God? Did we know it was God who helped us through that jam? Did we know it was God who made that awesome thing happen?
I am blessed to have had parents who saw God working in everything they did! I am blessed to have parents who saw God everywhere they went. They knew without a shadow of a doubt that God loved them, and they loved Him. However, we are not all that lucky. Some of us didn’t grow up with parents who pointed out all the ways God was helping out their family. Yet, even people who didn’t grow up learning about the faith can still believe in God. My friend Catherine didn’t grow up learning about the Lord, and yet He found her right when she needed Him most. God is good like that. He will come and chase us down and reveal Himself to us when He knows we will be open to it. I am sure God reveals Himself to us more than once, and He keeps revealing Himself to us until we are ready to see Him.
I think we are able to love Him even though we can’t see Him because we can see His work in our lives. We can believe in Him even though we can’t see Him because we can see all He has done in our lives, all He has done for us. If you look throughout your life for places where the Lord has been, I know you will find them. Now that my friend knows Jesus, she can see where He showed up for her all throughout her life. She didn’t know it was Him at the time, but now she can look back and see that He was there. I think this is why we can love Him, even though we haven’t seen Him. We have seen Him. We just didn’t realize it was Him.
I also love this verse because it says, "You believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy.” Have you felt this inexpressible and glorious joy? I have, and it is amazing. I had heard people talk about the Joy of the Lord before when I was younger, and I am not sure I knew what that meant. However, now I know. It is this joy that wells up inside of you when you think about Him. It is this joy you feel, even in the middle of some really difficult times. It’s not a happiness. You are not happy you are in the circumstance you are in, but you are joyful because you know God will take care of you while you are in it. It is unlike any other feeling I have ever felt. It is a joy that you can’t explain to others.
I know someone who lost their husband suddenly. She said throughout the grieving process, she knew the Lord was with her. She said she had some moments of pure joy over the last 9 months. However, she said she could not share them with people because they wouldn’t understand and would judge her for having joy while she was grieving. It wasn’t that she was happy her husband was gone. She missed him very much. It was a joy of the Lord that she was feeling. God allowed her to feel joy in His presence, and it was a magical feeling.
The verse ends with, “For you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls.” Part of the reason for this joy that we feel is because we know that when we believe, the result will be the salvation of our souls. If that isn’t something to be joyful about, then I don’t know what is. The thought that we get to spend eternity with the Lord definitely brings me joy.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to the episode today. Lord, we thank you for loving us. We thank you for helping us to believe even when we can’t see you. We thank you for all the ways you show up in our lives, even when we don’t realize it is you. You are so good to us. Thank you for the joy you fill us with. Lord, if there is anyone listening to this who has not felt this joy, I ask that you fill them up with it today. Lord, we love you, and we ask all this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you love listening to this podcast and you want more, I want to invite you to join my mentoring group. In this group, I will go deeper on topics that will help you grow closer to the Lord and help you live your faith more. The mentoring sessions will be on Tuesday nights at 8 PM EST. If you can not make the sessions live, you can always watch the recording. Last Thursday’s podcast was the audio from the first session if you would like to see what a session will be like. If you have any questions, please reach out to me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or CLICK HERE. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
The Word of the Lord for today is “My Children, when life is not as you think it should be, come to Me. Come to Me, I am the source of all good things. So your first response when things go wrong is to come to Me. Come to your God who loves you. Come to your God, who cares what happens to you. My children, your first response, remember, must be to come to me so that I can intercede and help you in your needs.”
A Refiner’s Fire
1 Peter 1:6-7 "I know how great this makes you feel, even though you have to put up with every kind of aggravation in the meantime. Pure gold put in the fire comes out of it proved pure; genuine faith put through this suffering comes out proved genuine. When Jesus wraps this all up, it’s your faith, not your gold, that God will have on display as evidence of his victory.”
In Tuesday’s episode, we talked about 1 Peter 1:6-7. This verse ends with, “The Day is coming when you’ll have it all—life healed and whole.” This is where today’s verses pick up. I had to go back and look because today’s verse begins with, “I know how great that makes you feel,” and I couldn’t remember what was making us feel so great. Now that I look back, I agree that thinking about a day when we have it all—life healed and whole does make us feel pretty great. Today’s verse talks about why we have to go through some of the things we need to go through. Or, maybe not why we have to go through them, but the result of going through them.
The verse says, “Pure gold put into the fire comes out proved pure; genuine faith put through this suffering comes out proved genuine.” I remember I was at a prayer group meeting once, and the leader was talking about the process of refining silver. I am not sure if the process is the same for refining gold or not. I think this story will give you a good idea of why we must all go through a refining process. Here is the story:
The Refiner’s Fire
As she watched the silversmith, he held a piece of silver over the fire and let it heat up. He explained that in refining silver, one needed to hold the silver in the middle of the fire where the flames were hottest so as to burn away all the impurities. The woman thought about God holding us in such a hot spot; then she thought again about the verse that says: ‘He sits as a refiner and purifier of silver.’ (Malachi 3:3) She asked the silversmith if it was true that he had to sit there in front of the fire the whole time the silver was being refined. The man answered that yes, he not only had to sit there holding the silver, but he had to keep his eyes on the silver the entire time it was in the fire. If the silver were left a moment too long in the flames, it would be destroyed. The woman was silent for a moment. Then she asked the silversmith, ‘How do you know when the silver is fully refined?’ He smiled at her and answered, ‘Oh, that’s easy — when I see my image in it.’
I love this story because, to me, it explains why we have to go through some of the things we have to go through. My favorite part is the very last part. I love that the silversmith said it is done when he can see his image in it. Isn’t that beautiful? Isn’t that the same with us? God is refining us and helping us to become not just better versions of ourselves but actually to become more and more like Jesus. God can tell when He is done refining us because he can see his reflection in us. I think that is a beautiful thought.
The verse today says that when gold is put in the fire, only the true gold remains. It is also saying that when genuine faith is put through suffering, it comes out proved genuine. Can you see how this would be true? Can you think of a time when your faith was tested? A time when you were sure you believed God worked all things for good. A time when you felt you really trusted in the Lord. Then it seemed like your whole world came crashing down. Maybe you lost your job? Maybe you lost your house? Maybe you lost a spouse or a child? Maybe you lost your parent?
Whatever it is that happened, it shook your world and tested your faith. You struggled to understand how the God you loved so much could allow this terrible thing to happen to you and your family. You struggle to trust that He will be there with you through it all. This is hard for all of us. It is easy to have faith when all is going well. It is easy for someone who is doing great in life to tell you to just trust in the Lord, to turn to Him, and He will help you. Those are easy words to say to others when all is going well. However, it is very different when you are the one going through it.
This is what this verse is trying to tell us. When we go through a difficult struggle and are able to keep our faith through it. When we are able to turn to the Lord in our confusion and our anger and talk with Him, that is when our faith is proved. That is how we can prove our faith is genuine. This isn’t just proving it to the Lord either; it is proving it to us as well. We may wonder if our faith is true and genuine, and when we hit a hard time, we get to see if it is or not.
The last line of this verse says, “When Jesus wraps this all up, it’s your faith, not your gold, that God will have on display as evidence of his victory.” This can be a very important thing for us to remember because it is so contrary to how the world thinks. The world only seems to care about how much stuff you have. Do you have the nicest house, car, job, etc? However, this verse is telling us that it is our faith, not our gold, that God will have on display as evidence of his victory. We tend to think we will know we have been successful in this life if we have given our family everything they wanted. We think our status in life will show how successful we have been; when we think like this, we are missing the point. We are missing what makes us great. It is not our stuff. It is our God and our faith in our God.
There is one part that I didn’t really notice until I wrote that last line. It says God will have our faith on display as evidence of his victory. It will not be our victory. It will be his. This is something I think I will take to prayer and ask the Lord to go deeper with me about this. I didn’t understand why it would be his victory. Meaning, if we messed up and didn’t have faith, would it be considered His failure? I know with kids, they tell us not to internalize our kid's wins and losses. It is not our fault if they lose, and it is not because of us if they win. What came to me when I just prayed about his was that our faith is evidence of God’s victory over evil. When we were in those difficult times, evil attacked us. We could have given in, but we didn’t because we have God on our side. God will always triumph over evil. When Jesus died on the cross for us, death and evil were defeated once and for all. When we turn to the Lord, believe in the Lord, and trust the Lord, He will deliver us from our hard times. It just might now be in the timing that we would like.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you, and we want to trust you. We want our faith to be strengthened, yet we don’t want to have to go through the trials. Lord, give us the strength and the fortitude to believe even when we are tested. Help us go through the testing and come out stronger on the other side. Help us care more about our faith than we do about our status or our material things. We love you so much, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I hope you enjoyed the preview of the mentoring session on yesterday’s episode. If you have not listened, I encourage you to take a bit of time and listen to yesterday’s episode. It will give you a feel for what my new mentoring program will be like. If you would like more information about the mentoring program, you can go to walkboldlywithjesus.com and go to the mentoring section, or you can CLICK HERE. I look forward to meeting you here on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
The Word of the Lord for today is: "I am the Lord your God. I am the only God. I am the all-powerful God. Remove all the idols of this world. Do not be ensnared by them, for I am your God. Why do you seek for other Gods’ when I am the most powerful, the most loving, the kindest God? You know what the idols are in your lives. Get rid of them and get closer to me, for I love you so much, my children. Never doubt that I love you."
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Have you ever desired a more personal relationship with the Lord? How great would it be to incorporate your spirituality into your daily routines? Have you ever been around people who seem so in love with the Lord and longed for that same relationship? Have you ever wished you knew more about praying, worshiping, praising, and so much more? Why is it that if we want to get better at something, like gardening, painting, or singing, we will seek professional help? However, we rarely do this when it comes to our faith. Yet, this could be the most critical area for improvement. My teachings will be for about 20-30 minutes. I will have a brief question and answer session, and then we will break into small groups where you can talk about what you just learned and how you will apply it to your life in the upcoming week. This is an excellent opportunity to create peer partnerships, which will help to create an environment of encouragement and motivation. You can help each stay on track and ensure you aren't just learning these things without applying them to your life. It is much easier to grow in your faith when you have a community of people on the journey with you. I will also have a Facebook group where you can post your progress, struggles, and questions. I honestly believe I am where I am today because I had a community surrounding me the whole way. So many of us feel alone, and when you join a community like this, you find out you are not alone!
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We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences, the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click here. It won’t take up much of your time, and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story, and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow, and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I. Have a blessed day!
What A God We Have!
1 Peter 1:3-5 What a God we have! And how fortunate we are to have him, this Father of our Master Jesus! Because Jesus was raised from the dead, we’ve been given a brand-new life and have everything to live for, including a future in heaven—and the future starts now! God is keeping careful watch over us and the future. The Day is coming when you’ll have it all—life healed and whole.
Today we are continuing on with 1 Peter 1. I love how today’s verse starts off by saying, “What a God we have!” It then goes on to talk about how fortunate we are to have it. This is true, and yet I am not sure we talk about it or even realize it enough. If we really knew all the things God did for us, I don’t think our minds could even comprehend it. Most of us know when God does the big things in our lives. We know when He heals people, when He opens doors for us, when He helps us out of impossible situations, yet that is only a tiny fraction of all the things He does for us. What about all the things we don’t see? What about the things we don’t know to say thank you for because he spared us from even having to know about it? What about all the times he aligned things perfectly in our favor, and it was so seamless, yet we didn’t realize it was Him setting it up for us? Yes, we are definitely fortunate we have Him!
The next part goes on to say that because Jesus was raised from the dead, we have been given a brand new life and have been given everything to live for. This is something that can be hard to believe. It can be hard to wrap our minds around this. Jesus died on the cross for our sins so that we could live the life that He deserved. We have all been given new life. When Jesus arose from the dead, He defeated death once and for all. He was victorious.
This new life that Jesus gave us is not a perfect life. We still live on Earth with broken people. We will still get hurt, and we will still hurt people. Jesus coming back to life did not ensure us that we would not have any problems. However, what He did ensure is that we can defeat evil just as He did. When Jesus came back to life, He showed us that God had victory over His enemies. We messed up, we ate the apple in the garden, and God had to punish us. Yet, look how amazing God is to us. Instead of letting us stay lost, stay in that state of original sin, he sent Jesus to come and redeem us. God is so good!
We need to accept this new life, though. We need to recognize that although it is not a perfect life, it is a great life. We now have the power of the Holy Spirit living inside of us. This is what helps us to live this new life. When we are struggling, all we have to do is call upon that power, and it will be granted to us. The part of the verse that I wish everyone could hear is when it says, “and have been given everything to live for.” There are so many people who don’t want to live any longer. They feel life is too hard or they are too much of a burden.
In 2022, there was a record high of 49,369 suicides. If you divide this number by 365 days in a year, you get 135 suicides per day. If you divide that number by 24 hours in a day, you get 5.6 suicides per hour in 2022. Can you even imagine that? Did you know it was this high? These people do not know that Jesus died for their sins. Or maybe they know it, but they don’t believe it. They don’t know that they are loved by the almighty one. They probably don’t feel loved by anyone. What if we could change this? What if we could start spreading the love of Jesus to all those we meet? What if we could embrace this new life that Jesus has won for us, and we could pass it on to all those we have contact with? What if we helped everyone to know the love of Jesus? We don't have to change the whole world, but what if we started with those who were closest to us?
This verse ends with, “including a future in heaven—and the future starts now! God is keeping careful watch over us and the future. The Day is coming when you’ll have it all—life healed and whole.” Jesus has secured a place in heaven for us. Not based on our merits but based on the fact that He died for our sins. He was sinless and yet took our sins to the cross for us. This is something to celebrate. This is something we can share with others. Let’s get the word out to all we meet. We have a future in heaven and that future starts now. God is keeping careful watch over us and the future. God is taking care of us. He is keeping an eye on all of it and working it for our good. We just have to trust Him.
We have to trust that this really sucky year won’t last forever. We have to trust that even though we lost our job, God has something else lined up for us. We have to trust that although we feel awful right now, this feeling won’t last forever. We need to trust that God has us and He is taking care of us, even if it is not in the timing that we want.
The last line in this verse is one that can hopefully give us all hope. It says, “The Day is coming when you’ll have it all—life healed and whole.” Who doesn’t want a life that is healed and whole? I wish I could tell every single person who is contemplating suicide this fact. The day is coming when you’ll have it all— life healed and whole. Don’t take your life; it will get better. Don’t take your life; people do care about you. Don’t take your life; people love you and accept you. Don’t take your life; God is watching out for your future. Turn to Him with your feelings. Be honest with Him, and He will help you.
Well, I definitely did not start out writing this, thinking I would be talking about suicide this morning. The Holy Spirit has a mind of His own, and He knows what people need to hear more than I do. I hope this was encouraging for you. I hope you have hope for this future in heaven that we have been told about. I hope you take this verse and all it says to heart. Jesus died for us so that we can be free. I hope you are living a free life. If not, I hope something that was said here today will help you move closer to the free life you are meant to live.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help those who feel hopeless hear this message today. Fill them with your love and hope in you that things will get better. Lord, help us be your love and your light to all those we know, especially those struggling. Help us to remember that Jesus died for our sins, and when He rose again, he gave us new life. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Don’t forget that today is the first session of my new mentoring group. I hope you will join me! It’s not too late. Just head over to my website, walkboldlywithjesus.com, or CLICK HERE. I look forward to getting to meet some of you face to face tonight on zoom. For everyone else, I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow and bringing you another witness. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I. Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, who love and praise me and honor me by their lives of holiness, know how to flow with the swift current. By the power of the Holy Spirit, they abandon their attempts to fight this current and flow freely with it. Its power and speed may seem frightening, but they remain afloat by practicing the gifts of the Holy Spirit.”
Not One Is Missing, Not One Forgotten
1 Peter 1:1-2 "I, Peter, am an apostle on assignment by Jesus, the Messiah, writing to exiles scattered to the four winds. Not one is missing, not one forgotten. God the Father has his eye on each of you and has determined by the work of the Spirit to keep you obedient through the sacrifice of Jesus. May everything good from God be yours!”
I started to finish an episode that I started over a year ago. Someone had given me the verse, and I guess I never finished the episode. However, when I started finishing it, I decided to check out the rest of the chapter and see what I was missing. I really liked all the verses that came before it in the chapter. So, I decided to start at the beginning of 1 Peter 1 and take this week to go through the first eight verses at least. I hope you will enjoy them as much as I do.
What stuck out to me about today’s verse is that after Jesus left the apostles, they did not all stick together in one place for very long. Yes, they went to the upper room to wait for the Holy Spirit, but then they went out to evangelize and spread the message of the Gospel to the whole world. Christianity was not welcome at that time. The Jewish people were already outcasts, and their God was not accepted by most, and now there is this new person called Jesus. The world was not sure what to do with this, and those who believed were outcasts, and many were exiled. However, this verse tells us that although they were exiled and scattered to the four winds, they were not lost, and they were not forgotten.
These are important words for us to here because we all feel apart from God at times. We feel apart from others as well. Sometimes it may feel like we are exiles scattered to the four winds. Do you know what I mean? Have you ever felt like you were alone or like you were so far away from those around you? You are not physically away. You live among your family, your coworkers, and your friends. Yet, you feel alone. You feel as though you might as well be miles away because you feel like you are in a completely different place than they are. You are not alone. This is common, unfortunately.
This is why these words are so important. No matter what you are feeling right now. No matter how different you feel or how lonely you are feeling. God wants you to know that not one of you is missing and not one is forgotten. God sees you! He knows right where you are at and even better, he will meet you right where you are at. This can be hard to believe because we often feel as though we are lost in this big wide world. We feel far from God, and we are sure that He has forgotten about us. Or, maybe He never even knew of us.
The truth is God has always known not only who we are but where we are. He has not left our side for a single moment. Nope, not even that one that just popped into your head. You know the one I am talking about. That one where you felt most alone. That one where you were so down, and you were sure that no one cared for you. Yes, even that one, He was right there with you. God has NEVER left you nor forsaken you. He has never forgotten about you. You are on His mind all of the time. Even when you are not thinking about Him, He is thinking about you.
The verse goes on to say, “God the Father has his eye on each of you and has determined by the work of the Spirit to keep you obedient through the sacrifice of Jesus.” This confirms what it says in the first half of the verse. God has His eye on each of you. There is no way you could be missing or forgotten when God has His eye on each of you. In this next part, I was not sure exactly what it meant, “And has determined by the work of the Holy Spirit to keep you obedient through the sacrifice of Jesus.” However, I think it is a bit easier to understand in the Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition, it says, “Chosen and destined by God the Father and sanctified by the Spirit for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood.”
Wow, imagine that. Imagine the truth that you’re chosen and destined by God the Father and sanctified by the Spirit for obedience to Jesus Christ. Let’s break that down: if God the Father has chosen us and destined us, that means a few things. First, it means He knows us. He knows what our purpose is, and it means we have a purpose. We have a reason for being here. We don’t always feel this way. Our emotions can get the most out of us if we let them. There can be times when we feel so lost we believe the enemy when He tells us we are alone. We believe the enemy when he tells us no one likes us or others would be better off without us. We believe the enemy when he tells us we have no purpose. However, this verse reminds us that we are not alone and that we do have a purpose.
Then the verse says that we are sanctified by the Spirit for obedience to Jesus Christ. The word sanctification means being set apart. So we are being told the Holy Spirit is setting us apart so we can be obedient to Jesus. This was essential back in the day as the world’s values did not support the new teachings of Jesus. If they wanted to follow Him, they would have had to live differently. Luckily the Lord sent them the Holy Spirit to help them live the way they were being called to live. We are being called to live this same way. We, too, have the Holy Spirit living inside of us. If we allow the Holy Spirit to sanctify us and to set us apart, then He will.
We are not on our own. Jesus did not come and give us these teachings and then die on the cross for nothing. He died on a cross for our sins. He came to walk with us so He could teach us, and then the Father sent the Holy Spirit to remind us of all Jesus taught us and to give us the power to live that way. I want each of you to remember, when you are feeling lonely, when you are feeling like no one cares, that “you are chosen and destined by God the Father.” Listen to that again, YOU ARE CHOSEN AND DESTINED by God the Father. I feel as though someone needed to hear that today. Maybe we all did.
The very last line in this verse says, “May everything good from God be yours!” The RSVCE says, “May grace and peace be multiplied to you.” Both are great. I will definitely accept all the good God has to offer. I like how the second version is more specific. May grace and peace be multiplied in you. I could definitely use more grace and more peace in my life. Actually, God has increased the peace in my life so much over the last 5 years. There used to be very little peace in my home, and now it is pretty peaceful most of the time. How about you? Do you have peace and grace? Do you need some? This verse is telling us that the Holy Spirit can give us peace and grace. If you need more, just ask. Our heavenly Father is so good, and He will give us more than we need if we just ask. Thank you, Lord, you are so good!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you, and we are grateful you chose us and have a destiny for us. We are thankful for all the grace and the peace that you give to us. We are grateful you do not forget a single one of us. We are grateful you are always with us and that you never leave our side! We love you, Lord!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Happy New Year! I hope you all had an amazing holiday season. If you are looking to grow closer to the Lord in this upcoming year, I have several ways you can do that. First, you can join my mentoring group. The details are on my website. CLICK HERE for my website. Basically, it includes a once-a-week Zoom call where there are 30 minutes of teaching and 30 minutes of small group time. There is also a private Facebook group. If this is a bit more than you are looking for, you could tune in to the podcast daily, and I will guide you through various scriptures. If you are looking for less of a time commitment, you can sign up for my newsletter, where I will send any news that is going on in my life as well as the most popular episode for that week. CLICK HERE to sign up for my newsletter. If you sign up, you also get an audio teaching on how to incorporate Jesus into your everyday life. It is great. It gives very practical tips. You won’t want to miss it. I hope you all have an amazing New Year! I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day.
Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, in the silence of your heart and soul, flowers bloom, and each gives a different fragrance. As you go out in the world, whatever fragrance that is needed for each person will come out because I am the Lord, and all is possible. Be my fragrant vessels of love to each and every person that you meet, whether you think they're nice or not. Let my fragrance of love spill out. Let it overflow so that they will know my love through you. I do not ask much. Just be my fragrance vessels of love.”
Tiny Steps of Trust Daily
Psalm 56:3-4 “But in the day that I'm afraid, I lay all my fears before you and trust in you with all my heart. What harm could a man bring to me? With God on my side, I will not be afraid of what comes.”
Today I decided to read from the Jesus Calling Devotional. I have not done that in a while; I am not sure why. For those of you who don’t know, this is a devotional book written as if God is speaking to you each day. It is really good and often says exactly what you need to hear for that day. Today’s spoke right to me. It reminded me how important it is to trust God in all times with all things. It is just as important to trust Him with the small things, as it is to trust Him with the big things. I will read today’s devotional for you as I think it will speak to you just as much as it spoke to me.
“TRUST ME with every fiber of your being! What I can accomplish in and through you is proportional to how much you depend on me. One aspect of this is the degree to which you trust me in a crisis or major decision. Some people fail miserably here, while others are at their best in tough times. Another aspect is even more telling: the consistency of your trust in me. People who rely on me in the midst of adversity may forget about me when life is flowing smoothly. Difficult times can jolt you into awareness of your need for me, whereas smooth sailing can lull you into a stupor of self-sufficiency.
I care as much about your tiny trust-steps through daily life as about your daily dramatic leaps of faith. You may think that no one else notices, but the One who is always beside you sees everything — and rejoices. Consistently trusting in me is vital to flourishing in my presence.”
Do you see what I mean when I say it often says exactly what you need to hear for the day? I love that it is written as if God is saying it directly to you. This is truly how God talks to us. I am not sure how many of you listening have taken the time to sit and listen to what God has to say to you. If you have not, give it a try today. God wants to talk to each one of us, and yet the world around us is so noisy it is hard to hear him. However, if we sit down and take the time to listen, we will hear what He wants to tell us. This can take time and also practice. The more time you put into trying to hear God talking to you, the more clearly you will hear Him. The more you will begin to recognize what He sounds like to you.
I have a journal, and I try to write in it as often as I can. In 2020 I changed the way I write in my prayer journal. I used to just write the God about my day and what was going on in my life. I still do this, but I don’t just do this. Now, I try to stop and take the time to listen to what God has to say back to me. This has been amazing. I have spent a lot of time listening and have given the Lord time to speak into my life, and it has been life-changing. You would be surprised what the Lord wants to say to you if you only gave Him the time to say it. He is so gentle and affirming.
Sometimes, we think we wouldn’t want to hear what the Lord has to say because we feel we aren’t doing a very good job, and He probably wouldn’t have anything nice to say to us. This is not true. That is what the enemy wants you to think so that you don’t stop and give the Lord time to speak love, light, and truth into your life. When you give Him the time, and you listen, you will be surprised at how nicely He talks to you. You will be surprised at how much He loves you. Even in our brokenness, even in our sin, He still speaks so much love into us. It is truly amazing.
This is why I started ending each episode with the Word from the Lord that He gave to our prayer group. The more we all start hearing the way He talks to us, the more we will start to recognize it when we hear Him talking in our own lives. Here is what I do when I write to the Lord. I write Him a letter, and then I ask Him to answer me using my pen, and then I start to write a letter back to myself. I don’t question what comes to mind; I don’t overthink it; I just write everything that comes to mind. Does that mean that every single thing I write down is from the Lord? No, probably not. However, I asked Him to answer me, and when we ask, He answers, so I trust that what I am writing down is from Him.
After you are done writing it down, you can re-read it and see what you wrote and how it makes you feel. If you wrote anything down that makes you feel bad, shameful, or guilty, that is probably not from the Lord. That is not how He talks to us. Sometimes He will convict us of something if we are doing something wrong. However, He doesn’t use shame and guilt to do it. God does not condemn us. He lovingly points us in another direction and then gives us the strength to go in that other direction. Anything you are not sure of, you can take to discernment. You can ask the Lord to clarify; you can ask the Lord to explain more, and you can always go deeper with what you got in the letter. If you do this often enough, you will recognize patterns. You will see that He tends to say the same things over and over again because we tend not to listen. Yet, He keeps saying them until we do listen.
The verse above says, “But in the day that I'm afraid, I lay all my fears before you and trust in you with all my heart. What harm could a man bring to me? With God on my side, I will not be afraid of what comes.” This is a good verse for today because I know a lot of people who are staring down some pretty big fears. Whether they are worried about losing their job, getting sick, or finding a new job, it is all scary. Several people I know are also sick and are worried they won’t be healed. This can be very scary to think you will have to live with this illness for the rest of your life. This is why today’s verse is so important.
There verse says that I lay all my fears before you and trust you with all my heart. I hope we are all doing this. I hope when something scary comes our way, our first instinct is to turn it over to the Lord. Give Him our cares, and He will help us carry them. He will even carry them for us if we can be brave enough to let go and let Him carry them for us. Often we want to pick them back up again. But if we can fully let go, He will take care of them for us. If we can trust Him to do this, our worries and cares become so much lighter.
My favorite part of the devotional from Jesus Calling is, “Another aspect is even more telling: the consistency of your trust in me.” I also love, “I care as much about your tiny trust-steps through daily life as about your daily dramatic leaps of faith.” These both remind us that although it is important to have trust in the Lord when things are going wrong in our lives, it is just as important to trust Him when things are calm and there isn’t a crisis. Do we do this? Do we trust that God is taking care of all the things, or just the big things? When things are going well, do we still turn to the Lord, or do we try to fix those things on our own?
I think this devotional gives us something to think about this weekend especially going into the new year. What could we be doing differently? Do we need to be more consistent with our trust in the Lord? What are those tiny trust-steps in our daily life that God is talking about? What if you took 20 minutes sometime today or this weekend and sat down and asked God these questions and then wrote down whatever you think you hear Him say back to you? What an awesome way to end this year and begin next year.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to trust you. We want to trust you not only with the big things but the small things too. Please show us how; please guide us. Help us learn how to take those tiny trust-steps into our daily life. Lord, we ask that you help us hear your voice in our head. We ask you to open our spiritual ears so we can hear you more. Lord, I ask you for a special blessing for each person as they enter this new Year. I ask that you bless them and their families. I ask that you bless their jobs, their ministries, whatever it is they do. I ask for you to help them enter this new year with renewed hope and love. We love you so much, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I can’t believe this is the last episode in 2023. Where has the time gone? I am looking forward to 2024 and all it has to offer. I know big things will happen in 2024. I hope you will join me for my new mentoring group. We will definitely go into more detail on how to write back and forth with the Lord, as it has really brought me closer to Him. If you want more details, you can go to my website, walkbodlywithjesus.com, and then go to the mentoring section, or you can CLICK HERE. I look forward to getting to know all who join me a bit better. It will be nice to get to spend some time face-to-face with some of you. I hope you have an amazing weekend. I hope you spend some time this weekend thinking about the upcoming year and what you want to get out of it. If you go into the new year intentionally, you will get so much more out of it. Remember, Jesus really does love you, yes you, and so do I! Have a blessed weekend.
Today’s Word from the Lord is, “I am the crucified Christ. My blood has freed you. I have washed you clean in my blood. Block your ears to the evil one. He is jealous of my children. His mission is to destroy. I surround my children with my all-consuming love. Love that doesn't skip a beat, and he knows it. Stay strong, stay focused on me.”
God Will Walk Among Us!!!
Revelation 21:3-4 “And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
This morning, I asked Tony if he had a verse for me, and he gave me this one. His friend Phil gave Tony a picture with this verse on it before I even met him. Tony had this picture hanging up in his room, and then we had it hanging in our house after we got married. The picture must have made a lasting impact on my husband because even after all these years, he still remembers the verse. This brought to mind for me this morning the fact that we never know the impact our actions have on others. I wonder if Phil gave this to Tony so that he would memorize the scripture verse? I wonder if he even knows that he did memorize it.
The same is true for all the things you do for others. Sometimes we do something, and we have no idea the impact that it will have on others. For instance, my family had a reunion this summer. My parents were celebrating 60 years of marriage, and so many family members went away to a house in Maine to hang out together for a few days. We were reminiscing about our memories of our siblings when we were younger, and many times, my siblings said, “I had no idea that meant so much to you.” My brother John has mentioned that he loved when I would come visit. He said he had letters I wrote him when I moved away, and that meant so much to him. I had no idea.
Our actions matter. Sometimes we may not want to say something because we aren’t sure if what we say will even matter. It matters. Even if it doesn’t seem to matter in the moment. If you feel prompted to do it, then God has a plan for it. We heard the testimony last week from my friend Catherine. When she was leaving Rehab, she received a book that she tucked away and did not look at again for two years. However, when she took it out two years later, it changed her whole world. She discovered Jesus. She didn’t really know anything about religion, God, Jesus, or any of it, and yet, in that one moment, she knew she would be okay. She knew her family would be okay, and she knew life would be okay.
What if that counselor hadn’t given her the book? What if she felt the Holy Spirit nudge her, but she ignored it because she didn’t want to offend Catherine? I recently wrote a letter to someone that I felt was searching. I felt nudged by the Holy Spirit to write that letter, but then when I told someone I had sent the letter, they said that person would be mad at me. I responded that I felt the Holy Spirit asked me to write the letter, and I would rather have that person mad at me than not listen to the Holy Spirit. However, I did pray that God would prepare his heart for the letter before it arrived. It turned out the person was not upset; they were searching, and they appreciated that I took a step to acknowledge I saw them and was there for them if they wanted to talk or ask any questions. Again, we never know what effect our actions will have. God knows, though, so if He prompts you, do your best to follow through.
Let’s get to the verse above, as it is a great one. It says, “And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” God is so good. He is so gentle and loving. In the Old Testament, God’s people could only get so close to Him. They couldn’t be in His direct presence. They were separated from Him. There was a veil separating the Holy place from the Most Holy. The High priest was allowed to enter this area one day a year on the day of atonement.
However, when Jesus came to earth, He was not separate from us. He walked among the people. He was one of us. He spends His time with others. He lived with his apostles for his years in ministry. He also spent time preaching to thousands and healing many others. He lived among us. Then, when Jesus died on the cross, the veil in the temple was torn in two. This was to symbolize that there is no longer a separation between us and the Lord. After Jesus went to be with His Father, He had His Father send us the Holy Spirit, so we would not be left alone. The Holy Spirit came to live inside of each one of us. You can’t get much closer to God than that.
Now we have this verse telling us that God’s dwelling place will be among us, and He will dwell with us. First, we had Jesus dwell with us and among us. He taught us a new way to live. He taught us a new way to think. It was definitely a renewal of the mind. Many of His teachings were hard to hear, and yet they spoke to so many. He stayed with us only a short time, and yet he changed our hearts, minds, and lives forever.
Then the Holy Spirit came to dwell within us. God knew if we were left on our own, we would forget all the amazing things we learned from Jesus. He also knew how easily swayed we were, and if we were left to our own devices, then we would cave when the pressure to forget what Jesus said was applied. God sent us the Holy Spirit to remind us and to guide us. He also sent the Holy Spirit so we would have the courage, the boldness, and the power to spread His word. Without the Holy Spirit, it would have been way too hard to stand up to all those who didn’t believe. It would have been so hard to endure all the persecution and violence. God sent the Holy Spirit, so we would not be left alone.
Now, this verse is saying that we will one day get to live among God. That He will wipe every tear from their eyes. That there will be no more death, mourning, crying, or pain. Can you even imagine a world without those things? There is so much sin, anger, hurt, hate, and so many other things that are not of God on this earth. It will be so nice when all of that is gone, and we can just focus on God. I can’t even imagine what it will be like to be among God. Actually, there is a song called “I Can Only Imagine,” and the chorus explains how I think when I think of seeing God. It says,
“Surrounded by Your glory
What will my heart feel
Will I dance for you, Jesus
Or in awe of You be still
Will I stand in Your presence
Or to my knees will I fall
Will I sing hallelujah
Will I be able to speak at all
I can only imagine
I can only imagine”
I think this is great because it is so true. We have no idea how we will react when we are standing face-to-face with God. The image that just came to mind was Adam and Even in the garden and how they got to hang out with and go for walks with God. How amazing is that!? That will hopefully be us one day. Walking side by side with the Lord. That image right there is something I can keep in my mind when I am tempted to sin. When I am tempted to be ugly to someone, I can remember how great it will feel to be walking side by side with God. It is something we can hold all of our actions up against. Is this feeling, is this action, is this thought more important than the ultimate goal of walking with God?
God cares how we act here on earth. He cares how we treat His children. He cares if we are kind or not. He cares if we feed the hungry and give drinks to the thirsty. We are not all automatically going to heaven. I wish that were the case. However, God is very clear as to what we need to do to get to heaven. Love God and love our neighbors. Are we loving our neighbors? Are we kind to everyone around us? If there is love, there is no room for hate, no room for ugliness, no room for resentment and unforgiveness. What if, going into this new year, we all took a look at our hearts and made some intentions to do better in 2024?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode. Lord, we look forward to when you will walk among us. If there is anything in our lives that is hindering us from being able to walk with you, we ask that you show us and give us the strength to fix it. We love you, Lord, and we want more than anything to be with you. We want to walk with you in a place where there is no more death, mourning, crying, or pain. Please help us get there, Lord. We know we can’t do it on our own. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. There are just five more days until the beginning of my mentoring group. Register now on my website, walkboldlywithjesus.com, and go to the group mentoring section. (Click Here) The beginning of the year is a great time to be intentional about growing in your faith and growing closer to the Lord. I hope you will join me! If not, I hope you will take some time to decide on a plan to grow in faith this year. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed day!
The Word of the Lord for today is, “Children of light, children of joy, reach out to the world and share my hope, my joy, my love. There is so much hatred in the world. There is so much distrust. Go out there and share the joy, the hope, and the love that I give you. Be my instruments of light to a world that is in desperate need of them. Remove the anger that is there. Soften the blows of those who are hurting. I am your God who loves. So go out there and love. Love the little ones. Love whoever needs to be loved. I am the god, and I love each and every one of you.”
Today, I want to witness about Christmas. This year my sister Dee moved back to CT and bought a new house. She had a Christmas Eve party because my aunt used to have one each year, but she is now moving to FL. I went to Dee’s house on Christmas Eve alone as my family wanted to chill out at home. Well, Sam & Noah were both working. It was great to see my parents, Dee, my sister Suzy & her husband John, two of her boys and her granddaughter, and then my sister Theresa and her husband Glenn. We ate dinner together and talked. Some played games. It was a really great time.
Then, when I got home, Sam & Noah were in the kitchen talking, and then Ryan came down. The boys and I stayed in the kitchen talking for over 2 hours. This in itself is a Christmas miracle as they are teenagers, and so they don’t love talking to their parents. We talked about all kinds of things, and it was so great. Of course, sometimes they were arguing, which I didn’t love, but it was awesome to see them interacting with each other. I feel like 2024 is going to be a great year. I think they are starting to come out of their rooms a bit more. They are starting to talk a bit more and hang out with friends a bit more. I am really looking forward to this upcoming year. Noah is a senior and is planning to go far away for college in the fall, so I am hoping to get to spend some good family time with him before he leaves.
On Christmas day we always go the Duggan’s house. The Desilets, my family, always celebrate on a different day, so we are lucky, and we don't have to alternate. I like that we get to do the same thing each year. I love that we get to see his entire family. His brother and wife, their two girls, my mother and father-in-law, and Tony’s aunt. Usually, when we go, our boys are on their computers, and their cousins are, too. Occasionally, we will play a game or two, but I would say the majority of years, we just hang out. It is nice to get a chance to catch up. They don’t live far away, but we don’t really see them too much. They have kids, we have kids, they work, we work. Life gets busy, and we don’t schedule time to visit.
It’s funny because when we lived in NJ when the boys were younger, we saw them a lot more. We would come up for all the holidays, and so they would come up and visit as well. It has been dawning on me more and more lately that we saw family more when we lived further away than we do now. We are only one and a half hours from Tony’s parent’s house and an hour and 10 minutes from my family, and yet we don’t see them that much. This is something I will change in the New Year as family is important. You never know when the last time you will see someone is.
Regret is something that is difficult to live with. I try to live my life so that I don’t have any regrets later. We can’t ensure this, but we can do our best to live in a way that we will be proud of later. I don’t want to wish I would have spent more time with people when they were alive. I want to actually spend more time with people when they are alive. This is something we can all work on. Do you have people you are unhappy with? Are you waiting for someone else to make the first step or the next move? Don’t wait on others. If someone is hurting you, let them know. What have you got to lose? If they don’t respond well, at least you gave it a try.
We only have one life, and I, for one, do not want to have regrets. Make amends, say the thing you have been wanting to say, and forgive the person you are angry with; you might not get the chance later. I know you may be waiting for them to do the right thing, but what if they never do? Are you ok with things never being said? What if you just confronted them? What if you just said you wanted to get past this? What if you said the thing that hurt you?
Ok, back to Christmas this year. I just want to thank God for it because it was really great. We had to wake our boys up because they are teens, and so they sleep late. I asked the night before, and they agreed to get up at 10. We didn’t actually know what to get the boys this year for Christmas as they didn’t give us too many ideas. We got them some practical gifts, and we weren’t sure how that would go over. They all had a great time opening the gifts, and they all seemed not only happy but appreciative, which you don’t always get with kids. Or at least we don’t always get it. Then we asked if we could change plans and leave earlier than we agreed, and no one got upset. They were all ok with it.
I had bought myself and the boys matching pajamas so we could do a family photo. They were all okay with it, and we wore the pajamas all day. When we got to the Duggan’s house, I realized none of the boys had brought their computers. They were sitting around the table, talking and playing on their phones. I asked if they wanted to play a card game, and they all said yes. So Joanie, the boys, and I all played Monopoly Deal. Then, when Tony’s brother and family arrived, we had dinner. It was great that even those who weren’t eating were sitting at the table. Everyone seemed to be engaged in good conversations and having a good time. After dinner, the kids opened presents and were really happy with all they received. Tony’s mom, Joanie, played piano, and then later Kaylee, his niece, also played piano. It was a great day. I hope you had an amazing Christmas too!
Help! My Heart And Mind Are Fighting Each Other!
Psalm 25:16-17 “Look at me and help me! I’m all alone and in big trouble. My heart and mind are fighting each other; Call a truce to this civil war.”
Today, it was hard to pick a verse. I thought I would be writing about Isaiah 35, as my friend wrote to me last week and asked me if I take requests for the podcast. She had read Isaiah 35, and it was really hitting her. She was feeling all the feels, and she wanted to see what I thought about that chapter. I was honored as that was the first time someone had asked me what I thought of a passage in the Bible. When I looked at the chapter, I realized I had already done an episode on that chapter, so I sent it to her. It was episode number 611, “A Way Through The Wilderness,” in case you wanted to check it out. After that, I tried to find a verse for today, and I was struggling. I think I am tired from the holidays. This reminds me, I hope you all had a very merry Christmas! I got to spend the day with family, so that is always nice. My kids were not on their computers, and they were talking to everyone. They even played a game of Monopoly Deal with me before their cousins got there. It was a great day!
Today’s verse reminds us that we can turn to the Lord when we are in trouble, even when we are in big trouble. This is important to remember, and I don’t think we can ever say it enough. Nothing is too big for God. There is nothing in this world that He can’t fix for us. There are all sorts of reasons why we may not turn to Him and ask for help when we are in big trouble. We don’t see how He could help. We don’t want to bother Him. We don’t feel we deserve His help, and so on. I am sure you have thought up very good reasons why you shouldn’t go to the Lord for help when you are in big trouble. One that just popped into my mind is, “I got myself into this mess; I need to get myself out.” This is definitely a human way of thinking, but it is not how God thinks. He has gotten us out of plenty of messes that we got ourselves into.
When we get ourselves into big trouble, all we have to do is be humble and turn back to the Lord. Repent and admit what we have done. Ask for His help, and He will help you. I feel as though I can’t stress this enough. God wants us to ask for help when we need it. Yes, I know He knows when we need help, probably even before we do, and yet He is a perfect Father, and He respects our free will. If we don’t want Him to step in, if we want to do it all ourselves, He will allow us to do that, even if it hurts his heart to watch us struggle. When in trouble, stop and ask the Lord for help. His plan will be much better than any plan we can come up with on our own!
I also liked this verse because of the next line, “My heart and mind are fighting with each other; Call a truce to this civil war.” Has this ever happened to you? It happens to me all the time. My heart wants to do something, and my brain convinces me that I don’t really want to do it, and then they fight over it. It is frustrating because I know what the right thing to do is, and yet my brain tries to convince me to do the opposite. I think the voice of God is in my heart, and yet, at times, the enemy tries to invade my brain, so they argue. I wish I could say I always chose the right thing to do, but that is not always the case. Sometimes I lose out to slothfulness and gluttony. This past year or two, I feel like they have won more than I care to talk about.
What do we do when this happens? What do we do when our hearts and our minds are fighting with each other? When this happens, we can turn to the Lord, just as it says in this verse. We can ask the Lord to call a truce. We can ask the Lord to give us the wisdom to know what we should do and the courage to do what is right. Our brains our trying to keep us comfortable so when we try to do uncomfortable things, our brains complain and try to convince us that we don’t want to do the uncomfortable thing. The problem with this is that we won’t grow if we don’t ever do something that is uncomfortable. We grow when we are outside of our comfort zone.
This is true with all things, not just our jobs. When we step outside our comfort zone and try something new with our spirituality or our prayer life, we grow closer to the Lord. When we step outside our comfort zone and try something new with our families, it can help us grow closer. Our brain is not bad; it is trying to save us from uncomfortable feelings. It is trying to help us. However, we all know what happens when we are saved from all uncomfortable feelings. Have you ever seen a child who was protected from all uncomfortable things? Actually, I feel as though I have been doing this to my kids recently.
The kids had a pretty challenging childhood. Mostly because of their behaviors, but that doesn’t change the fact that it was rough. They were very unkind to each other, and it took a long time for Tony and I to figure out how to parent them in an effective way. So, I would try to shield them from uncomfortable situations because I felt like they had enough to go through. However, doing this robbed them of building up the resiliency and tenacity that comes along with doing uncomfortable things. I now have two young adults and a 15-year-old, and in some ways, they are so resilient. Then there are all the things they struggle with because I was trying to protect them from the pain.
The same will be true with you and me if we continue to let our brains tell our hearts what to do. That still small voice in our hearts is our the Holy Spirit. We need to start listening to that voice more than the louder voice in our minds. The voice that, although it is trying to protect us, does not really know what we need. We need to pray for the strength and courage to listen to and follow our hearts more. We need to pray that the Lord will help us with discernment. We need to pray that the Lord opens our ears to hear what our hearts are telling us to do. We need to ask the Lord to call a truce!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening and their families. Lord, help us to listen to your voice in our hearts. Help us to do what is right, what is necessary, not what is comfortable. Lord, we pray you give us the gifts of discernment, courage, & strength so that we can do the things you want us to do. We love you, Lord, and we ask that you call a truce and help bring our hearts and our minds into one with your will. We ask you all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I wanted to remind everyone that my new mentoring program is kicking off one week from today!! I am so excited. I hope you will check out the information on my website and join me. We all spend so much time and energy trying to eat better and look better, but how much time are we investing into our relationship with the Lord and making sure we are right in His eyes? I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, I have a mission for you. My mission is to love. Every person that you meet today and every day of your life they are sent to you for you to pour my love out upon them. Forgive them, have mercy on them, and do not judge them. I love them, and I want you to love them too.”
God Claims All Who Were Rejected!
Romans 9:25-26 “Remember the prophecy God gave in Hosea: “To those who were rejected and not my people, I will say to them: ‘You are mine.’ And to those who were unloved, I will say: ‘You are my darling.’ And: “In the place where they were told, ‘You are nobody,’ this will be the very place where they will be renamed ‘Children of the living God.’”
Today I was going to go back to the end of Romans 8 and talk about God’s love again. I love to talk about God’s love because love, true love, is lacking in this world. Instead, the world is filled with anger and hatred. However, when I went to flip the page to read the end of Romans 8, I flipped two pages instead, and my eyes landed on Romans 9:25-26, and it really spoke to my heart. Christmas is definitely a time to celebrate. God sent his only son to come to earth for us. This shows just how much He loves us. Mary said yes, that shows just how much she loves God. Joseph said yet too. There is a lot to celebrate.
However, not everyone is celebrating this Christmas season. As joyful as holidays are for many people, there are also plenty of people who are sad and depressed at holidays. This can be for many reasons. First, if you have lost someone you love, the holidays can be really hard because you don’t have that person to celebrate with anymore. You remember all the things you used to do together and this year you can’t do that with them. It is sad to have to come up with new holiday traditions or to do the old ones without those people.
Others are sad because they don’t have anyone to share the holiday with. It could be that they are single, and their family does not live close by. It could be a college student who can’t afford to go home for the holidays. It could be they have no living relatives. They may be in a nursing home, and no one comes to visit. It might be that they are living on the streets and no longer talk to their family. Whatever the reason is, holidays are a difficult time to be alone. Even if you are happy you no longer talk with your family, the holidays can still be a tough time because of all the past memories.
Also, it can be a really sad time for kids who don’t have families. Whether they were taken away from their family for safety reasons and placed with a different family, or they grew up in an orphanage and never really had a family. The image that is in my mind is of children waiting for Santa to come, and he doesn’t. The song, in my mind, is from the movie “Annie,” and the line is, “Santa Clause we never see. Santa Clause…what’s that? who’s he?” Some kids don’t like Christmas because it is another reminder that they don’t have a family to celebrate with. It reminds them that another year has gone by without getting adopted or without moving back home with their parents.
Holidays can be hard for so many people for so many reasons. It can leave people feeling alone, and many probably feel rejected. They feel rejected because they have no one to celebrate the holidays with. I think this is why I was drawn to this verse. It says, “To those who were rejected and not my people, I will say to them: ‘You are mine.’ And to those who were unloved, I will say: ‘You are my darling.’” I mean, how amazing is that? God is claiming all those who are rejected. He is not saying all of you who are perfect are mine. He is not saying once you clean yourself up, then you can come to me, and you will be mine. He is saying those who are rejected are His.
For all of us who feel rejected and feel like we have no one who cares about us, God cares. The Holy Spirit keeps bringing an image up in my mind of all those who live on the streets. I feel as though He is saying, yes, those are mine. All those who have been rejected from society, yes, they are mine. All those who have been rejected from the church, yes, those are mine. All those children who have been rejected by countless parents looking to adopt, yes, they are mine. All those people who have been rejected by their loved ones, you are mine. God doesn’t just say, you are mine; he also says, “You are my darling.” How intimate is that? God doesn’t just call you into His family and then ignore you or treat you like you are just one of the many. He calls you darling.
The next part also really hit me right in the heart. It says, “In the place where they were told, ‘You are nobody,’ this will be the very place where they will be renamed ‘Children of the living God.’” Man, that’s good. I feel like this speaks to a lot of people. I bet we all know someone who doesn’t feel good enough. I bet we all know someone who feels like they are a nobody. Maybe it is us? Maybe we were told this by someone over the years. They might not have come right out and said it, yet their actions, their body language, or their attitude made it clear that is what they thought of you. This actually brings up something I feel I should say: we need to be careful how we treat people. When you walk by a homeless person on the street, avoiding eye contact and pretending they are not even there, this can make them feel like they are a nobody. You don’t have to give them money, but you can look them in the eyes and say hello. You can ask how their day is going. You can ask if they need a prayer for anything.
There is a woman named Mary who attended the Life in the Spirit seminar we hosted in the fall. She gave a testimony about how she was approached by someone outside the grocery store asking her for some money. She said she didn’t have any money to give but asked if she could pray for them. She asked what they needed prayers for, and they said they needed a place to live. So she prayed with them, and the person who approached her was so happy. Remember what Jesus said in Matthew 25:40 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’” Those we just pass by, those we treat as if they are nobody; they are all God’s children. God is saying in the verse above, “This will be the place they are named Children of the living God.”
If you are feeling rejected this Christmas season, if you are feeling like you are not important to others, if you are feeling like no one cares, please know that God cares. God is calling you to Him. He is saying, You are Mine. He is saying you are His darling. In that very place where someone said you were nobody, he is saying you are not nobody; you are a child of the living God. God is claiming you this day and every day. I feel as if this is speaking to someone in particular today. Someone who has been feeling rejected. Someone who has been feeling they are not enough. Someone has been feeling like no one cares. God cares! You are his darling child.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those who listen to this today. Lord, I pray that whoever needs this message, hears this message today. I pray that each of your children feels loved during this Christmas season. I pray they can feel your love, even if no one else is loving them. Lord, your love is enough! We love you, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I pray each and every one of you has an amazing Christmas. I pray right alongside you for anyone who is praying for a Christmas miracle this year. If you want to reach out and share it with me, I will pray specifically for your Christmas miracle. catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com If not, I will still be praying that your miracle comes true because God knows which is your miracle. I want to take a second to say thank you to everyone listening. Your support means so much to me. I will not be posting an episode on Monday as I will be celebrating Christmas with my family, and I hope you will all be enjoying Christmas as well. I look forward to meeting you here again on Tuesday. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed weekend and a very Merry Christmas!
The Word of the Lord for today is: “Peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let it be afraid. My children, let nothing steal the peace I have given you as my last enduring gift. It will sustain you in trouble. My power and love are in this permeating shalom. Peace is your strong protection.”
The Power of a Prayer Journal
For Christmas, in 2005, my uncle Jeano gave me a notebook. Inside the notebook was a letter from him that explained all about spiritual journaling/prayer journaling. I had never done prayer journaling before, and my first thought was that it was for people who were holier than me. I am sure you can start to see this recurring theme in my thoughts. I tend to feel like I am not holy enough to do all these different things. I am not sure why it took so long to realize these ideas could be a path to becoming more holy. In the letter, my uncle listed four benefits of prayer journaling. These are:
- Deepening your relationship with God.
- Helping you to see God really does answer your prayers as you look back and see it in your own writing time after time.
- Increasing your confidence (in God) as you take things to Him in your journal.
- Having someone to go to and unload on, anytime, anywhere, who can truly “handle it.”
All of that sounded amazing. I was always looking for some way to deepen my relationship with God. “What if I do it wrong?” “What if I say the wrong thing?” These questions popped into my head. I decided to try it anyway. What is the worst that can happen, right? I made my first entry on January 11, 2006. This is how I began my first entry, “I’ve written in a journal before, but not regularly, and not a prayer journal. I don’t know if there are certain rules, but I will just write what I am thinking. I am sure I will get better and more focused with practice.” Then I started to write about my day. That first day I wrote four pages in my new journal. I was so excited to start this new practice and I felt great afterwards.
I would love to say that from that day on I spent 10-20 minutes a day writing to God in that journal. Unfortunately, that was not the case. I just took out that journal to check how often I wrote in it, as I remembered it wasn’t often. It turns out after that first entry, on January 11, 2006, my next entry is on June 4, 2010. What?! I did not write in my prayer journal again for another 4 years. In case you had any illusions that I have it all figured out and this spiritual stuff came easier to me, I don’t and it didn’t. I wrote in my journal for a few days in June and then not again until September. Then it was once in September, once in October, and once in December. Just to give you an idea of how inconsistent my journaling was, my journal had 44 pages and it took me until June 2017 to fill it.
In Spring of 2017 I attended a retreat sponsored by the Military Council of Catholic Women (MCCW). I am not sure exactly what was said at this retreat to give me this conviction, but I came home from the retreat with the conviction that I needed to turn to God for help with my family issues. I struggled with parenting our three boys, as they were very strong willed, and Tony and I could not seem to get on the same page. Our marriage was also struggling.
I had read almost every parenting book out there, as well as many marriage books. A thought came to me at the retreat, that I was looking everywhere but to God for answers. I wrestled with this thought because I had been praying to him all along the way. What I heard in response to my question was I was spending more time trying to come up with my own answers than I was spending time trying to hear God’s answers to my prayers. Wow, that was not what I was expecting to hear.
When I got home from this retreat, I made a resolution to get up before the kids each morning and write in my prayer journal. Write to Him and let Him know all that was going on in my life. I know that He already knows what is going on, but it’s nice when we make time to talk with Him about it. You may know that your child went outside to play on the playground, but wouldn’t you still love to hear them explain what they did out there in their own words?
Talk to God about your day, your wins, your struggles, and anything else you want to talk to him about. I believe it makes God happy when we make time to talk with Him. He is our Father, and He wants to talk with His children. I got up almost every morning after that retreat and wrote in a journal. I talked about my day and what things were going on in our family. I thanked God for whatever I could and I asked for help in the areas I needed help in. I was so thankful I was able to have the discipline to get up early each morning and do this. It was such a change from my past attempts, from June 2017-Sept. 2017 I filled a whole journal.
I felt a great sense of peace while I was writing in the journal daily. I did feel my relationship with God deepening. It is similar to having a best friend you can talk to every day. I have heard from many sources that writing is good for your soul. Think how much better for your soul it is when you are writing to your heavenly father.
There are many different techniques to prayer journal and I have tried a few different ones. While writing this chapter I looked back at some of my journals and was reminded of the different formats I have used. There is no right or wrong way to start a prayer journal. You can just get a notebook and start writing. I hope you do that. My wish for you is to get a notebook, any notebook and just start writing. The only reason I am writing this part is because I know I like to have directions. I like to have an example of at least one way someone else did it so I can get started. If I am just told to do something without an example, sometimes I get stuck trying to decide how to start and I never start.
The first type of journaling I did was just writing whatever came to my mind. I would write as if I was talking to someone sitting next to me. I would write about my day, or what I did the day before. I would write about what I had coming up that day or anything I needed prayers for. I would also list any prayer requests I had received from others.
If I happened to be struggling with anything, and let’s be real, I always was, then I would talk about that and ask for God’s help. I would ask for His wisdom in a certain circumstance, or His patience, or strength to make it through. Whatever I felt I needed on that particular day, or in that particular circumstance. Sometimes I would write for a few pages, and sometimes I would fall asleep after writing a paragraph. It doesn’t matter. I truly believe that God loves our desire for holiness and He loves any attempt at trying to grow closer to him.
The next type of journaling I learned from Dynamic Catholic. I have received it on a prayer card with most of my orders. Also, the description is in the book, The Four Signs of a Dynamic Catholic by Matthew Kelly. Here is the prayer process from Dynamic Catholic:
Gratitude: Begin by thanking God in a personal dialogue for whatever you are most grateful for today.
Awareness: Revisit the times in the past twenty-four hours when you were and were not the-best-version-of-yourself. Talk to God about these situations and what you learned from them.
Significant Moments: Identify something you experienced today and explore what God might be trying to say to you through that event (or person).
Peace: Ask God to forgive you for any wrong you have committed (against yourself, another person, or Him) and to fill you with a deep and abiding peace.
Freedom: Speak with God about how He is inviting you to change your life, so that you can experience the freedom to be the-best-version-of-yourself.
Others: Lift up to God anyone you can feel called to pray for today, asking God to bless and guide them.
Finish by praying the Our Father.
I would look at my day and go through these 6 steps in my journal. Sometimes, it would just be a sentence for each one; sometimes, it would be longer. I think it is important to note that in step two, it says to notice where you were and were not the best version of yourself. I think when we look back over our day, it may be easy to think about all the times we might have missed the mark. Especially if we are a spouse or parent, we can usually see all the places throughout the day when we could have been better. Maybe we yelled at our children or lost our temper with our spouse. I think it’s important to examine these and see how we might be able to respond better next time.
However, I feel it is just as important to look at the things we did right today. How many times did we want to yell, but didn’t? Did we go outside and play with our child even though we really wanted to stay inside and read a book? If we only focus on the negative we may start to feel like all we do is mess up. However, when we are also looking at the things we did right we see we are not the terrible person we thought we were. If we know we are doing some things right, we can try to increase the number of times we get it right and decrease the number of times we get it wrong.
A third type of journaling I did came from the book called Consoling the Heart of Jesus by Father Michael E. Gaitley.1 He presented this method as an Examination of Conscience. I went through these steps before bed, and I wrote them in my journal during this period of journaling. You would begin by putting yourself in the presence of God. Then follow the steps in the acronym B. A. K. E. R.
B = Blessings. Spend the most time here, praising and thanking God for the blessing of the day.
A = Ask. Ask the Holy Spirit to enlighten you, so you can recognize your sins.
K = Kill. It was our sins that killed and crucified Jesus. Search for commissions and omissions. (This means what did you do that you shouldn’t have done and what didn’t you do that you should have done.)
E = Embrace. Be sorry for sin and allow Jesus to embrace you with rays of his mercy.
R = Resolution. Look ahead to the next day, anticipating potential pitfalls and opportunities.
I would think about each step and write the things that came to mind. I would think about all of my blessings for that day, all the things I had to be grateful for, and I would write them down. (B) Then I would write in my journal (although you could just say it), “Holy Spirit, come down and show me my sins,” or “Holy Spirit, show me all the ways I have sinned today.” (A) Then I would write down anything that comes to mind. (K) For the next step, I would tell God I was sorry for my sins and ask Him for His help to keep me from sinning again. (E). Next, I would picture God’s rays of mercy shining down on me. Finally, I would think about the following day and write down one thing I could do to help it go more smoothly and to be a better version of myself. Just that intentional few minutes of planning I found to be very helpful.
Another way a lot of people use their prayer journal is to read a Bible verse or chapter and then talk to God in their journal about what the verse said to them. They explain what it meant to them or what they thought of when they read it. Maybe you could relate that scripture to whatever you are going through on that particular day. I think you would be surprised how the same scripture verse can speak to you differently depending on what you are experiencing at the time. You could also read a daily devotional, you don’t have to buy a book, they have some online. After you read the daily devotional, you could write your reactions to it in your journal. Also, some devotionals have questions at the end of them. You could answer these during your journaling time.
Hopefully, these examples show you that there are many different ways to do your prayer journaling. I have used many of them at one time or another. Currently, I am writing a letter to God each day. I begin the letter with “Hi Dad,” “Good Morning, Father,” or some variation of this. I did not feel comfortable when I started referring to God as Dad, as it felt informal and even disrespectful. However, He is our Dad, and I believe He longs for a deep and intimate relationship with us, so I have grown comfortable with addressing my letters in this manner. You may not, and again that is great. We are all on our own journey. No two journeys will be the same. God made us perfectly equipped for our own journey. You know what you feel comfortable with and what you don’t. He loves you because you are you, not because you are trying to be like someone else. Just be yourself, write from the heart, and I bet He will love it!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, I ask that you bless their families, especially during the holiday season. I ask that you help us to remember the reason for the season. Let our focus not get distracted by all the business. Let us remember why we have Christmas and what we are really celebrating. I ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I hope you enjoyed listening to the chapter of my book today. I will place a link in the show notes in case you want to buy a copy. Click Here to get your autographed copy. You can also go on Amazon. If you click on the link below or go to my website, walkboldlywithjesus.com, you can get an autographed copy. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s word from the Lord is, “Seek me at all times. The more you seek me, the more I will enlighten you and guide you in ways that you never thought possible. Be my light to the world. Reflect in everything that you do that you are mine."
We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences, the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click here. It won’t take up much of your time, and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story, and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow, and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I. Have a blessed day!
Thank you so much, Cat, for sharing your witness. Isn’t that an amazing testimony? She has overcome so much, and I love that she can look back and see Jesus all over her life, even before she knew who Jesus was or that it was Jesus. I think it is awesome that God has called her to speak light and love into the lives of all those who are still suffering, as well as those who are in the struggle of recovery. It amazes me when I think that she has only known Jesus since 2017 because she has a trust in Him that you don’t see often. I hope you will check out her podcast. I will put a link for it in the show notes as well as her email address. If you are struggling with an addiction or you are in recovery, if you want some prayer and someone to walk with you, reach out to Catherine. Her email again is Catherine.Cody@icloud.com. Thanks again, Catherine, for sharing your testimony! I hope you will join us again with another story of how the Lord is working in your life. He is clearly working powerfully in your life!
Nothing In This Universe Has The Power To Diminish God's Love Towards Us!
Romans 8:35 “Who could ever divorce us from the endless love of God’s Anointed One? Absolutely no one! For nothing in the universe has the power to diminish his love toward us. Troubles, pressures, and problems are unable to come between us and heaven’s love. What about persecutions, deprivations, dangers, and death threats? No, for they are all impotent to hinder omnipotent love.”
This is the passion translation again. I decided this morning to just open it and read some of it and see what jumped out at me. I really liked all of chapter 8, but I thought it best to limit it to a verse or two. I will probably stay in chapter 8 for at least one more episode. It was tough to decide between this verse and the verses at the end of this section. This section in Chapter 8 is called “The Triumph of God’s Love.” Can you tell just by the title why I loved all of it? The end of this section was similar to this verse, yet it said it in a different way that was equally compelling. I will probably use those verses on Thursday or Friday, so stay tuned.
I decided on this verse today because it drives home something that I try to help people see. Something I wish everyone in the world knew down deep in the depths of their hearts. God loves us ALWAYS, NO MATTER WHAT WE DO! The verse starts by asking us a question. “Who could ever divorce us from the endless love of God’s Anointed One?” I like that it uses the word divorce as that is a word where, unfortunately, everyone knows the meaning. The verse answers that question with an, “Absolutely no one!” There is so much in that one sentence. That one sentence tells us that no one could ever divorce us from Jesus’ love. Divorce means to separate something from something else. The verse is saying no one can separate us from the endless love of God’s Anointed One. This tells us that the love is endless. It is not fickle like human love. It doesn’t come and go with the changing of the winds or the changing of our moods. God’s love is endless.
The next line says, “For nothing in the universe has the power to diminish his love toward us. Troubles, pressures, and problems are unable to come between us and heaven’s love.” The first part was saying no one could come between us; now this verse is saying nothing can come between us. We might agree that no person could come between us and God, and yet we struggle to believe that nothing can come between us. We think our failures make it so God can’t love us. We think our sins make it so God can’t love us. This verse shows us that NOTHING in this universe has the power to diminish His love towards us.
It even says that troubles, pressures, and problems are unable to come between us and heaven’s love. I think it is really important to know this because what it doesn’t say in this verse is no one, and nothing will try to come in between us and heaven’s love. You will find plenty of people that want to come between you and heaven’s love. You will find plenty of things that the devil will use to try to come between you and heaven’s love. If we know that these things aren’t strong enough to block God’s love for us, then we won’t worry so much. We won’t pay them so much attention. The enemy tries to convince us that every little thing we do makes us unworthy of God’s love. He tries to convince us that God could never love us; look at all we have done. This is why it is important to read God’s Word. It is important to know what the Lord is actually saying to us so we can stand up to the enemy and know when He is lying, which by the way, is always!
The last line in this verse says, “What about persecutions, deprivations, dangers, and death threats? No, for they are all impotent to hinder omnipotent love.” This last part is interesting. You might think, why would these things hinder God’s love? I am not doing them; they are being done to me. For instance, persecution is hostility and ill-treatment, especially on the basis of ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or political beliefs. Why would someone being hostile to me get in the way of God’s love? The reason we think this is because of the things they say to us. Their primary purpose is to make us feel like we are not good enough. They want us to think God could never love us. This verse confirms that even if we might feel far from God because of deprivations, dangers, and death threats, He is still right there with us, and He is loving us no matter what.
I love the language the last line uses. It says that all these tactics the enemy uses are impotent to hinder God’s love. Impotent means unable to take effective action; helpless or powerless. I love to think about how powerless the enemy and His tactics are to separate us from God’s love. The only thing is, we have to know this, we have to believe this, and we have to live this. If we don’t know this, then we will believe the enemy's lies, and we will think we are unloved. We will feel like we are unloved. When we believe the lie, we empower the liar. The enemy is convincing many people that the Lord couldn’t possibly love them. We have to get His word out. We have to share what we know, which is that the Lord’s love is endless and unconditional. Nothing we can do or anyone else can do can take it away from us. He loved us before we were born, and He will love us Always!!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening today and all of their families. I ask that you bless their holiday season and that you help us remember the reason for the season. Help us be ridiculously kind this holiday season. Lord, help us hear this message today and let it take root down deep in our hearts. Let us know that we know that we know that you love us always and nothing can change that. We ask that you reach out to all those who feel unloved this Christmas Season and help them feel loved! We love you right back, Lord, just not quite as perfectly as you love us. We ask all of this in accordance with our will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I am so excited because my new mentoring group starts two weeks from today! If you have any questions about it, please reach out to me on social media or with an email to catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com. If you know someone who would love to grow closer to the Lord in this upcoming year, you could gift them a membership for the first month and see what they think. It is just $30 a month for 4 weekly sessions and the private Facebook group. That is about a dollar a day. Also, if you or someone you know wants to grow closer to the Lord and yet really can’t afford the $30 a month, then let me know. I can send them a link to pay what they can afford to pay. I can’t wait to meet some of you in my new mentoring program. I hope you give it a try! I look forward to bringing you a witness from my good friend Catherine tomorrow. She has been on here before, but it was over a year ago, and I don’t think many of you heard her witness. I know you will love it, as it is an incredible testimony. She is a very strong woman. I hope you will tune in and listen tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
The Lord’s Word for you today from my prayer group is, “Even though we are in troubled times, my graces abound for you and yours. Fear not to move forward in trust every day. Do not be anxious. Believe in me. I will take care of you forever.”
God Has Infinitely More For You Than Your Most Unbelievable Dream!
Ephesians 3:20 “Never doubt God's mighty power to work in you. He will achieve infinitely more than your greatest request, your most unbelievable dream, and exceed your wildest imagination! He will outdo them all, for his miraculous power constantly energizes you.”
I know I have mentioned it before, yet I will say it again. I really love the passion translation. It gets the point of the verse across in a very passionate way. I talked last week about how the ladies in my mentoring group always pick a word and mantra for the year. This helps them remember throughout the year what they want that year, and then when they have to make a decision, they can hold all the choices up to their wants and needs for the year and see which choices align best. The other thing I recommend you do each year is to come up with some goals at the beginning of the year.
I think it is important that everyone has at least a few goals, as it gives us some direction. I am not talking about New Year's Resolutions that you set on December 31st and have already forgotten about two weeks later. I am talking about taking some time to think about where you want to be at the end of 2024. What would have liked to accomplish? I am not just talking about one area of your life either. Where would you like to be in your job, your relationship with the Lord, your relationships with your family members and friends? Where would you like to be financially? Once you know where you want to be at the end of the year, you set goals that help you get there. Time goes by so quickly, and we only get one life here on Earth. If we don’t live it intentionally, it will pass us by, and we will just go through it on autopilot.
The verse above is a great verse to think about when you are thinking of where you want to be at the end of this year. It is a great reminder that God’s mighty power is at work in you! I think this is so important to remember. Remembering this one thing could be the key to so many of our worries. If we can remember that His power is at work inside of us, then it takes the pressure off of us to think we need to do it all. We don’t have to worry if we are strong enough to handle this upcoming surgery because God’s mighty power is at work in us, and that is surely strong enough. We don’t have to worry about whether we are good enough because God’s mighty power is at work in us, and He is definitely enough. We don’t have to worry if we are brave enough to do the thing we need to do because God’s mighty power is at work in us and that will make us brave enough. Do you see my point?
There is one catch, though, we need to ask Him to help us. Our heavenly Father believes in free will, and he wants us to ask Him for help. He wants us to give Him permission to work in our lives. Have you done this? Have you given God permission to do whatever He needs to do in your life? What about starting each day with a simple prayer? God, I give this day to you, do with it what you want. Imagine what your days would look like if you put God in control of them. Imagine the amazing things that could happen. Imagine how much less trouble we would get into if we weren’t steering this boat we call life. Yes, God’s mighty power lives in us and works in us, and yet we need to call on that power. If we want to do life on our own and we don’t want God to interfere, then He will let us do that. Unfortunately, that is our choice. I say unfortunately because sometimes I wish we didn’t have free will. I think our free will gets us into all sorts of trouble.
However, without free will, we wouldn’t be free to love the Lord truly. It is not true love if it is not freely given. So, we do the best we can with our brokenness. God is there, and He wants to help us. All we need to do is ask. All we need to do is let God know He is welcome in our lives. We want Him here. We want Him right next to us, guiding us and helping us. If we do this, we can call upon His power to work in us at any time. It is always available without any notice, and it never runs out. What else in this world can you say that about?
The next line of the verse says, "He will achieve infinitely more than your greatest request, your most unbelievable dream, and exceed your wildest imagination!” I love this!! I know this to be true as it has happened in my own life, and yet I don’t think many others know this to be true. God is telling us in our prayer group week after week that we are not asking for too much. We are asking for too little. Yet, I think we all continue to feel as though we should just be happy and content with what we have, and we shouldn’t bother the Lord by asking for more. We think if we ask for more, then that means we are ungrateful for what we have already received. This couldn’t be further from the truth.
We are honoring the Lord when we ask for more because we are showing Him that we believe He can give us more and also that we know what we have came from Him. Our desires, those down deep in our hearts, came from the Lord; he put them there. He is not going to put desires down deep in our hearts and then not help us achieve those desires. This verse reminds us of this. God will not only help us achieve those desires but also help us achieve infinitely more than we request of Him. Has this happened to you before? Have you asked for one thing and yet received something so much better? My sister was praying for a job once. She wanted part-time, but that is hard to find in her line of work. She made a list of all the things she really wanted this job to have, and yet she knew she would probably have to compromise on some of the things as this job she created in her mind would be impossible to find.
She got offered a lot of jobs, most were full-time, or they required travel, or they didn’t pay enough. She was starting to get frustrated and was getting ready to give up on finding a job that fit her criteria. However, her word for the year was trust, and so she kept asking the Lord for a job that would be perfect for her, and she kept trusting He would provide. Finally, a job became available that was more than she could have asked for. It checked all the boxes she had written down and also had several bonus things that she didn’t even know she wanted, but God did! If we can trust Him long enough, He always comes through. Sometimes, we get tired of waiting, and we choose one of the options that we don’t really want. This verse could be a great reminder to look back to when we are tempted to settle for less than we desire. "He will achieve infinitely more than your greatest request, your most unbelievable dream, and exceed your wildest imagination!” Write this down somewhere that you will see it every day and read it every day. Remind yourself that you are a child of the one true King, and you don’t have to settle. God has so much more in store for you!
The last line of this verse says, “He will outdo them all, for his miraculous power constantly energizes you.” This is an important one for us to hear because it seems we could all use some extra energy, especially during the holiday season. We can rely on the miraculous power of God to energize us. I am betting we have all experienced this miraculous power over the years in our lives and yet maybe we didn’t realize where it came from. If you have children, think about how you stayed up all night with a crying baby or teething toddler and then still had enough energy to get out of bed in the morning. Anyone who has lived through that can tell you that is miraculous. How do you think doctors, nurses, police, and firefighters make it through their shifts working overtime? God’s miraculous power gives us energy to get out of bed when we really don’t want to. Think about a time when all you wanted to do was curl up in bed and never leave it. Did you eventually find the energy to get out of that bed? Was it miraculous?
I feel God has tasked me with two missions. One is to help as many people in the world as I can come to know that God is Love. He loves us all unconditionally and freely. There is nothing we need to do or even could do that would make Him love us any more or any less than He already does. Our past does not matter to the Lord. We are always just one good confession away from being right with Him again. Repent and turn back to the Lord; that was the message of all the prophets of old. God’s message hasn’t changed. You have never done something so bad that He can’t forgive you or that would make Him stop loving you. You are in His heart forever!! The second thing I believe He has called me to is to help everyone understand the power they have living inside of them. This verse is a great one for that. I think if we all knew exactly how much power we had living inside of us, it would blow our minds. The enemy wants us to feel we are weak and we can’t do anything. This is a lie. We can do all things through Christ, who strengthens us. He strengthens us because His spirit is literally living inside of us. How can we be weak with the Holy Spirit living inside of us? Can you imagine what the world would look like if we all started to live in this power?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each person listening to this today. Lord, I ask you to bless their families too. Lord, we ask that you help us all to realize that you want more for us than we want. Help us to see that we are now asking for too much but, in fact, too little. Help us to believe with our whole hearts that this verse is true. Help us take this verse into this upcoming year and expect great things to happen in our lives. Help us to expect your power to help us. Help us expect the miraculous energy when we need it the most. Lord, help us remember to invite you into our lives each and every day. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk more boldly with Jesus. As we get closer and closer to the new year, I want to invite you all to think about how you want to grow closer to the Lord over this next year. We must be intentional, or it doesn’t happen. If we are waiting for more time to pray with the Lord to appear, we will still be waiting next year. We need to make time. Do you want to read more books, listen to more podcasts, read the Bible, spend more time with the Lord? What can you do to intentionally grow closer to the Lord? Would you like some help learning to grow closer to the Lord this year? With my new mentoring program, I will teach you lots of ways to grow closer to the Lord. You will also have a set time each week devoted to learning and coming up with a plan about how you will check in with the Lord over the upcoming week. Planning in advance is the key to being successful. If we fail to plan, then we plan to fail. Let’s all go into the New Year with a concrete plan on how we will grow closer to the Lord this year. Whether it is in my mentoring program or some other way, have a plan. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
God’s word from my Prayer Group today is: “I have called you by name into life. I have called you every day by your name because I know you; I love you because you are my friend. My children, I have so much more for you. I have more for you every single day — more for yourself, more for you to give away, and more for you to enrich the world around you.”
Discipline & The Seven Deadly Sins
Proverbs 5:21-23 "For your ways are in full view of the Lord, and he examines all your paths. The evil deeds of the wicked ensnare them; the cords of their sins hold them fast. For lack of discipline, they will die, led astray by their own great folly.”
Today I couldn’t seem to come up with a verse for the episode. This is unusual, although it does happen sometimes. I decided to go to the proverbs since that is a book full of instructions on how we should live. I figured that would have some good advice for us. This verse came right after verse 20, which says, “Why, my son, be intoxicated with another man’s wife? Why embrace the bosom of a wayward woman?” This is where the verse above begins, "For your ways are in full view of the Lord, and he examines all your paths. The evil deeds of the wicked ensnare them; the cords of their sins hold them fast. For lack of discipline, they will die, led astray by their own great folly.”
This verse does not just apply when we are talking about adultery. We should remember this all day as we go throughout our days. Everything we do is in full view of the Lord, and He examines our paths. I think we forget this sometimes. I think we truly believe that we can hide things from the Lord. If we aren’t thinking about Him, He is not thinking about us. Kind of like when we are kids, we think if we do something when our parents’ backs are turned then they won’t know what we did. Guess what, they always know. Parents are much smarter than we give them credit for. This is something I don’t think we truly understand until we become parents. Once we become parents and we get an inside look at what it is like, then we gain a much greater understanding of our parents and what we put them through.
I think it helps us to understand our relationship with God as well. When we are a child, we feel as though our parents are just doing things because they can or because they like to punish up. We think they take things away because they don’t want us to have any fun or because we like to see them suffer. However, once we become parents, we realize that they were trying to protect us, or they were trying to teach us important life lessons. Once we have our own children, or maybe we don’t have our own children, but we have the benefit of hindsight, then we can see they were trying to prepare us to enter into the world as independent adults.
The same is true with God. We don’t always understand what His plan is and why He does the things He does. Sometimes it can seem like He is punishing us, and other times it seems like He doesn’t care that we are suffering. We know He could take away our pain, and we don’t understand why He doesn’t. Although, usually, when we have the benefit of hindsight, we can see that we need to go through what we went through in order to become the person we are today. I don’t know if “needed” to go through is the right word or not. Sometimes we allow our kids to go through hard things so they come out stronger on the other side. Did we “need” to let them go through it? Not necessarily; there are parents who shield their kids from disappointment, and yet their kids grow up to become independent adults too. They just might not be as resilient as the kids who were allowed to experience the pain of disappointment.
When we have children, they do not come with an instruction manual, so we are all just doing the best we can with what we have been given. The same is not true with God. He is perfect. He is the perfect father. He knows what is best for us, even if we disagree. He knows when we need to experience the pains of our mistakes, and He knows when it is okay to save us from some of our mistakes. Sometimes watching our children suffer through the pains of our mistakes is too much for us to handle, and we rush in to save them. God doesn’t need to do this. He has the benefit of seeing all the good that will come out of it, so He can watch us suffer in the short term so we can gain all the benefits in the long term. We are not blessed with that foresight. We struggle to see our kids struggle, and we want to save them from it.
I am guessing someone really needed to hear that today, as that is not at all what I thought I would be talking about today. What really stood out to me in the verse above was the last line, “For lack of discipline, they will die, led astray by their own great folly.” This is something no one really wants to hear, especially me. I have been struggling with discipline over the last few years. I was really good at it for a while, and then I think I stopped doing all the things that helped me be good at it. One reason lack of discipline can be so harmful to us is because it lets the deadly sins creep in. You know the ones I am talking about, pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, and sloth. When we are not disciplined, these creep in ever so slowly and quietly.
I know they have been in my life for the last few years. I tell myself God doesn’t care if I eat this cookie, and maybe he doesn’t. However, is it just that one cookie, or is it half the box of cookies? Is that cookie leading me into gluttony? If I am not disciplined with my eating, I can easily fall into gluttony. I actually believe I have been partaking in gluttony a lot over the last two years, as my clothes just keep getting tighter and tighter. I used to be good about enjoying a cookie at times but not having them all the time. I was good about eating pretty healthy and yet enjoying some cake at a celebration. However, my discipline with food seems to have disappeared in recent years.
If we are not disciplined in many areas, then we will struggle with these sins. For instance, if we don’t take captive our thoughts like it says in 2 Corinthians 10:5, then we can struggle with pride, greed, wrath, envy, and lust. We think that we can’t control our thoughts, and this is simply not true. Yes, you can’t control when a thought comes into your head. However, you can control whether or not you entertain that thought. You can take captive your thoughts and make a conscious choice not to keep thinking about that thought. You can change the thought to one that is not attached to these sins. For instance, if you see a beautiful woman or man, you might first have a lustful thought. However, you can consciously change that thought to an innocent one. If you have a thought about how you envy your neighbor for getting a new car, you can change that thought to say you are happy for them and that God is blessing them. You might not feel that way at the moment, but if you say it, you will begin to think that way.
I am sure all of us want to spend eternity in heaven. I don’t think you would be listening to a podcast named Walk Boldly With Jesus if you didn’t care about God and spending eternity with Him. Do we really want to put our eternity in jeopardy because we aren’t willing to have a little discipline while we are here on Earth? I know that discipline is not easy; believe me, I do. However, the good news is that we are not in this alone. All we need to do is have the desire to do better and then bring it to the Lord. If you are Catholic, bring this lack of discipline to the priest in confession. Bring the deadly sins that are attached to your lack of discipline to confession as well. Ask the Lord for help in overcoming them, and He will give you the strength. If you are not Catholic, you can take your struggle to the Lord and to your minister if you would like. Talk to the Lord about where your struggles are and where you getting caught up, and the Lord will help you.
The first step in change is realizing that there is a problem. I never really put two and two together before that my lack of discipline was leading me into a struggle with the seven deadly sins. I never realized that by not exercising discipline I was allowing those sins to creep into my life and to get comfy and to start directing my life in some ways. I can see where the Lord is talking directly to me this morning. I hope you can see where He might be talking to you as well. We can’t change what we don’t see. I am grateful for this eye-opening message this morning, as I now can start to be more aware of the consequences of my lack of discipline and why it matters if I eat that cookie or not, why it matters if I waste that time or not. Our choices matter. As it says in the verse above, “For your ways are in full view of the Lord, and he examines all your paths. The evil deeds of the wicked ensnare them; the cords of their sins hold them fast. For lack of discipline, they will die, led astray by their own great folly.” Do we want our lack of discipline to lead us astray?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we thank you for being the perfect Father to us. We thank you for knowing when we need to struggle through and when you can save us from the struggle. Lord, we thank you for waking us up this morning to one big reason why discipline is so important. We repent of letting these sins creep into our lives, and we resolve to be more aware going forward. Lord, we know we can only do this with your help. We ask you to help us develop more discipline. We ask you to give us the tenacity we need to keep trying to be disciplined, even when we fail over and over again. We want to spend eternity with you, Lord. Please help us get there. We love you, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you would like to dive deeper into how to walk more boldly with Jesus, I hope you will join my mentoring group that is starting in January. I will go over topics such as prayer, growing closer to the Lord, reading scriptures, hearing the Lord’s voice, walking in the confidence that you are a beloved child of God, and learning what it really means to have the power of the Holy Spirit living inside of you. It is going to be a great way to learn how to live your faith more. If you would like more information, click on the link below or go to my website, walkboldlywithjesus.com. I look forward to meeting you here again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed weekend!
The word from the Lord today is, “I call you. I encourage you. I thirst for you, yet you do not step forward; you step backward. I urge you to step forward, not hinder all that I have for you. For there is more that I long and ache to give you. This is a time of great graces. I want you to grow in leaps and bounds. My mercies are tremendous. My grace, my call, my gifts to you are great. Don’t refuse any of them. Let yourself be free to become much more than you can ever dream of. I have promised; I have given you my Spirit. I do not renege on my promises or hold back my Spirit from you. Let your light shine for me. There is enough darkness in the world. Let the light that is within you from me shine on others. Be not afraid to speak words of hope, love, and peace. Be my witnesses to the love that I have to give to them.”
The Same Way Fruit Appears In An Orchard
Galatians 5:22-23 “ But what happens when we live God’s way? He brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard—things like affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. We develop a willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart, and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments, not needing to force our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely.”
My mentor posted this online yesterday for us to read and think about as we all begin to think about our words and mantra for 2024. In the Big Life Mentoring with Pamela Crim, she has us pick a word and mantra each year. First, she has us fill out worksheets that help us pray about it, ask God about it, and figure out what it is we want and need this year. Then, we ask the Lord to give us a word for the year. Sometimes, we have a word in mind, and then after we do the worksheets, we realize God has a different word in mind. Sometimes He will give us a word that we don’t necessarily want but that we really need. For instance, He gave a friend of mine the word stay, when all she wanted to do was go.
God is a good and loving Father. He doesn’t always just tell us what we want to hear, He also tells us what we need to hear. Once we have our word, we come up with a mantra that we say every single day of the year. This is to remind us of what is important and how we said we wanted to live. This is great to have because it is also something to which we can hold all of our decisions up to see if they align with how we want to live our lives. For instance, my word last year was Bold. I knew I wanted to step out in faith more and ask people if I could pray over them. I knew I wanted to live my faith more boldly and not be afraid of what others thought of me. This was going to require me to be more bold.
After filling out the worksheet and finding out everything I wanted next year, I came up with a mantra, and then, at the New Year’s Retreat, my mentor helped me fine-tune it. My mantra for this year is, “I have a divine calling on my life, and I boldly respond, holding nothing back. I’m here to serve God fully and be used as His vessel. I know He is already proud of what I am doing, and I will continue to step out and be BOLD!” This mantra was great because it reminded me of who I wanted to be all throughout the year. Did I always live up to this mantra? No. Sometimes I did not respond boldly, but I believe I responded boldly more often than I would have if I had not had this mantra going through my head.
Now, let's get back to the verse. The verse says, “ But what happens when we live God’s way? He brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard—things like affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. We develop a willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart, and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments, not needing to force our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely.” While first reading this verse, I was confused as to what was meant by the saying, “He brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard.” How does fruit appear in the orchard? The first thing that came to me was that the tree needs to grow. When the tree is a sapling, it doesn’t have any fruit. However, as it grows up, as it matures as a tree, you will begin to see more and more fruit on it. The second thing that came to me is that the fruit is a gift. The tree didn’t have to do anything to earn the fruit it produced. All the tree had to do was be itself, do the things it was made to do and God took care of the rest.
The same is true for us when it comes to the Holy Spirit. We don’t have to do anything to earn the gifts of the Holy Spirit, they are freely given. However, sometimes we do need to ask for them. God is a big believer in free will, so He does not want to give you something you do not want. However, He is happy to give us gifts when we ask for them. You might know some people who have certain gifts from the Holy Spirit. You might even think to yourself that you asked for that same gift and wonder why they have a much stronger gift than you do. My guess would be that they use the gift more, or they spend more time in communion with the Lord.
Even though our gifts are freely given by the Lord, the power of the gifts we are given flows from our relationship with the Lord. Everything we do flows from our relationship with the Lord. So, we may have the same gifts as someone else, but if they are spending more time cultivating a deeper intimacy with the Lord, it may seem like they have a stronger gift than we do. We all have the same Holy Spirit living inside of us, the exact same Holy Spirit. The Lord has just shown them through that intimacy how to use it more. A second reason it can seem like they are more gifted is because they practice the gift they were given. They exercise those gifts, and so they become stronger.
We were all given the Holy Spirit at baptism and then a refreshing of the Holy Spirit at Confirmation. However, if we aren’t asking for the gifts of the Spirit, then we probably aren’t seeing them in our lives. If we did ask for them and yet we aren’t using them, we probably aren’t seeing the fruits of them in our lives. If you are faithful with little, God will give you more. Sometimes it takes using the gifts in faith for a long time before you actually see any fruit in your lives from them. However, if you ask the Lord for the gift and then you use the gift he gives you, you will grow in it.
The verse goes on to give a few examples- “things like affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. We develop a willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart, and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments, not needing to force our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely.” How great would it be if we had a supernatural affection for others? If we could be more Christ-like and love everyone, not just those who met our impossibly high standards, we didn’t know we had. I think we could all use a bit more of a sense of compassion in our lives. That is something that seems to be lacking nowadays.
Next, it says we will develop a willingness to stick with things. If anyone needs this one, it is me. I have really been struggling with that this year. However, I have plans in place to help me next year, and they all begin with spending more time with our heavenly Father. I know when I put Him first and make time first thing in the morning to spend with Him, my day goes better, and my life goes better. I don’t know why it is so easy to forget that. Another great thing this verse mentions that I think is important for all of us to have is a “conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people.” If we go into a situation or a conversation assuming good, assuming holiness is present, we will have much better results. Usually, we go into things assuming the worst, and then we wonder why it goes badly. Our attitude and thoughts matter!!
The last part of the verse that I want to touch on is where it says, “not needing to force our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely.” If we stick closely to the Lord, this part will be easier. If we are constantly checking in with the Lord, then we don’t have to force things in our lives. God will lead us down the steps He wants us to take. He will lead the way, and we just get to follow. That is not to say following is always easy, but it is not something we need to force. It says right in the verses we will be able to marshal and direct our energies wisely! Who wouldn’t want that?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us follow your ways. Help us ask for your gifts and then use them when you give them to us. Help us to know what to ask for, Lord. Help us to assume the good in others and the good in our situations. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I have decided that instead of calling my new program coaching, I will call it mentoring. If you want more info on that program, you can find all the details on my website, walkboldlywithjesus.com. The live mentoring nights will be Tuesday nights, and they will consist of 30 minutes of me teaching/mentoring on a topic and then 30 minutes of small group time where you can see how to use what I taught in your upcoming week. I really think the small group time will turn out to be your favorite part, even though you may be apprehensive at first since you might not know anyone. Growing with a community is the best!
The word of the Lord for today is the bookmark that we will go over in the Prayer Group today. It begins with a call, proclamation, promise, and directive. See if you can spot them.
“Come closer to me. Come deeper with me. Come into my presence because I want you, my diamonds, to sparkle so that all those around you will want to come and be in your presence to absorb your light. Your light is my life in you. I am the God who loves you. I am the God who protects you. I am the God who never stops caring for you. I give you my abundant blessings. No matter what is going on in your life right now. I take each step that you take. When you feel you can’t stand, I am there to carry you. What I share with you, you must share with others. It is I who sends you to share my way, my truth, and my life so that others may grow in me and love me. Arise with the name of Jesus on your lips.”
We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click here. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed day!
Thank you so much for sharing your witness. What an amazing testimony of how much freedom you can get from inner healing. Unbound is a remarkable model of inner healing. Unbound deliverance ministry is a model of prayer developed by Neal Lozano. It is the model for deliverance most widely endorsed by Catholic bishops and priests throughout the world. Unbound guides people to surrender more fully to Jesus and encounter the truth that sets them free.UNBOUND is a safe, loving, effective prayer model that helps people respond to the good news of the gospel. UNBOUND ministry teaches how to listen and respond in Five Key areas as people seek greater freedom in Christ and help others to do the same. If you would like to learn more about unbound, Click Here. I have personally been trained in the unbound prayer model as well as having gone through at least two unbound sessions of prayer myself. It is an incredible method that truly frees people from bondage. The freedom felt afterward is amazing. I highly suggest everyone check into it. If you would like more info on Unbound or if you would like Rosa to pray with feel free to email her at janet0042009@icloud.com. Thank you again, Rosa, for your powerful testimony. I hope you will share more testimonies about all the ways the Lord is working in your life. We look forward to hearing from you again.
What Is A Life Verse?
Isaiah 50:4-5 “The Lord God has given me a well-trained tongue, That I might know how to answer the weary a word that will waken them. Morning after morning, he wakens my ear to hear as disciples do; The Lord God opened my ear; I did not refuse, did not turn away.”
While at Encounter Ministries class last night, I was talking with a fellow student. We were talking about how excited we get at the beginning of the year and how much we love a good planner. I don’t really know this classmate that well, as we only see each other for a few hours on Monday nights, and most of that time is spent listening to the teachers. I had no idea she loved planners and planning for the new year as much as I did. We were talking about our plans for the future a bit, and she asked if I had scriptures that spoke to the future I wanted. I told her I hadn’t looked up scriptures for the job I wanted, although I do have scriptures surrounding me that remind me to be bold and remind me that the Holy Spirit is living inside of us. They remind me that we can move mountains with mustard seed-sized faith, and whatever we ask in Jesus’ name will be given to us because Jesus went to be with His Dad.
My friend said she has a few life verses, and one of them is Isaiah 50:4-7. I really liked 4-5 because it talks about what I want to do when I grow it. It is a verse that speaks to the future that I want to have. I thought it would be great to share this with you for a couple of reasons. First, I thought if you could see how this verse relates to what I want to do, you could see how there are verses in the Bible that relate to what you want to do as well. Second, you might really like this verse and like what it says. Although I want to fulfill this verse on a bigger scale, I think we are all called to fulfill this verse in some way. Third, I am hoping this episode will get you excited about asking the Lord to give you a few “Life Verses.” To me “Life Verses” are those ones that we can turn to and rely on no matter what is going on in our lives. They remind us of things we need to remember in difficult times.
The first part of today’s verse says, “The Lord God has given me a well-trained tongue, That I might know how to answer the weary a word that will waken them.” This is something that might not necessarily be true at the moment, but something I can pray into. We have talked about declarations in the past. Declarations can be affirmation statements, they can be scripture verses, they can be anything that we want to declare over ourselves. The best way to phrase a declaration statement is as if it has already happened. You wouldn’t want to say, someday, I will be a writer. Your brain will hear that and say to itself, ok, we aren’t working on that yet. That is a future goal. However, if you say I am a writer, then your brain will hear that and get to work on figuring out how to make that happen.
The above verse is a well-phrased declaration I could begin to say daily. “The Lord has given me a well-trained tongue.” This is actually a good declaration for all of us to say. Wouldn’t it be great if you didn’t say all the things you want to say? Wouldn’t it be great if those you are surrounded by didn’t say everything that came into their minds? How many times has someone said something to you, and you wondered what they were thinking when they decided to say that? It is crazy to me the things I hear come out of my own kids’ mouths at times. I mean, it seems like people are just getting more and more rude and they don’t seem to care. Imagine if we all had well-trained tongues. I bet our tongues get us in more trouble than we even know. Proverbs 18:21 says that life and death are in the power of the tongue. If our tongues are that powerful, it makes sense to pray earnestly for a well-trained tongue.
The verse goes on to say, “That I might know how to answer the weary a word that will waken them.” How great would it be to be able to do this? How great would it be to be able to know exactly what to say to your spouse, your child, your co-worker or your friend when they are weary? I know I have often prayed that I wish I knew what to say to cheer them up or to bring them out of their depression. I will say, if you don’t know how to pray for someone, ask the Lord to give you the words to say, pause, and then say whatever comes to your mind. You might not understand what the words you are saying mean, but the person you are praying over will.
I just got a message from a friend whom I pray over through text messages. Yesterday I didn’t really know what to pray for, so I told that to God. Yesterday part of my prayer was, “ We ask that you heal anything else that might be going on that we are unaware of. We know that you don’t need us to know, and you don’t need us to say all the right things. You just need us to come to you, and you will do the rest. This is us coming to you, Lord. This is us asking you to help us.” Today I got a reply back from my friend who said even though I sent this yesterday, she didn’t see it until today. Today she woke up with worry and anxiety, and this prayer gave her the peace that she really needed today. The peace that she knows can only come from God. God is so good! He will give you the words. All you have to do is ask.
The last part of this verse says, “Morning after morning, he wakens my ear to hear as disciples do; The Lord God opened my ear; I did not refuse, did not turn away.” This could be another declaration. Who wouldn’t want to wake up and hear like the disciples do? Yes, Lord, please open my ears. I want to hear like they heard. I want your voice to guide me every day in the right direction. Another declaration could be the ending part of this verse. I did not refuse, did not turn away. I wish I could say that I never refused the Lord. I wish I could say I never turned away. However, the truth is I do it all the time. Anytime I sin, I turn away from the Lord. Anytime I know the Holy Spirit is prompting me to do something and I don’t, I am refusing. My friend sure picked a great “Life Verse.” There are three declarations that have been found in these 2 different verses. That is pretty cool. I think I will write these verses down along with the declarations.
When you are reading the Bible, and you find that certain scriptures are jumping out at you, write them down and pay attention to them. The Lord might be trying to tell you something. Also, when you are reading scriptures, and you read some that describe a gift, quality, trait, virtue, or whatever it might be that you really want to have, then you can write down the scripture and make it into a declaration, which is just taking the verse and stating it in a way that says you already possess what was is stated in the verse. Sometimes you will come across a verse that just speaks directly to your soul. That might be a good life verse. Have you ever had a Bible verse that you heard and it just changed your whole life or your outlook on life? I remember the first Bible verse that really began to change my life was Romans 8:11 " If the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, the one who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also, through his Spirit that dwells in you.” Learning that we had the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead living inside of us was life-changing for me. I started living more into the power that we all have living inside of us. What is a verse that really means something to you?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, I ask you to give each person listening to this episode a verse that really speaks to their heart and soul. Lord, I ask you to help us come up with declarations about who we want to be, ones that will help us become the best version of ourselves. Help us pick a few life verses so that when we have decisions to make in our lives, we can refer to those verses, and they can keep us on the straight and narrow path toward you! We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus! Today I thought I would mention another benefit of joining my coaching program. This benefit is that we know we are not alone. It often feels like we are alone, especially in a world that is tolerant of everything except for Christianity. However, when you are in a group of other people who are also striving to grow closer to the Lord, then you know you are not alone, and you can be yourself more around them. For more information about my group coaching program that starts in January, check out my website, walkboldlywithjesus.com, or CLICK HERE. I look forward to bringing you a wonderful witness tomorrow morning. You won’t want to miss it. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day.
The Word from God for today, “My beloved children, now, now is the time. Now is all you have. This is your time, this is your now. My spirit moving among you will help you to be my light to those who encounter you each and every day. Do not be afraid. Do not be afraid, but believe. Believe in my love. Believe in my words to you that I am with you always. Now is the only time that I give you. Now is the time I ask you to be my other self to those you meet. Smile at them with my smile. Pray with them with my heart. Give them the hope that I give you. Do not wait, my children, do it now."
An Orphan Spirit, What Is That?
John 14:18 "I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.”
This is the verse immediately following the verses I covered in the last episode. I originally had it included in that episode but wanted to take it out so I would have some time to devote to just this verse. In our encounter ministry class last year, we talked a lot about healing. We had a whole eight weeks on physical healing and eight weeks on inner healing. One of the things that came up a lot during the inner healing quarter is the phrase “the orphan spirit.” This is not something that I had heard before. Or at least I don’t remember hearing it before this quarter.
The orphan spirit is one that can attach itself to people who feel they have been abandoned. Maybe one of their parents left them as a child or even as an adult. Maybe both of their parents left them. It could be that they have had multiple people in their lives leave them. This person/these people leaving from their life has left them with a sense of abandonment. It has left them feeling lonely and all alone. This can happen to adopted children as well. Even if they have a loving adopted mom and dad, they can feel abandoned by their birth families.
Often times people do not know they have this spirit within them. Evil spirits can not be in us unless we give them permission, but sometimes we do this subconsciously or without realizing we are doing it. For instance, when we come into agreement with the lies the enemy tells us, then we empower the liar and give Him access to our lives. This is how the orphan spirit can slip in unnoticed. From what I have learned, the orphan spirit is a spirit that will feed you lies, such as, “You do not have a father or mother.” “You are all alone.” “You don’t fit in anywhere.” “You are not loved.” “You are not wanted.” “You are not liked.”
This spirit can affect your relationships because you have a hard time believing someone could love you. You feel as though you always have this hole that needs to be filled, but you are not sure how to fill it. You try all the different ways you know to fill a hole, but it remains empty. You are unhappy, maybe not all the time, but you can’t seem to sustain happiness long-term. You may even be filled with anxiety and worry, and yet you can’t put your finger on the cause of these feelings. The cause is this spirit inside of you trying to ruin your happiness and whisper all those lies I mentioned earlier into your ear.
The only way to get rid of an orphan spirit is to rebuke it. You can say, even if you aren’t sure if you have one, “In the name of Jesus, I rebuke the orphan spirit. I do not give it permission to live in me, and I demand it leave right now. I bind it and send it to the foot of the cross.” All of God’s creations are bound by free will. If you tell a spirit, good or bad, to leave, they must leave. They cannot stay without permission, and yet we can inadvertently give them permission to stay without even realizing it. As I mentioned before, when we entertain negative thoughts and lies, then we are inviting the enemy into our minds, and if we don’t realize the enemy is there, then we don’t think to revoke the right to be there.
The truth is we all have a Father, and he has never and will never abandon us. Our heavenly Father has been there with us since before we were even created, and He will be with us for all eternity. He is someone we can rely on in a way that is different from any human relationship we have ever had. His love is perfect. It is unwavering and unconditional. It is hard to find that kind of love here on earth. Most of us love out of our brokenness. We love like we were loved, and that was most likely not perfect love. God is the only one that can fill that hole you are trying to fill. Turn to Him when you feel unloved. Turn to Him when you feel lost or alone. He will fill you with comfort. He will fill you with love.
There have been several testimonies about people who have received so much freedom after they have gone through some inner healing sessions. Whether it was an unbound session or an Encounter Ministries inner healing session, many people have had major breakthroughs in these sessions. Some people have reported that once they said the words to release the orphan spirit, they felt instant relief. They reported that they never knew they had this, and yet once they said it, so many things in their life made more sense. Once they released this spirit and then were filled up with the truth of all their heavenly Father had done for them over the years, they were filled with love from the Heavenly Father. They no longer felt alone or abandoned. They were finally set free.
The enemy tries to hide in the shadows. He doesn’t want us to know he is talking to us, he doesn’t want us to know that he is whispering lies to us. This is why his lies always seem to have some small truth in them. He will take this small truth and twist it to suit his needs. Sometimes we may have a spirit inside of us, and yet the feelings or thoughts it is feeding us are so subtle we may not even be aware of them. They usually affect us and our relationships, but we just don’t know why. For instance, if we have an orphan spirit that is constantly telling us subconsciously that no one stays and everyone always leaves us, then we may hold back our love and affection. We may put up a wall that we didn’t even know we put up to protect ourselves from getting too close because we think that person is going to leave at some point.
I hope all that I have said makes sense. I am not telling you this to scare you or make you worried that you have an unknown spirit living inside of you. I am telling you this because it is something the enemy doesn’t want you to know. I am telling you this because freedom can be just one sentence away. All you have to do when you notice a spirit is to tell it to leave in the name of Jesus. I am also telling you this because you might have some chronic issues. You might have some negative patterns that you have tried to fix, and yet no matter how hard you try, you can’t seem to fix them. You might have the same negative results every time you get into a relationship with someone. If this is the case, it might be a spirit causing this. If you are struggling with the same issue over and over again, I recommend going to an inner healing session. The freedom you can receive is amazing! There is nothing like it. If you want to do a Zoom inner healing session with Encounter Ministries, I believe you can just go to their website to find that. If you want to do an unbound session, I believe you can find that on the unbound website as well. Don’t keep living in the darkness when you could be living freely in the light!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each and every person who is listening to this episode today. Lord, if anyone listening is suffering from an orphan spirit, I ask you to put it on their hearts to reject that spirit right now. If anyone has any other spirits, like the spirit of anxiety, anger, worry, depression, unforgiveness, and any other, I pray that you will put it on their heart for them to reject these spirits in the name of Jesus and send them to the food of the cross. Lord, you are so good. You respect our free will so much that all your creations are bound by it. Thank you, Lord! You are amazing. We love you, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I want to take a minute to talk about my coaching program starting in January. It will consist of a once-a-week coaching call where I will teach a certain topic for 30 minutes, and then you will have 30 minutes of small group time to talk about how you can apply what you learned to your upcoming week. Also, you can get to know your group members and start to build a community to help you grow closer to the Lord. Growth happens so much faster when you are surrounded by a community. I will record the teachings so you can rewatch them or watch them at a different time if you can’t make the Tues night sessions. There will also be a members-only Facebook group to help us grow as a community. It will be a great place to post questions, prayer requests, and any struggles or successes we have along the journey. I hope you will consider joining me. It is only $30 a month, a dollar a day, and yet will help you grow closer to the Lord. Details can be found on my website, walkboldlywithjesus.com. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I. Have a blessed day!!
The word from the Lord for today is, "My children, I love you to be with me. I do not need your efforts, I do not need your talents, for I alone will make you fruitful. Just relax, be empty, and be with me."
The Advocate!
John 14:16-17 “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you always, the Spirit of truth, which the world cannot accept because it neither sees nor knows it. But you know it because it remains with you and will be in you.”
Jesus is talking in this verse. He is telling us that when He goes to be with the Father, He will ask His Father, and God will send us another Advocate to be with us always. Jesus’ plan wasn’t to come and walk among us, teach us all about the new covenant, and then leave us alone to figure out what to do with all that we were taught. Jesus came to set us free from our sins. He came to sacrifice Himself so that we may live. However, when He left, He did not leave us alone.
I love how He refers to the Holy Spirit as our Advocate. Here is the definition I got for an advocate, “one who pleads another's cause, who helps another by defending or comforting him.” Our advocate pleads our cause to the Heavenly Father. Romans 8:26 says, “In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.” The Holy Spirit intercedes for us because we don’t even know what to ask for sometimes. I was talking to a woman in my Encounter Ministries class on Monday, and she was saying that she doesn’t even know what to pray for right now with her family situation. My friend is not the only one who doesn’t know what to pray for. I am sure there have been times in each of our lives when we have encountered a situation where we didn’t even know what we wanted or we didn’t see a way out, so we didn’t know exactly what to ask the Lord.
When this happens, it is okay to ask the Holy Spirit to intercede on your behalf. The Holy Spirit knows what is deep down inside your heart, and He takes our deepest desires, even if we don’t know what they are, and He presents them to the Lord in the perfect way. This is why I love the gift of tongues. When you are speaking in tongues, you do not know what you are saying, but the Holy Spirit is speaking directly from your heart to the Lord’s heart/ears. It is a direct communication that no one can intercept. It is between the Holy Spirit and the Lord. Even the enemy doesn’t know what is said when we are speaking in tongues. If you do not have the gift of tongues, it is not too late to begin praying for that gift. If you want me to pray for you for the release of that gift, reach out, and I will definitely do that. If you would like me to pray over you for the release of that gift, reach out, and we will set up a time when I can either do it over the phone, via Zoom, or in person if you are somewhat local.
Jesus calls the Advocate the Spirit of truth. This reminds us that the Holy Spirit speaks the truth. In John 14:26b, Jesus says, "—he will teach you everything and remind you of all that [I] told you. The Holy Spirit not only speaks the truth, but He can teach us everything and remind us of all that Jesus told us. It is important that we realize that the Holy Spirit we have living inside of us isn’t just something that sounds nice and yet doesn't really mean anything. The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity. The Holy Spirit, the one living inside of you, is powerful, and it is capable of helping you do incredible things. This is why it is important to work with the Holy Spirit. It is important to consult the Holy Spirit and to invite the Holy Spirit into whatever you are doing. Did you ever wish you knew what God wanted you to do in a particular circumstance?
Have you ever asked someone to pray for discernment for you because you really didn’t know what to do? I have too! When we are in this situation, we can ask the Holy Spirit to help us. One of the gifts of the Holy Spirit is discernment. The Holy Spirit knows what we should do and can tell us if we make the time to ask and then listen for an answer. Sometimes there is not just one thing we can do. It is important to pray and ask the Lord what the best option is. However, sometimes the Lord doesn’t tell us because He is ok with either option. Sometimes there are multiple paths that would all lead to the same place. It is not necessarily which path we choose, it is more what we do on that path or with that path that matters.
When I actually sit and think about how incredible it is that we have the Holy Spirit living inside of us, it just boggles my mind. I am just in awe. I mean, we have the same Holy Spirit inside of us that Jesus had inside of Him. Can you even imagine that? I also struggle to understand how everyone is not blown away by this information. It says right in the verse above that the world cannot accept the advocate because it neither sees nor knows it. But you know it because it remains with you and will be in you. I guess if you don’t really believe in Jesus, then it would be hard to believe in the Holy Spirit, especially since Jesus walked the Earth. There is definitely proof that Jesus lived. There are so many people who don’t believe in Jesus or even God. I can see how they would now know the Advocate. The verse says that we know it because it remains with us and will be in us.
So, what about those of us who do know Jesus? We do know God. Do we know the Holy Spirit? Do we know the power and love that we have inside of us? Are we calling on that power? Are we talking with and praying to the Holy Spirit? Are we asking the Holy Spirit to pray for us and intercede on our behalf? The Holy Spirit was a gift from the Lord to help us stay on the straight and narrow path. The Holy Spirit was a gift to help us remember all that Jesus taught us. It was a gift to help us do the right thing. Why are we not using that gift? Why are we not calling on the power of that gift? There are so many gifts of the Holy Spirit, and Truth is only one of them.
I wonder how amazing our lives would be if we called on the Holy Spirit more often. I wonder what it would be like if we prayed to receive all the gifts of the Spirit and then we stepped out in Faith and used those gifts. There are so many gifts, and so many of us are just letting them go to waste or just lie dormant. Imagine how different this world would be if we all started leaning into the gifts of the Holy Spirit more. If we had more people spreading peace, love & joy. If we had more people being willing to be an instrument of God in healing the sick and spreading the Word of God. What if we all took a minute today and asked the Lord what gifts He wanted to reveal to us, and then we took those gifts and practiced them? This is a big part of my Encounter Ministries class. We learn about the gifts, but then we practice them in class, and we have homework to practice them outside of class as well. You can do the same. The Holy Spirit will help you. I am happy to help, too, if you want to reach out to me. Your life will never be the same when you start to discover the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to call on the Holy Spirit more. Please show us how! Please help us to have the courage to ask for the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Help us grow in these gifts. Help us to understand why you sent us the Holy Spirit. Help us to pray with and learn from the Holy Spirit. We love you, Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I am so excited about the group coaching program starting up in January. It is a great opportunity to grow closer to the Lord, learn more about the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and how to walk more boldly with Jesus. It will be a time to get to know others on this same journey. It will be a great opportunity for growth. And the best part is, it is only $30 a month. That is $1 a day. We definitely spend more than that on things that are not nearly as important as our faith journey. I hope you will join me in this new program so we can get to know each other and grow closer to the Lord together. I look forward to meeting you here again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed weekend!
The word from my prayer group for this weekend is one of my favorite ones. It is, “If you move more in trust each day, all can be. Trust in the secret. Trust in me, trust in my love, trust that I will give you the grace to meet whatever there is in life. As you move forward in trust, you will see things that you never thought were possible. All can be as you trust me more and more.”
Where Does My Help Come From?
Psalm 121:1-2 “I lift up my eyes to the mountains— where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.”
I heard this verse while I was listening to the Big Life Devotional by Pamela Crim yesterday, and I instantly thought of this song. The song is called Shoulders by for King and Country. I will place a link for the song in the show notes if you want to give it a listen. It is a really good song, so I do recommend checking it out. For King and Country is a great group of artists. They moved to this country from Australia in 1991 when their dad accepted a job here. I love this song because it reminds us where our help comes from. It also reminds us of various ways that God helps us. It also says the words from this verse. They both start the same way.
I look up to the mountains
Does my strength come from the mountains?
No, my strength comes from God
Who made heaven and earth, and the mountains
When we are struggling and suffering, we look around for strength anywhere we can find it. We look to TV for distractions, we look to food for comfort, and we sometimes turn to alcohol or drugs to numb the pain. We look everywhere for something that will take away the pain or help us get through it in some way. As long as we keep searching everywhere but where God is, then we will never find what we are looking for. God is our strength. He is the one that can get us through the hard times. We just need to turn to Him and ask Him. We just need to seek Him out instead of all the other things that we turn to when we are struggling.
When confusion's my companion
And despair holds me for ransom
I will feel no fear
I know that You are near
Think about what it is we do when we are confused and the feelings of despair set in. Do we turn to the Lord, or do we turn away? Do we have hope that the Lord will bring us out of this despair? I love the line that says, and despair holds me for ransom. That is such an accurate visual of despair. You feel like you can’t do anything but sit in it. This verse ends with I will feel no fear. I know that You are near. My prayer is we can all say this. My prayer for each of us is that we can look to the Lord when we feel confused and full of despair. We can look to the Lord and not be afraid because we know that our strength comes from Him. The one who made the heavens and the earth. If He can create all of that out of nothing, think about what He can do in your current situation!
When I'm caught deep in the valley
With chaos for my company
I'll find my comfort here
'Cause I know that You are near
How many of us are in a deep valley right now? How many of us feel like we have been in this valley for a long time, and we see no end in sight? I love that it says with chaos for my company. Have you ever had chaos in your company? I am one of 11 children. Chaos and I are old friends. However, how often have we had comfort and chaos at the same time? This verse says I’ll find comfort here because I know You are near. When we find ourselves in a valley and we are surrounded by chaos, it helps to remember that the Lord is always near. We are never alone, even when it feels like we are.
My help comes from You
You're right here, pulling me through
You carry my weakness, my sickness, my brokenness
All on Your shoulders
Your shoulders
Our help comes from the Lord. It can be easy to forget this because sometimes He uses human means to help us. For instance, we may think our help comes from the person giving us the things we need. For instance, help came from my neighbor when I was younger and my dad needed a car. Yes, the neighbor did help us out, and yet even he acknowledges the Lord led Him to do so. He had no way of knowing my dad needed a car, except that my dad prayed for a car, and God worked it out for him. I like the image of this verse. You’re right here, pulling me through. Have you ever felt like God was pulling you through? Like you for sure wouldn’t have made it if He wasn’t pulling you through. You didn’t have the energy or will to walk or even get out of bed, and yet you felt something pulling you out of bed and pushing you to keep going.
The next line is great, too, because it reminds us that we are not carrying our load along. It says you carry my weakness, my sickness, my brokenness all on your shoulders. God has some pretty broad shoulders. He can handle our weakness, sickness, and brokenness. We don’t have to carry it on our own. That is just something the enemy tries to get us to believe. We can give these things to the Lord, and He will carry them for us. All we need to do is ask.
My help comes from You
You are my rest, my rescue
I don't have to see to believe that
You're lifting me up on Your shoulders
Your shoulders
The Lord is our rest. We can just sit and rest in him. Whenever we want, whether we are weary and we need to rest, or whether we just want to rest in His love, mercy, and forgiveness. We can always rest in Him. He is also our rescue. He will rescue us from our circumstances, or He will give us the strength to get through them. I don’t have to see to believe that you’re lifting me up on Your shoulders. This is an important thing to remember. We don’t have to see it to believe it. We often worry because we can’t see the outcome ahead of time. We can’t see a way for the Lord to work things out. We don’t have to see it. We just have to trust that He can and will work things out. He is a Way-maker. He can make a way where there is no way.
You mend what once was shattered
And You turn my tears to laughter
Your forgiveness is my fortress
Oh. Your mercy is relentless
This verse talks to us about some of the things God does for us. He mends what was shattered. Can you think back to a time when you thought all was lost and things felt so broken you thought they would never go back together again? I know I can. A few years ago, my family and my marriage felt so broken I couldn’t see how it could be fixed. However, I never gave up on the Lord, and He came in and fixed what was once shattered. Our family is whole again, not perfect, but whole. God can definitely turn tears into laughter. I have seen Him do this many times. Especially when I go to visit my college roommate Kath. We spend the whole time laughing and crying.
The next line I am actually surprised it is in here, as the verse I was going to use today talked about God’s mercy and forgiveness and I didn’t use it as I had already used that verse in an earlier episode. This song verse says that God’s forgiveness is my fortress. Take a moment to think about that. What is the point of a fortress? It is to protect you and to give you a safe place to be. When I looked up the definition, it also said it was a place of defense and protection against attacks. Isn’t it interesting that the song says your forgiveness is my fortress? Did you know that God’s forgiveness can be your fortress? It can provide you protection against attacks from the enemy. The enemy wants you to believe that you are a sum of each and every one of your mistakes. However, if we rely on God’s forgiveness, we know this is not true. We know that He forgives everything when we turn back to Him and repent. Also, I want to restate what the song says, that God’s mercy is relentless. He will chase you down just to give you that mercy!!
That is such a great song. I pray you all take the time to go and listen to the song. This song does a great job of reminding us of where our strength comes from and why we need it. Our strength comes from God!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we know our strength comes from you. Please remind us when we forget. Lord, we thank you for all you do for us. We ask you to help us remember all the ways you are there for us. We ask you to pull us through all the hard times. We ask you to pull us out of the valley of despair. We ask you to be with us every step of the way! We love you, Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I want to remind everyone that I am starting a group coaching program in January. If you have ever desired to know the Lord more intimately, to go deeper into your relationship with the Lord, or to walk more boldly in your faith, this is the right program for you! I will help you get to know the Lord better, come up with daily routines that help you grow closer to the Lord, and teach you how to step out more boldly in your faith. We will learn all of that while having fun and getting to know each other. I pray you will join me on that adventure too! I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s word of prophecy from my prayer group is, “There is no demon who can touch you. There is no one who can steal my children from Me. You are ALL My children. I have given you a package of seeds. Those seeds will be scattered by each of My children. Some in small ways, some in big ways but not one seed sown is insignificant. It is all part of My forever plan. I am a part of you. Rest in My love and My peace. You are a chosen people. Chosen for me from the beginning of time. I cannot for the times. I cannot. You are whole in Me.”
Today’s witness is a recount of one that I heard yesterday on YouTube. I will put a link to this testimony video in the show notes. The testimony is about Lauren Daigle. Lauren talked about how when she was a teenager the Lord showed her what her future would look like. He showed her stages, He showed her exactly what her Lauren Daigle World Tour would look like. She didn’t know what he was showing her, but she could see crowds of people and tour buses and charts and awards and all the things, and she wasn’t even singing yet. She was a closet singer. No one knew she could sing. Her mom talked to the choir singer at their church and asked if he could put her in the choir, maybe in the back row. Anyway, she auditioned, and he gave her a song and asked her to lead the song in those two weeks. She said every decision she made in her career was based on these visions and dreams. Finally, she made it to the Lauren Daigle World Tour. It was exactly like what she had seen in her visions. She said at the beginning of the tour, God told her to “hold it loosely.” She had no idea what that meant, but she said, “OK.” She had 12 shows on her tour, and then COVID happened, and everything shut down. She was so heartbroken. She said it took her 6 months to get out of bed because she was so filled with disappointment. She was heartbroken because at 16, He showed her these visions and these dreams, and then it took her 12 years to be there to fulfill them. Then on the 12th show, it all fell apart, and the weight of disappointment was so heavy.
The Lord is the restorer of broken dreams. She said she used to never talk about God at shows because she wanted it to be more inclusive. But she then thought, how can I talk about Love when I am not talking about Love itself? She talked to God during COVID and asked where everything went. He told her that she needed to go back to the beginning. Why did she start singing? She sings to worship, to love me, to show me you care. God said worship is the thing that proceeds a miracle. If you are desperate for a miracle and you begin to worship and worship and worship, your eyes will be so focused on the thing you are worshiping that you won’t have time to give fear, anxiety, and stress to the things of this world. He told her that she had forgotten the heart of worship. She is grateful for the time to herself during COVID because she was missing the heart of worship. She was just going through the motions, and now she is back to worshiping and not just singing. He took away her disappointment. He made her experience at her concerts so much better!
As much as she can look back and be grateful for the shutdown now when she was in it, she was struggling. She was going at light speed before the show, and then all of a sudden, she was stopped. The whole world was stopped. She said it felt like she had whiplash because it all stopped so quickly. She struggled with a lot of anxiety, panic attacks, and depression. She was seeing a neurologist and going to therapy, just trying to figure out what was going on. She asked God to return to her the joy of my salvation. She didn’t just want to maintain, she wanted to have zeal and passion for life. When you allow God to come into the broken places, it is like this beautiful lens gets added to your eyes, and you are able to see through His eyes. It’s like you are looking through His “Glory filter.” You can even go through trials and tribulations with joy. She was finally understanding what Paul was saying when he could find contentment in all things. She started asking God for that wholeness.
She wants to help people with loneliness. Someone asked her what she would like to leave behind as her legacy. She said she wants to be known as someone who helps to eradicate loneliness. Loneliness is such a terrible feeling. Lauren says it is the worst feeling. She said there are many people that don’t have friends and that is not ok. We all need to do something about this. She said there is an Old Testament command to love your neighbor, and we all need to be doing this better. She suggests different ways to do this. When you are in the checkout line at the store, look the cashier in the eyes and ask how they are, how their day is going, and what is going on. When you pass someone on the sidewalk, you can say hello. I hope you are having a good day. We need to stop being so busy and make time to love our neighbors. Let’s all talk to and interact with people more often!
Click Here for First Video Lauren Daigle's Sincere Testimony Gave Me Chills
Click Herefor Second Video Lauren Daigle Opens Up About Overcoming Loneliness & Finding Purpose Emotional Interview
Why Share Words Of Prophecy?
1 Corinthians 14:3 “He who prophesies speaks to men for their upbuilding and encouragement and consolation.”
I have been talking more lately about hearing the Lord’s voice and how if we keep giving the Lord a chance to talk to us, then He will. Last night was a really exciting class at Encounter School of Ministry Boston Campus. Both year one and year two students were practicing receiving and sharing words of prophecy. It is always a lot of fun and also a bit intimidating because we always think when it is our turn to get a word, we won’t hear anything. As year two students, we have been learning to listen to the Lord’s voice for a year and a half now, and yet we still get nervous when it is time for us to get a word and share it.
I say this to encourage you. If you have started making time to listen to the Lord and yet you feel you are not hearing anything, I want you to know you are in good company. If you have not started making time to listen to the Lord because you know you won’t hear anything, you are also in good company. Many of us think we won’t hear anything. I mean, who are we anyway? Why would the Lord our God want to talk to us when He has more important things to do and more important people to talk to? I get why you would feel this way. We all kinda feel this way at first. As I said, my classmates and I have been doing this for a year and a half at least, some of us for a lot longer than that, and we can still feel that way at times.
However, God wants to talk to you. Yes, you! He is actually already talking to you. You just can’t hear Him because the noises of the world are so loud, and you probably aren’t spending the time to sit and listen. To answer the question, “Who am I that the Lord our God would want to talk to me?” You are a son or daughter of the one true king. You are His beloved child whom He made in His image and likeness. Yes, God is busy, and yet He is never too busy to sit and talk with you. God is not human. He does not have the same constraints we have. We each have his full attention at all times. He can be fully with us and whatever we are going through at the same time as He can be with everyone else.
When we ask the Lord for something, we are not taking anything away from anyone else. I think this is a really hard concept to understand. We tend to shy away from asking God for things because we know He is busy, and we don’t want to bother Him with our problems. This is limiting God, it is putting Him in a box. God is bigger than this idea that He can only help so many people, so we better not burden Him with our problems. God wants us to come to Him with everything. Not just the really big stuff we can’t handle on our own but the little things too. The bad stuff and the good stuff. He wants us to bring it all to Him and invite Him into it. Ask Him to help us with the things we need help with, ask Him for advice on the things we can do ourselves, and share with Him the good things that are happening. Yes, of course, He already knows, but it is not the same as when you tell Him about it.
God is our heavenly Father. Although He is not limited by our human constraints, such as time and our ability to be in only one place at one time, He does have feelings like we do. After all, we were made in His likeness and image, and Jesus was fully human. The difference between our emotions and the Lord’s emotions is that His emotions were not affected by the fall. God’s emotions are perfect. His love for us is a perfect love. He truly loves us unconditionally, which is a hard concept for us to understand as our love usually comes with conditions.
The verse above talks about words or prophecy. I have talked a bit lately about how God is talking to each one of us, and if we listen, we will hear what He is saying. I have also talked about how important it is to not only listen to when God is talking to us but also to get familiar with what He is saying to us in the scriptures. I mentioned how important it is to be familiar with God and how He talks with us because then, when the enemy tries to whisper his stupid lies in our ears, we will know it is not the Lord. I gave the story of the bank teller and how if they want to spot a fake bill, they have to be intimately familiar with what the real thing looks like. The same is true with God. If we want to be able to spot a fake, we have to be intimately familiar with the One true God and the way that He talks to us. This is why I have started to end each episode with a word of prophecy from our prayer group. If you are hearing a word from the Lord each day, then you will start to get intimately familiar with how He talks to us. Then when you hear the enemy's lies, you will know it is not from the Lord because He never talks to us like that.
The verse above explains why God shares words of prophecy with us. The verse says, “He who prophesies speaks to men for their upbuilding and encouragement and consolation.” This verse tells us why someone would share words of prophecy. If someone is sharing a word they received from the Lord, it is meant to be upbuilding, encouraging, and consoling. The reason I thought this was an important verse for you to hear today is because it can help you discern if what you are hearing is from the Lord. This verse gives you a measure to hold the word up against. When you receive a word, either from the Lord or from someone else, you can ask yourself these questions. Does it build me up? Does this word encourage me? Does this word provide me with consolation? If the answer is no to all three of these questions, then the word is probably not from the Lord. If you receive a word from someone and it leaves you feeling uneasy, anxious, or ashamed, that is not from the Lord. Shame is not from the Lord.
This is not to say that the Lord won’t ever convict us or let us know when we are doing something wrong. He definitely will, especially if we are asking Him to help purify us. He is a loving parent, and He will correct His children. However, the Lord always does it in a loving way. He never comes at us with condemnation. He convicts us of our wrongdoings in a gentle and loving way. We are not left with any shame, we are just left with a deep desire to change.
I pray this episode has helped you understand a bit more about hearing the Lord’s voice and what the purpose is for words of prophecy. I hope the verse will help you to be able to discern if you should share a word that you have received and also if a word someone else has shared with you could be from the Lord or not. The gifts of the Holy Spirit, such as receiving words of prophecy, are open to all of us. The more you try and use that gift, the more you will receive that gift. Set aside 5 minutes today and see what the Lord has to say to you. I promise you will not be sorry you did!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those who listen to this episode today. Lord, we want to hear you talking to us. Please help us set aside the time to sit and listen. Lord, we want to share your words with others. Please give us the courage and boldness to do so. We want to know you, Lord. We want to know you so well that we recognize when the enemy is telling us lies. Please help us. Give us a desire to read your word and spend more time with you. Help us to give up less important things so we can put you first in our lives. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you are still looking for Christmas presents for your loved ones, Click Here to check out my book. I will even autograph it and write them a special message before sending it out. I look forward to bringing you another witness tomorrow. I would like to urge all of you to consider giving a witness. It doesn’t really take a lot of time and yet could change someone’s life. Email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com if you would be willing to share your story. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s word of prophecy from my prayer group is, “My children, I am giving you new eyes, but just like your human eyes need time to adjust to the light or the darkness, your new spiritual eyes that I bestow upon you need to adjust to the light of My Glory. You will grow in this ability to see the glory around you. To see glory, even in pain. Be patient but keep looking.”
Our Father's Love (Part 13) Why Praise Is So Important
Psalm 103:22 “I will bless and praise the Lord with my whole heart! Let all his works throughout the earth, wherever his dominion stretches—let everything bless the Lord!”
This is the last episode in this series. I have really enjoyed taking a look at this psalm and breaking it down to examine it. I have not actually spent a lot of time in the Psalms, and it was beautiful to take the time to go through Psalm 103. Today’s topic is one of my favorites. I think my top 3 topics to talk about would be praise, forgiveness, and God’s love, not necessarily in that order. These are my favorites because I think they are some of the most important. God has really been showing me over the last few years how important praise is to Him. He often gives us a word of prophecy at our prayer group that talks about how much He loves that we come together to praise Him each week.
He has also been telling me over the last few years that praise is a big part of the reason I have been able to grow in my faith so much and that I am able to trust so much. When I ask what I am doing differently, He tells me that I am praising more. I am praising God, not just when I feel like it and not just when all things are going my way. I am praising God every single day, whether it is a good day or a bad day. I actually praise Him more on a bad day sometimes because when I listen to praise music, it can help me change my mood.
If you have not discovered any really good praise music, I recommend you go to Spotify and search through Christian music. My mentor, Pamela Crim, put together an awesome playlist called The Big Life Mornings playlist. It is a public playlist on Spotify, and if you type Big Life Mornings playlist into the search function, it will come up. It has a yellow background with someone walking in red shoes. Some of my favorite artists, in case you are not into playlists, are for King and Country, Lauren Daigle, Elevation Worship, Phil Wickham, TobyMac, Cory Asbury, and so many more of the artists that are on that playlist. There are several reasons that I recommend you find some great Christian music that you like.
First, listening to Christian music has helped me learn even more how much God loves me. I have included some of my favorite songs in various episodes over the years. However, if you have not heard the song Reckless Love by Cory Asbury, you are really missing out. If you do not do Spotify, you can check out YouTube as well. There is actually a playlist on my channel, WalkBodlyWithJesus, on YouTube that is called Prayer Group, and that is a great list of praise songs. It would be a great place to start. Whether you are on Spotify or YouTube, you can save songs to a playlist, and then you can listen to that playlist whenever you need to.
Another reason I recommend you find some good Christian music is because it can change your mood or your focus. Anytime we are anxious, angry, scared, mad, frustrated, or any other feeling, it is because of the story we are telling ourselves. If we are anxious, we are probably focusing on what may or may not happen. If we are angry or frustrated, we might be looking at a situation we can’t change. Listening to this music can help shift our focus from our problems, our worries, and our situation to our God. There is a saying that says that instead of looking at how big our problems are, we can focus on how big our God is. Music can help us do this. If you are listening to songs about how God is a miracle worker and a way-maker, it shifts your focus and helps you praise God in tough times.
A third reason I recommend listening to praise music is because it fills your head with God. God will be on your mind more because the things you listen to are the thoughts that will be in your head. Have you ever noticed that when you hang around someone a lot, you start to talk like them? This is because you spend so much time with them, and you are constantly hearing how they talk, so your brain picks it up. This can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on what they are saying. When I first learned this, I was a bit discouraged because the people in my house, with whom I spent the most time, were very negative and used very bad language. I did not want to start talking like they did. I needed to figure out a way to surround myself with different voices. This is when I started to listen to Christian podcasts and was able to find more Christian music. Imagine if you are listening to songs each day that talk about how much God loves us, how much He forgives us, and that talk about who God is. If you are hearing this over and over again, these will be the thoughts that fill your mind, and these will be the thoughts that come to your mind in times of trouble.
I feel I could go on and on about why I love listening to praise music. However, I will end with this last point. Praising God helps us become more grateful people. I know sometimes it doesn’t feel like we have much reason to praise God. It is not as if my life has been perfect over these last few years, and so that is why I have been able to praise God. I have had some really difficult times over these past few years, actually over the past 20 years. There have been lots of ups and downs in my marriage and in my parenting. My kids have really struggled over the years, and there have been several times in the last six years that I could have gotten really depressed and lost hope. However, I didn’t, and I truly believe it was because I have learned to praise God even in the hard times. I was able to do this because there are so many songs out there about people who have made it through really dark times, and God brought them through to the other side. I was able to do this because the thoughts in my mind from constantly listening to praise music are that God is there for me, He will always be there for me, and He can make a way where there is no way.
God is so good. He is there for us in good times and in bad times. There is always a reason to praise Him. When we are in a tough time, and we can’t find a reason, we can look back to all the times He has provided for us in the past. We can look forward to all the good things He will bring from this hard time. We can look at all the beauty around us and praise Him for that. You don’t have to praise God for your situation, you can praise Him for other things. If you want to, you can praise Him for the good that will come from your situation at a later date because we know God can use all things for our good. (Romans 8:28) I challenge all of you to begin to praise God more, and then let me know if you find that your trust in Him is also growing. I know it did for me, and I know I am not the only one. It can help you trust more too. If you are in a season where praising God seems too difficult because of your circumstances, then find some good Christian music to listen to and let them praise God for you while you listen. It will change your life, I am sure of it.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each person listening to this today. Lord, I ask that each person listen and find some music that praises you that they really like. There are so many different genres of Christian music out there, and I pray each person who listens finds the ones that make their heart happy. Lord, I pray they find songs that fill their soul. I pray this music helps us to praise you when we don’t feel we can. I pray this music helps us to shift our focus from our problems to you and how big you are. Lord, help us to find that music that speaks to our hearts, minds, and souls. We want to praise you, Lord. Please show us how. We love you, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s word of prophecy from our prayer group is: “My love conquered death for all of you. I laid my life down out of this tremendous love that I have for each and every one of you. You are so precious to me. You have no idea how precious you are. You cannot fathom to what depths I would go for each and every one of you. Please remember that I love you through all things. I am with you. You have a line that stretches to my heart and cannot be broken. It is a fishing line, and it cannot be broken. I am on one end, and you are on the other. I love you all. I love you all. My passion was very difficult. I suffered greatly. But I did it for each and every one of you, and I will not see you snatched from me. I love you.”
Our Father’s Love (Part 13) The Heavenly Angels
Psalm 103:20-21 So bless the Lord, all his messengers of power, for you are his mighty heroes who listen intently to the voice of his word to do it. Bless and praise the Lord, you mighty warriors ministers who serve him well and fulfill his desires.
These verses are talking about those who help the Lord. It is talking about the angels who listen intently to the Word of the Lord and then carry out their assignments. The Lord does not need anyone or anything. He created the entire universe out of nothing. He does not need us to help Him, He does not need the angels to help Him, and He doesn’t need the saints to help Him. Yet He allows us to help Him. He includes us in His great plan.
I have talked of the angels before. However, I don’t talk about them often. This is mostly because I do not know a lot about the angels. I have learned about them over the years. There was a two-part class that I went to about angels at Theology on Tap. I find angels interesting. Each person has their very own guardian angel. This is an angel that is assigned to look out for you. This angel is bound to our free will. So it can not do something that we do not want it to do. All creatures, demons, and angels alike have to obey our free will.
This is great news with demons and spirits because that means if we tell them to leave, they have to leave. If you are feeling depressed, angry, anxious, or any other feelings you don’t like, it could be a spirit causing that feeling. If so, you can say, “In the name of Jesus, I command the spirit of…(insert the feeling) to leave right now.” The spirit must leave. It can’t stay without permission. The problem is that sometimes we inadvertently give spirits permission to enter our minds or our thoughts. When we partake in occult activities, like having our futures told, tarot cards, and reiki, then we are opening a door to the enemy and inviting him in. Also, if we hear the enemy whispering words in our ears, and we partner with those lies, and we accept them as truth, then we are empowering the liar. This is giving the enemy power in our lives that we don’t want him to have.
Another way we allow the enemy access to our lives is through hate. When we hate people, when we refuse to forgive people, we are inviting the enemy to live in that hate and that unforgiveness. We are giving the enemy power over us to keep us in that hateful state. Each time we think bad things about people, we talk about them, or we spread rumors about them, we partner with the enemy. Sin is not of the Lord; it breaks our relationship or at least damages our relationship with Him. When we do this, we are partnering with the enemy. When has partnering with the enemy ever worked out for our good?
This is one reason why the angels and saints are so important. They can help us resist the enemy. They can protect us from bad things happening to us. I have heard some amazing stories of people who have been saved by angels. I mentioned we all have guardian angels. It is nice to acknowledge your angels and thank them for all they do for you. Of course, we don’t see most of what they do for us, but you can bet they are not just sitting back and relaxing. Another good thing to do is to tell your angel that you give it permission to act on your behalf and to do whatever it takes to protect you. Let your angel know you give it permission and that if it protects you, it will not be against your will. Accept your angel into your life.
You can talk to your angel, although I don’t think they talk back like God does when you talk with Him. You can also send your angel on assignment. For instance, a friend told me your angel can be in more than one place at a time. So, when she sees an ambulance go by with its lights on or she sees an accident on the road, she will ask her angel to go and be with that person who is hurt. She will ask her angel to keep that person company and to provide them comfort and love, at least until their family gets there. I thought that was beautiful, and now I have started doing that.
You can also ask your angel to talk to the angels of other people. Saint Padre Pio used to do this before any big or important meeting that he had. He would send his angel to the other people's angels and ask them to prepare the person's heart for what he was going to say. He found he had incredible results when he did this. This could be useful to all of us. We all have conversations we don’t look forward to. Whether it is our boss, certain family members, certain co-workers, or a stranger, we all have to have conversations that make us nervous. From now on, before we enter one of those conversations, we can send our angel ahead of us to prepare the way. This is also true when you have a certain outcome you would like, and you aren’t sure the other person will agree. Not that sending you an angel will guarantee that you get the answer you want, but it will certainly help prepare the other person in advance. They will be more open to hearing you out, at the very least.
Aside from our guardian angels, the Lord has legions of angels who act on his behalf. I certainly don’t know all that they are capable of doing. 2 Kings 6:15-17 gives us one example of when the Lord sent an army of angels to help Elisha. “Early the next morning, when the servant of the man of God arose and went out, he saw the force with its horses and chariots surrounding the city. “Alas!” he said to Elisha. “What shall we do, my lord?” Elisha answered, “Do not be afraid. Our side outnumbers theirs.” Then he prayed, “O Lord, open his eyes, that he may see.” And the Lord opened the eyes of the servant, and he saw that the mountainside was filled with fiery chariots and horses around Elisha.”
There was another story I heard of this woman who was walking down a dark alleyway, and she saw a man at the end. She was scared, and she prayed to the Lord for protection. The mad did not do anything to her. The next day she found out that there was another woman who was attacked in that same alleyway that same night. When she went to the police to give a sketch of the guy, she was able to ask the guy why he did not attack her. He said it was because she had a tall man with her. That was an angel, as she did not have anyone with her.
God is amazing! He protects us and helps us in so many ways. I only touched on a few ways in this episode. However, I recommend we all take some time and learn a little more about our guardian angels, the legions of angels, and the Saints and how they can help us. It can’t hurt to be prepared and to know about all the various ways we can call on protection and help from the Lord. One very powerful prayer of protection is the St. Michael the Archangel prayer. I gave it to a friend who was suffering with anxiety the other day and she found instant relief. Here is the prayer if you want to give it a try. "St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle, be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray; and do thou, O Prince of the Heavenly host, by the power of God, cast into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, you are amazing, and we thank you for all the different ways you help and protect us. We ask you to help us be more aware of the angels in our lives. Those who are heavenly creatures and those humans who are angels to us as well. Lord, help us see our blessings more, especially in this advent season. We love you, Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed weekend!
Here is the word of prophecy from our prayer group for today: “My children, I love you, I love you, I love you! Can’t you hear me crying out my love for you? The world is trying to mute me, silence me. But I love you, I love you, never doubt it. Whatever your condition is, I love you, I love you. I love the people that you reach out to. I love them as much as I love you. I want you all. I am not happy unless I have you all with me in my heart.”
Our Father’s Love (Part 12) Trust Enough To Ask For The Impossible
Psalm 103: 19 “Yahweh has established his throne in heaven; his kingdom rules the entire universe.”
God has established his throne in heaven. This doesn’t mean that is where He stays. His kingdom rules the entire universe. There is nothing that the Lord can’t reach. I think we forget this sometimes. We know God is all-powerful and all-sovereign, and then sometimes we are having trouble with something, and we don’t ask God for several reasons. We don’t ask Him because we think He is too busy to deal with our little problems, and we don’t want to bother Him. We don’t ask Him because this is a worldly problem, and what is He going to do about it anyway? We tend to put God in a box, and we think we know what He can do. We have an idea in our heads about what God can do for us, and we tend to keep our requests in alignment with those ideas.
This may seem silly when you hear me say this. We all know that God is all-powerful and He can do all things. We don’t limit God. Think about the last few things you have prayed for. Have they been for the same type of things? Do you pray for God to help you with things even when you don’t see a way that He can help you? Are you taking all of your problems to God, or just some of them? I know a lot of people who seem to get annoyed with me because I often say, “Well, let's pray about that.” If something is bothering us, then God wants to help us. It doesn’t matter how big or how small it is. He cares about everything that we care about.
The verse above says that His kingdom rules the entire universe. It does not say that it rules our health and our spiritual lives, but not our material lives. It does not place any restrictions on God. So, why do we? When was the last time you asked God to help you out of a bind that had nothing to do with health? We tend to pray to the Lord when we or someone we love needs healing, but not necessarily when we need material things. For instance, would you pray to the Lord if your car breaks down on the highway, or would you just call AAA? If you need money to pay your bills, do you think you should pray to the Lord for it? What if you ran out of food, would you pray to the Lord, or would you try to figure it out on your own? Do these sound like things the Lord can help with?
One time my dad’s car broke down, and he really needed a car if he was going to get to work. Before he even had time to tell my mom his car had broken down, a neighbor was at the door giving my dad a car. My dad hadn’t even told him he needed one. The man just said he had this feeling he was supposed to give my dad his wife’s car as she no longer needed it. One of my friends was sitting in her car waiting for the dollar store to open so she could buy groceries. She made her grocery list and realized she didn’t have enough money for all she needed. She prayed to God and told Him that if she just had $50 more, she could buy all she needed that week. The next thing she knew, her daughter had jumped out of the car to chase something that had just flown by. It was a $50 bill. One time, my parents ran out of food, and they really didn’t know how they were going to feed us that night for dinner. They prayed to the Lord for help, and a neighbor came over with all this extra food he had. His dad had to move in with them all of a sudden, and they couldn’t fit all his groceries into their house, so they asked my parents if they wanted the extras. God is so good!
These are all things where the people couldn’t imagine how God was going to answer their prayers, and yet they asked anyway. There is no way that my dad would have imagined a neighbor would just give him a car or bags full of groceries, yet it happened. There is no way my friend could have imagined that if she asked God for $50, she would randomly find a $50 bill in an empty parking lot. Nothing is beyond the reach of God. Nothing is impossible for God.
I think it is really important to remember this when we are praying for healing as well. We might not see any way that it can happen, and yet we can still pray to the Lord, even if we can’t see a way. For instance, there was a woman at the healing service who said she had several heart issues and had a pacemaker but would need a transplant at some point in the future. When she was prayed over, she felt heat in her heart, which means the Holy Spirit was working on it. She asked how that works if she has a pacemaker already. She couldn’t see how the Lord could heal her heart when she had a pacemaker. The deacon said he didn’t know either, we would have to ask Jesus. Here’s the thing, we don’t have to know. We just have to trust enough to ask and then wait and see. If God can create the entire universe, he can certainly figure out how to heal a heart with a pacemaker in it.
I don’t think we mean to place restrictions on God, I just think we aren’t accustomed to asking for big things. God tells us in our prayer group all the time that we are not asking for too much. We are asking for too little. When we ask for big things, miraculous things, things we can’t imagine how God will make them happen, then we are glorifying God and showing Him that we trust He can do all things. I have seen God do miraculous things, and I have heard about God doing miraculous things, so I believe God can do miraculous things.
A friend of mine has a nephew who has brittle bone disease. He cannot really go out and do things because he breaks bones so easily. He is also in a lot of pain. I was talking with my friend about praying for his nephew, and he said, “It’s not like God can give him a new body.” This is what we would probably all think. We would struggle to see how God could heal this young boy. What would God do, replace all his bones? Could he even do that? Yes, He is the creator of the universe. There is nothing he can’t do. However, we most likely wouldn’t think to pray for that because that seems so crazy to think about. Jesus restored sight to the blind, he helped the lame walk, and He literally brought people back from the dead. If He can do all of that, He can heal this young man.
If you are in need of a miracle, if you are in need of anything, ask the Lord for it. Ask God, even if you can’t see how He can fix it. Ask for it even when you don’t see a way through it. God can make a way where there is no way. I am sure God’s people did not see a way when they were caught between the Egyptian army and the Red Sea, yet God made a way by parting the waters. I bet no one knew that was coming or even thought of that as a possibility. The same is true for whatever you need. God’s kingdom rules the entire universe. Nothing is too big and nothing is too small for Him. You are never bothering God. He loves it every time you come to Him. I think sometimes He likes it more when we come to Him for the little things because it shows we are trusting Him more.
Think about who you ask to help you with the little things. If you just meet someone, you won’t want to bother them with little things. However, you wouldn’t think twice about asking your best friend or perhaps your family members to help you with something small. You wouldn’t hesitate because you know them and you know they would be happy to help you. The same is true with God. When you bring everything to Him, it shows Him that you trust Him and that you feel comfortable with Him. Let’s all take some time today and examine our prayers to God. Are there things we haven’t been asking Him? Is it because we think they are too big or too little? Have we been subconsciously putting restrictions on God? How can we change our prayer to reflect the fact that His kingdom rules the entire universe? There is nothing that is too big or too small for Him.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you, and we are so grateful you care about us so much. We want to turn to you first in all situations, please help us. We want to ask you for all things, big and small. We want to trust you in all situations. We can only do this with your help Lord. Please remind us to pray. Please help increase our trust and our faith so we can believe in you more. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Here is today’s word of prophecy from our prayer group: “All come to me be of good cheer. I see you all. I see my spirit burning within each of your hearts. I know your innermost secrets and desires because I created them for you. I live in you, you in me. What have you to fear? Why do you fear? Cast out all fear because you live in me and my love and abiding presence. I will care for my children. I am yours, you are mine, we are one. My heart beats within you, my precious ones. There is nothing to fear, ever. Believe no matter what comes. Believe in me and my love for you. It exists all and into eternity. Wash yourself in the blood of the Lamb. Stop. Stop worrying; I command it.”
Today the witness will be about the recent Encounter School of Ministry Boston Campus Healing Service that I attended. We witnessed many miraculous healings. The Holy Spirit always shows up where He is invited, welcomed, and expected. We always expect Him to show up at the healing services, and He does not disappoint us. Today I will relay some of those miracles to you.
There was one young lady who had several heart issues and was going to need a heart transplant in the future. She felt a warmth in her heart after she was prayed over. Warmth does not mean she was healed, but it does mean the Holy Spirit was working. This same young lady also received prayer for her ears/hearing. She said when they were praying over her, she could feel this warmth in her left ear. As soon as they stopped and asked her to test it, she had a warmth and this weird vibration in both ears.
There was a man who had neuropathy in his feet, and the pain was about an 8. After he had a team pray over him, the pain went down somewhat. The team prayed over him again, and it was down to a 2. He was hopeful it would continue to go down to zero over the next few days. I told him about my aunt’s neuropathy healing and how that took a few days, and he was encouraged. Hopefully he will reach back out and let us know how he is doing?
There was a woman who had pain starting at her neck and radiating down to her hip. After she had a team pray over her, the pain was gone, and she had a warmth radiating down instead. Praise God!
There was a woman who had digestive trouble and food intolerability. She said she would have to eat a pizza to know for sure if she was healed of the food issue, but she was literally doubled over from the weight of God’s glory. She just felt his presence so powerfully. Thank you, Jesus!
There was a team that prayed over my friend Catherine. She said that the doctors keep telling her she has a terminal disease and that she will die, and yet it has been nine years, and she is still standing. Catherine told me that they have started her on a medicine that is used to treat brain cancer, but they are testing it out on other kinds as well. Catherine’s cancer has been reacting well to it, and she is getting better. Her doctor told her she was the exception, and he didn’t know why it was working. She knows why, though. She knows God is healing her. She said the healing service was just what she needed that night.
One of our students, Jim, has muscle pain in the middle of his back. It was about a 5 or 6 on the pain scale before he was prayed over, and then it went down to about a 2. Praise the Lord!
There was one woman who had bursitis in her hip. Someone had a word of knowledge at the beginning that a hip would be healed. The woman tested it out and said the pain was less, but she could still feel it. When we switched to laying hands and praying over people in small groups, she was completely healed. She was so surprised and excited that she had no more pain. She ran around the church to test it out, and she praised Jesus.
There was another woman who had neck surgery a while ago and is having complications from it. She has a limited range of motion because she has a huge knot there. She just had a shot for it the other day because of the pain. It had been bothering her all day, and she had been rubbing it all day. She could not turn her head all the way to the right and look over her shoulder. After receiving prayer, the knot is completely gone and her range of motion has been restored!
One of the women praying over her for this healing also had a neck injury in 1990 and also had limited neck mobility. While she was praying over this woman for healing the Lord healed her also. Her neck mobility has been restored as well! Thank you, Jesus. God is so good. Even when you aren’t asking, He can heal you. Even when you are ministering to others, He can heal you.
Another one of our students, Tammy, suffered from an injury from a car accident in 1995. She said her neck will go out, which causes her back to go out which causes pain, lack of sleep, and a lot of other things. Tammy also had these popcorn sounds when she would rotate her neck. She said it would sound like Rice Krispy cereal. However, after receiving prayer, these popcorn sounds are considerably better. She can barely hear them now.
There was a lady who had surgery. She has arthritis in her fingers, and when she bends them, they make a clicking sound, and it is painful. After there was a work of knowledge about healing arthritis, and when she tested it out, she no longer had any pain. She can still hear the clicking, she can still feel the clicking, but now it is pain-free. She has had this pain for years, and now it is gone! God is so good!
As you can see from all these testimonies, God showed up at this healing service, and we are so grateful He did! I don’t know why I am always so surprised when He does. He told us in the Bible, ask, and you shall receive. He is a God of promises, and He always keeps them. He is a God who heals, we just have to ask. I hope you have enjoyed hearing about these healing testimonies. I pray they inspire you to attend a healing service in your area. I pray they inspire you to ask the Lord to heal whatever it is you are dealing with. I pray they build your faith and your belief in the healing power of the Lord our God.
Our Father’s Love (Part 11) Endless Love, Unbroken and Unrelenting
Psalm 103:17-18 “But Lord, your endless love stretches from one eternity to the other, unbroken and unrelenting toward those who fear you and those who bow facedown in awe before you. Your faithfulness to keep every gracious promise you’ve made passes from parents to children, to grandchildren, and beyond. You are faithful to all those who follow your ways and keep your word.”
Today’s verse is uplifting, especially after yesterday’s verse which had us thinking about how short life is. Today we get to go back to thinking about how much God loves us. We could think about this all day, every day, and would still never really comprehend how vast His love for us is. The other day we talked about how God separates us from our sin as far as the sunset is from the sunrise. Today we are talking about how much He loves us. The verse says that His “endless love stretches from one eternity to the other, unbroken and unrelenting.”
This world doesn’t seem to understand endless love. Love seems to end every day. The divorce rate in this country is so high. Actually, it is high all over the world. We live in a throw-away society where we want the newest and the best things, and we get rid of the old things. We don’t seem to want to work to keep the things we have. When things get difficult, when they get broken, we throw them away and start again instead of trying to fix them. This is not the same with God. His love is endless.
Can you even imagine what that would look like? Endless love, love that doesn’t end. Does that mean He still loves us after we mess up and hurt Him? Yes! Does that mean He still loves us even after we keep doing the same stupid things over and over again? Yes! Surely He will stop loving us once He can see that we are unfixable and unredeemable? Nope! There will never be a time when God’s love will stop. He loves us when we can’t even love ourselves. He loves us even when we don’t deserve it. He loves us even when we don’t want Him too! He created us with this endless love that goes from one eternity to the other. I love the adjectives this translation uses. They are unbroken and unrelenting.
I love unbroken because that is such a difference from our love. We live in a broken world, and so our love is broken. We struggle to love unconditionally. We struggle to love each other the way the Lord loves us. If I’m being honest, sometimes we struggle with just liking other people, never mind loving them. We love people when they do this or that. We love people who act like us, talk like us, look like us. Sometimes we love people because of what we can get from them, which is not actually loving them but using them. God’s love is not broken. He loves us unconditionally. He loves us for who we are, not what we do. We do not have to do anything to earn His love.
I love unrelenting because it is such an active word. When I hear the word unrelenting, I don’t think about a God who sits up in heaven just waiting for us to come to Him. When I hear that word, I picture a God who will stop at nothing to save His children. I picture a God who chases after them and does not let anything get in the way of finding them. God loves us, He wants us to be with Him forever in paradise. He is unrelenting in that pursuit. Why do we fight it so much?
The second part of this verse says, “Your faithfulness to keep every gracious promise you’ve made passes from parents to children, to grandchildren, and beyond. You are faithful to all those who follow your ways and keep your word.” There are two really important things in that first sentence to highlight. The first is that it reminds us that God is faithful and He keeps His promises. It doesn’t just say that God keeps promises, but it says that He is faithful to keep EVERY gracious promise He made every promise! This means when you read a promise in the Bible, you can be assured that God will keep that promise.
The second important thing it says is that those promises are passed down from parents to children, to grandchildren, and beyond. This shows us that the promises made in the Bible aren’t just for those people who were living at the time they were made. They are for you and for me too. It can be easy for us to read through the Bible and think of it as a great story about something that happened a really long time ago. We can think it has nothing to do with us, especially if we are reading a translation that is hard to understand. There may be a lot of words for things, and we don’t know what they mean.
The Bible is not just talking to those who lived back then. It is talking directly to each one of us, you and I. Before we sit down to read the Bible, we should ask the Lord to show us how what we are reading that day applies to our lives. I bet if we all did that before we read anything, we would be surprised at what we learned. The Lord wants to reveal the secrets in the Bible to us, we only need to ask Him. The Bible is not only relevant today but it could be called our handbook for how to get through life. It tells us what we should and shouldn’t do. It tells us all about the Lord. The book of Proverbs teaches us right from wrong. The Gospels tell us all about Jesus and are also full of parables that teach us how we should live our lives. We get to read stories of what happens when we don’t live according to God’s ways.
The verse ends with, “You are faithful to all those who follow your ways and keep your word.” This is a nice reminder to read the Bible and make sure we are following the Lord’s ways and keeping His Word. There are plenty of examples in the Bible to illustrate this point as well. You can look back throughout the Bible and see what happened to people who did not follow His ways. When we do not follow His ways, He allows us to feel the consequences of our actions, and sometimes that can be a pretty painful lesson. The good news is as soon as we turn back and repent, God is right there to welcome us back home with open arms.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you, and we are so grateful for your endless love. We are thankful your love is unbroken and unrelenting. Thank you for pursuing us. Thank you for chasing us down until you find us. Thank you for all you do to save us. Lord, help us accept your love. Fill us with your love, and help us pass that love on to others. Lord, help us to follow your ways and keep your word. Help us to read the Bible, put in our hearts a deep desire to read the Bible. We want to know your promises, we want to know how you want us to live. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I apologize for my voice these past few mornings. I have been struggling with a cold. Usually, as soon as I start to feel better, my voice starts to sound worse. I think I am almost through with the cough, so hopefully, my voice will come back soon. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Our Father’s Love (Part 10) What If This Time, Was The Last Time?
Psalm 103:15-16 “Our days are so few, and our momentary beauty so swiftly fades away! Then all of a sudden, we’re gone, like grass clippings blown away in a gust of wind, taken away to our appointment with death, leaving nothing to show that we were here.”
Wow, I was surprised to read that when I sat down to write this episode. It is something we all know, and yet we really don’t like to think about it. It is also strange that this is the verse for today because I just turned off the TV after watching an episode of The Closer. In this episode, a man helped get his son and daughter ready for school and then had to go to work. After he left, someone came in and shot his wife, mother-in-law, and two children. It turns out the person who shot them went to the wrong address. This man had a normal morning with his children and left to go to work, just like he always does, and yet his life will never be the same again. At the end of the show, they showed the chief detective at her house. The day before, she had left for work, and her cat was eating breakfast. When her husband came home at lunchtime, the cat had thrown up the breakfast, so her husband brought the cat to the vet. The cat was not doing well. She couldn’t understand how she had just seen the cat eating, and now she may never get to see the cat again.
This seems like a strange way to begin a devotional, and yet I think it demonstrates an important fact that we really don’t like to think about. We never know when it will be the last time we get to do something. If we knew it was the last time we were going to get to do something, we would probably do it very differently than we did. For instance, if you knew it was the very last time you were going to breastfeed your baby, you probably wouldn’t have been in such a rush for them to finish so you could get on with your day. If you knew it was the last time you were going to talk to your loved one, you probably would have said very different things. If you knew it was the last time you were to get to eat pizza, you would have savored it more. Do you see where I am going with this?
If we knew it was the last time, we would do it right. However, we rarely know it is going to be the last time. There are things we are blessed to get to know. For instance, if we get to be sitting with a loved one right before they pass on. At the end of the year, we know it is the child’s last day of whatever grade they just completed unless they get sick that last day. We don’t usually know when it’s the last time we will get to see our child crawl or the last time they will say that cute phrase they always say. We don’t know when it'll be the last time we will get to hug them or kiss them. Anything can happen at any time.
There are a couple of important things this verse can bring to our attention. The first one is that life is short, and we need not to take it for granted. What if we started approaching every interaction we had with people as if it were our last? What if we stopped leaving things unsaid? What if we were deliberate with our interactions and stopped to think before we acted and definitely before we spoke? Imagine what it would be like to leave each interaction with others without any regrets. Imagine being so present every single time you were with your loved ones that if that were the last time you saw them, you would be proud of your interactions. What is one way you can take what this verse says and apply it to your life and/or your interactions with others?
The second thing this verse shows us is how short this life is. The verse says, “Our days are so few, and our momentary beauty so swiftly fades away! Then all of a sudden, we’re gone, like grass clippings blown away in a gust of wind, taken away to our appointment with death, leaving nothing to show that we were here.” Our days here in this world are so few. We think we are here for a long time, so we do what we can to fit into this world. We focus on things that aren’t important, as this verse points out. Our momentary beauty so swiftly fades away. Yet that can be our main priority at times. Often our focus is on things of this world even though we are just here for a short amount of time. We spend a tiny amount of time in this world and, hopefully, eternity with our heavenly Father. So, why are we spending all of our time focusing on the things of this world when this is not where we will stay?
We need to keep our eyes fixed on the one above. When we put God first in our lives, we not only please him but also improve our lives here on earth. When we make time to pray or add prayer to the things we are already doing, our lives are blessed beyond measure. Usually, when things start going sideways in our lives, we can see it’s because we stopped putting God first. For instance, we stopped asking God to lead the way, and we took over the driver’s seat. If we want to take the lead, God will let us. That is how strongly He believes in free will. He will let us make a big old mess of our lives, and then He will be there to help us put it back together again. Wouldn’t it be great if we didn’t have to keep putting it back together again, though? This is where prayer comes in; this is why it is so important to put first things first. When we put God first and we stop to talk with Him before we make decisions, then life goes so much smoother. If we want to spend eternity with God, we need to remember this in all of our interactions here on Earth.
The last thing I don’t want to miss is the very last line that says that we are “taken away to our appointment with death, leaving nothing to show that we were here.” We all have an appointment with death, and yet none of us know when it will be. I just want to mention something that my mentor Pamela Crim mentions a lot. You need to be in the photos. This verse says we are taken away, leaving nothing to show that we were here. This is only true if you are not getting in any of the photos. Many of us listening are the ones that usually take the photos. Sometimes, it is because we really like to, sometimes because no one else will, and other times it is because we are too ashamed or embarrassed by our bodies to be in the photos. Regardless of what you look like, your family will be happy you got in the photos. When you pass on, these photos will tell the story of your life. They can’t do that if you are not in any photos. I am not going to go on and on about this. However, I felt I should prompted to mention it. Get in the photos, be intentional with each interaction you have, and put God first. I believe if you do these three things, you won’t have to worry about not knowing when it will be the last time you do something or see someone. You will be prepared.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each person listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you, and we appreciate you. We are sorry we take so many moments you give us for granted. We are sorry we take people for granted. Please help us change this, Lord. Help us to put you first. Help us to pay attention and be in the moment and intentional with each interaction we have. We are so grateful that you love us and you protect us. We are grateful that you don’t take us for granted. You are so wonderful, and we are so blessed by you. We thank you for all the graces you have given us, and we ask you to continue to bless us as we try to figure out this crazy thing called life. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me in this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you hear again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day.
Today’s word of prophecy from our prayer group is: "How precious you are each and every one of you. I know every detail of your life and I hold it deeply in my heart. I hear your prayers in the silence of my heart. They echo and reverberate through me. Fear not; I am always with you, thinking of you and leading you.”
Our Father’s Love (Part 9) Can We Be Angry With God?
Psalm 103:13-14 “The same way a loving father feels toward his children—that’s but a sample of your tender feelings toward us, your beloved children, who live in awe of you. You know all about us, inside and out. You are mindful that we’re made from dust.”
This verse probably means different things to different people. I can feel the love and tender feelings that our heavenly Father has for us because I know how loving fathers can be. I had an amazing example of a father. I always knew my dad loved me, and I knew of his tender feelings towards us. I wonder if this verse means as much to those who did not have a great father. What if you didn’t know your father loved you? What if he didn’t show you any tender feelings? Are you still able to feel the love coming from this verse?
If you did not feel loved by your Father while you were growing up, I want you to know you were loved by your heavenly Father. He created you and loved you before you were even born. Before your parents even thought about having you, God knew everything about you. The verse above says, “You know all about us, inside and out.” This is something we forget sometimes. We try to hide things from the Lord as if He doesn’t already know. This is especially true when we are angry with the Lord. We don’t think it is okay to be angry with God, so we hide it from him. We actually try to hide it from ourselves as well. We pretend we are not mad, or we tell ourselves we are not angry. When we do this, our anger festers under the surface, and I believe it blocks some of the graces God wants to give us.
When we are holding this anger in and just ignoring it, then we aren’t dealing with it, we aren’t processing it, and we certainly aren’t bringing it to God. These are the exact things we need to do to get rid of the anger or really any feeling that we are having. I understand why we don’t think we can be angry with God. I mean, He is God. He knows what He is doing, and He can prevent things from happening. Nothing happens that he didn’t allow to happen either with His perfect Will or His Permissive Will. We know God uses all things for our good, so how can we be mad at God when He will use whatever we are going through for our good? I understand where these feelings come from, and yet I don’t believe they are complete. Yes, God allows all things to happen, and yes He will use all things for good. That doesn’t mean you won’t have to go through some really hard times. That doesn’t mean that we won’t get ourselves into some pretty serious trouble.
Just because God can use it for good doesn’t mean He wills it for us. It doesn’t mean it was His plan for our life. None of us listen to God perfectly. None of us follow His plan perfectly. Sometimes we will do things to mess things up, and God will allow the consequences of that for some reasons we can understand, like to help us learn and grow, and for some reasons, we will never know about this side of heaven. However, sometimes our painful situations are not a result of something we have done. Sometimes bad stuff just happens, and we have no idea why. No matter how we look at it, we can’t seem to make sense of it.
The reason for this difficult time you are going through or have been through doesn't matter; it is still okay to be angry with God. If there is anyone who can handle our anger, it is the Lord. If you want to have a real relationship with Him, you have to be honest with Him. Think about the people in your life that you have the best relationships with. Why are you so close to them? What makes it a good relationship? The people I am closest to are the people with whom I can be completely honest. I don’t have to watch what I say, and I don't have to pretend to be ok when I am not. They are also the people who know me the best, and I know them the best as well.
Do you have people in your life like that? Do you have someone in your life who can just take one look at you and know that you are not okay? They know you so well that when you say I am fine, they can tell just by the tone in your voice that you are not really fine. Do you have someone in your life who you can tell you you are angry with something they did, and yet you guys are still friends, and you still love each other? I know I do, and it is such a blessing in my life. If we can have friends and loved ones who are capable of loving us even when we are angry with them for something they have done, why do we think we can’t have the same thing with our Heavenly Father? If your friends can tell when you are upset, don’t you think God can tell too? The verse says that He knows all about us, inside and out. That means He knows your feelings too. He has intimate knowledge of every part of you, even more so than your friends or family members do.
Here is the reason I believe it is okay to be angry with God. There were plenty of people in the Bible who cried out to the Lord. I also believe that anger is an emotion, and we can’t help our initial emotions. However, we can decide what we do with those emotions. Are we being angry with God, turning away from Him, and never looking back? Are we angry and crying out to Him and asking Him to help us? Are we asking Him to give us strength? Are we asking Him to give us some understanding? If we get angry and turn away from God, I don’t believe that is ok. However, if we are angry with God and then we try to figure out what to do with that anger, and we take that to God and ask for His help, I think that is ok.
We get to decide if we allow the anger to push us away from God or pull us closer to Him. We can have control over our emotions by having control over our thoughts. Our emotions are caused by the story we are telling ourselves. For instance, if I am angry at God for something, I need to examine what I believe about that thing. For instance, if I am angry with God for taking my child, I would need to examine what I am telling myself. Why am I blaming God? What is the story I am telling myself about what happened, why it happened, and who caused it? If I do not know the answers to these questions, I should bring them to the Lord. The why it happened may be an answer that we don’t ever get this side of heaven. That doesn’t mean we can’t ask the Lord. He wants us to come to Him, He wants us to ask questions. He wants all that we go through to bring us closer to Him, not further away. Our heavenly Father loves us and has tender feelings towards us. He can handle your anger and yet does not want you to stay there. He wants you to take it to Him and then lay it at His feet and let Him pick it up and carry it for you.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those who listen to this episode today. Lord, we love you, and we don’t want to be angry with you. We also don’t understand why you allow bad things to happen to good people. We don’t understand why kids get cancer, why there is human trafficking, why there is domestic abuse, and why people lose their kids or their spouses. There is so much we don’t understand, Lord, please help us. Help us to turn to you when we are confused and when we are angry. Help us to ask you for understanding. Help us to control the story we tell ourselves. Help us not to stay in that anger. We love you so much, Lord. We know you love us, and you know us better than anyone else, and we are so very grateful. We are so grateful for all the unknown things you have protected us from. You are so powerful! We ask all this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed weekend!
In Part 7, I mentioned that I felt the Lord was calling me to end each episode with a Word that He has given to our prayer group. The point of this is so we can all get used to hearing how the Lord talks to us, and so we will recognize when it is Him and when it is the enemy. Here is the word: I ask you to look at your brothers and sisters in the world and recognize that I love them. I want you to be a tangible instrument of my love to them. Do not judge or be impatient. Love them with the same love that I have for you. Be vulnerable as I am vulnerable.
Our Father’s Love (Part 8) Get Intimately Familiar With The Real One
Psalm 103:12 “Farther than from a sunrise to a sunset, that's how far you've removed our guilt from us.”
Today’s verse goes right along with the past few days, and yet it confirms it a bit stronger. For the last few days, I have been talking about God’s love and God’s mercy. We now know how much God loves us. We know He is not just sitting in heaven waiting for us to mess up so he can punish us. We know he does discipline us at times, but not never as much as we truly deserve. We also know from the previous episode that the Lord wants to talk to each and every one of us. When he talks to us, He is gentle and loving. We know He also has different ways of talking to us. If you did not know any of these things, or you struggle to believe any of these things, you can go back and listen to the last 2-3 episodes. However, if you have missed any in this series about the Father’s Love, then I would recommend going back and listening to them all, as I am really loving Psalm 103.
Today’s verse says, “Farther than from a sunrise to a sunset, that's how far you've removed our guilt from us.” Do you understand what this verse is saying? Do you understand the magnitude of this verse? God is separating us as far away from our sins as the sunrise is from the sunset. These two things never touch. They are as far apart as they can be. The sun rises in the East and sets in the West. Wherever you are in the world, take a moment and think about the most eastern point in the world you can think of. Then think of the most western point in the world you can think of. This is how separated you are from your sins.
We tend to think our sins are part of us. Oftentimes we take those sins on as our identity. For instance, I am a liar, not someone who has lied before. I am an adulterer, not someone who had an affair. I am a cheater, not someone who cheated in a game. Do you see what I am talking about? What is the sin that you are claiming as your identity? This is so common. I used to do this when it came to my children. I would say he is a liar. He said x, y, or z. My counselor would always correct me. He might have lied about this thing, but that is not his identity. This is hard for us. We find it easier to claim the sin and make it part of us.
I wonder if that is because when we do that, we also turn over our responsibility. If I am a liar, then it makes sense that I lied. I don’t have to take responsibility for it, and I don’t have to change it because it is just who I am. I have heard this a lot over the years. People justify the ugly things they say or do by saying, “That’s just who I am.” Or they justify their loved ones’ behaviors by saying, “That is just who they are.” Your sins and your behaviors are not who you are. They are not your identity. You are who God says you are. God says we are special (Eph 2:10), loved (Jer 31:3), redeemed (Gal 3:13), important (1 Peter 2:9), lovely (Dan 12:3), forgiven (Psalm 103:12), family (Eph 2:19), strong (Psalm 18:25), not alone (Matt 28:20), treasured (Deut 14:2), Protected (Psalm 121:3), created for a purpose (Jer 29:11), accepted (Rom 15:7), a new creation (2 Cor 5:17), chosen (John 15:16), a child of God (Rom 8:17), precious (1 Cor 6:20), empowered (Phil. 4:17), unique (Psalm 139:13), and cared for (Eph 3:17-19). The scripture references for each and every one of those words is listed in the show notes. Where is the scripture verse for the things you are taking on as your identity?
We think the Lord sees us as a sum of all our sins because that is how we see us. However, our ways are not like His ways, and our thoughts are not like His thoughts. If you listened to the previous episodes in this series, you remember Father Mike said truth can’t contradict truth. We know what is in the Bible is truth. So, if your idea of who you are contradicts the above identity, it can’t be the truth. The verse above confirms that God does not identify us as our sins. It says He separates us from our sins. How great would it be if we could do the same?
Why is it so hard to see ourselves through God’s eyes? I think part of it is because we don’t really know God. If we aren’t reading the scriptures, if we aren’t reading faith-filled books, and if we aren’t spending time with God, then how can we know Him? In the last episode of this series, we talked about hearing the Lord’s voice and listening to what He wants to say to us. If we aren’t doing this, if we don’t know how He talks to us, then how can we possibly know the difference between His voice and the enemy's voice?
I heard a story the other day, and I think it is a great analogy/example for this. The woman speaking is a banker. She no longer works with physical money. However, she used to. She asked us if we knew how they teach bank tellers to spot fake bills. We had several ideas of the differences between real and fake, and she said yes, there are definitely ways to tell them apart. However, she said when you are learning how to tell the difference between the real bill and the fake bill, they have you get intimately familiar with the real thing. They don’t teach you all the various characteristics of fake bills because there are so many differences, and they are constantly changing as counterfeiters get better. What they have you do is learn all about the real bill. What does it look like, what does it feel like, what is the weight of it, what is the texture, what does it smell like? They have you spend so much time with the real bills that when a fake comes into your hands, you instantly know it is different.
I loved this story the moment I heard it. It is a perfect analogy for listening to the Father’s voice. If you listen to your heavenly Father, talk to you each and every day. If you read about Him in the scriptures and you spend time with Him, then you will know when the enemy starts whispering lies into your ears. You will know it is not from God because it doesn’t make you feel the same way it does all the other times you have talked with Him. You will know it is not God because what is said contradicts the promises you have read in the scripture. If you want to start recognizing the enemy, you need to get more familiar with the Lord. Become intimately familiar with the real thing, and you will recognize when the lies start creeping back in. You are not your sins. God separates us from our sins, so why do we cling to them so tightly? Isn’t it time we loosen our grip and let them go?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to release our sins. Help us to separate ourselves from them. Help us bring them to you and lay them at your feet for your infinite disposal. Lord, thank you for separating us from our sins. Thank you for taking our sins to the cross. Lord, any time we cling to our sins and claim our sins as our identity, it reminds us of the cross. Remind us that your sacrifice was big enough to cover our sins. It was ENOUGH. We love you, Lord. Help us to get to know you so intimately that when the enemy comes around whispering in our ears, we instantly spot him as a fake and what he is saying as lies. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ mighty name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I hope you all have a very special Thanksgiving Day today! If you don’t celebrate, I still hope you have a special day! I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I!
I mentioned in Part 7 that I felt the Lord is calling me to end each episode with a Word that He has given to our prayer group. The point of this is so we can all get used to hearing how the Lord talks to us and so we will recognize when it is Him and when it is the enemy. Here is the word: “My children, when you are full of worry and fear, come to me. Give me your hand in trust, and I will help you. All your cares that you give to me I take care of in my time, not in your time. It is trust you must have with faith that never ends.”
Today’s witness Wednesday will be a bit different than usual. Today I am going to read you two blog posts written by Father David Barnes. He was the Spiritual Director at St. John’s Seminary in Boston in 2014 when these posts were written. He was ordained a priest of the Archdiocese of Boston in 1997. The two blog posts were written about a Eucharist procession that took place in 2014 from MIT to Harvard. It was in response to a “black mass” which was to be held that same night and the administration at the college refused to intervene. There are a few reasons I wanted to talk with you about this today. First, there is a Eucharist Procession this weekend right here in Lowell, MA, for anyone who is listening to this and who lives locally. It is on November 26th at 11 am at St. Rita’s Parish. The other one is because I have heard this story at least twice over the last month, and I feel it is one that should be repeated. We tend to get scared watching the news. We feel as though evil is taking over, and we can sometimes feel helpless. This story shows us we are not helpless. It shows us good defeats evil. The Lord has already won the war of good vs. evil. He will always be victorious!
The First Blog article is titled A Beautiful Night to be Catholic in the Archdiocese of Boston and was written by Father David Barnes on Tuesday, May 13, 2014. CLICK HERE to go to Father David Barnes' Blog
It’s a little after Midnight, and I am just getting in after participating in a magnificent evening. Hundreds of Catholics joined in a Eucharistic Procession down Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge from the MIT chapel to St. Paul's in Harvard Square. There, we spent a period of time in prayer. The purpose of the evening was to pray in reparation for a planned Satanic Mass on the campus of Harvard University.
The procession, which passed MIT and Central Square, was a site to behold. People were coming out of restaurants--some kneeling on the sidewalks, others blessing themselves, and some just staring in bewilderment. Many of the servers who organized the procession were from Juventutem Boston. That is the Traditional Latin Mass Community of young people. They did an impressive job. It's not easy to keep us priests organized.
The procession ended at St. Paul's in Harvard Square. When we arrived, the church--which I suppose holds about 1000 people--was already filled to capacity. So hundreds of those who walked in procession were left standing on the street outside of St. Paul's.
As I looked out at the congregation, I saw many people from my previous assignment in Beverly. They traveled a good distance to be there. It makes me proud to have been in a parish of people who love the Eucharist so much that they would come to this event. In the procession, I saw many students from Boston University (where I serve as Chaplain). It was so inspiring to see their witness.
The unsung hero of the event, in my opinion, was Fr. Richard Clancy, who is the Chaplain at MIT and who is the Director for Catholic Campus Ministry in the Archdiocese of Boston. He was the one who came up with the idea of a Eucharistic Procession. Although he doesn't look for accolades, he deserves some today.
Tonight, I spent several hours with Catholics from all over the Archdiocese of Boston--young and old, students, married people, priests, seminarians, religious men and women, lay people--who all love the Eucharist. That's what being a Catholic is. I'm grateful to have experienced their powerful witness tonight.
The second blog article is titled The Harvard Eucharistic Procession Was Beautiful . . . But Now What? This was written on Tuesday, May 13, 2014. CLICK HERE to go to Father David Barnes' Blog
The decision of a student group at Harvard University to host a "black mass" on its campus precipitated a massive response from Catholics around Boston, the United States, and even the world. I've heard of parishes all over the United States that held Holy Hours at the time of the scheduled event at Harvard. As I mentioned previously, I participated in a magnificent Eucharistic Procession from the campus of MIT to St. Paul's in Harvard Square. Hundreds of Catholics followed the Eucharistic Lord down the main street in Cambridge, where thousands of onlookers witnessed the flock following the Eucharistic Good Shepherd.
I'm not always a huge fan of "big events" because I feel like those things can be used as a substitute for true faith. Sometimes, they feel as though the effort that goes into planning and executing them far outweighs the benefits. They sometimes feel designed as a publicity stunt or as a way of evoking a strong emotional reaction, but the effects seem short-lived. Last night's Eucharistic Procession had a different feel. As I looked about and saw the many young college students from area universities participating, I was touched by their love for the Eucharist and their sincere desire to follow Christ.
During the past year, one thing that has really struck me about the college students whom I encounter every day is their Eucharistic Faith. Quite often, as I am standing outside of church on a Sunday before Mass, I am asked, "Father, do you have time for a quick confession?" Similarly, for thirty minutes each day before Daily Mass, I hear confessions. It is rare for there to be a day that nobody comes. I also noticed this at Mass itself. At every Sunday Mass, there are young people who come up in the communion line and ask for a blessing rather than receive the Eucharist. Presumably, having examined their conscience, they do not want to receive the Eucharist until they have received the Sacrament of Penance.
I find all of this very striking. These young people are not scrupulous or legalistic. They are not tied up in knots. Instead, they strike me as being young people who simply love the Lord and who want to approach Him and receive Him with devotion and love. Their love for the Eucharist and the ease with which they approach the Sacrament of Penance is a beautiful witness to Christ and His Grace. I benefit from their example.
All of this comes to mind for me today as I think about the "big event" of the Eucharistic Procession and the blasphemous "satanic mass" that precipitated it. I am reminded of my own need to deepen continually my devotion to the Eucharist. These events beckon all of us to examine ourselves and to renew our love for the Blessed Sacrament. Do I love the Eucharist? Do I live a life that is coherent with the Eucharist that I receive? Do I humbly examine myself before approaching to receive the Eucharist? Do I spend time in prayer before the Blessed Sacrament and make visits to be with the Lord in the Eucharist? Do I receive the Eucharist with reverence, or am I distracted, careless, or even willful?
In this instance, the "big event" ought to cause all of us who are Catholic to become more coherent in our lives. While we were rightly outraged at the intended sacrilege of the Eucharist by others, we ought to make certain that we do not simply become "protesters" in our relationship to the Eucharist. Instead, we ought to become more Eucharistic in our daily life. This "big event" ought to deepen our desire to grow in Eucharistic intimacy. We want to make sure that we ourselves are not sacrilegious, blasphemous, or careless.
I think the "big event" of the Eucharistic Procession will bear the most fruit if it is followed by Catholics everywhere examining our own consciences and humbly confessing our sins and receiving absolution. For me, the Eucharist Procession was an amazing witness of people showing their love for the Eucharist. In my life, however, the far more powerful and convincing witness of Eucharistic Faith is seeing the daily procession of college students making their way to the confessional.
Both of these articles demonstrate how powerful the Eucharist is and also the power of taking Jesus, in Eucharistic Form, to the streets. People recognize and can feel His presence even if they don’t know what they are feeling. If you have not participated in a Eucharistic Procession, I recommend you try to find one. They are so powerful, and it is so beautiful to see Jesus processing down the streets. It is one thing to love Jesus in the comfort and security of our churches. It is quite another to love Him out on the streets. I have placed a link to a video of the procession in the show notes. CLICK HERE FOR VIDEO If you have a few minutes, I know you will be blessed by watching it. I hope you enjoyed hearing about this amazing event and the effect it had on so many!
Our Father’s Love (Part 7) God’s Mercy Extends Higher Than The Highest Heavens
Psalm 103:10-11 “You may discipline us for our many sins, but never as much as we really deserve. Nor do you get even with us for what we’ve done. Higher than the highest heavens – that's how high your tender mercy extends! Greater than the grandeur of heaven above is the greatness of your loyal love, towering over all who fear you and bow down before you!”
Yesterday I talked about how much God loves us. I talked about how He gave His only son for us while we were still sinners. Today, we are talking about God’s mercy. We talked about how God is not just waiting up there for us to sin so that he can punish or hold that sin against us. Today’s verse confirms and reinforces this for us. It states that the Lord “will discipline us for our many sins, but never as much as we deserve.” We might hear this and worry because we all have different opinions of what we might deserve. We might look at all we have done and know we do not want the discipline we deserve. This is another time when it is important to remember that “God’s ways are not our ways, and His thoughts are not our thoughts.”
Just because we know that we deserve a severe punishment does not mean we will get one. God does not think like we think. Most of us are way harder on ourselves than God would ever be. We are harder on ourselves than we would be on other people. If you take a minute to think about something you are hard on yourself for and then ask yourself if your friend did that thing, would you be hard on them? For instance, when I talk with my friends, and they are complaining that they didn’t do something they should have done, I remind them that we are aiming for progress, not perfection. However, when I look back at all I haven’t done throughout the week, I can start to give myself a hard time.
God is not looking at all that we have done wrong. He is looking at all that we do right. He is not looking for our downfalls. He is looking at all of our progress, growing closer to Him. God has told our prayer group many times that the littlest thing we do to praise Him or to spread His love or his Word to others makes Him so happy. Think about a child that you know and love. When they come to you with a picture they made, do you look at all the ways that picture falls short of what it was supposed to look like? Do you focus on all the places they went out of the line and all the ways you would have done it differently? I doubt it. We would look at that picture and see all the love they put into it. We would see how hard they worked at it. We would see how hard they tried to do something beautiful for us. This is how the Lord looks at us.
Man, I wish each one of you could be in our prayer group meeting, even just for one day! I wish you could hear the way the Lord talks to us. By us, I mean you and me. When the Lord gives words of prophecy, they are meant to build up the community. They are not for one person. Even when the content is specifically for one person, the word builds up those who are giving it as well. When God is giving words to our prayer group, they are meant to be shared. Maybe I will start sharing one of his words at the end of each podcast. That way, you will begin to get used to hearing how the Lord talks to us. You will begin to see His mercy and His love.
If you spend time listening, you can hear the Lord’s voice. He does not talk to our prayer group because we are special or because He likes us best. He talks to our prayer group because we invite Him in, and we listen to what He has to say. One of the speakers at our Life in the Spirit Seminar mentioned a quote by St. Bonaventure that I think speaks to this. St. Bonaventure said the “Holy Spirit comes where he is loved…Where He is invited… and where He is expected.” Do you love the Holy Spirit? Have you invited the Holy Spirit into your life? What about your day? Do you expect the Holy Spirit to show up every time you ask?
This last one can be really difficult at times. I believe the Holy Spirit will show up. He has in so many instances that I can’t even count them all. I still question that he will show up sometimes. When someone asks me for a word of knowledge or when I need a scripture verse, I ask the Holy Spirit for it, and at the same time, my brain is telling me I won’t hear anything. After all the times I have heard from the Holy Spirit, I know this is ridiculous, yet it still happens. If you are having trouble listening to the Spirit, know you are not alone. Keep loving Him, keep inviting Him, keep trying to expect Him. When you invite Him in, take a few minutes of silence to see what He wants to tell you.
I think it is hard at first because we don’t know what the Lord’s voice sounds like or what kinds of things He wants to tell us. First, God’s voice usually sounds like your voice. At least in all those I have talked to who hear a voice in their heart, it sounds like their voice. Also, it might not be a voice. You may just get a thought that pops into your head out of nowhere. It could also be a feeling. For instance, you could feel an overwhelming peace about something. He also talks to us in visions and dreams sometimes. He can talk to us in and through Scripture, and He can also use other people. God is not limited. If He wants to tell you something, He will find a way, especially if you are inviting and expecting Him.
God says all types of different things. When discerning the words of prophecy for our prayer group, we look for four kinds of words. The first is a Call. Sometimes, God is calling you to do something. Usually, this is calling you deeper into your relationship with Him. The second is Proclamation. These are usually “I Am” statements where God tells us who He is or other essential things about Himself or His relationship with us. Third is Promise. These usually talk about how great God is and what He does for us. The fourth and final one is the Directive. This is when God is giving us a directive to do something. You can usually tell these ones because the language used is God telling us what to do. This is different from a call in the way that directive is usually God sending us to others. The call is generally calling us towards Him, and the directive is Him sending us out to others.
In our prayer group, we record all words of prophecy that are given in a month, and we have a team of four who read through all the words given and ask God to give us one call, proclamation, promise, and directive for the month. We put this on a bookmark so that everyone can have a record of what God told us that month. Here is an example of the latest bookmark we reviewed at our meeting.
Come beloved children of mine, come and feel my joy and my love. Once you feel it go and spread it to all those around you. Let them know that I am a God of love and hope. Come and be fully mine. Remember I am the I AM and you are mine. I am pleased with what you do for me, and I will love you to the Kingdom. You cannot contain me with your limited expectations. Even the tabernacle does not contain me. I am near you; I am everywhere. You will see and hear me. Open your eyes and ears. Expect me. I am there. Proclaim my word and my compassion. Proclaim it through your smile, words, with your arm around a shoulder. Take time to listen, and give up doing what you feel is urgent in that moment. Let my call be urgent, and proclaim me through your actions of love, forgiveness, and peace.
This is one example of the bookmark that we hand out each month. Do you see how loving the Lord’s words to us are? If you heard the Lord talk to you like this each and every week, do you think you would still think that the Lord is disciplining us more than we deserve? Do you think you would picture Him sitting up there waiting for us to sin so He can get back at us?
The verse above ends with, “Higher than the highest heavens – that's how high your tender mercy extends! Greater than the grandeur of heaven above is the greatness of your loyal love, towering over all who fear you and bow down before you!” I was thinking that I went off topic above, and yet I think this confirms what was said. The Lord loves us. His tender mercy extends higher than the heavens. He is more loyal to us than the grandeur of heaven.
I really feel as though the Holy Spirit wants you to know that the Lord wants to talk with you. He wants to sit and have conversations with you. He doesn’t want to be someone you see at church and someone you talk to when you need something. He wants to be a part of everything. I also feel very convicted that He wants me to share the words we receive at prayer group with you on this podcast. So, I will start tomorrow by ending each episode with a Word from the Lord. This way, you will begin to understand what His voice sounds like and will hopefully start to recognize His still, small voice inside you as well! I invite you all to take a moment and invite the Holy Spirit into your life right now. I invite you to give Him permission to work as much or as little in your life as He wants to. After you do that, expect Him to come and just see where He shows up! Not if He shows up, where and when He shows up.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we invite you in. You are welcome here. Lord, show us how to recognize you in our lives. I know you are already in all of our lives. I pray you show each and every person listening where you are in their lives, Lord. Help us feel your presence. Help us learn to trust you. Help us learn to listen to you. Help us all to listen to you better. Thank you so much, Lord, for showing up in such a big way today. I truly felt you wrote this episode and that it would touch the hearts of all who listen to it. I feel so much joy writing this. I feel as though you are talking faster than my fingers can type. Thank you, Lord, you are so good. Thank you for this message and for all those who will hear it. I pray lives are changed through your words today, Lord. I pray your children take a step to grow closer to you. We love you so much, Lord, and we thank you for being so amazing!! We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus! I hope you were touched by the Lord’s words to you today, and I hope they help you begin to see that the Lord is talking to you, too! I look forward to bringing you another witness tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
God Is So Kind, Tenderhearted, and Patient!
Psalm 103:8-9 “Lord, you’re so kind and tenderhearted and so patient with people who fail you! Your love is like a flooding river overflowing its banks with kindness. You don’t look at us only to find our faults just so that you can hold a grudge against us.”
Today’s verses are ones I think we all need to hear over and over again. They speak such truths in them, yet they are often forgotten, or we simply don’t believe them. The first line says, “Lord, you’re so kind and tenderhearted and so patient with people who fail you!” God truly is patient with us. If you need evidence of this, look back at the Old Testament in the Bible. Look how many times God’s people turned away from Him. Look how many times he did miraculous things for them, and they repaid Him by worshiping idols. It wasn’t one or two times. It was often. Look at when He saved them from Egypt, where they were slaves, and then they complained because they didn’t have meat to eat. He gave them this miraculous substance called manna daily to eat, but they wanted more.
The Lord often told them to do something, and they did the opposite. They had so many kings who wanted to rely on other nations to protect them instead of relying on the one true God to protect them. Ever since the fall, when Adam & Eve ate the apple, man has failed the Lord. You can see even in the New Testament where we failed the Lord. The worst is when we crucified the Son of God. However, the apostles failed to trust Jesus or understand what He was saying all along the way.
God is still so kind and so patient with us. Even when you fail, and we all fail. Romans 2:23 says, “ For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Then the very next verse says, “and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” Can you see how kind, tenderhearted, and patient He is with us? Even after all the times we turned away in the Old Testament, God still sent His only Son to be crucified for our sins. This also brings us to the next part of today’s verses: "Your love is like a flooding river overflowing its banks with kindness.”
Take a moment, close your eyes, and imagine a river overflowing its banks. Imagine how much water there must be in that river. Image what it looks like for that overflowing water to cover the river's surrounding land. Can you picture water covering the grass, the rocks, the dirt, everything? This is what the Lord’s love is like. It covers us with kindness. His love covers our dirt, our sins, and all of our weaknesses. What I love about this imagery is that you can’t control the water overflowing from a river. It can’t be contained. There is just too much to stay contained it the river. It just overflows to everything around it. This is what God’s love does for us. It fills us up and then overflows to all those who surround us.
The following line says, “You don’t look at us only to find our faults just so that you can hold a grudge against us.” This is a very common belief. I have talked to many people who admit that they think of God as a judge sitting up in heaven, looking down on us, and just waiting for us to screw up so He can punish us. I have known in my heart for a long time now that this is not true, and now I have a Bible verse to confirm it. It’s interesting that this line comes right after the line about God’s love overflowing with kindness. God doesn’t have to wait up in heaven, just waiting for us to mess up. He already knows what we will do before we do it. He knows when and where you will mess up. And guess what? He loves us anyway. He forgives us anyway.
I think it is hard to picture God as a good and loving father if we don’t have a good and loving father. If our father was always waiting for us to screw up so he could punish us, then we can transfer that to God. Also, if we grew up with this image of God in our minds, it can be tough to switch our thinking. If we struggle to believe that our heavenly Father is loving and doesn’t just look at our faults, we don’t need to look any further than the cross. God sent Jesus to pay for our sins. Ellen Gould White said, “Christ was treated as we deserve that we may be treated as He deserves. He was condemned for our sins, in which He had no share, that we might be justified by His righteousness, in which we had no share. He suffered the death which was ours, that we might receive His life. 'By His stripes, we are healed.”
Does that sound like a Father who is just looking for our faults? Does it sound like someone looking for a reason to hold a grudge against us? If God wanted to hold a grudge against us, He wouldn't have to sit around waiting for us to sin; we sin daily. We turn away from God frequently. God has plenty of reasons to hold grudges, yet He doesn’t. Romans 5:8 is also reminds us of this, “ But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” God didn’t wait for us to stop sinning to save us. Luckily, because I don’t think that is possible on this side of heaven. He saved us, knowing we would keep sinning. Jesus chose to die on that cross, not just for the sins of that day, but all the sins before that day, on that day, and all future sins.
When we hear all of that, it is hard to view our Lord as someone just sitting up in heaven waiting for us to sin so that he can punish us. Viewing Him like this doesn't make sense when we think about all He has sacrificed to save us. Father Mike always says truth can’t contradict truth. The words in the Bible are truth. They are the Words of God. The Bible is telling us plain and simple that God is not someone who looks at us only to find our faults, just so that you can hold a grudge against us. The facts in the Bible show us just how loving God really is. If you struggle to see what a loving Father in heaven we have, I urge you to read about Him in the Bible. Read the Psalms, the New Testament, and the Song of Songs. Read pretty much any part of the Bible, and you will be able to see how great God has loved us over the years. Looking back at our lives through the lens of “What had God done for us over the years?” we will see all the amazing things He has done for us. He really is a good, good Father.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Thank you for loving us so well. Thank you for showing us what true love looks like. Lord, we ask that you show us what a good Dad you are. For all of us struggling to get an accurate image or feeling of you, we ask that you help us, Lord. Please show us what to read and where to learn more. Lord, show us who you really are. Give us a renewal of our mind. Teach us to see the real you! We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Our Father's Love (Part 5) "Giving Justice To The Defenseless"
Psalm 103:6-7 “You're a God who makes things right, giving justice to the defenseless. You unveiled to Moses your plans and showed Israel's sons what you could do.”
The Lord’s timing is always perfect, although it doesn’t always feel perfect. I read this verse yesterday, and that timing was perfect because I felt it confirmed a friend’s situation. I have a friend struggling with workers comp for over a year. It has been so stressful, and he wants it all done and over with. I texted him on Wednesday of this week because he was supposed to have a Zoom meeting, which was sort of like a hearing to see the next steps. Several people told him he should have a lawyer present so he didn’t get taken advantage of during this hearing. He didn’t have money for a lawyer, and he didn’t want a lawyer. He said the Holy Spirit would be his lawyer.
I prayed over him on Monday that everything would work according to God’s plan. We prayed for God to give him the words to say. We prayed the truth would come up somehow. Then, on Wednesday morning, I sent him another prayer to fill him with peace about the situation. To give him courage and strength and again for the Holy Spirit to guide his words. He sent a text back saying the hearing was canceled, the insurance company dropped the suit, and no further actions needed to be done. That same day, I read the verse above, “You’re a God who makes things right, giving justice to the defenseless.” God is so good! He took care of everything for my friend. He answered our prayers.
He will do the same for you. Sometimes, we limit the scope of what we think God can do. We will go to Him when someone needs healing or if we need strength. We go to God when we have family issues, or our marriage is in trouble. However, when it comes to some things, we don’t go to Him because we can’t see what He could do in this situation. For instance, if we are in a legal battle, we might pray for strength but not for God to fix the problem because we can’t see a solution. We can’t see how God could do anything to fix it. It is difficult for us to understand that God doesn’t not have the same constraints that we have. He is not bound by anything. There is nothing He can’t do. If He can create the entire universe, He can get you out of whatever situation you find yourself.
I read this book called How To Be A Kings Kid. The author tells of a time when he was the president of a company. He put in a bid for a contract on a large government project. He was sure He knew all the details, so he didn’t read the fine print. After he signed the contract and committed the company to everything they owned, he saw that in the fine print, it required them to do something impossible for them to do. The out-of-town contractor sent them registered letters to inform them that the following communication they received would be the institution of a lawsuit for all they owned. The government was involved, the army engineers, seven contractors, hundreds of people—Top priority. Penalties on top of penalties—There was no way to undo what he had done.
The author said he panicked and asked God what he should do now. He said it seemed like God said, “It’s a little bit late to ask that question. You didn’t ask Me before you signed the contract.” The author said although he messed up he knows that our Heavenly Father has provided all kinds of latitude for His kids to goof, and then what we do about it is what determines the outcome. What does God say to do? If we confess our sins, He is faithful and will forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. The author prayed, “Lord, I have goofed. I have really made a boo-boo. How are You going to get us out of this mess? Hallelujah!”
Next, instead of worrying about this problem, he headed to a retreat. The retreat started out by asking everyone to confess their faults to one another. So he stood up and told them what he had done. He said, “God’s kids never give up. Praise God. We don’t know how our God’s going to get us out of it, but He’s promised to do it. He said in Psalm 50: ‘Offer unto God thanksgiving and pay thy vows unto the most high and call on me in the day of trouble, I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.” Then he said, “Lord, I’ll be glad to give You the glory because no man can deliver me.”
All of the people at the retreat gathered around him laid hands on him, and prayed in tongues over him. The interpretation of the prayer was beyond anything he would have had the nerve to pray: “Lord, make this whole transaction as though it had never existed.” It was a ridiculously impossible prayer, but it had been prayed. No way to call it back. And so he waited day after day for the lawsuit for his breach of contract to begin. Satan kept needling him daily, “It’ll come tomorrow.” But tomorrow, it didn’t; days passed, weeks, and finally, years without mentioning a lawsuit. During that time, he had to learn to praise Jesus all the time or else fall into the hands of the tormentor.
He doesn’t know what happened. The contractor still has his signature on the paper. And he is entitled to hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages unless God changed the minds of many people. He can’t explain to you how it happened. He is just reporting. God is in charge. The author said, “He used to be my partner, but no more. Since I’ve started to live like a King’s Kid, He’s Head Man. Hallelujah!
This situation seemed like a situation for the courts to figure out. The author didn’t even know how to pray for this situation. This brings me to something mentioned in the book, but everyone might now know what it meant. The book mentioned that the people prayed over him in tongues. Praying in tongues or praying in the spirit is a special prayer language and is a gift of the Holy Spirit. When you pray in tongues, the Holy Spirit is praying through you. The Holy Spirit is praying directly from your heart to the Lord’s. The Holy Spirit’s prayer is the perfect prayer. Sometimes, we don’t know what we actually want, or in this man's case, he wouldn’t have had the nerve to pray this prayer. Yet, the Holy Spirit knew his heart's desire and prayed for it. Many people do not want the gift of tongues. They think it is weird. I get it. It does sound weird. However, if you could pray a perfect prayer to the Lord for the deepest desires of your heart, wouldn’t you want to? One reason I love to pray in tongues is because it takes the pressure off me to know what to say. I just open my mouth, and the Holy Spirit speaks to the Lord for me straight from my heart.
The verse ends with, “You unveiled to Moses your plans and showed Israel's sons what you could do.” I think God is still showing us what He can do. We are lucky because ever since Jesus died on the cross, there is no longer a veil separating us from the Lord. We can approach Him. We can be close to Him. Nothing is separating us from the Lord. Well, we can put walls up, we can put blocks up. However, the Lord has removed all that is in our way. Now, it is up to us how close we want to get to the Lord. There is no question in my mind that the Lord is still showing us what He can do. Almost every day, I am blown away by His goodness. It would be every day, but sometimes I am not paying enough attention to be blown away. Sometimes, I get wrapped up in my own stuff. There are so many miracles that happen each and every day. We need to be paying attention to see them. If you have a problem, no matter the size or the type, bring it to the Lord. He will help you! It would be even better if we brought our decisions to the Lord before we made them and asked what He thought. I bet we would find ourselves in a lot less trouble that way.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, you are amazing and we are so grateful you take such good care of us. We are grateful you give justice to the defenseless. We are grateful you fix our problems even though we really don’t deserve it. Lord, help us to bring our decisions to you in advance so you can help us make the right decisions. Help us to turn to you, even in the impossible decisions. You are the God of the impossible. Remind us of that often, Lord. We love you, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Remember to sign up for my newsletter if you want all the details on my upcoming coaching program, retreats, and any other information. You can find the link to sign up on my website walkboldlywithjesus.com I look forward to meeting you again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Our Father’s Love (Part 4) “You’ve Supercharged My Life”
Psalm 103:5 “You satisfy my every desire with good things. You’ve supercharged my life so that I soar again like a flying eagle in the sky!”
Last quarter, my Encounter Ministries class was all about intimacy with Christ, and I have to tell you, I am really feeling it. I can feel myself falling deeper and deeper in love with Christ, God, and the Holy Spirit. I have read the Psalms before and listened to the entire Bible three times now, yet things are hitting me differently this time. I am finding the words in the passion translation so easy to understand. I am being drawn into this relationship with the Lord in the most gentle way. It is not as if I have to spend time with Him. It is as if I can’t wait to spend time with Him.
Now, that doesn’t mean I am doing this perfectly. I have found that I love to sit in the church when it is just me and the Tabernacle and spend time with God. I feel so close to Him. Yet, I am simply not making the time to do that. I say this because I want you to know I struggle to do the right thing, just as many of you are. We want to spend time with the Lord, say all the prayers, and have all the devotions, yet life keeps getting in the way.
Guess what, my sisters, my brothers, life is not getting in the way. Life is the thing we were put here to do. Some people, very few people considering, are sent here to seclude themselves and spend almost all their time communing with God. God has called them to that task, and they have accepted. I always think that would be such a great way to live. Nothing getting in the way of my time with God. Then I remembered that if it were just me and God, I wouldn’t have my husband. I wouldn’t have my kids. I wouldn’t see my siblings or parents as much. They were called to that life and get to spend a lot of time with the Lord, but that doesn’t mean their life or their decision is easy. They are sacrificing a lot to live that life. I am so grateful to those who answered that call because we all benefit from their sacrifices, loyalty, devotion, and prayers.
Most of us are called to live in the world but not be of the world. We are called to live out our lives in various professions. We are called to live and interact with people. We are not called to be alone. This, too, comes with its own set of challenges. We have to navigate having to be in the world and yet not of the world. We have to figure out how to be a reflection of Christ to those around us. This is not always easy to do. It is easy to get caught up in the world and our lives and forget to make time for the Lord. So many people I know feel frustrated with their lack of time and energy. Most people I know seem tired and feel like they have no more to give. They have used up all they have been given.
We feel this way because we are not making time for the Lord. He is our strength. He is where our power and energy comes from. I love the part of the verse above that says, “You’ve supercharged my life so that I soar again like a flying eagle in the sky!” When we feel weak, worn out, and completely helpless, we can turn to the Lord, who can fill us back up again. I think I love this translation because it shows the power of the Lord. The power of the Holy Spirit, which we are blessed to have living inside of us. I remember hearing a testimony of a little girl about seven or so. She was laying hands on her aunt to pray for healing. She said she felt this heat and this electricity go through her hands just before she put them on her aunt. She said it felt like her arm was plugged into an electrical socket or something. That is the power of the Holy Spirit.
The wording of this verse says, “You’ve supercharged my life so that I soar again like a flying eagle in the sky.” How many of us could use our lives to be supercharged? How many days at 3:00 in the afternoon do you wish the Holy Spirit would come and supercharge your life so you can be awake for the rest of the day? How many of us are just going through the motions day after day, and we need the Lord to come in and supercharge our lives? We need the Holy Spirit to jolt us awake to truly live our lives. So often, it takes a tragedy to help us wake up and see how vital and precious life is. Don’t wait for a tragedy. Wake up and see the beauty of each new day today.
The first part of this verse says, “You satisfy my every desire with good things.” Did you know the Lord is the one who puts the desires down deep in your heart? Don’t you think He will help you achieve them if He gave you them? The hard part in all of this is waiting for them. We live in a world where we get instant gratification. Have you ever stopped to think about what it was like before all the modern inventions we have today? Have you ever thought about how long it must have taken to cook things back in the day? Today, we look for the next thing to make our lives easier. We want an Instapot because we don’t want to wait 40 minutes for our chicken to cook in the oven when an Instapot can cook it in 10 minutes. I hate waiting 30 minutes for the heat to warm up a room. Imagine lighting a fire and waiting for that to heat the whole house. Imagine having to light candles to have light in the house.
I say all of this to show you why it makes sense that we struggle to wait for God’s timing. It makes sense that we would be impatient when things take a while because we are used to having what we want when we want it. I ordered a canister of tea online the other day, which was delivered to my door the next day. Sometimes, we can have a desire placed in our hearts, and it can be there for a very long time, and we get so tired of waiting. This might be you right now. You might read this verse or listen to it and think, “God is not satisfying my every desire with good things.” If this is your reality right now, I want to ask you to take that to God and ask Him about it. Don’t feel as though you should just be grateful for what you have. Yes, be grateful for what you have, and also ask God for the desires you are still waiting for. In our prayer group, God tells us repeatedly that we are not asking for too much. We are asking for too little. God wants to grant us our heart desires.
This thought keeps coming up in the back of my head, so I think I am supposed to address it. What about the mom who constantly desired to have children of her own and didn’t? What about the mom who wanted a big family and only had one child? What about the man who wanted to get married and yet never did? Honestly, I don’t know. I am not sure why those desires went unfulfilled. So many things about God and how He does things remain a mystery to me, and they probably always will. I don’t think we will be able to ever fully understand the complexity of God while we are still living. I think the Holy Spirit put this on my mind to let you know that if you have desires that have been unfulfilled, know that God sees you. He knows your desires and is right there with you while you wait.
If you have deep desires that have gone unfulfilled, bring them to the Lord. It is ok to seek understanding. It is ok to express your frustration, disappointment, and even anger to the Lord. He already knows you are feeling it anyway, so why not take it to Him and ask Him for help processing it? Taking all of that to the Lord and asking for help instead of trying to process it on your own will help you to grow closer to Him instead of further away. He wants to talk to us. He wants to be a part of everything we do.
I really wish I had a better answer for you. I wish I knew why this says He satisfies every desire, yet it doesn’t seem that way to some of us. I do know that the Holy Spirit would not let me get that thought out of my head, and I feel I was supposed to mention it even though I don’t have an answer. Maybe I was supposed to bring it up so you would know you are not alone, you are not forgotten, and that it is ok to bring it to God and ask for understanding and wisdom into your circumstances. I pray you get the understanding you seek. The Lord says to ask, and it will be given; knock, and the door will be answered. Seek, and you shall find. What is on my heart right now is that we need to seek more. Don’t just be content with the disappointment. God is not a God of disappointment. Seek understanding, seek clarity. God has more for us if we just seek Him more.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we thank you for fulfilling our deepest desires with good things. Thank you for supercharging our lives, Lord. We will take all you want to give us. More, Lord, more! Lord, some have deep desires that have not been fulfilled, and it doesn’t look like they will be filled. We ask that you give them understanding and clarity into your ways. We ask that you heal their hearts. We ask that you be with them; when they come to you, they gain the understanding they need. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ mighty name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I. Have a blessed day!
Introduction
Today’s witness is from my new friend Bruce. Bruce found my podcast randomly, and when he heard the call for people to share their stories, he reached out to me through email and shared his story with me. I asked him if I could share it, and he said yes. Bruce has made a career for the past thirty years as a head scenic artist, art director, and designer in the professional theatre business. For the past five years, he has also had a studio on James St. N., where he produced his own artwork. He is known and loved by many in the community for his work teaching the PMC art class for over a decade, as well as a more recent class for seniors at the YWCA. This is his story of losing sight but finding a new depth of faith.
Backstory
I’ve been a believing Christian since the age of ten, but at some point in the past few years, I began to notice a growing sense of spiritual restlessness. I felt like I never had the kind of spiritual life that you read and hear about. I always felt there could be a better experience. I wanted that closeness to God and that shower of blessings that the scriptures describe, but I always figured I was not worthy of it—or else I would have known it by now.
A few years ago, pastor lane spoke about being “haunted by God.” This began happening to me. I would wake up in the middle of the night thinking someone was there. I was never afraid, even though it felt surreal or supernatural. It was as if someone was trying to tell me something, but no words were heard. Someone was there. It was the Holy Ghost haunting me.
This was a good haunting. I was quite moved by this and began to pray for something to happen that would make me a better person and Christian. I asked myself what I would want from God as a spiritual blessing or gift if I had the chance. I decided that my greatest spiritual weakness was a lack of courage, so that is what I prayed for. I honestly believe that my answer came in the form of the trial I would soon go through. I learned that when you ask God to do something, you had better stand firm and be prepared.
Spring 2016
In the spring of 2016, I started to notice my eyesight slipping. It was harder to focus. I got new glasses prescribed, and by the time I picked them up, they failed to work for me. The doctor determined that I had low eye pressure. The doctor tried some treatments, but every treatment failed. Sometimes, my vision would return, only to fail again shortly afterward. I was coasting up and down with hopes and disappointment.
Summer 2016
In the summer of 2016, Pastor Lane was teaching a series of sermons from the Book of Job. This was never a favorite story of mine because I always looked at Job as someone with special favor from God. Each Sunday, I would take my seat on the balcony and listen to the woes of Job while at the same time in noticing that my sight was diminishing a little more each week.
I’ve never been known to have a quick temper, but one night, lying in my bed, I felt a real anger at what was happening to me. I was never a person who got angry at God, but now I was asking God, “How could you let this happen to an artist?” I had just turned sixty-five. I was looking forward to launching into more painting, more teaching, and a rewarding time ahead. Instead, my retirement gift was blindness—received with some bitterness toward God.
August 16, 2016
Taking what I thought was the mature approach to my anger, I decided that anger was not the right path and that it would only lead to my own misery. As Christians, we are always taught to look for the good purpose in all things, including our troubles and trials. I struggled to see where there was any good in an artist losing his vision. I was at a dead end and could not imagine my life without sight or the ability to do my artwork. I was forced to challenge God.
I prayed, “Lord, I know I can’t be angry at you about this. I don’t believe you would allow this to be cruel or to punish me. I do believe you must have some purpose in these awful circumstances you have placed me in. I am helpless and unable to understand any purpose for goodness here. Show me what you want me to know."
August 17, 2016
The next morning, as I was checking my email, I saw a message from a man I had worked with in previous years in the theatre business. I was a little surprised because I didn’t remember getting any messages from him before, so I was curious what he had to say. There was no text in the email, just an image of a stone tablet with the words “Psalm 73” carved into it. I had never known this man to talk about God or scripture, so this was a surprising message.
At this time, my vision was poor but still good enough that I could read using a magnifying glass. I had a Bible in my studio, which Pastor Mike Mileski had given me. It was a special edition with beautiful abstract artwork and a very easy-to-read text. I read from it every day before I set to work on my painting.
On this day, I decided to read Psalm 73, hoping to discover why my colleague had sent it to me. I started reading about Israel and the ungodly prospering. This didn’t seem to have anything to do with my situation. Reading further, the Psalmist expresses frustration and admits his unworthiness to God. I could relate to that more. The next verse was one which I had heard and read many times before without too much notice:
“Nevertheless, I am continually with thee. You hold me by my right hand. You guide me with your counsel and, afterward, receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but you, Lord, and there is nothing on earth that I desire more. My heart and my flesh fail me, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. It is good for me to be near God...I will put my trust in the Lord God that I may tell of his works.”
I was reading while standing at my drafting table, but when I read these words, I slumped down into a chair because I felt my knees weaken. I was so overcome by the words I read; it was as if I had never read or heard them before. At that moment, as I sat in my studio, it felt like someone put a cloak around me. A wave of peace and reassurance washed over me. I felt peace I had never known before. This was the “peace that passes all understanding,” which comes only from God. This was the Holy Spirit answering my prayer. Psalm 73 told me what I needed to know.
The Lord is with me, always at my right side, holding my hand. He will guide my footsteps and prevent me from falling. When my life on earth is over, I will stand with him in heaven because I am just as worthy in God’s sight as Job. I have no doubt of all this because the Lord has given me the courage to believe it fully.
After reading and taking in the words of Psalm 73, I said out loud in my studio, “What more could I possibly want?” I re-read Psalm 73 several times right after. I had never had a verse that I might refer to as my “life verse.” Now I had my own life verse because Psalm 73 changed my outlook on life forever.
Fall 2016
In the days and weeks that followed, I read psalm after psalm. I discovered that I could listen to someone read the psalms on YouTube, which was easier than struggling with my sight. I was amazed that the theology that weaved its way through the psalms. Several of them bolstered my faith and my reverence for this great book. I always read the daily devotional reading and commentary by Charles Spurgeon. His insight into the human condition, combined with his knowledge of theology, is remarkable. Many days he would offer up a psalm which would prove to be exactly what I needed to have that day.
In the year that followed, there were many efforts to fix my sight. I underwent four surgeries and received countless injections in my eyes. With a newfound peace and courage, I was able to go through all these ordeals knowing that the Lord was always with me. With the help of excellent, caring doctors, I didn’t need to worry.
Spring 2017
By the spring, it seemed at first that the surgeries had succeeded. The relief was short-lived. The pressure problem had been fixed, but a new problem appeared in the form of calcium deposits on my cornea, which were clouding my vision. I was just ready to get new glasses after waiting a year, only to find out it was not possible until the calcium was dealt with. This involved another specialist and more delays. I had been dealing with my life very well up until this time, but the combination of everything seemed to drag me down ‘til I felt depressed and very discouraged. August 17, 2017
One particularly bad day, I went to see what my friend Charles Spurgeon had to say. I was really counting on something meaningful to help me see my way out of this depressed state.
Instead of a psalm, this day’s reading was from John: the story of Lazarus. “Why Lazarus?” I thought. That didn’t seem to offer any help on this day. Spurgeon told how Christ is telling us that our trials, troubles, and illnesses are not forever, that there is a time for these things to end. That promise from God changed my mood from discouragement to hope and promise. I now had the promise that my long series of troubles with my sight would have an end. That was good enough for me. I had made it through the past year, and I knew I was a better person than before. I don’t think the old me would have come through the year as well.
The story continues
In September of this year, I had an operation to remove the calcium from my cornea. It was successful, but the condition has quickly returned since then. Once again, I find myself unable to get new glasses, parked on the sidelines with hazy vision. I am disappointed, but not without hope. I have hope because of the many prayers on my behalf and the peace and courage that get from my Saviour, who holds my right hand.
I am in awe of what God has done for me this past year. I am in awe of how God has moved in my life since I asked him to do something for me. I am richly blessed with a loving wife, daughters, and a family who care about and for me. I have a church filled with caring people who have prayed for me. I have everything I need; I know not everyone is blessed the same way. I don’t know if I will have my sight restored to where I can read and write and create art again. Even if I don’t, I know that God will have a plan for me, and I will never be left without him.
I once asked what the Lord wanted me to do. I found my answer in Psalm 73, which says. “I will tell of thy works.” This is why I am telling my story. I have yet to meet a person who did not face some sort of trouble, trial, illness, fear, and so on. I want people to know that you can be deeply blessed and assured by just opening your heart and asking God to do something for you. If you read Psalm 73 and do what the psalmist says by putting your trust in the lord, your life will change more than you can imagine. Whoever you are—rich or poor, young or old, you and I can be as richly blessed and stand as worthy as Job in God’s sight.
I just read a blog post that Bruce wrote for his church in November 2017. The following is part of an email to me summarizing his story and explaining about a miraculous event that happened in 2018.
Hello Catherine, I listened to your podcast, " If You Only Knew The Power You Had In You", the other day. I came across it by chance and was so taken with it that I listened to several more of your podcasts. You asked people to send you their stories and prayer requests. I recently retired after 30 years as a professional artist in the Live theatre business. I had my own studio for painting and designing. I taught art classes for 13 years at my church as well as the YWCA seniors centre. For several years I was dealing with glaucoma which was under control. In 2017 after 14 eye operations I lost my sight and was told there was nothing more that can de done. In November 2018, I went to a healing service in Toronto, not knowing what to expect. I had a miraculous encounter with the Holy Spirit and recovered my eyesight. That was a Sunday night. However, Monday morning, when I woke up, I was blind again. I could have been angry but was not because I was so amazed at what happened and knew in faith that the Lord was with me on this. I have been to several healing services since then but have not received my sight. My faith is stronger than ever and I am unable to give up hope. However, I have had occasional times of real sadness. Lately, I told God I don't know what to pray or do anymore. I don't understand why I am left this way. I have asked Him to help me out of this state I am in. When this happens, God always answers my prayer. I have listened to hundreds of podcasts and sermons. Your messages have answered so many of my concerns at just the right time as none other have. I have felt so akin to your thinking and way of explaining things. I would so appreciate your prayers for healing and restoring my eyesight. I already know that God has done it once, and will do it again. With my thanks and blessing on your ministry. Sincerely, Bruce Repei
Once I received this email I wrote back and asked if I could pray with Bruce over the phone. Two nights later I talked with Bruce & Alice on the phone for quite awhile. Bruce explained all about the healing service he went to and how his sight was restored. He could see all around the church, he could see Alice, he just looked around in awe the whole way home because he could finally see again. He looked all around his house when they got home. He didn’t go to bed until 2 or 3 in the morning. As he stated in his email, his sight was once again gone when he woke up. Bruce and Alice were both very upbeat and positive about the journey. When praying over Bruce, he could definitely feel heat, which is a manifestation of the Holy Spirit. He did not regain his sight but we are all hopeful it will return. I will continue to keep him in my prayers and hopefully continue to pray with him over the phone. I ask you to keep Bruce & Alice in your prayers as well. I am looking forward to the Witness Wednesday when I get to have Bruce on here telling you in his own words what it was like to finally have his sight back once and for all. That is going to be a glorious day. Don’t worry; whatever day it happens, I will be sure to tell you all about it! I won’t wait for a Wednesday!
Thank you Bruce for being brave enough to reach out to me and share your story with me. I am so honored you allowed me to pray with you and I can’t wait to do it again! I hope I get to meet you both in person when you come to MA in July. I hope every single person listening now understands a little better why I always say it is important to share our stories. My faith has grown after hearing Bruce’s story. People need to hear your story too. As Bruce said in his article, everyone has gone through something. Sometimes just hearing that someone else went through it and was able to trust in God makes it a little easier for you to trust in God. Thanks again Bruce! I can’t wait to celebrate with you!
Our Father's Love (Part 3) You've Rescued Me From Hell!
Psalm 113:4 “You've rescued me from hell and saved my life. You've crowned me with love and mercy.”
I think most of us can say that God has rescued us from hell at one point or another. Of course, this hell looks different for each one of us. Your hell might look like years of depression that seem overwhelming. Your hell might be years of anxiety too much to deal with. Your hell might be an abusive relationship that you can’t seem to leave. Your hell might be money troubles that keep getting worse and worse. We all have something we are dealing with. Mine was family trouble for a very long time. It was really difficult to parent my children, and my marriage was not going well. This went on for a very long time. Maybe yours has gone on for a long time, too.
When our difficult times go on for a long time, it can be difficult to believe that God will rescue us from them. Understanding why God hasn’t rescued us from these difficult times can be challenging. However, He always does rescue us from them. Not only does he rescue us from them, but he walks with us while we are in them as well. God never leaves our side. He is right there with us each step of the way. In my Encounter Ministries class, they taught us an exercise to help heal wounded memories. The first step is to stop and ask Jesus, “Where were you when this occurred?” Did you know you could ask God questions like this? Did you know asking where He was when you were struggling was okay?
Did you know that if you ask and truly listen, He will tell you where He was? That may seem strange to you if you are not used to listening to or hearing the Lord’s voice. Well, actually, it’s not usually the Lord’s voice you hear. It is usually more like you hear your own voice in your head or you get a thought in your head with no voice. But you will get an answer if you listen for one. I remember volunteering to do this exercise in front of the class so the teacher could demonstrate how it works. When I asked Jesus where He was during a specific experience with my boys, He explained that He was right there, giving me the strength to keep getting up each morning. He gave me strength and perseverance, so I never felt like giving up. He was with me through it all.
He is doing the same with you. You might have had some truly terrible experiences. Know that Jesus was right by your side through them. I don’t know why He didn’t prevent them from happening. That is something for Him to answer. I know He was there with you; no matter how alone you felt, you were not alone. He was there, walking by your side. God is so good like that!
The next part of the verse says, “You've crowned me with love and mercy.” These two things can be challenging for us to understand. We might be unable to believe that the Lord loves us for many reasons. If we have never been truly loved by anyone on earth, then it can be hard to believe anyone could love us, let alone someone as magnificent as the Lord. If we have had a hard life and done many things we are not proud of, then we struggle to believe someone could love us. The Lord’s love is unconditional. It is not dependent on what you do or say. It is not dependent on whether you love him back. You do not need to earn God’s love. It is freely given. This can be hard to understand, especially if we had to earn love as a child. We live in a broken world, so we don’t all love unconditionally.
The second part of this line also says we are crowned with mercy. The definition of mercy is “compassion or forgiveness shown toward someone whom it is within one's power to punish or harm.” This is why we struggle to believe in God’s mercy. We know He has the power to punish us. We know we deserve that punishment, yet God wants to shower us with His mercy. That doesn’t make much sense to us because that is not how the world thinks. We live in a day and age where we seem to be back to an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. It seems like if someone does something to you, you have to do something back to them.
For instance, when we are on the highway, and someone cuts you off, you have to blare your horn at them. You have to show them they did something wrong. My question is, “Why?” Why do you have to let them know they did something wrong? Can’t we have mercy on them and let them go on their way? I was driving with one of my sons the other day, and he wanted to get into a lane, but the driver wouldn’t let him in. He passed him on the right, and then my son got into that lane. However, my son was so angry that this man passed on the right and didn’t let him in. Where is the mercy? Where is the forgiveness?
People seem to get so angry at the slightest offense or at the slightest wrongdoing these days. This makes understanding how God can show us mercy when we have done some pretty big things more challenging. We are a flawed people, and we turn away from God often. So, how can he keep forgiving us when we don’t want to forgive those around us? These are all legitimate thoughts. However, we need to consider that we are not dealing with another human. We are dealing with the Lord God Almighty. He can do all things. There is nothing too great for Him. We are His children, and He crowns us with love and mercy, not one or the other, both. He is a good and loving Father!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to believe that you crown us with love and mercy. Help us to feel that down in our hearts! Thank you, Lord, for rescuing us from Hell. Thank you for all you did to get us out of that place and all you did to try to keep us out of it in the first place. We are sorry we don’t listen better. Help us learn to follow you more. Help us to hear your voice above all others. Help us to follow your path and no one else’s. We love you, Lord, you are amazing! Thank you for all you do for us. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ mighty name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I haven’t mentioned it in a while, so I want to remind everyone that if you want to receive my newsletter and any information on my coaching program or upcoming retreats, you can sign up on my webpage, walkboldlywithjesus.com. Or you can click on the link in the show notes. There is a link to receive a free audio training on how to invite Jesus into your every day.
I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day.
You’ve Healed Me Inside and Out
Psalm 113:3 “You kissed my heart with forgiveness, in spite of all I've done. You've healed me inside and out from every disease.”
This week, we are continuing with the series exploring Psalm 113. I am using the Passion Translation in case I didn’t mention it on Friday. I feel it is so beautiful. Today, the verse starts off with, “You kissed my heart with forgiveness, in spite of all I have done.” This is probably one of the most challenging concepts for us to understand. We look at our lives, and we look at all we have done wrong, and we struggle to believe the Lord can forgive us. We struggle to believe that our sins can be forgiven. How could they be? We wonder if people say God has forgiven us because they don’t know how bad our actions were.
Guess what? God knows, and He forgives them anyway. That was the point of Jesus dying on the cross. He takes each and every one of your sins with Him. This is why Catholics have the crucifix hanging in all of their churches. This is why they have the stations of the cross around the church. I had a friend once who said that he didn’t like being in a Catholic church because it was so depressing. It said he believes in the risen Lord. We do, too! However, we believe it is important to remember that Jesus died for our sins. He sacrificed His life so we could have eternal life. This is something to celebrate. This is something never to forget.
It is hard for people to accept the Lord’s forgiveness if they don’t think about the cross. Even if we do, it is hard to believe that God loves us so much that He would let His only son die for us. It is incredible to think about the fact that Jesus also loved us so much He chose to die on the cross for us. The Father didn’t make Him. He chose it, He volunteered for us. He must love us a lot.
I have talked with many people who think of God as a just judge sitting up in Heaven. He is watching us and waiting for us to mess up so that He can punish us. I wonder how it is possible to think this in light of the crucifixion. God laid out the rules very clearly to Adam and Eve. There was one tree they couldn’t eat from, yet they did. Then sin entered the world. It was not as if we did nothing wrong and the Lord punished us. He warned them, and they did it anyway. Yet, He still sent His son to save us. How often have we thought, “Well, they deserved it?” Imagine if the Lord had said this about us. He didn’t. He sent Jesus to take all of our sins to the cross. Yes, ALL of them, even that one that you don’t believe he wants to take to the cross. He already took it there.
Next, it says, “You've healed me inside and out from every disease.” God is so good. He does this for each one of us in different ways. Sometimes, He works on the wounds we have on the inside first, and sometimes, He works on our outside wounds first. Some of you listening may be suffering from something big right now, and you are wondering where your healing is. If that is you, I want you to know that the Lord sees you. He knows you are suffering. He hears your prayers.
The other night, I prayed with a listener and his wife. The man reached out because he lost his eyesight a few years ago and really wants it back. He wanted to tell me his story as he heard me mention on Witness Wednesdays that we all have a story, and it is essential to share our stories. Maybe I will share his story this Wednesday. I will check with him. However, what made me think of him today is the line in this verse that says, “You healed me inside and out from every disease.” The Lord is healing him. I know he is. He is growing closer to the Lord daily, which is fantastic. However, he has not been healed of whatever is causing him to lose his eyesight. He is positive, not angry at God, and yet sometimes gets sad that he has not regained his sight yet.
If you are praying for healing and haven’t received it yet, I want you to know you are not alone. If you pray for healing and sometimes get discouraged because it hasn’t happened yet, know that you are not alone in that feeling either. I want you to know I am praying for you. If you want to reach out as Bruce did by emailing Catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or on social media, Catherine Duggan. I would happily pray for your healing over the phone with you. I could also add you to my daily prayers and the prayer lines I am a part of or know of. There are so many prayer warriors out there who could be praying into your specific circumstance.
The words in the Bible are meant for all of us. They were not just spoken to the people who lived when it was written. They were meant for you and for me. This verse was meant for you and for me. The Lord is healing you inside and out. Maybe not in the order you would like, maybe not in the time that you would like. He is healing you, though. We know this because it says it right here in the Bible.
This verse reminds me of the story of the paralyzed man in Mark 2:2-11. This was the story of the man brought to Jesus by his friends. He was paralyzed and couldn’t walk, so his friends brought him to Jesus to be healed. They couldn’t reach Jesus because of all the crowds, so they brought him up on the roof, made a hole in the roof, and lowered him down. Jesus first said his sins had been forgiven and then healed him physically. Maybe this is what the Lord is doing to us, too. Maybe He is working on the things we can’t see before he heals the physical things we can see. I wish I had all the answers. I wish I could tell you why it seems like your prayers haven’t been answered yet. The truth is I have no idea. I do know the Lord’s ways are not our ways, and His thoughts are higher than our thoughts. He knows things we don’t know. He knows the perfect timing for things. I know it probably doesn’t feel great to hear that. I know that doesn’t take away your pain or suffering.
I pray that God gives you the strength to keep coming to Him, even when you don’t want to. I pray you keep asking the Lord for healing even when you think he doesn’t hear you. I pray you continue to ask even though you feel disappointed when he doesn’t answer immediately. I pray you get your healing and you tell the whole world about it. I pray your healing gives so much glory to God. I pray in the mighty name of Jesus that each of you listening, who is praying for a miracle healing, receives it sooner rather than later. I pray when you do; you share it with us in this community so we can celebrate with you and give all the glory to God!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, I know so many people patiently waiting for their healing: Bruce, my Dad, Diane, Melanie, Sheila, Marlene, and so many more. Lord, we know your timing is perfect. We ask you to give all those waiting for miracles the patience to wait for your timing. In the mighty name of Jesus, we ask you to give them the strength to persevere through this challenging time until you heal them. Lord, we ask that you fill them with hope and encouragement that a healing is coming. Lord, I always worry about giving people false hope, yet I know that is the enemy talking because there is no false hope in you! We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I hope if you are struggling and looking for healing that, you will reach out. I would love to pray with you over the phone or over Zoom. Click Here to message me. I would love to add you to my daily prayers. I would love to celebrate with you when you receive that healing you have been asking for. Please don’t stop asking. If you haven’t asked yet because you think God is busy with more important things, please know He is not. He has time for all His children and may just be waiting for you to ask.
I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Our Father’s Love (Part 1)
Psalm 103:1-2 “With my whole heart, with my whole life, and with my innermost being, I bow in wonder and love before you, the holy God! Yahweh, you are my soul’s celebration. How could I ever forget the miracles of kindness you’ve done for me?"
Yesterday, in the prayer group the leader read Psalm 103 to us. I was trying to listen to the psalm and yet I was also distracted. She did her talk about a few parts of the Psalm, so I got to hear a few of the parts again. This morning I decided to read the whole Psalm and ask the Lord to highlight any parts he wanted me to talk about. Well, let me tell you, He highlighted almost the whole thing. I really got the sense that the Lord wanted me to go deeper into this Psalm. I got the feeling that He wanted me to do a series of episodes on this Psalm. This is actually confirmation of a question I got asked last Friday. I was talking with my friend Cynthia and she asked me if I ever do themes or series on the podcast. It’s funny how the Lord will use other people to get his point across. I hear you loud and clear, Lord. I will do a series on Psalm 103.
Psalm 103 even has a beautiful title, “Our Father’s Love.” There is so much to our heavenly Father’s love. It is so vast and so all encompassing. In this psalm, His love is broken down into ways that we can understand better. Today’s verse starts with how we should love God. It begins with, “With my whole heart, with my whole life, and with my innermost being, I bow in wonder and love before you, the holy God!” This is definitely something to strive for. What does it mean to love God with our whole heart, our whole life, and with our innermost being?
The first thing that comes to mind is that we don't have other things competing for our love that are anywhere close to the way we love God. This may sound easy, and yet it is really isn’t. We my think we love God with our who heart and yet there are so many things we love. What if you had to pick between the Lord and TV, would you pick the Lord? My first response is, “of course I would.” Then I think back to all the times when I had homework to do for Bible study, or I felt the Lord was calling me to pray and yet I decided to watch TV instead. If you had to choose between the Lord and sleep, which would you choose. Again, my first instinct would always be the Lord. I would choose him about all else. Yet, when it is early in the morning and I am planning to get up and spend time with the Lord, I choose to hit the snooze button instead. In that moment I am not choosing the Lord, I am choosing sleep.
TV and sleep just happen to be the two things I tend to put above the Lord. Your’s might be something completely different. Maybe you put your phone or playing games on your phone above spending time with the Lord. Maybe you put housework or car work above spending time with the Lord. Wherever it is we are spending our time, that is where our affection is going. Think about a different relationship that you have. If you are married, think about your relationship with your spouse. You hopefully love your spouse with your whole heart. Yet, what happens when you don’t spend any time with that person. What happens when you are too busy doing other things?
The verse says, “And with my innermost being, I bow in wonder and love before you, the holy God!” How often are we bowing in wonder and love before the Lord? I was talking with a friend yesterday and we were talking about how amazing God is. We had a really Spirit filled Encounter Ministries class on Monday night and we were just in awe of the way the Lord showed up. My friend said she doesn’t know why we are so in awe each time as He does it so frequently. I think it is good that we are still in awe each and every time. I pray I never take his awesomeness for granted. I pray I never get used to the miraculous way He shows up each time we ask Him to. I pray I continue to bow in wonder and love before the Lord.
The next part of the verse goes along with this. It says, “Yahweh, you are my soul’s celebration. How could I ever forget the miracles of kindness you’ve done for me?” First, I love that beginning line. “Yahweh, you are my soul’s celebration.” How beautiful is that? Next, it reminds us to never forget the miracles of kindness He has done for us. I think today would be a great day to look back over your life, or even over this past week and recall to mind all the miracles of kindness that the Lord did for you. When we keep these miracles in the forefront of our mind it makes it easier to find joy. It makes it easier to make it through the hard times when we remember that Jesus helped us through the last hard time that we had.
This verse isn’t just talking about God helping us through the hard times, It is also talking about the small miracles of kindness as well. Someone in my prayer group mentioned yesterday that she felt the Lord put upon her heart to start a devotion of the Holy Face at her Tuesday prayer group. She chose St. Terese of Lisieux as the patron saint for the group. She asked the group to pray to St. Terese and ask her to show them a rose if she agreed to be their patron saint. One of the members said she got her rose, however, my friend did not. Then the other day she was walking by a thrift store and right in the front window was a picture of a Maine wild rose. This is significant to her because she is from Maine and because she received a word of prophecy from the Lord several years back while living in Maine. The Lord told her she was like this Maine rose and that he would transplant her some where that she could grow. Now she lives in MA.
There were plenty of people that probably walked by this picture of the rose and didn’t think anything of it, yet the Lord knew Carolyn would be walking by that day and that it would mean the world to her. God does this for each one of us. He knows us so intimately that He can set up something like this experience my friend had. I am sure if we all think about it we have all had many experiences like this. Think of at least one time when the Lord has blown you away with how well He knows you. What is one time when He showed up when you really needed it? When is one time when he provided for you when you least expected it? The Lord shows up for us more often than we even know. All those things that we chalk up to coincidences, are really the Lord showing us how much He cares. It is important that we know this and that we never forget those acts of kindness.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you and we thank you for all you do for us. Lord, we ask that you help us to never get used to your miracles, but that we are always in awe when we see your handiwork. Lord, we ask that you help us to see, especially throughout the day today, all the ways you are showing up for us, all the ways you are working things out for our good. We know you know us so intimately and we thank you for all the ways you confirm this throughout the day. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to seeing you again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
What Are We Waiting For?
James 4:13-15 “Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.”
This verse is so good because it reminds us that none of us know how much time we have. We wake up each day and take it for granted that we woke up. Most of us do not wake up grateful for a new day. If we are being honest, we probably wake up annoyed that our alarm is going off and wonder how it could possibly be time to get up already when we just laid our heads down a minute ago. I think the part of the verse that says, “You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes,” demonstrates how brief our life actually is. We may seem like we are here on earth forever, yet it goes by in the blink of an eye.
It sounds like the beginning of this verse is telling us we shouldn’t make plans because we don’t know if we will be around to carry out those plans. I don’t think that is what the verse is telling us. I think this verse is trying to get us to remember that tomorrow is not guaranteed. None of us know the day we will pass on. None of us know if we will wake up tomorrow. I think we need to continue to make plans and yet when we are making them we remember what the verse says, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.”
We have dear friends that we have not seen in a long time and yet think of often. We met this family when we were stationed in New Jersey. Tony worked with the husband, and since our family was 4 hours away, they adopted us into their family. Their daughter babysat our boys and we got together for dinner. Dave & Susan have this saying that I think is exactly what this verse is talking about. When you check in with them to confirm your plans, such as “Are we going to dinner tomorrow night?” They always say, “If The good Lord willing and the creek don’t rise.” This might sound like a cute saying, yet it reminds us that we can and should make plans and yet we can only carry out those plans if the Lord wills them and if He grants us the gift of another day.
This afternoon I heard this song that I haven’t heard in a while. The chorus of this song always gets me. The song's name is What Are We Waiting For by King and Country. The lyrics that always get me are: So what are we waiting for? What are we waiting for? Why are we wasting all the time like someone's making more? What are we praying for? What are we saving for? What if we could be the light that no one could ignore? What are we waiting for?
I have two favorite lines in that chorus. The first one is, “Why are we wasting all the time like someone’s making more?” Does that hit you, too, or is it just me? I find myself wasting so much time throughout the day. While I was supposed to write this in the last hour, I got sidetracked with at least three different things. Sometimes, it is things that need to be done. Other times, it is checking my email, my Facebook, and my messages on my phone. Other times, it is watching TV or playing a game on my phone. Time goes by each and every day, whether we realize it or not, whether we are paying attention to it or not. Sometimes, we get so tired of doing things that we wish we could just be done and finished with. However, we don’t realize how important that thing may be.
Recently, I have been saying that I want my kids to get their licenses because they are 18 & 19, and I spend a lot of time driving them in the car. Also, Sam does not get out until 9:30, and I would love to be in bed before 10. This week, the Holy Spirit put on my heart that if I am not driving them to work, I may not have much time to talk with them. Noah got his license a few weeks ago, and since he has started driving himself to work, I don’t see him nearly as much. We definitely don’t have that 30 minutes of time to be with each other and talk. When I drove him to work, we didn’t always talk, but we did tend to talk about music or a few other things. Now, I see him briefly before school and when I go in to say goodnight. However, if I am going to be earlier, I will probably be in bed when they get home from work, so I may not even get to hug them goodnight each night anymore. Do you see what I mean about wishing time away?
The other line in the chorus that I love is when it says, “What if we could be the light that no one could ignore?” How great would it be if we could be the light that no one could ignore. What if we loved Christ so much, and we were so full of Him, that His light radiated out of us so brightly that those around us couldn’t ignore it? When I ask the Lord, how we do this, He tells me with love. We need to love others the way He loves others. I heard at Bible study this week that this couple was visiting with some movie star down in Florida. This man said that he met Mother Theresa when he was in Jail. He said he only spent a few moments with her and she didn’t say very much and yet he was inspired to change his whole life because of her kindness. There was a British Journalist who was an atheist and yet he was chosen to interview Mother Theresa. Just being around her and her kindness was enough to turn this atheist into a believer and eventually he became a member of the Catholic Church.
What if we could be the light that no one could ignore? What if that was us? What if just spending time with us, just being around us was enough to help people see the love of Christ? Wouldn’t that be amazing? It all starts with love. It starts by loving others for who they are, not loving people when they are perfect, loving them right where they are, loving them flaws and all. We can’t do this on our own and yet we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us. Ask the Lord for grace to be His light in the world. He has said, “ask and you will receive.” What will you ask for today?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we know each day is a gift from you, we just forget it often. Please help us appreciate that gift more. Lord, help us be better stewards of you time. Help us not to waste time on things that don’t matter. Help us appreciate the time we have with our spouse and our children. Help us to understand we will miss that time when we don’t have it anymore. Lord, help us to be that light that no one can ignore. Fill us up so much with your light that it just spills out of us onto all those we meet. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on that journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I have a link on my website where you can register for my coaching program now, even though we won’t start the coaching until the New Year. You will input your name and email and then when the New Year rolls around I will send a payment link. I will start the FaceBook group now for those who are registered so we can get to know each other and be there for each other through the holiday season. The Facebook group will be there for those who sign up for group coaching. I will continue to provide more information as we go. If you have any questions please reach out on social media or email me catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you, and so do I. Have a blessed day!
The witness today is about Dr. Mary Neal. I saw her story on YouTube. Dr. Mary Neal is a board-certified orthopedic spine surgeon who drowned while kayaking on a South American river. She experienced life after death. She went to heaven and back, conversed with Jesus, and experienced God's encompassing love. She was returned to Earth with some specific instructions for work she still needed to do. Her life has been one filled with miracles and the intervention of God. Her story gives reason to live by faith and is a story of hope. I will retell the story that I heard on YouTube. I will also link the interview below so you can watch it yourself if you want to. CLICK HERE to watch the video.
Neal and her husband are avid kayakers. They have friends who are professional boaters who run trips to Chile. One year, their children were old enough so the parents could go away on vacation without them. They went on one of these trips to Chile for her husband’s birthday. They paddled all these rivers and had a great time. On what was going to be their last day of paddling, they decided to paddle a river well known for its waterfalls or drops, not like Niagara Falls, but 10-15-foot drops. These would be exhilarating and challenging but certainly within their skill set.
That day, her husband woke up for the first and only time in his life with back pain. Dr. Neal went on the river that day without her husband. She went on the river with her friends, who are professionals, and a few American clients. When they came to the first significant drop, one of the clients passed Dr. Neal and blocked the path to the channel they had selected to go over. This left her with one option: to go over the main part of the waterfall, which is what she did. As she got to the crest of the waterfall, she could see the bottom and the turbulence and flow. She knew it wouldn’t be pretty, but she figured she would hit the bottom, her boat would flip over, and she would have to get out of the boat, get tumbled around a bit, and then get spit out downstream. She said this is not a fun experience, but it is a part of boating occasionally, which is fine.
What happened next was something she could not have dreamed up. At this point in her life, she had never lost anyone close to her, so she had never really thought about death or what happens when you die. She hit the bottom, and her boat got stuck under rocks. She is a spine surgeon and is very calm in high-stress situations. She didn’t panic. She set about trying to free herself or the boat, but the weight of the water was too great for her to do anything. She thought about her options, and she realized she was going to die. She made a very active choice that God’s will be done. She felt like she had a choice. She could choose God’s will or fight it. Either way, she was going to die. The minute she chose God’s will, she immediately felt comforted and held by Jesus and reassured that all would be okay. She knew her husband would be ok. It took her a while to admit that she was being held by Christ because she didn’t think she was worthy. She learned in that moment that we are all individually known and loved by God.
She is very pragmatic and concrete thinking. God’s time is different. She could experience all of eternity in every moment. She thought she was hallucinating. She was still conscious of what was going on under the water. She could feel the weight of the water. She could feel the water pulling her out of the boat. She could feel her legs breaking but with no pain. At the same time, she was being held by Christ, taken through a life review, and then she felt her spirit leave her body. She said her spirit floated above the river, and when she was up in the sky, Jesus released her to the heavens. She was greeted by spirits. She knew they were people who had loved her during her entire existence. She knew they were tied to her story, but she didn’t recognize them because she didn’t know anyone who had died before. But it could have been like a great-grandparent who would know her, but she didn’t know them.
The beautiful thing is when we are reunited with people up in heaven. It is with an absolute understanding of the back story and its purpose. You are reunited with a purity of love. There is just no room for any destructive emotions. She really believes that the destructive emotions we feel on earth are an absence of love. She said you do not hold onto those feelings when you are up in heaven.
She would have claimed before this experience that she was a Christian. She said she was a cultural Christian. She went to church because she happened to grow up in the Midwest. That was about it. Now, her number one identity is that she is a beloved child of God, and everything else is secondary to that. She loves being a wife & mother. Those two jobs are critically important to her. However, the only thing that truly matters is that she is a beloved child of God. This experience changed her experience of life & death. It transformed what it means to be here on earth. We are not meant to be here and waste our lives. We are meant to go out and experience life.
She did not get to stay in heaven. She came back to life. They did not go into how that all happened, as it was a quick 20-minute interview. However, an article said she was underwater for 12 minutes, and she was without oxygen for 24 minutes, and yet she had no brain damage. When she was sent back, she was given a laundry list of things she still had to do. She was told about the coming and unexpected death of her son. He was nine at the time, and he was really healthy. She tried for a long time to come up with an alternate explanation of what had happened to her. She didn’t want it to be real. She didn’t want to do any of the things on the list. She didn’t feel qualified to do anything she was sent back to do. God always gives us things that will push us out of our comfort zone because it is only then that we truly discover our gifts and abilities to glorify God. There is so much more to her story. She has written two books about it. The books are called 7 Lessons from Heaven & To Heaven and Back. There is also a movie about her story.
Her film is now in theaters. It is called AfterDeath. It is a film about her story. She is hoping people bring their friends to the film. We are all going to die, and this film does a great job of making you think. She hopes everyone leaves this film feeling challenged. Challenged in your own assumptions of what death means and what happens afterward. If you get to a point where you accept life after death, then that leads you to a path where you discover meaning, purpose & joy. This is the life she believes we are meant to live.
God is so remarkable. It always amazes me when people have these after-death experiences and then come back to tell us about them. There is so much mystery surrounding God, yet so much that he reveals to us if we listen. I hope to learn more about her story and see what God sent her back to share.
Persevere & Receive What He Has Promised!
Hebrews 10:36 "You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised.”
This was one of the verses I typed for our August discernment notes for the Prayer Group. The message translation came up when I looked up the verse on biblegateway.com to check out different versions. I love the message translation because it puts it in our current terms. It takes what the Bible says and uses common everyday language to tell us what they are talking about. Another thing it does is group verses together. So, instead of having verse 36, it had verses 32-39 all lumped together. This way, you don’t take any verses out of context. I don’t always use this translation when writing the devotional, but I frequently look at it to ensure I understand what is being said. Today, I didn’t intend to look up the message translation; it just came up, and the verses blew me away. When I get a verse, I often read it before and after it. When I do this, I sometimes switch to those verses. This morning, the verses before this one give us much more context into what this verse means.
Here is the message translation for Hebrews 10:32-36, “Remember those early days after you first saw the light? Those were the hard times! Kicked around in public, targets of every kind of abuse—some days it was you, other days your friends. If some friends went to prison, you stuck by them. If some enemies broke in and seized your goods, you let them go with a smile, knowing they couldn’t touch your real treasure. Nothing they did bothered you, nothing set you back. So don’t throw it all away now. You were sure of yourselves then. It’s still a sure thing! But you need to stick it out, staying with God’s plan so you’ll be there for the promised completion.”
I loved these verses because it explains how hard it can be to stick with something. When we start something new, we are excited and go all in, or at least I do. I always want to do it because it is new and exciting. Even if it is hard work, it can still be exciting, and we can still be motivated. However, what about when it is not new or exciting anymore? Think about a hobby you started, and you were so excited about it, and you bought all the things to go with it and did it all the time. When I got married, my neighbor started selling Creative Memories scrapbooking supplies. To support her I started a scrapbook for Tony and me. Then, when I had kids, I got more into scrapbooking. I would stay up late doing it. My fellow moms and I would have scrapbooking nights going well into the mornings. I bought more and more stuff, and I loved it. Then as I had more kids and they got to ages where they were into more stuff, I slowly got away from scrapbooking. Now I have two bookshelves full of supplies, and I rarely ever scrapbook. I also got into running during COVID, and I was excited to go out and run. Not excited every day, but excited enough to get myself out there. I don’t think I ran much at all this past year. Our interests come and go. Our relationship with the Lord is something that should remain a constant in our lives.
The letters to the various communities in the New Testament addressed the people of the early church. Jesus came here to set up a new kingdom in this world. This religion was new and exciting. It was familiar in some ways and radically different in other ways. People were excited, and they were all in at first. People were excited about this new religion, and yet it was not an easy life for those who believed in Christ. Nowadays, if you believe in Christ, you may have some persecution, but nothing like they received back at the beginning.
Right after Christ died, there was a lot of persecution. Many could not openly worship and if they were caught they were put in jail or they were killed. Peter was crucified, Paul was beheaded, Andrew was also crucified, Thomas was pierced through with spears, Philipp was arrested and cruelly put to death, Matthew was stabbed to death, Bartholomew was a martyr for the Gospel, James was stoned and then clubbed to death, Simon, the zealot, was killed after refusing to sacrifice to the sun god, Matthias was burned to death, & John was the only one to die of natural causes. It was not easy to be a Christian when these letters were being written. This is why the early church father’s wrote letters to their people. They wanted to encourage them to keep believing.
These verses do just that. “Remember those early days after you first saw the light? Those were the hard times! Kicked around in public, targets of every kind of abuse—some days it was you, other days your friends. If some friends went to prison, you stuck by them.” This is reminding them of how they felt when they first came to know Christ. They are reminding them that times were hard even from the beginning and yet they followed Christ anyway. They were kicked around, and they were abused in all sorts of ways, and yet the Lord was still with them, and they were still with Him. It also reminds them that they stuck together. If their friend was in trouble, they did not desert them. They were right by their side.
Next, the verses remind them how they felt when they were full of the Lord. “If some enemies broke in and seized your goods, you let them go with a smile, knowing they couldn’t touch your real treasure. Nothing they did bothered you. Nothing set you back.” This verse reminds them of where the source of their joy is. Our joy is not found in our possessions. It is found in the Lord. If we have the Lord in our hearts, then we don’t care about our worldly possessions because we know we can’t take those with us. We know that we have the best gift inside of us, the Spirit of Christ. No one can take that away from us.
The verse says, “So don’t throw it all away now. You were sure of yourselves then. It’s still a sure thing! But you need to stick it out, staying with God’s plan so you’ll be there for the promised completion.” This part is reminding them that the time has not yet come. We need to stay in the fight. We have done so well for so long and must keep moving forward. We need to keep relying on God and defending God. We need to keep resting in the Lord. The verse reminds them that we can be just as sure of God today as we were when we first found Him. God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He was there for us then and will be there tomorrow. We can count on that.
The verse I chose for today states, “You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised.” This is a powerful reminder that we are all called to do something. What is God calling you to do? It also reminds us that God has made promises to us. When we have done the will of God, we will receive what He has promised us. That is pretty amazing! We just have to persevere. When it gets tough, and we feel we can’t keep going, we need to ask the Lord to help us. His power is made perfect in our weakness. We are never in this alone. The Holy Spirit lives inside of us, and that means we have the power of Jesus Christ living inside of us.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you and want to persevere in following you. We want to not only follow you, we want to bring you to all those we meet. Please help us, Lord. Help us to stand up when we are persecuted. Help us to defend you, even when it is hard. Help us to keep going when we think we can’t. Lord, I ask you to help bring wisdom and clarity to your children. We pray in a special way for your children who have left the church because of the actions of some involved in the church. Lord, help them to see that the church is made up of broken people, but that does not make it a broken church. Bring them back to your loving embrace, Lord! We also pray for all those with mental health disorders, Lord. Please break through the enemy's lies and tell them how loved they are! We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I want to let you know that I have decided to start the group coaching in January instead of November. I realize we are entering a hectic season for many people. Most people I know can’t add anything to their plate right now, even if it is a good thing. So, I will start the group coaching in January and take these next two months to talk about it and answer any questions.
I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Forget Yourself Long Enough To Lend A Helping Hand
Philippians 2:3-4 “Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.”
I had no idea this verse was in the Bible, yet it could be the answer to so many of our problems. Imagine what the world would be like if we did nothing from selfishness or empty conceit. Imagine if we all regarded one another as more important than ourselves. Imagine if we weren’t just looking out for our own best interests but those of others as well. I run into many people these days who clearly regard themselves as more important than those around them. You can tell in their voice when they talk to you that they are sure you do not know what you are talking about. You can tell by their actions they do not feel you are more important than they are.
Here is the verse above in the Message translation. Philippians 2:3-4 “Don’t push your way to the front; don’t sweet-talk your way to the top. Put yourself aside and help others get ahead. Don’t be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand.” How many of us are living like this? How many of us put aside what we want to help others get ahead? I love where it says, forget about yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand. I wish we could all lend a helping hand a bit more. What a better world we would live in if we did. I am not saying people aren’t doing this. I have seen people lending a helping hand. However, I have also seen far more people walk right by without stopping. I have seen people go out of their way to be mean to those less fortunate they are.
I can see extremes in two different ways. First, the person who thinks they are more important than everyone else. They don’t understand why they have to wait in line. They don’t know why the cashier can’t be faster or more efficient. They don’t understand why everything can’t be done for them. Most of their actions are done from selfishness and empty conceit. They care about themselves and no one else. They are definitely looking out for their own interests.
Then there is also the other extreme of those who never look out for their interests. The person who always puts others’ interests before his/her interests. This person has not been treated well and has been told they don’t matter. They have been taught that what they want isn’t as important as what those around them want. They have come to believe that what they want doesn’t matter. They think their worth is found in giving others what they want. They are not really choosing to put others first. They don’t know any other way.
None of the scenarios listed above are good. Yes, it does say to regard one another as more important than yourselves, but it doesn’t tell you that you don’t matter. It says, do not MERELY look out for your own personal interests. What you want and think matters. We should look out for ourselves. We shouldn’t make that our first priority, though.
We need to make sure we know who we are in God’s eyes. Even though we are called to regard others as more important than we are, we can’t forget that we were all made in God’s image and likeness. Jesus did now submit to others because He thought He was less than them. He didn’t humble himself to serve others because he had to. He did it because he wanted to. I feel this distinction is essential. This is shown in Philippians 2:5-6 “Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men.” Jesus knew He was God. He did not empty himself, humble himself because He had no other choice. He did this for us. He did this to show us what we should be doing. He is the “perfecter of faith.” He shows us how to love God perfectly.
The verse above asks us to humble ourselves and to put others before us. Yes, we want to be accepted into the kingdom of heaven. However, this verse tells us we don’t have to prove to God how great we are. We don’t have to act better than everyone else so that God will see us and favor us. Jesus was willing to humble himself. He was willing to empty himself to be fully human with us. Because He did this and because He was willing to be obedient to the Father, the Father lifted Him up and honored Him. Jesus tells us whoever is first on earth will be last in heaven, and whoever is last on earth will be first in heaven. Don’t we want to be first in heaven? Why are we trying so hard to be the best here on earth when this life is so short compared to eternity? Let’s all take some time today to think about how we can help elevate others instead of ourselves. How can we love others enough to regard them as higher than ourselves?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you, and we need you to help us. Sometimes, we step over others on our way to the top. Please forgive us and help us to change that. Sometimes, we regard ourselves as greater than others. Please forgive us and help us change. Lord, we want to treat others the way you treated others. We want to humble ourselves. We know we need your help, though. Please help us! We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. My new group coaching kicks off tomorrow night. Check out my website for all the details. walkboldlywithjesus.com, I hope you will join me to go deeper in your relationship with the Lord. Why is it that we will go to an exercise class if we want to be fitter, we will go to the doctor if we want to feel better, we will seek help if we're going to improve most areas in our lives, and yet we don’t seek help growing in our relationship with the Lord? I remember hearing Matthew Kelly talking about this. He once asked His dad why he always told him and his brothers to “Listen to the coach.” He said it frequently. Matthew’s dad said you can get good at a sport independently. However, if you want to be exceptional, you need to listen to your coach. I never forgot this, and after hearing this, I decided to get a spiritual director. I was nervous to get the first time, but I knew I wanted to be an exceptional Catholic. I knew I needed help figuring out how to grow closer to the Lord. I can tell you that it is easier to grow closer to the Lord when surrounded by a community of fellow believers striving to grow closer to the Lord. I hope you will consider joining me at least for the first month and see how it goes. Feel free to email me with any questions. catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow! Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
A Way Through The Wilderness
Isaiah 35:1-10 “The wilderness and the desert will be glad, And the Arabah will rejoice and blossom; Like the crocus, It will blossom profusely And rejoice with rejoicing and shout of joy. The glory of Lebanon will be given to it, The majesty of Carmel and Sharon. They will see the glory of the Lord, The majesty of our God. Encourage the exhausted, and strengthen the feeble. Say to those with anxious heart, “Take courage, fear not. Behold, your God will come with vengeance; The recompense of God will come, But He will save you.” Then the eyes of the blind will be opened, And the ears of the deaf will be unstopped. Then the lame will leap like a deer, And the tongue of the mute will shout for joy. For waters will break forth in the wilderness And streams in the Arabah. The scorched land will become a pool And the thirsty ground springs of water. In the haunt of jackals, its resting place, Grass becomes reeds and rushes. A highway will be there, a roadway, And it will be called the Highway of Holiness. The unclean will not travel on it, But it will be for him who walks that way, And fools will not wander on it. No lion will be there, Nor will any vicious beast go up on it; These will not be found there. But the redeemed will walk there, And the ransomed of the Lord will return And come with joyful shouting to Zion, With everlasting joy upon their heads. They will find gladness and joy, And sorrow and sighing will flee away.”
This is much longer than I usually do. I typically pick a verse and go with it. I heard the last few verses of this chapter in Isaiah at prayer group yesterday, and I really liked them. Then, when I read the whole chapter, I would pick a few verses in the middle to share. However, there were a few places in the verses that I didn’t understand. I was going to just explain the ones I did understand, and then I remembered how every time I look up the meaning of the verses I don’t understand, I am so glad I did. Whenever I look up the importance of the verses I don’t understand, I learn something interesting. Today is no different. I decided to look up the meaning of Isaiah 35, and I am happy I did.
I decided to use the middle verses because they talk about the eyes of the blind being opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped. I know many people who need healing right now, so I thought these verses would be perfect. Yet, when I read the article about the meaning of Isaiah, it talked about that verse meaning our spiritual ears and eyes. It was remarkable all the things that were discussed in this article. I will place a link for it in the show notes, as it was a fantastic article to read. The article is called The Holy Way by Tony S. Everett. I will share with you the things that stood out to me.
“In today's lesson, the people of God have been living as exiles in Babylon, approximately 500 miles from their homeland. The mighty Babylonian army, under King Nebuchadnezzar, had conquered Judah, shattered the city walls of Jerusalem, and left the Jerusalem temple in ruins. As was the custom in those days, conquering armies would relocate thousands of leading citizens in order to prevent any organized rebellion. The only way home was through this vast, frightening, and overwhelming wilderness. Perhaps even God had forgotten them. Their hands were weak, their knees had grown feeble, and their hearts had become fearful. There appeared to be no hope, no help, and no way to be restored and renewed.”
We have all been in the wilderness at some point or another. A dark, scary place where we felt alone, scared, and forgotten. We feel overlooked by friends and family and sometimes even by God. Times when we thought we couldn’t go any further. The terrain was too challenging, and the hardships were too much. It was too dark to see where we were going. We lost all hope, we lost our way, and we just wanted to give up and hide under a blanket forever. Have you ever had a time like this? Maybe you are in a time like this right now.
Today, God promises that way. It is God's holy way through the very wilderness space in our souls. "A highway shall be there, and it shall be called the Holy Way ... it shall be for God's people: no traveler, not even fools, shall go astray" (Isaiah 35:8).
I love what the author talks about next. He states that God did not promise to get rid of the wilderness. He did not promise we would never have to enter the wilderness again. He promised us a road right through the middle of the wilderness. He promised us a way of holy living in the midst of the wilderness. I love that! The author says, “The Lord is about to establish a new and faithful kingship in the world. Again, God will do this not by eliminating any and all wilderness space but by 1) changing the very wilderness itself, 2) changing the way God's people perceive the wilderness, and 3) transforming the way God's people behave in the wilderness.”
“First, God changes the wilderness. "Waters and streams shall nourish the dry land" (Isaiah 35:6 cf). "The burning sand shall become a pool and the thirsty ground springs of water" (Isaiah 35:7). "Wild beasts and predators will not be found there" (Isaiah 35:7, 9 cf). "Lions and other predatory beasts will not live in the wilderness anymore" (Isaiah 35:9 cf). "In the wilderness, the glory and majesty of the Lord will be revealed for all to see" (Isaiah 35:2 cf).” He goes on to state, “The Bible is filled with stories of how God changes the wilderness by being present within it. Remember that! Write it on your hearts! God does not eliminate wilderness from our lives. God changes those scary spaces by being present within them.”
“Second, God not only changes the wilderness spaces themselves, God opens blind eyes that just can't seem to see God's presence in those times of overwhelming fear, anxiety, confusion, and doubt. God opens ears so stopped up that they are deaf to God's word of promise and guidance (Isaiah 35:5). God empowers those who view themselves as trapped in their own wilderness; disabled by their own fears. God will increase their energy and send them leaping like a deer along God's holy way (Isaiah 35:6). To those whose voices can only speak pessimistic, contagious, doom and gloom about their own wilderness, God will give songs of joy (Isaiah 35:6).” Those chaotic and confusing spaces still exist. However, God changes the way we see and experience them; from hopeless and helpless, to potential and possibility; from exhaustion and despair, to renewed energy and anticipation. Look again with new eyes at your own wilderness spaces. Open your eyes to see God's presence and guidance on the holy journey of life.”
The author ends with his third point. “Third, and finally, God's holy way includes changing behavior as we travel. In our text, Isaiah describes that preparation for the discouraged exiles and for us. "Strengthen the weak hands and make firm the feeble knees. Say to those who are of a fearful heart, be strong, do not fear! Here is your God ... He will come and save you" (Isaiah 35:3-4).”
“Well, that's easier said than done, right? Alone, yes; without God's promise to change the wilderness from burning sand to pools of water. Alone without God's promise to change the dry land to abundant streams and blossoming flowers. Impossible without God's promise of safety from prowling beasts and bandits; impossible without God's promise to change into rejoicing and singing the fearful, despairing way we see the wilderness. Isaiah writes in verse 8, "not even fools," like you and me perhaps, will go astray on God's holy way.”
Well, it turns out I just ended up reading most of the article word for word because the way he explained it was so good. I did leave out a few things, and I think you would get a lot out of going back and reading the full article. The article is The Holy Way by Tony S. Everett. CLICK HERE for article
What I liked best about this article is that it reminds us that God isn’t going to take all of our trials from us. He isn’t going to let us skate through life without any rough times. It is usually in the rough times that we learn and grow the most. However, God will walk through those tough times with us. He won’t leave us alone. He will make a way through them. He will also change us while we are going through them. I also like how the verse talked about the Lord changing the wilderness. He can do that, and I think sometimes we forget that. We may be looking at an impossible situation, and we can’t see any way through it or see anything to change. He can come in and change things in ways we couldn’t on our own. If we are trying to get through this on our own, then yes, we will be lost in the wilderness. However, if we do it with God, He will make a path right through the wilderness, and He promises in the chapter above that it will be a highway where nothing terrible can harm us. Praise God, He is so good!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we thank you for making a way through the wilderness for us. We thank you for being right there with us in the wilderness. Lord, we thank you for changing how we see and hear you in the wilderness. If we are not open to that, Lord, I ask that you change our hearts. I ask you to help us remember all this when we are in the wilderness. Help us remember you are there. Help us not forget to look for the safe highway you created for us. Help us to remember you are protecting us. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Remember to check my website for all the details on my new group coaching program. I am most excited about us becoming a community where it is not just me sharing these podcasts daily. I am excited to get to know each and every one of you and help you grow closer to the Lord. I am excited to get to do life with you. I hope you will check out the website and join me. walkboldlywithjesus.com.
I look forward to meeting you again on Monday! Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed weekend!
Guilty Enough To Go Into The Fiery Hell?
Matthew 5:21-22 “You have heard that the ancients were told, ‘You shall not commit murder’ and ‘Whoever commits murder shall be liable to the court.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court; and whoever says to his brother, ‘You good-for-nothing,’ shall be guilty before the supreme court; and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell.”
Yesterday, the Gospel at mass was the beatitudes found in Matthew 5:1-12. While listening at Mass, I felt I was supposed to teach on those today. However, while reading them this morning, I felt the Holy Spirit nudge me to read further in the chapter. As soon as I got to these verses, I was told I could stop. What struck me about these verses is the importance of what they say and how easy it is for us to do. How easy is it for us to get mad at someone? Frequently, I would say. Mostly, I would say I get angry with people most when I am driving. I am not an angry driver and am usually pretty calm when driving.
Lately, I am still calm; however, I have noticed myself commenting on other drivers. It seems that people are driving worse and worse as the days go by. However, it could just be that I am getting old and less patient. I am not sure. However, I have noticed lately when I am driving, and someone cuts me off or drives in and out of the lanes, I think they are driving like an idiot. Sometimes, I might even say they are an idiot. This is exactly what I was thinking of this morning when I read this verse. The verse ends with, “And whoever says,
‘You fool’ shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell.”
Did you catch that? If we call someone a fool, we will be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell. I was talking to my dad one time about heaven and hell. We were discussing how Jesus died for our sins. We were discussing how some religions believe you have to believe that Jesus is our Lord and Savior and you get to go to heaven, and we were talking about how Catholics believe it is not just believing in Jesus, but it is your works as well. I have always believed that you will go to heaven if you are primarily a good person. My dad reminded me of what Mary told the little children of Fatima. She gave them a vision of all the suffering in hell, and she said to them that more people than we know are going there.
This concerned me, and I have spent some time thinking about it. Then, when I went to an Unbound training, I heard the story of the priest whose heart stopped. He died for a few minutes, and instead of going to heaven like he thought he would, he went to hell. When he saw Jesus, he was told he went there because he had unforgiveness in his heart. He wished God would punish those who had hurt him. I know we hear often that we must forgive, but I am not sure we understand what is at stake if we don’t forgive. The stakes are pretty high. The Our Father prayer says that God will forgive us as we forgive those. I think many of us don’t realize what we are saying when we say that prayer.
I believe God is highlighting these things for me because I am searching. I want to spend eternity with the Father, and God knows our thoughts. He knows our hearts. If we seek the truth, He will provide it for us. I don’t want to be writing about things on this podcast that might be leading you down the wrong path, or that might be false information. Before writing each episode, I pray that the words that come out are the Lord’s words for you, not mine. We will gain understanding if we seek to understand the Word of the Lord. The Lord said in Matthew 7:7-8 “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.”
I often think of this phrase when I am asking for something. However, the Lord reminded me of its last part: seek and you will find. Let’s start seeking the truth. Let’s take our concerns to the Lord. Not just our prayer requests but also our concerns. Concerns such as, am I loving my neighbor? Do I love you, God, with my whole heart, mind and soul? Did you know you can ask the Lord to show you how you are falling short in your life, and He will? He won’t show you in a condemning way. He will guide you in a gentle yet convicting way. He also won’t show you a hundred things at one time. I believe the Lord will show you one or two things you can work on, and when you prove to be faithful in working on those, He will show you a few more ways.
When we make a conscious effort to live the way God calls us to, I believe God rejoices in heaven. I think it makes Him so happy that we care enough about Him to stop and ask, will this bring me closer to the Lord or further away from Him? A few months ago, I was talking with my mother-in-law about whether we would go to heaven. She had a conversation with a friend, and they discussed what it takes to get into heaven, like my conversation with my dad. Actually that is why I was having the conversations with my dad. He is a deacon in the Catholic Church, so if I have questions on theology or what the Church says, I ask him. I also talked with a friend from Encounter Ministries, and she said she had just had a conversation with God about this the other day. Isn’t it funny how we tend to go to books, friends, or religious leaders, and my friend goes straight to the source?
She said she felt the Lord told her we were asking the wrong question. The question shouldn’t be, “Am I going to Heaven.” The question should be, “Do I love God.” This might seem like an easy question. Of course, I love God. Yet, do our actions show that we love God? If we love God, then we need to love each other. Jesus is inside each one of us. At Bible study this week, someone said they were listening to a talk, I am not sure who the talk was by, and the speaker said there are not two great commandments. There is only one. He said the two listed in the Gospels, Love the Lord your God with your whole heart, mind, and soul and love your neighbor as yourself, are actually one commandment.
He went on to explain they are equal to each other. Picture you have a math equation. 2 + 3 = 5 or 4 + 3 = 7. The speaker explained that if we love the Lord our God with our whole heart, mind, and soul, we will also love our neighbor. If we love our neighbor as we love ourselves, we will also love our God. We can’t do one without doing the other. If we attempt to do one without the other, we fall short. We are not truly loving God if we are treating His children with hatred and unforgiveness. Think about a sibling or a friend who has children, and you really don’t like how the children behave. Maybe you think they are spoiled brats. Are you loving your sibling well when you feel evil thoughts about their child? Are you loving your parents well when you are treating your siblings poorly?
I think the Lord is slowly revealing what is most important to Him. I know for sure that forgiveness is so essential, and this keeps getting confirmed the more and more I learn. Now that I know that deep in my soul, I believe he is moving on to the next thing: kindness and how we treat his beloved children. We can’t genuinely love Him if we are treating His children poorly. What I love about this verse is that it breaks it down so specifically. I don’t love what it says, as it is hard to hear. However, I would rather listen to it now and have the chance to change my ways than not hear it and inadvertently end up in a place I definitely don’t want to be for all eternity. Let me leave you with the Lord’s words today. I know it is a hard teaching, and it will take time to stop doing it. I also know we can stop doing it if we rely on the Lord to help us. All we need to do is say, Yes, Lord, come in and transform my heart and mind. Lord, I need you. Please give me the strength to stop doing these things. The Lord’s power is made perfect in our weakness. We have to humble ourselves and ask for help. Listen to these words and ask the Lord to let these words change your heart.
“You have heard that the ancients were told, ‘You shall not commit murder’ and ‘Whoever commits murder shall be liable to the court.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court; and whoever says to his brother, ‘You good-for-nothing,’ shall be guilty before the supreme court; and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell.”
Dear Lord, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, thank you for caring so much about us. You are willing to tell us what we don’t want to hear. Lord, help us to change our ways. Lord, help us to understand the gravity of our actions. We think it is no big deal to call someone an idiot, and yet you are saying we will be guilty enough to go to hell. Lord, help us change. We want to spend eternity with you. That is all we want, which is most important to us. Help us Lord. We love you very much and ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. My new coaching program starts in just 5 days. Make sure to go to my website and get all the details. www.walkbodlywithjesus.com I hope you will consider joining me so we can all go a little deeper in our relationship with the Lord. I know doing something new can be scary. You don’t know what to expect and aren’t sure you will like it. What if everyone else is further along on their journey? What if they know more than I do? What if you ask the wrong question? What if you hate it? All of these are everyday thoughts. First of all, we are all on our own spiritual journey. I personally love it when everyone else is further along because I learn so much from them. I have always been nervous about joining a new group, but I can honestly say I have never regretted it. Being surrounded by others who share the same beliefs and have the same desire to grow closer to the Lord is such a fantastic feeling. It is not something I can explain. It is something you have to experience for yourself. If you don’t like it, you can quit. Just because you sign up for the first month does not mean you have to stay forever. You can quit at any time. There is no long-term commitment required. You can just come and see what it is all about. If you have any questions or concerns, I am happy to answer them. catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com I look forward to meeting you hear again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day.
This morning, I want to witness how God always provides. At prayer group last week, one of the members talked about a time when she truly understood what it was to believe without a doubt that God would do something. Her husband had died at a very young age. They had two very young kids. She remembered the mass she had said for her husband one year after he had passed. Her husband had a big family. His mom had about 5 siblings, and dad had about 5 siblings. I am unsure how many siblings her husband had; I think she had several. She had invited the families to the mass. However, most lived out of state, so she only expected the few nearby to come to the mass. After the Mass, she invited everyone to her house for dinner. She had made a big tray of American chop suey. When she got to mass, she found out that his parents had invited the entire family, and they all came! There were so many people, and they all headed to her house afterward for food. She drove home in the car with her mom and dad. They asked what she was going to do. They knew she didn’t have enough food for that many people. She told her mom it would be fine. She said she knew God would provide. He wouldn’t let her run out of food. The father-in-law stopped at the store to get some potato salad. So they had one pan of American chop suey and some potato salad for all those people. I imagine it was a lot when you consider spouses and children. Agnes said she did not doubt that there would be enough food. After everyone left, they still had a whole pan of American chop suey for leftovers. God is so good!
I have also seen this abundance in my house growing up. My mom would make us grilled tuna melt sandwiches, and there would be so many of us kids, and yet my mom would use two cans of tuna, and it was as if it never ran out. I was always amazed at watching my mom cook when I was younger. I mean, imagine how much bread you must have to have to make enough French toast for 11 kids. I feel like we are always out of bread here, and I have three. Yet God always provided. We never went without food, even though my parents had little money. God definitely provided for my family.
Another example was given at the Life in the Spirit seminar. Our sister Caroline was at a Conference where the worship leader had a screen she used to show the words to the songs. They were outside, and some people in the back said they could not see the screen. The worship leader said, “That’s ok, I’ll pray.” She said, “Heavenly Father, you have appointed me as worship leader here, and as your appointed worship leader, I am asking you to rearrange the clouds, move the sun, or do something so people can see. Thank you, and amen.” Caroline was amazed. She was wondering what was going on. She asked the Lord to rearrange the sky. And then the Lord did, and all could see! God is so good!
One last one that I might have told you about before but is so good it bears repeating. My dad was on his way home from work, and our car died. There was no saving it. My dad didn’t know how to tell my mom because if he didn’t have a way to work, then he couldn’t make money, and without money, no bills get paid. He always gets home at dinner time, so he figured he would tell her when the kids left the table after dinner. During dinner, there was a knock on the door. When my dad opened the door, it was a neighbor. My dad and this particular neighbor had exchanged words before and they weren’t exactly friends.
This is another reason why what happened next was such a miracle. The man handed my dad a set of car keys. My dad was so confused. He asked the man what this was for, and he said, you need a car. My dad said, yes, but how do you know I needed a car? I just got home, I didn’t tell anyone yet. The neighbor said he felt he was supposed to come over to the house and give my dad the car keys. His wife doesn’t need a car, so they don’t need two. The vehicle is a gift to my parents. If my dad got another car and wanted to return that one, he could, but they were not expecting it back. It wasn’t a loan. They were giving the car to them free and clear. My dad didn’t know what to say. God is so good. He ALWAYS provides.
Where has God been providing in your life? What have you been attributing to good fortune that has really been the work of the Good Lord above?
The Lord Rewards Those Who Seek Him
Hebrews 11:6 “And without faith living within us it would be impossible to please God. For we come to God in faith, knowing that he is real and that he rewards the faith of those who passionately seek him.”
I heard this verse last night, and the Holy Spirit said, that is the one you will use tomorrow for your podcast. I love it when that happens because I know He has something He wants to tell you. The part that stood out to me last night is “He rewards the faith of those who passionately seek him.” This made me think, “Am I passionately seeking the Lord?” That is a good question and one that makes me think. I love the Lord, and I love to spend time with Him. Is that passionately seeking Him? I don’t think so. I think about what I do when I am seeking something. What do you do if you are seeking your keys and don’t know where they are? You search everywhere. You turn things over, look behind something, look through things, and look anywhere and everywhere you think of. Are we doing this in our pursuit of the Lord?
My teacher, Malinda, told us, “If we seek His vision for us, we will see it.” Have you ever stopped to ask the Lord what His vision is for your life? I mean, He made us, and He knows everything there is to know about us. Wouldn’t we want to know His vision for our lives? Wouldn’t it be the best vision as He can see the whole picture and honestly say He knows what is best for us? I ask the Lord what He wants me to do, but I never thought to ask what His vision for my life is. I definitely want to spend some time later today with that question.
The next question Malinda asked us was another great question. She asked, “Do I seek Jesus’ will for my life daily?” Wow, good question. I am not sure I do anything daily. Consistency is not one of my strong suits yet. However, God and I are working on it, and if I seek Him, He will reward me. Malinda told us we could set reminders on our phones. There are so many ways our phones can be distractions to us, yet there are also many ways they can help us grow spiritually. I often set alarms on my phone, then label them with whatever I am supposed to do when it goes off. Did you know you could label your alarms? My 6:30 alarm says, “Wake up, Noah.” My 7:30 alarm says, “Wake up, Ryan,” and my 7:45 alarm says, “Ryan’s bus.”
My early morning alarm used to say, “Spend time with the Lord.” This would remind me when I got up that if I hit snooze, I would delay my time with the Lord. He would be there waiting, but I would not show up. This was pretty effective in helping to stop hitting snooze. I should probably start doing that again. I would also have daily alarms reminding me to do certain things. If we want to set a reminder or an alarm on our phone, we can label it, “Seek Jesus’ will for my life today.” This could be a gentle reminder that we should seek His will for our lives. Malinda used a quote last night, and although I don’t remember who said it, I do remember it. “Don’t ask Jesus to bless what you want to do. Seek to bless what He is already doing.” That is a thought shift for us. Look around and see what Jesus is already doing in our lives. Are we cooperating with what He is doing in our lives, or are we making it harder for Him to work in our lives?
Now that we know how important it is to seek the Lord and that if we seek Him, He will reward us, you might ask yourself, “How do I seek the Lord?” This is a fair question, as we all want to ensure we do what God wants us to do. There are several ways you can seek the Lord. The first one would be to spend time with Him. Spend a certain amount of time with him every single day. I really like it first thing in the morning, but that might not work into your schedule. Whatever works best for you. Also, it doesn’t have to be a long time that you spend. Malinda talked about short conversations with the Lord all throughout the day. She said, “What a gift it would be to have His name be the first word on your lips.” Imagine if you were talking to Him so often throughout the day that His name was never far from your lips. By short conversations, they could be as short as “Good Morning, Lord” or "Let’s have lunch together, Lord.”
Another way to seek the Lord is to be in His Word. Read scripture, meditate on scripture, and seek to understand scripture. The more time we spend with scripture, the more time we spend with Jesus. Jesus is the Word of God. We can learn so much about God when we read His Word. We will find Him in every word that is written. When you get familiar with the scriptures, you are familiar with the Lord. If you are seeking someone, a great thing to do is get to know them.
Another way to seek the Lord is to praise and worship Him. Have you ever just lost yourself in praising the Lord? If not, I recommend finding some great praise music and playing it loudly. If you know the words, I recommend singing as loud as you want to. I recommend dancing or moving around to the music if you don't know the words. Let the words and the melody carry you. Let the Holy Spirit lead, and you follow. This is a great way to seek the Lord because He constantly shows up when we praise and worship Him. God is so good!
As you can see, there isn’t one right way to seek the Lord. Do what feels best for you. The Lord doesn’t care how we seek Him. He only cares that we seek Him. The Lord will reward those who passionately seek Him. Don’t you want to be among those who are rewarded? I know I do!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to seek you. Please help us! Show us how to seek you. Put on our hearts your desire for our life, Lord. Help us to desire what you desire. Help us to bless what you are already doing in our lives. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk Boldly with Jesus. Remember, my coaching group starts up one week from today! You won’t want to miss the first week. You can sign up at walkboldlywithjesus.com or click the link in the show notes. I can’t wait to grow closer to the Lord with you!
I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Am I Falling Asleep Too?
Acts 20:9 “And a young man named Eu′tychus was sitting in the window. He sank into a deep sleep as Paul talked still longer, and being overcome by sleep, he fell down from the third story and was taken up dead.”
I heard a sermon on the Elevation Podcast the other day. This sermon was called I Didn’t Know I Fell Asleep and was preached by a visiting pastor named Robert Madu. He is the pastor of a church in Texas, and he was outstanding. He read a short passage and got so much out of it. Let me read the whole passage so you have some context for the passage I selected above.
Acts 20:7-12 “On the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul talked with them, intending to depart on the morrow; and he prolonged his speech until midnight. There were many lights in the upper chamber where we were gathered. And a young man named Eu′tychus was sitting in the window. He sank into a deep sleep as Paul talked still longer; and being overcome by sleep, he fell down from the third story and was taken up dead. But Paul went down and bent over him and, embracing him, said, “Do not be alarmed, for his life is in him.” And when Paul had gone up and had broken bread and eaten, he conversed with them a long while, until daybreak, and so departed. And they took the lad away alive and were not a little comforted.”
After hearing that story, I wonder if you have the same question. Why would he sit in an open window? If you have time, I highly recommend you go back and listen to the whole episode on the Elevation podcast. CLICK HERE for the episode. Pastor Madu made many good points; I couldn’t relay them all to you in the next 10 minutes.
I want to focus on the one that hit me the hardest. Pastor Madu said, “Maybe he didn’t know he was falling asleep.” As soon as he said that, I knew where he was going with this because it can be so easy for us to slowly fall asleep regarding our faith. We get busy and don’t realize it has been weeks since we have been to church. We plan to get up and devote the first 10 minutes to God each morning, and then we hit snooze a few times, and we don’t have time to spend with God now, or we will be late for work, school, or whatever we have planned for the day. We want to read the Bible and be in God’s word, yet all these other things keep coming up, and we don’t have the time.
It is so easy to fall asleep. I am not talking about literally falling asleep, although I am sure we have all done that, too. I am sure we have all fallen asleep or nodded off during mass, church service, or at least during our prayers. We are tired, and we are busy, and we do so much. We must be careful when it comes to becoming sleepy and falling asleep in our spiritual life.
Did you know that if you put a frog in boiling water, he will jump right out? He does not want to be boiled alive. He has self-preservation skills. However, if you put a frog in cold water and put that pan over a flame, and it slowly gets hotter and hotter, the frog will not jump out. It gets accustomed to the water and does not know it is in trouble until it is too late. The same can be true with us and our faith. We can grow tired on our spiritual journey, and yet it happens so slowly with one decision and then another and then another that we don’t know we are in trouble until it is too late.
Are we slowly boiling ourselves? Are we making bad decisions after bad decisions without even realizing it? Let’s take a moment to do an inventory. Have we fallen asleep in our faith life? When was the last time we spent one-on-one time with the Lord, just me and Him? When was the last time I was in His scripture, and I don’t mean mass on Sunday? Yes, mass is essential, yet that shouldn’t be your only encounter with God’s word each week. When did I last ask the Lord what He thought I should do? When was the last time I sat in the classroom of silence, as Matthew Kelly calls it, and just listened to what the Lord wanted to say to me?
All of these things are essential parts of our spiritual journey. All of these things help us grow closer to the Lord. Every time I look back at my prayer journal, I am amazed at how long it has been since my last journal entry. I love writing in my prayer journal because I usually ask the Lord to write back to me through my pen. I love spending that time with the Lord, yet I allow life to get in the way of spending time with Him. I have signed up for a Bible study to help ensure I am in His Word daily, and I love attending it. Yet, I haven’t done any reading for the study because I am doing other things. I am not even sure what else I am doing. I know I do have a lot going on, and yet I find time to spend on FaceBook or playing a game on my phone.
It’s crazy how easy it is to distract ourselves from the Lord and our relationship with Him. Our relationship with the Lord is similar to that with friends and family. It can be so easy to fall asleep in those relationships as well. What happens if you get so busy you no longer have time to talk with your spouse, kids, or friends? What happens if you get so busy that you no longer have time to listen to them? What if you don’t have time to hang out with them and spend time with them? If you do not put time into your relationships, they fall apart.
Luckily, our God is forgiving and patient and waits for us to return to Him. However, what if we run out of time? The Bible is full of parables that tell us not to fall asleep because we don’t know when our time is coming, when the bridegroom will be coming, and when the master of the house will be coming. We must stay away, we must stay alert, and we must always keep growing. Take a few minutes this morning and see if you might be falling asleep. If so, what can you do about it? I know for me, I am going to try hard to stop hitting snooze and keep my dates with the Lord in the morning. Maybe even move them from my office to the church down the street. It is open 24/7, and the last time I was in the church with just me and Jesus, it was a fantastic feeling. If you have a church near you that is unlocked throughout the day, try it. I think you will be surprised how much closer you feel to the Lord when chatting with Him in a church.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, you are amazing and we would never want to fall asleep in our relationship with you. Yet, we sometimes do. We let life get in the way gradually and then begin to forget to do all the essential things, like spend time with you, listen to you, and be in your Word. We ask that you wake us up gently, Lord. Show us where we are falling asleep and how we can change it. We want to be all in with our relationship with you. We want to be fully awake. Teach us how, Lord! We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus! I want to take a quick minute to talk with you about how you could join me in a deeper, more personal way on this journey. I will be starting a Walk Boldly with Jesus group coaching program. I will teach on a topic on Tuesday nights at 8 p.m. EST on a Zoom call. The teaching will be about 30 minutes, and then we will have 30 minutes or so of small group discussions. This small group discussion time will be as valuable as the teaching time. This will give everyone a chance to process what was just taught and then figure out how you can apply it to your life over the next week.
The best part is that you will meet with those same people next week, so you can check back in with each other and see how the week went. We will all grow so much quicker if we do not just hear the teaching but apply it immediately in our lives. If you can not make Tuesdays at 8 PM EST, I’ve got you covered too! I will record the teachings so you can watch them when you have time. You won’t have the small group live discussions, but there will be a members-only Facebook group where you can discuss how you will apply it to your lives and check back in to see how it is going. Also, if a few people cannot make it but want to form a small group discussion at another time, I can set up a Zoom call for you to do at a convenient time for those who want to do that. If you have any questions, please let me know. This new coaching program will start in November. However, you can join at any point. If you know a fellow Christian who would like to grow in their relationship with the Lord and have a community alongside them on that journey, please pass along this information. All the info can be found at walkboldlywithjesus.com. Thank you!
I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Check out WalkboldlywithJesus.com to find all the details on my new coaching group. Here is a brief description.
Have you ever desired a more personal relationship with the Lord? Have you ever been around people who seem so in love with the Lord and longed for that same relationship? Have you ever wished you knew more about praying, worshiping, praising, and so much more? Why is it that if we want to get better at something, like gardening, painting, or singing, we will seek professional help? However, we rarely do this when it comes to our faith. Yet, this could be the most critical area for improvement. In this coaching program, I will host a weekly group coaching session, and you can attend live or watch the recording.
My teachings will be for about 30 minutes. I will have a brief question and answer session, and then we will break into small groups where you can talk about what you just learned and how you will apply it to your life in the upcoming week. This is an excellent opportunity to create peer partnerships, which will help to create an environment of encouragement and motivation. You can help each stay on track and ensure you aren't just learning these things without applying them to your life. Trust me. It is much easier to grow in your faith when you have a community of people on the journey with you. I will also have a Facebook group where you can post your progress, struggles, questions, and any questions. I honestly believe I am where I am today because I have had a community surrounding me the whole way. So many of us feel alone, and when you join a community like this, you find out you are not alone!
God Intended It For Good
Romans 50:20 “Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people, as he is doing today.”
I love this verse. I love Joseph. He persevered through so much stuff in his life. He was one of 12 boys in his family. Joseph was loved by his father more than the others because his mother was the woman he had first fallen in love with. His father had given Joseph this nice, colorful coat. Joseph was assigned to go with his brothers one day and tend the sheep. His brothers were tired and envied his favorite child status and the fact that David could interpret dreams, and they decided they wanted to kill him. One of the brothers convinced them to throw him in a ditch instead. Then they see a band of traveling slave traders and decide they might as well make some money, so they sold Joseph to the slave traders.
Joseph is bought by Potiphar, the pharaoh's superintendent of prisons. Potiphar's wife Henet is strongly attracted to Joseph and tries to seduce him. When he refuses, she falsely accuses him of attempting to rape her, and Joseph is imprisoned. Joseph is imprisoned with the Pharaoh's butler and baker, who have fallen out of favor. Dreams have plagued the two, which Joseph interprets correctly. When the Pharaoh has a dream he cannot decipher, his newly reinstated butler suggests he consult Joseph. Joseph interprets the dream to mean that Egypt will enjoy seven years of prosperity, followed by seven years of famine. Joseph suggests setting aside grain from the seven prosperous years in preparation for the famine. Pharaoh accepts the suggestion and appoints Joseph to take charge of the task.
Over the next several years, Joseph's power continued to grow. He marries a woman named Asenath and fends off an attack from the King of Syria. When the famine began, Egypt stored enough grain for itself and some to sell to neighboring nations. When Joseph's family back in Canaan travels to Egypt to buy grain, his brothers fail to recognize him, and Joseph shrewdly uses this to his advantage. He holds his brother Simeon (son of Jacob) hostage and orders the others to bring Jacob and Benjamin. Joseph reveals his identity and forgives his brothers.
That is pretty much the story in a nutshell. If you want to read the whole story, you can find it in Genesis 37-50. Do you see what I mean about having some tough things go on in his life? He was trying to do the right thing by not sleeping with Potiphar’s wife. He liked Potiphar. He treated him well. He also knew God wouldn’t like it. And yet He was thrown in jail for 13 years. Can you imagine being in jail for 13 years for something you didn’t do? Maybe you can. Do you feel like you are paying back time for something you didn’t do in your life? I used to feel that way when my boys were super hard. I used to think it wasn’t fair because I was a reasonably easy kid when I was younger, so why was I having such difficult kids?
Jacob had every reason to be bitter. He had every reason to be angry and resentful, yet he wasn’t. Jacob had been away from his family for 22 years before his brothers showed up on his doorstep looking to buy grain. Twenty-two years is a long time to go without seeing your family. Twenty-two years is enough to sit with resentment and anger and let it stew. However, this is not what Joseph did. Joseph used his position and his power to help his family. He not only gave them grain for free, but he also gave them a place to come and live.
Joseph’s brothers feared him as they knew what they did was terrible. Yet, David wasn’t angry with them. He forgave them and said the verse above, “Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people, as he is doing today.” This is incredible. Joseph forgave them and realized that the people of Egypt might not have been saved if he hadn’t been there to interpret Pharoh’s dream. He understands that although his brothers wanted to ruin his life, they wanted him dead. God wanted to use him and his situation for good.
Do you know that God wants to do this in your life too? Do you know God can do this in your life too? I know it feels like you have been in this hard situation for a long time. I know it might even feel as though God has abandoned you. I assure you, he hasn’t! He is there with you in whatever it is you are going through. God did not abandon Joseph; He used him for incredible things. Joseph was in that jail cell so he could interpret the dreams of the Pharaoh’s butler so that the butler could then recommend Joseph to the Pharaoh so that Joseph could save the nation.
I wonder if our suffering would be easier if we knew the result. For instance, would it have been easier for Joseph to sit in jail day after day if he knew after 13 years, he would be the second most important person in Egypt? It would have made it easier to parent my boys when they were younger if I had known that the Lord would work all that for our good. I know that life was much less stressful once I truly learned to accept this. Once I surrendered to the fact that God is in control and can take all the crappy things in our lives and use them for good, I relaxed and let a lot of stuff wash right over me.
When my son was in rehab, I wasn’t worried, and I was able to be there for him because I knew God could work even for his good. I don’t know how he is working that for his good, but I know he has a fantastic future and will be brighter because he has that in his past. Actually, I do know at least one way God used that experience for his good. My son used to think we were the worst parents, like most teens. However, in rehab, he was with people who don’t have parents or have parents but not ones who visit. He was with kids who used drugs with their parents. He was with kids who lived on the streets. Being in rehab gave him a greater appreciation for all that he has.
I am sorry that life is so hard right now. I am sorry you have been in this rough situation for a long time with no end in sight. I am so sorry that you feel alone and maybe even abandoned. I want you to hear me when I say God is there with you. Turn to Him. Ask him for the strength to keep walking forward until things turn around. Ask Him to give you a glimpse into the good that is to come. Ask Him to fill you with love and hope for a future full of amazing things. I love you, and I know God does too! Keep moving forward one small step at a time, and remember, God can use all things for your good.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, you are incredible, and we are so grateful! We ask you, Lord, to help us to keep walking forward when all seems lost. Help us stay in the fight long enough to see how you will use all this for our good. Fill us with strength, hope, and peace during tough times. Lord, I know some things people are going through are really hard and have been going on for a long time. Please comfort them in a special way today. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I want to remind you all that I have the details for my new group coaching program on my website. You can find that by going to walkboldlywithjesus.com. It will be live coaching on Tuesday nights at 8 PM EST on Zoom. I will teach on a topic, and then we will have small group sharing time. The cost is $30 a month. I will also send out recordings if you miss the coaching session. I will also have a members-only Facebook group where we can all be a part of a community of people all striving for holiness. I look forward to seeing you tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today, I am going to recount to you several appearances of the Blessed Mother Mary. It’s interesting because I first decided to do this when I heard about a shocking rosary miracle in Ukraine that happened about a year ago. I researched some other amazing things yesterday, and then today, when I was about to start recording, I found an article that discusses previous Marian apparitions in Ukraine. It appears our blessed Mother has visited them a few times over the years. So, today I will read the article from Desmond Miller,(CLICK HERE for first article) and then I will read the information from CNA on Facebook about the recent miracle Mary provided some people in Ukraine. (CLICK HERE for second article) My hope in sharing this with you is so that you can see how important the rosary can be and also so that you can see miracles are still going on today.
Ukraine as a country has suffered very much and yet has been blessed by apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Kievan Rus – the land of Rus (862-1242 CE), a federation of peoples located in the region of modern-day Belarus, Ukraine, and part of Russia, was the first European state to be dedicated to the Mother of God. This was done by Prince Yaroslav the Wise in 1037.
It is believed that in about 1505, the Blessed Virgin appeared in Hrushiv and that the local people had planted a willow tree at the site. Sometime later, a spring of water appeared beneath the tree.
During a severe cholera epidemic in that area in 1855, a local person dreamed that the Virgin had instructed the residents to clear and reclaim the ancient spring and celebrate Mass. This was done, and not one cholera death was reported thereafter.
The first apparition in modern times occurred two weeks before World War I, on May 12, 1914, in the village of Hrushiv. Twenty-two people, who were mowing fields near the local church of the Holy Trinity, all witnessed an apparition of the Virgin Mary. She said to them,
“There will be a war. Russia will become a godless country. Ukraine, as a nation, will suffer terribly for eighty years – and will have to live through the world wars, but it will be free afterward.”
People gathered from the whole area to see the apparition, which lasted into the next day.
Then, on April 26, 1987, seventy-three years later and exactly one year after the Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster, a bright light covered the church of the Holy Trinity and the surrounding area. From within this, the Virgin Mary appeared and floated above the cupola of the church. Marina Kizyn, a twelve-year-old girl, was the first to see this apparition. She immediately called her mother and some neighbors; all came and witnessed the apparition. Soon, hundreds and then thousands came from all over Russia to see the apparition, which continued daily until August 15, 1987. It is estimated that a total of 500,000 people had seen her by the time these apparitions ended. The Virgin Mary was even seen by the KGB agents! Many priests (from underground Catholic churches) came and provided as many as ten Holy Masses each day in front of the church. Many messages were documented:
“I have come on purpose to thank the Ukrainian people because you have suffered most for the church of Christ in the last 70 years. I have come to comfort you and to tell you that your suffering will soon come to an end. Ukraine will become an independent state.”
“Teach the children to pray. Teach them to live in truth and live yourselves in truth. Say the Rosary. It is the weapon against Satan. He fears the Rosary. Recite the Rosary at any gathering of people.”
“I have come to comfort you and to tell you that your suffering will end soon. I shall protect you for the glory and the future of God’s kingdom on earth, which will last for a thousand years. The Kingdom of Heaven and Earth is close at hand. It will come only through penance and the repentance of sins.”
“The Eternal God is calling you. This is why I have been sent to you. You in the Ukraine were the first [European] nation to be entrusted to me. Throughout your long persecution you have not lost faith, hope, or love. I always pray for you, my dear children, wherever you are.”
“Oppression and wars continue to occupy the minds and hearts of many people. Russia, despite everything, continues to deny my Son. Russia rejects real life and continues to live in darkness. If there is not a return to Christianity in Russia, there will be a Third World War; the whole world will face ruin.”
Ukraine had its declaration of independence ratified in Kiev on August 24, 1991 – some 77 years after Blessed Mary’s prediction in 1914!
Now we are witnessing the Russian invasion of the Ukraine beginning on 24 Feb. 2022 with yet more suffering and the potential for the start of a third world war.
I believe that God allows this to happen as a form of chastisement, a purification, a call to turn again to God. We are to repent, to praise and thank Him in every situation.
LATEST SHOCKING ROSARY MIRACLE IN UKRAINE
BLESSED VIRGIN MARY MANIFESTED HER GREAT POWER IN UKRAINE | RUSSIA WAR
"For 18 Days, 45 of us trapped Underground By Russian Missile Strikes came out safe through a Diamond Lady that Kept Us Alive and Nourished Us."
Beloved Souls and great Lovers of the Most Holy Rosary of our Lady, I wish to bring this edifying Rosary MIRACLE to strengthen your faith and love towards It.
As the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, remains under bombardment with missile strikes and rockets crashing into a residential building, Cathedrals, Churches, etc.
The Ukrainian aid workers rescued 45 civilians, mostly women, children, and the aged. We were trapped in the debris of about 2,000 feet underground for 18 days!
The rescue of these people who had been feared dead has been described as, I personally believe is an inspiring miracle of the Consecration of Ukraine to the Immaculate Heart of Our Lady, the Blessed Virgin Mary, Queen of Ukraine, Our Lady of Ransom, Our Lady of Good Remedy, Queen of the Holy Rosary.
HERE IS THE TESTIMONY
OF THE RESCUED PERSONS.
"As we were underground, it was dark and suffocating. Somehow, I accidentally touched my pockets and remembered my Rosary was in it. The moment I pulled it out and recited the first Hail Mary, a woman as shining like a diamond appeared. The moment She appeared, the entire under-earth was filled with light and oxygen. The moment she left, we all felt nourished, well-fed, and our thirst for water quenched. Each time we said our Angelus and Rosary, The Diamond woman would appear to bless us, supply us, leave us with Magnificent Light and Oxygen that accompanies Her Majestic presence."
It was so glorious for the victims that when the Ukrainian aid workers, with the use of the latest technology - unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), discovered that human beings were trapped there, and action was taken to rescue them. At the point of the rescue, most of the victims were reluctant to come out. In fact, one of them said,
"I can never come out from here, so I don't miss the company of the Diamond Lady. She is so kind."
It took the Miraculous appearance of our Lady to get her out of the rubbles, who now assured the young girl that She, the Queen of the Holy Rosary, would always be with all of them. *
Our Lady then advised them to tell the world that She is the Queen of Peace and can bring Peace to our troubled world if enough of us can pick up our Rosaries and pray to God. For the Rosary is the only weapon through which God has promised to bring peace and save the world.”
VICTORIOUS WE OF HEAVEN, SHOW US THY POWER.
As you can see, Mary has a special place in her heart for the people of Ukraine. It is incredible how she not only appeared to provide comfort in the latest miracle but also provided light, oxygen, and nourishment. In all or at least most of her apparitions, she is appealing to us to say the rosary. It must be important or she wouldn’t keep saying it. It only takes 20-30 minutes a day and you can say it anywhere. I like to say it when I am driving in the car. There are apps you can download as well so you don’t have to feel as though you are saying it alone. Also, they are helpful if you aren’t sure how to say it or you don’t know all the words to all the prayers. If you truly don’t have 20-30 minutes a day, or if that commitment seems too overwhelming for you, try just one decade a day. That only takes five minutes or so and by the end of 5 days you will have completed a whole rosary. Think about it, pray, and see where the rosary fits into your life.
Do Our Prayers Even Matter?
Ezekiel 22:30 “And I sought for anyone among them who would repair the wall and stand in the breach before me on behalf of the land, so that I would not destroy it; but I found no one.”
We spent last night in class talking about prophetic intercession. I have discussed intercessory prayer before on various episodes as I think it is essential. Here, we have the Lord telling us the same thing. Intercessory prayer is when you pray on behalf of someone else. For instance my family was interceding for my dad last week as he was in the hospital for a bit. Whenever anyone asks you to pray for someone, you are interceding on their behalf. Catholics do this same thing when we ask the Saints to pray for us. We are not asking them for a miracle. We ask them to intercede for us just as we would our family and friends.
General intercession is when someone asks you to pray for someone, and you do. The way they described it in class is that we are interceding from earth to heaven. Someone on earth asks us to pray for them or a loved one, and we send our prayers to heaven for them. Last night, we learned about prophetic intercession, which sounds fancy, and yet I bet we have all experienced it to some degree at one time or another. Prophetic intercession is praying from heaven to earth. Have you ever felt like you were supposed to pray for someone out of the blue? That would be prophetic intercession. God will sometimes put on our hearts something or someone to pray for, and then we must follow through with that prayer.
Sometimes, we will find out later why we were asked to pray. For instance, God urged my teacher to pray the rosary for his wife’s cousin. It was precisely 7 PM when he felt this placed on his heart. He started the rosary right away. The next day, his wife called him at work to let him know her cousin had died. She was in an accident at 7 the night before. When we get these feelings to pray, it is essential to obey. Our teacher told us about another time when he heard a fellow deacon was sick. He had not met this man before because he was away when the man came to talk to his diaconate class. He happened to be by his house and thought he would stop by, meet, and pray with him. On the way to the man’s house, he felt called to do the divine mercy chaplet. He completed the chaplet just as he arrived at the man’s house. He went and knocked on the door and found out the man had just passed away one minute before he knocked.
This is what is stated in St. Faustina’s Diary about saying the Divine Mercy Chaplet for someone who is dying: “At the hour of their death, I defend as My own glory every soul that will say this chaplet; or when others say it for a dying person, the pardon is the same. When this chaplet is said by the bedside of a dying person, God’s anger is placated, unfathomable mercy envelops the soul, and the very depths of My tender mercy are moved for the sake of the sorrowful Passion of My Son. (811) My teacher had no idea this man was close to death. He just knew he was sick. God knew, though, and God used my teacher to pray this important prayer. God may be using you too!
Another time, God urged my teacher to do a Jericho walk around the flag pole. This is when you walk around the flag seven times, silently praying, and after the seventh time, you pray and praise the Lord out loud. The burdens of the nation were put on his heart, and this is how the Lord wanted Him to pray for them. Our teacher had so many examples; I believe that is because He always tries to listen to the Lord and then act when he hears something.
I was so excited to share this with you this morning because it reinforces that we are not helpless. This world is crazy right now, and with the news as it is, we can often get overwhelmed by all that is happening. We often feel helpless as it seems like the problems are more significant than any one person, which is true. They are more significant than any one person. They are not bigger than God, though. Knowing that our prayers can make a difference is important.
Another excellent example of the importance of our prayers is what I talked about in the witness Wednesday last week. There was a man who saw a woman being put in an ambulance and knew he couldn’t really help her as he was not a doctor. So, as he ran by her house, he said one hail Mary for her recovery. Jesus appeared to this woman in the hospital and told her that she was dying and that this man’s prayer saved her. He held up his palm, and the face of the man running by was on Jesus’ hand. He said one Hail Mary prayer. One Hail Mary that only takes a few seconds to say.
We often say, “All I can do is pray,” as if we are out of options. Prayer is the best and most powerful thing we can do. Prophetic intercession is even more powerful because we are listening to what God wants us to do and then doing it. If you ever feel God is putting a person or a cause on your heart, take a minute and ask the Lord how He would like you to pray for that person—the how could make all the difference. Saint Faustina Kowalska was a nun in Poland. She received a vision that an angel was sent by God to chastise a certain city. She immediately began to pray for mercy, but no matter how much she prayed for mercy, she could not save the city. Then, she saw the Holy Trinity and felt the power of Jesus’ grace within her. At the same time, she found herself praying words that she heard internally, “Eternal Father, I offer You the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Your dearly beloved Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ, in atonement for our sins and those of the whole world; for the sake of His sorrowful Passion, have mercy on us.” (Saint Faustina’s Diary, 475) As she continued saying this inspired prayer, the angel became helpless and could not carry out the deserved punishment (see 474)
This example from St. Faustina is why this verse is so important. The verse above says, “And I sought for anyone among them who would repair the wall and stand in the breach before me on behalf of the land, so that I would not destroy it; but I found no one.” Is God calling you to stand in the breach? Is He calling you to help repair the wall? Instead of worrying about all that is going on in the world, we can pray about all that is going on. We often think our prayers aren’t doing much. We are just one person. St. Faustina is just one person, yet her prayers prevented the angel from chastising a city. If the prayers from one person are that powerful, imagine how powerful the prayers of millions of people would be. Pray, Pray, Pray. Pray for our loved ones and friends. Pray for all nations, church leaders, and leaders everywhere. If you feel the prompting to pray for someone out of the blue, take a minute and press in. Ask the Lord how He wants you to pray for that person. The prayer they taught us last night in class is: “God let me think like you think and feel what you feel.” If you can feel what He feels and think what He thinks, your prayers will be better because you will understand what you are praying for more.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each and every person listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to stand in that breach. Please let us help you. Use us, Lord. Show us how to listen to your voice. Show us how to obey when you call us. Give us the grace and the strength we need to follow your call. Open our ears to hear your call and open our hearts to interceding for others. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I have updated my website, walkboldlywithjesus.com, with the information about my new upcoming coaching program. I am very excited to offer this group coaching opportunity as I know one-on-one coaching is not for everyone. Yet we can all use some help along our spiritual journey. Also, I am excited to see friendships develop as they have in my mentoring group. There is something so special about having others alongside you on your faith journey. I really feel the small group discussions are going to be very fruitful. Time talking with other Christian women is always a great time. The coaching sessions will be Tuesday nights on Zoom at 8 PM EST.
I look forward to meeting you all here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Jesus In My Presence
Song of Songs 8:1 "If only I could show everyone this passionate desire I have for you. If only I could express it fully, no matter who was watching me, without shame or embarrassment.”
This is another verse from the Passion Translation of Song of Songs. As I read and re-read this translation, I notice how I am beginning to see Jesus differently. I was reading our required reading book for this quarter last night.“Personal Prayer: A Guide for Receiving the Father’s Love.” The authors of this book were talking about how to relate to God, and they said, “The key is that we need to be sure we do not let God be or remain abstract when we pray. Sometimes, we mistakenly think of Him as far away, off in the heavens somewhere. This seemed to hit home with me and really made me think.
When I think about it, I can tell the difference in my prayers when I think of God as sitting right there with me and praying to my Father in heaven. When I go to Eucharistic Adoration, I sometimes picture Jesus sitting on the altar. Not the Eucharist form of Jesus, but the actual man, Jesus. My prayers differ when picturing Jesus in my presence or even feeling the Lord in my presence. They are more personal. They are more intimate. The book says later in the chapter, “If we treat Him like a stranger, He will remain a stranger to us. If we only share ourselves with Him at a superficial level, the relationship will remain superficial. If we only spend time with Him sporadically, the relationship will remain at the level of acquaintances. If we bring our whole lives to Him and share our fears, our hopes, our wounds, our failures, and our love, then we will see that the relationship opens up more and, because He is God, becomes infinitely deep.”
The author is not saying anything complex here, but I needed to hear it. It’s like it is common sense, and yet, it was something I had never thought of before. Who wouldn’t want a deep relationship with the Lord? Why would anyone choose to keep it superficial or the Lord as a stranger? I am going to guess that most people aren’t consciously choosing to stay distant from the Lord. I don’t think they are thinking in their mind, “I think I will keep my distance.” Although now that I write that, I could see how some people might be saying that. If they have been hurt in the past, they might be reluctant to let anyone in, even the Lord. Others don’t realize they are keeping the Lord at a distance. The author says, “In fact, there is no limit to how deep our relationship can be with Him; it is limited only by our own willingness to trust Him and be vulnerable with Him.
Our willingness to trust the Lord and be vulnerable with Him can vary significantly from person to person and depend on our past experiences. If we have been hurt and let down repeatedly, we may find it very hard to trust the Lord and be vulnerable with Him. If we lose a loved one, we might be so angry we don’t know how to trust Him again. We can work on our openness to the Lord, yet many of us don’t know there is a block there. We don’t know that there is more love to be had. We don’t know anything other than our relationship with the Lord, the one we already have.
As a teenager, I longed for more with the Lord. I didn’t know it at the time. The Lord just reminded me of it now. When I was going through confirmation prep, and they asked why I wanted to make my confirmation, I said because I wanted more. I wanted to be as much a part of the church as possible. The Holy Spirit is putting on my heart now that what I really wanted was more God. I wanted to know Him more intimately, yet I didn’t know it then. I wonder how different my life would be if I had started to read scripture back then if I had been journaling and talking to the Lord. I wonder how different it would have been if I knew God was right there with me. Not just in an abstract way but right there next to me. He was so close I could sit and talk with Him. I wish I had known back then that I could ask Him questions, and if I sat and listened, He would answer them. I am grateful I know this now, and I pray you know it, too!
Yes, I know I have not talked about my chosen verse. I know someone needed to hear all that because it was firmly on my heart. The verse above says, "If only I could show everyone this passionate desire I have for you. If only I could express it fully, no matter who was watching me, without shame or embarrassment.” This verse goes along with all that I said above because if we want to have a passionate desire for the Lord, we need to spend time with Him. We need to remember that He is not distant. He is right next to us at all times. I like this verse so much for two reasons. The first I talked about the other day. I wish I could tell the world about my love for the Lord. I wish I could tell every single person on the planet about God’s love and how much He loves them. I honestly would shout it from the rooftops if I could.
This brings me to the second reason I like this verse so much: It says, “If only I could express it fully, no matter who was watching me, without shame or embarrassment.” This is definitely one of my top 5 wishes of all time. I wish I weren’t hindered by what others might think of me or my fear of rejection. I wish when I felt prompted by the Holy Spirit, I could act and not hesitate, not chicken out. I wish I could worship like David did. I wish I could get up and dance like no one was watching. I am getting better at this and will keep practicing and trying. I am grateful to my Encounter Ministries group because they encourage us to get up and express ourselves freely while worshiping, and there is no judgment.
It is not just while worshiping, though. I know I missed many opportunities to pray for people because I was afraid to ask them. Honestly, I don't know what I am afraid of. What is the worst that can happen? I know in my head the worst that can happen is that they say no, which is not the end of the world. Yet, for me, I get in my head. What if they say no? Then I will cry and feel dumb for crying, so I will cry more. Okay, even if this were all true, which has happened before, so what? So what if I cry and they think I am dumb? The alternative is that I don’t ask someone if they need prayer, and what if they really need prayer? What if they were going to say yes? Our teacher told us once that if the Holy Spirit is prompting you to pray for someone or to say something to someone, He has already prepared their heart for it.
I miss out on many opportunities to share my love of the Lord with others due to fear. This is why this podcast is called Walk Boldly with Jesus. That is my mission and my goal. I want to walk boldly with Jesus. I want to be able to talk about Him to anyone I meet. I want to worship Him in any way I want to. I want to ask everyone I meet if they need prayer. I want to do all of this without fear, even if it is not possible, despite fear. I want to shout from the rooftops all around the world that the Lord is Love and that He loves us so much. I want everyone to know that God loves them just as they are. They don’t have to change anything for God to love and accept them.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to have a deep relationship with you. Please help us to realize you are not some distant God in some faraway place. You are our Father, right next to us each step of the way. Help us understand we can talk with you and that you will talk back to us if we give You time and if we listen. Lord, help us think about what was said in that book. Help us to realize the ways we might be keeping you as a stranger or ways we might be keeping our relationship with you superficial. Lord, help us to open up; help us to be vulnerable. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. As promised, I have details of my new group coaching program that starts in November. Here is the description from my website. Have you ever desired a more personal relationship with the Lord? How great would it be to incorporate your spirituality into your daily routines? Have you ever been around people who seem so in love with the Lord and longed for that same relationship? Have you ever wished you knew more about praying, worshiping, praising, and so much more? Why is it that if we want to get better at something, like gardening, painting, or singing, we will seek professional help? However, we rarely do this when it comes to our faith. Yet, this could be the most critical area for improvement. The coaching sessions will be on Tuesday nights at 8 PM EST. My teachings will be for about 20-30 minutes. I will have a brief question and answer session, and then we will break into small groups where you can talk about what you just learned and how you will apply it to your life in the upcoming week. This is an excellent opportunity to create peer partnerships, which will help to create an environment of encouragement and motivation. You can help each stay on track and ensure you aren't just learning these things without applying them to your life. It is much easier to grow in your faith when you have a community of people on the journey with you. I will also have a Facebook group where you can post your progress, struggles, and questions. I honestly believe I am where I am today because I had a community surrounding me the whole way. So many of us feel alone, and when you join a community like this, you find out you are not alone! Please consider going deeper with me on this journey. I will discuss this for the next two weeks as I prepare for the launch. However, if you have questions, please feel free to reach out by email or social media. I hope to answer those questions here because others probably have the same questions. One person already asked if it would be strictly Catholic. The answer is no. I am Catholic, and so some things I say will be Catholic. However, this coaching program is not about religion. It is about how we can all grow closer to the Lord. It will not be a lot of theology as I am not a theologian. It will be more about how we get to know the Lord more. We will talk about prayer and incorporating Jesus into our everyday life. We will cover things like forgiveness, humility, trust, and whatever you might be struggling with. I want to help those in the group, so the topics I teach will depend on what those in the group need.
I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Redeeming Love
Song of Songs 7:10-12 “Now I know that I am for my beloved and all his desires are fulfilled in me. Come away, my lover. Come with me to the faraway fields. We will run away together to the forgotten places and show them redeeming love. Let us arise and run to the vineyards of your people and see if the budding vines of love are now in full bloom. We will discover if their passion is awakened. There, I will display my love for you.”
I chose these verses for a few reasons. The first one was that I really like how it says all his desires are fulfilled in me. I have heard oftentimes that God will fulfill the desires of your heart. This is something I genuinely believe. This verse isn’t saying that, though. It is saying that God’s desires are fulfilled in me. Thinking that my life fulfills God’s desires is a nice thought. Thinking that I could contribute to the happiness of God in some small way feels pretty good. I believe I am doing that if His desires are fulfilled in me.
Another reason I chose these verses is because of the phrase “redeeming love.” It says in the verses above, “We will run away together to the forgotten places and show them redeeming love.” I love this idea. I love the idea of going to the forgotten places and the forgotten people and showing them the redeeming love of Christ. That phrase, redeeming love, is powerful. It shows us that God’s love is not passive. It is not like our love. It is an active love. It is a love that changes people. It is a love that is powerful.
I like that phrase because it reinforces that we don’t have to do anything to redeem ourselves. It reminds us that we don’t have to say the right thing to be redeemed. It reminds us that we don't have to do the right thing to be redeemed. It is not a secret formula we need to figure out. We don’t have to be a specific person to be redeemed. We don’t have to fix our lives and change everything about ourselves to be redeemed. God’s love is what redeems us. God loves us so much that He sent His only son to die on the cross for us. Jesus was the one who earned our redemption for us. The work has already been done. All we need to do is accept this love and allow it to come into our hearts and change us. I love that!
Another reason I chose these verses is because I love the idea of reaching the people in the forgotten places. There are so many people who have been forgotten. Forgotten by their families, forgotten by their friends, even forgotten by the church. There are so many people who feel so alone. It’s crazy because billions of people are in this world, yet so many feel alone. There are more ways than ever for people to keep in touch. There is Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok, which are just the ways I know about. There are so many ways to keep in touch, yet teens feel more alone than ever. My biggest desire is to be able to help every single person in this world discover God’s love. I wish they all knew about this redeeming love. I wish I could go with Jesus to all the forgotten places and share His redeeming love with everyone.
The last part of these verses says, “Let us arise and run to the vineyards of your people and see if the budding vines of love are now in full bloom. We will discover if their passion is awakened. There, I will display my love for you.” What came to my mind when I read this was that this is precisely how you feel when you fall in love with Jesus. I must admit that I struggle with using the word lover when referring to Jesus or God. It is a pretty intimate term, and I didn’t really understand how it applied. However, reading this passion translation of this book of the Bible, I understand it a bit better.
I understand how we can fall entirely in love with Jesus and want to share that love with others. I feel like I am the woman speaking in these verses. I want to run around to all the people in the world and see if their passion is awakened. I want to help them to awaken their passion for Him. I want them to love Him as much as I do and to know he loves them. Actually, that last part is probably more important than the first part. Yes, I want them to love Jesus, and yet I think it may be more important that they know they are loved by him first.
I understand better now how much the Lord is pursuing us. I understand how much our yes means to Him. I can also understand a bit more why some people say no to Him. Sometimes, His love can be overwhelming, and we aren’t used to that type of love in this world. We can think we don’t deserve that type of love. We can let fear get in the way of accepting His love. On Father Mike’s Catechism in a Year podcast, he talked about a young woman he was teaching RCIA to several years ago. She went through the whole program but decided not to do it when it came time to become a member of the Catholic Church. She said she could not, in good faith, commit to going to mass every Sunday. That felt too overwhelming for her, and she did not want to become a member of the Church if she could not fulfill all the requirements, for lack of a better term. He talked with her, but she couldn’t do it. He prayed for her over the years, and recently, she wrote him a letter explaining that after all these years, she realized that she was letting fear get in her way of the call she knew God was placing on her heart. She was afraid of not being able to measure up. She was afraid of letting the Lord down.
Many of us feel this way. We feel God is calling us to do something, yet we don’t answer that call because we feel we won’t be able to do whatever He calls us to do. If God is calling us, He will equip us. He will give us the grace we need to follow through. God doesn’t want our perfection. He wants our yes. God doesn’t need us to have everything all figured out. He needs us to trust that He will lead the way and be there to guide us and provide us with all we need to do what He called us to do. If you have been reluctant to say yes, I feel the Holy Spirit prompting me to encourage you to take that leap of faith and say yes. You will be surprised how God blesses you when you say yes to your call. You will also be surprised how much better you feel. There is a joy I can’t explain. You have to feel it to understand.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to answer your call. Please give us the grace to say yes. Lord, we want to have an intimate relationship with you. Please show us how. We want to feel like this Shulamite woman feels about her Bridegroom King. Please show us how. Lord, we love you and want to bring your love to others. We want to bring your redeeming love to the forgotten places. Please help us. You are unique, Lord. You are King of Kings and Lord of Lords. You are the almighty one, a waymaker, and a promise keeper. Thank you, Lord, for being you. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Next week, I will bring you details on my new group coaching program that will help you discover how to walk more boldly with Jesus in your journey. I am so excited to share this journey with you! I look forward to meeting you here again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Why Would You Seek Me?
Song of Solomon 6:13b “The Shulamite Bride: Why would you seek a mere Shulamite like me? Why would you want to see my dance of love? The Bridegroom-King: Because you dance so gracefully, as though you danced with angels!”
I wanted to stick with the Song of Solomon Book, also known as the Song of Songs. I am in love with the passion translation of this book. Let me explain quickly for those of you who, like me, don’t know much about the Song of Songs. The Song of Songs is a love story between a Schulamite Bride, the Bridegroom King, and the brides-to-be, representing our interactions with the world. The passion translation tells you who is talking in each verse, so you don’t have to guess. It is easy to understand, and it can be read like a play. It is so beautiful. If you want to read this translation for free, you can go to bible.com and search it. I will also link a Word document where I copied this translation so you can read it. You can CLICK HERE and download it if you would like. Once you read it, you will be just as in love with it as I am. Remember, this is meant to be our story, too. This is how much our Lord is pursuing us, too!
While reading through the book this morning, two things in particular stood out to me. I will talk about one today and one tomorrow. Limiting the verses to one or two is difficult, as this book has many good things. I love the whole thing. However, the point of this podcast is to go deeper into the verses, so I will do my best to select a few verses to talk about. Today is just one verse but a conversation between the Shulamite Bride and her Bridegroom King. The Shulamite woman is asking a question we all ask at some point. Why me? Have you ever asked yourself this question when talking to the Lord? Why would you pick me? Why would you want to work through me? Why would you want to use me? I know I have.
This was the exact question I asked the Lord when trying to figure out why I had been baptized in the Holy Spirit and yet could not speak/pray in tongues. I heard/felt the Lord very clearly say, “Why not you?” He is saying that to you, too. The Lord is so amazing. When we look at ourselves, all we see are our flaws. All we see are our mistakes. That is not what the Lord sees. When He looks at us, He sees the person He created us to be. When He looks at us, He sees His child. If you have children or nieces and nephews, consider how you look at them. Do you see their mistakes and flaws, or do you see the good in them?
So many kids, my nieces and nephews, my boys, and their friends, don’t like how they look or don’t like anything about themselves. They don’t feel comfortable in their own skin. I wish, more than anything, that they could see themselves through my eyes. I wish they could see how amazing they are. I could tell them, and I do, but they don’t hear me. They don’t believe me. I imagine this is how God feels. I imagine how we talk about ourselves and see ourselves breaks His heart. I imagine He wishes we could see ourselves through His eyes, too.
Did you know this is something you can pray for? I have prayed for this for a long time, and while I am sure I don’t see myself exactly like God sees me, I do see myself better than I used to. I know I am a beloved child of God. I know God loves me, and although I may still question why he would want to use me or if He is using me, I don’t question if He loves or likes me. I know He does. I used to think the disciple John was a bit prideful or arrogant, referring to himself as “the beloved disciple, or the one who Jesus loved. Now I know that He wasn’t. He could see himself a bit more through Jesus’ eyes. He was able to believe what Jesus said about him. Jesus didn’t just say it about him, though. He said it about all of us. John was just able to believe it a bit more than we are.
In the verse above, the Shulamite Bride asks, “Why would you seek a mere Shulamite like me? Why would you want to see my dance of love?” and the Bridegroom-King says, “Because you dance so gracefully, as though you danced with angels!” Do you see how differently the Lord sees us? Do you see the kind of gentle, loving answer we get when we ask Him to show us how He sees us or why He would pick us? He doesn’t stop there, either. He goes on for almost another chapter, saying how wonderful she is.
God loves you! He really does. If you doubt this or think God couldn’t possibly love you after all you have done or all that has been done to you, I assure you, He can, and He does. If you have ever wondered what it feels like to be loved or pursued by the Lord, read this book in the Bible, and you will begin to understand what it feels like. When you read this book, resist the urge to discount yourself. When you read this book, fight the feelings you will have to say that God is not talking to you. This can be so easy for us to do. We can easily believe that God loves others but not us. We can believe that God forgives others but not us. God loves you! God forgives you!
Read this book and picture Jesus saying these things to you. Try to take them in and sit with them. Maybe you just read one chapter at a time and sit with it. Maybe you just read one paragraph and sit with it. Imagine the Lord saying these things to you. Imagine feeling these things about the Lord. If we want an intimate relationship with the Lord, reading this book might be a good start. Understanding the depths of His love for me becomes a bit more achievable when I read this translation of this book in the Bible. I hope it helps you as well.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us see your incredible love for us. Help us to believe you could be saying these things to us. Help us put ourselves in the Schulamite woman’s place. Help us truly take in how much you love us, pursue us, and long for us. We love you, Lord. We want to feel this way about you. We want to long for you. We want to pursue you. We want to turn over our lives to you. We need your help, Lord. We can do all things through you and nothing without you. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today I want to witness about the power of prayer. I saw a random YouTube Video. I will put a link in the show notes for the video. One of my Facebook friends posted it on her page, so I clicked. In the video, a priest talks about his friend John Petravitch, who was running through his neighborhood and saw an ambulance. He is a nice guy, so he wondered if he should stop and check if everything was okay. He thought, I don’t know the lady, and I am not a doctor, so he kept running. He decided to pray one Hail Mary while he was running. He didn’t stop and fold his hands in a prayer position. He didn’t kneel. He just prayed one Hail Mary while running. He didn’t think anything of it. A week later, he is jogging around the same neighborhood and hears this woman call out from her porch, “Hey you, sir.” He kept running as he didn’t know anyone from that neighborhood. Then she said, “No, you, the runner.” He stopped and looked at her and said, “Me?” And she said yes, and then, “You saved my life.” He said, “I’m sorry, Ma’am, I don’t think we know each other.” She said, “No, I recognize your face.” And here is the story. She explained, “Last week, I got sick and was rushed to the hospital. I was in the hospital dying, and Jesus appeared to me. He held out His hand, and your face was in the palm of His hand. Jesus told me you were going to die, but because of this man's prayer, you will live. That is the power of praying one Hail Mary. Can you imagine the power of praying the whole rosary? That would be 53 Hail Mary’s. If you have never said the rosary before, try it. If you are saying it sporadically, try saying it daily for the rest of the month. That is the challenge the priest in the video is giving us. St. Pius said, “If you want to save the world, say the rosary.” If there were ever a time when the world needed saving, it would be now.
The Holy Spirit brought to mind when Tony and I said the miraculous Rosary Novena together. The miraculous rosary novena is a 54-day novena, so basically, 6 novenas as a novena is typically 9 days of prayer. This rosary was promised anything you ask when you say it will be granted. You pray 3 novenas, 27 days in petition for the thing, and then 27 days in thanksgiving, even though you have not received it yet. We prayed for our neighbor, who is two years younger than our youngest and had cancer in her thigh. They thought she might have to lose her leg. We prayed that she would be cured of the cancer and not lose her leg. She did have surgery, and I think they removed part of the muscle or something, but she did not lose her leg, and she is cancer-free. Praise God. I felt like the Holy Spirit revealed to me this morning that although we were praying for someone else and not ourselves, we needed prayers as we struggled in our marriage. While God was working on our neighbor’s cancer, He was also working on our marriage. We grew so much closer together, and I believe the Holy Spirit showed me that it was saying the rosary together that helped that happen.
Isn’t it amazing how God does that? He can heal something broken even when you aren’t praying for that. I have heard a saying, “God won’t be outdone in generosity.” We were praying for someone else, and God healed us. When we give to those in need, we don’t have to be worried about our needs because God will provide. My parents always said yes, even if they didn’t have the money, because they knew God would provide. I remember once my parents talked about wanting to join Amway to make more money. They did not have the money to do so. They quickly prayed to the Lord, asking Him what they should do. They decided they would only join Amway if they got the start-up fee from somewhere. They knew they didn’t have the money through my dad’s regular paychecks. They prayed, and then they just waited to see.
Sometime that week, my parents received a check from my grandfather. I forget why he was sending them a check, but it was not for the amount they expected. He had written in a note with the check that he felt the Holy Spirit prompted him to add a certain amount to the check. He was not sure why. My grandpa added the amount they needed for a start-up fee to join Amway. However, my parents hadn’t told him they wanted to join Amway or how much it would cost them to join. God is so good! He hears our prayers. He is so generous.
My parents also talked about how they did a novena when they struggled to get pregnant. Each time they finished the novena, my mom was pregnant shortly after that. Thank you, Lord, you are so good! I hope these examples of our prayers' importance will inspire you to lean on prayer more often. I hope the first story, about the man who said the one Hail Mary, will inspire you to say a Hail Mary when you see someone in need. I also hope you will consider saying the rosary more often. Even if you say one decade a day, that will only take about 5 minutes, but you will be saying a full rosary at least once a week. It will change your life.
Will You Catch Your Foxes?
Song of Songs 2:15 “You must catch the troubling foxes, those sly little foxes that hinder our relationship. For they raid our budding vineyard of love to ruin what I’ve planted within you. Will you catch them and remove them for me? We will do it together.”
I had the best class at Encounter Ministries Boston Campus last night. Our teachers explained to us all about The Song of Songs book in the Bible. I am sure Father Mike explained it to me during the Bible in a Year, but not like they did tonight in class. They explained all about the different translations of the Bible and how they have a literal word-for-word translation, and they also have a dynamic translation which captures more of the phrase for phrase or thought for thought. Encounter Ministries decided to use the Passion Translation as they felt this was the best one to help us understand the Song of Songs best.
I am unsure if I knew anything about the song of songs before last night. However, it was beautiful how they explained it. Our teachers read out loud the first five chapters, stopping along the way to talk about what was really going on and what it all meant. It was incredible. I found myself so interested in the story and almost like I was a part of it. Which, of course, we are all a part of it. The Song of Songs is meant to be our love story with the Lord. Each one of us is pursued by the Lord just as this woman was pursued by her bridegroom. If you have not read the Song of Songs, I recommend you go and read it using the passion translation. I am sure we will have many more episodes from this book, as I heard so many incredible things last night.
However, as soon as I heard the verse above, I knew it was the verse I needed to talk about. I loved the language and the concept. “You must catch the troubling foxes, those sly little foxes that hinder our relationship, for they raid our budding vineyard of love to ruin what I’ve planted within you. Will you catch them and remove them for me? We will do it together?” First of all, there are so many things that get in the way of our relationship with the Lord. Thinking of these things as sly foxes is great because sometimes they are things we wouldn’t think would be a hindrance. For instance, we all had to take a few minutes and ask the Lord what our foxes were. One of my classmates heard the word busyness. This is probably a hindrance for many of us. I think the enemy likes to keep us busy. Even if we are busy doing good things, it can still get in the way of our relationship with the Lord if we don’t put that relationship first. Everyday things can also get in our way, like TV, social media, and games on our computer or our phone. What are the foxes in your life? What are the things that are hindering your relationship with the Lord?
Did you know that the Lord desires a personal relationship with you? He doesn’t just want to know you from afar. He doesn’t just want to be someone that you talk to when you need something. He wants to be in a relationship with you. What does that mean? If you are in a relationship with someone, then you spend time with them, and you get to know them. You care about them, and they care about you. This is not only what the Lord desires. This is his deepest longing. Did you know the Lord longs for you? Isn’t it incredible when you think about it? He could have anything He wants, and yet what He longs for is an intimate relationship with you. That just blows my mind.
In the next part of the verse, after the author explains what the foxes are, he says, “For they raid our budding vineyard of love to ruin what I’ve planted within you. Will you catch them and remove them for me?” This explains what the things that hinder our relationship do, they steal the fruit of all that the Lord planted inside of us. Do you often wonder why we are not producing more fruit? Why aren’t our prayers more fruitful? Why aren’t our actions being more fruitful? Why aren’t we seeing more fruit in our ministry? I know I do. This verse tells us that it is because there are hindrances that are getting in the way. We might not realize there are things getting in the way. However, we can’t have an intimate relationship with the Lord if we never have time to spend with Him.
Think of a good relationship that you have. Do you spend time with that person? What if you didn’t spend any time with them? Would it still be a good relationship? What about your relationship with work? Would you be able to get things done at work if every time you tried something else got it the way? Would you be productive at work if you spent your work time watching TV or playing games on your computer or your phone? No, I don’t think you would.
The Lord calls us to catch these foxes and remove them for Him. Isn’t it beautiful that He cares enough about us to ask us to do this for Him? The last few words of this verse are great. “We will do it together.” The Lord doesn’t even ask us to do it on our own. He isn’t telling us to go and take care of our foxes and then come back when we have finished. He is telling us that we will do it together. How amazing is that?
This is like so many things with the Lord. He wants to partner with us. This reminds me of forgiveness. We don’t have to do that alone, either. All we have to do is give our yes, and then the Lord will come alongside us and heal our hearts. Whatever it is we are trying to do, the Lord wants to partner with us. With Him, we can do all things, and without Him, we can do nothing. Once we realize this, I mean truly realize that we need Him for everything. Our life gets so much easier because we start to rely on His power instead of our own. He is so much stronger than we are. We need His power.
The Lord is asking you to catch your foxes. Will you do that for Him? Will you take two minutes of quiet time with the Lord this morning and ask Him what your foxes are? What are the things that are getting in the way of you spending time with Him? Or, maybe nothing is getting in the way of you spending time with Him, but something is getting in the way of you growing closer to Him. Is something hindering you from opening up and letting Him in?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we don’t want anything to get in the way of our relationship with you. Please help us discover our foxes and catch them. Please help us discover the intimate relationship you want to have with us. Help us say yes to your invitation. Help us grow closer to you. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. I will be sending out details about my new coaching program this week, so if you are not on my mailing list, CLICK HERE to join. I will also be adding the details on my website, walkboldlywithjesus.com. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Are you Ready?
Matthew 22:11-12 “But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing wedding clothes. He asked, ‘How did you get in here without wedding clothes, friend?’ The man was speechless.”
This was the Gospel reading from Mass yesterday. I was excited when I heard it because it was one that I had heard several times, and yet I did not understand it. Let me read you the whole parable so you can see why I was confused. The verse above is from the parable of the Wedding Banquet. It can be found in Matthew 22:1-14.
The Parable of the Wedding Banquet
Jesus spoke to them again in parables, saying: “The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son. He sent his servants to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to come.
“Then he sent some more servants and said, ‘Tell those who have been invited that I have prepared my dinner: My oxen and fattened cattle have been butchered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet.’ “But they paid no attention and went off—one to his field, another to his business. The rest seized his servants, mistreated them, and killed them. The king was enraged. He sent his army to destroy those murderers and burned their city. “Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited did not deserve to come. So go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find.’ So the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, the bad as well as the good, and the wedding hall was filled with guests. “But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing wedding clothes. He asked, ‘How did you get in here without wedding clothes, friend?’ The man was speechless. “Then the king told the attendants, ‘Tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ “For many are invited, but few are chosen.”
The reason I am always confused when I hear this parable is because the servants were told to go out to the streets and gather all the people they could find. The people were not intending to go to a wedding banquet that day. They were from the streets. I did not understand why the king came out and was upset that someone wasn’t in a wedding garment. Why would he expect someone to have a wedding garment if they were living on the street? Then when the man didn’t have a reason for not being in a wedding garment, he was bound by hand and foot and thrown outside into the darkness, where there would be weeping and gnashing of teeth. That seemed a bit harsh to me. The king told his servants to go out and get anyone they could find and invite them to this wedding banquet. Then he gets mad that one of the many people he invited wasn’t wearing a wedding garment. Not only was he mad, but he also punished the man. That never made sense to me.
This is why, yesterday, when I heard the reading, I was hoping the priest would do his homily on this reading, and he did! Well, I still am not sure I understand this parable completely. I want to share what I did learn in case you are confused and think this is unfair as well.
First, the wedding banquet ultimately represents when we finally get to be with the Lord in heaven. Although, we get to have a banquet with the Lord each week when we participate in mass. The wedding garment in question is our soul. The king was upset because this man did not keep his soul clean and ready to attend the banquet. We don’t know when it will be our time to join the Lord. We need to stay ready so that when the time comes, we are ready.
This is a common theme in the Bible. There is another parable about keeping watch and not knowing when your master will arrive. The parable of the faithful servant can be found in Matthew 24: 42-51. Then there is the parable of the 10 virgins, which can be found in Matthew 25:1-13. All of these are telling us that we need to be ready. It is our job to make sure whenever the time comes that we are ready.
I was upset because it didn’t seem fair that the man was caught off guard. He was invited to a banquet unexpectedly and yet was in trouble for not wearing the correct clothes to it. However, now I see that it is our job to ensure we are prepared. I tell this to my kids all the time. For instance, the kids know they have a project due on Friday. They have all week to complete the project, and yet they wait until Thursday night to work on it. Then, on Thursday night, they start the project, but they don’t have enough time to finish it. Then they are upset that their teacher doesn’t give them more time. They did not understand that it was their responsibility to be ready to present on Friday.
If this concept is presented in at least three different parables, I think it is something we should pay attention to. What are we doing to make sure that we are ready to meet the Lord? Are we paying attention to the state of our soul? Are we making sure if we hurt our relationship with the Lord that, we are doing what we can to repair it? Are we going to confession regularly, or are we expecting that we will be able to go at the last hour?
If all of these parables have taught us anything, it is that it can be dangerous to expect we will have time to do it later. They have taught us that showing up unprepared is never a good idea. Do we want to end up like the man at the wedding banquet where we are thrown out into the cold darkness?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, I ask that you help us not to take time for granted. Help us to appreciate every moment you have given us. Help us to be grateful for the time we have and not to put off the things we should do today. Lord, help us to be ready to meet you. If there is something in our way, help us to take care of it. We do not want to be kicked out of the wedding banquet. We do not want to miss out on meeting the bridegroom. We want to be ready, Lord. Please help us! We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I. Have a blessed day!
The Spirit of Offense, Be Gone!
Proverbs 19:11 “It is good sense to be slow to anger, and an honor to overlook an offense.”
I have really been struggling with the spirit of offense lately. Actually, I am not sure if it is new or if I am just noticing it more lately. Ever since we learned about it last year in Encounter Ministries, I have noticed that I definitely take offense often, especially with Tony. This is not something I am proud of, and it is something I am trying to figure out so that I don’t keep doing it. When we had a disagreement today, and I took offense again, I decided to look up and see if there was a prayer I could recite daily that would help me out with this. There was an article with a prayer the woman wrote, and it had the verse above attached to it. I decided this was the verse for the episode. I actually found a couple of verses that pertained to taking offense. This was the one I liked the best, though.
I think I am pretty good at being slow to anger. My mother has the patience of a Saint, and she passed them down to some of us kids. I am lucky enough to have gotten a lot of patience. I have also had to develop a lot of patience over the years as my kids could be pretty trying at times, and if I lost my cool, it just made it all that much more difficult to get anything done. If I was angry while they were angry, it just made the whole situation that much worse. I have actually gotten pretty good at not taking offense from my boys either, as they went through some tough phases where they liked to say anything to get me angry. I had to learn not to let their words affect me as they didn’t mean the. I knew it what they were saying wasn’t about me. It was about them and what they were going through.
However, for some reason, I still tend to take offense to several things my husband says or does. It is usually the same things, over and over again. You would think after 23 years of marriage, we would have these things figured out by now. You would think I would have learned not to take offense to them, as I am sure he is not trying to offend me. However, sometimes I think it is automatic. I did find an article that talks about four things that can cause us to become hurt or offended, and it also talks about four ways to overcome offense. I hope that this information will help you overcome offense. I think it is something many of us struggle with, and yet we would be so much happier if we didn’t.
Let’s start with the four things the author listed that contribute to people feeling hurt or offended. First is unrealistic expectations. It is important to know and understand what the other person’s expectations are for you and for the situation. This is not something you want to guess about. If you don’t know what their expectations are, then ask them and listen when they tell you. It is also important that they know what your expectations are, so don’t keep them to yourself. Share them and check to see if they understand them. Second is our own wounded spirit. I have heard it said that we don’t see others as they are. We see others as we are. We all have our own history, our own wounds, and our own thoughts that we take into every interaction that we have. We use all of this as a filter through which we view every interaction. Once we know our identity in Jesus and we understand what His love means to us, then we can start to work through our wounds with Jesus. Once we do, we can stop using them as a filter through which we see others.
The third is our holding onto things for too long. Sometimes we are offended, and we hold on to that for too long instead of just shaking it off. Friendships are important, and it is good to keep that in mind and get better at letting this go. The fourth thing is assuming negative intent. I was just at a retreat, and they asked a few people what the best piece of advice they were ever given was, and someone said, “Always assume positive intent.”This is so important. This is the biggest culprit, I think to me taking offense. I hear what is said, and I assume negative intent, so I get defensive and I slip into fight mode. It would be much better if I assumed positive intent. I am very good at this in other areas of my life. I am good with telling people if you don’t know the answer, tell yourself something that will serve you better. For instance, if you don’t know why someone hasn’t called back, assume they are busy instead of assuming they don’t want to talk to you. Do you see how that is assuming a positive intent? However, I struggle to do that in these instances.
This article, I will put a link in the show notes, goes on to list four steps we can take to help us learn to avoid a spirit of offense. It says that overcoming a spirit of offense takes intentionality and a humble spirit willing to surrender the right to stay hurt. Wow, that hits home for me. I sometimes want to cling to my right to stay hurt. I don’t know why because being hurt doesn’t feel good. I am seeing now why humility is another way to strengthen my resolve against taking offense.
The first step the article lists is to acknowledge that you were hurt by something someone said or did, even if it is an irrational hurt. God is ready and willing to hear our cries and help us walk through our pain. The article is not saying we need to acknowledge our pain to the person who hurt us. We need to acknowledge it to ourselves and to the Lord and then let the Lord help us heal. The second one is one that I didn’t really think of before, and yet I can definitely see the wisdom in it. It says, don’t quickly turn to others for counsel without serious consideration. If you need to process or discuss the offense, one person can prove the wisdom you seek. If you involve a lot of other people, you may easily create a bigger problem. Also, what came to my mind when I read that is that now you may even fall into gossiping instead of just seeking counsel.
The third thing was to pray for your own grieving spirit and for the other person. Prayer is always a great thing to do to help us avoid something and also to help us get over something after it happens as well. Fourth is to walk through forgiveness even if you don’t feel it. This means if you see the person who hurt you, act graciously. This can be difficult, but it is such an important step in the healing process. Forgiveness is an act of the will, not a feeling. You can forgive someone, even if you don’t feel like it. You can forgive someone and then not feel any different afterward. If you are willing to say, “Yes, I forgive this person.” Then God will come in and do the healing on your heart. You are not forgiving them on your own. God does all the heavy lifting. He just needs your yes!
I hope these two different lists of four things were helpful to you. If you have the time, I would suggest clicking on the link and reading the whole article. CLICK HERE for the first article. She also has three books that deal with overcoming a spirit of offense. I got the first on Audible, and since I am headed out of town on a plane tomorrow, I am guessing I will have plenty of time to listen to it. I will probably do more episodes on this topic once I am done with the book, as I really do think it is something many of us struggle with. I am going to end with a prayer from another article. CLICK HERE for the article with the prayer. Here is the prayer:
“Jesus, please call out the spirit of offense that is wreaking havoc on my soul. Remove it from my life and take away all its power. Deal with me on this issue and help me place this moment into a Kingdom frame so that in my heart and behavior, I’m not jerked around by the enemy of my soul who is whispering in my ear what he’d rather me believe. Amen.”
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to seeing you again on Monday! Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Before I begin my witness today, I first want to apologize for being a day late. With Monday not only being a holiday but also the last day of the retreat, I have been one day off this whole week. I totally forgot that yesterday was Wednesday, and yet I didn’t want to skip Witness Wednesday this week, so I am doing it a day late. My witness today will be about the retreat I just did this past weekend. God was in every stage of it, and so I want to give Him all the glory.
Last spring, I felt as though God put on my heart to host a retreat this year. I felt like He said in the summer, but I was a few months late. I researched many places to have the retreat, and many of the places people recommended had closed down. The ones that were still open were pretty expensive. There was the place in CT where the MCCW held the retreat I spoke at last April. However, that was booked until next summer, and I really felt like I was called to host one this year.
I was talking with a friend of mine at an Encounter event, and he gave me the names of a few more places to try. I am not sure if the place I found was from him or from a Google search, but I am so glad I found it. I wound up calling the Holy Cross Retreat House in July. The director said they had just started opening up the house for outside retreats as they usually just did Matt Talbot recovery retreats and Cursillo retreats there. We were actually the first outside group to come through the doors, so it was even more special. They were embarking on a new adventure having new groups come in, and I was embarking on a new adventure of hosting retreats, and we got to begin together.
The Holy Cross Retreat House was definitely a gift for the Lord. It could not have been a more perfect place for hosting my first retreat. The director, Nancy, was so easy to work with and so helpful. The retreat house bedrooms had all been repainted with new beds and mattresses. We were all able to stay in the same hallway, which was right next to the chapel and the meeting room. However, no room in the house is far from the chapel. I loved that it was a relatively small house, and yet it could house over 70 people.
The retreat house also just hired a new chef named Kerry, and she was also a gift from the Lord. She was truly amazing! Her food was the most incredible food I have ever had on retreat, and it was all homemade and made with organic ingredients. Another personal touch that made this retreat house perfect is that the food is all served family style. They have 2 to 4 volunteers that come in each meal and help serve the meal. They bring the serving dishes out to the table, and then we pass them around like we are at a family meal. They come around with coffee and tea. It was such an amazing experience. You may feel I am exaggerating, but the ladies who attended the retreat went on and on about the food. They asked the chef for all her recipes, that is how amazing the food was.
I had 12 people sign up for the retreat, which was great! That, again, was a gift from the Lord, as up until a week before, I only had 6 signed up. Then in that last week, I had 6 more people sign up. On the day of, we had two people who were unable to attend. One was in the ER with COVID, and the other one’s mom was sick, and she needed to take care of her mom. Check-in went well, and everyone was there by 3:15 or so. We started out with introductions, and everyone got to know each other pretty well just through introductions. I feel as though everyone bonded pretty quickly on this retreat. I am unsure if that is because of the small number of ladies in attendance or why it happened so quickly, but it was great. We had our first talk, we did some sharing, and then we headed to dinner. Right after dinner, we headed out to the chapel next door, where the Peyton Center was holding a candlelight rosary procession. Unfortunately, it was raining, and it was moved indoors, but it was still great. We walked around the chapel with a lot of other people saying the rosary and holding our candles. Whoever was taking photos for the Peyton Center got a great photo of me and my sister Liz and the retreat house director sent it to me. After that, we got back to the house, and we did a second talk and had more time for sharing before everyone headed to be.
The next day we started out with breakfast and then went to the chapel for praise and worship before mass at 10. After mass, we had another talk before lunch. After lunch, we had another talk, and then we had personal prayer time. Nancy, one of the ladies attending the retreat, led those who wanted to attend in a rosary. It turned out there were 5 of them, and so they each led a decade of the rosary and gave their own reflection on the mystery when it was their decade. I was not there, but I heard it was truly beautiful. Everyone did a great job with their reflections.
After the free time, we had adoration in the chapel for those who wanted to attend, and at the same time, we had confession for those who wanted to attend. We had someone attend confession who hadn’t been in 20 years. It was a beautiful thing to see! After confession and adoration, we had another talk and more time for sharing. Then we went to dinner. Yes, we did a lot of eating on this retreat! After dinner, we had another talk, and we ended the night with the Father’s Blessings. This is when we ask the Father to give us His heart for the person, or we ask the Father to tell us what He would like to say to the person, and then we pray those blessings over the person. There were five of us from the Encounter Ministries class at the retreat, so each person had at least 3 people speak blessings over them. It was a beautiful end to the evening.
The next morning we started with breakfast and then had praise and worship in the chapel. Some people left during praise and worship. After praise and worship, we gathered together to talk about how we could take what we learned from the retreat and bring it back into our everyday lives. We talked about how the retreat was going to change how we lived each day. We also took a few minutes to give feedback on the retreat. What worked well and what didn’t? Then everyone gave each other hugs, and we left the retreat center. It was a great retreat, and I couldn’t have asked for a better group of ladies or a better retreat house for my time hosting a retreat all by myself. I hope you enjoyed this glimpse into the retreat, and I hope you will join us the next time. I asked the ladies what they would tell someone who was thinking about coming, and so I will end with a few of their comments.
It was an easy retreat where all were made to feel welcomed, accepted, and loved. I feel all left loving themselves more, God more, and each other more. Mission accomplished and seeds sown.
I would tell them that it is a time to focus on prayer and to rest one’s soul as well as a time to engage in discussions about our wonderful God, that there is no pressure to do anything, and that they will not regret the decision to come.
Come, Come, Come! You will be so glad you did - and so glad you found such a wonderful place to hold this retreat, Catherine. I would gladly return. You did an awesome job!
Repent & Do the Father’s Will
Matthew 3:8-10 "Produce good fruit as evidence of your repentance. And do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you, God can raise up children to Abraham from these stones. Even now, the ax lies at the root of the trees. Therefore every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.”
This statement is being said by John the Baptist to the Pharisees and Sadducees. In the verse right before this one, John calls them a “brood of vipers.” What John the Baptist is saying in this first verse is to make sure they are truly changing on the inside, not just on the outside. He is telling them to produce good fruit as evidence of their repentance. In other words, let me see the real change that has taken place. John is saying that he doesn’t want them to use the excuse that they are children of Abraham. The children of Abraham are numerous.
I believe John is telling them that even though they are being baptized with water, if they do not change their ways, then Jesus will cut them down and throw them into the fire. Repentance is something we can all do. However, it can’t just be something we say we are going to do and then we don’t do. It can’t be an idea that we like, and we get behind, and yet we do not change our lives in any way.
Change is hard. Staying the same is easy. It can be easy to say we will change our ways, and we might even really mean it. Then when we try, we see it isn’t as easy as we thought it would be. We realize changing and repenting means we need to give up some things that we might really like. For instance, maybe we really like gossiping. We like to sit around with others and talk about all the crazy things other people do. This would be something we would need to repent of and to do no more.
I think this line in the verse above is an important one, “And do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’” I think this is an important word for all of us to hear because it is something that I think many of us do. We assume because we are Catholic, or because we are Christian, or because we believe in Jesus that, we are automatically going to heaven. I have heard this a lot of times from a lot of different people. If we declare Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we are automatically going to heaven. It also says in the Bible in Matthew 7:21-23, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name? Did we not drive out demons in your name? Did we not do mighty deeds in your name?’ Then I will declare to them solemnly, ‘I never knew you. Depart from me, you evildoers.’”
You can know Jesus, Jesus can be your Lord and Savior, and yet, if you are not doing the will of the Father, you will not be getting into heaven. Take a look at the things you are doing and look at the motive behind them. Are you praying for other people because you really care about those people, or are you praying for people so that you look good to others? Are you saying the rosary and attending mass because you want to be there, because of your love for the Lord, or are you doing that so that others see you and think you are a very holy person?
The Pharisees and Sadducees followed the letter of the law. They made sure their prayers were out in the open, and they were long so that everyone could see how “holy” they were. They made sure they were doing what it said they had to do. However, they weren’t following the heart of the law. They were more concerned with the rules than they were with the people. We can sometimes hear about the Pharisees and Sadducees and think we would never act like they do. However, if we really examined our behavior, I am not sure that is true.
Have we ever called someone out in an unloving way? We tell ourselves we are trying to help them, we are trying to get them into heaven, and yet we do not do it in a loving way. Have we ever walked by someone in need on the street and not stopped to see if we could help? Have we ever treated someone in need badly? How many times have we walked by the cold, the hungry, the thirsty, and not even bothered to look over at them? Jesus is in each one of us. Not each one of us that is doing good, that has our stuff together. Jesus is in those who are homeless, who are hungry, who are in need, who are in jail. When we do for them, we are doing for Him.
We are all called to the same repentance that John the Baptist was calling people to 2,000 years ago. We need to repent and turn back to the Lord. This is not a one-time thing. It isn’t that we repent and we turn back, and then we are good. We have to be constantly turning back as we are constantly turning away. We might not feel as though we are turning away, and yet we slowly begin to put all these things before the Lord. We slowly, or not so slowly, begin to mess up again. We begin to turn away from the Lord and towards the world. The Lord is patient, and He waits for us to come back to Him. He welcomes us back with open arms.
I think the moral of this verse is to repent and change our ways. To ensure everything we do is living according to the way Jesus called us to live. I also think it is important never to assume, just because we are children of God, that we are going to heaven. I think that is dangerous because if we assume all we have to do is accept Jesus as our Saviour, then we can live however we want to live. That is not what it says in the Bible that we get to do as we please. It says, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.” Are we doing the will of the Father? Do we need to repent and begin again?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to enter the kingdom of heaven. Please help us. Please put on our hearts any things we need to repent. Please put on our hearts any ways we are not following your will. Show us what you want us to do, Lord! We love you. You are so amazing. You are the King of kings and Lord of lords. We are so grateful for all you do for us. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Saul’s Jealousy
1 Samuel 18:6-9 " At the approach of Saul and David, on David’s return after striking down the Philistine, women came out from all the cities of Israel to meet Saul the king, singing and dancing, with tambourines, joyful songs, and stringed instruments. The women played and sang: “Saul has slain his thousands, David his tens of thousands.” Saul was very angry and resentful of the song, for he thought: “They give David tens of thousands, but only thousands to me. All that remains for him is the kingship.” From that day on, Saul kept a jealous eye on David.”
This verse takes place after David killed Goliath. David was not a soldier, he was a little brother to two of the soldiers, and his mom had asked him to bring his brothers some lunch. After he killed the Philistine, women from all around the city came out to meet Saul, who was the king. These women were singing a song that said Saul has slain thousands, David his tens of thousands.” When Saul heard this song, he became angry and resentful. He let this thought consume him. He thought, now that they are saying he killed more than me, they are going to make him king.
Several things are going on here in this passage. First, when Saul thinks the people will make David the King, he forgets who made him king. It was not the people it was the Lord our God. What God has put in place, man cannot undo. David does eventually become King, but not because the people chose him, but because God chose him. Saul starts down a path of not listening to the Lord and not obeying the commands He gives him. In 1 Samuel 15:10-11, it says, “Then the word of the Lord came to Samuel: I regret having made Saul king, for he has turned from me and has not kept my command. At this, Samuel grew angry and cried out to the Lord all night.” If Saul had been more concerned with the Lord's thoughts instead of what the people were saying, he would have had nothing to worry about anything. He would have had the Lord protecting him.
Jealousy is a dangerous thing. David had just done a great thing for Saul. He killed the giant that no one else would kill. Every person in Saul’s army was cowering from this giant. David walks in to give his brothers lunch and ends up killing this giant. That is a wonderful thing. Saul is happy, and he is rejoicing. Then he hears these women singing a song that says David killed more people than him, and he becomes jealous. It’s just a song! This just goes to show how easy it is to be jealous. The interesting part is that the song isn’t even true.
They were singing this song after David killed Goliath. At this point, David was not a great commander of the army. David was a shepherd boy who had killed one giant. Saul was the king, so I doubt he killed thousands of men either. I bet his men probably did, but being king, I don’t think he was out there killing thousands of men.
When we hear something that makes us jealous, the first thing we should do is think about what was said and if it is true or not. If Saul had stopped for a minute to think about the words to this song, he would have realized that there was no truth to them. He would have realized that they didn’t mean anything. It was just a fun song to sing. However, he didn’t. He just heard the song and let it take root in his heart. He became overcome with jealousy, and it said, “From that moment on, Saul kept a jealous eye on David.” So many wasted years of jealousy, and for what? Because of one line of lyrics in a song?
We may look at Saul, and we think he is silly to get so upset over this song. Yet, how many silly things do we get jealous over? How many times have you been jealous of a family member or a friend for something that was not a big deal? Have you ever been jealous over something that wasn’t even true? Did you stop to check and see if it was true before you got upset?
Jealousy can be hard to deal with. It is difficult when you see others are getting things you want but can’t seem to have. Jealousy is something that is involuntary. You hear something, and then you get a feeling of jealousy. This is something that you can’t control. However, you can control whether you entertain the idea or not. We get many thoughts passing through our heads each hour of each day. We do not spend time with each one of them. We don’t give them all attention. We get to decide what thoughts we are going to give attention to and which ones we are going to let pass by and just ignore.
If you are finding yourself getting jealous and you are unable to ignore the thoughts, I learned last night in Encounter a few practical steps you can take to get rid of those jealous feelings. First, bring your jealousy to the Lord. Tell Him what you are feeling and why and He will help you deal with whatever is making you jealous. Second, renounce the spirit of jealousy. This is easy to do. It is one simple sentence. In the name of Jesus, I renounce the spirit of jealousy, and I command it to leave right now. Next, thank the Lord for that person. Thank him for bringing your friend into your life. Thank Him for all the good times you and your friend have had. If it is not a friend, thank him for whoever it is that you are jealous of and what they have contributed to your life or the life of others. The last thing to do is to bless that person. Ask the Lord to bless that person and their family. Ask the Lord to use the thing you are jealous of to bless that family.
If you can do this when you start to feel jealous, you will notice that the jealousy stops, and you start to feel good, warm feelings toward whoever/whatever made you jealous. Jealousy is not a good feeling. It is not something that you want to feel. However, when you do the steps above, you will stop the negative feelings, and you will replace them with good feelings of gratitude and blessings. Give it a try. What do you have to lose?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today! Lord, we are so grateful for all you have given us, and we ask that you help us to be even more grateful. Lord, we are sorry we get jealous at times. Please help us to be happy for others instead of being jealous of others. Lord, help us to remember and follow the steps above so that we can overcome our jealousy and just be happy and joy-filled. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I apologize for not putting out a devotional yesterday morning. I was still at the retreat and was just enjoying being there with the 10 wonderful ladies who were able to make it. It was an awesome retreat where everyone had a great time, and everyone bonded pretty quickly. The food was amazing! If you are living in New England and are looking for a great retreat house, I would check out Holy Cross Retreat House in North Easton, MA. The retreat director, Nancy, is amazing, and they hired a new chef, Kerry, who is amazing too! Our experience there was great! I am already thinking of when my next retreat will be, and I hope you will all be able to join me next time. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day.
The Power of Eucharistic Adoration
Eucharistic Adoration is something I didn’t really do before my first retreat. I am not sure I even knew it was a thing. Then when I went to Adoration for the first time, I was not really sure what I should do. I remember being moved by the way the monstrance looked. It was so beautiful. I could not believe we could sit there and talk to Jesus. I know we can always talk to Jesus, but this was different. This was talking to Him with Him being right there. I picture Him just sitting on the altar, having a conversation with me. It is a beautiful experience.
I have had some people ask why I go to Adoration. Why don’t I just talk to Jesus from wherever I am? If you are thinking this too, I want to reassure you I do talk to Jesus anywhere and everywhere. Adoration is different because you are taking the time out of your busy day to drive to wherever Adoration is and dedicating time to just sit with Him. The best comparison I can think of would be visiting a loved one’s grave site. Somehow, being there at the grave site, you feel closer to your loved one. It feels as though you are there with them. You can talk to your deceased family members anywhere. So, why do you go to the grave site?
I remember a few very powerful experiences I had during Adoration. One time I was sitting in Adoration, and since I had not been before, I did not know what to do. I decided I was going to read the Bible while I was there. The one problem, I didn’t know where to start. Ok, I thought, maybe I will read about the 10 commandments. Another problem, I had no idea where I would find the 10 commandments in the Bible. I was very new to reading the Bible (if you can’t tell). I talked to God, and I told Him I had heard of people asking God where something was in the Bible and then just opening it randomly and ending up on the right page. I decided I would try this. I feel like I had tried it before with no luck, but I tried again anyway.
I asked God to show me where in the Bible it talks about the 10 commandments. I randomly opened my Bible, and there they were, the 10 commandments. I could not believe it. It was amazing! I decided to try again. I do not even remember what I asked for next, but I turned to a random page, and it was exactly what I was looking for. I was in awe.
I was so grateful. I couldn’t believe God, with all that He does, would take the time to show me where something is in the Bible. I was at the gift shop later that weekend, and I found a necklace that looked just like the monstrance. It was a triangle with rounded edges, and it had a diamond in the middle to represent the host. I bought it as a reminder that Jesus is always with us. I feel such joy just remembering that time in Adoration.
The next year I went to Adoration, at the same retreat location. I prayed that I could feel the presence of the Holy Spirit. I know He is always with us, but I wanted to feel His presence in a real, tangible way. I was praying, and I closed my eyes, and I saw this light. It was a white ball of light, and it was as if it was dancing on the back of my eyelids. It was so beautiful. I wanted it to last forever. I did not want to open my eyes because I did not want the light to disappear. It did not last for a long time. It was probably less than a minute. I remember just sitting there in awe again that God had shown up.
Why are we always surprised when God shows up? God tells us He will always show up, and then we are surprised when He does. Maybe it is because we are used to living in a world filled with humans. Humans don’t always show up. We make mistakes, we make bad choices, we hurt people sometimes without meaning to, and sometimes we say we will show up, and we don’t. God wants to be with us. If we ask Him, if we invite Him into our lives, He will enter our lives and transform them.
I wish I could tell you every time I go to Adoration, I have experiences like these two. I do not. Maybe it is because I am not asking for this type of experience each time. Maybe it is because He knows I do not need it. I am not sure. I do know I enjoy going to Adoration and spending time with God. I like that I can go and be in the same room with Him.
When I first started going to Eucharistic Adoration, I did not know what to do. I thought I would address this since many of you might be in the same boat. To be clear, there is no right or wrong way to do Adoration. God just wants us to be with Him, He does not care what we are doing when we come to be with Him. He would be happy if we just came and sat with Him. In fact, on March 14, 2019, at my charismatic prayer group, one of the ladies received this word, “My children, I love you to be with me. I do not need your effort, I do not need your talents, for I alone will make you fruitful. Just relax, be empty, and be with me.” However, there are many things you could do if you do not want to just go and sit there and enjoy the quiet.
You could say the Rosary while you are there. Currently, when I go to Adoration, I say the Rosary. I have not always done that, but with the craziness of the world today, we need all the help we can get. Many churches have rosary beads and pamphlets on how to say the Rosary in case you are new to say it. You can look in the appendix of this book to see how to say the Rosary. There is also the Chaplet of Divine Mercy that you can say on Rosary beads. You will find this in the appendix as well.
Another option would be to read scripture. You can open randomly to a section of the Bible and start reading. If you don’t want to randomly open the Bible and are wondering about a good place to start, I would suggest starting with the New Testament and going on from there. The psalms and proverbs are also good starting places. Wherever you choose to start, read a little of the Bible and then reflect on what you have just read. What does it mean? Do you have any questions? How does it make you feel?
I usually take my prayer journal and write to God while I am in Adoration. I write about my day, any things I need help with, any prayer requests, and anything else I want to tell Him. Then I wait and listen to what He has to say to me. I think this is something a lot of us do not do. We talk to God an awful lot, but we don’t stop and listen to what He has to say back to us. I have always had a hard time just sitting still and trying to listen to what God has to say to me. Now, instead of trying to sit quietly and listen, I ask God to speak to me through my pen, and I write anything that comes into my mind. This has been so great. For me, it is a much easier way to hear what God wants to tell me, and I also have a record of what He said since I was writing it down as it came to me. You may be skeptical that this could work for you, but I think if you gave it a try, you would be pleasantly surprised at the outcome.
For those of you who would like more structure, I have you covered too. I found this book called “Miracle Hour” by Linda Schubert. I highly recommend you get this book if you get the chance. It is a short book (33 pages) that describes “a method of prayer that will change your life.” Linda talks about breaking your holy hour up into 12 five-minute segments. The twelve segments are Praise, Sing to the Lord, Spiritual Warfare, Surrender, Release of the Holy Spirit, Repentance, Forgiveness, Scripture Reflections, Waiting for the Lord to Speak, Intercessions, Petitions, and Thanksgiving. In her book, she goes into detail on what you could say for each of those 12 sections. I loved finding this book because I am someone who likes to have directions on how to do something. Some people love to be told there is no right or wrong way to do something. I am not one of those people.
Right before finding this book, I decided I was going to wake up an hour earlier than usual each morning and spend that time with God. I was very excited about this new idea and couldn’t wait to see how much I grew in my faith during this one hour. The next morning I woke up ready to grow. However, there were so many choices for things I could do for that one hour I couldn’t decide how to spend it. Some days I would read the Bible, do my prayer journal, or maybe say the Rosary. Whatever you do is great as you are spending time with God and dedicating time to him. I was struggling because it would take me 20 minutes of the hour to figure out what I wanted to do. I was craving structure, and then I found this book at a Life in the Spirit seminar I went to, and I was so happy to have some structure.
I know the benefits of Eucharistic Adoration, and I truly enjoy going. I also struggle to find the time to go. I put on my goals sheet (which I fill out each month) and go to Eucharistic Adoration once a week. I wrote this for about 4 months before I actually started going. Our days are busy, and life happens, and we do not make time for everything. I was speaking to a friend about my struggle with wanting to go but not actually getting there, and she suggested I sign up for an hour each week. For me, this was a great suggestion, as I do have the time to go. I was just filling that time with less important things. However, if I have a commitment to show up and be there, I will show up and be there.
If you have never been to Eucharistic Adoration, and you are looking for ways to increase or strengthen your faith, then my suggestion would be to give it a try. Many churches have certain times a month they offer Adoration. Some churches have perpetual Adoration, which means they have Adoration 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You can go to onto
http://www.therealpresence.org/states/srtby_st.htm and find where Adoration is offered in your state.
Thank you for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to seeing you all again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I.
Are You Thirsty?
Isaiah 55:1-3 "All you who are thirsty, come to the water! You who have no money, come, buy grain and eat; Come, buy grain without money, wine and milk without cost! Why spend your money for what is not bread, your wages for what does not satisfy? Only listen to me, and you shall eat well, you shall delight in rich fare. Pay attention and come to me; listen, that you may have life. I will make with you an everlasting covenant, the steadfast loyalty promised to David.”
The verse of the day on Biblegateway today was Isaiah 55:6. However, when I started to read the whole chapter, this first part of the verse stood out to me. I researched the verses and what they meant, as I was not sure I understood the deeper meaning. I read a really great article titled “The Great Invitation: Come! Drink! Eat! Live!” by John Piper. I will place a link for the article in the show notes. This article gave me a better understanding of what these verses were saying.
The verse begins by saying, “All you who are thirsty, come to the water!” This is an invitation to all of us who are thirsty. All of us who are searching for more. We are looking for the living water that Jesus talks about. The verse also says, “You who have no money.” So the first group who are being invited are those who are thirsty and yet have no money to pay. The article talks about how these people have a thirst in their hearts. The author says these are the people whose “hearts feel like the brown grass in my backyard. It hasn’t rained for a long time. A lot of old hopes have dried up. Dreams have waited and almost died. Dead-end streets again and again. Empty. Unfulfilled. Dissatisfied. Knowing there has to be something more to life.” He talks about how everything good seems out of reach, and you have run out of strength and motivation.
If this is you, the Lord is speaking to you in this verse, He is inviting you into the banquet of salvation. You who have no money, you who have no power and no prestige. You who have no resources. He is calling you to Him, to the one who has it all and can give it all to you. You are exactly who the Lord is looking for in this first verse.
If that is not you, if you do have money, you do have resources and power, then you might fall into the second category of who God is inviting in. Next, it says, “Why spend your money for what is not bread, your wages for what does not satisfy?” The next group of people God is inviting is those who do have money, those who do have the strength to work. This second group of people are self-sufficient. The author describes them like this, “He’s not like the other guy — burnt out, at the end of his rope. He is still spending and still working, dreaming, chasing, searching, experimenting — a different job, different city, different car, different house, different wife, new computer, new boat, new books, new bike, new grill, new season tickets, new diet, new looks — there’s still a lot of looking around left in this person. But still no pot at the end of the rainbow. No fountain of youth. And every triumph peters out. The applause fades. The boat is boring. The style passes. Everything new gets old, and the options get fewer and fewer.”
Does that sound like you? Do you have all the things, and yet you are not happy? Are you constantly searching for the next big thing that will finally fulfill the desire you have or will finally make you happy? Do you know you have this deep hole inside of you longing and needing something that just can’t seem to be filled? No matter how self-sufficient you appear to be on the outside, you can’t seem to fill that hole on the inside.
I think most of us would fall into one of these two categories. The article asks, “What are we offered in these verses?” First, we are offered water, wine & milk. He says that these drinks correspond to the deep needs we all have. Water corresponds to the need for refreshment. When we are thirsty and dehydrated, it is water that we want. Nothing else does the trick. In Psalms 23:2-3 it says, “He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul.” This morning God is inviting you to receive refreshment & restoration. He is inviting you into a new beginning.
Milk corresponds to our need for nourishment. When someone is thirsty, you give them water. However, when you want babies to grow, you give them milk. This tells us that God is not just for emergencies. He is not just for the times when you feel dehydrated. He is there for the long hall. We don’t just give kids milk every now and then. They usually drink it every day. The same is true for the Lord. You can go to him continually, every single day, to get your nourishment. The author states, "He invites you not only to come alive with water but also to be stable and strong with milk.”
Wine corresponds to the need for exhilaration. We need the water to live and not die. We need the milk to grow and be nourished. And yet that is not all we need in life. “No matter how stoic, unemotional, laid-back or poker-faced we may seem to others, there is still a child inside of every one of us that God made for exhilaration—for shouting and singing and dancing and playing and skipping and running and jumping and laughing.” So, what verse one is telling us is that God wants to revive us from dehydration with His water, help nourish us and make us stronger with His milk, and give us exhilaration with His wine.
The second half of the verse above says, “Only listen to me, and you shall eat well, you shall delight in rich fare. Pay attention and come to me; listen, that you may have life. I will make with you an everlasting covenant, the steadfast loyalty promised to David.” Here the Lord is telling us to come to Him to listen to Him. Verse 3 tells us that we can have the same kind of covenant that God had with David. I am not sure if you know a lot about David or not, but God showed favor to David. David was very blessed and looked after. That does not mean he had an easy life, he did not. However, God did bless him and all he did. I definitely would like to share in that covenant with the Lord.
The article talks about four things we need to do in order to get these benefits. First, we need to listen to God’s word. Are we doing that, or are we listening to the words of the world? Next, he said we are called to come, buy, eat & enjoy. Here is his conclusion that explains what this means: “
- If you are distant from God, you need to come, draw near.
- If you have drawn near in recent days or just this morning, but hold back from any transaction analyzing and appraising, you need to buy. I admit it is a strange transaction: there is no price and you are spiritually bankrupt. But you must take this water and milk and wine, and count it yours just as much as if you had bought it, for there is one who has bought it.
- If you have made the transaction and hold the water and milk and wine in your hand, you need to eat. God is not a thing to be studied. He is a person to be experienced. He is food and life and joy for the soul.
- Finally, if you have eaten, delight yourself in the Lord. And say with the psalmist, “You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Psalm 16:11)."
CLICK HERE for the article. I highly encourage you to read the article. I have tried to summarize it for you, and yet the author goes into so much more detail. I think you will really enjoy the full article.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, you are amazing, and we love you. Lord, we thank you for calling us to you over and over again. We thank you that you do not give up on us when we continually turn away from you and turn toward the world. Lord, help us to come to you. Help us to listen to your word and to study your word. Help us to obtain the water, milk, and wine that you have available for us. We thank you, Lord, for all the wonderful things you do for us. You are the king of kings and the Lord of Lords. You are truly amazing! We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you all for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again in the morning. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I. Have a blessed day.
Today I will read a Facebook message from a mom whose son was in an accident. I do not know this family personally. One of my Big Life sisters does, and so she asked for prayers on our mentoring page and kept us updated. There were so many people praying for this young man. This mom’s name is Megan, and she got that phone call that no one wants to receive. That phone call where the sheriff says those four words that change your life forever, “There’s been an accident.” I will probably do another Witness Wednesday on this family later, as there have been so many miracles going on. God has definitely been showing off for this boy and His family. Today’s miracle is about how he was discovered and how if it weren’t for his phone, he wouldn’t be alive today. It’s crazy to me that God even works through cell phones. I will let her explain what happened.
If there is one thing that I want people to know about Creighton’s accident, it is about the importance of having crash detection on your phone. We can say with great certainty that, without crash detection, my son wouldn’t be alive today.
On June 30th, my 17-year-old son was in a rollover accident while driving back to town to go to work. He was driving on a quiet, rural highway in the dark hours of the morning when the accident happened. I got the call a little after 6:00 am from the Sumner County Deputy. The first thing she asked me when I answered the phone was to identify which person in my home drove a red truck. After I told her it was my son Creighton, she said, “You need to get to St. Francis Hospital as soon as possible. He’s been in a rollover accident.” That was the longest 25-minute drive of my life, not knowing what condition he would be in when I got there, only going off the knowledge that I had to identify him, meaning he wasn’t consciously able to tell them who he was on the scene.
When we got to the hospital, we were met at the ER doors by a chaplain. He told us that Creighton was alive (and I finally exhaled for the first time since my phone rang that morning) but that he was in critical condition and they were working on him in the Trauma ICU. He walked us to a room to wait for more information while his medical team worked to stabilize him.
While we were waiting for an update, I was contacted by a Sheriff who was on the scene, letting me know that his team of responders were all thinking of us. Desperate for any sort of information, I had my brother-in-law call him to ask about the details of the accident. He told us that the call came in at 5:18 that morning. He detailed for us their assessment of the scene. They believe Creighton’s car swerved off the road into an embankment, causing his truck to become airborne, rolling end over end when it came back down and ejecting him from the vehicle at some point in the collision. His body was found about 60 feet from his truck. He told us that Creighton was extremely hypoxic when the responders got to him, and he had to be intubated in the field. Over the next few hours, he remained in contact with us. We gave him updates, and he sent us pictures of the truck. We eventually asked the sheriff who called in the accident. He said, “Your son’s phone called 911. He has crash detection on his phone. It detected the accident and called us. When he didn’t respond to us, we dispatched to his location.” We were told that, with where he was in the ditch, it would’ve been difficult for anyone driving by to see him. When they arrived on the scene, the sun was just now coming up. There was little to no traffic and no good samaritans that had found him yet. He was alone and barely alive. Had his phone not had crash detection on it, Creighton wouldn’t still be here.
His injuries are extensive, and he has a long road to recovery. Once he is more stable and off the ventilator, we will travel with him to Madonna Rehab in Nebraska, where he will spend a couple of months in rehabilitation for his brain and spinal cord injuries. We have a positive outlook for his recovery, and he’s already shown us how much of a fighter he is. As heart-wrenching as it is to watch your child fight for their life, I am indescribably thankful that he still gets the chance to fight.
Please share his story and make others aware of the benefits of having crash detection on your phone. Newer versions of the iPhone (I was told it is iPhone 14 and newer) have this feature built into the phone. There are also apps, like Life360, where you can pay a small fee every month to add crash detection to all of your family’s phones. I hope you never need to use it, but if you or your loved one were ever to have an accident, I can promise you will be forever grateful for how quickly they are able to get help.
Wow, what a story. Thank the good Lord above that he had crash detection on his phone. Not only was it an option, but it was turned on. God is so good. This accident happened on June 30th, and I saw on the Facebook page that Creighton is now home! Praise God! The Facebook post that says he is home was from September 27th. So, almost 3 months later, he finally gets to come home. There were so many moments of uncertainty if that day would ever come—so many times when it was one step forward and 3 steps back. However, thanks be to God, Megan has all five of her children under the same roof again! It doesn’t look the same as it did before the accident, but she said having them all under the same roof will be something she never takes for granted again! If you want to read more about this young man’s journey, there is a Facebook page with all the posts about him. If you put in the search bar #creightonstrong, you will see all the posts. I am grateful to the mom for sharing her story. Who knows how many other children she can save by informing parents about crash detection? It was not something I had ever heard of before. Thank you to Megan for sharing this story, and thank you to Jenni, who shared it with the Big Life family so we could all cover this family in prayers. You can certainly see God’s fingerprints all over this situation.
How Long, Lord?
Psalm 13:4-5 “How long, Lord? Will you utterly forget me? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I carry sorrow in my soul, grief in my heart day after day? How long will my enemy triumph over me? Look upon me, answer me, Lord, my God! Give light to my eyes lest I sleep in death, Lest my enemy say, “I have prevailed,” lest my foes rejoice at my downfall. But I trust in your mercy. Grant my heart joy in your salvation, I will sing to the Lord, for he has dealt bountifully with me!”
When I read this Psalm today, I decided to use the whole Psalm instead of just a verse, as I think it is a beautiful example of the cycle of emotions we can go through. The Psalm starts out with lamenting. “How long, Lord, will you utterly forget me? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I carry sorrow in my soul, grief in my heart day after day? How long will my enemy triumph over me?” I am sure we have all been here. I am sure each person listening has had at least one time in their life when they were wondering if the difficult time would ever end. I am sure we have all wondered how long we would have to suffer. I think we have all had a time or two where we wondered if the Lord had turned away from us because it seemed like He abandoned us. Can you remember a time you felt like this? Maybe you are in this lamenting season right now.
I prayed over a man last night who was in such a season. He has been struggling for over a year with a work injury, and it has been one nightmare after another. It has been really stressful for him. He is finally starting to have some peace about the situation, and now the enemy is coming in and trying to take that peace from him. There are a lot of unknowns in his situation, and yet he is choosing to trust the Lord. Trusting the Lord doesn’t mean everything will suddenly be easy. I am sure he will have similar questions to the ones above. How long will I be without work, Lord? How will I pay my bills, Lord? How will I get sleep when my mind won’t stop thinking?
He told me the Lord reminded him of something the other day. When all the thoughts and doubts started to flood his mind, the Lord reminded him of a song that he used to sing at church when he was younger. He just started singing this song, and then his thoughts quieted down. This is such a great witness to the power of praise and praise music. When the enemy is attacking, you start to praise the Lord. The enemy is attacking because he wants you to turn against the Lord. When you start praising him, the enemy flees. Even if you don’t know what to say, you can just say “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus” repeatedly.
The next part of the Psalm says, “Look upon me, answer me, Lord, my God! Give light to my eyes lest I sleep in death, Lest my enemy say, “I have prevailed,” lest my foes rejoice at my downfall.” How many of us have been here? How many of us have begged God to do something, to look at us, to help us? The author of this Psalm is asking the Lord for help. He is asking the Lord to save him. He asks the Lord to bring him into the light before it is too late. Have you ever felt like if the Lord didn’t save you soon, it would be too late? I know I have.
I had surgery one time when I was younger. It was an outpatient procedure. Tony was taking me home to recuperate, and we stopped at the grocery store to pick up some comfort food for recovery. I didn’t feel well and thought I might pass out. We sat on a bench, and I passed out. I remember feeling like I had been out for a long time, and then I heard someone say, “Call 911.” I remember thinking that if they hadn’t even been called yet, then I wasn’t going to make it until they got there. I was taken to the hospital, and I was fine, but I definitely was praying at that moment for God to help me immediately.
The Psalm also says, “Lest my enemy say, “I have prevailed,” lest my foes rejoice at my downfall.” We don’t want the enemy to be able to say they won. We already know who wins the war between good and evil, and it is good. When Jesus died on the cross, He defeated death and evil once and for all! God is not going to let evil overcome us.
Finally, the psalm ends with the author reassuring the Lord of his trust. “But I trust in your mercy. Grant my heart joy in your salvation, I will sing to the Lord, for he has dealt bountifully with me!” In the span of a few lines, the author goes from lamenting to begging God for help, to reassuring God that he trusts Him, and then he is singing to the Lord for all He has done. This is not uncommon. Sometimes in the course of praying for things, we realize how much God has done for us in the past, and our petitions or our lamenting turns to praise.
I was reading the devotional titled “Jesus Calling.” It is an awesome devotional with messages from the Lord for each day of the year. I really liked today’s as it goes with the message of this episode. I will leave you with the words from this devotional:
When many things seem to be going wrong, trust me. When your life feels increasingly out of control, thank me. These are supernatural responses, and they can lift you above your circumstances. If you do what comes naturally in the face of difficulties, you may fall prey to negativism. Even a few complaints can set you on a path that is a downward spiral by darkening your perspective and mindset. With this attitude controlling you, complaints flow more and more readily from your mouth. Each one moves you steadily down the slippery spiral, but it is possible to apply brakes. Cry out to me in my name! Affirm your trust in Me, regardless of how you feel. Thank me for everything, though this seems unnatural – even irrational. Gradually you'll begin to ascend, recovering your lost ground.
When you are back on ground level, you can face your circumstances from a humble perspective. If you choose supernatural responses this time: trusting and thanking me – you will experience my most unfathomable peace.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to be with all those who are listening to this episode today. Lord, I ask you to be with all of us who are in a difficult place right now. Lord, please shine your light into the darkness. Please fill us with hope that you will save us before it is too late. Fill us with hope that our enemies won’t be able to say they defeated us. Lord, help us remember to praise you when times are hard. Remind us to thank you when times are hard. Help us not get caught up in negativity and keep us from falling down that slippery spiral. Show us how to apply the brakes and get back on ground level. Lord, I pray in a special way for each and every person listening to this episode that feels lost. Help them feel seen, Lord. We love you, Lord, you are amazing! We ask all of this in accordance with the will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Retreat registration has officially closed. I look forward to spending a few days with those who are able to come. It will be a great weekend. I look forward to meeting you here tomorrow with another witness. If you have a witness you would like to share, please let me know. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
God is talking. Are you listening?
1 Kings 19:12-13 After the earthquake, fire—but the Lord was not in the fire; after the fire, a light silent sound. When he heard this, Elijah hid his face in his cloak and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. A voice said to him, Why are you here, Elijah?
This verse takes place on a mountaintop. Elijah, a great prophet of the Lord, is hiding in a cave when the Lord appears to Him and asks him what he is doing in the cave. Next is 1 Kings 19:11-13 "Then the Lord said: Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord; the Lord will pass by. There was a strong and violent wind rending the mountains and crushing rocks before the Lord—but the Lord was not in the wind; after the wind, an earthquake—but the Lord was not in the earthquake; after the earthquake, fire—but the Lord was not in the fire; after the fire, a light silent sound. When he heard this, Elijah hid his face in his cloak and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. A voice said to him, Why are you here, Elijah?
At the end of Friday’s episode, I said I would talk about hearing the Lord’s voice more on Monday. I think this is a good verse to show us what it might be like to hear God’s voice. Elijah was told to go out and stand on the mountain, and the Lord will pass by. Then there was a strong wind, but that was not the Lord. After the wind, there was an earthquake, but the Lord wasn’t in the earthquake. After the earthquake, there was a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. God was found in the sound of silence on that mountain. That is where you can find the Lord too.
When we think about hearing the Lord’s voice, we tend to think of something like the scene in the movie “The Wizard of Oz.” We picture this big booming voice coming from the Lord. We also tend to think if the Lord was talking to us, there is no way we would miss it. This is not often the case. First, the Lord is talking to each and every one of us every day. If we can’t hear Him, it is because either we aren’t listening or because the sounds of this world are too loud. Only you can know which of these is most true for you. Are you spending time in silence, waiting for the Lord to speak to you? How often are you doing this?
I think it is amazing that God revealed himself in the silence. God is almighty, He is powerful, and He could have come in the fire or the earthquake, and yet he chose to come in the silence. I love that. I love that God doesn’t scare us when He talks to us. He doesn’t do something that would frighten us. How scared do you think you would be if you were just sitting down at the kitchen counter and all of a sudden you heard this big booming voice from the sky? What about if every time you went to make a decision, a booming voice from the sky told you which decision you should make? Life would seem pretty weird if that happened.
My experience has been something quite different. Whenever I have experienced the Lord speaking to me, it has been in a few different ways, but never a booming voice from the sky. The most common way for me to hear the Lord is through my thoughts. I ask the Lord to speak to me, and then I write down anything that comes into my mind. I do not question what I think He is saying, I do not let myself analyze it while I write it down. I just write down whatever comes into my mind. After I am done writing, I will re-read it, and if anything looks strange or makes me feel funny, I will talk to the Lord about it.
Another way we can all hear the Lord talking to us is that still, small voice inside. Do you know the one I am talking about? Have you heard that little voice inside of you that warns you when you shouldn’t do something? That voice that tells you when you should do something. I had that voice just yesterday telling me to check in with someone about coming to the retreat. I almost ignored it because I had already asked her, and she had already said she was busy and wasn’t going to come. I didn’t want to bug her or make her feel guilty for not coming, so I almost didn’t reach out. However, I knew it was the Holy Spirit telling me to reach out, so I did anyway. It turns out her plans changed, and she was now free to come next weekend. I am grateful I listened to that small voice inside that told me to reach out.
Another way God can talk with us is by visions. When you ask the Lord to talk with you, or you sit quietly in silence, you might close your eyes and get a vision of something. Sometimes it can just be a quick something, and other times it can be a whole scene. I remember one of the first times I went to a retreat. I was sitting in adoration, and I asked the Lord to let me feel His presence. I just wanted to know He was there with me. When I closed my eyes, I saw this white light bouncing around off the back of my eyelids. It is so cool. I remember not wanting to open my eyes because I feared it would go away, which it did. However, I did get to sit with that vision for a few minutes. Other people have really vivid visions where they can see a whole scene unfold before their eyes.
The last way I have experienced this is when I am sitting in a prayer group, and we tell the Lord that we are listening. I tell the Lord if He wants to tell me something, I will share it with the group. When I am in this situation, I get words that come into my mind. They are words that are not really spoken. It’s not as if I hear a voice dictating them to me. It is more like as I speak, the words just seem to keep coming. It is truly remarkable.
If you do hear an actual voice in your head from the Lord, it will most likely sound like your voice. The Lord is not trying to scare us. If we had this strange voice talking to us in our heads, we would think we were going crazy. So, God is gentle, and when He talks to us, He uses a voice we are used to hearing our own voice. This way, we can focus more on listening to it and less on what it sounds like or who is saying it.
I hope this helps you understand a bit more how God tends to talk with us. He truly does want to talk to each and every one of us each day. Where in your day can you take a few minutes to just sit in silence and give the Lord some time to talk to you? I promise if you start giving the Lord a chance to talk with you, you will be amazed at what He has to say. He is a good and loving Father who wants to talk with you. Won’t you give Him a chance?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, you are amazing, and we would love to talk with you and have you talk with us. Please show us how. Please show us where in our days we have the time to sit in silence and just be with you, to just listen to you. Lord, we want to put you first. Show us how. Lord, we are sorry we tend to fill our world with so much noise that we can’t hear you. Please help us change this, Lord. Help us get our priorities back on track. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Last call for the retreat. CLICK HERE for retreat info. I will be sending in my numbers later this afternoon. I am so grateful to all who have signed up already. I look forward to meeting you in a few days! I look forward to meeting you all here again tomorrow. If someone has a witness, they would be willing to share. Please reach out today or tomorrow so we can get that recorded. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Episode #587 A Conversation With The Lord About Mercy
Isaiah 55:6-7 “Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake their way, and the unrighteous their thoughts; let them return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.”
Today I have something a little different for you. Yesterday at prayer group, my good friend Louise did a teaching on God’s mercy and Justice. She talked about something she had heard in a sermon years ago. The priest said something his spiritual director told him, “God’s Justice is God’s mercy.” After the Lord brought the sermon back to her mind, they had a little back-and-forth conversation, and I am going to share that conversation with you as I feel God was giving us a glimpse into how He thinks and who He is. God’s ways are not our ways, and His thoughts are not our thoughts. So, when He gives us a glimpse into his ways, I feel we should all pay attention. Here is what she shared with us.
“I am merciful. I pour out mercy and forgiveness in torrents upon all of you, my children. I rain down mercy on every one of my children with no exceptions.” At that point, I found myself getting an image and looking at torrential rain. We've all seen torrential rain, and when it comes down, it comes down in buckets. It is heavy, and the Earth doesn't really have time to soak it all in. What can happen if it's a lasting rain is that things will accumulate, and it can create a little river and start really moving with a swift current. That is what I was picturing when the Lord said to me, “My children who love and praise me, honor me by their lives of holiness, know how to flow with the swift current. By the power of the Holy Spirit, they abandon their attempts to fight this current. And flow freely with it. Its power and speed may seem frightening, but they remain afloat by practicing the gifts of the Holy Spirit." The Isaiah gifts can be found in Isaiah 11:2-4a. “The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear; but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth.” and the charismatic gifts can be found in 1 Corinthians 12:4-11, “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.”
Then after I looked at those scriptures, the Lord said to me, "Those who don't know me or refuse to accept my existence. Those who no longer have faith in me, those who believe worldly philosophies are the way to live, and those deeply embedded in sinfulness struggle in this river. They fear they will drown. They fight the current of mercy and forgiveness, trying by their own strength and power to stay afloat. I need you to help them, my children." So I asked the Lord how do we do this? What are you asking of us? And he gave me two things. First, he said, "Be an example of them of how to float in this current. Show them lives abandoned to God and his love and power, especially in your interactions with them." Then second thing he said to me was, and this I found way more challenging was, "Reach out your hand to them as they pass by you in this current. Help them to stop struggling in this current of mercy and forgiveness. Help to steady them by companioning to them as you float together to the large lake of my calming love that is the river's end."
Wasn't that powerful? There is more I want to say about listening to the Lord’s voice, but I don’t want to detract from His message on Mercy, so I will talk about hearing the Lord’s voice on Monday. Today and this weekend, I hope you re-listen or re-read the Lord’s word and really let it sink in. There is a transcript of the message in the show notes so you can read through it slowly and really absorb what God is telling us about His mercy.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless each and every person listening to this episode today. Lord, I thank you so much for the blessing Louise is to me personally, to our prayer community, and to all who know her. I thank you for her faithfulness, not only in listening to your word and writing it down but also in sharing it with others. Lord, help us all to hear your message today. Help us to take this message to our hearts and to apply this message in our lives. Lord, help us to reach out our hand to those drowning in your mercy. Help us to steady them. Lord, show us how to be an example to them. Help us to be an example of your calming love. We love you, Lord, and we are so grateful you don’t give up on a single one of us. We are grateful for your mercy for each and every one of us. Lord, we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to Walk Boldly with Jesus. Just a reminder that if you want to join me on retreat next weekend and learn more about God’s love and how to hear His voice, I need to know by this Sunday night (Oct. 1st) as I need to send in the numbers to the retreat house on Monday morning. I look forward to meeting you here again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed weekend!
Chocolate Milk
John 20:21-22 “Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit."
This verse takes place after Jesus has been crucified. The apostles are all locked up in the upper room because they are afraid if the Jewish people knew where they were, they would be crucified, too. I am sure this was a very confusing time for the apostles. They had been living life with Jesus for the last few years. Every day extraordinary things happened. Then they find out that Jesus is going to be crucified. I mean, they knew Jesus had enemies, but I don’t think they understood what was truly going on. How could they? How is it possible to comprehend the man they had been following, the man they knew was the one true king, was going to be crucified? The Messiah was supposed to come and deliver them from their captives. Yet Jesus hadn’t defeated the Romans yet. How could He be leaving them?
I am sure this thought was going through so many people’s minds at the time. It must have been very confusing. They had read or been taught that when the Messiah comes, He will save them. They assume this means He will save them from the Roman occupation. They don’t realize that Jesus is here for much bigger things. Jesus has come to save their souls.
The apostles are locked in the upper room, and Jesus appears to them. I wonder if they were frightened at first. I wonder if they asked Him if it was really Him. Take a minute, close your eyes, and try to picture what it was like for them in that upper room. The man they thought was the Lord was crucified, and then they felt they needed to lock themselves in a room for fear of death, and then Jesus appeared to them in this locked room. I wonder if they thought He was a ghost? I wonder what they were thinking, what was going through their mind.
It says in the verse above this one that Jesus showed them his hands and feet, and then they rejoiced that He had risen. The first thing that Jesus did, even before showing them His hands and feet, was to impart peace to them. The first thing He said in that room was, “Peace be with you.” I think this makes perfect sense because they probably weren’t very peaceful. They were scared and unsure of what to do next.
After Jesus shows them his wounds, and they rejoice that He has returned, Jesus talks to them. “Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” Jesus knows they are confused about what just happened and what is going to happen. They had been following Jesus. That was their job, their life for the last several years. They had to have been wondering what they were going to do now that Jesus was gone. Then Jesus appeared and told them what to do. He told them that He was sending them out to do the works that He did. This gives them some direction and some guidance.
However, how could they go out and do the things that He did when they were scared of persecution? The next line answers this. It says, “When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” Jesus gave them the Holy Spirit to build them up and give them strength. The Holy Spirit gave them a holy boldness to go out and proclaim the good news about Jesus Christ. It gave them the courage to come out of the locked room and say all the things they had been taught to say. They witnessed all they had seen and heard over the several years they were with Jesus. They had the courage to leave the room, and that very same day, they baptized 3,000.
This is the same Holy Spirit that each one of us has living inside of us. We each, you and me, have the Spirit of Christ living inside of us. We have the potential to have this same holy boldness that the apostles exhibited. We have the potential to do all the signs and wonders that they did. The reason for this is that they were only capable of doing signs and wonders because Jesus gave them the authority, and He gave the Holy Spirit. Jesus didn’t just give these gifts to the apostles, and then they died with them 2,000 years ago. When Jesus gave them to the apostles, He was giving them to all those who were to follow after them as well.
If you have been baptized, you have received the Holy Spirit. This means you have all the power and all the courage that the apostles had living inside of you. You just have to access it. There is an analogy that I heard in Encounter Ministries, and I have also heard it at the Life in the Spirit seminars. I am not sure exactly how it goes, but it basically compares our lives to a glass of chocolate milk. Our life before the Holy Spirit, before baptism, is just plain milk. However, when you add the Holy Spirit, it is like you are adding chocolate sauce to the milk. Now that we have added the chocolate sauce, do we automatically have chocolate milk? No, we need to stir the milk to spread the chocolate sauce all around. This is similar to the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit can give you the power and the courage to do many things, but you need to call up it. You need to step out in faith and believe that it will be there to help you. Once you start calling upon the Holy Spirit to help you, then you will begin to see extraordinary things start to happen all around you. All you have to do is read the book of Acts in the Bible to see all the amazing things the apostles accomplished once they had the Holy Spirit living inside of them. Check out the book of Acts and then decide what amazing things you are going to do with this beautiful gift of the Holy Spirit that Jesus gave us.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening today. Lord, thank you for giving us the Holy Spirit. You are amazing. Thank you for giving us the authority to do the works that Jesus did and even great works now that He is with you in Heaven. Lord, we ask that you help us to see the ways you want us to use the power of the Holy Spirit in our own lives. Help us to see what you want us to do. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with our will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you want to come to hang out with me next weekend at the retreat, I need you to sign up by tomorrow. CLICK HERE to register for the retreat. Thank you to all those who have already signed up. It is going to be an amazing weekend! I can't wait to do life with you next weekend and talk all about how much God loves you! Retreats are such a great way to get filled up! I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Click Here for Retreat Info (just 3 more days to register!)
We have all seen God working in our lives. However, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences, the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or click here. It won’t take up much of your time, and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story, and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow, and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I. Have a blessed day!
Answered Prayers
Today, I want to witness to you the power of prayer. I am very grateful because my parents are devout Catholics. They both grew up in very Catholic homes, and their parents passed down to them the importance of our faith. They both went to Catholic schools growing up. Sometimes I wish that I lived back when they lived, and it seems like being Catholic was easier. Although, I am not sure it was easier. Sometimes I think that is just what we tell ourselves to make ourselves feel better. My mom and dad started dating when they were in High School. My parents, while in High School, used to meet at 5 or 6 in the morning so they could go to daily mass together. Nowadays, kids don’t even want to go to mass on Sunday morning. They don’t want to be up early on a school day, and they certainly don’t want to be in mass before school.
Maybe the same was true back then. Maybe my parents were different from all those around them. Maybe it wasn’t “cool” to go to daily mass back then, and yet they wanted to. Maybe they didn’t want to be at mass necessarily, maybe they just wanted to see each other, and that was the only way they could. I honestly don’t know, although I should ask them. The fact that they were waking up early to go to mass together before school is an answered prayer. Actually, it is probably many answered prayers. It is probably the answer to the prayer, please let me child know you. It is probably the answer to the prayer, please let my child meet a spouse who is Catholic. An answer to, please let my child meet someone who knows the Lord like they do.
I know my grandparents prayed a lot for my parents. and I can see the effects of those prayers, even after my grandparents have gone to meet Jesus. I am sure they are still praying for our family. I am sure they are up in heaven praying blessings and prayers of protection over us as we speak. Isn’t that awesome to think about? When our loved ones die, they don’t stop praying for us. Actually, their prayers probably increase because they don’t have the worldly distractions that we have here on earth. They can devote all their time to praising God and praying for their loved ones left here on Earth.
The reason I say I can see the results of their prayers is because my parents found each other. These days it is more and more rare to find a couple where they are both Catholic. And even if you are lucky enough to find a Catholic spouse, it is rare you are both as excited about the faith as my parents. My mom is the oldest of 10 children ranging from 80 years old down to about 60 or so. All of my mom’s siblings are alive to this day. It is not as if they have all had easy lives. It is not that they have never been sick, they have, and yet they are all still alive and well. That is the answer to so many prayers that probably seemed unanswered at the time. My mom and several of her siblings have had skin cancer, and yet through it all, God has protected them. That is so many answered prayers!
My parents had 11 children. When they got married, they wanted to have 12 children, a whole dozen. The reason for this is that my dad only had one brother, and they didn’t get to play together too much when they were growing up. My dad’s house was always so quiet, and there wasn’t much going on. However, when he went to my mom’s house, it was the opposite. It was never quiet, and there was always something going on. So, they decided to replicate that in their house and have a dozen kids. The fact that I have 10 brothers and sisters is another answer to prayers. Actually, probably several answered prayers as my parents said if they were unable to conceive, they would say a novena, and at the end of it, she would be pregnant.
My mom and dad are both in their early 80’s and are doing great! They are more active than most of their kids are, as they go out square and round dancing three nights a week. They are very involved in the church and run the prayer group there. My mom does the daughters of Isabella at the state level. My dad is the chaplain for the Knights of Columbus and another organization in town. They are healthy enough to remain busy, and I know that is the answer to many prayers.
Another way I can see so many answered prayers is the fact that myself and my siblings are all alive and well. It is not uncommon for large families to lose some of their siblings along the way. It is not uncommon in any size family, actually. However, all my siblings are doing great. I will say we have some close calls. My sister had a mysterious illness when she was younger, and we almost lost her. My brother was pulled through a big machine that makes chicken wire. We definitely could have lost him then. There have been a few suicide attempts in our family. There have been really bad car accidents. My sister had open heart surgery in the 8th grade. One of my brothers jumped out of a plane with the army and hit his head on the side of the plane on his way down. There have been plenty of opportunities when things could have ended very differently, and they didn’t, and I am so thankful for all those answered prayers of protection and healing.
I say all of this to let you know that your prayers are being answered. It is important that you continue to pray, even when you don’t see the results you want. I don’t know if my grandparents knew how important their prayers were. I don’t know if they got to see the fruit of their prayers while they were still here on earth. I don’t know if you will always see the fruit of your prayers either. Sometimes, we don’t recognize the fruit of our prayers. For instance, when Tony lost his job in the military, it didn’t look like an answered prayer. It looked like God had abandoned him. Yet for at least five years before he lost his job, he had been searching for a government job that was not in the military, and nothing was working out. It was a catch-22 because you got military preference once you were out of the military, but he didn’t want to get out of the military until he had another job. Well, God took care of all of that when he had Tony leave the military and then found him a higher-paying civilian job at a military base that he loved so much. It was definitely years of answered prayers, and yet it really didn’t look like it.
Our prayers matter. Keep praying for your kids to come back to the church, even if you don’t see any results. Keep praying they meet someone who loves Jesus. Or if they are already married to someone who doesn’t pray for that person’s conversion. Our prayers are so powerful. God has told us in our prayer group that we, the world, don’t understand how powerful our prayers are. Don’t give up. Keep praying, even when you don’t see results. I bet if you sat down and looked back over your life, you would also see so many answered prayers. God is good, and He does answer our prayers. All we need to do is look for the answers, and we will find them!
I Desire Mercy, not Sacrifice
Matthew 9:13 “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.”
To put this verse into context for you, I will read the few verses before this verse. Matthew 9:9-12 “ As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up and followed him. And as he sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” But when he heard this, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.” Then this is when Jesus said, “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.”
I was unsure what this verse meant, so I looked it up. I found a good article that explained what is happening here. The article is called “Mercy Not Sacrifice,” and it is on the webpage of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish in Pennsylvania. CLICK HERE for article. Let’s start with the definition of mercy. According to the article I read, Jesus “was quoting the prophet Hosea, who, centuries earlier, had condemned the Jews for attempting to excuse their idolatry and their oppression of the poor by offering the prescribed animal sacrifices.
What Jesus is saying in this verse is that it is not all about the laws and what we can do or what we can give up so that we can look holy or we can look religious. The Pharisees looked around Matthew’s house, and they saw a bunch of nameless sinners and tax collectors. Jesus wants us to know people's names. Jesus wants us to get involved with our hearts and not just our heads. The article gave the example of someone who joins a service project to help out around someone’s house. When she is done working, she talks with the owner and finds out the owner is very lonely. Now this woman has a choice to make. Does she head home so she can get the long list of errands done that day? Or does she accept the invitation for a cup of coffee and visit with this person?
The woman in the article goes in and has a cup of coffee. They have a great conversation, and they talk each week when they see each other at mass. The woman even stops by occasionally to see how the owner is doing. She prays for him in her personal prayer time. They have formed a relationship. The article says, “When we view what we do in Jesus’s name as simply nameless, faceless sacrifices, we have missed the whole concept of “love as I have loved you.” It’s all personal with Jesus. It is all about relationships.
Since we are talking about mercy in this verse, I think this is a good time to address why Catholics feel like we are required to do works of mercy. Let me preface this by saying I am not an expert in this area. I am learning just as you are. If you have questions you want me to answer or if you think I have gotten something wrong, feel free to email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com and let me know. The works of mercy are a chance for us to give witness to Christ. Jesus entrusted his followers with the responsibility of caring for others. He identified himself as the one whom his disciples would love and care for: “Whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me” Matthew 25:40. Jesus asks us to see him in every person we meet, especially in those who are suffering in need. He asks us to care for each person in a spirit of loving service, knowing that we are really loving and caring for Christ, who, through the Holy Spirit, lives on in every person.
There are two different types of works of mercy. The Corporal Works of Mercy are acts of love that address the physical and material needs of others. The Corporal Works of Mercy are: Feed the hungry, Give drink to the thirsty, Clothe the naked, Visit the imprisoned, Shelter the homeless, Visit the sick, and Bury the dead. Then there are the Spiritual Works of Mercy, which address the needs of peoples’ minds, hearts, and souls. The Spiritual Works of Mercy are Admonish, the sinner. (Give correction to those who need it.) Instruct the ignorant. (Share our knowledge with others.) Counsel the doubtful. (Give advice to those who need it.) Comfort the sorrowful. (Comfort those who suffer.) Bear wrongs patiently. (Be patient with others.) Forgive all injuries. (Forgive those who hurt us.) Pray for the living and the dead.
The works of mercy are practical ways to live out our Catholic faith. Even just one work of mercy can make an impact on the world. Performing Works of Mercy also prepares disciples for the Last Judgement, when Jesus Christ will come at the end of time to judge all people on how merciful they have been and how well they have treated those who are poor or in need. Jesus invites his followers: “Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and you gave me food, I was thirsty, and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me” (Matthew 25:31-32)
Jesus is asking us to take care of the hungry, the thirsty, the lonely, the naked, and those in prison. There are other places where Jesus asks us to take care of the orphans and the widows. Jesus does not want us going through this world being concerned only with ourselves and with our salvation. We might be fasting and praying and doing all we can to get ourselves into heaven, and yet if we are not taking care of others as well, we are not doing what he is asking us to do. We are told to see Christ in each person. Think about how you treat people. Do you treat each person you meet throughout the day as if they were Jesus? Jesus’ spirit is inside each one of us. Would Jesus be proud of the way you are treating the people that you meet? How could you change this?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, let your words sink into our hearts. Show us how you want us to help those in need. Show us what needs to change in our lives. Show us where we can make changes to live more in alignment with how you want us to live. We love you, Lord, you are amazing. We want to love others like you love us. Show us how. Help us to see you in everyone we meet. Remind us that you are calling us to do that. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Reminder the retreat registration closes in a few days. If you have been procrastinating, hurry, you won’t want to miss out! I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
What To Do About Anxiety, Fear & Worry
Matthew 5:9 “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”
I think it is kind of interesting that this is the verse of the day today. I was searching for good scripture verses for anxiety. I woke up this morning to a Facebook message from a friend asking for prayers because her anxiety was really bad, and she couldn’t sleep. This, unfortunately, happens to more people than we know. While looking for a verse, my phone buzzed with the verse of the day. I think it is interesting because this was the verse for my small group at the retreat. We have a group chat with all of us in that group, and it is called the Peacemakers. So, when I saw the verse, I knew that was the one I was supposed to use.
Then the Lord showed me that peace is exactly what those with anxiety need. Anxiety, worry, and fear are happening more and more these days. There are so many young people suffering from it, and yet it is affecting the older population as well. It seems no one is above the grasp of worry, anxiety, and fear. I imagine one thing that makes it so hard is that you don’t always know what you are anxious about. If you knew what it was, if it was a specific thing you were worried about, you could talk yourself out of it. You might be able to reason with yourself. However, when you have these feelings, but they aren’t about something specific, you aren’t sure what to tell yourself.
In my book on Anxiety, I have a chapter on what to do at the moment when you are having an anxiety attack. I am not a counselor, so what I am sharing with you are things I have learned by researching anxiety as I have a lot of friends and family who suffer from it, and I have tried to help them over the years. If you are struggling with anxiety, you may want to talk to a counselor about it. I have talked to a counselor for years for various reasons, and I find them so helpful!
I have heard when you are having anxiety, you should try to get back to the present moment. Anxiety is usually when we are thinking about the past or the future. However, in the present moment, there isn’t anything to worry about because it just is. Trying to get yourself back to the present moment when you are anxious can be just the trick you need. However, how do you do that? There are several different activities that you can quickly do when you are noticing that you are starting to worry. Actually, even if you are in a full-blown panic attack, you may be able to do these activities to calm yourself down. I will go over two of them
1.) The first and probably easiest to explain is to count numbers out of order or backward. When you do this, you are shifting focus from one part of your brain to another, and it is harder to be anxious when you are using this other part of your brain. Let's all practice this now. Everyone counts down backwards from 10. Awesome, nice job! You can also count numbers out of order. For instance, 3, 10, 15, 4, 8, 22, 17. Again, this forces your focus to start using another part of your brain.
2.) The next one is to enlist the help of your senses to pull you back into the present moment. The Mayo Clinic calls it the 5-4-3-2-1 Countdown to make anxiety blasts off. Here is how you would do it. You take a moment and look around at your surroundings. Now you would list:
5 things you can see: Your arm, a pen, your computer, the rug, the window.
4 things you can physically feel: Your face, the ground, your hair, your shoe
3 things you can hear: The rain outside, a car passing by, your fridge buzzing
2 things you can smell: your feet, a plant
1 thing you can taste: your chapstick, your drink, gum. These will obviously be different for everyone. It depends on the room you are in or the place where this occurs. It depends on what you are doing and what your surroundings are. However, this is something you can practice and get good at when you are not in the middle of an attack. You could silently do it in various familiar surroundings. For instance, when you are in your car on the way to work, or anyway, you could quickly run through this exercise. When you are making breakfast, lunch, or dinner, you could run through it. The more you practice it when you are not in the middle of a panic attack, the more likely you are to think of it when you are.
Counting backward or out of order is something I think you could easily practice when you are not in the middle of an attack. Just maybe try once or twice a day to count backward or to count out of order. If you have anxious thoughts a lot, but they aren’t to the level of a panic attack, then try to implement this technique right when you realize you’re thinking about something that is making you anxious. This doesn’t have to be something you do out loud. It doesn’t have to be something that anyone else is aware that you are doing. If you can get in the habit of recognizing the thoughts that are causing you anxiety, that would be the first step. Then, try counting backward or out of order to distract yourself from those thoughts.
The third one is extreme sensations. For instance, eating a fireball or a lemon head. This shock to the senses might be just enough to bring you back to the present moment. Also, the sensation of touching ice. This would be one that I am not sure you could practice when you are not in the moment. However, it would be one that you would need to prepare for. If you have tried the other two techniques and you have not found the relief at the moment that you are looking for, you may want to try this one. In order to try this one, you would have to have something on hand. If you are at your house, you likely have access to ice. If you are thinking that you would like to try one of the other things, you would have to buy those ahead of time so that you have them on hand when you need them.
This is another way we can help ourselves in the moment. We can be prepared for them when they come. If we know we are prone to panic attacks, what can we do to be prepared? What if it happens when we are out with others? What can we do in that situation? How would we want to handle it if we could plan in advance? What about if it happens when we are alone? What will our plan be? What if our kids are around? There are many different circumstances where panic attacks can come about. Is it possible to come up with a plan for the different circumstances? Is it possible to run through these scenarios in your mind ahead of time so if you find yourself in one of these situations, it won’t be the first time? Almost like you are doing a dress rehearsal in your brain so that you can practice the best way to respond.
I have been told that our brains believe what we tell them and that the reason visualization works so well is that our brains can’t tell the difference between what we are visualizing we are doing and what we are really doing. For instance, the best athletes run over their plays or their movements in their heads, even when they are not at practice. A golfer will visualize holding the golf club. They will visualize swinging it, hitting the ball, and then the ball going into the hole. They do this over and over again in their mind, and even though they are not actually doing it, when it comes time to do it on the course, their mind thinks they have been here before. Their mind feels like it has done this tons of times before, and it acts as if it has.
Wouldn’t it be great if you could train your mind to react to these anxious thoughts in a more productive way? Wouldn’t it be great if your mind automatically started one of these techniques when you felt a panic attack coming on? Wouldn’t it be great if you were prepared for these attacks before they came? I believe these things are possible. It won’t be easy, and it will take work, but it can happen. You can gain some control in the midst of these attacks if you do the work to prepare ahead of time. If you are struggling with anxiety, know that there are things you can do. Don’t just accept that you are someone with anxiety. Pray to God and ask Him to take it from you. Practice some of these techniques so that when the anxiety comes on, you are prepared. You can do this! The evil one is not more powerful than the Lord is, and He is the one protecting you!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask that you help those who are listening and who struggle with fear, worry, or anxiety. Please let something I said here help ease their anxiety. Please put on their hearts what would work for them. Help anyone struggling with anxiety to know that they can count on you to fill them with peace any time they ask. Help them to know they can turn to you and that there are things they can do. Help them in the moment, Lord, to see that you are there with them. Help them to feel your presence. Help them to know deep in their heart and minds that the darkness will not overtake them and that you would never let that happen. Be with them, Lord! We love you, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I put a link in the show notes an article titled 20 Prayers for Anxiousness to Trade Your Worries and Fears for God's Peace. Click Here I just want to remind you that this is the last week to sign up for the retreat. If you have been thinking about it and just haven’t signed up yet, please do so, as I have to turn the numbers in to the retreat center very soon. CLICK HERE for retreat info. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Strive For Holiness
Hebrews 12:14 “Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.”
Striving for holiness is something I have been hearing a lot about over the last few years. It is an interesting phrase that I don’t think many people think about. If you were to ask people if they were striving for holiness, I am not sure they would say yes. I don’t think this is because we don’t want holiness. I think it is because we just never really thought about it before. Another reason might be that we have thought about it, and yet we discounted ourselves because we could never be holy. Who are we to think we could be holy?
I remember going to a talk once by Jon Leonetti. He is excellent, by the way. You can find short videos on YouTube where he talks about all things Catholic. You can tell just by listening to him how much he loves his Faith. In his talk, he asked the audience how many people sitting there wanted to go to heaven. We all raised our hands. Then he asked how many of us wanted to be saints. I think there might have been 3 of us that raised our hands out of a couple hundred people in the room. He then said, “You know only saints are in heaven, right?” It’s true. Nothing unclean gets into heaven. This is why we go to purgatory. However, wouldn’t it be better if we started working towards holiness before we died? Wouldn’t it be better not to have to spend as much time getting it right after we die?
This verse tells us that we are ALL called to strive for peace and holiness. It says without this, we will not see the Lord. I don’t know about you, but I want to see the Lord. I want to do whatever I have to do to be able to not only see the Lord but to spend eternity with Him. Holiness is not something we will be perfect at, and I don’t think God expects perfection from us. It doesn’t say in this verse that we must master peace and holiness. It says we should strive for it. So, how do we strive for it?
Let's start with what holiness even means. From what I can gather, holiness means being set apart. Being holy means, we are set apart from the things of this world. It means we are set apart from sin too. One way we could strive for holiness is to ask God for the grace to follow Him in His ways. We can ask the Lord to put on our hearts the various ways we are falling short of holiness and then give us the grace and the strength to change those things. We can take all those things that the Lord put on our hearts to confession, and we can confess our sins and try to sin less next time. Going to confession can help us sin less because it brings our attention to our sins. The more you examine your conscience, the more you will begin to think about it even when you aren’t meaning to. Also, the more aware you will be of what is right and what is wrong. The more you start to look at the Examination of Conscience, the more the Holy Spirit begins to point out things. First, He will point out the big ways we are breaking our relationship with the Lord. However, as we continue to grow closer to Him, we will start to notice even the small ways we offend the Lord. It is gradual and gentle. The Lord is not going to put all the things in your heart at once. He meets us where we are and walks us in slowly.
Another important factor of being holy is having a personal, intimate relationship with our Lord, Jesus, and /or the Holy Spirit. They are three people in one, so it doesn’t matter which you have an intimate relationship with. A lot of people feel more comfortable talking to Jesus as we can relate to Him. He was human. He walked the earth. We have stories about those He hung around. He has a mom and a dad like we do. Others love to talk with the Holy Spirit living inside of us. Some like to talk to God the Father. Any of these are good. Whatever feels the most comfortable for you. You might start talking with one and then as your relationship grows, you might find you are talking to all three depending on the circumstance.
In order to have a personal relationship with any of them, you need to spend time with them. Imagine you wanted to have a relationship with your children, and yet you never had time for them. You wanted to, you meant to, and yet it just never happened. Things kept coming up, and you would get distracted. What kind of relationship do you think you would have with your kids if you never had any time to put into it? Would you know your kids? Would they know you? The same is true with the Lord. If you don’t spend any time with Him, then you won’t know Him. It says in Matthew 7:21-23, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day, many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’”
It is not enough to know who Jesus, God, and the Holy Spirit are. It is not enough to read about them in the Bible. It is not enough to admire them or even worship them from afar. We need to spend time with them. We need to talk with them. I know we are all busy, and I know we feel we don’t have any time. Yet, can we really afford not to? Do we really want to risk being one of those who Jesus says, “I do not know you?” We are talking about where we get to spend eternity.
It seems to me the stakes are pretty high, and even if we have tried in the past to have a relationship with Him before and we weren’t able to maintain it, we need to try again. If we ask the Lord to help us, he gladly will. Sometimes not in the ways we would like, but He will always help us. One of my teachers was saying that she had an assignment to spend the day with Jesus, and she thought there was no way she had the time to spend the entire day with Jesus. She went on vacation and got vertigo, and had to spend the whole day in bed. She was on a mission trip with several people, one of whom was a priest. He left the blessed sacrament with her while they went out for the day. She got to spend the whole day with Jesus. Maybe not how she had thought she would, but He made the time for her.
There are other ways to increase holiness. These are just two out of many. Ask the Lord what ways He wants you to grow in holiness, and then sit and listen to what He tells you. It won’t be something so extreme you could never do it. Someone at my prayer group just said yesterday, “God won’t ask you to go to Africa unless he first put Africa in your heart.” He is a loving Father. We don’t have to be scared to go to Him and ask Him what He wants us to do because He knows us better than we know ourselves. He will be gentle with us. He will stretch us and maybe take us out of our comfort zone, but not so much that we need to be scared. Spend time with the Lord each and every day, and He will guide you to holiness. If you feel your schedule is way too busy to add anything else to it, go to my website, walkboldlywithjesus.com, and click on the link to an audio teaching I created titled “Invite Jesus Into Your Every Day.” This will give you ways to talk with Jesus and connect with Jesus without adding anything new to your day.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, you are amazing, and we love you. We are so sorry that we don’t make time for you. We are sorry we don’t talk with you and cultivate our relationship with you. Lord, please put on each of our hearts at least one way we can grow closer to you. Put on our hearts one way we can grow in holiness. Lord, what we want more than anything in the whole world is to get to spend eternity with you. Please guide us, please show us how. We don’t want to get to the end of this life and have you say, “I never knew you.” We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I want to remind everyone that you just have one more week to sign up for the retreat. CLICK HERE for retreat info. Many people have checked out the webpage with the information and yet have not signed up. I want to encourage you. If you are thinking about it and yet are nervous or scared, sign up anyway. If you have never done a retreat before and don’t know what to expect, listen to Episode 580, Witness Wednesday #78, or you can listen to Episode #577, The Power of Retreats. There really is something very powerful about taking a weekend away and spending it with other faith-filled women. I hope you have been thinking about it or considering it, I pray you will take the leap of faith and sign up. I pray you will do that for yourself. You do so much for others. When was the last time you did something for yourself? I look forward to meeting you here again on Monday. Remember Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed weekend!
Keep asking! Nothing Is Too Big or Too Small!
1 Samuel 9:16 “Tomorrow about this time I will send to you a man from the land of Benjamin, and you shall anoint him to be ruler over my people Israel. He shall save my people from the hand of the Philistines, for I have seen the suffering of my people because their outcry has come to me.”
What stood out to me when I read this verse was the very last line. In this verse, God is talking to Samuel right before Saul shows up. God said that He will save His people from the hands of the Philistines because He has seen the suffering and because their outcry has come to Him. That is the part that stood out to me. He heard their outcry. I have been encountering more and more people who don’t pray for what they need unless it is a huge deal. If they don’t need a miracle, they aren’t asking God for anything.
I understand this sentiment. I mean, God is busy, He is doing important things, and we don’t want to waste His time with our small issues. When we do this, we are saying that God has a finite amount of power. We are assuming that He won’t have enough time or enough power to deal with the bigger issues and our smaller issues. God’s time and power are infinite. There are no limits to time or power for God. We never have to worry that our request will take God away from someone else. He is with each one of us 100% of the time.
Not only can God take care of the little things, He wants to. He cares about every aspect of our life. When we ask Him to help us, to take care of things, we are showing Him that we trust Him. We are showing Him that we want Him in all aspects of our life. There are so many areas where I see people suffering, and they aren’t asking God for help. I understand and believe that redemptive suffering is a thing. I believe that our prayers can be more powerful when we are in the midst of great suffering. I believe that if we can offer our suffering up for others, that is a powerful and beautiful thing. I don’t believe that God wants us to suffer for the rest of our lives. I don’t believe that if we have asked God for healing once or twice and it hasn’t happened, then that means that God isn’t going to heal us.
I don’t know why some people have chronic pain and have been suffering for a very long time. I don’t know why it seems like God heals some people, and yet it seems like He doesn’t heal others. His ways are higher than our ways, and His thoughts are higher than our thoughts. I do believe God wants us to ask for healing. I do believe He wants to hear the words come out of our mouths. God believes in free will. If we aren’t asking Him for healing, He is probably not going to be healing it. From all that I have learned, God wants us to be actively engaged in our relationship with Him. He doesn’t just want us to sit back and have a hands-off relationship with Him. I don’t believe He wants us to hold anything back from Him. I don’t believe He thinks anything is too big or too small for Him.
We have been told in our Encounter Ministries class that God cares just as much about our hang nail as He does about someone else’s cancer. It is not one or the other with God. It is everything. At the Encounter summer intensive, there was a woman who was saying that she had pain and stiffness in her hips. When she sits for any length of time, she has a hard time getting back up and a hard time walking afterward. For a year now, she hasn’t been able to wear shoes with laces because of the stiffness in her hips. She couldn’t bend down to tie them. She was prayed over at the end of the healing night for the summer intensive, and the next day she could bend down and tie her shoes again. Do you see? God even cares about what kind of shoes you want to wear.
In the verse above, God sent Saul to save His people from the Philistines. He did this because He heard them crying out. Are you crying out? Are you asking God for help? I am not saying that we need just to sit around and cry out to the Lord all the time. I am not saying we should be complaining about our pain or our circumstances either. What I am saying is that we don’t have to be afraid to ask God for something. We don’t have to feel like we are bothering Him. When we don’t ask Him, we are depriving Him of the opportunity to help us.
Think about how good you feel when you help someone out of a difficult situation. Think about the satisfaction and the joy you get when you help others. Now, think about how God might feel when He gets to be your savior and when He gets to save you from whatever it is you are going through, big or small. If you have chronic pain, you may be praying to God all the time, and yet you are not seeing healing. If this is the case, I am so sorry. I wish we could understand why God does what He does. However, if you are in chronic pain and you used to ask for God to heal you and now you have given up asking, I ask you to start again.
I don’t know why He hasn’t healed you yet. I don’t know what His plan is or when He wants to heal you. I do believe with all my heart that He does want to heal you. I do believe He wants you to keep asking for the healing. I believe he wants you to keep believing that healing is possible, that you are deserving of healing, and that He loves you more than anything else in this whole world.
I am not sure I believed healing of chronic pain was possible. I mean, I think I truly believed it in my heart, and yet there was still doubt. I mean, if He wanted it healed, He would have done it already, right? Then I prayed with my aunt. She had pain in her legs for over 5 years. She couldn’t walk without pain. It had gotten so bad that she had to quit her job 9 months earlier, and she was basically bedridden as when she walked, her pain was level 11. I told her we could pray together and that I believed God wanted to heal her. This was true, and yet I didn’t know what it would be like. I mean, she has had pain for so long. Surely if God wanted to heal her, He would have. We prayed, and she saw no change. We kept praying for a while. She didn’t have much change that night or the next day. However, a few days later, she got out of bed and was completely pain-free. How amazing is God? Yes, he could have healed her at any time, and yet He chose that specific day. We don’t know why, and we may never know why this side of heaven. We are just happy that my aunt kept asking Him and didn’t give up and just accepted that as her fate. She could have said no to me praying with her. She could have thought there was no point. But she said Yes, and God came through for her.
He can do this for you too! Please don’t stop asking. Please don’t think things are too big or too little for God. Please don’t feel like anything you ask would ever be an inconvenience to God or that you would bother Him. I don’t think anything makes Him happier than when we turn to Him, and when we show Him, we trust Him by entrusting our petition to Him. Another important piece to this which I won’t go into but I do want to mention, is that we should not just ask God for things, but we should praise Him daily as well. Thank Him for all that He has done and continues to do for you. Show God you are thankful for what He has done, and He will continue to do more. God loves you. He wants to be there for you. Trust Him and share everything with Him.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to bring things to you. Please help us. Help us get rid of our feeling of not enough and our feeling that we would be bothering you with our requests. Please help us to see that you are there for us in the big and the small ways. Please help us to see that you care about all the details of our lives, even the little ones. Lord, give us the strength and the courage to keep asking, even if it is something that we have asked for many times before. Help us to keep asking, Lord. We love you, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
CLICK HERE for retreat info.
Today, I will give my witness about the ACTS retreat I went on this weekend. One of the things that makes the ACTS retreat different and special is that you don’t know what to expect, and everything is a surprise. So, although I will be witnessing my experience, I won’t talk about what we did at the retreat as that is a well-guarded secret that I will keep out of respect for the ACTS community and out of respect for those who may be listening that want to go on an ACTS retreat someday.
I was very excited when I signed up for this retreat. I had been wanting to go on one for several years now, and the timing never lined up. The first year I saw the flyer just after it had happened. The next year I am not sure what happened, and then COVID happened. This year, my friend invited me in July, and it worked out that I didn’t have anything planned for that weekend. I signed up and was excited about getting to experience one of these weekends.
ACTS stands for Adoration, Community, Theology, and Service. I don’t think I knew this before going. I don’t think I knew very much at all before going. I remember the flyer I had seen years ago talking about helping you live out the Acts chapter in the Bible. However, I think that may have just been the theme for that retreat. The theme for last weekend was Forgiveness. I love this theme, as forgiveness is so important. There are so many ways unforgiveness can block us from God and from His graces, and even our eternal salvations. I am all for more teaching on forgiveness.
As I said, I was so excited for this retreat. I was really looking forward to it. Then, as it got closer, I started to get nervous. I was happy because I did know 3 other ladies from my prayer group who were coming, and I knew two ladies on the team putting the retreat on. I knew I wouldn’t be alone. However, when I usually go to a retreat, this is not the case. I started to remember how strange it felt to show up and not know anyone. In most cases, I have a schedule so I can see what is going to happen at the retreat. However, for this retreat, there was no schedule given to us in advance. This was a good thing because it let you be in the moment without constantly thinking about the next thing to come. However, it didn’t help calm our nerves before getting there. Sometimes the unknown is scary.
We met at the church and took a bus to the retreat location. This was nice and yet also a bit intimidating as we weren’t sure what we would be walking into. However, there were a few team members on the bus to welcome us. Getting off the bus, you could tell no one really knew what to expect, and everyone was a bit nervous. We were all shown to our rooms to drop off our stuff and then down to the dining room to eat some dinner. That is something I think I can tell you, we ate a lot of great food throughout the weekend. Especially as a group of women, we are used to providing meals for our families, and it is really nice when we go away that someone else does the cooking, and we just get to show up and eat. We even get to eat our food while it is hot, which moms of little ones don’t always get to do because they are usually feeding the children and then eating their meals afterward.
Over the next three days, we got to know most of the ladies on the retreat weekend. There were over 60 ladies on the retreat between the team and the people registered for the retreat. Unfortunately, I did not get to talk with everyone on the retreat, but I did meet a good number of new people. What I saw on this retreat is what I see on all the retreats that I go to. Everyone comes in a bit nervous, not really sure what to expect, and yet by the time they leave, they have a bunch of new sisters in Christ. They have more people to walk with on this journey of faith.
What I love most about retreats is that a lot of our preconceived notions get blown away. For instance, we tend to think everyone is more holy than us. We tend to think everyone else has things all together, and we are the only ones who don’t know what we are doing half the time. We think that everyone has this faith journey down pat, and we are the only ones who struggle. We think we are alone on our journey, and no one could possibly understand what we are going through. We look at those around us, and we see how strong their faith appears to be, and we are sure they never struggle. What do they have to struggle with anyway? Then we talk with them. Then we get to know them. Then we understand what the saying “You can’t judge a book by its cover” really means.
The reason it seems like you are the only one struggling is because we don’t like to talk about our struggles. We don’t like to admit that we are still trying to figure out our faith journey. We don’t want to talk about issues in our marriage and issues with parenting because we know we are the only ones going through it. We assume because others aren’t talking about their struggles, they aren’t having any. However, you aren’t talking either. While I got to know people this weekend, I met extraordinary women who have battled the same issues I have with my kids. I am not talking about similar things, I am talking about some of the same exact scenarios, so much so that the words they were saying could have been coming out of my mouth as well.
This is the biggest, most amazing thing about retreats to me. Yes, I love the time with God, and I love the brief break from reality. However, what I think I love the best is the way God sets up this time for us to get to know people that we might not have met otherwise. God creates opportunities for us to talk to those on the retreat that He knows we need to talk to. If you have been on a retreat before, no matter the type of retreat, you know what I am talking about. If you haven’t been on a retreat, think of some times when you have gone to a gathering of a group of ladies, even if it was just for a few hours. Did you wind up talking to someone that you really liked? Did you talk with someone who you just connected with immediately?
I definitely left the retreat this weekend with some new sisters in Christ that I can walk with along my journey. More people I can turn to for prayers, support, and strength. You also meet people who are further along than you are on your journey, so they can guide you, and you meet people who aren’t quite as far, and you can help guide them. I remember the first retreat I went on, and I haven’t looked back since. I have never once regretted going on a retreat. I have never once been on a retreat where I haven’t met other amazing women. Every retreat, I leave a better person. Every retreat I go to, I get a renewed love for God and for my faith. Every retreat is a stepping stone in this journey called life. Every retreat, I leave with new sisters in Christ along for the journey. If you haven’t been on a retreat, I highly suggest you find one. If mine is not the right retreat for you, look for one closer to you or one that fits what you are looking for. If you want to go on a retreat where you can meet a lot of amazing ladies, and yet you don’t have all the religious things at a traditional retreat, you can check out biglifehq.com Pamela plans adventure retreats for Christian women who want that time together. They are amazing as well. We are not meant to do life alone. We need community. If you don’t have a community, try to find one. You will be much happier. I am actually going to be starting a group coaching community for those of you who want a place where you can grow in your faith with other like-minded individuals. It will be a group where we will come together each week, and I will teach on a topic, and we will have time for small group discussions. We will all grow in our faith together. I will have more details in the upcoming weeks. It will start after the retreat. I hope you all have an amazing week, and I pray each and every one of you finds a retreat you can go on in the next few months. Your life will be changed.
We Have Redemption and Forgiveness of Sins!
Colossians 1:13-14 “ He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”
Original sin came about when Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit. This means sin entered into our hearts. The power of darkness had more of a hold on us, and our hearts were more attuned to sin. However, when Jesus came and died for us, He rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of God. Jesus redeemed us. He died for our sins, even when we didn’t deserve it. That is the part that gets me. It is not as if we deserved that mercy. It is not as if we were all loving God and treating Him the way He deserves to be treated. God loved us even after all the years of rebellion. If you look back at the Old Testament, you will see the people of God turning away from Him time and time again. Yet, He still went through with His plan to save them.
The people of the Old Testament did not have a Baptism of repentance. They had the Lord looking out for them. However, they didn’t have the Holy Spirit living inside of them, and they didn’t have Jesus yet. Jesus hadn’t yet died on the cross, so they weren’t saved from the original sin. Sin had more influence over them because they didn’t have the Spirit of God living inside of them, helping them make the right choice. They didn’t have the power and authority that we have from Jesus. This is not to excuse their behavior, but it does explain it a bit. It does help us to have a bit of empathy for them.
Look how much we mess up even with the Spirit of the Lord living inside of us. Now, imagine we didn’t have it. Imagine what life would be like if we couldn’t go to confession when we mess up. Imagine we didn’t have the gift and grace of forgiveness of sins. Imagine if every time we did something wrong, we needed to bring an animal to the temple and sacrifice it. When we look back at the Old Testament, we, or at least I, struggle to understand how and why God’s people were always turning away. It seems like if I saw a miracle, like the parting of the Red Sea, I would never want to turn away from the Lord. I would know without a doubt He was the one true God and would want to do whatever I could to please Him. I wouldn’t complain about what I was eating because what I was eating was a miracle from God each and every day. I love to think I would do things differently if I lived back in the Old Testament times.
However, would I really? I have seen God do extraordinary miracles right here in my lifetime, and yet I don’t always put Him first. I can eat whatever I want to eat, and yet sometimes I still complain. I have the Holy Spirit, the one who raised Jesus from the dead, living inside of me, and yet I still sin, I still doubt at times, I still complain. Why is that? Why is it that I know how amazing our God is? I have the power of the Spirit living inside of me, and yet I still mess up? Imagine if we didn’t? Imagine if we didn’t have the opportunity to go to mass daily. Imagine if we didn’t have the Eucharist to be providing us strength and fortitude each day or each week. We are very lucky that Jesus came and died for us. We are lucky we receive His Spirit when we are Baptized and again when we make our Confirmation.
The verse above says, “ He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” There is a caveat to this redemption and forgiveness. The caveat is that we accept it. It says in the Bible that Jesus gave His apostles the power and authority to forgive sins in His name. It says in John 20:23, “ If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” Your sins can be forgiven, but you have to accept that forgiveness, and this is hard for many of us. We believe that this can happen to other people, but somehow we believe that our sins are too big. God couldn’t possibly forgive me. If He knew what I did, he would hate me forever. These are the types of thoughts that go through our minds. We think forgiveness is for others.
This is not the case. Forgiveness is for every single person on the planet who will accept it and is ready to repent for what they have done. It says in the Catechism of the Catholic Church #1864, “There are no limits to the mercy of God, but anyone who deliberately refuses to accept his mercy by repenting, rejects the forgiveness of his sins and the salvation offered by the Holy Spirit. Such hardness of the heart can lead to final impenitence and eternal loss.” Jesus died for our sins. Why is that so hard for us to accept? This verse from the CCC says that if we don’t accept this forgiveness, it can lead to final impenitence and eternal loss. I don’t know about you, but that is not anything that I want. I just looked up the definition for final impenitence. I had a pretty good idea of what it meant, but I wanted to make sure of the exact definition. Here is what I found: Final penitence means dying unreconciled with God, whether through loss of faith, or through despair, or a blasphemous rejection of God's love.
I am 100% sure I do not want that for myself or anyone else. Dying unreconciled with God would be awful. If I want to make sure this does not happen, the answer is found in the definition. I need to make sure I do not lose my faith. I need to make sure I do not fall into despair and that I always remember there is always hope in our Lord and Savior. I also need to make sure I do not reject God’s love and forgiveness. I need to accept it with open arms. The stakes are pretty high. If you struggle to accept God’s forgiveness, I urge you to try and work on that. God has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. He did all the hard work. Now all we have to do is accept this forgiveness and love. I know it is not easy to accept it at times, and yet the alternative is hard as well. We must find a way to accept his forgiveness so we don’t end up separated from God for eternity.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, you are amazing, and we love you so much. We are so grateful you sent your one and only son to rescue us from the power of darkness and to transfer us into Jesus’ kingdom. You are the best! You are always looking out for us. We are so grateful. We are sorry when we struggle to accept your forgiveness or your love. We live in a broken world, and sometimes it is hard to believe someone could love us as the enemy tells us constantly that we are unloveable. It can be hard to believe we are forgiven when the enemy tells us no one would ever forgive us. Forgive us, Lord, for believing the enemy over you. Give us the strength to believe you above all else. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Thank you to those who have signed up for the retreat and those who couldn’t attend but wanted to donate money so someone else could attend. I really appreciate all of you! Registration for the retreat closes soon, so make sure to get registered if you want to attend. CLICK HERE for retreat info. I look forward to meeting you here tomorrow with another witness. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
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The title of today’s episode is The Power of Prayer. I have a special guest for today’s devotional. Today's devotional is from my new friend Whitney for those who didn’t hear the Witness Wednesday yesterday. Whitney feels called to ministry, so she asked her pastor if she could do the sermon this week, and he said yes. She posted it for her sisters in Christ to listen to it on our mentoring page, and I thought it was great, so I asked if I could share it with all of you. She agreed. I hope you enjoy this beautiful devotional.
Whitney, thank you so much for letting me share your talk with everyone. I am sure they loved it as much as I did. Feel free to share here again anytime! Thank you, everyone, for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. If you would like to sign up for the retreat, there is still time. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
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We have all seen God working in our lives. However, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences, the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click here. It won’t take up much of your time, and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story, and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow, and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I. Have a blessed day!
Why Self-Control Is So Important!
1 Corinthians 9:25-27 “Every athlete exercises discipline in every way. They do it to win a perishable crown, but we, an imperishable one. Thus, I do not run aimlessly; I do not fight as if I were shadowboxing. No, I drive my body and train it for fear that, after having preached to others, I myself should be disqualified.”
Yesterday I was talking about the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and I mentioned the book set my mom bought me. I grabbed one of the books to get the list of gifts from it, and later, I noticed I happened to grab the Self-Control book. I don’t think that was an accident, as that is the one I probably see the least in my life. I opened it up and started reading it and found this really amazing story of self-control in it. I would like to relay that story to you before I talk about the verse above, although they are all connected.
The author Robert Strand wrote the devotion series on the Nine Fruits of the Holy Spirit. I found this story in the Self-Control book. However, it is originally from Rober Schuller’s book Move Ahead with Possibility Thinking. It is about a polio victim who required an iron lung to breathe and learned how to breathe without it, even though every muscle below his Adam's apple is paralyzed. Karl Dewayne Sudekum, through discipline, has learned how to breathe like a frog. Here's the story.
In 1953, while Carl was a lieutenant in the US Navy, he contracted polio. For six years, he could breathe only in an iron lung or on a tilt bed. Then he got mad — really angry. He decided he would breathe. He stopped the rocking motion of his bed and remembered how he used to breathe like a frog as a young boy in Nashville, Tennessee. It was a trick almost all kids knew. He would take air with his tongue and force it down his windpipe. When he exhaled, his lungs let out the air like a deflating balloon. He's been breathing this way ever since. "Science doesn't really know how it's done,” he said. "It's a two-cycle pumping action that some people can do and some people can't. Some people can whistle through their teeth, but I never could. It's like that." He could stay away from the iron lung as long as he remained awake. With his first real independence, Sudeckum decided to become an attorney.
In 1959 he entered the University of San Diego. His wife, Emerald, drove him to school and wheeled him into class. He couldn't take notes, and a tape recorder was too awkward. He simply listened and remembered. Then he was told he had diabetes. That under control, the doctors discovered an ulcer. For a year, he lived with a mysterious high fever, a reaction to medication. Still, he got his diploma and passed the bar exam.
He is practicing now and signs documents, K. D. Sudeckum. It is too much of a task to write his full name with a pen in his teeth. When he talks too long in court, his face gets very red, but it's nothing to worry about. A cold is something else. It could be fatal. So what does he do? "I don't get colds." If he falls asleep or faints while out on his own, frog breathing, he will die unless someone who knows his condition administers artificial respiration. What does he do about that? "I try to think about it as little as possible.”
Wow, there are no words to describe this man’s self-control. It makes my day seem not so bad anymore. My challenges with self-control seem so small compared to his. Yet, I still have them, and they are challenging for me. I am sure your challenges with self-control are hard for you as well. We need not compare ourselves to each other. That is not why I told you this story. I told you this story so you could see what is possible for our self-control. If he can do it, we can do it. We just have to figure out what our motivation is. His started out as anger. I am not sure if that remained the whole time or if it switched. It doesn’t matter too much. However, it is clear that something was motivating him.
This is where I think this verse can be helpful. It can be our motivation if we let it. I remember the first time this verse had a profound impact on me. Father Mike was talking about it on the Bible in a year podcast, and He was talking about the self-discipline the athletes must have to win an Olympic medal, or for that matter, even to be able to compete in the Olympics. It is an unbelievably hard training schedule. They have to exercise, practice, and watch what they eat and what they drink. It is a lot, and yet they do it because they love it, hopefully, and also because they want to win the medal. The medal that they win is a big deal. It is something to be honored and something that not many people can say they have done. The odds of winning a gold medal at the Olympics is 1 in 662,000. Yet they train, and they work hard for it.
The race that we are all running, whether we know it or not, is the one for our salvation. The stakes are so much higher, and yet our efforts are so much lower. This is not the exact wording of how Father Mike said it, but whatever he did say left me with that thought in my head. I remember thinking about this for days afterward. I wonder if we realize what is at stake. Why aren’t we trying to do all we can so that when we get to heaven, God will not say to us, as he said to those in Matthew 7:21-23? “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. On that day, many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ Then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; go away from me, you who behave lawlessly.”
Wow, that is definitely something that I never want to hear. However, am I making time to sit with Jesus every day to talk? Do I have the self-control and the self-discipline to pass up sleeping in on a Sunday morning so I can go to church? Do I have the self-control to put first things first? Why is it I can muster the self-control to work out regularly at times, and yet the self-discipline to say the rosary daily or write in my prayer journal daily escapes me? I think I need to put this verse up somewhere that I will see it daily. When I read it, my heart is convicted to do something, and yet I quickly get distracted and forget about it. How about you? Are you doing all you can do to foster your relationship with God, Jesus, and/or the Holy Spirit? Are you using self-control to help you put first things first? This is definitely something I will need to take to my prayer time, and I hope you will join me in this. I hope you will ask the Lord to show you the various ways you are struggling with self-control and then ask Him what you should do about it. He will help you out if you ask Him. I want to train as hard as an athlete does to develop my relationship with my one true King.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, please help us to develop our self-control. Help us to put first things first and help us to grow closer to you. We never want to hear the words, “I never knew you.” Lord, we want to know you. We want to be close to you, please help us. We thank you, Lord, for all the ways you are already helping us and all the time you have spent with us. We are sorry we don’t always put you first and that so often, other things get in the way. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. CLICK HERE for retreat info. It is October 7-9th in Easton, MA, near Stonehill College. I hope you will join me for an amazing weekend. It will be a time to get filled up and refreshed. We are 3.5 weeks away. If you have any questions, please reach out. I need to let the retreat center know how many people are coming in about 2 weeks, so don’t wait to sign up. You do not have to make any payment when you sign up. I will send you an email regarding payment after you sign up. I look forward to meeting you here tomorrow with another witness. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I. Have a blessed day!
The Fruits of the Spirit
Colossians 1:9-10 “For this reason, since the day we heard it, we have not ceased praying for you and asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as you bear fruit in every good work and as you grow in the knowledge of God.”
I was at a conference this weekend on Saturday, and the speaker, Walter Matthews, talked about this verse. He started with verse 10, “So that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as you bear fruit in every good work and as you grow in the knowledge of God.” I like this verse as it talks about bearing fruit in every good work as you grow in the knowledge of God. However, I thought verse 9 was important as it says that they were praying they would all be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding. I think this is the key to the verse 10. If we don’t have wisdom and knowledge, then I believe we will struggle to bear fruit with our work.
Do you know what it means to bear fruit in your life or in your work? I am fairly new to this concept, so in case anyone else listening is like me, I will explain. Bearing fruit is another way to look at the outcome of the things you are doing. Are they good vs. bad? Are you getting good results at work? Do you feel good, do others around you feel good after interacting with you? What about at home? Are you happy with who you are at home? Are others happy with who you are at home? Is your home and your family growing in a positive way? These would all be good fruits.
When we want to judge if something is truly from the Holy Spirit, we look for the fruits of the Spirit in our work. There are nine fruits of the Holy Spirit. These are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. My mom actually got me a box set of books that talked about each of these fruits of the Spirit. It was cool to read about them each in more depth. One day when I was talking to my spiritual director, actually the first day with this spiritual director, he said something that helped me realize I could use these fruits as a gauge to see how I was doing in life. I can’t remember what he even said, and yet I remember a lightbulb went off in my head.
I am constantly wondering if what I am doing is pleasing the Lord. Am I getting this thing called life, right? Am I hearing what He is saying to me, and am I doing the things He is asking me to do? These are questions we should all ask ourselves from time to time. I tend to ask myself this often. After speaking with my spiritual advisor, I realized I could look at my life and see where the fruits of the Holy Spirit are showing up. For instance, where in my life can I see love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control? If I am seeing the fruits of the Holy Spirit, then I am doing something right.
When I look at my life, I do see the fruits of the Holy Spirit. The extent to which we see them in our lives can be an indication of how well we are doing walking with God if we have a lot of love in our lives, a lot of peace and joy, if we have a lot of patience in our lives, along with kindness and goodness. If we have faithfulness, gentleness & self-control, then we are probably doing pretty good. There are things that can also show us the areas we need to work on improving. For instance, lately, I have been struggling with self-control. I used to be doing pretty well, and now I struggle more with it.
The fruits of the Spirit are not something that we can earn with our own efforts.
The fruits of the Spirit increase when we live according to the Holy Spirit. The more we listen to the Holy Spirit, the more we do as we feel the Holy Spirit is leading us to do, and the more we will exhibit these fruits. So, what does this look like for us practically, that is the question I am wondering right now. How can we increase in these fruits of the Holy Spirit if it is not through our own efforts? First, we rely on the Holy Spirit more. We stop before we do something and ask the Holy Spirit if that is the path we are supposed to go down. Or we ask if there is a problem going down that path. Second, we remember we have the power of the Holy Spirit living inside of us, and it can give us courage and strength to do things we might not do otherwise. For instance, we might speak up against the injustice that we see a little more if we remember that the same power that raised Jesus from the dead lives inside of us.
Another way to grow in the gifts of the Spirit is to help others. Jesus told us what we have done for others, you have done for me. In Matthew 25, Jesus said, "Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” Jesus wants us to help the poor, feed the hungry, and clothe the naked. If we want to grow in the gifts, we can do these things as well.
It says in Matthew 7:18, “A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit.” To me, this is reassurance that even if I am not seeing all of the gifts of the Spirit in my life, or I am not seeing them to the degree that I would like or that I strive for, I am still a good tree. The same is true for you. You are a good tree. Whether you have very little fruit growing on your tree or you have tons of fruit growing, it doesn’t matter as much as it does that you have some fruit. If you are like me and you wonder how you are doing following the Lord, look at your life. When you see love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control in your life, celebrate it. That is the Lord’s goodness showing up in your life.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, I ask you to help people hear what they need to hear in this episode today. I feel I did not explain it well, and yet I think it is important for people to understand the fruits of the Spirit. Please help each person to hear exactly what they need to hear in the way they need to hear it. Please help it to make sense and not to be confusing. We love you, Lord. We want to follow you. We want to be led by the Holy Spirit. Please help us. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. Remember, signed copies of my book are still for sale on my website, and the retreat registration is still open. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. If you have a witness you would like to share for this Wednesday, please let me know. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
All Sins Are Not Created Equal
1 John 5:15-17 “ If you see your brother or sister committing what is not a deadly sin, you will ask, and God will give life to such a one—to those whose sin is not deadly. There is sin that is deadly; I do not say that you should pray about that. All wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin that is not deadly."
I was listening to Father Mike the other day, and he was talking about mortal sins vs. venial sins. I have heard the distinction between the two before, and yet I felt like he described it really well in this particular podcast episode, which is #247 on the Catechism in a Year Podcast titled The Weight of Sin. I recommend you listen to this episode if you want more information, as Father Mike explained it better than I can. However, I am going to try to relay much of what he said and also share my takeaways from it.
The Catholic Church believes there are two kinds of sin, venial sins, which are smaller in nature and do not sever your relationship with God, but they do wound it. Then there are mortal sins, which do sever your relationship with God, and you must repent and go to confession to repair that relationship. Father Mike gave an example that showed the difference between these two sins. I thought it was a great example, so that I will share it with you. Hearing this helped me to see the effect of our sins. If you are an animal lover, you may not love this example.
Father Mike said to think of a bullfight. The first thing that happens in a bullfight is that the picador comes out and uses barbs to limit the bull’s ability to fight the matador. The picador inserts these barbs in places like the back of the neck so that the bull can’t lift his head up. The point of these barbs is not to kill the bull. It is just to wound the bull. It is to make the bull weaker so he won’t be able to put up as much of a fight when the matador comes out. Our venial sins are like the picador, they do not kill our relationship, but they do wound it. They also make it so we can’t fight the enemy as well. The more venial sins we commit the more likely we are to commit mortal sins. Our mortal sins are like the matador, they kill our relationship with the Lord. Our mortal sins make us turn away and cut ties with our Lord. We can repair that relationship through repentance and confession.
My biggest takeaway from that example was that our venial sins make it more likely for us to commit mortal sins. I loved how he described the picador’s ability to limit the bull’s ability to fight back. It really resonated with me that when we are committing venial sins, we may call them small sins, but they limit our ability to fight back against the enemy. They limit our willpower. They limit our strength. We are left wounded, and so is our relationship with God. Our venial sins might be small, but they can start to add up.
St Augustin wrote, “While he is in the flesh, man can not help but have at least some light sins. But do not dispose of these sins that we call light. If you take them for light when you count them, tremble when you weigh them. A number of light objects make a great mass. A number of drops fill a river, and a number of grains make a heap. What, then, is our hope, confession?” This quote is a great reminder that small things can add up. We might think our venial sins are not that important, and yet they can add up and become overwhelming if we let them. Confession is a great way to repair your relationship with the Lord. I also learned a few things about confessions while listening to this episode.
Father Mike said when you are in confession, you want to give some detail about your sins, and yet you don’t want to go into the whole story of the sin. He said we need to land somewhere in between very vague and too much detail. There is a Nigerian priest who works with Father Mike, and he says, “Don’t come into the confessional and tell me that you stole a rope, and yet you neglect to tell me that a cow was attached. You didn’t steal a rope. You stole a cow.” What this priest is explaining is that we need to give all relevant details. Stealing a cow is very different than stealing a rope. Father Mike was saying, Don’t come in and say you hit someone. Who did you hit? It is a difference in level of severity if you hit someone, or you hit your mom, or you hit your mom with your car. Both of those details, how and with what, are relevant information.
I liked this explanation because I often wonder how much detail to give in confession. I wonder what it is they want to know and what is not important. I know we don’t have all day because there are others waiting. I feel as though this gave me some guidance for the next time I go to confession. I hope it helped you too! If it has been a while since your last confession, Father Mike is inviting you to go to confession, repair your relationship with God, and heal those wounds.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we don’t want to offend you. We don’t want to wound our relationship with you, and we definitely don't want to separate ourselves from you. Please help us. Please give us the grace to know when we have offended you and then give us the strength and wisdom to repent and go to confession. We love you, Lord. You do so much for us, and we are sorry for our sins, big or small. We are sorry for them, not just because they are wrong but because they offended you, who we should love above all things. We are so grateful you are always willing to take us back after our mistakes. We are grateful you are so kind and merciful. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I wanted to let you know that I will be putting out a retreat schedule soon. You will be able to see what the weekend will look like. I am so excited that it is coming up in a few weeks. If you have been thinking about coming, I want to urge you to sign up. Take that leap of faith. I know it may be scary, especially if you don’t know anyone going. However, sometimes that is when you meet the best people. What have you got to lose? I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
The Unforgivable Sin!
Matthew 12:31-32 "Therefore I tell you, people will be forgiven for every sin and blasphemy, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.”
This verse was addressed on the Catechism of the Catholic Church in a Year podcast this morning. When I heard it, I thought it was a great reminder of what this verse is actually saying. I am pretty sure I have talked about this before, and yet when I looked this verse up, I could see that I hadn’t used it as the main verse of any other episodes. I think it is so important that we understand what this verse means because it can be scary if we don’t.
I say it can be scary if you don’t know because I was very scared when I first heard this verse. When I heard there was something I, or someone I loved, could do that would not be forgiven, I was petrified. What if I did it on accident? What if I did it one time, would I truly never be forgiven? Also, the verse says, Whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, or blasphemy against the Spirit. Well, I have three boys who, when they were younger, loved to say inappropriate things just to get a rise out of us. They would say unkind things about God because they knew that would make me and their dad upset. What if they spoke against the Holy Spirit in this way? What if they said something unkind about the Holy Spirit, and then they were never forgiven? I don’t know if you can understand why I was upset or if that just seems silly to you. We are all different, and the way we view life, God, and religion is all different.
I tend to want to be a perfectionist when it comes to religion and my relationship with God. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean that I always do the right thing. How great would that be? What it means is that I strive to do things perfectly. I want a step-by-step guide to do all things that have to do with God. I am learning in Encounter Ministries, that is called having a performance mentality. I am trying to earn my way into heaven. I will do x, y, and z, and then I will get into heaven. I know it doesn’t work this way, and yet it takes a while to get out of that mentality. When I hear about something that could keep me from spending eternity without God, I try to pay attention. So, hearing there was something we could do that wouldn’t be forgiven was hard for me to hear.
I don’t think I really understood what this meant until a few years ago. I was listening to the Bible in a Year podcast, and Father Mike explained what this verse was actually saying. He explained it again today in the Catechism of the Catholic Church podcast. CCC #1864 says, “Therefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven.” There are no limits to the mercy of God, but anyone who deliberately refuses to accept his mercy by repenting, rejects the forgiveness of his sins and the salvation offered by the Holy Spirit. Such hardness of heart can lead to final impenitence and eternal loss.” The only sin God can’t forgive is the sin that we don’t allow Him to forgive. Blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is rejecting the forgiveness of our sins and the salvation offered by the Holy Spirit. Father Mike says the good news is that God wants to, wills to, and can forgive all of our sins, but He can only do this if we allow Him to do this. God wants us to bring all of our sins to him and repent for them.
Why is it so hard for us to believe that God will forgive our sins? Why do we struggle to believe this for ourselves, and yet we would be the first ones to tell someone else not to worry because God has forgiven them? I think one of the biggest reasons is that we have the enemy, the liar, whispering in our ears how unworthy we are. He fills us with guilt and shame. He tells us that yes, God is merciful, but His mercy only goes so far, and our sins have crossed the line. He says God can forgive a lot, but He can’t forgive us. He tells us we don’t deserve to be forgiven. He tells us it doesn’t matter if we are forgiven because we will just do it again.
Well, guess what, the devil is a liar. He knows that God will forgive all we do, and he hates that. He doesn’t want us to be forgiven because then we get to spend eternity with god, and he would rather we suffer for all eternity. It is important we work to believe that God will forgive our sins. It is important that we confess our sins and repent for them. I know there are some things that we don’t want to confess. We don’t want to walk into a confessional and tell a priest our deepest darkest secret or what we have done because we are embarrassed and ashamed. However, God already knows what we have done, and yet until we release it to Him, He can’t forgive us. He is just waiting for us to come to Him.
If we are struggling to believe that God will forgive us, maybe we need to work on how we see our Father in Heaven. Do we see Him as our Father? What experiences of Fathers do we have in our lives? I know many people see God as this judge sitting up in heaven, shaking His head, and waiting for us to mess up so he can punish us. This is not God. He is a loving father. He is up there watching us mess things up and do the wrong thing time and time again with compassion. He waits with open arms to welcome us back in when we mess up.
It is essential that we begin to see the Father for who He is. It is essential that we figure out how to believe that we are forgiven, that our sins are forgiven. Our sins wound our relationship with God, and the worse the sin, the deeper the wound. We need to repent for hurting the Lord, and we need not to let those sins determine our future. If we want to spend eternity with our heavenly father, we have to learn how to accept his forgiveness. Blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is rejecting the forgiveness of our sins and the salvation offered by the Holy Spirit. Is this what we want, or do we want to accept the forgiveness being offered and accept the salvation offered by the Holy Spirit?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you, and we ask you to help us accept your forgiveness. Lord, we give you permission to work in our hearts. Please work on softening whatever is in us that can’t accept your forgiveness. Please don’t let us miss out on eternal salvation. Please put on our hearts whatever it is that we need to change and then give us the strength to change it. We love you, Lord, and we don’t want anything to get in the way of spending eternity with you. You are too amazing. We are so grateful that you are willing to forgive our sins, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
CLICK HERE for Retreat info
We have all seen God working in our lives. However, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click here. It won’t take up much of your time, and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story, and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I. Have a blessed day!
CLICK HERE for retreat info.
Don’t Worry, The Disciples Doubted Too!
Matthew 28:17 "When they saw him, they worshiped him, but they doubted.”
I saw the Verse of the day this morning, and it was Matthew 28:18-20 "And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” This is a great verse and the one I thought I would be talking about today. However, when I read the whole section the verse above really stood out to me. I find it interesting that it is the verse right before verses 18-20. The Bible says that when the disciples saw Jesus, they worshiped him, but they doubted. Then, in the very next line, Jesus sends them out to make disciples of all nations.
I think this is important for us to pay attention to because I think at times we feel like we are “less than” if we don’t believe or if we have doubts. For instance, I have prayed for all sorts of miracles over the years. Some, even though I know and believe without a shadow of a doubt that God can do it, I doubted that He would do it. It is just not something I can picture, or I can wrap my head around. For instance, I prayed for a friend of a friend who had ALS or Lou Gehrig’s Disease. This is a terrible disease that usually starts in the hands, feet, arms, or legs. Then it spreads to other parts of the body. Muscles get weaker as more nerve cells die. This eventually affects chewing, swallowing, speaking, and breathing. It is a scary disease. I have had two friends for friends who have died from this. I prayed for both of them a lot. I knew God could do it, and yet I struggled to picture what that would look like. I doubted He would do it.
When we know God can do something, and yet we also have doubt, it is not a great feeling. However, I do suspect it is a normal feeling. Our brains are limited, and God’s power is not. We can only comprehend so much. We tend to need to have experienced something similar before we are able to believe certain things. For instance, we would never really believe that we could cash ourselves out of a store without a cashier, and now we have self-checkout lines. I am betting that our grandparents would not have believed we would be using computers or cell phones as much as we are. There are some things you just have to see to believe.
Oftentimes times miracles are similar to this idea. We might have head knowledge that Jesus is capable of all things, and yet we need to see it to believe it. The apostles knew it was Jesus in front of them. They saw his wounds, and in their hearts, they knew it was Jesus, and yet they doubted. They doubted, not because they didn’t want to believe. They doubted because they didn’t understand how this could happen. Their beloved teacher and friend was crucified and now has returned to them. How does one wrap their head around that? How do we explain that to ourselves? We are people who need explanations. We tend to be people who need to see something to believe it. They could see Jesus and His wounds, and yet their brain was still searching for an explanation that made sense to them.
This is why I believe so strongly in the power of witnessing our faith. This is why I believe so strongly that our testimony, our story, has to be shared. Our story can help build the faith of others. I was just talking to a friend from class last night about the amazing miracle God did in my marriage. She was fascinated, and I believe her faith in what God can do, grew because of what she was hearing, not because of anything I did but because of the way God’s love was manifested in my marriage. You have been through things too. Maybe you had a sibling die way before their time, maybe your parents got divorced, and you were traumatized, or maybe you lost a child or a spouse. Maybe you were miraculously healed, or you saw someone else miraculously healed. Whatever your story is, it is unique to you and yet could also help others who are in a similar situation.
I heard this quote one time and felt as though the Holy Spirit said, this is for you. The quote said, “Maybe you were given this mountain to climb so that others would know they could climb it too.” When I heard this, suddenly, my suffering, my trials, the impossibly hard time I was going through seemed to make a bit more sense. It seemed to have a purpose. I was able to see how my suffering could be used for good. However, if I don’t talk about my story if I don’t talk about the mountains that I have climbed, then others won’t know they can climb them too. I know I say this a lot, and that is because it is true. We all have a story, and the world needs to hear our story.
I have talked to many of you, and you have told me you don’t have a testimony. Your life has been pretty normal. Nothing extraordinary has really happened. First, God is in the normal too. Second, something that seems completely ordinary to you might be difficult for someone else. When I witnessed the births of my children, there was nothing spectacular about them, and yet someone who is pregnant and about to give birth in another country could be listening. She might hear my testimony, see that I did it and my baby was okay, and it might help ease her worry a little. Someone might have heard about how my son Noah was in the NICU for a bit, and yet he was perfectly fine afterward and realized that their baby could be fine too. You never know what other people need to hear.
The verse says, “When they saw him, they worshiped him, but they doubted.” I have certainly doubted, and I bet you have too. I love how God puts in the Bible so many examples of how human and normal the disciples were. They were ordinary human beings whom Jesus took under His wing and helped them become extraordinary. The disciples questioned Jesus. They didn’t understand all He said. They doubted. This is normal. You are not “less than” if you doubt. You are actually right alongside all of us. We all doubt at times.
There are a few things that can help us doubt less. The first is to read, watch, and hear as much as possible about the thing we are struggling to believe. So, if we struggle to believe that God is still healing today, do a search about healing testimonies online. Read books about healing. If you are struggling to believe God will help you in your circumstances, then read testimonies about how He has helped others in similar circumstances. Another thing we can do, actually the first thing we should do, is bring our doubt to God. Ask God to teach us. Ask Him to show us what we need to see. We can even ask God to change our hearts, to change our minds. We can let Him know we want to believe. We just don’t know how. Whenever I am praying for something that I can’t really wrap my head around, I always end my prayer with I believe, Lord, help my unbelief.
God doesn’t expect us to be perfect. He is God. He knows we will mess up and will not get it right much of the time, and yet I believe He loves when we come to Him with our weaknesses and ask Him for help. I believe it makes Him smile when we finally realize we need Him to do all things. Yes, there are things we can do on our own, and yet even those things would be done better if we invited the Lord into them and partnered with Him to do them. What if we started our day with a simple sentence, “Lord, I want to partner with you today in all that I do” I truly wonder how different our days would be.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you, and we want to believe in all the miraculous things you do. We believe, Lord, help our unbelief. Dad, you know what, in particular, each one of us is struggling to believe today. We ask that you show us one thing that can help deepen our belief. Show us how to build up our trust and our belief. Help us not to doubt. Lord, give us a renewal of the mind so we can think more like you and less like the world. You are so amazing, and we want to be more and more like you with each passing day. Help us, Lord! We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I wanted to address something today that will probably come up for many of us. You might hear me talk about the retreat, and it sounds fun and like something you would like to go to, and then there is a voice in your head telling you, you won’t know anyone, you aren’t holy enough to go, you would be alone, you would be out of place, they would see right away you don’t know as much, you don’t pray as well, you are too busy, you can’t leave your kids or your husband for a few days. Guess what, we are all thinking the same thing, and those thoughts are not from God. That is the enemy trying to convince you that you shouldn’t go. Do you know why he is doing that? Because He knows how good going on a retreat is for you spiritually and emotionally, and he doesn’t want that growth for you. He doesn’t want you to grow closer to the Lord. I know it can be hard to do something by yourself and doubly hard to do something new. The first retreat I went to, I went all alone, and it was in a foreign country I had only lived for a few months. I pushed through all the obstacles to get there, and it was an amazing retreat and helped put me on the path I am on. If you are considering coming to the retreat, I ask you to push past the fear and the doubts and just sign up. You will not be sorry you came, I promise you that much. I look forward to seeing you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
The Darkness Will Not Overtake You!
John 1:5 “ The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overtake it.”
I read this the other day on someone’s Facebook post and knew I had to use it. I know so many of us need to hear this right now. The darkness you are feeling will not overtake you. This is one of those verses we need to write on a sticky note or an index card and place somewhere we will see it often. I feel like there are so many verses in the Bible for us to stand on when we struggle. I was just thinking it would be nice to have a handy book or list of them, and then we can pull out the ones we need when we need them. Then the Holy Spirit reminded me of these little books called “Book of God’s Promises” or something like that. I believe it has verses broken up into categories. Although you don’t even have to buy a book, you can do a quick internet search of Bible verses for your struggles. For instance, Bible verses about anxiety, worry, fear, or whatever the struggle is for you.
I wish every single person who is struggling with the darkness right now knew that they would come out of it. I wish they knew it wouldn’t last forever. I know several people who were in a deep pit of despair and darkness, and now they are out of it. While they were in it, they didn’t know it wouldn’t consume them. They didn’t know there was a way out. When you are alone in the darkness, you can’t see anything. I just got this image of trying to find my bed at night after turning the bathroom light off. I walk very slowly, usually with my hands out so I can feel the things that are in front of me. I always make it to my bed, and I usually do it without getting hurt. Although, sometimes, I do stub my toe or run into the corner of the bed or something.
The difference is I have walked in my bedroom most days for the past eight years. I have walked around my bedroom in the light and in the dark. I know where everything is located. It is not the same as walking in the darkness in unfamiliar territory, like when I stay at a hotel or something. Oftentimes, when we are walking in the darkness that life brings, we don’t know the way. It is all unfamiliar to us. Even if we have been in a similar situation before, the darkness that comes with it can be different each time. Sometimes, you might be angry. Other times, you might be sad or anxious. When this happens, you don’t know what to do. You just feel alone and lost. You walk around with your hands out, trying to feel your way through life. Actually, when you are in the darkness of life, you might be trying hard not to feel your way through life.
Sometimes, we don’t want to feel because it hurts too much! We would rather turn off our emotions or stuff them down deep so that they can’t hurt us. I get that. Feeling our emotions makes us feel vulnerable. Our society isn’t super accepting of emotions. Also, because we live in a broken world, we might have been hurt many times when we have allowed our emotions to be seen or even to be felt. Has this happened to you? Have you shut off your emotions at times because they just hurt too much? If so, I know what that feels like. I know why you did it, and it was your mind trying to protect you. What God wants you to know now is that you can always feel safe sharing your emotions with Him.
You never have to hide them or keep them from Him. Sometimes, we might want to because we are ashamed of our emotions. For instance, if we have been waiting and praying for something for a long time, and it seems as though our prayers have gone unanswered, then this might make us angry or disappointed with God. However, we don’t think this is acceptable. Aren’t we supposed to be grateful for all that we have? Aren’t we supposed to give praise and thanksgiving in all things? If we are angry with God, how can we give praise and thanksgiving? How can we be grateful when it seems like our prayers are not being answered?
God doesn’t mind when we are mad at Him. If there is anyone who understands anger, frustration, and things not being fair, it would be Him. We saw Jesus get angry when He walked the earth. Remember when he turned the tables over in the temple? I am pretty sure Jesus knows what it is like for things not to be fair. He was crucified for our sins, not His own. I don’t think God minds when we are angry at Him. When we finally admit it, when we release that anger and share it with Him, He can start to heal our hearts. When we hide it from Him, He can’t heal it because He respects our free will. He won’t force Himself on us.
If you are in darkness right now, take a moment and think about what you are feeling. Have you talked to God about it? Have you been truthful to God about what you are feeling? Do you even know how you feel about God? Maybe you aren’t sure. Maybe you are confused because you love Him, and yet you feel abandoned by Him. I had a friend ask me once if I knew what it felt like when I expected a loved one to do something for me. I was sure they were going to do it, and then they didn’t. I told her yes. She said this is how she was feeling about God right now. She realized it wasn’t as much anger as it was disappointment. God can handle our anger, He can handle our disappointment, He can handle whatever it is we are feeling. We need to share it with Him, though. We need to ask Him for help dealing with it. We need to give Him permission to come in and heal all the pain.
If you are walking through darkness right now, please hear me when I say that IT WILL NOT OVERCOME YOU! God is right there with you, taking each step. He is shining a light, and His light can penetrate the darkness, but you have to look for it. What is one tiny piece of light in your day today? If you look for it, you will find it. Was it sunny today? Did you get a green light just when you needed it? Did a friend say hi today? Did you see something in nature? Was your cup of coffee or tea extra good today? What is that one bright spot in the darkness? The more you are on the lookout, the more you will find.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to find the light in the darkness. Help us to feel your presence in the darkness. Help us to understand that no matter what it feels like, this darkness will not consume us. It will not overcome us. Help us to know in the depths of our souls that you will save us. You will bring us out of the darkness. Lord, help us to share our emotions with you. Help us to be honest with you. We love you, Lord. Help us trust you. You are amazing, and you are with us always. We are so grateful, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I want to remind you to check out the details about the retreat I am hosting. If you are able to come, then I look forward to hanging out with you and sharing an amazing weekend together. If you can not come this time, I hope you will join me in the future. I have a link in the show notes for retreat info, or you can go to Walkboldlywithjesus.com. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow! Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
The God of Abundance
2 Corinthians 9:8 "And God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance so that by always having enough of everything, you may share abundantly in every good work.
Today’s episode will be a bit different. Yesterday, I was listening to a recording of my prayer group meeting from June 29th. I was not there as I was in Maine celebrating my parents’ 60th wedding anniversary. We begin each prayer group meeting with a short teaching. When I heard the scripture verse she used, I thought it would be a great verse for an episode. As I listened, I realized what my friend Nancy was saying was something we should all hear. So, instead of me talking about the verse this morning, you get the privilege of listening to my friend Nancy. I will come back at the end to talk about my favorite parts and to do the prayer and closing. Wasn't that a great teaching? I love that she talked about God’s abundance as we live in a world of scarcity. We worry we won’t have enough money, food, friends, or whatever it is. Paul is telling us right here in this verse that is not how God thinks. He is an abundant God who wants to give us more than we need. Probably my favorite line in the whole teaching is when she said, "We must not let our experiences determine our interpretation of scripture, but scripture determines our experiences.” This is something I will take to prayer and ask the Lord how I can do this as I am not sure, but I know it was a powerful statement.
It was also great how Nancy encourages us to start with those we already know, our current sphere of influence. I also loved that she said, “We are Him in that place with those people.” And finally, I loved that she encouraged us to keep on praying with confidence, praying with thanksgiving, and praying with trust. This was a short teaching, and yet there is so much in it. I have listened to it several times, and I am still hearing new things. I encourage you to listen to it again. Thank you so much, Nancy, for being such a faithful leader in our prayer group and for allowing me to share your teaching so that it can bless other people as well.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, thank you for Nancy. She is a blessing to our prayer group and to all who know her. Lord, we thank you for being a God of abundance. We thank you for giving us all we need to get through each day. Some days, we wish we had more, and yet we are thankful you give us all that we need. You are amazing, Lord. It is amazing you know exactly what each one of us needs, and it is awe-inspiring the way you fulfill those needs at times. Such as someone miraculously finding $50 on the ground when that was the exact amount she had just asked you for. Thank you for being You, for caring for your children so well. We ask you to help us be more like you, Lord. Help us to be You to those around us. Help us to act in a way that when they see us, they see You. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your Will and in Jesus’ holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again on Monday. Remember to check out the link in the show notes if you want information about the retreat. I will have photos of the place we are staying very soon. I hope you are able to join us. It will be an amazing weekend, and it is in just five weekends!! Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed weekend. CLICK HERE for retreat info
All about the Angels
John 1:51 “And he said to him, “Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”
I saw a Bible verse yesterday on Facebook for John 1:5 “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” When I saw this, I thought that would be the verse for today. Then, when I read the chapter of John 1 today, the story of Nathanael stuck out to me instead. I was going to write about his story, and then I came to this line, and I felt like the Holy Spirit said, that is the verse for today. So, I am not sure what the Lord wants to tell us all about angels today, but I am ready for it because I know angels are so amazing. I have heard some pretty incredible stories about how angels have helped people.
The Bible mentions angels 273 times. I was surprised at this. I am not sure why. I guess I just didn’t realize how often they were talked about in the Bible. I went to a “Theology on Tap” night at a local hotel, and the priest was doing a talk about the angels. It was really interesting. He said that each person who is born has a guardian angel and that all the angels were created at the same time. That means God knew from the very beginning of time how many people were going to exist in this world. That seems so crazy to me to think about. I mean, there are billions of people on Earth, and there are more being born each day. To be more precise, there are 140 million babies born all over the world each year. That means there are more than four babies born each minute of each day. That is a lot of angels waiting up there in heaven for a job to do.
Did you know you have a guardian angel? I spoke to a friend one time who said she believed in angels. However, she did not believe that each of us had our own guardian angel. She said that would just be too many angels. Whether we believe it or not, we do, in fact, each have our own guardian angel. Here are a few things I have learned about angels. First, they have to respect our free will. We need to give them permission to work in our lives. If you have not done so, maybe just take a quick second and say, “Guardian angel, I give you permission to work in my life.” Just to make sure they know you approve. Angels work for God; they aren’t going to do anything bad in your life, and I think you would be surprised at the things they can do in your life.
I heard a story that Father Padre Pio, who is a saint, used to send his guardian angel ahead of him into any meetings that he had, and he would ask his angel to talk to the other peoples’ angels and help prepare their hearts so it would be a good meeting. This can work for you, too. When you are walking into a situation where you don’t know what to expect, or you are nervous or anxious, or you are worried the other person won’t be kind, you can send your angel ahead of you to speak with their angel and ask their angel to prepare their heart to hear what you have to say, or maybe soften their heart. I have told people about this before, and they reported good results when they have done it. Give it a try sometime. What have you got to lose?
The second thing I learned about angels is that they want to do things for you. Their whole job is to protect and guide you. They are sitting around waiting for you to ask for their help or for you to put them to work. They are there to guide you, so ask them to help you make decisions, ask them to help keep you on the right path, and ask them to remove obstacles that might get in your way or distract you. You can talk to your angel. You can thank your angel. I am guessing being an angel is a pretty thankless job because we don’t even know most of what they protect us from. If we don’t know what they are doing, it can be hard to thank them for doing it. However, if we are regularly talking with our guardian angel, we can say something like, “Thank you for all you do for me, even if I don’t see it.” Even if you don’t talk regularly, you could thank your angel every so often for all the unseen work they do.
Another thing I know about angels is that they can be in more than one place at a time. So, you could send your angel to go and protect someone else, and yet they would still be with you. For instance, I have a friend who told me every time she passes an accident or sees an ambulance pass by. She will ask her angel to go be with the person in the ambulance to protect and comfort them. This does not leave her unprotected. Her angel is with her as well. This is amazing. You can send your angel to be with your kids or your spouse if you are worried about them. For instance, when your kids are not with you, when they are with friends, when they are in college, or when they move out of the house for the first time. You can ask your angel to be with them and to help guide them to make good decisions. You can also ask your angel to talk with their angel, and the two of them can work together to guide them.
Angels can be a very real protection in times of danger. Here is a story I read in the book “How to Live Like A King’s Kid.” The author was driving down a divided highway and to a meeting. The dividing strip was maybe 20 feet wide. Suddenly, a car coming from the other direction, going about 70, the same speed as he was traveling, started to cross the strip. It was headed straight for him. A 140 mph impact was in the making with him in the middle of it. The car hurtling at him was less than 20 yards away when it suddenly shot straight up in the air and turned upside down. It was a convertible, the top was down, and people flew in all directions. The car landed flat right next to him. He kept driving. He asked the Lord if he should stop, and the Lord said no, keep driving and intercede for those people. He looked back, and there were a lot of others stopping, so he listened. On Sunday, he gave a talk about this and then asked if anyone knew what happened. Three people came up to him and told him the other car’s tire had popped and sent them out of control. However, they were all thrown safely from the car, and although the car was totaled, every person in the car walked away from the accident. That is definitely a miracle. Here is what the author says, “A car traveling straight at you on a level Road does not suddenly jump straight up in the air. From straightforward motion to vertical motion is impossible unless you hit something curved to change the course, and that's what happened in the accident. The car's course was changed when it hit a curved surface, the curved circle of light that prevented darkness from entering and annihilating a king's kid. There were millions of foot-pounds of energy involved, but that's nothing for an angel of the Lord. Hallelujah, when we call upon the King, he works supernaturally to deliver us from trouble.”
This is only one example of how an angel has stepped in front of someone to protect them from danger. I have heard many others. I am sure if you search the internet you will find many examples. Maybe I will do a Witness Wednesday about some angel testimonies. I will work on that for you guys. In the meantime, give your angel permission to work in your life and talk with your angel, even though I don’t think they talk back. Let them know you appreciate all the unseen things they do to keep you safe. When you are in trouble, call upon them. It doesn’t have to be bad trouble, like a car accident. It could be as simple as you don’t have peace about a situation. Ask them to help you find peace. They are there to help, protect, and guide you, and mostly, they are bored waiting for us to ask them to intervene in our lives. It is not a bother to them when we ask for help. They love it. It makes them happy.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to protect all those listening to this episode today. Lord, thank you so much for assigning each one of us a guardian angel. Thank you for not bringing us into this world unprotected. I am sorry that we forgot to call upon them. I am sorry that we don’t all know we have one. Please help us be more aware of our angel. Please put it on our hearts to call on our angel whenever we need anything. We love you, Lord, you are amazing! We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you would like to join me in person, you are welcome to come to a retreat with me from October 7th-9th in Easton, MA. It will be a great weekend where we will get to know each other, grow in our faith together, and spend some time with our heavenly Father. I hope you will consider joining me. If you would like more information, you can CLICK HERE for retreat info, or you can go to walkboldlywithjesus.com and click on retreat info. I look forward to seeing you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
CLICK HERE for retreat info
CLICK HERE for Linda's book.
We have all seen God working in our lives; however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences, the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click here. It won’t take up much of your time, and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story, and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow, and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I. Have a blessed day!
The Eucharist
John 6:48-51 “I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever, and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
Today’s verse is a difficult teaching. It is one that turned a lot of those following Jesus away from Him. They could not comprehend it, and it did not make any sense to them. It is one that many religions disagree on as well. In the Catholic Church, we believe that the Eucharist becomes the actual body of Christ during mass. We believe that during mass, the priest has the power, through the Holy Spirit, to change the wine and bread into the blood and body of Christ. I do not have all the history of where this came from, but I do know that right here in this verse, Jesus said, “The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
The word we use for when the bread and wine are changed to the body and blood of the Eucharist is transubstantiation. This means the change by which the substance (though not the appearance) of the bread and wine in the Eucharist becomes Christ’s real presence—that is, his body and blood. This is an amazing miracle that takes place at each and every mass all around the world. The Catechism of the Catholic Church talks about the Eucharist and why we believe all that we believe. In CCC 1336, it says, “The first announcement of the Eucharist divided the disciples, just as the announcement of the Passion scandalized them: “This is a hard saying” who can listen to it? The Eucharist and the Cross are stumbling blocks. It is the same mystery, and it never ceases to be an occasion of division. “Will you also go away?” The Lord’s question echoes through the ages as a loving invitation to discover that only he has “the words of eternal life” and that to receive the faith of the gift of the Eucharist is to receive the Lord himself.
My goal today is not to try and convince anyone of the true presence of Christ in the Eucharist. My goal is to just talk about how beautiful it is that we get to actually have the body and blood of Jesus as part of our Mass. When we go up for Communion, we are receiving Christ into our bodies. We should prepare our bodies in a similar way that we would prepare a house if we were to have a guest. We must get rid of any mortal sins that we are carrying around. If you missed mass, you must go to Confession before receiving Christ into your body. I know sometimes this can be hard for us because if we truly understand that it is Christ in the Eucharist, then we understand the power of the Eucharist. It can be difficult to find a place and time to go to Confession, or at least that is what the enemy wants us to think. In all actuality, there is probably confession going on most days within a 30-minute radius of you.
However, the enemy makes it very difficult for us to go to Confession because He knows how good it is for our souls. At the time Confession is being offered, we will often forget or have completely random things come up. Every time that we find it is offered, it seems very inconvenient. That is the enemy; don’t let Him fool you. The temptation to go to the Eucharist, even though you have missed Mass, is very strong. We tell ourselves we will go to Confession soon, but we don’t want to miss our chance to receive the graces that go along with Communion. I get it; I have thought the same way in the past. The problem is it is not about us; it is about Christ, and it is about being obedient to the laws of our church. The Church has told us that it is a sin to go to communion when we have a mortal sin on our conscience, and missing Mass is a mortal sin. That means when we go to communion after having missed mass, before confessing in the Sacrament of Confession, then we are sinning again. Do we really want to bring Christ into our bodies when they are not ready?
Another way to prepare ourselves for receiving Christ is to be aware of how amazing it is that His presence is in the Eucharist and be reverent on the way up to the person dispensing it and also on our way back to our seat. Think about how amazing Jesus is and how much He sacrificed for us on the way up to communion. On your way back to your seat, thank Him for all He has done. I heard Dr. Edward Sri talk at a conference once, and He said every time he receives the Eucharist, he says, “Thank you, Lord, please remain in me until I am able to receive you again.” I started saying that on my way back to my seat or right after I got there. Church can be distracting, especially when everyone is walking up to communion. We might be tempted to check out who is at Mass that day and what they are wearing. What if instead of doing that, we just spent the time with our heads down thinking about and talking to God about how amazing He is? Wouldn’t that be a better use of our time?
Another amazing thing we get to do as Catholics is Eucharistic Adoration. Since we believe the Eucharist is the very real presence of the Lord Jesus Christ, then we can sit and adore Him. If you have not ever gone to Eucharistic Adoration, I recommend you give it a try. You get to sit in the room and adore Jesus. There is no set thing you have to do when you spend time with Him, either. You can pray, you can talk to Him, you can write in your prayer journal, and you can ask Him to help you work on something. For instance, I will go to adoration to write some of my talks or to work on my book. You can also sit there and do nothing. I will admit this is the hardest for me. It is hard for me just to go and sit with Him. I feel guilty like I should be doing something. However, He loves it when we just sit with Him.
I hope you enjoyed today's look at the Eucharist. I received this verse from the Lord yesterday, and yet I was unsure what exactly He wanted me to say about it. I was also unsure if I should talk about it as I know many people who listen to this, and yet they are not Catholic. However, I felt the Lord wanted me to talk about it, and today, I feel He gave me a lot more info about what He wanted me to say. If you are Catholic and you are listening, I hope this episode helps give you a bit more reverence for what is actually going on at Mass and how you can prepare your body a bit to receive the Eucharist. I hope it gave you some ideas of what to do on your way up to communion and what to do afterward. I hope this is only the beginning and that you explore more about it on your own. If you are not Catholic, I hope this provided you with a bit more insight into why we believe what we believe, and I am always happy to answer any questions you may have.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, you are amazing. Thank you for the gift of your son. Thank you that He not only came to walk the Earth to teach us, not only did He sacrifice His life to save us, but He also is alive and well in the Eucharist, which, in some parts of the world, is available to us each and every day. Thank you so much for Eucharistic Adoration as well. Thank you for giving us so many opportunities to adore you and glorify you. Lord, help us to see that we should prepare our bodies for you each week. Help us to see what we are doing that might get in the way of us receiving you in a state of grace. Convict our hearts to change anything that is not right, Lord. We love you tons, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I spoke with the retreat house yesterday to see if I could go and take some photos to upload to the retreat registration site. She said she would be happy to send me some photos. She said the new beds will be delivered this week. She said there were lots of enhancements this summer for sure. I am getting so excited as the retreat is just five weeks away! If you have not signed up yet and want to come, please consider signing up soon, as it will be helpful for planning purposes if I know how many people will be coming. You can always sign up now and pay later. That way, I will have a head count. CLICK HERE for retreat info and registration. I look forward to getting to spend the weekend with some of you! I look forward to bringing you another witness tomorrow as well. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Gossip Is Like Poison
Proverbs 16:28 “A perverse person spreads strife, and a whisperer separates close friends.”
What came to mind when I heard this verse was gossip. I know I have talked about this before, and yet I think we can’t really over-emphasize how bad gossiping is. We tend to think it is not that bad because you are just talking amongst your friends or family members, so the other person will never find out. We think we have a right to sometimes as if we are just stating how we are feeling. Nothing good comes from gossiping.
Even if we are just talking to our family or our friends, it can still hurt the other person. First of all, the other person usually finds out. It is a much smaller world than you think, and someone will tell someone, who will tell that person. However, even if they never find out what you said about them, there are still a few ways it can hurt that person. When you talk about someone, whether it is good or bad, what you say can and usually does affect the way the person you are talking to thinks about that person. For instance, if you are talking to your friend, Jane, about how someone at church was rude to you the other day, then Jane has that thought in their head now for all future interactions with that person at church. When they see that person, they will think of the thing you told them. This can be a good thing if you are spreading good things about people. For instance, if you were to tell Jane about how helpful this person at church was, then when she saw that person, she would think of how helpful she was to you.
The problem with the things we say helping to form our friends’ and families’ opinions of others is that our opinions aren’t always based on the facts. For instance, we might be saying that the woman at church was rude to us when, in all actuality, maybe we were just in a bad mood, and we were defensive, and she was just stating something or asking something, and we took offense and said she was rude. This can happen far more often than we would like to think. How we react to what other people say has much more to do with us and our experiences and moods than it does with them. They might have done or said the same thing to our friend Jane, and she didn’t find it rude at all.
Another problem with gossiping is that it is all one-sided. It is one person, or even a group of people, talking about what happened in a given situation. However, the person/people you are talking about also have an explanation or accounting of what happened, and it probably does not line up with yours. I understand that we need to vent at times. However, we could always vent to the Lord. He doesn’t take it personally, and He won’t let it shape the way He looks at the other person involved because He knows both sides of the story. If we must vent to someone else, could we do it without using names or without letting the other person know who we are talking about? That way, what we say will not affect how the person we are talking to looks at that other person.
This is especially important when we are married, and we are talking/venting to our parents or other family members about our spouse. We should not talk negatively or vent to our family members or our good friends about our spouse if we can help it. We love our spouse, and yet when we struggle, we want to talk about it to someone. We might be angry with them, and we know we will feel better if we talk to someone about it. The problem with going to family is that they may unknowingly or knowingly hold a grudge. They may hear you talking about your spouse when you are angry, and then they decide they don’t like him or her. You forgive your spouse quickly as you love them. However, the family might be much more slow to forgive. This was advice I got before I got married, and it has proved to be some pretty sound advice. I would talk to my friends if I was upset with my husband, but only friends who loved me and also knew that it was normal to fight with a spouse sometimes. You hopefully always love each other, but you may not always like each other.
Gossip not only hurts others, it can hurt you as well. It can hurt your soul as each time you gossip, it takes you a little further away from Christ. It can also affect your relationships. If you tend to gossip or talk badly about people a lot, then you will become known as someone who talks badly about people when you are not there, especially if you talk about your friends or coworkers to other friends or coworkers when they aren’t there. Your friends or coworkers will start to think you are probably talking about them when they are not around, too. Then, people might not trust you as much, or even worse, they may not want to be around you.
It is not fun to be around people who gossip or complain about others all the time. If we are trying to grow in our faith and our relationship with God, then we are probably trying to live as best we can. Gossip has no place in our pursuit of a holy lifestyle. This also means we will avoid being around those who gossip a lot or those who may cause us to gossip a lot. If we want to live a holy lifestyle, we need to do our best to live according to the Word of the Lord. We need to have Christ as our role model. He did not gossip, and He did not talk badly about others. He did not judge others, although He had every authority to do so. If we want to be Christ-like, we should not gossip.
I know it can be easy to fall into the trap of gossiping. I find myself in it more often than I would like. I try to tell myself I am not gossiping, and yet I can hear the Lord gently reminding me that I am. If you fall into gossiping easily, here is one suggestion that might help you to slow it down or stop it altogether. When you think about talking about another person, ask yourself if what you are about to say is good or bad. If it is bad, don’t say it; bite your tongue and just let it go unsaid. Next, you can ask yourself if what you are going to say will negatively impact the way that person will view the person you are talking about. If the answer is yes, then do not say it; bite your tongue and let it go unsaid. Our speech should be used to build people up. There are enough people in this world who are tearing people down; let’s not join them. Let’s be better than that. When you are thinking of someone who is annoying you, and you want to vent, stop, take a moment, and see if you can come up with one nice or at least neutral thing, you can stay instead. For instance, instead of saying my friend forgot to text me back yesterday, you can say my friend has a lot on his plate and texts me when he can. Gossip is bad, and it draws you away from the Lord. Is whatever you were going to say worth growing further away from the Lord?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to stop gossiping; it is just so hard. Please help us. Help convict us in our hearts when we are gossiping, and then show us how to stop. Lord, help us to understand how hurtful it is and how much pain it can cause. We love you, Lord, and we don’t want to do anything to hurt you or to cause separation between us. Please help us, Lord. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Just a reminder that registration for the retreat is open! The retreat will be from 2 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 7th, until 11 a.m. on Monday, October 9th. It will be two days of talks, prayers, praise, worship, sacraments, and so much more! You do not want to miss this weekend. My hope is that you will leave filled up with God’s love and armed with the skills to hear His voice guiding your journey. You will also leave with a few more friends to join you on this faith journey. I look forward to sharing an incredible weekend with you. CLICK HERE to register for retreat. I also look forward to joining you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
The Spirit Of Truth Is Speaking To You!
John 16:13-15 " When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason, I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.”
This verse talks about the Holy Spirit, the gift the Lord sent us when Jesus went to heaven. In this verse, it talks about various aspects of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit came to us for several reasons. This verse first discusses that it is the Spirit of truth and that He will guide us into all the truth. This is important because it reminds us that we can trust what we hear from the Holy Spirit. This verse reminds us that what we hear from the Holy Spirit comes directly from the Lord. The Spirit is not speaking on His own; He is telling us what He heard the Father say.
It also says that He will declare to us what will come. This is important because it reminds us that we have someone on our side. We can ask the Holy Spirit questions, and He will answer. This doesn’t mean that we will never be taken by surprise or that we will know everything that will happen to us throughout the day. This means the Holy Spirit can prepare us for what is coming if we allow Him. In order to allow Him to help us prepare for what is coming, we need to set aside time to listen to Him. We need to pay attention to what He says and not just listen and then let it go.
Our prayer group sets aside a time each week when we are quiet and listen for the words of the Holy Spirit. We record these words. We then type everything that was said, and we give those notes to the Discernment team. This team then discerns what we think the Lord’s call, proclamation, promise, and directive was for that month. We then put this information from the Holy Spirit onto a bookmark so that our whole group can remember the words that were said and we can incorporate them into our everyday lives. We can use these words to strengthen us and prepare us for what is to come. For instance this is the latest bookmark: “My call to each one of you is very personal. It is not a
message for everyone. It is intimate, personal, all-loving, and all-consuming. From the beginning, I spoke, and my Word created new life. I speak again today through my holy Word to each of your hearts. I create new life. I renew, replenish, and fill you with grace and mercy that I wish you to share with others. I watch over you, my children. I break the sword of the enemy who would come against you. I will defend you in battle. I have sent you the power of the Spirit, and he will give you all that you need to do what you have been called to do. You are the anointing I send to the world. Be not afraid. I am with you. My Spirit will speak through you the words that I wish to say. When I say you can, don’t tell me you can’t. Smile that today I send you.”
These words were spoken to our prayer group over the course of a month. We recorded them because we did not want to forget them. However, we receive many words each week, and it would be difficult to remember all of them. This is where the discernment team comes in. There are four of us on the team, and we all read through all the words given that month on our own and come up with what we think the Lord wants everyone to remember. We then come together and see if we have chosen the same things. Most of the time, we have at least two people who picked the same thing for each category so we will go with that. Occasionally, we all pick different words; if that is the case, we will pray and ask the Lord to lead us to the one He wants us to use.
I think if you were to look at the four categories we use to make our bookmarks, it might give you a better idea of what sort of information the Holy Spirit gives us. The first thing we look at is the call. What is the Holy Spirit calling us to do? I am sure the Holy Spirit is calling you to something as well. Do you know what that is? What is your calling? What is the Holy Spirit calling you to? Are you taking the time to listen to that call? Are you writing down the things you hear? God has a plan for each of us and sends the Holy Spirit to tell us what that plan is.
The next things we look at is proclamation. While you are listening to the Lord He will tell you things about Himself. These tend to be “I am” statements about who He is and what He is doing. For instance, in the bookmark above, the Holy Spirit told us, “From the beginning, I spoke, and my Word created new life. I speak again today through my holy Word to each of your hearts. I create a new life. I renew, replenish, and fill you with grace and mercy that I wish you to share with others.” Do you see how the Lord is proclaiming who He is and what He does? He is reminding us that He created everything. He is also telling us that not only did He create everything with His words, but that he is speaking those words into our hearts as well. He is letting us know that He creates new life. He wants us to know that He is filling us with grace and mercy so we can share it with others.
The third thing we look at is His promise. Did you know the Holy Spirit can share God’s promises with you? It’s true that God is still making promises, or maybe He is reminding us of promises made long ago that we have forgotten about or did not know about. Either way, they are promises we can count on. In the bookmark above, the promise is, “I watch over you, my children. I break the sword of the enemy who would come against you. I will defend you in battle. I have sent you the power of the Spirit, and he will give you all that you need to do what you have been called to do.” God is promising us that He is there watching over us. He is promising that He will break the sword of the enemy who will come against us. The Lord is letting us know He will defend us in battle. He is reminding us that He sent the Holy Spirit to us, and with that Holy Spirit comes power. He is letting us know that if he is calling us to something, He will give us all we need to complete that call. We are not on our own; He is there with us!
The last thing we look at is directive. What is the Lord directing us to do? We usually have a lot of directives to choose from, as I think the Lord wants us to be out in the world doing things for Him. He wants us to love others and bring them to Him. The directive in the bookmark above is, “You are the anointing I send to the world. Be not afraid. I am with you. My Spirit will speak through you the words that I wish to say. When I say you can, don’t tell me you can’t. Smile that today I send you.” In this directive, the Lord is assuring us that the Holy Spirit will speak through us and give us the words the Lord wants us to say. He is telling us he anointed us and that He is with us and will give us all we need for that anointing. I love that the Lord knows us so well. I love when He says, “When I say you can, don’t tell me you can’t.” Isn’t that just like us? I don’t know about you, but I tell the Lord, I can’t often. When I feel He is calling me to pray over complete strangers in the streets, I tell Him I can’t. When He tells me to do things that are way outside my comfort zone, I tell Him I can’t.
That line definitely convicts me. It reminds me that God is with me and who am I to tell the Lord what I can and can’t do? Didn’t he create me? Doesn’t He know every hair on my head? So, why am I telling Him what I can and can’t do when He is the one who created me? He knows what I can and can’t do much better than I do. What I should be saying is “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” I think the purpose of me going over our discernment process with you today is so that you can start to recognize when the Holy Spirit is talking to you. Now that you know some of the various ways He talks to you, maybe you will start to recognize His voice a bit more. Maybe you can differentiate what He is saying, and I hope it will help you put His words into action.
Hearing the voice of the Lord is a gift from the Holy Spirit, and it is one that can increase with practice and decrease if ignored. If the Holy Spirit is constantly talking with you and you are ignoring all He is saying, I am not sure if He will continue to talk with you. When you make time to listen to the Lord, He will always talk with you, as He loves when we listen. When He talks with you, write down what He says and refer back to it. I sometimes find myself reviewing my prayer journal and what the Lord said to me. However, I do not do it as often as I would like. Every time I do, I wonder why I don’t do it more often. It is so beneficial. I hope this episode encourages you to pay a little more attention to the Holy Spirit's voice and the different types of words He might give you. He is speaking to you, and His words are straight from the Lord.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we pray that we can all hear your voice. We pray that it brings us fruit in our lives. We pray we can hear it and apply it to our lives. We ask you to help us, Lord. Help us not just to hear it and forget it but to remember it and apply it to our lives. We love you, Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to seeing you again on Monday. Remember Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
God Can Make A Way Where There Is No Way!
Psalm 116:1-4 "I love the Lord because he has heard my voice and my supplications. Because he inclined his ear to me, therefore, I will call on him as long as I live. The snares of death encompassed me; the pangs of Sheol laid hold on me; I suffered distress and anguish. Then I called on the name of the Lord: “O Lord, I pray, save my life!”
I was only going to talk about verses 1 and 2, which are the verses of the day today on the Bible Gateway website where I look up Bible verses. I like this website because it will show you all the English translations of whatever verses you look up. Sometimes, it is helpful to look up a verse in multiple translations. Some translations are easier to understand than others. I like to read the surrounding verses of any scripture I am given to understand the context of the verse I am using. When I read more into the chapter today, I also decided to include the following two verses.
The beginning of this says that the author of this verse loves the Lord because the Lord has heard his voice and his prayers. When we hear that, we might assume that the author of this verse had a pretty easy life. We might think that the Lord answered His prayers because they were easy to answer. He didn’t need a lot, so the Lord responded to His prayers. However, when I read the following two verses, I could see this was not the case. The verse says, “The snares of death encompassed me; the pangs of Sheol laid hold on me; I suffered distress and anguish. Then I called on the name of the Lord: “O Lord, I pray, save my life!”
The person who wrote this verse was not asking for a small prayer, yet the Lord heard his voice and his prayer and listened to him. Here are the same verses in the message translation, “ I love God because he listened to me, listened as I begged for mercy. He listened so intently as I laid out my case before him. Death stared me in the face; hell was hard on my heels. Up against it, I didn’t know which way to turn; then I called out to God for help: “Please, God!” I cried out. “Save my life!” I feel like this translation goes into a bit more depth. I feel as though we can all relate to these verses.
The good news is that if God can help the person who wrote this psalm, which is believed to be King David, then God can help us out of our mess.
The verse says, “The snares of death encompassed me; the pang of Sheol laid hold of me; I suffered distress and anguish.” How many of us have been there? How many of us thought we might not make it through a situation? We might not have thought we would die, but we definitely felt the pangs of Hell. We looked at our situation and felt there was no way out of it. Because we didn’t see a way out, we didn’t think God could help us either. We seem to do that a lot. We look at our situation, and if we can’t see a way out of it, we don’t even bother asking God for help. I mean, what can He do anyway? Have you ever been in a situation like that? I know I have asked people if they wanted prayers, and they asked me what God would do about it. They said nothing could be done, so what is the point of praying?
I understand where they are coming from and why they would think that way. However, God doesn’t have to play by our rules. He can make a way where there isn’t one. He can save us from our problems in ways we can’t even imagine. God’s ways are higher than ours, and His thoughts are higher than ours. He spoke the entire world into existence. I am sure He can figure out how to get you out of whatever situation you find yourself in, even if it seems impossible. The Lord has proven time and time again in the Bible that He can rescue His people from impossible situations. The Israelites have found themselves in several situations where they should have died, been captured, or lost the war, yet God saved them from certain death. He can do the same for you.
A song popped into my head when I typed, “He can make a way where there isn’t one.” I think that song can probably say what I am trying to say better than I can. Here are the lyrics for “My Jesus” by Anne Wilson
… Are you past the point of weary?
Is your burden weighin' heavy?
Is it all too much to carry?
Let me tell you 'bout my Jesus
Do you feel that empty feeling?
'Cause shame's done all its stealin'
And you're desperate for some healin'
Let me tell you 'bout my Jesus
… He makes a way where there ain't no way
Rises up from an empty grave
Ain't no sinner that He can't save
Let me tell you 'bout my Jesus
His love is strong and His grace is free
And the good news is I know that He
Can do for you what He's done for me
Let me tell you 'bout my Jesus
And let my Jesus change your life
… Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Amen
Amen
… Who can wipe away the tears
From broken dreams and wasted years
And tell the past to disappear? Oh
Let me tell you 'bout my Jesus
And all the wrong turns that you would
Go and undo if you could
Who can work it all for your good
Let me tell you about my Jesus
… He makes a way where there ain't no way
Rises up from an empty grave
Ain't no sinner that He can't save
Let me tell you 'bout my Jesus
His love is strong and His grace is free
And the good news is I know that He
Can do for you what He's done for me
Let me tell you 'bout my Jesus
And let my Jesus change your life
… Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Amen
Amen, Amen
… Who would take my cross to Calvary?
Pay the price for all my guilty?
Who would care that much about me?
Let me tell you 'bout my Jesus, oh
… He makes a way where there ain't no way
Rises up from an empty grave
Ain't no sinner that He can't save
Let me tell you 'bout my Jesus
His love is strong and His grace is free
And the good news is I know that He
Can do for you what He's done for me
Let me tell you 'bout my Jesus
And let my Jesus change your life
… Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah, amen
Amen
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Let my Jesus change your life
Wow, that is a powerful song. I don’t know about you, but I love music. I didn’t ever really listen to it a lot growing up. We didn’t have a radio in our rooms, and we didn’t usually have the car radio on because there were so many of us, and we couldn’t agree on what kind of music to listen to. However, since I discovered that Christian music is a thing, I always listen to music. I think that is part of the reason my faith is so strong. All day, I have these songs reminding me about how amazing God is and how amazing I am in His eyes. There are songs out there for everything you are going through. If you don’t feel loved, there are songs to remind you how much you are loved. If you don’t feel worthy or enough, there are songs to remind you of how precious you are to our heavenly Father. If you are in a dark place, there are songs from others who have been there and made it out. Music is so good for the soul. If you want great music, check out The Big Life Mornings playlist on Spotify. I also have a playlist on my YouTube channel, walkboldlywithjesus, called prayer group, with tons of worship music on it as well.
No matter the situation, God will be there for you; you just need to ask Him. Remember to always pray to God, even if you don’t see a way out, even if it seems hopeless. He can find a way where there isn’t one. He can save you; you just have to give Him a chance. God loves you more than you know. He knows the situation you are in, and He knows the way through it. He is just waiting for you to come to Him and ask Him. Free will and humility are essential to God, and He won’t interfere if you don’t want Him to. Ask God for help, sit back, and watch Him make a way where there wasn’t one.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you, and we want to pray to you. We want to ask you to save us. We thank you for always finding a way to save us from ourselves. We are so grateful. We are sorry we doubt at times. We are sorry we don’t sometimes ask because we don’t see a way out. We thank you for always coming through and for not letting us down. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I am so excited because people have started signing up for the retreat. I can’t believe I get to spend a weekend pouring God’s love into some of you. If you know someone who could give you a bit of love or time away from the reality of life, please provide them with the information or the retreat. It’s going to be a great weekend! Click Here for Retreat Info. Check it out, and if you are interested, please sign up. If you need more information or have more questions, please get in touch with catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or 860-481-0959. Click Here to email. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
CLICK HERE for retreat info
We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click here. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed day!
Great Is Your Faith!
Matthew 15:28 “Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed instantly.”
I have heard this story in the Bible many times and I am sure you have too. Right before this verse is the story of the woman who was asking Jesus to heal her daughter. Here is the story found in Matthew 15:21-28 “Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.” But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, “Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.” He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” He answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed instantly.
I have heard several sermons on this story. The focus always seems to be on why Jesus spoke to her the way that He did and why He said the things that He said. I think those are important things to discuss because it sounds like He is being very rude. If you have not heard any sermons or any explanations of why Jesus said the things He said, I recommend you look them up as it is very interesting. However, what the Holy Spirit highlighted for me today is the very last line in this story. Jesus said, “‘Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.’ And her daughter was healed instantly.”
This came right after the woman said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” What the Holy Spirit told me is that we don’t have to be perfect to receive healing. This woman was not one of the chosen people and yet she believed that even the crumbs left over after the chosen people had been healed would have enough power to heal her daughter. She knew she wasn’t one of the chosen people. She knew she didn’t have a right, so to speak, to be asking Jesus for anything, let alone a miracle, and yet she was brave enough to ask anyway.
It’s interesting, when I read the words, “even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the master’s table,” I heard the Holy Spirit say, you are like the crumbs. I had no idea what he meant by this. Then I felt like he was saying, we think we need to be perfect to either ask for healing or pray for others for healing. The Holy Spirit was telling me we don’t have to be perfect. This woman was not perfect and yet she knew she needed a miracle and although she didn’t really know Jesus, she believed in His power and knew He could heal her daughter. She knew, without a doubt that He could heal her daughter. She even said when she called out, “Lord, son of David.” Even his apostles were struggling to see who He truly was and yet this woman could see.
If we want to be used by the Holy Spirit to pray for others then we don’t need to be perfect, we just need to be willing and humble. This woman humbled herself and knelt before Jesus. She begged Him to heal her daughter. She did not get caught up in what she should or shouldn’t do. She didn’t get caught up in what He was saying or how He was saying it. She needed Him to heal her daughter and she kept asking and persisting until He did. We can all learn a lot from this woman. Her faith was so powerful it saved her child.
Whom do you know that could use some prayers like this? This woman knew she had nothing to lose and everything to gain by begging Jesus to heal her daughter. Are we playing it too safe with our prayers? Are we holding back when we ask Jesus for healing or not even asking Him to heal our loved ones because we don’t want to bother Him or we don’t feel we are worthy? Are we asking for things, but not the big things, not the things we really want because we are afraid we won’t get them? Are we protecting ourselves from the letdown of our prayers not being answered so we don’t ever ask?
I know this is for someone today because it is very strong in my thoughts right now. God wants me to tell you to stop holding back and stop playing it small with your prayers. God has some amazing blessings for you and yet He is waiting for you to ask. He is waiting for you to trust that He will answer your prayers, even if they seem a bit impossible, even if they seem extremely impossible. God is telling us to ask Him anyway! I feel as though He really wants us to understand that we are not bothering Him with our prayers. We honor Him when we pray to Him and ask Him for help, especially when we ask Him for big, bold, audacious things. That is not a word I use often, but I felt that was the word I was supposed to use there.
Wouldn’t it be great one day to be sitting there, or standing there with Jesus, and then He turns to us and says, “Woman, or man, great is your faith!” I long for that day. That image, that vision is enough for me to do all I can to increase my faith. The image of Jesus saying that to me gives me the strength and fortitude to pray the litany of trust and the litany of humility often. That image gives me the strength to call on the Lord whenever I need Him. The woman in the verse today had great faith. She believed He was who He said He was, she believed in His power and she wasn’t afraid to ask Him for help. How about us?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless each and every person listening to this episode. Lord, we want to have great faith, please help us. We want to come to you when we are in need. We want to ask you the big, bold, audacious prayers. We believe Lord, help our unbelief. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I want to remind you that registration for the Oct 7-9th retreat has opened up. CLICK HERE to register! I am so excited to get to spend a weekend getting to know some of you. It is going to be a really fun time and yet also a time to be filled up with God’s love. It will be a healing weekend too! If life is a bit much at times, you will leave feeling refreshed. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day.
Can Unforgiveness Affect My Eternal Salvation?
Colossians 3:13 “Bearing with one another and forgiving one another, if one has a grievance against another; as the Lord has forgiven you, so must you also do.”
I recently attended a boot camp to learn about the unbound method of deliverance. Unbound is a technique to set people free from the things that weigh them down. The reality is that our enemy, the devil, wants to keep us from living out our destinies as children of God. Evil spirits can gain influence in our lives through open doorways. These are opened, often in childhood, by us or by other people. Through these doors, Satan’s lies and deceptions limit our access to the blessing of the kingdom of God. Sometimes we open doors to the enemy in ways we don’t know, for instance, participating in the occult, holding on to bitterness or unforgiveness, harboring resentment, and so on. On our first night of training, we learned about the first two essential steps.
The first one was repenting of sin and expressing faith in Jesus. We all sin, it is a part of our daily life, and yet when we sin it hurts our relationship with God. When we sin we are opening a door for the enemy to come in. Repentance for our sins is a big part of our freedom. If we truly want to be free we can’t have our sins hanging over us. One way our sins can invite the enemy in is because he will then use that sin to make us ashamed of what we did. Shame is straight from hell, it is not from God. Once we start to feel ashamed then we pull away and we tend to isolate ourselves because we feel as though we aren’t worth anything. Once we repent we bring our sins out of the darkness and into the light and they no longer have hold over us.
The second essential step that we talked about is forgiveness. This is the one that left the biggest impression on me. This is the one that I don’t think we realize how important it is. I remember when I was at a Bible study and they were talking about forgiveness. We were talking about Matthew 6:14, “For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.” When they said that God forgives us the same way we forgive those who trespass against us, I was so surprised. I had no idea what they were talking about. Now, I have been a Catholic for my whole life and this was only about 10 years ago. I have probably said the Our Father prayer more times than I can count and yet I never really put two and two together.
Have you ever had a time when you heard something or realized something and it was life-changing for you? I can remember two times this has happened for me with scripture. The first one was when I discovered Romans 8:11, “And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you.” When I discovered we have the power of the one who raised Jesus from the dead, the same power Jesus had, that was life-changing for me. The second time was when I discovered what I am really saying when I say the Our Father prayer. “Forgive us O Lord as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Did you know that is what you are saying? How many times have you said that prayer? Each time you say the rosary you say it at least 6 times. We also say it every time we attend mass.
When I heard this I was determined to learn how to forgive better. I was determined to not hold things against people. I have done my best to do this. Over the course of the last 10 years, I have learned quite a bit about forgiveness in my quest to become better at it. First I learned what forgiveness is and is not. Forgiveness is making a decision that you are no longer going to give the thing that happened any space in your brain anymore. You are not going to think about it and you are not going to let it dictate what you do and how you act. Forgiveness is an act of the will, it is not a feeling. You can forgive someone even if you don’t feel like it. You can forgive someone and yet not feel like anything has changed. Forgiveness is not saying the thing that the other person did was ok, it was not. When you forgive you are not letting the other person off the hook and condoning their behavior. Forgiveness is making a decision to turn the judgment over to God. Forgiveness is making a decision that you are no longer going to let unforgiveness eat you up inside. The person you are refusing to forgive probably has moved on and your unforgiveness is not bothering them at all.
The analogy that I have heard time and time again about forgiveness is that it is like taking a little sip of poison every single day with the expectation that the other person will die. I know you are angry, hurt, and sad. I am sure you have every right to be, and also, as long as you keep thinking about it and refusing to forgive, you can’t really heal. I talk to people I know about unforgiveness all the time since learning we will be forgiven as we forgive. I can’t help it, I understand what is at stake and I know it is not worth it. Whomever you are refusing to forgive has probably taken enough from you, are you really going to let them take your eternal salvation too? No matter what they did to you, is not forgiving them worth the risk of God not forgiving you?
Our teacher told the story about a preacher/minister who had died and found out he was on his way to hell. He said he saw how horrible it was. In hell, this man saw another man on all fours on fire from head to toe. He had a collar around his neck attached to a chain and a demon was holding the chain. Our teacher told us that this man went to hell because he had unforgiveness in his heart. I was curious to hear the exact story so I looked it up online. It turns out it was a priest who had a heart attack and must have flatlined at some point. Here is what the priest said, "I thought I was going upward because I thought I had done so much good in this lifetime trying to help so many people and made so many decisions that were godly decisions, but instead of me going up, I went down!” This priest was very angry as he said he did so much good in his lifetime. Then he said he saw Jesus and Jesus gave him a personal message. "Jesus said, 'You have been secretly upset with the people who have hurt you. You had been hoping that I would punish the people that hurt you. These are not your people. These are my people.' He said, 'I only want you to focus on the assignment I am giving you.’ The priest explains, “Although I did good, the thing I had in my heart was unforgiveness for the people who wronged me. A person that can't forgive is a person that has forgotten how much they have been forgiven of.”
This example is probably not what we want to hear. I know it scared me when I heard it and yet we must hear it. We have to know what will keep us from spending eternity with our Father. This is why God sends people to share these messages with us. Mary gave the little children of Fatima an image of hell and told them that more people than we know are ending up there. Forgiveness is not easy, I know that. I know that I don’t understand some of the things that have happened to you. I know people can be terrible and they do terrible things. If you are struggling to forgive I ask you to review what forgiveness is and is not again. You don’t have to forgive and forget. You don't have to forgive the person and invite them over for Christmas. It is perfectly ok to forgive the person and never see them again, never tell them you forgave them, never talk to them again. Forgiveness is for you, it is not for them.
The last line the priest said really hit me. “A person that can’t forgive is a person that has forgotten how much they have been forgiven of.” What if all the people we wronged refused to forgive us? What if God held original sin against us and refused to forgive us? What if he refused to send His only son to save us? Forgiveness is so much more important than we think it is. I know so many people who are refusing to forgive because they say the other person doesn’t deserve forgiveness. You might be right. Forgiveness is not about them, it is about you. It is about setting yourself free from the spirit of unforgiveness. Unforgiveness can block so much from the Lord. It can block healing, it can block graces, and it can block your forgiveness from the Lord. Is it really worth it?
I want to take a minute to add some hope to the end of this talk because if you are harboring unforgiveness it might be very scary to think of the consequences. You might have had some truly terrible things done to you and you want the Lord to forgive you and yet you have no idea where to even begin forgiving the other person or people. Here is the thing, the Lord doesn’t expect you to forgive on your own. We can’t actually forgive on our own. All we can do is say, yes Lord, I want to forgive, and the Lord can change your heart for you. If you are at a point right now where you really can’t even say,” Lord, I want to forgive, please help me.” That's ok. The Lord meets us where we are. Can you say I want to, want to forgive? Can you say, Jesus, please give me the grace to want, to want to forgive? If so, Jesus will help you get to that point and then you can move to actually forgiving.
My teacher told a story about a woman who was doing an Unbound session and the woman with whom she was working refused to forgive her sister. Well, this is the first step, you can’t move on to the rest if you can’t first get through forgiveness. The woman was adamant that she would not forgive or even pray for her sister. The woman leading the session asked if she would be able to ask Jesus to help her want, to want to forgive. She said yes and she asked Jesus. She said ok, now she wanted to want forgive, but she still couldn’t forgive. The leader asked her if she would be willing to do 1% of the work to forgive if Jesus could do the other 99%. She said she thought she might be able to do that and so she forgave her sister 1% and Jesus did the rest.
Remember, forgiveness is an act of the will, it is not a feeling. She might not have felt any different after she forgave her sister that 1% but she was willing to do it. God will meet you where you are too! If all you can say right now is, “Lord please give me the grace to want, to want, to want to forgive.” That’s ok, just say it. God is the one who does the forgiving. We just need to say the words and God does all the hard parts. God is asking us to let Him in, to not refuse to let Him work on any area of us. Can we do that? Can we give God even a tiny little crack of a window where He can come in and transform our hearts? Don’t let the unforgiveness of what others did to you dictate the level of forgiveness you get from God. Haven’t they done enough? Don’t let them continue to have an effect on your life and definitely not your eternity. A wonderful way to conclude your forgiveness of another is to pray the Father’s Blessing upon them. God will rejoice in your wholehearted generosity because that is the way He is with us.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to spend eternity with you. We don’t want anything to get in our way, especially unforgiveness. Please show us whom we need to forgive and then help us forgive them. For those we feel we can’t forgive, please help us Lord. Soften our hearts and give us the grace we need to at least want to forgive them. Help us say the words to allow you to come in and work on our hearts Lord. We want to hold nothing back from you. Help us also repent of our sins Lord. We don’t want to give the enemy any ammunition and when we keep our sins from you the enemy uses them against us. Help us turn them over to you Lord. Help us repent and turn back to you. Help us repair our relationship with you. We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Your Prayers Will Be Answered!
James 5:16: "The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results.”
The Big Life Devotional Podcast has an excellent episode yesterday titled “Praying in Circles.” What I loved most about this episode is that it gave us an action we can do to pray for our children, or really anything we are praying for. The idea of praying in circles comes from a book called The Circle Maker by Mark Batterson. This is an amazing book that talks about praying circles around our problems. Mark starts his book off by telling us the legend of Honi the Circle Maker—a man bold enough to draw a circle in the sand and not budge from inside it until God answered his prayers for his people. Honi was a man of God.
I am not sure if He was a prophet, or just a prayer warrior, or what. It had not rained in a very long time and the people in the village came to Honi and begged him to pray to God for rain. Honi agreed and he drew a circle in the dirt and prayed to God for rain. He told God he would not step foot out of that circle until it rained. He prayed and he prayed. Eventually, it started to sprinkle. When he saw this he could have stopped praying. He could have said thank you, Lord, I truly appreciate this little rain that you sent us. However, He didn’t. He said thank you Lord and also, this is not the rain I am praying for, I am praying for more rain. He continued to pray and praise the Lord. Finally, it was raining down so hard it was starting to flood the area, and all those that were standing around watching him pray were running for shelter.
What the Lord just put on my heart as I was typing is that we stop praying too early sometimes. At the first sign of our prayers being answered we stop praying and accept that small offering as the answer when God actually has so much more to give us. It is not that we don’t want more it is that we think we will be bothering God, or we will be greedy if we expect more. God wants you to know that is not true. He has so much more for you and He is just waiting for you to be open to receiving it. God wants us to expect big things, amazing things.
For instance, when we have partial healing, yes, absolutely thank God for that, and also let Him know you are expecting full healing. Keep asking for what you want. Don’t shy away because you are afraid you are asking for too much. I heard a phrase once and I love it. It reminds us why we ask for a lot. The phrase is “I’m not greedy, I’m just needy.” We aren’t asking God for more because we are being greedy, we are asking God because we know that we can’t do anything on our own and yet through Him, we can do all things.
The verse above says, “The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results.” Do you know what earnest means? The definition of earnest is “resulting from or showing sincere and intense conviction." What are you praying for right now? What is that prayer that you keep asking God about? That one prayer that you wonder if it will ever be answered? Are you praying earnestly for it? The Bible verses we read are talking to us directly. Each one of us and they are promised by God. Today’s verse tells us that the earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results. You can take this to the bank. This is a factual statement that you can rely on. If this is true, why haven’t some of our prayers been answered?
There are a couple of reasons for this. First and foremost is explained in Isaiah 55:8-9 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord.“As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” God is sovereign. He has a plan and it is better than our plan, even though we tend to think our plan and our timing is better. God knows what He is doing and so sometimes our prayers take longer than we would like or are answered differently than we would like because God has a better plan than we do.
However, I think sometimes our prayers take longer to be answered because of things we do or don’t do. Are we praying earnestly? Are we asking every single day? Are we asking for enough or are we settling for scraps? God doesn’t want to give you crumbs from the table. He wants to give you the whole cake. Why aren’t we asking for the cake? We will not be bothering God by asking Him for big, bold prayers. We will be honoring Him. Have you ever been asked to do something at work or in your personal life and the thing you were being asked to do was really difficult? How did you feel when someone asked you to do it? Did you feel honored that they thought you were capable of doing it? Yes, you might have been nervous, as it was a difficult thing or even just a new thing, and yet you felt honored that someone thought you could handle it or you could be good at it.
I remember each time the ladies in my prayer group asked to do a new thing. For instance when they asked me to be on the discernment team, or they asked me to be on the prayer team. I was so honored. It felt amazing to know they thought I was capable of doing those things. In a similar way, we honor God when we ask really big, bold prayers. We show Him we know how amazing He is. We show Him that we know He can do the impossible and that nothing is too big for Him. We are not asking God for too much, we are asking too little of Him.
It talks about persistence in the circle maker too. Mark Batterson talks about how we give up too soon sometimes when we are praying. We assume it is not God’s will if He takes too long to answer and yet maybe God is just waiting to see how badly we want it. What we are willing to do for it. For instance what if Honi, drew that circle in the sand and stood there for 5 hours and then gave up and yet God was going to make it rain after the 6th hour? We don’t know God’s timing, we just need to keep asking. Is there anything you want so badly you would be willing to draw a circle in the sand around that prayer? It doesn’t have to be standing in a circle in the sand until you get it, but maybe you could pray for 5 minutes every single day about that one thing until you get an answer. Maybe you could sit in a church every day for a few minutes until it is answered. Maybe you could commit to going to daily mass until it is answered. It doesn’t matter what you commit to as much as it matters that you are willing to commit to something.
I think you will see more answers to prayers if you do this because you will be more focused on your prayers. You will be searching for that answer because you are expecting it to come. It is as if you know it will be answered and so you are waiting expectantly. I wonder if that is the problem. I wonder if we are praying expectantly or not. Do you honestly expect God to answer your prayers? Are you on the lookout for the answers? Maybe that is why Honi’s prayer we answered so quickly. Actually, I have no idea how long he was standing in that circle, but I know it wasn’t months. He knew God would answer His prayer and He was willing to stand there in a circle, looking foolish, until God did. He put his pride aside and was willing to look foolish to wait on God. When we do this, when we step out in faith and put all of our trust in God, He never lets us down. There was no way God was going to not show up for Honi. Honi was honoring God by showing everyone in that town that God is the one to turn to when we need something. When you step out in faith, trusting God, He will always show up. He will not leave you hanging. Pray big, bold prayers, and watch how the Lord shows up for you. Pray earnestly and watch the amazing results. I just looked up in The Circle Maker Book, to see how long Honi prayed for and it said as his prayers went up the rain came down. So I guess his prayer was anwered pretty quickly. Batterson said Honi’s prayer was resolute yet humble, confident yet meek, expectant yet unassuming. I think we can all learn a lot from that statement. How can we follow Honi’s example of how to pray?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to pray earnestly, show us how. We want to step out in faith and demonstrate your awesomeness to all those around us, give us the holy boldness we need. Give us the persistence and the fortitude we need to continue to pray those prayers that don’t seem to be answered. Don’t let us give up Lord, help us keep asking. Show us, put on our hearts what it is you want us to do. If you want us to commit to doing something while we wait, put that on our hearts, let us know, and then give us the strength to do it. We love you, Lord, you are truly amazing. We thank you for always showing up. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I wanted to remind everyone that my retreat in October is open for registration. It is going to be a great weekend full of love. The Lord has been talking to me a lot about what that weekend should look like and I know it will be amazing. If you feel like you would like to feel a little more love from God these days, this retreat is for you. If you feel like you would like to have a deeper, more intimate relationship with the Lord, this retreat is for you. If you feel like you could use a little time away getting to know some really awesome people, this retreat is for you! Come join us, it will be great. CLICK HERE for the retreat or to walkboldlywithJesus.com. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Stay Focused on Jesus!
Colossians 3:1-2 "So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.”
Today’s prayer point to help us get ready for this weekend's healing service is “Focus on Jesus Christ.” This is a tough one. It may sound simple, we may all look at that and think we do a good job focusing on Jesus. I mean we pray each day, right? Good question, do we pray each day? How often do we pray? Is it once a day for 5 minutes, is it anytime we think to do it during the day, or is it only when someone we know asks us for prayers? I am sure it is a combination of all of that for all of us.
The question with this verse is, do we seek the things above, are our minds on Jesus, or are our minds on the things of this world? Because we live in this world, I am not sure if it will ever be possible to have our minds on things above all of the time. However, it is possible to spend more and more time thinking about the things in heaven and less and less time thinking about the things in this world. How do we do this though? How do we focus more on Jesus and less on this world?
What we spend our time doing is what we will spend our time thinking about. For instance, Tony and I just started watching a new TV series called Homeland. It is about a Prisoner of War that was in the middle east for 8 years and then was found and returned home to his family. Today, all morning I could not stop thinking about this show. I went over in my mind the various episodes we had watched, what I knew already, and what I was trying to figure out. Of course, it ended on a cliffhanger, so you are left wondering what will happen next. My mind has been so preoccupied with this show because we spent the majority of the day Sunday binge-watching it. We worked hard outside for several hours before it got hot outside and then were wiped out and decided to watch TV for the rest of the day. This show is on my mind because I spent so much time with it recently.
The same can be true with our Lord. If we spend our time focused on what is of Him, He will be what we can’t get out of our minds. Does this mean that we need to spend all day at church, or reading the Bible? No, it doesn’t. It does mean that while you go throughout your day, you can still have your focus on Him. For instance, when you are having your morning coffee and breakfast, you can be having a conversation with the Lord. You can talk to Him as if He is sitting right there with you. When you are driving into work, or wherever you need to drive to you can do several things to keep your focus on the Lord. One thing you could do is to talk with Him.
The second thing you could do is to listen to praise and worship music either on the radio or on an app like Spotify. You could pray for all those you know who are suffering and need the Lord’s help. You could listen to an audiobook that helps you grow in your faith. You could listen to a podcast that helps you keep your focus on the Lord. There is so much you can do while driving to keep your focus on the Lord. You can also do these same things while you go about any tasks throughout the day that don’t require a lot of thought, such as household chores, outside work, etc.
Another way you can increase your focus on Jesus is to have an attitude of gratitude. When we think about how grateful we are for all that we have then we remember why we have all that we have. This brings to mind who is responsible for giving us everything. Our focus is turned to the Lord. When we focus on gratitude we are focusing on what is good in our lives instead of focusing on what isn’t great in our lives. Also, gratitude helps us focus on what God is doing for us and is giving us, instead of focusing on what we don't have and what He isn’t doing for us.
One saying that I love and I think goes along great for today’s message is, “What if, instead of focusing on how big our problems are, we focused on how big God is?” I love that because it is so true. Another way to focus on God is to think about Him first when we encounter a problem. How many of us think of everything else before we think of God? Think about your thought process when you encounter a problem. Most of us, first get upset, then we wonder what we can do about it. Next, we try to do all we can to solve this problem ourselves. If we can’t we enlist the help of those around us. We rack our brains trying to think of who can help us and how they can help us. Finally, when we have done all we can do and our problem has not been solved yet, then we turn to the Lord and ask Him for help. Does this sound about right?
If, instead of thinking about what a big mess we got ourselves into, we thought about how amazing God is at getting us out of crazy situations, then we would be able to save ourselves a lot of stress and worry. We would probably also save ourselves some time. What if, instead of trying to do all we can before going to the Lord, we went to the Lord first? What if we went straight to the Lord and spent some quiet time with Him asking Him what we should do and then listening for His answer? Think about how much time you could save if you didn’t have to trial and error your way through solving your problem. Imagine the Lord showed you the solution before you even tried anything.
The last line in the verse above says, “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.” What you spend your time doing is what you will spend your time thinking about. If we want to think more about the things that are above, we need to spend our time doing things that bring that to mind. If you spend all your time doing things of this world, then your thoughts will be about this world. Often it is not what you are doing it is the subject matter. If you are listening to music, is it of this world or above? If you are reading books, are they of this world or above? Where could you make small shifts in your life to be thinking more of what is above than what is here on earth?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you and we want to think of you all day every day, show us how. Please put on our hearts any way in which we could be more focused on you. Please put on our hearts any ways that we are focused on what is of this world instead. Lord, you are amazing! You are Lord of Lords and King of Kings. You are the almighty one and we ask all these things in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you again tomorrow. In case you missed the announcement the other day I will be hosting a retreat from Oct 7-9th and the focus of the retreat will be to pour God’s love into you. CLICK HERE for retreat info. Remember Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
CLICK HERE for Retreat Info
We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click here. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed day!
The Lord Is Close To The Brokenhearted
Psalm 34:17-19 “The Lord hears his people when they call to him for help. He rescues them from all their troubles. The Lord is close to the brokenhearted; he rescues those whose spirits are crushed. The righteous person faces many troubles, but the Lord comes to the rescue each time.”
Yesterday I talked about how the Lord is with us to deliver us. If you are going through a hard time this can be hard to hear. You might want to believe it and yet you find it hard to see in your own life, especially if you have been struggling for a long time. Maybe you have witnessed God delivering your friends from their situations while you still struggle with yours. This can make it really difficult to believe that God is with you or that He will deliver you. Sometimes we can be delivered from a situation quickly. For instance, we pray for our child’s fever to go down, and it does. However, sometimes it can take a long time to be delivered and sometimes the way we are delivered is not the way we wanted to be delivered.
I know how hard it is to hear that God will deliver you if you are stuck in a place you feel you have been for a very long time. I struggled with parenting my children and in my marriage for over 10 years. It was a very long uphill battle. It was one where you get so excited because something you are doing is working, you are moving forward 2 steps and then the next day you are back 3 steps. I know that is extremely frustrating. I get it. If this is you right now, maybe not the same situation or trouble, but the same feeling of 2 steps forward and 3 steps back I want you to know you are not alone. I have been there and so many others are right there with you right now. If this is you, this verse is for you also.
“The Lord hears his people when they call to him for help. He rescues them from all their troubles.” The Lord hears you when you call Him for help. He hears you when you cry out that you are angry with Him. He hears that you are worried and anxious about many things. He hears that you are praying for healing for a loved one. He hears that you want the perfect house. He hears that you want the perfect wedding. He hears that you are struggling and He rescues you from all your troubles. The Lord will rescue you. Even if you don’t believe that He will. Even if you don’t understand how He will. If you need proof that the Lord will come to rescue you, sit down with a paper and a pen and ask the Lord to show you where He has rescued you in the past. The Lord is the same today, yesterday, and forever. If He has rescued you in the past, He will rescue you again.
The next line says, “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted; he rescues those whose spirits are crushed.” I love the imagery of this line. “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted.” I just picture sitting on the Lord’s lap as I once sat on my dad’s lap. I picture us as little children, going to our heavenly father with a broken heart. I picture Him scooping us up onto his lap and pulling us in close for a hug. Close your eyes and see if you can picture your head on His chest, just listening to His heartbeat. Just be there in His loving embrace. Can you feel the warmth of His body and the strength of His arms that are holding you tight? Can you imagine how safe you feel in His arms?
This verse is talking about you. You are the “brokenhearted.” God is talking to you. No matter what you are going through, God is near you. He never leaves your side. The next time you feel alone, the next time you feel like God has abandoned you, sit down and imagine Him right there with you. I imagine you are sitting on His lap and He is holding you. The other day at prayer group one of the ladies and a vision of herself sitting on the Father’s lap. She said she was filled with love and then she felt the need to get down so that she wasn’t taking up all His time. She wanted to make room for someone else and He told her to stay. He said something like, “Stay my daughter, do not worry. Right now I am holding all my children to my heart.” God is holding you, even when you can’t feel Him.
The second part of that line says, “He rescues those whose spirits are crushed.” Are you spirits crushed right now? Were you hoping for something and it didn’t happen? Were you praying and you can’t seem to find any answers to those prayers? Were you sure God would rescue you and yet He does not appear to be rescuing you? If so, this verse is for you. God rescues those whose spirits are crushed. It doesn’t say those who believe He will. It doesn’t say God rescues those who never gave up hope. It doesn’t say those who weren’t angry with Him. It says God rescues those whose spirits are crushed. If this is you, know that God is with you and that He will rescue you. The Bible doesn’t lie and there are no exceptions. God is not talking to some of us and not all of us through the Bible. The passages in the Bible apply to each and every one of us. The Lord is speaking directly to you through His Word in the Bible.
The last line in this verse is, “The righteous person faces many troubles, but the Lord comes to the rescue each time.” We talked about this a bit yesterday and here it is again. This verse is telling us that even if we are a really good person. Even if we are doing all the right things, and following God’s law, we will still face many troubles. Life is not going to be easy just because we follow the Lord. We will face trouble. The difference between us and someone who is not following the Lord is that we don’t have to face that trouble alone. The Lord is with us each step of the way. An image just came to mind of a child standing there with our heavenly Father standing right next to the child. He was holding the child’s hand and the sense I got was that we are like that child. As we go through life, as we face the many challenges we will face, our heavenly Father is right there with us holding our hand.
I don’t know about you, but I love the idea of my heavenly Father holding my hand as I walk through life. I love the idea of Him being right there next to me. I feel safer knowing if I wanted to run toward danger, He would be able to hold me back because He is that close to me. God is that close to you too! He is right there. If you can’t see Him, if you can’t feel Him, that’s ok. Can you believe He is there? Can you talk to Him? Can you listen and see what He has to say to you? God is there, there is not a doubt in my mind about that. I know He is there because I have seen Him so often in my life. However, even if I had never seen Him in my life, I would know He is right here with me because it says it so often in scripture and the Word of God is factual. This verse is true. “The Lord hears his people when they call to him for help. He rescues them from all their troubles. The Lord is close to the brokenhearted; he rescues those whose spirits are crushed. The righteous person faces many troubles, but the Lord comes to the rescue each time.” The last timeline is important to remember. It doesn’t say the Lord comes to the rescue sometimes. It says, “The Lord comes to the rescue each time.” Yes, He is coming this time too!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we thank you for always rescuing us. We thank you for staying close to us even when we push you away. Thank you for never leaving our side Lord. Thanks for being a good, good Father to each of us. Lord, we ask that you help us see how you have rescued us in the past. Lord, we ask you to show us where you are now in our situation. We ask you to give us renewed hope that you will in fact rescue us from whatever it is we are struggling with. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. In case you did not hear yesterday, registration is open for the retreat that I am hosting from October 8-9th. It will be an awesome time of filling up on the Lord’s love so we can then go out and share that love with others. If you are feeling like you could use a little more love, I hope you will join me. If you have ever wished you could have a deeper, more intimate relationship with our Heavenly Father, I hope you will join me. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow with three witnesses. All three things happened at the Encounter School of Ministry Boston Campus’ Summer Intensive and they are all wonderful. Remember Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
“I am with you, says the Lord, to deliver you!”
Jeremiah 1:19 "They will fight against you; but they shall not prevail against you, for I am with you, says the Lord, to deliver you.”
I know a lot of people who could use this promise right about now. I know a lot of people who are struggling with a lot of different things. There are some who are battling addiction, cancer, family members treating them badly, recovering from a stroke, recovering from a car accident, dealing with depression and anxiety, you name it and I probably know someone who is going through it right now. This is a great verse to keep handy and rely on when we are in a tough situation. “They will fight against you; but they shall not prevail against you, for I am with you, says the Lord, to deliver you.”
The Lord is saying this verse to you, yes you. You can even change this verse so it is talking you specifically. This is a great way to personalize the scriptures. Here is one way you can change it. “They will fight against me; but they shall not prevail against me, for God is with me and will deliver me.” Another way to personalize it would be to add your name. “They will fight against you, Catherine; but they shall not prevail against you, for I am with you, says the Lord, to deliver you, Catherine.” Do you see how both of these ways help me to see more clearly that the Lord is talking directly to me?
This is a promise that the Lord is making to you. His Word is truth. Whatever you read in the Bible, you can be sure it is true. The Lord doesn’t say things lightly, and he doesn’t say things He doesn’t mean. There isn’t anything in the Bible that was put there by accident. If it is in the Bible it is because it is something God wanted us to know. I think there are two things in this verse that God wants us to know and both are equally important.
First, God wants us to know that we will encounter hard times. There will be people that will want to fight with us. We will not just skate through life without any difficulties. Some people believe that once they decide to give their life to Christ, once they decide that they will follow God and live according to His law, everything will be ok. Life will be easy and they will not encounter the difficulties they had been facing. This is not the case. God never promised us an easy life. If you look at the faithful people in the Bible they had plenty of struggles. They struggled to pay bills, to put food on the table, they struggled to conceive children and they lost people they loved. Believing in God and following His ways doesn’t mean that struggle and tragedy will no longer exist. What it means is that you will no longer be dealing with these things on your own. You will no longer be dealing with them with your human strength, you will now have the strength of the Holy Spirit within you as well.
Looking back at the people in the Bible who have struggled with something you are struggling with can be a great way to find a way through your struggle. You might read the story of how they struggled and you may find out they did something that made all the difference and you can try to do the same thing. For instance, in the story of Ruth, she lost her husband, her brother-in-law, and her father-in-law. Her mother-in-law, Naomi, wanted to move back to be with her people, the Israelites. Those were not Ruth’s people and yet Ruth went with Naomi back to her homeland. They had both lost their husbands, they had no money, no food, and Naomi was ashamed as she lost everything and was coming home with nothing. Ruth was obedient and did all that Naomi told her to do. Because of this obedience, Ruth met a man, married him, and eventually became the great-grandmother to King David. None of this would have happened if she had decided not to stay with her mother-in-law and if she had decided not to be obedient. We can learn from her example.
Obedience can be hard. Sometimes we don’t want to do what we are being asked to do. One example of this was when Tony asked me if I could help outside yesterday. I did not want to help outside, that is one of my least favorite things to do. Our flower beds really needed to be weeded along with the sand surrounding our fire pit. Weeding is not fun. We also needed to redo the railings on our porch. That is not something I really know how to do, so I was asked to do the weeding while he did the porch railing. I knew he needed the help and since we both live in the house it is not just his responsibility to do the weeding. I put in my headphones and listened to a few episodes of the Elevation Podcast. I was obedient, even though I didn’t want to, and now our flowerbeds look great!
Sometimes what we are being asked to do is really difficult. Maybe you are being asked to watch as your loved one re-learns how to walk, talk, eat, and swallow after a stroke or brain bleed. Maybe you are being asked to wait for weeks for your radiation to start. Maybe you are being asked to watch while your child struggles with mental health. Maybe you are being asked to wait for the courts to decide what they will do about your situation. Whatever it is that you are waiting for or what you have been asked to do, be obedient in the situation. If God is calling you to be patient, then try to be more patient. If God is calling you to wait, then try to wait joyfully. When we can be obedient, even when it’s hard, then amazing things will happen to us.
The second thing I believe God is trying to tell us in the verse today is that even though we will have people and things that will come against us, they will not prevail. God is there for us and he will deliver us from whatever comes against us. He will deliver you from the situation at work. He will deliver you from that cancer. He will deliver you from that struggling relationship. He will deliver you from your enemies. God did not promise us an easy life and yet He did promise to always be there with us. He promises He will protect us from evil and from all that comes against us.
This verse is telling us we won’t sink, we won’t go under. We may feel like what we are going through will get the best of us, but it won’t. God is with us, He will protect us, He will save us. He will deliver us from whatever is troubling us. "They will fight against you; but they shall not prevail against you, for I am with you, says the Lord, to deliver you.”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we thank you for always being with us. We thank you for protecting us and delivering us. Lord, you are amazing. Help us to rely on you. Help us to believe you are there with us each step of the way and that you will deliver us. Lord, we ask for strength when they come against us. Give us the strength we need Lord. We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I am so excited to announce that the retreat I am hosting is officially open for registration. CLICK HERE for more details and registration in the show notes and you can also go to walkboldlywithjesus.com and click on the link for the retreat link. The retreat will be from October 7th-9th and it will be at the Holy Cross Retreat House in Easton, MA. It will be a weekend to get filled up with God’s love. Have you ever wanted to personally experience God’s love? Yes, God loves us all. He also loves each one of us individually and He wants to have a personal relationship with each one of us. This retreat could be your first step in discovering a deeper, more intimate relationship with Him. I hope you will join me! I look forward to seeing you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Yes, It’s Ok To Be Weak!
2 Corinthians 12:9 “But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” I will rather boast most gladly of my weaknesses, in order that the power of Christ may dwell with me.”
I love this verse. When I hear this verse I remember that we don’t always have to be strong. We don’t always have to be perfect. We don’t always have to get it right. When I hear this verse I am reminded that God’s power is made perfect in our weakness, not in our strength. I don’t know about you, but I find that awfully comforting. We tend to feel like we have to be strong for everyone else around us. Whether we are a parent, a spouse, a friend, we want to be the strong ones for those around us. Do you ever feel like that? Do you ever get tired of feeling like you have to be strong? This verse gives you permission to not be the strong one all the time.
I have kiddos that struggle with their mental health at times. When they are struggling it feels like we have to be strong as they need us to be there for them. They need us to be the safe place that they can land. They need us not to fall apart because they are already falling apart and they need us to hold them together. This isn’t just kids either. Maybe you have a spouse or a friend who struggles with mental illness. When they are falling apart, you feel you need to be strong to help hold them together. Is this you? Do you feel like if you fall apart everything will fall apart? I get it, I understand how that feels. This is why I love this verse. We may have to be strong with others and for others, and yet we don’t have to be strong for God or when we are with God.
When we are with God we can let it all go. We can be weak. We can cry, we can yell, we can fall apart. The beauty of it all is that when we are weak with God, He actually makes us stronger. I just thought of an analogy and I don’t know if it’s an exact fit but it came to my mind so I am trusting the Holy Spirit wants me to share it with you. The analogy I just thought of was something my son was talking about the other day. He was talking about how when we work out, our muscles are broken down, and then when they heal they are stronger. This is what came to mind when thinking of being stronger when we are weak with the Lord. God said His power is made perfect in our weakness. When we are weak with God we are strong, why is this?
One reason for this is that when we allow ourselves to be weak, we make more room for the Lord. We finally admit that we can’t do it all ourselves and that we need help. We turn to Him and we ask him to help us. Actually, at this point, we usually beg Him to help us. When we finally decide to be weak it’s because we have done all that we could do and it didn’t work. When we are finally ready to admit we need God we are so desperate and we would do anything for our prayers to be answered. This is when God can help us the most. This is when we are the most ready for His help.
God is just waiting for us to realize that we need His help. He is such a good Father that He waits for us to ask for help. He does not try to force Himself on us. He is patient too! He will sit by patiently watching us make the same mistakes over and over again until we finally realize that we don’t have to do it by ourselves. I imagine it must be frustrating for Him to sit there and watch us make the same mistakes time and time again. I heard this story at Christmas Eve mass once and I never forgot it. It just popped into my head when I thought about how frustrated God must be watching us. It was a Christmas poem/story called The Man and The Birds as told by Paul Harvey. I guess the author is unknown. Let me read it in case you have not heard it.
The Man and the Birds (Click Here for website)
Author Unknown (As told by Paul Harvey)
The man I’m going to tell you about was not a Scrooge, he was a kind decent, mostly good man. Generous to his family and upright in his dealings with other men. But he just didn’t believe in all of that incarnation stuff that the churches proclaim at Christmas time. It just didn’t make sense and he was too honest to pretend otherwise. He just couldn’t swallow the Jesus story, about God coming to Earth as a man.
He told his wife I’m truly sorry to distress you, but I’m not going with you to church this Christmas Eve. He said he would feel like a hypocrite and that he would much rather just stay at home, but that he would wait up for them. So he stayed and they went to the midnight service.
Shortly after the family drove away in the car, snow began to fall. He went to the window to watch the flurries getting heavier and heavier and then he went back to his fireside chair and began to read his newspaper.
Minutes later he was startled by a thudding sound. Then another ... and then another. At first, he thought someone must be throwing snowballs against the living room window. But when he went to the front door to investigate he found a flock of birds huddled outside miserably in the snow. They’d been caught in the storm and in a desperate search for shelter they had tried to fly through his large landscape window. That is what had been making the sound.
Well, he couldn’t let the poor creatures just lie there and freeze, so he remembered the barn where his children stabled their pony. That would provide a warm shelter. All he would have to do is to direct the birds into the shelter.
Quickly, he put on a coat and galoshes and he tramped through the deepening snow to the barn. He opened the doors wide and turned on a light so the birds would know the way in. But the birds did not come in.
So, he figured that food would entice them. He hurried back to the house and fetched some bread crumbs. He sprinkled them on the snow, making a trail of bread crumbs to the yellow-lighted wide open doorway of the stable. But to his dismay, the birds ignored the bread crumbs.
The birds continued to flap around helplessly in the snow. He tried catching them but could not. He tried shooing them into the barn by walking around and waving his arms. Instead, they scattered in every direction ... every direction except into the warm lighted barn.
And that’s when he realized they were afraid of him. To them, he reasoned, I am a strange and terrifying creature. If only I could think of some way to let them know that they can trust me. That I am not trying to hurt them but to help them. But how? Any move he made tended to frighten them and confuse them. They just would not follow. They would not be led or shooed because they feared him.
He thought to himself if only I could be a bird and mingle with them and speak their language. Then I could tell them not to be afraid. Then I could show them the way to the safe warm barn. But I would have to be one of them so they could see ... and hear ... and understand.
At that moment the church bells began to ring. The sound reached his ears above the sounds of the wind.
He stood there listening to the bells, Adeste Fidelis, listening to the bells pealing the glad tidings of Christmas.
And he sank to his knees in the snow …
I just love that story. In the story, the man finally understood why God sent His only Son to save us. To me, it also shows how frustrating it must be for God to watch us live our lives. This man wasn’t angry at the birds, he was full of compassion and just wanted to help them. I believe this is how God looks at us too. I think he watches us live our lives and He knows things would be easier if we listened to Him. He knows we wouldn’t be suffering as much if we lived in this world but were not of this world. He is not up there judging us and thinking we are stupid and wondering why we just don’t get it. I think he looks at us with compassion and is just waiting for us to stop trying to do it ourselves and finally turn to Him. When we do he is ready to jump in and help us. I think when we are weak, when we finally give in and ask for help God smiles and says, “Finally my child, how can I help you!”
You may feel you have to be strong with others, but you do not have to be strong with God. Let him shoulder your problems. Hand Him your worry, your cares, and your deepest desires, and let him carry them for you. In your weakness, His power is made perfect. Wouldn’t it be great to have more of God’s power in your life? I know I could definitely use more.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to be weak with you, show us how. We want your power to be made perfect in us. We love you Lord and we know your grace is sufficient for us. We know this and we also forget it when times get tough, please remind us, Lord. Remind us that we don’t have to always be strong. Remind us that your power is made perfect in weakness. Remind us that we can be ourselves with you. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. This has been a rough week for my family. I won’t go into details as it is not my story to share. However, I will say that being a parent is hard, and raising kids who struggle with mental illness, and let's be honest there aren’t many that don’t struggle with something these days, is even harder. If you have a child struggling please know you are not alone. You are doing a great job. You are a good parent, even when it feels like you are failing. The unkind things they say when they are struggling are not true. They love you, even if they can’t show it at the moment. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
CLICK HERE to read the article or to share it.
We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click here. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed day!
Unity Is the Goal
Ephesians 4:3-4 “Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one spirit, just as you were called to one home when you were called; one lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
Today’s prayer point for my healing ministry team is Unity. This is something I believe so many of us have been praying for quite some time now. Our country is more divided than I can remember it ever being. We really need unity in this country. This verse is also saying God would like unity within the church. This verse begins by saying, “Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.” Are we doing that? I think the most important part of that line might be “through the bond of peace.” There does not seem to be a lot of peace in the world right now. It does not seem like anyone can disagree with anyone peacefully. It seems as though most of us have forgotten that we can be peaceful and still disagree.
There are a few problems with this idea. First, if we aren’t peacefully talking about the issues then people probably aren’t listening. If people aren’t listening then how can we understand each other? If we want to get to unity we need to begin with understanding. We need to first understand where we are each coming from and then find some common ground. We need to make sure we are listening too. If we enter a conversation seeking to change the other person's mind, then we have already lost. We need to enter every conversation with the mindset of truly understanding what they are saying.
Imagine if we did this for each conversation we had. We didn’t enter the conversation with any preconceived notions of what the other person was going to say. What if we didn’t enter each conversation with the idea that we were right and they were wrong? What if we just entered the conversation with curiosity? I wonder how this would change our conversation.
Another issue with not peacefully discussing our issues is that if we get angry, or we frustrated then the other person stops listening. Think about the last time you got into an argument with someone about something. Did you continue to listen to them when they were raising their voice? When the conversation turns into an argument then you both stop listening to each other and the goal becomes to be right, to be the winner of the argument. This is not a way to gain unity. If unity is what you are seeking then arguing will not get you what you want. Arguing will just make people angry and may even make people not want to talk with you. If you are someone who tends to start arguments a lot, then people may avoid talking with you or spending time with you.
However, if you are someone who enters a conversation with a curiosity and a willingness to understand what the other person is saying then people will enjoy having a conversation with you. People will seek you out because they feel you really listen. People don’t really feel heard these days, especially with electronics. We are on our phones a lot these days and it can be very distracting. I have realized in the past few days that I have been on my phone while my kids have been talking to me. I am usually better about that and yet recently I have heard them get my attention and tell me they have said the same thing 3 times.
On one hand, I hate when I hear this. It makes me so frustrated that they have to tell me this. It makes me frustrated when it seems my phone controls me instead of just being a tool I use when I need it. On the other hand, I am thankful when they point it out so I can get it back under control. I don’t want to always be looking at my phone. I especially don’t want to be looking at my phone when my boys are trying to talk with me. I have teenage boys and the time they want to talk with their mom is limited. It is precious and I don’t want to waste any of it by being on my phone. Also, when we are on our phone when someone is talking to us that shows them that what they are saying is not important enough to look away from our phone. That is definitely not how I feel and not the message I want them to take away.
Now that we have talked about the importance of listening with curiosity and with the goal of understanding, another thing that I believe will help with unity is knowledge. If you want to be able to help unite then you have to know what you believe and why you believe it. I was once on a road trip with a fellow Christian. We were not the same denomination as I am Catholic and she is protestant. We talked a lot about our religions on the road trip. We talked about the things we both believe and the things one of us believed that the other one doesn’t. We were not arguing, we were not trying to convince the other person to believe what we believe, we were trying to understand where these varying beliefs came from. My friend had several incorrect beliefs about what Catholics actually believe and why we do what we do.
This is not an uncommon occurrence. We think we know what others believe or what they think and yet we get it wrong often. Misunderstanding can be a barrier to unity. We can’t be united if we don’t know what we believe. If we are having a conversation and yet we can’t explain what we believe and why we believe we won’t get anywhere. People can’t understand what you believe if you don’t even know. If we are talking about unity in the church, we need to understand as much as we can about the church. For instance, why am I Catholic? What do I believe and why do I believe it? It is also helpful to know common misunderstandings and what the truth is.
One example is that many people feel like Catholics pray to the Saints and they feel this is idolatry. They also don’t understand why we would pray to a Saint when we could pray straight to God. Catholics ask for the intercession of Saints. We are not praying to the Saints the way we pray to God. We know and believe we can pray straight to God, and we do, often. However, sometimes you are going through something that feels so big you need others to pray for you as well. Have you ever had something so big going on in your life that you asked everyone you know to pray for you? You called your pastor, you asked your friends, you asked anyone you know that prays to pray for you. This is similar to what it is like when Catholics pray to the Saints.
We are praying for the Saints to intercede for us. They are up in heaven with our heavenly Father, they served him faithfully while they were here on earth, and so we are asking them to go to the Lord and present our request as well. We tend to pray for the intercession of a Saint that has had some experience in whatever our struggle is. For instance, if we are praying for healing from cancer, we will pray for the intercession of St. Peregrine as God healed him and then used him to cure many others.
There are patron Saints for almost anything you could be going through and a quick internet search will give you the name of that patron Saint. In order to become a Saint, one of the qualifications you need to have is at least one miracle attributed to your name. In other words, after the saint died, people prayed for their intercession and after praying for their intercession if God granted that miracle, then they could become a Saint. Just to be clear, we attribute all the Glory to God for the miracle. We do not believe that the Saint performs the miracle. The Saint is just the intercessor, God is the miracle worker.
Do you see how important it is to understand why you believe what you believe? If you are having a conversation with someone and they want to know why you hold those beliefs or why you think the way you do, it is important to be able to explain it. The other really important thing to remember when your aim is unity it to lead with love. If you can change people’s hearts, you will change their minds. If people feel loved, respected, and listened to, they will usually stay in a conversation a lot longer than if they don’t. Unity is important and it is something this country and I think this world is really hungry for. Let’s help them out. Let’s approach people with love in our hearts and with the goal of curiosity and understanding in our minds. Let's judge less and understand more. Let’s argue less and love more. Isn’t it at least worth the try?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone listening to this episode today. Lord, we know you want unity in your church and we want to help you with that, show us how. Help us to approach each new conversation with openness, compassion, love, and curiosity. Help us to truly listen to the person we are talking to without any distractions. Help us to listen with the goal of understanding. Help us to be “little Christs” in this world. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with you will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to bringing you a witness tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Your Sins Become Like Snow
Isaiah 1:18 “Come now, let us argue it out, says the Lord: If your sins are like scarlet, will they become like snow? If they are red like crimson, will they become like wool?”
I am a part of a healing ministry and we have a healing service coming up in two weeks. Before the service the leader sends out a different prayer point for each day along with scriptures to go with the prayer point. Today we are to pray for God’s mercy and forgiveness. We had several scriptures and this was one of them. I liked this one because of the imagery and because of the message. I like the idea of my sins changing from scarlet to white like snow. I love thinking about God’s mercy. Do you ever spend time and think about God’s mercy? Do you think about how all of your sins are forgiven just by asking God and then repenting. You can’t ask God to forgive your sins when you aren’t sorry for them. However, if you are sorry and you repent, your sins are forgiven. It truly is that simple.
I talk to my kids a lot about how things can be pretty simple and yet they are not easy. It can be simple to confess your sins and to be forgiven and yet it is not always easy. It isn’t always easy to walk into a confessional and tell the priest all you have done. It isn’t even easy to find a day or time that you can go to confession. The enemy knows how powerful it is when you go to confession. He knows what a great grace it is for your soul and he doesn’t want that. He will do whatever he can to get in they way. Have you ever noticed when you want to go to confession, you can’t find somewhere that is open? Did you ever notice how you plan to go Saturday at 3 and yet somehow always manage to forget or something else comes up?
There are many churches within a 30 minute radius of me. There is probably confession most days. Actually, I think there might be confession every day available at the shrine in Lowell. The problem is not the availability of confession the problem is the thoughts the enemy puts in our heads. As soon as we start looking for somewhere to go to confession we start to think of all the reasons we can’t make any of those available times. We start to think about what and inconvenience it is to go and we start to tell ourselves that we can just tell God our sins, we don’t need a priest. However, that is the enemy keeping you from an amazing grace. Fight through the temptation not to go. If you have never been to confession with a priest can I suggest you give it a try. There is just something about the grace that comes from it that makes you feel amazing. You truly feel like your scarlet sins become white as snow. You feel so clean and so free.
Even if you do not believe that you need to go to a priest to confess your sins, even just confessing them to God is not always easy. It’s not easy to admit when we messed up. It’s not easy to claim our failures. It’s not easy to approach God time after time and say, “I messed up again. Yep, I did the same thing I keep telling you about.” Even though God forgives us every time, even though God loves it when we come to Him with our sins, it still is not easy for us to tell Him over and over again.
It’s also not always easy to be sorry for our sins. This may sound strange, but we live in the world and the world make sin seem fun. It has normalized sin so much that we don’t always feel sorry for doing things we know are wrong. Instead we try to justify it and try to convince ourselves that it really isn’t that wrong. The example that comes to mind for me was when I was watching Game of Thrones. I knew I shouldn’t really be watching it because of all the graphic sex scenes in it. Yet, I really wanted to know what happened in the show. I justified it to myself saying the sex scenes were not the reason I was watching it, and that there was more to it than just those scenes. However, I felt bad every time I watched it. I knew for me, it was wrong and yet I really wanted to watch it anyway.
The same can be true for something you might be doing. What about if you had an affair? Do you think that would be something that would be hard to confess, even just to God? What about if you were unkind to your spouse or to your kids, would that be hard to confess? The thing about sin is that it is usually accompanied by shame. When we know we are doing something that we shouldn’t be doing we start to feel shame. When we feel shame we usually don’t want to talk about it. Shame does not come from God. Some people think that is God’s way of letting them know what they are doing is wrong. That is not true. God does sometimes correct us but never with shame. Shame comes straight from the enemy.
If you want to know if something is from God or from the enemy the Bible tells us that we can look at it’s fruit. What is the fruit of shame, meaning, what does shame produce? Shame produces bad feelings. It not only makes us feel bad, it also makes us feel alone. It makes us want to hide so that no one knows what happened. It makes us want to keep that thing that we did a secret. It makes us feel like we need to stay in the dark. Does that sound like it would be from God? God is all about light, not darkness. Confession can bring those sins into the light. It can remove all shame if you let it.
The thing about confessing our sins to a priest or to God is that we need to accept His forgiveness. It does no good if we confess and then refuse to accept His forgiveness. It is important that we believe God loves us more than we could ever really know. It is important to know that God is merciful and forgiving and he is just waiting for us to ask, so that he can forgive us. He is just like the father from the prodigal son parable. God is there waiting patiently for us to confess, for us to realize the error of our ways. When we do He is right there to welcome us back with open arms. He is a good and loving father. He does not want to punish us He wants to love us and to hug us. God can make our sins white like the snow. We just have to let Him. We just have to believe and accept his forgiveness. What if we each took 5 minutes right now and thought about all the things we have done that might have offended the Lord and then told Him we were sorry. What if we just decided to say that thing that we have been afraid to say? What if we said the thing we are sure he couldn’t forgive and then accept his forgiveness. If you are truly struggling to believe that He could forgive you I recommend talking to a priest or your pastor. I recommend doing a bible study on God’s love or God’s forgiveness. You do not have to keep living with shame or guilt. That is not what God wants for you! He wants us to all be free!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to be forgiven, please help us. Lord, help us to believe with our hearts and minds that there isn’t anything too big for your mercy. Help us to believe you are a loving Father waiting to welcome us back each time we repent. We love you Lord and we are so grateful you are so merciful. We ask that you put on our hearts anything that we need to talk with you about Lord. I pray that each person listening to this has a conversation with you today about whatever is heavy on their heart. We ask all of this in accordance with Your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I want to remind everyone that I am on vacation in Maine and there is no internet accept at the Lodge. So I am still planning to post each day, however, depending on the internet connection and what is going on with the family I may not be able to. If I miss a day just know that nothing is wrong, I am just enjoying vacation and/or there was no internet connection. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
I Am Whole
Colossians 2:9-10 “ For in him dwells the whole fullness of the deity bodily, and you share in this fullness in him, who is the head of every principality and power.”
This episode will conclude our “I am who God says I am” series. I am whole is a struggle for many to believe. We have all sinned before, we all sin frequently probably. It can be easy for us to think that sin makes us less than. Especially if we have had a really difficult past. Maybe we have had a lot of relationships in the past and we didn’t show up as our best selves in them. Maybe we haven’t had a lot of relationships, but we have slept with a lot of other people. I think many people in this society feel used. I think we feel used by the other sex, used by our bosses, and used by big companies to sell more products. There is just this brokenness instead of the feeling that we are whole.
What just popped into my mind was all the teenagers right now and how easy it is to feel broken when you are a teen. You don’t look the right way, your hair isn’t perfect, your clothes aren’t perfect. Life can be really hard when you are young. A therapist told me the other day that 15 was the most volatile age for emotions. At this age, you feel your emotions more intensely than you ever will again. Our minds are so easily persuaded by the enemy. Why is it so much easier to believe the negative than it is to believe the positive?
I read a great article about this called, “Finding Spiritual Wholeness" by Leanne Payne. Click Here for the article. I recommend you read the whole thing. What Leanne was talking about in this article is that God is perfectly whole and we are made in his likeness and image. She said, “When “sin” (That which is against God’s character) entered the world, so did our brokenness, along with our broken ideas about how we view ourselves, God, and others. There is an intuitive knowledge of our personal brokenness that we are constantly attempting to fix, deny or protect.” Isn’t this so true? We are always trying to fix, deny or protect our brokenness.
You might be wondering why anyone would want to protect their brokenness. I have talked with plenty of people who want to protect their brokenness because they have become comfortable with that brokenness. They have lived with that brokenness so they have come to identify as a broken person. Changing that image would be hard and not something they believe they can do. One thing we don’t realize is that life is hard. Yes, it is hard to change and yet, isn’t living a sinful life also hard? Eating healthy can be hard, yet isn’t being overweight and struggling to get around hard too? Standing up to our loved ones and putting boundaries in place is hard, yet so is living without those boundaries in place. Quitting vaping is hard, yet so is living life addicted to nicotine and not being able to concentrate because you are thinking about the next time when you will get to hit your vape.
The article I read talked about how sin distorts how we look at things. Here are a few examples she gave:
Sin perverts our perception of God:
God is angry with me - “He hates my sin, he must hate me.”
God is disgusted with me - "I’m too dirty and damaged for Him to accept me”
God is distant from me - “Why would he want to be with me when I’m like this?”
God is unfair - “This is just one big setup...I couldn’t stop if I tried.”
God is unhappy - “All the fun things are off limits!”
Sin warps our self-perception:
We become foolishly great in our own eyes when we hide from the reality of our sin, like the emperor with no clothes.
We become worth - less in our own eyes when we become hyper-focused on our sins.
Sin degrades or elevates (to unhealthy levels) our perception of others:
We tend to do the same thing with other people that we do with ourselves - We make them out to be greater or less than we are. We serve them like gods or treat them like dogs.
Payne goes on to say, "Sin brings disintegration of self while righteousness (living congruently with the character of God) brings integration of self or spiritual wholeness. This is one reason God hates sin so much - He doesn’t want our disintegration because He loves us! It must be said that any and all “righteous living” apart from God doesn’t get us to wholeness, it gets us to self-righteousness - a horrible dis-ease that many Christians live with, and perpetrate on others.”
Now that we have talked about why we think we are not whole, let's look at what makes us whole. Do our actions determine if we are whole? Nope! Payne says, “Spiritual wholeness is not dependent on our actions but on an acceptance of God’s acting on our part in the life/death/resurrection of Christ. Because of our faith in Christ and what He’s done on our behalf, God can pronounce us whole and, remain a just God even though we often go on acting broken.” Jesus died to make us whole again. He took our sins to the cross with Him. We are no longer broken. Yes, we still act like we are broken at times yet God has redeemed us and made us whole.
So, if God has redeemed us and made us whole, why don’t we feel whole? I think we don’t feel whole because we struggle to believe that He can forgive us for what we have done. We don’t accept that forgiveness for ourselves. We will be the first ones to convince a friend or loved one that Jesus loves and forgives ALL their sins, we just struggle to believe He will do it for us. I talked with a woman recently who had been to confession about a time in her life when she wasn’t proud of how she was living. Even though she had been to confession the enemy was still not letting her move past it. She kept thinking about it and believing that she was her past mistakes. She was believing that she was stuck in her past. Things won’t change because she is still that person. She wasn’t believing in the healing that took place during confession.
So many of us do this same thing. We believe we are our past mistakes. We believe if we did it once we will do it again. We struggle to believe things will change and we struggle to believe that God could forgive us. To reiterate what the author of the article said, “Spiritual wholeness is not dependent on our actions but on an acceptance of God’s acting on our part in the life/death/resurrection of Christ.” It is not our actions that make us whole it was Jesus’ actions. Jesus knew when He decided to die on that cross for us that we would keep sinning. He didn’t die for us because we were blameless or because He knew we were going to stop sinning. He died for us to make us whole and His sacrifice was complete.
The verse above says, “ For in him dwells the whole fullness of the deity bodily, and you share in this fullness in him, who is the head of every principality and power.” We were made in the likeness and image of God. We share in the fullness of Him. However, when sin entered the world, so did our brokenness. God sent His only son to repair that. He died on the cross to make us whole, let’s live our lives in honor of that. Let’s live into this truth that we are whole. We are no longer broken, Christ made us whole!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you and we thank you for giving us your son to die on the cross so we could be made whole. Help us to live in that wholeness Lord. Help us to accept your forgiveness and help us make it more about you than about us. Help us to stop listening to the enemy. Help us to be strong enough to reject his stupid lies. Open our eyes to his lies and give us the strength to renounce them and take away any authority they have. Lord, when we believe the lies, we empower the liar. We are done empowering the liar Lord. We want you to be the only one that has any power in our lives. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Next week I will be on vacation with my family. I am still planning to post each day, however, they may not be consistent with the time of day. If you want to listen and a new one is not posted yet it might be a great opportunity to listen to one of the old ones. What I like to do is randomly select one of the old ones and it always ends up being exactly what I needed to hear for that day. I look forward to meeting you here again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed weekend!
I Am Healed
Isaiah 53:5 “But he was pierced for our sins, crushed for our iniquity. He bore the punishment that makes us whole, by his wounds we were healed.”
I love talking about the Lord’s healing. I love talking about it because it is so amazing and also because I am not sure people believe He is still healing today. I was at the Encounter Ministries Boston Campus’ summer intensive Tuesday night. That night the topic was the Prophetic Word. Wednesday night was going to be all about physical healing. I was talking with a friend from the prayer group at this event and her neck was really bothering her. She mentioned she would have to have the girls from the prayer group pray over her the next night at the healing service. I told her we didn’t have to wait until tomorrow, let's do it now. Just then one of our teachers came up to us so she joined in as well. We prayed a few times with little change. Then my teacher asked my friend if she believed Jesus could heal her right now. My friend said absolutely! My teacher said, “Pain be gone now!” We were praying quietly for a minute and my friend said, “Wait a minute,” and she tried to move her neck all around in circles and side to side. She said the pain was all gone! Praise God.
God is still healing people today. He is miraculously healing people quickly and He is also miraculously healing people over time. For instance, someone Tony works with had a stroke and was not expected to recover. Now, 2-3 months later, he is leaving rehab and going home. Is he 100% healed yet? No, but I truly believe he will get there. Not every healing God does is instantaneous and also He does not heal everyone that we ask Him to heal. I am not sure why this is. When I ask Him He always tells me, “His ways are higher than my ways, and His thoughts higher than my thoughts.” We aren’t meant to understand everything He does in this world.
Aside from physical healing, what I feel the Lord wants me to remind you of today is that he heals us from our sins and our brokenness. Because of original sin, we had a brokenness about us. We live in a very broken world and yet we don’t have to be broken. God died for our sins so that we could be healed. God wants us to live in that light. He wants us to realize our identity in Christ and not continue to live with this idea that we are broken. Yes, the world is a broken place, there are many broken people, but we don't have to be one of those broken people. We know Christ, and we can be in relationship with Him. The verse above is very graphic. “But he was pierced for our sins, crushed for our iniquity. He bore the punishment that makes us whole, by his wounds we were healed.” He was pierced for our sins, take a minute and think about that. Picture the Roman soldiers hammering nails into his hands. Think about how much that must have hurt. Then it says He was crushed for our iniquity. Take a moment to think about the scourging. Think about how much that must have hurt. How much He must have wanted to scream out in pain. I wonder if he wanted to say, “But it wasn’t me, I didn’t do it?” He was not being scourged because of anything He did. He took on our sins, our broken relationship with the Father and died on that cross so we could be free.
What just came to my mind was that there is no way to repay Jesus for what He did for us. There is no way to repay the debt that He paid for our sins, and He doesn’t want us to. Jesus has forgiven that debt to Him. He saved us knowing we would still sin. He saved us knowing we would turn away probably 100 times before we got it right. I don’t think this bothers Him as much as it does when we don’t accept His forgiveness. When we don’t live in the freedom that He sacrificed to gain for us. Jesus died so you could be healed. You, yes, You!
You, who are going through an abusive relationship right now. You, who are living with or dealing with an addict right now, You, who are getting a divorce, You who can’t have children, You who are struggling to parent the children you do have. Jesus died for each one of us and He wants us to live in that freedom. He is there to help us through our circumstances. He is there to lift us up when we need Him too. All we need to do is to lean into Him.
He died to heal us, but we are the ones that need to accept that healing. It’s kinda like if we had an illness and there was a medicine that could cure our illness and yet we refused to take the medicine. The medicine is sitting right there on the counter, right next to the water and yet we refuse to take it because we don’t believe it will help. We believe that our illness is worse than the doctor said it was. We know that medicine can’t possibly help us because our case is too severe. Does that sound silly to you? Are you rolling your eyes and wondering why I think I know more than the doctor does?
The same is true for us and our forgiveness of sins. Jesus died so our sins could be forgiven, so we could be healed physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Jesus was repairing the relationship with our heavenly Father that original sin had broken. He died for you. Yes, he died for all of us, but He also died for each of us individually. If you were the only person on Earth, He still would have gone through all of that for you. Jesus knows what we have done. He knows what we will do. He did not die on the cross for some of our sins, He died on the cross for all of our sins. There is nothing you can do that He won’t forgive. There is nothing that has happened to you that He can’t heal.
When we do something and then we don’t accept forgiveness for it we are offending the Lord. We are telling Him that His sacrifice was not enough. Is this what you believe? Do you believe that Jesus dying on the cross was not a big enough sacrifice to cover whatever it was that you did or that was done to you? It does not make you greedy to accept God’s sacrifice. It does not make you greedy to accept the forgiveness that God offers. His forgiveness is freely given. You don’t have to do anything to deserve it or to earn it. It is already yours through your baptism. He had you and your sins, your troubles in mind when He was on that cross. Accept the healing. Accept the forgiveness of sins.
One thing that has helped me accept God’s Word into my heart is to personalize it to me. I will put my name in or switch words from “our” to “my”. Sometimes we believe scripture is true. We just don’t think it applies to us for some reason or another. Here is how I might read this scripture if I was struggling to believe it was for me personally. “But he was pierced for my sins, crushed for my iniquity. He bore the punishment that makes me whole, by his wounds I, Catherine, was healed.” If you struggle to believe you are healed. If you struggle to believe all your sins, yes, even that one, can be forgiven. If you struggle to believe Jesus died for you personally and individually, I ask you to write this scripture down on a sticky note and place it on your computer, your bathroom mirror, your shower, or wherever you will see it daily. Make it personal and put it in your own name. Even just changing the “our” to “my” will really change the feel of it. “But he was pierced for my sins, crushed for my iniquity. He bore the punishment that makes me whole, by his wounds I, Catherine, was healed.” You can add your name, or just take the name out. Whichever feels best for you. Jesus loves you, He died for you, don’t lessen that sacrifice by refusing to accept the healing that comes from it. You are healed, all you need to do is live into that healing!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you and we accept your forgiveness. We accept your healing. Please help us. Lord, we ask that you come into our hearts and minds and clear any blocks we might have in accepting your healing and forgiveness. Lord, we give you permission to work on our hearts please soften them. We love you Lord, we are so grateful you sent your son to heal us and we are sorry if we haven’t been accepting that healing. Lord we can do nothing without you and yet all things with you. Please help us. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus! I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click here. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed day!
I am Guided
Isaiah 30:21 “And your ears shall hear a word behind you: “This is the way; walk in it,” when you would turn to the right or the left.”
This is a great verse because it explains that we are guided throughout our lives. However, it can also be misleading. Unfortunately, we can’t really take this verse literally. We do not have someone whispering into our ears each step of the way. Although that would be pretty cool. Imagine if you didn’t have to wonder if you were taking the right steps. Imagine if you didn’t have to worry about making the wrong decision because you had the Lord whispering in your ear telling you whether you were to turn left or right.
Although we don’t have someone behind us whispering in our ear at each turn, the Lord will lead us in the right direction if we take the time to ask Him and then listen to what He has to say. This can be tricky because many times we will be good about asking God what we should do but then not take the time to listen to His answer. Other times we are so excited about one of the choices that we jump in and choose that one without even pausing to ask God what He thinks. When we do either of these things we are not giving the Lord a chance to guide us into the life He has planned for us.
Hearing the word of God is something we can all do, we just have to know how to do it. In my Encounter Ministries class last night they went over the various ways that you might “hear” God’s word. There are four ways:
See it: Sometimes people see visions and that is how they get their answers. Sometimes you might see a word above someone's head. You might see something that is not actually there in the natural world. I know when learning inner healing our teachers told us sometimes God may ask us to do a prophetic act. You might be praying over someone for inner healing and while praying you see that they have a spear through their heart. You might feel as though God is asking you to take it out. You are likely the only person who sees this spear. That doesn’t make it any less real. When you are looking for an answer from the Lord, ask Him the question and then close your eyes and see if He wants to reveal anything to you through your sight.
Hear it: Usually, when we hear God it is not God’s voice. My teacher last night said she has heard the voice of God once, so that is pretty cool. However, I think it is rare that you hear the actual voice of God. In my experience, when I hear the voice of God He sounds just like my voice. It is that “still small voice” in your head or in your heart that helps you know what you should do. I am sure you have heard this voice before, however, you might not have known that it was God talking to you. When you are seeking answers from the Lord, ask your questions and then sit quietly and listen to see what He has to say. If you ask He will answer.
Feel it: Sometimes the Lord speaks to us with our feelings. There is a woman in our prayer group that feels things from the Lord very frequently. She will get a word of prophecy and then will go on to say that she is getting this strong feeling from the Lord that He is sad and wants us to turn to Him more, or that He has this deep longing. Last night, at the Encounter Summer Intensive we were doing a guided meditation using the parable of the prodigal son and she said she could just feel this overwhelming love that the Father has for us. She said she has never felt a love like this before. It was such a strong feeling. When you are looking for answers from the Lord, they may come in the form of a feeling, so pay attention to how you are feeling when asking the Lord what He thinks.
Think it: This is when a thought just pops into your head. Sometimes it can be when you are sitting trying to listen to the Lord, and other times it can just be out of the blue. Have you ever been going about your day and all of a sudden you get this thought to reach out to an old friend? Yep, me too! This is the Lord prompting you. A lot of times we ignore these thoughts. However, when we obey and reach out to the person we find out that was exactly what they needed. I had been thinking about reaching out to someone I had met on retreat for several months and I just never did. I am not sure why I didn’t but eventually, she reached out to me and she was having a rough time. I bet she would have really appreciated it if I had reached out when the Lord first told me to. Last night this woman was walking out the door to come to the summer intensive and she got the thought to bring this specific prayer card with her, so she threw it in her purse. The prayer card was a prayer about entrusting your children to God and not worrying if they will come back to the church. Then at the Summer Intensive, one of the ladies shared that she was worried about her kids never coming back to the church, so the woman gave her this prayer card. God has a plan and sometimes He will put thoughts in our head to help Him with that plan.
The teacher, that was talking about these four ways to hear God’s voice last night, was saying that she was sitting in church one day and the Lord brought a thought out of nowhere about a funeral she was at where there was a teen suicide. She did not understand why she would have this random thought in the middle of mass. Then God revealed to her that the teenage boy behind her was contemplating suicide. Sometimes you never know the impact of what you did for someone else. Sometimes you might get a prompting to call someone and you do. You could have a very nice conversation and yet you don’t feel like there was any great purpose in the call. However, we don’t know the effects it might have had. There was a purpose for God putting that thought in your head, that I am sure of!
I hope that you find these 4 ways of hearing the Lord’s voice helpful. If we want to grow in our ability to hear the Lord’s voice, we need to practice, just like anything else in life. If you want to be better at a sport, you need to play that sport. If you want to be better at cooking, you need to cook. If you want to become better at hearing the Lord’s voice, you need to sit down and listen often. I promise you the Lord wants to talk to you. God didn’t just pick a few of His children to talk to, He wants to talk to all of His children. He wants to sit down with you as you drink your morning coffee or tea and have a chat with you. A real back-and-forth chat. Your heavenly Father loves you and He longs to communicate with you. Why not give it a try? What do you have to lose?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to hear you communicating with us. No matter the method Lord, we just want to have a relationship with you. We want you to whisper in our ear and lead us down the correct path. Tell us whether we should turn right or turn left Lord. Help us to make time for you, to listen to you. We want to hear your Word Lord, please help us. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. If you are local and you want to join the Encounter Ministries Summer Intensive, it is not too late! CLICK HERE to register for Summer Intensive. We are going over God’s prophetic word today and I know it is going to be amazing! I hope you can join us! Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
I Am Strong
Philippians 4:13 “ I can do all things through him who strengthens me.”
This is truly one of my all-time favorite verses. I keep a list of all the verses I used as the central point of each episode as there are 31,102 verses in the Bible and I want to make sure that I am not always speaking about the same few that we all already know. I try not to repeat a verse I have used already as the main verse of the episode. However, sometimes if I learn something new about a verse or something fascinating I will repeat a verse. I am sure I have used this verse several times before within the episode, so I was surprised to see I hadn’t used it as a main verse. We will finish the “I Am What God Says I Am” series this week. If you haven’t listened in a while we have already done: I am protected, I am forgiven, I am courageous, and I am His. This week we will cover I am strong, I am guided, I am healed, and I am whole.
I love this verse because I think if we all embraced it, life would get easier. If we all accepted this, and let it settle into our hearts, we wouldn’t struggle so much. It is also a great reminder that we can do anything if we are doing it with the strength we get from Christ. This verse came from Paul in a letter to the Philippians. Paul has an amazing story. He has lots of amazing stories. The way He became a believer in Jesus was amazing. God wanted Him and one encounter with Jesus changed his whole life. Paul did not have an easy life, especially after He started traveling around and preaching about Jesus.
Sometimes we can think we are supposed to have an easy life. We believe in God and God will protect us so we get to just sit back and relax on easy street. That is not what God promised us. God promised He would be with us. He promised He would send an advocate to guide us, but He never promised our life would be easy. Actually, He said the opposite. In Matthew 16:24, “Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” He is calling us to take up our own cross. Our crosses will look very different from Jesus’ cross, thank goodness. Your cross will look different from my cross. Just because our crosses look different, doesn’t mean we don’t have crosses.
Paul was the Pope at one point. We might think if He is that close to the Lord, then his life was easy. Sometimes, oftentimes, the closer we get to the Lord the harder our life seems. The enemy hates when we get close to the Lord, so he will try to block you every chance he gets. The devil will make your life a living hell, and then try to convince you it is God’s fault, or if God loved you, why would He let this stuff happen to you? The enemy can be really convincing too. He can sound like He knows what he is talking about because He might through some scripture in there, or he will include just enough truth in his lies so that they seem credible. This is a trick, don’t fall for it. God is not the reason you are suffering and yet He can be the reason you make it through all that suffering.
Paul says right before the verse above in Philippians 4:10-13, “I rejoiced greatly in the Lord that at last, you renewed your concern for me. Indeed, you were concerned, but you had no opportunity to show it. I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well-fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength.”
The word that jumps out to me first is the word content. Many of us struggle to be content. If we are struggling financially, we wish we had more money. If we are successful then we still strive for more, or we feel lonely at the top. We live in a society that wants more and more. I rarely talk with someone who is content with where they are in life. Paul said he learned to be content in whatever the circumstances. You might think this was easy for Paul because He was the Pope. It was not, here are a few things Paul went through in his lifetime since turning his life over to God. Here is a list from 2 Corinthians 11:23-28 about all that Paul went through:
“Are they ministers of Christ? (I am talking like an insane person.) I am still more, with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, far worse beatings, and numerous brushes with death. Five times at the hands of the Jews I received forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, I passed a night and a day on the deep; on frequent journeys, in dangers from rivers, dangers from robbers, dangers from my own race, dangers from Gentiles, dangers in the city, dangers in the wilderness, dangers at sea, dangers among false brothers; in toil and hardship, through many sleepless nights, through hunger and thirst, through frequent fastings, through cold and exposure. And apart from these things, there is the daily pressure upon me of my anxiety for all the churches.”
Can you imagine? I can’t imagine even going through a fraction of what Paul went through, and yet I have walked through some very difficult times and I am sure you have too. I was not showing you all Paul went through so you could look at your life and compare it. Comparison is the thief of joy. I don’t believe we should look at our troubles and compare them to others because then we start to feel guilty for being upset about our problems when they seem so small compared to others. You still have a right to be upset about your circumstances, even if someone else’s circumstances are worse.
The thing to remember about Paul is that he was able to endure so much because he had the strength of Jesus, and so do you! We all have the Spirit of Jesus living inside of us. That was a gift the Father gave us when Jesus went to join Him in Heaven. The verse today says, “ I can do all things through him who strengthens me.” It says, all things. It doesn’t just mean the easy stuff. I know you feel like what you are dealing with is too much. I know you feel like you are alone and no one is there fighting with you. I know you might not feel the strength of Jesus and yet He is right there with you. When I look back I can see how the strength of Jesus got me through the hard times.
When things were really bad in our house I never gave up hope. I didn’t wake up each day feeling defeated or depressed, well, not on most days anyway. I woke up feeling ready to try a new strategy. Just the fact that I got out of bed was proof of Jesus’ strength. There were long periods, years actually, where it was crisis after crisis in my house. I would put out one fire and another one would be right there waiting to spring up. It was a lot and I had times when I wanted to throw in the towel. I definitely wondered what would happen if I ran away from it all. And yet, I made it through. I not only made it through but I changed the dynamics in our family. It was super hard work and work I know I couldn’t have done on my own.
You have the strength of Jesus inside of you and you are stronger than you think. You can do this thing you are going through right now! You can beat cancer, you can raise your kids to be great adults, you can fix your marriage, you can help your loved one recover from injury/illness, and you can make it through this financial crisis. Whatever it is, you can make it through because you can do all things through Christ who strengthens you. You are strong. There is a Winnie the Pooh quote that I think we should all embrace as truth, "You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.” You are stronger than you seem. You can do this hard thing, even when it feels like you can’t! You’ve got this, you have the power and strength of Jesus inside of you. You can do all things with Him!
Dear Heavenly Father, thank you so much for every person listening today. I ask you to bless each of them. Lord, help us to feel your strength. Help us to see the times in our life when we have relied on the strength of Jesus to get us through. Show us the times when you were there lifting us and we didn’t know it. Help us to turn to you for strength Lord. Help us not to rely on our own strength but to look to you and surrender our problems to you Lord. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. This week is the Encounter Ministries Boston Campus Summer Intensive. It is in Woburn MA from 6-9 PM Monday to Thursday. If you are local and would like to come it is not too late you can register at the door. It is at St. Charles Borromeo. If you are not able to join us, I ask that you pray for us. I ask that you pray for a successful event and that people get out of it exactly what they needed. I ask that you pray for protection over it as I know it will be powerful and wherever God’s power is strong the enemy tries to come in and destroy. Thank you in advance for all your prayers. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day! CLICK HERE to come to Encounter Ministries Boston Campus Summer Intensive!
I Am His
Isaiah 43:1-2 “But now, this is what the Lord says—he who created you, Jacob, he who formed you, Israel: “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.”
When I was looking at the sheet of verses titled, “I Am Who God Says I Am” I saw that it said Isaiah 43:1 for today, which makes sense. I am His is what God is saying when He Says, “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name, you are mine.” We are the Lord’s, there are several places in the Bible where it talks about how we are His people, He formed us in our mother’s womb, He knew us before we existed, and so on. That might even make a great Bible study, just looking at all the places where God says that we are His. However, when I was reading that verse this morning I decided to read the verses that come after this verse as well.
What I realized is that the very next verse tells us not to fear, which I found interesting since that is what we talked about yesterday. I didn’t want to talk about verse 1 without also talking about verse 2 because I think they go hand and hand. I think verse 2 explains what verse 1 means for us. In verse one God is telling us that we are His. He is saying that he has redeemed us and summoned us by name and that we are His. Let’s stay there for a moment. First, God says that He has redeemed us. Redeemed in the Bible means having been saved or delivered from sin or its consequences. I wonder if we understand what that means. I wonder if we are even capable of grasping the vastness of that statement. God has redeemed us. This means that mistake that you made, the one that you keep beating yourself up for, God has already redeemed it. This means that those sins that you have committed, you have been delivered from them. All those negative things the enemy keeps whispering in our ears about ourselves, The Lord has already redeemed them, He has redeemed us, all of us. He has delivered us from ourselves, from our sinful nature.
The next part says He summoned us by name, in other words, He called us. Do you know what this means? It means that God knows our name. He knows your name and He knows my name. He is calling us, not as a group, not as a whole, He is calling each one of us, by name, to Him. Almost every week in Prayer Group we get at least one word of prophecy that says, “Come closer my children, again I say, come closer my children.” God is calling us to be close to Him. He is calling us to sit with Him daily and have a conversation, pray with Him, and tell Him what is going on in our lives. He is calling us to Him because He wishes to have a relationship with us.
Earlier I said I think verse 2 explains what verse 1 means to us. What I meant by this is that verse 2 tells us all the ways God will protect us because we are His. He gives us an idea of the lengths He will go to just so He can protect His children. That is what you are, you are a child of God. The second verse starts by saying, “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you.” This is telling us that God is with us always. Even when we are passing through waters, He will be there. He will not only be there but He will protect us from these waters. He will make sure they do not sweep over us.
I think this is important to remember because how many times in life have you felt like you were treading water? How many times have you felt like you were going to drown? This verse is meant to reassure us. It is telling us no matter how high those waters get, we won’t drown. We belong to God and He is here protecting us always. We heard all those words of prophecy yesterday telling us not to fear anything because God is right there with us. Now, today, we hear the same thing. I get the feeling some of us are fearful about something now. I am not sure what you are going through, or what you might be afraid of, and yet I know that God is trying to reassure you that whatever it is, He is right there with you and that you don’t ever have to be afraid because He will never leave your side.
The last sentence in this verse is an even more dramatic statement of God’s love for us, His people. The verse ends with, “When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.” This is a pretty vivid picture and yet I think we can all think of a time in our lives when we felt like we were walking through fire. God is reassuring us that although we may feel like we are in a fire, we may feel the heat of the flames all around us, He will not let the flames set us ablaze. I am sure we hear this and we take it figuratively. We think about the things going on in our lives and how it feels like we are walking through fire. However, I want you to know, that God saved three of His children from a literal fire. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were three of God’s children. They loved God and they wanted to serve Him and only Him. Then King Nebuchadnezzar created a statue made of gold and said everyone needed to bow before it. These three young men refused as they said they would only bow to the one true king, our Lord God. King Nebuchadnezzar order these three young me to be thrown in the fiery furnace. God saved these men from being touched by the fire.
When King Nebuchadnezzar looked through the window to make sure they had died, he saw four people in the furnace instead of three. God had sent one of His angels into the fiery furnace to protect them. There is one line in the story of these three young men that I just love. This story can be found in Daniel 3. My favorite line though is found in verses 14-18, " King Nebuchadnezzar questioned them: “Is it true, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, that you will not serve my god, or worship the golden statue that I set up? Now, if you are ready to fall down and worship the statue I made, whenever you hear the sound of the horn, pipe, zither, dulcimer, harp, double-flute, and all the other musical instruments, then all will be well; if not, you shall be instantly cast into the white-hot furnace; and who is the God who can deliver you out of my hands?” Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego answered King Nebuchadnezzar, “There is no need for us to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If our God, whom we serve, can save us from the white-hot furnace and from your hands, O king, may he save us! But even if he will not, you should know, O king, that we will not serve your god or worship the golden statue which you set up.”
Wow, can you imagine saying that? Can you imagine the faith they must have had? They knew God could save them from the flames of that furnace and yet even if God didn’t save them, they would still be faithful to Him. I wonder if we can say the same. I wonder if we would be willing to stake our lives on our faith in God. God is telling us with this story as well as with the verses today that He will be there for us, no matter what. He will protect us from drowning in the waters in our lives and He will protect us from burning in the fires in our life. We belong to God and He will protect us from all that we encounter. He is there with us each step of the way, even in those really hard times. God wants us to come closer to Him and have a relationship with Him. He wants us to share with Him all that is going on in our lives so He can help us with it all. God loves you and You are His!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we thank you for protecting us from the water and the fire in our lives. Thank you for calling us by name, thank you for redeeming us. We love you, Lord. Help us to draw closer to you. Help us to learn how to have a relationship with you. Help us not to fear anything because we have you in our lives protecting us. We are so grateful for you and all the ways that you protect us. You are so powerful and we are so grateful we are Yours. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ mighty name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk body with Jesus. I worked a lot yesterday on getting the retreat ready to open for registration. I haven’t finished setting up registration but I do have the title and the description, so let me share that with you today as I am very excited about what I feel the Holy Spirit wants to do at this retreat. The Retreat is called Heart to Heart Retreat: Embracing God’s Love at Every Stage. The primary goal for this retreat is to pour God's Love into each of you. I feel the Holy Spirit is saying we all need to be filled up with His love so we can go out and fill others. This retreat will teach you how to hear His voice, abide in his love and cultivate a deeper more intimate relationship with Him. I truly hope you will all join me for this retreat. It will be from October 7th to the 9th. It will be in Easton, MA at the Holy Cross Retreat House. I am so excited to share this weekend with you and get to know some of you listening that I might not know. I look forward to meeting you here again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed weekend!
I Am Courageous
Joshua 1:9 “I command you: be strong and steadfast! Do not fear nor be dismayed, for the Lord, your God, is with you wherever you go.”
Today is another verse that tells us who God created us to be. God created us to be strong and steadfast. Do you know what steadfast means? Steadfast means resolutely firm and unwavering. This verse is telling us that we can be courageous because God is with us wherever we go. God is telling us in this verse that we don’t have to fear anything and we don’t have to be dismayed. God tells us not to fear quite often in the Bible. The phrase “fear not” is in the Bible 365 times. That is one time for each day of the year. I think this is something that God wants us to get and yet we still all struggle with it.
I can’t think of a single person who is not afraid of something. I think if we took the bravest person we know we would still discover they were afraid of something. There are people who are afraid of everything, there are people who are afraid of almost nothing and then there are those in between. Even if someone says they aren’t afraid of anything I bet if you asked them if they were afraid something might happen to their children, their pets, or any of their loved ones, I bet most would say yes. If you asked them if they were afraid of not being able to provide for their family I bet most would say yes. We are all afraid of something. I think this is why the Lord has said “fear not” so many times in the Bible.
He is still saying it to His people today. He is saying it to you and me. We are constantly getting words of prophecy at prayer group that tell us not to be afraid and that God is with us. Here are several words that we have received, and these all came within the same month. I would love for you to listen to these words as if your heavenly Father was saying them to you personally. Also, if any of them stand out to you or you feel like they are speaking to you pause the episode and write them down. I pray that God speaks to each one of you through these words. I pray that He highlights at least one of these for each individual person listening. All of these either speak to us not being afraid or they explain how and why we know God is with us.
I just got the feeling that we don't need to fear because He is the one that is in charge and He will make things happen in whatever way that He wants. He keeps telling us we're not God He is God. He is saying He can use whoever He wants. Whoever is willing to be used he can use.
You are the anointing I send to the world my children. Smile that I send you. I send each of you. Be not afraid I am with you. My spirit will speak through you the words that I wish you to say. Just be the anointing I wish you to be. All can be. When I say you can, don't tell me you can't. Praise me, praise me, praise me, my children. Smile that today I send you.
I watch over you, my children. All of you are my children. I break the sword of the enemy who would come against you. You have nothing to fear for I am there for each and every one of you in each and every trial. I will never forsake my children or leave my children. I will defend you in battle. I have sent you the power of the Spirit and He will give you all that you need to do what you have been called to do.
My children take my hand. Realize that I am with you. Go into the world without fear. I am holding onto your hand. There is no need to fear I am your God. I will protect you, I will defend you. Smile that you are mine. Smile my children. I am with you till the end of time. Come closer my children, come closer so that I can reveal my mysteries to you so you in turn can share them with the world. I am your Lord, I am your God and I am all-powerful. I hold onto your hand. Move forward, move forward with joy for you are mine.
My children you are like little sheep. You wander off for that next patch of juicy grass and I call you back. You wander over the top of the hill and you get caught in the briars and I find you. I know where your traps are. I will always search for you. I will always find you and I will always bring you back. But I ask you frequently, many times, to look over your shoulder and check on me to make sure you are near me. Often during the day look at me, listen for me, watch me. Stay near me and you will grow strong and healthy and you'll be my cherished one and you will do my will.
This verse came to mind as we are praying and all I could see is the real fullness of God's glory. He doesn't give us dim glory, He gives us blazing glory. He doesn't give us a weak Spirit, He gives us a courageous Spirit. He doesn't give us a dim light, He gives us a blazing light to bring to this world that God is so great and so full and he shares ALL of his fullness with us. With Him there's plenteous redemption so let's not just expect little let's expect a lot, more than our minds can possibly comprehend because He is big.
And my children, my darlings you think you are what your roles in life have made you be. You think you are what people have called you and told you you were. But please come to me in prayer and silence and listen to what I call you. I call you beloved, cherished, friend, child. You are my sheep, you are precious. You are my warriors, you are my disciples, you are my voice in the world right now, you are my hands, you are my feet. You have such a noble call and you don't realize it. You have so much power at your disposal and you don't use it. Don't be stuck in what the world has told you but be liberated in what I tell you.
Wow, those were all-powerful. What I feel the Holy Spirit telling me right now is to leave you with those so you can read through them or re-listen to them again. There is so much in there and yet I feel the Holy Spirit is saying that we don’t have to focus, understand or read through all of it. Listen again and see what stands out to you. There is plenty in there that speaks to the fact God made us courageous. Which word speaks to you the most? Which one did you really need to hear today? I would love it if you would reach out to me through an email at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or through social media and let me know which of the words from our heavenly Father touched you the most today. You are courageous because you have the Lord God almighty right there by your side every step of the way!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Wow, Lord, you are amazing. After all these years, I still cannot get over the fact that you want to talk to your children. When I think about all the ways we turn away from you and all the terrible ways we treat you, I would think you would want to ignore us. You not only take care of us and protect us, but you also want to have a relationship with us. Those were some pretty powerful words you gave to the prayer group and that you gave to me to share with everyone. I pray everyone listening truly hears Your words and I pray they find a home in their hearts. I pray they don’t just hear them with their ears, I pray they hear them with their heart, mind, and soul. I pray there is something for everyone in those words above. I pray people listen and relisten to them until they become a part of them. I pray they copy them down from the show notes and re-read them anytime they feel they need to be courageous or they need the reminder that they are not alone and you are right there with them.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I wanted to let you all know that I am getting closer to opening the registration for the retreat I am hosting. I am coming up with a title and a description that tries to explain how amazing the retreat will be. What I can tell you now is that it will be filled with God’s love, and my prayer is that everyone that comes gets filled up with the Love of God and also deepens their relationship with Him. I hope you will all join me! More details to come shortly. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed day!
I have two witnesses for you today. I do not know either of these people. I saw one of the witnesses on the Encounter Ministries Facebook page and then I saw the same witness on another friend’s page and I felt like that was the Holy Spirit telling meet share her story. I think her story is especially good because so many people struggle with food allergies these days and I am not sure it even occurs to us to ask for a healing from that. I am not sure we even believe that is something that can be healed. It probably doesn’t even enter our minds. However, for this young lady, it was life-changing for her. The first witness is Megan and she is talking about her miraculous healing and how that lead to her new job working for encounter ministries online campus. I will be relaying her witness to you and I will also put a link in the show notes of the podcast and the comments section of my Youtube channel so you can watch her give the testimony if you want to. It is so good watching her explain it. You can see the excitement and the gratitude on her face. CLICK HERE to watch her testimony!
Megan was at a regional Encounter Ministries conference in Seattle in 2019 and she was suffering from celiac disease, eosinophilic esophagitis, she had so many food allergies, she could really only eat a handful of foods and be ok and she also had major depressive disorder. She had been Catholic her entire life but she had never really truly met the Lord. At the healing service, the Lord took away everything that she was allergic to, the celiac disease was gone the depression was gone and I no longer had eosinophilic esophagitis.
In encounter ministries, we ask people to test to see if they have been healed. Test to see if the pain is gone. Test to see if you can do something that you couldn’t do before the prayer. For instance, if you couldn’t raise your arm above your head because of a shoulder injury then after the prayer try and see if you can raise your hand over your head. This added step to test if the healing has occurred gives the person praying and the person who has healed a chance to step out in faith and test the healing. Megan wasn’t sure how to test this healing as it was about allergies to food and she was at a conference. She asked a friend how to test it and they recommended she seek inner healing. During the inner healing session, she got to ask the Lord if He did in fact heal her at the conference. And she heard Him say Yes, over and over again yes.
After she left the inner healing session she went to the only restaurant she knew in this small town in Texas and she ate everything she had ever been allergic to on that plate. She ate gluten, wheat, soy, eggs, dairy, tree nuts, and peanuts and there was not one reaction. She drove four hours home praising the Lord the whole time. She had depression for so long and she woke up the next morning filled with joy. She had no idea where all this joy was coming from and why she was so excited and joyful. She then went to a summer intensive and then a friend convinced her to sign up for the 2 year online course. She became aware for the first time of her identity as a beloved daughter of Jesus Christ and the authority that He gave us and she was so excited to go deeper and deeper into their rich content. She is now working for Encounter School of Ministries as their Associate Director of the online school.
The second witness today is Sean. He is another Encounter Ministries student. In this witness, he is talking about an incredible grace he received during an encounter ministries class exercise. There are so many Encounter Ministry testimonies because there are so many amazing things going on with this school. I think one reason for this is because they are allowing the Holy Spirit to work through them and they are teaching so many others to do the same. The Holy Spirit is on the move in a big way right now. I love sharing these testimonies because we are all suffering in some way. The more I share the more chance there is for you to see yourself or your situation in one of these witnesses. If God can do it for them, He can do it for you too. Again, I will be telling Sean’s story and then I will place a link for the actual video so you can watch him tell it if you want to. I think you should watch the original video as no one tells our own testimony better than we do. CLICK HERE to watch his testimony!
Sean was a compulsive note-taker which doesn’t sound bad, but it can be really debilitating at times. He also has this really odd obsessive thing where if he is in a conversation and forgets what he will say, he can’t just let it go. He will spend 30 minutes pouring over it trying to remember. Sometimes he would still be thinking about it days later and it really stole his peace. He had this going on when he started Encounter. Week after week he encountered new revelations and new graces. A very powerful one was when a classmate was praying over him and she received an image that he had the anointing of St. Peter to jump out of the boat at the first sign of Jesus. When she said that he started crying and he got a grace of instant surrender in that moment. Now when these obsessive thoughts come to him, he can move on instantly. He can be fully in the present moment, fully at peace. He can have new eyes to see. He can see Jesus in the people that he talks to. He can speak what people need to hear in the moment to lead them to Jesus.
Last week he received the grace of joy. He was at a Chamber of Commerce event and even though they aren’t usually full of laughs. He found himself with a group of strangers and they found themselves laughing and being joyful. When he got to work the next day, he had claimed victory over his workplace the night before, the tellers were laughing for no reason. He works at a bank. The most beautiful thing was that none of it was rooted in emotion or even gratitude for the healing. It was rooted in who he is and who God is because God is faithful and Sean is His.
Sean’s father passed away when he was 3 years old. Sean had an image last week of himself with God the Father in a green field Sean was 3 years old and God was running after him, chasing him, playing with him, and throwing him in the air. He was teaching Sean his strength in Him. What God wants to do in all of us is to plant in our hearts that to be His son or His daughter is to be free. He told Sean at that moment that this is the new normal, this peace, this joy, this boldness, this is the new normal. This is just the beginning.
I hope you will go and check out both of these videos. They are very powerful. I hope when you listen to these witnesses each week you realize they are coming from normal everyday people like you and I. There is nothing extraordinary about these people. God did not choose them because they were the best, he chose them because they were willing, they were seeking and they said yes. You can too! We had a prophecy from the prayer group that we were just looking at the other day. Here is what we felt the Lord said to our group and He is saying it to you too. “My children, I have called each of you and I continue to call you. I have chosen you because of your great love and your hearts that are willing. I have not chosen you because you are the wisest, speak eloquently or perform the best. I chose you because you are small in the sense of being humble, knowing who you are, knowing that you need a God and Savior, and willing to accept me as that.” There you go, straight from the Lord himself. He isn’t choosing people because they are the best. He is choosing people who are humble, who love Him, and who have willing hearts. He chooses those that know they cannot do anything on their own and yet with Him there is nothing they cannot do. Is that you? Do you want to be used by God?
I am Forgiven
John 2:12 “I am writing to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven on account of his name.”
I decided to stick with some of the verses from the “I Am Who God Says I Am” Challenge from my Big Life mentoring group. I have talked about many of the verses however the next one that I had not talked about before is 2 John 2:12. I particularly liked this one because I am not sure this is one that most of us would agree with. Do you believe you are forgiven? I recently learned something that I thought was so interesting. I was at a meeting and we were talking about the difference between Redemption vs Salvation.
The way they explained it was to picture that you are in jail. Redemption means someone has been paid for your freedom. This means you have been redeemed. You are now free to go, free to leave the jail in which you were held captive. However, the salvation doesn’t come until you leave the prison. You need to be the one to accept that redemption and walk out of the door. That is the hard part, that is the part that we struggle with a lot. We might understand on some level that Jesus died for the sins of the world and yet we struggle to believe that he died for our sins in particular.
Do you believe that Jesus died for your sins? Do you believe there is nothing you can do that won’t be forgiven if you repent? Do you believe you don’t have to earn your forgiveness? This is something else that we struggle with. We think we have to be good enough to be forgiven. We mess up and then we think we need to fix everything before we turn to the Lord and ask for forgiveness. This couldn’t be further from the truth. There is nothing you have to do to be forgiven other than to be sorry for what you have done. You can’t earn your forgiveness, Jesus already paid the price for you. He paid a high price and when we try to earn our forgiveness we are essentially saying what He paid wasn’t enough.
Father Mike was just talking about this idea of earning our forgiveness the other day on the Catechism in a Year podcast when he was talking about the sacrament of reconciliation. When Catholics go to confession, we confess our sins we say we are sorry to God for having sinned against Him, we receive absolution for our sins and then the priest gives us a penance. Sometimes when we get the penance we think that it is not severe enough. For instance we confess we committed a mortal sin and the priest says that we should say 5 Hail Marys and 5 Our Fathers. We don’t see how that could possible atone for our sins. That’s the thing, we are not atoning for our sins, our forgiveness is freely given to us because Jesus died on the cross. He already atoned for our sins. Penance is meant to help us turn our hearts back to God. Just as our sin was an active choice of turning away from God, penance is an active choice of turning back to God.
What penance is meant to do is to help us get back on track. In an ideal world your penance would have something to do with what you were struggling with at the time of confession. For instance, if you are struggling with being kind to your family, your penance might be to say three kind things to each one of them before going to bed that night. If you are struggling with pride your penance might be to say the Litany of Humility. This would be in an ideal world, however, there are not enough priests and the priest might not always be able to come up with a creative penance that has to do with your specific struggle or your specific sins. If you are given a penance that doesn’t seem to “fit the crime” so to speak, remember that you are not earning your forgiveness, you are not trying to buy it, it has already been purchased for you. I read an article about doing penance after confession and it said, “Just as sin wounds (or breaks) our relationship with God and makes our souls sick, penance is medicine that helps us turn our hearts back towards our Creator. Confession removes that sin from our shoulders. Penance helps us move towards a more holy future.”
The verse above says that our sins are forgiven on account of his name.” I mentioned earlier that sometimes we think we need to fix things before we confess what we have done. We think we need to be perfect before we approach God and tell Him what we have done. Romans 5:8 tells us, “But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.” He didn’t wait till we stopped sinning. He didn’t wait until we had all our ducks in a row, He didn’t wait until we had life all figured out. He died for our sins while we were still sinners. This shows us how much God loves us and also shows us that He doesn’t want us to wait until we are perfect because that day will never come. God told Paul that His power is made perfect in our weakness.
We think we need to be perfect for God and yet God doesn’t require that of us. He would rather we come to Him in our weakness and our brokenness. If we are perfect we don’t need God. If we could do it all ourselves we wouldn’t need God. God is not there to watch us do all the work ourselves and then forgive us or love us after we have figured it all out. He is there to help us figure it out. He is there to guide us and to lead us in the right direction. We can’t change the really hard stuff without God’s help. We can’t forgive others without God helping us change our hearts. We can want to forgive and yet God is the one that is in charge of conversion of hearts. He is the one that forgives us and helps us forgive others. We need him all along the process.
The one thing I want to leave you with today is that your sins were forgiven when Jesus died on that cross. You don’t have to earn your forgiveness, you just have to accept it. You have to walk in that freedom that comes with forgiveness. If God has forgiven your sins and yet you are still walking around in a prison of your past mistakes then what do you think that says to the Lord? It says that you don’t believe Jesus’ sacrifice was enough to cover your sins. It says you think you know more than God does because He has said you are forgiven and you aren’t accepting that forgiveness. God has already paid your debt, He has already unlocked the door to your prison, all you have to do it walk out the door and live in that freedom. Can you do that today? Can you finally walk out of your prison and accept God’s forgiveness?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you and we ask you to help us accept your forgiveness. We are tired of living in our own prisons Lord, show us the way out. Change our hearts and our minds so we can accept that you love us so much you sent your only son to die for our sins, even while we were still sinning. Help us to walk in that freedom you bought for us. Help us to forgive others as well. You are the best Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to bringing you a witness tomorrow. I would like to encourage each and every one of you listening to do a witness for Witness Wednesday. I know you may be thinking that nothing miraculous has happened in your life and that may be true and yet I think if you really examine you life you will see ways that God worked all things for your good. You might also see when you were in a really difficult situation and God gave you the strength to get through it. You also could just tell your story. We all have a story and even though it may not seem that spectacular to us, we never know what telling our story could mean to someone else. We don’t know how what we say could change another persons life. Please pray about it and considering sharing a witness with me and everyone listening. CLICK HERE to contact me. Also, you could go to walkboldlywithjesus.com and go to the contact me part of the website. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed day!
We Are Protected
Psalm 18:32 “God gives me strength for the battle. He keeps my way secure.”
This verse came to me from a challenge that we received in Big Life mentoring this past week. Pamela Crim gave us a list of 14 Bible verses that tell us who God says we are. Our job was to read one verse each day and to pray with it. Read it out loud and really think about what it says. She encouraged us to go online to look up the verse in many different translations. Have you done that before? Have you taken a verse and then checked the other translations to see what words they use? I do this often and I am always surprised with the words the various translations use. I know they are all saying the same thing and yet some just hit me more than others. If you haven’t tried this before, or you haven’t done it often, might I suggest you give it a try? I think you will find you like reading the various translations. The website I use to do this is Biblegateway.com. However, there are several different ones you could use.
Today’s verse tells us that we are protected. It begins with the sentence, “God gives me strength for the battle.” This is important to know as God does give us strength for our battles. Sometimes we look at the fight we have ahead of us and we are sure that we don’t have the strength to fight it. We might be looking at a really long custody battle, divorce proceedings, a long medical journey, whatever it may be and we know we aren’t strong enough for it. Have you ever felt like this, like the road ahead is too hard, too long, too steep, too painful and that you just don’t have the strength for it? I get it, life is hard. I know so many who are struggling right now. So many who have way more to handle than any one person ever should.
The important thing to keep in mind is that we are not in this alone. You are probably right, your situation is more than you can handle on your own, which is why you are lucky that you are not on your own. You have your heavenly Father who is providing you with the strength you need each day. I know sometimes it doesn’t feel like He is giving you enough strength. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like you have enough to keep fighting and yet with each new day comes a renewed strength. He is constantly filling you up so that you can fight your battles. You might not feel as if you are full of strength and yet you do keep going, you do keep fighting so you can see He is giving you strength.
He keeps my way secure. I think this means that God always makes sure there is a way. God is a way maker and so we don’t have to worry about coming to a point where we are stuck at a dead end where there is no way out. I know it feels like we get to this point sometimes. I know we can reach a point where we can’t see a way out. The way out is not always one that we can see or that we can understand. God can make a way where there isn’t one. This can happen in several different ways.
I read about a person who was getting sued because he did not read the contract carefully and he was going to lose everything. He knew he didn’t really have a leg to stand on as he did sign the contract and yet he prayed for God to intervene anyway. The lawsuit just went away. It was like it never happened and he never heard anything more about it. There have been people who have been told they or their family member was going to die. They had some illness, like cancer, and there was nothing else the doctors could do for them. Their family members prayed anyway and God healed them. He took away their illness completely. That is a way forward that we didn’t see ahead of time and we might not have even believed it before seeing it.
I have heard many stories of people who were stuck in a situation and couldn’t see any way out of it. There have been numerous times when my parents were in situations where they couldn’t see a way out and yet they trusted that God had one and he never let them down. One of these is when they were asked to watch a friend’s 10 children on top of their own 11 children. They new it was important to this friend and so they said yes. However, they didn’t really have any food to feed their own children, let alone 10 others. They didn’t let this stop them from saying yes. They new that even though they couldn’t see a way that the Lord would provide a way because He always does.
My parents prayed for an answer to this problem they had and before they were even done praying there was a knock at the door. One of their neighbors was at the door asking if my parents could use some food. You see their father had just moved in with them unexpectedly and they didn’t have enough room in the cupboards for all his food as he had just gone grocery shopping before realizing he would need to move in with them. My parents gratefully accepted. They noticed that there was pasta and sauce in the bags. They were talking about how they could have spaghetti if they only had some ground meat. The next thing they know there is a knock at the door and it is a different neighbor. This neighbor was asking if my parents could use some meat? You see this guy had just gone hunting with a friend and they filled their fridges and freezers and still had some meet left over that they just didn’t have the room to store. Guess what was among this meat they were given? Yep, you guessed it, ground meat. They now had plenty of food to feed not only their kids, but the 10 they were babysitting as well.
This is not something they could have seen coming. The path was not neatly laid out in front of them. They said yes to watching the kids even though they didn’t know how they would feed them. I think God likes it when we do this. I think He likes it when we step out in faith knowing that He keeps His promises. I don’t know if my parents knew this specific verse or not and yet I do know they trusted God to protect them and to show them the way out of their situation. You can do the same. You can trust that God is protecting you. He is giving you strength for the battle and keeping your way secure. That is a promise you can stand on.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to know we are protected by you. Help us to feel that protection. Help us lean into you and not to worry about what might happen. Lord, help us to trust that you have secured our way. Help us to step out in faith knowing you will provide a way even if it is one we can’t see ahead of time. Help us to trust you Lord. We love you, you are amazing! You have always come through for us in the past and we know you always will. We are so grateful and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk Bodly With Jesus. I look forward to meeting you hear again tomorrow. Just a reminder if you want to be receiving my newsletter you can sign up on my website walkboldlywithjesus.com. (Click Here) Remember Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed day!
Do Sinners Really Have More Fun?
Proverbs 23:17-18 "Let not your heart envy sinners, but continue in the fear of the Lord all the day. Surely there is a future, and your hope will not be cut off.”
When I read this verse this morning I knew the Lord was talking to me, as it talks about fearing the Lord again and I mentioned yesterday how I usually stay away from those verses because I think we often misunderstand what it means to Fear the Lord. Yesterday I talked about a Deuteronomy 10:12-13 which said that Fear of the Lord meant to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to observe the Lord’s commands and decrees. Fearing the Lord is inextricably tied to loving, serving, and holding fast to the Lord in response to all the wonderful and gracious things he has done for us (Deut. 10:20; 1 Sam 12:24).This statement is from the article I talked about yesterday. CLICK HERE for the article.
Today’s verse says to not let your heart envy sinners. This can be hard. If our hearts are in love with this world and with worldly things it can be easy to envy sinners. It can seem, by worldly standards that sinners have more fun. It even says this in that Billy Joel Song “Only The Good Die Young.” The song says: “And they say there's a heaven for those who will wait, some say it's better, but I say it ain’t. I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints. The sinners are much more fun.” I know this is just a song and yet it shows the sentiment of many people. It is certainly the sentiment of my kids, and many other kids. They don’t want to be in church, they don’t want to be living the life that God wants us to live. They believe it is much more fun to do whatever you want to do. I mean, who wants to be told what they have to do and yet if they only knew where the consequences, the eternal consequences of their actions, I wonder if their choices would be different.
This world tends to look down upon Christians. They don’t understand why we believe in “this imaginary person that lives in the sky” or as one of my kids is fond of saying, “a hippie that lives in the clouds.” The world doesn’t understand why we believe the things we believe and therefore it rejects those things. We live in a world that wants to do whatever it wants to do. We live in a world that wants to believe whatever it wants to believe. They fight for the right to live however they want to live and yet want to take away the rights for Christians to believe what they believe. We live in a world where everyone is accepted, all beliefs are accepted, except those of Christians.
I believe it is hard to be a good Christian. I believe we are called to a higher standard. We are called to be the face of Christ to others and that is a tall order. Christ loved everyone, He was kind to everyone, He did not judge others even though He was God and had the authority to judge others. Jesus helped those in need. He gave to the poor, fed the hungry, healed the sick. We have big shoes to fill and we are all called to fill those shoes. Not just some of us, but each and every one of us is called to be the face of Christ to others. We are called to live an upright life. Romans 13 is a great chapter to read if you are wondering about how we are being called to live. I am just going to read Romans 13:13-14 which says, “Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh.”
I can see how we could look at those who get drunk or those who are being promiscuous and be jealous. Things always look greener on the other side of the fence. When you are at a bar and you see someone who is drunk it may appear that they are having more fun. However, that is a few hours of their time. What about when they sober up and realize all the things they have done? What about when they lose their job, their family, the home because all they do is drink? What about when they are living on the streets because they lost everything? Would you still be envious of them? What about someone who is sleeping around? Maybe you have a friend that is not in a committed relationship and is dating lots of people and is having sex with most of them. They seem to be having a good time and you might be a little jealous. It may seem like they are having a good time but what about when they start to feel like they are just being used for sex. What about when they start to wonder if anyone will ever love them? Would you still be envious of them?
We only see what things look like on the outside. We don’t see the after math of other people’s decisions and we don’t know how they feel or what they are thinking. We tend to think they are happy and yet that is often not the case. They do not have the joy that we can have when we are following the Lord and His ways. Joy of the Lord is something that does not compare with anything else. Happiness is fleeting and it is something anyone can obtain for a moment, or for a short period of time when things are going well in their lives. However, when things aren’t going well, they loose that happiness. Joy, true joy that comes from the Lord, is something you can always have. I am not always happy and yet I can always feel the Joy from the Lord. I can be in the middle of a really hard time, I can be going through something really difficult, like right now with my son in the hospital, and yet I can still be filled with joy. The joy is not based on my circumstances it is based on my love and hope in the Lord. Joy is a decision one makes and it is also a gift from the Holy Spirit.
When we are living the life God wants us to live we will be filled with joy. When we stop being envious of sinners and realize how amazing it is living a life with Christ we will be the ones that people envy. When I think of the people that I envy the most, it is those who are the face of Christ to others. Those who are kind to everyone, those who give to the poor, even when they don't have much themselves. I envy those who prioritize prayer time and their spiritual life over their social life. You know the people I am talking about. I bet if you made a list of the people you really envied, or those you look up to anyway, they wouldn’t be the sinners in your life.
The verse above tells us to, “Let not your heart envy sinners, but continue in the fear of the Lord all the day. Surely there is a future, and your hope will not be cut off.” Today we learned that “Fearing the Lord is inextricably tied to loving, serving, and holding fast to the Lord in response to all the wonderful and gracious things he has done for us (Deut. 10:20; 1 Sam 12:24)." So if we are not going to let our heart envy sinners and we are going continue to fear the Lord, what does that look like? According to Deuteronomy and first Samuel it means we are loving, serving and holding fast to the Lord because of all the wonderful things He has done for us. Are we doing this? Are we loving the Lord and thanking Him for all that He has done for us? Are we serving the Lord? What are we doing to serve the Lord? I bet you are doing more than you think you are doing. Are you praying for those in need? That is serving the Lord. Are you participating in Mass? That is serving the Lord?
This verse is not necessarily telling us something new, we are probably already doing the things we are called to do. It is a great reminder though. I think we probably all have those moments when we might envy a sinner because it looks like they are having more fun. This verse is a great reminder of why we shouldn’t do that and what would be a better use of our time. Next time you feel like you want to envy a sinner, say a prayer for them instead. Pray they find the joy in the Lord that is available for all who live their life with Jesus Christ.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to the episode today. Lord we love you and we love following you. We love our life in Christ and we wouldn’t change it for the world. Help us to continually turn our hearts back to you. Fill us with the Joy that only you can give us Lord. We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. It really is great to know I am not on this journey alone. I look forward to seeing you all on Monday. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed day.
“Fear of the Lord” What does that even mean?
Psalm 2:11 “Serve the Lord with fear; exult with trembling, accept correction lest he become angry and you perish along the way when his anger suddenly blazes up. Blessed are all who take refuge in him!”
When I was at adoration yesterday I asked the Lord which verse He wanted me to talk about today and then opened the Bible. I don’t do this often but this was what I felt led to do yesterday. I opened up to the first page of the Book of Psalms and the ending of the Book just before Psalms which happens to be Job. I read both pages that I opened to and I was unsure what I was supposed to talk about. However, when I read the verse above it seemed to stick out to me. Has that ever happened to you before? Have you ever been looking for an answer when reading the Bible and a verse just jumps our at you? This is the verse that jumped out at me last night.
I am always hesitant to talk about the verses that mention fearing the Lord as I struggle with them. I don’t think the Lord is someone to be feared. I think when we hear verses like this we go back to thinking we are supposed to think of the Lord as a mean old man sitting in heaven on His thrown looking down at us and judging all we do. This is not how I picture God and this is not how I think He wants us to picture Him. When he gives us words of prophecy at our prayer group meetings, this is not the God that He is showing us. He is showing us a loving God, a gentle God, one who cares more about us than we could possibly imagine.
If this is the case, why are there so many verses that teach us to “fear the Lord.” The reason is that “Fear of the Lord” doesn’t mean what we think it means. It does not mean that we are afraid of the Lord or that we are scared of the Lord. “Fear of the Lord” means that we are in awe of the Lord. Fear of the Lord means that we never forget His awesomeness, His greatness. The Lord is amazing and we should always keep that in our minds. When I just looked up online what fear of the Lord means in the Bible I found an article that really unpacks what that phrase means and I think that may be what the Lord is wanting me to share with you today. For God’s people, fearing the Lord is a response of reverent awe, obedience, and trust in the Lord. The article I found is called What is “The Fear of the Lord”? and was written by Mitch Bedzyk. Click Here for the article. I only used a small portion of the article and yet there were so many scripture references about what "fear of the Lord" means. I highly encourage you to read the article. In the article Mitch talks about what this phrase means in the Old and New Testament.
Here is what he says at the beginning. One of the best places to look for a concise unpacking of this concept is found in the book of Deuteronomy: “And now, O Israel, what does the Lord your God ask of you but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to observe the Lord’s commands and decrees” (Deut. 10:12-13). What a great verse to help us understand what “fear of the Lord” means. It does not say we should be afraid of him or hide from him, quite the contrary actually. It says we should love Him, walk in His ways and serve Him with our of our hearts and souls. It also says we should observe the Lord’s decrees.This is an important one. I think sometimes we think that because God is so merciful and so loving that we can kinda do what we want. We come to believe that everybody is going to heaven as long as we are a good person. We forget that although God is merciful He is also just and that believes very strongly in free will. He will not force us to love Him or to follow His rules. This means that we can make our own decisions and yet when we do we also have to live with these decisions.
I think that might be what He is talking about in the second half of the verse above. The part that says, “accept correction lest he become angry and you perish along the way when his anger suddenly blazes up.” God has given us rules to live by and He expects us to live by those rules. If you want to know the two most important ones according to Jesus, they are found in Matthew 22:36-40, “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” So, although there are many laws, they all depend on these two.
Are we truly loving the Lord our God and are we loving our neighbors? These are the things we should be doing. The verse above says to accept correction. This can be a hard thing to do. We may feel like we know what we are doing. We may feel like we are walking in the light and doing a good job. Then someone we know, love and respect mentions something we might be doing that we didn’t really even notice we were doing. If they love us and respect us then they are just trying to help us on our faith journey and we can take what they have said and discern it. Ask the Holy Spirit to put it on your heart to change if that message was from the Lord. Ask the Holy Spirit to give you the strength to change and to show you what you need to change.
If you received criticism from someone you don’t know, love or respect, you might want to just throw that criticism away. The enemy definitely speaks to us through others sometimes and when that happens it might just be to make you feel bad. The enemy is a liar and what he says is not the truth. However, I feel I should tell you to take what they say to the Lord to make sure it is not the truth. Sometimes our loved ones are trying to help us and yet they say it in a way that is hurtful. Sometimes that could be the enemy using them to get to us and sometimes it could be that they just don’t know how to say it correctly. If you get criticism or advice from someone take it to the Lord and ask Him if it is something He wants you to act on or not.
Usually, from what I have learned, if the Holy Spirit is convicting you of something you don’t feel bad about it. You don’t feel shame about it. You might get this sense that you need to change something you are doing but it comes as more of a realization that what you are doing doesn’t align with your love of the Lord. It does not come wrapped up in shame and guilt. It is more a feeling that you want to change, not because you have to or because someone told you to, but more because you love God and you want to do all you can to please Him and honor Him.
This verse ends with “Blessed are all who take refuge in him!” I think this is a great way to end this verse. It is a great reminder that although we are called to fear the Lord, we can and should also take refuge in Him. He is our everything. He is our protector, He is our savior, He is our Father, He is our everything. When we are in trouble, He is where we should turn. He is the one that will save us if we take refuge in Him. We don’t have to do that though. He gives us the choice and if we wish to try and save ourselves, He will let us. If we want to go at it alone, He will let us. This verse is telling us that if we take refuge in Him instead then we will be blessed. I don’t know about you, but I can use all the blessing I can get. I chose to take refuge in the Lord, our God and our Savior.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you and want to fear you in all the right ways. Teach us not to be afraid of you but to walk in all your ways, to love you, to serve the you with all our heart and with all our soul, and to observe your commands and decrees. Lord, open our eyes and help us to see you as you truly are and not in the distorted ways we have come to see you. Help us to not be afraid of you and yet to never lose that awe and that reverence for you. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I know some of you noticed there was not a Witness Wednesday yesterday. Someone even reached out to make sure all was ok. I really appreciate that, it was sweet. We did have something come up in our family late Tues night and I was at the hospital all day on Wednesday with one of my sons. He is ok now, thanks be to God however, we could always use your prayers for our boys as they are teens and being a teenager in this day and age is really difficult. There was not an episode posted yesterday because I was not home to pose it. I have since posted the Witness Wednesday so it is there to listen to. I look forward to meeting you hear again tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed day!
Today I want to witness about how the Lord can sometimes work in our lives. I went to a retreat in January with some of my big life mentoring sisters. There were about 20 of us there. We spent the time doing cool things like running in the ocean first thing in the morning and dressing in 80s gear and doing jazzercise at a local restaurant. I had not met most of these people before. Aside from the cool activities planned we also spent some time talking about what was going on in our lives and where we wanted to be at the end of the year. This wasn’t easy as many of us had never met and sharing the intimate details of our lives was scary. Although once people started sharing their stories the strangest thing happened, we realized even though we were all very different, we were also the same in a lot of ways. It was a great experience.
A month or so after the retreat I was talking to one of my new friends from the retreat. We were talking about our mentoring group and the various retreats our mentor Pamela Crim does and my friend said she could see me doing something like that, mentoring and putting on retreats. The seed was planted. I was trying to figure out where to go with my business.
I had thought about this type of thing before, but hearing someone else say she could see me doing it made it all see a bit more real. I tend to be a slow mover. I get an idea and I talk myself out of it for quite awhile. Do you ever do this? You come up with an idea and then don’t act on it because that inside voice tells you a million reasons why it won’t work?
One day I was at Eucharistic Adoration and I felt like the Holy Spirit told me I needed to plan a retreat for this summer. So of course I obeyed and started planning right away, right? Wrong. I did what I always do when the Holy Spirit directs me to do something. I asked a bunch of questions. Here are some of those questions: “This summer, are you sure? This summer is in just a few months. Who will even come to this retreat?” I felt as if the Holy Spirit said, “You just book a place and time and I will get the people there.” “Ok I said, but what about the theme of the retreat, what do you want us to do there? What will I talk about? Will I be the only speaker?” Again I felt I heard the Holy Spirit say, “Once you book the place I will give you more details.”
I really felt as if the Holy Spirit was wanting me to step out in faith. I started to call retreat centers to see if there was anyone who had availability this close to summer. Most places did not and the ones that did were too expensive. I wasn’t sure who would be attending but I knew I wanted to make it affordable for all. The price was going to be at least $400 at the places I was finding. I was getting frustrated and wanted to give up. I felt the Holy Spirit prompt me to email my prayer group and see if any of the would want to go on a retreat and if $400 was too expensive.
I also asked if they even wanted a sleepover retreat. Maybe I should just do a daytime retreat or a one day retreat. Many said yes to a retreat most said stay over retreat which I felt confirmed what I felt I was getting from the Holy Spirit. A few said they could go if it were $400, however many said it was too much, again confirming my thoughts. I decided to ask a few people if they knew any retreat places. I am not sure how I happened upon the Holy Cross Retreat Center, and yet I am so glad I did!
This retreat center was affordable and the person I talked to was so nice. They have many retreats there each year and yet they are always the same type of retreat. This fall will be the first time they open their doors to outside groups for retreats. They do not have a minimum number of people I have to have. They are completely redoing all the rooms with new paint, new beds and new mattresses. They already redid the bathrooms so by the time we get there it will look like a whole new place.
I was so excited that it was all coming together. I was amazed how the Holy Spirit led me to find the perfect place. Now that it was really happening I had to start thinking about what the theme would be and who to invite and how much it would cost. Oh, that is another way the Holy Spirit was guiding the details. The only weekend that was available except Thanksgiving weekend was October 6-8. However our prayer group is starting a Life in the Spirit Seminar on the 6th of October. However that happens to be a long weekend where many people may have Monday off. So I will be doing the retreat from Saturday until Monday instead of Friday until Sunday. It all worked out perfectly.
I am still figuring out all the details so that I can open registration in the next two weeks or so. I am sure I will have another witness after the retreat about all the amazing ways the Holy Spirit worked throughout the retreat. I know the Holy Spirit will make sure those who need this retreat come to this retreat. My hope is that anyone who needs this retreat can come, even if they can’t afford it. I will have a place on the registration page for people to donate extra money towards scholarships so if someone can’t pay they can still come.
I am excited to watch this all unfold and I’m excited to see what the Lord has planned. I truly feel as though He just wants to pour His love out on His children. I feel He wants to fill the up with His love and also provide some inner healing. I think connection with other people that are also on this faith journey is important as well.
This is one way I have opened up my heart and let the Lord lead me into a new adventure. It has been an amazing journey so far. How is the Lord working in your life?
The Great Commission
Mark 16:15 “And he said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation.”
I wish I knew what just went through your mind when I read that verse to you. This verse is Jesus talking to his disciples and He is sending them into the world to proclaim the gospel to the whole creation. I wonder what went through their mind when He told them to go out to the world and proclaim the gospel. When Jesus told his disciples to go out and proclaim the gospel it was after he had just risen from the dead. He had just been crucified on a cross for saying He was the son of God and now He wanted His disciples to go out and tell the world all about it. I wonder how that made them feel? I am sure they were excited to see Jesus. I am sure they were probably in shock as they saw Him crucified on a cross just days before this. Actually it says in Mark 16:14 that Jesus rebuked them for not believing the others when they said they had seen Him. However, in the very next line Jesus send them out to share the Gospel with the world.
I can imagine this was a crazy time for them. I feel like if I had been there I wouldn’t have wanted to leave Jesus’ side. I would have wanted to hold on to Him and never let go. I would have been afraid of losing Him again. I wonder if they felt this way too? I never really thought too much about the disciples and their feelings until I started watch The Chosen. This show gave life and personality to each one of the disciples. It gave me a face to think of when I hear their names mentioned in the Bible. It made them more personable and more human. It showed us how they might have felt the first time they were send out. There were a bit nervous as they didn’t know what to do or what to say. They had been walking with Jesus and they had watched what He did and heard what He said, but they had never done it themselves before.
This might be you too! You have heard the Bible stories at mass and yet you have never really shared them with others. Maybe you have read the Bible from cover to cover and yet you still don’t think you know enough. Maybe you are just new to the faith and you aren’t sure you know much of anything at all. Wherever you are on the spectrum of not really knowing much at all about the Gospel and knowing it like the back of your hand, Jesus was still talking to you when he gave this command. Each and every one of us is part of the great commission. Each and every one of us has been tasked with spreading the Gospel to the whole world. Well, the Church as a whole has been tasked with spreading the Gospel to the whole world, you could just start with you circle of influence. You can start with those around you.
I heard a cool story the other day when I was listening to a book by Mark Batterson called, “Chase the Lion.” Mark was talking about how he had gotten a word from God that said something about him reaching the nations. He didn’t understand what this meant. His church hand not started going on mission trips yet. He wasn’t someone who spoke all around the world. He had no idea how he was going to reach the nations. He kept this in the back of his mind and went about doing the work that he knew God wanted him to do. One day about 10 years later his friend gave him a call. His friend was traveling for work and was in a book store and saw Mark Batterson’s book on the bookshelf. His friend said, “Wow, I guess you are reaching the nations.” It finally hit Mark. He had no idea when he was given this word over 10 years ago that his books would be translated into many different languages. He was reaching the nations with his books and he didn’t even realize it.
I wonder how many of us are fulfilling this great commission without even realizing it? I wonder how many of you are thinking that you are just being kind and holding that door for a stranger and yet what you are really doing is being the face of Jesus to them. I wonder how many of you just think you are telling your grandchildren a bed time story and yet you are telling them about the hero’s in the Bible. How many of you think you are just calling to check in on a friend and yet you are showing them a kindness they have not seen before.
When Jesus came He did not talk about all the laws, He did not talk about religion. He came and demonstrated love first and foremost. He also did signs and wonders, which definitely helped spread the word faster. However, I believe he won them over first with love. What if we could offer that to all we meet? What if we could greet those around us with love? Not just our neighbor and our loved ones, but those we meet that aren’t easy to love. Jesus loved the sinners. He loved the tax collectors and the prostitutes. He showed love to all He met. What if we could do that? Would we be answering this call? I believe we would be because we would be showing the face of Christ to all those we meet.
Another way to spread the Gospel is to read scripture. You can’t spread the word if you don’t know the word. I don’t think you have to memorize scripture to be able to share it with others, just read it often and be familiar with it. I heard someone say that when we have good news, we can’t wait to share it. This is so true. When you get a new job or a new car, you can’t wait to tell people. When you find out you are having a baby you are so excited you want to tell everyone. The same is true about the good news in the Bible.
Once you become familiar with the stories, once you learn what the stories mean and how amazing God is, you want to tell everyone. It is as if you have information that is so important you want everyone to know it. This is how I feel. I used to dread hearing things like we are all called to share the Gospel. However, now I can’t help myself from talking about God or Jesus. I know when the change happened too. It happened when I started to read scripture more. I did a “Read the Bible in 90 Days” Study with a friend of mine and her husband about 10 years ago. Then in 2021 & 2022 I did the Bible in a year podcast with Father Mike Schmitz. I have also done several Bible Studies and listened to a podcast called “Exploring My Strange Bible,” where the pastor goes through several sections of the Bible and essentially does a Bible Study about each one. Once I really learned what God has done for us throughout the Bible I couldn’t help but want to share it. Once I learned what the Bible says about all the various topics such as love, forgiveness, repentance and so on, I wanted to share it with everyone.
This information was life changing for me and I wanted it to be able to change other’s lives as well. Suddenly when people would be talking about something, it would remind me of a Bible story and I would share it. When people talked about how hard it was to forgive I could tell them the things I learned and it helped them. Sharing the Bible doesn’t have to be daunting. It doesn’t have to be scary. It can be as simple as mentioning a story you heard, or repeating one of the parables you read that applies to the current situation. It could also be as simple as being the face of Jesus to all those you meet. I almost wrote as easy as being the face of Jesus, however, that is not easy.
Jesus showed love and kindness to all He met. He also showed mercy and forgiveness. These are not always things that are easy to do. Sometimes things can be simple and yet not very easy. I know that Jesus wants us to love and pray for our enemies and yet, what if our enemies really hurt us? He wants us to forgive, and yet, what if we can’t? What if what they did was so bad we can’t forgive? What if we feel called to love someone that doesn’t want our love and is very unkind to us? What then? This is why I say being the face of Jesus is a simple way to answer the call to the great commission and yet it is not an easy one. When Jesus sends us out, He is not sending us out alone. He is sending us out with the authority and power of the Holy Spirit. This means all we need to do is rely on that power and that strength and we can do all things, even those that feel impossible. What is one way you can answer this call to, “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation?”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to proclaim the Gospel to the whole creation, please show us how. Please give us the strength and courage to start with our families and friends. Give us a holy boldness to speak up to others when we feel your promptings. Please put on our hearts a deep desire to be in your Word and to learn what scripture says. We love you Lord, you are amazing and we ask all of this in accordance with your will an in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to Walk Boldly With Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Tomorrow I will have another witness for you. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I. Have a blessed day!
The Goodness of the Lord
Psalm 27:13-14 “I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living! Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!”
What came to mind when I read this verse was that we can look upon the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. It seems like we think we need to wait until heaven to look upon the goodness of the Lord. We tend to have the attitude that we just have to make it through this world until we get to celebrate with God in heaven. I am not saying we shouldn’t look forward to heaven, I know I am. However, we can also look upon the goodness of the Lord here in this world too!
I don’t believe we are meant to just muddle our way through this world, suffer tragedy, hang on to life by a thread and then we will have a party in heaven. I don’t believe this is the life God has planned for any of us! I believe He wants us to be happy and enjoying our life. I don’t think he wants us to spend out time anxious and worried about the things of this world, I think He wants us trusting in Him and celebrating every chance we get. A lot of the Psalms start out with David lamenting, I mean, he had some pretty hard times. He was anointed to be the next king and yet he was hunted by the current king and found himself hiding in caves. He had plenty to lament about, and I am sure you do too.
This psalm did not start out lamenting though. It started out strong reminding us to count on the Lord. Psalm 27:1-3 says, “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? When evildoers assail me to eat up my flesh, my adversaries and foes, it is they who stumble and fall. Though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear; though war arise against me, yet I will be confident.” Do you see how this Psalm is different? David is not lamenting about all that he is going through. He is acknowledging that tough times come and yet he is saying when they do, we can rely on the Lord.
David is telling us in this Psalm that we don't have to worry, we don’t have to fear our current circumstances because the Lord is our light and our salvations. He is telling us that the Lord is our stronghold and we don’t have to be afraid of anyone. David said, “Though and army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear, though war arise against me, yet I will be confident.” If you don’t know the story of David you might think he is just a really good writing and that it is easy for him to write these things because he was king or because he was writing about these things in the safety of his home. This is not the case. David was on the run for a long time. It wasn’t just a year or two and it wasn’t just one man pursuing him. Saul’s army was in pursuit of David at various times. David knows what he is talking about when he says, “an army encamp against him” and “war arise against me.”
You may feel like David did. You may feel like you have evildoers assailing you and you may even feel at times like there is an army encamped against you. This life is not always easy. We all encounter hardships and some of them may seem impossible to get through. When this is the case we can look back to scripture and find verses like this one. They can remind us that the Lord is our light and our salvation. We don’t have to fear whatever situation we are in, we just need to turn to the Lord for that light and that salvation.
Looking back at the verse above, “I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living! Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!” I picked this verse because of the first line, to remind us that we can see the Lord in the land of the living. Are we though? Are we trying to see God in our day to day lives? Are we looking out for all the ways that God is in our lives? When you make a prayer request to God, do we write it down and then look for the answer? When He answers do we share that answer with all those who we asked to pray with us? This is one way we can start to see the goodness of God in the land of the living. We can share with each other all that God is doing in our lives.
When I share the stories of those people I have prayed over that have received healing I am not sharing this story to have people look at me and say good things about me. I am well aware of the fact that I did not do anything except say yes when asked to pray. God is the one doing the healing, God is the one moving people’s hearts to want to step out in faith and ask for a healing. I am sharing these stories to help others see the goodness of God here in the land of the living. God is moving mountains today, every day, we just have to be on the lookout for it.
The second half of today’s verse says, “Wait for the Lord, be strong, and let you heart take courage, wait for the Lord!” This part is probably a lot harder than the first part. Waiting is something that is so hard, especially if you don’t have a time frame. If you know you will be sick for three months and then you will get better, it is easier to wait than being sick and not having any end in sight. This is the same for many things. If you know your child is not going to church now but in 15 years they will return to the church, it is easier to wait. We hear often that God’s timing is the perfect timing. However, God’s timing is very rarely our timing and so it doesn’t feel perfect most of the time.
I know a lot of people that are waiting on the Lord’s timing and to be honest, they are really tired of waiting. Some have been sick for a long time and really want to be healed now, not when God is ready. Some have had children that are suffering and they are ready for God to heal them now, not in His timing. Some have been in marriages that aren’t great and they are looking for God to come and in and fix this now. Waiting in the Lord is difficult, I know that, believe me,I do. I waited for God to come in and fix my family for over 10 years. We just kept fighting more and more, things were escalating and I knew I couldn’t take much more of it. I was doing the best I could waiting on the Lord and yet it felt like He was never going to intervene.
What I can see now that I am out of it is that He was there the whole time. He was lifting me up and giving me the strength to get though each day. If He weren’t with me, I wouldn’t have gotten out of bed probably. I definitely wouldn’t have been able to keep going back to the problem with a fresh new attitude. I would have given up hope of any change coming if God had not been there every step of the way. If I did not keep relying on Him.
I like how the verse says, “be strong, let your heart take courage.” This reminds us we have a choice. We can give up, you can give in and yet you don’t have to. You can give your heart permission to be strong and to take courage. You can choose to be strong and not be a victim. You can choose to lean into God and to trust that He will get you through this. You can choose to see the glory and the goodness of God while you are still here in the land of the living. It is all about perspective shift and what you are allowing your thoughts to think. Where is your focus, on God or on your problem? Where is your focus, on all that is going wrong, or the one that makes all things right?
If we keep our eyes on God, if we keep our focus on God, we will be stronger. We will be able to wait for the Lord because He will be strengthening us and lifting us up when we need it. God is there with us each step we take. Even in the really hard moments, He is there holding us. I know it may feel like you are alone, you aren’t, He is there. I know you may be tired of waiting, some of you have been waiting a long time. I want you to know that God is working in your situation. I don’t know why we have to go through all we have to go through. I don’t know why God anointed David to be the next king and then David was running and hiding from the current king for many, many years. Our ways are not God’s ways and our thoughts are not His thoughts. I don’t understand most things that God does and yet I trust them and I trust Him. Turn to God, talk to God, when times are hard, only He can explain why. Just know that He is there with you and when you wait on Him, He will make you stronger.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we are sorry we get so tired of waiting. We are sorry we turn elsewhere for the answers to our problems. We are sorry we don’t rely on you and that we don’t trust in you at times. We know you are our Lord and savior. We know you work all things for our good. We just get impatient at times. Lord, help us to rely on your more. Remind us when we forget that you are right there with us. Help us to feel your presence Lord! We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus! I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Only God Knows What Is Truly In Our Hearts
Proverbs 21:1-3 “The king's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he will. Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the heart. To do righteousness and justice is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice.”
This verse came from my prayer group yesterday. When I read it I was a little unsure what parts of it meant. I liked what it was saying and yet I didn’t understand it fully until I looked it up and until I read it in other translations. The message translation is usually where I go to first as it puts the verses in 21st century language and so it makes it a bit easier to understand at times.
The first line of this verse is a good one. “The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he will.” This is good because it shows us that God is the one that is in control. Our heart is in the hand of the Lord and He can turn it where He wants. To me this means God is gently guiding us in the right direction. On thing I read said that even if we have our heart set on doing something, God can change our minds. He can direct us down a new path. That just made me think of a scene from the TV show Yellowstone. I don’t know if you have seen it or not but in one of the scenes and I won’t say what scene or when because I don’t want to give anything away, but in one scene they wanted to change the direction of a river that was going through their property. You might think this is impossible a river is a river. It has carved out its path over thousands of years. There is not much you can do about it.
However, in the TV show, the family does not really take no for an answer. They have people go up into the mountains and they blow up something and the river now has a new path to follow. Whether this is something that could actually happen or just one of those things that happens on TV, I have no idea. However, this is what I thought of when I heard the first line of this verse and when I read that God can change our minds even when we are set on something. God can do all things. I think we know this on one level and then when we look at our problems, we seem to forget it.
We might be in a relationship with someone and we wish we could change their mind about something. When Tony and I were trying to figure out how to best raise our boys we did not agree on a lot once the boys started to get older and started to struggle with behavior issues. We were both stuck in our way of thinking and we both wished we could get through to the other person. I think this verse can give us hope in these situations. It says that God has our heart in His hand and can change it to His will. We don’t have to change our loved ones, God can do it for us. He doesn’t just change them, He changes us too! God worked wonders in our marriage and with our hearts and He can do the same for you
The next line in the verse says, “Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the heart.” This one is good because is shows us that although we may think we are doing what is right, only God knows what is really in our heart. God knows the motive behind the good deed we are doing. This brings to mind the parable of the Prodigal Son. The older brother in this story thought he was doing the right thing. He didn’t ask his dad for the inheritance and he didn’t take off and spend all of the money. He stayed and he worked in the fields every day. He did all that his father asked of him. However, he then got angry when his father had a party when his brother returned. He was angry because his father never did anything like that for him. The older brother did not stay for the right reasons. He was not helping his father out for the right reasons. He stayed and yet he didn’t have a relationship with the father. He never asked the father if he could have anything and yet resented the father for not offering anything.
I am sure we have all done things like this. I am sure we have all done good things for the wrong reasons. God is not interested in our good deeds if in our heart we are angry, resentful, and hateful. There are plenty of people that play the part. They do all the right things when they are in public and yet when no-one is around they are terrible people. This is what this line is talking about. Only God knows what is truly in our hearts. Only God knows what our motives are and yes, our motives matter. If we are helping the poor and yet our hearts are resenting every minute of it, God knows what we are feeling. God knows our hearts.
The last part of the verse says, “To do righteousness and justice is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice.” I believe what this part of the verse is talking about is that the Lord wants us to do the right thing to those around us more than he wants us to ignore those around us and yet still show up and do the things that make us look like a good person. For instance how the pharisees would act one way in front of people and then another when in the privacy of their own home. God is not interested in people who come to church on Sunday, give a lot of money and then go out act terribly to those around them for the other 6 days of the week.
This verse is telling us that it is more important to God that we treat people a certain way than it is that we try to do the right thing to worship Him or to please Him. He loves us and He loves when we worship Him and yet it is more important to Him that we treat everyone we meet with love and acceptance. He has so many children and so many of them are turning away from Him because of the lack love and acceptance in the world. I just get this overwhelming impression that He is saying it is not about how we pray, what words we are saying, how much we fast or sacrifice, it is about how we treat others.
How are we treating His children? Are we feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, healing the sick, helping the homeless, helping the widows and orphans, giving drink to those who are thirsty, visiting the lonely in nursing homes or in prisons? Jesus is inside each one of us and each person we meet. How are we being the face of Christ to others? That is what is important. That is more important than if we are saying the right prayers and doing the right things as far as sacrifice goes. The two most important commandments according to Jesus Christ himself are Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and soul and Love your neighbor as yourself. Are we doing that? Are we loving our neighbors, our families, those we don’t know? How could we be doing this better?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to have a pure heart, please help us. Please search our hearts and ask the Holy Spirit to convict us of anything that is not right in our hearts. If we have un pure motives, if we have any resentment, hatred or unforgiveness in our hearts Lord help us take care of it. Help us get rid of it. Lord we want to care more about your children, please help us. Put is on our hearts how you are calling each of us to help. You have a special calling for each o
e us and we ask that you help us realize that call Lord. Lord, we realize anything that is in our hearts that is not of you and we ask you to fill that empty space with the Holy Spirit. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk Boldly with Jesus. If you would like to get an autographed copy of my book head over to my website walkboldlywithjesus.com. (Click Here) I look forward to seeing you again on Monday. Have a blessed weekend!
Don’t Just Accept The Bad News
2 Kings 20:5 “Turn back, and say to Hezekiah prince of my people, Thus says the Lord, the God of your ancestor David: I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears; indeed, I will heal you; on the third day you shall go up to the house of the Lord.”
The story of Hezekiah was the story used in the sermon last Sunday on the Elevation Podcast with Steven Furtick. It was a really great sermon called “Challenge The Shadow.” In order to understand this you will need to know the whole story of what is happening to Hezekiah. I chose only verse 5 as the verse for today because I know several people that are really hoping for a miracle. They are hoping themselves or their loved ones get healed and they need to hear the Lord say to them, “I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears; indeed, I will heal you.”
The story of Hezekiah can be found in 2 Kings 20:1-7 "In those days Hezekiah became sick and was at the point of death. The prophet Isaiah son of Amoz came to him, and said to him, “Thus says the Lord: Set your house in order, for you shall die; you shall not recover.” Then Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the Lord: “Remember now, O Lord, I implore you, how I have walked before you in faithfulness with a whole heart, and have done what is good in your sight.” Hezekiah wept bitterly. Before Isaiah had gone out of the middle court, the word of the Lord came to him: “Turn back, and say to Hezekiah prince of my people, Thus says the Lord, the God of your ancestor David: I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears; indeed, I will heal you; on the third day you shall go up to the house of the Lord. I will add fifteen years to your life. I will deliver you and this city out of the hand of the king of Assyria; I will defend this city for my own sake and for my servant David’s sake.” Then Isaiah said, “Bring a lump of figs. Let them take it and apply it to the boil, so that he may recover.”
There are two main things I love about this story. The first one is that Hezekiah got some really bad news. He had a personal relationship with a prophet, someone who has a direct connection with God. Basically he heard straight from God that he was going to die and yet he didn’t just accept it. He asked God to remember him and all he had done and then he wept bitterly. I love this because I think we all accept far more than we have to these days. I think we accept the word of the doctors when they say we can’t get better, there is nothing else they can do. We will never walk again, we will never talk again, we will never do the things we once did. Yet, there have been plenty of people that have fought those odds.
I have heard many people say that we have to accept God’s will and if it is meant to be it will be. I get it and yet, it seems like God’s will was for Hezekiah to not recover from His illness and yet he did. I think this verse shows us it is ok to not just accept what we are told. I think it is ok to ask and to pray for the things you really want. I think it is ok to beg and cry when something is important to you.
I have seen prayers like this answered. My niece was born way too early. The doctor said she is really sorry but my niece was not going to make it. We begged God to let her live. We prayed and prayed even though they said it was too late. I asked if our parents should come to this hospital or the one she would be transferred to and the nurse told me they were certain she would not be transferred because she was not going to live. We still prayed, we still asked God to let her live, and He did. There have been people who had stage four cancer, the doctors said there was nothing they could do and yet they asked God, they were prayed over for healing and the healing came.
There have been people who had a stroke and were told they would never walk again and yet they are walking. Doctors don’t know everything, especially if they don’t know God. God is more powerful than anything. Someone in my Encounter Ministries class prayed over a friend of hers that hadn’t walked in over 10 years and was in a wheel chair. When my classmate prayed over my friend Her calf muscles grew out and she was able to walk again. God can do creative miracles. He can give you a new heart, he can grow a limb that wasn’t there, He can create anything with just one word.
I understand that there is something called redemptive suffering. I understand that your suffering can benefit others. If you are in pain, if you have something that you would like healed and you are asking and God is not healing it, then offering your suffering up for others is a great way to help others. I am not saying that good can’t come out of suffering. I am saying that if you want to be healed, don’t give up the hope that you will be healed. Don’t feel like you have asked enough and if God wanted it to happen it would happen. I don’t know why God heals when He heals. I do believe that what we do matters. I do think He likes it when we ask over and over again. I do believe he loves it when we look at an impossible situation and ask Him to come in and fix it. I think He likes that because when it is impossible for us to fix it then there is no way we can take credit for it. All the Glory is His!
The second thing I love about this verse is that after Hezekiah prayed to the Lord and wept bitterly the Lord changed His mind. The Lord added 15 years to Hezekiah’s life. This shows the love God has for His people. I love that the Lord wanted Isaiah to tell him, “I have heard your prayers and I have seen your tears.” It is the same for you. He has heard your prayers and has seen your tears. He knows you are hurting. I don’t know why you haven’t been healed yet. I definitely don’t understand the Lord’s ways. However, I do know, even when the doctor says it is too late, there is nothing we can do, there is always something God can do. There is never a point when it is too late for God. Lazarus had been dead and in a tomb for days and it was not too late.
I have been telling several people over these last few weeks to have faith in situations that looked hopeless. I have been praying some pretty big, bold prayers. Prayers like, God I know the doctors are saying this man is on hospice and will not get better. We know there is no worldly way for this man to get better and yet there is always a way with you. We know that Jesus said whatever we ask in his name will be granted to us since He is going to be with His Father. Lord we are calling on that promise and asking in Jesus’ name for you to heal this man in this world. There are so many suffering right now and I am praying for so many of them in this way. I think we need to pray these bold prayers. I think God loves it when we ask Him for the impossible and I think there is lots of evidence in the Bible.
We tend to take the word of the doctor’s and accept what they say because they are doctors, and I get that. What they are saying is not a lie, they are saying there is nothing they can do. They are saying there is no earthly solution to the problem. It is ok to accept that and yet that doesn’t mean there is no way. God is a way-maker and a miracle worker. He could heal you or your loved one in an instance. It is ok to keep asking. It is ok to ask even when it seems impossible. It is ok to not accept that you will lose your loved one, you will lose your house, your car, your ability to walk. It is ok to challenge your circumstances. Hezekiah heard straight from God that he was going to die and yet he challenged it.
The Bible is a manual of how we should live. The stories in it are lessons to us to guide us. This lesson shows us we don’t just have to accept our situation, even if we think it is from God. We can question it. God can change his mind, if He did it for Hezekiah, He can do it for you. We don’t know what God is thinking. We don’t know if it was God’s will for my niece to die and then we changed His mind. We don’t know if the doctors were just wrong. We don’t know and we don’t care because she lived. You don’t know if the situation you are in is from God. You don’t know if he just wants you to stay sick and offer your suffering up for others. So, if you don’t know, why not ask for things to change? Why not cry out to Him and ask for what you want.
I think the enemy had planted the idea that we just have to quietly accept our circumstance in our head. He has made accepting them seem like we are doing a holy thing. He has put in our minds that if we ask for more we are ungrateful for what we have. The enemy has got us believing that if we don’t just accept our suffering then we are ungrateful. This is because he knows how powerful God is and how much conversion of hearts can take place when God works in the impossible situations. The ripple effect of a miracle and reach thousands of people. When God does a miracle the people who witness that miracle, or even hear about it later, are never the same again. The enemy knows this is doing all he can to convince us it is selfish to even ask. He tried to convince us that there is no hope. He whispers in our ear, “If God wanted you healed you would be.” The devil is a liar! Don’t listen to that crap. God can heal anyone, even when the world says it is too late.
Don’t give up on Him. I know it is hard to keep asking. Hezekiah only had to cry out once and he was healed. I know many of you have been crying out for years. I know it is hard to keep having the faith. It is so worth it when it does happen though. When you are healed. When your loved one is healed. I understand if acceptance of your circumstance is the only way you can survive in that circumstance. If this is the case, reach out to me. I will continue to pray for you when you can’t. I will have others pray for you when you can’t. We will have hope for you when it hurts to much to have hope for yourself. Let’s do this together!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you and we need to come into our lives and do the impossible. So many listening are either hurting or have loved ones that are hurting. We need your help Lord. We need you to come and heal ourselves and our loved ones. We need you to give us hope again. We need you to show us that we can continue to ask for your intervention even when the world says it is too late. We need you to show us it is ok to keep asking. We need you to heal our hearts and minds Lord. WE NEED YOU! We need you in every area of our lives Lord. Give us the strength, the persistence and the hope we need to keep asking until we see the answers to our prayers. We love you so much and we ask all of this in accordance with our will and in Jesus’ holy will, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I went to check out the retreat house yesterday and it was great. They are completely redoing all the rooms with new paint, new beds, & new mattresses. They just redid the bathrooms. It is going to be a great retreat full of the Holy Spirit and God’s love. I hope you can join me. The dates will be October 7-9th and it is in North Easton, MA. I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed day!
We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click here. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed day!
God Is Holding Your Hand
Acts 18:9-10 “One night, the Lord appeared to Paul in a vision and said, “Do not be afraid. Continue with your preaching, and do not be silent, for I am with you. No one will attack you or try to harm you, for there are many in this city who are my people.”
I always get a bit jealous when I hear verses that say the Lord appeared to so and so in a dream or they were visited by an angel. Then I remember that although I am not getting visited by an angels that I am aware of, although if you listened to he episode on angels last week you know we aren’t always aware when we are visited by an angel. Although I am not aware of any visits from angels or the Lord in my sleep, the Lord does show up and talk to us each and every Thursday during prayer group. He also talks to me during my prayer time, so I really have no reason to be jealous. I don’t know if you ever felt like I did. Have you ever been jealous that some people seem to hear the world of the the Lord and you can’t? If this is the case I want to assure you that He wants to talk to you. God is always talking to His people, we just struggle to listen sometimes.
If you are struggling to hear the Lord. If you wish you could ask Him a question and really hear an answer I want you to know you can. It is possible. If you cannot hear Him it is not because He is mad at you or because He is punishing you. There could be a number of reasons why you can’t hear Him. Maybe you are harboring unforgiveness to others, that can block all kinds of graces. Maybe you don’t believe you can hear Him so you are afraid to sit in the silence and give Him time to talk? Maybe you don’t have any quiet time in your day? Think about how hard it is to hear someone that you are intentionally try to hear when you are in a crowded restaurant or on a subway train. Look through your day. If someone was following you around trying to talk to you all day, would there be any times when you would hear them?
The world we live in is busy and noisy. It is not often that we sit and listen to the Word of God. This can change. If you want to start hearing from God all you have to do is listen. He is already talking to you. I know that this may sound weird to some of you and yet I think it is important to tell you. I often talk with the Lord. I write Him a letter and then I write one back to myself and let the Holy Spirit lead what I write in the one back to myself. I feel the Lord is constantly telling me “Thank you for listening, not many do.” God is not mad, He is not punishing you, He is patiently waiting for you to come to Him and ask Him what He thinks. He is waiting to tell you how much He loves you until you take a minute to listen. Can you give God 5 minutes of your time today to just listen. If you are quiet, if you are asking the Lord to talk and you can’t hear anything then you can command the spirit of deaf ears to leave immediately. You can command your spiritual ears to open. You can ask God again and expect that He will answer as He always does!
I am not sure that had a lot, or anything to do with the verse, and yet when I feel led by the Holy Spirit I just agree and go along for the ride. Back to the verse. It says, “One night, the Lord appeared to Paul in a vision and said, “Do not be afraid. Continue with your preaching, and do not be silent, for I am with you. No one will attack you or try to harm you, for there are many in this city who are my people.” I think this verse is a testament to God’s love for Paul. He knew He was afraid and He came to talk to him and to reassure him. It sounds like Paul wanted to leave the place where he was. Paul was in Corinth and that was not a nice town. It’s nickname is “sin city.” I have heard Father Mike liken it to parts of Las Vegas. Paul was preaching at the synagogue to the Jews & the Greeks but they didn’t really want to hear what he had to say.
When they started to oppose him and hurl insults at him he decided to leave the synagogue and search out the gentiles. In case anyone listening is like me and you are not sure who the gentiles were or what that word means, let me explain. You were considered a gentile if you are not Jewish. It is not a certain race of people, or a certain tribe of people, it was all people that were not Jewish. God came to Paul in his dreams and told him not to be afraid, that He was with him and that he would not be attacked or harmed. God is saying this to us too! He is with each one of us and He is protecting us from all evil. I was typing up the minutes for my prayer group and we had several prophecies that see to confirm this. There were two that I thought were especially good to go with this verse.
The first one says, “I watch over you my children. All of you are my children. I break the sword of the enemy who would come against you. You have nothing to fear for I am there for each and every one of you in each and every trial. I will never forsake my children or leave my children. I will defend you in battle. I have sent you the power of the Spirit and He will give you all that you need to do what you have been called to do.” Isn’t that amazing? God is telling us that He is here for us. He will defend us in battle and any other situation. You may be thinking you are not in a battle, you are not in the military. Each one of us is in a battle whether we know it or not. Each one of us is in a spiritual battle and sometimes the enemy can take it out on our family members. We need to stand firm and hold onto this word from God and all the other words He has give us. God will not let the enemy win. He will protect us. All we need to do is turn to Him.
The second word I thought went along with this verse says, “My children take my hand. Realize that I am with you. Go into the world without fear. I am holding onto your hand. There is no need to fear I am your God. I will protect you, I will defend you. Smile that you are mine. Smile my children. I am with you till the end of times. Come closer my children, come closer that I can reveal my mysteries to you so you in turn can share them with the world. I am your Lord, I am your God and I am all powerful. I hold onto your hand. Move forward, move forward with joy for you are mine.”
I love how gentle God can be. He is talking about protecting us and He is doing it in this last verse as any Father would. Think back to when you were little. When you were walking with your dad you were probably holding his hand. If you weren’t holding it all the time, you at least know it is there if you need it. God is giving us this visual of walking with Him through life and asking us to take His hand and walk side by side with Him, what and amazing visual that is for me. Yes, please Lord, I would love to walk side by side with you! I would love to hold your hand so you can protect me and defend me against this crazy world. I also like how he ended the word with “Move forward with joy for you are mine.” We are His children, isn’t that amazing!! God is so good!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to protect and bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we are so grateful you are protecting us! We are so grateful you are a loving Father who wants to hold our hand and walk through this life with us. Lord, we ask that you help us to be able to hear you when you are talking to us. We are asking that you open our spiritual ears and allow us to have conversations with you. I ask that everyone listening to this episode is able to hear your word just as they do in the prayer group meeting. Lord, we thank you for the words above and we ask that you help them take route in our hearts. If anyone listening to this episode had a difficult relationship with their father, I ask that you let these two messages go deep down in their hearts and take route. You are a good and loving Father to all your children! We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus! I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Can My Faith Really Move Mountains?
Matthew 17:20 “ He said to them, “Because of your little faith. For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.”
This is a hard verse for me. Don’t get me wrong, I love it and I have it on a sticky not on the wall in front of where I work. However, I struggle with it. I am not sure I know exactly what it means and so I always skipped it and didn’t want to use it for today’s episode. That feeling inside to skip it is exactly why I didn’t. I have come to learn that the desire to skip things or avoid the hard things or the ones I don’t understand keeps me from growing. The Lord has so much to teach us and yet if we shy away from it we will miss out. The reason I love this verse and yet shy away from teaching about it is because I am not sure I fully understand it.
When I first decided to use this verse I thought it would be more of an episode where I explain my confusion and questions with it and yet don’t really provide any insight into it. However, I decided if I don’t understand something about it I should research it, look into it. With the age of electronics that we live in right now, you can have an answer to almost any question within minutes. That is what I did. I decided to read a few commentaries to find out what this verse is actually talking about. If you haven’t done that before, I highly suggest it. Type into your internet search bar whatever verse you are wanting more clarity on and then type “meaning of this verse,” or “commentary on this verse.” Once you read the commentary the verse will make so much more sense. What I love about it also is that you get to learn about what was going on at the time it was written, who it was being written to, or what words or customs were different back then and why that makes our interpretation of the verse difficult.
I think my biggest confusion with this verse was where it says, “if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move.” I feel as though I have a faith the size of a mustard seed and yet I don’t feel like I could say that to a mountain and it would move. Today, reading all of the commentary I realize that Jesus didn’t really mean move a mountain. According to the commentaries I read he was using the elements around them to illustrate His meaning. The mountain they were standing next too and a mustard seed they knew well to illustrate how small their faith needed to be to accomplish things that seemed impossible.
This felt reassuring to me as I do know God can do the impossible and I know if He can create the whole world out of nothing, He certainly could move a mountain. I guess I was just getting caught up in the words of it all. I am a perfectionist at times and so I truly felt like I was doing something wrong because as hard as I tried I did not believe if I told the mountain to move that it would move. Which leads me into the the other thing I often think, which is that if the apostles didn’t have the faith of a mustard seed after all that time what hope do I have? Do you ever think things like this? If he was chastising them for having little faith, what is He thinking about me? I bet you have, I think we all have.
This is why I also felt reassured when I read in the commentaries that Jesus was not saying that they didn’t have any faith or that they lost their faith. According to the commentaries I was reading, which I will of course put links to in the show notes, Jesus wanted them to know they didn’t need an abundance of faith, but they did need to believe in Him. Both articles stress that the apostles had faith. Jesus sent them out to do His will and they had all performed signs and wonders. They had just returned from going out and healing people and chasing out demons. They had the faith to do it. However, the commentaries seem to agree that the reason the apostles couldn’t do it in this case is because they were trying to do it with their own power and with their own strength. When they went out to do the work of Jesus, they were operating under His authority and yet when they came back, in this one instance, they forgot to rely on Jesus and were trying to do it with their own power, which of course we have no power, except that which Jesus gives us.
One of the articles says, “Faith is not simply believing in Jesus, rather continually depending on him.” The other article says that it was not that the apostles lost faith, it was more like they got caught up in the heat of the moment. This was reassuring to me because I can do the same thing. I can get so excited to pray over someone that I forget to invite the Lord in to do the healing. I will forget to stop and ask the Lord how He wants me to pray. I don’t think He is disappointed when we do this, I think he appreciates our enthusiasm and yet, we have no power without Him. We can do nothing on our own and yet we can do all things through Christ who stengthens us. If you find yourself rushing in to pray over someone in your own power, stop and ask Jesus to come and help you. Ask for Him to work through you. Ask for the Holy Spirit to give you the words to say. If you find you do this frequently ask God in your prayer time to help you grow in humility. Help you to remember to stop and invite Him in. I struggle with this and so I am learning just as we all are. I know He is the one that does the healing and yet I am so eager for Him to heal people that I forget to stop and ask Him to do it.
I hope this has brought some clarity to you as to what this verse means and how it applies to your life. The last line is such a great one. It says, “and nothing will be impossible for you.” I love this because I take God’s promises very seriously. Some people find them hard to believe, I am not one of those people. Some people probably think I am naive because I am so willing to believe them. I don’t wonder if God can raise people from the dead, I know He can. I don’t wonder if people will be healed I believe they will. I believe it until I they join God in heaven. I am the person at a wake wondering if the body will rise up and how we will explain that to others. I know people think I am crazy and some people do not want me to pray over them, that is just not something they are comfortable with and that is ok. God does not need us to lay hands on people to heal them. I don’t know where my ability to trust in God’s promises came from. I am so thankful I have it though.
My goal in life, my desire, more than anything else, is for every single person to know the love of God. To know that He loves them more than anything. That His love is consuming. His love is unconditional. His love fills all the holes and gaps the world has given us. He loves us when we are at our best and He loves us when we are at our worst. There is nothing we can do to make Him love us more, which is great because it take the pressure off to try to earn His love. There is also nothing we can do to make Him love us less. He never looses an ounce of love, no matter how awful we might be to Him. Who else can you say that about?
My second goal is to help every single person realize the strength and power we have when we rely on the Holy Spirit that is living inside of us. That same Holy Spirit that raised Jesus front the dead. Can you imagine a world where we were all walking around and standing in the authority and power that Jesus gave us. The world would be such an amazing place. You would see so many miracles because that is the power you have through Christ. The power to do the same works He did and even great works. Do you want that? Do you want to be able to be the hands and feet of Jesus? Do you want to be able to be used by God to help heal your loved one? Do you want to do the impossible? Do you want to see all the mountains in your life moved? All you need to do is rely on the Lord. Give the Holy Spirit permission to be in your life, to be in charge of your life. When you do this, your life will never be the same again. When you learn to stand in the authority and power that Jesus gave you, you will never be the same. Your faith really can move the mountains in your life if your faith is in Jesus Christ, the one with all the power.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this podcast today. Lord you are amazing and I ask you to show all those listening just how amazing you are. Lord I ask you to show each one of those listening one small thing you are doing in their lives. Open their spiritual eyes and allow them to see one tiny part of their life through your eyes. Lord there are so many people looking for healing and I know you are in each and every situation. We bring all those situations to you today Lord. I will not list them all as you know who they are and what they need. We thank you for being in them Lord! Lord, I am seeing the answers to so many of the prayers those around me are asking for and I thank you. Lord, I ask that you be with those who are not seeing the answers. Those who have been asking and have not been receiving the answers. I ask that you strengthen them and give them the persistence to keep asking and to praise you in the waiting. We love you Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I want to remind you that the book I wrote, called Total Trust in God’s Save Embrace, is some insight into how I got to have the trust I do in the Lord. If you would like a copy I have a few more left on my website that I am happy to write a personal message to you and then send it out. I am also excited to let you all know I will be hosting a retreat this fall. I am meeting with the retreat center on Wednesday, so will have more details for you soon. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
https://lordsguidance.com/blogs/bible-verse-meaning/matthew-17-20-meaning
https://www.rethinknow.org/faith-as-small-as-a-mustard-seed-matthew-17-20-meaning/
“O Ye Of Little Faith…Is that Me?”
1 John 5:14-15 “And this is the boldness we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have obtained the requests made of him.”
I was reading through an old journal yesterday and I came upon this scripture verse. It was one that I had been thinking about a lot at the time. The journal entry was from June 2, 2020. Here is what I wrote. Good morning Dad, I have been thinking lately about the Bible verse 1 John 5:14-15 “And this is the boldness we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have obtained the requests made of him.” I am hoping you can help me understand this passage. There are many passages like this in the Bible. I have been told you always answer prayers, but sometimes your answer is no. I have also been told sometimes you heal people with the ultimate healing by bringing them to heaven. I guess this one makes a little more sense because it says, “According to your will.” So I guess if it doesn’t happen it was not your will? I think what I am worried about or wondering about is if some of my prayers are not answered because of a lack of faith on my part. It seems you said to your disciples a lot, “Oh ye of little faith.” If this is happening, if my lack of faith is in the way please help me. I love you so much and I feel I trust you and believe in you and all you can do. But you can search my heart, please do so and please fill any empty space with your love and complete trust. I feel a sense of to be still and listen. Please communicate through my pen. The response I received this day was mostly about other stuff, however, I did feel like the Lord said He did not feel I lacked trust.
I felt as though the Holy Spirit was pointing out to me as I wrote my letter the part that says, “if we ask anything according to His will.” I have come back to this question many times over the years. I believe what I read in the Bible. I believe God’s promises. I feel as if I truly know God can do anything. I know He can heal people, I have seen it with my own eyes. I feel as though I know that with every fiber of my body. And so I struggle when I don’t see a healing. Everything I have been learning in Encounter Ministries says that God wants to heal all His children. So, why don’t some get healed? This entry above was just a few weeks after my dog had died of cancer. I am sure that is was on my mind. I know I was asking God why. Why did she have to die, she was so young? Why did she have to die when she was so good for our family? Why couldn’t He save her? Why didn’t He save her? I guess I am writing this episode to reassure all of you today that if you ever feel like you are the only one that questions the Lord, don’t worry, you are not. If you ever feel like you don’t understand some of the things you believe or you struggle to reconcile what is actually happening in your life with some of the promises you read in the Bible, you are not alone.
I remember I started to really believe that anyone could pray for healings after a talk by Mary Healy. I started reading all the books, and stepping out in faith and asking people if I could pray over them. I was confident, not in my ability, in the ability of the Lord to heal all people. I did not see a lot of fruit in my prayers but I kept trying anyway because it wasn’t up to me to do the healing, it is God that heals people. I was just offering myself as His vessel, or His instrument. I remember why my friend Iris got sick I trusted God would heal her. I prayed over her twice at least and I was sure He wanted to heal her. Our whole prayer group was praying over her. She was young and so full of Love and the Holy Spirit. He did not heal her. Well, He did heal her, as there is no sickness in heaven, however, He did not heal her here on earth.
I remember questioning why? I remember wondering if it was my fault, if I just did’t have enough faith. Have you ever wondered that? Have you ever felt like your lack of faith was the reason the miracle didn’t happen. Maybe someone has actually told you that. Maybe you have been waiting for a healing and the person praying over you, or your friends or family might have said if you believed enough it would happen. This is how I felt. I struggled to reconcile the fact that she died with the promise in John 14:12-14 that says, “Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.” Ok, so I believe, and I wanted to do the works Jesus did, the healing, and I asked in Jesus’ name, and yet what I asked for was not given to me. I didn’t understand. This is a promise and God always keeps His promises. I couldn’t reconcile this with the situation. It was the same when my dog dies. I believed, I asked in Jesus’ name, and yet she still died.
While I was talking to the Lord about this, while I was talking to other people about this I got a bit of understanding. What I felt like God told me was that it was not my fault she died. I needed to hear this. I know that God can do all things and that He doesn’t need me to save anyone and yet, we tend to feel guilty, we tend to blame ourselves, or at least I do. God knew I needed to hear Him say it was not my fault. My friends told me that our prayers were answered, because she was now in heaven and that there is no sickness in Heaven, so He did heal her. When I was asking God about my lack of faith I felt Him tell me that faith is a gift from the Spirit. The kind of faith it takes to save someones life is not something you can will, it is not something you can earn, it is a gift from the Spirit.
There is another verse that was also helpful in understanding the verse above. Proverbs 3:5-6 says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.” What I felt the Lord was saying to me when I read this verse was, “Trust Me, trust My plan. Do not rely on your own understanding for your ways are not my ways and your thoughts are not my thoughts.” God has a plan for each of us. God knows what He is doing. I don’t understand everything and I don’t think we are supposed to. I do feel like I understand more than I used to and this is because I keep searching for understanding and I keep taking my questions to God. Did you know you can do that? Did you know you can ask God questions and that He will answer you? Learning that was a game changer for me. Finding out that God wanted to talk to me and learning how to listen to Him has changed my life and my relationship with Him. I feel so much closer to Him now.
If you are struggling to understand God’s ways, or why it seems like some of your questions or prayers haven’t been answered I encourage you to ask the Lord. If you feel like you don’t get an answer, read scripture. Just ask the Lord to answer you through scripture and then turn to any page and see what it says, search the page expecting the answer to be there and you will find it. I think that is the key to prayer and also to this verse. God wants us to pray expectantly. He wants us to pray and to be confident our prayers will be answered. I know this is hard. I have been praying for a holy boldness and radical trust for at least 10 years now. I am seeing the fruit of those prayers. I am becoming more and more confident that God does answer prayers. I am becoming bolder with the prayers I am saying and trust that those things will come true.
I suggested to a friend of mine the other day that she pray expectantly for her mom. You see, her mom is in the hospital and she really needed her blood pressure to stabilize. I told my friend to look at the blood pressure machine and pray for it to stabilize. Look at the machine while praying and expect to see it stabilize. Not as if you are hoping it will, more as if you know it will because you are confident God answers prayers. Guess what? It stabilized and has remained stabile. The Lord is working. We can trust this verse. We can be confident that when we ask He answers, when we knock He opens the door, and when we seek, we find. We won’t always understand everything that happens. We only see a very small part of a very large picture. Our job is just to keep trusting the Lord that He is working all things for our good and then when we get confused or hurt by seemingly unanswered prayers, instead of turning away from Him, turn into Him and ask Him to help you understand.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today! Lord, we want to believe, we want to trust please help us. Lord, please help us all to develop a deep trust in you. Give us the gift of faith Lord. Give us a holy boldness and a radical trust in you. Teach us to trust you and your ways. Help us to turn to you when we feel lost of confused. Give us wisdom to understand how you are answering our prayers Lord. You know what those that are listening need Lord and I ask that you fill them with whatever it is they need on this Friday. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk Boldly with Jesus. I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. Just a reminder if you want my book I have a few copies left on my website. (Click Here) Also, you can sign up for my newsletter on my website as well. (Click Here) Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed day!
God’s Foolishness Is Wiser Than Human Wisdom
1 Corinthians 1:25 “For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.”
When I read this verse this morning I thought it was very interesting and so very true. It is something I don’t thing we often think about. It is one of those things that when you hear it, you know it is true, but it might never have occurred to you. I think it is pretty obvious that God is wiser than we are and we know he is stronger than us. It would not be hard to find evidence to support this and yet I still don’t know if I would have thought of it like this before. His foolishness is wiser than human wisdom and his weakness is stronger than human strength. When I find a verse to use, I try to look at the verses around it to get the context and too see what else God wants to tell us. The verses right after this one are pretty good too.
1 Corinthians 1:26-31 says, “Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God. He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, in order that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” One of my favorite verses/sayings is that God’s ways are higher than our ways and His thoughts greater than our thoughts. God does not think like we do and He does not do the things that we would do.
If we really need a prayer answered, or a healing to occur, who do we tend to ask first? I tend to ask my dad first, as I know he prays a lot and I feel his prayers are answered quickly. I also tend to ask the ladies in my prayer group because again, I feel their prayers are heard. Many would go to a priest first. We tend to go to the people that we think are “holier” than we are. When someone needs a healing, they tend to want a priest to pray over them as they are very “holy.” We want the best of the best as we know the stakes are high for some of our prayers. What I felt the holy Spirit tell me when I began this verse is that is not how the Lord thinks. Jesus did not come to earth and ask all the teachers, or the priests at the time to be his apostles. He was not looking for the best and the brightest. He came and called many who were considered foolish, outcasts, or weak to the rest of the world.
Some of us may feel we have a calling and then we start to think about all the ways we aren’t good enough to answer that call. We aren’t smart enough, we aren’t strong enough, we aren’t old enough, we aren’t young enough, we aren’t holy enough and so on. We list all the reasons why we can’t do the thing that God is calling us to do. Did you hear that last part, the thing God is calling you too. Why do we question our call when God is the one doing the calling? Don’t we know He is smarter than we are? If he says we are good enough, then we are good enough. If He says we aren’t too young, too old, to foolish, to sinful, then we aren’t. It’s crazy how if you asked us if God was wiser than we were we would say yes without any hesitation. Yet, when we question our worthiness of the call He has given us we are saying the exact opposite. We are saying that He must be wrong and that we know better than He does.
When we start to question our calling and when we start to think of all the ways we are not enough, we should stop and think about all those that came before us. Were they the smartest people around? Were they the most holiest people around? Were they the ones you would have chosen? St. Catherine of Sienna is a doctor of the church and yet when she was a child she had great difficulty learning to read and did not learn to write until she was an adult. There were plenty of religious leaders at the time that Jesus came and yet He did not call the religious leaders to be his disciples, he called every day normal people like you and me. He also called people like Matthew, who was a tax collector. That is not someone any of the other apostles would have chosen. God knows what He is doing. He has placed a call on each and every one of us and it is a call He chose specifically for us. It is perfectly suited for our strengths and weaknesses. He knows us better than we know ourselves. Trust in Him and his ability to know you and what you can and can’t do.
Right at the beginning of writing this episode I felt like the Holy Spirit was telling me that this is a two way street. He wants us to believe in our calling and also to believe in other’s calling as well. The same things I just said about your calling apply to others as well. Trust in the Lord’s ability to call others as well. Sometimes we may see a priest at the pulpit and we might thing they don’t seem the most qualified to be giving a sermon, or we see someone on the street talking about God and we might think they are not qualified to be talking about God. We might see our loved one volunteering at a soup kitchen and think they aren’t qualified, or a friend who wants to be in a healing ministry and yet you know they aren’t qualified. My question to you is, “who are we to judge their qualifications?” God gave them the calling, not us. Why do we think we know better than He does?
I felt like the Holy Spirit was telling us not to dismiss the answer to our prayers because it didn’t come in the package we thought it would. For instance, a young kid makes a profound comment and yet you blow it off because he is too young to know what he is talking about. A person in the line at the grocery store asks to pray for you and you say no because how powerful could her prayers be anyway. Someone offers to pray over you for healing and they are not a priest so you say no. God did not come to use the best of the best. Yes, those he used did become the best of the best, but that was only after they agreed to be used by God for whatever He called them too. The power of prayer, the wisdom, the strength that we have, that all comes from God. This is what the verse is trying to tell us when it says, “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God.” God chose the ones that He chose because that way all would know that it was Him and not the person.
If someone that is not well educated, has not gone to fancy schools, has not studied theology and yet they can speak eloquently, wisely and authoritatively about the church and its teachings, that person can not boast in their own abilities as those abilities are through the power of God. If you want a greater example of this go back into the Old Testament and read Judges 7 about Gideon and His army. Gideon was severely outnumbered with his army of 30,000. However, God had Him send almost everyone home and just had him keep 300 men. He wanted to make sure the Isrealites knew it was God who was winning the war. If we rely on our own strength, wisdom and power, we would claim all the glory, that is our fallen, broken, nature. However, if we have no power, no strength and no ability, then we know it was all God who accomplished the impossible thing. All the glory goes right to God where it rightfully belongs!
The next time you need help, remember to turn to God first. Also remember that He can send help through anyone. Don’t judge the person or the way God decides to help you. Remember that God can use anyone at anytime for anything. They don’t have to already know how to do the thing, they don’t have to be full of natural wisdom or talent. One of my favorite sayings I ever heard is, “God doesn’t call the equipped, He equips the called.” If you say yes then God will give you all you need to succeed. The same is true for every person that He calls. When He calls you don’t worry if you are enough, He will give you all you need to be enough.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we know you are wiser than we are and stronger than we are. Help us not to forget it! Help us to lean into you and to trust that when you call us to something we don’t have to be afraid to say yes because you will be right there with us giving us all we need to succeed. Lord, help us to look at others in the same way. Help us to not judge others or to question their call. We love you Lord, you are amazing. I am seeing so many answered prayers around me and I am so grateful!! We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you would like to purchase an autographed copy of my book there are still some available on my website. I want to thank you all for your support and ask if you wouldn’t mind sharing my podcast or my book with just one person over the next week. It would really help me out. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today I have two witnesses for you. Both of these witnesses were sent to me via email & FaceBook and so I am going to read them to you. The first one is from my aunt. My dad only has one brother and he lives in CA. We haven’t seen him in a very long time and while he was living in CA he got married. I have never met his wife. One day I got a notification that I had a new subscriber on my YouTube channel and I could see by the last name, it was his wife. I found her on facebook and reached out to her. I had heard she was very sick and wanted to offer to pray over the phone for her healing. She accepted and then sent me this testimony.
Hi Catherine I thought I would send this to you because I'm just so excited that your prayers over me to our Lord resulted in my healing.
Here's my story. My name is Joanne I'm 70 years old and I've had diabetes since 1998 and peripheral neuropathy since 2010. I've asked myself many times over the past years how long do I have to wait for a healing? This neuropathy has been steadily getting worse over the last years and I had to quit my job in November of 2022 because the pain was so severe I could not walk. I had basically become bedridden. People have prayed over me many, many times for healing and it never arrived. So that's why I asked how long do you wait for a healing?
My husband and I have our quiet time with the Lord every morning Jean, my husband has a brother, Pierre, who informed him that is niece Catherine has a podcast called Walk Boldly with Jesus. We started listening and we signed up with her podcast. She contacted us and asked if she could pray over me for healing. Of course, I said yes because I never give up a chance for healing. On June 10th she called and ask me what my pain level was using a scale of 1 to 10. That day my pain level was an 11. She prayed over me for a long time and after she was finished praying there was very little change in my pain, however I was more at peace. Catherine called the next day and I told her that my pain level was at about a 7 and she prayed over me again. Each day for 3 days the pain level went down a little more. On June 13th I got out of bed and I did not realize that I didn't have any pain until I made it to the kitchen. The Miracle that I had been longing for was finally mine. I had no pain for the first time in so many years. My husband and I were praising God left and right up and down. Jean kept asking me "are you sure you have no pain", "are you sure you have no pain?"
We of course let Catherine know and thanked her for that prayer to our lord for my healing. I am so thankful.
So I say for those of you that have been prayed over for healing and nothing changes immediately, don't think that God doesn't love you or that he is punishing you. Remain persistent in your prayers and have people pray over you again and again and even by phone.
I believe that being persistent in your prayers and never giving up hope, God will answer and your healing will occur.
Thank you Father, Son and the Holy Spirit.
The second witness is from someone you heard from before. Jasmin has come on and given a witness before. If you would like to listen to her witness you can go back to episode #256. She has recently been looking for a new job as her current one has not been good for her physical or mental health. She found a job that she wanted to take but it did not have health insurance and she has medical issues and can not be without insurance. She was getting discouraged and so I sent her a message on FaceBook and the following witness is the amazing reply I received.
Hi Catherine! I thought I had send on my original message but I didn't. So much has happened and things went so far to the left but thank the Lord and by the grace of God it all worked out in the end and I have a new 5th grade position. I have such a big testimony to share about what happened and how I got here but I'm still wrapping my head around it and processing it all. Thank you so much for thinking of me
So here it is the best way I can get it out. So I have been searching for a job and there is a job fair that I almost didn't go to but of the last minute I decided to go to it and from that job fair I had several schools interested. One school in particular was very persistent and told me that she really wanted to hire me and she asked for the go-ahead to check my references. Now my principal was already aware that I had been looking for jobs and I felt it was safe to tell her yeah she can check my references. The night before I had prayed and I asked God to please show me what I need to do. Do I stay where I am, do I go to this new position, what to do? I also asked for confirmation to be so supernatural that there is no way that I could deny that it came anywhere but from Him. A little while later I get a call from a colleague who is on the administrative team. She said that my principal's furious, that she had said all kind of horrible things about me, about my disability, and about me having to go and get infusions. She felt like I betrayed her by trying to go this other school and that the other districts would use my disability against me as a reason to fire me. I was just in a state of bewilderment. I was like, “God why did you let me apply for this job and tell this lady okay to give my references if you knew that how this is how this was going to all turn out? As the day went on it got worse and worse and worse and more things were said and by this point I'm just frantic. I text my principal and I ask her to call me. She said that she would call me but she continued to instead call this colleague and continue to say bad things about me. In the midst of all this my son told me that he saw a snake in the backyard. I told him to grab the machete and kill it because we're used to killing small ones and he came running back and said no Mom is a big one. So I go to see what he's talking about and I'm like I don't see anything, what are you talking about? He keeps saying mama it’s right there, you don't see it? Mama it’s right there you don't see it? And I'm like, “No, I don't see it what are you talking about?” So he told me it was underneath something and he kept hitting the thing that it was underneath. I'm like well if it was something under they would come out and it didn't. So about this time I instructed him to get a stick and flip it over and lo and behold there was a pretty big snake curled up under there. So I grabbed the machete and I go to kill it and I strike and I miss. It never ran. It lifted his head up looked at me and continued to flick his tongue and shake his head side to side as if it were taunting me or trying to hypnotize me. I got up and strike it again and cut off its tail. It still never ran, never moved, struck again, cut off another part, still never ran, never moved, kept looking at me with that same taunting hypnotized look. Struck again finally cut off his head. Now the crazy thing about this is that this neck never bled and it never ran. I left it there because I had nothing to pick it up with and hours later I came back not one drop of blood was spilled and the animals and the birds wouldn't even peck at it and try to take it away The ants did not even want it.
So as I'm sitting there all distraught about my job. I talk to my principal, I told her that it wasn't about her it was about me. I really want to do something different and then she goes ahead and tells me that she was hurt because she felt like I was trying to go to the same place as where we were and I told her you know I want to do something different and she basically told me that my disability and the fact that she had to make accommodations for me for my disability is the reason why I was not getting the positions that I applied for and that I would not get any other position until I no longer needed accommodations for my disability. Now at this point I am upset, I'm sad, and I'm hurt because I didn't ask to be in this predicament and I'm like what is all that is going on in this day is crazy and then I have the snake at my back door and then I'm like what does this mean and then it hit me. God spoke to me. He told me that snake has been there for ain't no telling how long, curled up under that thing that's been sitting there for over a year. It’s probably just been there growing, doing whatever and you were oblivious to the fact that it was there and once you flipped that cover back and you saw it, it was revealed to you. He said I had to reveal this truth to you in order to make you move. Because you would not have moved had I not shown you the truth. And that's so true because I had resigned myself to stay there. I had resigned myself to stay where it was comfortable, to keep confusion down, to keep everybody happy and to just remain in my comfort zone. God told me, now that you see the truth when I open that door you know what you need to know to walk through it. A couple hours later that next day my new principal called me and said that she would still having trouble verifying my references to hold on that she really wanted to hire me and she asked to see my evaluations from the last few years. I sent her everything that she asked for 10 minutes later she called me and offered me the job.
I'm still wrapping my head around everything that God loves me so much that he sent an undeniable sign and message to me to give me the courage to step out in faith and walk into a situation that he has prepared for me. Even though it hurt me to see all of those things I learned that people who I thought I could trust and who were close to me are really snakes lying and waiting and growing right next to my back door and I was oblivious to it until God threw off the cover and allowed me to see. I don't know who this testimony can help by sharing I don't even know how to articulate it in a way that it all makes sense and this might sound crazy and jumbled up to you but I had to get it out and tell someone because never in a million years what I have thought that I would experience something like that. The fact that it didn't even bleed and that the ants and no other animals would touch it, is what really took me aback and blew me away. Like I said I'm still trying to wrap my head around what everything means but I just had to tell you.
Thank you both for sharing your testimonies with me. I love to hear how God is working in your lives. God is so good. Sometimes we can’t even fathom the good He has in store for us. I am so very grateful for the healing He did for my aunt Joanne. She can finally walk without pain and it is amazing!! I am also grateful, not only for the job he provided for my friend Jasmin but also for the way he allowed her to understand what was going on and to be sure the new job was the job for her. It can be hard to leave a current job and he provided her the assurance she needed to know she was doing the right thing. Thank you Lord, you are awesome!
Have You Ever Met An Angel?
Hebrews 13:1-2 “Let mutual love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.”
When I heard this verse this morning on the Big Life podcast is reminded me of a story that a friend of mine told me. One of my friends came on the show to do a witness Wednesday and she was telling me about how she was visited by two angels one day. She did not know they were angels while she was talking to them and she almost didn’t let them in because although they were dressed nicely she was a single mom living alone and you can never be too careful. Something told her to let them in and they sat and talked about Jesus for awhile and then they got up to leave. As they were leaving one of them said thank you for inviting us in and being so hospitable. I think one of them even said, you never know when you could be entertaining an angel. She thought that was a weird thing to say so she closed the door behind them and watched for them to walk away and they didn’t they just vanished. They were there when she closed the door, but then there weren’t there when she looked out the window. There was no where else for them to go.
Another friend told a few angel stories on her Witness Wednesday episode. She was a school bus driver and one time she was driving a field trip full of kids to Boston. She was the second of five buses. Somehow the lead bus took a wrong turn and they ended up on a narrow street and they were doing construction. The first bus drove up to the edge of a ditch and almost went over. She said a prayer that God would help them get out of this safely. She looked out her front window and there was a man in a hard hat directing her on exactly how to get her bus turned around safely. They all got out safely. When she got back to the place they were going she was talking to the other drivers about how amazing the guy in the hard hat was. They said they didn’t see any guy in the hard hat. They saw how she got her bus out and so they did what she did.
Another time she was driving her bus in a snow storm. It was snowing so badly she could hardly see and then her windshield wiper stoped working. She pulled over to the side of the road and just prayed for God to intercede as this was before they had radios or cell phones. Soon after her prayer another bus pulled up behind her. A man got out of that bus climbed on top of her bus and switched the window blades out. They he went back to his bus. When she looked in her rear view mirror the guy and the bus was gone. It just vanished. She assumed it just pulled out ahead of her. When she got back to the bus garage she asked who was driving the bus that pulled in just before her. They said no-one. She was the only bus. God is so good.
These are examples of real angels. Supernatural beings that have been sent here for a mission. There is another kind of angel too and that is you and I. We can be someone’s angel and not even know about it. My mother in law and father in law still talk about how my sister Suzy was their angel one night. Tony & I and his brother and his wife went out to the movies. Leaving our babies with Joanie & Bill to watch. They were both under one, or very close to one. One of them was crying a lot and one of them needed to be changed and yet Joanie couldn’t change the one and console the other at the same time. It felt like chaos and she was not sure what to do and all of the sudden the doorbell rings and it is my sister Suzy. Suzy already had 4 boys of her own at this point and was also number 6 of 11 children in my family. She was well versed at chaos and came right in and changed one baby while calming the other down and she did it all with a smile on her face. She told them it was no problem and she would come over anytime they needed her to. It was something so simple to Suzy, she may not even remember that night and yet it meant the world to Tony’s parents. She was their angel.
When you look back over your life, can you see where God might have put some angel’s in your path? I think if I were to ask my husband he would say that the person that hired him into his job in England was an angel. He was competing for this job against people who had many more years of experience than he did. Yet, when she talked with Tony, she decided he was the right person for that job. She welcomed him into the Mission Support Group with open arms and her and her husband made our family feel so welcome. She was moving just a few months after we got there and so he didn’t get to work for her for very long and yet she made a lasting impression. He will forever be grateful to her giving him a chance right when he needed it the most. That job was probably his favorite job our of all the jobs he had in the military.
Who was there for you when you really needed them? Did you ever have a time when someone said the right thing or did the right thing, just when you needed it most. Did you ever wonder how they knew just what you needed? Did you chalk it up to a coincidence? It is more likely that God sent them because He knows everything we need. I remember one day my neighbor in England said I looked like I needed a hug. I still to this day, over 8 years later, can remember the feel of that hug. I had no idea that was exactly what I needed at that moment, but God did. I just needed to know someone cared and that hug let me know she cared. It let me know I wasn’t alone. It let me know God saw me and that He knew what I needed.
What if you could be that for someone? What if you have been that for someone? What if you said the thing that you wanted to say but didn’t know if you should? What if you did that thing that God put on your heart but you are too afraid to do? I shy away from saying nice things to people. I don’t know why. I guess I worry the reject the compliment or something and I will be embarrassed. That is the enemy telling me lies so that I don’t spread God’s love and joy around. I am getting more and more bold the more I pray for a holy boldness. I want to be able to say all the kind things that come into my head. There are so many who say every unkind thing that comes into their head. What if we were the opposite? What if we said all the kind things? What if, when we get a negative thought, we automatically think of something nice to say instead. What if we all tried to build each other up, even those we don’t agree with, instead of trying to tear them down.
My husband and kids jokingly make fun of me because I am always asking them if that is “build me up” language when they talk to each other. They make fun, and yet think about how different the world would be if we all only used “build me up” language. What if we all got into the mindset that we were only going to spread God’s love. We were only going to say the kind things. Our criticism, our judgement will not change hearts. I know many of us think we have to tell our loved ones when they are making bad choices and yet I don’t know if that is true. Love changes hearts, nagging does not. Jesus changes hearts, not us. We can love our loved ones, we can build up our loved ones, even when they are making bad choices. It doesn’t mean we are supporting those bad choices, it means we are supporting them. Once people feel loved and accepted for who they are they are more open to hearing what you have to say. If we feel judged by someone we don’t listen to what they have to say. Lead with love is what I feel God is telling me over and over again. So, I am going to keep telling you too!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, please let each one of us experience the presence of an angel at one time for another. Lord, let each one of us be that experience for someone else at one point or another. Lord, give us the courage to say yes when you call us into that role. Help us say yes, even if we don’t know why we are doing it. Help us make someone else’s prayers come true. Help us to be there for someone when they need us. Help us to do as the verse above says and let mutual love continue and let us show kindness to strangers just as we would our loved ones. Lord, show us how to be your face to all we meet. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I want to wish you all a very happy fourth of July! I look forward to bringing you a witness tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Do Not Despise Small Beginnings
Zachariah 4:10 “Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin, to see the plumb line in Zerubbabel’s hand.”
I heard this verse in a sermon I was listening to on the Elevation Podcast. The sermon was given by Jabin Chavez. This verse was a small part of his sermon and yet when he said it something inside me said that someone listening to this episode needs this verse right now. Someone needed to hear that is it ok that things aren’t going as fast as you wanted or happening as big as you wanted. Someone needed to hear that we don’t have to be discouraged with our small beginnings. I know this verse is for me, and yet I felt as though I was not the only one who needed to hear it. This verse is telling us not to despise small beginnings as this is often how our prayers are answered. Are you looking around and thinking this does not look like you thought it would? You thought you would be further along at this point in your life. You thought you business would be more successful. You thought you would be married, or you thought you would have kids. You thought it would look different.
The “it” is different for each one of us and yet many of us share this common disappointment. Why is this? Why do we wish we were further along instead of enjoying the ride to get to where we are going? I think we want to be further along because that is what the world seems to care about and we often get caught up in the world instead of what God wants. The world tells us that we are defined by what we have. We strive to have the biggest car, the biggest house, the best job, the most stuff. We think this makes us worthy because that is what society tells us. This is not what God tells us. God tells us in Matthew 19:30 “But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.” God does not look at our lives the way society does. He is not looking to see who has the most stuff, the biggest house, or the best job. God is looking to see, “Did you help out those in need?” “Did you love your neighbor as yourself?” “Did you follow His ways and put Him first?” These are the things God is judging.
Even when we know this, even when we know the things God is calling us to, we can still feel discouraged because, “we haven’t helped enough people yet,” or “we haven’t loved well enough yet.” Whether it is in our regular life, or our spiritual life, we can often tend to be discouraged with our progress. How many of us have said, "I should be praying more,” “I should trust more,” or “I should rely on God more?” We all have times when we aren’t happy with our progress and this verse is the perfect verse to remember when we start to have these thoughts.
Many of us can get the idea in our heads that God is up there, sitting on His thrown, looking down on us and judging us because He is not pleased with our progress. We picture Him just shaking His head and saying, “Really, again?” or “I can’t believe they haven’t learned that yet.” I think this verse is telling us that we are wrong. God isn’t up there judging our progress and being disappointed. He is up there watching and smiling at every small step in the right direction that we take. He is reassuring us not to worry if are beginnings are small because at least we are beginning.
Pastor Chavez was saying that often times the answers to our prayers come in seed form. We want God to just give us the answer with all the details all worked our perfectly and yet that is not often how it works. It does happen like that sometimes and we Praise God every time it does. Often we will pray about something and God will give us an idea and then we need to take that idea and cultivate it. This takes time. It takes time and lots of listening to God to figure our what He is calling us to do with our lives. However, even when we know what our calling is, it is often revealed in stages. I am not sure anyone gets handed a roadmap for their whole life’s mission all at one time. We often feel called to one thing, which then leads to another thing, which leads to another thing and so on. I am sure this is intentional because we get the skills to do the next level of things while we are learning to do the first level. I can imagine it is also intentional because if we knew where our 40 years of hard work was going to lead us, we might not say yes to that first step.
If I knew that saying yes to attending a retreat when I was in college would lead me to having a personal encounter with the Holy Spirit, which would lead me to help start a whole revivial of the Charismatic Renewal in the Catholic Church, would I still go to that retreat, or would I be overwhelmed with that much responsibility. Honestly I don’t know. I am grateful for those who attended the retreat that is now known as the Duquesne Weekend and has marked the beginning of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal. I am sure their lives changed immensely on that weekend and they helped lead the Charismatic Renewal one step at a time. I can imagine they wanted it to spread quicker because once you know the power of the Holy Spirit you want everyone else to have that experience too. However, they went at the pace God took them and I am sure God was happy with their small beginnings. I will actually put a link for a description of the Duquesne Weekend in the show notes as it was an incredible experience for all involved and is really interesting to read about. (Click Here for article)
You might be looking at your life and thinking you are not where you wanted to be or where you thought you would be and yet God is looking at your life and saying, “You are right where I want you to be.” Most of the time we have no idea of the amazing things God has planned for our lives. It’s when we do have some idea that we get impatient and we want those amazing things now. God’s timing is perfect. If we want something now and God has not given it to us yet, there is a reason. Most likely, we are not ready for it yet. God knows our hearts. He knows what we will do with what we are given. God’s ways are not our ways and His thoughts are not our thoughts. We do not understand a lot of the things God does. We often can’t understand His timing. This is because we are looking at a very tiny piece of the puzzle and God gets to see the whole picture.
I think what God is telling us with this verse is “Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin.” He doesn’t want us to despise the small beginnings because He gave us those small beginnings. Also, we shouldn’t judge our ending on the small beginnings because we don’t know what these small beginnings will grow into. One saying the pastor said in his sermon that I really liked was that you can cut open an apple and count the number of seeds in it. However, you have no idea how many apples are in one seed. Only God can make your endeavors fruitful. We won’t know how much fruit will come from each seed, each idea you have, until it is fully grown. Keep nurturing your ideas, keep working at them, don’t get discouraged if you aren’t where you thought you would be, God will get you there in His perfect timing.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listen to this episode today. Lord, help us to be content, happy, even joyous over our small beginnings knowing your timing is perfect. Help us to be patient as we wait for the amazing things you have called us to come to fruition. Help us to see clearly what you are calling us to and how we get there. We love you Lord, we want what you want. We want our wills to be aligned with your will, please help us. We are so grateful for all the desire you placed in our hearts. Please help us to cultivate those desires and to be patient while we wait for your perfect timing. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus! I am so glad to be back with all of you this week. I enjoyed spending time with my family last week. We stayed up until 2-3 in the morning playing games and laughing with each other. It was great. We also had dinners as a family. It was so nice to all be together. We missed the two siblings that couldn’t come. Hopefully we will all get together sometime soon. I just want to remind you that you can pick up an autographed copy of my book on my website. You can also sign up for my newsletter there. walkbodlywithjesus.com I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day.
Be Still & Listen
Exodus 19:3-6 "As Moses went up to meet God, God called down to him from the mountain: “Speak to the House of Jacob, tell the People of Israel: ‘You have seen what I did to Egypt and how I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to me. If you will listen obediently to what I say and keep my covenant, out of all peoples you’ll be my special treasure. The whole Earth is mine to choose from, but you’re special: a kingdom of priests, a holy nation.”
One of my friends sent this verse in a Facebook messenger chat. Her mother just had heart surgery and she is in the hospital with her waiting for her to recover. Her mom’s levels were all elevated and she needed to go onto a breathing machine. I am sure my friend was worried for her mom and I am sure the mom was worried too. I met this woman in my mentoring group. We went on retreat together. Everyone in our mentoring group picks a word and mantra for the year. This is just a way to help keep us focused on where we want the year to go and help us remember what is important to us throughout the year when things get busy. Life can happen so quickly sometimes that we don’t live it intentionally we just get swept up in it and almost go on autopilot. There can be so many people or things calling our time and it can get hard to prioritize if you don’t have a focus and/or you don’t priorities.
This is why we pick a word and mantra and try to say it every day. I was going to say that we do say it everyday, but I am sure we forget sometimes, or at least I know I do, especially on the weekends. However, even if I don’t say it everyday, I know I have one, I have it memorized and so when I have to make a decision about something I can think about that word and mantra in my head and then the decision is easy because usually only one aligns with my focus for the year.
My friend chose the words “Be Still” this year. It’s funny how when we pick a word, God helps us grow into that word over the year. It’s the same with you, even if you didn’t pick a word. If you have a desire in your heart, or if you have prayed for help to grow in a certain area, God will help you. When we pick a word it not only reminds us of how we want to grow over the year, but it is also the filter with which we look at the year. Let me explain what I mean. If my friend’s word is Be Still, then her focus is on being still and how she can learn to grow in that. So, when she is reading her Bible in the hospital next to her mom and she gets the Bible verse above, she then looks at this experience in the hospital as a reminder to be still.
God is amazing! If we are looking, if our eyes and ears are open, he will give us little signs, and sometimes big signs that He is right there with us in all of our situations or circumstances. This bible verse in the hospital was a little reminder from God to my friend to just Be Still and that He was taking of it all for her. If you are aware that God does this, if you are on the lookout for this, you will see that He is doing the same for you. God is not just doing this for some of His children. He is sending us all signs that He is there with them. The problem is if we don’t know that He is doing this, then we don’t notice them when we see them. Let’s start being on the lookout for these messages from God letting us know He is in it, all of it, with us!
I love how today’s verse begins with God reminding us what He has done for us in the past. It says, “As Moses went up to meet God, God called down to him from the mountain: “Speak to the House of Jacob, tell the People of Israel: ‘You have seen what I did to Egypt and how I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to me.” This is a great reminder that God is a miracle worker. He saved the Israelites from Egypt is a miraculous way. Also, it wasn’t just one miracle, it was miracle after miracle. He did all those signs to convince Pharaoh to let them go. He parted the Red Sea so they could pass, then He rolled it back to destroy their enemy. He miraculously provided manna for food every single morning. He rained down quail on them when they complained about not having meat to eat. It was miracle after miracle.
When we are struggling, we need to be reminded of all God can do. There are so many times when we are in a situation and we can’t see a way out. We have $500 worth of bills and $200 in our bank account. That math does not add up and we know that we will not be able to pay our bills. And yet the math also did not add up when Jesus only had 5 loaves of bread and two fish and there were over 5,000 people to feed and yet He fed them all with plenty to spare. When our loved one is in the hospital or on hospice and the doctors tell us there is nothing to do, we need God to remind us of what He has done in the past, so that we can have hope that we don’t have to worry because even if there is nothing the doctors can do, there is ALWAYS something our God can do. I love that God knows we need this reminder, even before we do. He is so good!!
The second half of this verse is, “If you will listen obediently to what I say and keep my covenant, out of all peoples you’ll be my special treasure. The whole Earth is mine to choose from, but you’re special: a kingdom of priests, a holy nation.” This is also great because it is reminding us that we are special. God could choose any person on the entire Earth, and yet He is choosing you. If we listen obeidiently to what He says, and keep His commandments then we will be set aside. We will be His holy nation. How great is that? I love that this translations says we will be His special treasure. What would you give to be God’s special treasure? I feel as though I would give anything to be considered God’s special treasure. God is giving us the instructions and although they seem easy, they can be harder than they sound.
The first thing it says is to listen obediently. It can be hard to listen if we aren’t hearing Him. This means we need to spend some time listening to what God is telling us. Let’s all stop for a moment and see when we could do this? When could we make time, even if it's just 5 minutes, in our day to sit quietly and listen to the God? Could you make 5 minutes sometime in your day to sit quietly with God if it meant you got to be His special treasure? The other thing God is asking us to do is to keep His covenant, which is to love the Lord your God with all your heart my and soul and to love your neighbor. Can we do that? What is one thing we can do to love others more? God doesn’t just mean your neighbor next door. He means, how can you love everyone, even those you don’t like.
That is something to spend some time pondering. Is this dislike, is this hatred I have in my heart for others worth not being counted as God’s special treasure? If you have a hard time loving others, take that to God. Spend some time talking with God and asking Him to help you through it. God wants us all to be His special treasure. We don’t have to be perfect, we don’t have to follow Him perfectly, we just have to really want to be His special treasure with our whole heart, and then listen to Him and He will guide us there. He wants it for us more than we want it for ourselves. We just have to give Him permission to work within us and then let Him gently guide us there!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, I ask you to show each one of us where in our day we can spend some time with you. I ask you to show everyone that we all have the time, even if we are very busy. Show them that you can talk to them anywhere, in the shower, in the car, while they are drinking coffee, while they are doing housework, anytime we are willing to listen, you are willing to talk. Lord we thank you for always reminding us at the perfect time of all you have done in the past. Lord, we are sorry we always forget and are so grateful when we need to remember, you are there. Lord, I want to keep my friend’s mom and my other friend’s father in law in our prayers today as they are who you put on my heart while writing this episode. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk Boldly with Jesus. In case you were all wondering, my parents 60th wedding anniversary celebration went great! Their love was definitely celebrated by many. The celebration continues as my parents, most of my siblings and I all head to Maine for a vacation together. I am not sure we have all vacationed together since we were little. If you were moved to find time in your day when you can listen to God and yet feel your schedule is too buys, I want to offer my audio training on how to invite Jesus into your every day activities. It is not that long and will just give you a few ideas of how you can increase your time with God and yet, not add more things into your buys schedule. Just a reminder if you don’t see an episode from me any day this week it is because I am hanging out with family and will be back next week. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed week!
Whoever Has Been Forgiven Little Loves Little
Luke 7:47 "Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little.”
I usually don’t have a scripture verse for these episodes in advance. I usually ask God to give me one right before I write it, or I look in my Encounter Ministry notes, or my prayer group notes. However, yesterday when I was listening to another podcast this story from the Bible came to me clear as day. This is not necessarily strange because as you know I sometimes get my episode ideas from other podcasts like The Big Life Devotional, Elevation, or Father Mike’s podcasts. However, this time the podcast I was listening to was not talking about this story at all. The story just popped into my head and I felt as if that was definitely the verse I was supposed to use today.
I chose Luke 7:47 as the main verse because that was the main point I felt the Holy Spirit emphasized when I got the verse, however, it probably won’t make any sense without the context of the whole story. The story is called “Jesus Anointed by a Sinful Woman” and it is found in Luke 7:36-50. “When one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, he went to the Pharisee’s house and reclined at the table. A woman in that town who lived a sinful life learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee’s house, so she came there with an alabaster jar of perfume. As she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them. When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is—that she is a sinner.” Jesus answered him, “Simon, I have something to tell you.” “Tell me, teacher,” he said. “Two people owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he forgave the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?” Simon replied, “I suppose the one who had the bigger debt forgiven.” “You have judged correctly,” Jesus said. Then he turned toward the woman and said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet. Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little.” Then Jesus said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.” The other guests began to say among themselves, “Who is this who even forgives sins?” Jesus said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”
Actually now that I am writing I see why this came to me while I was listening to the other podcast. The Big Life Devotional Podcast with Pamela Crim was talking about loving other people yesterday. As soon as she said do we love others, this story came to mind. I think the point the Holy Spirit wanted me to make is about forgiveness. In this verse Jesus is forgiving this woman of her sins. The reason she was crying and was washing Jesus’ feet with her tears and anointing them with perfume is because she knew all of her sins. She didn’t come into that house pretending to be anything different. She knew she was full of sin and that she was in the presence of the Lord. She knew she had a lot to repent for and she knew Jesus could forgive her sins. She wasn’t afraid to approach Jesus. She didn’t let her sins keep her from coming into the presence of God. She approached him, bowed at his feet and washed his feet. She humbled herself with the faith that she would be forgiven.
Today’s verse says, “Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little.” The person who owned the house was thinking in his head that Jesus didn’t know all of her sins. He was thinking if Jesus was a prophet, he would know her sins and he would not let her touch Him. What Jesus is saying here is that if she wasn’t a great sinner, if she didn’t really have many sins, she wouldn’t have humbled herself, she wouldn’t have sat at his feet and washed them with her tears. She loved Jesus so much because she knew how much sin she had and how great of a thing it was for Him to forgive it all. She loved Him so much because she had so much sin.
What the Holy Spirit was saying to me yesterday was that we should be more loving to others because we have been forgiven of so much also. I feel like I am struggling to get you to see what the Holy Spirit was showing me, and yet I am trusting what He wants you to hear, you will hear. What he showed me was that we struggle to forgive others, even when they had done little offenses to us. Sometimes, they haven’t done anything to us and yet we don’t love the person because we don’t like how they look, how they think, how the believe, or how they talk.
We judge others so much and God is saying, “Why are you judging them when I am not judging you? Why are you acting as if you have done nothing wrong? Why are you judging my creations? I created each person, who are you to judge them? You have been forgiven of so much, I have overlooked so much for you, why can’t you do the same? I love you my children with an everlasting love and unconditional love and I am asking you to do the same. I know you don’t all look alike, sound alike, dress alike, believe the same things and that is ok. I still call you to love one another unconditionally. I know you can’t do this on your own and yet if you only say the word I can help you. If you strive to love everyone, I will make your efforts fruitful. First, you must make that choice. You must choose to love others, even those you don’t agree with. When you wish to judge someone, imagine me up in heaven using those same standards to judge you. Is it worth it? Do you want me to use your standards to judge you? Remember all you have done, remember all your imperfections and remember that I have forgiven them all and I ask you to do the same towards others. Spread my love like wildfire. I promise if you start to lead with love your whole life will change. You will be friends with people you never expected. You will learn things you never expected. Trust me my children and start loving more and judging less.”
Well, I did not expect for the Holy Spirit to speak directly too us, although I did pray for this episode to be His words not mine and I did let Him know I was struggling to get His point across, so thank you Lord for your amazing words this morning. I will end with that because He has said it all.
Dear Heavenly Father I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we can’t thank you enough for showing up and speaking to each one of us directly. Help us to ponder your words Lord. Help us to see how we can live into those words. Give us the grace to lead with love, let that be our default Lord!! Help us to stop judging, help us to love first. Lord, we need a lot of help in this area. We ask you to rain down your love, your grace and your strength on us so we can follow your command to love all. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I wanted to let you know that I will be celebrating 60 years marriage with my parents this weekend. Their love is a love of the ages. Not only do they love each other so much even after 60 years, 11 children and countless grandchildren, great grandchildren and great great grandchildren, but they love others too. They are a great example of what this episode is about today. They have taught us to love others, even those we struggle to get along with. My whole family will be in town for this celebration and several days to follow. I am not planning to post episodes while they are in town. I am planning to enjoy this short time with them. If the Holy Spirit wakes me up early to write an episode or creates some down time to do that then I will obey. Otherwise, I will meet you guys again in July! I can’t believe it could be that close to July. If you know my parents feel free to wish them a Happy 60th Anniversary. I look forward to seeing you again soon! Remember Jesus loves you and He wants you to share that love with others. I love you all too! Have a blessed weekend!
If You Only Knew The Power Living Inside Of You…
Matthew 8: 16 “When evening came, many who were demon-possessed were brought to him, and he drove out the spirits with a word and healed all the sick.”
I was talking with a friend last night and we got on the topic of the Holy Spirit. I love to talk about the Holy Spirit because I am still in awe over the whole thing. I am in awe that God gave us the Holy Spirit. I am in awe that we have the Holy Spirit living inside of us. I wish each and every single baptized person on planet earth knew how powerful they were with the Holy Spirit living inside of them.
The verse above says, “When evening came, many who were demon-possessed were brought to him, and he drove out the spirits with a word and healed al the sick.” Jesus was able to chase away demons with a word. He was able to heal the sick just by saying be healed. Actually there are many different ways that Jesus healed people. If you read the many healing stories in the Bible you will see there wasn’t just one way that Jesus healed the sick. Sometimes he said “be healed” sometimes he just told them to do something like “take up your mat and go.” Other times he did a physical action like when he put mud on a blind mans eyes or put his fingers in a deaf man’s ears. I think there was so much variety so that Jesus could show us it is not what we do that heals people, it is who we ask. We come to God in faith and He does the healings.
I was talking to my friend last night because we were doing an inner healing session. Part of the process I was using for inner healing was to renounce the lies that we tell ourselves. I was explaining that we can do that at anytime. She can do that on her own even when I am not on the phone with her. When she starts to get anxious she can sit down and ask Jesus to help her figure out what specific lies she is telling herself. For instance, my car will break down and I won’t be able to get to work. Something bad will happen to me if I go out on my own. My children might get hurt if I let them do what they want. I am not sure what it might be for you. We all have things we tell ourselves that are not true. Things like I am unworthy of love, I am unloved, I am stupid, I am a bad driver. Whatever it is that you are telling yourself, you can renounce that lie once you realize what that lie is.
If you aren’t sure if you are telling yourself any lies, take a minute and think about what that inner voice is saying to you. Maybe take a minute and ask God to reveal any lies you are telling yourself. Once you have the lies it is easy to renounce them. It is a simple sentence, “In the name of Jesus I renounce the lie, and then you state the lie.” For instance, “In the name of Jesus I renounce the lie that I am not good enough, I am not pretty enough, I am not enough.” Ideally you would repeat the sentence for each lie. I just named a few so you would get the idea.
Once you renounce the lie you can ask God to replace that lie with the truth. It is amazing what you will hear when you ask God what truth He wants to give you in place of that lie. You will see just how much God loves you. You will see a tenderness that you probably didn’t know was there. My friend was saying that although renouncing lies is so simple, she didn’t know she could do that. I explained that she was not alone! So many of us don’t know we can do that. I definitely didn’t before enrolling in the Encounter Ministries class I am taking.
Another part of the inner healing session is to renounce any evil spirits. For instance, the spirit of anxiety, the spirit of depressions, the spirit of unworthiness. When Jesus sent the 12 apostles out to spread the word that the Kingdom of God was at hand He gave them the power to do signs and wonders. When He sent out the 72 He did the same. Jesus made us all, each one of us part of the great commission. He tasked us all with spreading the news of Him and all the things that happened in the Gospel. He wants us to make sure that every person on the planet has had a chance to hear about Him. To do this He gave us all the Holy Spirit. With the Holy Spirit we have the power living inside of us to cast out demons in Jesus’ name. We have the power to heal the sick in Jesus’ name. Well, we are not healing the sick but God is healing the sick through us when we are brave enough to step our in faith and to ask.
Did you know demons don’t have any power of you unless you give it to them? It’s true, you have to consent to them being there. Now, it’s not as if they ask you and you say yes or no. They find ways in through the sins we commit and often times we didn’t know that we opened a door or that we let them in. However, whether we knew we were doing it or not, if they find an open door they enter. However, they can’t stay once you tell them to leave. You, yes you, have the power to tell them to leave. If you notice you have a persistent feeling, such as anxiety, depression, worry, anger, irritability, loneliness, unworthiness, etc, this could be a spirit causing this persistent feeling. If you want to kick that spirit out all you have to stay is, “In the name of Jesus I renounce the spirit of …. and I command it to leave right now in Jesus’ name.”
Once you command it to leave, it must leave. It cannot stay, it has officially been evicted. God honors our free will and the enemy must do the same. He just does a good job at making us unaware of the power we have. I was telling my friend that I think that has been on of the enemies greatest tactics. I think the enemy has done a good job of either making us forget how much power we have living inside of us, or he has twisted the truth so much in the world that we don’t believe it. I am not sure what has happened, how he did it, and yet, we don’t seem to know that we have any real power.
Can you imagine how different the world would be if every baptized person was walking around in the full authority that Christ gave them? Can you imagine how different the world would be if we all knew that Jesus gave us the power to heal the sick, cast our demons, raise the dead and so much more! It says in John 14:12-14 “ Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.” Do you believe that scripture speaks the truth? Do you believe that God is honest and keeps His promises? If so, then you can see why I know that we each have so much power living inside of us.
This verse does not say that a select few will do the works that Jesus did. It does not say that priests and ministers will do the works that Jesus did. It says, “You, whomever believes in me.” Do you believe in Jesus? If so, then He is talking to you? I know it doesn’t feel like you have any power. I know you don’t feel worthy of any power. I know you probably don’t want any power, because as Aunt May says in Spider Man, “With great power comes great responsibility.” And yet, if you believe in Jesus you have this power anyway, so why are we wasting it? Why are we going around with aches and pains and not asking God in Jesus’ name to heal them? Why are we living under the oppression of spirits when we have the power to demand that they leave? Because we don’t know or we don’t believe we have this power. I hope after hearing this episode you go to your Bible and you look for the scripture verse John 14:12-14. I hope you underline it, I hope you write it on an index card and I hope you ask the Lord to show you how this applies in your life. Ask God to show you what He is calling you to do.
Don’t worry, God is gentle with us. He will not call us to move to another country when He knows we really don’t want that. He may call us to ask for healing in our own lives, He may call us to church more, to daily mass, to pray for someone we know, to pray over someone we know if that is something we aren’t too uncomfortable with. Imagine what this world would be like if we all started living in the authority that Jesus gave us. We are all so worried about what is happening in the world around us and yet we feel so powerless. That is a trick of the enemy. We are not powerless. We are more powerful than we know. He knows how powerful we are when we live into that power, when we realize what it truly means to have the Holy Spirit, the same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead living inside of us. Matthew 17:20 says, “ He replied, “Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” Did you hear that last line, “NOTHING WILL BE IMPOSSIBLE FOR YOU.”
One main goal of this podcast is to help us all start to believe that a little more. I know if we started to believe this the world would start to change. We wouldn’t be as scared all the time because we would know we have the power living inside of us to change things. We wouldn’t be living in so much pain because we would know we have the power inside of us to set ourselves free and to help set others free. We wouldn’t just accept the aches and pains we get as a given thing that come with getting older, we would pray for healing because we know the power of God to heal is living inside of us. I know the world would change, it has already started, if more and more of us realized the power laying dormant inside of us. The Holy Spirit’s ability to work through us is confined by our free will, by our belief in His power. If we want to have access to that power, we need to first know and believe that we have the Holy Spirit living inside of us. We have to learn what that means and the best way to do that is to read the Scriptures. Read the book of Acts in the Bible. Read all about what the apostles did with the Holy Spirit living inside of them. It is incredible and if they could do it, so can you because we have the same exact Holy Spirit, there is only one!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to understand the power and authority you have given to us, please help us. We want to live in that authority. We want to be able to cast out demons and heal those around us. Please build our faith, please show us how. Lord, we thank you for giving us your Son and then when He left you gave us the Holy Spirit. We are so grateful. Help bring an awareness in each person listening as to what having the Holy Spirit living inside of us means for us. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I have so exciting news, I have found a place to hold a retreat this fall. I have been feeling called to host a retreat and everywhere I called was so expensive. I just wanted to find a place that most people could afford to come if they wanted to. I was getting discouraged and God is so good and He knew that I just needed to keep calling places. I finally found one. I will have more details in the upcoming weeks but I am excited to announce that I will be hosting a retreat in October for anyone who would like to get away for a weekend and spend some time with Jesus. It will be a weekend full of praise and worship and thanksgiving to God. It will also be a time when we talk about some ways to develop a more intimate relationship with God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. It will be amazing because the Holy Spirit is the one leading the charge on this one. I hope you will consider joining me! I look forward to meeting you hear again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus love you, he really does, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click here. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed day!
Open The Eyes Of Their Heart Lord
Ephesians 1:18-21 “I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come.”
In the verse right before this one Paul is praying for God to give the Ephesians a Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that they may know him better. Then in this verse it starts off by saying that he prays the eyes of their hearts may be enlightened in order that they may know the hope to which God has called them, along with the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people and his incomparably great power for us who believe. I love how this verse points out the importance of understanding things with our heart and not just our minds. We can know something with our mind and yet if it just stays in our mind and doesn’t go anywhere else, it may not change our lives. There is a difference between knowing something intellectually and knowing something with our whole being.
I read an article, (CLICK HERE) for article, that said the Bible is like our manual for living a Christian lifestyle. Think about all the various manuals you have in your life for all your appliances. Did you read them? Did you read the manual to figure out how to work your TV? Did you read the manual to figure out how to use your microwave? What about the one that came with your cell phone? I am guessing most of us did not read these manuals. Maybe we read parts of them, like the quick start guide, or if we ran into a problem we may have read the part that talked about that problem we had. We don’t tend to read the whole thing. The same can be true of the Bible, as we do with so many owner’s manuals, we read it superficially or hardly at all and then wonder why the Christian life isn’t working the way it’s supposed to! We need to go back and read the manual carefully, asking God to give us His wisdom and understanding.
Only God can give us the grace to understand the Bible with our whole being, with our hearts and our minds. There are many aspects of our faith that we know on a superficial level and yet if we want a deeper understanding so we can actually live it out in our lives, we need to ask God to move it from just head knowledge to heart knowledge as well. For instance, we can tell people all day long that God loves us and He has a plan for our lives, and yet if we don’t truly believe that in our hearts, we won’t live our lives as if this is true. If you know in your heart that God is working all things for your good, then you don’t worry as much about the things that happen in your day to day life. You don’t worry as much even when you hit bumps in the road and big things go wrong, because you know with your whole being that even though this sucks a lot right now, God is going to work it for your good. If you don’t know this down deep in your heart, then even if you know it in your brain you will be more anxious, you will worry about all the various bumps in the road, you will not have peace in the storm.
This is why Paul is praying for God to give them a Spirit of Revelation and Wisdom. We all need to pray for this. If we want to truly understand who God is and what He has in store for us then we all need the gift of Revelation and Wisdom. There is always a deeper level to our understanding, to our spirituality, to our relationship with God. The only way to go deeper is through God. He is the one that reveals the deeper meanings of His word. Jesus even talked about how He used parables because the people weren’t able to comprehend what he was saying with their hearts. They needed to have things explained in ways they could see with their eyes and things they could wrap their brains around. However, the disciples were granted the grace to understand some of the parables at a deeper level. They were seeking a deeper understanding and so they were granted it.
Now that we have looked at what St. Paul was talking about when he prayed that the eyes of their hearts would be enlightened, let’s look at what the rest of the verse says. The first line says, “In order that you may know the hope to which he has called you.” We are all called to a greater life. We are called to an eternal salvation. We are called to spend eternity with God in Heaven. Do we have hope for that call? Do we believe that Jesus died on a cross to save us and to make that call possible? The article I read talked about two facets of this hope. The first part is that our salvation doesn’t rest on us choosing God, but on God choosing us. As Paul puts it (2 Tim. 1:9), God “has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was granted us in Christ Jesus from all eternity.” The second facet of this hope from the article is, “The hope of His calling is the certainty of increasing blessing and joy in Christ, beginning now and lasting through all eternity.” This goes back to what I was talking about earlier. We can have hope that God is working all things for our good. We can have hope in all of the promises that were made all throughout the Bible. God does amazing things for His people.
The next part of the verse says, “the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people.”The article I read goes into great detail on two different ways to interpret this part of the verse. I will not go into a lot of detail, I will just state the two ways as the author did and if you want to look at how he came up with these two ways you can check out the link to the article. Either way you interpret this phrase, whether we are heirs to a vast fortune in heaven or whether we are God’s special inheritance (both are true), the application is the same. We must live as citizens of heaven who belong to God. We must live as saints, God’s holy ones, separate from this evil world. Paul was praying for the eyes of the hearts to be opened so they could fully grasp what it meant to live as a people of God. He wanted them to truly understand the importance of living our lives separate from the world. God wants us to live as a holy people set apart from the rest of the world. He wants us to live in the world but not of the world.
The last part says, "and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come.” This part is so important that we internalize it and make it known throughout our whole body. Once we can really grasp this information, once it makes its way deep into our heart, then our lives will never be the same. We will never again doubt if we have the strength to make it though. We know we do because we are keenly aware of the power we have inside of us. Once we truly understand what it means to have the power of the Holy Spirit living inside of us, we will be unstoppable, the enemy won’t be able to touch us. That doesn’t mean he won’t try, but it means we will know he won’t defeat us.
Unfortunately, this is not something we can come to know on our own. God reveals this to us bit by bit as we need it, search for it and ask for it. We can not will our belief in the power of the Holy Spirit, believe me, I have tried. Faith is a gift from the Holy Spirit. I have prayed over plenty of people and felt like I believed they would be healed and they were not. I heard a speaker once, and I can’t seem to find the talk again, but it was Mary Healy and it was a short clip of a talk. I heard her say something like, we can’t will our belief in healing. It is a gift from God. That doesn’t mean we should stop trying to heal people. We should keep believing as much as we can and with each time that someone is healed our faith will grown. God will grow our faith in His time. God will open the eyes to our heart to see the power we have inside of us on His time line all we can do is keep asking. I do think the more we ask, the more we desire it, the more he will open them. If we seek, we will find.
The article talks about six things God wants us to know about the surpassing greatness of His power. I will list them here, and you can get more detail in the article. (CLICK HERE) God wants us to know the surpassing greatness of His power:
Saved us.
Enables us to persevere through trials.
Enables us to overcome temptation and live in holiness.
Enables us to serve Him faithfully.
Enables us for everything that He has called us to do.
To keep us to the end.
If things aren’t going right for you. If you are struggling to live this Christian life, which I think most of us are, maybe we should go back and read the manual God gave us. Maybe we should immerse ourselves in Scripture and find out what God wants us to do. However, as we have learned today, we can’t just read the scripture and understand it. We also need to keep asking God to open the eyes to our heart. We need to keep asking God to help us understand what we are reading. We can continually ask for wisdom and knowledge from God and when we ask, He answers. He will help us if we just ask!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we are asking for your help understanding all we read in the Bible. We are asking for your help to understand all we see in the world. Lord, help us to distinguish what is of You and what is of the world. Help us to figure out how to live the life you want us to live. Help us to truly understand the strength we have because of the Holy Spirit living inside of us. Lord, we ask that you truly open the eyes of our heart to see the incredible power we having inside of us. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you would like an autographed copy of my book you can find it on my website walkboldlywithjesus.com or Click Here. If you want to receive my weekly newsletter Click Here. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
We Were Saved Forever
Romans 5:9-10 “And since by his blood he did all this for us as sinners, how much more will he do for us now that he has declared us not guilty? Now he will save us from all of God’s wrath to come. And since, when we were his enemies, we were brought back to God by the death of his Son, what blessings he must have for us now that we are his friends and he is living within us!”
This is one of those verses that I just can’t seem to believe. It is one I seem to get stuck on and think about often. Well, maybe not as often as I should, but it is one that definitely sticks with me. Jesus died on a cross for us while we were still sinners. He knew all the things we were still going to do and yet He still thought we were worth it. Can you believe that? I can see dying for someone who messed up and yet they were sorry and they were committed to not doing it again. This is not what Jesus did. Jesus knew we were sinners and that we would not change completely and yet He died for us anyway.
This verse begins with, “And since by his blood he did all this for us as sinners, how much more will he do for us now that he has declared us not guilty?” I find this wording interesting. Some of the other translations say we “were reconciled with God” and another says “there is no longer a question that we are at odds with God.” What this verse is saying, no matter which translation we are looking at is that our relationship with God was put right. When Adam and Eve ate of the fruit of good and evil we were banished from Heaven and there was a veil between us and God. When Jesus died on that cross the veil was torn and there is nothing in the way between us and God now.
Well, there can be things getting in the way of your relationship with God but if there are, they are things you are putting there or things you did. Before Jesus died for us, there was original sin, so we were separated from God because of the sin of Adam and Eve. If there is anything getting in the way of us being with God now, it is something we put there. We have no one to blame but ourselves. The only sins affecting our relationship with God are the ones we are committing. This is very different than before.
The beginning of this verse is also telling us to look at how amazingly God treated His people before He sent Jesus down to die for our sins. If God could do all those amazing things for His people before He saved us, just think of how much more He will do for us now. In other words, God saved His people time and time again from trouble, even though they kept turning away from Him, even though they were still paying for the original sin. If this is the case, how much more will He do for those who He has declared innocent. I was looking for a better way to explain this, a way that might make it more clear. I found an article and I will put a link for it in the show notes. This article is titled, “Romans 5:9-10 | Legally Safe, Relationally Near” by David McLemore. (CLICK HERE) for the article. This article said, "Romans 5:9-10 shows us three things about how God saves us:
He has set us free by justification;
He has drawn us near in reconciliation;
He is saving us forever by the life of Christ.”
The first point of the article was that God has set us free by Justification. The way the author described this is to imagine you are in court on trial for something you know you did. The judge is the person you committed the crime against. There is no denying that you did the crime, there is overwhelming evidence and you have no choice other than to plead guilty as everyone knows you are guilty. You plead guilty and you stand there for what feels like forever waiting for the judge to hand over your sentence, which is probably your life. Finally, the judge looks you in the eyes and says, “The penalty has already been paid. You are free to go.” Can you imagine that? Everything you have done and yet you are free to go because someone else paid the penalty. This is what the author meant by we are set free by justification. Jesus paid the price for our sins.
The second point he made was that God has drawn us near in reconciliation. The author points out that the first step was a more legal step. You are legally set free. This next step is a relational step. There is a difference between setting you free and wanting to have a relationship with you. God could have set us free but still kept the barrier up. I mean we did continuously turn away from Him. We do continue to sin over and over again. Can you think of a circumstance where you might forgive and set free and yet want to keep your distance? What about in the case of a divorce? You might forgive that person for leaving, you might realize they weren’t the only one caused the problem, and yet you might want to still keep your distance to protect your heart from being hurt again. I have heard of this a lot in the case of addiction. The person who was hurt is willing to forgive the person with the addiction for all the pain they caused and yet they keep their distance from them.
God did not do this to us, He welcomed us back in with open arms. The article describes it as the judge smiling at you after saying you are free. Then they come down and hug you and lead you back into their chamber. They talk with you, welcome you and support you. It is as if they want to be a part of your life and there is no indication that they will ever leave. It’s almost as if God has adopted you as his own child, which you soon find out, He has. The author states this is what reconciliation feels like. “It feels like the way you felt in the happiest, safest time of your life but infinitely better. It feels as if everything bad is going to be set right. You feel a nearness. It’s nearly inexplicable. Our words just won’t do.” When you have been reconciled with God “You look around you and think through your life and, really, nothing much has changed circumstantially, but everything seems to have changed deep in your heart.”
This brings us to his third point: He is saving us forever by the life of Christ. The author of the article tried to illustrate what the verse means when it says, “ how much more will he do for us now that he has declared us not guilty?” Here is what he says:
“Let me try to illustrate this “much more” of the gospel. Tomorrow comes and we sin again. We are grieved over it and seek to repent and we drag ourselves back into that courtroom. We find the devil there, with the world behind him, condemning us. Yet the scene looks and feels different. We aren’t on trial anymore. Jesus is there before the Father and through the Holy Spirit confirms to our hearts that the blood of Jesus paid for this sin too. We can’t be condemned now, not after all that Jesus has done for us. We are still as free as we were before. Our heart explodes again. We have new power to love God – even deeper this time! Jesus has paid the penalty for us.”
This illustration assures us that Jesus’ sacrifice was enough to pay for all of our sins. This shows us that God is not up there just waiting for us to mess up so He can jump on us and correct us. God has redeemed us and He wants to be with us, have a relationship with us. He does not want anything to get in the way of that relationship. The next paragraph I am going to read just as it is from the article because the author wrote it so well and makes a valid point. He says,
“The hardest thing in the world for God to do was to put us poor sinners back into right relationship with him. It cost Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity his very life. He entered in and lived a perfect life and suffered and died to save us. He has already done the hardest, most complicated thing. Now all he has to do is keep you. What Paul is saying here essentially is, “Since God has already done the hardest thing, why would he not do the easier thing of keeping you? God tore his son to pieces for you, why would he not now give you everything else you need?”
God saved us, not just that one time, each and every time. Through that one selfless act of Jesus, we have been redeemed forever. Each time we sin we have the option of repenting, turning back to God and being forgiven. There is no limit on how many times we can be forgiven. We will be forgiven over and over again as long as we ask God for it. He gave His son for us and now all we need to do is turn to Him and to repent when we mess up, which we will for sure do. God knows this and He loves us anyway, he forgives us anyway.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we are sorry we keep turning away and we are so thankful you keep forgiving us. We find it hard to comprehend the love you have for us that you would send your only son to die for us. You are amazing and we love you so much! Please help us to understand the relationship you want to have with us. Put on our hearts whatever it is you would like us to do to have a better relationship with you. We love you so much Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you would like an autographed copy of my book you can find it on my website walkboldlywithjesus.com or Click Here. If you want to receive my weekly newsletter Click Here. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
We Are Able To Accomplish Abundantly More Than We Imagine
Ephesians 3:20 “Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine.”
When I read this verse I thought it was so great because it shows us the power of the Holy Spirit working inside us. It tells us that we are more powerful than we think. It reminds us that we can accomplish more than we think. Not just a little more, but it says abundantly more than we can imagine. I feel this trips us up more often than we think. We look at all we have ahead of us and we don’t see any way that we can do it. One of my kids asked me the other day if I actually believed that God never gave us more than we can handle? I told him I heard someone say it differently. I heard that God never gives us more than He can handle. However, we need to turn to God and partner with Him.
God never intended for us to do it on our own. He always intended to help us through it all. I do believe that God wouldn’t give us more than we can handle with Him, and yet if we are trying to do everything by ourselves than I do believe it will be more than we can handle. The Bible says in Philippians 4:13 “We can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” It does not say that I can do all things by myself with no help from anyone. We need Christ to strengthen us and we are lucky because we have the Spirit of Christ living inside of us. We don’t have to go far to find Him.
When you take a look at all you are going through right now, examine how much you are relying on God and how much you are trying to do all by yourself. I think knowing God can do anything and living our lives as if we know God can do anything are two very different things. Are we turning to God when we are struggling or are we turning to the world? I had a word of prophesy during the prayer group meeting and God was telling us that we are turning to the world. Here is the word I received: “I am there with you my children. I am walking with you and I am talking with you and yet you're not listening. Open your ears, take the time to just sit in the silence and listen to what I have to say. I am your strong hold. I am your refuge. I am your place in a storm. Come search for me, come find me. When you look for me, I will be there because I am always there but you are not always searching and you're not always looking. You're looking to find comfort in other place, you're looking to find comfort in the things of this world. I am not of this world and your comfort is not in this world it is in me. Turn to me, look for me, listen to me, I am the answer, I am the way, I am the light. Don't try to find your answers in this world you will search and search and you will not find. I am right here, I am right beside you, open your eyes, open your ears, find me. I am not hidden and I am right here. All you have to do is seek and you will find, knock and the door will be answered. I am here, turn to me, come to me. I love you with an everlasting love. A love that knows no boundaries, a love that is unconditional. There is nothing you can do to lose that love. I love you my children more than you know, more than you can imagine. Come to me and let me love you like you need to be loved today.”
What I get from this word is that God wants to be there for us and yet we are not letting Him. He is walking with us and talking with us each and everyday and yet we are not listening. When is the last time we stopped and asked God what He wanted us to do before we did it? When is the last time we just sat in silence and let God know we were listening if He wanted to talk with us? Have we ever done that? Have we ever stopped to see if we could hear God’s voice? If you have you are probably surprised that His voice sounds a lot like your voice. I believe this is done on purpose so we aren’t scared when He talks with us. He is talking to us, He says so right in this word that He gave me today.
God loves us unconditionally, this is amazing. I feel this should make it easier for us to come to Him. I get it if we don’t turn to the Lord in times of trouble because he will just judge us and punish us, however, that is not who God is. God loves us always and forever no matter what we do. I sometimes use our kids as an example because they are our children and we always love them. I think this sort of demonstrates how much God loves us, and yet it is not exactly how because our love is human and so it is flawed. As much as we may try, we can’t love our children perfectly and yet God can love us perfectly.
God is telling us in this verse to invite Him into our struggle. He is saying He loves us and He wants to help us. He is just waiting for the invitation into our lives, the invitation into the chaos and He will help us calm the storm. You are not alone, you don’t have to do it on your own. Ask God to help, invite Him in, search for Him and you will find Him. Remember you can do all things through Christ who strengthens you and we all have the Spirit of Christ living inside of us. You will get through this, whatever “this” is for you. I will leave you with the words from the verse, “Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine.”
Dear Heavenly Father I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, please help us turn to you, please help us ask you for help, please let us let you in. Lord we invite you right now into our mess, into our chaos and into our lives. We grant you full access to help us in anyway you are willing to help us. We need you Father! We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you would like an autographed copy of my book with a personal message just for you, CLICK HERE. If you get a message that says it is unavailable, that will go away as soon as you pick regular or personalized. Also, if you would like to receive my weekly newsletter CLICK HERE. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Make God Your Hiding Place
Nahum 1:7 “God is good, a hiding place in tough times. He recognizes and welcomes anyone looking for help, No matter how desperate the trouble.” (message translation)
I was unsure on what verse to use today and so I looked up the verse of the day. As soon as I read it I knew it was the perfect verse for today as I have several friends who are struggling right now. I decided to use the message translation because I love how it puts the Bible into terms that are so easy to understand. This particular verse I loved the first line. “God is good, a hiding place in tough times.” When we are in tough times, we could all use a hiding place. We could all use something to distract us so that we don’t have to think about what is going on. We need something to take our mind off of the upcoming appointments, the “what ifs” that are running through our minds, the things we wish we could go back and change, the uncertainty of what the future holds. We wish we could change it all. Our mind is racing from one thing to another and it is making us nervous and uncertain.
We just want to watch tv, scroll on our phones, read a book, do something to hide from our problems and worries. Sometimes we even through ourselves into work because we just want to hide from everything else. When I read this verse this morning it occurred to me that I never thought God could be that hiding place. What came to mind when I read that verse was that we could bury ourselves in him instead of TV, books, work, and scrolling on our phones. We could hide in the scriptures. We don’t have to know what to read. God is really good at leading us if we let Him. We could just sit down with the Bible and open it up and God will speak to us through whatever we are reading in the Bible. Yes, He is that good. No matter what you are reading in the Bible, God can have it speak to you in your particular situation.
You can also hide in prayer. Instead of just thinking of all the things that might go wrong, you can turn each thought over the God. When a thought comes into your head, like “what if the doctor says I need another surgery,” you can immediately pray to God, “Lord, please let this be it. In Jesus’ name please let the doctor say I don’t need anymore surgery.” When you start thinking about all that could go wrong, you can turn each one over to the Lord. You can say something like, “Dad, I give these thoughts to you.” You can also ask the Lord to give you the strength for whatever is coming. “Lord, only you know the future. I pray that you give me the grace and the strength to face whatever comes my way. I pray I can feel your presence through this whole journey.”
You could also escape your thoughts with prayers that are already written and you just have to recite them. These could include the Hail Mary, the Our Father, Glory be to the father, the rosary, or any other prayers you know. The St. Michael prayer is a great one when you are feeling anxious or worried. There are also countless novenas you could say. A novena is a prayer or group of prayers you can say for nine days. There is a miraculous rosary you can say. It is a something you say for 54 days, 27 days in petition for something, and 27 days in thanksgiving for something. I believe Mary appeared to someone to give them this rosary and told them that whatever the petition they are asking for will be granted to them. Tony and I have seen amazing results from this prayer. You could just search for a novena for your particular circumstance, most are much shorter than the miraculous rosary, they just take a minute to say.
Another way you could hide in the Lord is to listen to praise music, or to praise the Lord on your own. Praise the Lord is just thanking Him for all He has done and telling Him how amazing He is. Listening to praise music can be a great way to settle our mind. Instead of sitting thinking of all the things running through our heads we can listen to praise and worship music, which is usually filled with words from scripture. If you sing along that is a great way to get your mind off your troubles. If you don’t know the words, you can always go on YouTube and watch the lyric video so you can sing along. There are so many great songs out there for when you are struggling. There is a playlist on Spotify called “Big Life Mornings” and it is full of upbeat music.
Listening to podcasts is another way to take your mind off of all you are going through. There are daily devotionals, like this one and The Big Life devotional that examine scripture. There are also ones that are longer and go a lot deeper into the scripture, like the Elevation Podcast with Steven Furtick. There are also podcasts for anything you are going through. If you are struggling and feel like you would like some help processing it, you can search for whatever is causing your struggle. For instance, podcasts about cancer, podcasts about depression, anxiety, divorce, marriage issues, parenting. Whatever your are struggling with, there is someone else who is not only struggling with it, but they are talking about it on their podcast or on Youtube.
Today’s verse says, “God is good, a hiding place in tough times. He recognizes and welcomes anyone looking for help, No matter how desperate the trouble.” God is good, I know you know this and yet sometimes we need to remind ourselves of this fact, especially when our thoughts start to get the better of us. God recognized you and welcomes you when you are looking for help. This is reminding us that God sees us. He knows we are struggling, He knows we need help. He welcomes us with open arms and assures us He is there with us. I love that the last line is “No matter how desperate the trouble.” Sometimes we can know on some level God will be there and yet we can also struggle to believe that He will help us or we think our thing is too big for Him. This verse assures us, no matter how desperate the times are. There is no problem that is too big or two small for God. He is in every situation and He will take care of it. We can rest in that promise, we can count on it.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Dad, there are so many who are struggling right now. We ask you to come and comfort them, help them feel your presence. We ask that you help calm the racing thoughts and fill their hearts and minds with the peace of Christ. Lord, give them a supernatural wisdom that you will take care of it and that you are already working all things for their good. Help them to know they can count on you, rely on you and even hide in you if they need. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you would like an autographed copy of my book with a personal message just for you, CLICK HERE. If you get a message that says it is unavailable, that will go away as soon as you pick regular or personalized. Also, if you would like to receive my weekly newsletter CLICK HERE. I look forward to bringing you a witness tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed day!
We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click here. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed day!
Praise The Lord, Both Now And Forevermore
Psalm 113:1-2 "Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord, you his servants; praise the name of the Lord. Let the name of the Lord be praised, both now and forevermore.”
This verse was given at prayer group last week and when I first looked it up I was hesitant. I had a little conversation with God about how I have already talked about praise a lot and that maybe I should use a different scripture. I still think it is so crazy how I always try to talk to God about how my ideas might be better than His or try to tell him something like He doesn’t already know everything. Anyway, while I was trying to convince God about how I wasn’t sure praise was the topic I should talk about today, he reminded me of what I learned while listening to Father Mike’s Catechism in a year podcast.
This podcast is so great. I know I have talked to several of you that started it and couldn’t really get into it and so you stopped. I just want to say that I get it. It was not super interesting like the Bible in a year was when it first started. Now, I love it. I thought it was going to be just a litany of rules that I didn’t really want to listen to but that I would because I want to be able to defend my faith to others, especially my loved ones, and also because I truly want to know why Catholic’s believe what we believe. I was so wrong. It is not at all a litany of rules. It is an explanation of so much. It talks about who God is, Who Jesus is, Who the Holy Spirit it, who they are in relationship to one another. That part was beautiful. Recently we have been talking about the mass and why, where, when and how we meet. I had no idea about most of the stuff he is talking about. It helps me to see the mass in a whole new light. A much needed new light.
I have always liked being Catholic. I mean I didn’t always love going to mass every single week, even when on vacation. I didn’t love getting picked up early from a friend’s house so I could go to mass. However, I did like the mass. I like how I know what to expect, I like how every mass is the same all over the world. I love that we have the body and blood of Jesus at mass. I love all the prayers and sacraments. I love being Catholic and yet after listening to the Catechism in a year I am falling even more in love with our faith. It is not just about our faith either, it is about so many things. I thought it would be a bit like the 10 commandments, a list of we can do this and we can’t do that. However, it explains in so much detail not only what we believe, but why we believed it and where in the Bible you can find reference to it. It has been amazing.
This week was about the mass and it was talking about praise, specifically praise music. The church says that out of all of the art, out of all of the things that can help us pray well, singing and music is of inestimable value, greater than that of any other art. That is from CCC #1156. The reason for music and praise songs being so important is because they combine sacred music and words. Many praise songs use words right out of the Bible. I remember when I first noticed this I was so excited. After I went to a retreat with the Military Council of Catholic Woman, I picked up a CD of Anne Trufant's music. I had no idea that Christian music was a thing. I mean I knew we sang songs at church but I didn’t know there was Christian artist in all genres of music. It was the greatest discovery ever! While I was listening to this music all the time and starting to learn the words, I would then begin to see or hear the words when I was reading or listening to the Bible, or when I was in church.
Over the last few years when I talk with God about the growth in my prayer life, the deepening trust I have in Him and His plan, and the calm I am able to have in the storm, He repeatedly tells me it is due to my praise. I truly feel praise can deepen our faith more than we know. The more we praise, the more we can see the amazing things God does for us, even in the hard times. When we are focused on praise, we are focused on finding the good, even in a bad situation.
Praise can be hard at times. There can be times when we feel as though we don’t have any reason to praise God. There can be times when it feels like everything is against us, everything we try fails. When it is hard for us to praise, I think this is a sign that we need to praise all the more. The good thing about praising God is that you can do it through listening to music. You don’t even have to say anything if you don’t want to. You can let the words of the music just wash over you. The song writer and singers of Christian music do such a good job of praising God. They have taken lyrics right from the Bible and put them to music. Not only is this good because we get to hear God’s words, but also because it helps us learn them.
Matt Maher took the Our Father prayer and made it into a song with a nice beat. He did this because one of his friends texted him one day and said that he thought it would be a great way for kids to learn the Our Father. Just picture kids hanging out and singing along to that song. I am betting more people have prayed the Our Father through singing that song than they did before. “He who sings,” said St. Augustine, “prays twice.” The holy Bishop of Hippo meant that singing adds to our praise and worship of God—that our voices are gifts, with which we can make music to the Lord.
Another thing praise is good for is to pull you out of a dry season of prayer or an attack of Spiritual Warfare. If you are trying to pray and yet nothing is coming, or if you are feeling oppressed by the enemy, put on some praise music. The enemies don’t understand why we praise God, especially when we are struggling. It confuses them and they leave. If we can praise God when we are struggling to pray we will be rewarded. We will see fruit from our praise.
I know I have said this before but I will keep saying it because I know it is hard to hear. You can always praise God, even in though times. You don’t have to praise Him for that hard time, you can praise Him for the small ways He is showing you He is there. For instance, a beautiful sunrise, a text from a concerned friend, a really great cup of coffee, a small step in the right direction. Whatever it is, no matter how small it is, just stop and praise God for it. I truly believe that things get better faster when we can praise God in the middle of the storm. Take a second and look at your life. Where could you add a little praise into it? Could you listen to praise music while you clean up, or while you drive? Could you spend 2 minutes while you drink your morning cup of coffee or tea and thank God for 3 things He did yesterday? Can you wake up and thank God for letting you wake up to a brand new day before your feet ever hit the floor? How can we praise God today? How can we add it to our daily routine?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to praise you, we want to thank you, please show us how. Lord, we are so grateful for all you do and we are sorry if we haven’t said so lately. We are sorry if we let the over whelm the world and of our situation prevent us from seeing your glory at times. We know you are amazing. We know you are the Lord of Lords and the King of Kings. You are the beginning and the end and we are so grateful for you. We are grateful you choose us to have a relationship with. We are grateful you redeemed us. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you would like an autographed copy of my book with a personal message just for you, CLICK HERE. If you get a message that says it is unavailable, that will go away as soon as you pick regular or personalized. Also, if you would like to receive my weekly newsletter CLICK HERE. I look forward to bringing you a witness tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Blank Slate
Exodus 34:4 “So Moses chiseled out two stone tablets like the first ones and went up Mount Sinai early in the morning, as the Lord had commanded him; and he carried the two stone tablets in his hands.”
I was listening to Father Mike’s weekly homily from the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity. He talked about this verse, which is just one sentence and yet he used this sentence to show us how we should come before the Lord each and every day. He told us how we can enter into each encounter with Him and even a different perspective on how we look at the mass. I will put a link for this episode in the notes if you want to listen to it. I am not going cover all that he covered, I will just touch on two things that really touched me.
The first thing he said was that when it talks about Moses going up the mountain he brought two blank tablets in his hands. This is Moses second time up the mountain. The first time up the mountain he brought two tablets and God gave him the 10 commandments. Then when he came back down the mountain the people were worshiping a golden calf. Moses threw these tablets down and broke them. Now Moses was headed back up the hill with two new blank tablets. Father Mike was saying this is how we should approach the Lord, with blank tablets.
Often we approach the Lord full of expectations, not just about who the Lord is, but what He can and can’t do and how He does and does not want us to act. We walk into a prayer session expecting it to go exactly like every other prayer session has gone. What if we approached the Lord without any exceptions, without any preconceived notions and let Him tell us who He is and what He wants us to do? How would your prayer life be different if you entered into it open for anything? How would your relationship with the Lord change if you approached Him with a clean slate each and every time you approached Him?
What the Holy Spirit keeps bringing me back to is when I said we have expectations and preconceived notions of what He can and can’t do. I think this is what He wants me to talk about today. This is something He talks to us about often. Are we asking Him to answer our prayers and then assuming we know how they will be answered? Are we placing our constraints on God and not letting Him do all He wants to do? They Holy Spirit just brought a great example of us limiting Him to my mind.
Yesterday I was at Eucharistic Adoration and when I was leaving there was another lady leaving at the same time as I was. The other woman had a limp and her foot was turned to the side a bit. I felt the Holy Spirit asking me to ask her if I could pray over her. I was resisting as I tend to do. I was explaining I didn’t know the woman and I would feel weird, as if God didn’t already know any of that. Finally, I got up the courage to ask the woman if I could pray over her leg. She said someone already prayed over her when she was a kid. Her mother was part of the charismatic renewal and brought her to the meetings. She had a priest pray over her leg back then.
This happened 60 years ago and it seemed as though this woman believed she didn’t need any other prayers because someone had already prayed for her and it was not healed. I do not know what she was thinking because I didn’t ask, it was not my place. I do know that some people think if God wanted to heal them, He would have done it, so there is no point in asking again. I agree, if God wants to heal you, He can absolutely do it at any time. However, I disagree that just because He didn’t heal you that one time then He doesn’t want to heal you. I can’t explain why He didn’t heal you or your loved one the first time they were prayed over. I do know that sometimes things we do or don’t do can get in the way of our healing. We talked about a big one yesterday, unforgiveness. If you are harboring a lot of resentment and unforgiveness in your heart then that might be blocking the healing God wants you to have.
I have heard many people say that since they have prayed and they were not healed then maybe God has just given them this cross to bare, just like He did for Paul. It says in 2 Corinthians 12:7b-9 "Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.” People hear this verse and they resign to living with their chronic pain, their disease, their hearing loss, their blindness, whatever their ailment is because they think God wants them to have it to teach them a lesson, or show them something. They think it is just their thorn in their side.
They taught us in our Encounter Ministries class that this thorn that Paul is talking about is actually not a physical ailment, but actually all the persecution he received while carrying out his public ministry. Whether you think it is a physical ailment or not is not as important as what Paul did about this thorn in his side. He did not ask God to heal it one time and then stop. It says in this verse that he asked, no he pleaded three times to the Lord for Him to take it away and then the Lord responded to Him. The Lord told Paul why he had this thorn and what would come from it. What I feel the Holy Spirit saying to you is to keep asking the Lord until you hear back from Him. Did you hear Him clearly say He wants you to stop asking? Did He explain what would come from this? God wants all of His children to be healed. Also, God loves persistence. There are many examples I can think of off the top of my head. If you are wanting a healing, needing a healing, keep asking. Ask God every single day. I don’t know why we have to wait sometimes. God’s ways are higher than our ways and His thoughts higher than our thoughts. I do know that He loves you and He wants to heal you. Just keep asking!
When we ask God for a healing, we should approach Him with blank slates, just as Moses did. Maybe God wants to heal you miraculously right now, maybe He wants to heal you through chemotherapy or radiation. Maybe he wants to heal you through lots of prayer. I don’t know what God’s plan is for you and neither do you. However, I feel the Holy Spirit telling us to be open to it all. Come and ask God how He wants to heal us, ask Him how he wants us to pray for healing. We might think we know how to pray, and we probably do, and also, God might want us to do something different this time. We won’t know until we stop and ask Him. This is something I struggle with, remember to pause and ask God what I should do. I like to just jump in and do what is comfortable, what I know, and yet my praying is always more fruitful when I pause and ask the Lord what He wants me to do. What if we all just tried to approach God with blank slates this week and see how it changes things? I was going to talk about the other point Father Mike had, but the Holy Spirit took me in another direction, on I am sure someone really needed to hear today. (CLICK HERE) for Father Mike’s episode if you are interested. He had some really great points.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to approach you with blank slates, please show us how. We are sorry for all the time we assumed we knew what you wanted and didn’t actually stop to ask you. We thank you for being so very patient with us as we mess up time and time again. Lord, we ask that you help us to be persistent in going after that healing that we so desperately want. Lord, we believe you can heal us, we believe you want to heal us, help our unbelief. Lord we love you so very much and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you would like an autographed copy of my book with a personal message just for you, CLICK HERE. If you get a message that says it is unavailable, that will go away as soon as you pick regular or personalized. Also, if you would like to receive my weekly newsletter CLICK HERE. I look forward to seeing you all right here tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you so much, and so do I. Have a blessed day!
The Shocking Consequences of Unforgiveness
Matthew 18:21-22 “Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?” Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.”
A few of the ladies from my prayer group and I attended a bootcamp to teach us about the unbound method of deliverance. Unbound is a method of setting people free from the things that weigh them down. Sometimes we open doors to the enemy in ways we didn’t know and Unbound helps us close those doors. There are 5 Keys in the Unbound program. The five keys are: Repenting of sin and expressing faith in Jesus; forgiving oneself and others; renouncing the lies, spirits, and tactics of Satan; taking authority over the works of Satan; receiving the Father's blessing. When you go through an Unbound session you meet with someone and they walk you through each of these keys.
In our first night of training we covered an intro and then we learned about the first two keys. The first one was repenting of sin and expressing faith in Jesus. We all sin, it is a part of our daily life, and yet when we sin in hurts our relationship with God. When we sin we are opening a door for the enemy to come in. Repentance for our sins is a big part of our freedom. If we truly want to be free we can’t have our sins hanging over us. One way our sins can invite the enemy in is because He will then use that sin to make us ashamed of what we did. Shame is straight from hell, it is not from God. Once we start to feel ashamed then we pull away and we tend to isolate because we feel as though we aren’t worthy of anything. Once we repent we bring our sins out of the darkness and into the light and they no longer have hold over us.
The second key we talked about is forgiveness. This is the one that left the biggest impression on me. This is the one that I don’t think we realize how important it is. I remember when I was at a Bible study and they were talking about forgiveness. We were talking about Matthew 6:14, “For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.” When they said that God forgives us the same way we forgive those who trespass against us I was so surprised. I had no idea what they were talking about. Now, I have been a Catholic for my whole life and this was only about 10 years ago. I have probably said the Our Father prayer more times than I can count and yet I never really put two and two together.
Have you ever had a time when you heard something or realized something and it was life changing for you? I can remember two times this has happened for me with scripture. The first one was when I discovered Romans 8:11, “And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you.” When I discovered we have the power of the one who raised Jesus from the dead, the same power Jesus had, that was life changing for me. The second time was when I discovered what I am really saying when I say the Our Father prayer. “Forgive us O Lord as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Did you know that is what you are saying? How many times do you say that prayer, have you said that prayer? If you say the rosary every day you have said it at least 6-5 times daily.
When I heard this I was determined to learn how to forgive better. I was determined to not hold things against people. I have done my best to do this. Over the course of the last 10 years have a learned quite a bit about forgiveness in my quest to become better at it. First I learned what forgiveness is and is not. Forgiveness is making a decision that you are no longer going to give the thing that happened any space in your brain anymore. You are not going to think about it and you are not going let it dictate what you do and how you act. Forgiveness is an act of the will, it is not a feeling. You can, not feel like forgiving someone and yet you can still forgive them. You can forgive someone and yet not feel like anything has changed. Forgiveness is not saying the thing that the other person did was ok, it was not. When you forgive you are not letting the other person off the hook and condoning their behavior. Forgiveness is making a decision to turn the judgement over to God. Forgiveness is making a decision that you are no longer going to let the unforgiveness eat you up inside. The person you are refusing to forgive probably has moved on and your unforgiveness is not bothering them at all.
The analogy that I have heard time and time again about forgiveness is that it is like taking a little sip of poison every single day with the expectation that the other person will die. I know you are angry, hurt, sad, I am sure you have every right to be and also, as long as you keep thinking about it and refusing to forgive, you can’t really heal. I talk to people I know about unforgiveness all the time since learning we will be forgiven as we forgive. I can’t help it, I understand what is at stake and I know it is not worth it. Whoever you are refusing to forgive has probably taken enough from you, are you really going to let them take you eternal salvations too? What they did to you, is not forgiving them worth the risk of God not forgiving you?
Our teacher on Monday told us about a preacher/minister who had died and found out he was on his way to hell. He said he saw how horrible it was. In hell this man saw another man on all fours on fire from head to toe. He had a collar around his neck attached to a chain and a demon was holding the chain. Our teacher told us that this man went to hell because he had unforgiveness in his heart. I was curious to hear the exact story so I looked it up online. I will put a link to the article in the show notes. It turns out is was a priest who had a heart attack and must have flatlined at some point. CLICK HERE for the article.
Here is what priest said, "I thought I was going upward because I thought I had done so much good in this lifetime trying to help so many people and made so many decisions that were godly decisions, but as opposed to me going up, I went down.” This priest was very angry as he said he did so much good in his lifetime. Then he said he saw Jesus and Jesus gave him a personal message. "He said, 'You have been secretly upset with the people who have hurt you. You had been hoping that I would punish the people that hurt you. These are not your people. These are my people.' He said, 'I only want you to focus on the assignment I am giving you.’ The priest explains, “Although I did good, the thing I had in my heart was the unforgiveness to the people who wronged me. A person that can't forgive is a person that has forgotten how much they have been forgiven of.”
This example is probably not what we want to hear. I know it scared me when I heard it and yet we must hear it. We have to know what will keep us from spending eternity with our Father. This is why God sends people to share these messages with us. Mary gave the little children of Fatima an image of hell and told them that more people than we know are ending up there. Forgiveness is not easy, I know that. I know that I don’t understand some of the things that have happened to you. I know people can be terrible and they do terrible things. If you are struggling to forgive I ask you to review what forgiveness is and is not again. You don’t have to forgive and forget. You don't have to forgive the person and invite them over for Christmas. It is perfectly ok to forgive the person and never see them again, never tell them you forgave them, never talk to them again. Forgiveness is for you, it is not for them.
The last line the priest said really hit me. “A person that can’t forgive is a person that has forgotten how much they have been forgiven of.” What if all the people we wronged refused to forgive us? What if God held original sin against us and refused to forgive us? What if he refused to send His only son to save us? Forgiveness is so much more important than we think it is. I know so many people who are refusing to forgive because they say the other person doesn’t deserve forgiveness. You might be right and also, forgiveness is about them, it is about you. It is about setting yourself free from the spirit of unforgiveness. Unforgiveness can block so much from the Lord. It can block healing, it can block graces, it can block your forgiveness from the Lord. Is it really worth it?
I want to take a minute to add some hope to this episode as if you are harboring unforgiveness it might be very scary to think of the consequences. You might have had some truly terrible things done to you and you want the Lord to forgive you and yet you have no idea where to even begin forgiving the other person or people. Here is the thing, the Lord doesn’t expect you to forgive on your own. We can’t actually forgive on our own. All we can do is say, yes Lord, I want to forgive, and the Lord can change your heart for you. If you are at a point right now where you really can’t even say, Lord, I want to forgive, please help me, that’s ok, the Lord meets us where we are at. Can you say I want to want to forgive? Can you say, Jesus, can you give me the grace to want to want to forgive? If so, Jesus will help you get to that point and then you can move to actually forgiving.
My teacher told a story about a woman who was doing an Unbound session and the woman who she was working with refused to forgive her sister. Well, this is the first key, you can’t move on to the rest of the keys if you can’t first get through forgiveness. The woman was adamant that she would not forgive or even pray for her sister. The woman leading the session asked if she would be able to ask Jesus to help her want to want to forgive. She said yes and she asked Jesus. She said ok, now she wanted to want forgive, but she still couldn’t forgive. The leader asked her if she would be willing to do 1% of the work to forgive if Jesus could do the other 99%. She said she thought she might be able to do that and so she forgave her sister 1% and Jesus did the rest.
Remember, forgiveness is an act of the will, it is not a feeling. She might not have felt any different after she forgave her sister that 1% but she was willing to do it. God will meet you where you are at too! If all you can say right now is, “Lord please give me the grace to want to want to want to forgive.” That’s ok, just say it. God is the one who does the forgiving. We just need to say the words and God does all the hard parts. God is asking us to let Him in, to not refuse to let Him work on any area of us. Can we do that? Can we give God even a tiny little crack of a window where He can come in and transform our heart? Don’t let the unforgiveness of what others did dictate the level of forgiveness you get from God. Haven’t then done enough, don’t let them continue to have an effect on your life and definitely not your eternity.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, today’s topic was a hard one. I ask you to open people’s hearts and minds and let them hear the word that you want them to hear. Holy Spirit I ask you to convict each person listening to this of any unforgiveness that they may have so we can all work to forgive. Sometimes our unforgiveness is hidden and so we ask for you to show us any areas we need to forgive in Lord. We say yes to you coming in and helping us forgive. We say yes to you forgiving us as we forgive others. We say yes to loving your children as you love them. We love you Lord and we are sorry for closing you out and not letting you heal our hearts by guarding them with unforgiveness. We need your help Lord and we are so grateful you always come when we call. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. My book is for sale on my website right now. If you buy from my website I will write a personal message and sign it before sending it to you. Click Here for the book and Click Here for my website in the show notes. I also want to remind you that I send out a weekly newsletter with one of my podcast episodes, the most popular ones, and also an update on what is going on in my life. When you sign up you also get an audio training on how to invite Jesus into your everyday life. Click Here to sign up for the Newsletter! Thank you for all your support, I really appreciate it! I look forward to meeting you hear again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed weekend!
What If I Can’t See A Way?
Isaiah 51:2 “Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you; for when he was but one I called him, and I blessed him and made him many.”
I was very surprised when the Lord gave me this verse in adoration. I took an Unbound training on Monday and was sure the Lord wanted me to talk about forgiveness. However, when I was in adoration I asked the Lord to give me the verse that He wanted me to talk about and this is what I got. Then I was confused because I wasn’t sure where he wanted me to go with it. I mean I can see the value in looking back to see where you came from. Looking back to see those that came before you is a good idea. I understand that and yet I wasn’t sure exactly where He wanted me to take it.
So, I did what I always do in this circumstance, which is to type the words, “meaning of Isaiah 51:2” in the internet search bar. If you are new to listening to this podcast I want to assure you that I know I don’t know it all. I am definitely not a theologian and I am not an expert of scripture by any means. I did not start this podcast because I wanted to impart my wisdom to others, I started this podcast because I wanted to learn more about scripture and then share what I learned with others. I am learning just as all of you are and there is so much I don’t know. Luckily we live in an age where there is so much information at our fingertips. This can for sure be a blessing and a curse but in this instance it is a blessing. After reading two different articles on what this verse meant to them, I finally understood what God wanted me to talk about.
He actually revealed it to me when I was running this morning in part. I think, if I understood correctly, that God wants to reassure us that He will be with us in times of trouble. I know we all know this on a superficial level. I am sure we have all said it to plenty of other people and yet God wants us to know it on a deeper level, on an intimate level. How can we know that if we haven’t seen it before? How can we know that God will show up for us this time if we have never needed Him to show up for us before? How can we know He will show up for us in this circumstance when the last time it was a completely different circumstance? Maybe this is too big of a thing for God.
I just got a feeling in my stomach like that is the thing God wants to talk to today. Have some of you been thinking that your situation might just be too big for God? Have you been scared because although you have heard God is a way maker and He will find a way, you wonder if He will. You can’t see a way and so maybe there isn’t one. If this is you, it’s ok. God understands what you are going though and He gets it. Our brains our limited to earthly constraints. Even if we have seen miracles time and time again our human condition is to doubt miracles will happen and put God in a box that we can understand and we can wrap our heads around.
While I was on my run this morning I was worried because it was a winding road and there were no sidewalks. When I looked up the length of the street I could not see if any cars were coming. However, as I got closer to each turn I could see around the bend to see if there were any cars coming. I felt as if God said, it’s the same with life. If you look too far ahead, you can’t see the way. You can’t see if the dangers and you also can’t see the path. However, as you get closer your path becomes clear.
Have you ever heard the saying that the present is all we ever really have? The past has already happened and the future is yet to come and then when you get to the future it is actually the present. If we want to be less anxious we need to stay in the present moment. I think what God was trying to tell me on my run was not to worry if there were cars up ahead because I would see them when I needed to see them. Are you worrying about things that are yet to come? Are you trying to foresee problems before they even happen. Do you know why this is not a good idea? Eigthy-five percent of things we worry about don’t even end up happening. Think about how much time you have wasted worrying about stuff that never happened. I bet it is a lot. God is saying, if you need to worry, I will give you time to worry. Well, he is actually telling us all throughout the Bible not to worry. However, I think what he was saying was that we will see what we need to see when we need to see it.
This verse above addresses our worry and anxiety, which we all have so much of these days. “Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you; for when he was but one I called him, and I blessed him and made him many.” God is reminding us in this verse that He blessed Abraham and Sarah and told them they would have more descendants than the number of stars in the sky when they didn’t have any children. Think of how hard it must have been for them to believe that. Yet they did believe it and they went on believing it for 25 years before they had their son Issac. Did they wait perfectly? No, at one point Sarah tried to take it into her own hands and had her husband sleep with her handmaid to have a baby. They weren’t perfect, but they did believe and God did come through on His promise, just as He will for you too!
I feel as if God wants you to know He sees you in your situation. He knows how hard it is to wait. He sees you hurting and He wants you to keep believing that He is with you, even when you can’t see a way out, even when you can’t see how He can help you. He wants you to look back and see the miraculous things He has done in the past and believe that He will do the same for you. That is the hard part, isn’t it? It’s no that you don’t believe God can do it, it is that you struggle to believe you are worthy enough for Him to do it, or that He loves you enough to do it. Let me tell you right now, you are just as worthy as any of us. God loves you more than you could ever know. He would do anything to show His love for you, and He did. He gave it all just for you. Even if you were the only one on earth, God would have still sent His son. Isn’t that incredible?
I am so sorry life is so hard right now. I am sorry you have cancer. I am sorry your loved one is in the hospital, I am sorry you have chronic pain. I am sorry you are suffering. I truly believe that God wants me to tell you He is there with you. He is in the hospital bed with you. He is sitting by the hospital bed with you. He is with you every moment of every day. If you can’t see a way through this, if you can’t think of a possible solution, God wants you to look back to all the things He has done in the past. Not just Abraham, the parting of the red sea, the walls of Jericho, the manna on the dessert ground every morning, the healings, the signs and wonders. If you can’t see a way, join the club, you are not the only one. The apostles had no idea how to feed thousands of people with 2 fish and 5 loaves of bread, yet Jesus found a way. There is a way through whatever it is you are experiencing. God wants you to know it is ok if you can’t see it. He is asking you, “Can you look back at the past and believe I can do it, even if you can’t see how I can do it?” What do you think? Can you believe it before you see it? Abraham had to wait 25 years, Noah was building the arc, waiting for the flood he couldn’t see for 100 years. Can you wait without seeing for your miracle, your help, your way through, you answers?
Dear Heavenly Father I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to believe you will rescue us. We believe, help our unbelief. Lord, we thank you for all the amazing things you have done in the past. We thank you for being here with us every step of the way even if we don’t see you. Holy Spirit help us to see where God is in this very moment. Help us look at all we are going through and see the places where God helped us. Open our eyes and give us spiritual insight into our situation. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. My book is for sale on my website right now. If you buy from my website I will write a personal message and sign it before sending it to you. Click Here for the book and Click Here for my website in the show notes. I also want to remind you that I send out a weekly newsletter with one of my podcast episodes, the most popular ones, and also an update on what is going on in my life. When you sign up you also get an audio training on how to invite Jesus into your everyday life. Click Here to sign up for the Newsletter! Thank you for all your support, I really appreciate it! I look forward to meeting you hear again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
CLICK HERE for more information about our Charismatic Prayer Group
We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click here. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed day!
All Can Prophesy
1 Corinthians 14:31 & 39 "For you can all prophesy in turn so that everyone may be instructed and encouraged. Therefore, my brothers and sisters, be eager to prophesy, and do not forbid speaking in tongues.”
I felt this was particularly appropriate this week since I just attended the School of Prophetic Ministry this past weekend. It was so amazing, I wish you could have all been there with me. I am definitely going to incorporate some of the exercises that we did at the event into the retreat that I am going to be hosting this summer or this fall. You will not want to miss it. There were 37 people who attended this school and it went from 6-9 on Friday night and 9-9 on Saturday. We learned so much information and also had plenty of opportunities to put that information into practice. The best way to describe it for me is to imagine you are going to class all day and yet you keep taking these breaks where you get to hear God speaking encouragement and love into you. I think every single person left that school feeling loved by God.
I thought I would take a minute to talk about what I mean by prophesy. I know I mentioned in another episode recently but in case you missed it, we were all baptized as priest, prophet and king. When we think of prophet we think, or at least I think of the major and minor prophets of the Bible. I think of people who God revealed information to and then they went out and relayed that information to God’s people. Most of us, when we think of prophecy, we think that is something other people can do, but we aren’t capable of doing it. This is not true. As you can see in the verse about we can all prophesy. The definition of a prophet is someone who hears God’s voice and speaks His word. You might be thinking that you are not a prophet because you can not hear God’s word. However, it says in the Bible that we were all baptized at priest, prophet and king. This means you are a prophet, which means you can hear God’s voice.
If you are a prophet, and you are supposed to be able to hear God’s voice, then why can’t you? Is this the question you are asking yourself? There are a few reasons why you might not be able to hear God’s voice. The biggest and most common one is because you simply aren’t listening. When is the last time you sat down in a quiet space and asked God to speak to you? When is the last time you talked to Him about your day expecting Him to talk back? When is the last time you asked God a question and then stopped and waited in silence until you got your answer? I am willing to bet for many of us, we never have, and for those who have, it has been a while since we have done it.
Another reason that we might not be hearing God is because we don’t believe we can hear Him. In this case, He is still talking, and we are probably hearing Him even, and yet we are brushing it off as just our own thoughts, or just saying it is our gut feeling or our inner voice. When we ask God something, He will answer. It says so in the Bible. This means if we ask God a question, and we listen for an answer then we can trust that God is speaking to us.
Not everything we hear is from God. If you are hearing something that goes against the theology of your religion, or against what you know to be true about God, then that isn’t God talking. He will never contradict Himself. Also, if what you are hearing makes you feel bad about yourself, makes you feel shame, or any other bad feelings, that is not God either. He does correct us and yet He does it in such a loving way that we don’t feel bad about it. Also, if what you are hearing is something drastic, like pick your family of 5 up and over them to another country, run that by a friend, priest, or spiritual advisor. Have them pray over that decision with you and have them help you discern if it is from the Lord or not.
Beyond those types of things, if you ask God and then you feel like you have an answer, move forward in the trust that it is God answering your questions. Most of us will get something to mind right away and we will push it aside and think to ourselves, “That was too easy, that must just be from me.” This has happened lots of times with me and the rest of the people in my class. However, when we are brave and when we release that word to the other person, even though we aren’t sure it is really from God because it doesn’t make any sense to us, then we find out it makes all the sense in the world to the other person and that it was definitely from God. God is so good, and He wants to talk to you too!!
Another reason that some people can’t hear God when He is talking to them is because we are so distracted. There is so much noise and distraction in this world. We tend to have music on in the background, or the TV on, just for the noise. When we sleep we have white noise machines, when we are in the car we have the radio. When we are waiting in line we are playing a game on our phones. We can’t hear God because we never have any time when are brains aren’t already busy doing something else, listening to something else, and concentrating on something else. What if we changed that? What if we decided to have some part of our day where there was no other noise, no other distractions. I know some of you are thinking that you are so busy, you don’t have time to add one more thing like meditation into your schedule.
I am not talking about meditation and I am not talking about adding anything to your schedule. I am talking about just sitting in silence for a few minutes. Look at your schedule, what are you already doing that you could do in silence? Do you have a commute sometime in your day? Do you spend some time in the car? Instead of listening to music or sports radio, could you ask the Lord to speak to you and then listen to what he has to say? Maybe at lunch time, if you eat lunch alone, you could ask God to talk with you during lunch? Maybe you could ask God to talk with you in the shower? It doesn’t have to be where you go to church sit in the correct pew and ask God to talk. He will talk to you anywhere you invite Him to talk to you. We are looking for progress not perfection. Just ask and He will answer.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to hear your voice, please help us. Please help us to believe you will speak to us. Help us believe you want to speak to us and you are just waiting for us to listen. Show us where in our lives we can make time daily to listen to you. Help remind us to ask you and listen to you when things get hard and also when things are great. Help us to trust it is really you talking to us. Meet us where we are Lord, just as you always do. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. My book is for sale on my website right now. If you buy from my website I will write a personal message and sign it before sending it to you. Click Here for the book and Click Here for my website in the show notes. I also want to remind you that I send out a weekly newsletter with one of my podcast episodes, the most popular ones, and also an update on what is going on in my life. When you sign up you also get an audio training on how to invite Jesus into your everyday life. Click Here to sign up for the Newsletter! Thank you for all your support, I really appreciate it! I look forward to meeting you hear again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed weekend!
How Can I Stay On the Right Path?
Psalm 119: 9-11 “How can a young person stay on the path of purity? By living according to your word. I seek you with all my heart; do not let me stray from your commands. I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.”
I love this verse because it asks a question and then gives an answer. I also love it because I am someone who loves to get direction. I am not someone who likes to cook without a recipe, or someone who does well with recipes that say, “a dash of this,” or “salt to taste.” I like step by step clear instructions. I suspect that has something to do with me wanting to do everything the right way. There is a right way and a wrong way to do many things and yet there are also plenty of things that don’t have a right and wrong way to do them. God has been trying to teach me this lesson for a long time and I am a very slow learner with this lesson. A lot of the time there is not just one right way to do something and as long as you are getting it done, the how doesn’t matter as much.
I know this and yet I still want to “do it all the right way.” I think this comes out most when doing things for the Lord. I want to get it right. I want him to be delighted me. I am always searching for answers on what God is calling me to do, and what God wants from all of us. So, this verse is great for me because it asks a question, tells us the answer and then reinforces what was just said by repeating it in a different way. I also like it because it deals with a problem we have probably encountered, how can a young person say on the path of purity? If we have children then we have asked ourselves and hopefully God this question many times. We just want our kids to stay on the straight and narrow. This verse doesn’t just apply to our kids, or the young people in the world, it is for all of us and it is great advice.
Lets look at what it says, “How can a young person stay on the path of purity? By living according to your word.” This is great, we have our answer. We just have to live according to God’s word and we are all set. Does anyone else hear the answer to that question and just get more questions? Questions like which words from God, where do we find these words from God? I often think it would be great if there was a step by step guide to living my life. Just tell me exactly what to do. God does actually give us direction on how to live our lives. God started way back when Moses led the promised people out of Egypt. God knew his people had developed some really bad habits while they were living in Egypt so He gave Moses the 10 commandments to help guide them in their day to day lives. We are lucky enough to have the benefit of these commandments to help guide us in living our lives too!
Another place we can look in the Bible for direction in our lives is the Proverbs. The Proverbs give us great direction and definitely teach us some things we should do and those we should not do. For instance Proverbs 29:13 says, “Those who conceal their sins do not prosper, but those who confess and renounce them find mercy.” This instructs us not to conceal our sin. We should confess our sin and repent and then we will find mercy. That is a great one as the enemy tries to convince us we are better off if we don’t tell anyone what we have done. Then the shame sets in and it starts to eat us alive. The enemy tells us we will never be forgiven. However, if we listened to this proverb and just came right out and confessed it and repented then we would be forgiven and we would have no need for shame.
Proverbs 1:8 says, “Listen, my son, to your father's instruction and do not forsake your mother's teaching.” This is another great one that many of us realize too late in life. When we are little we don’t want to listen to our parents and then when we are teens we decide that our parents don’t know what they are talking about. They tell us something and we do the opposite because we are sure they don’t know what it is like to be a teen. We are sure they have never experienced the things we are experiencing. We see them as adults and forget they needed to pass through the teen years just as we do. I have heard that when children get to about their mid 20s they start to come around to asking their parents questions or for advice. We could all save ourselves some heartache if we just listened to this proverb and listened to our mothers and fathers. They are only trying to protect us.
I asked some questions earlier and I want to make sure to answer them. Sometimes I ask questions to get us all thinking. They are questions that only you have the answer too. However, today’s questions do have answers. The questions were, “Which words from God and where do we find these words from God?” Which words from God is an easy question to answer, all of them. If God said it in the Bible, God meant it. He did not say anything in the Bible casually. The Bible was intentionally thought out and written by people who were very close to God and were inspired by the Holy Spirit. You can stand on every single word of the Bible. The Bible will not lead you astray.
The second part of the question was where do we find these words from God. One place we just talked about and that is the Bible. There are so many good words in the Bible. If you haven’t read the Bible I suggest you start with the Gospels or the Psalms. Both are good. I also love Acts. If you want to have someone guide you through reading it, I suggest the Bible in a Year Podcast with Father Mike Schmitz, he is amazing and you learn so much! Another place to find the word of God is by sitting and listening. God will speak to you if you give hime the time to listen. If you aren’t familiar with this idea let me first say that usually when God is speaking to you, it will sound like your voice in your heard. This is important to realize because if we are expecting a great big booming voice to come from the sky, we will either be greatly disappointed or we will think He is not talking to us because we aren’t hearing any booming voices. If you need guidance, I mean who among us doesn’t, then you can ask the Lord a question and the sit quietly and He can give you an answer, or some direction anyway.
When you are sitting there listening, whatever comes into your mind, right after you asked the question is usually from God. Don’t question it, don’t try and talk yourself out of it, write it down and pray about it. Listening to God’s word may take some time and some practice as we not to believe that God will talk to us. I guarantee He wants to talk to you, He is just waiting for you to stop and listen. Will we give Him a few minutes a day to see what God, our Father in Heaven wants to say to us? I heard a saying while in my Encounter School of Ministry Boston Campus class and then I heard it again that the School of Prophetic Ministry that we just had. The saying is, “The value you place on the word you receive, determines the power you receive from it. In other words, God can tell you something and yet if you don’t believe it, if you don’t stand on that word, it won’t have power in your life. Don’t just ask God to talk with you and then ignore what He says. Write it down, go back and read it, remind yourself of it when times are hard. If you have received something from the Lord, you can stand on that word as a promise. You can use it as an affirmation or a something you remind yourself of every single day!
The last line of the verse says, “I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.” I didn’t want to end today without pointing this line out. I am sure we all wish we didn’t sin. Sin breaks our relationship with God and who would want that? This verse gives us the answer to our problem of sinning. When we have hidden His word in our hearts then we might not sin against Him anymore. In order to hide His word in our hearts, we first have to know His word. Get familiar with His word, read it, listen to it, memorize it. If we want instructions on how to live this crazy, unpredictable life, all we need to do is turn to the Lord’s word and we will find our answers.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord we want to hear your word, please open our ears, our hearts and our minds. We want to be able to stand on your Word Lord, please help us, show us how. Show us that your word is awesome and can be such a beacon of light in our dark times. Lord, I ask that you speak to each person listening to this episode sometime this week. I ask that they be able to hear what you say to them and that it blesses them. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with Your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. My book is for sale on my website right now. If you buy from my website I will write a personal message and sign it before sending it to you. Click Here for the book and Click Here for my website in the show notes. I also want to remind you that I send out a weekly newsletter with one of my podcast episodes, the most popular ones, and also an update on what is going on in my life. When you sign up you also get an audio training on how to invite Jesus into your everyday life. Click Here to sign up for the Newsletter! Thank you for all your support, I really appreciate it! I look forward to meeting you hear again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed weekend!
I Called To The Lord And Have Been Saved From My Enemies
2 Samuel 22:1-6 “David sang to the Lord the words of this song when the Lord delivered him from the hand of all his enemies and from the hand of Saul. He said: “The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield and the horn of my salvation. He is my stronghold, my refuge and my savior— from violent people you save me. “I called to the Lord, who is worthy of praise, and have been saved from my enemies. The waves of death swirled about me; the torrents of destruction overwhelmed me. The cords of the grave coiled around me; the snares of death confronted me.”
I heard this verse while typing up the minutes for my prayer group yesterday. I was just going to use the first part, the part that ending with “my refuge and my savior —from violent people you save me.” That was where I was going to stop and yet I felt the Holy Spirit tell me to include the next few verses too. The thought came to me, “What if the Lord hasn’t saved them yet. What if they are still stuck in the rough time. They will want to hear the next few lines, they will want to see that David knew real dangers.
I will start at the beginning. “David sang to the Lord the words of this song when the Lord delivered him from the hand of his enemies and from the hand of Saul.” If you don’t know the story of David’s life you should read it sometime, he had a truly fascinating life. Most people know about David and Goliath and maybe that David is the author of many of the psalms, and that’s about it. If you only know about David and Goliath you might think that David has a pretty great life. It seems like if he did something that amazing he would be instantly famous. In today’s day and age he would become and influencer and go all over the world talking about how we can all slay our giants. However, this wasn’t David’s fate.
David killed the giant, and then went back home to tend to his dad’s sheep. One day the prophet Samuel got the word from God that he needed to go and anoint one of Jesse’s sons as the next king. Samuel saw David’s older brothers and thought for sure they would be the anointed ones because they “looked like kings.” God told Samuel that He will not judge by outside appearance but by inside appearance, He will judge by what is in there hearts. David was not home when Samuel first got there to pick a son. Once the Lord ruled out all the other sons, Samuel asked if Jesse had any other sons and they sent someone to go get David. David was now anointed with oil to be the next king.
After being anointed as the next king you would think that David’s life was not going to get really interesting. Maybe he would go to the palace and learn from the present king. You might think that he was to become king right away. Neither of these are what happened. I believe David went back to taking care of his father’s sheep. From the time that David was anointed King to when he became king was 15 years. During that time David went to play the Lyre for the current king, Saul, got banished by Saul, hid in the desert, lived on the run, was forced out of the nation and fought many battles. This was all in that 15 years before David became king. I didn’t intend to go into so much detail about David, and yet I think the Holy Spirit wanted to let us know that life is not linear. It is not that things in life always work out in the timing that we want them too. It is not always moving forward. Sometimes you will get great news, like a job promotion is coming and yet that promotion might be three years in the future. You might pray for God to save you from your current boss and He is, just not yet. You might take three steps forward and two steps back. This is how it was for David. He would have something amazing happen and then nothing. He would be doing great and then find himself hiding in a cave.
I feel what the Holy Spirit is trying to tell us this morning is that this verse is absolutely true. The Lord is our rock, our fortress and our deliverer; Our God is our rock, in whom we take refuge, our shield and the horn of our salvation. He is our stronghold, our refuge and our savior. This is all true and on good days, in good times, we know this, we say this, we tell others this. What about the bad times? Do you still know this? Do we still tell others that God is our rock and our savior when we are in the middle of a really hard time? Do we tell ourselves? Is there a way to rely on the Lord in these hard times?
You might be thinking when you first hear David’s songs to the Lord, as he has many, that David is different because he was anointed. Of course he can rely on God, or course he is taken care of by God, he is anointed. I’ve got news for you my friend, so are you! You were anointed in your baptism as priest, profit and king. David was anointed as king, you’ve been anointed for all three. One thing I really admire about David is that he was never too proud to turn back to God. If you read about David you can see how much he was loved by God and how much he loved God. God loved David and anointed him to be king and yet did not spare him from hardships. David did not have an easy life, he struggled a lot. Just look at how David describes the hard times in his life, “The waves of death swirled about me; the torrents of destruction overwhelmed me. The cords of the grave coiled around me; the snares of death confronted me.”
How many of us know exactly what David is talking about here? How many of us hear that and are brought right back into a really difficult time in our past, or maybe this describes what we are going through right now? This is pretty descriptive language and it lets us know exactly how bad things were for David. It shows us that he did not have an easy life. God loves us just as much as he loved David and yet he is not going to spare us from trial. Trials are where we grow, trails are when we turn to God the most. These trials are what transformed David from a shepherd boy into a king. The same is true for us, for you and me. The trials we go through transform us into the person we need to become.
There is one line in the verse that I haven’t talked about yet and I think it is the key to how David was able to persevere for so long without losing his faith in our Lord God and Savior. “I called to the Lord, who is worthy of praise, and have been saved from my enemies.” David called out to the Lord every single time. We might thing because David was anointed and because he was so loved by God that he was a really good person and didn’t really mess up too much. It was easy for David to call on the Lord because the Lord loved him and because he followed the Lord’s ways so of course the Lord would help him. Yes, David did try to follow the Lord’s ways, just like we do, and yet he messed up a lot, just like we do. One of David’s biggest mess ups that I know of is when he saw a woman bathing while he was on top of his house and had the woman brought to him. She was married and he had his way with her anyway. Then he later found out that she was pregnant and knew that everyone would know it was not her husband’s, because he was a soldier away at war, so he had her husband killed and took her as his wife. Ok, you may have done some pretty bad things, but do they compare to that?
We often think we can’t go to the Lord, we can’t call on the Lord because we have sinned and we are not worthy of His help. This is garbage and it comes straight from the enemy. The reason God helped David so much was because David asked. I believe it is that simple. When David disobeyed the Lord, when he messed up he always repented, said sorry and then went to the Lord to get him out of the situation he found himself in. David knew he could always go to the Lord. He knew God wouldn’t always be happy with him, that is why he repented but he trusted that he could always go to Him when needed. God is there for you too. There is nothing you can do that would cause God to turn his back on you. There is nothing you could do that would make you less loved. There is nothing you can do that would make it so you can’t go to the Father for help. Go to the Lord, look how much trouble David got out of by simply calling to the God.
One last thing I want to remind you of is that praise is so important as well. If you are feeling unworthy, if you are feeling stressed or worried, if you are feeling spiritually empty or dry, praise God through it. When we praise God the enemy flees. He can’t stand to hear us worship God. You don’t have to know the right things to say and you don’t even have to say anything. You can just put on Christian music and listen to the words, let the words penetrate your heart and mind. I know you will feel increasingly better the more you praise the Lord in the tough times!
Dear heavenly Father I ask you to bless all those listen to this episode. Lord, we love you and we praise you. You are worthy of praise. We ask you to be our rock and our stronghold. Lord we ask you to help us turn to you, even when we don’t feel worthy, even when we don’t think we deserve your help. Lord, if we have done something to offend you, please put it on our hearts and please help us to repent. We thank you Lord for always being there for David and we thank you for always being there for us. Help us to see how you have been there for us over the years. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. My book is for sale on my website right now. If you buy from my website I will write a personal message and sign it before sending it to you. Click Here for the book and Click Here for my website in the show notes. Thank you for all your support, I really appreciate it! I look forward to meeting you hear again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed weekend!
Set The Captive Free
Isaiah 61:1“The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners.”
My teacher from Encounter sent this verse to me yesterday. His words in the email where, “We need an army of Christians to live Isaiah 61:1-2!” I had know idea what this verse said, so I immediately looked it up and I agree, we need an army of Christians to live out this verse. The first part of the verse says, “The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me.” This is true for each one of us who is baptized. If you have been baptized then you have received the Spirit of the Lord. If you have made your confirmation you have also received the Spirit of the Lord. Sometimes we think we don’t have the Spirit of the Lord within us because we don’t feel it. We hear verses like this one and we think it is definitely talking about someone else. Be honest, when you heard the verse above did you count yourself out? The Spirit of the Lord is upon you, that is a fact.
The next part of the verse says, “The Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.” God is not talking to everyone else but you here. Whether you feel like you are anointed or not, you are. When we were baptized we were anointed as priest, prophet and king. Being a prophet means it is our job to proclaim good new to the poor. What good news are we proclaiming, hope and love, are what come to my mind. Hope that there is something better out there. Hope that this world is not forever and there is another world that is everlasting happiness. Hope that just because they are in this circumstance right now, doesn’t mean they will be forever. Hope that change is possible. Love, that they are not alone and forgotten, that their heavenly Father sees them and loves them.
The next part says, “He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness the prisoners.” That feels like a pretty tall order and yet it really isn’t because we aren’t doing it alone or with our own strength. How can we bind up the brokenhearted? Who do you know that is really struggling right now? Who do you know that is really sad and misguided right now? What could you do for them? How could you be there for them in their time of need? Next it says, proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness the prisoners. Who do you know that needs a little freedom? Freedom from worry, freedom from anxiety, freedom from their past mistakes. Who do you know that needs to be released from the darkness? The weight of bills pilling up, the darkness of mental illness, the darkness of divorce, separation, feeling alone. Even listing all that my mind keeps telling me I can’t help them. Who am I to help them? What can I do, I am just one person? We are not just one person though, we are one person with the power of the Holy Spirit living inside of us and there is nothing that the Spirit of God can’t do.
I get it if you heard this verse and counted yourself out. Who feels qualified to set the captive free and release from darkness the prisoners? How are we supposed to help the brokenhearted? It all feels like too much and we don’t feel qualified.
Even after taking a whole year of classes on the gifts of the Holy Spirit I still don’t feel qualified and yet, I know I am. I am not qualified because of the year I took at Encounter School of Ministry Boston Campus. I am not qualified because of my life lessons. I am not qualified because of my faith. I am qualified because God gave me His hope and His love and He asked me to share it with the world. He asked you to do the same too. We don’t have to know exactly what to say to heal people. We don’t have to know exactly the right thing to say to help people. We don’t have to know the right thing to say to pray over people. We just have to ask the Holy Spirit to come and do it through us. We can ask the Holy Spirit to give us the words to say to those in need. We can just listen and not say anything, sometimes that helps more than talking ever could. People want to be heard, they want to be seen. They want to know that someone cares about them. You can be the face of Jesus to all you meet, not by your own power, but by the power of the Holy Spirit and the grace of God.
Week after week in my prayer group God is asking us to go out and to be His love, His hope, His joy, His peace to others. If we were doing it, He wouldn’t have to keep asking us. The world needs more Jesus now more than ever. I say that although, if you read the lives of the Saints over the years, they always said that. I am not sure if these times are worse than other times, I do know that these times are bad. I know that we definitely need more Jesus. People are starving for His love and His peace. People are also starving for His Word. They are searching for truth and if we aren’t giving it them, others will. I was listening to Father Mike’s Catechism in a Year podcast the other day and he was talking about this famous person who is an atheist. He does not believe in God. This man was doing a show and he went out into the lobby afterwards to shake hands with the fans and take photos. One man waited for others to leave and then went up to him and said, “I know you don’t believe in God, but I wanted you to have this,” and gave him a little form of the Bible, maybe just the Gospels and the Psalms or something. The man took the Bible and was so moved he talked about it later in a live stream or an interview. He said some people might get really upset that this man gave me this Bible when he knows I don’t believe in God. However, I am not upset and I don’t think it is rude. I don’t believe in God. However, if I did, if I truly believed that there was a heaven and hell wouldn’t I do anything to make sure others knew about it? Wouldn’t it make sense that I would want to save all those I could from an eternal life in Hell? What can we do to make sure others know of God’s love, His peace, His joy, and His hope? Are we spreading His message around? Are we living our lives as a living testament to Jesus? When people see us, do they see Jesus?
I have told you that God is telling us each and every week to be His face to the world. Here is just one of the many directives we received from Him. “I have promised, and I have given you my Spirit. I do not renege on my promises or hold back my Spirit from you. Let your light shine for me. There is enough darkness in the world. Let the light that is within you from me shine on others. Be not afraid to speak words of hope, love, and peace. Be my witnesses to the love that I have to give to them.” God is not asking a lot from us. He is not asking us to go out and travel the world spreading His love. He is asking us to be his Love, Light, Hope, Peace & Joy to those around us. He is asking us to live our lives in a way that others will see us and want what we have. The peace, love, hope and joy of the Lord is contagious. If we have it and live in it, others will want it. When they do, when they come and ask about it, give the glory to the Father. Point them to the Father. Show them that they can have what you have if the turn to the Father.
We can do this. We can do it together. We can be there to support each other as we tell those around us that Jesus is awesome. Also, I feel I need to say, if your immediate loved ones don’t want to hear how amazing Jesus is, that is ok. Live in His light and it will shine on them too. It might not be your job to bring them to Jesus. Maybe God has another plan for them. All we can do is pray for them and keep shining God’s light on them by letting it shine brightly through us. Rest assured that God has a plan for them. Also, believe that if you are out sharing God’s love with those around you, then someone around them, someone they will be able to hear it from, will share God’s love with them too. I know it may be scary and yet it doesn’t have to be. All we have to do is say yes to God and He will give us all we need to do anything He is asking us to do.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask that you show us where in our lives we can help spread your light, your love, your peace, your hope and your joy. Show us who in our lives is open to hearing about you. Show us how we can set the captives free. Show us how we can bring your light into their darkness. Show us how we can bring the good news to the poor. We feel inadequate Lord, please help us. Please fill us with your strength. Please remind us that we have the power of the Holy Spirit living inside of us, the same Holy Spirit Jesus had inside him. Remind us we are not alone, we are not doing this alone. Remind us you are with us and the Holy Spirit can tell us what to do if we just ask and listen. We love you Lord, you are amazing. We thank you for giving us the Holy Spirit. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. My book is on sale on my website right now. If you buy from my website I will write a personal message and sign it before sending it to you. If you are following me on Facebook, Catherine Duggan, I did a live video yesterday with the link in the comments. Click Here for the book and Click Here for my website in the show notes. Thank you for all your support, I really appreciate it! I look forward to meeting you hear again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click here. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed day!
This morning when I got up I was not sure what I was going to witness about. I thought perhaps Tony’s friend who is in the ICU and has had several miracles over the last 20 days. However, something was holding me back so I prayed about it and I felt like the Lord wanted me to talk about how we have been blessed with so much support over the years. We had our first child, Sam, 19 years ago in the country of Turkey. We had been living there just about 2 years and we were moving back to the United States a few weeks after we had Sam.
At the time we were in Turkey you could either have your child at a Turkish hospital or you could do something called Stork Nesting, where you would go to Landstuhl in Germany at about 36 weeks and stay there so you could deliver your baby at an American hospital since they didn’t have one at our base in Turkey. I did not want to leave Tony while I was 36 weeks pregnant and go to Germany so we decided to have our first baby at a Turkish hospital. We had taken a tour and it looked like a good hospital. We knew several people who had babies there and had a good experience.
My water broke exactly on Sam’s due date in the middle of the night. However, I wasn’t having any contractions, so we went to Tony’s work and called people back in the states to let them know that today was the day. We went back home and got ready to go to the hospital. We had a nurse friend who told us by 7 am to go to the hospital even though I wasn’t having contractions. We went to the hospital and the doctor started me on petocin to get the labor started. Once it was time they took me into to the room to have the baby and Sam wouldn’t come out. They had to do a c-section after trying a few different things. Sam was born and he was beautiful.
The next hurdle was to figure out breast feeding. I had read in books that there will be people at the hospital to help you if you have trouble. My nurse at the hospital was a 19 year old girl who had no idea about breast feeding. Luckily the base had a breast feeding counselor and once I got home she was able to come and help me figure it out. The military has a tradition of brining meals to a family if they have just had a baby, or someone is in the hospital, or if one of the parents is away for a while. It was so nice to not have to worry about cooking and trying to take care of this little baby.
God was so good to send the perfect people into our lives over the years. We happened to be really good friends with a nurse and had two other nurses next door to us. One day when they were visiting they said Sam’s eye looked like it had too much gunk in it. We were told his eye might be goopy, so we didn’t think anything of it. However, when they saw it they told us to take him in to be seen. Sure enough he had some infection in his eye and needed ointment. Tony and I were both first time parents, we were so nervous as he was just a little baby and the doctor told us we would need to pull down the bottom part of his eye and put a thin line of ointment. Tony and I both shouted “Not it.” at the same time. The doctor looked at us and said, “you know one of you has to be it, right?” We explained we were just nervous and so he was so kind and demonstrated it for us. Sam didn’t cry at all and we saw that it was super easy.
We were in NJ when we had our second child, Noah. Well, I was in NJ, Tony happened to be in Colorado for a class. He was coming back in a few days. When I was thinking about writing about Noah’s birth I wasn’t even thinking about how God orchestrated the events leading up the birth so that I wasn’t alone in the operating room. We had a planned c-section with Noah. He was going to be born on All Saints Day, November 1st. That was one week before he was due and they like to schedule c-sectioned earlier than your due date.
Tony had a class he had to go to in Colorado and he had made sure we had a back up person to help out in case he was gone. The only thing is that she was busy from October 14-19th because she was away on a retreat. My sister Elizabeth and her husband and young daughter, along with my older sister Dianne decided to come visit for a few days. They were only coming down for three days, they were visiting from October 17-20th. They were supposed to get there on Monday afternoon and yet hit traffic and came in Monday night. I had an event that night on base so I say a brief hi to them and then went to my event on base. That night we hung out and watched TV together.
I couldn’t sleep that night I was having some sort of pain. I thought it was gas pain but in the morning I decided to go to my doctor’s office just to have it checked out. Tony happened to call when I was there and the doctor told him I was fine. I wasn’t having any contractions and all was good. Then she did an exam and noticed I was a bit more dilated than she thought so she sent me to the hospital just to be checked out. She told me she was sure I wasn’t having the baby today. Luckily my sister Dianne had driven me to the doctor’s office. By the time we got to the hospital, which was about 5 minutes away, my contractions were so strong I couldn’t walk into the hospital.
The doctor came in and told me I was having this baby today. I wanted to wait for Tony but he was in Colorado and wouldn’t make it in time. My sister Dianne agreed to come in the OR with me for the c-section so I wouldn’t be in there alone. Dianne did not want to have any children of her own, so it was neat that she got to be in the OR with me while I gave birth. She got to be the first person to hold our son Noah and that was really special. I was still recovering from the C-section and waiting for the sedation to wear off so I didn’t get to hold him right away. Next thing we know he is under the warming lights and the nurse said he was breathing different. They took him to the NICU and I didn’t get to see him for over 24 hours.
Tony came in that night and went to see Noah. We didn’t have a name at that point because we were deciding between Noah Alexander and Patrick Holden. I didn’t know what he looked like, I only saw him briefly. The next day I tried to go visit Noah but when I stood up I felt dizzy so the nurse wouldn’t let me go. I think I tried twice before I was able to go see him. He was so sweet. He was not really gaining weight and they wanted to put a feeding tube in but we asked them to hold off and I fed him. He was eating but it was talking him a long time. We decided to do breastfeeding every other meal and bottle feeding on the alternates meals. This way he could get more rest after he bottle fed.
It was hard to see Noah in the NICU and yet we knew God was with us. At one point they said if he didn’t gain a certain amount of weight by a certain time then they would put in a feeding tube, and he did gain the weight. We were able to avoid the feeding tube. God was there every step of the way with Noah. Every test he had to pass in the NICU he passed with flying colors. I believe he was in the NICU for 9 days. Those were very long days and yet we were blessed because he wasn’t very sick and we knew he would be ok. The same is not true for every baby in the NICU. God was there with us and also sent people to help take care of us and take care of Sam. My mom and dad came down to keep an eye on Sam when Tony and I were in the hospital. We would both sleep at the hospital for the first several days. When we went to every other feeding we went home to sleep as there was another couple who needed the room we were using. Our friends brought meals again so we didn’t have to worry about food and my parents didn’t either.
The birth of our third son was a planned c-section and my parents were in town to help watch Sam and Noah while we were in the hospital. This birth went off without a hitch. Everything went as planned and we stayed in the hospital just a few days to recuperate from the C-section and then headed home. Our family was complete.
God is so good. He has been with us throughout each of the pregnancies and through all of the births. I know they all worked out as they were supposed to and God sent so many good people to be there for us and to help us when we needed it. Sometimes we don’t realize that our friends, family and co-workers are a gift from God. We don’t realize that not everyone has that support. I think this is why I try so hard to check in with people who I know are struggling. Why I check up after people I know have a procedure. This is why I text and check in to see how those I know are doing. I have been blessed, even though we moved around a lot, to have a great support network. I know that is a blessing and a grace that not everyone has. I also know I take it for granted sometimes and I am grateful for days like today when God reminds me how lucky I am. If you are lucky enough to have a support network, people who look out for you and help you, then I ask you to be that for someone else who might not have that. Who is one person you know that could use a friend, or even just a helping hand, or even just an ear to talk to. Kindness and checking in on people is more important than you think. After writing this I went on a quick run and I heard a song that goes perfectly with Witness Wednesday. I will put the lyrics in the show notes along with a link so you can listen to the song if you have time. The words are so great, if you have time, check it out and maybe think about how we can be more impressed throughout the day with God’s miracles.
Blown Away By Josh Wilson (Click Here to listen)
Yea She's dancing like a crazy fool From the kitchen to the dining room
And she tells me, 'Baby, life is way too short to be too cool.'
She says, ‘
When did we get so serious? Can we just all stop acting unimpressed?'
There's a hundred million miracles in front of us passing by God open my eyes
I wanna be blown away! By your extraordinary grace every ordinary day
Blown away! By your great big love in every little place
I wanna slow down look around God please show me how to stop and be amazed
I wanna be blown away! Blown away!
I want to see a sunset And have to stop and catch my breath
O I never want to forget How you take a dead heart and bring back to life again
Oh! When did we get so serious? Can we just all stop acting unimpressed?'
There's a hundred million miracles in front of us passing by God open my eyes
I wanna be blown away! By your extraordinary grace every ordinary day
Blown away! By your great big love in every little place
I wanna slow down look around God please show me how to stop and be amazed
I wanna be blown away! Blown away!
The Earth is full of heaven 'Cause you're always breaking through
Put the wonder back inside these eyes God, I don't want to miss you
When did we get so serious? Can we just all stop acting unimpressed?'
There's a hundred million miracles in front of us passing by God open my eyes
I wanna be blown away! By your extraordinary grace every ordinary day
Blown away! By your great big love in every little place
I wanna slow down look around God please show me how to stop and be amazed
I wanna be blown away! Blown away!
I Am Doing A New Thing!
Isaiah 43:18-19 “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.”
I chose this verse because it made with think of the Chosen and it also made me think about what we talked about a lot in Encounter Ministries, which is a Renewal of the mind. In the Chosen people are always saying Jesus is doing things in a new way. It’s like He is teaching similar stuff to what they already know and yet He is saying it in a completely new way. There are shirts with sayings on them from the Chosen and two of them are “We are not what we were,” and “Get used to different.” These shirts show us that after you have encountered Jesus, truly encountered Him, you are not the same, and that is a good thing.
I wanted to look up the meaning of this verse just so my thoughts on the verse didn’t override what the verse was actually saying. I am glad I did because I was focusing mostly on the words, “I am doing a new thing!” This was what made me choose this verse because Jesus was doing a new thing during his 3 years of ministry. He was doing and saying things that people hadn’t done or said before. He was not afraid to speak the truth, the harsh realities to everyone and yet he spoke them with love. He spoke them in a way they could actually hear them and be changed by them. Do we let the words we read in the Bible change us? I was thinking this type of renewal of mind is what God was talking about in this verse. However, after reading more about this verse, I think it is about a renewal, but maybe not exactly what I was thinking.
The first part of the verse is saying, “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past.” God does not want His people to focus on their past. Sometimes we can get stuck focusing on our past and where we have been instead of looking ahead to where we are going. I don’t think it was just about the problems they had in the past, I don’t think God wanted them to think about how He had helped them in the past either. The next verse says, “See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?” God is telling them He is going to help them in a different way than He has helped them in the past. Do you know why it is important to tell them this?
Have you ever been expecting things to look a certain way and when they don’t you dismiss them? What if you were so sure God was going to save you in the same way He did last time, that you missed the help He sent this time? There is a parable of a drowning man that I think illustrates this idea. A fellow was stuck on his rooftop in a flood. He was praying to God for help. Soon a man in a rowboat came by and the fellow shouted to the man on the roof, “Jump in, I can save you.”The stranded fellow shouted back, “No, it’s OK, I’m praying to God and he is going to save me.” So the rowboat went on. Then a motorboat came by. “The fellow in the motorboat shouted, “Jump in, I can save you.” To this the stranded man said, “No thanks, I’m praying to God and he is going to save me. I have faith.” So the motorboat went on. Then a helicopter came by and the pilot shouted down, “Grab this rope and I will lift you to safety.” To this the stranded man again replied, “No thanks, I’m praying to God and he is going to save me. I have faith.” So the helicopter reluctantly flew away. Soon the water rose above the rooftop and the man drowned. He went to Heaven. He finally got his chance to discuss this whole situation with God, at which point he exclaimed, “I had faith in you but you didn’t save me, you let me drown. I don’t understand why!” To this God replied, “I sent you a rowboat, a motorboat and a helicopter, what more did you expect?”
This might be a silly parable and yet I think there is some truth to how we think or behave at times. Sometimes we think we will know how God will save us, or how He will give us help. Sometimes we are so sure we are right that we might miss out on what He really wants to do for us. In one of the witness Wednesdays I talked about how Tony had been wanting to get out of the military for awhile and yet nothing was panning out for him. Then out of the blue he needed to get out of the air force and the perfect civilian job opened up for him. It didn’t look like the answer he was looking for and actually, he had stopped looking for any answer. He had decided to stay in and was ok with that idea. However, God knew where his heart was and although the method God took was not ideal in Tony’s eyes, the outcome was greater than we could have imagined.
This verse is for each one of us. “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.” God does not want us dwelling in the past. It is ok to briefly look back at the past to see how far you have come and to make sure you don’t make the same mistakes again, and yet we aren’t meant to stay there. Our focus should be on where we are going? How will we ever get there if we are always looking back and never looking forward? Also, hear God when He says, “I am doing a new thing!” He is speaking this to you and to me. He wants to do a new think in your life, let Him. Be on the lookout for this new thing. If you are looking, you will find it.
The last sentence in the verse is for some of you in particular today. You need to hear this today and although I thought I chose this verse for all the reasons I already listed the Holy Spirit is telling me He chose this verse so you could hear this today. “I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.” God is wanting you to know that He is making a way in the wilderness for you. He is making streams in the wasteland. I know if feels like there is no way forward, I have been there. I know if feels impossible to see how you will get out of this situation. I have been there too. The answer is, God is making a way. It is ok that we can’t see the way because God doesn’t have to follow a path, He can make a path. He can do miraculous things to get us out of the completely ordinary and normal trouble we find ourselves in. He loves us that much!! He loves you that much! If you are in the middle of the wastelands right now, if you feel like you are in the wilderness, know that the Holy Spirit picked this verse just for you and He wants you to know God is making a way through it all!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to see you in our everyday. We thank you for doing something new and we ask you open our hearts and minds to see the new thing you are doing. Lord, we thank you for making a way where there isn’t one. We ask you to help us to keep believing that this is possible and that you will get us through this. Also, Lord, please take away this worry and this stress. Help us to focus on you instead of our problems. Lord, we love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you all for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I wanted to let you all know that I am running a special on my book. If you order from my website, findingtruenorthcoaching.com or you CLICK HERE, then I will write a personal message and sign the copy before I send it to your house. If you didn’t know I wrote a book, it is a book that explains the various ways that I grew my trust in God to a point where I now know when I am in trouble, He will take care of it for me. I worry so much less about things because I know He is in control. If you would like the same, check out my book. It’s called Total Trust in God’s Safe Embrace. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Is He Crazy?
Hebrews 11:30 “By faith the walls of Jericho fell, after the army had marched around them for seven days.”
The story of Joshua and the walls of Jericho always makes me laugh because I wonder what the army must have thought about his plan. You can read about it in Joshua 6. I will read you the beginning part where God was talking to Joshua 6:1-5, “Now the gates of Jericho were securely barred because of the Israelites. No one went out and no one came in. Then the Lord said to Joshua, “See, I have delivered Jericho into your hands, along with its king and its fighting men. March around the city once with all the armed men. Do this for six days. Have seven priests carry trumpets of rams’ horns in front of the ark. On the seventh day, march around the city seven times, with the priests blowing the trumpets. When you hear them sound a long blast on the trumpets, have the whole army give a loud shout; then the wall of the city will collapse and the army will go up, everyone straight in.”
I think about how sometimes I feel the Holy Spirit prompting me to go pray over someone and yet I don’t because I am afraid of what they will think and yet Joshua walked up to his army and the priests and told them they were going to walk around the walled city for seven days and then the walls were just going to fall down. Can you imagine how that must have sounded to those who were listening? What kind of battle strategy is that? I wonder if he was nervous telling the people what God told him? I know they lived in a time when God’s presence was with them more visibly. However, the people going into Jericho were not the same people that crossed the red sea on dry ground. They are their descendants, so I am sure they heard the story of what happened but none of them, except Joshua and one other man were there when it happened. I wonder if God prepared the people’s hearts and minds to hear this plan?
I guess I didn’t really think of that before. The fact that if God is asking us to do something, then he probably prepared the hearts and minds of those involved. If God is asking me to pray over someone, that person probably won’t say no. God probably wouldn’t send me into a situation where they would say no, unless maybe if He was trying to teach me humility. Joshua’s faith is the fourth kind of faith I wanted to talk to you about today. Joshua had faith to do what God told him to do even when it seemed crazy. It doesn’t say in the Bible that Joshua argued with God. It doesn’t say that He hesitated to do what God told him to do. It just says what God told him to do and then he did it. He did it even though he didn’t understand it. He did it even though I am sure many people thought he was crazy.
What is God calling us to do that we are avoiding, or arguing or hesitating to do because it doesn’t make sense and it makes us look crazy? Often times God will have you step outside of your comfort zone. Have you watched the series “The Chosen?” If not, you should, it is so good! In this show, the apostles are constantly being asked to do things they don’t know how to do. They are being asked to do things they feel foolish doing. People didn’t just go around talking about God and healing people. Until Jesus, that wasn’t something that was seen. However, when Jesus came along it was ok if he was healing people as he was the Messiah. Then Jesus sent his 12 apostles out 2 by 2 to go out and talk about God and to perform signs and wonders. They had no idea what they were doing and I am sure they felt as if people would look at them funny. There is something called imposture syndrome. It is when you are doing something and yet your inner voice, your inner critic asks who you think you are to be doing this things. Your inner critic tells you that you aren’t good enough to do what you are doing. It tries to cast doubt on you and your abilities. I am not sure they knew what imposture syndrome was back then, but I am sure the apostles had it.
I am sure they felt like they were not qualified to do the things Jesus was asking them to do. If the apostles on the show are any indication of how the real apostles felt, they definitely felt insecure. They definitely felt like, “Who are we to do God’s work?” You may be feeling like this too. Who am I to be called by God? Who am I to pray over someone? Who am I think God is asking me to do this crazy thing? Who you are is a child of God. God asks us to be obedient, even when He is asking us to do something out of the ordinary. Many of the Saints were asked to do things that made them look crazy. People told them they were crazy or they were imaging things, especially the people that had apparitions of Mary. Many people told them they were crazy and they didn’t really see what they knew they saw.
If you feel as though God is calling you to do something, step out in faith and do it. If you want to be obedient and yet you really aren’t sure it what you are hearing is from God or not, ask a friend to discern it with you. Ask them to pray about it and see if they get a confirmation. You can also talk about it with a priest or a spiritual director. God does call us out of our comfort zone and yet He also gives us all we need to do the thing He is asking us to do. If you feel you need confirmation, He will give you confirmation.
What is God calling you to do that you are afraid to do? What is He calling you to do that you think seems foolish? What if you did that thing anyway? What if you did it scared? What if you did it looking like a fool? What if Joshua had been too afraid to look like a fool in front of the Army? What if he decided to try to take the city his own way? Do you think it would have worked? Do you think it would have been as easy as marching around the wall for 7 days? God’s way is always the best way. Even if we feel foolish doing it.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to follow you, we want to be obedient to your calls, help us. We want to do as you ask, even if we will look foolish. We want to trust that what we hear is from you, help us. Help us to have the faith of Joshua and to step forward in trust. We love you Lord, you are truly amazing. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I just want to give you a head’s up that next week I will be selling autographed copies of my book. I will write a personal message to each person that buys a copy from me and I will mail it to your house. It will be $13 for the autographed copy and then $4.00 for shipping and handling. I will put a link for this in the show notes starting next week. I just wanted to let everyone know what was coming. I look forward to meeting you here again on Monday! Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed weekend!
God Will Provide
Hebrews 11:17-18 “By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had embraced the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, even though God had said to him, “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.”
This morning I saw something that I hadn’t seen before. Almost every paragraph in Hebrews 11 begins with two words, “by faith.” I also didn’t realize how many different people the chapter talks about. I am not sure I will cover all of them, but I will do a few more. I also discovered, when reading most of the chapter this morning, that the chapter begins with a definition of faith. I thought this would be a good thing to share with you as well. The definition can be found in Hebrews 11:1, “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” I think this is particularly important when we talk about today’s verse.
God asked Abraham to offer Isaac, his only son, the one that God promised Abraham and Sarah they would conceive, even though Abraham was about 100 and Sarah was about 90. God had said to Abraham, “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.” Yet, God is asking Abraham to sacrifice Isaac now. This must have been confusing to Abraham. Let me read you Genesis 22:1-19 “Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!” “Here I am,” he replied. Then God said, “Take your son, your only son, whom you love—Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you.” Early the next morning Abraham got up and loaded his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about. On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. He said to his servants, “Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.” Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together, Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, “Father?” “Yes, my son?” Abraham replied. “The fire and wood are here,” Isaac said, “but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” And the two of them went on together. When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. But the angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!” “Here I am,” he replied. “Do not lay a hand on the boy,” he said. “Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.” Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called that place The Lord Will Provide. And to this day it is said, “On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided.” The angel of the Lord called to Abraham from heaven a second time and said, “I swear by myself, declares the Lord, that because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.” Then Abraham returned to his servants, and they set off together for Beersheba. And Abraham stayed in Beersheba.”
I know that was a lot to read and yet I thought it was important for everyone to know the story of how Abraham was tested because we might all have times when we are tested. Has God ever asked you to do something and you really didn’t understand why? Has He asked you to do something which seemed to contradict something else He already told you? God told Abraham that he was going to use Isaac to build a nation of Abraham’s descendants and then God told Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. That must have been confusing, and yet as you see above in Genesis 22:8 Abraham says to Isaac, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” Abraham had faith that God would provide a lamb for the burn offering. He had faith even though God told him his son was to be the burnt offering. He had faith even though he didn’t have any idea what was going to happen on top of that mountain. Abraham had faith that He and Isaac would both be coming back down that mountain and yet he wasn’t sure what he was going to experience on that mountain. He told the servants in Genesis 22:5 “Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.” He didn’t say I will come back to you, he said we will come back to you.
I think this is amazing. I wonder how Abraham could be so sure that God was not going to take his son. Then when I think about it I realize that Abraham was able to have that trust in God because of two reasons. First, he knew God. I mean really knew God. He was close with God, and he knew the kind of God he is. Abraham knew that God was against child sacrifice. He knew he did not agree with other god’s requiring child sacrifice. Second, Abraham knew that God always keeps his promises. He knew that if God said that through Isaac his offspring would be reckoned then it would happen just as God said. This must have been how Abraham knew they would both come back down the mountain. However, that doesn’t mean that Abraham knew he wouldn’t have to sacrifice his son. He might have thought he had to sacrifice him and then God would bring Isaac back to him. We don’t know what Abraham was thinking from moment to moment.
This story of Abraham and Isaac is the third type of faith I wanted to talk to you about this week. This is a faith that God will find a way through even when you don’t see one. I am sure Abraham did not understand how he could sacrifice Isaac and yet Isaac would still be alive to have all these offspring. He didn’t see a way and yet he trusted their was one. The same can be true for us. We don’t have to understand how it will happen. We don’t have to know the plan, we just have to be obedient to what God is calling us to do and God will work the rest out. I feel it is important to remember that God may test us. He asked something of Abraham that was big and required a lot of faith. Maybe he is doing the same to you.
What if we looked at each challenge in our lives as a test of faith? How would you look at things differently if you thought like this? Would it change how you viewed the situation? For instance, if you have a loved one in the hospital, or at home and yet they are very sick. Would it change how you prayed if you looked at the situation as a test. Remember the definition of faith is “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” I love this definition. Can we be confident in what we hope for even when we don’t see a way to get it? Can we be assured it will happen when we don’t see how it will happen? I have been told that hope is not as easy as I think it is. I know hope is not easy and yet, what is the alternative? Do we just give up on our dreams so that we don’t get disappointed? Do we stop believing it will happen because it hasn’t yet, because it seems hopeless, because it hurts less to not hope? I don’t know, only you can answer that. For me, I am going to have hope. I am going to keep hoping even when it hurts because what if this is the test? What if God just needed me to have hope for one more day and I gave up a day too early? I don’t know if that is a thing, but what if Abraham had said no. What if he had hope and faith until he got up on that mountain and then when it was time to put Issac on the wood he said no? We don’t know what would have happened, only God knows that. We don’t know because Abraham didn’t say that. He kept the faith the whole time. You can too.
I know it is painful when we hope for things and they don’t happen, and I don’t have an answer for that. I hoped, I had faith, I prayed for my friend Iris to be cured of cancer while she was here on earth and yet God healed her in heaven instead. I prayed, I hoped, I had faith that God would raise my friend’s husband after he passed and He didn’t. I know it can hurt to have faith and hope and then not get what we hoped for. I also know so many more instances where I had confidence in what I hoped for and assurance in what I could not see and God did come through. I had hope, even though it was hard, and God worked his miracles in ways I will never understand. When you are struggling to have hope, look to Abraham. When things don’t make any sense, when you are confused, when things look impossible, look to Abraham and have faith in God anyway. God is for you, not against you. He can find a way, He can make a way. Nothing is impossible for God. Move forward In Faith!
Dear Heavenly Father I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to have faith, please help us. Help us to have the faith of Abraham. Help us to know you in the deep and intimate way that Abraham knew you. Help us to trust the lives of our loved ones in your hands just as Abraham did. Give us the strength, the courage and the faith to say yes when you ask us to do things that don’t make any sense to us. We love you Lord, we know you are good. We know you are for us and not against us. Help us to say yes more often. Help us to have hope, even when its hard. We are so grateful for all you do and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click here. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed day!
He Said Yes Even Though He Didn’t Have All The Details
Hebrews 11:8 “By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going."
Abraham is the second person I want to talk to you about this week. He is the second example of faith. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Abraham you can read about him in Genesis 12. I will read you a brief part from Genesis 12:1-3, “The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” Man, wouldn’t you love to have a conversation like that with God? God makes some pretty great promises to Abraham in this verse. “I will make you a great nation and I will bless you.” That is a pretty good deal. However, Abraham had to do something in order to have these things that God promised him. He had to leave everything and everyone he knew.
I bet all of us would want this blessing and yet I am not sure any of us would want to do what Abraham had to do. How many of us would want to leave everything and everyone we knew to head out to an undisclosed location? God told Abraham he was going to “the land I will show you.” He didn’t show him ahead of time. God would show him when he got there. This means, as the verse above says, “By faith, Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he didn’t know where he was going.” Would you like to head out on a journey not knowing where you are going?
My husband Tony retired from the Air Force. For the first 15 years of our lives together we moved around every few years. The Air Force tends to move their officer’s every 2-3 years. The hardest part about the move is the not knowing. There are a few months when you know you are up for an assignment and you even get some idea of what places are available for you to move to. However, you don’t know which one you are moving to until about 2 months before you have to move. That part where you know you are leaving and you don’t know where you are going is the hardest. Once you know you kick into moving mode and you are busy learning about where you are going, when you are going, and then your packing and moving. Before you know where you are going you are stuck in limbo. You can’t really be excited about going because you don’t know where you are going and yet you can’t really act like nothing is changing as you are sad you are leaving your friends.
I think in any situation, the hardest part is the unknown. Even if we aren’t talking about moving. If you have a sick loved one, or if you are sick, the hardest part is the not knowing what is next, or if you will get better, or how long the sickness, the pain, the discomfort will continue. Abraham did not know where he was going and he said yes any way. God asked him to leave everything for this promise of a better life and Abraham said yes, with no other details. I wonder how many of us would do the same? I wonder how many of us would head out to an undisclosed location? He had to not only leave his father’s house, not only leave his country, but leave his people too. Abraham was married at the time he left. I wonder how his wife felt about leaving everything before they knew where they were going? I wonder if it was hard to persuade her to go? I wonder if she understood what was going on?
Sometimes when we feel God asking us to do something, our family doesn’t understand. They didn’t hear the same thing we heard from God. This can be really hard at times. I said earlier, “wouldn’t it be great to have a conversation like that with God.” God is wanting to have these conversations with us, it is us that is not listening. We are the ones that are not entering into these conversations. When we do enter in, God calls us to do something and we want to have all the details before we move. We want to know every detail about what we need to do and what will happen when we do. God wants to give us the first step and we don’t take it unless we know the next 20 steps that come after it. Don’t feel bad if you are listening and you are feeling as if I am talking to you. I am talking to myself as well.
I feel as though God has asked me to plan a retreat this summer and I have so many questions for Him. He keeps telling me He will give me more info once a book the place and I keep asking for the other details now. Abraham did not have the details ahead of time. Although it doesn’t say if he asked God for more details. It doesn’t say if he sat with the request for a while getting up the courage to go. It just says that God told him to go and he went, by faith.
Abraham is definitely one to look up to if we are struggling with faith. God told him if he went great things would happen and so he went. God is telling us the same thing, we just aren’t listening. God is trying to tell us that if we take that step He is asking us to take, greater things will happen for us. God is calling us to greater things and yet we need to step out in faith. What step is God calling you to take that you are afraid to take? What step is God calling you to take and yet you keep asking for more information before you take that steps?
I have a friend who has really been growing in her ability to listen to the Lord. She had a dream in December that was so vivid and she knew God was calling her to be a substitute teacher at the local school. She always said you couldn’t pay her enough to teach other people’s children and so she laughed when she had this dream. However, she was obedient and signed up to teach. She knew this job was only until the summer and then didn’t know what she would do next. Now God is calling her to move to Nebraska and help out at a retreat center and a different Encounter Ministry Campus. She does not know much more than that and yet she said yes. She doesn’t know the timing, she doesn’t know where she will live, she doesn’t have all the details and yet she is trusting that God will give her that information when she needs to know, what a beautiful example of faith.
What if we stopped fighting with God, stopped questioning God and just said yes? What if we stopped waiting until we had all the answers and just moved forward in faith? What if I said yes, I will plan that retreat, and just found a place, not knowing all the details? What if you said yes to what He is asking you to do? I know it might be scary to say yes without all the details, but if God is calling you to do it, He is going to give you all you need to accomplish it. He will never leave you alone! He will never abandon you! I got a word of prophecy last night and I think God meant it not only for me but for all of you too! The word given to me was that God is always with us. He goes before us, He comes after us, He is right beside us. We are covered in His protection and no one can hurt us because we are His. Trust that He is there with you and that He will be there every step of the way. Step out in faith, knowing He is right beside you.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you and we thank you for speaking to us, even when we don’t listen. We thank you for being patient with us and for continuing to ask us to do things even when we are afraid to take that step. You are such a patient and loving God and we are so grateful. Lord, we ask for an increase in faith and trust so we can take that step without having all the details. Please help us to grow in our ability to hear you and our ability to do as you ask. Help us give you our “Yes" Lord! We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Today is our 500th episode together and I am so happy I am not on this journey alone. I am happy we are learning and praying together. Everything is more fun when we get to do it with friends! I look forward to meeting you here tomorrow for another witness Wednesday. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Things Not Yet Seen
Hebrews 11:7 “By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family. By faith he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that is in keeping with faith.”
My friend Louise was leading prayer group on Thursday and she did a teaching on Hebrews 11. As she was talking I felt like the Holy Spirit was showing me several different things in this chapter. I felt like this would be a good chapter to spend some time in as it shows several different examples of faith in several different circumstances. Each day this week I will take a different verse from this chapter and we will look at the circumstances the people find themselves in and how their faith grows because of these circumstances.
In today’s verse we have Noah. In case you are listening to this and you don’t know the story of Noah, let me take a minute to explain. The people who lived when Noah lived were not a God fearing people. They worshipped other gods, they participated in child sacrifice and were a perverse nation. God wanted to destroy the earth and start over again. However, there was one righteous family. Noah & his wife and they had a few sons. God asked Noah to build an arc that would keep his family safe from the flood that he intended to send. He gave his very specific directions and dimensions for this arc. He wanted Noah to build an arc that would not only keep his family safe, but he wanted him to also bring on board at least one female and one male of every land animal on earth.
At the time that God told Noah this, the place where Noah lived had not gotten rain in a very long time. There was no earthly reason why Noah would need to build an arc. It definitely didn’t make sense to him or to his family. However, Noah built the arc and saved his family and all the animals. The verse above says, “By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family.” That first part is the first kind of example I want to talk to you about this week. It says, “By faith, when warned about things not yet seen.” When have you been asked to have this type of faith? When has God warned you about something that was coming but you didn’t see it yet? When has he asked you to do something and yet you really don’t understand why? Has this happened to you before? Have you felt like God wanted you to do something and yet it didn’t seem to make any sense to you?
This can happen to us in big ways and small ways. You might feel like God is asking you to call someone or pray for someone and yet you don’t understand why. You might be asked to give someone money, or loan them your car and yet they didn’t even ask you for it. You might feel God is asking you to quit your job and move back home, and yet it doesn’t make sense to you. You don’t understand it because this request came out of left field. In all of these circumstances you feel God is asking you to do something before you see the need for it. It would be easier to understand if you saw the need. It would be easier to understand if you saw the why first. If you had someone come and ask you for money then it would be easier for you to understand why God was asking you to give them money. If you saw that someone was without a car then you could understand why you felt led to let them borrow your car. And yet, that isn’t how God works sometimes.
What just occurred to me, thank you Holy Spirit, is that sometimes God does it this way because then the Glory is His. If we walk up to someone and ask them if they need a car, when they do, but we had no way of knowing that, then it points them to God. When someone needs $50 for gas and someone else gives the exactly $50 without them even asking, it points them to God. If they asked if we had money and we gave them money, that would be nice of us and it would be a good thing, and yet it wouldn’t necessarily point them to God. Even with them getting exactly what they needed without asking, sometimes it doesn’t point them to God. Sometimes they chalk it up to a coincidence. However, if they get enough coincidences, they will start to look for something bigger behind it all and they will find God.
Back to Noah, he can be a great example of how to live out this kind of faith. He didn’t understand, it didn’t make any sense from an earthly view and yet he did it anyway. The verse says he built the arc out of a holy fear. This doesn’t mean that he was so scared of God that he built this arc because he didn’t feel like he had any other choice. It doesn’t mean that he built he arc out of fear of consequences from God for him or his family. Holy fear is a fear that comes from love. It is less of a fear and more of an awe or reverence toward God. Noah was in awe of God and I am sure he was grateful that God was willing to spare him and his family. That is a pretty big honor, especially since they were the only family saved.
I know it can seem like God is asking more from you than you are capable of doing. I know that you feel like God maybe has a little too much faith in you at times. They say God will never give us more than we can handle and we wonder if God over estimates us at times. I heard someone say that quote a bit differently. They said, “God never gives us more than He can handle.” That feels a bit more accurate at times because there is nothing God can’t handle. When you feel overwhelmed, when you feel like God has asked you to do more than you can handle, take a moment to think of all that God asked Noah to do.
God asked Noah, when he was 500 years old to build and arc and it took over 100 years to build this arc. I have trouble finding the energy to wash my dishes some days and Noah was over 450 years older than I am. After building this arc, he needed to fill it with at least one female and one male animal of each kind. I cannot imagine it was easy to get all those animals on the arc with out them eating each other. Imagine taking care of all those animals for 150 days while the earth was flooded. I mean, how do you clean out the stalls of lions?
God asked a lot of Noah when he asked him to build this arc. He asked a lot of Noah and his whole family when he gave them the task of repopulating the entire world. God asked a lot from them and yet he didn’t leave them alone. He gave them the strength they needed to accomplish all he set before them and He will do the same for you. All God needed from Noah was his “yes” and God can do the rest. All God needs from you is your “yes” too! He is asking for your yes, even when you don’t understand. He is asking for your yes, even when it doesn’t make sense. He is asking for your yes even when others might say you are crazy. He is asking for your yes even when you feel it is too much. All He needs is your yes and he will give you all you need to accomplish all He has asked you to do. Will you say yes?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, please help us to say yes even when we don’t understand why. Help us to act even when you are asking us to prepare for things not yet seen. Help us to have faith in you Lord. Help us to trust that if you are asking there is a good reason. Give us the strength and the grace to say yes even if we don’t feel we are good enough. Help us to say yes even when we feel we can’t do it. Lord, we love you and we thank you for trusting us even though we don’t deserve it. Thank you for using us in your plan even though we aren’t worthy! We are so grateful and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I. Have a blessed day!
I Will Take Refuge In The Shadow Of His Wings
Psalms 57:1 “Have mercy on me, my God, have mercy on me, for in you I take refuge. I will take refuge in the shadow of your wings until the disaster has passed.”
What struck me about this passage when I first read it was the last line. “I will take refuge in the shadow of your wings until the disaster has passed.” The thought that came to my mind was, “Wouldn't it be nice to just rest in God’s shadow until the disaster has passed?” I thought about all the people I know right now who are in situations that feel like they are a disaster. I have a friend who is in a legal battle with a family member over money. Tony has a co-worker who is in intensive care fighting for his life. I have a family member who just found out she has cancer. Another friend’s husband found out he is going blind. I got a text from a friend today who asked for prayers for her brother who went to the ER today because he was having seizures. I could go on and on. It seems to be never ending.
When I think of all of them, I can see how this verse applies to them. The beginning says, have mercy on me, my God, have mercy on me, for in you I take refuge. I can see them crying this out to the Lord. I am crying it out for them in my prayers. I am begging God to have mercy on them. I am begging God to please not let Tony’s co-worker pass away. Please have mercy on him. Please don’t leave his kids without a dad and his wife without a husband. Please let my family member’s cancer be stage one and easily removable. Please have mercy on my friend’s husband and miraculously cure his eye sight. Please stop the seizures my friend’s brother is having and please heal any damage that might be a result of the seizures. Please God, have mercy on me and my loved ones. Please God, have mercy on them and their loved ones.
The verse says, “For in you I take refuge.” To take refuge means to go to a safe place. When we are struggling, as so many of us are today, we can go the Lord, He can be our safe place. He can be the place we go to and we rest. The ending of the verse says, “I will take refuge in the shadow of your wings until the disaster has passed.” When I hear this I get two images. The first one is of a giant eagle. This eagle is taller than any person, but not so giant that we are tiny in comparison. This eagle is standing up tall and proud and we are there tucked under his giant eagle wing. It is as if he is hugging us and we feel warm and safe there. The second image is us just falling asleep under the protection of His wings until the disaster has passed.
When something awful is happening in our lives a lot of times we want to pretend it isn’t happening. Life is easier that way. We wish we could just stay in bed until the bad parts of our lives are over. Technically we could do this, some people do this, and yet, I don’t think any of us would be happy with those results. Unfortunately, avoiding the disaster and trying to sleep it away will not change the fact there you are going through something really hard right now. I have a friend who is really struggling because her daughter is not talking to her and her daughter is about to turn 18. Her daughter is going to graduate and she doesn’t get to watch her walk across that stage. My friend does not even want to get out of bed in the morning some mornings, and who can blame her, I wouldn’t either. However, my friend does get up and she does still do the things that are required of her. Not because she wants to and not because she has to, but because she has taken refuge in the Lord. She knows where her strength comes from and no one can take that away from her. She is strong and she knows she is a beloved daughter of God and that makes all the difference in the world.
When we are going through really difficult time we can take refuge in God. We can hide under his wings and He will protect us. I like the image I get when I hear this verse because we are asleep in the Father’s arms/wings and He is just holding us there until the disaster goes away. How great would that be. How great would it be to just hide away in a safe place until all this mess was over? While we can’t literally hide until the mess goes away, we can place our troubles in the hands of our Lord and then give Him permission to take care of them for us. We can hide in His shadow while we wait for the miracle that He has planned for us and for our loved ones.
We just have to hold on. We just have to turn towards the Lord instead of away from him when we need him. We just need to rest in his shadow and continue to say, “Have mercy on me, my God, have mercy on me.” If you are going through a disaster right now, I want you to know you are not alone. There are so many of us who are struggling right now. I also want you to know that I am praying for you and your family. I am praying God has mercy on you and your loved ones. I am praying you are able to find refuge in God our Savior. I am holding onto hope for you. Take refuge in the shadow of His wings until the disaster has passed. This disaster will pass, I promise you that. You will make it through this. God is there with you, even when you can’t feel Him. He is there, right there with you. Rest in Him!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each person listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to rest in you, please help us. Lord, have mercy on us and on our loved ones. Please do this miracle for us. The one we keep asking for, the one we really, really, need right now. Yep, that one, the one that seems impossible. We know you are God of this impossible. We know you are the Way-maker and you make a way where there isn’t one. We know these miracle would be simple for you and so we are begging for your mercy Lord, please help us. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you hear again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
God Is In The Practical Things Too!
James 1:5 “If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.”
I read this one and I really liked it because I think wisdom is something that we might not think to request from God. I think we all feel pretty comfortable praying to God when we are sick or when a loved one is sick. I don’t know if it is because we know God can heal people or if it is because we know there is nothing we can do and so we hope God can do something. I think we tend to go to God as a last resort. We try to solve things on our own and then if we can’t we turn to God. Why do we save him for last?
God can do anything. He created this whole Universe, he can surely help us with whatever it is we need help with. Yet, we don’t always think to ask him unless it is something we know we can’t do ourselves, like heal a sickness. It’s interesting because when you have to rely on God for more, you see him more. My husband and my boys didn’t really see a lot of miracles from God when our kids were growing up. Luckily my husband had a great job and he is really good with money. We never really struggled with money and my kids never lacked anything with regards to food, clothing, roof over their heads. We always had great medical insurance. We were blessed with being able to live in other countries and travel to see things. I am grateful that we didn’t have to struggle with those things.
I am grateful and yet at times I wished we did have to struggle. I know that probably sounds strange and I understand why it sounds strange. Why would anyone want to have to struggle? I don’t think I truly wanted to struggle, I did want the faith that comes with having to struggle though. I wanted my kids to be able to see that God will always provide for us. I wanted them to know that God would always be there to take care of their needs. My parents struggled when I was growing up. I mean they had 11 kids to take care of and my dad had a great job and yet money only goes so far. Imagine paying the mortgage, electric, and heating bills for a house that fits that many children. Imagine the food bill and then the clothing and the shoes. Think about how much it costs for you to have one child play a sport, do dancing, or theatre and then multiply that by 11.
My parents sacrificed a lot to have all of us kids. There were months when they had to decide which bill they were going to pay and which one could wait until next month. My mom was constantly on the phone with the bill collectors telling them she could send $5 a month or whatever it was she had. I know it was hard on them and I don’t wish that on anyone. And yet, I do wish everyone could have the faith that they have that God would take care of what they needed. The knew without a doubt that they could call on Him for big things and small things. They knew He would help with practical things, like food and a car, just as much as he would heal my sister of a mysterious illness.
I know, and God knows, that I didn’t really want to experience the pain of not having enough, but I did want to the faith that comes with it. I feel the Holy Spirit is pointing out to me that although I did not have to worry about resources like food, shelter or clothing, I did have to struggle. My boys were pretty difficult at times and I did learn how to trust that God would be there in all the different ways. I had to trust that God would save my child from being hit by a car when he would run down the middle of the street. I had to trust that God would save my children from each other when they were at their worst. I had to learn to trust that God would not let my children take their own lives. I did have plenty of ways to build my trust, and you do too.
Maybe you don’t have such drastic things in your lives, but we are all struggling with something. What causes you the most struggles and how can it help you trust God more? Has your faith grown because of those struggles? Can you look back at the past few years and see how God was there for you in the struggles? For me, I can look back and see that God places the perfect people in my life at each and every base where we were stationed. I was never alone. I may have felt alone in my house, but I always had really good friends that would listen to me, they would build me up and they would support me. They would also take the boys when I needed a break, or they would take me away for the weekend and Tony would keep the boys. God also provided me with a strong Catholic Woman’s group, or the strength to start one if there wasn’t already one. If you are not part of a Christian woman’s group or men’s group, you should find one. I cannot tell you the strength you get from seeing other’s living their faith. It is incredible.
God can use your struggles to help build your faith, you just have to let Him. If you look closely over your struggles you will see Him there. You will see He has always been there and He will always be there! Getting back to this verse in particular, it says, “If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.” I wanted to share with you a quick story of a time when my dad really needed some wisdom and he got it! My dad got a call from work one day from my mom. She told him that one of their neighbors was upset with him because my dad had talked to his girlfriend about going back to church again. Once she started going back to church she decided she couldn’t be with her boyfriend anymore. I am not sure the exact circumstances for the breakup but that is why the man was mad at my dad. My mom told my dad that the man said he was coming over tonight as soon as my dad got home from work to beat my dad up. When my dad drove up to the house, he saw the man waiting for him in our front yard and all the neighborhood kids, including my siblings, standing around to watch the fight.
As my dad got out of the car he started praying to God for wisdom for this situation. He prayed that God would tell him what to say. He prayed God would give him the words, and He did! He walked up to the man and said, “I know you want to punch me and I understand why. I know how much you are hurting inside and if punching me will take that hurt away then I will gladly accept that pain.” Or something to that affect. Then he closed his eyes, bracing for the punch. Instead the man started crying, my dad gave him a hug and they went inside and talked for a few hours. My dad knows there is no way he would have come up with that on his own. He asked God and God came through, just like He always does! I wish we all stopped to ask God what we should say before we said it. Imagine what a kinder place this world would be if we all just stopped and asked God what we should say, or if we should even say anything, before we said it?
If you take one thing away from this episode I hope it is that God is in the practical. You can ask God for wisdom. You can ask God for help making your decisions. You can ask God to find you a new place to live. You can ask God for the huge healing miracle you need. You can ask God for food or for money to pay your bills. You can ask God for anything. It doesn’t have to be big, it doesn’t have to be something you can’t do on your own. God isn’t just for last resort types of prayers. He wants to be in everything with you! Invite him in to the ordinary of your day. Ask Him for the practical things you need and you will be surprised how He shows up. Look for Him and you will find Him!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to look back and have the Holy Spirit open our eyes so we can where you were through all of our struggles. Help us to see that you were there the whole time. Help us to give you permission to use our struggles to build our faith. Help us to turn to you, not just for the impossible things, but for the practical things as well. We love you Lord, you are so incredible. You are there for the big and the small. Help us to see this Lord. Help us to truly know this and help us come to you more. Help us to remember to consult you when we have a difficult situation and we don’t know the words to say. We are so grateful to have you on our side Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed day!
Cincinnati City Wide Healing Service (Click Here)
Brighton Healing Service (Click Here)
We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click here. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed day!
Stand Firm In Your Freedom
Galatians 5:1 “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.”
We have been talking a lot about freedom this quarter in my Encounter Ministries class. This quarter was on inner healing and I learned so much. I learned things I didn’t even know I needed to learn. It was amazing. I had heard that this quarter would probably be the most transformational because as we learn these various tools to set people free, we practice using these tools on each other. So, instead of just getting the book knowledge of how the tools work, we got first hand knowledge and began the hard work of healing our inner selves. Although the amazing thing with these tools is that it isn’t really hard work because we let the Holy Spirit lead us and we go where he wants us to go. It is not a lot of hard work on our part to try and figure everything out. It is a process of asking the Holy Spirit, Jesus or our Lord the questions and letting them answer them for us. It is pretty remarkable.
This verse goes so well with the theme for this quarter. Inner Healing is all about freedom. It is freedom from our chains that keep holding us down. It is freedom from all the memories that keep us stuck in our past. There could also be people that we have unhealthy attachments to that could be keeping us stuck. All of these things can be barriers for the freedom that Christ wants for us. The verse above says that Freedom is why Christ has set us free. Christ died on the cross to set us free from our sins and yet we still aren’t free when we let all this other stuff weigh us down and trap us.
There are so many ways in which we can let ourselves be burdened by the yoke of slavery. Some ways we bring upon ourselves and some we don’t. We may not even be aware of many things that have to do with inner healing. Many times when something happens to us, we create lies about that situation. We are not aware of these lies, the are formed in our unconscious. These lies start to influence our thinking and our actions even though we aren’t aware of them. I heard an example of this woman who told her mom something about her day when she was younger and her mom yelled at her. The girl didn’t do anything wrong and the mom apologized later. Her mom was having a really bad day and the young girl caught her at a bad time. Even though the mom apologized later and the girl understood that her mom didn’t mean to yell, her daughter’s brain still told herself a lie that “my mom doesn’t want to hear about my day.” Without even realizing it she started to believe this lie and stopped trying to talk to her mom about her day. Do you see how sneaky the enemy is. He just comes in and whispers these lies to us and we start to believe them.
That would be an example of something that happened and we were’t really aware that it had happened. Another example of this would be soul ties. A soul tie is an inordinate attachment we create with another person that limits our freedom. Whenever we give our heart to someone that does not deserve it, that person receives authority over us and we become tied to that person. This could be in a romantic relationship or a friendship, it could also be with a family member. Did you ever feel like you just could not stop thinking about someone, even though you knew they were bad for you? You probably formed a soul time with that person. The good news is that through the power of the name of Jesus, we can break the bonds of our soul times and the Lord can restore authority over our lives. This is another way we can gain freedom.
The past few examples were ways that we might have become burdened by the yoke of slavery without even knowing it. There are also several ways we can knowingly become burdened. One big one of these for me is the stupid television. I would love to say I was free to turn the TV off anytime I want to. However, I don’t think this is true. In theory I can but in reality, I get sucked into the show I am watching and I can’t turn it off. I tell myself I will turn it off after one episode and then I sit there for hours and watch it even though I really want to be doing something else. That is not the freedom that Jesus died on a cross for.
Another way were burden ourselves is by doing something we know could be addictive. The only time you really have a choice if you will use drugs or alcohol or not is at the very beginning. After that you are addicted and you no longer have the freedom to say no. You body needs it, it craves it and although you don’t want to do it anymore you don’t feel you have a choice.
Another example of when we are choosing to give up our freedom is when we choose to indulge in the desires of our flesh. This could be a wide variety of things from eating all the cake we have ever wanted to having an affair. When we choose to do this we are not choosing to live in the freedom that Jesus earned for us. The verse says, "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” We are told to stand firm in our freedom. This means when we can, we need to choose freedom. Jesus didn’t die for our sins so we could continue to be held captive.
Take a look at your life, all aspects of your life. Are there ways you are allowing yourself to become burdened by the yoke of slavery? What areas of your life have more control over you than you have over them? Does you calendar run your life? Does the TV schedule have more control over you than you would like? Do your children have control over you? Are addictions running your life? I think it is important to look at our lives and see where we are allowing things other than God to be in charge of our life. If we do find areas where we are not free we need to turn these areas over to God and allow Him to come in and take control. I know some of these will be easier than others. I know if you are suffering with an addiction it may seem like there is not able to get control and with your own power, you aren’t. However, with the power of the Holy Spirt you can do all things.
We need to remind ourselves that we are more powerful than our wants and desires. Just because we want something doesn’t mean we have to have it. Just because we feel a strong desire to sit and watch TV doesn’t mean we have to. We have the Holy Spirit living inside of us and that means we have a power that is beyond any power the enemy has to tempt us. We just have to come into agreement with that power and start using it. The enemy wants us to think we are weak and we have to give into our desires and yet it knows we are stronger than that. The enemy knows the power we have inside of us, and yet it just keeps acting as if we don’t have any power at all and we tend to come into agreement with that lie instead of relying on the immense power we have. We are strong and Jesus died so we would be able to live in freedom. Let’s learn to live in that Freedom Jesus wanted for us.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to live in the freedom you want for us. Help bring into light any areas in our life where were are not free. Show us how to become free in those areas. Show us what things need to change in our lives so we can be free and live a free life. We love you Lord and we are grateful you sacrificed you son for our freedom. We are sorry we don’t always live in that freedom. Help us to live that way more and more each day. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
We Are All Part Of The Communion Of Saints
1 Corinthians 12:26 “ If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it."
I am listening to the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) podcast with Father Mike this year. The last two years I did the Bible in a Year and this year when he started this one I thought it would be a good one to listen to. The Catechism is basically a rule book for the Catholic Church and I am definitely a rule follower. Also, I have a lot of friends that are not Catholic and they wonder why we do a lot of the things we do, or why we believe a lot of the things we believe. I don’t want to have to say, that is a good question, I have no idea. I love to learn why we believe what we believe. I did not really expect it to be too interesting. I mean, if you read the terms and conditions booklets of any of your appliances you wouldn’t think that was interesting reading. However, I was wrong, I am loving listening to the CCC. It’s not just a list of rules, it explains exactly what we believe and why we believe it. I am learning so much from it. It really is beautiful.
I came across this verse the other day when listening to the CCC and knew I wanted to share it with you. I am sure I have heard this verse before. I agree with this statement. If one person in your family is suffering, you all suffer together. If one person is honored you all rejoice together. This makes sense. I can see how this is true. Think about a time when someone in your family was suffering. Did your whole family suffer with them? What about when they were honored, did the whole family rejoice? I know this is how our family works. Not too long ago my sister sent a text message that her son was accepted into one of the top High Schools in the United States, and we all rejoiced with her. Another sister found out she is having medical problems and we all suffered with her. I am sure you will be able to think of many examples in your own family as well.
I learned from listening to the CCC that we are all part of the communion of saints. We are all members of the body of Christ. We are members of the communion of saints and that means that what we do is for everyone, it's not just for us. The CCC says, “In this solidarity with all men, whether living or dead, founded on the communion of saints, the least of our acts done in charity redounds to the profit of all.” Whenever we do something good, it is not just for our grace, it’s not just for our good, it is for the good of the whole communion of saints, for the whole body of Christ. Father Mike put it like this, “Every good thing we do, even the smallest thing is for the community. If you're homebound right now, if you do nothing in the sense that the world would say that's productive or that's important, if you simply unite your prayers and your heart to Jesus and your suffering to Jesus that doesn't just help you and purify your heart it helps the entire body. If you just offer that suffering up in love and say, “Jesus use the suffering, take my suffering and use my suffering that doesn't just make you holy or sanctify you, it helps everyone. There is no such thing as private virtue or grace, it belongs to all of us.
This was really inspiring for me to hear. What are your thoughts on it? The reason I think it is so inspiring is two fold I think. First, it lets me know that I am part of something bigger than myself. I am part of a community, we all are. Sometimes the world can feel like a scary and lonely place. Knowing we are part of a communion of saints can help us feel less alone. The second part of it is that it helps me see what I do matters. It matters if I pray because my prayers, as small as they may be, are building up the whole body. My good deeds, are not just my good deeds they help everyone. It makes me realize I am not just part of a community but I also have a responsibility to do my share in that community.
As inspiring as I thought this first part was, the CCC goes onto say in the very next line something that is pretty convicting. It is something that really makes you think. It says, “Every sin harms this communion.” This is not as inspiring and yet makes you stop and think. It makes sense. If we are part of a communion of saints and everything good thing we do builds up this communion, then it would make sense that every bad thing we do tears down the communion of saints. It makes sense and yet it is not really something we want to think about. We like think about how much our good deeds help everyone else out because it makes us feel good and yet thinking about how our sins affect others is not something that makes us feel good.
Father Mike said there is no such thing as private sin. There is personal sin, sin that I have done on my own, but there is no such thing as private sin because our sin belongs to everyone. In the same way that our good deeds build up the church, our sins tear down the church. Our sins weaken the entire communion of saints. Wow, that seems like a lot of pressure. I think it does us good to know this information though. I think knowledge can be powerful at times. I feel as if knowing that every good thing I do, doesn’t just purify my heart, but it helps to purify everyone’s hearts, will encourage me to do more good things. I also feel as though knowing my sin isn’t just my sin but that it affects the entire community, may encourage me to sin less, or at least try harder.
It’s an interesting fact I have been learning over these last few years about people. Often times we will show up for others in a way we won’t for ourselves. For example, you say you will work out each day but then you hit snooze and don’t get up. However, if you set a time to meet someone at the gym, you will show up more consistently because you don’t want to let the other person down. I am not sure why we do this, but we do. Knowing this about people, I think the information above could help us. If we can’t manage to sin less for ourselves, maybe knowing that our sins are affecting others will be just the thing we need to motivate us to try to sin less. Also, if we are struggling to pray, or do acts of service, maybe knowing others benefit from our good work will be just the motivation we need. How about you, does knowing this information change anything for you?
Dear Heavenly Father, I pray that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to spend some time thinking about this concept today. All of our good deeds build up the whole body of Christ and all of our sins damage the body of Christ. We can either see that as a lot of pressure, or we can see it as the motivation we needed to try and live a good live. We can think of this every time we do something kind or something to build our faith. We can also remind ourselves before we sin, that it is not just us we have to worry about, we are part of something bigger. Also Lord, help those who struggle with feeling alone know that they are not alone, they are part of the communion of saints. We are never alone. Lord, we thank you and we love you. You are truly amazing. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Our Children Need A Personal Encounter With Jesus
2 Peter 1:12-15 “Therefore I intend always to remind you of these qualities, though you know them and are established in the truth that you have. I think it right, as long as I am in this body, to stir you up by way of reminder, since I know that the putting off of my body will be soon, as our Lord Jesus Christ made clear to me. And I will make every effort so that after my departure you may be able at any time to recall these things.”
This week we have been talking about this whole section of 2 Peter 1. We have covered 2 Peter 1:3-15. To give you a quick summary of the previous verses, God has given us everything we need for life and godliness through His divine power. Then Peter tells us we need to supplement our faith with a list of qualities, these are listed in 2 Peter 1:5-7 which says, “For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love.” Then yesterday we learned that these are the qualities that keep us from being unfruitful or ineffective with our knowledge of the Lord. Those who lack these qualities are nearsighted and blind and have forgotten that they were cleansed from their former sin. If you would like to explore these verses more, please go back and listen to the previous episodes #489, 490 & 492.
I think today’s verse is a beautiful example of how Peter took care of his fellow followers. Peter knew these qualities were important. He knew if his brothers lacked these qualities they would be nearsighted and blind and he didn’t want that for them. I also love that he is encouraging them. He explains to them that he knows they already have these qualities and they are already grounded in the truth. He goes on to say that as long as he is alive he will keep reminding them of how to live so that when he is no longer around they will remember. I am sure they were learning so much at the beginning. Everything Jesus was telling them was new to them. Jesus was giving them a renewal of the mind and this is important for all of us.
Peter could see how important it was to hear things over and over again. We don’t usually remember things after hearing them the first time. We learn best through repetition. Also, it was good that Peter could prepare them for the day when he was no longer among them. I am sure it was a lot for Peter to think about how they were going to do without him there. I remember reading about when Jesus knew His time was coming to an end He would get frustrated with the disciples and ask them, “How long will I be here with you?” (Matthew 17:17) It sounds like Peter was worried as well that they might not remember all they had learned after he left. This is a concern I think we all have.
Peter’s concern might be on a greater scale as he was in charge of shepherding the entire Catholic Church and yet we still worry that those we are in charge of will forget all we have taught them. We don’t even wait until we are about to die to worry, we worry they will forget when we are still alive and yet not living with them. We are afraid when they go out into the world they will forget all we taught them. We worry for them. Even when they are adults, we worry for them. My oldest is barely an adult, so I don’t have a lot of experience in this area but I have talked with a lot of other moms who have grown children and they say we never stop worrying about them.
I think Peter shows us a great way to shepherd our children in this verse. He reminds them of what is important and then explains why it is important. He also encourages them and lets them know they are already doing a great job. I think it is ok to remind our kids of the important things we want them to remember and yet I also think it is important to not remind them too often. We absorb so much when we are children. The things you felt were important for your children to do when they were growing up, they will remember. My kids don’t always have the best manners at home, however, they have great manners when they go out because we emphasized that when they were young. As much as I think it is good to remind our kids of things, I think we also have to be careful we don’t do it so often that we make them feel like they are doing it wrong or that they don’t remember how to do it. I think we need to have a little faith that we were actually good parents and they did hear the things we said, even if it didn’t seem like they did.
One difference between the brothers that Peter is talking to and our children is that the brothers Peter is talking with are eager to grow closer to God, they are eager to learn all they can about God, many times, our children are not. If this is the case, I feel we need to tread lightly. We want our kids to carry on the faith when we pass away and yet they seem to have no interest. In this case, it wouldn’t be beneficial to constantly be reminding them of all the things you have taught them over the years. You have taught them, they heard you and yet they don’t want to access that information right now because they don’t see how it affects their lives in any way. I think if we want to reach our children, young or old, the best way will be through a personal encounter with Jesus. This is not something we can orchestrate for them, however, this can give us something specific to pray for them. When they are going through a hard time, we can ask for God to use their difficult time as an opportunity for them to encounter Jesus in a personal way.
If we constantly remind our kids of everything we have taught them over and over again they will feel as though we don’t think they learned anything. They will think we don’t think they are smart enough to remember it. It’t not that I think we shouldn’t mention God or Jesus or the Holy Spirit to our children, I definitely think we should. However, I think if we are constantly nagging them our our beliefs they might close a door to God because they are tired of hearing about him. I know God is capable of overcoming any obstacles and I also know it would be easier if their hearts weren’t hardened to Him because we shoved our beliefs on them over and over again. I think there is a happy medium somewhere and we can stay at that happy medium until God answers are prayers for that personal encounter with Jesus for them. I think the important thing to remember is to never give up hope that they will come back to God. He is a miraculous God and He won’t let your kids be lost. He will leave the 99 to go and find them!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help those we are responsible for teaching to have an open heart and an open mind when we are teaching them. Help them to understand that when we are reminding them of things it is because we love them and we want them to remember them. We love our children Lord and we ask that you help each and every one of them to have a personal encounter with Jesus. We know you will save our children Lord, we know you will leave the 99 to bring them home. We ask you to give us patience and perseverance as we wait for your timing Lord. We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to seeing you again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed weekend!
Am I Nearsighted and Blind?
2 Peter 1:8-11 “For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall. For in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”
Today is day three where we are talking about the same section of scripture. I didn’t intend to spend the whole week on this one section, but the more I read the more I liked it and when I started to talk about it there wasn’t enough time in one episode to cover all the important things to say. Today I will talk about 2 Peter 1:8-11 and then tomorrow I will finish this section off with 1 Peter 1:12-15. If you are tuning in today and you haven’t listened to the rest of the week, I would suggest you go back and listen to Monday’s and Tuesdays episodes because then you will have a little more context.
To give you a quick summary of the previous verses, God has given us everything we need for life and godliness through His divine power. Then Peter tells us we need to supplement our faith with list of qualities, these are listed in 2 Peter 1:5-7 which says, “For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love.” Right after this is where today’s verse picks up.
Today’s verse begins with “For these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Peter is telling us that these qualities are ours if we want them, and that they are increasing. Peter is calling us to do all we can to add these virtues into our daily lives. He knows we won’t do it perfectly and that is ok, we don’t need to be perfect, we just need to do our best. Peter is telling us that these qualities will keep us from being ineffective and unfruitful in our knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
I think what we have learned over these past two days is that God has given us all we need and yet He doesn’t want us to just sit back and rely on Him to do everything. The article we have been using this week talks about this sort of tension. We don’t grown on our own, we grow by relying on the resources that God makes available to us and yet we also don’t just sit back and do nothing. We need to do all we can to add virtue into our lives, and to stake small steps forward to grow. He goes on to say that we grow by relying on Jesus and by working hard. It is not one or the other. Either we do it ourselves or we rely on Jesus. We can do both, rely on Jesus and at the same time, we keep moving forward.
The next line says, “For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins.” This is an interesting way to look at this as we can all blind to this at times. I think we have all forgotten at some point that we were cleansed from our former sin. Or maybe we didn’t forget, maybe we just find it hard to believe. I mean don’t we all have some sins that we struggle to believe God will forgive? We know He can do anything and yet we still feel like this thing we did was too bad to be forgiven. Actually what just popped into my mind when I was writing that is not that the sin won’t be forgiven, it’s more that we question our worthiness of being forgiven. We don’t feel like we deserve to be forgiven. When we do this though we are saying that we are not sure that Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross was enough. Jesus died on the cross for our sins, all of our sins. His sacrifice was enough to cover whatever we have done. It is not a question of whether we worthy of His forgiveness or not. We certainly are not and yet Jesus died for us anyway. He died for our sins even though we were still sinners. That just amazes me. I feel like if it were me I would want the people to get it together before I sacrificed for them. I would want some sort of assurance that this was not going to happen again, and yet Jesus freely chose to die for us even though he knew we were not done sinning yet, not by a long shot.
The verse ends with, “Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall.” Wow, that seems like a pretty big statement Peter just made. “If you practice these qualities you will never fall.” Imagine what it would be like to never fall? I have no idea if that is even possible and yet I think striving to practice these qualities is definitely worth the possibility of never falling. Next he says, “For in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” Yes please! I would literally like nothing more than to be provided an entrance into the eternal kingdom of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Can you imagine spending eternity with Jesus, that would be so amazing. The Holy Spirit seems to be reminding me that we don’t earn our way into heaven. It is not as if these qualities are a checklist and if we do them, we get to go to heaven and if we don’t, or if we miss one then we don’t get to go to heaven.
These qualities are ways that we can grow closer to God, we can grow in our knowledge of God. They will help change us and change our hearts. When we begin to practice these qualities they will help strengthen us and help us to do the right thing more and the wrong thing less. This is what happens when we grow closer to God, we automatically want to be better people, we automatically want to sin less. Unfortunately growing closer to God doesn’t mean we will never sin again, however, it does make us want to sin less. The analogy that is coming to mind is when you have a teacher in school that you really like versus one you don’t know. If you don’t really know a teacher, if you don’t have a bond with that teacher, you don’t really feel an obligation to do any work or to go above and beyond for them. You probably aren’t volunteering much in class and the class participation isn’t great. However, if you really like your teacher, if you know them well and you both have a relationship, then you go out of your way to help that teacher. You raise your hand, you offer to help out in class, you do the work that is assigned. This is because you don’t want to let that teacher down, you don’t want to do anything to break that connection you both have.
This is the same with God. Once you have a personal connection with Him, once you feel close to Him, you don’t want to do anything to mess that up. You find yourself wanting to pray more, even when prayer used to be a struggle. You find yourself wanting to spend time with Him. I think this might be why Peter is telling us to practice these qualities, they change us and they bring us closer to God.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to want to be close to you. You are calling us to come closer, please open our ears and let us hear that call. Lord, help us to accept your forgiveness of our sins and be open to your love. Give us a desire in our hearts to practice these qualities and also the strength and persistence to keep practicing them, even when it’s hard. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. This week we have been focusing on this one section of 2 Peter 1. Tomorrow I will finish up with this section. I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Article: Created To Grow by Daryl Dash
We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click here. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed day!
How Can I Be More Fruitful & Effective
2 Peter 1:5-7 “For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love.
I choses this verse today because it is the verse that follows yesterday’s verse. This is a continuation or a part 2 from yesterday. We are still in 2nd letter of Peter and he is talking about what qualities keep us from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. We talked about the verses right before this yesterday and one of the things we talked about is how we are granted the divine power through our knowledge of God. Today we talk about what qualities keep us from being ineffective and unfruitful. Who wants to be ineffective and unfruitful? I know I don’t. I love verses like this because although I know I don’t have to do anything for God to love me and I know I don’t have to earn my place in heaven I still like to learn how I can grow closer to the Lord. I love to learn various ways I can become more like Jesus. I like to learn how I can become more effective and more fruitful. If I am loving this then I am sure I am not the only one. This is why when I read verses like this, I get so excited to share them. I love helping to figure out how the can grow in holiness too!
Let’s take a look at what this verse says. The verse begins by saying, “For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love.” Peter is giving us a list of qualities that will help us to grow. Right at the start he says, “make every effort.” Peter is not telling us we have to do this, he is not telling us to stress out about this, he is not telling us we have to be perfect at this, he is telling us to try hard to do it. He is telling us to do our best, to make every effort, to do these things.
The next few lines I will quote directly from yesterday’s article as I feel Daryl Dash gives a good explanation as to what Peter meant by supplementing our faith. “Peter says we’re to supplement our faith. What he means is this: If we really are depending on God’s power to give us everything we need, then this must work itself out in some very practical ways. We must rely on God’s resources if we’re going to grow. And when we rely on these resources, we’ll take some steps to grow.” So, how do we grow? Peter lists some of these steps in this verse. He asks us to supplement the first thing with the second thing in this list.
First, he says to supplement our faith, which is trusting God, which is where it all begins; with Virtue which is moral excellence, which means that we change from the inside out. Yes, we need to have faith in God, we need to trust God and we also need to have virtue. We need to strive for moral excellence. We need to not just say we trust God and then sit back and watch as He does all the work. We need to do our part too. We can begin with supplementing our faith with developing more virtue. Second he says, supplement virtue, again, this morale excellence, with knowledge, which is growth in our knowledge of God. Now that we are growing in virtue we also need to grow in our knowledge of God. These two can actually go hand and hand. As you grow in virtue you will want to grow in your knowledge of God and as you grow in your knowledge of God you will grow in virtue.
Third Peter says, supplement knowledge with self control, which is the ability to restrain ourselves from sinful desires. If I had to pick one that would probably be the hardest for me, I think I would pick this one. I love to grow in my knowledge of God, where I would find it hard is supplementing that with self control. I struggle with self control a lot. I am wondering if it is because I am trying to do it with my own power instead of with the divine power we were given? That is probably exactly the problem. I think most times when we can’t figure out what the problem is, it is most likely us trying to do things in our own strength or on our own time or in our own way. God is asking to grow in our knowledge of Him and at the same time, grow in our self control. Why is this so hard for us? Why do we struggle so much with doing what is wrong instead of what is right?
The fourth thing on Peter’s list is to supplement self control with steadfastness, which is to stay faithful not just for a short time, but over the long haul. This is another hard one. We are a pretty fickle people. We like something or someone one day and then the wind shifts and we no longer like that thing or that person. I can see how these two can go hand and hand though. If you are steadfast with your commitments, if you show up and do them day in and day out, whether you want to or not, you will grow in your self control. At the same time, you will struggle with being steadfast if you don’t have any self control. The rely on each other and they help each other grow. When you grow in one you will grow in the other.
Next the verse says to supplement steadfastness with godliness, which is living a godly life. Remember when I said that self control would be the hardest for me, well, I think I may have to take that back as they seem to keep getting harder the further down the list we go. Living a godly life is definitely not easy. Although I guess it is easier if you are being steadfast and you are growing in your self discipline. I think it is interesting that these are all so interconnected. I just looked up “what does it mean to live a godly life?” as I wasn’t really sure and I found what I think is a great way to explain it. This quote is from Pastor Colon Smith and I will place a link to his article “What’s the Secret to Living a Godly Life” in the show notes in case you are wondering what the secret is. Here is the quote I really liked, “Godliness, a God-centered life, is not a set of disciplines or a system. It is a person. The mystery of a godly life lies in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ who appeared in a body and was vindicated by the Spirit. Jesus Christ is godliness in the flesh. He has lived the God-centered life, and our hope of living a godly life is in him. Jesus Christ is the object of our faith and Jesus Christ is the source of our life.” Isn’t that beautiful? If we want to grow in our godliness we need to look to Jesus, not just as our example of how to live, but as our source of strength to live that way.
Peter goes on to say we should supplement godliness with brotherly love, which is the affection of a family that comes with long familiarity and deep bonds. One definition went on to say, yes you will fight, you will bicker, but if someone tries to bully your family member the brotherly love will show a very powerful side to it. I can see how this could come after godliness as I am pretty sure Peter is not just talking about our families here. I think he is wanting us to treat everyone we meet with this brotherly love. If this is the case it makes sense why it would come after godliness. First we need to look to Jesus and ask Him to help us live the way He lived, and this means loving our neighbors in this familiar way. We definitely need His help to do this as not everyone seems lovable to us. We definitely don’t want to rush to the defense of everyone we meet. We don’t even want to talk to some people we meet and yet those are probably the ones that need our love the most.
Lastly, Peter goes on to say we should supplement our brotherly love with love, which is the virtue that sums up all other virtues. Love is defined in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8a. "Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.” I can see why this would come after brotherly love, that is hard enough and then we supplement it with love. We use the word love a lot in our culture. We don’t usually differentiate what type of love either. We say we love pizza, we love ice cream, we love our family and we love God. There is just one word that has many different meanings, or maybe not different meanings but different levels. I think we would all agree that we don’t love pizza as much as we love God, although with my husband it may be close as he loves pizza. If we can start by loving our neighbors with a brotherly love then maybe with the help of Jesus we can start to love others with the kind of love that it talks about in 1 Corinthians.
Imagine what a different world it would be if were patient and kind to all we met? What if we were not envious or boastful? What is we were not arrogant or rude? Imagine how great it would be to not insist we were right all the time, to not be irritable or restful? Imagine if we didn’t rejoice in the wrongdoing of others but we rejoiced in the truth? Imagine if we were able to bear all things, believe all things, hope all things and endure all things? Can you even imagine how different our lives would be. Just asking those questions has got me wondering how I can do that? What do I need to do to be that person that embodies “love”? What came to mind when I started to wonder how I could do this is to just start with one of these qualities and focus on it. Then when I was doing better with that one, I could move on to the next one. For instance, I could just focus on being more patient and kind for a whole month. Then I could focus on not being envious or boastful and so on. I think I will divide these up into 12 months and then focus on one each month. If you would like to join me, I will give this some more thought on how we can do this and I will include my thoughts in my newsletter. My thought is we could just assign each one to a month of the year and remind ourselves each day that is what you are focusing on for that month. I am excited to see the difference in a year from now if we intentionally focus on loving others better. I hope you will join me and I hope you will check in with me and let me know how it is going? If you would like more info on this it will be in my newsletter. If you are not already receiving my newsletter their will be a link for it in the show notes or you can go to walkboldlywithjesus.com and click on the link for the audio training about how to invite Jesus into your every day activities and that will add you to my newsletter list.
I know this episode is on the longer side and I apologize for that. However, I hope it is giving you lots of great ideas of how to be more effective and fruitful in getting to know the Lord. I had intended to go over the next two verses today as well, but I have kept you long enough. I promise to cover the next two verses on Thursday. Stay tuned…
Dear Heavenly Father I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we are so grateful you gave us such wonderful fathers of the church to teach us. We thank you for St. Peter and all his wisdom. Lord, we ask you to help us grow in all of these virtues. We ask that you show us the way and give us the strength, wisdom and knowledge. We ask that you give us a hunger to live the life you want us to live, not the one we want to live. Lord you are amazing and we love you so much. Lord, for all of those who want to join me in my quest to love others better, to live out the definition of love that you gave us in 1 Corinthians, I pray that you give us the ability to be steadfast with our efforts and to grow in our self control. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Tomorrow’s witness is my new friend Megan. Megan has an amazing witness as to how God worked up stream in ways she had no idea He was working. It’s awesome how God does that, He arranges all things for our good. It is nice when we read that in scripture and yet it is even more real when we see how He does that in our own lives. You will not want to miss her witness tomorrow. I can’t wait to share it with you. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Article: Created To Grow by Daryl Dash
Article: What’s The Secret to Living a Godly Life?
His Divine Power Granted to Us
2 Peter 1:3-4 “His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.”
I really liked this verse when I read it and then the more I looked at it, the less convinced I was that I could explain it well. I looked it up online to see what others said about it and it turns out that a lot of people have talked about it and they don’t all agree. There is one article that I read titled “Created to Grow” By Daryl Dash. (CLICK HERE) The article seemed to explain this verse in a way I could really understand.
I think what drew me to this verse were two different parts. First, “His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness.” I like that He has granted us all things we need for life and godliness. Our call, each and every one of us, is to become a saint. We all have a call for holiness and to hear that Jesus’ divine power has granted us all we need for this is amazing. The second part that drew me to this verse is when it says, “So that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature.” We talked about this in my Encounter Ministries class and it just blows me away. I am blown away with the idea that we may partake of the divine nature. Can you imagine how much God must love us for Him to want this for us, for Him to share this with us?
Let’s take the first part of this verse. His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness. This is not talking about the type of power we have on our own. This isn’t talking about the power we have through our humanity. This is divine power that we are talking about. We are talking about the power that Jesus had. God is giving us this same power. It is a power that never runs out and that is sufficient for all that we need. This is something that can be hard to believe. We often don’t feel like the power we have is sufficient for all that we are going through. I mean we are going through so really hard times right now. Our power seems pretty insufficient a lot of the time. This is because we are trying to do it all ourselves. We are forgetting to invite God into our problems. Also, we invite Him in and we turn our problems over to Him, and then we take them right back. God has given us His divine power and yet we don’t use it. We rely on our own power. Why do we do this? Why can’t we invite God in and let Him help us?
The next part of the verse after it talks about the kind of power we are given, it says how we received it. It says it was granted to us. Do you know what that means? We don’t have to earn it. The article I read compared this to when a student fills out an application for a grant to go to college. If they qualify, they get the grant. They didn’t do anything to earn it and they never have to pay it back. It is just given to them free of charge. This is exactly how we get our power by God. You are a child of God, so you qualify. Therefore, His divine power is freely given to you. We don’t deserve it, we don’t earn, God simply gives it to us because we need it. Just like the student requesting the grant, need is the only qualification.
Next it says what this power covers, “all things.” That is pretty amazing. God’s power isn’t like an insurance policy where they will cover this and that, but not that other thing. God doesn’t say that His power will cover most of what we need, but then we need to come up with the rest. The verse says that His power will cover all things that pertain to life and godliness. There is nothing that is not covered by this power. He give us all we need to live our lives day to day and He also gives us all we need to grown in holiness or godliness. He doesn’t just give us what we need to grow closer to Him, He gives us all we need to grow in all aspects of our life.
Once we can learn this, I mean really learn this and understand it the depths of our heart, life will get easier. It won’t seem so hard. Life may never be easy, and yet when you know with your whole being that you don’t need to be strong enough on your own because God has given you enough of His power for all you need, it feels a bit easier, or maybe not easier, but a bit lighter. Once you fully accept that you are not alone and that you don’t have to do it alone, you can suddenly breathe a little easier. God’s power is enough for whatever it is you are going through. I know you feel like you will be crushed with the weight of your problems some days and yet, God has given you enough power to stand tall under all that weight. I know you have days when you want to give up, don’t, God’s power is right there, just ask for it, just accept it!
The next part of this verse says, “through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises.” When we are trying to grow closer to God the best way to do this is to get to know God. Think about how you grow closer to your friends or your family. Normally you spend time with them, you talk with them and you learn all you can about them. It’s the same with God. You can get to know Him by spending time with Him in prayer. You can spend time with Him talking and then taking time to listen to what He has to say. You can also get to know God by reading scriptures. The more you read the Bible the more you learn about who God really is. God is the same yesterday, today and forever. That means the God of the Old Testament is also the same God as the New Testament, who is also the same God we have today.
If we want to know how God will react in a certain circumstance we can see how He has acted in the past. If you want to know if God will be there for you when things get tough look back at all the ways He has been there for His people in the past. If you want to know what God will do when you do’t have enough money to feed your family look back to how He miraculously provided Mana every single day when His people were in the desert. If you want to know what He will do when you have you back against the wall, your enemy is gaining on you, and you can’t see a way out, read about what God did for the Israelites when the reached the Red Sea and there was no where to cross and the Egyptian army was right behind them. He parted the Red Sea and made a way where there wasn’t one. Then he let that Sea come roaring back to destroy their enemy. Everything you need to know about God can be found in the Bible.
This verse also says “by which he has granted to us His precious and very great promises.” If you want to know what these promises are, you can also find that in the Bible. God has made many promises to His people and He has always kept them. God is not like us. He does not make promises and then break them. I am guessing this is another after effect of the fall, I don’t know, but God does not do that. When He says something He means it and He always keeps His promises. When you read through the Bible and you read something that Jesus has said to the apostles, just know He is saying that to you as well. You can read the Bible as if God is talking directly to you. Sometimes people even insert their name when they are reading the Bible. Especially anywhere where it says God’s people, or where it says the Israelites. The words in the Bible are just as much for you as they are for anyone else.
The very last line of this verse says, “so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.” We are meant to partake in the divine nature. Jesus died on the cross for our sins and when He did that he overcame evil. That doesn’t mean that we will never give in to sin again, but it does mean that we are not slaves to sin. We have a choice. We get to choose if we want to spend eternity with our heavenly Father or not. That wasn’t a choice before and now it is. We escaped from the corruption that is in world when Jesus died for our sins. Jesus has given us a divine power to choose God. We have this divine power that makes us capable of all we need, we just have to access it. We have to believe we have it and exercise it with authority. The good news is we don’t have to do this all by ourselves. We can turn to God, get to know God and the rely on His power instead of our own.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to rely on your power and not our own as we have no power without you. We can do nothing without you and yet we can do all things through you. We are so grateful for the divine power you are granting us. Lord we ask that you put a deep desire in our heart to get to know you more. Lord, we ask that you put a hunger in our heart to read the scriptures and to learn your word. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to seeing you tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Article: Created To Grow by Daryl Dash
Remember What God Has Done For Us
Isaiah 51:15-16 “I am the Lord your God, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar— the Lord of hosts is his name. And I have put my words in your mouth and covered you in the shadow of my hand, establishing the heavens and laying the foundations of the earth, and saying to Zion, ‘You are my people.’”
This was the verse that we used to go with the monthly bookmark that we do monthly at my prayer group. It seemed to go well with the words of prophecy that we received and discerned for that month. We were working on January’s discernment. After reading this verse again this morning I wanted to get a sense of what others said about it. I wanted to make sure I really understood what it meant so I could help you understand what it means. I am glad I did because I definitely would have missed the context of this verse.
The first line, “I am the Lord your God, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar— the Lord of hosts is his name.” This is meant to remind the Israelites of when God saved them from Egypt. However, not so much about how He parted the Red Sea so they could pass through on dry land, this is more to remind them of what happened after they crossed safely. God sent the raging waters to destroy those who chased after them. This is God reminding them that He is there protector and that He is there savior. A few verses earlier in Isaiah 51:12-13 it says, “I, I am he who comforts you; who are you that you are afraid of man who dies, of the son of man who is made like grass, and have forgotten the Lord, your Maker, who stretched out the heavens and laid the foundations of the earth, and you fear continually all the day because of the wrath of the oppressor, when he sets himself to destroy? And where is the wrath of the oppressor? God is trying to remind the Israelites who they are. They are the chosen people of God. They have His protection. Throughout this chapter He is trying to remind them of who they are and that they don’t need to be afraid. They don’t need to be afraid of their enemies, they don’t need to be afraid of anything because God is on their side.
This is a great reminder to us as well. We don’t have to be afraid of the current president, the last president, or the next president. We don’t have to focus on how bad the world around us is getting. We don’t have to focus on all the messes in our life. We need to focus on how God is Sovereign over all of these – He is the Almighty. Everything He wills comes to pass. And God has promised Jerusalem that the day will come when her exile will be finished, and she will return. If God has promised it, then His people can count on it, they can rely on it. God is trying to remind the Israelites that He is the Lord of hosts and if He saved them before He can save them again. I think He is also telling us this too! God rolled back the seas so His people could pass on dry ground and then let them roar again to protect those same people. What has God done in your life that you can look back to and know that you will be ok in this tough time as well? What has He done in the past that proves to you that He will show up in this present situation as well? If you can’t think of something He has done personally in your past, you can look to what He has done in scripture. Hebrews 13:8 says, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” What He has done in the past that He can do again.
The last part of the verse says, “And I have put my words in your mouth and covered you in the shadow of my hand, establishing the heavens and laying the foundations of the earth, and saying to Zion, ‘You are my people.’” This part of the verse is reminding us that we have a part to play in God’s plan. Yes, He is there to protect us and He also wants us to go out and spread His message to all those we meet. He doesn’t want us to sit around and worship Him and praise Him and yet keep Him to ourselves. He is protecting us and filling us up with His graces so that we can share them with all we meet. This might make us nervous to think about talking about God to others. I know I get nervous thinking about it. What if I don’t know what to say? What if they ask questions and I don’t have any answers? What if I say the wrong thing, or say something that isn’t true? In this verse God is reassuring us that when we say yes, when we step out in that call, He will be putting the words in our mouth. God isn’t asking us to know everything, He isn’t asking us to be an eloquent speaker or have all the right words, He is asking us to be an empty vessel. He is asking for our “yes” and then He will give us the words to say.
God is calling each and every one of us to go out and to pass to others all He has given us. Each month when we review and discern all the words that God has given us throughout the prayer group meetings, we realize that God is giving us this call over and over again. He doesn’t always say it in the same way, and yet it is always there. Go and tell my people, go and spread my love, my hope, my love, my peace, my forgiveness. God would not keep telling us every single week if it was not important to Him. He also probably wouldn’t keep telling us this if we were doing it. So, why aren’t we doing it? Why aren’t we passing on what the Lord is giving us? What is stopping us? This will be different for each one of us. I can’t answer these questions for you. I can tell you when I started to read the Bible more and learn more about my faith, I started to want to share more with others. Maybe it is the enemy telling us we don’t know enough to share with others?
Although, when God is asking us in prayer group to share with others, it is not knowledge of the scripture He is asking us to share. He is asking us to share His love, His peace, His joy, His forgiveness and other things like this. These are things we don’t need to be super smart and have the Bible memorized to share. We can share these things without knowing much scripture at all. However, we do need to have these things in our life if we want to share them. If we don’t know God’s love, peace, joy, forgiveness then we can’t share it with others? God wants to give us all of this and more and all He asks is that we share it with those around us. We don’t have to go up to strangers and share it, we could start right in our own home with those we spend the most time with. I have included in this episodes the bookmark that we worked on yesterday. I think hearing an example of God’s call for us to go out and share all He gives will help you understand a bit better. Also, as you can see in the bookmark, He doesn’t start by directing us to go out and share. He starts by calling us closer and then telling us how special we are and reminding us how amazing He is. Then He asks us to go out and share it with others. I will leave you with His words today. Here are the words we felt God wanted us to use for the January 2023 bookmark:
Come closer to me. Come deeper with me. Come into my presence because I want you, my diamonds, to sparkle so that all those around you will want to come and be in your presence to absorb your light. Your light is my life in you. I am the God who loves you. I am the God who protects you. I am the God who never stops caring for you. I give you my abundant blessings. No matter what is going on in your life right now I take each step that you take. When you feel you can’t stand I am there to carry you. What I share with you , you must share with others. It is I who sends you to share my way, my truth and my life so that others may grow in me and love me. Arise and go forward with the name of Jesus on your lips.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you and we are so grateful for your words above. We are grateful that you want to spend your time talking to us when you have so much to do. We are grateful for your protection and that we are your chosen people. We are sorry we get it wrong so often and we just ask for your forgiveness. We love you Lord. We thank you for your protection and we thank you for putting the words in our mouth. Please give us the courage to use those words to help bring others to you Lord. We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to seeing you again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed day!
Things Planned Long Ago
Isaiah 25:1 “Lord, you are my God; I will exalt you and praise your name, for in perfect faithfulness you have done wonderful things, things planned long ago.”
I saw this verse on Facebook today and I really liked it. It reminds us of several important things. First, it reminds us to exalt and to praise our Lord and Savior. I thought I would look up the world exalt as it is one of those words that I kinda know what it means, but if you asked I wouldn’t be able to give you a definition. In case this is you too, according to Oxford dictionary, exalt means to hold (someone or something) in very high regard; think or speak very highly of. This makes sense, we definitely should be holding God in high regard as He is the creator of all heaven and earth. He is the creator of the whole universe. We should definitely exalt the Lord. The one part of that definition that I wonder if we do enough, or even much of at all is to speak highly of Him.
Do we speak highly of God? I mean to speak highly of Him means we are speaking of Him and are we doing that? When do we talk about God? When are we talking about Him and telling others about Him? I think praising God is easier because we can do this on our own. We can sing praise songs, we can say in our minds or out loud how amazing He is and we can thank Him for all He does. I guess we could exalt Him on our own too. We could speak highly of Him to ourselves I guess too. When we are praising Him we could be saying how amazing He is.
I think it would be great if we could figure out how to exalt the Lord more to other people. Who do we feel like we could talk to about God? Who would want to hear us talk about the amazing things God has done for us? Do you have a group of friends you can talk to about God? Do you have people who love to hear about the way God is working your life? This verse is a great reminder to do this. If you don’t have friends who want to hear about it, this verse could be a prompt for you to find some. A great place to find people open to hearing how God is working in your life is at church, a bible study, a Christian women’s group or men’s group, a prayer group.
Having a faith community is so important, even if it is just online. I am part of a Christian mentoring group and it has been so helpful over the years. It is great to have people to reach out to and they support you with prayers. Because it is a Christian group they help you solve your problems and they offer support in a way that is inline with the Christian way of living. If you have a fight with your husband and you ask for prayers they aren’t going to be telling you to leave your husband. They will offer suggestions of things they have tried when they struggled. There is nothing like having a great group of fellow believers surrounding you. This also provides lots of opportunities to exalt and praise the Lord with others who do the same.
The next part of this verse says, “For in perfect faithfulness you have done wonderful things, things planned long ago.” This reminds us that God is faithful. I think we can forget this at times when it seems like nothing is going our way. When we ask God for something and He doesn’t answer our prayers the way we want Him to. The Bible says when we ask God answers and sometimes we think this means He gives us everything and anything that we ask for. This is not what that means. God does not ignore any of our prayers or our requests. However, His answer is sometimes no and also He sometimes says not yet. These can be hard for us to hear and since His ways are higher than our way and His thoughts greater than our thoughts, we usually don’t understand why the answer is no. This can cause us to doubt His faithfulness. This can cause us to believe He is not listening to our prayers.
This verse reminds us that He is faithful to us. He has heard every one of our prayers and He has answered every one of our prayers. If we haven’t seen how the prayer has been answered than maybe the answer was no or maybe is was not yet. Either way, we might have a harder time seeing those answers to our prayers. We also may not like the answers to those prayers. This is when we have to remember that God knows the whole picture and we only know the part we have lived already. God has the benefit of hindsight because there is no time limitations on God. He can see the past, present & future all at the same time. I know this is not really something our brains can comprehend but it is how God works. All we see is the no that God gave us, we see that closed door and we are devastated. What we don’t see is the better door that He is going to open when we get there. It wasn’t actually a no, it was a not yet.
The last part of the verse says, “You have done wonderful things, things planned long ago.” I think we often forget that God had our lives planned out long before we were even born. There is nothing that we do that surprises God. There is nothing we could do that He didn’t already expect us to do. Sometimes when amazing things happen we think that we were just lucky. We “thank our lucky stars” that the vice president just happened to leave at the exact same time that you were being looked at for a promotion. Guess what, God knew when you were going to be looked at for a promotion and arranged an amazing job opportunity for the Vice President at that exact time. God knows our needs way before we know what we need. He also knows what we don’t need long before we know. God knew I didn’t need to be with a jealous man for the rest of my life and gave me the strength and wisdom to break up with my high school/college boyfriend. He also knew who I did need to spend the rest of my life with and made sure I was available when I met him.
God knows the desires of your heart, He put them there. He knows what things we need and what things we don’t need. He knows what jobs are good for us and what jobs are not. He knows what people are good for us and which ones aren’t. I wish that meant that we never made mistakes because we just let God lead all of our decisions. However, that isn’t the case, we sometimes don’t want to hear what God has to say, or we don’t like what He has to say. I knew in Sept of my sophomore year of college that I would need to break up with the boy I dated for the last 4 years. God put it on my heart when we were at a Labor Day party with his family. Although I knew we needed to break up in Sept, it took me until March to listen and to actually do it.
Sometimes we know what God is telling us, what He wants us to do and yet we don’t want to listen. God is so patient with us and sometimes He will wait for us to come around to our senses, other times, He will do something to wake us up and get us to listen to Him. Not only is He patient with us when we don’t listen to Him or go against what He has planned, but when we come back He uses all that happened for good. God has amazing things planned for our life and they are things that He planned long ago. It is not as if God is on the edge of His seat waiting to see what you are going to do. He knows what you are going to do and He has planned in advance for it. There isn’t anything we can do that is a surprise to Him. He does wonderful things for us and He planned those wonderful things long ago!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you and we are so grateful for all you do. We are grateful you look out for us and you protect us from ourselves. We are grateful you made plans for us long ago and that you have done wonderful things in our lives to keep those plans. We are sorry for all the times we failed to listen to your promptings or turned away from you and we are grateful that you find a way to use all that happens for good. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today I want to witness about how God is working in my life. I don’t have any big miracles to share with you today and I think that is ok because the whole point of Witness Wednesdays is to show God working in our lives in big ways and in small ways. I wanted to show how God is in the ordinary things in life as much as He is in the extraordinary things. My dream for some time now is to be a speaker and to be part of a healing ministry. I have been doing personal development for several years now and I have been motivated to change by so many speakers and one day I decided I wanted to be that person on the stage motivating others. Except I don’t want to be a personal development speaker, I want to become a speaker so I can tell everyone who will listen about God’s love. I truly feel if people could learn that God is love and know this down to their core the world would be a better place. Knowing I wanted to be a professional speaker, I joined the organization called Toastmasters because they help you become a better speaker. If you haven’t heard of Toastmasters it is a group where you can give speeches, and practice impromptu speaking each meeting. They also have an educational component to it that teaches you have to give a good speech and also teaches you how to do different types of speeches. It is a great program and I really learned a lot.
When I decided I wanted to be a part of a healing ministry I started reading all the books I could get my hands on about healing. I looked into several healing programs where I could either go there to take a course or I could do it online. However, all of them seemed a bit expensive at the time and also my family was falling apart and I needed to work on healing that before adding anything else to my plate. My kids needed my attention and a lot of it. It wasn’t the right time. Then I heard about this new program called Encounter Ministries, but again it was not the right time for it. It would have been online and it would have been during a time when I was having to drive into Boston pretty regularly. However, the next year it came to the Boston area for an in person class and things at home had improved a lot. I was able to sign up and take the course.
During this course we had a quarter on Prophetic Words. When doing the various activities during the prophetic quarter there were several people that told me that there was a breakthrough coming in my near future, sometime in the first half of this year. I was excited because that confirmed what I had been hearing God tell me in my personal life as well. I was thinking that breakthrough was going to come in the form of me talking at the retreat I planned to attend. However, when I asked if they needed a speaker they said they were all set. I was definitely disappointed as I felt that was what the Lord wanted me to do, but I trusted whatever His plan was, it would happen. I kept my eyes open for other chances to give a talk. One day in February the woman organizing the retreat said one of the speakers had to back out and asked if I was still willing to talk. I was so grateful.
I went to adoration to ask God what He wanted me to talk about as the theme of the retreat was Christ In Me. What does it mean for us as women to have Christ in us literally and spiritually in mass and then to take that out into the world? While in adoration I felt the Lord tell me I needed to learn more about the Eucharist, so I did. It was so beautiful how he lead me to exactly what He wanted me to know and how He helped me put it together in a way that taught others about the Eucharist and what it means to have Christ within me, without boring them or giving them too much technical stuff. Everyone at the retreat loved the talk and felt they learned from it. My friend Joan said it changed the way she interacted at mass that day.
This retreat was a breakthrough because I can finally say I am a paid speaker, because I got paid to speak at the retreat. It was also a breakthrough because I got to tell all those who attended that I have a podcast and that I have a book. I put 20 of my books out on the tables on the last day so that if anyone wanted to buy one, they could. I sold all 20 of them. There was one religious Sister who bought one book for each of the other 5 Sisters living in her house. It was so great to share my book with others and hopefully they will enjoy it and share it with others as well!
Can you see how God was working in all of that? He was working in the details to guide me to a Toastmasters group and He was working the details to provide an in person opportunity to learn more about healing and all the other gifts of the Holy Spirit. Through this class I have grown so much and I have also met really incredible people who are all on this journey with me. It really is great to be surrounded by others who are also working developing the same things you are. We can support each other along the way, especially when the enemy comes in and tries to tell us lies. When this happens we have each other to speak truth into that lie.
This program has given me the courage to ask people if I can pray over them or to ask people if they want me to pray with them. This was really helpful on the retreat I just attended. I was able to ask the main keynote speaker if she wanted me to pray over her before her talk. She then asked me to pray over her before her next talk as well. There was one point where we were doing discernment for who will be on the next board to run the N. E. Region of the MCCW. I was able to walk about the room and pray over everyone discerning the position. It was a really beautiful opportunity.
God is so good to us. He guides us in the right direction and He has perfect timing. It doesn’t always feel like perfect timing when we are in it, but years later we can usually see how His timing was actually perfect timing. I have done several witnesses lately about the amazing miracles God has done in my life or the lives of others. I have had others witness about profound times in their life where God has shown up. Today I wanted to share with you some of the smaller ways, some of the behind the scenes ways that God has shown up in my life. God may not be making any giant, grand gestures in your life right now. That doesn’t mean He is not there and that doesn’t mean that He is not working. He is in every single detail of your life. We just need to look for Him and we will find Him.
We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click here. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed day!
What Is The Enemy Saying?
Judges 7:9-11 “That same night the Lord said to him, “Get up, attack the camp; for I have given it into your hand. But if you fear to attack, go down to the camp with your servant Purah; and you shall hear what they say, and afterward your hands shall be strengthened to attack the camp.” Then he went down with his servant Purah to the outposts of the armed men that were in the camp."
This is one of the verses that Pastor Steven Furtick touched on in his sermon a few weeks ago. The entire sermon was good and I will probably touch on something else he said in a different podcast because it had to do with worry and I know a lot of us struggle with worry. I will put a link for the whole sermon in the show notes. (Click Here) However, today’s message is a bit different than you might have heard before and yet when I heard it I knew I could relate to it and I bet you will too. The verse above comes after an interesting part in the Bible. In this verse God is talking to Gideon. He has been talking to him for awhile now.
An angel first appeared to Gideon and told him he was a mighty warrior that was leading his people to victory over their oppressors. Gideon did not believe this as he really couldn’t see himself as a mighty warrior because he was the least in his family. Gideon asked the Lord to do several things to prove he really was God and then he finally accepted this information. Then Gideon gathered troops and went to fight the Midianites army. God told Gideon he had too many soldiers. If they went to war with 32,000 soldiers then the Israelites would take the credit for the win instead of knowing that it was God who delivered them. God told Gideon to send anyone home that was fearful and trembling. Gideon did this and 22,000 people left. He was now down to 10,000.
I am sure he was scared and thinking he was crazy for sending home all these people. However, God told him that was not enough. He told him to take those that were left down to the water and watch how they drank the water. Split them into two groups, those who put there face to the water and drink and those who use there hands to cup the water and then drink. There were 300 soldiers who cupped their hands to drink and 9,700 who put their face to the water. God told Gideon to keep the 300 and send the rest home. Can you even imagine this? In Judges 7:12 it says, “The Midianites and the Amalekites and all the people of the east lay along the valley as thick as locusts; and their camels were without number, countless as the sand on the seashore.” There troops are thick as locusts and Gideon now has 300 men.
This is where the verse above fits into this story. God is telling Gideon that he has given the enemy into his hand and he should go and attack in the night. However, God said if you are afraid to attack, go down to the camp and hear what they are saying about you. That right there is the part I find interesting. Sometimes we won’t listen to God about what he says about us, we need to hear it from someone else. Why is that? God is the almighty one? He is the maker of the whole universe. Why do we take someone else’s word for it? Why do we need someone else to tell us the same thing? I thought this part of the sermon was different than most other sermons because usually we are telling you not to listen to the enemy. However, in this verse God is telling Gideon to go down and listen to what the enemy is saying about him.
In Judges 7:13-14 it says, “ When Gideon arrived, there was a man telling a dream to his comrade; and he said, “I had a dream, and in it a cake of barley bread tumbled into the camp of Midian, and came to the tent, and struck it so that it fell; it turned upside down, and the tent collapsed.” And his comrade answered, “This is no other than the sword of Gideon son of Joash, a man of Israel; into his hand God has given Midian and all the army.” When Gideon heard this he worshiped the Lord and he believed what the Lord had said. Gideon went back and got his army and did as the Lord had commanded.” Gideon needed to hear it from the enemy that he was powerful. God told Gideon that He had already delivered the Midianites into the hands of Gideon’s army and yet He was still afraid. He was afraid until he heard the Midianite, the enemy, talking about how powerful he was.
Is this you too? Has God been telling you He has great plans for you? Has He been telling you that you can do all things through Christ who strengthens you? Has He been telling you that you will make it through this hard storm? Have you been listening to Him? Have you been worrying instead of believing? Are you scared? If so, you are in great company. However, I want you to consider this, if you weren’t powerful, why would the enemy bother with you? The enemy has limited resources, you better believe the enemy is focusing on those who are going somewhere, doing something. If you are lukewarm in your faith, the enemy is not going to bother with you. He’s not worried as he knows that God is not interested in us being lukewarm in our faith. If you have been under attack lately. If you have noticed the enemy attacking your family, attacking you, attacking your marriage, attacking your friendships or your job, it is because the things God is saying about you are true. You are the amazing, wonderful son or daughter of God that He keeps telling you about.
This is the one time where I would say it is ok to look at what the enemy is saying. Maybe not what he is saying with his words as the words may still be unkind. However, look at what his actions are saying. When you look at the spiritual attacks that are coming in your life, picture yourself as Gideon in this story. You are facing an army as many as the locusts and you only have 300. However, you have the 300 that God picked for you and you have the promise from God that He has already delivered them into your hands. You’ve got this! Whatever it is that you are going through right now, God will help you through it. He has already made a way and now all you have to do is ask Him to help lead you to it.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, you are amazing and I don’t know why we don’t always listen to you. Lord, we ask that you help open our ears to hear you more clearly and to be able to believe what you say about us. Help us to see that we are worthy and we are amazing in your eyes. Help us to see that the enemy wouldn’t even bother messing with us if weren’t a threat to him, if we weren’t growing closer to you. Thank you so much Lord for believing in us even when we don’t believe in ourselves. Thank you for saving us even when we doubt. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow with a witness. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Elevation Podcast Episode Instruments of Victory (CLICK HERE)
Are You The Hands & Feet of Jesus?
Matthew 25:35-36 “Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’
I spoke at a retreat this weekend and the theme was Christ In Me. While writing my talk I realized that my parents are the best example I have seen of “Christ living within me.” They not only taught us about God and our faith, they lived it in a way in which you could see Christ just by looking at them. There are 11 children in my family and we all vary in our degrees of faith in God. Some believe, some don’t. Yet, all of us would give the shirt off of our back to someone in need. We don’t think twice about offering to help and we truly mean it. We do not feel it is an inconvenience, we don’t resent it afterwards, we just know it is the right thing to do. If we have met you more than once, you are now officially part of our family. We have so many friends of the family that we just consider part of our family.
All of this is because my parents led by example. They didn’t lecture us on being kind and giving to others, well, I am sure we did get lectures, however, they followed those up with actions. Often times we can tell our children to do something, we can lecture and we can nag and yet if we aren’t showing them with our actions then it doesn’t matter what we are saying. You can tell your child that giving to those in need is important and they may or may not understand why. However, when you give to someone in need while they are with you and they see that person’s face, that person’s gratitude then they are more likely to be impacted. They are more likely to do the same.
Our parents would give to anyone that needed something, even if they really couldn’t afford it. My parents had 11 children so my mom stayed home with the kids and my dad worked. My dad had a great job and yet they still didn’t have a lot of money because we had a big house and a lot of kids. My parents did not let that stop them from giving to the church, helping those in need and helping anyone that asked. I didn’t understand when I was a child what a sacrifice that was for them. I saw how much my mom was writing the checks for in mass and I thought to myself, when I get older I am going to give a lot more than that. Now that I am older I see how hard it can be to give. We don’t have 11 kids and we make more money than my dad did at the time, and yet we struggle to give at church at times.
What just came to mind is Mark 12:41-44 “Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts. But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a few cents. Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything—all she had to live on.” This is what my parents were doing. They were giving all they had to give and some weeks that would be $5 or $10 dollars and some weeks it would be $20. We on the other hand are wanting to give out of our surplus.
I remember a time when I was explaining to a friend how my parents gave money to the church even when they didn’t really have money for their bills. My friend said this was just bad financial decisions. This is a worldly way to think of it and yet this is how many of us think of it. We feel we need to pay all or our bills first, pay for all the things we need, then all the things we want and then if there is any left over money, we can give that to God. When we think like this we are relying on ourselves to take care of our needs. God knows what you need and He will make sure you have it. We should be giving to God first and then everything else can come after that. This is not the worldly view though. It does not make sense to many people. Remember God’s ways are not our ways and God’s thoughts are higher than our thoughts. It doesn’t have to make sense to us according to our worldly view, and my parents knew this.
It felt as though they weren’t afraid to go against the crowd if they were doing it for God. My dad wore a big crucifix around his neck for the longest time at work. He knew not everyone liked it but it wasn’t for them, it was for him. My mom stayed home and didn’t work even though not everyone agreed with this. She was very smart and could have done anything for a job and yet she sacrificed and stayed home with us because that is what she felt was best.
Over the years we had many people living in our home because they had no where else to go. We once had a family with 10 kids living in our home with 11 kids. Another time we had someone who moved in with her husband and grand children. We have had numerous friends stay with us. If you didn’t have a place to stay you were always welcome at the Desilets house. It wasn’t always super convenient for us kids and yet it taught us so much without saying anything. We could see how grateful the people staying with us were. We could see how important it was to help people, even when it wasn’t a perfect situation, even when it didn’t fit into what you thought it would look like.
Christ is calling us to be reflections of Him. He is calling us to help His people, His beloved brothers and sisters. God is asking us to see the face of Christ in all those we meet. If Jesus was asking for food, would you tell Him no? If Jesus asked if he could crash at your place for a bit while He got back on his feet, would you tell him no? This is exactly what we are doing when we are saying no to others. Jesus is in each one of us and if we want to help Jesus then we need to help those around us as well.
When my parents go to heaven the will be able to confidently say when you were hungry I gave you food, when you were thirsty, I gave you a drink, when you were a stranger I welcomed you and when you were naked I clothed you, when you were ill I cared for you and when you were in prison I visited you, just as it talks about in the verse above. The awesome news is that they taught us kids to do the same, and not just their kids, but all who meet them. If you have the pleasure of knowing my parents I am sure you have experienced their kindness and their willingness to help out has rubbed off on you too. We all have the Spirit of Christ inside of us, let’s share that with others.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those who are listening to this podcast right now. Lord, we thank you for filling us with your Spirit and we ask that you help us to use this strength to do all the things you talk about above. Help us be your face to those who don’t know you. Help us to help all those in need. Help us to not turn away. Help us to give more expecting nothing in return. We love you Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Thank you also for your prayers for this past weekend. The talk went really well and we all had a great time on the retreat. It was just what we all needed, time away with Jesus and with fellow ladies who are so faith filled. It was the perfect mix of liturgical celebrations, like daily mass, stations of the cross, illuminated rosary, and adoration w/confession and then we also had speakers and lots of time for fellowship. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed day!
You Are Never Alone, The Father Is With You Too!
John 16:32 “ The hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each one to his home, and you will leave me alone. Yet I am not alone because the Father is with me.”
I saw this verse or the verse right after it in at least two places this mornings so I think I am supposed to talk about it. The first place it came up was in the notes of my prayer group meeting from last week and then again on someone else’s facebook post. The verse directly after this one, John 16:33 says, “ I have said this to you, so that in me you may have peace. In the world you face persecution. But take courage; I have conquered the world!” Jesus told us in the verse above that the time had come when his disciples were going to leave Him alone and yet they didn’t have to worry because He wouldn’t be alone, His father would be with Him. In the next verse He said that He told them this so that they would have peace. I wonder if they remembered this in all the chaos of the next few days? I wondering if they did have any peace when they saw Him suffering knowing that although He seemed to be all alone, He wasn’t. Jesus did all He could to prepare the disciples for His death and resurrection.
Although Jesus is saying these things to the apostles, He is not just saying them to the apostles, He is saying them to us too. I think He is letting us know that when we turn away, when it seems like we have abandoned Jesus, He is not alone, He is with His Father. We are not alone either. When Jesus went to be with His Father He asked His Father to send the Holy Spirit down to be with us, and to never leave us. When we are going through hard times, when we feel as though we are alone, we must remember that we are never alone. We have the Holy Spirit, living inside of us and that gives us so much strength. I think we all underestimate how much strength we have with the Holy Spirit living inside of us. Have you ever taken time to consider what it means to have the Holy Spirit living inside of you?
I don’t think we really understand the gift Jesus was giving to us. The power and strength He was giving to us. In Romans 8:11 it says, “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.” Did you know that Jesus, although fully God and fully human, only used his human nature to do all the miracles? He relied on His human natured and the power He received from the Holy Spirit. That same Spirit that empowered Jesus lives inside of you. Isn’t that incredible? Tonight I went to pray with someone who’s husband died unexpectedly. There were 9 of us that went to pray with this friend of ours. We weren’t just going to pray with her though, we were going there to pray for a resurrection. You see the power that raised Jesus from the dead lives inside each one of us. And Jesus said in John 14:12-14 “Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.”
We will do even greater works than Jesus did because He is with His Father now. So, we were hoping to get to pray over her husband’s body and bring him back as they did in the Bible. Did you know it wasn’t just Jesus that raised people from the dead in the Bible? Peter raised Tabitha from the dead. Elijah raised the son of the widow from the dead. Elisha raised the son of the woman of Shunem. The power to raise someone from the dead lives inside each on of us. We are learning how to use the gifts of the Holy Spirit more and more in each class that we take. So tonight 9 of us went to our friend’s house so we could pray with her and we could pray over her husband. We were unable to pray for her husband as the place they moved him too closed at 4:30 and we got there at 5. We prayed with our friend, for our friend, for her children and for her husband. We prayed for love and for peace to come upon their family and we also prayed that God would breathe life back into her husband. My friend happens to live in Boston. Can you imagine what a spectacular event that would be in Boston, with this Satanic Conference about to kick off and God shows up and raises someone from the dead right in the morgue in Boston. Praise God, that would be amazing! This has happened before. I talked about it at one of the Witness Wednesdays. Someone died in the morning and 8 hours later came back to life, unzipped himself and went home. All things are possible with God.
Going back to the verse above, “The hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each one to his home, and you will leave me alone. Yet I am not alone because the Father is with me.” When I think of this verse and I think of my friend, I think about how the Father is with her too. It was very clear while we were praying over her that the Father is with her, He will not leave her alone, He will not leave her kids alone. I hope and pray their dad comes back home. And yet, I know, even if He doesn’t her kids will still have a Heavenly Father who will look out for them and take care of them. They will never be alone! God made that abundantly clear as we prayed over our friend.
The Father never left Jesus alone either. He was right there with Him every step of the way. He was right there on the cross with Him. God won’t ever leave you alone either. I know if feels like you are alone at times, I promise, He is right there with you. Sometimes when we feel the most alone is when we are the closest to Him. I have heard that when you feel dryness in your prayer time, when you feel like you can’t hear Him or you can’t feel Him, this could be right before you break through to a new level of closeness. Keep showing up to prayer time, even when you can’t feel Him, even when you don’t know what to do, even when you can’t say anything, keep showing up. God is there with you. He will never leave you. God was there with Jesus and He is there with you. You are never alone! Lean into Him and know he is there.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we thank you that you are always with us and you never leave us. We thank you for sending your only Son to come down and walk among us and to die for our sins. Lord, we thank you for sending the Holy Spirit to us so that He can empower us and guide us throughout out lives. Lord, I ask that you help each person listening to know the power of the Holy Spirit living inside of us. I ask that you put on our hearts how we can live more boldly with this knowledge. How can we step out and use this power you have given us? How can we use all the gifts you have given us to help build your kingdom? We love you Lord, you have given us so much and we want to give back to you, show us how. Lord, we ask you to keep our friend and her family in your prayers. We ask for you to breathe life back into her husband. You said when we ask, you answer and we are asking Lord. Jesus, You said whatever we ask in Your name we will receive since you are going to be with the Father, so we are asking in Your name, Jesus! We ask all of this in accordance with your Holy will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Please remember to keep me and all those who are on the retreat with me in your prayers this weekend, please keep Boston in your prayers this weekend as there is a satanic convention happening there this weekend, and if you could keep my friend Malinda, her husband John and her children Isabella and John in your prayers. They could really use them right now. I will definitely be doing a Witness Wednesday if God answers are prayers the way we would like Him to weekend with her husband. I look forward to meeting you hear again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a Blessed weekend!
God Chooses The Most Unlikely People
Acts 9:15 “But the Lord said to him, “Go, for he is an instrument whom I have chosen to bring my name before Gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel.”
This verse comes just after Saul has seen a vision of Jesus and Jesus asked him why He was persecuting Him. Then Saul losses his sight and is told to go into the city and wait to be told what to do. Then the Lord asked one of his disciples to go to Saul. There is a conversation between this disciple and the Lord in Acts 9:10-16: “Now there was a disciple in Damascus named Ananias. The Lord said to him in a vision, “Ananias.” He answered, “Here I am, Lord.” The Lord said to him, “Get up and go to the street called Straight, and at the house of Judas look for a man of Tarsus named Saul. At this moment he is praying, and he has seen in a vision a man named Ananias come in and lay his hands on him so that he might regain his sight.” But Ananias answered, “Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints in Jerusalem; and here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who invoke your name.” But the Lord said to him, “Go, for he is an instrument whom I have chosen to bring my name before Gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel; I myself will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.”
There are several themes that I see coming across in these verses. First, I always find it interesting when the disciples of God, the ones that get to have a conversation with Him, argue with Him or question Him. I always think I would respond differently and yet, I do get to have conversations with God and I do still question. I mean we are all human and questioning and doubting are definitely human things to do. In these verses Ananias is giving a task to do. God wants him to go and restore Saul’s sight. I wonder if Ananias every healed anyone before? Would this be his first time? Also, Ananias has heard rumors about this person he is supposed to go and heal. Saul’s reputation preceded him. He was not a nice person. He was in that town to collect any believers of Jesus and bring them to jail essentially. He approved the stoning to death of Stephen, one of Jesus’ followers. I can totally understand why Ananias would question this plan. Why he might be scared even. If he goes to heal this man in Jesus’ name, then Saul will know he is a Christian. What if there are ramifications of that?
There are many reasons why we might question the Lord’s plan. I think worrying about our own safety and the possible risk to our life is a pretty big one. It’s interesting how I can silently judge Ananias for questioning God when he is dealing with someone that has stoned fellow believers, and yet I question God when I am completely safe and yet just being asked to step outside of my comfort zone. My life is not in danger and yet I still question God’s plan. I still hesitate to do what I know He is asking me to do. So, why do I always think it is crazy when others question God’s plan? I am the first to say God has a plan. I am the first to encourage someone to step out in faith and do the scary thing God is asking you to do. I am also the first one to hesitate when God asks me to do some things. I am the first one to question and to wonder if I am really the best person to do that. I question if He really knows what He is doing asking me to do that.
In this verse Ananias is actually not questioning his own ability, he is questioning Saul’s worthiness of being healed. This is another thing that we can be quick to judge. We can all question God’s decisions on who He heals, saves, works through. Maybe you know someone really great who died from cancer, or was killed in a car accident when they were a teenager and you also know some pretty terrible people that beat cancer and seem to have everything going for them. In our eyes, these things can seem very unfair and we don’t understand them. They make no sense to us. I don’t understand them either, so I will not be giving you any answers to those questions today. However, I do know that God has a plan and He can use anyone for that plan. I do know when it comes to the question of worthiness, none of us are worthy on our own merit. We can’t judge others because we don’t know their heart, only God can judge as He knows what is in our hearts. You can have someone that seems as nice as can be in public and yet is awful in their private life. You can have someone who is not very nice to people and yet that is because they were wounded and they don’t know any other way.
I saw the movie and read the book called The Shack. If you have not read the book or seen the movie you should check it out, it is so good. Of course the book is better, but the movie does a pretty good job explaining why we shouldn’t judge others. It talks about how we don’t see the whole picture. We can judge the man who is abusing his wife and child, but would we judge that child? What about when that child grows up to abuse his wife and child? We only see a tiny part of who a person really is. I am really noticing this in my class. There are so many different people and they all look like they are doing great. Then when you talk to them you see how they are struggling, how we are all struggling. I shared in class the other day about some of the things that happened when my boys were younger. I had volunteered to run through an exercise on healing a wounded memory. It was really powerful. Afterwards several people approached me and told me they came from a similar situation. You never know by looking at anyone where they came from, what they have been through, or what they are still going through.
That felt a little like I was off on a tangent, but I think someone needed to hear that today. Back to what I was saying, God can use anyone and He often chooses the most unlikely candidate. He tends to use imperfect people, people who have messed up, people who seem broken, people who have struggled, people who have sinned. God uses people who can easily be judged for their faults. These people, people who aren’t perfect (no is perfect by the way), people who have really struggled are actually the perfect people to use because they can speak to those who are also struggling. They are someone you can look at and say, if they could do it, so can I. If someone who grew up with nothing can make something of themselves then I can too. If someone who has been abused was able to get away from that abuse, then so can I. If someone who was an alcoholic can give up alcohol so can I. If someone who is a sinner can be used by God to do amazing things, so can I.
I love the story of Saul in these verses because it gives me faith for my boys. I was always a bit worried because although I know God can do anything and in His timing He would call my boys back to Him, I also know that He honors our free will. I wasn’t sure my boys would ever be searching for Him or looking for Him. What I feel God showed me with these verse is that they don’t have to be looking for Him. Saul was not looking to be the next Pope. He was perfectly happy with his current job and was not in the market for a new one. Yet one encounter with Jesus and He was ready to devote his whole life to Him. This is what I have hope for my boys and for you can too for anyone you are worried about. Just as Anne talked about in the witness yesterday, one encounter with Jesus can change their whole world. Keep praying for them and for this encounter.
Dear Heavenly Father I ask you to bless all those who are listening to this episode today. Lord, let them hear exactly what they need to hear today. Lord, help us to not judge others. Give us your heart and your eyes for others Lord. Help us to be compassionate and to know that there is always more to the person than what we are able to see. Lord, give us the boldness to do whatever you ask us to do, even when we are scared, even when we don’t understand it, even if you are asking us to heal a really scary person. Give us the strength and the grace we need to follow your commands no matter how hard we think they are. We can do all things through you who strengthen us! We love you so much Lord. We are grateful you have a plan and you don’t let our questioning it get in the way. We are grateful you use all things for our good and you don’t let us mess up your plan. We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Today I am headed to Hartford CT for a retreat with the Military Council of Catholic Women. I will be speaking at the retreat tomorrow so please keep me and all those attending in your prayers. Please pray the Holy Spirit is with us and fills us all up this weekend so we can go back to our regular lives renewed in the Holy spirit! Also, please remember if you are local to try to stay out of Boston this weekend and to pray from afar about the Satanic convention that is happening this weekend. St. Michael the Archangel defend us in battle. Be our protector against the wickedness and the snares of the devil. May God rebuke him we humbly pray and do thou oh prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God, cast into hell Satan and all the other evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen! I look forward to meeting you hear again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed day!
We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click here. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed day!
Visit Anne's Website: The Mission On The Mountain
Let’s Have A Conversation With Our Heavenly Father
Psalm 145:8 “The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.”
I heard this as the verse of the day on KLOVE radio last night when I was picking Sam up from work. I instantly knew it was one I wanted to talk about because I have been thinking a lot about God lately and who we think He is. I have heard several people say lately that they think of God as a task master in the sky who is watching us carefully and He is just waiting for us to mess us so he can punish us. I can’t say that I ever thought of God in this way. However, I did used to think I needed to do the right thing or say the right thing in order to make God happy, in order to earn his love or his approval. I can also see how one can look at God like He is up there waiting to judge us. I mean we are taught to fear God and yet I don’t think we are taught what that actually means. When it says we should fear God it actually means to have reverence for God. Our fear of God is not negative, but a positive attitude of reverence, which helps us ascribe to God His due Omnipotence, Sovereignty and Supremacy.
I now think God is Love. I know God loves me. I know He delights in me and that He is pleased with me. I know I am His beloved daughter. I know I don’t have to do anything to earn these feelings, they are freely given. I know he is not up there waiting for me to mess up so that he can punish me, although he is waiting with open arms for me when I mess up so that I can come back to Him. When I try to think about how I know this, I am not too sure. When I was on the Big Life New Year’s Retreat I was reading one of my journal entries to two of the ladies there and I felt like the Holy Spirit said to me, “This is how you know. This is where your confidence in yourself and in my love for you comes from.” I took a minute to think about it and I knew He was right. I mean, He is the Holy Spirit, so of course he was right. But I could see how He was right. I learned about writing letters to God in my journal and then asking Him to write back to me using my pen in 2019 when I was learning to be a life coach and a spiritual coach. I started doing this regularly at some point in 2020.
I was listening to the Bible in A Year Podcast and Father Mike was talking about how if we want a more intimate relationship with God we could start by speaking to Him more intimately. I am not sure what he said exactly but that is what I heard. I started writing in my journal as if it was a letter to God. I started addressing it Dear Father, because Dad felt to informal and I wanted to make sure I was being reverent. However, over the days to come I experimented with other terms, Dad, Daddy, Papa. It felt strange at first but the more I did it the more comfortable I felt with it. I did feel as though I was growing closer to Him. I went back and looked in my journal. I am not sure which journal I used before this one, but his one starts May 1, 2020. It seems I was writing pretty often during this time. That is probably because it was during Covid and so the world kind of slowed down and we had more time. The first time that I can see in this journal that I asked God to answer me through my pen was June 2, 2020. This is what I felt He said to me:
“Dear Holy One, I love you! I do not feel you lack trust. You are a good and faithful servant. Thank you for getting the prayer group online. I missed you ladies and the praise and worship. I am here for you, lean into me. I love you my daughter. I love what you are becoming. I will mold you if you let me. Help the leaders of the prayer group as the leaders are tired. You can bring a new energy into the group. The workshop is a good idea.”
Can you see how hearing words like this from your heavenly Father would help build you see that God is love? Can you see how it would help build your confidence and help you realize more about who He is and more about who you are in his eyes? It is not always super positive. It is not as if the letters are always filled with compliments and that is it. Sometimes we need correction and guidance and sometimes we don’t want to hear that. However, when it is coming from God correction is given with love and grace. When you spend time listen to what God is actually saying, you realize He is not a mean task master waiting for us to screw up. He is a loving Father wanting to help us and protect us. Here is an example from June 24, 2020. This is the second time in this journal that I asked to hear from God. This is just a portion of what I felt He was saying:
“You will do a great many things. I will show you when you are ready, stay the course. Your work pleases me. Your effort pleases me. Notice the good more in Tony. Point out the light you see. Live by “will this matter in 5 years.” Help bring more light into your family instead of darkness. No sarcasm, no teasing, just building each other up. You are better than that. Be a good listener, put first things first. You are doing great, keep going. I love you my daughter and I am with you, I know your name. I love you.”
Again can you see the love in His words? I know that every single word might not be from God. Sometimes our own thoughts can get mixed in as well. However, I asked God to answer me and when we ask God He answers, so I trust most of this is from God. Another way you can tell when you are writing that the words are not mostly from you is because we are not this kind to ourselves. We are own worst critic and we don’t believe in ourselves like God does. We don’t say nice things to ourselves like God does.
God loves you and He wants to tell you how much, we are just too busy to listen. I have found, sometimes even when I do sit down and find quiet time to listen to God, I can’t hear anything. I think for me, this is because I get too much in my head. I tell myself I won't hear anything or I question everything. This is why, for me, writing letters to and from God helps me hear him better. When I am writing I am not thinking too much. I am not questioning or over analyzing. I am just writing all that comes into my head. Sometimes it was a few things and sometimes it was longer. There were times when we had a conversation back and forth. I would write something then I would write what I felt God said in reply and then I would write again and so on. It was amazing! Have you ever wanted to sit down and have a conversation with God. A real back and forth conversation, you can. All you have to do is start it and then listen for God’s reply. If you are listening and you can’t hear Him, try writing down what comes into your mind. We don’t usually hear God’s voice as a loud booming voice from the sky. Usually He sounds more like your own voice in your head. It is more like a thought than an audible voice.
Writing these letters to God and having Him write back has been amazing. I truly think it has helped to cement my knowledge in who I am in His eyes. I have less stress and anxiety because I don’t just think God is looking out for me, I know He is because He tells me often. I don’t just think that God loves me, I know he does because He tells me often. I don’t wonder if He is proud of me or if I am doing a good job, Know I am because He tells me often. He is longing to tell you too. All you have to do is ask and then listen for His response. Give it a try, I know you will be blown away by the love He gives you. If you give it a try and nothing happens, please reach out to me. I would love to help you with this as I know God is longing to talk to each one of us individually. He tells me often, and also tells us at prayer group that His people aren’t listening to Him. If you struggle to see God as a loving Father, start writing letters to Him and ask Him to reply. You will see just how much He loves you and who couldn’t use more love in their life?
Dear Heavenly Father I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, I ask you that you show each person listening who they are in your eyes. I thank you for all the times you have answered my letters and I ask you encourage others to write to you as well. Lord, I pray that each person listening begins to listen more to what you have to say. I pray that your words will fill their soul and they will see just how amazing you are. I pray they will see that you are not waiting for us to screw up so you can punish us, you are waiting to welcome us back with open arms. You are a good good Father and I pray that every person listening will be able to see that for themselves, not just take my word for it. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk Boldly with Jesus. I am looking forward to bringing you a witness tomorrow from my friend Anne Trufant. I met Anne on a Military Council of the Catholic Woman’s conference. She is a Catholic speaker, singer, and she and her husband run a summer camp. Anne was such a great speaker we hired her to come back the following year. I have had the pleasure of hearing her speak at at least five conference/retreats. At the very first one I bought one of her CD’s. It was amazing. I didn’t really know Christian music was a thing before her CD. I listened to it every day. It was so good. The next year I bought the other 2 or 3 that she had. I was hooked! I know you will love Anne as much as I do. She has so many great stories of encounters with the Lord. Tomorrow she will tell us about her first real up close and personal encounter. It is pretty amazing, you won’t want to miss it. I will see you tomorrow. Remember, Jesus love you, and so do I. Have a blessed day!
How To Live According To The Spirit
Romans 8:5-6 “For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.”
This verse has been waiting for me to use it for several days now. I can’t remember how I discovered it, but I wrote it down and then Thursday and Friday I didn’t use it and then this morning I had another verse planned and this one was sitting open on my desktop. I am sure I had a great idea of what to talk about when I chose it and yet this morning nothing was really coming to me. Then I got the idea to search for articles on how to set our mind of the Spirit because this verse says that will bring life and peace and I think we could all use more of that in our lives!
I think the first part of this verse is pretty easy to understand. If we live according to the flesh, then our minds will be set on the things according to the flesh. Now that I think about it, it might not be easy for all of us to understand what it means to live according to the flesh. Let me explain a bit. The flesh refers to that inner power and will to do wrong, to disobey the Lord, and to yield to sinful inner urgings. Living according to the flesh doesn’t just mean when you do things of a sexual nature, which is what I was thinking when I first read this verse, or really anytime I hear that term. Living according to the flesh means you do whatever you want to do. You let your urges control your actions. You know you really shouldn’t do something and yet you do it anyway just because you really want to. Sometimes it is not merely a want, it might be an addiction to something. You feel you need to have it, and physically or mentally, your body might need it at that moment. For instance if you are addicted too drugs your body needs them to continue to feel like it wants to feel.
Living according to the flesh can be easier at times because our bodies and minds have many cravings and many times it is easier to give in than to fight it. I have really been struggling with will power lately. I used to be really good at not giving in to my cravings and doing the right thing. There was a time when I decided to not watch any TV unless it was helping me grow closer to God. I would listen to programs on Formed.org, and I would watch videos on the various Saints lives. I would read books about the Saints. I was doing really good. I was also very disciplined with my food cravings. I honestly felt so much better, mentally and physically. Not that I feel bad now, but I did feel better then.
I agree with this verse when it says, if you live according to the flesh, you set your mind on the flesh. When I was living more according to the Spirit it was easier to be disciplined because I was in God’s Word more, I was surrounding myself with excellent examples of people who lived in the Spirit and I could see all the benefits they received from our heavenly Father. I could see the fruits of the Holy Spirit in their lives and I wanted those fruits. Now I struggle with living according to the Spirit. I have days when I know what God would like me to be doing and yet I choose to sit and watch mindless TV instead. I struggle to not give in to my urges to procrastinate, to hit the snooze button instead of spending time with God, and to not eat the entire pan of brownies. (In my defensive my son did put caramel on them, you would want to eat the whole pan if you saw them too.) The more I live according to my flesh, the more normal it seems because the more my mind gets set to the ways of the flesh.
However, that is not how I want to live. I want to live according to the Spirit. Now I just need to know how to do that. There are lots of ways, and many of you are probably doing many of them. Since I am one that likes instruction and step by step directions so that I can make sure I am doing things correctly, I will give you some guidance from an article I found and I will put the link to this article in the show notes. I do want to just say first that these are not the only ways to live more according to the Spirit. You do what feels best for you. These are just a few ideas to get you started. The main thing to remember is that if you put God first, you will be off to a great start!
This article had 5 ideas for how to “Set Your Mind On Things Above” and was written by Lissie Hoover.
Put to death what is earthly: She says that the first steps toward setting your mind on things above is to rid yourself of your old self and the sin and habits that accompanied it. She said we can’t remain part of the system of sin we have been delivered from. She gave a great analogy about trying to climb a ladder toward freedom with heavy weights upon your feet. You would get dragged down each time you tried to take a step. This is what sin can do to us if we don’t let it go.
Put on the New Self: Casting off sin is not enough if we do it with our own strength. We are given the power to reject sin and temptation through the empowering of His Spirit and the transforming of our minds through His Word. She said the new self refers to the justified, transformed being that looks more like Jesus than our old selves in sin and shame.
Let the peace of Christ rule in your mind: If we focus on this world, our peace will be stolen from us. There is so much to worry about all around us. When we say the peace of Christ should rule our hearts it means it should rule our minds too. We need to turn away from focusing on our problems and the problems on our world and turn our focus to God and his goodness and sovereignty. I love the saying, don’t focus on how big your problems are, focus on how big your God is.
Let the Word of Christ richly dwell: One of the best ways to set your mind on things above is to read the Word of the Lord. If we are just reading and consuming things of this world we cannot keep our focus on things above. She gave a great analogy about reading the Bible. She said, “If someone you love send you a letter, would you toss it on a shelf and fail to open it? Of Course not! If we love Christ, we will dedicate ourselves to reading his words to us.” She is so right. God gave us the Bible, and often times we let it sit on a shelf, or at least I did for a good 30 years or so. Even now I have days where it just sits on a shelf, or a table. She also talks about how quiet study time is important and yet we also need to share what we learn. She says it only makes sense that reading and discussing Christ-centered things will shift our mind from things of this world to his truth.
Give Thanks to God: The author acknowledges that thankfulness may not always come easy in all circumstances. However, every good thing comes from God. She points out that we are all deserving of God’s wrath for our rebellion against Him, for violating His laws and departing from what is true and right and yet Christ died for us, making salvation possible. Gratitude can also help us shift our focus from our worries to God’s power to save and provide. Thank God, even when it is hard. He does a lot for us and the least we can do is thank him.
There was another article I read which I don’t really have time to talk about but I will put a link for it in the show notes. One quick think I do want to mention is what he said about prayer. He said we need to fight with prayer. Prayer is not meant to be a last resort, or a defensive strategy for when we mess up. It’s meant to be a first response and an offensive weapon. I will go more into that another time I am sure but I wanted to at least put it out there to let your subconscious mind start taking that in. Our prayers are more powerful than we realize, I know that to be true!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to pray for all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to fix our eyes, hearts and minds on you, please continue to show us how. Show us how to focus more on the things above than on the things of this world. Help transform us Lord. Help give us a renewal of the mind. We love you Lord, you are truly amazing. Thank you for all you have done for us and in us and thank you for all you are continuing to do. We are truly grateful and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. This week I an attending a retreat and I will be one of the speakers. I ask that you all keep me and this retreat in your prayers I ask that God has something personal and specific for each person attending.
Next weekend, April 28-30, a group is hosting a “Satanic Conference” at the Boston Marriot Hotel that will gather over 5,000 people to give glory to Satan. As difficult as it might be for us to comprehend, the event is completely sold out. While many may be attending on a lark or out of curiosity, we know that events such as these are very serious and can cause great damage to souls. There is well-founded concern that consecrated Eucharistic Hosts may be publicly desecrated at this event.
Many of the leaders of this convention are the same individuals who were organizers of the planned Black Mass in Cambridge ten years ago. That sacrilege was thwarted by the People of God rising up in prayer and in a Eucharistic Procession. This planned conference is a call for each of us to fast and pray over these days in a fervent manner.
A local priest by me is making a personal invitation to each of you to fast and pray and, if possible, to join in Holy Hours. Satan and his minions have an evil plan for us, but our Lord is much more powerful than any of these dark forces. Joining our prayers with the Lord and the Church, I believe we are going to witness a great Victory for Christ through the outpouring of grace that comes from the fervent prayers of His “little ones.”
This can seem like scary times but it is important to keep our eyes fixed above and remember that God already defeated evil. The war has already been won. I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed day!
Set Your Mind On Things Above by Lissie Hoover
How To Set The Mind On The Spirit by Kenny Roberts
Fear & What To Do About It
2 Timothy 1:7 “For God did not give us a spirit of cowardice but rather of power and love and self-control.”
I think there is a lot of fear in the world today. There was a lot of fear before this pandemic but now there is even more. It seems as though everyone is afraid of something and some people are living with fear all day everyday. There are many that have financial fears; they have lost their job, either permanently or temporarily. The Pandemic, that I hope we are finally coming out of, has caused so much panic and fear in people over the last few years. People were so afraid to leave their houses for a while. Then in the midst of the pandemic there were also several attacks of various racial or ethnic groups, making it even more scary for whole groups of people to leave their houses. Even still today, there are a lot of reasons to be fearful right now. Many of these reasons are real reasons, the threat is real and it makes sense to be cautious. However, we need to remember who we are. We are children of God. He tells us in Matthew 6:27 “Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?” Worrying won’t get us anywhere. However, knowing this does not make our fear any less real. During the pandemic I was doing the Jeff Cavin’s bible study called Walking Towards Eternity. One of the chapters addresses fear. One thing that I think is important to point out is that there is a difference between healthy fear and unhealthy fear. I believe the difference is that a healthy fear keeps you safe and helps you to make good choices. For instance, having a healthy fear of God can help you make choices that keep you from sinning. Having a healthy fear of COVID or any disease can help you practice good hygiene and make other choices to aid in the prevention of spreading this terrible virus. An unhealthy fear is one that keeps you trapped in some way. For instance, you are so afraid of COVID that you don’t leave your house even when necessary, or you spend every moment of the day afraid you might catch the virus. One of the questions that I found in the chapter that I thought would be especially relevant for everyone right now was, “What practical steps can be taken to overcome fear?” Did you know that fear, all on its own, triggers more than 1,400 known physical and chemical responses and activates more than 30 different hormones? Here are several practical steps you can take to conquer your fear.
1. Turn your fear over to God. “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” 2 Corinthians 10:5. As soon as you notice you are having a fearful thought, take a moment and hand that thought over to God.
2. Ask yourself if this fear is a legitimate fear/scenario? Is it likely that the thing you are afraid of will happen? Often times we worry about things that never happen. Mark Twain once said, “I… have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.”
3. Educate yourself: “Prudent education teaches virtue; it prevents or cures fear … The education of the conscience guarantees freedom and engenders peace of heart.” (Catechism 1784) Learn your faith, learn to know God, the more you know and understand the word of God the less you will be afraid.
4. Understand your fear: Some fears are based on personal experience and some are a result of culture and past experiences. Understand how your fears came to be. Understand how it comes on, how it makes you feel and what level of intensity it is.
5. Visualize Courage: What would it look like if you did not have this fear? What would it look like if you overcame this fear? What if this fear did not exist in your life?
6. Act as if: If you act courageously in a gradual way, you will overcome the limiting story you tell yourself. For instance, if you are afraid to give a presentation, one way to start overcoming this fear is to give a short presentation to a family member, when comfortable with that you could give the presentation to a close friend, and then to a not so close friend. The point of this is to step outside of your comfort zone slowly and then gradually expand your comfort zone.
7. Move towards your fear: Instead of running away from your fear, turn around and face it. Write down 5-10 ideas of ways you can face your fear in some small way and then act on these ideas daily.
8. Don’t live in Denial: It is important to examine how your fear is limiting you. Sometimes we are so used to our everyday routine that we don’t see the ways our fear has us trapped.
9. Fortitude: “The virtue of fortitude enables one to conquer fear, even fear of death, and to face trials and persecutions. It disposes one even to renounce and sacrifice his life in defense of a just cause. ‘The Lord is my strength and my song.’ ‘In the world you have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.’” (Catechism 1008) Keep going, even when you don’t want to, even when you are afraid.
10. Channel your spirituality: When you are feeling afraid of something lean into your spirituality even more. Read God’s word, say a prayer, talk to the Lord, do something to help you connect with God and remember that he is your refuge.
“God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea; though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble with its tumult.” ~Psalm 46:1-3
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask you to help us trust in you more and to have less fear. Lord, we know you are protecting us. We you know you are strength and our refuge. If we know this we have nothing to fear, help us know this more Lord. Help us understand with you nothing can harm us. Help us to focus on how big you are instead of how big our problem is. We love you Lord, you are amazing. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I wanted to take a minute to let everyone know, in case you are new to listening, that I have a book that I wrote called TOTAL TRUST In God’s Safe Embrace. It is a book that teaches the 15 different ways in which I developed a really deep trust in God and also a more intimate relationship with Him. I have been through a lot of stuff over the last 18 years of my life and yet through it all, I knew God was there with me and that things would be ok. I discovered it is possible to have peace, even in the middle of chaos. If life is hard right now, if you are struggling with something, check out my book, it could help you find God in the middle of the chaos. Also if you want to reach out to me through my website or with an email to catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com (Click Here) then I can even send you a signed copy of my book. I look forward to meeting you here again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed weekend.
Stand Firm In Your Truth
Jeremiah 1:4-5 “I knew you before I formed you in your mother’s womb. Before you were born I set you apart and appointed you as my prophet to the nations.”
Do you know who you are? Do you know without a shadow of a doubt, the truth about who you are to God? It says in the Bible in Jeremiah 1:4-5 “I knew you before I formed you in your mother’s womb. Before you were born I set you apart and appointed you as my prophet to the nations.” God knew you before you were even formed. Isn’t that amazing? He set you apart even before you were born. You are his child and he loves you.
Sometimes we lose site of who we are. Sometimes the enemy comes in and tries to confuse us. The enemy is not someone that usually comes in and tells bold face lies. Bold face lies would be too easy for us to spot, too easy for us to see that they were not true. If the enemy came and whispered in your ear that a dog says moo and a cow barks, you would not believe it. You know, without a doubt, that a dog barks and a cow says moo. However, the enemy comes in with half truths and tries to get you to believe them and often times we fall hook, line, and sinker. For instance, when someone is having a bad day and snaps at us, the enemy comes in and tells us that person doesn’t like us, or that we are always letting people down.
Satan preys on our weaknesses and our insecurities. If we have a job interview, he will whisper questions in our ear like, “Are you sure you can do this job?” or “There is probably someone else out there that is more qualified.” These are designed to make you question yourself. They make you feel like you are not enough. What if we knew who we were with complete certainty? What if we did not question if we had what it takes because we knew that God gave us so much potential. How great would it be to not even listen when the enemy whispered things like “No one could love you,” or “Your not good enough to love,” into your ear because you know that God loves you. You know this because he says so, you know this because he gave his only son on a cross for you and so when Satan tries to tell you differently you don’t even give it a second thought. You dismiss the thought as easily as you would if he told you that fish could walk on land.
Why is it so easy to believe all the bad stuff about ourselves and so hard to believe the good stuff? Why do we question it when a someone gives us a compliment, but easily believe it when someone criticizes us? Maybe it is because we don’t stand firm in who we are? Maybe we struggle to believe all the amazing things that God has told us about who we are? I read an article that I feel we should all read. The title is “Who Does God Say I Am?” and it had a list of biblical affirmations about our identity in Jesus Christ. These affirmations are based on specific bible verses. It is not an exhaustive list from the bible, but it is something that I feel we could all benefit from reading. Click here to read this article.
If you know and understand who you are, then the enemy won’t be able to convince you of his half truths. Here are some truths:
You are made in the likeness and image of God (Gen. 1:27).
You have the power of the one that raised Jesus from the dead inside of us (Romans 8:11).
You are a friend to Jesus (John 15:15).
You have been set free from the law of sin and death (Romans 8:2).
As a child of God, You are a fellow heir with Christ (Romans 8:17).
You have been accepted by Christ (Romans 15:7).
You have been set free in Christ (Galatians 5:1).
You are chosen, holy and blameless before God (Ephesians 1:4).
You are redeemed and forgiven by the grace of Christ (Ephesians 1:7)
The peace of God guards your heart and mind (Philippians 4:7)
God supplies all your needs (Philippians 4:19)
You have been chosen of God, and you are holy and beloved (Colossians 3:12)
These are just some of the truths about who you are according to God. There are so many more. Spend some time reading over these. Spend some time in your bible reading all the wonderful things that God says to you. Spend time learning the truth about who you are so that when someone tries to get you to believe something that is not true, you will not fall for their lies or their half truths. Stand firm in who you are and whose you are!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, I ask you to protect each one of us and help teach us how to put on the armor of God against the enemy. Help us to learn who we are in your eyes so we can be firm in who we are. Help us to be so sure of your love that we don’t question it when the enemy starts talking. Help us open our ears to you and your truth and close our ears to the enemy and his lies. We love you Lord, you are amazing. You know who we are and it must break your heart to see us walking around without knowing who we are. Help us Lord. We want to be firm in your truth. Give us a hunger for that truth and that knowledge of who we are in your eyes. We are so grateful for you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me in this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed day!
**This episode was inspired by an episode of The Big Life Devotional by Pamela Crim. (Episode #680 The Twisted Truth) Click here to go to that webpage
We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click here. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed day!
Today I want to witness about the Encounter Ministry Divine Mercy Healing Service that I had the pleasure of ministering at last Friday. I want to explain what we do at these healing services because you may hear me talking about them and yet you may not have ever been to a healing service. I have been to a couple different healing services. Encounter Ministries format is by far my favorite. One reason for this is that they get everyone involved and they show that you don’t have to be special, you don’t have to be extra holy, you don’t have to know how to heal, to be used by the Lord to heal. God can heal through anyone. All we have to do is be willing to say yes and do as prompted either by the Holy Spirit, or in this case, the person leading the healing service. You will see what I mean when I get to the corporate prayer part of the service. Another reason this format is my favorite is because they stop all along the way to test out and see if any was healed and then they give all thanks and glory to God. I think this builds the faith of everyone in the room each time someone reports a healing and therefore allows more healings to occur. I also chose to witness about this today because there are plenty of healings that took place that night as well.
The first thing we do at these healing services we start with an hour of praise and worship in front of the Blessed Sacrament. These first two healings took place during the praise and worship before we even prayed over anyone. There was a woman who said she had an issue with her neck, there was a kink in her neck and after praise and worship it was gone. Someone else had neck pain and after praise and worship it was reduced. Next the prayer team came up and gave any word of knowledge that we received. A word of knowledge in this case means any conditions we felt we head from the Lord that He wanted to heal that night. The next thing we do is ask everyone to test their conditions. There will be things you can’t test, but many you can. For instance, if you have limitations, like you can’t raise your hand past a certain point, we ask you to try and raise it and see if there is any difference. Many times in the Bible the healing came when the person took that step in faith and acted in some way on their part. In Luke 6:8 Jesus said to the man with the shriveled hand, “Get up and stand in front of everyone.” So he got up and stood there. And then in Luke 6:10 Jesus said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He did so, and his hand was completely restored. Do you see how Jesus asked him to stretch his hand out and then it was completely restored? I have been praying over people for healing for many years now. When I made this small shift of checking back in and asking people to check if there is a difference, I saw so many more people experience healings. If it isn’t a limitation problem, you can assess a difference in pain. Take a quick minute before you start and ask the person what is your pain level at now from 1-10. Then check back in with them afterwards and see what the pain level is at after the prayer.
After the prayer team gave any words of knowledge we received, Deacon Joe checked back in with those that came for healing to see if anyone was healed. There was someone who had numbness in her face and then when the word of knowledge was released about God wanting to heal someone who had numbness in the face, the woman’s numbness went away. Praise God!
Next Deacon Joe did a prayer thanking God for giving us the word of knowledge and said some words of command about those conditions. Then he asked people to test and see if anything had changed. He asked if they had a reduction of pain or an increase in movement. There was no-one that saw a change after that prayer so he moved on to corporate prayer. For this section of the service, Deacon Joe lists a body part, such as head, neck & shoulder. If you have pain in that area you raise your hand and stand up. Everyone that is not standing now goes over to someone that is standing and puts their hand on them, if the person says it is ok and we pray for that person. Deacon Joe tells us what to say and we just repeat after him. Everyone in the room is now either receiving prayer or praying over someone else. Even if you aren’t on prayer team. Even if you have never prayed over anyone before, you get to pray over someone. You don’t have to be nervous about how to do it because all you are doing is putting your hand on someone and repeating after Deacon Joe and God is doing all the hard work of healing. It is so amazing. I am telling you, if you ever have the opportunity to be at an Encounter Ministries healing service, you should go. It is so powerful. After each time we pray, again, we check in with the people receiving prayer. After this first prayer we had someone who had less pain in his shoulder. Then we had another person who had tension released after this first prayer. Someone else said his neck was better. The we did the head, neck and shoulders again. This time we had someone else’s neck that was releasing after the second time praying. Next we moved on to back, spine and hips. There was someone who reported no more pain. Thank you Jesus. There was someone else who had pain in his L2 vertebrae in his spine. He said it was 50% better and he also was filled with peace all over. There was someone else who had a release in their lower back. God is so good!! We did it one more time. Another person experienced lower back pain that was decreased. Someone else felt as though they had a lot of tension and they needed to pop their back and it didn’t pop, but the tension did release.
Next we went to legs, ankles and feet. After the first time praying we had a woman who had a toenail injury three times in the last 2 weeks and now the pain is gone. Someone else had pain in her toes and now the pain is released. Then we prayed a second time and someone had tendinitis in the Achilles tendon and after prayer the tendinitis was relaxed. There was a prayer team who was praying in proxy for someone. This means that the person wasn’t actually there, so someone else was standing in for them. When the prayer team was praying in proxy for this other person, one of the prayer team members calf was being healed. God is so good! She wasn’t even asking for prayer for herself and yet God gave it to her anyway. This is something I think is super important for us to all remember, God won’t be outdone in generosity. He will always give us more than we give Him.
Next we moved onto hearing and vision loss. There was a woman who had a differential in hearing between her two ears. After prayer her hearing was the same in both ears. Praise God! We prayed a second time and there was a woman who asked the prayer team if they were speaking louder that time. Nope! That is just the amazing power of God letting you hear better. Hallelujah! God is so good! Next Deacon Joe encouraged everyone, if they began to receive a healing, but it was not complete, then they can ask for more prayer over that healing in individual prayer.
Then we moved onto depression and anxiety. There was someone who felt lighter after prayer. Then we prayed a second time. This time we had two other people who said they were feeling better. Someone else said they were feeling calmer now after prayer. Deacon Joe reminded us that Jesus gave us the power to cast out any demons. Then he asked Jesus to fill all those suffering with peace!
Next we moved on to food allergies. We prayed twice, however, it is hard to test this one. I’ll let you know if I hear of any testimonies for this one, nothing yet.
Then we moved on to praying for internal organs, like thyroid, heart, stomach, etc. When we asked if there was anything that you could test this woman had COPD. She said she was out of breath when she walked up the stairs. She went with one of the prayer team members and jogged down the hall and up the stairs to see how she did. When she got back she said it was better. We prayed a second time and she tested it again. She said it was better, even after jogging up the stairs twice she was feeling good. Praise God!
The last thing we prayed for was cancer and terminal illnesses. We prayed for this a second time. This is another thing that is really hard to know, without going to the doctor, if there was any improvement. However, one of my friends was online on zoom during this service because she had just started a new round of chemo the day before and she didn’t have enough strength to come in person. This is the message I received the next day, “The prayer group by zoom was good last night. They did private zoom meetings for the zoom people to get a two person prayer team to pray over people. It was wonderful. They prayed for healing for all the things I needed. I had my 3rd of 5 chemo days today and I felt good and did well today.” Actually the fact she could even be on zoom is a God job because we weren’t intending to have it online and then Deacon Joe decided last minute to put in on zoom. The Holy Spirit is so good! My husband received a text message from someone he sent the zoom link too and her reply said, “Thanks Tony. I can’t get the sound to work but I can feel the healing nonetheless.” She couldn’t even hear what was being said and she could feel the healing. It just shows that God has no boundaries, even technology can’t stop His healing power!
I hope you enjoyed this overview of the healing service and the witness of all the healings that took place. Jesus is still healing each and every day. He is not only healing, but he is miraculously healing and he is using every day people like you and me. Yes you! I know you don’t believe it, and yet I am praying you will keep coming back to listen to this podcast and these witnesses and you will begin to believe in the power of the Holy Spirit that is living inside of you. Once you do, you will be amazed at all God can do through you. And then hopefully you will come on here and share you testimony with others. I can’t wait to hear about all that God is doing in your life! When we share what God is doing with others, it gives all the Glory to God!
Are We Ready?
1 Corinthians 1:5-8 “For in him you have been enriched in every way—with all kinds of speech and with all knowledge— God thus confirming our testimony about Christ among you. Therefore you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed. He will also keep you firm to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
What I thought about when I read this verse was how the apostles thought that they would see the second coming of Jesus in their time. They thought Jesus was coming back soon and that they would need to be ready for it. I wonder if that made it easier for them to stay ready for His return. I feel as thought the apostles had the benefit of living with Jesus and learning directly from Him. They got to see His miracles up close and personal and they got to have a personal relationship with Jesus. From what I can remember learning or hearing, the apostles thought Jesus would return during their lifetime.
I was thinking that it might have been easier for them to stay on the straight and narrow because they had that time they got to spend with Jesus while he was a live and then they also had the thought that Jesus would be returning any day now for judgment. I thought of the Bible verse Matthew 24:42, “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come.” The apostles thought his return was imminent and so I wonder if it was easier to prepare for it and stay ready?
We on the other hand, many of us probably don’t even really understand what is going to happen when Jesus comes again. I will be honest, I do not know a lot. I know he will come to judge the living and the dead. I know this because we say it each week at church. I don’t know much more about it. I did hear a bit about it during the Catechism of the Catholic Church in a year podcast a week or so ago. It was very interesting and definitely something I should spend some more time reading about. However, regardless of how much we know about it, most people know that there will be a seconding coming of Christ and that we should be ready for it. Are we?
I think we would all be living our lives very differently if we knew Christ was coming tomorrow. And example of this would be when my husband Tony goes away on a trip. When Tony is here I try to stay up on the laundry, dishes, and forth. I don’t really like housework, but I try. However, when Tony is away on a trip I don’t do any of that as I know my boys don’t care, they are teens who rarely come out of their rooms. Don’t get me wrong, if he is gone for a long period of time, I will clean, but if it is a few days, I usually don’t do much in the way of cleaning, which feel great to me. I get a break and it doesn’t bother anyone.
The problem is the night before he comes home. If I had just kept up with the chores the whole time he was gone, then the night before he came home wouldn’t be anything special. However, I don’t. So, the night before Tony comes home I am usually up until the wee hours cleaning all the dishes, putting the laundry away, making sure the counters are clean. I am not doing this because I have to, I am doing it because I know Tony likes it that way and because I want to make him happy. He always has the house spotless when I return from a trip, so I try to return the favor. This is why I say I think our lives would be different if we knew the day and hour that Christ was coming.
We go about our days as if the next day is guaranteed to us. We take a lot of things for granted. For instance, we just assume we will wake up to see another day of life, we assume we will get to see our grandchildren grow up and get married, or even our children get married. We go about life as if we will live to be a very old age. Yet, none of that is guaranteed. I am not trying to be all doom and gloom. I am just trying to get us all to realize that we have no idea what day will be our last day and we should live accordingly. When I say live accordingly, I don’t mean we should be fearful and anxious each day thinking that could be our last day. I mean we should live each day to the fullest. We shouldn’t leave things unsaid. We shouldn’t procrastinate and push things off until the next day, week, month or year because we don’t know if those will ever come.
The same goes with the state of our soul. We should all be living “as if.” As if Jesus was coming again tomorrow. As if today was our last day. As if our decisions matter, because they do. We don’t know when Jesus is coming. Do we want to be caught unprepared on that last day? Do we want Jesus to pass us by because we kept putting off going to confession, or forgiving that person we know we needed to forgive? Wow, when that thought came to me I felt as if the Holy Spirit wanted me to emphasize that one. Are you holding onto unforgiveness. Are you trying to wait until the last possible second to forgive someone? What if you don’t get that chance? What if you are taken right before you thought you would be? Don’t wait! Unforgiveness is not helping you and it’s not hurting the other person. Just let go, let go of the anger, let go of the hate, let go of all the feeling that aren’t serving you. Give all of that to Jesus and allow him to come into your heart and heal it.
The people in the verse above were eagerly awaiting the coming of Christ, are we? They were trying to stay prepared because they thought He might be coming any day now. For us, we know it has been about almost 2,000 years and he has not returned yet, so I don’t think we expect Him anytime soon. However, we don’t know. In Matthew 24:36 it says, ““But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” We don’t know when He is coming and so we need to be prepared.
What do you need to do to be ready for Christ’s coming? I am not talking about saying 100 rosaries, or going to church every single day. I am talking about what do you have to get right with your soul? Do you need to take inventory of your life and see if you are putting God first? Do you need to look at your life and see which things are in need of repentance. That is what John the Baptist was preaching about the first coming of Jesus. “Repent and turn back to the way of the Lord.” Do we need to do that? Have we turned away, either with our hearts, our minds, or our actions? If so, it’s ok, just turn back. God is always waiting there for us with open arms, just waiting for us to come home. Then He scoops us up in a loving embrace, puts one of his finest robes on us, puts his ring upon our finger and throws us a party and says, “My son/daughter who was lost, has come home!”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those who are listening to this podcast today. Lord, we want to be ready when you come again, please help us. Put on our hearts all the things we keep putting off. Put on our hearts all the things we are not aware of that are not good for our soul. Lord, let us repent and be truly sorry for these things Lord. We love you Lord, you are amazing! We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to brining you another witness tomorrow. If you would like to share your story, witness or testimony, reach out to me. We would all love to hear it! Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed day!
What If I Don’t Want To Forgive?
Matthew 19:26 “Jesus looked at them and said, ‘With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.’”
Jesus is our guide. He came down to earth to show us how we should be acting. He came down to teach us that the Lord our God is love. He is trying to guide us to springs of the water of life, but we keep wanting to do our own thing. We don’t want to follow in his foot steps. Why don’t we? Because it is hard. Jesus said to love everyone, even our enemies. Is this even possible? Jesus wants us to forgive, but aren’t there some people that just can’t be forgiven? Shouldn’t be forgiven?
I wonder if we all realize what forgiveness is? Forgiveness is not telling the other person that what they did was right, or ok. It was not ok what they did. It is not forgetting what happened or excusing it in anyway. Forgiveness is admitting to yourself that this terrible thing did happen, that you can’t change it, so you are releasing any hold that it has over you. I know forgiveness is hard. In some cases it seems impossible. However, it is so necessary. God tells us right in the Our Father Prayer, Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. God is going to forgive us to the same extent that we forgave others. Think about the things or the people that you are unable to forgive. Do you really want the inability to forgive them to get in the way of God forgiving you? There are some things that no matter how hard we try, we can not forgive. This is ok, we don’t have to do this on our own. God can step in and help us forgive. The only thing we must do is to ask him. To give Him permission to work in your heart to forgive. We had a word or prophecy given at our prayer group that I feel is so important to share.
“I ask you to forgive my children. I know that is a difficult command and at times may seem very impossible for you to do. But I remind you that I am with you always, and with me nothing is impossible. Bring your inability to me. Allow me to work with my grace through you, so that you can be my forgiving heart for all the world.”
In this word, the Lord is asking us to forgive. He is reminding us that even though we feel it is impossible, nothing is impossible in Him. In Matthew 19:26 Jesus said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” It also says in Philippians 4:13 “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” We are not in this alone. We have God on our side and with that we can do anything. I love how God always shows up to remind us of things when we forget. I like how God is reminding us that He is always with us and then asking us to bring our inability to him. He is asking us to allow Him to work with His grace through us, so that we can bring His forgiving heart to all the world. How beautiful is that? How great is it that God not only wants to use his grace to heal our heart, but he wants us to be His forgiving heart for all the world.
God gave us free will. Can you imagine how frustrating it must be for Him to sit by and watch us squander all that he has provided for us? He would love nothing more than to rain down graces on us and yet we can’t be bothered to let him. God is not going to step in if we do not ask Him. He does not want to force us to love Him. The only way to ensure it is true love is to give us the choice to love him or not. Every day we have a choice to make. Are we going to choose God or are we going to choose something else? God has so much grace and so much mercy to give. He does not leave us alone to make these decisions. He is there for us every step of the way.
But we do need to make that choice. Once we do make that choice, He will be there to help us overcome all of the obstacles. And there will be obstacles. The life that God is asking us to live is not an easy life. Especially in this world right now. Forgiveness and love are two things that we are being called to do that are not the norm in society today. We live in a culture that does not want to forgive. We want to stay angry, blame other, and not even talk to someone that doesn’t think as we think. This is not what Jesus wants for us.
Jesus did not come to earth to be with people just like Him. He did not just hang around with those that believed like he believed. He didn’t find all the people that were getting it right in life. He came for those that were struggling. He came for those that needed Him. When he met these people, he did not meet them with judgement and unforgiveness. He met them with love and forgiveness. He accepted them as they were and encouraged them and helped them to become better.
How great would it be if we could do the same. If we could greet everyone we meet with the same love and acceptance that Jesus had. You may be thinking that you are different. Jesus could do that because he was man and God, so he had the Holy Spirit inside him to help him make the right choice. Guess what? So do you. You have the Holy Spirit inside of you and if you let Him, He will guide you to make the right choices as well. Just remember what Jesus said in Matthew 19:26, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” You can do this! It is possible! Just take a moment and ask God for help.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we really want to forgive and yet we also don’t really want to forgive. Please help us. We give you permission right now to come into our lives, into our hearts and help us to forgive anyone we are struggling to forgive. Lord we want to be free to be forgiven by you. We want nothing in the way of that forgiveness. Dad, Abba, Father, please come to our aide and help us. Show us how to forgive. Prepare our hearts to forgive. Give us the strength and the grace to forgive. We trust you Lord. We love you! We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk Boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
You Are Not Too Old & You Are Not Too Young
Mark 16:17-18 “And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well.”
If you haven’t noticed already I tend to do a lot of verses that talk about the amazing power we get from the Holy Spirit. The reason for this is because I think it is so incredible that Jesus would send the Holy Spirit to empower us and to help guide us. People pay so much money for people to tell them what to do and how they should do it and yet we have the ultimate guide living inside of us. I talk so much about the Holy Spirit because I think if we all truly knew how powerful we are with it, our lives would be so different. It is the dream of many young boys, and even some young girls to be a super hero. Each and every one of us could be living a supernatural life style. How great would it be if you could be doing the things from the verse above? I know not everyone wants to have all these gifts. Maybe you don’t have any desire to drive out demons, or speak in a new tongue. How great would it be to be able to lay hands on sick people and they get well?
I am not talking about in healing ministry, I understand everyone may not feel called to that. However, how about just being able to pray for a loved one when they get hurt and see them get better? How about being able to pray for a swollen ankle or a migraine headache and have the pain and swelling go away? There is no junior Holy Spirit. There isn’t a different portion of the Holy Spirit given to some people and not to others. I know some of you are listening to this and you are counting yourself out. As soon as I said you could pray over a loved one and they could be healed you said to yourself, “Maybe some people can do that, but not me.” I am too old, I am too young, I am not holy enough, I don’t know enough, whatever it may be. How long are we going to keep coming up with excuses? Moses was over 80 when he saw the burning bush and God called him into service. Not 80 when he completed his work from God, 80 when he started it. Noah was about 500 when he started building the arc, which took a century to build. Noah & Moses were not too old, and you are not too old either! You are just getting started.
As far as too young…I saw a testimony last night, I will put a link for it in the show notes. At the Encounter School of Ministry Conference in 2020 there was a woman who attended. She had stage 4 Esophageal cancer and the doctors told her there was nothing else they could do. She went to the healing service and waited in line for the priest to pray over her, because that is what we do. We go to the person we think might have the closest connection with God, or the most power of the Holy Spirit. We want someone with a track record. It is our future, it is our life, we want to entrust our healing to the one that is the most experienced. I totally get it, I would have done the same. Yet, when she finally got up to Father Matthias and she told him what was wrong, he said, I think we need to have the children pray for you. Honestly, she didn’t want to, she had just waited in a long line to get up to Father Mathias. However, she was obedient and she went to find some children. At this conference they had several youth tracts. One for elementary kids, one for middle school, one for high school and one for college. They taught these kids all about the power of the Holy Spirit and part of that was teaching them to pray over others.
She went up to a couple kids who ranged in age from 6-9 years old. She told them she had cancer and the doctors said there was nothing else that could be done. A nine year old little girl said, “That’s because they don’t know the power of Jesus.” The kids prayed for various things, all “in Jesus’ name.” She felt this warmth in her lung and she told the kids. They got all excited and prayed even more. A few months later she went to the doctor for another CAT scan. The doctor looked at it and didn’t know what to say. He was stuttering and shocked. He said the scan was completely clear. There was no cancer anywhere. This was all new territory for him as that had never happened for him before. That was three years ago and she is still cancer free. Praise God, He is so good. These children were not too young and you are not too young either. These children were not too inexperienced and you are not either.
When we are searching for a healing, we go to the person that has the most experience because we are thinking healing is like anything else. The one with the most experience, the one with the best track record, the one that is closer to God is more likely to give you the healing. The thing we are forgetting is that Jesus is the one that does the healing and Jesus doesn’t need any certain conditions to do a healing. He can work through any one at any time. Like He did with these children. I have heard many similar stories where people who were completely “unqualified” in our standards, and even their own standards, have been the instrument of incredible healings. I think one reason some people see more healings than others is because they are stepping out in faith and trying more than others. The more you step out in faith and try and pray over others the more healings you will see. The rate of people getting healed that you don’t pray over is 0%. What have you got to lose, I mean honestly, what do you have to lose? You might risk looking silly, sounding silly, or you might risk rejection if you ask someone if you can pray over them and they say no. If you are comparing what you might lose to what you might gain if you prayed and you did see a healing, I don’t think they can compare.
I am talking to myself as much as I am talking to you. I am often afraid to ask someone if I can pray over them. Why am I afraid? The worst that can happen is that they say no? Or I am also afraid I will pray and nothing will happen. Again, why am I afraid? Even if they are not healed, they won’t be any worse off than they were before I prayed. The verse above says, “And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well.” It does not say, those who are old enough, young enough, experienced enough, or holy enough. It says these signs will accompany those who believe. That’s it, that is the only requirement. And remember, you only need the faith of a mustard see, and they are really tiny! I love the name of the podcast, even though I didn’t know how much I loved it when I started this podcast. I love that I am learning how to walk more boldly with Jesus and I pray you are too! I pray as you listen to this podcast and all the witnesses you will see more and more how powerful the Holy Spirit is and how powerful you can be when you let the Holy Spirit guide your actions!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those who listen to this episode today. Lord we love you and we are so grateful for the Holy Spirit, The Advocate, The Paraclete. We are grateful you didn’t leave us alone. We ask that you teach us more and more how to listen to the Holy Spirit and how to follow wherever He leads us. Lord, we ask that you help us step out with a bold faith and begin to pray for people more. I ask that you inspire each person listening in their own way. If they are just ready to begin praying silently for people’s healings, great, that is super important too! If they are ready to begin saying a quick prayer with someone when they are asked to pray, that is great too. If they are wanting to lay hands on someone and pray commands in the name of Jesus, that is cool too. Lord, let us each start somewhere and give us the grace, the strength and the faith to take that first step. Lord we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I hope you take some time to CLICK HERE to listen to the testimony. Or you could just google Angel being cured of stage 4 esophageal cancer. You should get a youtube link that comes up. You can also see the link on my facebook page Catherine Duggan. It is only a 3 minute video but is awesome. I look forward to meeting your here again on Monday. Have a Blessed day!
Every One Of God’s Promises Is A “Yes”
2 Corinthians 1:19-20 “ For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you, Silvanus and Timothy and I, was not “Yes and No”; but in him it is always “Yes.” For in him every one of God’s promises is a “Yes.” For this reason it is through him that we say the “Amen,” to the glory of God.”
I thought this was an interesting verse. When I looked up the meaning of it I found that it said God is not fickle with His promises. He does not promise something to us and then later say “no” to that promise because He doesn’t really feel like it that day. That seemed to really hit home with me today. I think I have been feeling a little fickle with commitments to God lately. I say I will get up at a certain time to pray with Him and then I hit snooze, sometimes for an hour and then I don’t have time to sit and pray with Him. Of course in the moment I tell myself that it is ok because I can pray with Him later. It doesn’t have to be first thing in the morning. This may be true for some people, however, I know myself and I know that if I do not pray with God first thing in the morning, I will not make time later. But, in that moment when I am trying to decide whether I should get up or do it later, I convince myself I will do it later.
Another way I feel I have been fickle with the Lord is with fasting. I want to fast, I truly do, and yet every time I try to come up with a plan it all seems too hard. I get overwhelmed with all the options and I don’t pick anything. I also will decide on something, for instance, I will fast from breakfast and lunch on Mondays and then just eat before class at 3. However, then Monday comes and I don’t feel like fasting, or I come up with some excuse why I can’t do it. How about you? Have you been fickle with your promises to God? Have you been sometimes “yes” and sometimes “no”?
God is not like this. He doesn’t base His actions on how He feels from day to day. When He makes a promise we can be sure He will follow through on that promise. He fulfilled all of His Old Testament promises in Jesus. Jesus also was not fickle. He didn’t want to die on a cross for our sins. He even asked His Dad if there was any other way. In Matthew 26:39 it says, “Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.” Jesus really didn’t want to go through the pain and suffering that He endured, and yet He didn’t say “no” He told His father if it needed to be done, He would do it.
I think this verse is an important one to remember. Sometimes we wonder about God’s promises. We wonder if they will come true. For instance, in Romans 8:28 it says, “ And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” You might be stuck in the middle of a really hard season right now. You might be really struggling to understand how God could use this for good? You might not believe that it can be used for good. I think that’s ok. We don’t have to understand how God works all the time. There is so much about Him that is a mystery. God promises to use all thins for our good and all we need to know is that He keeps His promises. God’s promises are always a “Yes.” We don’t have to understand it, we just have to believe it.
Another promise we struggle to believe is that Jesus died for our sins. We don’t necessarily have trouble believing this in the broad sense. We can all say Jesus died for our sins, and we truly believe He did for “our” sins collectively, but we struggle to believe He died for our sins personally. We struggle to accept forgiveness because we don’t believe our sins can be forgiven. We will be the first to tell others that their sins are forgiven and yet the last ones to believe it for ourselves. Why is that? Why is it so hard for us to believe that God loves us so much He is happy to forgive us when we say sorry? Don’t we do that with our loved ones? Maybe not as much our spouse, but when our kids say sorry, we usually are quick to forgive. Our heavenly Father is the same.
The last part of the verse says, “For this reason it is through him that we say the “Amen,” to the glory of God.” This is something I am just recently learning more about. In my Encounter class they talk a lot about the power of coming into agreement with something. When we say “Amen” we are saying I agree that this statement is true. When we say Amen at the end of a prayer we are coming into agreement with all those who said it. We are agreeing with everyone else who prayed that prayer that is a true prayer. When we say “Amen” at mass, for Catholics, when the priest says “The Body of Christ” we are saying, “Yes, I believe that this is the body of Christ.” When we say Amen, we are agreeing with the statement or prayer and saying, “Yes, this is true.”
There is power when you come into agreement with things. When Jesus was going around and healing people sometimes He asked the people if they wanted to be healed. He wanted them to come into agreement with the healing. Sometimes the person needed a healing asked Jesus if He wanted to heal them. In Matthew 8:2 it says, “A man with leprosy came and knelt before him and said, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.” The man wanted Jesus to come into agreement with Him about his healing. Jesus agreed and the man was healed. Do you see the power of coming into agreement?
This can, unfortunately, work against us as well. Never with God, when you come into agreement with what God is saying to you, amazing things can happen. God has great and amazing things planned for your life and He is waiting for you to come into agreement for them. However, we can also come into agreement with the enemy and then that gives the enemy power. When the enemy whispers things into your ear and you adopt those things as truth, that gives the enemy power. When you agree with all the things he is saying to you, you are giving him more and more power. None of us would willingly give the enemy power, and yet that is exactly what we are doing when we believe his stupid lies, when we let him get in our head. If we are going to come into agreement with someone, let’s choose God. Let’s believe what He tells us as his promises are always a “yes” and they always result in good eventually. The enemy is a liar and he comes only to steal, kill, and destroy. Let’s be careful to make sure we are not coming into agreement with what the enemy is telling us. We don’t want to give him any more power than he already has. We are children of God, let’s live like it. Let’s come into agreement with that and not with the lies of the enemy. Take a look at your life. Have you come into agreement and believed any lies of the enemy? If so, how can you replace those lies with the promises of Christ? God’s promises are always a “yes!”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to come into agreement with you as we know when we do it is powerful. Please help us. We want to break all agreements we made with the enemy, whether they were intentional or unintentional. Please help us. We want to belong only to you Lord! You are amazing Lord and we are so grateful that your promises are always a “yes.” We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day.
We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click here. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed day!
Today I want to witness to you about something that happened to my sister yesterday and how she could see God working the background. My sister’s dog Nyla was injured on their walk in the woods yesterday. She lets Nyla run off leash in the woods so Nyla can get a lot of exercise and have fun at the same time. Yesterday Nyla and Dee got separated for a bit. When Nyla came back to Dee she was panting and out of breath. Dee thought it was from a lot of running so she put her in the car and they went home. When she got home Dee realized she had a gash on her chest and brought her straight to the emergency room. The vet was able to stitch Nyla’s gash and give her pain medicine. When I was talking with Dee as she waited for Nyla’s surgery she was explaining the ways that she could see God working in the background. The first one was that Dee had the flyer for the animal hospital right on her table when she got home and saw the gash. She didn’t really know anything about this hospital. However, she was planning to get up at 4 to walk Nyla. She happened to wake up at 3 and couldn’t get back to sleep. She decided to go through a stack of papers on her desk instead of wasting that hour. In that stack of papers was this flyer for the animal hospital so she took it out and put it on her table. She had no idea she would need it just two hours or so later, but God did! Next were a series of decisions she made about money. Taking your dog to the emergency room is expensive. The last time Dee got paid there were a couple different decisions that she made that she felt were God working in the background. She had $400 to put towards something and several options to choose from. However, she felt strongly that she should put it towards her credit card balance. She then made another decision with her finances and had more money that she wouldn’t normally have and she put the towards her credit card balance as well. She believes all those situations were God working in the background because the balance on her credit card was the same amount as the vet bill was. How amazing is that? God is so good. She had no idea she was going to need all that money on her card. If she would have put that money towards something else, she would not have had the money for the animal hospital bill. It is always scary when our pets have to go into the hospital and it is also scary when we don’t know how we will pay for them. God took care of her and she didn’t need to worry. She was very grateful. Nyla is now at home resting up. Prayers for a speedy recovery would be appreciated as I am sure Nyla does not want to sit around waiting to get better. She loves to run!
I would also like to witness about another friend of mine today. I had a friend share with me a story one time of how God miraculously answered her prayers about money as well. She was really struggling financially. She was sitting in the parking lot outside the dollar store where she was going to do her grocery shopping. She was making a list of the bare essentials that she needed as she had three children and she needed to make sure she had enough food. I don’t remember the exact numbers but I think she had $20 or so for groceries for the week. She had gotten to the store before it opened and she had her daughter in the car. She was looking at her list and looking at the $20 she had and knew she didn’t have enough money. She closed her eyes and thought, “If I just had 50 more dollars I could make this work.” She no sooner had that thought when her daughter saw something fly by wind and fall on the ground of the parking lot. Before my friend could say anything her daughter jumped out of the car and picked up what she saw fly by. She gave it to her mother. It was a $50 bill. There was no one else in that parking lot. It was a miracle. God heard her request. She didn’t even have to ask God, He heard the request of her heart and gave it to her. God is so good. He always takes care of us! He knows the things we worry about. He knows what we need. He hears the whispers of our heart.
I am so grateful to both of these ladies for sharing their stories with me so I could share them with you. God works in all of our lives, whether we know it or not. God is working in your life too. Even if you don’t see how. Even if you don’t recognize his work. I wonder if you would see Him more if you were looking for Him more? I wonder if you think about the last time something happened and you thought, “Oh, what a coincidence, that worked out really well.” What if it wasn’t a coincidence? What if your heavenly Father arranged all of that just for you? Would it make a difference in how you viewed that situation? Would it change your life if you started seeing all the ways God is working in your life, even in the small details? Try looking for God more in your days and then email or reach out to me on social media and let me know if it does make a difference? I think you will be pleasantly surprised.
Let’s Replace the Bad With The Good
Matthew 12:43-45 “When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it wanders through waterless regions looking for a resting place, but it finds none. Then it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ When it comes, it finds it empty, swept, and put in order. Then it goes and brings along seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and live there; and the last state of that person is worse than the first. So will it be also with this evil generation.”
I heard this verse again last night and I thought it would be a good one to talk about today as it can be a confusing one. I know I didn’t really understand this verse when I first heard it and so I thought I would explain what I have learned about it. When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person it wanders through waterless regions looking for a resting place, but it finds none. This is referring to when a demon is cast out of a person. It leaves the body, but it does not leave the world. Once a demon is kicked out of one person, it searches for another person to inhabit. If it is does not find one, it tries to return home again.
When the demon gets back to the person whom he used to inhabit, if he finds them empty, swept, and put in order, then he will go and get some friends and move right back in. I didn’t understand this when I first heard it. I didn’t understand what the person was supposed to do. The verse says they swept it out and put it in order. What else did they need to do. I thought it was a good thing that it was empty and didn’t understand why the demons could come back and bring even more with them. Then I heard it explained and it made more sense.
When we have evil spirits occupying space in our minds and bodies we need to not just kick them out, we need to replace them with the Holy Spirit. What this verse is saying is that even though the evil spirits were kicked out of this person’s body, they person did not turn to the Lord. The person did not fill those places with the Holy Spirit. Basically the took the miracle of the being set free and yet did not change their lives. They continued to live their lives in the same manner that they did before they were set free. Living lives filled with sin is not living a life of freedom. Paul clearly states in Romans 8:9, “You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ.” If you do not invite the Spirit of Christ into you then you are left empty and evil spirits can come take up residence.
The reason we talked about his verse last night in class is because this quarter is on inner healing and the teacher was explaining that someone needs to be ready for inner healing before they can go through a session. They were explaining that if they are not ready and they do not have a faith community to support them afterwards than we might have a situation like the one in this verse. We may take someone through inner healing and yet if they weren’t ready for it and they aren’t ready to walk in that freedom, then it might get worse for them. I know it seems hard to believe that someone wouldn’t want to walk in the freedom that comes with inner healing. Sometimes people want relief from the demons inside and yet they have had these demons so long they aren't ready to trust God yet. They aren’t sure who to trust. They may also find that they identify with their pain and so they don’t want to give that identity up. We live in a broken world and we are used to pain. We are not used to being loved. We aren’t used to being forgiven. We aren’t used to being loved for us, exactly as we are.
Now that we know we need to replace the bad things in our lives with good things, what does this look like practically? It is one thing to hear something and understand it and it is another thing to be able to take that knowledge and apply it to your life. You can have all the knowledge in the world, but if you don’t apply any of it to your life, it won’t make any difference. So, how do we apply this knowledge to our lives? We might not think this applies to our lives because we don’t have evil spirits inside us. Hopefully this is true and you are full of the Holy Spirit and you are leaving no room for evil spirits. Even if this is true, this verse still applies to you. No matter who you are, there is sin in your life. None of us are perfect. The concept in this verse doesn’t have to just apply to evil spirits. It can be applied to any sin and also to any bad habit. For instance, imagine if you are trying to quit smoking. What happens if you decide to quit smoking and yet you don’t replace that habit with anything else? You are likely to start smoking again, and maybe even start smoking more than before because you were without for awhile. What if you decide to stop eating junk food but instead of replacing the junk food with healthy food you just stop eating the junk? How long you do think it will be before you start eating that junk again?
We need to not just stop doing the things that aren’t good for us, we need to replace them with things that are good for us. For instance, instead of eating ice cream, maybe make your own frozen treat with fruit. Instead of eating chips, maybe replace it with veggies and dip or roasted chick peas? What is your bad habit, or the sin you keep falling into and how can you replace it with something that is good for you? One thing I struggle with is watching too much TV and the shows I am watching aren’t great for me. I could spend that time reading scripture, or even watching shows that bless me. At one point a few years ago I decided I wouldn’t watch regular TV shows anymore. If I was going to be watching TV it was going to be something that would help me grow closer to God. I watched movies about saints, I listened to audio teachings on formed.com, I used that time to grow in my faith while I was also unwinding from the day. If you find yourself scrolling on social media a lot you can replace that with scrolling on YouTube for videos on things that will help you grow closer to God. You could also spend that time reading a book.
There is not just one way to grow closer to God. The awesome news is that there are so many different ways to grow closer. Find something that works for you. Find something good to replace the bad habits and repetitive sins in your life. Don’t just stop doing the bad thing and forget to replace it. You don’t want to leave yourself vulnerable to attacks from the enemy. Fill your time with good things, holy things. Also, if you are like me, you have a lot of bad habits. Don’t set out to change them all at one time because you will get discouraged and just give up. Pick one thing today and think about what you could do instead or what you can replace that thing with and then start changing just that one thing. You will get to all of them eventually, just start one at a time. We can do this. We can put things in order and yet not leave room for the enemy to come in. You’ve got this!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to fill our lives with you and all things of you. We don’t want to quit the bad without replacing it with good things. We don’t want to leave any room for the enemy. Lord we want every encounter with you to leave us changed forever. We don’t want to encounter you and have it not change our lives. Help us to be transformed every time we interact with you. You are amazing Lord. You do so much for us and we are so grateful. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to brining you another witness tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Christ Died For Us While We Were Still Sinners
Romans 5:6-8 “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.”
This verse is one of those verses where it makes complete sense and you know you probably should have known it, and yet when you hear it you realize you haven’t really ever thought of it like that. We all know that Christ died for our sins. I think we probably all know that He did this even though we didn’t really deserve it. I just don’t think I ever thought of the fact that he died for us while we were still sinners. He didn’t wait for us to be pure. He didn’t require anything from us really. God wanted us to be reunited with Him. He didn’t want anything to separate us any longer, so He sent His only son to die for us while we were still sinners. That is remarkable when you think about it. It says in the verse that Christ died for the ungodly.
It can be hard to remember this sometimes. It can be hard to remember that Jesus didn’t die for those who were perfect. He didn’t die for those who always get it all right. He didn’t die for those who know how to pray perfectly, worship and praise perfectly, who fast perfectly. Jesus even said in Matthew 9:12-13, “ But when he heard this, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.” I don’t understand why it is so hard to remember this. If we were perfect, we would have no need for Jesus to have died for our sins. None of us are perfect.
I know it seems like some people have it all figured out, some people know just what to do and what to say. You look at other people at church and they seem to have it all together. They come with their young children and their children behave. Or they don’t have children and yet they know all the songs and they know all the people. It is so easy to look around the church and see people who seem to have it all together. I remember, a few years ago I went to mass at a few different churches because Tony was out of town for work and I needed to find a time where I could go with the kids. They weren’t always ready to go in time for our regular church. I remember getting to mass, probably late because the boys didn’t want to go to mass. I remember looking around at the big families. The ones that had 5-10 kids and wondering how they do it. I remember wondering how they get their kids to behave so well. I remember thinking they all seemed so helpful. How is it I couldn’t seem to get it together with three boys and yet they have 7 children and they have it all together?
Looking around at church, or anywhere really and comparing yourself to others is never a good thing. Just because someone seems to have it all together does not mean that they do. You have no idea what happened at the house before getting all those children to church, or what happened in the car right before walking into church. I am from a big family and I can say without a doubt that we didn’t have it all together all the time. We fought with each other, we disobeyed our parents, we talked back, we were normal kids. However, we knew it was important to our parents to be good at church, so we did our best. We weren’t always great, but we did ok. But if you judged our family on how we were at church, you definitely wouldn’t be getting the whole picture. It is like that for everyone.
What just came to mind is the comedy actor Robin Williams. He brought so much joy and laughter to so many people. He seemed so happy all the time, well, all the time we saw him. Tony and I actually got to meet him when He came to Turkey on a morale tour. He did one of his comedy routines and he was so funny. He made everyone laugh. To look at Robin Williams from the outside you would think he had a great life. What you didn’t see by just looking at him is that he struggled with depression for many years. What you don’t see by looking at someone from the outside is how they are feeling on the inside. Robin Williams took his own life when he was only 63 years old. Those who did not know him well had no idea he was struggling with depression.
Every single person in this world is struggling with something. This is one reason why we should be kind to everyone we meet, even if they are not being kind. We don’t know what they are going through. You might have an encounter with someone in a store and they are rude to you. You may want to be rude back and yet, what if they are being rude because their mom or dad just died, or their child? What if their spouse died and they are lashing out because they don’t know what else to do? What if a you see someone at the store that looks tired and is very grumpy. Maybe they have been up all night with a screaming baby and this is the first 10 minutes they have gotten to their self in a very long time.
I am not saying people have a right to be rude, or that their circumstances excuse their behaviors. However, you will not be held responsible for their behaviors, but you will be held responsible for your behaviors, how you responded to them. How you treat people is how you treat Jesus. Jesus is in each person we meet. If Jesus was having a bad day, you would be kind and understanding. Treat each person you meet with the same courtesy. Wouldn’t treating everyone kindly, even those who were unkind to you, be easier if you realized they were going through something hard? We don’t know what people are dealing with, even people we do know well, might have more on their plate then they like to talk about. Cut people some slack and don’t compare yourself to others. These two things will give you so much joy in your life.
It may seem like I have gotten off topic, but this verse is reminding us how much God loves us just as we are. It is telling us that we don’t have to be perfect, we don’t have to get it all right before God loves us. Jesus died for us while we were still sinners. He didn’t wait until we stopped sinning. This is important to remember when we are comparing ourselves to others. We don’t have to be perfect because that is not who God came to save. We can accept God’s love right here right now, right in the middle of our brokenness because that is what He came for. Someone needs to hear that today. God loves you, yes you, so much that He sent His only son to save you in your brokenness, in your sinfulness. He doesn’t need you to do anything for him to love you. He already loves you just as you are. He loves you in the mess that you are in. He loves you with all that you have done. He loves you in all that has been done to you. He loves you for you. God loves you and there is nothing you can do about it. He has always loved you, yes even when you did that thing, and He will always love you, yes, even when you do that thing again. There is nothing you can do good or bad to make God love you any more or any less. He already loves you to the moon and back again just as you are. Accept His love, it is freely given!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, thank you for sending your son to die for us while we were still sinners. I ask you to help us remember this when we are feeling like we have to be perfect or we have to get it all right. Remind us that you love us just as we are. You love us while we are still sinners. Lord, we ask you to give us the strength and the grace to not compare ourselves to others. We ask you to help us to see that everyone is going through something and to be kind to others, even when they aren’t kind to us. We love you lord, you are amazing. Help us to accept your love. Open our hearts to it. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. If you haven’t already received my “Invite Jesus into Your Every Day” audio training I will put a link in the show notes (click here) or you can go to my website walkboldlywithjesus.com and click on the link. The training gives you some great tips on how to include Jesus in the things you are already doing. Remember Jesus loves you, and so do I. Have a blessed day!
And By His Bruises We Are Healed
Isaiah 53:5 “But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed.”
With today being Good Friday, or at least that is the day I am recording this episode, I am not surprised this is the verse of the day. It makes me so sad to think of all Jesus had to go through to save us. It makes me sad to think of all that pain and suffering. Anytime I do the sorrowful mysteries for the rosary I am reminded of each of the painful steps he had to take. I usually use a rosary app to do the rosary and it gives a great description of each of the mysteries. For those of you who do not say the rosary, or maybe those that do not have the app and so don’t get the same commentary, let me share with you the five mysteries and how the app describes them:
First, The agony in the garden: Jesus comes with his disciples to Gethsemane. “Stay here while I go yonder and pray.” Entering the garden with Peter ,James and John Jesus prays, "My soul is sorrowful unto death.” Jesus sees the sins of all mankind, who’s guilt he has taken upon himself. He sees the wrath of the father, which his sufferings much appease. So great is his anguish that his sweat becomes as drops of blood falling to the ground. An angel appears to him from heaven to strengthen him. “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me, yet not my will but yours be done. Finding the disciples asleep, “Could you not watch one hour with me?” Jesus is betrayed by Judas, cruelly bound and lead away. Father by the merits of the agony of Jesus in the garden, have mercy on us and on the whole world.
The Second Sorrowful Mystery, The scourging at the pillar. Jesus is taken before the high priest where he is falsely accused, buffeted and insulted. The Jewish leaders take Jesus before Pilate, for only he can impose the death penalty. The robber Barabas is preferred to Jesus. Pilate can find no cause in him, yet to appease the Jews he orders Jesus to be scourged. The scourge is made of leather thongs to which are attached small sharp bones. Jesus is bound to a pillar and cruelly scourged until his whole body is covered with deep wounds. The lamb of God offers his suffering for the sins of mankind. Jesus suffers so much in his sacred flesh to satisfy especially for sins of the flesh. The prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled, he was wounded for our iniquities, he was bruised for our sins. Father, by the merit of Jesus in this painful scourging, have mercy on us and on the whole world.
The Third Sorrowful Mystery, The Crowning With Thorns. Pilate asks, “Are you a king?” Jesus answers, “I am a king but my kingdom is not of this world.” In the Praetorium, the solders place an old purple robe on Jesus in mockery of his claim to be a king. They fashion a crown out of thorns and forcefully press it down upon his head. In his bound hands the place a reed as a scepter in mockery of his kingship. Kneeling before him in derision the spit on him and cry out, “Hail, King of the Jews.” Taking the reed from his had they strike him on the head, driving the thorns more deeply into his scalp. Pilate brings Jesus before the people, hoping his pitiful sight will soften them. “Behold the man.” Their response, “Crucify him, crucify him.” Our blessed Lord submitted to this terrible humiliation to make reparation for our pride. Father, by the merits of this terrible, painful, humiliation, have mercy on us and on the whole world.
The Fourth Sorrowful Mystery, The Carrying of the Cross. One condemned to death by crucifixion is forced to carry the cross to the place of execution. The suffering of Jesus is intense as the cross is laid on his bruised and wounded back and shoulders. Weak and exhausted from loss of blood, lack of food and rest, Jesus falls three times under the weight of the cross. Jesus meets his afflicted mother causing untold damage in the hearts of son and mother. The countenance of Jesus is disfigured with blood and sweat, with dust and spittle. Veronica wipes his face, leaving on her towel the image of his countenance. Fearing that Jesus might die on the way, the soldiers forced Simeon of Cyrene to carry the cross behind Jesus. Jesus speaks to weeping women, “Weep not for me, but for yourselves and your children. If anyone is to be my disciple, let him take up his cross and follow me. Father by the merits of this painful journey to Calgary have mercy on us and on the whole world.
The Fifth Sorrowful Mastery, The Crucifixion. Then hands and feet of Jesus are nailed to the cross in the presence of his afflicted mother. “Father forgive them, for they know now what they do. This day you will be with me in paradise. Woman, behold your son, son behold your mother. My God, My God, why have you forsaken me? I thirst. It is finished. Father, into your hands I commend my Spirit.” The side of Jesus is pierced by a lance. His body is taken down and placed in the arms of his mother. Father, by the merits of the crucifixion and the death of Jesus, have mercy on us and on the whole world.
I am not sure why I felt called to share those mysteries with you. I guess I just thought it would be good to remember all Christ went through for us before getting into the verse. Not that any of us could really forget what Jesus did for us. The verse says, “But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed.” This verse came out of Isaiah. Did you know Isaiah lived 740 years before Jesus was even born. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine knowing what was going to happen over 750 years before it happens? It is not as if Jesus just appeared one day without any notice. This is what makes it hard for me to understand why more Jewish people, especially the leaders, didn’t know who he was. Their were scriptures about him and what he would come and do, and yet people still didn’t believe.
I talked the other day about the fact that Jesus was wounded for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities. Remember, we are the ones responsible for his death as he took our sins to the cross, each and every one of us. The next line in today’s verse says, “Upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we were healed.” Did you know we were already made whole? I know it may not feel like it, but we were! I have been hearing the last part of the verse a lot lately. “By his bruises we were healed.” We tend to think God doesn’t want to heal us. We tend to ask timidly for healings or we don’t ask at all. We think God doesn’t want to heal us or that our ailment isn’t that bad and there are others far worse off than we are. We think God is too busy to heal us, so we don’t ask. Another reason we might not ask is because we are afraid to ask. What if the answer is no? What if we ask God to heal us and then we don’t get better, what do we do then? All of these are real concerns.
What this verse is telling us is that God does want to heal us. We are healed by his bruises. We are made whole by the punishment he endured. God did not send his only son to die on the cross so we can live a life full of sickness. God wants to heal us, not only forgive our sins. If you need a healing or someone you know needs a healing ask God for it and then keep asking God for it. Sometimes we need to be persistent. God rewards persistence, there are numerous examples of this in the bible. If you don’t get your healing the first time, or the 10th time you ask, keep asking. We can be tempted to stop asking and to assume that if God wanted to heal us He would have done it already. God does want to heal you, that is not the question. When does he want to heal you is the question. We don’t know the answer to this so we just need to keep asking and He will show us. The verse says, “And by his bruises we are healed.” Don’t stop asking. What if you gave up just before the healing. What if you asked 100 times and God was planning to heal you after you asked 101. You healing could be right around the corner.
One thing I have come to realize in my own personal life is that God rewards perseverance. I don’t give up and I don’t take no for an answer. I refused to believe my family would be broken forever, and I kept asking for God to fix it. I refused to believe I would be lost on a mountain in Bosnia Herzegovina and I prayed till I got off the mountain. I refused to believe that my niece was not going to make it and she did. I am not saying I am the reason for these miracles, I give all the glory to God. What I am saying is that He rewards us when we don’t give up. If you are too tired to keep asking, ask someone else to ask for awhile. But don’t give up hope, He does want to heal you!!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those who are listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to not give up. Help us to keep asking. Help us to believe that you want to heal us. Help us to see you love your children and don’t want any of them to be hurting. Lord, give us strength and grace to persevere, to not stop asking, no matter how long it takes to get those answers. Help us to keep hoping, even when it is hard to hope. Lord, teach us to rely on others and to have them ask when we can’t. Help us to realize we don’t have to go through anything alone. You are always there with us. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again on Monday. I wish you all a very happy Easter! Remember, Jesus loves you, and there is no greater time to remember that than this weekend when we remember all he sacrificed for us, for you, yes you! I love you and I hope you have a very blessed weekend.
Train for Godliness
1 Timothy 4:7-8 “ Have nothing to do with profane myths and old wives’ tales. Train yourself in godliness, for, while physical training is of some value, godliness is valuable in every way, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.”
I just want to take a moment, before going into this verse, to tell you how much I am enjoying exploring the Bible. If you do not spend much time in the Bible, I would urge you to change that. Even if you just spend 5 minutes in God’s word, it would change you life. Currently I am not spending a ton of time in the Bible. In my class we go over several scriptures that support our lessons. I am doing these episodes each day, so I am in God’s word daily, however, the past two years I was doing the Bible podcast with Father Mike and I am not this year, so I am not in the Word as much as I have been in the past. However, I still find it so fascinating. There is so much wisdom and common sense in the Bible.
We tend to think, or at least I think the Bible is a bunch of stories that we can really learn a lot from. I forget that the letters to the people of that time, the ones from the early church fathers, are full of wisdom and are full of instructions for how to live our lives. They are instructing the early church and we can learn so much from them. I forget that we are not the only ones trying to figure out how to live a Godly life. I forget we are not the first people to encounter problems hearing God’s voice, following God’s ways. I so easily forget that there are generations upon generations of people who have been right where I am and they can shine a light onto my situation.
Sometimes I can think of the Bible as something I am supposed to read because that is what a “good Christian” does. I can think of it as just another task to get me one step closer to heaven. I can check off the box on my too do list of things I need to do in order to impress God. And yet I have times, like this morning when I remember how much I love to read God’s word, not for any other reason except that I love it. This morning I was looking for a scripture for this episode. I was looking at ones I had saved for another time. I looked up 1 Timothy 4:17 and decided to read the whole chapter. That is how I stumbled upon today’s scripture. Just in case you were wondering how I came up with the verses for the day, sometimes it is just random and other times it is from my prayer group or my class, or the scripture of the day.
I love today’s verse though and I had no idea it was even in the Bible. I can’t remember ever hearing it before. I love it because it is so easy to understand and so relatable. I love it because it points out something that we should all know and yet probably has never crossed our minds. Let me give you the verse again, “Have nothing to do with profane myths and old wives’ tales. Train yourself in godliness, for, while physical training is of some value, godliness is valuable in every way, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.” The first sentence is something that can be hard to do. It can be easy to get caught up in old wives’ tales and myths sometimes. Especially if those around us believe in them. It is a good reminder though that we should avoid them, have nothing to do with them. If we focus on old wives’ tales or myths we could get all caught up in superstition and that is not a good thing. It is best to avoid that and rely on the Word of God and what we know to be true instead.
The next line is great! It is something we don’t think about enough. It says, “Train yourself in godliness, for, while physical training is of some value, godliness is valuable in every way, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.” Wow, isn’t that so good! It is easy to go about our days in this life forgetting that their is another life to come. It is easy to get caught up in the here and now. It is easy to think about what we want to do now, how we want to feel now, what we want to eat now and forget that we have another life, an eternal life, and that our here and now decisions will affect that life. Our next life will be much longer than this life. It may feel like this life is long, but eternity is longer, trust me. Yet, we focus so much more of our time on this life. We give in to our every whim and desire because “YOLO”, you only live once, right? Nope, there is another life and how you live this one matters.
I am not saying you can’t have fun in this life. I am not saying you shouldn’t strive to be happy in this life, you definitely should. I am saying, we should do as the verse tells us to do and we should train ourselves in godliness. Many of us participate in some sort of physical training. We try to take care of ourselves physically with what we eat and how we exercise. Even if we are not taking care of ourselves physically we are aware that we should and we are consciously choosing not to. Are you aware that you need to train yourself in Godliness? I am not sure it is something we think about. I am not sure it even crosses our mind. This is why I find this scripture so fascinating. It is such a simple concept. It even seems like it would be common sense and yet it seemed completely new to me. It seems like it is the first time I am hearing it.
Maybe it is not new to you. Maybe you are familiar with this verse, or this idea of training ourselves in Godliness. If so, that is awesome! I would love to hear from you on how you are training yourself in Godliness. How are you accomplishing this? For those of you, who like me, are hearing this either for the first time, or in a new light, how can you train achieve this, how can you train yourself in godliness? When I take a minute to think about it, what comes to my mind is to read the scriptures. When I am training physically, for a race for instance, I will read what others have done to prepare for the race and then I will decide how I want to train. It can be the same for godliness. I can read scripture and see how those who have come before me have trained. I can read about the Saints and how they trained, I can read about anyone else that has achieved what I want to achieve, godliness, holiness, intimate communion with the Father, and I can decide how I want to train.
The first step in changing anything is becoming aware you need to change. Reading this verse this morning has shown me that I need to change. I don’t need to change everything I am doing as some things I am already doing can be part of my training process. It is not so much that I need to change what I am doing as much as my outlook on it. I am now aware that training for godliness is a thing and is something I should be doing so I can set up a plan to do that. I can examine the things in my life, my priorities and make sure they are in the correct order. I can ask myself questions like, I am spending more time on my physical well being than my spiritual well being? Is this thing I want to do going to be good for me not only in this life but for my next life as well? I can stop and ask myself before I make big decisions, “Is this something my future self will thank me for?”
You may have other questions that come up for you when you think about training for godliness. I feel the prompting to mention that we don’t need to make a big to do list of all the things we need to do to train for godliness. It doesn’t have to be a lot of pressure to live up to certain expectations. I feel the point of this scripture is just to remind us or make us aware that our decisions and actions in this life matter. I think the point of it is just to bring an awareness into our lives so we aren’t just going on autopilot as that is so easy to do. Maybe just take a moment to evaluate your life and see if you are training for godliness and if not, what could you do start training. Start slow, maybe add one thing to your day that can help you grow closer to God. If you aren’t sure where you to start, you could start with adding scripture, or adding time to talk to God. It doesn’t matter where you start, it just matters that you start.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each person listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to train for godliness. Help us to care more about our spiritual well being than our physical well being. Help bring an awareness into our lives of where our priorities might need to be realigned. Help us put you first Lord! We love you and we are grateful for all you do for us! We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk Boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you, and so do I. Have a blessed day!
We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click here. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed day!
Lorraine Sweet's Blog "My Tea With Jesus" (click here)
Who Is Responsible For Jesus’ Death?
Ephesians 1:7-8a “ In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace that he lavished on us.”
During Holy Week the fact that Christ died for our sins is on the top of our minds. As we go through the week we are all anticipating Good Friday, which is only Good Friday now that we know what happened and why it happened. Back when it happened, no one was calling it good Friday. It was a day filled with complete and utter sadness. The Savior, the Messiah had been murdered. How could that be? It was not only heart breaking, it was confusing. Why didn’t He save Himself? He helped all those people over the last three years, he brought Lazarus back from the dead, why couldn’t He just come down off of the cross? No one understood, no one heard Him when He told them what was going to happen. It definitely did not feel like a “Good Friday.”
The reason we celebrate it as “Good Friday” is because we understand why Jesus had to die on the cross. We understand His passion for a greater purpose. We understand that the Jewish chief priest and elders were not responsible for Jesus’ death. We understand that Pontius Pilate and the Romans were not responsible for Jesus’ death. We understand that Judas is not responsible for Jesus’ death. Jesus died on a cross because that it was He was sent here to do. Jesus died on a cross to redeem us from original sin and reunite us with our heavenly Father. Jesus came to fulfill the Father’s plan.
I have been listening to the Catechism in a Year podcast with Father Mike. I am learning to so much about who God is, who Jesus is, who the Holy Spirit is. I am also learning a lot of about what the Catholic Church actually says about a lot of things as I think the world can kind of take what they think the church is saying and then get it all twisted up. Father Mike said he was talking to a man one time that was really upset because the man said Catholics blame the Jews for Christ’s death and yet Christ dying was a good thing because He saved us from our sins. So why do we blame the Jews when it was a good thing? Father Mike explained that we do not blame the Jewish people for Christ’s death. In the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which spells our exactly what the Catholic Church believes, #598 says, “In her magisterial teaching of the faith and in the witness of her saints, the church has never forgotten that "sinners were the authors and the ministers of all the sufferings that the Divine Redeemer endured." Taking into account the fact that our sins affect Christ himself, the church does not hesitate to impute to Christians the greatest responsibility for the torments inflicted upon Jesus, a responsibility with which they have all too often burden the Jews alone: we must regard as guilty all those who continue to relax into their sins since our sins made the Lord Christ suffer the torment of the cross, those who plunge themselves into disorders and crimes crucify the son of God a new in their hearts (for he is in them) and hold him up to contempt. And it can be seen that our crime in this case is greater in us than in the Jews as for them, according to the witnesses of the apostle, "none of the rulers of this age understood this for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory.” We, however, profess to know him. And when we deny him by our deeds, we in someway seem to lay violent hands on him. St. Francis of Assisi said, “Nor did demons crucify him; it is you who have crucified him and crucify him still, when you delight in your vices and sins.”
This really hit me when I heard it. I have heard many people say the Jewish people killed Jesus. I would always say, yes, some did, but not all of them. However, I never really thought of it like this. I never thought of us all having a part in it because Jesus died for our sins, all of our sins, every single person on the the planet, past, present and future. None of us can escape responsibility for it. I don’t know that our responsibility for His death should be our focus. I don’t know that we should focus more on that than the fact that He died to release us, to set us free from sin. I think when we think of Jesus dying on the cross we should celebrate what He did for us. Our freedom came at such a high cost. I think the fact that He took our sins with Him to the cross and that sin no longer has dominion over us is definitely where we should focus our thoughts.
However, I do think it would be good to take some time every now and then, especially during Holy Week, and examine your behaviors. Take a look at your life and your choices. Are you continuing to crucify Christ daily with your choices? I have been thinking a lot about what St. Francis said, “Nor did demons crucify him; it is you who have crucified him and crucify him still, when you delight in your vices and sins.” We all talk about how horrible the crucifixion was. We talk about how amazing it is that Jesus died for our sins, but what an awful experience. That pain and that suffering is nothing we would ever want anyone to go through again. And yet, St. Francis is saying when we continue to delight in our sins we crucify him still. That is powerful to me. Maybe it is just the Holy Spirit convicting me, maybe that is not resonating with you or sticking with you. I hope that is the case. However, I felt moved to share it with you in case it did resonate. In case it did cause you to stop and think about the various ways you may be delighting in your vices or your sins.
Lent is a time when we usually stop and take a look at our vices. We see which ones we want to take a break from for the 40 days of Lent. We examine our lives and how we want to live differently during Lent. Maybe we are being called to live differently every day and not just during lent. Do we have vices or sins that we need to give up once and for all and not keep turning back to them? Are we doing things on a regular basis that are causing Jesus more pain that we need to? Can we stop these things? Yes, I know we can stop these things if we choose to because Jesus defeated sin when He died on the cross. Sin no longer has dominion over us. If we partner with God to give up our vices, to give up our sins, He will help us. We can do all things through Christ who strengthens us!
This episode is not too make you feel guilty. I am not saying you alone are responsible for Christ’s death on a cross. We all, as a human race are responsible because He died for our sins, each and every one of us. The point is not to feel guilty, the reason I shared this with you is so that we can all take a look at our lives and see the things that we may still be doing on a consistent basis that are continuing to hurt Jesus. The first step in changing anything is to be aware something needs to change. This is why I felt compelled to share this with you. If you heard what St. Francis said you and felt convicted to change something, great! If you didn’t, that is great too. God puts on our hearts what He wants us to work on. If you didn’t feel compelled to change anything then that is great. This may not be an issue for you. I know it resonated with some of you though. I know it did with me too.
Dear Heavenly Father, I pray you bless everyone listening to this episode today. Lord, please put on our hearts any recurring sins you want us to change. Please put on our hearts any ways we are not showing up in the best way we can. Lord, we thank you for sending your Son to die on a cross for us. We know it wasn’t easy and it came at great cost to you. We love you Lord, you are amazing. We thank you for taking away our sin and the hold that sin had over us. We ask you Lord to help us remember that sin no longer has dominion over us. Help us to remember we are stronger than our desires. Help us to remember, just because we want it doesn’t mean we have to have it. Help remind us of the strength and power we have because you are within us. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy and powerful name, Amen
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I am so excited to bring you a witness tomorrow from my mother in law. She was brave enough to step out in courage and share two witnesses about two different times when God showed up for her. I know you will love it! I look forward to bringing that to you tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I! Go out and celebrate life today!
“If You Choose, You Can Make Me Clean”
Mark 1:40-42 “ A leper came to him begging him, and kneeling he said to him, “If you choose, you can make me clean.” Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, “I do choose. Be made clean!” Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean.”
I choose this verse today because I think this leper asks a question that we all ask at one point or another. When we need something from God, or when we need a healing for ourselves or for a loved one, we probably say to Jesus, if you choose to give me this, or if you choose to heal this person, you can. We know that Jesus can do anything. There isn’t anything He can’t do, so when we say this it is more for our benefit then for His. When we add “if you choose to” when we pray it is as if we are giving Jesus a way out. We are building in an out for Him and for us. Why I say for us is because if we don’t see the desired outcome we can just decide that Jesus didn’t choose to heal them this time. That is not always the case.
There are things that can get in the way of a healing, things that can block a healing. Unbelief can get in the way of healing. You don’t have to have belief to be healed. Jesus brought people back from the dead and how much belief can you have when you are dead? This is proof you can be headed even if you don’t have faith and yet unbelief can be a block at other times. For instance, Jesus could not heal in Nazareth because that was his hometown. That is where he grew up. It says in Matthew 13:58, “ And he did not do many deeds of power there, because of their unbelief.” The people that knew him as a child could not believe that he could be anything more than a carpenter’s son, so he was unable to do signs and wonders there.
Another thing that can be a block to healing can be unforgiveness. This can be a big block at times. Jesus wants to heal us, he wants us all to be free from our pain and suffering. And also, Jesus wants us to forgive. He taught us, right in the Our Father prayer, that we will be forgiven to the extent we forgive others. If we can’t forgive others God won’t forgive us. I know I have mentioned this before and I will keep mentioning it because this is huge. I know that some of you listening are dealing with some pretty big betrayals. I know some of you listening have had people hurt you in unimaginable ways. I know that the last thing you probably want to do is to forgive that person, or those people. And yet, that is exactly what God is asking you to do.
One thing I have learned and I want to pass on to you in case you were never told this, is that forgiveness is an act of will, it is a choice. It is not a feeling. You can forgive someone even if you don’t feel like it. You can forgive someone even when you don’t really want to. The only thing that is required for you to forgive someone is taking that brave first step to say the words, “I forgive _______ for _______.” It’s even better if you can do it in the name of Jesus. For instance, “ In the name of Jesus I forgive _________ for ____________.” It is totally ok if you say this and yet you don’t really feel it yet, even if you aren’t sure if you believe it yet. You are letting God know you are open to trying to forgive this person and you are inviting God in to do all the heavy lifting.
Forgiveness is hard and we can’t do it on our own. Only God can go in and heal our wounds and help us to forgive. However, God is a perfect gentleman and He will not come in where He has not been invited. He values our free will so much that He will sit by and watch, no matter how much it hurts him to see us like that, He will let us hold onto our anger and hurt if we choose too. However, He doesn’t like to see it and He is always right there waiting to take our pain and sorrow from us, we just have to ask Him. We just have to let Him know we want His help and invite Him into our mess so He can start to clean it up again.
God is asking us to forgive for two reasons. First, he wants to free us from the pain and suffering we are going through. I want to briefly touch on what forgiveness is and is not because I am not sure we all understand forgiveness completely. Forgiveness is not telling someone that what they did is ok. Forgiveness is not necessarily reconnecting with that person and letting them back into your life. Forgiveness is not saying they didn’t hurt you. Forgiveness is simply saying this thing happened, I can’t change the fact that it happened and yet I am not going to keep thinking about it. I am not going to keep replaying what happened over and over again in my head. I am letting it go. I am going to stop letting this terrible thing have a hold over me any more. I am breaking any hold it has over me. You are not saying what happened is ok, because it wasn’t. You can forgive someone and yet, never want to be around them again. That is totally find. Forgiveness and reconciliation are two different things.
When we refuse to forgive we are holding on to all that pain, anger, resentment, sadness and many other emotions and it slowly eats away at us from the inside. However, it is not hurting the other person. They are likely not holding on to any emotions from the incident and are merrily going throughout their day. I have heard that when we refuse to forgive it is as if we are drinking a little poison every single day and expecting the other person to die. It just doesn’t happen like that as you are the one taking the poison. The thing that happened was traumatic enough, why let that unforgiveness eat you up inside too? God does not want that for you. That is the first reason He wants us to forgive, to free us from that.
The second reason is because the other person who did that to you is God’s child too. I know you probably could care less about the other person and God gets that. He knows what you went through and He is not asking you to care about the other person. He is asking you to forgive that person though. You never know what your forgiveness could do for that person. I remember the story of Saint Maria Goretti. She was a young woman, a girl really, and she loved the Lord so much. One day a friend of hers, an older boy who lived where she lived, tried to rape her. She refused and kept telling the boy that this was not what God wanted. He had a knife and was so angry that he stabbed her several times. She was rushed to the hospital where she died, I am not sure how long she stayed a live for but I know she forgave her attacker before she died. This boy was so moved by her ability to forgive him that while he was in jail he decided to become a priest. His whole life was changed by this one girl’s ability to forgive. Forgiveness is powerful.
If you are not sure if you are holding onto any unresolved unforgiveness then ask the Holy Spirit to bring to mind anyone you might have unforgiveness towards. Another thing I have learned about forgiveness is that unfortunately it is not a one and done. You may have forgiven someone, you may have turned it over to the Lord and then one day you may feel that unforgiveness, that anger, sadness, or whatever it is again. This is normal. I am letting you know this so you don’t get discouraged with yourself. Sometimes it can be frustrating and we can think, “Really, I thought I dealt with this already?” It’s ok, just turn it back over to God and forgive the person again if you need to. It will get easier each time you do it. When you are first trying to forgive someone you may need to say it 100 time, 1000 times, who knows, it depends how deep the wound is. However many times you have to say it, just know that God is proud of you each time you are able to say it. He is smiling down on you and then going to work on your heart, on the wounds caused by that person, by that situation. God is releasing you a little more each time. He loves you and wants you to be free. Back to the verse above, Yes Jesus chooses to heal you!!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each person listening today. We thank you for wanting to heal us. We thank you for encouraging us to forgive and for being patient with us while we figure out how to forgive our own time line. We know it can’t be easy for you to watch us holding on to all of that. Lord, we thank you for doing all the heavy lifting, for doing the hard part. We know all we have to do is say that we forgive the person and then you come in and do the actual forgiving. You heal the wounds, you heal the scars, you make it possible for us to forgive. Thank you Lord. You are truly amazing. We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I wanted to take a minute to let you know that if you have clicked on the link and put your name and email address in and yet you have not received my audio training or the newsletter I sent out on Wednesday, the please email me catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com (Click Here) and I will try to figure out why the email did not go through. Thank you for subscribing. If you have not given me your email address so I can send my audio training (Click Here). I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a very blessed day!
I Had Nearly Lost My Foothold
Psalm 73:1-5 “Surely God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart. But as for me, my feet had almost slipped; I had nearly lost my foothold. For I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. They have no struggles; their bodies are healthy and strong. They are free from common human burdens; they are not plagued by human ills.”
This Psalm came up in prayer group yesterday. Not these verses, but when I read the whole Psalm these verses stood out to me because they talk about something that is so easy to do. This whole Psalm is talking about a person who is good and upright and loves the Lord, and lives accordingly. However, He says here in these verses that he almost slipped. He almost lost his foothold. He said he envied the arrogant when he saw the prosperity of the wicked. Have you ever done this before? Have you ever envied someone you knew, or knew of, and yet they were not known to be a very nice person? You didn’t envy them because they weren’t a nice person, but you envied them for all they had?
Did you ever notice how sometimes it can seem like some things always go right for some people? It seems as though they always get what they want. Everything just seems to work out of them and they never seem to have a difficult time and yet, they are not a good person. Meanwhile, you are following God’s laws, you are doing all the things you should be doing, you are kind, you are loving, and yet it seems like you just can’t get ahead. I get it. This is something I don’t understand as well. It’s so frustrating.
Tony had a boss one time and she was a nightmare. She would always yell at him, and say unkind things to him. Then she would ask him to do things, like come over and mow her lawn. He didn’t want to and yet he didn’t feel as though he could say no as she was his boss. She was very unkind to all those who worked for her and yet she was very kind to all those who she worked for. He hated to go to work and would dread work every single Monday. Luckily in the military people move around a lot so she was only his boss for a year or so. However, Tony was not the only person she treated like this. She was not a nice person to those who worked for her and yet she seemed to keep getting promoted. It made no sense to those who had worked for her in the past. It didn’t seem fair.
When you see people who are mean, unkind, or even people who are doing illegal things get ahead it can feel very discouraging. It can seem so unfair. I know people who love the Lord, who do everything they possibly could for the Lord, they are the kindest, most gentle people in the world and yet they have so much that goes wrong in their lives. They can’t seem to pay their bills, or their loved ones are terminally ill, or whatever else is going on. It doesn’t seem to make sense. I can see how the person writing this Psalm could have almost slipped. I can see how he could have lost his foothold. The enemy is good. He knows just what to show us to make us jealous or envious. This is especially true with social media. The enemy will use it to prey on your weaknesses.
For instance, if you are wanting to buy a house but just can’t at the moment, you will see people who have just bought a house in your social media feed. If you are waiting to get married you will see posts from friends who just got engaged. If you want to have a baby you will see posts of those who just had a baby. The enemy makes sure you see these posts and then starts to whisper in your ear. He whispers things like, “Why them, and not you?” “Look how happy they are, you will never be that happy.” “It’s never going to happen for you.” and so on. The devil wants you to be envious because envy is a sin and it gets in the way of our relationship with God. When we are looking at all we don’t have, and we are all guilty of this, we are taking our eyes off God. When I say we all do this, I mean we all do it. For some it might not be the things I listed, but have you ever thought, “I wish I had his/her hair,” “I wish I had his/her patience,” “I wish I prayed like him/her,” “I wish I could do that too,” or anything like that. Or maybe it is more material things, “I wish I had that car,” “I wish I had that job,” “I wish I had those clothes.” Whatever it is, I think I can safely say we have all been envious of something at some point in our lives. This opens a door for the enemy to come in and whisper all sorts of lies to us.
The next things this verse says is, “ They have no struggles; their bodies are healthy and strong. They are free from common human burdens; they are not plagued by human ills.” It definitely seems like this is true sometimes. It seems like those we know and love are struggling, some people seem to always be sick. I know three ladies specifically in my mentoring group who are wonderful people. They would give their shirt off their back if someone needed it and yet they are chronically ill. I also know plenty of people who are not kind, are down right mean and unkind, and yet they never seem to get sick. Why is that? Sickness is not a punishment from God, it is not the result of sin. Jesus addressed this in the Bible when He was asked “Who sinned, this man or his parents that he would be born blind.” Jesus answered, in John 9:3, ”Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.”
I think an important thing to remember also is that we don’t always know someone’s full story, this is true even for our loved ones. Our loved ones may be struggling and they don’t want to talk about it because they don’t want us to worry, or they don’t want to bother us. Or maybe they have told us, but we still don’t really know what they are going through because we have never been through it before. It may seem to us like the people who are arrogant have everything going for them. On the outside it can seem as though their life is perfect and they have all they could ever want. However, often times they don’t have what they really want. Yes, they have money, but that doesn’t make them happy, at least not forever. Many times the money gets in the way of healthy relationships. Many times once they make a bunch of money they aren’t sure what to do after that. There is a lot of mental health issues like depression and anxiety for even the arrogant. We just don’t see it because the enemy is really good at pointing our all the good that we are missing out on.
The verse above starts out, “Surely God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart.” God is good to those who follow Him. Keep doing what you know is right, even when it might not make sense to you. Even when others may think you are crazy. Don’t listen when people say, it’s ok to tell this small white lie to get ahead in business, it’s ok to do this one small thing that is illegal, it’s ok to not follow this law God has set out as it’s a small one anyway. God is looking out for us. God never promised us that life would be easy if He followed Him. Actually He told us it wouldn’t. He told us we would struggle and yet He did promise He would be there with us every step of the way. He will give us the strength we need to get through anything that comes our way. I know it seems tempting when we see people who have it all, even if they are awful people, to want what they have. When you find yourself envying those people who earned all they have in a worldly way, instead of a Godly way I want you to remember that this world is relatively short compared to eternity. Would you rather have everything go great in this world, live like a king/queen while hear on earth, gaining all you want any way you want, but they spend eternity separated from the Father, or would you rather suffer here on earth and then spend eternity in heaven with our heavenly Father?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we are sorry we can sometimes envy those who do not follow your ways. We are sorry we almost slip sometimes, and we are sorry when we actually do slip. Lord, we love you and we want to only follow you help us stay on track. Open our spiritual eyes to the enemy and all his tricks. Help us to see his plan and help us to not fall for it. Help us to keep our eyes on you! Help us to remember you are always with us and help us to turn to you and talk with you when things seem hard. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jeusus’ powerful name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I wanted to let you know about this new audio training I created. It is about how to invite Jesus into your everyday. Often times we want to pray, we want to spend time with Jesus, and yet we just aren’t finding the time to do so. In this audio training I will teach you to invite Jesus into 3 of the most common tasks we do each day. If you want to hear this audio training all you need to do is go to my website walkboldlywithjesus.com or you can click on the link below. It will take you to a page where you can put in your name and email and the audio training will be delivered right to your inbox. I hope you enjoy it. Feel free to reach out to me and let me know what you think of it. I look forward to meeting you hear again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed weekend!
It’s Not Too Late
Joel 2:12-14 “But there’s also this, it’s not too late—God’s personal Message!—“Come back to me and really mean it! Come fasting and weeping, sorry for your sins!” Change your life, not just your clothes. Come back to God, your God. And here’s why: God is kind and merciful. He takes a deep breath, puts up with a lot, This most patient God, extravagant in love, always ready to cancel catastrophe. Who knows? Maybe he’ll do it now, maybe he’ll turn around and show pity. Maybe, when all’s said and done, there’ll be blessings full and robust for your God!”
Today I decided to use the message translations. Sometimes I just feel it is helpful to hear what God is saying in language that is easier to understand. Sometimes when I don’t understand a verse I will read it in the message translation and afterwards I have a much better idea of what it is saying. If you are like me, you have no idea what is going on in Joel 2, so this verse may not mean as much to you. Let me briefly explain what is going on before this verse. Verses 1-11 are talking about how God’s judgement is on its way. It is describing a black out day, a doomsday, no silver lining, etc. Those first 11 verse are nothing but doom and gloom and then you come to these verses. But wait, it’s not too late. I bet they were so relieved to hear those words. Can’t you just picture it? Someone is telling you there is something terrible on the very near horizon. Something awful you don’t want to face. Then they say there may be a way out. How excited would you be? I know some of you are praying for that right now. I know some of you have gotten awful news, or are awaiting news that could be awful and you are praying for a “but wait, it’s not too late.” I hope those words come for you. I hope you hear them just as God’s people did in this passage.
God told them, even now, even though I have already dispatched my armies, even though I have already decided what I want to do, even now, it is not too late. God is so kind and merciful. I love this version because it puts the message in plain english that we can all understand. I love that it says God, “Takes a deep breath, and puts up with a lot.” Truer words have never been spoken. Can you imagine how much God puts up with from us? There is a line in a song I love. The song is called “Love me Like I Am” by King and Country. The lines I love are: “It’s amazing that You can. Love me like I am. And even when I can’t You still love me as I am. Oh, I don't know how You do it And I know I put You through it.” This line always makes me smile because I think of all the ways I put God through it.
I think about all the times I say I will do something and I don’t. I think of all times I am unkind or say things I know He wouldn’t like. I think about all the times I know I shouldn’t do something and yet I do it anyway. I think of all the times I felt He asked me to do something and I said no, or I ignored the request, as if I didn’t hear Him. How about you? Can you think of some times you “put God through it?” Can you think of times when He probably had to teak a deep breath and lets be honest, probably rolled His eyes. And yet, He keeps forgiving us, He keeps offering us a second, a third, a one hundredth chance. God is so amazing. I am honestly in awe and have no idea how He does it.
In this verse after it says that it is not too late, it gives us instructions. “Come back to me and really mean it! Come fasting and weeping, sorry for your sins!” Change your life, not just your clothes. Come back to God, your God.” Wow, that is powerful. I like how he is willing to take us back and yet He is not letting us walk all over Him. He is not taking us back from a point of weakness. Begging us to come as if He needs us to come back to Him. He tells us we can come back and yet He tells us to really mean it this time. Don’t just fake it. Don’t just come back to me intending to do the same thing you always do. Really mean it this time. Really plan on changing this time. He is also asking us to do something. He is asking us to come back fasting and weeping with actual sorrow for our sins. There is a line in the act of contrition that is my favorite and also it makes me sad to even think about. The Act of Contrition is the prayer Catholics say at the end of Confession. There are many versions, here is one of them:
My God,
I am sorry for my sins with all my heart.
In choosing to do wrong
and failing to do good,
I have sinned against you
whom I should love above all things.
I firmly intend, with your help,
to do penance,
to sin no more,
and to avoid whatever leads me to sin.
Our Savior Jesus Christ suffered and died for us.
In his name, my God, have mercy.
The line that I love and that makes me sad to think about is the one that says, “In choosing do wrong and failing to do good, I have sinned against you, whom I should love above all things.” I love it because every time I say it I am reminded that it was my choice to sin. It makes me sad because it reminds me that I hurt God when I sin and I should love God above all things. When I say that line, every time I say that line, I am reminded how much my sin hurts God and I am truly sorry for my sins. What about you? Even if you are not Catholic, and don’t feel you need to go to a priest to confess, do you still bring your sins to God? When you do, are you truly sorry? God is calling us back to Him. This isn’t something that is hard to do, it is a choice we get to make. Will we turn back to Him? Will we repent of our sins and turn back to His loving care?
Although it is not hard to turn back to God, sometimes it may feel hard because we may not believe that God can forgive us. We may feel whatever we have done is too great for God to forgive. I assure you it is not. If you feel this way, read the whole Chapter of Joel 2. In most versions of this verse it starts with, “Even now,” declares the Lord, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning.” Even now, remind yourself of that when you are doubting God’s forgiveness. No matter what it is that has happened to you, that you may have done, even now, God wants you to come back home to Him.
I want to touch on the fasting piece of this message. Fasting is a way to strengthen your intimacy with God and it is also a way to humble yourself before Him. Fasting can be carried out in many different ways. You could fast from a meal, for instance fast from breakfast, or you could eat breakfast and fast from lunch and then eat dinner. You could also fast for the entire day or for several hours in the day. For instance 9-3 you could fast. You could also fast from things that have nothing to do with food. You can fast from gossiping, or watching TV, or social media. I know several ladies that take a break and fast from Facebook during lent. Fasting can be whatever you want it to be. The point is to give something up for a time period that is important to you. It is cheating if you fast from mushrooms and olives, if you don’t like them in the first place. It doesn't have to be extremely difficult, but it should be something that you like and yet you are choosing to not do it in a desire to grow closer to the Lord.
The second half of today’s verse shows us why we should come back to the Lord. It says, “And here’s why: God is kind and merciful. He takes a deep breath, puts up with a lot, This most patient God, extravagant in love, always ready to cancel catastrophe. Who knows? Maybe he’ll do it now, maybe he’ll turn around and show pity. Maybe, when all’s said and done, there’ll be blessings full and robust for your God!” God is the most patient God, extravagant in love always ready to cancel catastrophe. When people talk about the Old Testament, they tend to talk about a God who got angry and killed people. I have thought the same thing. I mean there are several examples, like Sodom and Gomorrah, Noah’s arc, after they Israelites scouted out the promised land and doubted their ability to take it. However, when you read through the whole Old Testament, you will see that although there are examples where God gave judgement on HIs people, there were far more times when he was lenient. There are more times when He allowed someone to intercede and to ask Him not to do the thing He wanted to do, the judgement that was deserved.
God loves us, He desires each and every one of us to be in His kingdom with Him. He desires and even longs to spend eternity with each and every one of us. He wants us to turn back to Him. If you are struggling with something right now, bring it to God, He will help you with it. If you think either something has been done to you that God can’t forgive, or you have done something so awful that God can’t forgive, I beg to you hear me now, “There is NOTHING God won’t forgive.” Just repent, tell God you are sorry if it was something you did. If it wasn’t something you did, you have nothing to be sorry about and God knows that you. You just have to believe it for yourself now. I will end with the words of this verse, “God is kind and merciful. He is the most patient God, extravagant in love and always ready to cancel catastrophe.”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each and every person listening to this episode today. Lord, we thank you for always wanting to forgive us, always wanting to give us another chance to come back to you. We are grateful you give us unlimited chances. We are grateful that as long as we are still on Earth, it is not too late! We are grateful there is nothing we can do that you won’t forgive. Lord we are sorry for our sins. We are sorry that when we choose to do what is wrong or when we fail to do what is right, we hurt you. We are sorry because we never want to hurt you. We love you Lord, you are amazing! You are too good to us and we know we don’t deserve it and yet you do it anyway. You are so patient with us and you keep being patient and we are so grateful. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I wanted to let you know about this new audio training I created. It is about how to invite Jesus into your everyday. Often times we want to pray, we want to spend time with Jesus, and yet we just aren’t finding the time to do so. In this audio training I will teach you to invite Jesus into 3 of the most common tasks we do each day. If you want to hear this audio training all you need to do is go to my website walkboldlywithjesus.com or you can Click Here. It will take you to a page where you can put in your name and email and the audio training will be delivered right to your inbox. I hope you enjoy it. Feel free to reach out to me and let me know what you think of it. I look forward to meeting you hear again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click here. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed day!
When You Believe The Lie You Empower The Liar
Genesis 3:4-5 “But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
I have talked many time about how the devil is a liar. I often talk about how he twists the truth and makes his lies just convincing enough that we tend to believe them. We just started a new quarter in my Encounter Ministry class and this quarter is on inner healing and freedom. The second session of class yesterday was really good and I learned to see things in a different way so I wanted to share them with you. I thought hearing them was pretty powerful and something we all should know. You might already know this on some level, but for some reason the way it was said, or the way I heard it last night seemed different. As soon as the words came out of our teacher’s mouth I felt like the Holy Spirit said that you all needed to hear them too.
In this verse above the serpent told Eve that if she ate of the fruit of the tree she was forbidden to eat from she would become like God. The thing is, she was already like God. She was made in his image and his likeness. She didn’t need to eat the fruit to become like Him, she already was. Our teacher said Eve was trying to earn with performance what she already earned by inheritance. God freely made her in His image and likeness. She didn’t have to do anything to become like Him. However, the serpent told her if she ate of the fruit her eyes would be opened and she would become like God. So she did.
We all have the devil whispering lies into our ears. Lies that pray on wounds we have deep inside. Wounds that have been caused by others usually in our past. Sometimes we know about these wounds and sometimes we don’t. We heard a testimony last night of a woman that went through an inner healing prayer session. She was a very anxious person. The prayer ministers asked God to reveal to her a memory of when this anxiety got started. She had a memory of sitting at dinner with her mom one time and her mom was angry, I’m not sure if the mom was angry at her, or just had a bad day and was in a really bad mood. Next the prayer ministers told her to ask God what lies she came up with in that moment. She realized in that one moment at the dinner table she started telling herself that she wasn’t good enough. That she couldn’t do anything right. She carried these lies with her from that point forward.
Whether we realize it or not the enemy is telling us lies. Often times we don’t know it is the enemy talking to us and we just believe the things that he is saying. We need to wake up. We need to stop going throughout our day believing every single thing our brain tells us. The enemy can not read our thoughts, which is a great thing, but he give us thoughts, or suggest thoughts for us. We need to start rejecting those thoughts. The phrase I heard in class that I thought was so powerful is, “Hearing lies has no authority in your life. The power comes when you come into agreement with those lies.” I think we get scared when the enemy starts whispering lies to us but those lies have no power unless you give them power.
Another powerful statement they said last night is, “If you believe the lie you empower the liar.” The devil has no power over you unless you give him power. I don’t know if we realize we are doing that when we accept the lies he is telling us. I wonder if I would fight harder against the lies if I knew he needed me to come into agreement with them for them to have any power over me? I wonder if I would fight harder against believing the lies he tells me if I knew that when I believed them I was empowering the enemy. Why aren’t we fighting back more? Why aren’t we standing up to the lies and calling BS when we hear them? Why aren’t we choosing what to believe about ourselves? Why are the bad things so much easier to believe than the good things?
I think the bad is easier to believe because we live in a broken world and unfortunately we hear the bad more than the good. We also think, we should be humble, we shouldn’t think we are all that great. This is not what being humble means. Being humble doesn’t mean we think less of ourselves, as in we make ourselves smaller than we are. Being humble means we think of ourselves less often, meaning we are not the center of our attention. We think of others before ourselves. We think of God and we know God is the reason for anything good in us. He is our strength, he is our power, he is all things and without Him we would have nothing. God doesn’t want us to put ourselves down and he doesn’t want us to believe the lies of the enemy.
In Luke 10:19 it says, “See, I have given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing will hurt you.” God has given us authority over all the power of the enemy. He can’t hurt us unless we partner with him. Unless we come into agreement with his lies. We have to choose who we will believe, who we will follow. In Romans 6:16 it says, “ Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?” When you come into agreement with the lies of the devil it leads to sin and shame.
Look at the Genesis again when Adam and Eve came into agreement with the serpents lies and ate the fruit. They went against God’s will to follow the serpents lies. They instantly knew they were naked and they felt shame for the first time. This is the whole point of the enemies lies. Shame is from the enemy and it makes you do things you wouldn’t normally do. The goal of the enemy is to lock us into a cycle of sin and shame. God wants us to have life in abundance. Which do you choose to follow? Which life would you like to have?
I know it can be hard not to believe the lies sometimes. I know sometimes the enemy twists the truth in such a way that lie seems like it is true. He has been perfecting his tactics for so many years now. The enemy is good at his job. However, no matter how good he is, he has no power unless we give it to him. One way to know if it is the enemy telling you something is to pay attention to how you feel. Do you feel crappy, do you feel shame, do you feel you are not enough, that is the enemy. If God is telling you something you will feel encouraged, you will feel loved, you will feel accepted. I know it feels like the lies are never ending sometimes. I know if feels like they are so loud and you can’t hear anything else. This is why it is so important to have declarations to tell yourself. Declarations to remind yourself that you are a child of God. Declarations to remind yourself of the truth, of all God’s promises to you. Declarations can remind you that God has given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing will hurt you. If you need some really good declarations, some declarations that remind you of the power you have, the power God has given you, go back and listen to episode #368 What Do You Declare? In that episode I have listed 21 powerful declarations to remind yourself of the power God has given you and the promises he has made to you. The enemy can not read your thoughts, but he can hear what you say. That means if you are thinking negative thoughts and speaking them out loud the enemy can hear them and use them against you. However, if you are thinking negative thoughts, but saying positive declarations, he doesn’t know the negative thoughts you are having and can’t use them against you.
I know many of you are busy and may not have time to go back to the previous episode so I will put the 21 declarations at the bottom of this page in my show notes. I will list a few now.
I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me (Philippians 4:13)
Because I have faith nothing will be impossible for me. (Matthew 17:20)
I will do the works Jesus did an even greater Works. (John 14:12)
Whatever I ask in Jesus's name, he will do it. (John 14:13)
My heart will not be troubled or afraid. (John 14:27)
I will abide in Jesus and bear much fruit (John 15:9)
Jesus loves me as the father loves him (John 15:9)
Jesus lay down his life for me, his friend (John 15:13)
If I ask, I will receive (John 16:24)
In Jesus, I have peace. (John 16:33)
I am a child of God (acts 17:28)
Jesus died for me while I was still a sinner (Romans 5:8)
Death no longer has dominion over me (Romans 6:9–11)
Sin no longer has dominion over me (Romans 6:14)
the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in me! (Roman 8:11)
I receive the spirit of Sonship. I am a child of God. (Romans 8: 15–17)
I have been saved (Romans 8:24)
the Holy Spirit helps me in my weakness; he intercedes for me when I don't know how to pray (Romans 8:26)
In everything God works for good with me (Romans 8:28)
God is for me who is against me? (Romans 8:31)
I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate me from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:38 to 39)
We all need to stop giving the enemy power in our lives. We need to be intentional about our thoughts and we have to figure out a way to get out of that cycle of sin and shame that the enemy traps us into it. I know it is not easy, but it can be done. God gave us the Holy Spirit who is living inside of us. He gave us the power over our enemies. We need to stop fearing our enemies, we need to stop fearing the lies the enemy is telling us and start taking back control. We are children of God. We shouldn’t be scared of anything. If God if for us, who could be against us?
Dear heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each and every person listening to this episode today. Lord, I ask the Holy Spirit to show each one of us what lies we are accepting from the enemy? I ask that the Holy Spirit to show us what truth we can replace that lie with. I ask the Holy Spirit to remind each and every one of us of the power God has given to us through the Holy Spirit. We have the power to reject the lies of the enemy, please help us know this Lord. I pray that each person picks one or two declarations and starts saying them every time they feel attacked by the enemy. Lord, I pray each person listening to this knows that praise and worship is the best defense against the attacks of the enemy because it takes our eyes off of him and places them back on you. We love you Lord, we are so sorry we keep falling for the enemies lies. We are sorry we keep believing we are less than you made us to be. We are so grateful you keep reminding us. We are grateful you gave us the Holy Spirit so that we have the power to defeat our enemies. You are truly amazing and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk Boldly with Jesus. I wanted to let you know about this new audio training I created. It is about how to invite Jesus into your everyday. Often times we want to pray, we want to spend time with Jesus, and yet we just aren’t finding the time to do so. In this audio training I will teach you to invite Jesus into 3 of the most common tasks we do each day. If you want to hear this audio training all you need to do is go to my website walkboldlywithjesus.com or you can CLICK HERE. It will take you to a page where you can put in your name and email and the audio training will be delivered right to your inbox. I hope you enjoy it. Feel free to reach out to me and let me know what you think of it. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed day!
The Formula For Peace
Philippians 4:4-7 “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
Last Monday session 2 of our class was all about peace. The title of the session was The Power of Peace. It was a really good class. I learned a lot about peace and how important it is. I learned that we can impart peace on others. Did you know that? Did you know that you can give peace to others? In Matthew 10:7-13 Jesus sent the 12 disciples out to proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God and also to heal people, cast out demons and more. In Matthew 10:13 Jesus says, “ If the house is worthy, let your peace come upon it; but if it is not worthy, let your peace return to you.” The disciples were instructed to impart their peace, or the peace Jesus gave them, on the houses that they visited.
Deacon Joe, one of our teachers, talked about how he and his wife had a priest stay with them once. He was coming into town for a conference or something and so they had him stay at their house. Deacon Joe said from the moment the priest walked into their house they could feel a peace that wasn’t there before. This peace that the priest brought with him stayed in their house long after he had left. Have you every felt this sort of peace in your house before? Have you ever had someone over to your house and when they were there you just felt more peaceful? The reverse can also be true unfortunately. Have you ever had someone over to your house, or even just been around someone and you felt less peaceful? Have you ever spent time with someone and afterwards you notice you have less peace, you are more agitated, or more restless? I have definitely had the second one happen. I have interacted with people who have been negative and then I feel negative. I am not a fan of that.
I do find it intriguing that we can impart peace to others. Peace is something that can feel elusive sometimes. Peace is something we all seem to strive for and yet not too many find. Or at least that is how it seems. I know a lot of people who are anxious. I know a lot of people who are angry. I know a lot of people who are anxious and angry. I do not know a lot of people who are peaceful. There is so much going on in the world and it is easy to see why people worry a lot. It is easy to see why people are anxious and even why they are angry. The world can often be an unkind and scary place. Because of this we might start to feel as if having peace in our lives is a fairytale. We might think it is unattainable and just something people talk about but never really achieve. Have you ever felt like that? Honestly, have you? Its ok if you have, I totally get it! There is so much going on right now in the world and it’s totally normally to not be at peace, or to not have peace.
I want to let you in on a well kept secret, you can have peace, even in the middle of chaos. It’s true, you really can. For instance, when I was struggling with my son being in rehab, things were very chaotic. I did not know what was going to happen from day to day. I had to drive into Boston a lot. I had a lot of appointments with various people. Yet, through all of this, I had peace. Not necessarily peace with the situation, but an overall peace that God was taking care of everything. I knew this was not the end, that God had so much more planned for our son. I had a peace that whatever was going to happen, it would be used for his good. That doesn’t mean every single minute I felt at peace. I definitely had days when I wanted to be through this storm. I definitely had days when I was tired of the struggle, tired of it all. It wasn’t smooth sailing the whole time and yet there was always this sense of peace, this sense of, “God’s got this.”
It is hard to explain, but it is possible, I assure you. You don’t have to take my assurance though, because God tells us it is possible in the verse above, and He even gives us a formula, which is really cool because sometimes we are given a parable and we need to work out what it means. However, in this verse the formula for peace is spelled out nice and simply for us. Let’s take a look at the verse above. It begins with, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone.” Rejoicing in the Lord is always a good thing. It is possible to rejoice in the Lord, even when you are in a tough situation. You don’t have to rejoice for that situation, you can always rejoice for something else, like the sunrise, the nice breakfast you had, or even the fact that you woke up to a brand new day of life. Whatever you want to rejoice for is up to you, but this verse is a great reminder to us to rejoice in the Lord. It is also a good reminder to let our gentleness be known to everyone. This part of the verse is telling us to be nice to everyone.
Right after that part is when we get to the formula for peace. It says, “The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” The first part of the formula is to know that the Lord is near so you don’t have to worry about anything. I know, this is easier said than done. However I think the rest of the formula makes it a bit easier. The next parts says, “in everything by prayer and supplications with thanksgiving let you requests be known to God.” Let’s break that down. We all know what pray means. I think we are probably pretty good with the prayer part, especially if we are struggling. Many people, even people who are not Christian, pray when they are struggling.
Next is says supplications, this is a word I had to look up. It means to plead humbly. So God wants us to not only come to Him for help, but to plead to Him humbly. If you are not sure what that means, in my eyes that means, to come to the Lord in prayer and ask Him/ plead with Him to help you through the situation knowing full well that you can do nothing without Him and all things through Him. I get stuck on how to be humble sometimes, but I think it can be as simple as realizing we need God for everything. We can’t do anything without Him.
The last part of the formula might be the hardest part. Asking God for help can be hard, but it isn’t always. However, thanking God when you are in the middle of a storm can be extremely hard. We often do not feel we have any reasons to thank God. Sometimes we are even angry at God for letting this situation happen to us. We may blame God for our circumstances. He understands this and doesn’t blame us for this. And yet, He is calling us to ask Him for help, turn the situation over to Him, and to do this all with thanksgiving. This isn’t an easy thing to do, but it is worth the cost.
What does God promise us if we can “in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be known to God?” He promises us that, “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” Could you be thankful in the hard times if you knew that you would receive the peace of God? I think it says, “Which surpasses all understanding, because it doesn’t make sense to have peace when there is chaos all around you. It didn’t make sense for me to have peace when my son was in rehab. Many people told me the knew I was more stressed and that I was just hiding it. They could not understand that I was at peace with it. Not because I accepted it and stopped fighting for our son. I was at peace because I knew God was in control and that He would use this for our son’s good. It surpasses all understanding because the world wants us to stay angry, worried and anxious. The world doesn’t want us to have peace in the middle of a storm. What do you want?
Do you want more peace in your life? Do you want to stop worrying about everything all the time? Do you want to be less anxious? Do you want to have the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding to guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. What I love about this is that it is not telling us we have to guard our hearts and minds. It does say that several places in the Bible, however, this verse is telling us if we bring all things to God by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, then the peace of God will protect our minds. How amazing would that be? If you want to feel more peace in your life, check out this formula, try to apply it to you life and see how much more peace you can have. God did not create us to be anxious and worried. Give peace a try, I know you won’t be disappointed.
Dear heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those who are listening to the episode today. Lord, you are amazing and we thank you for giving us a formula for peace. We just ask you to help us put it into action Lord. Please show each one of us how we can put this formula into action in our lives. Please have the Holy Spirit reveal to us where we could be doing this more or what step we are getting stuck on. Lord, show us where we can be thankful in our current situation. Lord, I know so many are hurting right now, I ask you to be with them and to comfort them. I ask you to show them how to implement this formula in their lives so they don't have to be so anxious and worried. You are so awesome and you are offering us the peace of God to guard our hearts and minds, we accept Lord, please come into our lives and guard our hearts and minds with your peace. Please wrap us up in your peace like a giant blanket that nothing can penetrate. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I wanted to let you know about this new audio training I created. It is about how to invite Jesus into your everyday. Often times we want to pray, we want to spend time with Jesus, and yet we just aren’t finding the time to do so. In this audio training I will teach you to invite Jesus into 3 of the most common tasks we do each day. If you want to hear this audio training all you need to do is go to my website walkboldlywithjesus.com or you can click on the link below. It will take you to a page where you can put in your name and email and the audio training will be delivered right to your inbox. I hope you enjoy it. Feel free to reach out to me and let me know what you think of it. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed day!
It Is Through Christ That We Defeat Our Enemies
Psalm 44:5-6 “Through you we push down our foes; through your name we tread down our assailants. For not in my bow do I trust, nor can my sword save me.”
This is something we can tend to forget. We pray for God to help us out of our situations. We pray for God to save us from our foes. Then when we get away from them, we tend to forget it was God who saved us. This verse says, “Through you we push down our foes; through your name we tread down our assailants.” We do these things through God. Philippians 4:13 says, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” It is through God that we can do the hard things. It is not by our own power or strength. It is not through our ability or our determination. We have none of that without the Lord. It’s like we know this, but then we it’s most important, we forget.
When we are facing really difficult times that is often when we forget that we can do all things through Christ. We forget if God is for us, who could be against us. We take our eyes off Jesus and we forget that He is the answer. He is our strength. It’s easy to take our eyes off Jesus. This world is so distracting. This world is so full of noise. Anytime we want to focus on Jesus, our phone rings, or a notification goes off telling us we have a text message, we have a facebook message, or some other thing that can distract us. If we want to keep our eyes focused on Jesus we need to be very intentional. In the mornings I wake up early just to spend time with God. And most morning, aside from writing these podcast episodes we don’t get to spend a lot of time together. I will sit down with my prayer journal and then my dog Aimee will let me know she is ready to go downstairs to eat and go outside. Then I make my lemon water and Tony’s coffee and sometimes empty the dishwasher. Then it is time to write the podcast episode if I haven’t already.
Do you see how distractions can take our focus off the Lord? What I started to do at the beginning of this year is I added saying the rosary to my morning routine and I do it when I am feeding the dog, doing the dishes, and making Tony’s coffee. I have an awesome app that says the rosary and a really great explanation of each mystery. I do not have my rosary beads in my hands but I do say the prayers with the app. It is not perfect as I am not always paying the best attention, but it is getting me in the habit of saying the rosary every day and I can slowly get better at meditating more on the mysteries, the more I say them. This was one intentional way for me to reclaim the prayer time that distractions took away from me.
Sometimes our distractions are phones and computers and things that we can figure out how to ignore during our prayer time. Sometimes are distractions are things we can’t ignore. I can’t really ignore my dog if she needs to go outside. I can’t really ignore the fact that I have to wake kids up for school or dive kids to work. However, I can use that time to spend with the Lord, even while I am doing other things. One thing the Lord has been really trying to get me to see, and I seem to be a very slow learner, is that prayer time doesn’t have to be perfect. There are many ways to spend time with God and they can still be considered prayer time.
We are much harder on ourselves than God is on us. We have a picture of him sitting up in heaven on his beautiful throne and we think He is looking down from heaven upon us and shaking His head because we aren’t spending enough time with Him. Or we think He is judging us because we didn’t say this prayer right, or we fell asleep during that prayer time. What God has been trying to show me over the last couple years is that is not at all what He is doing. God is up in heaven smiling down upon us. He loves us so incredibly. Anytime we fit any prayer in, He is smiling. He is not up there saying, “Why was that only 5 minutes, when you know you have time for 10.” He is up there saying, “Thank you my son or Thank you my daughter for spending your precious time with me.” This doesn’t mean He doesn’t want to spend more time with us, it doesn’t mean He doesn’t want us to keep trying to spend time alone with Him. However, it does mean He is not judging us for it. If He is not judging us, why are we judging ourselves? Be graceful with yourself. Setting up a prayer time can be difficult. Keep trying.
The last part of the verse says, “For not in my bow do I trust, nor can my sword save me.” I know I already briefly touched on this but I wanted to stress the importance of these words. We tend to want to save ourselves. We ask God for help but then rely on our own strength, our own power. We make all the calls, we do all the things, we proceed with whatever we think the next right step is and go full steam ahead. Taking the next right step is not a bad thing. It is something I often suggest when people don’t know what to do. However, we sometimes skip a very important step before we take that next right step. We often forget to stop and ask God what he wants us to do. We ask Him for help and then don’t stop to listen to how he wants to help. What if we changed this? What if we stopped and took a moment to ask God how He wants to save us from our current situation? What if we stopped and asked God where to go from here?
I can just imagine all the plans God has made for us to get us out of a situation and then we mess them up because we decide to act without consulting Him first. I just refer back to this verse. “For not in my bow do I trust, nor can my sword save me.” We can’t do it on our own. We can’t defend ourselves on our own. We can protect our loved ones on our own. And the amazing thing is, we don’t have to! God is there for us. He is our protector and our shield. He is our refuge. We can do all things through HIm who strengthens us. We just need to ask, and then wait to listen to HIs reply. Waiting is the hard part, but I know you can do it.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask for you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord we love you and we want to walk with you. We want to rely on you, we just need your help. We are sorry we ask for your help and then we don’t listen for how you want to help. Please help us to trust you more and to listen more. Help us to rely on you and not forget that it is through you that we are able to defeat our enemies. Help us remember that through you we can do all things. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting your here again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I. Have a blessed weekend!
Don’t Worry, I Will Explain It
1 John 3:8 “Everyone who commits sin is a child of the devil; for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The Son of God was revealed for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil.”
I read this verse and thought, “Nope, I don’t want to go there.” Actually, I read this verse and then read the next two verses after it. 1 John 3:8-10 says, “Everyone who commits sin is a child of the devil; for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The Son of God was revealed for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil. Those who have been born of God do not sin, because God’s seed abides in them; they cannot sin, because they have been born of God. The children of God and the children of the devil are revealed in this way: all who do not do what is right are not from God, nor are those who do not love their brothers and sisters.” Ok, after hearing all that do you see why I didn’t want to touch this verse?
First of all, I didn’t really understand it. If I sin I am a child of the devil? What does that even mean? We all sin, don’t we? Then it says Those born of God do not sin. But wait, I am born of God and yet I do sin? It is definitely confusing and not something I felt qualified to talk about. Secondly, I didn’t want someone to hear this verse , or read it in the transcript and then think they weren’t a child of God because they sin. Because let's all be honest, we all sin. So, I was happy to skip this one and go on to find another verse. I felt the Holy Spirit stop me and ask, what does this verse mean? What if someone already read it and didn’t stop to ask what it means? What if someone is walking around thinking they are no longer my child just because they sin?
I am always humbled when the Holy Spirit reminds me of the purpose for this podcast. It is not to talk about all the things I understand. It is not to talk about things I really love talking about. It is to help myself and you, all those listening, to understand scripture a little better. My purpose is to help you walk a boldy with Jesus one verse at a time. The only way to do this is to take difficult scriptures, ones I don’t understand and figure them out, examine them, research them, and then share that with you. I may not alway get it right, but I do try my best and I ask the Holy Spirit to take care of the rest.
I am sure I will keep needing to be reminded to stop and examine a verse if I don’t understand it because the enemy loves to try and stop me by telling me I am not qualified to talk about the scripture. He tells me I don’t know what I am doing and so I can’t help others. Do you see how he takes a kernel of truth and twists it? He is right, I am not qualified and I don’t always know what the scriptures mean. However, the way he twists it is because I am not sharing just my thoughts on it. I am researching and looking to those that do know the answers. I am taking the time to explore the meaning and then sharing what I learned from those that are qualified so that you don’t have to take that time. If something I say is confusing, or you still don’t understand the verse, I urge you to reach out and let me know. I would be happy to explore it in more detail with you. Or you can explore it on your own as well. I just type “What is the meaning of 1 John 3:8” or whatever verse I am looking at in the search bar on the internet and usually a list of articles come up. Whatever it is in the Bible we are trying to understand, there are probably plenty of other people that have come before us that have asked the same question. Look for the answers they found. I will put the links to two of the articles I read in the show notes in case you want to read the full articles.
Now that I explained all that, what did I discover? What does this confusing verse mean? From what I found, I understand it to mean that when we are sinning we are a child of Satan, meaning he is influencing those behaviors. When we are following God’s ways, God is influencing those behaviors. I feel the Holy Spirit just gave me an analogy that made me smile. It is one that if you have kids you have probably said it and even if you don’t you probably heard your parents say it. When our kids are not behaving I tell Tony they are his kids and when they are behaving I say they are my kids. Of course they are all both of our kids all the time. However, when I say that I am implying that his DNA is what is influencing the kids misbehavior and my DNA is influencing their good behavior. It made me smile when this thought came to me because I could just picture God up in heaven shaking his head, looking at Satan and saying, nope, they are your kids today. I know He doesn’t do this, but it made me smile remember all the times, Tony and I went back and forth, nope, these are your kids.
One thing everything I read agreed on is that this verse is not determining your salvation. This verse is not saying because you sin you are a child of Satan and you are going to Hell. That is not the case. It is not saying if you want to go to heaven you can’t sin. It is not talking about your salvation in any way. We are all born with a sinful nature. Ever since sin enter the world, it has plagued us. Sin entered the world because of Satan. He brought it here and when we sin it is because of His influence. It is because we are allowing his influence to shape our behaviors. We are cooperating with him. However, the ending of this verse says, “The Son of God was revealed for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil.” This means that although we were born with original sin and a sinful nature, Jesus was sent to destroy that. If you have been baptized you are received the Holy Spirit living inside of you. Even though we have the Holy Spirit living inside of us we also have Satan trying to influence our behaviors, trying to get us to go against what God says. One example I found in one of the articles talked about Matthew 16:23 when Jesus said to Peter, "Get behind Me, Satan!” He was revealing the source of Peter's rebuke of Christ by which Peter demonstrated that he was representing Satan's purpose, not God’s.
I pray this explanations clears up some of the confusion surrounding this verse. The verse is not saying you will go to hell if you sin. It is not saying you belong to Satan if you sin. It is saying that while you are sinning you are under the influence of Satan. It is a good reminder as sometimes we can write off little sins. We can say, that wasn’t so bad. We can question, is that really a sin, does it really matter. I think when we read this verse, it can speak to those situations. If you are sinning you are cooperating with the enemy. Does it matter if it is a little cooperation or a lot of cooperation, let me ask you this question. If one of your loved ones was being influenced by someone who was sent here to steal, kill and destroy, would it matter to you that they were only being influenced a little? God cares deeply about even our smallest decisions. Instead of being offended by this verse, let’s take it as a warning to try harder not to be influenced by the devil.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those who are listening to this episode today. Lord we want to follow your ways, please help us. We want to only be influenced by you. Please help shield us from the influence of the enemy. Please help us put on your armor Lord. Lord, I ask you to help each one of us understand what this verse is saying and I ask that if we don’t understand it you will inspire us to go deeper. Lord, we want to understand your Word. We thank you for your word and thank you for giving it to us. You are truly remarkable. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. I just want to remind all of you, if you haven’t gotten a chance to check out my book yet, I invite you to do so. Or if you have checked it out I invite you to leave a review on Amazon or suggest it to a friend. If you didn’t know I wrote a book, you can find it on Amazon. It is called Total Trust, in God’s Safe Embrace. Thank you for all of you that have already purchased it I truly appreciate it! Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed day!
Q. Does 1 John 3:9 Teach that Christians Must Be Sinless?
Can a Christian Be of the Devil? - 1 John 3:8, 10 (GraceNotes - no. 60) by Dr. Charlie Bing
We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click here. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed day!
God Sees You!
Psalm 139:13-14 "For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; that I know very well.”
When I was reading this verse I got to the part where it says, “Wonderful are your works; that I know very well,” and the thought came to me, do we know this? We know some of God’s works are wonderful, but do we know all of His works are wonderful. I am sure there isn’t really a dispute over whether a sunset or a sunrise is wonderful. I think most things in nature are pretty wonderful. I mean, not necessarily tornados or hurricanes, but mostly nature is wonderful. However, what about ourselves? Do we see how wonderfully made we are? The beginning of this verse says that it was God who formed our inward parts and who knit us together in our mother’s womb. God made each one of us intentionally. He knit us together.
Let’s think about that for a moment. Have you ever seen someone knit something? They need to be paying attention to what they are doing so what they are making turns out the way they want it to. They need to be very specific in their pattern if they want it to come out looking like the idea they had. They need to think ahead and make sure they have all the various color threads need. They need to make sure they have all the supplies to make this thing they are making. This verse says God knit us together in our mother’s womb. I like that description because it depicts the care God took to create us. He thought about every little detail before he created us. He intentionally made you the way you are. He thinks you are perfect just as you are.
I was at a conference in January of 2020 and the main speaker talked about how she had been hosting these events for several years now. She said she will never forget the first time she asked her audience, “How many of you hate your body?” There was context, she was doing an activity called Stand Up For Your Sister, but anyway, she asked the question and over 90% of the women in the room stood up. Ninety percent, can you believe that. She didn’t ask if you just don’t like some aspect of your body, she didn’t ask if there was something you would like to change, she didn’t ask if you were unhappy with your body, she asked if you hate your body. Hate is a very strong word, and yet ninety percent of all the ladies in the room stood up. It seems as if we don’t know that we are fearfully and wonderfully made. It seems as though we struggle with this idea.
Why do you think we struggle so much with accepting that we are fearfully and wonderfully made and that we are not an accident? Why is it we can see the beauty in others, we can see the beauty in all of God’s creation pretty much, except the beauty of His creation in us? Could it be the society that we live in or the environment we grew up in? Definitely! If we grew up thinking we were not enough, that is going to carry into our teen years and into our adult life. Also, society has a very particular way they feel everyone should look and act. There are impossible standards out there and we all feel we need to live up to them. We feel no matter what we are doing, we are doing the wrong thing. If we are a stay at home mom, society makes us feel like we are not contributing. If we are a working mom, society makes us feel as though we are neglecting out children. If we are a dad that works 60 hours a week so we can put food on the table we are a workaholic, but if we work 40 hours and can’t afford to put food on the table then we are not providing for our family. Do you see how there is not way to win when we try to gain earthly approval. You will never be able to be liked by everyone. I heard Matthew Kelly point out one time, even Winnie the Pooh has people who don’t like him.
There is one place where you are always accepted, you are always loved and cherished, in the eyes of your heavenly Father, your Creator. God made you and when you are saying you don’t like things about you, you are saying you don’t like God’s creation. God does not make mistakes. He knew what He was doing when He created you. He did it with intention and purpose. You are fearfully and wonderfully made. You were made for a reason. You are perfect just as you are. You don’t have to change a single thing about you for God to love you. He loves you just as you are, just as He made you.
I was typing up the the minutes from a prayer group meeting we had a few months ago and I came across a word of prophecy that I think the Lord wants me to share it with all of you. I will end with His words, because who could say it better than God? This is what He said, “My children, I, your father ask you to come and stand by my shoulder. I ask you to look through my eyes at yourself. See yourself naked and bare before me. See through my eyes. Let go of your shame, I see no shame in you. I have created you. I see you beautiful. I see you from your conception for all eternity in the radiance that I have made you. In the design that I have created you. In the perfection I bestow upon you. I pour my gifts upon you. I ask you to love yourself, I ask you to forgive yourself. I ask you to see what I have given you. What I continue to give you. What I have prepared for you. You are wonderful in my eyes. I create nothing that is unworthy. You are worthy. You are worthy to drink from the chalice of my son's blood to eat of his body. You are worthy to be temples of the Holy Spirit, you are worthy to dwell with me in the place that I have prepared for you. Come to me. Come to me with joy. Drop everything that is not of love, of joy, of peace. I will never stop blessing you.”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord I ask that you open our eyes and help us to see ourselves through your eyes. Help us to see the wonder and the beauty that you created us to be. Help us to not judge ourselves or others. Help us to not hate ourselves or others. Help us to love ourselves as you love us Lord! Help us start to change not only the way we look at ourselves but the way we look at others as well. Help us to see others through your eyes as well Lord. We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ powerful name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk Boldly with Jesus. I look forward to brining you another witness tomorrow. I think it will actually be a couple different people’s testimonies from my Encounter class. I know you will love them. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Give And It Will Be Given To You
Luke 6:38 “Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”
I think this is a great verse and I think it is something to remember. I remember when I was young and I saw my mom writing out checks for the offertory at church I thought she was not giving enough. Now, remember I said I was young. I would see her write a check for $5.00 or for $15.00, sometimes even $20.00 and I thought that wasn’t really a lot of money. Now when I look back I can see that was actually a lot that she was putting into the basket. My parents had 11 children. I only have 3 boys, who happen to be teenagers right now, and our grocery bill is so expensive, I can only imagine what it was with 11 children. We lived in a big house because we had so many children and it was expensive to heat it and keep the lights on.
When I hear the story in Mark 21:41-44 I always think of that day in church when I thought my mom wasn’t giving enough. Mark 21:41-44 says, “Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts. But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a few cents. Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything—all she had to live on.”
My dad had a great job working with the state and my mom stayed home to take care of us kids. Although there were a few times she did try to work outside the home also. For instance, she tried to take a third shift job at Frito Lay so she could work while we were sleeping and then my dad would pick her up on his way to work. Can you imagine that? My mom took care of us all day and then worked at night. The only reason she quit is because they had mandatory overtime. If you shift was over and they needed you to stay, then you had to stay. This wouldn’t work for my mom as my dad needed to get to work and us kids needed to get to school. I honestly am not sure when this was, so I am not sure how many of us still lived at home. I would say at least the 5 youngest.
Today, it is tough to make ends meet with a two income household. I honestly don’t know how they did it with one income. Actually, I do know how they did, with a lot of prayer. Every time they realized they needed something and they didn’t have enough money for it, they would pray and ask God how He wanted them to handle the situation. And God always showed up for them in a big way. They were obedient in putting money into the basket each week, even if it meant they didn’t have enough money for other things. I was about to say, they didn’t worry, but I don’t think that is true. I think they did worry, and yet they also trusted that God would provide, and you know what, He always did!
I am sure I have told this story before but in case you haven’t heard it, my parents’ friend asked them to watch their 10 kids because they had something important they had to do together. My parents didn’t even hesitate, they just said yes. However, they were already worried because they didn’t know what they were going to feed their own children and now we added 10 more to the mix. My parents prayed together and asked God to let them know what they should do. They told God if they just had some spaghetti or something they could feed a lot of people. No sooner had they finished their prayer when there was a knock at the door. Their neighbor had a bunch of extra food because his father had to move in suddenly and his dad had just gone grocery shopping before the move and his neighbor had just gone grocery shopping as well. They had no where to put this extra food.
My parents graciously accepted and when putting the food away the realized that there was plenty of spaghetti and sauce to go around. My parents praised God and thanked him for the wonderful surprise food that showed up. They were talking and happened to say, if we only had some ground meat for the spaghetti it would be perfect. I don’t think they even prayed for this, I think they were just talking to each other. However, no sooner did that statement leave their lips then there was a knock on the door. A different neighbor had gone out hunting and had brought home a lot of meat. They filled their freezer and fridge with meat and yet they still had meat left over. They wanted to know if my parents wanted it. Again, my parents graciously accepted and they realized they had the ground meat they were looking for. It was so amazing. The Lord really is so so good!
I think relying on God is something that seems foolish to a lot of people today. I remember when Tony and I were talking with neighbors one time we were discussing the idea of how much we give to the church and how much we give to the giving campaign that the military has. I forget what it is called, but they did it every year. Everyone was expected to give something. I remember we were discussing how much we each thought was reasonable and I explained how much my mom gave, even though most months it was hard to even pay the bills. They thought it was crazy, or bad financial management to give more than you really can afford to give. I whole heartedly disagree with this. My parents were being obedient to the church and trying to give as much as they can. Some weeks were more than other weeks, but they did what they could.
If you ask me there was no better way for them to spend that money. Remember what the verse above said? “Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” My parents gave and it was definitely given back to them. I have heard the saying, God will not be outdone in generosity. Whatever you give to God will be returned plus more. God did not give my parents pack the exact amount they gave in church, he gave them more. Although they didn’t have a lot of money, they never went without the essentials. God always sent people to help them when they needed it. Some days we would go outside and there would be a box of random things on our porch, like clothes, food, toys, etc. My parents did their best to give God all they had and He repayed them by providing for their needs.
Are you giving all you can to church or other charities? Are you being gracious and forgiving towards others? Are you giving them the patience they require? The verse above says, “Give and it will be given to you.” Are you doing this? Are you giving? If you want God to give to you, you must give to others as well.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this podcast today. Lord, we ask you to open our hearts and to soften them to the idea of asking you how much we should give. We ask you to soften our hearts to the idea of not just giving out of the abundance but giving even if it stretches us a bit. More importantly than the giving, help us rely on you better. Help us to trust that you will provide for us, that we don’t have to do everything ourselves. Lord, we thank you for this. We thank you for always providing for us. We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ powerful name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to seeing you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
The Beauty of God’s Laws
Psalm 119:18 "Open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in your law.”
I heard this verse yesterday at prayer group and I thought it was interesting. I liked it because sometimes we can’t understand why God has certain laws. Especially if they are laws that go against what society says is the right thing to do. We live in a world that justifies things as ok, just because so many people are doing them. My son told me yesterday that 2.55 million middle schooler and high schoolers vape. He said 14% of high schoolers vape. Basically he was trying to tell me that it is normal and not a big deal. I know he is a teenager and this is how teenagers think. I remember his brother telling me that every kid vapes. I am sure it felt that way to him. Although, if you think about it, even though 14% is way to high of a percentage of our teens to be vaping, that still leaves 86% that are not. So the fact that they think “everyone” is vaping is not quite true. Although whether it is actually true or not does not change their perception.
Teenagers do this a lot. If there friends are dong it, then it seems like “everyone” is doing it because everyone they hang around with is doing it. Also, I am sure they see people vaping in class or in the bathroom. You wouldn’t think kids could vape in class as you wouldn’t see someone lighting up a cigarette in the middle of class. However, with how easy vapes are too conceal and with fruity flavors, there is little smell and also very little smoke. It’s not just vaping either. One of my other sons talks trash to his friends while playing video games. I hear him say the rudest things and when I ask him about it he says they are all saying the same kind of stuff. Another one of my sons says he types insults back and forth with his friend. It is strange to me as I don’t understand why. They say it is “normal” and that is just what kids do.
So far I have been talking about teens and we all know teens say, “everyone is doing it.” This is typical for a teen, I am sure I am not telling you anything you don’t know. However, are their things in your life that you do and you aren’t sure why you do them? Or things you know that you do because everyone else does them. Or maybe that isn’t why you do them, but that is the justification for doing them. Have you ever done something that was wrong and then tried to think of someone else you knew that did the same thing so you could justify it to yourself? I know I did this when I was watching Game of Thrones with Tony. It was a good show and I really liked the story line and yet there was way to much sex in this show. I knew while I was watching it that God did not approve. I justified it thinking about all the Catholic people I knew that had watched it. I justified it by thinking about all the people around the world that watched it. An average episode had 32.7 million viewers. How could something so many people were doing, be wrong?
I ask how it could be wrong and yet I knew in my soul it was wrong. Does that ever happen to you? You are doing something you know you shouldn’t do and you just feel something deep inside telling you not to do it. This is why I like this verse. The verse says, “Open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in your law.” God’s laws are not meant to be a punishment. They are meant to be guardrails for us. They are meant to help keep us on the road to heaven because God loves us and wants to spend eternity with us. God’s laws are meant to keep us from eternal suffering. Which one of us wants eternal suffering? Any takers? No, I didn’t think so. This verse is asking God to show is the wonderful things in His law. It is asking Him to show us the beauty of it.
Things are easier to do if we know the why. If we can understand why we are being asked to do what we are being asked to do we are more likely to do it. For instance, do you remember when your parents said, “Because I said so.” or maybe you remember when you said that same phrase to your children? How did that work out for you with your kids? How did it work out for your parents with you? In my experience it does not work out as well as when I explain what I need the kids to do. They want to understand there is a purpose to what I am asking them to do.
Sometimes we don’t understand why God is asking us to do things. There are reasons and I am pretty sure there is an explanation for everything God has asked us to do. I know at least in the Catholic Church, we have a book called the Catholicism of the Catholic Church. This explains why we believe all we believe. However, not all of us have read that. I know I haven’t. Although now I am listening to a little bit of it each day as Father Mike reads it to me on his podcast and then explains what he just read. It is a great way to learn more about why we have the rules we have and believe the things we believe. I know for me, the more I learn about the why, the more I want to follow God’s laws. The more I learn about them the more I realize God didn’t give us these laws for His benefit. They are not arbitrary and they are not just meant to make our lives harder. Each one has a purpose and all of them together are mean to keep us in relationship with God.
Have you ever gone bowling with kids and you put the bumpers up so they can’t get a gutter ball? If you don’t know what I am talking about, bowling alleys have these rails that come up and cover the bumpers. What would happen if you didn’t put the bumpers up? In my experience, every time the kids throws the ball, it goes into the gutter. This makes the game very frustrating for them as they can’t seem to make any progress. They don’t have any fun because they don’t get to knock down any pins. I feel like God is saying life without His laws would be the same. If everyone was just doing whatever they wanted without following any laws, we would be very frustrated and we wouldn’t get anywhere. God’s laws point us in the right direction and help us stay on track. They are there to help us enjoy life more, not to limit us and take away our fun.
Although, our idea of what is fun could be tainted by the world we live in. We see everyone doing things that seem fun and we want to do them even though we know we shouldn’t. The time we spend on this world is so small compared to eternity in the next life. The enemy wants us to focus on the here and now and not worry about the future. We need to be thinking about the future. We don’t need to obsess about it, but if we want to spend eternity with our heavenly Father, as He wants all of His children to do, then we do need to make good choices now. Again, this is why I love this verse. We are asking our father to show us the wonderful things in His law. Basically we are asking Him to help us see His laws in a new light. Give us new eyes to see the laws, help us to see how great they are instead of looking at them like a burden.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each person listening to this episode today. Lord we love you so much and we want to spend eternity with you. We thank you for your laws and we ask that you show us how wonderful they are. Help us to see them through your eyes Lord. Help us to see they are for our benefit and not for our punishment. Help us to see they are to keep us safe and not to control us. Help us to see they are from a loving Father. Your laws were made with love and I can’t get enough of that. Lord, you are so amazing. You have thought of everything and we are so grateful. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again on Monday. Remember Jesus loves you, and so do I! Oh, also, happy St. Patrick’s Day if you are listening to this the day I recorded it. This St. Patrick’s Day might be a bit different since it is a Friday during lent. Corned Beef and Cabbage might not be possible today, but you can always have it another day. Have a blessed weekend!
Bury Your Old Do-It-Yourself Life
Romans 8:12-14 “So don’t you see that we don’t owe this old do-it-yourself life one red cent. There’s nothing in it for us, nothing at all. The best thing to do is give it a decent burial and get on with your new life. God’s Spirit beckons. There are things to do and places to go!”
The translation I used this morning is the message translation. I don’t usually use this translation, however, when I heard this verse with the translation yesterday on the Big Life Devotional Podcast by Pamela Crim, I knew it was the one I wanted to share with you. I think the other versions are good to, I just think this one says it so plainly it is hard to miss the message. The verse starts off by saying that we don’t owe this old do-it-yourself life one red cent. I think this is hard for us to imagine. Do you know what the verse is talking about when it says, “this old do-it-yourself life?” I imagine it means all the things we try to do on our own, without inviting God into them.
I remember when I was on a retreat one time I felt as if I heard God tell me, “You are looking every where else for answers but not to me.” I was confused at first because of course I had asked God for help, of course I prayed about my situation. But what he revealed to me is that yes, I asked Him for help, but then I proceeded to try and figure the solution out on my own. I read every book I could on marriages or on parenting. I asked everyone I knew and really listened to what they had to say. I was really good at listening the my friends, the books, the professionals and implementing their advice. However, I wasn’t taking the time to sit with God and listen to Him.
I would talk at God, maybe to God, but not with God. It wouldn’t be a back and forth conversation. I would lay all my problems at His feet, ask Him how I could fix them, and then end prayer time without listening to how he wanted me to fix them. Have you ever done this? Have you ever talked at God? Have you ever laid all your problems at His feet and then picked them back up again and carried them into your day? I think that is what this verse is talking about. We don’t have to do everything ourselves. God wants to help us. He wants us to give Him our problems and then trust for Him to take care of them. As I am writing that I am thinking, that doesn’t mean we can’t do anything. I believe God likes it when we partner with Him. I don’t think God was telling me not to read any parenting books. What He was telling me was to spend time with Him every single morning. I started journaling every morning. I would wake up 30 minutes before I needed to be up with the kids and I would write to God. I would tell Him all that was on my mind. I would tell Him the things I read about and ask which things He thought I should try. I didn’t really know too much how to listen to His voice, but just journaling and talking through things with Him was beyond helpful.
I have since learned how to take time and listen to God and it has been amazing. There are lots of ways you might here God talking, not actually hear his voice, but know what He is saying to you. One of those ways is sitting still and just listening. If you ask God to talk to you and then you are still and listen, the things that come to your mind could be from God. His voice usually sounds a lot like your own voice as that is what if familiar to you. For instance I asked God to help me figure out what I could do to help my son Ryan who is struggling right now. I was quiet and listened and then the idea to have Ryan invite his friend to boxing with him so they can both work out their troubles on a punching bag instead of other unhealthy ways. Was this definitely from God, who knows, but I asked God for a solution and one came to me so I definitely think the Holy Spirit gave me the idea.
When you are listening for God’s voice, it will most likely not be a booming voice coming from the sky, like those movies that have a narrator. God is usually much more subtle than that. It is usually a thought that is put in your head. You have to be purposefully listening or you might miss it. Although having said that I can think of a few stories when God was trying to tell someone something and they didn’t want to hear it so they were not listening and He had three different people, strangers even, give them the message they needed to hear. I believe God is longing for us to spend time listening to Him. I believe He wants us to come to Him to listen each day. However, if there is a message He needs you to hear, He will get your attention somehow.
The next part of the verse says, “The best thing to do is give it a decent burial and get on with your new life. God’s Spirit beckons.” This is referring to your “do-it-yourself” attitude. That is not serving you. There is nothing in that for you. Do you remember you life before Christ? Maybe you didn’t have a life before Christ. Maybe you have believed since birth. Maybe your parents taught you about God your whole life. When Catholics talk about this they usually say, “I am a cradle Catholic.” When you hear this they mean they have been Catholic their whole life. Even if this is you, do you remember a time before you really understood what it all meant? Do you remember a time when you felt you were on your own and you had to do it all yourself? Do you remember a time when you knew all about Jesus and yet you lived your life how you wanted to, instead of how He wanted you to?
For some of us this is a specific day and time. We know exactly when we turned our life over to Jesus and there was no turning back. For others, it is more like a roller coaster. We turn to Jesus, then we turn away, then we turn back, then we turn away. What this verse is saying is that we need to say goodbye to our old life. The one where we do it all ourselves. The one where we are too busy for God. The one where we feel alone and unloved. The one where we do whatever we want to do. In other translations it says the one where we live according to our flesh. This means we listen to what our body wants us to do instead of what God wants us to do. However, it is time to say goodbye to that old life, it is time to bury it and get on with our new life.
The next three words are awesome. “God’s Spirit Beckons” How great is that? God’s Spirit, you know, the one that raised Jesus from the dead, beckons you. How crazy is that? God’s Spirit is calling out to you, calling you to come closer to God. The reason we don’t have to do everything ourselves is because Jesus died on a cross for us and then went up into heaven to be with His dad. He didn’t want to leave us alone so He sent the Holy Spirit to come be with us. He sent the Holy Spirit to guide us in His ways. If we listen to the Holy Spirit, instead of our flesh, we will have life and we will have it abundantly. If we listen to our flesh we will die.
The last line in the message translation says, “There are things to do and places to go!” God has amazing plans for your life. He really does. Maybe you are in a season right now where that is really hard to believe. That’s ok, you don’t have to believe it, I will believe it for you. I know it to be true. God wants to shower His children with love and abundance in all things. He wants to ridiculously bless you. If you are struggling right now, please hang on. I don’t know God’s timing but I know if you are struggling right now, then He is not finished with you yet. God does not want His children to suffer. God has places for you to go and things for you to do. This is true even when we can’t see it or don’t understand it. His plans can seem like they come out of no where. For instance I remember saying, several years ago, “Why am I the only person in my family that can’t write?” My siblings and parents all have such talent in that area and when I try to come up with a poem or a story, nothing would come to me. Fast forward several years and I am writing a podcast episode daily and I have written two books. God is a mystery and yet it all makes sense in His eyes.
If you don’t know the amazing things God has planned for you, join the club. We usually don’t know them until we are living them. However, if you are stuck in a pit and can’t see any light, know that there is light. Reach out and talk with someone about it. Nothing changes if nothing changes. Talk to God, and take the time to listen. One trick I have for listening to God’s voice, which I learned form Fern Gorin at the Life Purpose Institute is to write a letter to God and then ask God to answer your letter back to you using your pen. Then you write whatever comes to mind. Don’t question it, don’t think about it, just write every thought that comes into your mind. This has been such a blessing to me. Listening to what God has to say and then having the written record so I can go back and reread it anytime I need encouragement has been amazing. If you are struggling right now, give this letter writing a try. You will be amazed at what you hear from God. He is so encouraging and loving. He says the kindest things. If you are getting thoughts that are not kind, know that is not from the Lord. He only says things that build you up and encourage. God loves you very much and He doesn’t want any of His children to suffer. He is with you!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to live by the spirit and not by our flesh. Help us not only turn to you but actually take the time to slow down and listen to you. Help guide us and lead us into the amazing life you have for us. Help us to bury our old do it yourself life and live into a Spirit led life. Lord, you are amazing and we love you tons! We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed day!
If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click here. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed day!
Today I was thinking about recounting some more of the testimony that Pastor Jim Baker gave us during class. I thought that would be good because he has seen such amazing miracles. However, if you haven’t seen amazing miracles in your life they may be hard to believe. Especially last week’s witness as it is hard to believe that people were raised from the dead. Even if you can believe that the things did happen it is hard to believe that you could make them happen. When we hear miracles like raising people from the dead we tend to think they are super holy people who have been healing people for years. This is not the case. The people I talked about last week were everyday people just like you and me. They attend a church that talks about miracles, they pray for miracles and so they see miracles. My prayer for each on of you listening is that when you hear about how God is working in people’s lives during these Witness Wednesdays it will plant a seed in you. Each and every week you listen to another episode about a miracle happening in someone else’s life it will water that seed that is planted in you. Eventually that seed will grow and you will start to believe that a miracle could happen in your life, and hopefully you will start to believe that God could use you to do a miracle as well.
You might have heard that and thought that God couldn’t use you, that you are too broken. Broken people are exactly who God uses, so you would be His ideal candidate. Today I thought I would witness about what happened at my Encounter Ministry practicum on Monday night. This quarter in my class we are studying physical healings. We learned a prayer model of how to pray over people for physical healings. Monday night we invited people to come to class and we broke up into teams of three and we prayed over people for a healing. I said earlier how when we hear about miracles, we think it is people who have been healing for many years. This is not the case with those of us in class. Our quarter is 8 weeks long and this was week 6. One of the people on my team had never prayed over anyone for healing before. The other two of us had done it some. None of us were experts.
The first person who came to us was needing healing of stomach pain. He gets very anxious and stressed at work and has a lot of pain in his stomach because he is so tense. We prayed over him and two of us saw a vision of knots being untangled and going away. He said he felt cool or heat, I can’t remember which, in his stomach where the woman had her hand. He said the pain went from a 6 to a 4. It did not go lower than that the next few times we prayed, however, he said he did feel this sense of peace come over his whole body. He said he felt so good after we prayed. We prayed for God to continue his healing that night while he slept and to help him not worry about work so much. The pressure would still be there, but that God would give him a sense of peace about it all. One of the ladies on our team received a vision of his angel just wrapping it’s wings around him. It was beautiful. Praise God!
The next person we prayed over was a woman who had a lot of things going on. Scar tissue in her brain, something going wrong with her pace maker, something with her thyroid, she keeps teetering between pre diabetes and type 2 diabetes and she had a frozen shoulder. We prayed for everything that she needed prayers for. The one thing we could actually test was the frozen shoulder. After you pray over someone for healing it is good to ask what is different now. Has the pain level decreased? Is there something you can do now that you couldn’t do before we prayed. This is just a little step of faith and yet and can make all the difference. Sometimes you stepping out in faith and trying to move that arm, or trying to see, trying to walk, whatever it is, is the thing that completes the healing.
The woman could only lift her arm a little bit. She had very little rotation in it as well. We prayed specifically over that arm that it get unfrozen, that anything holding in there would be released. We prayed a few other things in Jesus’ name and then asked her to try and move it. She had more movement but still very limited. We prayed again for her shoulder and arm and asked her to lift it again. She could lift it at least to shoulder level now. We prayed one more time and we asked God to continue to heal her arm on the way home and while she slept. We asked God for a complete healing of that arm. When she left us that night she was not completely healed but she did have a lot more movement in her arm. Praise God!
Next we prayed over another classmate who had ankle trouble. He has plantar fasciitis and his ankle has been pretty weak. He said when he wakes up in the morning it is hard for him to walk. It takes him a while to get down the hall because of the pain. He was not having any pain right now so we weren’t able to ask if the pain level had gone down or not. However, after we pray, we ask people what is going on in their body? Do you feel anything? It can be normal to feel heat, coolness, or tingling, however these are not required for a healing to take place. They are a physical manifestation of the Holy Spirit, however the Holy Spirit can heal without these manifestations. Our classmate said when the woman was holding onto his ankle he felt a coolness, almost like her hands were ice packs. The Holy Spirit was definitely doing something. Two of us praying over him saw a vision of healing taking place. We do not know if he was healed as it only bother him in the morning, but I will let you know after I talk to him next Monday at class.
The last person we prayed over was one of the ladies on our team. She has been having shoulder pain for quite a bit of time now. She has been prayed over for it but it won’t seem to go away. It is not a super sharp pain but it is a dull ache that is always there and is so frustrating. It also hinders movement of her arm. She can raise her arm, but not as smoothly as the other one. It takes work to get her arm up in the air. This is particularly frustrating because she loves to praise and worship God and yet she can’t raise both her arms. We prayed over her arm and shoulder. She did get some more movement and she was able to lift it higher. We prayed again and she could lift it higher. When we were done praying she could lift is just as high as the other one but it was still a bit of work. It wasn’t a smooth movement like the other arm is. We prayed for God to continue the healing. I believe the pain had gone away. I don’t think she had any pain. Praise God! I will check back in with her and update you when I find out if the pain is now gone.
One thing that just came to mind so I want to mention is that sometimes you can receive a healing at a service like this and then when you go home and wake up the next day you might feel the pain again. This is the enemy trying to take away your healing. He can’t take away what God has given you though. If you have pain or some sort of regression from you healing. Rebuke that. Say, “Nope, not today Satan. God healed me and I claim that healing. I reject any pain, I reject anything that might get in the way of that healing. God healed me and we are in agreement with that healing.” Keep claiming the healing. It is yours forever, don’t let the enemy take it from you.
I hope you are enjoying these Witness Wednesdays. Testimonies are so crucial to faith building. The scripture is also important and that is why I do the daily devotionals. If we want to walk boldly in faith we need to hear about all God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit did in the Bible and we also need to hear about how the Holy Spirit is still alive and well in each one of us. The Holy Spirit is still doing amazing things every day and the more we hear about it the more we will believe. Being bold is not easy, it takes courage and it can also take practice. You can begin walking boldly with Jesus one tiny little baby step at a time, He will be right there with you holding your hand. He would never let you fall. He is a good, good Father! I hope you all have an amazing week!
Are We Held To Higher Standards?
Luke 12:47-48 “The servant who knows the master’s will and does not get ready or does not do what the master wants will be beaten with many blows. But the one who does not know and does things deserving punishment will be beaten with few blows. From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.”
I thought this was really interesting when reading it this morning. I thought it was a great reminder that we are held accountable for the things we know. The more we come to know and believe about Jesus, the higher the standard we are held too. This verse is saying that if you know God’s will and yet you choose not to do it, you choose to ignore God’s will, you will be punished more than you would if you didn’t know God’s will and went against it. This probably doesn’t seem fair to some of us. I remember I was at a Bible study in England and we were talking about something in the Bible, I am not sure what, and we ended up talking about this very thing.
We were talking about sin, I think. One of the prerequisites for something being a sin, at least in the catholic church, is that you have to know it is a sin. If you eat meat on Friday during lent because no one ever told you that you couldn’t eat meat on Friday during lent, then it isn’t a sin for you. I remember someone else saying, what I was thinking. Wouldn’t it be better to not keep learning about the Bible, about God’s laws? Basically, can’t we just live in bliss in our ignorance? Why would we want to keep learning about God’s will and God’s laws if it is going to make our life harder? Someone else asked, “Why are we held to a higher standard? That doesn’t seem fair, we are the ones trying to do the right thing and yet we have to work all that much harder.” I totally understand what this woman was saying, it doesn’t seem fair. It seems like if we are trying to live life the right way, that should be good enough, we shouldn’t have to get it right all the time.
I agree, and I don’t think this verse is saying that we need to get it right all the time. It is not saying that we need to be perfect. That is what grace is for. What I believe it is saying is that we need to try to follow God’s laws and God’s will. I think it is also saying that we can’t hold those who don’t know the laws responsible for following the laws. Would you hold a one year accountable for not talking yet when they just don’t know how? No, it is the same concept with non believers. They don’t know how amazing God is, they don’t know Jesus died for their sins, they don’t know any of it so they can’t be held accountable for following God’s laws.
If this is how we are thinking then it makes sense to us to think that our life would be easier if we stopped learning more about God, if we stopped learning His laws and His ways. However, this verse does not say they won’t be held accountable, it says they won’t be held as accountable. Their punishment won’t be as severe because they didn’t know better but there will still be a punishment. This is because they are making a choice to stay ignorant. They are making a choice to not learn about God and His ways. There are opportunities every where you turn to learn more about God. There are lots of churches, there are countless online resources, from websites to podcasts and everything in between. There are so many more movies now that are religious in nature. There is a whole TV series about Jesus’ life called the Chosen. Even just watching that you would learn so much about Jesus and who he is and what He taught.
There is no excuse for not knowing about God. Every person has a responsibility to learn as much as they can about Jesus, God and the Holy Spirit. Walking around in ignorance is not a good option. I know on the surface level that seems like an easier way of living, maybe even a better way of living because it may seem like there aren’t so many rules. However, they may be living without the rules, but they are also living without the grace, they are living without the sacraments, they are living outside of a relationship with God. I wouldn’t trade my relationship with my heavenly father for anything, would you? Would you still want to be held at a lower standard if it meant you would be outside of a relationship with God? When we look at what is fair and what isn’t we should look at all they are missing out on.
The reason we are held to a higher standard is because God gives us what we need to rise to the occasion. He gives us the Holy Spirit to help us follow the laws, He gives us grace when we mess up. However, we also have others watching what we are doing. If we are Christian then we are representing God and all other Christians. People will look to us to see what a Christian is like. If we say we are Christian but we don’t live our lives like Jesus taught us to then we ruin the reputation of all Christians. We might have people who look to us to see how they should be living. They may say, she doesn’t go to church, so I don’t have to go to church. She is Christian and yet she gossips, so I guess gossiping isn’t so bad after all. Do you see how by saying you are Christian, but then not live according to how Jesus taught us, you could be inadvertently causing someone else to stray for God or to sin.
Matthew 18:6 says, “If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.” God takes our role as role models and mentors seriously. If we are going to claim to be Christian than we should act like it, we should live our lives accordingly. We should be good representatives of Jesus so that if someone looks at us and how we are living they will see that we know Jesus and that He is directing how we are living our lives. We are held to a higher standard because we have been give the Holy Spirit to help us sin no more. We have been given the grace to get it wrong and yet repent and try again. Growing in our faith, growing in our knowledge of God and of our faith and of what God expects from us is so much better than living in ignorance just so we aren’t held as accountable. With more knowledge comes more grace, more fruit of the Spirit.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, you are amazing and we love you. We ask that you help us to follow your ways. We ask you to help us be good role models. We ask you to help us continue down the path of learning all about you and how you want us to live. Lord, help us to release any feelings of unfairness. Help us to follow your ways filled with joy knowing you love us and shower us with your grace. We are so grateful for you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to bringing you another witness tomorrow. I would like to ask each one of you listening to consider giving a witness. If you are not sure what you would say try to answer one of these questions. What hard times have I been through and how did God help me through them? What things in my life worked out so perfectly I know it had to have been God arranging it? When have I been in a situation where I wasn’t sure I was going to make it but I did? When I look back over the years where can I see that things worked out perfectly even though at the time they seemed anything but perfect? These are just a few ideas to get you thinking. Your witness/testimony can be about anything you like it to be about. I know each and everyone of you has a story because God works in all of our lives. If you don’t really know what to say and would rather do an interview style witness, we can do that too. I am so passionate about Witness Wednesdays because I know how important testimony is to the building up of faith. Please consider stepping outside of your comfort zone and sharing your story. I will meet you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed day!
The Outcast of the Outcasts
John 4:13-14 “Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
A friend suggested I talk about the woman at the well today as it was the Gospel for mass yesterday. For those of you who are not sure which story I am talking about let me recap quickly. Jesus stopped by a well outside of Samaria. There was a woman who was getting water at the well and Jesus asked her for a drink. This was strange for her as Jews did not use anything that Samaritans used. They kept their things separate. This was also strange for a Jewish man to be talking to a Samaritan woman. However, Jesus asked her for water again and then told her the verse above. Jesus said, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
The woman asked Jesus to let her drink of this water so she wouldn’t have to keep coming to the well for water. You see, most woman came to the well first thing in the morning when it was not so hot. However, this woman did not want to be seen by the other woman as she was an outcast. She had already have 5 husbands and the man she was living with at the time was not her husband. What is really interesting is that this Samaritan woman is the first person that Jesus offered the living water too. He had not spoken of this before, He had not revealed who he was to anyone before this encounter.
The Jews and the Samaritan had a feud going on, so they did not associate with one another. The Samaritans were basically outcasts to the Jews. This woman was an outcast to her own people. So she was an outcast to the outcasts and yet Jesus chose her to reveal His identity to. I learned something new during the sermon at mass today too. The priest said Jesus specifically sent the apostles to look for food while he waited at the well so that he could be alone for this encounter. He did not want the apostles there to judge this woman. He wanted it to be just Himself and this woman so she would feel comfortable. Isn’t God so good. He takes into account our feeling, our wants and needs. He arranges our circumstances with such detail.
The verse above talks about living waters. What does that mean? Actually it says the water Jesus gives will give them a spring of water welling up to eternal life. Jesus told this woman that whoever drank of this water would not thirst again. I wanted to know what this actually meant, so I looked for an article. I found an article that talked about how we all have an ache in our heart that only Jesus can fill. We don’t always understand this at first. We know we have this ache, as I am sure this woman did. I am sure this woman was missing something in her life and she did not know what it was. She kept searching for it in various men, but what she was really searching for was God.
I have heard people say we all have a “God size” whole in our hearts and only God can fill it. I think this is so true and I wish it were easier for us to realize this. I know people who have had to take the really long road around to realize that Jesus was what they were searching for. I know plenty of people that were searching in all the wrong places for this water that Jesus is talking about. Some have turned to alcohol or drugs to find this water. Others have turned to other relationships, other people, or sex to find this water Jesus is talking about. Others have turned to self harming behaviors, stayed in abusive relationships, gone back to unhealthy relationships, just to have what Jesus is offering this woman.
In the article I read it said, “Only Jesus can supply the water that our thirsty souls desire. Only he can fill the emptiness and the ache.” I love how this is worded. Our souls are thirsty. We are constantly searching for what will quench our thirst. It is more money? Is it having a spouse? Is it having kids? Is it having the right car, the right house, the right job title? What do you think will make you happy? What have you been telling yourself will make you happy? A lot of us think, I will be happen when… What is your when? What are you waiting for before you can be happy? Only Jesus can quench our souls. Without Him we will keep searching for that next best thing that will make us happy. We will keep searching but never finding.
Another thing I thought of when I was thinking about this verse is the fact that Jesus chose this particular woman to reveal his identity to. I have mentioned this before but did you notice God has a pattern of using those who by human standards, don’t really deserve it? Moses was brought to my mind first after this woman. I was thinking about how Moses had killed a man and then ran away from Egypt. This is who God decided to use to save the Jewish people. Think about all the truly amazing things Moses did. His life did not start off in an amazing way. His mother had to put him in a basket in a river when he was a baby to avoid him being killed. She gave him up so that he could have a life. Then he wasn’t even raised in the Jewish culture. He was raised as an Egyptian prince. This is who God used to save all of the Jewish people from Egypt.
We often think God can’t use us and we come up with all the excuses in the book. I am too old, I am too young, I am not from a religious family, I am not as “holy” as other people in my family or in my friend circle. We are super great at coming up with reasons why God won’t use us. Sometimes those things are our tendency to sin. For instance we think God can’t use me because I have sinned in my past and I continue to sin. Guess what? Murder is a sin and yet God used Moses. Adultery is a sin and yet God used David. We all sin, God doesn’t need us to be perfect.
God has a purpose for each one of us. I was going to say, “If God wants to use you, He will.” However, I don’t believe it is a matter of “if”. God definitely wants to use you, He wants to use all of us to help Him build up His Kingdom. Whatever you feel God putting on your heart know that He chose you for a reason. Maybe that thing you feel is a weakness is the exact reason God chose you. Maybe He is going to use that weakness to help you talk to others with that same weakness? Maybe your addiction or alcohol makes you perfectly suited to bring his good news to others with an addiction to alcohol. God will use all our mistakes, all of our pain, all of our sins, for good if we let Him. Don’t listen to that inner voice that tells you God wouldn’t use you. That is the voice of the enemy trying to keep you down because he knows God has powerful plans for you and the enemy is worried about what will happen if you step into those plans. God knows you are not perfect and that is exactly why He wants to use you. Let Him. Say Yes. Surrender to God and He will use you. You are exactly who He wants.
Dear Heavenly Father I ask you to bless all those who are listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to drink of the living waters, please help us. Lord, give us this wellspring of water inside of us. Help us to say yes to your call on our life. Help us to see that you use imperfect people all the time. Help us to see we are exactly who you want to use. Please help us to stop listening to that annoying voice of the enemy telling us you would never want to use us. Please Lord, make your voice so much louder than the enemies. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to seeing you here again tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Four Steps to Forgiveness
Matthew 5:43-45 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.”
Yesterday’s episode took a turn I wasn’t expecting. When I started writing it I was talking about how frustrating it is when our time line and God’s time line don’t add up, or aren’t the same. Then halfway through the Holy Spirit lead me down the path of praying for those who hurt us and helping God save His children. Then I went to prayer group and the teaching was on love your enemies and many of the words of prophesy that were given were also about this topic.
After the meeting was over, we stayed after to go over our bookmark. The bookmark is where we discern all the words of prophecy we received in a month and then come up with the top call, proclamation, promise and directive from God for that month. We are behind in going over the book marks so the bookmark we went over yesterday was from April 2022. Almost a whole year ago and yet it was exactly what we heard in the teaching and what God had said to me in the episode from yesterday. God is so good! When He wants us to hear something, He will make sure we hear it.
So, lets take a look at this passage. “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven.” God is telling us to love our enemies. You might hear this and think that you don’t have any enemies. Enemies can be a harsh word and you are sure you don’t have anything like that. However, when you really press in and think about it, I bet you can come up with some. They might be foreign countries whose politics you don’t like or who are hurting their people. It might be people who over the years have hurt you and you are holding a grudge against them, it could be politicians in this country. The point is God is not just talking about enemies, as in just people you are at war with.
Jesus is telling us in this passage to love our enemies and to pray for those who persecute us. Are we doing this? Are we praying for the person who cut us off in traffic yesterday? Are we praying for the person who is holding up the line at the grocery store? Are we praying for that family member that just drives us crazy? Are we praying for those who used to tease us in grade school or high school? Are we spreading love to those whom we don’t like? Are we loving those that make us mad, sad and angry?
The leader of the prayer group meeting yesterday gave us 4 steps to forgiveness by Father Jim Blount. It would be hard to love someone when you can’t forgive them. Here are the four steps to forgiveness. (Click Here to read article)
1.) Make an act of will: Forgiveness isn’t about your feelings it is a decision. You can make a decision to forgive someone, even if you don’t feel like it. God is going to forgive us as we forgive others. This is something that is good to keep in our minds. To decide to forgive, make an act of the will with this prayer: “I forgive you, (name), in the name of Jesus Christ, now and forever.”
2.) Bless those who persecute you: In this step we return a blessing for a curse. When someone is cursing at us, we don’t return that curse back to them. Words are very powerful. This is the most important step to forgiveness. The anger and the hatred of our wounds leave by the act of blessing. Blessing melts the ice of the heart. Blessing releases the poison. Blessings heals the heart.
3.) Give Thanks always: This is difficult. It is a call to maturity and a call to sanctity. We can thank our persecutors because our persecutors awaken us to the goodness of God. God uses our wounds and pain to teach us humility and dependence on him alone. Through them, I turn to him and he heals me. Though we never ask for persecutions and wounds, they can be a channel for us of the grace of a good and bountiful harvest. St. Therese of Avila said “The only thing we will thank God for when we get to Heaven will be our crosses. St. Rose of Lima said similarly, “Apart from the cross, there is no other ladder by which we may get to Heaven.
4.) Praise the Lord: This is the fourth and final step of forgiveness. We give praise directly to God. We acknowledge Our Lord himself as the source of all our life. God is the all-loving Divine Physician who, for our good and eternal salvation, comes to our aid in the midst of sin and suffering. By praising him, we return all that we are and all that we have suffered to God, the source of all that is good in life. This step completes our forgiveness and leads to perfect acceptance of God’s holy will. To praise God, make an act of will with this prayer: “I praise you Lord and your Blessed Mother and I glorify you for your heavenly plan that is saving me and leading me to perfect joy.”
If you do these four steps to forgiveness, you will be able to love your enemies. These four steps, when done consistently, can transform your heart and your mind. I can tell you from yesterday, God is calling us to love His unloveable. He is calling us to love His lost sheep, to love them back to the kingdom. We can not do this if we are angry and unforgiving. There are some people that we either know personally or we have heard about in the news or in history and we think that they are unforgivable. What they did was awful and there is not way to forgive it. However, God is telling us to forgive them anyway. We don’t have to feel like it, we just have to make a decision to do. Can we do that for God? Can we love his children, even the most evil ones?
I will leave you with the bookmark from my prayer group for April 2022 because it is God’s words instead of mine and He says it so perfectly: “My children, do you hear me call your name? Do you feel my warm breath upon you? I am calling you. I am calling everyone, even the most evil person you can think of. I want all my children to be with me. I am light in the darkness, and as you walk, because you are my light, you bring light into the darkness. In that light is my mercy that you bring to others through your speaking, loving and compassion. I will save all who seek me. Don’t give up on anyone. Pray them to the Kingdom. One little movement of the soul and they can have Heaven with me for eternity. Continue to be open to me and to love me. Continue to spread my Word, my love, and my mercy. I love you more than you can ever imagine. Be faithful to me as I am to you.”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, loving are enemies is difficult. We want to do if for you and yet we can’t do it without your help. Help us to follow these four steps Lord. Help us to forgive when we don’t feel like it. Help us to forgive even when it's hard. Help us learn to forgive more and more easily. We love you Lord, we understand you want all of your children to be saved. You want them all to go to Heaven. If we can help Lord, we want to. Just show us how to help. We love you Lord and we are so grateful for you. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus! I look forward to meeting you here again on Monday. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed weekend!
God’s Timing, Not Ours
2 Peter 3:8-9 “But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.”
When I read this verse I think about how God’s timing can be so frustrating for us sometimes. I was praying with a friend of mine last night because she is so tired of working at her job. It is not great for her mental or physical health, they are not supportive of her, and the kids she teaches are not well behaved at all. She has been praying to the Lord for a long time now and she is not seeing results. She is tired and frustrated and feels like God is telling her to take a leap of faith, but doesn’t seem to be directing her how to do that. God’s timing is not like our timing. For us, we each have the same 24 hours in a day. Whether we use that to our advantage or not. Whether we are healthy or we are sick. Whether we are young or we are old. We all have 24 hours in a day, it is constant, it never changes.
However, it is not the same for God. This verse is telling us that one day for God could be like a thousand years and a thousand years could be like a day. It is impossible for us to understand how time works for God. He seems to know every move we will make and yet he is also very present in each moment. He is in our future, our present and our past. They are all happening at the same time for Him, which of course makes no sense to us. How can the past and the future be happening at the same time? There are so many things about God that are a mystery. This is one of them.
The next line says the Lord is not slow in keeping his promise as some understand slowness. God is not just stalling. He is not promising you something and then forgetting about it or delaying it because he doesn’t care. On the contrary He cares so much that He is aligning his promise up for you at the perfect time. Sometimes we want things to happen now, but God knows if it did happen now, it wouldn’t work. You wouldn’t appreciate it, or you would waste it, or something else along these lines. However, if God gives it to you in a year, after you have experienced all these other things, you will be able to appreciate it more.
I know we want God to fulfill his promises now. I know we want him to give us what we ask for now. We don’t want to wait, we want it now. I get it. I have been in plenty of situations where I have been asking God for something and it takes far longer than I wanted it to. I felt like I was losing strength and a parent can’t lose strength when their kids are acting up. You need to be on point, you need to be at the top of your game. Yet God says, He is there in our weakness. His power is made perfect in our weakness. Sometimes we need to get to that point so we can realize we need God. Sometimes we need to get to the point where we have tried everything on our own and nothing has worked. Sometimes we need to hit rock bottom so that God can come in and pick us up off the floor. However, if we have a choice, we keep trying to do everything on our own. Often we are not even giving God a chance to work, we are too busy doing it ourselves, so He sits back and He waits. Then we wonder why He is not answering our prayers.
The last line in this verse says, “ Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” Thank you Lord for being patient with me! Thank you for not wanting me to perish! When I read this verse I think about the many times I have heard people say, “Jesus needs to hurry up and come.” People are thinking the world is so terrible that we are ready for the end times. We are ready for Jesus to come for His final judgement and end this world. We wonder what God is waiting for as we feel the world is bad enough. We feel it can’t really get much worse than it is, so what is God waiting for?
This verse answers that question for us. God does not want anyone to perish. He wants everyone to come to repentance. Yes, this world is crazy, and falling apart and so very broken. And yet if Jesus came today for the final judgement, how many of us would be going to heaven? How many of our loved ones would be going? We think we are ready for Jesus to come, but are we really? We just want the awfulness of this world to end, but we aren’t necessarily ready for His judgement. And maybe some of us are ready. If you are listening to this podcast you love Jesus. If you are listening to a podcast about how to walk boldly with Jesus then you probably are doing your best to live your life according to God’s will and law. That is awesome, you are probably ready to join Jesus in His kingdom in Heaven. What about your family members though? Are they ready?
I understand this world is hard and it seems to be getting worse and worse each day. I don’t know that this country has ever been more divided. There is so much racism and sexism. People are just rude and are not at all sorry about it. There is so much hate these days and it seems to drown out the love. So, naturally we want Jesus to come and save us. However, He already saved us. He did his job, now it is time to do ours. Romans 5:20-21 says, "The law was brought in so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Yes there is so much evil in the world right now, and that means there is so much grace as well. God is showering us with grace each and every day and we need to use this grace to spread his love to all we meet. We need to overshadow the hate with love.
This is not easy. It is not easy to be surrounded by hate and to spread love. It is not easy to be that one positive voice amongst a sea of negativity. It is not easy to respond with love when met with hate. This is what grace if for. This is why God is showering us with grace. He is concerned for His children. He is concerned that if He came now so many of His children would be lost. So many of our children would be lost. We can’t wait for Jesus to come and save us, we need to step up to the plate and start trying to save others. We can not save anyone on our own. We have no power on our own. However when we turn to the Holy Spirit, who is living inside all of us who are baptized, we have all the power in the world.
Ask the Holy Spirit how you can help your loved ones? Ask the Holy Spirit how you can spread God’s love to others? Pray each and every day for those who don’t know God’s love. When you encounter hate, pray for that person. I know you don’t want to, I don’t either. I know you don’t feel like they deserve your prayers. You don’t want to waste your breath on them. I get it, I understand what you mean. Don’t do it for them. Do it for Christ, do it for your heavenly Father who’s heart is breaking when He thinks about how many of His children are lost right now.
We wonder what He is waiting for and He wonders why we can’t see it. Why can’t we see how sad He is at all of his lost sheep. It says in the Bible God will leave His 99 righteous sheep to go find that one lost sheep. Think of how it must be for God to see so many of his sheep lost. Let’s try to help Him get them back. Let’s ask the Holy Spirit how we can partner with God to use this grace He is giving us for His good. What can we do to help others rediscover His love? What is one thing we can do that would help make the world a brighter place? What is one thing we can do to shine the peace of Christ and the love of Christ to all those we meet?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we are sorry we get so impatient at times waiting for your timing. We are grateful your ways are higher than our ways, please give us the patience and strength we need to keep waiting for your perfect timing. Lord, please show us where we can partner with you in saving your children. We can feel your pain and we want to help. Show us how Lord. Show us how to shine your love and light into the world. Show us how to respond with love when greeted by hate. Show us how to love the unlovable just as Jesus did. Show us how to start in our homes. Lord, we have so much to learn and we are ready to start. Teach us oh Lord we are ready and willing. We love you Lord, you are so forgiving. You are so patient. We are grateful for all you do for us and we ask all of this in accordance to your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus! I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed day!
If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click here. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed day!
Today I want to share with you some of the testimonies I heard last night from the guest speaker at my Encounter Ministries class. His name is Pastor Jim Baker and he is from Zion Christian Fellowship in Columbus Ohio. You can find more information about him at his website zionequip.com Pastor Baker talked about his community in Ohio and he said they have testimony of 18 people who were raised from the dead. 18 people, right here in America, by ordinary people like you and me.
The first one he talked about was about a construction worker who has 6 children. He felt like the Lord told him to take the family to Kings Island. He goes to Kings Island and he is waiting in line and this lady about 50 feet in front from him keels over and someone yells “she’s dead.” Every one is scrambling around and trying to save her or bring her back. This man is in line wondering if he should do something. He is just rocking back and forth and trying to decide what to do. He knows the Lord brought him here for a reason so he springs into action and fights his way through the crowd to get to the lady. He leans over her, puts his hand over her and says, “Live in the name Jesus.” She suddenly is alive again and takes a deep breath and the paramedics take her away.
The man is wondering what even just happened. He is in awe and he is back to waiting in line again. As he is waiting in line he has an open vision. His eyes are open, the screen comes down, and it is the throne room of heaven. It is busy, angels are flying around, worship is going on and all of the sudden all of heaven stops and it looks at the screen and it is this man, Ryan, and he is rocking back and forth. The minute he decided to engage God dispatched and angel at the speed of light and it went and met him as he commanded it, the angel came and raised the woman up.
They have seen multiple people brought back to life at car accidents. One guy that died at 7 A. M. and woke up at 11 P.M. and had to unzip himself from a body bag at the morgue. He was dead for 16 hours and was back at work two days later with no brain damage. This next one was a family from their church was visiting a different church. Someone passed away during the service and no one really new what to do. They were trying CRP and they had the paddles and nothing was working. Amy from Zion Church stood up on a chair and said, “Come on people start speaking life.” She started commanding life back into the person and they came back to life.
They have also seen two people come back to life after suicide. One of them was a young girl who was in a terrible relationship. The guy was really mean to her and he told her to just kill herself. The family didn’t know that had happened, they just knew they hadn’t heard from her in a little while. They went into her room and they found her with a really thick room around her neck. She had hung herself and she had blood coming from her eyes and stuff. The family was distraught, trying to cut her down, they don’t know how long she has been dead, so they are praying for her and nothing is happening. The ambulance comes, the paramedics are trying to raise her up and nothing happens and then as they are getting ready to stop everything the brother says, let's give it one more time, prays for her and boom she comes back to life. She hardens her heart to the Lord for about three months. Then she got saved with a water baptism one Sunday and she said she now realizes that every breath is gift from the Lord. She just glows.
The last one for today is a man who was the son of one of the families in the church. Genius level intellect, he was in the military and just walked away from the Lord. He got into Atheism Science. For whatever the life circumstances were, he hung himself with a belt and his roommate found him grey and unresponsive. They put him on machines and he was brain dead and the machines were keeping him a live. This was on a Tuesday and they called the family in and let them know they were going to pull the plug on Thursday. Somehow between Wed night and Thursday morning he comes back completely alive, full brain activity with all his intellect still in tact.
These are just a few on the stories the Pastor told us. He told us so many more. I will probably share more with you another time. I think all these are enough for one day. I hope you can see how incredible this is. I hope you can see how powerfully God is working in the world today. He is not just working in Ohio, and he is not just working in Africa. He is working everywhere. He is healing people all around you and yet if you aren’t on the lookout for it, you probably won’t see it. There is nothing extra special about these people. They just heard the Holy Spirit and then decided to act on what he said. You can do the same. They are commanding things to happen because they know Jesus gave them the authority. You have the same authority. I know it doesn’t feel like it. I know you don’t believe you could do something like healing, it’s too crazy. It’s for more holy people. Don’t believe these lies. My prayer for you is that the more you listen to these episodes, the more you listen to this podcast the more you will start to believe that you too can do these extraordinary things. My prayer is that if you see someone who is sick or in need of prayer you will start to believe that you could pray for them and you could see healings. The first time you pray for a healing over someone you might not see any change, that is ok, keep trying. I prayed over people for years without seeing much healing. It is part of the process. God still loves it when we try. I can’t wait to have you on one of these Witness Wednesdays talking about how you stepped out in faith, how you were bold and you prayed over someone, even if you didn’t see the results you wanted, you still tried and I can’t wait to hear about it.
You Are Anointed
Psalm 23:5-6 “You prepare a feast for me in the presence of my enemies. You honor me by anointing my head with oil. My cup overflows with blessings. Surely your goodness and unfailing love will pursue me all the days of my life, and I will live in the house of the Lord forever.”
There is a lot to like about this verse. First. It starts out saying that God will prepare a feast for me in the presence of my enemies. I don’t have to be worried about my enemies as God has got me. He is my shield and my refuge. Now he is saying we will prepare a feast for me. When someone is preparing a meal for us, they are not usually stressed out about it. They aren’t worry about all the things going on around them. Picture this, there is chaos all around you, and yet in front of you is this beautifully set up dining room table. You have a seat and God is bringing you a feast one course at a time. He is not concerned with your enemies because He knows they can’t touch you. You are not concerned either because you just feel so at home, so taken care of. Isn’t that a beautifully relaxing image?
Next the verse says that God honors us by anointing our head with oil. Did you know that you have an anointing on your life? We all do. Did you know through your baptism you were anointed to be priest, prophet and king? It’s true, just as Christ was all three of these, you are also anointed to be these three things to your community. What does that mean for us?
Let’s start with priest. Drawing on the priesthood of the Old Testament, a priest is one who offers sacrifices (see Genesis 14:18; Exodus 29:38- 42; Leviticus 23:6,8). Some sacrifices are personal, and some are on behalf of others. These sacrifices will look different for each one of us depending on our circumstances. However, sacrifice to some degree should be a part of our every day life. I have tried to embrace this a little more this year, so I am fasting from one thing each month. I will switch it up each month, but there will always be something I am fasting from. I think this will help me to appreciate things more and it will also show me that I am not a slave to that thing. For instance, if I feel like I just can’t stop eating chocolate, then I will fast from that for a month. By the end of the year I will have shown God and myself that I do not need these things. I will have also made a small sacrifice each month for 12 months.
Next we have prophet. A prophet is a spokesperson for God, or one who speaks on God’s behalf (see Exodus 4:30; Deuteronomy 18:18; Isaiah 42:19). In the Old and New Testaments, prophets called people to a different way of life. Can we be a spokesperson for God by how we live our lives? Can we live in a way that when people see us they think to themselves, “I want what they have?” Can we call others to a different way of life, not necessarily with our words, but with our love? Can we love others as Jesus did? Can we speak love and light into the world, into people’s lives? Can we be prophets?
Lastly, we are anointed as kings. What are kings called to do? Usually rule over others. We are called to rule over ourselves first and foremost. We are all responsible for making sure we are living our lives according to God’s laws. Most kings are called to rule over others, however, as Christians we are called to servant leadership. A servant leader leads by serving others. In other words, servant leaders place the interests and needs of their followers ahead of their own self-interests and needs. Generally, they value the development of their followers, building their communities, acting authentically, and sharing power.
Now that we know what each one of these means, hopefully we can apply this to our every day life. God has anointed us in our every day tasks too. For instance, I was anointed to be a mother and a wife. That was where God called me and that is what He set me apart to do. Maybe you are anointed to be a doctor, a lawyer, a pharmacy tech, a garbage collector, a grandmother, a teacher, whatever it is, God has anointed you to do it. Your baptismal anointing is not meant to replace any of those other calls on your life. You are anointed to be a priest, prophet and king in the life you are already living. Think about your day to day life, how can you incorporate sacrifice into your days? How can you be more of a prophet spreading the Lord’s Word in your daily lives? How can you be more of a servant leader right now, right where you are?
The verse then goes on to say my cup overflows with blessings. This is also great imagery. I love to picture a tea cup, as we grew up drinking tea in my family. Although I don’t picture a regular tea cup, the image I am getting is an English fancy tea cup from a china set. The tea is being poured into it with a steady stream and the cup is overflowing and running all over the table and even onto the floor. This is how many blessing God has for you. He wants to rain down blessings upon blessings on all of His children. Sometimes we get in the way of God’s blessings. Sometimes we don’t appreciate the blessings that we have and so why would God give us more? Sometimes we find ourselves complaining about all that is going on in our lives instead of praising God and giving thanksgiving. God has ridiculous blessings for you. All you have to do is believe that and then praise God for any blessings, even if they are small. If you can be faithful with the small He will increase your blessings. He is a good, good Father!
The ending of this verse is beautiful. “Surely your goodness and unfailing love will pursue me all the days of my life, and I will live in the house of the Lord forever.” We had this word pursue the other day. I love that word. This verse is saying that God’s goodness and unfailing love will pursue us all the day of our lives. Isn’t that wonderful? We don’t have to chase after God, because He is already chasing after us. All we have to do is to let ourselves be caught by God’s goodness and unfailing love. Unfailing love is not like any love we can find here on earth. It is an incredible love that knows no limits, that knows no boundaries. God’s love never leaves us. No matter how much we may try to run from it. No matter how much we try to reject it or send it back. No matter how much we might mess up. God’s unfailing love will pursue you every single day of your life. How incredible is that?
And the very last part of the verse says, “I will live in the house of the Lord forever.” Yes please! I want to live in the house of the Lord forever. I think we all do. It is so amazing to me that God has an open door policy to heaven. All our welcome. Come as you are, in your broken and wounded state. You do not have to earn your way, you don’t have to do anything to get there. Jesus has earned you your right to be there. All you have to do is surrender to God and let Him help you, let Him give you the strength to follow Him. Following God is not always an easy road but it is a rewarding road and one that leads to spending eternity living in the house of the Lord.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening today. Lord, we thank you for loving us like you do. We thank you for preparing us a feast in the presence of our enemies. We thank you for the ridiculous blessings you want to give us and we are sorry if we get in your way of doing that. We thank you for making us priest, prophet, and king and we ask for your help in discovering what that means for each one of us and how we can incorporate that anointing into our lives. We love you Lord and we can’t wait to live in your house forever! We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to bringing you another witness tomorrow. Last night in my class we had a guest speaker named Jim Baker, and he was amazing. The whole first hour of class he gave testimony to all the amazing healings he has seen. His church has seen 18 people raised from the dead. And this is right here in the United States, right in Ohio. The people who did this were everyday ordinary people. It was incredible to hear and I will share a few of those stories with you tomorrow. You won’t want to miss it. Remember Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
God, How Can I Help You Today?
Ezekiel 37:7 “So I prophesied as I was commanded; and as I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold, a rattling; and the bones came together, bone to its bone.”
I liked this verse for many reasons. First I love that is shows Ezekiel’s obedience to God. It wasn’t as if God was asking him to do something easy. God was asking Him to prophesy of dead bones and make them living again. Let me read you the whole section.
Ezekiel 37:1-6 says, “The hand of the Lord was upon me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of the valley; it was full of bones. And he led me round among them; and behold, there were very many upon the valley; and lo, they were very dry. And he said to me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” And I answered, “O Lord God, thou knowest.” Again he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones, and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. And I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the Lord.”
Take a minute and put yourself in Ezekiel’s shoes. God asked him to speak words over the dry bones and they will come to life. I can imagine that was a little hard to believe. I will admit I don’t know a lot about Ezekiel off the top of my head. I can’t list any incredible things that happened before this one and yet I am sure there were many. I mean this is chapter 37, so there is a lot that has happened with Ezekiel before God asked him to prophesy over dry bones and make them live again. And yet, I still think it is remarkable that God told him to do it and he did it. I wonder what he was thinking? I wonder if he knew it would work? I wonder if he had even a moment of self doubt? I wonder what that moment felt like when he prophesied as he was commanded and it actually worked. Do you know what I mean? I wonder what he was thinking as these dry bones all around him began to come to life. It must have been incredible.
Another reason I love this passage is because it demonstrates to us that God likes to use us to do His work. He likes to allow us to take part in his plan and He gives us power to do so. Do you think God needed Ezekiel to raise those bones? Nope, he could have easily done it himself. He allowed him to do it and that is incredible. Did you know God is wanting to use you for incredible things too? He is, He really is. I know some of you, many of you probably just counted yourself out when you heard that statement. I bet many of you said, he doesn’t want to use me, I am too old, too shy, too young, too buys, too something. Or maybe you thought you were not holy enough, not outgoing enough, not bold enough, not enough in some way. That is a lie the enemy is telling you. Don’t let the enemy lie to you about your calling.
God is so good and He calls us right where we are at. I am not saying God is calling each and every one of us to go out and bring his love to every nation. Although that may be your calling. He does want to use each and every one of us to be a part of His plan. He is talking to each and every one of us every single day, we just aren’t listening to Him. What if we started to listen? What if we started to ask God what He wants us to do? What if we asked God every morning, “God, what can I do for you today?” How do you think your life would change if you began each day like this? Imagine how much faster we could change the world if we were all working with God. Imagine how many more lives would be touched if we all just did our little part in spreading the word of God and spreading the love of God.
God is not going to call each one of us to raise bones from the dead. He is calling some people to do this. There are people living right now, all around the world that are raising people from the dead. However, these people have asked God for that gift and have worked hard to cultivate that gift. They were faithful with the small gifts God gave and they were obedient in the small things and God gave them more and more responsibility as He noticed they were faithful and obedient. He did not start out asking them to raise the dead and He won’t start out with that for you either.
Sometimes we are afraid to ask God what He wants us to do, or what we can do for Him because we don’t know what He will ask. What if He asks us something we can’t do? What if He asks us to do something too hard for us or something that will make us too uncomfortable? These are good questions. You don’t have to feel bad about asking them because you want to make sure you aren’t going to let God down. He knows this. The thing to remember is God knows you better than you know you. He will ask you to do things that have you step outside your comfort zone, and this is so you can grow. It is also so you can show your obedience. However, if He asks you to do something and you couldn’t because you were nervous, or you just couldn’t bring yourself to do it. That’s ok, just try again next time. I can tell this is the Holy Spirit talking through me today because I needed to hear that too. God is not going to give you a task that is so important His whole plan would be messed up if you didn’t do. God knows you, he knows what you can and can’t do and He loves you, even when you can’t do something you feel He is calling you to do.
In prayer group we have a time where we are all silent and we ask God to speak to us. Then we all listen and see if He wants to give us a word to share. Over the years we have found that if he gives someone a word and yet they aren’t sure if they should share it for one reason or another, He will move on and give that word to someone else. I think this is reassuring because it takes the pressure off us and yet I don’t think we should use that as an excuse to not step forward when we think God might be asking us to do something. If He is asking He will give us the courage and if He really wants us to do it, He will keep asking so much that we can’t say no. I have shared this story before, but was reminded of it this weekend and then felt like I should share it again.
This girl went to church camp and the pastor told this story: his daughter was driving home one day and she felt that God was telling her to do a headstand by the pop machine at a gas station. Of course she didn't want to because it was just so random and she would feel way too uncomfortable to do that. She kept pushing it away and God kept pursuing her. Finally she gave in and drove to the gas station. She walked in and there was only one guy there who is working. She smiled, waved awkwardly and walked over to the pop machine. She looked at him again and he was staring, so she did a headstand and began to walk out. As she was reaching for the handle the man stopped her and asked, "Why did you do that?" And she said, "For some reason God told me to do a handstand by the pop machine." The man stared at her for a little bit he then grabbed a gun from under the counter and set it on top. He said, "Today after work, I was planning on killing myself. I had nowhere else to turn so I turned to God, any God. And I prayed, "If you are real and want me alive send a girl to do a handstand by the pop machine.”
I get all choked up anytime I recall a miracle as I am just so moved by God’s love for us. This girl heard God asking her to do something and she didn’t want to. She felt it was too crazy, she was too uncomfortable, and didn’t want to. Yet God kept pursuing her. I love the way that is worded. God was pursuing her. He wasn’t pressuring her, He wasn’t commanding her. He was pursuing her. He wanted her to be a part of His plan. How amazing do you think she felt after finding out the incredible thing God used her for? I am sure it was rewarding for her to be a part of His plan to save the man working their that night. She had no idea why she was supposed to do the handstand, and yet she did it anyway.
There will be many times when God is calling us to do something and we don’t know why. Sometimes we are lucky and just after we do it we can see the reason why we were supposed to do it, and other times, we may never know why. I remember reading in a book or hearing a story about this preacher who was away on business. Three of his coworkers at the church had this strong feeling that God was sending them over to the preacher’s house at 3 in the morning to intercede for his wife and children. They drove over and just prayed outside the house for a few hours. They are still not sure why they were sent there, but they are sure they prevented some sort of attack from the enemy.
I am not sure why God doesn’t share the why with us. I feel like it would be much easier to gather the courage to do a random handstand if we knew it would save someone’s life. Maybe in the not knowing God is helping to build our trust and our faith as well. I am not sure. I do know God wants to use you, just as He wants to use me. I know He wants to speak to you, He just needs you to listen. What if right after you listen to this you take a minute and ask God what He would like to do for you today and then try to do it. Don’t worry, you won’t be perfect at hearing God’s word, none of us are. Don’t worry, you might not always be able to do what you feel He is asking you to do, it’s ok, He doesn’t hold it against you and He will make sure His will is done even if we can’t do it. God is not going to put a lot of pressure on us to be a part of His plan. It is more of an honor and one that He offers freely to all of us. How can you help God today?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you so much and we can’t believe you invite us in to help with your plan. We thank you and we want to say yes Lord. Help us to say yes. Help give us the courage and the boldness to do as you ask. Help us to give you quiet time each day to listen to what you have to say. Help us to ask you daily how we can help you. You are so amazing Lord and we are so grateful you love us so much!! We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Faith Is A Gift
Mark 11:22-24 “ And Jesus answered them, “Have faith in God. Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you receive it, and you will.”
I love this verse. I love it and it is confusing to me at the same time. I love it because it shows how powerful our faith can be. It is confusing because I can’t imagine having the faith to tell a mountain to be taken up and cast into the sea. Do you have passages like this in the Bible? Verses you really like and at the same time you aren’t sure what they mean or how to interpret them? Or maybe you really like them and you think they are true for other people but they are not true for you? I think today may be one of those days where we talk about the verse and yet you might be left with more questions than answers. We are on this journey together and I don’t have all the answers. I am learning right along side you.
I love to imagine what it would be like if I commanded a mountain to get up and through itself in the sea. Even though I can picture it in my mind, I don’t actually believe that I could do that. It feels way to big and too out there. A whole mountain, throwing itself into the sea, that seems a bit far fetched. I know God can do anything. I don’t doubt that God could cast a mountain in to the sea, I doubt that I could, even if I believed. It seems to always come down to that. I believe God could do anything, but I don’t necessarily believe He would use me to do it. Do you feel this way too? Yes, maybe God does want to heal people today, but not through me. I am not good enough for the that, I am not holy enough, I am not Catholic enough, Christian enough, strong enough, you get the picture. I am not enough for God to use in that way.
Man, what a number the enemy plays on us. He just whispers these stupid lies into our head and we don’t know any better and we buy them and believe him. Well, actually, they aren’t complete lies, which is where he gets us. Yes, we are not enough on our own to have God work through us. We aren’t worthy on our own, God makes us worthy because He created us in His likeness and image and because we have the Holy spirit inside of us. God wants to use us, even in our brokenness and the enemy knows this. This is why Satan left heaven. He knew from the beginning of time that God was going to make humans and that we were going to mess up and yet God was going to love us anyway. That was too much for Satan’s pride. This is probably why Satan attacks us in this way so frequently. He is constantly trying to tell us that we are not enough and we don’t live up to God’s standards. However, it is not God’s standards he is wanting us to live up to, it's his own. He is projecting his feeling onto us. He doesn’t feel we are worthy. God says otherwise!
I know it is possible to get to a point where you know God wants to use you for something. You might not know what but you know He wants to use you or He is using you. You no longer question if you are good enough for Him to use. You still might not understand it, as we don’t see ourselves through God’s eyes. We usually see ourselves through the lens of this world and that is not always kind. However, you start to see fruit in your life and you know God is using you. This is when this verse can get tricky, or at least it did for me. When you are convinced that God can’t or won’t use you, you don’t worry about this verse because you don’t think you will ever have that type of faith so the verse isn’t relevant to you.
What about when you do believe God is using you? What about when you do feel you have the faith of a mustard seed? What about when you feel you believe God is healing in this world and even believe He can use you to do it? When you believe all of that and then you read this passage you can get discouraged. Yes, I believe God can heal through me, but do I believe I can cast a mountain into the sea, not really. I don’t think this verse is about mountains though. I think God is just letting us know that faith is powerful and whatever we say, if we do not doubt in our heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you receive it, and you will.”
I think many of us struggle with this verse because we do have faith. Many of us have seen miracles, and if we have’t seen our own miracles, we believe the ones we read about in scriptures or we hear about on line or on TV. We know God can do miracles. We believe, and yet we don’t always get what we ask for. We feel there is not doubt in our heat and yet the healing we desperately wanted for our loved one did not come to pass. What do we do now? How do we reconcile with this verse as we know all that is written in the Bible is truth and yet this verse says if we believe with no doubt in our heart it will come to pass? This is where the enemy can come in and start whispering half truths again. See, God doesn’t really do the things you want Him to do. See, you aren’t good enough for God to heal your loved one. See, you don’t have the faith you thought you had. Why couldn’t you just have more faith? It is your fault this person died. The enemy loves to make us feel bad.
Have you ever had these thoughts? Have you ever wondered about this verse? Have you ever brought this verse to God and asked Him what it means? The last line in this verse says, “Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you receive it, and you will.” I get stuck on this one a lot. I take this one to God a lot. I had a friend, a prayer group member, and her name was Iris. Iris was young, kind, so full of life. I joined prayer group in 2018 and Iris got throat cancer in 2020. At this point I had been reading all the healing books I could for a year or two now. I had seen some success when I had prayed over people for healing. I truly believed that God would heal Iris. I believed that God would use me to heal her completely and that she would be back to prayer group in no time. In August of that same year, Iris went home to be with the Lord.
I was so confused and honestly, angry. I asked God why He didn’t heal her. I asked why He tells us that whatever we pray for in faith we will get and then He took my friend. I blamed myself. Have you done that before? Have you prayed for a healing or for a loved one to get better and then when they didn’t you blamed yourself for not having enough faith. I think this happens more often than we would like to admit. I also think sometimes other people may make us feel this way. Well, Jesus said if you have faith it will happen so maybe you just didn’t have enough faith. Honestly, I really struggle with understanding this passage and other ones like it.
I truly believe God can do anything, I know He can. There is no doubt in my heart. But then even as I say that the Holy Spirit brings up some pretty severe illnesses and I don’t doubt that God can do it, but sometimes I guess I doubt that He will do it. For instance chronic illnesses like Chrons disease. I know God can heal it, I honestly do. However, it is hard for me to picture Him doing it, if that makes sense. I feel I did not have any doubt that Iris would be healed and so I was confused when she passed away. I wondered if it was my fault. If she died because I didn’t have enough faith. If I could have saved her if I just had more faith. I know I am not alone with going down this line of thinking. Although I don’t have any answers and I still struggle to understand verses like this at times, God gave me two pieces of insight during my prayer time that were very helpful.
First, He did actually answer my prayers because Iris is healed now. There is no sickness in heaven. Iris is no longer suffering. She can eat food, swallow, and can talk again. I am sure she is up there singing with the angels right now. Second, God told me I can not manufacture trust. Trust is a gift and it is a fruit of the Holy Spirit. I can’t will myself to have no doubt in my heart. God gives us faith. There are things that build our faith, such as reading the Bible, learning about God and all He has done, and hearing about miracles that others have seen as well. If our loved ones, or anyone we pray over is not healed God does not want us to blame ourselves. God is the one responsible for healing people and He is also the one responsible for making our prayers fruitful. God has a plan and it is our job to following His promptings. It is our job to pray over someone if we feel called to do so. It is our job to step out in faith and say the prayer and then leave the outcome of the prayer to God.
Hopefully you understand this verse a bit better. As I said at the beginning of the episode, I am learning right along side you and have struggled with this verse. My prayer is that I did not leave you with more questions than answers and that if you do have questions you seek the answers. God is a mystery and we will not understand everything about Him while we are here on Earth. And yet, we can seek to learn as much as we can. If you only take one thing away from this episode I pray it is the reassurance that you are not responsible for the outcome of your healing prayers. You couldn’t have saved your loved ones by conjuring up more faith on your own. Faith is a gift from God.
Dear Heavenly Father I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask that you impart your wisdom about this verse on us. Help us to understand what this verse means. Help us to fight off the enemy when he is trying to tell us our loved one death is our fault. Help us to ignore His lies and replace them with the truth. Fill our hearts and minds with the truth Lord. Fill our hearts and minds with your love, your peace, your grace. We love you Lord, you are amazing! We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you hear again on Monday. Remember Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Fall Into The Hand Of The Lord
2 Samuel 24:14 “Then David said to Gad, “I am in great distress; let us fall into the hand of the Lord, for his mercy is great; but let me not fall into the hand of man.”
I had a friend that was feeling very stressed out and unsettled yesterday. She put on worship music and was instantly settled. Then the Lord directed her to this passage and where it says, “Let us fall into the hand of the Lord, she saw settle into the hand of the Lord and she remembered that she can always settle into God’s hand and He will be there for her. She realized she was rushing around to get everything done. She had so much to do she didn’t have any time for anything else. She didn’t have time to stop and pray because she needed to get everything done. She said she was not making time for the one things she needed to make time for. Once she stopped and just took a few minutes to listen to a praise and worship song and then let go of the tears and started talking to God, she felt so much better. She had left a voice message about how she was feeling and then after she listened to the praise song and talked to God you could tell in her voice she was doing so much better. Praise God! Why do we all forget to turn to God when we are stressed? Why do we make time for everything else and not for God? Why don’t we realize that He is exactly who we need to spend time with when we feel unsettled? Sometimes it can be as easy as sitting down and listening to one praise song, or opening the Bible and reading one verse. Next time you are unsettled and feeling anxious I pray you remember to “fall into the hand of the Lord."
Let’s take a look at this verse and see what it is saying. David is saying he is in great distress. In order to know why he is in great distress we need to look at the verse around this one. Just before this verse David had taken a census of the people in Israel. This angered God because people only had a right to count the things that belonged to them, but Israel did not belong to David, they belonged to God. It was as if David was taking claim over them. David knew he messed up and so he was in great distressed. It seems like David should be used of this as he messed up a lot. He loved the Lord and yet he often did things that were not good. He spent a lot of time repenting.
Right before the verse above we have 2 Samuel 24:10-13 “But David’s heart smote him after he had numbered the people. And David said to the Lord, “I have sinned greatly in what I have done. But now, O Lord, I pray thee, take away the iniquity of thy servant; for I have done very foolishly.” And when David arose in the morning, the word of the Lord came to the prophet Gad, David’s seer, saying, “Go and say to David, ‘Thus says the Lord, Three things I offer[f] you; choose one of them, that I may do it to you.’” So Gad came to David and told him, and said to him, “Shall three years of famine come to you in your land? Or will you flee three months before your foes while they pursue you? Or shall there be three days’ pestilence in your land? Now consider, and decide what answer I shall return to him who sent me.”
Even though David did mess up a lot he was very good at repenting. He was very close with the Lord and he knew he didn’t want to be apart from Him. He knew no matter what He did God would forgive him if he repented. This is something I wish we all knew. I think so many people who feel helpless and feel like they can’t go on in life need to know that there is nothing they could do that God wouldn’t forgive. There is never a point where they are unredeemable. As long as they are still alive there is never a point where it is too late. They could at any point repent and God is right there waiting to welcome them back in, welcome you back in.
David knew he did something wrong and so he asked the Lord to take away his iniquity. God spoke to Gad, a prophet, and gave him three choices to give to David. If David wanted to atone for his sins, he needed to pick one of the three choices God gave to Gad. Those choices again were, “Shall three years of famine come to you in your land? Or will you flee three months before your foes while they pursue you? Or shall there be three days’ pestilence in your land?” The verse above says, “let us fall into the hand of the Lord, for his mercy is great; but let me not fall into the hand of man.” In this verse David is talking about how he would rather have the famine come to his land, or the three days of pestilence in his land because God is in control of these. He would be relying on God and His mercy. However, if he chose to flee from his human enemies for three months he would be falling into the hands of men and the are not very merciful.
David knew God, he knew his heart. David spent a lot of time with God and was very close to Him. God loved David very much. He blessed him often. David knew that if he fell into God’s hands God would judge him appropriately. Not too much, but just the right amount. David knew he needed to pay for his sins and he trusted that whatever God did would be just. He knew, even when he had disobeyed and potentially angered God, that He could still turn to him and ask for help, ask for forgiveness. I wonder if we know that? Do we know we can ask God for forgiveness, even for things that seem unforgivable?
I wonder if giving David three choices was a test for him to see if he was going to choose God and his mercy or if he was going to turn to the world again. How many times have we turned to the world instead of God when we feel we have done something wrong, or even just when we have a problem? How many times do we seek guidance from the world instead of from God? How many times do we seek forgiveness from the world when God is the one we need forgiveness from? How many times do we seek solutions from the world instead of from God?
David knew he messed up and needed to repent. We all know when we mess up and need to repent. When we repent God is waiting there with open arms, ready to welcome us back in. I feel God really wants to get that point across to us today. He knows we keep turning away and that is ok as long as we keep turning back to Him. And as we grow closer to the Lord, we will start turning away from Him less and less. God is merciful and He is there for us, He is waiting for us to set things right, just as David did. And when we do He will have mercy on us just as He did with David. God loves you very much too!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to repent and to trust that you are merciful. Lord help us remember to turn to you when we are rushing around and feel like we don’t have enough time to do all we need to do. Help us to realize if we take the time to pause and connect back to you, everything will run smoother and we will actually get more done. Lord, why do we always forget that you are our source of peace and comfort? Help us to remember this every time we forget. Lord, help us to understand that even though we turn away, when we turn back to you and repent that you are waiting there for us with open arms. Help us to see there is nothing we can do that is too great for you forgive. You are awesome Lord and you are so merciful. We are so grateful for how patient you are with us. We keep turning away and you keep calling up back to you anyway. We love you Lord! We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed day!
If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click here. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed day!
Today I want to witness to you about a call I had with a friend. As I have told you before my class this quarter is on physical healing, which is really cool. Last Monday we learned this five step prayer model that we can use when we are praying over people for physical healing. The model has five steps to it, and each step might have a few components to it. It gives us a guide line to follow so we don’t feel we are all on our own. Although they made sure to state not to worry if we miss a step. If you pray over someone for healing and then they are walking away and you realize you forgot to do one of the steps, you don’t have to call them back over to do that step. Last week I talked about my classmate we prayed over in class to practice this model that we had just learned.
This week our homework for this class was to pray over a loved one or close friend. I do have loved ones that could use praying over, however, I did not feel like they would be comfortable with me praying over them. My father in law has been sick with a cold or bronchitis for over a month now. I did not think he would feel comfortable with me praying over him. My husband also has hip pain, but again, I did not think he would feel super comfortable with me praying over him. I was thinking about who I would pray over when a friend of mine posted on facebook that she really needed some prayers because she was having really hard time right now. I instantly felt like she was who I was supposed to pray over. I sent her a facebook message stating what I was learning about in class and that I would love to pray for her for a physical healing. She said she would love that.
We set up a time when we could do a Facebook call, I think we did later that night or the next night. I called her and we walked through the prayer model. I explained that I would be reading from a paper because I still hadn’t memorized the steps yet, and although I might not look like I know what I am doing, God is the one doing the healing and He knows what He is doing, so we should be all set. The first part is to figure out what is going on with whoever we are praying over. My friend has had chronic migraines for 31 years and has also, in the last year started taking care of her dad. She has had to do all sorts of paperwork and things that she did not know how to do and never thought she would be doing. She also took in her father’s dog to live with her because when he broke his ankle and was in the hospital he couldn’t have the dog with him.
My friend has been experiencing a lot of anxiety lately with all she has to do. I explained that next quarter is on inner healing and we will learn to pray over things like anxiety but this quarter is on physical healing. I explained that I could pray peace over her for the anxiety, but that most of the praying would be for the physical healing of the headaches if that was ok. She agreed and said if she didn't have the headaches, then that would be a big help with the anxiety also. She said she has a headache every single day and in one day she could have up to five different types of headaches. Medicine does not help the headaches either.
After praying over her for peace and then also praying command prayers for headache to leave and the pain to go away, she said the intensity was less. She said she also felt a peace come over her. She said she still had the headache but she said she could feel a little change. I asked if she wanted me to pray over her again, and she said yes. This time I prayed a little differently. There are three different types of ways to pray in the model we learned. There is a prayer of petition, where a request is made to God to heal, asking as a son or daughter with authority! Power based on intimacy with the Father. “Fervent prayer of a righteous man is powerful” (James 5). For instance you might say, “Father in the name of Jesus, I ask you to let your presence come and bring healing to (fill in the name of who you are praying over). Next is Prayer of command where an authoritative act of faith addressed to a body part, a sickness or evil spirit. (Matthew 10:1) For instance, “In the name of Jesus I command the bones, ligaments, muscles and tendons, be healed.” For a sickness you might say, “In the name of Jesus I command this tumor to dissolve and disappear.” For a spirit you might say, "In the name of Jesus, I command the spirit of affliction to leave now in Jesus name.” The third way to pray is a Prophetic Act: An action done in the physical realm of what you’re seeing in the spiritual realm that releases God’s power to heal. For instance, you can ask, “Father what are you doing? Or “How do you want to release healing right now?”
Since I prayed over my friend with prayers of command the first time, I decided to try prayers of petition the next time. I asked God to heal her headaches, I asked him to heal her anxiety and just fill her with a sense of peace. I asked for his presence to be known and that he surround her with love. I am not sure of everything I said, but she said she felt more of a sense of peace and her headache was even better, but was still there. She could feel it but the intensity was gone. I asked if she wanted me to keep going and to continue to pray for a full healing. She said yes.
Next I prayed with a prophetic act. I asked God how he wanted to release healing right now and I felt as though he said with love. I felt like He wanted me to let my friend know how much he loved her and how much she meant to Him. He wanted her to know that He is there with her and that she is stronger than she thinks. He wanted her to know He is proud of her for all she is doing to take care of her dad. He wanted her to know that He will never leave her side and that He hears her prayers. I cannot remember all He wanted her to know but whatever I heard I told it to her.
A big part of our prayer model is checking in frequently to see if anything is going on with the person. Do they feel anything? Often times people may feel heat, tingling, cool, or peace. This can be normal but is not necessary for a healing. She was feeling peace. She said she still did have a headache but she felt this presence all around her. She said she felt surrounded by it. I asked if she wanted me to keep praying for the headache to go away and he said that although she was intrigued to what might happen if I kept praying, she also really wanted to sit with that feeling of this presence all around her. I told her that was a great idea and that I would be happy to pray over her for healing any other time she wanted me to. I let her go to sit with the feeling of being surrounded by the Holy Spirit, Jesus, and or God. Before going I prayed that God would continue to heal her as she sat with Him and also all through the night. I prayed for a complete healing of the migraines. I heard back from my friend a few days later saying despite her bad anxiety she has hardly noticed her headaches, Praise God!! He is so good. Now Lord, we just ask you to take away her anxiety too!
I hope that by me witnessing to you about the healings I am seeing you will see that God wants to heal all of His children and He wants to use regular people, like you and me. I know when I said that you told yourself He doesn’t want to use you, but He does. Each and every one of us has the authority to command pain to go away. We have the authority to command sickness and spirits to go away. Jesus gave us the authority and the Holy Spirit. The same exact Holy Spirit that Jesus used to do miracles is living inside of you, just waiting for you to discover the amazing power that can be used through you if you let it. You may pray over someone for a healing and they don’t get healed. This doesn’t mean you can’t do it, it just means keep trying. You won’t get a basket ball in the hood the first time you try either. Maybe God just wants to see if you will be faithful and keep showing up and trying even when it doesn’t work.
I have prayed over people for years now. Honestly probably about four or five years I have stopped to pray over people who need physical healings. Many times I saw no results. Did I feel discouraged, absolutely! Did I stop doing it, no! I kept on trying, even though I felt discouraged because I had read books about people who are doing amazing healings now, restoring sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, people are getting up out of wheel chairs and walking. All of these people had long periods where they prayed over people and they weren’t healed. Then one day, they started seeing more and more that were healed. Still not everyone they pray over is healed. It is God that does the healing and He is a mystery. But if you keep showing up and trying He will work through you.
I going to keep sharing my stories so you can see that amazing things can happen for you too when you are faithful in asking God to use you. I don’t believe I was born with a special healing gift. I believe God is using me to heal others because I have asked him every day for years now and because I am willing to step out and faith and ask people to pray over them even though I know they might not get healed. If you want God to use you, just ask Him. It might not be for healing, but whatever it is for, just keep asking. God loves when we are persistent. If you have been asking and haven’t seen an answer, maybe He is just waiting to see how badly you want it. Step out in faith as if He has answered you and see what happens. Keep stepping out with the faith that because you asked, He will answer. And then share your stories with us so we can cheer you on along the way!
Love in Truth and Action
1 John 3:18 "Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.”
When I went to the BibleGateway website I use to look up the Bible verses this morning this was the verse of the day. I loved it, especially since I just talked about how Jesus is love yesterday. I think this one little verse says so much. Even though there aren’t very many words it says something so powerful and yet something I don’t think a lot of people realize. I think a lot of people try to love in word or speech. There are many people that say I love you and yet they don’t really know what that means. They say I love you with their words and yet their actions say I can’t be bothered with you.
For instance a person that tells their spouse that they have to work late at the office tonight and then they says, “I love you.” Meanwhile they are going out to have an affair with someone else. A parent who calls to say good night to their child over the phone because they have to work late and then says, “I love you,” but heads out to the bar, or to go gambling instead of going home. I knew a dad who always promised his kids he would come to their games to watch them play football or soccer, but never made it because he was too caught up with his race cars. This is not love. Words are not love. You can say, “I love you,” all you want and yet if truth and actions don’t back it up, they won’t feel it.
I am not sure if everyone listening has heard of the Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman, but I am going to quickly recap because it can be life changing. Gary Chapman was a counselor and I think maybe a preacher too, but I am not positive. He started to notice that all the couples that were coming to him for marriage counseling were complaining about things that could all pretty much fit into five different categories. What he realized is that we all feel loved in a certain way and we all give love in a certain way. We usually give love in the same way we receive love. The problem with this is that your kids and your spouse might not receive love in the same way that you are giving it.
Gary Chapman came up with five different ways people give and receive love. One is Quality time, this means you or your loved one feels most loved when you take time out of your day to spend quality time with them. The second one is Receiving gifts, this means that your loved one feels most love when you are giving them a gift. This one is not so much about getting a gift, it is about the fact that you knew enough about them to get them something you knew they liked and also that you were thinking about them. The third one is Physical Touch. This doesn’t have to be romantic. For a kid it could be a high five, or a pat on the back/head. For a spouse it could just be a hug or an arm on the back as you pass by. The fourth one is Words of Affirmation. This means your loved one feels most loved when you are telling them you appreciate them and complimenting them on what they are doing that is good and right. The fifth one is Acts of Service. Acts of Service means your loved one feels most loved when you are doing something for them. When you wash their car, or do the dishes. It doesn’t matter what you are doing as long as you are doing it to help them out.
Take a minute to think about which one of these you might me. You can take a quick quiz at https://5lovelanguages.com/quizzes/love-language. I will have a link in the show notes. The reason it is important to know your love language is because that is probably how you are showing love to others. Gary Chapman could notice right away when a couple came into his office what love language each person spoke and why they were having troubles. For instance, once couple came in complaining because the wife said her husband was always out hunting or hanging out with the guys and the husband didn’t understand what the wife was complaining about because he always washed her car, took care of all the laundry and the cleaning up before he left. Can you see it too? Her love language was quality time and she didn’t feel loved because he wasn’t spending time with her. His love language was acts of service and so he thought he was loving her well because he was doing a bunch of stuff around the house for her.
They both loved each other very much, they were just speaking the wrong language. Gary Chapman talks about how if you are speaking the wrong love language you might be trying to show your loved one all the love in the world, but they don’t understand it as love. He said it is like you are speaking a foreign language to them. How many of your loved ones would understand what you were saying if you were speaking a different language to them? It is important to know your love language and your loved ones language because then you can show them you love them in a way they can really feel it. I had my husband and my children each take the test so that I would know how to love them best. Yes, I did have to bribe my kids to take the test, but they still took it and now I know.
Another reason to know your loved ones love language is because if you do the opposite of their love language it hurts them a lot more than other things. For instance, one of my sons love language is words of affirmation. That is how he truly feels loved, when we comment all he is doing that is right. This means when we use negative words, or comment on what he is doing wrong, it hits him harder than the other kids. He takes it more personally and almost as a betrayal since that is his love language. I am sure I am not explaining it as good as the book does. I highly recommend the book. I bet you could even get it out at your local library. The books has several suggestions at the end of each chapter about how you can love your loved one in their love language. Actually I think I am going to make a much more concerted effort during this Lenten season to love my loved ones with their love languages.
Whether you find out your loved ones love language or not, I urge you to realize that your loved ones either feel love or don’t feel love based on our actions, not on our words. Are you actions telling them that you love them? Are you making time for them, are you doing the things you said you would do? The verse also talks about truth and we didn’t really touch on that yet. Telling the truth is so important. Our kids know when we are not telling the truth, so do our spouses. We need to be open and honest with our loved ones. When we lie, even if we have the best intentions we break the trust of those we love. Sometimes we can’t get that trust back. Think very carefully before you speak and remember that the truth will set you free. I will end with the verse as it is so good and says it so perfectly. "Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to know how to love our loved ones better. Help us to show them love in a way they can really feel it. Help us to love with truth and action instead of words or speech. Lord, please put on our hearts any ways in which we could love people better. How can we love you better Lord? You are so amazing and you show us love every single day. How can we show you love? How can we show you are gratitude for all you do for us? We love you Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to bringing you another witness tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
The Fragrance of Christ
2 Corinthians 2:14 “But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads in every place the fragrance that comes from knowing him.”
I really liked the imagery of this verse. The first part says, “But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession.” Can’t you just picture Jesus walking in front of us leading us in a procession? I can picture us all lined up behind Jesus, we are wearing our very best outfits, with super comfy shoes on, and we are marching behind Jesus. Our heads are held high and our shoulders are back. We have such confidence when we are following behind him because we have won, the war is over, God is the victor and we get to bask in that glory.
What is crazy to me is that God did already win the war. I know most days it doesn’t seem like it because there is still a battle going on between good and evil. We seem to still be fighting the enemy for our soul. However, it is not really a war because in a war we don’t know who will win. And actually there aren’t really any winners in wars as there is so much devastation on both sides. However, in the battle of good and evil, God already won our souls when he gave His only Son to die on the cross for our sins. In that moment, God defeated evil for good. When Jesus died on that cross He took our sins with Him and that means he cleared the way for us to go to heaven.
When I say Jesus cleared the way I mean that when He died He took our sins with Him. He was sinless and yet carried our sins to the cross to free us from sin. However, that doesn’t mean we are free to do whatever we want here on earth and then get a free pass to heaven. God still expects us to follow his laws while we are here on earth. This may seem like an impossible task, especially given the world that we are living in. However, Jesus didn’t just take our sins with Him to the cross and then leave us alone here on earth. When Jesus went to sit at the right hand of the Father, He sent us the Holy Spirit to help us here on Earth. He did not leave us alone.
The devil is still trying to get our souls, however, they belong to God. The devil can not get our souls unless we let him. God has defeated evil and the Holy Spirit is within us to help us follow God’s ways and give us the strength to withstand the temptings of the devil. The devil’s temptings can be strong, and as we have talked about before he is a very good liar. He can convince us of many things if we let him. However, they Holy Spirit is much stronger than the enemy. If we invite the Holy Spirit into our life, into any moment that the enemy is trying to tempt us, we will be victorious. We will be marching behind Jesus in that triumphal procession. We don’t have to fear the battle between good and evil because we know God has already won. All we need to do is to keep inviting the Holy Spirit to come into our every day life and help us fight the daily battle to do what is right.
The second part of the verse says, “Through us spreads in every place the fragrance that comes from knowing him.” I love this idea of spreading the fragrance that comes from knowing him. What I pictured when I first heard this was being in a room after someone who was wearing a strong perfume or cologne had walked away. You know how you can still smell their fragrance for a bit after they walk away? That is how I hope people feel after they talk with me about Christ. Wouldn’t it be awesome if we just exuded this aroma of Christ so strongly that after we walked away people were still smelling it?
I have talked a lot over the last year and a half about how we are being called to be the face of Christ. When people see us, they should see a reflection of Christ looking back at them. This is what we should all aspire too. We can ask the Holy Spirit to help us with this. We can ask the Holy Spirit to transform our hearts and minds. Wouldn’t it be nice if after each interaction we have with other people, we leave them with a greater knowledge of Christ? This verse seems to be a slightly different way of looking at it. Maybe we don’t have to leave everyone with a greater knowledge of Christ, maybe we could just leave them with a greater sense of Christ.
Sometimes we think we need to preach to everyone we meet. We want everyone to know about Jesus and we feel it is our job to tell them. If this is you, it is awesome that you are that on fire to share Christ with everyone and this can be the right approach in some situations. However, not everyone is there yet. Not everyone is ready to hear all about Jesus. I do believe everyone is ready and looking for kindness, for love and acceptance. What if we left every person we met with a greater sense of love and acceptance? I think this is what the verse above is talking about. We would be leaving them with the fragrance that comes from knowing Him.
To know Jesus is to know love. True love, not human love. To know Jesus is to know an unconditional love that has no boundaries. Jesus accepted everyone. He did not turn anyone away. What if this was our philosophy? What if we entered every situation with the determination to love and accept everyone we meet? How different would our interactions be? How different would our lives be? How different would the world be if everyone accepted and loved everyone. I am not saying we need to accept all they are doing. Jesus sat and ate with tax collectors and sinners. He loved them and accepted them and yet he did not condone their behaviors. He filled them with love and then told them to go and sin no more.
There may be people you know who are you feel are making bad choices. You may know people who are acting in a way that is contrary to our beliefs at a Christian. You may feel like it is your job to correct them. I have found there is no-one better to change the hearts and minds of people than the Holy Spirit. He is equipped in ways we are not. He can bring our sins to us in a loving and non judgmental way. When God points out our sins, we never feel guilty or bad about them. Shame never enters in when the Holy Spirit is bringing our sins to our mind. We just get this sense that we want to change them. When we point out the sins of others, it almost always sounds judgmental and condemning.
I get that you feel it is your job to save your loved ones. The best way to do this is to pray for them, ask the Holy Spirit and all the saints and angels to intercede for you as well. Then, fill your loved ones with love and acceptance. Make them feel welcome in your home. Make them feel loved because I assure you the world is not loving them. Accepting them in your home does not mean you are condoning the thing you don’t agree with. Jesus accepted people as they were and yet did not condone their sins. Shower love on people, there is not enough of it in this world. Love is free, it has been given freely to you from God and He is asking you to give it freely. Do not make people earn your love, do not make people pay for your love with this condition or that. For instance, as a parent sometimes we give the impression we will love you if you get this grade, if you have this haircut, if you play this sport. Love your children, old or young freely with no conditions. If we do this, I believe we will be fulfilling this verse. If we leave people feeling more loved and accepted after we talk with them, then we will be leaving the fragrance of knowing Jesus with them because Jesus is love!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord we want to leave people with your fragrance. We want to leave an impression of you on each person we meet. Help us do this Lord. Please help us to know what that means for each one of us. Transform our hearts and minds so we can be more and more Christ like with each passing day. Help us to love others Lord. Not just love others but shower them with love. Help us to accept others too Lord. Help us to leave each person we interact with filled with a sense of you. We love you Lord, you are the almighty one and the most powerful one. We adore you, we bless you and we glorify you! We are so grateful for all you do for us and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus Holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed day!
Our Thoughts Become Who We Are
John 8:44-47 "You are from your father the devil, and you choose to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me. Which of you convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? Whoever is from God hears the words of God. The reason you do not hear them is that you are not from God.”
In this Bible verse Jesus is talking to the Jews that are persecuting Him and wanting to kill Him. He is telling them that they are from the devil and they are working for the devil. He tells them the are choosing to do the devil’s desires. I really like how Jesus is describing the devil in these verses. It leaves not room for interpretation. The devil is and always has been a murdered. He is also a liar, actually the father of lies. He speaks according to his own nature.
That line reminds me of a quote that I absolutely love because I think it is so true. Loa Tzu said, "Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your habits; they become character.” I wish everyone new this quote and took it to heart. I wish everyone knew how important their thoughts and their words are. I struggle to get my husband and kids to know how important their words and thoughts are. When they say things that are unkind and I say something the say things like, “I am not saying it to them, I am just telling you.” They tell me they know they can’t say those things in school or around other people.
What they don’t understand is that their words become their actions. The thing is we don’t ever realize it. I just heard about this study that was done where these researchers went into several classrooms and gave the kids a pretest. Then they met with the teacher to discuss the results. They told the teacher that most of the kids in the class did very well. However, there were these few kids that scored off the charts. They were truly gifted. They didn’t want the teachers to change anything about the way they were teaching and they said they would come at the end of the year to retest the children. At the end of the year the teacher said she did not act any differently than she did before the pretest. The researchers had lied to the teacher. Everyone in the class scored the pretty much the same on the pretest. However, on the post test the students who supposedly scored off the charts the first time, scored much better.
Without knowing she was doing it, the teacher had expected more from these students throughout the year. She treated them differently than she had because she knew they could do more. She didn’t consciously change her actions, but her thoughts that they were so gifted, changed the way she talked to them and that changed her behavior towards them. Do you see how important your thoughts are? If you think someone is annoying, that will change how you talk to that person, which will change how you act around that person. Which will start to change your character.
Your thoughts are not just important for how you think, they control how you feel too. Your thoughts are the filter through which all your emotions go through. For instance, if you think your son is just being lazy when they say no to helping you will feel and react very differently than if you realize they are really tired because they worked a 12 hour shift every day for the last 10 days. If you tell yourself that a homeless person is lazy and just doesn’t want to work you will think and act differently than you would if you knew their actual story, whatever that may be. Most of this is subconscious. We don’t think we are acting differently, just as those teachers didn’t notice any change in their behavior.
The reason I am talking our thoughts when I am talking about the verse above is because one of Satan’s chief tricks in mental warfare. He gets in our thoughts and plays havoc on our thoughts. Actually I recently learned that Satan can’t read our thoughts. He doesn’t know what we are thinking, but he can give us thoughts. He can whisper things in our ears and we can take on those thoughts as our own. The thing is, he is the father of lies. The things he is telling us are not the truth. Just like the verse above. Imagine what the enemy was telling the Jews about Jesus. He was probably whispering half truths into their ears and they were buying all of it. That is one of the biggest problems with Satan, he is such a good liar. He wraps his ugly little lies around a kernel of truth so it implants doubt in our minds. Once doubt enters our mind it's easier to fall for his line of thinking.
I don’t want to keep talking about the enemy as God is so much more powerful. I just wanted to demonstrate how important it is that we watch our words and our thoughts. When we say unkind things, the enemy hears them and then thinks we are open to those types of words/behaviors and so he starts to feed us those types of thoughts. We need to resist the enemies thoughts. We need to protect our mind from him. I have talked about Ephesians 6:13-18 before so I will not explain it again, but I will read it to you because it is a great way to protect against the enemy.
Ephesians 6:13-18 says, “Therefore take up the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to withstand on that evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand therefore, and fasten the belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness. As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace. With all of these, take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. Pray in the Spirit at all times in every prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert and always persevere in supplication for all the saints.” If you want to hear the explanation of this verse you can look back to episode #108 Armor of God. I think that is a great verse to meditate on and see how you can apply that verse to your every day life.
Putting on the armor of God daily can be a great way to defend against the enemy. Another way can be praise and worship. The enemy is not going to be able to get into your mind when your mind is focused on praising the Lord. Another way to fight the enemy is to live a life of forgiveness. Unforgiveness can block healings, it can block grace, it can block a lot of things. It makes Satan so happy when we hold on to old hurts. He knows how damaging that can be for our souls. You don’t have to forgive people on your own, we can’t. You just have to ask God to come in and help you forgive. You just have to take that first step and be willing to say, “God, I don’t want to forgive this person, but I know you want me to. Please help me Lord. I want you to come in and help me forgive this person.”
An important thing to remember about forgiveness is that you are doing it for you, not for them. Also, when you forgive, you are not saying what they did is ok. When you forgive you are saying, this thing happened, it was not ok, and yet I can’t change that it happened so I am deciding I will no longer let it have a hold over me. I will no longer let it take up space in my brain. I will not longer spend valuable time thinking about it. I heard this analogy a long time about unforgiveness and I think it explains it well. Holding on to unforgiveness is like drinking a little bit of poison every day and then expecting the other person to die. I know you feel that person doesn’t deserve your forgiveness and they probably don’t. But you deserve to forgive them because you deserve to not have that weigh on you anymore. Forgiveness truly is not about them, it is about you and your peace, your freedom, your soul. God is going to forgive us in the same way we forgive others. Think about that thing you are not forgiving. Is holding on to that more important than having God forgive your sins?
The enemy corrupted the thoughts of those who wanted Jesus dead. Do not let the enemy corrupt your thought. Refuse him entry. When you start to have negative thoughts, thoughts that clearly did not come from God, notice them and change your thoughts. Just stop that train of thinking, interrupt it, and change it to something more positive. For instance if you are thinking something negative about someone you know, stop and try to come up with one positive thing instead. Remember, "Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your habits; they become character.” Think about your thoughts, words and actions over the last few days. Would you be happy if your character was based on those thoughts, words and actions?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this podcast today. Lord, we ask you to protect our thoughts and our minds. We ask you to show us where we might have thoughts that aren’t of you shaping our character. We ask you to help us change those thoughts Lord. You said whoever is of God can hear the truth of God. We want to hear the truth to God. We want to be of God. Help us Lord, show us, put on our hearts any ways in which our thought, words, actions or character are not of God. Lord, you are so forgiving and merciful. Help us to be forgiving and merciful Lord. I get the sense that someone listening is holding on to unforgiveness Lord, and they may not even know it. I pray you put that on their heart and that you give them the strength to hand over that unforgiveness to you. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will an in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to Walk Boldly With Jesus. I look forward to meeting you back here on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed weekend.
God’s Timing
Mark 8:22-26 “They came to Bethsaida. Some people brought a blind man to him and begged him to touch him. He took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village; and when he had put saliva on his eyes and laid his hands on him, he asked him, “Can you see anything?” And the man looked up and said, “I can see people, but they look like trees, walking.” Then Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again; and he looked intently and his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. Then he sent him away to his home, saying, “Do not even go into the village.”
I remember hearing someone explain this verse. I can’t remember who explained it, but they were pointing out things that I wouldn’t have thought of and yet make so much sense. They pointed out that Jesus took the blind many by the hand and let him out of the village. One reason He might have done this is to get him away from the crowds. Not because Jesus didn’t like crowds but because crowds were probably over whelming for the blind man. He couldn’t see anything but he could hear everyone around him and with the number of people that followed Jesus, that could have been sensory overload. Jesus takes him out of this environment and off to where they can be alone.
Next, Jesus doesn’t command the eyes to see as he has done in the past. He doesn’t just immediately heal the man’s eyes. First he put some saliva the eyes and then laid his hands on him. I wonder what that guys was thinking? I mean, he is standing there with Jesus, asking for a healing, and Jesus puts spit in his eye. If he had heard the stories of all these miraculous healings, where Jesus just tells a paralytic to get up and walk and he does, then he probably thought this was strange. Why did Jesus put saliva on the man’s eyes? What was the purpose?
Next Jesus did something else that was different, he asked the man if he could see anything after Jesus laid His hands on the blind man. It seems like usually Jesus was the one telling the person that they were healed and yet in this case Jesus asked the man if he was healed. The man replied he could see people, but they look like trees, walking. Jesus laid his hands on the blind man again and he looked intently and his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. Why did Jesus heal this man in stages?
One article I read talks about how this man may not have had as much faith as his friends did. The verse said ,“some people brought a blind man to him and begged him to touch him.” The blind man wasn’t doing the begging, the friends were. It seems like this man had just enough faith to let his friends bring him to see Jesus. In Mark 10:47 we will see Jesus heal another man and that man was doing all the begging himself. He knew Jesus could heal him and he wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity. The blind man here in this passage is not really saying anything. He is more just letting things unfold as they will. The blind man did have some faith. He had enough faith to let Jesus lead him out of town and spit in his eye. The author of the article I read thinks this is why Jesus healed this particular man in stages. He was trying to build his faith along the way.
The article goes on to mention that the gradual restoration of sight of the blind man was meant to symbolize the slowness of the Twelve in attaining spiritual insight. Their eyes were opened very slowly, similar to this man with his sight. Jesus is saying, “You started of completely spiritually blind. Then your eyes were gradually opened to understanding me and God’s kingdom. Over time you will see and understand clearly. I know things are spiritually fuzzy for you right now, but all will be made clear.” Wow, I hadn’t though of that before.
How many of us feel spiritually fuzzy? I love that phrase. I think we all feel that way, at least in some areas. We might think we have a pretty good idea of some things and then others are a complete mystery. That is normal. If Jesus is telling the 12 disciples that their eyes will be opened gradually, and they got to be around Jesus 24 hours a day 7 days a week then I think it is understandable that our eyes would be opened gradually as well. The more we seek to understand the Lord, the more He will reveal to us. We must go out and do the seeking though. We must be the ones to engage first. We must be the one search for the answers. God says, when we ask He will answer, when we seek we will find, when we knock the door will be opened. Have you been seeking lately? Have you been knocking lately? Have you been asking lately?
I wonder if this delay in the thing you would like is so that God can build your faith gradually? I wonder if the delay in the things I want is because God is still building my faith so that when I get the thing I want I am ready for it, I can appreciate it? I feel that is exactly what God has been telling me lately. I seem to want to run ahead of God. When I was at my Encounter Class and the leaders were praying over me, one of the shared the vision she got with me. She said it was as if I was running down this street just looking for people to heal and God was saying, “Slow down, wait for me!” I keep hearing God tell me that He knows my dreams, he knows my desires and He is preparing me for them. I am not ready yet, but when I am he will give them to me.
Is it the same for you? Are you still growing, are you still learning? Are there things you have to learn or believe before your deepest desires can come true? Maybe you are not stuck, maybe you are gradually gaining all you need. I know waiting on God’s timing can be tough, believe me I know. I know sometimes we just want to run when God wants us to walk. I get it. Also, God’s timing is better than ours. We find that hard to believe sometimes because we feel we have timed things our pretty perfectly. However, God sees all the little things we don’t see and if it hasn’t happened yet, there is a reason for it. Nothing is arbitrary with God. Every single thing that happens is known to God long before it is known to us! He has a plan, ask Him for it, seek it out, knock on the door and it will be opened. God restored this man’s sight, he didn’t leave him partially healed, he fully healed him. He won’t leave your hopes and dreams partially fulfilled either. The plans God has for you are greater than you could even dream. Let Him lead you there just as He led this blind man out of the city and changed his life forever!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to the podcast today. Lord, we want to see clearly spiritually. We want to seek and to knock and to ask, please help us do this. Lord, help us have the patience to wait on your timing, we know it is the best timing, we just get impatient at times. Help our belief grow in you and in your ability to make all of our dreams come true. Open our eyes Lord. We are so grateful for all you do for us. You are truly amazing and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you hear again tomorrow. We got some snow here last night. If you have snow where you are I hope you are all having fun and staying safely off the roads. Remember Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Email me to share your witness. Catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or (click here)
This week I want to witness about the awesome stuff we are learning in my class and also how I see the Lord working in other areas of my life. This quarter in my class we are focusing on physical healing. This week we learned the 5 step prayer model and then we were asked to practice it. The teacher asked if there was anyone in the class that had mobility issues. There were seven people who said yes. They went to the outside of the church and then the rest of us split up into groups of 3-5 and we went to practice the prayer model and pray over them for healing. The person we were praying over had pain in her knees. She also got pain in her back if she stood for too long. We began praying for her and after a bit she was in pain from standing, so we all sat down. After the first time we prayed over her she said that she felt more peace and that she felt warmth flow down her back when one of the other students put her hand on her back. Since there are three ways to pray over someone in this model they wanted us to try all three, so we prayed at least three times over her. Each time she said she felt something different happening inside of her. At one point she said when we prayed for healing in her back the pain moved from one place in her back to another place in her back.
We were told that if the pain moves around, for instance you have pain in your head and then after prayer that pain goes away but show up immediately elsewhere, then it may be a spirit of affliction. She remembered this and noticed that her pain moved in her back so we commanded the spirit of affliction to leave immediately. When we were done going through the different prayer models she had no pain anywhere in her body. She wasn’t sure if the problem where she gets pain if she stands too long was gone, but she said she would let us know when we see her in class next week. Praise God, for the pain being gone!
I can also see God working my prayer group. We have more and more people that are either coming in person or coming online and it is beautiful to see. Last week we had at least 12 online and we had 7 in person. Also there are four other ladies from my prayer group that attend the Encounter Ministries class with me and we have started talking about the different ways we can pray over the prayer group members for healing. We used to have a “prayer room” after the meetings where those who wanted prayer could stay and have 2 of our members lay hands on them and pray for whatever they needed. However, with Covid we stopped that and have yet to start it back up again. We also talked about making house calls and just stopping by for 20 min or so to pray over people. I can see God’s hands all over this. I have been writing in my dream journal almost daily for several years now that I am part of a healing ministry and now it looks like God is starting to make that a reality for me. I am so grateful!
I have also been wanting to be a speaker for a number of years now. I joined Toastmasters in 2020 to help improve my speaking skills. Toastmaster is a worldwide organization that trains people how to become better at giving speeches. They have training programs for all different types of speeches. The clubs usually meet every other week, although that can vary. One of my clubs meets each week on a Sunday afternoon. The meeting are usually an hour to an hour an a half long. They can all vary a bit but the usually consist of three parts.
First, there is a prepared speeches part where 1-3 members give a speech on whatever they want to talk about. There education program, called Pathways, gives them projects to work on that tells them the type of speech to do, but they get to pick the topic. While they are giving their speech there is someone taking notes and evaluating their speech. The second part is called Table Topics. This is where one person will have a list of questions and they will ask each person one question. The person is supposed to take 1-2 minutes to answer the question. This teaches us how to talk off the cuff on something we didn’t know we would be talking about. It is good preparation for networking events where you have no idea what people might ask you. It is also good preparation for talk around the dinner table or any other small talk situations where you don’t know the questions ahead of time. It helps you think on your feet. The third part of the meeting is formal evaluations. This is where the person taking notes on your speech tells you all the reasons they liked your speech. They explain all the things you did right and what really worked. Then they tell you one or two areas or ways you can improve your speech. This is super valuable because you can’t improve and get better if you don’t know what is not working.
Along with writing in my dream journal that I am part of a healing ministry I have also been writing that I am a speaker and I speak on stages all over the world. I have participated in the speech competitions for Toastmasters for the last two years. I have also been teaching at my prayer group for the last four years or so. Although that is not speaking on a stage, it has given me the opportunity to practice getting up in front of people and talking about God, my favorite subject. I also have this podcast, which is not getting up and speaking in front of people all over the world, but it is getting the message of God’s love to people in other parts of the world. There are people living in the United Kingdom, Spain, Singapore, Germany, Canada, Australia, Philippines, Rwanda and Brazil that have heard my podcast. Isn’t it amazing how God answers are prayers in ways we never would have thought of on our own. I know He is going to answer my prayer of speaking on stages all over the world. However, my boys are still in school, they need me home, not traveling all over the world and yet God was still able to help me achieve my dream of spreading his love all over the world through the podcast. God is so good!!
During the quarter at Encounter Ministries where we were learning about words of prophecy I was giving a prophecy that God had big plans for me and that they would happen soon, in the first half of this year. Yesterday I got a call from the organizer of the retreat that I am going to in April. I had volunteered to be a speaker at it back in September if they needed one but they had already filled the speaker roles. Yesterday she called back and said someone had to back out at the last minute and they would love it if I could fill that slot. She said I would be the first speaker the attendees would here. I would be the one to open the retreat. I am so excited and so grateful to God for the way He is working in my life and the way He is fulfilling all my dreams. God is so good! If you have dreams and you are waiting on God to help you fulfill them keep praying and also, take steps towards those dreams. I didn’t just write these things in my dream journal, I stepped out and read all the books on healing that I could. I said yes, when I felt like I should pray over someone, I took this encounter class. I also took steps towards my speaking career by signing up for toastmasters and said yes when asked if I would be one of the leaders at my prayer group.
Don’t just sit there and wait for God to do all the work. Yes, He will answer our prayers and I believe He will fulfill the deepest desires of our hearts, and also, I think He wants to see how much we want it. How important is it to us? Are we willing to work for it? Are we willing to step out in faith? Are we willing to say yes, even when we might be scared or unsure? Are we willing to give God our Fiat, our Yes? What is it that you really want? What is it that you are waiting on God to do for you? Can you take one step towards that today? It doesn’t have to be a big step. Maybe today that one step is just to think about what it is you want and then to write it down. Maybe you write it down every day? This gets your mind thinking about it more and your subconscious starts to figure out how to make it happen. Also, have you asked God for it? Have you invited Him into the dream with you? Do you talk with Him about them? God loves to be invited into our dreams, our hopes, our wishes, even our day to day activities. He wants to be a part of all of it and things go so much smoother when He is with us! I can’t wait to hear about how God is working in you hopes and dreams!
A New Lenten Journey
1 John 4:19 “We love because he first loved us.”
Some other versions added the word “him” or “God” to this verse as well. We love Him because He loved us first. I chose this verse this morning because I wanted to talk to you about Lent. Lent can be a time when we sacrifice as a way to show God our love for Him. Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday and we will begin the Lenten season. I remember when I started looking at lent in a different light. When I was growing it up it was always “What are you giving up for lent?” Most people I knew gave up chocolate, candy, or sweets. And that is not a bad thing, as that is a real sacrifice from many people. As I got older, I started to understand that Lent was so much more than just giving up chocolate. I remember people talking about how lent is a season of conversion. It is a time to acknowledge the ways we have turned away from God and to find ways that we can turn our hearts and minds back towards God.
I remember I watched a YouTube video of Father Mike talking about how we prepare for Lent. (Click Here for video) He talks about how sometimes we give up things that we don’t even like. For instance, he knows someone who gave up watermelon in the winter in Minnesota. He talked about how we can sometimes do a twofer. Where we have been wanting to lose weight, so we decide to give up snacking for Lent. This is not a bad thing, it's just if that you might be missing the point. What is the point of Lent? This is a season of purification and enlightenment. The purification part is when we ask ourselves, what is still in our lives that we can’t have in our lives if we want to follow Jesus. The second thing, enlightenment, we ask ourselves, what are the ways in which I need to follow after Jesus and start confirming my life to His? Do you see how giving up M & M’s might not get us closer to these two things?
Father Mike mentioned that Jesus often talks about Prayer, Fasting & Almsgiving. He suggests we pick one thing in each of these categories and do that thing, but do it really intentionally. What is one way you can grow closer to Jesus through prayer this lenten season? What about listening to the Gospel for 15 minutes a day, or reading it and just sitting with it for 15 minutes? This is a way you could grow closer to the Lord. Spend a few minutes asking God what He is calling you to for prayer this lenten season. The next is fasting. The church is only requiring us to fast Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. What do you want to fast from during lent? Your fast doesn’t have to have anything to do with food. It could be a social media fast, checking your phone all the time, TV, or something else that you can get out of your life to help purify your life. Ask the Lord to help you decide. The third thing is Almsgiving. This doesn’t have to be money. It could be giving of your time. Father Mike had this great idea of writing a note of encouragement to one person each day during Lent. I did this one year and the people that received them were very appreciative. Make the list in advance and then take a few minutes each day to send out that note. It doesn’t have to be a card in the mail, it could be a nice email or a FaceBook message or a text message. One important thing Father Mike said also was that it doesn’t have to be intense. It doesn’t have to be super hard. We already talked about how the purpose of Lent is to grow closer to God, not to torture ourselves.
I also heard two other ideas for lent that I wanted to share with you. The first one I heard on the Big Life Devotional podcast (episode #540 “Making Space for Jesus”). (Click Here for podcast) Pamela Crim talked about 40 bags for the 40 days of Lent. The idea for this is that we make more room in our lives for what God has planned for us by getting rid of our “stuff” that is cluttering up our lives and our houses. Each day you go through some part of your house and find something to give away or throw away. It does not have to be a whole bag; it could just be one item. It could be things you don’t use anymore, but it could also be something you do like and use, but someone you know has mentioned that they also really like it. God does not want us to be attached to our material possessions. He tells us in Matthew 6:19-21 (ESV) “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” This would be one way of showing God that you are making space in your life and your home for all he has to offer.
The second new idea for lent that I read about on Aleteia.org in an article title “How my Lent of love has created my love of Lent,” by Maria Garabis Davis. (Click Here for article)In this article, she talks about how she realized that Lent was not so much about what you are sacrificing as it is about who your are sacrificing for. Giving up your favorite sweet is never easy, but think about how much easier it would be if you were giving it up with the intention of healing your friend’s illness. She talks about how the notion of the connection between sacrifice and loving others is something that is portrayed over and over again by the saints. So, at the beginning of lent she makes a list of 40 names and assigns them each one day of lent. Each day she prays for that person and offers up whatever sacrifices she can for that person. I just love both these ideas and so I wanted to pass them along in case you were looking for something different to do this Lenten journey. Whatever it is you decide to do, I hope this Lent brings you closer to God and deepens your relationship with Him.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask you to show up how you want us to spend this Lenten Season. Reveal to us what we need to give up that is getting in the way of us living the life you want us to live. What do we need to give up to help purify us Lord? What is one thing we can add to our day for the next 40 days that will help us grow closer to you? Lord, we just ask that you put on our hearts what you would like us to do. We want to partner with you during this lenten season. We love you Lord and you are amazing. We hope to take this time to give you back a little of the love you give us. We are so grateful for you! We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I hope these next 40 days are a blessing for each one on you and that you are able to use this time to grow closer to God. I look forward to bringing you another witness tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
God’s Power in Varying Degrees
Deuteronomy 32:2 “Let my teaching fall like rain and my words descend like dew, like showers on new grass, like abundant rain on tender plants.”
I received a book from my mother in law for Christmas called “Pray a Word of the Day.” Each day it had a word and a scripture verse that uses that word. Then it has a brief little devotional or story about that word. Today’s word was fall, and the scripture verse was the one I am talking about today. The devotional talked about these four friends that took a walk to the local park. Then the rain rolled in and by the time they got back to the house they were drenched. The next few lines really stood out to me. It said, “Every corner of the neighborhood was saturated. Droopy hydrangeas perked up. The lavender glistened. The thirsty lawns were revived.”
What came to my mind when I read this was that something one considers bad, might be good for another. For instance, I am sure the people who had to run home in the rain, probably weren’t praising God for the rain. I know when I was on my last road trip, I was not praising God for the rain, especially if it was my turn to drive. Yet, I am sure the flowers and the lawns were very thankful for the rain. I thought the topic of this podcast would be how some things we complain about other people would be praising God for. However, when I read this verse, I kept getting stuck on the line, my words descend like dew. I didn’t really understand what that meant and yet I thought that was ok because I didn’t have to really understand to talk about what I though I was going to talk about. Then I stopped and remembered the reason I started this podcast. I started this podcast so we could all understand scripture better. I think that happens when we can relate scripture to our own lives and make it more personal. We don’t start to understand scripture better when we skip over the lines we don’t understand.
When I first read this verse and then that thought above came to me I figured that was what the Holy Spirit wanted me to talk about. But, then I couldn’t get that question out of my head, “what does my words descend like dew mean?” And maybe you didn’t get stuck on that. Maybe you already know what this verse is saying. I am going to review what I learned anyway because I am willing to bet you will learn something you didn’t know or hear it in a different way at least.
The first part says, “Let my teaching fall like rain and my words descend like dew.” For some reason I didn’t understand that this was talking about God’s teachings and God’s words. When I read an article (click here for article) about this verse it talked about how God blesses us in various ways and in various degrees. Sometimes His teachings fall on us like rain. Have you seen grass after it has rained? It is so green and full of life. The ground just soaks up the rain. We can do this with the Lord’s teachings as well. When God is raining down his teaching on us we can soak it all in and we can use it to live our life more fully. God’s teachings can make our life more abundant.
When it talks about His words descending like dew what is coming to me is that His words are always there, just like the dew. The dew is there each morning, and God’s words are always there as well. Also the dew covers everything and so do God’s word’s. They can cover us, they can cover everything we are going through and everything we have ever gone through. The article I read also talked about how amazing Jesus’ words were when He walked the Earth. People were amazed at the words He spoke. In John 7 some soldiers were sent to capture Jesus and yet they returned without Him and their only reply was, “Never has anyone spoken like this!” Jesus’ words were powerful and He spoke of things no one else had talked about before. Not everything He said was easy to hear and yet mosts people took it in and accepted it as truth.
The verse ends with, “like showers on new grass, like abundant rain on tender plants.” The article I read says this part shows us that God blesses the new babe just as much as those who have been faithful for years. It also talks about how god’s blessing come in various degrees sometimes. Sometimes it is a light mist of blessings, some times it is showers of rain and other times it is abundant rain. God gives us blessings based on what we need at the time we are asking for them.
One thing I liked that the article pointed out is that there is one substance we are talking about. That is water. Whether we are talking about falling like rain, descending like dew, showers, or abundant rain, it is all water. The water in this verse is talking about God’s power. God’s power comes out in His teachings and in His words. God’s power comes down like showers at times and like abundant rain at times. The article also said that in the whole book of Deuteronomy Moses is recounting the Lord’s blessings in a song. However, this particular chapter Deuteronomy 32 is the climax or highpoint of the entire song. I did not know this before so I thought at was an interesting point. I love learning new facts about the Bible!
I really liked how the devotional ended. It was a great way to relate the Bible verse to our lives. Here is what Susanna, the writer for today’s devotional, wrote: “Like my parched neighborhood, I need God’s Spirit to fall on me, drenching me with refreshment and hope. His truth rains down guidance and blessing. Encouragement and wisdom are found when His words fall, refreshing my thirsty spirit.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode. Lord, let your words of wisdom and hope fall on our thirsty souls and revive our spirits. Lord, we love you and we thank you for all the blessings you have given us. Whether it is a light rain or a downpour of your blessings Lord, we will take them all. We know you know what we need and you always give us what we need. We are grateful that your ways are higher than our ways and you know better than we do. You do not always give us what we want, but you do always give us what we need. You are the best! Thank you for raining down blessings when we are thirsty or when we are in a drought. Lord you are so amazing and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I would like to ask each of you to consider doing a witness for Witness Wednesday. I know it may sound intimidating, and you may feel like your life is boring and you have nothing to share. I assure you it is not. We have all seen God working in our lives. If you don’t want to do it for yourself, do it for the person who’s faith will grow just by hearing it. Please give it some thought. If you would like to give one but aren’t really sure how, or what you would say, email me Catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or (click here) and I can give you some questions to get you started. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Are You Doing It Too?
Romans 1:29-32 "They were filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice. Full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, craftiness, they are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, rebellious toward parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. They know God’s decree, that those who practice such things deserve to die—yet they not only do them but even applaud others who practice them.”
This was a tough verse for me to read this morning. The whole section, called the guilt of humankind, was talking about people forgetting about God and not giving God the proper respect. Honestly, I was sort of skimming the chapter and thinking in my head that God was not talking about me in this section. He was talking about all those Godless people who don’t care about God, don’t like God, maybe don’t know God. I was nodding my head and thinking yes, those people He is talking about are awful, or at least their behaviors are awful. Good thing He is not talking about me. Then I came to the end verses above and they really stood out to me.
The verses above list over 20 different ways to go against God’s decree. It is easy to look at some of them and know that they are not describing us. You might look at the verse and say, I am not wicked, I am not evil or full of malice. I am not full of murder. I do not invent evil, I am not heartless or ruthless. I think we can all look at the list above and agree that there are several things listed that do not describe us, and that is great. However, I wonder if any of us can look at that list and say that none of them describe us? We might read through the list and at first glance think we are exempt from all of them. I would never do any of those things. Is this true though, if we are being completely honest? I am going to go through a few that I know I have done, so you can see how we might be doing these things in our every day life.
The first two that stick out to me kind of go hand in hand, covetousness and full of envy. I would like to say I don’t do these things. I am happy with what I have and I don’t need what other people have. Then I look at Facebook and I see the awesome vacation that someone took and envy starts to creep its way in. I look at Instagram and I see the new house, the new job, the new baby someone just had and envy and covetousness starts to creep in. Honestly for me I see these creep in even in my Encounter Ministry class. I see people being slain in the Spirit or exhibiting physical manifestations of the Holy Spirit and envy starts to creep in. Why did they get to be slain in the Spirit? Are they holier than I am? Why are they manifesting the Holy Spirit like that, do they have more of the Holy Spirit than I do? I see some students using gifts of the Holy Spirit that I don’t have and covetousness creeps in.
I don’t always realize it in the moment, it’s only when I reflect back on it. I know when I have thoughts like these it is the enemy coming in and whispering them into my ears. I reject the thoughts and I replace it with the truth. I don’t sit in the envy and the covetousness. I recognize it, dismiss it and move on. However, it is there even if only briefly. How about you? Do you see places in your life where envy and covetousness, which is a strong desire to have something, are creeping in? Do you wonder why you feel crappy after you spend time on social media? Are you secretly wanting everything that everyone else has? Maybe you don’t even realize it, maybe all you know is that if you spend too long on social media you feel less grateful for what you do have and you have this unsettled feeling but you aren’t sure why. Next time you feel that way stop and ask yourself if you are feeling envy or covetousness? Remind yourself of all the blessings that you have received from God. Remind yourself that although other people may seem like they have a perfect life on social media, we don’t know what is really going on behind the scenes.
The next things that stood out to me was the part that says, “They are gossipers, slanderers.” I wish I could say these did not apply to me. I actually do try very hard not to be a gossiper or a slander, however, I find myself in situations where I am partaking in both. For instance, if I have a bad experience with someone at a store, I will then tell my friends or family. I will talk bad about that person instead of just forgiving and moving on. I will talk bad about drivers on the road. I would say I am not slandering people all over town and ruining their reputation and yet God still put it on my heart that whenever we are talking bad about people it is not good. Why is it we will run into several good people throughout the day and yet the only ones we talk about are the ones that weren’t good? Why not tell people about that woman who held the door for you, or the man behind you in line that gave you that extra penny you needed? Why not be on the look out for ways that people are doing good in the world instead of focusing on the ones that aren’t?
Gossiping, this is really harmful and I don’t think we realize how much. We might think we are just joking around, or just letting off some steam, but gossip can cause division in even the closest groups of friends. I don’t know if it is gossiping or slander when we are commenting on the annoying this others are doing but I know its not good. For instance, often times after we do a YouTube workout video we will comment on what the instructor did that we didn’t like, or her outfit, voice, etc. This is not good. At least she got out there and did it. At least she was brave enough to put her video online to help us get into shape. We might think it is not a big deal, it’s not like she will ever know what we are saying and we are right, she probably won’t. The problem with this is that it is training our brain to notice what we don’t like instead of what we do like. What about if after each video we commented on what was good instead of what we didn’t like?
Gossip can also run rampant in families. One sibling talks to another sibling who then talks to another sibling and soon there are things being said that aren’t accurate. Just because we are related to people doesn’t mean we have the right to talk about them when they are not around. Just because you may not agree with how your sibling is parenting does not mean you have a right to talk about them badly or gossip about them other siblings. Just because you don’t like something your parents did doesn’t mean you get to gossip about them to your other siblings. Talking about something and gossiping are different and you can tell you are gossiping if you are saying something that you wouldn’t want to get back to them. If you would be upset, or if they would be upset if they heard what you were saying, then it is gossip and you shouldn’t be saying it.
The line that stood out the most and is actually the reason I chose these verses today is, “They know God’s decree, that those who practice such things deserve to die—yet they not only do them but even applaud others who practice them.” Wow, that is hard to hear, those who practice such things deserve to die. That is a pretty strong statement. I think often times, we can minimize what we are doing, even if we know it is wrong. We sort of rack and stack our sins. Yes, I know I am doing this one sin but it isn’t as bad as some of the other things other people are doing so I think I am ok. In the verse above, there is no distinction. It doesn’t say if you are only doing one or two of these things it is ok, but more than that and you deserve to dies. It doesn’t say that, it combines them all into one long list of things we shouldn’t do.
If the Bible is telling us it is not ok to do it and that those who do, deserve to die, then why do we think it is ok? Why do we let ourselves off the hook so easily? Why do we normalize the things God tells us not to do? Why do we think it is perfectly acceptable to do certain things just because, “everyone is doing them?” Gossiping is rampant in this country. It is hard to find people to be around that don’t just want to sit and gossip about other people. Could me break this cycle? Could we refuse to take part in any gossiping? We could either walk away when people start gossiping or change the story. Maybe say positive things about the person, or change the topic. Would you be more motivated to change your behaviors if you realized the if we partake in these things we deserve death? I feel like that is the motivation I needed to hear to try a little harder. If we know it is wrong, why do we keep doing it?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to see what behaviors we are doing that go against your decree. Put on our hearts all the things we are doing that are not ok in your eyes. Sometimes we are not doing it on purpose, sometimes we are not even aware of what we are doing. Please reveal it to us Lord, please show us how we can change, how we can worship you and honor you in a better way Lord. We love you so much and we don’t want to do anything that will hurt you or sadden you. We are so grateful for you and all you do for us. We are grateful for all the patience you have for us as we learn to live this one life you have given us. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again on Monday. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed weekend!
You Are Known
Psalm 139:1-4 "O Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away. You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, you know it completely.”
I read a post on Facebook yesterday that pointed me to Psalm 139. It was about different verse in the psalm, but when I read the whole thing I realized it was a really good one. They all probably are great. I have heard if you are going to start reading the Bible for the first time you should start with the Gospels, or with the Psalms. That must mean they are pretty good. These verses stood out to me in particular because they talk about how well God knows us. Being Known is one of the six stages of Attachment developed by psychologist Gordon Neufeld. His model presents six stages of attachment that create the foundations for virtually every relationship your children will ever have. Since we are God’s children, This is important to us as well. I will list the six stages and then will focus on Being Known. The stages are Proximity, Sameness, Belonging or Loyalty, Significance, Love & Being Known.
Reading through those I think this verse may touch on more than one of them. However, let’s begin with Being Known and go from there. Every single one of us longs to be known. This is why we get upset when our loved ones get us a gift we don’t like. It is not necessarily the gift that upsets us, it is the fact that they didn’t know us well enough to know we wouldn’t like it. God isn’t like that. God is omniscient, which means he has infinite awareness, understanding, and insight. Another definition is that He possesses universal or complete knowledge. God knows everything about you. He can read your thoughts, he knows your actions and He also knows your heart behind your actions. God knows why you did all the things you did.
This can be scary for some people because they feel they don’t want God to know everything about them. They feel they are not worthy of being known. Some people might worry that God knows all they have done because they have done some things they are not proud of. This is all of us actually. I am sure there is not a single person who has gone through their whole life without doing some things they are not proud of. We all say the wrong thing sometimes. We all do the wrong thing sometimes. We all hurt people intentionally or unintentionally. The thing to remember is that God is not surprised by our behavior. He has searched us and He knows us. This means He knows all of us. He doesn’t just look at the things we did that we wish we hadn’t done. He looks at everything we have done. He knows our motives behind all we have done. He looks straight into our heart.
This is a good thing because He sees what we can’t see. He knows that when we acted out and yelled that we hated our parents, we didn’t really hate them. He knows that when we yelled at our spouse or our friend it was really because we were hurting inside, or because we had an awful day at work and needed a safe space to let off steam. He knows that when we yelled at our children when we caught them doing drugs or something else dangerous it was because we were really scared. He knows that when we were unkind to the person in line it was because of all the stress and pressure at work. God Knows Everything! He gets it. He understands that our actions aren’t who we are. He knows that, but do we know that? Do we give ourselves the grace of examining our behavior after the fact? Do we allow ourselves forgiveness when we factor in our motives? I am not saying the things I listed above are good reasons to do those things. I don’t think we should take our frustrations out on our spouse, friends, or kids. I am not excusing the behaviors, I am explaining them though. If your friend was super stressed at work and then you called and asked a question and they yelled at you, would you be angry with them? Would you want to stop being friends with that person? Would you realize that was out of character and try to find out what was wrong with your friend? We tend to have so much grace for other people and yet not very much for ourselves. I would love it if we could change that. I would love it if we could all start to see ourselves a little more through the Lord’s eyes.
The next line says, “You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, you know it completely.” God knows all your ways. He knows that you are grumpy before coffee in the morning. He knows you don’t like change. He knows you don’t like to stay up late. He knows you are irritable if you get hungry. He also knows you are a great mom, dad, friend. He knows you are a great employee, He knows you are a great spouse or partner. He knows the good, the bad and the ugly and you know what, He still loves you. He loves you not despite all of it, but because of all of it.
The verse says He knows our words even before we say them. I wish sometimes He would guard my mouth and prevent me from saying some of them. How about you? Have you ever wished you hadn’t say something? Have you ever just blurted something out that felt right in the moment and yet you instantly regretted it? I know I have. God knows our thoughts and He knows our words. Again, he knows the thoughts and feelings behind our words. He knows the feelings that we might not even know. Sometimes we may feel angry and yet we are just worried or anxious. God knows this. God knows our heart, even when we don’t.
We are known and loved by God. We are accepted and loved by God. God knows us better than anyone we have ever known and He loves us. I need everyone single one of you to hear that on an individual level today. You are known by God. God knows your inner most thoughts and desires. God knows the why behind your actions. God sees through all the BS that we put up to protect ourselves and He sees you, the real you. God loves you! He loves you right this very second, right as you are. He isn’t waiting for you to become something else, He isn’t waiting until to you do this or that, He isn’t waiting for you to be perfect. He knows you and loves you just as you are. He loves all you imperfections, He loves all the ways you spread His love and His light. Yes you do, you spread His love and His light just by being you! God loves you, all of you!!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today! Lord, I ask you to open everyone’s hearts and minds so they can really hear this message today. Help each and every listener hear how much you know them and how much you love them. Help them to feel it down to their core Lord. We ask you to guard our thoughts and our words. We pray that our thoughts conform to your thoughts. Lord you are so amazing. You know everything about us and you still love us. Help us to do the same. Help us to know ourselves and still love ourselves. Soften our hearts o Lord! We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with you will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus! I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed day!
We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click here. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed day!
Open Doors
I was talking with God this morning about what I should witness about today and I felt like He said open doors. He reminded me on the time leading up to our wedding. Tony was in the Air Force and he was assigned at Fairchild AFB near Spokane, WA. He was coming home a few days before the wedding and then we were going to drive cross country for our honeymoon. We were getting married at his parent’s church in Hartford and then our reception was going to be at a VFW not too far from there. Tony’s parents had bought land and built a house in Pomfret, CT, which is only 10 minutes or so from my parents house. I went to visit them often before the wedding. One night was I going over for dinner and they had very serious looks on their faces. I could tell something was wrong. They told me I should have a seat. I thought they were going to tell me something had happened to Tony. Luckily, Tony was fine. Instead they told me that the roof had blown off of the VFW during the last storm we had and it wouldn’t be repaired in time for our wedding. I believe this was the beginning of June and our wedding was July 1st. I had no idea what we were going to do. I called Tony to let him know and also because he is a great problem solver. He talked to his dad and between the two of them they had a new place picked out that night. His dad played cards at the Polish American Club in Newington and they didn't have anything planned for that day so they said we could use it. It was amazing how quickly God opened all of those doors. It turned out it was actually a much better place to have the reception because it had air conditioning and the other place did not. It was so hot that day that the cake frosting was melting on the way to decorate the reception hall and we got there around 8 A. M.
The next memory God brought to mind about opening doors was my Master’s Degree program. I had gotten my bachelor’s degree in psychology because in CT you couldn’t get a degree in education, you had to get a different degree and then be accepted into the education program there. That would have been an extra year of schooling and I didn’t get accepted. Which again was a blessing because Tony and I would have been separated that whole year since he was already in Washington at his new job. It is amazing how God works in all these little details. Sometimes we feel awful or we feel sad or angry that something didn’t work out and then we find out later the reason it didn’t work out and it all makes sense.
Since I didn’t get into the education program while getting my undergraduate degree I started to look at Master’s Degree programs near where we lived. I found a program in Special Education that was a one year accelerated program. That meant you went to school five quarters, summer, fall, winter, spring, summer and then you got your Master’s Degree of Education in Special Education. This program only accepted 10 students at a time as it was a couple that ran the program and they couldn’t oversea too many people’s thesis’. It’s funny again, looking back how God is in the details. This was a one year accelerated program, but what we didn’t know at the time, but God did, was that Tony was going to get orders to move in the spring and that if it had been a traditional 2 year program I wouldn’t have been able to finish it, or I would have had to stay in WA for a year while my husband was in Turkey. Wow, I am just realizing how crazy it is that it worked out like that.
That timing isn’t even the thing about the program I was planning to witness about. It was just revealed to me as I was typing. Another extraordinary thing that happened with my program is that I got a call about a week before school was going to start. It was from one of the two advisors for this program. She said she noticed my undergraduate degree was in psychology and was wondering if I wanted to intern for her and her husband while I was in the program. She said it would just be 10-20 hours a week and it would be gather data for them and doing research reviews. For instance if they were doing a study the other girl and I would go to the library and research all the articles that pertained to the topic. We would look through them and give my advisors any that were good and talked about exactly what they needed. We also went to some schools and evaluated their direct interaction classes they had going on. She said if I wanted to do this, they would pay for my tuition and give me a weekly stipend. I was so surprised! She wanted to pay for me to get my Master’s Degree and then also pay me a paycheck each week. God is so good!
One last witness for today as to how much smarter God is than we are was how He helped me select a college. I knew I wanted to be a teacher and I knew Eastern Connecticut State University had a great education program. However, the boy I was dating in High School was going to Seton Hall University in New Jersey, so naturally I wanted to follow him to New Jersey. I applied to two schools in New Jersey and I got accepted to both of them. I even received a large financial aid package as my parents still have 4 kids living at home and one other one in college already. Even though I got a large financial aid package, the school was out of state so it would have been $20,000 a year, which today probably seems like nothing. I had received $14,000 in financial aid with pell grants and work study. This would mean I would need to pay $6,000. That might not seem like a lot, especially with how expensive schools are right now, but there was no way I or my parents could pay $6,000. My guidance counselor at school said I had received a $2,000 scholarship that would help with some of that $6,000. But still I didn’t have the $4,000. I was disappointed but then I got the financial aid packet from ECSU and I would not have to pay anything out of pocket, I would just need to take the standard subsidized loans each year. I was able to get my undergraduate degree with only having about ten to fifteen thousand total in student loans and as I mentioned above my Master’s degree was free. God is so good.
Another reason this is a witness to how God’s ways are higher than our ways is because my high school boyfriend and I broke up. We were together for four years so of course at that age you think you will get married. However, God knew what He had planned for me. My roommate at ECSU was in ROTC and they had bring a friend night. This is where i met Tony. If I had gone to school in New Jersey I might not have met him. Although with his parents moving close to my parents I am sure if I had messed up God’s plan and gone to New Jersey than He would have found another way for us to meet. He is that good. There is no messing up God’s plan, there is just delaying it.
Well, I really enjoyed walking down memory lane with you this morning. I keep thinking I will run out of things to witness about and God keeps showing me new ways that He was there and I didn’t realize it at the time. He is so good like that! God is in the details of your life too. There is a reason you didn’t get that job or that relationship didn’t work out. There is a reason your plan didn’t work out. God’s ways are higher than our ways. He knows so much more than we do and He can look into the future and help us make decisions today that set us up for a better tomorrow. My challenge to you today is to think back to a time where you were disappointed with how something turned out and then try and see if you can see why it happened. Does it make more sense now with the benefit of hindsight? I hope you all have an amazing week!
Jesus’ Boldness & Confidence
Luke 4:18-19 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
After Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, and the Holy Spirit came upon Him, He went into the wilderness for 40 days where he was tempted by the devil. This verse takes place just after His return from the wilderness. It says in Luke 4:16-21, “When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
When I heard this scripture last night what stood out to me was Jesus’ bravery or boldness and His confidence in who He was and what He had been sent to do. I say bravery or boldness because Jesus stood up in font of all those in the synagogue and said He was the fulfillment of that scripture. I would say that take some boldness or some bravery. I believe Nazareth would be considered a small town at the time. I am from a small town and standing up in front of people that have known you your whole life and declaring something this amazing would be difficult. When you grow up with people it is hard to see them differently than you remember them. It can be hard to picture them as this famous person, or this person that is exceptional at something if that is not who they were when they were growing up. Imagine standing up in front of everyone you graduated 8th grade with and telling them that you are the fulfillment of an old testament prophecy. That would not be easy for me.
I also admired Jesus’ confidence in who He was and what He was sent here to do. Jesus read the scroll that was handed to him and read what it said and announced that the prophecy had been fulfilled. He didn’t read it, go home and think about it for a few days, and then claim it. He stepped right into his destiny and I admire that. I believe it is rare to have someone so sure of His calling. I know, He is fully God, so of course He knows what God called Him to do, and yet He was also fully human. He had all the human emotions that we have, or at least most of them. Think about when Jesus was praying to God in the garden. He knew all the reasons He needed to die on that cross, He knew it was going to happen, and yet He asked His Father to not let it happen. He was fully human also. Even though He was fully human He didn’t seem to doubt His identity at all.
Doubting our identity as a child of God is pretty common. Often times, we believe in God, we love God and we know God is there for us. However, we don’t identify as a child of God. We wouldn’t necessarily call ourselves children of God because that seems reserved for someone closer to God, someone holier than we are. We don’t doubt God’s goodness or His ability to love, we doubt our worthiness of that love. We also doubt our calling. I think many of us know or at least have a pretty good feeling as to what God is calling us to and yet we question it because we don’t really feel equipped for it. For instance many years ago I got this desire in my heart to be involved in a healing ministry. I didn’t pay much attention to it because I “knew” that was for people far holier than I was. I counted myself out of something that God had placed on my heart. Have you ever done that? Have you ever had the desire to do something or the feeling that God was calling you to do something, and then proceeded to tell God all the reasons why you weren’t right for that calling? Yep, me too. Why do we do that? Why do we think we know better than God?
I wonder if Jesus ever felt like that? I wonder if He questioned God as He grew up? I wonder how old He was when God revealed the whole of the plan? I wonder if He had conversations with God the same as we do? I wonder if He questioned God like we do? I can just picture Jesus talking to His dad and saying things like, “Really, you want me to go there? I think it would make more sense if I went here and then there.” There is so much I wonder about Jesus and I can’t wait to ask Him all my questions when I get to meet Him one day. For now, I will just ponder.
This verse says that the Spirit of the Lord was upon Jesus because He was anointed to bring good news to the poor. He was sent to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” God did not send Jesus on His mission without first equipping Him with the Holy Spirit. When Jesus was baptized the Heavens opened up and they never closed again. Jesus was filled with the Holy Spirit and so He had the power to go forth and to complete His mission. The Holy Spirit was all that Jesus needed to do all that He was sent here to do.
I know many of you are questioning your purpose, or your mission. Many of you are questioning your call. You have a desire in your heart and you don’t know if it is from God. Or maybe you do feel it is from God but you also feel like He may have made a mistake because you can’t possibly do what He is calling you to do. All of this is normal. It is normal to wonder if your desires were put there by God. It is normal to feel you are not equipped for the call you are pretty sure God has given you. It is normal to question. The one thing I think is important to remember is that we were equipped at our baptism with the same Holy Spirit that Jesus was equipped with. This means we were anointed as well. I know you don’t feel equipped to do all you are being called to do, do it anyway. You will be pleasantly surprised that you actually do have all you need inside of you already. God does not make mistakes. If He called you to something it is because you are the perfect person for that thing. Trust Him and that He knows what He is doing. Jesus stepped forward confidently into His role and into His mission after He was filled with the Holy Spirit. I wonder if we can do the same? Can we trust God knows what He is doing and that since we were filled with the Holy Spirit at baptism we too are equipped and anointed?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, it is amazing the way you align our heart with your heart. Lord, help us to answer the call you have placed on our lives. Help us to trust you even if we don’t trust in ourselves. Help us to believe that we are filled with the Holy Spirit and that means we are ready for any challenge you give us. Lord, since today is St. Valentine’s Day, I ask that you be with all those who are broken hearted. Please wrap all those who need a little extra love in your arms today Lord. Help them to feel loved today and every day. You are so good to us and we are so grateful. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I hope you all have an amazing Valentine’s Day! I look forward to brining you a Witness tomorrow for Witness Wednesday. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed day.
God Shows No Partiality
Acts 10:34 “Then Peter began to speak to them: “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.”
I was at a Super Bowl party last night and I was talking with another woman who was there. I am not really into football so I was in the kitchen with the food most of the night. I am not sure if she is into football and was just being nice, but she visited with me for at least the first half of the game. We were talking and she mentioned that her favorite Bible story was about Cornelieus. I have to admit when she first said it I was not sure who she was talking about. Then when she mentioned Peter visiting him, I remembered the story. I will recap it for you briefly in case you, like me, do not remember that story.
In Caesarea there was a man named Cornelius, a centurion of the Italian Cohort, as it was called. He was a devout man who feared God with all his household; he gave alms generously to the people and prayed constantly to God. One afternoon at about three o’clock he had a vision in which he clearly saw an angel of God coming in and saying to him, “Cornelius.” He stared at him in terror and said, “What is it, Lord?” He answered, “Your prayers and your alms have ascended as a memorial before God. Now send men to Joppa for a certain Simon who is called Peter; he is lodging with Simon, a tanner, whose house is by the seaside.” When the angel who spoke to him had left, he called two of his slaves and a devout soldier from the ranks of those who served him, and after telling them everything, he sent them to Joppa.
About noon the next day, as they were on their journey and approaching the city, Peter went up on the roof to pray. He became hungry and wanted something to eat; and while it was being prepared, he fell into a trance. He saw the heaven opened and something like a large sheet coming down, being lowered to the ground by its four corners. In it were all kinds of four-footed creatures and reptiles and birds of the air. Then he heard a voice saying, “Get up, Peter; kill and eat.” But Peter said, “By no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is profane or unclean.” The voice said to him again, a second time, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” This happened three times, and the thing was suddenly taken up to heaven.”
Right after this dream Cornelius’ mean reached the gate and asked for Peter. Peter went with the down to meet Cornelius and asked why they sent for him. Cornelius explained about the Angel and that is when Peter said to them, “You yourselves know that it is unlawful for a Jew to associate with or to visit a Gentile; but God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean.” “Then Peter began to speak to them: “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.” Peter began to preach to Cornelius and all who were present that day and the Holy Spirit came down and fell upon all of them.
What my new friend loved most about this story is that the angel appeared to the Roman soldier and told him that God saw his deeds and they were good. A Roman soldier, did good deeds. The romans were not good to the Israelites, they were persecuting them. You would think God would want nothing to do with them and yet He sends and angel to tell Cornelius that his prayers are being heard. She said she grew up being taught that our actions can’t be good because we are nothing compared to God. Jesus is so pure and our actions can never be pure or clean compared to his. She loves this verse because if a Roman soldier can be told his actions are pleasing to the Lord, then surely our actions can be pleasing too.
I liked this verse above because Peter says, “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.” I love this because I think we all tend to forget this. We look at some people, or some groups of people and we count them out of God’s plan. We think because of this reason or that reason they can’t be saved, they can’t be God fearing individuals. Do you know what I mean? You might look at someone that is dressed in goth type clothes. They wear all black and they have their nose pierced and they wear a choke collar and we think they can’t possibly believe in God. But it says right here that God shows no partiality. He does not care what you are wearing or what you look like. He does not care what your job is or what country you come from.
What God cares about is if you are following HIs laws. Are you loving others and yourself? Are you putting Him above all else? When Jesus walked the Earth Gentiles and Jews did not associate. Jesus broke this mold and talked to anyone He wanted to. However, Peter needed that dream he had as well as witnessing the Holy Spirit descend on these Gentiles in order to understand that God did not care who you were or where you came from. He cares what is in your heart and if you love Him or not.
It saddens me to think we are 2,000 years later and we are still judging others and deciding who we think is able to worship God. I wonder when we will learn to accept that God is the only judge. We only see what is on the outside and God sees what is on the inside. We see how people act out in the world and God sees how they act all time. It reminds me of when Samuel went to anoint David as future king. Samuel was told to take the anointing oil and go to anoint one of Jesse’s sons as the next king. Samuel saw several of Jesse’s sons and they looked like King material. Each time the Lord told Samuel in 1 Samuel 16:7 “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”
Here we are 2,000 years later, actually we are well past 2,000 years if we are going way back to when Samuel lived and we are still looking at appearances instead of looking on the inside. We may have our ideas of who we think is capable of getting in to heaven and who isn’t but what we think doesn’t really matter. It is not up to us, we don’t get a say in it and that is awesome. It is awesome that God doesn’t rely on us to help Him decide who gets in and who doesn’t because we are flawed and many of us tend to see the worst in people. We have all of our history, all of our baggage, all that we have been through that clouds are judgement. We look at everyone through a filter that was created from all we have experienced over the years. God doesn’t have this filter. He can see with crystal clear vision into our hearts and instantly knows our true motives.
The next time we are tempted to judge someone we should remember that God is judging us in the same way we judge others. It would be great if we could all stop judging because it is the right thing to do. However, if you are not there yet, if you feel like your job is to judge others and you don’t want to stop just because it is the right thing to do, then maybe you can stop if you remember that God is judging you in that same way. When you come to your final day here are Earth and you head up to talk to God about your time here on earth do you want God to judge you on your appearance, your financial status, your job title, your skin color or any other characteristics that you are judging others for here on Earth? I doubt it. I doubt anyone wants that. Peter said, “I truly understand that God shows no partiality.” If God shows no partiality, then why do we?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to stop judging others. Help us to stop feeling like our actions aren’t good enough. Help us to understand that you are not partial to one race or another. You aren’t partial to one religion or another. You aren’t so rigid that whole groups of people are excluded from your kingdom. You view each one of us on an individual basis and we are so grateful for that. Help us do the same Lord. Help us see others through your eyes, not our own. Lord, you are amazing, you are so powerful and we are so grateful for all you do. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you would be willing to share a story or a testimony of how Jesus is working in your life please reach out and let me know. My email is catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or you can CLICK HERE. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed day!
We Were So Utterly, Unbearably Crushed
2 Corinthians 1:8-11 "We do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, of the affliction we experienced in Asia; for we were so utterly, unbearably crushed that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death so that we would rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. He who rescued us from so deadly a peril will continue to rescue us; on him we have set our hope that he will rescue us again, as you also join in helping us by your prayers, so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many."
What stood out to me in this verse was the part where it says, “We were so utterly, unbearably crushed that we despaired of life itself.” It just made me think of how so many people are feeling that right now. There are so many that are struggling and I would say many of them feel they are utterly and unbearably crushed by the weight of their problems, or the circumstances. I have also been asked to pray for a staggering number of teenagers that feel like they don’t want to live anymore. Life is really hard these days for so many people.
This verse talks about how God saved them from their despair. They felt like they had received the death sentence so they would rely on God instead of themselves. Have you ever been in a position when you had no other choice but to rely on God? Have things been so bad that you couldn’t see any way out? You had to surrender it to God because you had tried everything you could do on your own and you were still struggling. I think sometimes we need these type of circumstances so we can remember that we were aren’t in control and we never were. God has always been the one in control.
Trying to rely on ourselves is normal, we all do it. I remember when I was on a retreat once and I really felt like God told me that I was turning to everyone else but Him. I didn’t understand because I did ask God for help often. He revealed to me that although I do ask Him for help, I don’t sit and wait for an answer. When I wanted to know how to be a better mom, a better, wife, a better Catholic, I would turn to books. I have read so many books about parenting and relationships. I have read books on prayer and the lives of the Saints. I have done a lot of reading and I don’t think that is a bad thing. I think reading is really good. I think was God was telling me though is that I asked Him for help and the proceeded as if I didn’t need it. I was acting like I had to fix it all on my own.
Don’t get me wrong, God does want us to take action sometimes. I do not think He wanted me to sit back and do nothing. What I think He was calling me to, was time with Him. He wanted me to not only ask Him for help, but then to spend the time listening to Him and doing what He wanted me to do. If we ask God questions He will answer, it says so write in the Bible. It says in Matthew 7:7-8 “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.” If we ask God what we should do, He will answer us. However, we can’t hear that answer if we are not listening. I was not listening. I was using God more as a sounding board. I would talk at Him, or maybe to Him, I am not sure, but I wouldn’t talk with Him. It was not an exchange of information. When we talk to God, it is more fruitful if we do it with the expectation that He will talk back with us. It probably won’t be audible words, but He can make His point clear without words.
The next part of the verse says, “He who rescued us from so deadly a peril will continue to rescue us; on him we have set our hope that he will rescue us again.” This is a great reminder that God has rescued us in the past and He will do it again. God will continue to rescue us as we continue to go through the ups and downs of life. We need to set our hope in Him just as they did. We need to keep reminding ourselves that God will continue to rescue us. If we can’t think of a time in our past that God has rescued us we can look back to Scripture and see all the stories where God has rescued His people. When we see these stories they can build our faith as well. God is the same yesterday, today and forever. If He was rescuing people back in the Old Testament, and he rescued people in the New Testament, and He has been rescuing people all throughout History, then He will rescue us too. We can rest our hope in that truth.
The verse ends with, “as you also join in helping us by your prayers, so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many.” I like this ending because it tells us that blessings are granted through the prayers of many. It also shows that even the disciples asked others for prayers. My spiritual mentor was just saying the other day that we don’t realize the power of intercessory prayer. When we pray for someone, whether they asked us to or not, we are adding our prayers with their prayers. When a lot of people are all praying for the same thing, it is more powerful. This is why people ask us to pray. When we say we will pray for someone, we should take that seriously. If you can stop and pray with the right then, that is even better. If not, write it down so you do not forget to pray for the persons. The concept of intercessory prayer is mentioned 80 times in the Bible.
One of the greatest examples of intercession took place when Moses stood before God on behalf of Israel. In Exodus 32:10, God said, “Leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them [the Israelites] and that I may destroy them.” But Moses did not give up. And because God had a relationship with Moses, He allowed Moses to state the case on behalf of the people. In Exodus 32:14, we read that “the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened.” God listens to our prayers. Our prayers are important. Your prayers are important. Keep praying for people, we have no idea the importance of those prayers.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask you to rescue us from any circumstances that make us feel crushed. We ask you to be with everyone who feels they can’t live any longer. We ask you to send your angels to all those who feel they don’t want to go on with life. We ask you to protect them and not to let them take their lives. Lord, we pray in a special way for the kids in the world today. Life is so hard for them and depression and anxiety are on the rise. We ask you to help them to feel loved. We ask you to help the crave your love instead of the broken love of this world. Lord, we ask you to help us be great intercessors for those around us. Help us to take our job as a prayer warrior seriously. Lord, you are amazing. You do so much for us and we are so grateful. We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldy with Jesus. Can I ask you for a favor this Friday morning? If you have read my book, Total Trust In God’s Safe Embrace, could you please go to Amazon and leave a review? People really do read those. Also, if you have not done a review on the podcast, would you consider doing that also? And then the one last thing is would you share this podcast with one other person? Who do you know that could benefit from spending time with scripture each day? Thank you my friends I truly appreciate it! I look forward to seeing you here again on Monday. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a Blessed weekend!
The Laborers Are Few
Luke 10:1-2 “After this the Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go. He said to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”
We talked about this verse in class this week because our program is all about how to become activated in the gifts of the Holy Spirit so we can go out and be God’s light to others. It is about how we can learn to use the gifts to minister to others. There are so many people hurting in this world right now. If there was ever a time when the verse above was true, it is now. There is such a great need for people who are willing to talk about God and His love for others. There are plenty of people to spread hate around. There are plenty of people in the world to judge you and to make you feel bad about yourself. However, it seems there is a shortage of people who can love people for who they are, right where they are.
Jesus had an amazing way of doing just that. When I read the Gospels and I read all about Jesus’ life and His ministry I can’t help but want to be one of His laborers. Every where He went people just felt loved. That is not to say all He said was feel good stuff. He taught some pretty tough stuff. He taught things that no-one had said before and people weren’t sure if they liked. For instance, love your neighbor but also love your enemy? Pray for those who persecute you? These were not things that were easy to hear and yet once you heard Jesus speak, you were never the same again. Jesus left people feeling better than they did before His interaction with Him. I wonder if we can say the same? Wouldn’t this be a great goal for each and every one of us?
What if we all decided that our goal with every interaction was to leave the other person, or people feeling better than they did before your interaction? Imagine what the world would look like if everyone’s goal was to bring out the best in others. I am in a coaching program called Growth Day and this is the theme for the month, How to Bring Out the Best in Others. The coaches yesterday were saying that you will not have fulfillment in life if you are just worrying about yourself. God made us as social creatures. We need to be with community, we need to be giving to other people in order to feel fulfilled. We were made this way by design. God wanted us to rely on each other, He made woman as a companion for man. He did not want us to be alone.
Jesus was sending these seventy others out to prepare the way for Him. He sent them to every town and place where He himself intended to go. In Luke 10:9 Jesus told them to “ cure the sick who are there, and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.” Jesus is sending us out to prepare the way for Him as well. The world needs more Jesus in it. The world needs more love and less hate. The world needs more people who are willing to talk about God and Jesus. God needs more laborers in His vineyard. Will you be one of them? The verse in Luke says that Jesus told them to cure the sick and tell them the kingdom of God has come near to you. This might seem impossible for us. We might hear that and think there is no way we could cure the sick, that is not something that is happening in this day and age. Or we might know that healings are happening today and yet we are sure they are reserved for the super holy people like priests and nuns, or people that are extra close to God.
If this is what you are thinking you are not alone. Many people, probably most people feel this way. We can get on board with the fact that the disciples were healing people because Jesus gave them that power. Jesus specifically sent them out to do these things and He would not send them out without equipping them with this power. We can believe all of this without any problem. Where the problem comes in is when we are told that we have this same calling and we have this same power. When we hear this we do not believe it. We don’t see how that is possible. Who are we and why would we be important enough to help God in this amazing calling? What did we do that would make us special enough to heal the sick, cast out demons, or spread the good news of the Gospel? Those are good questions and yet I will answer with a question. What made the disciples so special? They were all of different walks of life, some were fishermen, or task collectors, there was a doctor, and a zealot. They were all just ordinary people who didn’t really bring any extraordinary gifts to the table. So, what makes them so special? Jesus, Jesus made them extraordinary and He can do the same for us.
In Mark 16:15-18 Jesus says, “Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation. The one who believes and is baptized will be saved; but the one who does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will accompany those who believe: by using my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes in their hands, and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.” It says right here in this verse that signs will accompany those who believe. Jesus says those who believe will cast out demons and speak a new tongue. They can drink a deadly thing and it won’t hurt them, they will lay hand on the sick and they will recover. Do you believe?
I am not asking if you believe you can do signs and wonders, I am asking if you believe in Jesus? Do you believe that the scripture is the Word of God and is truth? If so, then whether you believe in your ability to do signs and wonders or not, it is fact. Jesus said signs will accompany those who believe. In the verse above it is talking about there are not enough laborers. Will you be a laborer for Christ? I am not asking you to go out and lay hands on people as that may be way outside of your comfort zone, I know it was for me until more recently. What I am asking you to do is to look at your sphere of influence, look at your life and those who surround you. What is one thing you can do to spread the word of God, or to spread the good news of Jesus? Maybe you don’t even mention Jesus, especially if you family is particularly against Jesus right now. Maybe you just start by demonstrating His love to them, loving them like Jesus loves them. That means you accept them for who they are and love them through whatever they are going through.
I know for many of you listening, the idea that we have the power to heal others is way outside of your comfort zone. You can see how some people can maybe do it, but definitely not you and definitely not “regular” people like you and I. I am hoping this podcast will change your thinking. Not this episode, but over time I am hoping I can show you enough evidence in the Bible that you will begin to see that when God gave us the Holy Spirit, He gave us more power than we could ever imagine. He gave us a supernatural power to do signs and wonders because those glorify God. We live in a world where people need to see before they believe and signs and wonders help with that. I know it take a renewal of the mind and that takes time. I am not asking you to believe that today. Today I am asking everyone listening to ask themselves, “How can I be a laborer in God’s vineyard?” What is one thing I can do this week to spread God’s love and light to others? How can I leave people feeling better than they did before our interaction?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today? Lord, we are so grateful you gave us the Holy Spirit. We are so grateful you gave us Jesus. We are grateful you are calling us to be your laborers and we are sorry if we haven’t been doing our job of that lately. This world we live in makes it hard to talk about Jesus. It even makes it hard to spread you love, as love is not a super popular thing and people don’t really know what love really is these days. Lord, help us to grow in this area. We ask the Holy Spirit to put on our hearts how you want us to grow in this area. I ask that you reveal one way to each of us that you want us to spread your love, peace and light to others. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed day!
We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click here. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Have a blessed day!
Today I want to witness about how God is working in the little ways of our lives. I know recently I have been talking more about the miracles I've been seeing God doing and I think that's awesome. I am so grateful God is still working miracles today. I am grateful in this crazy world that God is still showing up and still showing us how much he loves us even when the world is not loving him back. I also think that not everybody is seeing miracles. I think there are a lot of people suffering and I think there are a lot of people that are struggling right now. I know there is a lot of fear and a lot of anxiety in the world and sometimes that can make people lean into God more. However sometimes it can just make people feel more alone. Maybe you're listening to the witness Wednesdays and thinking that's great that she's seeing miracles but what about me? How is God working in my life? I'm not seeing him heal people. Where is God showing up for me? This is a question that we all think at one time or another. Sometimes it can seem like God is working in everyone else’s life, but we can’t see Him working in our lives. My prayer is that these Witness Wednesdays will help us all start to recognize God working in our lives more often.
Today I want to witness to how God has been in all the little details, not just the big things. In 2019 I found a podcast called the Big Life Podcast. I am sure it was God that helped me find this podcast. I listened to the podcast for quite some time and loved how it talked about scripture every day and also tied it into how to live the big life God created us to live. After awhile of listening to the podcast, I joined Big Life mentoring which is run by the creator of the podcast, Pamela Crim. I decided to join in February of 2020. God was in this detail as well because I had just started my own business, I had my whole marketing plan, I was ready to go. Then March 2020 is when everything shut down. We weren’t really allowed to leave our houses, kids were home, Tony was home, I was home.
I am a social person and God knows this. I truly believe it was his plan for me to join mentoring so I would not feel so alone during the pandemic. As I said I joined mentoring in February, however, I didn’t really get close with anyone until April when Pamela decided to form small work our groups. By the end of April everyone was getting tired of being in isolation, and finding reasons to get out of bed in the morning, when we couldn’t leave our homes, was getting harder. So, Pamela formed work out groups of 8 people. The leader of the group would start a facebook call at whatever time you signed up for and we would all talk for a few minutes and say good morning to each other. Then we would do a workout from YouTube together. They were short 10-20 minutes but they got us up and moving and we had that daily contact with other humans. It was so great! The leader of my group, Kim, agreed to keep doing the call every morning and so 2 years later, actually almost 3 years later, we are still working out together and checking in with each other.
What I find amazing is how God put together this group of 8 random strangers and we are such a perfect fit for each other. The first thing I think is interesting is our names. We have two Catherine’s spelled exactly the same way, Kathleen, Kim, Kimberly, Kelly, Ashley & Natalie. Each one of us either owns our own business or wants to. Three of our group members have studied nutrition and exercise. Two of our group members are trained to be massage therapists. At lest two of the members in our group have children that are very difficult in very similar ways. Several of the ladies in the group love Disney. Most of the ladies in the group like to run. All of the ladies in the group love Jesus! We all love setting goals and keeping them. I finally found people who get just as excited about a new planner and a new year as I do!
If you have always had friends that love Jesus, you might not know what a rare find that is. Looking back, I actually have had friends that I can talk about God and Jesus to for a long time because I join women’s groups. However, I haven’t had a group of ladies that I talk to daily that talk about prayer and God. We don’t sit around and gossip and complain about our husbands. We do talk about what is going on and what we are struggling with and then we try to help each other overcome those struggles. It has been a breath of fresh air and we were able to keep in touch during the whole pandemic. We even got together and ran a half marathon down in Gulf Shores Alabama.
I remember the first time I met any of them in person was when I signed up for a big life retreat in Tennessee. Two other group members were going, Kimberly and Kelly. Kimberly is from Maine and she was driving down so we decided to drive together. When we decided to drive together we had been talking in the mornings for about four months. We thought we knew each other and then when we were in the car for two days driving we really got to know each other even better. This was when we found out how similar our situation with our children was. Well, the situation was different, but the similarities with the way our children acted was so similar. It was great because Kimberly thought it was just her going through it. She felt alone and like no one understood. We talked the whole way to Tennessee and the whole way home. We talked about parenting, our jobs, our religions, our beliefs, it was great. We both definitely needed that trip and that time together. Then we met up with Kelly at the retreat and got to know her better as well.
It has been almost three years together and we have all been through a lot. We have all needed to lean in and rely on the group for support over these last 3 years. It was not all at the same time, and we were able to be there for each person as they needed support. I know these last three years would have been hard for each of us if were weren’t checking in on each other and having that support of knowing that the ladies in that group would do anything for us. We all get down, we all have rough days, who do you have checking in on you and making sure you don’t stay down? This is super important and I know God knew we would each need each other over the last 3 years. I am so grateful to God, and Pamela, for putting together this group or exceptional women!
You might be looking at this witness and not really seeing how God played a role in it. However, there were multiple different workout groups and they met at all different times throughout the day. What are the chances that these 8 people, who were so perfectly matched would wind up in the same group? And I don’t mean perfectly matched like we are all the same. We are very different in personalities and family make up and such. But what is so perfect is that we all compliment each other so well. Our personalities mix together well and make a great group. God was definitely in the making of this group. That is the reason I wanted to witness about it today. Look in your life and see what situations, what jobs, what friend groups might God have arranged for you? If you are struggling to see God working in your life, start thinking about the things that have happened that seem too good to be true. Like this group of women from all over the country that have only met in person a few times and yet would do anything for each other. God is so good! He is working in these quiet, unseen ways in your life too.
Who Am I?
Judges 6:12-16 “The angel of the Lord appeared to him and said to him, “The Lord is with you, you mighty warrior.” Gideon answered him, “But sir, if the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all his wonderful deeds that our ancestors recounted to us, saying, ‘Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt?’ But now the Lord has cast us off, and given us into the hand of Midian.” Then the Lord turned to him and said, “Go in this might of yours and deliver Israel from the hand of Midian; I hereby commission you.” He responded, “But sir, how can I deliver Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family.” The Lord said to him, “But I will be with you, and you shall strike down the Midianites, every one of them.”
I really like this story because it is one most of us can relate too. Well, not the first verse probably. I doubt too many of us have been visited by an angel. The verse starts off by telling us that an angel appeared to Gideon and told him the Lord was with him and then called him a mighty warrior. I find it interesting how Gideon answered the angel. I feel as though I would be in shock and probably speechless if the angel of God spoke to me. If he told me that God was with me I think I would say thank you or I would just be in awe. Gideon is not speechless and it doesn’t sound like he is in awe. He questions the angel. He says, “But sir, if the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all his wonderful deeds that our ancestors recounted to us, saying, ‘Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt?’ But now the Lord has cast us off, and given us into the hand of Midian.”
Those are some pretty gutsy things to say to an angel. The angel said the Lord is with you and Gideon basically said, “oh yeah, how? We don’t see it. What has He done for us lately?” With this being written text, we don’t know the tone or volume this was said with. I picture Gideon being angry and almost yelling it at the angel. However, I could be wrong, he could have mater of factly stated it to him. Either way Gideon did not believe what the angel said and he wanted an explanation, or some sort of proof that God was for them.
Next the angel says, “Go in this might of yours and deliver Israel from the hand of Midian; I hereby commission you.” The angel does not answer his question as to where God has been. The angel looks at Gideon and then tells him to go and lead the fight with Midian to deliver his people. Gideon’s response is a response that I think most of us have when God commissions us for a task. We question it, we tell Him we aren’t ready, we aren’t good enough, we don’t know how, we aren’t strong enough. We question God as if He, the one who created us, did not know all these things about us when he commissioned us for that task. When Gideon was told that he was commissioned to defeat Midian he said, “But sir, how can I deliver Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family.”
Gideon was counting himself out before he even got started. He looked at his family and his place in that family and judged his abilities on that. He felt God must have made a mistake. How could he be a mighty warrior when his family was the weakest and he was the least in his family? Does this sound familiar? Do you ever count yourself out of things because of your family or your history with your family? I can understand a bit of what Gideon was feeling. I am from a large family and we didn’t have a lot of money growing up. When I was in school, if there was a big field trip I immediately counted myself out. There was not way my parents could afford the cost of trip when they can barely afford their bills. In seventh grade my french class was taking a trip to Quebec for a few days. I think the cost was $450 or something like that. I knew I wouldn’t be able to go. I am not even sure if I asked my parents or if I just counted myself out. One day after school the french teacher talked with me and asked if I wanted to go on the trip. I explained I did but my parents couldn’t afford it. She said there was a scholarship, and so if my parents could afford some of it, the school could pay the rest. Somehow my parents were able to pay whatever part they had to pay and I was able to go.
Another way I can relate to Gideon is when he said he was the least of his family. I don’t think I was the least of my family, and yet, having a large family, you are bound to be compared to your sibblings. Others are bound to compare you as well. I remember one Christmas Eve party at my aunts house one of my uncles saw me and was trying to figure out which child I was. My mom is one of 10 children so you can imagine how many kids were at this Christmas Eve party. He said oh, you are the smart one that is going to Yale right? Nope, that is Virginia. Oh, you are the one that just got that cheerleading award, nope, that is Elizabeth. Got it, you are the one that is having open heart surgery, nope that is Theresa, Oh, who are you then he said. I wasn’t really sure how to respond to that one. I didn’t know which distinguishing characteristic might have been used to describe me.
We can all get stuck thinking we are who our family says we are. We can get stuck thinking we can’t do certain things because of our past history. We know God is calling us to something and yet we don’t answer that call because we don’t think we can do it. Instead of giving God our whole hearted yes, we give Him a list of reasons why we are not the right person for the job. The very beginning of this verse the angel of God address Gideon as a mighty warrior, and yet he questions that. What name is God calling you that you are dismissing. Is it son/daughter of the one true King? Is it Beloved? Is it Mighty Warrior? Is it Gifted Healer? Is it Disciple? Is it Preacher/Teacher? Is it Worthy or Enough? What name do you hear God calling you and yet you struggle to accept? God does not make mistakes. He is the Lord God Almighty. If He calls you something it is because that is your name to Him. That is who you are in His eyes!
What task is God commissioning you for that you are resisting? Is there something you feel called to do and instead of telling God yes, you are giving him a whole host of reasons why you can do it? Is He asking you to do something and you are explaining to him why anyone else would be better for the job? I get it, I do the same and yet God is telling us here in this story of Gideon that we need to believe what the Lord says about it and just go out and do it. Stop trying to tell God who you are, He knows who you are better than you do. Stop trying to find all these excuses why you can’t do the thing God is telling you to do. Start trying to figure out how to do the thing God is leading you to do. Stop and ask God, what would you like me to do today? If you don’t know how to do what He is calling you to do then ask Him how He would like you to do it. Our God is a wonderful God and He will answer us when we ask. Answer the call God is placing on your life today with a resounding Yes! Trust if He gave it to you He will help you fulfill it!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode. Lord we are so grateful that you know us better than we know ourselves. Thank you for loving us so much and being the best dad out there. Thank you for calling us by our true identity even when we struggle to see it. Lord, help us to see ourselves and the world through your eyes. Father, thank you for commissioning us to certain tasks. We are sorry we don’t always say yes. It is not because we don’t want to, it is because we are afraid. Please replace that fear with courage and strength. Make us bold so we can say yes to whatever you ask. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you would be willing to give a witness as to how God is working in your life, please let me know. I know those listening would love to hear it! I look forward to bringing you a witness tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Act of Faith
John 5:5-9 “One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be made well?” The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.” Jesus said to him, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.” At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk.’”
I love this story because it is such a short story and yet I have come to learn there a lot of lessons in it. That is why I love studying scripture, especially doing Bible studies where they go into depth on what each story in the Bible means. There are a lot of parables, there are a lot of hidden meanings, the Bible is a living text and it can be so simple at times and so complex other times. I love every time I learn some deeper meaning to a story. When I first heard this story I thought it was a great testament to Jesus’ healing power, and it is. I didn’t realize how much more there was to it.
First let me explain what is going on in this story in case you haven’t heard it before. The man in this story has been laying at the pool of Bethesda for over 30 years. The story with this particular pool is that there are certain seasons or times when it was believed an angel would stir the water. When this happened if you could be the first one in the water you would be healed. This man couldn’t walk so each time the pool was stirred up, he would have to pull his body with his arms down to the pool. There were always people that would get in front of him and get in the pool first. I am not sure how often the pool was stirred, but I can imagine that was a long 30 something years for this man who was trying to get into a pool he can not reach.
Is that you? Have you been trying to do something for a very long time and you are not having any luck? Maybe you have been sick with something for a long time and you keep praying for a healing and yet you have not received one. Maybe you have been struggling with issues in your family for a long time and you have been praying and yet you have not seen any answers to those prayers. Maybe you have been trying to get further in your career and you keep praying and asking God to help and yet, so far no answers. If this is the case, keep praying, keep asking, keep searching. This man was ill for 38 years before he was healed. I don’t know if he was at the pool of Bethesda the whole time, but I am sure he was hoping for a healing the whole time.
The first thing I learned about this verse that I didn’t really pay much attention to when I heard it is that Jesus asks the man, “Do you want to be made well?” Jesus puts the ball in the man’s court. He asks him if he wants to be healed. This may seem silly to you. He has been waiting at a pool for a healing for over 30 years not, of course he wants to be healed. However, not everyone does want to be healed. Some people are afraid to be healed because their sickness is all they have known. They are afraid of what their life will be like without it? They are worried because their identity is wrapped up in this illness. So, instead of just healing this man Jesus asks if he wants to be healed. I find it interesting that the man did not answer the questions with an answer, he started explaining why he had not been healed before now.
Doesn’t that sound like something we would all do? When asked if we want something we come up with all the excuses or reasons that we haven’t gotten it yet. We want people to know we tried and yet we just couldn’t do it. We explain how unfair the world is and that we are victims of that unfairness. This man was telling Jesus about why he hadn’t been healed yet, instead of just answering his question and saying, “yes, I want to be healed.” Why is that so hard for us to admit sometimes? Why can’t we just ask for what we need? Why is it so hard to ask God to heal us, or provide for us? It makes him so happy when we rely on Him?
The next thing I learned about this verse that I didn’t pay much attention to is when Jesus says, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.” Jesus did not do anything outwardly to heal this man. He didn’t lay hands on him, He didn’t tell him he was healed, he just told him to stand and take up his mat and walk. By doing this, Jesus is requiring this man to take make an act of faith. He is asking a man who has not walked in 38 years to stand up and walk. I wonder what was going through that man’s mind when he heard Jesus say that. I wonder if he jumped right up, or if he hesitated wondering what this man was talking about? I wonder if his brain was flooded with negative thoughts such as, “Why is he telling you to get up, doesn’t he know you can’t walk?” “I can’t get up and walk, I haven’t walked for 38 years.” “If I try to stand up I will fall down again.”
We don’t know whether this man had any negative thoughts or not. What we do know is that he was able to stand up, take up his mat and walk away. Even if he did have those thoughts, he was able to overcome them and to make that act of faith. He tried to stand up when asked to and therefore he was healed. I am wondering if some of what is keeping us stuck from moving forward, or stuck from getting our breakthrough is that we are failing to act in faith? Are we getting in our own way? Are we listening to all those negative voices in our head? Is Jesus asking us to make an act of faith and we are too scared because of all the years we have been waiting for it, or all the drama while we wait. What if we didn’t listen to those voices? What if we just stepped out in faith that God will do what He said He would do. What is one thing you can do today to make an act of faith?
Dear Heavenly Father, I pray you bless all those listening to this episode today. Thank you for all you teach us through your scriptures. Thank you for all the times that you heal us, not just from physical wounds, but also emotional ones as well. Lord, you are truly amazing and we are so grateful we know you! We ask that you give us the strength and courage to make that act of faith when you ask us to make it. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus; holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldy with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Believing Without Seeing
1 Peter 1:8-9 “Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls.”
I asked my friend to choose a verse for me while I was at retreat. She chose this one. I am not sure I knew this one and yet I love it. I know, I say that a lot. It is true, God is so good and there are countless verses from the Bible that I love. I love this one because it ends with the salvation of our souls and who wouldn’t love that. As much as I love this verse I have been stuck on what to say about it. I think one of the hardest parts of faith is believing in things we can’t see. Having that faith that what God says is true even when you don’t see any proof of it.
This reminds me of what I talked about yesterday. Abraham and Sarah trusted that God was going to make him the father of nations even though he didn’t have any children at the time. They trusted for a long time before they saw any proof that God would keep His word. Well that is not completely true, God had given them proof over the years that he would keep His word, maybe not about this specific thing but about many other things. God had been providing for Abraham and also talking with him for most of his life I think.
God told Abraham to leave his home but did not tell him where he was going and Abraham listened and God always provided for him. Wherever Abraham went he was prosperous. He listened to God, he trusted God and he was rewarded by God. Did Abraham always do it perfectly, nope. When they got tired of waiting for God to give Sarah a baby, Abraham slept with Sarah’s handmaid so that Abraham would have a baby. That did not turn out well. When Abraham and Sarah had to go into Egypt to evade a famine Abraham was concerned they might kill him and take Sarah as their wife, so he told her to lie and say she was his sister. This did not end well either.
Every time we try to take things into our own hands, or force our own timing onto God’s plans things do not end well. When Abraham and Sarah were able to believe in God’s word while they weren’t seeing proof of it, then things went better and they were rewarded for their patience and their faith. The same is true for us. We are being called to have faith in things that we cannot. We may be able to see God’s faithfulness in our lives, but we might not be able to see proof for that specific promise.
I think this is where I am getting stuck with this passage. It says, “Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy.” I guess I am struggling because I think we do see God in our lives. I get that we don’t see him physically, and maybe that is what they mean, but we do see him, right? Or maybe not everyone does see Him in their lives. God is working in our lives every single day. If we are looking for it, we will see it. When we start looking we will begin to see Him in the big things and the little things. So, I guess my question is do I love Him even though I haven’t seen Him, or do I love him because I have seen Him working in my life? It sounds like today might not be one of those days where you end this podcast feeling you know the meaning of the scripture verse any better than you did before you started it. Which I think is ok, I hope is ok. Our goal here is to walk boldly with Jesus. My goal is to explore the scripture with you and to learn together. Today I feel this is a scripture we can pray on and ask God to reveal the meaning of it and how we can use it to make our lives better.
I did look up the meaning of this scripture as I was lost as to how to start or what to say. There are many commentaries that will give you a more in depth look into this scripture. I felt the Holy spirit was leading me to talk about where we see God in our lives instead of talking about where we don’t see Him. I think God gives us plenty of chances to have faith in things when we can’t see the proof. For me, this is easier to do the more I look at all the places I have seen God in my life. When I look back and see all the places He has shown up and kept His promises, then it is easier for me to believe He will take care of this too.
God is working in my life and He is working in your life to. The question is did we know it was God when we saw Him? Did we know that kind person who paid for our coffee was the face of God? Did we know the person that held the door of the elevator was the face of God? Did we know the person who was in line in front of us at the store was the face of God? Did we know the stranger that said a kind word, was the face of God? Did we know the breakthrough we received at work was a gift from God? Did we know it was God who helped us through that last difficult season? Did we know it was God who made that awesome thing happen?
I am blessed to have had parents who saw God working in everything they did! I am blessed to have parents who saw God everywhere they went. They knew without a shadow of a doubt that God loved them and they loved Him. They did an awesome job of passing this down to me and so I also know without a shadow of a doubt that I am loved by God. I love God very much and I don’t know if that is because I haven’t seen him or because I have. I don’t think it matters. What I feel the Holy Spirit is revealing to me, to share with you, is that if we want to be able to trust in things we can’t see, then we need to first start trying to see God in our lives. Where can we see Him? Where has He helped us in the past? What blessings has He already given us? If we want to have faith that God will keep this promise we can look back to see what promises He has already kept for us.
I am not sure if this episode actually explained the verse above or if it left you more confused. Hopefully, at the very least it gave you something to think about and something to take to prayer. I hope it also encouraged you to take a look at your life and try to see God in the day to day of life. Also look back and see if you can tell where God was in your past. What difficult season did He help you out of? What bad decision did He use for your good? If we look for Him, we will see Him.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, I ask you to help clear up any confusion I might have caused. Lord, I ask you to shine a light on all the places you are showing up in our lives. Help us to see you every single day. Help us to love you even when we don’t see you. Help us to believe in what we don’t see. Lord, I pray that you speak to each one of individually. I pray that each person who listens to this episode and every episode hears exactly what they need to hear. Lord, you are amazing and we love you so much. We are so grateful that you are showing up for us. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again on Monday. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed weekend!
God Reveals One Step At A Time
Hebrews 11:1-2 “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the men of old received divine approval.”
For the past two years I have done the Bible in a Year podcast with Father Mike. This year he is doing the Catechism of the Catholic Church in a Year. The Catechism aims to summarize in book form the main beliefs of the Catholic Church. I have owned this book for several years now and yet have never read the whole thing. I did find some things highlighted today when looking through it, so I have looked through it, but never read through it all. I was excited about this new podcast Father Mike is doing because I think it is important to be able to understand your faith completely and also to be able to explain it to others when asked. And people tend to have a lot of questions as to why Catholics believe the things they believe.
The other day when I was listening, Father Mike touched on something that I thought was important to share with you because it is something that we have all run into many times in our lives. The Catechism was talking about how God sometimes reveals things to people in order to invite them into His own company. The adequate response to this invitation is faith. It goes on to say in paragraph 144 that Sacred Scripture calls this human response to God, the author of revelation, “the obedience to faith.” It says to obey in faith is to submit freely to the word that has been heard, because its truth is guaranteed by God, who is Truth itself. Abraham is the model of such obedience offered us by Sacred Scripture. The Virgin Mary is its most perfect embodiment. Paragraph 145 says The Letter to the Hebrews, in its great eulogy of the faith of Israel’s ancestors lays special emphasis on Abraham’s faith; “By faith, Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place which he was to receive as an inheritance; and he went out, not knowing where to go.” By faith, he lived as a stranger and pilgrim in the promised land. By faith, Sarah was given to conceive the son of the promise. And by faith Abraham offered his only son in sacrifice.
What Father Mike pointed out is that all three people mentioned here, Abraham, Sarah and Mary acted in faith. This was not the part that surprised me as I have heard the story of Abraham and Sarah many times and I know everyone knows that Mary acted in faith when she said yes to carrying the Son of God. What Father Mike said that make sense when you think about it, but I guess I never really thought about it before, was that God didn’t give these three people all the information before they answered in faith. He didn’t lay out every step they were going to take. He didn’t tell them every bump in the road they were going to run into. He didn’t give them a five year plan or a 10 year plan. He didn’t even give them a one year plan. He gave them the initial invitation with very little detail. Abraham knew he couldn’t stay where he was and that God was inviting him to leave his homeland. He said yes without knowing where he was going and how would all turn out.
Sarah knew she was going to conceive a son but was not given any other information about when or how, since she was advanced in age. Mary was invited to conceive the son of God and she asked one clarifying question, how that was possible when she had not known man. She was told the Holy Spirit would overshadow her and she would conceive the son of God. However, that was about all the information she got. She also was not told everything she would go through. She wasn’t told she would leave him in Jerusalem when he was 12 and she would be worried he was lost for 3 days. She wasn’t told about his suffering and crucifixion. She was told about just that first step.
This is the part that I think we can all relate to. God is calling us all to something and He calls us to it without giving us all the details. He shines just enough light on our situation so we can see the next right step. This can be scary for us. We tend to want to know what is coming next. We want to make sure we will be safe and secure. But what if we knew everything we were going to go through and then were scared we couldn’t do it. Everything we go through in life prepares us for the next thing we will go through. If you knew it all in advance you might not say yes. It is believed that Mary was very young when she got married and had Jesus. Do you think a teenager could have said yes having a child that was going to be tortured and killed? Do you think she would have had that kind of strength as a teen? I think Mary was able to be with Christ through all of that because of all the things that came before that. Every thing we go through good or bad prepares us for the rest of our lives.
What about Abraham and Sarah? Do you think they would have been all excited about having a child if they knew they were going to having to offer him up in a sacrifice? Probably not, but God had been so faithful to His word that Abraham knew if God was asking him to do it, then He had a plan of how to make it right again. Has God been faithful in our lives? Can we look back and see where He has been with us the whole way? Can we look back and see how things that didn’t make sense at the time now make sense with the benefit of hindsight? Has God gotten you through some pretty tough spots? Do you have things that you have done and looking back you can honestly say you wouldn’t have done them if you had known all they would entail? God is so good. He knows human nature. He knows that we get scared easily. He knows we tend to chose the easy route and we try to avoid pain and discomfort at all costs.
God’s ways are higher than our ways and His thoughts higher than our thoughts. He knows if we knew the whole picture we might not accept the call He is calling us to. Can we say yes if faith, like Abraham, Mary and Sarah did? Can we say yes to whatever new thing God is calling us into without knowing all the details? Can we trust that God has the details worked out and if we are faithful and take the next right step he will shine a light forward to the next right step? I feel prompted to also mention that God’s timing is not our timing. God told Abraham he would have a child and then I believe they waited 25 years for that to happen. They did not wait perfectly, they tried to make it happen on their own, but in the end God was faithful. I guess I felt prompted to mention that because I know some of you are waiting for your answered prayers. I know some of you have been waiting a long time. I want to encourage you and let you know you are in good company. Sometimes we can think God doesn’t like us as much if we kept waiting. Almost like God is taking care of those more important to Him before He gets to us. This is not the case. God promised Abraham everything and yet he had to wait a long time also.
Have faith to take that next step, even when you can’t see where that step is leading you. Take that step even if you don’t know the final outcome or you don’t know all the details. Take a step towards wherever God is calling you knowing that if He called you there He will be there to shine a light on each step until you get there. Going back to the verse, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” St. Augustine said, ““Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.” God rewards us when we step out in faith. Where can you trust God and step out in faith today?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask that you help us to know what you are calling us to. We ask that you help us to have the faith to step out in that call even though we don’t have all the details, even though we don’t know what will come next, or when it will come. Lord, give us the perseverance we need to wait for your call and to not try and manufacture it on our own. We love you Lord, you are amazing. You know what is best for us and we pray that we can listen to you and wait for your plan. We are so grateful you have a plan for each of us and that you light our steps so we can follow your plan. We are sorry for all the times we didn’t follow your plan, we are trying Dad. We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed day!
We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click here. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Have a blessed day!
You Are A Saint That Sins Sometimes
Hebrews 8:12 “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”
Anytime I get together with a group of women and we start talking I sense a pattern. I am speaking about women as that is who I tend to hang around with, although I think men struggle with this as well. I think they struggle to talk about it though. Whenever I have been around women and they feel as though they can really open up and be honest and vulnerable they often talk about how they are feel like they are not enough. This feeling of not being enough often brings up shame as well. We regret the choices we made in the past, even when we didn’t feel like we had a choice.
On some level we know that we were doing the best we could and yet we feel guilty for the things we did anyway. For instance, once our children are older and we get the benefit of hindsight we can see that we weren’t always the best parent. We didn’t always react in the best way and we didn’t always do what was best for the children. However, we did always do the best we could in that moment. We did the best we could with what we had in that moment. We know that, and yet we still let shame and guilt eat us up inside. And as if our own shame and guilt were not enough, we also receive the shame and guilt that our teenagers feel the need to pile on. It’s as if it is a right of passage for them to tell us all the ways we failed them.
I know one day they will have a much better understanding of why we did what we did, but while they are teens they will not understand. Today I saw a post of Facebook and it made me remember about how we talked about in my class how God doesn’t remember our sins. I wasn’t sure if I did an episode on it and then when I looked back, I realized I did. It was not this same verse from the Bible however, and I really felt like the Holy Spirit wanted me to talk about it again, so I will listen and do just that. I think hearing that we are not a sum of our past mistakes is something we can’t really hear enough. It is something we need to keep hearing over and over again because the enemy wants us to forget it and as soon as we hear it he starts to tell us why that may be true for others, but it isn’t true for us.
This verse is telling us that God will forgive our wickedness and remember our sins no more. Why is it so hard for us to hear that and believe it? Why is it so much easier for us to believe the negative stuff the enemy tells us than the positive stuff our heavenly Father tells us? God knows all that we have done over the years, however, when we repent for our sins he forgives and forgets. This may be hard for us to comprehend because we stuggle with forgiving and forgetting. We tend to think if we forget then that person who did something to us is somehow getting away with something. We also struggle to forgive and forget what we have done because we struggle with thinking we are worthy of forgiveness and we don’t want to let ourselves off the hook too easily. The thing is, if Jesus says we are forgiven, who are we to hold onto it? If Jesus has already forgotten what we did, why are we still clinging to it? Why are we clinging to our old identity instead of clinging to the identity that Jesus has given to us?
I know I explained this in another episode #355 (click here for episode) if you want to go back and listen to it, but I thought it was really powerful when I heard it and I think it could be repeated a million times and we would still struggle to remember it. Jesus died on a cross for our sins. I think that is something that is easy to conceptualize as we can look at a cross and see his sacrifice. However, do we believe He did it for our sins, yours and mine? That is harder to believe. It is harder to think of his sacrifice as something He did for me personally and yet that is exactly who He did if for. He gave His life for you, individually, and for each one of us as an individual, not as a whole. It talks about how when Jesus was in the garden, asking His Father to let this cup pass from Him, he was thinking about all of our sins. Yours and mine included He willingly took them to the cross with Him, so when are were going to release them?
I want to touch on something it says in Romans 6:11 is says, “So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” Do you consider yourself dead to sin? I wasn’t sure what to say when asked this question. I wasn’t sure what this question even meant. Then we were asked another question that gave us a little more clarity. Do you consider yourself a sinner who does the right thing now and then, or do you consider yourself a saint that sins sometimes. This is all about a mindset. We have to live into our baptism promises. We need to believe that Jesus died for our sins and when he did he removed our sinful nature. Our identity matters. You may think this is a little thing and it doesn’t really matter. You may think the above question is just a matter of semantics. I assure you it isn’t. What you tell yourself matters.
We are saints who sin sometimes. It is important that we understand this because the enemy wants us to focus on our sins. He wants us to think we are unredeemable. He wants us to feel like we are our sins. The enemy wants us to take on our sins as if they are our identity. For instance, I lied to someone therefor I am a liar. I stole a piece of candy from a friend, therefore I am a thief. You are not your actions, you are not your sins. You are a redeemed child of God, that is your identity. Your sins are things you do and they can be forgiven and forgotten.
I am not sure why the Holy Spirit wanted me to repeat those two paragraphs from an earlier episode. I felt strongly that the Lord wants us to know He is not holding on to our sins and so we shouldn’t either. I really feel like He is asking us to give them over to Him once and for all. I feel like the Lord is calling us to forgive ourselves, because He already has. Maybe that is something we could all give up for Lent this year? Maybe we could give up carrying around the guilt we feel over things God has already forgiven and forgotten. How much lighter would you feel if you finally released that guilt and shame to God? What if you made 2023 the year you turned it over to God and didn’t take it back? What if this year was the year you released it for good? Remember your identity, You are a saint that sins sometimes, not a sinner that gets it right sometimes. You are a child of the one true God. He loves you!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord you are amazing and we are so grateful you don’t remember our sins. Please help us to forget as well. Please help us to turn them over to you. Help us to put them down and not pick them back up again. Help us to finally, once and for all release those things you have already forgiven and forgotten. If there is anything we are holding onto that we haven’t repented for please put that on our heart and help us take that to you and turn that over to you as well Lord. You are so amazing and the way you just forget our sins says so much about you. You are the best Father ever!! We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I can’t wait to share my witness with you tomorrow about all the healing I saw happen on the retreat last weekend. God was showing off big time I am so very grateful I got to be a small part of it. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed day!
I’m Surrounded By You!
Hebrews 12:1-2 "Therefore, since we are encompassed with such a great cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us. Let us look to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God."
Last weekend was quite a weekend for me. I was away on retreat with 20 other Christian women who are all dedicated to starting their year off right and turning their focus to God. Each year in Big Life Mentoring, shout out to Pamela Crim, we each pick a word and mantra. Our word and manta is what we say every day to help remind us of the commitments we made to ourselves to live as the best version of ourselves. This New Year’s retreat that I was on for the last 5 days was a chance to talk about what we want to get out of this year and also to form a great bond and friendship with several other ladies. These ladies can be our accountability group and support throughout the whole year. We know what each and every lady on this retreat is wanting this year and we can pray for them and their goals.
This was my first year going to this retreat. It was an amazing weekend. I love when women who love Jesus get together to talk and get to know each other. We played worship music and walked to the beach at night to look at the stars and thank God for all He has done. We all talked about our strengths and our areas for improvement. We talked about where we are struggling and what we want out of this upcoming year. We talked about what we were going to do to help make those wants a reality. It was really good girl bonding time and everyone loved it.
While I was on this retreat several ladies were talking about how they have that negative voice inside their head so often. You know the voice I am talking about, the one that says you are not enough, the one that says God would never forgive you, the one that makes you feel awful about yourself. That voice that makes you question every decision you have ever made. That voice that make you feel like you don’t belong. We all have our own version of the mean voice inside of our head.
This verse is telling us that we can look to those around us as witnesses. This weekend on the New Year’s retreat I saw so many witnesses. The woman who were on the retreat were truly amazing. We all struggle with different things and also we are all really good at other things. We can look to each other for help with the things we are struggling with. Who in your life could be a witness? Who in your life could you look to for an example in how to live? The people in my prayer group are also great witnesses. They are all excellent examples of how to be the face of Christ to others. In the four years that I have been in this prayer group they have taught me so much about God and His love. Look to those around you and learn all you can from them!
This next line is the one that really made me think this was the verse for today. It says, “Let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.” That is a powerful statement and one that we all need to remember when we have so many burdens in life. We have so much that can go wrong each day. If we can lay aside every thing that is weighing on us and run the race with endurance life will be so much easier. The verse also asks us to lay aside the sin that so easily entangles us. This is a very true statement of how sin works. We tend to get entangled in it. We make one bad choice and then another and then before we know it we are wrapped up in sin, regret and shame.
This verse is telling us to lay our burdens and sin aside. The question is, “How do we do that?” How do we lay our burdens aside? How do we avoid getting entangled in sin? The answer is right in this verse. “Let us look to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.” Jesus is the author of our faith. He can show us the way. We can learn so much just by looking at Jesus and the way He lived. We can also look to Jesus when we are trying to find the strength to lay our burdens aside. We can look to Jesus when we are trying to find a way to just make it through the day. This weekend there were at least two ladies that said they were afraid that the enemy was stronger than they were. This is a real fear that many of us have. The truth is, the enemy probably is stronger than we are, but he is definitely not stronger than God is. God has already won that battle and come out as the victor.
When we start to get scared that the enemy might be getting stronger than we are we can remember Romans 8:31 “…If God is for us, who can be against us?” This is the truth that we need to keep reminding ourselves. If God is for us, who can be against us? God is for you and me and each one of His children. Yes you, you are His child. Even when you don’t feel worthy, even when you don’t feel you deserve it, even when you feel like you can’t possibly be good enough to be his son or daughter, He is for you. God doesn’t need us to feel good enough for Him to love us. He always loves us! He is always our Father, and we are always His children.
One thing we did several times this weekend is listen to worship music. We listened when we were in the hot tub, we listened when we were at the beach, and we listened while we were getting up in the morning. We surrounded ourselves with worship music. One song played several times and is one that I think is a great song for us all to remember when we are struggling with the thoughts that the enemy might overtake us. This song is called, “Surrounded (Fight my battles) by Michael W. Smith. (Click here for song) What I love about this song is the way it tells us how to fight our battles and then reminds us God is there with us. Here are the main lyrics:
… The word says
"For the spirit of heaviness
Put on the garment of praise"
That's how we fight our battles (yeah)
… This is how I fight my battles
This is how I fight my battles (yeah, yes)
This is how I fight my battles (what we're doing tonight)
This is how I fight my battles
Just when you think you're lost
… It may look like I'm surrounded but I'm surrounded by You, hey!
It may look like I'm surrounded but I'm surrounded by You
It may look like I'm surrounded but I'm surrounded by You
It may look like I'm surrounded but I'm surrounded by You
This is a great thing to remember. When we are feeling overwhelmed with the attacks of the enemy we can remind ourselves that although it feels like we are surrounded on all sides by the enemy, we are actually surrounded by the Lord our God. The song repeats these verses over and over again. It is so relaxing and fills me with this peace when I listen to this song. I hope you take the time to listen to it because I know it can bring you peace too!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, be with us and help us feel you surrounding us. When we feel as though the enemy is greater than we are, help us to remember that we aren’t in this alone. Help us to remember you are there surrounding us and protecting us. Spiritual warfare is real and every single one of us is in a battle, whether we realize it or not. We will fight that battle lifting up praise to you as you surround us. We love you so much Lord, you are amazing!! You are so powerful and we are so grateful that you already won the war over evil. You conquered death and sin no longer has dominion over us now. Thank you Lord! We praise you and we thank you. You are awesome and we are in awe of you. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I am grateful for each one of you. I am also grateful for your patience and your grace as I missed a whole week of posting the podcast. Usually I get them done and advance when I am going away and that didn’t happen this time. Then with all the living I did on retreat, along with some very long days driving in the car I was unable to get any posted last week. I am happy to report I am home, safe and sound, and ready to begin recording the podcast again! I did unfortunately just test positive for Covid today, so if I sound all stuffed up or if my voice is scratchy, you know why. I guess God felt I could use a few extra days of rest. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow! Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed day!
God, Please Help Me Watch What I Say!
Psalm 141:3-4 “Post a guard at my mouth, God, set a watch at the door of my lips. Don’t let me so much as dream of evil or thoughtlessly fall into bad company. And these people who only do wrong- don’t let me lure me with their sweet talk! May the Just One set me straight, may the Kind One correct me, Don’t let sin anoint my head. I’m praying hard against their evil ways!”
I was sold at the first line of this verse. Post a guard at my mouth, yes please. How many times have you wished you could take back something you said? How many times have you said something that felt really good in the moment and then you instantly regretted saying it? I was just thinking of a Meg Ryan movie called “You’ve God Mail.” Meg Ryan’s character in the movie said she never has a zinger when she needs one. She was saying that she wished, just once, she could say exactly what she wanted to say when she wanted to say it. Then a few days later she was talking to someone she didn’t like and she told him exactly what she thought of him. Instead of feeling better like she imagined she would, she felt awful that she had been mean to him. Has this happened to you before? I am pretty sure it has happened to all of us. We imagine how great it would be tell someone what we think of them and then it isn’t.
I remember being in 8th grade and we had a new kid in class. I was picked on when I was in school. People made fun of me because they said I smelled and because I didn’t have the nicest clothes. I remember this new kid was just trying to fit in with the cool kids and he said something unkind, I don’t remember what but it was something about me being smelly, or something like that. I instantly started to cry. If you know me at all, you know it is not hard to get me to cry. I cry when I am happy, when I am sad, when I hear a moving story about someone else, when someone else is sad. Anyway, I started to cry and he instantly knew what he had said was unkind and hurt my feelings. He felt so bad. He was never unkind like that to me again.
I can remember saying plenty of things over the years that I regret. When we are feeling frustrated, angry, tired and so many other emotions, we can say things we don’t mean. Or maybe we do mean them but if we weren’t so tired, angry, etc. we might have had the power to not say them to the person. People always say sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me. This is an awful saying. Words can cut deeper than any knife and the wounds from unkind words can take a lot longer to heal than the wounds from a knife. I have lost friendships over misspoken words. I have struggled in my marriage over the years because of a lack of communication but also some very unkind words spoken. Why do we struggle so much with our words? I say we because I know I am not the only one listening to this that has struggled with this. I am sure every single person listening to this episode has said something they regret at one time or another. If only God would put a guard on our mouths. This is a prayer I pray often. I would love it if I could only speak love to those around me and those I meet. Can you imagine how much of a better place the world would be to live in if we all had a guard over our mouths?
The next part of this verse says, “Don’t let me so much as dream of evil or thoughtlessly fall into bad company. This line is great too! Yes please Lord, don’t let me even dream of evil or thoughtlessly fall into bad company. Has this ever happened to you? Have you ever thoughtlessly fallen into bad company? You thought you had just made a good new friend and then you realize they aren’t that good of a friend? Mostly we think about our kids when we think of thoughtlessly falling into bad company, but adults can do it to. You might become friends with your neighbor and then you realize when you hang out with them, you drink to much, or you gossip. You might start hanging out with someone from work and then realize they spend their off time dabbling in fortune telling and tarot cards. You didn’t enter this friendship wanting to be around these things, or do these things, but you kinda fell into it.
It is important to pray for God to protect us from falling into bad company. It is great if we pray this protection over our children too. Dear Lord, please protect our children from falling into bad company as well. The earlier we can start praying that our children are surrounded by good friends, the better off they will be. I know as parents we wish we could choose our kids friends. However, who better to choose them than our heavenly Father? If you are hearing this idea for the first time, the idea we can pray for God to put good role models and good friends in our kids path then you might be feeling discouraged. I know I was a little when I first heard it. I was discouraged because my kids were not little anymore. They were in high school, but not little kids. I thought it was too late. If you feel this way, hear me now, It is never too late! Even if your children are grown, it is not too late for you to pray that God gives them positive role models. It is not too late to pray that God surrounds them with good friends, good people. With God, too late is not a thing. He is the creator of time and He certainly doesn’t let it get in His way of doing miracles and saving our children.
The next part of this verse says, “And these people who only do wrong- don’t let me lure me with their sweet talk!” Have you noticed that sin tends to be more attractive at times? This is just us looking through a worldly filter. The world tells us sugar is better than salad. The world tells us we don’t have to keep our wedding vows, it would be more fun to fill our desires with whoever we want. The world tells us we don’t have to be kind and loving, the world is a hard place and we just have to look out for ourselves because no one else will. When we were on the road today my sister saw a random bible verse on a car. It didn’t have the words, just the book, chapter and verse. It was Romans 6:23, which says, “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” I didn’t know why we saw this verse as I had already picked this scripture for today’s episode. Now I know why. Yes, sin looks more attractive if we look at it through a worldly filter. However, It says right here in Romans 6:23, “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Looking at it from a Godly point of view, which looks more attractive, “Death, or eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord?” When we look at it this way, it’s not even close. Who would choose death over eternal life in Jesus?
The last part of the verse says, “May the Just One set me straight, may the Kind One correct me, Don’t let sin anoint my head. I’m praying hard against their evil ways!” This is right out of scripture and it makes such a great prayer. I will end with this prayer today!
Dear Heavenly Father please bless those listening to this episode today. Lord, you are the Just One, please set us straight. You are the Kind one, correct us. Lord, do not let sin anoint my head. I pray to you right now to protect me against their evil ways. You are amazing Lord and we love you! We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I am so grateful for each and every one of you listening to this episode today. I am grateful for your support and your dedication. I can’t wait to spend time with you again Monday. If I am not here on Monday its because I am on retreat and either didn’t have wifi or life happened and I couldn’t get it posted. Don’t worry, I am doing great and will be back as soon as I can. Have a blessed weekend!
Why Do We Question Our Calling?
Jeremiah 1:4-9 “Now the word of the Lord came to me saying, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.” Then I said, “Ah, Lord God! Behold, I do not know how to speak, for I am only a youth.” But the Lord said to me, “Do not say, ‘I am only a youth’; for to all to whom I send you you shall go, and whatever I command you you shall speak. Be not afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord.” Then the Lord put forth his hand and touched my mouth; and the Lord said to me, “Behold, I have put my words in your mouth.”
These are some pretty powerful verses. Imagine the Lord coming to you and saying them, can you imagine that? God starts off by telling Jeremiah that before God formed him in the womb He knew Him and before he was born He consecrated him, and appointed him a prophet to the nations. This blew my minds last night. I am surprised too, because I have heard these verse before. I have heard people give talks on these verses. I have also been hearing people say that you already have everything you need to succeed inside of you. And yet, I never put two and two together. I am not sure I ever knew it actually said that in the Bible. Or, maybe I did and I forgot. I am not sure, but it definitely stood out last night when I was listening to the Elevation podcast episode “Tricks are for Kids” with Pastor Steven Furtick.
Pastor Steven said the Lord was telling Jeremiah that he had called him for amazing things and before Jeremiah could start with the excuses, God told Jeremiah that He knew him before he was formed in the womb. That struck me in a different way last night. Perhaps its because I am in this Encounter Ministries class and they are teaching us to be activated in the gifts of the Holy Spirit and then to go out and use them. The going out and using them part can be scary. It involves risk and risk can be scary. In class, especially in this quarter we have been speaking words of prophecy over each other and that can sometimes feel scary or intimidating for both people.
It can be scary to feel like you are responsible for speaking God’s words over someone. The enemy can come in and start to make you question yourself. He whispers in your ear, “Who are you to hear God, you are nobody.” “You aren’t good enough to hear God.” “God would never pick you.” He will continue as long as you will listen. We have to learn to shut the enemy down as soon as we realize he is there. We can speak truth back to the enemy. “Who are we? We are children of God.” “We aren’t good enough, we know and yet God loves us and uses us for amazing things anyway.” “God did pick me and you and every single one of us.” One important thing to remember is that we are not the one coming up with the words to say, we are just the deliverer of those words. God is doing all the heavy lifting, we are just the messenger.
It can also be scary to be receiving the words because what if God is calling you to a task that you might not like, one you don’t necessarily want. Imagine how Jeremiah must have felt. God told Jeremiah that he appointed him as a prophet of nations. Not a prophet of those he is close to, not a prophet of the town he grew up in, not a prophet of a nation, a prophet of nations. How crazy is that? I feel like that would be a lot for any one person to hear. At least the disciples were sent out two by two. I can’t imagine what Jeremiah must have been feeling. I think Jeremiah’s response was one similar to all of our responses when God calls us to do big things. Jeremiah replied, “Ah, Lord God! Behold, I do not know how to speak, for I am only a youth.” Yep, that is pretty much what we would all do. We would start in with the excuses, and don’t worry if you don’t have any because the enemy will whisper plenty in your ear. He does not want you to answer your call to greatness.
If you are feeling called to something that seems scary to you right now, know that it is perfectly normal to come up with excuses why you can’t answer that call. You are in great company, Moses came up with excuses, and Jeremiah came up with excuses, even Abraham questioned how it would be possible to have a child in his advanced years. It is normal to question, God knows you have doubts and when you bring them to Him, he provides answers. In this case Jeremiah was concerned because he was young and because he didn’t know how to speak. Those seem like legitimate concerns. Who is going to listen to a youth about important things? How can he go out and speak to Nations when he is not a public speaker? What will he say, who will listen? Do these questions sound familiar? Are you questioning your call? Are you wondering how God could be picking you for something when you don’t know anything about it? You don’t know how to be a prophet, a healer, in deliverance ministry, a teacher or any of the other things God is calling you to do. That’s ok, God’s got you.
I love God’s reply to Jeremiah, “Do not say, ‘I am only a youth’; for to all to whom I send you you shall go, and whatever I command you you shall speak. Be not afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord.” I love this because as much as we can understand what Jeremiah was thinking, we still have to remember he was talking to God. Can you imagine telling God you can’t do what He told you to do? I had a hard time saying no to my parents growing up, I feel like I wouldn’t be able to say no to God. Also, it’s funny because when we question God about our calling it as if we are saying that we know more than God. It is as if we think that God didn’t know the things we are saying about us, like He forgot that we were shy, or we didn’t like public speaking or that Jeremiah was young or Abraham was old. It makes me laugh because we all do it and yet, He is God, he knows those things we see as weaknesses and He already has a plan for them. We just have to trust that He will equip us for the task he has given us. Actually this verse says He has already equipped us. He knew from before we were even a thought who He wanted us to be and he filled us with all we need to become that person.
The verse ends with, “Then the Lord put forth his hand and touched my mouth; and the Lord said to me, “Behold, I have put my words in your mouth.” Jeremiah didn’t have to know what to say, God gave him he words to say. God put His words in Jeremiah’s mouth. That is awesome. I hope God will do that for me too! When I am writing my podcasts I ask God for it to be His words I am sharing instead of my own. Who wouldn’t want God’s word’s in their mouth? God also tells Jeremiah not to be afraid because He will deliver him. I am sure it took Jeremiah awhile to let this all sink in. God can tell us not to be afraid and yet it is hard to not be afraid sometimes. Our human understanding of the world gets in the way of understanding how God will deliver us. There is a saying that I love and so I may have already shared it with you. However, I feel like it is something we can’t hear enough as it is so true. Instead of focusing on how big our problems are, or in this context, how big our calling is, we can focus on how big our God is.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those who are listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to say yes, we just need some extra courage. We are sorry we question you, our thoughts are not your thoughts and we don’t see all that you see. Please help us to trust more and question less. We love you Lord, you are amazing. It is incredible that you knew us even before we were formed in the womb. It is amazing that you love us that much. You are so powerful, help us trust that you will deliver us from evil and equip us for any call you give us. We are so grateful Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. In case you didn’t hear Tuesday’s episode I am heading on a retreat and so if there is a day where I do not post an episode, know that I am ok, nothing is wrong, I just either didn’t have wifi or life was happening and I didn’t get it posted. I am planning to still post one every day, but just in case it doesn’t happen I don’t want you to worry. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed day!
We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click here. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Have a blessed day!
Dance Like No One Is Watching
2 Samuel 6:14-16 “And David danced before the Lord with all his might; and David was belted with a linen ephod. So David and all the house of Israel brought up the ark of the Lord with shouting, and with the sound of the horn.”
I like this verse because it shows how happy David was that the Arc was coming back home. It says that David danced before the Lord with all of his might; and that David was belted with a linen ephod. I am not sure how much you know about David, so let me give you a quick recap. David is the King. He is usually dressed as a King in splendid garments. However, in order to bring the Arc of the Covenant back into Jerusalem David had set aside his royal robes and was “wearing a linen ephod”—a clear indication that he was not naked. The ephod David wore was a garment usually reserved for priests and those ministering before the Lord. As David led the procession of the ark into the city, he humbly laid aside his royal garments and worshiped the Lord, in ecstatic joy, as the representative of God’s “kingdom of priests.”
There is so much in these 3 short verses. First, David was dancing before the Lord with all his might. When is the last time you danced in front of the Lord with all your might? When is the last time you did anything in front of the Lord with all your might? What amazes me is that David was the leader, he was the king and yet he humbled himself and set aside his royal robes to welcome the Arc of the Covenant back into the city. David was the king and yet he didn’t care what others though of him. He didn’t care that he was wearing very little clothing. He didn’t care that he might look silly dancing around like a fool. In fact, in a later verse one of his wives sees him leaping and dancing before the Lord; and she despised him in her heart. When he got home she called him on his behavior and he didn’t try and defend it, he didn’t feel he needed to explain himself to her, he simply said in 2 Samuel 6:21, “It was before the Lord, who chose me above your father, and above all his house, to appoint me as prince over Israel, the people of the Lord—and I will make merry before the Lord.” He is basically saying that he doesn’t care what she thinks. The Lord has done amazing things for him, so he will praise him any way he likes.
I wonder what it would be like to have that kind of courage. Actually I don’t think it took courage for David. I don’t think it even occurred to him to stop and think about what others would think. I bet his love for God was so great, he couldn’t help but be filled with joy! I love that David was filled with joy. I have heard it said that martyrs, those who die for the faith, don’t really have a choice. Their faith is so strong, their love and belief is so strong that the option to stay alive as long as they denounce their faith, is not an option at all for them. They couldn’t do it. I think it similar with David and the way he worships. I think his heart is over flowing with joy of the Lord and so the option to “tone down” his praise, it not really an option for him. It is not something that would enter his mind. I don’t think he is thinking of others at all. I think his eyes are fixed on God and that is all he is thinking about when he is praising.
I wish this was me. I wish I could freely praise God without worrying what the person next to me is thinking. I wish I could just throw my hands up in the air or dance around the room without the fear of being judged. I pray for a holy boldness all the time. However, maybe I need to pray for a deeper faith, or a less distracted faith? Maybe I need to pray for God to help me keep my eyes fixed on Him so I am not thinking of what others might be thinking. It seems crazy to me that I would care more about what other people think than I would about what God thinks. I know God would be smiling down at me if I was to let loose and just worship with a childlike sense of abandonment. If I know God would be smiling, why do I care what others will think? This is my great mystery. This is the thing I keep trying to tell myself and yet I still get nervous about what others will think.
I am working on this and I hope to get to David’s level of praise someday. I pray I will be able to just let the Holy Spirit lead me however He wants to. I pray I will be able to give up that control and just follow the Spirit as He leads me in praise. I pray I will have so much joy, like David did, that I can’t help but dance and leap for joy. I pray I have so much joy I can’t contain it. Sometimes I stand in the back of the church during praise and worship in my class. This way I don’t have to worry about being judged because everyone else’s eyes are straight ahead focused on Jesus. I don’t know why I think people will judge me, I am not judging them, my eyes are fixed on Jesus too.
The last verse says, “So David and all the house of Israel brought up the ark of the Lord with shouting, and with the sound of the horn.” This is another thing I have been working on over these last few years. I am learning to praise God out loud. At prayer group I still use the praise sheets. They are sheets of paper with a bunch of praise sayings on them. When I first started going I had no idea how to praise and so these sheets were very helpful. I still find them helpful, although I also think of them as a crutch sometimes. I now know that Jesus talks to me. I know how to praise Jesus and so sometimes when I use these sheets I think I am using it as a crutch instead of listening to see what praise things the Holy Spirit brings to mind. I like all the things these sheets say and so I keep using them because I figure I am still new to praising out loud. However, sometimes I do try to “wing it” so that I can practice doing it on my own as well. I like both ways, but I prefer to read the sheets until I have more of them memorized.
The thing that stands out in my mind the most about these 3 verses is the joy of David. He was filled with so much joy it spilled out of him. He danced so freely. I just got a sense that the Lord was saying, “He wasn’t worried about what others thought of him because He knew who’s he is. He knows that he belongs to the Lord God almighty and if God is pleased, then that is all that matters. What can we do this week to be a little more childlike in our praise and worship?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all of those listening to this episode today. Lord we ask you to help us all to approach praise and worship in a child like manner with no fear of judgement. We ask you to help us care more about what you think of us than what other people think of us. We ask you to fill us with the joy that David had. We ask you to fill us with so much joy that it spills out of us and onto others. We love you Lord, you are amazing. You are worthy of all our praise. You are the King of kings and Lord of lords. We thank you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I just want to let everyone know that I will be going away on a New’s Year’s Retreat this upcoming weekend. I am starting the road trip to this retreat with a friend and two of my sisters tomorrow, Wednesday. I am hoping and planning to bring you a new episode each day like normal. However, if there is a day without one know that I am fine and I just didn’t have internet or life got in the way, as we have very long days of driving ahead. I am grateful for your grace this week. If there is a day without an episode you could go back and listen to one of the older episodes. There are over 400 to choose from. I look forward to bringing you a new witness tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you, and so do I. Have a blessed day!
They Believed Because Of Her Testimony
John 4:39-42 “Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me all that I ever did.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of your words that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world.”
I like this verse because it shows how important it is that we talk about our faith and how much God is doing for us. The opening sentence in this verse says, “Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony. What if she didn’t tell anyone what had happened. What if she was too afraid of what others might think to talk about it. She was already and outcast because of her lifestyle. She had 5 different husbands over the yeas and when she met Jesus the man she was currently living with was not her husband. The reason she was getting water at the hottest time of day is because she was too ashamed to get water in the morning when the rest of the women got their water. She did not want to be the center of attention. She didn’t want everyone looking at her and yet she ran to town to tell everyone about Jesus.
I wonder if all those people would have been saved if she was too afraid to tell her story. If she was too afraid to share her excitement over Jesus and what He did for her. The reason I ask is because sometimes I am afraid to share. Sometimes I get a prompting from the Holy Spirit to say something to someone and all this fear and doubt goes through my mind. I wonder what that person will think of me if I say it. I wonder if I will sound crazy or stupid. I wonder if they will even listen or if they will just walk away. I wonder if they will be mean. It sounds like this woman did not think about it at all. She had a conversation with Jesus and then ran right to town to tell everyone about it. I want her courage, her boldness, her humility. Or maybe her impulsiveness if she ran off without even thinking about it. Maybe I need more of that when it come to Jesus. Maybe I just need to act first and think later when it comes to following the promptings of the Holy Spirit.
Have you ever wondered if something you say or do could have this affect on people? It can. It might have already. A lot of times it is for us to plant the seeds but not to see the harvest. We have no idea how our words and actions can affect the course of someone’s life. Sometimes we say something and the person we say it to doesn’t really think much of it, but then down the road they see the significance of it. Think back to all the people that have been influential in your life. Did you know at the time they were going to be so influential? Did you know that advice they gave you was going to shape the kind of person you would become? Are those people still alive? Could you tell them now how influential they were? They may not know.
We don’t usually see the good in us as much as others do. It is an interesting experiment to ask those who know you well to tell you what they see in you, what they feel your strengths are as well as what your weaknesses are. I was reading a book titled “The Miracle Morning” and the author Hal Elrod suggested sending an email to those closest to you, this can include family, friends and co workers. He suggests you email them and ask them to tell you the top 2-3 areas of weakness you may have and then also some areas of strength. He said it is a great way to see if you are living life intentionally and if you are giving off the vibe you want to give off. At the end of the book he gave a sample email to send out. I think if you asked others how they see you, you will be surprised. They will see things in you to admire and look up to and you may not see them.
The verse ends by saying that although the people in the town started to believe in Jesus because of her words, now they believe because they heard Jesus for themselves. I love this part too because I feel it takes the pressure off of me. I just have to tell my story, I just have to talk about what Jesus has done for me and hopefully that will be enough to lead people to find Jesus. It is not my responsibility to make them Christian, to save their soul, to teach them everything they need to know about Jesus. Jesus will do that. It is just my job to tell them about my encounter. If I tell people how God is working in my life, that will be enough to get them to seek God so they can find out more. I truly believe our stories our powerful enough to bring others to Christ and this verse is a great witness to that.
Sometimes we think our story is not big enough, interesting enough, important enough to tell others. We feel we have lived a boring, normal life and so others won’t want to hear about it. This is a lie from the enemy. He knows how important our stories are and he knows others need to hear them. There isn’t a single person that gets through this life without hardships, without struggles. Maybe you feel your struggles are small compared to others and yet someone else might be having the same struggle you had and they feel like it is so overwhelming. God might be doing big amazing things in your life, and that is awesome, tell people about it. God might be doing small, almost unnoticeable things in your life and that is amazing too, tell people about it. There are some people, a lot of people, who don’t know God. They don’t know that the reason everything went so well and things fell into place so nicely is because of God. However, if you tell them about the little ways you see God showing up in your life, they will start to see Him in their life as well.
I know it is hard to speak up sometimes. I know this world doesn’t seem to be super friendly to people who want to talk about Jesus. I know there are a million reasons we can come up with for why we shouldn’t share our story. I know the enemy is whispering in your ear that you don’t have anything to share. He is saying your life is too boring, no one wants to hear about your life. I know all of that and yet if you read this verse hopefully you can see the importance of sharing your story anyway. What if your story was the story someone needs to hear today to find Jesus, or to come back to Jesus? Can we join together and be brave enough to share our story so that we can bring others to know Jesus? Can we do that for God? If you feel like you are not brave enough, I know I am not some days, then ask God for help. He gives us what we ask for, especially if we are asking for things that will help us build up the kingdom of God. How is God working in your life and who can you talk about it with today?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Please help us to see how you are working in our lives. Please open our eyes to all you do for us and help give us the boldness to share it. Dad, we are asking for you to help us to spread our story to all those we meet so they can start to see you working in their lives. We ask that you help us not to believe the enemies lies that our story is boring, or that we don’t have anything to say. We love you Lord, you are working in our lives and we want to share that with others. We just need your help to do that. Thank you Lord! We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Satan is the Accuser
Zechariah 3:1-4 "Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him. And the Lord said to Satan, “The Lord rebuke you, O Satan! The Lord who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you! Is not this a brand plucked from the fire?” Now Joshua was standing before the angel, clothed with filthy garments. And the angel said to those who were standing before him, “Remove the filthy garments from him.” And to him he said, “Behold, I have taken your iniquity away from you, and I will clothe you with rich apparel.”
I chose this scripture this morning because when I read it I was reminded of a powerful story someone told at prayer group yesterday and I felt that was confirmation from the Holy Spirit that I should talk about it. I also love to talk about this topic because I feel it is one we have a hard time believing. These verses are from the old testament, so Jesus hadn’t even died on a cross for them and yet God is taking way Joshua’s sin. The first sentence in these verses says, “Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him.” Did you know that Satan does this to us too? When you hear that voice pointing out all the things you have done wrong and you start to feel shame building up inside, or you start to feel like you are an awful person, that is Satan. That does not come from God. God never accuses us. The Holy Spirit will sometimes convict us of our sins, but always does so in a loving way that make us want to change, but does not make us feel guilty and certainly doesn’t fill us with shame. That is all Satan.
I have heard people say that Satan is the Father of lies a lot, or the prince of darkness, but I don’t hear people talking about how he is the accuser. This is also why I wanted to use this verse this morning. This way all of you who are listening will know that when you hear someone listing off your sins, you will know that it is not God, it is Satan. Knowing this can take a lot of the pressure off because when you start to hear the enemy accusing you, you can command him to leave and you can ask the Holy Spirit to come fill you up. In the verse above it says, “The Lord said to Satan, “The Lord rebuke you, O Satan!” You can rebuke Satan as well. What I have learned to say from my prayer group is, “In the name of Jesus, I rebuke you Satan and I send you to the foot of the cross.” Evil Spirits flee at the name of Jesus. They are subject to Him and so if you send them to the foot of the cross in Jesus’ name, then they have to go. Then Jesus can take care of them.
The next part says, “The Lord who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you! Is not this a brand plucked from the fire?” This part was a bit confusing. I did not have any idea what it meant. Luckily I did not skip over it, but I took a minute to look it up online. Apparently what it means is that we were chosen by God. The fire is all the accusations that Satan is throwing at them, and God is plucking them out of that fire because the Lord has chosen these people to be His chosen people. God has done this for us too. I love this verse so much because it shows that God has loved us and saved us from the beginning. The Old Testament if full of stories about God saving his people. I like this one though because it talks specifically about God saving them from Satan and all his accusations. Yes, we are sinners, Satan is not lying, but God chose us anyway. God sees us for who we are inside, not for our sins. God chose me and He chose you. You are chosen by God. He sees you!
This next part is perhaps my favorite part. It says, “ Now Joshua was standing before the angel, clothed with filthy garments. And the angel said to those who were standing before him, “Remove the filthy garments from him.” And to him he said, “Behold, I have taken your iniquity away from you, and I will clothe you with rich apparel.” First, just the fact that Joshua got to interact with an angel is pretty cool. I wouldn’t mind that. That would be awesome. What I love though, is that the angel said that they took away his iniquity and clothed him with rich apparel. They wiped away his sin, and they gave him new clothes so that he would look on the outside like he did on the inside. God is so good!
Did you know when Jesus died on a cross he took away our iniquities too? Did you know when He died He took all of the sins we will ever commit with Him. An eternal life in Heaven is our inheritance from Jesus dying on a cross. I am pretty sure I have talked about an inheritance mentality vs. a performance mentality before and yet I am going to go over it again because it is really hard for us to grasp. Most of us grew up with and still have a performance mentality. We feel we have to earn love and respect. This is true in the world a lot of the time, so we apply it to God and we try to earn His love and respect. We constantly feel we are not doing enough. We are constantly trying to figure out what we need to do to make God happy and to earn His love. God already loves us. There isn’t a single thing we need to do to earn his love. It is freely given to all.
This is an inheritance mentality. We understand that we don’t have to do anything because God already loves us. Think of an inheritance you might get if you have a loved one who dies. Let’s say your grandparents die and you inherit their farm. What did you do to inherit that farm? Nothing, they died and that is why you inherited the farm. It is the same with the Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus died on the cross and because of that we have inherited the Kingdom of God here on earth and the ability to spend eternal life in Heaven. We did not inherit it though any action on our part. We are just the beneficiaries of Jesus’ death. I hope that makes sense as it can be life changing when we learn to truly believe that we don’t have to earn heaven and we don’t have to earn God’s love. If you allow that to change the way you go through life, your life will change.
I want to end with the story that was told at my prayer group yesterday. Actually it was first told at our Encounter class and I am not quite sure how it came about. I want to say it was a dream the instructor had, but I don’t remember clearly. I am also probably not going to be the best at retelling it, but I think I will hopefully do a good enough job that you get the gist of it. There was a woman and she was walking down a dark hallway towards a bright light. She could feel the accuser behind her calling out all of her sins as she walked down the hallway. He was calling out every sin she had ever committed in her whole life. She was feeling so ashamed as she knew he was speaking the truth and that she had done all those things. When she got to the end of the hallway and walked into the light she saw God. He was sitting there behind a desk, looking like a judge and He said, “Well, you have heard the charges, how do you plead?” Just as she was about to say guilty, as she knew she had done those things, Jesus walked up next to her, he wrapped a red mantle around her and said, “Not guilty.”
It makes me tear up every time I hear this because it is such a great visual of what Jesus did for us. He is the reason we are saved. He is the reason our sins are forgiven. We cling to our sins, we won’t let them go. We remember them and we hold on to them. God doesn’t. He just wants us to repent and move on. Tell God what you did, go to confession and then forget about them. God has forgotten about them, so why are we remembering them? Why are we clinging to them? Let them go. Jesus died so they could be forgiven and forgotten, it is our duty to let them go once we have confessed them and repented. Whenever you are tempted to hold on to your sins, whenever you have the accuser on your back listing off your sins, I want you to picture Jesus standing next to you, wrapping his red mantle of love around you and picture Him saying, “Not Guilty.”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you and are so grateful you love us so freely. We are grateful you send Jesus to die on a cross for us. Father, help us to switch from a performance based mentality to an inheritance mentality. Help us to realize we don’t have to do anything to earn your love and forgiveness, we already have it. Dad, help us to see we don’t have to earn our way into heaven. Help us to understand it all. Lord, we ask for the Holy Spirit to work on our hearts and to soften them and help us to see you the right way. We pray for wisdom and knowledge to understand you and all you have revealed to us. You have given us so many reasons to be grateful and we definitely are grateful. You are amazing and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on my journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed weekend!
Praise Is The Way Out Of The Darkness
Psalm 150 “Praise the Lord! Praise God in his sanctuary; praise him in his mighty firmament! Praise him for his mighty deeds; praise him according to his exceeding greatness! Praise him with trumpet sound; praise him with lute and harp! Praise him with timbrel and dance; praise him with strings and pipe! Praise him with sounding cymbals; praise him with loud clashing symbols! Let everything that breathe praise the Lord! Praise the Lord!”
I decided I would take some scriptures from my Encounter Ministries class. We are definitely learning how to walk boldly with Jesus in that class, or maybe more with the Holy Spirit. Wherever the Holy Spirit is God and Jesus are not far away. The reason I hesitated when I read this Psalm is because I talk about praise a lot. I thought you might be sick of hearing about praise and I thought I might not have anything new to say about praise. However, I don’t think that thought was a nudge from the Holy Spirit, I think it was a nudge from the enemy. The reason I think this is because I know how important praise is, and so does the enemy.
There is so much power in praising God and the enemy knows that. Just the other day I was talking with some of the ladies in my Encounter class and we were talking about dryness in prayer and when we feel we are in the darkness. Have you ever felt like that? Have you ever felt like you are doing your part praying to God and yet you can’t feel Him, you can’t seem to find Him? Have you ever felt like He has abandoned you? You are not a lone, this happens to everyone at some point or another. We had a speaker at our conference the other day who said when we feel like God is pulling away, that is not a bad thing, it is actually a good thing.
Damian Stayne said during his talk that when we feel like God is pulling away from us, He is actually just stretching our heart muscle. If we want to grow in our faith, in our trust, in our love of God, our heart muscles must grow too. God is helping it to do that by gently pulling away at times and then coming closer. During the discussion with my friends and classmates we were talking about what we do in the dark times. One woman said she just had a few days where she felt alone. The previous days she had felt very close to the Lord and it felt amazing. Then she entered a few days where she couldn’t feel the Lord. She felt alone. She said she remembered hearing somewhere that when you are in the darkness you should praise the Lord. She decided even though she didn’t feel like it, she would praise the Lord and in a few days she came out of the darkness.
I think I may have mentioned this before, but in case you have never heard this before, Mother Teresa was known for her love of Jesus. She had a very personal and intimate encounter with Jesus on a train one time and it fortified her faith beyond words. She loved Him. When others met her, just by being around her, they loved Jesus too. Her love for Jesus was overflowing. Mother Teresa also went through a dark time. She would go into prayer time and she couldn’t pray, she didn’t feel God anywhere. There were times when she questioned if He existed. She knew He did, because she had seen Him and yet she didn’t feel like He existed. This dark period for her wasn’t just a year or two, I believe it was more like 50 years. I saw one place online that said, “For nearly 50 years, Mother Teresa endured what the church calls a “dark night of the soul” — a period of spiritual doubt, despair and loneliness that many of the great mystics experienced, her namesake St. Therese of Lisieux included.”
Can you imagine that? Fifty years of spiritual doubt, despair and loneliness and those around her did not know. She did share this information with her spiritual director, but most of those around her would have said she was a happy person, so full of the Light of God. She smiled a lot and spread God’s joy to so many others. It makes me sad to think she didn’t have that joy inside of her. I pray that none of you listening to this podcast have to endure 50 years of suffering like she did. You will probably have to endure some times of darkness, times when you feel lonely, you feel God has abandoned you, and so on. When this happens, remember this episode and praise God through it.
I believe that praising God more is the answer to so many questions. I believe it is the solution to so many of our problems. I was praying one time while I was out for a run and I asked God to tell me what I was doing that was different than others. I asked Him to tell me why I was able to have such a deep trust in Him and I really felt like He said it is because I praise Him so much. I love to listen to praise and worship music. Ever since I discovered Christian music I have been in love with it and listen to it any chance I get. Spending all this time praising God has definitely increased my faith I have also had a practice of daily (or as close to daily as I can get) gratitude. I think this had really made a difference too. I think both of these help train my mind and help my mind stay focused on the things that are important. They keep pointing me back to Jesus.
If you find yourself enduring what the church calls the “dark night of the soul” try praising God through it. I don’t know a lot about the “dark night of the soul,” but I don’t think it is typical that it lasts as long as it did for Mother Teresa of Calcutta. I believe Damian said his lasted about 10 years. However, you can also have dark periods of isolation that last just a few days, like my friend had a few weeks ago. The timing of it all is up to God. God has a purpose for this period of isolation and only He knows when it has done its job.
I don’t know that praising God while you are in the Darkness will get you out of the darkness any faster because God has His own timing. I do believe that it will help you endure the darkness better. I believe praising God is a great way to get outside of your thoughts and focus on God and all He has done for you.
I am going to read Psalm 150 to you again so you can hear the intensity in which the author of Psalm believes in praising the Lord. I think the words of the Psalm are the best words to leave you with today.“Praise the Lord! Praise God in his sanctuary; praise him in his mighty firmament! Praise him for his mighty deeds; praise him according to his exceeding greatness! Praise him with trumpet sound; praise him with lute and harp! Praise him with timbrel and dance; praise him with strings and pipe! Praise him with sounding cymbals; praise him with loud clashing symbols! Let everything that breathe praise the Lord! Praise the Lord!”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to praise you and love you forever. Lord, we ask that you be with everyone, even those going through that dark night of the soul. I pray that you give them the strength they need to make it through to the other side. We know on the other side of that darkness is light. We know it is not just light, but also growth and new treasures that you have for us when we get to the other side. We thank you Lord, you are truly wonderful. We know you never abandon us and we love you for it! We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed day!
We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click here. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Have a blessed day!
Start A Fire In My Soul
2 Timothy 1:5-6 “I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, dwells in you as well. For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands.”
I was listening to some praise and worship songs this morning and I was looking for one song in particular because I just love it. I couldn’t remember the name but I remembered which playlist it was on, so I searched through and found it. It is called Start a Fire and it is by Unspoken. I love this song so much because I feel like it speaks to my soul. I feel it expresses how I feel so deeply. I love many praise and worship songs for this reason. I find the artists ability to capture how I feel about God and put it into words is remarkable. This is why I love listening to Christian music so much. I will hear a song and find myself nodding my head and saying, yes, that is exactly it. Sometimes I didn’t even know that was how I felt, I just couldn’t put words to it but as soon as I heard them I knew it was true.
I want to share the words of this song with you:
This world can be cold and bitter
Feels like we're in the dead of winter
Waiting on something better
But am I really gonna hide forever?
Over and over again
I hear Your voice in my head
Let Your light shine, let Your light shine for all to see
Start a fire in my soul
Fan the flame and make it grow
So there's no doubt or denying
Let it burn so brightly
That everyone around can see
That it's You, that it's You that we need
Start a fire in me
You only need a spark to start a whole blaze
It only takes a little faith
Let it start right here in this city
So these old walls will never be the same
Over and over again
I hear Your voice in my head
They need to know
I need to go
Spirit won't You fall on my heart now
You are the fire, You are the flame
You are the light on the darkest day
We have the hope, we bear Your name
We carry the news that You have come to save
Only You can save
There are so many things I love about this song. I love the part where it says over and over again I hear your voice in my head, let you light shine, let your light shine for all to see. I feel God is telling all of this. He wants us to let our light shine. It even says in the Bible, don’t hide your light under a bushel, put it on the table for all to see. I love the part where it says, am I really going to hide forever? As if we can hide from God. He sees us, He sees all of us and guess what, He loves us, just as we are. I love the part where it says, “Start a fire in my soul. Fan the flames and make it grow so there’s not doubt or denying. Let it burn so brightly that everyone around you can see that it’s you, that its you that we need.” This is what God wants from us. He wants His light to shine so brightly in us that everyone can see it. He wants us to be a reflection of Him and to pass His light on to others. This is my prayer for each one of you listening. I pray God starts a fire in your soul. Actually I pray He fans the flames on the fire He has already started. You would not be listening to this podcast if there wasn’t already a fire in your soul. I also love the part that says, “You are the fire, You are the flame, You are the light on the darkest day.” This is so true. I hope you know that. I hope you know that God is that fire you feel inside, He is the flame. God is the light on the darkest day. Your darkest day, that one where you felt alone, that one where you feel sad, mad, angry, or depressed. God is there and He is your light. He will light a way where you didn’t think there was one.
The verse above starts by saying, “I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, dwells in you as well.” I met with some of the ladies in my prayer group yesterday to review what we had learned at a recently attended conference. During the conversation we started talking about the faith that was passed down to us from our parents, who received it from their parents. Your faith came from some where and I think we underestimate how important it is that our parents passed our faith down to us. Maybe some of you listening didn’t have that. Maybe you found your faith on your own. Well, maybe God led you to your faith in another way. That is great if you were able to find your faith despite the lack of faith in your childhood.
For those of you that grew up going to church, I would like you to take a minute to appreciate how great that is. Maybe you didn’t appreciate it at the time because, let’s be honest, most kids don’t enjoy the fact that their parents made them go to church. However, if you look back now, can you see what a gift that was? Can you see how your parents were giving you a firm foundation on which you can rely for the rest of your lives.
I really don’t know if I would have made it through I made it through if I didn’t have my faith, if I didn’t have God right there with me. I don’t know if I would have had the strength to keep fighting, to keep searching for answers, to keep trying. Our family of origin, the family we grew up with has a large impact on who we become. Sometimes we can get caught up in seeing all the negative things that came from our family. Maybe today we could take a moment to think about all the good things that came from our family. Maybe we can think about what a gift it is that our parents passed down the faith to us. We can think back to how many other generations have kept the faith alive in our family so that we could have the foundation we have today. If you didn’t have that firm foundation, if you had to find it on your own, maybe think about how important it is to pass that along to the next generation, so that they aren’t lost and so they don’t have to find God on their own. What a gift that would be.
The verse above ends with, "For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands.” It reminds us that God is a Gift. Not everyone knows God, not everyone has received this gift. This verse is telling us to fan the flame of that gift. Fan the flame of the fire inside of us. As the song says, “Fan the flame and make it grow, so there's no doubt or denying. Let it burn so brightly that everyone around can see that it's You, that it's You that we need.” What if your love for God burned so brightly that there was no way to deny it? What if it burned so brightly that is spread like wild fire to all those you meet? Have you ever been with someone who had an infectious laugh? They are filled with so much joy and when you are around them you can’t help but laugh too? What if we were like that with the Holy Spirit? We were so filled with the Holy Spirit that when others were around us they can’t help but be filled with the Holy Spirit too? What if we made that our goal? What if our goal for 2023 was to fan the flame of our faith so that it grew so brightly that all could see it? This is my goal, will you join me?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you and we want to fan the flame, will you help us? We want to be so full of your love and goodness that it spills out on all those we meet. We want the fire inside of us to be like a wildfire that spreads to each and every person we come in contact with. We don’t want anyone to have to go another day without knowing your love, your mercy, your glory, and your grace. You are so amazing Lord. We are so grateful for those who came before us and passed on your faith to their loved ones. Please help us to pass on our faith to our loved ones as well. Give us the strength and the will power we need to do this Lord. We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to bringing you another witness tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
God’s Mercy Is Endless
Psalm 36:7-9 “How precious is your mercy, O God! The children of men take refuge in the shadow of your wings. They feast on the abundance of your house, and you give them drink from the river of your delights. For with you is the fountain of life; in your light do we see light.”
I love the imagery in this verse. I love how it talks about God’s mercy. This is something I don’t think we talk about enough. We talk about God’s love but not always His mercy. I think the reason for this is because we have a hard time believing in His mercy. We have a hard enough time believing that God loves us. Believing that and believing that he forgives us for our sins, all of our sins is just too much to believe for some of us. Why is it so much easier to believe these things for other people than it is to believe them about ourselves? I can believe that God will forgive my kids for all their sins. That comes easily to me. I can believe he loves them with his whole heart no matter what they do. I find that easy to believe because I know I love them with my whole heart no matter what they do. If I can do it in my broken state, surely God can do it.
I know that God’s mercy is endless. This made me think of a prayer that is part of the Divine Mercy Chaplet. Here is the prayer, “Eternal God, in whom mercy is endless and the treasury of compassion inexhaustible, look kindly upon us and increase Your mercy in us, that in difficult moments we might not despair nor become despondent, but with great confidence submit ourselves to Your holy will, which is Love and Mercy itself.” I think the Holy Spirit brought this to my mind right now is because it talks about God’s mercy. Is this something you believe for others, but not yourself? Is it something that you think you believe, but then when you examine your actions, you realize you are not quite there yet? This is where I am at most of the time. I know God is merciful. I know God loves me and forgives all my sins, and yet at times I act like I am not forgiven. I strive to do all I can to earn God’s love when in actuality, there is nothing I have to do because I already have all His love. Do you do this too?
The beginning of this verse says, “The children of men take refuge in the shadow of your wings.” Isn’t that a beautiful image? When I hear that verse I picture a giant Eagle just standing on the ground and I am standing next to Him. I am holding on to his little leg and He has His giant wing wrapped around me in protection. We can take refuge in the Lord, did you know that? There are many places in the Bible where it talks about God being our refuge. When you need protection, when you need a safe place to rest, rest in the Lord, He will be your refuge.
The next line says, “They feast on the abundance of your house, and you give them drink from the river of your delights.” Sometimes we can think of God in terms of giving things up. We can think if we want to be a good Christian then we have to sacrifice all we have. We think we need to go without. This is not the case. God is a God of abundance. Yes, we are called to give and to sacrifice, but God will not be outdone in generosity. The more you give the more God gives to you. God knows what things you like, He knows the things you need and He is taking care of them for you. He is a God of abundance. He is not just taking care of the things you need, but the things you want as well. It says, you give them drink from the river of your delights. God is so good. He isn’t just in the big things in life, He is in all the little details of your life too. He shares His delights with you.
This verse ends with, “For with you is the fountain of life; in your light do we see light.” God is our fountain of life. Everything we have flows through Him. We would have nothing without Him and we are nothing without Him. God is also our light. He lights the way for us and He is the light in the world that we see. What would be great is if we could get to a point where we that light for others. If we got to a place where God’s light shined so brightly though us that we could be that light for others. Now that I am saying that, I think we can be a light for others, even if we aren’t quite where we want to be. I am not sure we will ever be at a place where we think we have finally arrived. I don’t think this life is all about getting to the perfect place in life. I think this life is more about our journey to become the best versions of ourselves. I am not sure we ever arrive at that destination while we are here on earth. I think it is something we can continually work towards.
What came to my mind just after I wrote that we could be a light for others is all the ways we help to spread God’s love around this world. When you are talking about God or Jesus to those you meet, that is spreading God’s light. When you pray for someone, you are being a light to them. When you do something kind for someone, you are spreading God’s light to them. I know we probably don’t think of ourselves as spreading God’s light to others. We don’t think of ourselves as being a light to others, and yet, that is exactly what we are doing when we are talking about God, spreading His message, spreading His love. Sometimes we can spread God’s love, without even opening our mouths. There is so much darkness in the world, so much hatred and division. When we are the opposite of that, when we are love and light people can’t help but notice. We can be the light to others just by being different, just by being positive and not letting the world take our joy away. If we can do that, other’s will notice and they will want what we have.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Dad, we want you to be our light, we want to drink of the river of your delights. Dad, please help us to remember that you are a God of abundance. Help us to not be afraid that if we give to others we will be left with nothing. Help us to remember that you will not be out done in generosity. Father, your mercy is endless and we are so grateful. Please help us to remember and to believe this in our day to day life. Help us to believe that you truly do forgive our sins and that you love us always. We love you Dad and we ask all of this in accordance with your will an in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Remain Steadfast
Sirach 2:1-3 “My son, if you come forward to serve the Lord, remain in justice and in fear, and prepare yourself for temptation. Set your heart right and be steadfast, incline your ear, and receive words of understanding, and do not be hasty in time of calamity. Await God’s patience, cling to him and do not depart, that you may be wise in all your ways.”
What originally drew me to this verse was the word steadfast. Each person in my mentoring group asks God to lead them to a word for the year. This is a word them will help guide them throughout the year. Before receiving that word we do a worksheet that asks questions like “What do you want in this upcoming year?” “What has been getting in your way?” and “What is the truth?” Once we have our word for the year, we come up with a mantra, something to say everyday to remind us of what is important to us this upcoming year. For instance, my word is Breakthrough and my mantra is “Every day I step out in boldness to follow the promptings of the Holy Spirit, even if I am scared. I am unwavering in my commitment to grow in all areas of my life. This year is a year of breakthrough for me!!” One of my friends chose the word steadfast, so when I heard this verse at my prayer group yesterday I instantly thought of my friend Kelly.
Then when I went back to look up the scripture I decided it was a good one to share with all of you. I know that not everyone listening to this podcast is Catholic. If you are not Catholic and you do not have the Book of Sirach in you Bible, I want to encourage you to read through it. You can find it on biblegateway.com or any other website that has various versions of the Bible. If you just put “read Sirach” into the search bar, it will come up. There are also various Bible apps where you can read the different versions of the Bible. Sirach is full of so much wisdom, I think if you take a look at you will love it as much as I do.
The verse begins by telling us that if we come to serve the Lord, we should remain in justice and in fear. I think I have talked about fear of the Lord before, but let me just touch on it here really quickly. Fear of the Lord does not mean that you are afraid of God in the same way that you would be afraid of a bear, or someone robbing your house. Fear of the Lord means to be in reverent awe of His holiness, to give Him complete reverence and to honor Him as the God of great glory, majesty, purity and power. For instance, if God was standing in front of me, I would probably fall to the ground and kneel before Him, I may even be trembling. I wouldn’t be trembling because I was afraid he would hurt me, I would be trembling because it would be so hard to believe that God, who is all powerful, would visit me. Does that make sense? I hope that makes sense.
The other thing that first verse says is to prepare yourself for temptation. If you are going to serve the Lord you are going to be tempted. The enemy does not want us working for the Lord. He will do whatever He can do to make that not happen. So, don’t be surprised if as soon as you decide to teach Sunday School at your church that you get an offer to make extra money working at your job. Don’t be surprised if as soon as you decide you will help out with the youth group that your boss suddenly wants you to work late on those days. Right when you decide you want to go into ministry and work for a church, you get an amazing job offer somewhere else for a lot more money. You will be tempted if you decide to serve the Lord.
The next verse says, “Set your heart right and be steadfast, incline your ear, and receive words of understanding, and do not be hasty in time of calamity.” I looked up the definition of steadfast to make sure I understood the verse correctly. This is the definition I found, “To be steadfast is to be firmly fixed and not subject to change, to be firm in belief and determination, and to be loyal and faithful.” God is asking us to set our heart right and then be firm and not to change it. He is calling us to be loyal and faithful in our beliefs. Can we do that? Can we set our hearts right and be steadfast? Next, the verse says to incline your ear, and receive words of understanding. This is something I talk about a lot because I feel God talks to me about it a lot. Are you taking the time to listen to the Word of God? Are you listening to what God wants to say to you? I feel as though God has a lot to say to us and we just aren’t listening. When this verse is talking about receiving words of understanding, it is not talking about words from the world, He is talking about His words of understanding. If you spend even just five minutes listening to the Lord each day, you will have such a greater understanding of your life.
This verse ends with “Do not be hasty in time of calamity. Await God’s patience, cling to him and do not depart, that you may be wise in all your ways.” Don’t jump to fix things on your own in time of calamity. For instance, you might have a loved one that is struggling and you want to just fix everything for them. However, this verse is telling us to wait for God’s patience. Maybe it is not a good idea for us to fix it. Maybe our loved one needs to go through this thing. On Monday nights mentoring session my mentor talked about how we usually don’t get our breakthrough until we have hit rock bottom. The same is true for our loved ones. What if we are taking away their chance at a breakthrough because we keep preventing them from hitting rock bottom?
The same is true in our own lives too. Most of the time when things are crazy in our lives, we aren’t sure why the things are happening. We can’t see the plan, we can’t see beyond the chaos. However, God can. He can see it all. He knows why we are in the mess we find ourselves in and He knows our way out. The verse says to await God’s patience, and then it also says to cling to him and do not depart, that we may be wise in all our ways. If we cling to God He will get us through whatever we are going through. He can get us through anything. If we listen to God and let Him guide us, he will lead us out of any calamity that we find ourselves in. I know it is hard to be patient. It is hard to be patient when everything is going right, being patient when calamity strikes is almost impossible. I say almost impossible because all things are possible with Jesus who strengthens us.
We can do this! We can await God’s patience and we can cling to Him and not depart. We can be steadfast in our love for Him. We can be steadfast in our listening to the Word of God and our reading of the Word of God. We can remain in justice and in fear and we can be prepared when the enemy tries to tempt us. I think it is important to remember that we will be tempted. This is important because then we can recognize the enemies temptations for what they really are and we can turn them down. Remember if we want to serve the Lord, we will be tempted, but we have the power to resist because we have the power of God living inside of us. We can do all things through Christ who strengthens us.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, you are amazing and we are so grateful for You! Lord, help us to resist any temptations that come along and try to distract us from our goal of serving you. Help us to remain steadfast in our love for you and help us to await your patience. Lord, you know what each person listening to this episode needs and I ask you to hear the prayers of the hearts today Lord. We pray all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I want to ask everyone listening to consider giving a witness for Witness Wednesday. I know they really help build up the faith of others. I know you probably don’t think you have anything to talk about, I certainly did now know I had so many witnesses to give. Just think about any time in your life when things either worked out really well, or didn’t work out really well. Where was God in all of it? What did you learn from it? You have a story, we all do, and sharing them helps and encourages others to see they are not alone. Please give it some thought this weekend. I look forward to spending time with you again on Monday. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed weekend!
Where Sin Increased, Grace Abounded All The More
Romans 5:20-21 “Law came in, to increase the trespass; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that , as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord."
When I read this verse this morning I knew it was the one to talk about because one of the speakers mentioned it in their talk last week at the conference and I thought he made a really good point. I will see if I can help you see the beauty in the time we are living in. Let me begin with the first line of this verse because I didn’t understand it. It was one of those lines that I just want to skip over to get to the part I can explain at least a little better. However, my commitment to you is that we will really examine these scriptures and we will gain a better understanding of what they mean. We can not do that if I skip over the ones I don’t understand. So, instead I decided to see what those who do Bible commentary have to say about this verse.
The reason I don’t understand it is because it sounds like it is saying God gave us the law so that we might sin more. Do you see why that would be confusing to me? Why would God want us to sin more? Figuring out what scriptures like this is really saying is why I love doing this podcast. A few years ago, if I was reading that on my own, I probably would have just moved on, I don’t know that I would have looked it up to see what it was saying. This is another reason I am grateful for each of you listening to this podcast. You push me to learn and to grow because you are willing to learn and grow with me. Thank you!
What I found out about this verse is that ever since Adam and Eve took and ate of the apple, sin came into the world. It is not that people were sinning more, it was that they were noticing their sin more. In this verse, Paul is not saying that God introduced the Law because He wanted to make us sin more, but that He wanted us to be more aware of our sins and the fact that we had a totally sinful nature. We were already sinning, we just didn’t realize what we were doing was a sin. The analogy I read said its like accusing a kid of stealing a cookie before you even tell him what stealing is. If there is no law against taking a cookie then he is not stealing it. However, once there is a law and once he understands it, then any cookies he takes after that is willful disobedience. God was helping us to see all the ways we were not living how we were meant to live. They say the first step to change is acknowledging that you need to change. How could the Israelites be expected to change if they did not know what they were doing was wrong? This was the point to the law, to show them their sins, not to make them sin more.
The next part of the verse above says, "but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.” This line explains to us that God didn’t just give them the law, but He gave them grace as well. Here is a quote from an article titled, "Pastor: What the grace of God does in us” by Rev. J. Patrick Street. I will place a link for it in the show notes (click here for article). This is what the pastor said about grace:
“You see that the grace of God is more than salvation but also everything we need for life and godliness. The definition of grace could be “God's life, power and righteousness given to us by unmerited favor.” It is through grace that God works effective change in our hearts and lives. Grace gives us a new life which is not condemned by God. Through God's grace we are forgiven, transforming our thinking, resulting in the renewal of our mind and heart. Through grace we live the kind of life that God would like every one of His children to experience.” The grace of god is essential for us to live the way God wants us to live. We need God’s grace.
One of the speakers at the conference was talking about how the world is crazy right now. He was talking about how the devil is having a hay day with the world and that sin is running rampant. He also said we shouldn’t be afraid because where sin increased, grace abounded all the more. God’s grace is alive and well and is within all of us. We received a word of prophecy almost six months ago in our prayer group and I think it fits well with what we are talking about today. Let me read it to you:
"How often I tell you my people to listen. To listen to my word, to not harden your hearts, but to listen to my voice. How often I tell you parables, parables that compare to life, to the life you live. You look around you and you think the world has never been in worse shape than it is now. For you that is true for others that have come before you they felt the same. But the world is in the best shape it has ever been in because I was born into this world and I gave my life for each one of you and redeemed you and set you free. So do not look at the world, look at me and do not listen to the world, listen to me, to my voice. I am faithfulness itself and I am faithful from the beginning until the end of time. You have nothing to fear. You have NOTHING to fear. You have a grand and glorious God who has fought the battle and won the victory. Listen to what I tell you. Do not look at the world, look at me. Open your hearts, listen to my Word, and I give you life.
Grace is abounding today just as it has so many times before. God knows all that will happen. He is not surprised by any of it. He will give us grace according to our need. God knows what we need and when we need it. We can trust Him to take care of us. I think it is important to know what is going on in the world. I think we should be walking through life with our eyes wide open, and at the same time I don’t think we need to be scared of what is coming. God is prepared, and He is preparing us. It can be daunting to see all the craziness that surrounds us, all the mayhem. There is so much we could worry about and yet God is calling us not to worry. He is calling us to trust him and to rely on His grace. I believe the reason we are seeing so many people that God is using in miraculous ways right now is precisely because of all the evil in the world right now. God’s grace is all around us and we just have to rely on that instead of relying on the world.
God is telling us in the word of prophecy that He gave to my prayer group that we need to not look at the world, but look at him. He does not want us listening to the world, but He wants us listening to His voice. He is telling us we have nothing to FEAR, so why aren’t we listening to Him? Why are we so fearful and anxious all the time? Why are we so worried about the future when we know the ending to the story? We know what happened, death was defeated, sin was defeated, the enemy was defeated. It doesn’t matter what it looks like here on earth. It doesn’t matter who seems to be winning. God has already won the war and He as already defeated the enemy. I will leave you with the Lord’s words today, “You have nothing to fear!”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this podcast today. Lord, we know you are amazing and we know you have already won the war, so why are we so anxious and scared. We ask you to take this anxiety from us Lord. We ask you to fill us with your grace and help us to live the life you want us to live. We are so grateful for the grace you have already given us and we ask you for more Lord. Lord, we ask you to help us to see the world through your lens. Helps us to see what you see. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Damian Stayne's Website with Testimony videos Click Here
http://www.coretlumenchristi.org/videos.php#
We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click here. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Have a blessed day!
Can I Learn to Hope Against All Hope?
Romans 4:18-21 “In hope he believed against hope, that he should become the father of many nations; as he had been told, “So shall your descendants be.” He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead because he was about a hundred years old, or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. No distrust made him waiver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.”
There is so much in these four short verse. It begins with, “In hope he believed against hope that he should become the father of many nations, as he had been told.” I wish we could believe in hope against all hope. We have all been in one situation or another when it looked like it wasn’t going to work out. We have all been in a situation where what we wanted seemed to be agains all hope. Think back to a time when all hope was lost. Can you think of a time when you were telling yourself, or maybe others were telling you that there was no hope? This is the type of situation Abraham was living. God told him he would be the father of all nations and yet he was 75 years old, which was pretty old in that day and age and he didn’t have any children. Abraham had plenty of reasons to doubt what he was told.
I like how the verse says his faith did not weaken when he considered his own body, “which was as good as dead because he was a hundred years old.” The author of this section is even saying that Abraham was as good as dead. According to several sources I found online Abraham was 75 years old when God promised he would be there Father of nations and his descendants would be like the stars. Then he was 100 years old when Isaac was born. Can you imagine waiting 25 years for a promise from God? Maybe you can. Maybe you have been waiting 25 years to meet your future spouse, maybe you have been waiting 25 years to have children, maybe you have been waiting 25 years for your child or your spouse to become sober or get off all drugs. If you have been waiting a really long time for your dream to come true, or a promise to come true, look to Abraham for guidance.
I want to have the faith that Abraham had. I want to have a faith that believes in hope, against all hope. I want to stand firm in my faith and not have it weaken when I see all that is up against me. I want to have total trust as Abraham had. It says in this verse, “No distrust made him waiver concerning the promise of God.” How amazing would it be if our trust was so great that nothing could make us waiver in it? I have had this type of trust before. When my niece was born early, I believed that God was not going to take her from us. I believed in hope, against all hope that she would live. The doctors told us she would not, and we continued to hope and believe in God. The nurses told us that she would not make it and we believed and trusted God against all hope. They told us to say goodbye and we decided to praise God instead and we kept trusting, kept hoping and kept believing that our God could do anything, and He did.
This believing in Hope for us lasted months, months that seemed like years, but it was still months. I don’t think I have ever waited for something for 25 years. Actually I did wait for a long time for things to get better in my family with my husband and with my children. It was not 25 years, but it was at least 15 or so. I trusted that God would work it all for our good, I trusted that God was in control and that He was there with us through all of it. I believe I was given this kind of trust because I asked for it, because I looked for it. I don’t believe I have this trust in God because I am special, I don’t think I am just lucky, I think God gives us what we ask for.
Have you been intentional in asking God for what you need, or giving Him permission to give you all that He thinks you need? God tells us in Matthew 7:7-8 “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.” Ask God for what you want. Ask Him for a deeper faith, ask Him for a deeper trust, ask Him for more strength, ask Him for whatever you need and then praise Him when He gives it to you. I knew I needed more God in my life when I was facing the things I was facing. I knew I couldn’t do it on my own and I knew He was the only way we would all make it though. I know God can do amazing things and so I decided I wasn’t going to be afraid to ask for them. I wasn’t going to be afraid to seek Him and His gifts more. He never looks at us like we are greedy when we are seeking His gifts. He wants to give them to us. His gifts only bring us closer to Him and help us spread His word. Nothing bad comes from the gifts of the Lord. We don’t have to be afraid to ask for them, he loves when we seek Him and desire Him.
Sometimes I feel insecure talking about my faith in God because I feel as though others will think I am bragging, or think I am exaggerating. I feel the Lord has been telling me lately to talk about it more, to not hold back because if others see the kind of faith that is possible, they can search for it too. The kind of faith that Abraham had is not impossible. The faith that Daniel had in the lion’s den is not impossible. If you want to have a faith like this the first step is to ask for it and to keep asking until you get it. We heard in Luke 18:1-8 about the parable of the persistent widow. God likes when we ask Him for something over and over again. That is one way He knows how much we want it. The next thing to do is to seek it. Ask God what you need to do and then follow His promptings. Increased Faith is a gift from God. There are things you can do and should do, such as follow the promptings of the Holy Spirit, but ultimately, it is a gift from God. I have a sticky note right by my computer that reminds me to keep asking God for His gifts. That sticky note says, “It’s not that I am greedy, it’s that I am needy.” I need all that God has to give, especially if I want to become more like Him, especially if I want to spread His love all over the world. If you want the trust, faith and hope that is talked about in this verse above then the first step is easy, just ask for it.
I just want to take a minute to point out the last sentence in this verse, “No distrust made him waiver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.” The part of this line that I want to highlight is when it says, “but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.” Abraham grew strong in his faith as he gave Glory to God. How often are you giving Glory to God? Are you doing it even when you aren’t seeing the answers to your prayers? Are you doing it even when you have been waiting a really long time? I think we can all learn a lot from these few verses and one thing for sure is that his faith grew strong as he gave Glory to God. If his faith can grow by doing that, so can ours. What if we all gave a little more glory to God this week and this month? What if we praise him more and more and see what that leads too. I once heard a quote that I will never forget. I think it was Joyce Meyers that said it, but I can’t be 100% certain. The quote is, “If you complain, you remain, if you praise, you will be raised.” I truly believed that part of the reason my faith in the Lord is so strong is because I love praise music and I love gratitude. Those two combined have been huge in helping me grow in faith. Give it a try, and see if you love it as much as I do!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, you are amazing and we want to trust like Abraham trusted. We want to have faith and hope like he had. We want to believe in hope against all hope. We want to be unwavering in our faith, even when we look at all that seems to be against us. We want to wait faithfully, even if it takes 25 years for you to fulfill that promise you made to us. We love you Lord and we are so grateful for you. We are grateful you answer when we ask, we find when we seek and that you open doors when we knock. You are truly powerful and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Are Your Actions Bearing Fruit?
Proverbs 20:4 "The slacker does not plow during planting season; at harvest time he looks, and there is nothing."
My friend Jeremy sends out an email every few weeks with a reflection on a bible verse. I received one in the middle of December and I knew I wanted to share it with you because it addresses such an important topic. Here is what my friend Jeremy wrote:
“I know a man who, over the past year, ate a doughnut at church every Sunday, ate them and other sweets whenever offered at work, and pretty much lacked dietary discipline. Due to exercise and what he thought was "living right", it didn't seem to affect his weight or anything else. Until he went to the doctor. His lab results showed a large jump in cholesterol over the past year. (You can tell his mom it's still not outside of healthy range.) Whoops! What he thought was having no effect was silently portending possible disaster if not curbed.
I know a student (or two or three) who, over the past semester, did little homework and thought it wasn't really having a big impact on their grade - after all, homework was only worth 10% of the grade! Then came the Final (worth 20%), and they had no idea how to do any of it...then they wondered if there was anything they could do after the Final to get their grade back up? Now, the teacher had to remind them that it's called "Final" for a reason...
These stories made me wonder, what else are we doing that we think isn't harming us because we don't see the immediate effects, but in reality it is leading to a harvest of nothing? I can think of several examples...maybe thinking angry outbursts here and there have no impact only to realize later the victims of these outbursts now fear you? Or perhaps indulging (or just enjoying) gossip or social media dissing and doxxing thinking they do not hurt your ability to see people in God's light? Or that lustful thoughts and actions don't hurt your relationships? Or filling yourself with the world's media messages rather than God's Message in his Word doesn't shape you into something less beautiful?”
I think why this message from Jeremy convicted me so much is because he is talking about something that is so easy to do. It is something that is so common. I have definitely found myself in this trap a lot over the past few years. We can get so caught up in doing normal, every day things that everyone else is doing and we don’t realize the harm we are causing. I liked Jeremy’s example of how we can think that it is not a big deal to gossip or to talk about others behind their back. We might think it is not causing any harm, they don’t even know we are doing it. First, the unintended consequence of this is that you start to see them in a negative light. You start to see them as the rumors portray them instead of how they might really be. Second, others around you may start to wonder if you talk about them when they aren’t around? Those around you may think, “He talks about her when she is not here, I wonder if they talk about me when I am not there?” Another reason gossip is so bad is because it puts division among groups of people. Your church can’t function as one big family if there is division and gossip amongst members is the quickest way to get that division.
When I read the sentence about how you may not think your angry outburst has any affect on the people you yelled at and yet you find out later they are scared of you. This reminded me of a quote by Maya Angelou that said, “I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” We may think that the unkind thing we said to the cashier was not a big deal, but it was. Everything you say and do has the power to hurt someone, it can also have the power to help someone. What you say matters. How you make someone feel matters.
The verse above talks about how the slacker does not plow and then at harvest time he has nothing. We don’t want this to be us. We don’t wan’t to spend this life doing as we please and then when it comes time for eternal life we have nothing. God says we will know what is good by its fruits. Think about the things you are doing? Are they bearing much fruit? Do you know what the fruits of the Holy Spirit are? The fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
If you want to know if the things you are doing are good, you can look at what you get from them. Are these things you are doing producing good fruit? When you gossip, does it bring you love, joy, peace, kindness faithfulness, etc? I know when I gossip is brings an unpleasant feeling in my stomach and then I worry that the person I talked about will find out and feel bad. Worry is not a fruit of the Holy Spirit. Judging by how worry makes us feel I do wonder if it is fruit from the devil?
How about when you are angry and you say things while you are angry? Does that usually bear good fruit? Do you usually feel love, joy and peace afterwards? Does it make the other person feel loved, or at peace? I don’t think so, that hasn’t been my experience. When I lose my cool and yell at someone, I tend to feel awful afterwards and they seem to feel awful too.
What if we all took a few minutes to look at the things we are and are not doing in our lives and asked ourselves, is this bearing fruit? Is this having unintended consequences? Maybe it is something you didn’t realize. For instance, maybe you think you are just helping your son or daughter see the error of their ways, that seems noble right? What happens when you look at the fruit of your labor though? Are they seeing the error of their ways? Are they feeling loved and at peace? Is it bringing them joy? Or, do they feel unloved? Do they feel like nothing they do is ever good enough? Do they feel like we are being unkind to them?
I am not saying we shouldn’t ever correct our children, I know we need to train them up in the way of the Lord. However, what I feel the Holy Spirit was talking about here is when we are dealing with our adult children. I know we have strong feelings of how they should be living and I know those feelings are coming from a place of love. However, if what we are doing is not bearing fruit, maybe we could switch tactics. How can we love and accept them for who they are and yet help them to know God more? I don’t know. I do now that I have a strong feeling the Holy Spirit is asking us to look at the fruit of our labors and if it is not good fruit, stop doing it. Let the Holy Spirit guide you. Ask the Holy Spirit how you can help your son or daughter and then follow the path He gives you.
You may be surprised with the path you are asked to take. Sometimes it starts with love an acceptance and not saying the things you are thinking. Remember how God dealt with the Israelites when he set them free from Egypt? He started with love and basics first. He reminded them how much they were loved. He allowed them to do things He did agree with, like divorce, because He knew where they were at and He knew they weren’t capable of that yet. The same may be true with our children, young or old. They may not be capable of following all of God’s rules yet. First they much truly feel love and accepted. Look at all of Jesus’ interactions. He led with love and acceptance first. Come as you are. His love and acceptance is what won people over. He wasn’t saying what they were doing was right He was just loving them in the middle of it. We can do this too, if we rely on the Holy Spirit to guide us. How can we all show our love for those around us more? How can we lead with love? Let's take a close look at the things we are doing that we know we shouldn’t be doing and look for the unintended consequences. Let’s look at the fruit our life is bearing and make any changes we need to make.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to bear fruit in our lives, show us how. Lord, we don’t want to be a slacker and have nothing at harvest. We want to store up our treasures in heaven so at harvest we are fully prepared, show us how. Lord, we are just trying to love our children and if that is causing them pain please put on our hearts how to love them better. Dad, I really feel as though you are speaking to parents here and asking us to look at how we are making our children, especially our grown children, feel. I hear you asking us to look at the fruits of our actions. Please help us to do that. We love you Lord, you are truly amazing. We are so grateful you are so patient with us and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed day!
It Is Good You Exist!
Romans 8:14-16 “For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father!” it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God.”
I love scripture verses that talk about how we are the children of God. I love the image of God being our father. At the same time I understand how that image can be hard for some people. I had a wonderful father. I had a dad that wasn’t perfect, I am sure he feels he made a lot of mistakes, but he learned from them and then changed. I am from a large family and I know he was a different father for us younger kids than he was for the older kids. That is to be expected. None of us know how to be parents before we become parents. The younger kids get the benefit of having parents that have learned by making mistakes with the older kids. Even the older kids would agree that our dad is pretty great. He is such a great example of walking in the faith. Both of my parents are. He also made sure we felt loved. I never questioned if my parents loved me. I know not everyone can say the same.
The idea of God being our Father, makes it easier for me to feel like I am loved by God. I know a Father’s love and since He is God I can believe that His love is ever greater than any love we could receive from a Father here on earth. However, what about those who didn’t have a great father? What about those whose father was mean, abusive, absent, unloving, cold? There are all kinds of people in the world and all kinds of fathers. If you did not have a loving father, if you did not have a kind and generous father, then it may be hard for you to see God as your Father. If this is the case I would suggest that you read the verse that talk about God the Father. Read scripture and get to know who God is, who He truly is.
Another way to learn more about God as your Father is to ask Jesus to reveal who God is to you. It says in Luke 10:22 “All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father or who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” Guess what? Jesus chooses to reveal God the Father to you, all you have to do is ask and then sit and listen. God knows all you have been through. He has been there every step of the way with you. He is not surprised that you struggle to see him as your Father because you struggle with the idea of a Father. He knows all of this. Take your struggle to Him, talk to Him about it. Talk to Jesus about it. Ask Him to help you see God as your Father.
God is not a Father like any one of us has seen before. Even if we had great dads, they still can’t compare to the love of our Father in heaven. His love for us is complete, and immovable. There isn’t anything we can do to make Him stop loving us. I know it is hard for us to believe this, but it is 100% true. He loves us at the exact moment when we are choosing evil over good. He loves us when we turn away, he loves us when we are weak and he loves us when we are strong. He loves us when we repent and come back and yet he loves us just as much even if we don’t come back.
What I love about this verse is that it says, “For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received a spirit of adoption.” We don’t have to fear anything because God is our Father and He is taking care of us. We fear things because we think we are on our own. We fear things because we forget that God is in control. We think we have to be in control of everything and when we think like that it makes sense that we would fear things because who are we to solve all of our problems. However, we are not in control and we were never meant to be. We don’t have to fear things because we know that our Father in heaven is looking out for us. We know He is arranging all things for our good. We have been adopted by God the Father and we are His children. He is our protection and our refuge. We do not have to fear anything.
I also love when the verse says, “When we cry, “Abba! Father!” it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God.” I am not sure most of us think we have a close enough relationship to call God Father, Abba, or Dad. When I hear most people pray and when I pray I mostly say Lord, although I do tend to start my prayers with Heavenly Father. I think if we want to have a more intimate relationship with God, it is up to us to ask for it and begin to cultivate it. God wants to be closer to each one of us and yet He will not force it on us. If you want to be able to feel comfortable calling God Abba, or even Dad, then it is up to you to start.
I wanted to think of God more intimately as my Dad. I wanted to feel that closeness as if I was a little kid and I could just climb up on his lap and fall asleep. I didn’t really know where to start. I decided in my journal writing I would address the daily entries to God more informally. I started with “Dear Father,” as I felt Dad was too informal and I didn’t want to be disrespectful. As I continued to write to Him daily, or as consistently as I could, I felt I was growing closer to Him and I no long felt uncomfortable with calling Him Father and then I switched to Dad and that feels right now too. I have grown a lot closer to Him, and I do think of Him as my Father. It is not difficult for me to believe that I am loved by Him and that He delights in me. Do you know that He delights in you too? He does, it’s true! Your heavenly Father delights in you and you bring Him joy, unspeakable joy.
That doesn’t mean He likes everything you do, or say, but it does mean that He loves you always. I heard something at a conference last night from Peter Herbeck and I want to pass it along because it was so good. He woke up one morning and he opened his eyes and he felt as if he could see God smiling at him. Kinda like when a parent watches their child sleep. He felt as though he “caught” God watching him sleep and smiling at him. He asked God if He wanted to tell him anyting and he felt God said, “It’s really good you exist Peter. You were my idea and I don’t have any bad ideas.” This message is not just for Peter, it is for each and every one of us. It is really good that you exist Joanie, Peggy, Nancy, Kelly and everyone else that is listening. Put your name at the end of that statement. For instance, It is really good you exist Catherine. God is saying that to you today, He wants you to know He is so happy you are here.
I also think it is great that He said, “You were my idea and I don’t have any bad ideas.” Sometimes we can think it was a mistake that we are alive. We can think we don’t belong here, or that no one wants us here. However, if we ever start to think this way, we can remember that it was God’s idea to put us here, right now in this time and in this place. God doesn’t have bad ideas, so what is the good in all of this? I am meant to be here, I am here for a purpose. God loves me and is happy I exist.
Dear Heavenly Father I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Father, I ask you to heal all of our hearts. I ask you to help those who didn’t have loving fathers to help see you as that loving Father they missed out on having. I ask you to show them all the ways over the years that you were there loving them in the difficult times in their lives. Lord, open us up to seeing you are our Dad, our Abba. Soften our hearts so we can allow your love into our hearts. Open our hearts so we see that you did not give us a spirit of fear. Help us grow closer to you Dad. Help us to want to grow closer to you, help us to seek you. We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you are looking for something to help you start your New Year off right may I suggest getting my book Total Trust In God’s Safe Embrace. It takes you through 15 different things I did to increase my trust in the Lord. It would be a great beginning to this New Year of life we will hopefully be given. You can find the book on Amazon. If you have read the book would you do me a favor and leave an honest review on Amazon? It is a great way to help others find my book and let others know what you thought to it. Reviews do matter. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
God Loves You Just As You Are
John 3:16-17 “ For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”
I wrestled with God this morning when he gave me this scripture. “Isn’t that more of a lenten scripture?” I asked God. However, I still got the feeling He wanted me to talk about this passage, so here goes. What stuck out to me today was the last part of this verse. “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” I think often times we think of the Lord as sitting up in heaven looking down on us and judging us. We see Him as a judge who is looking for reasons to condemn us. I think God is trying to tell us this morning that this is not the case. He loves us and wanted to save us from our own mistakes. Sometimes we think our mistakes end with us and this isn’t always the case. Adam & Eve fell from grace and their mistake in taking the apple from the enemy created original sin. Every one of us was born with original sin and because of this we do many things that are against the way we should be living. Because of original sin, we no longer had a close relationship with the father. There always needed to be something to separate us.
Hebrews 9:1-9 tells us that in the temple a veil separated the Holy of Holies—the earthly dwelling place of God’s presence—from the rest of the temple where men dwelt. This signified that man was separated from God by sin (Isaiah 59:1-2). Only the high priest was permitted to pass beyond this veil once each year (Exodus 30:10; Hebrews 9:7) to enter into God’s presence for all of Israel and make atonement for their sins (Leviticus 16). God did not want this separation. This was not why He created Adam and Eve. At the beginning before their sin, He walked with them and among them. That is how it what was intended for our relationship.
I guess I think of this scripture usually as more of a Lenten scripture because when I hear the words “he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life,” I think of the sacrifice and I think of Jesus dying on the cross. I don’t think this is what God wants us to think of this morning. I think he wants us to focus on two things. The first one is His love for us. Think of how much God has to Love us in order to send us his son. Think of how much love he must have for us to sacrifice his only son in atonement for our sins. God must really love us. He does love us that much. God’s love for us is so great and it is never changing. I heard Steven Furtick on the Elevation podcast say the other day, my love for my kids is an 11. Out of 10, he loves his kids an 11. This is like God’s love for us. Take a minute and think of someone you love more than anything, it may be your spouse, your children, you parents, your siblings, your boyfriend or girlfriend, whoever it is for you. Think of how much you love them. Now if you multiply that number by 1,000 that is how much God loves us.
God’s love always amazes me because it is so pure and it is so unconditional. There is a new song I heard on the radio recently and I love it. It makes me tear up sometimes when I hear it because I think of all the people I know that don’t know God loves them like they are. There are so many people that don’t feel loved. They don’t feel accepted by anyone. It breaks my heart that they don’t know how completely loved and accepted they are by God. This new song is by King and Country, who are quickly becoming one of my favorite bands of all time, and the song is called, “Love Me Like I Am.” (Click Here for link to song) Here are the words:
I am a little unstable
Loose wires always getting tangled now
I am a little bit difficult
I can be a little self-critical now
I am a little unable
To put all my cards on the table now
But somehow You're still with me
It's amazing that You can
Love me like I am
And even when I can't
You still love me as I am
Oh, I don't know how You do it
And I know I put You through it
Yeah, it's amazing that You can
Love me like I
Love me like I
Am
I am a little uneven
In need of a little more healing now
Yes, I am
And I feel a little unfixable
You're nothing short of a miracle now
'Cause somehow You're still with me
It's amazing that You can
Love me like I am
And even when I can't
You still love me as I am
Oh, I don't know how You do it
And I know I put You through it
Yeah, it's amazing that You can
Love me like I
Love me like I
Am,
I just love this song and I love these lyrics. Mostly because they describe each one of us. Who among us hasn’t felt a little unstable at some point in our lives? Who hasn’t been self-critical or felt a little unfixable? I also love it because it describes God’s love so perfectly. He loves us just as we are. It isn’t that he will love us when we get our stuff figured out. It isn’t that he will love us when we aren’t feeling so broken. It is not that he will love us once we do this thing or that thing. God loves us right here, right where we are. God loves us completely just as we are. God loves us in the middle of the mess just as much as he loves us when we have things figured out. I don’t know who needed to hear that today, but God loves you, just as you are! You don’t have to change for him to love you. He already loves you. It doesn’t matter how many times you have turned away from Him, he still is there waiting with open arms to welcome you in. God loves you, just as you are!
The second thing God wants us to focus on is the part where it says, "For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” Christmas time is a time to celebrate baby Jesus coming into the world. It is a time to remember that God send Jesus, not to condemn us, but to save us. Baby Jesus is a symbol of that love I was just talking about. Baby Jesus is an answer to the promise God gave us. Such a small baby and yet so much love and hope inside of him. I think God wants us all thinking about how much He loves us today. If you are feeling lonely, which I know can be common during the holidays, remember how much you are loved by God and remember He is always right by your side. If you are feeling unloved today, remember how much God loves you just as you are. If you are feeling unaccepted by those you love today, remember God accepts you and loves you for you. I really feel strongly that this message was for someone listening that is struggling today. If that is you, know that God loves you so much that he gave me this message for you specifically.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, it is amazing that you can love us like we are. It is amazing that you can love us in our brokenness. We are so grateful for your love. Lord, please help us love like you love. Please help us to show those who feel unloved love. Please help us find those who feel broken and unloveable or un accepted and help us to love them like you love. It breaks my heart that so many people in the world can feel so unloved. Help us try to fix that. Show us how we can help those people feel loved. Help us to help them Lord. We love you so much and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus! I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click here. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Have a blessed day!
Can You Defend Your Faith?
1 Peter 3:15-16 "Rather, revere Christ as Lord in your hearts. Always be prepared to offer an explanation to anyone who asks you to justify the hope that is in you. However, do so with gentleness and respect and with a clean conscience so that those who slander you for your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame.”
When I heard this verse and then heard Father Mike talking about it I thought it would be a good verse to share today. Father Mike said this verse is the reason he studied theology in college. He wanted to be able to offer and explanation to anyone who asked about why he believed what he believed. This is something I think more of us should strive to obtain. I am not saying we should all go to college and study theology, although that does sound fun to me. I am saying we should all strive to learn more about our faith, our religion, and why we believe what we believe. I have heard a lot of people over the years refer to themselves as cradle catholic. This means they have been a Catholic ever since they were a baby. Unfortunately a lot of times it also means that they do not know a lot about the faith, or why they believe what they believe.
I know that does not represent everyone that has been Catholic since birth, but I do think it represents a lot of us. I remember when I got married and moved into our first house. We lived on Fairchild AFB near Spokane, WA. Once we got settled our neighbors came over and one of the first things I can remember them asking me was what the Catholic faith was all about. They asked me what we believe. I didn’t really know what to say. I did think of the creed, so I could come up with a few things to say, but mostly I froze. I loved my faith, I love being Catholic and yet I didn’t really know what to say when people asked about it or when people challenged it, which happened quite a bit.
I don’t know if that happens with all faiths or what, but as Catholics we are asked quite a bit why we believe what we believed. We are asked my we worship Mary? We are asked why we worship the Saints? We are asked why we can’t just talk to God directly, why we have to go to the Saints first? We are asked why we have to go to confession with a priest? Why do we think the Eucharist is the real flesh and blood of Jesus? For a good part of my life, I did not know how to answer these questions. I did know how to defend my faith or as the verse above says, I was not prepared to offer and explanation to anyone who asked me to justify the hope that is in me.
I remember not liking the fact that I didn’t have answers to these questions. I didn’t like the fact that I didn’t know why I believed what I believed. I bought a book called Catholic Apologetics. It explained why we believe many of the things we believe and where in scripture support for those beliefs could be found. Then I started to join Bible Studies and I learned so much more about God and what the Bible says. I also learned more about my faith and Catholicism.
I love being a Catholic, I love all of our sacraments, I love that we get to go to a priest for confession. I love that we get to hear the priest say, “The Lord has freed you from your sins. Go in peace.” For me, there is just something so special about releasing my sins to the priest and then hearing him say those words. It’s almost like a confirmation that God really does forgive me. I love that all Catholics, all around the world, all 1.3 billion of us are celebrating the same Mass on Sunday mornings. We are saying the same prayers, we are reading the same readings, we are sharing in the same Eucharist.
This verse does not just apply to Catholics, it applies to all Christians. Whatever your believe about Christ, be prepared to offer an explanation. When someone asks you why you love Jesus, what do you tell them? Do you have an answer? What do you say to someone who asks you, “If God is real, then why is there so much suffering and hardship and persecution that we see going on around us?” What do you say when you are asked, “If God knows everything like he seems to suggest, and not only that he seems to have it all worked out, then what’s the point in praying or talking to him at all?” There are a lot of questions that people have and they are looking to us for answers.
Some people are looking to argue, or to catch you off guard and try to convince you that your beliefs are false. This happens more often than we would like to admit. If we aren’t firm in our faith, if we aren’t sure of our beliefs, we may be persuaded that they don’t make sense or that they are foolish. We may start to question what we believe. We may fall for the lies of the enemy that what we believe isn’t really true. There are people that are very versed in the Bible and they use that knowledge to back up their beliefs. They are able to defend and explain what they believe and why they believe it and that can be really intimidating for someone who is not in the same position. Take the time to learn what you believe and why you believe it. Don’t just learn it so you know it, learn it so you can explain it to others that ask.
Although some people might be looking to argue, others are asking these questions because they really want to know. They may be thinking of becoming Christian and yet they just don’t understand the difference between the various religions. They may be searching for something and what you say might just be that thing that brings them to Jesus. Learning what we believe and why we believe it helps us grow not only in our faith, but in our relationship with the Lord. Studying what you believe usually entails reading the scriptures surrounding your faith. You can’t read scripture and not be changed. You cannot spend time in God’s Word and not grow closer to Him.
Before I end I want to call your attention to the ending of this verse too. It says, “However, do so with gentleness and respect and with a clean conscience so that those who slander you for your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame.” It doesn’t just matter what we say, it matters how we say it. As Father Mike says, “Don’t beat the person over the head with it.” Explain what you believe and why with gentleness and respect. Love is what will win people over for Jesus. If you are talking about Jesus and how much you love Him and yet you are not doing it with gentleness and respect the person you are talking too will not want more of what you have. If you are throwing your beliefs in someone else’s face, or trying to force them on them, they will be rejected. I do believe in evangelizing and spreading God’s Word to all we meet. I think this should be done more through our actions. I want to live my life in such a way that people look at me and say, “I want more of what she has.” That is my hope for all I meet. I hope when they see me and they see a reflection of Jesus. This is what we are called to do. We are all called to be a reflection of Jesus. He is the one that will bring people to His Father. What can we do today to be a reflection of Christ Jesus? What can we do to learn a little more about what we believe and why we believe it? How can we share that information with others in a gentle and respectful way?
Dear Heavenly Father I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode. Lord, we want to be able to share you with others. We want to be able to explain that hope and that joy that fills us up inside, please help us. Lord, we ask that you show us where to look, what to study, so we can be well prepared when our faith is challenged or when we meet someone that wants to know you. Help us lead others to you Lord and help us to do it with gentleness and respect. Help us to do it in a way that makes people want to lean in and learn more, not turn away and shut down. We love you Lord, you are amazing!! We are grateful for all you do for us and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to bringing you a witness tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Who Are You Relying On?
Isaiah 22:10 “You counted the buildings in Jerusalem and tore down houses to strengthen the wall.”
When I asked God to give me a verse he wanted me to talk about today this was the verse I felt I heard. Normally, I would read a verse like this and then find another one as this doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense to me. However, when I read it the first thing that came to mind was that they were trying to rely on themselves, instead of relying on the Lord. Let me read you the verses just before and after this to give you a little context. Isaiah 22:8-11 “The Lord stripped away the defenses of Judah, and you looked in that day to the weapons in the Palace of the Forest. You saw that the walls of the City of David were broken through in many places; you stored up water in the Lower Pool. You counted the buildings in Jerusalem and tore down houses to strengthen the wall. You built a reservoir between the two walls for the water of the Old Pool, but you did not look to the One who made it, or have regard for the One who planned it long ago.”
These verses start by saying that the Lord stripped away the defenses of Judah. If God took away the defenses I am sure Judah was not living how they were supposed to live. I am sure God was hoping that when he stripped away the defenses they would repent and turn back to Him. It actually says in the next verse Isaiah 22:12 "The Lord, the Lord Almighty, called you on that day to weep and to wail, to tear out your hair and put on sackcloth. God was calling these people to repentance and instead they turned to the weapons in the Palace of the Forest.
In verse 10 above it says, "you counted the buildings in Jerusalem and tore down houses to strengthen the wall.” When I looked up online what it was talking about when it said counting the houses one commentary said, “They numbered the houses of Jerusalem, that every house might send in its quota of men for the public service, or contribute in money to it, which they raised by a poll, so much a head or so much a house.” God was no longer protecting them and instead of repenting, instead of turning back to him and crying out for help, instead of relying on God as their shield and their refuge, they decided to rely on themselves. I think what God is wanting us to ask ourselves today is “Where are we relying on ourselves instead of God? Also, where might he be calling us to repent and turn back to Him?
I have heard the saying, “Pray like it is all up to God and work like it is all up to you.” I don’t think God gets upset with us when we do things to fix out situation. I don’t think He wants us to just sit around and wait for Him to do everything. I don’t think that is what this verse is saying. I think it is not what the people were doing as much as it is what was in their hearts when they were doing it. It is very different to pray to God for help and for protection and then to also fortify your city. There are plenty of cases in the Old Testament of the wars the Lord’s people fought. They prayed to God for protection and for victory, but then they actually had to go out and fight the war. I really don’t think God wants us to just sit and let Him fix everything. However, I do think He cares about what is in our hearts while we are working.
Have we prayed about a situation before doing anything? Have we stopped and asked God what we should do? Have we stopped to ask God for help in that situation? Are we moving forward with the next right step with the confidence that God is in control and that He will help us? God blessed the people in this verse with prophets. The Old Testament is full of prophets that told the people when they were doing things that upset the Lord. Did you know we have prophets in this day and age too? There are people out there, right now, telling us we need to repent. Telling us that God is not happy with a lot of things that are going on in the world right now. Are we listening? Are we even hearing them? We seem to be so caught up in the ways of the world that we are not paying attention to God and the way that He wants us to live. God is calling us and has always called us to be set apart from the world. He is calling us to a higher way of living. Will this mean that we might stand out from others? Yes. Will this mean that others might not understand us and might mock us or persecute us? Yes. However, it says is Matthew 5:10-12, “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” Catholic beliefs today, and all Christian beliefs are not popular beliefs. It is difficult to have a conversation right now, at least in America, because the country is so divided.
I have heard it said that we have all forgotten how to “agree to disagree.” If we don’t like someone else’s opinion then we jump down their throat and tell them all the reasons why they are wrong. The days where we can have a civil discussion about differing beliefs seem to have disappeared and often times we are attacked for our beliefs, and I am not just talking about Christians being attacked. Sometimes Christians are the ones attacking. Everyone is so set in their beliefs and feel so strongly that they want everyone else to believe what they believe as well. What if instead of beating people over the head with our ideas, we just presented them with love and left it up to God to change their hearts? It is not our job to make every person we meet a Christian. It is our job to make sure everyone we meet, knows Jesus, has heard of Jesus, has felt His love. God will do the rest.
Think about your interactions over the last week or so, especially during the business of the Christmas season. Have the people that you have interacted with seen Jesus in you this past week? We are called to be a reflection of Jesus. Have you been showing other’s the love of Jesus this week? Try to call to mind some of your interaction, would you want that interaction to be a reflection of Jesus? I know people who have been turned away from church or from religion and faith all together because they looked around at the congregation and they didn’t like what they saw. They didn’t understand how people who went to church on Sunday and worshiped God could act the way they did outside of church.
We are called to a higher way of living. We are called to be representatives of Christ all the time, not just for that one hour on Sunday. Today is the first day of our very last week in 2022. Next Sunday we will begin a whole new year. What could you do differently this next year to become more of a reflection of Christ? What could you do to represent Christ better in your day to day life? How can you grow closer to Christ in this upcoming year? The more we know about someone the more we can imitate them. How can you get to know Christ better this year? My challenge to you for this week is to take some time, sit with God and ask Him what He wants you to do differently this year. In what ways does He want you to rely more on Him and less on yourself.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord show us the ways we are relying on ourselves instead of you. Help us to rely more on you. Help us to see we don't have to do it ourselves. Lord help us to take time this week to see what we need to change in this upcoming year to depend more on you to be more of a reflection of you. Lord when others see us we want them to see you show us how. Show us how to be a better representation of you through our entire week, not just on Sunday. Lord we love you and we are sorry that you are calling us to a different way of living and we aren’t listening. Please help us hear you better. Please help us live the way you want us to live. Lord, I pray for every single person listening to this that 2023 is an amazing year of growth for all of us. I pray that this year, we all learn to grow closer to you. You are so amazing. You are the almighty one and you are the Light of the World. We are so grateful for all you do for us and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you, and so do I. Have a blessed day!
Do Not Be Deceived
Collisions 2:8 “See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ.”
Today's verse is a continuation of yesterday’s. Yesterday I talked about the three verses right before this one. I talked about how important it is to have a firm foundation in God’s word. I talked about how important it is to read the Bible daily. Today’s verse talks about why it is important to be well versed in God’s word.
It says, “See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ.” If you don’t know what the Bible actually says, you can be deceived. The devil is a fallen angel. He knows what the Bible says, he watched it all happen. The devil is very tricky. He tells us things that seem like they could be true, or he tells us things that are true, but takes them out of context or twists them around.
It’s not often the the enemy tells you an outright lie. If he did you would be less likely to believe him. He also focuses on things that you may already be insecure about. Let me read you how the devil tried to deceive Jesus in Matthew 4:1-11 “Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.” Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”
Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written: “‘He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’” Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.” Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’” Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him.
This happened right after Jesus was baptized and God opened up Heaven and said “This is my son in which I am well pleased.” Jesus was fully God and fully human, can you see how he might have doubted his identity? He might have questioned if who He really was, or that God was really pleased in Him. So, right away the devil says, “If you are the son of God…” He will do this for us too. He will try to tell us we are not the son or daughter of God. He will try to attack our identity in many ways. He will try to make us believe you aren’t good at our job, we aren’t a good parent, we aren’t a good spouse, we aren’t a good sibling. He will take some quick doubt that passes through our mind, or some small truth and he will twist it until he has us believing his lies.
After his first attempt did not work the devil tried to attack his identity again with another Bible verse. “If you are the son of God…” He will try this with us too. Once we catch on to his plan, he will switch up his plan, but often it will still have to do with getting you to doubt your identity or doubt what God says to you or about you. In this case, the devil used exact words from the Bible, he was just using them out of context. He could do that with us too. Luckily Jesus knew scripture and was able to keep from being deceived.
Once the devil saw that Jesus knew His identity as the son of God and that wasn’t going to change, the devil tried to tempt Him to be more like God. “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.” He was telling Jesus he could be ruler over all the land, as far as He could see if Jesus just bowed down to worship him. Jesus recited a bible verse to satan and told him to leave. The enemy does this with us as well. He doesn’t come straight to us with this last one, he usually has others do it for him. Have you ever been offered a job that is everything you are looking for as far as money and fame or prestige are concerned, and yet it has you working so hard you never see your family? Have you ever been tempted to take a job that you know will just leave you stressed out because of the money or the location or the benefits? Have you ever compromised your values to take a job?
The enemy works in lots of different ways. He knows how important family values are, family time is and so he will use your boss, your company, a new job offer as a way to entice you away from your family. He will use your job to keep you so busy you don’t have time to think about God, you don’t have time to pray, you are too tired to go to mass on Sunday. He will use lots of things to entice your children to turn to the world instead of God as well. He will use their friends, social media, music, tv, movies, all to show them that they don’t need their parents. They don’t need God.
Do you see why it is so important to be in God’s Word every day? Do you see why it is so important to not only read, but to try and understand the Bible and what it is telling us? The more secure we are in who we are and whose we are, the more likely we will be able to recognize Satan’s lies and tell him to go away as Jesus did.
Another reason it is important to know what that Bible says is because then you can carry on a well informed conversation with those around you that don’t believe the same way you do. There are a lot of people that take the Bible out of context as well. There are a lot of people who read one line and then use that one line, out of context to try and make their point that this thing or that thing is actually ok to do. If you know what the Bible says, you can explain to them why what they are saying isn’t an accurate representation of the Lord’s Word. They may not listen, but at least you didn’t let their faulty knowledge deceive you. Also, maybe they will listen.
Imagine how great it would be if, just by knowing what the Bible says, you were able to win more souls over to the kingdom of God? Imagine if the people who are believing the enemies lies, were to learn the truth and be able to see what God is really saying, or how much God really loves them. Wouldn’t that be worth the sacrifice of a few minutes of scripture reading a day? Even if you only helped one person see the truth and join the kingdom of heaven, it would be worth it.
If you have never read that Bible before I have a few suggestions. First, I would listen to the Bible in a Year podcast, also found on YouTube, with Father Mike Schmitz. It is really good and he explains what he read so well. Second, if you are doing it on your own, don’t start at the beginning. Start in the New Testament. It starts with the Gospels and you learn all about who Jesus is and what He did during His three years of ministry. Then it goes on to talk about the early church. You can also start with Psalms if you like. If you start at the beginning of the Bible you will get bogged down with geneology and the laws and you will probably give up. There is a lot of great stuff in the old testament, you just gotta get through a few books that might not feel as interesting without the back story.
Another thing you can do is to join a Bible study. This will help you go through the Bible with other people who are also just learning. A Bible study helps you take a section of the Bible and really examine it, not just read it. There is a podcast called “Exploring my Strange Bible” by Tim Mackie. It is really good and it is like a individual Bible study. If you want to study the Bible, but don’t have a group near you, or maybe don’t have time to meet with a group, this is a great alternative. Tim Mackey is a pastor that did a bunch of sermons on various books in the Bible. He goes into great detail on what is actually being said and teaches what that means for us. I encourage you to check it out. You can search for a book of the Bible that you are interested in and start there. You don’t have to go in order.
I hope yesterday’s and today’s episodes have impressed upon you how important it is to read the Bible daily. You will be so much stronger if you do. The enemy will still try to deceive you but you will be ready and armed with the Word of God. You will have the armor of God on you and nothing is better than that.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. We ask you again to place upon our heart the desire to read your Word every single day. We ask you to place upon our hearts the desire to not only read your word, but to understand it. We ask that you equip us with all we need to see right though the enemies lies. We ask that you strengthen us for whatever might come our way. Lord, we ask that you protect our families. The enemy is working overtime to attack our families and there are so many children that are hurting. Please protect our families. Please show us how to protect our children and our marriages, because they are under attack as well. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I want to wish you all a very merry Christmas and I look forward to spending time with you all on Monday. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed weekend!
Live In Christ and Be Rooted In Him!
Colossians 2:6-7 "As therefore you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so live in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.”
When I read this verse I really liked the message. I love thinking about being rooted in Christ. When I hear those words I think of trees and how intertwined their roots are. The roots soak up the water to feed the tree. Think about all the trees in the world and how well they are surviving. Imagine if they were rooted in Christ. Imagine if they had the access to the life giving water that we have access too.
I don’t think we think about roots very much. I don’t know if we truly understand how important it is to have a firm foundation. If a tree doesn’t have good roots it will not be able to withstand a storm and there will always be storms. It doesn’t matter if you are a tree, a mountain, an animal, a person, there will always be storms throughout life. I wonder if we understand how important it is to try and develop those roots before the storms come? While we are going through a hard time, we usually decide we need to figure out some way to get thought it. This is often when we will turn to God, turn to scripture, or turn to church.
What if we were to do this before we hit the hard time. What if we were to prepare in advance for it. When you are in the middle of a crisis, it is too late to prepare. You are in survival mode. I think society as a whole underestimates the need for roots, for a firm foundation. This verse tells us to live in Him, just as you were taught. But, what if you weren’t taught? What if no one ever explained to you how important it was to read the Bible? Or, what if they told you how important it was, but they didn’t explain why it was important? Do you know why it is important to read the Bible? That is not a rhetorical question. If someone was to ask you why you should read the Bible, would you have an answer to give? I feel like a few years ago I definitely wouldn’t have had one. I don’t even know if I have one now that would fully explain how important it is and yet I am going to try to give you a reason because I think it is important for us all to be able to verbalize to others why reading the Bible and being “in” God’s Word is so important.
One reason it is important to read the Bible is so we can get to know God better. God desires an intimate relationship with each one of us. How can we have an intimate relationship with Him if we know nothing about Him? Have you ever had a one sided relationship before. You know everything about that person and they know nothing about you? It wasn’t a good relationship, was it? Reading the Bible can help make the relationship a two way street.
Another reason we should read the Bible is because the Bible has instructions for everything you might be going through. It is an instruction guide for life. Often we turn to the world for solutions to our problems. We read books and we ask our friends. How often to we turn to the Bible? How often do we sit down and ask God what we should do? The important thing to remember is not only to ask God, but to stop and sit in silence and listen to what God says to do. The other day I heard a story of a woman who walked in while her son was on the computer. She saw that he was looking at pornography. She was so upset and told him to go to bed and they would talk about it in the next day. She didn’t know how to handle it and didn’t want to say something she would regret. She decided to turn to God and ask for wisdom on what to do in this circumstance.
Did you know God will give you wisdom of what to do in a circumstance if you give Him a chance? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could all pause when we are upset and consult God before we say anything. Imagine how much nicer our words would be even if we just paused and said a quick prayer to God to guide your words before saying something. When this woman was praying she felt God gave her the answer to her problem. She had her son write a story for the woman on the screen. What was her childhood like, what was her teen years like, what happened in her life that made her feel like she had to make a living in pornography. He did this and he never wanted to look at pornography again. If she would have just went with her first instinct she probably would have punished him and he would have gotten angry but probably wound’t have learned any lesson from it.
Did you know there is something called the Bible Concordance? A concordance contains an alphabetical index of words used in the Bible and the main Bible references where the word occurs. A Bible concordance is useful in locating passages in the Bible. If you can remember just one word in a verse, you can often find what you’re looking for. If you are struggling with an issue, you can look key words up in the concordance. If you can’t find the words you are looking for in the Concordance, you can also type your question into a search bar on the internet. For instance, “Bible verses about parenting.” It is likely that others have struggled with a similar thing and they have done all the leg work to find the bible verse for you.
I was going to write a third reason it is important to read the Bible and nothing was coming to me, so I decided I would search the internet to see if there was an article about this topic. There were so many. I urge you if you aren’t convinced that reading the Bible daily is a necessity, do a search on the internet of why it is important and you will be convinced. A third reason came to me as I was searching through the various articles. Reading the Bible feeds your soul. It offers you encouragement and strength. As you go through the Bible you notice certain verses stand out to you. These verses are great ones to write down and turn to in your time of need. If they stood out to you, there is a reason why. God knows you will need that verse at some point, or there is something He is wanting to teach you from that verse. God speaks to us in so many ways and sometimes it is through scripture.
The verse above ends by saying, “Abounding in Thanksgiving.” This is so important and yet not always easy to do. When times are good we sometimes forget to be grateful because we are just enjoying the good times, especially if things have been good for awhile. Then when things are bad we don’t usually think we have any reasons to be grateful. I believe God wants us to be grateful in the good times and the bad times. I truly believe that there is always something you can be grateful for. Sometimes it may be big things and sometimes it may be small things. Sometimes I am grateful for huge answers to prayers. Other-times, I am just grateful for my cup of tea, or that the sun is shining. What if we all make it a goal to be “abounding in Thanksgiving” for this upcoming year? Or if that is too much of a stretch from where you are right now, what if we just started with making a goal of finding one thing to be grateful each day? What if you made a commitment to write down one new thing you are grateful for each day. At the end of 2023 you will have a list of 365 reasons you had throughout the year to be grateful. Wouldn’t that be something amazing to review at the end of 2023?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, please show each one of us why it is important for us to ground ourselves in your Word. Please put on our hearts a desire to read the Bible daily. Help us to turn to you and to turn to the Bible in our times of need instead of turning to the world. Lord you are so amazing and we are sorry we don’t listen more to what you have to say. We are sorry we ask everyone else for advice, but we don’t ask you. Or, if we do ask, we don’t listen to what you say. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed day!
We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click here. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Have a blessed day!
Spend Your Days Under The Lord’s Care
Psalm 37:18-19 “The blameless spend their days under the Lord’s care, and their inheritance will endure forever. In times of disaster they will not wither; in days of famine they will enjoy plenty.”
I picked this verse this morning because of the line at the beginning that says, “The blameless spend their days under the Lord’s care. How great does that sound? How much would you like to spend your days under the Lord’s care? As I say that I realize we do spend every day under the Lord’s care. I guess what I pictured when I read this verse was a more personal and intimate picture of living with the Lord. My son Ryan is not feeling well this week. It’s always hard to see our kids not feeling well. When they are really little, them not feeling good equals you spending a lot of time with them. There can be good and bad things to this. One good thing is they usually want to snuggle with you and that isn’t always the case when they do feel good. One not great thing is that you don’t get a lot of other things done because they usually require all your attention. Ryan is 14 so when he doesn’t feel good he just stays in his room and rests and I don’t really see him except to bring him medicine or food. Regardless of the age when your child is sick, or even your spouse, you take special care of them.
This is what I pictured when I read this verse. I pictured lying in a bed and God bringing me chicken noodle soup and sitting with me. He is talking with me and telling me I will be ok and that He won’t let anything happen to me. Doesn’t that sound like a lovely picture? The feelings you get when you think of a parent lovingly taking care of a child gives you a good sense of how your heavenly Father feels about you. He may not make you soup when you are sick, but he does sit vigilantly by your bedside. In fact, he is always with you, not just when you are sick. Also, He is taking care of every detail of your life.
The next part of this verse says, “And their inheritance will endure forever.” This is pretty awesome too. It doesn’t say it will endure until they make me angry. It doesn’t say it will endure until they die. It doesn’t say their inheritance will endure until they spend it all. It says their inheritance will endure forever. It will never run out. Our inheritance is not based on anything we have done or will do. If you think about it in earthly terms, how do you get an inheritance? Do you have to work really heard, do all the right things, be a good person, and then we earn the inheritance. No, that isn’t how it works. We don’t earn an inheritance, we are granted it when someone dies. For instance, your parent dies and so you inherit all of their estate. You didn’t do anything to inherit it, you just get it because someone died.
Our heavenly inheritance is the same. There isn’t anything we must do to earn heaven. We don’t have to check off all the right boxes, we don’t have to do all the right things, we don’t have to make sure we are perfect. We already have our inheritance because Jesus died on a cross for us. He sacrificed for our sins so that we could gain our inheritance. And this verse is telling us that our inheritance is forever. It is not a limited time offer. It is not something that will expire. It is ours for as long as we want it.
The verse ends by saying, “In times of disaster they will not wither.” I think this is important to remember because we may not always feel this way. When we are in times of disaster we may feel like we are withering. We may feel like there is no way out. We may feel like we can’t go on for another moment. We just want it to stop. Whatever that it is for you. If you are in pain or you are sick you may feel like you are withering away and soon there will be no more of you. If you are in a dark season spiritually you may feel like your faith is withering away to nothing. If you are struggling with relationships, you may feel they are withering away to nothing. In these times this verse can be encouraging. It can be encouraging to know that God will not let you wither.
The verse goes on to say that, “In days of famine they will enjoy plenty.” This not only provides encouragement, but also hope. This verse assures us that we will not be left destitute. The rest of the world may be in a famine, but we will have plenty. Does this mean that we will always be raking in the money and have an excess of money to use however we want to? No. Does it mean we won’t ever have money trouble? No. What it does mean is that God will never let us starve to death. He is not promising us that there will always be an abundance, He is saying that He will provide what we need. What we need and what we want are often times two very different things. We want things to be easy. We want to not have to worry about anything. We want to have everything we ever wanted. However, we don’t need all those things.
God knows what you need and He will take care of it. I was just reminded of another verse that explains this so beautifully. Matthew 6:25-27 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?” I love this verse for many reasons, but most of all because it reminds us how much God cares for us. It reminds us that He knows what our needs are and He will meet them. It reminds us He really is a good, good Father.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to trust that you will meet all of our needs. Please help us. Lord, help us to know that you are always there with us, right by our side. Help us to believe that when there is a famine we will have plenty. We are so grateful that our inheritance is forever. You are so amazing Lord. We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Tomorrow’s witness will be a couple from my Encounter class. They were enjoying nice picnic one day when things changed quickly. There was an urgent need for prayer and they fulfilled it. I know you are really going to enjoy it. I may have one or two other short ones. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Today I decided to read Ch. 2 of my book with you. The title of that chapter is The Power of a Prayer Journal. I think you will be surprised with how hard it was for me to start this habit and how long it took me to really stay consistent with it. I hope you enjoy today's episode and if you do, please check out my book. You can find it on Amazon. Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Love In Action (Part 4)
Romans 12:17-21 “Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. On the contrary: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good."
Today we conclude out Love in Action series. This week we have taken a close look at Romans 12:9-21 and really spent some time trying to learn how to put love into action. There are some interesting things in today’s verse. Let’s take a look at it. It begins by saying, “Do not repay anyone evil for evil.” This is similar to what we talked about yesterday when it said to bless those who persecute you, bless and not curse. Today it is telling us, not only can we not curse them, but we should not repay evil for evil. This means we shouldn’t follow the saying found in Leviticus 24:19–20 which says, “Anyone who injures their neighbor is to be injured in the same manner: fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. The one who has inflicted the injury must suffer the same injury.” The verse today is telling us this is not what we should do. We should not repay evil for evil. It explains what we should do instead in Matthew 5:38-42, “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.
This is calling us to a whole different level of interaction. You may wonder why the Old Testament says, “an eye for an eye,” and the New Testament says, “Do not repay evil for evil?" This is a great question. I am not completely sure of the answer, but after having listened to the Bible in a Year with Father Mike for the past two years, I think it is because they didn’t have the Holy Spirit inside of them in the Old Testament. Also, God was teaching them slowly how to come back to Him. They had slowly over time pulled away from God and mixed in with those around them. Many of their hearts were hardened and so God called them back slowly. He allowed things that He didn’t like because of the hardness of their hearts. For instance, he allowed them to get divorced because many people have dealt treacherously against their spouse. The people were committing grave sins and because of this and the hardening of the hearts, God told Moses to allow for divorce.
However, in the New Testament, Jesus gave us a whole new way to live and a whole new set of standards. He didn’t just give us these new instructions and then go up to heaven and forget about us. He sent us the Holy Spirit to help guide us and lead us. The Israelites had the Spirit leading them through the dessert, but they did not personally have Him inside of them. Each and every one of us has the Holy Spirit inside of us. The Holy Spirit gives us the power to answer this call to a higher way of living and loving. We just need to rely on that power. When someone does something unkind to you and you get the urge to do something unkind back, remember this verse, and rely on the Holy Spirit to help you bless that person instead.
Next it says, "Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone.” I think we need to be careful how we read this. One might read this and think this justifies people pleasing behavior. I don’t believe that is what this verse is saying. I think this verse is saying to be careful to not let you actions have the appearance of sin to anyone. For instance, you may be doing something that is not a sin, but because of the culture or the environment, it might appear that you are sinning. If so, don’t do that thing if it may cause others to sin.
The next line in the verse says, “If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.” We all know that we don’t have control of other people’s thoughts, feelings, or actions. For this reason, we can’t guarantee that we will be at peace with everyone. However, this verse is calling you to live at peace with everyone as much as you can. What this means for us it to do our best to get along with the person we are with. We need to do whatever is within our control to ensure peace. This means we do not repay evil for evil. This means we don’t hold grudges, and we don’t hold on to un-forgiveness. What do you need to do to live at peace with everyone? Are their changes you need to make? Do you need to rely on the Holy Spirit more? If you find you are not living at peace with some people, look at the situation and see which of your actions are contributing to the lack of peace.
The verse goes on to say, “Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. On the contrary: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.” The beginning of this sentence is similar to when it says do not repay evil for evil. It can be tempting to take revenge. If someone hurts us we tend to want to hurt them, it is human nature. However, God is calling us to rise above that. God is calling us to trust that He will carry out any revenge that needs to happen. What God wants us to do instead of taking revenge is to basically love that person that did evil to us.
The verse says, “if your enemy is hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink.” This sounds an awful lot like when he told us to bless our enemies and not curse them. Why doesn’t God want us to repay evil with evil? Why does He want us to bless those who persecute us, instead of cursing them? Could it be because He loves us and He knows if we return evil for evil our hearts will begin to harden? Could it be He is protecting us from ourselves? If those that are evil cause us to be sin by being evil back, they that hurts our soul, it hurts our relationship with God. By God telling us to let it go, He is trying to protect us from sinning. I love how God doesn’t just say be nice to those who have wronged you and everyone can live happily ever after. God tells us that He will avenge the evil that was done, He will repay the person for the evil committed. Isn’t it amazing that God is willing to take that burden on for us. Our conscious can remain clear. God is so good.
The one line I find the most interesting in this whole verse is when it says, “In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.” By being nice to your enemy you will be heaping burning coals on his head. I looked up what this meant online just to get a better idea. There were a few different things. One article said, “Our kind and gentle reaction to hatred spotlights the depravity of the one who treated us poorly and leaves the hurtful person alone in his or her hatefulness. Nothing pricks the conscience of a hateful person like a soft, forgiving spirit in the one he has wronged (Proverbs 15:1). Another thought is that to "heap burning coals on his head" refers to a time when keeping one's hearth fire alive was a life-saving necessity. If someone could not keep their fire going, then they would go around the town, carrying some sort of container on his head, asking for hot coals to rekindle his fire. Putting coals in this container on his head would benefit him, fulfilling his need, and helping him.” Either way, it sounds like by being nice to those who are not nice to you, you would be helping them to see how they should be acting and you would be showing them love, which is probably something they are lacking. You know the saying, “Hurt people, hurt people.” Your actions, good or bad, positive or negative will impact every person you interact with. What do you want that impact to be?
The verse ends with awesome advice, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” This is a great goal for us all try and obtain. How great would it be if we overcame evil with good? Do you even believe that is possible? I have seen it. I have seen people’s hearts change when they were treated with love. I have seen people who had hearts that were hardened, people who had closed off their hearts to the world as a result of years of pain and suffering. These people were rude and unkind. They treated people badly because they felt bad and they wanted others to feel the way they felt. They treated people badly because that is how they were treated and they didn’t know anything else. Yet, when these people encountered the love of Christ, when their bad behavior was greeted with love and acceptance, their hearts began to soften and they began to treat people a bit nicer. It is definitely not an immediate thawing or softening of the heart, but it does happen. Who in your life could you try to overcome evil with good? Is there a specific person that might just need a little love? Is there someone that has been unkind to you that you could show kindness? Let’s all make that our goal, especially over the Christmas season. Let’s make it our goal to be kind to everyone, to overcome evil with kindness, and to spread God’s love to every single person we meet!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, you are calling us to things we aren’t sure we can do, please help us. Please help us to be kind to those who are unkind to us. Please help us to not want to repay evil for evil. Revenge is something that comes natural to many of us, please help us break the cycle. Lord, we want to do all that you want us to do, we just need your help. Help us to remember you gave us the Holy Spirit and Jesus and we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us. Help us to remember to ask the Holy Spirit to help us when we are too weak to do as you ask. We love you Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I. Have a blessed weekend.
Love In Action (Part 3)
Romans 12:14-16 “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited.”
Today we continue on with our Love in Action series. In case you didn’t catch any other episodes this week let me explain. This week we are taking a look at Romans 12:9-21. In the Bible this section is titled Love in Action. I thought it would be a great idea to look at these verses in a bit more detail than we would if we took the whole section at once. Sometimes it can be easy to read through a scripture and although we like what it says, we don’t slow down long enough to put what it says into practice. My hope with the episodes this week is that we will take a close enough look at this scripture that we are able to understand what love in action means and how we can implement some of it into our lives. Even if we just took one thing away from this weeks episodes I think we would all be loving the world a little bit more than we did, or perhaps loving them in a better way.
Today’s verse starts out with a tough word. It says, “Bless those who persecute you; bless and not curse.” This is not always easy to do. For many of us it comes more naturally to curse those who persecute us. Well, maybe we don’t want to curse them, but we certainly don’t want to bless them. We usually aren’t wishing for good things to come their way. If we want to love like Jesus loved, we need to bless those who persecute us. Remember on the cross, right before Jesus dies He said, Father forgive them, they know not what they do. If Jesus could treat those that persecuted Him with forgiveness, we can attempt to bless those who persecute us. My first thought is, what does blessing those who persecute me even look like? When someone cuts us off in traffic instead of beeping our horn, swearing at them and saying whatever other unkind things we may think of, we can say a quick blessing. Dear Lord, I ask you to bless that person today and keep them safe. When people are rude to us throughout the day, we may stop and say a quick blessing. Dear Lord, we ask you to bless that person and help them to have a better day. It can be that simple. It doesn’t have to be that you say a long drawn out prayer wishing the world for them. Just say a quick blessing instead of wishing something bad to happen, which may be our go to thought.
Next, the verse says, rejoice with those who rejoice. This can be hard, especially if we don’t feel we have anything to rejoice about. For instance, what if our friend just got a new job and they are rejoicing. According to this verse we should be rejoicing with them, but what if we have been looking too and we haven’t found a job yet? What if our friend is rejoicing because they are getting married or having a baby? We should be rejoicing with them and yet we have been praying to get married or have a baby for a long time and it hasn’t happened for us yet. Do you see how it can sometimes be hard to rejoice when others rejoice. When I first read this I didn’t understand why it would be hard to do this. Then the Holy Spirit brought to my mind all these reasons why we might struggle sometimes. Even in this instances when someone has something you want and you don’t, we should still strive to rejoice with them. Someone else getting what they prayed for doesn’t take away from your chances of getting it. That can be what we are thinking sometimes. We might think if someone gets a job that means there is one less job out there for me to get. This is not true, the perfect job for you is out there too.
Something else that just came into my mind is that we can have two competing emotions at the same time. I think it is super important that we all know that this is ok. You can be happy and rejoicing for someone else’s success and at the same time be sad for your circumstances. You can be excited for them and nervous for yourself. Sometimes it is important to give ourselves permission to be happy for someone else’s success and know that our happiness for them does not take away anything from our circumstances.
Next the verse says, “Mourn with those who mourn.” This can be difficult for the same reasons I listed above. What if you are celebrating because something great just happened in your life, it can be hard to mourn with someone else. It can also be hard to mourn with those who mourn if you don’t know the person they lost. I think one way to mourn, even when it is hard, is to put yourself in that person’s shoes. Maybe you are finding it hard to mourn with someone who got fired because you have never had that happen. That is great that it hasn’t happened to you, but you can put yourself in their shoes? Can you imagine how you might feel if it did happen to you. Maybe you know someone who is mourning the loss of a loved one. Could you put yourself in their shoes and imagine what life would be like if you lost your mom, dad, sibling, spouse or friend? Putting yourself in someone else’s shoes is a great way to connect with others. You may not be going through what they are going through but when you take the time to think about what it would be like for you if you were, you gain a whole new perspective as well as a greater level of understanding and compassion.
The verse ends by saying, “Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited.” Our country does not seem to be doing a great job of living in harmony with one another. There is so much division in this country today. I think if we were to love in all the ways we have talked about earlier in this episode and the last two episodes, then we might be able to live in better harmony with one another. A big part of living in harmony with one another is addressed in the very next line. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low positions. A lot of the division is caused by people thinking they are better than someone else. When we think we are better than someone else and we think we know more than they do, then we don’t really listen to what they have to say. We don’t take their opinion into account or listen to their side of things because they can’t possibly know what they are talking about.
Politicians tend not to listen to the very people that elected them. Once they get into their office they tend to forget who got them into that position. Associating with people of a low position can be hard sometimes, just as associating with people of a high position can be hard. We tend to like familiarity. We tend to stick to people whom are like us. We understand them and we relate well to them. However, God is calling us to higher relationships. If we want to love like Jesus did, we need to love everyone, not just those at the same station in life as we are, not just those we feel comfortable around, everyone.
Do not be conceited is also a struggle these days. We live in a “look at me” culture where people post photos of themselves on social media all the time. Social media was first started to keep people connected. It was a way of staying in touch with a lot of people at one time. Instead of having to write individual letters/emails to all your friends, you could make one post and every one of your friends could see it. It is a great concept. However, today a lot of people use it as a platform to say, “Look how awesome I am doing or I am.” This can make it hard not to be conceited when we are spending all of our time only posting about how great we are and all the amazing things that are going on in our lives.
If we want to love like Jesus did, we need to make the effort to do what Jesus did and think like Jesus thought. Jesus never promised us that following Him would be easy. Yes, many things we talked about today, and in the other episodes this week, might not come naturally to us, and that is ok. Just because it doesn’t come naturally and just because it won’t be easy, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep trying. We can do hard things. The Bible says in Philippians 4:14, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” God will help us do these things, we just have to want to do them, try to do them and God will do the rest. He will give us the strength and perseverance we need to do them. Also, we don’t have to change everything all at once. What if you just picked one thing out of this episode that you could start doing? What if you just decided to rejoice when others rejoice from now on, no matter how you were feeling? What if you decided you were going to bless those that persecute you from now on? Whatever it is you think you could try to start doing, or stop doing if it was a negative thing.
God doesn’t expect perfection from us. He is just looking for us to try. He is looking for us to want to grow closer to Him. He is looking for our effort. What is one step you can take today to love a little more like Jesus loved? What is one thing you can do to put love into action? Will you do that one thing today?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord we want to love like you love, please help us. Help us to rejoice when others rejoice and mourn when they mourn. Help us to let go of pride, that is not easy for us Lord. We will need some of your supernatural help to get rid of our pride. Help us to not be conceited, help us to think of others more than we think of ourselves. And probably the hardest thing you are calling us to today is to bless those who persecute us. Oh Lord, we are definitely going to need your help with that one. Please show us how to do this. When we are in a circumstance where someone is persecuting us, please put on our heart the correct words to say, the correct feelings to have, whatever else we might need in the moment. We love you Lord and we are so grateful you answer our prayers. We are grateful for all the strength, wisdom and knowledge you provide us on a daily basis. You are so amazing Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed day.
We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click here. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Have a blessed day!
Love In Action (Part 2)
Romans 12:12-13 “Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.”
Today we continue on in the section of Romans titled Love in Action. If you didn’t listen yesterday, we are taking this week to go through Romans 12:9-21 and look at it in a little more detail. My hope is by the end of this week we will all know how to love a little better. This verse starts out by telling us to be joyful in hope. This isn’t necessarily the easiest thing to do. What if we have been hoping for something for a long time? What if we are starting to get tired of waiting for that thing to happen? I think even in these circumstances, God is asking us to be joyful in hope. He doesn’t specify, be joyful only when it is easy to hope. He doesn’t specify, be joyful only when you are just beginning to hope. He just says be joyful in hope. Is that what you have been missing? Have you been hoping for something and yet not really joyful while you hope? What if you made that change? What would be different if you were joyful in hope? Could you give it a try?
Next it says be patient in affliction. Man, we are starting right out of the gate this morning with some hard words. An affliction is something that causes you pain and suffering. I was just thinking about this and how the section we are reading about is love in action. In this context I can see how it would be important to be patient while in affliction. Have you ever been around a loved one who is in pain and is not patient? It can definitely be hard to feel any love from that person. When we are in pain we don’t always feel like being patient. Actually, I don’t necessarily think it is always a choice. Patience is something that seems to come naturally to some while others have to work hard to be patient. If patience is something that you need to work hard for it is not going to be easy to have patience when you are suffering and all your effort is focused on your pain. I think it is important to remember that the Bible is teaching us how to live, how to love, how to pray, how to do all things like Jesus did. It is giving us the instructions and it is up to us to apply them in our lives. Learning the things in the Bible is like learning anything else, it takes time. I don’t want you to hear these episodes on learning to love and then feel bad because you don’t love exactly the way it talks about in the Bible. We are all learning, some of us may be hearing this for the first time. Some of us may have read this in the Bible one hundred times and yet never stopped to examine it and implement it in their lives. This podcast is about our journey. It is about trying to be a little better today than we were yesterday. You might hear that God wants us to be patient in affliction and then think about how angry you get when you are suffering, or what a terrible patient you are when you are sick. That’s ok, this is a process. The first step is knowing what God is calling us to and noticing how our actions differ from that. Once we are aware of something, then we can work to change it.
The verse goes on to say be faithful in prayer. This doesn’t seem like a hard one, but it can be. How many times have we let other things get in the way of our prayer time? If we think of this in terms of love in action, we can see how praying for others can help them feel loved. I can definitely see how being faithful in prayer can show love. We want the best for our loved ones. We want them to succeed and to be healthy and happy. The best way to help them with this is not nagging them to do what we think they should do, believe me, I have tried that route. The best way to do this is for us to be faithful in prayer and to turn our worries and concerns over to God. God loves our loved ones more than we ever could. He wants the best for them. If we can be faithful in prayer and then let God do the rest, our loved ones will feel more loved because we won’t constantly be nagging them. No-one likes to be nagged.
Next, the verse says to share with the Lord’s people who are in need. This is a great one. It’s not hard to see how sharing with those in need could be love in action. However, we might not always encounter love when we share with those in need. There are a lot of factors that might come up. For instance, we all struggle with pride at times and so someone in need might not take what you are trying to give because their pride is getting in the way. Also, people in need might be angry at their circumstances and so they may not be as gracious as you would want them to be. Don’t let a one bad encounter, or even a few bad encounters stop you from giving to those in need. We are all people, we all have days when we aren’t our best versions of ourselves. Just because someone didn’t receive your gift, donation, help with gratitude or grace this time, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give next time. Keep sharing with those in need, keep loving people with your actions.
The last thing in this verse says practice hospitality. This can be a great way to show love to others. People love when they are treated with hospitality. Hospitality can incorporate a variety of actions. It can mean that you invite people into your home, have people over for dinner, or host a party for your family or neighbors. When Tony and I first got married, we loved having people over to the house. I remember we were out shopping one day and the salesman was very nice and we were both thinking, we should have him over for dinner. We laugh now because we used to want to invite everyone over for dinner. However, hospitality doesn’t have to mean having people over to your house if you don’t want to. Another way to show people hospitality is to prepare meals for them if they have a baby, if they are sick, if they had surgery, or if they had a death in their family.
This is something that is pretty big on military bases. I never really saw it before living on base, but if you have a baby in the military, often times your the squadron of the military member will organize meals to be dropped off so you don’t have to worry about cooking for the first week or two. Let me tell you, this definitely feels like love in action when you have a little baby and aren’t getting much sleep and then someone shows up at your doorstep with dinner all prepared. You definitely feel loved and you definitely love that person. Another way to show hospitality is to welcome a new neighbor. Moving is hard and stressful and it feels so good when one of your new neighbors takes the time to stop by and say hello and welcome you into the neighborhood. Think back to some times when people showed you hospitality. How did it make you feel? Did you feel loved?
Today we talked about several ways to put love into action. I will leave you with the words from scripture to ponder throughout the day today. “Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.” How can you put love into action today?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those who listen to this episode today. Lord, help us to be joyful in hope, patient in affliction and faithful in prayer. Those are not all easy things to do and we definitely rely on you to help us. Lord, help us to share with your people who are in need, even when it’s not easy. Help us to not get discouraged if we run into problems when we try to share what we have with others. Help us to not get discouraged if all doesn’t go like we thought it would. Lord, help us to practice hospitality. Jesus was so good at this, please help us love like Jesus did. We are so grateful for all you do for us, you are amazing Lord. We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to brining you another witness tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I. Have a blessed day!
Love in Action (Part 1)
Romans 12:9-11 “Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord.”
When I was looking through various scriptures for the episode I found this subtitle in Romans 12, Love in Action, and instantly knew I wanted to talk on it. I think love is a complicated thing. There are so many different kinds of love and also so many different interpretations of love. If you asked 100 different people what love is, I bet you would get 100 different answers. On top of all of that, we have all had different experiences with love. Some of us were shown a lot of love growing up and some of us weren’t. Some of us were used in the name of love, some of us were abused in the name of love. Some of us had parents who didn’t know how to love. Some of us didn’t have parents. Do you see what I mean about how love is complicated? What I loved about this subtitle is that if we think of love as an action, we can define it a little more easily. I also love that the Bible defines it for us, so we don’t have to come up with a definition. I love that because if we had to come up with a definition it would probably be tainted by our experiences. God’s love is pure and that is the love we want. Yet, we can’t strive for something if we don’t know how to get it.
In this section of the Bible, love is broken down into actions. I will spend the next few episodes going over these actions and looking at them a little closer and hopefully by the end of this week we will all understand love a little better. This verse starts by saying love must be sincere. I think we have all felt the difference between sincere love and insincere love. When someone one is insincere with their love you can usually tell. They may be saying they love you with their words, and yet their actions are saying something completely different. For instance, they say they love you and they want to spend time with you, but then they never do. They say you mean everything to them and yet they put you last. These are a few examples of how you might feel if someone wasn’t sincere with their love.
Next the verse says, Hate what is evil and cling to what is good. You would think this one would be obvious and easy. Of course we would hate what is evil. Who would choose to cling to what is evil over what is good? And yet we do it all the time. It is difficult in this world to know what is evil sometimes. The world seems to normalize so much that is not good. A great example of this is pornography. This is ruining people’s marriage. I have a friend who’s husband was addicted to it and would not stop. It ruined their marriage. He had a wife, he could have clung to his marriage and yet he clung to what was evil instead. Unfortunately this is becoming more and more of a problem. There are lots of ways in which we allow things to creep into our marriages and ruin them. We want to cling to what is good and yet we get so turned around sometimes with what is good and what isn’t. Even with our prayer time. We know prayer is good. We want to spend time in prayer and grow closer to God and yet we allow so many other things that aren’t good to take the place of prayer. Lord, please help us to hate what is evil and cling to what is good.
Next it says, “Be devoted to one another in love.” Being devoted to one another is something we seem to struggle with. I think the divorce rate today is above 50%. I think if we could master being devoted to one another in love, we could change this. When I looked up the word devoted it said, “very loving or loyal.” Imagine if we were loyal to one another in love? How would your relationships change if you were loyal in love? When looking up the definition for loyal it said, “giving or showing firm and constant support or allegiance to a person or institution.” Think about your relationships, how would they be different if you showed more firm and constant support to your loved one? I know mine would improve. I can’t think of a single relationship that wouldn’t improve with a little more support. I think our loved ones just want to know that we are on their side and we have got their back.
The verse goes on to say, “Honor one another above yourselves.” This is something I see less and less today. We seem to live in a society that looks out for themselves first and others second. I don’t mind helping others as long as it doesn’t inconvenience me. Putting others first can be hard. We want to make sure our own needs are taking care of and that is not a bad thing. However, we often have excess and yet we hold onto it afraid we won’t have enough. I am not saying we shouldn’t save for a rainy day, saving is good. However, when you have way more than you need and yet you still aren’t giving to those in need because you are afraid you won’t have enough, that is not a good thing. Trust in the Lord, that he will provide for you when you need it. Also, take some time and think of how you could honor those around you.
Lastly it says, “Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord.” This can be hard sometimes. We can certainly lose our zeal and spiritual fervor if we are not paying attention. If we are not serving the Lord on a regular basis, it can be easy to lose our zeal. If we are not keeping up with our prayer time and we are not checking in with God on a regular basis, then we can start to forget how amazing He is. We can start to forget all of His promises and all that He has done for us. We can also lose our zeal or spiritual fervor if we do the same thing day in and day out. We can start to do things out of routine without even putting much thought into it and then these things can become boring to us. If this happens, it is ok, it is normal. Don’t keep doing those same things though, switch it up. If you are getting bored with how you are interacting with God, do something different. Say different prayers, maybe journal instead of talking with God. Maybe take a break from what you normally do and try something new. God doesn’t really care HOW we spend time with Him, He just cares IF we spend time with Him.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask that you help us to hear all ways we can put love into action. Help us to hear in this episode which ways we need to work on and then show us how to work on it. Lord, we want to love like you love, please show us how. We want our love to be sincere. We want to hate what is evil and cling to what is good. We want to be devoted to one another in love. We want to honor one another above ourselves. Lord, we just don’t know how, please show us. Father, we want to never be lacking in zeal, but keep our spiritual fervor, serving you. Please teach us, Dad. We are willing to learn and we are giving you permission to come into our lives and teach us. We need you Lord! You love so freely and so perfectly. We want to love like that too! We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with you will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me in this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Remember To Love This Christmas.
1 Corinthians 13:1-3 “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.”
This is a powerful scripture and a powerful reminder of how important love is. This is something we can easily forget. We can strive to be the best at everything we do. Sometimes we can do a lot of things in the name of love, but in the process actually end up hurting those we love instead. For instance, we might work a lot to try to be a good provider for our family. We are working so much because we love our family and we want to make sure they have everything they need. However, sometimes we end up working too much and then they don’t ever get to see us. This is not showing them love. We might want to show our family that we love them by keeping the house clean. However, if we take this too far and are always yelling at everyone to clean up their stuff, then we are not showing them we love them.
I was listening to the KLOVE radio station yesterday and the host of the show shared a poem that took this verse and changed it to apply to the Christmas season. Since this season is one that gets away from all of us from time to time I thought I would share it will you too. When I heard this it was a great reminder of what is really important during this season. The Poem is called 1 Corinthians 13 Christmas Style By Sharon Jaynes. (Click Here) to check out her website.
If I decorate my house perfectly with lovely plaid bows, strands of twinkling lights, and shiny glass balls, but do not show love to my family – I’m just another decorator.
If I slave away in the kitchen, baking dozens of Christmas cookies, preparing gourmet meals, and arranging a beautifully adorned table at mealtime, but do not show love to my family – I’m just another cook.
If I work at the soup kitchen, carol in the nursing home, and give all that I have to charity, but do not show love to my family – it profits me nothing.
If I trim the spruce with shimmering angels and crocheted snowflakes, attend a myriad of holiday parties, and sing in the choir’s cantata but do not focus on Christ, I have missed the point.
Love stops the cooking to hug the child.
Love sets aside the decorating to kiss the husband.
Love is kind, though harried and tired.
Love doesn’t envy another home that has coordinated Christmas china and table linens.
Love doesn’t yell at the kids to get out of your way.
Love doesn’t give only to those who are able to give in return, but rejoices in giving to those who can’t.
Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things.
Love never fails. Video games will break; pearl necklaces will be lost; golf clubs will rust. But giving the gift of love will endure.
I really like how she not only took the verse above and made it about Christmas, but she also went a step further and showed us what it would look like if we did show love during this time. It is easy to get caught up in our to do list this season. I know there is a lot to do. There are presents to buy and decorations to put up. There are teacher gifts to give and work parties to attend. There is a lot. However, you get to choose how you do these things. You can spend hours making teacher gifts, or you can get them a gift card, the teacher will love it no matter which you choose to do because you are showing your appreciation. You can get all stressed out about finding time to put up all your decorations, or you can put up the ones you want to put up and keep the rest for another year. You can attend every Christmas party you are invited to, or you can tell some that you would love to come but you just can’t make it this year.
Every year, once a year, we get to celebrate the coming of Jesus Christ into this world as a baby. We get to remember how much Mary and Joseph sacrificed for us. We get to remember how much our God in Heaven loves us that he would give us His only son to walk among us. Many of us get to spend time with our families during this season. I know that part can be stressful for some. Families are not always easy to get along with. There may be past hurts and wounds. What if you considered the gift of forgiveness this Christmas? I am not sure who that was for, but I did not intend to write that and yet I felt I was supposed to include that. If what I just said about forgiveness touched your heart, I think God is wanting to talk with you. See if you can find sometime this weekend to sit with the Lord and ask Him if that was meant for you, if He wants you to forgive someone this Christmas? If He does, then don’t worry because He will give you the words to say and He will give you the strength to say them.
I know this information is not anything new, I think we just need a reminder sometimes and so when I heard it on the radio I though it would be good to share it with all of you as well. Don’t get so caught up in all that you are doing or have to do that you find yourself being unkind. Make time for those you love, even if it means you don’t get your house perfectly decorated or your cookies go unfrosted. Maya Angelou said, “I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” How are you going to make others feel this Christmas season?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, be with us throughout this advent season. Help remind us of what is important when we forget. Help us to love all those we encounter. Help us remember giving is better than getting. Help us remember all those that might be struggling during this difficult time. Lord, we ask you put on our hearts anyone you want us to reach out to, anyone that might need us to check in. Show us how to help those that need help. We love you Lord, you are amazing. We are so grateful you sent your only son to walk among us, to be one of us. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk Boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed weekend!
What is the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception?
Today, I decided to do something a little different. I usually begin by sharing a scripture verse with you. However, today is a very special day, at least in the Catholic Church. There is a lot of confusion about this day and so I wanted to explain what we are actually celebrating today and why we are celebrating it. Today, in the Catholic Church, we celebrate the Immaculate Conception. When I was growing up I never understood how Mary could have immaculately conceived Jesus on the 8th of December and then delivered him on December 25th. It didn’t make sense to me and yet I didn’t really question it. It was not until I was an adult, I am not sure how many years ago, that I learned what we were truly celebrating. I found this great article that explains what we are celebrating and why. It is called, “8 Things You Need to Know About the Immaculate Conception,” by Jimmy Akin. I will put a link for the article in the show notes. (Click Here) for the article. This is where I found the information for this episode.
The Immaculate Conceptions is not referring to Jesus’ conception, it is referring to Mary’s conception. Mary has a human mother and father, her conception was not the same as Jesus’. However, it was special in another way. Here is how the Catholic Church explains it:
CCC490 To become the mother of the Saviour, Mary “was enriched by God with gifts appropriate to such a role.” The angel Gabriel at the moment of the annunciation salutes her as “full of grace”. In fact, in order for Mary to be able to give the free assent of her faith to the announcement of her vocation, it was necessary that she be wholly borne by God's grace.
CCC491 Through the centuries the Church has become ever more aware that Mary, “full of grace” through God, was redeemed from the moment of her conception. That is what the dogma of the Immaculate Conception confesses, as Pope Pius IX proclaimed in 1854:
The most Blessed Virgin Mary was, from the first moment of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of almighty God and by virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, Saviour of the human race, preserved immune from all stain of original sin.
This means that Mary was not only free from original sin, but she was also free from person sin as well. The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains:
CCC493 The Fathers of the Eastern tradition call the Mother of God “the All-Holy” (Panagia), and celebrate her as “free from any stain of sin, as though fashioned by the Holy Spirit and formed as a new creature”. By the grace of God Mary remained free of every personal sin her whole life long. “Let it be done to me according to your word. . .”
The next question Akin asks is, “If Mary was free from sin, does that mean she didn’t need Jesus to die on a cross for her?"
He answers, “No. What we've already quoted states that Mary was immaculately conceived as part of her being “full of grace” and thus "redeemed from the moment of her conception" by "a singular grace and privilege of almighty God and by virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, Saviour of the human race."
The Catechism goes on to state:
CCC492 The “splendour of an entirely unique holiness” by which Mary is “enriched from the first instant of her conception” comes wholly from Christ: she is “redeemed, in a more exalted fashion, by reason of the merits of her Son”. The Father blessed Mary more than any other created person “in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places” and chose her “in Christ before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless before him in love”.
CCC508 From among the descendants of Eve, God chose the Virgin Mary to be the mother of his Son. “Full of grace”, Mary is “the most excellent fruit of redemption” (SC 103): from the first instant of her conception, she was totally preserved from the stain of original sin and she remained pure from all personal sin throughout her life.
The next question Akin asked is, “How does this make Mary a parallel of Eve?” His is answer is: Adam and Eve were both created immaculate--without original sin or its stain. They fell from grace, and through them mankind was bound to sin. Christ and Mary were also conceived immaculate. They remained faithful, and through them mankind was redeemed from sin. Christ is thus the New Adam, and Mary the New Eve.
The Catechism notes:
CCC494 . . . As St. Irenaeus says, “Being obedient she became the cause of salvation for herself and for the whole human race.” Hence not a few of the early Fathers gladly assert. . .: “The knot of Eve's disobedience was untied by Mary's obedience: what the virgin Eve bound through her disbelief, Mary loosened by her faith.” Comparing her with Eve, they call Mary “the Mother of the living” and frequently claim: “Death through Eve, life through Mary.”
Another question Akin asked was, “Was it necessary for God to make Mary immaculate at her conception so that she could be Jesus' mother?”
Akin writes, “No. The Church only speaks of the Immaculate Conception as something that was "fitting," something that made Mary a "fit habitation" (i.e., suitable dwelling) for the Son of God, not something that was necessary. Thus in preparing to define the dogma, Pope Pius IX stated:
And hence they [the Church Fathers] affirmed that the Blessed Virgin was, through grace, entirely free from every stain of sin, and from all corruption of body, soul and mind; that she was always united with God and joined to him by an eternal covenant; that she was never in darkness but always in light; and that, therefore, she was entirely a fit habitation for Christ, not because of the state of her body, but because of her original grace. . . .
For it was certainly not fitting that this vessel of election should be wounded by the common injuries, since she, differing so much from the others, had only nature in common with them, not sin. In fact, it was quite fitting that, as the Only-Begotten has a Father in heaven, whom the Seraphim extol as thrice holy, so he should have a Mother on earth who would never be without the splendor of holiness [Ineffabilis Deus]."
Many of you listening may have already known all about this special day. However, I felt it was important to explain as I remember when I first found out what we were celebrating I was confused. I didn’t really understand at first and I would have loved to have had this article back then. I know there are some people who don’t understand that we aren’t celebrating Jesus’ immaculate conception and so I wanted to clear up any misunderstandings about this day. For those of you who are Catholic, just in case you don’t know, the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conceptions is a holy day of obligation. I hope you all enjoyed this little explanation and I hope you check out the article for more information.
Dear Heavenly Father, we are so grateful you gave us Mary so she could say yes to having your one and only son. We are so grateful you came up with a plan to save us. We are grateful for all you have done for us over the years. We don’t deserve anything and yet you give us so much. We thank you Lord. We love you and we celebrate and honor your beautiful daughter Mary today. We honor you and your plan for her life. You are so amazing how you plan everything out in advance. You are the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. You are truly remarkable and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed day!
We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click on the link below. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Have a blessed day!
My Sheep Hear My Voice and I Know Them!
John 10:27-30 “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me; and I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish, and no one shall snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.”
The verse we got in class last night was John 10:27, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them and they follow me.” I was going to stop here and then the Holy Spirit prompted me to look at what came after that verse. I could see by the semicolon at then end of the verse that there was more to this sentence. I am glad that I did because the next three verse are pretty powerful as well. Let me start at the beginning of the verse. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. That right there is a lot more powerful than it might seem. We are God’s sheep this verse says we hear His voice. It doesn’t say a special chosen few hear my voice. It doesn’t say holy people hear my voice. It says My sheep hear my voice. This means we are all able to hear God’s voice. Do you hear God’s voice?
If we are not hearing God’s voice right now, it is not because we can’t, it is not because he is hiding it from us, it is not because we aren’t good enough, or holy enough. If we can’t hear God’s voice right now, it is because we are not taking the time to listen. I assure you, God wants to talk to us. He wants to talk to all of His children. Another reason we might not be able to hear His voice right now is because we don’t believe God would talk to us. Who are we? We aren’t special, why would God want to talk to us? Who are we? We are a children of God. We are special because He made us in His likeness and image. If we sit down and ask God to talk to us and then sit there in the silence and wait expectantly, God will talk with us. Will we hear an audible voice, maybe, but probably not. It is more likely we will have a sudden thought, or we hear our inner voice say something. The voice of God is different for each one of us. It is most often that inner voice, your voice that you hear. God can also talk with us through other means of communication, such as visions and through scripture. Although since this verse talks about hearing God’s voice I won’t go into detail on visions and scripture.
The next part of the verse says, “I know them.” God knows each one of us individually. He cares about us and our individual circumstances. I have a word of prophecy from my prayer group up on the wall in front of where I work and it begins by saying, “I have called you by name into life. I have called you every day by your name because I know you, I love you, because you are my friend.” I have this up as a reminder that God knows my name. He is my friend. God is your friend too! He knows your name and he calls you by name every single day. Are you answering that call? Are you hearing that call? God knows you, are you taking the time to get to know Him?
Next it says, “and they follow me.” Are we following God’s voice? Are we sticking close by Him so He can protect us from all the dangers out there? Or, are we doing our own thing? Are we following our own path because we think we know what is best for us? If we are listening to God’s voice then we can follow Him and He will keep us safe. He will lead us down the path that is the best for us. That doesn’t mean we won’t ever encounter an hardships or troubles, but it does mean, when we do, we can lean on God because He will be right there with us. Will you follow God today?
The next part of the verse is super encouraging. It says, “and I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish, and no one shall snatch them out of my hand.” Wow, that is pretty amazing. Not only do we get to hear God’s voice, not only does He know us by name, and not only do we get to follow Him, but he also gives us eternal life. How great is that? I don’t know about you but I don’t want to perish. I am forever grateful that Jesus died so that we can have eternal life. I also love that it says no one will snatch them out of my hand. That means if we are listening to God’s voice and following Him, the enemy will not snatch us out of His hands. Unfortunately this doesn’t mean the enemy won’t try. This doesn’t mean we will have stress free lives. However, it does mean, we belong to God, and He is there for us. He will protect us and will not allow anyone to be taken out of his hands. Our job is just to listen for His voice so we know where to go and when. Our job is to follow Him, He will take care of the rest.
The last line in this verse says, “My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.” This is more reassurance that no one is able to snatch us out of the Father’s hand. We are His and He knows us by name. He knows us by name. Can you believe how awesome that is? There are 8 billion people in the world and God knows you, individually. He knows your name, He knows your wants, your needs your desires. He knows you! That just blows my mind. On our way home from class last night we were talking in the car about how incredible it is that God can talk to all of us at the same time.
We did a lot of activations last night. We were partnered up and we practiced listening to God’s voice. It was a truly amazing experience. I definitely would recommend it to each and every one of you. What was especially remarkable, was how he was talking to each one of us specifically and how He was able to talk to all of us at the same exact time. We did specific exercises led by one of our teachers. However, anyone can practice hearing the Lord’s voice. If you are not used to hearing God’s voice start by setting aside a few minutes a day. It could be just five minutes and it doesn’t have to be sitting in a chair with your eyes closed. It could be while you are driving to work, or driving to the store. It could be while you are in the shower or while you make your morning cup of coffee or tea. Wherever you are and whatever your are doing, just ask the Lord to speak to you. You can say something like, “Lord, what would you like to tell me right now?” You could also ask Him what He thinks of a certain decision you want to make. You can have a back and forth conversation with God. You talk, He listens, then He talks, and you listen. I struggle to hear God if I am just sitting there listening. For me, I hear Him best if I am writing down the thoughts that are coming into my head. I do not question them, I just write them all down as I think of them. After I write them all down I can go back and look at them and ask God to show we what is from Him and what is not.
“My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.” This is so important. The Lord is our Shepard and we are His sheep. We must hear His voice and follow Him. If we want eternal life, we must stay close to the Lord. Will you take just 5 minutes today and spend that time listening for the Lord’s voice, for His direction?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we are so grateful you call us by name. We are grateful you know us and that you protect us. We are grateful that if we follow you we will not perish but will have eternal life. Thank you for not letting anyone snatch us out of your hands. Lord, help us to hear your voice. Help us to listen with expectancy. Help us to take time throughout the day to pause and listen to you. Help us to learn to pause and ask you before any major decisions. Help us to grow Lord. Help us to know you like you know us. We love you Lord, you are so amazing! We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus! I look forward to sharing another witness with you tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Can Good Things Come From Bad Situations?
Romans 8:28 “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose."
Have you ever had something happen, and even though you know it was a bad thing that happened, what came out of it was good? This happens a lot in romance movies. Something bad happens to the main character, for instance her car breaks down, and then the man of her dreams stops to help her and they live happily ever after. Another example is from wedding planner. The main character gets hurt and a really cute doctor stops to help her. It is not great that the car broke down, but the outcome, of meeting your future husband, is great. I know these examples are from movies, but they happen in real life too. I know people who got cancer, and had to go through chemo and radiation and it was truly terrible. And also, it made them slow down and learn to appreciate what was really important to them. Sometimes when something bad happens it can be the wakeup call or the second chance we needed to get back on track.
I think that is what this verse is talking about. It says all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called to his purpose. It doesn’t say all things are good, it doesn’t say all things turn into good things, it says all things work together for the good of that person. Does this mean nothing bad will ever happen? Nope! Does this mean you life will be smooth sailing if you love God and are called according to his purpose? Unfortunately, no, it does not. What does it mean? It means that no matter what happens, good or bad, God can use it for your good. He can take the crap of you life, and use it as fertilizer to make fruit grow in your life. Good things can grow out of bad circumstances, if you let them.
We all know the pandemic was a bad thing. Over 6.5 million people died from that awful disease. So many people lost their jobs, lost their loved ones, lost their businesses. There was so much fear and anxiety during the last 2-3 years of life. We lost a lot during that time. It was really hard on so many people. It will take us a long time to recover in so many ways from this pandemic. As awful as this pandemic was, so good things did grow out of it. Families were forced to slow down and spend time together. I know that wasn’t good for everyone, and yet it was great for some. My husband had to leave the house for work at 5 am just to beat the traffic and then he wouldn’t get home until 5 or 6 because of traffic on the way home. Now that he is working from home we get to have breakfast, lunch and dinner together most days. There were some positive things to come out of these last two years.
Last night I received an email from a friend in my prayer group. Another friend from our prayer group had sent her a page from her prayer journal around this time 2020. This prayer journal entry talks about a really good thing that came out of a bad situation. It was Advent time in 2020 and a lot of people weren’t able to be with their family like they usually would. A lot of people had small Christmas celebrations that year with only those that lived in the same house as they did. I know it was a sad holiday season for so many. It wasn’t any different for my friend. She wanted to be with family and that wasn’t going to happen. God showed up for her and provided her with a truly special experience during a time that could have been really lonely. Here is her journal entry:
Lord Jesus, It is amazing that this terrible pandemic has provided me with an opportunity that I have longed for. (This is Romans 8:28 in action). And what is it that I have longed for? A Christmas spent completely with You, alone with You, asking You to be born anew in my heart.
Thank You, Lord Jesus, for using this Advent season to open my eyes to parts of the Salvation story that I hadn’t considered. Each day lately I have stopped to meditate on Mary and Joseph’s long, difficult 80 mile journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem. How many miles could they travel in a day? Were they short on supplies? Did Mary walk much of the way? Surely, she could not have worked to stay balanced on a donkey for the whole time. How did she not go into labor while being jostled about on the donkey? How hard dear St. Joseph must have worked to try to keep Mary, the holy Mother of God, comfortable! And how sad he must have been to watch her suffer silently. What people did they meet on their journey, people who couldn’t know that they were in the presence of the soon-to-be born Messiah? Were there robbers on their journey? And did angels of God take on human form, to be seen only by the thieves, to frighten away any threat to the Holy Family?
Thank You, Lord, for inviting me this year to make that journey with Mary and Joseph. Thank You for stopping me so often in my daily tasks to question, “Where are they now? What are they doing? Resting? Walking? What are they talking about? What prayers are they saying?” Jesus, my Lord and Savior, teach me to pray and trust as they did. Oh, dear Jesus, thank You for using this time of quarantine to invite me on this intimate journey.
Thank You, Jesus my dear Lord, for asking me to set my dining room table for Christmas early this year - on the first Sunday of Advent - setting it with places for You, Your Mother and Saint Joseph. I have been graced in 2 ways by this. First, it has provided me with a tangible way to express my longing to welcome You to be born anew and more deeply in my heart. That longing grows each time I look at Your seat at the head of the table.
Secondly, it has made me more aware of Your constant Presence. In the evening, when I light the candles on the Advent wreath and Walter and I sit at the table to pray the rosary, I am more aware that You , Mary and Joseph are quietly hearing our prayers and are honored by them.
While I know that my heart will be so sad that Walter and I cannot be with our family this Christmas, I am so grateful for the invitation from You to spend this holy time focused only on You and welcoming You to come and be more fully alive in and through me for the glory of Your Holy Name.
May I ask one thing this year, Lord? Grant to each member of my family the grace to experience Your Presence in a life-changing way this Christmas. Amen.
I share this with you because I think it is a really great way to spend advent. Advent and Lent are two times out of the year that we are called to do something different. These are two seasons in the year that are more heavily dedicated to our Lord and Savior, His birth and His death. Both require us to prepare ourselves for these events. Meditating on Mary and Joseph’s journey can be a great way to set aside some time to grow closer to the holy family. There are some great questions in this meditation. Listen to it again, or read the transcript in the show notes, or on Facebook and spend some time really thinking about their journey, what they must have gone through, what it was like for them. Maybe set a place at your table for Jesus, or for all three of them, Jesus, Mary & Joseph. How would your dinners be different if you set a place for them? How would the conversations be different? I pray you are all having an amazing advent season, and if you were looking for something special to do this advent, try this meditation and see how it changes you.
Dear heavenly Father, please bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we are so grateful you gave us your only son. You are amazing! It still blows my mind that you love us that much. We are flawed, and we mess up all the time, we turn away from you and deny you all the time and yet you still sent your son to die on a cross for us. It is hard to fathom that kind of love. Help us to remember it during this season and every day of our lives. Help us never forget how much you love us and how much you sacrificed for us. We love you Lord, you are so awesome. We are so grateful and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
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Me, Are You Sure God?
1 Samuel 9:18-21 & 1 Samuel 10:1 “Saul approached Samuel in the gateway and asked, “Would you please tell me where the seer’s house is?” “I am the seer,” Samuel replied. “Go up ahead of me to the high place, for today you are to eat with me, and in the morning I will send you on your way and will tell you all that is in your heart. As for the donkeys you lost three days ago, do not worry about them; they have been found. And to whom is all the desire of Israel turned, if not to you and your whole family line?” Saul answered, “But am I not a Benjamite, from the smallest tribe of Israel, and is not my clan the least of all the clans of the tribe of Benjamin? Why do you say such a thing to me?” Then Samuel took a flask of olive oil and poured it on Saul’s head and kissed him, saying, “Has not the Lord anointed you ruler over his inheritance?”
When I was reading over the scriptures for the week this one caught my eye because Saul says something I can picture each one of us saying. Saul has set out in search of these 3 donkeys that are missing. This interaction picks up when he gets to Samuel’s house. He is looking for Samuel because he is a seer. A seer is a perceiver of hidden truth according to one site I found online. Samuel says Saul is to eat with him and then will go on his way in the morning. Samuel then drops this crazy idea on Saul that Israels future lies in his hands. Saul answered, “But am I not a Benjamite, from the smallest tribe of Israel, and is not my clan the least of all the clans of the tribe of Benjamin? Why do you say such a thing to me?” This is where I think we can all relate.
Saul has just been told, “And to whom is all the desire of Israel turned, if not to you and your whole family line?” Basically the future of Israel lies in Saul’s hands and he instantly questions his worthiness. Have you ever done this? Have you ever wanted to go for a promotion at work and yet worried you weren’t good enough for it? Have you ever had someone tell you that you would be perfect for some position, whether paid, or volunteer and you wonder what they see in you that made them think that? I know I have. I went to a retreat once, and they were looking for people to be on the executive board for the European region. It was my first retreat with the group. I had been a part of the local groups for a few years. The women I had met at the retreat were saying if no one else wanted the positions maybe we should help out.
I instantly wondered if I could do it. Didn’t you have to be pretty holy to be on the executive board of a large Catholic organization? What if they knew how flawed I am? What if they realized I don’t know nearly as much as anyone else does about our faith? What if’s kept running through my head. When we were talking about it at dinner, we were discussing what experience we had either in a job setting or in a volunteer setting. I mentioned I had several years experience volunteering on the executive boards of several spouses groups. I had pretty much done all the various roles. I will never forget one of the women said, I could have guessed that. I wondered what about me made her think that. To me I just saw my self as a mom of three boys. Someone who helps out wherever needed. I didn’t think I did anything too important. I mean I know mothering is important. Its just, sometimes in the grand scheme of things, when mothering is your full time job, it can start to feel like you aren’t important. I am not sure if that makes sense to everyone, but I know some of you have probably felt that way before. It was nice to have someone else affirm that she knew I could do it.
I had only spent two days or so with this woman and she could see things in me that I couldn’t see. Why is it that others can see things in us that we can’t see? Why do others see the best in us and we not only can’t see it, we often struggle to believe it when they call it out in us? Saul was struggling to believe he was worthy of this amazing thing Samuel called out in him. He answered, “But am I not a Benjamite, from the smallest tribe of Israel, and is not my clan the least of all the clans of the tribe of Benjamin? Why do you say such a thing to me?” All Saul could see was where he came from. He saw his family status, he saw his place in the clan, he saw all he lacked. He didn’t come from the best family, he didn’t have the status, he didn’t see what Samuel saw in him. However, Samuel was a seer, he could see the hidden truths. Samuel was able to see what God had in store for Saul. He was able to look to the future and see all Saul was capable of doing.
I know Saul didn’t have the benefit of the Bible. I am sure some of the stories of God had been passed down through the generations, but he did’t have the benefit of the complete Old and New Testament. If he did he would have been able to realize that God rarely, if ever, uses those with perfect family blood lines. He rarely, if ever, uses the person you are I would pick for Him to use. God tends to pick the broken to do His work. God chooses people not based on how we see them, but on how He sees them. God chooses people for a particular purpose and your status, your family, your job, your reputation, none of that will exclude you out if God wants you. I was mentioning to Tony yesterday about how Saul was on his way to capture and put in jail anyone who believed in Jesus Christ and God gave him a vision and he was baptized just a few days later. Saul consented to the stoning of Stephen, a beloved follow of Jesus, and he was not excluded from God’s glory. He was not excluded from helping to build up the kingdom of God here on earth. Saul is just one example, but there are so many. Even within the 12 apostles there was Matthew who was a tax collector, Simon who was a zealot and Judas who was a thief.
I know you don’t think you are worthy of the call God is placing on your life, answer that call anyway. God will be there every step of the way to give you all you need. I know you don’t feel comfortable believing the great things people call out in you, believe them anyway. I know it can be uncomfortable to call out the wonderful things you see in others, call them out anyway. You never know how much it could mean to that person. You never know if that thought that you had about that person is something God put in your mind for you to share it for Him. We need to build people up. This world does a great job of tearing people down. What if we did a great job of building people up? What if we called out the good we see in others even if we think they already see it. What if God is using us to tell that person something that He has been telling them and yet they just couldn’t hear it? God loves you, he is choosing you for something right now, can you say yes? I asked God one time, why me, and he said why not you. He sees incredible things in each one of us. He is choosing you and He has His reasons, trust that The One True God, the God almighty, The Maker of Heaven and Earth did not get it wrong. Trust He knows what He is doing and say “Yes Lord, Yes, Lord, Yes, Yes, Lord.”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you and we are sorry to question you. We are sorry we struggle to believe you would really use us. We are sorry we struggle to see how wonderfully you made us. We say yes Lord, even if we don’t understand why you chose us, we say yes. We say yes even if we don’t think we are worthy because we know if you call us for something you will also equip us for it. Lord, please help us to call out the wonderful things we see in others. Give us the boldness to follow your promptings and share them with others. We love you Lord, you are amazing. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed day!
(Click Here) for Encounter School Boston You Tube Page. We will be posting more testimonies on this YouTube page each week.
We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click here. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Have a blessed day!
Find The Gold In People
Romans 2:1-4 “You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things. Now we know that God’s judgment against those who do such things is based on truth. So when you, a mere human being, pass judgment on them and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God’s judgment? Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, forbearance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance?”
We spend a lot of time in class talking about this topic of judging others and calling out other peoples sin last night and I think it was such a great conversation. I wanted to share the idea with all of you as well. We all know we shouldn’t judge others. Did you know the extent to which you judge others is the extent to which God will judge you? For me, finding that our, taking a minute to let that sink in was a game changer for me. If I expect perfection from others and don’t cut anyone any slack, then God will do the same? I don’t know if that is exactly how it works, but that right there was enough for me to double down on my efforts not to judge. I know I am not perfect. I know I have many flaws. I know I need God to be very gracious with me and so that means I must be gracious with others. To me, that seems like a small trade off.
If I am gracious with others here on earth, how does that hurt me? It may be inconvenient. I may have to be nice to those I don’t like, I may have to put up with annoyances. I may have to watch them make bad choices and not judge them for it. However, if you compare that to the alternative, it doesn’t compare. If you compare those inconveniences to what might happen if God judged me the way I was judging others, I would be suffering a lot more than inconveniences after I leave earth. I want to spend eternity with my heavenly father. Our time in this world is so limited when we compare it to eternity. Romans 8:18 says, “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.” Is it hard not to judge others, yes. It is worth it in the end, absolutely.
When I talk about judging others, most of you are probably thinking about how we judge strangers. How we judge those we see on the streets, or in the grocery stores, maybe even those at work. Those we judge when there is really no reason to judge. We might judge someone’s outfit or the decisions they are making, but they don’t affect us. Our judgement does not really affect them. However, what about when we view our judgement as necessary? For instance, we all want our children, or siblings, our family members to be successful. We want them to have a good life. When we worry they are headed down the wrong path, we feel it is our job to correct their course. We are only try to help them be more responsible, be healthier, be whatever it is we think they should be. Sometimes if our children, our loved ones, or our friends are doing something that we know is a sin we feel as though it is our duty to tell them. We feel we are helping them to their salvation if we call out their sin. We are only trying to help. I get it, and yet, are we really helping?
In class we took a look at how Jesus dealt with sin in the Bible. Sometimes, he did call it out, but only if needed and only with love. For instance, the woman at the well, He let her know that she was living with a man that was not her husband, but he never once made her feel ashamed for it. He was letting her know that He saw her, He knew her, all of her, and yet still loved her. The woman caught in adultery, he didn’t scold her, he didn’t tell her she needed to get her life together, he didn’t lecture her on why what she was doing was wrong. He showed her kindness, He saved her life, and he told her to sin no more. What about Luke 19:1-10? Zacchaeus was a chief tax collector who wanted to see Jesus. Jesus called out to Zacchaeus and said, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” The scripture says others around were muttering that the Lord would dare to eat with a sinner. Jesus never called out all Zacchaaeus’ sins. He called him by his name, showing that He knew him and then He showed love for Zacchaeus by going to his house for lunch. Then in Luke 19:8 it says, “But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”
Why did Zacchaeus have a change of heart? Why did he change his ways? Why did the woman at the well change her ways? Both of them had a renewal of the mind through an encounter with the love of Jesus. Our goal in life, all of us, should be to lead people to encounter the transforming love of God. I know we worry about our families and friends. I know we love them and we just want what is best for them. I also know that God loves them more than we ever could. God wants more for them than we could ever imagine. So, why do we think it is up to us and us alone to set them on the right path. Why do we think it is our job to call out there sins? Have you ever met someone or had someone in your life that pointed out all you did that was wrong? Have you ever been around someone who made you feel like nothing you did was ever good enough? How did that make you feel? Did it make you want to work really hard to get that person’s respect? Did it make you want to not even bother to try because there was no way they would be happy? Did you feel any love from that person?
The reason for the title of this episode is because our teacher kept saying we needed to look for the gold in people. When you are mining for gold, you don’t always find gold. Sometimes you pull up rocks, mud, sludge, or whatever else in mixed in with the gold. However, you don’t keep that stuff. You sift through all the junk and you only keep the good stuff. What if we did that with all we meet. Yes we see all the junk, the uncleanliness, the immature decisions, the sinfulness, and much more. However, what if we were to sift that stuff out and just look for the gold. Look for that one thing they are doing right, that one thing they have going for them, that one thing we can be proud of. I think we definitely underestimate the power of our words and more importantly the power of positive words.
Fear is gripping this society today. There is so much fear, worry, anxiety. We must fight it. We must believe that our God is bigger than anything this world has to through at Him. We must believe that God has the power to change our loved ones, to change us. If there is one thing God has told me so many times over the years it is to be patient with the process. He continues to tell me, because it takes multiple times, that the change I am looking for is coming, but it is not coming through my nagging. My nagging only slows God’s plan down. My nagging only closes the hearts and minds of those I want the best for. God continues to tell me I just need to love the people and He will do the rest. Sometimes this is counterintuitive. I know you don’t see how affirming a person when they are making terrible choices can help the situation, but it can. We need to come along side our loved ones. Instead of acting like we have it all figured out, we can sympathize with their situation. We can let them know we love them right where they are at. They don’t need to change for us to love them. They don’t need to be a certain person so we can love them. We already love them and we are here to help when they are ready for the help. Every single person in this world, whether they know it or not, is just looking to be loved, respected, and accepted.
We are called to be like Jesus. We are called to act like Jesus. We are called to think like Jesus. We can’t do this on our own, but with Jesus, we can do all things! What if we put our worry aside for a moment and just lead with love? What if we sifted through all the crap and called out that one thing they were doing right? What if we just met people where they were and led them to an encounter with God’s transforming love? I promise you, if you lead with love, you will be surprised at the changes you will see. St. Augustine said, “Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.” I think this applies to finding the gold in others. You may have 101 reasons why this won’t work, why focusing on the positive won’t change anything, why your correcting them is necessary. I get it and yet I am asking you to have faith. Have faith that God can change the situation, change the person, change you. Have faith that love is what is needed. You will be surprised how different people act when they know they are loved and they don’t have to fight for love. How about we all commit to trying this for advent? Can you spend the next 26 days leading with love? Can you stop the criticizing, judging, nagging, for the next 26 days and just find the gold in all those you meet. Not just find it, but point it out and celebrate it. God’s love is the most powerful tool for change!
Dear heavenly Father, please bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, forgive us for judging others, we don’t mean to. Forgive us for nagging our loved ones, we only want the best for them. Forgive us for making others feel unloved or unwanted, that was not our intent. Lord, show us how to lead with love. Jesus did it so perfectly, show us how to imitate Jesus. We just want our loved ones to be successful and happy, whatever that looks like for them. If this means we need to change or renew our minds to see them in a different light then we give you permission to change us too Lord. Mold us and transform us to your likeness and image Lord. We love you Lord, you are truly amazing. We are grateful you love our loved ones more than we ever could. We are grateful you are in charge and we are sorry we keep forgetting that. You are amazing Lord. You are the almighty one, the prince of peace. We bless you, we adore you and we glorify. We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name. Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldy with Jesus. I look forward to brining you another witness tomorrow. Tomorrow’s witness will be a couple different ones from my encounter class. I know you will enjoy them. They all speak about healing, and who couldn’t use a healing? I pray you have a blessed day and remember, Jesus loves you and so do I!
What is God Like?
Exodus 34:5-7 “And the Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord. The Lord passed before him, and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”
The Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there, can you even imagine? The Lord our God just coming down in the cloud and standing with you? Sometimes I think Moses was so lucky. He was so loved by the Lord and He had so many great conversations with the Lord. He had interactions with the Lord that most of us only dream of. As I write that, I wonder if that is a true statement? Could we have interactions with the Lord, like Moses did? While I think we could have interactions like Moses did, I don’t think most of us do because we are not willing to trust like Moses did. We are not willing to sacrifice and be obedient like Moses. When I start to think about how lucky Moses was, the Holy Spirit reminds me of all Moses was called to do. Moses did not have an easy job. Going in front of the Pharaoh and asking him to release the Jews was not easy. Going back to Pharaoh again and again could not have been easy. Then he also had to lead the people out of Egypt.
When I pictured Moses leading the people out of Egypt I pictured a small caravan of people. I’m not sure if I thought it was a few hundred or a few thousand. Honestly I probably pictured a few hundred. When I read Exodus 12:37 and I learned “There were about six hundred thousand men on foot, besides women and children,” I couldn’t believe it. When I think of how many people Moses was leading, I don’t feel he was lucky. I can’t even get my three boys to do what I want them to do, can you imagine being in charge of well over 600,000 people. Counting women and children some people say it was over 2 million people. Moses had a hard job. If he wasn’t as close with God I am not sure he would have been able to do it.
The next part of the verse talks about God, it tells us some of His characteristics. The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. The Lord showed this over and over again with how he treated the Israelites. They constantly turned away from the Him and yet he kept forgiving them. God performed numerous miracles for them and they were always in awe and they celebrated, and praised Him, and then after a little time went by, they started to complain about their circumstances again. We do this too, don’t we? We are so happy when God answers our prayers, and we praise Him and thank Him. Then we go back to our normal lives, we get bored and we start to complain to the Lord because we don’t have all the things we want to have. God saved the Israelites from slavery and yet they were complaining because they didn’t have any meat to eat. They were romanticizing their life in slavery because they were comfortable there. This new life Moses led them too wasn’t comfortable. Yes, they were free, but they didn’t have the comforts they were used to.
Isn’t it strange how we do the same thing? We know we are being called to something different and yet we cling to our past because that is where we are most comfortable. Even if our past holds trauma, even if we weren’t free in our past situations, even if our past situations were hurting us, we can cling to what we are used to doing, what made us comfortable. We know that staying with that abusive partner is not safe for us and yet if we leave, what will we have? We may not even have a place to live, or money to buy food. God can do miraculous things for us, He can help us leave that abusive relationship, that job that was stealing all our time away from our families, that town that wasn’t good for us and yet once we leave that situation we may long for some of the comforts that life provided us.
God is merciful and gracious, he understands what we are going through. He is slow to anger. He understands that we will make mistakes and He stands by our side while me make them. I looked up the word steadfast as I wasn’t sure exactly what steadfast love and faithfulness meant. According to the Oxford Dictionary steadfast means resolutely or dutifully firm and unwavering. That seems to fit well with our God. His love and faithfulness is unwavering. He does not always like what we do and He doesn’t always approve of it, and yet his love for us never changes. Whether we have turned away or not, whether we are striving to be holy or not, God’s love for us never changes, it’s always there!
I really like the next part of the verse too. It says, “ Keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.” I am so grateful that God forgives our iniquity and transgression and sin. Can you even imagine where we would be if God didn’t for our transgressions and sins? We are all sinners. None of us are perfect. I looked up the word iniquity because it is one of those words that I kinda know what it means, but I couldn’t explain it to someone else. I think if we are exploring these verses we will understand them better if we can explain each word to someone else. According to Oxford dictionary iniquity means, “Immoral or grossly unfair behavior.” Yup, that sounds about right. Where would we be if God didn’t forgive our immoral or grossly unfair behavior? I also love how it says that God is keeping steadfast love for thousands.
The last part of this verse was reassuring and yet a bit frightening, at least for me when I read it. The ending of the verse says, “But who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.” The first part seems like a good thing. We love that God forgives our sins but we don’t want the guilty to go free. God is a good good Father and so sometimes He gives out consequences that we may not like when we do the wrong thing. He does not let us get away with things we shouldn’t get away with. God will call us our on our stuff. That part was not the frightening part.
The second part of that sentence where it says, “visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.” This part seems disturbing to me. Does that mean if my parents, or grandparents make a huge mistake then I will have to pay for it? If my great grandmother does something to upset God, then I will also have to pay for her sins? When I read this part of the verse I almost skipped over it. It didn’t make sense to me and if I don’t understand it how could I explain it. Also, it doesn’t seem to paint God in a very good light and I don’t want that either. The reason I didn’t skip over this verse is because we are on a journey to learn what the Bible is telling us. We can’t do that if we skip all the hard parts. So, instead of skipping I went to my good friend google and looked up what other people saying about this last part that seems to be discussing generational curses. I looked through a few articles, two of which seemed to explain it. If you have the time check out the articles as I felt the held a lot of good information.
One article said, “So here’s what the “generational curse” is really about: The skeletons in your closet weren’t put there by your dad or your grandmother or your great-aunt. They’re the work of your First Parents. You were in Adam when he broke God’s commandment. You were condemned with him. But that’s not the end of the story — praise God! Just as you were in Adam when he fell from grace, so now, if you believe in Jesus, you are in Christ through faith. This is what Paul means when he says that “one man [Jesus] did obey. That is why many people will be made right with God.” (Romans 5:19, NIRV). To get out from under the “generational curse,” you have to be grafted into a whole new family tree (Romans 11:11-24). God sent Jesus to die for our sins so we wouldn’t be condemned by the sins of others.” (Click Here for article)
The second article explains it a bit differently. It says, "It’s important to note that, even within the Mosaic Law, children were not required to suffer the penalty for their parents’ sins (see Deuteronomy 24:16). Nor was a child’s standing before God determined by the actions of his or her parents (see Ezekiel 18:1–32). However, there is no such thing as sin without consequence. When a parent sins, his or her children (and grandchildren) can expect to experience negative, earthly consequences for that sin. For example, if a father is an alcoholic, his children will not be punished for his sin; however, they will have to deal with the negative consequences of his actions, such as verbal abuse, a strained marriage with the mother, financial problems, and more.
Through Jesus and His death on the cross, all punishment for sin has been paid for once and for all and is not counted against those who have faith in Him (Romans 6:10; 1 Peter 3:18). In moments when we must deal with the consequences of other peoples’ sin, we can remember that God has given us the Holy Spirit as a comforter and helper (John 14:16–17) and that God has promised to work all things together for the good of those who love Him. (Click Here for 2nd article)
Both these explanations gave me comfort. Although at first glance it seems as though we would have to pay for our father’s or mother’s sins, or even our grandparent’s sins, it turns out that Jesus already paid for our sins once and for all. However, we may still have to deal the earthly consequences of those sins and for that we have the Holy Spirit to help us and guide us. God is so Good, he never leaves us alone. He knew we would need the Holy Spirit and so He sent him to us!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to see you for who you are. Help us to see all the amazing characteristics you have. Help us to feel your steadfast love and faithfulness. Thank you for being so merciful and gracious. Thanks for being so amazing and forgiving our iniquities, transgressions and sins! We don’t know where we would be without you. We are so grateful for you! We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to seeing you tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today is Thanksgiving and I am so grateful to God for helping me write my book Total Trust in God’s Safe Embrace. Today I thought I would read a chapter with you so you can get a glimpse into what the book has to offer. Chapter 15 is called The Power of Spiritual Direction. It talks about the importance of a Spiritual Director, why you should get one and where you can find one. I hope you will enjoy it! Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Fearless Confidence
Acts 4:29-31 “And now they’re at it again! Take care of their threats and give your servants fearless confidence in preaching your Message, as you stretch out your hand to us in healings and miracles and wonders done in the name of your holy servant Jesus.” While they were praying, the place where they were meeting trembled and shook. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak God’s Word with fearless confidence.”
I love how this verse ends, “They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak God’s Word with fearless confidence. How great would it be to speak God’s work with fearless confidence? How great would it be to just say what you wanted to say without feeling like you had to sensor it for the world. How many times have you thought something and then not said it because you weren’t sure what other’s would think? How many times have you not mentioned God because you didn’t want to be different or because you didn’t want to be ridiculed? I love how the disciples weren’t afraid. The stakes were high for them and yet they couldn’t be silenced. For them, it wasn’t a case of worrying if someone would be angry. They were threatened and told they could not speak about Jesus to anyone. They were thrown in jail and they were beaten, one of Jesus’ disciples, Steven, was stoned to death for his preachings.
I was drawn to this passage for two main reasons. The first is because I love that they prayed for fearless confidence. I pray for a holy boldness a lot and now I can pray for this too! The second reason is because of something Father Mike pointed out that I didn’t really notice. Does that ever happen to you? Something is right there in front of you, and yet you don’t realize it until someone points it out? Father Mike was talking about how remarkable it was that these disciples asked God for fearless confidence instead of asking God to take away the danger. As I mentioned earlier, at this time in the early church, it was really difficult to preach about God. There were rules and laws against it. People were told if they talked about Christ Jesus they will go to jail. They were beaten, they were put in jail, they were stoned to death. They did not have the religious freedoms many of us have today.
They could have prayed for the threat to their safety to be removed. They could have asked God to protect them from all dangers. They could have asked for him to change the situation they were in. They could have asked God for anything and instead they asked God for fearless confidence in preaching His message. Wouldn’t it be awesome if we could all make this our prayer? Wouldn’t it be great if instead of praying that God changes our circumstances we ask God to change us? We can ask God to give us more strength, more courage, more love, more patience, more whatever it is we need to make it though our current circumstance, instead of asking God to change that circumstance. Tony was talking to his friend once when I was pregnant with one of our boys. We didn’t find out the gender of our baby until they were born. We wanted to be surprised. Tony was telling his friend that he didn’t care if it was a boy or girl, he just prayed our baby was healthy. Tony said he will never forget what his friend replied, “I used to pray for a healthy baby, now I pray for the strength to take care of whatever baby God gives me.”
Tony was moved by this statement. He thought it was great that his friend was bold enough to pray a prayer like that. When we are able to pray something like Tony’s friend prayed, or like the apostles prayed, we are truly trusting in the will of God. We are trusting in the sovereign power of God. We are asking God to equip us for whatever circumstances He has laid out before us. A lot of times we want to take the easy way out. Sometimes everything in life is so overwhelming that we can’t help but ask for God to take it away, and that is ok. It’s not bad to ask God to remove your heavy burdens. Turning you worries and cares over God should be the first thing we all do. I think asking God to take away your struggles is a good thing. I think praying for God to change you, instead of asking Him to change your circumstances is a deeper level in your relationship with the Lord. I long for that close of a relationship with my heavenly dad. I long for the type of relationship where I have complete trust in God and His plans. I long for a relationship with Him where my will and His will line up perfectly. How awesome would that be?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, you are amazing. Please help us to desire for you to transform us instead of us asking you to take away our circumstance. Help us to be open to your will Lord. Please give us the words to say when we pray. We love you Lord, you are the almighty one and the Lord of all Lord. We are so grateful and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldy with Jesus. It is so great to know I am not on this journey by myself! Thank you also for all of you that have purchased my book Total Trust in God’s Safe Embrace! I truly appreciate it. Today, I want to wish all of you listening from America a very Happy Thanksgiving! I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Check out Robert's Book on Amazon (Click Here)
Check out my book on Amazon (Click Here)
We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click on the link below. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Have a blessed day!
Are We Talking About Jesus?
Romans 10:14-17 "But how can people call for help if they don’t know who to trust? And how can they know who to trust if they haven’t heard of the One who can be trusted? And how can they hear if nobody tells them? And how is anyone going to tell them, unless someone is sent to do it? That’s why Scripture exclaims, A sight to take your breath away! Grand processions of people telling all the good things of God! But not everybody is ready for this, ready to see and hear and act. Isaiah asked what we all ask at one time or another: “Does anyone care, God? Is anyone listening and believing a word of it?” The point is: Before you trust, you have to listen. But unless Christ’s Word is preached, there’s nothing to listen to.”
We are all called to evangelization. What does evangelization even mean? According to the diocese of Trenton “Evangelization means bringing the Good News of Jesus into every human situation and seeking to convert individuals and society by the divine power of the Gospel itself.” This could look different for each one of us. I have a friend who feels called to share the Psalms with those he meets. When he does people are often moved to tears and it opens doors for him to talk about other parts of the Bible. I have another friend who likes to spend time mentoring women in all that Jesus wants for them. She meets people right where they are and uses the scriptures and applies them to how they can live their lives in a big way. Some people like to go out onto the streets and talk to the homeless people about God and Jesus. Other people like to go door to door asking if they can share the Good News of the Jesus with all those they meet.
There isn’t one special way that you have to evangelize. There also isn’t a set rule on who you have to evangelize too. Sometimes we might feel more comfortable talking about Jesus within our family. We might talk about Jesus to our siblings, our parents, or even our children. Other people might feel uncomfortable talking about Jesus with their family but they are perfectly fine talking about him to strangers or to their friends. Whatever feels best for you, that is a great place to start. I say a great place to start because sometimes it is good to step outside of your comfort zone and try something new. It’s great if you start be talking about Jesus with those you feel more comfortable doing, but then over time, as you become more and more comfortable talking about Jesus, you can branch out and start talking to others about Him.
The verse above says, "But how can people call for help if they don’t know who to trust? And how can they know who to trust if they haven’t heard of the One who can be trusted? And how can they hear if nobody tells them? And how is anyone going to tell them, unless someone is sent to do it?” We live in a world where there is so much noise and so many distractions. We don’t know who to listen to these days. This verse is saying, how can we call for help when we don’t know who we can trust. And how can people know they can trust Jesus if we aren’t talking about Him. If they don’t know who He is? It is our job, each and everyone of us, to teach the world who Jesus really is and that they can trust Him. Even if you just start with your spouse or your children, tell them about Jesus. Tell them about all of God’s promises that Jesus came to fulfill. Tell them they can trust Jesus. God is our comfort, our shield and our protector. If you didn’t already know that, wouldn’t you want to? I am not talking about going out and forcing your beliefs on others. I am talking about sharing the Good News with those willing to listen.
Next the verse says, “That’s why Scripture exclaims, A sight to take your breath away! Grand processions of people telling all the good things of God!” How great would it be if we were all talking about God? The verse is saying that it would be so beautiful it would take our breath away if we saw grand processions of people telling all the good things of God! Doesn’t that sound like something you want to be a part of? Doesn’t that sound exciting? Can you picture it? Instead of being afraid to talk about your faith because you don’t want to offend anyone, you freely walk down the streets proclaiming the Good News of Christ Jesus. When I picture that I think of a time when we used to vacation at this military place called “Fourth Cliffs.” We would go camping there over the fourth of July weekend. Each 4th of July they would have a little parade. This parade consisted of a pick up truck with and American Flag attached to it. Anyone who wanted to participate in the parade walked behind the truck shouting “Happy Birthday America!” and “Happy 4th of July.” It was so much fun. When I hear the part of this verse that says “a grand procession,” I picture a whole bunch of people out in the streets talking about how amazing Jesus is!
The verse also says, “But not everybody is ready for this, ready to see and hear and act.” We can’t do anything about those that are not ready to see, hear or act. That is a job for God. God needs to soften their hearts, open their eyes and ears. We are not responsible for the fruit of our labor. It is not our job to make sure everyone we talk to hears what we are saying. It is only our job to say it. We don’t have to put pressure on ourselves to say the right thing to everyone all the time. We don’t have to stress about not knowing what to say. If we just follow the promptings of the Holy Spirit, God will take care of the rest. God will make sure what we say takes root in the people we are talking to. We don’t have to worry about that. God is so good!
Next the verse says, “Isaiah asked what we all ask at one time or another: “Does anyone care, God? Is anyone listening and believing a word of it?” I like how this says, we all ask at one time or another. I think this is so true. Especially if we have children. We teach them the ways of God, we tell them about Jesus and how much He loves them and then yet we often have no idea if they are hearing what we are saying. Do they believe all that we are saying, do they believe any of it? What about our friends and family members? Do they believe what we are saying? Are they even listening?
The verse ends with, “The point is: Before you trust, you have to listen. But unless Christ’s Word is preached, there’s nothing to listen to.” This brings us back to the beginning. It is not our job to make sure everything we say is heard or understood, that is God’s job. Our job is just to get the information out there. Before anyone can trust they need to listen and if we aren’t talking about Jesus, then there isn’t anything for them to listen to. Take a moment and think about how many people you meet throughout your day. Think about how you could incorporate Jesus into the conversation. Maybe think up a few one liners about Jesus or God that could really fit into most conversations. Or, practice listening to the Holy Spirit, so you can know when He is prompting you to share the Good News of Jesus to someone. Think of how you can share Jesus with your friends and family. One great way is to love them. Sometimes we teach people more with our actions than we ever could with our words. Especially if we are talking about Jesus and yet we are not loving people and treating them with respect. In that case our actions will be much louder than our words and they won’t hear anything we are saying. We are all called to share the Good News of Jesus. How you do that is up to you and God. Ask Him how He wants you to share and He will tell you.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we don’t want to keep you to ourselves, we want to share you with others, please help us. Show us how you want each one of us to share with those around us. Give us the courage to share even when we might be nervous or scared. Help reassure us that you will guide us in what to say if we ask and if we listen to you guiding us. Lord, we love you and we want everyone to love you. Please help us tell about all the amazing things that make you so incredible. You are the almighty one. You are the King of Kings and the Lord or Lords. We are so very grateful for all you do for us and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Tomorrow’s witness will be our friend Robert L. again. This week he will be sharing with us some amazing things he has witnessed. I know you will really enjoy his witness. If you haven’t been listening regularly, I want to share some exciting news you may not have heard. I wrote a book and it is out in the world!! I am very excited. The book is called Total Trust in God’s Safe Embrace. It is about 15 different ways you can grow in your trust with the Lord. I have had to trust God a lot over the years and in doing so I was always searching for and praying for ways to increase that trust. This book is a compilation of all those ways I found. My trust in the Lord is deep now and I know it is because of the things listed in this book. I hope you check it out. If you have bought the book and you have read it, would you consider leaving a review on Amazon, or emailing me a review for my website? The more reviews on Amazon the more people will discover my book and it can help them as well. Thank you for all your support! Remember Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
The Prodigal Son
Luke 15:20-24 “So he set out for his father’s house. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion. He ran to him, threw his arms around him, and kissed him. Then the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ “But the father said to his servants, ‘Quickly bring out the finest robe we have and put it on him. Place a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Then bring the fatted calf and kill it, and let us celebrate with a feast. For this son of mine was dead and has come back to life. He was lost, and now he has been found.’ And they began to celebrate.”
I really like hearing other people talk about the various aspects of the Parable of the Prodigal Son. It seems like such a straight forward story to me, at least at first glance. For those who are not aware of the story, let me read it to you.
Luke 15:11-32 “The Parable of the Lost (or Prodigal) Son. Then he said: “There was a man who had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of your estate that I will inherit.’ And so the father divided the property between them.
“A few days later the younger son gathered together everything he had and traveled to a distant country, where he squandered his inheritance on a life of dissolute living. When he had spent it all, a severe famine afflicted that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the local inhabitants who sent him to his farm to feed the pigs. He would have willingly filled his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.
“Then he came to his senses and said, ‘How many of my father’s hired workers have more food than they can consume, while here I am, dying of hunger. I will depart from this place and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me like one of your hired workers.” ’
“So he set out for his father’s house. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion. He ran to him, threw his arms around him, and kissed him. Then the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’
“But the father said to his servants, ‘Quickly bring out the finest robe we have and put it on him. Place a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Then bring the fatted calf and kill it, and let us celebrate with a feast. For this son of mine was dead and has come back to life. He was lost, and now he has been found.’ And they began to celebrate.
“Now the elder son had been out in the fields, and as he returned and drew near the house, he could hear the sounds of music and dancing. He summoned one of the servants and inquired what all this meant. The servant replied, ‘Your brother has come home, and your father has killed the fatted calf because he has him back safe and sound.’ The elder son then became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him, but he said to his father in reply, ‘All these years I have worked like a slave for you, and I never once disobeyed your orders. Even so, you have never even given me a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours returns after wasting his inheritance from you on prostitutes, you kill the fatted calf for him.’
“Then the father said to him, ‘Son, you are with me always, and everything I have is yours. But it was only right that we should celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and now he has been found.’ ”
I have heard many people talk about this one parable. Some have focused on the younger son who took his father’s money and left. Some focus on the father and his willingness and eagerness to forgive. Other’s focus on the older son who stayed and work his father’s land. Every time I listen to someone explain this story I always learn something new. No matter how many times this story is explained there is a whole new level I didn’t know about. It truly amazes me. Today I want to explain one small part of it that Father Mike explained on day #318 (Click Here to Listen) on the Bible in A Year podcast. I thought it was so great and I think everyone should hear how he explains the interaction between the younger son and his father when he comes home. Father Mike explains that when the younger son is leaving he is saying he doesn’t want anything to do with his father. He takes the inheritance and leaves. Then he comes home because he is starving. Father Mike and Stephanie Parks, who works for focus created this retreat called the Prodigal son retreat and it focuses on the four things the father said when the son came home.
First, What does it mean that the father gives him the best robe? In the ancient world you only have a couple robes and only one best robe. This son just took half his father’s money and squandered it away. He is not a good son, he is a failure and yet the father says give him the best robe. This represents giving him the glory of the father. Next the father says, put a ring on his finger. On that ring would be a signet of the father, a sign of the father’s authority. So not only is his clothing him in the father’s glory but he is putting on his hand the father’s authority. He is fully restoring him to sonship. Thirdly he is saying put shoes on his feet. Why? Because the son is free. He is free to leave again if he wants to. Lastly the father says, “kill the fatted calf.” There are not a lot of fatted calves lying around. You get one. Not only does he get the best robe so he is clothed in the father’s glory, then he gets the ring to show the father’s authority, he is restored, not only does he gets shoes and is free to leave if he wants to again but then they kill the fatted calf because he is relentlessly pursued, he is ridiculously celebrated.
I haven’t head anyone explain the four things the father gives to the son before. I knew that the father was accepting the son back as is but I didn’t realize the significance of those four things. I love to do Bible studies and to listen to people who have studied the Bible so much more than I have explain the various things to me. There is so much depth to everything in the Bible and if we are just reading it on our own we can sometimes miss a lot. We might read something as is without reading into too much. However, a lot of times there is so much more to what is being said in just the words. This is why I loved listening to the Bible in a Year podcast these past two years. Father Mike & Jeff Cavins, when he in on the show, give so much insight into what we are hearing when we listen to the Bible. There is another podcast called Exploring My Strange Bible by Tim Mackie. Each episode of this podcast is like a mini Bible lesson. It is so good. I really enjoy listening to it. I hope you enjoyed this brief insight into the parable today. In the episode #319 Father Mike also talks about the older brother in this parable. If you have time I would check out the complete episode. It’s really interesting.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, you are amazing. I love that you teach us in parables. I love that you reveal the truth to us slowly so we don’t get overwhelmed. Thank you for showing us your love for us by demonstrating it in the Father of this parable. You are so forgiving and you welcome up with open arms. You don’t even wait for us to get up to the door. You see us from far off and you run out to greet us. We are so lucky you love us so much. We love you Father and we are so grateful you forgive us for our sins. We are grateful you welcome up back in and restore us to sonship and daughter ship. You are amazing and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
I Can Resist That Cookie!
Proverbs 26:11 “Like a dog that returns to its vomit is a fool who reverts to his folly."
Ok, I heard this and I just knew I had to use this verse. I mean, did you ever expect to hear such a thing in the Bible? I didn’t even know vomit was a word back then. I didn’t just pick this verse because of the colorful language though. I also picked it because it is such a true statement and it is one that applies to all of us. How many times have you done the same thing over and over again? I am not talking about something wonderful like working out, or eating salad for lunch. I am talking about something you know you shouldn’t be doing and yet you do it anyway.
I was just talking with some of my friends today about how much we like cinnamon rolls. They are so delicious. I was telling them how BJ’s has great cinnamon rolls in their bakery section. They are all in one big pan and the frosting covers all of them. Then you put one in the microwave for 15-20 seconds and it is all warm and gooey. We love them. However, we no longer buy them because if we have them in the house we will eat them all and that’s not good for our health. One of my friends said she no longer buys junk food either. She said every time she buys it she tells herself that she will be good and just have on every now and then. How many time have you told yourself that? I’ll just have one and leave the rest. I know I have done it more times than I can count.
The worst for me is TV. If I put one quick show on to watch while I eat my meal, I will wind up spending hours watching TV. It happens every time. The funny thing, that’s not so funny, is that I know this will happen. I have a conversation with myself that goes something like this, “Catherine, don’t turn the TV on, you know you will wind up sitting there for hours.” “No I won’t. I really want to get my book done. It means a lot to me and I am sure I will turn the TV off right after this show. I can watch just one episode.” “You have yet to ever really get up and turn the TV off after one episode when you are in the mood to watch a movie.” The conversation with myself goes on for awhile, but eventually I am convinced that I am just turning the TV on while I eat and I will be able to turn it off after an episode. Guess what? I do not turn it off after one episode, I watch at least three before turning it off.
Do you have something like this? Something you know you shouldn’t be doing and yet you keep doing it. Something you don’t want to do and yet you seem to keep coming back to it? This verse is telling us that when we keep doing these things that we know we shouldn’t be doing, these things that we don’t want to be doing, we are like a dog that eats his vomit. In other words, we are not being very smart. Albert Einstein said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” So, if that is the definition of insanity, why do we do it? Why do we keep doing the same thing all the time?
These temptations are not from God. I remember hearing somewhere that God does not tempt us and so I looked it up to make sure I wasn’t giving you false information. This information can be found in James 1:13-14 where it says, “When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.” For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; but each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed.” The enemy is the one who is tempting us with all those cookies, desserts, tv episodes and whatever else we struggle with resisting. Why would the enemy be tempting us? Could it be because he wants to lead us to sin? Could it be because he wants to lead us further away from our heavenly Father?
You may be thinking I am being a little dramatic right now. Are you thinking, “Catherine, eating a cookie or cinnamon roll is not a sin?” I totally agree with you, I don’t think eating a cookie or a cinnamon roll, or even watching an episode on TV is a sin. However, do we stop at one? Do we just eat one cinnamon roll, or do we eat the whole pack? Do we just watch one episode of TV or do we waste hours of our day watching TV? It is not eating the cookie, or watching the TV show that is the sin, it is what it can lead us too. I really don’t think God cares if you eat a cookie or watch an episode on TV. However, I think He does care if that action leads us to sin. The devil does not care about our well being. He would not be tempting us to something just because it makes us happy. He will always have an ulterior motive. Is he leading us to the sin of gluttony? Is he leading us to the sin of slothfulness? I don’t know what sin the enemy is leading me into but I do know he is up to no good.
Sometimes if we have been doing the same thing over and over again for a while, it can become a habit. We always watch an episode while we eat so we feel as though we have to continue this habit. We always eat the whole package of cookies, so that means we have to eat the whole package this time. This is a lie the enemy keeps telling us, but it is not true. One of the declarations I gave you the other day is found in Romans 6:14 says, “Sin no longer has dominion over me.” Jesus died on the cross so we could be free from our sins. We need to step into that freedom. We need to claim that freedom for our own.
You may not have been able to resist that cookie in the past, but that doesn’t mean you have to eat it this time. I know when we are faced with temptation we feel powerless most of the time. We feel as though we have given in every other time, and we will give in this time too. However, you are more powerful than you think. You have the power of the one who raised Jesus from the dead living inside of you. You have the power to resist that thing with which you are struggling. The enemy doesn’t want you to know this, he wants you to feel weak, he wants you to feel stuck. He wants you to feel like you are the same person you have always been. He wants you to think you can’t change. This is a lie. You can change. You can resist that which you thought you couldn’t. Is it easy, no, not at first, but it gets easier. All we need to do is lean into the Lord. Ask the Lord for the strength to say no to that thing we don’t want to eat or you don’t want to do. Just because you have always done something in the past doesn’t mean you have to continue to do it. Claim the freedom Jesus won for you! Claim the power of the Holy Spirit living inside of you! You’ve got this!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to resist the temptations of the enemy. Help us to know you have given us the power to resist all temptation. Help us to claim the freedom Jesus won for us. Help us claim the power of the Holy Spirit that you gave to us. Lord, you are amazing and we love you! We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me no this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Thank you to all of you that have bought my book. Your support means a lot to me! I look forward to spending time with you on Monday. Have a blessed weekend.
Why Does Jesus Speak in Parables?
Matthew 13:10-13 “The disciples came to him and asked, “Why do you speak to the people in parables?”He replied, “Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. This is why I speak to them in parables:“Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand.”
Last week in class we talked about the different ways that God communicates with us. One of those ways is through parables. I never really completely understood why Jesus had to talk in parables. I didn’t understand why he couldn’t just tell everyone what He was telling his apostles. In class they mentioned the goal of a parable was not only to teach but also to conceal. Jesus taught in parables to conceal the powerful knowledge from the proud but reveal it to the childlike. For some reason, this sentence seemed to put things into perspective for me. I now understood a little better why everyone couldn’t hear what Jesus was saying. They weren’t spiritually ready to hear what Jesus had to say.
Then they gave us the scripture verse Luke 10:21, "At that time Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this is what you were pleased to do.” This reinforces what the teacher was saying. Some understanding is hidden from those who do not believe or are not ready to hear what God has to say. We must learn to be childlike when we approach God if we wish to have a greater understanding of Him.
Then they pointed us to Proverbs 25:2, “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of kings.” Then I was confused again. Why would God conceal a matter and why would that be a good thing?
The next morning while I was reading my devotional this is what it said:
As you look at the day before you, you see a twisted, complicated path, with branches going off in all directions. You wonder how you can possibly find your way through that maze. Then you remember the One who is with you always, holding you by your right hand. You recall my promise to guide you with my counsel, and you begin to relax. As you look again at the path ahead you notice that a peaceful fog has settled over it obscuring your view. You can see only a few steps in front of you, so you turn your attention more fully to me and begin to enjoy my presence. The fog is a protection from you, calling you back into the present moment. Although I inhabit all space and time, you can communicate with me only here and now. Someday that fog will no longer be necessary, for you will have learned to keep your focus on me and on the path just ahead of you.”
Proverbs 25:2 says, "It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of kings.” They reminded us in class that we are kings through our Baptism. What this verse is telling us is that as we explore God’s Word, we uncover more and more revelations about God. As we do this, we mature into a deeper intimacy with God. God conceals things from us that we are not ready to hear or to know. However, as we dive into Scripture and as we work on growing closer to Him, he slowly reveals all we need to know. How many of us can look back over our lives and say with certainty we would have gone down the path we did if we knew all we would go through at the beginning of the path? If new parents new exactly what they were getting into, if they knew all the challenges their child would go through, would anyone choose to have a baby?
If you knew could see a movie of your life, all the challenges you were going to face, before you started down the path you started down, would you still chose it? If we look back over our life usually we can see how one experience prepared us for another experience. Our difficult times are so hard while we are going through them and yet often times, when we look back, many years later, we can see how they were necessary. If we can’t see why they were necessary, we can at least see what we learned from them and how they prepared us for the next thing we were going to have to face.
If we think of it in terms of school. If you show a first grader an algebra problem and tell them they are going to be expected to know how to do that that, they won’t know what you are talking about. They may feel overwhelmed because that seems so far from where they are right now. However, if you don’t show them what they need to know in several years, but you show them what they will be learning that year, they won’t be so overwhelmed. This is the same with us when it comes to our faith. Jesus knew that if He told people everything they needed to know about God, we would be overwhelmed. Developing an intimate relationship with God has to be developed over time, step by step. We would get overwhelmed if everything was revealed to us at once.
There was a statement made in class that I loved. The teacher said, “God speaks to us in parables not to hide things from us, but to hide things for us.” This is something important for us all to remember. This is the way God works. He does all things for us, not to us. He is working all things for our good. If we are going through a difficult time, it is not because God is doing something to us, He is doing it for us. The difficult could be of your own making and yet God can use it for your good. He can use it for your growth. I loved in the devotional above how it says a “a peaceful fog has settled over it obscuring your view.” Even just that description brings me peace. It doesn’t say you are plunged into darkness, it doesn’t say I have taken away all light so you can’t see, it says a peaceful fog settles over it, meaning the path ahead. Sometimes knowing too much in advance can be a bad thing. It can cause us not to do something because we don’t think we are strong enough. Yet, God knows by the time we get there, we will be strong enough.
I recently ran a trail fest with my friend Ashley. She had always wanted to do one and so we decided for her birthday this year, we would sign up. A trail fest is three days of running in a row. You are camping in a tent at night and then getting up early and running three beautiful runs each day. I knew going into this that it would be difficult. It was going to be running 34 miles in three days and it would be running at an elevation we were not used to. We knew it would be difficult and yet we were willing to give it a try. However, what we didn’t know was that sleeping on the ground with only a sleeping bag is really uncomfortable. We didn’t know that when we got to the highest point of the run it would be really hard to breathe. We didn’t know that compost toilets were really tall and when we sat on them our feet would be off the ground. We didn’t know that the last day was less of a trail run and more of a rock climbing experience. We didn’t know we would be trying to walk in deep sand during parts of it.
If we had known exactly what we were getting into, I am not sure we would have signed up. If we knew all of that, we might not have gotten to enjoy the awesome experience. That trip was a once in a lifetime trip that we will always remember. Those things I mentioned above, didn’t ruin our trip, they only made it more challenging, and yet we still succeeded. If we had known exactly what we were getting into we would have told ourselves we couldn’t do it. We would have thought we weren’t strong enough. God knew this and in His infinite wisdom concealed some of that information from us and I am so thankful! I am grateful I now have this amazing experience to look back upon.
The same is true for my spiritual life. If you would have asked me years ago if I would ever be in a charismatic prayer group I would have said no way. I could never speak in tongues, I could never pray over people out loud, unscripted. I could never praise God out loud. Even now, after all the growth I have made, I still get nervous when I get a glimpse into the future God has planned for me. I know I am not ready to see all He has planned because I will count myself out. God knows exactly what we need to know and when we need to know it and I am so grateful for that. We are so lucky to have a God that cares so much for us and that knows us so well. Trust that God will reveal to you what you need to know when you need to know it. I know it is frustrating when we don’t know what is coming next. I know we want to see the whole path right now, or at least I know I do. However, learning that God is hiding things for me, not from me, gives me a whole new way to look at it.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we thank you for protecting us from ourselves. We thank you for knowing exactly what we need. You are so good to us. We don’t want to be anxious about the future. We want to be able to stay in the present moment and to keep our eyes fixed on you. Lord, please give us the patience to wait for you to reveal things when we are ready. help us to see you are doing this for us and not to us. Help us to understand why we can’t know everything up front. Lord, help us to be ok with the not knowing. Help us to learn to stay in this moment and enjoy it instead of constantly thinking about what comes next. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. In case you haven’t listened to the other episodes this week I wanted to share the news that my book is finally out there in the world! I am so excited to share it with all of you. It is called Total Trust in God’s Safe Embrace and it can be found only on Amazon right now. It is in paperback or ebook format with the audio book coming soon. Please check it out and please pass it along to anyone you think might benefit from a deeper, more intimate relationship with God and also could use a little more trust in God’s plan for their life. Thank you for all your support. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed day!
Today I am going to share some witnesses from people who have been healed of some pretty big things. Randy Clark is someone who does a lot of mission healing trips. He has a school to teach others about the gift of healing. Randy Clark and Dr. Mary Healy wrote a book called The Spiritual Gifts Handbook. This website was found at the end of the book. These healing took place on some of Randy’s healing trips to other countries. I did not witness these things first hand I am relaying them from a website (CLICK HERE) so you can watch the witnesses for yourself. You can see that these are real people and that healing is still going on, healing didn’t end with the apostles and it isn’t reserved for the holiest of Saints. Healing is still being done today and God is using ordinary people like you and me to do it. If you have time I urge you to check out the website I link I provided. There is really nothing like seeing these miracles for yourself.
The first one is a man who was born blind and he received his sight. There was a young man who was born blind in his left eye. There was a word of knowledge at the healing service. A word of knowledge is when God tells someone a certain body part or a certain ailment that He want to heal. This young man heard the world of knowledge and ask God to heal his eye. He said, “Please God open my eye, I want to see.” When he opened his eye he didn’t feel anything but then he noticed he could see. Randy checked back in with this young man four years later to see how he was doing. He could still see and his father said his son’s miracle was causing people to believe all over the country of Brazil. Praise God, He is so good!
There was a girl in Brazil. I am not sure how old she was, maybe 8 years old? One month and 8 days before the healing service the girl was ran over by a motorcycle and she died. For 30 minutes she was pronounced dead by the paramedics. Her mom kept praying constantly for her. The medical professionals told her there was no use in praying as she was dead, it was game over. She called her cell group leader and she told her I am sorry but there is nothing anyone can do, it is over. Her mom said she refused to accept that. She touched her daughters chest and said, “I rebuke the spirit of death,” she touched her hand and said, “I command the spirit of life to come back to her,” and she said “Holy Spirit please breathe new life into her, breathe life into her.” As soon as she said that her daughter Maria breathed in and came back to us. She cracked her skull and she still has some injuries as it was only a month before the healing service. When she came to the healing service she came in a wheel chair, she couldn’t walk, she had an open wound on her head, and she had a lot of pain in her head. After the healing service the pain was completely healed, the wound on her head closed and she was walking. Praise God, He is so Good!
This woman went to the healing service and during praise and worship God told her, “it’s the crowbar, you are still holding onto that.” Then during the service Randy got the word crowbar as a world of knowledge. When she heard that she knew God wanted to heal her. The reason crowbar was significant is because she was a victim of domestic violence and she was beaten with a crowbar. Her neck was broken, her jaw was broken and she suffered loss of hearing in her right ear. She couldn’t hear at all out of that ear unless she wore her hearing aide. During worship they said, “Now I am going to wash you clean,” and the woman was just sweating and just getting soaked. She took the hearing aide out because it won’t work if it gets wet. Once she took the hearing aide out she realized she could still hear. She said, “I guess the hearing was healed when God healed my heart.” “God told her it’s not the hearing that you want, it’s the hearing that you want” and he healed her heart. What I love about this video is that Randy explains how important it is to step our in faith even if you aren’t sure if you are right, even if you aren’t sure what the meaning of that step out in faith. Randy didn’t know what that the word crowbar was from God. It couldn’t have just been something that came into his mind from something else. He chose to believe that because He asked God for something that God answered him. What if he was wrong and the word crowbar meant nothing to anyone in the audience? That’s ok, nothing bad would have happened. He might be embarrassed but isn’t it worth risking a little embarrassment on the chance that God could be using you for something amazing? And believe me, I am asking myself that question as much as I am asking you it.
These healings are amazing. There are three other ones on this website as well. I hope you go and check out the website. Hearing me retell them is good, but nothing compares to seeing these people tell about it themselves. Nothing compares to seeing their faces just after they have been healed. God is so good! I don’t think it is a coincidence that I felt led to call my podcast Walk Boldly with Jesus and then I start taking a class that is teaching me to do just that. I hope you guys don’t mind but I intend to bring you all along for the ride. I know for some of you listening the whole supernatural side of our faith seems strange. Or maybe not strange, but you aren’t sure what to think of it. You think healings are awesome, a little unbelievable but pretty cool. However, they happen to other people, not to you and not for you. I am hoping to change your minds. I am hoping that everyone listening to this podcast eventually realizes that the supernatural is not something out of the ordinary that a few blessed people get to do. The supernatural lifestyle is something God wants for all of us. Yes, it feels strange because it is not normal in this world. However, we are meant to be in this world, but not of this world. God set us apart. The supernatural lifestyle was normal for the apostles and it can be for you too. If this is hard for you to believe, that’s ok, I get it. It doesn’t make a lot of sense in this world. I am not asking for you to believe you can do the supernatural, I am just asking you continue on this journey of discovery with me. I ask you to be brave and if you do feel a prompting from the Holy Spirit that you step out in faith and trust that prompting is from God. He wants to speak to each of us. Yes, even you. All we need to do is learn to listen. I love you all and I am so grateful you are choosing to spend a few minutes with me to grow closer to the Lord.
We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just (click here). It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Have a blessed day!
Forget Not All His Benefits
Psalm 103:1-5 “Praise the Lord, my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name. Praise the Lord, my soul, and forget not all his benefits—who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion, who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.
This verse has a lot to it. First it's talking about praise, which is similar to yesterday’s verse. This verse is not just saying praise the Lord, it is saying praise the Lord with your soul. Praise the Lord with your inmost being. Have you ever praised like this before? Have you ever been singing along with a song, or even just listening to a song and you felt that song with your inmost soul? I have a few songs on my playlist like that. Actually we sang one of these songs at my class last Monday night. It is called "Raise a Hallelujah” by Bethel Music. If you haven’t heard that song I recommend you look it up. It’s such a great song! At class that song got everyone up on their feet singing along at the top of their lungs. It was is so good!
After this verse it says, “And forget not all His benefits—who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion, who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.” I think it might be good to look at each of these separately. The first thing it mentions is that God forgives all you sin. It doesn’t say some of your sins, it doesn’t say everyone else’s sins, but not yours, it says He forgives ALL your sins. Do you believe this is true? Do you believe that the Lord loves you so much He forgives your sins? Many of us will quickly say Jesus died on a cross for our sins. We know this and yet when you look at how we are living you wouldn’t be able to tell we know this. Some of us hold onto our sins and we wear them like a scarlet letter. We don’t let people close to us because if they really knew who we were or what we did they wouldn’t want to be our friend anymore.
We tell all those that will listen about how Jesus died for our sins and about how God loves them no matter what they have done. We tell them their behavior doesn’t make God love them any more or any less than He already does. We tell others that it is never too late to turn back to the Lord and repent. We tell them this and the whole time we are telling them this we are holding onto our own sins and we are holding onto the belief that God couldn’t possibly love us because of the things we have done. If you are good at telling others about God’s forgiveness and not great about accepting it into your life I want to encourage you to hear God’s word in this verse right now. “He forgives all you sins.” Yes, even that one you have been trying to hide from Him. Yes, even that one you know for sure He couldn’t possibly forgive. He forgives all of our sins. All we need to do is trust that and be brave enough to bring our sins to Him, confess them, and repent. He is so eager for each one of us to turn back to Him. He is waiting with open arms!
He heals all your diseases, is this something you believe? This one is sometimes harder for me. I mean, I know He can heal all diseases and at the same time, I know people who have died of diseases and so it is a harder one for me to understand. I know for sure He heals all diseases when we die and go to heaven. When we get to heaven there will be no disease. I am not sure why He doesn’t heal all diseases this side of heaven? I don’t understand why some people get to live and some people don’t. In my eyes, there is no rhyme or reason to it. Every time I try to understand, or I try to apply some sort of human logic to it, the Holy Spirit points me to Isaiah 55:18-19, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” We are not meant to understand everything this side of heaven.
Even though I know a lot of people that have died from diseases, I have also heard a lot of testimony of people who have been healed here no Earth and get to live the rest of their lives disease free. I watched the “Fearless” Documentary the other night with Tony. This documentary explores what it means to live our Catholic Faith in a fearless way. I know not everyone listening to this is Catholic, and I love that. I still think you should watch the documentary. It is such a powerful testimony to the power of stepping out in faith. There is video footage from healing services and it is incredible to see how many people were healed and how they were healed. There was a man who came to the service in a wheel chair, he hadn’t walked in 7 years. He was up and walking that night. Praise God, He is so good! God is healing people even today, even in this day and age and He is doing it though ordinary people like you and me.
The next part says, “Who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion.” This one may be another one that is hard to believe. God can redeem your life from the pit, is this something you can believe? This may be harder to believe if you are in a pit right now. When you are in a pit you don’t usually feel much love or compassion. You don’t usually feel much of anything. You certainly don’t think God will redeem what you are going through as all you can see is darkness around you. This is one where you might have to keep telling yourself it while you are in the pit. It might be one that you don’t necessarily believe, but something you hope for. If you are in a pit right now, picture God lifting you out of it, putting a crown on your head and filling you with love and compassion. This may be difficult if all you see is darkness. Try anyway. God will redeem your life from the pit. He says so right here in this verse. God has not abandoned you, nor will He ever abandon you. If this is what you are hearing it is a lie from the enemy. If this is what you are hearing on a daily basis, then write this part of the verse down and read it every time you get the thought that you are alone or that God has abandoned you. God will crown you with love and compassion, remember that!
The last thing the verse says is, "Who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.” Another amazing thing about God is that He doesn’t just give us what we need to survive. He makes sure we have that and then He goes above and beyond that. He satisfies our desires with good things. Do you believe this? Is this something you have gotten to witness? Have you ever asked the Lord for something and then received something so much better than you asked for? Sometimes God likes to show off and I love it! The other day God miraculously fixed the water at my friend’s parents house. He could have arranged to have a plumber come, or someone to look at the well, but instead He decided to miraculously fix it. My friend was praying that she would have enough food at a celebration she was having and she ended up having way more food than she needed. Praise God, He is so good! I heard something on the Big Life podcast the other day and I have started saying it a lot. I really like it. When I notice something that God did, when I see something God created, or when God answers a prayer I say, “Thank you God I love it!”
The next time you notice something God did for you, or something He created for the whole world, like a beautiful sunset, say, “Thank you God, I love it!” and see if you feel any differently about it. I can’t say that without smiling and filling up with joy. That is a super short way to praise God and yet it gets the praise to HIm. This verse started out talking about praise and I just realized I am ending it talking about praise. I didn’t mean to do this and yet I am sure the Holy Spirit did because praising God is just that important. What can you praise God for today? How many times today can you say, “Thank you God, I love it!”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we thank you for all you do for us. We ask you to help us to believe those things listed above that we are struggling to believe. We ask you to help us come to an understanding about the things we don’t understand. If it is something we aren’t meant to understand help us to see that too Lord. We pray for those who are in a pit right now, we pray that you show them how much you love them and that you lift them out of that pit and put that crown of love and compassion on them. Lord, we pray for all those suffering with a disease right now, we pray you heal their disease. We pray for all those who need forgiveness. We pray that you open their hearts and help them accept your forgiveness. Lord we love you and we are so grateful you do so much for us. You truly are the Lord of Lords and the Kings of Kings. You are the father of forgiveness and we are so grateful. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. In case you didn’t hear yesterday, my book is finally out into the world! It is called Total Trust In God’s Safe Embrace! I hope you will take a look at it and share it with your friends. Click Here for book. Thank you for all your support! I look forward to bringing you another witness tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed day.
I Keep My Eyes Always On The Lord
Psalm 16:7-8 “I will praise the Lord, who counsels me; even at night my heart instructs me. I keep my eyes always on the Lord. With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken.”
When I read this my first thought was, I wish my eyes were always on the Lord. I wonder if sometimes, in the Psalms and actually in any part of the Bible, if they are saying what they know they should do instead of what they are actually doing. The person writing this Psalm, were their eyes always on the Lord, or were they saying this as a reminder to themselves of what works best? The beginning of this verse says I will praise the Lord and you guys know that is one of my favorite things to do. Praising the Lord is something I tend not to forget to do too often. Luckily I am in a prayer group that knows how important praise is, so even if I didn’t do it regularly on my own, we praise God every Thursday for an hour. That is one of the great things about surrounding yourself with other people who love God, they help you remember what is truly important.
“I will praise the Lord, who counsels me; even at night my heart instructs me.” This is a great verse because it reminds us who is leading us through this crazy thing we call life. The Lord is there to counsel us. Are we seeking His guidance? Are we stopping to ask Him what He thinks of all the plans we are making in our head? When is the last time you slowed yourself down long enough to run something by God before you did it? Has it been awhile? Have you been running into a lot of dead ends lately? Have you noticed that things aren’t bad, but they aren’t great either? Maybe that’s because you are going so fast you haven’t had time to listen to God counsel you. He really does have some pretty great advise if we slow down and listen to it.
Things just go more smoothly with the counsel of the almighty one. I mean, you can tell just from His name, that He knows what He is talking about. He has seen your entire life, He know what turns you will make and He knows how to help you get to the life you want faster than you could ever could on your own. So, why don’t we listen to His counsel then? We don’t listen because we are too busy. One luxury that Covid afforded us, was the gift of slowing down. There was so much bad that came from Covid, and I am not disputing that. However, Covid also afforded us the opportunity to clear our calendars. To just stay home and be with our family for a little while. The amount of time we were all home with family is different for everyone, but we all got some time where are schedules were completely cleared. No one was going to work, no one was going to school, grocery stores and other stores weren’t open for a bit. The whole world slowed almost to a stop.
This was not good for so many reasons and also the fact that it allowed many people to stop and consciously choose what to add back into their schedule was a benefit. Some people found out they liked the less busy schedule. Some people decided they liked spending more time with their kids. Some families were so busy they went from one activity to the next without any time to even eat a meal together. However, with the forced time to slow down, they were able to spend that time together. People we able to spend more quiet time with God because they no longer had a long commute to work each day. There was brief period in time when life slowed down and we all had the chance to check in with God and ask for His counsel. I am sure not everyone used this time to check in with God, but they had the chance.
When I read the second half of that first line, “even at night my heart instructs me,” I thought of how it was dark at night. I am not sure if this verse is talking about at night meaning, even when I am asleep my heart instructs me, or even through the dark parts of my life my heart instructs me. However, I think regardless of what the Psalm is saying, both of these are true. God doesn’t guide us sometimes, and then other times leave us on our own to fend for ourselves. He is always there guiding us. He is always there in that “still small voice” down deep inside of us. However, we can’t always hear him because we aren’t always listening. If you are going through a difficult time right now and you feel like you could really use some direction, take some time and sit with the Lord. Ask Him for direction and then wait and listen until you get some direction. We tend to ask God questions a lot but we don’t really ask expecting to get a reply. God wants to talk with you, He wants to guide you. If you ask Him a question sit expectantly and He will answer you.
The last line in this verse is awesome, if we can just remember it. It says, “I keep my eyes always on the Lord. With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken.” There is so much anxiety in the world and I think there wouldn’t be if we could remember this verse. If we were to keep our eyes on the Lord, instead of on the news, our friends facebook page, the celebrity tabloids, the politics and all the other things we keep our attention on, we would not be so anxious. It says with the Lord at our right hand, we will not be shaken! The Lord is our shield and our refuge. We do not need to be afraid and yet we often lose sight of this fact. We take our eyes off the Lord and we forget He is there for us, we forget He promises to always be there for us.
This is why when I read this verse I instantly thought, “I wish I kept my eyes always on the Lord.” It is so easy to take our eyes off the Lord. It is so easy to get wrapped up in what were are doing and forget to stop and ask the Lord what He thinks about it. It is easy to turn to the news, our friends and other things in the world for answers. We expect answers from these things, but for some reason we don’t expect answers from God. Maybe we think He is too busy to talk to us. Maybe we think we aren’t good enough for God to talk to us. Whatever the reason is, we take our eyes off the Lord because we don’t expect Him to talk to us. If you notice you are getting anxious, or feeling like the things around you are making you feel scared, it is time to turn your eyes back to the Lord. It is time to let Him guide your steps. It is time to ask the Lord what you should do and then wait with an expectant faith that He will give you an answer.
I know that if we all started sitting and waiting with an expectant faith for the Lord to talk with us, then He would talk with us. I do this when I write in my prayer journal. I write a letter to God and then I ask God to speak to me through my pen and I write a letter back to myself. I write whatever comes into my mind because I am expecting it to be God talking to me. God tells us right in the Bible, ask and you shall receive. If we ask God to talk with us, He will. The problem is not that God is not talking to us, the problem is that we are not listening to Him when He talks to us. We are too busy to listen. Think about your week this week. When could you fit in some time to listen to the Lord? Actually schedule it into your day or your week. I am sure if you started doing this, scheduling in time to just sit and listen to the Lord, you will be amazed at what you hear Him say. Give it a try this week and let me know how it goes.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, I ask for you to help us listen to you. I ask that you show us where in our schedules we can take the time to sit with you. Put it upon our hearts Lord so that we take this ever important time with you. Lord, we want to keep our eyes on you. We don’t want to be shaken by the things we encounter. We want to know and trust that you have everything under control. Lord we trust in you! You are amazing and we are so grateful for all you do for us. We are amazed that you would talk to each of us individually and we thank you Lord. We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I have some very exciting news today. My book is finally out there in the world. For those of you that don’t know, I wrote a book called “Total Trust in God’s Safe Embrace.” It is about 15 different ways I was able to grow my faith in the Lord to a point where I trust Him even in the most difficult circumstances. If you are looking to trust God more I would love to invite you to check out my book. It is available on Amazon in print format and eBook format. I will be doing the audio book in the next week or two. I thank you all so much for your support in this process. I look forward to meeting you back here tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
What Do You Declare?
John 6:63 "It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.”
The other day in our class we talked about the power of our words. I have done a couple episodes now on how painful words can be. Today I want to talk about how saying the right words can actually change your life in a good way. When I was just starting out on my personal development journey I was introduced to a habit where you write down 5 reasons you are grateful each day and then you write your 10 big dreams you have and you write them as if they have already happened. For instance, I wrote I am an excellent mother. You do this every single day and then you will notice some time from now, you have achieved all the things you set out to achieve. The reason for this is because you have told you brain what to focus on and you told it where you are going. Even when you are not actively coming up with a plan for how to get those things, your brain is already thinking about all of them. Your subconscious mind goes to work on figuring out how to do all the things you want to do. It really is a beautiful thing.
When we were talking about declarations the other day our teacher reminded us of that old Saturday Night Live skit with Stuart Smalley. He did a skit where he would look in the mirror before his talk show and he would say, “Because I am good enough, I am smart enough and doggommit people like me.” We always laughed when he said this because it seems so silly to talk to yourself like that. However, now they are finding that saying positive things like this can actually be helpful to how you see yourself and how you feel. Saying positive things can be a great way to change your mindset as well.
This is one reason why declarations can be so powerful. We get sucked into believing a lot of negative things about ourselves and even about God sometimes. The enemy whispers lies into our ears and instead of telling Him to shut up, we buy what he is selling hook line and sinker. But God is also trying to tell us things. His voice is being drowned out by the enemy and by the voices of the world. But if we listen to what God is telling us we will learn who we are in God’s eyes. When we listen to the lies the enemy tells us, we feel terrible about ourselves. We feel unloved and we feel as though no-one knows what we are going through. These are lies from the enemy. When we listen to God we feel loved, we feel worthy, we feel like we can do anything.
In class we went over 5 Biblical reasons to make declarations in faith for yourself.
The first reason is because declarations have the power to stregthen us from weakness. In Joel 3:10 it says, “Let the weak say, I am strong.” In Philippians 4:13 it says, “I can do all things through Christ who Strengthens me. These are both powerful statements to help strengthen us when we feel we need to be stronger.
The second reason is that declarations can direct the course of our lives. Look at James 3:4-5 "Or take ships as an example. Although they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are steered by a very small rudder wherever the pilot wants to go. Likewise, the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. Our tongues are the “rudder” of our life. Although they are just a small part of our body, they can have an enormous impact on our lives. Choose to use yours for good, too spread the love of God and to build people up and not tear them down.
The third reason for making declarations is that they can confirm or seal our beliefs. For instance, Romans 10:9-10 “ because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved.” It says right in this verse that one who believes with the heart and so is justified and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved. Speaking the truth out-loud is so important.
The fourth reason is because declarations are weapons that keep us from falling into performance mentality. When Jesus was tested in Matthew 4, He didn’t feel like He had to defend Himself by explain why what the devil was saying wasn’t true. He simply and firmly stated scripture verses and the enemy left knowing he had been defeated. WE CAN DO THE SAME!! We have the power to speak scripture into our lives. We have the power to defeat the enemy with our words.
The fifth reason we were taught to develop the declarations is because they can unlock the promises of God in our lives. If we look at 2 Corinthians 1:19-20 it says, “For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you, Silvanus and Timothy and I, was not “Yes and No”; but in him it is always “Yes.” For in him every one of God’s promises is a “Yes.” For this reason it is through him that we say the “Amen,” to the glory of God. God has made a lot of promises and each and everyone one of them is for you and me both! We can stand on those promises. They aren’t the kind of wishy washy promises we make today. These are firm promises. It says right in this verse, but in Him it is always yes! God made the promises for us, now we just have to claim them.
There are two ways to come up with Declarations. The first way is to ask the Lord to give you some declarations for your life. This type of declaration you should take some time and discern. Discern it either by yourself or with a spiritual director or mentor. See if this is really from the Lord. The second type of declaration is one from scripture. These ones you can always count on. You know they are from the Lord because He inspired every word in the Scripture. I felt moved last week to focus on the scripture verse I had underlined and made them into declarations. I will include them in the show notes and also read them to you now.
I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me (Philippians 4:13)
Because I have faith nothing will be impossible for me. (Matthew 17:20)
I will do the works Jesus did an even greater Works. (John 14:12)
Whatever I ask in Jesus's name, he will do it. (John 14:13)
My heart will not be troubled or afraid. (John 14:27)
I will abide in Jesus and bear much fruit (John 15:9)
Jesus loves me as the father loves him (John 15:9)
Jesus lay down his life for me, his friend (John 15:13)
If I ask, I will receive (John 16:24)
In Jesus, I have peace. (John 16:33)
I am a child of God (Acts 17:28)
Jesus died for me while I was still a sinner (Romans 5:8)
Death no longer has dominion over me (Romans 6:9–11)
Sin no longer has dominion over me (Romans 6:14)
the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in me! (Roman 8:11)
I receive the spirit of Sonship. I am a child of God. (Romans 8: 15–17)
I have been saved (Romans 8:24)
the Holy Spirit helps me in my weakness; he intercedes for me when I don't know how to pray (Romans 8:26)
In everything God works for good with me (Romans 8:28)
God is for me who is against me? (Romans 8:31)
I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate me from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:38 to 39)
I hope that each one of you will take some time this week and ask the Lord to show you what decorations could help you grow in your understanding about yourself and about God. I hope that if you have created some declarations that you will decide what to do with them. I am going to write 10 declarations in the mornings until I fully believe them, and then I will pick another 10. First I also need to discern what 10 I will start with. Another idea I had for someone who doesn’t have the time to write 10 declarations each morning was to write all the declarations on an index card and then place the declarations in a bowl of vase or somewhere we you can pick one out each morning and say that declaration over yourself and that day. I think if you did either of these two ideas you would notice your mind shifting. I bet you would notice you are beginning to believe things you never thought you would believe. God is so good!!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, you are amazing and we are so grateful for all the promises you have made us. Help us to take time out of our day and sit with you and ask you what declarations you have for us. Help us to do something with those declarations. Show us how you want us to use those declarations for our good. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward being back with you on Monday. Have a blessed weekend
Signs & Wonders
Matthew 10:7-8 “As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Cure the sick; raise the dead; cleanse those with a skin disease; cast out demons. You received without payment; give without payment.”
I saw this verse this morning and I thought it was a great verse for today. As you can tell, from a lot of the verses I have been sharing with you lately, the class I am taking talks a lot about the supernatural gifts of the Holy Spirit. I love to share this information with you because I am not sure how many of us really know or believe that the Holy Spirit is still working in a supernatural way in this world. I am sure we all believe in the signs and wonders that occurred when Jesus walked the earth and the ones the apostles saw and did. However, it seems most people do not believe these things are still happening today, or that they have been happening ever since Pentecost.
Through the ages there have been times when the supernatural signs and wonders were less and less. However, there was never a time where there were’t any signs and wonders. If you read about the Saints you will see about the miracles they performed all throughout the ages. I think because the Saints are attributed to a lot of the miracles that we hear about we assume that only Saints can perform miracles. Do you want to know a secret about Saints? They weren’t always Saints. At one point every saint there is was just a regular human like you and me. They didn’t always know they were going to be a Saint. You may be on your way to Sainthood and you might not even know it. All they knew is that they loved Jesus and wanted to do all they could to follow Him. Do you love Jesus, if so you are well on your way!
In the verse above Jesus is telling us what we need to do. Remember the Bible is a living document, what we are reading in the Bible is just as much for us today as it was for the apostles 2000 years ago. Jesus is telling you and me to go and proclaim the good news, “The kingdom of heaven has come near.” People need to hear this, even today. Today the enemy wants to fill us with worry and anxiety. He wants us to spend our time looking around to the world and seeing what a mess it is. He wants us to look around the world and feel like things are hopeless because that is what it looks like right now. There is so much violence, so much hatred, so much craziness. It is easy to get lost in worry and anxiety when we are looking at the world. This is why we need to affix our eyes to Jesus. He is our savior, He is our peace. It is only when we take our eyes off of Him that we get wrapped up in worry and even fear.
It seems more and more people are giving into fear and anxiety these days. They are taking their eyes off of Jesus and turning them to the news, to social media and to the newspapers. We need to be proclaiming the good news of Jesus. We need to be helping people turn their eyes back to Jesus and what better way to do that than to show them signs and wonders. Signs and wonders will not necessarily be enough to change the hearts towards Jesus, however, signs and wonders might get their attention and once we have their attention we can tell them all about Jesus’ love. I think a lot of people are disillusioned with the Church these days. They see all the division and the scandal and they think that is all the church is. The Church is made up of people and since we are a fallen people there will always be people that don’t do as they are called to do. This isn’t a reason to take our eyes of Jesus, if anything it should be more of a reason to keep our eyes fixed on Him so He can help us not make those same mistakes.
Be honest, when I mention signs and wonders, do you instantly count yourself out? Are you thinking the Saints could do them because they were Saints, but that isn’t something us ordinary humans can do? Me too! I used to think like this too. Well, actually, if I am being honest I still have doubts, but they lessen with each step out in faith that I take. If you are like me you don’t have doubts that God could do miracles through you, God is God, He can do anything. However, when I start to think of God doing signs and wonders through me I think, “Why me?” The enemy gets in my mind and he tells me God wouldn’t use me. He tells me I am too boring, too weak, too sinful, not holy enough, not good enough and so on. The thing is, Jesus doesn’t usually use those who are perfect. He didn’t come to find “perfect” people to start His church. He used 12 people who most of us wouldn’t have picked. One of the reasons the Gospels start with the lineage of Jesus is to show us that Jesus did not come from a perfect line of people. There were plenty of people in Jesus’ lineage that weren’t holy enough, weren’t good enough, weren’t even close to perfect by the world’s standards, and yet they were chosen out of everyone to be part of the lineage of Christ.
Besides proclaiming the good news, Jesus is calling us to “Cure the sick; raise the dead; cleanse those with a skin disease; cast out demons.” This is a pretty tall order. However, Jesus is not going to call us to do something and then not equip us for the call. John 14:12 says, “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.” When Jesus went to His Father, he sent us the Holy Spirit and this is the power we need to do even greater works than Jesus did. It says in this passage “whoever believes in me” this is a tricky statement. I say that because the faith required to do signs and wonders is not something we can manufacture on our own. That type of faith is a gift from the Holy Spirit.
This type of faith can be built up by reading the scriptures and seeing all the signs and wonders Jesus and the apostles performed. It can also be built up by witnessing or hearing about miracles that are happening today. The more you witness these miracles the more your faith will be built up. This is another reason for doing Witness Wednesdays. When you hear about how God is still working miracles today, it helps you believe it could happen in your life. When you see it happening to regular, every day people like you and me, you start to think, “If it could happen to them, why couldn’t it happen to me.”
There is a documentary called “Fearless” and this is what the executive producer said about the movie, “We have come to realize it is more than a movie, it is more of a movement that the Holy Spirit is using to spark an awakening among ordinary Catholics, like you and me, to be able to live their Catholic Faith in an extraordinary way, in an extraordinary, fearless way. It has launched thousands and thousands of people on their own God adventures. You can watch this documentary for free by going to fearlessdocumentary.net (click here) You can also watch it on Youtube (click here). I will put links for both in the show notes. If you get a chance check it out.
I am going to continue to talk about signs and wonders and my prayer is that something I say will be the one thing you need to hear to get you started on your journey to discovering what signs and wonders God wants to give you. God wants to call us to greater things. No matter who you are, where you are, how old you are, God has more for you. That will look different for each one of us, but He is calling you. Abraham was 100 when He has Issac. Whatever age you are, you are not too old to build the kingdom of God. However young you are, you are not too young to build the kingdom of God. There is young boy from Italy that was only 16 when he died and He is blessed and is being considered for sainthood. This is the first millennial too venerated. God can use you for His purposes, all you have to do is say yes. I know it may feel scary to say yes to something when you don’t understand it completely, but if you say yes to the Lord, He will use you in amazing ways.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to the episode today. Lord, we are so grateful for all the sign and wonders you have done and are still doing. We ask you to show us how you want to use us Lord. We ask you to give us the strength to say yes to you even if we don’t understand what we are saying yes too. We ask you to give us the courage to step out in faith and trust that we are doing what you called us to do. Lord, if we can’t hear your call we ask that you help open our ears, our hearts and our minds to whatever you are calling us to. We ask that you help us be open to you and your will. Confirm our will to your will Lord. We love you, you are amazing. We are so grateful for all you do for us and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I am in the final stages of getting me book up and running. I will let you know when it is available. I ask for prayers from all of you that these final stages of formatting and uploading go smoothly and that God gets the book out to all those that can benefit from reading it. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed day!
We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click on the link below. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Have a blessed day!
Power from the Holy Spirit
Acts 1:3-5 & 8 “After his suffering he presented himself alive to them by many convincing proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God. While staying with them, he ordered them not to leave Jerusalem but to wait there for the promise of the Father. “This,” he said, “is what you have heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
Last night in my Encounter Ministries class we had a baptism of the Holy Spirit. This is when someone gets prayed over for the Holy Spirit to become active in someone’s life. As a Catholic, I know that when I was Baptized as a baby, I received the Holy Spirit. Then when I was confirmed, that was my adult Baptism into the church and the Holy Spirit came upon me then as well. For those listening who are not Catholic, I am not sure on your beliefs. I have heard the Holy Spirit comes upon you when you accept Jesus Christ as your savior and receive a Baptism at your church. For all of us, a Baptism of the Holy Spirit, in its fullness, is not an event, it’s a lifestyle. They Holy Spirit has the power to transform your life so that you are never the same again. However, you need to cooperate with the Spirit and give it permission to do so.
So, if we have already received the Holy Spirit at our Baptism, why would we need or want a Baptism in the Holy Spirit? Doesn’t He already live inside of us? Yes, if you have been Baptized then the Holy Spirit is living inside of you. However, have you asked the Spirit for the gifts He has to share with you? Have you invited Him into your life to work in a powerful way? When you are baptized you are given the gift of the Holy Spirit. However, it is up to you to open that gift and use it. Encounter has an interesting way of explaining it. Imagine you are a glass of milk and the Holy Spirit is chocolate sauce. You can add the chocolate sauce to the milk, but if you don’t stir the milk you don’t have chocolate milk, you just have chocolate sauce in your milk. The Holy Spirit is kind of like this. Yes, you have the Holy Spirit, but you have to do something to activate that gift.
In the verse above, Jesus was spending time with the apostles after He came back to life after being crucified. Let's stop there for a minute. The Holy Spirit brought Jesus back from the dead. That same Holy Spirit is living inside of you. Isn’t that amazing? I still remember the first time I heard that I just couldn’t believe it. If you don’t believe me you can look in the Bible at Romans 8:11 “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.” That just blows my mind that we have the same Spirit Jesus had. The Holy Spirit is the one who empowered Jesus to do all the miracles. The Holy Spirit gave Jesus the power to touch so many peoples lives. Jesus did not use his divinity while here on earth, He relied on the Holy Spirit, the same one that we have living inside of us.
In the verse above Jesus orders the apostles to stay in Jerusalem and wait there for the promise of the Father. “This,” he said, “is what you have heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” This is the great commission Jesus gave to His apostles and all of us. We are all to spread the word to everyone, all the way to the ends of the earth. Jesus is talking to you and me as much as He is talking to the apostles. Jesus never intended for it to be the job of 12 men to spread the Good News to the entire world.
I believe He intended for them to begin spreading the world and then each person they talk to does their part in spreading the Good News. This is much easier to do if we have the power of the Holy Spirit to help us. I don’t know about you, but I could sure use some help. I am not necessarily a shy person, but I am a people pleaser who does not like confrontation and cares way too much what other people think about me. So, it is not easy for me to talk to others about Jesus. I worry if I will upset them, I worry I will look stupid, I worry they will be mean. All of this means that I don’t open my mouth in many situations. However, through prayer the Holy Spirit is helping me get over this fear. I pray often for a Holy boldness to say whatever I feel the Holy Spirit prompting me to say. I definitely still have times when I am not confident enough to say what I feel led to say, but those times are becoming less and less.
I would not be doing this podcast if the Holy Spirit wasn’t helping me write each episode and giving me the courage to put them out there in the world where people can hear them. Writing them is one thing, but sharing them with the world is another. What if they don’t like them, what if I say something that isn’t true, I am not a theologian, what if I upset someone? These are the type of questions that can paralyze someone and keep them from stepping out into the purpose God gave them. I am grateful that I know the power of the Holy Spirit. I am grateful I know that He wants to equip each one of us for our mission. I know that He is there giving me the strength to do all things I am called to do. One of my favorite sayings is, “God doesn’t call the equipped, He equips the called.” The Holy Spirit will give you all you need to do whatever God is asking you to do. All you have to do is say yes!
If you have been baptized and you have not asked the Holy Spirit for any of His gifts I ask you to consider doing so. I ask you to consider asking the Holy Spirit to come into your everyday life. Give Him permission to act in your life. Ask Him to show you what God has in store for you and then ask Him to give you the power to yes to God’s plan, even if you are scared, even if there is so much that is unknown, trust in the power of the Holy Spirit to help you. I know this is a big prayer and also, who couldn’t use a little more power in their life? If there is one word that God has been making sure I heard over these last few months, it’s that God has so much more for us. He wants to give us more but we aren’t asking for it. Spend some time with God today and ask Him where in your life He wants to give you more. Talk to the Holy Spirit and give Him permission to work in your life. I am sure He is already working in your life, but give Him the permission to work more powerfully in your life. You will be amazed at the ways you see your life changing.
Dear Heavenly Father, please bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, thank you so much for giving us the Holy Spirit, you are amazing, The Holy Spirit is amazing. Thank you for bestowing this power upon on. Help us to use the Holy Spirit to build up your kingdom. Help each one of us to do our part to fulfill your great commission. Open our eyes, hearts and mind to the Holy Spirit. If anyone is confused, or doesn’t understand about the Holy Spirit, we pray you enlighten their mind so they can live more fully with the Holy Spirit in their lives. We love you Lord, you are awesome. You love us so much and we are so grateful. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I truly appreciate each and every one of you for listening. If you are interested in doing a witness Wednesday, please let me know. It is much more interesting when it isn’t me doing them each week. I look forward to sharing another witness with you tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed day!
Don’t Deprive Yourself of a Happy Day!
Sirach 14:14 “Do not deprive yourself of a happy day; let not your share of desired good pass by you.”
I was surprised at hearing this phrase in the Bible. There are a lot of places in the Bible where it talks about sacrifices and fasting and doing without things. It was nice to hear this verse. Do not deprive yourself of a happy day. This is something more and more of us are doing these days. We are spending too much time either living in the past or worrying about the future. I heard a really great sermon on the Elevation podcast last week called “Remember Lot’s Wife,” by Christine Caine. If you have time you I recommend listening to it. So much wisdom in all she said. One of her main points, I believe she had several, was to not get stuck in the past. One of the scripture verses she mentioned was Luke 17:32. It is a very short passage with just three words. “Remember Lot’s wife.”
This verse comes in the middle of the section called Coming of the Kingdom. Jesus is telling his disciples what will happen when the Kingdom of God comes. Then in the middle of this explanation He says, “Remember Lot’s wife.” Something I learned from this sermon is that there are 170 woman mentioned in the Bible. Some woman even have their own book of the Bible, like Ruth and Esther. However, when Jesus is talking about the end of days, He tells us to remember Lot’s wife. What do we know about Lot’s wife? The only thing I know about Lot’s wife, the only thing the Bible tells us, is that when Lot’s family was leaving Sodom, before sulfur and fire rained down to destroy the city, his family was told not to look back. Lot’s wife looked back and she was instantly turned into a pillar of salt.
Why would it be important to remember Lot’s wife? Lot’s wife was so caught up in what she was leaving behind, that she missed where she was going? I totally get this. They had to leave everything behind, they had to leave their house, their friends, any other family besides their immediate family. It was a lot they had to leave behind. It was also a much better life where they were going. The town they lived in was full of people doing awful things. And also, that town was about to be destroyed. If she stayed their she would have died. She knew this and yet she still couldn’t help and turn back to look. She was too stuck in what she was leaving and it ruined the amazing future she could have had. Is this happening to you?
Are you stuck looking back? Are you so caught up in what happened in the past, what you gave up, what you lost, that you can’t seem to step forward towards your future? I am not minimizing what you may have lost. Some people have lost a lot and that is hard. I have a friend who lost her mom, who was her best friend this year. I just went to a funeral on Friday for another family who lost their mom. Loss is real and it is painful. It takes time to learn to live with the feelings of loss. I understand this. I also know that family member you lost wouldn’t want you to stay it that grief and that pain. They would want you to get help to figure out how to move forward with the pain. Staying stuck in the past won’t get you anywhere.
Also, some of you may have had past relationships that haven’t worked out and so you are scared to move forward with a new relationship. This is normal. New is hard and uncertain. It is ok to be cautious. It’s ok to take your time. Just don’t get too caught up in looking backwards that you miss the amazing future you could be walking towards. Whatever it is you are focusing on in your past, ask yourself, “Is this holding me back from an amazing future?” If the answer is yes, figure out what you need to do to let go of it. That might be different for each one of us. Maybe that means attending a grief share group, maybe that means seeing a counselor, maybe that means saying goodbye to a bad relationship. Whatever it is, you are strong enough to do it. You can do hard things!
The other way we deprive ourselves of a bad day is we worry about the future. We have conversations in our head about what we will say if this happens or that happens, even though those things almost never happen. We worry about how we will deal with a thousand different scenarios when they occur and most of them never occur. I am not saying we shouldn’t plan ahead. I think we should do our best to plan ahead in most circumstances. However, I don’t think we should worry about everything that might go wrong. We will never be able to plan for every single thing that may happen. There will always be some level of faith or trust that things will work out. And if something happens, we will have plenty of time to worry then. We don’t need to ruin this day worrying bout what might happen on another day. There is a saying that speaks the truth about worry and I just love it as it is a great reminder. “Worrying doesn’t take away tomorrows problems, it just takes away today’s peace.”
No matter how much you worry about tomorrow’s potential problems, it won’t make your problems go away. However, it will make it impossible to enjoy the day you are living right now. There is so much wisdom in the verse above. “Do not deprive yourself of a happy day; let not your share of desired good pass by you.” How many days have we deprived ourselves of a happy day because we were either stuck in the past or worried about the future? How many more days are we going to deprive ourselves of happiness? I love how the second half of the verse says, “let not your share of desired good pass you by.” Do you even know how much good you might be missing out on by depriving yourself of good days?
Some of us may need time and we may need someone to help with that grief or that trauma. Some of us may need to accept that the past has happened and although we can’t change it, we can learn from it and move forward. We can make a decision to stop letting the past ruin our today. We can also make a decision to not let the unknown of the future ruin our today. We can make a decision to enjoy today, live in today and deal with the unknown things when they become known. The Bible is constantly telling us not to worry. Now we have a verse telling us to not deprive ourselves of a good day, and to not miss out on the good things in life. How many more times and in how many more different ways do we need the Lord to tell us not to worry, not to focus on the past, and to just live in the moment, before we actually listen? What if we heard Him today? What if we choose today to make the decision to have a happy day today, and then tomorrow and then the next day?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to have a happy day, please help us. We want to stop worrying about the future, it’s just so hard, this world is so uncertain. Please show us how to stop worrying. Lord, we don’t want to be stuck in the past. We want to let the past go, we want to move forward, please help us. Help us to turn our eyes towards you and to know that you will help us be at peace with our past and you will be with us as we step into the future. We trust you Lord, we know you are always with us. Help us trust you more. We love you Lord, you are so amazing. You are the almighty one and we are so grateful for all you do. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I have an exciting announcement. My book will be coming out on Amazon very soon! Here is the description I have about the book. “Have you ever wished you could have the kind of trust Daniel had in the Lion's Den or Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego had in the fiery furnace? Have you ever wished you could trust God this deeply when you were in the middle of a storm or when your faith was being tested? Do you long for a deeper intimacy with your heavenly Father? If so, this book is your answer! In this book, I have outlined 15 different ways in which I deepened my faith in the Lord. I have come to know the Lord so intimately, and I know He will take care of everything. I have had some pretty big things happen over the years and yet I knew with ever fiber of my being, God was there for me and He would be my guide. My trust in the Lord runs deep and it didn't just happen. I worked hard to learn to trust God with such conviction. The good news is if I can do it, so can you! There is something in this book for everyone. With 15 different ways to grow closer to God, you are sure to find some that are perfect for you. If you want to trust the Lord more, if you want to have a more intimate relationship with God, get this book. You will not be disappointed!” I will let you know when it is available on Amazon. I am excited to get to share this book with you! I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Gentle Words Bring Life
Proverbs 15:4 “Gentle words bring life and health; a deceitful tongue crushes the spirit.”
We all know that our words are powerful and yet we don’t always pay attention to what we are saying. We should always speak with intention and pay close attention to our words. In my Encounter Ministry class we are learning the importance of our words. We are learning how to make declarations. I am sure I will share that information with you after I do this week’s homework. However, today I wanted to share the concept of a video we watched in class because it really was powerful. I will place a link for the video in the show notes and I encourage you to take a look a look at it. It is not a long video, just 2 minutes of your time and yet it is so impactful. If you have any doubt about how important words are, you should definitely watch the video.
This video is about an experiment that Ikea completed. At Ikea they believe that happiness is spread by how we treat people. That is why they went this extra mile to spread positivity. They took two of their own plants in placed them in GEM schools across the UAE. Recorded audio messages were played in a loop where one plant was being bullied and one was being complimented. The students started to notice that the plant being bullied was starting to wilt and droop down, while the plant that was being complimented was thriving. I think this is remarkable. If negative words can have that much of an affect on plants, imagine how much they can affect your children, your loved ones, your friends, co-workers, and all those you meet.
I chose this scripture because it tells a truth that although we might all already know, we don’t alway realize it when we are talking. “Gentle words bring life and health; a deceitful tongue crushes the spirit.” This is especially true when you have children. Have you ever said something harsh to a child in a moment of anger and you just see their tiny little spirit get crushed? You didn’t mean to, you weren’t even thinking, you just reacted. We have all done it and it feels terrible. I am sure we all feel terrible when we just react in the moment and we accidentally yell at our children or say something unkind. However, what about the unkind word we said to the driver who cut us off, or the person in the store who took the last jar container of coffee? Do you feel bad about that?
I have talked before about how words can hurt people. That episode was called Words Can Wound. Today I want to talk to you about how words can build people up, or as this verse says, “Gentle words bring life and health.” If words of encouragement can help a plant to thrive, think of how much more they could help those around us thrive. If I was a betting woman I would bet if you are listening to this podcast you are aware of how hurtful your words can be. I think this is talked about a lot these days, which I think is good because that was not always the case. I don’t know if we talk enough about the importance of words of encouragement.
We all want our children to be successful. We want the to be happy and healthy. We want them to have a good job and we don’t want them to have to struggle like we did, or like others do. This is a good thing. Having expectations of our children is great. We just need to make sure our expectations are good expectations. Our children will live up to our expectations of them. If we expect them to succeed they will, if we expect them to fail, they will. This is why our words our so important. Our words become the thoughts they have running through their head. If we tell them they are capable of doing hard things, over time that will be the mantra that runs through their mind. If we tell them we are proud of them, they are good kids, they are responsible, those are the thoughts that will be running through their heads.
I think we sometimes accidentally put the wrong thoughts in our kids heads because we are worried for them. We don’t realize what our words might be saying to them. For instance, I read a book about parenting once and it said if you are constantly reminding your kids about everything then you are telling them you don’t have confidence in them to remember it. One thing that stood out to me was, reminding them every time they get out of the car to watch out for the car next to them. I was worried they would hit the car next to them with the door. However, they never once did and yet every time they got out of the car, I would remind them. When I did this it was showing them I didn’t trust them to remember what I said or I didn’t trust them to know how to get out of the car. Either way, it was telling them I didn’t trust them. When I would remind them to take their dishes to the sink a hundred times it is telling them they can’t be trusted to remember to do it. Also, reminding them to be good when they go to a friends house. I am sure you get the picture. Our words and what we say to our kids matters. The things we tell them all the time become the stories they tell themselves.
This can be for grown children too. If you are telling your grown children they should be doing this or they should be doing that, they may interpret this as they are not good enough or nothing they do pleases you. If you are reminding them of the same thing over and over again they may feel as though you don’t think they are capable of remembering it on their own. What stories do you want playing through your child’s mind? Decide now what stories you want playing through their mind and then be very intentional with what you say and how you say it. There is a difference between saying, “Great job saving this week! I can’t wait to see how much you save next week,” and “Don’t forget to save some money this week.” Which one do you think is more likely to encourage them to save more?
I know we all want our children to do well. I guess what I am saying is that nagging them and reminding them of all the things you think they might forget may not actually be helping you accomplish your mission. Instead, try to praise them for all they are doing right. Have high expectations and expect they are capable of living up to them. Trust they can remember things without a million reminders. Trust that what you have taught them has sunk in and you don’t have to constantly remind them. When you are correcting them for something remember this verse, ““Gentle words bring life and health; a deceitful tongue crushes the spirit.” You children will need correction and guidance as they grow. Remember to be intentional about how you provide that correction and guidance. We want to bring life and health to our children, we don’t want to crush their spirit.
Dear heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask you to help us be intentional with our words. Let us only use words that bring forth life. Let us only use words that build people up instead of tearing them down. Show us where we might be falling short of this. Help us to not let our anger get the best of us. Show us where in our lives we can be better about how we are communicating with those around us. Lord, help us to see how powerful our words are and let us only use our words for good. Lord, you are truly amazing and we are so grateful you are our dad. We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed weekend!
Love Is The Answer
Proverbs 24:17-18 "Do not rejoice when your enemies fall, and do not let your heart be glad when they stumble, lest the Lord see it and be displeased and turn away his anger from them.”
I was surprised when I heard this yesterday on Father Mike’s Podcast because this topic had come up in a conversation with a friend just the other day. She was talking about how God revealed to her a sin that she didn’t know or at least didn’t realize was a sin. She was driving to work the other day and someone was behind her tailgating her for quite a long way. Finally the person sped past her and then that person got pulled over. She passed them pulled over and she laughed all the way to work. Later she had the sense that God was telling her that was a sin. Then I hear Father Mike read this proverb about not rejoicing when our enemies fall.
My friend is not alone. I think many of us would have done the same. I think many of us would have wished for the person to get pulled over and then felt very good if they did. I used to do this and then I head a talk on this topic. I am not sure if it was this exact proverb or not but the speaker said we shouldn’t be wishing other people ill will. As easy as it is to do when they are being awful to us. The speaker, and I can’t remember who it was or where it was, was saying when someone is doing something unkind to you, like tailgating you the whole way to work, or cutting you in line at the grocery store, instead of wishing them ill will, say a prayer of blessing for them. We never want to let others cause us to sin.
My friend was saying she had a coworker ask her to define sin. What is a sin? She said she had to stop in think. It’s one of those things where you know what it is but you can’t necessarily explain it. Or, maybe some of you can, I don’t know. I was always taught that sin is anything you do to break your relationship with God. However, that doesn’t really explain to someone that doesn’t know about sin, what it is. My friend took some time, and thought about. She asked the Holy Spirit to help her out and what she felt like the Holy Spirit was telling her was that sin is whenever you do anything that goes against the biggest commandments which Jesus says is love the Lord you God with all your heart and second is to love your neighbor as you love yourself. She felt like the Holy Spirit was saying sin is anything you do that goes against these commandments.
The sense she got was that it wasn’t about a long checklist of things you can and can’t do. When you are trying to figure out if something is a sin ask yourself this question, “does it go against me showing love to God, myself, or my neighbor?” If the answer is yes, it is a sin and you should repent. I love this because it makes things so much easier. It says in Matthew 22:40 "On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” If you are obeying the two greatest commandments then you will be obeying all the commandments. You cannot be truly loving your neighbor while you are stealing from their house, or coveting their wife.
On one hand, I like this definition of sin because it’s simple and it narrows our focus. Instead of trying to think of all the commandments and all the things we should and shouldn’t do we can just ask ourselves, “Am I doing this in love?” However, I also think it holds us to a higher standard. It reminds us that we are called to love our enemies as well and that is not so easy to do. I feel as though looking at the commandments it can be easy for us to think we are not sinning. If we sit down and just look at the 10 commandments, as written, not the examination of conscience, then we will probably say we have not sinned today. However, what if you looked at all your interactions throughout the day and you asked yourself, “Did I do that with love today?” “Did I treat that person with love?” “Did I hate anyone today?” “Did I treat anyone in way that doesn’t show them love?”
I think if we did this we would find we were having a lot more conversations with God about our sins. If we adopted this definition of sin, we would be living a much better life. We would become the people God is calling us to be. Jesus said loving God and loving our neighbor as we love ourselves are the greatest commandments. Are we treating them as such? Are we keeping this in our minds as we are going throughout our day? How many of us needed this reminder today? I know I did. When God says we need to love our neighbor, He doesn’t just mean the neighbors you like. He doesn’t just mean the good neighbors. He means all your neighbors, even the one that is annoying you, even the one that has 10 cars parked on their front long. God is calling you to love all of your neighbors. When God says neighbors He doesn’t just mean people you live next to, He means everyone you share life with, everyone you interact with, everyone you drive next to on the road.
Getting back to the verse above, it is not loving to take pleasure when our enemies fall. It is human, we all have felt that at one time or another, probably more often than we would like to admit. However, if we are happy each time our enemies fall, then we begin to develop a pattern and slowly over time our heart hardens to our enemies. By enemy, I don’t mean it needs to be your arch nemesis. You enemy could be anyone who is not for you but against you. Your enemy could be anyone you are upset with or doesn’t treat you kindly. There are some pretty awful people in the world but here’s the thing, you can’t control them, you can only control your behaviors. Do you want to let those awful people decide if you are going to get to spend eternity in Heaven with God or eternity in Hell? No, we don’t. Don’t give them any power. Live your life with as much love as you can. When you encounter someone who is not being kind say a prayer for that person and their soul. God wants all His children in heaven with Him, so we will be helping God out if every time we want to rejoice in someone else’s misery or every time we want to treat someone like they deserve to be treated, we can say a prayer for them instead.
A thought just came to mind, sometimes we feel we need to treat others badly so they know they hurt us. Sometimes we feel we need to beep the horn when they cut us off so they know not to do it next time. We feel like if we treat them with love when they are treating us badly they will just keep doing it. The thought the Holy Spirit just gave me while writing this is, “What if God treated us like we deserved to be treated?” Wow, what a thought. Think about all the things God does for us? Think about how many times we have messed up and God has forgiven us without pointing it out to us. Do you really think that person in the car that cut you off didn’t know they did something wrong? Do you really think they won’t do it again next time just because you beeped? What about that person that is being unkind at work? Has the fact that you are being unkind back helped the situation? Would the situation change if you changed your tactic and decided to love them despite their actions?
Don’t let other people dictate your behaviors. Don’t let them drag you down. You are better than that. What areas in your life do you find yourself giving into the temptation to rejoice at other peoples bad fortune, or where do you find yourself rooting for people to fail? What could you do differently? It is much better to have a plan when you go into a situation. Our habits don’t just change on their own. We can’t get rid of one thing and not replace it with something else or the bad habit will creep back in. My challenge for you today is to think of how this message applies to you and then figure out a way you can replace a sinful habit with one of love.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we don’t want to sin, please help us. We don’t want to do anything that would separate us from you and yet we don’t know how to love our enemies. It is so difficult Lord. These thoughts of celebrating when our enemies fall come so naturally we hardly even notice we are having them. Please bring them out of our subconscious and into our awareness. Lord, we want you to show us where we are making mistakes and not living up to what you are calling us too. We want to love all those around us and yet it is so hard. People are complicated and sometimes down right mean. We struggle to love those people Lord, but we can do all things through you so please help us. Lord, I ask you to show us individually in our own lives how you want us to love others. You are amazing Lord. You are the Lord of Lords and the King of Kings. We are so grateful to you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click on the link below. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Have a blessed day!
We Are No Longer Slaves To Sin
Romans 6:16 “ Do you not know that, if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?.”
Wow, I am not sure I have ever really thought about it in this way before. This idea of being a slave to sin is actually something I have been thinking a lot about lately. There were several years where I really worked on my self control and my self discipline. I gave up soda, which if you know me, that was a big sacrifice and at the same time, it isn’t really good for me so I don’t want to drink it. Well, I want to, but I don’t. I also wasn’t eating a lot of junk food. It wasn’t as if I suddenly didn’t want soda, or chips, or ice cream. I definitely did. However, I also wanted to be healthy and I knew it wasn’t ok to give into my every whim or desire. I knew that beside becoming healthier I was becoming mentally stronger. It is great exercise for your mind and body to deny yourself some of the things you want. It is really powerful to let you body know that just because it wants something doesn’t mean is should have it. It may sound strange if you have not done this, but you feel so great when you are able to say no to yourself.
There was a time, not too long ago where I was really good at this. For several years I was very good at this. However, this last year and a half, I am not sure what happened. I seem to have forgotten that I don’t have to give in to every desire I have. My body tells me I want chips and I say ok. My body tells me I don’t want to work out and I say ok. I seem to have forgotten I can tell myself no. If this is you too, if you are struggling with self control, I suggest you read Romans 6-8. That was my homework this week for my class and I could not believe how much it spoke to me. Especially the first chapter or two, it reminds us that we are more powerful than sin. It reminds us we don’t have to give in to temptation.
This verse above says, "Do you not know that, if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?” What this verse is telling us is that if we are giving in to our every desire the we will become slaves to our desires. Do you ever feel like that, like you are a slave to your desires or to your cravings? I know I do. I used to be addicted to coke a cola. I knew it wasn’t great to drink it all the time and so I wouldn’t buy it for the house. However, then I would find myself having to find reasons to drive by a Cumberland Farms so I could grab a coke. More times than I can count I have been addicted to a TV show. I would have plenty of work to do and yet I would sit on the couch and watch TV because I was a slave to that desire. I would tell myself to get up and turn the TV off, and yet I just couldn’t.
I don’t want to be a slave to anything. I want the freedom to do something or not do something. That freedom only comes when we use the will power that we were given. That freedom only comes when we ask God to help us do the things we want to do instead of that which we don’t want to do. I recently learned that when St. Paul said in Romans 6:15 “I do not understand my own actions, but I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing that I hate.” He was actually referring to his life before his baptism. This is because as it says in Romans 6:15, “ For Sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under Grace.”
We have the power to overcome sin. We no longer have to become slave to it. I wonder if you are asking yourself the same question I am asking myself, “They why do we?” If you are like me, you still become slave to your desires, even though we have power over sin. Why is this? I am not an expert but I think there are two reasons. The first on, and I think the biggest reason is because we are believing the lies. We are believing the enemy when he whispers lies about us. The enemy tells us we are weak. The enemy tells us we have to eat that cookie, or watch that TV show. The enemy tells us it’s ok to just have one cookie, or to just watch one TV. If you are addicted to something you must hear me now, “It won’t be just one.” The enemy knows this. He knows if he can get you to just do it one time, he will have you hooked.
The enemy is a liar. He makes us think “we deserve” to eat that cookie, or drink that soda. He convinces us we don’t need to go to the gym because we are tired and “we deserve” to just sit down and watch some TV He convinces us that all these little choices don’t matter. He convinces us a cookie is just a cookie. And sometimes it is. If you can eat a cookie or two and not have a problem, then a cookie is just a cookie. But if it is not cookies, for you, what is it? I am sure each one of us has that one thing we feel we can’t control. Where are you lacking in will power and self control? What lies is the enemy telling you about that. What lies are you believing?
Did you know you are a child of God? Did you know God will give you the strength to get through anything? He will give you the strength to do anything. In Philippians 4:13 it says, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” This is a fact. It doesn’t say I can do some things, it says, “I can do all things.” You can go to the gym, you can stop eating that junk, you can turn the TV off. You can do all things through Christ who strengthens you!
The second reason I think we continue to fall prey to sin is because of our human nature. We were born with original sin and although Jesus died for our sins and so our nature to sin is gone, we still have some of the effects of original sin which means we will still sin sometimes. The more we stay connected to God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, the less we will sin. The more we turn our lives over to God, the more we will learn to live like and think like Jesus did. Is it hard work, yes! Is it worth it, absolutely
The next time your body or your mind is telling you that you “need” to do something that you know is not good for you, you remind yourself of Romans 6:15, “ For Sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under Grace.” You remind yourself that the enemy is a liar and you don’t have to listen. Remind yourself that you are more powerful than the enemy because you have the power of the Holy Spirit living inside of you. If the Holy Spirit can raise Jesus from the dead, he can absolutely give you the will power to say no to any temptation the enemy throws at you. You can do this! We can do this! Sin no longer has dominion over us!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone listening to this podcast today. Lord, help us remember that you defeated the enemy and he no longer has any control over us. Help us remember that we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us. Lord, we ask that you come into any area we are struggling with and you show us how to succeed. We invite you into all of our struggles and ask you to help us overcome. Give us the strength we need to say no when we need to say no and to say yes when we need to say yes. We love you Lord, you are truly amazing and we are so grateful for all you have done for us. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Tomorrow I will be sharing a witness with you about some answers to prayers I have seen while praying over people or praying for people. I look forward to sharing those with you tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day.
Dead To Sin
Romans 6:1-4 “What then are we to say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.”
The other day I talked about how our sins are not remembered. Once you have confessed your sins, God forgets about them. He isn’t keeping a long list of all of our sins. List keeping and score keeping is something we do, not God. The episode called Your Sins Are Not Remembered talks about how we are saints who sometimes sin and not sinners who sometimes get it right. If you haven’t listened to that episode I encourage you to go back and listen to it. The information in the episode is information I learned in my class and I thought it was a great new way to look at ourselves and sin.
Today I want to look at where in scripture it talks about us being dead to sin. There may be several places, but I picked this one to start with. The beginning of this verse is actually said in response to Romans 5:20 which ends with, “but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.” Romans 5:20 is saying the greater the sin the greater God’s grace. Then this verse picks up asking if we should continue to sin so that we can have more grace. Then the verse says, by no means! Yes, where there is sin, there is grace, but we don’t need to sin to receive grace. God’s grace is always available to us.
The next line says, “How can we who died to sin go on living it it?” Jesus took our sins to the cross and gave His life so that we could be free from them. This verse is asking us how can we go on sinning when we have been freed from them? This is something a lot of us have a hard time wrapping our heads around. It is something easy to say, “Jesus died for our sins.” It is a lot harder to actually believe that He died for our sins. It might be easy for us to believe it for our friends, and family. But believing that He died our sins, yours and mine, is sometimes harder than we would think. We like to hold onto our sins. We like to let them define us. This isn’t what God wants for us. He doesn’t want us to hold onto them and He doesn’t want us to define ourselves by our sins. What He wants is for us to repent and turn back to Him. He wants us to forget about them just as He does.
The next few lines say, “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.” This is pretty remarkable. I like how this part says, “we too might walk in the newness of life.” How many of us want to live in a newness of life? I looked up what this phrase means to try and give you, and myself, a better understanding of this phrase. I found an article titled “Walking in Newness of Life.” (Click Here) for article. Here is what she said about this particular verse:
“To walk in newness of life requires us to abandon our judgmentalism and to do God’s justice rather than continuing in our self-serving habits (Rom. 6:12–13). As instruments of God’s justice, believers act in ways through which the life-giving power of God’s grace builds up people and communities in Christ. This is far more active than merely refraining from bad behavior. Our calling is to become instruments of justice and reconciliation, working to root out the effects of sin in a troubled world.”
This definitely sounds like something I would love to do. I would love to abandon being judgmental and do God’s justice rather than continuing my self-serving habits. The articles talks about how we need to change the way we think. Everything I seem to be learning about and reading about lately is all focused on a renewal of the mind. In our class they keep talking about the old saying, “What would Jesus do.” They say we shouldn’t be as focused on what Jesus would do, we should be more focused on “What would Jesus think.” Jesus did not have self-serving habits. He put others first, always. If we could start to think more like Jesus we would see the world in a whole new light. Imagine if you tried to see people how Jesus sees people. He doesn’t get annoyed when people ask questions, unless it is the Pharisees who are just trying to trap him. He doesn’t brush people off because He is too busy, He makes time for them. He doesn’t get really upset if His plans don’t go the way He thought they would, he adapts.
We can say to ourselves that it was easier for Jesus because He is fully God as well as fully human. However, He didn’t use his divinity while He was on earth. He only used the power He received from the Holy Spirit and then He left us with that power when He went to join His father. We have the same power Jesus used. However, we won’t ever be able to fully use and rely on that power if we don’t have a renewal of our mind. We need to walk in newness of life and that requires us to think like Jesus did. When you are in your car and you are dealing with bad drivers, think to yourself, what would Jesus think of this driver? When you are out and about and you see homeless people on the streets, think to yourself, what would Jesus think of this person? If we tried to think like Jesus thinks in all situations, it would not only change our thoughts, it would change our actions as well.
For instance, before thinking like Jesus thinks, we might see a person in need and just pass them by for one reason or another. I am sure we could come up with plenty of justifications as to why we can’t help them. However, if we see them and think of them as Jesus would, we would stop and see how we could help them. Another example is our motivation behind our actions. If we see a homeless person, we may give money because we feel guilty if we don’t. However, if we think of that person like Jesus does then we would give money, food, gift card, or whatever we do because we love that person and we want to help them.
The article I mentioned above said, “As instruments of God’s justice, believers act in ways through which the life-giving power of God’s grace builds up people and communities in Christ. This is far more active than merely refraining from bad behavior. Our calling is to become instruments of justice and reconciliation, working to root out the effects of sin in a troubled world.” This newness in life is not just saying I will not longer sin, or do any bad behaviors. It is going beyond that. I like how the author put it “believers act in ways through which the life-giving power of God’s grace builds up people and communities in Christ.” I think grace is so important. Jesus definitely offered so much grace. I think if we lead our lives with grace and love in the forefront of our minds in every interaction we had, our lives would be transformed and so would those around us.
I love the saying “sprinkle kindness like confetti.” What if we did the same with grace. I think we worry if we offer people grace, we are saying what they are doing is ok. If we look at all the interactions Jesus had with sinners, He offered love and grace. The woman caught in adultery, did He condemn her? Did He look at her disapprovingly so she knew what she did was wrong? Did He tell her what she did was wrong, so she would know? No, He gave her love and grace. Why do we think it is our job to judge others? Jesus was truly the only one with the power to judge and He didn’t. If He could offer so much love and grace, why do we think we need to judge and condemn? I challenge you, the next time you want to judge or condemn, or politely point out someone’s shortcomings, stop and ask yourself, “What would Jesus think?” Then, instead of doing what you want to do, offer them love and grace. You can affirm someone without agreeing with them. You can offer someone love and grace and still not approve of what they are doing. Jesus didn’t approve of what the woman was doing and yet he still gave her grace. It is not our job to judge and it is not our job to fix everyone. Both of those jobs belong to God. Our job is just to pass God’s love and grace onto everyone we meet. One last thing, I know we think we are helping when we are mentioning how our loved ones are falling short of living up to God’s expectations. We are pointing out what they are doing wrong so they can change, I get it. However, I just ask you to think about how you would feel. Would you be more open to talking to someone and to hearing what they had to say if they were showering you with love and grace, or judgement and correction?
Dear heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to think like Jesus thinks. Renew our minds so we can live in the newness of life Jesus earned for us. Lord, I feel you want us to lead with love and grace, please help us to do that. Please help change the way we think. Anytime we have the desire to judge or to condemn please remind us to offer grace and love instead. Lord, we can’t do any of this without you, help us to remember that. Help us to lean into you when we are struggling. Help us to rely on the power of the Holy Spirit to not only guide our actions, but our thoughts too. We love you Lord, you are so amazing. You have give us so much at great costs to you and we want you to do know we are so grateful. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me in this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I would like you to all consider doing a witness for the podcast. Testimony is how we build up faith and we all play a part in that. As you can see from the various witnesses we have had so far, everyone has a story. It can be as simple as God helping you pass a test, or get a job, to God working some miracle in your life. It doesn’t matter what your story is, it will help build the faith of others when they see God working in our everyday lives. Just think about it and if you feel called to do and aren’t sure how, let me know, I would be happy to help. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed day!
Being Persistent Pays Off
Luke 18:1-8 “ Jesus told them a story showing that it was necessary for them to pray consistently and never quit. He said, “There was once a judge in some city who never gave God a thought and cared nothing for people. A widow in that city kept after him: ‘My rights are being violated. Protect me!’ “He never gave her the time of day. But after this went on and on he said to himself, ‘I care nothing what God thinks, even less what people think. But because this widow won’t quit badgering me, I’d better do something and see that she gets justice—otherwise I’m going to end up beaten black-and-blue by her pounding.’” Then the Master said, “Do you hear what that judge, corrupt as he is, is saying? So what makes you think God won’t step in and work justice for his chosen people, who continue to cry out for help? Won’t he stick up for them? I assure you, he will. He will not drag his feet. But how much of that kind of persistent faith will the Son of Man find on the earth when he returns?”
Persevering in prayer was the topic of prayer group today. The person leading today had a whole talk written our on a different topic and then while she was eating her breakfast, the Holy Spirit told her she needed to speak on prayer instead. Now, my prayer group starts at 10 am and she was getting picked up at 9 a.m. I am not sure what time she eats breakfast, but that didn’t give her much time to prepare. However, the Holy Spirit is not going to tell you to rewrite your whole talk and then not help you with what to say.
It was a wonderful talk and it was clear throughout the whole meeting that prayer is what we were supposed to be talking about. Most of the scripture verses that were give were about prayer. Most of the words of prophecy that were given were about prayer also. We are asked several times in the Bible to pray continuously. We are also told we should have expectant trust when we pray. We should pray confidently knowing the Lord our God hears our prayers and answers them. We are also asked to pray persistently. The woman giving the talk asked us all to examine the qualities of our prayers. Are they persevering? Are they encouraging? Are they trusting and steadfast? Those are great questions. What about your prayers? Do they have these qualities to them?
The verse above is one of my favorites, although I have a lot of favorites. I love how the woman knew what she wanted and she didn’t give up. I love how Jesus is the one who tells us this parable and then encourages us to do the same. Have you ever felt like you were pestering God before? Have you ever worried that He might be getting annoyed because you have been asking Him the same thing for a very long time? I know I have and I know plenty of other people that have. Have you ever prayed for something so long you started to think God didn’t want you to have it? Have you ever prayed for God to take the desire away from you for a specific thing you keep waiting for? You aren’t alone. Many of us have done that. I know God’s timing is perfect and yet when I am waiting for something year after year, it doesn’t feel perfect.
If we knew why we had to wait, or when we had to wait until, it would be easier. It’s the trusting part that is so difficult. It’s the waiting in silence as we continue to ask year after year. I get it. I have been there. I have prayed for so so many years that our kids behavior would get better. I prayed for all the anger to leave our house. I prayed for so many things for so many years. There were definitely times when I wanted to give up. There were times when I didn’t feel I could ask for the same thing one more time. Yet, the verse above kept me going. The verse above reassured me that we can’t ask God for something too many times. He does not get annoyed, He does not get upset. In fact, He is the one telling us to keep asking. In fact, those prayers that my boys behaviors would get better and that the anger would leave our house, they cam true. My prayers were answered after all those years and yours will be too!
Did you know this verse is not the only verse where Jesus tells us to keep asking and asking? It says in Luke 11:5-8 “ And he said to them, “Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set before him.’ And he answers from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door has already been locked, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.’ I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs.” There are others examples like this in the Bible as well. God wants us to continue to ask for something, even if He hasn’t given it to us yet. He wants us to be like a dog with a bone.
If you have a deep desire in your heart and you are getting tired of praying for the same thing, ask someone else to pray for you. Our friends can be a great resource for extra prayers. If you are praying for something you really want it can be emotional to keep praying for it when it feels like you will never get it. If you are struggling to persevere with a prayer for something you really want, enlist the help of your friends. The more people praying the better. Imagine if that widow in the parable had other people bugging the judge as well. Maybe she would have gotten justice faster, who knows?
The woman giving the talk said that although perseverance in prayer is important, the first step is to begin with asking in the first place. Have you ever complained about God not giving you what you wanted but then upon digging deeper you realized you never asked Him for it? The speaker said she got this sense that Jesus was really sad because there were so many people complaining and yet they didn’t ask. He has what they are looking for and He is happy to give it to them, He is just waiting for the to ask Him. That thing you are waiting for, did you already ask for it? Did you ask often? Are you still asking, or did you give up? And by the way, not judgement if you gave up. I totally get it. It is hard to keep asking. I have been there. I want to encourage you, if you gave up, start again. Ask again. Jesus is telling us to be persistent, to keep asking. What if God was just about to give you the very thing you have been waiting for and you gave up asking right before He was about to give it to you? Don’t give up too soon. Remember, if you get tired, enlist the help of your friends or your loved ones.
I learned something about St. Dominic today. He had four elements or characteristics for a perfect prayer. If you wanted to pray perfectly you must be patient, persevering, persistent, and pestering. I love that last word. I feel as though the word pestering gives us permission to continue to ask for things. One of the ladies in the group said when she heard that word she pictured us going up to Jesus as a little kid and tugging on the bottom of his outfit. Let’s all see if we can do some pestering this week? Let’s try to ask God for that thing we assumed He didn’t want to give us. Let’s all ask Him for that thing we keep asking Him for, or that thing we got tired and stopped asking Him for. Let’s see if we can approach our prayer time this upcoming week with a renewed sense of perseverance!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those who are listening to this podcast today. Lord, help us to persevere in our prayer, even when it’s hard. Help us to enlist the help of our loved ones. Help us to pray with trust and confidence. Help us to see what is lacking in our prayer life. Holy Spirit please open our eyes and ears and reveal to us how we can improve our prayer life. Help us to remember to ask for whatever it is we need, big or small. Lord, give us the strength to be like the persistent widow. We love you Lord and we are so grateful for all you do for us. You are the Light of the World. You are the Word made flesh. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining my on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed weekend!
Kingdom Mindset
Mark 8:17-21 “And becoming aware of it, Jesus said to them, “Why are you talking about having no bread? Do you still not perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Do you have eyes, and fail to see? Do you have ears, and fail to hear? And do you not remember? When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you collect?” They said to him, “Twelve.” “And the seven for the four thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you collect?” And they said to him, “Seven.” Then he said to them, “Do you not yet understand?”
This verse comes after the feeding of the four thousand in Mark’s gospel. Right before this verse the Pharisees came and began to argue with Jesus and were asking Him to show them a sign. Then Jesus got on the boat and warned the disciples about the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod. They did not understand and were wondering if Jesus was talking about the fact they forgot to bring bread. Jesus hears them talking and this is where the verse picks up. Jesus is upset with them because they still don’t seem to understand who they are with. Right before getting on the boat Jesus fead four thousand people with just 7 loaves of bread. Then they get on the boat and the disciples are worrying because they only have one loaf of bread. The first thing Jesus asks is, “do you still not perceive or understand?” I think this is a really important question. It shows us something that is so important. If we want to follow Jesus we need to have a renewal of our mind. We can’t filter the things we see the Holy Spirit do through our worldly brains. They just won’t make any sense to us.
What we can see in this verse is that the disciples haven’t quite developed what they called in my class the “kingdom mindset.” Jesus even asks them, "Do you have eyes, and fail to see? Do you have ears, and fail to hear?” The disciples just saw Jesus feed 4,000 people and yet they didn’t really understand what they saw. They weren’t able to understand it as well as they could if they let go of their worldly mindset and took on a kingdom mindset. In our worldly mindset we understand that some things can and can’t be done. We understand the laws of nature and we honor them. We know from experience and everything we have been taught that some things are just impossible to do. We know this to be true. A kingdom mindset is one where we understand nothing is impossible for our God. When we have a kingdom mindset we understand that God can do more with less. He can feed 4,000 with 7 loaves. He can feed five thousand with five loaves. God can do the impossible. He can heal the leper and cure the blind. He can solve any problem that comes His way.
A kingdom mindset is not something that is easy to develop. It is something we can work towards and it is also a gift from God. First, I say we can work towards it because we can spend time going over the miracles Jesus performed, not just Jesus, but the disciples too. We can read and reread them so that we know them like the back of our hand. We can read them so many times they seem normal to us, because that is the thing. When you have a kingdom mindset, when you are with Jesus, a supernatural lifestyle is normal. You will see miracles everywhere you look once you are able to see them. Once your eyes are opened and the film is removed from your eyes you will be amazed at all the things God is doing in your life and the lives of those around you. Secondly, I say it is a gift from God because Faith is a gift from God. We can read about more and more miracles and that will definitely increase our faith, but to get the kind of faith we need to move mountains, that is not something we can manufacture on our own. That mountain moving faith is a gift from God for those who are seeking it. The more we trust God the more He allows our faith to grow. However, we need to do our part also be renewing our mind and working toward developing a kingdom mindset.
It says in 1 Corinthians 2:12-13, “Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the gifts bestowed on us by God. And we speak of these things in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual things to those who are spiritual.” Through our baptism we have been give the Spirit of God. We have this Spirit living inside of us. This Spirit is the one who helps us interpret what we see and what we hear. Although, He can only help us if we listen to Him. That still small voice you hear inside of you, that is the Holy Spirit. The thing is, the voice inside is so soft and the voice of the world is constantly screaming at us. Sometimes it is hard to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit. If we want to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit, we need to practice. We need to intentionally set aside time to sit and quiet our minds and ask the Holy Spirit what He thinks. The more you practice, the louder the voice of the Spirit will become. The more you listen to the Holy Spirit the less you listen to the world. The more you listen to the Holy Spirit the more your mind will be transformed.
Our teacher said something in class the other day that really resonated with me. She said you know your mind is beginning to be renewed when you start to lose the fear of man. Do you ever worry about what others think of you? Do you ever worry what someone might say or do? I know I would love to be more open with my prayer. I would love to walk up to every single person I see who is struggling in some way and ask if I could pray over them. If I see a physical injury I instantly want to pray over that person for a healing. What is holding me back? Fear. I am afraid of what they might say, what if they say no and I feel rejected. I am afraid of what I might say. What if I say the wrong thing? What if I pray for them and they aren’t healed? What if they get upset? All these things hold me back from living the life I know God has called me to live. What about you? What fears are holding you back?
Our teacher said, “Everything changes when we lose that fear of man.” I want to lose that fear so badly and yet I don’t think it is something I can will away. As mentioned earlier I truly believe developing a kingdom mindset is partly my job and partly God’s job. I think faith is a gift from God and that He will provide the wisdom I need to strengthen my faith. I also think the more I expose myself to His miracles, through reading about them, maybe watching them on TV or youtube, and telling others about them, my faith will grow. The more we expose ourselves to the supernatural the more normal the supernatural will become to us. When I heard our teacher say that everything changes when we lose that fear of man, I instantly asked God, “How do I lose that fear of man?” Later in the class the answer I heard was, “Turn your eyes to me.”
Did you notice when I was listing my fears it was all about me? I might say the wrong thing, I might feel rejected, and so on. What if I fixed my eyes on Jesus? What if I trusted He was prompting me to pray over the person and therefore He would give me the words to pray. When we pray over people, we are not the ones healing them, God is, so the results or the fruit of my prayer, whether they are healed or not, is not up to me. I worry about whether I will feel rejected, but if I was focused on Jesus I would worry more about whether he feels rejected because He asked me to pray over someone and I didn’t.
If we want a transformation of our mind, we need to turn our eyes to Jesus. We need to focus on Him. We need to listen to that small voice inside of us. We need to give that voice time to talk. If we want to develop a kingdom mindset then we need to remember all the miracles we have seen and heard about. We need to look at all God did through the disciples and realize that God wants to do that through us too. He wants to work through us, we just have to let Him. Do you want a renewal of the mind? Can you keep your eyes fixed on Jesus? Whenever we start to worry about what the world might think, we just need to turn our eyes back to Jesus. Whenever we start to think too much about ourselves, we can turn our gaze back to Jesus. A renewal of the mind is not only possible, it is necessary!
Dear Heavenly Father, we ask you to bless all those listening to the episode today. Lord, we love you and we are so grateful for all you do for us. Lord, we ask you to fill us with the gift of faith. We want to be able to see all your miracles through a supernatural lens. We want to see what is truly right in this world. We ask you for a renewal of our mind. We ask you for the faith we need so we can move mountains. We ask you for the faith needed to heal the sick and cure the blind. Lord, we believe, help our unbelief. Give us all we need to do your will Lord Jesus! You are the almighty one. You are Lord of Lords and King of Kings. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed day!
We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click here. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Have a blessed day!
Your Sins Are Not Remembered
Isaiah 43:25 “I, I am He who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.”
This was the topic of one of our sessions at my Encounter School of Ministry class last night. The topic was dead to sin. We talked about how because Jesus died on the cross for us and because we are baptized, then we are dead to sin. When we are born, we have a fallen nature. This is because of original sin. However, when Jesus died on the cross, he took our sin with Him. Therefore, we no longer have a fallen nature, we have a sinless nature. In Romans 6:11 is says, “So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.”
Do you consider yourself dead to sin? I wasn’t sure what to say when asked this question. I wasn’t sure what this question even meant. Then we were asked another question that gave me a little more clarity. Do you consider yourself a sinner who does the right thing now and then, or do you consider yourself a saint that sins sometimes. This is all about a mindset. We have to live into our baptism promises. We need to believe that Jesus died for our sins and when he did he removed our sinful nature. Our identity matters. You may think this is a little thing and it doesn’t really matter. You may think the above question is just a matter of semantics. I assure you it isn’t. What you tell yourself matters.
We are saints who sin sometimes. It is important that we understand this because the enemy wants us to focus on our sins. He wants us to think we are unredeemable. He wants us to feel like we are our sins. The enemy wants us to take on our sins as if they are our identity. For instance, I lied to someone therefor I am a liar. I stole a piece of candy from a friend, therefore I am a thief. You are not your actions, you are not your sins. You are a redeemed child of God, that is your identity. Your sins are things you do and they can be forgiven and forgotten.
Did you know that Jesus doesn’t remember our sins once we confess them? He forgives and forgets them. It says this in the verse above. Jesus is saying he blots out our transgressions and he does not remember our sins. One of the saints, St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, the nun responsible for the spread of the devotion to the sacred heart was once asked by her spiritual advisor to ask God what her last mortal sin was. He wanted to make sure her visions about the sacred heart were truly from God. Who better to know our last mortal sin than God who knows everything. The next time she was having prayer time she asked the Lord what her last mortal sin was and do you know what he said? I don’t remember. With this response her spiritual advisor knew her visions were from God.
Can you believe this response? I thought this was a great verse to bring to all of you today because I don’t remember ever hearing this verse before. I have read through the entire Bible three times and I have done several Bible studies and yet I don’t remember ever hearing this verse before. We tend to think of God as someone who is writing down all of our sins in a book and keeping track of them so He can show them to us at the end of our lives and ask us to explain them. However, this verse says He forgives and forgets our sins. How amazing is that? Another things a lot of us think is that we need to work really hard to make up for our sins. We don’t. Jesus did that when he took our sins to the cross with Him. All we have to do is admit our sins, confess them to God and they will be forgiven and forgotten. Our teacher explained it like this, “Jesus, just wants you to admit that you took the cookie from the cookie jar.” God wants you to come before Him as a child and admit what you have done.
The enemy wants you to hold onto what you have done. He wants you to accept your sin as your identity and he wants you to be too ashamed to share it with the father. The devil wants to convince you that God couldn’t possibly forgive you for this thing you have done. He convinces you that this thing is different, yes, God forgives sin, but not sins like this, not sins this bad. The devil is a liar. He is telling you this because he knows your deepest fear is not being forgiven or accepted by God. There isn’t anything you can do that is unforgivable. And it is not hard to be forgiven. All you have to do is admit what you have done and then accept the forgiveness God gives to you.
This last part is hard for many of us. We are willing to confess our sins, and yet we have a hard time accepting the forgiveness God is offering us. We have a hard time believing we are worthy of this forgiveness. Let me set one thing straight, we aren’t worthy of God’s forgiveness or His Grace. We aren’t worthy and yet He gives them to us freely. Through his death on the cross and through our baptism we are redeemed from our sinful nature and therefore our sins are forgiven and forgotten. It is incredible and yes, hard to believe.
If we look at this through our worldly eyes, we find it hard to believe God would forgive and forget. Forgiving and forgetting is something we really struggle with. If we are struggling with identifying as a saint who sins sometimes and instead think of ourselves as sinners who sometimes does the right thing we can take this to God during our prayer time. This week while we are praying we can ask God to show us how to transform our thinking. We can ask God to help renew our minds so we can understand this truth. We can ask God to show us how to adopt this identity of a saint as our own. If God forgets our sins, why are we holding onto them? Why do we take these sins and make them our identity? Our true identity is a redeemed son or daughter of Christ. Our true identity is a saint who sometimes sins.
Dear Heavenly Father I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to truly believe we are saints who sometimes sin and not sinners who sometimes get it right. Lord, help us to believe you forgive our sins when we confess them, and then you forget about them. Help us to believe you are not sitting up there in heaven keeping a stick account of every sin we have ever done. We love you Lord. It is amazing to us how you forgive and forget even though we aren’t worthy. We are so very grateful and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. If you would like to give a witness this week for Witness Wednesday there is still time, just contact me today. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Gold Is Tested In The Fire
Sirach 2:4-6 “Accept whatever is brought upon you, and in changes that humble you be patient. For gold is tested in the fire, and acceptable men in the furnace of humiliation. Trust in him, and he will help you; make your ways straight, and hope in him.”
Accept whatever is brought upon you, that’s easier said than done. Sometimes I wish when it said hard things like this, it gave exact directions on how to do it. Wouldn’t that be so much easier? Or, even better, if you could ask God specifically how the Word applies to your situation? For instance, how do you accept everything that is brought upon you when the thing that is brought upon you is the unimaginable? What if you lose your child, or your spouse? How are you supposed to accept that? Where is the how part of this verse? What if you are like Job and you not only loose all your sons and daughters, but all your farm animals, your servants who were with those animals and then your possessions and your health. How is one to accept so much loss?
Then the verse goes on to say, you should be patient when you experience changes that humble you. If something is humbling you, it is probably difficult. Have you tried to be patient when you are learning something new? It’s not that easy. Its frustrating! One of our sons is learning to drive. That is a very humbling experience because when you are a teenager you think you know everything. Then you get behind a wheel and you realize there is so much you don’t know. Being patient while learning to drive is difficult. Being patient while trying to teach someone to drive is difficult as well. Teaching your child to drive is also a change that humbles you. I know how to drive, I have been doing it for over 25 years now. However, when it comes time to teach my son I forget to say certain things because I do them without even thinking after all these years. It is humbling for both of us and although I am mostly patient while doing it, I am not sure how I am able to be patient. This is another place where instructions would be great.
I really like the analogy in the next line. “For gold is tested in the fire, and acceptable men in the furnace of humiliation.” I love the image of gold being tested in the fire. I am not sure if you have ever heard the story of the refiners fire before, but I just love the story so I am going to share it with you. In this story they are talking about silver, but it is a similar process for refining gold as well. Here is the story:
As she watched the silversmith, he held a piece of silver over the fire and let it heat up. He explained that in refining silver, one needed to hold the silver in the middle of the fire where the flames were hottest as to burn away all the impurities. The woman thought about God holding us in such a hot spot; then she thought again about the verse that says: ‘He sits as a refiner and purifier of silver.’ (Malachi 3:3) She asked the silversmith if it was true that he had to sit there in front of the fire the whole time the silver was being refined. The man answered that yes, he not only had to sit there holding the silver, but he had to keep his eyes on the silver the entire time it was in the fire. If the silver was left a moment too long in the flames, it would be destroyed. The woman was silent for a moment. Then she asked the silversmith, ‘How do you know when the silver is fully refined?’ He smiled at her and answered, ‘Oh, that’s easy — when I see my image in it.’
My favorite part of this story is the last line, “Oh, that’s easy-when I see my image in it.” God is our refiner. He is watching us the entire time we are in the fire. He doesn’t leave us in that fire a second longer than He has to in order to get all of our impurities out. God is not just sitting around on the sidelines talking to others while we are in the fire. He is right there keeping his eyes on us the entire time. Today’s verse says just as the gold is being tested in this fire, so is an acceptable man being tested in the furnace of humiliation. God isn’t going to let us get humiliated more than we can handle. He will not leave us in that humiliation a minute longer than we need to be. He is our loving father and He is trying to help us become all we are meant to become. Once He looks at us and see’s His reflection shining back at Him, He knows we are ready.
The ending of this verse says, “Trust in him, and he will help you; make your ways straight, and hope in him.” Actually, maybe this is the how part of the verse. How do we accept the unthinkable thing that happened to us? We trust in Him. I was just talking to a friend today about this very thing. We both prayed for our friend to be healed. We both really believed she would be, and she wasn’t. Well, I guess technically she was because their is not disease or illness in heaven. However, she was not healed here on earth. We were questioning this today while thinking back on it. We were talking about how we didn’t understand because Jesus said whatever you ask for in my name if you believe, I will grant you. Well, we asked, we believed, and it didn’t happen. We both agreed the only way to accept it is to accept that God’s will is sovereign. His ways are higher than our ways and His thought higher than our thoughts. We trust Him and if she wasn’t saved we trust He had his reasons.
The verse says to trust in him and he will help you, I have seen this time and time again. I have trusted Him a lot over the years and He has helped me a lot over the years. I know trusting is hard, especially if you have been hurt in the past. Trusting God isn’t like trusting anyone else. It is safe to put your trust in God because He doesn’t let us down. If you trust in Him He will come through for you. He loves to come when unexpected and just knock your socks off, He is that good of a daddy! Next it says, make your ways straight and hope in him. Hope is another thing that can be tough. We have all hoped in something before and been let down. Hoping in the Lord is different. It is safe to hope in Him because He is not going to promise you something He can’t deliver on. He is the God of the impossible and He is a WayMaker. He makes a way where there is no way. If you hope in Him He will come through. He is amazing like that! We started this episode by talking about how we wish we knew how to accept whatever is brought upon you and how to be patient when a change humbles you. I think the answer to both of these is to trust God and He will help you.
I think sometimes we don’t understand the power God brings when He comes to help you. We read God will help us and we wonder what He is going to do about your broken leg or how is he going to help me quit smoking. God can literally heal your leg in a moment. I have been reading so many healing stories and you wouldn’t believe all the amazing things God has done. Also, we dismiss God from miracles like smoking or vaping. I prayed that my son, who was under 18 at the time would stop smoking. The next time I talked to him, he said it was so weird because every time he would smoke a cigarette it made him sick. He said it was all of the sudden. He used to be fine but now cigarettes grossed him out. That was totally God doing that. I asked to heal him of this addiction and He did. God is so good. He is much more powerful than we give Him credit for. If you are finding acceptance of your circumstances difficult, turn to God, ask Him for help. Trust in Him and He will help you!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you and we are so happy you love us. Lord, we ask for you to help us understand what you are saying in today’s verses. Help us to really take it in and apply it in our lives. Lord, help us to accept those things that are brought upon us. Help us to understand you are refining us in the fire of your love. You have your watchful eye on us and will take us out at the perfect moment. Help us be patient enough to wait for you Lord. Help us to put our hope and trust in you. We love you so much Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Remember Jesus love you and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Would You Choose Fire or Water, Life or Death?
Sirach 15:15-17 “If you will, you can keep the commandments, and to act faithfully is a matter of your own choice. He has placed before you fire and water: stretch out your hand for whichever you wish. Before a man are life and death, and whichever he chooses will be given to him.”
This is one of those verses where it sounds a lot easier than it is. If you will, you can keep the commandments. Which one of us would say, “I want to break the commandments?" Who would say, “I think today I will decide not to do what God commands us to do?" I don’t know if there are any of us listening to this podcast who feel that way. If you are listening to a podcast called Walk Boldly with Jesus then you are probably trying to do your best to live as God commands us to live. It seems to me it is not as easy at it sounds though. It would be nice if everything were black and white, but we live in a world of grey. We look at the commandments and we say, those seem pretty easy to follow and on the surface level we are correct. It is not all that difficult for most of us not to steal and not to kill someone. Most of us don’t worship other God’s, we know God is our one true God. Honor you Mother and Father, that’s not too hard to do, right? Do you see what I mean about how they seem pretty easy to follow on the surface level.
However, if we really look into our behaviors we will see things aren’t so cut and dry. There are lots of ways where are behavior is breaking a commandment and yet we don’t realize it. For instance, if we were asked we would probably say that we do not worship any other God. We know God is the only God there is. But then when we look at how we are living our lives what do we spend most of our time doing? Are we giving our TV, our phone, or our video games god like status? We may say we aren’t worshipping them, but is it the first thing we turn to in the morning and that last thing we turn to at night? When we are upset are we turning to God or are we turning to our phone or TV to sooth ourselves? What are we placing first in our lives? Is it God? For many of us, it isn’t.
What about the commandment “You Shall Not Bear False Witness Against Your Neighbor?” Have you ever passed on a rumor that you heard about someone? Have you ever gossiped? I am pretty sure we have all gossiped at one point or another. Have you ever stretched the truth to make someone else look bad or to make yourself look better? Have you ever said something untrue and unkind when you were angry? Or maybe when you were embarrassed. When I was younger I was at a friend’s house. We asked to use her brothers video game and he said no. We used it anyway and then he got super angry and it started a big fight. My friend told her mom that her brother said we could use it. I knew it wasn’t true and I didn’t speak up. Have you even been in a scenario where you didn’t lie and yet at the same time, you knew someone else was lying and you went along with it?
The next part of the first line says, “to act faithfully is a matter of your own choice.” This is something else where I think there is a lot of grey. Yes, ultimately it is your own choice and yet it doesn’t feel that simple in the moment. Think about how many times you have been in a situation where you did something you weren’t proud of because you felt you didn’t have any other choice. We live in a broken world and sometimes none of our choices are good choices. For instance, you can stay in a marriage that is abusive or you can get a divorce, neither one is a pleasant choice. Sometimes our choices aren’t that drastic and yet we still don’t feel like we had much of a choice, especially when we are younger. How many times when you were in school did you do something you knew was wrong because everyone else was doing it or because the older kids dared you to do it. Peer pressure is a thing and not just when we are little kids. Adults cave to peer pressure also.
Tony and I are going away this weekend and the friends was are staying with are not Catholic. I am not sure if they attend a church service or not. I wanted to look into what time mass would be in their town and I instantly hesitated. I didn’t want to inconvenience them by asking them to plan their morning around my plans to go to mass. What if they wanted to go out to breakfast, what if they wanted to head out to go somewhere early, what if it was an inconvenience to them? Now, they are super sweet and they wouldn’t care a bit if I said I wanted to make sure I attended mass. I know this and yet I still feel weird fitting mass in when we are supposed to be visiting them. I made sure to go to daily mass today in case I don’t make it this weekend. While at mass, or just after mass, I had this though come into my head. “You don’t want to mention mass to your friends because you are afraid of what they may think, but you don’t care what God will think.” Wow, that hit home for me. Why are we more concerned with what others will think when we should be concerned what Jesus will think? I say we because I know I am not the only one that thinks like this.
The Next line in the verse says, “He has placed before you fire and water stretch out your hand for whichever you wish.” That seems like a pretty easy choice. I would definitely choose the living water of God versus the fires of Hell. I can say that with certainty and yet, if you look at the day to day choices I am making, would my actions support that claim? Am I choosing on a daily basis the living waters of God, or am I giving in to the temptations of this world. We may be strong in Spirit and yet weak in the flesh. We may want to choose heaven and yet inadvertently choosing hell. Here is one way that just came into my mind to help describe what I am thinking. I have a choice, I can either be healthy or I can be unhealthy. I choose to be healthy. I don’t think any of us would choose to be unhealthy. However, if you look at my daily choices would they support this? Currently, I would say no. Today I had several spoonfuls of raw cookie dough, I had pizza for dinner, for the third time this week, and I had some of my son’t birthday cake, his birthday was Tuesday. My choices do not support the fact that I choose to be healthy. I have plenty of salad ingredients in my fridge. I could have easily made a salad for dinner. If I truly choose to be healthy, that would have been my choice.
The last line of this verse says, “Before a man are life and death, and whichever he chooses will be given to him.” This again seems to be an easy choice. I choose life! I think the important thing to remember is that this is not a one time thing. You can’t just choose life once and it will be given to you. You have to choose life over and over again with your actions. You have to choose life when you are deciding to go to the gym or watch tv. You have to choose live when you are deciding between drinking a 12 pack of beer or drinking some water. You have to choose life when you are deciding between staying in bed all day or getting up and calling a friend. You have to choose life when you are deciding between committing that sin you know you shouldn’t do or just saying no and putting God first. We get to choose and we get to make that choice over and over again, so if we choose wrong, we usually get another chance to choose the right the next time. God is good like that. He is a God of many, many chances. Choose wisely and remember, the stakes are high. We are choosing between water and fire, life and death. Which do you choose? Would your actions agree?
Dear heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord you are amazing and we are so grateful you give us a choice. Please help us to choose wisely. Please help us to realize the consequences of our actions. Help us to see that ever choice puts us closer to life or closer to death. Give us the strength we need to choose correctly. We may be strong in Spirit and weak in the flesh. Help us to make the right choice. We love you Lord, you are such a great Father. You teach us the right way to live and then you let us make up our own mind. You don’t demand our love, you ask for it. You are so good and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to seeing you again on Monday. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed weekend!
What Is Steadfast Love & Faithfulness?
Proverbs 3:3 “Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you; bind them around your neck; write them on the tablet of your heart.”
This is one of those times where I looked up the meaning of the verse so I could gain a better understanding of what it was saying. I read two articles that gave me more insight into what this verse is saying. I will put a link for the two articles in the show notes. The first article talked about steadfast love. Steadfast love is a predetermined commitment to love regardless of the qualifications of the beloved. “I am here for you because that’s who I am,” rather than, “I am here for you as long as you are lovable.” How great is that? Wouldn’t it be great if we could love people with a steadfast love? I think my kids know that I love them even when I don’t love their behavior. I have always told them that. When they were younger they had a lot of behaviors I didn’t like. I would always tell them, “I love them, I just don’t like their behavior.” I think they know in their heart this is true. However, I have never thought of steadfast love being a love because of who I am instead of who they are. Actually when I think about it I guess I have thought that, but didn’t know that was steadfast love. I know I love them because I am their mom. It doesn’t matter what they do, and trust me, they have pushed the boundaries, I will always love them because I am there mom.
Did you know this is how God feels about us too? He loves us, not because of anything we do, not because of who we are, but because of who He is. The second article I read talked about how the first line in this verse is Covenant language. It says that faithfulness and steadfast love characterize God’s behavior toward His people. In return since covenants are reciprocal, we are expected to return faithfulness and steadfast love to Him. Covenant language is a new term for me. I know God made several covenants with His people throughout the various times, I just don’t remember hearing that term before. I do love thinking about covenants made with God though. To me a covenant is so personal and the thought that God didn’t just make this covenant with His people as a whole, but that He made this covenant with each one of us just blows my mind. Think about that for a minute. You God loves you so much He made a covenant with you. God is so good!!
We talked about steadfast love, now let's talk about faithfulness. One thing both articles mentioned that I didn’t know is that faithfulness means truth. One of the articles also said trustworthiness, which I can see. In a marriage if you are faithful then you are trustworthy. If you are not faithful then you are not trustworthy. However, I don’t think I ever thought about the word faithful meaning truth. The first article said faithfulness is saying and doing truth. It said faithfulness and steadfast love will often be found together in the Bible. The author gave a great analogy. He said these two virtues are like a kite and string. Love functions best when tethered by truth. When we love without commitment to truth, we are like a kite without a string. Likewise, when we are true without love, we’re more string than kite. If we offer truth to people without love, they likely won’t hear it as intended. Have you ever told someone something and although what you said was the truth, it was said without love and so it was rejected?
Tony and I really enjoy watching The Good Doctor tv show. It is a doctor show where one of the doctors has Autism Spectrum Disorder. He struggles to feel the emotions others feel. He is big on telling the truth and he does not do it with love most of the time because he doesn’t feel love like others do. It is interesting to watch how people react when he is talking to him. For me, I can truly see what a difference it makes not just what you say, but how you say it. My children were pretty strong willed when they were younger. I learned early on that how I said something made just as much of a difference as what I was saying. I could say the same thing two different ways and one way would get the response I wanted and one way would not. For instance, telling my kids they had to get in the shower would create a negative response. However, simply asking them to take a shower sometime in the next 10 minutes would usually result in a shower. If you are not getting the results you want when talking to someone lately, take a minute and think about how you are talking with them. Are you giving them the truth without love? Is there any way you could switch up how you are talking to them?
Now that we have talked about steadfast love and faithfulness are, we can talk about what it means to not let it forsake you. Maybe you know what this means. I didn’t. That is one of those words I know, but couldn’t really explain it if someone asked. I thought it meant something negative in this verse though. Almost like, don’t let it get you into trouble. What forsake means is abandon or renounce/give up. So what this verse is saying is don’t abandon steadfast love and faithfulness. Don’t walk away from them, keep them with you always. I am glad I looked this up because once I truly understand what a verse means it takes root more in my soul. Also, I don’t skip over when I am reading the Bible. Whenever I read it again I smile. This is one reason I love doing this podcast, it helps me understand what I am reading. I gain a better understanding of God’s Word and what He is calling us to.
The last line of this verse is great. It says, bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart. When I first read “bind them around your neck,” I thought of something really heavy, almost like a millstone around your neck. However the second article talked about how our love and trust in God should be obvious to others, like a beautiful necklace which would adorn our necks. This is a much better thought and representation now that I understand the verse better. Wouldn’t it be great if all Christians had steadfast love and trustworthiness and they wore it around their neck on display for the whole world to see? How many more people do you think would fall in love with Christ if they saw the steadfast love and faithfulness He promises us lived out in our lives? The first article talks about how binding this virtues around our neck is like wearing our fitness tracker around our wrist. Our fitness tracker can only do it’s job if we remember to put it. These virtues can only help us if we make sure we put them on each morning and have them with us throughout the whole day.
What does God mean when He says to write them on the tablet of your heart? The first article says this means to press them into yourself so deeply that you live them genuinely from the inside out. That sounds like a pretty good plan. Anytime you want to make a change everyone always says you need to change on the inside before you can change on the outside. The second article says that writing something on your heart means (1) it touches you deeply, (2) you are marked by it, and (3) you will always remember it. I think both of these give a great idea of what God is talking about when He asks us to write these virtues on the tablet of our heart. God wants us to love with a steadfast love and to be faithful, not just towards him, but to all those in our lives and those we meet. This is not something that just happens, we need to intentionally remember this each day, we need to think of it often so we can ingrain it into our very being. The good news is, God will help us with this. We never have to do anything on our own or by our own strength. God is always there to help us. All we need to do is reach out and ask.
Dear heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, you are amazing and we love you. We ask you to help us develop this steadfast love and faithfulness you are calling us to. Help give us an understanding of how we can write this on our hearts and bind it around our necks. We say yes to this call Lord, now we just need you to show us how, as you always do when we ask. We thank you Lord, for always being there for us. You are the almighty one and you never cease to show us what to do, you never cease to support us and strengthen us. We are so grateful Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow! Remember Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed day!
The first article was titled Proverbs 3:3-4 | Wisdom & Loving Faithfulness by Matt Broadway (Click Here)
The second article was titled Family Wisdom. Proverbs 3:3-4 by Britta Lafont (Click Here)
https://brittalafont.com/family-wisdom-proverbs-33-4/
Thank you so much Dee for coming on the show. I really appreciate you coming on the show to talk about how passing the test was a miracle. One reason I love that Dee came on to tell you about this miracle is because Dee is not one for organized religion, or religion of any kind really. She is not someone who prays all the time. I think many people assume if they don’t pray all the time then God won’t answer their prayers when they do. They don’t feel they are worthy of miracles, or they don’t think miracles are possible. I think many people see others receiving miracles and they count themselves out because they don’t go to church, or they don’t pray enough, or they aren’t holy enough. Yet, God loves all his children equally. He doesn’t love those who pray any more than he loves those who don’t. The only reason some are receiving miracles while others aren’t is because those who are receiving them have asked. Even if you don’t know for sure who is up there. Even if you aren’t quite sure if God is real, take a chance and ask for something. You will be surprised what your heavenly father will do for you.
We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click here. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Have a blessed day!
Our God Is A God of Abundance
2 Corinthians 9:8 “And God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that by always having enough of everything, you may share abundantly in every good work.”
Have you ever prayed for something and then gotten way more than you prayed for? God is always doing this for His children. He loves to lavish His love and His grace on us. He showers us with mercy and forgiveness as well. God is amazing. I want to look at some examples of how our God is a God of abundance. When we are reading in Mark 6:30-44 we are reading about Jesus feeding the 5,000. This is where Jesus took 5 loaves and 2 fish and fed 5,000 people. This is a miracle, no one would have thought that could be done. I think if I had been feeding that many people I would have put limits on them while I was handing the food out. I would have told them to make sure to just take one piece of each until we make sure there is enough for everyone. Mark 6:42-43 says, "And all ate and were filled; and they took up twelve baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish.” Jesus didn’t limit people, He wasn’t worried. He knew His Father was a God of abundance. After all 5,000 people had eaten, they still had 12 baskets of bread and fish. Can you even imagine that? Can you picture how much they had left over after feeding 5,000 people with 5 loaves and 2 fish?
Do you remember when God rained down quail for His children when they were in the dessert? In Numbers 11 it talks about how the Israelites were complaining because they had no meat to eat. They were saying it was better when they were in Egypt because at least they had meat and other fine things to eat. Now, remember, they were slaves in Egypt, but right now all they could think about was how they wanted meat to eat. So, God gave them a miracle and He rained down quail on them. God could have given them meat for one or two days, but instead He gave them meat for a whole month. He is a God of abundance. It says it Numbers 11:32, “So the people worked all that day and night and all the next day, gathering the quails; the least anyone gathered was ten homers; and they spread them out for themselves all around the camp.” Every single person gathered at least ten homers. I know that number probably means nothing to you, or at least it means nothing to me. I have no idea how much an homer is. However, I did google it to see. If we do a bit of math we see that 10 homers is equal to about 220,000cm3, and at 0.98gm/cm3 that works out to about 1900 birds, weighing about 475 pounds. You can’t look at that number and tell me that God isn’t a God of abundance.
Next, let's look at Peter when he was trying to catch some fish. Peter and his brother Andrew had been out all night trying to catch some fish. They were really behind on their taxes and they needed that money. They were not able to catch anything all night long. In the morning Jesus was on the shore and he ask Peter if He could get in his boat to preach to the people on shore. Afterwards Jesus told Peter to put his net back into the water. Peter explained they tried to catch fish all night and nothing happened but since Jesus was asking he would do it. Then in Luke 5:6 it says, “When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break.” They had to call the other boat over to help and both boats were filled with fish. God knew how much money they owed. He could have given them just enough fish to pay off what they owed. But that is not who God is. He likes to go above and beyond what we need and what we expect.
There are stories of God’s abundance in our life time as well. I have told the story before and yet I don’t think you can repeat stories of miracles too often. My parents were praying for food one day as they had just said they would babysit a family of 8 kids and they had at least 8 kids of their own at this point. Within the hour of that prayer their neighbor came over and gave them grocery bags of food they didn’t need as they had their father move in with them and he had a lot of food at his house but they had also just gone shopping. Then there was another knock at the door and and someone else gave my parents a bunch of extra meat they had from their last hunting trip.
I talked about a story of abundance in my witness last week. God could have found Tony any job and yet He gave him a job with a promotion. He gave Tony a job that he loved with awesome people to work with. He moved us to a place where we had incredible friends and a great support system. He moved us to a place where we had an incredible house and the boys each had incredible friends. The teachers at the boys school were amazing. We didn’t lack anything.
My sister was searching for a new job. A part time job so she could have more time with her family. Not only did God find her a part time job, but he found her a job that checked all the boxes she was looking for. It was part time and it was fully remote. It had a flexible schedule so if her grandkids had to stay home from school she could help their parents out and watch them. She made more money per hour than she did in her full time job. It wasn’t just any job, it was the perfect job.
I am sure you all have your own stories of the abundance God has provided for you. If you can’t see the abundance, I challenge you to look for it. I challenge you to examine how God has answered your prayers. What have you asked for and what has He given you? I have a friend who decided to move closer to home. She and her husband decided to give themselves a year to sell their house, move back home and build a new house. Well, God had other plans. Within 3 months of deciding to move they had sold their house and started building their dream house closer to their parents. I believe they moved into their new house just after the new year, just 7 months after they had decided to move. Now they are living on a farm, in a newly built house, they have chickens, they are growing vegetables, they both have new jobs. God is so good! He is definitely a God of abundance. If you can’t see you abundance, keep looking I know it is there.
Dear Heavenly Father I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you. You are too good to us and we are so grateful. Thank you for the abundance you give to us. The abundance we don’t deserve and yet you give to us freely. Thank you for all the ways you show up for us Lord. You are truly amazing. Lord, we just ask that you help us to recognize where in our lives you are providing for us, where you are giving us an abundance. We ask you to show each one of us and help us to fully appreciate all you do for us. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Tomorrow’s witness will be one of my sisters, Dianne. She has a witness of how God miraculously helped her pass a certification test she needed to pass. I look forward to sharing that with you tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
People are Sticky
Sirach 13:1 “Whoever touches pitch gets dirty, and whoever associates with a proud person becomes like him.”
This entire chapter in Sirach is titled Caution Regarding Associates. Each verse describes different types of people or different types of relationships you might have. I liked this first verse because the way Father Mike described it left a distinct picture in my head. It was a visual that I won’t forget. I think if we can attach visuals to what we are learning it helps us understand them better. First, let's talk about what pitch is. Pitch, in the chemical-process industries, is the black or dark brown residue obtained by distilling coal tar, wood tar, fats, fatty acids, or fatty oils. Pitch is sticky. When you touch it, it stays on your hands and then gets on everything you touch. When I heard this I thought of the tar baby in Brer Rabbit. That rabbit got tar all over him.
The thing that Father Mike said that really stood with me was, “people are sticky.” The verse talks about how if you touch pitch you will get dirty. Then it talks about how if you associate with a proud person you will become like that proud person. I agree with Father Mike, “people are sticky.” If you hang around with someone long enough, you will start to become like them, even if you don’t want to. It usually happens slowly, and often times without us even being aware of it. We hang around someone who is negative all the time and eventually we start to complain more than we used to. We hang around with someone who likes to go out to eat and we start to go out to eat more often. We even start to talk like those that we hang around with. If you don’t believe think about the people you spend the most time with. Do they have any things they say often? Do you say those things now? One of the people I follow on social media used to say 100 % every time she agreed with something her husband was saying. For instance, he would say something like “Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to what happens to you.” And she would say “I agree 100%” or she would just say, “yes, 100%.” After watching their morning show for quite awhile I started to say 100% a lot as well.
This is why we are called to be careful who we spend the most time with. We need to be intentional not only about how we spend our time, but also who we spend our time with. I am not saying you shouldn’t spend any time with those who are negative. You may have family members that are negative and you can’t just not spend any time with them. If this is the case for you I would say just try to limit the time you spend with them. Also, try to bring some light into the darkness of their complaining. Maybe point out the good things or the positive things in their situation. Also, sometimes if they get talking about a certain thing they can get pretty negative, try to change the topic.
If you can’t avoid the negativity and you can’t really escape it, for instance, my husband and three boys were all pretty negative for awhile. I lived in the same house with them, so avoiding them wasn’t really an option. In this case, I tried to fill the time I wasn’t with them, when they were at work, or at school, with positive people. I would listen to uplifting music, I would listen to audio books that would lift my spirits, I would do Bible studies. We are in charge of our own thoughts and we are in charge of who we hang out with for the most part. We are in charge of how we feel.
That is another way people are sticky. Oftentimes, we can get stuck with other people’s moods. We can wake up in a great mood, have a great morning, and then walk into work feeling great. However, if someone we work closely with is in a bad mood, their mood can be contagious. It can be the same if our spouse or our children are in a bad mood. This is something that can happen if we aren’t paying attention. If we are around someone who walks into work and had a bad morning their attitude rubs off on us. Now all of the sudden our good mood lessens and we start to feel anxious and grumpy but we are not sure why. Has that ever happened to you? It would be nice if it happened the other way. It would be nice if your good mood rubbed off on your coworker that was having a bad day. This can happen sometimes, but more often than not the bad attitude is the one that winds up spreading. I am not sure why this is, but I wonder if it is because we are going on autopilot.
I wonder if the bad mood spreads faster than the good mood because we are all just kinda going through our days on autopilot and not really being present in the moment? If we aren’t intentionally guarding our thoughts and moods then the enemy can easily come in and turn them negative. He can get us to think about all that is wrong in our lives instead of all that is right. I know some of you listening have some pretty heavy stuff going on in your lives right now. It is easy to find all that is going wrong in your lives. However, I want to challenge you to try to find a few things that are going right. Can you find 3 things that you can be grateful for today? It doesn’t have to be three things that have to do with your situation. We don’t have to be thankful for our terrible situation, but we can be grateful for something while going through it. For instance, when we were really struggling with my son, I would be grateful for the few hours he was at school. I would be grateful God put people in my life that were there for me and would listen and give me hugs when I needed them. I was grateful for the times Tony, my husband, would take the boys somewhere for the weekend so I could recharge my batteries.
The enemy doesn’t want us to know this, but I will let you in on the secret. We can actually have control over our thoughts and our feelings. If we don’t like how we are feeling, we can change our thoughts and feel differently. The enemy wants us to continue to feel helpless because that is when we are most vulnerable to him. We are never helpless because we are children of God. God will put people in your life to help you through difficult times, and all you have to do is let them help you. Accepting help can be hard, but not as hard as doing it on your own. We seemed to have veered from the whole people are sticky idea, which means the Holy Spirit knew someone needed to hear this message today. If you are struggling, please let others help. I know trusting people can be hard, especially if you have been let down before. Try to trust people anyway. Pray for God to bring people into your life that will help you, people that will lift you up and not bring you down. Pray for people in your life who are filled with God’s light. Pray for people whose love and light are contagious.
Remember, no matter what the enemy tells you, you are in control of your thoughts and emotions. You have the power to change your emotions by changing your thoughts. I have talked about this before and I don’t want this episode to be too long, so I won’t go into details, but basically, if you are having feelings you don’t like, ask yourself, “What story and I telling myself?” and then change that story to something you feel better about. For instance, when I feel frustrated and sad with my son because of the choices he is making, I examine the story I am telling myself. When I do that I realize I am telling myself, “if he continues to make these choices he won’t have a good future.” However, we have no way of knowing this is true because our God is bigger than my son’s choices. Once I realize this I change my thoughts to, “I may not like his choices, but nothing is too big for God to overcome.” This helps change my emotions and I find comfort in the fact that God can do anything and I release the worry over my son to God. I put him in God’s hands and then I don’t need to worry.
I know this is just a brief overview, if you would like more clarification on how to change your emotions, reach out and I would be happy to help you. The main thing to remember is to be intentional about who you are spending time with. Guard your thoughts and emotions and be intentional about what you are thinking about. Also, remember that people are sticky. If you spend a lot of time with people who don’t have similar values, your values may start to change into those of the people you are spending time with. Also, guard your mood. If you are in a good mood, try to intentionally spread that good mood, instead of getting stuck catching someone else’s negative mood. Romans 8:31 says, “If God if for you, who could be against you!” You can do this, you can take control of your thoughts and emotions.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, you are amazing and we are so grateful for you. We are grateful for all the wonderful people you have put in our path over the years. We are grateful for those you gave us in a season where we really needed them. Lord, we ask you to help us guard our hearts and minds against those who are negative or who wish us harm. Lord, help us to spread your light and love into the world and let that overcome the darkness. Help us to guard our mood when others try to bring us down. Help us to guard our thoughts against the enemy. Help us to live more intentionally and less on auto pilot. We love you Lord, you are incredible. You are the almighty king of peace and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed day.
Switching from What If to What Is
Exodus 4:1-5 “Moses answered, “What if they do not believe me or listen to me and say, ‘The Lord did not appear to you’?” Then the Lord said to him, “What is that in your hand?” “A staff,” he replied. The Lord said, “Throw it on the ground.” Moses threw it on the ground and it became a snake, and he ran from it. Then the Lord said to him, “Reach out your hand and take it by the tail.” So Moses reached out and took hold of the snake and it turned back into a staff in his hand. “This,” said the Lord, “is so that they may believe that the Lord, the God of their fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has appeared to you.”
I was listening to a sermon on the Elevation Church podcast the other day. Steven Furtick always has such great sermons. I wanted to share part of this one with you because it was a topic that a lot of us have been struggling with lately. It was something that is pretty common and yet it is not serving us. The title of the sermon was “From What If To What Is” (Click Here) for a link to the full sermon in the show notes if you want to listen to it. It is definitely worth the time to listen to the whole thing. I am just able to briefly touch on what he said but his podcast is a good 45 minutes long, so he has more time to go into depth on it.
This verse starts off by Moses questioning God. God had just told Moses he wanted him to go to Egypt and talk to God’s people. He said he wanted Moses to talk to the most powerful person at the time, the pharaoh of Egypt and tell him he needed to let the Israelites go. He needed to release his entire work force, as the Israelites were slaves in Egypt. Also, Moses has been on the run for 40 years after he killed a man. Moses was concerned no one would believe him if he did as God asked Him to do.
So Moses asked God, "“What if they do not believe me or listen to me and say, ‘The Lord did not appear to you’?” Moses started right in with the what ifs. This is the only one he mentioned but I wonder if it was the only one? I wonder if this one “what if” spiraled into a bunch of “what ifs?” Has that ever happened to you before, you start wondering what if this happens and what if that happens and before you know it you’ve imagined 50 different scenarios and most of them bad. Did you ever notice your mind doesn’t usually go through all the positive what ifs. When is the last time your brains asked what if I win the lottery? What if everything works out perfectly. What if I do get that job with the pay raise? What if I do meet the man of my dreams? If your brain has done the what ifs with a positive spin then you are lucky, that is not how it usually goes.
So Moses asks God what if they don’t believe him. Then the Lord said to him, “What is that in your hand?” “A staff,” he replied. The Lord said, “Throw it on the ground.” Moses threw it on the ground and it became a snake, and he ran from it. Then the Lord said to him, “Reach out your hand and take it by the tail.” So Moses reached out and took hold of the snake and it turned back into a staff in his hand. “This,” said the Lord, “is so that they may believe that the Lord, the God of their fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has appeared to you.”
God was going to use what Moses already had, the staff, to convince the people that Moses was telling the truth. If God sends you to do something he will give you all you need to do it. We don’t have to question Him. One thing Steven Furtick said that I really liked was, “Do you know how you know if you have what it takes to do what you are called to do?” “You know because God called you to do it. If he called you to it then he gave you everything you need to do it.” This kind of goes along with one of my favorite sayings, which is God doesn’t call the equipped, he equips the called. If God is calling you to do something you can rest assured knowing He has already given you all you need to fulfill that calling.
When Moses said, “What if they don’t believe me.” God said, “What is that in your hand?” Do you see how Pastor Furtick got the title “From What If to What is?” It is such an interesting concept though and one I think could really help some of us. When we ask “What if” we are thinking about the future. We are going through all the scenarios of everything that could go wrong with our day? What if I don’t get this episode done in time? What if people can’t listen when they normally listen? What if they get tired of having to listen later in the day? What if they stop listening? Do you see how one thought can then spiral into a lot of thoughts, each one seemingly more and more serious? I would like to say this type of thought pattern was unusual. It isn’t. If you start to head down the what if road often, you are not alone. There are many of us that do this.
However, when we do this, we are worrying needlessly and we are probably missing out on whatever is happening at the moment because we are too wrapped up in our thoughts. We are too wrapped up in what might happen and so we are missing out on what is actually happening. Let’s examine this concept of moving from what if to what is. If we are focusing on what is, then we are focusing on where we are in that moment. We are also focusing on the facts and so there is a level of confidence that we don’t have when we focus on the unknown. If we focus on the what is we can also take the worry out of it or at least some of it. For instance, let's say you have a bill due and you don’t have the money to pay it. Your mind may start down the what if road. What if I can’t pay this heating bill? What if they then turn off my heat. What if we freeze to death with no heat? What if because I don’t have heat the state comes and takes away my children? What if my children have to grow up in foster care? Do you see how our thoughts can spiral quickly? Do you see how these thoughts are based on the future. They are also based on things I don’t have any real control over.
What about if I focused on the What is question? What is true about this situation. It is true I don’t have the money to pay the bill. Is it true they will turn the heat off, probably not. Most states have laws preventing the utility company from shutting these things off in the winter. It is true that I have blankets and warm clothes if they did turn the heat off. It is true that my children are at home with me right now and no one is threatening to take them away. Do you see how these thoughts can keep you in the present moment? These examples have a bit of problem solving in them but this doesn’t have to be the case. You focusing on “what is” could be as simple as what is true in this moment. For instance, if you are going down the what if road about your relationship you can stop yourself and just state what is true right now. In this moment I know he loves me, I know I love him. I know we are happy. I know we enjoy spending time together. Do you see how these thoughts will lift your spirits and the what if thoughts will bring you down? Do you see how thinking like this keeps you in the present moment and the what if thoughts propel you into the unknown future? The next time you are caught in a “what if” spiral, see if you can remember to switch to “what is.” If you often get stuck on the “what if” road to misery maybe put up a detour sign. Put a sticky note somewhere you will see it reminding you to switch from “what if” to “what is.” You will be so much happier when you do.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this podcast today! Lord, help us to stay in the present moment. Help us to think about what is and leave the what ifs to you. You are our Lord and our Savior. You can take care of all the what ifs before we even get to them. You are bigger than anything that could come our way. Help us to trust that Lord. Help us to trust you have already thought of all the what ifs and you have prepared us for them. We love you Lord. You are truly amazing. We are so grateful we have you looking out for us and preparing the way. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed weekend!
How Important is 15 Minutes?
Matthew 14:23 "And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone.”
In the Bible it often mentions how Jesus would go off to be alone to pray. Jesus spent a lot of time healing people and helping people. He spent a lot of time talking to people also. However, he also made sure He fit in time to go off by himself and pray or spend time with the Lord, His father. The teacher in our class on Monday said she always thinks how easy it must have been for Jesus to go off and pray because God is His Father. It would be like going off and talking to your father. It probably wouldn’t be that hard for you to make time to do that. Even as I say that, I realize that isn’t a true statement. I enjoy talking to my dad and would love to talk to him more and yet, I don’t make the time. Jesus was super busy. I am sure He wanted to help as many people as He could. I wonder if it was hard for Him to pull himself away from all that was going on to find time to spend with His Father? I am sure Jesus wanted to help as may people as He could. I also wonder if there was a lot of pressure to work hard because he knew his time here on Earth was limited?
The teacher on Monday mentioned God had been giving her a lesson throughout that day. He was calling her to 15 minutes with him each day. I am sure He is calling all of us to the same. He was trying to get her to understand how important this 15 minutes was to her so he kept giving her different scenarios. For instance, how important would 15 minutes be if you are rushing to catch an airplane? (pretty important) How important would 15 minutes be if you were at dinner with your friends and you were sitting around talking while waiting for your food? (not too important) Then He said, how important is 15 minutes with me? She said she could just feel how important that 15 was to God. Then she said she felt sad because she can remember all the times she said to God, “I’m coming, just not yet.” How many of us have done this too? How many of us have want to spend time with the Lord in the morning but then we get distracted or busy and we tell God we will do it later? I wonder what we have to do that is so important?
I remember reading Resisting Happiness by Matthew Kelly. There was one place in the book where Matthew was talking about how he and is brothers would take turns asking their dad if they could stay home from mass that week. He said he remembered asking his father one time if he could stay home from mass and his father said yes. He was so excited. Then his father said, “You can stay home this week if you an tell me what you are going to be doing at home that is more important than thanking God for giving you another week of life.” Matthew just looked at him, not knowing what to say. His dad said, “It might take awhile to think of something that important so why don’t you go get dressed fro mass while you are thinking.” It was about 5-7 years ago that I read that and it left an impression on me. What is more important than thanking God for another week of life?
Sometimes if I have a busy day I will cut my prayer time short so I can prepare for the day. Have you ever done this? However, prayer time is preparing for the day in the most powerful way. Prayer time can be inviting God into your day and asking Him to help you throughout the day. Have you ever noticed the days when you do start with spending time with God go way better than the days you don’t. My sister gave me a wooden plaque with a poem on it called “The Difference” by Alan Grant. It really changed the way I thought about prayer, and not having enough time in the morning to pray. Here is the poem:
I got up early one morning
and rushed right into the day:
I had so much to accomplish
that I didn't have time to pray.
Problems just tumbled about me,
and heavier came each task.
“Why doesn't God help me?” I wondered.
He answered, "You didn't ask."
I wanted to see joy and beauty,
but the day toiled on, gray and bleak;
I wondered why God didn't show me.
He said, “But you didn't seek.”
I tried to come into God’s presence;
I used all my keys at the lock.
God gently and lovingly chided,
“My child, you didn’t knock.”
I woke up early this morning,
and paused before entering the day;
I had so much to accomplish
that I had to take time to pray.
I really liked this poem. I think it is a great reminder of how important prayer is, even just 15 minutes, even just 5 minutes. It is also a great reminder that things just work better when we invite God into our situation. When we stop and give him permission to do what He wants to do in our lives. When we stop to go over our day with Him and let Him know we are thinking of Him. There was something else our teacher said that really hit me. She was talking about how she was planning a conference and it was getting difficult. She was feeling abandoned because she was only a few weeks out, she didn’t have a lot of help, and there were several things that hadn’t come together yet. She knew God was helping and at the same time she felt abandoned. She said she called out to God and asked why He wasn’t helping. She said she got the impression God told her she could do it. Look at all Jesus did. She said to God, “Of course Jesus could do all of that, He had you.” And God said back to her, “So do you.”
God is our Father too. We are His adopted sons and daughters. When we go off to pray like Jesus did, we are talking to our Father, our dad, our daddy, our papa. When we are doing the Lord’s work, we have God on our side, just like Jesus did. God will help us, just as he helped Jesus. Whatever we do in Jesus’ name is all for the Lord’s glory. He will be there for us just as He was there for Jesus. God is calling us to spend time with Him. He is calling us to just start each day with Him. He is calling the woman teaching our class to 15 minutes a day. Matthew Kelly says to start with just 10 minutes a day. There was a word of prophecy at prayer group recently that said just 5 minutes a day. Whatever you give the Lord, He will give you back 10 fold. I don’t think God is sitting up there worrying if you gave him 5 minutes or 10 minutes, or 15 minutes. God just wants to spend time with you. I know you are busy, I know I am busy, I know we are all busy, but too busy for God? Too busy for 15 minutes thanking God for another week of life and inviting Him into our day? If we truly are too busy to spend 15 minutes with God each day, then we really need to revisit our calendar and see what we may need to give up. God should be our priority, let’s make that happen!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to put you first. Help us to start our day off with inviting you into our day and thanking you for giving us the gift of a brand new day. Lord, we are sorry we allow ourselves to get so busy that we don’t make time to pray. We are sorry we are not starting our days off with you. Please help us Lord. Please show us where we could rearrange things so we can put you first. We love you Lord and we want to spend time with you each day. You are awesome Lord. You are the almighty and powerful Lord. You are the light of the world. We adore you and we glorify you. We give you thanks for your great glory. We are so grateful for all you do and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Could I ask for a favor? If you are enjoying this podcast, could you share it with a friend? Also could you rate and review the podcast as that is how other people will find it. Thank you! I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed day.
Today I would like to witness about how faithful God is and how He is always listening even when you don’t think He is. My husband, Tony, joined ROTC in college and was commissioned into the Air Force right after his four years of college was over, Although he was enjoying the Air Force, after his four year commitment was up he started looking for a different job. He had always wanted to be a criminal investigator for a government agency. His top choices were the Marshal’s or the FBI. He applied to many positions and was often considered for the jobs, but ultimately didn’t get hired a lot because veteran’s had preferential treatment and although he was in the military, he was not a veteran yet because he was still in the military. I talked with him about getting out of the military and then finding a job but we had three small boys at the time and giving up a steady income and great health care in the hopes of finding his dream job was not something he was willing to do.
He searched for several years while we were in New Jersey. There wasn’t any real urgency to his search though because he really liked being in the military and was happy in the various jobs he had on base. Then in 2009 we moved to Stuttgart Germany. We were excited for the move as we had lived over seas, in the country of Turkey, a few years earlier and loved it. Tony did not love Germany. He was not happy at his job and he was not happy in Germany. We were supposed to be there three years I think but he was really wanting to go home the whole first year we were there. He was finally settling into Germany and beginning to think it wasn’t so bad, when October 2010 came around and our lives changed forever.
In the Summer of 2010 we heard there was going to be a reduction in force for Air Force personnel officers that were in Tony’s year group. What this means is that they have too many personel officers with the same rank, and they need to let some of them go. Basically the air force was doing a lay off. Tony’s bosses told him not to worry. They usually cut the bottom 10%. They look at your performance reports and see who is not performing as good as the rest of them. I am sure they take other things into account, but I don’t know what they are. Tony’s bosses said he had nothing to worry about because he was always given really high scores on his performance reports. He was always rated #1 our of how ever many officers there were that he worked with.
One morning in Oct 2010 Tony went to work and found out his name had been selected to be laid off. It was devastating news. Everyone was astonished. His bosses called to see if there was some mistake. They said there wasn’t. This board was different than previous boards. They let a lot of people go that scored high on their performance reviews and they kept a lot of people that others though would surely be let go because they didn’t score well at all. Many people said it did not make any sense. They let go some squadron commanders and in order to have that job it means you are in the top 10%. It was confusing and no one understood why they made the decisions they made and yet there was nothing we could do about it. There was no appeals process. None of us could understand what happened and yet, God knew.
We were now living in Germany, We had four months to find a new job and to move. Tony had to find a job while living in Germany, so he had to fly back to the states for interviews or take them over the phone. This was a very difficult time for Tony. The uncertainty of the future and how he was going to provide for the family was weighing heavily on him. We did pray together that God would provide and find him a job. We knew God would take care of us and yet there was still that worry, especially as it got closer and closer to the deadline of us having to move. However, even in that we could see God working. For instance, because it was the military saying we had to move, they would pay for the move. We didn’t have to worry about how we were going to afford to move back to the states. I believe they also let you keep the medical care for 6 months after you got out of the military until you found another job so we weren’t going to be left out in the cold. Although after giving the military 11 years of your life and then being let go, I am sure to Tony it probably felt like they were abandoning him.
Tony started applying for jobs right away. In December he went back to the US for a transition class that helps people who are transitioning from the military back to civilian life. While he was back there he got a job interview for a job at Lakenheath England. The job was to be the Mission Support Group Deputy Commander. He said he felt like he had a pretty good interview, he really liked the commander who was interviewing him and it sounded like the job would be something he would really enjoy. He was unsure if he would get the job though because the other person they were interviewing had a lot more experience than he did. The other person was retired Col, so he had over 20 years experience. Right before Tony got on the airplane to come back to Germany he found out they were offering him the job. He was so excited.
Although Tony was excited for this job, we really had no idea how much of an answer to prayers it was until we got there and he started working it. Tony had wanted to get out of the military for a few years, but especially that last year and a half, however, he wouldn’t just leave the military without having another job because he wanted to be a good provider for our family. All of the sudden there is a situation where he has to leave the military. That part of the story is not great. I know Tony hates the way he left the military and yet it forced him to take the step he had been wanting to take. He absolutely loved the job he went to. It was a promotion. He was a major in the Air Force, and he was a GS 14 in the civilian world, which is equivalent to a Lieutenant Colonel in the Air Force. In his job he was not in the military but everyone he worked with was so he got to have the best of both worlds. His job as deputy Mission Support Group commander meant that he got to over see the workings of the support side of the base. Anything that had to do with the services for the people that worked on base. For instance, the security forces and the fire department, the hotel on base and all the restaurants, the civil engineers and the housing offices, Tony got to work with all these different squadrons.
This job was exactly what Tony was looking for, even if he didn’t know it when he first got it. Tony was so grateful to have a job and to get to stay overseas in England. Although Tony was not happy why he had to find this job, he was so happy in this job. He really enjoyed working with the commander that hired him into the position, even though she was just there for a few months before she moved. Then he had two great commanders after her before we moved back to the united states. We stayed in England for about 4.5 years and Tony loved his job. It was more than he could have ever asked for. He loved helping people, he loved being around the military and he loved those he worked with. He could not have asked for a better outcome or a better job. We also found an amazing house when we moved there, the boys each had amazing friends, we were blessed with family friends who had children our boys age. We were able to go on family vacations with them and have them over to our house. It was an incredible 4.5 years.
As I said at the beginning this is a witness as to how God is faithful and how He is listening even when we don’t know He is. Tony talked about getting a job outside the military but I don’t know if he ever talked to God about it specifically. Tony wanted to get out of the military but didn’t want to jump ship without another job, God heard that and took care of it. I also want to point out how God always out does our expectations. Tony was looking for any job. He probably would have taken any job, even if it was one that wasn’t perfect because we needed and income and we needed health insurance. Yet, God found him the perfect job. It wasn’t just another job, it was a job and a promotion. It was a job helping people, which always fills Tony’s heart and soul. He found us the perfect friends, and made sure each of our three boys had a best friend as well. He found us the perfect house that was big enough for us to have our friends over. He put the perfect bosses in Tony’s path so Tony had awesome leadership to help him learn this new position.
God goes above and beyond. It won’t always look like we want it to. It won’t always happen in a way we want it to. There will be times of uncertainty when we need to step out in faith and keep trusting even when we don’t see the ending. This was a period of extreme uncertainty and yet we can see God’s hands all of it. If you are in an uncertain period right now, just hold on, just keep trusting, God is working on a plan that is going to knock your socks off. I know it is hard when you are waiting and I know its frustrating because its in God’s time, not ours, but your answer is coming, I promise!
We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click here. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Have a blessed day!
Don’t Count Yourself Out
Genesis 28:10-15 "Jacob left Beersheba and set out for Harran. When he reached a certain place, he stopped for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep. He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. There above it stood the Lord, and he said: “I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying. Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring. I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”
The title of this episode is Don’t Count Yourself Out. Do you ever do this? Do you ever hear about someone doing something and count yourself out because you don’t think you are strong enough or you don’t think you are good enough, or you are not enough in some other way? Do you ever hear about someone receiving a blessing and count yourself out of receiving a blessing because you are not good enough or you are not holy enough? I think we all count ourselves sometimes. We hear about people receiving blessing and good things from God and we tell ourselves they are holier than we are. They are better Christians that we are. They are closer to God so of course He is blessing them. We then proceed to think of all the ways where we are falling short. We think of all the thing we are doing wrong and how God couldn’t possibly bless us.
Yesterday in class we talked about the verse above and when I heard her talking about it I knew some of you needed to hear it as bad as I did. In the verse above God is bestowing upon Jacob an amazing blessing. He is promising to give him and his descendants the land Jacob was laying on. God is also promising Jacob his descendants will be like dust of the earth and will be spread out to the east, west, north and south. Then he says all people on earth will be blessed through Jacob and his offspring. God promises to be with Jacob, to watch over him, and to bring him back to that land. I am not sure if you know the story of Jacob or not. If you don’t you probably assume Jacob is a great guy. It is easy to assume he is a very holy man that was doing everything right. However, this is not the case.
In Genesis 27, the chapter right before this, Isaac, Jacob’s dad, asked Essau, Jacob’s brother, to prepare him some food and then he will give him the blessing he deserves because he is the oldest. However, Jacob’s mom persuades Jacob to get the blessing instead. Jacob dressed up like his brother, they even put goat skin on his hands so he would be hairy like his brother’s hands. Then he brought food into his father and pretended to be his brother. His father doubted but Jacob convinced him and stole his brothers blessing. When Essau came home he was really angry. He begged his father for a blessing but there wasn’t really one to be had, He had already given it to Jacob.
Essau was so angry he decided he would kill Jacob once his father passed away. Their mother heard about Essau’s plan and told Jacob to run away. She told him to go and stay with her brother until Essau’s anger calmed down. It was on his way to her brother’s house where Jacob has this dream. Jacob was not doing everything right. He was not the ideal person we would think God would choose to bless and yet God blessed him tremendously. Do you know what that means? That means He can bless you tremendously too. It means you don’t have to count yourself out from whatever it is you think you want to do or whatever it is God wants to do for you.
If we look back through scripture we will see plenty of examples of where God used people we would have never chosen to do the things he wanted to get done. God chose Tamar, a woman whose husband died and because her father in law refused to give his other younger son to her so she could conceive a child, as was the custom back then, she pretended to be a harlot and tricked her father in law into sleeping with her so she could conceive a son. Tamar was definitely not doing everything right and yet God used Tamar is part of the lineage that brought about David the king and therefore our savior Jesus as well. There is also Ruth, who was not even Christian, she was a moabite woman, a foreigner. Even though she was not Christian she was great grandmother of David.
I know it feels like we are getting it all wrong sometimes. I know it feels like we can’t possibly be doing enough to earn God’s blessings. I know it feels like we are never good enough. I know. And yet, God isn’t asking us to be good enough. God isn’t ask us to do enough. God isn’t asking much from us at all. He isn’t expecting us to get it all right. He isn’t expecting us to be perfect. He is just expecting us to show up each day as we are and to spend some time with Him. He does the blessings, not us. There isn’t a way to earn blessings. God gives them freely to all who ask and to all who seek them.
The next time you are counting yourself out because you think you are not enough or because you think you have done too much wrong, think of Jacob. Think of how he first stole his brother’s birthright by telling Essau he can only have a bowl of soup if he gave up his birthright. Essau was starving, so he agreed. Then Jacob went in and pretended to be Essau to steal his blessing too. Whatever it is you did, God can still bless you. He is not counting you out, so don’t count yourself out. I heard a phrase in class last night and it really stuck with me. The teacher said, “When we believe the lie we empower the liar.” I love this. The enemy is the father of lies. When we believe these lies, we are empowering him and giving him authority in our lives. God loves you, he loves you just as you are. He made you and He is our good, good Father. Don’t count yourself out. God will use you if that is what you want. God will bless you. God isn’t looking for perfection. If you don’t believe me, go back and look at almost every bible story written. David was blessed beyond belief and yet he had an affair and then had the girl’s husband killed in battle. I could go on but I will leave the rest of the stories up to you. Hopefully you can already see whatever you did, it is not enough to count you out of God’s blessing. There is nothing you can do that would exclude your from God’s blessings. God is always waiting with open arms for us to turn back and repent. Don’t count yourself out!
Dear heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to realize you love us right were we are. Help us to see you don’t need us to be perfect, you just need us to be us. Help us to not count ourselves out. Lord please bless us as abundantly as you blessed Jacob. Please bless our perfectly imperfect lives Lord. We love you Lord, you are truly amazing. We ask all of this in accordance with you will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I am not sure who our witness will be tomorrow but I am sure the Holy Spirit will provide one. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed day!
God is Love!
1 John 4:7-11 “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.”
It’s funny how the Holy Spirit works sometimes. I put a verse into google this morning because often times I will use the verse God gives us during prayer group. I put in the verse that I had starred in my notes and I clicked on the first result on the webpage. I read the verses and then decided to read the whole chapter to get more of a context. Then I found the verse above and I knew I wanted that verse because it contains the single most important thing we need to know about God. Well, in my opinion it is the most important because if we can’t believe that then we probably won’t believe the rest of it. After I choose this verse I noticed it was not at all the verse I put into the search bar. I was looking for John 14:12-13 and somehow the search pulled up 1 John 4:12-13, which lead me to 1 John 4:7-11. I take this a confirmation they Holy Spirit was leading me to this verse, and I know this message is for someone specific. Is that person you?
The reason I said I think this verse contains the single most important thing we need to know is because is says, “God is love.” I really feel if everyone knew this, if everyone could believe this one thing, we would all be believers. The enemy wouldn’t have any of us in his camp because everyone wants to be loved. Instead of believing this, or even really talking about this, we talk about all the rules that God has and we talk about religion and who believes what and who does what within their religion. I was going to say the apostles had it easy because they didn’t have all these different religions, but they did have a lot of different religions. There was only one Christian religion but there were lots of other religions and lots of other false Gods they were competing with. Actually I remember hearing Jeff Cavins, the author of several Bible studies, say one time that love is what brought a lot of the pagans into our religion. They were astonished by the fact God didn’t need anything from us. He loves us just as we are not for what we could do for Him. This was different from all the other Gods.
Let’s take a look at what this verse says. It starts out by sayings, “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.” I love that this verse starts with “let us love one another.” This is so important and yet I think it is something we are lacking in the world today. I feel there is more hate and more division in the world. People seem to see all of our differences instead of all the ways we are similar. Yet, this verse says, to love one another because love is from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. This is nice because if we love God we know God. There are many that haven’t known love. Some people were born into families where the parents didn’t know how to love. Or maybe they did at one point but then they got addicted to something else, drugs, alcohol, or whatever it was and that was the only thing they could love. Some people were brought up with a perverted sense of love. They were taught that love meant keeping quiet while they were being abused. None of that is the kind of love that comes from God. God’s love is a pure and unconditional love. God’s love is given freely and with no strings attached.
The next part of this verse says, “Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.” This is perhaps one of my favorite lines. Whoever does not love does not know God. This is something I don’t think a lot of people understand. Even people who attend church regularly. They go to church and sit there and judge all the other people in church. They judge the people they see on the street and those that are different from them. They think they are doing it because of their love for God. They think they are looking at others through God’s eyes because God tells us to do certain things and these people certainly aren’t doing it correctly. Do you ever do this, be honest. Have you ever looked at someone and thought they weren’t doing it right? They shouldn’t be living with that person before marriage or they shouldn’t be doing that thing. We all do this, whether we want to admit it or not. It is human nature. However, why are we doing it? Are we doing it out of concern because we love that person and we are concerned for their soul, or are we doing it because we think we are perfect and they are not?
I love how this verse says, “God is love.” I feel like that right there could be a mic drop moment and nothing else really needs to be said. “God is love.” Full stop, end of sentence. I think too often we think of God as the Judge, Jury and Executioner. We think He is sitting up there in heaven judging our every move and just waiting to rain down judgement on us like He did for Sodom and Gomorrah. When in all actuality, He is up there watching us, helping us, and weeping for us when we go astray. He is not mad at us because we went astray, or turned away from Him, He is sad. He is sad because He wants each and every one of us to get to spend eternity with Him. Yet, if we turn away from Him, or reject Him and don’t turn back, then we will be separated from Him for all eternity. He loves us too much to sit back and watch us do that.
The ending of this verse show us just how much God loves us. God made the perfect world and then Adam & Eve went against what God had commanded them to do. This meant our closeness with God was removed. We lost the right to be in God’s presence. However, even though God is a just God and He needed to kick Adam and Eve out of the garden, He didn’t want to live without in His presence forever, so He came up with a plan to redeem us. This is what the ending of this verse is about. It says, “ God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.”
Can you think of a way that shows us more fully how deep and immense the Lord’s love for us is? He sent His only son to Earth, to walk among us and then to die a horrible death for our sins. That is a pretty extraordinary way to reveal His love to us. You know what is even more remarkable? He sent His son to die on a cross while we were still sinners. It’s not as if we had all cleaned up our acts, we had it all together and then God said, ok, my son will atone for your sins now that you are no longer sinning. He came and forgave us while we were still sinning. It is truly remarkable when you think about how much love God must have for us.
I also love how the verse ends just how it started. We must love one another. The emphasis doesn’t seem to be on how much God loves us or that God is Love. Although this verse does a great job showing us both these things are true. The emphasis is on how we need to love one another as God loves us. The verse is saying God is love and God loves you so you should love others. It is also saying if we don’t know love, we don’t know God. We don’t want to be left out from knowing God. If you are someone that struggles with loving others, get to know God more. When you do, you will know how to love more. Let’s all try to love others a little more this week. Try to think of some way you can show someone else you love them this week. Not a loved one, but someone you meet out in public, or someone you work with. You don’t have to say “I love you,” to a complete stranger, but is there a way you can show them love? One way that is anonymous is to buy a couple scratch tickets and put them on random strangers car windshields. Or there are many other random acts of kindness you can do. Pay for the car behind you’s coffee. Put easy to grab snacks in your car for when you see a homeless person asking for money at a light. Whatever you think you want to do, just try to do something to show others a little bit of God’s love this week.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to know you and your love, please help us. Lord, help us to love others as you love others. Help us to not judge others and to just love them. Judging is your job, not ours, help us to remember this. Helps us to spread your love around like confetti. You started and ended this verse with the command to love one, show us how. Convict our hearts of where in the world you want us to show your love. Help us not to get overwhelmed with all the various ways we can love others. Help us to just start and take one step and then another. We love you Lord and we are so very grateful you love us so much! We can’t believe how amazing you are and how much you sacrificed in order to save us. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I. Have a blessed day!
Could You Perform Miracles?
John 14:12-13 “Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these, because I am going to the Father. And whatever you ask in my name, I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything of me in my name, I will do it.”
This is one of my favorite verses in the Bible. it is one that I read and when I heard it I believed it right away. Some verses are like this in the Bible. When you read the Bible some things are easy to take in and others are difficult. These easy and difficult things are different for everyone. We all have a different experience when we read the Bible because we have all had different experiences throughout our lives. There is a quote by Steven R. Covey that I really like. Steven R. Covey said, “We see the world, not as it is, but as we are.” This is true for the Bible as well. We look at and interpret the things we read in the Bible with our own unique lens. For instance, if we had people letting us down our whole lives, we may read the parts of the Bible that talk about trust and struggle to believe we can trust God because we haven’t been able to trust anyone on earth. If we have grown up in a very unloving environment, we may struggle with the parts of the Bible that talk about unconditional love. Other things may come easier to us.
For me, I instantly loved this verse. I know the Bible is God’s Word and that God chose His words very carefully. Sometimes when we are reading the Bible there may be a question in our minds about why they used this word vs. that word. One thing I have learned from doing Bible studies is that there is always a reason why certain words were chosen. Also, if you have done Bible studies you have had the benefit of hearing all about the original Greek or Hebrew words that were used in the original translation and what those words meant. Sometimes, when translated, we don’t have an exact word to mean what they were saying. I find Bible studies fascinating because you gain so much more insight into what the verses are really saying. Anyway, back to the verse. I heard this verse, or read this verse and I believed Jesus’ word to us. I have never really been one to struggle with trust. I grew up in a loving family, I had great friends growing up, I am blessed to be able to say I was not let down by those I know and cared about often growing up. Therefore, I trust pretty easily.
But, what if you don’t trust easily? What if you look at that verse and say there is no way we could preform the works Jesus did, Jesus was God, of course He performed miracles. Also, the apostles were right there with Him for 3 years during His ministry, of course they could do miracles too. We can all usually agree that Jesus did miracles when He walked the earth, and we can also usually agree that the apostles were sent out and they performed miracles too. Where we run into trouble is trying to believe we could do signs and wonders in the world today. Who are we? We are not holy enough, we are not worthy of that power and authority. I agree with both of those statements, and yet Jesus still says we will do the works that He did and even greater works than He did. How is this possible?
It is possible through the Holy Spirit. Did you ever realize or notice that there is not a single miracle recorded in the Gospels before Jesus was baptized? Jesus was fully human and fully God the entire time He walked the earth. There was nothing stopping Jesus from performing miracles during the first 30 years of His life. However, He chose to wait until after He was baptized and received the Holy Spirit to start performing miracles. This is something I recently found out and found fascinating. It was not a surprise to me that Jesus did miracles in the Bible, He is God after all. What I didn’t know is that Jesus didn’t use his divinity to perform miracles. He used the Holy Spirit, working through Him to perform the miracles. He chose to put his divinity aside and act from his human nature, with the help from the Holy Spirit because it would be greater glory for God.
St. Lawrence of Brindisi explains it like this:
"Christ came into the world to do battle against Satan, to do away with idolatry, and to turn the world to faith and piety and the worship of the true God. He could have accomplished this by using the weapons of his might and coming as he will come to judge, in glory and majesty… But in order that his victory might be the more glorious, he willed to fight Satan in our weak flesh. It is as if an unarmed man, right hand bound, where to fight with his left hand alone against a powerful enemy; if he emerged victorious, his victory would be regarded as all the more glorious. So Christ conquered Satan with the right hand of his divinity bound, and using against him only the left hand of his weak humanity.”
Is this new to you too? Did you know that God performed these miracles and defeated satan without using his divinity? He relied on the power of the Holy Spirit working through Him. Do you know why this changes everything? It changes everything because Jesus gave us the Holy Spirit to dwell within us as well. If you are baptized then you have the Holy Spirit living inside of you. If you have the Holy Spirit living inside of you then you have the power to defeat Satan and to perform works like Jesus did. Another one of my favorite verses is Romans 8:11 “ The Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from the dead, lives in you…” I wish we all knew how much power we actually have inside our frail human bodies.
This verse can be scary to many people. Wait, if I can perform works like Jesus did, does that mean I have to travel all over the world and be a missionary like the disciples were? No, you don’t have to travel anywhere if you don’t feel called to do that. What they talked about in my class is ministering to your sphere of influence. You can start small. Be an example to your family, your friends, your co workers. Let’s read the verse again, “Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these, because I am going to the Father. And whatever you ask in my name, I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything of me in my name, I will do it.”
If you were able to believe and adopt this verse as your own personal truth, how much greater would your life be? How great would it be to do works like Jesus did? How great would it be to be able to heal a loved one? Did you know there are people doing this everyday? Did you know there are lots of people that have read this verse, decided to believe it and are now living out a supernatural lifestyle with the power of the Holy Spirit? The last line of the verse says, “If you ask anything of me in my name, I will do it.” How awesome of a promise is that? God has so much more for us and we aren’t asking for it. We aren’t going to God to ask Him what He has for us. Why are we choosing to live a normal life when God is offering us a supernatural one of signs and wonders?
You might be thinking, that is great for you Catherine. I am glad you believe this verse and you want that life, but I am happy with mine as is. If this is what you are thinking I challenge you over this next week or so to bring this to prayer. I challenge you to be brave enough to just talk to God about it. Tell Him how you are feeling about this verse and ask Him if He has anything to say to you about it. When we do sign and wonders, we build up people’s faith. Don’t you think this world needs some faith building right now? Look at the day of Pentecost, 3,000 were baptized on that day. I know this verse can be scary. I know the thought of us healing or performing miracles is strange to most of us. I know it is way outside of our comfort zone. I also know God is calling us all to it. I also know that this world really needs people who are willing to step outside their comfort zone. God needs people who will step out in faith knowing they have the Holy Spirit living inside of them and that He will guide them.
If this verse is something that you struggle with, write it down and look at it often over the next month. Bring it to God and ask Him to show you how this applies to your life. Ask God what He wants you to do with this verse? Be brave, be bold, if you ask the Holy Spirit for help, He will help you. Just start small. Step out in faith and ask a loved one if they want you to pray for them. If you spend time with God He will guide this journey for you. He will lead you to where you need to go. We just have to be brave enough to say three small words, “Use me Lord.” Can you be brave enough to say those words? Can we be Christ’s hands and feet here on earth? Remember, we have a good good Father. He is going to ease you into this lifestyle. He is going to meet you where you are at and build your faith along the way. Trust Him and give Him permission to work in your life, give Him permission to use you and He will.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask you send your angels to prepare the way for everyone listening to hear this message today. We pray you give us the courage to believe this verse and to step out in faith knowing you have given us the power of the Holy Spirit to help us do your work here on earth. Lord, the world needs you more than ever and if we can bring you to others, please show us how. Show us what you want each of us to do. Reveal to us what this verse means for each one of us in our individual lives. We love you Lord, you are incredible. We are so grateful you gave us the Holy Spirit. Lord you are the almighty one, you are the king of kings and the Lord of Lords. You are the light of the world. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you on Monday. Remember Jesus loves you, and so do I. Have a blessed weekend!
Was The Devil Ever Given Authority?
Genesis 1:26-28 “Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”
This is another verse we talked about in my class. They were describing how this verse shows God giving us the freedom to rule the things on Earth. There are three things God is giving us permission to do in this verse. First, He is saying to be fruitful and multiply. God created one man and one woman. It was their job to create the rest of the population on earth. The second thing God asked us to do is to expand over the earth. God told us to fill the earth and subdue it. The last thing He told us to do is to take authority over it. God told us to have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth. This might not be anything new to you. You may have already known this. I have definitely heard this verse many times before, especially the be fruitful and multiply part. However, I have never heard it explained as it was in class on Monday night. I had never thought of it as God giving us authority over the things of this earth. I know it says it, I just never really gave it much thought I guess.
The next thing they said is something that I also never really thought of and although it makes sense, I am guessing most of us have not thought of it. The teacher asked if the devil was ever given any authority over the things of the earth? That is a great question and the answer is no. Yes, he was given permission by God to mess with Job, but even then, he needed to ask permission. He has never been giving authority of the things of this world. Do you know what that means? The only way he has any authority over us is if we relinquish that authority God gave to us. Have you been giving the enemy authority over you and your life? Have you been allowing him into your thoughts and letting him run wild? Maybe you didn’t know you had a choice. The devil is very good at twisting the truth and making us believe we don’t have a choice or that we are not in charge.
I think we worry about the enemy because we realize there is spiritual warfare all around us. We worry because evil seems to be creeping into all aspects of the world. We worry because the hate seems to be growing stronger and stronger. The world seems to be fighting hard against Christians these days. I saw a billboard last night that said, “I am an atheist and I vote.” What is even the purpose of that billboard? I know people are saying it seems things have never been this bad. If you have ever read any books written by the saints, they always say the same thing. Everyone always things the time they are living in is the worst time. I am not saying we aren’t getting close to end times and I am not saying we are. Jesus told us the timing is not for us to know.
I do know if we spend time worrying about it then we are giving the authority over our worry to the enemy. Whenever we are worrying about something we are spending too much time in the what ifs. When we do this, we are allowing the enemy to come in and have free range in our thoughts. He only has that authority because we are giving it to him. Maybe we are getting close to Jesus’ coming and maybe we aren’t. My question is not whether He is coming soon or not, my question is what do I have to do to be ready for it. Instead of worrying about what may or may not happen, let's spend our time making sure if it does happen we are ready. Saying that makes me think of parable of the 10 Virgins in Matthew 25:1-13. The Parable of the Ten Virgins, is one of the parables Jesus told about ten virgins who await a bridegroom; five have brought enough oil for their lamps for the wait, while the oil of the other five runs out. The five virgins who are prepared for the bridegroom's arrival are rewarded, while the five who went to buy further oil miss the bridegroom's arrival and are disowned.
It makes me think of this parable because the girls did not know when to expect the bridegroom. Five of those girls were ready for whenever he got there. They did not have to worry if he got there late because they had come prepared. This is what we must do. We must stay alert and do our best to make sure if Jesus came tomorrow, we would be ready for Him. When we do this, we take the power away from the enemy. He wants to be in our ears whispering, Jesus is coming and you aren’t ready, you still have so much to do, you aren’t good enough, you will never be ready and so on. However, when we spend each day living according to how Jesus asked us to live, we don’t have to worry about His coming because we are ready. We don’t have to listen to the enemy whisper in our ears because we already know what he will say. We know he will try to twist the truth. Remember on Tuesday we talked about how the devil’s greatest fear is confident children in Christ, this is how we get confident. We live each day in the best way we can and at the same time we are continually striving to live it better. Not because we have to earn our way into heaven or to earn the Lord’s love, but because we love God and we want to keep growing closer and closer to Him. We can’t grow closer if we don’t know Him. If we want a more intimate relationship with God we need to read scripture and really get to know who God is.
Instead of spending time worrying we could be spending this time reading scripture and spending time just being with God. I think that is His favorite. Every week in prayer group God tells us some version of, “sit with me in silence, or just be with me.” My goal and hope by talking about this with you this morning is that you will realize that if the devil only gains authority by us giving it to him, we don’t have to be afraid of him. Yes, be aware and be on guard, but we don’t have to be afraid of him because we are children of God and God is our refuge and our shield. God will protect us from the enemy. I think one important thing we forget when we think about the enemy and the spiritual warfare that is going on is that God already won the war. When Jesus died on the cross He defeated evil. He regained this world for us and we have the authority over it, not satan. Let’s not give him any power over us. Let’s be strong and confident in who we are and whose we are.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you and we are so grateful you created us in your likeness and image. We are grateful you gave us dominion over the things of this world as we know that is giving us a lot of responsibility. We are sorry we don’t always do things correctly. We are sorry we aren’t always good stewards of the things you give us dominion over. Lord, help us not to relinquish any of our authority to the evil one. Help us not to give him power over us or to let him into our thoughts. Show us how to keep that from happening. Lord, you are incredible. You already defeated evil, so we don’t have to be afraid of him anymore. Help us to be strong and confident children of God. You are amazing Lord. You are the light of the world and the word made flesh. You are the resurrection and the life. We adore you and we glorify you. We are grateful for all you do for us and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed day!
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We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click here. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Have a blessed day!
The Devil’s Greatest Fear
1 Peter 2:9 “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, that you may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”
This is one of the verses that was covered in my class last night. In case I didn’t mention this before, I have enrolled in a two year program with the Encounter School of Ministry. This school was designed and established from the heart of Encounter Ministries. This school draws from the richness of our Catholic heritage as we seek to teach, equip, and activate disciples to demonstrate the love of God through the power of the Holy Spirit in their spheres of influence. In conformity with the teachings and traditions of the Catholic Church, we offer students a dynamic 2-year training program designed to take you to the next level in your ministry. I am really loving the class so far. I truly believe that Jesus gave us all the authority to do signs and wonders here on earth when He gave us the gift of the Holy Spirit. I am sure I will be using a lot of the Bible verses from class in the podcast so that everyone can see how powerful the Holy Spirit is.
This first quarter is all about Identity and Transformation. Last night I heard something and I knew I wanted to share that with all of you. Our teacher asked us a question. What is the devil most afraid of? Do you want to take guess? Maybe you already know, but I don’t think I did. The enemy is most afraid of confident sons and daughters of Christ. Did you know that already? What does that mean? What she meant by confident sons and daughters is that we are confident in who we are as sons and daughters of Christ. We have talked before about how the enemy loves to steal our joy with half truths. He takes a kernel of truth and then twists it into a lie that we believe hook line and sinker. Why do we believe it? Because we are insecure in who we are and He knows that.
Remember when Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist and then the Holy Spirit came upon Him and He went into the wilderness for 40 days? This can be found in Matthew 3 & 4. In Matthew 3:16-17 it says, “And when Jesus was baptized, he went up immediately from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and alighting on him; and lo, a voice from heaven, saying, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” Immediately after this Jesus went into the desert for 40 days. In Matthew 4:1-3 it says, “Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And he fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterward he was hungry. And the tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” Do you see how the devil was trying to get Jesus to question His identity? God had just said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” Now the devil is coming in 40 days later when Jesus is hungry and trying to get Him to question His identity. The devil says, “If you are the Son of God.” Luckily, God had just affirmed who Jesus was and Jesus was confident in who He is. He was not tempted by the devil. I wonder if we can say the same?
Are we confident children of Christ? Do we let the enemy get in and twist the truth of who we are? Let's look at this verse and see who we actually are. The verse says, “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, that you may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” It starts out by saying we are a chosen race. Did you know you were chosen? God chose you, yes you to be one of His children. It says so right here in this verse. If this is something you struggle to believe, post it somewhere you can read it multiple times a day. We are a chosen race, you are His chosen child. Next, it says we are a royal priesthood. I was not sure exactly how to explain this, so I looked it up and found the answer on lavendervines.com. “We are a royal priesthood, which means we have direct access and fellowship with God like a priest but are also called to expand the Kingdom of God and influence the world like a king.” I will post a link to her article as she goes into a lot more detail in her article. Basically we have direct access to God, there is nothing in between us like there was in the old testament. The moment Jesus died on our cross the veil at the temple was torn in two. (Matthew 27:51) This veil in the temple was meant to keep the Holy of Holies apart from the people. Only Priests were allowed to go in there. However, when Jesus died on the cross that veil was torn in two and we were granted direct access to the Lord. That is another thing I learned somewhat recently and something that still amazes me. We now have direct contact with the Lord, we don’t have anything standing in between us.
Next, the verse says, “A holy nation, God’s own people.” We are holy, which means to be set apart, or different. We are not the same as everyone else. We belong to God and that makes us different. We don’t have to do things on our own, or rely on our own strength. We have the power of the Holy Spirit on our side to help us do what we need to do. Also in Philippians 4:13 it says, “I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.” We have a loving father who has set us apart from the ways of the world and He gives us the power to resist the ways of the world if we call upon it. Do you believe this? Do you believe that God has set you apart and that we are called to live differently?
The last part of the verse is one I think we forget often and maybe even the thing we have the most trouble believing or remembering. It says, “That you may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” Do you struggle to believe you've been called out of the darkness and into His marvelous light? Right now it may feel like you are stuck in the darkness. That is a lie the enemy wants you to believe. Yes, things may seem pretty bleak right now, but you have already been called into the light and you are not stuck in the darkness. God is shining His light into that darkness you feel, can you see it? Are you looking for it? Or are you just falling for the lies of the enemy? If you struggle to believe who you are in Christ, you are not alone. We all struggle sometimes. However, the reason I wanted to share this with you today is because we are so much more powerful when we can believe these things and we can be confident in who we are.
When we know who we are, when we are confident in who we are and whose we are, the enemy can’t touch us. Being confident in who you are doesn’t mean you will never being tempted by the enemy, you will. He will do all he can to get you to doubt who you are. However, when you are confident you don’t fall for his lies. He still tries, but you don’t give him the time of day. You don’t even listen to His lies because you know he is a liar. If you go back and read Matthew 4, you will see Jesus didn’t get upset at the devil, He didn’t get flustered, He just answered the questions of the devil with scripture. This is one reason why it is so great to get familiar with scripture. If we truly know what the Bible says, it is a lot harder for the devil to use it against us. It is hard for him to twist it into something it is not if we know what it says. However, even if you don’t know scripture, you can still ignore the enemy if you just remember this one verse. This verse above says all you need to know.
“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, that you may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” Write this somewhere you will see it often. Memorize this one scripture if it helps you to believe more in your identity as a child of Christ. Know who you are and whose you are and the enemy won’t be able to get into your heard. He won’t be able to make you doubt. He will be afraid of you because he knows how much power a confident child of God has. He knows how powerful we become when we step into our identity. He knows when we fully step into our true identity, we are lost to him forever.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you and we accept our place as your sons and daughters. Lord, please help us to step into this identity fully and to not believe the lies of the enemy. Help protect us against these lies. We want to be confident children Lord, please show us how. Give us the strength we need to do this. We are so grateful you have adopted us Lord, we are thankful you have chosen us and set us apart. Help us to live into this glorified state. You are the almighty one, you are Lord of Lords and Kings of kings. We are so very grateful for all you do for us and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed day!
Divine Power To Destroy Strongholds
2 Corinthians 10:3-6 “For though we live in the world we are not carrying on a worldly war, for the weapons of our warfare are not worldly but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every proud obstacle to the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to obey Christ, being ready to punish every disobedience when your obedience is complete."
That first line is really powerful, especially with all the controversy over weapons these days. Yes, we are living in the world and yet we don’t fight like the world does. Our weapons don’t destroy people and their lives, we destroy strongholds. Isn’t that a powerful statement that our weapons have divine power to destroy strongholds? It doesn’t say some of us have the divine power to destroy strongholds, it say our weapons. It is talking about all of us, you and me. Are you facing some pretty big strongholds right now? Are you fighting for custody of your children? Are you looking at the giant stack of bills and the empty bank account and wondering how this is all going to work out? Are you struggling with family members or co-workers and dreading seeing them each day? Are you facing chronic pain each day and wondering how you are going to make it though the day? God has given us the weapons that have divine power to break those strongholds. When we face strong holds we might be tempted to give up or to give in. We may feel as though we are in over our head. If we feel like this it is important to remember this verse.
While trying to write this I was stuck here for a while because I kept wondering if that last part was helpful. I wondered if I were facing a seemingly insurmountable stronghold right now, like chronic pain for instance, would I feel comfort by this verse, or would I need some more instruction? God gives us weapons with divine power to destroy strong holds, that is awesome. However, what I keep asking myself is how do I find these weapons, how do I use these weapons? I figured if I was asking these questions you might be too. What came to my mind were a couple of things. First, the second half of this verse is a clue. it says, “Take captive every thought to obey Christ.” When we are facing a stronghold our thoughts can be very powerful and they can help us or they can hurt us depending on what we are thinking.
Our thoughts tell us a story, whether we realize it or not. Our brains listen to everything we say. When we are facing a difficult situation we need to harness our thoughts and make them work for us instead of against us. This means we need to be intentional with what we are thinking and even the things we surround ourselves with. If we are already struggling to feel positive we don’t want to surround ourselves with negative people. We don’t want to share our problems with someone that will jump into our pity party and help us stay there. We need to intentionally seek out things that will help us have more positive thoughts. One way to do this is to spend a few minutes, first thing when you wake up, with the Lord. Talk to God about all the things going wrong and tell Him that you would like His help in all these situations. Ask God to be with you throughout the day and to help you with every situation you encounter. Ask God for the strength to get through this day a little better than you did yesterday. You don’t have to ask God to fix everything, although you can and He will. You can just ask God to give you whatever you need to make it though this one day.
I think the Holy Spirit and Prayer might be the weapons God is talking about in this verse, or at least two of the weapons. You can call on the Holy Spirit any time you are in need. Four simple words and you will have the full power of the Holy Spirit strengthening you. “Come Holy Spirit Come.” It is that easy. When you call on the Holy Spirit He always comes. I have heard miraculous stories of ways the Holy Spirit has shown up for people when they called upon Him. If you are looking to break a stronghold, whether it be an addiction, a struggle in your family, a struggle at work, or lack of work, the Holy Spirit can help you. I remember reading in a book about a minister who felt called to work with teens on the streets of NYC. He was a preacher from Pennsylvania. It was a long road but he ended up helping a lot of them break their addictions. He said he wondered why some kids were able to break their addiction completely and some broke it for awhile and then went back to it. He said it was the kids that accepted the Holy Spirit into their lives that broke that addiction completely. The name of that book is The Cross and the Switchblade by David Wilkerson. I highly recommend that book to everyone. It is such a great book about listening to God’s word even when it doesn’t make sense to us or anyone around us.
Prayer is another great weapon against our strongholds. There are so many different types of prayer. You can pray in the moment whatever comes into your mind. You can also pray formal or prescript prayers. For instance if I am scared I pray the prayer to St. Michael as he is the defender of evil. He is our protector. Also, the simple prayer of saying Jesus’ name. The enemy flees at Jesus’ name. There are also prayers called novenas. This is when you pray a prayer for nine days in a row. You can also have other people pray for you, you can have Mary intercede for you, you can have all the saints intercede fro you. Prayer is so great. Oftentimes we see prayer as a last resort. I have said and I know I have heard a lot of people say, “all we can do is pray.” As if prayer is reserved for when all else fails. We should be praying the whole time, praying when you first find out, praying for a solution, praying for peace and wisdom. Our first stop should be going to our Heavenly Father and trusting the situation in His capable hands. My hope is that we all realize how powerful our prayers are and they can be even more powerful if we realize Jesus gave us the authority to do greater works than He did.
I think this verse is another verse that is very important for us to remember. Yes, we live in this world, but we do not fight like this world. This world fights with weapons and unkind words. It attacks people’s sense of identity, it attacks family values, it attacks love. This world is filled with so much hate and division. We fight back with our prayers. We invite God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit into the situation and we let them show us how to proceed. The Holy Spirit gives us divine power to break our strongholds. One great way to exercise this power is to pray for all we need and to turn our worries over to God. Remember we are called to be set apart. Don’t let the world drag you down, don’t let the world persuade you to fight like they fight. Pray about whatever your troubles are, call the Holy Spirit into the situation and watch how much better things get. I will leave you with Romans 8:31, “What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want the divine power you give to us to destroy strongholds. Lord, help us to turn to you every time we are in trouble. Help us begin to pray at the first sign of trouble, not as a last resort. Help us to realize the immense power of prayer, so we never again say, “all we can do now is pray.” But instead say, we don’t have to worry because we have been praying and we will continue to pray. Lord we are so grateful you answer all of our prayers. We know they don’t always look like exactly what we want and yet we are grateful anyway. Lord, you are so mighty and powerful. You are the Alpha and the Omega. You are the King of Kings. We adore you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Temptations
1 Corinthians 10:12-13 “Therefore let any one who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall. No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your strength, but with the temptation will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it."
I thought this was a great verse to talk about because we are all tempted. It can be so frustrating because we are tempted the most when we make a commitment to do something. We make a commitment to stop eating donuts and someone brings in donuts to the break room at work. You make a commitment to start running in the morning and someone invites you to do something else in the morning. You decide you will take a break from drinking alcohol and your friends call up and invite you to margarita Tuesdays. I am sure you all have your own examples of times when you made a commitment to do something and then were immediately tempted to break that commitment. It is inevitable and many times we don’t even realize it is a temptation. We don’t realize we are being tempted away from our commitment.
I am not sure what the first line in the verse is saying. My interpretation is that we need to be careful if we think we are above temptations, or if we start to think we are standing on our own two feet and we have this whole faith thing down pat. Or maybe we start to think too much of ourselves and our own abilities. It says, “Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall.” I think what God is trying to tell us is to be careful and to think twice if we feel everything is easy for us and we are doing everything right. If we start to think we are perfect then we may fall. Humility is so important. We can all always learn something, there isn’t a single one of us that knows everything or that does everything perfectly. There is always room for improvement. I think this is what the Lord is trying to tell us with this first line, but I don’t know that for sure. I am definitely not a theologian.
The next line is an important one. “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man.” In other words, you are not alone. Temptation is not a new thing. It is not something that is unique to you. Temptation has been around since the beginning of time, quite literally. Look at Eve, she was tempted by the apple. Temptation is here and it is not going anywhere. I think this line is put in to reassure us that temptation is normal. We all get tempted. There is nothing wrong with us just because we are tempted. Sometimes we can feel that we are weak if we are tempted. Everyone is tempted by something at one point or another.
The next part says, “God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your strength.” This is great news. God is right there with us in that temptation. He may be allowing the temptation but he will not tempt us more than we can handle. I wonder if this means we have the power to resist all temptations? I honestly don’t know the answer to that question. I know I don’t always feel like I have the power and I know I don’t always resist the temptations in front of me. Is that because I am not trying hard enough or because I am not using or accepting the power that God is giving to me? Those are both questions I don’t have the answer too. I will need to spend some time with God and ponder those questions. I will ask the Lord to show me what is getting in the way. What about you? How are you doing resisting the temptations set out in front of you? Are you letting those temptations deter you from keeping the commitments you said you would do?
The ending of this verse is something I hadn’t really though of before. “But with the temptation will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.” This is an interesting way of looking at temptations. If I am reading and interpreting this correctly, the Lord is saying the temptation can also provide us a way to escape if we are able to endure it. For instance, if we are a smoker and we commit to giving it up, our ability to avoid the temptation to smoke is our escape, our way out. Resisting temptation is also a great way to see how dedicated you are to your commitment. If you say you are going to give up sweets and then the first time you are presented a sweet you eat it, you probably were not that dedicated to giving them up.
We usually assume temptations are from the enemy. We assume the enemy is trying to keep us from doing the good things we have planned. However, what if some temptations were from our Father in heaven to test us and see if we really meant what we said? What if some of the temptations were from our heavenly Father to help us get stronger or to help us overcome something we need to overcome? This verse tells us God will not let us be tempted beyond our strength, remember this the next time you are tempted. The next time you are tempted whether it is by a cookie, or something a lot more serious, remember God has given you the strength to withstand the temptation. You don’t have to give in to that temptation, you are stronger than you think. The next time you are tempted try to pause and ask yourself, what is the purpose of this temptation. Is it trying to get me off track, is it trying to teach me something, is it trying to build up my resilience or my perseverance? Also remember that you are not the only one being tempted. We are all going through it so be kind to yourself. Temptation is common, you just have to decide what you are going to do with it. How can you make the temptation work for you instead of against you?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, you are so great and we are so grateful for you. Lord, help us to recognize the power to resist temptation that you have given us. Help us remember that power in times of need. Thank you for showing us we are not alone and preventing us from being tempted beyond our strength. Help us to endure these temptations Lord, and help us to escape. Lord, you are amazing. You are the Light of the World, and the Word made Flesh. You are the almighty one and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed weekend!
Rejoice That Your Names Are Written In Heaven
Luke 10:17-20 “The seventy returned with joy, saying, “Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!” He said to them, “I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning. See, I have given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing will hurt you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.
The verse is very powerful for two different reasons. The first one is the disciples were sent out by Jesus to spread to good news of the Gospel and they were able to do signs and wonders as Jesus was. The disciples were excited to come back and tell Jesus how good they did on their assignment. They were filled with joy because they were able to cast out demons in Jesus’ name. Then Jesus told them He gave them he authority to tread on snakes and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing will hurt you. This definitely deserves some time for us to stop and really think about. Jesus gave them authority over all the power of the enemy; and nothing would hurt them. Did you know He gave you that same power as well?
It says in John 14:12-14, “Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.” Jesus was able to do a lot more than cast out demons. He was able to heal people, physical healings and emotional healings, He was able to perform miracles, he was able to inspire and teach others. In this verse in John’s gospel Jesus is telling us that we will also do the works that He did and we will actually be able to do greater works than these. Do you believe this? Do you believe you will do the works Jesus did and even greater works? We read about first the 12 and then the 70 that Jesus sent out to spread the good news and they came back saying they were able to do the works he did. If we can see it happened just as He said in the Bible, why do we struggle to believe it?
Some of us may not think it is possible to do the works Jesus did because we are normal, ordinary, boring people. It takes extraordinary people to perform miracles. This is what many of us think. What could I do, I’m not anyone special? I have two things to say to that. First, you are special, we all are, because God made us in His likeness and image and because we are His chosen children. Second, I’ve got a newsflash for you, none of the apostles were any more special than you or I before they started following Jesus. If you have not watched the series The Chosen, you really should give it a try. What I love the most about the series is how human everyone is, even Jesus. It shows who the apostles were before they were chosen. They were regular, every day people. They were not the richest people, they were not the ones that were getting everything right, they were not the ones everyone looked up to. They were the people who’s hearts were touched when they met Jesus. They were the ones who knew after spending a very short time with Jesus, that there was no where else they would rather be. They were the ones that said yes.
I love the series because it shows their humanity. It shows how some of Jesus’ followers didn’t know scripture well and so they started to learn it. The series shows how they all have doubts, just as we do, as to their worthiness to be followers. In an episode I saw this week, one of the brothers, I think it was James, said he didn’t understand much at all of what was going on. Isn’t that us so much of the time? We want to understand what the Bible is saying and yet sometimes it is just above our heads. If I could get one message out to everyone in the world it would be to “not count yourself out.” I wish everyone would hear this verse in John 14:12-14, “Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it,” and accept it as their truth. I wish everyone would hear this and know that Jesus was talking to them when He said it.
I know we don’t feel special enough to think we could perform healings and miracles and yet the Bible says we are. It also says in Proverbs 3:5 “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.” We don’t have to feel we are good enough. We just have to trust God is faithful and that Jesus wouldn’t say something if it wasn’t true. There are people all over the world who have made a decision to believe this Word of God and because they believe it they are doing the works that Jesus did and even greater works. What would it take for you to believe this Word of God? Why is it you believe other things God has said and yet you struggle to believe this one? How would your life change if you adopted this word as your personal truth?
The second reason the verse above is so powerful is because of the last line, “Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” How powerful is that? These apostles have just come back from doing signs and wonders and Jesus tells them not to rejoice over that, but to rejoice because their names are written in Heaven. Imagine hearing those words from Jesus? God wants us to spread the Good News of the Gospel. He wants us to bring others to our faith. He wants us to build up the faith of others. One great way to build up the faith of others is to perform signs and miracles. Even if you are not performing signs and miracles, you have probably seen some miracles in your life time, especially if you have ever prayed for anything then you have received some answered prayers. Who are you sharing those answered prayers with? How are you using all God is doing in your life to help build the faith of others?
Evangelization, which we are all called to do, isn’t only about going out and preaching the Word of God. A lot of the time it is about living your life as a living example of Christ. Remember what my dad said the other day in his witness? Other people in our neighbor hood would come up to him and say they noticed he had a different kind of peace around him and they wanted to know how to get it. That is our ultimate goal. That right there should be our goal for living each day. How can we live today so someone will notice it and want to have it? We can keep that in our minds with each decision we make. When I do this will I being a reflection of Jesus? If other people saw me do this, would they think of God, would they want to have more of what I have? How can I take all God has given me and have it reflect Jesus back to the world? Those are some great things to ponder of this next week. I want to rejoice that my name is written in Heaven.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to do greater works than you, please help us. We believe Lord, help our unbelief. Help soften our hearts and change our hearts and minds so we can believe you will give us whatever we ask. Help us to believe we can do the works you do. Lord, we could be helping so many more people if we could just believe. Help us to want to believe as we know you can help us do anything we ask for Lord. Help us to rejoice that our name is written in Heaven. Thank you for writing our name in Heaven Lord. We are so very grateful you are so kind to us. You love us so much and we are so thankful. You are our almighty and loving Father. You are the Prince of Piece and the Lion of Judah. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus love you and so do I! Have a blessed day!
We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click on the link below. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Have a blessed day!
Let’s Go On The Offensive!
Matthew 16:18 “And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.”
Father Mike talked about this verse and I thought it was so powerful. I know not everyone listening to this episode is listening to his podcast and I think everyone should hear this message so I am going to relay his message. Father Mike said when he was younger and he read this passage he thought, when it says “the gates of Hades will not prevail against it,” it meant that hell will not destroy the church. Even if the church gets really bad, hell cannot possible destroy the church. Father Mike said that is not what Jesus is saying. Jesus says, “The gates of hell/Hades will not prevail against it.” Which means not that the gates of Hades are attacking the church, but that the gates of Hades will not be able to prevent the church from overtaking hell. The gates of Hades will not be able to prevent God’s power, His Kindgom on Earth from destroying the kingdom of the evil one with His power. It’s not a defensive position, it’s an offensive position. You and I have been brought into this church and we have been made members of the body of Christ. We are sons and daughters of our Father.
Yes, there is this defensive promise that God is with us, God is for us, that He loves us and cares for us. Also, there is this offensive posture that we have which is, “Where does His light need to be shined?” “Where does His grace need to be revealed?” “Where does His hope need to be proclaimed?” “Where does His love need to be brought?” There are a lot of places without love, without hope, and without light within our world. If we are meant to be on the offensive, if the members of the church are meant to be on the offensive where the gates of hell cannot prevail against it, “where can you and I bring light today where there is no light?” “Where can you and I bring hope today where there is not hope?” “Where can you and I bring love today where there is no love?” This doesn’t have to be someone struggling in another country or another state. This could be someone living next door to you or even someone living in the same house as you.
I don’t know about you, but I found this profound. I was instantly moved by this idea. I think we usually feel as though we are on the defensive. There is so much awful in this world and we are constantly feeling like we have to defend ourselves and our loved ones against it. I love the idea of being on the offensive. I love the idea of knowing we are brining light into the darkness. I know it probably sounds silly but I picture wearing these big boots and knocking down evil’s door and shining this big spot light into that darkness. Father Mike asked some great questions. Let’s look at those questions a little closer.
“Where can I bring light today where there is no light?” Who do you know that is in the darkness right now? Who do you know is struggling and can’t see the light? Are there secrets hanging out in the dark that need to come into the light? Start in your own house. Are there people you are living with that could use a little more light in their life? Do you have family members that are struggling and you have been too busy to notice? Or maybe you haven’t been too busy, but you didn’t really know what to do so you were hoping the problem would just go away. I pray you were doing more than hoping. I pray you were praying, not only for the one who was struggling but also praying for God to show you what you could do to help. When in doubt, pray. God will always show you what to do if you ask Him. What if we all took this question to God this week. Let’s all take a few minutes and ask God directly where He wants us to bring more light into the world? We can ask God to show us who He wants us to help and how He wants us to do it.
The next question was,”Where can you and I bring hope today where there is not hope?” This is a great one because there are more and more people losing hope these days. People are losing hope in our government, they are losing hope in humanity, they are losing hope in everything. What can we do to renew the hope people are losing? What can we do to bring them a new hope? How can we get them to see that hope in Jesus is all they need? One thing I have done for my friends that were losing hope in something, like a deep desire they had, was to keep hoping for them. Hope can be hard sometimes because if you hope in something there is always the chance you may be let down. For instance if you are hoping that you get a certain job, and then you don’t, you may be let down. The thing about hoping in the Lord is, He never lets you down. He always keeps His promises. Maybe if we can show people how faithful God is to His promises then we can help them find their hope again? What other ways can you think of to bring hope where there is none? This is another great thing to take to God. Spend some time asking God to show you exactly who He wants you to bring hope to and how?
The last question is, “Where can you and I today bring love today where there is no love?” There is a real lack of love in the world right now. Where can we bring love into our part of the world? Mother Teresa said, “Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do... but how much love we put in that action” Starting with our home, how can we add more love into our home? How can we bring more love into our work places? What about our neighborhoods, is there a way we can bring more love into our neighborhoods? Could we wave hi to our neighbors as we walk past? Instead of walking by in a hurry, maybe we could take the time to stop and ask them how they are doing? Maybe checking in with our co workers and asking how they are doing? What if you were the only person to ask them how they were doing? We never know what people are feeling on the inside. I have heard many stories of people who were on their way to taking their own life and then decided not to because someone, completely unaware of their plans, stopped and said something kind to them. Remember, you never know how one kind word can change someone’s life.
Let’s all go on the offensive. Instead of waiting for the evil one to try and ruin our day, let’s try to bring more light, love and hope into some else’s day. Yes, we always need to be ready to fight against the enemy as he loves to attack us. However, instead of just being on the defensive lets go on the offensive too. That might just knock him off his game. I don’t know if you have ever played chess, but if you have ever played with someone that is really good, they can anticipate your moves. They know if they do this, you will likely do this. Chess players are thinking several moves in advance and they run through several scenarios in their head. However, when they are playing with someone that doesn’t always do the thing they thought they would do they can get stuck being on the defensive. When this happens you are in control of the board and they are just reacting to your moves. If we are spreading love, hope and light to all we meet, the enemy will be stuck reacting us instead of us always reacting to him. What do you say, do you want to put the enemy on the defensive with me?
Dear Heavenly Father I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode with me today. Lord, you are amazing and we love how you have already defeated the enemy for us. We ask you to help us spread your love, light and hope to all those we meet. Lord, the world is lacking these things in a big way right now and we aren’t sure how to help spread them, please show each and every one of us how to do our part. We are ready and willing to work for you Lord, show us how, show us where, show us who. Lord, you are the light of this world and we want to spread that light to others. You are the hope of this world, help us share that hope with others, You are the love we desperately need in this world, help us to share that love with every single person we meet. We love you so much Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Tomorrow’s guess will be my sister Michelle. My sister’s witness is about how she was able to trust God in a difficult situation and how that situation turned out better than she could have hoped. If you have ever struggled to trust God, if you have ever really wanted something and struggled to trust it would come, this is the witness for you. I look forward to sharing her witness with you tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed day!
God Has Chosen You, Yes You!
Isaiah 41:8-10 “But you, Israel, my servant, Jacob, whom I have chosen, you descendants of Abraham my friend, I took you from the ends of the earth, from its farthest corners I called you.I said, ‘You are my servant’; I have chosen you and have not rejected you. So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”
Someone told me once, whenever you are going through the Bible and you see the world Israel you can substitute your name in there. Israel is what God called His chosen people. We are also God’s chosen people. I am not sure if you have ever tried doing that, substituting your name, but it makes the scriptures more personal. In this verse you would probably substitute your name for Jacob’s name. Let’s all do that right now. Listen to the first line again putting in your name. Repeat after me, “But you, Israel, my servant, insert your name here, whom I have chosen.” So for me it would be, “But you, Israel, my servant, Catherine, whom I have chosen.” That might even be a good verse to write on a sticky note and put it somewhere you will see it often. This scripture just happens to be one that is easier to personalize, but all the scriptures are meant for each one of us individually. God is talking to all His people and at the same time He is talking to each one of His people.
This verse starts by reminding us who we are. We are God’s chosen people. It also reminds us of where we came from. God took us from the ends of the earth, from the farthest corners he called us. He saved us from slavery in Egypt. He led us out of Egypt and into the promised land. He took care of us and met our every need while were wandering in the wilderness for 40 years. One amazing part is that He took care of us for all 40 years even though it was never meant to be 40 years. He took care of us for all 40 years even though we continually turned our backs on Him and complained about everything.
Maybe you feel like you are far from everyone else right now. Maybe you feel as though you are in a deep pit and you can’t seem to find your way out. Maybe you feel as though you might as well be at the farthest corners because you feel so alone and isolated. If this is you please write this verse down and look at it multiple times a day. If you feel isolated, if you feel you are in a pit and can’t get out, if you feel all alone, you probably also feel abandoned by God. You have not been abandoned or rejected. It says right in this verse, “I have chosen you and have not rejected you. So do not fear, I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”
God is there for you. He sees you in your struggles. He is there with you in the marriage that is struggling. He is there with you in that house where everything is chaos right now. Yes, He sees your husband or your wife abusing alcohol and He is working in that situation. Yes, He sees your parents getting older or getting sick and He is there in that situation. Yes, He sees you struggling to get back on track and He is there working in that situation too. We live in a world that is full of rejection. There are so many ways we can feel rejected in the world we are living in. We have constant connection to the whole world. If we text someone we know when they read our message, so when they don’t write back right away we might wonder why. We might start to feel rejected like they didn’t write back because they are upset with us, or maybe they didn’t care enough to write back right away. If we call someone and they don’t pick up we might wonder why they didn’t pick up. Are they avoiding my calls? Did I do something wrong? I could go on. There are many, many ways we can feel rejected.
However, God is not rejecting us. He is saying flat out in this verse, “I have chosen you, and have not rejected you.” This is amazing! If I could be anything in the world, I would want to be chosen by God. And He reassures us in this passage that we are chosen. Do you know what is so great about being chosen by God? We didn’t have to do anything to be chosen. We just needed to exist and He chose us and will protect us. That right there, is amazing to me. Something I learned in my class on Monday night, well, I guess I already knew but God reminded me, is that we don’t have to earn His love. This is something God keeps reminding me of because as amazing as I think it is, I can’t seem to remember it. I remember it in my brain. I will tell anyone I talk to that they don’t have to earn God’s love, it is freely given. I know this, I truly do, and yet I still try to earn it by doing one more thing in my day. I wonder if I am doing enough and I hear the Holy Spirit say, “It’s not about doing, it’s about being.” God doesn’t want us to “do” things as much as He wants us to “BE” with Him.
Doing things is great. I do believe He wants us to go out and do works in His name. However, those works will not make Him love us anymore and they will not get us any closer to heaven. God loves us no matter what we do and we were given Heaven by Jesus when He died for our sins. It’s not something we earn. If you feel as though you have been rejected or separated from God, please write down this verse and look at it often. God is talking to you, yes you. God loves you and He has chosen you, he has not rejected you. The verse also says “I will strengthen you and help you.” God will help you when you ask. It may not look like you imagined it would and it may not be on your timeline. Help will come though. God always keeps His word and His promises. God is already working in your situation in ways you can’t see. He is lining things up and working on softening peoples hearts. He is 12 steps ahead of us and we can rest in the fact that He said He will help us and He will strengthen us. He will give you the strength to make it through anything you face. I will leave you with God’s word’s instead of my own. Close your eyes and imagine God is saying this directly to you, because He is, “You are my servant’; I have chosen you and have not rejected you. So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we thank you for choosing us and for not rejecting us. We thank you for finding us wherever we are and leading us home. Lord, we don’t want to fear, please help us to realize You are with us and that you will strengthen us and help us. Lord, we ask you to open our eyes and show us how you are working in our current situation. Help us to not feel rejected Lord. If we do feel rejected or alone please help us feel your love today. Help us to know you are there with us. Help us to lean into you instead of away from you. We are so grateful for all you do for us. You are the almighty Lord God. You are our Savior. You are the Light of the World. We love you Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk Boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Love God with Your Whole Heart, Soul & Strength
Deuteronomy 6:4-5 " Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.”
That is a pretty tall order. First of all, it’s hard because many of us don’t even know what love is. We only know the love we have been shown, and in a lot of cases, that was not love. I started writing this episode for Thursday morning and then I realized before writing about how we are called to love God with our whole heart, soul and strength, I should explain what love is. If you have not listened to yesterday’s episode go listen to that one as it goes together with this one. Yesterday’s episode titled “What is Love?” talks about how love is defined in 1 Corinthians 13:4-7. Today the Lord is asking us to love Him with all of our heart, soul and strength. That sounds great in theory, but how do we actually do that?
Let’s start with our heart. How do we give our whole heart to God? This makes me think of a scene I saw last night on the Chosen season 2 episode 6. Mary Magdalen left the camp where Jesus was and she went to the bar to gamble and drink. She knew she didn’t want to be doing what she was doing and yet it seemed as if she couldn’t help it. After she was finally able to walk away she couldn’t go home to Jesus. She was too ashamed. Matthew and Simon found her and brought her back. When Mary talked with Jesus He said He just needed Mary to give her heart to God, which she had. That was all. Then He ask her a question, “Did you really never expect to sin again?” From this scene I think Jesus was telling us, He doesn’t need us to be perfect. He is not setting these super high standards that he needs us to live up to at all times. We just need to give Him our hearts.
I found an article titled, “20 Ways to Love God with All Your Heart, Soul, Mind & Strength.” (Click Here) In this article it talked about 20 different ways we could love God. One of these ways was to love God with our whole heart. This is what it said, “We can think of the heart as the place of our spiritual life, thoughts, feelings, motivations, reason, and understanding. Our decisions, our morals, and our will come from it. So, loving God with all our heart is to have a strong desire and will towards Him.” This seems to line up with what Jesus said to Mary. Do we desire to be with God. Is our will pointed towards God or away from God? What does our spiritual life look like? Are we spending time with God every single day? What do we think about all the time? Are we thinking about God more than anything else throughout the day? Is God behind all of our motivations, reasons and understanding? Think about these things. Take some time to ponder if you are loving the Lord our God with your whole heart.
Next it says to love the Lord your God with all your soul. This is what I found in that article. “The Hebrew word for “soul” gives the idea of the breath of life. The Greek word gives a more global idea of the inner self, the individual, the mind (in the sense of our deep thoughts). We can say that it is the non-physical part of the human being (Psalm 16:10; Ezekiel 18:4). It is what defines our personhood, who we are. So, loving God with our whole soul is to love Him with everything we are, is to find our inner self inclined to Him, seeking Him, having Him at the center of our affections. What comes to mind after reading that is the question, Are we seeking Him? Is he at the center of our affections? When we are sitting around thinking about what we want to do, does God come to our minds? Do we want to spend time with Him? Do we want to be near Him? If we could pick someone to spend our time with, who would that be? Would it be God?
Finally, the verse tells us to love God with our whole strength. Love God with our whole Strength, what does that mean? The article said, “We find the word “strength” in the Bible a lot of times, and most of them refer to the power of God. Strength refers to the physical aspect of loving God. It is how we show that we love Him and do everything we can to put our love for God into action. If our inner motivation and desire are to love God, our actions (the strength of our bodies) will show it. What I think this is saying is that if we want to love God with our whole strength then our actions have to be towards God. Are we doing things God wants us to do? When we get to the end of the day would God be proud of our actions? Did we do things He has asked us to do? Did we treat people nicely? Did we share His love and His peace with all the various people we interacted with today? Did our actions reflect our love for God?
I told you at the beginning of this episode the verse was a pretty tall order. God is calling us to love Him with our whole heart, soul and strength and yet He is not expecting us to do it perfectly. He knows we are going to mess up, He knows we are going to get it wrong. Honestly, we will probably get it wrong a lot more than we will get it right. He is calling us to it anyway. God wants us to enter this relationship with Him. A relationship where we do our best to love Him with our thoughts, with our desires and our will. We love Him with our actions and the motivation behind our actions. Basically God wants us to give our whole self to Him as He gave everything to us. Again, He knows we won’t do it perfectly and that is ok. He just wants us to try.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to love you with our whole heart, soul and strength, please show us how. Lord, help us to know where we are falling short so we can do better. We want to love you as you love us Lord. Give us the strength and the wisdom we need to love you more fully. You are truly amazing Lord. You love us fully and completely even though we keep messing up time and time again. We are so grateful you never give up on us Lord. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again on Monday. Remember Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed weekend.
What is Love?
1 Corinthians 13:4-7 “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”
How many of us have known that kind of love? How many of us know how to love like that? When we look at all the things love is, it can be a bit overwhelming. Let’s break it down and examine it phrase by phrase. “Love is patient.” Are we being patient with the Lord? Are we rushing Him to give us the answers we want, when we want them, or are we allowing things to work out in His time? What about our loved ones? Are we being patient with our spouse when they still haven’t done that thing we asked them to do about a hundred times? Are we patient with our children when they are asking us the same question for the tenth time? Are we patient with our siblings when they ask to borrow our clothes again? What is one way we can be more patient with our loved ones? “Love is kind.” Are we being kind to the Lord our God? Are we being kind to all those who we love? What is one way we can be kinder to those we love?
“It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.” How about us? Are we envious of the relationship others have the God? Are we envious of what God is doing for others? Are we envious of all the things we see on Facebook and social media? It is hard in this day and age not to be envious when there are so many people posting about how great their life is on social media. We all know, on some level, that no one has a perfect life, and yet, when you scroll through facebook it is hard to find someone who appears to have any cares in the world. “It does not boast.” Do we boast about our relationship with God or about how much God has blessed us with? Do we post things on social media for the sole purpose of bragging about what we have? Are we boasting about the amazing things we get to do just so others will see it? What are our intentions behind what we are posting on social media? “It is not proud.” When we hear the word proud, we might not understand why this would be a bad thing. I love my children and my husband and I am proud of them. In this verse it is not saying love means you are not proud of other people or proud of an accomplishment you might have done. Proud in this verse is talking about an arrogance we have the we are better than others. Pride of all we have done, without acknowledging God’s role in all of it? Attributing our success to our own efforts instead of God’s blessings and grace. Are we struggling with pride? According to one definition pride is also a “cynical insensitivity to the needs of others.” Are we being sensitive to the needs of others? What is one thing we could do to be less envious, boastful, or proud?
“Love does not dishonor others.” Are we honoring those we love? Have we gossiped or spread lies about them? Maybe you didn’t know they were lies, someone told you something and so you told someone else. Gossip is an awful thing. Even if it isn’t a lie, other people’s business is not ours to share. Let’s honor people enough to not spread information about them to others. Let’s honor people enough to stand up for them when we hear information we know isn’t correct. Next time you catch yourself gossiping, or you hear others gossip, I hope this sentence comes into your mind, “Love does not dishonor others.” How about God? Have we talked badly about God? Have we talked about how He hasn’t answered our prayers yet? What is one thing we can do to honor our loved ones more?
“Love is not self-seeking.” Have we only been looking out for ourselves? Have we been spending all of our time talking with the Lord and not bothering to stop and listen to what he wants to say? Have we been asking and asking from the Lord and not giving Him anything in return? What about our loved ones? Have we been looking out for their best interests and trying to serve them, or have we been asking them to serve us? Have we been spending time with them or are we just doing what we want to do? “Love is not easily angered.” Wow, that is a tough one. Have we been getting frustrated and angry more easily with God? Have we been easily angered with our loved ones? “It keeps no records of wrongs.” This is one I think we struggle with. In our human love, we do keep records of wrongs. I hear people saying all the time, “My brother did this and my sister did that.” I bet if I asked you to tell me something your siblings did when they were younger, you can come up with a whole list of things. This can be also be true in marriage. Although Love doesn’t keep score, we sometimes do. I did the dishes three times and he only did them once. I put the kids to be 5 times this week and she only did it twice. Are we doing this with God too? Are we keeping score? Are we comparing how much He has helped others vs how much He has helped us? What could we do to be less self-seeking or less easily angered? How can we learn to not keep score?
“Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.” This one we would think would be an obvious one. Obviously love doesn’t delight in evil. Why would we want something evil to happen to a loved one? However, if we are struggling with envy, sometimes we can get some delight when something goes wrong for someone who we think has everything. It is not the best side of us, and yet it happens. If you have a friend and everything always seems to come up in her favor. She tries her hand at several different things and it always works out. It’s as if luck is always on her side. Meanwhile, you are struggling to make ends meet, you try things and everything seems to fail. It seems as if you are the unluckiest person in the world. Sometimes when we are in this situation, as much as we hate to admit it, we like to see others struggle a little. We like to know we are not the only one having a difficult time. When is the last time we rejoiced in the truth? What can we do to learn to be happy for other’s success? How can we realize, someone else’s success doesn’t take anything away from us?
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” This right here is a pretty big statement. I always tell my kids, “nobody always anything.” For instance they will say, “he always hits me,” talking about their brother. Or, “you always say no to everything,” talking about their parents. However, this verse is telling us that love always protects, always trusts, always hopes and always preservers. This is how we know that God’s love is different from the love we are used to. There are parents that love their children and yet they don’t protect them, they abuse them. There isn’t always trust in a loving relationship, there isn’t even always trust in a marriage. I would like to say there is hope in all loving relationships, I am just not sure if that’s true in many relationships. Love always perseveres. This is another one I would like to say is definitely true and yet I am not sure it is with all human love. We are a broken people and we don’t know how to love like our heavenly father does. However, we can keep trying to learn.
Today’s episode asked a lot of questions and did not give you a lot of answers. The reason for this is because I don’t have a lot of answers for how you love. We have all had very different experiences with love over the years. I feel lucky in that I had great experiences with love growing up. I always felt loved and cared for. This isn’t the case for everyone. Today’s episode is meant to get you to examine two things. First, what is true love? Sometimes we think God can’t love us because of all we have done, or because we are looking at love through our own past experiences with love. God loves us with a perfect love that transcends all of our limitations and unworthiness. Second, how do you love? The love you are sharing with the world, how does it compare to true love? If we are thinking more and more about what love is meant to be then we can start to change the ways in which we are getting it all wrong. We can start to love more like Jesus did. This is what God wants from us. Not to share our broken love, but to share His love with one and all.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you and we appreciate you laying it all out for us. We are grateful you explain to us what love is so we can see how we are getting it right and how we are getting it wrong. Lord, we want to spread your love to others and we can only do that if we know how. Thank you for showing us how. That you for being such a great example of perfect love. Thank you for loving us the way you do. Help us to receive that love God. You are so mighty and so powerful. You are the Light of the world. We love you, we adore you, we glorify you. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Remember, Jesus love you and so do I! Have a blessed day!
We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click on the link below. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Have a blessed day!
Share Your Story
Psalm 105:1-2 “Give praise to the Lord, proclaim his name; make known among the nations what he has done. Sing to him, sing praise to him; tell of all his wonderful acts.”
Keeping along the theme of praise from yesterday’s episode, today’s verse talks about a different kind for praise. It talks about praising God by telling all of His wonderful acts. The verse begins by saying we should make known among all the nations what He has done. This has come up in several places for me over this past month. I went to a conference on Sept. 10th and the speaker was talking about how important it is for us to share our story. Then the word we were given in prayer group said something similar. Each week in prayer group it seems the Lord is telling us to go out and spread what He is teaching us to others. Then I watched a webinar and they were talking about how important it is to tell our witness. I also started a class last week and in class the instructor talked about how important it is to share our stories with others.
The reason it is so important to share our story with others is because it helps to build others’ faith up when they see God working in your life. God has done incredible things in your life and talking about them is good for you as well as others. The reason I started Witness Wednesdays on this podcast is because I saw and heard how much the people taking the Life in the Spirit seminar enjoyed listening to them. Many of them said although they learned a lot from the teachings, what really touched their hearts were the witnesses. We only see what people want us to see about their lives. If people don’t talk about it me may never see how God is working in their lives. When we talk about the things God has done for us it helps others to see what is possible for God to do in their lives.
If we are not on the lookout for how God is moving and working in our lives, we may miss it. We may chalk it up to coincidence, or think our victory was due to our efforts alone. If we are not telling others of all God has done, we may forget. That might seem hard to believe, how could you ever forget the miraculous things God has done in your life? However, I am sure He has done way more than we can even think of. If you had to sit and make a list of all the things God has given you in your life, could you? If you had to make a list of all the prayers He has answered for you, how long would that list be? If you were asked to make a list of all the time God showed up and rescued you, would you be able to? What about all those times God protected you from something before it happened?
We are all going through out lives and maybe you think your life is pretty boring. Maybe you think you haven’t had your share of tragedy, or you haven’t suffered enough. I knew a woman once who was concerned she had not had enough suffering in her life. If this is you, if you have had a pretty good life so far and you feel as though you haven’t really needed to rely on God and you haven’t really seen God working in your life I would say you might just be looking at it in a different way. If you haven’t had much tragedy in your life, that is a good thing. That means God has been working in your life to keep all that out. He has protected you from the things that sought to get in your way. You may think your life is boring, but what kinds of things do you think God had to give you or do for you to help you live this boring life?
I think we don’t realize how much God is in the little details of our lives. Think about the various things you have prayed. Did you get answers to those prayers? Is the house you are living in the answer to a prayer? Are your children and answer to your prayer? I know it may not always seem like they are an answer to a prayer as parenting is hard and yet, I bet you did pray to have children one day. What about having food on the table and clothes to wash? Are those answers to your prayers? What about where you live, is that an answer to prayers? Did you pray to live close to family, far from family, in a city, in the country, by a lake? I think if many of us think about it we will realize we are living into the exact things we prayed for 5 or 10 years ago.
We have a faithful God and He answers our prayers. If we are living our answered prayers right now, why don’t we talk about it more? Why aren’t we shouting from the roof tops all the things God has done for us? I know it can be hard to know what to say. It can be hard to think of ways God is working in our lives. However, once you try, once you sit down and really think of things that have happened over the years, things will start to come into your mind. You can ask the Holy Spirit as well to bing into your mind all the ways you gave seen God working your life. I think sometimes we think it has to be some miraculous event in order to share it with others. However, God is working in the small ways too. I love to hear stories about how someone needed something small in that very moment and God gave it to them. For instance, I heard a story once about a woman who only had enough money for one sandwich at a fast food place. She bought one chicken sandwich and her and her son took turns taking a bite until the sandwich was gone. That sandwich was not gone until they were both completely full. That is a miracle and yet it is something that can easily be forgotten or overshadowed by all the other things going on in life. If that woman hadn’t shared this story and talked about it, she may have forgotten about it. Sharing our story helps keep the memory alive.
I know you don’t think you have a story. I know it can be scary to share our story, it can be scary to be vulnerable. I also know God is calling us to share our story to build up His Kingdom. God wants us to tell of His wondrous acts. I challenge each one of you to take a few minutes out of your day and write down at least 10 ways God has shown up in your life. These can be anything. Did He bless you with children? Did He bless you with a home? Did He bless you with parents and siblings? Did He bless you with a spouse? What do you have to be thankful to God for? How can you share that list with others? Can you pick just one memory where you know God was there for you and share it with at least three people this week? God is asking us in the verse above to “tell of all His wondrous deeds.” I ask you all to ponder that this week. Take some time and ask God how this applies to you? Ask God how He wants you to answer this call?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to share our story, we want to tell of your wondrous deed and yet we don’t know how, please show us. Please help us recall all the ways you are working in our lives. Please show us how to share this information with others. Lord, we are all different and the way one of us shares might not work for someone else. Please share with each of us individually how you would like us to answer your call. We love you Lord and we are so grateful for you. You are the light of the World and the Word make Flesh. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If technology works out for us today the guest speaker tomorrow will be my dad. My parents have seen a lot of miracles over the years. I have talked about a few during some of the regular episodes, but I am looking forward to letting my dad and mom share some of them. Tomorrow my dad will talk about a few of them. I look forward to sharing that with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day.
Praise is the Answer
1 Thessalonians 5:18 “ Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”
I know I talk about praise a lot and yet, I am not sure if we could ever talk about praise enough. I am training for a race and on Saturdays is when I do my long runs for the week. This Saturday my long run was 9 miles, which I was not really looking forward to. I am not sure if anyone really looks forward to long runs. I decided I was going to catch up on the Big Life Devotional Podcast during my run. They are short 10-15 minute episodes and I was going to be running for over 2 hours so I had plenty of time to catch up. As I was listening what really resonated with me were the episodes on praise. I was running, and all of the sudden I felt as if I had been handed the answer to a question I had been thinking about for quite a while now. I have been wondering how I’ve been able to have such a deep faith all will turn out ok when all the evidence around me was showing the exact opposite?
While I was running I felt God was saying, the answer is praise. Pamela Crim in one of the episodes of her Big Life Devotional Podcast was talking about 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18. What I focused in on and what really hit home for me was 1 Thessalonians 5:18, “ Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” Why this stuck with me is because she explained it in a way I hadn’t heard it explained before. I have heard before and even said before, we can always praise God, even when we are in the middle of a difficult situation. We don’t have to praise God for the situation, but we can find something to praise God for while we are going through something difficult. I have said things like, you don’t have to praise God because you having a hard time but you can praise God for the sunrise that morning, or a cup of really great coffee. I believe this, I think you can always find something to praise God for.
Listening to Pamela’s podcast episode I feel I gained an even deeper knowledge of praise and so naturally I wanted to share it will all of your who are on this journey with me. Pamela points out the phrase above doesn’t say God’s will is for us to praise God FOR all circumstances, it says In all circumstances. That’s what I was saying earlier. You don’t have to thank God FOR the difficult situation you are in but you can praise God while you are IN your difficult situation. Then what Pamela said next is something I knew but didn’t know. You know what I mean? Do you ever know something sort of subconsciously, but then someone says it out loud and brings it to the forefront of your mind? Or you knew something, but you couldn’t really explain the why and then someone says something, and everything makes sense? Pamela said we can’t thank God for all circumstances because God didn’t create all circumstances. Wow, do you see what I mean? We probably all know God doesn’t create all circumstances and yet hearing it somehow makes it more real. Some of the difficult circumstances we are in are because of things we did. God can only lead us if we follow Him. Sometimes, often times, we don’t want to do what God tells us to do and so we do our own thing. This inevitably leads us down the wrong path because if that path was the right path God wouldn’t have been standing in our way.
If we can’t thank God for all circumstances, how do we thank God in all circumstances. This is another place where Pamela said something and a lightbulb went on. It was a different way of looking at it. Pamela said when she is in the middle of a mess and can’t seem to find the good in the situation she will thank God for how He is going to work it all together for good. We don’t know what that will look like. When we are in the middle we can’t see the finish line. We can’t see the happy ending. When we are in the middle everything is just hard and is overwhelming. In this overwhelm can you stop and praise God for however He is going to us this for good? This takes a bit of faith and I think that’s why it is so powerful. You are praising God for something you haven’t seen yet. You are thinking about the good that will come out of this. How do you know good will come out of this difficult situation you are in? Romans 8:28 “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” The good is coming, it’s on the other side of this hard thing. Keep going forward, praise God for the good you can’t see and believe the good is coming.
Did that hit you like it hit me? Did it give you a better understanding of why we feel we can’t praise God FOR all circumstances? Did it help you see how you can praise God IN all circumstances? For me, I think I also needed to hear that I created some of my circumstances. Again, something I knew, but also really needed to hear. I think knowing I created some of my circumstances helps take away some of the anger. If we can see how our bad choices got us into a difficult situation it makes it harder to be angry at God. We tend to blame God for everything and for me, listening to that episode reminded me to pause and take a look at the situation. Am I in the situation because of my own doing? If so, what can I learn from this situation so I don’t make the same mistake again? How can I learn to follow the path God has set for me instead of making my own?
I said at the beginning of this episode I felt as if God said the answer to my question of my deep faith in times of trouble was because of praise. I have tried to praise God in all circumstances. My go to music for the past 10 years or so has been Christian music. And often times that is written from scripture passages. I remember the first time I heard a reading at church and it was the words to one of my favorite songs I was so excited. Because I wasn’t reading the scripture a lot back then, I had no idea. When I am happy, I listen to praise music, when I am sad, I listen to praise music. I also try to add praise to all my prayers, not a lot, but at least a sentence or two praising God. I also praise God out lout at my prayer group meetings with the 15 or so other people who are there. If you are struggling to trust in God, try adding more praise into your life. That praise can look like whatever feels best to you. You can start by listening to Christian music, or you can just tell God how great He is and how much you love Him. You can thank Him for all he is doing in your life, all He has done, and all He will do. I am sure if you add more praise into your day you will feel closer to the Lord and your trust in Him will grow. It might feel strange at first to just start praising God, especially if you do it out loud. Just think of it this way, it will be an adventure, one that is life changing!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask you to touch our hearts and show us where you want us to praise you more. We are sorry we don’t always follow your path and then we get ourselves into difficult situations. We are forever grateful you are able to use everything in our lives for our good and for your good. We are grateful no matter how many times we turn away you still use everything for our good and you accept us back with open arms each and every time. Lord you are so wonderful. You are the Lord God almighty, You are our just and faithful ruler, You are the Light of the world. We love you so much and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Are you struggling to return to the Lord?
Isaiah 30:15 “For thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel: In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.”
This verse might be a hard one for us to hear. Many of us are doers. Rest is hard for us. We are good at doing things. We say yes to more and more things. We can always find the time to do one more thing. However, when it comes to finding the time to rest, we struggle. When we are resting we feel lazy. We feel like should be doing more. Our mind thinks about all the other things we should be doing. Resting is hard.
Returning is hard too. Returning to anything is difficult. Think about the last time you were on a roll with something and then had to take a break for some reason. Was it hard to get back into it? It’s strange to me because it is hard returning to something when you’ve been away from awhile, even when it’s something you really enjoy doing. For instance, my family used to get together every month. Then we got away from it for one reason or another. Now we want to get back into it and yet it is really difficult, even though it is something we really enjoy doing, even though it is something we want to do. Once you break a habit reforming it is a struggle.
This verse is talking about returning to the Lord. If returning to normal every day stuff is hard, imagine how hard it is to return to the Lord. Returning to the Lord is something many people want to do and yet struggle with. There are all sorts of things that can get in the way of returning to the Lord. Sometimes we don’t feel worthy enough. We know all we have done and figure God won’t forgive us. Sometimes we feel so lost we don’t even know where to begin. How does one return to the Lord after being gone so long? We may be picturing God as the disciplinarian and we are worried he is waiting at the door to punish up for staying away so long. There could be any number of reasons why it is difficult to return once we leave and yet this verse tells us we will be saved in the returning and resting.
The verse also says, “in quietness and in truth shall be your strength.” So, not only are we saved when we rest, but we have strength in the quietness. How many of us avoid the quiet? I know I am constantly doing things to fill the quiet. If I am making dinner, I will put a tv show on, I will listen to music, or I will listen to an audiobook. If I am riding in the car I will listen to music, an audiobook, or say the rosary with an app. My boys said they even listen to music while they are reading a book. We do all we can to avoid the silence and yet the Lord says in the quietness is our strength and when we rest we will be saved. How can we do this more?
First I will address the resting and the quietness. If we want to rest more there are a couple things that may help. First, write in into you calendar. Plan when you are going to rest. Are you going to rest for a certain amount of time every day? Are you going to rest for a few hours on the weekend? What is your plan? If you don’t have a plan, it probably won’t happen. Second, give yourself permission to rest. Accept that rest is an important thing to do. Resting doesn’t make you lazy, it makes you smart. If we don’t rest we will burn out and be no good to anyone. Rest is essential, our bodies need it and they will get it one way or another. If we avoid resting and keep doing all the things we will get sick and be forced to rest. Has that ever happened to you before? Have you ever kept going, even when you knew you should be resting and then something happened that forced you to rest? It has definitely happened to me and I have learned my lesson, mostly. Accepting that rest is important and can be so helpful because then you aren’t feeling bad when you are resting. You aren’t trying to talk yourself out of it and you aren’t saying unkind things to yourself while you are trying to rest. You are able to be more in the moment without thinking about all the other things you should be doing.
Next lets talk about the idea of returning to the Lord. If you have been away from the Lord, returning to the Lord can feel scary, but it doesn’t have too. Many of us look at God as this judgmental God who sits on His throne in the sky waiting for us to screw up so He can punish us. This couldn’t be further from the truth. God is like the father in the parable of the prodigal son. In this parable the son told his father he didn’t want to wait until the father died to get half of his father’s estate. He asked his father to give him his inheritance now and then he left. The son squandered away all of the money and ended up feeding pigs in someone else’s barn. He was starving one day while he was feeding the pigs and was thinking about how well his father treats his servants. He decided to go back and beg his father for a job as a servant. In Luke 15:20-24 it says, “So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. Then the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly, bring out a robe—the best one—and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’ And they began to celebrate.”
This is what our heavenly Father does when we return to Him. He is not waiting at the door with a punishment. He is running out to meet you, right where you are at. He is hugging you and throwing a party for you. I know it is easy to feel like we won’t be welcome, like we have done too much wrong, or we have been away too long. However, if you don’t believe me with just the parable of the prodigal son, let me share with you Luke 15:7. Luke 15:7 says, “Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.” Did you get that? This is Jesus talking in Luke 15:7. He said there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance. God is not looking for us to be perfect. God is not looking for us to never stray. God is looking for us to repent and turn back to Him. And when we do all of heaven rejoices.
I know you are struggling to come back to the faith. That’s ok, do it anyway. I know you are struggling to come back to God. That’s ok, do it anyway. I know you have questions and concerns. That’s ok, do it anyway. I know you worry you won’t be good enough or you will just mess up again. That’s ok, do it anyway. I know you think He won’t forgive you, but you just heard two examples where Jesus himself tells us that’s not true. That is a lie the enemy is telling you to keep you away, and it's working. The enemy knows if he can keep you thinking you need to wait until you are perfect to come home then you won’t ever come home to God because we will never be perfect. We are flawed humans living in a broken world. God knows this and yet He loves us anyway. God did not wait until we were perfect and sinless to send His son to die for us. Jesus died on the cross for us while we were still sinners. What God wants from us is our desire to be in union with Him. He wants our desire to be faithful. If you ask God for these things He will make them happen. All He is waiting for is for your yes.
What if you took that leap of faith today? What if you just said yes Lord, I am yours to do with as you please? What if you just said yes Lord, if you want me, I am yours. What if you just had an honest conversation with the Lord? What if you said, “Lord, I know I have been away for a bit, ok maybe a long time and although I am ready to come home I am also scared. I am scared because I have been away for so long. I am scared because I don’t know how to come home. I am scared because I don’t know where to start. I am scared because I am afraid of what coming home will mean for my current lifestyle. I am afraid of all of it Lord and yet I can’t get this yearning to come out of my mind. Help me Lord. I say yes to you. I give you permission to show me the next right step. I ask for you to come into my life and change whatever needs to be changed. I ask you for the courage to make those changes. I love you Lord and I want to come home.” Do you think you can do that today?
I am not sure who this episode is for today. If you are listening to this podcast you may not need to come home, you may already be at home with the Lord. If that is you, maybe you were supposed to hear this so you could pass it on to someone you know that is wanting to come home and doesn’t know where to start? If you are listening to this episode because someone forwarded it to you, know that person loves you with their whole heart and is happy to support you in your journey home. All you need to do is take the first step and say Yes to God, He will do the rest!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you and we are so grateful you are so forgiving and loving. We are thankful you welcome us home with open arms every time we turn back to you. It makes me smile to think about you throwing a party to celebrate our return. You are such a gracious father. Lord, we ask you to touch the hearts and minds of all who hear this episode. We pray all those who are wanting to come home to you are able to do so. We pray they hear the words in this episode and realize they are welcome just as they are, they don’t have to change before coming home. We pray they realize you accept them for who they are and you meet them right where they are at. Lord, if they have questions, if they are confused, we ask you send the Holy Spirit to help them figure all that stuff out. Lord, we just pray this episode reaches those you intended it to reach. If that means we need to send it to someone we know that is struggling then give us the courage to do so. Lord you are so amazing. You are the one and only Ruler. You are the Lord God Almighty. None are like you. We are so grateful for you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I had not idea the podcast was going to go there today, but that is the beauty of letting the Holy Spirit lead. I know someone needed this message today, if it wasn’t you think about who you know that might need it. I look forward to spending time with you again on Monday. Remember, Jesus love you and so do I! Have a blessed weekend!
They Aim Cruel Words Like Deadly Arrows
Psalm 64:3-4 “They sharpen their tongues like swords and aim cruel words like deadly arrows. They shoot from ambush at the innocent; they shoot suddenly, without fear.”
I am currently watching a TV show about high school students. This verse certainly rings true for them. There is a new kid at the school and he gets bullied. It is so hard to watch kids bullying other kids. It's hard to watch anyone being bullied. I just want to tell the person who is bullying, “You don’t have to do this. You are better than this. This won’t actually make your life better.” And I want to tell the person being bullied, “You are not the things they are saying about you. You are not worthless. You are an awesome person. They are bullying you because they are hurt and don’t know what else to do.” I was picked on when I was younger. I was one of 11 children. We didn’t have the nicest clothes, we didn’t have the coolest new toys, I am sure I sometimes smelled because I didn’t shower or because I didn’t wear deodorant. I know I didn’t always brush my hair in middle school and sometimes I would wear the same clothes as I wore the day before because I woke up so late and didn’t have time to even get changed. I am sure my parents and teachers around me told me the same things I want to tell those being bullied, but it didn’t make a difference. In the moment, all you hear are the negative things people are saying. This verse actually perfectly describes bullies. They sharpen their tongues like swords and aim cruel words like deadly arrows. They know just what to say to cut you to the bone. Their words hurt so deeply you remember them for years to come.
It makes me so sad to think of how many people get bullied in school each day. Did you know 1 out of 5 kids report getting bullied. That’s just the number who report being bullied. I am sure the number is higher. That number is just taking kids into account. Unfortunately bullying doesn’t stop when we grow up. There are adults that bully kids, there are adults that bully other adults. Senior Citizens sometimes get bullied. Bullying can happen to anyone. There is no rhyme or reason to it. This verse applies to all of us. I think everyone has had cruel words like deadly arrows aimed in their direction. Maybe it was a kid in school, or your boss at work. It might have even been your children or your spouse. Maybe it was/is a family member or an in-law. Whoever it was their unkind words they still hurt. They may even hurt more if it was a loved one. Even if we are old enough to understand the person is being unkind to us because they are hurting inside, it still doesn’t really take away the sting of their words. Even if we try to ignore the things they say, we usually let them get into our head, at least briefly. So, what can we do when we have someone aiming their cruel words at us?
That is the million dollar question. If we can answer that question we could save people a lot of heartache and pain. To try and find an answer I went back to the Psalm 64 where I found the verse above. I though to myself, surly there has to be something positive in this psalm. Maybe the author of the verse knows what to do. I did find some relief in verses 7 and 8. Psalm 64:7-8 says, “But God will shoot them with his arrows; they will suddenly be struck down. He will turn their own tongues against them and bring them to ruin; all who see them will shake their heads in scorn.” I should have known. The answer is God. The answer is always God, why haven’t I learned that yet? God is our refuge. When we need help, we can turn to Him. It says God will shoot them with His arrows and they will be struck down. It says He will turn their own tongues against them and bring them to ruin. I read this, and I know God’s word is truth and yet I can think of instances when this was not true. Or I should say I haven’t seen this to be true. The thing is, God’s timing isn’t our timing. What is 50 years to us could be one day to God. So when it says they will be suddenly struck down, that doesn’t mean immediately in our time. I can think of times when the people who were in the wrong, those that were bulling or being unkind seemed to get away with it. To our eyes it seems as though nothing happened to them.
If you are in a situation like this, or if you have been in the past, I am sorry. I know how hard it is to get bullied, or to be treated unfairly or badly and the person responsible for it seemingly gets off without any consequences. To this I have two thoughts. First, we don’t know what their justice is, but we do know that God is a just God. Maybe we won’t see the consequences, but we can rest assured there will be some. Second, God’s timing is not our timing. Just because everything seems to be working out for them right now, doesn’t mean it always will. Also, things aren’t always what them seem. Just because someone looks like everything is going there way, doesn’t mean it actually is going their way. We only see what people want us to see. There is much of our lives that remain hidden, especially if we want it that way.
So, what can help in this situation? I think the way to strengthen our skin and not let things others say get under it is to remember who we are and whose you are. You are the son or daughter of the one true King. You are amazing. You are enough just as you are. You are made in the likeness and image of the Lord our God. You are a great mom. You are a great dad. You are a great daughter. You are a great son. Know who you are. If you don’t know who you are, spend some time figuring it out. God is your refuge and your savior. You belong to God. He will protect you. If you are confident in who you are then the negative things others say to you will have a harder time getting into your mind. Also, if you surround yourself with positive roll models. If you have great friends and family who build you up all the time then when you encounter a few bad apples, you can brush it off more easily because you know who you are and whose you are. You are in charge of protecting your mind and decided what you will let in and what you will block out.
Sometimes when we are getting bullied we can resent that person and we can start to feel hatred towards them. This is what the enemy wants. He wants you to be so angry that you fill your heart with hate instead of love. We might feel like we want something bad to happen to that person. If this is you, remember, it is not our place to judge. It is not our job to make sure they get justice for what they have done. We are only in charge of our actions. If we let their behaviors fill us with hate we might end up doing something we regret. If we let their behaviors fill us with hate then we are letting the enemy win. Let God take care of the judgement and we can just focus on protecting our minds and not letting what they say rattle around in our heads. Whatever our troubles are, we can turn to God and ask Him for help. We can ask Him to take away our unkind thoughts. We can ask Him to help us remember who we are. We can ask Him to help us remember we don’t have to be scared because He is our protector. I heard a sermon by Pastor Steven Furtick yesterday and he said, “If your enemies could do to you what you are afraid they are going to do, they would have done it already. God’s got your back and they can’t touch you.” We are all scared of something, we need to turn those fears over to the Lord and ask Him to take them from us. If you are being bullied right now, or if you have someone in your life who is not treating you the way you deserve to be treated hear this, you are awesome. You are worthy. You are enough just as you are. You are perfect in fact because you were made in the likeness and image of God. You are a prince or princess of the one true King. You are amazing!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, protect us from the sharp words of others. Protect us from the unkind way people treat us. Lord, we ask for your shelter through this storm. We ask you to guard our hearts and our minds so their unkind words have no where to land. There are so many people being bullied right now and we ask you to be with them, help them feel loved and accepted as they are. Protect them from others and protect them from themselves. Lord, we are losing far too many to suicide these days. Nearly 800,000 people die every year from suicide. That is one person every 40 seconds. Lord, please help us. Help us to help others too. Show us what we need to do to stop all the bullying so we can help people begin to heal. Lord, you are sovereign. Your ways are not our ways. Teach us your ways Lord. Help us to become more like you. You are amazing. Help us turn to you instead of turning to the world Lord. Help us to help others. We love you Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed day!
We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click on the link below. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Have a blessed day!
What About When I Can’t Pray?
Psalm 57:5-6 “Be exalted, O God, above the heavens; let your glory be over all the earth. They spread a net for my feet I was bowed down in distress. They dug a pit in my path—but they have fallen into it themselves.”
This verse starts off putting God in his rightful place. It starts off by acknowledging God is exalted above the heavens. Exalted means high ranking. God is in charge of all of Heaven and Earth. The next line asks God to let His Glory be over all the earth. David is asking the Lord to show us His glory. David wrote this psalm when he had fled from Saul into the cave. He said in the next line, “They have spread a net for my feet I was bowed down in distress.” Today’s verse comes after several verses where David is talking to God and asking Him for protection. He is asking God for mercy and for God to protect Him. I think this verse shows us what we should do when we are struggling and when we encounter something we can’t handle. David drops to his knees and bows down.
David knows this is not a situation he can handle on his own. He was hiding in a cave from the king. He didn’t do anything wrong, Saul was just jealous of him. How does one fix that situation? David knew this was something only God could fix. Do you have a situation like that right now? Are you in circumstances well above your head? Maybe you are not hiding in a cave from the king, but you are stuck in a situation in which you can’t see a way out. I have a friend that is in a seemingly impossible situation right now. I have also been in many situations like this. The type of circumstances that drive you to your knees. The type of situation where you don’t even know what to pray for because you can’t see any positive outcome. Did you know it is ok to not always know exactly what to pray for? You don’t have to know, God knows what you are struggling with. God knows the best way to solve your problem. He has it all figured out already.
You can do as David did and ask for God’s glory to be over all the earth. You can bow down in distress and just Be with the Lord. God knows there are times when we can’t pray or we don’t know what to say when we pray. God knows this and is ok with it. The best thing to do when we can’t pray is to praise God. I know this is probably when you want to praise God the least. I know it seems counter intuitive to praise God when it feels like all is falling apart. However, praising God always helps the situation. God loves our praises and He loves when we turn to Him. Whether you are praising God, or just sitting there being with Him, God is happy. He doesn’t need us to come to Him with the perfect plan or perfect prayers. He doesn’t actually need anything for us. He is happy just being with us.
In this Psalm, David didn’t know what to ask for? He didn’t know how the Lord was going to save him from Saul? However he did trust that God had a plan. He knew to praise God in his time of need. If you ever need inspiration on how to praise God, read the psalms. David was a master at praise and worship. He was also a master at turning to the Lord for help. David knew he couldn’t do anything without God on his side. He also knew when he sinned he could always repent and turn back to the Lord. Sometime we don’t turn back because we think what we did was too bad for God to forgive. David always turned back to the Lord and repented, no matter the severity of his sin, and David had some pretty severe ones.
The last line it this verse is great. It says, “They dug a pit in my path—but they have fallen into it themselves.” This is the awesome thing about being on God’s side, He wins every time! Things may look bleak at times, things may seem like there is no hope to be found. There will be times when you can’t even imagine life getting better. Things are so bad and you can’t see a way out. You are not alone in your situation. There are others that have gone through something similar to what you are going through and they have made it through to the other side. With God, we don’t always know the journey, but we know the ending. God will always find a way to redeem His children and also redeem the situations we find ourselves in. If you or a loved one is in trouble right now and you can’t see a way out I hope you hear me when I say, God knows about your situation and He is working it all out. You don’t have to know what to pray for, God’s got this! Just praise God, not for the situation but for being the incredible God that He is! Praise God and then sit back and watch in amazement how he takes an impossible situation and turns it into a beautiful life lesson. God’s love always wins out in the end. God is the victor every single time!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help all of those who are in impossible situations today. Helps them to keep their hope. Help them to know you are with them through this all and you will come out victorious in the end. Lord, give all those who are struggling the strength they need to keep waking up in the morning, the strength to keep hoping when all seems so hopeless. Lord, give them a super natural understanding of their situation and how you are working in it. Help them feel your love the entire time. Help give them the peace of Christ in their hearts. Lord, you are awesome and we are so grateful you take such wonderful care of us. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Tomorrow’s guest speaker is my good friend Nancy. Nancy was the leader of the prayer group when I first joined and has been a great mentor to me on my faith journey these last 4 years. She will be witnessing this week about a prayer she prayed for a very long time. A prayer that seemed to go unanswered for a very long time. I think we all have those prayers we feel God doesn’t hear. Nancy’s witness provides encouragement to all of us to keep praying those prayers because God is so faithful. I know you are going to love her witness. I can’t wait to share it with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
The Zip It Challenge
Proverbs 18:2 “Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions.”
The Proverbs is a great place to go if we want to get instructions on how to live a better life. It is full of really great advice on how to be a good person, how to be a good Christian. I have heard of people taking a month and studying one chapter of proverbs each day. There are exactly 31 chapters, so it works out nicely. A chapter in the Bible doesn’t usually take long to read. If you are looking for your next Bible study, or if you are wondering where to even begin in your Bible, consider reading through the Proverbs.
This verse in particular is a very good verse, especially in this day and age. Currently it seems as though everyone has an opinion and people share these opinions freely. Many are not interested in trying to understand what is actually going on they just want to shout their opinion from the roof tops. Did you know you don’t always have to say whatever comes into your mind? Did you know it is not your obligation to tell your opinion to everyone? Sometimes, many times, it is appropriate to think something and not say it out loud.
This is something I try to teach my children and actually my nephews too. There are far too many people these days who do not have a filter. Many of us have a filter and well we might think something unkind, we don’t say it out loud because we know it would only hurt others feelings. However, if we did’t have a filter we would say it out-loud, not necessarily meaning to be mean, and yet it hurts the person’s feelings anyway. If we all stopped to think about how what we were about to say was going to affect the person or people we were saying it too, we would have a lot less misunderstandings in the world. It doesn’t have to be a long time you sit and consider how it will make people feel. Just take a breath, before opening your mouth and ask yourself, “Will I be helping the situation if I say this?” You can also ask, “Am I adding value to the conversation by saying this?” Or, you can also ask, “Will I be hurting someone by giving this opinion?”
Sometimes we think we need to give our opinions whenever we have them, especially to our spouse and to our children. This isn’t always the case. If you child comes downstairs to go to school and they are wearing something that doesn’t match, or something you don’t like, you don’t have to give them your opinion. Did they ask for your opinion? If so, that’s great, feel free to give it. If they didn’t ask, hold your tongue. They like that outfit, or they wouldn’t have put it on. Your saying something probably won’t make them change, but it may make them self conscious that others may feel the same way. It may also cause them to doubt themselves. I know as parents, especially as moms, we want to save our children from any potential embarrassment. Yet, in doing this we often times wind up hurting their feelings, or getting them to question themselves. What if we didn’t say anything? What if we just built them up and let them wear what they wanted to school?
This isn’t just about school either. That was one example but you can substitute they clothes they are wearing for any other argument you might be having with your kids these days. I wonder what the world would be like if we all paused and considered the ramifications of saying whatever it is we want to say? I wonder what the world would be like if we all realized we didn’t have to say every thought that comes into our heard? There is a challenge I learned about in Big Life Mentoring. It is from a book called Zip It The Keep it shut 40 day challenge by Karen Ehman.
Here is the description of the book: We use our words everywhere: with family members, coworkers, the stranger in the store—even the words we text or post online. Our daily words can impact our relationships for better—or for worse. (Been there. Said that. Wish you could take it back. Can you relate?)
Karen Ehman’s 40-day devotional challenge Zip It—based on her New York Times best-seller Keep It Shut: What to Say, How to Say It, and When to Say Nothing at All—offers practical ways to use our words to build, not to break; to bless, not to badger; to encourage, not to embitter; to praise, not to pounce.”
I have not read this book, or her first book, although they both sound like something I should check out. Her book also has scripture verse fro each day of the challenge. It is more of a devotional to learn to hold our tongues. “Zip It covers eight major topics: taming our tempers, sarcasm, gossip, gracious speech, sweet and salty language, asking for forgiveness, whether to speak up or remain silent, and how God’s word can alter our words.”
The reason I mention this book and this challenge is because I know people who have made it a goal of their’s to not say any negative things for 30 days. I know others who have decided to not nag their loved ones for 30 days. They stop and think, before giving their opinion, will this matter in 5 years? The thing you are about to correct, will it matter in 5 years? Is it something that needs to be said? Do they need to hear your opinion, or can you zip it and let it go? What would your relationships be like with your loved ones if you zipped it more? How would your relationship with your spouse be different if you didn’t tell them every time you didn’t like something they did? How would your relationship with your children be if you didn’t tell them every time you disapproved of something they did? I’m not just talking about little children either. Many of you have adult children. How would your relationship change if you decided not to say every criticism that came into your heard? If you decided not to tell them how you think they should live their life? Honestly, take a moment and think about how things in that relationship might be different.
This verse had two parts two it. It says, “Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions.” We talked about airing our own opinions, I just want to take a minute to address the understanding piece of this verse. We will not always agree with everyone we may meet. We may not even agree with everyone in our family or those who live in our house. That is ok. We don’t have to all agree on everything. However, it is important to try to understand where the other person is coming from. This country is so divided right now and so many people don’t even want to try to understand the other side of what they believe. I have heard this quote, I am not sure who said it. The quote is, “Peace is not when everyone agrees. It is when we can respect our disagreements and still play in the sandbox together.” We don’t have to all be on the same page. However, can we calmly listen to the other person and try to understand where they are coming from? Can we calmly talk through our differences? Can we respect each other enough to at least try to understand what the other side is saying? So much strife comes from misunderstanding. We are not taking the time to fully understand what someone is saying and we get so angry at the mere idea of what they might be saying. However, when we take the time to fully understand it we realize they have a point. Maybe not one we can agree with or get behind, but at least we understand where they are coming from.
This verse tells us if we are not going to try to gain an understanding we are fools. It also says we should not take delight in airing our own opinions all the time. We don’t want to be fools, we want to be wise. I challenge you to think about your comments this week. Did that comment you just said need to be said? Did it make them feel better about themselves, or worse? Can you stop and think before you say something and ask yourself if it needs to be said? I know you will see positive changes in your life if you can learn to let the negative comments and criticisms go without voicing them out loud. Give it a try, what have you got to lose?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to control our tongue. Open our hearts and minds to a greater understanding of those things we disagree with. Help us to not reject things without first understanding them. Help us to think before opening our lips. Help us to use the filter you gave us to not just say whatever comes to our minds. Help us to see others through your eyes oh Lord. We love you Lord, you are truly remarkable and we are so grateful for you. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Are We Underestimating Praise?
2 Chronicles 20:21-22 "After consulting the people, Jehoshaphat appointed men to sing to the Lord and to praise him for the splendor of his holiness as they went out at the head of the army, saying: “Give thanks to the Lord, for his love endures forever.”As they began to sing and praise, the Lord set ambushes against the men of Ammon and Moab and Mount Seir who were invading Judah, and they were defeated.”
In this chapter of Chronicles, God’s people have armies coming to attack them from three different places. Things were not looking good. Then the Spirit of the Lord came upon Jahaziel son of Zechariah as he stood in the assembly. He told the king and all the people of Judah that they shouldn’t be afraid because they was not their fight, it was God’s fight. He told them to march down against the invading armies, but that they would not have to fight the battle. This is where the verse picks up. “After consulting the people, Jehoshaphat appointed men to sing to the Lord and to praise him for the splendor of his holiness as they went out at the head of the army, saying: “Give thanks to the Lord, for his love endures forever.”
Jehoshaphat and his army were headed into what seemed like a hopeless battle. There were three different armies waiting to destroy them and to take their land. You would think they would have the soldiers lead them this battle. Even if they trusted God, you would think just to be on the safe side you would have the soldiers go first. However, King Jehoshaphat appointed men to sing to the Lord and to praise Him for the splendor of his holiness as they went out to face the armies. “As they began to sing and praise, the Lord set ambushes against the men of Ammon and Moab and Mount Seir who were invading Judah, and they were defeated.”
Did you catch that last part? It doesn’t say once they started fighting the Lord gave them victory. It doesn’t say their enemy was defeated by their mighty hand. It says as they began to sing and praise, the Lord set ambushes against their enemy and they were defeated. They didn’t even have to fight a single person. They didn’t have to lift their hands at all in this fight, they just needed to lift up their voices. Do you have enemies that you need defeated? Are you praising God now while you are in the middle of it, or are you waiting until you get out of it? I have known that praise is important for some time know. I have even done other episodes on how important it is to praise through the storm, not just after it is over. However, I didn’t know about this story. I didn’t know about God destroying three armies with praise alone.
Sometimes we are trying to fight our enemies on our own. We know we need God and yet we ask Him for so much we feel we should try to do this one on our own. Yet, instead of leading with praise we lead with anger, frustration, sadness, jealousy and whatever other emotions we are feeling in the moment. Can you think of a time when you have charged into a situation with your emotions leading the way? How did that work out for you? For me, it never works out. When I go into a situation on my own, without inviting the Lord to come with me, it never works out as I intended it to. However, when I do think to praise the Lord while I am in the middle of a difficult situation, it always turns out well.
There are times when we think God has abandoned us. We are praying and it does not seem like He is with us. Maybe we are the ones who have abandoned God. We may be praying, but are we praying with a hopeful heart? Are we trusting God will come through for us when we pray? Are we praising God for all He does for us? God is working in our lives every single day, are we praising Him for that? I talk a lot about gratitude because I think it is so important to go through life being grateful for what we have. I think when we are grateful with what we have God blesses us with more. Being grateful is also a great way to shift our mood if we are feeling sad, or having a bad day. Sometimes all it takes is a perspective switch and we can turn our whole day around.
Praise is different from gratitude. Sometimes we can be praising God for what we have and what He has done for us and yet praise is so much more than that. We can also praise God fro who He is. Sometimes we are in a situation where we may not want to or be able to praise God for the situation. For instance, in this verse God’s people were not praising God for the situation they were in. They were not grateful they had three armies coming after them. They were praising God for “the splendor of His Holiness.” They were praising God for who He is. He is the the Fountain of Life. He is the great “I AM.” He is the Just One and He is the King of kings. He is the Lord of Lords and He is the Light of the world. He is the Lord our God. He is the Way, the Truth and the Life.
How often are you praising God for simply being God? How often are you spending time in prayer thanking and praising God for being everything you need Him to be? Maybe the next time we are in a hard situation, instead of charging into the situation with our guns blazing, maybe we can lead with our praise. Instead of leading with our anger, frustration, sadness, we can lead with our praise. God is always there for us. Let’s be there for Him. Let’s give God the praise that He so rightly deserves. The thought just came to me that not everyone knows how to praise God. There is not specific way. I love to listen to praise and worship music, which is really any Christian music. I am also part of a prayer group and we praise outloud to the Lord thanking Him for all He has done and all he Is. I say phrases such as those listed above, things such as, you are the Light of the World, You are the Word made flesh, You are the King of the Kings. You can also think back to all you have and thank God for that one by one. You can thank God for everyone He has brought into your life. Praise is time spent with the Lord when you are either thanking Him for something or you are talking about all the reasons He is awesome!! I challenge you to find some time in your day today and praise the Lord. You can do it silently within your own heart, or you can shout if from the roof tops, and everything in between. Whatever you feel comfortable with. The more you praise the more comfortable it will feel to you. Also, the more you praise the more you will see God working in your life.
Dear Heavenly Father I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to praise you more. Put praise for you on our hearts so we long to do it. Give us a thirst for praising you Lord. It is so amazing how you defeated Judah’s enemy when they started to praise you. Lord, we have many enemies and we need you to defeat them. Help us to praise you first instead of trying to fix it all our selves. We love you Lord, you are so powerful. You give Light to our lamps. You straighten our crooked path. You are always by our side and we am so grateful. I ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed weekend.
A Divided Heart
Psalm 86:11 “Teach me your way, O Lord, that I may walk in your truth; give me an undivided heart to revere your name.”
God has been teaching us His way since the beginning. He has always guided and us showed us how we should live. I don’t thing the problem is God not teaching us, I think the problem is our divided heart. The end of this verse says give me an undivided heart to revere your name. To revere someone’s name means to honor and admire it. Are we doing that with God’s name? I don’t think we are. I hear people taking the Lord’s name in vain all throughout the day. It’s not always in a bad way, and yet it is not used to revere God. Think back over the last 24 hours. Have you used God’s name in the last 24 hours? How did you use it? Were you honoring and admiring God when you used it? What can we do to get back to revering God’s name?
God has done a great job of teaching us His ways. At first He walked and talked with Adam and Eve and I am sure they had some great conversations. However, after the fall that type of relationship was no longer permitted. Even though we were no longer living in that same environment God found ways over the years to teach us His ways. He used prophets and other faithful people to teach us all we needed to know. Then God sent His only son to walk among us and to teach us. He also sent His son so our relationship could be healed and there was no long anything standing in between us and the real presence of God. Then all these lessons and stories were written down so those of us who came after would know how God expected us to live.
If we want to know how to walk it God’s truth, we can find out. God has taught us many times over. So, what’s the problem then? The problem is our divided heart. The problem is, we live in a world that is so contrary to everything God teaches us. Our hearts are divided because we love this world. We love our friends, we love our family, we love our TVs and our cars and all of our stuff. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It is good to love our families and friends. It may even be ok to love your stuff. What definitely isn’t ok is to love that stuff more than God. You might be thinking you’re good, you are sure you don’t love your stuff, your family or your friends more than God. But, what if we looked at how your are spending your time? Are you spending more time with your family, friends & TV more than you are spending with God? What if we looked at your finances? Are you spending lots of money on material things and not much money on the church, charity, or the poor?
God is so good. I took a break from writing this episode so I could get my run in because I could feel my motivation to do the run dwindling. I don’t know about you but I need to get my workouts done in the morning or they just don’t happen. While I was on the run I was listening to some personal development podcast. However, after a while I switched to praise music. As soon as I did God put on a song that goes perfectly with the podcast. I love when He does that! Does this ever happen to you? You are wondering about something, thinking about something, or just really need encouragement about something and the perfect song for that moment comes on the radio? This was actually the second day in a row for this to happen to me. God is so good.
The song that I think makes the point I am trying to make really well is called House Divided by Josh Wilson. There lyrics are as follows:
Could someone tell me why,
old habits just won't die,
It's like I've got two hearts inside one chest.
And one is beating for the life I'm headed toward
The other wants to drag me to my death
Bridge:
I am a house divided, but I've decided I'm gonna fight it,
I do what I don't want to, Oh God I need you,
to make me new.
Chorus:
Everyday (x3)
Verse 2:
I've never understood,
the folks that think we're good,
whenever we are left to our desires,
Oh, the way i see it is,
Alone, we are adrift,
in an ocean in a boat we set on fire.
I especially like when the part that says, “ I am a house divided, but I've decided I'm gonna fight it,
I do what I don't want to, Oh God I need you, to make me new.” I feel as though I am saying this very thing to God every day! I tell Him I am sorry for putting this, that, or the other thing in front of Him yet again. I ask Him to help me because I, like St. Paul said in Romans 7:15 “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” This is what Josh is saying in this song. He knows what he should do and yet what he knows and what he does are two different things. I also like when he said, “It's like I've got two hearts inside one chest. And one is beating for the life I'm headed toward the other wants to drag me to my death.”
This is actually what is happening. There are two spirits competing for your soul. The Holy Spirit is living inside of you and is trying to lead you to the life you are headed towards. He is leading to you the amazing life God has planned for you. The one that is so much better than you can even imagine. Then there is the devil. He is fighting for your death. He would like nothing more than to drag your soul down to hell for eternal suffering. I know that doesn’t sound good and it may even sound scary. I am not trying to scare you, I am trying to tell you what is going on. Do you ever wonder why everything is so hard, why it feels like there is this force working agains you? The reason is because there is a force working against you. The enemy is strong and he is willing to do whatever it takes to win your soul.
God gave us free will and the enemy uses that against us. He whispers lies into our ears all day long. He tells us we are not good enough, he tells us we will never measure up. He tells us we won’t ever loose the weight anyway, so why bother trying? He tells us it’s ok to sit on the couch and watch tv all day, we don’t have anything else to do anyway. He tells us its ok if we aren’t living up to our potential, there are lots of people that aren’t and we are doing better than a lot of other people. He fills our heads with these lies so often we start to believe them. This is why our hearts feel so divided. Just as this songs says, we need to recognize this is happening and we need to consciously decide to fight it. We need to call upon God, He is the only one who can truly help us fight it. I will leave you with the words of today’s verse, “Teach me your way, O Lord, that I may walk in your truth; give me an undivided heart to revere your name.”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to walk in your truth, please help us. Teach us your ways, soften our hearts and incline our ears so we can hear you. Lord, give us an undivided heart. If our heart is already divided, please help us put it back together again! Lord, help us to put you first above all things. If there is anything we are putting above you, please put it on our hearts and then give us the strength to change it. We love you Lord, you are so powerful. You are the Almighty one and you are the Prince of Peace. We adore thee, we bow before thee, holy is your name. Lord, we are so grateful for all you do and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Can I ask you a favor? If you are enjoying this podcast, can you share it with at least one friend today? Next to the title, or somewhere on the page there is usually three dots and if you click on that it gives you lots of options, one is usually to share the episode. Also, if you could subscribe, rate and review the podcast, that would help ensure that more people can find the podcast. Your reviews really do matter, it helps the platform know you like the show and think others should listen too. Thank you so much for your support! It means the world to me. I appreciate you showing up to listen. I look forward to hanging out with you tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed day!
We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click on the link below. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Have a blessed day!
There is a right way and a wrong way.
Proverbs 16:25 “Sometimes there is a way that seems to be right, but in the end it is the way to death.”
Sometimes there is a way that seems right. I think this hit me when I heard Father Mike talking about it because I can see us all doing it. He said this verse is talking about sin. We all know what is right and wrong. We all know the various things God wants us to do and the things He doesn’t want us to do. And yet, we still don’t always do what’s right. Living in the world we live in and the time we live in, it can be hard to do what is right. It can be hard to know what is right these days. Actually if you read the Bible, or you read stories of the Saints, I am not sure it was ever easy to live how God wants us to live. I don’t know if God intended for it to be easy.
What would be easy is if we had lived as He intended. God intended His people to be set apart from everyone one else. Come to think of it, I am not sure it would have been easy even then. Look at the Israelites once they left Egypt. They saw miracle after miracle. And I am not talking about small miracles, if there is such a thing. I am talking about parting the red sea and being inundated with quail because they were complaining and they were tired of the Manna that God was miraculously providing them each day. The Israelites were living apart from everyone else. They were living in the wilderness all together and set apart from all the foreigners. However, they still struggled to follow God’s ways. They complained a lot and turned away from God a lot.
I guess no matter where you live, what time you live in, or who you live with it can be hard to do the right thing all the time. What made this verse really stand out was how it was saying sometimes there is a way that seems to be right, but in the end its the way to death. What that makes me wonder is about all the things that I do, even when I know I shouldn’t, because I think God doesn’t really mind. It is not usually big things, although sometimes it might be. Have you ever done something you know God doesn’t really want you to do it, but you talk yourself into it anyway because of some logic that makes sense in your own head? It made me smile when I wrote that because I instantly thought of my boys. They are master negotiators. I think most kids are, but since mine are the ones I deal with on a daily basis I am going to say they are extra good at it.
We will come up with a well thought out rule, that makes complete sense and we know has their best interest at heart. We know the reason behind the rule, we know why it is a good rule. We are completely confident this is a good rule. We introduce it to the kids and 10 minutes later they have us questioning the rule, our parenting, the world. It’s so crazy how good kids are at coming up with excuses and reasons why what we know to be good for them, isn’t actually good for them. It made me smile because I can picture God shaking His head just like I do with the boys. At least God isn’t left questioning his decisions. He knows He is right and is just shaking His head at our attempt to negotiate or prove wrong the Almighty One.
If you have kids, or have ever worked with kids you might be thinking what we do is nothing like what they do. However, think about the last time you did something you knew you weren’t supposed to do. It might have been something small or it might have been something big. Think about all the justification you did to be ok with doing the thing. For instance, in the Catholic Church, you are not supposed to eat an hour before you receive the host. We believe the Eucharist is the Body of Christ and so we are supposed to have an empty stomach before going to Communion. However, sometimes I don’t do that. Sometimes I tell myself God won’t mind because I really need my cup of tea so I can stay awake in Mass, or I needed to eat this banana so I didn’t feel hungry at Mass. I can come up with a million reasons why God doesn’t actually mind if I eat before receiving the Eucharist.
I do similar justifying when I have something else to do instead of going to Mass. God won’t mind, He knows how important soccer is, or He knows how important lunch with my friends is. God knows I am traveling so He doesn’t mind. I think it is absolutely true that God is understanding. I don’t think it is the end of the world if you do some of these things occasionally. And yet, I don’t actually know if that’s true. I think if we do something long enough it is no longer an exception to the rule, it is a new habit. Have you made a new habit out of doing things you know God wouldn’t want you to do? You were able to justify it so often to yourself, now it is the norm, it is a habit.
I think this can be a very slippery slope. Yes, God is full of grace and He will forgive any sins for which we repent. However, does that mean we count on God’s grace and intentionally do something we know is wrong because we really want to do it and because it isn’t “that” wrong. Also, there is another way to look at each thing you are doing. Maybe you are telling yourself, as I do often, God doesn’t care if I eat this cookie. Maybe that is true. It is not a sin to eat that cookie. However, what is behind our desire to eat that cookie. Are we just eating one or are we being gluttonous and eating the whole pack? Maybe God doesn’t mind if you drinking a coffee or tea before you walk into church. However, does He mind the fact you know you are doing something wrong and yet doing it anyway? It might not be the action itself, but the motivation behind the action. I am sure God does understand how important it is that you go out with your friends for lunch. However, He may also wonder why you didn’t look up other mass times that you could go to that didn’t interfere with your lunch plans. There are usually so many mass times at a Catholic Church. You can even go Saturday or Sunday. Yes, it takes more time and more planning but you can make it work. God might not be upset if you miss service while on vacation, and yet think of how happy He would be if you did go out of your way to find a way to attend a service while on vacation.
The ending of this verse is what really has my attention, “But in the end its the way to death.” That doesn’t sound pleasant. What if we are justifying all the times we don’t want to live like God wants us to live and then we end up ruining our chances to spend eternity with our Heavenly Father? I am certainly not saying that if you miss mass while on vacation or eat and drink before going to communion then you are not going to heaven. All I am thinking is, if we break the little rules God gives us so easily, what is to stop us from breaking the bigger rules. I can see how if we think about his too much we might get anxious. I don’t think this is what the verse intends for us. I don’t want to you to finish listening to this episode and be anxious about your actions leading to death. I do, however, thing this verse is a great reminder to look at our actions and see if we are living according to how God is asking us to live? Are there things we know God doesn’t want us to do and yet we are doing them anyway? Can we stop doing these things? If no, can we pray for the strength and the proper situation so we can stop them.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to follow your ways, please help us. Lord, if there are any places in our lives where we are doing things you don’t approve of, please show us. Please give us the strength and/or the plan we need to stop doing those things. Lord, help us stop justifying our behaviors with excuses and help us to do what is right. We love you Lord, you are truly amazing!!You are my Aide and my rescue from the enemy. You are our Everlasting Father. You are the Mighty God, the Prince of Peace. We love you and we adore you. We are so very grateful for all you do. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Tomorrow’s guest speaker will be Amber J. Amber and I are in Big Life mentoring together. Amber was going through some pretty difficult things in life. She really didn’t like her job, it was making her miserable and her marriage was really struggling because they couldn’t have children. Amber did not really consider herself a believer, however, she was desperate and decided to say her first prayer in a very long time. After seeing God answer prayer after prayer, she could no longer chalk it up to coincidence and she began her faith journey to grow closer to God. I know you are going to really enjoy her witness. I can’t wait to share that with you tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed day!
You Shall Be Rescued From It
Jeremiah 30:7 “Alas! That day is so great there is none like it; it is a time of distress for Jacob; yet he shall be rescued from it.”
What a great promise from the Lord! Our God is so amazing. He acknowledges that it was a time of great distress for Jacob and yet He says Jacob will be rescued from it. How many of you really need to hear that right now? How many of you could really use this promise from God right now in your lives? I know several people who are in suffering. I know they could really use this promise right now. They could use the promise that they will be rescued from the situation they are in. They need to know the pain, hurt and anger they feel won’t last forever.
It is important to remember God didn’t just make these promises to the people living at the time this was written. He is making this promise to all of us. You can take the promises you find in scripture and apply them to your own life. God is talking to you just as much as He is talking to the people in the Bible, just as much as He is talking to me, just as much as He is talking to any of us. Yes, you are in a terrible situation right now, and yet you will be rescued from it.
Maybe you have recently lost someone close to you. If this has happened to you I imagine you are feeling a whole range of emotions. I also imagine your emotions can switch at the drop of a hat. One minute you are sad and you really miss them and the next minute you are angry they are gone. Sometimes you can be feeling two competing emotions at the same time. For instance you can be really sad you don’t get to see them anymore and yet be happy they get to be with Jesus and celebrate the fact they are whole again and no longer suffering. Whatever you are feeling, let yourself feel it. Sometimes we can make the situation worse because we tell ourselves we “should” be feeling this way or we “shouldn’t” be feeling that way. You have a right to feel how ever you feel. Allow yourself that grace. This pain you are feeling won’t last forever. God will rescue you from it.
Maybe you are having family issues. Maybe you’re worried about your children. You aren’t sure what their future looks like. You aren’t sure if they are safe? You know they are making bad choices and yet you can’t save them from themselves. This is really hard. Trust me, I have been through this. I have had lots of family issues over the years. I had a marriage that was falling apart. I had kids that were making bad choices, getting in trouble, and it seemed I couldn’t help them. I was doing all I could and nothing was really changing. I continued to pray, this was the one thing that did make a difference. I also didn’t give up hope that things would get better. I knew God was working and yet I didn’t know how he was working and I certainly didn’t know when it would be over, when things would finally get better. If you are in this situation right now, don’t give up. Keep praying, keep hoping. I know hope can hurt sometimes. Hope hurts because it feels as though we are leaving ourselves open to get hurt if it doesn’t happen. Try to still hope anyway. God never leaves us hanging. He will come through, it just won’t be in our time it will be in His. I struggled for over 15 years. I definitely had times when I thought things weren’t ever going to get better. I had lots of times when I wondered why it had to take this long. I never got those answers, but I can finally say, after all those years, that I am doing good. Our family is doing good. It still feels strange to say because we struggled for so long. However, I am so very grateful I didn’t give up praying and hoping and I smile every time someone asks how thing are now. I used to say, “I’m surviving.” That was the best I could say, now, everything is really good. Praise God!!
I went to an event on Friday sponsored by American Needs Fatima. It was where a replica of the Fatima statue comes and visits a house. The custodian brings the statue to the house and then takes time to explain all about Fatima and what happened, what Mary asked us to do, what Mary promised us, and answers any questions we had. During His talk the custodian of the statue mentioned St. Monica and I felt as though I was supposed to remind all of you about St. Monica. St. Monica was a very devout Catholic and her son, Augustine, wanted nothing to do with her faith. She did not approve of his lifestyle and Augustine moved to Rome one night without telling his mom where he was going. She tried to follow him and he had already moved on to Milan by the time she got to Rome. She finally found him and she prayed unceasingly for his conversion. Finally he did get baptized in the the faith, along with his best friend and his son, whom he had with a woman he loved but never married. St. Monica prayed for her son for a very long time. Augustine was 32 when he finally became a Catholic. She prayed and cried for at least 17 years before she saw a change. God will rescue you, don’t give up hope!
God hears your prayers. Sometimes it seems like God is now working in our lives. It seems like He does not hear our prayers. If you have been praying for something for a while now and it hasn’t happened yet, I am sorry. If you have had unanswered prayers for quite some time now I know how hard it can be and how easy it is to get frustrated. I know how painful it is to watch others get their prayers answered and yet yours seem to go unanswered. I know all of this is hard. I know it can get harder and harder to believe God hears you. I assure you, He does. He has not left you alone, He has not abandoned you. He is working diligently on rescuing you. Remember God’s timing isn’t our time. What is a year to us could be blink of an eye to God. Don’t stop praying, don’t stop hoping, don’t give up. God will rescue you just as He rescued Jacob and countless other people before Him.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this podcast today. Lord, we want to believe you hear all of our prayers, please help us. Lord, some people listening have been waiting on some answers to some pretty big prayers, please help them continue to wait without giving up hope and without giving in to despair. Fill them with a renewed send of hope and encouragement that you are working on the situation and help them truly believe you will answer their prayers. Lord you are amazing! You are the resurrection and the life, you are the Way, the Truth, and the Life. You are our savior Lord and we are so very grateful. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I wanted to share some exciting news with all of you. I have writing a book and I will be publishing it on Amazon in the upcoming month or so. The name of the book is called Total Trust in God’s Safe Embrace. It is a book about how to build up your trust in God and how to develop a more intimate relationship with Him. I hope you will check it out once it is released. I will let you know when it is available on Amazon. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you and so do I. Have a blessed day!
Which Path To Choose?
Isaiah 30:21 “And when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left, your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it.”
Do you ever wonder why you ask the Lord what you should do and you don’t hear a clear answer? I was talking with my spiritual advisor one time and I told her I was going to pray about the two choices I had to choose from and see which one God wanted me to do. She told me not to be surprised if God wasn’t super specific or if He didn’t tell me which one to pick. She said He doesn’t always tell us what to do. Sometimes He lets us pick. Then we talked about how their might not be just one path God wants you to walk down. We talked about how we don’t have to worry that there is one right answer and all the rest are wrong.
I didn’t know there was scripture to back this up, it was more of a feeling. I truly felt if God wanted you to do one specific thing he would let you know. He would place the desire to pick that one thing directly in your head. You would know what God wants you to do. Then there are the times when you really don’t know which to pick. You feel you could be happy doing either job, or you could be happy living in either place. It is in these times, I believe the decision about which to do is left up to us because God is ok with both of them. Yesterday I was listening to another elevation church podcast and I head Pastor Steven Furtick read this verse and so I wanted to share it will all of you because I know many of you have been in a situation where you were praying for God to guide you one way or the other.
The verse above says “And when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left. God will be with you no matter which you choose. We know God is always with us, however, that doesn’t mean He always supports our choices. When we are about to do something that goes against God or something God knows will lead us down a wrong path, He will let us know. Think back to all the times you made a decision that ended badly. Did you have a feeling it might? Did you feel as if God was urging you not to do it? That’s the thing, we always have a choice. Even when God knows the path won’t end well, he will warn us against it, but He will not prevent us from doing it. God honors our free will.
I think sometimes we want God to tell us which way to go so we don’t have to make the decision. If we let God choose then we can blame Him when things go wrong, when they don’t turn out like we expected they would. Another reason we would like God to make the decisions is because there are so many decisions we have to make all throughout the day and it can be overwhelming. Then there are also so many choices for each of those decisions. Have you ever heard the term analysis paralysis? Analysis paralysis is an inability to make a decision due to over-thinking a problem. An individual or a group can have too much data. The result is endless wrangling over the upsides and downsides of each option, and an inability to pick one. This used to happen to me every time the kids would bring home a sheet from their teacher asking for donations for something. The list would have 50 things we could donate. I would look at them and they all seemed easy enough. However, there were so many too choose from I would usually end up frustrated and not get any. I loved the teachers who would just send home a note telling me what to bring, no choice involved.
With all the technology we have at our fingertips these days the choices and amount of information can be overwhelming. For instance if you are throwing a party, instead of going to the local party store and seeing what they have in stock you can google how to throw a party, or you can look up a different themes, decorations, table pieces and more. Pinterest is also a big thing. This is a website and an app where people post photos of things they have done, all the decoration they’ve made, all the parties they’ve had. If you go on Pinterest you will probably get lost in your search and spend hours there, just looking at all they have to offer and yet you will probably make very little decisions. Because of this, I am thankful to have found this verse. I am thankful to know that sometimes God is ok with us picking any path.
I want to do what God wants me to do. I want to follow His will. This is why I get frustrated sometimes when I don’t know what He wants me to do. However, what I take from this verse is that He hasn’t just set up one path for us. He hasn’t just planned our every move, he allows us to decide what we want to do. The verse goes on to say, “Your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it.” No matter which path you decide to go down, God will be there to guide you. You just need to listen to the voice you hear in your ears. God will tell you when it is time to pivot to a new job, a new house, or whatever the next step is. I watched a video about this very topic by Father Mike Schmidt. He said we tend to look for God to reassure us with every step we take. Our intentions are good, we want to know we are doing the right thing. We want to please God and to do His will. Father Mike said when God wants us to move, or to change something, he will tell us. If God is not saying something, then you are good to keep doing what you are doing. Why is it we need that constant assurance from God? We want Him to cheer on our every step. We want Him to keep telling us we are headed in the right direction.
One thing Pastor Furtick said that I think is so powerful is, “The important thing is not which road you take to get there, the important thing is how you walk on that path.” Sometimes we might have to choose between two things and we don’t really feel God is leading us one way or another. That might be because He is ok with either path. They both could be good and they both could be bad. Your success isn’t dependent on the path you picked, it is dependent on how you walk that path. Are you staying close to God? Are you close enough to hear that voice the verse is talking about? Are you checking in with God regularly to see if He is still ok with the path you are on or does He wants you to make a turn down a different road? How are you walking on your path? The verse says there will be a voice behind you saying, “This is the way, walk in it.” Are you listening to that voice? Are you following the directions it is giving you? If the Lord is not giving you directions, just continue going forward in the direction you are going and when it is time to make a change God will let you know.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to hear your voice. Help us to listen to your voice. Help us to make difficult decisions and help us to know you will be with us no matter what decision we make. Lord, we ask you to lead us down the path you want us to go and we ask you help us to walk uprightly down that path. Give us wisdom and discernment Lord, so when we need to make a decision we can make it swiftly and without too much anxiety. Lord, we ask you help us sift through all the information and all the choices and just focus in on you Lord. We love you Lord. You are so great! You are the almighty one. You are the Light of the World. We adore you and we are so grateful for all you do for us. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus! I look forward to spending time with you on Monday! Have a blessed weekend.
A Fresh Start
2 Corinthians 5:16-18 “From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh; even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.”
When I read this verse, I really liked it. I love how it says we regard no one according to the flesh. The verse acknowledges, “ok, we know, we did this with Jesus,” but we learned our lesson and we don’t do that any longer. I really like reading the message translation because it puts these verses in terms we would use today and sometimes I think it helps me understand the passage more, or gives me a different understanding of the verse. It helps me to think of it in a way I might not have thought of on my own. It’s kind of like these podcasts. It takes the Word of God and then it shows how it applies to us in our everyday life. Sometimes it is hard, with some of the language in the Bible, to understand what exactly they mean. If I have a verse that I don’t quite understand, I will usually go to the message translation and see what that says. That is usually enough to help me understand it. I want to read today’s verse from the message translation.
“Because of this decision we don’t evaluate people by what they have or how they look. We looked at the Messiah that way once and got it all wrong, as you know. We certainly don’t look at him that way anymore. Now we look inside, and what we see is that anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start, is created new. The old life is gone; a new life emerges! Look at it! All this comes from the God who settled the relationship between us and him, and then called us to settle our relationships with each other. God put the world square with himself through the Messiah, giving the world a fresh start by offering forgiveness of sins. God has given us the task of telling everyone what he is doing. We’re Christ’s representatives. God uses us to persuade men and women to drop their differences and enter into God’s work of making things right between them. We’re speaking for Christ himself now: Become friends with God; he’s already a friend with you.”
First, I want to say I wish this first sentence were true. I truly wish people didn’t judge others by what they have or how they look. How great would it be to live in a world where we don’t have to worry about what the have or how we look? How great would it be to know others weren’t judging us? Also, how great would it be to be able to not judge others or compare yourself to others. I have heard the quote, “Comparison is the thief of joy.” I know this to be true. I know so many people who are feeling great, and then they hop on social media and see how well everyone else is doing and they start to feel bad about themselves. They are judging others based on the small snapshot of their life they post on social media. When they compare their life to the lives of others and they decide they can’t measure up. They decide their life isn’t nearly as good as everyone else.
As much as I know this first sentence isn’t true for the majority of people in this world, what if we made it true for us? What if we stopped judging people by what they have and how they look? What if we started to be the change we want to see in the world? What if we prayed and asked God to work on us from the inside out? What if we asked God to help us stop judging others? When we read this verse we see this is what God is calling us to. He is calling us to no longer judge people according to the flesh. It goes on to say, “Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. When Jesus was alive he was judged by this world’s standards. He was mocked for his claim to be a king because He didn’t look like a king. However, He is not longer judged in this way. We now look at Jesus for who He truly is.
The verse goes on to say, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come.” I love the way the message translations says, “anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start, is created new. The old life is gone; a new life emerges!” How many of us have felt that at some time in our lives? How many of us have felt we just needed a fresh start? This is possible through Christ. We don’t have to be the same people we always were. We don’t have to do the same things we have always done. We can start again. We can recreate ourselves. We might think this is a one time thing. We found Jesus and now we get to start fresh. I don’t think this is true. I think we can choose at any point to start new, to say goodbye to our old life, our old ways and say hello to the new life that is made possible through Christ. What things in your life need to go so you can have a closer life in Christ? What things from your past are you carrying around when God wants you to let them go and let your new life emerge? Is it greed, anger, past hurts, jealousy, judgement? Whatever it is, you can let it go now. God doesn’t want you to keep holding on to it.
Next the verse says, “All this comes from the God who settled the relationship between us and him, and then called us to settle our relationships with each other. God put the world square with himself through the Messiah, giving the world a fresh start by offering forgiveness of sins.” Adam and Eve corrupted the bond we had with God. Humanity had to live with the fact for a very long time and its consequences. However, God fixed this when He sent Jesus to die on a cross for our sins. God made it so we could be close to Him again, so the veil between us could be dropped. So why aren’t we closer to Him? According to this verse God gave us a fresh start by offering forgiveness of sins. This is how we get that fresh start I was talking about earlier. When we bring our sins to God, He forgives them and we are made clean again. The problem is we aren’t always bringing our sins to God. There may be many reasons for this, we may be scared He won’t forgive them, we may be embarrassed or have shame around those sins. Shame is a huge weapon the enemy uses against us. If we feel ashamed of something we probably aren’t going to want to talk about it, even to a priest, in come case, especially to a priest. The enemy knows this keeps us stuck in our old life. The enemy knows if you won’t confess it, even just to God, then that sin still holds power over you. If you feel as though you could really use a fresh start right now, confess your sins and repent. God wants you to have a fresh new life. He wants to restore His relationship with you.
One of the last things this verse says is, “God has given us the task of telling everyone what he is doing. We’re Christ’s representatives. God uses us to persuade men and women to drop their differences and enter into God’s work of making things right between them.” We are told this so often. We are Christ’s representatives. What we do matters. People are watching us and judging Christ by what we do. We are a reflection of Jesus. What if we were more cognizant of this fact? What if we examined our own behaviors and asked ourselves, “Am I doing a good job reflecting Christ to the world?” The verse also says God uses us to persuade men and women to drop their difference and enter into God’s work of making things right between them. Are we doing this? Are our words and actions helping to bring others together or drive them apart? Do we get sucked into the gossip and join in instead of trying to stop the gossip? Do we get swept us in talking about all our differences instead of finding ways we are similar? Are we passing along the message of reconciliation or are we condemning those that have sinned or are sinning?
I think one area that is hard for a lot of people is when they see their children doing things they know God does not condone. In this instance I think it is important to remember a fresh start is always available. Although we don’t need to condone these behaviors, I also don’t think pointing them out over and over again is helpful. We want to bring people together and not drive them away. If we could look at people through a Godly lens instead of worldly one I am sure we would see the world differently. God doesn’t love everything we do all the time, and yet He does love us all the time. Even when we are acting in ways God doesn’t like, He still showers us with love. We could learn a lot if we echoed this type of love. The only way to do this is to pray and ask God to teach us how.
I love the very last line of the message translations. It says, “We’re speaking for Christ himself now: Become friends with God; he’s already a friend with you.” How great is that? How awesome is it to know God is friends with us? Are we friends with Him? Think of your relationship with God. Is it like a friendship? Is it give and take? Do you listen as much as you talk? Is your relationship with God one in which you could sit and talk for hours with Him? Or, is it one where you feel He is the ever judgmental Father and He is just looking for ways to punish you? This is not what God is all about. Does He believe in justice, absolutely and also, He believes in Mercy. God’s mercy is much bigger than His judgement. God wants to be your friend, will you let Him in? Will you accept his forgiveness of sins and get a fresh start to your life? Will you try to stop judging others for what they look like and what they have. Let’s join together to be Christ’s representative and share the Good News with all those who will listen.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to be your friend, show us how. Put on our hearts anything getting in the way of this and then give us the strength and wisdom to change it. Lord, help us to no longer regard others according to the flesh. Please help us to accept your forgiveness of sins and start fresh again. Help us to be your representatives to bring people together instead of encouraging this divisiveness. We love you Lord, you are so amazing! You are the Messiah, You are the fountain of life, you are the Holy One of Israel. We are so grateful for all you do and we ask all of this in Jesus’ holy name and according to your will, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click on the link below. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Have a blessed day!
Share God’s Light With Others
2 Corinthians 4:4-6 & 15 “The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ. All this is for your benefit, so that the grace that is reaching more and more people may cause thanksgiving to overflow to the glory of God.”
The first line in this verse is one of those ones I wanted to skip over because I didn’t understand it. Do you ever do that? You read something and you don’t quite understand what it is saying, but you move on because you figure it’s not that important. I am so grateful I am doing this podcast and I am grateful to you for listening to it, truly grateful. One of the reasons I am grateful to be doing this podcast is because it is forcing me to examine the scripture a lot more closely. I am stopping to take a closer look at verses I don’t understand instead of just passing it by. Honestly, it is a lot easier than I thought to find out the meaning of scriptures we don’t understand. All I do is put the words, “meaning of scripture 2 Corinthians 4:4” for instance in the search bar and usually get an explanation. Today I didn’t even need an explanation, I just needed to read the verse in one of the other translations of the Bible. Reading the same passage in various translations is also a great way to gain a greater understanding. The message translation and the New Living Translation tend to put the Bible verse in terms more commonly used today. If I don’t understand a verse I usually start by reading it in the Message translation of the Bible and it usually helps. The website I use for bible verses most often is www.biblegateway.com On this website you can look verses up in any of the many translations pretty easily. There is also a way to list the verse in all the english translations so you can compare them. I really like it.
Now, back to the verse. When I read this verse I read, “The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” What I heard in my head was that God has blinded the minds of the unbelievers and so I didn’t understand why God would do that. I always struggle understanding the lines in the bible which say, “God’s words hardened their hearts.” So I thought this was a similar statement and I was going to skip over it. However, luckily I committed to really understanding the verses and being able to explain them to you. So, I looked up the meaning of this verse and realized I missed a few key words in this first line. It doesn’t say “God has blinded the minds of unbelievers.” It says, “The god of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers.” Do you know who the God of this world is? Satan. Remember when Pilate asked Jesus if He was a King and Jesus said, “I am a king but my kingdom is not of this world.” The verse above is saying Satan has blinded the minds of unbelievers. This makes so much more sense. Of course Satan is blinding the minds of those who don’t believe. If they could see the light of the gospel, truly see it, there is no way they would remain unbelievers.
The verse is talking about the light of the Gospel being the glory of Jesus, who is the image of God. It talks about how we are not preaching about ourselves but we are preaching about Jesus and how we are servants for Jesus’ sake. We are not preaching our message we are messengers for Jesus and we are passing along His message. For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ. God filled us up with the light of the knowledge of God’s glory and it is our job to share that light with others. Week after week in prayer group God is asking us to share His light. He is asking us to take His love and pass it on to others. He is asking us to take His forgiveness and to pass it on to others. God gives us so much and He is not giving us everything so we can keep it for ourselves. He wants us to spread His love and His light to everyone we meet.
The next line says, “All this is for your benefit, so that the grace that is reaching more and more people may cause thanksgiving to overflow to the glory of God.” I love the word grace. According to Merriam-Webster dictionary online, Grace is unmerited divine assistance given to humans for their regeneration or sanctification. Grace is unmerited divine assistance. God gives us assistance even though we don’t deserve it, even though we haven’t done anything extraordinary. He gives us grace even if we don’t ask for it. The verse says His grace is reaching more and more people so that may cause thanksgiving to overflow to the glory of God. I know I for one am so grateful for the grace God is showering upon us. I think between the light of knowledge God is filling us up with and the grace He is giving us, it is hard not to share His light with others. It is hard not to be grateful and to give Glory to God. This verse is a great reminder to us that we need to be sharing His light with others. We should not be proclaiming our story, we should be proclaiming the story of Jesus and talking about God’s Glory. We are messengers passing along the stories of Jesus and how amazing His is. When we share the light of knowledge we can hopefully bring non believers into that light and bring them out of the darkness that Satan has cast over them. The Glory of God is brighter than any darkness from the devil.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you and we thank you for the light of knowledge you have filled us with. We ask you to help us share that light with all we meet. We are so grateful for you glory and your grace. Help us spread your glory to others Lord. You are so powerful. You are our aide and rescue us from the enemy. You draw us out of deep waters. We are so grateful and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to sharing a witness with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Start With Love
Psalm 63:1 “O God, you are my God, I seek you, my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.”
When I read this verse I thought it did a great job explaining the yearning we have for God. We all need God in our lives. We are desperate to have him in our lives. This verse shows this in a way I don’t think I could. It also helps me realize how much I need God. Have you ever read something and then realized that was exactly how you felt, and you didn’t really know it before you read it? I knew I loved God and I knew I longed for God. However, I couldn’t put it into words until I read this verse. My soul thirsts for Him. My flesh faints for Him as in a dry and weary land where there is not water. There is no water if God is not in my life. My life is a dry and weary land when I don’t call upon God.
Carrie Underwood has a song called, “What I Never Knew I Always Wanted.” I have not heard this song before and yet I found it today while looking up something. This song was not written about Jesus. I believe it was written about her child judging from the other words. However, the chorus speaks to the way many of us feel about Jesus. The chorus says:
I finally found what I never knew I always wanted
I couldn't see; I was blind 'til my eyes were opened
I didn't know there was a hole
Something missing in my soul
'Til you filled it up with your love
I think so many people are walking around this world right now and they don’t know God is what they have always wanted. They know they have a hole, they know something is missing in their soul and yet they don’t know what it is. I like the line, I couldn’t see; I was blind ’til my eyes were opened. How can we help them open their eyes? The next line in this chorus might be giving us the answer to that very question. I didn’t know there was a hole, something missing in my soul, ‘till you filled it up with your love. What if we worked on filling people up with love? What if we showed people so much love they realized that is what they have been missing in their lives?
We can’t fill them up with our love though. Our love is broken and judgmental. Our love is not a perfect love, it is flawed and it can hurt others, even when we don’t want to. However, if we filled them up with God’s Love, the love of Jesus, then they would feel an unconditional love that would fill the hole in their soul. I know you are already asking yourself, how do I do that? How do I love with Jesus’ love and not my own love? I know you are asking this because I am asking this too. We are all called to be a reflection of Jesus. We are called to love like He loved. How did Jesus love? We can’t be expected to love like Jesus if we don’t know how He loved. The best way to know this is to look back at scripture.
Jesus Christ set a perfect example of kindness and love. Throughout His earthly ministry, Jesus showed His love for others by blessing and serving the poor, the sick, and the distressed. Jesus did not run away from the leapers as most people did at the time. He touched them and He healed them. He did not turn away anyone who needed help. How can we show Jesus’ love to others like this? How can we bless and serve the poor, the sick, and the distressed? Some people listening to this can go out and volunteer at a soup kitchen, or a food pantry. Maybe you would rather volunteer at a hospital or somewhere you can help out with people who are sick. Maybe you would like to be a hospice volunteer and sit with those that are dying and have no one to be with them? However, there are others that are listening and you are thinking your days of helping the poor or the sick are over because you can’t get out of the house to volunteer anywhere. I assure you, your days of helping are not over, they have just changed. Now instead of going and doing the volunteer work by hand, you can pray for those in need and you can pray for people to answer God’s call to go and help. St. Terese of Lisieux is the patron saint of missions even though she was never healthy enough to go on one. She didn’t let her health stop her from praying for everyone who could go on missions.
Jesus also showed his love for others by not making people feel bad for what they did or who they were. God didn’t condemn the tax collectors, or the Roman soldiers. He didn’t condemn the woman who was caught in adultery or the woman at the well who had been married several times and was living with a man she was not married to. What brought people to Christianity in the very beginning was the Love Jesus had for everyone. People were finding a love they had not known before when they found Jesus. They were used to rules and judgement. They were used to following God’s that required so much of them. They found this new religion fascinating. A religion where God just wanted to love you and to be loved. He did not require much on your part. People could come as they were. They were not expected to be perfect because Jesus set the bar when he said in Mark 2:17, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.”
The apostles were not going out and only talking to the Jewish people who knew God and were already following the laws. They were talking to everyone who would listen and they were preaching about God’s love. Who doesn’t want to be loved? Who doesn't want to be accepted? I think we have lost this idea of talking about God’s love somewhere along the way. Somewhere along the way we started talking more about the legalistic side of Christianity, especially Catholicism, than we do about the love Jesus had for everyone. Yes, there is a right and a wrong way to live. Yes, God tells us what that right and wrong way is in His Scripture. However, we will never get a chance to show people the benefit of living God’s way, if we don’t start with loving them right where they are at first. People want to be accepted for who they are and they want to be met where they are at. Jesus didn’t tell the tax collectors He would have dinner with them when they changed their life style. He loved them while they were sinners and told them He had so much more for them.
If people feel love and accepted they will be open to hearing what you have to say. We want people to know all the things Jesus says. We want people to live according to God’s ways and we want this because we care about their souls. This is a great thing. I am not saying we are wrong to care about the way people are living their lives. I am saying if we want to save their soul, we need to start with loving them just as they are. The way to get people to want to save their own souls, which is the only way anything will change, is by being a reflection of God’s love. Love them as Jesus does. Love them in all their imperfections and all their messiness of life. Do not continually tell them they need to change who they are, shower them with so much love, tell them about Jesus and how much He loves them, just as they are, and pray for them. Your prayers will do so much more than your nagging will. If people feel judged, they will not ask questions, they will not be open to hearing anything we have to say. I believe what God needs most from us is not us judging others and trying to talk them into changing their behaviors. What He needs most from us is our loving others like Jesus did. He needs us to love them so much they ask themselves, “How can I love as much as that person does? How can I love so unconditionally? How can I be so accepting of people? How can I love so freely?” When they ask those questions, then they will be open to hearing about the Gospel and about a God who loves them completely. Can we do that? Can we love others like Jesus did? Can we lead with love first?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord we long for you just as the verse says. Our souls thirst for you as one would thirst for water in a dry land. Lord, we love you and we want to bring others into a personal relationship with you. Help us do this. Please help us to understand how to love others like you did. Show us where in our lives we are falling short of this Lord. Give us the strength to hold our tongue and to not nag our loved ones to do what we want them to do. We are coming from a loving place Lord, we want to save their souls. Yet we know you are the only one to do that Lord. Help us to learn to say less to the person and pray more to you. Help us to truly turn them over to your loving care Lord. You care more about their souls than we ever could. Help us Lord, we are trying. We are so grateful for all you do. You give light to our lamps and you brighten the darkness about us. You are the word of God and you are the word of live. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with you will and in Jesus holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
God’s Spirit Dwells in You
1 Corinthians 3:16 “ Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?
This is a question I think often when I am talking to people. Whenever I talk to someone who doubts their abilities or their capabilities, I want to ask them this question. I want to ask most people this question as I think a lot of us don’t know this. I have heard people talk a lot about our body’s being a temple when they talk bout how we take care of our body. I have heard people mention “our body is a temple” when they are wanting you to do their workout program, or their nutrition program. I have also heard people talk about how our body is a temple when they are talking about sexual sin or trying to convince you not to use your body in a negative way.
I do think it is important to think of your body as a temple, not just any temple, but God’s temple. Knowing I am God’s temple is quite a responsibility. Currently I am not acting as if I know my body is a temple. Right now I am acting as if my body is a waste station and I am throwing all the junk I can find into it. I seem to be struggling with self control when it comes to eating and exercising these days. This is somewhat new to me as I have done really good over the past several years to gain lots of self control when it comes to eating and exercising. I know I don’t need to base my eating and my working out on my feelings. I know if I get into a good routine, I can workout even when I don’t want to. I know I don’t have to eat the ice cream just because I want to.
Even though I know these things, I am still struggling. Have you ever had this happen to you? You know what you need to do, and you still can’t seem to do it? I think this happens to all of us. Right now for me, I think it is the enemy making my desires stronger than my will power. I believe God is calling me to so much more in life and the enemy doesn’t want me to hear this call. He doesn’t want me to live up to my purpose so he is distracting me with social media and other things on the computer. He is tempting me with all sorts of food that is not all that healthy and he is loving every single time I give in to his distractions. He has me saying things like, “I just can’t resist, or I can’t overcome my desires to not work out.” The devil is a liar.
I can resist. It is not easy, but it is possible. We have the power of the Holy Spirit living inside of us. I don’t think we realize how much power we have living inside of us. Romans 8:11 is a very powerful scripture to write down and read often. It is a great scripture to remind yourself of every time you feel like you can’t do something. Romans 8:11 says, “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.” The Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead. Remember when Jesus died on the cross for our sins and then three days later rose again? The Holy Spirit raised Jesus from the dead. That same Holy Spirit is now living in you and me, that’s remarkable to me.
I forget this often. I often rely on my own will power, my own mind, thoughts, talents, abilities, and so on. I know God is always there to help me, but I forget the Holy Spirit lives inside of me. I forget how powerful the Holy Spirit is. Well, actually, I don’t forget how powerful he is, but I do forget that power is living inside of me. When I pray for people I pray the Lord sends the Holy Spirit down to be in the situation I am praying for. I forget the Holy Spirit doesn’t need to come down to be in the situation because He lives here on earth in each one of us. He is right here inside of us to give us the power we need. All we need to do is call upon that power.
Are we doing that? Are we remembering to call upon the power of the Holy Spirit? I know I’m not. I have been complaining a lot about my lack of will power. I have not been running like I want to and I have been gaining weight because I am not really being careful about what I eat. I get frustrated and I wonder why I was so good before and now I am not. I was talking with a friend the other day and she helped me figure it out. When I first moved to MA, home life was pretty out of control. I was struggling big time with behaviors from my kids, with just having moved to a new community where I didn’t know anyone, trying to work when I kept getting called by the schools, struggling with my marriage. Everything seemed pretty out of control. I think I was so good about exercising and watching what I ate because it was the one thing I felt I had control over. I couldn’t control a lot in my life at that time, but I could control what I ate and when I worked out.
I think I was also better at remembering to call on the Holy Spirit because I needed his power daily, hourly, sometimes minute by minute. People who knew me when I was going through the worst of it would comment how strong I was. I was quick to tell them, it’s not me, it’s God. He is the one holding me up right now. The Holy Spirit was my go to because it was obvious I was out of my depths. The things that were going on in my life were so far out of my control. I am grateful I had God to lean on and I am beyond grateful He gave us the Holy Spirit. They say a mother’s love is so strong you can do anything you need to do to protect your kids. I don’t disagree a mother’s love is strong and also I don’t think it is her love alone. I think it is our desperate need to protect our children that gives us the courage to call out to the Holy Spirit. The strength comes from Him.
I am grateful things have calmed down now. I am grateful God answered my years of prayers. I am grateful he provided our family with a miraculous restoration. I love my life and I am so grateful to God for loving me enough to answer my prayers. I also want to make sure I am not taking this answered prayers for granted. I think my perceived lack of will power right now is because I am forgetting to call upon the Holy Spirit. I am thinking I need to do it all on my own, and I don’t. I am trying to will myself into doing the things I want and I am forgetting to reach out and ask for help. I have reached out to friends and asked for accountability partners. I have reached out and asked people to call and check in with me, ask me if I have done it. I have asked God to help me, but I am not sure I have invited the Holy Spirit into this struggle. I have been keeping the struggle separate from God. Telling myself things like, “God doesn’t care if I eat this cookie.” God may not care if I eat that cookie, however, he does care if I feel bad about eating that cookie. He does care if I am mindlessly giving into temptations. He does care about all the little things and He does want to be invited into all the parts of our lives, especially the ones we are struggling with.
I am grateful I read this scripture verse today. I am grateful God showed me this small yet powerful reminder this morning. Today I am going to invite the Holy Spirit into my struggle. Today I am going to write this verse on a sticky note and place it up somewhere I will see it often. Today I invite you to do the same. Invite the Holy Spirit into whatever you are struggling with the most. Actually invite the Holy Spirit into all aspects of your life, the good and the bad. Who couldn’t use more power in their life? Wouldn’t you like the good to be even better and the bad to get better? The Holy Spirit has incredible power to make things better in your life. I am living proof of that. Our family went from an angry and somewhat violent family to a loving and calm family. Things are not perfect and I am not sure they will ever be as we live in a broken world. However, they are so good and I am so grateful. Whatever you are struggling with, please believe me when I say the Holy Spirit has the power to change it. Remember Romans 8:11, The power of the Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you. What could be more powerful?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Holy Spirit, we invite you into our lives and give you permission to intercede as you wish. We give you free rein as we know your ways are higher than our ways. We are sorry we keep relying on our own power and we will try to remember to call upon your power. We are so grateful for all you do for us. Lord, we are so grateful you sent the Holy Spirit to come live within and to guide us. Please help us remember to call upon the Holy Spirit more in our lives. Help us to remember we don’t have to do anything on our own, He is always with us. He is just waiting for us to ask. Lord, help us to remember our bodies are a temple and the Holy spirit is living inside that temple. Help us to treat our bodies like a temple. Lord you are so amazing. You are my joy, you are my life, you are Emmanuel, God with us. We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you on Monday. Have a blessed weekend!
Is Healing Possible?
James 4:2-4 “You want something and do not have it; so you commit murder. And you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures. Adulterers! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.”
This verse came up in my daily devotional “Jesus Calling” today. Actually it was from August 20th. The whole devotional for this day was on healing. I love to read about healing. I am so fascinated by healings. I am so curious why some are healed and some aren’t. I believe God heals people on the daily. I believe He miraculously cures people daily as well. I have heard so many recounts of people who have witnessed God’s miraculous healings. Actually, we just heard an example of one of these healings yesterday. If you have not listened to this weeks Witness Wednesday, you can find it anywhere you listen to podcasts and also on YouTube. I will read you the devotional today as I think it has a lot of great info on healing and I know so many people right now who need healing either for themselves and/or a loved one.
I am a God who heals. I heal broken bodies, broken minds, broken hearts, broken lives, and broken relationships. My very presence has immense healing powers. You cannot live close to me without experiencing some degree of healing. However, it is also true you have not because you ask not. You receive the healing that flows naturally from my presence, whether you seek it or not. But there is more—much more—available to those who ask. The first step in receiving healing is to live ever so close to me. The benefits of this practice are too numerous to list. As you grow more and more intimate with me, I reveal my will to you more directly. When the time is right I prompt you to ask for the healing of some brokenness in you or in another person. The healing may be instantaneous, or it may be a process. That is up to me. Your part is to trust me fully and to thank me for the restoration that has begun. I rarely heal all the brokenness in a person's life. Even my servant Paul was told, "my grace is sufficient for you," when he sought healing for the thorn in his flesh. Nonetheless much healing is available to those whose lives are intimately interwoven with mine. Ask and you will receive.
I loved in this devotional when God said we receive the healing that flows naturally from His presence, whether we ask for it or not. I love that He is healing us even when we don’t ask. I love that we just need to be close to Him and we experience some degree of healing. What jumped out to me the most in this devotional was when He said, “You have not because you ask not.” God said he has so much more healing for us and yet we aren’t receiving it because we aren’t asking for it. The question that came to mind after reading that was, “why aren’t we asking for it?” I think people might not be asking for a healing because they don’t believe they are worthy of one, or they don’t believe a healing is possible. I can understand both of these reasonings and yet, they are getting in the way of a healing.
I can see how one might not feel worthy of a healing, especially if they have lived a life they are not proud of. Sometimes we get headed down a wrong path, we somehow get all turned around and we aren’t living the way God wants us to live. I don’t think anyone sets out to live a life of being unkind and mean to people. I think life happens, people experience things, and react to them the best way they know how and eventually they get tired of things going wrong and they become hard and unforgiving. I could see how this person might not feel worthy of a healing. However, God loves them and is willing to give them another chance, all they need to do is be brave enough to ask for it. Then there are other people who live their lives according to God but also don’t feel worthy of a healing because they feel others deserve it more. Maybe they feel other are more deserving because they are younger, they have a family, they did more for the community. Whatever it is they are thinking, it is no taking into account how big our God is. God is not limited in the number of healings He can do. We don’t have to hold back from asking for a healing because others are more deserving. God can heal others and He can heal us too. We just need to ask.
I can also see how we might hold back in asking for a healing because our illness is too severe. Maybe the doctors have told you there is no cure for the disease you have and so you don’t ask God for a healing because you know the disease you have in incurable. The doctors are giving you all the information they have and yet just because your illness is incurable with modern medicine, doesn’t mean God can’t cure it. Remember, our God is a God of the Impossible. He is a Way Maker. He cured leprosy long before modern medicine did. He cured blindness and He has even brought people back from the dead. There is nothing our God can’t do. He just wants us to ask. He will heal us to a certain point even without asking. However, we have free will and so if we want extraordinary healing, we need to ask Him. He wants to know we agree to the healing, that it is actually something we want.
I also like how in the devotional it said the first step to healing is to live closer to God. I liked how it said as we get closer and closer to Him he reveals His will more fully to us and then at some point He prompts us to ask for a healing. If we are looking to see more healing in our lives, we first need to start living closer to the Lord. Make growing closer to Him a priority. The verse above also talks about how we need to live closer to the Lord also. It says if we make friends with the world then we will be an enemy of God. If we want to be a friend of God we must not cling to the things of this world. We must try to grow closer and closer to God. Instead of spending time with things of this world, we must try to replace the things of this world with the things God wants us to do. Spend time with Him instead of spending time with the TV, or the video games.
He also said something I think many of us wish weren’t true. He said, “the healing might be instantaneous and it might be a process. That is up to me.” I think we are all wishing for the healing to be instantaneous. I know that is what I pray for. I know I wish it were up to me. However, when I start to think that way I revert back to Isaiah 55:8-9 ““For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” God has a plan, he doesn’t just flip a coin to see if you will be healed instantaneous or if it will be a process. He has a plan and His plan is great than our plan. I think sometimes we think God didn’t answer our prayers if we are healed with modern medicine instead of a more obvious miraculous cure. If our cancer or our loved ones cancer doesn’t just miraculously go away one day, we don’t think God is answering our prayers. As the devotional says, sometimes he heals instantaneously and sometimes its a process. Both are God’s healings. He is present in both ways. One is not better than the other, they are just different.
God says in the devotional our jobs are to trust Him fully and to thank me for the restoration that has begun. I have a friend who just found out her scans showed that some of the lymph nodes are shrinking. Her doctor told her the chemo is working. This is a great example of God’s healing being a process. She needed to try different drugs, she needed to hang in their in trust Him fully and now she can thank Him for the restoration that has begun. What is on my heart deeply today is to tell all of you to not get discouraged if the process is not what you wanted. Try not to get discouraged if the healing you are praying for is taking longer than you like. Try to keep trusting in God completely that the healing you have asked for is coming. Ask and you will receive, that is what God keeps telling us. Also, if you are waiting for a healing for yourself or a loved one and you haven’t asked God for it yet, do that today. God said in the verse above, “You do not have because you do not ask.” If that is you, take a moment today and ask the Lord for the healing you want. Don’t just hope for it, ask for it. Then do all you can to grow closer to the Lord. He is there waiting for you with open arms. He is ready to welcome you in and to heal you or your loved one. I leave you with these words from our Heavenly Father, “But there is more—much more—available to those who ask.”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, you are truly amazing. We are so grateful for the healings that flow naturally from your presence. Lord, we are also so very grateful that you offer so much more to those who ask for it. We are asking Lord, please heal us and our loved ones. Please help us to know you are healing us and our loved ones, especially if it is process. If it is going to be a process, please give us the strength and perseverance to not give up hope, to not stop trusting you. Give us the strength we need to trust you all the way till we receive the healing. Lord, sometimes things get worse before they get better, help us believe when it looks like it is getting worse. Help us keep the trust and faith when it doesn’t look hopeful. Help us to keep the trust and faith when the doctors are telling us there is no way. Help remind us you are a way maker. We love you Lord, you are truly remarkable and we are so grateful for all you do. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click on the link below. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Have a blessed day!
Do you talk about God to others?
Luke 12:11-12 “When you are brought before synagogues, rulers and authorities, do not worry about how you will defend yourselves or what you will say, for the Holy Spirit will teach you at that time what you should say.”
This may seem like a small verse in the grand scheme of things, but this is a very powerful verse. This is a verse we should all remember. This verse is so important because it reminds us the Holy Spirit it with us and they Holy spirit will help us when we don’t know what to say. I think we all use the excuse, we don’t know what to say, a lot when it comes to our task of evangelization. We cower from talking about God to others because we don’t know what to say and we don’t feel comfortable. We don’t talk about God to strangers because we live in a culture where we are afraid to offend someone by talking about God and yet it seems like it is perfectly acceptable to offend people about every other thing on the planet.
We can’t mention God because people might be offended and yet people can use swear words anywhere without worrying about offending someone. It is a little bit crazy what kinds of things people will say these days, and yet we still worry about talking about God because we don’t want to offend someone or we don’t want to push our belief on others. Although everyone else in the world doesn’t seem to have a problem pushing their beliefs on others. If we are in a situation where we want to talk to someone about God but we really don’t know what to say, we can call on the Holy Spirit to help us out. It is as simple as saying, “Come Holy Spirit.”
I never used to talk about my faith. I would talk about God if someone asked, but I didn’t really know a lot about God, so they would be short conversations. I always felt unsure of what to say and I didn’t really know how to answer questions about my faith. I feel people always had questions for me because I am Catholic and so they wanted to know what we believe and why we believe those things. I remember one of the first times meeting my new neighbors when we first got married and moved to Spokane, Washington, they asked what I believed as a Catholic. What were our core beliefs. To be honest, I didn’t know how to answer this question. I was just out of college, I loved my faith, but I wasn’t super strong in it. I was stumped and I didn’t know at the time the Holy Spirit would give me the answers. I did remember at the time that Catholics say a prayer at mass each week that lists our core beliefs. When I am in mass and we get to that prayer, actually to any of the prayers, I have them memorized. We say the same prayers each week, so I know them by heart. However, I realized, If I am not at church and I want to recite them, I can’t always remember them.
This experience with my neighbors, although it felt uncomfortable, was a great thing to have happened. In that moment, when they asked what I believed and I couldn’t spell it out for them, I knew I never wanted to be in that position again. I not only wanted to know what I believe, but I wanted to know why I believe those things. I embarked on my journey to learn about God and my faith, and I haven’t looked back since. Fast forward to 20 years later, August of 2020 I went on a road trip with a friend of mine. We are both Christian and love talking about God. She is not Catholic and so she had a lot of questions about the Catholic faith. I am happy to report that I was able to answer most, if not all of her questions. She said she had never met a Catholic that could answer all her questions or explain what we believe like I did. I say this not to brag about how much I have learned, but to show you that it is possible to learn about why you believe what you believe. And also to demonstrate how I learned to listen to the Holy Spirit. I let Him guide the conversation and I listen for the answers He wants me to give. The Holy Spirit is really smart and always gives me the correct answer.
One of the biggest things I feel has helped me to feel more confident in talking about God has been reading the Bible. I did a read the Bible in 90 days bible study with my friend and her husband when I was in England. It was great because although it was a lot of reading, when we would meet, once a week I believe, there would be a video explaining the parts we read. I loved this. If you have never done a bible study before, I highly recommend it. There are people that study the Bible so much more than I do and they are willing to explain all the little things we might miss when we read it. I truly love learning what is behind the verses, or how the word they originally used in Greek or Hebrew meant something different from that same word in English. I love when they explain the context of what it would have meant to those hearing the words spoken back in the day. Bible Studies make the Bible and the people in it come to life. It is amazing and wonderful.
This verse is talking about when the apostles would get in trouble for talking about Jesus. The verse is saying to go out and proudly proclaim the good news of Jesus. If you happen to be arrested you don’t have to worry about what to say to defend yourself because the Holy Spirit will teach you what to say. I don’t know about you, but I am not sure I would be able to rely on this Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit was new to them. He was fresh upon the scene and some of their friends were getting stoned to death for talking about Jesus. I was just writing, I am sure they were scared, but actually I am not sure they were. They Holy Spirit is remarkable and in Acts 4:31 it says, “After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly.” They spoke the word of God boldly. So, maybe they weren’t afraid. Maybe they already knew from past experience that the Holy Spirit would give them the words. I pray for this Holy Boldness. Ever since I was at a retreat and I heard this scripture and I heard the speaker mention Holy Boldness, I knew I wanted it.
I am guessing it was those prayers that lead me to all the Bible studies I have been to, and the home rosary groups, and the Catholic Women’s groups, and my prayer group. The Holy Spirit lead me to all the different ways I could grow in my faith and showed me what it was like to speak up for the faith. The Holy Spirit has put incredible people in my life. I have had so many wonderful examples of what it is like to live my life as an example of my faith. I am grateful for each and ever person I have met along the way who has helped build my faith up to where it is today. Today, I am not afraid to talk about God and I have surrounded myself with friends that love to talk about God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit with me. It is so wonderful. If you currently shy away from talking about God, or your faith, can I suggest you pray for holy boldness. Would you like to pray for a holy boldness to speak about God and to speak His word from scriptures? Could you step out in faith knowing the Holy Spirit is there to guide the conversations? Let’s pray for this right now.
Dear heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to the episode right now. Lord, today we are asking you fill us with a holy boldness, like you did for the apostles. Lord, we need the Holy Spirit to show us what to say in this crazy, mixed up world. Christians and our values seemed to be looked down upon more and more these days. We need that holy boldness to stand up for them and to defend you and our values. We love you Lord and we are so very grateful you sent your Advocate to be with us always. Lord, give us the faith to enter into the hard conversations knowing the Holy Spirit will be there to teach us at that time what to say. We are so grateful for all you do for us. Lord, you are the King of Kings and the Lord or Lords. We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Tomorrow’s guest is my friend Mary. I met Mary at one our assignments in the military. Mary is going to bring us a witness about how God saved her life in a miraculous way. You will not want to miss this witness. I look forward to sharing it with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Pour Out Your Hearts To Him
Psalm 62:8 “Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your heart before him; God is a refuge for us.”
I was talking with someone the other day and they are really struggling. They are struggling because their child is making bad choices and there isn’t anything they can do to stop it. I asked how she was doing and she said she trusts 100% in the Lord and that He is working in all of this and at the same time, she is crying out to the Lord asking why her child has to go through this. I wanted to share this with all of you because I want you to know you are not alone. I also want you to know it is ok to have two competing feelings. You can be happy about something and also concerned at how it will all work out. You can be happy you just found out you were pregnant, and also feel worried that you will have another mouth to feed. You can be sad your loved one passed away and grateful they aren’t in pain anymore.
When it comes to trusting the Lord, I think we have expectations that are unrealistic. We tend to think if we trust the Lord, we won’t ever have to struggle again. All of our needs will be met and life will be great. I can tell you from experience, this isn’t the case. God never said we wouldn’t struggle. Moses trusted God and yet the Israelites struggled. Moses trusted God would do as He said and yet, I am sure there were times when he was sweating it out waiting for God to answer the prayers. God will take care of our needs and He will provide. However, it is not always in our timing and that can cause some stress.
My parents are great at trusting the Lord. If they didn’t have something they needed they asked the Lord and He provided it. However, that doesn’t mean they never worried about anything. I am one of 11 children, so as you can imagine, there was never enough money to go around. Sometimes, we had more bills than we had money. Sometimes God would answer prayers by providing extra money is some miraculous way, like when my grandparents would send unexpected money. Other times God would provide food from neighbors so we didn’t have to spend money on food and could put that money towards the bills. However, sometimes God would provide by softening the heart of the person my mom called at the electric or heating company and they would let us pay a smaller amount this month or they would agree to wait one more month before shutting the electric or heat off. God always came through, just not always in the ways we would have chosen.
You can trust the Lord and also be mad, sad, or upset with Him at the same time. You can trust that things will work out in the end, or that He will use all this bad for good and also be upset you had to go through the bad. My friend can trust that things will work out for her son and also be really sad her son has to go through all of this. She can know God is looking out for Him and still be frustrated that God didn’t protect Him from all of this. I think the not knowing why is the hardest part. If we could skip ahead to the end of the story and know the why of what we are going through, I bet things would be easier to endure. If we knew how God was going to use the hard things for His good, if we understood the why, it might make it easier to make it though the hard times. For instance, if I knew my son was going to get in trouble with the law, have to spend time in jail, but ultimately he would use that experience to save countless other kids from he same fate, I might find it easier to make it through the time he was in jail.
My friend said something the other day and I think it's amazing she can look at it like that when she is hurting so much. She said this is just a blip in her son’s life. It is so true and yet, when we are living through it, we feel as though it is an eternity. When our kids are teenagers they make mistakes. Some teens really struggle, most teens struggle I think. When they are struggling to fit in and to make it through middle school and high school we worry about them. We tell them this time won’t last forever and yet it feels like it might. We as parents worry about their future and what impact these years will have on their future. We worry about them being successful and to be honest sometimes we worry about them being alive in the future. If your kids are making bad choices you may worry they will harm themselves intentionally or unintentionally.
We need to keep going back to God. This verse says, “Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your heart before him; God is a refuge for us.” I think most of us are working on the trust in him at all times part of this verse. We are probably pretty good at trusting Him with a few things, and are still working on the rest of the things. I think God understands and He is willing to wait for us. The thing I think we all don’t realize is we can’t manufacture trust in God ourselves. This comes from God. If we want to trust God more we need to ask Him to help us learn to trust more. The next line tells us to pour out of heart before Him. I think many of us are afraid to do this. We are afraid to yell at God, or be sad or mad at God. We feel angry with Him, but we don’t say it because we feel it is wrong to be upset, mad or sad at God.
He is telling us right here in this verse to pour out our hearts to Him. God already knows what is in your heart. There is no way of hiding it. However, when you pour it out to God, when you say it out loud and release all those feelings God can start healing you. He can start to work on the pain and hurt you feel. God is strong. He can take whatever it is you want to say to Him. God longs to have a close and intimate relationship with you. Think of those you have close relationships with. Would you be as close as you are if you couldn’t share you real feelings with them? If you lied to them and always told them everything was ok, going good, even when it wasn’t would they still want to be your friend? Be honest with God. Tell Him how you feel. Yell, cry, scream, whatever it is you need to do to let God into your heart.
The last line says God is a refuge for us. Refuge means providing shelter from pursuit, danger, or trouble. God provides us a shelter, a safe place, where we can bring Him all we have. We don’t have to be afraid of our feelings, God is available to listen to them and to help us figure them out. God is there for us through everything. He is someone we can always count on, even if others have let us down. My hope for each one of you listening is that you feel comfortable pouring your heart out to the Lord. I hope you trust Him enough to yell and scream when you feel you need to and that you know He will still love you the same after you do. He might even love you more, if that’s possible. Or, maybe not love you more, but you may feel closer to Him afterwards. The more you open up to God the closer you will feel to Him. Trust He can take whatever you have to say to Him.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you and we want to trust you, please help us. We want to know you are there for us and that you will love us just as much if we cry out when we don’t understand. Help us to have faith your plan is better than our plan. Help us to trust even when we don’t know what the plan is. Help us to be honest with you about how we are feeling. We love you Lord, you are amazing. You are the Messiah, You are the Lord, You are the Resurrection and the Life. We are so grateful for all you do for us. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to seeing you tomorrow. Have a blessed day.
Are You Listening?
Ezekiel 12:1-2 (NIV) “The word of the Lord came to me: “Son of man, you are living among a rebellious people. They have eyes to see but do not see and ears to hear but do not hear, for they are a rebellious people.”
I thought this was an interesting verse because I can see how it applies to my life. Have you ever wanted something so much you were blinded by it? Have you ever been offered an opportunity and it seemed so good you couldn’t really see it for what it really was? I think this has happened to all of us at one point or another. We know how God wants us to live. We know the life He is calling us to live and yet when we look at how we are living our lives it may look like we are blind or deaf to what God is saying to us. Even though we know the right way to live, so often we choose to live in a way that is in complete opposition to the life we are being called to live.
I find it easy to judge the Israelites. I find it easy to wonder how the could be so rebellious. God literally parted the Red sea for them. They had God in their presence every single day. They got to listen to Moses speak and Moses got to talk with God. They received Manna every single day. Imagine a miracle every single day when you wake up? They had God winning wars for them left and right. They saw so many miraculous things and yet they kept turning away from God. It is easy for me to look at all they have done wrong and wonder how they could have gotten it so wrong. How could they keep turning away from the one true God to worship all these other Gods?
It is easy for me to judge until….until I think about all the times I have turned a deaf ear or a blind eye to what God is calling me to do. I think in my head they were lucky because God was with them every day. In Exodus 13:21 it says, “By day the LORD went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to guide them on their way and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, so that they could travel by day or night.” Yes, they had the presence of God, but so do we. They had God leading them either as a pillar of cloud or a pillar of fire. Yet, we have God’s true presence in the Eucharist. I know it is not the same in all parts of the world, but in most parts of America you can go to mass every single day if you want to. Not only can we be around the presence of the Eucharist, but we can have that presence inside of us.
I think about how luck they were to see the amazing miracles they got to see. I wonder how anyone who saw such incredible things could ever turn away. I mean, if I saw God part the red sea I would like to think I would never stray from Him. However, I have seen God do incredible miracles and that thought is still not enough to get me to turn off the tv or stop scrolling on social media. I do not like to judge others. I have prayed hard for God to help me with this and I have gotten pretty good at remembering we are all going through something and so when someone is having a hard time, I don’t usually judge them. When someone is acting unkind, I remind myself I don’t know what they have been through. Maybe they just got some awful news and don’t really know what else to do. I heard this saying once, and it has always kind of just stayed with me. The saying was, “Hurt people, hurt people.” Meaning if someone is being unkind and hurting someone else it probably means they are hurt as well and they are acting out. That is not an excuse for anyone to hurt someone else. I am not excusing their behavior, I am just trying to understand it. Knowing that statement is probably true, allows me to be more forgiving and less judgmental towards other people’s actions.
It is not our place to judge others. That right is reserved for God and for God alone, which is actually great. It is exhausting trying to judge others. It’s exhausting thinking we need to correct all we see and that we are better than others. If we spent less time judging and more time focused on what we could be doing better we would be a lot stronger in our faith. It is easy to read the scriptures and see how God could be saying these things to the Israelites, or to the various people in the Old and New Testament. However, do we realize God is saying these things to us? The Bible is a living document. It is not like any other book. God is talking to us just as much as He was talking to the people living at the time when it was written. Can you see how God is talking to you through the scriptures in the Bible? Did you know these words apply to us as well as to them? It is easy to see how they apply to the Israelites, but can we see how they apply to us?
Can you see where in your life you have been turning a blind eye or a deaf ear to the Lord? Can you find some time today to sit and listen to what God is trying to tell you, or what He is trying to show you? Even if you don’t know exactly what it is I think each one of us knows God has been trying to tell us something or show us something and we just really didn’t want to hear or see it. How about you, have you been trying to ignore that feeling you have that God wants you to do something you don’t want to do? For me, it’s fasting. God has been calling me to it and although I am not purposely avoiding it, I am letting the enemy talk louder. I hear God calling me to fast and then I let my perfectionism creep in. Then I wonder, what day do I fast, how do I fast, just bread and water, just for a few hours, fast from TV, fast from social media, etc and then I get so overwhelmed that I don’t do anything. So, this is me admitting to all who are listening that I have not been listening to the call of God and I am pledging I will start today. If God is calling you to do something, He will show you how, He will give you the strength to do it. What if we all took time today to listen to God and made the commitment to stop turning away from Him? What if we all agree we will no longer turn a blind eye or a deaf ear to the Lord? How much more amazing would our life be? What obstacles would we finally be able to overcome? What dreams might finally come true?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we are so grateful you speak to us and we are sorry when we don’t listen. We are grateful you show us the way and we are sorry when we don’t see. Lord, please help us to open our eyes and ears to you. Help us open our hearts fully to you. Help us to respond to your call. Help us to resist all the other voices in the world and just listen to yours. Help give us the strength to follow your call no matter where it leads us. We love you Lord, you are incredible. You are the Just One and you are the Great “I AM.” We are so grateful for all you do and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you on Monday. Have a blessed weekend!
But God
Acts 3:15 “You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead. We are witnesses of this.”
The message I want to give you today came from a sermon I heard from Paster Steven Furtick at Elevation Church. He has a podcast and a YouTube channel. I will put a link to this sermon in the show notes so if you get a chance you can listen to it. He had such a great message and I am only going to touch on a very small part of it. I hope you take the time to listen to his whole message. His sermon was called “What Comes After.” Pastor Furtick was talking about what comes after a big event in your life. He said one of the best verses for us to pass along to any new Christian is Acts 3:15. Then he read the verse from above like this, “You killed the author of life, but God…” And then he repeated “But God.” I knew in that very moment I wanted you all to hear that message.
Some of you are going through a lot right now. You are facing things you don’t want to face and things no one should have to face. Some of you have loved ones that are very sick, some of you are very sick, and some of your children are very sick. Some of you are dealing with the loss of a loved one and some of you are in the middle of a mess with your spouse or your family. Some of you are looking at your situation and thinking it looks pretty bleak. You might be thinking there is no way out of the mess you find yourself in. You might be wondering how your loved one will get better when the odds are not in their favor. You might be wondering if you and your spouse will ever be happy again. You might be wondering when your chronic pain will stop or when you will be healed of this illness you have been carrying for a long time. When I think of all those situations I think of those two words Pastor Furtick said from this verse, “But God.”
The whole verse says, “You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead. We are witnesses of this.” If we were to look at Jesus’ experience while it was happening, without the benefit of knowing, “What comes after,” we wouldn’t look at it in the same way. The day Jesus died, no one was calling that day Good Friday. We named it that after we found out what came after. It didn’t feel like a good day to anyone present at that crucifixion. No one was celebrating that terrible event at the time and yet so much good has come from it. We needed Jesus to go through that awful experience so God could redeem us. The person speaking in this verse is talking to the people responsible for Jesus’ death. He is telling them that although they tried to stop Jesus from spreading the good news, God brought Him back. You tried to do evil, But God. You tried to silence the Good News, But God. Where do you need to remember But God in your life today?
Are you thinking, my child is too sick, the doctors are saying she is not going to make it, we need to say goodbye? Please remember, But God. But God can fix anything. He doesn’t have to follow the laws of medicine. He can do whatever He wants whenever He wants. Are you wondering how your mom is going to come back from this illness? Are you wondering how she is going to beat the odds? Remember, But God. God has healed lepers, God has brought people back from dead, He can surely cure that cancer, or heal that lack of appetite. He can give her the strength she needs to be whole again. Are you thinking your marriage is never going to be the same. You and your spouse have been through too much, you have grown too far apart? Maybe that is true, maybe this situation is too big for you and your spouse, But God. But nothing is too big for God. Yes, it’s too big for you guys on your own but with God you can do all things. Our God is the God of the impossible. He has done so many amazing things in my life and I know He had done some amazing things in your life too. I know things look bad, But God.
The other things to remember, besides the fact God can do the impossible is that He can also take something bad and use it for Good. What happened to Jesus was really bad, and yet God used it for good. As hard as it is to imagine while your are in the middle of an awful time, it is important to remember that God can redeem any situation. As I talked about the other day, this doesn’t mean the situation suddenly becomes good. It is not a good thing you have to go through whatever terrible thing you are struggling with right now. It still sucks and you will probably never look back on it and say you are happy you went through it. However, God can use that situation for good. Maybe you are going through this terrible situation to learn something, or to gain perseverance and resilience? Maybe you needed to learn a lesson and this was the only way you would learn it? Sometimes, no matter how many times someone tells us something, we don’t listen until something bad enough happens that we are forced to listen. Sometimes we are in the terrible situation because of our own actions and that’s ok. We all make mistakes. If we were on our own I wouldn’t be saying that’s ok, But God. But God can redeem us, and all of our mistakes. He can take our brokenness and make us whole again. God is that Good!
I know life is difficult for so many right now. What if we all looked at our lives and asked ourselves where we need to remember, But God? What if we all remembered that none of us know what happens after. Only God has that information and He doesn’t seem to be sharing it. What if we all took some time to think about all the ways God could use this for our good, for His good? I know it doesn’t make sense now. I know it’s confusing, frustrating, sad, overwhelming, and all the other things too. I know you just want to scream and cry at the same time. Go ahead, God can take it. He can take all we have for Him. He is strong. It is totally normal to feel all those things you are feeling. Let yourself feel them. As you feel them, just remember, But God. Just remember He is the Way Maker, The Miracle Worker, the God of the Impossible. I know your situation may look bad, it may look hopeless, but God! God can turn it all around. God is amazing and He wants to heal you, heal your loved one, save your marriage. He wants to do all those things for us, will we let Him? We will keep hope alive and continue to ask Him for the healing we want? We will keep reminding ourselves nothing is too big for God? We will see the brighter days ahead!
Dear heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you so much. We are struggling Lord, and we aren’t sure why. Our loved ones are hurting and we aren’t sure why or what we can do about it. Lord, we ask you to come down individually and personally into each and every one of our situations today and we ask you to perform miracles. We know you want to and we know you are more than capable. Lord, please show up for us in big ways today. Help us to keep hope alive and continue to remember you can redeem any situation. You can redeem any mistakes we have made. Lord, help us to know deep in our hearts that you can do all things and that you really want to heal us, our spouse, our loved one, and our relationships. Lord, you are so incredible and we are so grateful for all you do. We ask all this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I wanted to let everyone know I have decided to post the audio from these podcasts on YouTube as I know many people who do not listen to podcasts and yet like to watch things on YouTube. If you know anyone who might enjoy listening to this on YouTube please let them know they can search for Walk Boldly With Jesus and my channel will come up. Another reason some people might prefer YouTube is because there is a playlist that just has the Witness Wednesday’s on it. So if they just want to listen to those, they can be found on a separate playlist. If you are enjoying this podcast can you please share it with at least one new person. Also, if you could leave a review, that would also help other people find this podcast better. Thank you! I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click on the link below. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Have a blessed day
Whoever Walks With The Wise Becomes Wise
Proverbs 13:20 “Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools suffers harm.”
Who you hang around with and spend your time with is so important. I know I have talked about his topic before and yet I feel it is so important for us all to truly to think about so I am going to talk about it again. I remember several years ago I told Tony that we needed more Catholic friends. He jokingly made a comment about how we should be accepting of everyone and not limit our circle to Catholic friends. I say jokingly because he knew I wasn’t saying we can only be friends with people who are Catholic. I will ask you what I asked him. If you wan to be a really good tennis player, do you think it would be more helpful to hang out with other tennis players, or to hang out with soccer players? It would be more helpful to hang out with tennis players because they know what it takes to be good at tennis. Both groups of people are good people. You can learn a lot from both soccer players and tennis players. I am sure soccer players could help you learn discipline, sportsmanship, and lots of other great things. However, they will not be as much help becoming great at tennis as tennis players would. Do you see where I am going with this?
I don’t think everyone should surround themselves with people just like them. I don’t think you should only have one type of friend. I do think you should surround yourself with people who you look up to. I think you should spend the most time with those who have the same beliefs as you do. I think you should hang out with those who have similar values as you do. Jim Rohn said, “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” Who you spend time with matters. There is another quote that says, “Show me your friends and I will show you your future.” They both tell us the same thing, Who we surround ourselves with is an important factor in who we become. Why is this? Why is it so important to be intentional about who we spend time with?
This is so important because we become like those we spend time with. When you hang out with people for long enough you start to talk like them and you start to act like them. If you are Christian and all of your friends are not, then you will probably start to compromise your beliefs to fit in. You may not even do it consciously. It will probably start off small. For instance you will not mention something amazing that happened because you don’t want to mention God in front of the others. Or maybe you do mention something that happened but you don’t attribute it to God, you casually say it was a coincidence or you got lucky. It seems when we are Christian and our friends are not we go out of our way not to offend anyone. We don’t want to mention God because that may make them feel uncomfortable. I am so grateful I have several Christian friends and so I can talk openly about my faith and not have to worry about offending anyone. However, I also have friends that are not Christian. I still love to hang out with them, we just keep it neutral when it comes to religion.
The verse above says, “Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools suffers harm.” Have you ever heard the saying you want to buy the cheapest house in the most expensive neighborhood? I have heard something similar when it comes to choosing your friends. I have heard if you are the smartest person in the room you need to find a better room. We want to be surrounded by people that make us want to be better people. People who make us want to grow and learn. We will live up to or down to the expectations given to us. If we surround ourselves with people who don’t believe in us, we won’t think we can do very much. If everyone around us is perfectly content with staying where they are and they don’t want to grow, then growth will not be important to us either.
If you are listening to this podcast it means you want to grow, you want to learn. That is awesome. Growth is so important. By starting your day off listening to me each morning you are inviting me into your circle of influence. I am so grateful I get to be one of the people you spend time with. Who else do you spend time with? Are they helping you reach your goals? Are they helping you grow in your faith or are they pulling you away from it? God continually told His people in the Old Testament that He set them apart from everyone else. He set them apart and told them they could not marry people who weren’t not Israelites because God knows how hard it is to be surrounded by people who are different than you and to not join in their ways. Do you remember Solomon? He was one of the wisest men in the history of the Bible. God blessed him with Wisdom so he could rule the country. God had told his people they must not intermarry because they would surely turn their hearts toward other Gods. Solomon was very wise and yet He continued to take wives from other religions. Solomon had seven hundred wives of royal birth and three hundred concubines, and his wives led him astray. If Solomon who was given an abundance of wisdom straight from God couldn’t resist the pull of his wives, what hope do we have?
If you want to grow in your faith, and you want to challenge yourself, then you need to carefully select who you spend the most time with. Some of us have family members that challenge our faith, or maybe make us feel we can’t do all we want to do. If this is the case, I am not saying you can never spend time with those family members. I do, however, think you should limit your time with anyone who doesn’t bring out the best in you. While it is true we don’t get to choose family, we do get to choose how much time we spend with them. We do get to choose how much influence those members of our family have on our lives. Set some boundaries if you need to. Protect what you are building. Protect your beliefs from those who wish to change them. How we live in this world determines how we spend eternity. Surround yourself with people who will help you live in a way that will help you spend an eternity it the presence of God. It will be worth it, I promise!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask you to help us surround ourselves with those people who will help us grow in our faith. Help us to set boundaries for those who wish to change us. The enemy is always sending people into our lives, please help us to spot them and not let them change our beliefs. Help us to follow you always. Help us to be a good influence on those in our lives and help us to help bring others close to Christ. We love you Lord, you are truly amazing. We are grateful for all you do for us. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I am not sure who will be giving a witness tomorrow but I am sure the Holy Spirit will make sure we have one. I look forward to sharing that with you. Have a blessed day!
Redeeming The Time
Ephesians 5:15-16 “See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil.”
I really liked this verse and wanted to talk to you about it today because I am not sure we realize how important time is. It matters how we spend our time. The first part of this verse talks about how we need to make sure we are walking circumspectly, not as fools but as wise. Circumspectly is a fancy way to say we need to think carefully before we act. This is hard for us sometimes. I feel like I say this a lot but I think it is so important that we all become aware of it. We go through life on auto pilot. There is so much of our day we spend just going through the motions. We aren’t actually making a lot of the decisions as we go through our day. We have all formed habits, good ones and bad ones, and those habits are what make a lot of the decisions for us.
It sounds like this is not a new problem. I think from the beginning of time this was a problem. We tend to default to whatever we have done in the past. It is not easy to always walk circumspectly. It requires us to pause and think before we do something. This is contrary to how we live out our day to day moments. Do you stop and think before you eat your breakfast? Do you stop to think if whatever your are about to eat is actually the best thing for you to eat? Is it something that will nourish your body or is it something you are just in the habit of eating? What about how you spend your time in the mornings? Are you spending this precious time in a way that is going to set your day up for success, or are you looking at your phone and then reacting to whatever you saw on your phone?
It is important we look at how we are spending our time and try to stop and think before we do anything. I have been much more aware of how I am spending my time lately. I am trying to be more focused and stay on task better. I am trying to spend my time more wisely. However, I am finding it is very hard. I find myself slipping into old habits throughout the day. For instance, I will pick up my phone and check my email so many times throughout the day. I do not have a ton of important emails coming in all throughout the day. I could easily spend 15-30 min at the end of the day and go through all my emails and be good for the day. However, I am in the habit of checking them, so I do. This is something I am working on changing.
I read something one time that said we all think our time is our own. However, it is a gift from God and one day He is going to want us to give a full account of how we spent His gift. I don’t know about you, but I thought this was pretty powerful. If you knew one day you would have to answer for how you spent your time, would you spend it differently? Would you spend as much time on that video game, or watching those facebook or Youtube videos? Would you still binge watch all 8 seasons of that tv show during work hours if you knew you would have to explain your actions to God someday? I ask that question in a loving way. I don’t picture God asking us in a very condemning way. I can picture Him asking us in a loving way. More of a response to us asking why we didn’t get to do all the things we wanted to do. God has amazing plans for each one of us an no matter where we are on this journey of life, it is important to take a minute and think about how we are spending this precious time that God has given us. There is a song I love and it talks about this very topic. It is called “Spend a Life” By David Dunn. (Click Here) I highly recommend you take a minute and this to this awesome song. I am going to take a minute to read you the lyrics, no not sing them, don’t worry. I think you all need to hear them and I know we are all busy and so most of you probably won’t listen to the song.
Spend a Life by David Dunn
Everybody's got a balance
But no one knows how much
There's no way to run the numbers
No way to count it up
And we're pouring out our fortunes
In the moments
Both the big and the small
Yeah we gotta spend it all
All I have is what You gave
Watching seconds turn to days
I was made for more then just to watch it fly
A few more turns around the sun
Could be hundreds, could be one
Show me how to spend the treasure of my time
Show me how to spend a life, yeah
Show me how to spend a life
I have never seen a tombstone
Say I didn't work enough, nah
Nobody ever heard a father say
I held my kids too much
God I wanna run after
What really matters
So remind me when I fall
How a good man spends it all
Don't let me waste it
Don't let lose it
Don't let me steal it for myself
No, no
I know it's precious
I know it's priceless
I know my time is flying by
Show me how to spend a life
'Cause all I have is what You gave
Watching seconds turn to days
I was made for more then just to watch it fly
A few more turns around the sun
Could be hundreds, could be one
Show me how to spend the treasure of my time, yeah
Show me how to spend a life, yeah
Wow, did that hit you like it hit me? I got teary eyed just thinking about all this song talks about. None of us know how much time we have. I love when the song talks about trips around the sun and he says, could be hundreds could be one. This is so true and as much as I don’t think it is helpful to constantly be thinking about our death, I do think it is healthy to occasionally look at how we are living our lives and ask ourselves, would be proud of how we lived our lives if we were to die tomorrow? Sometimes we put things off and we say we just need to do x, y, or z and then we will do the things we really want to do. We know in our hearts we aren’t prioritizing this correctly and yet we tell ourselves we only have to do this for a few more years, just until we get that promotion, just until we make more money, just until…But we aren’t guaranteed anything. What if we lived our lives with the realization tomorrow is not a given? What if we woke up each day grateful God blessed us with another day and then lived it as the gift it really is? What if we thought about how we are spending our time and consciously chose how we wanted to spend it? What if we realized we only get a finite amount of time and so we live each moment as if it is a precious gift. What if we stopped putting things off and did them right when we wanted to? Would your life be any different if you started walking into your days circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise? How can you redeem the time you have been given?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to notice how we are spending our time. Help us to take back control of our time. Lord, I know I really struggle with wasting time and I know I can’t be the only one that struggles with this, please help us Lord. We ask the Holy Spirit to nudge us when we are wasting time and help to bring us back on track. We ask you to help us realize how important our time is. We ask you to help us realize how finite our time is, but not in an anxious way where we stress out. We ask you to help us see it in a helpful way so we can take advantage of every minute you have given to us. Help us to be grateful for each and every precious second you give us Lord. You are truly amazing and we are so grateful for you. You are the light of the world and the word made flesh. You are so kind to give us so many wonderful days, help us appreciate it more. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus holy name, Amen.
Thank you for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Answering The Call
Isaiah 6:8 “Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I; send me!”
There is a song we sing at church with these words and I just love it. I was just thinking, or I guess wondering what we would say if God asked us this question? I would love to say yes, and I honestly think I would and then I wonder what He might be sending me to go and do. I remember hearing about a woman and her husband who attended a Charismatic Conference in Canada. I think it was in Toronto. There was a huge outpouring of the Holy Spirit at this conference. I am sure I am not going to retell the story perfectly as I heard it several years ago, but I am confident you will get the important parts. The speaker at this conference asked this woman if she would like to be given a nation to spread the word of God and to spread God’s healing. He felt the Holy Spirit was telling Him they had a calling to have a healing ministry in another country. She said yes. She didn’t even hesitate, she jumped all in. The country she was called to minister in was Mozambique, which is located in Southeastern Africa. She felt a calling specifically towards healing the blind and the deaf. Her and her husband answered this call. They moved there and started their ministry.
They moved to Africa faithful to this calling they felt on their life. They moved their with the belief they were going to change people’s lives. Healing people that could not see or hear. They were so excited. Their names were Rolland and Heidi Baker. I will post a link to their website in the show notes as I just read the History of their ministry and it is truly amazing. What I remember from the book I read is that they prayed over every person they saw with vision issues or hearing issues and they didn’t have any results for the first year. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine being faithful in asking people to pray over them day in and day out and not having any healings? I imagine I would have given up. I would hope I would have stuck with it, but I honestly can’t say for sure I would have. It is hard to step out in faith and ask someone if you can pray over them. You are putting yourself in a vulnerable position every time you ask someone. What if they say no? What if they don’t get healed. I admire their courage to continue to follow their calling even in the absence of confirmation. They did eventually get confirmation on their calling. They have seen incredible healings ever since.
I often wonder if I would have the strength to follow a calling like they did. What just came to my mind is that they Holy Spirit knows us. He comes to us and meets us where we are at. When I read the History of this couple, they had been going on missions for years before they moved to Africa. They had already lived in other countries as well. They had been preparing for this assignment for several years, even if they didn’t know that was what they were preparing for. I was going to say God isn’t just going to call someone who has never been overseas to start a ministry overseas. However, He might. He called Moses to speak to Pharoh and to speak to the Israelite people and He didn’t feel comfortable with public speaking at all. He had a stutter and he are argued with God to send someone else. I think God prepares us for our calling. I think He knows what we like and don’t like. I think He may call us out of our comfort zone and challenge us to achieve bigger and greater things in His name. However, He will also give us whatever we need to answer that call.
I read something and I can’t remember where I read it but the author said she always prays for God to give her the strength she needs for whatever he is calling her to do. She said she was nervous because she was asked to go on a mission trip to Africa. She has a weak stomach and was worried she wouldn’t be able to eat the food she was offered. She said she knew it was a sign of disrespect to not eat something if you are offered it and she also knew where she was going they ate some things that aren’t something we would normally eat. She said she just prayed for God to give her the strength to handle any situations she encountered, and He always did.
I remember hearing a phrase at the first retreat I went to for the Military Council of Catholic Women. I had just moved to Germany, I had three little boys ages 1-5 and when the opportunity for a retreat came up, I jumped on it. While I was there I heard this phrase over and over again. “God doesn’t call the equipped, He equips the called.” The idea behind this phrase is that all God needs is your yes. All He needs it you to be willing to do something and He will equip you with all you need. I instantly loved this idea. Some ladies didn’t like it. They thought it was absurd to think God didn’t take into account our talents when He was calling us to do something. I was the opposite. I heard this phrase and I felt like a whole new world opened up. I don’t think the phrase means God doesn’t take our talents into account. I think what it means is we don’t have to think we are qualified for the job to say yes.
As I said earlier, God sometimes, often times, calls us out of our comfort zone. We can’t grow when we are in our comfort zone. It isn’t until we push ourselves, we challenge ourselves that we grow. This is true in all areas in our lives. If we always do the same thing, if we always do what we know how to do and never try something new, we may be comfortable, but we will not be growing. This phrase opened a whole new world for me because I feel it gave me permission to say yes to things even when I didn’t feel qualified. It gave me the confidence to step forward in faith to try new things. It gave me the courage to say yes when I might not have said yes before. I have also heard a lot of people say we are born with everything we need to fulfill our calling. It is already inside of us. I think this is 100% true as God made us, He knew us before we were even a thought in our parents mind. I absolutely believe He put everything in us we would need to live out our purpose.
I think these two ideas go together because even though we may have all we need, we don’t always know it. For instance, when God called me to write a book, I had no idea I had that ability. I said yes, because I believe that God doesn’t call the equipped He equips the called. Aso if God calls me to do something, He is not going to leave me alone to do it on my own. He is always with us giving us all we need to answer His call. My hope for you today is that you will answer the call you feel in your heart. We all have a different call. My call for a long time was to be a mom and a wife. Your call does not have to be go out and start a ministry in a new country. God is calling each one of us to more. He is calling us to something and we can only know what that is if we spend time with Him and listen. I know you probably don’t feel ready for what you are being called to do. Nobody does when they first hear the call. God is looking for our trust. He is looking for our yes, even if we are unsure. Even if we don’t understand what He wants and even if we think we are unqualified. He is looking for our yes and then He will provide the rest, I promise. It will not always be easy, but the more we say yes, the more He will show us He is there with us.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to answer your call, please help us. Help us to understand you would never leave us alone and you would never call us to something we couldn’t do. Lord, we ask you help each and every person listening to this episode hear what you are calling them to. No matter how big or how small it is, help them to say yes to this call Lord. Help give us the courage and strength we need. Help us to know it is ok to say yes, even when, especially when, we don’t feel we are qualified. This is an even greater sacrifice because we are relying solely on you and your power to help us answer that call. We love you Lord. You are so incredible. You have helped countless others answer their call. We are so very grateful. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you on Monday. Have a blessed weekend!
The Clay Vessel
2 Corinthians 4:7-10 “But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies.”
I looked up the meaning of this verse and the answer I found is very interesting so I am going to read it to you. I will also put a link to the explanation in the show notes so you can check it out too if you want to. CLICK HERE for explanation.
What is the treasure Paul describes in this verse? From the previous verse, we know that it is the "light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" (2 Corinthians 4:6). Paul described God as shining His light into Paul's heart, penetrating the darkness of Paul's unbelief and revealing His glory to Paul through faith in Christ. Paul finally saw with spiritual eyes what he had never seen in all of his years of religious practice. In fact, Paul's phrasing in the prior verse incorporates the values of many different cultures—light, knowledge, and glory—and expresses them in the form of a person which is Jesus Christ.
To know God in this way, to see God's glory and to be given the opportunity to share in that glory forever, is the greatest of all treasures. Paul writes now that this great treasure is not kept under lock and key in a museum or a bank vault. Instead, God keeps this treasure of the light of His glory in Christ in fragile jars of clay. Clay jars were included in nearly every aspect of life in Paul's day. They were efficient containers, but also prone to breaking easily. Modern people tend to think of glass jars as "fragile," but glass was considered an improvement over clay.
The point being made is that God has deliberately chosen something fragile and unimpressive. Why would God keep this great treasure in such vulnerable containers? Paul says God wants to show that the power of His glory is from Him. He leaves no room to suggest that power comes from Paul or any other human being. The power of the gospel is so overwhelming that it is not limited by the quality of its container. God displays His limitless power and glory by distributing it through limited and common human vessels.
Wow, that last paragraph is pretty powerful. Especially where it says, “The power of the gospel is so overwhelming that it is not limited by the quality of its container. Then it goes on to say God displays His limitless power and glory by distributing it through limited and common human vessels. Do you ever feel like you are not good enough to spread the Word of God. Maybe it’s not that you don’t feel good enough, but you don’t feel smart enough, holy enough, or some other version of enough. Often times we don’t feel like we are enough and so we don’t try. We count ourselves out of the game before it even starts. We tell ourselves that God doesn’t want us to spread the word. He wants those that are more qualified to do it. That last paragraph is speaking directly to those of us who feel this way. “The power of the Gospel is so overwhelming that it is not limited by the quality of the container.”
Even though we aren’t perfect, we can still spread the good news of the Gospel. Maybe it’s true and we don’t know enough, we aren’t good enough, we aren’t holy enough, that doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because we aren’t doing anything through our own strength. All of our power comes from God and He can do anything. That is the point He was making by talking about clay pots. Clay pots were normal, ordinary and boring back in the day. They were very common as they were used for everything. God will fill us with His power as well. No matter how common or fragile we may feel.
I really liked this verse because it shows us that God does allow us to suffer, but not be completely broken. It says we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed. Do you ever feel like this? Do you ever feel like every single thing in your life is going wrong and wonder how you are still standing? Somehow you have not been crushed by the weight of it all. The power of God is what is keeping us from being crushed under the weight of it all. He does allow us to be afflicted but He is right there with us the whole time. He is giving us the strength we need to get through it all.
The next line says, perplexed but not driven to despair. We don’t always understand what is going on. Sometimes something bad happens, something really hard for us to understand. For instance, when we lose a loved one suddenly. When this happens we probably are filled with a lot of questions. Even though we have questions, we are not driven to despair. My devotional this morning touched on the subject of our perplexity. This is what it said in Jesus Calling for August 7th. “Understanding will never bring you Peace. That’s why I have instructed you to trust in Me, not in your understanding. Human beings have a voracious appetite for trying to figure things out in order to gain a sense of mastery over their lives. But the world presents you with an endless series of problems. As soon as you master one set, another pops up to challenge you. The relief you had anticipated is short-lived. Soon your mind is gearing up again: searching for understanding (mastery) instead of seeking Me (your Master). If we don’t want to be driven to despair when feel perplexed then we need to search for God before we seek understanding. Sometimes we have to trust God knows what He is doing, even when we don’t understand why He is doing it.
The next part says we are persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed. Again, this is because of the power of God. Sometimes if might feel like we are destroyed. We may feel as though things couldn’t get any lower. If you are in a season like this then I want to encourage you to adopt this verse. To know that you maybe be knocked down, but you will not be destroyed. God will not allow it. He is with you on this journey, even if you can’t see Him or feel Him. I like this verse because it provides encouragement and shows us that no matter how bad it gets God can still redeem us and redeem the situation we find ourselves in. There is nothing more powerful than God, and I find that so comforting.
The final part of the verse says, “ always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies.” God is calling us to be His light in the world. He wants others to look at us and see Jesus. Are we working on this? This is something that will take a lifetime to perfect and something we can work on every single day. We don’t have to wait until we feel we are enough. Remember the power of the Gospel is not limited to the quality of the vessel. God’s power will not be limited by us. It doesn’t matter if we are enough, we will never be enough, but God’s power can still flow through us to others. We can be His light in the world, even with all or our imperfections. All we need to do is ask God to lead the way. We have to accept the challenge, say yes, and then the power of God can work through us. Will you accept the challenge today?
Dear Heavenly Father I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord we thank you for not letting us get crushed by the way of our problems. Thank you for not letting us be driven to despair by our perplexity. We thank you that when we are knockdown we are not destroyed. We thank you for using us as your vessel. We are grateful you are there for us through everything. We love you so much Lord, you are so amazing! We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click on the link below. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Have a blessed day!
God Knows What He Is Doing!
Isaiah 45:9 “Woe to you who strive with your Maker, earthen vessels with the potter! Does the clay say to the one who fashions it, “What are you making”? or “Your work has no handles”?
As soon as I heard this verse the other day I knew I wanted to share it with all of you. As soon as I heard it I thought, “Wait, that is exactly what we do.” This verse is talking about how a clay pot wouldn’t tell the creator how to form it. The potter knows how to form clay. It’s his job. I heard this verse and I instantly felt silly for all the times when I told God how I think He should do things. Yes, I really did that, and I am sure you have to. We see things like they are and we are sure we have the solution of how to make things better. We tell God if He would just do X, Y and Z then everything would work out and everything would be fine. I hope you see, as I do, how crazy this is. Why don’t we realize God has already thought about that? Why doesn’t it occur to us that God has not only thought of that plan, but 5,000 other plans just like it and He has seen the outcome of all those plans. Not just the 5 minutes down the road outcome, or even the 5 years down the road outcome. He has seen the forever down the road outcome.
We think we know better than God because we don’t have the ability to know how things will turn out in the end like He does. We tend to see what is right in front of us and we might be able to look ahead some, but none of us know what is 5, 10 or 20 years in our future. There is too much between us and that future to see how it will turn out. There are too many forks in the road, too many twists and turns for us to see clearly to the end of the road. The same is not true for God. He can look around every twist, every corner and down each fork in the road. He sees what we can’t see and that make Him uniquely qualified to be our Creator. I know I am not telling you something new. I know you know this already, I do too. So… why do we still tell God how to do things?
I wonder if it is because we don’t know what else to do? I wonder if we tell God what to do because we want to help, we want to be useful and yet we know there is nothing we can do to help. But, if we are telling God what to do then we are helping, right?! We are part of the solution? I have a newsflash I know is not going to be a surprise to you. God doesn’t need our help. He doesn’t need our solutions. God is the way maker. He makes a way where there isn’t a way. God is the God of the Impossible. He makes possible what isn’t possible by human standards. God’s got this, He doesn’t need our help or our suggestions. What He would love is our praises! What He would love instead is our gratitude. What He would love is our love and appreciation.
I know some of you are going through a really difficult time right now. I know some of you don’t understand why your situation is the way that it is. I understand the feeling. I have had a lot of situations over the last 20 years that I did not understand. Situations I wouldn’t have thought I would ever be in. Situations I didn’t feel I deserved to be in. I felt I had been faithful to God and I didn’t understand why life was so hard. What I do understand now, that I didn’t understand then is how much of a better person I am because of those trials. I am a better wife and a better mother because I had those trials. I am a better listener because I had those trials. I have provided many other parents with comfort because of the mountains I had to climb. I have been able to offer words of encouragement and words of support instead of words of judgement because of the all that happened in my life.
If you are in a season right now where everything sucks, I promise you a better season is coming. I don’t know when, but you are in the sowing season right now and you will reap the harvest. I almost said soon, but I don’t know if it will be soon. I struggled for 16 years and the struggle is not over yet, so I can’t promise soon. I can promise it will come though. I can promise you God hasn’t forgotten about you. He understands why you think your solutions is better than His and He also knows why that is not true. He knows you just want the hard part to be over and yet He knows why you have to walk through this. I don’t know what your specific circumstance is and I don’t know why you are in that situation. I do know that God can take any awful thing and use if for good.
That doesn’t mean it won’t be awful anymore. I heard it explained one time on the Big Life devotional crap is always crap. Can crap be used for good? Yes, farmers can use it for fertilizer. Does that mean the crap is transformed into something good. No, it is still crap, but it can be used to create something good. If someone takes their pain and uses it to help others, that is taking something bad and using it for good. However, that pain is still their. That thing that happened to cause the pain is still an awful thing that happened. Sometimes when people hear that God will use what is bad for good they are waiting for the hurt to go away. They are waiting to feel happy about what happened. That is not what is meant here. Crap is still crap. You are not suddenly going to feel happy about some awful thing you went through. However, you may be able to use that pain or that sorrow to help others and that can create something beautiful from something awful. I hope that made sense.
God knows what He is doing! We do not have to tell Him what to do. We do not know better than He does. Remember what it says in Isaiah 55:8-9 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” God’s ways are higher than our ways. As hard as it is to do sometimes, we need to trust God knows what He is doing and instead of telling how He could be doing it better we could ask Him for the strength to endure it, or the strength to get through it. We could pray for whatever it is we need to survive. We can ask Him to help us not just survive but to thrive in any circumstances we find ourselves in!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord we are so grateful your ways are higher than our ways. We are sorry we forget this so often. We are sorry we are constantly telling you how to do things better than you are. Please help us to remember you know better than we do. Lord, we ask you to help all those struggling right now. We ask you to fill them with all they need to make it through this very difficult time. Lord, we ask you give them wisdom to understand what is going on. We ask you to fill them with trust, hope and love. Lord you are amazing. We love you so very much. You are the light of the world and the word made flesh. We are so grateful and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk body with Jesus. Tomorrow’s guest is a friend of mine named Jeremy. I first met Jeremy through his wife Kristiann. We had a mutual friend and when Tony and I were moving to Germany, our friend put us in contact as Kristiann and Jeremy had moved to Germany a few months earlier. It was great to meet someone so soon after getting there. I love that about the military. Everyone helps everyone and someone you know probably knows someone at the new base you are moving to. Jeremy and his wife are no longer in Germany and are now living stateside again. Jeremy is going to give his witness about how he struggled with loss and what happened when He turned to God and told Him “I can’t do this, you need to do it for me.” It is an amazing witness and I can’t wait to share it with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Words Have Power to Bless or to Wound
James 1:19 “You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger.”
This verse really hit home with me this morning. It was the subject of the daily devotional I am reading “Jesus calling.” Actually it wasn’t even today’s message. I am behind because I was on vacation and I wasn’t doing my normal morning routine. This morning I got up and decided I would do two devotionals so I can try to catch up to where I should be. This book is so good. I always really enjoy the devotionals. The reason I say this mornings devotional hit home for me is because I know how important words can be and I know how much what we can say can hurt others.
I just got back from a family vacations with my husband, all three of our boys, and my husband’s whole family, his mom and dad, his brother and his wife, and their two girls. This is one of our favorite times of the year. It is so nice to get too spend a whole week with family. We get to hang out and talk. We get to play lots of games, especially with his mom and dad. My youngest two boys love to play with their two girls. They play all different board games and card games. It is music to my ears to hear them talking and laughing. The place we go to is a campground in Maine. We stay in a cabin with no internet. There is internet at the lodge, which is open 8-7 but not in our cabins. There is a tv, but it doesn’t have cable, you can just watch movies on it. I love this because it means we have so much more time to talk and to visit. However, as you can imagine my kids do not love this.
Two of them really enjoy playing games with their cousins, playing chess with their Pop (Tony’s dad) and playing parcheesi with both Tony’s parents. They also really enjoy when we rent a boat and they get to go out in the boat and go fishing, or when we pull them behind the boat on a boogie board. However, that still leaves a lot of time when they are bored. They do not enjoy the fact there is no Wifi. They miss talking with their friends on the computer and playing video games with their friends. Also, this year was super hot and the cabins are not air conditioned. Since our house is air conditioned, they are not used to sleeping in such hot temperatures. Some parts of the trip were difficult for them.
Our oldest, really did not enjoy the vacation. He really liked spending time talking with Tony’s brother, and he got to play chess with Pop a few times, but most of the time he was unhappy. I did go out and get him a fan at one point and he was much more comfortable after that but he still was very unhappy. He is the reason this verse hit home today. When he is unhappy or angry, he says things he doesn’t mean. He is really struggling right now and being away from his friends and his work for a week was more than he could take. Each day, at least once a day he would start to say very unkind things. Not because he really thinks those things were true but because he was upset and that is how he acts when he is upset. I don’t know why he does this. It is not something new, he has done this ever since he was little. In the moment, when he is angry, he does not care what he is saying or who he is hurting. However, afterwards he feels really bad about it. I wish he could hear this verse and adopt this principle. I am going to write it on a sticky not for him, because I know he doesn’t want to do this. He doesn’t want to feel this way, he doesn’t want to say unkind things and then feel bad about it later. He needs help learning to control what he says and it is not human help he needs. He needs the Lord’s help. I know my son is not the only one who says things they don’t mean when they are angry. We have all done this before. I thought I would read you the devotional I read this morning because it really explains this verse well and how important it is to watch our words.
“Watch your words diligently. Words have such great power to bless or to wound. When you speak carelessly or negatively, you damage others as well as yourself. This ability to verbalize is an awesome privilege, granted only to those I created in my image. You need help in wielding this mighty power responsibly. Though the world applauds quick-witted retorts, my instructions about communication are quite different: “be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry.” Ask my spirit to help you whenever you speak. I have trained you to pray – "Help me, Holy Spirit" – before answering the phone, and you have seen the benefits of this discipline. Simply apply the same discipline to communicating with people around you. If they are silent, pray before speaking to them. If they are talking, pray before responding. These are split-second prayers but they put you in touch with my presence. In this way you're speaking comes under the control of my spirit. As positive speech patterns replace your negative ones, the increase in your joy will amaze you.”
I love the advice in this short devotional. Imagine how much different our interactions would be if we all paused before replying and said, “Help me, Holy Spirit.” Also, if you need to start a conversation with someone you just quickly pause and say, “Help me, Holy Spirit.” The Holy Spirit is within us. He is waiting for us to ask Him to help us. What if we got in the habit of doing that more often? I wonder how different our days would be? I wonder how much smoother our conversations would be? I love how it says, “In this way you’re speaking come under the control of my Spirit.” Wouldn’t you love that? I know I would. I would love it if everything that came out of my mouth was under the control of the Holy Spirit. I know I say the wrong things sometimes. I have gotten so much better than I was because I have spent a lot of hard work and time learning to say the right things and to say kind things. And yet, I still mess up, I still say the wrong things. I wish I had heard this before or thought of this before. I have prayed things like, “Lord, guard my mouth.” However, I never thought to say a quick half a second prayer every time I open my mouth. This sounds like it could be a great way to become better with my interactions with others.
The other thing I wanted to quickly touch on because it really touched me this morning also was the last three words, “slow to anger.” This touched me because sometimes I can be quick to anger. Sometimes I can take offense to small things. Sometimes I can get upset over things that weren’t intentional or weren’t really a big deal. I know I can’t be the only person that does this. When I read them, it was as if the Holy Spirit shined a light on my actions. It was as if He was gently reminding me God wants us to be slow to anger. God doesn’t want us to take things so personally. He doesn’t want us to walk around taking offense and getting angry at everything we encounter. He wants us to be slow to anger. Is that you? Are you slow to anger, or are you quick to anger? If we are quick to anger it doesn’t mean we are bad. It just means we need to ask God for help. We need to ask Him to show us how to be slow to anger. It means we need to invite the Holy Spirit into more of our interactions. Maybe each morning when we get up we can hand our day over to the Holy Spirit. Maybe we could say a quick prayer like, “Holy Spirit, come into all my interactions today. Help me be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to anger. I give you permission to take control.” That would take not more that a second or two and yet you are inviting the Holy Spirit into your daily interactions. You are handing over control to the Holy Spirit. I bet we would find this practice very powerful.
Let’s start now. “Holy Spirit, come into all my interactions today. Help me be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to anger. I give you permission to take control.”
Dear Heavenly Father I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, you are amazing and we are so grateful for all you do for us. Lord, please help us to be quick to listen and slow to speak and to anger. Help us to not take offense to everything. Help us to see our loved ones aren’t intentionally trying to hurt us. Helps us to hold our tongue when we get angry and not lash out. Help us to invite the Holy Spirit into our interactions before we even open our mouths to say anything. When we do speak out rashly and possibly unkindly, help those we offend to forgive us and to heal from what we said. We love you Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Call To Me And I Will Answer You
Jeremiah 33:2-3 “Thus says the Lord who made the earth, the Lord who formed it to establish it—the Lord is his name: Call to me and I will answer you, and will tell you great and hidden things that you have not known.”
How great would it be if the Lord was talking to us like this? I picture this scene like the movies where Jeremiah is just sitting there drinking his morning coffee and all of the sudden a booming voice comes out of nowhere and says, “Call to me and I will answer you, and will tell you great and hidden things that you have not known.” This is not how God communicates with most of us. He did communicate with some like that. Moses talked with God and heard His reply. God called to Samuel in his sleep. Some people report hearing the Lord’s audible voice, however, most people do not hear His voice. Even if you do not hear His voice, the Lord can still talk to you. He can communicate in a variety of ways. Let’s examine what the verse is saying, and then we will talk about the various ways He talks with us.
The first part of the verse is reminding us how amazing God is. It says, “The Lord who made the earth, the Lord who formed it to establish it - the Lord is his name.” The next part says, “Call to me and I will answer you, and will tell you great and hidden things that you have not known.” God is constantly telling us throughout the Bible if we ask He will answer. This time He is telling us He will tell us great and hidden things we have not known. Who wouldn’t want to know great and hidden things? So, how do we know when God is talking to us? How do we hear his voice? Do we hear His voice?
As I mentioned earlier, you may hear His voice, but this is very rare. I know a lot of people who hear from God regularly and they do not hear an audible voice. There are several different ways that God communicates with us. The way I see God communicate most often at my Thursday prayer group meeting is when we are all silent and ask the Lord to speak to us. We usually say what Samuel said to God in 1 Samuel 3:10, “Speak, for your servant is listening.” Then we wait to hear from the Lord. Most of the time someone has a thought come into their mind. It is not an audible voice but the Lord has put this thought in their head and they share it with everyone. Listening to the Lord does require a degree of trust and a degree of vulnerability. If you ask the Lord a question, or if you just tell Him you are listening and willing to listen to Him, and then you started to get a bunch of thoughts in your head, it takes trust to believe it is God speaking to you. Especially if you are new to communicating with the Lord in this way. If you are sitting and asking God to talk to you, have paper with you to write down any thoughts you get after you ask God to talk with you. Trust that these thoughts could be from God. You asked Him to talk to you and when we ask, He answers.
The enemy does not want us communicating with God because He knows when you do you grow closer to God and your deepen your relationship. Do not be surprised if when you are trying to listen to God and a thought enters you mind, you start to doubt it’s from God. This is the enemy. He will also put thoughts in your head, but these ones won’t be nice thoughts. The thoughts from the enemy will be things like, “Why would God talk to you, you’re a nobody?” “You’re just thinking whatever you want to think.” “God would never talk like that, God would never say that.” If you start to doubt what you are thinking is actually from God, know the enemy is probably putting those thoughts in your head. You can answer those questions with the truths that God has give us. For instance, “Why would God talk to you?” Your answer can be that God would talk to you because you are made in His likeness and image and because He told you if you asked He would answer. If you call to Him He will answer. He tells us this right here in this verse. Don’t let the enemy convince you otherwise.
Another way some people communicate with the Lord is through visions. They will ask the Lord to speak and then they will get a vision of something. Sometimes this vision is accompanied by a word and sometimes it is just a vision. My friend Corinne tends to have visions during our prayer group meetings and often times they are comical. Our Lord has a sense of humor and it really comes out in her visions. One time during prayer group He was trying to convey a message of joy and Corinne had a vision of us all riding down the hill on a sled in the snow. We were all just laughing and have a great time. Sometimes people will have a vision and then they will have a word from the Lord that goes with it to sort of explain it.
Another way God talks to us is through the scriptures. I have had a lot of people tell me about how they were really struggling with something and then they saw a scripture verse and it gave them so much comfort. How they see this verse is always different. Maybe they heard it at church, or they saw it in a book or on a magnet. Maybe their friend mentioned it or they saw it in passing somewhere. I remember a story I heard from a speaker. She said she knew God was asking her to move to another state, but she really didn’t want to go. She said if He wanted her to go He was going to have to make it really clear because she didn’t want to go. She had three different random people give her the same scripture verse in one week. I am not sure what the verse is anymore, but it was clear to her that God wanted her to move. One of the people that gave her the verse was a delivery man. It was not someone she knew. She had never talked with him before, he did not know if she was religious. He just dropped off her package, went to walk away, and then turned around and said, I feel I am supposed to give you this scripture verse. This happened two other times with different people in one week. This leads me to another way God communicates with us.
God communicates through other people. You could be struggling with something and you don’t mention it to anyone and yet someone you know, or maybe someone you don’t know, happens to say something that makes you feel better, or answers your questions. I listen to a lot of different things, between podcasts, webinars, music and prayer groups and they are always exactly what I need to hear. How does God do that? I listen to the Big Life Devotional Podcast. It is actually where I got the idea for this podcast. There are hundreds of thousands of people that listen to that podcast. There are at least 400 of those listeners that are in the Big Life mentoring program. Pamela Crim does a Facebook live for all her members in the morning while she records her devotional. All those of us that are watching live are all different. We are different ages, different jobs, different stages in our lives, different family make ups and yet every one of us feels like each episode seems to be written specifically for us. The sermons in church are the same. Did you ever wonder why the Sunday sermon said exactly what you needed to hear? It’s because the Holy Spirit helped write that sermon.
The woman that does the Big Life Podcast could not do the morning Facebook Live video this morning because she is traveling. She told us if we wanted to do our morning routine we could watch an old one that was recorded. I saw one the other day that said Wednesday. I didn’t check the date because it happened to be Wednesday. I watched the whole thing, it was really what I needed to hear, and I actually connected with someone else who happened to rewatch that one on Wednesday. I finally realized it wasn’t the correct date It was from Jan 6, 2021. God knew what He was doing. He knew I needed to connect with this lady. He knew of all the messages in her devotionals, that was the one I needed to hear today. God is so good. He will talk to you through other people if you are open to hearing it.
I said earlier communicating with God requires trust and it requires vulnerability. It requires trust because you have to believe that if you ask He will answer. You have to trust those thoughts in your head, after you asked the Lord to talk, are really the Lord. You have to trust He will talk to you because He said He would. It also requires vulnerability because it can feel like you are risking rejection asking God to talk to you. What if I ask God to talk and He doesn’t, what does that mean. This brings us back to the trust. If you ask God He will answer. It also requires vulnerability if you are in a group setting because you are saying the thoughts that come into your out loud and you might start to wonder, “Did I really hear something?” “Is this really from God?” “What if it’s not from God?” This is normal. When this happens remember the enemy doesn’t want us to communicate with our heavenly Father. He wants us as far from Him as we can get. He will always start to cause doubt when He sees we are getting closer. Keep trusting it’s the Lord talking. Spend time each day listening for all the Lord has to say. I promise if you do start listening more, your relationship with the Lord will grow so much deeper. You will develop an intimate relationship with your heavenly Father, His son Jesus, and the Holy Spirit.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord we want to hear your voice, please help us listen more. Open our eyes to see all the ways you are trying to communicate with us and open our ears to hear them. Open our minds to understand your messages Lord. Lord we are open to hearing you, in whatever way you want to communicate with us. Help us to hear you and help us to recognize it is you talking. Help us be brave and share what you tell us with others. Fill us with the trust we need to believe you would talk to us. We love you Lord! You are truly amazing. You are the light of the world. You are the word made flesh. We are so grateful for all you do for us. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you on Monday. Have a blessed weekend!
In Your Presence There Is Fullness of Joy
Psalm 16:11 “You show me the path of life. In your presence there is fullness of joy; in your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”
We talked a lot on Tuesday about how God directs our steps. God has a plan for our lives and it is an amazing plan. He has plans for our good. We also talked about how we sometimes don’t wait for God to direct our steps. Sometimes we don’t take the path that God is trying to show us because we run ahead of Him. God has our lives perfectly timed and we don’t want to wait for His timing. We think we know better and we are sure our timing is perfect. So, instead of patiently walking side by side with God, we run ahead. Then when we reach a fork in the road we don’t pause to turn around and ask Him which way to go, we just pick the way that looks the best and then run full force down it. Then we wonder why things go wrong. We wonder why we aren’t happy. Sometimes we are living the exact life we dreamed about living and yet we still aren’t happy.
I think this is explained in the next line of this verse. “In your presence there is fullness of joy.” We aren’t happy when we reach the things we wanted to reach because we ran ahead of God. We didn’t bring Him along for the journey. The fullness of joy is found in the presence of God. It doesn’t say the fullness of joy is found in your job, it doesn’t say you will find the fullness of joy when you make a lot of money or reach your wildest dreams. It says the fullness of joy is found in God’s presence. If we want to have joy we need to remain in the presence of God.
In John’s gospel Jesus says, “remain in Me” frequently. What does this mean? How do we do this? How do we remain in the presence of God? I decided to look this up online to see how we could remain in the presence of God. I found an awesome video from Father Mike on YouTube. Father Mike says, getting right down to it, remaining in the presence of the Lord is inviting God into everything we do. Whatever the next step we are going to take is, we just ask the Lord, “Could you come with?” Hey Jesus, I am going on a run, do you want to come with? Hey Jesus, I am about to make dinner, do you want to come with? We invite him to come with because this is what you do with someone you love you invite them to come with you. How do we do that? How do we invite someone along with you? First, you ask them. Second, its when you gaze upon Jesus in that interior gaze. Where you just know that Jesus is there with you.
Father Mike then explains about the Practice of the Presence. He says it is something we have to learn. If we want to live a life where we remain in the presence of God we will need to practice. It is not something that will just come automatically. He talks about a book he read where the author wrote about the practice of the presence of God and the author said the way he does this is to remind himself every time he touches a key on his computer Jesus is with him. He doesn’t do this in a burdensome way. He doesn’t get upset with himself if he forgets. He just tries to remind himself throughout the day that God is with Him, in everything He does. Even if he needs to remind himself a hundred times a day. The first way was to ask God to come with you. The second was to gaze upon God. The third way is to speak to Him because He is present. When we are running, cooking, working, whatever you are doing talk to God. God is always present to us, and when we invite him to come with we are being present to Him. Remember, remaining in God takes practice. Don’t beat yourself up if we don’t get it right the first time or the 100th time. Just keep coming back to it and keep practicing it.
We might wonder, when we invite God to come with, what will that feel like? What will we experience? Father Mike explains that we never know. God is free. He is not an ATM where we punch in the correct code and we get the same thing each time. God is not robotic in how he loves us. Sometimes it might feel great, and we might experience great blessings, sometimes we might feel nothing, sometimes it may be difficult. He always loves us how we need but He is free to love us how he want to. So, how will God respond, what will it be like? It will be exactly what you need because God is free and because He loves you very much! I will post a link to Father Mike’s video in the show notes so if you get a chance you can watch it. It is really good. (CLICK HERE for video)
The last line in this verse says, “In His right hand is where we find pleasures forevermore.” I looked up the meaning of this because I didn’t really know what to say about this part and because I know the right hand is a place of honor and I wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing some important meaning. As always, I am so glad I did. I love when I can get a deeper meaning of the scripture. I will place a link to the article I found because it talks about each part of this verse. I am just focusing on what the author wrote about this last part. “Christ is at God’s right hand. We are in Christ at God’s right hand. This is a place of great priority in the heavenly courts. The pleasures that come to us from the hand of God in Christ are the kind that are eternal, rather than temporal. Sadly, even Christians will trade the eternal pleasures of God for the temporary pleasures of sin. It is so wonderful to understand that God has eternal pleasures for us that are so far above what the earth has to offer. It is the pearl of great price that is worth a man or woman’s whole life in trade (Mt 13:44). Lay down your life for what he has for you.” (CLICK HERE for full article)
I am glad I found this because this line takes on a whole new meaning to me now. When I first read it I thought it sounded nice, God has pleasures for us. I didn’t key in to the word forevermore. Or, maybe I did think about it, but I thought about it more like forevermore in this life. I didn’t connect the dots that God was offering us pleasures that are eternal versus what the world is offering us which is temporary. It makes so much sense know that I have read the explanation. I can see how we are always choosing the temporary pleasures of this world over the eternal pleasures from God. I don’t know that we are consciously making this choice. I think if we thought about that before we made the choice we might choose differently. If every time we were about to choose a temporary pleasure we remembered that it is one or the other. We can’t constantly choose the things of this world and then have an eternity with God, we have to pick one or the other. If we knew that was our choice, I don’t think we would choose the temporary pleasure of sin so easily.
The problem is, we aren’t really choosing it consciously most of the time. We have all formed habits and a lot of the time we go through the day on auto pilot and we just do what we have always done and don’t ever give it a second thought. If we want to choose eternity with the Lord we need to be better about intentionally choosing Him and letting Him lead us. We need to do as Father Mike and practice being in the presence of the Lord every day. If we keep practicing we will slowly but surly replace our bad habits for good ones and we will spend more and more time in the presence of the Lord. This will help us grow stronger in resisting the temptations of the enemy. Eventually we will be strong enough to choose what is eternal versus what is temporary. Will you join me in practicing being present with the Lord this week?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to be in your presence. We want to find the fulfillment of joy in You. We want to follow the path you have for us. Help us to do so. Lord help remind us to practice being present. Show us what to do. Give us the strength we need to choose your eternal rewards instead of the temporary ones the world is offering us. Help us to see what the world is offering us comes through sin. Help us to see if we want to spend eternity with you we constantly have to choose you. It is not just a choice we make once and we are good to go. It is a decision we make hundreds of times a day. Help us make the right decision Lord. Lord you are awesome. You are the bread of life and the blessed and only ruler. We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus Holy Name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click on the link below. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Have a blessed day!
Though We Stumble, We Shall Not Fall
Psalm 37:23-24 “Our steps are made firm by the Lord, when he delights in our way; though we stumble, we shall not fall headlong, for the Lord holds us by the hand.”
I have read that verse several times today and yet this time when I read it I got the image of toddler walking along the sidewalk while he is holding his daddy’s hand. When we are just learning to walk we definitely stumble and sometimes we even fall. We fall because we are learning something new. We fall because we are letting go of the safety of the wall, couch, or coffee table and venture out on our own. It is not a bad thing when we fall as long as we get back up and try again. It is expected to take time to learn something new. It is part of the journey. If we never let go of that safety net we will never learn what we are capable of.
What I love about this verse though is that it says we will stumble, but we will not fall because God hold us by the hand. God allows us to venture out into the unknown, but we are not alone. He doesn’t send us out alone, he holds our hand. He allows us to stumble, but we don’t fall headfirst into the ground. We stumble and He steadies us. To me that is a great image.
The beginning line of this verse says, “Our steps are made firm by the Lord, when he delights in our way.” I found the word “when” an interesting addition to this sentence. I was wondering why it was there. I know the words in the Bible are chosen carefully so what does that first sentence mean? The first thought that came to me was maybe when our steps are unsteady and weak, we aren’t doing what the Lord wants us to do. Maybe we are like a child venturing out on our own. We aren’t waiting for the Lord to hold our hand, we are just heading out without him. Have you ever done this? Saw something you wanted and went after it. You didn’t stop to ask God if it was right for you? You didn’t stop to weigh the pros and cons, you didn’t really give it much thought at all. It all seemed too good to be true and so you ran after it. Yep, me too. How did it work out for you? Was it all you thought it would be?
The thought that keeps coming up in my mind is, “Not every opportunity is from God.” If something feels too good to be true, this is a great time to pause and examine the situation. I am definitely an optimist so you won’t find me raining on your parade. Maybe it is exactly what you have been praying for. Maybe God gave this opportunity to you as an answer to your prayers. God does do amazing things. Often times God’s plan do seem too good to be true. This is not me telling you if it seems too good to be true it probably is. What I am saying is if the opportunity is from God He won’t mind if you pause to consult Him about it. He will like it if you take time to pray about it. Even if that time is 5 minutes. A job may come up and you may not have a lot of time to consider it, that’s ok. Take a few minutes, catch your breath and ask God what He thinks. Ask Him for guidance and see what he says, or how you feel about the job after you have talked to God about it.
Have you ever rushed into the perfect opportunity because you thought it was the answer to your prayers and it wasn’t? This can happen when we don’t stop and invite God into our decision making. For instance, we have been praying for more money and then a promotion becomes available. We decide, without talking to God, this promotion is the answer to all of our prayers. However, when we get the promotion we find out it has a lot of travel attached to it, or longer hours and now we never get to spend time with our family. Not every opportunity is from God. Sometimes the enemy offers us things that seem like what we want but aren’t actually good for us. For instance we want to be rich and powerful and we achieve it and yet we are not happy. These opportunities, or maybe the desires, might be from the enemy. We live in a fast paced world and sometimes it seems like we have to do everything so quickly. We feel as though we don’t have 5 minutes to stop and think. If you don’t have time to pause and consult the Lord then I don’t believe that opportunity is from the Lord. I think that is the enemy trying to get you to make decisions based on your feelings instead of your thoughts.
Our feelings can betray us. When we are acting solely upon our feelings we are letting go of God’s hand and telling Him we can walk on our own. We are telling God we don’t need Him. Our feelings don’t have our overall best interest at heart. Our feelings are based on our temporary happiness. Their goal is to make us feel good in the moment. For instance, we might eat some macaroni and cheese for dinner because are feeling sad today and want to feel happy. However, how is that macaroni and cheese going to make you feel when you no longer fit into your clothing. We might take a job that seems good and pays a lot of money because we feel scared that we won’t have enough money to pay the bills. However, how much are you going to enjoy that job when you find out you never get to see your family. Do you see how your feeling can betray you.
The verse says, “Our steps are made firm by the Lord, when he delights in our way; though we stumble, we shall not fall headlong, for the Lord holds us by the hand.” When we stop and consult God, ask Him what He wants us to do, invite Him into the situation, our steps are made firm. When we pause and grab hold of God’s hand He will lead us. This doesn’t mean everything will be perfect. We will still stumble, but we won’t fall. God hold’s tight to our hand. Yes, he allows us to stumble, and that is because when we stumble we learn, when we stumble we become more resilient, when we stumble we learn to lean on Him more. However, He does not allow us to fall headlong. He catches us and sets us on solid ground once again.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we are so grateful that you make firm our steps. We are grateful you allow us to stumble because that is where we grow and yet you don’t allow us to fall. You are there to catch us. You hold our hand gently guiding through these uncharted waters. Lord, we are sorry for all those times when we run off without you and do the things we want to do. We are sorry for the times when we don’t consult you. We know you know better than we do. We know your ways are higher than our ways. Help give us the strength to pause and invite you into our decisions. Help give us the patience to wait on your timing. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Tomorrow’s guest is one of my dearest friends Marlana. We met in NJ just after we both became mothers for the first time. We met at a prayer group with several other ladies. These ladies will forever hold a special place in my heart because we all learned how to be mothers together. We were there for each other through all the craziness of being a first time mom and we were all there for each other when we each brought a second, and sometimes third baby into the family. Our spouses were all in the military and we also got to support each other through many different deployments. Marlana is going to talk to us about how she learned about the importance of obedience to the Lord, especially when you don’t understand why He is asking you to do the things He is asking you to do. She has an incredible story of how her obedience helped her grow closer to the Lord and her family grow closer together. I know you are going to love her story as much as I do and I can’t wait to share it with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
I Have Kept The Faith
2 Timothy 4:6-7 “ For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time for my departure is near. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith."
St. Paul is speaking in this verse. I didn’t really understand what the first line of this verse was saying other than it seemed like St. Paul was dying. I had no idea what he meant by being poured out like a drink offering. I did not know the significance of that. I was tempted to just skip that line and go to the next one as I really like the next line. However, I remember that is not why I am doing this podcast. I am doing this podcast so we can all learn the scripture better, so we can all understand it a little more. We won’t be able to do that if I skip over the sentences I don’t understand. So I decided to look up the meaning of that first line. I am always surprised at what I find. According to bibleref.com, the "drink offering" refers to a cup of wine a Jewish priest poured out beside the altar following the offering of a ram, lamb, or bull in the temple (Numbers 15:1–10; 28:4–7). Just as the drink offering symbolized the end of the offering, Paul's life was about to come to an end. He is writing these words under Roman imprisonment and expects to be executed before too long. Paul has already made one courtroom appearance during this imprisonment (2 Timothy 4:16), but does not expect to be given another opportunity.
St. Paul thought his life was over, he expected to be executed shortly. The next line in this verse is one that I have heard often. It says, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” Well, I haven’t heard that last part often, but I have heard “I have fought the good fight, or I am fighting the good fight?” I really like that phrase. St. Paul embodied this phrase. When He says he fought the good fight, finished the race and kept the faith, he is not just saying that. If you don’t know the story of Paul you can read about it in Acts 9. Let me summarize it for you. Paul started out as Saul. Saul was going around finding and persecuting anyone who believed in Jesus. Saul went to the high priests to ask if he could go to Damascus and round up any believers of Jesus and bring them back as prisoners. On the way he saw a blinding white light and heard Jesus’ voice ask why Saul was persecuting Him. He told Saul to go into the nearby town and wait for someone to come to him. When Saul got up he could no longer see. Saul waited for this person to come find him. Ananias found Saul, prayed over him and Saul we baptized in Jesus’ name. Saul became Paul and became a man of extreme faith.
Paul changed his ways. He went from persecuting anyone that believed in Jesus, to being one of His biggest believers. Paul was one of the most prolific contributors to the New Testament. There are 27 books in the New Testament and 13-14 of them are traditionally attributed to Paul. Paul suffered a lot in his quest to spread the good news. In 2 Corinthians 11:16-33 Paul talks about all he went through. I will just read you 2 Corinthians 11:24-27 “Five different times the Jewish leaders gave me thirty-nine lashes. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked. Once I spent a whole night and a day adrift at sea. I have traveled on many long journeys. I have faced danger from rivers and from robbers. I have faced danger from my own people, the Jews, as well as from the Gentiles. I have faced danger in the cities, in the deserts, and on the seas. And I have faced danger from men who claim to be believers but are not. I have worked hard and long, enduring many sleepless nights. I have been hungry and thirsty and have often gone without food. I have shivered in the cold, without enough clothing to keep me warm.”
Wow, did you know Paul went through all of that? If anyone can say they “fought the good fight” it is Paul and he definitely kept the faith. I think we often take for granted how good we have it here in America. Can you even imagine being stoned or thrown into jail for being Christian? That seems so strange to me because in this country we are free to worship whatever we want to worship. We don't have to worship in secret. We are free to attend mass every single day if we want to. I wonder if we know how lucky we are? there are countries where it is still illegal to be Christian. According to the Pew Research Center, more than 80% of the world’s governments interfered with their citizens; religious worship in some way in 2019. There are some countries where you face persecution if you are Christian. There are some countries where you are risking your life to practice your Christian faith. For example, converting from Islam to another religion is illegal and is punishable by imprisonment, confiscation of property, or even the death sentence. We take for granted the fact we can go out to the store and buy a Bible. In some countries they are not allowed to sell Bibles. The only way to get Bibles into these countries is by illegal covert operations.
I wonder how much more the people living in these countries appreciate reading their Bibles. I bet they are so much more grateful when they have the opportunity to receive the Eucharist. I can’t imagine having to worship in secret and having to hide my faith for fear of my life. I look back at all Paul had to deal with, how hard he had to fight to spread the word of the Lord and I am thankful I didn’t live back in that time. However, I realize it is still going on today in many parts of the world. I am not sure what I can to do about that but I know I can pray for those that are not free to worship God. I can pray things change and that we are all free to worship God openly. I can also be careful to not take my freedom of religion for granted. I can be grateful for all the opportunities to worship here in America. I can make sure I am not complaining if the mass times don’t line up perfectly with my schedule. I can be grateful to the priests who work so hard to try and reach everyone even though more and more churches are being closed. Churches wouldn’t close if more people were attending them. We are very lucky to be Christians in this country. It is not perfect and their is persecution, but no where near what they see in other countries, and I am very thankful for that.
Wouldn’t it be great, when our time of departure is near, if we could all say, “ I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” Our fight may not be the same as anyone else’s fight, but it is still a fight. Being Christian is not easy when we are surrounded by a world that is so different. Living a Christian life style is contrary to a lot of the ways of the world today. This is not something new, the apostles knew this truth all too well. If they could be brave and live this lifestyle in the times they lived in, so can we. They were facing stoning and crucifixion. We may face judgment from those around us, we may even face alienation from friends or family who don’t believe the same way we do. However, in most circumstances, we will not face death, or even jail time. Let us live our Christian life proudly. Let us stand up for what we believe without fear of Judgement from this world. The only Judgement that matters is the Judgement from the Lord, who is a righteous judge. Let us live in a way so when our time is done those around us will say, “He/She has fought the good life, She/He has finished the race, He/She has kept the faith.”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord we are so grateful to have you in our lives. Lord, we pray for anyone living in this world who can’t freely worship you. We pray things change and everyone in the world is able to freely worship you. We pray for those being persecuted in your name. We pray for all those meeting in secret, that they may one day be able to meet in the open. We pray for strength for those who do not have regular access to the Eucharist. Lord, we ask you the help us appreciate how good we have it here in the United States and anywhere where freedom of religion is something actually enforced. We ask you not let us take our privileges for granted. We love you Lord. We want to be able to say at the end of our lives, above all else, we kept the faith. Help us Lord. You are our strength, you are our rock, you are our fortress. We are so grateful for all you do for us. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
The Veil Is Torn In Two
2 Corinthians 3:18 “And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”
This was a verse I needed to look up to truly understand. I am always so surprised when I read the explanation of verses by people who have studied the Bible and know so much more than I do. This is one of the reasons I really enjoy doing Bible studies. There are people who know so much about the original languages the Bible was written, or the history of the times it was written in. There are people who know the Jewish traditions and how they relate to various aspects of the Christian faith. I love when I do a Bible study and they explain these things that seem like little bits of information and yet when you know them it adds so much more to what you are reading. The explanation of this verse is a great example of that.
When I read this verse I didn’t really understand the significance of the part that says, “who with unveiled faces.” I thought it simply meant uncovered faces. I should know by now the words in the Bible are chosen very carefully and nothing is just thrown in there. God paid attention to every detail and every word and there is a reason for the exact words used. When Paul said this he was referring to Exodus 34 when Moses’ had to cover his face after meeting with God. The reason Moses’ had to cover His face is because it would be a reflection of God and the Israelites’ hearts and minds were hardened by their sin. They could not look upon the Glory of God because of their sin. There was no way to remove this sin through study or attempts at obedience or even through religiously following the law. Paul explains that God removes the veil between Himself and His people when they come to Him through their trust in Jesus. Only in Christ is sin forgiven once and for all. For the Israelites, Jesus had not come to die for our sins yet. Therefore Moses had to cover his face after meeting with God.
Let me try to explain a little more about the significance of the veil. In the Old Testament, in the temple there was a veil separating the Holy of Holies—the earthly dwelling place of God’s presence—from the rest of the temple where men dwelt. Man had to be separated from the presence of God because of sin. However, in Matthew 27: 50-51 it says, “And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom…” I read an article which talks about the significance of this verse. I will place a link to it in the show notes in case you are interested in reading it. The article says the size and thickness of the veil makes the event of it tearing upon Jesus’ death all that much more momentous. This veil was around 60 ft high and Jewish tradition states it was about 4 inches thick. The articles states, “Above all, the tearing of the veil at the moment of Jesus’ death dramatically symbolized that His sacrifice, the shedding of His own blood, was a sufficient atonement for sins. It signified that now the way into the Holy of Holies was open for all people, for all time, both Jew and Gentile.”
Now that the veil is removed the Holy Spirit can work on removing the hardness in our hearts and allowing those in Christ to see God’s glory. Because this veil is removed we can now see Christ for who He really is. When this happens God begins to transform us into the image of Christ. Because Jesus died on the cross for our sins, we no longer have to be separated from God’s glory. As the verse above says we, “are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.” God’s glory can transform us, if we allow it to. First we have to say yes. Yes, to accepting Jesus died on the cross for our sins. Yes, to believing we are saved, not because we deserve it, and not because of anything we have done, but because Jesus died on the cross for us. Yes, to accepting God’s glory and letting it in. Yes, to listening to God and accepting His ways.
When Jesus died on the cross He torn down the veil between us and God and yet we keep wanting to put it back up. We want to keep ourselves apart from God because we feel we aren’t worthy. We hold onto our sin because we simply don’t believe that God could ever forgive us. We know and believe in theory that Jesus died on the cross for our sins but deep inside we tell ourselves He died for other’s sins but not ours, our sins are too great. Why do we do this? Why do we let the enemy fill our head with these lies? Why is it so hard to accept forgiveness? It is not just God’s forgiveness we struggle to accept. We struggle to accept forgiveness from our loved ones as well. Is this something you struggle with? Something happens and you hurt a loved one. You apologize and they forgive you and yet you let the guilt eat you up inside anyway. Why don’t we believe them when they say we are forgiven? Why is it so hard to believe that our loved ones have forgiven us?
I think the answer to both situations is the enemy and the fact we live in a fallen world. We don’t believe God will truly forgive us because the enemy whispers in our ear all sorts of lies about why we aren’t worthy and why we can never be forgiven. It is the same with our loved ones. The enemy preys on our deepest fears and turns them into lies that he whispers into our ear all the time. Also, we live in a broken world, so we don’t experience true, selfless forgiveness like Jesus gave us when He died on the cross. It is hard for us to believe things we haven’t seen before. If we haven’t seen healthy forgiveness then it is hard to believe it is possible. The good news is God can help us with this if we turn it over to Him. You may be tired of hearing me say that by now, and yet I will continue to say it because it is true and because someone still needs to hear it, or someone needs that reminder today.
We are not perfect, we are all flawed. We tend to look around us and think that everyone is so much holier than we are. We wonder how everyone else can be getting it so right, and we are getting it so wrong. If this is you, if you have these thoughts, these next few Bible verses are for you. Ecclesiastes 7:20 says, “Indeed, there is no one on earth who is righteous, no one who does what is right and never sins.” Romans 3:10 says, “There is no one righteous, not even one;” Psalm 14:3 says, “They have all turned aside, together they have become corrupt; There is no one who does good, not even one.” There are several other verses just like these. The Bible makes it clear, in the Old and the New Testament, we are all sinners. In Romans 3:23-24 it says, “ for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” Did you catch that last part, it begins by saying we have all fallen short of God’s grace. Then it says, AND we are all justified freely by His grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.
God knows we aren’t worthy. God knows your sins, even if you hide them because you are too ashamed to tell Him. He knows them. Bring them to Him, lay them at his feet and ask Him for help, ask Him for forgiveness and then rest assured that you are forgiven. God gave us the ultimate sacrifice to forgive our sins and I truly feel it is a slap in the face when we refuse to accept His forgiveness. Jesus talked about not accepting His forgiveness in the parable of the unforgiving servant found in Matthew 18:21-35. If you are struggling to accept Jesus’ forgiveness you may find it helpful to go and read this parable. We need to learn to accept God’s glory and His forgiveness and the good news is we don’t have to do it alone, we just have to ask God for His help.
Wow, I had no idea we were going to be talking about forgiveness today. The Holy Spirit knows where He is leading me though, so I am sure that was exactly what someone needed to hear today. It was a great reminder for all of us. Jesus died so we could be forgiven and that veil separating us from God could come down. Don’t try to put it back up. Allow God’s mercy and grace to transform you each and every day. Some days will be better than others and that is ok. Progress not perfection is my motto. Remember, when the enemy starts whispering lies about how we don’t deserve God’s glory, you remind yourself and the enemy that God doesn’t give us His glory because we deserve it, and He doesn’t give it to us because of anything we have done, He gives us His glory because Jesus died for our sins and there is nothing anyone can do to change that. It is ours forever!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord we are so grateful you gave us your only son to die for our sins. We are grateful you love us that much. Lord we want to accept your mercy, your grace, your forgiveness and your love. If anything is standing in our way we ask you to remove it. We ask you to help each and every one of accept your grace and forgiveness. Lord, you know our struggles, please help us. Please release us from anything binding us to our negative thoughts and our negative habits. We want to be free from all evil spirits. When the enemy is whispering his stupid lies please fill our minds and hearts with Your Words instead. We love you Lord. You are amazing. You are the Great I am, you are the just one and you are the lamb of God. You are our joy and our life. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen
Thank you for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you on Monday. Have an amazing and blessed weekend.
Thankfulness Opens The Door to My Presence
1 Thessalonians 5:18 “ give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”
I talk about gratitude a lot because I believe it is the key to so many things. I think if we can practice being grateful more often we will discover how much more we have to be grateful for. If we are more grateful with those we love then our relationships will become stronger. If we are more grateful to those who work for us then they will like coming to work more and will probably work harder because they feel appreciated. That is what gratitude does, it shows appreciation. One of my sisters said to me the other day that her love language was gratitude. When her customers and when her co workers show her appreciations she feels loved and is so much happier at work. Think about your own life. Are you happier when you feel appreciated? Do you like it when people are grateful for the things you do for them? I know I am happier and I love it when people show gratitude for the things I do.
This morning’s devotional in “Jesus Calling” talked about gratitude in a way I really liked. Remember these devotionals are written as if they are a direct message from Jesus. I think I liked this one so much because it explained exactly how important I think gratitude is and yet I couldn’t quite explain it as eloquently as the Lord did. I mean, He is God after all. Here is the passage from this morning’s devotional:
“Thankfulness opens the door to My Presence. Though I am always with you, I have gone to great measures to preserve your freedom of choice. I have placed a door between you and me, and I have empowered you to open or close that door. There are many ways to open it, but a grateful attitude is one of the most effective. Thankfulness is built on a substructure of trust. When thankful words stick in your throat, you need to check up on your foundation of trust. When thankfulness flows freely from your heart and lips, let your gratitude draw you closer to me. I want you to learn the art of giving thanks in all circumstances. See how many times you can thank me daily; this will awaken your awareness to a multitude of blessings. It will also cushion the impact of trials when they come against you. Practice my presence by practicing the discipline of thankfulness.”
I know, there is a lot in there, so let’s unpack that together. First God is saying thankfulness, or gratitude opens the door to His Presence. Who wouldn’t want to be in God’s presence? I feel as though just knowing that makes me want to be more thankful throughout the day. We often say God gave us free will. However, do we really understand what that means? Do we understand if we want God in our lives, we need to choose Him? We need to make the constant decision to follow Him and His ways? God is not going to force Himself upon us, we get to decide if we are going to invite Him into our lives and it is not just a one and done type of situation. It is a multiple times a day kind of situation. I really like how God explains in this passage that although he is always with us there is a door in between us as well. I love the wording of this phrase. I love how He says He has empowered us to open or close the door. God, the almighty one, the Lord of Lords and the King of Kings has given us the power to decide if we want to open or close the door. That is pretty awesome and also it’s a lot of responsibility. Sometimes I wish I could trade my free will for God’s will. Sometimes I wish it weren’t up to me to choose to do the right thing. Have you ever felt like that? Do you struggle with choosing to do the right thing? Do you ever feel like it would just be easier if you didn’t have that choice? It might be easier if we didn’t have the choice, but it also wouldn’t be true love if we didn’t have a choice. Love is not true love if it is taken, it must be freely given.
The next line in the devotional says, “There are many ways to open it, but a grateful attitude is one of the most effective.” A grateful attitude is one of the most effective ways to get closer to God, to open the door between you and Him. Do you even need to hear anything else? I feel as though I could end this devotional with that line and you would have all the info you need. However, God didn’t stop there, He kept going. The next line, is interesting. “Thankfulness is built on a substructure of trust.” It goes on to say if you struggle with gratitude you should examine your foundation of trust. I am going to be honest and admit that I don’t completely understand this line. I think about when someone gives me a gift, why would I not want to say thank you? What does that have to do with trust? The thought coming to me is that I am not trusting their motives maybe. For instance this salesman on the phone this morning was complimenting me on my website. I said thank you, but in my mind I was telling myself he was just saying it to get me to buy what he was selling. So, I guess I can see how sometimes our reluctance to say thankful things could be because a lack of trust. And then when we can be grateful we can let that gratefulness draw us closer to God.
The ending says, “I want you to learn the art of giving thanks in all circumstances. See how many times you can thank me daily; this will awaken your awareness to a multitude of blessings. It will also cushion the impact of trials when they come against you. Practice my presence by practicing the discipline of thankfulness.” This is such a clear call to action and such a practical thing for us to start doing. Sometimes when we hear about things that will help us grow closer to God we don’t always know how to do them. For instance, how exactly do we trust in God more? What are the steps? This time, God spells out exactly what He wants us to do. He wants us to learn how to give thanks in all circumstances. This isn’t necessarily a clear path, as we know what God wants us to do, but not necessarily how to do it. But God doesn’t stop there. He tells us to see how many times a day we can thank Him. This is a very practical thing and it is not at all confusing. God is calling us to practice thanksgiving each day. If we are already in the habit of seeing how many times we can thank God when things are going well, it will be easier to keep up this habit when things aren’t going well. I love how God says gratitude will cushion the impact of trials. When you can focus on the good things and learn to be grateful in the really hard times, then gratitude makes the hard times hurt a little less. They are still awful, but the gratitude does lessen the blow. If we can practice thankfulness each and every day we will continue to grow closer and closer to God. God is calling us to see how many times a day we can thank Him. Are you going to answer that call?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to practice being grateful, please help us. We are so grateful you empowered us to open the door in between us. We want to grow closer to you each and every day. Lord, help us to hear these words from you today. Open our hearts and minds to your message of gratitude. Help us to grasp the importance of it and help us to develop and attitude of gratitude. Lord you are amazing. You are the Light of the World and we adore you. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day.
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We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click on the link below. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Have a blessed day!
We Act Differently
Acts 16:22-28 “ The crowd joined in the attack against Paul and Silas, and the magistrates ordered them to be stripped and beaten with rods. After they had been severely flogged, they were thrown into prison, and the jailer was commanded to guard them carefully. When he received these orders, he put them in the inner cell and fastened their feet in the stocks. About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken. At once all the prison doors flew open, and everyone’s chains came loose. The jailer woke up, and when he saw the prison doors open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself because he thought the prisoners had escaped. But Paul shouted, “Don’t harm yourself! We are all here!”
Paul and Silas were stripped and beaten for calling a demon out of a woman. You see, this demon used her to tell the future. Her owners made a great deal of money from her fortune telling and they weren’t happy when Paul cast out this demon. Because of this they were stripped and beaten with rods. After that they were thrown in prison and the jailer was commanded to guard them carefully. He took this assignment very seriously so he took them into the inner cell and fastened their fee in the stocks. The next part of the verse is where it gets strange. It was not strange to get stripped or beaten back in those days. It was also not strange to get thrown in jail. If you did not follow the laws you got thrown in jail. But what came next was strange. The verse says, about midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them.
I wasn’t alive when this took place but I gotta think that was different. I don’t know a single person who would decide to sing after being stripped and beaten with rods and then thrown into prison with my feet in the stocks. I can see the praying part. I might be praying for relief of my pain, maybe for some food, I might be praying for my freedom, and I might even being praying for revenge. I am thinking if I was just beaten I might not be feeling very good about the ones who sentenced me to this punishment. I may be asking God to hurt them, or to pay them back for all they did to me. I know this isn’t the Christian thing to do, I am just trying to be honest about what I may or may not do if I were in this circumstance. What would you do? What would you do if you were just beaten and thrown into jail? Would you start singing? Would you be praying? What would you be praying for?
The verse doesn’t say what Paul and Silas were praying for and it doesn’t say which hymns they were singing. When I picture this scene I picture them praising God with their hymns. The reason I think this is what they were doing is because while they were singing there was a violent earthquake that shook the foundations of the prison, and at once the door opened and the chains came loose. This is what happens when we are able to praise God in the difficult times. Praising God when things are good does not make us different. Even people who are not Christians can celebrate when times are good. It’s easy to be happy and to be grateful when all is going our way. That doesn’t set us apart. I believe that God loves it any time we praise Him. When we take the time to praise Him I think that makes him very happy. It shows Him that we appreciate Him and everything He does for us. It shows God we are grateful.
I believe when we can find to courage and the trust to praise God in the bad times, praise God when most people would look at the situation and not see anything to praise, that is when our biggest break throughs can happen. Paul and Silas had every right to sit in that cell and have a pity party. They could have thought about how unfair their situation was. They could have been mad at God. They were there spreading the Good News of the Gospel. They cast out a demon in Jesus’ name, and what did they get for their faithfulness? They were bruised and beaten and thrown into jail. By all accounts, according to the ways o this world, they had every right to be mad and to through a pity party. But they didn’t. They prayed and sang hymns. They acted differently and people noticed. In the verse it says the other prisoners were listening to them. The other prisoners noticed they were doing something different. I am sure they were confused as to why these men seemed to be happy about being in jail. I don’t think Paul and Silas were happy they were in jail. I do think they were filled with a joy of the Lord that can’t be explained. I think they were happy because they knew God would be there for them. They were content to follow what God told them to do and accept the consequences that came along with that. They knew God would take care of them because he always had in the past.
When the earthquake happened in this verse and the doors opened most people probably would have run out. I feel as though I would have seen that as a work of God and I may have left. It seems like God answered their prayers by breaking them out of jail, and yet they didn’t leave. This is another way in which they acted differently. Not only did they not run away, but even when they were released, the refused to go without an escort. This is an example of how different life can be when you trust God with everything and when you learn to listen to the Holy Spirit. If you look at their actions the whole time they were in jail they never seemed to doubt that God was going to take care of them. They never seem to act like they are scared for their future. They seemed very confident there was a plan and they were happy to wait and see what it was. Because they did not leave, because they were singing when others would have been complaining because of their actions, the jailor fell at Paul’s & Silas’ feet and ask what he needed to do to be saved and he and is whole house were baptized that night.
I feel the Holy Spirit really wants me to get across to you that Christians should act differently. People are watching us, just as the other prisoners were watching Paul and Silas. How are we reacting to disappointments? How are we dealing with the troubles in our lives? Are we reaching out and asking God for help? Are we praising God, even in the difficult times because we know He will take care of us? Are we complaining a lot and getting upset with God because He is not answering our prayers the way we think He should, or in the timing we think is right? People are always watching others and for Christians there is an extra layer or scrutiny. God wants us to share His love and His peace with the rest of the world. We want others to look at us and want to do whatever they can do to have what we have. And I don’t mean wealth and material things, I mean the peace and love of Jesus in our hearts. There is a song written by Peter Scholtes called “They’ll Know We Are Christians by Our Love.” This line is also part of the chorus. We want to strive to the lives that are talked about in this song. The lyrics are:
We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord
And we pray that our unity will one day be restored
And they'll know we are Christians by our love, by our love
We will work with each other, we will work side by side
And we'll guard each man's dignity and save each man's pride
And they'll know we are Christians by our love, by our love
Would you react differently to situations if you knew other’s were watching? Did you know you are Christ’s representative in this world? God is counting on us to show other’s how amazing it is to be a believer. How amazing it is to live in God’s love and peace. God is counting on us to show others Christians act differently. We rely on Him and we trust that He has a plan. We praise Him all the time, not just when we feel like it and not just in the good times. We don’t have to rush out of the jail when the doors open we can demand what is just and right because God is taking care of all the details. We don’t have to be afraid and defeated because we know the ending to the story. We know God has already won our salvation for us. We know, no matter what happens we are on the winning side and that means we can act differently.
Dear Heavenly Father I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, you are amazing. We are sorry we don’t praise you more for all the things you do for us. Lord, help us to learn to praise you when we are going through tough times, before we see the way out, before we see the miracle. We want to trust you enough to be able to know the miracle is coming and therefore praise before we see it. We don’t want to have to see to believe. We believe Lord, help our unbelief. Help us also to act differently. Help us to not conform to the ways of the world but be transformed by your ways. Help us be a worthy example to all those who are watching. Help us to reflect your love and peace back to all who look upon us. Thank you Lord, we are so grateful. You are the resurrection and the Life. You are the Way, the Truth and the Life. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Tomorrow’s guest is Crystal. She is a friend of Andrea, who was on here a few months ago talking about her experience with anxiety. Crystal is giving her witness about the incredible journey she has been on. She has had a lot of struggles over the years and has overcome some pretty big obstacles to get to where she is today. God is using all Crystal has been through for good, as he does will all of us. God is so great! He takes the bad things that happen to us and uses them for good and for the building of His Kingdom. I know you are all going to love hearing her witness. I look forward to sharing it with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Oh, How I Love Your Law!
Psalm 119:97-104 “Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long. Your commands are always with me and make me wiser than my enemies. I have more insight than all my teachers, for I meditate on your statutes. I have more understanding than the elders, for I obey your precepts. I have kept my feet from every evil path so that I might obey your word. I have not departed from your laws, for you yourself have taught me. How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth! I gain understanding from your precepts; therefore I hate every wrong path.
I am not sure if you are familiar with Psalm 119. I wasn’t before my prayer group last Thursday. Psalm 119 is a long psalm and the New International Version has a footnote that says “This psalm is an acrostic poem, the stanzas of which begin with successive letters of the Hebrew alphabet; moreover, the verses of each stanza begin with the same letter of the Hebrew alphabet.” My Revised Standard Version, Second Catholic Edition has a footnote that says, “This great hymn of praise for the Torah, the Law of God, is typical of the best Jewish piety after the Exile. In this psalm several verses make up the different stanzas. Each of these stanzas is praising God and talking about how wonderful his laws are. They are talking about how great we are when we follow these laws. While I was reading them I felt they all have a similar message, and they use various words to convey this message. I chose this stanza because it stood out to me when I was reading thought the Psalm.
I am not sure why it stood out to me other than I really love the first line. “Oh, how I love your law!” I do love the Lord’s law. The Lord’s law provides us comfort because it instructs us and gives us limits. God’s law is like the guard rails on the highway. You can drive along on the highway at faster speeds and you don’t have to worry about driving off the road if there are guardrails to keep you safe. God’s laws are like these guard rails. They also remind me of the bumpers I used to use with my kids when we went bowling. Ok, I used them for myself sometimes too. Did you know when you go bowling their is a setting where you can put bumpers up? What this means is that these metal rails cover the gutters so that you can’t get a gutter ball. This is great when going with young kids because it can be really frustrating to go bowling and have your ball always end up in the gutter before it makes it down the lane. These bumpers protect that from happening.
Life is like this sometimes. We can go through times in our lives where it can be really hard to stay in our lane. Times when it seems no matter how hard we try we keep ending up in the gutter. These are the times when we can rely on God to be our bumper. We can turn to God and ask Him for help. We can remember His laws and rely on them to keep us on the straight and narrow. God will always answer when we ask. If you are struggling right now, ask God for help!
The next few lines says, “I meditate on it all day long. Your commands are always with me and make me wiser than my enemies. I have more insight than all my teachers, for I meditate on your statutes.” I wish this were true. I wish I meditated on God’s laws all day long, or even just on His word all day long. Unfortunately I get sidetracked often. I get caught up in the things for this world and forget about these things. Sometimes I don’t forget about God’s laws, and yet I don’t follow them because they contradict what the world is saying. It can be really hard to live in this world and to live by God’s laws at times. This world is in such contrast with God wants us to do. They seem to be at opposite ends of the spectrum and if we do as God is calling us to do then we don’t always fit into this world. We seem weird and different. This doesn’t always feel good, but this is how it was meant to be. God called us and set us apart. This means when we look at the world we should be able to look around and see who is Christian and who in not. We should look different. Do we?
I like when this verse says, “Your commands are always with me and make me wiser than my enemies. i have more insight than all my teachers for I meditate on your statutes.” There are many places in the Bible where it talks about how much wiser those that know God’s commands are. If we want to be wise we need to change our minds. I have been hearing a lot lately that we need a renewal of the mind. I can see that now. The reason we may feel weird when we are following the Lord’s ways are because are minds are thinking like everyone else in this world. Our minds have conformed to those around us, to the world that we live in. What if we could have a renewal of our mind? What if we could start thinking more like Jesus did? How is this even possible? If we turn to scripture we can see how this would be possible. We start reading the Lord’s word every day. We start meditating not only on his Word, but also on His laws and how God is wanting us to live.
In case you do not listen to Father Mike’s Bible in a Year Podcast I want to tell you, next year, starting in January, Father Mike is doing a new podcast called Catechism of the Catholic Church in a year. If you are not Catholic this may not appeal to you. However, if you are Catholic, this is going to be awesome. Father Mike will take the whole Catechism, which is all the laws of our faith and he will break it down to small chunks and will help us figure out what it means. This next year through the help of Father Mike, we will be able to do just what this verse is saying. We will be able to meditate on God’s law every single day in a way most of us have not done before. I urge you to listen to this podcast next year. It is only 20 minutes or so a day and yet the impact on your life could be life changing.
Today’s verse ends with, “ I have more understanding than the elders, for I obey your precepts. I have kept my feet from every evil path so that I might obey your word. I have not departed from your laws, for you yourself have taught me. How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth! I gain understanding from your precepts; therefore I hate every wrong path.” This is similar to the beginning of the verse. This verse is saying the same thing in several different ways so we understand how important it is. I really like in this verse when it says, “I have kept my feet from every evil path so that I might obey your word. Can you say this? I know I can’t. I wish I could. I wish I could say I have kept my feet from every evil path and yet I know I haven’t. I know there are things I have done that God would not approve of. It then says, “I gain understanding from your precepts; therefore I hate every wrong path.” We need to understand God’s precepts if we expect to be able to avoid the wrong path. I don’t know if we can even say we hate ever wrong path right now. If we do not have a renewal of our mind yet then some of the wrong paths may appeal to us because the world is telling us it is right and it is good to do those things.
If we want the words in this verse to be true for us then we need to work at it. Holiness is not easy. If we want a renewal of our minds we need to fill our minds with all things God. If you spend a lot of time around something or someone you will start to act like that person. If we want to act more like God we need to immerse ourselves in Him. Read His word, spend time talking with Him, spend time listening to Him. The things of this world are so loud and they surround us all the time. If we want to surround ourselves with God we need to be very intentional. What can you do today to spend a little more time with God and a little less time with the things of this world? For me, I am going to try to change one of my habits. Currently whenever I have a few minutes of down time, I look at my phone and check my emails, check Facebook, or play a game. Instead of picking up my phone, I am going to try to take that few minutes and pray, or sit quietly with the Lord. How about you, what can you do?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to love your laws, we want your word to be sweeter than honey to us. Help us Lord, give us a renewal of our mind so we can follow your precepts and gain wisdom. Help us be smarter than those we meet because we know your laws and we follow them. Lord, help us to be ok with being different because we follow your laws. Help us to strive for this because you created us to be set apart. Help us to feel loved and accepted by you all the time. Help us to not crave that love and acceptance from others, but to always turn to you for it. Lord, you are amazing! You are our joy, you are our life, you are Emmanuel, God with us. We are so grateful for all you do. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Stay Focused on His Word
Colossians 1:21-23 “You yourselves are a case study of what he does. At one time you all had your backs turned to God, thinking rebellious thoughts of him, giving him trouble every chance you got. But now, by giving himself completely at the Cross, actually dying for you, Christ brought you over to God’s side and put your lives together, whole and holy in his presence. You don’t walk away from a gift like that! You stay grounded and steady in that bond of trust, constantly tuned in to the Message, careful not to be distracted or diverted. There is no other Message—just this one. Every creature under heaven gets this same Message. I, Paul, am a messenger of this Message.”
This verse illustrates exactly what Jesus did for us on the cross. He sacrificed himself for us while we were still sinners. It’s one thing to put yourself on the line for someone who is innocent and did nothing wrong. However, that is not the case with us. We were a people who seemed to turn away from God every time things got difficult. We were thankful when something miraculous happened, like when God led the Israelites out of Egypt. When they were safely on the other side of the Red Sea, they were rejoicing and praising God. Then, it wasn’t long before they started complaining about something. God’s people were constantly turning away from Him and yet He still sent His son to save us. I love how this verse says, “But now, by giving himself completely at the Cross, actually dying for you, Christ brought you over to God’s side and put your lives together, whole and holy in his presence.”
Jesus definitely gave himself completely at the cross. There was nothing left for Him to give. Then it says He brought us over to God’s side. This wasn’t an easy thing to do. God is a just God. He has banished Adam and Eve from the garden of Eden. They broke the closeness we had with the Father and He wanted it back. He knew that required a sacrifice and so He gave his only son. Imagine how hard that must have been for God to watch His son go through all of that. I was just wondering if he ever questioned it? If He ever thought, “They are not worth this great of a sacrifice. They do not love me enough, or they do not deserve this?” I honestly don’t think He did. God loves us and he created us His likeness and image. I do think He shakes His head and is even disappointed with us often, but I don’t think He ever thought we weren’t worth saving, which is truly incredible to me.
The verse says He put our lives together, whole and holy in His presence. I love that, whole and holy. How many of us long to feel whole and holy? Holiness is something we should all be striving for. A sense of wholeness is something I think we all long for and yet we don’t always feel it. In this verse Paul is saying that Jesus dying on a cross makes us whole and holy when we are in His presence. I wonder if that means when we are feeling empty, or when we feel like something is missing, we are not in His presence? I wonder this because the very next line in the verse says, “You don’t walk away from a gift like that!” We have a choice in all of this. Yes, Jesus died for our sins, but that doesn’t mean we automatically get to go to heaven. We still get to choose if we want to spend eternity with God or not. God gave us free will because He knew that if we were made to love Him, if we had too, then that is not real love. Real love has to be freely given.
The next line in the verse tells us how we can do this. “You stay grounded and steady in that bond of trust, constantly tuned in to the Message, careful not to be distracted or diverted.” Although this states what we need to do pretty simply, it is not always easy. There is a difference between simple and easy. It is simple to know how to lose weight. If you eat less calories than you burn each day, you will lose weight. Does that mean it is easy, no. It can be hard to figure out how to eat less calories. This verse tells us to stay grounded and steady in that bond of trust. We all know that trust can be a very difficult to things to have. I think trust is easier for some than others and I am not sure why. I don’t know if it depends on our past. If we have generally been around trustworthy people then it might be easier for us to trust. However, if we have been surrounded by people who continually let us down, it might be harder to trust. I think St. Paul is helping us with this when he goes on to say, “constantly tuned into the Message, careful not be distracted or diverted.”
St. Paul is telling us if we want to stay grounded and steady to that bond of trust we need to be tuned into God’s word. Reading His word daily is a great way to stay tuned into the Message. It is a great way to increase your trust in the Lord. Reading the Word of the Lord will help increase your trust in the same way someone showing up for you again and again will increase your trust in them. The more you read the Word of the Lord, the more you learn about who He is and how He shows up for His people. There are so many amazing stories in the Bible. I feel I have learned so much in these last two years just from listening to Father Mike do the Bible in a Year podcast. I know I mention that podcast a lot and it is because it has truly been life changing. I have read the Bible before, and I have done Bible studies before. However, to have a small section read to me each day and then have it explained to me in a way that is easy to understand has been amazing. I feel as though I really know the characters in the Bible. I feel as though they are part of my family.
The last part of that is the part I have talked about a few times this week and one I really struggle with. I am not struggling with staying in His Word because of doing these episodes and because of listening to Father Mike. However the last part of that sentence says, “careful not to be distracted or diverted.” This is a tall order in today’s society. There are so many distractions in the world. You don’t have to go out looking for distractions, they come finding you these days. Even if you are good and don’t turn the tv on, your phone or your computer can be a distraction. Sometimes while I am trying to concentrate on prayer time or writing these episodes my phone will light up with a message. Sometimes I can ignore it and sometimes I stop to read the message. If I stop to read it, sometimes I can then get sucked down a rabbit hole. For instance, if the message asked a question then I get distracted answering that questions and maybe I need to look something up online and then I see a website and get distracted with that website and then I forget to answer the question for 20 minutes while I am on the website and then I forget I am in the middle of writing something.
It is easy to be distracted and if we want to be whole and holy it is our job to try to limit those distractions and to remain in His Word. One way to do this is to put your phone on silent during your prayer time or your work time. Another way is to change the notifications settings on our phone so we aren’t being interrupted every time someone texts us. Remaining in His Word can be different for each of us. Maybe you want to read the Bible in the morning when you get up, maybe you read it on you lunch break, or before you go to bed. It doesn’t matter when you read His Word, it just matters that you are reading His word. Even if you are just reading the one verse from this podcast and thinking about it throughout the day. God is not asking for a huge time commitment. He is just asking for us to keep His Word in the forefront of our minds. If we can do this then we will stay whole and holy because we will be filled with His Word and our focus will remain on Him because we are not distracted with things of this world. This seems simple and yet it is not easy. Even though it is not easy, we can do it. In case no one has told you this lately, YOU CAN DO HARD THINGS! Actually you can do ALL things through Christ who strengthens you. (Philippians 4:13)
Dear Heavenly Father I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord we love you and we ask you to help us to stay focused on you. Help us to limit our distractions and to study your world ever day. Help us to stay grounded and steady in the bond of trust. Some of us really struggle with trust Lord, help us change that. Help us to see that you are trustworthy and you won’t let us down. Help us to know that we can do all things with you. Lord, some of us are really struggling with distractions and we ask you to help us with this. Lord you are amazing. You are the Word of Life, and the Lamb of God. You are the just one and we are so grateful for all you do. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you on Monday. Have a blessed weekend!
Deny Yourself
Luke 9:23 “ Then he said to them all, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.”
Those words, “Deny themselves and take up their cross daily” have been rolling around in my brain for about a week now. I know I have talked about this before and I probably will continue to talk about it because I know I am not the only person who struggles with this. I struggle with denying myself. Actually sometimes I am really good at it. Sometimes I make up my mind to do something and I do it well. For instance, I used to participate in this thing called the last 90 days. This is when you would live intentionally for the last 90 days of the year. Usually we all decide on January 1st each new year we are going to live better. We are going to eat better, exercise more, pray more, be nicer, and so many other things that we have forgotten about 10 days into the year. However, the last 90 days of the year, or at least the last 45 or so, we tend to eat more and exercise less. In these last 90 days of the year, we have Halloween, where most of us eat too much candy, then we have Thanksgiving where we tend to eat too much in general, and then the Christmas season lasts pretty much the whole month of December between work, family and friend parties. Many of us tend not to worry too much about how much we are eating or exercising because we are going to get back on track at the beginning of the new year. Is this how you enter the new year? The last 90 days challenge was meant to challenge us to live the last 90 days with the same intention that we want to the live at the beginning of the new year. Plus, how great would it be to go into the new year with the momentum of having just lived 90 days really well?
The last 90 days is not the purpose of this episode, I was just explaining to you how I can do really well sometimes. I have fasted once a week before for several months, I have had times when I said the rosary every day. I have had times when I attended mass everyday. I guess I don’t always struggle with denying myself, but currently the struggle is real. I do seem to struggle frequently with denying myself and taking up my cross. I don’t even know how it happens? It seems like I and doing great, eating right, exercising, and waking up for prayer time in the mornings and then something happens. It doesn’t have to even be something big. Something happens and I start sleeping through prayer time, or eating junk food whenever I want it, or skipping my exercise and then one things leads to another and I end up where I am right now. I end up in a place where I don’t think twice about having a cookie, just because I want it. Or, even worse, I do think twice and I have it anyway. I sit and watch TV even though their are other things I know the Lord is calling me to do just because I really want to see what happens in my show. Does this happen to you? Maybe your thing isn’t TV and its not food, but do you have something that you know you should be denying yourself from and yet you aren’t?
The verse above is from the Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition Bible. This is the version I tend to use most often as it is the newest version of the Bible that I just bought. However, sometimes I really like to read the Message translation or other translations to see how they differ. I usually use the website biblegateway.com to look up the bible verses. I really like the message translation of this verse. The message translation usually doesn’t just have one verse, it has several verses grouped together. Here is the Message translation of Luke 9:23-27, “Then he told them what they could expect for themselves: “Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You’re not in the driver’s seat—I am. Don’t run from suffering; embrace it. Follow me and I’ll show you how. Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to finding yourself, your true self. What good would it do to get everything you want and lose you, the real you? If any of you is embarrassed with me and the way I’m leading you, know that the Son of Man will be far more embarrassed with you when he arrives in all his splendor in company with the Father and the holy angels. This isn’t, you realize, pie in the sky by and by. Some who have taken their stand right here are going to see it happen, see with their own eyes the kingdom of God.”
I like the message translation because it puts it in terms we can relate to today. It has a way of explaining the Bible in layman’s terms for lack of a better explanation. First the verse starts by saying if we want to come with Jesus, we need to let Him lead us, we are not in the driver’s seat. How many of us needed to hear that today? Be honest, did you need that gentle reminder that God is in the driver’s seat? It’s ok, we all forget this at times. Thankfully we have a forgiving God that gently reminds us when we forget. Next it says, don’t run from suffering, embrace it. That doesn’t sound fun. I don’t think any one of us wants to embrace suffering. However, so much growth can come from suffering. We can grow in our faith so much more when we embrace struggling. Struggling is a part of life, it is never easy to struggle, however, it gets easier when we embrace it and stop fighting it. Steven Furtick from Elevation Church said in his sermon this week that he has been able to find the most peace in a situation when he has allowed God to explain everything later. We don’t usually know why we have to go through a struggle while we are going through it and yet most of the time, further down the road, we understand what the struggle was for.
Next it says, “Follow me and I’ll show you how. Self-help is no help at all.” If we follow God, He will show us the way. We are never alone on this journey. And yet, how many times have we tried to do it all ourselves. I don’t think God is saying we should never do anything to help ourselves. I think He is saying we don’t have to do it All ourselves. We don’t have to do it without Him. Invite Him in, lean on Him, and He will help, He will show us how. Here is where we get to the part I am struggling with right now. “Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to finding yourself, your true self.” Why is self-sacrifice is so hard? Why is it so important? It says right in this verse why it is so important. It is the way, God’s way. Jesus was the best example of self-sacrifice we could ever ask for. So was Mary. She didn’t even hesitate before she said yes to the sacrifice of having Jesus. It was not a popular decision. She didn’t gain any friends by saying yes. She was almost disowned by Joseph because she was pregnant before they were married. She knew it wouldn’t be easy and yet she said yes. Actually, she didn’t even take the time to think about whether it would be easy or not. God asked her to do something and she said yes, without hesitation.
When is the last time God asked you to do something and you said yes without hesitation? When have you said yes to God without at least pausing and seeing how easy or hard it would be for you? We have some great examples in the Bible of people who were great at self-sacrifice. Daniel opted to get thrown in the lion’s den instead of agreeing to stop praying. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego opted to be thrown in a fiery furnace instead of bowing down to a golden statue. There are countless examples in the Bible of what people would sacrifice and yet I struggle to deny myself a cookie? I struggle to get up and pray in the morning when Daniel fought for his right to pray 5 times a day. I know my struggle is not the same as theirs. I am using their ability sacrifice as a model we can all look up to. I think we down play the significance of our struggle to sacrifice. I know I do. I tell myself God doesn’t really care if I eat this cookie. It is not doing anyone harm. This could be true. I don’t think God cares in general if we eat cookies. I do think He cares if we eat cookies, if we promised ourselves we wouldn’t. I do think he cares if we eat so many cookies that we make ourselves sick. I also don’t think God generally minds if we sleep in. I do think He minds if we sleep in when we made an appointment with Him to show up and pray. I do think He minds when we spend all day in bed to a point where we are not taking car of ourselves.
Does this make sense? Can you see the difference? Self-sacrifice is important. We are not meant to have every little thing that we want. We are not meant to want things of this world more than we want to be with God. Another line in this verse that is so good is, “What good would it do to get everything you want and lose you, the real you?” This is something for us all to ponder. If self-sacrifice is the way to find ourselves, what does that mean if we aren’t doing it? What good does it do if we spend this whole life eating what we want, doing what we want, with no thought as to how it is affecting God or how it is affecting our soul? What good does it do if we get everything we want here on this world and yet lose the one thing that is most important our heavenly Father and our eternal life with Him in heaven. Would you trade all of that for the choices you are making right now? Would it help us struggle less if we realized that was the choice we were making? I am not saying we can’t enjoy life on earth. It says in John 10:10 “I came that they may have life and have it to the full.” God wants us to enjoy and live a full life. That doesn’t mean we can do whatever we want. Just like we love our children and want them to enjoy life and yet you have to have rules so they can enjoy life. The same is true with us. Self-sacrifice is the way. Give it a try this week. What can you sacrifice in order to spend more time with the Lord, or to show God how much He means to you? If we want to follow Christ we must deny ourselves. How can you do this, what is one small way you can deny yourself this week? I am going to stop watching my TV show. How are about you?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask for your help to show us how to deny ourselves and take up our cross to follow you. We want to follow you Lord, show us how. Lord help us to be strong like so many that came before us. Help us to have the courage to give up the things we are putting before you. Help us to see those things as the false gods that they are. Help us to put you first and to love you more than anything. You are so amazing Lord. You are the Lamb of Lambs and the Light of the World. We are truly grateful for all you do for us and we are sorry if our actions don’t always show it. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click on the link below. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Have a blessed day!
The Law of the Lord is Refreshing
Psalm 19:8 “The law of the LORD is perfect, refreshing the soul. The decree of the LORD is trustworthy, giving wisdom to the simple.”
This is an interesting verse. The law of the Lord is perfect, that is pretty easy to understand. The Lord is never wrong. God didn’t make any mistakes when He was making the world. God still doesn’t make any mistakes. God’s law is perfect. However, the second part, refreshing to the soul… this could be a little harder to understand. How is God’s law refreshing to the soul? Let me explain how I see the law of the Lord refreshing. Do you ever feel like this world has gone crazy? Do you ever look around and wonder what happened to this world we live? I know I do. Sometimes this world doesn’t make any sense to me. Especially when I hear about the awful things people do to one another. Some people act as if they have their own set of rules in their head and they don’t share those rules with anyone. You just watch the things you do and wonder what the heck is going on.
People justify awful behavior by coming up with excuses that also don’t make any sense. They say things like, “He did it to me first, or she started it.” When we continue to act in an unkind manner to others just because someone did it to us, that is not ok. That is not how we were meant to live. However, if we are following the law of the Lord it can be refreshing because the law of the Lord is perfect and because we know what to expect. There is order in the chaos when people know what to expect and if they have a certain set of rules to follow. When there aren’t any rules, there is no order, just chaos.
God’s perfect law is refreshing because it is familiar. It is refreshing because it makes sense. It's like coming home after a crazy day. When we look to the world for answers it is confusing and we just get frustrated. However, when we look to God for the answers we get a sense of peace that is refreshing. We don’t have to question what is going on or why we thing the things we think. If we are unclear on any of that we can turn to God’s word and all our the answers can be found in our sacred scripture.
The next line in the verse says The decree of the Lord is trustworthy, giving wisdom to the simple. We can trust the Lord and His laws. They won’t let us down. They won’t lead us down a path that will get us lost. The same can’t be said of the world. If you follow the wisdom of the world it may lead you down a path you don’t want to be on. You may get lost in a sea of confusion. You wonder why there are so many contradictions. Why sometimes it is ok to do something and other times it is not ok. Or why it is ok for some people to do something but not ok for others to do it. If you try to make sense of the world you only end up being more confused and often times sad or angry.
However, the decree of the Lord is trustworthy, you don’t have to question it. When it says it gives wisdom to the simple it is saying it gives instruction. You don’t have to wonder what is right and what is wrong with God. He lays it out very clearly in the Bible. In the Old testament you will find the 10 commandments that God gave to Moses for us all to follow. Then in the new Testament you will find even more instruction in Matthew 22:36-40, where it says, “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” I find comfort just reading those words from Jesus. I definitely find it refreshing that all I have to do is love God and love my neighbor.
Doesn’t God’s law seem to be so simple compared to what the world is telling us we need to do? The world is telling us we need to have a certain car, wear a certain label on our clothes, have a certain job, shop at a certain store, etc. The world is constantly telling us what we need to do. There are so many commercials that tell us what to buy. There are reality TV shows that tell us how we should live. The world wants to tell us how we can live, who we can love, what we can and can’t believe spiritually, and so on. In North America alone companies spent almost $300 billion dollars on advertising. Advertising to tell us what we should be thinking, buying and doing.
This is why I find it so refreshing to turn back to God and look to Him for the answers instead of looking to the world for those answers. It is so simple, maybe not always easy, but so simple to look to the decrees of our Lord to get our wisdom. I know it is not always easy to love our neighbors. There are some pretty awful people out there and sometimes those awful people can be living in your house, or can be a part of your family. God never promised us easy. Even when it is hard, you can love your neighbor. God is always there to help. He is also there to help if you are struggling to love Him. To some of you that may sound crazy. To others you know exactly what I mean. Loving God can be hard if you haven’t ever really known true love before. If you have had a really hard past you might have walled up your heart to protect yourself. That is ok. Tell God, ask Him to help you take that brick wall down and let Him in. Tell Him what you need and He is happy to give it to you. God loves you and He really wants you to love Him too. Turn to Him and His Word for the answers to your questions. If you have not started reading the Bible daily, give it a try. I really feel you will find it refreshing, just as this verse says. You definitely won’t be disappointed you did.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord this world seems to be getting more and more crazy. We are thankful we have your law to guide us. We are thankful that your decrees are trustworthy and they provide us wisdom. Lord, help us to turn to you. Help us to find refreshment in your laws. Help us to see how your laws are a welcome change to the craziness of the world. Help us to love you with all of our heart mind and soul and to love our neighbors too! Lord you are truly amazing and we love you. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Tomorrow our guest will be Debra again. Debra was on podcast two weeks ago talking about how God helped her through the most difficult time in her life. She is back again to tell about an amazing encounter she had with the Holy Spirit. I love that she is coming on again to talk about this because sometimes we experience supernatural occurrences with the Holy Spirit and we are afraid to talk about them because we don’t think anyone would believe us. I am grateful this is a community where we can safely talk about our God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit without fear of judgement. I am so grateful to have you all along this journey with me. I look forward to sharing her witness with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Two Way Communication With God
Ephesians 3:17-19 “ and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
At my prayer group, we put together a book mark each month from the words of prophecies that are recorded throughout the month. We have a discernment team of four people who go through all the words given and decide what they think Jesus was calling us to that month, what was His proclamation, what was His promise, and what was His directive. We then put these together on a bookmark for all of our members. It is our way to remember what it was that God had to say to us that month. I thought today I would share out latest one with you. Here is what it says:
“Do not fear to come to me. I am your God; I am your joy, your hope, your greatest love. Draw nearer to me every moment and watch the heavens light up with love. You are my child. I love you and I will destroy anything that keeps you from loving me more. I am renewing and healing your heart once more and forever, for my love for you will never ever stop. Bathe yourselves in the river flowing from the throne of God. Let yourselves be carried away in the current and do not be afraid, for I am your God and I love you. Don’t just lean or rest your head on me, throw yourself and all your cares on me.”
Isn’t that amazing? There are so many things I love about that message from our Lord. First He starts off telling us not to fear coming closer to Him because He is our God. You might wonder why He needs to say that. Why would someone be afraid to come closer to God? I think this happens more often than we think. People are afraid to come close to God because they are afraid to get hurt. Maybe they have a past that is full of pain and mistrust and they are afraid to trust God because they worry He will let them down like so many have in the past. There are others that are afraid to come close to God because they feel unworthy. They are afraid God won’t love them because they don’t love them self. God knows all of this and starts our right away telling us to be afraid.
Next He says He is our joy, our hope, and our greatest love. This is so important. If we come closer to God we can find the things that we are looking for. We are all looking for joy hope and love. These can all be found in our heavenly Father. He is longing to give us all of these things. He is just waiting for us to come closer and to rely on Him, to lean into Him.
Then it says, to draw nearer to Him every moment and watch the heavens light up with love. That is a beautiful visual. Can you imagine what it would look like when heaven lights up with love? I just imagine bright white lights everyone. Almost like fireflies filling all the skies, everywhere you look. Also, fireworks, and they are all white just bursting in the sky and filling it with light. It makes me smile to think God would be so happy just because we draw nearer to Him with each new moment.
This month’s word from our Lord goes on to say that we are His children. He loves us and will destroy anything that keeps us from loving Him more. Isn’t that an awesome promise from our heavenly Father? He will destroy whatever is getting in the way of us loving Him. What is getting in the way of is loving Him more? What things are we allowing to come between us and God? Turn them over to the Lord. Ask Him to destroy those things so you can focus on Him so you can love God more and more.
Next the word says, I am renewing and healing your heart once more and forever, for my love for you will never ever stop. How amazing is that? God is renewing and healing our hearts once more and forever. How many of us need our hearts renewed and healed? How many of us are tired of the heartache of this world? How many of us need our hearts healed from all the pain this world has caused? How many of us really need to hear today that God’s love will never ever stop?
The verse ends with, bathe yourselves in the river flowing from the throne of God. Let yourselves be carried away in the current and do not be afraid, for I am your God and I love you. Don’t just lean or rest your head on me, throw yourself and all your cares on me.” This is another amazing visual. Can’t you just picture being carried away in the current of God’s river? There is a song by Jason Gray called “I’m Gonna Let It Go,” and in this song he has a line that says, “Being carried in the current of your love, when I lean into Your arms, You’re enough.” I always loved that line in the song. If you are someone who tends to worry a lot that is a great song to listen to. It makes me smile just to think of bathing in the current of God’s love. Can you just picture God’s love washing over you like a river? The very last line is one that I think we should all make sure we hear today. God is telling us, don’t just lean on me, don’t just rest your head on my shoulder, throw yourself and all your cares on me.
In other words, don’t be half in and half out. Don’t kinda rely on God. Don’t tell Him you are turning your worries over to Him, but then continue to try to fix them yourself. Be all in. Throw all your cares on God and let Him fix them. Turn to Him and love Him with your whole heart. Rely on Him and trust Him with everything, not just those things you feel safe handing over. God is calling us to come close to Him, He is telling us not to be afraid because He is our God and He loves us. He will never let you down!
Wasn’t that an amazing word from God this month? Did you know God wants to talk to you like that as well? Did you know you can sit and ask the Lord to talk with you? I have mentioned this before, but I will mention it again because it has been really powerful practice for me. If you want to hear the Lord talk to you, all you need to do is sit and listen. Let God know you are available to listen and He will talk. However, if you are like me, and you struggle to sit still and listen you an try a journaling exercise. I sit down and I write a letter to God. I usually address it Dear Dad, or Hi Dad. Although when I first started I felt that was too informal and so I started with Dear Father. You can address the letter however you like. Then you write in this letter anything you want to talk to God about for the day. Whatever you would say to Him if you were having a conversation with Him, because you are. When you are done with that letter, you can ask God to answer your letter back through your pen. Then you start a second letter and address it to yourself. I usually start if off with My Dearest Daughter, but you can begin the letter in any way that you want to. Then you write whatever comes to your mind. The trick is to not sensor the letter, not judge the thoughts and question if they are from God. You asked Him to answer you and when we ask He answers. Just start writing, without judgement, or too much thought whatever comes into your mind.
This has been a really awesome way for me to grow closer to God. If you have longed for a back and forth conversation from God this will be life changing for you. Some of you listening may already hear from God just by sitting in silence and listening. If this is you, I still encourage you to give the letter writing a try. See if it is any different. I learned this exercise from Fran Groin at The Life Purpose Institute where I earned my spiritual coaching certificate. I hope everyone listening will give this a try. At first it may seem strange, but it gets easier and having these letters from your heavenly Father to go back and read is so great. Remember this word the Lord gave us when you read your letters. God loves us and so when you write nice things know that is How He truly feels about you. God is calling us to come closer to Him, let’s answer that call.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we thank you for your amazing words you gave to the prayer group. We thank you for loving so well and so completely. We thank you for finding ways to show us how much you love us and want us to throw ourselves onto you. Lord, we ask you to help us do this. We ask you to help us to come to you and to bathe ourselves in the river of your love. Lord we ask you to help us grow closer to you. We ask that you show us how you want us to do that and then give us the strength or will power to do it. Lord, I ask that you help everyone listening to this episode try the journal exercise. I ask you to give them the courage to try something new and I ask that you make it fruitful for them. Lord, we love you so much and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Distractions, are they from the Devil?
Romans 7:15 “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.”
I really like this verse. It may be one of my favorite verses. I feel as though I may have used it so often in these devotionals you all may have it memorized by now. I use it so often because I find it so applicable in my life. I am constantly finding myself distracted and doing something I don’t want to be doing. I have big dreams. I know God wants to use me for big things, and I have said yes to all God wants to use me for. I have said yes to all the things. And yet, I can’t be available to do those things if I am filling my time with all these other things that He hasn’t asked me to do. God did not ask me to watch 2 hours of TV today. Actually, He tried to get me to turn the TV off by reminding me of my other tasks waiting for me. I am now up pretty late at night doing the episode because I watched TV earlier even though this episode wasn’t done yet. I also needed to type something up for my prayer group and now it won’t get done until tomorrow because I watched TV.
I am not saying watching TV is bad. I don’t think there is anything wrong with watching some TV. However, when I know I have other things I need to do and I don’t get to them because I watched TV, that is frustrating for me. It is frustrating to me because I know it is something I struggle with. I always tell myself this time will be different and this time I will just watch one episode and then I don’t. It is never different. You would think after all these years of being me, I would know me by now. If I watch one episode I will watch another. It is very difficult for me to turn the TV off once it is on. I know this and yet it is still a struggle. I know I am better off if I don’t turn it on. If I could just make it through those quick 10 minutes of awkwardness when I am easting in silence because I didn’t turn the TV on, then I know the rest of my day will be better. And yet, I turn it on. WHY??
Maybe your distraction isn’t TV. Maybe you don’t relate to not being able to turn the TV off. Great, then what is your thing? We all have something that distracts us from our prayer time, our work and our family. Maybe your thing is online shopping. Once you start looking for something online you get lost in time and four hours later, you are still shopping. Maybe it is reading a book. You get so engrossed in you book you forget about everything else you said you would do. What about games on your phone, or social media? How much time are you spending on those and what are you not doing in order to have time to be on your phone? We all have some weakness that sucks up our time if we are not careful. The other day when I was searching for the Screwtape letter for an episode earlier this week, the one called, no condemnation, I came upon this letter. I have not been able to shake what is says. It has stuck with me the rest of this week so I will share it with you. Don’t worry, I am not going to go through all the letters, although you really should read them all, they are amazing.
For those of you who did not listen to the episode earlier this week, let me explain what I am talking about. The Screwtape Letters is a book written by C. S. Lewis. The premise of the Screwtape Letters is a series of Letters from an Uncle, Screwtape, to his nephew Wormwood. Wormwood is a junior demon and his uncle is a high level demon. The nephew writes to his uncle about his “patient” i.e. the man who’s soul he is trying to win for the devil and the book is comprised of his uncle’s replies. It can be a bit confusing because when they talk about the enemy in this letter they are talking about God. When they talk about the father below they are talking about satan. The book discloses tactics the enemy uses to win our souls for Satan. Here is an excerpt from Letter XII:
“As this condition becomes more fully established, you will be gradually freed from the tiresome business of providing Pleasures as temptations. As the uneasiness and his reluctance to face it cut him off more and more from all real happiness, and as habit renders the pleasures of vanity and excitement and flippancy at once less pleasant and harder to forgo (for that is what habit fortunately does to a pleasure) you will find that anything or nothing is sufficient to attract his wandering attention. You no longer need a good book, which he really likes, to keep him from his prayers or his work or his sleep; a column of advertisements in yesterday’s paper will do. You can make him waste his time not only in conversation he enjoys with people whom he likes, but in conversations with those he cares nothing about on subjects that bore him. You can make him do nothing at all for long periods. You can keep him up late at night, not roistering, but staring at a dead fire in a cold room. All the healthy and outgoing activities which we want him to avoid can be inhibited and nothing given in return, so that at last he may say, as one of my own patients said on his arrival down here, “I now see that I spent most of my life in doing neither what I ought nor what I liked”. The Christians describe the Enemy as one “without whom Nothing is strong”. And Nothing is very strong: strong enough to steal away a man’s best years not in sweet sins but in a dreary flickering of the mind over it knows not what and knows not why, in the gratification of curiosities so feeble that the man is only half aware of them, in drumming of fingers and kicking of heels, in whistling tunes that he does not like, or in the long, dim labyrinth of reveries that have not even lust or ambition to give them a relish, but which, once chance association has started them, the creature is too weak and fuddled to shake off.
You will say that these are very small sins; and doubtless, like all young tempters, you are anxious to be able to report spectacular wickedness. But do remember, the only thing that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the Enemy. It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts,
Your affectionate uncle
SCREWTAPE”
This is so sad to me and yet it is something so many of us fall into. We can waste years of our lives doing nothing if we are not careful. Today it is so easy to get sucking into hours of TV. There are no commercials, you don’t have to hit any buttons, you just sit on the couch and the TV keeps playing episode after episode. It can also be so easy to get sucked into playing on our phones, surfing the internet on our computers, reading a book, whatever it is that is keeping you distracting from your real purpose in life. I wonder how many people have failed to live up to their potential because of distractions. Les Brown said, “The graveyard is the richest place on earth, because it is here that you will find all the hopes and dreams that were never fulfilled, the books that were never written, the songs that were never sung, the inventions that were never shared, the cures that were never discovered, all because someone was too afraid to take that first step, keep with the problem, or determined to carry out their dream.” Or, maybe they were just too distracted by other things to accomplish their dreams?
Let’s not make the same mistakes. Let’s live more intentionally. Let’s put down our phones, get off our computers, get off the couch, turn off the TV, put the book down and spend some time with the Lord. Listen to what the Lord wants you to do and then do it. Not after you finish wasting all your time, do it now, before another day goes by. We don’t know how many days we are going to get. Each one is a gift. What are we doing with that gift? How are we spending the days of our life? How much of this precious time God has given us are we going to allow the enemy to steal from us? How much time are we going to surrender to mindless distractions just because the enemy has convinced us we want to. When you stop yourself from engaging in your usual distractions it will be hard at first. Your mind will try to talk you into it and tell you it is not a big deal. Fight the urge to listen. Remember what it says in the letter. I will leave you with the last few lines of the letter because they are the ones I can’t seem to shake this week. “But do remember, the only thing that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the Enemy. It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts,” Don’t go down that gentle slope. Pay attention to what you are doing and live more intentionally. Don’t let the enemy trick you anymore. Fight back! Distractions are from the enemy.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to fight the distractions. Help us to know, even though we feel powerless against the pull of the distraction, we aren’t. You are right there giving us all the power we need. All we need to do is acknowledge you are filling us with the power and then use that power to walk away from the distraction. Lord, this is so hard, please continue to strengthen our resolve each and every day. Help us to fight these temptations, help us to recognize they are straight from the devil and to reject them. Lord you are amazing. You are the Light of the world and the our Savior. You are the Lord God Almighty. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you on Monday. Have a blessed weekend!
Fix Your Eyes On Jesus
Ephesians 2:8-9 “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.”
This verse is an important one. It is something I think we forget more than we remember. At least I know I forget this often. I do know I am saved because Jesus died on a cross from my sins. I know I am not saved because of my own actions. I know there are no works that I could do to save myself because Jesus already paid the ultimate sacrifice. I know all of this and yet sometimes I still try to do it all myself. Sometimes I try to fix things myself. Instead of immediately turning to the Lord when things get tough, I try to fix them myself. I do all that is humanly possible to do and then when that doesn’t work, I turn to the Lord. Do you know why it doesn’t work when we try to do things on our own? Because we were trying to do it on our own. We can’t do anything on our own and why would be want to when we have a heavenly Father that wants to do it with us?
This morning’s devotional was about this same message. The daily devotional I am reading this year is called “Jesus Calling” by Sarah Young. I am really enjoying this one because the devotionals are not super long and they are written as if they are a direct message to you from Jesus. It’s great to get a personal message from Jesus each morning. I’m going to read you the message from this morning because I think it illustrates this verse well.
"I want you to experience the riches of your salvation: the joy of being loved constantly and perfectly. You make a practice of judging yourself, based on how you look or behave or feel. If you like what you see in the mirror, you feel a bit more worthy of my love. When things are going smoothly and your performance seems adequate, you find it easier to believe you are my beloved child. When you feel discouraged, you tend to look inward so you can correct whatever is wrong. Instead of trying to “fix” yourself, fix your gaze on me the lover of your soul. Rather than using your energy to judge yourself, redirect it to praising Me. Remember that I see you clothed in My righteousness, radiant in My perfect Love.”
This gives some great examples I think we can all relate to. It is easier for us to feel loved when we like what we see in the mirror or when we feel we are doing a good job. It is easier to think we are God’s beloved child when we are attending church, showing up for our prayer time and helping others. However, what about when we aren’t? What about when we are snoozing through prayer time and missing church on Sunday? What about when we are not being kind and loving, but we are being irritable and grumpy? Do we still know we are God’s beloved child? Do we still believe we are loved? Or, do we struggle to believe it because we haven’t earned his love or earned our spot as His beloved child.
I can’t answer that for you, but for me I know I struggle with feeling like I have to earn it. The thing that bugs me the most is that I don’t even know I am doing it. If you ask me if I have to earn God’s love, I would say, “No.” I truly know I am loved no matter what. However, if you look at my actions they say something else. Why is that? It is so frustrating when you know something on one level and yet your actions reveal that you might not know or accept it on all levels. This I am sure is a trick from the enemy. As it mentioned in the letter from Wormwood in the Tuesday episode, the enemy wants to keep our brains in a fog. He wants to keep us from thinking clearly and asking too many questions. We need to resist this fog. We need to try to live as intentionally as we can. We can so easily go throughout our day on auto pilot. We do the things we did yesterday, every day is similar and we aren’t even really thinking about what we are doing. We are just doing what we always do. However, what if what we always do isn’t the best for us? What if we could do better if we lived more intentionally?
In this message from the daily devotional Jesus is calling us back to Him. He is calling us to stop trying fix ourselves and instead fix our eyes on Him. Hebrews 3:1 says, "Therefore, holy brothers and sisters, who share in the heavenly calling, fix your thoughts on Jesus, whom we acknowledge as our apostle and high priest.” We need to stop turning our gaze inward and fix our gaze on Jesus. Look towards Him and then never take your eyes off of him! I love where it says in the devotional, “Rather than using your energy to judge yourself, redirect it to praising Me.” That is such a great piece of advice. Judging ourselves does take so much energy. Praising God will uplift your spirits also. I love to praise God, I always feel so loved afterwards.
Psalm 34:5 says, “Those who look to him are radiant; their faces are never covered with shame.” When we are looking to God we are radiant. We don’t feel ashamed, we feel as though we are God’s children because we know we are. I love when God gives us the answers to the questions we are asking. If we want to know how we can experience the riches of our salvation and the joy of being loved constantly and perfectly we need to fix our eyes on Jesus and to redirect our energy to praise. Imagine if you could feel the joy of being loved constantly and perfectly? You can, just turn your gaze to Jesus and praise Him.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we are so grateful that you gave the ultimate sacrifice for us. We know we don’t have to earn it and yet we still try. Help us to stop that Lord. Help us to accept your love and acceptance that is freely given. Help us to know in our innermost being you love us no matter what and we don’t have to do anything to save ourselves. Your grace has already saved us. Help us accept your grace Lord and use it to praise you! We love you Lord, you are so amazing. You are the best and we are so grateful for you. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click on the link below. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Have a blessed day!
With My God I Can Scale a Wall
2 Samuel 22:26-30 “To the faithful you show yourself faithful, to the blameless you show yourself blameless, to the pure you show yourself pure, but to the devious you show yourself shrewd. You save the humble, but your eyes are on the haughty to bring them low. You, Lord, are my lamp; the Lord turns my darkness into light. With your help I can advance against a troop; with my God I can scale a wall.”
I was only going to use the last part of this verse because I like how it talked about what we can do with God. However, I thought reading the verses before that part would be a good idea also. The first part of this verse shows us who God show’s Himself to be. If you are faithful you will see a faithful God. If you are blameless you will see a blameless God, and if you are pure you will see a pure God. I think there is something to be said for this. I think this is kind of a universal truth. Stephen R. Covey says, “We don’t see the world as it is, we see the world as we are.” This means that we all experience the world through a filter. Our filter is made up of all of our experiences as well as all the things we have been taught up until that point. This is why two people can go through the same event and yet view it very differently. They both have had different experiences. For instance, two people can be sitting at the airport waiting for a plane and there is a screaming baby. The person who has had a lot of experiences with screaming babies, will react differently than someone who hasn’t had any experience with them.
We see the world through this filter and sometimes that filter is adjusted by our emotions. If we are in a really bad mood we will look at a situation very differently than if we are in a good mood. Why do you think kids are always offering to help out before they ask for something? They know we are more likely to say yes when we are in a good mood. Our filter is also adjusted according to our habits and personalities. If we are typically someone who judges others or is cynical, then we will view situations differently. We will most like be looking for something to judge. We will be waiting for someone to mess up or something to go wrong instead of enjoying the situation we are in. On the contrary, if we are usually someone that goes with the flow and enjoys where they are in that moment, then we will have a very different view.
This verse is saying if we are faithful God will show himself as faithful. If we are pure God will show Himself as pure. It is not saying God is sometimes one way and sometimes another way. As it says in Hebrews 13:8, “God is the same yesterday, today and forever.” I think what is meant in this verse is if we are faithful we are able to see God as faithful. Meaning we can see clearly and nothing is getting in our way. Almost like our eyes are wide open. When we are blameless we are free to see God as blameless. There is nothing clouding our judgement. Think about when you give your child a consequence because they did something wrong. How do they react afterwards? Are they able to see you are giving them the consequence so they learn a lesson and do better next time? Most of the time I would say no. They just know that you gave them a consequence and they probably don’t like you very much at the moment. However, the sibling that is not in trouble because they didn’t do anything wrong, can see you are not to blame. Does that make sense, the blameless child can see you as blameless.
The very next part of the verse says, “ but to the devious you show yourself shrewd. You save the humble, but your eyes are on the haughty to bring them low.” To the devious God appears shrewd. When I looked that word up it said, “showing sharp powers of judgement.” Again I go back to the child analogy. Of course God would look judgmental to someone who is devious. God teaches us a certain way to live and being devious is not a part of the way He is teaching us to live. When people know they are doing something wrong they feel judged by those who are not doing what they are doing. Then it says, “You save the humble, but your eyes are on the haughty to bring them low. Do you know what haughty means? It means arrogantly superior or disdainful. God is calling us to a life of humility. I heard someone say the other day, humility doesn’t mean you think less of yourself, it means you think of yourself less. God is calling us to put him first in our lives. He is calling us to think of Him more than we think of ourselves. So, can you see why he would be watching those that are arrogant and why He would be trying to bring them back down to earth?
Now we get to my favorite part of the verse. It says, “You, Lord, are my lamp; the Lord turns my darkness into light. With your help I can advance against a troop; with my God I can scale a wall.” First, I love anytime scripture talks about God turning our darkness into light. There is so much darkness in the world and I like to picture God just flipping a big light switch and all the darkness leaving our world. I know that is not how it usually happens, but isn’t it a great visual? I like how this verse is illustrating for us how much we can do with God on our side. It says we can advance against a troop. Scripture is full of victory stories where God’s people went up against great armies, where they were far out numbered and yet they still one the battle or they one the war. Every time the leader of God’s people stopped and turned to the Lord for direction He protected them. Sometimes God told them to go to war and He would hand their enemies over to them. Sometimes God told them not to go to war and if they listened He protected them.
Are we turning to God when we have to fight our enemies? Did you know you didn’t have to attend every fight you were invited to? Sometimes God wants to go before you into battle and defeat your enemies for you and sometimes He wants you to avoid the war altogether. The only way to know which you are being called to do is to spend time with God and ask Him. Every time someone was defeated in the Bible it was because they didn’t turn to the Lord. Or they did turn to Him and then didn’t listen to what He told them to do. Let’s not make the same mistake. Let’s turn to the Lord and ask what He wants us to do? Wouldn’t it be great if you knew God was charging into battle before you? Wouldn’t it be great to know before you even entered the battle that God was going to turn your enemies over to you? You can have this information. All you need to so is spend time with the Lord and listen to what He wants you to do. The verse also says with God I can scale a wall. This reminds me of a vision someone at the conference gave me. She said she saw me looking over a wall. The wall was tall, but I could see over it. I was looking out at everything on the other side and God was right next to me. He was bent over with His hands clasped ready to boost me over the wall. I recalled the memory of the vision just after reading this verse this morning. God will help you scale the walls in your life too. Words of prophecy and visions are meant to build up the church. God was not just giving this vision to me personally. He will help any one of us scale a wall. The only catch is that we need to trust enough to step into his hands. Can you trust God enough to take that step? When someone is boosting you over a fence you are putting your full weigh into their hands. Are you finally ready to step into God’s hands and give hime the full weight of your life?
Dear heavenly father I ask you to bless everyone listening to this episode today. Lord we ask you to help us be blameless and pure and faithful. We ask that you help keep us from being haughty and shrewd. Lord help direct us. Help us to take the time and sit down with you and ask you where you want us to go in our lives. Help us to ask which battles you want us in and which ones you want us to stay out of. Lord we want you to go before us and defeat our enemies. We want you to help us scale a wall. Lord help us trust you enough to put the full weight of our lives in your hands knowing you will lift us up and get us over that wall we have built. Lord you are the Light of the world. Your light brightens our darkness. We are so graetful for your love and for your light. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I am not sure who the witness will be this Wednesday but I assure you we will have one. I look forward to sharing that with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
No Condemnation
Romans 8:1-2 “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death.”
Here we are talking about condemnation again. I think God keeps talking to us about it because we keep judging others. We look at something someone else is doing and we think about how wrong they are for doing it. Or worse, we talk to someone else about how wrong they are for doing it. I was at a retreat once and the priest was talking about how awful the sin of gossip is, Especially in a church. He was talking about how it is like a sickness and once people at church start gossiping it spreads like a virus and things are never the same. We can look at a situation, and so easily judge it. Unless you are directly involved in the situation, you don’t have all the facts. Even if you are directly involved you don’t have all the facts because you don’t know what the other person is thinking or feeling. I wonder why we judge others so easily. When I was wondering this I feel as though the Holy Spirit reminded me of a book I read several years ago. It is titled Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis. If you have not read this book, you honestly should make it one of the next books you read. It was truly eye opening into the mind of the enemy.
The premise of the Screwtape Letters is a series of Letters from an Uncle, Screwtape, to his nephew Wormwood. Wormwood is a junior demon and his uncle is a high level demon. The nephew writes to his uncle about his “patient” i.e. the man who’s soul he is trying to win for the devil and the book is comprised of his uncle’s replies. It can be a bit confusing because when they talk about the enemy in this letter they are talking about God. When they talk about the father below they are talking about satan. The book discloses tactics the enemy uses to win our souls for Satan. I said earlier it was eye opening but when I really thing about it the word the comes to mind is sobering. We don’t think twice about spreading a little gossip. Sometimes it even feels good to be the one to get to share something about someone else that no-one else knew. What’s the harm, right? This letter right here, it talks about the harm. Listen carefully as it can be hard to follow just listening to it. If you can follow along in the show notes, that is ever better. I will also put a link to the website where I got the text so you re-read it later. I also shortened it by one paragraph to make it a bit shorter. (Click Here for Article) Here is the letter.
II
MY DEAR WORMWOOD,
I note with grave displeasure that your patient has become a Christian. Do not indulge the hope that you will escape the usual penalties; indeed, in your better moments, I trust you would hardly even wish to do so. In the meantime we must make the best of the situation.
There is no need to despair; hundreds of these adult converts have been reclaimed after a brief sojourn in the Enemy's camp and are now with us. All the habits of the patient, both mental and bodily, are still in our favour.
One of our great allies at present is the Church itself. Do not misunderstand me. I do mean the Church as we see her spread but through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners. That, I confess, is a spectacle which makes our boldest tempters uneasy. But fortunately it is quite invisible to these humans. All your patient sees is the half-finished, sham Gothic erection on the new building estate. When he goes inside, he sees the local grocer with rather in oily expression on his face bustling up to offer him one shiny little book containing a liturgy which neither of them understands, and one shabby little book containing corrupt texts of a number of religious lyrics, mostly bad, and in very small print. When he gets to his pew and looks round him he sees just that selection of his neighbours whom he has hitherto avoided. You want to lean pretty heavily on those neighbours. Make his mind flit to and fro between an expression like "the body of Christ" and the actual faces in the next pew. It matters very little, of course, what kind of people that next pew really contains. You may know one of them to be a great warrior on the Enemy's side. No matter. Your patient, thanks to Our Father below, is a fool. Provided that any of those neighbours sing out of tune, or have boots that squeak, or double chins, or odd clothes, the patient will quite easily believe that their religion must therefore be somehow ridiculous. At his present stage, you see, he has an idea of "Christians" in his mind which he supposes to be spiritual but which, in fact, is largely pictorial. His mind is full of togas and sandals and armour and bare legs and the mere fact that the other people in church wear modern clothes is a real-though of course an unconscious-difficulty to him. Never let it come to the surface; never let him ask what he expected them to look like. Keep everything hazy in his mind now, and you will have all eternity wherein to amuse yourself by producing in him the peculiar kind of clarity which Hell affords.
I have been writing hitherto on the assumption that the people in the next pew afford no rational ground for disappointment. Of course if they do-if the patient knows that the woman with the absurd hat is a fanatical bridge-player or the man with squeaky boots a miser and an extortioner-then your task is so much the easier. All you then have to do is to keep out of his mind the question "If I, being what I am, can consider that I am in some sense a Christian, why should the different vices of those people in the next pew prove that their religion is mere hypocrisy and convention?" You may ask whether it is possible to keep such an obvious thought from occurring even to a human mind. It is, Wormwood, it is! Handle him properly and it simply won't come into his head. He has not been anything long enough with the Enemy to have any real humility yet. What he says, even on his knees, about his own sinfulness is all parrot talk. At bottom, he still believes he has run up a very favourable credit-balance in the Enemy's ledger by allowing himself to be converted, and thinks that he is showing great humility and condescension in going to church with these "smug", commonplace neighbours at all. Keep him in that state of mind as long as you can.
Your affectionate uncle SCREWTAPE
Don’t you see, the enemy wants us to keep gossiping. He wants to keep us focused on anything except for our Heavenly Father. If you are in church, thinking about the dress the person in front you is wearing then you are taking your eyes off the Lord. The line that really got me was the one question the uncle said to never let the patient ask,
"If I, being what I am, can consider that I am in some sense a Christian, why should the different vices of those people in the next pew prove that their religion is mere hypocrisy and convention?" Let’s not make the enemy happy. Let’s not do his work for him. From now on, every time you want to gossip about someone ask yourself that question. If I am Christian, with all my flaws, why do I doubt they are with all their flaws. There verse above says, “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death.” It does not say there is now no condemnation because we are all perfect people who never sin. We are not saved because of anything we did. We are saved because Jesus gave His life for us.
I know this episode is long already, but I want to end with the daily devotional from the book “Jesus Calling” about this very topic. The woman who wrote this book felt these messages were for our Lord, and this is one I think we should all hear.
“My children make a pastime of judging one another – and themselves. But I am the only capable judge, and I have acquitted you through my own blood. Your acquittal came at the price of my unparalleled sacrifice. That is why I am highly offended when I hear my children judge one another or indulge in self-hatred. If you live close to me and absorb my word, the Holy Spirit will guide and correct you as needed. There is no condemnation for those who belong to Me.”
Dear heavenly Father I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord we are so sorry we judge. We don't want to do anything that offends you. Help us repent Lord. Help us to turn away from gossiping and to do it no more. Lord you gave the ultimate sacrifice so our sins could be forgiven. The least we could do is accept that grace and not engage in gossip or self hatred. You are our creator, you made us in your likeness and image, how could we hate anything you created? You are so amazing God. We are so grateful and we know there is nothing we could do to compare to your great sacrifice. We promise to try and stop judging others and ourselves. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus holy name Amen.
Thank you for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day
Salt & Light of the Earth
Matthew 5:13-16 “You are the salt of the earth. But if salt loses its taste, with what can it be seasoned? It is no longer good for anything but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. You are the light of the world. A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and then put it under a bushel basket; it is set on a lamp stand, where it gives light to all in the house. Just so, your light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father.”
When we look at what this verse means, we need to look at the purpose of salt. Today we use salt for everything. We use it to flavor our food, as a preservative, it is also used in the manufacturing of soap. We use salt to melt the ice in the winder and it is used for making chemicals like baking soda. Back in the day salt was mainly used as an instrument to reduce the corruption of meat and other food so they would last longer. I believe this is the way in which Jesus is comparing us to salt. Just as salt was used to slow the corruption of the meat, we can slow the corruption of society. However, we can only do this if we are living by God’s laws and spreading His word to others. If we want to help slow the corruption of this world we need to be aware of our behavior and how we are living. Are we living in a way that others will want to replicate? Are we spreading the word of God through our actions?
The verse also says that we are the light of the world. A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and then put it under a bushel basket; it is set on a lamp stand, where it gives light to all in the house. There is no need to hide our light. I think we all hide our light at times. We don’t mean to, we just assess our situation and decide whether we think the person we are talking to would be open to hearing what we have to say or not. If we judge that they wouldn’t then we don’t say it. I know I have done this before. I wish I could say that I openly and freely talked about God all the time. However, there are times when I hold back, times when I want to say something and I don’t. When we do this, we are hiding our light under a bushel.
This is not what God is calling us to do. Jesus is telling us in this verse that our light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father. We need to shine the light of Christ before all those we meet. Not just those that we think want to hear about God, but to all those we meet. However, God isn’t saying that we need to hit people over the head with the word of God. He isn’t saying that we need to make them sit down and listen to every word we have to say about the Lord. The verse says that they may see our good deeds and glorify our heavenly Father. If you feel like someone might not be open to hearing about the Lord then you can show them the Gospel with your actions. You can go out of your way to be nice to them. You can show them love or forgiveness even when they don’t deserve it. You can be open when you meet them and not judge them, just accept them for who they are. This will shine the light of Christ on them without having to say anything.
When I read the part of the verse that said, “That they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father,” I thought that sounded harder than I thought. Doing good deeds can be difficult at times. I am sure we all struggle from time to time with doing the right thing. However, the part that really got me was when it said glorify your heavenly Father. I wondered if I do this when I am around others. I definitely do it when I prayed for something and I got what I prayed for. However, do I always give the glory to God? I am thinking about times when I am with those that I know don’t believe in God. Do I still say “Praise God?” Do I still give God the glory, or do I say it was a coincidence, do I say it was luck or do I not say anything? I know what I would like to do. I would like to always give God the glory, even in the presence of those that don’t believe. However, I am not sure that I do. After reading this verse I will now pay more attention to this. I will be more intentional about letting my light shine and giving God the glory.
I have prayed for radical boldness over the years and God has increased my boldness. I wouldn’t have thought even just a few years ago that I would be doing a podcast that is spreading God’s Word. I wouldn’t have thought that I could get up in front of my prayer group and give a talk about God. I can now pray over strangers that I don’t really know. I still struggle with this one, but God is not done with me. He is still working on me, just as He is still working on you. If you are having trouble letting your light shine, just ask God for help. Ask Him to give you the boldness you need to talk about God in all situations. He is longing for us to ask Him for help. He is longing for us to help Him spread His light and His love. I am getting better at giving God the Glory and that is all thanks to Him and His blessings on me.
Be the salt of the earth. Live in a way that slows the decay of morality in society today. Live in a way that others want to imitate. Preserve God’s ways and others will follow. Also be the Light of the world. Let your light shine so brightly that it can be seen by all you meet. Let your words and actions spread the light and love of God. Live in a way that inspires people to want what you have. Then, give God all the Glory!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to be the salt of the earth. Help us to live in a way that slows the decay of our world. Help us to be the light of the world. Help us to live in a way that lets your light shine through us on all those we meet. Lord, you are so amazing and we are so grateful for all you do. We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again on Monday. Have a blessed weekend!
Let your “yes” be yes and your “no” be no.
James 5:12 "Above all, my beloved, do not swear, either by heaven or by earth or by any other oath, but let your “Yes” be yes and your “No” be no, so that you may not fall under condemnation.”
What caught my attention about this verse was the part where it says, “let your ‘yes’ be yes and your ‘no’ be no.” I talked on Monday about trusting in the Lord and how it is difficult to trust others because they will let us down. Today this verse is teaching us the importance of keeping our word. It starts off by telling us not to swear either by heaven or by earth or by any other oath. When the verse is talking about not swearing, it is not talking about using bad language or cussing. Although, you probably shouldn’t do that either. Have you ever said something like, “I swear on my… that I am telling the truth? We all have filled those… in with various words. We do this to convince the other person that we are telling the truth. However, this verse is telling us that we shouldn’t have to do that. If you were a person that always told the truth, you would not have to swear by anything.
God is calling us to be men and women of our word. He is telling us in this verse that if we say something we should do it. Also if we say no to something we should be true to that as well. I don’t know about you, but I have trouble with both of these. I think we live in a busy world these days and many of us are doing more than we should be doing. We say we will do something even though we don’t really have time to do it and then we are surprised when it doesn’t get done. We also live in a distracted world, so even if we do have time to do it, we get distracted so easily we forget to do it and it doesn’t get done. Does this sound familiar to anyone, or is it just me? The thing is, it isn’t just God that wants us to keep our word. We want to be someone people can trust as well. We don’t feel good when we say we will do something and then we don’t do it.
Do you know the person we tend to let down the most? Ourselves, we tend to do things for other people more than we do them for ourselves. Working out is really good for me and yet, I don’t show up for myself in that area. For instance, I am running a half marathon with my sister for her birthday. I know I need to train. I told myself that I would run Thursday and Saturday this week. I didn’t, even though I didn’t have any reason not to run. Yet, I wasn’t feeling well this morning and I still showed up for workout because I didn’t want to leave my friend hanging. Do you have areas in your life where you do this too? You will show up and do what you said if other people are involved, your kids, your spouse, your parents, but if it is just for you, you don’t show up. I know I can’t be the only person that does this.
Why is it important to realize if you are keeping your word or not? There are a few reasons. First, God is telling us right here is this scripture to keep our word. To let our “yes” be a yes and “no” be no. One reason it is so important to keep our word is because if we start to think of ourselves as someone that doesn’t keep our word we might not think it is as important to tell the truth. We may start to tell little white lies to cover up for the fact that we did’t do what we said we would do. For instance, you might say, “I was sick and couldn’t get it done,” when really you just forgot. Or maybe you say that you emailed it to them and it must have gotten lost or sent to their junk mail folder. You didn’t intentionally mean to let them down, you just forgot to do the thing and now you don’t want them to be upset with you so you are covering up for it. I am willing to bet that we have all been on one end of this type of situation. Either you have been the one telling the little white lie to get out of trouble for forgetting to do something, or you have been the one let down and you knew they were lying to get out of it. Why do we do that? Why do we instinctively make up a story sometimes when we feel like we might be in trouble or we might hurt someone’s feelings?
I am not sure why we do it, or why I do it. I am guessing it is because we don’t want to admit that we messed up. I don’t want to feel like I let someone down again, I feel vulnerable, and so I make up a lie to protect myself.
Did you know when we consistently let ourselves down, we stop believing in ourselves. We start to tell ourselves, consciously or subconsciously that we can’t do things. We start to believe that we are not someone that keeps his or her word because we haven’t been keeping our word to ourselves. Then we stop making commitments to ourselves because we assume we will just break them. We might stop making commitments to others too. Say you decide you want to say the rosary every day to grow closer to God. If you have consistently been blowing yourself off, then you may decide not to even try to say the rosary because you tell yourself you will just quit anyway. This can happen in all areas of our life. We may talk ourselves our of volunteering at church because we tell ourselves we will not show up and then will let someone down. Do you see how this can spread and start to limit you in your life?
Besides giving up on believing in yourself, telling these white lies can also spread to you telling bigger lies. Luke 16:10 says, “Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much.” If we are dishonest in the little things in our lives, we will start to get comfortable telling these little lies and then we might start to tell bigger lies. This verse is telling us that if we lie in little ways, we will also lie in big ways. Lying is one of those things that can snowball. You can start off telling a small lie with the best of intentions and before you know it the lie has gotten out of control. Even if this has never happened to you, I am sure you have seen this in enough movies. The guys makes up a little lie about having a dog to get the girl to go on a date with him. What could it hurt? Then they hit it off and start dating and she wants to meet this dog. So he borrows his neighbors dog and says that it is his dog. And then they get serious and she is spending more time at his house and wondering where the dog is but now he is afraid to tell her the truth because too much time has gone by and I am sure you can tell the rest of that story. Even if we don’t know exactly how it ends, we know it doesn’t end well. Lying doesn’t get us anywhere. The truth always comes out in the end. We should all save ourselves time and pain and learn from this wise verse. “Above all, my beloved, do not swear, either by heaven or by earth or by any other oath, but let your “Yes” be yes and your “No” be no, so that you may not fall under condemnation.”
Just real quick, I want to address the you may not fall under condemnation part. Sometimes this condemnation comes from the person that you lied to. When they find out you lied, they will not be happy and you will feel their condemnation. Other times the condemnation will come from yourself. You know when you are being honest and when you are not. When you are lying, even if you don’t get caught you will feel awful. You know that you deceived someone and you will feel it inside. And finally, God knows when you are being truthful and when you aren’t. You may be able to hide it from others, you may even be able to justify it to yourself, but you cannot hide the truth from the Lord. We are not perfect, we will all make mistakes. However, let us try to be men and women of our word. Let’s be different from the rest of the world. God set us apart, let’s act like it and be a people who take our word very seriously. Take time and answer questions intentionally. If you don’t have time, be honest and say no. If you say no, make sure to do it. Try not to tell a lie, even if it seems little and harmless and like no one will get hurt. You never know the unintended consequences.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to be men and women of honor. Help us to keep our word and do as we say we will. Help us to pause and consider what is being asked and then help us to discern if it is right for us. Lord, we want to be truthful people, help us. Help us also keep our word to ourselves. Help us to show up even when we feel like no one is counting on us but ourselves. Help us see our worth and that we are worthy of the same consideration we give others. We love you so much Lord. You are amazing and we ask all of this in accordance of your will and in Jesus holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to seeing you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click on the link below. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Have a blessed day!
The Chinese Bamboo Tree
Psalm 40:1-2 "I waited patiently for the Lord; he inclined to me and heard my cry. He drew me up from the desolate pit, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure.”
I have been doing a study on patience lately. When I heard this verse I thought it was a great one to remind us that when we wait patiently for the Lord He hears our cries. I thought the imagery in this verse was so good. Have you ever felt like you have been in a desolate pit? Maybe you feel like you are in one right now. I know when a friend of mine got Covid, that is exactly how she felt. She felt like she was all alone in a pit and she was never going to get out of it. It can be so easy to feel this way. Having patience and trusting the Lord is easier when you know how long you have to be patient for. For instance, being patient at the red light until the light turns green is easier because you know it won’t be long until it turns green. Being patient while you are pregnant is not easy, however, you know the pregnancy part will be over in 9 months. If you have an end date, being patient is easier. You can at least count down and you know how long you need to endure whatever you are going through.
What about when you don’t know. What about when you are in a situation that feels like you are stuck in a miry bog and you have no idea when you will get out of it. I honestly have no idea what a miry bog is, but when I picture it I picture being stuck in the mud. Has that ever happened to you? You are walking in the woods, or somewhere, and you step in mud and your foot gets stuck. Then every step you take requires a great deal of effort, especially if you want to keep your shoes on and not lose them in the mud. If you have never been in this situation I am sure you can still picture it. This type of situation would be easier to handle if you could see the end of the mud. If this mud was just a small puddle and the end was in sight. You could figure out in your head how many more steps until you are out of the mud. Being able to see the end of the mud doesn’t make your steps easier, but it does make it easier for you to keep taking steps.
When I am doing a workout, I do much better, push much harder if the person lets me know how much long I have to do. If we have been doing an exercise for awhile and it is difficult, sometimes I will take a break. I struggle with pushing my self with exercise at times. However, if the person leading says something like, “ok, just 8 more, or 10 more seconds,” then I will keep pushing because I know I can do it for that much longer. However, if they do not let me know then I am more likely to take a break. Is this you too? Do you find it easier to make it though difficult times if there is an end in sight, if you know how long you will be suffering for? Have you ever been going through something that seemed to be lasting forever with no end in sight? How did you handle it? Were you able to keep trusting in the Lord?
The reason I think this verse is a great reminder to us is because it says the Lord hears our cries. Even when we don’t think He is listening, He is. The Lord will pick you up out of that desolate pit and that miry bog and He will put you upon rock. He will make your steps secure. How many of you could use that right about now? How many of you would love to just feel like you were on solid ground, like you footing was secure. So much in this world seems unsteady right now. There is so much around us that is changing, so good and some bad. When a lot of things change all at once it can make us feel unsteady. We are creatures of habit, we don’t tend to like change very much. So, if there is so much in the world that feels unsteady right now, how do we continue to wait patiently for the Lord?
Patience is something that we need to continually work on. It is not something that you will wake up with one day. It would be great if we could go to bed one day not being a patient person at all and then wake up one more with the patience of a Saint. However, that is not how patience works. We have to work at patience, we have to practice being patient, we have to nurture this virtue and it will grow, slowly. Have you ever heard about the Chinese Bamboo tree? The following is an excerpt from my study on Peace, written by Robert Strand.
The Chinese plant the seed; water and fertilize it, but the first year nothing happens. The second year they water and fertilizer, and still nothing happens. No sign of life bursting through the earth. The third and fourth year they water and fertilize it… And sometime during the course of the fifth year in a period of about six weeks, this bamboo tree grows to a height of approximately 90 feet! The question is: did it grow 90 feet in six weeks or did it grow 90 feet in five years? The obvious answer is that it took all of the five years because without the nurture and care of the preceding period of time, there would be no tree.
Patience is like this Bamboo tree. It can seem like we are working hard to develop patience and we are getting no where and then one day we realize that someone cut us off in traffic and we didn’t yell at them, or our child broke something and we didn’t fly off the handle. If you have been trying to grow in patience for a long time and you have seen no growth I ask you, have you invited God into your process? Have you asked God to help you? We can’t do anything on our own and yet we always try. This is why I want to give you this friendly reminder that if you have been trying to increase your patience on your own, you should stop now and invite the Lord in. I know we hesitate to ask the Lord for help because we think we can do it all on our own. Or, maybe we didn’t ask because we think He is too busy to bother Him with such a small request. Whatever the reason for not inviting the Lord in, I urge you to reconsider. You will be trying in vain to grow in patience on your own. Why do we always want to take the long way around instead of stopping, asking God for help and letting Him show us the short cut?
Being patient is beneficial is so many ways. However, the best way is because it helps improve your relationships. Whether that relationship is with you and your family, your friends, your coworkers, or the cashier at the local coffee shop. All your relationships will improve as your ability to be patient improves. I have been told I have the patience of a Saint. I think some of those patience I came by naturally as my mother is the oldest of 10 children and she and my dad had 11 children of their own. She has passed some of her patience down to me. However, a lot of the patience I have was forged through years of struggling. I was not always this patient but life kept throwing me into circumstances where if I wasn’t patient the situation would have gotten so much worse. I was constantly being put into situations with people that were very impatient. If I was also impatient, we would have gotten no where. We would have never left the house. I had to learn to be patient out of a necessity and I did. I asked God for help because I know I can do nothing without Him. I am not telling you this to brag about my patience, I am telling you this because if I did it, you can too. Is it easy? No, but nothing worth having is ever easy. You can grow in patience. Just ask the Lord to help you and then take small, intentional steps in the right direction.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to grow in patience. Help us to wait patiently for you and your timing. We are grateful you hear our cry when we are struggling and you lift us out of our pit and put us back on steady ground. We can’t thank you enough Lord. Please help us to not tire of trying to grow in patience. Please encourage us to keep going when we want to give up. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me in this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Tomorrow’s guest speaker is Deborah G. She is going to witness about how God walked with her through the most difficult time of her life. She was in the perfect marriage, her kids had just left the house and her and her husband had just built there dream home together. Deborah thought everything was going great when she was blindsided by the news that her husband was having an emotional affair with someone else. She now knows God in a way she never did before. She feels so close to Him and although life is still really hard, she can see how He is with her every step of the way. Deborah gives a powerful example of how she felt the real presence of the Holy Spirit. You will not want to miss this witness. I look forward to sharing it with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
It Would Have Been Enough…
Psalm 40:4-5 “Happy are those who make the Lord their trust, who do not turn to the proud, to those who go astray after false gods. You have multiplied, O Lord my God, your wondrous deeds and your thoughts toward us; none can compare with you. Were I to proclaim and tell of them, they would be more than can be counted.”
Happy are those who make the Lord their trust. Do you know why this is? Do you know why if you trust in the Lord you are happy? Because the Lord always come through in a way that the rest of the world doesn’t. The Lord doesn’t let you down. He doesn’t say He will do something and then forget to do it. Have you ever been let down by someone in your life? Have you ever had someone say they would do something and then they didn’t. I am willing to bet you have. I think we all have. Personally I have had people let me down. They didn’t mean to, but they did. I have also let people down. I said I would do something and then I didn’t. Not because I was trying to hurt them, but because I forgot. I know that saying I forgot isn’t an excuse, or a good reason, I am just explaining how sometimes we can let people down without meaning to.
God doesn’t do this though. God has never forgotten a promise. He has never forgotten to show up when we needed Him. He has never not been there for us. This is why we are happy when we make the Lord our trust. However, if we place our trust in the things of this world, those that go astray after false gods, we will be let down. We want to believe we can trust those that are proud. They tell us how strong they are and how they can take care of everything and then they let us down. Humans are fickle. We are there for each other when it is convenient for us. We are there for each other until something better comes along. The divorce rate in America is about 44 %. That is just less than half of all married couples. When you get married you put your trust in your spouse. Your trust them to be faithful and to uphold the marriage vows. You trust that you will be with them forever. That is not the case for a lot of people these days.
I think if we are honest and we look around at the world today there are lots of people that we should be able to trust and yet we can’t. We elect politicians expecting that they will uphold their word and do what they said they would do before they got elected, however, we can’t always trust they will do that. We should be able to trust police officer’s to be fair and just and that is not always the case. We should be able to trust priests and that is not always the case either. Children should be able to trust that their parents will always protect them, but sometimes they don’t. There are untrustworthy people in all walks of life. Poor or rich, it doesn’t matter, you can find people that abuse trust no matter where you look. However, God will never abuse your trust. He will always be there for you and will protect you always.
The second half of this verse says, “You have multiplied, O Lord my God, your wondrous deeds and your thoughts toward us; none can compare with you. Were I to proclaim and tell of them, they would be more than can be counted.” How great is it that God multiplies his wondrous deeds and his thoughts towards us. It is so true that none can compare to God. It’s interesting that we turn to other things before God and yet when we think of what God has done for us vs. what the other things we are turning to have done, there is no comparison. I like how it says, if I were to proclaim and tell of them, they would be more than can be counted. Have you ever done this? Have you ever tried to count your blessings? I heard of this Jewish tradition of singing a song about the Exodus during passover. Dayenu (“It Would Have Been Enough”) is a song that lists a series of kindnesses God performed for the Jewish people during and after the Exodus and concludes each with the word dayenu — “it would have been enough.” Here are the words:
If He had taken us out of Egypt and not made judgements on them; [it would have been] enough for us.
If He had made judgments on them and had not made [them] on their gods; [it would have been] enough for us.
If He had made [them] on their gods and had not killed their firstborn; [it would have been] enough for us.
If He had killed their firstborn and had not given us their money; [it would have been] enough for us.
If He had given us their money and had not split the Sea for us; [it would have been] enough for us.
If He had split the Sea for us and had not taken us through it on dry land; [it would have been] enough for us.
If He had taken us through it on dry land and had not pushed down our enemies in [the Sea]; [it would have been] enough for us.
If He had pushed down our enemies in [the Sea] and had not supplied our needs in the wilderness for forty years; [it would have been] enough for us.
If He had supplied our needs in the wilderness for forty years and had not fed us the manna; [it would have been] enough for us.
If He had fed us the manna and had not given us the Shabbat; [it would have been] enough for us.
If He had given us the Shabbat and had not brought us close to Mount Sinai; [it would have been] enough for us.
If He had brought us close to Mount Sinai and had not given us the Torah; [it would have been] enough for us.
If He had given us the Torah and had not brought us into the land of Israel; [it would have been] enough for us.
If He had brought us into the land of Israel and had not built us the ‘Chosen House’ [the Temple; it would have been] enough for us.
I remember when I first learned of this tradition the author was talking about how this is a great tradition for us to adopt to show our gratitude. Although, instead of recounting the story of Exodus, we could recount the story of our lives. You would make stanzas full of all the amazing things God has done for you. For example:
If God had helped me get my Master’s degree and not given me such amazing friends, it would have been enough for me.
If God had given me such amazing friends and not introduced me to my husband, it would have been enough.
If God had introduced me to my husband and not moved us to incredible places to live, it would have been enough for me.
If God had moved us to incredible places and not showed us beautiful places to travel, it would have been enough.
If God sent us on beautiful vacations and not give us beautiful children, it would have been enough.
If God gave us beautiful children and not moved us back close to family, it would have been enough.
Hopefully you get the point. I am sure I did not do that perfectly and I would definitely like to spend some more time on it to really come up with some great examples of how much God has blessed me and my family. God has blessed all of us. If you really sit down and think about it I bet you can come up with all sorts of blessings that God has given to you or brought into your life. I am sure if you really think about it you will see that God has multiplied His wondrous deeds just as it say in this verse. Putting our trust in the Lord will make you happy. Thinking about all your blessing will make you and God happy. What if you took a few minutes out of your day today and came up with a Dayenu song of your own. What a great way to thank God for all He has done. I have been told when you sing, you are praying twice. Let's all create this Dayenu song and sing it to the Lord today!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, you are amazing and we are so grateful for all you have done for us. Lord, we want to trust you. Please point out any ways we are placing are trust in others. Help us to trust you first and foremost Lord. You are our trust. Lord, help us to each write a Dayenu song to you. Help us to remember all your wondrous deeds in our lives. We know you have done so much, help us to recall it all. Lord you are so special. You are the Lord of Lords and the King of Kings. We are grateful to be your sons and daughters, your prince and princesses. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to seeing you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Words Can Wound
James 3:2-5 “ For all of us make many mistakes. Anyone who makes no mistakes in speaking is perfect, able to keep the whole body in check with a bridle. If we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we guide their whole bodies. Or look at ships: though they are so large that it takes strong winds to drive them, yet they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs. So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great exploits. How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire!”
This verse is so good because it shows us how important our words are. The verse begins by telling us a very important thing many of us overlook. It says, “for all of us make many mistakes.” That in itself could be a whole episode. How many of us jump at someone for making a mistake? How many of us get really annoyed when they mess up our order at the restaurant, or ever worse at the coffee shop? Imagine you haven’t had your coffee yet in the morning and then you go to take a sip of the newly made coffee as you are driving away from Dunkin Donuts and there person at drive through messed up your order. How would you respond in a situation like this? I know a lot of people that would not respond well. I called the pharmacy to check on my prescription today and the guy said that he was not sure what happened but it never got ordered. He just placed the order and it can get here by tomorrow. He was nice and apologized and said he could call around to other local pharmacies if I needed it today. It is face wash, so I didn’t need it right away, but you could tell by his voice that he was surprised when I wasn’t angry with them. Anger seems to be the norm these days.
However, I wonder if that would change if we were to remember what it says in this verse. I wonder how we would act towards people when they made a mistake if the fact that we all make many mistakes was always at the forefront of our mind. I can get so upset with my husband for forgetting to do something I asked him to do and yet I sometimes forget to do what he asks me to do as well. I can be frustrated when someone forgets to call me back and yet I forget to call people back as well. Do you see where I am going with this? We all make mistakes and maybe remembering this will help us be more compassionate to others when they mess up?
The next line says, “Anyone who makes no mistakes in speaking is perfect, able to keep the whole body in check with a bridle.” This is an interesting sentence. If you are able to speak perfectly, you are able to keep your whole body in check. I love the two analogies it gives. The first one talks about how if we put a bit into the mouth of a horse we can guide their whole body. The second one is comparing us to a ship. It talks about how large ships are and how it takes strong winds to drive them, but yet a small rudder guides them. The verse is saying that our tongue is like this. We must be careful about what we say because our words can guide our whole body. There is a saying that my friend had up outside of her door at work and I have loved it since the moment I read it. I feel this is similar to what this verse is trying to tell us. The quote is from Lao Tzu and it says, “Watch your thoughts, they become your words; watch your words, they become your actions; watch your actions, they become your habits; watch your habits, they become your character; watch your character, it becomes your destiny.”
Sometimes we take our words lightly. We don’t pay a lot of attention to what we say because we all learned that nursery rhyme when we were kids and we believed it. You know the one I am talking about, “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” I think that came straight from the enemy, because it is a lie. Words can hurt people far more than sticks and stones ever could. I am not saying sticks and stones don’t hurt, however, your bruises usually heal. Some things we say to people can leave a scar on them forever. There is a story I heard a long time ago that explains how much words can hurt better than I can. I am not sure who wrote this original story.
“There once was a little boy who had a very bad temper. His father decided to hand him a bag of nails and said that every time the boy lost his temper, he had to hammer a nail into the fence. On the first day, the boy hammered 37 nails into that fence. The boy gradually began to control his temper over the next few weeks, and the number of nails he was hammering into the fence slowly decreased. He discovered it was easier to control his temper than to hammer those nails into the fence. Finally, the day came when the boy didn’t lose his temper at all. He told his father the news and the father suggested that the boy should now pull out a nail every day he kept his temper under control. The days passed and the young boy was finally able to tell his father that all the nails were gone. The father took his son by the hand and led him to the fence. ‘You have done well, my son, but look at the holes in the fence. The fence will never be the same. When you say things in anger, they leave a scar just like this one. You can put a knife in a man and draw it out. It won’t matter how many times you say I’m sorry, the wound is still there.’”
I believe this story is a powerful reminder of how important it is to choose your words carefully. When you are angry, walk away, take a breather, try not to say anything to anyone while you are still angry. Sometimes we say horrible things to people because we are hurting and we want others to hurt to. I get it, it doesn’t feel good when we are hurting. However, what good are we doing if we pass that hurt on to others. Then we both feel like crap in the moment and you will feel even worse when you have time to calm down and think about how bad you made someone feel. If you struggle with saying unkind things when you are angry, and I think most of us are, pray about this. Ask God to help change you. He is great at that.
The last sentence says, “How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire!” You can say some small thing that you think is no big deal and yet it sets the fire ablaze. We don’t know everyone’s story. We don’t know what they have been through. You may have a cashier who messes up your order and you think she is just incompetent. What you don’t know is she just lost her mother three days ago. You might be annoyed because someone is driving too fast, but what you don’t know is that their wife is in the ICU and they want to get there before she dies. We don’t know peoples story. What if we treated everyone like they were going through a really hard time. What if the next time you want to say something unkind to someone you imagined they had just gone through something awful and you cut them some slack? How different would this world be if we all started treating each other with the compassion we show those who have just lost a loved one? There are two other sayings that I love and they may sound cheesy, but I love them and so I am going to share them anyway. The first is, “In a world where you can be anything, be kind.” This is so true. Let’s just all try to be kinder to everyone we meet. The second is “Sprinkle love like confetti.” I love the picture I get in my mind when I picture myself sprinkling confetti. Our words matter. Our words have the power to lift someone up or to keep them down. Use your words to lift someone up today, you won’t be sorry!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to see how important our words are. Help us to understand their power and to only use them for good. Help us to remember we all make many mistakes and to be more compassionate when others make mistakes. Lord help us to choose our words carefully so we do not inflict wounds with our words. You are amazing Lord and we love you. We are grateful for your love. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name Amen.
Our Children
Deuteronomy 6:20-25 “ When your children ask you in time to come, “What is the meaning of the decrees and the statutes and the ordinances that the Lord our God has commanded you?” then you shall say to your children, “We were Pharaoh’s slaves in Egypt, but the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand. The Lord displayed before our eyes great and awesome signs and wonders against Egypt, against Pharaoh and all his household. He brought us out from there in order to bring us in, to give us the land that he promised on oath to our ancestors. Then the Lord commanded us to observe all these statutes, to fear the Lord our God, for our lasting good, so as to keep us alive, as is now the case. If we diligently observe this entire commandment before the Lord our God, as he has commanded us, we will be in the right.”
This is something that has been on my heart a lot lately. This whole verse is about sharing our religion and the reason behind it with our children. I was much better about this when the kids were younger. When my kids were little they gave me a run for my money, but they were usually pretty well behaved at church. We would put veggie tales on for them when we would go on car rides. As they got older I feel we tried to share the faith with them but they didn’t want to hear it and we had so many other issues going on that we didn’t have the energy to fight about our faith. We did bring them to church every week and have them make their sacraments so I am glad about that. As they got older, brining them to church got more and more difficult. I would let them take books and the younger two would just read books the whole time. However, they weren’t old enough to leave at home and they would refuse to come if they couldn’t bring books. So, if I wanted to make it to church, this was how I was able to get there.
I talked about this in confession and the priest told me that at least they were there and that we aren’t in charge of making sure they get something out of it. We never know how much they are actually taking in, even if they are reading something else. He told me not to stress about it, just to hand it over to God in prayer. Which now that I am thinking of it is what we should always do when we feel stuck and something is weighing on us. However, we all need to be reminded of that every now and then. We brought our children to church every week until our boys were in 10th, 8th & 6th grade. Why did we stop? The pandemic happened. When everyone stopped going to church so did we. My husband, Tony and I watched church on TV, but we did not make the kids watch with us. Then when we started going again, we started going at 7 on Sunday morning. I wasn’t going to wake my kids up at 7 on a Sunday morning to go as they were staying up late at night.
So, here we are 2 years after churches opened back up and my kids aren’t going to church with us. I was talking with the priest on Friday because they had confession at the conference and he told me not to worry. He said confirmation is about the person making a decision on their own to become a member of the Catholic Church and it wasn’t something I needed to make them do. He did suggest we have more conversations about church. Instead of making the kids go, inviting them to go. Maybe going at a time they are more likely to be awake for and asking them if they want to come along. He said let them know the option for confirmation is still open and ask if they are interested. I know I am not the only mom out there that feels like I am failing in the area of passing our faith down to our children.
I liked this passage because it talked about how when our kids ask why they need to follow the commandments we should tell them about all God has done for us. That seems like a much better answer than because I said so, or because God said so. I think when we think about all that God has done for us, it makes it easier to want to follow His way. I love to hear stories about the signs and wonders in the Bible. When I read the Old Testament about how many amazing things God did for His people, it just reinforces how much He loves us. Then when we read about Jesus in the New Testament, it amazing. It truly amazes me how much God loves His people, how much He loves you and I. When I think about all that God asks us to do, it seems so small in comparison to all He has done for us. I know our children may not feel this way. They may not get it and I think that is ok. God gave them free will and so who are we to take that away from them. God knows that it is not true love if it is not freely given. We can force our children to go to mass, but we can’t force them to love God. Our job is not to convince our children of what is right, it is to point them in the right direction. Our job is to be a witness and an example of Christ to them. If we are doing our best to live like Christ, then hopefully when our children see us, they will see Christ.
One of the speakers at the conference this weekend said something I really liked. I don’t remember their exact words but the idea was that we should live our lives with such love and joy that people just look at us and say, “I want what you have.” Are you doing this? Are you living a life so filled with the Spirit that people say, “I want what you have?” I think sometimes we don’t go about living our faith with joy. For instance, I had a friend who told me that when she was younger she would fast one day a week. However, when she was fasting she would be so hungry that she would be grumpy with her family. This is not going to make anyone else want to fast. Whatever we do for God we should do with love and joy. If our children see us obeying the commandments, not because we have to, but because we want to, they may be more likely to follow in our footsteps. If they see that we are able to handle all life throws at us because we rely on God, they are more likely to want that. Our kids are more likely to listen to our actions than to our words. We don’t have to lecture them about how great God is and how important it is that they follow His ways. If we live in God’s ways and they see how much joy and love we are filled with, they will follow.
I have been hesitant to talk with my boys about God. I mean I bring it up wherever it can naturally fit into a conversation but that is about it. I am going to try to talk to them about it more intentionally. Maybe start with inviting them to mass once a month with going out to lunch afterwards. Or, maybe just inviting each week, even if they aren’t coming. I will pray for the Holy Spirit to show me any ways in which I could be more of an example to our boys. I will make sure when I am talking about God or our religion I am doing it in a way that shows my love and joy for all of it. Like this verse says, I will talk about how many amazing things God has done for us. How many signs and wonders He has done, not just back in the days when the Bible was written, but also in our family. Ultimately, it is God who will bring our children back to the faith. He loves our children more than we do and He will ensure they are taken care of. However, we can do our part by sharing our faith with them in the form of stories and with our actions.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to teach our children about your goodness. Help us to relay all the ways you have helped us in the past. Help us to tell our children about all the amazing signs and wonders you have given to your people. Lord, we know that when we spread those amazing stories people can’t help but believe because you are so amazing. You make impossible things happen and we are so very grateful. Lord, we entrust our children to you. We ask that you make up for all of our flaws and mistakes we made while raising them. We did the best we could Lord, we leave the rest up to you. We ask that if you want us to do more, then you have the Holy Spirit put that on our hearts. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day.
We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click on the link below. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Have a blessed day!
What If He Doesn’t Show Up?
Judges 7:2 “The Lord said to Gideon, “The troops with you are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hand. Israel would only take the credit away from me, saying, ‘My own hand has delivered me.’”
At the conference this weekend one of the talks was all about Gideon. It covered Judges 6 and 7, however, this morning I am going to talk about the verse above. I will give you a quick summary of Judges 6 and 7 in case you are not familiar with Gideon as when they mentioned His name, I didn’t know who they were talking about. An angel of God went to Gideon and called him a mighty warrior. Gideon was confused as his family was among the weakest clan of Manasseh and Gideon himself was the least in His family. Never the less, the angel of God was calling him to save Israel. I have talked about Gideon before because what he did next is something most of us would do. He asked God to show him a sign if he was really God and if God really wanted him to do this thing. God gave him a sign, but Gideon was still scared because God was asking Gideon to lead His people into battle against their enemies. Gideon asked God for two more signs and when God gave them to him, he couldn’t refuse Him anymore.
Gideon called upon God’s people to come and fight their enemy with him and 32,000 people showed up to fight. Gideon and his army were still outnumbered by a lot. This is where the verse above picks up. God looked at the 32,000 men and told Gideon that he had too many troops. God told Gideon that if he went into battle with that many men, the Israelites would believe they saved themselves from Midian, instead of God saving them. God told Gideon to send home any man that was afraid to fight in this war. Gideon probably expected a few hundred, maybe even a few thousand to go home. However, twenty two thousand men left. Now Gideon was left with 10,000 men up against the whole Midianite army. I can imagine Gideon was probably a lot more anxious about the battle now. He started with 32,000 which was already a small amount compared to the enemy and now they are down to 10,000. You would think that would be good now.
God had other plans, He told Gideon there were still too many men. He said he needed to narrow it down even more and God told Gideon how to do it. After this next cut, Gideon was down to 300 men against all of the enemies armies. Can you take a minute and put yourself in Gideon’s shoes? Can you imagine what it would be like to show up to a war against an army that far out numbers you and then to let most of that army go home? I wonder what Gideon was thinking? I know he asked God to give him signs that God was going to do what He said He would do. However, in the moment, I wonder if he doubted, I wonder if he was scared? I don’t really know how one wouldn’t be scared in that situation. Gideon and his army was successful in defeating the Midianites. Even though He may have been scared Gideon trusted in the Lord and it paid off, it always does.
Now that you know the basics of Gideon’s story, let's get back to this verse. ““The Lord said to Gideon, “The troops with you are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hand. Israel would only take the credit away from me, saying, ‘My own hand has delivered me.’” The part of this verse that stands out to me the most is when it says, “Israel would only take the credit away from me.” This is something that I think we tend to do often. It is not just for those that lived back in Gideon’s time, we are still doing this today. I wonder how many times I have had something miraculous happen and have given credit to everything except for God. I wonder how many times I have gotten exactly what I had been praying for and then given thanks to everyone around me, except for God. Have you ever done this? You were praying for a new job and you got it and you called up and thanked those that helped you prepare for the interview, and those that looked over your resume or helped you practice interviews but you didn’t thank God. Or maybe you did thank Him, but you attribute your success in getting the job to your own efforts.
One of the speakers asked a question at the conference last weekend that really hit me and really stuck with me. His question was, “Do you ever put yourself in situations where everyone would notice if the Holy Spirit doesn’t show up?” If most of us are being honest we would probably say no. Why not? Because doing that would make us vulnerable. What if He didn’t show up, what would we do then? We would look like fools. We would be so embarrassed. The thing I have learned from reading various books is that the Holy Spirit always shows up when we call upon Him. If we create a situation where everyone would notice if He didn’t show up then God would not let us down. If we step out in that kind of radical faith, God rewards it. There is a great example of this in 1 Kings 18:22-24, "Then Elijah said to them, “I am the only one of the Lord’s prophets left, but Baal has four hundred and fifty prophets. Get two bulls for us. Let Baal’s prophets choose one for themselves, and let them cut it into pieces and put it on the wood but not set fire to it. I will prepare the other bull and put it on the wood but not set fire to it. Then you call on the name of your god, and I will call on the name of the Lord. The god who answers by fire—he is God.” Elijah was putting God’s reputation on the line by saying God would light the fire. What if He didn’t show up? Everyone would have noticed. God showed up, as He always does. Because Elijah did this demonstration of God’s power, the people turned back to God. Elijah’s willingness and trust to put himself and God into this situation helped others deepen their trust and faith.
One of the speakers last weekend told us a story of how he put himself in a situation where everyone would notice if the Holy Spirit didn’t show up. He was on a mission trip with two other guys in Belize. They felt called to hold a healing service. They had never done this before, but they felt the Holy Spirit calling them to do it, so they said yes. They weren’t really that nervous as they figured there wouldn’t be that many people that showed up anyway. When they arrived to the church they noticed that all the doors were open and when they got closer they could see that there were over 200 men in that church waiting for the healing service to begin. They prayed for the Holy Spirit to show up that night and He did. They had an amazing healing service. Not because these men were particularly gifted with healing, but because they stepped out in faith and said yes when the Holy Spirit asked them to do something that they didn’t know how to do. They said yes, and potentially put their reputation on the line, to answer the call. When you have this type of radical faith, or obedience, God will not let you down. If you are stepping out in faith for His sake, He will always be there to back you up. He will never abandon you or leave you on your own.
Have you ever said no to the Holy Spirit because you didn’t want to be embarrassed. I know I have. Sometimes the Holy Spirit asks you to do some hard things, some things that are out of your comfort zone. I will actually give a witness tomorrow about how the Holy Spirit asked me to step way outside of my comfort zone to do something and how I struggled with it. Over this next week, give some thought to the question, “Do you ever put yourself in situations where everyone would notice if the Holy Spirit doesn’t show up?” Then think about how you could do this, or pray that if God does ask you to put yourself in this type of situation that you have the strength and the boldness to say yes. He won’t abandon you and He won’t leave you alone. God will always show up and you may just deepen other’s faith by demonstrating your ability to step out in faith.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to step out in faith, please help us. We want to be in situations where we have to rely on the Holy Spirit to show up. Well, if we are being honest, we may not want to yet, but we want to want to. We want to have the faith that Elijah had, we want to have the faith that these three missionaries had. Lord, fill us with the faith of these men and then more. Fill us with a radical trust that we can step out in faith and know that we know you will always be there to catch us. We love you so much Lord and we are so grateful that you are always there for us and that you never abandon us. We are so grateful you trust us and use us to help bring others into your kingdom. You are so amazing Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I will be the speaker tomorrow and I will talk about a time when the Holy Spirit asked me to step way outside my comfort zone and what that looked like for me. Also, I will talk about a special experience I had with the Holy Spirit that shows He shows up when asked. I look forward to sharing that with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Steadfast Love
Psalm 143:8 “Let me hear of your steadfast love in the morning, for in you I put my trust. Teach me the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul.”
Steadfast love, do you know what that means? I looked it up as I know it is good, but I didn’t know exactly what it meant. The whole point of this podcast is to examine scripture more closely, to really get an idea of what it is saying to us. This scripture verse starts off by saying, “Let me hear of your steadfast love in the morning, for in you I put my trust.” So, what is this steadfast love that we want to hear about? Steadfast means firmly fixed in place or immovable. Doesn’t that paint a nice picture of God’s love for us? It is firmly fixed in place, there is nothing we can do to get rid of His love. Sometimes we think that God must not love us anymore because we did something that was so bad, so unforgivable that God couldn’t possibly love us anymore. This is false thinking. This is just what the enemy wants you to think.
If you think that the Lord doesn’t love you then you won’t turn to Him in times of need. You will turn to things of tis world. Did you know that the word steadfast is used 127 times in the book of psalms. Apparently we are not the only ones that need the reassurance that God’s love is fixed and immoveable. Why is that? Why do we question God’s love? I ask that question a lot because it helps get our brains thinking. We see things we wouldn’t have seen otherwise. When we are reading the Bible, we can have a tendency to gloss over things that we hear because we don’t understand them or because we don’t agree with them. This podcast is examining scripture closely. I am trying to understand what it means and share that message with you so we can all grow in our understanding of God’s word. In order to understand it more deeply sometimes we need to ask ourselves why we do things. Why did the Lord need to use the word 127 times in just one book of the Bible? Why do we questions His love?
I think we question it because we have never known a love like it before. We have only know love from those of us that live in this broken world. Even if we had really good examples of love, they were not as good as the Father’s love. Our parents might have shown us a lot of love. However, was it unconditional love? Did you feel like you had to do something to earn it? Did you feel like you were loved no matter what you did, good or bad? Was it an everlasting love? Was it a love that was fixed and immoveable? I hope it was. I would like to think that I loved my kids unconditionally with no strings attached, but I am not sure they feel that way. Sometimes we can do our very best and yet the way others interpret our love can vary from how it is intended. God’s love is steady and unchanging. It is fixed and immovable. This is definitely something to pause and take in for a moment. Can you believe He loves you that much, all the time?
The next line says, I put my trust in you. Did you know it is safe to put your trust in the Lord? The Lord is always there for us. His love is steadfast and never leaves us. Therefore, we can trust Him in all that we do. The Lord never leaves us alone, He walks with us in the good times and bad times. We had a word of prophecy at prayer group last November that said, “ I am here. I am here with you wherever you go, whatever you do, I am with you. Know that I am your God. I will be with you in the good times and the bad times. Know that I am with you.” God is reaffirming to us that we can trust Him because He will always be with us.
The last sentence of the verse says, “Teach me the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul.” God is trying to teach us the way we should go by giving us the Bible, by giving us the Saints, by giving the priests, and the Pope, or if you are not Catholic, your minister or pastor. God is not wanting us to blindly follow those of the world. Sometimes what we are called to do may seem very foreign from what the rest of the world is doing. That is o.k. we should do it anyway. If you read about God’s chosen people in the Bible, they often did things that were different from those around them. God has always called His people to be set apart from the rest of the world. When you look at your life, is it set apart from others? Can you tell you are Christian by the way you are living? When Jesus comes back to earth, will He find faithful people?
If we want to live the way God wants us to live, Jesus simplified it for us. God gave the Israelites 10 commandments in the Old Testament. Jesus said in Matthew 22:37-40, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” All the Law and the prophets hang on these two commandments. If you are doing these first two then you will be doing the others. I know this sounds simpler then it really is.
I know some of you may be thinking, “love my neighbor? Have you met my neighbor?” No, I haven’t. But God has and He is calling you to love your neighbor anyway. He is even calling you to love those that are your enemies. He says in Matthew 5:44 “But I tell you, love your neighbor and pray for those that persecute you.” This is not easy and God knows this. However, it is possible with the love and power of God. God not only teaches us how to live, He gives us all we need to live the life He is calling us to live. He will never call us to do something and not give us everything we need to do it. If He is calling you to love someone that is hard to love, he will give you the strength to love that person. All we need to do is ask for it and then be open to receiving it. God is showing us how to live, we just have to be open to listening. Love is at the center of living a Christian life. It is not judgement, or condemnation. It is not our job to judge those that are not living the way we feel they should be. It is our job to love them where they are at.
When Jesus encountered people that were not living their lives according to the Lord, what did He do? Did He explain to them all the ways they were falling short? Did He scold them and condemn them for all they had done? No, He simply loved them where they were at. This is so important. Often times we feel it is our job to tell people that they are living in sin. This isn’t our job, our job is to love them and to share Jesus’ love with them. We can share the Gospel with them if they are open to it, but they won’t be open to it if we aren’t showing them that they are accepted and loved just as they are. Reading the stories in the Bible, especially the new Testament, can be a great place to turn when we don’t know what to do. Jesus gives us so many good examples. Jesus has taught us the way to go, it is now our job to follow.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, show us they way you want us to live. Give us the strength and boldness to live that way even if it contradicts the way the world is telling us to live. We trust you Lord, and we are grateful for your steadfast love. Lord, help our love of you and of our neighbors be a steadfast. Show us what that means. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Baptism of the Holy Spirit
Acts 4:29-31 “And now, Lord, look at their threats, and grant to your servants to speak your Word with all boldness, while you stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus." When they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken; and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God with boldness.”
Last night I attended the East Coast Encounter Ministry Conference. I was so happy to be there. I love being in a room that is full of the Holy Spirit. Have you ever had the privilege? Have you ever been in a room and you could just feel the Holy Spirit? I am not even talking about when you have a sense that the Holy Spirit might be there. I am talking about when you walk in to a room and you can feel the Holy Spirit is there in a big way. It is a feeling I can’t quite describe. There is so much joy in the room. It is truly amazing. Last night was one of those nights. The conference started with worship, which is how we should start anything. Even your own personal prayer time will be more meaningful if you start it with praise. God loves when we praise Him. There isn’t one certain way that we need to praise Him. He leaves the how up to us. My favorite way is to listen to Christian music and sing a long. Maybe you would prefer to tell God how great He is, or call out various names for Him. The choice is yours.
After worship we had prayer time where a Deacon spoke words of prayer and words of prophecy over the whole group. Next we had a speaker talk to us about the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. It was a wonderful and funny talk. I am sure I will pass along some of what I learned at a later date. Right now I am just letting it all sink in. After the talk there were prayer teams that were set up to do individual prayers over people. It was so beautiful. There were people who were overcome with the Holy Spirit every where you looked. It was amazing. The Holy Spirit definitely showed up there last night. Although I wasn’t surprised as He always shows up when we call on Him. He is so good like that. He wants to give us all He has, His gifts and His fruits, we just aren’t usually asking for them.
The speaker went through several scriptures tonight, one of which was the scripture above. I liked how this verse begins because the person writing this verse is telling God to “look at their threats,” talking about the Jews that killed Jesus. It’s as if the speaker is telling God something He didn’t already know. There is nothing that goes on that God does not know about. He not only knows about it while it is going on, He knew about it long before it started. He knows everything, from the beginning of time until the end. It wasn’t necessary for Peter or John, whoever was speaking at that time, to make that statement and yet it speaks to their human nature. It is tough for us to wrap our heads around the fact that God knows everything. So, sometimes, oftentimes, we feel the need to remind Him of what we are going through.
What Peter and John are looking for in this verse is boldness, along with signs and wonders to be preformed in Jesus’ name. They understand what they are up against. They are trying to spread the Gospel to people who lived the same time Jesus lived and yet still don’t believe. They are trying to spread the Gospel in a time when they could be put in jail, stoned to death, or crucified just for saying Jesus’ name. They know if they want to have any chance at being successful in their mission, they will need to preach with a holy boldness. They know if they expect people to believe them they need to also have signs and wonders to back up their teaching. It would be so great if we could all believe without seeing, but that is not how a lot of us work. We need to see first and then believe. The apostles knew this.
What happened after they asked for boldness, signs and wonders? “When they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken; and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God with boldness.” What happened? God answered their prayers. He always does! He is good like that. I know there may be a lot of people in your life that you can’t count on. We live in a fallen and broken world. However, God is not one of these people. You can count on God to answer your prayers every time you ask. He will never let you down. I feel like I should say something about that last statement. Every time I write that statement, I wonder if this is true. When I say He will never let you down, I mean He never says He will do something and then fails to do it. He never breaks His promises. He never leaves us, He is always with us. He always answers your prayers. There is never a time when you are asking for something and He is ignoring you. He always comes through.
I think why I get this funny feeling when I write that God never lets us down is because I know people who have been let down by God. I think anyone that has lost a loved one probably feels let down by God when it happens. I know when we lost a member of our prayer group, a young member that was in her 40s, I felt let down. I didn’t understand why He didn’t save her when I know that He could have. If you have lost a loved one, you may have had similar feelings. So I think that is why I am hesitant to say God never lets us down. Although, what I feel the Holy Spirit saying to me right now is that God didn’t let us down, we were disappointed with His decision. We asked for our loved one to be saved and they weren’t and we are understandably upset with God for that. However, God did answer our prayers, it just wasn’t how we wanted Him to. Our expectation was that He would save our loved one here on earth and He decided to save them by brining them to heaven. God didn’t do what we wanted Him to do and we are disappointed and that is OK. God can handle our disappointment. He can even handle our anger. As long as we are turning to God in our time of need, He will be there to help us through all of our emotions.
I may have gone on a little tangent there, but every time I write that God won’t let us down, I get a funny feeling and the Holy Spirit let me to address that feeling today in case any of you were listening and feeling like you have been let down by the Lord. We may not always like the answers to our prayers, but He does always answer them and He is always there with us to provide us with the strength to get through another day. He gives us the strength to get through the circumstances we are presented with. He is a good good Father.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this podcast today. Lord, we want the holy boldness that you gave to you apostles. We want the signs and wonders also. Lord, we want all your Holy Spirit wants to give us. We are open to the gifts and the fruits of the Holy Spirit. If there is someone listening to this episode that is does not know about the Holy Spirit and how amazing He is, I ask that you put a desire to learn more on their hearts. I ask for you to put a desire to grown more in the Holy Spirit on every person listening Lord. I pray for a revival of the Holy Spirit in this town, in this state, in this country and in the world. Lord, help everyone know you, your son and your Holy Spirit. Lord we love you, you are truly amazing. We are so grateful you gave us your Holy Spirit. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you on Monday. Have a blessed weekend!
Rely on God
2 Chronicles 16:7-9 “At that time the seer Hanani came to King Asa of Judah, and said to him, “Because you relied on the king of Aram, and did not rely on the Lord your God, the army of the king of Aram has escaped you. Were not the Ethiopians and the Libyans a huge army with exceedingly many chariots and cavalry? Yet because you relied on the Lord, he gave them into your hand. For the eyes of the Lord range throughout the entire earth, to strengthen those whose heart is true to him. You have done foolishly in this; for from now on you will have wars.”
I love the way the Holy Spirit works. I heard this verse recently on the Bible in a year podcast and I was thinking it would be a great verse to talk about with you. Then I forgot. Today I was typing up the minutes from our prayer group meetings back in December of last year and I saw this verse again. I felt it was a confirmation that God wanted me to talk to you about this verse. This is just one of the many things I love about God. He asks us to do something, and then if we forget, he gently reminds us. I also love that He doesn’t seem to be upset with us that we forgot. He doesn’t make us feel bad, He just reminds us of what we said we would do. He is such a loving Father.
The reason this verse stood out to me is because it is about a king who turned to others for help instead of turning to the Lord. King Asa was went to the King of Aram and asked to make a treaty with him and for that king to break his treaty with the King of Isreael so that Isreal would withdraw from Judah. Up until this point when King Asa went to battle he would rely on the Lord to help him win the battle and the Lord did. So in this verse the seer Hanani went to the king of Judah and told him that because he didn’t rely on the Lord, he relied on someone else, then the army he wanted to get escaped him.
I thought this was good because it is a reminder to us to rely on the Lord. How many times have we turned to things in the world for help, instead of relying on God? How many times have things seemed overwhelming and we don’t see a way out and so we ask others for help before we ask the Lord for help. Asking others for help is not a bad thing. However, when you stop relying on the Lord, that is when it becomes a problem. The seer reminds King Asa about some of the other armies that he went up against that were huge armies with lots of chariots and calvary and yet King Asa defeated them because he relied on the Lord. I wonder what changed? I wonder why he was able to rely on the Lord for some of the time, and yet not other times. Especially when the Lord delivered him from some pretty tough enemies.
I don’t understand what was going through the king’s mind. Even though I don’t understand what the king was thinking I would say we probably do the same thing. There are times when we rely on the Lord more easily than others. There are times when something happens and we go straight to the Lord and we ask Him to fix it or to take care of it. Then there are other times when we try to fix it ourselves. We ask others to help, we may even go to people we don’t like just because we think we really need their help. This is when we need the reminder that God is all we need. Rely on Him and He will always come through. In the daily devotional that I am reading titled “Jesus Calling” it has messages from Jesus each day. Two sentences from today’s devotional stuck out to me. It said, “A trusting response includes Me in your thoughts as you consider strategies to deal with a situation. My continual Presence is a promise, guaranteeing that you never have to face anything alone.” This is confirming what I said earlier. It is not that you shouldn’t ask others for help, asking for help is great. It is only a problem if you don’t have God in your thoughts as part of your plan. If you are doing all you are doing without God.
I love the second to last sentence in this verse also. “For the eyes of the Lord range throughout the entire earth, to strengthen those whose heart is true to him.” “The eyes of the Lord range throughout the entire earth, to strengthen those whose heart is true to him.” Isn’t that beautiful? It's as if the Lord is just constantly scanning earth to see who needs Him to help them. If you are in trouble, the Lord knows it. There is no hiding anything from the Lord. He knew what you were going to do before you did. He is always there to help you get out of it. We had a word of prophecy at our prayer group that said, “I am here. I am here with you wherever you go, whatever you do, I am with you. Know that I am your God. I will be with you in the good times and bad times. Know that I am with you.” God tells us this weekly. I think it must be something He really wants us to hear.
If you are trying to solve things are your own, don’t. Lean into God, rely on Him and He will get you through. God was upset with the King of Judah for not relying on Him and for turning to things of this world. Don’t let that be you. Keep God in your thoughts as you come up with strategies for dealing with all situations. Begin your day with asking the Lord what He wants you to do. Whenever you encounter a difficult situation turn to the Lord and ask Him how He can help you. Ask God to lead you and you can’t go wrong. Consult Him as you would consult your best friend. Tell Him what is wrong and then listen to what He has to say. Don’t just tell Him how to fix your situation, tell Him the problem and let Him tell you the way to solve it.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless those listening to this episode today. Lord, we all fail to turn to you at times, help us to change this. We all rely on the things of this world, help us to rely on you first, every time Lord. We are so grateful that you keep constant watch on earth, scanning for trouble so you can help those whose heart is true to you. Our heart is true to you Lord, and if it isn’t please change it so it is. Let us know what we need to do to be more true to you. God you are the great “I AM” and you are the Word of Live. You are our joy and our live. We love you Lord. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to seeing you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click on the link below. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Have a blessed day!
Take The Log Out Of Your Own Eye First
Psalm 85:8 “ I will listen for what God, the LORD, has to say; surely he will speak of peace to his people and to his faithful. May they not turn to foolishness!”
May they not turn to foolishness, seems like a pretty tall order. It seems in the Bible God’s people are always turning to foolishness. Right now in the Bible in a year podcast with Father Mike, we are finishing up the books of Chronicles and Kings. We have gone over a long line of kings since we began these two books. One thing that most of these kings had in common is that they turned to foolishness. Some of the kings started out as great kings and then they turned away from the Lord and started to worship other gods. They all turned to foolishness. One of the first kings to do this was King Solomon. He really wanted to be a good king. When God told him that he could ask for whatever he wanted and God would give it to him, he asked for Wisdom. That sounds like a great thing to wish for. He wanted to be a fair and just ruler and so he asked for wisdom to rule his people. However, along with wisdom, he also got the wealth and the strength as a reward for making such a selfless request.
Doesn’t this story sound like King Solomon is set up to be a really great king in the sight of the Lord? The problem is Solomon starts to really like the riches he is collecting. He builds up his army, he started to accumulate horses and chariots, which God has instructed kings not to do. He also started accumulating wives and concubines. God told his people not to intermarry with the people of other nations as they will turn your hearts away from God. Solomon didn’t listen, he had seven hundred wives of noble birth and 300 concubines. Think about that for a minute. That is 1000 woman that Solomon had under his care. If you thought it was difficult to keep your husband or wife happy, imagine if you had 1,000. Of course with this many wives, it was bound to happen that Solomon’s heart would be pulled away from the Lord. He wanted to keep his wives happy so he allowed them to build an alter to their Gods and he would worship with them. God gave Solomon so much, it was clear that God was walking with Solomon, and then he turns to other Gods, it makes no sense to me.
Then yesterday we learned about another king named Joash. Joash was seven years old when he began to reign, and he reigned forty years in Jerusalem. Joash did what was right in the eyes of the Lord all the days of Jehoiada the priest. Jehoiada was his advisor and mentor and helped Joash follow the Lord. However, when Jehoiada the priest dies, Joash turned to the false God’s of the people he conquered. It’s interesting because God helped him win the battle. He was close enough to the Lord to listen to His advise in battle and to trust what God told Him in battle, and then as soon as they win the battle, Joash takes on worship of these false God’s. It seems so crazy to me. It is so easy for me to judge the people of the old testament.
Why is that? Why is it so easy for us to judge others and yet so hard for us to see all the ways we are getting it wrong? I do take some comfort in the fact that I am not the only one who does this. It must have been a pretty common problem back in the day if they are addressing it in the Bible. It says in Matthew 7:3-5, “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” Actually I will read to you the verse right before that too, as they go together, Matthew 7:1-2 says, “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” Wow, that is a lot to take in. “Do not judge, or you too will be judged.” This is something that is so hard. Do you find this hard too, or is it just me? Not judging others is something I have been consciously working on for a long time now. I have even prayed often for God to help me learn to not judge others.
Have you ever been warned not to pray for patience? I know that probably sounds weird, but I have been warned not to pray for patience because the way you build up your patience is by having opportunities to practice it. So, if you pray for patience, the next thing you know, you are stuck in a traffic jam, or some other uncomfortable scenario where you have to practice patience. It is not fun. The reason I tell you this is because I did not get a warning about praying for God to help me not judge people. I kept hearing things at church like the verse above, do not judge people or you too will be judged. So, I prayed that God would help me stop judging people. I did not pray this once, I prayed it often, so God would know I was serious. Guess what, God heard my prayers, as He always does. However, he did not just fill me supernaturally with the ability to not judge people. This is what I was expecting. I asked for Him to help me not judge and so I was expecting for me just to have the ability to not judge people. That is how prayer works, right? Wrong.
Instead of having a supernatural ability to not judge people, God gave me lots of opportunities to learn not to judge. How did He do that, you ask? Every time I had a judgmental thought about any situation or the way a mom or anyone was handling the situation, that same situation would happen to me. You probably think I am exaggerating when I say every time, but I really don’t think I am. It didn’t even have to be a full blown judgement. Even if it was a fleeting thought like, “if that was me I would do it like this…” Then the next thing I know I am in the same scenario. If you want to learn to not judge others, step into their shoes, it is eye opening. I remember watching Super Nanny, a show about a nanny that would come in and teach parents how to deal with unruly kids. I remember watching the show and thinking to myself, “If my kids ever did that I would…” I can’t for the life of me figure out how I ended that sentence, but it would have come in pretty handy when my child did do that thing, because they did. Although I am not sure I could recommend praying for help with judging others, it has made me extremely understanding to others. I definitely judge others less, and try to lead others by example so they don’t judge either.
We are all doing the best we can and at the same time, we could all be doing better. That is a fact, a confusing fact, but still a fact. We are doing what we can, with what we have, with wherever we are at. It is easy to for me to judge the people of the Old Testament because I have the benefit of looking back on their life and seeing where they went wrong. However, in the moment, without the benefit of hindsight, who know what I would have done in their situation. I can’t imagine it was easy for Solomon to have 700 wives and 300 concubines. I know it was a situation of his own making and at the same time I am sure some of those wives were to make alliances with neighboring nations, as that is how things were done back then.
It is easy for us to judge others but that is not what the Lord wants us to do. It is not our place to judge, it is God’s. He knows everything, even the things we can’t see, like what is truly in someone’s heart. The verse above says, “I will listen for what God, the LORD, has to say; surely he will speak of peace to his people and to his faithful. May they not turn to foolishness!” This verse is telling us that if we listen for what God has to say then we will not turn to foolishness. I really like that the verse says surely God will speak of peace to His children. We all could use a little more peace in our lives. How about we all try to listen for what God, the Lord, has to say to us and then just try to do what He tells us to do and not worry about whether others are doing the same. Remember what we learned in Matthew 7 today. Take the log out of your own eye before you try to remove the speck from someone else’s eye. If you want to judge someone, turn that judgement inward and see what it is you can to do listen to what God has to say. If you are looking for more peace in your life, listen to what God has to say. Are you listening?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to listen to all you are saying to us. Help us to not turn to foolishness. Lord, help us not to judge others. Help us to leave that up to you and help us to just have compassion and understanding for others. Lord, help us to keep our eyes and ears fixed on you so you and only you can lead us on the right path. It is so easy to stray off the path you want us to follow. Please help us stay on that path. Lord, God almighty, you are the just one and you are the Way, the Truth, and the Life. We are so grateful for all you do for us. We love you Lord! We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Tomorrow’s guest witness will be Mary C. I know you will enjoy hearing her witness. I look forward to sharing that with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Your Body is a Temple
1 Corinthians 6:19-20 “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God? You are not your own; you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.”
I thought this verse was a good one for me today because yesterday I did not honor my body. Yesterday I took full advantage of the fact that it was Father’s Day. I ate cookies for dessert, after breakfast. I had ice cream a little later in the day. Then I may or may not have had another cookie or so. I also did not do any exercise yesterday but I did sit on the couch with Tony and watch about six or seven hours of TV. That is not taking good care of my body. Yesterday I was not treating my body as a temple of the Holy Spirit within me. I like how this verse starts off by giving you the benefit of the doubt. “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God?” The reason I say giving you the benefit of the doubt is because He is saying, “did you not know?” In other words, maybe you didn’t realize that your body was a temple, so this is your reminder. The bad news is, you can’t use that as an excuse anymore because I just shared this verse with you.
This is one of those times when sometimes I feel like learning about scripture can make life harder. I remember thinking once, ok maybe more than once on my journey, wouldn’t it be better if I didn’t learn this stuff, if I didn’t study scripture? The reason I felt this way was because God is calling us to live a better life. He is calling us into so much more. However, that call is not easy, and it requires sacrifice. If you study the Bible and learn how God wants you to live, it can limit what you can do. I remember thinking on numerous occasions that if one of the requirements for something to be a sin is that you know it is a sin, then what if I stopped learning. What if I stop reading how God wants me to live and then if I do something I am not supposed to do, it won’t be a sin because I didn’t know any better. Have you ever had thoughts like these? Be honest, have you? I think this is normal. I think it can be scary to live life as a Christian. Especially in a world that doesn’t value the Christian lifestyle.
There is so much that goes against the Christian lifestyle surrounding us these days. There are so many tv shows that are so graphic either with sex or violence. The music as well, seems to be getting worse and worse. Then there are so many restaurants that offer such gluttonous foods. You can have any kind of food you want delivered to your house within the hour these days. At least it used to be a little harder to over indulge. You would at least have to drive to the grocery store and pick out what you wanted. Now you can just sit at your computer and click on all the junk you like and then someone will bring it right to your door. It is so simple and yet, not helpful in a lot of ways.
I was listening to the Bible in a year podcast with Tony yesterday and I remember saying I can’t believe how God’s people in the Old Testament kept turning away from God. They saw amazing miracles and yet, they kept turning away. However, this morning I can understand it. The allure of the world is overwhelming sometimes. The want to just do what everyone else is doing can be hard to resist. The TV shows look so interesting, the idea of sleeping in on Sunday instead of going to mass looks appealing, and it can also be so easy to get sucked into gossiping, why not everyone else is doing it? There are things that I know I shouldn’t be doing, but what if I didn’t know, would that be better. Could I blissfully go about my life doing things that are wrong, but not actually sinning, because I don’t know for sure they are sins? I was going to write the answer to this question is no. However, I don’t actually know if that is true or not. My hunch is that we have a duty to learn and grow and remaining ignorant about our faith and God’s word just so we can go on living in a way we are pretty sure God wouldn’t approve of but don’t know for sure because we are avoiding learning about it can’t be ok. I am pretty sure that is a loophole that God would close.
However, even if we could do that, I am glad I am not. I am glad I am learning more about His word and How God wants me to live. Yes, learning and studying scripture does mean that we are limited in doing things sometimes. However, He is limiting us from doing things that are not good for us. They are not good for our soul. He is protecting us, just as we are protecting our children when we tell them they can’t eat candy for every meal. We are not trying to be mean, we know it isn’t healthy and they will get sick if they eat candy for every meal. The Lord is doing the same. He know’s our soul will get sick if we watch too much violence and sex on TV. He know if we eat too much junk, we will get sick. He knows the more we follow the ways of the world, the further away from Him we will get.
On the other hand, the more we learn about God and His ways, the closer to Him we get. The more we study His word and try to imitate the way He wants us to live the more God blesses us and pours down His graces on us. I don’t know if you can remember a time when you weren’t living your life according to God’s purpose or God’s plan, but if you can I bet your life wasn’t going as good as it does when you are living according to God’s plan. Studying the scripture is a blessing because we get to know God on a deeper lever. We develop a more intimate relationship with Him and that is so much better than anything the world has to offer. The ways of the world can be enticing and sometimes living the Christian lifestyle can feel restrictive, especially if you are surrounded by others that don’t understand it. However, whatever you are sacrificing to live according to God’s ways is nothing compared to what God sacrificed to save you and me.
The verse above says, “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God? You are not your own; you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.” I believe this verse is a great reminder to us. The first thing I think of when I hear this verse is of course food. It is a reminder to me to not eat everything that I want to eat. Since my body is a temple and I should Glorify God in my body, I should probably take care of it. That is not to say I can’t enjoy anything that is not good for me, it is just a reminder that moderation is important. This verse is not just about food though. We should also glorify God with what we do with our bodies and what we wear on our bodies. I like how the verse says, “you are not your own, you were bought with a price.” Since this is the case, we should act accordingly and treat our bodies as the temple they are.
We are beyond lucky that God sent the Holy Spirit to dwell within us. The least we can do is create an environment where the Holy Spirit can happily dwell. Think about it, if you were a guest living in your body, would you want to stay there? I know that may be a weird question but I think it is an important one for us to ponder. When we do we might come up with some things we are doing that we may want to change. If not, no worries, maybe you are doing a great job living the way God is calling us to live. If you do notice some things you want to change, know that you aren’t on your own changing them. God will help you if you ask. He is always willing to give us the strength we need to make changes. Take some time today and think about this verse. Am I glorifying God in my body, with my body?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you and we are so grateful that you gave us the Holy Spirit to dwell within us. Help us to make our bodies a temple to the Holy Spirit.
Help give us the strength to say no to all that is bad for our bodies. Help us to have the strength to not over indulge. Lord, renew the desire to learn and study your word. Give us the desire to walk in your ways, even when it is hard. Even when others aren’t walking in your ways. Give us the strength to go against the grain of the world Lord, this world that knows nothing of you. Lord you are the Light of the world, and you are the hope of the hopeless. We are so grateful for all you do for us and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Listen and the Lord will speak
Psalm 85:8 “Let me hear what God the Lord will speak, for he will speak peace to his people, to his saints, to those who turn to him in their hearts.”
I like this verse fro two reasons. The first is because it starts with saying, “Let me hear what God the Lord will speak.” I like this because I do not think that everyone is aware that the Lord wants to speak to us. Do you know that the Lord is wanting to speak with you? He does not want to just sit and listen while you spout off all our requests. The Lord wants to have a conversation. He wants to help guide you and He will give you direction. We often think that we can’t ask the Lord questions because He doesn’t talk back. However, the Lord will speak to you if you give Him the attention and silence that He needs. What happens a lot of the time is that we ask the Lord questions but we don’t give Him the time and space to sit and listen to His answer. This is probably because we aren’t expecting Him to answer. God is busy, He is worrying about the whole world, He doesn’t have time to answer my silly little question about this or that, right? Wrong. God has all the time in the world for you and for me. He can deal with our questions at the same time as He can deal with everything else.
We have a hard time understanding this because our brains are limited in our capacity to understand things beyond our imaginations. It is hard for us to understand how God works with time because we can only go forward in time. Trying to grasp or understand how God can see all things that are happening in time at the same time is very confusing for us. This is where faith comes in. Faith is trusting in things you can’t see, and even things you can’t understand sometimes. St. Augustine said, “ Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of faith is to see what you do not believe.” I use this quote as inspiration to remind me that if I want to see that which is unbelievable and extraordinary, first I need to have faith in those things I can’t see. This starts with spending time with the Lord. Spending time getting to know God better. Spend time with HIs Word, read the scriptures, study them and see how the apply to your lives. Did you know the scriptures are just as relevant to our lives today as they were more than two thousand years ago? The books of Proverbs is chuck full of advice for how we should be living our lives. When you spend time in the scripture you get to know God better and you also want to be a better person.
The more you learn about God and who He truly is, the more you want to be closer to Him. God is truly amazing. There are no words I could say that will help you see how remarkable He is. However, when you read the Bible, when you read how many times and how many different ways He has saved His people, you can’t help but fall more and more in love with Him. You also can’t help trust Him more as well. Spending time with the scriptures is a great way to grow in your faith. Sometimes when you sit and ask God questions, He will answer you with scripture. I have had several people tell stories about how they asked God a question and then over the next day or two they either got a scripture verse randomly come to them, or they had people give them a scripture verse and the verse was an answer to their question. God works in so many different ways. He is amazing!
Spending time with scripture is so important and the more time you find to spend with scripture, the more you will see your faith grow. However, I think it is just as important to spend time in silence with the Lord as well. We tend to turn to the Lord when we need Him and we ask Him for a bunch of stuff. We put our requests in and that is great. God wants us to turn to Him and ask Him for all that we need. He is our provider and He loves when we ask for things. He also loves when we just sit with Him in silence and let him minister to us. He loves when we talk with Him and then also give Him a chance to talk back. See what God wants to tell you. He can only talk to us when we let Him. If we are always busy, and fill all of our time with noise, then He can’t talk to us. Well, He can, but we won’t hear Him because we aren’t listening.
Spending quiet time with God can be difficult. Not because we don’t want to but because we live in a busy and noise world and we are not used of quiet time anymore. Our brains are used to going a million miles a minute and so even when we sit down and try to spend time just listening to the Lord, our brains keep thinking of a million other things we should be doing. That’s ok, God understands how we work. He is looking more for the effort and He will do the rest. God is so amazing, he has the ability to take our imperfect effort and make it perfect. If you have the desire to grow closer to Him, He will help you. If you have the desire to trust Him, He will help you. He is amazing like that. He turns our imperfections into perfections if we allow Him to.
The other thing I really liked about this verse is the last part of the sentence when it says, “for he will speak peace to his people, to his saints, to those who turn to him in their hearts.” I think we could all use God speaking a little more peace into our lives. We are all struggling to find peace these days. There is so much turmoil, anger and hate in the world right now. Having God speak peace into us would be awesome. If we want to hear this peace the Lord is speaking we need to turn our hearts to Him. That means we are not turning our hearts to the world, to TV, or other worldly vices. We need to turn to God and spend time with Him in silence and in His scriptures. If you trust me, and start to spend more time with God in Silence as well as spending more time in the scriptures I guarantee you will be surprised how much closer you feel to Him. If you did not know before today that God wants to talk with you then I urge you to spend some time talking with Him and then giving Him time to talk with you.
One thing I wanted to mention because one of my prayer group ladies mentioned she wish someone told her this. She said sometimes when she asks God a question the answer doesn’t come right away. She will ask God for advice on a situation and often times the answer doesn’t come right then. She said, for her, the answer usually comes from something someone else said. For instance, she will be talking to a friend, or read something in a daily devotional, and she will just know that is God talking to her though that person or thought that devotional. God will get His answer to your question to you in a variety of ways if you are open to hearing it and are looking for an answer. The first step to hearing God talk with you more is to know He wants to. If you aren’t even aware that God wants to talk with you then you won’t be on the lookout for it and you won’t spend time in silence listening for it. I hope after hearing this today, if you didn’t already know God wants to talk with you, then you will start listening for all He has to say to you. I hope you will start to be on the lookout for all the ways He might be talking to you. Imagine how amazing it will feel to actually get answers to your questions.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us find quiet time to sit and listen to you. Give us the desire to sit and study scripture and learn more about you. Lord, you have always been here for your people and reading about all of that gives us more trust that you will always be there for us. Lord, we want the peace that you give those who turn to you, help us turn to you. Lord we love you so very much. You are the great “I AM,” and you are the King of Kings. We are so grateful for all you do for us. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you on Monday. Have a blessed weekend.
Hello all, before I get started with today’s episode I just want to mention that I started this podcast one year ago today. I can’t believe it’s been a year already! I really didn’t know what I was doing and am thankful for my brother John and his wife Rebecca for walking me through how to get started. I am so grateful for each and everyone of you that has listened to this podcast. Whether you listened just once or whether you listen each day. I am honored you choose to spend part of your day with me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I have grown so much over this last year by spending time each day with a scripture verse or two and I hope you have too! I love you all, thank you for your support and company on this journey.
A Bubbling Spring of Joy
John 3:8 “ The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
Today’s scripture verse came from my daily devotional book that I have started reading. A very good friend of mine, who’s witness you heard a few weeks ago, recommended this book. This book helped introduce her to Jesus and I thought it would be a good addition to my morning routine. The daily devotions are written as though it is God talking to you. They are really beautiful and can really make you think some days. Today’s devotional touched me, actually it is from June 13th, but I was a few days behind and so I caught up this morning. Remember when we talked awhile ago about God not expecting perfection? My being behind on my devotional is a great example. It’s ok if you get behind. Just pick back up where you left off. No one but you is keeping score, so just let it go.
I want to read the June 13th devotional to you because I think God was talking to each one of us for this one.
“I am creating something new in you: a bubbling spring of joy that fills over into others lives. Do not mistake this joy for your own or try to take credit for it in anyway. Instead, watch in the light as my spirit flows through you to bless others. Let yourself become a Reservoir of the spirits fruit. Your part is to live close to me, open to all that I am doing in you. Don't try to control the streaming of my spirit through you. Just keep focusing on me as we walk through this day together. Enjoy my presence, which permeates you with love, joy, and peace.”
Isn’t that beautiful? God is creating something new in us, a bubbling spring of joy that fills over into others lives. Have you noticed that our lives always spill over into others lives? Have you even been in a bad mood and then noticed that your bad mood spread to others and now they are having a bad mood? The reverse can happen too. You can be in a great mood and your great mood can spread to others. This is why it is so important to be mindful of our mood and what we are sharing with those around us. Are we spreading joy or pain? This is one reason I like this devotional so much. God is saying that He is creating a bubbling spring of joy. He also tells us not to control the streaming of His Spirit through us. This is great. That means we can let God do the work when it comes to filling us with joy and showing us how to spread that joy to others.
Often times we think we need to do it all ourselves. We think we need to figure out how to spread God’s love and joy to others. God is reassuring us here that we don’t have to figure out how to do any of it. He said our part is to live close to Him and to be open to all He is doing. This last part can be harder than we think. Being open to what He is doing is something that is easy to agree to and hard to actually do. How easy do you think it would be to be open to His plan when you don’t understand His plan? Sometimes we don’t understand why God is asking us to do something and so it is harder to be open to it. It is also harder to be open to it if He is asking us to do something that is outside of our comfort zone. If we struggle with being open to God’s plan, all we need to do is pray for Him to open our hearts and mind. I also like how God tells us in this devotional to not try and control the streaming of His spirit through us. Just keep our focus on Him and He will do the rest.
Our verse for today says, ““ The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” This is so true and so powerful. We do hear the sound of the wind, we can even feel the wind, and yet we don’t know where it is coming from or where it is going. The Holy Spirit has often been described as like the wind. I have heard people say that when you feel the wind upon your face think of it as the breath of God. I love imagining myself standing there on a windy day feeling the wind all around me and thinking it is the breath of God. I never really wondered though where the wind was going and where it came from, have you? I think we don’t worry about where the wind is going or coming from because God is in control of the wind. He knows what He is doing. We don’t have to worry. I don’t know if that was a big a ha moment for you or not, but it felt like it was for me.
When that thought came to my mind I instantly thought, ‘Oh, I get it. We are worrying in our lives because we are not letting God be in control.” Or maybe we are not trusting that He is in control. Are you holding back control of your life? Are you trying to figure it all out on your own? Are you worrying because you don’t trust that God has got this, that He knows what He is doing? If so, you are not alone, we all do this. We want God to be in control, but we don’t know how to let go of the control. We want to trust God and yet, we have been let down by others so often that we find trusting others, even God, really difficult. In the devotional above it shows us that God knows we have trouble letting go of the control. This is why He tells us not to try to control the streaming of His spirit through us. He tells us to just keep focusing on Him as we walk through this day together. When we are struggling with worry, or letting go of control, we need to shift our focus to God and keep our focus on Him throughout the whole day. He is the one to rely on.
I will leave you with the words from the devotional again as I think they are really powerful and I believe God is talking to each and everyone one of us through this devotional. I hope you look at the show notes and re-read these words. I hope you spend some time thinking about them and what they mean to you. How could you implement these words into your life? Imagine your heavenly Father speaking these words directly to you. How would you reply?
“I am creating something new in you: a bubbling spring of joy that fills over into others lives. Do not mistake this joy for your own or try to take credit for it in anyway. Instead, watch in the light as my spirit flows through you to bless others. Let yourself become a Reservoir of the spirits fruit. Your part is to live close to me, open to all that I am doing in you. Don't try to control the streaming of my spirit through you. Just keep focusing on me as we walk through this day together. Enjoy my presence, which permeates you with love, joy, and peace.”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to be open to all that you are doing in our lives. If we are not, please help us. Lord, help us to live close to you. Help us to not try and control everything. Help us to just focus on you and walk through our days with you. Lord, you are so amazing. You are the almighty one and we are grateful for you. We say yes to you Lord, yes to you creating something new in us, Yes to spreading your love, joy and peace to others. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click on the link below. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Have a blessed day!
The Power at Work Within Us
Ephesians 3:19-21 “Now to him, who by the power at work within us, is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”
Did you know there was a power at work within us? Did you know with that power we can accomplish abundantly far more than we could ever ask or imagine? Have you ever had to do something that was really hard and you weren’t quite sure how you would get it done, and yet, you somehow were able to do it? That is the power that is working within you. The Holy Spirit lives in each one of us and is ready and willing to take action anytime we need him too. This is truly amazing to me. It is amazing to me that God sent His only son down to earth to die on a cross for our sins and then when Jesus went back up to sit at the right hand of His Father, God sent us an advocate to guide us on our way.
This verse says the power within us is able to accomplish far more than we would be able to ask or imagine. So, if we don’t know to ask or imagine it, how does the Holy Spirit know what we need help with? They Holy Spirit has a direct link to your heart. The Holy Spirit knows what we want better than we do. When we think about what we want, we can get all caught up in our head wondering if we can do it, wondering if we should do it, wondering if it is ok to want this or that. The Holy Spirit looks deep into our heart and knows what we want, probably even before we do. Or maybe it isn’t that the Holy Spirit knows before we do, maybe it is just that the Holy Spirit can admit what we want sooner than we are ready too. For instance, if we want to have a baby. Maybe we aren’t quite ready to admit that we want a baby because having a baby can be scary and we might not feel ready for it. Also, we might have this sense that we want to find a new job. However, we don’t pray for it yet, because getting a new job can be scary too. Even though our conscious self is not quite ready to pray for these things because they are scary, the Holy Spirit is aware that we want then and can start to pray for us.
The Holy Spirit can also help us do things that are very difficult. Can you think back to a time when you had to get through something and you remember thinking to yourself that there was no way you could do it? I have had plenty of these experiences. I have had plenty of times when I have gone through something and I was sure I wasn’t going to make it through. For instance, one time when Tony went to Germany to do his reserve time. He went for 6 weeks to Germany every year for a few years and it was up to me to hold the fort down until he returned. During this particular time in Germany I was having a lot of trouble with the boys at home. One of them had gotten expelled from school, and I wasn’t sure what I was going to do while he was home with me. There wasn’t any talk about when the district would find him a new school. It was a difficult time but I made it through because of the strength of the Holy Spirit.
The verse also says, “to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.” The power at work within us should get all the glory. Sometimes we like to take credit for all that is going right in our lives, and we blame others for all that is going wrong. Do you see anything wrong with this? Do you see how this doesn’t give glory where glory belongs? The Holy Spirit was given to us by God and the Holy Spirit is the one that is living inside of us and giving us the strength to do all things. When we take credit for the things that we couldn’t have done without the Holy Spirit, it is as if we don’t appreciate what He does for us. Have you ever been working with someone in school or at work and they take all the credit for the whole project? How did that make you feel? Did you want to work with them again? I wonder if the Holy Spirit feels like that when we take all the credit?
How can we give the glory to the Holy Spirit or to God? We praise them and we have gratitude for them. Also, we let others know what they have done for us. When people comment on how strong your were through it all, you can say something like, “Thanks to the Holy Spirit,” or you can say, “all the glory goes to God.” Whatever it is you want to say is good, just as long as you are giving the glory to God. He does so much for us and I bet He is thanked very often for his generosity. How many times have we forgotten to stop and thank the Lord for all He has done? Let’s try to develop a practice of gratitude and try to remember to give God the glory, He deserves it.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you and we are sorry for all the times when we did not give you the glory. We are sorry for all the times we took the credit for the work of the Holy Spirit. He is amazing and we didn’t mean to take away the glory for ourselves. Lord, we are so grateful you sent your advocate to us to guide us and to give us power. You are amazing. You are the Lord of the Lords and we are so grateful to have you in our lives. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with our wills and in Jesus’ name, Amen.
Thank you for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Tomorrow’s guest witness will be Beth. I look forwarded to sharing her story with you. Have a blessed day!
The Unforgivable Sin
Mark 3:28-29 “Truly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the children of man, and whatever blasphemies they utter, but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin”
I remember the first time I really heard this verse, or at least heard and paused to ponder what it meant. My dad and I were talking and I am don’t remember how we got on the topic of this verse, but we did. I remember hearing the last part of this verse and really worrying. It says, “But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin.” That seems pretty severe. I instantly starting thinking back over my life trying to figure out if I had ever blasphemed against the Holy Spirit. My understanding of blasphemy was that you speak ill or sacrilegiously about God, or in this case the Holy Spirit. I was sure I never consciously blasphemed agains the Holy Spirit, but what if I did it on accident? When we start using words like “guilty of eternal sin,” I worry because I really want to spend eternity with my Jesus in heaven.
I also started to worry about my boys as when they were younger they would say unkind things about God just to try to push my buttons. I remember when one of my boys was younger, he was looking through a flyer for a video rental place. He was 5 and wanted me to read all the names of the movies to him. One of them was the movie Jackass. I didn’t want to tell him that one because it was not a great word for a 5 year old to know. However, he promised he would never use it and I gave in and told him the name. Actually there was another movie on the same page called Drag Me To Hell. My son did a good job not using those words for a little while. After that, anytime he got upset he would start to use that word. He would say things like, you a jackass, dad’s a jackass and so on. He used it so often that I was glad I lived in Germany and most people didn’t know what he was saying. One time we had gone to see a castle and he started to act up. I was taking him back to the car to sit and calm down and he didn’t want to go so he started calling everyone a jackass. Mom’s a jackass, dad’s a jackass, grandma Joanie’s a jackass, and I was ignoring the behavior as he just wanted to get me upset. The next thing I know he yells out “God’s a jackass, drag me to hell.” I would never know what was going to come out of my kids mouth.
I am sure you can imagine how nervous I would be that they would commit this eternal sin. That my son would call the Holy Sprit a jackass or something and then never be forgiven. I did spend a lot of time thinking about this verse upon first hearing it. I am not sure what got me to stop spending so much time worrying about it but eventually I did. However, whenever I heard it again I would wonder what exactly it meant to blaspheme the Holy Spirit and if I, or anyone in my family had done it, since I really want to spend eternity with them in heaven.
I didn’t really understand this verse until I heard Father Mike talk about on the Bible in a Year Podcast. I really liked how he explained it and also it really set my heart at ease and so when I heard it again this year I decided I wanted to share it will all of you in case you are not listening to the Bible in a Year podcast and you have always wondered what this verse meant. Also, even if you were not worried about what this verse meant it is good to have this information moving forward in your faith journey.
Father Mike explained that the “unforgivable sin” any sin that we refuse to surrender to the Lord for His mercy. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says, “There are no limits to the mercy of God but anyone that deliberately refuses to accept his mercy by repenting, rejects the forgiveness of his sins, and the salvation offered by the Holy Spirit, and such hardness of hearts can lead to final impenitence and eternal loss. So any sin can be a sin against the Holy Spirit but there is not just one sin. It reminds us that we need to bring everything to the foot of the cross and to ask for forgiveness and then to accept forgiveness. Hearing this really set my mind at ease. Having Father Mike give me the reassurance that there is nothing I can do that God is not willing to forgive was great.
As much as I found this explanation reassuring I understand that some of you listening may not find it reassuring. I know there are a lot of people that struggle to believe that God will forgive their sins. Life is hard and we have all done things we are not proud of. We don’t always make the right choices. In fact, sometimes we make truly terrible choices. We hurt people intentionally and unintentionally. We may have even killed someone, maybe accidentally when we were driving or when we were on a substance like alcohol. Whatever it is we have done in the past, God is ready and willing to forgive. All we need to do is say sorry and ask for forgiveness. God knows what we have done and He still loves us and wants to forgive us. Accept that forgiveness.
If you are struggling with accepting that God can forgive you then just start there. Tell God how you are feeling and ask Him to help you open your heart and mind to HIs forgiveness. You don’t have to do this on your own. God wants this for you more than you want it for you. All you need is a willingness to accept God’s forgiveness and He will do the rest. God knows where you are at. He knows what you have been through, what you have done and why you think you can’t be forgiven. He doesn’t expect you to do it all on your own. All God wants is for you to ask Him for help right where you are at. He will do the rest. He is so amazing like that. He does all the heavy lifting when we can’t. God loves us more than we could ever know. He wants us to be with Him in heaven for all eternity. Accept His forgiveness! He gives it freely.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help open our hearts and minds to the fact you are willing to forgive our sins. Help us accept this. Help this fact bring us comfort instead of worry. If we are struggling to accept your forgiveness, help us Lord. We are so grateful that you forgive our sins, as we certainly don’t deserve your forgiveness or you love. We love you Lord. You are the king of kings and we are grateful we can call you our dad. We ask all of this in accordance with your word and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Seek the Lord and His Strength
Psalm 105:4 “Seek the Lord and his strength; seek his presence continually.”
I thought this was a great verse because I know a lot of people that could really use some strength right now. When we are going through a difficult time we can often turn to things other than the Lord for strength. We might start having a drink when we get home from work, or after a busy day with the kids. We figure that will give us just enough strength to get through the night until the kids go to bed, or it will relax us enough to forget about work. However, often times one drink turns into two or three and then creates another problem. Sometimes we turn to our friends and family to get the strength that we need. However, they can only provide so much strength as they are human and on their own they have a finite amount of strength. We also might try and rely on our own strength to get us through. This is not enough. We need to seek the Lord’s strength.
How can we seek the Lord’s strength? First and foremost, we can ask for it. That may sound so simple, and it is, and yet so many of us forget to start there. We look everywhere else first. We get upset with the Lord for not giving us the strength we need and yet we never asked for it in the first place. God wants to help us. He is ready and willing. All He asks from us is for us to ask Him. Yes He knows you need help, and also He is a willing to let you try to fix it yourself if that is what you want to do. Have you ever done this with your children, co-workers, or siblings? You can see them struggling and you know they need help, but you don’t help them until they ask? You give them the chance to figure it out on their own. God does not do this to punish us, or because He doesn’t care. Quite the opposite, He does it because He does care. He cares about what we want and need. He cares about our growth and we grow when we do things that are difficult. However, He will step in as soon as we ask Him too.
Another way we can seek his strength is to seek the tools that He gave to us. We can dig into His word and find strength in the scriptures. We can also seek the various prayers He has given to us. There are so many prayers out there. You can say your own prayers, or you can find ones for your specific need. Sometimes we don’t know what to pray, especially if we are really upset. Finding a prayer that someone else wrote and praying it can take a lot of the pressure off. If you are struggling and you can’t find the words to say you can also just sit with the Lord. He doesn’t need us to say the right thing, He just wants us to seek Him. It says in Matthew 6:7 “When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words.” Our prayers don’t have to be long and drawn out, they don’t have to be perfect and eloquent, they don’t have to be exact. What God wants is for us to speak from the heart.
Another way we can seek the Lord is to attend Mass or a church service. Being part of a community is great because when you surround yourself with others that believe the same way you believe you feel more free to be yourself. You don’t have to worry that people will mock you or persecute you for your beliefs. You feel safe. Also, Mass is great because you get to worship God and participate in a sacrament. Mass is the ultimate way to seek God because you actually receive Jesus, through communion, into your body. At church services you get to hear the word of God and then the pastor gives a sermon on that word to make it more personal to each and every one of us. These sermons help us to take the word of God and apply it to our lives. The sermons help us understand the Word of God more.
Often times at mass there is also praise and worship music and that is another way to seek the Lord. I love to listen to praise and worship music. If I think back to the one thing I have done consistently since I discovered praise music in 2011 it would be to listen to it often. I didn’t know Christian music was a thing. Well, I knew we sang songs at church but I didn’t know that they had Christian music across all genres. I didn’t know you could listen to Christian music when you weren’t at church. Maybe this sounds silly, but I just didn’t know. When I first started I bought some CD’s from Anne Trufant a Christian singer that was at a conference I went to. I started to listen to her songs in my car and while I cleaned my house. I started to learn the words to the songs and then I would hear the song lyrics during the readings at church. Her songs had a lot of scripture in them and I didn’t even realize it. Now I have discovered an app called Spotify and it has all the music you could ever want on it and it is free if you don’t mind ads. However, if I was listening to the radio I would have ads anyway. On this app you can search for any type of music you like. It will also start to make mixes for you once the app sees what music you tend to listen to. I listen to a certain playlist call Big Life Mornings by Pamela Crim. She has chosen a bunch of really upbeat Christian music and I just love it.
Another way to seek God, which I briefly mentioned is to just sit with the Lord. At Catholic churches you can go to something called Eucharistic Adoration. This is the worship of the Eucharist outside of the Mass. The Eucharistic Host is displayed in a monstrance on the altar so that all can see and pray in the presence of Christ. The Eucharist contains the body and blood of Christ and so when you are in Eucharistic Adoration you are in the true presence of Christ. Do you have to go to Adoration to spend time with God? Absolutely not. God is everywhere, He is all around us and even inside of us in the form of the Holy Spirit. If you want to spend time with the Lord you can do this anywhere. According to Jesus, its good to go away from the crowd to pray. In Matthew 6:6 it says, “But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” The Bible also mentions several times how Jesus went off to the Mts. or somewhere else to be by himself to pray. Whatever works for you is great. Just spend time with the Lord. When I sit with the Lord, I will often write in my journal as if I am writing a letter to my Father in heaven as it is difficult for me to just sit in silence with Him. Again whatever works for you is perfect. There are no rules to spending time with our heavenly Father, whatever feels right to you.
I have mentioned five ways that we can seek the Lord. First, ask the Lord for His strength. Second, seek the tools He has given to us. Third, attend Mass or a church service. Fourth, listen to praise and worship music. Fifth, spend time with the Lord, just the two of you There are many other ways that you can seek strength from the Lord. Try these ways and see which ones you like best. One of the many things about God is that He knows we are all unique and what works for one of us may not work for another. I promise if you turn to God and seek your strength from Him instead of from the world, He will give you more strength than you need. I have seen people get through incredibly difficult, impossible situations because they relied on God instead of themselves or the world. Lean in, God is waiting.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord help us turn to you for strength. Help us to see that the world can’t help us like you can. Help us to make good choices when searching for strength and not fall into bad habits that we will have to fix later. Lord, if anyone is turning to bad habits for their strength right now, I ask that you send the Holy Spirit to convict them of it and help them turn back to you. Lord you are the Lord of Lords and the King of Kings. You are the resurrection and the life. We are so grateful for all that you do. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you on Monday. Have a blessed weekend!
His Glory
Isaiah 60:2 “For darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples; but the Lord will arise upon you, and his glory will appear over you.”
I thought this was a good verse for today because it seems like the earth is currently covered in darkness and there is even a thick darkness around people. This darkness can vary. For some the darkness could be sickness. We all know our fair share of people that have been really sick over these last two years. However, in general I think we tend to know more and more people getting sick. I have never known so many people that either have cancer or have a loved one suffering from it. And although I am thankful that the success rate for curing it is so much higher than it used to be, there are still far to many people suffering from it. I know people who are in chronic pain every day and have been for a very long time. I am sure it seems to them like they are covered in a thick darkness and they probably feel as though there is not end to that darkness.
To others the darkness might be pure evil. For instance, the shootings in Texas, in Buffalo and all the others shootings that have been occurring over this year. Did you know that there have been 240 mass shootings in 2022 alone? A mass shooting is any occurrence where 4 or more people, not including the shooter, is injured or killed. We have not have a single week pass by this year where there have been less than 4 mass shootings. I am not telling you this to start a political debate about gun violence or legislation. I am telling you this to show you that darkness is covering the earth and darkness is covering the people. Whether that darkness is causing you to be evil or whether that evil is causing you pain and suffering. The whole world is suffering right now. We are suffering because of all the violence in the world, we are suffering because of all the disease in the world and we are suffering because of sin in the world.
I was talking with a friend the other day and she meditates a lot and is usually very upbeat. She was really down. She said her heart and soul feel so heavy over all the violence in this country. She said she just can’t understand the people that commit the violence. She can’t understand how it could happen so often. She said she usually isn’t affected like this but she really is not sure how to shake this feeling. She is trying to figure out the purpose of it all. Unfortunately I don’t think there is a purpose to everything. Sin is corrupting this world and this is not what God wants for us. This is what he was trying to protect us from. If everyone in the world was abiding by even just the main two commandments, Love God and love one another, we would’t have any of this violence. However, the violence and heartbreak is all around us and we need to decide what to do about it.
We can choose to get lost in this darkness. We can sit and think about all that is wrong with the world and all try to understand it. We can spend countless hours watching the news and reading articles about all that is wrong with the world today. We have that choice. However, where will that get us? Will this help us feel any better? Will this help cure our sadness or our lack of understanding. I don’t think so. I think we will be more confused and we will also be a lot more anxious. I had a friend that was really struggling with anxiety. She was worried about the future of this country, she was worried about the possibility of another world war, or a civil war. Her anxiety was getting so bad that it was a struggle to get out of bed in the morning. When we talked I asked her to stop watching the news for 2 weeks. After one day she said she felt so much better. It is so simple and yet we feel we need to watch the news, we need to be informed. I don’t disagree with the need to be informed, I question how much you need to watch or read in order to be sufficiently informed.
The second half of this verse says, “but the Lord will arise upon you, and his glory will appear over you.” The thing I think a lot of us are forgetting is just how big our God is. Yes, we may be outnumbered. There are far more non-Christians than there are Christians, but when has that ever stopped us before? Look at the beginning of our religion. There were the 12 apostles and then in one day the baptized 3,000. This verse is a reminder to us that the Lord will rise upon us. We don’t have to figure this world out on our own. We don’t have to figure it out at all. That’s God’s job, we just need to keep turning back to Him, and looking to Him for the answers instead of looking to the World for the answers. God is always with us, we are never alone. The word “arise” is a verb that means to emerge or become apparent. This verse doesn’t mean that when the world is in darkness the Lord will finally come. He never left us. This verse is just saying that when we are in darkness the Lord becomes more apparent, or He emerges. This is because when we are in darkness we look for Him. When things are going great, we tend not to look for God. We are enjoying life, we are happy and we might be grateful, but don’t actively seek Him in the same way that we do when we are in darkness.
The last thing the verse says is that “his glory will appear over you.” I read that and I didn’t think it said anything amazing. I thought it was a nice sentiment but I didn’t grasp the full weight of that phrase until I looked up what “glory” means. According to the internet, the Bible definition of glory is “ is to describe the splendor, holiness and majesty of God. Glory, in this sense, is often associated with a person experiencing God's presence in a tangible way.” Can you imagine the splendor, holiness and majesty of God appearing over you? How awesome would it be to experience God’s presence in a tangible way? I believe you don’t have to be in darkness to feel God’s presence in a tangible way and also I can see how it would be more likely because that is when we are most vulnerable. We let down our guards when we are in a thick darkness because it is abundantly clear to us that we can’t do it on our own. We tried, we gave it all we had, and we can’t get out of the darkness without Him. I think this scripture verse is an awesome verse to remember when you are struggling and going through a hard time. God is acknowledging that yes, the world is in darkness, and yes, we are too, however, He is there. His glory is upon us. If you are in darkness start looking out for God’s Glory. It will appear over you.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask that you help us through this darkness. Help us to turn away from the darkness and look for the light. Help us to not focus on the darkness but to keep our eyes fixed on you Lord. Lord, we ask that you give us the strength we need to wait for your glory. We ask that you open our eyes to be able to see your Glory when it comes. You are so amazing Lord and we are truly grateful for all you do for us. We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click on the link below. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Have a blessed day!
Your Own Prayer Language
Acts 2:1-4 "When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.”
I thought I would talk about this scripture today since we just celebrated Pentecost yesterday yesterday at mass. At least we did in the Catholic Church. I am not sure if that is a date that is universally celebrated or not. In case you are not sure what I am talking about, Pentecost is the day when the Holy Spirit came upon to the Apostles. After Jesus was crucified and then rose from the dead, he walked the Earth for 40 days. After this time Jesus told the apostles that He was going to see His Father in Heaven in John 14:16 Jesus says, “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever.” I am guessing the apostles didn’t know exactly what this meant. I doubt they could have ever imagined what happened on Pentecost.
After Jesus ascended into heaven all the apostles were gathered together in the upper room and this is where Acts 2:1-4 picks up. They were all sitting around, probably sad because Jesus left again, or maybe they were praising God because Jesus came back at all. It doesn’t say exactly what they were doing. However it does say that they heard a noise like the rush of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house they were sitting in. Then all of the sudden as they looked around the room they saw tongues of fire above everyone’s head. Well, the verse says, resting on them, but it is always pictured with these tongues of fire right above their heads. Can you imagine how strange that must have been for them? Even though I am sure they got used to seeing strange things when they were with Jesus, I bet even they were shocked by this event. Next it says they were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. Man, I wish the Holy Spirit would have filled me with the ability to speak French when I was in High School. Imagine being able to skip 4 years of learning a language in High School and just have the Holy Spirit give you the ability? That would have made for an easier High School experience.
In all seriousness, because of this special ability given to the apostles that day, they were able to go out and speak to all the people that were in town. In Acts 2:7-11 it explains just how great a gift this was. “Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” The town was filled with visitors that spoke all different languages. Had the apostles not been given this gift, they wouldn’t have been able to get the word out to everyone that day. Because they were all able to understand them, the apostles were able to baptize 3,000 people in that one day.
When we read the book of Acts, and most of the Bible actually, we tend to think the things we read about are not happening today. For instance, we believe that Jesus healed people back in His day, and they even believe that the apostles had the power to heal people in Jesus’ name. However, we feel that power died with the apostles and it is not something that is still going on today. We don’t see the healings that are still going on today because we are not looking for them. I guarantee if you look for miracles today you will see them. Actually, my friend who is giving her witness tomorrow has received several miracles. Most of the people giving their witnesses have seen miracles. They have not seen miracles because God loves them more than he loves us. They haven’t seen miracles because they are more favored than we are. They received miracles because they were open to it. They asked for them and then they were on the lookout for them. They may not even realized at the time that they are miracles. They just knew that they needed something and God provided it. However, looking back, they can see that it was miraculous. I am sure that God is providing big and small miracles in your life too. If you can’t see them it is because you are not looking for them. Take some time today and think about any prayers that you prayed and then they were answered. Take some time and let God know that you are willing and will happily accept and be grateful for any miracles He wants to send your way. Ask Him to show you the miracles He has already given to you so that you can thank Him.
It is not just miracles that are still happening today. The Holy Spirit is also still giving people the gift of speaking in another language. I wanted to take a minute or two to talk about the gift of tongues because I think it is something that most people don’t understand. I know I didn’t understand until several years ago. I always thought it was really weird and if I am being honest, a little scary. What is the gift of tongues? The gift of tongues is a gift from the Holy Spirit. It is often one of the first gifts given and it is the only one that is just for you personally. Most of the gifts, such as healing and words of prophecy are given so that we can build up the body of Christ, so we can build up the church. However, the gift of tongues is just for you and to help strengthen your faith and your prayer life. The gift of tongues is your own personal prayer language. Most of the time, in my experience, it is not an actual language that others would understand. I know in this verse the apostles spoke all different languages so that those around them could understand and that is what was needed at the time for them. All the people that I know that speak in tongues it is not any recognizable language. That can happen, but I wouldn’t expect it to happen as it is not the norm.
If you want to speak in tongues all you have to do is ask the Holy Spirit for the gift. Ask with a true and sincere desire for it. You could also go through a life in the Spirit seminar or you could ask your church pastor if anyone in your church would be able to pray over you for a Baptism in the Holy Spirit. Once you ask for the baptism in the Holy Spirit, or you ask for the gift of tongues, you have to wait with expectance. God answers our prayers. If you want your own personal prayer language, and you ask God for it, then you should expect that He will deliver. As you wait, you practice putting random sounds together. I heard Patty Mansfield explain once, think of it as if you were talking with baby Jesus. You wouldn’t use words, you would say things like goo goo and ga ga because that is how we talk to babies.
You can practice this when you are in the car or in the shower, or where ever you want to practice. God is willing to give all that ask for the gift of tongues the gift. However, many that want it do not receive it because they are not willing to give up control of their vocal chords, they are not willing to look or feel silly practicing these random sounds. If you put in the time and you believe that God will answer your prayer, then you will develop your own prayer language. One thing I want to caution you on because I didn’t understand it at the time is that you will not know what you are praying for when you are praying in tongues. I thought I would be making these sounds but I would be thinking of what I was praying for. This is not the case. You will be making sounds and it just feels like you are making sounds. However, you will know when it is just you making sounds and when the Holy Spirit takes over and you are speaking in tongues. If you have faith that it will happen, it will happen.
In Romans 8:26 it says, “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.” When you are praying in tongues, what is happening is that the Holy Spirit is communicating directly with the Lord from the depths of your heart. The Holy Spirit is saying what you truly want to say in the way that God can hear it best. Also, another benefit is that no-one else knows what you are saying, even the devil. Satan can not understand our prayers when we pray in tongues. It is a private conversation between the Holy Spirit and God on your behalf. Have you ever had a time when you really needed prayer and yet you didn’t even know what to pray for? This is an excellent example of when praying in tongues comes in handy. You don’t know what you need, but the Holy Spirit does and He sends those prayers to God for you. Miraculous things happen when you turn over that control and let the Holy Spirit say your prayers for you!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to pray for all those listening to this episode this morning. Lord, help us to understand the gift of praying in tongues a little better. Help us to open our hearts and minds to the idea. If anyone is wanting this gift Lord, we ask that you give it to them. That you give them the trust they need to ask for it. Lord, we ask you to open our eyes to the miracles you are already performing in our lives. We are so grateful for each and every one of them. You are amazing and we can’t thank you enough for all you do. We praise you Lord and we love you. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Tomorrow’s guest is my friend Jasmin. Jasmin has had a long journey. She was a single mom while trying to work and go to school. She has hit many bumps in the road and yet when she was looking back she could see God was with her through it all. She has seen some incredible miracles and I think the timing of this witness is perfect after today’s devotional. Isn’t God funny like that? We recorded this witness about a month ago and it just happens to be the day after a devotional on recognizing the miracles in our lives. That was definitely planned by the Holy Spirit. I love that. I know you are going to love hearing the witness tomorrow and I look forward to sharing it with you. Have a blessed day!
Joy Comes With The Morning
Psalm 30:5 “For his anger is but for a moment; his favor is for a lifetime. Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning.”
There is a song I listen to, but of course now that I want to know what song it is, I can’t think of it. The chorus of this song sings “joy come with the morning.” I love this idea and so when I heard this verse the other day I knew that was what I wanted to talk about today. The first line of the verse is also an important thing to remember. God does get mad at us. He has over seven billion children, of course He gets angry sometimes. I think if I were parent over everyone on Earth, I would be mad most of the time because this world is going crazy. There is so much going on today that is not of God and that is heartbreaking to me. I can only imagine what it feels like to God. According to the internet there are 2.3 billion Christians in the world. This means that 70% of His children have turned away, rejected Him, or are worshiping false Gods. That has got to be hard to watch.
However, this verse gives us hope because it says His anger is but for a moment and His favor is for a lifetime. If you find favor in the Lord, that will last your whole lifetime. God loves each and everyone of us. It is not Him that turns away from us, it is us that walks away from Him. Or maybe we don’t walk away, but we don’t follow His commandments either. We all have God’s favor from the beginning. If we lose His favor it is because of our actions and not because of anything God does. God has told us throughout the Bible, whether it be with His words directly, or though the stories of others in the Bible, that if we want to be back in His favor, all we need to do is repent. He is so forgiving and loving. He is there waiting for us with open arms to turn back to Him and run into His loving arms.
It is never too late to repent and to turn back. We tend to think whatever we did was too bad for God to forgive, or maybe we think we have been away for so long that we can’t possibly go back to church now. You can go back, it is not too late. It says in Luke 15:7, “I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.” It is great if we can all follow God’s commandments, never go astray and just worship God. However, He is saying right in this verse that He rejoices more over those of us that mess up, we repent and we turn back. Maybe you did some truly awful things and you are sure God won’t forgive you. Maybe you don’t feel that what you did was awful, but it did go on for too long and now you can’t come back. If you are struggling in anyway with thinking God won’t forgive you, I want you to write down the Luke 15:7 verse and look at it often. God rejoices when we turn away and then turn back.
The last line says, “Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning.” I love this because it show that we won’t be sad forever, joy will come again. I have a friend right now that may be losing her brother. He had a stroke and was making progress and then went into congestive heart failure and the doctors are not giving the family much hope. Luckily my friend is a very devout Catholic and she knows and believes that there is always Hope in the Lord. She knows that it is not over until its over, and then sometimes its not even over. For instance Jesus brought Lazarus back from the dead after 4 days and a little girl back shortly after she died. However, we don’t see this a lot in today’s day and age. We do see miracles though and God may choose to give my friend a miracle. However, He may not and that is so hard.
Having a loved one that is sick is so difficult. There are so many emotions that you cycle through. This is normal. It is ok to be sad, mad, even happy. That may sound weird, but if your loved one has been suffering for a long time and then they pass away you may be happy they are finally out of pain. Whatever, you are feeling, allow yourself to feel it without judgement. Our feelings are one way that our body communicates with us and also a way to warn us of danger. I have heard anger can be a very useful emotion because it can give you the courage to stand up for yourself. However, too much anger, expressed badly is not helpful. Also, I think it is important to mention because I don’t think everyone is aware, you can have two competing emotions at the same time. It is ok if you feel sad that you are losing a loved one and also happy at the same time that they will be out of pain. You can be happy if you are having a baby and yet nervous at the same time. Our human brains are capable of handling more than one emotion at a time. I mention this because we are hard on ourselves and we judge ourselves often. If possible, try to accept your emotions as they come. Let them wash over you and acknowledge them. Sit with them and allow yourself to feel them, don’t shut them down. If you allow them to come you will feel better sooner.
If you are in a really hard place right now, whether it is a loved one that is sick, hard times financially, unemployed, tired from chasing small children, or anything else that has you worried or sad, I want you to write this verse on a sticky note and put it up somewhere you will see it often. “Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning.” I know it feels like you will be sad forever, struggling financially forever, missing your prodigal children forever, or whatever your version of struggle is, but joy will come with the morning. This darkness will end with the same certainty that the night always ends and gives way to the morning. The darkness always comes into our lives, but God doesn’t let it stay forever. Just like He doesn’t let night stay forever, The sun rises every morning and so will the light come back into your life.
One thing to remember that God mentions a lot in the Bible is that if you want to help bring that light in sooner, praise God while you are in the dark. Praise Him for everything you can be grateful for. Praise Him for the little wins, and you will see more. Look for God’s work in your darkness and you will begin to see pockets of light. You will get through this, I promise you will! I know it may not seem like it and that is ok. Even if you can’t imagine ever feeling better, just keep taking one step and then other and you will be walking in the light again one day soon. For all of you that are listening and are struggling I just want you to know that you are loved and that you are seen! God sees you and He is right there with you. Lean into Him and He will guide you through this tough time. Joy will come with the morning, that is a promise from God.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, you are amazing and we are grateful you always bring joy with the morning. Lord, I know so many that are struggling with one thing or another right now. We ask you to fill them with your peace and help them trust all with be OK. We ask that you fill them with love and let them know you are there. We ask that you fill them with discernment as to what they should do in their particular circumstances. Lord, we ask that you help us to always remember that your anger is but for a moment; and your favor is for a lifetime. That weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning. Help us to believe this with our whole heart, Lord. Help us to know that we can always repent and turn back to you and you will not only forgive us but rejoice because of our turning back. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Spend Time In the Silence
Mark 6:31 “The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught. He said to them, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.” For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat.”
This verse comes after the time when Jesus started to send the apostles out two by two to do His works. When they came back they felt exhausted and they told Him all they were doing. I am sure they were excited to share with Jesus all the good things they had been doing. I know I would have been. However, even though they were out doing good things, they were still tired. It says many were coming and going and they had no leisure even to eat. Have you ever been that busy, so busy you forgot to eat? I am betting we have all been there at one point or another, and although not eating ins’t good for you, it isn’t bad to be busy at times. We will all go through seasons in our lives when we are busier than we want to be. The key is to balance those times with times where you aren’t crazy busy.
An example of this is when you have a baby, or young children. Chances are, you are not getting a lot of sleep and maybe missing some meals when you have a baby and when your children are young. You can’t help being busy in this phase of your life. Babies are tiny and totally reliant on you, so you have lots of sleepless nights. However, there are things you can do to make this a little easier on yourself. For instance, you can sleep when the baby sleeps. So, instead of trying to get as much done as you can when they nap, you could nap as well. Also, you could not volunteer to do a bunch of different things when your baby or children are little so that you don’t feel overwhelmed with things to do. These are just a few things you can do to make it a little less crazy when your kids are little. As your children start sleeping through the night, or go off to school, your schedule begins to change, and you hopefully get more sleep and have time to slow down and eat.
Sometimes life can give you situations when you need to be busy and sometimes we can create situations where we need to be busy. For instance, we sign up to help out with everything volunteer opportunity that comes our way. Or, maybe we take a job that requires us to work 60 or even 80 hours a week. Whatever the reason, sometimes we are really busy. As I said earlier, it is not bad to be busy, as long as there are times when you are not super busy. This could look different for everyone but there needs to be a time when you are not so busy and you have time to rest.
Jesus knew the importance of rest when it came to His disciples. I am not sure He always knew it when it came to Himself, but He knew the disciples would need to rest. This is why in the verse above Jesus told them to “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.” Jesus is calling us to this same thing. When is the last time you had time to rest? Are you filling your days with things that keep you busy? If so, have you examined why you are doing this? Sometimes we stay busy because we don’t want to think about anything. Maybe you are going through a really difficult time right now, or maybe a loved one is. If this is the case, sometimes when we slow down our mind fills with worry or sadness. However, as long as we are moving and not thinking, we feel as if we are doing ok. We think if we just don’t let ourselves think about it all will be ok. I get this thinking. I have definitely been there before. However, this thinking is flawed.
If we are keeping ourselves busy then we are missing out on just sitting with Jesus and letting Him heal us in that silence. I don’t think Jesus is telling the disciples to go to a deserted place to rest just so they could get some sleep. I think He was sending them to a deserted place so they could rest and so He could minister to them. It is often in the silent, alone times that God ministers to us. There have been several words of prophecy as my prayer group that talks about this silence and how powerful it is. One of those words was, “Listen to me deeply. When you listen I can help you, heal you, enrich you through my presence. It is in silence that I speak in a new and better way. But if you chatter and chatter and chatter I cannot be there to heal you.” Another one was, “My children, in the days ahead I ask you to simply be, be with me in silence. Just be and let the silence fill you. Be at peace. Breathe in my Holy Spirit, the very breath of God.”
As you can see, the Lord is still calling us away to a deserted place to be with Him. He is calling us to just BE with Him in the silence. I remember Matthew Kelly in one of his books talked about how much you can learn in the classroom of silence. How much time are you spending in silence with the Lord? I know I struggle with sitting in the silence. I feel I always need to be doing something, serving God in some way. I feel when I am dedicating time to God I need to be praying, or talking, or doing something to honor and praise Him. And yet, in his own words, in the bible verse as well as the words of prophecy, God is telling us we don’t have to always be doing something. He is telling us that He wants to meet us in the silence. He is telling us that in the silence is when He heals us, helps us and enriches us. He is also telling us that His silence can fill us up. Do you ever have times when you just feel empty? I know I do. We tend to give and give and give of our time and then we forget that we need to stop and recharge at some point. God is telling us that we can let Him fill us up, but we need to sit with Him and let Him do it. Have you ever tried to fill your car with gas while you were still driving? It doesn’t work, you need to stop, even just for a few minutes to fill your car up with gas. It’s the same with us but we aren’t using gas. We are filling ourselves with the silence and with the Holy Spirit.
I love the last word of prophecy when the Lord told us to breathe in the Holy Spirit, the very breath of God. Isn’t that amazing that we get to breathe in the very breath of God. My mentor, Pamela Crim, has us start out each morning with taking 3 big intentional breaths. She reminds us that the air we breathe is the very breath of God. While we are taking these three intentional breaths we are asking God to fill us up with His breath and also with whatever we need to get through the day. Do you think you could fit this short daily practice into your life? I know some of us are busier than others, but do you think you have 1 minute a day that you could sit with the Lord and let His breath fill you up? I wonder how much of a change you will see when you are intentional about spending this 60 seconds with the Lord. Give it a shot, what have you got to lose?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to go somewhere deserted and just spend time with you. Help us to see the importance of slowing down and resting. Help us to spend time in the silence so you can heal us, help us and enrich us. Lord, we want all you have to offer, please help us to figure out where and when to make the time to spend with you. We love you Lord! We are so grateful that you give us your very breath of life to breathe in and fill us up. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you on Monday. Have a blessed weekend!
The Lord Rejoices in You!
Zephaniah 3:17 “ The Lord, your God, is in your midst, a warrior who gives victory; he will rejoice over you with gladness, he will renew you in his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.”
I think this verse is great because it brings God’s love and affection into light. This verse gives us a different view of God. It begins by telling us that the Lord, our God is in our midst. Is this news to you, or did you already know this? Did you know that God isn’t just sitting on top of a throne in Heaven looking down on us? He is all around us. He is everywhere. Next, it says that He is a warrior who gives victory. Do you ever picture the Lord as a warrior? It’s funny because I know that the Lord fights for us, but I don’t picture Him as a warrior. When I think of the Lord, I picture Jesus and He seemed to be far from a warrior.
When I think of the word warrior, I think of a soldier that is dressed in armor and armed with weapons. I bet you get a similar picture in your mind when you hear that word. However when I looked it up online the Merriam Webster website said the definition of warrior is a person engaged or experienced in warfare broadly. When I hear this definition I do think of God. We are all engaged in spiritual warfare, whether we want to be or not. The enemy is fighting for our souls and if we are not paying attention and fighting back, he will win them. However, this verse gives us hope. This verse states that the Lord is a warrior who gives victory. God has already defeated evil. The moment Jesus voluntarily gave up His life for ours evil was defeated. If we can remember this and hold onto this truth we can fight off the evil one.
The reason I said the evil one will win our souls if we aren’t aware and if we aren’t fighting back is because the enemy is constantly trying to trick us. It says right in John 10:10 “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.” If we are not aware that the enemy is out there trying to steal our happiness and destroy all the good in our lives, they we may not see his lies for what they are. He always begins by telling us half truths so that he can gain our confidence. You may find some truth in the things that the enemy is telling you. One great way to tell if it is the enemy talking to you or the Holy Spirit talking to you is to pay attention to how you feel afterwards. The enemy uses these half truths to make you feel bad about yourself, to make you feel angry, shameful, full of regret, of any other negative emotion that you might feel. The Holy Spirit does sometimes point out things we are doing that are not good, but He always does it with love. It is always convicting, but not condemning. If you feel condemned that is not from the Lord.
The last part of the verse gives us an image that we may not have had before. It said, “He will rejoice over you with gladness, He will renew you in His love; He will exult over you with loud singing.” Not only is it something that you have not thought of before, but it may be hard for you to believe. If it is hard for you to believe this verse, I want you to remember all the other verses we have done over the past year. I started this podcast last June. This is episode #252. If you have been listening for awhile you have heard a lot of verses from the Bible. You know that God gave us the Bible so we could learn about Him and His ways. He does not put things in the Bible that are not true. The Bible is The Word of God. If you read something in the Bible you can know with confidence that it is true.
This verse says that the Lord rejoices over you with gladness. How amazing is that? Can you even imagine what that looks like. The love of God is something that is given so freely and yet we can have a hard time accepting it. When we look at ourselves all we see are our flaws. It’s kinda like when you find the perfect partner. When you first start dating you wonder what he or she sees in you. We think this way with God sometimes. He is so amazing and when we think of ourselves all we see are the ways in which we don’t measure up or the ways we let Him down. This isn’t how God sees us. He loves us, flaws in all, and as this verse says, the Lord rejoices over us with gladness. Take a minute and just sit with that thought. The Lord rejoices over you with gladness. Know this to be true with the same certainty that you know all the other verses to be true. God doesn’t just rejoice over some of His children and not others. He rejoices over all of us. This may be easier to understand if you are a parent. If you are a parent you know that your children are not all the same. Some behave well, and others not so well. Some make you happy and others make you sad at times. However, you love all your children and you rejoice in all of them, you rejoice in their differences. Our heavenly Father does the same.
The verse also says He will renew you in His love. I don’t know about you, but I could sure use a renewal in the Lord’s love. This world is a tough one and it can really wear us down. There is so much negativity and hatred right now. I am not sure what is going on but the enemy is having a hay day with our families and our family values. I hope that God will renew the whole world with His love. I wonder how many would be receptive to it? I wonder how many would reject His love. It seems the world today has decided that they can do things better without the Lord, and look where it is getting us. I say, Yes Lord, renew me with your love! I accept all of it. I will take all the love you want to give me. It makes me sad that so many are rejecting God’s love these days because the people of this world are starving for love. They feel so alone and lost. This world definitely needs a renewal of God’s love.
The verse ends with He will exult over you with loud singing. Exult means to rejoice, so this verse is repeating the fact that the Lord is rejoicing over us. However, He is not just doing it with gladness, He is also doing it with loud singing. Think about the last time your rejoiced with loud singing. What were you excited about? We wouldn’t rejoice with loud singing over something that we weren’t excited over. We don’t rejoice with loud singing that we lost our job or that our car broke down. We don’t rejoice with loud singing about things that we don’t care about. Imagine how much the Lord must care about you to be rejoicing with loud singing. Yes, you. I know some of you are dismissing the fact that I am talking to you. You find it easy to believe that the Lord would be rejoicing for other people, but not for you. The Lord is talking to you specifically in this verse. The Lord loves you and He is rejoicing with gladness and loud singing for you. Why is it so hard for you to believe that? If you are struggling to believe this, first know that you are not a lone, many people struggle to really believe God loves them and the thought that He rejoices over them is too much to believe. Second, that doesn’t make it any less true. It is a fact that God loves you and He rejoices over you. So, if you are struggling to believe this, I challenge you to write this verse on a post it note and place it on your bathroom mirror. Then read this verse every time you look in the mirror until you start to believe it for the truth that it is. God loves you, yes you, and He rejoices with gladness and loud songs over you.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord we ask that you help us to feel your love today and every day. Lord, help us to believe that you rejoice over us. Help us to know this is true and to accept your love and rejoicing with a glad and humble heart. We are not worthy of your love or rejoicing and yet you give it so freely. Help us be more like you Lord. Help us to rejoice with gladness and loud singing about those in our lives. Help us to bring your love into the world around us. You are so amazing and if we could share a fraction of your love with the world it would be our honor. We love you Lord and we are so grateful for your love. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click on the link below. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Have a blessed day!
Our Shadow Side
2 Corinthians 11:14 “And no wonder! Even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.”
I heard this verse last night while listening to an audio book on my way home from visiting my parents’ house. The book is titled, “Falling Upward” by Richard Rohr. Richard Rohr talks about how we all have a shadow side. We all have good and bad inside of us and we need to recognize and be aware of both. He said our persona doesn’t chose to see evil in ourselves so it always disguises it as good. We do things in the name of prudence, common sense, justice, or I am doing this for your own good, but it usually manifests, fear, control, or vengeance. Did you know that the name Lucifer literally means light bearer? The evil one always makes the darkness look like light and light like the darkness. I found this chapter to be really interesting. I have heard of the shadow self before but I enjoy hearing about it again as it is a great reminder to me that we need to be aware of all we think, say and do.
What I thought of when I heard this verse is that I have seen a lot of evil things that people have done in the name of good. People treated badly just because of their race, color, nationality, sexual preference or anything else that make people seem different from others. A lot of times the people that are doing the unkind acts are justifying their behaviors. They feel they have a right to do them and they don’t think that they are doing anything wrong. It breaks my heart to think of how many people have been hurt in the name of love or in the name of religion. I feel as though now a days the evil one is excelling at disguising himself as an angel of light. We seem to be doing mean and unkind things and justifying them in one way or another. Whatever we are telling ourselves, we are wrong. God’s number one commandment is to love Him and to love others. If we feel led to act a certain way, or if we feel God is asking us to do something we must stop and ask ourselves if we are living up to these two commandments. If what you want to do contradicts these two commandments, then it is not from God.
One thing that came to mind when I heard this was unforgiveness. The Holy Spirit will sometimes put someone on our mind that we need to forgive. He does this because the Holy Spirit is our guide in life. He knows what is in our hearts and He wants to help us get to heaven. When you feel that prompting, try to listen, it will serve you well. Sometimes we can feel as though someone doesn’t deserve forgiveness. We feel as though we are completely justified in being angry and not forgiving this person. We feel as though our reasons for not forgiving are pure and so it is ok if we don’t forgive. This is the enemy trying to get in our heads. God calls us to forgive. He calls us to forgive a lot. He wants us to forgive again and again. It says in Matthew 18:21-22, "Then Peter came and said to him, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.” That is a lot of forgiveness God is expecting of us. Can we do it? Can we do what is asked of us even when we don’t want to?
Richard Rohr talked about how our mind does things in the name of someone’s own good and yet it usually manifests, fear, control or vengeance. I think we can get stuck in this trap a lot. We think we are doing things for our children’s own good, or maybe its our aging spouse or aging parents. We think we know better than them and we feel as though we are only trying to help them. However, our real motivation might be fear that they will get hurt, they will be unhappy, or that we will lose them. Some fear is ok. We probably wouldn’t survive very long is we were 100% fearless. If we did everything we wanted to do without any fear, we would probably live a short life. Fear can save us from making some bad choices. However, it can also hold us and our loved ones back from growing and changing.
When we feel fear we need to ask ourselves where the fear is coming from and what we are afraid of. Is our fear because of clear and present danger, or is it our lack trust that things will be ok? The problem is that our fear is disguised as love or concern for our loved ones. We don’t know we are making our decisions based on fear. I think it is important to examine the reasons we feel the way we do. Ask ourselves why we are making the decisions that we are making. Why are we saying no to our child? Why are we preventing our aging parent from doing this, that or the other thing? Are we truly looking out for their best interests?
We all have a shadow side, as much as we wish we didn’t. If we don’t want to let this shadow side control us we must be aware of it and question the motivation of our actions. If we are doing things that are hurting people or not treating people with respect then we are not acting as our best self. Don’t let the enemy trick you. Don’t let the enemy come into your life disguised as an angel of light. Be aware that the enemy can disguise himself like that and that he may be leading you to make bad choices. Question why you are making the decisions you are making, especially if you are hurting others and saying it is in the name of God, or religion, or whatever else. God wants us to love Him and love others. If your actions do not do those two things, or if they contradict those two things, then they may be the evil one trying to disguise himself as good.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, I ask that this message reach those you intended it for. Lord, we all have a shadow side, help us to see ours. Help us to recognize it and accept it without acting on it. Help us to question our actions Lord and discontinue any actions that are not of you. We love you Lord, you are so amazing. We are so grateful that you gave us the Holy Spirit. Lord, we ask that the Holy Spirit show us when the devil is disguised as an angel of light. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to seeing you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Intercessory Prayer
Job 33:22-26 “Their souls draw near the Pit, and their lives to those who bring death. Then, if there should be for one of them an angel, a mediator, one of a thousand, one who declares a person upright, and he is gracious to that person, and says, ‘Deliver him from going down into the Pit; I have found a ransom; let his flesh become fresh with youth; let him return to the days of his youthful vigor’; then he prays to God, and is accepted by him, he comes into his presence with joy, and God repays him for his righteousness.”
I really like how this verse demonstrates how powerful intercessory prayer is. This is demonstrated a lot in the Bible and yet I don’t know if we grasp how important and powerful it is. God loves us, we are his children and He would do anything for us. He is also a fair and just God. This means that sometimes He has to do things that He doesn’t necessarily want to do. For instance, I am not sure if He really wanted to banish Adam & Eve from the Garden of Eden. I bet He enjoyed their evening walks together and enjoyed their company. However, He told them the rules for living there, and they disobeyed the rules. He needed to follow through with the consequences. There are so many times throughout the history of the Bible when God gave his people rules to follow and they didn’t listen and He let them feel the consequences of their actions. However, there have also been times when God wanted to impose consequences and someone intervened on their behalf and fought for God to go easy on them.
Moses did this a lot when the Israelites were wandering in the desert. It seemed like every time Moses was turning around they were breaking another rule, or turning against the Lord for one reason or another. Moses spoke up to God a lot for the people He led out of Egypt. He was constantly trying to keep them out of trouble with the Lord. Sometimes Moses was doing it for the people and sometimes he was doing it because of his love for God. For instance, when Moses when up onto the mountain and the Israelites make a golden calf, the Lord wanted to destroy them. However Moses spoke up to the Lord in Exodus 32:11-12, “But Moses sought the favor of the Lord his God. “Lord,” he said, “why should your anger burn against your people, whom you brought out of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out, to kill them in the mountains and to wipe them off the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce anger; relent and do not bring disaster on your people.” Moses and saying this because He doesn’t want God to look bad in the eyes of the Egyptians.
The Lord is calling us all to pray for others. The lord does not want to lose a single one of His children to sin and yet this world is calling us all away from the Lord. This world is confusing us with it’s noise and distractions. It is teaching us that what we want is more important than what God wants. It is teaching us that if we think something is right, then it is right, even if God says it isn’t. The notion of fasting for spiritual reasons is looked down upon, however, the idea of fasting to lose weight it widely accepted. The idea of spending hours binge watching TV is encouraged but the idea of spending hours reading the Bible is looked down upon. Matthew 7:13-14 says, “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” This is a very telling verse. This means that although the Lord doesn’t want to lose a single one of His children to sin, he is actually losing a majority of them.
So, how can we help the Lord? We can pray for all sinners. We can pray for a repentance of all hearts. We can pray for a conversion of the whole world. There were many saints that prayed daily for the conversion of souls and for the souls of all sinners. It doesn’t have to be a long, wordy prayer where you make sure to say all the right things. It can be as simple as Lord, I pray for the souls of all sinners. Our prayers are powerful and if ask the Lord, He answers. Do you think you could add one extra line to your daily prayers? Even if you just ask one time, even if right now you asked God to save all sinners, it would make a difference. However, if you added it to your daily prayers it would make even more of a difference. The Lord wants us to pray for others. He wants us to intercede on their behalf.
Another great way to intercede is to start by interceding for your loved ones. If you have children, then you are probably worried that they do not believe in God, or that they don’t go to church any more. You are probably worried for their souls. Or maybe you aren’t worried about your children but you are worried about a sibling, a parent, a spouse, or a friend. Often times when we are worried for our loved ones souls we think there is nothing we can do but pray, as if praying isn’t powerful. Our prayers are so powerful and we don’t even realize it. I heard a witness the other day from a friend of mine. Her brother has fallen away from the Catholic church and she worries for him because of this. She prays for him daily. The other day he had a massive stroke and is not doing too well. They had a priest come to the hospital and gave him the anointing of the sick and absolved him of his sins. His soul is pure again. Our prayers are powerful.
You may have something that is really weighing on you right now and you feel helpless in this situation. If that is you I want you to hear this message. You are not helpless. You are more powerful than you know because you have the power of Jesus Christ behind you. Your prayers are going up to the Lord and He hears every single one of them. Ask others to pray for you and your situation also. God loves it when we come together and pray. Ask friends and family. If it is something you don’t want others to know about you can ask them to pray for a private intention. There are usually prayer lines at your church when you can give them the request and they send it out to a whole list of people who will pray for your intention. If your church doesn’t have one you can email st.jsprayerline@gmail.com and I will get your request out to all of our prayer warriors. There are also websites you can go to such as Lourdesprayerrequest.com, unity.org/prayer-request, or hisradio.com/prayer/need-prayer/, just to name a few.
One last thing I would like to mention is that there is nothing too small to pray about. Many people turn to God for the big things in their life because they don’t know what else to do. However, God is in all the little details too. If you need $5 for something, ask the Lord, it’s not too small a request. If you need timing to work out for something, ask the Lord. It is actually amazing when you start to pray for little things as well as the big things. When you do this you are giving God an opportunity to show up more in your life and you get to see how amazing He is at even the little details. Trust me, you won’t be sorry. You will begin to see how much He is willing to do in your life, if you just invite Him in. He is there waiting for the invite. Why not invite Him in today?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to the episode today. Lord, we invite you into all areas of our lives. We invite you into the big issues as well as the small ones. We give you unlimited access into our lives. Lord, help us to intercede for others. If you want us to intercede for a particular person or a particular cause, put that on our hearts and help us to do it. Help us to reach out and ask others to pray for us as well. Lord, we love you and we are so grateful that you listen to our prayers. You are so just and yet so merciful. We are so lucky to have you as our heavenly Father. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Joy, Trust, Forgiveness & Love
Psalm 86:4-5 “Bring joy to your servant, Lord, for I put my trust in you. You, Lord, are forgiving and good, abounding in love to all who call to you.”
Joy is one of my favorite words. It makes me smile just hearing it. The reason I like the word joy so much is because it reminds me of God. Only God can bring you joy in the middle of a difficult situation. Only the Holy Spirit can remind you of something that makes you smile or laugh, when all you feel like doing is crying. Have you ever been in a situation where you know you should be crying, but you are laughing? That is the Holy Spirit moving in you. I remember when my grandpa Desilets, my dad’s dad, passed away we laughed a lot at his wake. It wasn’t that we weren’t sad, we were so sad. Yet, we kept remembering the good times that we spent with him. We remembered all the funny stories and we shared them with each other.
The same thing happened at my friend Shannon’s wake. This was even more sad in my eyes as my grandpa had lived a nice long life. He got to see his children grow up and have children and then see his grandchildren have children. However, my friend Shannon was 40 years old. She had daughter that was only 9 years old. All we wanted to do at that wake was cry. Her passing was so tragic. However, they Holy Spirit knew what we needed. He knew that we needed to remember the fun times we had with Shannon. We needed to remember how funny she was and all the times that she made us laugh. She was so full of life and she loved to make people laugh. She would have wanted us to be laughing and not crying because that is who she was.
I also like how this verse is pairing joy with trust in God. I have found the more we trust God, the more joy we find in our lives. This makes a lot of sense. It is difficult to have joy when you are worried all the time. However, the more you are able to let that worry go by handing it over to God and trusting He will take care of it, the more room you will have for joy. I found so much joy in my life once I learned to trust that God was in control. Once I realized I could have joy even when I wasn’t happy. I have a friend that is going through a really difficult time right now. She is going through something that no parent should have to go through. Yet many do. She is devastated by the situation and yet she is still finding joy in her days. She is trusting that God will take care of the situation and He will do a much better job than she can because He knows all the little pieces that she doesn’t know. He can see both sides. He can see right into the heart of her son and He knows what her son is thinking and feeling.
It is not easy for her, or any of us, to let go of the control we think we have over our difficult situation. However, the control we think we have is just an illusion anyway. God is in control, whether we want to admit it or not. We can waste our time and energy fighting Him and trying to keep hold of that control, or we can let go and let Him take care of it. Once we finally let go, which usually isn’t until we have done all we can do and have no other choice but to surrender it to God, then we feel so much better. If you have ever been able to turn something over to God, something that was really weighing on your mind and soul, you feel lighter afterwards. You can actually feel this weight being lifted off of your shoulders. It is amazing. Then we always ask ourselves why we didn’t hand it over sooner. Why can’t we remember this feeling for the next time this happens? Why can’t we hand things over to God sooner? Why do we always have to do it the hard way? If we can learn to trust God with our struggles, trust that He will help us through them, we would have so much more joy in our lives.
The next line in the verse says, “ You, Lord, are forgiving and good, abounding in love to all who call to you.” This is something we can’t hear enough because it is so hard for us to believe. The Lord is forgiving. Do you believe this, really believe this? And when I say do you believe this, I don’t mean do you believe that God forgives everyone else, but He doesn’t forgive you. I mean do you believe that God forgives you. Do you believe that there is nothing beyond the scope of God’s forgiveness? Sometimes we feel like we are not worthy of God’s forgiveness because we have done too many bad things. My first thought is, we are right, we are not worthy, no one is. However, God doesn’t give His forgiveness to those that are worthy. He gives His forgiveness to anyone that asks for it. There is no preferential treatment when it comes to God’s forgiveness. There are only two requirements. First, we must repent for out sins. Repent means you feel or express sincere regret or remorse about one's wrongdoing or sin. Basically you have to be sorry for your sins. Second, we must ask for forgiveness. God wants to forgive us, He is just waiting for us to repent and turn back to Him. Ask the Lord and He will forgive you.
The next step is the hard one. After He forgives you, you need to accept that forgiveness and forgive yourself. If the Lord God almighty can forgive us, why can’t we forgive ourselves. Why do we hold onto the guilt? It is like we are torturing ourselves. If we hold onto the guilt even after God has forgiven us then it is like we are saying to God, that we don’t accept His forgiveness. Do we think we know better than Him? Our sins are not greater than His forgiveness. When we realize that, we will have more joy in our lives as well. Living with guilt and feeling like you can’t be forgiven makes living hard. It is hard to be happy and joyful when we are filled with guilt and regret. Let it go. I know its not always easy to let God’s forgiveness into your lies. However, if you do, you won’t be sorry. If you are struggling to forgive yourself for something, ask God for help. He loves to help us, and He is just waiting for us to ask.
The verse ends with the words, “abounding in love to all who call to you.” The Lord is abounding with love. Isn’t that a great picture of the Lord? The word abounding doesn’t really leave much room for lack. Sometimes we might not feel loved by the Lord and we might think that He doesn’t have enough love for us. This is not true. The Lord loves you just as much as He loves everyone else. When I picture the word abounding, I think of the word overflowing. This is how I picture the Lord’s love for us. It is overflowing. Not only is there enough love for each and everyone one of us, but His love for us is overflowing. In the mornings I fill my dog’s water dish up at the sink. Sometimes I turn the water on for the dish while I do something else. Occasionally I will forget and when I remember the dish is overflowing with water. This is how I picture the Lord’s love. It more than enough to fill each one of us up and then some. If you are not feeling this love, all you need to do is call on Him. Call on His forgiveness, call on His love. Call on Him and He will give you all you need.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord we love you so much and we are so grateful for all that you do for us. We don’t always understand why you forgive us but we are grateful that you do. Help us to accept this forgiveness and to forgive ourselves. Lord, we thank you for all the joy you bring into our lives. We thank you for the times you remind us to laugh when all we want to do is cry. Lord, we have more joy when we put our trust in your, please help us to do that. Help us to turn our worries over to you and not take them back again. You are so great Lord. We call on you to love us Lord. Help us to feel that love, fill us up with that love. You are so amazing and we are so grateful that you love abounds for those who call on you. Help us to call on you Lord. We ask all of this in accordance with you will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you on Monday. Have a blessed weekend.
Progress Not Perfection
Hebrews 5:7-9 "During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with fervent cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered and, once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.”
I think this verse struck me at first because of the line in the middle that says, “He was heard because of his reverent submission.” My ears perked up because I am always trying to figure out how to maximize the power of my prayers. Saying that out loud I understand how crazy that may sound. Although I don’t think I am alone. I am sure there are others out there that are trying to pray perfectly so that God will answer our prayers. However, God doesn’t need us to pray a certain way. He doesn’t need us do make our prayers powerful, that is His job. And yet, I am still always trying to figure it out anyway. I am constantly trying to figure out the perfect way to pray. Why is it that we are always searching for perfection when God is only asking us for progression. Progress not perfection is something I tell my friends and family all the time. I celebrate with them in all their imperfections because I truly believe that we should focus on progress not perfection. If we are moving forward towards our goal, no matter how small that progress is, we should celebrate. God is not asking us for perfection, he just wants us on that journey to come closer to Him.
This verse can help us on that journey if we really look at it. The first line says that while Jesus was on earth, “he offered up prayers and petitions with fervent cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission.” Reverent submission, do we all know what the means? It can be summed up with these 8 words, “yet not my will, but yours be done.” Jesus did not want to die. Jesus was begging and crying for the Lord to take this cup from Him and yet He was willing to obey if that is what His father asked Him to do. Can you imagine how hard it was for God on that night? I have a hard time sticking to bedtime when my child is begging to stay up for one more show. I can’t even imagine if they were begging me to save them from an excruciatingly painful death and I had the power to save them, but I couldn’t because it wouldn’t serve the greater purpose. Just thinking about that right there helps me to understand how much God loves us. It makes me wonder how anyone could question that God loves us if He could do that for us.
Another powerful part of that line is when it says, “He was heard.” This is powerful because we are told that Jesus’ prayers were heard, yet He was still crucified. We sometimes think that God must not have heard our prayers because if He did surely He would have saved our loved one, or granted our request, whatever it was. However, right here in this verse we are told that Jesus’ prayers were heard, and yet He was still crucified. God hears our prayers, always. Even if we don’t say them perfectly, even if we are not living our lives perfectly, He always hears us and He always answers our prayers. Sometimes the answer is no and that is really hard for us. We don’t understand. I have been praying a lot for this friend of a friend. She was diagnosed 2 years ago with ALS. There is no cure and it is a really debilitating disease. The end comes pretty quickly and yet not before taking away your ability to do the most basic things like swallow and breathe. She was a young woman and she has two young children. I was praying for a miraculous cure or healing. I was begging God to not leave those two boys without a mother.
This young woman died last weekend. God heard my prayers and yet the answer was no for Him keeping her alive. When I struggle with times like this I remember Isaiah 55:8-9 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” We don’t always understand, but we can be confident that He heard our prayers, just as He heard Jesus’ prayers. If He had to tell His only son no, he will have tell us no sometimes too. God has a difficult job. Imagine how hard it was to parent your children. Whether you had one, two, or twenty, it wasn’t easy to watch them make mistakes and know that you can’t save them from it because it needs to happen. And if you were like me, you weren’t always strong enough to let them make those mistakes. I stepped in and shielded my children from things that I should have let them experience. Now imagine you have more than 7 billion children you are taking care of. Imagine how hard it would be to allow them to make the mistakes that you know they are going to make. God is so strong and so amazing. He is the ultimate Father.
The last line in this verse says, “Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered and, once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.” Jesus learned obedience from His suffering. He didn’t want to do it and yet He did because His Father asked Him to and because of this obedience, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey Him. These last 5 words also stuck out to me when I read this verse for the first time. Jesus is the source of eternal salvation for all who obey Him. Obeying Him is something I struggle with sometimes. I want to do what is right and yet, my mind wants to do other things. For instance, I am working on writing a book that I truly feel the Lord asked me to write. I think it will help a lot of people with their anxiety and bring people closer to the Lord. I want to obey the Lord and finish this book. I honestly do. I think about it alot. Then when I sit down to work on it, I open up Facebook instead of my writing app. I got lost in social media for an hour and then run out of time. The other day I had all evening to work on it. I was looking forward to it all week. Then when the time came I decided to watch a quick episode on TV while I ate my dinner. Four hours later the night is over and I have not written a single word but instead I watched 4 hours of TV. The words from St. Paul in Romans 7:15 come to my mind often, “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.”
I think we all have ways we could obey the Lord more. They may be small ways and they may be larger ways. Only you know what the Lord is calling you to do. Jesus was called to sacrifice His life in order to gain eternal salvation for us. Whatever the Lord is calling you to do, will seem small in comparison to that. Can we follow in Jesus’ footsteps? Can we have reverent submission? Can we say to the Lord, not my will but yours be done? It is not always easy. He will call us to do things we don’t want to do. Maybe right now He is calling you to do something really hard, something you don’t want to do. Maybe He is calling you to give up drinking, or calling you to fast, or something else that is really hard. If this is the case I want to remind you, and myself, He is not calling us to do anything alone. He will be there every step of the way. He is also not calling us to do anything that He won’t give us the power and strength to do. Call on Him as He is calling on you. Be obedient and you will be amazed at the ways you see God show up in your life.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, you are amazing are we are truly luck we have you are our Heavenly Father. We are grateful that you are in charge instead of us. We are grateful that you are strong enough to make the hard choices. We don’t always understand your plan Lord. Please help us to stay faithful when we struggle to understand. Please help us to remember that you are looking for progress not perfection and that it is not our job to make our prayers powerful, that is your job. Lord, we pray that you give us the strength and power to obey even if we don’t want to. Help us to pray the prayer and truly mean the words, not my will but yours be done. Lord, we love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Thank you so much Tracie for sharing your journey with us. There is so much in there that people can relate to. One thing I want to point out that you touched on, but did not elaborate on is how God saved your son, and also your daughter from that abusive relationship. I want to touch on it because God was still answering your prayers even when you did not feel worthy, even when you were living in a way that you were not proud of. I think this is important for us all to realize. We don’t reach out and ask God for help sometimes because we don’t feel worthy. However, God isn’t asking us to do anything other than ask for His help. Invite Him in to our situations no matter how crazy they are. Don’t wait until things are perfect and your feel worthy before you ask God for help. Invite Him into the mess and you will see that getting out of the mess, with His help, is so much easier than doing it ourselves. Thank you Tracie, for sharing so many good lessons with us. I hope one day you will share with us the story of how God saved your son from congestive heart failure. We look forward to hearing from you again.
We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click on the link below. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Have a blessed day!
Stop and Think Before Reacting
Hebrews 5:1-3 “Every high priest is selected from among the people and is appointed to represent the people in matters related to God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins. He is able to deal gently with those who are ignorant and are going astray, since he himself is subject to weakness. This is why he has to offer sacrifices for his own sins, as well as for the sins of the people.”
This verse is talking about the high priests and how they should e able to deal gently with those who are ignorant and going astray because they themselves are subject to weakness. I don’t think this verse just applies to high priests though. I think this verse applies to each one of us. I have noticed a lot lately that we, as a society in general, are not being very gentle with each other. It seems to me that we are getting more and more inpatient. We seem to forget that we are subject to weakness and that we are not perfect. It seems as though society is getting less and less tolerant of those that make mistakes. As if we don’t all make mistakes in one area or another.
Perhaps I am noticing this more because I am teaching my teenager how to drive. If you have not had the pleasure, you are missing out. It definitely increases your prayer life. Driving with a new driver also helps you develop patience. You have to remain calm because if you freak out, they will freak out. This is like pretty much everything in parenting. Kids take their cues from us. It is easier to patient and calm when you are in the car with your child and you know they don’t know how to drive. It is easier for you to empathize with what they are going through because you can see that they are trying and that they really want to learn. However, what if you are not the one in the car with them. What if you are in the car behind them? What if you are stuck going 20 miles an hour in a 25 mile and hour zone because that is as fast as the person in front of you is going. How easy would it be for you to have patience for that person?
The other day while my son was driving we ended up on a road I did not intend for us to be on. I had him stop by the side of the road so I could explain he had two options. This car came up behind us quickly and was not happy we were stopped. They started honking the horn and telling us to go. I politely asked them to go around us. However, they had pulled up so close behind us that they would have to back up to go around us. They were not happy. There was a man driving the car and a woman in the passenger seat. When the car went around us the woman unrolled her window and yelled something at us. My son was instantly angry that they would be so impatient. I get it though. They didn’t know what was going on, they didn’t know he was a first time driver. The thing is, we rarely know the whole story. Would they have reacted that way if they knew he was a first time driver? We don’t know. Maybe they would have been compassionate, or maybe they were having a really bad day and it wouldn’t have mattered. Maybe they were in a hurry for some reason and we will never know what it is. The point is that we rarely have the whole picture. So, what can we do about that?
We can treat all people with compassion. We can react with kindness even if we don’t understand. We can remember what this verse says, "He is able to deal gently with those who are ignorant and are going astray, since he himself is subject to weakness.” We all make mistakes, we all have good days and bad days. If we can remember this when we are frustrated with others, maybe we could react more gently and with understanding. When I was a teenager I was stopped at a stop sign and there was a stream of cars that were running the other stop sign. I was annoyed that they weren’t stopping and so I beeped my horn and then took my turn. However, I happened to be turning the same way they were and realized it was a funeral procession and that is why they were running the stop sign. Of course I felt awful and immediately pulled over to let them all pass me. We just don’t know, so much of the time.
We have no idea what others are going through. I have a friend that suffers from chronic pain and yet you would never know it by looking at her. I know someone who was in an abusive relationship and yet we never knew because she hid it from us. People don’t tend to talk about the bad parts of their lives. Whether it is because of shame, embarrassment, fear of being judged, fear of being hurt, or whatever else, we don’t share large parts of our lives. I have really tried to adopt the idea “everybody is going through something.” Whenever I get frustrated I try to remind myself that I don’t know what they are going through, what their cross to bear is, but I do know we all have one. Trying to remember this in every situation helps me to respond with compassion. It helps me to be more understanding. I have heard people say that they honk the horn because they want the person to know that they did something wrong, so they don’t do it again. Think about when you were driving and you made a mistake, maybe you cut someone off, or you stopped too quickly, or you forgot to blinker, whatever it was did you need someone to honk at you to tell you you did something wrong, or did you already know? Most of the time we know, we didn’t mean to do it, that is what makes it a mistake.
Can you imagine how much better the world would be to live in if we were free to make mistakes without people jumping down our throats when we did? Can you imagine how much less stressed you would feel if you weren’t so angry anytime someone did something you didn’t like? It is not our job to fix everyone or correct everyone. This verse above talks about how the high priests should deal with those that are ignorant and going astray. It was actually their job to try and correct those that were ignorant and going astray. It was their job to try to help direct them back to living the way God wanted them to live. However, God didn’t tell the priests to yell at them and order them to get their lives in order. He didn’t tell them to judge them and treat them badly. The priests were supposed to be gentle and to remember that they are subject to weakness also. I believe this verse is a call to all of us. Whenever you find yourself wanting to yell at someone or find yourself frustrated with something they are doing, I urge you to remember that you are not perfect either. You do things that others find frustrating and when you do, how do you wish they would react to you? Not, how do they react, ask yourself, how would I like someone to treat me if I was doing this?
If we just stop, take a moment and remember that we don’t know what this person is going through, or what the whole situation is, then I am willing to bet we would react a lot more gently than we currently do. What about you? Do you think you can deal more gently with people knowing that you are not perfect and that we are all going through something?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to be patient and calm with those that frustrate us. Help us to pause and remember that everyone is going through something before we open our mouths. Help us to react more gently remembering that we are not perfect either. Lord, we pray a special prayer of blessing and protection for all those that are teaching children how to drive. It is not for the faint of heart. Lord, you are so amazing. You have done so much for us and we are so very grateful. Just the fact that we have cars to drive is amazing. You are so powerful and mighty. We love you lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Our guest for tomorrow’s Witness Wednesday is Tracie H. Tracie is going to tell us about her experience with faith growing up and how it changed over the years. She is going to witness how God is there for us when we need Him, even if we aren’t always there with Him. She will share how amazing He is at bringing people together just when they need each other the most. I know you will lover her witness. I look forward to sharing it with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Don’t Believe Everything You Hear
1 John 4:1 “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God; for many false prophets have gone out into the world.”
What first stood out to me about this scripture was the words “test the spirit to see whether they are from God.” What came to my mind is the various opportunities that we are presented with from day to day. The world is so busy and there is so much you can do. We can be tempted to do a lot of things at one time. We think to ourselves, well this is quick, it would only take me 10 minutes to do in the morning. Well, I guess I could add this in too as it only takes 15 minutes. Then a friend calls and asks if we can do something for them and although we already have a busy schedule we say yes because we want to help them out and it will only take an hour from start to finish. Do you do this too, or is it just me? I can start out with a completely empty day and then by the end it is filled to the brim with things to do. Some of it needs to be done and some of it doesn’t. Although, in my mind I probably think it all needs to be done.
This is what I thought of when I read this verse. I though that we need to discern more about the things we are doing. Even things with the church. Have you ever taken on more than you should have at church because you figured if you didn’t do it, no one would? Be honest, you know you have. We all have. Maybe it wasn’t at church, but it was with your family, friends or at work. We don’t mind doing the work and we think that we are pleasing the Lord because we are so involved with our church, or wherever you are spending your time. However, have you ever stopped to ask God if you should take on a role, before you take it on? Have you ever asked what He wanted you to do? I think if you did, you would be surprised. Every opportunity that comes your way is not sent there from the Lord. God is not asking you to do everything the world is asking you to do. This verse is trying to remind us of that. Test the spirits and see if they are from God. Stop and pray about a new position before you take it on. Don’t just say yes in the moment. Take it to the Lord and see what He has to say about it.
Maybe He doesn’t have anything to say and it will be left up to you. However, what if he does? We know that God knows things long before we do. What if we want to say yes to a job but He knows that there is something better coming down the line. What if we want to say yes to a volunteer opportunity but he knows you will be super busy in a few months and won’t have time. We tend to feel if we are not busy all the time then we aren’t doing enough. However, I don’t believe that is from God. I think that is one of the things this verse is warning us about. If we are busy all the time then we don’t have time to sit down and just BE with God. If we keep our minds constantly going then we run out of time to even think of God, never mind talk to Him or sit and listen to Him. If you are intentional about your relationship with God then you can find ways to include Him in all you do. However, how many of us are doing that? How many of us are inviting God into all of our daily actions? I am not saying that we should be busy, I am just cautioning you and myself, to think about opportunities presented before jumping to say yes. Stop and ask God if He is the one presenting the opportunity and if He wants you to take it. Just as this verse says, test and make sure it its from God.
The other things I thought of when I read this verse is best described by the Message translation of this verse. It says, “Dear friends, don’t believe everything you hear. Carefully weigh and examine what people tell you. Not everyone who talks about God comes from God. There are a lot of lying preachers loose in the world.” The first part of that verse says, don’t believe everything you hear. This is something we are told often, but do we pay attention to it? This world is pretty divided these days and some people will use the Lord and scripture to push their agenda. Just because someone says something about God, doesn’t make it true. Even if you hear it at a church, or from a preacher or pastor, it might not be true. Sometimes we hear things and we feel in our inmost being that it is not true. We should listen to this voice and we should test to see if it is really from God or not. Sometimes we hear things that are in direct opposition to all we know to be true about God. If this is the case, you should definitely question it and not just believe it.
I found this article called Five Ways to Know If Something Is From God by Deb Wolf. (CLICK HERE for the article) The first thing Deb says is to begin with prayer. This is a great starting point for anything you are doing. However, if you are not sure if what you are hearing is from God, ask Him. Sit with it and pray about it. Ask the Lord and then listen to see what you hear, or what you feel. Often times it won’t be an audible answer but you might feel one way or another. The second things suggested in the article is to ask yourself, does this glorify God? Whatever you are questioning, does it Glorify God? God will never guide you to do something that will not give Him glory. The third thing would be to ask yourself, does it agree with scripture? God gave us His word to show us His well. Does whatever you are questioning agree with scripture? The fourth thing from the article is to be willing to wait. Be patient because God’s will is worth the wait. If something is from God He will guide you to it. Don’t rush it. The fifth and last thing mentioned in this article is to trust God to accomplish His will in your life. The article says “you can trust that if God wants something specific in your life He will guide you to it.” Deb Wolf says, “The good news is if you are trusting and glorifying God with your life you can move ahead confidently.
As you go through your day, question what you are told. Don’t just believe things that you feel aren’t true. God is good and someone is telling you something that doesn’t match up with that then question it. The same goes with things people say about you. Not everyone is speaking truth. If someone says something unkind that makes you feel awful about yourself, even if it is you that is saying it, don’t believe it. Question why it isn’t true. Find proof that the statements are false. Also remember that not every opportunity is from God as well. Take a day to think and to pray about whether this opportunity is right for you. Ask God if He thinks you should take it. If you do decide to take the position do it because you want to, now because you feel you have to. Trust that God will find the right person to fill that position if it is not for you.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to test the things we hear and help us to know which are from you. We want to listen to you Lord and we want to reject any false prophets, help us to know the difference. Help us to lean into prayer and scripture when we are not sure. We love you Lord, you are amazing! We are so grateful for all you do for us. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Look At The Fruits
1 Thessalonians 5:21-22 “But examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good; abstain from every form of evil.”
The teaching at my prayer group meeting yesterday was about discernment. I thought it was interesting because that is similar to the topic of my episode yesterday. While I was writing yesterdays episode I remembered something my spiritual director told me about discernment, but the episode was already long enough so I didn’t go into it. However, when I heard this verse today and then I heard a something similar in the teaching, I knew that the Holy Spirit wanted me to share it with you. I think discernment is something that we all struggle with. Discernment in the way I understand it is when we need to make a decision and we sit with the Lord and ask Him what He thinks we should do. We give ourselves time to pray about it and really consider what God would want us to do. This is my understanding of it anyway.
The problem is that we don’t always get a clear answer. We learned from Father Mike in yesterdays episode that if God wants you to change direction in your vocation or your purpose in life, He will make that clear to you. However, the realization that He has been bringing me to, or at least I think He has, is that He doesn’t have a huge opinion on every little decision we need to make. We say that we just want to know what He wants us to do and we will do it. Have you ever said this? I know I have. Lord, just tell me what to do and I will do it. I have prayed that so many times. And you know what I usually hear? Crickets, I don’t hear God telling me His grand plan for my life. While I was in with my spiritual director this week what came to my mind is that there is not just one way to live this life. There isn’t a certain checklist of things that we need to do and if we miss one our lives will be over.
I don’t know about you, but I am a perfectionist and a rule follower. I never knew this before but it has really become apparent in these last few years. I want to do things the right way. I want to do things perfectly. I don’t want to get it wrong. What I feel God has been trying to teach me over these last several years, maybe my whole life, is that there is not just one way to do things. For instance, maybe you make mashed potatoes by peeling them first, cutting them into small pieces and boiling them. Maybe you don’t peel them and you boil them with the peels still on. Maybe you don’t cut them into small pieces and you boil them whole. No matter how you boil these potatoes, you will still be able to make mashed potatoes. I don’t know if that is a great analogy, but you get my point. There is more than one way to do things. Life is like this as well. If it is a huge decision in your life, I believe what Father Mike said yesterday is true. God won’t ask you to make that decision without making sure you have all the info. However, what about the millions of decisions that aren’t huge, but aren’t that small either? How do we make those?
I believe we should still bring them to prayer. If we invite the Lord into the smallest of our circumstances He will be more a part of our lives. We will turn to Him more and we will turn to Him sooner because we will be used to involving Him in our every day life. If you are not sure what to do, be intentional about sitting with the Lord and asking Him what He would do if He were in your circumstance? Or, maybe you ask Him what He wants you to do? What your conversation looks like, is up to you, just sit down and make sure to have one. Make sure you allow time to sit and listen to God and see if He has an answer for you. It is unlikely to come in words, however, it may come in a feeling, a thought, a memory, a story, or some other way He has of communicating. Pay attention, not just in that moment but over the next couple of days and see what the Lord says. A friend said today that she usually hears things days later and sometimes it comes in the words of someone she is talking to. If we are looking for answers we tend to find them.
However, sometimes we don’t hear an answer. I was talking with my spiritual director about this and she said that sometimes God lets us make the choice. Sometimes it is not super clear which way He wants us to go. Remember, God put the desires in your heart. He wants you to fulfill those desires. So, if you are unsure as to which way to go, pray and really think about what you want. Then step forward in faith knowing that God can use anything for good. Once you make a choice, pay attention to how that thing is making you feel. What my spiritual director told me is that we should look at the fruits that come from our decision. This is what the verse above is saying as well. “But examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good; abstain from every form of evil.” Say the decision was to accept a new job. How does that new job make you feel? Do you feel happy and joyful or do you feel anxious or angry? Is it helping your home life, or making it worse? Is the overall impact of this new job good or bad? Hold fast to what is good and abstain from what is evil.
I have a really good friend who was trying to decide if she should take a job or not. The job sounded really good, she felt she could really make a difference in the kids lives and she felt it was the right job at the right time. A few months into having the job, she realized the job wasn’t producing good fruit. Her co-workers complained a lot and gossiped all the time. She felt stressed and anxious when she left work. It got to be where she didn’t really even want to go in to work because she felt the coworkers made it an uncomfortable environment. Because she loves the Lord and spends time with Him, she was able to see that this wasn’t what He wanted for her anymore. Soon after she started to feel this way, another job opened up at her place and she prayed if she should apply. She wasn’t sure what to do, but after going in for the interview she felt so much peace. She was excited for this new opportunity. Now, we might be tempted to think that she made a mistake by choosing to take that first job. We could say, the fruit was bad, so it was the wrong choice. However, it felt great at first and she might not have found out about this other job if she wasn’t already there working at the center.
God is so good. We worry so much about making the wrong choice, but when we do we are making God smaller than He is. He is bigger than our mistakes. He does not just have one path for us to go down. I believe, as long as we are loving Him and our neighbors then He give us some leeway. He lets us make choices, fulfill our desires and as long as we are paying attention to the fruit that our decision are producing He leaves it up to us. So, step out in faith, trust that if you are spending time with God, He is leading your way, even if you don’t have that certainty or clarity you are searching for. Know that there is not just one right path that you must adhere too. God trusts you to make your own decisions sometimes, “But examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good; abstain from every form of evil.”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we just want to do what is right and by doing so we get stuck wanting to have the certainty and that clarity. You are calling us to step out in faith. You are calling us to trust that you are leading us and that if we are heading down the wrong path you will help us do a course correction. Lord, we know you are big and powerful and we don’t mean to make you smaller by thinking you can’t handle our missteps. We know that our life is in your hands and that you want us to succeed even more than we want to. You love us more than we could imagine and because you are so loving, you let us make our own choices. Help us to look for the fruit Lord. Help us pay attention to the fruit our choices are producing and change paths if we are producing bad fruit. We love you Lord, you are awesome. We are so grateful for you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you on Monday. Have a blessed weekend!
What Is My Next Step?
Psalm 43:3-4 “Send out your light and your truth; let them lead me; let them bring me to your holy hill and to your dwelling! Then I will go to the altar of God, to God my exceeding joy, and I will praise you with the lyre, O God, my God.”
I love the idea of the Lord leading us with His light and His truth. What I like most about it is that His light can cut through any darkness and His truth can cut through any lies, even the ones that we tell ourselves. These two things are so important for us to remember. We can start to feel as if our hole is so dark no light will ever get in. God’s light can always get it. We have to let it in though. We can get in our own way sometimes. Picture yourself sitting in a room with the shades drawn and the lights off. You are complaining that it is so dark you can’t see anything and yet, you don’t turn the light on or even open the shades. We do this to God too. We sit in our misery and we don’t invite Him in. He is knocking at the door, but we are too sad, too upset, too angry, too whatever to open the door. We don’t let Him in and then we ask Him where His is.
One way we might not be letting in His light is that we may not be seeking Him. God can be found anywhere and everywhere if we are searching. If we are looking we can learn to see His light all around us. However, if we aren’t looking we won’t see it. No matter how bright His light is, if you don’t want to see it, you won’t. You will make every excuse in the book but you won’t recognize God’s light. The first thing we can do to let the Lord’s light into our lives is we can seek it.
The next thing we can do is to be around others that can help us see it. When we are upset, we tend to want to either be alone, or surrounded with others that are feeling similar to us. We don’t want to watch happy movies, or listen to uplifting music. We want to wallow in our feelings. This can be ok for a brief amount of time. Sometimes we really need to let ourselves feel our feelings. However, we can't stay there. It should be more of a brief pit stop than an extended stay. After our brief pit stop, we need to be around others that can help us see the light. If we don’t have people like that in our immediate circle we can use uplifting movies, TV shows, or music. Even just being around people that are filled with the light of the Lord can help lift our mood. Sometimes they don’t even have to say anything. You know the person I am talking about. That friend of yours who brightens your whole day just by being with you. Maybe it’s your spouse, your parents, your sibling, your best friend, whoever it is, we should all have someone like that in our lives and when we are in the dark, looking for the light, they are the ones to go to. Also, if you are not in the darkness right now, maybe you could be the light for someone right now. God wants us to share His light with one and all. Sometimes we need help seeing the light and sometimes we are the ones to bring that light to others.
When we are asking the Lord to send His light to lead us, sometimes we are disappointed with the way He does this. When we ask Him to send His light what we really mean is for Him to send a floodlight that will light our way for the next 5-10 years. We want to be able to see from where we are to where we are going. We want to see all the twists and turns. We want to see the finish line now so we know it is safe to follow that light. This is not how the Lord usually works. He sends His light more in the form of a candle or a flashlight. He lights up your next step or two and then you are in the dark until you take that next step. He doesn’t want us to rely on what we can see. If we could see every step, every twist, every turn, then we wouldn’t be stepping out in faith. If we faithfully take that next right step that the Lord lit up for us then He will light up the next step for us. Your steps might not be too close together either. You may spend sometime waiting in-between steps. This waiting can be hard because we don’t always know how long we will have to wait for and while we are awaiting we are not necessarily hearing from God everyday.
I saw a video on Youtube once with Father Mike Schmitz and he said he is constantly asked, “what does God want me to do?” (CLICK HERE for video) I will put a link to this video in the show notes because it was a quick 6 minute video and yet he explains it so well. Basically what Father Mike explained is that God shows us what He wants us to do one step at a time. Father Mike said we think we are seeking certainty or clarity, but what we are really wanting is God’s constant reassurance that we are going in the right direction. He said that God’s never going to ask you to make a decisions with your vocation or what he’s call you to based of of what he hasn’t revealed to you. God has revealed to us the way God wants us to live, the commandments, the sacraments, the beatitudes.
In the verse above it asks God to send out His light and His truth and to let them lead me. Father Mike is saying, God gave us His truth. We can let that lead us to where we are going and let that truth help us to take the next right step. If God is not lighting up your next step for you, that doesn’t mean He has abandoned you, it means he wants you to stay where you are until He gives you the next right step. Father Mikes gives us an invitation in the video and I want to pass that invitation on to you. His invitation for you today is “to be content and confident to live in uncertainty.” Or a better way to say it is “To live with a certainty that God has already given to you, to live with the clarity that he’s already spoken in.” You know what He wants you do. Micah 6:8 says, “He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” God has already told you what He wants you to do and when He calls you to move forward, He will speak with clarity and that question will always have confirmation. This doesn’t mean He is going to tell you the next five steps, just that next step.
Father Mike talks about how when the Angel came to Mary to ask if she would be the mother of the Jesus, and she said, “Behold, I’m the handmaiden of the Lord. May it be done unto me according to your word.” The very next line says, “Then the angel departed from her.” Mary was asked to answer this one question, will you be the Mother of God? Then the angel disappeared. God’s certainty isn’t telling us all the future steps, God’s certainty is “I will be with you.” Just stay on the path He has revealed to you until He asks you to turn. I know waiting can be uncomfortable and the unknown is really hard sometimes. However, Father Mike is telling us that if you aren’t hearing anything from God on your next step then He isn’t asking you to take one. If God is wanting you to pivot in direction or take a different turn in your life, He will reveal that to you. If not, keep heading in the same direction with the certainty that God is with you and if He wanted you to do something different He would let you know. I will leave you with Father Mike’s call to us. Can you be content and confident to live in the uncertainty? Can you live with the certainty that God has already given to you, to live with the clarity that he’s already spoken in?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, send us your light and your truth. Help us to follow them to wherever you want us to go. Lord, help us to be ok with not knowing all the steps. Help us to just take that next right step. Help us to be ok with following your light, even if it is one step at a time. Help us to live in your truth for the times when you just want us to keep going forward. We love you Lord, we are so grateful for your light, especially in the dark times. We are grateful that you light and your truth break through any darkness and any lies that we find ourselves in. You are amazing Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or (CLICK HERE). It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Have a blessed day!
Let Go Of Shame
Isaiah 54:4-5 “Do not fear, you shall not be put to shame; do not be discouraged, you shall not be disgraced. For the shame of your youth you shall forget, the reproach of your widowhood no longer remember. For your husband is your Maker; the Lord of hosts is his name, Your redeemer, the Holy One of Israel, called God of all the earth.”
This verse starts out with some pretty familiar words, “Do not fear.” Is it just me or do we hear those words a lot? In this verse it is referring to a specific fear. The fear of being put to shame. Shame is a painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behavior. I think we fear shame because we know we can be the ones that cause it. We feel that we will do something that will humiliate ourselves. Especially in this world where everything is on display for the whole world to see. Our lives are lived more in the open now than ever before. It is almost as if we are living in a fish bowl and every else is looking in. It used to be that you could mess up, make a mistake and the whole world wouldn’t know about it, but now, we worry this is no longer true. We worry that because we live our lives so openly everyone will see our mistake and we will be humiliated. Do you ever feel like this? Do you ever feel like some small silly little mistake you made caused you so much shame because it happened in public in front of others? Do you ever feel shame over things that once upon a time you wouldn’t have cared less about?
The definition of shame says you have a painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behavior, and yet we tend to take shame on for all different reasons. Sometimes we feel shame for things we didn’t even do, but that others did to us. We feel shame for things that other people said to us. Sometimes we feel shame for decisions we made even though they were absolutely the right decision for us at the time and yet we feel shame due to other people’s opinions of our decisions. If this is you, and I am pretty sure we have all felt shame before, I hope you take comfort in this verse. The Lord says, “Do not fear, you shall not be put to shame; do not be discouraged, you shall not be disgraced. The Lord is telling us that we won’t be put to shame and that we won’t be disgraced. The Lord is protecting us. We do not have to feel shame because we are children of God. Shame does not come from the Lord. The Lord wants us to repent for wrong doing, but he doesn’t ever want us to feel shame from it. That is the enemy and he is good at telling us all the ways we should feel ashamed for things. Ignore him! He is a thief and a liar. He is trying to destroy your happiness, your self esteem. He is trying to pull you away from God. Don’t let him. When you are tempted to feel shame for something remind yourself that you are a child of God and that God is protecting you. Stand up to the enemy and tell him you refuse to feel the shame he is throwing at you.
The next line is another important line that I think we all need to hear. “For the shame of your youth, you shall forget.” Some of us think that we can’t be forgiven for things we have done in the past. We are ashamed of the things we did and we think God couldn’t possible forgive us for something so terrible. We hold onto these things and we don’t surrender them to God because we are ashamed. This verse can bring us some comfort. If it is possible for us to forget the sins of our youth, then surely God can too. God does not hold these things against us. He is up there, just waiting for us to realize that He loves us more than our actions. He loves us more than anything. He waits patiently while we learn this the hard way. He waits patiently while we figure it out on our own because we don’t trust it when we hear verses like this one. I don’t think I am the first person to tell you that shame is not from God. He doesn’t want you to be ashamed. However, I am hoping that you can finally hear it this time. Let go of your shame. Release it to the Lord and let Him heal you from it. You will feel good afterwards. It will be like a weight is lifted off your shoulders. You don’t have to carry that weight on your own. Hand it over to the Lord, He will carry it for you.
Next the verse says, “the reproach of your widowhood no longer remember. For your husband is your Maker; the Lord of hosts is his name, Your redeemer, the Holy One of Israel, called God of all the earth.” I love learning new names for the Lord, in my prayer group we have several periods of praise during our meeting. I have a list of various name for the Lord and I recite them during the praise parts of the meeting. Here are some examples of the things I say:
You are the Great “I AM”
YOu are the Just One
YOu are the King of Kings
You are the Lord of Lords
You are the Lamb of God
You are the Light of the World
You are the Lord God Almighty
This verse says that you don’t have to be worried about widowhood because your husband is the Lord. He is the Maker; the Lord of Hosts is His name, Your redeemer, the Holy one of Israel, called the God of all earth. Those are some pretty amazing titles, and He is your husband. How great is that? You can use these titles when you are wanting to praise the Lord for anything. You can praise Him when something good happens, you can praise Him when something bad happens, you can praise Him when you need something and you can praise Him when you don’t. He is there for you and He loves it when we praise Him. It doesn’t have to take a lot of time and you can do it anywhere. Even in the line at the grocery store, although you might want to be praising Him in your heard while you are in the the grocery store like. If you are unsure what I am talking about when I say praising Him with these names, I just repeat them. For instance: Lord God you are the Maker, you are the Lord of Hosts, you are the Redeemer and the Holy one of Israel. Lord you are the God of all earth. I love you Lord. It can be as simple as that. Just a few seconds and yet makes a world of difference to our Lord who loves our praise.
This verse is making some pretty big promises but you have to accept them in order to benefit from them. You have to be the one to decide if you are going to let go of your shame or not. You are the one that needs to decide if you will let go of the shame of your youth. Once you make the decision, the Lord will take care of the rest. He doesn’t need you to figure out how to let go of it, He just needs you to hand it over to Him and release the control of holding on to it. He will do the rest. Wouldn’t it be amazing if we could all remember that shame does not come from the Lord and we could reject it when the enemy tries to pile that on us. We can, if we ask the Lord to help us. He is waiting for us to invite Him in to all of our troubles. Can we do that today? Can we invite the Lord in and turn our troubles over to Him?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to release any shame we may be feeling. Help us to see that shame does not come from you and help us to reject it and let it in our lives. Help us believe that you can help us forget the shame of our youth. Help us to see that you love us regardless of any shame we may feel. Help us to understand that there is nothing you won’t forgive. There is nothing in our past that is beyond your mercy and forgiveness. Help us to feel how much you truly love us Lord. We love you Lord, you are truly amazing. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. My guest tomorrow will be my friend Corinne. She has an amazing witness of her faith journey. She even gives us some stories of angels. Corinne has an amazing faith. She has been part of a few different healing ministries, currently she lives in Arizona and is part of a healing ministry there. I know you will enjoy her witness. I look forward to sharing it with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Thirsting For God
Psalm 42:1 “As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God.”
The theme of last week’s prayer group was “Thirst.” The leader asked us if we thirst for God. She mentioned the verse says as a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God. It does not say that the deer is searching for stagnant water. As soon as she said this I thought to myself, this is where a lot of us are. We are stagnant. We are not moving forward, and hopefully, we are also not moving backwards. We are just stuck right where we are. This can be a dangerous place to be because this is where the comfort of the known comes in. When we get too comfortable where we are, we can lose our drive to keep moving forward or in this case, keep moving closer to God. Is this you? Do you feel your relationship with the Lord is stagnant? Or maybe you don’t think of it as stagnant, maybe you look at it as comfortable. We are in a comfortable place and it is nice. Let me ask you the same question our leader asked us, “Do you thirst for God?” “Do you long for Him, more than you long for anything else?”
Think about a deer in the woods running around. Think about him/her after running all day and they are so tired and thirsty and they just really need a drink. Can you picture it? Now ask yourself, do I thirst for God like this deer thirst for water? I would love to say the answer is yes and sometimes when I think about it I think it is yes. When I ask myself that question I tell myself I absolutely thirst for God. I long to be close to Him. I would give anything to be close to Him. Have you ever thought this before? It feels so good and yet it almost hurts because you want to be that close to God. I do long for Him, I am sure of it. However, when I examine my life, do my actions show Him that I long for Him? I thought to myself that I would do anything to be close to Him. Yet, there are plenty of times in my day where I could take a break and be alone with Him in prayer, yet, I don’t chose to do that. There are books and podcasts and music I could read or listen to that could bring me close to Him and yet I don’t alway chose that either. I want so badly to say that I long for God as much as this deer longs for water and yet, I sadly don’t know if it is true.
Now, the Holy Spirit seems to be prompting me to say that we can long for God and yet not always act on it. I feel as though He is telling me that if we feel like we long for Him then that makes Him happy and now we just need to figure out how to put that longing into action. There was a word given at our prayer group that of course goes perfectly with this topic. It still amazes me how God not only shows up every week, but how He always gives us words that are right on target with the topic. It’s almost as if He knew what we were going to say. Here is the word that was giving last Thursday. The Lord said, “I do thirst for you, I do long for you. I long that you draw deeper and closer to me, that I may heal those places that you have not given me yet. I long and thirst that you will draw nearer to me for my heart has more for you, more for you. This is your time to draw nearer that I may give you more. Your life is in my hands and I draw you but you must open more to me. I can only knock, I cannot enter unless you allow me. There is more of my love to give to you, there is more for you to do for me. Draw, thirst, long to open those doors to me. I draw you, I love you, I need your love too.”
I thought I would share this with you for two reasons. The first is because God shows up and talks to us every week at our meetings and I think He really wants me to share that word with as many people as I can. The second reason is because I think the answer to how we can put our longing into action is contained in this message He gave us. First, the Lord is calling us closer to Him. A great way to get closer to Him is to read His word. Not just read it, but study it, learn it, get to know who He is and what He asks of us. Then He says that He wants to heal those places we have not give to Him yet. You know the places He is talking about. The things that you keep holding on to because you think He couldn’t possibly heal that thing, or because you are too ashamed to hand it over to Him. If we want to be closer to the Lord, we have to let him in to each and every part of us. The more we open to Him and let Him in, the more He can Heal us and make us more able to long for Him. Next, the Lord says that He has so much for us and that this is our time to draw nearer to Him so He can give us more. However, there is a catch. We have to open the door and let Him in.
I think this is where a lot of us get stuck. We want the Lord to help us, save us, love us and yet we don’t want to let Him in. Why we don’t let Him in might be different for each one of us. Some might be afraid of getting hurt, some might have been hurt so much in the past they don’t know how to trust or to love, there can be any number of reasons we don’t open up. God will not force Himself on you. He gave us free will to choose if we want to love Him or not. He loves us regardless of whether we let Him in or not. If we want to long for God and to put that longing into action, we need to open our hearts, take the risk that comes with stepping out in faith and trust that God will be there for us. In the word given above the Lord is saying that He has more of His love to give to us and He also says that there is more for us to do for Him. What is the Lord calling you to do? Are you doing it? Could you do it if you knew He was right there with you? The last sentence the Lord says, is “I draw you, I love you, I need your love too.” Can we give the Lord our love today? If you are struggling with loving the Lord, longing for Him, or anything else, pray to the Lord about it. Talk to Him and tell Him how you feel and I promise He will help you. He is that amazing!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to long for you as a deer longs for the flowing stream. Lord, I felt convicted when I heard the comment about the stagnant water, please show all of us any areas in our lives where we are stagnant. Help us grow closer to you. Help us to open up those areas we have kept from you. Help us release them to you for healing. Lord, help us to see where are actions are not living up to our wants and help us to make things right. Help us to put you first above all things! We love you so much Lord. We are so grateful that you are always here, waiting patiently for us to turn back to you each and every time we turn away or mess up. You are amazing and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day.
Blossom Like A Lily
Sirach 39:13-16 “Listen to me, my faithful children, and blossom like a rose growing by a stream of water. Send out fragrance like incense, and put forth blossoms like a lily. Scatter the fragrance, and sing a hymn of praise; bless the Lord for all his works. Ascribe majesty to his name and give thanks to him with praise, with songs on your lips, and with harps; this is what you shall say in thanksgiving: “All the works of the Lord are very good, and whatever he commands will be done at the appointed time.”
I decided to use the same verse again today because there is so much in it and I only talked about the first line yesterday. Today we will pick up starting at the second line. It says, “Send out fragrance like incense, and put forth blossoms like a lily.” When I read the first part about sending out fragrance like incense I immediately thought of going out and spreading God’s work. God loves us and He fills us with so much love, hope, grace, mercy, forgiveness, and so many other things. However, He doesn’t want us to just keep all of that to ourselves. He wants us to go out and share this with the world. If the world seems too big for you to think about, consider sharing it with those you love first.
Can you share God’s love with those that live in your house, or your parents and siblings, or your friends? Who can you think of that you can share God’s love and mercy with? What about His forgiveness? Is there some you know that could really use some forgiveness. Remember God’s forgiveness is not the same as our forgiveness. We tend to tie a bunch of expectations or conditions to our forgiveness. God just forgives, freely, just because we asked. Can you be an example of this type of forgiveness for someone today?
I have talked a lot about how God wants us to live our lives as a witness to Him. I have mentioned that He is calling us to live in a manor that exemplifies His values, not those of the world. The reason I keep saying this is because He keeps saying it. Each week God tells our prayer group some version of this sentiment. For instance, this was the word we received today, “You must be the shining light of Christ to each other. Let everyone see your total surrender to God. Demonstrate the surrender by accepting whatever he gives you and giving whatever he takes from you. Your prompt, blind, simple and cheerful obedience will show what loving trust means. Your joyful smile will demonstrate how grateful you are to God for having chosen you to serve him. Let us not forget that our aim is to quench the thirst of Jesus for souls.” Did you catch that last part? “Our aim is to quench the thirst of Jesus for souls.” God doesn’t want any of His children to have to spend eternity apart from Him. He wants all of His children saved. Our aim is to witness of his love and show people there is a different way. There is an unconditional love that they have been searching for and it is found in Jesus.
The next part of the sentence in this verse had me stumped. It says “Put forth blossoms like a lily.” I am not a flower expert and I had not idea what that meant. I was tempted to skip over it, as I often am when I don’t understand something. Do you ever do that, skip over something that you don’t understand? I decided to spend a few minutes and find out why lillies were so special. What if I skipped over it and it had a significant meaning? The point of doing this podcast is so that we can all understand the scriptures a little better. If I skip over all the things I don’t understand this podcast wouldn’t last very long. I am so glad I took the time to research. Before I tell you what I found I just want you to know it was in a theology paper or in an explanation of this scripture. I do not know if this is why this verse says blossom like Lillies but it really resonated with me so I wanted to share it with you.
The article I found was titled, “3 Fun Facts About Lilies” posted one Freytagsflorist.com. The first fact about lilies is they come in a variety of different shapes, sizes and colors. This is true for us and this is true for faith as well. We are all different, we are all unique. We all learn about God differently, we pray differently, we encounter God differently. What works really well for one person, might not work at all for another person. For instance, I really love music at mass. It makes me so happy and just fills me with so much joy. However, my husband is not a fan of music. He prefers a nice quiet mass where he can pray and just be with the Lord. One way is not better than the other, they are just different. So when the verse is saying bloom like lilies, maybe it means we should be ok with being different. Maybe it is saying that although we may look different in shape, size and color, we are all the same, we are all lilies.
The second fact about lilies is they symbolize purity and refined beauty. Isn’t that beautiful? Can’t you just see the Lord asking us to blossom in purity and refined beauty? Also, the various colors convey different meanings. For instance, a white lily traditionally symbolizes modesty and new beginnings. An orange lily symbolizes passion. A Lily of the Valley is a symbol of sweetness and a pure heart. These are all things God would want from us. It could also symbolize how we are all different and so we bring different things to the table. Some of us are good at writing, reading, volunteering, singing, being a eucharistic minister, or a religious education teacher. Just as each lily color represents something different, so do we. This is to be celebrated and encouraged.
The third fact was the one I read and though, yep, it was no accident that the author chose lily as the flower. The oil extracted from lilies actually has been found to have healing and softening properties. The oil has been known to work well for cracked and dry skin. There is no greater healer than our Lord. So the fact that the lily has healing properties is perfect. Do you see why I am glad I took the time to understand more about lilies. Sometimes we might skip right past things, thinking that they aren’t really that important. I am sure the Holy Spirit lead me to this article so I could share it with all of you. Whether this is the exact reason why this language was selected for this verse, I don’t know. However, I do know it opened my eyes a little more to how we are different and why that can be a good thing.
The rest of this verse today talks about praise. “Scatter the fragrance, and sing a hymn of praise; bless the Lord for all his works. Ascribe majesty to his name and give thanks to him with praise, with songs on your lips, and with harps; this is what you shall say in thanksgiving: “All the works of the Lord are very good, and whatever he commands will be done at the appointed time.” I don’t think I could ever really state enough how important praise is. The Lord does so much for us and He really loves it when we praise Him. This can be something that is easy to forget. We don’t forget to ask for prayers, but we can easily forget to praise Him when we get our answers. It can also be hard to praise the Lord when we don’t see answers to our prayers. I’ve talked about this before so I won’t spend a lot of time on it, but no matter your circumstances, there is always something you can be grateful for. There is always something you can praise the Lord for. If you are feeling down, a great way to get out of that is to start praising the Lord.
From this one short verse we learned that we need to nourish our mind, body, and souls. We learned we need to spread God’s love and His message to one and all. We learned that we are all different and that is how we are meant to be. That is a good thing and we all bring something different to the table. And finally, to praise the Lord. Sing Him songs, be grateful and tell all the world how awesome He is. Isn’t it incredible how much we can get out of 4 short verses in the Bible. God is amazing!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to bring others too you, please help us. Lord, we say yes to all you ask of us. Lord, help us to recognize our differences bring us together. Our differences help the church to grow. Help us to praise you Lord, with every breath we take. Help us to blossom like lilies. Help us to learn you healing properties so we can pass them on to others. We love you Lord and we are so grateful for all you do for us. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to seeing you on Monday. Have a Blessed weekend.
Nourish Your Mind, Body and Soul
Sirach 39:13-16 “Listen to me, my faithful children, and blossom like a rose growing by a stream of water. Send out fragrance like incense, and put forth blossoms like a lily. Scatter the fragrance, and sing a hymn of praise; bless the Lord for all his works. Ascribe majesty to his name and give thanks to him with praise, with songs on your lips, and with harps; this is what you shall say in thanksgiving: “All the works of the Lord are very good, and whatever he commands will be done at the appointed time.”
I thought this was a beautifully written verse. It sounds so poetic. I like the symbolism as well of us blossoming like a rose that is growing by a stream of water. I wonder why He specifies that the rose is growing by a stream of water. What would be different about a rose that was blossoming by a stream of water versus a rose that is growing elsewhere? Why was this an important detail to put in? Was it just added to make it more poetic? I don’t think so. I think it was added to demonstrate a more accurate picture of how fully the Lord wants us to grow and blossom into our faith.
Roses need water to live. If we have a rose growing in the desert it is relying on whatever water we give it. We have to remember to water our plants. However, roses that grow in the wild, ones that grow next to a stream, they don’t need anything from us. Their roots can grab the water straight from the stream. Roses growing next to a stream of water have an abundant source of water for nourishment. What about us? Do we have an abundant source of nourishment? What are you doing to nourish not only your body, but your soul?
This is something that I think is really important to talk about. And I am not here to talk to you about diets, or some new health fad that is here today and gone tomorrow. What I want to talk to you about is how you can nourish your mind, body and soul. The enemy can attack us more easily when we are weak. When we are not taking care of ourselves. There are so many choices of food out there, some of it is good for us and some of it is bad for us. We tell ourselves that the food that is good for us tastes bad and the food that is bad for us tastes so good. This isn’t always the case. This is something the enemy has planted in our minds and we buy it hook line and sinker because it is easier to eat whatever we want. We tell ourselves that we deserve to eat that cookie because we have had a stressful day. So we do, we eat that cookie, and the next one, and the next one. We may or may not feel better in that moment. However, what about the next day when we go to put our pants on and they are don’t fit anymore because we had a few too many bad days where we ate cookies, candy, fast food, whatever your comfort food is. Then we no longer feel better, we feel awful about ourselves and so we eat the cookies to feel better and the cycle continues.
We need to figure out what type of food nourishes our body. It could be different for all of us. We are all created differently and some things that my siblings can eat I can’t eat and vice versa. It is up to you to figure out what food make you feel good and nourish your body and what ones don’t. The next thing we need to do is stop eating whatever we feel like eating. Believe me when I say I am talking to myself most of all. On Mother’s Day they had cheesecake on sale for a riduculously low price, because that is what the enemy does when he sees you trying to make changes. So we buy this cheesecake with 12 pieces. Actually we buys two because who can pass up a 75% off sale, right? Luckily it was Mother’s Day so we left one of the cheesecakes with our parents. I decided I was only going to eat sweets on Sundays from now on because I crave them all day every day. Well, I ate not one, but two pieces of cheese cake on Monday, and candy at the movies on Tues. Just because we want to eat something doesn’t mean we should or that we have to. We are stronger than we are giving ourselves credit for. We say things like, “I just couldn’t help it,” or at least that is what I say. That is a lie. I can help it, I just don’t want to. I wonder if it would help me stop eating so much crap if I thought to myself while doing it, “You are making the devil so happy right now.” I honestly think that is a true statement. I don’t think the enemy wants us to have will power. He prefers when we act on our impulses. If we rely on our feelings we are not going to make the best choices.
When we eat badly we are giving the enemy free ammunition to use against us. When we eat badly the enemy starts to tell us we have no control, how can we be in charge of our life when we can’t even be in charge with what we eat. He tells us we are powerless to our cravings, he makes us feel bad about our weight, he fills our heads with negative thoughts. However, when we are nourishing our body with food that are healthy, he quiets down. He has less to use against us because when we are nourishing our bodies we tend to feel good about ourselves. We are less vulnerable to attacks from the enemy when we are nourishing our bodies instead of filling it with junk.
It is also important to nourish your mind and your soul as well. This can be just as important and yet it is less talked about. We also have cravings in these areas that can lead us to fill our minds with stuff that is not nourishing us. For instance, how many hours have you spent watching TV that is not nourishing your mind or your soul? Some TV shows are to your mind and soul what donuts are to your body. They make you feel good in the moment but then afterwards you feel bad. The enemy starts to say things to make you feel bad about yourself. He says things like, “You wasted so much time today.” “ You could have been doing something productive with your time.” “You will never get the project done because you can’t stop watching TV.” It doesn’t have to be TV, it can be whatever you are filling your time with that is not serving you. Maybe it is social media. It may feel good when you start scrolling but inevitably you will see something that upsets you, and if not you will start to feel bad because now you have to work late because you spent 2 hours scrolling on social media today.
As you can see, there are lots of things to distract us from nourishing our mind, body and soul. This is why I like this verse so much. It talks about the roses that are growing right next to the river. How can we be more like these roses? How can we be so close to the thing that helps us grow? We can read the word everyday. We can surround ourselves with things that build us up. We can pray that God gives us the strength to not eat that donut or watch that TV show today. Our lifeline, the one and only thing we need to help us grow is God. He will provide the rest. Stay close to Him, call on Him every day, ask Him for the help you need to get through each day. Call upon Him in difficult moments when you need to make a hard choice, even if that hard choice is just whether or not to eat a cookie. God loves when we come to Him with the big things in our lives, and he also loves it just as much when we come to Him with the little things in our lives. Stay close to God and He will help you not just grow, but flourish, like the roses that grow by a stream of water.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord we love you so much. We want to grow and flourish in your company. Help us to stay close to you. Help us to learn to nourish our mind, body and souls. Help us to not give in to our cravings. Lord, help us to see we have the power to resist our cravings. We can do all things through Christ who strengthens us. Also, we have the power of the Holy Spirit living inside of us and that makes us more powerful than ever! We ask that you remind us of this when we feel weak. We ask that you help us to see that we are stronger against enemy attacks when we are nourishing our mind, body and soul. Lord we are so grateful that you care for us so much. We are grateful for all the strength and wisdom you give us. We love you, you are amazing and we ask all of this in accordance with your holy will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just (CLICK HERE). It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Have a blessed day!
Let Your Life Be A Witness of Jesus
2 Corinthians 3:2-3 “You yourselves are our letter of recommendation, written on your hearts, to be known and read by all men; and you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.”
Verses like the one above always make we feel a little uncomfortable. I hate to admit that but it is true. I feel as though there is extra pressure put on us to live our lives a certain way. Do you know why I feel this way? Because we are called to live our lives a certain way. We are called to a higher standard. This can make us feel uncomfortable because we are afraid we are not living up to this standard. We want to fit in and just do what everyone else is doing. We don’t want to be different because if we are different then we might stand out and if we stand out we might be vulnerable. God didn’t make us to fit in with others. God made us to be set apart.
This is not a new problem. Ever since the beginning of time God has been trying to keep us set apart so that we would not be corrupted by the ways of the world. This has been a constant struggle. Every time the Israelites would conquer a new land they would inevitably start to adopt the practices and the culture of the land they conquered. This is often why God would order them to kill everyone living it that land. He knew how weak our hearts were and He knew we wouldn’t be able to stay set apart from them. The other people worshiped many Gods at this time and some of them even required human sacrifice. They were not good customs that they were adopting.
We are called to be examples of God’s love, light, peace, forgiveness and kindness. We are called to higher standards. When people look at us, they should be able to tell, just by how we are living that we are Christians and what that means. I had a friend on a few weeks ago that gave her witness about going back to church after being away for a long time. One of the things that drover her away in the first place is the hypocrisy that is found in churches. The hypocrisy of many people that go to church on Sunday and then do whatever they want the rest of the week. The Christian faith is not one that is meant to be lived on Sunday and then forgotten about the rest of the week. It is not ok to be one person at church on Sunday and a completely different person everywhere else. This is not only important for the community, it’s even more important in your home.
What do you think you are teaching your children if you are going to church each week, volunteering and being so helpful there and then when you are at home you are yelling and swearing and not helping out around the house? Do you think you children will grow up loving God and Jesus if they see you acting two different ways, one way at church and one way at home? Consistency is the key. We need to decide our values and then hold these values in every circumstance. We need to start at home and show all of our love and kindness there before we can branch off to others. Did you ever notice how sometimes we are kinder to those at work than we are at home? We are really nice at work because it is work and we need to be professional and we need to keep our job. However, we are tired and cranky when we get home from work so we take that frustration out on our family. We probably don’t even notice it a lot of the time. We just slip into the habit because we know our family will love us no matter what. It’s kind of like when our kids are little and they act out for their parents, but are really well behaved at school. They say it is because they feel safe, they know their parents will always love them no matter what.
We must strive to be better than this. We must strive to be Christ like in all circumstances. God is calling us to an amazing life of blessings and grace and all we have to do is strive to be more Christ like. He is calling us to share Him with the world and he is equipping us with all we need to do this, we just have to say yes. One way to live more Christ like across all setting in our lives is to live more intentionally. When we just come home and slip into our comfortable routine, this is where we can start to live inconsistently. It can be really helpful to set intentions before you walk through your door at night. If you drive to work, sit in your car for and extra minute or two when you get home and set your intentions for who you want to be when you walk through that door. Do you want to be calm and confident? Do you want to be patient and loving? Do you want to be helpful? Who do you want your spouse and/or kids to see when you walk through that door. If you have a lot of stress from work still maybe take a few minutes and just breathe and try to release that stress. You can do the same before you walk into work in the morning too. Decide before walking through the doors of your office who you want to be at work. How can you be your best self in each circumstance?
Living more intentionally will help us be more Christlike. If we have this as a goal and we remind ourselves of this goal every day, multiple times a day, then this goal can become a standard we hold all of our decisions up against. For instance, if I wanted to watch a movie that was inappropriate, I can ask myself if watching that movie fits in alignment with my goal to be more Christlike, and also if it fits with my values. I can look at how much I am giving to the church or other charities and see if that is in line with my values and my goal to be more Christlike. You can ask yourself this question for all that you do and then you will be living more intentionally. God will give you all you need to imitate Christ if you ask for it, if you strive for it. God is calling us to be His image in the world. He is calling us to be His hands and feet in the world. He is calling us to witness to His love and mercy, not just with our words, but with our actions too! Will we answer this call? Will we say yes to the Lord and then do our best to live intentionally and try and share His love, light, peace, forgiveness and kindness with the world? Our world really needs more Jesus right now, can we try to reflect His goodness in our lives?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone listening to this episode this morning. Lord, we want to live a good Christian life. We want to live a life set apart from the things of this world. Help to break our attachment to the things of this world. Help give us the strength to live the life you want us to live. Help us spread Jesus to one and all. Help us to reflect His goodness in our day to day lives. Help us live more consistently throughout our days and weeks. We love you Lord, you are amazing. We want to answer your call. We want people to know we are Christians just by looking at us and how we are living. We want to be your ambassadors Lord. Please give us the strength to do that. You are so good to us Lord and we are so very grateful. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Tomorrow’s witness is given by Catherine C. She talks about her struggle with faith, her struggle with alcoholism, and struggle with family life. Catherine is an amazing woman who decided to open up, be vulnerable and share her story with hopes that her story will help others. If you know anyone that is struggling with any addiction, or anyone parenting teens, please share tomorrow’s witness with them. It is a beautiful witness of how God can save you when you least expect it. It is a beautiful witness of someone yearning and searching for something and yet not knowing what they are searching for. It is also shows how God is there for you, helping you and guiding you, even before you have found Him, even if you didn’t know it was Him. I know you are going to love the witness tomorrow and I am so grateful I get to share it with you. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Jesus is bigger than the Facts
Luke 8:50 “While Jesus was still speaking, someone came from the house of Jairus, the synagogue leader. “Your daughter is dead,” he said. “Don’t bother the teacher anymore. Hearing this, Jesus said to Jairus, “Don’t be afraid; just believe, and she will be healed.”
Pastor Steven Furtick gave an excellent sermon on this passage a few weeks ago. If you want to listen to it you can check it our on the Elevation with Steven Furtick Podcast. The title of the Episode is The Facts aren’t Final. Steven Furtick explores this passage in a lot more detail then I can do in this short amount of time as his podcast is close to an hour long. However, I really liked his messages surrounding this verse. There are usually several messages in his sermons. They are really good. The main message for this episode is revealed in the title, Facts are not Final.
This verse is about a man who went to see Jesus because his daughter was dying. He found Jesus and he fell down on his knees and asked Jesus to come to his house and to save his daughter. Then in Luke 8:50 it says, “While Jesus was still speaking, someone came from the house of Jairus, the synagogue leader. “Your daughter is dead,” he said. “Don’t bother the teacher anymore. Hearing this Jesus said to Jairus, “Don’t be afraid; just believe, and she will be healed.” Can you imagine being in this circumstance? Have you heard those words before, “Just believe and she, he, they will be healed?” This can be so hard. It can be so hard to believe on a good day, but when you are faced with facts that don’t give a lot of room for hope.
This man just received news that his little girl died. Not that she was sick, but that she had died. Imagine how hard it was for this man to believe. It says that Jairus was a synagogue leader. They synagogue leaders at the time of Jesus did not know what to make of Jesus. Even in this passage they refer to him as the teacher, no the son of God, not the healer, not the resurrected Christ, the teacher. Jairus must have wondered if Jesus was a healer because he did go to Jesus and ask Him to save his daughter. I wonder if he believed that he could heal his daughter or if this was just what some may call a “Hail Mary” attempt. A “Hail Mary” in case you don’t know is when you try something that you are pretty sure will not work, but you don’t have any other chance so you give it one last shot anyway. Hail Mary is actually a great name for that type of circumstance because she is definitely someone that we can rely on when all else has failed.
The facts of this case seemed bleak. Jairus wanted Jesus to save his daughter but according to the facts Jesus did not get there in time and his daughter died. Jesus was on his way to Jairus’ house when he got stopped by a large crowd of people. One of those people was the woman who had been bleeding for 12 years and no doctors could help her. She went up to Jesus in the crowd and touched his cloak and was immediately healed. Jesus stopped to acknowledge this and while He was still talking to this woman, who’s story is amazing and deserves a whole episode of her own, Jairus got new that his daughter had died. I don’t know about you, but I feel like I would be super angry at this point. I feel as the my grief would have over come me and I would have started to yell at Jesus. I would have told Him my daughters death was all His fault. If he hadn’t have stopped to talk to that lady, my daughter might still be alive.
Can you picture the scene? It seems when we are angry and hurt we lash out. It makes us feel better, even if just for a moment, if we can blame someone else. This is a normal reaction, however, there is no mention of any such reaction from Jairus. Jesus hears the man from Jairus’ house tell Jairus that his daughter died and Jesus says, “Don’t be afraid; just believe, and she will be healed.” The question is, “How do we believe when we are faced with facts that dispute that faith?” How does this man believe that his daughter will be ok when he was just told that she was dead? Do you have a circumstance in your life where the facts don’t leave room for much hope?
Do you have a situation where the facts tell you that there is no way out? For instance, maybe you have too many bills and not enough money. Maybe you have a diagnosis and the doctors are saying there is no cure for. Maybe your child is facing a situation and you don’t see a way out of it for them. Maybe your marriage is in trouble and your spouse has said there is no way to fix it. In all of these circumstances, the facts say that your situation is beyond hope. The facts say that you can’t change they things. If a doctor says you have a terminal illness, that is a fact. You can’t dispute that fact on merit, as you do in fact have an illness that there is no human cure for. If your spouse has made up their mind that divorce is the only way, then it will take divine intervention to save that marriage. So, how do we have faith when the facts are telling us there is no hope?
One great way is to look back at scripture. This Bible verse is not the only time it looked liked Jesus arrived too late. In John 11 Jesus’ friend Lazarus got sick and his sisters wrote to Jesus asking him to come home and heal their brother. Jesus stayed where He was and finished what He was doing and then He went back. By the time Jesus got back there, Lazarus had been dead and in a tomb for 4 days. The facts in this chapter would tell us that Lazarus was not coming back. He had already been dead for 4 days, his body was probably starting to smell and maybe decompose. However, Jesus came back and raised Lazarus from the dead. What about the woman who had been bleeding for 12 years? The facts told her she would never get better, there was no cure. The doctors couldn’t help her, they only made it worse. I am sure she had to fight her mind reminding her of these facts the entire way to see Jesus. She fought through the voices telling her the facts that she would not get better and that there was no hope. She stepped out in faith, touched His garment, the hem of his garment, and she was cured.
In the story above, the facts said Jairus’ daughter had died. He no longer had a need for someone to come and heal his daughter. The facts said it was too late. However, Jesus said, “Don’t be afraid; just believe, and she will be healed.” And Jairus went with Jesus to see his little girl. In Luke 8:54-55 it says, “ But he took her by the hand and said, “My child, get up!” Her spirit returned, and at once she stood up. Then Jesus told them to give her something to eat.” The facts said it was too late and Jesus said “Do not be afraid, just believe.”
Where do you need to hear that in your life right now. The Bible is not just a collection of stories that give us historical data but don’t really pertain to our lives. The Bible is just as relevant today as it was back in that day. When Jesus is telling these parables to the people in the Bible, He is also telling them to you. Where in your life are you struggling with the facts? Where in your life are the facts not leaving much room for hope? Where in your life do you need to hear these words, straight from Jesus’ mouth, “Do not be afraid, just believe.”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help those that are struggling to believe that the facts aren’t final. Help those facing some very scary facts. Lord, we know you are amazing and you are God of the impossible. Please give us the strength to not be afraid and to believe. Lord we believe, help our unbelief. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to seeing you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Take Care of Yourself
1 Timothy 4:16 “Attend to yourself and to your teaching; persevere in both tasks, for by doing so you will save both yourself and those who listen to you.”
Attend to yourself is what stood out to me in this verse. Why is that such a hard thing to do? Why do we struggle with that so much? There are a couple ways I can see this being hard for us. The first way is taking care of ourselves. There are a few people that I know that do this very well. They make sure to take time for themselves. They love their family and do a great job taking care of them and yet they have learned that they can be better at taking care of their family if they take care of themselves too. Most people I know tend to take care of everyone else and sort of forget to take care of themselves. Is this you? Do you do everything for everyone else and then you are left worn down and tired with no energy and not feeling great about yourself? Are you always giving and never receiving? You are not alone. I think we all do this. The problem is, this is not healthy? This is not what is best for those around us.
We can’t be our best for those we love if we wear ourselves thin. If we are always giving and never receiving then we may start to feel resentful of those around us. We are not at our best if we are tired and worn out all the time. If we are always doing and never resting then we can start to feel unhappy inside. Once we start to feel unhappy inside it can be really hard to get out of those feelings. Depression and anxiety seem to be at an all time high right now. We must start to take care of ourselves if we want to change this; if we want to show up for ourselves and those around us in a way that we can sustain for the long haul. Some of you may be hearing this and thinking that is easier said than done. Some people might have the luxury of taking time for themselves, but that is just not possible for you in your circumstance. I get why it feels that way. I have been there before with three young boys all close in age. It felt like they needed me every second of every day. However, I was lucky and my husband was able to take care of them so I could take a break.
What if you don’t have a spouse to take care of the kids? What if you are a care giver to a child or spouse? What if there is no one to help? My answer to this is pray about it. Recognize that you need a break and figure out how to get one. Do you have extended family that can help out? Do you have a friend in a similar circumstance and the two of you can trade off services? Can you hire a babysitter or a house cleaner? I know we feel selfish if we do something for ourselves. It is not selfish to take care of yourself. It is actually the opposite. We need to take care of ourselves so we can continue to take care of those that need us. What good are we if we are burned out? Sometimes taking care of ourselves can be as simple as taking a bath, taking a long walk, talking a short walk, putting on some music and just breathing for 5 minutes. There are lots of ways to take care of yourself. Find something that brings you joy, gives you a chance to feel good, and helps you recharge. You will not be sorry you did.
The other way I see that we struggle to “attend to ourselves” is with respect to our spiritual journey. Oftentimes it is just so much easier to look at everyone else’s journey. It is easier for us to judge others than it is for us to judge ourselves. We are quick to point out where other people are falling short and yet we fail to see all the ways we are. This verse is telling us to attend to ourselves. God tells us this again in Matthew 7:3-5 when he says, “ Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.” I did an episode in the last few weeks about judgement so I won’t address that today. However, if this is something you struggle with, and we all do, then go back and listen to episode #210 if you haven’t heard it already.
Today I want to just take a minute to talk about how we can attend to ourselves. How can we make sure that we are living the way God wants us to live? First, we can figure out how God is calling us to live. The best way to do this is through reading His word. If you have not made this a daily practice yet, I challenge you to start today. Even if you just read one verse a day, or one chapter a day, or maybe you set a timer and just read 5 minutes a day, you will see a change. Immersing yourself in His word is so powerful and equips you with the words you need to fight off the enemy. Another way is to read spiritual books. We all struggle in life. It is a given and yet we don’t all struggle with the same things. Whatever it is you are struggling with, there is a book out there that helps you deal with it. There are spiritual books that help you deal with things like anxiety, anger, depression, and other struggles of the mind. There are also spiritual books that help us with the struggles of our soul, like living out the virtues, using the gifts of the Holy Spirit, how to pray more, how to pray better, if you have a struggle, or a question, there has been a book written about it. Reading or listening if you enjoy audiobooks can be a great way to learn all you want to learn.
I love the last sentence in this verse. “persevere in both tasks, for by doing so you will save both yourself and those who listen to you.” I love the word persevere. I think it is a great goal for all of us. I also like that it says we will not only save ourselves but those who listen to us. However, we can only save those who listen to us if we are teaching them the correct things. This is why it is important to know how to live. We can live in a manner such that those around us see how we are living and want to live that way too. Let’s all try to be a reflection of Jesus. When we are people will want what we have and they will do what we do. First, we need to attend to ourselves and then others will follow.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to the episode today. Lord, help us attend to ourselves and our teachings first. Help us to save ourselves and those that listen to us. You said in Matthew 18:6, “but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened round his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.” Help us to not cause others to stumble. Help us live a life in a way that reflects you and your ways back to the world. Help us be your light in the world. We love you Lord, you are amazing. Help us be amazing through you. Help us to not judge others. Lord, I ask that you help everyone listening to this episode take care of themselves. If they do not know how, I ask that you open doors for them. We are so grateful for all that you do for us. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to seeing you again on Monday. Have a blessed weekend.
Discerning God’s Will
Hebrews 13:20-21 “ Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in you that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ; to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.”
This is a prayer that is found in Hebrews. I love that it reminds us of what God did for us. God raised Jesus from the dead for us. I also like how it says that our Lord Jesus is the great shepherd of the sheep. I love picturing Jesus as our shepherd. To me that seems so loving and tender. Jesus looking over us and guiding us to where we need to go. Then the verse reminds us the God sealed our eternal covenant with the blood of Jesus. God sent His only son down to die on a cross for our sins. A reminder of just how much the Lord loves us. Next the verse is asking the Lord to equip you with everything good that you may do His will. We are praying that God will work in us so that we do what is pleasing in the sight of Jesus Christ for the Glory of Christ.
This seems like a pretty tall order. The first hard part is knowing what is the will of God. This is something prayer can help with. We can pray daily that our will conforms to the Lord’s will. We can also pray that the Lord show us what His will is and to give us the strength to follow His will. You may be wondering why we would need strength to follow God’s will. Doesn’t God want what is best for us? If so, why would we need strength? Yes, God wants what is best for us. However, it is not always an easy road to get us to where God wants us to get too. We do a lot of things along the way that are not what God wanted us to do and sometimes God lets us feel those consequences before we can get back on track. Also, sometimes the way to get to where we need to be is filled with suffering. We need strength to make it through that suffering.
There are two main things that I can see would be tough for us to understand in this prayer. The first one is knowing what is God’s will. What is it that God put you here on this earth for? This is something that I think we all want to know the answer too. Sometimes in life we feel as though we don’t have a sense of purpose. We don’t feel great about ourselves because we don’t feel we are doing anything with our lives, or we don’t think we are doing enough. This is something I think we all go through at some point in our lives and some of us go through more than once. We can struggle at each new stage in life. Every time we start something new it takes us time to figure out what we are doing and time to get into a routine with a new normal. During this time it is important to lean into God and to spend time sitting with Him and asking Him what He wants you to do.
We often complain that God is not talking to us or that we don’t know what He wants us to do. However, we also don’t spend time just sitting with Him and listening to all He wants to tell us. God does talk with us, we are just usually too busy to hear it. Even if we spend a lot of time in prayer, it doesn’t mean we are spending time listening. Do you ever get to the end of a long prayer time and notice that you did all the talking? I know I do. I will spend 45 minutes spilling out all I have been up to and all my needs to the Lord and then sometimes I don’t have time to listen to what He wants to say. Other times I do listen, but certainly not for as long as I talked for. If we want to know God’s will for us in our lives we need to spend the time with Him listening and letting Him lead us. Our sense of purpose if found when we are doing what we were created to do. My favorite quote is from St. Catherine of Sienna and she said, “Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire.” I want to set the world on fire for Christ and so I try to remind myself that I can only do that if I spend time listening to what God wants me to do and then do what He says.
Doing what He says is the second thing we may struggle with when we read this prayer. This prayer is asking the Lord to equip us with everything good to do His will. When you sit and listen to the Lord and ask Him what He wants for your life you find out He wants incredible things for you, especially if you turn over your life to Him and tell Him you will do whatever He wants you to do. It can be scary to hear what He wants you to do. I have heard a lot of people say that you shouldn’t invite the Holy Spirit into your life half heartedly. If you give the Holy Spirit permission to have free reign in your life, you never know where it will take you. You never know what He will help you do. The only thing that is for sure is that it will be an amazing ride, so buckle up and enjoy it!
It can be very intimidating to hear what God has planned for you. I think this is why he often times doesn’t reveal your whole life plan at one time. We usually just know a step or two and once we step out in faith and take that step, the next step is revealed. I think why it is usually scary for us is because we forget that we are not doing it alone. We look at what God is asking us to do and we know we aren’t qualified. We know we can’t do that on our own. God may be calling you to do something that you don’t even know how to do. I remember one time a few years ago, I was asking the Lord, why I was the only one in my family that couldn’t write. I have two brothers that have self-published books, my dad has self published books, my sisters write the most beautiful poems, and yet when I tried to write a poem all that would come to mind was roses are red, violets are blue. So, imagine my surprise one day when I felt God calling me to write a blog about His word. I didn’t know what I was doing, but I trusted God to help me. Then He asked me to write a book about how I grew in my faith. I said yes, but I was honest with Him and told Him that I didn’t know what I had done and also I didn’t know how to write a book. I explained I would show up to write each day, but He would have to give me the words to write. He did and I wrote that book in just a few months. Each time I sat down to write it wasn’t a struggle. He showed up in a big way every time.
God isn’t calling you to do anything on your own. He will equip you to do whatever He is calling you to do. I know a Catholic speaker and singer. She said she was sitting in her car in college and she saw a sheet with words to a song just appear in mid air right next to her. She thought she was crazy, as that is not a normal occurrence and she ran inside and hid under her blankets. However, the next day she woke up with a different voice. God gave her a voice so she could spread His message through song and through speeches. That is an extreme example, and that is the point. Whatever it is God is calling you to do, He will equip you to do it. You are not doing it on your own, with your own strength and with you own talents. The Lord will give you all that you need and He will be there every step of the way as well so if you get stuck you can call out for help and he will be there. Spend some time this week sitting quietly with the Lord and ask Him to lead you. Ask for your will to conform to His will. And if you are brave enough, give the Holy Spirit free rein in your life. Commit to saying yes to the Lord no matter what He asks of you. It may be scary, but the amazing life you will have when you do far overshadows any doubt or fear you may have.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you and we are so grateful that you equip us for your call. Today we ask you to give us strength to answer that call. We ask that you help us find the time to sit with you and listen to what you are calling us to do. We ask that you help us trust that you will equip us for that call. Lord, you are so amazing. We have so many examples of those that you called to great things and then helped them achieve them. When we doubt we ask that you put these examples on our mind, help us recall these examples when we need them the most. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus holy name, Amen.
Thank you for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click on the link below. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Have a blessed day!
Love Is The Fulfilling Of The Law
Romans 12:9-10 “The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not kill, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed in this sentence, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.
I read this verse this morning and I thought it was a great one to talk about. I loved every part of it and so I wanted to share it with you. The first part is saying all the commandments can be summed up in one sentence. “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” There are not a lot of commandments, there are only ten. However, how many of us remember all ten? I am not sure I could recite all 10 of them. So, when I read this and saw that all I really need to focus on is loving my neighbor I thought that was pretty great. It is certainly easier to remember than trying to remember all 10 of them.
I realize as I am writing this, that although loving my neighbor is easier to remember it is not always easier to do. I think if we read the commandments we might look at ones like “Thou shalt not kill” and think, I can do that. I can go through life without killing someone. That is not to say you won’t want to every now and then, but you are fairly confident that you don’t have to worry about that one. However, there is actually so much more to that commandment. Maybe you won’t kill someone’s physical body, but would you kill their spirit by teasing them or picking on them? Would you kill their reputation by talking badly about them behind their back? There are more than one way to kill someone and sometimes we don’t think of it like that. However, you would not be doing any of those things if you were loving your neighbor.
What about “Thou shalt not steal?” This is one that is easy to see how we wouldn’t do it if we loved our neighbors. If we loved those around us then we wouldn’t steal from them because we would care about them. We also wouldn’t rob stores because we would see that they are our neighbor and we wouldn’t want to see them hurt. We wouldn’t want to see them lose their business. We also wouldn’t want to hurt our friendship is we loved them. We would care what they thought of us and we wouldn’t want to let them down.
The reason I said that although only having one commandment to remember is easier to remember, but not necessarily easier to do is because loving others can be hard at times. Loving our kind neighbors is not hard. For most of us, it is easy to love someone who is nice to us and who treats us well. We love people who are outgoing and have great personalities. We love people who we connect easily with and who are easy to talk to. However, what about the grumpy old man next door, or the grumpy old lady next door? Are we supposed to love them? How do we love someone that is grumpy? Or a better question, how do we love someone who isn’t nice to us? What if we have a neighbor, or a relative that has always treated us badly? Surly God can’t want us to love that person? He does, he wants us to love everyone.
Do you see now why I said this commandment may be more difficult than all the others combined? It feels impossible to love some people and I get that. If you have been hurt by someone, especially if it was a family member then trying to love them can feel impossible. If this is you, I would say, don’t start there. Start where it is easy. Love those that are nice to you and that are easier to love and then work your way up, slowly to those that are harder to love. I have said this before and I will keep saying it until we actually believe it, God doesn’t need our perfection. He doesn’t need us to love everyone perfectly. However, He does want us to try. He does want us to love more than we hate. Knowing that God is not looking for perfection, can you try to love your neighbors a little more? When it says neighbors, He don’t just mean your physical neighbors, He means all those that you meet.
Does knowing that loving your neighbors fulfills all the commandments change how the way you view loving your neighbors? Does it make it seem more important to try to do this? I love how the verse above says, “Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.” The thought of love as the fulfillment of the law is a beautiful thought. It is also a sad thought if we think about how much love is missing from this world. When I look around I don’t see love all around me. I see anger, division, resentment, hatred even. Then if I think about love being the fulfillment of the law I think that we aren’t not doing a great job fulfilling the law. We can get really overwhelmed if we think about the whole world and how much the world is lacking in love. But, what if we just focused on our small part of the world? What if we didn’t worry about others and we just focused on ourselves and how well we were loving our neighbors.
Let’s focus on what we have control over and let’s strive to love the best we can. What can we do to love our neighbors more? What can we do to love those that seem unlovable? If love is the fulfillment of the law, how can we incorporate more love into our lives? Let’s ask the Lord to show us the answer to this question. If we know we are struggling to love someone because of past hurts, bring it to the Lord and ask Him for help. He can help us do the impossible. God is calling us to love more. He is calling us to share His love with the world. He wants us to be His reflection in the world. Every week at prayer group the Lord is telling us that He wants us to be His instruments here on earth. He is showering us with love so we in turn can shower others. What is one thing you can do today to love someone a little more?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode. Lord, we want to love our neighbors, we just don’t know how, please help us. We want to love all those around us, even those that seem unlovable. Lord, we all have that person or people that we can’t seem to love because we can’t forgive them for all the things that have happened in the past. Heal our hearts, soften our hearts, help us to forgive and to love all our neighbors, regardless of circumstances. Just because we love someone doesn’t mean we need to spend time with them. If someone hurt us we don’t have to let them back into our lives, we can love them from afar. Lord, help us understand all of this. If there is more we could be doing please put that on our hearts. Please send the Holy Spirit to open our eyes to the ways we are not loving our neighbor and then give us the strength to start loving our neighbor more. We love you Lord, you love us so freely and we want to imitate that, please help us. You are truly amazing and truly an example of how we should love. We are so grateful for all you do and we ask all this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Tomorrow’s guest is Andrea. She will share her witness about how God has saved her life and also helped her through terrible anxiety attacks. This is something so many people are struggling with right now and if I know her story will help a lot of people. If you struggle with anxiety or you know someone who does, please share this episode with them. Andrea opens up about what it felt like and what she did to combat it. This weeks format is a little different. After her witness we spent some time just talking and I asked some questions as I know several people struggling with anxiety right now and thought they could use some additional information. I am sure everyone will get something out of this testimony. I look forward to sharing it with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Hearing The Voice of Our Good Shepherd
Revelations 7:17 "For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd; ‘he will lead them to springs of living water.’ ‘And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.’”
What a beautiful image of God wiping away every tear from our eyes. I don’t know about you, but I am a crier. I tend to cry a lot. God is going to be busy if He is going to wipe away every tear. In all seriousness though, this is a beautiful scripture. It starts off by talking about the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd. That Lamb is Jesus. He is our good shepherd. It says in John 10:11, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” This is exactly what Jesus did for us, He laid down His life for us, his sheep. I heard a story yesterday from a friend about an incident that happened when she was walking in Walmart during the pandemic. She was walking in Walmart with a mask on because there was still a mandate that a mask was required to shop there. However, there was a man walking towards her with two young girls with him. When he passed my friend he made sheep sounds at her. He was implying that she was a sheep and that she was blindly following the other sheep.
I have heard this analogy often and despite the popular belief that sheep are stupid, they are actually incredibly intelligent. They have very impressive cognitive ability and just like humans, they form deep and lasting bonds with each other, they stick up for one another in fights, and they grieve when they lose a friend. They experience all of the same emotions that we do including fear, joy, boredom, anger and happiness to name a few. We envision the sheep blindly following whoever and going wherever they are told to go. This is not the case. Sheep recognize their shepherd’s voice and they will go wherever their shepherd tells them to go. They have complete trust in their shepherd. The shepherd in return for this obedience loves them and is willing to lay down his life for them. How beautiful is that?
I think this is one way that sheep have an advantage over us. They recognize their shepherd’s voice and so they follow it. I think we have a hard time figuring out whose voice to listen not. The world is so busy and so noisy and there are so many voices speaking into our lives. There are the voices of the loved ones around us. They are speaking to us and leading us in a direction they think we should go. Then there are our friends who may not have the same beliefs we do and they are leading us in the direction they think we should go. Then there are all the voices of those in the world that also usually have opinions of how we should and shouldn’t be living. There are so many voices and we get confused and we don’t know which ones to listen to. Often times the voices and the noises of the world are so loud we can’t hear the voice of our good shepherd. The voices of the world are not the voices that we need to be listening to and yet they are so loud we can’t hear any other voices.
The verse above says that the shepherd will lead us to springs of living waters. Don’t we want this? Don’t we want to follow the shepherd that will lead us to springs of living waters? So, how do we learn to hear the Lord’s voice more? How do we learn to tune out all the noise of the world so we can focus in on the Lord’s voice? First, we can begin by spending time each day trying to hear the Lord’s voice. How much time do you spend each day asking the Lord for things in prayer? How much time do you spend sitting quietly and asking the Lord what He wants to say to you? The Lord wants to talk to us, we just don’t give Him the time to talk. This can be your first step. Just sit quietly ask let the Lord know you are ready to listen. At our prayer group we usually begin by saying, “Speak Lord, your servants are listening.” (1 Samuel 3:10) You do not have to start off by sitting down and giving God 30 minutes of quite time to speak to you. If you have never done this before 30 minutes is a long time. Even if you have, it still may be a long time. Just start out with 5 minutes of quiet time and see what happens.
The next step that can help you start hearing the Lord’s word more is to write down whatever He tells you in that five minutes. I struggle with just sitting there and not thinking of anything and not doing anything for 5 min. So, I do an exercise I learned from Fern Gorin at the Life Purpose Institute. I ask the Lord to speak to me through my pen and then I write down whatever comes to mind for the next 5 minutes or however long I am sitting there for. This is especially helpful because then you can go back and read over it. Now, is every single thing that comes to mind in that 5 minutes from the Lord, probably not, but it is a start. I think the more times you do this, the more and more of what you write will be from the Lord. Also, you are asking the Lord to show up and when we ask, He answers. So, why wouldn’t he show up and talk to you through your pen? The key to this exercise is to not question everything that comes into your mind. Just write it all down and then you can read over it later and think about what you think the Lord was telling you. While you are writing, don’t second guess your self, don’t let the enemies voice come in and get you to question why the Lord would talk to you, block out all the doubt and just trust that you asked the Lord to show up and so He will.
If we want the shepherd to lead us to springs of living waters and we want the Lord to wipe away every tear, then we need to learn to listen to the shepherd’s voice and to follow Him where ever he is leading us. The way I suggested above is just one way to begin to hear the Lord’s voice. If it doesn’t resonate with you, no worries, do something different. We are all different people and we all do things differently. The important part of this message is not that you listen to the Lord’s voice the same way I do. The important thing is that we all figure out a way to block out all the noise of the world and start finding a way to hear the voice of our good good shepherd.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask you to help us hear your voice. We want you to lead us to the living waters and to wipe away all our tears. Help us to hear your voice above all others. Help us to block out the noise of the world and concentrate on your voice. Lord, we are so grateful for all you do for us. We are so grateful to be counted as one of your sheep. You are an awesome shepherd and we love you. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Have Mercy!
Matthew 12:7-8 “But if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of Man is lord of the sabbath.”
What stuck out most to me in this verse is when the Lord says, “I desire mercy and not sacrifice.” Today during prayer group, we had several words about mercy. I was also typing up the minutes from our meetings last September and there were several words given about God’s mercy then too. Also, the teaching today at the meeting was on God’s mercy. There is no way I could hear God talking about mercy that many times, and then not mention to all of you. This verse is about the Pharisees are complaining because Jesus and His disciples were picking grain in the fields on the Sabbath because they were hungry. They needed to eat. This is when Jesus speaks up and tells them that if they knew what the phrase “I desire mercy and not sacrifice” meant, then they wouldn’t be condemning the innocent. What does that phrase mean? The Lord desires mercy from us. He desires us to be merciful and to share His mercy with others. I actually have four words of prophecy to share with you today because they were given to our prayer group to share and because who better to help us understand how much the Lord desires mercy than the Lord himself.
The first word I want to share is from the meeting that we had today. This word shows how much the Lord longs for us to ask for mercy and to share mercy with others. Here is what was said: "If you only knew how my mercy longs, it aches to be sent out to more and more. Ask the Lord for mercy every day, every hour, to relieve my pain. The pain in my heart that suffers for you and for all who need my mercy, who are afraid of my mercy, who run away from my mercy. Call them in, draw them to me, pray that the Lord of mercy will have mercy, so that my heart will be relieved of more, of more, of more mercy." Wow, can you hear the desperation in the Lord’s voice? He wants to give us mercy. Why aren’t we asking for it? Why are we afraid of his mercy? Why are we running away from it? Is it because we don’t think we deserve it? It is because we don’t think we need it? Take a moment and think about yourself. Are you accepting the Lord’s mercy? Are you asking for it? Are you one that is afraid of it or are you running from it? Why is that?
The next word that I want to share was also given to us at the prayer group meeting today. Listen to His words and see how God is calling out to us, He is calling out to you. Can you hear Him? He said: "Come, come to me. I call you often but you get distracted. Come, come to me first. Come to me quickly. Bring everything with you, bring everyone with you. My mercy is so great, my love, my forgiveness is so powerful. I am the Lord God most high. I will save all who seek me, don't give up on anyone. One little movement of their soul and they can have heaven with me for eternity.” I don’t know about you, but I can definitely relate to this one too. I feel as though I am constantly distracted. I want to come to the Lord, I want to come to Him first and yet I let so many things get in my way and distract me. I seem to constantly be getting off course on my way to Him. I love when it says, “I will save all who seek me, don’t give up on anyone. One little movement of their soul and they can have heaven with me for eternity.” How great does that sound? What this word is saying is that God can save anyone. It sounds like He knows we have a tendency to think that some people are beyond saving. I love that he lovingly reassures us that no one is beyond saving. He reminds us that his mercy is great and his love and forgiveness are so powerful. God is good!
The next word that I want to share with you was given last September. It talks about God’s mercy and how God wants us to share His mercy with others. He said: “Remember I am light in the darkness and as you walk, because you are my light, you bring light into the darkness. And in that light is my mercy and that is what you bring to others, my mercy, through your speaking, through your loving, through your compassion. You are part of letting my mercy go, so walk always in my light and know that no darkness can cover you because you are mine. You are mine for eternity. Remember you are mine.” How great is that word? We are His for eternity, yes please. That is awesome. What amazes me the most is that God wants us to share in brining his mercy to others. He could just do it himself, He doesn’t have to include us, and yet he does. He lets us share His light with the world too. We bring light to the darkness. In that light is the Lord’s mercy. This word says that we bring His mercy to others through our speaking, our compassion and our loving others.
Take a moment to evaluate yourself. Are you living up to this? Are you spreading mercy or are you spreading judgement and condemnation? The Pharisees were not spreading mercy. They were condemning the blameless because of their judgement. We must be very careful not to do this. We must be very careful to be a light in the darkness. It is easy to judge, it is easy to add to the darkness. That is not what we are being called to do. We are being called to share the Lord’s mercy with others. We are being called so spread God’s light to others. Are we doing this? If we aren’t doing this, what needs to change so that we can do this? What do we need to do differently?
The last word I want to share with you today is from last September. In this word, the Lord is asking us, yet again, to share His mercy. He said: “My children, my mercy flows from me to you so that in turn it may flow from you to others. Mercy is what I give so that you in turn can give my mercy to others. Do not be afraid, I am with you. Be a people of mercy, reflect my heart for I am a merciful God and you must be a merciful people.” The Lord speaks to us at every single prayer meeting. He says all sorts of things to us. What are the chances that there would be this many words of prophecy on mercy today. This wasn’t even all of them. mercy was mentioned at least three more times. It is so clear to me and after hearing all these words from our Lord, I hope it is clear to you too. The Lord is calling us to be a merciful people. Can we answer this call? Can we offer more mercy and less judgement? Can we work on being a light in the darkness and sharing the Lord’s light with others? What is one thing we can do today to help share the Lord’s mercy with others? If you are not sure, ask the Lord, He will tell you.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us be a light in the darkness. Help us to share your mercy with others. Help us to ask for mercy and to give mercy. Lord, help us to be the merciful people that you are calling us to be. We need your help Lord. We are so grateful that you gave us these wonderful words. We are grateful that you give of your mercy so freely. We love you Lord, you are so amazing. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to seeing you on Monday. Have a blessed day!
God’s Glory
Exodus 33:18-19 “Moses said, “Please show me your glory.” And he said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘The Lord.’ And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.”
Do you know what I love about Moses? He wasn’t afraid to ask God for things. Do you ever feel like you don’t want to ask God for something? Do you feel as though you don’t deserve anything so why ask God? Or maybe you wonder, “who am I to ask this of God?” All these feelings have merit. We aren’t really worthy of most of what we ask for. Well, we aren’t worthy in our own right. However, God made us in His likeness and image. I try to remember this when that question comes up in my head. When I ask myself, “Who are you, that you can ask God for this or that?” I answer myself, I am a child of God, made in His likeness and image. Moses knew He wasn’t worthy of this special treatment and yet He still asked God for things all the time. I think we would all like to see the Glory of the Lord, yet would we think to ask God for it? Moses did. He wasn’t afraid to ask. Well, maybe he was afraid, but he asked anyway. Either way, he asked and because he asked he got to see the goodness pass before him, what a reward for his faithfulness.
I think this passage stood out to me today because I had a discernment meeting today and one of the words of prophecy that we were discerning was about God’s glory. It was interesting and something I did not know so I though I would pass it along to all of you as well. Here is what the Lord said, “My children, I desire to share my glory with you. But my glory and obedient suffering go together. They are intwined. Both give life, both are beautiful. Can you enter into my glory? Can you obediently enter into the suffering that you share with me? Come, come enter in, be not afraid, I am your strength, I am your joy, I am your help.” Isn’t that powerful? When I think of glory, I don’t think of obedient suffering. Actually, I am not sure I ever think of obedient suffering. I don’t know that I knew that was something we were called to. I mean, I guess if I really think about it I have heard that we are called into suffering with the Lord, but it is not something I think about a lot.
As I write that I am thinking how lucky I am that I don’t think about suffering a lot. I know a lot of people that suffer daily. They have chronic pain that they can’t escape from, or they are suffering from anxiety on a daily basis. I am thankful that I am not suffering on a daily basis. I pray for everyone that is suffering. I think this word of prophecy puts suffering into a whole new light. The Lord says that His glory and obedient suffering go together. He said they both give life and both are beautiful. I am going to be honest with you, I don’t understand this. This is something I will need to ponder and pray about. How does obedient suffering give life? How is suffering beautiful? I know plenty of people that are suffering and it doesn’t feel beautiful to them. It feels hard, it feel frustrating, it feels overwhelming. How is it beautiful? Today is not one of those days where I can give you the explanation that helps you to understand. I myself don’t understand. However, I did think it was important to share this word with you because I know some of us needed to hear it.
I guess there are a couple of things we would need to understand to grasp what the Lord is saying in His word. First, what is His glory? He is asking if we can enter into His glory, how can we answer this if we don’t know what His glory is? When looking up what is God’s Glory I found an article Titled What is God’s Glory by Aaron Armstrong, (Click Here for article)that talked about how God’s glory generally refers to three things. The first is connected to what God does, His actions the world. The second has to do with God’s reputation. The third has to do with he beauty of His very being. When God is calling us into His glory, he is calling us to a deeper understanding of his ways and for us to know and love Him, to point others to the good He has done, and to give thanks to him for how He is working in us and through us for His glory and our good. If this is what God is calling us to do, then it makes it a little easier to answer the question. This is definitely something to pray on. We could ask God if this is what He means by entering into His glory? I would happily, and I do, seek to understand His ways, I do love Him, I try to point others towards Him, and I do thank Him. How about you? Are you trying to seek God’s glory? Now that you know He wants to share His glory with you, will you allow that to change you? Will you try harder to seek His glory now that you know He wants to share it with you?
The next part of His statement might be the part where some of us get stuck. His glory intwined with obedient suffering. This is perhaps the more difficult question. When He asks us if we can enter into His glory, we can probably answer yes somewhat easily as it doesn’t require too much from us. We can seek the Lord, love the Lord, spread His messages and be grateful to the Lord, without a whole lot of action on our part. We can give ourself grace knowing that we have the desire to enter into His glory, so He will help us. We aren’t perfect and He knows that so He will help us get to where we need to be. However, then He asks us, “Can you obediently enter into the suffering that you share with me?” This is where we pull back, or at least I feel the urge to pull back. Obediently enter into suffering, no thank you. Is there some way around this part? Can I bask in God’s glory without the suffering? That would be great, but according to this word, no, that is not possible. The two go hand and hand. You can’t have one without the other.
So, why are we so reluctant to obediently enter into suffering? I think that is pretty self explanatory, who wants to suffer? Suffering is not fun and can be very overwhelming. I think this is why the Lord gave us the second half of His word. He didn’t just ask us to enter into suffering and then end there. He said, “Can you obediently enter into the suffering that you share with me? Come, come enter in, be not afraid, I am your strength, I am your joy, I am your help.” One thing I just notice when I reread what He said was that He said can you obediently enter into the suffering that you share with me? He is not asking us to suffer along, He would share in our suffering. That is not a small thing. Sometimes we can read a statement and just gloss over it. It doesn’t really register in our minds. This is something we should let register. God will be there with us in our suffering. He will share in our suffering. That is something to write down somewhere to help remind you when you are in the middle of suffering. You are not alone!
Then we get to his last line in the words that He gave us. Come, come enter in, do not be afraid, I am your strength, I am your joy, I am your help. Not only is God with us, but he is providing us with strength, joy and help along the way. I think we all know that God provides us strength when we are suffering, I hope we have all felt that strength at one point or another. I think we can all agree that He provides us help, this is not really news to us. However, did you know He also provides joy when you are suffering? If you haven’t felt any joy when you are suffering, you are not alone. Suffering is hard and finding joy while you are in it is difficult. The great part is that god is providing the joy, you don’t have to. You do have to look for it though. If you seek joy in the suffering you will find it. God will provide the joy, you just have to look for it. Maybe you find joy in the friend that brought you a coffee today, or that meeting that got canceled and now you get to have 30 minutes of down time. Whatever it is, I promise if you start looking for joy in the suffering, God will provide it. He always keeps His word.
I am going to leave you with God’s words today as I would love for everyone to spend some time talking with the Lord today and asking Him to show you what these words mean for you in your life? What is He trying to tell you personally with this message? Yes, God can speak personally to each one of us, with the same message. It’s amazing and wonderful. If you ask the Lord, how this applies to you in your specific circumstances, He will answer.
“My children, I desire to share my glory with you. But my glory and obedient suffering go together. They are intwined. Both give life, both are beautiful. Can you enter into my glory? Can you obediently enter into the suffering that you share with me? Come, come enter in, be not afraid, I am your strength, I am your joy, I am your help.”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to understand how your amazing words to us today apply to our individual lives. Help us to gain a deeper understanding of what these words mean. Lord, we love you and we want to enter into your glory and we want to be obedient and yet we don’t really want to enter into suffering. Help us to understand why it is so important to enter into suffering with you. Help us to not be afraid. Help us to believe that you will give us strength, help and joy. If we are already suffering, help us to find they joy you are giving us. Lord you are amazing, you are so great to give us these words. It is amazing that you are still showing up after all these years and after all we have done. We love you so much and are so grateful for all you do for us. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click on the link below. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Have a blessed day!
So Close
1 Samuel 23:26-28 “ Saul went on one side of the mountain, and David and his men on the other side of the mountain. David was hurrying to get away from Saul, while Saul and his men were closing in on David and his men to capture them. 27 Then a messenger came to Saul, saying, “Hurry and come; for the Philistines have made a raid on the land.” So Saul stopped pursuing David, and went against the Philistines; therefore that place was called the Rock of Escape.”
Father Mike talked about this verse the other day on Day 114 of the Bible in a Year Podcast and I thought it was such a great message that I wanted to pass it along to all of you that may or may not be listening to that podcast. If you are not listening, can I just take a second to say you really should be. It is such a great podcast. I like it so much because I am not only getting the Word of God every day, but I am also getting an explanation of it from someone who knows far more than I do. It gives me such a better understanding not of just the verses he talks about that day, but of the whole Bible in general. Also, every time we enter into a new time period Father Mike invites Jeff Cavins onto the show, who has also studied the Bible extensively and has written number Bible studies. Jeff introduces us to each new time period and he tells us what is significant about that time period and what to look out for while we are listening. It’s so informative.
Ok, back to today’s verse. In the verse today David is running from Saul. It turns out that the two armies aren’t actually that far apart. David is on one side of the mountain and Saul is on the other. Saul has actually been chasing David for awhile at this point but God has not delivered David into Saul’s hands. Saul and his army were gaining on David when a messenger came to Saul saying that he had to go defend his land from the Philistines who were raiding it. David was safe once again. I wonder if David knew just how close he was to being caught? This is something that we can’t usually keep track of. We can keep track of all the times God got us out of the middle of a bad situation. We can thank Him for healing us when we were sick. We can thank Him for helping us to find a job after being without one for so long. We can thank God for all the ways that He helped us when we really needed it.
However, what about all the times He saved us from the trouble before we got into it? How do we thank Him for that, when we didn’t even know about? I wonder how many times God has saved each one of us from things that we didn’t know about. I wonder how many times He prevented something bad from happening, or prevented us from getting sick. God is working all the time and in every detail of your life. There will be times, probably many times, when God will give you the strength to make it through a really difficult time. There will be times when He thinks it is necessary for you to go through the hard time so that you can grow stronger and deepen your faith. There will be times when you will need to go through the difficult situations to grow in perseverance and resilience. There will also be times when God saves you from ever having to go through the difficult situation. These are the times that we don’t know about. This could have happened three times in your life and this could have happened a thousand times in your life.
We have no idea how many close calls we have had. I read a story once, I can’t remember what book it was in, and it was about someone who got a strange feeling in the middle of the night that he needed to drive over to a friends house and pray for his wife. His friend was out of town and he had no idea why he had this feeling. He drove over to his friends house and prayed for an hour or two in his car in front of his friends house. Neither one of them know what he was praying against. There wasn’t anything bad that happened that night and so they are thankful for that. Would something have happened if he hadn’t been there praying? Only God knows the answer to that question. Maybe one day in heaven we will see our lives played out and we will be able to see all the things God protected us from. Until then we will just go on, obliviously unaware of how close we sometimes come to danger.
Even though we don’t know all the ways that God protects us from things, it doesn’t mean we can’t thank Him. We can thank God for all the ways He protects us on a regular basis. We don’t have to know exactly what He is doing to know that He is doing something. We know we are safe and we are provided for and that is worth a lot of gratitude. God doesn’t need our thanks, and yet He sure does appreciate it when we acknowledge all He does for us. I know that God appreciates when we show our gratitude because it gives us an example of it in the Bible. In Luke 17 Jesus stops along the way to heal 10 lepers. Afterwards only one of the lepers comes back to say thank you. In Luke 17:17-19, “Jesus asked, “Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Has no one returned to give praise to God except this foreigner?” Then he said to him, “Rise and go; your faith has made you well.” Don’t be like these lepers. Be grateful for all that God is doing in your life. Thank God for all that He is doing, all the things you can see and all that you can’t see. You have no idea how close you might have been to being captured just as David was.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we are so grateful for all the ways you protect us and provide for us. Lord, we have no idea how many times we were on the edge of something scary and you pulled us away from that edge. We thank you Lord. Lord, help us to be more grateful. Help us to express our gratitude more. Help us to be the one out of the ten that comes back and says Thank you! We love you Lord, you are truly amazing. You do so much for us and we are so grateful. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Believe You Are Forgiven!
John 8:34-36 “Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, every one who commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not continue in the house for ever; the son continues for ever. So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.”
The reason I thought this would be a good one to talk about today is because we are still in the Easter season. We just celebrated Jesus dying on a cross for our sins and then rising again. We are all pretty excited right now because we know that Jesus rose from the dead. We know that He did not just die on a cross that day and that was the end of the story. He rose again. He came back and ministered to His people and then when He went to sit at His Father’s right hand, He sent us the Holy Spirit to be with us and to help us. I have talked about the power of the Holy Spirit a few times last week. Today I want to talk to you about Jesus dying on a cross for our sins and what that really means. We know that Jesus died on a cross so that our sins would be forgiven. We all understand this when we are celebrating Easter. We understand this enough to explain it to others. I feel as though we all get in on some level. Yet, I feel as though we have a hard time remembering it when it comes to thinking about our own sin.
It seems to me this happens a lot with the things we read in the Bible or the things we know to be true. We know them, we believe them, and yet somehow we struggle to apply them to our lives. We think we are somehow exempt from them. As if Jesus died on the cross to forgive others sins, but not our sins. If He knew how bad our sins were, surely He would have changed His mind. Do you ever think like this? Maybe you have never consciously thought these things. However, do you ever have a hard time forgiving yourself? Do you ever go to confession, confess your sins, and then keep holding on to them? If you do, you would not be alone. I think this is a common struggle. We hand our sins over to God to take care of, and yet we still hold onto them also. What this verse above is saying is that if the Son makes you free, which He did by dying on a cross, then you will be free indeed.
The way I heard it explained once is that when we are holding onto our sins we are thinking we know better than God. Jesus told the disciples in John 20:23 “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” Jesus is telling the disciples that they have the power to forgive sin and yet, we go to confession, we confess our sins and then we still hold onto them, we still let them have power over us. Why is this? I don’t think we are intentionally thinking that we are smarter than God. I don’t think we think are intentionally trying to offend God. We just struggle to believe that our sins are forgiven that easily. What I don’t think we realize in the moments after confession is that it wasn’t easy. God sent His only son to walk among us so that He could be sacrificed for our sins. That could not have been easy. What Jesus went through on the cross was not easy. It seems a little too easy when we go to confession and then come out 5 min later and our sins are forgiven. However, that is not why our sins are forgiven. Our sins are forgiven because God sent His only Son to die on a cross and because Jesus said yes to God’s will instead of His own.
I know it can be hard to believe that your sins are forgiven. I know it can be hard to let those sins go. We feel as though they deserve some sort of punishment. We feel as though we need to do more to make up for them. I get it. I think we have all been there at one point or another. We all have feelings of unworthiness. We all feel at times like Jesus died for most sins, but surely He didn’t know I was going to do this. Jesus knew. God knew. That is the reason He sent His son. Those sins that you don’t think Jesus knew about, He did. Do you remember in Luke 22:44, it says, “In his anguish he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down on the ground.” I imagine this is when Jesus was thinking of all of those sins. All those sins that we worry won’t be forgiven. Jesus knew about them before you even did them. Jesus went into this sacrifice with open eyes. He was fully God. He knew all that we would do and He still chose to die for us. So, why are we still holding onto our sins? Why aren’t we accepting this sacrifice? Why aren’t we accepting this gift from our Heavenly Father?
This verse says, ““Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, every one who commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not continue in the house for ever; the son continues for ever. So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.” Lets all decide, right here and now that we will not be a slave to sin any longer. Lets decide to accept the freedom that Jesus is offering us. The freedom He gave up so much for, the freedom he endured so much suffering to win for us. Let us not turn away from that freedom. Let us not refuse to accept the freedom that He is so freely giving us. “If the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to release all the guilt from our sins. Help us to accept that Jesus died for our sins, yes our sins. Help us to not hold onto them. Lord, please heal whatever needs to be healed so we can accept this gift you have given us. Help us to be free and no longer be a slave to our sin. Give us the strength we need to rise above our sin and feel the forgiveness that you are offering. We love you Lord, we are so grateful that you send your only son down to die for our sins. You are truly amazing and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk Boldly With Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Be Strong and Courageous
Deuteronomy 31:6 “Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the Lord your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.”
Do you ever wish things were as easy at they seemed. Be strong and courageous, that seems pretty easy. I can do that. I can do that right up until I can’t. I can do that when things are going my way. I can do that when my kids are nice and safe. I can do that when my marriage is going great. I can do that when my husband’s job is nice and secure. I can do that when our health is great. Then there are the other times. How can I be strong and courageous when we find out my husband has testicular cancer? How can I be strong and courageous when we find out my husband lost his job? What about when our children are sick, or unsafe? What about when are marriage is falling apart. How does one be strong and courageous when things are in turmoil and you don’t know what way is up?
This verse says, “Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the Lord your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.” This verse shows us that the Lord knows us, He knows our heart. He not only tells us not to be afraid, but he tells us not be be terrified. That is what many of us feel when we are faced with the unknown. And who could blame us, the unknown is terrifying. It is scary when you find out that a loved one has a disease that has claimed the lives of so many. I know there are many different kinods of cancer and some are more curable than others. However, anyone that hears their loved one has cancer, they are terrified. They don’t wait to hear any details. Just the word cancer brings up all these scary feelings, for those that have it and for those whose loved one has it. It is similar with all the other things I mentioned. You are terrified when you are unsure about your child’s safety, and when your marriage is falling apart. It is terrifying to be losing your job unexpectedly and not have a plan, especially if you have a wife and kids to take care of. So, if all these things are terrifying, and God knows it, why is He telling us not to be afraid?
The Lord is telling us not to be afraid because even though it may feel terrifying and we may feel very alone, we are not alone. He is there with us. God never leaves our side and He never forsakes us. I looked up the word forsake, which I find myself doing a lot while writing these episodes. I find it really helps me understand the verses better if I know the actual meaning of the word, not just kinda know what it means. Does that makes sense? Do you ever find that you know what some words mean, either from past knowledge, or from context, but if you were asked to give a definition, you are not sure you could? Forsake was one of these words for me. The actual definition of the word is abandon. God will never abandon us. He is always with us from before our conception until after our death. We can count on that. He is with us whether we can feel Him or not.
How does knowing this help us to be courageous and strong? Knowing this helps us because if we know that God is always with us we can lean in and rely on Him when we don’t have the strength. I have talked about my prayer group before and how we create these bookmarks each month from all the words that have been given to us throughout the meetings. The one we discussed at today’s meeting goes really well with this verse. Here is what it said, “My little ones, when you feel that your cup is empty and you have nowhere else to go, call me, talk to me, sing to me, call out love to me, and I will fill that cup to overflowing. In my Name is your refuge, your courage. In my Name is all the power that you need to go on each day with all you do. In my Name alone you will find comfort, rest, courage, love, mercy poured out upon you by me, just for your calling on my Name, Jesus. Go and spread my love to one and all. Fear not to move forward in my love, my joy and my power. Love is meant to be shared. As I love you so must you love others. I am always with you.” Let me read that one more time. This goes so perfectly with this verse. God is telling us once again to not be afraid and to go forth with courage.
God is telling us right here what we need to do to go forth with courage. We just need to call upon His name. We don’t need to do a million things, we don’t have to be perfect enough, we don’t have to be holy enough. In His name is our refuge, and our courage. You may not feel as though you have enough courage to make it through all the uncertainty, but God has more than enough. All the courage you need is found in His name. Just call upon Him. I will make sure to put those words from our Lord, in the episode summary so you can take a look at them because I am sure when each one of us reads it, we will all see different things. The exact words you need to hear today are different from the ones I need to hear but they are all contained in this message. Even in that first line it is showing us God is not expecting us all to do the same thing. He is sayin, call me, talk to me, sing to me, whatever works best for you, just call on the Lord’s name, any way that you know how. He is not picky. He is not looking for perfection. That is something we place on ourselves and it gets in the way of what He is calling us to. The message also says, “In my name is all the power that you need to go on each day with all you do.”
Everything we need is found in Him and only in Him. You can search elsewhere, we all do. We look to our friends and family for strength, we look to the internet, we look to the world, we look to TV and movies, we look everywhere for the strength and power we need to get through our day and yet we don’t find it. We will never find what we are looking for out there. We need to look within and we need to turn our eyes to God. He says it right here in this message to us, “In my name alone you will find comfort, rest, courage, love, and mercy poured out upon you by me.” Take a minute and think about it. Can you name one other thing that can provide you all of that?
There are still going to be uncertain times in your life. There will still be times when you get terrifying news. Hopefully, you can now face that news with a little more courage and strength knowing that when you feel weak, terrified, afraid, uncertain, you can call upon Jesus’ name and the Lord will give you all the strength, courage, love, comfort, rest, and mercy you need. You can be strong and courageous, not because you are strong on your own, but because God is strong and He will hold you up when you can’t stand. You can be strong because God will never leave you or forsake you. He is always there and if you ever need His strength or His power it is only one call away.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, you are amazing and we are so grateful that you never abandon us. I know we give you plenty of reasons to go and the fact that you stick around and you love us anyway is something we can never thank you enough for. Lord, help us to call on you. Help us to know you are there. Help us to stop looking in all the wrong places for our strength and our courage. Help us to turn to you at the first sign of trouble instead of as a last resort. Lord, we are so sorry that we do that. We are sorry we seek you last. Help us to seek you first. You are so amazing. You give us so much and we are so grateful. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you on Monday. Have a blessed weekend!
The Power Within
Mark 4:39 "He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, “Quiet! Be still!” Then the wind died down and it was completely calm.”
Man, how great would it be to have Jesus right there with you in the storms? I know he is always with us in the storms, but I mean right there sitting next to you. So that you can see Him and hear Him stand up and yell at the storms in your life to shut up and behave. Wouldn’t that be amazing? I feel as though it would make it so much easier to trust that He was there if we could see Him. If we could hear his voice. Think about how hard it is to see in a storm. Particularly if you are on a boat as these men were. I can just picture the boat being thrown about on the water. I can picture it being so dark and the rain coming down so heavily. This may not have been the case in this circumstance as it does not mention rain. However, there are all different types of storms that we go through in our lives. Some are worse than others. Maybe it wasn’t raining this particular storm, but the winds were blowing and the waves were rising. The people on this boat were very concerned. Then with very few words, Jesus calmed the storm. He rebuked the winds and said to the waves, “Quiet! Be still!” and everything was completely calm.
Can you even imagine this? Can you picture the storms in your life ending as quickly as they started? Wouldn’t it be so nice to just speak a few words and everything calms down? Did you know that you actually do have that power? Jesus gave us the power to rebuke our enemies, to chases away evil and to worry no more. We just have to accept that power and then use it. You have the power to rebuke all evil that comes into your life. You can close the door and not let it in. You can chose to bind all evil and send it to the foot of the cross. But first, you have to believe that you have that power, you have to know that you have that power. Maybe no one ever told you about this before. If this is the first you are hearing about this, then I am glad you are listening to this episode. In Acts 1:8 Jesus said, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”
When you are baptized in the Holy Spirit, which if you are Catholic, usually happens when you are a baby and then again when you make your confirmation. If you are not Catholic it happens, when you are baptized into your church, or when you ask for it. There are many ways to be baptized in the Holy Spirit. If you want more information on that, reach out, I would be happy to give you all the information you need. When you are baptized in the Holy Spirit, “the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you.” Romans 8:11. I remember the first time I heard this I was truly in awe. Think about that for a minute. "The Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you.” I don’t think we have any idea how much power we have living inside of us. We feel weak and we feel helpless when we are in a storm. We wish we could do something and yet what can we do, we are weak, we are powerless in this situation. This is a lie from the enemy and we buy it hook line and sinker, every single time. Oh, how amazing it would be if we all could realize the power we have living inside of us. Imagine how afraid the enemy would be if we knew how great this power was.
There are some that know how great this power is. Do you know anyone that has been faces with incredible pain and suffering and yet they seem to still have joy? Do you know anyone that seems to be faced with storm after storm and yet has beat incredible odds and was pretty calm and joyful throughout? Do you wonder what their secret is? Do you wonder how they can be so calm, in the face of so much uncertainty? I will tell you their secret right now. They know the power they have inside of them. Is it their power, no. Are they powerful on their own, no. They are powerful because they have the power of the Holy Spirit, the same Spirit that brought Jesus back from the dead. They know that even if the seas get rough, the winds blow and the waves pick up, they have the power to rebuke the wind and tell the waves to calm down. They step out in faith and calm the storms because they know they are capable. Not through their own strength but through the strength of the Holy Spirit. You have this strength too.
Does this mean that once you know this, things won’t ever be tough again. Nope. Does this mean that you will never worry when things get hard. nope. You have this strength and this power so that you can use it. You will be tested and will need to call upon this power. So, if knowing this doesn’t help me stay out of the storm, why is it important that we know this? Because once you know you have the power to rebuke the evil that wants to enter your life, then you are able to use this power. If you don’t know that this power is lying dormant inside of you then you won’t call upon it. You will feel helpless in situations when you don’t know what to do. When situations feel too big, like the storm in the verse for today, you may feel weak and helpless. However, if you know you have this power inside of you then you can stand strong and face the storm with a peace and a joy because you know that you are not helpless. You can stand in this power and you can tell the evil to leave. You can refuse to let the evil into your mind or your heart. You can rely on the spirit that lives inside of you to calm your mind and your heart.
If you are looking for calm in the storm, be that calm. Call upon the power that is already inside of you. Call upon that power to rebuke any evil that comes your way. Call upon that power to help you refuse to believe the lies of the enemy. Call upon that power to be strong. When you don’t know what to do in a situation, Pray. It may feel like you aren’t doing anything. I have heard many people say, all I can do is pray. Praying is not a little thing. Prayers are so very powerful. Again, the idea that you are not doing anything except praying, is something the enemy wants you to believe. He wants you to believe that praying isn’t a big deal because even he knows how powerful prayers can be. Once people realize that they have the power of the Holy Spirit inside of them, and that praying is the most powerful they can do in any situation, they will be unstoppable. Their prayers will shoot like a rocket to heaven, straight to the ears of God. I know God hears all or our prayers, but I think if we all knew the power of our prayers, if we all believed in the power of our prayers, the enemy would be shaking in his boots.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, I pray that you reveal to all those listening how truly powerful their prayers are. Give them a glimpse as to how much you love to hear them pray. Lord open their eyes to the power of the Holy Spirit that is living inside of them. If anyone listening doesn’t have the Holy Spirit living inside of them I ask that you place that desire upon their hearts. Lord, you are so truly amazing. The fact that you would even give us the Holy Spirit is beyond words. Your love is unending and we can’t even comprehend what that means. You have given us so much and we are not worthy. We are so grateful Lord. We love you so much and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
We have all seen God working in our lives, however, we might not all be aware it is God who is working in our lives. This is why it is so important we start talking about it more. The more we share our experiences the more people understand how God works and how much He truly loves us. If you would be willing to share any experience you have had of how God has worked or is working your life, please email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or just click on the link below. It won’t take up much of your time and your story could be just the story that someone needs to hear today. Prayerfully consider sharing. Everyone has a story and the world needs to hear them. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow and I will have another witness for you next Wednesday. Have a blessed day!
What Does the Lord Require of Us?
Micah 6:8 “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”
This verse came right after God was making a case against Israel. He was telling them to remember all He had done for them and then they were asking how they should appear before the Lord. Should they bring burnt offering, should they give him thousands of lambs or rivers of oil? This is the reply they get back. “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” I feel as though this is how we would all act. We hear that God is angry with us and we want to know what we can do to fix it. Our first thought would be similar to their first thought I bet. We would try to give God something. Have you ever heard the saying if you through enough money at a problem it will go away? God is not like this. There is not amount of money that you could give Him to get away with your sins. God does not need anything that you have to give Him. He doesn’t need anything.
What God requires of us does not take any money. It is not an object which we can buy with money either. What God requires of us is more about who we are and how we live. This is much harder. Becoming someone different is difficult and not nearly as easy as buying something. This is why that is our first go to solution. We want the easy way out. Who wants to take the hard way? But guess what? No one ever grows taking the easy way. Your strength is forged in battle. Your perseverance and resilience comes from being knocked down and then standing back up. Think about the difference if you walked up the access road to the top of the mountain, or you scaled the cliffs to get to the top, which would give your muscles a better workout? Which way would help you get stronger faster? It is the same with life.
None of us enjoy the battles, none of us like taking the long way around and yet it is necessary to get you to be there person you want to be. The person God wants you to be. God is calling you to a better life, a life you will love and be so glad once you get there. And you will get there, just as the Israelites got to the promised land. The question is how long is it going to take to get you there? I heard Father Mike talking the other day and he said that it took the Israelites less than 2 weeks to get to the promised land. Then they sent scouts up to look at the land and search out their strengths and weaknesses. Check out their food and the situation in the cities. They were supposed to scout it out and report back. Then God would lead them to their victory. However, they reported back that they shouldn’t attack. That the men of those lands were too big and too numerous. The felt defeated before they even tried. They turned their backs on God and did not think He could help them win. For this, God punished them to walk the dessert for 40 more years. Are you holding up your progress by doubting that God can help you? Are you prolonging your suffering and taking the longer way because you don’t want to follow God’s ways?
This verse is telling us what God is requiring of us. “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” He is not requiring us to give Him lots of sacrifices each day. He is not asking us for special oil. He is not asking us for anything that we can buy. He is asking us to do justice. I found several articles that discuss the verse and how to do what the Lord is requiring of us. I will share some of the things I found in an article titled, How to Do Justice, Love Mercy, and Walk Humbly with God by Jason Soroski. (CLICK HERE FOR ARTICLE) According to Jason, “To do Justice means to know and seek the justice and righteousness of God in our own lives and in the world around us. It is important to note that we are to do justice. It is not just a thought, but something that we act upon, living out justice not just in what we say but in what we do. He also says, “True Justice is living out the truth of Scripture, speaking truth to others. It is done in love and spoken through mercy and humility. God requires us to do justice not to place ourselves as superior to others, but to walk in love, sharing and living out the truth of the gospel.”
Next the verse says we should love kindness. I wish more people in this world loved kindness. I feel as though sometimes, when something happens in the world, like Covid, it really brings out peoples kindness. At least at the beginning of it all we saw everyone wanting to help everyone. Also when this war in Ukraine started. I know there is a family in my town that took on a refuge family from Ukraine. The community really came together to provide what was needed for that family. However, there are so many other times when I just see people being unkind. God is calling us not just to be kind, but to love kindness. When we love something we want to share it with others. God is calling us to share our kindness with others.
The third thing the Lord is requiring of us is to walk humbly with your God. In Philippians 2:3 it says, “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others about yourselves. Jason Soroski says in his article that “We walk humbly with God when we acknowledge that He is just and that only through His mercy are we made whole. When we truly believe this, it flows out of our lives and into the lives of others. As with justice, humility is an action. We are to walk with Christ in humility, not running ahead, not standing still, Humility is perhaps one of the hardest things for us to show. We live in a world that glorifies the strongest, the smartest, and the best. Humility, therefore, runs counter to everything we are taught to hold meaning. Yet Jesus gives the exact opposite example. The apostle Paul reminds us in Philippians 2:7-8 that Jesus displayed the ultimate act of humility in that, “he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross!”
Jason concludes, “These things are required of us because added together they keep our hearts balanced, focused, and centered on godly things. When we lean too far into any one of these things, we fall into a trap: justice without mercy leads to cruelty, mercy without justice leads to vulnerability, and humility without confidence in God’s justice and love for God’s mercy leads to fear and lack of self-worth. Yet when these three are in perfect biblical balance as laid out in Micah 6:8, we find ourselves becoming imitators of Christ, who was filled with grace and truth and placed the needs of others above His own.” Let us all try to become imitators of Christ.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, please help us to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with you God. Lord, if we don’t understand what this means, please give us an understanding of what you are calling us to do. Help us seek out an understanding of what you require from us so we can give it to you. Forgive us Lord, for wanting to take the easy way out. Give us the strength to persevere through hard times. Give us the wisdom to know when we are making things harder than they have to be. Help us to know we are the reason things are taking so long, just as the Israelites were the reason they needed to wander for 40 years in the wilderness. We love you Lord, you are truly amazing. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Tomorrow’s witness will be from my friend Emerald. Emerald’s story is one many of us can relate to. She fell away from the church and was not really sure what was true and what wasn’t. She embarked on a journey of truth of herself. Then when she felt called to go back to church, she struggled with feelings of worthiness and whether or not she would be accepted. I think if we are honest with ourselves we will all see ourselves in some aspect of Emerald’s story. I look forward to sharing that with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Do we always recognize Jesus?
John 20:11-16 “ But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher).”
I was listening to this recount of the resurrection the other day and as soon as I heard these verses I thought, how many times have we seen Jesus and yet we didn’t recognize Him? Has this ever happened to you? Have you ever had an encounter with Jesus and yet you didn’t know it at the time? Then when you look back you realize that must have been what it was? I think this happens more often than we think it does. God works through all of us. Did you ever have someone give you a kind word at the exact moment that you needed it? That was Jesus. Did you ever have someone bail you out of a situation that you couldn’t get out of? That was Jesus. Did you ever have something that seemed like a coincidence and yet at the same time it seemed to good to be true? That was Jesus.
Just as Mary did not recognize Jesus when she first saw Him after His resurrection, we will not always recognize Him. We probably run into him several times a day and yet we don’t recognize him. He is in each one of us. When you are being kind and showing love to others Jesus’ light is shining through you. You might not even know you are doing it, but God uses each of us to do His will. We just need to listen for His promptings. Did you ever get a feeling that you were supposed to call someone but you didn’t know why? Then when you called the person they said you made their day? That was God using you. Did you ever feel prompted to pray for someone, or give someone a hug and you didn’t understand why? That was God using you. You were the face of Jesus for that person in need at that moment. God has a plan and He allows us to be a part of it. He allows us to be the face of Jesus to others. Isn’t that amazing?
Another thing I thought of when I reread this scripture is that Mary was so focused on what she was expecting to see, Jesus in the tomb that she didn’t even realize what she was actually seeing. The verse says, “But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” Mary looked in the tomb and saw two angels. I feel as though that part is just skipped over. Mary not only saw two angels, but they spoke to her, they asked her a question. She answered them and told them who she was looking for and then she just turned away. I wonder what was going through her mind. I wonder how she could look at and talk to two angels and yet not even really care? Just go about her day like something miraculous didn’t just happen. It’s almost as if she didn’t realize they were angels.
I wonder how many times we have done this? I wonder how many times we have been presented with a miracle and we didn’t notice it because it wasn’t what we were looking for. For instance, my husband was not a fan of his job at one point. He had been looking for another job but couldn’t find what he was looking for. Then unexpectedly he had to leave his job that he didn’t really like. He was very upset and felt bad about it. However, the job he got was so much better than the one he had. It was actually everything he had been praying for, but didn’t realize it because it didn’t come in the way that he would have liked it to have come.
We do this a lot. We ask God for things and then when He gives us what we want we don’t recognize it if it doesn’t look like we thought it would. We ask for a new job but then get upset when we loose the old one. We ask for children but then get upset if that doesn’t look like we thought it would. Maybe we wanted boys and got girls, maybe we wanted 2 and got 3, whatever it is, we can fail to see the miracle sometimes because it looks different from what we thought it would. Sometimes our miracles can come in very unexpected ways. Sometimes people find themselves working ridiculous hours at work, never seeing their families and as much as they want to stop, they just can’t. Then something happens, usually some sort of tragedy and they finally wake up and realize this tragedy was the miracle they needed to finally wake up and put their family first.
I hope you don’t have to endure a tragedy to realize the miracles in your life. We all have miracles in our lives, big ones and small ones. If we are on the lookout for them then we will be more likely to see them. Also, if we know that Jesus is all around us, and we are on the lookout for Him, we will start to see Him more as well. The next time someone does something kind for you, know that is Jesus shining through them. The next time you feel a prompting to do something kind, even if you don’t know why and even if you don’t understand it, do it. Perhaps God is using you to be the face of Jesus for someone who really needs it. God is calling each one of us to be his disciples. Will you answer that call?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you and we are sorry if we can’t always recognize you. We are sorry if our own expectations get in the way of us noticing the miracles you are blessing us with. Lord, we ask that you open our eyes to see all the miracles that you do in our lives. Big, or small, open our eyes to let us see them. Lord, help us to hear your call and to listen to it. You are so amazing and we miss somethings because we are so stuck in our own ways. Helps us to get unstuck. Sometimes we don’t listen when your ask us to do something, help us to listen more and to do what you ask of us. You are our alighting father and we ask that you help us obey your commands. You are so good and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus holy name, amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Making Scripture Personal
Psalm 91 "He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High, who abides in the shadow of the Almighty, will say to the Lord, “My refuge and my fortress; my God, in whom I trust.” For he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the deadly pestilence; he will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness is a shield and buckler. You will not fear the terror of the night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in darkness, nor the destruction that wastes at noonday.
A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand; but it will not come near you. You will only look with your eyes and see the recompense of the wicked.
Because you have made the Lord your refuge,[a] the Most High your habitation, no evil shall befall you, no scourge come near your tent.
For he will give his angels charge of you to guard you in all your ways. On their hands they will bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone. You will tread on the lion and the adder, the young lion and the serpent you will trample under foot.
Because he cleaves to me in love, I will deliver him; I will protect him, because he knows my name. When he calls to me, I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble, I will rescue him and honor him. With long life I will satisfy him, and show him my salvation.
Have you ever personalized scripture before? Have you ever replaced the word Israelites for your name? Have you ever just inserted your name into scripture to make it more personal to you? What do you think about this idea? If you haven’t done it before, why haven’t you? Is it because you never thought of it before? Is it because you think it is wrong to add your name to the holy scriptures. Is it because you can’t see how the Bible and the scriptures apply to you in your life? Take a moment and really think about this idea of personalizing scripture. I will be honest with you, I have not done it a lot. I have heard of this idea before and I though it sounded like an awesome idea, and then I just never really did anything with it. I did an episode awhile back #107 I will be Joyful in God my Savior. It was about Habakkuk 3:17-19 and how I read a story in Dave Hollis’ Book titled “Built Through Courage,” that his friend had rewritten that verse to fit her particular circumstances. It was powerful for him to hear this and then he rewrote it to fit his particular circumstance as well. If you would like to hear how they rewrote that verse you can check out that episode, #107.
Today I want to talk to you about why personalizing scripture can help you grown in your faith. The Bible is not just a collection of words, or a collection of stories that are nice to read. The Bible is one of God’s way of communicating with us. Using the Bible God is teaching us how to act, how to interact with each other, what to do, what not to do. He is also teaching us about Him and His ways. He is teaching us about His love and His forgiveness. He is communicating with us and if we can make that communication more personal then we will connect to it more. When your were in school did you pay more attention when the teacher was talking to the whole class, or when she was talking to you individually? What about at a work meeting? Would you pay more attention if your boss said your name before he started talking, or if he was addressing the whole audience? I think we can all agree that we would pay more attention if someone was talking to us directly. It is the same with the Bible. If you put you name into the Bible verse you will pay more attention because it will feel as though that verse was written directly for you. I will now read today’s verse except I have I personalized it. Listen and see if you connect with this one more than the other?
I dwell in the shelter of the Most High, I abide in the shadow of the Almighty, I will say to you Lord, “My refuge and my fortress; it is you, in whom I trust.” For You will deliver me from the snare of the fowler and from the deadly pestilence; You will cover me with your pinions, and under your wings I will find refuge; your faithfulness is a shield and buckler. I will not fear the terror of the night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in darkness, nor the destruction that wastes at noonday.
A thousand may fall at my side, ten thousand at my right hand; but it will not come near me. I will only look with your eyes and see the recompense of the wicked.
Because I have made the Lord my refuge, the Most High my habitation, no evil shall befall me, no scourge come near my tent.
For you will give your angels charge of me to guard me in all your ways. On their hands they will bear me up, lest I dash my foot against a stone. I will tread on the lion and the adder, the young lion and the serpent I will trample under foot.
Because I cleave to you in love, You will deliver me; You will protect me, because I know your name. When I call to you, You will answer me; You will be with me in trouble, You will rescue me and honor me. With long life you will satisfy me, and show me your salvation.
Did you find this more personal? Instead of saying it the original way, I replaced the “he’s” with I. What did you think? Could you tell the difference? Did you feel any different after one more than the other?
You can also personalize it by taking out the troubles that are mentioned in the verse and adding your own troubles. For instance you could change it to say:
For You will deliver me from all my anxiety
and from my insecurities. You will cover me with your pinions, and under your wings I will find refuge; your faithfulness is a shield and buckler. I will not fear the uncertainty of the future nor the stresses of each day, nor the loneliness of the world, nor the welfare of my family.
A thousand may fall at my side, ten thousand at my right hand; but it will not come near me. I will only look with your eyes and see the recompense of the wicked.
This is just an example to show you how you might want to change the scripture. There are many ways you can personalize scripture. Rick Warren, author of A Purpose Driven Life, suggests that we can replace any pronouns or nouns in scripture with our name. For example, if he were personalizing John 3:16, He'd write something like this: 'For God so loved Rick, he gave his one and only Son so that Rick would not perish but have everlasting life.” Or, "Or, for Philippians 1:6: 'He who began a good work in Rick Warren will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.’" Warren went on to note that if one uses the "personalize-it method," the results will "strengthen your faith and encourage yourself. Do this, and many passages of Scripture will literally bring tears to your eyes. You'll start to read the Bible as God's love letter to you," continued Warren.
There are article out there that can give you more examples of how to do this. I just wanted to introduce you to the idea today. If you think it sounds like something you would like to try I say you just go for it. There is no right or wrong way to do it. Take a scripture verse and see how it can apply to your exact circumstances. Instead of reading the Bible as if it is a collection of stories completely unrelated to your life, start reading it as if God is talking to you, right where you are, in the circumstances that you are in. I bet the Bible will come to life in a whole new way. Give it a try, if you don’t like it, no worries. However, what if you do try it and it is life changing? Don’t let this opportunity pass you by.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to read your scripture more. Put it on our hearts and give us a greater desire to read your Word every day. Help us to read it as if you are talking directly to us, because you are. Open our eyes and help us to see that your Word is not just for the Israelites that lived over 2,000 years ago, it for us as well. Lord we love you and we are so grateful that you love us enough to give a your Word so we can get to know you. You are amazing and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you on Monday. Have a blessed weekend.
A World Washed In Sunshine
Job 11:13-20 “Still, if you set your heart on God and reach out to him, If you scrub your hands of sin and refuse to entertain evil in your home,You’ll be able to face the world unashamed and keep a firm grip on life, guiltless and fearless. You’ll forget your troubles; they’ll be like old, faded photographs. Your world will be washed in sunshine, every shadow dispersed by dawn. Full of hope, you’ll relax, confident again; you’ll look around, sit back, and take it easy. Expansive, without a care in the world, you’ll be hunted out by many for your blessing. But the wicked will see none of this. They’re headed down a dead-end road with nothing to look forward to—nothing.” (msg. translation)
How great would it be to forget your troubles. The verse gives us the image of old, faded photographs. Imagine if your troubles were so far away that they felt like old faded photographs? It also says your world would be washed in sunshine, every shadow dispersed by dawn. Imagine if this were true? You life was bright and filled with light and there was no darkness. Sin lurked in the darkness. Then enemy lurked in the darkness. However, if we scrub our hands of sin and refuse to entertain evil in our home the we can live in the light. We can chase away our troubles. Turning away from sin is not something that is easy and it is not something we can do on our own. This is why God is telling us to reach out to Him. If we ask Him for help and He will help us.
The next line says “full of hope, you’ll relax, confident again; you’ll look around, sit back, and take it easy. Doesn’t that sound so nice? When is the last time you felt like that? When is the last time you looked around at your life, or this world that we live in and felt like you could take it easy? Most people I know are super stressed about what is going on in this world. They are worried about the government in the United States. They are worried about their jobs and how it will be affected if they do or do not take the covid vaccine. They are worried about their civil rights and personal freedom of choice and wonder if they will be taken away from them. There are so many people that ware worried about the war in Europe and I think we all wonder when it will stop. I have heard many people are super worried that this war between two countries will turn into WW III, I get it. There is a lot of scary things going on in the world right now and that causes many of us to be anxious and to be worried.
If this is you, first know that you are not alone. There are many people who are stressing and worrying about all these things too. You are in good company. The second thing I want you to know is that you don’t have to keep worrying and being anxious about these things. Part of the reason that we worry so much is because we watch or read the news a lot. When we are constantly putting that information into our brain, then our brains are going to focus on it. I have talked before about our Reticular Activator System. It is a filter that we all have in our brains. Our brains take in so much information per second and our brain can’t process it all, so it filters out the things it doesn’t think we are interested in. We set our filter by the things we do, watch, read, etc. If we spend a lot of time on something then our brain thinks we are interested in it and so it lets in all the info that it sees on those things and filters out a lot of other things.
For instance, if you are constantly watching news about the war then your brain thinks you are really interested in that topic and so it will point out things about the war every where you look. If you are suddenly into running a lot, your brain would allow in all things that have to do with running. For instance, my friend said one time that it seems like everyone has run a marathon. In all actuality less than 1% of the population of the United States have run a marathon. It just seemed like more to her because everywhere she looked her brain showed her runners.
If you want to be full of hope, relax, and be confident again you have the power to do this. You just need to change your focus. I had a friend that was very upset with all that is going on in the world. It was affecting her job and even her motivation to get out of bed in the morning. She felt like what was the point of getting out of bed when the world was falling apart anyway. I asked her to make one small change. Stop watching the news. Here’s the thing, yes, it is important to be informed, but do you really need to watch the news and check the news as often as you do? Is that why you are checking the news, to be informed? Or, are you checking if obsessively? If the news is affecting your mood and you feel you are anxious and worried a lot, stop watching the news. I promise you will see that worry and anxiety lessen. Sometimes we think we will worry less if we are more informed. I don’t think this is the case with the news because it is set up to shock you. They want you to keep watching so it is not just facts, it is information with a spin that makes you want to keep watching.
In my opinion, if there is nothing you can change about what is going on, then it doesn’t do any good to obsess about it. We don’t know what is going to happen with the war in Ukraine. Hopefully it will end soon, and maybe it will turn into WW III. Either way there is nothing we can do to change it. The government is a mess right now, but there is nothing we can do to change that either. There are things we can do sometimes. We can vote in local elections. We can write to our congressmen and women. However, watching the news and worrying won’t change anything and it is not serving most of us. Nothing good is coming out of obsessively watching the news. If you find that you are anxious and worried a lot I challenge you to take a one week break from the news, and just see how you feel. You do not have to take my word for it. Test it out and see for yourself. I know my friend said she felt so much better!
The next line of the verse says, “Expansive, without a care in the world, you’ll be hunted out by many for your blessing. But the wicked will see none of this. They’re headed down a dead-end road with nothing to look forward to—nothing.” Imagine if you didn’t have a care in the world? Can you remember the last time you didn’t have a care in the world? It was probably when you were a child. “You’ll be hunted out by many for your blessing. Imagine that. People seeking you out for your blessing. This whole verse is telling us what we need to do to have this extraordinary life. If we want the things we talked about in this verse we need to reach out to the Lord and scrub sin from our lives. We don’t have to do this perfectly. God is not expecting us to wake up one day and sin no more. It isn’t about being perfect, it is about our small daily decisions. Can you avoid one sin today? Can you acknowledge to God some sin that you know you are struggling with? Can you just take one step closer to God today? The verse says the wicked will see none of this. They are headed down a dead-end road with noting to look forward to-nothing. We don’t want this to be us. We want the carefree life, the sun washed life. We want to relax and have all of our troubles disappear. God is telling us how to make this happen, now all we have to do it say yes. Yes Lord, I will reach out to you. Yes, Lord, I struggle with sin and I want to sin no more, please help me. Yes Lord, I want all that you offer to me. Yes Lord, I will do my best to scrub sin from my life with your help. It feel impossible, but Matthew 19:26 says, “With God all things are Possible.”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to turn away from sin, please help us. We want to reach out to you in our time of need, why is this so hard? Please help us reach out Lord. Lord, we accept your offer of a world washed with sunshine and free of shadows, help us do our part to live in that world. We would love for our troubles to go away. We are so grateful for all of your promises. It is amazing how you take care of us so well when we are turning away from you so often. Lord, we are so grateful that you are so forgiving and that you shower us with grace. I don’t know where we would be without all that grace. Help us to accept your grace and forgiveness. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
If you would like to share your witness or your story about how God is working in your life please send me a message. It does not take a lot of time and could make a real difference in someone's life. Email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or (click here).
Reach Out To God
Job 11:13-20 “Still, if you set your heart on God and reach out to him, If you scrub your hands of sin and refuse to entertain evil in your home,You’ll be able to face the world unashamed and keep a firm grip on life, guiltless and fearless. You’ll forget your troubles; they’ll be like old, faded photographs. Your world will be washed in sunshine, every shadow dispersed by dawn. Full of hope, you’ll relax, confident again; you’ll look around, sit back, and take it easy. Expansive, without a care in the world, you’ll be hunted out by many for your blessing. But the wicked will see none of this. They’re headed down a dead-end road with nothing to look forward to—nothing.” (msg. translation)
When I read this, I thought is sounded so beautiful. I usually the use the New Revised Standard Version-Catholic Edition for the translation, however, sometimes I like to look at various translations because even though they all say the same thing, they say it using different words. If you haven’t done this before there is a website you can go to www.biblegateway.com and you put in the verse you are looking for and then there is a drop down menu where you can select all different translations of the Bible. It really cool. There is also an app called The Bible app and it has a bunch of Bible translations on there too if you prefer apps to websites. The message translation is one that takes the Bible verse and puts it in terms that are more common in todays language.
Today this verse is telling us that if we set our heart on God and reach out to Him, and if we scrub our hands of sin and refuse to entertain evil in our homes, then we will be able to face the world unashamed and keep a firm grip on life, guiltless and fearless. Is it me, or is this said with such ease? As if it’s not that difficult to do. I was going to say that the first part is not that hard, we can set our hearts on God and reach out to Him pretty easily, however, then the Holy Spirit stopped me and said, “Are your hearts set on God?” Instead of answering this question quickly I think we should take a moment and think about it. What are our hearts set on? What is the first thing we think of in the morning? What is the first thing you think about all throughout the day? What is the last think you think about before bed? How many times throughout the day are you thinking about God? Do you think about Him more than anything else? Is there something else in your life that you set your heart to? What comes to mind for me is my phone, social media and watching TV. Am I putting these things above God? Is my heart set, maybe by default, to these things? I want God to be first in my life. I want to set my heart to Him, so why am I going on social media before having my prayer time. Why am I always checking my phone, but not finding the time to write in my journal. Man, this isn’t where I thought this would be going today and yet I feel very convicted to take a hard look at my priorities and align them with my desire to put God first. We can say we love God all we want, but if our actions don’t align then those might just be words.
It also said that we reach out to God, and I though this was easy too. However, again the Holy Spirit reminded me about how much we like to solve things on our own. Also, how hard it is for some of us to turn to the Lord. There are many reasons why someone might struggle reaching out to the Lord. One of those reasons might be that they have a hard time asking for help. They just want to fix it themselves so that they don’t have to ask for help. Another reason might be that they don’t feel they are worthy of help. They feel they aren’t good enough to ask God for help. Someone else might think that God has let them down in the past because He didn’t answer their prayers the way they wanted Him to. It could be any number of reasons that we are not reaching out for the Lord. However, as this verse is saying, if we could figure out how to set our hearts to God and reach out to him, we would be able to have a firmer grip on life.
It also says if we scrub our hands of sin and refuse to entertain evil in our home we will be able to face the world unashamed. Wouldn’t that we great! In my opinion there is far too much shame in this world. I mean there are a lot of awful things going on in the world, but the people doing them are not the ones that are filled with shame. The people that are filled with shame are the people who are trying to do in God’s eyes and yet feel like they are falling short. We feel shame because we aren’t as good a parent as we want to be. We feel shame because we tried and failed. We feel shame because we aren’t living up to the perfect standards that we decided God wanted from us. Shame does not come from the Lord. The Lord does want us to acknowledge our sins and then repent for them but he doesn’t want us to feel shame from them. This verse is telling us to scrub sin from our hands. The person who is saying this is talking to Job, whom we know is blameless in the eyes of the Lord. Job was not being judged with all these things that were afflicting him. There will be many people throughout your life that will try to tell you about your sins. They will try to make you feel shame because of some perceived sin that you have done. You are the best judge of your sins. Do not let others make you feel ashamed. Yes, try not to sin and try to not entertain evil from you home. However, if you do sin, repent to the Lord and accept His forgiveness.
This verse is pretty long, so I will cover the second half of it in the episode on Thursday. Today I challenge you to think of ways in which you can set your heart to God. What would that look like for you? What could you do to show God that He is number one in your life? For me, that looks like starting my day off with His word, even if I feel I have other things I need to do first. It means writing in my prayer journal before sitting down to watch TV. What will it look like for you? The second things we talked about is scrubbing out sin. What does this look like for you? If you are Catholic, maybe it means going to confession more often? If you are not Catholic, maybe it means sitting down with God and discussing the ways you are not living the way He is calling us to live. Maybe it means you pick one thing that you know you shouldn’t be doing, and stop doing it. This will look different for each one of us. I ask you to take a few minutes and think about how you can implement these two requests into your lives. God is calling us to be better, let's answer that call!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord we are all struggling with different things. Help us each figure out how we can reach out to you more. How we can set our hearts on you and how we can scrub out sin in our lives. Lord, help to convict us of how we can change. Help us to not feel shameful. Help us to repent and turn back to you accepting your forgiveness and feeling your love. Lord, you don’t condemn us, you just love us. Help us to feel that love and to love you back as best we can. You are so amazing Lord. The way you forgive our sins and love us so completely. We are so very grateful and we ask all of this in accordance with our will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on our journey to walk boldly with Jesus. This week’s witness will be Brandy H. Brandy talks about her faith, her family, and the miracles she saw God do with her youngest daughter. It is a fascinating witness of God’s glory and you won’t want to miss it. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow! Have a blessed day!
Patience Is A Virtue
Sirach 1:23 “Those who are patient stay calm until the right moment, and then cheerfulness comes back to them. They hold back their words until the right moment; then the lips of many tell of their good sense.”
Have you ever heard people say, patience is a virtue? I have heard it frequently and it is usually said when someone is struggling with patience. What is a virtue? According to my quick internet search virtue has been defined as “conformity of life and conduct with the principles of morality.” The virtues are thus the practical attitudes and habits adopted in obedience to those principles. It seems there is much discussion online whether patience is actually a virtue or not. However, most agree that it is not a virtue. The saying patience is a virtue is showing how important and good having patience is. Have you ever known someone that seemed to have an unlimited amount of patience? That was my mom.
She was the oldest of 10 children growing up and being the oldest meant that she had to help raise them. It also meant if my grandmother was sick, she needed to step in and take care of everyone until she got better. This happened one time, I forget how old she was, although I know she was still in school. My grandfather was away as he was in the Navy and my grandmother got very sick. My mom had to miss I think about 3 months of school so she could take care of the kids while my grandma was sick. You might think, after being the oldest of 10 kids, she wouldn’t want any kids, or maybe she might want one or two, but definitely not too many. You would be wrong. My parents got married wanting 12 children. Now, I can see how a Catholic couple could have 12 kids, but going into the marriage wanting that many, after having just helped raise 9 is beyond me. My husband thought I was crazy wanting four kids. My mom and dad had 11 kids.
Now, you would think after helping to raise 10 kids and then raising 11 kids of your own, you would be done with children by the time your kids were grown. You would think my mom would be kinda tired of kids at that point. Not that kids are bad. I love children. I just know how much work it is to raise children and I have no idea how hard it is to raise 11 children but I can imagine it is harder than raising 3. My mom did not take a break. When my youngest brother was in school, I’m not sure what age, she went to work at a Montessori school for 3-5 year olds. She was in her glory. She just really loves children. The reason I am telling you all of this is because my mom had so much patience. Now, I am not saying she never lost her cool, because she did, she is human after all. However, she could be faced with immensely difficult situations and stay very calm. Because we had a lot of kids growing up, we didn’t really have a lot of money. Thankfully, my dad had a very good job, however, it still wasn’t enough money most of the time because of the amount of kids they had. My mom would see that we had more bills than money, and she would stay calm. I am sure it probably stressed her out, but some people get really angry when they get stressed. She did not. She remained calm, and just called the places and set up payment plans.
I was a child that did not like to get up in the morning, which is funny to me know as I was up at 4 am this morning. However, when I was in school, I hated waking up. Often times I would not get out of bed until about the 6th time of being woken up. Yet, I can’t remember my mom yelling at me once for it. Even if I was late to the car, she was just patiently waiting for me. My siblings, not so patient, but who could blame them. I wasn’t intending this episode to be about my mom, although I am not surprised that is where the Holy Spirit took me because I have always admired my mom’s patience. I have had to develop a lot of patience over the years. Well, I guess I didn’t have to, but I chose to do that instead of being angry and frustrated all the time. Do you know that you have a choice? You can choose to develop more patience. It is not as if there is a finite amount of patience and it is not as if you either have it or you don’t. You can work on it and you can become more patient if you want to.
The verse says, “Those who are patient stay calm until the right moment, and then cheerfulness comes back to them. They hold back their words until the right moment; then the lips of many tell of their good sense.” There are two parts to this verse. The first one is “Those who are patient stay calm until the right moment, and then cheerfulness comes back to them.” This is so true. Can you picture a time when you have stayed calm in a situation? Didn’t it feel less stressful? Were you able to be happy in the difficult situation? When there is at least on person that is being patient and remaining calm, then it usually helps others to do the same. We tend to mirror other peoples emotions. This is why they say not to make a big deal when your children are little and they fall down. If you freak out, they freak out. If you remain calm, they may remain calm. The mirror our emotions, especially when they are younger.
Another reason to become more patient is because being impatient never helps a situation. It usually has the opposite effect. Have you noticed when you are in a hurry, everything goes wrong? You can’t find your shoes, your keys, your jacket, whatever it is you need. Or you walk out of the house and forget things because you were in a hurry. Also, if you are in a hurry and you are waiting on others, being impatient usually starts a fight and there definitely aren’t those cheerful feeling the verse is talking about. When we are impatient with those we are trying to get out of the house, they often get angry and then is slows us down even more. This was a big lesson that God showed me over and over again when my kids were little. If we were late, rushing the kids, nagging the kids and being frustrated with the kids, was not going to get them out of the house any faster. I had to learn to remain calm, patient, compassionate and helpful. Instead of yelling at the to get their shoes on I would place their shoes by the door, ask if they needed help putting them on, or sometimes, just put the shoes in the car for them so they could do it in the car. When I was able to be patient and remain calm, we definitely had a more cheerful car ride.
The second part of this verse says, “They hold back their words until the right moment; then the lips of many tell of their good sense.” Have you ever noticed that when we are impatient we don’t always say the nicest things? Even if they are things that need to be said, we don’t say them at the right time if we are not remaining calm. For instance, it would have been completely appropriate for my mom to sit me down when I was younger and talk with me about how important it was to get up in the mornings and how if I get to the car late, I am making everyone late. And she might have, I just don’t remember. However, yelling at me in the morning when I am half asleep and when we are trying to get out the door is not the right time. I know when I was impatient with my kids because we needed to get somewhere and we were late, I would slip into lecture mode. You have to get up earlier, I told you to make sure you had everything the night before, we are going to be late now because you can’t be bothered to hurry, and whatever else I used to say. Those were definitely not my finest hours. Although I know we all have those moments as parents. It would absolutely been appropriate after the fact, not in the moment, to talk about why we were late and what we could do differently next time. The verse doesn’t say, they hold back their words forever. It says they hold their words for the right moment. This is so important. There is a time and place to say things and learning to know when that is will serve you well.
There is a challenge that I learned about in my mentoring group. It is called the Zip It Challenge and it is based on a best selling book by Karen Ehman. You can look it up online and you will find the book. I haven’t read it but it looks really good, so I may have to get it. She said she covers eight major topics: taming our tempers, sarcasm, gossip, gracious speech, sweet and salty language, asking for forgiveness, whether to speak up or remain silent, and how God’s word can alter our words. I could use some help in all those areas. However, the zip it challenge is when you are more intentional with your words. It is where you spend the next 40 days, or 20 days, or even just one day, realizing that you don’t have to say every thought that comes into your mind. Before saying something, stop and ask yourself, does this need to be said? Will this still matter to me in 5 years? I have heard of numerous people taking this challenge it reporting it really helped their relationships, whether is was with the kids or their spouse or their parents. There are lots of things we say that just don’t really need to be said. We think we are helping our loved ones, but many times, we are just nagging or telling them something they already know. Maybe this week, we could all try to be a little more patient and a little more intentional about our words. Being patient may not be easy, but it will make you happier. Being intentional with your words is also not easy, but really worth it when you see the change in your relationships. Words are powerful. Choose them wisely.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, you are amazing and we love you. We ask that you help us grow in patience. Please help us to learn to be calm in difficult situations. Help us to be patient with our loved ones. Help us to guard our tongue and to hold back out words until the right moment. Lord, help us discern waht needs to be said and what doesn’t. Help us be more intentional with our words and to think before we speak. Lord, we are so grateful that you are always with us. We are also grateful that you are so forgiving as we mess up a lot. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
There Is More Than Just What You See
2 Kings 6:15-17 “When an attendant of the man of God rose early in the morning and went out, an army with horses and chariots was all around the city. His servant said, “Alas, master! What shall we do?” He replied, “Do not be afraid, for there are more with us than there are with them.” Then Elisha prayed: “O Lord, please open his eyes that he may see.” So the Lord opened the eyes of the servant, and he saw; the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.”
The phrase I can’t get out of my head is “there are more with us than there are with them.” This is something that can be hard to remember. When God is on our side, no one can be greater than us. 1 John 4:4 says, “Little children, you are from God, and have conquered them; for the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.” The one who is in us is greater than the one who is in the world. We should all write this down and put it on our fridge, on our bathroom mirror, everywhere, so that we can constantly be reminded of this. Why is it so important that we remember this? It is so important because so often it seems like we are in over our head. It seems like our troubles are too much for us and we can’t keep our head above water. We frequently feel out numbered.
I love how the servant thought they were out numbered. He had no idea what they were going to do and then Elisha prayed that God would open the eyes of the servant. Then his eyes were opened and he saw the mountains were full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha. This is such a beautiful image. Can you just see it? A mountain full of horses and chariots of fire, Elisha was not worried about defeat when he could see the Lord’s army all around him. How amazing it must have been for Elisha and for the servant. I wonder if this was a one time thing for Elisha or if he always got to see things like this. This passage makes me wonder about all the things that surround us that we can’t see. It reassures me that even though sometimes we feel very alone, we never are. God is always with us but we could also be surrounded with horses and chariots of fire, and we just don’t know because we can’t see them.
Did you know each one of us has a guardian angel? Your have had your guardian angel since the moment you were born. Have you ever asked your angel for anything? Have you ever thanked it for all those things that it has saved you from? Probably not because it was so good and saved you from it before you even knew it was a problem. There is a short prayer that I used to pray with our boys when they were younger. It is not just for little kids though. It is a prayer that we can still say daily to let our guardian angel know that we know they are there and that we appreciate them and that we give them permission to work in our lives. In case you do not know the prayer I will recite it for you now.
Angel of God my guardian dear to whom God’s love commits me here.
Ever this day be at my side, to light and guard, to rule and guide. Amen
This prayer is pretty great because it explains to us the job description of our angel. Our guardian angel is here to help light our way. It is here to guard us from any dangers. It is here to help us get to heaven by helping to rule and guide us. We have to accept its help though. Angels will not go against free will any more than God will. If you have never done this before take a quick minute and just let your guardian angel know that it has your full permission to work in your lives. Give it free rein to do whatever it thinks is necessary to protect you, heart, mind and soul.
Did you also know that God also has legions of angels? Online it says that there are 9 different types of angels. Each type of angel has a different job to do. I did not intend to make this episode an informational episode about angels, although I do find it fascinating and the more I read about them, the more I want to read. The main point of today’s episode is to show you that you are never alone. We can not see all those that surround us and I am sure that is for good reason. Can you imagine what the world would be like if we could see all the spirits of the world? If we could see all the good then we would probably see all the bad too. I know there are evil spirits all around us, but I am glad that we can’t see them. I can’t imagine it would be a good thing to be able to see that stuff. However, when you feel like you are alone and abandoned know that you are not. You have God, who is always with you. You have your guardian angel, who is always with you. Then there are also lots of other angels that can be by your side in a moment if you call upon them. Aside from all these angels, there are also all the Saints up in heaven. They are also praying for you and interceding for you. I am not sure if they can physically be by your side of not, but they are definitely with you in spirit. Especially all of your loved ones that have gone before you.
Just because you can’t see the work that God is doing, doesn’t mean that he is not doing it. When we are feeling alone or abandoned we can remember this verse. He replied, “Do not be afraid, for there are more with us than there are with them.” Then Elisha prayed: “O Lord, please open his eyes that he may see.” So the Lord opened the eyes of the servant, and he saw; the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.” If the Lord would send horses and chariots of fire for Elisha, he would send them for you too! God will do whatever it takes to protect you and keep you safe. I know sometimes we feel outnumbered and overpowered, but we are not. Our God is greater than anything this world can throw at you. You are not alone, you are surrounded by those that love you, even if you can’t see or feel them. They are there!
Dear Heavenly Fathering I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to not feel alone. Help us to remember to call upon your angels when we need them. Help us remember to give our guardian angel permission to work in our lives and help us to remember to thank them occasionally for all that they have done for us. I am sure they do more than we know, they protect us from things we didn’t even know about. Lord, we are so grateful that you send you angels to protect us just as you sent the horses and chariots of fire to protect Elisha. We are sorry that we get angry sometimes when we can’t see what you are doing. Help us to trust even when we can’t see. Lord we love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you on Monday. Have a blessed weekend!
Our Own Justifications
Judges 21:25 & Judges 17:6 “ In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did what was right in his own eyes.”
These are some pretty powerful words. In both cases, this sentence followed a description of how the people were going against the Lord and doing things that were evil. In Judges 17 Micah steals money from his mom and when he decides to give it back to her she uses some of it to make a molten image and a graven image. These are both used to worship false gods and they were strictly forbidden for Israelites. In Judges 25 the men of Israel are trying to find wives for the Benjamites as they made a vow not to share their daughters with them. Their solution was to go kill an entire village and kill men, woman & children. The only ones they were to keep alive were the 400 virgins in that village. After this they realized that these 400 girls were not going to be enough wives for all the men. So, they told the Benjamites to hide and lie in wait and they can steal the wives and daughters of Shiloh. Yet the men of Israel would not be to blame because they did not give these women freely, they were stolen.
It is so crazy that anyone would think this is ok. It really makes you wonder what kind of a world they were living in where they might think this was a good idea. It also goes to show that they really have no idea who God is or what He truly wants. How could they think that God would think this was acceptable behavior? It’s as if they believe that God doesn’t really care about people he just cares about the law. If they can uphold the law, according to the letter of the law not the spirit of the law, then all is ok. No harm done. It seems so crazy to me. It seems crazy and yet I can see how we struggle with this same thing. I was just about to say that we are not stealing peoples wives and daughters, but that is not true. Some people are still doing this today. It is estimated that between 15,000 to 50,000 women and children are forced into sexual slavery in the United States every year, and this number is pretty conservative as other research shows numbers being much higher. Even if we are not talking about actually kidnapping, what about those men or woman that steal a spouse away from their partner or their children. One estimate from the journal of Marriage and Divorce concludes that a mindblowing 70% of married Americans cheat at least once in their marriage. This is insane. What is going on in our culture, what was going on in their culture?
I think the answer can be found in the verse. “ In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did what was right in his own eyes.” What this verse is telling us is that the Israelites had no one to over see them. There was no one to direct them as to what was right and wrong. Now, they did have the tablets from God. They had all those years of instruction from Moses and then from Joshua. It is not as if they can claim that they didn’t know what the Lord expected from them. He gave them very detailed instructions through Moses and Joshua. However, there was no king. They no longer had that one person who was the clear leader. Because of this they each did what was right in their own eyes. They each decided for themselves what was right and what was wrong. Does this sound familiar? Have you ever heard the term relativism? Relativism is the belief that there's no absolute truth, only the truths that a particular individual or culture happen to believe.
I had not heard of this term before I went on a retreat and I wasn’t aware that it was a thing. However, when I look at the world I can see that relativism is everywhere. When I first heard of it, I didn’t see the danger of it. That all seemed perfectly reasonable to me. You believe what you believe and I believe what I believe. What could be wrong with that? However, I can now see that the problem is that it’s not accurate. There are universal truths in the world and if we pretend that their aren’t we are doing everyone a disservice. There are things that are right and wrong. Things that are wrong, not just because of one’s religion, but because they are harmful to people. For instance, bullying others is wrong. Mistreating others is wrong. Having an affair with someone in a relationship is wrong. These are all things that cause pain to others. Somehow we convince ourselves that we aren’t doing anything wrong. For instance, when we are picking on someone else we might think, he deserves it because he is not nice to others, or we were picked on so we think it is ok to pick on others. I have heard people justify affairs because they no longer loved their spouse, or their spouse wasn’t nice to them. We tend to be really good at justifying our behaviors. I don’t think this is very different from the people of the old testament. They found all sorts of excuses why their behaviors weren’t that bad. They justified the things that they were doing too.
Have you ever found yourself doing something that you knew was wrong and yet you convinced yourself that it was ok because of some reason or another? It might have been something big or maybe it was something small. Maybe that was your justification, well, this is just a small thing, God won’t mind. Have you ever found yourself doing something in such a way that you might be upholding the letter of the law, but you know you have broken the spirit of the law. What I think of when I think of this is trying to find loopholes in the various commandments. For instance, when I was younger I was babysitting and two of my older sisters stopped by to visit. We were joking around and they asked what we could do for fun. They said, what were the exact instructions of your parents and then we talked about all the things we could do that they didn’t explicitly tell us we couldn’t do. For instance, they didn’t say, don’t go play in traffic, or don’t play with matches. It was understood when they said stay safe, but we were trying to see how we could technically follow their instructions and still be mischievous. Have you ever done this with God? Have you ever tried to skirt around His rules or do something that is more in the grey area?
I think if we all think about it we can think of times when we have done this. We might miss mass, but tell ourselves that it is ok because our children had a sports event, or we were really busy. Maybe we eat meat on Friday during lent but convince ourselves that God doesn’t mind because someone invited us out to dinner and the place was known for their steak. We justify many things we do and actually I feel as though more and more, we don’t even feel like we need to justify it. It seems like we are all just doing what we want to do because we want to do it, and that is justification enough. We either don’t even consider what God would think, or we think, he would want me to be happy. Guess what? God does want us to be happy, that is why he gave us directions on how to live. He knows that the things we would desire to make us happy, don’t in fact make us happy, we just think they will. For instance, we think eating a whole cake will make us happy, so we do. Then we feel sick to our stomaches and we start to feel bad about ourselves for not showing self control. We think we will be happy if start seeing this married person because he/she is nice and they really like us. Then we find ourselves feeling guilty and having to tell lies all the time and we actually feel terrible.
If we want to be happy we have the blueprint. God has laid it out in front of us. We just need to follow it. We need to start putting God and what He wants in front of ourselves and what we want. Why is it we think that if we follow God’s ways we will miss out on something? Why do we think that the way of the world will be better than God’s way? Have we not see the destruction that is going on in the world? Have we not seen how miserably unhappy so many people are today? It is your choice, you can choose to follow the Lord or not. In Joshua 24:15 it says, “But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.” No matter which you choose, be honest with yourself. Don’t justify the bad things you are doing and try to make them ok. There are universal truths and God is going to hold you to them.
Dear Heavenly Father, please bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord we are sorry for all the ways we offend you. We are sorry for justifying our unjust and awful behavior. We are sorry for choosing hte things of this world over the ways you want us to live. We want to follow you Lord. We want to be your faithful followers, please help us. Help us to see the ways in which we are doing things that are wrong and just using excuses to justify them. Change our hearts Lord, soften them and help lead us to the right decisions. Convict us of the things we need to change. We love you Lord, you are so amazing! We are grateful for all you do for us and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
If you would like to share your witness with me you can email me at Catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or you can (click here)
Human Judgement vs. Divine Judgement
John 8:7 “And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.”
Last Sunday, for the Catholic masses, the Gospel reading was John 8:1-11. This is the story of the day that Jesus was teaching in the temple and the scribes and Pharisees brought to Jesus a woman that was caught in the act of adultery. The punishment for this according to Moses was to stone this woman to death. They asked Jesus what He says they should do as they were hoping He would go against his law and they could find something to charge Him with. However, Jesus didn’t tell them not to stone her. He was bent down writing in the sand and when they continued to ask Him He said to them in verse 7, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” There was not a single person there, besides Jesus, that was without sin and so they went away without anyone throwing a single stone.
Our priest gave a really good sermon about this scripture verse and it really got me thinking, so I wanted to share the essence of it with you. The priest’s name was Father Michael Kerper and he is a priest in Nashua, NH.
One thing he mentioned at the beginning of his sermon that I am not sure I have thought of before, is that the sin of judging others is one that is rarely confessed. I don’t think this is something we think about very often. I think it is something that we do so often we don’t even realize we are doing it. I wonder, if we were consciously aware of it, how many times a day would we notice we were doing it? It doesn’t even have to be in big ways, like the example in this story. We do judge people that break the laws and do things that we think are wrong. If we read about people that have been arrested in the newspaper, we may judge them. We feel as though they are wrong because they were arrested. We know nothing about their circumstances, other than what is posted in the newspaper. We may feel as though we are better than them because we haven’t broken any laws. Just because we haven’t broken any laws yet, doesn’t mean we wouldn’t. What if your family was starving and the only way to feed them was to steal, would you do it? Does not doing it make you a better person than someone who did?
I wish I could say the only time we judge people is when they had committed a crime. This is not great, but at least it would be limited to a certain circumstance. However, I can’t say that. Our judgement of others does not seem to have a limit. We judge the mom in the grocery store who is yelling at her child to behave. We judge the mother who is giving her child snacks so that they will behave. We judge the person driving too slow and we judge the person driving too fast. We judge what people are wearing, what they are eating, what they like to do in their free time, what political candidates they believe in. We are masters at judging other people. We make comments, usually to friends and family, about how we can’t believe so and so did this or that.
Father Kerper talked about how there is human judgement and then there is Divine Judgement. He had three aspects of Divine Judgement. First, the judgement happens face to face and alone, just you and God. Jesus was talking to the woman after everyone left. He did not talk to her in front of the whole crowd of people. Second, Jesus never mentioned the sin to the woman. All Jesus said to her is in John 8:10-11, “Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” “No one, sir,” she said. “Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.” There is no condemnation of her sin. He just gently and lovingly tells her to go and to leave her life of sin. The third aspect of divine judgement was that God alone knows the whole story. Jesus could see that the good far outweighs the sin for this woman.
How often are we judging before we know the whole story? I remember hearing a story one time, and I am not sure who told it. I think it was Jeff Cavins or Matthew Kelly but I can’t be sure. They were riding the subway one day and a man got on the subway with his several children. They children we pretty young and they were not behaving well on he train. They were loud and running around and people were starting to get annoyed. The father just sat there. He did not say a thing to his children. I am sure you can picture the scene. Maybe you have been in a similar circumstance. There person telling the story wanted to tell the dad to get his kids under control. However, when he looked at the dad he could tell it had been a rough day. Instead of getting upset with the dad and asking him to get his kids under control he decided to talk to him with compassion. He went over to the man and asked if he was ok, or said something like, “looks like its been a rough day.” It turns out the man had just left the hospital and his wife had just died. The kids had just lost their mother. He didn’t know what to do, what to think, his brain was in a fog. How does one process that kind of information? The person recounting the story stayed and talked with the man. He gave the guy his number and offered to help in any way he could. That man on the train did not need judgement, he needed compassion and understanding.
That’s the thing though, no one needs judgement. Everyone is going through something. Some things may be big things like the man losing his wife and the kids losing their mother. Other things might not be that big, but important nonetheless. Someone might be wearing dirty clothes because they lost their job and can’t afford to wash them, maybe someone’s loved one is sick and so they spend all their time at the hospital? We don’t know the whole story. It is easy for us to judge others because we get to be on the outside looking in. However, we don’t know the whole story. Father Kerper said God’s judgement is merciful. We must not abide by human standards when it comes to judgement. We must look at others with mercy. We must rise about judgement and when we do slip up, which we will, confess it. Tell God what you have done and repent for it. I think if we got in the habit of immediately acknowledging to God when we have judgmental thoughts, we would start to notice them more and then we could start to change them. The first step to changing anything is noticing you are doing it. Father Kerper gave us a challenge and I would like to pass it along to you. Think about the spirit of judgement in your own life. Where do you tend to judge people the most? What do you judge about them? How can you become more aware so that you can change this? Father Keeper said we will be judged as we judge others. Really examine your life and think about whether you are ok with God judging you the same way you judge others. If you are not ok with it then start to change it. God will help you if you only ask Him.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we do not want to judge, please help us to look at others with mercy and compassion instead of judgement. Please convict us when we are being judgmental so that we can notice and change it. Lord, help us to see that everyone is going through their own stuff and it is not our place to judge. Our lives aren’t perfect and we are not perfect, so what gives us the right to judge. Help us to see this Lord. Help us to see you are the only one that has the right to judge. Help us to leave that to you. We are so grateful that we have you Lord. We are grateful that you are willing to help us learn not to judge. You are amazing and so wonderful. We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Tomorrow our guest for Witness Wednesday is Cathy K. She will be joining us to talk about how God revealed to her that her husband was having an affair and then helped her through that very difficult time. God is so good and He always shows up when we need Him too. I hope you will join us tomorrow for Cathy’s wonderful witness. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day.
Why Do We Question The Lord?
Judges 6:17-18 “Gideon replied, “If now I have found favor in your eyes, give me a sign that it is really you talking to me. Please do not go away until I come back and bring my offering and set it before you.” And the Lord said, “I will wait until you return.”
Father Mike read chapter 6 of Judges the other day and while I was listening to him read I thought to myself, isn’t that just like all of us. I didn’t want to read the whole chapter for you today so let me give you a brief summary. The Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord, again and He gave them into the hands of the Midianites for seven years. Do you see a pattern here? I feel as though throughout the whole Old Testament we are reading how the Israelites turned away from the Lord, or they did something evil in the sight of the Lord. The first thing that came to mind was, man, when will they learn, when with they get it together? Immediately the Holy Spirit placed on my heart that we are not very different. Most of us are probably not worshiping other Gods in the same way they were, and luckily human sacrifice is not a common things here is the United States. However, we do often turn away from the Lord. Our hearts are fickle and although we would like to say we would do anything for God, most of us mean we would do anything that wasn’t too difficult and wasn’t too much of an inconvenience. This may sound harsh, but if you really think about it and were honest with yourself, I think you would agree.
Back to the story now. The Midianites were so oppressive that the Israelites cried out to the Lord for help. Then an angel of God came to talk to Gideon. The angel told Gideon that the Lord was with him and that he was a might warrior. Did you get that? An angel of God came to talk to Gideon and to tell him that God was with him. Do you know what Gideon did next? He began to argue or dispute that God was with him. In Judges 6:13 he says, ““Pardon me, my lord,” Gideon replied, “but if the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us? Where are all his wonders that our ancestors told us about when they said, ‘Did not the Lord bring us up out of Egypt?’ But now the Lord has abandoned us and given us into the hand of Midian.”
I think this is such a human thing to do. We have an angel right in front of us telling us that God is with us and we want to just argue with it. We want to complain and say that what God is doing is not good enough. The angel doesn’t even get sucked into defending the Lord, or listing all the ways the Lord has helped them in the past. The angel just continues to go on and to tell Gideon to go forward and save the Israelites. What does Gideon do next? He questions the angel again. He says in Judges 6:15 “Pardon me, my lord,” Gideon replied, “but how can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family.” Have you ever done this? Has the Lord ever called you to do something and then you questions His judgement? You question what He was thinking asking you to do this thing when you are clearly, in your mind, the least qualified person for the job. It amazes me how we keep thinking we are smarter than God, that we know better than he does. We may not think this is what we are doing, but when we are questioning His call, our actions are telling Him that we don’t trust Him, or we think we know better than He does. God created the whole universe in 6 days, surely He can decide who is and is not capable of defeating the Midianites.
The angel reassures Gideon that God will be with him and that he will in fact strike down all the Midianites and leave none alive. Then Gideon says, “Gideon replied, “If now I have found favor in your eyes, give me a sign that it is really you talking to me. Please do not go away until I come back and bring my offering and set it before you.” And the Lord said, “I will wait until you return.” This is another typical thing many of us would do. We want proof of what was being said. Gideon asked God for a sign that it was really God talking to him. How many times have you done this before? How many times have you said, “God, if this is really you, show me.” The angel said he would wait and when Gideon gave the angel food to eat the angel burned it with one touch to show Gideon that he was really an angel of God. Finally Gideon realized that he was really talking to an angel of God. I wonder what that moment felt like? The moment he realized he had been talking with an angel of God. I bet it felt amazing!
Towards the end of this chapter, Gideon sent messengers all throughout Manasseh, calling them to arms, and also into Asher, Zebulun and Naphtali, so that they too went up to meet him. Gideon was ready to go against the army God said he would defeat. Now that it is time to go against the army, what does Gideon do? He asks God for another sign. In Judges 6:36-38 "Gideon said to God, “If you will save Israel by my hand as you have promised— look, I will place a wool fleece on the threshing floor. If there is dew only on the fleece and all the ground is dry, then I will know that you will save Israel by my hand, as you said.” And that is what happened. Gideon rose early the next day; he squeezed the fleece and wrung out the dew—a bowlful of water.” That is a pretty clear sign. Gideon asked God for a sign and God gave him one. Now Gideon is ready to go against the enemy, right? Wrong. Gideon gets the sign he asked for and then asks God for another sign, just to be sure. In Judges 6:39-40 he says, “Do not be angry with me. Let me make just one more request. Allow me one more test with the fleece, but this time make the fleece dry and let the ground be covered with dew.” That night God did so. Only the fleece was dry; all the ground was covered with dew.”
My first instinct is to judge Gideon for asking God for signs. Not only did he need one sign, but he went back and asked for a second sign. It was actually a third sign if you count the one at the beginning that he asked the angel for. I would like to say that my faith is stronger and I wouldn’t need signs. Then my rational brain looks at the circumstances Gideon was in. He was facing not only the ruling force, the Midianites, who had been oppressing them for at least seven years, but he was also facing the Amalekites and other eastern peoples who joined their forces. I can’t say with certainty that I wouldn’t want some sort of assurances from God that He was going to be with me. I think we look to God for assurances even in our every day lives. I can imagine it would be more so if we were headed into battle.
When I heard this chapter talking about Gideon the other day it just made me smile thinking about how much I can see each one of us in him. It made me smile when he asked God for something and then when he got exactly what he wanted he asked for something else. It was just so hard for him to believe that God was going to be with him, he needed to ask for proof twice. Can’t you picture yourself doing this? Hey God, if this is really you, turn that red light, green. Then He does and you ask something else. You tell yourself that was too easy, or that was a coincidence and you ask God to do something else to prove it is really Him. Have you ever done this before? Why is it so hard for us to believe that God would talk to us or do extraordinary things for us? If God says something He means it. Why do we question Him? Why do we ask for proof? “Why is it so hard for us to believe that God would use us to carry out part of His plan?” Jesus said in John 20:29, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” Let us strive to be like those who do not require proof to believe. Let us strive to believe and trust without asking for proof. “Lord I believe, help my unbelief.” Let us dare to believe that God wants to use us in His great plan.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to believe that you are with us without needing proof. Help us to trust without testing you and asking you to jump through hoops just so we can believe. Lord, we love you, you are amazing and we know this. Help us not be scared when you call us to something. Help us to know without a doubt that you will be there with us and you will give us the strength to do whatever you are asking us to do. We are so grateful that you are always with us. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
God is Calling You
Luke 5:31-32 “ And Jesus answered them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”
The reason I like this scripture so much is because it reminds us that we don’t have to be perfect for God. It reminds us that God doesn’t expect us to have it all together, to know the right thing to do and to do it all the time. He came to walk this earth with us because we needed Him. He knows exactly who we are and he still calls us. This is truly amazing to me. Why is this so hard for us to understand? Why is it so hard for us to believe that God can love and accept us just as we are? Why is it that we feel like we are not good enough for God. We feel like we need to have it all together. We ask ourselves questions like, “Why would God help me, what have I ever done for Him” We question and we doubt. Why is this?
God is telling us right here in this passage that He did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. He knows we are sinners. There is no use trying to hide it from Him, He already knows. And yet he came to call us to Him anyway. Will we except this call? Will we step outside of our disbelief long enough to repent and accept the Lord’s forgiveness? God gave some really powerful words of prophecy yesterday during my prayer group and I would like to share two of them with you now. The first one I would like to share was, “My children, my children I call you not because you are great and wonderful and perfect I call you because you are little and weak and helpless. I call you because you just let me work in your life. That's why I love you. Always be near me, always trust in me, for I AM powerful and great and perfect and I don't ask you to be anything but my lover.”
God doesn’t love us despite our sins and weaknesses, he loves us because of them. Our weaknesses make us humble and God can do His best work through those that are humble. When we are struggling we turn to the Lord and we rely on Him. When everything is going great, we tend to rely on ourselves. That is until something goes wrong again and we go back to relying on the Lord. This verse above and the words the Lord said during prayer group are not the only times that God has told us he loves us in our weaknesses. Remember the conversation He had with Paul in 2 Corinthians 12:9, “ But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.” God has always worked through ordinary sinful people. I think we all know that God uses people to do His work here on Earth, however, sometimes we can ignore the call when we hear it because we think to ourselves, “God wouldn’t use me, I’m not holy enough, I am not smart enough, I am not liked enough…” Or whatever your version of not enough is. We all have some version of not enough and we let that stop us from answering God’s call. I saw a poem, or a list yesterday of a bunch of people that God used to do His work, and they were not perfect. They were all sinners, just as we are. Here is what I read. It is titled Do You Seriously Think God can’t use You?
Noah was a drunk, Abraham was too old, Isaac was a daydreamer, Jacob was a liar, Leah was ugly, Joseph was abused, Moses had a stuttering problem, Gideon was afraid, Samson had long hair and was a womanizer, Rahab was a prostitute, Jeremiah and Timothy were too young, David had an affair and was a murderer, Elijah was suicidal, Isaiah preached naked, Jonah ran from God, Naomi was a widow, Job went bankrupt, Peter denied Christ, the disciples fell asleep while praying, Martha worried about everything, the Samaritan woman was divorced, Zaccheus was too small, Paul was too religious, Timothy had an ulcer, Lazarus was dead. Maybe you see yourself in one of these people from the Bible and maybe you don’t. What is important to see is that God can use anyone. It is important to know that God loves us, just as we are and He will use us and our weaknesses to carry out His will and to help build His kingdom here and now.
Now that we have talked about how God uses each one of us even in our weaknesses and how He is calling all of us, I would like to share a call that He gave yesterday at our prayer group. The Lord said “I have placed a call upon your hearts today. I call you to deep prayer, not the many words you would think, but from your heart. A deep prayer call me, call me to turn the tides, call me to forgive, call me to have compassion. Make your prayer a daily call. Forgiveness is what I want, but no one listens. I ask you to be my prayer warriors this day. Daily come before me without words. Just listen and I will direct your path. Will you take this call? Just come.” The Lord is calling each and every one of us into deep prayer. Will we accept His call? He is also calling us to forgiveness, will we accept that call? And lastly He is calling us to be with Him and listen for Him to direct our paths, we will accept that call?
I feel as though the call to prayer daily wouldn’t be that hard, I could find five minutes to sit with the Lord. Then I think about my day and I know I have five minutes, but do I give it to the Lord each day, probably not. I let myself get distracted and I forget. However, I do keep trying and that is what God wants, for us to keep trying, not for us to be perfect. The next call was to forgiveness, I know some of you are disqualifying yourself from this call already. You heard the word forgiveness and you told yourself you just can’t. He isn’t calling you to forgive because He knows what you went though and He couldn’t possibly want you to forgive. You are right, He does know what you went through and that is why He wants you to forgive. He knows that you will be so much happier when you do. He knows that until you do this thing that happened still has control over you. He knows all the graces it takes to forgive and He wants to give them to you. Don’t count yourself out. Take up this call. Tell God you will do your best to forgive, and then spend time in prayer each day and He will show you how.
The third thing He asked us to do is to listen quietly and let Him lead our steps. Can we do this? Can we pause for a few minutes each day and ask the Lord how we should proceed? Matthew Kelly talks about this in his book “Resisting Happiness.” He talks about how different his life was once he started his days off asking the Lord what he wanted him to do, or what the Lord thought about the various decisions in his life. Will you take up this call to give the Lord 5 minutes of silence a day to just listen and let Him direct your steps. Some of you just heard that question and immediately told yourself that I am not talking to you, or God is not talking to you because you know you can’t hear the Lord. You can give him 5 minutes, but you don’t think you will hear anything. Maybe you have tried before and you never hear anything. God is calling you to give Him that 5 minutes every day, even if you don’t hear anything. God is faithful and if we are faithfully showing up God is too. Even if you don’t hear anything, even if you don’t feel as though God is there with you, I assure you He is. He always shows up. If He is not talking to you maybe He is silently working within you. Maybe He is working on softening your heart so you can forgive, maybe He is mending your broken heart, maybe he is attending to your wounds. Whatever He is doing, I promise you, if you show up God will show up. He is there working within you.
So, do you think you can answer God’s call? Can you believe that God could be calling you, even in your imperfection? If you can’t believe it, can you step outside that disbelief long enough to give God a chance? He loves you just as you are. He is not asking anything from you other than for you to love Him. If you say yes to the Lord’s call, He will show you how to carry it out. Just keep saying yes to the Lord, even if you doubt. He will show you why He is wanting to use you. Your weakness might be the exact thing someone else needs. The Lord works in mysterious ways. We won’t always understand. God isn’t asking us to be strong or powerful, He is just calling us to say yes, and He will help us do the rest. Remember what God said in the word He gave to my prayer group, “Always be near me, always trust in me, for I AM powerful and great and perfect and I don't ask you to be anything but my lover.”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you and we want to answer your call, please give us the courage to do so. Please help us to believe that you would use each one of us, even though we are flawed. Help us to see that you have a purpose and that you are so amazing you can use anyone for your good. Lord, help us to say yes even when we are scared or when we doubt. Help us to find 5 minutes every day that we can give to you. Five minutes that we can just sit and listen without any words. Help us to hear you and to move forward in the path you have set out for us. Lord, we hear you when you say you want forgiveness, and yet forgiveness is so hard. Please help us, please soften our hearts so that we can forgive. Lord, you are a true mystery and you are so powerful. We thank you for being you and for loving us so much. We are so very grateful and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you on Monday. Have a blessed weekend!
Lay Aside Every Sin That Clings So Closely
Hebrews 12:1-2 “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.”
I got this verse from Diane’s witness yesterday. I really like how it talks about how we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses. This is why I am so excited to be able to bring you a different witness each week. When we get to see what other people experience and what other people struggle with it helps us see that we are not alone. We see that other people struggle too. Oftentimes it seems like everyone else is doing great and we wonder why we are the only ones that struggle. We wonder why others have it so easy and everything seems hard for us. You would never know just by looking at someone that they were struggling with unforgiveness, that their husband was dying, or that they lost a child. This is only something you would find out when you got to know the person.
This verse is calling us to lay aside every weight and sin that clings so closely. What is that sin for you? What sins are we clinging to, or are clinging to us? Do you feel like when you go to confession you are always saying the same sins over and over again? Do you feel as though you are struggling with having the same weight on your shoulders all the time. For instance, maybe the weight God is calling you to lay aside is the worry about your loved ones. Do you find that you are constantly worried and feel like you have to fix all of their problems? The Lord is saying, look around you. I am taking care of everyone else, I will take care of your loved ones too. Look at the way I am helping others, you don’t have to worry, I have got them. Maybe the sin you are struggling with is unforgiveness. God is telling us, lay that sin aside, you can do it. I know forgiveness is hard and I know that you can do hard things. Remember Tina, it took her 20 years, but she did it in the end. Look around you at how others are learning to forgive and learn from them.
The next part of the verse says, “let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us.” What stuck out to me in this part are the words, set before us. God has a plan for each one of us. He sets out the course in front of us and shows us where to go one step at a time. And yet sometimes we don’t want to go on that course. We don’t want to run the race that is set before us, we want to blaze our own path, do our own thing. God is patient with us and usually He will just keep calling us back on track. Eventually we figure it out and we start to run the race He set before us, but we still have a few detours every now and then. Why is this? Why can’t we just stay on the path He has for us? I think it because we don’t see the whole picture and so His plan doesn’t always make sense to us. We don’t see why we have to do something and instead of trusting that God has it all worked out, we do what makes sense to us in our minds. I don’t think we mean to stray off the path, I think sometimes we just don’t know what God wants because we are not taking the time to slow down and ask him. It’s like when you are driving in a car and you are not sure what exit to get off at, or which turn to take. Your passenger knows how to get where you are going, but are talking to them while you are driving and you don’t give them a chance to tell you to turn right at the next light. If we want to know how to get to where God is leading us, then we need to spend some time listening to his directions.
Life is hard and I can definitely see why God is telling us to run with perseverance because we can run into a lot of obstacles and without perseverance we might give up or give in to the worries and hardships of life. I am sure this has happened to all of us at one point or another. I am sure we have all had things happen to us and we wondered how we can still go on. How we could ever feel better or how we could even heal. I am sure Diane asked herself this after she lost her only son. Some tragedies feel as if they are too much too bear. In this verse God is telling us to keep getting back up when life knocks us down. Keep running the race that is set before you. If you think you can’t keep running, you don’t have the energy or the power to get back up again, God tells us where to look.
The last part of the verse says, “looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.” Jesus is the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. If we want to know what we should do we can look back and see how Jesus would have handled it. I remember a time when everyone was wearing bracelets that said “WWJD.” This stood for What Would Jesus Do. This is a great question to ask ourselves. We are not called to be perfect, we are called to be Holy. God knows that we won’t always get it right and I think He is more than ok with that. However, He does want us to keep trying to get it right. He wants us to keep looking at Jesus and to do our best to be a reflection of Jesus to all those that we meet.
Another really important part of this verse that I think is important to mention is the part where it says that Jesus endured the cross, disregarding it’s shame. I wasn’t really sure what this meant, especially in some of the other translations. When I looked it up it said that dying a cross was a shameful way to die. However, Jesus, never once accepted that shame. He accepted that He needed to die on the cross, but He didn’t feel shame for it. He held His head high and never took the shame that people were throwing at Him in. We can do this too. Shame is not something that comes from God. Shame is something that comes from the enemy. Yes, God does want you to realize when you have sinned and He wants you to repent. However, He does not want you to feel shameful. He wants us all to know how much we are loved. There is nothing we can to get in the way of that love. There is nothing that will make God stop loving you. Nothing you can do and nothing anyone else can do. God loves you completely and He always will.
Shame is a weapon the enemy uses to bring us down. Shame is a weapon used to keep us in the dark and keep us away from God’s love. If we are feeling shame then it is hard to feel God’s love. We feel as though we are not worthy of God’s love and that God couldn’t possible love us if he knew what we did or what had been done to us. Guess what? God does know what happened and He loves you anyway. When we are allowing shame into our lives, we are allowing the darkness. This darkness can swallow up the Light if you allow it to. Living in the dark in not fun for anyone, if you are living in the dark, know that you are not alone. Look to Jesus, he is our salvation. Look to Jesus and release yourself of the shame you have been holding on to. If you can not release it on your own then keep bringing it to God and asking Him to release you. He would be happy to! God is calling us to lay aside every weight and sin so we can run the race set before us. If you are unable to do this, ask for help. God is waiting for us to turn to Him and ask Him for help. What is taking us so long? You don’t have to wait until you are ready to forgive to ask God for help. He can help you get ready, if you ask.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us release our sins. Help us to release any shame we may be holding on to. Lord, help us to know that you love us no matter what we do. Lord, we want to run the race set before us, help us to stay on the path you set out of us. Help us to not get side tracked or to veer off course because we don’t understand your plan. Help us to just trust that you are leading us on the best route. Lord, help us to know, to really know, that we don’t have to accept shame into our lives. Even if it is being given to us by those that love us. We can reject shame and refuse to let it in. We love you Lord, you are so very amazing. We are so grateful for you loving guidance and the example you gave us in Jesus. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus holy name, Amen
Thank you so much for joining me one this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
If you would like to share your story you can contact me by email Catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or you can
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Do We Thank God Enough?
1 Thessalonians 1:2-3 "We always thank God for all of you and continually mention you in our prayers. We remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.”
When I first read this verse the first thing that stood out to me were the words, “We always thank God…” I think these stuck out to me so much because I was just talking a friend the other day and she mentioned how much God likes it when we thank Him. She couldn’t remember where she heard it, but she said she had just read something about how God likes it when we pray and ask Him for His help. However, it really melts His heart when we thank Him. I am sure those weren’t the exact words she used, but whatever she said, this is the impression it left on me. This isn’t the first time I have heard this. I seem to hear this over and over again. God does so much for us, the least we can do is say thank you. In Luke 17:12-19 Jesus cures 10 men from leprosy and only one came back to say thank you. Jesus asked in Luke 17:17-19, “Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Has no one returned to give praise to God except this foreigner? Then he said to him, “Rise and go; your faith has made you well.”
Jesus didn’t want the gratitude for himself. He didn’t heal people so they would thank him or so He could feel good about himself. He wanted the glory for His Father. Have you ever gotten offended for someone else before? For instance your parents do something really kind for people and yet no one thanks them? Maybe you have a friend that does a lot at work and never gets a thank you. Maybe yours spouse helps out his or her friends and yet, no thank you. Do you ever get upset for them? They don’t seem to mind, but you are annoyed and maybe you even mention it to the other person because you don’t like how it seems they are taking advantage of you parent, spouse, friend, child, whoever it is. I know I have done this before and I can’t imagine I am the only one. Showing our gratitude and saying thank you is such an important thing to do.
I tend to talk about gratitude a lot because it is one of the simplest things you can do to change your mood. It is also a really simple way to show God that you appreciate all He does for you. Having a regular gratitude practice is also a really great way to open your eyes to see more of what God is doing for you. If you train yourself to be in the habit of looking for reasons to be grateful, then you will start to notice things that you hadn’t previously noticed. For instance, you might not usually pay attention to the weather, but suddenly you are appreciating the sunny days. Maybe you start to notice less traffic on your drive, or more green lights, or the leaves changing or the flowers blooming. Once you start approaching your day from a place of gratitude, you will notice a difference and you will find you are in a much better mood. If you haven’t already developed a daily gratitude practice, I challenge you to start today. Take a notebook, or a piece of paper and write down 3 things you are grateful for that are specific to this day. If you don’t have a notebook or a piece of paper, you could use your phone to take notes, or you can even just think about three things and not write them down. I like to go back and look through them, but maybe you just want to spend 5 minutes while you drink your coffee and think about all the things you have to be grateful for. However it works best for you, that is the way to do it. I promise it is a life changing habit. If you don’t see an increase in your mood, let me know, I will be very surprised.
As I read past the first part of this verse I really liked the second half just as much. I think it makes some really powerful points. The verse says, “ We remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.” Let me start with the first thing they said, “your work produced by faith.” This is what they mean when they talk about faith in action. Their faith produced work, they didn’t just sit around and talk about the faith. They didn’t just gather at mass on Sunday and then the rest of the week do their own thing. They put their faith into action and that produced work. There are plenty of people that can talk the talk, however, the Thessalonians were also walking the walk. They saw how Paul, Silas & Timothy lived among them and then when they left they continued to live out their faith. It says in 1 Thessalonians 1:6-7 “ You became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you welcomed the message in the midst of severe suffering with the joy given by the Holy Spirit. And so you became a model to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia.” Their work was produced by their faith.
Next it says, “your labor prompted by love.” They weren’t laboring in vain. They weren’t begrudgingly doing the work that God set them out to do. Their work came from a place of love. I think this is beautiful. When is the last time that your work was prompted by love? It is sometimes I think. For instance, when I am making dinner for my family and I am excited because I know it is something they will really like. I know this is prompted by love because I am joyful while I am making it. I am not complaining, I am in a good mood, I probably have worship music or some podcast or audiobook on and I am in the zone. I can tell when my labor is not prompted by love when I am grumpy, when I am complaining, when I am maybe even resentful that I have to do to it. I am probably not listening to worship music or anything, I am just talking to myself under my breath. Do you know what I mean? Can you see the difference in these two states of mind? Can you picture yourself in each state? I wonder what we could do to try to remain in the first state more often than the second? Maybe gratitude would help? Maybe just reminding ourselves that we can chose to labor out of a place of love? I don’t know what the solution is, but I do know that the first part of solving a problem is know that you have a problem. Now that we know that we aren’t always laboring out of a place of love, we can notice it and try to change it.
The third thing the Thessalonians were praised for is their “endurance inspired hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.” In 1 Thessalonians 1:8-10 it says, "The Lord’s message rang out from you not only in Macedonia and Achaia—your faith in God has become known everywhere. Therefore we do not need to say anything about it, for they themselves report what kind of reception you gave us. They tell how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath.” They had endurance to wait for the coming of Jesus because of their hope that He would come. The Thessalonians were able to turn from their idols and to serve the one true God. This couldn’t have been easy for them. Many of them probably worshiped these idols ever since they were children. So, what gave them the power to turn away from these idols and serve the Lord? The Holy Spirit did. The Holy Spirit is very powerful and if you decide you want to do something, even if it is really hard, the Holy Spirit will help you. Once the Holy Spirit helped them turn away from these idols, what helped them continue to serve the Lord? Yep, you guessed it. Their endurance inspired by hope in our Lord.
We all have various levels of endurance. Our endurance is important because it helps us do things that are hard for us. For instance if I wanted to run a marathon, I would need to have a lot of endurance to do so. It is what would keep me going. My endurance for that would be based on my ability to run, or to complete things I start, or my dedication to completing the goal. However, this is not the same endurance that the Thessalonians had. Their endurance was not based on a belief of their own abilities. Their endurance was based on their hope in our Lord Jesus. That is an unending faith and endurance. They were able to get through the hard times knowing that Jesus was with them and that He would be coming again. We know that they were suffering because the verse above said, “you welcomed the message in the midst of severe suffering.” We don’t know what the suffering was but we know they were suffering and yet they were able to welcome the message of the Gospel and then put their faith into action. I wonder if we can do that. I wonder if we can live our lives in a way that someone would say this to us one day? “ We remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask you to be with us and we ask you to help us in our quest to thank you more. Help us to be more grateful throughout the day. Help us to be more mindful and to notice all the ways you help us throughout the day. We love you so much and we know you do so much for us. We are so very grateful and we are sorry that we don’t say it more often. Lord, we ask you to help us be more like the Thessalonians. Help us to have a faith that is fruitful and based on action not just words. Help our labor to be prompted by love and our endurance to be inspired by hope. Lord you are amazing, you do so much for us every single day. We are so lucky to have you as our Heavenly Father. We are so grateful and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Tomorrow we will hear a witness from my friend Diane who has more than her fair share of tragedy in her life. She will briefly share it with us as well as how she got through it all. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Your God My God
Ruth 1:16 "But Ruth said, “Do not press me to leave you or to turn back from following you! Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God.”
I was listening to the Elevation Church podcast yesterday with Pastor Steven Furtick. He did this talk on the book of Ruth and it was really good. If you have not read the book of Ruth it is a great book and it is a short one so it wouldn’t take you long to read it. Ruth is the daughter in law of Naomi. They leave their home because of a famine and they go to another land. Then Naomi’s husband dies, and 10 years later both her son’s die. She decides to go back home and tells her daughter in laws to go back to their homes. Orpah decided to go home to her family. However, Ruth refused to leave. This is where the verse above come in. Ruth said to Naomi, “Do not press me to leave you or to turn back from following you! Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God.”
Steven Furtick said something in his sermon and as soon as he said it the Holy Spirit said, yes, that is what I want you to talk about. Steven repeated “your God my God,” and said this is true for all of us and the people we hang out with. This hit me with such conviction. In Exodus 20:2-3 God says, "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.” We may think this is easy as we don’t live in a time where people worship a lot of false God’s, like when we had the greek gods. There are some other religions that may worship other gods, like the god of fertility or the god of death, however, it is not everyday that people are talking about them like it was back in the day when the Bible was written. We probably hear this verse and say to ourselves, I’ve got that commandment down, or at least I do. When I am thinking about confession I think that I don’t have to worry about breaking this commandment as I know that the Lord is my one true God.
Just when I am sure I don’t have any other God’s before our God, I hear a sermon asking if I am worshiping other things like TV, alcohol, food, or other things. You see, it doesn’t have to be another God that you are worshipping, it could be something as simple as TV. It could be anything that you are putting ahead of God. Have you ever sat there and watched TV when you knew you should be doing something for the Lord? How many hours do you watch TV vs. how much time you spend with the Lord? Have you ever decided that your morning cup of coffee or your breakfast was more important than fasting an hour before you receive communion? Have you decided that your sleep was more important than waking up and going to church and praising God? I won’t speak for all of us, but I seem to find plenty of things to put before God. I don’t think of these things as putting other God’s before our God, but it is what we are doing a lot of the time.
What is first in your heart? What do you think about the majority of the time? Where do your loyalties lie? Who we spend our time with matters more than we know. Jim Rohn famously said that we are the average of the five people we spend the most time with. Think about this for a minute. Think of the five people you spend the most time with. Can you see aspects of them in you? I know when I spend a lot of time with someone then I start to talk like them, we all do, we can’t help it. Think about the type of person that you want to be. Do the people that you spend the most time with help you be that person? Do they encourage you and lift you up? A lot of the time we just fall into our friends group and we just stay with the same group of friends for our lives, or at least a really long time. There are not a lot of people that intentionally choose their friend group. Usually we meet people at work, or our neighbors, or we are friends with our kids parents. How many of us go out and search for friends that will be positive roll models, build us up, and help us to grow? I am going to guess, not many. Although if you have done this then kudos to you because it is so important.
It’s interesting to me that as parents we know how important it is for our kids to have great friends. Whatever their friends are into they are into. If they are hanging around good kids, they have a tendency to be a good kid. If they are hanging around kids that get into trouble then they tend to be a kid that gets into trouble. We know this for our children and yet we don’t think of it for us. Even as an adult, who you hang around with matter. As it says in the verse above, “your God my God.” If your friends are sports fanatics then you might discover that sports are what you are putting above God. You might see that you are missing church more and more because there is a really good game on and you don’t want to miss it. You might hang out with people that love TV and talk about all the shows that they binge watch and so you start to watch more and more TV. However, if you find friends that love Jesus and the Lord and you can openly talk about your faith with them, you will grow in your faith. Having a faith community is a great way to grow in your faith.
I have grown leaps and bounds in my faith since joining the Charismatic prayer group in 2017. However, ever since I got married I have been involved in some sort of Catholic women’s group. The reason for this is because I knew I needed help staying focused on the Lord. I knew if I was going to grow, I would need help. If we surround ourselves with those that love the Lord, then when we run into an issue, they can help us through it in a way that is consistent with our faith. I remember I was listening to one of my mentors once and she was talking about how she was fighting a lot with her husband. She picked her friends up at the airport and was complaining to them about her husband. Some friends might join in and even add to what she is saying. However, these friends value the vows of marriage and also know how important family was to my mentor. Instead of joining in they questioned her in a loving way and reminded her that marriage is hard and no one is perfect. What do your friends do when you complain? Do they just listen and reassure you things will get better, do they offer advice consistent with your values, do they pray with you about it, do they dismiss your concerns, do they jump on the negativity band wagon? Our friendships are meant to build us up, make us feel secure, and help us to grow. That is not to say our friendships will be perfect. We will sometimes get upset and argue, we are human after all. However, if you have a friendship with someone and you feel they are pulling you away from the Lord, it is time to reevaluate that friendship. As the verse above says, “your God my God.” Their interests will start to become your interests, is this a good thing?
If you are concerned because you don’t have 5 people that you hang out with, or you don’t want to be a combination the 5 people you hang out with most, you can change this by surrounding yourself with TV, movie, books, or music of people you want to be more like. For instance if you listen to a lot of sermons, you will be surrounding yourself with the world of the Lord. Or if you read the Bible daily, or listen to podcasts from people you admire, watch documentaries or TV shows about good wholesome topics. Your brain will be full of whatever you decide you want to put in it. If you can’t surround yourself with people that can help you grown in your faith, then you can read books and watch show, and listen to podcasts or worship music and this will also help you grow. Brendon Burchard says, “where your focus goes, your energy flows.” Where is your focus? Are you focused on the Lord, or are you too busy with other things? Are you waiting for your life to slow down to focus on the Lord? We have control over what we put into our mind and it starts with the people we surround ourselves with.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this podcast today. Lord, help us to see if we have people in our lives that are distracting us from you. If so, show us how you would like us to change the situation. Lord, we want to put you first. Please show us all the ways in our lives where we are putting other things before you. Convict our hearts to change this. Lord, we ask that you bring faith filled people into our lives to help us grow in our faith and trust in you. We want to know you more and more and grow closer to you Lord, please help us. We love you so much. You are amazing. We are so grateful for all you do for us and we ask all of this in accordance with your will an in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day.
The Refiner’s Fire
Romans 8:31 “What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us?”
This verse is interesting to me because when I first read it was I was all fired about how if God is for us, then no one can really be against us. However, when I sat for a few minutes and just thought about what I was going to write about the thought came into my mind that if God is for us, it seems like there are more people against us. My friend said today that it seems like the more you pray the more problems that come up in your life. However, she said this is a good thing because those things need to come to the surface so that you can deal with them. I think this is a great point that I had never really thought of before. I guess not in this context. The closer we are willing to get to God, the more He transforms us into His likeness and image. He created us that way and then original sin happened and now we struggle to resemble the Lord. However, the more we open our hearts and minds to Him, the more He can transform us.
How does God transform us? What keeps coming back to my mind over and over again this week is purification through fire. Maybe it is because I was talking about going through hard times yesterday and how those hard times change us and prepare us to live into the person that God created us to be. I just feel like I am supposed to tell you about a story I heard once about a refiner’s fire. You may have heard this before as I was able to find it pretty easily on an internet search, so I think it is well known. It is called The Refiners Fire. I am not sure who wrote it. I heard it at a meeting once and I have never been able to forget it. I will read it to you now.
“As she watched the silversmith, he held a piece of silver over the fire and let it heat up. He explained that in refining silver, one needed to hold the silver in the middle of the fire where the flames were hottest as to burn away all the impurities. The woman thought about God holding us in such a hot spot; then she thought again about the verse that says: ‘He sits as a refiner and purifier of silver.’ (Malachi 3:3) She asked the silversmith if it was true that he had to sit there in front of the fire the whole time the silver was being refined. The man answered that yes, he not only had to sit there holding the silver, but he had to keep his eyes on the silver the entire time it was in the fire. If the silver was left a moment too long in the flames, it would be destroyed. The woman was silent for a moment. Then she asked the silversmith, ‘How do you know when the silver is fully refined?’ He smiled at her and answered, ‘Oh, that’s easy — when I see my image in it.’”
Isn’t this an amazing image? I can just picture our heavenly Father holding us in His hand through the hot spots of our life. Keeping His eye on us, never looking away, ready to take us out at the perfect moment. My very favorite part is when she asked the silversmith how he knew when the silver was fully refined and he answered, “when I see my image in it.” That is when God will know that we are fully refined, when He looks at us and sees His reflection. I am not sure why this story touches my heart so much. To me it paints a picture of a loving and attentive Father. One that is always paying attention and never sleeping on the job. If you have ever been around children you know how hard it is to keep your eyes on them at all times. Now imagine you have over 7 billion children. God is remarkable!
The silversmith said that if the silver was left a moment too long, it would be destroyed. Sometimes we feel like we have been left in the fire too long. We feel like we can’t go on for one more second. I like this analogy because it shows us God knows what He is doing. He did not just put us in the middle of a fire, walk away for a lunch break, come back and then take us out again. He has his eyes on us the whole time, just waiting for the perfect moment. He didn’t take us out too early and He didn’t leave us in too long. If you feel like you are ready to give up, like God has forgotten about you, rest assured that He hasn’t. He is there with you, holding you, watching you, and ready to take you out as soon as He can see His reflection in you.
A second reason why we seem to have more problems when we grow closer to God is because the enemy starts to get nervous. Satan is not worried about those with luke warm faith. In Revelations 3:15-16 it says, “I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So because you were lukewarm – neither hot nor cold – I am about to spit you out of my mouth. The Lord is not interested in those with lukewarm faith, therefore, satan doesn’t have to worry. He is already sure he will get their souls. He is not concerned with those that have turned away from the Lord. Satan is most concerned with those that are trying to grow closer to the Lord. Their is a battle for your soul and Satan is not about to give up without a fight. I remember when the boys were little I would get so frustrated because on the days when I would have home rosary group and Bible study, my morning would be awful. Everything that could go wrong, would go wrong. I remember asking God why this was happening. I would tell Him I was trying to do the right thing, shouldn’t it be easier? Shouldn’t You be helping me out?
I mentioned it to the home rosary group one day and one of the ladies said it is not God that is messing up your mornings, it is the enemy. Who would benefit from you being so frustrated that you stop going to the meetings?
I can see how Satan would want to make our lives harder so that we give up and stop trying. Can you look back at your life and think of a time when you felt as if you were doing something really good, something where you felt you were growing closer to the Lord, and yet you stopped because it just became too difficult? I definitely have done this over the years. I have seen others do it as well. Especially when they were really getting a lot out of it. For instance, I find Eucharistic Adoration really powerful. For me, it is great to set aside that time each week to sit and be in the presence of the Lord. However, things keep coming up during that time and so I have to cancel or find someone else to take my spot, and my mind keeps telling me to just give up my spot. This is the enemy and I know it. I know he wants me to give up my adoration spot because if I do not have a commitment to go each week, then I won’t go. I will want to, but I will allow other things to get in the way and I won’t end up going.
None of us want to go through trials. None of us want to be tested through fire. Yet we all want to grow closer to the Lord. As we grow closer we may realize that things seem to be getting more difficult. We may be encountering a lot of issues that make us want to give up and stop trying. If this is the case I ask you to remember this verse. “If God is for us, who could be against us?” Who is stronger than God? We are on the winning team. Don’t give up when things get hard. Keep fighting for the things that you know are helping your grow closer to the Lord. We must guard and protect the time that we spend with the Lord. The enemy will keep putting obstacles in the way to distract you from your goal and your purpose. He doesn’t want you to grow closer to the Lord. Keep jumping over the obstacles. Keep getting back up when you get knocked down. Keep showing up, even when it’s hard. If the enemy is attacking you that means you are a threat to him. It means he is worried you are getting too close to God. This is a good thing. This means you are doing something right. Keep doing what your doing. God has His eye fixed on you and He will pull you out of the fire at there perfect moment.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord we are so thankful that you keep your eyes fixed on us. We thank you for refining us, even if it hurts. We thank you for wanting to grow closer to us and helping us grow closer to you. Lord, we thank you for protecting us from those that wish to harm us. We thank you for pulling us out of the fire. Lord we ask that you give us the strength and perseverance to not give up when the enemy tries to derail us from those things that bring us closer to you. We ask that if we have already allowed the enemy to derail us that you give us the courage to start back up again. Lord, we don’t want to be luke warm. We want to be on fire for your love Lord. We want to be like that perfect piece of silver. We want you to look at us and see your reflection. Help us oh Lord. We are so grateful for how well you look out for us. We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you on Monday. Have a blessed day!
Evil Has Been Defeated
John 16:20-22 “Very truly I tell you, you will weep and mourn while the world rejoices. You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy. A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come; but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world. So with you: Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy.”
This verse comes just after Jesus explains to His disciples that He is going to go away for a bit and then He will come back again. They don’t really understand what He is saying. How could they? He did not tell them exactly what was going happen to Him as I am sure it was hard for Him to explain, and even harder for them to wrap their heads around. How does one wrap their head around the idea that Jesus died for our sins? If they new exactly what was going to happen they would have tried to stop it, just as Peter did when Jesus was first met in the garden. Judas had led the soldiers and some of the officials from the chief priests and Pharisees to find Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. When they tried to arrest Him Peter took our his sword and cut off the ear off of one of the high priest’s servants. It is our human nature. We want to protect those we love. Many of us want to protect those who are hurting, even if we don’t know them or love them personally.
Tony and I have been watching the TV show Doctor Who lately. The Doctor is a time Lord that can travel through time and space. He usually saves a lot of people. However, the Doctor talks about how some things are fixed in time. They are things that must remain the same. Even though he knows this, he often finds himself in situations where he wants to help anyway. Yesterday we saw an episode where the Doctor happened to end up somewhere on the exact day these people were supposed to die. He wanted to help them but he knew it had to happen in order for the other things in the future to happen. What happened to these people sparked so many other amazing things in the future. Things that may not have happened if he had saved them from this fate, yet he had to try anyway. This Doctor has lived for hundreds of years and knows the consequences of trying to change things that are meant to happen. If it was too difficult for him not to meddle and try to save these people, how hard do you think it would be for the rest of us normal people?
We all want to save our loved ones from their troubles. However, what if those troubles were the very thing they needed to go through to become the person they were created to be? For instance, we want to save our child from getting their heart broken in a relationship however, if they don’t break up with that person they will never meet the person they are supposed to be with forever. We all grieve when one relationship ends and then our grief turns to joy when we enter another relationship. The verse above talks about how a woman is goes through a lot of pain to bring a baby into this world, and yet she forgets about the pain when she sees her beautiful baby. I don’t know if she forgets about the pain, but definitely thinks the pain was worth it. Right now a lot of us are going through a time or trial. I know several people that have been sick for months, I know several people who are struggling with parenting their children, I know several teens who are struggling. Many people I know right now are in a time of grieving. This verse can give us hope that a time for joy is just around the corner.
The disciples didn’t know what Jesus meant when He was talking to them. They didn’t understand why he had to die. Sometimes, we don’t understand why we have to go through our circumstances either. I am sure the disciples felt like Jesus was needlessly killed. They didn’t understand why he was killed and they didn’t understand that he would rise again a few days later. I wonder if they truly understood that if it would have made it easier in the days just after his death. I would like to think it would have, however, we all know that he rose again and I still get really sad every time I think about all he went through. He had a really awful and painful death. Not only the beatings and the hanging on the cross, but the breaking of His heart knowing that people were turning away from Him, that his disciples were abandoning Him and Peter would even deny knowing Him. As much as the disciples would have liked to save Jesus from His death it needed to happen.
My friend was doing a talk about a book she had read by Fulton Sheen titled The 7 Words of Jesus and Mary. In this book Arch Bishop Sheen says “What do the scars of Christ teach us? They teach us that life is a struggle. That our condition of final resurrection is exactly the same as His. Unless there is a cross in our lives there will never be an empty tomb. Unless there is a good Friday there will never be an Easter Sunday. Unless there is a crown of thorns there will never be a halo of light. Unless we suffer with him we shall not rise with him. The scars are not only reminders that life is warfare but they are also pledges of victory in that war. Our blessed Lord said, “I have overcome the world,” by this he means he has overcome evil and principal. The victory is assured only the good news has not yet leaked out. Evil will never be able to be stronger than it was on that particular day. For the worst thing that evil can do is not to ruin cities and to wage wars against the good in the living. The worst thing that evil can do is to kill God. Having been defeated in that, in evil’s strongest moment, when evil wore it's greatest armor it can never be victorious again.”
I thought this explained so well why it is necessary for us and our loved ones to go through hard times. I also loved how it explained that evil was defeated on that day. I think this is something that we often forget. Sometimes it feels like whatever we are going through is more than we can handle. We feel as though we are drowning in our circumstances, like they will overcome. We feel as though we just can’t go on anymore. When we are feeling like this we must remember this line. Evil was defeated in it’s strongest moment. Jesus won the battle between good and evil. The devil through everything he had at Jesus and Jesus rose again. Therefore, evil can never be victorious again. I hope we can all remember this are we go through our trials. God never promised us there wouldn’t be trials. He did promise to be with us in those trials and He promised we would save us. I remember someone told me once that there are three ways that God saves us from the fires of our lives. Sometimes He saves us from the fire all together. Sometimes He saves us through the fire. And sometime He saves us on the other side of the fire, meaning He saves us from this world by brining us to join Him in our eternal life.
We usually all want to be saved from the fire and I totally get that, I am right there with you. However, as Jesus is saying in the verse above, our grief will turn to joy. We don’t know what our trials are for but I assure you they are necessary. God isn’t needlessly punishing you for something just as Jesus didn’t needless die on the cross. Your trials have a purpose and as much as we would like to be saved from them or to save our children from them, hopefully we can take some comfort in knowing we will be better people for having gone through them. I know if can feel as though you can’t make it one more day sometimes. God is with you, even if you can’t feel Him. He is giving you the strength you need, even if it is just the strength to get through the next 10 minutes, I promise He is there and will give you the strength you need for the 10 minutes after that as well. He has got you and your loved ones. He is there with them as well. Don’t try to save them from their problems, they are necessary, just be there for them like our heavenly Father is there for us.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we thank you for being with us through our hard times. We ask you to give us the courage and strength to go on when we don’t feel like we can. We are grateful that sometimes you save us from our trials, and we are also grateful for our trials that you allow us to go through because they help us become who you want us to be. Lord, there are a lot of people struggling right now and we ask that you help the know that you are there with them. We ask that you fill them with your love and your peace. Help them to know that they are not alone. Lord, give us the strength to not try and save our loved ones from their problems but for us to be patient and just be there for them through it all. We love you Lord, you are amazing. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Arm Yourself With Scripture
2 Thessalonians 3:3 "But the Lord is faithful; he will strengthen you and guard you from the evil one.”
As I was looking for a tea cup this morning I came across one that my sister in law gave me for Christmas. It has a series of statements on it in two columns. The first column is all the things we might say to ourselves when we are struggling and the other side is all the things that God says back to our statements. It got me thinking about how many people I know that are struggling right now. How many people I know that are wanting to do amazing things with their lives and yet are running into these negative self talk statements at each turn. When I hear the way they are talking to themselves, I tell them the things they are saying are not true. However, the enemy wants them to believe those things are true because then they stop trying to accomplish amazing things. If they believe the things they tell themselves, then they won’t continue on the same path.
I am sure you know the types of statements that I am talking about as we have all said them to ourselves at one point or another. I am not smart enough, nobody loves me, I don’t deserve forgiveness, I can’t go on, and so forth. There are so many defeating things that we tell ourselves. We tend to doubt ourselves and we tend to think we are not good enough. However, God created us in His likeness and image so we are perfect just as we are. I know the enemy helps put these thoughts in our head. He likes us to feel we are helpless because when we feel like that then we aren’t accomplishing God’s great plan for our lives. The ladies I know that are struggling the most right now are ladies that have dedicated their lives to the Lord. They have a light and a fire burning inside of them to accomplish God’s will and to spread His love and His light to everyone they meet. And yet, they struggle with feelings of unworthiness and inadequacy.
This is something that is running rampant in our culture these days. People are feeling more and more alone and they feel as though they aren’t anything special. Just by existing here on earth, you are special. You are made in the image and likeness of God, that is another reason you are special. So, why don’t we feel special, why don’t we feel loved? I think the reason we don’t feel loved or special is because we are looking for those things in this world and from those around us, instead of turning to the Lord and asking Him to show us love. When we rely on things of this world we will always be let down because we live in a broken world. However, God never lets us down. He is always there for us when we need Him. The verse above says, "But the Lord is faithful; he will strengthen you and guard you from the evil one.” I truly believe that the evil one is behind all of our questioning. He is the one that benefits the most from it. However, this morning I was listening the The Big Life Devotional by Pamela Crim, and she was talking about how the enemy does get in our way of doing amazing things sometimes. Do you know what else can get in our way? Us! We can get in our own way as well.
You see, the enemy has no power over you unless you let Him. Yes, he can persuade you to have these thoughts, maybe he can even put them in your head, to be honest, I am not really sure. However, you are the only one that can decide if you want to keep having them or not. “The Lord is faithful; he will strengthen you and guard you from the evil one,” but you have to turn to Him and ask Him. If you are constantly having these attacks or constantly having this negative self talk, what are you doing about it? One thing the Lord seems to be telling me in several different ways lately is that we have a part to play. We don’t get to just sit by and watch as God does everything for us. We do our part and He does His part. So what is our part? Our part is to read God’s word, learn about who God is and how He works. Our part is to spend time with the Lord, talk with Him and listen to Him. If we ask Him what He wants us to do and then listen, He will tell us.
One thing that we can do to combat the enemy and ourselves when it comes to negative self talk is to create a list of scripture verses that dispute the negative things we like to tell ourselves. A friend of mine said she has a notebook like this. I forget what she called it, maybe her book of promises, I’m not sure. She said on the left hand side of the page she has all the things that she tells herself when she is struggling and then on the right hand side she has scripture verses that dispute those things and remind her of all that God has promised to us. I think this is an awesome idea! If you are someone that has a lot of negative self talk it is time to change that. It is time to turn to the Lord and for you to know that He is there giving you strength and guidance. He is protecting you and you can arm yourself with scripture so the next time the enemy tries to convince you that you are not smart enough, you are not loved, or you can’t go on, you can use the Lord’s word against the enemy, just as Jesus did when He was attacked by the enemy after His 40 days in the desert. If you want to read about this it is in Matthew 4:1-11 or Luke 4.
Today I would like to get your list started with the ones that are on my tea cup. I am sure if you do a quick internet search for “I say vs. God says” you will probably find even more. I encourage you, if there are certain negative things you are telling yourself over and over again, do an internet search for bible verses about that thing and arm yourself with scripture. Here are the ones from my teacup:
You say I can’t figure it out. God says I will direct your steps. (Proverbs 3:5-6)
You say I am too tired. God says I will give you rest. (Matthew 11:28-30)
You say it's impossible. God says all things are possible. (Luke 18:27)
You say nobody loves me. God says I love you. (John 3:16)
You say I can't forgive myself. God says I forgive you. (Romans 8:1)
You say it's not worth it. God says it will be worth it. (Romans 8:28)
You say I'm not smart enough. God says I will give you wisdom. (1 Corinthians 1:30)
You say I'm not able. God says I am able. (2 Corinthians 9:8)
You say I can't go on. God says my grace is sufficient. (Two Corinthians 12:9)
You say I can't do it. God says you can do all things. (Philippians 4:13)
You say I can't manage. God says I will supply all your needs. (Philippians 4:19)
You say I'm afraid. God says I have not given you fear. (2 Timothy 1:7)
You say I feel all alone. God says I will never leave you alone. (Hebrews 13:5)
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we thank you for all your promises and for all the ways you protect us from the evil one and from all that wishes us harm. Lord, help us to rely on you and to arm ourselves with your scripture. If there is a certain scripture you want us to know I ask that you put in on our hearts Lord. Help us to take action and to create this list and put it somewhere where we will see it often and where we can remind ourselves of it when we are struggling. God you are truly amazing and we are so grateful for all you do for us. We thank you for making us in your likeness and image and we ask you to help us appreciate that more. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Tomorrow we will have another witness from my friend Anna. She will talk about her journey to discover the Lord and what he was all about. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow, have a blessed day!
Discipline Yourselves
1 Peter 1:13-16 “ Therefore prepare your minds for action; discipline yourselves; set all your hope on the grace that Jesus Christ will bring you when he is revealed. Like obedient children, do not be conformed to the desires that you formerly had in ignorance. Instead, as he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct; for it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”
This is a great scripture for this time of year. Lent is definitely a time to discipline ourselves. I really like the first line of the verse. It says to prepare our minds for action. This can be hard for some of us. We can have a lot of ideas, but then we get stuck wanting them to be perfect and so we spend a lot of time thinking about them and how we should do them, but then we don’t do them because we aren’t quite sure how. Does this sound familiar? I know I can’t be the only person that does this. I can’t be the only one that wants to do things perfectly and so then I get stuck and don’t end up doing as much as I know I could be doing.
I want to follow the Lord’s will and I want to follow His commandments, and yet sometimes I don’t do something because I am not sure exactly how He wants me to do it. The think is, most of the time, I don’t think He cares how we do it, as long as we are doing it with the right frame of mind and with our heart. If we let the Holy Spirit guide us then we can’t go wrong. Why do we worry so much then? I think it is because we love the Lord so much, we want to be perfect for Him. I think it is because we struggle to believe that He truly loves us just as we are. We are used to human love which is fallible and conditional at times. We feel as though we must earn the Lord’s love and so we want to do things perfectly for Him. I don’t think we even realize we are doing this. I know I wasn’t aware. I was talking to my spiritual advisor about how I felt like I needed to do all these things, and she pointed out that I was feeling like I needed to earn God’s love. We don’t need to earn God’s love! He loves us more than anything and He has long before we were born and He will long after we die. I know I have probably said this a lot and I will keep saying it because we struggle to believe it. We do not have to earn God’s love, He gives it freely and abundantly.
The next two words are words that we don’t always like, discipline yourselves. This is not easy. This is one thing that we get to work on during lent. We get a chance to discipline ourselves by fasting from things that are important to us, or doing things that we don’t normally do. During lent we get to step outside of our comfort zone and stretch ourselves in the area of discipline. I remember watching a youtube video of Father Mike talking about why we fast during lent. He explained it in a way that made me enjoy fasting a little more. He talked about how fasting is a way of showing God how much we love Him. Fasting is an act of love. It’s kind of like that question, what do you get the guy that has everything? Well, God has everything, He doesn’t need anything. He loves us completely and one way to show Him our love is to fast, or give something up during lent, or start doing something we normally don’t do. The thing is, it isn’t really an act of love if we complain and grumble the whole time. If we go through the motions and we do it just because we have to, then that is showing obedience, but it is not showing love. How can you show God your love during this lenten season? What can you fast from, what can you start doing? Hopefully you have already given this some thought since we are two weeks or so into lent. However, are you carrying out you lenten obligations complaining and grumbling, or are you doing them out of your love for your heavenly father?
The next line says, “set all your hope on the grace that Jesus Christ will bring you when he is revealed.” To be honest, I almost skipped over this line. I was not really sure what it meant or how to explain it. Then I figured if I didn’t know, maybe you don’t either. Also the point of this podcast is for us to grow on the journey and for us to understand scripture a little more and figure out how we can apply it to our lives, so I looked up the meaning of this line to see if anyone else had already explained it. The consensus seems to be that we are to hope in the grace that Jesus will bring us, instead of hoping in things of this world, like money, material objects, or even people. I think we have a tendency to hope in the things of this world instead of looking towards Jesus.
I found an article that is titled, Two Ways To Fix Your Hope on Future Grace by Jen Wilkin. (Click Here for Article) It is definitely worth reading. She talks about how we need to place our hope in the day that Christ is coming because the days we are currently in may be filled with trial and sorrow. The two ways she talks about in the article to fix our hope on future grace are to prepare our minds and be sober minded. It is a very good article and I would do it a disservice to try and summarize it for you in a few short lines. I recommend you take a look at the article if you wish to get a better understanding of this verse and how you can put it into practice in your own life.
The next line says, “Like obedient children, do not be conformed to the desires that you formerly had in ignorance.” This is an interesting line. God is often telling us to be like children, or to have a childlike faith. It doesn’t just say to not give in to your desires. It says to not be conformed to the the desires you formerly had in ignorance. If you are listening to this podcast then you are trying to grow in your faith. You are trying to learn more about the Lord and His Word. As you grow you will gain a better understanding of what the Lord is calling us to. What His commandments are and what He expects from us. As you grow your may learn that some things you are doing are not in alignment with what God expects from you or how he is calling you to live. This part of the verse is telling us that it is not ok to continue to do these things because now we know they are wrong. Once you know, if you continue to do then then you are choosing that thing over the Lord. One of the conditions of something being a sin is that you have to know it was wrong. You have to have freely chosen to do it. Once you know something is wrong, God is calling us to no longer do it.
Being completely honest with you, I have hesitated on my journey to grow before because of this very reason. In the past I have stopped to think, “Maybe I don’t want to learn more, because when we learn more we are held to a higher standard.” If I don’t know something is wrong and I am doing it, God is not holding it against me. However, once I know it is wrong, then He is. Maybe you have never thought this, but in case you have, I have two things to share. First, growing closer to the Lord is worth any hardship you may perceive by learning what He expects from us. As you grow closer to the Lord, you find you don’t want to do anything that might get in the way of your relationship. You find yourself wanting to please Him more than you want to do those things you used to do.
Second, God is calling us to all grow closer to Him. The very next line in this verse is “ Instead, as he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct; for it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” We have a responsibility to learn about God’s Word and what He is calling us to do. We are all called to Holiness. God is not ok with us just living in ignorance of His ways and continuing on doing whatever we like. He is calling us to read His Word, study His Word and live in a way that is in alignment with this word. If we purposely refuse to learn because we don’t want to have to live as He is calling us to live then that is not ok and I don’t think we can claim ignorance. We all have a choice to make. God is calling us all to holiness. That may mean something different to each of us. I think if you want to know what God is calling you to, then all you need to do is ask Him. He will tell you. I think the one thing that is the same for all of us is that He is calling us to read and study His Word and also to love Him and love our neighbors. Will you accept His call?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this podcast today. Lord, we love you and we want to live in alignment with you. Help us, show us how. Lord, help us to set our hopes in Jesus and the graces He will bring when He is revealed. Lord I ask that you give us a better understanding of the verse. Please speak to us this week and help us understand it better. Help us to set our minds towards action and help us to discipline ourselves. Lord we love you so very much. You are amazing and we are grateful for all you do for us each and every day. Help us to show you that gratitude with our actions. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
I Believe; Help My Unbelief
Mark 9:21-27 “Jesus asked the father, “How long has this been happening to him?” And he said, “From childhood. It has often cast him into the fire and into the water, to destroy him; but if you are able to do anything, have pity on us and help us.” Jesus said to him, “If you are able!—All things can be done for the one who believes.” Immediately the father of the child cried out, “I believe; help my unbelief!” When Jesus saw that a crowd came running together, he rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, “You spirit that keeps this boy from speaking and hearing, I command you, come out of him, and never enter him again!” After crying out and convulsing him terribly, it came out, and the boy was like a corpse, so that most of them said, “He is dead.” But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he was able to stand.”
Today’s verse is part of the same story we had in yesterday’s verse. There was just too much to include it all in that one episode. Yesterday started out with the father explaining what was happening to his son. Today Jesus is asking just how long this has been happening to the boy? We also find out that the spirit has not just cast the boy down onto the ground, but it has often cast him into fire and into water so that he might die. I think everyone listening can sympathize with all this boy has had to go through and how his father is at the point where he would do anything for his son. I can’t imagine watching anyone’s child go through life with this happening the them. It must have been heartbreaking for the father to see this happening and not be able to do anything about it.
The father says, “if you are able to do anything, have pity on us and help us.” Jesus picks right up on the man’s hesitation and says back to him, “If you are able!- All things can be done for the ones who believes.” I love how the father of the boy doesn’t miss a beat. He immediately cries out, “I believe, help my unbelief.” Imagine the level of faith the father must have had to believe that Jesus could save his son. Also, I love that the man was not too proud to say, I believe, help my unbelief. He wasn’t too proud to acknowledge that there might be some doubt. His son had been sick ever since he was a young boy. When we suffer, or when we see our children suffer for a long time, we start to think we or they always will. It can be easy to have hope at first that something will make them better. We have hope in God, in the doctors, in the medicine. But, what about when that relief doesn’t come? What about when we continue to suffer or see our children suffer year after year with no relief? What do we do then? Where does our hope go?
I can see how the father might have struggled to believe that someone could cure his son. That his son might not have to suffer anymore. It is almost like it was too good to be true and so it makes sense that he may have been a bit hesitant to believe. I think something we don’t talk about enough, is how scary it can be to hope sometimes. How painful it can be to hope. When we don’t talk about it and we don’t acknowledge it we are doing everyone a disservice. I didn’t understand this before. I kept telling my friend she needed to keep hoping for what she wanted. She needed to keep believing that God gave her the desires in her heart and so He was going to fulfill them. What I wasn’t understanding was how much it hurt her to keep hoping and then be let down each time when it didn’t happen. I do believe that God gave us our desires and that He will fulfill them. However, I don’t know this for sure. I am definitely not an expert on God. I don’t know if any of us will ever be. He is so complex and just when you think you have Him all figured out, you realize that you have only scratched the surface.
I can understand how if you keep expecting something to happen and it doesn’t you could get tired of expecting it to happen. I can see how it would be painful to have hope and then feel like you are being let down over and over again. I think this happens more often then we are aware of and I think it is something we should acknowledge and start talking about it more. I think we don’t talk about it because we don’t want people to know that we struggle to have hope or we struggle to believe in the impossible. We live in an age where most people strive to portray the best side of their life. We like to brag about the good things that are going on and gloss over the bad things. We act as though we are fine, even though we are really struggling. We don’t want people to know we are struggling, we don’t want people to know we need help, we feel sad, we feel angry, we know we should be grateful and yet we just don’t feel it. I know people who look like they are having the time of their lives. They are killing it as moms, wives, daughters, they seem like all is going so well. Then when I talk to them they feel like they are failures, they feel depressed, they feel no excitement, or they feel overwhelmed. We need to start being honest. Not with everyone you meet on every street corner, but with someone, with those you love and trust.
We all struggle to believe things will get better sometimes. We all feel overwhelmed with our problems at times. Instead of me telling my friend she needed to keep having hope that her desires would come true I told her that I would have hope for her. Did you know we could do this? Sometimes we get to a point where we can’t hope, or where we can’t pray. Sometimes we are so depressed, or have been sick for so long, we just can’t even pray. When this happens your brothers and sisters in Christ can pray for you. We are a community of believers, we are not alone. If we are struggling, we can ask others to believe for us or to have hope for us. In the Bible a group of friends carried their friend on a mat to see Jesus. Their friend couldn’t walk and they thought if they could see Jesus, He would heal him. However, the house Jesus was in was too crowded so they went up to the roof, made a hole in the roof, and lowered him down right in front of Jesus. Jesus did heal the man and he looked up at his friends and told them that their faith healed him. Don’t get discouraged if your loved ones don’t believe that the will be healed or that their dreams will come true. Faith is a gift and if you have faith that it will happen, that is enough. Keep believing for them, keep praying for them, keeping hoping for them. If you are having trouble hoping for something or having trouble believing things will get better, ask someone to pray for you, to have hope for you. Don’t be afraid to talk about your fears as it is only when you bring them to light that they loose their power over you. Jesus healed this boy after many years of being possessed. Just because you haven’t received your healing yet, doesn’t mean it is not coming. Keep hoping, keep believing or have someone else do it for you.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we believe, help our unbelief. Lord, help us to have the courage to talk to someone if we are struggling with hope or with believing you will help us. Help us to not be ashamed of these feelings. Help us to know that he feeling of shame does not come from you. You are a loving Father who always forgives when we repent. We love you Lord, so much! It is truly amazing how you work and even though we don’t understand it all the time, we admire it and are in awe of it. We are so grateful for all you do for us. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you on Monday. Have a blessed weekend!
O Faithless Generation
Mark 9:17-19 “And one of the crowd answered him, “Teacher, I brought my son to you, for he has a dumb spirit; and wherever it seizes him, it dashes him down; and he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid; and I asked your disciples to cast it out, and they were not able.” And he answered them, “O faithless generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him to me.”
The verse starts with a father talking to Jesus about how he son is possessed by a dumb spirit. He asked the disciples to cast it out and they were not able to. The disciples didn’t understand why they couldn’t cast out the spirit. They had been with Jesus for a while now, they had seen all that Jesus could do. I am not certain of what they disciples had done up until this point but I think they had probably performed some miracles before, or they wouldn’t have been so surprised it didn’t work this time. Then Jesus says,”O faithless generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you?” Ouch, that must have hurt. I wasn’t even there but I still can feel the pain of Jesus saying that to them.
It is easy for me to think about what kind of disciple I would have been. I like to tell myself that if I lived back when Jesus lived, my faith would be rock solid. If I got to follow Jesus around and watch him cure people, there would be no shadow of doubt in my mind. I would have followed Him anywhere and done anything for Him. Isn’t it amazing how easy it is for us to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes and say what we would do if that was us? It is easy to look at the disciples and wonder how they could still doubt when they lived their days surrounded by miracles. When I stop and think about it though, I get it. Jesus had 3 years of ministry. This means that although the disciples did get to spend a lot of time with Jesus, it was at most 3 years. Think about committed you are to your beliefs. All the disciples were adults. Even if they were young adults, that gives them 18 years to form their beliefs. Now Jesus comes along and shakes things up. He helps them to question everything they know to be true. I wonder how easily I would have really jumped on board if I lived back then.
It is easy for me, sitting on this side of Jesus’ coming and say I would follow Him anywhere. However, I can say that because I have the benefit of knowing who Jesus is and what He did for us. I am not sure what I would have thought if I lived back then and I had to get to know Jesus. If I met this man that was turning the world upside down. In the world the disciples lived in, healing wasn’t an everyday thing. Before Jesus, if you got sick, you separated yourself so you wouldn’t get others sick and you were alone. There was no cure for Leprosy, there was no cure for blindness, or for the deaf. Jesus was curing all of this and the disciples got to witness it. We would love to think this means they wouldn’t question, they wouldn’t doubt. However, I am sure it was a lot to take in. Knowing that God can do anything is a huge mind shift. It is not something that usually happens over night. I can imagine that each time the disciples saw Jesus perform a miracle their faith grew a little more. However, I can imagine how being presented with a boy that was possessed by a spirit capable of throwing the boy down and causing convulsing, they might doubt in their abilities to help him.
There it is, right there. They were doubting in themselves. They probably were not doubting this boy could be cured. I am sure they believed that Jesus could cure him. They were probably doubting their own ability to help the boy. I can see how they might doubt they had the ability to save the boy. And you know what, they didn’t have the ability to save the boy. Even if whatever they did had worked, it wouldn’t have been them saving the boy, it would have been God’s power working through them. This is something we can all struggle with. We struggle with the thought that God would use us for something that important. Who are we that God would use us? This is something we ask ourselves often. Do you want to know the answer? You are a child of God and you were made in His likeness and image. That is who you are. You are a son or daughter of the one true King. God is using you because you are available, because you said yes when He asked. You were willing to step out in faith and at least try to be His instruments and that pleases Him. Sometimes we can get it all mixed up in our heads. Instead of focusing on our faith in God and our belief that all things are possible for God, we start to focus on our humanness, our weaknesses, our unworthiness. When we take the focus off of God and put it on ourselves, we aren’t as capable of being used as we are when we are focused on the Lord.
I am telling myself this today as much as I am telling you. I have some pretty big prayers into the Lord. I have asked him to cure a loved one of MS and a friend of a friend of ALS. These are diseases that have no cure. These are diseases that can be awful and claim peoples’ lives far too early. They also severely limit their quality of life at times. The woman suffering from ALS can no longer walk and she has little boys to take care of. I am praying hard for a healing for both of them. I don’t doubt for a second that God could do it. And yet, I still find that doubt lurking in my mind that this is too much. It’s too hard. I can hear the Lord telling me, "O faithless generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you?”
I find it such a weird thing that I know for sure God could do it and yet I have doubt that He will do it. Lord I believe, help my unbelief. I know God is a mystery and that we are not meant to know everything. I know God’s ways are better than our ways and His thought higher than our thoughts. Today the Holy Spirit seems to be telling me, that I am doubting my ability to cure these women. I am worried I am not praying the right way, or asking the right way and therefore they will not be cured. What I feel the Holy Spirit wants me to hear today, and wants me to pass on, is that it is not my fault. I don’t have the ability to cure anyone. If God wants to cure these ladies, He can do it through me or anyone else regardless of what they do. I don’t have to do anything perfectly for it to happen. I have been taking the focus off of God and putting in on myself. I need to keep focusing on God and His power and His ability and not my own.
Have you been doing this lately? Have you been trying to solve things for others and relying on yourself instead of the Lord. The Holy Spirit want you to know too, that it’s not your fault either. If your prayers are not being answered it is not because you are praying wrong, or not praying enough, or not having enough faith. We are not responsible for answering our prayers. God is the only one that can make our prayers fruitful. All we need to do is ask with expectant faith and He will answer. It is also important to remember that No is an answer. God doesn’t always say yes. As much as we would love for the answer to always be yes, this isn’t the case. I wish I knew why He didn’t always cure people. I am sure He has a plan and I know His plan is best. That doesn’t make it easier when our loved ones are sick, however, it does take the pressure off of us to think we need to be perfect for our prayers to be answered. God said ask and you shall receive. He didn’t say, pray perfectly and you shall receive. The Lord loves us, He is hearing our prayers and He is answering each and every one of the. It may not be in the time frame we would like, it may not be the answer we would like, however, He is answering them.
Dear Heavenly Father I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord we believe help our unbelief. Lord, help us to keep our focus on you and not on ourselves. Help us to focus on your power and your capabilities instead of focusing on all we are incapable of doing. Lord, we know you are amazing and you can do amazing things. Help us to believe that you could use us to help you do those amazing things. Help us to know that we are your children and made in your likeness and image. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus holy name, Amen!
Thank you for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Our guest speaker today is Linda. She is going to talk to us about the day her whole life changed and her journey to discover a closer relationship with the Lord. If you have ever received devastating news, if you have ever through a really difficult time, if you have ever questioned why this was all happening to you, this witness was for you. Linda speaks openly and honestly about her trials, how they felt and how she feels now. I know as you listen to Linda’s witness you will see some of your story in her story.
God’s Plan Will Be Accomplished
Isaiah 55:10-11 “As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.”
As soon as I heard this I knew it was a message that I wanted you guys to hear. This is another great verse. Sometimes we think we have the ability to mess up God’s plan. We think He gave us free will and so all the crap that happens in our life is because we messed up, we brought it on ourselves, and now we will miss out on the good life that God has planned for us. This isn’t true. Yesterday’s verse assured us that sometimes we go through hard times to test our faith and to increase our perseverance. It is not because we have done anything wrong. The thought that we could mess up God’s plan for us is one that I think a lot of us have. When we hear it we may think it sounds crazy. However, I bet if you sat down and think about it, there have been times when you questioned your actions and wondered if you messed it all up. If your past mistakes ruined the good future God had for you. Especially if you have been waiting a long time for some of your desires to come true. You may start to question if your choices have messed up everything good God had planned for you.
As much as I can see how we would all go down this line of thinking, it is seriously flawed. If we had the ability to mess up God’s plan, then we would have more power than He does, and we know that is not the case. God is the almighty. Yes, God does allow us to feel the consequences of our actions. Yes, we may be able to through a monkey wrench in his plans, however, we do not have the power to ruin all God’s plans for us. We are not that powerful. Actually we have no power, other than that which the Lord gives us. The Lord can take our mistakes and use them for good. Think about in Genesis when Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery. God used that awful action to propel Joseph to the second in command of all of Egypt. He was able to save his father and brothers from the famine because they had sold him. Joseph says to his brothers in Genesis 50:20 “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.”
The verse above is further proof that God’s plans will be carried out. It says, “As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.” The Lord’s word will not return to Him empty. It will accomplish what He desires and achieve the purpose for which He sent it. God knows us, He knows all that will happen. He is not surprised when we do something to mess up His plans.
I was listening to The Big Life Podcast by Pamela Crim last week sometime and she was talking about how if God wants us to meet someone we will. If we happen to miss our first opportunity, then He will give us another one. She gave an example of these two ladies in mentoring that were destined to meet. God made sure that they could both attend this adventure retreat so they could meet. However, there were so many people at the retreat and they were in different cabins they didn’t end up meeting. However, He also arranged it so they were both on the same connecting flight back to their homes. God wasn’t taking any chances this time though, they were not only on the same flight, they were sitting right next to each other. God is so good!
Maybe it was God’s plan all along for them to meet on the plane instead of at the retreat. He could have arranged that they be in the same cabin. I don’t know. All I know is that God wanted these ladies to meet and these ladies met and they are both 100% sure that God wanted them to meet. There is another example of God’s plan working out in the life of another Big Life girl in mentoring. She was married and had children. However, that marriage didn’t work out and she has been single for a long time. Her children are grown and she wanted to find someone to love, however, she always found the wrong guys. She met this great guy several years ago but the timing was wrong, the situation was wrong, I am not sure exactly what happened, but it didn’t work out for them. However, they met again about a year and a half ago and the timing all worked out. They were able to be together and now they are getting married and buying a house together. They are starting a business together. God hadn’t given up on them, He was just waiting until the time was right. I am sure they both wondered at some point if they had missed their chance on true love but God always delivers. He is so good!
We don’t understand God’s timing. We want things to happen on our timeline and when it doesn’t we get upset and question what is going on. We start to blame ourselves and think that we messed it all up. Relax, God is in control. Can we negatively affect our lives, I think so. If we turn away from the Lord, that has consequences. However, He is also ready to forgive us when we turn back to Him and repent. Think about how mad the Lord was at the Israelites. They did truly awful things to the Lord and He still let them go into the promised land. Yes, it was delayed 40 years, but He still led them there. If we have not completely turned away from the Lord. If we are seeking Him and trying to do His will, no matter how many times we fail, He will keep saving us and He will use what the enemy uses for evil for our good. If you are still waiting for something bad to be used for good I encourage you to keep praying, keep hoping and have faith that God’s good plan for you is right around the corner. We haven’t messed up His plan for us, our kids haven’t messed up His plan for them. We aren’t that powerful. As this verse tells us, “so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.”
Dear Heavenly Father I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord we love you and we are so grateful that your will is always accomplished. We have no idea what we are doing half the time and we are grateful that you take care of us and correct our mistakes and don’t let them ruin our lives. We are grateful you use what the enemy means for evil for good. Help us to keep praying and hoping that our happy ending is coming. Help us to have faith that you are working all things for our good and that we do not have the power to mess up your good plans for our lives. We love you Lord, you are amazing! We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I hope you will join me tomorrow for another wonderful witness. Tomorrow Linda will tell us how wonderful her life was until the fateful day she received devastating news. She will talk about how she prioritized God and her family, but not in the right order. She even talks about a healing service she attended and the miraculous experience she encountered. I look forward to sharing her story with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Testing of Faith Produces Perseverance
James 1:2 -4 & 12 “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him.”
This is a pretty tall order. This verse asks us to consider it pure joy whenever you face trials of many kinds because we know that testing of our faith produces perseverance. I understand what the verse is saying. I understand the concept. I am just not sure I understand how to do this. I’m not sure joy would be the word I would use when I am undergoing trials. I would say words like sad, frustrated, mad, angry, annoyed, scared, lonely and defeated seem more like what I feel when I am going through trials. So, why is this verse telling us to feel joy?
We often ask why we have to struggle? We ask why we have to face various kids of trials? I have learned from Father Mike that there isn’t just one reason why we find ourselves in trials. Father Mike states several times in his Bible in a Year podcast that sometimes we do find ourselves in difficult trials because of something we have done. Sometimes we go against what the Lord wants us to do and there are consequences for that. Other times, the situation we are in is not of our own doing and does not mean that we did anything wrong. For instance, Job, he was a righteous in the eyes of the Lord, yet he suffered terribly. Not all suffering is a result of sin. Another example, of this is found in John 9:1-3 “As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” "Neither this man nor his parents sinned," said Jesus, "but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.”
Do you see the reasons for your trials can vary. I think a lot of us think if we are struggling, then we must have done something to deserve it. God must be punishing us in some way. I have heard that one a lot. Jesus is telling us right here in the Bible, your trials are not always because of sin. Sometimes your trials are to show the work of God in your life. It is rare that you know the reason for your struggle while you are in it. However, even if you did, I am not sure it would make it easier. Take this verse for instance. It says that when our faith is tested we gain perseverance. Perseverance is great. It is often times the thing that gets us through our trials. I find it interesting that in order for our perseverance to grow we need to go through trails, yet our perseverance is what helps us get through those trials. I am glad that I have gained a lot of perseverance over the years. Even though I know that I will gain perseverance when I go through a hard time, it doesn’t make that hard time easier.
The rest of the verse says to “Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him.” That all sounds wonderful. I definitely want to be mature and not lacking in anything. I also definitely want to receive the crown of life. The problem is, I don’t know how to remain steadfast under trial. I don’t know how to consider it joy that I have trials. I know what the Lord wants me to do, I am just not sure how to do it. I love how the Lord always gives us answers. I was just thinking that it would be nice if I could give you guys some tips on how to stay steadfast under trials and I did a quick internet search and found some. The article I found is titled Six ways to remain steadfast during trials and it is written by Dan Panetti. (CLICK HERE for article) I will post a link to the article in the show notes, but I will list Dan’s six ideas here as well.
Focus on what you can control—not on what you can’t (Prov. 3:5–6 “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.”)
Live in the moment—refuse to be anxious about tomorrow (Matt. 6:34 “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.”)
Look for ways to break up the monotony—tackle a home improvement project or learn to play a new card game. One of my sons proposed that I come up with a question for each family member to be researched and presented around the dinner table. It has sparked some of the best conversations we have ever had.
Relax and take a walk—meditate on the ways that God has provided for you, delivered you from death, given you a purpose, and equipped you for his service (Psalm 116:7–9 “Return, O my soul, to your rest; for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you. For you have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling; I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living.”)
Bathe in a book of the Bible—not just read through it, but sit and soak in it! Think of Naaman going down into the Jordan again and again. Read and re-read a passage, chapter, or book—dive deep(er) into the Word!
Memorize and meditate on Scripture—both of which are under appreciated spiritual disciplines. My oldest son and I are currently focusing on memorizing at least one verse from each book of the Bible.
Just knowing that we grow in perseverance anytime our faith is tested might not be enough to help us find joy in our trials. However, maybe some of these ideas can help us to be steadfast in our trials. I like how the author even provided a few scripture verses to back up some of his suggestions. I have not done a lot of scripture memorizing in the past. However, I did try scripture writing for awhile and I thought it was great. If you want to give that a try, or even if you want to do the scripture memorizing and are not sure where to start, I started with an internet search of scripture writing plans. When you type that in you will get a whole list of scriptures, usually with a certain them, such as “wisdom,” “freedom,” “being bold,” all sorts of themes, whatever you might be struggling with the most. If you want to bathe in a book in the Bible, and you are not sure where to start, I have always been told a great place to start is in at the beginning of the new Testament, in the Gospel of Matthew, or the Psalms is another great place to start.
I hope each of you will write these ideas down so that next time you are going through trials, they can help you remain steadfast. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be mature and not lacking in anything. If so, we need to let perseverance finish it work in us. In order to do this, we must make it through all the trials. In order to do this we must figure out a way to remain steadfast in our trials. I know it is difficult going through a difficult time and not understanding why you have to go through it. However, this verse gives us a little hope. One reason we are going through it is to test our faith. Are you going to remain steadfast? Do we want the crown of life? The choice is ours.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you and we ask that you are with us in our times of trial. We ask that you give us the grace to find joy in our trials and that you help us to stay steadfast also. Lord, we want all you have to give us and that includes the crown of life. Help us to not drown in our difficult time. Sometimes it feels like we are drowning and we are asking that you save us before that happens. Lord, even if it is not the right time while we are going through it for us to know why it is all happening, please give us the grace to understand that if its not the reason, we will grow in perseverance while we make it through to the other side. Also, help us to feel your presence while in the trial and know that you are with us. We love you Lord, you are truly amazing. We are so very grateful for you. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on your journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
He Will Restore You
1 Peter 5:8-11 “Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of sufferings. And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. To him be the power for ever and ever. Amen.”
I like this description of the devil. I think it portrays his true nature. Think of how much destruction a lion can do. He could devour a whole person, until there is almost nothing left. This is similar to what the enemy can do if we let him. He can tear us down and make us think we are nothing. He can make us feel all alone and cut off contact from those that actually make us feel better. There was a scene in a movie once where the boy felt all alone. He felt like no one understood him and everyone thought he was a liar. He told this to a friend and she said she didn’t think that was true. Then she said, “although I suppose that is what he wants you to think.” (He meaning the villain of the story) The boy didn’t understand what his friend meant. She went on to explain if he was all alone, he wasn’t that dangerous. It is much easier to defeat one person than it is to defeat a group of people. The boy realized the enemies trick and let his friends in, he opened up about how he was feeling and let them help. Has the enemy been trying this with you lately? Has he been trying to separate you from your pack so he can attack? Don’t let him. Stick with your pack. You are not alone, there are people that care about you. Don’t the the lion find you alone and vulnerable.
The next line tells us to resist him, but then it also tells us how. It says to stand firm in your faith. This is not always easy to do. It is easy to have faith when all is going well. When things are coming up in our favor, and we have no worries and no cares. However, what about when things aren’t coming up in our favor? What about when everything seems to be going wrong and all seems lost. How do we have faith then? This verse says, we can stand firm in our faith because we know that the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of suffering. I think one of the most important things I ever learned was that everyone is going through something. We can stand firm in our faith because we know we are not alone. There are approximately 2.38 billion Christians in the world. There are people that are going through the same kind of suffering you are going through. I know this doesn’t seem possible. It seems like your situation is unique and no one else would understand. Please hear me when I say this is a lie of the enemy. He wants you to feel alone, he wants you to feel abandoned, he wants you to pull away from the pack. This is when you are most vulnerable.
I have a friend that I met in my mentoring group who was going through something unique. She didn’t think anyone else would understand. Then when we went on a road trip together, she saw how similar our situations were and that even though I wasn’t in her exact situation, I could understand her pain. She no longer felt so alone. Then she found the more she talked about it, the more people were actually experiencing something similar, they just weren’t talking about it. I know I have said this before, and I know it is not easy, however, it is so important that we talk about our struggles. Other people need to hear them. It gives others hope when they hear someone else is also going through a tough time. It gives mothers of young children hope to hear of more experienced mothers who went through similar situations and yet lived through it. I was at a women’s conference and everyone kept saying that our story is our super power. I think this is true. There is so much power in our story. It helps unite people, it gives people hope, and it even gives them the strength to get through their situation because you have shown them that it won’t last forever and that they will make it to the other side. I know I probably sound like a broken record at this point, but I feel so strongly that God wants us to share our struggles as well as our victories.
The verse ends with “And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. To him be the power for ever and ever. Amen.” This is reassuring us that our suffering will not go on forever. Yes, we will all suffer. God never promised us a life without suffering, however, He did promise to never abandon us. God is with us in our suffering. This verse says “after you have suffered a little while” however, we don’t know what a little while is. A day in our life can be a blink of the eye for our heavenly Father. No one knows how long their suffering will go on for. The one thing we do know is that our God is a God that keeps His word. This verse says that after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace will restore you and make you strong, firm, and steadfast.
The God of all grace, the one who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ. All grace comes from the Lord. His grace is required to do all things and He gives it to us freely. It also says, the one who has called us to his eternal glory. Isn’t this amazing. The God that has called us to eternal glory is going to restore us, and make us strong, firm and steadfast. Many times when we are in the middle of a hard time, we feel abandoned. We also feel as though we will never be the same again. We feel as though we are broken into a million pieces and there is no way back to our old selves. When we are struggling and feeling like this we can take out this verse and remind ourselves that we will be whole again. We can read this and know with certainty that our God, the God of all graces, will restore us, and make us strong, firm and steadfast.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord we love you and we are grateful that you always restore us. Lord, we don’t understand why we have to suffer and sometimes we feel like it will never end. When we feel like this we ask that you fill us with your love and with the grace of hope that an end is near. We ask that you remind us of this verse and remind us that we are never alone. Remind us that we not only have you but we have the family of believers by our side to help hold us up when we feel we can’t stand. Lord, help us resist the enemy and all his lies. Help us to be bold and share our story so others know they are not alone. Help us stand firm in our faith together against the enemy. Lord you are amazing and we are so grateful you never abandon us and that you restore us and make us strong again. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again on Monday. Have a blessed weekend!
The Lord Has Been Good To Us
Psalm 116:5-7 “The Lord is gracious and righteous; our God is full of compassion. The Lord protects the unwary; when I was brought low, he saved me. Return to your rest, my soul, for the Lord has been good to you.”
I really like this verse. I know, I say that a lot. It’s true though. There are so many good verses in the Bible. The last line in this is my favorite part of it, but I don’t want to skip straight to the end so let me begin at the beginning. The Lord is gracious and righteous; our god is full of compassion. This really doesn’t need any explaining. I think we all know these things to be true. However, maybe you are going through a rough patch right now. Maybe you are sitting at the bottom of a pit and you can’t see the way out and you are questioning God. Maybe you are not seeing God in your situation and wondering is this true? Is He gracious and righteous because I am not seeing that in my life right now?
In case someone listening is in the position that we have all be in at one point or another I will give a few examples. God saved the Israelites from Egypt, he freed them from slavery and led them to the promised land. Shortly after He freed them, they rebelled against him by making a golden calf. Yet, he was gracious and showed them mercy. When David sinned against the Lord, God was gracious and showed him mercy. There are numerous examples in the Bible where the Lord was gracious. An example of God’s righteousness is when God told Abraham that He was going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham asked the Lord if He would spare the cities if there were 50 godly people in the city and God agreed. He agreed several times as Abraham kept lowering the number of godly people until Abraham got down to 10 people. God agreed to spare the cities if He could find 10 Godly people in them. God knew that He was going to destroy the cities because there weren’t any godly people in it. However, He took the time to talk with Abraham and help him understand.
When I read God is full of compassion, the story that came to mind was the story of the woman who was healed just by touching His cloak. You can find this story in Matthew 9:20-22, Mark 5:25-34, and Luke 8:43-48. As soon as she touched His cloak Jesus felt power leave Him. He asked who it was and She stood up and admitted what had happened. Matthew 9:22 says, “Jesus turned and saw her. “Take heart, daughter,” he said, “your faith has healed you.” And the woman was healed at that moment.” I can just imagine the compassion in Jesus’ eyes. Also when Jesus talked to the woman at the well. This can be found in John 4:4-42. This woman had to go and draw water at the hottest time of the day as she was not welcome in the mornings when all the other woman collected their water. Yet, Jesus came when He knew she would be there to talk to her and to save her. There are plenty of other examples in the Bible of Jesus’ compassion.
Can you see times in your life when God has been gracious, righteous, or compassionate? Times when God showed you mercy even when you didn’t deserve it? Can you think of times in the past when God loved you when you felt unlovable? Even if you are in a place of questioning right now, can you look back and see times in the past when God has been gracious and righteous?
The next line says, “The Lord protects the unwary.” This first part says something different than I thought. When I first read it I thought it meant that God protected the weak, which He definitely does. However, when I looked up the definition of unwary it said, not cautious and not aware of possible dangers. I don’t know about you, but I think I like the verse even more knowing this. I already knew that God protected those that can’t protect themselves. I knew he protects the weak as His power is made perfect in our weakness. However, I never really thought about God protecting those that aren’t aware of possible dangers. I am happy that I know this as there are so many possible dangers out there and we can’t possibly be aware of all of them. I feel as though knowing this can take some of the pressure off us to think about all the possible dangers of every single thing we do.
You know this pressure I am talking about. We can sit and think about a million ways that everything can go wrong. We can worry ourselves sick about things that may never happen. God is always telling us not to worry and yet we still worry. We feel as though we can’t help it. I wonder if knowing this will help us worry less? I wonder if someone hearing this episode will hear these words and realize that they don’t have to worry about all that may happen because God has got us covered? He protects he unwary. He protects us even when we are not cautious and unaware of possible dangers. When I read this, I hear God saying, “I’ve got you child. You do not need to worry. I am in charge.” What do you hear God saying when you hear these words?
“When I was brought low He saved me.” We can all look back on our lives and think of a low time when God saved us. No matter how wonderful our life has been, we live in a broken world and so we have all had bad things happen. Whether it was when we were a kid in school and others were mean or maybe we have had other tragedy and trauma in our lives. Either way, if you look back can you see how God has saved you from it? He still wants to save us more from it as well. Even if He has saved us from the situation, we still might need to be healed from it. I really felt the Holy Spirit prompting me to write that last sentence. God is speaking to us directly and telling us that even thought the trauma is over, we might not be completely healed. He wants us to know that He is not done yet. He will keep saving you until you are 100% free. Free from hate, free from unforgiveness, free from worry, free from feeling unloved, free from feeling abandoned, free from resentment and jealousy. Whatever it is that you are still feeling the Lord wants you to know that He is still saving you. He is not done with you yet.
The last line in this verse is my favorite, although now that I have examined the other lines more closely, I really like them too. This line says, “Return to your rest, my soul, for the Lord has been good to you.” I love this because I can just picture someone saying this to their soul almost as a parent would to their child. It is like we are reassuring out soul that it is ok to rest as the Lord has been good to you. The image I get is of a child that doesn’t want to go to sleep because they are anxious about everything. The parent lays them down in their bed, rubs their back and tells them, “return to rest, my child, all is ok. You have nothing to worry about.” I feel as though this is what the verse is saying. Our souls can rest, knowing that the Lord has been good to us and so we have no reason to fear anything. Hebrews 13:8 says, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to look back and see all the ways you have been compassionate, righteous, and gracious to us over the years. Lord, help us to worry less knowing that you protect the unwary. Lord, we thank you for saving us every time we were brought low. Please help us continue to turn to you and to let you continue to save us and to set us free from all the things you want to set us free from. We are so grateful that our soul can rest knowing that you have been good to us. We love you Lord, you are amazing. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Welcome to Witness Wednesdays here on the Walk Boldly With Jesus Podcast. I am your host Catherine Duggan, however, each Wednesday I will have a guest give their witness of how God is working in their lives. Hearing how God is working in other people’s lives shows us how deeply He cares for each one of us individually. Listening to these experiences will help your faith grow. I am so blessed to be able to share these with you. The title of Today’s Episode is The Lord Doesn’t Have Favorites, He Has Intimates. Our guest speaker today is Tina and she is going to talk about her journey to forgive. We all struggle with forgiveness, some more than others, but it is not easy for any of us. Listening to how others learned to forgive helps us on our journey toward forgiveness. While you listen to Tina’s amazing witness try and see how it may apply to your own journey. Thank you Tina for being willing to share your difficult journey!
There Will Always Be Scoffers
Jude 17-21 “But, dear friends, remember what the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ foretold. They said to you, “In the last times there will be scoffers who will follow their own ungodly desires.” These are the people who divide you, who follow mere natural instincts and do not have the Spirit. But you, dear friends, by building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in God’s love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life.”
“In the last times there will be scoffers who will follow their own ungodly desires.”Unfortunately, I don’t think this is limited to the last times. I think all throughout the ages there have been many scoffers. Many people who mock our religion and Jesus and the Lord our God. Jesus even said in John 15:18, “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you.” The people of God have been ridiculed since almost the beginning of time. People don’t always understand why we do the things we do, or believe the things we believe. I think the part about how they follow their own ungodly desires, is so true, especially today. It may have always been true, just as it is today, however, I feel as though with how easy everything is to get nowadays, it might be worse. I feel as though we are definitely a culture that feels like we deserve to have all that we desire and we don’t want anyone tell us any different.
We are like children rebelling against our parents about all the rules of the house. We don’t understand that often times rules are given to keep us safe. When we are younger we need to rely on our parents for these rules as we are not old enough to think for ourselves. Our parents are older and wiser and can help guide us until we can make our own decisions. This is the same for God. He provides us with rules and a way to live so that He can keep us safe. Until we are wiser and we can make our own decisions about how we want to live. The problems, a lot of times we don’t make great choices. Even when we get older, we don’t necessarily get wiser. The next line in the verse talks about how the people that divide us are those that just follow their instincts and aren’t guided by the Holy Spirit. Wow, I find that powerful. I don’t know about you, but I find myself relying on my instincts rather than the Spirit all too often.
There is a difference between our instincts and that small voice inside of us that is the Holy Spirit. I was just telling someone the other day that she needed to trust that voice inside of them that was guiding her. I told her to pray for what to do and to really listen and the voice inside her would guide her. That still small voice inside of you, that is the Holy Spirit. The one that is so faint you can’t really hear it most of the time, that is the Lord speaking to you. The difference between following our natural instincts and following the Holy Spirit is prayer and time. If you are stopping and taking the time to pray about something, and then also taking the time to listen to what the Lord has to say about it, that you are probably following the prompting of the Holy Spirit. However, if you are just responding automatically based on either your emotions, or on the way you have always done things in the past, then you are not responding to the Holy Spirit. Responding to our natural instincts without listening for the guidance of the Holy Spirit can lead us to following our ungodly desires. This will not get us to where we want to go.
Luckily for us, the verse doesn’t stop there. The verse continues on to tell us how we get to where we want to go. The verse says, “But you, dear friends, by building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in God’s love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life.” Yes, please, sign me up for eternal life. I want that. If we don’t want to act on our ungodly desires the verse is telling us that we need to build ourselves up in our most holy faith, to pray in the Holy Spirit, and to keep ourselves in God’s love as we wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ. How do we build ourselves us in our faith? I think there are a lot of ways. This is a good thing because what might be good for me, might not be good for you. What I really like to do is listen to praise and worship music and sing along, loudly, if I am alone. I love to write in my prayer journal and listen to podcasts and audio books to build my faith. I also love praying in the Spirit. However, some of you listening may not really like to write and so a prayer journal would be more of a chore. Maybe you like to read books instead of listening to them. Maybe you don’t like music, you prefer silence. Whatever you preferences are, there is a way to use that to build your faith. If you learn best around others, find a community. If you like silence just sit in the silence. If you like noise, find a way to pray loudly, or listen to music and sing a long.
God will meet you where you are at. All you really need is the desire to want to build your faith. If you have the desire and you search out ways to grow in your faith the Lord will meet you on your journey, right where you are and He will place opportunities in your path. If you don’t believe this think about how you found this podcast. Did god use someone you know to put it in your path? Think about the last book you read, how did you learn about that book? My friend told me today on the phone that she really wanted to go to a church, but hadn’t decided which one yet and was nervous to go to a new church for the first time. She went out to lunch and someone paid for her lunch. She went over to thank him and it turns out he was a pastor of one of the churches on her list. She went two weeks later and she was welcomed in with open arms. A lot of times we look at a situation and think that it is a coincidence that something happened. I want to challenge you to change your thinking and think of them as God instances. They didn’t just happen on accident. God planned them out perfectly because He has a plan for your life and it is a good plan, it is a great plan. God will help you build your faith. All he requires is that you desire it and that you say yes when He presents you with an opportunity. If you have the desire, but you are struggling to say yes to the opportunities, pray about that too. Take that to God. Pray for the holy boldness you need to say yes to an opportunity that you are scared to say yet to. Also, take that fear to a trusted friend. Let them help you. That is what friends are for. You would help them if they asked and you would be happy they asked. So, why do we always hesitate before we ask? Why is it we think we would be a burden if we asked for help, but we never think our friends are burdens when they ask?
The Lord wants to have mercy on us and to give us eternal life. Let’s help Him out. Let’s do our best to build up our faith so we can resist our own ungodly desires. Let’s build our faith so we can ignore our scoffers. In 2 Timothy 3:12 it says, “Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.” We will be persecuted because we desire to live a Godly life in Christ. So, let’s build up our faith so we can withstand the persecution and we can stay in God’s love as we wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to have eternal life with you. Please give us the strength to withstand our ungodly desires. Please give us the holy boldness to say yes to every opportunity you provide to us, even if we are scared. Lord, help the desire to build our faith grow stronger and stronger in each one of us. You are amazing Lord, we are so grateful that you have offered us eternal life and we ask that you help us stay in your love until Jesus bring us to it. We love you Lord! We are grateful for all you do for us Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus holy name, Amen.
Thank you for joining me on this journey to walk Boldly with Jesus. Remember tomorrow will be our second week for the new segment called Witness Wednesday. Tomorrow’s witness is about a woman who lost her father to a hit and run by a teenage driver and her journey towards forgiveness for that driver. I hope you will join me to listen to her story, as it is truly remarkable. I also hope as you listen to more and more of these witnesses you will realize that we all have seen the Lord working in big and small ways in our life. The more we talk about it the more others will begin to see God working in their lives. I hope every single listener will consider giving their witness. It is not about us, it is about giving God the glory and helping others see all the different ways God works. He is not working the same way in my life as He is in someone else’s life. The more ways we show off God’s work, the more people begin to see it in their lives. I know you may be nervous, so was everyone that has given a witness. God will give you the courage to get though it. Just be open to the idea as you listen each week. One day you might be listening to your own story. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
We Are God’s Children
1 John 3:2 “Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.”
This first line is something I think a lot of us forget and it’s something the enemy definitely tries to make us forget. We are God’s children. You are a child of God. It is super important that you remember this? It is important because the enemy is going to try to make your forget. He is going to try to make you feel alone. He is going to try to make you feel like you have no one. This is one of his specialties. He takes whatever it is you are going through and he tells you that you are alone, no one can understand what you are going through, so don’t bother talking about it to anyone. He makes you feel as though if you spoke up to your friends then you would be bothering them. He whispers things in your ear that no one cares, that they are better off without you, that you are a burden. The enemy is a liar.
You are a child of God. You are a part of something bigger than you could even imagine. I thought I had a large family since I am 1 of 11 children. That is nothing compared to the family of God. We are all God’s children. That makes us all brothers and sisters. Are you showing love to our brothers and sisters? Are we treating each other like we are children of God? God made us as social creatures. We are not meant to go through life a lone. We are meant to be in community. If you are feeling alone right now, that is what the enemy wants. Fight back. Find a community. There are many churches our there. Find one that feels right for you. You may attend one church and if you don’t feel at home there, try another one. I would also suggest that you get involved in the church. Volunteer to help out with something. Even if you just pick one things. You could volunteer to be a reader, or a eucharistic minister, a greeter, or the person that passes the basket around. Whatever your interests are, there is probably a way to use them to help out your church. This is a great way to not only help others, but find more of a sense of belonging.
The next part of this verse is something that I think we can struggle with sometimes. The verse says, “what we will be has not yet been revealed.” We can struggle with this because we want to know everything up front. We want all the details, we don’t particularly like all the twists and turns in the road. If we really think about it though, this could be exciting. What we will be has not net been revealed. This means we could be anything. What do you want to be? What do you envision your future to hold? Matthew 19:26 says, “With God all things are possible.” What would you want to do with your life if nothing was impossible? If all restraints and obstacles were removed, what is your heart’s desire? It says in Philippians 4:13, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” Do you see God telling us over and over again that if we rely on Him, nothing is impossible.
Sometimes we get frustrated with where we are in life. We are not where we want to be. This could be in all areas, we are not as rich as we would like, we are not as successful as we would like, we are not as happy as we would like. We get frustrated because we know we could do more, have more and yet we don’t. If this is the case, we could take comfort in this verse. “What we will be has not yet be revealed.” We are still growing. We are constantly growing and changing until the end of time. If you are not happy with where you are at then that means that God is not done with you yet. You are a work in progress and His plan is still in motion. God has amazing plans for each one of us and those plans are revealed at all different times. Some people know when they are young what God’s plan for their life is, and some of us it takes a really long time. Either way, we need to trust that there is a plan and if we haven’t found our purpose, or our calling yet, then God will reveal it to us in His time, not ours.
The verse ends with, “What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.” From what I have read, this part of the verse is referring to the second coming of Jesus. When Jesus comes back to judge the living and the dead, then we will see Him as He is and we will be like Him. Wouldn’t that be great if we could be like Jesus? I had a friend tell me this weekend that she feels like it is more possible for her to be like John the Baptist, living in the wilderness than it would be to be like Jesus. Jesus was perfect, He was without sin. How do try to emulate that? Even if we strive for perfection we will never be in the same league as Jesus. I totally get what she is saying. The bar is set pretty high if we are to be like Jesus. John the Baptist was living in the wilderness. He was living separate from the world, other than those that came to see him, get baptized by him and to listen to him talk.
Living apart from the world seems so appealing at times. I think when we are alone in nature, we have the tendency to sin a lot less. When we are apart from the world that doesn’t understand Christianity and questions all we do, then we find it easier to follow the Lord. I am sure it wasn’t easy living in the wilderness. I have no idea if he had a bed to sleep on or if he slept on the ground. I do know he ate locusts and wild honey. I can imagine that was a difficult diet to live off of. Even with all of that, I wonder if that life, as unglamorous and probably uncomfortable as it was, is better than a life lived among those in the world. It is so hard to find quite time to pray in this busy world. It is hard to do what the Lord tells us is right when there are so many others telling us it is wrong. We have so many outside voices coming into our homes and into phones. The steady stream of information can feel overwhelming and much of what we are hearing and seeing is contrary to what we believe. I could see how being more like John the Baptist could be easier and more attainable.
Here’s a secret though, God isn’t expecting perfection from us. He just wants us to keep trying. He created us, He has known us since before we were born, He knows we are not perfect. Jesus is love and that is what the world needs to see. Our goal is to reflect Jesus’ love back to the world. Some of us were called to live apart from the world, and yet most of us are called to live among the world and yet remember that we are set apart. We are challenged to live our faith in this broken world. This is difficult if we keep our eyes on all those around us. However, if we keep our eyes fixed on the Lord and we remember to put Him first, then He will help us. He will make all things possible for us.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you and we know that you have good plans for us. We thank you for those plans. Lord, we ask you to give us the grace to have patience while we wait for your plans to be revealed. We ask for the grace to see that all things are possible through you. We ask you to help us love our brothers and sisters. Help us to love those that are hard to love. Help us to feel as though we are not alone. Lord, there are so many that feel alone, even with 7 billion people on this planet. Please fill all those that are lonely with your love. Help them to ignore the enemy and realize that he is a liar. Help them to see that the world is a better place because they are here. Lord, you are so amazing and we love you so very much. We are grateful for all you do for us and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
I’m Not Greedy, I’m Just Needy!
Isaiah 40:28-31 “Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom. He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.”
“He will not grow tired or weary.” I thought two things when I read this, the first was, wouldn’t that be nice? Wouldn’t it be nice to not grow tired or weary? I know a lot of us are feeling tired and weary lately. There is a lot going on in our worlds and we are ready for a break. This is why my first thought was, wouldn’t that be nice. My second thought was, do we believe this? Do we believe that God doesn’t grow tired and weary? I wondered this because I feel as though often times we treat God as though this is not true. We treat God as if He is not the almighty and powerful Lord that does not grow tired or weary.
I say this because we tend to be cautious with our prayers. We save up our prayers for the really important times, as if we only get so many and we don’t want to run out. This may sound silly, but you know you have all thought that at one time or another. Maybe you didn’t think that exact thought, but you did hold back from asking God for something because it wasn’t that important and He had bigger things to think about. We have all done this. We want to pray that our child wins the football game but then we feel guilty because there are people with real problems and we are taking God’s attention away from them to ask Him to help our kids win a football game, or to help me find a parking spot. This verse is telling us something that we already know on some level, but have trouble believing. God does not grow tired or weary. God can help you with your small request and help someone else with their giant request all at the same time. He can do it all and still not grow tired or weary. He is that amazing.
The next line in the verse says his understanding no one can fathom. We can’t even begin to understand all that the Lord knows. We see how he is working in our lives and we think He is a little crazy, or we think He is upset with us because things aren’t going our way. We don’t understand that all these things are happening so that His plan for us to have ridiculous goodness can come to fruition. We needed to lose that job so that we could get this better one. We needed lose that sense of security so we could appreciate it when we gained it back. We needed to go through that hard time so that we could show someone else that they can get through it too. We can’t fathom the Lord’s understanding. It’s just like it says in Isaiah 55:8 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,”declares the Lord.” The Lord knows what He is doing. It is ok if we don’t understand. It will all make sense one day.
The next line says, “He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak.” This is something that can really help us if we can remember it. He gives strength to the weary. How long have we been weary for? Did we know that God would give us strength? Did we ask for it? If there is a lot weighing down on your heart, I want you to know that I am right there with you. There isn’t a single person I know right now that is just coasting through life, no troubles to speak of. We are all weary. I would like to say that it is because of COVID, but I think it is more of a condition of living in a broken world. We are not perfect, we all hurt each other, sometimes without even knowing it. We have fallen into an age where our own pleasure, our own wants trump all else. We don’t want to hurt our loved ones, and we also don’t want to give up the things that we want. We are weary because we are trying to exist in a world that doesn’t understand the Christian way of life. We are weary because we are relying on the world to give us our strength, when our Lord is sitting by watching and trying to offer us the strength we need. However, we are so busy trying to do it all ourselves that we don’t see him there handing it out.
What is coming to me right now is, we need to stop turning to the world to get our strength and our power. Yes, the world does offer us power, and it might feel good for a while to have that power. However, if you find your power from he world you will never be fulfilled. You will always be searching for more. You will have this part of you that will always feel empty. However, if you turn to the Lord and you ask him for your strength and your power, He will fill you up completely. You will be lacking nothing. It says in 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 “But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” God’s power is made perfect in our weakness. How great would it be if we could be like St. Paul and delight in our weaknesses, insults, hardships and persecutions? How many times will we need to hear that God will give us strength when we are weary and power when we are weak before we actually believe it? How long will we turn away from God and look elsewhere to find our power before we turn back to God and ask Him? He is standing there ready to give us all we need for the day and we are too busy looking every else for it that we don’t see it.
The verse ends with a really great visual. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.” First it is telling us that everyone grows weary. It is not just those that have been around for a long time, even the youth grow weary. Actually, our youth in particular these days seem to be growing weary. None of us are exempt, and yet it says, those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. When we are weary and weak it is hard to hope. When we are weary it is usually because the enemy has wore us down and we are fresh out of hope. However, this verse is telling us that if we hope in the Lord, he will renew our strength. There it is again. There verse is repeating the Lord is our strength. Maybe this time will be the time that we truly hear it. Maybe today we will believe that the Lord does not grow weary and He doesn’t grow tired. Wouldn’t it be great if today is the day that we finally start turning to the Lord and asking him for that strength and power that he is just waiting to give us?
I heard these two phrases a few times over the last few days and they just came to mind again so I would like to share them with you. The first is the phrase, “more Lord more.” The Lord has so much more for you. We don’t want to ask for more sometimes because we don’t want to be greedy. We settle for little answers to our prayers because we don’t want to push our luck or we feel we should just be happy with what we get. The Lord wants us to ask for more. Yes, be grateful for what you receive and yet still ask for more. In the book “The Circle Maker” the author Mark Batterson talks about a man who was praying for rain as they hadn’t had rain in a very long time. This man drew a circle in the ground and told the Lord he would not leave that circle until the rain came. It finally started to sprinkle. Every started to rejoice and the man started to pray harder. He said that was not the rain he was praying for, He was praying for more rain, and it began to rain harder. He still said that was not the rain he was praying for. Finally it started to rains so hard that everyone had to run for cover. The Lord wants to do this in your life as well. Start saying, “Thank you Lord and more Lord more.” Be open to more, be willing to ask the Lord for more.
The other phrase I heard was in the Life in the Spirit Seminar video. David Mangan was talking about the gifts of the Holy Spirit. He was talking about how we should all be open to whatever gifts the Holy Spirit wants to give us, particularly the gift of speaking in tongues. This is one that people often don’t want as they find it weird. David was saying that he is open to any gifts the Lord is passing out and he is getting in line twice. Then he said, “It’s not that I am greedy, it’s that I am needy.” I love this because it is so true. We don’t have to feel as though we are greedy when we say “more Lord more.” We are needy, we all are. We can’t do anything without the Lord, and that makes us pretty needy. I just keep feeling as though the Holy Spirit really wants you to hear that the Lord has so much more for each and every one of you. Our prayers are too little, He is bigger than we give Him credit for. Stop playing little with your prayers. Step out in faith and ask for what you truly want, God has more for you. He does not grow weary or get tired. Keep asking, don’t limit yourself, Our God is a Big God who can do Big things. He is standing by waiting for you to trust that and for you to step out in faith and ask for the miracle you have been wanting but too afraid to ask for.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone listening to this episode today. Lord you are amazing. I love when you speak to me and you give me a specific message for everyone listening. Lord, help us to believe and truly accept that you don’t grow weary or tired and that you love when we come to you. Help us to turn to you for all we need Lord. Help us to look to you for our strength and power Lord. Help us to say “more Lord more” with the expectant faith that you want to give us more, that you have more to give. Lord, I know you were speaking to some people individually when you were saying we needed to step out in faith and ask for more. I pray that those individuals hear that message deep in their hearts and that you give them the boldness and trust they need to pray those big prayers. Help us all to pray those big prayers Lord. Give us the grace of a more expectant faith Lord. We believe, help our unbelief. Lord, I especially want to pray for those that are weary and need your strength. Help them Lord, give them more. We love you Lord, you are so amazing. We are so grateful that with all you give to us, you are telling us to ask for more. We will take all you have to offer Lord, not because we are greedy, but because we are needy. We ask all of this in accordance with your word and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to seeing you again on Monday. Have a blessed weekend!
Fear God, What Does That Mean?
Ecclesiastes 12:13-14 “ Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the duty of all mankind. For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil.”
What stood out to me the most is Fear God and keep his commandments. I was always confused with this before. I didn’t understand what Fear God meant. He is a loving God, why do we have to fear Him? I am not afraid of God, so does that mean I don’t fear Him? Then it was explained to me one day. Fear God doesn’t mean that you are afraid of Him. It does mean that you have a reverence for Him. It means that you have a deep respect for Him and all that He is capable of doing. It means that you stop and think twice before doing something that He has asked you not to do. You think twice not because you are scared of the consequences, although that may be part of it, but mostly it is because you don’t want to do anything to offend or hurt Him. You don’t want to fracture your relationship with Him.
In the Catholic Church, when we go to confession we end our confession with the Act of Contrition Prayer. It goes as follows: “My God, I am sorry for my sins with all my heart. In choosing to do wrong and failing to do what is good, I have sinned against You whom I should love above all things, I firmly intend, with Your help, to do penance, to sin no more, and to avoid whatever leads me to sin.” I really like this prayer because it helps me see why sin is so wrong. It is me choosing to do what is wrong and failing to do what is good. It also reminds me that I sinned agains my heavenly Father, whom I should love above all things. However, I obviously forgot that when I sinned. I was not showing God that I loved Him above all things when I choose to do the thing that I did.
For instance, maybe I watched TV instead of praying yesterday, so, which thing did I love more? Maybe I decided to buy a new shirt instead of giving my tithing to the Church this week. Did I love God or new clothes more? Maybe I didn’t even go to church because I wanted to do something else instead. Was I choosing God first, or something else? I like this prayer because it spells out what sin is and it helps me to own it. I say I would do anything for the Lord, just ask and I will do it. And yet, when it comes to things He asks everyone to do I sometimes struggle. I don’t always want to go to mass. Actually lately, the enemy has really been trying to convince me not to go. Which, by the way, is how I know it is so important to go. God is so great. He knows the enemy is making it seem like it is not important to go to mass, and so God is making sure that I am hearing from Father Mike on the Bible in a Year Podcast how important it really is and why it is so important that we worship the Lord in the way that He asked us to, not the way we want to.
Another reason I really like the Act of Contrition prayer is because it ends with “I firmly intend, with Your help, to do penance, to sin no more and to avoid whatever leads me to sin.” There is a lot in that one sentence. First, I love that it acknowledges that we can’t do it alone. We need the Lord to help us. We are a broken people and the only way we can resist sin is through the grace of God. This is a fact that we can’t get away from and the sooner we realize we need God’s help the sooner we can ask Him for it.
Next, it says that we intend to do penance. This is an important part of the repenting process. Even if you are not Catholic and so you do not go to a priest to repent, what are you going to do to make it up to the Lord. Yes, Jesus died on the cross for our sins, that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t make it up to the Lord when we sin against Him. As Catholics, we have a priest that hears out sins, forgives us on Jesus’ behalf and then gives us a penance. If you are not going to a priest then come up with your own penance. It doesn’t have to be anything drastic. What is something you can do to make it up to the Lord? For instance, can you spend a few extra minutes in prayer this week? Can you attend a daily mass to make up for the other mass you missed? I don’t know what it is that you are repenting for, but you do, and you can come up with a penance. If you don’t know, ask the Lord, He will be happy to tell you.
Finally, at the end it says, I intend to sin no more and to avoid whatever leads me to sin. Wow, that one can get right by us if we don’t pay attention to it, so I will say it again. I intend to avoid whatever leads me to sin. What does this mean? This means that I won’t tempt myself. If I know that I have a tendency to watch TV instead of doing my prayer time, then I will do my prayer time before I even turn the TV on so that I can avoid that which leads me to sin. If I know that I can’t resist a drink and when I drink I get drunk and do things I shouldn’t, then avoiding whatever leads me to sin would be not going to the bar, or not being around alcohol. If I know I tend to be a glutton when it comes to eating sweets and junk food then avoiding what leads me to sin would mean I don’t buy that stuff to have in the house. This last line means you stay away from things that lead you to sin. We all think that our will power is greater than it really is. However, even if we do have a great will power, why put ourselves in a position where we have to choose between God and anything else.
Before ending for the day I want to point out the last line of the verse above. It says, "For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil.” Whether you are Catholic or not, God will bring all that we do into judgement. It says every hidden thing. Sometimes we don’t want to confess something, or bring something to God because we are embarrassed and we don’t want to bring that thing into the light. God already knows about it. There is nothing that we can do that God doesn’t know about. We do not have to be ashamed of anything with the Lord. He is our loving Father and He is ready to welcome us back with open arms if we just confess it to Him and ask for His forgiveness. The one that wants you to keep your secrets hidden is the enemy. He knows that if he can convince you that God won’t forgive you, or that you shouldn’t tell anyone and just keep it hidden, then it will continue to eat you up inside. The enemy knows this and he loves this. You see, our secrets only have power when they are in the dark. As soon as you bring them into the light, they loose their power over us.
I feel strongly that some of you listening to this have some secrets or some things that you have hidden away. God wants you to know that it is ok to bring them to Him. He has already forgiven you, and when you bring them to Him and lay them at His feet then you can start to forgive yourself. He wants me to tell you that it is not your fault He knows that. He just wants you to know and believe that as well. I am not sure who that was for this morning, however, I felt god had that message for someone in particular today.
God loves each and every one of you listening today. If you have anything weighing on your conscious try to get to confession. If you are not Catholic, or don’t believe in going to a priest for confession, just take a few minutes and repent to the Lord for whatever is weighing on you. He is ready to forgive, He just wants you to say the words. Can you do that today?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we thank you for being so forgiving. We ask that if we have done something to hurt our relationship with you, you put it on our hearts to repent. Lord, we love you and we fear you. We don’t want to do anything to damage our relationship with you. Please give us the grace we need to sin no more and to even avoid the near occasion of sin. Lord, help us not put ourselves in a situation where we might be lead to sin. When we do sin, help us not to keep it hidden. Help us bring it into the light where the enemy can’t use it against us. We love you Lord, you are so amazing. Your wilingness to forgive is truly awesome. We are so grateful and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Welcome to Witness Wednesdays here on the Walk Boldly With Jesus Podcast. Each Wednesday I will have a guest give their witness of how God is working in their lives. Hearing how God is working in other people’s lives shows us how deeply He cares for each one of us individually. Listening to these experiences will help your faith grow. I am so blessed to be able to share these with you. Our first witness if from Peggy K. Today she is going to share with us how God has revealed His love to her throughout her adult life. She even shares a few miracles with us. I hope after you listen to this you can see some ways in which God has been working in your life as well. God loves you just as much as He loves Peggy. He will work miracles in our lives too, we just have to notice them.
His Love Endures Forever
Psalm 136 “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good. His love endures forever.
Give thanks to the God of gods. His love endures forever.
Give thanks to the Lord of lords: His love endures forever.
to him who alone does great wonders, His love endures forever.
who by his understanding made the heavens, his love endures forever.
who spread out the earth upon the waters, His love endures forever.
who made the great lights—His love endures forever. the sun to govern the day, His love endures forever. the moon and stars to govern the night; His love endures forever.
to him who struck down the firstborn of Egypt His love endures forever. and brought Israel out from among them His love endures forever.
with a mighty hand and outstretched arm; His love endures forever.
to him who divided the Red Sea[a] asunder His love endures forever. and brought Israel through the midst of it, His love endures forever. but swept Pharaoh and his army into the Red Sea; His love endures forever.
to him who led his people through the wilderness; His love endures forever.
to him who struck down great kings, His love endures forever. and killed mighty kings—His love endures forever. Sihon king of the Amorites His love endures forever. and Og king of Bashan—His love endures forever. and gave their land as an inheritance, His love endures forever. an inheritance to his servant Israel. His love endures forever.
He remembered us in our low estate His love endures forever.
and freed us from our enemies. His love endures forever. He gives food to every creature. His love endures forever.
Give thanks to the God of heaven. His love endures forever.
I know this verse is a lot longer than I usually do. I usually pick a verse or two and this is all 26 verses of this Psalm. Psalm 136:6 “who spread out the earth upon the waters, His love endures forever” was the verse that lead me to this Psalm in the first place. I decided to read the whole Psalm as I felt perhaps this was a small part of something bigger. When I read the whole thing I instantly felt like I should share the whole thing. Since the phrase “His love endures forever” is repeated throughout the whole Psalm, I thought I would just take that out to make it shorter and just repeat it after each section. However, when I had that thought I immediately got the sense God wanted me to leave it in there. I felt He was saying to me that we need to have that reminder over and over again today.
This Psalm today has two purposes. First and foremost to remind you over and over again so many times that there is no way you can forget that God’s love endures forever. Forever is a very long time. It means it never goes away. God’s love lasts forever, it doesn’t say it lasts a lifetime, it says forever. It doesn’t say that His love lasts until you do something He doesn’t like, it says forever. It doesn’t say that it endures until you get sick or are in a seemingly impossible situation and then it goes away. It says it endures forever. It also doesn’t say that His love endures forever as long as you don’t walk away, as long as you do all the things you are supposed to do, or as long as you get it right all the time. No, it says His love endures forever and that’s it. There are no conditions placed on it, there is no requirement for you, God has loved you from the beginning of time and He will continue to love you forever, regardless of circumstances. That is pretty amazing when you really think about it. Who else can you say that about? Who else’s love will endure forever, regardless of your actions and regardless of time?
The second purpose of this psalm today is to remind us of some the remarkable things God has done for us over the years. The sense I am getting this morning is that some of you listening to this episode may be struggling with feeling God’s Love right now. Maybe you are sick, and you feel as though He is not answering your prayers. Maybe you are feeling stuck in a family situation that seems impossible and feel as though He is not hearing your prayers. Maybe nothing in particular is wrong, you just don’t really feel a sense that God is with you right now. Whatever you particular circumstance is God wants you to know that He is speaking directly to you to day. He hears you, He is answering your prayers, He loves you and most importantly, He is right there with you through it all. This Psalm is for you. This is your heavenly Father letting you know that His love endures forever and just as he did all these things for His people in the past He will do just as much for you. He is moving mountains in your life, He is preparing you for amazing things, you just can’t see it yet. Hang in there, your miracle is coming!!
“Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good. Give thanks to the God of gods. Give thanks to the Lord of lords: to him who alone does great wonders, who by his understanding made the heavens, who spread out the earth upon the waters, who made the great lights— the sun to govern the day, the moon and stars to govern the night;” Can you imagine how powerful God must be to create the whole universe. He made the heavens, the earth, the sun, the moon and the stars, just for us. Every time you look at the sun, the moon, or the stars, you can think of how much God loves you. Hopefully, after hearing this verse, when you look at them, it will be a reminder to you that His love endures forever. When you can’t feel God’s love or His Presence in your life, look to the sun, moon, or stars and remember His promise that His love endures forever.
“To him who struck down the firstborn of Egypt and brought Israel out from among them with a mighty hand and outstretched arm; to him who divided the Red Sea asunder and brought Israel through the midst of it, but swept Pharaoh and his army into the Red Sea; to him who led his people through the wilderness;” Imagine if God can do all of this for His people, what He will do for you. God did not just strike down the firstborn of Egypt, first He gave the Pharoh multiple chances to let the Lord’s people go. He also told His people what to do so that their first born children would not be lost. He divided the Red Sea for His people. They felt lost, they could not see a way out with the Red Sea on one side and an army closing in on the other. I am sure many of them felt as if God had led them to their death. Yet, God made a way where there wasn’t one. He did not just lead them to freedom, He also destroyed their enemies, the army that was pursuing them. God will do the same for you! He will make a way where you don’t see one. He will make a way back from this illness, out of the family situation, out of the work situation and out of any other situation you find yourself in, no matter how impossible it seems. He is the Waymaker. He always finds a way.
“To him who struck down great kings, and killed mighty kings—Sihon king of the Amorites and Og king of Bashan—and gave their land as an inheritance, an inheritance to his servant Israel.” The Lord gave His people an inheritance. The people entering these fights did not always think the would be victorious. Sometimes, many times, over the years, God’s people were outnumbered. They would go into battle knowing that they were not only out numbered, but also had less weapons, less resources, less everything. They definitely wouldn’t have been favored to win if people were betting based on appearances. However, what they did have was the favor of God. That is all they needed. No matter how hopeless your situation seems, God has the power to fix it, to save you from it, and to bring you out of it. We just have to keep relying on Him and waiting for His time, now our time. He has struck down kings, He can surely take care of what is in your way. God’s got you! He will save you.
“He remembered us in our low estate and freed us from our enemies. He gives food to every creature. Give thanks to the God of heaven.” God remembers you always, not just when everything is going great and you are high on life. He remembers you when you are at your lowest as well. He has freed His people from so many enemies, and He will free you too. If there is one thing we have learned from reviewing all these things the Lord has done for us it is that nothing is too great for Him. There is no enemy too powerful, no situation too complicated for the Lord our God. The verse ends with “Give thanks to the God of heaven.” I think you will be surprised how far the smallest amount of gratitude will get you. The Lord has done so many incredible things and He really loves it when we acknowledge that. Who doesn’t like to be appreciated, right? We owe everything to the Lord. We have no idea how many things He has saved us from throughout each day and then when you add in all the things He has done for us. We could never repay Him, and He is not asking us to. However, we can thank Him. We can let Him know how grateful we are. If you are wanting to see God more at work in your lives, I challenge you to take 5 minutes or less our of your day and intentionally thank the Lord of all you have seen Him do in your life that day. I bet, if you do this, you will begin to see more and more. I am not sure if God is actually doing more and more when we intentionally thank Him, or if He is doing the same, but we are just noticing more. Either way, you will see the Lord more at work in your life when you begin to be grateful for each thing you notice. I want to leave you with the phrase we have heard most today, “His Love endures forever.”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, you are amazing and we are so grateful for all the things you have done for your people throughout the ages. We are so grateful that you love us so much. Lord, thank you for giving us a love that endures forever. Thank you for taking care of our enemies and protecting us from all things. Thank you for being more powerful than everything else. Thank you for making a way when we can’t see one. We are so grateful your ways are higher than our ways and your thoughts higher than our thoughts. We would be lost with out you Lord. Father, help us to be more grateful for all that you do. Help us to take time out of our days to intentionally try to see you at work in our lives. We love you so much Lord, help us to feel your love. You are truly awe inspiring and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I hope you will join me tomorrow for our first ever, Witness Wednesday. Peggy will be sharing how she has witnessed God’s love in her life. It is a truly amazing story and you won’t want to miss it! I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
The Power of God Lives Inside You
John 14:1 “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me.”
Man, we would be rich if we had a $1.00 ever time God told us not to let our hearts be troubled, to not be anxious, or not to worry. So, why is that so dang hard for us to do? Why is it so hard for us not to worry? It seems we are in a constant state of worry these days. We worry about the state of the economy, we worry about the government, we worry about COVID, we worry about what is going on in other countries. We can’t seem to help ourselves from worrying. I think this is exactly what the enemy wants. He wants us to think of all the ways that things could go wrong. I wonder what our days would feel like if we turned the tables on all this worry? I wonder how we would feel if instead of spending all this time worrying about what might go wrong, we focused our attention on what could go right?
Now, I am not talking about being a Polly Anna or a Ms. Suzy Sunshine and always just looking at the positive things in life. I am not living in a fantasy world where everything just always works out and everyone is always happy. I wish I lived in that world. I was just telling my friend on the phone last night that I wish we lived in a world where disease wasn’t a thing that existed and everybody was nice. No one invaded any one, we just all got along. I know that is not possible this side of heaven and I am not suggesting it is. What I am suggesting is that we take control of our thoughts. This is something else the enemy doesn’t want you to know, but you can be in control of your thoughts. I know it doesn’t feel like it sometimes, but you can. It isn’t always easy, and it may take a lot of work, but isn’t it worth it if you didn’t feel anxious or worried all the time. We feel anxious and worried when we are not living in the present. There is no anxiety in the present moment, everything just is as it is.
However, if we start thinking about things that have happened in the past, or things that may happen in the future, this is where we can get anxious and worried. Eighty-five percent of the things we worry about never happen. Eighty-five percent! I know this number sounds high, but if you sit and really think about the things you worry about, how many of them actually happened? Not many right? Why is this? Why are we so worried and tuned into all the things that may go wrong? I don’t know the answer to that. If I had to guess I would say it is because the media is reminding us of all that may happen. They like to throw out their speculations and their ideas because if you are worried about what might happen then you will be tuning into their show to see if it is happening. We also tend to be a people who like to guess at the outcome of an even. Have you ever sat next to someone watching a TV show and they are constantly guess what is going to happen next in the show? We do this in real life too. We want to be the one to know what will happen next.
The problem with this is that stress and worry are not good for you, mentally or physically. Stress can cause some of these physical symptoms: a faster heartbeat, fatigue, headaches, inability to concentrate, irritability, nervous energy, rapid breathing or shortness of breath, and many others. If you have chronic stress you can suffer from: suppression of the immune system, digestive disorders, muscle tension, short-term memory loss, premature coronary artery disease or heart attacks as well. So often I hear people say that they can’t help it that they worry, it is just who they are. I know I say this a lot, but that is what the enemy wants you to think. He wants you to think that there is nothing you can do about this worrying. That you have to feel like this all the time. It is part of you just as is your eye color or your age. This is not true. You do not have to worry or be anxious all the time. You can change if you want to.
When it comes to thinking about what might happen in the future I ask myself two questions. First, can I change the outcome? For instance, if I am worried about my children growing up to be responsible adults I ask myself, “Can I do anything to change this outcome?” In this circumstance, I would say yes. If I work on teaching them to be responsible children, then I could have an affect on the outcome. In this case, instead of focusing on my thoughts of worry, I focus on my actions that I can do to help achieve the outcome that I want. I still may wonder if they will grow up to be responsible adults, but I don’t worry about it because I know I am already doing all I can to affect that outcome. The rest is up to them and to God. However, what if there isn’t anything I can do to affect the outcome. For instance, many are worried about where this country is headed and what is the future of this country. I would ask myself, is there anything I can do to change the outcome of this event? There is not much I can do at the moment. I can make sure to do my part when it comes to voting or to being environmentally conscientious but other than that, there is not much I can do. If this is the case, I do not spend a lot of energy thinking about things that I can’t change. I pray about them, I turn the over to God and then I focus my energy and my thoughts on those things that are in my control.
This verse says, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me.” If we believe in God and we believe in Jesus, then we know they are looking out for us. We don’t have to know everything that will happen in the future, God will take care of those details as He always does. If we don’t want to worry all the time, we have to protect our thoughts. It’s not that we can’t ever worry about something, we will all have things that we worry about. The key is to recognize those thoughts and then turn them over to the Lord, In 2 Corinthians 10:5 it says, “…and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” We have this power! We are children of God. When we notice our thoughts are starting to make us anxious we can capture them and turn them over to the Lord. Just say something to yourself like, “Jesus I capture this thought and I turn it over to you. Jesus I trust in you.” Then tell yourself that you have handed it over and you are not going to think about it anymore and direct your thoughts elsewhere. I know even though this sounds simple, it is not easy. However, I promise you, if you give it a try, it will get easier and easier. If nothing fruitful is coming form your worry, then release it. God doesn’t want that for you. Think of who benefits from you feeling worried, anxious, scared, depressed, and hopeless? It is not the Lord. In 2 Timothy 1:7 it says, “For God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of self-control.” God did not give us this spirit of fear, but He did give us a spirit of power and love and self-control. Why are we choosing the spirit of fear that is from the enemy instead of the spirit that the Lord Himself gave us? The Lord is constantly telling us not to be anxious and worried, when are we finally going to listen? When are we finally going to say, “Not today Satan,” and fight back against his spirit of fear? You have the power of God inside you. Romans 8:11 says, “The Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from the dead, lives in you.” When will we decide to use this power? When will we decide we want to be free once and for all from this spirit of fear? I think today seems like a good day, how about you?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those who are listing to this episode. Lord, help us to protect our thought and turn over to you any that are making us anxious and nervous. We want to follow your instructions Lord, to not let our hearts be troubled we need your help. Lord, there is a lot that we could be nervous about in this world, however, we know you are our Lord and Savior. Help us to trust in that and to not worry about the things of this world. Help us to stay in the present moment. There is no worry or anxiety there. Help us to not stay in the past or the present too long. We love you Lord, you are so amazing. We know you are in control and we don’t want to worry all the time. Help us to be grateful for all you do for us and to see that you will keep doing it. You are so amazing and we know this, so help us remember this when we start to worry. We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Remember to listen this Wednesday for our first ever “Witness Wednesday.” You are going to love the story of how Peggy has witnessed God’s love throughout her adult life and the amazing things He did for her. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
God Loves and Longs For You, Yes You!
Philippians 4:1 “ Therefore, my brothers and sisters, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, my beloved.”
Did you know that the Lord longs for you? Over the years I have hear a lot of talk about how the Lord desires to have an intimate relationship with you. Have you ever heard this? Did you understand what they meant whey they said it? At first, I had no idea. How do you have an intimate relationship with someone that you can’t talk to? Well, you can talk to Him, but He doesn’t talk back. Isn’t that one sided? How do you get to know someone that doesn’t talk back to you? How do you have an intimate relationship with someone you barely know? These are all the thoughts that went through my head. Now that I have grown in my faith I can see how I was so wrong.
Joining the Charismatic Renewal really helped me see that God does talk to us, we just don’t usually sit and listen for it. We don’t expect Him to talk to us so we don’t give Him the quite time to just sit and listen. We are all pretty good at asking God for things, especially if we are in an urgent or desperate situation. However, if you sit and just BE with God, He will talk with you. Probably not in an audible voice, like you and I could talk. More of thoughts in your heard, or some people get visions. The reason it took me joining the Charismatic Renewal to learn this is because I got to see this in action. Most of us learn better with examples. You can tell me how to cook a turkey all day long, but until you show me, and I get to try it on my own, I won’t remember. The same is true with hearing the Word of God.
When I would go to these prayer group meetings, every week, there would be words of prophesy. There would be people that could hear what the Lord wanted to tell us and they would tell us what they heard. Unfortunately, often times seeing is believing. When you see people every single week hearing the word of God, you start to believe that if they can hear it, you can too! Also, I took a course to become a spiritual coach from the Life Coach Institute. The director Fern Gorin taught us an exercise where you write a letter to God, and then you ask the Lord to speak through your pen and you write a letter back to yourself. I have integrated this practice into my prayer journaling and it has been amazing. Learning to listen to the Lord’s voice takes practice and it takes trust. It is easy to second guess yourself and wondering if you are just making up these things. This is when it is important to remember that God has told us multiple times in the Bible that if we ask He will answer. We need to trust that if we asked He is answering.
The other thing I had thought was how can you have an intimate relationship with someone that you don’t really know that well. I had this thought before I began reading scripture. If you read scripture, you will get to know God very well. When you read the Bible you learn all about who God is, the things He has done in the past, and everything you could want to know about Him. You get to know the Lord more intimately than you know most other people. You get to see how consistent He has been over thousands of years. You can see how He reacted in various situations and with various people. You get to see what makes Him, angry, happy, sad, all the different emotions. How many other people in your life can you say that you know that well?
The reason I knew this was the verse for today was because of a phone call I had yesterday. The prayer group I belong to has been around for 50 years. That is a long time. There was an article in Pentecost Today, a publication about all things Charismatic, about our group celebrating the 50th anniversary. A man from Texas called to ask some questions as that is a long time for a group to still be meeting. Among the many questions he asked, one was about having an intimate relationship with the Lord. I thought about how I have grown in that area and I attribute my growth to going to the Charismatic Prayer groups. I knew just from reading the scripture and doing Bible studies, along with conferences, that Jesus loves me. I knew that God is Love. That is the best way that I could describe God. God is love. Sometimes we get all caught up in the religion of it all, but at the end of the day, God is love. I feel that with my whole being.
However, it wasn’t until I started attending this Charismatic Prayer Group that I realized just how much God loves us. I know many of you that are listening do not attend Charismatic Prayer groups so I want to explain briefly what I am talking about. Imagine each week you go and sit with about 15-20 men and woman who spend 30-40 minutes praising and worshiping the Lord. Then they spend about 15 minutes just sitting and listening to the Lord. They not only listen, but they are obedient to share any words of prophesy that He gives them. If you sat in a room each week and every week the Lord showed up to talk with you, how could you not see how much He loves you? An intimate relationship just forms almost on its own, after hearing what He has to say each week.
The reason I wanted to share this verse with you today is because I don’t know if many of you realize that the Lord not only loves you, He longs for you. It says so, right here in the Bible. Here is an example of the a word that we heard at one of our prayer groups, “Your praises reach the throne of the father, who pours out his love on you. Be at peace my loved ones. I am well pleased with your praises. I long to commune with you. Come more often to me and speak your heart. I am always here longing and waiting and longing to hear from you.” Imagine hearing things like this each week from our heavenly Father. These words are not just for those of us in the group. The Lord longs to hear from each one of us. He is longing and waiting for you. Try to spend some time this week, even just five minutes a day listening to what the Lord has to say. If you give him the time, He will talk with you.
Another example of how much the Lord loves us as a whole, but then also individually is something that happened yesterday at prayer group. We have a member who has been sick with COVID since December 5th. She is still having trouble breathing, she has trouble sleeping, she is anxious and just all around tired from three months of all of this. During our time to listen yesterday, the very last thing the Lord gave someone was a scripture verse. Job 11:18 says, “Having hope will give you courage. You will be protected and will rest in safety.” Do you see how He gives personal messages out of love. Our friend is having so much trouble breathing and the Lord is telling her, “You will be protected and will rest in safety.” She really needed to hear this and He knew that. Now before she sleeps she can turn to Job 11:18 and find comfort.
Another example someone in our prayer group had yesterday. She has macular degeneration and so if something falls on the floor she can’t find it. She dropped the tiny backing to an earring the other day. She prayed to her guardian angel to help her find it and the next step she took she stepped on it. God is so good! He knows exactly what we need, when we need it!! God loves you, He longs for you. Spend some time getting to know Him. Whether it is just sitting with Him, or whether it is listening to scripture and learning more about Him. He longs for us to grow closer and closer to Him. Let us not keep Him waiting. Let’s spend time with Him today!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this podcast today. Lord, you are amazing and we love you. The fact that you long for us, is hard for us to comprehend sometimes. You are so wonderful and we are a broken people and yet you long to commune with us. You long to spend time with us and Lord we ask that you help us to make that a priority. We ask that you help take away any distractions and help us put our focus where it belongs, which is on you Lord. Help us grow closer and closer to you and help us give you time where we just sit and listen to what you have to say. We love you Lord, and we are so grateful for everything about you. Lord we also ask that you be with all those that are fighting in Europe right now. Lord, we ask that you protect all the innocent and give them whatever they need to live through this awful situation. We ask that you place a bubble of protection around them. Lord, we know that you are the God of the Impossible and that you can make a way even when we don’t see one. We are asking for you to end this conflict quickly and without any more casualties. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen
Thank you for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you on Monday. Have a blessed weekend!
God Is In Control
Proverbs 3:5-6 "Lean on, trust in, and be confident in the Lord with all your heart and mind and do not rely on your own insight or understanding. In all your ways know, recognize, and acknowledge Him, and He will direct and make straight and plain your paths."
I thought this was really fitting for something that I wanted to share with you today. I was sent a prayer of sorts on Facebook last week and it has such a good message that I really wanted to share it with all of you. Its an example of how something in our everyday life can help us understand God or something he has done so much more than we normally. I feel as though God uses our every day life sometimes to show us what he is doing or what he is thinking. For instance, if we are struggling with understanding how He can forgive us for something and then our child does something and we understand a little better how, as our father, He could forgive us as we would forgive our children. This is one of those times when God used this woman’s everyday life to help her understand Him a little better. The person who wrote this is Mary Katherine Backstrom. (CLICK HERE for Facebook page) She is a virtual blogger, speaker, and best selling author. I will put a link in the show notes to her facebook page because she has a lot of things like this on her page.
Hey, God.
Sorry it’s been a minute. But something happened today, and for the first time in a long time, I felt like I understood Your heart a little better. You probably already know why I’m talking, because well...You are God. But I guess the whole point of prayer is to talk, so I’m gonna tell You what happened. Today, I was at a traffic light staring at Holland, who was screaming in her car seat because a friend gave her a paper clip during preschool and she snuck it home in her clothes, and then accidentally dropped it into the abyss that is my car’s floorboard. Then, despite her desperate pleas, I wouldn’t pull over so she could unbuckle and climb around the car looking for said paper clip. That made her BIG mad.We are talking wailing and crying and gnashing of teeth mad. sigh Moving on.
Now, if she had known that I couldn’t pull over because I was hurrying to take her somewhere special before soccer practice, maybe she wouldn’t have minded. But she was screaming too loudly about her paper clip for me to explain. “You are an EVIL mommy! A wicked step mother! I wish I had a better mommy!” Un-freaking-believable, right? I gave birth to that little turdlet and she had the audacity to disown me over a paper clip. So, I let her mourn and scream. There was no reasoning with her, anyways. She wanted what she wanted.
To Holland, that paper clip was the most valuable thing she’d ever owned. But I couldn’t stop thinking: If only she knew what was coming. If only she knew why I wouldn’t pull over. If only she knew that I wanted to take her out for ice cream—just the two of us—maybe she would have gotten excited. Maybe she would have forgotten about that stupid paper clip. I had something in store for her that was so much better than a milligram of bent wire. But that bent wire was her heart’s desire. She could see nothing else.
I was contemplating this to myself and I realized, holy cow, God. I’m no better than my toddler.
I am essentially riding around in life’s car seat, clutching tight to my precious paper clips, and raging at you when one falls out of my hands. My writing job changes, but I liked my job. A speaking gig falls between my fingers, but it’s the one I was most excited about. My husband changes as a human, but I was comfortable with who he was. “My paper clips, God! Pull over and let me collect them! PULL OVER GOD WAAAAAAAH!”
All the while you are watching my tears from the front seat, waiting for the wailing to stop so you can tell me MY DAUGHTER. Let go of that trinket. Stop your crying. I have something better just up ahead. So, God. I just want you to know that, in this one small way, my Mama heart understood a little more about your Daddy heart today.
To be honest, I don’t want to lose any of the things I hold unto so tightly. My youth, my writing career, my children being little, my marriage being comfortable. But, if change must happen, I pray you comfort my heart and remind me that Your plans are for my good.
And remind me that for goodness sake, if I can just stop wailing over lost paper clips for one stinking minute, You’ve been trying to take me out for ice cream. I think this was a prayer. Perhaps a revelation. Maybe more of a brain dump. Either way, I feel a little closer to you tonight, God.And I think that deserves an “amen”.
This touched me so much because it is something we all do. We all want what we want and we don’t understand when we can’t have it. We can’t see that God has something better in store because we are too caught up in mourning the loss of the thing we didn’t get or the thing we lost. Jeremiah 29:11 says, “ For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Most of us know this, we believe this, and yet, when it comes time to trust in this, it is really hard. We like things comfortable, we like things to stay the same. When we are praying we may say that we want this job if it is according to God’s will and yet we really mean we really want the job because we want it. We want to want what God wants, and yet we don’t want to give up on what we want. We have all heard the phrase when one door closes another one opens. But, what do we do while we wait for that other door to open? What if it doesn’t open for a few months or a year. We have a sister Katie that was a member here and moved away. She has been looking for a job for a very long time and I don’t know if she has found one yet or not. How do we continue to trust that the Lord has amazing things planned for us when we have been waiting so long?
There is an article that I will put a link to in the show notes titled When God’s Timing is Taking Too Long by Joyce Meyers. (CLICK HERE for article) This articles talks about how God uses this waiting period to stretch our faith in Him and to bring about change and growth in our lives. Joyce outlines 4 ways to make this waiting time easier. First, she talks about Waiting with Patience. You will be waiting anyway, so do you want to be miserable while you wait, or do you want to try and enjoy the wait. Patience is a virtue and it is also a fruit of the Spirit. It is developed under trial, so we can’t avoid difficult circumstances if we want to grow in patience. This is why people say not to pray for more patience, because as soon as you do you will find yourself stuck in a situation that helps your develop more patience, like sitting in traffic.
The second thing is to Accept God’s Timing. This is not easy, but it is necessary. Joyce states that although it is frustrating, not knowing God’s time might be the thing that keeps us in the game. If we knew how long it would take, we might give up. Do you think the Israelites would have left Egypt if they knew they were going to wander in the desert for 40 years? Joyce said, “We know that God's plan for our lives is good, and when we entrust ourselves to Him, we can experience total peace and happiness.” The third things she talks about is Learning to Rely on God. Proverbs 16:9 says, “The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps” and Proverbs 20:24 says “Man's steps are ordered by the Lord. How then can a man understand his way?” We don’t always understand the way that God is leading us. It doesn’t always make sense to us and if we try to understand we can struggle and get confused and frustrated. A better way is described in Proverbs 3:5-6, “Lean on, trust in, and be confident in the Lord with all your heart and mind and do not rely on your own insight or understanding. In all your ways know, recognize, and acknowledge Him, and He will direct and make straight and plain your paths.” We try to figure everything out ourselves. Sometime, often times, we need to just lean in and trust that God has got this. He has always taken care of us in the past and He will continue to do so.
The last thing that Joyce talks about is From Seedtime to Harvest Time. Ecclesiastes 3:1 tells us: To everything there is a season, and a time for every matter or purpose under heaven. We will not all be in the same season at the same time. We don’t need to be jealous if we see someone else enjoying harvest while we are still planting. We all go through these different seasons. They went through a season of planting before their harvest and you will go through a season of harvest too. There was a lot more detail in this article so I hope you will take some time to read the whole article. God is in control, we don’t have to understand it all, we just need to learn to trust and to have patience while we wait. Our lives are like a mystery unfolding before our very eyes. Who doesn’t like a mystery?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you and we know that you want what is best for us. Help us to be patient and joyfully wait for your timing. Help us to loosen our grip on the things we want and accept when you have something better planned for us. Lord, help us to see that if you are closing one door, you are opening a better door. Help us seek out growth in our relationship with you Lord. Help us to not avoid difficult situations but instead enter into them knowing you are with us and you are leading us to growth. We are so grateful for all you do for us. We love you Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I wanted to let you know about a change I am making to this podcast starting next week. At the beginning of March I am going to start having “Witness Wednesdays.” We have all experienced God working in our lives. We need to talk about those experiences more. We need to share them with others. These miracles can be used for the Glory of God, but only if we share them. We all have a story. Actually, we all probably have a lot of stories. I am helping to lead a Life in the Spirit Seminar and each week someone gives a witness of how God has worked in their lives. Seeing these each week has helped me realize that we all need to be talking about when we have witnessed God in our lives. So, each Wednesday, instead of a regular episode, the episode will be about someone’s witness statement about how God is working in their lives. If you would like to give me your witness, I would love to record it. You can email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow! Have a blessed day!
God Is At Work In You
Philippians 2:13-16 “For it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”
This is an excellent thing to think about and to remember. It is God who is at work in us, enabling us to both will and to work for His good pleasure God is the reason we are able to do all things. Sometimes we fall short of our expectations for ourselves. Actually often times we fall short of our expectations for ourselves. When it comes to the Lord, we set high expectations for ourselves. We want to serve Him, please Him, trust Him. We want to do all things for Him and we want to do them perfectly. He is our Father, or course we want to please Him. This isn’t a bad thing. It is good that we are striving to do things correctly, the way He wants us to. It is good if we are striving for Holiness. He wants us to strive for this and it makes Him happy when we are trying to live the way He asked us to. All these things are good things.
Where I think we get it wrong is when we think that we have to be perfect. When we think that God is looking for perfection and that we are letting Him down if we do anything less than our best. I don’t think that we fall short of the Lord’s expectations. He knows us better than we know ourselves. He knew us completely before we were even born. He knows what we have been through over the years. He knows what we have done over the years. He knows everything about it. He knows what we are capable of giving and what we just can’t give Him right now. He knows where we are at emotionally and what is in our heart. You know how you have that one friend? The one that has been there for you through it all. The one that has seen you at your best and at your worst. The one that loves you not in spite of it all, but because of it all. Do you have a friend like that? If you had to pick one person that knew you better than anyone else, who would it be. Know think about how well that person knows you. God knows you better than even that friend. God knows you more intimately than you can even imagine. He has literally been there every second of you life. He has never left your side. Even when you tried to walk away, he stayed with you. Even when you said you wanted to be left alone, he was there with you.
Sometimes we have unrealistic expectations for ourselves and even for those we love sometimes. We expect people to be a certain way and to do certain things and then when they don’t we are disappointed in them. This is a normal human experience. We think because we are disappointed with ourselves, then God must be disappointed with us also. I don’t know if this is true. The definition of disappointment is sadness or displeasure caused by the nonfulfillment of one's hopes or expectations. I think if God knows us and He knows where we are at, then I don’t think He sets unrealistic expectations for us. I think He only expects from us what we are capable of giving Him. He may get angry sometimes when we don’t live as He has asked us to live, but I think he expects that from us, because He knows us and He knows human nature. We are only disappointed when people do things that we didn’t think they would do.
How does knowing this help us? When I remember this, it releases the pressure to be perfect. It allows me to make mistakes and know that God is merciful and that He is not disappointed in me. Disappointed is such a loaded word. I don’t know if always was, or it this is a new. However, if someone says they are disappointed with you, it hurts more than other things. For instance, no one wants to hear their parent say, “I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed.” That is the worst, we would rather they be made at us. I don’t know why this is, I just know it’s true. We don’t want to let anyone down, especially God.
In the verse above it says that God is at work in us. Did you know this? We have all heard that God is always with us, He never leaves us, but did you know that He was at work in you? Did you know that He is enabling you to will and to work for his good pleasure? This means He is the reason that you want to please Him. He makes it possible for you to want to please Him. He empowers you to work for His good.
If you feel like you are not doing enough for the Lord, ask Him to help you do more. If you feel as though you don’t desire Him enough, ask Him for more. If you feel you are falling short in any way, ask the Lord for more. The Lord gives us all we need to do what He wants us to do. We might feel as though we will let him down because we don’t have what it takes to do what He is asking us to do. Let me reassure you, if He is asking you to do it, the He has given you all you need to do it. He would’t ask you to do something without equipping you for the call.
The other day, my mentor, felt God was calling her to talk about a very sensitive subject on her podcast. She felt a calling to talk about suicide and how we need to take that option off the table. She did not feel equipped to talk about that. She is not a counselor, she is not a doctor or a psychologist, she has not formal training in that area. And yet, God was calling her. She resisted for days, because that is what we do when we don’t feel qualified. We pretend we don’t hear the Lord, or we tell Him we can’t possibly do it. We tell Him He has the wrong person. Imagine that, telling God He has the wrong person, like we know better than he does. And yet we have all done it. Finally my mentor did the episode that God asked her to do. It was great and it was much needed as so many of our young people are taking their lives these days. God gave her the words she needed to get His message out to all of her listeners. He always gives us what we need. We just need to step forward with faith that He has given us what we need. The Lord is working in you. What are you holding back from doing because you don’t feel equipped? Where in your life can you step out in faith trusting that if He called you He will equip you?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those that are listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you so much and we are so grateful for all that you do for us. We are grateful that you are at work in us and that you equip us for all that you call us to do. Lord, we apologize for all the times that we have said no when you have called us. We were scared and we ask that you give us a holy boldness so that we are never scared again. Lord, we ask that you help us to step out in faith and trust that if you call us then you have equipped us. Lord, thank you for loving us so well. Thank you for enabling us to will and to work for your good pleasure. You are amazing and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I wanted to let you know about a change I am making to this podcast starting next week. At the beginning of March I am going to start having “Witness Wednesdays.” We have all experienced God working in our lives. We need to talk about those experiences more. We need to share them with others. These miracles can be used for the Glory of God, but only if we share them. We all have a story. Actually, we all probably have a lot of stories. I am helping to lead a Life in the Spirit Seminar and each week someone gives a witness of how God has worked in their lives. Seeing these each week has helped me realize that we all need to be talking about when we have witnessed God in our lives. So, each Wednesday, instead of a regular episode, the episode will be about someone’s witness statement about how God is working in their lives. If you would like to give me your witness, I would love to record it. You can email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow! Have a blessed day!
Let’s Judge & Condemn Less and Forgive More
Luke 6:37 “Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven;”
This verse was from the Gospel reading at church Sunday. As soon as I heard it I knew I wanted to use if for an episode. I feel these are three things that come so easily to human nature. We often find ourselves judging, condemning and being unforgiving. There almost seems to be an epidemic of that these days. Everyone lives such public lives, there is little that people keep private. Because people are living their lives so publicly it seems we have decided that if they are going to put it out there for all to see, then they can’t get upset when they are judged or condemned for it. We have an attitude that if they don’t want to be criticized then they shouldn’t put it out there. I understand this thinking and I am sure I have even said it in the past. However, today what is on my heart is, What about our responsibility to not judge or condemn? What about our responsibility to forgive?
I often think about going to Heaven. Not in the way where I want to get there sometime soon, but I do think about what I need to do to get there and what it will be like when I get there. I have a lot of goals in life and my number one goal is to be a saint. This is probably not something a lot of people think about. I was at a conference once and the speaker asked how many people in the audience wanted to be a saint and only 2 people raised their hands. It is not something we think about because I think most people think that it is not something they can do. However, saints are not perfect people. You don’t have to be perfect to be a saint. Saints are people that have dedicated their lives to loving God and doing their best to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit. Do they fall short at time, absolutely. However, they never stop trying. They know that they can’t do it on their own. Saints are people who are humble enough to know that they can do nothing without the Lord. They are humble enough to know that in their human frailty they are weak. However, with God they can do anything.
I don’t think we give enough thought to what happens after this life. If we are talking in terms of eternity, this life is pretty short. Do we really want to trade eternal happiness in the next world for moments of fleeting happiness in this one? Or maybe its not fleeting moments of happiness, maybe we feel extremely happy and fulfilled right now in this life, and yet we are not living according to God’s commandments and what He says is right and wrong. Is it worth spending eternity separated from the Lord? Lately, the Holy Spirit keeps bringing me back to Matthew 7:13-14, “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it.” The gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction. Has your life been a little to easy lately? Have you been choosing easy because, well, it’s easy? Don’t you see that the easy way is leading to destruction? It may be easy, but are you getting the outcomes you want? What is the fruit you are receiving from taking this easy way?
Jesus is telling us in the Bible that the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life and few find it. I think we can often reassure ourselves that something we are doing isn’t so bad because if it were, there wouldn’t be so many other people doing it. This is the opposite of what Jesus is telling us. We have so much anxiety these days because we want to fit in, we want to be like everyone else, we are worried about what people might think of us. And yet, God is telling us that we don’t want to be like everyone else. He is telling us that following the crowd is not going to lead us to life, it leads to destruction. Jesus is telling us that the road to life is a difficult one. It is full of hard choices and unpopular decisions. Take a moment and consider how you are living. Are you taking the easy road or the hard one? I know for me, it is not just one or the other. Sometimes I take the hard road, but then I get tired and weak and start taking the easy one. I know this about myself and so I bring this to God and ask Him to help me say on the hard road, I ask the Holy Spirit to convict me when I am taking the easy road. And yet, I still find myself on the easy road sometimes, more often than I would like if I am being completely honest. If this is you too, that’s ok, God doesn’t expect us to be perfect. He just wants us to keep trying over and over again to get it right. He also wants us to turn to him when we get it wrong. He wants us to apologize and then move forward. He will help us find the narrow gate if we ask Him.
God is giving us clues as to how to find the narrow gate all throughout the Bible. Actually, it is not even clues, He gives us very clear instructions if we are willing to hear them. Today he is saying, “Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven;” I think verses like this are so powerful because they are a reminder to us that our actions do matter. God does care if we judge others. The verse doesn’t say, “don’t judge others, unless they put their information on facebook for all to see, and then it is ok to judge them.” It says, don’t judge others, and you will not be judged. It says the same about condemning and being unforgiving. There is not context where it says it is ok to do these things. I wonder if we would do these things less if we remembered this verse? What if we put this verse up somewhere where we saw it often? Would we do these things less if we remembered that if we do them to others God will do them to us?
I know learning that God will forgive me in the same way I forgive others was definitely a game changer for me. I don’t know that I was ever really particularly unforgiving, but when I learned this I learned how to be very forgiving. Think about all the times we mess up and do the wrong things each and every day. How do we want the Lord to forgive us? Do we want Him to give it freely and abundantly, or do we want Him to hold every tiny thing against us? Do we want Him to forgive and move past it, or continue to hold on to each thing we do and stack them on top of each other like a tower of sins hanging over our heads? This is not the only time in the Bible that God references that He will forgive us if we forgive others. We know that the Lord keeps His Word. So, if we believe His promises, why wouldn’t we take at His word about this? If we want to be forgiven, we must forgive. If we struggle to forgive, ask the Lord to help. If we don’t want to be condemned, we must not condemn others. If we don’t want to be judged, we must stop judging others. We might think that the comments we are making are not a big deal. The Lord is telling us that they are. He is telling us that we need to stop. What if you placed this verse on your fridge for the next month, or even a week? Would it help you do these things less? Is it worth a try? You future may depend on it.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, please help us to judge and condemn less. Lord, we want you to forgive us so please help us to learn to forgive more easily. Lord, show us where we are taking the easy road in our lives. Gently convict us and show us how to get back on the hard road that leads to the narrow gate. Lord, if we are not thinking about you and how we can spend eternity with you, please put that on our heart. Lord you are amazing, you are so merciful and we don’t deserve you. We don’t deserve your love or forgiveness and yet you give it freely. We are so grateful, thank you! We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day!!
Take My Yoke Upon You
Matthew 11:28-30 “ Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
This is not the verse I was planning to talk to you about today, but after the night I just had I am hoping that the Holy Spirit will talk to me as He talks to you tonight. I remember I heard a teaching on this verse once and they mentioned why farmers would use a yoke. A yoke is a wooden crosspiece that is fastened around the neck of two animals and then usually hooked to a plow or a cart. This yoke allows them to pull loads that they would not normally be able to pull on their own. I think I also remember the person explaining that a younger animal is usually paired with a more experienced animal. This way the more experienced animal can set the pace and teach the younger one. This seems to fit so perfectly with this verse.
The Lord is calling us, all who are weary and carrying heavy burdens. I don’t know about you, but this evening I am feeling pretty weary and my burdens are feeling pretty heavy. The Lord is calling us and it says He will give us rest. God is calling us to take up His yoke and to learn from Him. That is such a great visual for me. I got an image of this giant wooden yoke on the ground. I go up and put my head in it and the God puts His head in and my burdens are suddenly weightless. I wish it were that simple. I wish we could just hand God our troubles and then we felt this enormous weight off of our shoulders instantly. I think it can be this simple sometimes. I think we get in our own way sometimes. We want to hand our problems over to God and yet we also want to hold on to them. We don’t want to completely release them, because then we wouldn’t be in control anymore.
Have you heard of the expression, “Hitch your wagon to the right cart?” or “Don’t hitch your wagon to the wrong horse?” Both of these came to my mind when I started talking about what a yoke meant. I was thinking that if I had my choice of anyone to hook my yoke to, it would be the Lord. There is no one else that I would rather rely on and no one more powerful. I love the idea of taking His yoke and learning from Him. The Lord has so much to teach us. Even in this verse He says, “I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your soul.” How awesome would it be to find rest in your soul? Can you imagine what that would feel like? When I imagine rest in my soul I imagine a peace about all things in life. I imagine I am stress free and have no anxiety. I imagine I am filled with hope and joy.
I really feel as though the Holy Spirit is reminding me of Rick Warren’s definition of joy and wanting me to share it. I have talked about it before but right now I feel the Holy Spiriting telling me that I am not the only one that needs this refresher right now. Rick Warren’s definition of joy is as follows, “Joy is the settled assurance that God is in control of all the details of my life, the quiet confidence that ultimately everything is going to be alright and the determined choice to praise God in every situation.” Wow, yes, I did need to hear that tonight. For me tonight, this is a reminder that joy doesn’t mean I am always happy about everything. This to me means that it is ok that I am sad tonight about things going on and that doesn’t mean that the situation has taken away my joy. I do know that God is in control of all the details of my life. I am sure of it. I am grateful for it because He does a much better job than I could do.
When I think about it, truly think about it, I do have a quiet confidence that ultimately everything is going to be alright. Does that mean that I know how it is all going to turn out? No, no at all. Does that mean that I know when it will get better? Nope, I don’t know that either. However, I do know that eventually everything is going to be ok. Will it be exactly as I wish it would be, probably not. But that is ok, because God’s plan is better than my plan and His ways are higher than my ways. The last part of this definition is the part that we forget about a lot. It says, “the determined choice to praise God in every situation.” Wow, that is not something I always think of. Then, even when I do think of it, I don’t always want to do it. For instance, tonight was a rough night. Do I want to praise God for tonight? Not really? This is where I think we get confused. We think that praising God is about thanking Him for the situation we are in. There are many ways to praise God without thanking Him for the specific situation.
For instance, even though it was a rough night I am thankful that I have kids to argue with. Some people don’t and I realize that even when parenting them is difficult I am still blessed beyond measure that I have them. I am grateful to the Lord for giving me amazing friends. Friends that dropped everything they were doing to say a quick prayer just because I said I needed some. If it wasn’t for the argument tonight I wouldn’t have had the amazing gift of peace that I felt immediately after they prayed. That is something that I am not sure I have felt before. I have heard people say that I felt your prayers and I always thought that was nice, but didn’t truly understand what they meant until this evening. Not even 5 minutes after I asked my friends for prayers, this immediate sense of peace came over me. That is definitely something to praise the Lord for. We can also praise the Lord for being amazing. He does so much for us and even if we don’t want to praise Him for the current circumstances, we can praise Him for being awesome and for the amazing outcome that we know He is working on as we speak.
In all the books about miracles and faith, the authors always talk about how important praise is. I think this could be the secret ingredient that many of us are missing. How often do we praise the Lord? I mean truly spend time thanking the Lord for all He does and praise Him for being our almighty Lord and Savior? What if we all tried to praise Him more this week and see how much better our week goes? When you start to feel down, or get in a bad mood, think of 10 things you are grateful to God for. The bible verse Luke 16:10 came to mind just now. The verse says, “Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much.” If we appreciate what we have and praise the Lord for it, God will entrust us with more. What if the Lord is waiting for us to be grateful in our current circumstances before He moves us out of them? Can we spend just 5 minutes today praising the Lord? When I am finished with this episode I am going to listen to 5 minutes of praise and worship music. That is another great way to praise the Lord. If you can’t think of anything to say, you can always just listen to music. I have heard many people say that singing is praying twice. So if you feel as though you just don’t know what to say, sing a song, they have amazing songs out there that say all the things you want to say.
Remember, all of us who are weary and those of us carrying heavy burdens, come to the Lord and we will find rest. Take up His yoke and let Him help you carry your load. Wouldn’t it be so much easier if you weren’t the only one carrying it all? You are not alone. God is there, He is offering you His yoke, reach down and pick it up! Through the Lord we can find rest for our souls. Who’s soul could use a little rest? I know mine could. How about yours?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, the devil is having a heyday with our families and we ask that you intercede for us. We ask that you show us how to kick him our of our lives once and for all. Lord we ask for your protection over our families and give us the strength to keep fighting another day. Lord we love you so much, you are so very amazing!! You have given us all so much and we are so very grateful. Lord we ask that you fill us with your love peace and joy. I ask that you wrap your arms around each person listening to this today and give them a squeeze. Help them to feel your love a little extra this week Lord. I sense that I am not the only one that needs that this week Lord. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
What A God We Have!
1 Peter 1:3-7 “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who are being protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you rejoice, even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith—being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.”
God is so great! He sent his only son down to die on a cross for our sins and through his resurrection we have been given a new birth into the living hope. Because of Jesus’ death and resurrection we are now able to go to heaven. The verse says that our inheritance, which is to spend eternity with or heavenly Father, is imperishable, undefiled and unfading. I can’t think of anything on earth that I can say the same about. That is pretty amazing. We have the opportunity to go to heaven, what are we doing with that opportunity? Are we wasting it by living however we want to live and not paying any attention to what God wants?
The message translation of this verse says, "Because Jesus was raised from the dead, we’ve been given a brand-new life and have everything to live for, including a future in heaven—and the future starts now! God is keeping careful watch over us and the future. The Day is coming when you’ll have it all—life healed and whole.” We have everything to live for, including a future in heaven- and the future starts now! That seems like a call to action to me. If we are not really living, what is holding us up? Time waits for no one. We all have a lot to live for, so why aren’t we truly living? Why aren’t we taking full advantage of this life while we have it? The line in the message translation that I love is “The Day is coming when you’ll have it all-life healed and whole.” Isn’t that something to look forward to? Doesn’t that sound amazing?
We live in a broken world. In this world we get hurt frequently, we sometimes hurt others, this will not be the case in heaven. In heaven we will be healed and whole. We will get to spend eternity in the presence of our heavenly Father and Jesus. Your life may seem long, you may seem like the idea of heaven is so far away. However, our lives here on earth are relatively short if we compare them to eternity. Isn’t doing the right thing here on earth, even if it is inconvenient, worth the eternal reward we will get in heaven?
The verse also says that we are being protected by the power of God. I wonder if we all realize exactly how powerful God is? He created the whole earth, He parted the Red Sea, He provided mana for the Israelites when they were in the desert, He flooded the entire earth, He healed the sick, turned water into wine, raised the dead. The Lord has done incredible things with His mighty power and now His power is protecting you. There isn’t anything that the Lord can’t do. Whatever you are going through, the power of the Lord can protect you. Have you asked him lately? I asked someone yesterday what he could do for self care because his dad has dementia and isn’t the same person as he was. He said he could pray about it as he really hadn’t been doing that. My friend is not alone. We all forget to pray about things sometimes. We worry about them and we think about them all the time. We assume that God knows we want Him to help in our difficult situation and so we don’t think to ask Him for that help. Let’s try to change this. Let’s try to stop and pray about anything that is worrying us, right from the beginning, instead of doing it as an after thought.
The verse goes on to say, “In this you rejoice, even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith—being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.” The Lord is telling us that we can rejoice at the thought of Heaven and knowing that He is protecting us, even though we will have to suffer various trials here in this world. This verse is saying that we have to suffer these trials so that the genuineness of our faith may be tested. Think about the various trials you have gone through and you are going through. Would you have responded differently to those trials if you knew that the Lord was protecting you and that they were just a test of your faith? If you read the story of Job, you can see that the trials he went through were definitely a test of faith. He was a faithful and loyal servant of the Lord and the devil thought if he went through the unimaginable, he would stop having faith in the Lord. He did go through the worst possible trials. He lost his children, his land, his livestock, his friends, the people that once looked up to him, his money, the only thing he had left was his wife and his life. He even came down with a terrible sickness that caused him pain day and night.
Job did not give up hope in the Lord. His faith did not waiver, even though he didn’t understand what was going on, he continued to talk to the Lord, and to believe in Him. I wonder if we can say the same. I wonder if we will change the way we respond to trials in the future. If the Lord is telling us that He is giving us these trials so that we can prove our faith to him, then what can we do to show the Lord we believe and trust in Him? First, we can continue to pray to the Lord. Even if we don’t know what to say, we can just sit with Him. We can just call out his name. Whatever you can do in the moment. Second, we can believe that He will protect us. And if we don’t believe we can let the Lord know that we want to believe by saying what the father said in Mark 9:24 “Lord, I believe, help my unbelief.”
I know going through trials if difficult and not pleasant for anyone. Although some trials can seem impossibly long and so difficult to deal with, the Lord is there with you through it all. He has not and will not abandon you. Job felt as if the Lord had abandoned him, he questioned where he was through it all. If you feel this way, it is normal, you are normal. Life’s challenges are hard and we are all doing the best we can. I am hoping now that we know the trials we go through are a test of our faith that we may be able to respond to them differently. I am hoping that we can turn towards the Lord instead of away from Him. I am hoping that asking the Lord for help and handing it over to Him will be our first thought instead of our last resort. I will leave you with the question I asked earlier. How would you respond differently if you knew you have had to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith could be found?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we are so grateful that you are with us through all of our trials. Lord, we ask you to help us respond in faith when we are struggling. Help us to continue to love you and pray to you even in the middle of our struggle. Lord you are amazing and we can’t wait to spend eternity with you. We are so grateful for our inheritance Lord and so grateful that you sent your only son to save us. We are so lucky. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you on Monday. Have a blessed weekend!
Where The Spirit Of The Lord Is, There Is Freedom
2 Corinthians 3:17 “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.”
I saw this verse on Facebook today and thought it was a great one. I have been helping to lead a Life in the Spirit Seminar and each week we learn a little bit more about the Holy Spirit and about the beginning of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal. There is a video teaching about different subjects and then one of our prayer group members gives a witness about how they have seen God working in their lives. I have really been learning a lot. Not just from the talks, but also from other people’s experience of how they have seen God in their life.
The first week’s topic was God’s Love. The witness was about a woman who was told she couldn’t have children and yet had two healthy children. She was a woman who married the love of her life and even though the marriage ended, God was there with her through it all. He provided miracles all throughout her life small ones and big ones, like giving birth to her children when she was told she couldn’t have kids. This woman experienced a baptism of the Holy Spirit and she talks about how her life was changed after that. She had this love and closeness with the Lord that she never had before. She was filled with this sense of peace that although things weren’t always easy, she would be ok. God would be there with her through it all. The verse above says that where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. This woman definitely experienced freedom for her worries.
The second week the topic was salvation. The witness was about a woman who lost her father at a young age. He was only about 60 years old when he was hit be a teenager and killed. There was some speculation that the teen had been drinking but could not be proven. This woman could not forgive the teen. She was so angry that he took her father from his children and his grandchildren. She harbored this anger for 20 years. Forgiveness wasn’t even something she could think about. She went to grief counseling, and they recommended she write the teen a letter, but not send it. She couldn’t even think of doing this.
Many years later a former coworker of hers lost her husband to a teen driving accident. My friend attended this wake and asked her former coworker how she was doing. The former coworker said she thought she was ready to write the teenage a letter of forgiveness, as it had been four months. My friend burst into tears and asked how she could forgive so soon as it had only been four months. My friend’s dad died 20 years ago and she still harbored feelings of unforgiveness. Her former coworker told her she needed to forgive him, for herself as much as for the boy. How could she expect God to forgive her if she didn’t forgive others.
The Holy Spirit works in mysterious ways. If my friend hadn’t have ran into her former co-worker at this wake, who knows if she would have forgiven that young man. My friend didn’t even notice how much her unforgiveness had blocked her relationship with the lord. It took her another year to write the letter. When she read it out loud to her husband she felt so free. It was as if a huge weight she didn’t know she had been carrying had been lifted. It enabled her to have a closer and intimate relationship with God. She was finally free of the unforgiveness.
Last night’s topic was New Life. It talked about how we have a new life when we accept the Holy Spirit into our lives and give Him permission to work in our lives. When we surrender to God, amazing things happen. For some, it is so hard to surrender everything. For others, it is easy to surrender everything to God, and yet, when things get tough they take it back and try to do it on their own. The witness for last night was about a member who was doing her best to be a good Catholic. She attended mass and her kids went to Catholic school. She talked about how her priorities once she got married were her husband, her kids and God. However, about 14 years ago her husband had heart trouble and was give 3-5 years to live. She was told his heart would just stop and it would be sudden death. She didn’t know what to do with this. He was her best friend and her whole world. How could she think about a future without him?
She was upset with God and questioned what she did to deserve this. She allowed fear and anxiety to take over life. She begged God to save them from this medical prognosis. She cried out why have you forsaken me. There were many more years of hospital stays and ER visits. She felt as though God was waiting on her, but she didn’t know what to do. She started to go to daily mass and spent hours in the adoration chapel. One day she saw an advertisement for a Catholic Healing Service. She begged her husband to take her and he did. At this service she was taught about the power of the Holy Spirit and what can block us from the healing power of God and from hearing His voice. They were lead through prayers of forgiveness, renunciation of sickness, sin, diseases, and negative emotions. At this service her eyes were open to what had been blocking her. The Holy Spirit showed her that even though she had been praying all those years, she hadn’t truly believed that God was hearing her prayers and that He would take care of them. She realized that God had been suffering with her and He just wanted her to trust that He would take care of them. At this service everyone was invited to come up one at a time to be prayed over. When she went up she surrendered all to God and asked for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Suddenly she felt a gust of wind push her back, she was swept off her feet and knocked to the ground. The Holy Spirit came upon her and she was filled with tremendous peace, love and joy. Her sadness and stress were gone and she felt light as a feather. She was free, from all her worries, sadness, anxieties, and stress. She definitely was feeling the freedom that comes with the Holy Spirit.
The reason I wanted to share these three witnesses with you today is because I don’t think we talk about the Holy Spirit enough. We talk a lot about God and we hear a lot about Jesus and yet, the Holy Spirit remains a mystery to many of us. We don’t know a lot about Him and so we tend to stick to what we know. The Holy Spirit is available to all. It is not something that you need to do certain things for. It is not as if you earn the Holy Spirit by being extra Holy, or by jumping through all the hoops. The Holy Spirit is available to anyone that wants it. You can call upon the Holy Spirit at any time and it only takes a second. “Come Holy Spirit come” are among the most powerful words you could say. There are many prayers to the Holy Spirit. There is one that I used to say often, although I must say I have gotten away from it and I want to get back to it. I will end with that prayer today. If you are looking for a way to invite the Holy Spirit into your life, say this prayer daily and then buckle up and enjoy the ride. If you invite Him in, He will do amazing things in your life. He will give you a freedom that you have never experienced before. The power of the Holy Spirit will surprise you. Wouldn’t it be great if you knew what God wanted you to do? When you have a relationship with the Holy Spirit you will be able to hear God’s words more clearly. There is so much I could say about the Holy Spirit and the benefits of getting to know more about Him and inviting Him into your life. However, I don’t want to go on all day, so maybe I will do another episode later about this very important topic. I am sure I will do many over the years. I hope you enjoyed the witnesses. They were condensed, but I am hoping to bring you their full story in upcoming episodes. I will leave you with a prayer to the Holy Spirit.
Oh, Holy Spirit, beloved of my soul…I adore you.
Enlighten me, guide me, strengthen me, console me.
Tell me what I should do; give me your orders. I
Promise to submit myself to all that You desire of me
And to accept all that You permit to happen to me.
Let me only know your will.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Submit Yourselves to God
James 4:7-8 “Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.”
This is another one of those things that sounds much easier to do than it actually is. Submit ourselves to God. That doesn’t sound too hard, right? It doesn’t sound hard, but have you tried it? It is not easy to submit to God. What does it even mean to submit ourselves to God? Google's dictionary defines submission as "the action or fact of accepting or yielding to a superior force or to the will or authority of another person.” I think there are two parts to this. First, the action of accepting or yielding to a superior force. This means that we would accept that God is in control. We would do as He tells us to do because He is our superior force. He created all things and He gives us a set of rules to live by and so we must live by them.
The second part of this definition is accepting or yielding to the will or authority of another person. Submitting to God would be accepting His will as our will. It would me that we accept His will for our lives. There are times when this is very easy. When we get the job we really want, it is easy to accept it as God’s will. When we meet the love of our life we can accept that it is God’s will for us to be with this person. However, what about when things aren’t going our way. What about when God’s will differs from our will. What about if we don’t get a job because He has something better in mind for us. Can you think of a time when you really wanted something to happen and it didn’t? What about when you didn’t want something to happen and it did? How easy was it for you to submit to the Lord’s will?
This verse tells us to submit ourselves to God. If we want to do this we need to figure out where we are struggling and then ask God for help. We can ask Him to help us submit. He will always help when we ask. If we are struggling to see how God wants us to submit to Him, then we can always just ask Him. My spiritual director told me one time to model St. Teresa of Lisieux and explain to God that I am just a little child and I need Him to show me the way. I need Him to show me or tell me what He wants me to do. I want to follow His will, I just need directions, just as a child would This really spoke to me. I sometimes, oftentimes if I am being honest, I think I need to know what God wants from me. I think I am just supposed to know. It seems like everyone else knows, why don’t I know. So, I try to guess, I try to listen and I try to do all the things just in case that is what He was wanting.
However, what I try to do now is to ask the Lord to help me understand. I ask Him to explain it to me as though I was a child. I ask Him to make it clear to me and to give me the courage and strength for whatever He wants me to do. We are all just little children in the eyes of the Lord. In Matthew 18:3 Jesus said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” God wants us to become like children. I think he wants us to be like children because there is something so pure about a child’s faith. Children don’t get caught up in understanding every little detail. They don’t ask all the questions. Miracles are miracles because there is no explanation. If there was an explanation as to exactly how it happened, it wouldn’t be a miracle. Adults don’t really like to believe in things that they can’t see. Children on the other hand, they love to play make believe. They have no problem believing in things they can’t see. If you are struggling to submit to God ask Him to show you how. He has assured us that if we ask He will answer, so let’s ask.
The next part of this verse says to resist the devil and he will flee from you. Again, something that sounds so easy and yet is so difficult. I would love to say I resist the devil. The problem is, the devil is always disguised as something else. For instance, he will be disguised as temptation. You know that you should spend time in prayer or in silence and suddenly your favorite tv show is having a marathon and showing episodes all day. You decide to give up sweets for lent and someone drops cookies off at your house. You decide you are going to start running and it rains for a week straight. Do you see how it is hard to resist the devil in these circumstances because you don’t know it is the enemy attacking you.
Another way the enemy might show up is through distractions. You decide you want to spend more time with your children and suddenly everyone in the family has something else to do, or your work suddenly gets really busy. You may want to spend more time with your parents and then something comes up to prevent you from spending more time with them. We find it hard to resist the other things that are getting in our way and so family time gets put off or pushed aside. The enemy might also show up as anger. We want to be peaceful and to not get upset over little things. Then the enemy comes along and presents one little thing after another until you can’t take it anymore and get angry and you lose it.
The enemy doesn’t want us to grow in holiness. He will do whatever it takes to prevent this from happening. He certainly does not want to flee. If we want the devil to flee we have to figure out a way to resist him, all his temptations and lies. How do we resist something that we don’t know is there? One way we can resist the devil is to keep turning our eyes to the Lord. We can keep asking Him what He wants us to do and asking Him to help us do it. We can ask the Lord to open our eyes to see the devil and all his tricks. We can try to be on the lookout for different ways the enemy may be interfering in our lives. If things are not going well and you are not acting like you want to, the devil is probably involved. If you feel you are growing further from the Lord, the devil is probably involved.
Another way to resist the devil is to do what the verse above says, “Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.” In my prayer group every week the Lord calls us closer to Him. He is calling all of us closer to Him. If we come closer to God He will come closer to you. Then the verse says, wash your hands, you sinners and purify your hearts, you double minded. I wasn’t sure what double minded in this verse meant. When I looked it up it meant that our heart is split between God and the things of this world. This is the devil’s way in. This is his back door. If we love the things of this world as much or even more than we love God, then that is all the devil needs to attack us. The more we release our attachment to the things of this world, the less of a hold the devil has over us. If we want to resist the devil we can ask God to help us, we can turn to Him and grow closer to Him, and we try to release our attachment to the things of this world.
Releasing our attachment to things of this world is not easy. We all have our favorite TV shows or our favorite foods we like to eat, and that is ok. I am not saying that you can’t like anything that is of this world. I am saying that our priorities should be God first and then everything else. If anything is getting in the way of us doing the things we know we need to do, then that is the devil at work and we need to resist. I have been being attacked by the spirit of distraction lately. I will have time to write this book I am writing, or work on my podcast and the spirit of distraction will come and show me all these other more fun things to do. I must resist.
Did you know, in a weird way, when the devil attacks you, it is sort of a compliment. It is confirmation that you are walking on the right path. The reason I say this is because the devil doesn’t mess around with the Luke warm, he doesn’t mess around with those that are already headed to see him. He only concerns himself with those that are headed to see the Lord, those that are favored and are trying to walk the right path. If you are feeling like the devil is attacking you, take comfort in the fact that you are doing something right, or he wouldn’t bother with you. Then turn to the Lord and keep trying to do the next right thing. God is on your side and He will be your refuge and your shield if you ask Him to. Come in close to the Lord and He will come in close to you. He will put his arm around you and protect you from all harm.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to resist the devil and we want him to flee, please help us. Please protect us Lord and shield us from all harm. Help open our eyes to see the devil and all of his tricks in our lives. Lord, we want to put you first, help us to see what is getting in our way. Open our eyes to anything that is preventing us from growing closer to you. Help us to know what you want us to do and help us to become like children. Lord you are amazing and we love you so very much. We are grateful that you are our God and that you take such good care of us. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Child of the One True King!
1 John 3:1 “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.”
This verse is so powerful. What great love the Father has lavished on us, isn’t that powerful? Can’t you just picture the Father lavishing us with Love. Or maybe you can’t. Maybe you struggle to believe that you are a child of God. Maybe you struggle to believe that the Lord loves you, and the thought that He lavishes love on you is something that you just can’t wrap your head around. If this is you, you are not alone. Love in this world is so complicated and a lot of things can get in the way of us loving and us feeling loved. There is a song by Matthew West called “Hello, My name is.” This song has the beginning line of the verse above in the lyrics, along with some reasons why we can’t feel this love. I want to go over some of those lyrics with you. Also, there is a link to the song in the show notes if you want to listen to it. (Click Here for song)
The song starts out by saying:
Hello, my name is regret
I'm pretty sure we have met
Every single day of your life
I'm the whisper inside
That won't let you forget
This is true for so many of us. We struggle to feel God’s love because we have so many regrets. Regrets over things we have done or things we have said; regrets over things we didn’t do and didn’t say. When we have regrets, the enemy takes those and he whispers them to us over and over again so that we feel like we aren’t worthy of God’s love. The enemy doesn’t let us forget about them.
Next, the song goes on to say:
Hello, my name is defeat
I know you recognize me
Just when you think you can win
I'll drag you right back down again
Till you've lost all belief
Does this sound familiar? Things are going well and then we start to get a voice in our head telling us that things will go wrong. Sure it seems like all is going well, but things always get messed up in the end. Things have gone wrong so many times in the past that you start to think you don’t deserve to ever win. You don’t deserve the happiness or the love that God has planned for you. When this happens we can start to self sabotage. We don’t even know we are doing it. The enemy just keeps telling us that we have failed in the past so we will fail again. He drags us back down over and over again until we have lost all belief, in ourselves and sometimes in God.
Then the song goes on to say:
Oh, these are the voices, oh these are the lies
And I have believed them, for the very last time
Hello, my name is child of the One true King
I've been saved, I've been changed, I have been set free
Amazing grace is the song I sing
Hello, my name is child of the One true King
This is a verse that we may want to write down and read often. I know I say this about a lot of verses from scripture and you may have a lot of post it notes or index cards. I really think this one could help us all when we are feeling defeated, or when the enemy is telling us lies. As much as we want to believe that God loves us and that we are His children, sometimes the things of this world get in our way. Sometimes we let the enemies lies get to us and convince us that we are not worthy, that we are not loved, that we are unlovable, and so many other things that are not true. For me, when I heard this song, I love it. I have listened to it a million times or so. Well, that may be a slight exaggeration but I have listened to it a lot. And guess what? Now I hear this chorus run through my head when I need it to. When I start to feel down on myself I literally tell myself, “Catherine, you are a child of the one true king!” When I hear this, I can’t help but smile. When I start to doubt myself, when I start to have regret, or when I feel any of the enemy’s tactics I tell him, sorry but I am a child of the one true king. You’ve got nothing on my God, He is my one true king. I have even started saying this to my friends when they are struggling. When they are feeling down and also when they are feeling attacked, I remind them who they are and whose they are. They are a child of God, the one true King and He won’t let the enemy hurt them. He won’t let the enemy win.
The song goes on to say:
I am no longer defined
By all the wreckage behind
The One who makes all things new
Has proven it's true
Just take a look at my life
We all have things in our past that we are not proud of. We have all said and done things that weren’t great. Whether we did them on purpose or not, none of us are perfect. We live in a broken world and this means that we hurt people sometimes. Regardless of what you have done in your past, you do not have to be defined by it. I think it is good to reflect on any areas that you are not proud of. If there are things you regret in your past, then take stalk of them and hand them over to the Lord. Ask Him to help you forgive yourself. Ask Him to help you move past them. We can not change the past no matter how much we want to. If we want to find peace with our past mistakes we need to turn them over and ask God for help. As these lyrics say, He is the one that makes all things new. I also like how the lyrics say that he Has proven its true, just take a look at my life. I think if we all took a look at our lives over the years, we would see plenty of examples of how God showed us His love, how He protected us from things, how He saved us from things.
The song ends with:
What love the Father Has lavished upon us
That we should be called His children
Hello, my name is child of the One true King
I've been saved, I've been changed, I have been set free
Amazing grace is the song I sing
Hello, my name is child of the One true King, yeah
These are the words from the scripture verse about. Can you imagine how much the Lord loves us to call us His children. Think about how much love you have for your children. Now, time that by a bajillion and that is how much our heavenly Father loves us. My hope is that when you start to doubt this, you remember this song, you remember this scripture verse and you remember that you are a child of the one true king. You remember that you’ve been saved, you've been changed, you have been set free. You are not who you were and you don’t have to let your past mistakes define you. God has saved you, changed you and set you free from everything. All you have to do is live in this freedom. Don’t let the enemy drag you back to your old self. Anytime he starts to whisper lies in your ear just tell him, “I am a child of the one true king, I am not listening to you.”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we are so grateful for all the love that you lavish on us. We are sorry if we find it hard to accept it sometimes. Please help us with this. We want to freely accept all that you have to offer us. We want to live in the freedom you have given us. We don’t want to live with any chains that the enemy tries to weigh us down with. Please help us release anything that we need to release to live in your freedom. You are so amazing and you give us so much, help us to accept it. Help us to know that we are your children and that you love us. Help us not to believe the lies of the enemy. We are grateful for all you do for us Lord. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day.
God of My Salvation
Micah 7:7-9 “But as for me, I will look to the Lord, I will wait for the God of my salvation; my God will hear me. Do not rejoice over me, O my enemy; when I fall, I shall rise; when I sit in darkness, the Lord will be a light to me. I must bear the indignation of the Lord, because I have sinned against him, until he takes my side and executes judgment for me. He will bring me out to the light; I shall see his vindication.”
I really like this verse. In the very first line he is saying no matter what others are doing, he will look to the Lord. When I heard this I instantly thought of Joshua 24:15 which says, “But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.” These two men are both saying the same thing. They are declaring that you can do whatever you want to do, but they are going to serve the Lord. Joshua even goes a step further and says his whole house will serve the Lord.
Next, it says that he will wait for the God of his salvations; he is sure His God will hear him. This is important because later it talks about how he must bear the indignation or the Lord, because he has sinned against him, and yet he has no doubt that the Lord will hear him, that the Lord will be his salvation. I wish we all knew this and could firmly say it as Micah did. The Lord will hear us, even though we have sinned against Him. We are His children and He won’t stop listening to us. He has promised that He will never forsake us. He is a God who keeps His promises. If He says something it is truth. We can take it to the bank as some people say. His word is His bond. Micah is saying He will look to the Lord and he will wait on Him.
This next line might be my favorite one of this verse. It is hard to say because there are some great lines in this verse, but this one is so good. “Do not rejoice over me, O my enemy; when I fall, I shall rise; when I sit in darkness, the Lord will be a light to me.” The reason this is my favorite is because it shows a bravery and a boldness that many of us struggle with. Micah is not backing down from his enemies. It seems like often times we cower from our enemies. We sit back and we hide and we hope that they can’t see us. If they can’t see us then they can’t hurt us right? We can just wait for the Lord sitting here behind this bush and not engaging. Micah didn’t cower from the enemy, he stood up to the enemy and told him not to get too excited because even though it looks like he may be defeated he wasn’t.
Micah didn’t seem to have any doubt that the Lord would rescue him. He was so confident he stood up to the enemy, looked him right in the eyes and said, nope, don’t rejoice yet! You may think you knocked me down, but I always get back up. You may think you dragged me into the darkness, but the Lord will be my light. Wouldn’t it be great if we could all tell the enemy this? What if we were all brave enough and confident enough to shout this out when we are struggling and when we feel defeated? Ok, maybe shouting it out might be too much for where you are right now, but maybe you could remember it? Could you write it down and read it everyday so when the enemy attacked you could remember that the Lord is your Savior. He will pick you back up when the enemy knocks you down and He will be your light when you feel you are wading through the darkness.
It may look like the enemy has won, but the Lord always wins. This is something that we must all remember, we are on the winning side. Yes, we are in a war between good and evil, and yes we need to fight with everything we have, and yet, the ending has already been written. Good triumphs over evil. We may find ourselves stuck in dark times, but we don’t have to worry that the Lord will leave us there. We can be confident, just as Micah was, that although we may have gotten ourselves into some trouble the Lord will come and be our salvation. We have to be strong while we wait as the enemy will try to throw everything he can think of at us while we wait. He will do everything in his power to bring us down, and yet He will not succeed, the Lord will save us.
The next part of the verse says, “ I must bear the indignation of the Lord, because I have sinned against him, until he takes my side and executes judgment for me. He will bring me out to the light; I shall see his vindication.” This next part is something that we don’t really like to think about. However, I think it is important to know that sometimes the Lord does get angry with us. We are not alway great at living the way He asks us to live and we are not always great at doing the things He asks us to do. I think there is such a powerful honesty in this part of the verse. I must bear the indignation of the Lord because I have sinned against him. Micah knows that He has sinned and he is owning it. How often do we do the same? Are we owning up to it when we sin? Are we repenting and going to confession? Are we having a conversation with the Lord and letting Him know that we are sorry?
Micah is saying that he understands that the Lord is angry and He deserves it. He is not defending what he did, or making excuses. He is saying that he was in the wrong and so, he will bear the Lord’s anger until the Lord takes his side and executes judgement for him. He recognizes and accepts that God hands out the judgement. It is not for Micah to decide what the judgement should be. God will execute the judgement. Then it says that the Lord will bring him out to the light and that Micah will see the Lord’s vindication. Vindication means the act of clearing someone of blame. The Lord takes our sins and then He makes them disappear. It doesn’t just say he is waiting for the Lord’s forgiveness. It says he is waiting for the Lord’s vindication. He is waiting for the Lord to clear him of it all. He is waiting for his slate to be wiped clean.
I truly wish that every single person listening to this episode could believe with all their heart that when you sin and when you repent, then the Lord wipes your slate completely clean. This is the truth and yet it is hard for some of us to believe. It is easier for us to believe that we have sinned and so God couldn’t possibly love us. We have sinned so God can’t forgive us. We doubt in God’s love and forgiveness because we doubt in our own worth. I hope you can hear this, YOU ARE WORTHY of God’s Love. YOU ARE WORTHY of God’s forgiveness. There is nothing you can do that God won’t forgive if you ask Him to. Let’s all be more like Micah and have a confident faith that the Lord will pick us up when we fall and that He will be our light in the darkness.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we know that you have already won and that the enemy will not bring us down. Please help us remember this when we feel like we are drowning. Please help us to call out to you when we feel like we are in the darkness. Lord you are so wonderful. You pick us up when we are down and you are our light when we are in the dark. Lord, we know their are times when we have to bear with your indignation because we have sinned. We thank you for showing us your vindication. You are so mighty and powerful and we are so grateful that we are on your team Lord. We are grateful that we have you as our refuge and our salvation. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Where is there a god who can compare with you?
Micah 7:18-20 “Where is the god who can compare with you—wiping the slate clean of guilt, Turning a blind eye, a deaf ear, to the past sins of your purged and precious people? You don’t nurse your anger and don’t stay angry long, for mercy is your specialty. That’s what you love most. And compassion is on its way to us. You’ll stamp out our wrongdoing. You’ll sink our sins to the bottom of the ocean. You’ll stay true to your word to Father Jacob and continue the compassion you showed Grandfather Abraham—Everything you promised our ancestors from a long time ago.”
I decided to use the message translation today as sometimes it is nice to take look at what the Lord is saying in His scripture in everyday terms that we use often. Usually I use the New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition. However, I do sometimes use other translations. This morning felt like a message translation kind of morning. I liked this verse when I heard it yesterday because it talks about how great our God is and how He is unlike any other god. In today’s day and age we don’t really hear about a lot of other God’s. However Micah is an Old Testament prophet and back when He lived there were a lot of other Gods. People were worshiping all sorts of Gods. Gods of light, fertility, water, you name it and there was probably a God for it. However, in this verse Micah is talking about how great God is and how the other God’s can’t even compare with Him. I also like how it goes into detail on why our God is so great.
The first thing Micah talks about is something that a lot of people have a hard time believing about God. God can wipe our slate clean of guilt. He can forgive our sins and then never think about them again. This is not something that is difficult for God. If you turn to Him and you truly repent for having sinned, He forgives those sins, wipes your slate clean you never thinks of them again. It is like they didn’t happen. He does not secretly hold them against you. This is something that do as humans and so we find it hard to comprehend how God can just forgive and forget.
When people come to us and apologize for the things they have done, we can sometimes struggle to forgive. Sometimes we don’t want to forgive and sometimes we want to but just don’t know how to forgive. When you find yourself in this circumstance the best thing to do is to pray about it. Ask God for help to forgive the person. Forgiveness is super important, not for the person asking, but for you and for your soul. The other thing that we struggle with is the wiping the slate clean. Wouldn’t it be great if we could forgive the sins and then wipe the slate clean? This is hard for us because we want to protect ourselves. We are afraid if we forgive and forget then the person will do it again and we will get hurt again. This is something that can happen. I am sure it even happens to God.
If we sin against God and then we truly repent, he forgives us and wipes our slate clean. However, we are human and so even if we were truly sorry we will inevitably sin again, it is in our nature. Each time we sin, we hurt our relationship with God. So, even though we keep sinning God is still willing to wipe our slate clean each time. Maybe we should try to do this as well? It won’t be easy. We have a strong instinct within us to protect ourselves. I don’t think this is a bad instinct. However, I do think that if we pray to God for help and we try to forgive more we would be happier and less stressed. Also, think about how different your relationships would be if you could truly forgive and forget the past sins of others. When I say forget, I mean, don’t hold their past sins against them. Don’t throw them in their face time and time again. If they have repented and you have forgiven them, they we should try to wipe the slate clean. They get to start again, like a do over. I know this won’t be easy, but what if we all gave it a try? How much greater would the world be with more forgiveness in it?
Next, he goes on to say, “You don’t nurse your anger and don’t stay angry long, for mercy is your specialty. That’s what you love most. And compassion is on its way to us.” This is another thing that is so great about our God. He doesn’t stay angry long. Yes, He does get angry, we have seen that enough times in the Bible, but God doesn’t stay angry, He is quick to forgive. When I read the words, “you don’t nurse your anger,” I thought about how easy this is to do. This is for sure something that many of us do. If we get angry about something we can let it consume us. We think about how upset we are, how thoughtless the other person was, or how unfair the circumstances are. Instead of trying to find a way to be less angry we allow these angry thoughts to take over our thinking. We pay close attention to them and we let them control how we feel. In some cases we may think about how we can get revenge on the person that we are angry at. Can you think of a time when you have nursed your anger? When you let you anger take over? How did that turn out? How did you feel when you were nursing your anger? I am guessing you didn’t feel too good as anger is not a feel good emotion. We would feel much better if we could quickly pass through anger and move on to forgiveness.
I love how the verse says that mercy is God’s specialty. This is another thing that we have a hard time believing. We find it hard to trust that God has mercy on us. It is hard for us to believe because we find mercy hard for us to give. We think if we struggle with mercy then God probably does too. Why would He forgive us and have mercy on us when we can’t even have mercy on ourselves? God isn’t like us. He is God, He is our creator. He loves us and gives His mercy freely to us. Even though we might struggle to have mercy on others, we tend to have more mercy for our children. They are our kids and we love them. We have mercy when they mess up because they are our children. This same thing can be said for God. We are His children. He loves us and shows us mercy, He does not struggle with it. Wouldn’t it be great if we could all make mercy our specialty? Maybe we could try to have a little more mercy to those that anger us?
The last two things that Micah talks about in this verse is the Lord’s compassion and the fact that He always stays true to His word. These are both really important as well. What comes to mind when I look over this verse is that Micah is giving a road map of how to be more like God. God created us to be in His likeness and image. Our job here on earth is to be God’s light to others. He wants us to make Him known to one and all. How do we do this? How do we make sure that others know God? One way would be to reflect God in all we do. If people look at us and they see God’s light shining through, if they see His peace and His joy, they will want to know Him. If we know what God is like, we can do our best to adopt these characteristics.
Today we learned that God does not nurse His anger. He forgives our sins and then moves on, He does not hold our past sins against us. We learned that mercy is His specialty and that he buries our sins at the bottom of the ocean. This means, that our past sins will never see the light of day again. They are gone forever. We also learned that God is full of compassion. And finally, we learned that He is always true to His word. When I look at this list, I think that these things are doable. They are not things that will be easy to do, but they are things that we are all capable of doing if we try. I think if you are listening to this episode, you are already someone who tries to be compassionate to others. This is not something new that we learned today. Everyone that knows the Lord our God knows that He is compassionate. Compassion itself isn’t hard. The hard part is to have compassion for everyone. Compassion for some people comes easy and for others we have to try harder. It is something we can do though.
The ability to let go of our anger will be something harder to accomplish. Having mercy can be difficult as well depending on the circumstances. If we truly want others to know God then it is important that we be an example. I know that these things will be hard and at the same time I think Micah laid out a pretty simple, but not easy, roadmap for us. If we work on increasing these characteristics we can become a better example of God to one and all. God is happy to help us whenever we ask Him. He will transform our hearts and minds if we ask and if we let Him. So why not ask? Why not try to become more like Him? We may think that we can never change this much and this is true if we are trying to do it all on our own. However, with God, all things are possible. If we truly want to change, He will change us. Let’s at least try, what have we got to lose?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. We ask that you help change our hearts and minds Lord. Help transform us to be more like you. Help us to become better examples of your love. Lord, we want others to see you when they see us. We want to bring others to you. We want to be living examples of your word Lord. Help us to forgive, have mercy and be compassionate. Help us to be all the things you want us to be. Give us the desire to change if we aren’t quite there yet. Give us the courage to change and the knowledge that we can change if we want to because you are with us. We love you Lord, you are truly amazing. We are so grateful for all the ways that you love us and take care of us. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to seeing you again on Monday. Have a blessed weekend!
A Home with Our Lord and Jesus
John 14:23-24 “Jesus replied, “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. Anyone who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me.”
I thought this scripture verse was appropriate today because on Tuesday nights I am helping to run a Life in the Spirit Seminar. This is a 7 week course on how to live a Life with the Holy Spirit. How to invite the Holy Spirit into your daily life, and live more fully in Him. Each week there is a talk on a different subject. This week the talk was on Salvation. This is not something that people like to think about. We like to do whatever we want to do and we don’t really like someone telling us what we should do. We don’t really want someone telling us what is right and wrong. We figure we are grown ups and we can make our up our own minds what is right and wrong.
The problem with this is that we don’t always make the right choices. Also, we don’t always use the best logic to come up with our decisions. Sometimes we aren’t using any logic at all, we are just doing what feels good in the moment. Do you think it would be a good idea to let our children decide what is right and wrong on their own? Without any teaching or modeling, we just let them make all the decisions about what they are going to do. Do you see any problems with this? I do. They don’t have enough experience with life to decide what is best for them. For instance, if we let kids decide what to eat for every meal it would be candy and soda. If we let them decide if they wanted to brush their teeth and shower, it would be a no. However, these things are not good for them. All of their teeth will fall out if they only eat candy, drink soda, and don’t brush. The need guidance and sometimes, often times, they need us to make the hard decisions for them.
We could argue that the reason we need to guide them and tell them what to do when they are younger is because their brains are not finished developing yet or because they don’t have the life experience to know better yet. However, we are adults and so we can make our own decisions because our brains are fully developed and because we have life experiences, and the guidance of our elders to help us learn. However, we still don’t always make the right choices. I bet if you take even just one minute you can think of a time when you or another adult you know, spouse, sibling, friend or coworker has made a truly terrible decision. One that you knew, the second they told you, that it was a bad idea and it wasn’t going to end how they though it would. Yet, they are an adult and they get to make that bad choice and you just sit on the sidelines and watch. Isn’t that so hard to do? Doesn’t it just stink when we know someone is doing something that is going to end up hurting themselves and there is nothing we can do about it. Can you think of a situation where this has happened to you? When someone you loved was headed for a disaster and there wasn’t anything you could do about it?
Now let’s take a moment and think about how God must feel. There are 7.9 billion people on this planet. Can you imagine having that many children to look after? Can you imagine watching each one of them making decisions on their own and then you have to watch the fallout? God loves us more than we can even imagine. More than we could even love our own children. He loves us with a perfect love. If it hurts us to watch a loved one make a terrible choice to head down a wrong path, think about how many times that pain must be multiplied for God. It would be so much easier if God just took away our free will and we just all followed Him and loved Him because we had to, there was no choice. The problem is, if you do not have a choice, then it is not real love. So, even though it is hard, and we probably break His heart a million times a day, God gives us free will. We get to make the choices that we think are right for our family. Here’s the catch, just as it is with our kids, we also have to deal with the consequences of our choices.
Do you know how terrible you feel when you have to give your child a consequence for a bad choice them made. Or, when you have to watch them deal with a natural consequence for their choice. I know they learn from these consequences and it is better for them in the long run, but it breaks my heart to see them upset. I bet God feels the same way. Can you imagine what it must feel like to have your children completely turn their backs on you? Can you imagine what it would feel like for you to give them everything and for them to hate you, condemn you, and not even know you. This is a reality for God every day. Of the 7.9 billion people on this planet, only 2.5 are Christian. That means that less than a third of His children recognize Him. That has to be hard to see everyday.
The verse above says, “Jesus replied, “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. Anyone who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me.” Jesus is telling us that if we love Him we will obey His teachings. Also He is saying that if we do this His Father will love us and Jesus and His Father will come to us and make their home with us. How amazing does that sound? How great would it be to share a home with the Lord our God and Jesus? It doesn’t say He will build us a house, it doesn’t say we can hang out. It says They will build their home with us. What would you give to live at home with God and Jesus? What would you do?
Some people think that the Catholic Church has a lot of rules. Maybe this is true, but the rules are there for our own good. You know how sometimes when we set rules for our children, like it is not good for you to watch too much TV. Our kids don’t understand. They think we are just being mean or over bearing. However, we know that too much TV is not good for our kids. This is similar to the rules that God sets for us. We may not understand how He is protecting us from ourselves. We may not understand the purpose of the rules, and yet just because we don’t understand doesn’t mean they aren’t good rules. Our heavenly Father knows a lot more than we do. He has been watching humanity since the beginning of time. He knows what we will do before we even do it and so He knows what guidelines to put in place to try and keep us on the straight and narrow.
Think about how long we are in this life for. Let’s say we live a long healthy life, we are here for about 100 years. Then what? Then we live for an eternity in the afterlife. Isn’t it worth a little struggle, a little sacrifice now, so that we can live eternally in the presence of our Lord and Savior. Whether we like it or not, God does give us commandments to live by. He gives us rules and guidelines to follow. He tells us everything we need to do to get into Heaven. Are we listening to what He is saying? Are we following His commands? Are we aware that we need to do this? I have always been someone that responds better to a reward. I hear that the Lord will love me and build His home with me if I follow His commands and I instantly want to know what I need to do to make that happen.
Some people respond better to consequences. They strive to do what they need to do to avoid something bad happening. If this is you, let me just take a moment to remind you of what happens if we don’t follow the Lord’s commands. If we do what we want, and decide that it is our life and God can’t tell us what to do, and we don’t follow His commands, then maybe we get everything we want in this world. Maybe we have a truly fun filled, live by seat of our pants life where we get to do everything we want to do. However, what about when we leave this world? What then? If we spend our life telling God we don’t want to do what He wants us to do, or if we are too busy for God in this Life, what comes next? How will we spend our eternity? I think you all know the answer to that question. It is not something we like to think about, but it is a fact. It is something that God talks about in the Bible. It is a consequence that He has warned us about and yet many of us not paying attention. I have included in the show notes a link to the video I watched on Salvation by Ralph Martin. Video on Salvation (CLICK HERE) It is really good and I highly recommend for everyone to watch it. It really gets you thinking about what is important in this world. Do we want to end up spending eternity living in a home with the Lord and Jesus? If so, all we need to do is follow His commands.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to make the right choices in our lives. Help us to choose you and life everlasting with you. Lord, we know that sin leads us to death and we don’t want that. We want you to love us and build your home with us. Lord, we know we need your help. We know we all do things that you do not like. We hold on to past resentments, we refuse to forgive, we don’t treat others like we would want to be treated, and many other things. Help change our hearts, help give us the will power, grace and strength to do the right thing. Lord we love you! You are truly amazing and we are so very thankful for all you do for us. We are grateful for the patience you have for us as I know it is probably very frustrating how many times we mess up. Help us to mess up less Lord. Help us to keep our eyes on you. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Video on Salvation (CLICK HERE)
Do Not Worry About Your Life
Luke 12:22-31 “He said to his disciples, “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? If then you are not able to do so small a thing as that, why do you worry about the rest? Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you—you of little faith! And do not keep striving for what you are to eat and what you are to drink, and do not keep worrying. For it is the nations of the world that strive after all these things, and your Father knows that you need them. Instead, strive for his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well."
Wow, I am always struck by how powerful these verses are. No matter how many times I hear them I am still moved by them. They are so simple and yet so profound. Like much of the Bible they contain so much in a few verses. The Lord is constantly telling us not to worry about our life. Why is this so hard for us to do? Or not to do I guess? Why do we feel we need to worry about everything? Many of us don’t want to worry. We feel as though if we had a choice we certainly wouldn’t choose to worry. So, why is that our go to? Why are we so anxious all the time? Why do we worry so much? Why is it so hard for us to trust that God will take care of things, take care of us?
This verse brings up a lot of really good points that we may not usually think of and yet if we did, it may help us to worry less. The first thing it talks about is that we don’t have to worry about what we will eat. It then asks us to think about the ravens. They don’t have a kitchen full of food. They don’t have a pantry that they can go to each day to get food out of. Each day they go out and get enough food for that day. They don’t worry whether they will find food or not. God gives them all the provisions they need for that day, one day at a time. If He is making sure the birds are fed, why wouldn’t he make sure we are fed. We are His beloved children. If we make sure to feed our children, why do we doubt that God will make sure to feed us? Did you know that when God was providing mana for the Israelites in the desert, he provided just enough for that one day. When they woke up there was a substance on the ground called manna. This was what they ate. God provided just enough for that one day. If they tried to take extra for the next day they would wake up and find it had spoiled and worms were eating it. They had to trust that each day God would provide their meal for that day. We could use some of that trust in our lives today.
This next line is one that I just love. The verse says, “And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? If then you are not able to do so small a thing as that, why do you worry about the rest?” I love this because it points out to us how useless our worry is. What are we gaining by worrying? Are we adding hours to our life by worrying? No, I would argue that we are subtracting hours because the time you spend worrying is time not being spent on fully living. You cannot fully be living in the present moment if your mind is distracted by all your worrying. Also, worry and stress are not good for your body. It may take time off your life by causing health problems if you are constantly worried or stressed about things. Did you know that 90% of what we worry about doesn’t even happen? We worry about things that might happen, and most of the time they don’t happen. I have a secret for you, if they do happen, you will have plenty of time to worry then. If your worrying can’t change the outcome, if there is nothing you can do but worry, then why worry, you will have time to worry if it does happen.
The next line says, “Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you—you of little faith!” I find it interesting that He mentions they don’t “toil or spin.” When talking about the ravens He said they don’t “sow or reap.” I find it interesting that He points out that they are not doing anything and God is providing for them. Maybe it is just my interpretation, but what I hear God saying here is, “We don’t have to earn our food or our clothes.” God does not take care of us and give us provisions because we do all the right things. In both cases above he is saying that they don’t do anything and yet He provides for them. It also points out that if He does that for the flowers and the birds, how much more would He do for us. This is a recurring message that God keeps pointing out to me over the last few months, maybe longer and I just didn’t notice. He keeps telling me, “you don’t have to earn my love, you already have it. I will take care of you regardless of whether you deserve it or not. You are mine and I am yours. I don’t need anything from you, I don’t need you to do anything for me. I just want you to BE with me.”
The part of the last line that I am not a fan of, and yet God says on more than one occasion in the Bible and Jesus seemed to say often when He walked the Earth is “you of little faith!” It seems no matter how many impossible things we see God do, or the disciples saw Jesus do, we struggle to believe He will do them for us, or that we can be His instruments. We worry about all these things that God said He will take care of. We worry that we will have enough food, even though God tells us right here in this verse that we don’t have to. We worry that we will have enough money to buy clothes and God is saying, I’ve got you. You don’t have to worry. Why does He have to keep saying “you of little faith?” When will we learn? When will we trust? What do we have to do so that we can hear him say, “you of great faith?” This is what I am longing for, this would be my one wish if I met a genie in a bottle. I would wish that I could have the faith of a mustard seed that God is always talking about.
The Lord gives us an answer to these questions of why we worry in the ending of this verse. “ And do not keep striving for what you are to eat and what you are to drink, and do not keep worrying. For it is the nations of the world that strive after all these things, and your Father knows that you need them. Instead, strive for his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well.” We worry because we are striving for the things of this world. We are stressing over worldly things instead of spending our time striving for the Kingdom. God tells us right now that if we spend our time striving for the kingdom, then he will take care of everything else. I know this to be true because I have seen it with my own eyes. My parents have always strived for the kingdom of heaven. Even when they were teenagers, which is a time when a lot of us struggle with the church and following the rules, they were striving for the kingdom. They would go to daily mass together sometimes as teens. They would go to Sunday mass together. When we were growing up they often had to rely on the Lord for food and clothes as I am one of 11 children and although my dad had a great job, it is expensive to raise 11 children.
I wish I could say that my parents never, worried, but they are human, so this is not the case. However, even while worrying they still prayed and relied on the Lord. They always kept their eyes fixed above and the Lord always came through. We never went hungry and we always had enough clothes. We would get bags of clothes dropped off at our door because everyone knew we didn’t have a lot of money. I swear the Lord would perform a miracle of multiplication every time my mom would cook. She would use 2 cans of tuna to make tuna melts for all of us and wouldn’t run out of tuna. I would watch her cook and think that there was no way that would be enough food for all of us and then we would always have left overs. There is not a doubt in my mind that God provided for us in a supernatural way and I there is also not a doubt in my mind it is because my parents kept their eyes focused on Him and even though they did worry sometimes, they always knew He would provide.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we don’t want to worry, please help us not to. Please help us to hear these words today in a different way. Please help them to penetrate our heart and our mind and for us to understand what they mean. Lord, please give us a supernatural understanding of what you are saying with this verse. Help us to trust that you will provide all we need for any circumstance. Please help us to have more trust and more faith. Help us to also understand that we don’t have to be perfect, we don’t have to earn your love or your provisions. All you want from us is to be with you and to keep our eyes fixed on you and not on those things of this world. Help us to do this Lord. We want all of this, we just need your help to make it happen. We are weak and you are strong. We can do all things through Christ who strengthens us. Please help us to do all things Lord. We love you so very much and we are so grateful that you provide for us even though we don’t deserve it. We ask all this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
The Golden Rule
Matthew 7:12 “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.”
Did you know that the golden rule was actually in the Bible? I knew it was something that I was taught growing up. I knew that it was a nice thing to do, but I did not realize that it was found in the Bible. I didn’t know it was a command from our Heavenly Father. I am not sure if it was ever presented to me as if it were God telling us to do this. I figured it was just something that parents told their kids to get them to behave better. You know what I mean? Similar to how they tell us that the magic words are please and thank you. Even though I didn’t know this was a bible verse, I did try to embrace this advice.
I feel as though this simple, short verse can be a guiding principle for how to live our life. If we are not sure what to do in a certain circumstance, we can think of this verse and it can help us make a decision. For instance, if we are not sure if we should tell someone something, think about whether or not we would want them to tell us. This can apply in many different circumstances. When we are interacting with our children, when we are driving, when we are at work, no matter the circumstances we can ask ourselves what we would like someone else to do to/for us and then decide what we will do.
I feel like the world would be a much better place if more of us remembered and lived by the golden rule. When I read some of the comments that people write to other people on social media I wonder what they are thinking. The definitely are not thinking about how they would feel if someone said that to them. They write comments that are very unkind. One of the people I follow on social media made a post about the comments people made on her posts. They wrote comments about how annoying she is and how they can’t stand her. This is crazy because if you think someone is annoying you can not follow them, or you can click on a button and hide their posts so they don’t show up on your screen. You do not have to share you unkind thoughts with them.
This golden rule also makes me think of the Matthew 25:34-40 “Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’ And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’
When is the last time we fed the hungry or clothed the naked? When is the last time we gave someone a drink, or went to visit someone that was lonely in prison or sick? My sister and her husband and daughter used to make meals for those the homeless people in Worcester. It wasn’t anything fancy, it was just a brown bag with a sandwich, an apple, a bottle of water and maybe a granola bar. Then they would drive around and give them to those they saw on the streets. I have always admired this and wanted to do it, but never have. Her daughter is an adult now and last year she was going to college in Boston. She would carry around in her car a basket of granola bars, water, chips and other snacks so if someone came up to her car, she could give them something to eat. Kindness is contagious. If we have it, we can spread it. The world definitely needs more kindness right now.
Another thing I have always admired and yet not actually done yet was something I read in Matthew Kelly’s book “Resisting Happiness.” If you have not read this book, I highly recommend it. It was so good. In this book Matthew Kelly talks about how his mentor at the time use to take him to a nursing home on Saturday afternoons for an hour or two. It was not a lot of time, but he said it was so powerful. He said the elderly that lived there were so happy to have a visitor and they were so wise and had so many stories to tell. How are we treating the elderly in our society? How are we treating our own parents as they get older, or the people at our church? Are we patient and understanding? Are we empathetic to the fact that growing old isn’t easy? Are we treating them like we would want to be treated when we are their age? If we are lucky enough to live to be their age? Do we respect their wisdom and their experience?
What about clothing the naked? There are plenty of people that can not afford clothes. What are we doing with our clothes? Are we donating them to others when we no longer want them? What about buying new clothes for those that need them? For instance in the winter time, we could donate fresh, new, socks to the homeless shelter. It is cold out there in the winter in a lot of places and dry socks are a commodity. What about donating winter jackets? These don’t even have to be new, but if we have more than we need, we can donate some. Also, we could go to the thrift store, or Goodwill and buy a few winter jackets and bring them to a homeless shelter. There are plenty of people living on the streets and although we can’t clothe them all, we can do our small part.
Do you see how this golden rule can apply to so many circumstances. God is looking for us to treat others how we wish to be treated. He is wanting us to be kind and loving towards all we meet as this is how we would want to be treated. However, He doesn’t want us to just stop there. He wants us to go out and search for those that are lost, hungry, sick, thirsty, and take care of them the way we would want God to take care of us. God wants us to be His hands and feet on earth and help Him take care of all of His children. Will you accept this challenge? Will you continue to try and live by the golden rule? What is one thing you can do today, or this week to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, welcome the stranger, or visit someone that is lonely?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to live by the golden rule. Help us to be your hands and feet in this world. We want to be your instruments Lord, put it on our heart how you want us to help. Lord, help us to see that it doesn’t have to be a big thing that we do all the time. Help us to spend less time thinking and planning and more time doing. Help us to know what you want us to do and let us not get side tracked by all the options. There are so many ways to help those in need, let us just pick one and do it. We love you Lord, you are so amazing. You do so much for us and we want to do more for others. We just need your help. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I just want to remind everyone that my prayer group is putting on a Life in the Spirit Seminar tonight at 7:00 P. M. (EST) If you are interested in learning more about the Holy Spirit and how to invite Him more into your life, email me and I will send you the zoom link. Catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com. I look forward to seeing you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
The Lord Is My Shepherd
Ezekiel 34:14-17 "I will feed them with good pasture, and the mountain heights of Israel shall be their pasture; there they shall lie down in good grazing land, and they shall feed on rich pasture on the mountains of Israel. I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them lie down, says the Lord God. I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, but the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with justice.”
This is another promise from God. There are so many of them in the Bible. I feel so incredibly lucky to have a God that cares about us so much that He would promise to take care of us. God is not just talking about giving us what is left over, or a mediocre life. It says that He shall feed us with good pasture and with rich pasture. He talks about how our pasture shall be on the Mountain heights of Israel. The Lord is saying that we shall be set apart. He will feed us and make sure we have a place to live. The Lord will be our shepherd, he will make sure we have all we need. A place to eat and a place to lie down.
The next part says that God will search for the lost and bring back those that strayed. Do you feel like you are lost? Do you feel as though you have strayed far from home and can’t find your way back? Don’t worry, the Lord isn’t expecting you to find your way back on your own. He is out there searching for you and He is ready to help. The Lord says in this verse the He will be our shepherd. He is a loving Father that doesn’t pass off his responsibilities. He didn’t just create us and then appoint someone to take care of us and then move on to something else. He has appointed people to be His instrument here one earth, but even when God has done that He has always stayed involved, always walked with us in our journey. When God appointed Moses to lead His people out of Egypt, His spirit was in front of them the whole time. Day and night, His spirit was there leading the way.
A prime example of when God has gone out to seek the lost is when He found Mary Magdalen. She was raised Jewish and her father used to read her stories and teach her the Jewish ways when she was little. However, when Jesus found her she was far from her Jewish roots. According to the Chosen episode I saw, she was possessed with demons and she would sometimes go crazy. She didn’t know what was going on, but she was longing for something. I just don’t think she knew what she was longing for. Then Jesus came and called her home. It is a really beautiful episode if you ever get the chance to watch it.
Another way that we can tell how much God loves us is found in John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” God sent Jesus, His only son, down to earth to show us the way and to die on the cross for our sins. We were all lost to God because of original sin and so He sent His son down to save us. He does not give up on us, ever. He keeps searching for us until He finds us and calls us home.
We tried very hard to raise our boys Catholic and to bring them to church and religious education. However, they really struggled going to mass each week and we struggled as well. They weren’t always well behaved and sometimes it was really hard to get anything out of mass when we were trying to deal with certain behaviors. However, once COVID shut down the churches and the religious education class it became impossible to get them to go. Actually, we stopped trying to get them to go. I am sure I told myself that it was ok if they didn’t go because the obligation to attend mass was waived for a while and it was probably not safe for them to go any way. Maybe this was part of it, but the bigger truth is that I didn’t want to fight anymore. I also wanted to enjoy mass and be able to listen and pay attention. So I just stopped waking them put to go. Of course I had no idea that COVID would last so long and with each passing week it got harder and harder to get them to go back to church. I will keep trying, however, I take comfort in knowing that God will seek them and bring them back in His time.
The next part of the verse says, “I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, but the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with justice.” God will bind up the injured and strengthen the weak. This is something we really need right now. This is a promise that is really useful during a pandemic. There are lots of people injured and weak that are crying to God for help. I have known several people that have cried out to God over the last 24 months and He has saved them. He has fixed their cancer, cured their MS symptoms, healed them from COVID. He has been very busy lately. Although I suspect He is always busy.
I also know many that have felt weak over these past few years and have turned to the Lord for the strength that they needed. He has always come through. He doesn’t always answer our prayers in the way we think He will, but He does always answer them. I heard the witness the other day of a woman who said she was married for 25 years and then she got a divorce. She said that although he Lord didn’t answer her prayers the way she would have liked, sparing her from he divorce, He did provide her the strength she needed to make it through the whole process. He not only provided strength but he provided practical things like a one million dollar lean on her house to be taken off so she could sell it. She was able to rent an apartment to live in with no down payment and no job. The Lord found her a job after being a stay at home mom for so many years. All of these things were miracles and she was so very grateful.
The one part of the verse that I didn’t understand was, “but the fat and the strong I will destroy.” It seemed strange to me that God would destroy the fat and the strong, so I looked up what it meant. What I found said that what this meant was that God was going to destroy those that were getting fat and strong because of taking advantage of others. The people that would eat all the food and not share with their fellow man, or take what they had and lord it over other people. Use their strength and power to keep others down. This makes more sense. Then the Lord says that He will “feed them with justice.” It makes sense that if people are acting like that then God would enact Justice on them. He is after all the God of Justice. This is why we can rest assured that we don’t have to be scared of evil doers, because God will take care of them for us. He is a loving God that always looks our for us and provides for us. Thank you God!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we are so grateful you provide for us and look out for us. We are grateful you seek us when we are lost and you bring us back when we stray. You are a great shepherd and we are so lucky to have you. Help us to seek you Lord. We love you Lord, you are amazing! We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
The Easy Path or The Harder To Travel Path
1 Corinthians 2:9 “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him”
This is pretty awesome when we think about it. God has prepared something so amazing for those that love Him that no human heart has conceived it. No eye has seen it and no ear has heard it. I definitely want to sign up for that. How do we sign up for that? The verse says that God has prepared it for those that love Him. It might be easy to think that we automatically qualify because of course we love God. We have talked about this before in another episode about how we may feel like we love God, but does God feel like we love Him? What are we doing to show God that we love Him?
If you are listening to this episode then I am sure that you love God. You wouldn’t go out of your way to spend 10 minutes of your day listening to me talk about a scripture verse if you didn’t want to grow in your faith, grow closer to God, or learn how to walk boldly with Jesus. I am not questioning if you love God. I am sure that you do. I do wonder how we could show God that we love Him even more than we already are. I would like there to be no question in God’s mind whether we love him or not.
I feel as though God has been repeating a few things to me lately. Does this ever happen to you? You feel as though God is telling you something and then every where you look it seems to be a similar message? This is a thing, I know it is. I have heard many people talk about it. I heard a story once of this woman who had a big decision to make. She didn’t want to move, but she really felt like God was calling her to move. She told God that if he wanted her to move He would have to make His will very clear to her as she really didn’t want to hear it. She was in church on Sunday and she heard a verse that confirmed that she was supposed to move. She passed it off as coincidence, or maybe she was reading too much into in. The next day, a friend called her up and said that she didn’t know why, but she had a feeling she was supposed to call and give her this certain scripture verse and it whatever it was confirmed that she should move. Again, she tried to ignore it and explain it away. The next day, a delivery man dropped off a package to her door and after she signed for it he was walking away and then he turned and gave her a scripture verse, out of the blue. It was not someone she knew, he just said, I am not sure why this is coming to mind but what does this mean to you and gave her the scripture verse. She finally agreed to move. God is funny how he works sometimes. If He has a message for you, He will get it to you, no matter how many times you try to ignore it.
This is what the Lord has been doing to me lately, or I should say he has been doing this for me lately. There seems to be a few messages that keep coming up over and over again. One of them is the one I talked about the other day. God has been telling me through Bible verses and through conversations with people that He really wants us to just be still with Him. Another message that seems to keep coming up is that the road to God is the narrow one, the road less traveled. The scripture Matthew 7:13-14 keeps coming up. It says, “Go in through the narrow door. The door is wide and the road is easy that leads to hell. Many people are going through that door. But the door is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life that lasts forever. Few people are finding it.”
This message has also come up at my prayer group. Someone today had a vision of a path that we were walking down and then the path split and you could choose which path to go down. One way looks smooth and easy to travel and the other is all rocky and hilly and harder to travel. The Lord says, “So many times we chose the path that is the easiest because we don’t want to have a hard time doing anything. We want things to go smoothly constantly. But on the other road, where it is hard to travel, that s where He is. It is in the rough traveling, it is in the hardships, it is in the hard times going, trying, fighting, to get to the Lord, that is where the purities come. That is where your heart becomes more like His because He struggled constantly. As we walk the road, we get tired and we say, “Lord, I don’t want any more of this. I’d rather just walk the smooth road. And He constantly calls us with the eyes of Love. “Come, just a little bit more, just a little bit further. For I am waiting, don’t worry about the roughness it will not hurt you for I am your God and I travel with you.”
This is something I feel He keeps reminding me. Sometimes I want to do something am I am not sure if I should. For instance, my husband and I started watching a tv show that was an interesting show, however, it was very graphic and had a lot of sex in it. There were times when I felt very uncomfortable watching it. I felt as though the Holy Spirit was convicting me that I shouldn’t be watching it. I would try to rationalize that it was a very popular show and I knew plenty of other people that watched it. This is when I felt very strongly that the Lord showed me Matthew 7:13-14. I felt like the Lord was telling me that He knows a lot of people have watched it, but He is calling me to more. He is calling me to take a different road.
The Lord is not just calling me to take a different road. He is calling you too. He is calling all of us to examine our behavior and see if we are loving Him through our behavior? If we were to look at our lives would we know just by what we see that we love the Lord? Would we see that we put God first, or everything else first? We would see that our lives are lived any differently than anyone else’s? God is telling us in Matthew 7:13-14 “Go in through the narrow door. The door is wide and the road is easy that leads to hell. Many people are going through that door. But the door is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life that lasts forever. Few people are finding it.” Are we part of the few people that are finding the narrow door? Are we even looking for the narrow door?
When I was watching the show and I felt convicted that I should stop, I didn’t want to. It was a good show and I was enjoying it. I was trying to convince myself that God didn’t really care if I watched it. I was afraid of missing out on something enjoyable. Then one day I thought about how amazing Heaven is going to be. I though about how I may be sacrificing some enjoyment in the here and now, but I will be gaining eternal enjoyment. I say that I will give anything to be in heaven with the Lord for eternity, however, I couldn’t even stop watching one TV show when I felt the Lord was asking me to. So, it looks like I still have lots of work to do. And you know what, that is ok. The Lord doesn’t need me to have it all figured out right this second. All He really wants is for us to be seeking the right answers. He wants us to keep trying to get it right. He knows we will fail a lot and He still loves us anyway.
Let’s all take a look at the path we are on and figure out if it is the easy path, the one that feels good, but doesn’t lead anywhere good. Or, are we on the difficult path, the one less traveled, that leads to the Lord. I love in the vision when the Lord said, “Come, just a little bit more, just a little bit further. For I am waiting, don’t worry about the roughness it will not hurt you for I am your God and I travel with you.” I love that God is traveling with us and that He is protecting us. If you are traveling down a really hard road right now, I hope the Lord’s words will bring you comfort. “Come, just a little bit more, just a little bit further, for I am waiting.” He is there waiting for us, we just have to keep choosing the right path to walk down. It isn’t one decision and we are done. It is a series of decisions every single day and if we get it wrong, we can always course correct. He just wants us to keep trying to get it right. Remember what is waiting for us when we get it right. “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to choose the narrow path, please keep guiding us. Please keep sending the Holy Spirit to convict us when we are heading in the wrong direction. Please keep turning us around and directing us back to the correct path. We love you Lord, we love you above all things, help our behavior to reflect that. Help us to put you above all things. Help us overcome our temporary desire for pleasure here on earth so we can enjoy eternal happiness living in your presence. Lord we want all the amazing things you have planned for those that love you. Help us be counted among those that love you. You are so amazing and we are so grateful that you still love us even when we mess up. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to seeing you on Monday. Have a blessed weekend!
Sprinkle Love Like Confetti
2 Corinthians 3:4-6 “Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. Not that we are competent of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our competence is from God, who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of letter but of spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life."
I liked this verse when I read it for a couple of reasons. The first reason was that it says “such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God.” I liked the phrasing of it. The verse is saying that they have confidence toward God through Christ. They are acknowledging that Christ is the reason the have confidence in God. It is through Him that all things are possible. I like this because it means that all the responsibility for trusting God is not on my shoulders. If I ask, Christ will help me with my confidence towards God.
The next line says, “Not that we are competent of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our competence is from God.” I like this because again, it takes some of the responsibility off of us to have to know how to do it all and to be good everything. If God asks us to do something then He will give us all we need to do it. This is sometimes hard to believe. Imagine God asks you to build an orphanage in a foreign country. One where you have never been before. It is difficult to say yes to this when you have no idea how any of the pieces will come together. Maybe you don’t even know how to build anything, and you are not a fan of travel. Maybe you don’t have any money and you don’t have the first clue how to do fundraising. It would be hard to step into this calling when you don’t have any answers. And yet, some people do.
God asked Noah to build an arc. He asked him to build in arc in the middle of a drought. Noah had no idea how to build an arc, he was a farmer. Noah had never built an arc before. I don’t think that Noah had all the supplies to build the arc before he said yes to the Lord. God asked Noah to build an arc, with very specific dimensions and Noah said yes. He said yes, not because he knew what he was doing, and not because he had all the answers. He said yes because he loved God and God asked him to. He said yes and relied on the Lord to give him what he would need to complete the project.
I wish we all had this kind of trust in the Lord. I wish that when God asked us to do something, we all just said yes. We didn’t think about it, we didn’t weigh the pros and the cons, we didn’t worry about whether we were good enough or not. I wish we just said yes. If God wanted to erase everyone except Noah off the face of the earth then it seems like the world was in a pretty bad place. The world is in a pretty bad place right now. It seems as though you can be anything you want today except for Christian. You have to be tolerant of everyone else’s beliefs, but no one has to be tolerant of the Christian beliefs. Don’t get me wrong, I think that we should be tolerant of other people’s beliefs. I just expect that same respect and it doesn’t seem to be happening these days. I believe that God is calling us all to action. I believe He wants us to spread the gospel, to live His word every day.
This brings me to the next line in this verse, “our competence is from God, who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant.” God made the apostles competent ministers of the new covenant. He will do the same for us. If we just say yes, he will equip us with the knowledge and power that we need to spread the good news. If you are anything like me you shrink away from the responsibility to spread the good news. You think to yourself, “Who am I to talk about God, what do I know?” or you say “There are others much better suited to talk about Jesus. Others that have studied harder or paid attention more.” There are any number of things we tell ourselves to convince us that God maybe calling some people, but He isn’t calling me. I am not worthy to serve the Lord. I am not good enough, smart enough, educated enough, or whatever your version of “not enough” is.
This is the enemy talking! He has convinced us that we aren’t enough and so God couldn’t possible use us. All the proof you need to know this isn’t true can be found in the Bible. God never used the most educated men, the most holy people, the people that got everything right. He used normal, everyday people to be his instruments in the world and He wants to use you. Do not believe the enemy that you are not enough. Are you worthy? No, none of us are worthy and yet God loves us and wants to use us anyway. God made us in His likeness and image, so we can’t be all that bad.
The last part of this verse is a really important part. It is one that I find really interesting and want to dive deeper into. I will just touch on it today to draw your attention to it and then if you want to dive deeper to understand it better you can do that. The last part of this verse says, “who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of letter but of spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” This talk of a new covenant is what I would like to dive deeper into. The things I found regarding this particular scripture say that the letter of the law is the mosaic law. Before Paul was converted he used to enforce the laws of the old covenant. The reason this verse says that the letter kills is because it is impossible for us to follow all the laws on our own. We are a sinful people and we can’t live a life without sin without the Holy Spirit. When Paul teaches the new covenant he teaches those who trust in Jesus to live by the Holy Spirit.
I think this is where many of us go wrong. We want to help everyone find Jesus and we have noble intentions. However, we go about it by preaching the letter of the law instead of the spirit of the law. Instead of starting out letting everyone know how much they are loved by our heavenly father, we tell them that they are living in sin if they live with someone they aren’t married too. Instead of loving people right where they are at, and trusting the Holy Spirit to convict them of any wrong doing, we judge them and treat them according to how we feel they should be treated. The Holy Spirit has really convicted me over the years that Jesus is love and that He wants me to be an example of that love to all that I meet. I fall short and I don’t always do this, however, I never stop trying and I know that when I do fail, God forgives me and then he gives me the grace I need to do better next time.
If we truly want to help people find their way to Jesus then we need to be a reflection of Jesus to all we meet. When Jesus ate with the tax collectors and the prostitutes, he did not lecture them about what they were doing and how they needed to change. He just loved them right where they were at and they saw a love and a peace in Him that they wanted. Our words will not be the thing that changes people, our actions will. It seems like people are starving for love and connection these days. This may sound weird because with social media, it seems like everyone has so many more friends. However, it is rare to get true connection with others online. There is definitely a shortage of love these days. Even with all these ways to communicate people are feeling more alone than ever. What if we spread love around to everyone we meet? I heard this saying and I love it. I think if we all made it our goal for 2022, we would be better people at the end of the year and the world around us would be that much better. I will leave you with this quote, “Sprinkle love like confetti.”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to love you and to have confidence in you. Lord, help us to say yes to whatever it is you are calling us to, even if we don’t understand how or why you are calling us to it. Help us to say yes, even if we don’t have any of the answers we think we need. Please give us the grace to trust You and rely on You for all we will need to carry out the mission you give us. We want to be competent ministers of the new covenant. Help us to lead by example and to teach the spirit of the law instead of focusing on the letter of the law. We love you so much Lord, help us sprinkle that love like confetti to all those we come in contact with. Thank you so much for all you do for us. You are truly spectacular and we are so grateful. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
You Need Only Be Still
Exodus 14:13-14 “Moses answered the people, “Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again. The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.”
This is something that the Lord has been telling me a lot lately. “You need only to be still” When I read this verse I knew it was a message that wan’t just for me, it was for all of us. The beginning of the verse says something that God says a lot in the Bible. “Do not be afraid.” God is constantly telling us this in the Bible. He tells us over and over again to not be afraid, to not worry. Why is it so hard to listen to Him? Why do we tend to worry about everything? Why is it so hard to trust and to not be afraid? I think that it is so hard to trust because we are used to people letting us down.
We live in a broken world and people say they will do things all the time and then they don’t. We all make promises and then struggle to keep them. People say one thing and mean another. As much as we want to be perfect, we are far from it. We are afraid to trust God because we forget that He is not like the other people in our lives. We forget that He doesn’t let us down and that He always keeps His promises. God does not tell us one thing and then do another. When you read the Bible you can see exactly who God is. He tells us who He is, what He wants and all the things He is willing to do for us. So, why can’t we trust it? Are we working on trusting more? Are we trying to trust that He will do the things He says He will? Are we trying to not be afraid, knowing He will save us?
The next part of the verse says, “Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today.” I know a lot of people that are waiting for this deliverance today. Moses said this to the Israelites when they were standing on the banks of the Red Sea. They were scared because they looked behind them and they could see the Egyptian army coming right for them. Then they looked in front of them and they saw the red seas. I would be scared too! They were confused because Moses told them that God was leading them to a promised land. They trusted this was true and they left their homes. Now it looked like they were facing certain death. How could this be happening? Then Moses said stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today.
How do you stand firm when you are scared? How do you stand firm when it looks like you are facing certain death? I don’t blame the Israelites for being scared, I think I would have been scared too. And yet, the Israelites had seen God do the impossible just before they left Egypt. The Lord had brought plagues upon Egypt, but spared them. They saw how Moses held up his hands and the plagues came and then he commanded them to stop and they did. God killed all the first born sons in Egypt, but allowed them to mark their doors so that their first borns would be saved. They had seen first hand the power of God and yet, they were still scared when they reached the Red Sea and couldn’t see a way out. We might be tempted to judge them. I mean, they saw first hand God’s power, how come they didn’t trust He would save them? They didn’t trust because they didn’t see the way. We are people who believe and trust what we see and are skeptical if we can’t see it with our own eyes. Sometimes even when we do see it with our own eyes, we don’t trust it. We think it must be a trick, there must be some other explanation for it.
In case you don’t know this story, God parted the Red Sea and the Israelites walked right through it on dry ground. Then when the Egyptian army tried to do the same the water flowed again and they all died. You would think after seeing this the Israelites would never again doubt the Lord. And yet they do, time and time again. I guess it is our human nature. However, I think it is something that we should fight against. I don’t think we should just accept it as a fact and not try to do anything about it. Moses was able to trust all God said. Well, there was one time when he didn’t and because of it wasn’t allowed to lead the people into the promised land. However, for the most part he learned to trust in God. If he can learn to trust in God then I believe we can too, but how? How can we learn to trust in the Lord more?
I think the answer can be found in the last part of this verse. “The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.” I think if we want to trust in the Lord more we need to be still and sit with Him. There were two words of prophecy from my prayer group that seem to fit perfectly with this episode and seem to confirm this call for us to just be still. In the first one the Lord said, “My children in the days ahead I ask that you simply be, be with me in silence. Just be and let that silence fill you, around you because I am in that silence.” Sometimes we can feel like we always need to be doing something. We feel as though we need to be praying, or saying a rosary, or talking to God. We don’t understand that He loves it when we just sit with Him, not doing anything, just sitting. The Lord our God is in the silence. When we are sitting with Him in silence He is all around us.
In the second word, that was given to my prayer group, the Lord said, “Be still my children. Be still and breathe in my Holy Spirit. The spirit of life, of goodness, of truth, of wisdom, of love and compassion. Be still and breathe in the very breath of God. I know that my gift to you, in my great mercy is life, life in me, with me, through me, because of me.” “Breathe in the very breath of God.” Wow, imagine if we thought of that every time we took a breath? How much closer would we grow to God if we remembered that every time we were taking in a breath we were breathing in the very breath of God? Again, in this word the Lord is telling us to be still. I know He is not just talking to me. We live in such a busy world. If you think about it honestly, when was the last time you just sat in silence with the Lord? I know for me this is so difficult. We are used to a noisy and busy world.
When I hear the Lord telling me to just be still with Him I get confused. I want to obey the Lord and yet I wonder, be still and do what? He tells me to just be still and do nothing. Do nothing? How do I do nothing? It is definitely something that I have been working on and yet still struggle with a lot. If we want to trust the Lord more then we need to do as He asks us to do. We need to sit with Him in silence and to let that silence fill us up. The Lord tells us to breathe in His Holy Spirit. The spirit of truth, wisdom, love and compassion. Who doesn’t need more of all of that? The Lord will give us all we need, and He all He is asking from us is that we sit still with Him and let Him fill us up. Why is this so hard? Can you commit to spending even just 5 minutes sitting in silence with the Lord today? Will you sit in silence and breathe in the Holy Spirit, the very breath of God?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this podcast today. Lord, help us to stand firm and to not be afraid. Help us to trust that you will deliver us from our situation, whatever that situation may be. Lord, help us to sit still in the silence. Calm our minds and help us to see that you are calling us to just be with you. That we don’t have to do anything, you just want our time. You offer us so much Lord, help us to accept all that you offer. You have said that your gift to us is life you, with you, through you and because of you. We want that gift Lord. We want to live a life in you and with you. Please help us Lord. We love you, you are wonderful and I know we don’t tell you that enough. We are so grateful for all that you do. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Do Not Lose Heart
2 Corinthians 4:16-18 “So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.
The beginning of this verse is something that is much easier said than done. It is easy for us to tell others to not give up hope, don’t lose heart. It is easy for us to tell them that the chronic pain they are having won’t last forever. It’s easy to say the pain you are feeling over losing someone will fade one day. It is easy for someone outside of the situation to tell you not to loose heart. It is a much harder thing to actually do when you are the one in the middle of the hard thing. It is very hard to not lose hope when you don’t see any light at the end of the tunnel.
What this verse is telling us is that even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. Have you been sick for a very long time? Are you just waiting for the pain or the illness to go away? I have a friend that only has one kidney. Not because of anything she did, she just happened to be born with only one kidney. She has been in a lot of pain over the past few years. She had seen several different types of doctors and they could not fix the pain. She finally found one that was able to help her. She was pain free for quite a while and then she started to get a lot of UTI’s. These were quite painful and they kept putting her on medicine that didn’t work well. It would take her several trips back to the Emergency Room before someone would listen to her and fix her medication.
I can see how she could be losing hope. It is not fun to always be sick. When you are sick you feel weak and your defenses are down. The enemy loves to take advantage of this. He loves to tell you that you will always feel like this. That there is no end in sight and that means you will feel like this forever. I can see why he does this. This is what it feels like and this may even be what it looks like. The devil is not idiot. He does not make up lies out of thin air to tell us. He takes what is true and bends it to fit his needs. He can see that it would be easy for us to believe that things will stay like this forever, because that is what it looks and feels like. It is not a leap to think this. You were probably already wondering and he is just confirming it for you.
However, this is not the case. This verse says that this momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure. I don’t know if that helps you at all, but it helps me realize that this suffering I am going through right now is preparing me for an eternal weight of glory. That is pretty awesome. Sign me up for eternal glory beyond all measure. You are not suffering in vain. The Lord sees your suffering and will reward you greatly in Heaven. The verse also says, “we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.”
This is telling us that we are looking at the wrong things. We are looking at what we can see instead of relying on what we know. We see our body staying sick, or wasting away, but we don’t look and see how much stronger we are getting on the inside. We can’t see our faith growing and our trust growing. We also can’t see how much more resilient we are getting. What we can see is temporary and what cannot be seen is eternal. What if we focused on the eternal? What if we were able to concentrate on the fact that this life is temporary and that our eternal life is going to be so much better?
The Lord does not want us to lose hope. He wants us to keep fighting through the pain, through the depression, through the illness that seems like it won’t quit. Some of my friends have had one bad thing after another for months now. It seems like it is never ending and they are wondering when it is going to end. When will it be their time to enjoy some calm seas? When will they feel better? When will their loved ones get better? When will these attacks from the enemy telling them they are not good enough stop? I don’t have an answer for them. I don’t know when it will stop or when things will get better. I do know that God doesn’t want them to lose hope. I know that He is there with them through it all.
I wonder if it is helpful to think of this time as a training time? I know it is a really difficult time and I also know that sometimes when I am going through a really hard time, a perspective shift can be enough to help me turn things around and stop feeling so badly. I know chronic pain is not an easy thing to experience. I wonder if thinking about that pain as training for eternal glory would be helpful? Would it be helpful if you thought about your suffering as a necessary thing to go through to gain eternal glory? Eternal glory beyond all measure is your reward for suffering here on earth. Does knowing that make the suffering easier? I can’t answer that for you. Only you know what is helpful and not helpful. I just wanted to explain what this verse was saying to the best of my ability and to pose some questions to see if thinking about your situation in a different way would help change your perspective.
Our perspective is everything sometimes. We always have a choice how we look at a situation and if we choose the wrong way then we will not be helping ourselves out. We do ourselves a disservice when we look at our lives negatively. When we judge everything that we are going through in a negative light. If we are able to change this, and try to see the positive side of every situation then we will live much happier lives. Not because everything is all of the sudden sunshine and rainbows in our life, but because we are choosing to shine a light into the darkness and brighten things up a bit. I know this is not always easy and it does take some work, sometimes some hard work. However, it is so worth it in the end. Wouldn’t it be worth the hard work of changing our thoughts if it could change how we feel in any given situation? It costs you nothing to change your thoughts. It is something you can do even if you can’t change your circumstances and when you do you will feel like everything has changed.
If you are not sure how to change your thoughts, the simplest and easiest way I can think of right now is to start being more grateful. Try to come up with three to five things every single day that you are grateful for. You may not feel any different the first few times you do it, but I promise, if you keep at it you will see a change. I would suggest writing them down in a notebook so that you can look at them as often as you want and remind yourself of all the things you have to be grateful for. However, you could always just say them out loud also. Just take a minute or two and write down or say out loud things like, “Thank you God for allowing me to wake up today.” “Thank you for my family.” “Thank you for this wonderful cup of coffee.” “Thank you for the sunrise.” Whatever it is that you can be thankful for is great. The more grateful you can be the better you will feel. I have know lots of people that have tried this and they have all reported feeling better. Give it a try, what have you got to lose?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us when we are struggling. Help us to focus on what is eternal instead of what is of this world. Help us to keep our eyes fixed on you and the eternal glory beyond measure that you have waiting for us. Lord, we ask that you put on our hearts to be more grateful, especially in times when it is difficult because we aren’t grateful for the circumstances we find ourselves in. Even if we can’t be grateful for our current circumstances, help us to find something throughout our day that we can be grateful for. We love you Lord, you are amazing! We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I wanted to invite all of you listening to get to know the Holy Spirit a little more and how to live in the Holy Spirit. My prayer group is holding a free Life in the Spirit Seminar starting tonight at 7:00 pm EST. It will be from 7-8:30 EST every Tuesday night for the next 7 weeks. It is a great way to learn about the Holy Spirit and to even be baptized in the Holy Spirit on week 5. If you feel like this is something you would like to check out send me an email at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com and I will send you the zoom link. Oh, I forgot to mention that it is virtual. I hope you can join us. It is a life changing experience. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Take Away The Stone
John 11:38-44 “Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance. “Take away the stone,” he said. “But, Lord,” said Martha, the sister of the dead man, “by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days.” Then Jesus said, “Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?” So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.” When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face. Jesus said to them, “Take off the grave clothes and let him go.”
I am not sure how many of you listening to this know the story of Lazarus so I want to fill you in case you are not familiar with this story. Jesus is friends with this family. He has stayed at Mary & Martha’s house before when He has come through town. Mary and Martha are the two sisters and Lazarus is their brother. Jesus loves all of them. They are His friends. When Lazarus first got sick Jesus was out of town and Mary sent Him a note saying that Lazarus was sick and would die if Jesus did not come. Jesus replied in John 11:4-7 “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.” Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days, and then he said to his disciples, “Let us go back to Judea.”
That verse did not make a lot of sense to me when I first read it. Especially when it says, “Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days, and then he said to his disciples, “Let us go back to Judea.” I would think if He loved them He would have left immediately to go and save Lazarus. Also, Jesus says that this sickness will not end in death. Yet, when Jesus arrives back in Judea Lazarus is dead. He had been dead for four days by the time Jesus got there. How could Jesus say the sickness would not end in death, when Lazarus died?
Jesus could say that because death was not the end for Lazarus. Yes, he died and was even placed in a tomb, and then four days later Jesus came. This is where the verse for today picks up. It says that Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. Jesus felt for Martha and Mary. He was sad with them. It even says that Jesus wept. He knew the ending and He still wept with them. He could feel their pain. Once Jesus got to the tomb He told them to take the stone away. Then, Martha tells Jesus to be careful because after four days, Lazarus will not be smelling too great. Then Jesus says to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God? Here Martha is, she just told Jesus a few minutes ago that even though Jesus wasn’t there to save Lazarus, the Lord would do whatever Jesus asked. She was basically telling Jesus she believed he could do anything. Then, a few minutes later, outside the tomb she starts to doubt.
Isn’t that just like us? We believe and then when it comes time to see our faith in action we doubt. We wonder if it will really work, if it will really happen. So Jesus reminds her to believe and she will see the glory of God. This is what Jesus meant in the earlier verse when he said, “No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s son may be glorified through it.” If Jesus would have gone back and saved Lazarus before he died, would God have gotten all the Glory? He may have gotten the glory, but then He might not have. People might have said Lazarus got better because of the medicine, or because of the doctor, or some other reason. However, with Jesus calling Lazarus out of the tomb, there is not mistaking who deserves the glory in this instance. There is no misunderstanding or claims of coincidence. Jesus brought Lazarus back from the dead. There is no disputing that it was witnessed by many.
I forgot to talk about one very important part of this verse. Right before Jesus calls Lazarus to come out of the tomb “Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.”Before Jesus asked the Lord for anything He thanked Him. He didn’t wait until He saw Lazarus alive to thank the Lord. Jesus thanked Him before He even called for Lazarus to come out of the tomb. This is something that we get wrong a lot. We ask the Lord for a lot of things and we wait until we get them and then if we remember, we thank Him. Why is this? Why do we wait until we have it before we thank Him? Why do we so often forget to thank him? Wouldn’t it be great if we could ask for things with the confidence that He was going to answer our prayers and then thank Him for answering them? We can ask the Lord in confidence as He does always answer our prayers, just not always in the way we want Him too. Isn’t it good to get into the habit of thanking Him even if we didn’t get the answer that we wanted? Have you ever gotten a present for Christmas or your birthday and it wasn’t what you asked for? Did you still say thank you to the person who gave it to you? Then why aren’t we saying thank you to God.
In this verse Jesus says right after He thanks God that He knows God always hears him, but that He wanted all of those around Him to know that God sent Him. Isn’t it crazy how we have to see and hear with our own eyes to believe? Even though Jesus was about to bring Lazarus back from the dead, he knew if He wanted others to believe that God had sent Him then He needed to make sure people heard Him ask God and then Thank Him for answering His prayers. He wanted to make sure people knew that it wasn’t His own power but that God had given Him the power to raise Lazarus.
This is something that we need to all remember. God is still doing miracles every single day. He is still healing people and I have even heard of at least one case where someone was brought back to life just as Lazarus was. When we witness these things we sometimes want to praise the person that seemed to create the miracle. However, it was not through their own power that the person was healed. It was through the power of the Holy Spirit, and Jesus, and God all in one. We can’t heal people, only God can do that. What we can do is agree to be His hands and feet here on earth. We can say “Yes, Lord, use me.” We can ask the Lord to use us to help him in any way He needs us too. However, I caution you to not take those words lightly. If you ask the Lord to use you, He will. If you say yes, He will gladly accept the help. Just make sure you are ready to help as you never know what He will call you to do. He called Moses to talk to all the Israelites when Moses wasn’t a good public speaker. He called David to kill a giant when he was just a boy. Think about it and if you decide you are ready then say yes to the Lord, ask Him to use you. He may give you tasks that are outside of your comfort zone, but He will never ask you to do something and then not give you all that you need to do it. I heard a saying at a retreat once and it has given me a lot more courage to say yes to the Lord. We were told at the retreat that “God doesn’t call the equipped, He equips the called.” What this means is that if God calls you to something He will give you all you need to answer that call. All He requires of you is to say yes.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to believe even when we doubt. Help us to thank you for all that we ask for, and help us to do it right when we ask instead of waiting until we get what we want. Help us remember to thank you and not to forget. Lord, when we see amazing things happening here on earth help us to remember to give you all the glory. Lord, search our hearts and inspire those of us that are ready to say, Yes Lord, use me. I am yours for whatever you need. Help me be part of your army. Let me help spread the good news to all those I meet. Let us be your hands and feet Lord. We love you! You are so amazing and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Being Content With What I Have
Philippians 4:11-13 “Not that I am referring to being in need; for I have learned to be content with whatever I have. I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me.”
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we all learned this invaluable lesson? Paul said that he has learned to be content with whatever he has. If we could all learn this there would be so much less fighting in the world today. It seems like a lot of fighting begins when someone has something and someone else wants it. It can be a material thing, like oil, food, water, or it can be something else like power, fame, or good fortune. When we see others with these we have a tendency to get jealous and to want what others have. Some people feel as though they deserve to take what others have and so they try to take what they want.
Can you imagine a world in which we are all content with what we have? I think it is hard in this country because we have access to so much and the American dream seems to be wanting more and more. Climbing that ladder of success no matter what it means for you personally or to your relationships. It seems that there are few people in this country that are content with what they have. I think social media makes it even harder to be content with what you have because everyone is always posting photos about their new car, or their vacation, or their house, or whatever exciting new thing just happened to them. Back in the day, if your neighbor got a new car you would see it outside their house, but you wouldn’t be reading about it online. You probably wouldn’t see everyone’s photos of their vacations all the time. It would just be if you happened to be at their house when they got their film developed.
However, with digital cameras and phones in everyone’s hands all the time, we tend to document our lives and live more publicly than we used to. This is not necessarily a bad thing as I am very happy that I get to keep in touch with my friends from all over the world. I like that I can spend 30 minutes on social media and catch up on most major events in my friends lives. As opposed to having to email, snail mail, or call all of them. Technology has been a life saver in many instances. Especially when we couldn’t leave our houses. My family had many zoom calls during that time and it was great to be able to see everyone's faces.
As much as technology can be a life saver it can also be a major source of envy for many people. It can be hard when you are going through a particularly hard season of parenting and all you see on social media are these posts that make it seem like everyone else seems to be superstar parents. Maybe you have been struggling with health and yet everyone you look at online seems to be so healthy and it appears to come so naturally to them. Maybe you just lost your job. I know this is a very real possibility for many people these days with all that is going on. It is hard if you lost your job not to be jealous of those that have jobs and are posting about their jobs.
One way you can tell that people are not content with what they have is when you hear them complaining all the time. When you are content with what you have you don’t do a lot of complaining. You are happy with the way things are and you are grateful for what you do have. The definition of being content is being in a state of peaceful happiness. This does not mean that you never strive for more, but it does mean that you are happy with what you have at the moment. One thing we can do that could help us be more content is to focus on the things we do have instead of the things we don’t have. It can be easy to get stuck in a rut thinking about all the things that we want and yet don’t have yet. However, if we shifted that focus to thinking about all the things that God has blessed us with then we would be much more content. We may even be grateful. I think being grateful is one of the keys to being content.
You may be complaining about something that you have at the same time that someone else is begging God to have that thing. For instance, you may be complaining because your hair is too thick, too think, too long or too short all the while someone who is going through chemo therapy is praying for God to give them hair again. You may be complaining because your car is older than you would like and someone else is praying for a car so that they can get to work. You may be complaining because your spouse or your children are driving you crazy. Meanwhile, there are so many out there that are still struggling to find a spouse or to have children. When we think about what we have in this manner it makes it much easier to be content with what we have.
I have heard stories of people from other countries that have far less available to them than we do and yet they are completely content and grateful for all that they do have. I have heard of people going on mission trips to other countries and they bring candy for the children. It is not a lot of candy, but they said the children are so excited just for one piece of candy. I have also heard that they bring pens and paper and the children are so excited. I don’t think my children would be excited if I gave them a pen and paper. These are things we take for granted. Think about how much time and anguish we would save ourselves if we could be content with what the good Lord has given us. If we could view everything we have as a gift from the Lord.
In this verse St. Paul says, “In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me.” What is this secret that St. Paul found? He found that he can do all things through Christ who strengthens him. When we rely on the Lord He will give us the strength we need to get through any circumstance. Whether we are hungry or not, whether we have all we think we need, or not. When Jesus Christ is by our side, we will be strengthened to face the circumstances, no matter what they might be. St. Paul knew this, and he is sharing it with all of us.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to be like St. Paul and to be content with what we have. Help us to not be envious of what others have. Help us to appreciate and be grateful for the things you have given us. If we strive for more let us do so with a gracious and humble heart. Let us not complain but instead shift our focus to gratitude. We are grateful Lord, help us to show you. We love you Lord, you are awesome and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again on Monday. Have a blessed weekend!
The God of Hope
Romans 15:13 “ May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”
The God of hope, what a great way to refer to the Lord. He is the God of hope. All hope can be found in Him. I like the thought of God filling me with joy and peace as I trust in Him, don’t you? I feel as though that would be reassurance that we were doing the right thing. Actually now that I just said that I can see how this is the case. When we are trusting in the Lord, we are filled with peace and joy. Can you think of a time when you had a decision to make and you felt completely at peace with it? Can you think of a time when you were so happy and filled with complete joy? Think about these circumstances. Can you see how you were trusting the Lord in them?
The second half of 2020 and the first half of 2021 were really tough on our family. Actually they were tough on most families as we were in the middle of a pandemic, and we were stuck in our houses for a lot of it. It was not an easy time for anyone. However, on top of all of this we had a lot of other things going on that made it even more difficult. Probably some of the hardest parenting issues we will ever have to face, and we have faced a lot of parenting issues. Although it was a really difficult time, I was filled with joy and peace for much of that difficult time because I was trusting that the Lord knew what was best. We were encountering situation after situation that we had never encountered before. We didn’t know what to do or how to handle most of it. What do you do when you are in a situation and you don’t know what to do? You turn to the Lord. I spent a lot of time in prayer. I asked the Lord at every turn which way He wanted me to go. I relied on Him to get us through it. I am not saying this to boast at how great I am for turning to the Lord. I turned to Him because I did not know what else to do. This is usually why we turn to the Lord. When we have tried all we can think of on our own and nothing worked.
However, I would love to change this. I would love to turn to God first in every circumstance, not just when I feel stuck and don’t know what to do. This is what the Lord wants too. He is always there for us and He is happy when we turn to Him in times of trouble. However, I am sure He would also love it if we turned to Him in our every day decision making. Or, what about when you do know what you want to do? What about stopping to ask God what He thinks about you taking that job you want or buying that car you want. You may already know what you want to do, but what if we stopped to run it by the Lord and see if He thinks it’s a good idea? Sometimes our decisions can be clouded by superficial things or we have the wrong motivation driving our decision making and we don’t realize it until it is too late. Invite the Lord into all your decisions. Wouldn’t it be great to feel that peace and joy of trusting the Lord all the time?
This verse ends with, “so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” I don’t know anyone that would turn down the chance to be overflowing with hope. This verse also tells us where hope come from, the power of the Holy Spirit. If we want to have more hope, we just have to ask for it. Jesus tells His disciples in John 16:23-24 “ On that day you will ask nothing of me. Very truly, I tell you, if you ask anything of the Father in my name, he will give it to you. Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be complete.” If we want to have more hope in our lives all we need to do is ask the Lord for it and we will receive it by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord we ask that you fill us all with joy and peace as we trust in you. We all want to overflow with hope, please show us how. Please fill us with the power of the Holy Spirit. Please help those that have given up on hope, or have forgotten how to hope. We love you Lord, you are so amazing. You give us so much to hope for. We are so grateful for all you do for us. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
God Lights Up My Darkness
Psalm 18:28 “It is you who light my lamp; the Lord, my God, lights up my darkness.”
This is one of the verses that is great to copy down somewhere and look at it often. This is a great verse to refer to when you are in times of trouble or when you are confused as to what you should do. It is a short verse, so it is one that could easily memorized. Whenever we are struggling or feeling like we need some direction, Scripture is a great place to turn to. There are so many answers and so many reassurances that can be found in the Bible. The problem can sometimes be that we don’t know where to find those answers. This is why it is a good idea when we hear a verse that we think can provide us comfort, we write it down somewhere we can easily find it again when we need it.
This verse talks about how God lights our lamp. He lights up our darkness. You are not an exception to this. Are you currently go through a dark time in your life? Are you struggling with something and wondering if you will ever get through it? I have a friend that has been sick with Covid for over 2 months. She is finally feeling better during the day, but really can’t breathe well at night. When she goes to take a deep breathe she can’t and then she starts to get anxious that she won’t get enough air in her lungs. I have another friend who has had a sick member of her family since Thanksgiving. Every time one of them gets better another one gets sick. It seems like it is never ending. Do you know someone going through a similar darkness?
I hope this verse can bring them and you a lot of comfort. They are not in this darkness alone and neither are you. The Lord is with you. He is always with you. There is never a time when you are going through anything alone. God is with you each and every step of the way. He will never abandon you. Sometimes when we are in the darkness it is hard to see the light. I am sure when my friend is up late at night and she can’t breathe she is feeling alone in the darkness. I am sure my other friend is wondering why everyone in her house keeps getting sick and if it will ever end. Yes, it will end. There is a light at the end of the tunnel and that light is our Lord.
The Lord is our light. When you are in a period of darkness or when you are unsure what to do, turn to the Lord and He will light the way. Sometimes He will shine a bright light and provide some sort of solution that renews your hope and brightens your whole day. Other times He may just shine a flashlight. He may not illuminate the whole way forward. He might just give you the next right step and then He doesn’t illuminate the next step until you take that first one. This can be frustrating. We often times want to know the whole plan before we take any steps forward. Moving forward on our journey one step at a time takes a lot of faith. Where is the path leading us? What if we start down it and then we don’t like where we are going? We hesitate to take that first step because we are afraid.
The Lord has our best interests at heart. He would not lead us down the wrong path. He has amazing things planned for each one of us but we have to be brave enough to keep taking the next right step, even when we can’t see where our steps are leading. Even if we feel like we are walking in the dark. The Lord is our light. Do you know where all of our fear and questioning comes from? The enemy! He puts these questions in our heard because he is afraid of what would happen if we all followed the Lord’s light. Can you imagine if everyone on earth was following the Lord and living up to the potential that God gave them? Imagine what an amazing world this would be to live in if we all just did the next right thing.
The enemy has imagined that and it didn’t make him happy. He loves when we are at odds with one another. I am sure he and the rest of his evil spirits have been celebrating a lot over these last few years at least. The way we have been treating our fellow Americans over the last few years is crazy. I am sure it is not just the last few years, I know racism has been a problem since the creation of the country. However, these last few years everything seems to have spiked. The country is so divided on so many issues. It reminds me of Luke 12:52-53 which says, " From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”
Why are we so at odds with one another? Because the enemy wants us to be. He is a liar and a trouble maker. He whispers things in our ears all the time. Our loved one can say something to us that is not a big deal and yet we can blow it up into a huge thing all because the enemy is telling us we shouldn’t let them get away with saying that, or he keeps reminding us of it over and over again. He may point out annoying things about those around us just to keep us arguing. He points out the differences between us and everyone else, instead of showing us how we are alike. The enemy is awful and we can’t let him into our minds. It says in 2 Corinthians 10:3-5 “Indeed, we live as human beings, but we do not wage war according to human standards; for the weapons of our warfare are not merely human, but they have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every proud obstacle raised up against the knowledge of God, and we take every thought captive to obey Christ.”
This verse is showing us how to live in the light that God is providing us. It is reminding us that we are not really fighting ourselves, we are fighting the enemy and all of his evil spirits. The verse is also reassuring though because it says that our powers are also not merely human, but they have the power to destroy strongholds. Does the enemy have any strongholds on you? Is there something he has been telling you for a long time that you keep believing. Or maybe it is an illness or an addiction and the enemy keeps feeding you all kinds of lies about how it is never going to go away. He may be telling you God can’t take it from you or God won’t take it from you. The enemy may be telling you that you have always been like this so you will always be like this. Don’t believe him, the enemy is a liar.
This verse tells us how to defeat the enemy. It says, “we take every thought captive to obey Christ.” Take your thoughts captive. Right now the enemy has hijacked a lot of our thoughts and is feeding us misinformation. He is taking some kernel of truth and twisting it to fit his purpose of dividing all of us and turning us against each other and convincing us that the Lord doesn’t love us. We need to stop listening to him, take captive our thoughts and remember that my God lights up my darkness. It is the Lord that lights my lamp. God will light your path and show you which way to go. He will help you make your decisions if you ask Him. This is where a lot of us go wrong. We forget to stop and ask the Lord what He thinks we should do. I am not a betting person, but if I was I would bet you that if you stopped and asked the Lord what you should do before you made any big decisions, you would see Him in your life so much more. He is right there, waiting for an invitation to lead you to the life you have always been waiting for. Are you ready to invite Him in? Are you ready to trust Him, even if you can only see the next right step and you don’t know the final destination? Are you ready to finally step into the light?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to follow you, wherever you are leading us. Help us to invite you into our decisions Lord. Actually Lord, let’s invite you in right now. Lord, we invite you into our decisions and we ask you to guide us in all future decisions we need to make. Let us know what you want us to do and then give us the strength to do what is right even if it is hard and even if that is not what we want to do. Lord, light our way and shine a light so brightly that we can’t do anything else except follow it. You are so wonderful and you always save us even when we do the wrong thing. We are so grateful for all the times you shined a light through the darkness. We wouldn’t have gotten through it without that light. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Keep Your Hearts At Attention
1 Peter 3:13-15 “If with heart and soul you’re doing good, do you think you can be stopped? Even if you suffer for it, you’re still better off. Don’t give the opposition a second thought. Through thick and thin, keep your hearts at attention, in adoration before Christ, your Master. Be ready to speak up and tell anyone who asks why you’re living the way you are, and always with the utmost courtesy. Keep a clear conscience before God so that when people throw mud at you, none of it will stick. They’ll end up realizing that they’re the ones who need a bath. It’s better to suffer for doing good, if that’s what God wants, than to be punished for doing bad. That’s what Christ did definitively: suffered because of others’ sins, the Righteous One for the unrighteous ones. He went through it all—was put to death and then made alive—to bring us to God.”
I decided to use the message translation today as I like how it puts the verse in more modern day terms and sometimes makes it easier to understand, or easier to apply it to our current day and time. This verse starts out by saying that if we do are doing good with our whole heart than nothing can stop us. Who would want to stop us from doing good? Then it goes on to say that even if we suffer for doing good, we are still better off than if we did evil. Yesterday we talked about how God doesn’t want us to repay evil with evil and if we instead repay evil with blessing then we will inherit a blessing. This verse is saying it’s worth it. Doing good is always better than the alternative, even if it is not easy for you.
Next it goes on to say that we shouldn’t worry about those that are against us. How many times have you heard that while you were growing up? I was picked on quite a bit when I was a child. I was from a big family, I didn’t have the nicest clothes, I really liked sleep, so sometimes I would forgo brushing my hair or changing my clothes if it meant that I could sleep for 5 extra minutes. I don’t really blame the kids that picked on me, as being a kid is hard and we are all just doing the best we can. However, being picked on a lot meant that my parents often told me to just ignore the other person. To not let what they say bother me. They will stop saying it if they realize it doesn’t bother you. This makes sense and I have probably even said it to my boys. However, it really doesn’t help the situation.
This verse isn’t just telling us to ignore the other person, it’s telling us to keep our hearts at attention, in adoration before Christ, your Master. In other words, don’t let those that are being unkind distract us from our real focus, which is Jesus. The enemy loves to distract us and get us thinking about anything else. He doesn’t like it when we think of Jesus because then we think of love and joy and happiness. If we were constantly thinking about and adoring Jesus we wouldn’t have time to be worried about what others were thinking about us.
This next line is actually the one line that stuck out to me the most. “Be ready to speak up and tell anyone who asks why you’re living the way you are, and always with the utmost courtesy.” This is one that I struggled with for a long time. I went to religious education when I was a child and even in my teen years. I went to a Catholic Church my whole life and I knew the beliefs that I held. However, I did not always know why we believed them or any foundations for them. When I was asked by people of other faiths things like “Why do Catholics worship Mary” or “Who gave priests the right to forgive our sins” I didn’t know what to say. When I was an adult I wanted to understand my religion more, so I started to study it. I did Bible studies and I went to classes that talked about why we believe what we believe. It has been really beneficial and I have learned a lot over the years.
The Catholic Faith has been around for over 2,000 years. It is one that Jesus started and then appointed His disciples to go out and share it with the world. There is a reason for everything that we believe and it helps if we know what that is. If you understand the things that you believe you can get into conversations with people and not get so flustered. If you know why you believe what you believe then you can help spread the good news to others. We are all called to evangelization. This is something that I was not happy to learn as the idea of going out and talking to others about religion always scared me. However, the more you learn, the more you want to talk about it. I think the reason it scared me so much before is because I was picturing going up to perfect strangers and starting up a conversation about Jesus. This may be what some of us are called to and that is great if you can do that. I think some of us are being called to spread the gospel to those around us. Do you talk about Jesus in your homes or with your friends?
I remember the first time my good friend Kath and I had a discussion about God. It was so nice. I had talked about God in Bible studies and at prayer group, and I enjoyed it. However the more I learned and the more I studied, the more I began to talk about God or scripture in my every day life as well. I did not have a lot of friends at the time that were the interested in talking about God, and after a few conversations with Kath I realized that is what I was missing, that I didn’t know I was missing. I wanted to be surrounded by people that didn’t mind when I talked about God. If you don’t have a peer group that you can talk about God with, you are really missing out. My workout group is comprised of 8 Christian women. We are not all the same religion, we are all very different in jobs and upbringings. Yet, we all love Jesus and we can talk about Him all we want. We don’t hesitate to ask each other to pray for us or to celebrate and give God all the glory when something amazing happens. When we struggle, we don’t just sit around and complain. We raise each other up, send each scripture or worship songs. We spread God’s love to each other.
If you are not sure why you believe what you believe what you believe, I urge you to join a bible study, listen to podcasts, find a church community where you are surrounded by others that love Jesus. The Bible in a Year Podcast with Father Mike Schmidt is a great way to learn scripture. It is only 20-30 minutes a day, he does all the reading and the explaining and all you have to do it listen. I have learned so much from Him and from scripture. If you do not have friends or family that you can openly talk about your faith with the I recommend trying to find some. You grow so much when you have a faith community to share your growth with. Being surrounded by people who share your love of Jesus is so much fun. I highly recommend it to one and all.
Next, the verse says, “Keep a clear conscience before God so that when people throw mud at you, none of it will stick. They’ll end up realizing that they’re the ones who need a bath.” I love this translation. What this is saying is that we should take the higher road. We should be kind, even if others aren’t. Then when people want to accuse of something, there is nothing they can say. They have nothing to accuse us of because we haven’t done anything wrong. I like how in this translation is says that when people throw mud, it won’t stick. That is quite the visual. I also like when it says that they will realize that they’re the ones who need a bath. Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case. Even if nothing sticks, our enemies still tend to throw stuff just to see if others will believe it. It usually takes awhile for them to realize that they are the ones that need to change. At least if we are keeping our hearts focused on Jesus then we will have stay out of trouble ourselves. We can leave the rest up to the Lord.
The verse ends with, “It’s better to suffer for doing good, if that’s what God wants, than to be punished for doing bad. That’s what Christ did definitively: suffered because of others’ sins, the Righteous One for the unrighteous ones. He went through it all—was put to death and then made alive—to bring us to God.” This sums it all up pretty nicely. Jesus suffered for our sins. How are we going to repay Him for that? Can we choose to do good, even if it means we may suffer?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to choose to do the right thing, even when it is difficult, even if it means we may suffer. Lord, you sent your only son to us so that He could die for our sins. Please help us to not let that be in vain. Help us to repay that with choosing to do good. Lord, give us a desire to learn more about You and more about our faith. Help us to learn all we need to know to explain our reasons for hope to all that ask. We want to spread your gospel, your word, your love, peace and joy to all. We need your help though Lord. Please give us all the grace we need to do this. We love you Lord, you are amazing. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Do Not Repay Evil With Evil
1 Peter 3:8-9 “Finally, all of you, be like-minded, be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate and humble. Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing.”
I came across this verse while I was doing a study about the 9 fruits of the Spirit. The first fruit of the Spirit is Love, or at least it is in this series. This month I have been learning all about what the Bible says about love and also how I define love. My spiritual director asked me that very same question last month, so when I read it in this study I felt like it was a sign that I was on the right track. It has been a really interesting study. If you want to check it out you can find it on Amazon. It is called the Nine Fruits of the Spirit; a devotion series by Robert Strand. I think you may need to buy each one separate as I didn’t really see a set with all of them together when I looked.
What stuck out to me most when I read this verse was the line in the middle. It says, “Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult.” We do this so often, it’s like second nature. We may think that we don’t, and we probably don’t want to, but we do it more than we would like. Think about when you are driving in your car and someone cuts you off. How do you react? What about when you are checking out in line and the cashier is new and is taking a very long time. How do you react in that circumstance? What about when someone says something unkind to you? Do you repay that with an unkind word back to them?
I think this probably stuck out to me because I have been a little grumpier than usual lately. Usually if people cut me off in traffic, I don’t mind that much. I can put myself in their shoes and also I know that me getting upset at them and saying something to them while I am in my car and they are in their car doesn’t do anything to change the situation. It might make me in a bad mood, but they have already moved on and they can’t hear anything I say in my car anyway. However, if I say something unkind it will affect my mood. Actually, you don’t even have to say it, you just have to think it and your mood is affected. Isn’t that annoying? Sometimes I get frustrated because I don’t say something, I just think it and then I get in a bad mood. This is why it is so important to think about the things you tell yourself.
It is important to check in with yourself on your thoughts, especially if you are irritated at something that someone has done to you. Let’s use the idea of waiting in line as an example. I am sure with the holiday seasons just ending, we can all remember waiting in line for something. If we are waiting in the line and we are thinking that it is taking too long we can start to get angry at the people in front of us for buying too many things, we can get mad at the cashier for not knowing how to do her job, or for going really slow. We can get upset over any number of things. However, what will that do for us? Would you rather be in line happily waiting, or angrily waiting? There is a definite difference between the two. There is a physical difference. If you are angrily waiting in line, you are not in a good mood. You probably have this tight feeling your stomach and you may even be rude to those around you. If you are happily waiting, you are probably just looking around at the various things to buy while you wait. You are pleasant to those around you and you feel great physically probably.
We have the option at any time to choose how we feel. Well, there is something called our initial reactions that we can’t choose. Something happens and then we instantly feel a certain way about. However, we get to decide if that is how we want to continue to feel, or if we want to change how we are feeling. I have spent a lot of time working on my feelings. The way that you feel is directly related to the story or meaning you are assigning to the circumstance. Have you ever wondered why you react differently than others when certain things happen? For instance, you and I could both be stuck in traffic and one of us could be sitting there getting angrier and angrier and the other one could be singing along loudly to music, or listening to a podcast.
I used to get very upset with traffic. I would just sit in it and think about how late I was going to be and what that meant for whatever I was going to do. If I was going to work I would then think how upset my boss would be, how I wouldn’t get my work done, etc. My mind would just keep spiraling. Then one day, after reading lots of books, I realized, my thinking all of this didn’t change the outcome. Whether I sat there being upset about being stuck in traffic, or I used this new found time to catch up with a friend, sing with the radio, or listen to an audio book, I was still sitting in traffic and I would still get there at the same time. Which way sounds like a better use of your time?
I tell you all of this because it is the same with repaying evil for evil. You will not feel better after you do it. Actually most of the time you feel worse. It may feel good in that initial moment when you said that unkind thing back to them when they totally deserved it. Then the initial feeling wears off and you start to feel bad for saying it because you are a good person. The Lord is telling us in this verse to be compassionate and to love one another. He is not telling us to do this only when it is easy and only when we feel like it. It says in Luke 6:32-33, “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that.” If we can’t repay evil with evil, then what do we do when someone does something to us?
The next line in the verse addresses this. It says, "On the contrary, repay evil with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing.” This may not seem to make any sense. You may be wondering why you would bless someone when they just did something unkind to you. I can think of two really good reasons. The first one is that God is telling us this is what He wants us to do in this verse. He is telling us to repay evil with blessing. The second is because you will feel so much better afterwards. If you say or do something unkind in response then you will have that on your conscience and you will feel bad about it. However, if you bless that person then you won’t have anything negative on your conscience weighing you down.
I remember one time at prayer group a woman was talking about how she was standing in line at the grocery store once and everyone in line was getting upset because the cashier was new and so she was really slow. She said people were saying unkind things under their breath. She said she was annoyed to and then she saw the cashiers face. She was clearly overwhelmed and unhappy that she was going so slow. My friend’s heart was filled with such compassion and she said she instantly said a prayer of blessing for that cashier. She said now she does it every time she starts to get impatient with someone, well every time she remembers to. My friend said doing this has helped her grow in compassion. We never know what the other person is going through. Maybe they are not really a mean person, they are just having a bad day. Maybe something terrible just happened and they are acting out. We don’t know what their motivation for being unkind was. However, we can keep our motivations pure and just bless them instead of repaying evil for evil.
God says we are called to do this so that we may inherit a blessing. What do we inherit if we repay evil with evil? I’m not sure, but it is nothing good I can guarantee that. However, if we do as we are called to do and repay evil with a blessing then we will inherit a blessing. It seems like it is worth the trade off. What do you think? Do you think the next time you want to repay evil with evil you can remember this verse and instead stop and say a quick blessing for that person. It might not be automatic. I still get annoyed initially when someone drives like a manic on the road, cuts me off, or does something unkind. Then I try to stop my thoughts and remind myself to say a prayer for them. Give it a try. It honestly changes your whole mood. It is really difficult to be angry with someone when you are praying for them. Let’s spread kindness more. Let’s try and let God’s love and light shine through us and through the darkness of evil.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to be compassionate and to love one another. Help us to repay evil with a blessing instead of with evil. Help us remember this in the moment when we want to respond unkindly. Lord give us the power to overcome our desire to be unkind and to respond as you would respond. Help us to shine your light on all those we come in contact with. Help us to spread your love and peace to all those we meet. Lord we are so very grateful for all that you do for us. You are amazing and we love you. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Do We Know and Love The Lord?
Psalm 91:14-16 “Those who love me, I will deliver; I will protect those who know my name. When they call to me, I will answer them; I will be with them in trouble, I will rescue them and honor them. With long life I will satisfy them, and show them my salvation.”
Wow, that is quite the promise that our Lord is giving us. Did you notice that He is responding to our actions in it? He starts by saying, “Those who love me, I will deliver.” The Lord is calling us to love Him. You may think this is easy, of course I love the Lord. I think it is more complicated than this. We may think we love the Lord, but do our actions support that? Do we just say that we love Him, or do we truly love Him with our whole heart? Would someone who didn’t know us and could only judge us by our actions say that we loved the Lord? What are we doing to show the Lord that we love Him? There is an article I found online titled, How to Love God According To The Bible by Victorino Q. Abrugar. (Click Here for article)
I will place a link for the article in the show notes, but I will also go over some of them with you as the Lord says He will deliver those that love Him. I want us to be delivered. One way to show God you love Him is to spend time with Him. Are we doing this? Do we make this a priority throughout our day? Think of it like this, if your loved ones spent the same amount of time with you are you spend with God, would you think they loved you? Would you feel like you were important to them? If not, what can you do differently to spend more time with the Lord?
Another way that we can show God that we love Him is to obey Him. John 14:15 says, “If you love me, obey my commandments.” This one can be a tough one. Obeying the Lord’s commandments isn’t always easy. We don’t always want to do what He wants us to do. Matthew 7:13-14 says, “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it. Sometimes we think, it can’t be that bad, everyone else is doing it. Even as adults we think this sometimes. More times than we would like to admit I bet. This is not the case though. Just because it seems to be the normal thing to do, doesn’t mean it is obeying God. It says right in the verse that the road is hard and leads to life, but there are few who find it. God is calling us to a better way of doing things. He is calling us to a higher way. He expects more from us because we know better and because He gives us His graces and strength to follow His commandments.
Another way to love God is to put Him first. This one is hard. We tend to want to do what we want to do and when what we want conflicts with what we thing God wants, then often times we chose what we want. Also, we tend to put God last as He is so forgiving and He is someone that we can’t see. We often put those that are most important last as we know that they will be understanding. Prayer time should be first. Father Mike said that doesn’t mean it needs to be the first thing you do in the morning, but it needs to be the first thing that you write into your schedule. If you plan to pray at night, that’s great, but think of that first and schedule the rest of your day around that so that you can make sure to get that in. Are we putting God first in our lives? I will not go over all the ways listed in the article although I do recommend you read it as there is a lot of good information about why we love God and how we can show our love for God.
The next thing the verse says is, “I will protect those who know my name.” This is another one that we may read and immediately think it’s easy as of course we know that Lord. However, do we really know the Lord? Do we spend time studying His scriptures and learning who He really is? Do we spend time doing the things that He has asked us to do? In Matthew 7:22-23 it says, “ On judgment day many will say to me, ‘Lord! Lord! We prophesied in your name and cast out demons in your name and performed many miracles in your name.’ But I will reply, ‘I never knew you. Get away from me, you who break God’s laws.” Will God say this to us? Are we breaking God’s laws? If we are truly loving God, then we probably know Him and are trying to follow His laws. It is something to take a few minutes to think about and see if we have more work to do in either of those areas.
The verse ends with something that is again, responding to us. It says, “When they call to me, I will answer them; I will be with them in trouble, I will rescue them and honor them. With long life I will satisfy them, and show them my salvation.” The Lord is asking us to act and then He will come through. God says He will answer those that call to Him. He will be with them in trouble and He will rescue them and honor them. Doesn’t all of that sound amazing! I want to sign up for all of the above. The verse tells us how. All we need to do is call on Him. Call on the Lord when we need him. When we are in trouble, we call out to the Lord and He will be there to rescue us. It doesn’t say that if we sit and wallow in our misery He will be there to rescue us. It doesn’t say if we just complain about our situation He will be there to rescue us. He is requiring us to take the first step, and He will do the rest. That is not a bad deal if you ask me.
The very last thing in the verse says, “With long life I will satisfy them, and show them my salvation.” Our Lord is so amazing. He makes so many promises to us. He says that He satisfy us with long life. I have three children and I want to be there to see them do all the things that they want to do when they grow up. I am hoping that I am blessed with a long life so that I can see all of it. I also am hoping for the Lord’s salvation. I know that I am not perfect and I know that is ok. God doesn’t need us to be perfect to earn His salvation. Jesus already did that when He dies on the cross for us. However, God does need us to love Him and to love our neighbors. Are we doing that? Are we loving our neighbors? He also wants us to call on Him. If we are in trouble, call of the Lord. If we have gone against His commandments, turn back and repent. Our Heavenly Father is a merciful Father. He keeps forgiving us time and time again, all He asks in return is that we repent and be truly sorry for having offended Him. Is this something we can do? Doesn’t it seem like a small price to pay for all that He has promised us?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to love you and to know you. Help us to call on you in our time of need. Help us to learn how to show you that we love you and that we know you. Help us to keep your commandments and help us to not be one of those that you turn away at the gates saying you don’t know our name. Lord, put on our hearts anything that we are doing that is against your commandments and give us the strength and the grace to stop doing that thing. We want to please you Lord, we want to call on you, love you, and know you. Give us the grace to do so. Help us remember in our times of need that all we need to do is call on you and you will not only rescue us from that difficult time, but you will also be right there with us. Lord help us to remember, when we forget. We love you and we know how amazing you are. We are so grateful to have you and we hope you know that. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again on Monday. Have a blessed weekend!
God Wants You, Yes You!
1 Timothy 1:12-16 “I am grateful to him who has strengthened me, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he considered me trustworthy in appointing me to the ministry. I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and an arrogant man, but I have been mercifully treated because I acted out of ignorance in my unbelief. Indeed, the grace of our Lord has been abundant, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. This saying is trustworthy and deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. Of these I am the foremost. But for that reason I was mercifully treated, so that in me, as the foremost, Christ Jesus might display all his patience as an example for those who would come to believe in him for everlasting life.”
Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. This is something that the pharisees and sadducees could not understand. Actually many people couldn’t understand this. Jesus was the savior, the Jewish people thought He was coming to save them from the Roman Army. They did not understand that He was coming to save them from something much more important. He was coming so that we would have eternal salvation. He came to walk among us so He could save us from ourselves. God had a perfect plan and Adam and Eve, being human and not perfect, messed up that plan. God sent His son to us so that He could set things right again.
The beginning of this verse talks about “him who strengthened me.” This sounds an awful lot like Philippians 4:13, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” It is true that we get our strength through Jesus Christ. Paul is thankful in this verse because Jesus considered him trustworthy in appointing him to the ministry. He talks about how he was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and an arrogant man. If you were designing this world, if you got to choose who was going to lead God’s people, is this the type of man you would choose? Does Paul sound like the ideal candidate? He was a blasphemer, a persecutor, and an arrogant man. He is not who I would pick. And yet He is exactly who God picked.
Why do you think He does this? Why do you think God chooses to use less than perfect people for his ministry? I think He does it because of exactly what He says to us in Isaiah 55:8-9, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” God knows us better than we know ourselves. He knows if he only uses perfect people, we won’t listen to them. It is really hard to connect with someone that you can’t relate to. Also, we tend to believe what we see more than what we hear.
It is one thing to have someone who has never struggled with an addiction come and tell you that Jesus can heal your addictions. It is quite another to see someone that you know had an addiction problem and now is cured of it. Which would you rather, someone to tell you that Jesus can forgive your sins, or to see Jesus sitting with those that have sinned? We as people don’t like listening as much as we like seeing. Jesus took a man that was not a very good person, someone who didn’t even believe that Jesus was who He said He was, and used him to do extraordinary things. This is because of God’s mercy. I bet that every time Paul told the story of his conversion he won over more people than the leaders in the church preaching about God’s mercy without ever having experienced it.
It even says in the last sentence of this verse why Jesus chose Paul. He said, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. Of these I am the foremost. But for that reason I was mercifully treated, so that in me, as the foremost, Christ Jesus might display all his patience as an example for those who would come to believe in him for everlasting life.” Paul was chosen, not in spite of his past sins, but because of them. He was chosen to be an example of Jesus’ patience to all those who would come to believe. Don’t you find it easier to believe that God will forgive your sins when you know that He forgave Paul’s sins? What about Saint Peter? Peter loved the Lord, he followed Him for three years and yet when Jesus needed him the most, he abandoned Jesus. He not only abandoned Him, he denied even knowing Jesus. And yet, knowing all of this, Jesus chose Peter to be the rock that His church would be built upon.
If the Lord can use Peter, who denied Him three times in His time of need, and He can use Paul, who was a blasphemer, a persecutor and an arrogant man, don’t you think He can use you? Sometimes we count ourselves out and we don’t listen when God calls us because we don’t think we are good enough to serve the Lord. He is almighty and powerful and we are little and useless. He is perfect and we are full of sin. How could He possibly use us when their are others out there that are so much better than us at everything? God doesn’t want better, God wants you. If you are willing, God wants to use you. He is calling every single one of us to serve Him. Are we worthy of serving Him? Nope and yet He still calls us to serve Him. He does not call us in spite of our past sins, He calls us because of our past sins. He calls us because His ways are higher than our ways. He knows that there is someone out there that needs to hear our witness about how God saved us. He knows that we are good examples of His love and mercy. Others need to hear about all the graces that we have received even though we didn’t deserve to receive anything.
So many people think miracles only happen for those who are really faithful. God only forgives sins for other people, but not for them. They find it easy to believe God forgives small sins, but surely He won’t forgive their sins, they are too great. This is why God needs us. God wants us to be living examples of all He can do with those who are willing. If you need further examples of when God has used people that you would never have chosen, all you have to do is look in the Bible. There are so many examples. I will point you to a few in case you aren’t quite convinced. What about Moses? Moses was a murderer and yet God chose him to lead the people out of Exodus. Jacob stole his brother’s birth rite and then stole his blessings and God chose him to be the father of the 12 tribes of Israel. There are many other stories like this in the Bible. God doesn’t use perfect people to carry out his mission. He came to save the sinners and He uses us sinners to do that. I want to leave you with a word of prophecy that was received at my prayer group because it shows that the Lord understands that we question our calling and our usefulness and like a good Father, he reassures us of His love.
“My children you are an integral part of my plan. Yes, you, You may see yourself as little and that is good you are little but my grace is strong and powerful within you. I have placed you where are you are, in the times that you are, in the circumstances that you are. And I am with you. I am with you to use you to spread the joy of knowing me. To spread my word, to spread knowledge of my goodness. I love you. You are an essential part of my plan. Please work with me for I am working with you. “
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to answer your call. Help us to see that you know we are not worthy, you know of all of our sins, and yet you call us anyway. Remind us often that your ways are higher than our ways and we don’t have to understand why you do the things you do. They don’t have to make sense to us because our thoughts are not your thoughts. Help us to trust you. Help us to see in us what you see in us. Help us to take that step forward even if we don’t know why we are doing it. Lord, we say yes to serving you, yes to all you want us to do, we just need your help, your grace, your strength. We love you Lord, you are so amazing and we are so grateful that you accept us exactly as we are, that you love us exactly as we are. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
God Will Make A Way Where There Is No Way
John 16:33 “I have said this to you, so that in me you may have peace. In the world you face persecution. But take courage; I have conquered the world!”
This is something that we can all take heart in knowing. We will all face persecution, but Jesus has conquered this world. We don’t have to worry that the persecution will be the end of us. Sometimes it feels like it will. There are times when the persecution seems like it is too much, like we are drowning and we can’t possible come up for air. This is when it is important to remember this verse. The enemy will definitely try to make you feel like he is winning. He will make you feel like you are in a losing situation and no matter what happens you can’t win.
This is actually his specialty. He loves to make us feel like we are in a hopeless situation. He whispers in our ear that there is no way out. No matter what you do, you hurt someone, you lose someone, you end up getting hurt, whatever it is. I have had several friends that have been in this type of situation lately. When we are in those situations the enemy may be right, there is no way out that we can see. It is those last words that I want you to focus on. No way out that we can see. The thing is, we don’t have to see a way out. God can see things that we can’t see. He can make a way where there is no way. God is really good at making a way in times when people thought for sure there wasn’t a way.
I am sure when the Israelites were leaving Egypt and they were being pursued by the Egyptian army they thought there was no way out. The army was gaining on them and all they saw in front of them was the Red Sea. There was no possible outcome that they could see where they lived. If they tried to cross the Red Sea they would drown. If they turned back they would be caught and surly be killed for fleeing. It seemed like they were in an impossible situation. However, God made a way where there was no way. In Exodus 14:15-18 it says, “Then the Lord said to Moses, “Why do you cry out to me? Tell the Israelites to go forward. But you lift up your staff, and stretch out your hand over the sea and divide it, that the Israelites may go into the sea on dry ground. Then I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians so that they will go in after them; and so I will gain glory for myself over Pharaoh and all his army, his chariots, and his chariot drivers. And the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord, when I have gained glory for myself over Pharaoh, his chariots, and his chariot drivers.”
I am 100% sure that there wasn’t a single person in that group of people that saw that way out. God can make a way where there is no way. Maybe you are in a situation where you can’t see a way out, hang in there, God has a plan. Maybe you are in a situation where there is no good choice, God will show you which to choose if you ask Him. If you are stuck in a situation and you can’t see a way out, I urge you to read Isaiah 43. I found Isaiah 43:15-16, “I am the Lord, your Holy One, the Creator of Israel, your King. Thus says the Lord, who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters,” when I was searching for a verse about God making a way where there wasn’t one. However, when I went to the verse I decided to read the whole chapter and it is really good. It talks about various things that the Lord has done for us over the years. Isaiah 43:19 says, “I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.”
The Bible is full of stories where God did the impossible, where He did something that no one saw coming. Remember Daniel in the lion’s den? Daniel continued to pray to our Lord, even when it was outlawed and so he was thrown in the Lion’s pit. God sent and angel to keep the Lion’s mouths closed so they wouldn’t eat Daniel. This can be found in Daniel 6. There was also Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego that refused to bow to King Nebuchadnessar’s golden statue and were thrown in the fiery furnace. God sent an angel into the furnace to keep them from burning up. This can be found in Daniel 3. I am sure no-one involved in these two circumstances could have seen these two outcomes. However, Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego all had the courage to stay in the fight. They had the courage to trust God would get them out of the situation even when they couldn’t see how. Can we be more like this guys? Can we keep doing the next right thing, even when we don’t see how it will all turn out? Can we keep going when it seems like all is lost?
This bible verse reminds us that all is not lost. Yes, the enemy might be making your life miserable, just he was with Job. Remember Job? He lost everything. His crops, his animals, his children, and eventually his health. He could not see any way forward that wasn’t filled with misery. And yet, he stayed in the fight. He didn’t give up on God. If you ever feel like your life can’t get any worse and you are sure that no-one understands what you are going through, read the book of Job. Talk with Job, he understands what you are going through. He understands what if feels like to suffer day in and day out with no relief. He knows what it feels like to lose everything. He will understand. And if you are struggling to see any light at the end of your tunnel, read the ending of the book of Job. Spoiler Alert, Job doesn’t end up dying in his misery. The story ends with Job receiving his wealth back several fold, having another 10 children and living for another 140 years. The enemy doesn’t win? Why not? Because God has already conquered this world. He is in charge, He is the winner.
You may feel beaten down, but you will not be broken. You may feel as though you have been stuck in this impossible situation for a long time and you see no way out. Hang in there, God will make a way out. You may even wonder if God is hearing you or if God is there with you. He is. He is always right there with you. He will not always take our struggles away from us or even prevent us from our struggles and we learned yesterday why that is. In Romans 5:3-5 we learned that our struggles produce endurance, and endurance produces character and character produces hope. We need to have struggles in our lives. This is how we grow, this is how we learn. This is how we learn to lean into and rely on God. Think about the really great times in your lives. Did you feel really close to the Lord? Did you rely on Him and thank Him for all that good that you have? If you did, awesome! I bet you would be in the minority. Many times when things are good, we forget about God. We think we don’t need to rely on Him because all is going well. Often times we feel the closest to God when we are in a place of suffering because this is when all other comforts are stripped away and we remember to turn to Him. If you remember nothing else from this episode today I hope you remember God can make a way where there is not way. You are not defeated, keep going, this struggle will not overcome you! You can do this! You are strong with the Lord by your side. Philippians 4:13 “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to know in the depths of our heart that you can make a way where there is no way. Help us to trust that you have already conquered this world. We will not be defeated. When we forget help us to remember these incredible stories of those that came before us that trusted you would save them when they didn’t see a way. Help us to not listen to the enemy who tells us that we are not strong enough, that there is no way out and that you will not save us. Help us to only listen to you Lord. Give every person listening to this episode a desire to read Your Word and find comfort in it. You have done so much for us Lord and we are so grateful. We thank you for giving us strength when we have none. You are so wonderful. You have done the impossible time and time again and we couldn’t be more in awe if we tried. We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Do We Boast In Our Sufferings?
Romans 5:3-5 “And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”
I don’t know about you, but I don’t know a lot of people who boast in their sufferings. I know a lot of people who hide their sufferings. People who pretend they aren’t suffering. I often see people who boast of their successes. They can’t wait to tell you about their new car or their new job. However, when something bad happens, they do not talk about it and many even go so far as to hide any suffering.
This is a shame and it does everyone a disservice. When we hide our failures or our suffering and we pretend that everything is ok, then it makes other people feel alone in their suffering. I understand why people hide their suffering, I just wish we wouldn’t. I get it, when others know what you are going through it puts you in a vulnerable position because they may make fun of you. They may also pity you or make you feel bad for going through whatever it is you are going through. The reverse of that is also true. When people know you are suffering they can help you and they can help give you strength because you don’t feel so alone.
I really enjoy when people talk about their struggles. I honestly wish we all did it more often. The reason I feel this way is because the enemy makes us feel alone so often. He makes us feel as though we are the only person going through something and like no one understands us. When we don’t talk about our struggles, and we just keep them to ourselves, then we can start to be ashamed of them. The enemy starts whispering our ear all these lies about whatever it is we are going through. He will tell us we are weak, or we should have known better, or we deserve whatever is happening. Whatever it is that he is telling you, it is a lie. If you are going through something right now, I guarantee that there are plenty of other people that have gone through it. No matter how obscure you think it may be, I promise you, you are not the only one. Find someone else who has and talk with them. Or, just talk with your friends. If they are true friends, they will listen and be understanding even if they haven’t gone through it.
Once we talk about these things, whatever we are suffering through, it brings that thing into the light. The enemy can’t survive in the light. This is why he prefers that we don’t talk about things and we keep them in the darkness. The enemy thrives in the darkness. When we keep things secret and we don’t talk about them, he is able to keep saying whatever he wants to us because we don’t have anyone else to speak truth and light into our situation. I believe this is why we have so many suicides in this country. People who are depressed don’t talk about it because they are ashamed of how they are feeling. They keep their feelings to themselves because they don’t want to burden anyone else and then the enemy tells them all these lies. Because they aren’t sharing their feelings or plans with others, we aren’t able to speak love and truth into their lives. The enemy has convinced them that we would be better off without them and we aren’t able to to tell them differently because we don’t know what the are feeling. We could help change this by making it normal to talk about our struggles. If we could all judge less and love more we might be able to turn the tides.
I want to get back to the verse because it points out something that I don’t think we are all aware of. It says, “And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” I think we have all wondered at one time or another why we had to go through something. I am sure every person listening to this today has gone through suffering at one point or another. Did you ask God why you had to go through it? I know I do sometimes. This verse doesn’t answer why you had to go through that specific suffering, however, it does explain what we can gain from suffering.
Suffering produces endurance. It doesn’t feel like it when we are in it. When we are in it we feel depleted, we feel as though we don’t have enough strength to get out of bed. However, we always do manage to get through it and we manage to get out of bed eventually. The next time we go through something difficult we have a little more endurance, we last a little longer before we feel like we want to give up. It may be gradual and you may not notice it, especially if you have the enemy whispering in your ear. But, now you have this scripture assuring you that suffering produces endurance.
Endurance produces character. I can definitely see this. If we have suffered through something hard, we are not the same afterwards. What we take from each circumstance might be different, but it changes all of us. I know when my kids were little I would watch the tv show Super Nanny, and I would quietly judge the parents of those kids. I would say things in my mind like, “If my kid ever did that I would…” I never really finished that sentence, or if I did, I can’t remember now what I said. Then my kids got a little older and my kids did that thing, and I didn’t know how to handle it. I remember asking myself years down the road, “If your kid did that you would what Catherine, how would you finish that sentence because your kid is doing that.” Going through the experience of raising strong willed children has definitely built my character. I have so much compassion for all parents now. I get it, parenting is hard, no matter what your children do. I will be the last person to judge a parent because of those difficult years.
The verse ends with, “character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” We are back to hope again. Character produces hope. I can see how if we have struggled and we have built up our endurance, built up our character then we would have more hope. Often times we look at our struggles in life as defeats. However, we made it though them. We might not have gotten the outcome that we wanted but we did survive them. Yesterday I talked about how hope might be difficult if it seems like you have been let down in the past. I love the ending of this verse because it addresses this very thing.
“Hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” I love this. I love picturing God just pouring his love into our hearts. Take a minute, close your eyes and try to picture God holding a pitcher and pouring His love into your heart, filling it up. I don’t know why but when I picture it the liquid in the pitcher is gold or bright white, like a light. I can just feel my heart feeling full with God’s love. God gave us all the Holy Spirit, how many of us are using it? Are you letting the Holy Spirit guide your dreams and desires? Are you spending time listening to what the Holy Spirit wants you do? Are you asking God to send you the Holy Spirit in times of struggle. One of the shortest and most powerful prayers you can say is “Come Holy Spirit Come. Those four words will bring with them so much strength and power.
Let’s all try to boast of our struggles more. Instead of always trying to seem like everything is perfect and we are perfect, let’s start being real and talking more about what is truly going on in our lives. If we start, maybe others will follow. Let’s let the world know that it is normal to struggle, everyone struggles at some point or another. Let’s try to be open to hearing others struggles without judging. Even if we don’t understand, we can still be empathetic knowing we have gone through things that they wouldn’t understand. Also, let’s invite the Holy Spirit into our lives more. He is our strength and power. God filled our heart with love through Him.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us boast of our struggles. Give us the grace of boldness so we can do this freely without worry of condemnation. Help us begin to talk about our struggles so that others may follow. Lord, help us to develop a good character through our struggles and not a resentful or bitter character. We thank you for filling our hearts with Your love Lord. Help us to see that hope does not disappoint and help us to hope more fully. Lord, I pray that you help all those that are struggling with mental illness, especially depression. There are far too many of your children taking their own lives because the enemy is telling them it’s what is best. Help them to speak out about their suffering and open their hearts and minds to hear us when we speak truth, love and light into their lives. Lord, you are amazing and we love you so very much. We are so grateful for all the struggles you have carried us through. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Why Is Hoping So Hard?
Romans 8:24-25 “For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.”
Hope is a strange thing. I like how it is described in this verse, especially when it says, “For who hopes for what he sees?” I guess I never thought of it like that. I guess sometimes I think of faith and hope as the same thing. If someone has a deep desire that they are hoping will come true, then I guess I think of it as if they have faith that it will happen. But even know that I say that I can see that they are not the same. You can have hope that something will happen, but not have faith that it will. The definition of hope, according to the Oxford Languages is a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen. However the definition for faith is complete trust or confidence in someone or something. There are other definitions of faith, but this is the one that describes how I was using it earlier.
Looking at these two definitions I can see that they are not the same. It didn’t occur to me until I read this verse that they were not the same. If you hope something will happen, you do not necessarily have complete trust or confidence that it will happen. You hope it will, but you are not sure because you haven’t seen it yet. You have no proof. When I stopped to think about it, I can see what they are saying about hope. Hope is something you can’t see. If you had a candy bar in your hand, you wouldn’t say that you hope you get a candy bar. You don’t have to hope because you have one right in your hand. This is why hope is so difficult. How do we hope for what we cannot see?
I remember reading about the apostle Thomas. He was one of the 12. He spent all that time with Jesus, following Him around and listening to Him preach. He had seen the impossible things Jesus had done. Yet, when he heard Jesus had risen he said he would not believe it until he put his fingers where the nail marks were then he would not believe that Jesus had risen. Then in John 20:29 Jesus says, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” If Thomas had trouble believing what he could not see, how are we supposed to?
This is a difficult question. This, is probably where the distinction between hope and faith come in. Having faith means that you have complete trust or confidence in someone or something. However, having hope means that you want something to happen or that you have a desire for something to happen. You can hope for something even if you don’t know if it will happen or not. However, anytime you are hoping in or having faith in something that you can’t see, you become vulnerable. It said above it’s not hope if you can see it. However, that is not true with faith. Thomas saw Jesus and so he had faith that He was alive. It is much easier to have faith when we see. We are vulnerable when we have hope because we are not sure it will happen. We are vulnerable because if we hope in something too much and it doesn’t happen we will be disappointed and we could be devastated depending on how badly we hopped for it and what it was we were hoping for.
Some people find hope easier than others. I have been trying for a few years now to find out why this is? I wish I knew why it was easier for some people to hope and others find it almost impossible. I wondered if it is based life circumstances? I could see how if you have been let down time and time again, you would be hesitant to believe you would get what you hope for. I can see how it would be hard to want to put yourself in a place where you could get hurt again if you didn’t get what you were hoping for. I wonder if it is because the person who finds it easy to hope has had an easier life and so they have more reason to believe good things will happen? If you are constantly seeing good things happen, then maybe its like that saying, “the proof is in the pudding.” You find it easy to have hope because you have alway gotten what you wanted in the past. I honestly don’t know why it’s easier for some than for others.
What is coming to my mind right now is that maybe it’s not so much the circumstances, but how we view those circumstances. In mentoring the other night Pamela Crim said, “Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react it.” Maybe this is the difference? Maybe it doesn’t matter as much what you have been through as it does how you react to what you have been through. Not even how you react to it, but what you think about it. Two people can go through the same event and view it very differently. There is another quote, “We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” This means that we all take our life experiences everywhere we go. They are a part of us. So, we interpret each experience that we encounter through the lens of past experiences. If we view our past in a way that has us thinking nothing ever works out for us then it will be harder to hope than if we view our past in a more positive way.
I view my life as having worked out really well. If you were looking at my life from the outside looking in, just surface level, you would probably think I had a pretty great life. My husband was an officer in the air force. We got to live in three different countries. We have three handsome boys. We have always had a pretty nice house and haven’t had to worry about money. If you did not know me well, you would say that it was easy for me to have hope because things always work out for me. Those of you that know me know that this is not the case. Our family has had some very difficult circumstances that I wouldn’t wish upon my enemy. There was a time when we were having multiple crisis in a day. There were some truly awful parts during these last 10 years. However, I choose to focus on the positive. Even in the worst situations I look for a silver lining, something to be grateful for. I look for ways to see God working in each and every circumstance.
Sometimes I have wondered if I am just lucky. If I find it easy to have hope because I have an optimistic personality. If I happened upon this faith or this hope, almost as if I was born with it. When I wonder this, the Holy Spirit reminds me that it was not always easy for me to hope. There were times in the past when I could not see how things would turn out and I was not sure they would get better. I worked hard for the faith that I have and the ability to have hope. It took me stepping out of my comfort zone. It took me trusting when I had not visible sign that I should trust. It took me asking our Father over and over again for more faith, more trust. The Lord wanted me to tell you this today so that you can see if it is possible for me to grow in faith, trust and hope, then it is possible for you too.
I know some of you listening have big prayers that you are asking the Lord. Some of you are trying to hope for things you have desired for a very long time. So long, it is scary to hope because you are afraid to get hurt. I want you to know that the Lord hears your prayers and He knows your desires. He is not bothered by the fact that you are afraid to hope or afraid to ask for what you really want. He can help with all of that if you just ask Him too. The enemy is the one that is keeping you from the Lord by pointing out all the ways he may have let you down in the past. The enemy is the one who is spinning all the good to make it seem like nothing works out for you. I know hope is hard. Trust me, I know hope is hard. That is ok, God isn’t asking you to hope on your own. Turn to Him right where you are at and ask Him to take you to where you want to go.
That right there is what the Lord keeps reminding me of. You don’t have to do it, you just have to say yes and ask the Lord to do it for you. I think it was St. Therese of Liseux that said something about asking Jesus to be her elevator. She said she pictured herself as a little girl at the bottom of these giant stairs. She was so small she couldn’t even take one step and if Jesus wanted her to climb them He would have to carry her. If you struggle with feelings like you are not enough, she would be a great Saint to study. She is know as the “little flower.” She was extraordinary. Be like St. Therese and rely on the Lord to get to where you are going. Ask for more faith, more hope, more love. Whatever it is you need, ask the Lord and He will help you.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we are so grateful for all you have done for us. We want to be able to hope for all things Lord, please help us. We want to have an unwavering faith that will believe without seeing, help us Lord. For those of us that are struggling to hope, please give us the courage to be vulnerable and ask you for the big things we desire and then hope that they will come true. Lord, we know that you have our best interests at heart. Help us to see this in all that we do. We love you Lord, you are so amazing. Help us to focus on the good in our lives instead of the bad. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
God Will Give You A New Spirit
Ezekiel 36:26-28 “A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances. You shall dwell in the land which I gave to your fathers; and you shall be my people, and I will be your God.”
When I read this verse I was instantly in love. I think there is so much in this short verse. “A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” The Lord will give us a new heart and a new spirit. That is amazing to me. Do you understand how amazing that is? This is saying that nothing is too much for the Lord. Sometimes we think that our past is too much and so when the Lord is talking about loving us, He is talking about loving others, but not us. When he is asking us to love Him, He is talking to other people. He knows that I could never love Him because I could never love anyone.
I wonder if we all know and realize that God knows all we have been through? God knows about your childhood. God knows about the parent or spouse that abused you. He still loves you! He knows about the sins of our past. He still loves us! He knows about the terrible way we treated others over the years, He still loves us. He knows about that thing that you did that one time that you think no one knows about. He knows, and He still loves you. He knows about that drinking and the drugs. He still loves you! He knows about that unforgivable thing that you did that you would do anything to take back but you can’t. He still loves you! I know I may sound like a broken record because I give you this message often. It is because it is the foundation of everything. If you know that God loves you just as you are, sins and all, then you can love God. If you can’t accept that God loves you then I am not sure if you can love God.
I have heard it said before that we can only love God as much as we love ourselves. I don’t know if this is true or not. Honestly, I hope it is not because I know a lot of people that don’t love themselves very much and it makes me sad to think that they might not be able to love the Lord. Also, it makes we wonder if they can feel the Lord’s love. If we do not think that we are worthy of love, then how can we believe that the Lord loves us? This is why I love this verse! The Lord can give us a new heart.
Maybe our heart has been broken too many times. Maybe our heart has too much baggage and we just can’t seem to let go of it. Maybe our heart is full of unforgiveness. We may have been hurt so much in the past that we don’t want to forgive. We can’t see a way to forgive the horrible things that have happened. We don’t have to, the Lord can give us a new heart. It says right in the verse that He will take out the heart of stone and give us a heart of flesh. Do you feel like He is talking to you? Do you feel like you have been hurt one too many times and it is too difficult for you love anyone? Have you asked the Lord for help? Have you asked Him for a new spirit or a new heart? Maybe this had never occurred to you. I know I never knew this verse before. But now that I do, I know that all we need to do is turn to the Lord and he will give us a new heart and a new spirit. How amazing is that?
The next part of the verse is one that I need to remind myself of often. “And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances.” The Lord will put His spirit in us and cause us to walk in His statutes and be careful to observe His ordinances. I am constantly thinking that I have to do this all on my own. I turn to God and I ask Him for help. We talk often. And yet, when it comes down to it, I try to be perfect for Him. I am hard on myself if I am not doing what I think He wants me to do. I wonder am I praying the right way, should I be fasting, should I be doing more? I wonder if the Lord is pleased with what I am doing and I wonder if He thinks I am not doing enough. I know that He loves me and that He doesn’t need anything from me. Then I act like I need to do everything on my own.
I like this part of the verse because God is telling us that He will put His spirit within me and He will cause me to walk in His statutes. I don’t have to do it all on my own. God is not saying that He will help me. He is saying He will do it for me. Why don’t I rest in the promise? Why do I strive to be perfect when I know the Lord doesn’t need my perfection. All He needs is my yes. All He wants is for us to be a willing vessel and then for us to let Him do His work. I worry that I don’t have enough faith. Then the Holy Spirit tells me that faith is a gift from the Lord. If I want more all I have to do is ask. I worry that I won’t walk in His footsteps and yet this verse is saying He will give His spirit so that I will. I worry that my prayers are not fruitful and the Holy Spirit tells me that He alone can make them fruitful. All God needs from us is our YES! Yes, I am willing. Yes, I am your vessel, fill me up. Yes, I want my will to be your will. Yes, I believe, help my unbelief. All we need to do is give God permission and He will take care of the rest. Can you do that?
The last line of the verse says, “You shall dwell in the land which I gave to your fathers; and you shall be my people, and I will be your God.” We shall be His people and He will be our God! I want to leave you with the words of God from our Prayer Group March 2021 because they go so well with this verse and because they are so powerful.
“Listen to your heartbeat. I want to be fully one with you. Draw closer. The Father and I are one, and you are one with me, so you are one with the Father as well. I will pour down my grace upon your heart, your will, your very soul. You will look like me. Trust in me. Follow me. Take time to listen to me, to know my will. Fear nothing. Have confidence in me. I am your Lord and God. I died for you to grow ever closer to me.”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to the podcast today. I ask that you put a new heart in us and a new spirit. Lord, take our heart of stone and replace it with one of flesh. Lord, the world can be cruel and we need a new heart and spirit. Lord, help all those that don’t believe they are worthy of your love. Help them to feel your love and to love you right back. Lord, help us to walk in your ways. We say yes to your spirit causing us to dwell in your ways and we thank you for being so gracious. Walking in your ways is not always easy and we appreciate all the help we can get. Lord we are grateful that we are your and you are ours. We love you so much and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on the journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you on Monday. Have a blessed weekend!
What Is Your Ultimate Goal?
Philippians 3:12-14 “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”
I think I may have mentioned this before, but in case I haven’t, I love the beginning of a new year, even the beginning of a new month. I love it because it gives us a chance to decide what we want to do that month. It gives us a chance to live intentionally that month or that year. I wonder how many of you listening to this episode set yearly, monthly, or daily goals? When I looked it up online it said that less than 3 percent of Americans have written goals. I used to write New Year’s Resolutions each year. I would start the year off so strong and then by week 3 or 4, I would lose my motivation and stop. Then I started to write yearly goals, but write what I would do each month to help me reach my goals by the end of the year. I was definitely more successful doing this, but I still didn’t do great.
Then I joined something called Big Life Mentoring. It changed my life. Pamela Crim, the head mama, the person in charge, our leader, introduced me to a goal setting method that has made it so much easier to reach my yearly goals. She has us set daily goals, weekly goals, monthly goals and annual goals. She has us fill our an After Action Report at the end of the month so we know what went well and what didn’t, this way we can plan better next month. She also has us write down our monthly highlights, so we can remember the good that happened that month instead of focusing on the bad. This is why I love the beginning of each month. It is a new chance to reset. To look at what didn’t work well last month and fix it, right now, instead of waiting until the end of the year. Have you ever looked back at the end of the year and wondered where the time went? Wondered what you did in that year of life? Have you ever looked back on a year and wished you did more, or wished that you did things differently? Making monthly goals can help.
You may be wondering what this has to do with today’s verse. The author of this verse says, “I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” This is the ultimate goal that I believe we are all reaching for. Is this something you want? Do you have a goal of reaching heaven one day? What are you doing to reach this goal? I heard something the other day on the Bible in a Year podcast that keeps coming back to me over and over again. It was in November or December, so I am not sure what book Father Mike was reading from. However, in his commentary he told us to think about how hard Olympic athletes work to win their medal. He said they are working that hard to earn a medal that will sit on a shelf and after some time people won’t remember their name. Then he asked why are we not working that hard to reach our goal of eternal salvation?
What a powerful question if you think about it. What are we doing to reach our goal to get into heaven? Is that a goal of yours? Have you thought about it before? What are your spiritual goals for this year? Do you want to spend this year growing towards the Lord or away from the Lord? Are you actions moving you closer to Him? We all tend to think we have plenty of time. We will read the Bible next year. We will join that Bible study when we have more free time on our hands. We will say the rosary every day after we retire. We have lots of plans of how we will honor God sometime, just not right now. However, we don’t know how much time we have left here in this world. Time goes so quickly. It is the beginning of a new year and then you blink and it is the end of the year. It is crazy how time works and it seems the older you get the quicker it goes.
Another message in this verse that I feel is important is when it says, “But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead.” This is where some of us get stuck. We get stuck in our past. We focus on the things we did wrong, or the things that happened to us. Sometimes we think that our past sins are so great that they can’t possibly be forgiven and so we are reluctant to look towards the future. We fear that the future doesn’t hold anything good because of our past. Or, maybe we aren’t worried about our past sins, but we look at how life has worked out for us in the past and we struggle to have hope that anything would change. We tell ourselves that it has never worked out before, so why would it work out this time. St. Paul is telling us in this verse that he is not looking back, he is forgetting about his past and straining toward what is ahead. St. Paul had a lot of sins in his past. He had done a lot of things that he was not proud of, and yet he didn’t let it stop him from straining toward what is ahead. Are you going to let your past stop you?
I would like to leave you with these questions and hope that you give it some time today to think about them. Is your goal to have eternal salvation in heaven? What are you doing to strive for that goal? God is forever reach out to us, loving us, helping us, calling to us, pursuing us. What are you doing to pursue God? Are you actively trying to grow closer to God, or are you passively waiting by the sidelines, hoping it will just happen? Your salvation isn’t based solely on your acts, but God is calling us to follow His commandments and to love Him and our neighbors. Are we being intentional about doing this?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to strive to be closer to you. We don’t want our past to get in the way, please help us let go of the things we need to let go. Please help us to live intentionally and help us to know what we need to do to grow closer to you. Lord, help us to be open to you and all you want to do for us and with us. Help us to cooperate with you in all things. Give us the grace of faith and trust and any other graces that we may need. Lord, we love you. You are so remarkable and I am sure we don’t tell you that enough. We are so grateful to you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Have Confidence Before God
1 John 3:21-24 “Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God; and we receive from him whatever we ask, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him. And this is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. All who keep his commandments abide in him, and he in them. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit which he has given us.”
The beginning part of this verse confused me at first. I did not understand what it meant when it said, “If our hearts do not condemn us.” When I looked through a couple of different websites it looks like what the writer is trying to say is, if we are following the Lord’s commands. If we know that we are doing what we are supposed to be doing. Many times we wonder if we will have salvation. Our hearts are condemning us, meaning our hearts don’t believe that we will gain salvation. I think it is important to remember that we will not earn salvation on our own. We will never be “good enough” to be saved by ourselves. We earn salvation because Jesus died on a cross for us. Does that mean, that we get to do whatever we want now? No, not at all, the Lord wants us to follow His commands and walk in His footsteps. It even says it in this verse, “because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him.”
This is another verse that says that we will “receive from him whatever we ask.” This is similar to Matthew 7:7, “ Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” This verse is giving us instruction on how our prayers can be answered. The verse is telling us to have confidence before God that He will keep His promise to answer our prayers because we keep his commandments and do what pleases Him. Are we doing this? Are we keeping His commandments? One of the articles I read said this is not referring to the commandments given to Moses, but the commandments given during the sermon on the mount. The Sermon on the Mount can be found in Matthew 5-7. The 10 Commandments can be found in Exodus 20:2-17 and Deuteronomy 5:6-21. I am not sure if it’s true that we need to focus more on the Sermon on the Mount more than the 10 Commandments, however, Matthew 5:2-11 lists the beatitudes and it couldn’t hurt to read those and become familiar with them.
The next line in this verse says, “And this is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another just as he has commanded us.” Here we are back to love again. I think if we were all truly living the two greatest commandments as the Lord instructed us to, all the others would be easy. These can be found in Matthew 22:36-40, “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” We talked about yesterday how God said above all clothe yourselves in love. Love is something that keeps coming up. I think if we could understand how important love is, we would understand God more. I believe that God is love. We can not hope to bring people to the Lord through Jesus if we don’t approach them with love. If we start from love and go from there, we would get so much further.
Jesus didn’t approach people and try to change them with His words. He didn’t sit with the tax collectors and tell them that they can’t keep doing their job. He didn’t sit there and judge them and tell them they would be going to hell if they continued down their current path. He just loved them right where they were at, just as they were. It wasn’t just His words that changed people, it was His love. We need more of this in the world. We need less judgement and more love. I believe that Jesus did tell people how they could live according to the Lord. I am not saying that He just sat by and watched those He knew continue to make the same sins over and over again. I do believe He corrected people, but that isn’t where He started. He started out just loving them where they were at. This is something that I wish everyone could realize. People will listen to you if they know you are coming from a place of love. If someone knows that you love them and really care about them, they will listen to what you have to say. They will be more likely to trust that what you are saying is coming from a place of concern and not judgement. I have seen this time and time again with our children. Our kids response to anything we are saying is based on how we say it and how they are feeling when we say it. If they are feeling loved at that moment they are more likely to hear what we are saying and less likely to be defensive. Now, if only I could remember that every time I talked to my kids.
The same is true with those that you wish to talk to about Jesus. If we start off talking to someone we don’t know telling them about all the things they should and should not do, they will shut down and not listen. However, if you start off by talking with them about Jesus’ love, they will be more likely to listen. If we love others right where they are at, we will be more likely to bring them to Jesus. The same goes for our spouses or our kids. If we are always telling them what they are doing wrong, they are going to stop listening to us. I understand we may feel it is our place to correct them and to bring them up in the correct way. I am not disputing this, but are you coming from a place of love first? Many times we are not parenting from a place of love, we are parenting from a place of fear. We are scared that our kids won’t do the right thing, or that they may get hurt, or that they will stop believing in God, or that they won’t ever find God. Parenting from fear, or making any decisions from a place of fear will not help us achieve what we want to achieve. Colossians 3:14 “Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.” Love is the key, love is the answer.
I love how this verse ends. “All who keep his commandments abide in him, and he in them. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit which he has given us.” How great is it then when we keep His commandments He abides in us and we abide in Him? He abides in us by the Spirit which He has given to us. I don’t know about you, but I could sure use the Lord abiding in me. This statement also shows us how devastating sin can be. The verse says all who keep his commandments abide in Him and He in them. But, what about when we sin? What does sin do to that relationship? Sin breaks that relationship. When we choose to sin we are choosing to break our relationship with the Lord and the only way to repair it is to repent. To let the Lord know we are sorry and to commit to do our best to not sin again. I am so grateful that our Heavenly Father wants to abide in us and that He allows us to abide in Him. He not only allows it, but He loves it when we abide in Him.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to abide in you. Help us to keep your commandments and to do what pleases you. Help us to have confidence in you and to not let our hearts condemn us. Lord, this world seems to be really struggling with the commandment to love one another. Please help us to have the strength to do this. Give us a holy boldness that is required to love some people. Help us to see that it is not our place to judge and condemn, it is our place to love people, right where they’re at. It is our job to let Jesus’ love for them shine through us. Help us remember this Lord and give us the grace to make it happen. We love you Lord, you are so amazing. We are so grateful that we get to abide in You and that You abide in us. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
As God’s Chosen Ones, Holy and Beloved
Colossians 3:12-17 “As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”
I can’t believe how much instruction can be found in just a few scripture verses. It constantly amazes me how much is packed into each verse. This verse starts out by saying as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved. Did you know that you were God’s chosen one? Are you aware of this fact each and every day? You are holy and beloved. Even if you had nothing else in your life going for you, that would be enough. Then the verse tells us what to do as God’s beloved ones. It says clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. That is a pretty tall order.
It would be a little easier if we were being called to one of those things. If we were being called to clothe ourselves with compassion or kindness, or humility, or meekness, or patience. However that is not what the Lord is calling us to do. He is calling us to all five of them things. We probably won’t use them all at the same time. It depends on the situations. However, we are called to be all these things. The verse says to clothe ourselves with these things. Are we doing this? Are we treating those we encounter with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience? How could you be more compassionate, show more kindness, be more humble, be more meek, and more patient?
Next the verse says, “Bear with one another, and if anyone has a complaint agains another forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.” Even just the first four words seem to be difficult these days. Bear with one another. We have been around our family members a lot more over these last two years. Think about how you have spent these last two years. We spent several months not really being able to leave our homes, and the rest of the time, even if we could leave, we probably didn’t venture out around too many people. This means we have been around the same few people more than usual. Are we bearing with them? Are we being patient and kind when they need something from us? Are we allowing them to get under our nerves, or are we cutting them some slack and being compassionate for the circumstances?
Here we are talking about forgiveness again. I think the word forgive is mentioned around 95 times in the KJV according to a quick internet search. Why do you think forgiveness is mentioned so often in the Bible? My thought is, God thinks it is really important and He really wants us to get this message. The verse is very specific to say that just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. That is a pretty tall order and if we think too hard on it we may think we could never forgive as perfectly as the Lord forgives. This is probably true. However, can we at least try? Is there someone that you need to forgive and you haven’t yet? Is there something that you are holding onto that you could let go of?
Next it says, “Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.” If we clothe ourselves with love, forgiveness comes easier. Love binds everything together in perfect harmony. This reminds me of 1 Corinthians 13:13 “But now faith, hope, and love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” Again the Lord is saying, above all, clothe yourself with love. Yes, be kind and compassionate, be meek and humble, be patient, but above all clothe yourself in love. Love is so important. I believe if we had more love and less hate in the world we wouldn’t have so much evil. We wouldn’t be so divided. So many of the world’s problems could be solved if we were all filled with love.
Mother Teresa has a quote that I really like that says, “Not all of us can do great things, but we can do small things with great love.” How can you spread more love into the world? Can you bring love into all the small things you do throughout the day? Can you do the dishes with love? Can you do the laundry with love? Can you clean the bathrooms with love? Sometimes when we are doing these every day tasks, we can feel frustrated that we have to do them. We can be resentful that others aren’t doing them. What if we tried to do all things with love? Another quote from Mother Teresa is “If you want to change the world, go home and love your family.” The world needs more love and it can start with you in your home. If people feel loved, they will pass on that love. If they do not feel loved, they will have no love to pass on. We need to spread as much love as we can in the world.
The next line says, “And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body.” Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts. Be honest, how is this going for you? It seems it is not going to well for a lot of people these days. COVID is creating a lot of anxiety for a lot of people. People who have it are anxious about their symptoms, about whether they will heal or not, whether the symptoms will ever go away or if they will stay forever. People who do not have it are anxious about if and when they will get it, will they pass it to their loved ones. People worry if they should go places, if they should attend important events. There is so much anxiety. I wish we could all let the peace of Christ rule in our hearts. It is available to us, we just have to accept it. Can we trust that God is in control? Can we trust that some things, like COVID we don’t have any control over. Well, there are some things we can do to try to lower our chances of getting it, but overall, we are not in control. I know it is hard to give up control of our worries and our anxieties. However, it feels so amazing when we are able to let the peace of Christ rule our hearts. I promise you won’t be sorry if you trade in your worries for the peace of Christ.
The verse ends with saying, “And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” Be thankful is a great way to end a verse. Praise and thanksgiving are such important parts of our relationship with our heavenly Father. He does so much for us and it is so great when we are able to thank Him. If you are feeling stuck and feeling like you could be closer to the Lord, but not sure how, may I suggest you develop a daily practice of gratitude? What do you have to be grateful for? How many things can you come up with in a minute? Can you come up with 5 things everyday? The other thing that has really helped me grow closer to the Lord is praise. I listen to praise music a lot. I also am part of a charismatic prayer group and we praise out loud together each week. I try to add praise to my prayers. The verse ends by saying that whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus. I wonder if we would act differently if we thought of this verse before we did anything? I wonder if we would do things differently, treat people differently, think about what we said before we said it, if we remembered that we were to do all things in the name of the Lord Jesus? What do you think? Would you act differently if you did all things int he name of Jesus?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those that are listening to this episode today. Lord help us to clothe ourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience and above all Love. Lord, help us to forgive not only our loved ones, but our enemies too. If we struggle with this Lord, help us turn to you. Help us to let the peace of Christ rule in our hearts. We need more love and peace in the world Lord, help us to spread your love and peace to all we encounter. Help us to praise and thank you Lord. Help us to do all things in Jesus’ holy name. We love you Lord, you are truly amazing. We are nothing without you. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
The Potter’s Clay
Jeremiah 18:1-6 “The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: “Come, go down to the potter’s house, and there I will let you hear my words.” So I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was working at his wheel. The vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter’s hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as seemed good to him. Then the word of the Lord came to me: Can I not do with you, O house of Israel, just as this potter has done? says the Lord. Just like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel.”
There were a couple verses that I thought would be good for today. However, when I read this one again I felt like it was the one for today. I have at least two friends that are going through something really hard with their children. I know they are not a lone, I know many of us struggle and have a difficult time raising our children. These two in particular are having to let go of their children for a time and the amount of time is unknown. I am so grateful that they both believe in God and know He is in control. It is still crazy hard to do, but it does give some comfort to know God can bring their loved ones back to them.
The reason I felt this verse was so great for today is because it is a reminder that no matter how bad things seem, God can turn this mess into a beautiful work of art. Most times when we think about difficulty with our children we think of Luke 15:11-32. This is a story of a man who had two sons. One of the sons asked his father for his inheritance now, while his father was still alive and when he was young enough to enjoy it. His father gave it to him and he went and squandered it all. Then eventually when he was working on a far feeding the pigs he realized his father fed his help better than this and decided to go home and beg his father for a job.
We think of our children as the prodigal son and we just need to wait for them to get tired of the life they have chosen and decide to come home. This is a great scripture to refer to, but not just because it shows the son coming home. It is a great scripture for us as parents to refer to because it shows what we as parents can do. The father watched for his son. He kept watch and never gave up hope. When he saw his son, he did not wait in his house, angrily thinking about all the things he wanted his son to say before he would forgive him. He saw his son and he ran to him. He hugged his son and welcomed him back into the house before the son even had a chance to apologize.
We can learn a lot from this father. He is a great example of faith and hope. He is a great example of how we can react when our children want to come home. Are we welcoming them with open arms? What do you need to do to be ready to welcome your child home with open arms? Do you need to let go of past hurts? Do you need to forgive old offenses? Do you need to grieve the life you thought they would have? This last one is perfectly normal. When we have a child we imagine a great life for them. We imagine all the milestones in their life. We picture each moment. Then, when they don’t get to experience those things, it’s ok to grieve for them. It’s ok to grieve the loss that you won’t get to experience that with them as well. Even if they are missing out on these things because of choices they made, it doesn’t make it any easier for us as parents to watch them miss out on it.
I am not an expert but I believe that it is perfectly ok to grieve unmet expectations. I think it is the best way to be able to move on from that sadness. I know some people say you should just be happy with what you have and I think this is true. And I also believe that you can be happy with what you have and be sad for something that you don’t have. For instance, you can be happy you got a new job, but be sad you won’t work with the same people you used to work with. You can have two conflicting emotions at the same time. Grieving the loss of the future you wanted for them is ok, it helps you let it go and opens you up to accept the future they will have.
The reason I chose the Jeremiah verse instead of the prodigal son verse as the main point of this episode today is because I think it is a better visual for my friends that are struggling right now. And if you are struggling with parenting, with your spouse, or with any other loved one, I think this scripture could be one to really hold on tight to. Jeremiah 18:4-6 “The vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter’s hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as seemed good to him. Then the word of the Lord came to me: Can I not do with you, O house of Israel, just as this potter has done? says the Lord. Just like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel.”
When you are worried about your loved one, think of this verse. Picture the crazy situation your loved one is in as the clay that was spoiled in the potter’s hand. Then think of their future as the reworked vessel that seemed good to him. Picture the Lord saying these words directly to you. “Can I not do with you, just as the potter has done?” We don’t have to wait until our child is ready to come home. We just need to wait until the Lord is done reworking them into the masterpiece that He wants them to be. It may not be the future that we wanted for them, but it doesn’t mean it won’t be great, or even better than what we had planned for them.
If you are struggling right now, or if you find yourself having to let go, when you really don’t want to, I encourage you to lean into the Lord. Talk with Him daily, journal to Him, explain to Him all the things you are feeling and ask Him to help you. Ask Him for the strength to let go knowing He will bring them back. Tell Him you are entrusting them in His care and that you know they will come back. Tell Him you believe, and ask Him to help your unbelief. These are just the things that I have asked for. Only you know what you need. He will give you what you need if you are brave enough to ask for it.
I also want to encourage you to believe that just because things happen in God’s timing doesn’t mean it will be a long road. God can work quickly as we have seen many examples of this in the Bible. When I worry about my children, which I have done plenty over the years, I find comfort in Acts 9:1-19, the story of Saul’s conversion. If you have not read this, or are not familiar with it, I highly recommend you check it out. Really briefly, and spoiler alert, Saul was someone that we persecuting and murdering anyone that believed in Jesus. On his way to another town to round up more believers he was blinded by a vision of Jesus. He was blind for three days and then he received his sight back. This man is the man we know as Saint Paul. His conversion did not take a long time. His conversion was not something he was seeking out. The Lord chose him, and He was the Lord’s. The same can happen for your loved one. It could take a long time, but it could also be a quick transformation. Pray big prayers. Hope for the impossible. Our God is an amazing God and He works the impossible every day. He can do it in your life too! Only if we are bold enough to ask Him for it and brave enough to believe He will do it for us, not because we deserve it but because He is so good!
Dear Heaven Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord we ask you in particular to be with those that are struggling with their own version of the prodigal son parable. Help them to imitate the father in this story, ready to welcome their loved one home with open arms, expecting nothing in return. Help us to ready our minds and hearts for this return that we are sure will come. Lord, you love us and our children more than we can possible imagine. We trust our children to you and we thank you for taking such good care of them and not letting their decisions ruin them. Lord, we know you can change hearts and minds as you did so with so many people in the Bible. Please do this for us and our children. Change our hearts and minds to be more in alignment with yours. Lord you are so powerful and we are so grateful for you and for how much you look out for us! We love you so much Lord and we ask all of this in accordance to your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you are struggling and morning the loss of something please know you are not alone. There are many of us that have been through it and you will get through it too. If you want to reach out I would be happy to talk with you. You can email me at Catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day.
Nothing Is Too Hard For God
Jeremiah 32:17 “Ah, Sovereign Lord, you have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and outstretched arm. Nothing is too hard for you.”
I wonder if we truly believe this? Do we believe nothing is too hard for the Lord? I know I certainly want to believe it. I know that I do believe it with my whole heart. And yet, do I believe it? Have you ever had something that you believed, something you were so sure was true and yet your actions still questioned it, or some part of you still wondered? For instance, I believe God can cure anything. I know He can as we have seen it time and time again, not only in the Bible, we are still seeing it today. I just talked about three recent miracle in yesterday’s episode. So, I know that God can do the impossible. I know that nothing is too hard for Him, and yet I sometimes still hesitate to pray for what I really want. Why is this?
I was just asking my husband Tony about this question. I asked him if he truly believed that nothing was too hard for God. He said absolutely. Nothing can get in the way of God’s will. Then I gave him a scenario of someone being sick with an incurable illness and asked him if God could cure that person. He said yes, definitely, but I don’t think He would. So, maybe this is the real issue. Maybe it’s not an issue of whether we believe that God can do anything, maybe it is about whether or not we trust God will do something. Why do we question whether God will save someone or not? I understand that not everyone we pray for gets better and I don’t believe that is because of anything we are doing wrong. I believe that some things are a mystery and I don’t know why God doesn’t cure everyone when we know that He can.
When I pray for someone to get better and they do not, I lean into Isaiah 55:8-9 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” I lean into this verse because it reminds me that I don’t have to understand it because God’s thoughts are not our thoughts. He doesn’t think like us. He knows all the pieces to the puzzle before He even starts to put it together and His ways are higher than our ways. He has a plan and whatever it is, it is better than our plan. So, I understand that not everyone we pray for will be healed.
However, I still wonder why we question that He will heal the people we are praying for? If we know He can, why do we doubt that He will? Do we think that God made these people sick? Well, not made them sick, but because He is allowing them to be sick, it must be His will for them to be sick? I think some of us think that. We know God could cure all cancer if He wanted to and so it must be His will that cancer is on the face of the earth. I am not an expert by any means on God’s will but I am pretty sure that God doesn’t want most of what is going on in the world to be going on. He doesn’t want us to be dying of cancer and other diseases. He doesn’t want all the violence in the world today. He doesn’t want us all divided and fighting with each other. I am pretty sure that there is very little going on in this world is according to God’s perfect will. So then, that leaves God’s permissive will. Yes God allows bad things to happen. However, in the middle of all the bad, he also allows some great things to happen.
He is still preforming miracles. He is still curing people and raising up Saints. Why can’t our loved one be the next miracle? Why do we have such a hard time believing that God wants to cure our loved ones? Why do we have that doubt? Today I was sending out a prayer request to the prayer line I belong to. I was asking for prayers for a friend’s mom who is having stomach surgery at the end of the month. I wanted to ask for prayers so that she was completely cured and they didn’t even have to do the surgery. But then I knew they already checked and they did need to. So I wanted to ask for prayers that when they got in there she was completely healed and they didn’t need to take away any of her stomach. I know God can do this, I have heard of stories like this before. Yet when I went to type it, I couldn’t. Now that I am thinking about it I am wondering if I was thinking God wouldn’t do it, or I was worried about what others would think if I wrote that.
Isn’t that something that can limit our prayers sometimes? Do you ever alter what you really want to say because someone else is listening and you don’t want to sound silly or crazy? I sometimes am also cautious as to what I am saying when I am praying out loud because I don’t want to get someone’s hopes up and then let them down if it doesn’t happen. I guess I don’t want to give people false hope. However, I believe that God wants us to hope for the impossible. I think He wants us to trust Him with the big Asks. Noting is too hard for God. If we know this is true, then maybe the problem is that we are not asking Him for big enough things. He is a powerful and He can make the impossible happen. Are we asking Him too? Also, when we are asking are we asking Him with the expectation that He will? Do we believe not only that He can, but that He will? And if we don’t believe that, can we ask God to help us believe, just like the soldier did in Mark 9:24, “Lord I believe, help my unbelief.”
I think we are not seeing more healings because we are not expecting to see them. We believe that God can and that is a start. Now, I think He wants us to go that one step further and believe He not only can, but He wants to and he will. I think if we ask God to help us with our unbelief then He will. There are so many people with COVID right now and it seems there are more and more each day. What if we all keep praying for them and we do it with the belief that God wants to take away their pain. He wants to cure all those infected with this virus. What if we were all praying with expectant hearts, would we see a rise in the number of our loved ones being cured? What if we prayed some pretty big prayers? Remember, we are talking about the same God that made the heavens and the earth. Whatever we are asking Him to do is tiny in comparison to that. Give it a try, see if your prayers feel any different when you are believing the Lord wants to do what you are asking Him to do.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we believe, help our unbelief. Lord, help us to believe that you not only can answer our prayers, but that you want to. Help us to ask you for the impossible believing that you will answer. Lord you are so powerful. You make the heavens and the earth, you make day and night, you made all things. We are so luck that you are our one true God. We don’t deserve your love and yet you give it so freely. We don’t deserve your mercy and yet you give us that freely as well. We love you so much Lord and we are so grateful for all you do for us. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you on Monday. Have a blessed weekend.
Woman, You Have Great Faith!
Mark 7:24-30 “From there he set out and went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice, but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet. Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. He said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” But she answered him, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” Then he said to her, “For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.” So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.”
When I came across this scripture a while back, I avoided it. I avoided it because I don’t think I can explain it as well as it was explained to me. I avoided it because I think it makes Jesus sound rude and I know He is not. Listening to it makes me confused. I always felt like Jesus was very dismissive of this woman and that was confusing as I know that is so out of character for Him. I have heard it explained several times now and although I’m not sure I can do it justice, I want to try as it is such a powerful verse when properly understood. I will also put a link for an article in the show notes where is explained really well. You can also just google meaning of Mark 7:24-30 and I am sure you will come up with some good explanations.
Jesus had just left the Jewish communities and was trying to get some rest. He entered a Gentile community hoping no one would recognize Him. It didn’t work and a woman who had a child that was possessed saw Him. She begged Jesus to cast the demon out of her little girl. What happens next is the part that I was confused at. Jesus says, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and through it to the dogs.” Doesn’t this sound like an insult? Doesn’t it sound like Jesus is being dismissive of this woman? I didn’t understand why He would say this to her. Aren’t there other ways He could say what He wanted to say? After listening to others explain this time and time again, it is clear that without context and maybe some knowledge on the language back then, it would be hard for anyone to understand.
What Jesus was saying to this woman was not an insult, it was a parable. He was saying to her that there is a certain order to they way things should be done. First He came to feed His children. He wasn’t saying that He wouldn’t ever help the Gentiles, he was just saying that He was feeding His people first. What is amazing is that the woman understood what He was saying. She didn’t take offense to it. This is something that I struggle with daily. I take things personally and can sometimes get offended easily. If this was me, I can see how I might have argued with Jesus. I might have been offended at what He said, and argued that I had just as much right to healing as His people did. Doesn’t this sound like what most of us would say? It seems we think we are entitled to whatever we want these days. Especially if we are told we can’t have it.
This woman was different. She didn’t argue with Jesus, she didn’t take offense and try to defend her rightful place at the table. She wasn’t claiming equality. This is the thing that I think many of us miss. Or at least I know I missed it. I had heard people say that she humbled herself but I didn’t quite understand what they meant. After Jesus said that to this woman, she replied, ““Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” Then he said to her, “For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.” This made no sense to me. In Matthew 15:28 it says, “Then Jesus said to her, “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.” And her daughter was healed at that moment.” How does what she said show that she has great faith? What did she even say?
When this woman said that even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs, she was showing Jesus that she understood His parable. She was showing Him that gets it, she is not of Jewish decent. She is not one of the chosen ones that Jesus came to heal. And instead of arguing that she is just as worthy as they are, she owns that she is different and still asks for His help. By saying that even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs, she is acknowledging how powerful Jesus is. She is saying, ok, you aren’t here for us and yet you have so much to give that after you feed all of your children, there will still be some left over. So, I need mine now. I know it’s not the time but my daughter needs you now. This is why Jesus says that she has great faith. She not only believed that He would heal and minister to His children, but to others as well. There is a quote from the book that the article I read was based on that I really liked. They were talking about the assertiveness of the woman and it said, “She’s not saying, “Lord, give me what I deserve on the basis of my goodness.” She’s saying, “Give me what I don’t deserve on the basis of your goodness—and I need it now.” This is a quote from Timothy Keller’s book Jesus The King. The article I found it is was titled, Meaning of Mark 7:24-30 by Austin Gentry. (Click Here For Article)
Wow, this is something that I think we could all spend some time thinking about. When we ask God for things are we trying to rely on our goodness? I know sometimes when I am praying I says things like, please God, she is such a faithful daughter, or she had done so much good and she has so much faith, and so on. I am explaining to God why this person deserves healing. I have read in several healing books that we don’t need to do this as God knows everything about each one of us. I don’t think I ever really understood until right now that we aren’t healed because of our goodness, we are healed because of His goodness. When I pray for people sometimes I feel as though I need to do something a certain way. Should I be kneeling? Should I lay hands on that person? Should I close my eyes, should I keep them open? The Holy Spirit is slowly and gently bringing to my attention that I am making it all about me. It doesn’t matter what I do, God doesn’t need me to do anything but ask. The Lord is not healing people or answering prayers because I am doing something. He is doing it because I asked and because of His goodness. It’s not about me.
I hope that this explanation has helped you understand this verse. I hope you will take a few minutes to read the article because it goes into so much more detail and is explained much more eloquently than I explained it. I am so glad that I decided to try and explain this verse today as it has really opened my eyes and has me thinking differently about how I pray. It also reminds me of God’s abundance. He is not a small God, He can do all things. He has enough power to answer all the prayers from everyone who asks. He is the God of all people. He is amazing and I am so very thankful that He is my God too!
Dear Heavenly Father, please bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, please give everyone listening a better understanding of this verse. Please open our eyes to all the ways that we are making our prayers about us instead of you. Open our eyes to any ways that we are trying to rely on our goodness instead of your goodness. Lord, help us to be unoffended by you. Help us to see what you want us to see in all that you are doing in our lives. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ Holy Name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
The Miracles in Life
1 Thessalonians 5:11 “Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing.”
If there is one thing that I have become acutely aware of over time it is how important community is. I know I have talked about this before, and I think it is something that can be mentioned again. I have talked about how much my friends helped me get through all the difficult times I have had over the years. Today I want to talk about how important community is to helping build not only your faith, but spreading the Gospel to others as well. When I was younger, newly married, and just out of college my husband and I were living in a new state and we didn’t really know anyone. We started at a new church. This church has a Catholic women’s group that met once a month. I was hesitant to join as I felt like I wasn’t Catholic enough. Do you know what I mean? I can’t be the only person that has ever felt that way.
I mean I went to church, I went to religious education growing up, I made all the sacraments, and still I felt like I was Catholic, but not enough to go to this women’s group. I was convinced that they all knew so much more than I did. They had probably all not only read the Bible before but had it memorized. They had probably all been going to groups likes this their whole lives. Has this ever happened to you? You think about joining something that you think could help you grow in the faith and then all of the sudden your mind is flooded with all these negative thoughts? Don’t worry, you are not alone. This happens to all of us. The reason is the enemy. He knows you will grow if you are in a community of believers. He wants to deter you from ever stepping through that door because he knows once you do, you won’t want to leave.
There is something about being in a community of believers that is not like anything else. You may be involved in other groups, for instance a bowling group, a running group, a book club. These are great. Being with a group of people that have a shared interest feels really great. You can encourage each other and build each other up just as this verse is telling us to do. However, it is different when you are encouraging each other and building each other up in the faith. It is so much more powerful and it truly can change your life. We are all on a faith journey and how long or how short that journey is depends on us. Are you going to stay on this journey forever, or are you going to give up and quit?
There will be times when your faith is tested. There will be times when you question God and everything you know about Him. We all run into difficult times. No one skates through life without encountering trouble. No one is exempt from pain. Even Jesus and Mary encountered pain. There is no reason to believe that we won’t have to go through it. The important this is how you deal with that pain and that testing of your faith. If you are on your own it will be much harder to get through it. If you are by yourself, it will be harder to keep believing, harder to talk yourself out of your negative, doubting thoughts that the enemy is bound to fill your head with. When you have a community of believers surrounding you, they speak truth into your darkness. They speak the Lord’s words and His promises into the darkness. If you surround yourself with people who don’t believe, they may be able to love you through the difficult times, they may be able to comfort you, but will they be able to talk truth to you when you need to hear it? Will they be able to remind you that you are a child of God and that He is always with you?
A community of believers is not just important when you are struggling, they are important when you are thriving as well. They are there to help you grow more and more in your faith. They are there to celebrate your wins with you and to help you recognize where God is working in your life. That is something that I am not sure we spend enough time doing. Are we taking time out of our days or our weeks to stop and look at how God is working in our lives? I remember the first time I saw a spiritual director and they asked me that question. “Where do you see God working in your life?” I was not sure what to say. I know God is there, I know He is working in my life, but I wasn’t taking the time to ask myself that question and to truly answer it. I think it is a question that can be life changing if you get into the habit of asking yourself that question on a regular basis. “How is God working in my life this week? Where do I see God at work in my life? What things has God done in my life this week?” Any or all of these questions are a great place to start.
I was planning to talk about a different verse and a different topic today. Then as I was beginning to write this episode, I got a text message. I had decided I wasn’t going to check any messages while I was working on my podcast, but for some reason I did. It was a message from a friend. His wife has MS and she has been suffering with a pretty bad flareup. She had lost mobility on one side of her body. Usually flare ups don’t last long but this had lasted for weeks and they were worried. I prayed, along with many others, and the text message was to tell us that she has been at 100% mobility for a few weeks now. Praise God, he is amazing! He is so good!
I went to go tell my workout group as they are a group of faithful ladies and I feel when you witness or hear about a miracle you should spread the news so you can as the verse says, “encourage one another and build one another up.” When I got to the message page my friend had just written the following message, “Great news girls. All the active cancer in the pancreas is gone!! And the rest of the cancer has shrunk quite a bit. She is giving her two weeks off and they will be decreasing her chemo since she has had such a hard time with it. So exciting.” You see, my friends mom had gotten a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer several months back and it had spread to other parts of her body. We immediately started praying and the next time she went to get pet scan her numbers decreased from the thousands to the hundreds. Now to read this message that the cancer is completely gone in the pancreas, is amazing. God is so good!
I felt like both those messages were a sign that I should relay these miracles to you. I think it is great when we can believe without seeing, and I also know that sometimes it is easier to believe when we can see. Sometimes we need to see the miracles to build our faith. If you have a loved one that is sick or that you are worried might be getting sick trust that the Lord can heal all things. Have faith that when you ask the Lord answers. Another thing that the Lord has made perfectly clear this year is that you don’t have to know how it will happen. It is ok if you are praying for something that you can’t really see an answer to. You might be praying that a loved one is cured of a disease where there is no earthly cure. That is ok, God is not confined to what is possible with earthly means. You may be in a situation where all the doctors or counselors are telling you that things won’t change, don’t loose faith, God can move mountains.
One last miracle to end this episode. I have a friend who’s baby was born at 26 weeks. The baby was under 2 lbs when she was born. I was there in the ICU room hours after the baby was born. The doctors told the parents she would not live. They were so sorry and wished they had better news, but they were certain she would not live. We did not give up hope. We prayed all the more. We praised God, we told Him we knew He could still save her. We prayed, we thanked Him, we praised Him and we kept hoping that He would save her. Today that little girl is 2 years old and is the happiest little girl you have ever seen. Was it an easy road. No. Was she instantly cured. No. She spent 4 months in the hospital. It was a long 4 months for her and for her parents. And one they are so thankful for because their little girl is doing so great now. I don’t know why they had to go through that awful experience but I do know and they do know that a miracle happened for them that night and that changes people. They will forever be changed by that night and so will I.
I hope that these examples of real miracles that are happening to real people in today’s day and age will encourage you and build up your faith. I hope they will bring you comfort when you are facing an impossible situation. These three situations were difficult. It sucks that they had to go through them and I don’t know why they had to go through them. However, I do know that God’s glory shines through them and they are a testament to how much God loves us and how real miracles are. It is proof for all of us to see that miracles are still happening today and if it can happen for them it can happen for you. Please don’t give up hope. Your miracle is just around the corner, keep asking and you will receive.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, please help these words to encourage and build up the faith of all those listening. Lord, help us to see how you are working in our lives. Help us to stop and take the time to think about that question. Help us to talk to those around us about how You are working in our lives. Help us to encourage others in the faith. Help each one of us to find a community of believers that will help us grow closer to you. Lord, we love you so much and are so grateful for all the miracles, big and small that you have doing in our lives every single day. You are so good and we ask all of this in according to your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
A New Year’s Blessing
Sirach 50:22-24 “And now bless the God of all, who everywhere works great wonders, who fosters our growth from birth, and deals with us according to his mercy. May he give us gladness of heart, and may there be peace in our days in Israel, as in the days of old. May he entrust to us his mercy, and may he deliver us in our days!”
This is another great verse for the beginning of the year as it sounds like great things to ask the Lord for this year. It starts off by blessing God. This is something that I have tried to add to my prayers over the last year or so. Instead of just asking the Lord for I want, I also try to thank Him for all that He has already given us and I praise Him for being so amazing. Most of us are aware of many of the things that God does for us, but did you know that He also does so much for us that we are not aware of. For instance, all the things that he is preventing from happening to us. If we get hurt and then He heals us, we would be aware of that. However, if he delays us from getting out of the house so that we never even get in the accident in the first place, then we probably wouldn’t even be aware of this. I believe the Lord does this type of thing for us often and so I try to remember to thank Him as often as I can.
Next the verse says, “who everywhere works great wonders.” This is something that some of us struggle with. We know that God works great wonders, we just don’t believe that He does it in our lives. This can be for a number of reasons. Maybe we haven’t really seen Him work great wonders in our lives. We might have seen our neighbor get better after being diagnosed with cancer. We might have seen our friends marriage be healed after being close to a divorce. We may have witnessed God doing great works in others lives and but we haven’t seen Him do great wonders in our lives. This may cause some people to feel as though they are not worthy of the Lord working great wonders in their lives. If this is you I urge you to relook at your life. Is it possible that God prevented some things from happening and you just aren’t aware? The verse says everywhere works great wonders, not just some places. Everywhere, so where could God have worked great works in your life? Has someone you loved been sick and then gotten better? Have those in your family been spared from all serious illnesses? Sometimes the lack of bad things in your life is another way that God is working great wonders in your life. God is working great works in your life. If you haven’t been able to see them then maybe think about all the things He has been saving you from, or all the ways He is preparing you for the amazing things that are to come in your future.
Next it says, “who fosters our growth from birth, and deals with us according to his mercy.” God fosters our growth from birth. This is something that shows how much God loves us. He doesn’t just hope that we grow up in the faith. He doesn’t just create us and then move on to the next person. He doesn’t just pay attention to us when we are old enough to praise and worship Him. He fosters our growth from birth. He is always with us! Then it says that the Lord deals with us according to his mercy. This statement is so much more important for us to hear then I think we realize. It doesn’t say that God deals with us according to His judgement. This is often how we can see God. Instead of seeing Him as our loving Father who views our mistakes and mess ups with mercy, we view Him as a judge who is condemning us for our mistakes. This statement says that the Lord deals with us according to his mercy. I think if we could all believe this and remember this when we feel we are letting Him down then we would be more likely to return to him after we mess up. Our forgetting, or not believing that the Lord deals with us according to His mercy could be affecting our relationship with Him. Is this getting in your way of seeing the Father as He truly is? Is it getting in the way of you turning back to Him and accepting that He does love you, flaws in all?
The second half of this verse is why I thought is sounded like a good verse for the new year. “May he give us gladness of heart, and may there be peace in our days in Israel, as in the days of old. May he entrust to us his mercy, and may he deliver us in our days!” It is a blessing that I for one would love to have this year. I hope that the Lord gives us gladness of heart and peace in our days. We just had the holidays and so hopefully we all got to experience some gladness of heart. However, what about the rest of the year? I know people were expecting 2021 to be a much better year than 2020. We were expecting or hoping that things would be back to normal and we could get out and see our loved ones again. We could hold gatherings and get our groups back together in person. And we did have some of that about halfway through the year. However, I am not sure that people got the gladness of heart that they were hoping for. This year may be more of the same, I don’t know. Just when we thought things were getting back to some sort of normal, a new strain comes out and the numbers jump again.
I am claiming this blessing for this year. May God give you and me the gladness of heart and may there be peace in our days. We could all use a little more peace in our days! There is a lot of uncertainty and worry in the world today. How wonderful would it be to have more peace? It says “May he entrust to us His mercy, and may he deliver us in our days.” This is a promise that we need to hold on to. He will entrust us with His mercy and He will deliver us. I think just believing in that promise would bring more peace into our days. The Lord loves us. He gives us so much mercy. Take some time today and think about where in your life God has done great works. Maybe think about the times when He has shown you great mercy. Think about God giving you goodness of heart and peace in your day.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask that you give us this gladness of hear and peace in our days that the verse mentions. Things seem so chaotic these days and we could all use a little more peace in our lives. Help us to see your mercy and not focus on your judgement. Help us to understand that You are a loving Father not a critical judge. You look upon us with mercy not judgement. Help us to turn back to you when we mess up knowing you will be there with open arms. Lord we are so very grateful for all that you do for us. We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus holy name, amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Be My Light In The World
Matthew 7:7-11 “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!”
I thought this would be a good verse for the first episode in 2022. This verse, like the year, presents so much possibility. What will you ask for this year? What will you seek this year? What doors will you knock on this year? I heard something on the bible in year intro yesterday that I want to share with you as I though it was really good. Father Mike was talking about Adam & Eve in the garden. He was talking about how the serpent lied to them and tricked them into eating the apple. Then he said one line that I thought was so good. He said when Eve at that apple she was seeking the creation instead of the creator. Are you seeking the creator?
I came upon this verse because I wanted to share with you a bookmark from my prayer group. Each bookmark has a scripture verse that goes along with it. Our monthly bookmarks contain a summary of sorts from all the words of prophecy given that month. I may have described this before but in case I haven’t, let me explain. Each week at our prayer groups we have time for silence so we can listen to anything the Lord wants to say to us. Back in the early 2000’s the prayer group started to record these words of prophecy that were given at the meeting. Each month they had several people re-read all the given words and discern what God’s call, directive, proclamation, and promise were for that month. They would then put this information on a bookmark for everyone in the group to keep. I would like to share the bookmark from July of 2020 as I feel they are great words for the beginning of this new year. As you listen to this close your eyes and imagine God is saying this directly to you. Because He is. It is not by accident I felt let to read this to you today and it is not by accident that your are listening to this episode today. The Lord, your Heavenly Father, wants you to hear this today.
“I have called you by name into life. I have called you every day by your name because I know you, I love you, because you are my friend. My children, I have so much more for you. I have more for you every single day-- more for yourself, more for you to give away, and more for you to enrich the world around you. Even though we are in troubled times, my graces abound for you and yours. Fear not to move forward in trust every day. Seek me at all times. The more you seek me the more I will enlighten you and guide you in ways that you never thought possible. Do not be anxious. Believe in me. I will take care of you forever. Be my light to the world. Reflect in everything that you do that you are mine.”
There is so much in this bookmark. Let’s start at the beginning. “I have called you by name into life. I have called you every day by your name because I know you, I love you, because you are my friend.” This is remarkable. I am not sure if we all know this is true, or if we ever really think about it. I bet if someone asked us if God knew our name, we would probably say yes, because we know that God knows everything. But have you ever really sat with that though? God knows your name, He knows you personally. There are billions of people in this world and yet God cares about you personally. In this message from the Lord He is saying that He calls us everyday by our name because he knows us and He loves us. He tells us that He is our friend. That right there, is something to sit and think about. God is your friend. Did you know that? Do you treat Him like He is your friend? He is calling you by name daily, are you doing the same? What can do you in this upcoming year to treat God more like a friend?
Next He says, “My children, I have so much more for you. I have more for you every single day-- more for yourself, more for you to give away, and more for you to enrich the world around you.” Wow, did you know that God has more for you? And not just more for you, not just enough to get by, He has so much for you that you will have some left over to give away. So much so that you can enrich the world. Did you know that God is calling us to do that? He does not give us all that we have so that we can just get by. He gives us all that we need and then some so that we can share His love and joy with the world. When we enrich the world, we are spreading the Gospel, spreading God’s love, peace & joy. That makes Him so happy. I think what He is trying to telling us in this word is to be on the lookout for more. I think He wants us to be on the lookout for how we can give away His love, joy & peace. I think He wants us to be on the lookout for how we can enrich the world with all God gives to us. Can you be on the lookout for that this year?
Next He says, “Even though we are in troubled times, my graces abound for you and yours.” We certainly are in troubled times. My friend said that she is back to not leaving the house as the numbers for Covid in the city she lives are the worst they have been since it started. There is a father of four young children that just died from Covid complications just before Christmas. Just when things seem like they are getting better, they get worse. In this word God is telling us that even in the middle of all this His graces are abounding for you and yours. It doesn’t just say for you, it says for you and yours. What if we were on the lookout for these graces each day? How much different would our days be if instead of looking for all the ways life is hard, or all the things that are going wrong, we looked for all the graces that God is giving to us and our loved ones?
Then the Lord says, “Fear not to move forward in trust every day. Seek me at all times. The more you seek me the more I will enlighten you and guide you in ways that you never thought possible. Do not be anxious. Believe in me. I will take care of you forever. “ Wow, that is a lot in just a few sentences. Fear not to move forward in trust. This is hard. It isn’t easy to move forward in trust especially everyday. The next line tells us how to do this though. Seek me at all times. If we want to trust in the Lord then we need to seek the Lord. We need to bring our problems to Him and seek His solutions, not our own. Rely on Him to fix them, not ourselves. I love the next line. “The more you seek me the more I will enlighten you and guide you in ways that you never thought possible.” Who doesn’t need to be guided by the Lord? But it doesn’t just say that He will guide us, it also says that He will enlighten us. We need this. This world can be so confusing and the enemy uses all the noise of the world to keep us in the dark and to keep us from who we are meant to be. The more we seek the Lord in our lives the more He enlightens us and guides us to the path He has planned for us. I also loved how He said he will guide us in ways we never thought possible. I have seen this over and over again this year. Prayers have been answered in ways that no one would have thought possible. He has done the impossible in many peoples lives this year. Don’t you want that in your life? Can you seek the Lord more this year?
This word ends with, “Be my light to the world. Reflect in everything that you do that you are mine.” This brings us back to the beginning. The Lord is calling us to be His light in the world. This world, where there is so much darkness, so much anger, and lately, so much despair. We can spread the Lord’s light to all those dark places. The last line is so important. “Reflect in everything that you do that you are mine” Are we doing this? Can people tell just by looking at the way you live and the way you interact with others that you belong to Christ? The world has enough people to spread the darkness and the negativity. Can you spread the Lord’s Light? Can you act in such a way that all will know just by looking at you that you belong to Christ? What would be great is if that was our number 1 goal for 2022. “I will be a light to the world. I will reflect in everything that I do that I belong to Christ.” Will you join me?
Dear Heavenly Father I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord I ask that you bless this whole year. I ask that you walk with each one of us throughout this year and that you rain down blessings and graces on all of us. Lord I ask that you help us to be a light to the world and that you help us to act in such a way that we reflect that we are yours. Lord, we can’t do anything without you but with you we can do all things. Lord we ask that you help us to see what you want us to do this year and how we can put You first in our lives. We love you so much Lord. We thank you for bringing us into a whole new year of life. We are so grateful to you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I am so happy to be walking with you through another year of life. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow, Have a blessed day!
What Are Your Plans for 2022?
Proverbs 16:3 “Commit to the Lord whatever you do, and he will establish your plans.”
This time of year is my favorite time of year! I love the beginning of a new year because it contains so many possibilities, so much potential. Nothing has happened that year yet. You are starting with a blank canvas and the upcoming year can be whatever you want it to be. If you want to grow in your faith that year, great! If you want to focus on becoming really good at your job, that’s great too! If you want to focus on your family or your relationships, wonderful. Whatever you want your focus to be is great. You get to decide. I wonder how many of you listening to this episode think about what you want to get out of this next year? I know it doesn’t tend to be something that many people I know think about. I would love to change this. I would love it if every person took some time and thought about what they wanted this upcoming year to look like. I am not talking about spending hours thinking about it and I am not talking about coming up with a list of 30 New Years Resolutions that you will probably only do for a week or two and then they will become a distant memory.
What I am suggesting is just sit down and invite the Holy Spirit to have a conversation with you about where He sees this year going? Is there anything in particular that He would like to see you focus on this year? In what ways would He like to see you grow this year? Ask if the Lord has plans for you and if so, what are they? What do you need to do to help the Lord’s plans come to fruition? The verse above says, “Commit to the Lord whatever you do, and He will establish your plans.” Are we doing that? Are we committing all we do to the Lord and then letting him establish our plans? Or, are we just going about our day, focused on our plans, and not really even stopping to check in with the Lord? Have you done this before? Have you started your year off by offering it to God and by asking Him what He would like you to do this year? If you haven’t may I suggest you give it a try this year? Even if you are not listening to this on New Year’s Eve when I posted it. Even if you are halfway through the year, or more. May I suggest you take 5 minutes and ask God what He sees for you this year?
Another verse that goes along with this one is a little further down in Proverbs 16. Verse 9 says, “In their hearts humans plan their course, but the Lord establishes their steps.” It’s not a bad thing to plan your course. It is good to have desires, dreams and goals. It is good that we have some direction and that we are working towards something. It is also important to remember that the Lord establishes our steps. This is especially important to remember when things don’t go according to our plan. How many times have things gone perfectly according to your plans? For me, I can say that things don’t tend to go perfectly according to my plans very often at all. I have learned to be very flexible, especially if my plans are relying on other people. For instance, trying to get out of the house with three boys all under the age of 5 was very challenging when the boys were younger. I would picture a nice morning where I got up and showered before the kids woke up. Since I was all ready to go before they got up I would have time to calmly help them get dressed and make them breakfast. Can you picture it? This nice relaxing morning before the start of the day? I don’t know about your mornings if you had young kids, but mine rarely went like that.
What was more likely was that one of the boys would be up in the middle of the night for something and then I would be so tired in the morning after being up in the middle of the night that I would turn my alarm off and then not even have time to shower in the morning before we had to go. Breakfast was more of a what can we take and eat in the car kind of thing and there was no calmly helping the kids get ready. It was more of a rush them to get ready so we weren’t late. I think it would have been helpful for me to remember in these moments that the Lord establishes our steps. Now, I am not trying to say that the Lord made me late. This may be an extreme example of when things don’t go our way. However, I think when things aren’t going our way, we could gain more perspective if we looked at it differently. Instead of looking at the situation and thinking that everything is going wrong, we can look at it and think that it’s just going differently. It is not going as we planned but that doesn’t mean it is going wrong.
So often we plan things a certain way taking into account all the things we can think of that could get in our way. For instance, we might set two alarms, because we know that we might sleep through one alarm. We might shower the night before because we know we sometimes get up to late to shower in the morning. We may even make muffins or a breakfast casserole the night before because we know we could oversleep or be rushed. Sometimes we get really good at planning for the unexpected. And yet, things still don’t work out as we wanted. Maybe we prepared a lot for an interview for the job we really wanted. We woke up early, we prayed, we ate breakfast, we showered, we did all we could to prepare for success at this interview. And yet we didn’t get the job. What happened? Maybe God knew to prepare for things that you did’t see coming. Maybe this job was going to keep you away from home more than you wanted, maybe the boss was not a nice person, maybe there was a much better job just around the corner that you didn’t know about.
We plan our course, we go through life trying to figure out what we want and then working towards it. However, God establishes our steps. He has a plan for us too and His plan is better than our plan. Sometimes we don’t know what His plan is. He doesn’t usually reveal the plan in whole before you decide if you want to follow it or not. Usually God establishes your steps one step at a time. It isn’t our job to understand the plan, or even God’s ways. Our job is to follow the steps that God establishes for us and then trust that they are leading us to where we want to go. If you ever doubt that God’s plan is leading you to where you want to go then read and reread Jeremiah 29:11, “For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.”
The last scripture verse that I want to mention to you today is Psalm 127:1, “Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the guards stand watch in vain.” This is similar to the first verse which said “Commit to the Lord whatever you do, and He will establish your plans.” However, this verse is slightly different. This verse takes it one step further and says if you the Lord doesn’t build your house, then you build in vain. If the Lord is not watching over the city, the guards stand watch in vain. What I believe these verses are telling us is that nothing is worth doing and nothing is worth having unless the Lord is involved. If you are planning your year out, or even a weekend out and you don’t invite the Lord into those plans, then your plans are made in vain. The Lord has a plan for your life and if you go about you life without stopping to consult the Lord and invite Him into the middle of it then all your planning will be in vain. I believe that the Lord wants to plan your life with you, but you need to be the one to invite him in and be willing to work with His plan.
I hope if you get nothing else out of this message today, I hope that you take away from this episode the importance of inviting the Lord into your life and into your plans. I hope that you will spend some time with the Lord and ask Him what He wants for you this year? Is He calling you to grow in any areas? Does He have sometime specific He would like you to focus on? I am not sure where each of you is in your faith. I am not sure if you believe that you can ask the Lord questions and that you will get answers. I assure you, if you ask the Lord a question and you listen for the answer, He will give you one. It may not be right away and it may not be how you expect it to come. However, I promise you, if you ask God a question, be on the lookout for the answer. It will come!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, tomorrow is a brand new year. This is the last day of 2021. I ask that you encourage each of the listeners to take 5 minutes today and spend some time talking about this upcoming year. Lord, we ask that you put on our hearts anything you want us to do this year. Send the Holy Spirit down to convict us of what you would like us to focus on this year. Lord we are your willing servants. Show us how we can best serve you. We love you Lord and we are ready for you to establish our steps and our plans. You are amazing Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I can’t believe 2021 will be over at the end of today. I am entering 2022 full of hope and love and I hope you are too. Thank you for being faithful and listening over these last 6 months. I look forward to spending 2022 growing in my faith with you. Have a blessed weekend and A Happy New Year!
Faithful Friends Are Beyond Price
Sirach 6:14-17 “Faithful friends are a sturdy shelter; whoever finds one finds a treasure. Faithful friends are beyond price, no amount can balance their worth. Faithful friends are life-saving medicine; those who fear God will find them. Those who fear the Lord enjoy stable friendship, for as they are, so will their neighbors be.”
I love this verse. Yesterday we talked about how to find good friends and what types of friends we don’t want. Today’s verse is great because it talks about how great it is when you have good friends. Faithful friends are a sturdy shelter. I have definitely experienced this. There have been so many times when I have needed a sturdy shelter to help me deal with all that was going on in my life. God has been so good to me and has placed really great friends in my life at every stage of my life.
My husband, Tony, was in the Air Force, so we moved around quite a bit. Moving around is great because you get to see different parts of the world and experience different cultures. However, it also means you need to start all over again each time you move. You move somewhere and you usually don’t know anyone. If you are really luck you may know someone from a previous assignment. We moved six times before settling down in Massachusetts. The Lord looked out for me and each assignment he lead me to really close friendships, liked the ladies I talked about yesterday. If you want an example of how amazing God is at placing you in the right place at the right time, let me explain about my experience in New Jersey.
We moved to New Jersey when our son was 6 weeks old. He was our first child and so we were just learning how to be parents. When he was about 9 months old, I met a woman whose husband worked with mine. We were at a spouse’s event and she mentioned that she attended a playgroup on base. I went to it the following week and every week there after for the next three years. I met a group of ladies there that were all first time moms and most of us had boys all the same age. There was one lady that had a daughter. We became the best of friends, helping each other navigate through all the challenges of not only being a parent, but being a spouse of someone in the military. We were there for each other when we all had our second, and in some case third child. It was like we grew up together because we went from being young adults to parents together. We have all moved away since then and we don’t keep in touch all that often, but when we do, it is like we never stopped talking. Those ladies were my sturdy shelter in the storm. When I found them, I definitely felt like I had found a treasure. Their friendship is priceless.
Every base I went to I faced different challenges, but I never faced them alone. I always had close friends to help me through them. I like the ending of this verse because is says that “Faithful friends are life-saving medicine; those who fear God will find them. Those who fear the Lord enjoy stable friendship, for as they are, so will their neighbors be.” Faithful friends are life-saving medicine is something that I don’t think anyone that has a faithful friend can argue with. Having a faithful friend to turn to can lift your spirits and help make your burden lighter. Think about when you are feeling upset about something, do you have a friend that you can call who can help take your cares away? Do you have someone that you can call when you are upset and you feel better just by hearing their voice? I think we underestimate friendships now a days.
I also liked how the verse says, “those who fear God will find them. Those who fear the Lord enjoy stable friendship, for as they are, so will their neighbor be.” I like this because it puts some of the responsibility on us. It says that those who fear God will find good friends. This is why you have been able to find good friends over the years. It also says, “for as they are, so will their neighbor be.” We touched on this yesterday a little. If you are kind you will attract kind people. If you are friendly and trustworthy, then you will attract friendly and trustworthy people. As you are, so will your neighbor be. If you want to have better friendships, then be a better friend.
I have been talking so much about friendships this week because I truly feel that they can make all the difference. There is a lot of negativity in the world today. There is a lot of anger and hatred these days. Sometimes it can feel like we are surrounded by all this negativity and it can start to infect us. If you do not surround yourself with people who can spread light and love into your life, then life will be harder. Do you have someone that you can count on to shine light into your darkness? Do you have someone in your life that will spread Christ’s joy to you, especially when you need it the most? If not, how can you change that for this upcoming year? How can you surround yourself with people that will make you a better person, a better Christian, a better example of Christ?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask that you help us to surround ourselves with people that will lift us up and help us be more like you. We ask that you lead us to these people and that you help us to be that person to all those in our life. Help us to be more like you. Help us to spread your love and your light to all we meet. We love you so much Lord. We think you are amazing and we want to be like you in any way that we can. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Good Friends Are So Important
Sirach 6:7-13 “When you gain friends, gain them through testing, and do not be quick to trust them. For there are friends when it suits them, but they will not be around in time of trouble. Another is a friend who turns into an enemy, and tells of the quarrel to your disgrace. Others are friends, table companions, but they cannot be found in time of affliction. When things go well, they are your other self, and lord it over your servants. If disaster comes upon you, they turn against you and hide themselves. Stay away from your enemies, and be on guard with your friends.”
When I looked at Sirach 6 there was a whole section of friends and what we should and shouldn’t do regarding friends. I thought these verses would be good to spend some time in because I don’t think we realize how important it is to have good friends. When was the last time you were intentional about making the right kind of friends? I think that is something that we think about when we are kids a lot more than when we are adults. When we are parents we think about how important it is for our kids to make the right kind of friends. We pray that God will direct them towards the “good kids.” We pray that their friends will be a good influence on them and not lead them into trouble. But when is the last time we thought about ourselves and been intentional about making good friends?
We are social creatures. God did not intend for us to be alone. This is why after He made Adam, He made Eve, so they would’t be alone. I am not just talking about a partner either. Even if you are not married or with someone romantically, you are still not meant to be alone. You are meant to have family and friends to share life with. Whatever you are going through, it is easier if you have someone going through it with you. Hard times are so much easier if you have someone to share the load with you. Happy times are so much happier if you have someone to share the excitement with. I remember the first time I ran a half marathon was during Covid. There were no organized races at the time, so I decided to run a half marathon through my town. I charted it out on the computer and got up one Sat. morning and ran 13.1 miles. It was exciting for me when I finished, but sort of anti-climatic as I hit 13.1 miles halfway up the hill to my house. There was not finish line, no one waiting with posters to cheer me on, and no medal. I did a group call with my workout girls and a few of them answered to celebrate with me. However, a few months later I flew to Alabama and met those same girls and ran another half marathon. This time there was a finish line and there were people waiting to cheer me on at the end. It was a much better experience.
This group of friends that I met up with in Alabama are a group of friends that I am 100% sure God divinely interceded in our lives and put us all in a group together. We happened to all be in the same mentoring group, Big Life mentoring. However, there are over 400 people in mentoring. What are the chances that we would all meet? We are also from 7 different states, now 8 as one moved, and 3 different time zones. At the beginning of Covid, our mentor thought it would be helpful to start small workout groups to give us a reason to keep getting out of bed when everyone in the house was at home and when we couldn’t leave our houses. It was also a great way to help us stay sane in a difficult time. When the whole world was shut down and we couldn’t leave our houses, we would at least have this quick 10 minute video call with these 8 strangers. It was meant to go for one week, we are coming up on 2 years in April. It was exactly what each of us needed.
This group of 8 people quickly became a really close knit group of girls that encourage each other in all areas of our lives. What I like most about it is that we are all Christian and so we don’t have to be worried about talking about Jesus too much. We don’t have to worry that someone is going to roll their eyes when we tell them that things will work out and that Jesus has got this. We are not all the same. We are actually very different. We have different personalities, different jobs, different stages in life, and yet when we get together we all have so much to talk about because we are so similar even though we are different. We push each other to be better, we remind each other to have grace for ourselves, we remind each other that we are loved just as we are, and most importantly, we pray with each other and for each other.
Our friends are so important. Do you have friends you can celebrate with? Do you have friends that are there for you no matter what? Do you have friends that will sit there and cry with you, or just listen for as long as you need to talk for? Do you have friends that will tell you when you are doing something that isn’t in alignment with who you want to be? I don’t want to have friends that are just going to tell me whatever I want to hear to make me happy. I want someone to tell me when I am doing something that is not in alignment with who I want to be. If I am gossiping and being unkind, I want my friend to call me out of on it. I want friends that will help me get into the kingdom of heaven, don’t you?
Let’s listen to the verse one more time because I think it is a great example of the type of friends we need to watch out for. “When you gain friends, gain them through testing, and do not be quick to trust them. For there are friends when it suits them, but they will not be around in time of trouble. Another is a friend who turns into an enemy, and tells of the quarrel to your disgrace. Others are friends, table companions, but they cannot be found in time of affliction. When things go well, they are your other self, and lord it over your servants. If disaster comes upon you, they turn against you and hide themselves. Stay away from your enemies, and be on guard with your friends.”
I think we have all experienced all of these different types of friends before. Especially I would say in middle school and high school. When kids are just learning how to be friends it is difficult at times. You want to fit and be popular and often times the nice guy isn’t popular. However, even as adults we may have experienced some of these different types of people. I know some of the ladies in the group said it is difficult to share and open up because they have been burned in the past. This is what the verse is warning us against. When you gain your friends, gain them through testing, and do not be quick to trust them. If you are slow to trust people, this is not a bad thing. It’s ok to be slow to trust people. The only thing I would caution you on is building up walls and never trusting anyone after you have been hurt. We need friends and if you are someone who has built up walls and never lets anyone in, I urge you to bring that to prayer and ask God to help you tear down some walls.
We have talked about the importance of good friendships and we talked about the different types of bad friendships. I would like to challenge you all to take a look at those that you live in communion with. It could be your friends that you hang out with, the people you talk to at church, your family, whoever you spend time with. Are they helping you become a better version of you? Are they there for you when you want to celebrate with them or when you need to rely on them? If you do not have anyone in your life that is encouraging you on your faith journey, someone that you can talk openly about your faith to, then I encourage you to change that. I encourage you to join a faith group at your church, a bible study, a prayer group, or some other way to meet others that can help you on your faith journey. We were not meant to do this on our own. If you are interested in joining a faith community where you can grown in the faith and you don’t know where or how, send me an email, I would be happy to point you in the right direction. I would even be willing to start one if there was a need. My email is catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com email me if you would be interested in joining a faith community.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, I pray that you open the hearts and minds of all those listening to this episode today. I know you had someone specific in mind when you gave me the last part of that message. Please give that person the courage to send me and email so that they can get hooked up with a faith community. Lord, we need others to help us grow in the faith. We ask that you help all of us meet those awesome friends that will help us do that. We thank you for all those people that you have already brought into our lives that have touched our lives and made it better. We love you so much and we are so thankful that you care about each one of us so much! You are awesome and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Be Intentional With Who You Take Advice From
Sirach 6:5-6 “Pleasant speech multiplies friends, and a gracious tongue multiplies courtesies. Let those who are friendly with you be many, but let your advisers be one in a thousand.”
The first part of this verse is something that we all know, but not something we think of often. Pleasant speech multiplies friends, I think we all know this. If we want people to like us then we should speak nicely to people. No one wants to be friends with someone that is unkind to them. However, how often do we intentionally think about this? How often do we pay attention to how we are talking to others? It also says that a gracious tongue multiplies courtesies. People are going to be kinder to you if you are kind and gracious to others. You have heard the “golden rule” treat others as you want to be treated. Are you doing it? Are you following the “golden rule?”
This part of the verse also makes me think of our speech not only too people, but about people as well. How do you talk about your friends when they are not around? Do you spend time talking about some of your friends in a negative way to your other friends? Do you spend time gossiping with your friends about other people? There are two reasons why this is really not a good idea. The first is because it is not respectful to the person you are gossiping about. Every person in the world is going through something hard. If they aren’t right now, they have in the past or they will in the future. You never know what someone is going through and until you have walked a mile in their shoes, you have no idea what their life is like. Whatever gossip you are spreading about people could hurt them, and could damage their reputation. Another rule our parents taught us, “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” This can be applied to all situations when it comes to gossip. Gossip leads to destruction. If you want to destroy a community all you need to do is start spreading some gossip. It is awful.
The second way that gossip is bad is because it can ruin friendships. If you are constantly talking badly about people when they aren’t around, to your friends, then your friends are going to start to wonder if you talk about them when they aren’t around. They may start to think that you are not a very good person. They may be cautious of what they say around you because they may think you will repeat it to others when they aren’t around or they don’t want you to make fun of them. The best way to avoid all of that is to remember that “Pleasant speech multiples friends, and gracious tongue multiplies courtesies.” If you want more friends then think about how you talk to people and how you talk about others in front of people.
The next part of the verse says, “Let those who are friendly with you be many, but let your advisers be one in a thousand.” I think this is great advise. We all have family or loved ones that want to give us advise about everything. You know the family members or friends that I am talking about. The ones that want to tell you how you should raise your children, who you should marry, where you should live, what job you should have and so on. It is difficult because usually these people are our loved ones and they think they are only trying to help us. They want what is best for us. The problem is usually their advise is based on what they think is best and what they think is best is not always what is best. They don’t usually have all the facts, they don’t know all the details or the information. They are giving you advice on the limited information that they have.
Tony and I have three boys. They are all very close together in age. We had three boys in four years. When the boys were little, we struggled a lot. Actually until recently we struggled, and our boys are now 17, 16, & 13. We received so much advice from well meaning people trying to tell us the best way to raise our children. If you are a parent, I am sure you have gotten similar advice. It doesn’t matter how well your kids behaved, other people can’t help but give you their opinions on everything to do with parenting. All this advice can drive you crazy sometimes. No one can seem to agree on what is best for kids. Some people say if you don’t spank your kids they will grow up spoiled. Others say if you do spank your kids you are abusive and your kids will grow up not feeling loved. With all these people telling you how they think you should be living your life, it can get overwhelming. It can also fill some people with anxiety. It is hard if you are a people pleaser and everyone is telling you how they want you to live your life. Especially if the way they want you to do things is not in alignment with how you think you should do things.
So, what do you do when all these people want to give you advice on how to live your life? I would refer back to Sirach 6:6, ““Let those who are friendly with you be many, but let your advisers be one in a thousand.” It is great if you have a lot of family and friends that care about you. However, that doesn’t mean that they all get a say in how you live your life. Let those who you are friendly with be many, but let your advisers be one in a thousand. You get to decide who you listen to. This is super important and can make all the difference between you living your life aligned with your passion and purpose and filled with joy, or a life where you are miserable, resentful and lacking joy. I get people pleasers. I am probably the biggest one. I don’t like conflict and have avoided it my whole life. However, I have learned to set boundaries. I have learned to be selective in who I allow to advise me. If your values don’t align with mine, I am not going to take advise on how I should live my life from you. If you have a different style of parenting than me, that’s great, I believe different things work for different children. However, I am not going to be taking advise from you on how to raise my children.
This woman I follow online Kristina Kuzmik has this great quote that she put on t-shirts that says, “Mind your own motherhood.” I love this because it is so true that people tend to think that the way they are parenting is the right way and that everyone needs to do it there way. You can have two parents parenting in completely different ways and yet they both have wonderful children. The only thing that our unsolicited advice does is to make the parent feel like they are doing something wrong. Just because it is not how we would do it does not mean that it is wrong. I think this is so important for us all to realize. We can do things differently than the way people want us to and we can still do them really well. We don’t have to do things to please everyone. I remember how freeing it felt when I decided that I was going to stop explaining myself and my parenting to others. I knew I was a great mom, I knew I had done the research, I was doing the best I could, I knew that I was the best mom for my kids. God gave me these specific 3 boys to raise for a reason and I was the best mom for the job. I knew why the things they were telling me to try wouldn’t work with my boys and I finally realized I didn’t have to explain or justify my parenting to anyone else.
You don’t have to either. And I am not just talking about parenting. You have a right to live your life how you want to. You don’t have to justify your decisions to anyone. You don’t have to explain why you are single, why you have kids, why you don’t have kids, why you work, why you don’t work, why you eat only meat, why you eat only veggies, however you decide you want to live, it is your decision. You don’t have to do something just because someone else tells you it is the best. If you want to try it great, but do it because you want to, not because someone else told you to.
Now that I have covered how you don’t have to listen to everyone that wants to give you advice, I want to say that there are some people that you should listen to. This verse doesn’t say, don’t take advice from anyone, it says let your advisor be one in a thousand. This means, be selective. I believe that everyone needs someone they can bounce ideas off of, someone that can tell them when they are doing something that is not healthy or dangerous. Someone that can be real and honest with them. However, I believe that you should make sure that this person’s belief’s and values are aligned with yours. Make sure they are someone that you can trust and that they really know you. They know your inner most desires, they know what your values are, they know what you struggle with and what you excel at. Be selective in who you ask for advice from and even when you trust the person, listen to their advice, take it under advisement and weigh it in your decision making process, but ultimately, you will need to make your own decision.
If you want to save yourself a lot of anxiety, stress, and heartache, then you be intentional about who you chose to take advice from. Be intentional about how you talk to others and about others. “Pleasant speech mulitiplies friends,” this is a great verse to remember.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to be kind to all those that we meet. Help us all have pleasant speech and to mulitply our friends. Help us Lord to be selective with who we take advice from. Help us to not worry so much as to what others think but that we only care what you think of us Lord. Help us to find those few people that we can confide in and that can help advise us. We love you Lord and we are so grateful for all you have done for us. You are amazing and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I wanted to mention that my boys are off school this week for Christmas vacation, Tony is also off from work several days this week, and my sister is visiting from another state. I am still planning on getting the podcast out each day as I truly enjoy spending that time with the Lord and with you. However, if it is not out first thing in the morning know that all is ok, I am just spending time with my family and I will get it posted as soon as I can. Thank you for your understanding. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Why Do We Struggle to Obey?
Colossians 3:20 “Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.”
Have you ever had the Lord try to tell you something and you just didn’t seem to be getting it, so you find that the Lord keeps telling you over and over again? It has happened to me numerous times so I thought I would tell you about this recent one. That way if you notice the same thing happening to you, you will recognize that it is probably the Holy Spirit trying to get your attention and maybe you will pay attention sooner. Even though this has happened to me before, it still took several weeks before I realized the message. Let me try to explain.
I had been feeling like the Holy Spirit was wanting me to fast, but I just wasn’t clear on how often, what to fast from, how long to fast, or anything like that. I am someone that does pretty well with following directions. If I am told what to do I usually listen. However, when it is not specific and there is room for interpretation, or I am left with too many choices, then I tend not to do anything. I think of all the different ways I could fast, but then I never actually do anything because I can’t make up my mind. This is where I was at with fasting. I had felt like the Holy Spirit was convicting me that I wasn’t really showing much self discipline lately when it comes to food. Then by not deciding on a way to fast, I felt like I wasn’t being obedient to the Holy Spirit, who I felt was wanting me to add fasting into my life in some way.
Next, Tony and I have been going to a 7 AM mass on many Sunday Mornings. If I get up early enough to have a cup of tea then I am getting up really early as we need to leave the house by 6:30. Tony usually asks if I want to take a cup of tea in the car. I know that we are not supposed to eat at least an hour before communion. Actually it may be an hour before mass, I am not sure and I haven’t checked it out, partly because I don’t want to find out that I have to go a whole hour before mass without eating or drinking. I usually say yes to the cup of tea, but then just drink it on my way home after mass. However, sometimes I tell myself that it is ok if I drink the tea before mass. It’s just tea, it’s not like I am eating a big breakfast or something. Does God really care about a cup of tea? I feel the Holy Spirit has been convicting me to be more obedient with that rules also.
A few weeks later I was listening to the Bible in a Year podcast, if you are not listening to this, you are truly missing out on so much good insight into the Bible, and Father Mike said something about not going to communion if you have sinned. I don’t remember what exactly he said, but what I felt the Holy Spirit convicted me of is that I shouldn’t be going to communion if I have missed mass and I haven’t gone to confession about it. Now, this is not news to me. I know this, and yet I had been going to communion anyway. Most weeks I didn’t even think about. It is not as if I purposely thought about missing mass and then decided to go to communion. However, once I heard Father Mike say whatever he said, the Holy Spirit convicted me that I couldn’t go until I went to confession. Of course, I didn’t just obey, I had to argue a bit. It’s really not that big of a rule. It’s not like I committed some big sin. I am sure God won’t mind. I really don’t want to miss out on communion. I really want to go to communion. I felt like the Holy Spirit was saying, “just because you want to doesn’t mean you can. If you wanted to go to communion so badly you should have gone to mass, or gone to confession.” Now, these may not have been the Holy Spirit’s exact words, but this is the conviction that I got when I was sitting there in mass.
I am sure there were other ways God tried to tell me as well. However, this morning was the final message where I understood what I feel God has been trying to tell me over the last few months. The priest’s homily was about the verse above, “Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.” He talked about the commandment to honor your mother and father. The priest mentioned that this commandment is not exclusively about your mother and father, it also extends to all of those in authority. It also mentions this in the examine of conscience. Some of the questions they ask on the Examine of Conscience for this commandment are:
Have I disobeyed the lawful demands of my superiors, teachers, or employer?
Have I disobeyed, insulted, or shown disrespect to my parents or legitimate superiors?
Many of us may think if we are nice and respectful to our parents, we are complying with this commandment. However, even if we are great with our parents, if we don’t obey all those in a place of legitimate authority, then we are not completing this commandment. This is something that our country seems to be really struggling with right now. We don’t like what one leader, or another says and so we feel we don’t have to listen. We live in America, we have all these freedoms and we sometimes take that to the extreme. We think because we are free that we can do whatever we want, and that is not what freedom actually is. I don’t want to get anyone all worked about talking about political things, and I that is not what I am talking about today. I mention the fact that we need to be obedient to those in authority to say that the Holy Spirit was telling me I need to be more obedient to Him.
Our priest was talking about what some people call cafeteria Catholics. He was talking about how more and more we are becoming a people of God that pick and choose what we want to believe and what we don’t. We are ok with believing and following the rules that are convenient for us and don’t make us feel uncomfortable. We can go to mass on Sunday, as long as it a time that doesn’t interfere with our football watching, or going to brunch with friends. We can fast for an hour before communion as long as I won’t miss my morning cup of coffee. We are too busy to go to mass and also too busy to go to confession.
The Gospel reading today was Luke 2:41-52, which I talked about on Friday. This is when Jesus stayed behind to talk with the people in the temple when Joseph & Mary started back home. The verse that the priest focused on today is Luke 2:51, “Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them. His mother treasured all these things in her heart.” Jesus was fully man and fully God and he didn’t need to go with Joseph & Mary and become obedient to them. However, He did. He did this to teach us obedience. The priest was saying in his homily today that he felt like we are forgetting our call to be obedient. He said we are letting our feeling decide our actions. We are doing what we feel like doing, instead of doing what we are told to do. Jesus could have told Mary and Joseph that He no longer needed them. He could have told them He needed to stay where He was and teach in the temple. However, He followed them back home and did what they told Him to do.
How many of us can imitate this obedience? How can we do what God is asking us to do even when we don’t want to? Is there something in your life that you know the Holy Spirit has been trying to convict you about and you haven’t been listening because you didn’t want to? What can you do about that today? For me, it was to go to confession before going to communion again. It is also to make it to mass every week, even if I don’t feel like it. It took several weeks, but thought all these different ways, the Holy Spirit finally got across the message of obedience, and now I can see how it kept popping up in different ways over the last few weeks. I am thankful to the Lord and the Holy Spirit that if we don’t catch on in one way, they try another way, and they don’t give up on us, they just keep sending messages.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to be obedient to you. Guide us in the way you want us to live. Help us to see that your way is better than our way. Lord you set us apart from this world and yet we keep trying to cling to it and live according to its ways instead of according to your ways. Please help us change this Lord. Take away our stubbornness and our unwillingness to obey. We love you Lord, you are amazing. We are so thankful that you love us enough to tell us how to live. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day.
Mary Liked to Ponder
Luke 2:1-20 "In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn. In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!” When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.” So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.”
There are two things about this verse that I would like to focus on today. The first is how Jesus was born in a manger. Growing up I didn’t understand this. I felt like if Mary was giving birth to the Son of God, then the least He could do is provide her with a comfortable bed to deliver the baby in. I felt like it was all so disorganized and I really didn’t understand why God didn’t plan better. Now that I am an adult, or actually more accurately, now that I know more about God and the story of Jesus I am able to understand that it was all very well planned out. God always has a plan. God had been preparing His people for this birth for a very long time. He had given very specific details and He was ensuring that all the details were accurate so that His people would know that His son was the Savior.
Jesus was not born into luxury because He was not going to be that kind of king. He was going to be an amazing leader and yet He would also be a servant. I have a rosary app on my phone and I like how they describe Jesus’ birth. Jesus enters the world in poverty to teach us the detachment from earthly things. I have also heard others describe that he was born in the stable to teach us humility. I am not sure why Jesus was born in a stable, but I think it set Him on the path for what kind of person He wanted to be. If we have a lot of stuff, we don’t need to rely on the Lord as we feel we can provide for ourselves. We also get distracted by all that stuff and then sometimes don’t think about God or don’t want to give up that time we spend doing other stuff to spend with Him. When you experience poverty you are also more grateful for the things that you have. I now know that Jesus’ birth happened exactly as it was supposed to and was very well thought out.
The second thing I would like to talk about are the word at the end of this section. Luke 2:19 says, “But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.” I think Mary does this a lot. I remember Father Michael Gaitley talking about Mary’s heart pondering in his Book 33 Days to Morning Glory. When the magi, or the shepherds visited Jesus they told Mary and Joseph all that the Angel’s said about Jesus. Mary did not get overwhelmed, she did not freak out, she treasured all they said and she pondered them in her heart. I am not sure what I would do if I were in her circumstance. I think I would feel that was a lot of pressure, but it doesn’t seem like she felt that way.
At the end of chapter 2 in Luke it mentions Mary pondering again. Do you remember the story of when Mary & Joseph went to Jerusalem for the festival of Passover and then when it ended they started the return home and Jesus wasn’t with them? They were traveling with friends and family and assumed He was with them, but He wasn’t. They were a whole day’s journey away before they found out. When they found Him and asked Him where He was. In Luke 2:49-51 Jesus said to them, “‘Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?’ But they didn’t understand what he said to them. Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them. His mother treasured all these things in her heart.” I find it interesting that the verse says that Mary and Joseph didn’t understand what he said to them. I wonder if this happened a lot? At this point Jesus was 12 years old. I remember watching this scene in the show The Chosen. I remember Mary looked up to the Lord and said, “Not yet,” or “I’m not ready yet,” or something like that. I can imagine that is how she felt.
I can imagine how difficult it is when our kids grow up and move out of the house. I have several friends whose kids went to college over the last few years and they are sad they don’t see them every day. I can imagine Mary being concerned that Jesus was going to grow up and have to leave home to fulfill his destiny too soon. I don’t know how much of Jesus’ life and destiny was revealed to Mary, or when it was revealed. She new from before His conception that He would be the Son of God, but was she able to understand what that meant? Was she given an understanding of all He would have to go through? I wonder if she knew from the beginning that he was going to have to sacrifice himself for us?
Do you see why Mary would have a lot to ponder. I can imagine when others told her things, like the shepherds, she might not have understood the gravity of the situation. The definition for ponder is to think about something carefully, especially before make a decision or reaching a conclusion. A synonym for it is to meditate. It makes sense that Mary would spend a lot of time pondering things. As I said the other day, it is hard enough being the parent of any child. I can imagine the pressure would be so much greater if we were parenting God’s child.
There are so many things about Mary that we could look up to. Pondering is one of them. Instead of making decisions or leaping to conclusions before we have all the facts, maybe we can slow down and do some pondering. We could take some time and ask God what He thinks we should do, or how we should think about things. When we hear something that is upsetting or overwhelming maybe we could ponder it for a bit before we react. I know this won’t always be easy. I don’t think it was always easy for Mary either. I think it is something to consider though. Think about what normally happens when you get upset. For me, I hear something upsetting and if I react right away I am not reacting as my best self. I may say unkind things, or maybe I am sarcastic or rude. However, after I react and I have time to calm down and really think about it, I realize that I should have done things differently. What if we all took time to ponder more this year? How would our relationships be different if we pondered more before we reacted? I wonder if we would grow in wisdom if we took the time to ponder why things were happening and the meaning behind them?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask that you help us to ponder more this year. Help us to slow down and not let life just pass us by. We ask that you help us to ponder the things that happen to us and why they are happening. Help us to be willing and mindful participants in our own lives. Don’t let us just sleepwalk through life on auto pilot. Help us to take it all in and enjoy it. Lord we ask that this Christmas season is amazing for all of us and that you bless those that need your blessings Lord. Please help those that are struggling and help them to feel loved. We love you Lord, you are amazing. We are so very grateful to you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining my on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus and this week for joining me in preparing our hearts and minds for celebrating the coming of our Savior, Lord Jesus Christ. I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and I will be here to spend time with you again on Monday. Have a blessed weekend!
A Faith Like Mary’s
Luke 1:39-56 “ In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.” And Mary said,“My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name. His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.” And Mary remained with her about three months and then returned to her home.
I know that is a lot at once. I don’t know that we will go through all of it, but I wanted to finish the chapter and go over Mary’s visit with Elizabeth. If you remember yesterday, we ended with Luke 1:36-38, “ And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.” Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her. I didn’t cover the line about Elizabeth yesterday as we had already talked about Elizabeth and Zechariah the day before. However, I think it is interesting that the angel shared this news with Mary. I wonder if it was just further proof that he was really an angel, or if he knew Mary would want to know. It doesn’t say why the angel told Mary this news. Although the very next line is “For nothing is impossible with God.” Maybe that is why the angel told Mary? Maybe he told Mary about Elizabeth as an example of how nothing is impossible with God.
It is also amazing that Mary had just found out that she was going to conceive the child of the Most High and what is the first things that she does? She packs her things and hurries to help her cousin with her pregnancy. Isn’t that just like Jesus. He sees someone in need and he rushes to help. Mary would have had every right to take a few days and let it sink it what was going on. Our priest was talking about this at mass on Sunday and was saying that Mary could have just sat in a chair, put her feet up and expected to be waited on hand and foot. I mean she was carrying the Saviour in her womb. If anyone deserved to be waited on, it would have been her. However, that didn’t even seem to cross Mary’s mind. Her immediate thought was how can I serve my cousin. She didn’t even seem to be thinking of herself at all.
Mary traveled somewhere between 80-100 miles to get to Elizabeth’s house. I read an article that mentioned that the town Mary traveled too was at an elevation that was 1,336 feet higher than that of Nazareth, which means Mary had to travel uphill quite a distance. It would not have been an easy journey for Mary. Yet, she made it anyway. She didn’t even seem to stop and think about if she could make it or if it would be difficult. She just heard that her cousin was having a baby and left to go and help her. Her selflessness is something that we can all admire and look up to.
When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting the baby lept in her womb and she was filled with the Holy Spirit. I find this fascinating that Mary was filled with the Holy Spirit before birth, John the Baptist was filled with the Holy Spirit before birth, and now Elizabeth is filled with the Holy Spirit. I did not know this before about John or Elizabeth. I know Jesus talked about His Father sending the Holy Spirit down to us after He was crucified, so I guess I assumed no one had the Holy Spirit before that day of Pentecost. Well, no one except Mary. When I think about it I guess it makes sense that others may have had it, I guess I just never thought about it. I wonder if the prophets were filled with the Holy Spirit. I guess I didn’t realize that the Holy Spirit existed before Jesus was crucified. I just looked up online and there are verses where it mentions the Holy Spirit came upon people of the Old Testament. This is why I am enjoying examining the various scripture verses more closely. I am learning so many things that I probably wouldn’t have noticed had I just been reading or listening to whole chapters at a time. Now I know that the Holy Spirit did work through people long before Pentecost. I didn’t know that before.
Once Elizabeth is filled by the Holy Spirit she is also filled with the knowledge that Mary is the mother of our Lord. She is the first person to say that Mary is blessed and so is her child. Then she says something about Mary that I wish she could say about all of us. Elizabeth says, “Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her!” Wouldn’t it be great if we could all do this? Wouldn’t it be great if we could all believe that the Lord would fulfill his promises to us? Why is it so hard for us? Why do we struggle with this?
We could say that it was easier for her as she was told by an angel, but do we really think that would make a difference for us? We could say she lived in a different time when it was easier to believe. However, we don’t know if that was true. I think the Jewish people were persecuted since the beginning of time. We could say that she was chosen since before she was born and so of course she believed, but she still needed to say yes. This fate was not forced on her. We could come up with a lot of reasons why it was easier for Mary to believe, but we don’t know that it was.
I don’t know what was different for Mary. However, if I had to guess I would say that she centered her life around God, so it wasn’t really a choice for her. I don’t think that God just happened to be in the center of Mary’s life and so she just kicked back and relaxed and just had the faith that she had. I think Mary was able to believe in God’s promises because of a million small choices she made over the years as she grew up. I think she was able to believe because she made the choice to put God at the center of her world. She made the choice to pledge to remain a virgin to honor God. She made a bunch of choices that probably weren’t that popular at the time. She still made them. I think that most of us would love to have the faith that Mary had, but when we are honest with ourselves, we don’t want to do the work to have it. We don’t want to make those difficult decision that might go against what others think is right. We don’t want to stand out and be different. Guess what, Mary was different. If we want to have a faith like Mary, we need to make choices like Mary.
How can you start putting God first in your life? How can you center your life around God? What are some small choices you can make that will help make it easier to say yes to the Lord? We are coming up on a brand new year. Maybe take some time and see what you can do differently this year that will shift your focus from worldly things, to Godly things. Maybe take some time and listen to what the Lord is saying to you about the upcoming year. Is He asking you to do anything different? Is He calling you to do more, to do less? Maybe He just wants you to come and sit with Him. I don’t think He is always calling us to do more, sometimes I think He is calling us to do less. Like Martha and Mary, there is a time and place for both. Which is God calling you to this year?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to put You at the center of our world. Help us to make the hard choices to do the right thing even if it isn’t the popular thing. Help us to not care so much what others think but only what you think of us Lord. Help us to have a faith like Mary. Help us to believe that you will keep your promises to us. You are so amazing Lord and we are so grateful for all that you do. We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I hope you are not letting the stress that can happen over the holidays get to you. I hope you are able to practice patience, remember that everyone you see is going through something, and just spread God’s love and light to all that you meet. I had someone send me a text the other day and I really liked what she said, so I am passing it along to you. She said, “Have a blest and wonderful day of noticing where and in whom you see the presence of the Light of Christ today and where and for whom you were the presence of the light of Christ for others today.” That is a great thing to be on the lookout for. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Mary Says Yes!
Luke 1:26-38 “ In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.” Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.”
I know this week we are focusing on longer sections. Usually we do a verse or two, however, this week we are doing more at one time. The reason for this is because Christmas is in four days and so this week is not like any other week. We are all getting reading for the arrival of our savior, our king. It is a big week. I wanted to focus on scriptures that centered around this special time so that we could all prepare our hearts and minds for what we are celebrating this weekend. Today we hear the story of Mary’s visit from the angel Gabriel. The verse says that Elizabeth is in her 6th month of pregnancy and so this takes place at least 6 months after Zechariah’s visit.
The first thing I would like to mention is the greeting. “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.” Can you imagine getting a greeting like that from an angel? Think about how many people were on earth at that time. Out of all those people, Mary is chosen and Mary is highly favored. She was actually chosen before she was born for this job. She also had the Holy Spirit in her before she was born. That is just incredible to me. Also, one thing I would like to point out because I didn’t always know it and I think it is something to know is that Mary was born without sin. We are all born with original sin because Adam and Eve ate the apple. However, Mary was conceived without sin. She is also the only human to have never sinned. Can you imagine having that grace, that strength, that will power? I read an article about the theology behind the Catholic belief that Mary was conceived without sin. It is not something that I feel I know enough about that I can explain it in a way that backs it up with theology, but I will put a link to the article in the show notes if you are interested in learning a little more about it. The article is titled, “Why I came to believe that Mary was conceived without sin,” by Dr. Leroy Hulzenga. (CLICK HERE FOR ARTICLE)
Next the angel describes to Mary that she will conceive a son and tells her that He will be the Son of the Most High. That right there I think would get me. I don’t know if I would even be able to comprehend what the angel was saying. The Son of the Most High? She is going to conceive God’s child. That is a lot for anyone to take in. Then the angel tell her that Jesus will reign over the house of Jacob forever. I wonder if she was able to take that all in? I think that would be something to meditate on, how Mary might have felt after this visit. How much of all that the angel told her made sense? Was she just going on faith and not really understanding all that was to come? I can’t imagine how anyone would be able to fully understand what was to come.
Then Mary asks a question, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God.” Mary was confused as to how this would happen as she was a virgin and had not known a man. Does this sound familiar? In the story we heard yesterday Zechariah was confused at how his wife would conceive when she was advanced in years. However, when Zechariah asked the question he was struck mute for the duration his wife’s pregnancy. Why didn’t this happen to Mary? The difference between these two stories is that Zechariah asked with doubt. He was questioning because he didn’t think it was possible. However, Mary didn’t doubt that God could do it, she was just asking for clarification on how it would happen. Then as soon as she found out she immediately accepted her task.
Can we just take a minute to acknowledge her acceptance? It was not “ok, I guess I could do that.” It was not, “Do I have to do that?” Mary could have said no. She did not have to say yes. She did not ask if someone else could do it. She said yes. Actually her exact words were, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” She didn’t hesitate, she didn’t ask for more time she just said yes. She was being asked to this incredible, big thing and she just said yes. How many times has God asked us to do something and we put Him off? We didn’t say no, but we didn’t say yes either. Or maybe we did say no.
I remember this story from a person in my prayer group. She was at mass while visiting family. The priest at the mass said he was sorry he was sitting so much but he had a chronic pain issue and was in a lot of pain that day. My friend was on her way out of mass when the Holy Spirit told her to go pray for healing over the priest. You see, my friend belongs to a healing ministry at back in her home state. She said no because she didn’t know the priest and he would think she was crazy. Yes, she told the Holy Spirit no. Now, don’t pretend like you have never done that because I bet you have. I know I have. I was too scared to do what I was being asked to do so I didn’t do it. However, luckily she and the Holy Spirit have a close relationship and He wasn’t taking no for an answer. She said she literally couldn’t walk out of that church. Her feet wouldn’t move. So, she waited until most of the other people had left and she went up to the priest. She quickly explained that she was a member of a healing ministry in her home state and she wanted to pray over him. He gladly accepted and she prayed over him. When she was done he said, “You know, I wasn’t even supposed to be here today. I am just filling in for another priest who got sick at the last minute. Now I know why he got sick.” She was so touched and when she got to her car she apologized to the Holy Spirit for saying no.
We don’t always understand the full gravity of what we are being asked to do. We don’t know why it is important that we do it or what difference it will make. Mary knew it was a big undertaking, and yet she still said yes. Even if she didn’t know all the details, or all the heartache with her son being crucified, she knew she was being asked to raise the Son of the Most High. She knew that was huge and she still said yes. Do you think she was scared? Probably, who wouldn’t be. I don’t know any person that isn’t scared for their first pregnancy. Was it a lot of responsibility? Definitely, and yet she still said yes. What is the Holy Spirit asking you to do that you are avoiding because of one reason or another? Can you be like Mary and say yes? Can you say yes the next time God asks you do to something? Say yes right away, without hesitation. Say yes, even though you are scared. Say yes even though you don’t understand it completely. Say yes, even though you don’t know how you will do it. God will not ask you to do something and then abandon you. If He is asking you to do something He will give you all you need to do it, but first you have to say yes. You have to take the leap of faith to say yes even if you don’t feel you can do it, knowing that God will help you do it. Once you say yes, God will equip you with all you need. Can you be brave enough to say yes?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask that you give us the courage to say yes even when we are scared. Help us to say yes even when we don’t understand what it entails. Help us to be more like Mary. Lord, we love you and we look forward to celebrating the coming of you son Jesus. We are so thankful You sent Him to us, not just for His sacrifice but also so that He could share your love and your light to the world. Help us to pass on that love and light to the whole world. Lord we are so grateful for all you have given us and do for us. Lord, we ask that you be with all those that are alone this Christmas season. Help them to feel your love. Keep all those that are out on the streets safe and warm. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Zechariah Is Also Visited By An Angel
Luke 1:5-20 “In the time of Herod king of Judea there was a priest named Zechariah, who belonged to the priestly division of Abijah; his wife Elizabeth was also a descendant of Aaron. Both of them were righteous in the sight of God, observing all the Lord’s commands and decrees blamelessly. But they were childless because Elizabeth was not able to conceive, and they were both very old. Once when Zechariah’s division was on duty and he was serving as priest before God, he was chosen by lot, according to the custom of the priesthood, to go into the temple of the Lord and burn incense. And when the time for the burning of incense came, all the assembled worshipers were praying outside. Then an angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing at the right side of the altar of incense. When Zechariah saw him, he was startled and was gripped with fear. But the angel said to him: “Do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to call him John. He will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He is never to take wine or other fermented drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even before he is born. He will bring back many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” Zechariah asked the angel, “How can I be sure of this? I am an old man and my wife is well along in years.” The angel said to him, “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to tell you this good news. And now you will be silent and not able to speak until the day this happens, because you did not believe my words, which will come true at their appointed time.”
Today we have the story of another person being visited by an angel. I know I said yesterday that I didn’t think visits from Angels happened often even back then, but I am starting to wonder. Zechariah was visited, Mary was visited, Joseph was visited 4 times. Perhaps it was more common than I thought…There are a few things in this verse that I would like to discuss or draw your attention to. The first one is that these verse say that Elizabeth and Zechariah were both righteous and observed all the Lord’s commands and decrees blamelessly. It goes on to say, but they were childless because Elizabeth couldn’t conceive. I know some people have wondered if the reason they couldn’t conceive was because they did something wrong. They wonder if they sinned in some way and there God was punishing them. I know this used to be how people thought back when Jesus walked the earth too. I remember hearing John 9:2-3 which says, “His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.” It’s the same with people who can’t conceive. It is not a punishment because they did something wrong. I think it is important that people know that.
Next the angel appears and tell Zechariah all about his future son. Just like yesterday I wonder if this put extra pressure on him and Elizabeth? Although he was already a priest and I think preachers and ministers already feel an added pressure as if the whole congregation is watching them to see how they are as parents. People probably hold them to a higher standard. I wonder if they shared all this information with John when he got old enough to hear it? Are you ever old enough to hear that you will be responsible for brining many people back to the Lord our God? No pressure there, right? The Angel said that “he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah.” In the spirit of Elijah, those are some pretty big shoes that John had to fill.
Another thing I thought was amazing that I didn’t know before is that the Angel said that John would be filled with the Holy Spirit even before he was born. I don’t remember hearing this part before. I know when John heard Mary’s voice when he was still in his mother’s womb he lept with joy and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, but I did not know that John was even before He was born. I just wanted to draw your attention to that line in the verse because as soon as I read it I was surprised.
Now Zechariah asked the angel, “How can I be sure of this? I am an old man and my wife is well along in years.” I feel like this would be more like my reaction than that of Mary or Joseph. I wonder if I would question this Angel as well? I would like to think I wouldn’t, but I think most of us would struggle with believing something this extraordinary. They had prayed for years and now that they had given up hope, or at least it seems they have, God answers their prayers. This is such a great lesson for us. It is never too late for God to answer our prayers. It isn’t too late, even if we have given up our hope, it isn’t too late if our earthy circumstances see to prevent it. It is never too late for the Lord to answer your prayers. Please remember that!!
I love the Angel’s reply to Zechariah. “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to tell you this good news. And now you will be silent and not able to speak until the day this happens, because you did not believe my words, which will come true at their appointed time.” I mean, he has a point. He is an Angel of God, he is God’s messenger, he is able to stand in the presence of God. He does deserve to be taken seriously. I can just imagine how deflated Gabriel must have felt. I imagine he is talking in a voice the the wizard in The Wizard of Oz. With a strong and powerful voice you relay the message of God and then Zechariah doesn’t believe you. That would upset me too. So what happens to Zechariah? He loses his ability to speak until the baby is born and these words are fulfilled.
Although Zechariah did not believe the Angel at first, he must have done a good job raising John with his wife Elizabeth because John fulfilled all that was said about him. He was amazing and although I didn’t know it beforehand, I can definitely see how he was filled with the Holy Spirit. He was able to live in the wilderness and all he ate was locusts and wild honey. One could not live off of that alone without the Holy Spirit sustaining him.
I like to wonder sometimes about John the Baptist and Jesus as kids. They were cousins, or their mothers were anyway, so that makes them family. I wonder if they got together and played traditional kids games, or if they got together at a young age and discussed scripture? I like to imagine that they got to run around and be kids, at least for a little while. I can’t imagine Jesus as a child. I don’t know why, it's just so hard for me to picture him like that. I can picture Him as a baby in the manger and then as a grown up. I wonder if it was a surprise for John the Baptist to learn that his cousin was Jesus, the son of God? Sometimes I wish I could be back there in that time watching it all unfold. However, I am not sure I would have had the strength to withstand the persecution that they had to deal with back them. I am thankful for all the stories in the Bible that help us get a glimpse into the lives of Jesus and His friends and family. I am thankful for the description of all the visits from the Angels. We can learn so much just from reading the Word of God. My hope is that if you have not already been then you will be inspired at some point soon to venture into the Bible and do some exploring on your own.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to believe your word however we hear it. Lord prepare our hearts so that if you send an Angel to us, we are ready for it. Help us make time for you, to listen to your word and to read your word. Lord, thank you for John the Baptist who was filled with the Holy Spirit even before he was born. Help us to be filled with the Holy Spirit and help us to do something about it. Help us to not just sit around and wait for things to happen but for us to use the Holy Spirit to do the things that you are leading us to do. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. God certainly showed up today and gave me lots of instances to practice patience today, how about you? I did not do well in all of them, but I am growing. I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Saint Joseph’s Faithfulness
Matthew 1:18-25 “This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit. Because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly. But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”). When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. But he did not consummate their marriage until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.
I thought since Christmas is coming, less than a week if you are listening to this when I first published it, then I would focus on that this week. Today I want to focus on Saint Joseph. I think he is someone that we don’t talk about enough. This year Pope Francis declared 2021 the Year of Saint Joseph. I have been hearing a lot more about St. Joseph this year and several ladies I know did the consecration to St. Joseph. Everyone I know that has read or learned more about Saint Joseph just keep talking about how incredible he was. Let’s talk about the different things in this verse.
The verse begins by describing how they were pledged to be married but before they were together he found out that Mary was pregnant. Joseph now finds himself stuck because it says he is faithful to the law. He wants to follow the law and yet according to the law back in the day if a woman was caught cheating on her husband she was to be stoned to death. Joseph didn’t want to disobey the law and he also didn’t want to publicly disgrace Mary. He was a good man and so he was going to quietly divorce her as to keep her from all of that. However, he was visited by an angel in his dream before he could do anything. This angel explained what was going on and told Joseph to name the baby Jesus.
Can you imagine being visited by an angel in your sleep? When I was little I used to imagine what it would be like to have an angel come and visit me like Mary or Joseph. I wondered what it would feel like. I wondered if I would believe what I was seeing? I wonder how Joseph felt when he woke up from that dream? Did he know it was a visit from a real angel and not just a normal dream right away? I wonder why the angel came to Joseph in a dream, but to Mary when she was awake. I think it is hard for us to imagine what it would feel like as it is so foreign to most of us. I like to think things were different back then. That it was easier for them to believe because they lived in a time when there weren’t so many distractions or when the faith was stronger. However, I don’t think, even back then, it was a common occurrence to be visited by an angel. I don’t know that those around them would have any easier time believing it than we would. Yet, Joseph did believe and he did obey.
Joseph had a choice, just like Mary did. Joseph could have decided that it was all just a dream. He could have believed that Mary had cheated on him and he could have left her. However, he made a choice to stay. He chose to listen to the angel and to name the baby Jesus. He was faithful to the Lord and he raised Jesus as his child. Did you know that Joseph was visited by an angel a second time in a dream? This time was right after the Magi visited baby Jesus. Matthew 2:13-15 recounts, “ When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.” So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called my son.”
Again, Joseph had a choice to make. His wife had just given birth recently. He had a baby and I am sure they were all tired as she gave birth in a manger. I can’t imagine they were getting great sleep there. Then the angel of God tells Joseph to get up in the middle of the night and take his wife and baby to Egypt. Remember the first time the angel visited he was told that what he was asked to do was to help fulfill the Lord’s word through a prophet, “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” Now the angel is asking Joseph a second time to fulfill the Lord’s word, “Out of Egypt I called my son.” The benefit that Joseph has over many of us is that he would have been well versed on the Old Testament prophets since he was a Jewish man. The Jewish males went to school/class to study the Jewish scriptures.
I wonder if knowing about all these scriptures or words from the prophets made it easier or harder to say yes? I wonder if knowing what he was getting into made it harder or easier. I am not sure I would want to know the fate of my child if it was to suffer like Christ suffered. I wonder if knowing all he knew about Jesus and what he was to become put added pressure on Joseph as a father. I think most parents feel a pressure to be a good parent. We feel like we don’t want to mess our children up. When they are babies they are completely dependent on us and as they grow they want to become more independent. However, I don’t think that sense of responsibility for our children ever goes away. I can just imagine the pressure that I felt not to mess my kids up too badly would be multiplied by 100,000 if I knew I was raising God’s child.
I am hoping it wasn’t like this for Mary and Joseph. I am hoping that they didn’t feel constant pressure to measure up or to be perfect. I like to think that they were able to be a somewhat regular family at the time. Although I am sure it was super stressful when Jesus stayed back in the temple to talk to the teachers when they left. I can’t imagine not knowing where my child was for that long. I did actually lose my child at a fair once and although it was less than 5 minutes real time it felt like a million years. I can’t imagine if I had to have that feeling for days. I know things were always perfect for them, but I hope that they were able to raise Jesus without too much pressure to be perfect parents and also without feeling that they weren’t worthy. The bible doesn’t share many interactions with Joseph in the bible, but you can tell by the reverence that Jesus had with Mary, that he was very respectful to his parents.
Joseph had two more dreams where an angel appeared to him. These are described in Matthew 2:19-23, “After Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who were trying to take the child’s life are dead.” So he got up, took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning in Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. Having been warned in a dream, he withdrew to the district of Galilee, and he went and lived in a town called Nazareth. So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets, that he would be called a Nazarene.” Again, Joseph had a choice and he said yes.
Joseph had several changes to say no, to refuse his destiny or fulfill his purpose and yet he didn’t. Each time he was given a task he completed it. He did not ask questions, it doesn’t appear that he argued or did it begrudgingly. Joseph had four dreams where an angel of God appeared to him and told him to do something and he said yes. They were not easy things that the angel was asking him to do and yet he did them anyway. I wonder if we would have the same strength? I wonder if we could stay when we thought we should go? I wonder if we would move to another country after just having a baby and then move back. Joseph was so faithful to do what God wanted him to do. There is very little that I know about Joseph, but what I do know, I admire. He had so much strength and so much faith. I think we could all benefit from getting to know Joseph a little more.
Dear Heavenly Father, I pray that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we thank you for choosing Joseph to be Jesus’ earthly father. He was so faithful to your word and your commands. Help us to be more faithful. Help us to do what you want us to do whether we feel like it or not. Help us to be willing to listen more for Your word Lord. We thank you for giving us Mary, Joseph & Jesus. You are so amazing and you love us so much to have sacrificed your son for us. Lord, we ask that you help us keep our hearts and minds focused on you this week and not on the commercialized version of Christmas. Help us to remember the reason for the season. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. For those of you that have joined me and kept me company on this “10 weeks to be more like Jesus challenge,” thank you as well. I hope it was beneficial for you. I would love to hear anything you may have liked or didn’t like about the challenge. If you would like to email me my email is Catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com. I would love to hear from you. This week’s final character trait is Patience. With Christmas coming this week and families and friends getting together, along with last minute shopping, I think the Lord is going to give us plenty of chances to grow in patience this week. I sent out an article last night and I will put a link here in the show notes titled, “7 Strategies to Build Your Patience Muscles,” by Melissa Eisler. (click here for article) If you read this article it might help you navigate through all the stressful situations that may come up around this holiday season. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Have a blessed and patient day!
God Will Bring You Back
Isaiah 54:7-8 “‘For a brief moment I abandoned you, but with deep compassion I will bring you back. In a surge of anger I hid my face from you for a moment, but with everlasting kindness I will have compassion on you,’ says the Lord your Redeemer.”
When I heard this verse at prayer group today I knew it was my verse for the day. This verse came right after someone read something she had found in the The Word Among Us. This is what she read, “This all powerful, unchanging God wants to be the source of your peace. He wants to calm your heart when, like Israel, you face uncertainties and suffering. When your sins feel too great for him to forgive, he wants to remind you of his omnipotent and immutable love. When you are tempted to embrace the weak changeable love of this fallen world He longs to gather you to Himself in great tenderness. This is the God whose love will never leave you.
I thought this was so beautiful because we can all get caught up in thinking that whatever we have done in the past is too big for God to ever forgive. We are quick to tell others of God’s love and His forgiveness, and then when it comes to ourselves we assume that we can’t be forgiven because of all that we have done in our past. It is so strange how we can do this and how we don’t see any anything wrong with our thinking. We don’t at all see that we are contradicting ourselves if we tell others that God will forgive all your sins, not matter what they are, and then we don’t believe that about our sins.
I like how this verse shows the realness of God. It show us in the verse that God does get angry. It’s not that He loves everything that we do. It sounds like from this verse that God does get mad at us for some things we do. However, It says, “For a brief moment I have abandoned you, but with deep compassion I will bring you back.” For a brief moment, not for hours, days, weeks or months, but for a brief moment and then He will bring us back. Have you ever felt this way before? Have you ever been so upset with someone that you wanted to abandon them, or at least thought about it? I know I have. I am willing to bet that anyone that has been in any sort of relationship, whether it’s with family, kids, friends, a partner, or whoever has felt this way. Feeling this way doesn’t make us a bad people, it makes us human. Being in relationship with someone is hard. There are so many different personalities, temperaments, likes and dislikes. Then when you add emotions to all of that things can get crazy.
I don’t know about you but when I get angry at someone it usually lasts more than a brief moment. I have done a lot of work to master my thoughts so that I can have more control over my feelings and yet, I still stay angry for longer than a brief moment. Sometimes even when they come back and apologize, we might not be ready to forgive or let go of our anger quite yet. However, God said he abandoned us for a brief moment. Then the next part of that line is even more amazing. God says that with deep compassion he will bring us back. He doesn’t say that with a whole lot of work on our part we can figure out a way to redeem ourselves. He says that with a compassion He will bring us back.
I think this is another thing that we get wrong a lot. We think because we have sinned we need to make it up to God in some way. We think we need to earn his forgiveness. We don’t. God will bring us back, all we need to do is repent of our sins, be truly sorry for having offended Him, and He will bring us back. Can you imagine that level of compassion? Can you imagine how much God must love us to turn away only for a brief moment?
The next line in this verse says, “In a surge of anger I hid my face from you for a moment, but with everlasting kindness I will have compassion on you,’ says the Lord your Redeemer.” This line is similar to the last one. It seems to paint a more vivid picture for us though. “In a surge of anger,” who hasn’t felt that before? I think every one of us can imagine what that feels like, or can remember when we experienced that feeling. When I felt a surge of anger I did not just turn my head away for a moment. I would like to think I walked away to cool down, but I am sure there were plenty of times when I didn’t. When I felt a surge of anger and yelled at the person, or said unkind words. And yet, the Lord, just hid his face from us for a moment. Then it says that with his everlasting kindness he will have compassion on us. Think of the worst thing you have done. Think of the thing that you keep telling yourself that God can’t possibly forgive. Then reread this verse. “‘For a brief moment I abandoned you, but with deep compassion I will bring you back. In a surge of anger I hid my face from you for a moment, but with everlasting kindness I will have compassion on you,’ says the Lord your Redeemer.”
Even the last five words of this verse are so powerful, “says the Lord your Redeemer.” If the two lines at the beginning of the verse weren’t enough to convince you that the Lord will bring you back and that He will have compassion on you, maybe this ending will. This is the Lord your God telling you that He is your redeemer. He is calling Himself your redeemer. Are you going to tell God that He is wrong? Are you going to challenge what He is saying in this verse? God Himself is telling you that He will bring you back and have compassion on you. Why is it that we can’t believe this?
That quote from the Word Among Us that I read early had these two lines in it that I want to leave you with “When you are tempted to embrace the weak changeable love of this fallen world He longs to gather you to Himself in great tenderness. This is the God whose love will never leave you.” God approaches us and interacts with us with a great tenderness. Sometimes we can view him as someone who judges us from afar and waiting to punish us with His wrath. That is not God. God’s love will never leave you. We saw this when he said even in a burst of anger He will hide his face but for a moment. When our sins feel too overwhelming turn to Isaiah 54:7-8. You don’t have to rely on the words of those in this world to calm your mind and your heart. Let God’s words speak directly to your heart. “‘For a brief moment I abandoned you, but with deep compassion I will bring you back. In a surge of anger I hid my face from you for a moment, but with everlasting kindness I will have compassion on you,’ says the Lord your Redeemer.”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. We ask that you forgive us Lord for any way that we may have offended you. We thank you for your deep compassion and everlasting kindness. We don’t deserver your love, kindness and compassion Lord and yet you still give it to us freely. Help us to remember your words to us in this verse Lord God. Help us to understand that you will bring us back. We don’t have to do anything for you, we can’t redeem ourselves, you redeem us through your deep compassion. Lord, we are so very grateful for all that you do. We love you so much and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldy with Jesus. Can you believe we are at the end of our 9th week in our “Be more like Jesus Challenge?” I for one can’t believe how fast this time went by. It always amazes me how fast the month of November and December go by. It’s like we are going through them at light speed. Next week will be our last week and that character trait is patience. This is one they say never to pray for because the next thing you know you will be stuck in traffic or some other instance where you get to practice patience. With us being so close to Christmas and all the stores and restaurants being short staffed, I am guessing we will all get plenty of practice with this one this week. I hope you did well trying to be more of a servant this week. I am sure that Jesus appreciate all the effort you put into this challenge over the last 9 weeks. Whether it was reading all the articles and trying all the suggestions, or just listening to the podcasts, or just trying to love people more. I believe that Jesus loves our efforts, not matter how big or how small. I look forward to spending time with you on Monday. Have a blessed weekend!
Peace I Leave You; My Peace I Give To You
John 14:26-27 “The Advocate, the holy Spirit that the Father will send in my name—he will teach you everything and remind you of all that [I] told you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give it to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid.”
I think this verse stood out to me because I know a lot of people that are struggling to find peace right now. Either they are struggling with anxiety or depression, or a physical illness. There is never a good time to be physically ill, however, the holidays is the worst time. On a good day, most of us tend not to be super good patients. The doctors tell you to rest and you say you will. But then the dog needs to go out, your kids need to eat and they want you to cook it, or the laundry won’t get done if you don’t do it. There are a hundred things going through our minds and we just don’t seem to rest. Now, maybe you are the exception to this rule. Maybe you do a great job resting when you are ill and you don’t push yourself. If that is you then I am so proud of you. It is not easy and yet it is really the only way to get better sometimes.
For those of us that push through, refuse to rest, or say we will rest after we get it all done, which never happens, I would like to suggest that you try something new, and just rest. If you are feeling sick take time for yourself and rest. I bet you will get better faster and you will be up and at it again before you know it. I promise you that if you rest for a day or two, or even a week, your world will not end. Yes, maybe your laundry won’t get done, life will still go on. Your kids will survive if they had to wear the same thing more than one day in a row because you were too sick to do laundry. Your kids will survive if they have to eat cereal for three meals a day for a week because you can’t get out of bed. I promise they will not be scarred for life because of this.
Is this what we would want for them everyday, no, of course not. However, if you are sick and you need to rest, then you can rest. I am giving you permission because sometimes we need someone else to tell us that it is ok. We need someone to tell us we are not a bad mom and dad if we take a day or two or however, much we need to rest and get better. Covid seems to be running rampant right now, again. I know several people who are sick right now, right before Christmas. I understand that is awful timing. I understand that you have so much to do to get ready for the holidays. I also understand that your family wants you to recover from this more than anything you could possibly give to them or do for them for Christmas.
Yes, you may not be able to do all of your shopping by Dec. 25th. Yes, your presents may not all get wrapped on time. You may have to give up some traditions that you normally do, such as Christmas cards, or gifts to the kids teachers, maybe even going all out with decorations. It is ok, the world will not end. Your loved ones will understand. If you need to push Christmas back a week, then do that. The most important thing is that you take care of yourself so that you can be around for many Christmas’s to come. I am sure your family would prefer that you take it easy, rest, don’t push yourself, and then get better sooner. You are more important than any gift, cookie swap, or holiday party that you may have to miss. Nothing is more important than your heath.
For those of you that are struggling to find peace with your mental health this season, first I just want to say that you are not alone. I know so many people struggling with anxiety and depression right now. The holidays are great whenever thing is going great. However, when you are struggling, they can be really difficult, especially if you have lost people in the past. It doesn’t even have to be that you just lost someone. It doesn’t matter when you lost a loved one, the holidays can bring that pain back. We remember our lost ones more during the holidays because we have all the memories of the past holidays we got to spend with them, we miss them because we don’t get to spend this holiday with them. It can be really sad to think about all they are missing out on. It can be really hard for so many, especially if they are not surrounded by family that are still here. One thing to remember, and hopefully it can bring someone comfort, is to remember that although we no longer see them, they are still with us. They aren’t missing out on the festivities, they are there watching us from Heaven and enjoying being a part of it. It is sad for us because we are here on earth without them, but I honestly don’t believe it is sad for the. They get to be with our heavenly Father and they get to be with us as we celebrate. It doesn’t get much better than that.
I started with first saying that you are not alone because sometimes it can feel that way. Sometimes it can feel like everyone else is happy and they are loving life and we can’t understand why we aren’t. It is important that you know this is not the case. Even people that look super happy on social media, or in the drop off line at school are struggling. They are just hiding it, the same way you are when you go out around other people. Knowing we are not alone and that what we are feeling is normal can really help take the pressure off what we are going through. However, it doesn’t change what we are going through, or what we are feeling. That is what you are probably looking for. How do I feel better? How do I stop the anxious feelings and the depression? How do I get this peace that God is talking about?
This is where this verse come in. “The Advocate, the holy Spirit that the Father will send in my name—he will teach you everything and remind you of all that [I] told you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give it to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid.” Jesus said before He was crucified that He was going to leave us with peace. He said his peace will be different than the peace the world will give us. What is the peace that the world gives us? The world tells us to rely on ourselves. If you want to lose weight, just take this pill or buy that food. If you want to be financially set for the future invest in this thing or buy that stock. Whatever it is you are looking for, you can find something the world is selling to try to give you more peace about it. There are books about every single topic from parenting to the most obscure things. The world would like us to rely on it to solve our problems.
I am not saying you shouldn’t try to lose weight if that is a concern of yours and I am not saying it is bad to invest. It is good to take care of your health and your financial future. However, those things in itself won’t give you peace of mind and they will never give you a peace like God can give you. You can invest in your future, but if you don’t also have trust in God that things will work out, then you will invest and invest and you will never feel like you have invested enough. It is good to take care of your body and try to keep in healthy, but if you are not trusting in God to help keep you healthy then you will never feel like you are doing enough.
Jesus said that after he died, His Father would send down the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, and He would teach us everything, and would remind us of all that Jesus told us. The Holy Spirit is our key to happiness and to peace. If you are feeling super anxious or depressed pray for the Holy Spirit to come and give you that peace. The Holy Spirit can teach you to have peace and I also believe He can give you peace as a gift in the moments that you need it. When you are feeling your thoughts spiral downward there are two prayers that are short enough to remember even if you can’t really think and can be enormously powerful. First is “Come Holy Spirit Come,” and the second one is “Jesus, I trust in You.” You can repeat one of these over and over again, “Come Holy Spirit Come, Come Holy Spirit Come, Come Holy Spirit Come” or “Jesus, I trust in You, Jesus, I trust in You, Jesus, I trust in You” or you can alternate “Come Holy Spirit Come, Jesus I trust in You,Come Holy Spirit Come, Jesus I trust in You.”
I don’t know what is best for you in your circumstance. Whatever works best for you is what is best, there is not right thing to say. Our Father in heaven gave us the Holy Spirit to bring us peace and to teach us. He knew we would need the Holy Spirit to make it through this crazy world. If you are suffering with anxiety or depression right now I want you to know that I am praying for you. I know it is not easy. God will help you with this and this will not last forever. It probably seems like it will, but I promise you it won’t. That is just a lie the enemy is telling you, don’t believe it! Your Father in heaven knows you are struggling and He is doing an amazing work in your and will deliver you from this in His perfect timing. Keep going, keep calling on the power of the Holy Spirit, and the power of Jesus’ name. Don’t give up, there are so many people that love you!
Dear Heavenly Father I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Father, I ask for a special blessing for those that are suffering mentally or physically during this holiday season. Lord I ask for you to give them an overwhelming sense that they are loved and an overwhelming sense of peace that all will be ok eventually. Lord, I ask that you cure them all of their struggles, but even if it isn’t your perfect timing for that I pray that right after they hear this episode you fill them with love and peace, even if it is just for a moment. Give them that grace so that they have the strength to go on. Even if someone is not listening to this episode Lord, I ask that you give all those that are struggling a moment of pure love and peace. Lord, you are so amazing. I can’t believe how much you love us and help us despite our continued mess ups. We want to strive to be more like you Lord, and we know that we can’t do anything without your help. We are helpless without you. We love you Lord and we ask all this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I know today is a little bit longer, but I really felt like the Holy Spirit wanted to speak to all those suffering right now. If you are someone who is suffering I would love if you would be on the lookout for that overwhelming feeling of peace and love today. I know God will deliver as He always does and I don’t want you to miss it. I love all of you that are listening and I am praying for all of you. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow, have a blessed day!
Having A Willingness To Listen
Sirach 6:33 “If you are willing to listen, you can learn; if you pay attention, you can be instructed.”
This applies to all areas of our life. You may be listening to this and think that this episode won’t apply to you because you are not at school, or you are not at work and so you don’t need to learn or pay attention to anything. You have spent your life learning and now you want to just relax and enjoy retirement. Or maybe you just finished school and now you have started working and you figure your time for learning is over. I assure you, no matter what stage of live you are in, the verse if for you. Learning is something that we do every single day, whether we want to or not. The only question is what are you learning?
I believe that most of the conflict and confusion in the world today is because we don’t listen well. It seems to me if someone starts talking about something that we don’t know anything about, we might listen for a few minutes, but then we may start to tune them out. If someone starts talking about something that we disagree with we tend to get upset or angry and we stop listening and start formulating in our mind what we are going to say back to this person. We start building our defense before we even know what it is they are going to say. This verse says, “if you are willing to listen, you can learn.” It doesn’t say that if you are willing to listen you will suddenly agree with what the other person is saying. It says you will learn. If we aren’t willing to hear the other person then we can’t understand where they are coming from, what they actually believe, and why they believe it. We will stay divided if we can’t learn to listen to what the other person is saying and learn what they believe.
This applies to work situations as well. If you go into a situation or a job and you think that you already know it all then you will have a hard time hearing what your boss is saying to you when he is trying to help you learn. Also, it doesn’t just mean that we need to be willing to listen when someone is saying something that we want to hear. It also means we need to be willing to listen when someone is saying something that is hard to hear. For instance, if someone we work with is critiquing us on our work, we can tend to get defensive and not listen to what they have to say. However, if we can be willing to listen, we can perhaps learn to do it a better more efficient way.
I think if we were all able to think of this verse when we were receiving criticism, I think we would all learn so much more. Often times we hear someone telling us how we might be able to do something better and instead of listening to what they are saying our mind starts telling us a different story. While the other person is talking we start thinking to ourselves, “They think they know everything. Of course they think their way is better, they think they are perfect. They are telling me that my way is wrong and I know that it isn’t. Why is there way better than my way…” And because our brains start doing this, we are actually not even listening to what the person is saying. We totally missed what they said. They probably explained why they thought this other way was better. They probably even said that your way wasn’t wrong, they just thought this other way might save you time. If we are willing to listen, we can learn. If we can try to view criticism as a way to help us grow and improve rather than viewing it as an attack on us, we will learn a lot more.
This also applies to us in our home life and all of our relationships. I have heard so many people say they wish their spouse, kids, family, or friends listened more. I don’t know how it is in your house, but I know in my house we could avoid most arguments if we listened to each other more. Often times we know what we think and what we want and so when someone says something that goes against one of those two things we don’t want to listen. We think we know best as a wife, a husband, a mom, a dad, a son, a daughter, a friend, it doesn’t matter our role, we always think we know best and when someone challenges that, we are not willing to listen. Also, when we do listen we are not really listening with an open mind. We all have our own agenda and although sometimes we might be able to listen with an open mind, we don’t do it all the time. I am not sure if I even do it most of the time.
If we are willing to listen, we will learn. This is so powerful if we can just remember it. How many parents wish they knew their kids better? How many parents are willing to take the time to listen to their kids? Not just listen to the kids when they need them to do something or they are arguing with them, but taking time to sit down with then and ask how they are doing. Also, how many of us are willing to listen to our friends or family talk about things that we are not interested in? Maybe your spouse loves football and you don’t. You are not interested in it and you don’t know anything about it. What if you were still willing to listen to him/her talk about it? How different do you think your relationships would be if you took the time to listen to those you love talk about things that you weren’t interested in?
I remember when I read this in one of the many parenting books I read over the years I was not a fan. I was not interested in listening to my children talk about video games that I didn’t understand anything about. However, once I started doing it, I was amazed how much my relationships improved just by doing this simple task. It was so easy. I was intentional about talking to each one of my boys about whatever they wanted to talk about. If it was a video game that I knew nothing about I would ask them to explain it to me. Seeing their face light up when I asked them to explain it to me was priceless. Those that you care about want to share their passions with you. You will be surprised how much closer you will grow to them just by showing the slightest interest in their passions. I am not talking about taking on their passions as your own, or spending hours talking about things you have no interest in. I am talking about a 10-20 minute conversation about whatever they want to talk about, whether you are interested in that thing or not.
I was listening to a coaching sessions from one of my mentors Brendon Burchard yesterday. The coaching session was on how to have better relationships. He said that one thing every relationship needs if it is going to stay vibrant is novelty. He said that he is known for always bringing up a new topic of conversation with his friends. They will all be sitting around the table and he will just throw out a topic that either he knows nothing about, or that they haven’t talked about before and he will get a new discussion going. For instance, he doesn’t have kids so he might say, what are the top 3 things you would tell a new parent. Or he might say, I don’t know much about this thing or that and then ask what everyone else knows about it. He tries to generate conversation and he is willing to listen so that he can learn.
This verse also applies to our prayer life. If we listen to the Lord, we will learn. This is probably the most important. Are we willing to the listen to the Lord? What about when He is telling us something that we don’t want to hear? What about when the Holy Spirit is gently convicting us about something that we need to change? Are we willing to listen and to learn? The Lord will direct our steps, if we listen. The Lord will help us achieve all that we want in life, but only if we are willing to listen. The Lord is always talking to us, we just aren’t always listening. Actually, many of us are rarely listening. As we head into this new year, maybe we can make that a goal for 2022. I will be willing to listen so that I can learn. I will be willing to listen to the Lord, even when I don’t want to. I will be willing to listen to my loved ones, even when it is hard. I will be willing to listen with an open mind and not take it personally. I will be willing to listen so that I can learn.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask that you open our ears so that we may listen more. We ask that you open our hearts and our minds so that we may have a greater willingness to listen. Lord, help us to be open to take criticism as a learning experience and not as a personal attack. Help us to want to talk with our loved ones about whatever they want to talk about. Help us to put our phones, computers, or any other distractions down when we are talking with people. We want to be willing to listen so that we can learn. Help us to do this Lord. Thank you for all the ways you help us all day, every day. We are so very grateful. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Small Beginnings
Zechariah 4:10 “For whoever has despised the day of small things shall rejoice, and shall see the plummet in the hand of Zerubbabel.
I liked this verse because I think it is applicable to all of us. I can’t think of anything that started off really big. Everything starts off small and then can grow into something bigger. This verse is referring to the building of the second temple. Zerubbabel laid the foundation for the second temple first. He didn’t just decide to rebuild the temple and the it was rebuilt. First he had to lay the foundation and then he had to build it brick by brick. At first, when you are building a house, it doesn’t look like much. Even once the foundation is poured, it still does not look like a house. Once you start to add the walls you get a sense of how big it is going to be and what it will look like. However, this takes time.
This verse is saying is that even though some people may despise the small beginnings, they will rejoice when they see the completed project. When the verse says, “shall see the plummet in the had of Zerubbabael,” it is talking about an instrument used by masons and carpenters, to draw perpendicular lines with, in order to judge whether the building is upright. In other words they are saying that they shall rejoice once they see the building complete, once it is finished being built. They may not think it looks like much in the beginning and they may complain with how long it is going to take to complete it, but they will rejoice once they see it finished.
I think it is so important for us to remember that everything starts off small. Think about when Jesus came into His ministry. He did not instantly have a million followers. He started off small, He gathered his disciples slowly, a few at a time. At least that is how it happened in the TV series about Jesus’ life, called the Chosen. I am sure I have mentioned this series before, but in case this is the first you are hearing about it, I highly recommend it. It is a 7 season series about Jesus’ 3 years in ministry. In this series you get to see the characters of the Bible act out the scenes on your TV, computer, phone, or wherever you are watching it. What I love most about it as we get to see the emotions of Jesus and all the various people in His life. If you haven’t checked it out, I think you should. I am sure you will be glad you did.
Back to my point, which is that even Jesus’s ministry started out small. He didn’t have as many people listening to his first talks as he did his later talks. Jesus was ok with his ministry not growing so quickly. He often told the people that he cured to not tell anyone. He was happy to help people without getting the recognition for it. However, the more Jesus helped people and spoke to the crowds the more the Word of God got out there and the more people that came to find Jesus. He started to have more and more people come to listen to Him speak and to witness miracles. Just doing a quick internet search I found that there are currently 2.3 billion Christians in the world. I would say Jesus’ ministry has grown significantly from the time when He first walked the earth.
The same is true with whatever you are trying to do. Maybe you are part of a prayer group and you are concerned because there are not that many people attending. That is ok, everything starts small. If we are faithful and we keep showing up, God will make our efforts fruitful. The people that need your group will find your group, you can be sure of that. Maybe you are writing a book and not sure if anyone will ever read it. That’s ok, think of how you will rejoice when it is done and it is successful. Keep writing, even when you feel discouraged, keep pushing forward and you will have success. Just don’t give up!
It can be really frustrating at first because we are so excited about the thing we are doing. We feel like it is a good idea and can't wait to share our mission with everyone. Then we realize that not everyone is as excited about it as we are. We may even have people that try to talk us out of it for some reason or another. Usually if someone is trying to talk you out of your dream it is because either they don’t understand what you are trying to do, or they have some fear that they are basing their decision on. Sometimes their fear is something that you should consider and sometimes it is a fear based on something they are going through. For instance, you may have a dream that you want to travel to other countries on various mission trips. Someone you know and love may try to talk you out of that dream because they are afraid for your safety. This is something you can stop and consider. If you are not afraid for your safety, then you don’t have to let their fear stop you.
Even if we get all the love and support we want for our dreams, it can still be frustrating if they are not happening as quickly as you want them too. You may want to help feed the hungry. You set up a soup kitchen and yet there aren’t too many people attending. This is normal. Everything starts small. You have to get the word out there. You have to give it time for people to find you and to be able to trust you. Maybe people are afraid to try something new. We don’t know why more people aren’t coming, but if we keep showing up, then others will come eventually. If you are faithful, God will be faithful too!
You may be listening to this and thinking that you don’t have any big dreams to go on a mission trip, or start a soup kitchen, so this doesn’t really apply to you. I assure you it does. EVERYTHING that we do starts off small. Even in our everyday life. For instance, take your prayer life. Often times we can get frustrated because we are not further along on our faith journey. Maybe you have been on this faith journey for a long time and you get that it starts off small but that you should definitely be closer to God at this point in your life. If this is you, you are not alone. Many of us feel this way. The thing to remember is that we have begun our journey, it may be a small beginning but we are on that journey. God is not wanting us to be perfect, He is just wanting us to strive to be closer to Him. If we are striving for that then we are making God happy.
There are so many places in our lives that this can apply. You may be wanting to have a close relationship with someone and yet it is going slower than you like. That’s ok, keep showing up. You may be wanting to read the Bible daily and yet you still forget to fit it in more days than you remember. That’s ok, keep trying. You may be wanting your dream to come true faster than it is. That’s ok, keep building it. In Matthew 25:23 it says, “His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.’” I imagine this is what the Lord is saying to us. If you are frustrated over your small beginnings remember these two verses. I don’t believe that the Lord is judging us because we should be further along. I believe that He is looking at our efforts, no matter how small they are and He is saying, “Well done my good and faithful servant. Because you have been faithful with little and so I will give you more.”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask that you help us to be patient with our small beginnings. Help us to keep showing up even when we don’t see it growing at the rate we think it should. We ask that you help our efforts be fruitful and to grow as you wish them too. Lord, help us to grow in our prayer lives and to become closer to you. We love you Lord and we thank you for all you do for us. You are amazing and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to seeing you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
By Prayer and Supplication with Thanksgiving
Philippians 4:6-7 “Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
Don’t worry about anything, seriously, does God know us at all? Yes, God does know us, and this is why he says over and over again in the bible for us not to worry. He knows that we worry all the time. We worry about everything from small things to big things. It doesn’t make a difference, how many times He tells us not to worry, we seem to do it anyway. The thing is, He doesn’t just tell us not to worry and then move on with the next thing. Often times He tells us not to worry and then in the next breath tells us what to do instead.
In this verse it says, “Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” After God tells us not to worry he tells us what to do instead. Instead of worrying, with prayer, supplication and thanksgiving we should let our requests known to God. Which do you think will help you the most, worrying about the thing, or praying about it and letting God know what you need? I’m going to bet praying about it. Actually, I don’t have to bet because God is telling us this right here in this verse. God is giving us the instructions of what to do, why don’t we listen? Why do we insist on worrying when He is giving us an alternative?
Do you know what supplication is? If you don’t understand what God is asking of us in this verse then how can you do it? I had to look it up as I have heard this verse before, but I wanted to really understand it especially if it can help me, and others to worry less. Supplication means asking or begging for something earnestly or humbly. It may seem redundant to say prayer and supplication. However, not all prayer is supplication. When you are praying sometimes you are thanking God, or praising God and other times you may be requesting something. Every time you pray you don’t necessarily make a request. However, in supplication, there is always a request.
In this verse God is telling us to make a request. What is bothering you, what are you worried about, what do you need to happen? God is telling us to pray to Him and to ask humbly ask Him for what we need. He is asking us to place our worries in His hands instead of keeping them to ourselves. After we pray for them and ask God for our help He is asking us for thanksgiving. God is commanding us to do three things in place of worrying. First, we are to pray to the Lord when we find ourselves worrying. Second, we are to ask God for His help and plead with Him to answer our prayers. Third, we are supposed to let go of it, and thank Him for answering our prayers.
This third step is probably the hardest for most of us. Some of us may struggle with asking God for help, but eventually there comes a point when we all do it anyway, even if its hard. However, the letting go and the trusting part, that is where many of us get tripped up. When we notice that we are worrying about something we usually run through all the scenarios in our head and we see what we need to do to fix the situation. Then we try to fix the situation by ourselves as we continue to worry about it. Finally, when we feel as though we have no other choice, we turn the situation over to the Lord. However, we don’t turn it over completely. We turn it over, and we ask for His help and yet we still hold on to the idea that we may need to fix it or we worry that He won’t fix it. Why do we do this? I think we do it because it is hard to rely on others. It is hard to believe that someone else besides us can fix our problems. The thing is, if God were just another human, I get it. People have let us down before, and we struggle to trust them. However, God isn’t just another human. He isn’t human at all and He has never let us down.
If we are going to follow God’s instructions in this verse then we are not only going to have to ask God to help us, we are going to need to release it to Him completely and then thank Him for fixing it for us. If we ask God for help he will give it to us. The second half of this verse is just as important as the fist half. The first sentence tells us what He wants us to do and then the second half tells us what He promises us if we do it. God tells us that if we can do these 3 simple steps, they are simple but they are not easy, then “the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” Did you catch that? “The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” If we are able to ask God for His help and then hand it over to Him then the peace of God will guard our hearts and our minds.
God is not telling us we need to just forget about it on our own. He is saying that we don’t have to worry because the peace of God will guard our hearts and our minds. God will not only take care of our problem that we are worrying about but He will also put our minds at peace. I think this is something I am constantly struggling with and I am sure I am not the only one. I think I need to do these things on my own. For instance, the other day I was thinking about how maybe I don’t have enough faith. Then I felt as though the Holy Spirit reminded me that faith is a gift. If God wants me to have more faith he can give me more faith. One of the gifts of the Holy Spirit is increased faith. I don’t have to do it all on my own. I am responsible for seeking God and for asking Him for the things that I need and want, however, I am not responsible for the fruit of those prayers. Only God can make our prayers fruitful. This is going to be something I keep reminding myself of over this upcoming year. Only God can make our prayers fruitful.
We don’t have to worry if we are doing enough for the Lord, or if we are praying the right way, or if we are asking Him the right way. We just have to by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving make our requests known to the Lord and He will take care of the rest. If we can just remember to pray to the Lord, to beg him humbly for what it is we need, and then to Thank Him, even before we see the results, God will make our prayers fruitful, that is not our job. No matter how much we want to fix things, that is not our job. We get to turn it over to God and He will take care of it for us. I know this is easier said than done. It may sound simple, but I know it is not easy to actually do it. However, it’s not easy to spend so much time worrying either. Would it be worth the effort if it meant you could have the peace of God, which surpassing all understanding, guarding your hearts and minds in Jesus Christ?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask that you help us to release our worries to you. We ask that you increase our faith in you and you help us to realize we don’t have to do it on our own. Lord, you want to help us and you are waiting for us to ask, give us the strength and wisdom to ask. Help us to turn to you sooner when we’re struggling. Help us to not only turn to you with prayer, which we are hopefully doing often but also with supplication and thanksgiving which are two things we may forget to do. We love you Lord you are so amazing and we definitely want your peace to guard our hearts and minds in Jesus Christ. Lord, we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. The character trait we are working on this week is how can we serve other more. Matthew 20:25-28 says, “Jesus called them together and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave— just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” We are here to serve others and sometimes we can be really good about reminding others of this, but not great at remembering to do it ourselves. The article I sent out last night was titled 95 Easy Ways To Serve Others. Especially in this holiday season, it might be nice to look through this list and pick a few ways we can serve others. Holidays can be a time of great joy, and they can also be a time of great suffering for anyone who has lost someone. Try to remember others in this time of celebration. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day.
God Has A Plan
Acts 16:25-28 “About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken. At once all the prison doors flew open, and everyone’s chains came loose. The jailer woke up, and when he saw the prison doors open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself because he thought the prisoners had escaped. But Paul shouted, “Don’t harm yourself! We are all here!”
This story actually begins a few verses before this. In Acts 16:16-24 it says, “Once when we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a female slave who had a spirit by which she predicted the future. She earned a great deal of money for her owners by fortune-telling. She followed Paul and the rest of us, shouting, “These men are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved.” She kept this up for many days. Finally Paul became so annoyed that he turned around and said to the spirit, “In the name of Jesus Christ I command you to come out of her!” At that moment the spirit left her. When her owners realized that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace to face the authorities. They brought them before the magistrates and said, “These men are Jews, and are throwing our city into an uproar by advocating customs unlawful for us Romans to accept or practice.” The crowd joined in the attack against Paul and Silas, and the magistrates ordered them to be stripped and beaten with rods. After they had been severely flogged, they were thrown into prison, and the jailer was commanded to guard them carefully. When he received these orders, he put them in the inner cell and fastened their feet in the stocks.”
This is where our verse takes place. They have been beaten with rods and are now chained up in prison. You would think after a day like that they would feel defeated. You would think that they would be questioning God and asking Him why they have to suffer so much when they are just doing what He asked them to do. You might also think that they were passed out in pain and sleeping. Is this what they were doing? No, the verse says it was midnight and they were still praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them. This is something that always amazes me about the apostles and other believers in the the faith, such as the Saints. I am always amazed by their strength. I know that God underwent extreme suffering in the 24 hours before He was crucified. He sweat drops of blood, if that is not suffering, I don’t know what is. And yet, I think we can down play it sometimes and think well, He is fully God and fully human, so of course He can withstand it, He is God. However, there are countless other Saints who have gone through extreme suffering and have done it with joy.
Paul & Silas had just been beaten with rods, and yet they were not questioning God, they were praising and singing to Him. This is something that I think we can hear sometimes and not pause and think about how truly amazing it is. I don’t know if we glaze over it because we don’t understand it, or because don’t think we are capable of it. I don’t know the reason, but I wanted to pause and take a moment to recognize how remarkable these two are for the way they endured their suffering. We could all learn a lot from them and how they lived not only when times were good, but more so when times were tough.
The verse says that at midnight, while they were praying and praising, they were set free. The door opened and their chains came loose. What strikes me about this verse is that they were set free and yet they did not leave. They stayed there until morning when the guard woke up. What I hear the Lord saying to me about this verse is that everything He does is for His glory and the good of His kingdom. If Paul & Silas would have left at midnight, they could have escaped. However, it would not have been known how they escaped. People could have said that someone broke in and freed them. God would not have gotten the Glory. However, by waiting until morning, not only did they convert the guard and his whole house to believers, but they were set free and did not have to worry about being caught for escaping.
Sometimes the things we are going through or the things others are going through make no sense to us. If we had been there in that jail cell, it would have made no sense to us that when they were freed they didn’t leave the cell. I can’t imagine sitting in that cell and just waiting for the jailer to wake up when we could have escaped and been hours away by the time the jailer woke up. Luckily Paul and Silas were good at listening to the Lord and trusting in Him. They were not scared in that jail cell. They were praising the Lord and trusting that the Lord would get them out of the situation. They were patient and waited on the Lord’s timing and by doing so they saved the jailer and his whole family.
Do you see how if the apostles left at midnight, they would have escaped and would have been free? Do you also see that they did not leave at midnight and yet they were still free? We never know how God will work things out for us. Sometimes we can only see things in black and white. We can see only two choices. For instance, we could see that if we left the cell when the door was opened, then we would be free. However, if we stay there then we would be stuck in jail forever. Sometimes we are so angry, upset, scared, afraid, we can’t see all the possibilities. We only see the two. Sometimes we may not see all the options because we have a limited amount of information, whereas, God has all the information He would ever need. It seems as though the apostles waited for God to tell them what to do next. They trusted that even though they didn’t know what would happen next, God would take care of it.
This may be the same in some circumstances in our lives too. We may not understand why God is asking us to wait it out a little longer. We know God can save us now and we don’t understand why He isn’t. We don’t understand why we are going though all of this in the first place. Maybe God is using this thing you are going through to save someone else. Maybe through watching your strength in the face of your situation someone has decided to give God a try. Maybe after watching the way you were saved from your circumstances someone else has decided to be saved as well. We don’t know what God’s plan is or why He does the things that He does. There is one thing that we can be sure of and that is that God has a plan and He has a reason for everything. God can use all things for His glory. We may think that some things are a coincidence. However, if you look back over the last 5 or 10 years of your life I bet you will see how those things you felt were coincidences were actually things that God timed out perfectly for a specific reason. It is amazing to me how detailed God’s plan is. He has every tiny detailed planned out.
The next time we get tired of waiting for our suffering to be over, maybe we can remember this verse and we can pray and praise him even when we are struggling. We can remember that if He has not saved us yet, it is for a reason and that there is a greater good that is going to come from our situation. I know that doesn’t always make it easier for us when we are in the moment. However, I felt God wanted me to share with you that even when we don’t know His plan and we don’t understand his plan, we should still know that He has a plan and it is for our good and the good of his whole church.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. We ask that you give us the strength of Paul and Silas when we are suffering. Lord we ask that you give us the strength and the wisdom to pray and sing praises to you when we are suffering. Help us to know that you have a plan even when we don’t see it or understand it. Help us to know that we are never suffering in vain. You will always use our suffering for your glory. We love you Lord and we thank you for all that you do for us. You are amazing and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk Boldly with Jesus. Next week’s character trait is “servant”. How can we me more of a servant? Matthew 20:28 says, "just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve.” I will send out more information on this on Sunday. I look forward to seeing you again on Monday. Have a blessed weekend.
Road Trip
Psalm 144:7-9 “Stretch out your hand from on high; set me free and rescue me from the mighty waters, from the hand of aliens, whose mouths speak lies, and whose right hands are false. I will sing a new song to you, O God; upon a ten-stringed harp I will play to you,”
When I read this verse I thought it was appropriate as I talked with a friend this morning and she is going through a difficult time right now. I wish I could say she was my only friend going through a hard time right now. I wish I could say that those I knew that are suffering right now are in the minority. Unfortunately it is hard for me to think of someone that I know that isn’t suffering in some way or another right now. I know so many people that I know have asked for prayers because they or a loved one has cancer. It is out of control how many people have cancer right now. Also, after a year and a half of staying inside, a lot of families are struggling. Children don’t want to be back in school, or they are more anxious or more depressed.
I don’t want to be all doom and gloom and I’m not meaning to sound like that. I just know that there are so many people suffering right now. I am on a few different prayer lists and the requests for prayers is non-stop and those that need them are really suffering. I long for the days when the worst people have to worry about is whether they will pass their English or Math test at school. However, I don’t know that those days will come. I think as long as we are on this side of heaven there will always be tough times, we will always have struggle. I do think that we get a break from it. I don’t think the struggle is constant, although I know it can feel that way when we are in it. I think we just truck along doing life and sometimes we encounter circumstances that are really difficult and then sometimes we don’t.
I view it as a long road trip. If you have ever been on a long road trip you know that some stretches of road are easy. The traffic is flowing, the road is well taken care of, the weather is nice, maybe there is nice scenery to look at out the window. There are some parts of the road trip that you really enjoy. Then there are some parts that are not great. There are parts of every long road trip that aren’t fun, there might be more traffic then we like, it might be a really long and boring stretch of road without much to see, or you may even have weather that is not great. Then there are times in a long road trip that can be awful. You can be stuck in traffic for hours and not move far at all, you can be stuck in a torrential downpour or a snow blizzard. Your car could even break down while you are on a road trip.
This is similar to our journey through life. Some times are going to go by quickly and you are going to enjoy the ride and the view. Other times life will feel like it is crawling by and you aren’t getting anywhere. And sometimes nothing great will be happening and also, nothing bad will be happening. You will just be coasting through. Thinking of my journey through life like this has helped me to remember in the hard times, that they will not last forever. This is just a season I am in and brighter days are coming.
I think our attitude and our thoughts play such a huge role in how we feel during the difficult times. When we are going through a difficult time we get to choose what we focus on. We may not know that at the time, but we always get to choose what we focus on. In every scenario there are many different things happening and which you decide to focus on, or what you decide to tell yourself about that situation will play a huge part in how you feel and your attitude towards it. For instance, if I am struggling with my boys there are many things in that struggle that I can focus on. Let’s say I am unhappy that my son got a D in algebra. I can focus on the fact that he got a D and that he may fail that class for the semester if he doesn’t try harder this quarter. I could focus on the fact that he attended school more this semester than last. I could focus on the fact that he did really well in his other classes. I could focus on the fact that last year was really hard and he is doing better this year. Do you see how there are numerous things that I could focus on?
I get to choose which one I am going to focus on. I can choose to focus on a negative one that will make me angry and keep me upset, or I can focus on one that is more positive and will help me to see that this one D is not the end of the world. I am not saying that you can’t care about the problem you are facing. Of course you can care, and I am also not saying don’t think about it. What I am saying is that if you are going through a hard time, try to find something positive in the situation and focus on that instead of obsessing about the negative things in the circumstance. This is especially important if you can’t do anything about the negative things. If I chose to focus on my son’s D, what would that change? Would my being angry about it change the grade? Would my being angry at him make him want to study harder? I can think of many reasons why me focusing on something that makes me angry will hurt me, but I can’t see how it will change the situation.
The verse above says, “Stretch out your hand from on high; set me free and rescue me from the mighty waters, from the hand of aliens, whose mouths speak lies, and whose right hands are false. I will sing a new song to you, O God; upon a ten-stringed harp I will play to you,” This is something that I think we have all been praying for lately. At least all those that I have been talking to. They would love for the Lord, our God, to stretch out His hand and rescue them to set them free. I have several friends that feel like they are sinking in the mighty waters and are waiting and praying for God to save them. I like how in this verse, immediately after they ask God to stretch out His had to save them, they then say they will sing a new song to Him and upon a ten-stringed harp they will play to Him. Immediately after they ask for help they start to praise Him. This is where a lot of us struggle. We wait for God to help before we praise Him. We wait to see God show up and fix things before we begin to praise.
What if we began to praise immediately after asking? What if we thanked God and praised God for helping us before we saw Him help? I wonder if anything would be different? I wonder if we would see help sooner? I wonder if we would feel any different? In John 20:29 “Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” I wonder if we would strengthen our faith if we not only believed that God would answer our prayers but we thanked Him and praised Him before we saw any proof that He was going too? I am going to try this and see what happens. I invite you to do that same. Let’s join together and thank God and praise God for answering all the prayers we have asked Him to answer right now, before He has answered them. Let’s not wait until after our prayers are answered to thank the Lord. Let’s show Him that we believe in Him as He believes in us.
Dear Heavenly Father, I pray for all those listening to this episode today. Lord we ask that help us to know that we will make it through this difficult time. Lord, give us a supernatural sense of peace and comfort knowing that you are here with us always and that you will help us through whatever we are facing. Lord, we ask that you help us to see that we can choose what we focus on. Help us to focus on the good and the positive in each situation. Help us to remember to thank you and to praise you Lord. Help us to not wait until we see your answers to our prayers. Help us to thank you and praise you now, while we are still waiting for those answers because we trust that you will answer them. We love you Lord and we know that you are amazing. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
God Doesn’t Need Anything From Us
Psalm 115:9-11 “O Israel, trust in the Lord! He is their help and their shield. O house of Aaron, trust in the Lord! He is their help and their shield. You who fear the Lord, trust in the Lord! He is their help and their shield.”
These seem to be two themes that come up over and over again in the Bible. The first one is trust in the Lord. I have recently been reminded of this lately. I was listening to a podcast about manifesting your destiny. I know there is come controversy over this idea and over the idea of the law of attraction. However, when I think of it, I don’t think of manifesting my destiny as if I am creating my destiny, or as if somehow the universe is coincidentally sending good things my way. I know that God is in charge of everything. He is the sole reason that the sun rises and sets, He is the reason that everything exists. I give God all of the credit and the glory.
What this podcast reminded me of is to trust that when we ask for things, God will answer. I have been praying some really big prayers lately. I am sure we all have as there are a lot of people who are pretty sick these days. I am praying for two people who have conditions that are not curable with modern medicine. However, Jesus is the great physician and he can cure anything. I keep wondering what I need to do to ensure these prayers are answered. I keep wondering if I need to fast, or print out pictures and lay hands on the photos, as I don’t live close to either of them. I wonder what it is I need to do so that these two ladies can be healed.
Many of you may be listening to this and you are shaking your heads because you already know that their healing doesn’t depend on what I do. Nothing I do will heal these ladies. Only God can do that. He doesn’t ask us to do anything except pray and believe that He will do it. I know this, I really do. And yet, I keep reverting back to thinking if my prayer aren’t working it is because I am doing something wrong, or that I am not doing enough. Why do I do this? Are you doing this too? I doubt I am the only one that thinks I am not doing enough for God.
There was a word given at my prayer group that I have written on a note on my wall so that I would be reminded of it every time I looked up. I switched around my desk and now I don’t see it very often and I am now realizing that I should move it because it is such a great reminder for me, and maybe for you if you struggle with feeling like you are not doing enough. Here is what was said at the meeting, “My children, I love you to be with me. I do not need your effort, I do not need your talents, for I alone will make you fruitful. Just relax, be empty, and be with me.” This was given on March 14, 2019. It has been almost two years and I still have trouble remember this.
I am not sure exactly what was said on the podcast that struck me. All I remember is the thoughts that came into my mind. I remembered what I have read in numerous books which is that you should ask for what you want/need and then thank God for it as if you already received it. If you ask He will answer. Trust that if you asked, He will answer and begin to thank Him and praise Him right away. This is something that I had forgotten about. I don’t know how, but I had. This podcast also reminded me to have the faith that nothing is impossible with God. I decided I was going to stop obsessing about what I needed to do to make this happen and just trust that God heard me and that He is already making it happen. I am going to picture them healthy. I am going to praise the Lord for His good works and for His answers to my prayers. Remember yesterday when I talked about how the enemy always wants to get our focus off of God? This is exactly what I have been letting him do. I have been focused inward on what I needed to do instead of trusting that God can make it happen without me actually doing anything. God doesn’t need our help. He welcomes our prayers and loves when we say yes, but He is not reliant on us for anything. I wish I could say this was going to be the last time I need this reminder, but I am sure it won’t be.
The second thing this verse talks about is how God is our help and our shield. This is great because it describes two ways that God shows up in our lives. Sometimes God will help you when you are in trouble. Well He will always help you when you are in trouble, but what I meant was sometimes He will allow you to go through that difficult circumstance, or time in your life and He will help you through it. He will be right there next to you providing you with whatever it is you need to get through it. He can give you strength, perseverance, boldness, resources, support, whatever you need in your specific circumstance.
The other way God shows up sometimes is that He shields us from the hard time. This can many times go unnoticed as we don’t always know what danger he has shielded us from. For instance if you are in the woods and there is a bear around the corner. You wanted to go that way but you got a funny feeling and so you went another way. You never saw the bear, so you don’t know that the Holy Spirit just saved you from a chance encounter with a bear. I heard a story from a friend about 911 that illustrates how God can save us from the trouble. My friend’s husband worked at the Pentagon at the time of 911. He was headed to the area where the plane hit just seconds before the plane hit. He had his hand on the door and he heard someone call his name. He did not see anyone so he turned around and went down to the end of the hallway to see if there was someone there. There wasn’t anyone there, but it distracted him just long enough so that he wasn’t in the part of the building that got hit by the plane.
We don’t know why things happen the way that they do. For all the people who did lose loved ones that day, the Lord was there to help them through it. He was there to give them the strength to get out of bed and keep on going. He was there to give them the strength to take care of their children, to go to work to do all the things that they needed to keep doing. He was there to love them through it all, even if they didn’t feel that love. Then there are those like my friend who God shielded from that circumstance. However, he has had other circumstances that he was not shielded from. I don’t believe that anyone escapes this life without having to go through any hard times. I think that we are shielded more often than we think we are but we just don’t know each time that it happens. I thank God for all the times he has helped me through the hard times and each time he has shielded me from them.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to turn our focus away from ourselves and turn it back to you. Lord, help us to trust that you hear our prayers and that you don’t need anything from us. You love us just as we are and you answer our prayers not because of anything that we do but because you are loving and merciful. Help us to be grateful Lord, help us to remember to trust you and to thank you for all that you do. You are so amazing and we know this, please help us to remember it. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I hope you are doing well with your challenge to be more committed this week. I know I have been really trying to keep my promises to myself and others as well as really thinking about things before I commit to them. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
The Thief Comes Only to Steal and Kill and Destroy
John 10:10 “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”
This is one of those verses that can be a great reminder of why we shouldn’t listen to the enemy when he tells us his lies. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. Sometimes when the enemy whispers things into our ears it almost seems like he is being helpful. Almost as if he is just drawing your attention to something so that you can fix it. For instance he may point out that you haven’t been to the gym in a while. This may not seem that bad as it has been awhile and you did feel better when you were going. And if that was his plan, then that would be kind of him. However, the thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.
Think about what usually happens when you start to think about how you haven’t gone to the gym in a while? Do you start to get down on yourself? Do you start to think about all the other things that you said you would do that you haven’t done? Do you start to feel like you can’t do anything right? This was his plan. His plan was not to help you it was to get you to take your eyes off Jesus and turn them toward yourself. This is always his plan. The thief knows that when we are focused on God, everything is better. This is why he tried to divert our focus to anywhere but there.
Have you ever read the Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis? If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it. The premise of the book is a series of letters between an Uncle named Screwtape, who is a high level demon, and his nephew Wormwood, who is a brand new, just starting out demon. In each letter the nephew tells his uncle what he is doing to torment the human that he has been assigned to. The uncle writes back and gives him advice as to what works best and what doesn’t. It is a fascination book that points out all the ways that we can get off track and how easily our mind can be turned away from God and onto something else.
It is a good book, however, it is also a very startling book. When you read through it you realize all the different directions that our attention is being pulled. You can also see how the enemy doesn’t really have to do too much sometimes to turn a good and holy experience into an occasion to sin. One that comes to mind very vividly is when they are talking about how humans behave in church. The uncle was saying that his nephew should get the human to focus on anything else other than the message being preached at the pulpit. They talked about how he could point out the funny hat the lady in front of them is wearing, or the child two rows up that is crying. Do whatever you have to do to divert their attention away from the reason they are at church and the message that is being preached.
How many times have you been sitting in mass, or service and although you are there in body, your mind is wandering all over the place? How many times have you made it halfway through Mass or service and have no idea what was said or what the message the priest or minister talked about? When I was younger my dad would sometimes assign us each a part of the mass to pay extra special attention to and then after mass he would ask us how much we remember about that part of Mass. I feel like I didn’t ever remember anything. I remember thinking, it was just less than an hour ago, how can I not remember. I have seen many people at a Catholic Mass read the bulletin during the readings and the sermon. Why is this?
This is because the thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. He is not interested in your mortal soul being saved. He is not interested in helping you pay attention so that you can learn how to get into heaven. He does not want you to hear any of the good news that is found in the Gospel. He is trying to do all he can to kill your soul so that you never get to see heaven. I know that may sound harsh, but it is the truth. There is a heaven and there is a hell. As badly as God wants your soul to come to heaven, that is as badly as the devil wants your soul to go to hell. I wish this were not the case. I wish we could all go to heaven. However, it is stated over and over again in the Bible that this is not the case. It talks very clearly about what we need to do to go to heaven and what we need to do to go to hell.
Matthew 7:13-14 says, “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. The thief is at the end of the broad road. The verse above says that the Lord has come that they may have life and have it abundantly and then this verse says small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it. The Lord is life and the thief is death. You would think that if we knew this we would all choose the Lord. However, the enemy is really good at confusing us and getting us to take our focus off the Lord. It’s as if he has people posted at the entrance to the narrow road and every time we start towards it, they usher us to the wide road. It is wide, it is easy, it is “normal.”
We are naturally drawn to the road to destruction because we live in a broken world. We tend to be a people that follow others. We are often referred to in the Bible as sheep, the Lord’s sheep. However, we don’t always follow the Lord. More often than not we follow other people. We follow are habits or our desires. We know what we like and what we want and that usually doesn’t align with what God wants for us. God wants us to love others and yet, sometimes we just don’t want to. God wants us to forgive others, but we don’t want to. God wants us to love others as He would love them and that is hard and we are not sure we want to invest them time. Or maybe it’s not about investing the time, maybe it is about being afraid to be that vulnerable. Whatever it is, we struggle a lot with the things that God asks us to do.
Often times the reason we struggle is because we have the enemy, the thief whispering lies into our ears. He tells us we will never be good enough, so why bother trying. He tells us that God won’t mind if we just do this, that, or the other thing because we really want to and God wants us to be happy. He convinces us that our sins aren’t that bad, they aren’t hurting anyone. Guess what? They are hurting you. If you are sinning, no matter how small, and we all are, then we are hurting our relationship with Jesus. We can repair this relationship, but only if we are honest with ourselves and repent from our ways. We won’t do this if we believe that we aren’t really doing anything wrong. Do not believe the lies of the enemy. Do not let the thief come into your life and steal your joy. You are stronger than you think you are. When you start to get down on yourself, realize that is the thief trying to steal your joy and don’t listen to his lies. Jesus came so that we may have life and have it abundantly. Doesn’t that sound so much better than what the enemy is offering? I don’t know about you but I want to live eternally in the presence of the Lord. I want to walk through the small gate and that means I need to walk down the narrow path. I know it is not easy, but I will keep trying. Will you join me?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. We ask that you help us to now let the thief into our lives. We ask that you shine a light on where he is already in our lives so that we can kick him out. Lord, please give us the wisdom to know when he is speaking to us so that we can just ignore it. Lord help us to walk the narrow path and enter the narrow gate. We know it is difficult and that we will get it wrong over and over again. Please don’t give up on us, please forgive us and keep directing us back to the narrow path. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you are enjoying this podcast please subscribe to it and also share it with a friend. I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
God’s Not Finished With You Yet
Philippians 1:6 “I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ.”
This seems to be something I have been hearing a lot over the past year. It is something that I have taken a lot of comfort in and I thought in case you hadn’t heard it, I would pass it along to you this morning. What I have been hearing over the past year is different variations of this verse. The consensus of all the different versions is, God isn’t through with you yet. You are still on the journey and He is still working with you to complete what He has started in you. Sometimes we can look at our circumstances and wonder what God was thinking. Maybe this is you right now. Maybe you are in stage in life where you wonder why God brought you here? Why He would allow these things to happen to you?
If this is you, then this verse is definitely for you. “I am confident that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ.” Why you are in this current place in your life is not something I have the answer to and it is not something that you may get the answer to either. However, you can be confident in the fact that God knows about the circumstance you find yourself in. He knows all that you are going through and He will bring you through it. He is not done His work in you yet. I heard someone say the other day that if you are in a place of suffering, the God isn’t done with you yet. He is not going to leave anyone in a place of suffering.
The visualization that just came to mind for me is one of someone writing a book, or a term paper. Usually if you are writing a book or a report, you don’t get it right on the first try. You write a chapter, and then you re-read it and make some changes. Then you re-read it and make a few more changes until you have your final copy. Another example is when a sculptor is making something. They mold the clay into what they think they want it to look like, and then they step back and look at it. Then they make a few adjustments and look at it again. Then they continue to make modifications on it until they are happy with the final product.
I am sure this is not exactly how God does it, but it is a visualization to help you get and idea of what I am talking about. God knows our future, He knows our past. He knows the person He created us to be. We can’t reach our full potential until are ready. God has a plan for each one of us. He has mapped out the best way for us to get there. Sometimes we don’t always follow His plan. Sometimes, we say no to God when He is asking us to do something that we don’t want to do. He gave us free will, so we can say no if we want to. However, when we do this we now creating our own time line instead of sticking to God’s. Whose time line do you think will be more efficient? I’m going to guess God’s would be.
God is not going to give up on us. He is going to patiently wait for us to turn back to Him and to trust Him again. Then he will get us back on track. Us saying no and going off track is unfortunately not a one time thing for most of us. We tend to be trucking along, doing what we feel God wants us to do and then out of no where, we get knocked off the track. Sometimes we don’t intentionally go off track, it just happens when we take our eyes off God and look to others. However, it happens, we somehow find ourselves in situations that we don’t like. God patiently waits for us to turn back to Him, to ask Him for help and then He gets us back on track. The visualization I just got in my head after saying that was-of those little trains that kids play with. I saw one fall off the track and then God reached over and picked it up with his thumb and forefinger and gently places it back on the track. This is what I believe God is continually do to us. We go off track and He gently places us back on track.
St. Paul wrote these letters to the Philippians while he was in jail. If anyone deserves to wonder why their life is going how it is going I think it would be Paul. He was preaching God’s Word. He was saying yes to all God asked him to do and yet he endured so much suffering. He went through a lot. Yet, he never lost faith. I love how he says in this verse that he is confident that the one who started a good work in you would bring it to completion. He knew, even while he was in jail that God was not done with him yet. St. Paul’s story could have ended when he went to jail, it could have ended when he was ship wrecked or when he was bitten by a snake. There were several instances that could have ended St. Paul’s life and his story, but they didn’t because God was not finished with him yet.
God is not finished with you yet either. Going through these circumstances that you are going through right now is going to make you stronger. I don’t know what they are preparing you for, but God does. Even if the thing you are going through wasn’t part of God’s original plan for you, He can still turn it around and use it for your good. He is that amazing! The reason I say some things might not have been part of God’s original plan for you is because as I mentioned earlier sometimes we go off course. I think when we do this sometimes God’s perfect will is not always carried out. Sometimes God’s permissive will is carried out instead.
For instance, if you are a parent you may have a great plan for your child’s future. This of course does not involve them going through any pain or suffering. However, we all know that kids don’t typically follow our script to the letter. They don’t date the perfect person that you picked out for them, they date the person that is all wrong for them. So, they get hurt. And although this wasn’t what you wanted for them, it was their choice and you can just be there to pick up the pieces and hope they learn from this mistake. This is sort of like our relationship with God. He knows what is best for us and yet sometimes we are just not quite ready to hear it so we do our own thing and God lets us experience the consequences of that action and hopes that we learn from our mistakes.
I know suffering is hard. I know it is not easy when we don’t understand why we are going through the things we are going through. I also know it is not always easy to have the faith that you will get though it. I love how confident St. Paul was. He didn’t say that God might not be finished with you yet, he didn’t say God might finish the good work that he started, he said he was confident that God would finish the good work he started in you. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind and there isn’t a doubt in my mind either. I hope that you can find some comfort in the fact that if you are not where you thought you would be or could be right now then God is not done with you yet. God has started a good work in each one of us and He will not stop until He has completed that good work. I believe that will be a life long mission and He will continue to perfect us until that glorious day when we get to be with Him in paradise.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to follow you and to say yes to you. Help us to try and stay on your track instead of us trying to make our own. Lord you know what is best for us and we know this, so why do we fight it? If we are suffering right now Lord I ask that you be with us and you help us to know that you won’t leave us there. Help us to see that this is just a stop on the journey and that you are not done with us yet. We love you Lord, you are truly amazing. I am in awe at how you use everything that we go through for good. We are so grateful for the way you plan out our lives and even when we get off track you wait patiently for us to realize it and then you help us get back on track without making us feel bad about ourselves. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. This weeks character trait is something that I definitely struggle with. The goal this week is to learn how to be more committed. The article is about how to be more committed to your commitments. (CLICK HERE FOR ARTICLE) We all have things that we have committed to God that we would do. Are we doing them? Could we be doing better with those commitments? Those are the things we could examine this week. Only 3 more weeks, counting this one, can you believe it? I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Into The Light
Matthew 10:26-28 “So have no fear of them; for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known. What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops. Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”
Fear is something that we all struggle with. It’s something that can just sneak up on us when we are not expecting it. It can come out of no where. Sometimes our fears are based on actual things that have happened to us and sometimes they are based upon things we feel may happen to us in the future. Either way, the fear is very real and can be scary. When we feel fear we can turn to the Lord, and He can take there fear from us or He can give us the strength to face that fear. We never know which He will do. It depends on what we need at that particular time.
I like how this verse says that nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known. Many people have fears around secrets. People worry that their secrets will be found out and other people worry that the secret they are supposed to keep won’t be found out. I know that a lot of terrible acts against people are committed in secret. These acts can stay secret for a long time, some may even stay secret for a lifetime here on earth. However, nothing is secret from God. He knows all things. There isn’t a single thing that you or anyone else can do that is a secret from God.
Some people may not like this. They may feel this is a bad thing because God can see all we do and we don’t always do the right thing. However, I think this is a good thing. Not only can God see all that we do, but He can see into our heart as well. Sometimes we can seem like we are doing things for the right reasons. We can appear to be walking the walk of a good Christian and the whole time our hearts may be in it for the wrong reasons. We may be trying to deceive someone, or maybe trying to deceive ourselves. On the other hand, we may be doing all the wrong things, but for the right reasons. I think this happens a lot more than we think. I think we get it wrong a lot, and yet we have a pure heart and the best of intentions. I am thankful God can see into our hearts and knows that we weren’t trying to screw everything up.
When the verse says, “what I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops,” I think of how many things our mind tells us in the dark. I don’t think many of them are from God. I think this advice is great advice for anything that you hear in the dark. All those negative thoughts that we have are not from the Lord. Those are from the enemy and they are lies. They are not our truths and yet we accept them and we hold onto them because we are afraid to bring them into the light. We are afraid that if we bring these thoughts into the light, then others will know these things. We believe that others will believe them and then they may not like us anymore. Or even worse, we are afraid that if we bring these thoughts into the light it will make them true. This could not be further from the truth, and the enemy knows this.
The enemy knows that if you were to bring all these negative thoughts into the light, other people would see how ridiculous they were and they would call you on it. They would reassure you that these things are not true. It is so easy to see the enemies lies in other people’s lives. Have you ever noticed this? Have you ever had a friend tell you the negative thoughts they are feeling and you wonder why the would believe it? You hear them and you can’t even believe that they would think that. Even strangers, people you don’t even know that well, if they were to tell you the negative thoughts the enemy has been whispering to them, you would recognize right away that it was the enemy talking.
I had this happen to me at a conference once. We had to write down all the awful thoughts that swirl around in our head. You know the ones I am talking about, the ones that tell us we aren’t good enough, we aren’t pretty enough, we don’t do enough. It is usually some version of “we aren’t enough.” Anyway at this conference we needed to write down all these thoughts. Then we were asked to be brave enough to share these thoughts with someone sitting next to us. Someone we didn’t know. I paired up with this beautiful young girl who was the mama of a 2 year old and was pregnant with twins. Here are some of the thoughts that she had in her head, “I’m not a good mom.” “I won’t be a good mom to these twins either.” “I am not attractive to my husband.” “I’m not good at anything.” I don’t think any of you listening to this have to meet this young lady to know that none of these things are true.
Why do we do this to ourselves? Well, we are not doing it, the enemy is, but why do we let him? Why do we allow him control over our thoughts? Why do we allow him to rent space in our brain? When will we learn to evict him the moment he starts talking. I just got a great visual of pressing this button anytime we get a negative thought and it ejects Satan right out of our mind. How great would that be? This button does not exist, not matter how much we would like it to. However, we can ask God to come into these thoughts and we can tell Satan to leave. We do have power over him thanks to Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. I know it is hard, and I know we all think it is easier to leave these thoughts in the dark and not talk about them. But let’s listen to God, let’s bring these thoughts into the light. I know this verse is not talking about the negative thoughts we get from the enemy, but when I read this verse I feel this is the message that the Holy Spirit wanted me to pass on to you.
The next time you start to have negative thoughts and the enemy starts to tell you who you are, you can stop him right in his tracks and tell him that you know who you are. You are a son or daughter of Jesus Christ the King. You are made in the likeness and image of the Lord our God. You are more than enough and God loves you just as you are, flaws in all. Shine a light on those fears that you have as well. All those fears and insecurities that you have breed in the darkness. They grow stronger when you leave them in the dark. Bring them into the light. Share them with a loved one, a friend, or the Lord. Yes, He knows what they are, and He still wants you to share them with him yourself. You can be free of these thoughts and these fears if you want to. Just keep reminding yourself who you are and whose you are.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord help us to shine a light on all those things that the enemy wants us to keep in the darkness. Help us to shout your words from the roof tops. Help us to know who we are and that we are enough because we are made in your likeness and image. Help us to stand firm in the fact that we are your sons and daughters and you love us just as we are. We are so very thankful that you love us and that you chose us Lord Jesus. You are so very amazing and we love you! We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Next week’s character trait is committed. How can we be more committed? I look forward to spending time with you again on Monday. Have a blessed weekend!
Joy & Forgiveness of Sin
Psalm 32:1 “Oh, what joy for those whose disobedience if forgiven, whose sins put out to sight”
I love the word joy. I love what I feel when I have joy. Joy is different than happiness. They can feel similar but they have very different causes. Your happiness is usually dependent on your circumstances. We usually feel happy when things are going good in our lives. When things seems to be going in our favor. We tend to feel unhappy when things are going badly. When things seem to be against us. However, joy, doesn’t have to be based on our circumstances. We can find joy in any circumstance, we just have to look for it, or in some cases create it. This is why I love joy, because it is something that we can create.
I would say we can create happiness also, but that can be really hard at times. If you are really sad about something that just happened, even looking on the bright side of things, probably isn’t going to make you feel happy. However, you can probably find joy in the situation. Most people probably define joy the same way they define happiness. Rick Warren gave us this definition of joy and I think it is perfect: “Joy is the settled assurance that God is in control of all the details of my life, the quiet confidence that ultimately everything is going to be alright and the determined choice to praise God in every situation.” Can you see how using this definition of joy, you could have joy in any circumstance, even ones that are heartbreaking?
Someone that was very special to my prayer group passed away this week. I don’t think anyone is happy about this. However, we can find joy in it if joy is a settled assurance that God is in control of all the details of our lives. We all die the moment we were supposed to, not a moment before and not a moment after. In this joy we find the quiet confidence that ultimately everything is going to be alright and the determined choice, that even though we are sad for the loss of our friend, we will praise God not only for the time we got to spend with her, but the fact that she is with Him in heaven right now. She is no longer suffering here on this earth.
This verse talks about the joy for those whose sins are forgiven. Those whose sins are put out of sight. What spoke to me about this part of the verse was that we need to accept that our sins our forgiven. As soon as I read that verse that thought jumped out in my mind. God forgives our sins. Jesus forgave sins when He was here on earth and He gave that power to the apostles before He left. All we need to do is ask God to forgive our sins and He will. So, why don’t we believe that? Why do we cling to our sins and not let them go? God forgives them and then we hold onto them. Why do we accept our sins as our identity? This isn’t what God wants for us. Yes, He does want us to own up to them. He wants us to repent and then He wants us to move on from them. He wants us to learn from our mistakes and move forward with a new understanding. He doesn’t want us to keep our sins and attach our identity to them.
What came to mind when I read this verse was the Parable of the Unforgiving Debtor. Jesus used this parable to explain what would happen if we do not forgive others. However, I have also heard someone talk about it in regard to not believing our sins are forgiven. You can find this parable in Matthew 18:21-35. I will not read it all to you, but I will summarize the story in case you are not familiar with it. The parable is about a king who decided to collect all he was owed. He had a servant that owed him more money than he would ever be able to pay back in several lifetimes. When he couldn’t pay the king ordered him to be sold along with his wife, children and all of his belongings. However, he begged the king and the king not only let him go, but forgave all his debt. This is awesome. This is like the Lord, he forgives our sins when we turn to him and we ask Him. However, this is not the end of the parable. If the man had truly believed that his debt was forgiven, if he would have accepted that, then his whole life could have been changed.
When we accept God’s love and mercy and we allow it to change our heart, then we become better people. We allow God’s love and mercy to spread to others because we share it freely with others. However, this man did not accept the fact that his debt was forgiven. He clung to his debt and he didn’t let it go. He couldn’t stop feeling as if he owed the king. Because of this he searched after all those that owed him money so he could gather the money he thought he owed the king. He found a servant that owed him a fraction of what he owed the king. The servant couldn’t pay him and begged for more time. However, he didn’t grant him more time. He threw him in jail until he could pay his debt.
Do you see how his life could have been so different if he had just accepted the king’s gracious offer to forgive his debt? He could have been so excited and could have passed that kind gesture on to his servant. Instead he had to cling to his debt and refuse the forgiveness. This did not end well for him as the King found out that he didn’t show others the mercy that he was shown and the king had him sent to jail to be tortured until he had repaid his debt in full. It is tragic to me that so much was lost because one man couldn’t accept the forgiveness he was given. What we do matters. We may think that what we do only affects ourselves. We may wonder why others care if we forgive as it doesn’t have anything to do with them. However, our actions affect others. If you need a visual think of a still pond. Then picture you dropping a pebble in that pond. Can you picture the circles of water rippling away from the place you dropped the rock?
We do not exist in a vacuum. When we do something it affects the world around us. When this man refused to accept the forgiveness offered to him by his king, his life was not the only life ruined. What about the man he put into jail? What about his wife and his children? What about the king? Do you think he will want to have mercy the next time someone begs? It is the same for us when we refuse to accept God’s mercy. Our refusal effects those around us. When we cling to that sin and when we make it part of our identity it can have unintended consequences on our family and friends. Instead of celebrating the fact that we have been forgiven and feeling the freedom that comes along with that, we may still feel weighed down by it and it may affect all or our interactions. We may take offense to things we wouldn’t normally, or we may be irritable or jumpy.
I don’t know what the effects might be in your specific circumstance, but I do know that there will be some. The Lord wants to forgive you, accept His forgiveness. Allow Him to forgive you and to heal you. Father Mike said today on the episode I was listening to that the more sin there is, the more grace there is because the more grace we need. Accept the grace that God wants to give you when He forgives you. Accept that you are worthy of forgiveness, not because of anything you have done, but because Christ died for us. Don’t make his sacrifice be in vain. Accept God’s forgiveness.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask that you give us the grace we need to accept your forgiveness. You are too kind and we often struggle with the idea that we are not worthy of your forgiveness. Although this is true and we are not worthy, you still forgive us because you love us and you sent your only son down to die on a cross for us. Let us remember this sacrifice so that we can accept that you forgive us. We love you Lord and we thank you for your forgiveness. We can never repay all we owe you and you don’t ask us to. You are amazing Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I hope the challenge to be more compassionate this week is going well. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
God Observes His Children
Psalm 33:13-15 “From heaven the LORD looks down and observes the children of Adam, From his dwelling place he surveys all who dwell on earth. The One who fashioned together their hearts is the One who knows all their works.”
God looks down upon us from heaven, this is not news to us. However, it may be something we don’t think about enough. Do you remember this when you are going through your day? Do you stop and think about how God is observing you from His dwelling place when you are going about your day? I wonder if we would do half of the things that we do, if were thought about this more. The One who fashioned together our hearts is the One who knows all of our works. God knows all that you do.
God is not just sitting around in heaven enjoying the good life. He is not just sitting back and enjoying all the praise from the angels and saints. He is alert, always watching us and seeing where He needs to step in and help. He is also not just looking at some of us. He is observing all of the children of Adam. That is every person on earth. I think sometimes we can think that if someone does not believe the same things that we believe that God is not paying any attention to them. God is observing all of us. He knows everything that everyone on earth does. I am sure He is not pleased with a lot that He sees. I know I have read many things about how the sins of the world grieve Him. He loves His children and does not want to lose a single one of them.
Even though you probably already knew that God was looking down on you from above, does hearing that change anything for you? When I read that, even though I know this, it serves as a reminder for me. It makes me slow down and evaluate my days. It has me reviewing the last few weeks. How have I spent my time? What have I been doing and how have I been acting? When I look back over my last few weeks, am I proud of how I lived them? Are their any parts of them that I wouldn’t want God to have witnessed? For me, my answer would be yes, there are parts that I am not happy with. How about you? How have you been living and are there things you would have done differently had you been consciously thinking about God observing all you do? I wonder if things would have been different if I had kept the thought that God is always watching me in the forefront of my mind?
It’s not even big things that I am talking about. It’s the little decisions we make that can add up over time. Or the little things that can lead to you missing out of important things. For instance, one thing I am not proud of over the last couple of weeks is that I haven’t really had a plan at dinner time. My son would ask, “What is for dinner?” and I would have no idea. I would ask what he wanted and then make ramen noodles or penne pasta, maybe a frozen pizza. I usually didn’t have any meat thawed. Whenever he asked, I would feel bad about not planning in advance and then vow to do better tomorrow. However, this went on for a week or two. When I look back on those weeks I am not proud of the way I showed up at dinner time or the fact that God observed it all. However, I decided this week that I am going to plan our meals in advance. I’m going to be proud of how I show up at dinner time.
I actually have a book called Saving Dinner by Leanne Ely. This book is amazing because it has weekly meal plans in it. It gives you the shopping list, the recipes and it even tells you what you will make for side dishes with each meal. It also has the recipes broken up into seasons of the year. I made a decision that I was going to make sure I knew what was for dinner and that I was providing a healthy meal for my family. I printed the shopping list, and went shopping. Last night was my first night going with this plan. I made apple chicken with baked potatoes and baked butternut squash.
Do you remember how I said that it isn’t necessarily the big things, but the little things that cause you to miss out on other things? Well, last night I made a nice dinner and I asked the kids to sit down with me for dinner. Two of them did and one of my sons even tried something new, which he doesn’t do often. After dinner while we were still at the table I asked if they wanted to play a game. They said no, but then thought about it for a minute and changed their minds. Last night I got to sit at the table and play a board game with two of my sons for over 2 hours. Would this have happened if I hadn’t made dinner and asked them to join me at the table? I don’t know, probably not, as it hasn’t happened in several months.
It is not that I haven’t made dinner in several months its just that a series of small things have lead up to us not having dinner together much as a family. It’s amazing how it happens when I think about it. We were having family time every night for a bit and having dinner together. Then something happens and we make an exception one night, then another night and then the next thing I know we don’t see the boys because they are on their electronics and eating dinner in their rooms. Tony and I are just looking around and wondering how we got back to this. It is not just one thing it is a series of small decisions that don’t seem like a big deal at the time.
What are these small decisions in your life that are causing you to miss out on some pretty great things? Maybe it’s not meal times for you. Maybe you have been spending time on other things instead spending time in prayer. Maybe it started with just hitting snooze that one time, and now you spend 30 minutes hitting snooze and miss our on 30 minutes of time with the Lord. Or maybe haven’t been calling your parents, children, or friends as much. You used to call them regularly, but then something happened and over time you got out of the habit. Now you are nervous to call because it has been so long. Think of all the great conversations you are missing out on by not calling.
I don’t know what your thing is. I bet if you look at your life through the lens of “God is observing me from heaven and He knows all my works,” you can think of a thing or two that you may want to change. Why not take the opportunity to work on that thing today? Sometimes when we get to this time of year, we may notice things we want to change and we let ourselves off the hook by saying we will change that in the new year. Why wait until January 1st to make changes that you know you want to make. Especially if there are things you are not proud of. If you are looking over the last few weeks of your life and you can think of times when you aren’t proud of how you showed up, then make a decision right now to change how you will show up the next time you are in that circumstance. Don’t put off until tomorrow, what you can do today. Tomorrow is not guaranteed to any of us.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to be aware of you throughout our whole day. Help us to not only keep you in the front of our minds, but to keep the truth that you are always observing us at the front of our minds as well. Help us to make the right decisions even when they are difficult. Please help us to always show up in a way that makes you proud. Shine a light on any area of our life that needs to change. Any area that has slowly become a less than version of what it once was. We love you Lord and we are so very grateful to have you in our lives. We are so grateful that we have a loving Father who keeps a constant watchful eye on us. Thank you! You are so very amazing and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you are enjoying this podcast and you have not subscribed you are welcome to do so. This will ensure the daily episodes get downloaded right to your device. Also, if you would share this podcast with others you think might enjoy it, that would really help get the word out to even more people who want to hear it. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
He Is My Fortress
Psalm 144:1-2 “Praise be to the Lord my Rock, who trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle. He is my loving God and my fortress, my stronghold and my deliverer, my shield, in whom I take refuge, who subdues peoples under me.
I find this verse very intriguing. When I read this, what came to mind wasn’t people in the military, although I have been around the military a lot over the last 20 years. God definitely does help out the military. I’m amazed when I hear the stories of the old testament in the Bible. I am surprised how old war is. I guess I never really gave it too much thought. If there are lots of people in one area it makes sense that they would not all get along and they would need someone to help settle disputes. Likewise, if there are various lands, it makes sense that people would want to conquer other people’s land. It is in our broken nature. It makes sense and yet, it just never occurred to me that they had huge armies way back in the old testament.
However, this is not what I thought of when I read this verse. What came to my mind when I read this verse is how specific it is. The verse does not say that the Lord trains us for war. It does not say that He trains His people, or the multitude, it says that He trains my hands for war and my fingers for battle. This verse is talking about each one of individually. Likewise I believe he trains each one of us for our own personal war. He knows our stories even before we do, even before we were born He could see our future. Therefore, he can train each of us individually for what we are going to need to face.
Have you ever found yourself in a situation and you had no idea why you were in it? Have you ever wondered why you took certain paths in your life? Paths that didn’t seem to make any sense at the time you took them? These could have been training for things you are to encounter in the future. I grew up in a family with 11 kids. That’s a lot of people in one house. Even though we all grew up in the same house, we all learned different things from that experience. We all have very different take aways. This is because we all needed different things to combat our very different futures. I would say a big thing I learned from growing up in a house full of kids is to not over react. Kids will do wild and crazy things, and they will survive. My parents had learned after having that many kids that they didn’t have to over react every time someone did something wrong because the older kids had survived. Now, if you ask my older siblings they probably did not learn this same lesson as my parents probably hadn’t learned this lesson yet when they were little.
This lesson served me well as I ended up having three boys very close in age and boys tend to do some crazy stuff, specially if there is more than one of them. I knew from my past experiences that this would happen as I had three older brothers. I knew that they would probably survive just fine and I did not need to over react. Do you see how that training was specific for me. Someone who wasn’t going to have any children would not need that specific lesson. Can you look back over your life and see how God has trained you to make it through the battles that you have faced? Think back to those paths that you took and you didn’t know why you were taking them. Does it make sense now? Can you see how the things you went through on those paths prepared you for the future you have now? Isn’t God amazing!!
The next part of the verse says, “He is my loving God and my fortress, my stronghold and my deliverer, my shield, in whom I take refuge, who subdues peoples under me.” Isn’t this lovely? “He is my loving God and my fortress.” I think that is beautiful imagery. I love to imagine God as this castle built around me. He is my fortress, he is protecting me from all that wants to hurt me. Not only has God trained you to fight the specific war that He knows you are going to have to fight, but He is also your fortress. It says later in this verse, he is my shield, in whom I take refuge. He has trained you to fight and yes, you ready. And also, he is your refuge and your fortress. When you need a break from the war, when you need to rest, you can rest in the comfort of His arms. He is your stronghold and your deliverer.
I feel so loved when I read this verse. This verse shows us that God knows exactly what we need. Yes, He is there to show us how to fight, He will even fight along side us. It shows us that all the things we go through in life are meant to build us up so that we can be strong enough to face the next thing we are going to encounter. We often wish that things would happen in our timing. We don’t understand why we have to wait on God’s timing. When I read this verse I feel better about waiting on God’s timing. I feel as though God is showing us that He is taking the time to train us and if we rush it, we won’t be ready. We may not have all the skills we need to have to face the upcoming task.
Have you ever had to go through something and other people don’t understand how you have the strength to go through it? You have the strength because you have a loving and caring God. You have a God that knew you were going to have to face this and He has trained you to have the faith. Also, He is there with you in it. He is your fortress, so when you don’t have the strength you can fall down inside the walls of the fortress, behind God’s shield and take refuge. He will be strong for you, when you can’t be.
Whatever it is you are going through, know that God has personally trained you for this specific occasion. You may now feel you are equipped and you may not feel like you are qualified but God wouldn’t let you enter into a battle your couldn’t win. When you are struggling remember that God has trained you for this. Also, remember that He is you loving God and your fortress, your stronghold and your deliverer, your shield, in whom you take refuge, who subdues peoples under you.” You will make it through this difficult time. I promise if you keep going, if you don’t give up, as we talked about yesterday, you will make it through this and you will be better equipped to handle the next thing that comes your way. God is your trainer, it doesn’t get any better than that.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to rely on you when we are in time of trouble. Help us to see that you are our fortress and our shield. Help us to see that we have your protection anytime we want it. Lord, please also help us to see that you have trained us for each battle we face. You have given us experiences that have lead us to this point and will get us through this point so we will be better prepared for the next thing we will face. Lord, you are so amazing and we are so grateful for the way you lovingly prepare each one of us for our specific challenges. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Let Us Not Grow Weary In Doing Good
Galatians 6:9 “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.”
“Let us not become wearing in doing good.” That is something that is easier said than done. I think it can be easy to become weary in doing good, especially if you are always striving to do good. If you are trying to be perfect so that you can earn your way into the kingdom of God, you will get tired very quickly. And guess what, God doesn’t need your perfection. God is not calling you to be perfect. He wants us to do our best, He is not looking for perfection.
This can be hard to accept. When we look around us we see a world that seems to ask for perfection. We see people posting on social media about their perfect family, their perfect house, their perfectly decorated Christmas tree. We see the models on TV and in the magazines and they look so perfect. We see our co-workers and they seem to be doing everything so perfectly. We look at our friends and they are perfect parents, and we look at other couples and they seem perfect. With our access to technology in today’s world, it can seem like everyone else seems to be doing so much more than we are. This is just an illusion.
There may be people out there doing more than you, but there are also people out there doing less than you. It is not our job to compare. All you can see is what those people are doing. You can’t see all the behind the scenes footage. Maybe they are striving to be perfect at work and yet they are failing at home. Maybe they had to miss out on their child’s sporting event or dance recital so that they could spend the time to have a perfectly decorated tree. It doesn’t matter what this world is asking of us, it only matters what the Lord is asking from us. He is not asking for us to be perfect.
He is asking for us to do good in the world and to not grow weary doing it. There are two ways I think we can grow weary from doing good. The first one is when we over do it. We strive for perfection. Our brokenness has us striving to do more and more so that God will love us more and more. We know on some level that this isn’t actually true. We know there isn’t anything we can do to make God love us anymore than He already does. Yet, even though we know this on some level, we still strive to do the right thing, to do it perfectly, to do enough so that God will love us. This is the first way we can grow weary. We just get tired of trying so hard.
The second way I think we can grow weary is when we are doing good over a long period of time and yet we see no reward or nothing positive coming out of it. For instance, you know someone that is always unkind to you. You have always treated this person with kindness. You decided you would spread kindness in the world even if others didn’t. However, if you continue to be kind and the other person continues to be unkind, you can get tired. You can start to wonder if it’s even worth being kind to that person when they are still being so unkind. The verse above is telling us that we need to keep trying. Don’t grow weary as we never know what good we are doing that we just can’t see. We never know which kind thing it is that will make a difference.
Another example of how we might grow weary if we don’t see results is if we are doing good for a specific cause and yet we see not change in the circumstances. For instance, my friend has been doing good and fighting for what is right for her daughter. However, she has been fighting for what is right for her daughter for over two years now and is not seeing any results. She is tired and who can blame her. The verse above is telling us not to give up. It is telling us that we will reap the benefits in God’s time, not ours. However, if we quit, if we stop doing good, we may never reap the benefits.
We have all heard stories about how one act of kindness changed the outcome of someones life in a profound way. Here is a story I heard when I was younger. There was a boy walking home from school one day with all of his books. His hands were full as he had cleaned out his locker that day. On his way home he tripped and dropped all of his stuff all over the sidewalk. A new kid in the neighborhood saw him and helped him pick up his stuff. He helped the boy carry his stuff home and they talked the whole way to his house. They became friends and walked to school together the rest of the years they were in school. At graduation the boy who had dropped all of his things that day wrote his friend a note. He let him know that the reason he had cleaned out his locker that day was because he was not intending to go back to school. He was being bullied, was so alone and had decided to take his life. But then when that other boy offered to help carry his stuff and then became his friend, his whole life changed. He had found a reason to live. The other boy had no idea of the impact of that one good deed.
Sometimes the good you are doing can be affecting people and you just can’t see it. In the first example where you were being kind to someone that was unkind to you. Maybe you don’t see any change in that person who is unkind. However, another co-worker has witnessed your kindness and has tried to be kind to someone in their life. Your kindness is spreading even when you don’t see it. Another benefit of your kindness that you may not always see is when your children, friends, or loved ones witness your kindness and then spread it to their loved ones.
I understand how we can grow weary doing good when we don’t see any results. Is this is you right now? Have you have been trying so hard to do good and are tired because you don’t see any results of all your efforts? If so I would say look to the Lord for the strength to keep going. He is telling us that we will reap a harvest, only if we don’t give up. If you are struggling to not give up, then ask the Lord for help. He is there to help us. He longs for us to turn to Him and to ask Him for help. Why don’t we do it more often? Why don’t we ask Him, who has unending strength and power to help us when we are running out? Lord, help us to not grow weary in doing good.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask that you help us to not grow wearing in doing good. Help us to be patient and to wait for your timing for our harvest. Help us to continue to do good even when we can’t see any good coming from it. Lord, help those of us that grow weary because we are trying to be perfect for you. Help us to truly understand that we don’t have to strive for perfection. Help us to understand that we don’t have to earn Your love, it is given freely. Lord, I ask that you help all of us move that knowledge from our brain to our heart so that we truly feel your love and know that it is unconditional. We love you Lord, you are so amazing. We thank you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. The character trait we are working on this week in our “10 Weeks to be More Like Jesus” Challenge is Compassion. I have emailed out an article titled, 10 Easy Ways to Cultivate Compassion written by Lizza Rankin, M. D. I will put a link in the show notes if you would like to join us in trying to grow in compassion this week. (CLICK HERE FOR ARTICLE) I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
A Mustard Seed Grows
Matthew 13:31-32 “Another parable he put before them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed which a man took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.”
Mustard seeds are talked about a few times in the Bible. I know one of my favorite verses is Matthew 17:20 which says, “He replied because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have the faith as a mustard see, you can say to the mountain move and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” I love this verse because it talks about the power of faith and it gives me something to strive for. I can’t imagine the kind of faith that could literally move mountains. However, that doesn’t mean I won’t keep asking for it. Now that I just said that, I can actually see how God has moved some mountains in my life and my friend’s lives. Not literal rock mountains, but some pretty big mountains none the less.
The verse above is not referring to our faith as a grain of mustard seed, he is talking about he Kingdom of heaven. He is talking about how the kingdom of heaven starts out like a grain of mustard seed but then it grows into the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree. I do not know a lot about plants, however, from my reading I found out that the mustard tree here in America does not get that big. It stays a shrub as it is an annual plant that is always small is properly an herb. However, where it grew on the banks of the Jordan River it would grow as high as a horse and its rider.
However, it did not grow that tall right away. It would take several years to produce anything and to grow tall. This parable is to show how the Gospel of the Lord was to start small. It started with Jesus, and he passed it along to his 12 apostles, and then they passed it on to many. One commentary I read talked about how the preaching of the gospel works like leaven in the hearts of those who receive it. The leaven works certainly, so does the word, yet gradually. When the apostles preached the gospel it took root in peoples’ hearts and then grew over time. I think one reason I like this parable so much is it can be applied to our lives as well. Can you think of anything in your life that started out as something small and then grew into something bigger?
Sometimes I feel that I am not doing enough. Do you ever feel that way. There are so many places in our lives that we can feel this way. I am not doing enough for my family. I am not doing enough at work. I am not doing enough at school. And most definitely, I am not doing enough for the Kingdom of God. These feelings can sometimes become overwhelming. The feeling that we are not doing enough does not come from he Lord. Sometimes the Holy Spirit will convict of us something if we ask Him too and if we are truly doing something wrong. However, that feeling of “not enough” doesn’t come from the Lord. When the Holy Spirit convicts you of something He does it in a loving manner that does not make you feel bad about yourself.
When we are feeling like we are not doing enough I think it is important to remember this parable of the mustard seed. They would plant these tiny little seeds and then it would take years for them to grow into trees that produced fruit. When you are feeling like you aren’t enough take some time and think about the things you are doing and what fruit they may be producing down the road. Yes, it may look like you are not doing much now. That doesn’t mean you aren’t. It probably just means that you have planted the seeds and now you get to be patient and wait for them to grow. This may take a long time and that is ok. As long as you have planted the seeds, you are not responsible for making sure they grow. It says in 1 Corinthians 3:6-7, “ I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow.”
Our job is just to plant the seeds and then God will make them grow. Sometimes when it seems like we are not doing enough it is because we are in the planting stages. I know a lot of people who are Christian and they have raised their children to be Christian and yet their children don’t attend mass, or service. I can’t speak for Protestants as I am not sure their beliefs on the need to attend services. However, I know it is very upsetting to the Catholic parents that I know because we believe that the Eucharist is life giving and we also believe that Mass is a sacrament and we hate that our children are missing out on those graces. I believe that if we have done our best to plant the seeds in our children when they are young, then we just need to pray and God will take care of the rest. it may take our whole lives, or longer for us to see the fruit from those seeds, but we will see them.
Also, the fruit from the seed may look different than we think it will. For instance, my parents raised me and my 10 siblings in the Catholic faith. We were in mass every Sunday and we made all of our sacraments. Today we are all grown ups and only 4 of us are still attending mass. However, every one of us spreads kindness and love into the world. Although my siblings may not be attending mass, they are definitely loving their neighbors. One of my sisters put together 6 baskets for families in need of a Thanksgiving dinner. She also organized a family craft day so we could make ornaments for foster children. There were 3 of my siblings, myself and my mom and her sister that participated and we made over 100 ornaments. I am not saying this brag about my family, I am saying this because my parents might thing they didn’t do enough because all my siblings aren’t attending church. However, because of the seeds that they planted, those 6 families had a wonderful Thanksgiving Day dinner. Also, those foster children will have a few ornaments of their very own.
It is easy for us to think we are not doing enough. I am sure that is what the enemy wants us to think. He wants us to think we aren’t doing enough so that we start looking at ourself and stop looking towards the Lord. We are all doing the best we can. All we need to do is to continue to do the best we can and to offer what we are doing up to the Lord. When we feel we are not doing enough we can talk to the Lord about it. We can say something like, “Dear Lord, I love you and I want to do as much as I can for you. I feel as though I am not doing enough, please help me to be patient and wait for you to grow fruit from my efforts. If there is something else you think I should be doing put that on my heart. Otherwise, I will trust that I am doing enough for you Lord.” God doesn’t want us to feel bad. He doesn’t need us to do anything. He appreciates our help and our efforts whatever they are. Remember, he is our father. If you have children, do you ever look at their efforts and think that they are not enough? Well, maybe we do, because we are imperfect people. However, our Heavenly Father is perfect and He only looks upon us with love and gratitude when we try to do things for His Glory.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless everyone listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to do everything for you. Please help us to know that we are enough just as we are. We don’t have to prove ourselves to you. Please help us to see that what we are doing may look small, but we are planting seeds that will grow into giant trees some days. Lord, in our efforts to please you sometimes we get caught up in thinking about ourselves and how much we are doing. It is not about ourselves Lord, help us always look to you instead. We love you Lord and we thank you for all you do in our lives. We thank you for taking our tiny seeds and helping them grow into trees. We can’t ever thank you enough. You are amazing Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I hope you were able to spend a little more time in prayer this week. Next week’s character trait is compassionate. I will send out an email on Sunday with ideas on how to grow in compassion over the next week. I look forward to spending time with you on Monday. Have a blessed weekend!
We Are More Than Conquerors Through Him Who Loved Us
Romans 8:35-39 “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
This scripture verse is letting us know that there is nothing that we can do that will separate us from God’s love. It is also telling us that we should not interpret the bad things that are happening in our lives as proof that God has stopped loving us. God will continue to love us forever. There is nothing that we can do to change this. The verse is asking us if hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril or sword will separate us from Christ. This is a tough question because these things can separate us if we let them. One really important part of this verse is when it says, “No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” Do you need to hear that again? “We are more than conquerors through him who loved us.”
If this is the case, then why do we feel so defeated at times? Some of the things listed above can absolutely separate us from Christ if we let them. Have you ever gone through a hardship and instead of feeling closer to God, you felt farther away? Have you ever struggled to see where God was in all of your pain? This can happen to a lot of people. I just heard about a couple that lost one of their 6 month old little twins. Lose of a child is something that can really strain your relationship with God. Losing a loved one is always hard. However, losing a child has got to be one of the hardest to understand. It makes no sense to us. Why did she have to die? Why would God do this to their family? Why wouldn’t God heal her, as we know that He can? When we are hurting we tend to lash out and we try to find someone to blame. God is a good candidate as He is strong and He can take our anger. God doesn’t mind when we yell at Him, as He understands what we are going through.
The problem is when we don’t process our anger and our grief and we stay mad at God. If we are able to lean into God instead of turning away from Him in anger, God can give us the strength to get back up again after we have been knocked down. God can ease our pain and help us to get out of bed in the morning. God can help us find a reason to go on. We can do all things through Christ who strengthens us. We can defeat the grief we feel if we turn to God and ask Him to help us. The same is true with any hardship you are going through. Maybe you have lost your job, and you don’t know how you are going to provide for your family right now. Turn to God and He will help you provide. He will provide for you if you ask Him too, He is that amazing!
What about persecution and famine, could that separate you from Christ? I can see how it could. If you are being persecuted for your beliefs, you may start to hide your beliefs more so that you fit in with the crowd. You may even compromise your beliefs just so that you do not get persecuted anymore. Today when I was listening to the Bible in a Year podcast Father Mike read from 2 Maccabees 6. It told the story of a wise old man named Eleazar. The Greeks were trying to get the Jews to become more the like Greeks. They were trying to force Eleazar to eat pork, which was against Jewish laws. His friends were telling him that it would be ok, he could eat whatever meat he wanted to eat, but it would look like he was eating the pork. The Greeks wouldn’t know the difference and Eleazar wouldn’t have to die.
However, Eleazar refused saying that if people saw him eat the meat and thought that he had gone against the Lord’s law, then they too might sin and He couldn’t do that. Eleazar was able to withstand the persecution, but what about those that didn’t. Persecution and famine can definitely mess with your head. Most of us don’t want to die, especially if that dying involves torture and a painful death. We also don’t want to starve to death. When you don’t have anything to eat and you haven’t had anything for a very long time, you will do somethings that you normally wouldn’t. The same goes for how you act when your life is on the line.
These things don’t have to separate us from the Lord. If we turn to Him, and ask Him for help, we will get the help we are looking for. Remember, it says right in this verse that, “We are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” We can conquer anything with Christ. He is there for us and He will help us get through whatever it is we are going through. The only thing we need to do is ask for this help and then accept when He offers it to us. I know accepting help can be hard. We think we need to be strong and do it all ourselves. I am telling you, accept the help. Accept the help, even if it looks different than you thought it would. You never know how God will reach out and help. Sometimes it is through a complete stranger, sometimes it is exactly what you asked for and sometimes it is nothing like the help that you asked for. The thing is, God knows best. If He is sending you help it is because that is exactly what you need right now. Accept it. Trust that He knows what He is doing. I will end with the end of the verse as I think it sums it up nicely and it doesn’t really need any explaining. “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Dear Heavenly Father, I pray that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to lean into you in times of distress and not turn away. Lord, give us the strength to not let anything separate us from your love. Give us the strength to get back up again when life knocks us down. Help us to process our grief in a way that does not blame you for all that is going wrong. Help us to see that you are with us through all the bad and the good. We love you Lord, you are so amazing, help us to never forget that. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I hope you have a very happy Thanksgiving to those of you that are in America. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow, have a blessed day!!
All We Need To Do Is Ask
Wisdom 7:7 “Therefore I prayed, and understanding was given me; I called on God, and the spirit of wisdom came to me.”
We have talked about King Solomon before and how on the night before He became King God told Solomon that He would give Him whatever He asked for. King Solomon could have asked for anything and do you remember what he asked for? Did he ask for riches and wealth? Did he ask for all his enemies to be delivered into his hands? Did he ask for all the fame and power that can come with being a king? No, he didn’t ask for any of that. He asked for Wisdom so that he could be a just and fair ruler over his kingdom. When I just searched how old Solomon was when he became king it said he was 12. Can you imagine becoming king at 12 years old? That must have been so much responsibility for such a young man. He was just a boy. Even though he was just a young boy, he knew enough to pray for wisdom. I find that amazing.
I talked a few days ago about how we don’t think like God thinks. I talked about how His ways are higher than our ways and His thoughts are higher than our thoughts. One way to help us understand God’s plan a little more is to pray for wisdom. When we are praying for wisdom we are praying that God will help us to make the right decisions. We are praying that He will show us what we need to do and how we can do it. We are praying that God reveals to us the next step, the next right thing that we should do. We need God’s guidance in what is right and wrong. We need God to give us the gift of wisdom.
One way that God teaches us wisdom is through His Word. When we read His Word, we can see what He has taught those that came before us. We can see what they have done in the past and we can learn from them. There is so much wisdom in the Bible. I mean there is a whole book of the Bible called Wisdom. This is not the only book that is full of wisdom though. Proverbs and Sirach are another two that are full of wisdom. If there is a certain subject, or topic that you are looking for wisdom about, you can search the Bible. Actually, you can search the internet and it will search the Bible for you, if you are not sure where to look. You can just type a question into the search bar and it will search the Bible for you. For instance, you can type, “What does the bible say about gossip?” The internet search will provide you with bible verses about gossip as well as articles that people have written about that subject. Give it a try, I think you will be surprised with all that you can learn.
Another way God teaches us wisdom is through our experiences. This one can be difficult at times as it is usually through out mistakes that we learn our best lessons. We can learn through our successes and our failures, however, our failures usually lead us to our successes. Well, they do if we let them. Sometimes we don’t learn our lesson through our mistakes and then we repeat the same mistakes over and over again. Proverbs 26:11 says, “Like a dog that returns to its vomit is a fool who reverts to his folly.” This is not a very pretty picture, but I think it is an accurate picture to prove this point. It makes no sense that a dog would return to eat its own vomit. Whatever it was that came up, obviously didn’t sit well with them the first time around, why would they want to try it again? The same is true for us when we do something that we already know will not work. Why do we keep trying the same thing over and over again when its not working? Albert Einstein said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
Why do we do this? Why is it so hard for us to learn from our mistakes sometimes? I feel as though with some things we learn pretty quickly. For instance, if we touch a hot stove, we learn pretty quickly that we do not want to do that again. However, when it comes to other things, we repeat the same mistakes over and over again. For instance, I know that if I sit down to watch “one quick episode” before I do the thing I am supposed to be doing, I will get sucked in and watch several episodes and then won’t have time to do the important thing I was supposed to do. I know this about myself and recently have gotten a lot better about it. However, for years I would tell myself that I would just watch “one quick episode” while I ate my breakfast. It kills me to think how many hundreds of hours I have wasted watching TV when I knew better. How about you? Are there some lessons that God is trying to teach you and no matter how many times it goes wrong, you still keep doing it? When will we learn? When will decide, enough is enough and learn the lesson already?
Another great way that we can gain wisdom is mentioned in the verse above. “Therefore I prayed, and understanding was given me; I called on God, and the spirit of wisdom came to me.” This seems so simple and yet is so profound. We know that when we ask God answers, so why don’t we think that we will get wisdom just by asking? Maybe you do know this. Maybe it is just me that struggles with this. Actually as I said yesterday, we are never alone. Some of you may already know this, but I know some of you are in the same boat as me. I tend to feel like I have to earn whatever it is I am asking for. Do you ever feel like this? This is something that God has really been talking to me about a lot lately. I ask God for wisdom, and then I try to see what prayers I should be saying or what things I should be doing. I try to take it upon myself to gain the wisdom that I am seeking. Why don’t I know that just asking God for it is enough? It says right here in the verse, “I prayed, and understanding was given to me; I called on God, and the spirit of wisdom came to me.”
It’s that simple. Why do I try to make it harder? Why am I not trusting that He will answer my call and grant me the gift of wisdom? When I was praying on this the other day, the story to the centurion came to mind. This story can be found in Matthew 8:5-10. “When Jesus had entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him, asking for help. “Lord,” he said, “my servant lies at home paralyzed, suffering terribly.” Jesus said to him, “Shall I come and heal him?” The centurion replied, “Lord, I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. But just say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and that one, ‘Come,’ and he comes. I say to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.” When Jesus heard this, he was amazed and said to those following him, “Truly I tell you, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith.”
When I hear this story I am in awe of this centurion. He trusted that if Jesus said his servant would be healed then He would be healed. He didn’t need Jesus to come lay hands on the servant, he didn’t need Him to say a particular prayer. All the centurion needed is for Jesus to say that his servant would be healed and he believed it would happen. If we ask God for wisdom He will give it to us. We don’t have to earn it, we don’t have to do anything other than ask. God has told us this over and over again in the Bible, ask and it will be given, seek and you will find. I am hoping that this time around I am ready to learn this lesson and I will actually stop trying to figure it out on my own and trust that because I have asked God for wisdom, He will deliver.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we pray to you for wisdom. We ask that you help us find the wisdom in your scriptures. We pray that you help us to learn from our mistakes and not be like fools returning to our folly. We know you are the only one that can help us learn those lessons Lord. Help us to trust that because we asked you will answer. Help us to trust that there is nothing else we need to do. Your gifts are freely given and do not need to be earned they just need to be sought after. We love you so much Lord, you are truly amazing. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I hope you quest to become more prayerful this week is going well. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Although tomorrow is Thanksgiving here is America, so if you do not meet me here tomorrow I will assume you are having a great time with family and friends. Have a blessed day!
Helping Others Climb Their Mountain
2 Corinthians 1:3-5 “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ.”
This verse reminds me of a saying I heard several years ago that brought me comfort. At the time there was a lot going on in my family. Everything was so hard and I didn’t understand why it was happening. Why I needed to be going through all of that with my boys or with my marriage. I read a book called Courage by Debbie Ford. Or at least I think that is the book I found it in. The quote was something to the effect of, “Maybe you have been given this mountain to climb so that you can show others it can be done.” I don’t know what it was about this quote that helped me feel better. Maybe it was because I felt it gave my suffering a purpose. I was not longer wondering why I was going through all this. I knew I was going through it so that I could help others through it later on.
This is what this verse is telling us. God is with us in our troubles and He comforts us. God will be there for you through everything. There is nothing you have to go through a lone. He is always there for you, not only to comfort you, but to strengthen you, to help you through it. I love how this verse starts with reminding us that God is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion, and the God of all comfort. God plays so many rolls in our lives and it is important to remember that He is not only there to solve our problems, fix things for us, heal us and our loved ones. He also wants to be there to comfort us. He understands what we are going through and has compassion on us.
Do you ever feel like you are alone in your situation? Like no one understands what you are going through? Does this feeling cause you to hide your situation or make you want to not talk about it because no one would understand anyway? Do you feel like if people knew what you were going through then they would judge you or think you were in the wrong? I bet the answer for many of us is yes. Do you know why I think that? I have talked to a lot of people over the years and most of them felt alone. Most of them felt so alone and did not talk about their situation because they felt ashamed or they felt like they would be judged. If this is you, I assure you, you are not the only one that is going through what you are going through. I also know that it is normal to feel like you are.
Do you know who wants you to feel like you are alone? The enemy does. He is a liar and he tries to convince us that we are alone because we are not as powerful when we are alone. When you are alone and not talking about your situation to anyone then he can come into your situation and twist everything around and make things worse than they really are. He can tell you that things will never change, he will tell you that you shouldn’t bother people with your problems. He will tell you that you are annoying when you talk about your problems to others and then they won’t want to be around you. He will tell you that you are an inconvenience if you ask for help. He will tell you that other people don’t have time for you. He will tell you that if you tell others they will judge you, then they won’t like you anymore. He will tell you all sorts of things to keep you feeling alone. He will take any chance of joy or hope away from you. It is so important that you hear me right now, HE IS A LIAR! HE IS A LIAR!
You are not alone, there are many people right now that are going through the same thing and there are many people that have already gone through it. Find someone who had been where you are and has made it through. I promise you there is a way through whatever you are facing. There are many people that have survived it and can give you a roadmap to get through it to. Find a community. I guarantee there is one out there. If it is parenting, dealing with teens and depression, behavior issues, marriage, success in career, whatever it is, there is a community of people out there that is also struggling with the very thing you are struggling with. If you don’t believe me, send me a message with your struggle and I will find you the support community you are looking for. The enemy wants us to be alone, let’s not give him that satisfaction.
Let’s address some of the other things he says. You would be bothering others with your problems. This is not true. People that truly love you want to know when you are hurting and want to help when they can. Even if they can’t help, just saying your problems out loud to another person helps. I once heard this technique, I forgot where I heard it, but these two people would partner up and they would call each other once a week and vent about what was going on their lives. The other person would just listen, not give any advice, just listen. Then the next person would go, again, it was not a time to give advice, just a chance to say it all out loud to another person. Besides not advice, the other rule was that it was a completely judgement free zone. If you are keeping your situation to yourself, I promise you talking about it out loud will help immensely. Give it a try. If you don’t feel you could possible trust anyone, then sit in your car and talk out loud to yourself and to God. If you don’t feel better then send me a message and let me know because I have never heard of anyone that didn’t feel better after getting it all out.
Let’s talk about when the enemy tells you things will never change. He tells you that you will be in this situation forever. This is not true. I don’t know what your circumstance is. Maybe it is something that will be a life long issue. For instance, you have a illness that is not curable, or you are a caretaker to a family member who’s situation is not going to improve. Even if this is the case, that does not mean that there is no hope. Even if you do not believe that a miraculous healing could occur, things can still get better. If your situation can not change, you can change how you are showing up in that situation. For instance, maybe you are worn out and just so tired. You can learn how to practice self care. You can ask for help. You can trust others because as much as we know that we are the only ones that can do things right, that is not true either. That is another lie from the enemy to get you feeling like you have to do it all. That way you are tired and worn out and can’t fight off his attacks. If you don’t know of anyone that can help, ask at your local church, search online for volunteer organizations that help care takers. I promise there are people out there that want to help. Even if your situation can’t change, you change how you show up to that situation, please remember that. You have so much more power than the enemy wants you to think you do. If you are feeling like your situation is hopeless and you see no way things will change, please send me an email at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com and I can give you more specific ways for your specific circumstance. I can’t go into much detail in this short 10 minute episode, but I feel very strongly that everyone can change their circumstances or how they show up to them. I believe that no one is stuck in a hopeless situation.
I know this one may be a bit long, and I am sorry for that. I just get so worked up when I think of how much the enemy is attacking us and making people feel like they are alone. This is why I think this verse is a great reminder that God shows us compassion and comfort, and we need to make sure that compassion and comfort doesn’t stop with us. Is there someone in your life that you know is suffering? Have you been afraid to say anything because you feel it is none of your business, or what stops me sometimes is being worried they will not want my help. We need to be brave and bold and ask anyway. Maybe they will reject your help, maybe they aren’t ready to admit they need help or ready to accept it. Either way, you will be grateful that you at least asked, and they will be too, even if they can’t show it. Anytime I have been bold enough to step out and ask if someone was ok, or if they needed help, they were always grateful. We are all social creatures. We need community. God did not create us to be alone. If you are in a place to help others, please be bold and brave enough to offer. If you are feeling alone, hopeless, helpless, or overwhelmed, please be bold and brave enough to reach out for help. I am going to say these next four sentences because I know someone listening to this needs to hear them. YOU ARE LOVED! YOU ARE ENOUGH! YOU ARE STRONG! YOU CAN DO HARD THINGS!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to see the enemies lies for what they are. Help shine a light on any lies in our lives that we might be believing. Help us to know that our situation is never hopeless because with you all things are possible. Help us all to be bold and brave and to reach out and ask for help when we need it, or accept the help that is offered. Help us also be bold and brave enough to offer help wherever we can. Lord, we are so thankful for all the compassion and comfort that you give to us. Please help us to pass that on to others. Lord, help us to love others as you love us. You are truly amazing and we love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you know someone that is struggling maybe send them this episode so they can see that they are not alone and that people want to help them. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Trust Him
Isaiah 55:8-9 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
This is a verse that can bring us comfort in difficult times. It is also one that can be frustrating at times. It can be frustrating when our thoughts don’t match up with God’s thoughts. Sometimes we have no idea what God is thinking. His ways don’t make sense to us. We pray for our loved one to be cured, and then they pass away. How does that make sense? I thought if I asked God he would answer? I thought according to John 14:13, “And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.” If Jesus said He will do whatever we ask in His name, why did my loved one die? These are questions that many of us find ourselves asking in a difficult time. When I have asked them the answer I have received has been that God did cure my loved one because there is no sickness in heaven. Also, the Lord always points be back to this verse.
His ways are higher than our ways. That may be frustrating at times, but most of the time I find it very comforting. I don’t have to worry that my future is in the hands of someone that thinks like we do. Not that our thinking it bad, but it is limited. God’s scope is limitless. He can see around every bend, twist, and turn in your life. He can anticipate every move you are going to make. This can be frustrating too because you don’t know all those twists and turns. He may be working one thing in your life and it makes not sense to you at all. Yet, in five years when you need to cross a bridge and you only have the strength to do it because of that thing that you did 5 years ago, it all makes sense. Well, actually, it only makes sense if you are looking for ways that it makes sense. If you are able to take the time to self reflect, then it will all make sense one day.
The thing that got me thinking of God’s ways not always making sense was the first reading at the daily Mass on Wednesday. It was from 2 Maccabees 7:1, 20-32, which I know will not be in everyone’s bible. If it is not in your Bible, do a quick google search and you will be able to read the whole story. I won’t read the whole thing to you here, but I do suggest you read it. Actually, the whole Maccabees book is a good one to read. In these verses it talks about a mother who had 7 sons. They were Jewish and the invading army was forcing the Jewish people to eat pork. She and her sons refused and she had to watch all her sons be tortured and killed rather than go against the laws given to them by Moses. They were being faithful to God. They were refusing to compromise their beliefs, they were giving up their lives for God and yet, they still died. In our eyes, they were not saved.
However, God’s ways our higher than our ways, and He is not going to abandon His children. We don’t know what these men were saved from. Maybe they were saved from the fires of hell because if they compromised on this one thing, maybe they would have gotten so caught up in the new culture that they would have fallen away from the ways of the Lord. We don’t know. Maybe they were saved from having to live under the rule of this new authority? Maybe God was rewarding them for their faithfulness by taking them out of this broken world. We don’t know. We don’t know what God was thinking, but we do know that he knows more than we do and if He did, it was for a reason.
Do you remember the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego? If you want to revisit this story it is in the Book of Daniel chapter 3. These 3 were Jewish and they were set over the affairs in the province of Babylon. King Nebuchadnezzar built a giant statue out of gold and put out a mandate that everyone must bow to it. They refused and said they would only bow to the Lord our God. When they were confronted by Nebuchadnezzar and asked why they wouldn’t bow and told if they didn’t bow they would be put in the fiery furnace, “Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego replied to him, “King Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to deliver us from it, and he will deliver us from Your Majesty’s hand. But even if he does not, we want you to know, Your Majesty, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.”
Can you imagine the bravery of these three men? Can you imagine their faith? They knew that the Lord our God could save them and they believed he would save them, and yet, they were prepared to die if He did not save them. They were definitely gifted with some holy boldness in order to be able to stand up to the king like that, and also to be willing to die instead of betraying their Lord, our Lord. I wonder if I would have the courage? I wonder how I would react? I remember having a discussion about Martyrs once with a friend. She was saying that it was crazy to give up your life if someone is threatening to kill you instead of just doing that one thing.
For instance, Saint Maria Goretti was stabbed to death because she refused to let a childhood friend force himself on her. My friend was saying that Maria didn't have to die. God would have forgiven her. He knew she didn’t want to do it. My friend said she couldn’t imagine that God would have wanted Maria to die. I understand what she is saying. God is always willing to forgive as long as we ask for it. The thing about Martyrs is, they don’t see a choice in this type of circumstance. They love the Lord so much and have devoted their life to Him and living with the thought that they betrayed Him, is not an option. Also, Saint Maria was not just thinking about herself in this instance. I don’t know if she was thinking about herself at all. What she kept saying in the movie was, “God doesn’t want you to do this.” She was concerned for her friends soul as well. She didn’t want him to cross that line and end up suffering in eternity for it.
Yes, I believe that God would have forgiven these men for eating pork instead of sacrificing their life for it. However, I also believe that their reward in heaven because of their sacrifice was so much greater than their suffering in the moment. I believe if Saint Maria Goretti would have not been able to resist, God would have continued to love her and favor her. However, because she was able to resist, God was able to use her sacrifice to save so many others that would not have been saved. Maria, was rushed to the hospital and before she died she forgave the kid that assaulted her. That kid went to jail and served his time. The whole time all he could think about is how she forgave him. He went on to become a priest. Saint Maria Goretti is a great example of forgiveness and because of her sacrifice, so many people have been able to forgive, have been able to know the love of God.
Do you see how God’s ways are higher than our ways? We don’t always understand His plan. Why did the mother have to watch her 7 sons die? Why didn’t God save them? Why didn’t He at least leave her one of them? Why didn’t he deliver them in a way that we think He should have. Why did he let Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego live? I guess I didn’t mention that earlier. In case you are not familiar with that story. King Nebuchadnezzar was so angry at their reply that he threw them into the fiery furnace, which he had ordered to make extra hot. After they were thrown in to the furnace the king looked in and he saw four people in the furnace not three and they were completely untouched by the fire. The Lord had sent his angel in there to protect them. When the king saw that they were untouched by the fire he called for them to come out of the fire and they walked right out. Then Nebuchadnezzar said, “Praise be to the God of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, who has sent his angel and rescued his servants! They trusted in him and defied the king’s command and were willing to give up their lives rather than serve or worship any god except their own God. Therefore I decree that the people of any nation or language who say anything against the God of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego be cut into pieces and their houses be turned into piles of rubble, for no other god can save in this way.”
God sent an angel down to save these three, but he allowed the 7 sons to be tortured and killed. This can be hard to reconcile with because we don’t think like God thinks. I run into this thinking frequently, especially when it comes to people who are sick. I believe with all my being that God can cure any illness, even mental illness. I know he can. There isn’t a doubt in my mind. This means that I struggle when He doesn’t. We have a lot of conversations about it. I question Him a lot about it. I wonder if I am doing something wrong with my prayers. I wonder if I should be doing more. I wonder why I can’t heal this person. And there it is. I can’t heal anyone, only God can. Every time I have these discussions with the Lord, He always says the same thing. “My thoughts are greater than your thoughts, and my ways are better than your ways. Why are you doubting me? Why do you keep questioning me? I know what I am doing and I am doing what is best for everyone. Yes, it hurts sometimes but there is always a reason. I am your Father, you will not always like what I do, you won’t always agree with it, but it is what is best. Trust me.”
Wow, how can I argue with that. When you find yourself wondering what the heck God is thinking remember these words that he told me. Remember this verse, maybe write it down and remind yourself of it often if you are in a difficult place right now. God knows what He is doing. I know it is hard for us to see it and hard for us to even believe it sometimes. Trust Him. He has got you in the palm of His hands, just relax and let Him take care of you.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to understand that your ways are higher than our ways. Help us to trust that you know what you are doing and that you have a reason. Help us know believe with our whole being that you have our best interests at heart and if you are doing something then there will be something good that comes out of it. Help us to be ok with not knowing. Help us to not get lost in the questioning and the needing to know why. Give us reassurance that everything will all make sense one day, even if it is not until we join you in heaven. We love you so much and we thank you for all you do for us. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you all for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. This week’s character trait is prayerful. How can we become more prayerful this week. I sent out and email last night to all those involved in this challenge. It is not too late to sign up if you want to join us for the second half of this challenge. There will be a link (CLICK HERE to register) in the show notes or you can email catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com The article I sent in the email last night is titled, 12 Practical Ways To Improve Your Prayer Life. I will put a link in the show notes. (CLICK HERE) I hope it will give you some great tips. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Seek The Lord
Psalm 34:4-7 “I sought the Lord, and he answered me, and delivered me from all my fears. Look to him, and be radiant; so your faces shall never be ashamed. This poor soul cried, and was heard by the Lord, and was saved from every trouble. The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him, and delivers them.” (NRSV)
Did you catch those first four words? I sought the Lord. Sought is an action word. It does not say that I did nothing and the Lord answered my prayers. It says I sought the Lord and he answered my prayers. We have to take the step to seek the Lord and he will answer the prayers that we are asking for. What can you do to seek the Lord? You can spend time with Him. You can talk to Him and pray to Him. You can read His Word. There are lots of ways you can seek the Lord. Which one will you choose?
The next line is something that I bet we are all praying for. He delivered me from all my fears. How great would it be to be delivered from all your fears. What are your fears? Why do you have those fears? Have you sought the Lord when it comes to delivery from those fears? The Lord is willing to help us when we ask for it. Have you asked for His help? Why not? What have you got to lose? Why is it that we would rather sit with our fear than turn to the Lord and ask Him for help with it?
Is it that we feel we don’t need help? We can handle it on our own? Is it that we think it is too small of a problem for the Lord our God to handle? Is it that we feel embarrassed that we fear anything at all? Do we think if we don’t ask the Lord for help then He won’t know we are afraid? Whatever the reason is, the Lord is just waiting for us to invite Him into our fears and ask for His help. He can deliver us from our fears if we turn to Him and invite Him to take care of them for us. If we are going to fight to keep our fears, by not talking about them and not getting help for them, then we will get to keep them. Is this what we want? Do we want to keep our fears, or do we want to release them and get on living our best life?
The next part of the verse says, “Those who look to him are radiant.” Have you ever seen someone that looked radiant. I don’t mean literally shining like diamonds, like Edward in the Twilight Series. I mean someone that just glowed. A lot of people say that when someone is pregnant the are glowing. They also say this about the newlyweds or people that just fell in love. What is this glow? It is their joy shining through. They are so happy they can’t contain it all and it is shines through. You will also notice this with people who are filled with the Holy Spirit. Their pure joy can not be contained.
“Look to him, and be radiant; so your faces shall never be ashamed.” The second part of this is saying that if you keep your eyes on the Lord you won’t do anything that will cause you shame. If you turn away from the Lord, you may turn to other things. Things that may cause you to do things that are shameful. Can you think of a time when you did something that you were not proud of? When you did it, were your eyes fixed on the Lord or on something else? We can be easily led astray when we take our eye of Jesus. He can be our protection and our shelter if we let Him. If we keep our eyes fixed on Jesus we will walk in His ways and our face will never be covered in shame.
Then the verse goes back to the idea of us seeking him. It says, “This poor soul cried, and was heard by the Lord, and was saved from every trouble.” First the soul called out, and then the Lord heard Him and saved him out of all his troubles. We must take that first step. Once we do, God can take over and it will be a glorious day when we let Him do that. We like to think we can fix things on our own. So, God lets us. I wonder if He rolls his eyes or shakes His head as He watches us make the same mistakes over and over again? I wonder what He thinks every time we go back to trying to do it all ourselves. When we will learn? Why can’t we just turn to Him the moment we encounter trouble? Why is it so hard?
The last part of this verse says, “The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him, and delivers them.” What I like most about this last part is that it talks about the angel of the Lord encamping around those who fear him. I don’t know about you, but having an angel encamp around me sound pretty great. Did you know that you have a guardian angel? We all do. Our angel is there to protect us and guide us. We can talk to our angel and we can ask our angel for help or for guidance. Father Padre Pio had a very close relationship with his guardian angel. He used to tell his spirtual children, if you are in trouble and you can not get to me, send your guardian angel to me. He would tell them this for confession as well. I watched a video about Father Padre Pio and his ability to hear other people’s guardian angels when they were sent to him. It was remarkable. I am going to put a link for it in the show notes as I was blown away listening to it. It is not a long video. I recommend checking it out. (Click Here for Video)
We have so much to learn from the Saints. They are truly remarkable people. Listening to Father Padre Pio talk about his guardian angel it makes me realize that I am neglecting mine. If they are there to protect and guide me, why and I not calling upon my angel more? It is not as if I don’t need the guidance. I have started to call upon my guardian angel more. I ask my angel to go before me into any tough situation and soften the hearts of those I am meeting with. I ask that my angel talk to their angel and ask that their ears and hearts be opened to listen. I have passed this suggestion on to others, I think this was another thing that Padre Pio suggested, but I can’t be sure it was him. I have friends that have reported meetings that they expected to go badly, or conversations that they dreaded having, actually went well when they asked their angel to prepare the way. What do you think? Are you going to start calling on your angel? Or maybe you are still skeptical. That’s fair, I only started learning about the angels and their power in the last couple of years. May I suggest though, if you are not sure about angels, you do some research? If you do your research and don’t find any compelling evidence that guardian angels exist, then you haven’t lost anything but some time. However, if you do research and you see how powerful your angel is and that you could have that angel using that power to protect and guide you, wouldn’t you want to know that? I guarantee if you start to learn more about the angels you won’t be sorry. They are truly amazing!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we are seeking you, please help us. Lord please deliver us from our fears and our troubles. Help us to keep our eyes fixed on you so that we do not do anything that could cause us shame. Lord thank you for giving us each a guardian angel to protect us and guide us. Teach us how to rely on that angel Lord. We are so very thankful that you are so amazing. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. “When you hold resentment toward another, you are bound to that person or condition by an emotional link that is stronger than steel. Forgiveness is the only way to dissolve that link and get free.” That is a quote by Katherine Ponder. I look forward to spending time with you on Monday. Have a blessed weekend!
Praise & Thanksgiving
Psalm 145:1-3 “I will proclaim your greatness, my God and king; I will thank you forever and ever. Every day I will thank you; I will praise you forever and ever. The Lord is great and is to be highly praised; his greatness is beyond understanding.”
I read this and thought it was a great verse for us since one week from today is Thanksgiving. I have probably talked about gratitude before, just as I am sure that I have talked about praising the Lord before. This is because both keep coming up in the scripture and both are very important. I was just talking to a friend on the phone today and she mentioned that she was talking to a family member and they had a great discussion on gratitude. She said they talked about being thankful for this day and the sun and all the little things. She was explaining to him how important gratitude is.
I was talking with another friend after mass this morning and she also happened to mention gratitude. She suggested picking one night of the week and having the kids think of at least one thing they can be thankful for and then talking about how important gratitude is. There are so many benefits to gratitude and no down side. One benefit of gratitude is that it can help you shift your mood. You can take any circumstance that you are in, and find something in that moment to be grateful for. No matter how bad the situation is, if you can find something to be grateful for, then it will help shift your mood.
For example, if you have lost a loved one recently, you can be grateful that you had that loved one to lose, some people don’t. If you broke your arm, you can be thankful that you still have your arm, or that it will heal eventually. Some people lose their arms and have to figure out how to live life without it. Although, even in that circumstance you can be grateful that you didn’t lose more than you arm, or you can be grateful that although you lost your arm, at least you didn’t lose your life. These are examples of how you can find something to be grateful for in any situation, even the bad ones.
However, what about the good times. It is important to be grateful in the good times as well. Sometimes when things are going well we don’t take the time to stop and be grateful for it. Why is this? Is it that we are just too busy? Is it that we don’t think of it? Is it because we don’t want to jinx it? I’m not sure why we don’t do this more, maybe it is a combination of all those reasons. The reason why isn’t really important. What is important is that we start doing it now. If we want God to trust us with more, then we need to show him that we appreciate what we already have. What can you be thankful for today? Can you pause this episode and list 5 things that you are grateful for today? They don’t have to be big things, it could be as simple as the changing of the leaves. I find myself so much more grateful this time a year. I just drive around in awe of God’s magnificent beauty and it makes me so grateful to be alive. What makes you smile, brings you joy and makes you grateful to be alive? Have you thanked the good Lord above for it yet? Why not, you wouldn’t have it without Him.
“I will proclaim your greatness, my God and king; I will thank you forever and ever. Every day I will thank you; I will praise you forever and ever. The Lord is great and is to be highly praised; his greatness is beyond understanding.” I just talked about gratitude and how we should be grateful to God for all that we have. Now, I want to talk about praise. This is why I read the verse to you again. It is so beautiful. I will proclaim your greatness, my God and king, I will thank you forever and ever. Do you see how the two sentiments go together so nicely in this verse. First is the praise, talking about how great the Lord is. Then it ends with I will thank you forever and ever. The author is taking time to stop and thank the Lord for all that He has done for him.
Then it says, every day I will thank you; I will praise you forever and ever. Do you see how both of these things are so important to the Lord? He wants us to thank Him every single day and also praise Him forever. Praising the Lord can be something else that we forget to do. We don’t usually forget to pray to the Lord when we need something, however, praising him is not something that we think to do. What if you started adding praise into your prayers? What if at the same time as you are asking God for something you were also telling Him how great He is? For instance, “Dear Lord, I ask that you be with my son as he has a contest at school today. Please help him to be calm and remember what he has learned. Please help him to be gracious, whether he wins or not. Lord, you are truly amazing. You do so much for us and we are so very thankful. I love you Lord and I ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Did you see how easy praising the Lord can be? It could be as simple as adding a line or two to the prayers you are already saying. Another time we seem to forget to praise the Lord is after He has answered our prayers. This may sound strange as you would think the first thing we would do when our prayers are answered is thank the Lord. However, sometimes, we don’t realize out prayers have been answered. Sometimes we look at good things happening and think we are lucky. Or we know something great happened but we don’t remember it just so happens to be the exact thing that we were praying for. It is not that we are trying to forget about God, we just don’t see the miracle He gave us.
I have been noticing God’s miracles a lot more ever since I started to write down my prayers. I have been making a conscious effort to write down the things I am asking God for and those that others ask me to pray for. I write them down in a notebook and then I leave space underneath so I can go back and write notes when they have been answered. Here are a few answered prayers:
My friends eye was healed!
A young severely depressed girl found a treatment center after being told all the beds were filled.
My friend to raise more than $20,000 for her mission cause in Haiti.
A woman who was losing hope that her baby would ever get to come home as he was in the hospital for over a year got to take her baby home.
Someone else’s toe was healed.
A woman who had several miscarriages was finally able to get pregnant again and have a healthy pregnancy.
A friend who was really ill with COVID and then had a blood clot and was in ICU for a while is now home with his family.
A church was starting a new UNBOUND ministry and wanted prayers for a successful ministry. Their first session was awesome.
A friend had to have eye surgery and was very anxious. She had a very successful surgery and was able to sleep through it all.
A friend’s brother needed to find a new residential facility. He was living on the other side of the state and it was hard for my friend to get to see him. Now he is living just minutes away.
God is so good! He is there answering our prayers. If you can’t see how God is working in your lives, then may I suggest you start writing down your prayers. Keep a list of all the things you have asked God for, and then periodically look through the list and see if any have been answered. It’s not really a if they have been answered as much as it noticing when they are answered. Because God tells us “Ask and it will be given to you.” He does answer our prayers, we just need to pay attention. I believe the more you can praise the Lord and thank the Lord, the more you will be aware of His presence in your life. I don’t think if you praise and thank the Lord He will show up more, He is already showing up. I just think if you are praising Him and thanking Him, you will see it more. Will you take the time to notice Him?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to praise you and thank you. We repent for all the times that you answered our prayers and we did not thank you or praise you. Lord we are sorry for all the times that you answered our prayers and we didn’t even recognize that you answered them. Lord, help us notice this more. You are so great and you always answer our prayers, help us to see this every time Lord. We love you so much and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus, and also the walk to be more like Jesus over the past few weeks. How are you doing with forgiving this week? Is there someone that you just can’t seem to forgive. A woman at a Bible study said one time that a priest told her if you can’t forgive someone, then just try to want to forgive, or even try to want to want to forgive. We all need to start somewhere. It doesn’t have to be all your nothing. Baby steps. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow, have a blessed day!
Our Influences
Philippians 3:17-18 “Brothers and sisters, join in imitating me, and observe those who live according to the example you have in us. For many live as enemies of the cross of Christ; I have often told you of them, and now I tell you even with tears.”
This verse stuck out to me because it is something that I believe very strongly in and it is something that I think people don’t put enough consideration into. Who are you spending your time with? What information are you surrounding yourself with? We are influenced by our environment, I don’t think anyone would argue with that statement. I think we would all agree that the people we’re around and the things we surround ourselves with will influence how we think and how we act. Do you agree? There have been numerous studies done to see whether nature, our DNA, or nurture, our environment and our experiences are more influential in determining the kind of person we become. I don’t know the results of all these studies, but I do know that both are important. Both play a significant role. I believe this is why you can have 11 children growing up in the same house with the same parents and yet they all seem to be very different people.
Even though I think we all know that our environment and the people we spend time with influences our thoughts and our behavior, we still do very little to take control over these things. If our child has a friend that we think is a bad influence, we will want to do something about it. Now, depending on the age of the child and our level of influence we may or may not be able to act on that want. However, what about us? Do we watch who we are friends with? Do you have negative people in your life? Do you have people that no matter what is going on, they always seem to find something to complain about? Do you have people in your life that drain your energy or make you feel bad about yourself when you spend time with them. Why do we continue to spend time with these people.
Why don’t we spend more time consciously choosing the people that we spend more time with? If we want to live a holy life, one full of all the love and joy that comes from following Christ, then we need to surround ourselves with people that want the same thing. I remember I told my husband Tony once that we needed more Catholic friends. He joked and said, “Oh, now we can’t be friends with people that aren’t Catholic. Doesn’t Jesus love all people.” Yes, Jesus loves everyone, and so do I. Well, I try to anyway. However, the way I explained it to Tony was like this. What if you wanted to be a really good tennis player. Do you think it would be easier to become a great tennis player if you surrounded yourself with other tennis players or with basketball players. There is nothing wrong with basketball players. You may even like that sport. However, if you want to get good at something you hang around with people who are either already good at it, or who are also trying to get good at it.
This is the same with anything that you are trying to get good at. If you want to be a really great parent, find yourself some friends that parent the way you want to parent. If you want to be good at running, join a running group. It is important for anyone who is serious about getting good at something to find others that are already good at it and to learn from them. This is why having a mentor is so important. You may not have a lot of control over your friends. You may not have time to have friends because you are busy with work and family. Although as I am writing this I want to add in that everyone can benefit from making time for friends. Tony and I went out with another couple the other weekend and we had no idea how much we missed having adult friends that we can hang out with. If you want to become better at something and you don’t know anyone that is already good at it, you can find them through books, movies, podcasts, the internet, etc.
We live in an age of technology and although it makes me crazy sometimes since I have three teenagers that spend far too much time on it, it can also be really helpful. With the internet you can have instant access to so much information. There are also so many books out there about every topic you can think of. There are multiple experts out there for whatever it is you want to be good at. Even if you can’t surround yourself with people that can help you, you can surround yourself with the information. If you are spending your time reading on a certain topic, that information will influence your thoughts and your behaviors. Also, there are you tube videos about almost everything as well. So, if you are not a fan of reading, watch some you tube videos, listen to an audio book or a podcast, do whatever you need to do to surround yourself with people or information that will build you up.
“Brothers and sisters, join in imitating me, and observe those who live according to the example you have in us. For many live as enemies of the cross of Christ; I have often told you of them, and now I tell you even with tears.” Back in the day, they understood how important it was to surround yourself with people who were living right in the eyes of the Lord. When the Jews were taking into exile, or even when they conquered various lands the Lord always told them not to take the foreigners as their wives and husbands. This was not because they were bad people, although many of them were, it was because God knew that if you spend all your time with people who believe differently than you do, then you may start to act like they act. This is exactly what happened. The Israelites started to inter-marry and then many found themselves offering sacrifices to other Gods.
This verse is telling us to observe those who are living according to Christ. Who is getting it right? It doesn’t even have to be someone that has it all figured out and is getting it right all the time. It could be someone that is just one step ahead of you. There are a lot of spiritual writers out there, there are also a lot of podcasts that can help with this. There are some religious leaders that have you tube channels as well if you would rather watch something. There is something out there for everyone. There are so many great examples of the faith that have come before us and if we try to imitate them as the verse tells us to, we will be in good shape.
Sometimes I think we get overwhelmed because we don’t know what to do. There are so many things that can help us grow in our faith and we don’t know what we should do. This is sometimes called analysis paralysis. Its when there are so many choices and you spend so much time thinking about and how it will work and what if it goes wrong and what if you mess up, what if its not perfect. You spend so much time thinking about it that you never actually do anything about it. I don’t want this to be one of those times. You are already doing more than a lot of people because you found this podcast and you are exposing yourself to scripture every day. If you still want more, you could find a saint and read about their lives and what they did to live their life dedicated to God. You could look up a book. Just pick one thing that can help you learn how to become better at what you want to become better at. Maybe it is some aspect of the faith, like forgiveness, humility, love, or anything else. You can just search for books or podcasts on these topics. Find a good example and follow it, that is what we are being called to do in today’s verse.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. We want to imitate those good examples Lord. We want to grow closer to you Lord. Please help us to see who we should imitate and who we shouldn’t. If there is someone in our lives who is pulling us away from you we ask that you shine a light on that relationship Lord. We want to surround ourselves with holy people so we can become more holy. We love you Lord Jesus and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Remember, we forgive others not because they deserve it but because we deserve peace. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Holy Boldness
Ephesians 6:18-20 “Pray in the Spirit at all times in every prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert and always persevere in supplication for all the saints. Pray also for me, so that when I speak, a message may be given to me to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it boldly, as I must speak.”
Pray in the Spirit at all times in every prayer and supplication. Praying in the Spirit to me means praying in tongues. It says in Romans 8:26, “ Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.” In other words, we don’t know how to pray, but if we allow the Spirit to take over for us, then He can pray what we really need to pray. I am not sure how many of you listening to this podcast have prayed in tongues before, or even believe that praying in tongues is a thing that people do. I thought I would just take a moment to explain what happens when you pray in tongues. When you are praying in tongues, you mouth and vocal chords are making sounds that most of the time do not sound anything like real words. You do not know what you are saying when you are praying in tongues. It is a conversation between the Holy Spirit and The Lord. The Holy Spirit is speaking what it finds in your heart and sharing that with the Father.
When looking up the meaning of this verse two different sites talked about how living and praying in the Spirit was about more than just our thoughts and our desires. Praying in the Spirit also has to do with our submission to God. We need to realize that we are dependent on the Lord for all things. It is about turning to God and asking Him to help us and then we also trust that He will help us and His help with be whatever is best for us.
Then the verse says to keep alert and always persevere in supplication for all the saints. When I first read this I thought it was asking us to persevere in asking the Saints for their help. However, upon research this verse is actually asking us to persevere in supplication for the saints, not from the saints. It is asking us to pray not only for the things that we need but those needs of other believers. It talks about how we are to pray persistently and about all matters. Although we might not be able to pray out loud every second of every day, it is important to develop the habit of praying consistently. When something comes up, no matter how big or how small, our first thought should be to share it with the Lord. We need to turn to Him no matter how small the matter is.
The second half of this verse is talking about St. Paul. St. Paul was put in prison because he was sharing the good news of Jesus Christ. Now in this message he is asking for prayers so that he may speak boldly about the message of the Gospel. He is still in prison when he writes this, that is why he is saying that he is an ambassador in chains. How many of us would be willing to still continue to proclaim the Gospel if we were sitting in jail for doing that very thing? Take a minute to think about it, would you? I have prayed for a holy boldness ever since I knew that was a thing. I don’t remember when I learned about holy boldness, or where I first heard that term, but I instantly loved it.
If you don’t know let me share something with you, I am a crier. I cry when I see a sad movie or TV show. I cry when I see a happy movie or TV, especially if I didn’t expect the happy ending. I cry when I am upset, I cry when I am nervous, I cry when I am happy. Sometime I don’t even know why I am crying. I can feel the tears falling down my cheeks, but I don’t feel sad and so I don’t know why I am crying. I have been told that tears can be a gift from the Holy Spirit. They have never felt like a gift. I know some people that can’t cry. Due to their upbringing, things that have happened to them in their past, or some other reason, they just can’t cry. No matter how hard they try. So when they see me cry they feel that it is a gift. I guess it all depends on how you look at it.
The reason I mention this is because this is a big part of the reason I never really talked about the faith to people unless they started the conversation. I was afraid if I got nervous and I started to cry then they would think I was crazy. I still don’t really like to walk up to someone that I don’t know and start a conversation. However, I am getting better at this as I have been asking God to help me with this for a very long time now. I remember the first time I felt called to ask someone if I could pray over him. I was a silent retreat and I had just been given the gift of speaking in tongues. This guys was really suffering and I felt the Holy Spirit tell me to pray over him. I didn’t know this guy, I hadn’t ever talked to him. The only reason I knew he was hurting was because he shared that at the first night of the retreat. Then the rest of the retreat was silent so I never talked to him again. I remember hearing the Lord ask me to pray over him and telling the Lord if He wanted me to do this, then He would have to give me the courage, because I was scared to do that kind of thing.
I remember the Lord gave me several opportunities and I let each one pass me by. I was just so nervous. Each time I repented and told the Lord that I wanted to, I just couldn’t and that if He kept giving me chances I would keep trying. Finally, I asked the guy if I could pray over him. He said I could and was thankful. Even though he was thankful, I was still nervous and I did start to cry. Not ugly face cry, just tears streaming down my face as I prayed. I felt foolish for having cried, but I was really proud of myself for stepping out of my comfort zone and asking the man in the first place.
This is why I can’t imagine being as brave as St. Paul who was willing to proclaiming the Good News even from his prison cell. Maybe this is why he is asking us to persevere in supplication for all believers. We all need strength from the Lord. Maybe what you need is different than what I need. Maybe you don’t need a holy boldness. I know several ladies in my prayer group that proclaim the Word of God for the whole world to hear. They may not need boldness, but maybe they need strength for trials they face, maybe they need help not worrying, we all need something. Let us keep praying for ourselves and for our fellow believers. Let us pray that God gives each one of us exactly what we need to help bring others into a personal relationship with Him.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask that you help all your saints and give us whatever it is we need to help spread your word and help bring others into your glorious kingdom. Lord we ask you to help us be alert as St. Paul asked of us. We ask that you help us to be persevering in supplication for your saints. We ask that you give each and every one of us a holy boldness to proclaim your word. Lord you are so good and you always give us everything we need for the day. I ask that you help us to see this each and every day. Lord, you are amazing and we love you. We ask all of this is accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name. Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. This week we are working on growing in forgiveness. (Click Here) for a link to the article about forgiveness. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Total Surrender
2 Corinthians 12:9 “but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” (RSVCE)
“Worrying does not take away tomorrow’s problems, it takes away todays peace.” Think about this for a moment. If you really think about this you know it’s true. You know worrying doesn’t change the outcome. You can worry from know until the end of time and your worry still will not change what is going to happen. I don’t say this to discourage you. There are things you can do to change what may or may not happen. You are not hopeless or helpless in these situations. Quite the opposite in fact.
You are very powerful in difficult situations because you have God on your side. It says in 2 Corinthians 12:9 “but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” (RSVCE) This is God talking to St. Paul and He is talking to you too. God’s power is made perfect in your weakness. Did you know that? I am betting you didn’t. The reason that I bet you didn’t know that is because the enemy doesn’t want you to. He wants you to feel like you are in this all alone. So, if the power of God is made perfect in our weakness, why don’t we feel this power? Are you actually being weak? Are you surrendering the worry over to God? Are you asking Him for help? Or, are you trying to stay strong and do it all yourself? Are you not asking God for help because you think He is too busy, you don’t think He would help, or maybe you don’t think you deserve help? God wants to help and is ready and willing to help, and also He is waiting for you to decide if you want His help or not.
If you want to be strong and do everything on your own, God is going to give you that option. He isn’t going to force Himself on you. He gave us free will and with that comes great responsibility. God is asking us to invite Him into our lives and into our worry. He is there in our lives, just waiting for us to give Him permission to help us, waiting for us to admit that we need Him. We all need Him. Sometimes the enemy puts the idea in our head that if we need God then we are weak. There isn’t a person alive that doesn’t need God. Even Jesus, who was fully God and fully human, asked God for help.
The reason I decided to talk about this today is because I have a friend of mine that experienced a miracle on Friday and it got me thinking about how much we all want to experience miracles and yet how we all get in out own way. I am hoping that by giving you her example, as well as my own, you might be able to see how you are getting in your own way. Of course we didn’t intentionally get in our own way. We thought we were doing what we were supposed to do. We were doing all we could to save our families. Isn’t that what anyone would do? This is a perfect example of the phrase hindsight is 20/20. If we had known we were getting in the way we could have saved ourselves the heartache and surrendered sooner. Let me explain.
I was really struggling with my family. My husband and I were fighting a lot and the boys were acting out a lot. I did pray, and I asked God for help. I prayed that He would fix it, that He would give us a miracle, that He would show me what to do. Then, I read every book I could find on marriages and parenting. I listened to every podcast and searched the internet for the answer to my problems. I talked to every expert I could find. I did all I could to fix this problem in my family. Did you catch that last part? I did all I could. I asked God to fix it, and then I took the reigns back and tried to fix it on my own. Why do we do that? Why do we kill ourselves trying to solve things on our own. God is made perfect in our weakness, why don’t we let him take over?
Eventually I got tired or fighting, I got tired of doing all the research, I got tired of trying to solve it all on my own. Eventually I turned to God and said, “I give up. I can’t do this anymore. This is getting me no where. Things have to change and they have to change now. I need a break. I need you to fix this. I turn this completely over to you. I trust that you have all or our best interests in mind. You are a part of my covenant with Tony and you don’t take that lightly. You love our children more than anyone else and you want more for them than we possibly can. I surrender Lord.” If you know me and the situation, then you know I was considering a divorce. However, I told God that I didn’t want it and that I had faith in Him to either find another way, or to bring us back together later. I promised to be faithful to his Law even if I was divorced.
Do you know what? God gave me that miracle I was begging Him for. Tony and I just celebrated our 21st wedding anniversary in July and although we argue as all couples do, we are so very happy. Our children are all doing well in school, doing well at home, and have all overcome some really difficult years. God is so good! I wish I could help you all to see and feel how good He really is. He loves us and wants to help us, we just need to get out of our own way.
My friend has been battling similar issues with her family for a long time now as well. She has been fighting for her daughter for a few years. She has been faithful to pray, just as I was. She has been asking God for help. And also, she has been trying to fix it herself. She has spoken to numerous specialist, counselors, and lawyers. She has done her best to love her child despite her child being awful to her. That is what we do, we fight for our children because they can’t fight for themselves. We feel as though if we aren’t fighting for them then we are giving up and how can we give up on our children? I want to argue, maybe you aren’t giving up, maybe you are handing the fight over to a more qualified candidate.
God is our Heavenly Father. Think about how much you would fight for you child. Now take that and multiply it by a thousand. That is how much God is going to fight for you, His child. The thing about handing things over to God is that He is not bound in the same way we are. He can see solutions that we would never see. He can make a way, where there is no way. In my case, I would have never in a million years imagined that in 3 years our family would go from having several crisis a day in our home to having peace in our home. Our family truly experienced a miracle and it was only after I surrendered, stopped fighting and let God take control without worrying about the outcome. I had total faith that I would be ok however, things turned out because I was not in control God was.
My friend also saw her miracle. After fighting so hard and so long, she just couldn’t do it anymore. She had exhausted her financial means, her emotional and mental energy, everything. She loves her daughter more than anything and did not want to give up on fighting for her. And also, she just could not keep putting herself at risk by continuing to fight. She finally surrendered it to God. She said she didn’t know what was going to happen in court and she listed the few outcomes that she could think of. She said unless God showed up in a huge way nothing was going to change. Guess what? God showed up in a huge way.
The judge listened to everything that everyone had to say and she came up with ideas that hadn’t even occurred to my friend. She had some great ideas, and she made things happen that my friend honestly couldn’t even picture happening anytime soon. Do you see how crazy good God is? He wants to help us. He wants to provide miracles for us. Why can’t we just surrender it to Him and get out His way and let Him work?
Dear Heavenly Father, I pray that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want you to help us. We ask that you step in and show us when we are taking over. Show us how to surrender Lord. We know you can fix things better than we can. Give us the courage to surrender all of our problems to you. Help us get out of our own way Lord. Help us to step aside and let you help us. We love you Lord, you are so amazing and we are so grateful for all the ways you help us without us even knowing. Thank you for the miracles talked about here today and thank you for the millions of miracles that no one even notices. You are the best and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Today begins our fifth week of the challenge, can you believe it’s been 5 weeks already? Our focus for this week is Forgiveness. How can we be more forgiving. This one is near and dear to my heart and has been ever since I found out that God forgives us to the same extent that we forgive others. I am not sure why I didn’t know this before, as we say it every time we say the Our Father, but I still didn’t know. Now that I do know it, I want everyone else to know so that they don’t stay angry here on each just to lose that connection with the Father in Heaven. In the email that went out last night it I put an article titled The Eight Keys to Forgiveness by Robert Enright. (click here). Hopefully this article will help you develop a deeper understanding of forgiveness and some ideas of how that can happen. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day.
Armor of God
Ephesians 6::10-17 “ Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power. Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to withstand on that evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand therefore, and fasten the belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness. As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace. With all of these, take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.”
I know this is more verses than we usually cover, but I didn’t think I could talk about the first part without talking about the second part. The first part of this verse talks about who we need to protect ourselves from. The second part tells us that we need to put on the armor of God, and it explains what that means. This verse starts off very strong. It tells us to be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His power. Did you know that God’s power could strengthen you? Next it tells us to put on the armor of God, which will be explained a little later. The reason we need to put on this armor is so that we can stand against the devil. The next line is one that I don’t think many of us want to hear and even if we do hear it, we don’t want to believe it.
“ For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” Our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh. This is what we don’t want to hear. We don’t want to talk about spiritual warfare and we don’t want to listen to anything about spiritual warfare, because we don’t really understand it. If we don’t understand it, then usually we are scared of it. We, as a society, tend to shy away from things we don’t understand. Things we can’t explain and don’t understand make us feel uncomfortable. No amount of ignoring will change the fact that there is a spiritual war going all around us.
The devil is not happy that God made us and especially not happy that we are made in the likeness and image of God. The devil wants us all to perish. Each day you are met with good spirits and you are met with bad ones. I think it is so important to understand this verse because it helps you with your relationships. I say it could help you with your relationships because often times we get upset with our loved ones. We think they are the ones that we are fighting with. However, if we can remember that our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, then maybe we could be more understanding with our loved ones. Maybe we could look deeper than their actions or words and look for the motivation behind them.
The enemy wants us to fight with our loved ones, he wants us to feel alone. In just this one week I have heard about 4 people that have committed suicide. That is the enemies doing. He wants us to feel hopeless, alone, and like no one loves us. You can’t fight the enemy of darkness the same way you would fight a person. Your fists won’t hurt him. However, your words could hurt him. Call on the power of Jesus Christ to fight any spiritual attacks on you or on your loved ones. God also talks about His armor that will protect us. Let’s go over what He means by that.
“Stand therefore, and fasten the belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness. As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace. With all of these, take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.” Fasten the belt of truth around your waist. The devil is the father of lies. He will take a half truth, or a kernel of truth and twist it into a big fat lie that we believe. If we want to stand in God’s armor then we must focus on the truth and not let the enemy twist it. Know your truths, know who you are, know what you believe, and if you are struggling take the time to see if your thoughts are actually true. Ask someone else, bring those thoughts into the light. If you are afraid to ask someone because you feel ashamed, or guilty, then those are probably thoughts from the enemy. He wants you to feel those things so that you don’t ask anyone. Once your dark thoughts are brought into the light, the enemy starts to lose control of them.
Next it says put on the breastplate of righteousness. Stand in your choices. Do what is right in the Lord’s eyes and you can be assured that He is right there with you protecting you. The father of lies will not have any ammunition to use against you if you are living a righteous life. If you are following the Lord’s laws then stand firm in that truth and you will be protected against the enemy. Next it says, “As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace.” The Lord does not want us fighting. If we can strive for peace in all circumstances then the evil one will have less to come at us with. The enemy is happy when we are upset with one another. When we are arguing and fighting then we are not united and the enemy loves that. He lives for chaos and confusion. So, the next time you are being stubborn and not wanting to be the first to apologize, take a minute and consider why you feel that way. Remember who we would be making happy by refusing to apologize, God, or the enemy?
Next, the verse says, “With all of these, take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one.” That sounds awesome. I can actually visualize holding up a shield that is glowing with a bright white light and their are all these flaming arrows headed towards me and they just disappear into the shield. I don’t even feel the impact of them. So, what is this shield of faith? It is our faith. Our faith in God, our faith in all of His promises. Sometimes it is hard to have faith, especially when all is going wrong. I can imagine the loved ones of those four people that committed suicide this week may be struggling with their faith. It can be hard to have faith when we don’t understand things. I am sure they are asking how God could have let this happen. This is something that we all probably ask God at one time or another throughout our lives. God is not to blame though. This is the enemy twisting the truth and trying to get us to turn away from God. The enemy knows that our faith is a shield against his attacks and he will use any method necessary to shake our faith and try to convince us that we can’t trust God. It is a lie, he is a liar. When you are in the middle of a crisis, this is when you need to lean more into your faith, knowing that God is there for you and He is helping you through it, even if it feels like he isn’t.
The verse ends with two last pieces of armor. “Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.” To be honest, I was not sure what the helmet of salvation meant. I was going to just skip over it and move on to the next thing. I am glad I didn’t because when I looked up what it meant it is definitely something we should all hear. The helmet of salvation is talking about our thoughts. When we put the helmet of salvation on it blocks out those negative thoughts. When you are wearing the helmet of salvation you can hear what is right and what is true. Are you wondering how you can put on the helmet of salvation? That is the thought that came to mind when I heard it helps us protect our thoughts against the enemy. I decided to look it up as I didn’t want to tell you there was armor out there to protect your thoughts and then not tell you how to put it on. When looking for the answer, I found a you tube video for kids that did a much better job explaining this armor than I did. I will put a link in the show notes. Let me just do a quick summary of what he said because I think he did a really good job summing it all up.
This is an excerpt from The Helmet of Salvation: A Sunday School lesson about the Armor of God for kids on Douglas Talks (Click Here to watch). “All the other armor of God has to do with how you live. Through your own effort you can make your armor stronger, but that is not the case with the helmet of salvation. Your salvation is like wearing a helmet into battle. And being saved from your sins is not something that happens because of your effort. We are saved from our sins because of what Jesus Christ did for us. John 3:16 says, “Whoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.” Because of Jesus we can be saved from our sins. All the other parts of the armor can be strengthened by how you live. If you are speaking the truth, if you are being honest you will have the belt of truth, if you are doing what is right you are going to have the breastplate of righteousness, if you are ready to tell people about Jesus Christ you will have you feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. If you hold fast to what you believe you will have the shield of faith. You can have all of these things, but you could be lacking the most important, which is the helmet of salvation. We need to realize that we can’t save ourselves, Jesus is our salvation.”
I really liked how he talked about the fact that we can put the other pieces of armor on ourselves, through our own actions, and yet the helmet we need to rely on Jesus for that one. It is such a great reminder that although we are responsible for our actions and following God’s law, that alone is not enough. We need Jesus to do any of this. He is our salvation. We are not in this alone. I think knowing this also takes some of the pressure off of us. We are not responsible for doing everything ourselves. Jesus already died on a cross for our sins. One last thing we did not talk about and I am sorry as I know this is longer than usual today, is the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. The word of God can be a great defense against the enemy. Remember, when Jesus was in the desert after being baptized? The enemy came at Him to. Yes, the enemy tried to trick Jesus. Jesus did not fight back, He simply quoted scripture. If you don’t remember this you can find it in Matthew 4:1-11. I won’t recount it to you as we are out of time, but I do suggest if you don’t remember it, that you read it because it is a great illustration of how powerful scripture can be.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. I ask that you help us to put on the armor of God. Help protect us against the lies of the evil one. Lord, when we are falling prey to the enemy we ask that you shine a light into the darkness that he is casting on us. We thank you for sending your son down to die for our salvation. We ask that you help us remember that we cannot save ourselves we need to rely on you. Help us to develop the skills to strengthen the armor we are wearing. We want to be protected against all enemies. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus holy name, Amen.
I Will Be Joyful In God My Savior
Habakkuk 3:17-19 "Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.”
There is a lot going wrong for the people in this verse. The things mentioned here are not small things. It might not seem like a big deal to us, as how many of us eat figs anyway? However, it was a bid deal at the time. The people that wrote this depended on those crops not just for food, but also for their lively hood. If they did not have figs, grapes or olives, what would they sell at the market to get the other things they needed. The verse says the fields produced no food. What could they eat, if they had not fruits or vegetables? Normally I would say at least they have animals to eat. However, the verse also says, no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls.
I can’t even imagine what I would do if I were in their circumstances. This verse is basically saying that they had nothing. They had no food, they had no animals, and if they didn’t have any of that, then they didn’t have anything to trade with to get the other things that they needed. I know that we often think our situation can’t really get any worse, however, for these guys I would say that it really couldn’t get much worse. How did they react to these dire circumstances? Did they yell and scream at God? Did they question Him and ask Him how dare He take it all away? Did they turn away from God? No, they didn’t do any of those things. In that very same sentence, they said “yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.”
Wow, that is incredible. Don’t you wish you had their strength? Don’t you wish you felt the same way on your worst days? I will rejoice in the Lord. Not, I will trust the Lord, not I will be ok with the Lord, I will rejoice in the Lord. What did they have to rejoice about? Then it goes on to say I will be joyful in God my Savior. I was about to ask you what they had to be joyful about, and then the words “in God my Savior” rattled around in my head. They weren’t joyful because of their circumstances, they were joyful because of God their Savior. They knew God was going to save them. They didn’t know when and they didn’t know how, but they relied on the fact that God was their savior and if He saved them before, He would do it again.
Why is it so hard for us to remember this? What came to mind was, maybe we haven’t seen Him save us before. What if we have never needed saving before and so we don’t know that He will save us this time. If this is what you are thinking, rest assured that whatever God has done to those that have come before us, He will do to us. If He has saved His people in the Bible, then He will save us. Those are our people. Remember Hebrews 13:8 says, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.” Because Jesus saved His people in the Bible over and over again, we know He will save us. We also know that because of His promise in Jeremiah 29:11 which says, “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
God will use all things for our good. The problem is, we don’t want to wait for it. We want things to happen when we are ready, or when we think we are ready. When are we going to come around to the fact that God’s timing is perfect? If things are going wrong for us, God’s got a plan. He might not have planned for you to get yourself into this trouble, but as soon as He saw you headed there He came up with a plan to fix it. That is what He does. We mess up and He fixes it. I truly hope He doesn’t get tired of doing that. We would be lost without Him.
Let’s say that we are able to come to grips with our situation. We acknowledge that God is doing His thing and although we don’t know how it will work out, we know it will work out. Then what do we do? We still need to figure out a way to lesson our pain so we can live to make it through to the other side. The people in this verse decided that although these terrible things were happening they were going to rejoice in the Lord. Do you think you could persevere in this difficult time? Do you think you could not only keep hope in the Lord, but to rejoice in the Lord?
I am currently reading a new book titled Built Through Courage by Dave Hollis. In this book Dave talked about something that I thought was a really cool idea to help us get through some really difficult times. I know some of you are either really struggling, or you have loved ones that are. Dave was talking about how he and Rachel, his wife at the time, had a couple that mentored them in the beginning of their relationship. This couple had a very strong faith. The wife in this couple had a massive stroke after just having a baby. She survived it but was now confined to a wheel chair. Dave asked her how they could still have so much faith after something so tragic happened. They said they relied on a scripture verse. That scripture verse is the same as today’s verse Habakkuk 3:17-19. This woman, who was now struggling with so much, took this verse and made it her own. Here is what her version of the verse said:
“Though I cannot walk and I am confined to a wheel chair. Though my face is paralyzed and I cannot smile. Though I am extremely impaired and cannot take care of my own baby boy, yet I will rejoice in the Lord. I will be joyful in God my savior.”
The author of the book I am reading, Dave Hollis, had not heard this scripture before. When he head this story, he was in the middle of a divorce he did not ask for and was transitioning out of a company he ran with his ex-wife. Everything he knew to be true about his identity was changing and he didn’t know what to do about it. Dave decided to also adopt this verse and make it his own. Here is Dave’s verse:
“Though my marriage has come to an end, and my future looks different than I thought it would. Though this blank paper I have been handed to imagine what’s next fills me with equal parts fear and excitement. Though my identity both at home and at work is shifting under my feet, yet I will rejoice in the Lord. I will be joyful in God my savior.”
What is it that you are going through? Whatever it is, would it help you to write your own version of this verse? Would it help you to read that verse daily to remind yourself that God is your Savior? Let’s not forget that important part of the verse. I will be joyful in God my savior. Reading this every day can give you a reminder that you are not alone and that you are not in charge of fixing everything yourself. God is your savior.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to your episode today. Lord, we thank you that we have food and the things we need to get through the day. Lord we thank you for these beautiful verses and I hope we all get to rewrite them to fit our own lives. You are our Savior Lord God please help us to remember! Lord help us to rejoice in you during the hard times. Help us lean into you and not turn away from you. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
A New Life
1 John 3:4-6 “Everyone who commits sin is guilty of lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. You know that he was revealed to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. No one who abides in him sins; no one who sins has either seen him or known him.”
This is the same verse as yesterday because I spent the whole time talking about verse 4 and I didn’t even touch on these other two verses. I think these verses are important and I didn’t want to leave you hanging. Verse 5 says, “You know that he was revealed to take away sins, and in him there is no sin.” This is referring of course to Jesus Christ. There was no sin in Jesus. Did you know that Mary was also without sin? I find both of these remarkable. I know Jesus was fully God, but He was also fully human and we can’t seem to help ourselves from sinning.
This verse says He was revealed to take away sins. John 3:16 says, "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” God sent His only son to us so that He could pay for all of our sins. God is a just God and He gave Adam and Eve a just consequence for what they did. However, He did not want to be apart from His children forever. He knew reparation had to be paid for the sins of the world. He sent His only son to walk among us and then to be crucified so that we could be reunited with the Lord.
I can’t imagine how hard it must have been for either one of them. The Bible paints a pretty clear picture of how hard it was for Jesus. When He was in the Garden of Gethsemane His sweat was drops of blood. When I am doing the sorrowful mysteries of the rosary I am always so sad when it talks about that mystery. One narration of the rosary says that Jesus saw all the sins of the world, He also saw the wrath of His father that He had to appease. Can you imagine the sins of the whole world flashing before your eyes? Think about how awful we feel after watching a few stories on the nightly news. Now imagine you are seeing the sins of every human being on the planet, those that came before, and those that will come after. That is a lot for one person.
The next verse says, “No one who abides in him sins; no one who sins has either seen him or known him.” This is the other reason why I said yesterday that I passed this verse over many times before deciding to write about it. I don’t understand this verse as everyone sins. So when it says that no one who abides in him sins, I wonder about that. Then the next line is even more upsetting because it says that no one who sins has either seen him or known him. What? St. Paul, who we know has seen Jesus and knows Jesus because of his personal encounter with Him says that he sins. So, I did not want to address this verse because I don’t understand it myself.
Also, if I am being completely honest I didn’t want to address it because it says something that could invite conflict. It could make some people upset to hear this. If someone told me that if I sin it means I don’t know Jesus, I would be upset. This type of thinking is what the enemy wants though. If we are scared to talk about things that people might not agree with or that might make people upset, then there won’t be much we can talk about. We need to be bold when talking about our faith. There are lots of things that God says that upsets people. We can’t pretend he didn’t say them. Jesus said plenty of things that upset people in His time here on earth, so did his disciples. We are all called to be disciples. That means that we are all called to pass along God’s message, whether people like it or not.
Now, that does not mean we shove God’s message down the throats of everyone we meet whether they want to hear it or not. It does mean that we address the hard subjects, even if they make us uncomfortable. It means, if there is something about our faith that we don’t understand, we take the time to learn what it means so that we can clear up any misinformation that is out there and so we can understand it better. Father Mike said the other day that teachers of the faith are held to a higher standard. We are all called to be teachers of our faith. We are called to spread God’s word and to help others encounter Jesus. We can’t do that if we don’t try to deepen our own faith and understanding.
The more we get to know God the deeper our relationship gets with Him. The more we read and understand His word, the closer we get to Him. I want to discover all God’s word has to offer. I want to understand it all. The only way I can do this is to be brave enough to talk about the scriptures that I don’t understand. I love that we only cover a verse or two each day. This gives us the chance to really look at what each verse is saying and to really get a good understanding of what each verse means and how it applies to our life. Knowing what God wants from us and applying that knowledge to our lives are two very different things. Have you ever heard the quote, “Knowledge is Power”? Well there is another quote that I feel is a little more accurate. “Knowledge isn’t power until it is applied.” It doesn’t make a difference if we know every line of the Bible if we aren’t going to do anything with that knowledge. The only way that the scripture can change your life is if you take what you learn from it and use that knowledge to make changes in your life.
Now, lets get back to 1 John 3:6, “No one who abides in him sins; no one who sins has either seen him or known him.” This verse is not saying that if you sin you are not a believer. according to the commentary that I found (click here for commentary) the context of this verse was talking about a relationship with Christ. It is saying that true fellowship with Christ cannot result in sin- this is part of John’s defense agains the claim that the gospel give people an excuse to do wrong. The commentary also talked about how a believer is marked by a changed life. When Jesus enters your life, you live a different life. Yes, believers do sin, but they try not to and hopefully the don’t continually and repeatedly sin.
The verse is showing that there is a difference in the lives of believers and non-believers. You should be able to look at the life someone is living and be able to tell if they are a believer or not. The commentator says, “Though every believer is a work in progress, every believer’s life should show a noticeable difference in living a life that becomes more like Christ. If a person’s life is not different that that of a non-believer, there is no reason to be confident they are a true believer.” This gives us something to think about. Can people tell just by looking at my life that I am a believer? Have I been changed by my relationship with Christ? Is there something more I could be doing to be living a more Christian life? God sent His only son to die on a cross for my sins. Am I do all I can to honor that sacrifice? Am I doing my best to ensure I don’t sin? Am I repenting when I do sin? Is there anything I could be doing differently?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today? We are so grateful that you sent your son to be with us and to make reparation for our sins. Lord, help us to honor this sacrifice. Help us to live the way you want us to live. If there is something we could be doing differently we ask that you shine a light on that and put a desire to do it in our hearts. Lord, we love you so very much and we want to do what you want us to do. Please help us. Please guide us Lord. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I really do appreciate you! There are so many things to fill up your day and you are taking time out of an already busy day to be on this journey with me. It brings me comfort to know that I am not doing it alone. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
A Sin Is A Sin, No Matter How Small
1 John 3:4-6 “Everyone who commits sin is guilty of lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. You know that he was revealed to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. No one who abides in him sins; no one who sins has either seen him or known him.”
This verse took some contemplation, some research, and some time. Each Thursday at prayer group I get several verses. I write each verse down on its own document and then in the mornings I pick one to write about. I have clicked on this verse several times now. However, the wording was intimidating to me and I felt like I could not explain it to you if I didn’t understand it. I reasoned that this was a good idea as I don’t want to teach you something that is wrong. Then I remembered my reason for this podcast. The purpose of this podcast is to discover scripture with you. I chose these scriptures because they are the ones that God revealed to us at prayer group. If I skip over all the ones that I find difficult or the ones that I don’t fully understand, then this podcast won’t last very long because there is a lot more in the Bible that I don’t understand, then what I do understand. This podcast is meant to help me, and hopefully you, grow in the faith. We won’t grow if we just stick to what we already know. So, I will do my best to learn and then explain to you any scriptures that come up. If you are listening and I talk about a scripture and you think I am wrong with what I said about it, please reach out and let me know. I am not perfect and I will make mistakes. Making mistakes is part of learning and growing.
The first verse says, “Everyone who commits sin is guilty of lawlessness; sin is lawlessness.” I think what through me off with this part was the word lawlessness. Apparently back in the day when this was written those that were not believers in God were referred to as lawless. Which, if you think about it, makes sense. If you do not believe in God then you would not feel as though you needed to follow His laws. Lawless means lack of law. What this first part of the verse is saying is that if you sin, you are guilty of not following God’s law. One of the commentaries that I read talked about how this verse is also not making a distinction between sins. It is saying if you sin in any way you are guilty of breaking God’s law.
Sometimes we can get caught up in thinking that some sins are better than other sins. We justify our behaviors sometimes by saying, “its ok that I did this small thing because at least I am not doing something that is a bigger sin.” For instance, It is ok that I spread a rumor about that person, at least I didn’t beat them up. I don’t know if that is a great example, but you know what I mean? We can justify something small because we could be doing worse. Or we justify our behavior because although, yes we are sinning, we aren’t acting as badly as the rest of the world. This can be a very slippery slope. Just because someone else is committing a bigger sin than you, doesn’t make your sin any less of a sin. This verse is telling us, a sin is a sin. End of story. No matter how small of a sin you think it is, if it goes against what God has told us to do or not to do, then you must repent. If you do not repent there will be a consequence.
Have you ever heard a child do this? One of my boys called his brother a name once. When I talked to him about it, he didn’t feel like he should be in trouble because, “at least I didn’t hit him,” he said. Are you rolling your eyes thinking about times when you have heard kids say things like this. I have news for you, kids are not the only ones who do this. I would bet we have all done this at one time or another. I heard a podcast by Hal Elrod on this topic once. He said he was tired of being a good enough father. He would do things that weren’t necessarily bad, but they just didn’t align with the kind of dad he wanted to be. For instance he would get caught up in work and let his kids watch too much TV. He would feel bad, but then would tell himself that there are parents our there that are hurting their kids, and what I am doing is not that bad. Obviously, you can’t compare the two. But in our heads, we sometimes do compare worst case scenario’s to our scenario to make ourselves feel better.
Hal decided instead of always trying to find someone that was doing a worse job to make himself feel better, he would try to find someone that was doing a great job and try to live up to that standard. He would find role models that were knocking this whole dad thing out of the park. He would see what they were doing and how he could do it too. He said this was a game changer for him and it fundamentally changed how he showed up for his children.
What if we did this with God and our relationship with Him? What if instead of looking at others that are not getting it right and being happy that we are doing better than them, we look to those that are getting it right and see how they are doing it so we can do it too? What if we set our own standards higher for our behavior? What if we saw all sin as bad, and not justified some of it because we could be doing worse?
Father Mike the other day was talking about a prophet Ezra. Ezra was talking to the people of Israel and found out that they were not keeping themselves separate from the neighboring peoples with their detestable practices. They had intermarried with those around them. Also the leaders and officials had led the way in this unfaithfulness. In Ezra 9:6 Ezra prayed,”“I am too ashamed and disgraced, my God, to lift up my face to you, because our sins are higher than our heads and our guilt has reached to the heavens.” Father Mike asked how we react to sin? When we see others sinning in this world, what do we feel? Do we feel outrage, do we feel anger, sadness, embarrassment? Do we feel anything?
Sin seems so commonplace these days. It feels like sin is all around us all the time. Have we become complacent? Have we given in to a worldly view of things? Have we committed sins and not even really considered them sins because everybody is doing it? One way to really examine this is to take a look at the examine of conscience. Every time I look at that I am surprised at the things I see in it. I am reminded of how we should be living our lives and how out of the ordinary that may feel sometimes. Following the Lord isn’t always easy, especially in this ever changing world. It says in John 15:9, "If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you.”
We are called to live a different life. We are called to a higher way of living. God has specific rules for us and He has them for a reason. God has not arbitrarily assigned us any rules. If God says you should not do something there is a very good reason for it. We may not always understand what those reasons are. It is the same for our kids. We give them rules and we know why we have the rules we have. Our kids may not agree, they may not understand them, but they need to abide by them. We need to do the same. Let’s show God just how much He means to us by how we live our lives.
Dear Heavenly Father I pray that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to see those sins that we may not see. Help us to notice where we have become complacent in our lives. We believe Lord and we don’t ever want to be counted among the lawless. Help us to stay on the straight and narrow path. We are thankful that you have chosen us out of the world and we hope you continue to choose us. Lord, help us to aspire to be better than just ok Christians. Help us to aspire to be the best. Help us to show you how much we love you with our actions. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Did you say the Litany of Humility yesterday? Did you say it yet today? Here is your friendly reminder. It does not take long to say but you will notice a difference. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Matthew 6:34 ““So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.”
Wow, this is a great verse for all of us to write down and place it all around us. The thing is, when we read this it sounds so simple. Don’t worry about tomorrow, you will have time for that later, you have enough to worry about today. Don’t you wish it was that simple. Don’t you wish you could just tell yourself not to worry, and then you actually don’t worry. Life would be so much simpler if it worked that way. I don’t think this verse is telling us anything that we don’t already know on some level. We know that we don’t need to worry about the future because we don’t even know what will happen in the future. We also know that there is plenty to worry about in this moment without borrowing worries from another day. So, if we already know all of this, why do we still worry about tomorrow?
We still worry for the same reason that we still eat candy and drink soda even though we know eating vegetables and drinking water is better for us. We still worry for the same reason that watch TV instead of working out even though we know working out is better for us. We worry because that is what we have trained our brain to do. We worry because that is what we have done in the past. We worry because that is our habit. We worry because it is an automatic response and changing automatic responses takes work.
Is it possible for you or I to change how much we worry, yes. I know this is hard for some of you to believe. I know so many people that identify with the identity of being a worrier. They say things like “It’s just who I am,” or “I have always been a worrier, I can’t change it now.” Is this you? Be honest with yourself, have you said these things? Do you believe that you are a worrier and that will never change? I get it, if you have always done something, then you assume you always will do it. You don’t know anything different. However, this doesn’t need to be the case. You may be a person who worries, but that is not your identity. I used to be someone that hated to get up in the morning and then I started to get up at 5:30 in the morning so I could get prayer time and workout time in before the kids woke up. Was it easy to make this switch, not at all. Was it worth it, absolutely. You can change. Who you are is not set in stone.
There are two different mindsets that we can have. If you have a fixed mindset then you believe that intelligence, talent, and other qualities are innate and unchangeable. Basically you are who you are. If you are not good at something you typically believe you will never be good at it. However, a growth mindset means you believe these things can be developed with practice. You believe that just because you can’t do something yet, doesn’t mean that you won’t ever be able to do it. I think if you look around you, there are a lot of examples to prove that just because you are not good at something, doesn’t mean you will never be good at it. Did you know that Michael Jordon was kicked off of his high school basketball team before he went on to win 6 championships, 5 MVP awards and 2 Olympic gold medals? Did you know that Steven Spielberg, the only director to have made over 10 billion dollars in the box office from his films was rejected 3 times from USC’s film school. Michael Jordon was not born an amazing basketball player. He had to work hard to become an amazing basketball player. He made a goal of getting 100 free throws in a row. This meant if he got to 75 and missed one, he would start all over again. He also spent the entire summer doing two practice sessions a day, six days a week, shooting at least 500 jump shots in each practice. That's more than 6,000 practice shots each week!
I know many of you listening to this may not be basketball fans. I am not a basketball fan either. I tell you this story to show you that just because you can’t do something now, doesn’t mean you will never be able to do it. Also, just because you do something now, like worry, doesn’t mean you always have to do. Hopefully by now, some of you that were skeptical at first are starting to believe that you can change if you want to. It was pretty simple for Michael Jordon to become an excellent basketball player. He knew what skills he needed to develop and then he practiced them over and over again until he got really good at them. It wasn’t easy, it took a lot of work, but it was simple.
In this same way, worrying less is simple, but it is not easy. If we want to worry less, then we need to take control of our thoughts. It says in 2 Corinthians 10:5, “…and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” You can take your thoughts captive. You can be in charge of what you think and what you don’t think. This may seem impossible and I understand why you would think that. We live in a society where we don’t really have to think for ourselves if we don’t want to. There are news networks that tell us what to think, there are movies and tv shows that influence how we think, there are social media “influencers” that tell us what we should and shouldn’t like. If we look at commercials, magazines, books, radio shows, podcasts, we are constantly being told what to think. So, I get that you don’t think you can help how you think or what you think about. However, it is possible.
I read an article titled “Radical Trust” by Laura Fleetwood (Seeking the Still). Laura mentioned that a friend sent her this verse in an email and it was a much needed reminder. She said that although there is so much in this world that we can’t control, we CAN control our thoughts. After reading this verse, every time her mind wanted to worry about something, she would take captive that thought and hand it over to Jesus. This is what she said, “Literally, in my mind, I snatch it and give it to Jesus. And then I tell myself, I trust you, Jesus. I trust you. I trust you.” She also says, “Take this fearful thought, Lord. Take the what-ifs and should haves and could haves. I give them to you again, and again, and again.” When she gets a fearful or worrisome thought in her head this is what she does, “Snatch…Hand it over…I trust you, Jesus. Snatch…Hand it over…I trust you, Jesus. Snatch…Hand it over…I trust you, Jesus.”
If Laura can do this, so can you. It won’t be easy, but if you get in the habit of doing it then it will become easier. Starting a new habit is always difficult, however, isn’t worrying all the time hard too? Do you like how you feel when you spend so much time worrying? What would you give in order to not have to worry so much? If it feels like you worry about everything all the time, know that you are not alone. It is pretty common. Do you have one thing that you always worry about? One situation or topic that you worry about more than others? For instance, you children, your car, your abilities? If you are someone that seems to worry about everything then even just thinking about capturing your thoughts may feel overwhelming. This is why I just asked if there was any one thing you worry about more than the others. Maybe just start with one area. Try to pay attention and listen to yourself saying things about that one topic. When you do hear it, snatch the thought, hand it over, and say Jesus I trust you. Once you get that area down you can move onto another. You can do this! We can do this!
Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for all those listening to this episode today. Lord, please bless them. Lord, we ask that you help us control our thoughts. When the enemy starts whispering his fancy lies into our ears, help us to snatch the thoughts and hand them over to you. Lord help us all to worry less and trust more. Lord, even if we are worried, help us to still move forward with faith in you. Lord you are truly amazing and we are so lucky that you love us and do so much for us. We thank you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your scripture and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. This weeks character trait is humility. For this week, I challenge you to say the Litany of Humility each day for the next 7 days. (Click here for Litany of Humility) I will put a link to that in the show notes. I will also put the link to an article with some suggestions on ways to grow in humility. (Click Here for Article) If you haven’t signed up for the “10 weeks to be more like Jesus” Challenge, you can still do so at findingtruenorthcoaching.com or (click here to register). I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Litany of Humility
O Jesus, meek and humble of heart, Hear me.
From the desire of being esteemed, Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the desire of being loved, Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the desire of being extolled, Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the desire of being honored, Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the desire of being praised, Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the desire of being preferred to others, Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the desire of being consulted, Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the desire of being approved, Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the fear of being humiliated, Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the fear of being despised, Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the fear of suffering rebukes, Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the fear of being calumniated, Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the fear of being forgotten, Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the fear of being ridiculed, Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the fear of being wronged, Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the fear of being suspected, Deliver me, O Jesus.
That others may be loved more than I, Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That others may be esteemed more than I, Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That, in the opinion of the world, others may increase and I may decrease, Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That others may be chosen and I set aside, Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That others may be praised and I go unnoticed, Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That others may be preferred to me in everything, Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That others may become holier than I, provided that I may become as holy as I should, Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
Putting God First Is Hard Sometimes
Matthew 6:33 “But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
“Strive first for the kingdom of God.” This sounds easier than it is. It seems like it would make sense that we would strive for the kingdom of God. Who doesn’t want to go to heaven, right? However, there is so much in this world that distracts us from the kingdom of God. Our attention is being pulled in so many different directions. There are so many ways we can choose to fill our time. There are so many distractions in our day to day life, especially in today’s society. When I was younger if you had a favorite TV show, you had to wait a whole week in between episodes. Now-a-days, you can sit on the couch and watch an entire series in one day, or one week depending how long it is. Tony and I sat on the couch for an entire Saturday after Christmas and watched the whole Mandalorian series.
With Netflix and Hulu, and all the other ways to stream TV shows and movies, it is so easy to lost in watching TV and forget about everything else. Also, so many of us are wasting so much time on our smart phones. Between scrolling on social media like Facebook or Instagram or playing various apps on our phones like candy crust or solitaire, we are wasting hours of our time. If we are filling our days with things of this world, then we don’t have time to strive for anything else. How are we spending out time? Are we putting God first, or are we fitting Him wherever we can?
Someone at my prayer group received this word today, “My children, I tell you if you seek first my kingdom I will bring order in your life. I will share my wisdom with you. I am always your God, there is none other like me. Seek not anything else. I tell you again, seek my kingdom, seek my will, place it first in your life and you will have found less strife. My children I love you. Imprint that deeply in your heart. I am your God and I am to be placed first.” Then she said she got the impression that the Lord is almost sorrowful that He is not the one being placed first, all the things of the world are being placed first, so this is why He keeps telling us to place Him first if we want the good things of the Lord in our life He has to be placed first. We have no time for Him, but we have time for everything else. She could almost feel a deep hurt that He has by us not placing Him first.
When I heard this I felt like it cut right through me. I know God was talking to me, was He talking to you too? I know I have been putting other things before Him lately. For instance, I will sit on the couch and watch 3 episodes of a tv show with my husband after dinner, even though I know that I haven’t finished writing my episode for the podcast yet. If I haven’t finished writing it, then I definitely haven’t finished recording and editing it. That is not placing God first, that is fitting Him in when I can. That is me, putting things of this world first and putting God last. It makes me so sad to think that God is deeply hurt by this.
It makes sense that He would be. How do we feel when our friends, parents, children, spouse put everything else before us? I owe everything that I have and everything that I am to God. He provides for me every single day. He is so generous and so loving. He is continually answering my prayers and those of my family and friends. He shows up every single day to write these podcast episodes with me. He doesn’t get a single day off. He not only has to be on call all the time, He is always at His best. How do I repay God for all that He has done and continues to do for me? I watch TV instead of showing up for our time together. I hit snooze and sleep in instead of meeting Him for our morning prayer time. I ask so much of the Lord. I have some pretty big prayer requests in to Him. I am asking Him to do the impossible and to cure the impossible. I am asking for so much and yet, I am not doing the things He is asking me to do.
Can I change this, yes, but not without His help. The first step is recognizing where we’re letting God down and where we’re placing other things above Him. Unfortunately, I needed God to come right out and say it to me before I woke up and saw what I was doing. Now that I am awake I need to decide what to do about it. I heard God loud and clear that I am placing other things, everything else above Him and that He is really sad about that. Now what do I do? The answer to this question is going to be different for everyone because we are all putting different things ahead of God.
For me, I know that I am placing sleep, TV, and distractions on my phone ahead of God. By sleep I don’t mean that I should give up all my sleep to pray all the time. I know how important sleep is. Prayer is also important and when I choose to press snooze for an hour instead of meeting God for our appointed time, that is not ok. I am also not saying that watching TV, scrolling on social media, or playing games on your phone are bad. These things in moderation are fine. However, when I have made a commitment to God to write a new episode of this podcast everyday and then before I have done that I proceed to watch 3 hours of television, that is not moderation. Also, I am giving my best to TV instead of to the Lord. When do you think I would be at my best to write and record an episode, at 7 PM or at 10 PM? Ideally it would be great if I could get the episode written and recorded before the end of my work day, but I end up getting distracted on my phone and then I don’t get it done.
The reason I am telling you all of this is because I want to be open and honest with you. I want you to know that I struggle with all the things that I talk about. When I am writing these episodes I am talking to myself just as much as I am talking to you. When I heard that word today it was as if God was talking directly to me and you know what, I know He wasn’t just talking to me. I know I am not the only person that is struggling with putting God first. Living the life that God wants us to live is not always easy. Sometimes we may have to choose to do what He is asking us to do, instead of what we want to do. This past weekend was a perfect example of this and a perfect example of how I failed to put God first. Tony and I had friends visiting for the weekend. We had such a great time hanging out with other adults as we don’t do that very often. Our friends were still here Sunday morning and we didn’t plan ahead to know what we were going to do about mass. It just so happens that they left at 10:20 and our mass right down the road is at 11. Perfect timing right? Except, we hadn’t eaten breakfast yet, and we really wanted to relax and watch an episode of TV. Yes, I am serious. We chose to sit on the couch, watch TV, and eat breakfast instead of going to church. I still can’t believe we did. Actually I can because it is hard to do the right thing sometimes. And if we are not in the habit of putting God first, unfortunately, it gets easier and easier to make the wrong choice.
Do you see why I know that God was talking to me with His statement this morning? I didn’t want to write that last part. I didn’t want to tell you all that I didn’t go to mass this Sunday. However, I felt the Holy Spirit kept bringing it up and reminding me of it and so maybe someone needed to hear that. Maybe someone needed to know that they are not alone, that someone else struggles with putting God first or with doing what they know is right. I want to put God first, I truly do. I feel that with every fiber of my body. Every time I do something like I did last Sunday, I remember what St. Paul says in Romans 7:15 "I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” I know I want to live the way the Lord wants me to live. I know that when I mess up, like I did last Sunday, that is not who I am, that is just something I did. I can continue to try to put God first in my life. It is a process and I won’t get it right all the time, and that’s ok. As long as I keep coming back to the Lord and repenting when I mess up, I will get there someday. I don’t think God is looking for perfection, I think He is looking for our effort and our persistence. I think we please God when we keep trying again and again. I am going to keep trying to put God first, will you keep trying with me?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we hear you. We understand how it may hurt you that we are putting everything else ahead of you and we want to stop doing that. We need your help Lord. Please give us the wisdom, strength and courage to put you above everything. Lord, help us to put your will and your wants above ours. We know how much better our life would be if we put you first, and we are asking for you to help us do that. We love you Lord, you are our everything and we would have nothing without you. We know this. We are so sorry for putting you last. We repent for making time for everything else in our lives and then being too busy for you. We thank you for all that have done and continue to do for us. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Is Fear In Control?
John 19:9-12 “He entered his headquarters again and said to Jesus, “Where are you from?” But Jesus gave him no answer. So Pilate said to him, “You will not speak to me? Do you not know that I have authority to release you and authority to crucify you?” Jesus answered him, “You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above. Therefore he who delivered me over to you has the greater sin.” From then on Pilate sought to release him, but the Jews cried out, “If you release this man, you are not Caesar's friend. Everyone who makes himself a king opposes Caesar.” (ESV)
Pilate is someone that I can empathize with. He was not Jewish and this was not his fight. He was a person in power and the chief priests and their officials used him to get done what they couldn’t. They did not have the power to crucify, so they turned Jesus over to Pilate to have him do it. Pilate didn’t know who Jesus was or really what He had done wrong. When He tried to question Jesus, Jesus had nothing to say. Pilate knew Jesus was innocent. Whether he knew it for sure, or whether he just had a feeling, Pilate knew that Jesus did not deserve to die.
I think it is interesting that even though he knew Jesus didn’t deserve the punishment, Pilate gave it to him anyway. I think this speaks so clearly to how far people will go to please others or to keep harm from coming to themselves. It is amazing to me how many times we make our decisions from a place of fear. The chief priests were worried about what Jesus was saying. They were afraid of the change that Jesus represented. Instead of trying to understand who He was and what He stood for, the wanted Him gone. They were too afraid to even stop and listen to Him.
Pilate tried to give Jesus back to the Jews. Pilate said at least three separate times that he could find no fault in him. And yet, the chief priests and their officials refused to take no for an answer. Pilate could have insisted that Jesus was innocent and that he wasn’t going to crucify an innocent man. So, why didn’t he? I think Pilate was afraid. There were several reasons he could have been afraid. Maybe he didn’t want to seem weak to the Jewish people. He might have been afraid of an uprising of the people if he went against their wishes. He also might have been afraid because the Jewish people were claiming that Jesus was going against Cesar by claiming to be a king. I am sure Pilate didn’t want to make waves with Cesar.
Both Pilate, and the chief priests were making their decisions out of a place of fear. How often do we do that? How often do we make decisions based on the fear something will happen or not happen? How often do we judge something and shy away from it just because it is new or different? We all tend fear the unknown, fear of the unknown is the greatest fear of all. It is normal to fear the unknown. However, fearing the unknown, and letting that fear control you are two very different things. There were many people that were afraid of Jesus and the things He was doing. Even the people that followed Him and were the closest to Him we scared sometimes. In Matthew 14:25-26 it says, “ Shortly before dawn Jesus went out to them, walking on the lake. When the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified. “It’s a ghost,” they said, and cried out in fear.”
The disciples were afraid, but they called out and they asked Jesus to reassure them. Many people that lived when Jesus did were scared of the things that He was doing. He was doing and saying things that they had not been seen or heard before. The problem is not that the chief priests and officials were scared. The problem was that they let fear talk them into making some bad decisions. The other people that were scared leaned into that fear and sought Jesus out to see what He was saying and what He was doing. They were open to listening to Him and trying to understand what he was all about.
Can you think of any times in your life when you made decisions based on fear? I am willing to be that we all do it more often than we think. For example, have you ever bought too much of something because you were afraid they would run out before you could get back to the store? What about if you are a parent, have you ever yelled at your child because you were afraid? Does your fear come out as anger sometimes?
I remember when my mom and I went to look at the venue for my wedding reception. Our wedding was at 10 am so the reception hall needed to be decorated by 9-9:30. We went to talk to the man in charge of the VFW where we were going to have our reception. We were doing all the food and all the decorations, so we knew we needed to get into the hall early. The man we talked to was not very kind to us and said there was no way we could get in before 9. We were understandably upset and he would not work with us at all. My mom and I were upset, but we figured we would talk to someone in the morning. When we told my dad what had happened he was furious with that guy. He wanted to call him up and yell at him. He was upset because he was afraid that “his little girl” was going to be disappointed. My dad’s anger was really coming from a place of fear. What about when we are afraid that our children might get hurt, then we sometimes make bad decisions because we are letting our fear control us.
I am sure that I have yelled at the boys on more than one occasion because I was afraid. For instance, they were running towards the street and I yelled at them because I was afraid they would get hit. I saw them raising their hand to their brother and I yelled because I was afraid they were going to hurt their brother, but they were just handing them something. I don’t know if these examples are making any sense. I can’t remember a specific instance, but I can remember the feeling. That feeling that I knew I had done something wrong, even though I had good intentions.
We’ve got to learn to notice when our actions are being controlled by fear. It is not easy, but it is essential to us living a faith filled life. We need to take control back from fear. If we let fear control our actions then we could end up doing things that hurt people. Look at the mistakes that the chief priests made when they were letting fear make their decisions. They were afraid of Jesus and so they had people falsely testify against him, they had him crucified. These were religious people, I don’t know that they would have done this had they not been so scared. What about Pilate, if he had stood up to his fear then he wouldn’t have let Jesus be punished for a crime he didn’t commit. How is fear affecting your life? What parts of your life are being controlled by your fear? Are you parenting from a place of fear? Are you living your life from a place of fear? Are you approaching God from a place of fear? In what ways can you examine you life and take back those places where fear seems to have control? All things are possible with God on your side. If fear has hold of any part of your life, you can get it back. All you need to do is ask God to show you how and then do as he directs you. You are strong. You can do hard things. You can be in control again!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we come to you and we ask you to shine a light on any place in our lives where we might be letting fear run the show. Please help us to take back control of those areas. Lord, we want you to have complete control over our lives. Lord, we thank you for all that you do for us, you are amazing. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus holy name, Amen.
Is God Your First Choice or Last Resort?
Matthew 8:23-27 “And when he got into the boat, his disciples followed him. A wind storm arose on the sea, so great that the boat was being swamped by the waves; but he was asleep. And they went and woke him up, saying, “Lord, save us! We are perishing!” And he said to them, “Why are you afraid, you of little faith?” Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the sea; and there was a dead calm. They were amazed, saying, “What sort of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him?”
This is an interesting story. Jesus was in the boat with all of his disciples and there was a wind storm. The boat was being swamped by waves and everyone on it was afraid. Everyone except Jesus, He was asleep. When I hear this story I wonder why Jesus was asleep. I mean I am sure He was tired as He was teaching so much. Everywhere He went, He was swarmed by people who wanted to hear Him teach and wanted Him to heal themselves and their loved ones. I guess it makes sense that He would be asleep.
I guess I am more wondering how He could sleep through all the craziness of the storm. I am sure it was probably loud on the boat with the disciples doing all they could to save the boat. As I wrote that, I felt as though the Holy Spirit said, “And there in lies the problem.” I was questioning when I first read this verse why Jesus said, “Why are you afraid, you of little faith?” I didn’t understand why Jesus would have said they had little faith. And then when I just said, the disciples were doing all they could to save the boat it hit me. They were relying on themselves to fix their problem. They weren’t praying to God and asking Him to help them get out of the situation. And actually in their case it wouldn’t even be just praying to God. They had God right there on the boat with them. They could have, at the first sign of trouble, asked Jesus to fix the situation. Why didn’t they?
This is something we all know a lot about. We do this all the time. Or, at least I know I and many people I know do. We know we have a problem and instead of turning to the one solution guaranteed to fix it, we try a million solutions on our own. We try to rely on ourselves to get us out of the situation. This is a message that God has been trying to get me to see for a long time now. I have had my fair share of storms over the years. I have prayed about these storms, and I have asked God to help, but I didn’t turn to Him to fix the situation as soon as the storm came. First, I read a million books on the subject matter, I asked everyone that knew anything about anything, what they thought I should do, I came up with plan after plan to fix the situation on my own. Does this sound familiar to anyone? Have you ever had a storm in your life and instead of turning to God, you tried to solve it, or fix it on your own? I know I can’t be the only one that has ever done this.
This is probably what the disciples were doing on that boat. They were probably looking to the fisherman they had with them, or anyone else that knew anything about boats. They were probably all putting their heads together to come up with a plan to save the boat. They were relying on their own knowledge and their own abilities. Proverbs 3:5 says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;” I wasn’t there, and I am only guessing but I don’t think that they would have thought what they were doing was a demonstration of little faith. They could have had the best intentions. Maybe they didn’t go to Jesus first because they knew He was tired and they didn’t want to bother Him. I get that. Jesus worked hard and I can see wanting to let Him rest and not bother Him unless you had too. It makes sense in our minds. Maybe this is why God tells us not to rely on our own understanding.
As I write this I am gaining a new understanding, which I assume is coming from the Holy Spirit. Even though we may not go to God first because we have good intentions, it still shows Him a lack of faith. Maybe not a lack of faith that we don’t think He can help us, but a lack of faith that He would want to help us. Perhaps a lack of faith that we are important enough for Him to help. Also it shows that we think God can’t do all things at the same time. Our actions are telling God that we think He is too busy to help us.
I was at a conference once and there was a priest speaking at the conference that was assigned to a college or university. He mentioned he always said a rosary at the football games praying that his team would win. He said they captured a photo of him one week saying the rosary and he got a lot of negative comments from people who saw the photo. They said comments like, “a Catholic priest spending time praying about a football game when there are people dying of cancer.” I remember he told us that they were upset that he was wasting God’s time over a silly football time when there were bigger, more important things that God should be spending His time on. I remember he said, “My God is bigger than that.” He explained the we shouldn’t feel bad about asking God for all of the things that we need because other people might be worse off than we are. This priest said that our God can do all of things we are asking for as well as the things that others need too. He is not limited by the same things that we are limited by. Actually, He is not limited by anything.
I remember coming home and writing a sticky note on my fridge that said, “My god is bigger than that.” It reminds me that God should be the first place I turn to in times of trouble. It reminds me that I don’t have to feel bad asking God to help me out of a problem because He may have other more important things to do. This is not true. God thinks I, and my problems are just as important as anyone else. He can help us all. He has no limitations. He is the almighty one, creator of all things.
The next time we are in a storm, we should go straight to God. We don’t have to waste time trying to rely on our understanding or our own abilities. He is there for us. When the disciples woke Jesus up, He rebuked the winds and the sea and there was a dead calm. If Jesus can do this to the winds and the sea, what do you think He can do to the storms in your life? I know it is hard, and I am right there with you, trying to solve my problems on my own. Let's join together and make a decision to turn to God to calm the storms. Let’s not save God for a last resort, let’s make him our first line of defense. When we get in the habit of doing that, I bet we will see the storms calmed a lot quicker.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to trust in your more. Help us to turn to you first instead of waiting until You are our last resort. Lord, help us to believe that you can help everyone and that when we come to you we are not taking your time away from others. Help us to see that you have infinite amounts of time for each and every one of us. Help us to not rely on our own understanding. Help us to see the bigger picture Lord. We are so thankful for all that you do for us. We are thankful that you are merciful and loving. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Great Is The Lord, and Greatly to Be Praised
Psalm 145:1-3 “I will extol you, my God and King, and bless your name forever and ever. Every day I will bless you, and praise your name forever and ever. Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised; his greatness is unsearchable.”
This is a great verse. I think if you know me at all by now, you know that I love to praise the Lord. I think He is truly amazing and I think it is so important to tell Him that. Our Lord does so much for us every day. He gives us so much mercy and so much grace. He forgives us again and again, even though we don’t really deserve it. His love is unconditional and unending. How many people can you say that about? He performs miracles for us, just to make us happy. He doesn’t need anything from us in return. Again, how many people can you say that about? How many people do you know that will do things for you without expecting anything in return? I hope you do know at least one, because there are people out there like that, but they are certainly not the majority.
This is why I love praising the Lord so much. There is little that we can give God to repay Him. There is nothing He needs from us. He is complete and totally perfect just as He is. Even though He doesn’t need anything from us, He does like when we praise Him. Praising the Lord is something that costs us nothing but our time and is easy to do. Once you start to incorporate praising the Lord into your daily routine, you will wonder why you weren’t always doing it. It feels so good to say thank you to God for all that He does for us. The more you praise Him the more you realize how amazing He truly is.
When I attended a Life in the Spirit seminar, they gave us praise sheets so that we could participate in the praise part of the meetings. You do not need a praise sheet to praise the Lord. There is no right or wrong way to do it. However, if you are new to praising the Lord, it may feel intimidating, especially if you are in a room full of people that have been doing it for a long time. If this is your first time intentionally praising the Lord it may feel strange. That’s normal, just keep doing it. If you are like me and most people who have never really spent time praising the Lord before, you are not really sure what to say. I understand this. I had no idea what to say at first and even though I have been doing it at least every Thursday for the last 3 years or so, I still use the praise sheet. I like the things that are written on the sheet. I do praise on my own, with my own words at home sometimes, but I really like using the sheet.
Here are some of the things that are on the praise sheet I was given.
Praise you our Lord and our God, Praise your holy name, we rejoice in your presence oh Lord, Jesus you are my strength, Jesus you are my rock, Jesus you are my fortress, Jesus you are my deliver, Jesus you are my refuge, Jesus you are my shield, Jesus you are my strong hold, Jesus you are my salvation, Jesus you are my healer, Jesus you are my teacher, Jesus you are my savior, Jesus you are my advocate, Jesus you are the great amen, Jesus you are the author of life, Jesus you are the beginning in the end, Jesus you are the blessed and only ruler, Jesus you are the breath of life, Jesus you are the captain of salvation, Jesus you are the good shepherd, Jesus you are the healer, Jesus you are hope and glory.
You are the Messiah, you are the fountain of life, you are the vine keep us attached to you Lord, you are the holy one of Israel, you are the Christ, the power and wisdom of God, you are the Lamb who was slain you are the word made flesh, you are the holy one who sits up on the throne, you are the living word, you are emmanuel, you are the son of God, you set my feet are dancing, you are truth, you are loved, you are power, you are wisdom, you are the faithful one, you are our redeemer, you are the great “I AM” The list goes on, but those are several examples of the kinds of things you would find on a praise sheet.
There is a great little book called “Opening The Gates of Praise” by Father John M. Capuci. The reason I say little book is because it is just 38 pages long. However, in this book Father talks about five things. First, why we praise. Second, what are our obstacles to praise. Third, ways to praise. Fourth, how to develop a spirit of praise. Fifth, He takes you through the steps so you can write out your own string of praise. This was a great book for explaining praise.
In this book Father has 10 great reasons why we should praise God. I am not going to read them all to you as it is not my book, it is his. I will list a few that you may find surprising. One that I didn’t know is that praise breaks down the walls that are barriers to God’s grace. Father Capuci says, “When we praise, the walls of arrogance, self-hatred and low self-esteem begin to be broken down. God begins the healing process in us as we go before Him, praising His most awesome power!” Another reason we should praise God is because praise allows us the freedom to be ourselves before God and the community. Father Capuci says, “When we can praise God for an extended time, on a regular basis, areas of being overly concerned with how people will look at us begin to be healed. When a person can praise God out loud, in the midst of the community, we can be assured that healing of self-image is taking place. The last reason I will touch on is because praise breaks down negativity in our lives. Who couldn’t use a little less of that right now. There is so much negativity every where we look. If praise can break that down I say it is worth it. Father Capuci says, “There is no such thing as a negative personality. Instead, many people struggle with the temptation to fall into negativity. What happens is this: it becomes increasingly difficult to see God’s goodness and action in our lives or even around us. So, we begin to develop a spirit of negativity. Praise binds the spirit of negativity, setting us free from its hold. The more we praise the Lord we will see the effects of negativity loose its grasp and we will move toward the power of the Holy Spirit.
I don’t want to relay everything in this book to you as it is not my information to share. I would highly recommend you get a copy of this book if you can. If you would like a copy, I will put the info from the back of the book in the show notes. I do want to go over quickly the four different types of praise that Father Capuci talks about. First, Praise God for being God, an example of this type of praise would be the phrases I mentioned earlier from the praise sheets. The second type of praise is praise God for your history, for example, your faith, family, being born, you faculties, and your life. The third type of praise is praise God for your present, your here and now. What is God doing right now in your life? Did He help you find your keys, did you give you a nice sunny day, a green light, what can you praise God for right now in the moment? The fourth type of praise is praise God for what the Spirit is doing right now, for instance, healing a headache, shoulder is heated, outpouring of the Spirit, Receiving new gifts, or perhaps healing your self-image. Is there anything the Spirit is doing within you right now that you can praise. Father Capuci talks about how if you string these four categories together then you have a “string of praise.” He encourages us each to sit down and write down at least 5 things in each category and then start to use this list to praise God more often. If you would like the praise sheets that I was talking about early just send me an email at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com and I will send you a copy.
I would be remiss if I didn’t also mention my favorite way to praise, which is to listen to praise and worship music. If you are listening to this podcast and you have an smart phone or a computer I recommend you go to an app or website called spotify. It is free to make an account and you can listen to all the Christian music you want for free. It is a great way to try out a bunch of different artists and see who you like. You could do the same thing on youtube if you like that better. Listening to praise music can lift your spirits instantly. There is a playlist on Spotify that was created by my mentor called “Big Life Mornings” and it is a great compilation of upbeat Christian songs. I have discovered so many new great songs. Maybe give it a try? What have you got to lose?
Dear Heavenly Father, please bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you and we want to praise you, please show us how. Please put this upon our hearts and if we are not already praising you help us to start. Help us to want to start. Give us the courage to praise you silently and also in out loud. Help us to push through the feelings of awkwardness until we get comfortable praising you Lord. You are so amazing, you do so much for us and expect nothing in return. Help us to do this for you with no expectations. Lord, we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Today is day 100 of that journey and I am so excited to get to share that with you. Thank you for continuing to show up and listen. Thank you for all of you that have given me your feedback, I really appreciate it. If you are able to go to the rate this podcast, that would be great to help others see it more. Also, if you have a friend or loved one you could share it with, that would be great too. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow, Have a blessed day!
To order Fr. John Capuci's book please send payment to
Rev. John M. Capuci
C/O H. O. M. Books
108 Aberdeen Stree
Lowell, Massachusetts 01850
**This is the info in the back of the book, however, I cannot be sure this is still where you would still order them. It might be good to send an email to Father Capuci at his new parish and just check with him. Here is the email for his parish. amin@sccwoburn.com
Repent, Now Is The Time
Sirach 16:11 “Even if there were only one stiff-necked person, it would be a wonder if he remained unpunished. For mercy and wrath are with the Lord; he is mighty to forgive—but he also pours out wrath.”
I don’t think we like to think about things like this. I know I don’t. I like to think of God as just love. I struggle with reading the Old Testament at times because it is hard for me to reconcile the God I read about in the Old Testament with the God I have in my mind. I think of God as loving and forgiving. I picture a God that is just pouring down love, mercy and forgiveness on us like it is rain. I picture a God who would do anything to save us and to protect us. This is the God that I picture in my head. And then when I read about a god that killed all the first born children in Egypt, I struggle to reconcile the two. Hebrews 13:8 says, “ Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” Since we know that God is the same yesterday, today and forever, we know that the God of the Old Testament, is the same God in the New Testament. So, why the discrepancy? What is different?
I don’t know if anything is different. God is love. He loves us more than we could ever know. He has loved us from the beginning of time and that will never change. However, God is not only love. He is our Heavenly Father. Think about your father, or a father figure in your life. Did they just love you and never correct you? When you have children, you are responsible for forming them into the type of person they are to be. You are responsible for teaching them how to live and for enforcing consequences when they do things that go against your rules. When you enforce these consequences, does that mean that you do not love your children? No, quite the contrary, when you enforce these rules you are letting your children know that you love them too much to let them mess up their lives.
This is what the Lord is doing, only He is responsible for the entire human race. Can you imagine that type of responsibility? It is all I can handle to try to raise three responsible young men. I can’t imagine if I had billions of children that I was responsible for. God created Adam and Eve, and things were going pretty good. Then Eve ate the fruit and it all went downhill from there. Once sin entered the world, things kept getting worse. God has been very patient over the years. We, as humans, have been doing what we want to do for a very long time and many of us don’t pay much attention to what it is God would like us to be doing. It seems we have all gotten pretty comfortable living our lives outside of the faith, or perhaps living a watered down version of our faith. This is especially true during the pandemic. Some of us have actually grown in our faith more during this pandemic. I know my in laws started watching daily mass during the pandemic. Churches were closed and they discovered that mass was on the TV every day at 10 am. So they started watching daily. Before the pandemic, they did not do that. Some of us have gotten in the habit of not going to church and not watching it on TV and that is not good.
Our God is a just God. You will read that often in the Bible. The Bible clearly spells out how we are supposed to live. If that is not enough we have the 10 commandments. We also have Jesus’ life that clearly portrays how we should all be living. The bible not only tells us how to live, it also tells us what will happen if we don’t live the way God is telling us to live. Our God wouldn’t be a just God if he just watched us continue to head down the wrong path and didn’t say or do anything about it. What would you think of a father that had children that continually misbehaved, went against his wishes and did awful things and yet the father just sat by and did nothing? God loves us and He doesn’t love when he has to give us consequences for our actions. However, He tells us what we should do, He tells us what will happen if we do it, and then He lets us make the decisions of what we want to do. That is a loving and caring father.
The verse above says, “For mercy and wrath are with the Lord; he is mighty to forgive—but he also pours out wrath.” God gives us so much mercy and he is so forgiving. However, I don’t believe that we would ever learn any lessons, or turn away from our sinful ways if he was only merciful and if he never did anything when we acted out or went against his ways. I don’t think that God likes having to punish us. I think this is why Moses, and so many other people throughout the Bible were able to intercede on our behalf, or on the behalf of God’s people. It is a patter that occurred over and over again throughout the Bible. God’s people rebelled against God and went against all He taught them, and then someone interceded on their behalf and they were saved. God is happy when we intercede for those that can’t or won’t intercede for themselves. This was the topic of many of the words that were given at my prayer group this past Thursday. I think that they were important and I want to share them with you so you can see that God does not want to punish us, however, if He is to be just, He can’t just keep sitting by and watching as we destroy all that He has built.
There were three powerful words of prophesy given. I think we all need to hear them. The first one started with a vision. This vision was of a huge crevice, with a gate on one side. We are not standing around it, we are kneeling and we are pleading. I ask the Lord what this vision meant and he said:
“Repent, repent, repent” and you say, “I have and I am tired of repenting." And I say, "do not become weary of repenting morning, noon, and night. For you are not repenting just for yourself, you are pleading to the father for your brothers and sisters who cannot repent or won’t repent. Will you become the bridge for them before the gate is closed? Love the falling, intercede for the falling, repent for the falling, my heart bleeds for the falling. Your prayers of repentance relieves my pain. I love them all, I died for them all. Repentance is a form of forgiveness. Ask forgiveness for the fallen and the broken. Who will, if my people will not.
As you can see by this word, God wants us to repent for those that either can’t or won’t repent. There were several saints that dedicated their lives to praying for the souls of sinners. God doesn’t want to see any of His children end up anywhere but in Heaven. The world is a crazy place right now and God is asking for our help to save His children.
The second word or prophecy that was given said, “Now is the time my children, now is the time. Wait no longer, repent. Get on your knees, get on the knees of your heart. Come to me in the depth of your heart in great humility and I your Lord will hear and answer your prayers for your brothers and sisters. I will forgive and have forgiven the world and I will continue to pour out my mercy on all of you and each of you. But I ask you to come now, do not wait. Do not wait for time is growing very short. You do not know the hour only my father in heaven knows the hour. Time is short. Heed my word. Heed my call to you. Come, come into the depths of your hearts, come on your bended knee. Come and repent and believe the good news that I am your risen Lord, and you are mine. This was the second time within in 15 minute period that God mentioned us repenting not only for ourselves, but for others as well. I get the feeling this is something He really wants us to hear.
The third word of prophecy said, “Kneel down before me in supplication. Call out to me for the needs of mankind. Now is my time of mercy. Now is my time of mercy. It is the time to ask, the time to pray, the time to sacrifice. Call out for my mercy for you and all mankind. I am a merciful God. Repent of all that is wrong. Call out for my mercy, for my justice is before me. It is only my mercy that can stop it. So again I tell you kneel down before me and supplication.” The person who received this word has had the impression that it was so bad that His justice also had to be satisfied so that's why he's asking for sacrifice so that he would not be almost forced to do what is just if we do not change. This was the third time in that same 15 minutes. I do not know what exactly God is talking about. I do know that when he says only HIs father know the hour, that is the truth.
The apostles expected the second coming of the Lord to be within their lifetime and we are now 2,000 or so years after that. We do not know how much time we each have in this world. What I do know is that God is telling us that it is important that we repent right now for ourselves and for others. He is telling us that He wants to pour out His mercy on us but that He needs us to ask for it. He is also calling us to sacrifice. That can look different for everyone, and we should pause to see what that looks like for each one of us. Repenting for ourselves and others doesn’t have to be long prayer. It could be as simple as telling the Lord we repent for ourselves and others several times a day. One of the ladies in my prayer group said, “It doesn’t have to be a long prayer, God listens to your heart, not your words.” So, even if you aren’t praying a specific prayer, but you are thinking about your sins and those of the sinners frequently, God will know. If your heart desires to save the sinners and for God to have mercy on the sinners, then even if you say nothing, God will know. God is asking us for our help, will you help Him?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord we repent for ourselves and we repent for those that either can not or will not repent for themselves. Lord show us how you would like us to repent and how you would like us to sacrifice. Lord, we are all in and we want what you want. Show us what it is that you want. Shine a light on the places in our lives where we need to repent and then give us the strength to do that. We love you Lord, you are so amazing. We thank you for coming to us and asking us for our help. You are so mighty and so powerful and we are lucky we have you. Thank you for all that you do for us. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. We have just started a new week, which means a new character trait. I find it funny that this week’s trait is self-control and as I am writing this it is Halloween Night and I just had a lack of self control when it came to handing out candy. I have been really good about not eating candy for awhile now. However, I ate probably 4 mini butterfingers, 2 mini milky ways, and a few baby ruth. However, I will send out the email tonight for self control and then I will figure out how to increase my self control so that I don’t eat all the left over candy we have. I hope you will all join me this week. If you would still like to sign up for the “10 Weeks To Be More Like Jesus” challenge you can email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or you can click here. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day.
Commit Your Way To The Lord
Psalm 37:5-7 “Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him and he will do this: He will make your righteous reward shine like the dawn, your vindication like the noonday sun. Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him; do not fret when people succeed in their ways, when they carry out their wicked schemes.”
“Commit your way to the Lord: trust in him and he will do this.” There is that word trust again. It keeps coming up. It looks like we are not going to be able to get away from it. The Lord is calling us to trust Him. I don’t see anyway to deny that. According to the Revised Standard Version Bible the word “Trust” 147 times. Old Testament 134 times. This is something that keeps getting repeated over and over again. I think it is something we might want to pay attention too.
The beginning of this verse says to commit your way to the Lord. What does this mean? How can we do this. We can decide we want to follow the Lord. We can decide that instead of trying to handle things on our own, we will turn them over to the Lord. Committing our way to the Lord can look different for each one of us. Maybe for some of us that means we will start each day sitting in silence and praying with Him. For other people it might mean praying the Liturgy of the Hours. Some people may decide that committing their way to the Lord means they want to volunteer at various places in their community. It doesn’t have to look the same for each of us.
What will be the same for all of us, is our love and commitment to the Lord. If we decide to commit our way to the Lord that means we are committing to following His laws and living the way He calls us to Live. The Lord knows where are heart is at and He knows what we want to do. By committing to the Lord’s ways, we are saying that we will try to do whatever we need to do to follow Him and to live by His rules. This will mean that we need to learn what the Lord wants from us and how to live the way He wants us to live. We can’t commit our way to the Lord if we don’t know what that looks like. It would be like trying to follow the rules of a game that you have never played before. If you are going to truly commit to the Lord then you are also committing to learning more about Him and His ways.
The next part says, “He will make your righteous reward shine like the dawn, your vindication like the noonday sun.” God will reward you for your faithfulness. If someone attacks your character, God will give you vindication. He says in the next verse, “Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him; do not fret when people succeed in their ways, when they carry out their wicked schemes.” “Be still before the Lord,” that is not something that comes easy too many of us. Many of us have a hard time coming before the Lord to pray, never mind coming before Him to be still. We live in a world that is constantly busy and filled with so much noise. How can the Lord call us to come before Him and be still? Is that even possible? Maybe it is not possible on our own, but all things are possible with Christ.
As if coming before the Lord to be still wasn’t hard enough the Lord calls us to also “wait patiently for Him.” Patience is definitely a virtue and it is one that is becoming harder and harder to find in today’s world. So, how can we be still before the Lord and wait patiently for Him? We can set aside a few minutes a day to just sit and be still. I know this may be hard at first, but guess what? You can do hard things! I know the enemy doesn’t want you to think you can, but you are a child of God, of course you can do hard things. Set aside time whenever it is best for you. Sometimes we can get stuck in trying to do things perfectly, or the correct way, or at least I do. God did not say be still before the Lord for 5 hours a day. He just said be still before the Lord. So, even if you start with 5 minutes a day, that would be great! It doesn’t have to be first thing in the morning, at lunch, before bed, it can be whatever is best for you. I remember hearing a story about someone asking their mentor when the best time to do it was and their mentor said, “Whenever you are actually going to do it.” Meaning, don’t decide morning is best if you hate to get up in the morning. Don’t pick right before bed if you know you always fall asleep at that time. You’ve got this, you can find 5 minutes in your day to be still with the Lord.
The second part of that was to wait patiently for Him. That doesn’t mean that you sit there and ask the Lord to hurry up and come before your thoughts wander off. It doesn’t mean that you get impatient because the Lord hasn’t shown up yet. If you ask the Lord to come, He will. Just believe that is true and then wait patiently. If thoughts come to your mind, that’s fine. You can either dismiss them gently, or incorporate them into your prayer. Whatever works best for you.
These verses end with, "Do not fret when people succeed in their ways, when they carry out their wicked schemes.” This brings us back to the beginning where we started a few days ago. We don’t have to worry about those that are doing wicked schemes, even if they seem to be successful. God will take care of them. It is His job to judge not ours. Our job is to commit our ways to the Lord and then trust that He will do what needs to be done. When we commit our ways to the Lord, remember part of that is turning our worries over to Him and trusting that He will take care of them, trusting He will take care of us. We don’t have to worry about those with wicked schemes. God promised us He would make our vindication like the noonday sun. We know God always keeps His promises. So, are we going to believe Him, or are we going to worry?
Dear Heavenly Father, please bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask that you continue to help us to trust you. We ask that you help us to be still before you and to wait patiently for you. We struggle with all these things and we know if we were on our own we would fail. However, we are not on our own, we have you Lord Jesus, please help us. Help us to see that we don’t have to worry about evil doers because you are in charge and you have it all under control. We love you Lord and we thank you for all that you do for us. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Delight In The Lord
Psalm 37:4 “Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.”
I am not sure if you have noticed but I have been sticking to Psalm 37 this week. I read it on Friday after my prayer group and the verses given at prayer group were Psalm 37:1-7. However, when I read them, I realized that there was so much packed into those 7 short verses. Then I was going to do 2 verses each day, but even 2 sometimes was too much. For instance yesterday’s verse was “Trust in the Lord and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pastures.” The second verse would have been this verse, but by the time I finished talking about trusting the Lord and doing good, it was the end of the episode. I could have probably just made it a longer episode and squeezed this verse in, but I didn’t want to rush past this very important point.
Have you ever thought about taking delight in the Lord? I am sure this is not the only time this idea is presented in the Bible. Actually there are more than 10 instances in the Bible where it talks about taking delight in the Lord or in His law. I have never thought of taking delight in the Lord before. I mean, I love him and I spend time with him, but to be honest, when I read this verse I wondered how I would even do take delight in the Lord. I literally typed into the search bar on my computer, “How does one delight in the Lord.” I tell you this because I don’t want you to think because I am doing this podcast, I have everything figured out. I don’t want you to think when I speak I am speaking with any authority as if I was an expert. I am on the same journey you are on. We could study the Bible our whole lives and still not have it all figured out.
When I read a scripture verse I listen to what the Holy Spirit has to tell me about the verse, I also think about what I have learned up until this point, and sometimes, many times, I go to the internet to see what others say about this verse. My goal with this podcast is for us to be on this journey together to discover God’s Word more fully and to see how we can apply that word to our daily lives. I am not choosing versing that I already understand. Actually I am not really choosing the verses. I am using the verses from my prayer group that people feel inspired by the Holy Spirit to share. This means often times I will get a verse and I don’t completely understand what it means. Sometimes the Holy Spirit gives me an understanding and sometimes I find that understanding through research.
I do know that it is important to read the scripture and to try to understand it. This was confirmed at my prayer group the other day, someone felt strongly that the Lord wanted to tell us that His word is as pertinent today as it was then. We have the Lord right in our tabernacle and he is right there with us in adoration and in everything. His word is still as powerful today as it was. That is why it is important to read his word and fill us so that we can fill ourselves with what God wants to tell us.” God will speak to you directly through the scriptures if you let Him.
Ok, back to today’s verse. How does one delight in the Lord? I found two really good articles and I will put a link to them in the show notes. One of them was titled, “What Does It Mean To Take Delight In The Lord?” and was written by Tracy Kulwicki. In this article Tracy talks not only about this verse, but the verses we discussed yesterday. Psalm 37:3-4 ““Trust in the Lord and do good. Then you will live safely in the land and prosper. Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you your heart’s desires.” The author said before you get the desires of your heart you need to trust in the Lord, do good and take delight in the Lord. She says the reason we need to do these things first is not because we need to win God over, or because we need to work hard to get things from God. The reason we need to do these things is because when we do these things first, then our desires become His.
We talked a lot yesterday about how to trust in the Lord and do good. Today we will talk about how do we delight in the Lord? Here is what Tracy says about how we can delight in the Lord.
“When I take delight in my children, I spend time with them. I watch the things they do. I notice who they are. I notice their features and character. I laugh at the funny things they do. I hold them close. I talk with them. I listen to them. I recognize the unique things about them that make them who they are. I think about them often. I focus on the great things about them that I love. I remember the words they’ve said that melt my heart, the great memories we’ve created together, and the times when we overcame something challenging together.
She went on to say, “We can do the same things with God. We take delight in God by spending time with Him, watching the things He is doing in our lives. We can notice who He is, learn about His features and characteristics. We can laugh at the funny moments in our lives that come from His hand. We can hold Him close, talk with Him, listen to Him. Recognize who He is, think about Him all throughout our day and focus on His greatness and love. We can remember the times He has moved in our lives, the things He has done for us, and the prayers He has answered.”
I think this is both a great description of how we already delight in things and also how we can apply what we are already doing to God. Just listening to that description of how we delight in our children made me smile. It made me think of how much I love my children. If you don’t have children, I bet you do have something that you delight in as she described above. It might be a pet, friends, nieces and nephews, cousins, friends. Whatever it is that you delight in, that was a pretty good description of how we go about doing it. Then thinking about how I could apply that to our Lord made me smile as well. I love our Lord. I am sure you do too, or you wouldn’t be listening to a podcast titled, “Walk Boldly With Jesus.” Thinking about all the ways we can delight in him, makes me smile and warms my heart. Let me break down some of the things she said so we can really remember them.
- Spend time with Him. This is something we talk about a lot. However, in this context we are not talking about it as if spending time with the Lord is one more thing on your to do list. Spend time with Him with the intent to delight in Him. Set aside time for Him and then look forward to that time in the same way you would look forward to spending time with anyone or anything that you delight in.
- Watch the things He is doing in your life. Take notice throughout the day of what the Lord is doing in your life. Focus on the big and small ways that God is showing up for you each and every day. He is there and you will notice where He is if you look for Him. The more you look, the more you will see Him. “Seek and you shall find.”
- We can notice who He is. We can learn about His features and characteristics. There are a number of ways we can do this. If we read the Bible we will learn a lot about who God is, who Jesus is, and who the Holy Spirit is. Reading God’s word is a great way to get to know Him. It is also not the only way. You can read books written by Saints, theologians, people who have studied the Bible and history. You can listen to podcasts or watch movies about God. We live in an age where all the knowledge you want is right at your fingertips. Whatever way you learn best, is great. It doesn’t have to be just one way. There is no right or wrong way to learn about the Lord. Do what is best for you. There are many roads all leading to the same place.
- Laugh at the funny moments that God brings us. I am sure we have all had funny moments in our lives. I am sure we have had times when we knew how things were going to go and they went horribly wrong in our eyes, and perfectly right in the Lord’s eyes. When we are no longer in that situation and we can look back on it and see how funny it actually is. God has a great sense of humor. The ladies at prayer group get to witness this frequently when God gives them a vision. Think of any of these funny times that God has given to you. Humor in our lives is a gift.
- We can hold Him close, talk to Him, and listen to Him. These are all possible. You may be wondering how we can hold Him close when He is not physically here. I can think of two ways. First, if you are Catholic then you can receive the Eucharist and He literally couldn’t be any closer to you. Second, you can hold him close to your heart in the same way that you hold those that you have lost close to your heart. If you have ever lost someone close to you then you know that is not just a figure of speech. You are literally holding those people close to your heart. I think we all know that we can talk to Him, but do we do it? How often do you talk to the Lord? He is always available and ready to listen. If you are not doing this often, maybe it is time to do it more. You may know that you can talk to the Lord, but did you know that you can listen to Him as well? I don’t think we do this often enough. God wants to talk to us, but how many of us give Him the time to listen?
- Recognize who He is. When I read that I think of praising Him. Not just recognizing that He is God, but recognizing all that entails. Recognizing that He is the creator of all things. He is the Lord God almighty. There is so much to who He is and taking some time to explore that and to celebrate that would definitely help you delight in Him.
- Think about Him all throughout the day and focus on His goodness and His Love. This is a great one to end with. Try and turn your thoughts to Him all throughout the day. I believe she mentioned in the article to set reminders on your phone until you are trained to do it automatically. Also focus on His goodness and His love. When we focus on those two things I don’t know how we can do anything else but delight in the Lord. God’s goodness and love are so amazing. They are unsurpassed by anything else. If we keep these in mind we are guaranteed to delight in Him.
There is so much more in Tracy’s article. I urge you to read her full article. (click here for article) You can click on the link in the show notes or even just to google “What does it mean to take delight in the Lord?”. Her website is workingmomsbalance.com It was a great article and it went into more detail than I could in this episode.
I just want to leave you with the question, “What can you do today to delight in the Lord?”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those that listen to this episode today. Lord we love you and we want to delight in you. Lord, help us to get to know you better and help us to spend more time with you. Help us to notice where you are in our lives Lord and help us to remember all the funny things you have done. You are amazing Lord and we are so very thankful for all that you do for us every day. You keep showing up for us even when we aren’t the best at showing up for you and we are grateful for that Lord. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Another great article Titled "Delight Yourself in the Lord: This Changed My Life" by Kelly R Baker. (click here for article)
To Sign up for the "10 Weeks To Be More Like Jesus" Challenge click here.
Trust In The Lord And Do Good
Psalm 37:3 Trust in the Lord and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture.”
This verse says so much in one short sentence. It is calling us to so much and it is also offering us so much. The very first thing it says is, “trust in the Lord and do good.” Even just those 7 words are calling us to a lot. Trust in the Lord is something that is so important and yet not always easy to do. It is easier to trust when all is going well and you can see your way forward. However, what about when you can’t. What about when you can’t see the way forward and you are unsure of what to do? I have a friend who chose the word trust this year because she felt that she was not trusting in God’s plan enough.
She was constantly worrying about her children, her husband, her job, her future. She knew she needed to leave her job because it was not great for her mental health. However, she worried if she could leave it. Would the amount she have in savings be enough? Would she be able to find a different job with less hours? Would she make enough to pay all the bills? What if her kids needed money? What if her husband lost his job? She was full with what ifs. She didn’t want to keep living this way. She wanted to be able to trust that God had a plan and that He would take care of the details.
Does this mean that she should just quit her job and not worry about anything. No, that is not what I am saying and this is not what she did either. She looked for another job, and trusted that the right job would come along. Was it easy, no. Every time she got a job offer that was not what she wanted she considered it because of that fear that the right job wouldn’t come along. However, she had decided at the beginning of the year that she was going trust more and so she did have to turn down a few wrong fits before the right fit came along. Meanwhile she kept her other job knowing that it wouldn’t be forever and that God would get her through. Sometimes just knowing there is an end to something makes it easier to get through.
She found a new job that was half as many hours and much less stress. It was exactly what she was looking for. She was able to quit her other job and she is much less stressed out now. Does she still worry if she will run out of savings, yes. However, she is worrying about it less now because she saw how God took care of the job situation. Does she still worry about her kids, grandkids, and husband, yes, because trust in God is a journey and not an overnight realization.
Trust in God is not a one time thing. It is a decision that we need to make over and over again, sometimes many times a day. Trust in God is not a feeling, it’s a decision, it’s a choice. You may not feel like you trust in God, but are you moving forward even when you are scared? Are you moving forward even when you don’t know the next 10 steps ahead? We had a word given at prayer group one time that said, “Trust in me. Do not be afraid. You must choose to hope and trust in me. It is a choice; it is not a feeling. When darkness comes choose hope, love, trust; choose me.” My brother has a quote at the end of every email he sends. This quote says, “There will be times you want to quit every good thing you do in this life, persist. Courage is not the absence of fear, it is the mastery of it.”
I love this quote because it speaks to each one of us. I am sure there have been things that you have wanted to do and yet you were scared. Maybe you trusted in the Lord and did them anyway, and maybe you didn’t. Either way, you can appreciate what this quote is saying. There will always be things we worry about. I don’t know that trust in the Lord means that you will never worry about anything ever again. I think it means that when you do worry, you will choose to move forward anyway trusting that He will take care of you.
The next part of the verse says “and do good.” Father Mike talked about this in his podcast today. Well, if you are up to date it wasn’t today, but I am a bit behind. He was talking about how we are not just called to be good Christian people, but that we are also called to works of mercy as well. Father Mike said it is not enough to just believe in God and to be a good person. We need to ask ourselves how we can use the fruit that God gave us to help those around us.
He is not saying that we need to fly to Calcutta and help the poor on the streets of India. We need to look on either side of us. Who can we help? Are you a parent, and your feeding and clothing your children? Are you a son or daughter and are you taking care of your parents or grandparents? Is there a local food pantry you can donate food to or volunteer at? Is there a clothing drive or a Toys for Tots drive you can donate to? Where in your neighborhood could you give back some of what God has given to you? James 2:18 comments, "Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works." James chapter 2 ends by insisting that, "faith apart from works is dead" (James 2:26). What can you do to give back to the community or to help those in need?
We are not far from Christmas season, which is a great time to help those less fortunate. A lot of churches have what they call a giving tree. They ask local families who need a little help at Christmas time to provide needs or wants. Then they write these things on tags and put them on the tree. Then the parishioners take home these tags and buy the presents for those that need them. This is a great way to give back and to help those in need. If your church doesn’t have one of these, maybe check out other local churches. Also, during the holidays, it is a great idea to check in with local shelters and see if they need anything. Warm socks are a big thing for homeless shelters especially in the winter months.
One of my sisters and her family use to go out to the homeless in Worcester and hand out packed lunches. They would make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and put an apple and bottle of water, or something like that. It wasn’t anything fancy, but it was there way to give back. Now, her daughter which goes to school in Boston has a bag of snacks in her car at all times. When she sees someone on the side of the road asking for money she gives them some food. Our children are always watching us. If we show them how important it is to help those in need, they will do the same when they grow up. Yesterday I talked about how giving my parents were. There are 11 children in my family and although we may all be different, there isn’t a single one of us that would see someone in need and not help. That is not how we were raised. What can you do this week to help someone in need?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask that you help us to trust you more and more with each passing day. Lord, we ask that you help us to see that trusting you is a choice and not a feeling and help us to be strong enough to make that choice. We want to trust you Lord. Help us to do good Lord Jesus. Show us the people in our lives that need our help. Shine a light on those that we could be helping. Lord, we ask you to put in on our hearts to give back even more than we already are. Lord we love you and we long to be like you. You gave everything you had for us, help us to repay that debt and give all that we have to others. Lord thank you for all that you are and all that you do. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Just a reminder that this week’s character trait to be more like Jesus is Gentle. I will keep a link for the two articles in the show notes in case you haven’t signed up for the challenge yet and you want to take a look at the articles. One of them is titles, “Gentleness is Strength: The 7 Habits of Highly Gentle People.” (Click here for article) The other one is titled, “22 Unusual Ways To Be Gentle With Yourself.” (Click here for article) If you still want to sign up to receive the emails right to your inbox you can email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or (click here to signup) I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day.
The More You Give, The More You Get?
Psalm 37:1-2 “Do not fret because of those who are evil or be envious of those who do wrong; for like the grass they will soon wither, like green plants they will soon die away.”
Do you ever wonder why some people are so evil? Does it ever seem like those that are doing everything right are struggling and those that seem to only care about themselves are doing great? I remember when I was little I used to wonder this. My parents are so faithful and they pray all the time. They gave so much of their time and money to the church. I couldn’t understand why we struggled so much. I have heard numerous people say, “The more you give, the more you get.” Well, my parents literally couldn’t have given any more than they did.
They gave weekly at church, they provided for all 11 children, plus anyone else that needed anything. If a friend had no where to stay, they moved them in with us. One time it was a family with 8 or 10 children, on top of our 11 children. It was a crowded house, but that is who my parents are and have always been. So, when we struggled or had tough times I really didn’t understand it. I would question God. “What the heck is going on,” I would say. “My parents give so much, shouldn’t it be there turn to get something every now and then?” Maybe you have been in a similar situation or had similar thoughts. I am going to share with you what the Lord has just shared with me.
My parents were getting more and I just couldn’t see it because it did not look like what I thought it would. In my mind as a child, and actually even today I felt like if you give more you will get more meant you will get more money and that may be the case for some people. However, that was not the case for my parents. However, they got things far better than money. They got to witness miracles that they would not have gotten to witness if they had a lot of money. They prayed for something and God came through, every time. This is a blessing that you don’t get to see as much if you have a lot of money because you tend not to need as much so you aren’t asking God for things, your are relying on yourself to provide.
I have told you in past episodes about how my dad needed a car and even before he had time to tell my mom his car broke, God provided him another one. Also, when they didn’t know how they were going to feed us for dinner one night and then two different neighbors just happened to have too much food and gave the extras to us. These are just two of the numerous miracles they have seen. Also, when they needed money to start a business, God provided the exact amount they needed. God has always provided for them and even though it didn’t look like I thought it would, I can see it now.
God also protected our family through everything. That is not to say that we never had any issues and we skated through life on easy street. Each of us have gone through some difficult times. However, God has been there with us through them, whether we could see it at the time or not. One of my brothers was working at a factory that make the wire fencing. He was pulled through he machine one night. He should not have made it through that, and yet, he did. He had very few injuries. My grandfather thought someone was knocking on his door one night but the guy was actually trying to break in. He cut my grandfathers throat after robbing him and my grandfather was healed and out of the hospital in record time. One night my little sister was in the hospital and the doctors had done all they could. They said if her fever didn’t break that night, they didn’t know what else they could do to help her. My parents prayed and her fever broke. I could go on and on. God provided so much more and I just didn’t see it at the time.
God also provided a community. They had many people that helped out. When you are kind to people, they want to be kind back. My parents are the type of people that will give you the shirt off their back if you were cold. My dad literally turned the other cheek one time when someone hit him. If they needed something, someone was always there to help out. This is another way that God provided more but I couldn’t see it at the time.
Having a faith like this also comes with its fair share of enemies. It says in John 15:19-20 “If you belonged to the world, the world would love you as its own. Because you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world—therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, ‘Servants are not greater than their master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you; if they kept my word, they will keep yours also.” My parents ran into some issues with people not agreeing with things they did. Since I was just a kid I did not know most of them. However, I do remember that someone reported my dad to the boss because he wore a cross and they said it was offensive. Through all of the things that happened to my parents because of evil, God protected them and protected his job.
Good will always win out over evil! This is what God is trying to say in this verse. We don’t have to be envious of evil doers “for like the grass they will soon wither, like green plants they will soon die away.” It may seem like they are getting everything they want and it may seem like everything is going in their favor. However, it won’t last forever. Their time is coming. Even if they do get all they want in this world, they still have to answer for their behavior and the way they lived their life. I would much rather be struggling in this world and then live in eternal happiness in heaven, then have things go great in this world and have eternal suffering in the after world. How about you?
Can you look back over your life and see where God has provided for you? After listening to this episode today can you look back and find some ways that you didn’t see before? Maybe his provisions didn’t look like you thought they would? Have you been wondering why God hasn’t been there, but now you can see He was there, His help just didn’t look like you expected it to? I was surprised by what the Holy Spirit showed me today as I distinctly remember asking Him why my parents had to go through so much when they were so faithful. Today He opened my eyes and showed me all the ways that He was there for them and all the ways that their suffering actually brought them closer to Him. I hope sharing this with you will help your eyes to be opened to all the unexpected benefits of your suffering.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord we are so grateful for all the unexpected ways you show up for us and you give us more than we know. Lord we are sorry that we don’t notice all you do for us. We will keep our eyes open more and be on the lookout for your hand in our lives as we know it is always there. Lord, You are so amazing and we love you so much. We thank you for protecting us from those that hate us. You are awesome Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. How is your quest to become more gentle this week going? Hopefully you found something helpful in the articles I sent this you this week. If you know someone else who would benefit from the email, feel free to forward it on. I will put a link for the two articles in the show notes in case you haven’t signed up for the challenge yet but you want to take a look at the articles. One of them is titles, “Gentleness is Strength: The 7 Habits of Highly Gentle People.” (Click here for article) The other one is titled, “22 Unusual Ways To Be Gentle With Yourself.” (Click here for article) If you still want to sign up to receive the emails right to your inbox you can email me at catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com or click on the link in the show notes. (Click here to sign up) If you can’t find the show notes, they are on the page where you clicked on the episode. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day.
Storm-Battered and Unconsoled
Isaiah 54:11-14 “O afflicted one,* storm-battered and unconsoled, I lay your pavements in carnelians, your foundations in sapphires; I will make your battlements of rubies, your gates of jewels, and all your walls of precious stones. All your children shall be taught by the LORD; great shall be the peace of your children. In justice shall you be established, far from oppression, you shall not fear, from destruction, it cannot come near. If there be an attack, it is not my doing; whoever attacks shall fall before you.”
When I read this verse this morning I knew this was the one. So many are struggling right now. This verse is to show you that God understands. “O afflicted one, storm-battled and unconsoled.” He gets it. He understands how you are feeling. He’s showing you that He sees you. You haven’t somehow escaped His attention. He knows you are suffering and he knows that you are unconsoled.
Once He has your attention and lets you know He sees you, then He is telling you that he has laid the way before you with precious stones. “I lay your pavements in carnelians (a semi-precious stone), I lay your foundations in sapphires; I will make your battlements of rubies, your gate of jewels, and all your walls of precious stones.” Actually the Lord is not just talking about laying the road before you, He is talking about building all around you. He talks about the pavements, which I was thinking was the path ahead. However, then He talks about your foundation, your walls, your battlements, and your gates. We all know that if we wish to get anywhere in life, we need to have a firm foundation. If our foundation isn’t firm, it won’t support us.
This reminds me of Matthew 7:24-27, “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.” If we don’t build our house on a firm foundation it will slip away.
Next, the Lord talks about our battlements made of rubies. I was not sure what battlements were, so I looked it up. Battlements are the parapets at the top of a wall, especially of a fort or castle, that have regularly spaced squared openings for shooting through. Also, our walls are make of precious stones and our gates of jewels. These are how we defend ourselves. God is building these things for us out of the finest materials. He is our protection and He will make sure we are safe.
The next part of the verse says, “All your children shall be taught by the Lord; great shall be the peace of your children.” This might not be your experience right now. You may hear this and wonder when that peace is going to come. I know when I read that line, I thought that is not true for so many children I know these days. I have heard several people say over the last few months that it seems like the enemy is really attacking God’s faithful ones through their children and their marriages. There are so many children struggling right now with so many things. The mental health of our kids is under attack for sure. Also, with social media and constant access to their phones, our children are being bullied in ways we don’t even know.
I am surprised at the number of young kids who are willing to send inappropriate photos over the phone because it doesn’t feel like a big deal. It feels like everyone is doing it. I think social media also allows kids to say things that they would never say to someone’s face because they just have to type it into a phone. It gives them a sense that they are somewhat removed from it. I have three teenagers, and I get how hard it can be. If you are listening to this and you either have teenagers or maybe you have teenager grandkids or nieces and nephews, I would say pray for them definitely and also remember this promise from God. “All your children shall be taught by the Lord; great shall be the peace of your children.” God always keeps his promises. He doesn’t tell us when they will have peace, but he tells us they will. Our job is to keep them going through the hard times until they have this peace.
The next part may be hard to understand as well.“ In justice shall you be established, far from oppression, you shall not fear, from destruction, it cannot come near.” You will be established in justice, far from oppression, destruction cannot come near. If you are struggling right now, this may be hard to take in. It may be hard to see how you are far from oppression. It may seem like oppression is all around you. You may feel beaten down at every turn. If this is you, remember the ending of that line, destruction cannot come near. Although you may be struggling, this will not destroy you! You will make it though this. Whatever it is, you will come out on the other side being better, stronger, and more faith filled. God is with you through this difficult time. He is building this protective house around you. Keep hanging in there.
The ending of this verse may be the most important to hear for some of you. “ If there be an attack, it is not my doing; whoever attacks shall fall before you.” This is so important for us to realize. “If there be an attack is it not my doing.” I bet we have all wondered or even ask God, “What have I done to deserve this?” If you have thought this, you are not alone. The apostles also thought this way. In John 9:1-3 it says, “As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” "Neither this man nor his parents sinned," said Jesus, "but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.”
God is telling in both these verses, we didn’t do anything. This is not His doing. He did not give you cancer, He did not take away your loved one, He did not cause your spouse to leave, it is not His doing. I love the last sentence. He says, whoever attacks shall fall before you. He is showing us that evil will not win in the end. Evil will not get the last word. He will protect us and He will defeat evil. Whoever attacks shall fall before you.
There are several promises in this scripture verse today. If you are struggling, if you feel storm battered and unconsoled, maybe write this verse down and read it again. Try sitting with this verse and see how God wants to use it to talk to you. The things I said about the verse today, actually any day in this podcast is just the way God is talking to be about the different verses. However, He wants to make each verse personal to you. If you spend some time after you listen to the podcast to reread the verse, it’s in the show notes, and then ask God what He wants to say to you about the verse, I am sure you will be surprised at what you start thinking about. If you ask Him, He will answer, you just have to give Him the time to listen.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we thank you for showing us that you see us in our struggles and that you are there for us. Thank you for building us a beautiful house of protection. Thank you for promising peace for our children. Thank you for letting us know that it is not you that is attacking us and that whoever does attack us will fall before us. Lord, you are so loving and so merciful and we are so very lucky to have you in our lives. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I sent out a new email last night to all those signed up for the challenge. I hope everyone tried to love a little more last week. This week the character trait we will be working on is gentle. One thing that we struggle with, that I am not sure Jesus struggled with is how to be gentle to ourselves. So, there is information in the email on how to be gentle to yourselves and gentle to others. If you would still like to sign up my email is Catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
The Sovereign Lord Comes With Power
Isaiah 40:10 “See, the Sovereign Lord comes with power, and he rules with a mighty arm. See, his reward is with him, and his recompense accompanies him.”
In the previous episode I talked about the verse right before this one. That episode was all about how we don’t have to be afraid to speak God’s work or spread God’s love because God will protect us. This is the very next two. Isaiah 10:10 says that the Lord comes with power and He rules with a mighty arm. I think this is something that we both like about God and maybe don’t like. I think we can all agree that we like the part that says God comes with power. I bet we have all seen God’s power in one or another in our lives. If we haven’t then we are not looking because I guarantee that God is showing up with power in our lives.
The part that we may not like is the part that says He rules with a mighty arm. If you have read the old testament you probably have many examples of this. One example can be found in Numbers 21:2-9. The Israelites made a vow to the Lord that if He handed the Canaanites over to them then they would destroy the city. The Lord did as they asked. Then the Israelites got tired of being in the wilderness and started complaining and they spoke against God and Moses. Then in Numbers 21:7-9 it says, “Then the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died. So the people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned, because we have spoken against the Lord and against you; intercede with the Lord, that He will remove the serpents from us.” And Moses interceded for the people. Then the Lord said to Moses, “Make a fiery serpent, and put it on a flag pole; and it shall come about, that everyone who is bitten, and looks at it, will live.” So Moses made a bronze serpent and put it on the flag pole; and it came about, that if a serpent bit someone, and he looked at the bronze serpent, he lived. God did everything for His people and sometimes that meant he needed to rule with a mighty arm.
Another example of God ruling with a mighty hand is when the scouts went out to check out the promised land. This can be found in Numbers 13 and 14. God’s Spirit dwelled with he Israelites the whole time they were in the desert. He performed many miracles for them and He kept forgiving them every time the messed up, which was often. Reading the old testament sometimes it seems like God’s people couldn’t go a day without disobeying God, although we probably aren’t much different.
In Numbers 13 God asked Moses to send some men out to spy on the promised land. This was the land that the Lord had promised to them. Yet when the men went out to scout the land they saw the inhabitants of the land and they were afraid. They decided that even though the Lord had promised them this land, they couldn’t possibly go and take it because the people were too big, and the city had a giant wall around it. They didn’t think, even with God on their side, that they could defeat them. Their God, the same God that parted the red sea, provided them manna every day, and made it rain quail so that they would have enough meat for an entire month. After the scouts reported what they had seen, the Israelites starting complaining to Moses and Aaron and talked about choosing a leader and going back to Egypt, back to where they were slaves. They even talked about stoning Moses and Aaron. God was so upset and wanted to destroy them. Again Moses interceded and God decided instead of destroying them He decided that no one over the age of 20 at that time would enter into the promised land. He had the Israelites wander in the desert 40 more years, until all those over 20 had died, before they could go into the promised land.
God is just and He tells us the way He expects us to live. Then He lovingly gives us the choice if we want to follow His laws or not. If we choose not to follow His laws then He will enforce the consequences. He is our loving Father. He doesn’t want to give us consequences any more than we want to give our children consequences when they mess up. However, that is how children learn. They do something, see what happens, and then decide if they want to do it again based on the outcome. If God just let us get away with everything, and no matter what happened we all went to Heaven, then that wouldn’t really be giving us free will. We wouldn’t be choosing what we want, He would be choosing if for us.
What makes the next part of the verse so great is that it compliments that first part but leaves us in a better place. The next line is, “See, his reward is with him, and his recompense accompanies him.” Jesus has His reward and His recompense with Him. So even though God rules with a mighty arm and has to come down on us when we are not living by his law, there is also the flip side to that. God rewards us when we are living by His law. 1 Corinthians 2:9 says, “ But, as it is written,“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him”
The verse also says God’s recompense accompanies Him. In case you are like me and you’re not sure exactly what recompense means, let me explain. Recompense means to make amends to (someone) for loss or harm suffered; compensate. I love the thought of this. I love the thought of God making amends for all we have lost or harm that we suffered. Not making amends as if he owes us anything, but more rewarding us for all that we suffered in this world for His sake. A verse that confirms that we will be rewarded if we suffer with Jesus is Romans 8:17, “and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may be glorified with Him.” We suffer with Him so that we may be glorified with Him. I don’t know about you, but that is something that I am looking forward too. I can’t wait to be glorified with Jesus. I know that means that I will have to suffer here on this earth, but wouldn’t you rather suffer here on this earth for how ever long you are here for, the spend your eternal life suffering? Trust in the Lord. He comes with power and He will reward you for your suffering.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we thank you for being a just God. We thank you for giving us such clear directions on what you want us to do, and what you don’t want us to do. Lord, help us follow these directions. Help us live the life you want for us. Help us to see when we are about to make a mistake and give us the strength to stop it. Lord you are truly amazing and we thank you for all you do for us. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I will be sending out another email on Sunday with next week’s character trait for our “10 Weeks to Be Like Jesus” Challenge. If you want to get an email and you have not signed up yet, no worries, there is a link in the show notes. (Click Here) You don’t have to commit to anything when you sign up. It’s just giving me your email address so I can send you the information in and email. I will only send one email a week for the next 10 weeks. I look forward to spending time with you again on Monday. Have a Blessed weekend.
“Here is Your God!”
Isaiah 40:9 "You who bring good news to Zion, go up on a high mountain. You who bring good news to Jerusalem, lift up your voice with a shout lift it up, do not be afraid; say to the towns of Judah, “Here is your God!”
When I was trying to decide on a verse for today I came up with Isaiah 40:10. I am not sure why, that is just the verse that popped into my head. Then, when I read the verse before it and the verse after it, I thought they were all really good. So I chose to share all three of them with you. However, when I started to write this episode, I spent the whole time talking about Isaiah 40:9. So I will share the other two with you another day. What really stood out to me about the first verse is when it said, “lift up your voice with a shout lift it up, do not be afraid; say to the towns of Judah, ‘Here is your God!’” What struck me specifically were the words, “do not be afraid.” I know God says the words a lot in the Bible, and yet in this circumstance it seems different.
When I think of God saying, “do not be afraid,” I think more of don’t worry, don’t be anxious. And I guess He could mean that here too. But what doesn’t he want us to be afraid of? He doesn’t want us to be afraid to lift our voices and say to the world, “Here is your God!” When I read this my first thought was, “Yes, exactly!” Why are we afraid to talk about God? Actually I am not really asking that, because I get it. I know why we are afraid to talk about God. Or, I know at least one reason we are afraid to talk about God. It is not cool to talk about God these days. It seems like society is ok with us talking about everything else, but that. It seems like everyone is talking about tolerance and that everybody has a right to be who they are and believe what they want to believe, unless that belief is about God, or Jesus.
Is it just me or are you getting that feeling too? It seems to me that if you believe in God and want to live as He is asking us to live, you are judged and criticized. In an age where everything seems to offend everyone, it is easier to live our lives privately and not share our beliefs with others. This would be easier. This would be safer. However, we don’t grow when we stay in our comfort zone. We don’t grow in our faith when we hide it away. Matthew 5:15 says, “No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house.” It would be a mistake for us to hide our religion or our beliefs because we are afraid of being judged or criticized.
Think about how the apostles felt sitting in that upper room. Their Lord had been crucified and people were looking to do the same to them. They had every right to be scared. They weren’t in the same situation as we are. What is the worst thing you think would happen if you shared your faith, your beliefs, or your God with the world? You might get into a confrontation, someone might yell at your or say unkind things to you, you may be judged, or you may even lose friends? These are all real possibilities and I am not trying to minimize them. However, the apostles were facing crucifixion, stoning, jail time, and I don’t know what else. The stakes were much higher, they were risking a lot more than that.
I was thinking that we are lucky that we live in the times that we live in. Times when we can express our beliefs without threat of losing our lives, going to jail, or other awful consequences. Then I realized that it isn’t just the times we live in, it is the place we live in. Not everyone lives in a country where they can talk about God without fear of serious consequences. I just looked up what the consequence for being Christian in the Middle East is and I discovered an article on a site called The Guardian called Where in the world is the worst place to be a Christian. Here are a few of the top places:
North Korea: Thousands of Christians are imprisioned, and many have reportedly been tortured and executed. Believers meet secretly, and risk arrest and death by doing so.
Somalia: This Islamist group al-Shabaab has stated that it wants to rid Somalia of all Christians, and people suspected of following the faith are likely to be killed on the spot. Many meet in secret, or don’t meet at all, and cannot own Bibles.
Iraq: As Islamic State has taken control of large parts of the country, Christians and other minorities have been forced to convert, pay a punitive tax or be killed. There have been public execution-style killings of Christians by Isis, some of them recorded and broadcast for propaganda purposes, and most churches have been demolished.
There were plenty more like these, but I didn’t think you wanted to hear all of them. I will put a link for the article in the show notes in case you are interested in reading it. (Click Here) When I think about what some people are having to go through just to believe in God, or just to practice a religion that I get to practice freely I am suddenly more grateful. After reading that article and then thinking about the reasons we don’t talk about God in our country, honestly, I feel ashamed of my behavior. I feel ashamed that I complain about things like mass not being at the best time to fit into my schedule, or that I have to wear a mask to church, or any number of things that I may complain about. There are people risking their life to live their faith in secret because it is the only way they can live it.
When I think about it like this it make me wonder, what are we actually afraid of? Why don’t we talk about God more? Why don’t we point out all the places we see God in the world? Why are we afraid to talk about God with our children? Why aren’t we inviting everyone we know to come to mass with us? Maybe instead of asking ourselves why we don’t do these things, we should ask ourselves, “What am I willing to risk to bring others into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ?’ It is clear that God wants us to spread His Word. The verse says, “You who bring good news to Zion, go up on a high mountain. You who bring good news to Jerusalem, lift up your voice with a shout lift it up, do not be afraid; say to the towns of Judah, “Here is your God!”
Basically God is telling us to shout if from the roof top or the mountain top that He is our God. If God is asking us to share His Word, and He is telling us to not be afraid, then why are we afraid? Do we not believe that He will protect us? Think about how he protected Daniel in the Lions’ Den. Daniel 6:16-21 says, “So the king gave the order, and they brought Daniel and threw him into the lions’ den. The king said to Daniel, “May your God, whom you serve continually, rescue you!” A stone was brought and placed over the mouth of the den, and the king sealed it with his own signet ring and with the rings of his nobles, so that Daniel’s situation might not be changed. Then the king returned to his palace and spent the night without eating and without any entertainment being brought to him. And he could not sleep. At the first light of dawn, the king got up and hurried to the lions’ den. When he came near the den, he called to Daniel in an anguished voice, “Daniel, servant of the living God, has your God, whom you serve continually, been able to rescue you from the lions?” Daniel answered, “May the king live forever! My God sent his angel, and he shut the mouths of the lions. They have not hurt me, because I was found innocent in his sight. Nor have I ever done any wrong before you, Your Majesty.”
If we are faithful and if we step out in that faith and share God’s Word and God’s love with others, He will be there for us to protect us. Will you be brave with me? Will you step out in faith and see where you can talk about God’s word or God’s love? I am not saying you have to go out and talk about God to everyone you meet, although I am sure that would make Him happy. All I am asking is that if an opening presents itself where you can add God into your conversation, you won’t shy away because you are scared. You will be brave and step out in faith. What do you think? Can you do that? If you need extra courage remember what some people are risking to live their faith. What do you have to lose?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to shout from the mountain tops that you are our Lord. Help us to be brave enough to do this. Holy Spirit give us a Holy boldness to speak out and share God’s word. Lord fill us with the Holy Spirit as you did the apostles on Pentecost. Let us not be afraid. Father you often tell us that, please help us to truly hear it this day. Lord we ask that you protect all those that are having to hide their faith because of fear of losing their lives. If we can help them in any way Lord, please put that on our hearts. Lord, we love you and we thank you for all that you do. You are amazing and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
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The Spirit And Flesh Are Opposed
Galatians 5:16-21 “I say, then: live by the Spirit and you will certainly not gratify the desire of the flesh. For the flesh has desires against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; these are opposed to each other, so that you may not do what you want. But if you are guided by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are obvious: immorality, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, hatreds, rivalry, jealousy, outbursts of fury, acts of selfishness, dissensions, factions, occasions of envy,* drinking bouts, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.”
I like this verse because it is telling us how to solve a problem. I think everyone struggles with the desires of the flesh. Even if we always want to do what is right, it is a struggle. It says in this verse that “the flesh has desires against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; these are opposed to each other, so that you may not do what you want.” This sounds an awful lot like what St. Paul was saying in Romans 7:15, “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.”
If you ever wondered why it was so hard to do the right thing and why sometimes, or oftentimes in my case, we do the thing we hate, now we know. It is because the Spirit and the flesh are opposed to each other. They want different things. This is why we feel like no matter how hard we try to do the right things, we come up short a lot of the time. However, in this verse it solves this problem, it gives us the answer. The verse says, “live by the Spirit and you will certainly not gratify the desire of the flesh.” Great! Awesome! Now we have the key to not giving into our desires.
Wouldn’t it be great if it were that easy. Wouldn’t it be great if we knew what to do and we did it. Unfortunately, life is not always that simple. Just because we know how to do something doesn’t mean we always choose to do it. I think that is part of God’s frustration with us. I think He is in Heaven, watching us choose the wrong thing over and over again and wondering what else He could do. I remember one time around Christmas I heard a story about a man that was looking out his window and a bird kept flying into the same window. He tried everything he could to get the bird to stop flying into the window but he was a bird and so he didn’t listen. The man thought if he could only become a bird and teach the bird how to fly away. Then the man thought of God and how He must feel looking down on us and seeing us make the same mistakes again and again. God was able to send His son down to become one of us and teach us how to live. Are we living like He taught us to live?
“Live by the Spirit and you will certainly not gratify the desire of the flesh.” This sounds pretty clear, there is one problem. How does one “live by the Spirit?” This may not be a problem for you. You may already know this. However, when I heard this verse my first thought was, yes, I want to do that. Then my next thought was, wait, how do I do that? In case this is you too, I want to give you what I found when I read a little further down in the chapter. Galatians 5:22-26 says, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us walk in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying one another.
There are two parts to this verse that I think explain how to live in the Spirit. First it describes the fruit of the Spirit. If we want to walk in the Spirit then we need to walk in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. This does not sound simple. When I hear all those things I think that it is impossible for us to walk in the Spirit as it is hard to be all of those things. However, then I remember we are not walking this alone. If we want to walk in the Spirit then God will help us. If we can just focus on choosing the next right step, we will be well on our way. If we choose to say yes to God, Yes to the Spirit and Yes to Jesus, then they will help us will all the rest. If we can remember that everything we do is a choice we might just have a chance to stop making all of our decisions on auto pilot.
This is what the flesh wants. The flesh wants us to not think and just react because if we act without thinking we will do what is easy. That is our default. Do we get up early and go to the gym or do we hit snooze? If we act on instinct we just hit snooze because that is the path of least resistance and because we are not thinking about what we really want. If we don’t take the time to remind ourselves that we have a choice then we will continue to do what the flesh wants us to do. However, if we can take a moment, tell God that we want to live in the Spirit and then do our best to say Yes to all the things that will help us live into the fruits of the Spirit, then we will no long be slaves to the flesh.
The second thing this verse told us was to not become conceited, provoking and envying one another. Wow, those also are not easy things to give up. We live in an age that seems to be full of themselves. People are posting “selfies” of themselves all over their social media pages. It seems so many people feel entitled to things just because they are who they are. In the news over the last few years we have seen a lot more people in power, such as movie stars and politicians that have used their power to get what they wanted at the expense of others. They felt they were so powerful they could get away with anything. Provoking one another seems to be a favorite pastime in this America these days. This country is so divided on so many issues and it seems like instead of having respectful conversations about more and more people are saying things that start a fight. As for envying others, this has always been a problem, and now with social media on the scene it is even worse than even. Everyone wants to post what they are doing and then people who aren’t doing those things get envious that they aren’t doing the thing, or buying the thing.
I think this verse is helpful because it not only tells us what we should do but it tells us what we shouldn’t do. If we want to walk in the Spirit we should try to do more of the good things, and we should work hard to avoid the bad things. I know this may sound hard but remember Matthew 19:26 "Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” Our job is to say Yes, to try out best and to ask God to help us. Also, be graceful with ourselves when we mess up because we will mess up. We can do this. We can learn to walk with the Spirit.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to live by the Spirit and we know we need your help to do that. We want to walk in the Spirit and we don’t want to become conceited, provoking, and envious of one another. Help us Lord. Shine a light on any ways of the flesh that we have been living. Show us where in our lives we need to change. We want to be all in with you Lord and we don’t know how to do that. We need your guidance and grace. We know we are weak and you are strong. We know that we can’t do anything without you but with you we can do all things. We love you Lord, you are so amazing. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If you are joining me on the 10 week “Be More Like Jesus” challenge and you haven’t gotten an email from me yet, please check your junk folder because the website said they were all accepted by your email accounts. If you haven't signed up yet, it is not too late. You can jump in anytime during these next 10 weeks. I will have the link in the show notes. (Click Here) I look forward to seeing you tomorrow, Have a blessed day!
Which Wolf Are You Feeding?
Sirach 6:14-17 “Faithful friends are a sturdy shelter; whoever finds one finds a treasure. Faithful friends are beyond price, no amount can balance their worth. Faithful friends are life-saving medicine; those who fear God will find them. Those who fear the Lord enjoy stable friendship, for as they are, so will their neighbors be.”
There is a saying by Jim Rohn that says, “you are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with.” Take a minute to think about this. Who do you spend the most time with? When I first heard this quote it really made me think. I spend the most time with my family, my husband and our three boys. I wondered if I was truly the average of these four boys/men. It did not seem like I was, as we tend to think opposite about most topics. I tend to think the glass is half full and they tend to think its half empty. When I think about the type of person I want to be it is a joy filled person that is optimistic and inspiring. I want to see all that is right with the world.
So I was wondering, how can I be the person I want to be when the people I spend the most time with do not want the same things? This is a situation that I bet we all fall into. We are not always surrounded with people who have the same interests or even the same beliefs as we do. So, how then can we surround ourselves with people that do inspire us to be a better person? There are several ways this can be accomplished.
One way is find a club or group that is filled with people that have your similar interests or beliefs. This group can be your support system and can help encourage your progress and development. For instance, a prayer group, a fitness group, a group for whatever hobby you might have, etc. But, what if you have trouble getting out and about? What if you don’t know how to surround yourself with positive people? Well, if this is the case and you do not have access to people who can build you up and encourage you to follow your dreams then do not worry, you can still surround yourself with books about people, you can watch TV shows and movies, you can listen to podcasts.
Have you ever noticed when you spend a lot of time with someone you start to talk like them? For instance, when you go down south for any length of time and you might start saying y’all. Imagine how much easier it would be to be happy and joy filled if you were surrounding yourself with books, podcasts, or tv shows that feature people who are joy filled? How much easier it would be to forgive, to love or to have hope if you were surrounding yourself with people who did these things regularly? Just the other day I was talking to a few ladies about how people don’t believe in miracles anymore. How much more likely would you be to think of miracles if you were hearing about them on a consistent basis?
Another great resource for positivity and encouragement are the Saints. There is a saint for almost every situation. If you are struggling with forgiveness then read all about St. Maria Goretti. If you are struggling with your children or your husband read all about Saint Monica, if you are struggling with something that seems impossible, read about Saint Rita. There have been so many that have come before us that are such great examples of what we can do and how we can do it. The saints can be our faithful friends that God was talking about in the Sirach verse. They can be our sturdy shelter, our treasure, our life-saving medicine. The more we are exposed to God’s word and to people who are living it, the more we will want to do the same.
There is an old Cherokee story:
An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life:
“A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy.“ It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil–he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.” He continued, “The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you–and inside every other person, too.” The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: “Which wolf will win?” The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”
So, my question to you is, “Which wolf are you feeding?”
Dear Heavenly Father I pray that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we pray that you help us surround ourselves with those that will help us grow in your love and in your faith. Lord help us feed the good wolf. The one that joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. Lord, please shine a light on anything in our lives that may be feeding the bad wolf so that we can fix it. We love you Lord and we thank you for all that you do for us. Lord, thank you for the Saints that are such a good example of how we can live our lives. Help us to live like them Lord, Help us to sacrifice like they did. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Thank you also to those of you participating in the 10 Weeks to Be More Like Jesus Challenge. Today was Day 1 and I already heard from one listener that she tried a few different things on the list today. This week we will be focusing on Love. I will keep the link to the article titled 87 ways to Be kind and Loving in the show notes. (click here for article) I will also keep the link to sign up in the show notes in case you want to sign up for the challenge and get the emails delivered right to your inbox. (Click here to sign up) At the end of the show notes I put the names of a few podcasts that I really like in case you want to surround yourself with more great examples of how to live with the Joy of the Lord. As always, I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Podcasts (that I listen to and can recommend)
Big Life Devotional (Daily)
The Jeff Cavins Show
Fr. Mike Schmitz
Exploring My Strange Bible
Your Catholic Life with Jon Leonetti
Abiding Together
Elevation with Steven Furtick
Famine
Amos 8:11-12 “The time is surely coming, says the Lord God, when I will send a famine on the land; not a famine of bread, or a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord. They shall wander from sea to sea, and from north to east; they shall run to and fro, seeking the word of the Lord, but they shall not find it.”
Does it feel like you are in this famine? Does it feel like you have plenty to eat and drink, but you could use a little more God in your life? I know a lot of people that are struggling. I heard from a woman the other day that is still looking for a job. She has been looking for a long time now and she said it’s hard. She said that at this point she really needs a miracle and that it really tries your faith when you are asking for something for such a long time and you don’t see any answers.
I wish I could say that this person was in the minority. That most people I knew were doing pretty good and not struggling too much. However, that is not the case. Everywhere I turn these days I seem to be running into people that need a miracle. Cancer seems to be everywhere and it seems every day someone else I know has a loved one that just found out they have cancer. There are also people struggling to either find work, or at risk of losing the job the have because all the controversy with the COVID vaccine right now.
Then there are those that have been praying for things for so long that it is hard to remember a time when they weren’t praying for it and yet it appears their has not been an answer yet. They feel these desires have been placed in their hearts for a reason and yet it is hard to keep hoping for them when they haven’t seen any signs there is even a possibility of their desires coming true. I say it appears there haven’t been any answers because maybe there have been and we don’t understand what those answers are. God is a mystery and sometimes He does things and we think they make no sense and then years down the road, we have an ah ha moment and it all makes sense.
Why are there so many people struggling right now? Why are there so many people that feel like God is not talking to them, or they feel like they are in the famine that God is talking about in this verse? Why do some people get to hear the Word of God and other’s don’t? I wish I had these answers for you. I wish I understood God’s plan and could relay it to you. Unfortunately, He is the only one that knows all the details. I do know that God doesn’t want us to suffer. Father Mike is always talking about God’s permissive will vs God’s perfect will. God’s perfect will be for all of us to never sin and for their to be no suffering in the world. God doesn’t like to watch us suffer. He loves us and wants nothing but the best for us. However, sin entered the world and so God does permit things to happen to us and he does allow us to suffer.
What can we do while we are in the suffering to make it easier? I think there are a few things we can do. First, I think we can praise God. We can thank Him for all the things that He is doing for us, even when He is not doing the everything for us. Even if you have been praying for one thing for the last 20 years and He has not answered that prayer yet, I am sure you can find other things that He has done for you. Do you have enough food to eat and a roof over your head? You can thank God for that. Is your health ok, are your kids ok? You can thank God for that? What else can you thank God for? Luke 16:10 says, “Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much.” If we show God that we can be faithful with what we have, He will trust us with more.
Second, we can keep asking Him. When we have already asked God a million times for something we can be tempted to stop asking. We can take His silence as a no and just give up. I think this is a mistake. There are numerous time in the Bible when God lets us know that He likes our persistence. I have talked about the woman and the judge several times. Another example is found in Luke 11:5-8, "And he said to them, “Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set before him.’ And he answers from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door has already been locked, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.’ I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs.” God wants us to keep asking. He doesn’t want us to give up. Maybe He is waiting to see how much it means to us. Maybe He wants to know how long you will keep asking for it.
Third, We can spend time listening. Instead of just praying for what we want and going about our day, we can stop and ask God what He wants. We can ask Him if we are doing what He wants us to do. Are we living our lives according to His Word? Are we living the life He wants us to live or did we take a wrong turn somewhere and then missed the detour signs to get back on track? It can be really hard sometimes to make the time to hear the Lord. Our lives are so busy and full of distractions. If we want to hear the Lord we need to set time aside for Him. We need to quiet not only our minds but our environment too. Silence our cell phones, and step away from the business in our lives.
In the Bible when it talks about Jesus praying it often says He went off to be alone or He went up the mountain where he could be alone. Matthew 26:36 says, "Then Jesus went with his followers to a place called Gethsemane. He said to them, “Sit here while I go there and pray.” Another example is Matthew 14:23, “After he had dismissed them, he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray…” Jesus knew it was easier to hear the Lord when you had less distractions. Are you giving the Lord your full attention when you are spending time with Him? Are you spending time with Him to try and hear what He has to say? Is it possible that you aren’t hearing the Word of the Lord because you either aren’t seeking it, or your aren’t going off to a quiet place where you can hear it?
The Lord loves you! He wants to talk to each one of us. He wants to have conversations with us. We are His children and He is our Heavenly Father. He doesn’t want us to suffer. If you feel that you are in a famine of God’s Word lately, try and spend some time this week going off by yourself and just sitting with the Lord. You don’t have to say anything. If you have never done this before, I think you will be amazed at how amazing it can feel. One thing we say at prayer group that may be helpful is “Speak Lord, your servant is listening,” and then we just sit and listen. Give it a try, what do you have to lose?
Dear Heavenly Father, I pray that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord you are so amazing and we want to hear your Word. Please don’t hide it from us. Lord, help us to make time for you. Help us to go off by ourselves and listen to what you have to say to us. Direct us Lord. Please help us to find comfort in our circumstances. Please provide those that are struggling not only with the peace they need but also the strength they need to keep pushing forward. Give them the grace to keep having faith even when it is being tested. Lord we love you so very much and we are so very thankful for all that you do for us. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Thank you also to those of you participating in the 10 Weeks to Be More Like Jesus Challenge. I sent out the first email last night. This week we will be focusing on Love. The email had a link to an article titled 87 ways to Be Love and Kind. (click here for article) I will place a link in the show notes in case you are interesting in trying to be more loving this week. I will also put a link in the show notes in case you want to sign up for the challenge and get the emails delivered right to your inbox. (Click here to sign up) As always, I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Litany of Humility
James 4:6 “But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: ‘God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble.’”
Yesterday’s verse told us the Lord requires us to walk humbly with our God and then today’s verse is telling us that “God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble.” I mentioned in the last episode that I didn’t want to rush the topic of humility as I feel it is an important one. I remember a speaker once said that humility is one of those things you hope that you don’t have to pray for. She said she worked hard at being humble because if she needed to pray for humility you never know what will happen. Have you ever had someone tell you not to pray for patience. Yes, patience is a virtue and it is important to have, but they say don’t pray for it because with God’s sense of humor the next thing you know you will be stuck in traffic. One way we can increase in the virtues we want to have is to practice them. So, if you pray for patience God is going to give you situations where you have to practice patience. Similarly, if you pray for humility God will give you situations that will give you a chance to practice humility. This is what they say anyway.
However, I have found a prayer called the Litany of Humility. A litany is a prayer that has a series of petitions and a response after each one of them. At prayer group one day, the person sharing challenged us to say the Litany of Humility daily for one month and see if we felt any different. It is a somewhat longer prayer, but only takes a few minutes to say. I thought this was a great idea and I was interested to see how it went. I started to say this prayer almost every morning during my morning routine.
I was surprised at all the different petitions in the prayer. I was surprised how many things went into humility. I was surprised how I felt saying some of the things. The beginning part of the prayer we are asking Jesus to deliver us from the different petitions. The second part of the prayer we are asking Jesus to give us the grace to desire the different petitions. I am going to recite it for you now, but if you want to read it for yourself it is in the show notes.
Litany of Humility
O Jesus, meek and humble of heart, Hear me.
From the desire of being esteemed, Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the desire of being loved, Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the desire of being extolled, Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the desire of being honored, Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the desire of being praised, Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the desire of being preferred to others, Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the desire of being consulted, Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the desire of being approved, Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the fear of being humiliated, Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the fear of being despised, Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the fear of suffering rebukes, Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the fear of being calumniated, Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the fear of being forgotten, Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the fear of being ridiculed, Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the fear of being wronged, Deliver me, O Jesus.
From the fear of being suspected, Deliver me, O Jesus.
That others may be loved more than I, Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That others may be esteemed more than I, Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That, in the opinion of the world, others may increase and I may decrease, Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That others may be chosen and I set aside, Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That others may be praised and I go unnoticed, Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That others may be preferred to me in everything, Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That others may become holier than I, provided that I may become as holy as I should, Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
It might be hard to catch all of the petitions when you listen to it one time. I encourage you to either listen to it a few times, or check out the show notes and really look at all the different parts to humility. Before this prayer when I thought about humility I thought it just meant not thinking we better than everyone else. I think that may be part of it, but it also means so much more than just that. It talks about all the different fears that you may have, such as the fear of being ridiculed and the fear of being despised. It also talks about the desires such as the desire to be loved and to be esteemed. Did you know all those things had to do with humility? The prayer is asking God to deliver you from those fears and those desires.
Did you know you can be held captive by your desires just as much as your fears? One may think that fears are more debilitating because fears can cause you to be too scared to act sometimes. If the fear is strong enough it can keep you from doing things you really want to do. For instance you may want to go out and meet people but you are so afraid of what they might think of you that you stay home just to avoid that possibility. Your desires can get you into just as much trouble. For instance you desire your parents love and so you don’t speak up for yourself because you think they may not like you if you do. Or you desire to be esteemed so you go out of your way to make yourself look good, even if it means working long hours and neglecting other things. Do you see how both of these things, your fears and your desires could be something that you need to be delivered from?
The next part is asking Jesus to grant you the grace to desire it. Why would you need to pray for the grace to desire something? These are things that don’t come naturally to us because we are all human. For instance, praying for the grace to desire others being loved more than I, or that others get all the praise well I go unnoticed. Those are not the first things that most of us would pray for, however, can you see how much greater your life would be if you did desire those things? Can you see how much happier your life would be if you weren’t constantly thinking about what others thought of you or how much you desired to be loved? What if you could stop worrying about being humiliated, forgotten, or preferred? How would you life be different? How would each day be different?
I loved this prayer. I wanted everything that it talked about in this prayer. Think about how much more confident you would be if you were delivered from all your fears and those desires that are holding you back. I not only said this prayer daily for a month I continued saying if for several months and then on and off for the last 2 years. You know what? I did notice a difference. I noticed a difference pretty quickly. Right around the time I started to say this prayer, I started as a praise leader at prayer meetings. That means I needed to get up in front of the group and talk for 5-10 minutes. The first time I did I was so nervous, I was crying through most of it because that is what I do when I get nervous. I noticed that I got comfortable leading these meetings soon after I started. I know the reason for this is because I prayed for God to take all these fears away. Also all the desires that put pressure on me to be better. I was not afraid to get ridiculed, and I didn’t desire to be praised or honored. I was just happy to spread the word of the Lord to all that would listen. Sometimes I wonder if I would even be doing this podcast right now if it weren’t for this prayer.
We all want to be liked and loved. We all have the fear of being rejected, despised, or some of the other fears listed. I bet we have all had moments when pride has gotten the better of us. When we have acted in a way that we are not proud of because of some of these fears and desires. If you are struggling with worrying about what others think I challenge you to say this prayer every day for a month and see if you still care as much about what they think at the end of that month. There are so many good things in this prayer, I challenge all of you listening to see how you feel after saying it daily for the next month. It only takes a few minutes and even if you don’t believe it will help, what will it hurt?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord help us to be more humble. Help us to look at this prayer and see how much we need it in our lives. Lord the verse says that You oppose the proud but show favor to the humble. Help us to be humble, help us to earn your favor oh Lord. Give us the strength to overcome these fears and desires Lord Jesus. Please grant us the grace to desire the petitions in this prayer. Lord you are amazing and you are always there for us. We thank you and we love you Lord. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. And thank you to those that have already signed up to walk with me in these next 10 weeks to grow more like Jesus. I am excited to take that adventure with you and I will be sending out the first email this weekend. If you have not signed up yet, I will put a link in the show notes. If you don’t know what I am talking about, I and members of this community, will be spending the next 10 weeks trying to grow more like Jesus. Each week we will take one character trait and try to grow more in that trait. I will send an email out each week so we can all work on the same trait and also there will be a link for a zoom call for those that would like to meet and talk about how it is going. I look forward to spending time with you on Monday. Have a blessed weekend!
Click Here to join the 10 week "Be More Like Jesus" Challenge
Justice & Kindness
Michah 6:8 “He has showed you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”
This verse says that the Lord is requiring three things from us. The first thing He is requiring is that we do justice. Justice is one of those words we can hear and we instantly think that we know what it means. When you heard that God was requiring Justice from you did you discount it because of course you are a just person. You treat people fairly, so no need to worry about this requirement, it has been fulfilled. However, I don’t think it is as simple as that. I don’t think justice can be boiled down to doing what we think is fair, or treating everyone equal. I remember when I was studying to be a special education teacher, and also when I became a parent I was told that treating everyone the same isn’t necessarily being fair. For instance, just because one student needs 20 extra minutes on a test doesn’t mean in order to be fair you have to give everyone 20 extra minutes on the test. Similarly, if one of you children needs new shoes it is not unfair to buy them new shoes and not buy the other kids new shoes, because they don’t need new shoes.
As a parent, and maybe in any leadership role, you will get told that you are being unfair sometimes. I think when this happens it is important to look at the situation and decide if that is a true statement or not. I was told that what is fair or just is to make sure that everyone has what they need. One person may need something to be successful and yet another person doesn’t need that same thing. However, they may need something else. We need to look at each individual circumstance separately and understand that everyone’s needs are different. It is not unfair to give someone something that they need and then not give the same thing to someone that doesn’t need it.
I think we tend to think of justice as just a synonym for fairness and I think when we do that we are simplifying it a little too much. Most of what I found online said something similar. However, I found one think that talked about three definitions of justice. The first one was fairness, which I just covered. The second one is moral rightness. I think this is an important one as well. There are two kinds of laws. There are the ones that we must follow because we live in a society that has laws to keep order and govern the people and then there are the moral laws. Laws that God gave us to govern His people and to help us live good moral lives. Sometimes these laws can conflict and that is when we can get ourselves into trouble. There may be laws that say it is ok to do something but you know that they go against your moral laws.
God is calling us to Justice, which we means moral rightness. He is asking us to do what is right even when it may contradict a law that the government has given us. For instance, Our government has given us a law so that we are free to practice any religion we like. If we want to worship false gods, that is totally ok with our government. However, it is not ok with our God. He has given us a commandment to worship Him and Him alone. Doing justice would be to follow God’s law in this circumstance. We are called to do what is morally right instead of what the rest of society is doing. Have you ever known something was wrong but did it anyway because all those around you were doing it?
The third definition is a scheme or system of law in which every person receives his/her/its due from the system, including all rights, both natural and legal. Another way to say this is that people get what is coming to them. However, the way they are using it is not the way many of us use it. When most people say this, they are almost always talking about someone that did something bad and they are hoping that something bad happens to them. This is one form of Justice. God has definitely imparted some consequences that we may have thought were harsh, but were exactly what was needed at that time.
As much as I think we would all like to say that we are just, I think it is really had for most humans to be just. The reason I say this is because it is so hard to not let our emotions influence our decisions. There are some people that know the laws and enforce them and don’t take into account how they are feeling. However, I think these people are few and far between. I am sure we have all been on the receiving end of some unjust treatment. Whether it was a boss that was in a bad mood and over reacted when you made a mistake, or an angry parent who was tired of the same behavior and gave you a punishment that did not fit the crime as they say, we have all experienced it.
It doesn’t always have to be a bad consequence to be unjust either. Sometimes people get away with things that they shouldn’t have and that is not good either. Sometimes you can be in a great mood and so when someone does something you just let it go without really taking action. However, then they may not learn their lesson. Or, you may let someone get away with something just because you are tired and don’t feel like dealing with it. If you want to do justice to someone then they should receive a consequence based on their action, not on how you are feeling that day. I am torn as I write this because I don’t think that rules should just be enforced without looking at the whole picture. I was thinking that I was wrong to say we should keep emotion out of it. I don’t think every person that breaks a rule should have the same consequence. I think it should be a case by case basis. Although now that I am thinking about it, I don’t think the difference in consequences should be based on emotion, I think they should be based on all the factors. I think someone that kills someone for the sport of it should have a very different consequence than someone who kills someone on accident. What was the reason the person did what they did, what was the outcome, these are all factors that I feel should be weighed when deciding what justice for that person would be.
According to the verse the next thing that the Lord requires of us is to love kindness. This is another thing that I think we can probably all dismiss pretty quickly assuming that we all love kindness. Who doesn’t love kindness, right? The thing is, you can say that you love kindness all day long, but is that what your actions are saying? How does the Lord know that you love kindness? Can He tell just by looking at your life and how you interact with people that you love kindness? What about in your family? Do you show kindness to those that you spend the most time with? We always talk about how we should be kind to strangers and we should, however, we should be just as kind, to those that we live with. I bet we all know someone that is the kindest person when you seem him or her at church, in the store, at school or work and then when you see him or her with their family they are always yelling, or speaking unkind to them. Mother Theresa said, “If you want to change the world, go home and love your family.” Kindness starts at home.
How about those that you don’t like? Are you kind to them? In Matthew 5:44 Jesus says, “But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” We need to start with kindness in our homes, but we can’t stop there. We need to be kind to everyone we meet. Jesus doesn’t just say be kind to our enemies, he wants us to love them and to pray for them. This is a tall order, but with God, we can do all things. Take a look at your life and ask yourself three questions. First, am I kind at home, and how could I improve this? Second, am I kind to my neighbors and friends, and how can I improve this? Third, am I kind to those I don’t like and those that don’t like me and how can I improve this? The lord is calling us to love kindness, how can we show Him with our actions that we do.
According to this verse, the third thing the Lord is calling us to is to walk humbly with our God. When I read this verse this morning the first thing that jumped out at me was the phrase walk humbly with our God. The reason for this is because I think humility is so important and I feel God has been impressing that upon me over the last year or two. I was sure this whole episode was going to be on humility, but I guess the Holy Spirit had another idea. However, I don’t want to rush the topic of humility and I don’t want to make this episode too long. So, tomorrow I am going to talk about humility either with this same verse or another. For now I leave you with the question, How can I walk more humbly with the Lord our God?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord we want to do all that you require us to do but we need your help. As St. Paul said we don’t do the things we want to do and we do the things we don’t want to do. Give us the strength to overcome our desire to do what is wrong. Give us the strength to do the things that you want us to do. Lord, we love you, help us show you that love. You are amazing and we thank you for all you do for us. We ask all of this in accordance with Your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. And thank you to those that have already signed up to walk with me in these next 10 weeks to grow more like Jesus. I am excited to take that adventure with you and I will be sending out the first email in a few days. If you have not signed up yet, I will put a link in the show notes. (Click Here) If you don’t know what I am talking about, I and members of this community, will be spending the next 10 weeks trying to grow more like Jesus. Each week we will take one character trait and try to grow more in that trait. I will send an email out each week so we can all work on the same trait and also there will be a link for a zoom call for those that would like to meet and talk about how it is going. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
Click Here to join the 10 week "Be More Like Jesus" Challenge
God’s Love and Mercy Are Never Ending
Lamentations 3:22-23 “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”
Today’s verse mentions love and mercy again. I find it fascinating how God keeps telling us the same things over and over again and yet it is so hard for us to hear Him, for us to really hear Him. The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. I just looked up the word steadfast as I really wanted to understand what this verse was saying. According to the internet steadfast means resolutely or dutifully firm and unwavering. This verse is saying that God’s love, which is unwavering never ceases. Have you ever had love that was unwavering before?
I know some people have had great examples of love over the years. I also know that some of you haven’t. Some of you were promised unwavering love that never ceases from your spouse and then they left you and took their love with them. This is devastating to a person and if this has happened to you, then I am sorry. Love is not supposed to be like that. The love that we are capable of having and giving here on earth can be flawed. We are an imperfect people living in a broken world. Sometimes love gets caught up in that brokenness. I don’t think anyone enters marriage with the intention of breaking their vows. I think when they enter marriage, they truly mean all that they say. However, then our brokenness enters and we lose our way.
If you have not had any examples of steadfast love before then it may be hard to believe that God’s love is unwavering. It may also be hard to believe that is never ceases. I know I have said this before, and God has said this before, and that is because everyone is still not hearing it. There is nothing you could even do that would cause God’s love to stop. God has always loved you and will always love you. His love never ceases! Its always there and all we have to do is choose to accept it. Yes, it is a choice. I am not saying it is an easy choice. If you have been through a lot and it’s difficult for you to feel loved or accept love then I am not saying this will be easy. I am saying it’s possible though. If you make a choice that you want to let God’s love in then just tell Him and give Him permission to help you make it happen.
Next in the verse it says, “His mercies never come to an end;” Can you imagine that . It might take a minute or two to wrap your head about that. God’s mercies never come to an end. What does that mean? It means that God will never stop forgiving you. Earlier I said there is nothing you can do that could make God stop loving you, well, now He is saying the same thing for His mercy. I think sometimes we think that God is going to get tired of all of our nonsense and He will just give up on us. We think His mercy will end and He will just end us, like He did when He flooded the earth. However, if you know that story, then you know how it ended. It ended with God promising, actually it was even more than a promise, it was a covenant between God and Noah and all the generations to come. God promised He would never do that again.
I am sure God probably gets tired of our constant messing up. I am sure He probably gets tired of the way we treat Him and the way we continue to sin with little repentance. He is probably up in Heaven shaking His head and rolling His eyes. I wonder if there are times when He regrets that covenant He made with Noah. However, He did make that covenant and we don’t have to worry about Him destroying the world. But even better than that, we don’t have to worry about His mercy running out. His mercies never come to an end. It will always be there.
Great, so does this mean we can do as we please and ignore all He tells us to do, because His mercy will always be there for us? No, not at all, God is merciful and He is also just. He gave us free will and He allows us to use it. However, because we have free will it makes the decision to follow God all the more special. There are also consequences if we do not follow the laws that God has set our for us. He wants us all to be saved. He wants us all to spend eternal life with Him up in Heaven. However, He is not going to force that on us. He is going to let us make our choices. If we choose to go against the ways that God teaches us to live then He will allow us to do that, but we will be choosing the consequences that go along with those choices.
The verse ends with “They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” God is so great. Not only does His love and mercy never go away, but they are new every morning. Every morning when you wake up God renews His love and His mercy. He is so faithful. He never leaves us alone. He is with us each and every day. If that is not something to be grateful for, I don’t know what is. This is another great verse to remember when you start to lose hope. Its a good one to write it down and put it where you will see it often. Its a good one to memorize so when you’re struggling you can recall it without much effort. Its a good one to keep in your back pocket for a friend when they need to hear it. “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”
Dear Heavenly Father, we are so grateful that your love and mercy are with us forever. We are thankful that they are new each morning. Lord, help us to love others as you love us. Help us to be merciful with others are you are merciful with us. Lord Jesus you are amazing and we love you. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus holy name, amen.
Thank you for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. And thank you to those that have already signed up to walk with me in these next 10 weeks to grow more like Jesus. I am excited to take that adventure with you and I will be sending out the first email in a few days. If you have not signed up yet, I will put a link in the show notes. (click here) If you didn’t catch yesterdays episode, I will be spending the next 10 weeks trying to grow more like Jesus. Each week we will take one character trait and try to grow more in that trait. I will send an email out each week so we can all work on the same trait and also there will be a link for a zoom call for those that would like to meet and talk about how it is going. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!
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Who Needs A Little More Mercy In Their Life
Matthew 5:7 ““Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.”
Mercy reminds me a lot of forgiveness. I say this because we like to be forgiven, and yet we don’t always like to forgive. I think we all like when we’re shown mercy and yet when it comes to showing others mercy, we think that makes us weak. Showing mercy isn’t always easy. What does mercy even mean? Mercy is compassion or forgiveness shown toward someone whom it is within one's power to punish or harm. If you are in a position to show someone mercy, then that means you are in a position of power. You do not have to worry about looking weak. Mercy does not make someone weak. Showing someone mercy when they need it is such a powerful thing to do. You have no idea how much that gesture of mercy can do to change their lives.
I remember when I changed my parenting style to favor mercy more than punishment, our lives changed. We had a difficult time parenting. It was really rough for a very long time. We didn’t how to handle some of the behaviors we were seeing. We did the best we could, as all parents do. However, I never stopped trying to learn how to deal with the behaviors we were seeing. I prayed and asked God for His help. I read books and talked to experts. Finally I read a book that I really loved and it was called Parenting without Power Struggles. This book taught me that the foundation of parenting is your connection with your kids. If you have a strong connection, they will have a stronger desire to get along and do as you asked. Don’t get me wrong, she was not saying that was the be all end all. She gave lots of practical techniques on how to accomplish this.
In this book Susan Stiffelman asked one set of parents to consider the difference between throwing seeds on dry, rocky earth and planting them in cultivated, healthy soil. “You can throw thousands of seeds on dry, uncultivated ground, but they won’t have as much chance of sprouting. Similarly, if we want our kids to be receptive to our support and direction, we first need to prepare the soil- to create a natural openness in them- by helping them feel heard and by giving them the sense that we’re unquestionably on their side.” After reading this book, after prayer, and talking with others I realized that what we needed in our house was not more anger and punishment, it was more mercy. Our kids were getting upset and acting out in the only way that they knew how. They were not going to learn a new way to deal with frustration by being punished. I realized what our boys needed most at that time in their lives was to know that they were loved. They needed to know that they were loved no matter what they did.
They needed to be shown mercy. I realized we needed more Jesus in our lives and in our house. Jesus is love and mercy and so I started to pour out both of these on our children. This may look like something different in your house. I am certainly not claiming to be an expert on parenting, families, or anything really. I am just sharing how mercy saved our family in case you are in similar situation and need something to try. Or, in case you want to try it now before you get into the situation we found ourselves in. For me, showing more mercy meant not punishing for every little thing the boys did. If they acted out in frustration and did something wrong, I would recognize that they were frustrated and give them a cooling period without yelling. The cooling period was something like watch tv, listen to music, or play a video game. They thought this was awesome and honestly, I am sure they thought they were getting away with something at first. But what it really did for them was show them that I get it. I understand that sometimes we get upset and do things that we don’t want to do. It showed them that I understand what it is like to lose my temper and that sometimes we need some time to chill out before we talk about it.
I did not just forget about the incident and move on. They still needed to talk with me about what happened once they were calm. However, since they had a cooling off period, so did I. So when we talked about it, I was not letting my emotions lead the discussion. I was approaching it more out of a curiosity stand point, asking them what happened so I could understand instead of placing blame and asking them to defend themselves. The boys felt heard, probably for the first time in a long time. When I took this time to slow down and figure out what really happened most of the time I found out that things were not really what they seemed. This was the beginning of a new life for us. That may sound dramatic to some of you, but our family was struggling with so much anger. We were drowning in it with no way out. This simple act of showing more love and mercy was our life boat.
I know everyone listening to this podcast may not be a parent and even if you are, your kids may be already grown and so you may think this doesn’t apply to you. Let me assure you, that in whatever stage of life you are in, it can only get better when you have more love and more mercy. If you are someone that goes to work everyday, how can you show more mercy to those you work with? People make mistakes all the time and how you deal with it can either make that person feel good or bad. I have often heard the quote, “People may not always remember what you do, but they will always remember how you made them feel.” This is so true. When you are having a bad day and someone does something to make you feel better, you don’t often forget it. When you make a huge mistake and someone shows you grace and mercy, you remember that forever.
I remember reading a book one time, I don’t remember which one, but I remember the story the author told about borrowing her dads car. This woman was in college and she borrowed her dad’s car for a special reason, I think maybe she had a date. Her dad loved his car, it was very special to him. When she was driving it that night, someone ran a red light and hit her car. The car was totaled and she had to go to the hospital. She was ok and did not have any severe injuries. She was so scared for her dad to come to the hospital to see her because she knew how mad he would be. That car was his baby. Her dad finally arrived at the hospital and when he came in to the room he gave her a big hug and said, “rough night, huh.” She started to cry and apologized about the car. He said he didn’t care about the car, he just was glad she was ok. It makes me emotional thinking about the dad’s response because there were any number of things he could have said to her when he walked into that room. And yet, what he said, “rough night, huh.” was perfect. It showed her, that he understood what she was feeling. It showed her that he knew it was going to be tough for her to tell him about his car. He could have gone in there and yelled at her and made her feel awful and told her she was not going to ever borrow his car again, but he didn’t. He showed her mercy and love and because of it, she did not feel so bad about herself.
There are so many instances in my life that I look back on and I wish I had known the perfect thing to say. I wish I was better at not letting my emotions do the talking. I wish my first thought was always mercy and to think about how my words would make someone feel about themselves. Unfortunately, this is not the case. However, because I am aware of these desires, I am working towards them. I am doing my best to put mercy first, to think about how what I am about to say will make the other person feel before I say it. I can’t change the past, but I can learn from it and work on being a better person in the future.
Remember when you are out there in the world, you are a representative of Jesus. Think about how you treat other people. Are you treating them like Jesus would? When they look at you are they seeing a reflection of Jesus? That is our goal, that is what we are here on this earth to do. We are here to introduce each person to Jesus. St. Francis of Assisi has a quote that I just love and that embodies how we should live our lives. He said, “Preach the Gospel at all times. Use words if necessary.” Where in your life could you be more merciful? How could you be more like Jesus?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask that you teach us to be more merciful. We ask that you shine a light on those places in our lives where you are calling us to show more mercy or more love. Lord you are so merciful and we are so grateful. Lord we want to be an example of You to others, please show us how. Help us to become more and more like you each day. Help us to preach the Gospel at all times, not only with our words but with our actions as well. Lord you are so powerful and we are so grateful that you love us. We love you Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey talk walk boldly with Jesus. Speaking of joining me on this Journey, I keep thinking about episode #80 “How Can We Help God.” Specifically what I keep thinking about are the character traits of Jesus and the call to be more like Jesus which we heard again in today's episode. I feel called to try to grow in those traits and I think trying to do anything new is easier with a community. I am wondering if anyone listening to this podcast would like to join me in this venture. There are 10 weeks until Christmas, I know, where is there year going? Anyway, there are 10 weeks until Christmas and so I thought we could focus on one character trait a week from know until Christmas and see how we are doing. If you are interested in joining me (click here). Once you sign up I will send an email describing what the character trait for the week is and some ways you might be able to grow in it. I hope you will consider joining me as it is much more fun to do things with a community. It also provides a greater level of accountability. I will also hold a zoom call each week so that anyone who wants to get together and talk about how it is going can do so. We can learn a lot from each other as we are all in different places in our journey. I hope you will consider joining me on this 10 week adventure to grow more like Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow, Have a blessed day!
Those Who Seek Me Find Me
Proverbs 8:17-19 “Those who love me I also love, and those who seek me find me. With me are riches and honor, wealth that endures, and righteousness. My fruit is better than gold, even pure gold, and my yield than choice silver.”
I thought this scripture was fitting after we just talked about love yesterday. Today, the Lord is telling us that He loves all those that love Him. Notice it does not say He loves all those that are perfect, or those that have never done anything wrong. It does not say He loves all those that are beautiful, all those that wear a certain size clothing, all those that say the right thing. It says “Those who love me I also love.” So, I have a question for you. Do you love Jesus? If so, then no need to question it, He loves you too! It says so right here in this verse.
Next it says those that seek me find me. It says this often in the Bible. Are you seeking God? Are you looking for Him in your day to day interactions with others? Are you looking for Him in all that you do? God is in everything, He is all around us. However, the verse says those that seek me find me. It doesn’t say that those who are too busy to look for me will find me. It says if you are looking for Him you will find Him. You need to take action. You need to start looking and then you will find Him.
I keep hearing about people who are really struggling right now. I have a really good friend who’s father just got diagnosed with cancer and who’s mother in law just started chemo. I have another close friend who’s mother got diagnosed with cancer as well. Then a prayer request came through for a mom of 5 that has pneumonia. There are a lot of people that are going through some really hard things right now. When you are going through something hard sometimes it’s difficult to see where God is in all of it. We wonder why it’s happening and why God is letting it happen.
This is normal. It is hard for us to understand why God lets these things happen to our loved ones. Sometimes, even when we are going through something hard, we can catch glimpses of God. I say glimpses because you have to be looking for Him. You have to search out where He is because I assure you, if you are going through something hard, God is right there with you. If you are not looking for Him though, then you might not see Him.
God can be found in the most unexpected ways sometimes. He knows exactly what you need and sometimes it is something that you didn’t even know you needed. For instance, I was walking to my car one time when I was upset and my neighbor came over and gave me a hug. I didn’t even know I needed this hug but as soon as she gave it to me I knew it was a hug from my heavenly father. He was telling me all was going to be ok. One time my husband and I went to the movies with my brother in law and his wife. We left our son and their daughter with his parents while we were at the movies. I am not sure exactly what happened but something to the affect of one was crying, the other one needed a diaper change, and his mom had no idea how she was going to handle both problems at the same time. Suddenly there was a knock at the door. It was my sister Suzy who had come to drop something off. My sister Suzy had 4 boys at the time and loves children. She came in and happily helped get the situation under control. Tony’s mom had no idea that she needed Suzy at that moment. However, when she came it seemed like she was an angel from Heaven. It was such a simple act and yet Tony’s mom will never forget it.
God is there when we need him, even if we can’t see Him. If you are struggling to find Him in your situation or your current circumstances look for Him in the small things. What small little thing brought you joy today? Was it the sun shining, or the rainbow after the storm? Did you know that a rainbow is a symbol of God’s promise? In Genesis 9:12-13 it says, “ And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth.” Did you notice that it says “a covenant for all generations to come”? That means the covenant is for me and for you as well. When you see a rainbow it is God reminding you of this covenant. If you are having a hard time finding God in your day to day circumstances, find a photo of a rainbow and look at it when you start to give up. Look at the rainbow and know that God has made a covenant with you.
Next the verse says, “With me are riches and honor, wealth that endures, and righteousness. My fruit is better than gold, even pure gold, and my yield than choice silver.” Now that we know God loves us and that we can find Him if we look for Him, He wants us to know what awaits us when we find Him. With God you will find riches and honor, wealth that endures and righteousness. But what does that mean? What riches and honor, what wealth will endure forever? Then He goes on to say, “My fruit is better than gold, even pure gold, and my yield than choice silver.” What is the fruit that God is talking about? In Galatians 5:22-23 Paul lists the fruits of the Holy Spirit, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.”
Can you see how these 9 gifts from the Holy Spirit are a kind of wealth that will endure forever? Can you see how these 9 gifts can bring you riches and honor? You can have all the money in the world, but if you don’t have love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control, then your money won’t get you anywhere. Would you rather have even the purest gold, or these 9 gifts from God? What good is money, gold or silver if you don’t have love or peace? There are plenty of people out there that have more money than they know what to do with and yet they are not happy. Money is not what makes people happy. Sure, it can allow them to buy all the material things that they ever wanted, but things will only keep people happy for so long. We all have a longing for connection. We want to feel connected to other people, we want to be connected with a passion and purpose in life. We all want to be liked and loved by others. Can you imagine how hard it would be to be liked by others without these 9 gifts?
Self-control is another big one that I see ruin so many peoples’ lives. If you don’t have self control then what’s to stop you from just doing whatever you want whenever you want? Why do you think some people use drugs, gamble, steal, kill people? They don’t have the self control not too. I know this may not be the same for everyone. Maybe some people have other reasons they do these things. However, self control is something that a lot of people struggle with. What about you, what would your life be like without self-control?
I think its clear that God is the way to go. If you could choose to be with Him, why wouldn’t you. There is only an up side to following God. He loves those that love Him. Those that seek Him, find Him. Then once you do find Him you will get riches and honor, wealth that endures and righteousness. Who doesn’t want those things? Let God in, love Him and trust that He loves you! Seek Him and trust that you will find HIm.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we thank you for loving us. We thank you for helping us to seek you. Lord, help us to see you in those unexpected ways that you show up. Help us to see you in the small things as well as the big things. Lord, we love you, even if we can’t always show it. You are amazing and you do so much for us. Thank you for the 9 gifts of the Holy Spirit. We can’t thank you enough. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ Holy name, Amen.
God Loves You, Yes You!
Jeremiah 29:13 “When you look for me, you will find me. Yes, when you seek me with all your heart.”
I was listening to the Bible in a year podcast today and Fr. Mike talked about Jeremiah 29:11, which I talked about in the episode titled An Unexpected Handstand. Jeremiah 29:11 I have probably referenced in other devotionals as well as it is one of the first verses I learned and it is one that many people use as their life verse. Jeremiah 29:11 says, “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” This is a really good verse to put on a sticky note and put it on your fridge, your bathroom mirror, anywhere you will see it. It is a great reminder that God has a plan for you and it's a good one. It is one full of hope not despair. If you have been wondering if God has a plan for your life, write this scripture down and memorize it.
Today I don’t want to talk about that scripture though. When Fr. Mike was reading, he went beyond that one verse and read a few more. As I was listening I was struck by Jeremiah 29:13. I felt instantly that the Holy Spirit had something to say to all of us about that verse. Jeremiah 29:13 says, “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” What instantly came to mind was the with all your heart. The thought came to mind, “Are we doing this? I am not questioning if we are seeking God because I think many of us are, but are we doing it with all of our heart?
I think the reason this thought came to mind is because of the word or prophecy that I received at prayer group today. The word I received was, “I love you my children. I tell you this often but some of you can’t hear me. I love you, each one of you, individually, right where you’re at, exactly who you are. I love you. Let my love in. Feel my love. Let my love fill you up. I love you my children.” Can you hear these words? I am asking this because I truly want to know. Can you hear the Lord when He says that He loves you? Do you know that the Lord loves you? Do you believe that He loves you just as your are right where you are?
If I had a fairy godmother and she granted me only one wish, I would wish for everyone in the world to know God’s love. That is how important I think it is. Since I do not have a fairy godmother I am making that my mission in life. I know, it probably sounds like a crazy mission. How can one person share God’s love with the whole world? I don’t know how I can do it, and that’s ok. I don’t have to know how. All I have to do is say yes when God asks me to do something and He will show me the next right step. But that is not the topic of today’s devotional. Today we are talking about how much God loves you. Why is this so hard for so many people to believe?
Be honest with yourself when you answer the questions above? No one will know your answers but you. Well, you and God, but he already knows the truth. So it’s just you that you have to be honest with. If your answer is no, no you can’t hear Him tell you that He loves you, no you don’t know that He loves you or no, you can’t believe that He loves you, the first thing I want to tell you is that you are not alone. I know the devil wants you to feel that way. He wants you to feel like you are the only one, like something is wrong with you because everyone else can feel God’s love. This is NOT true. There are many reasons why people can’t feel God’s love and there are lots of people that have those reasons.
I might even say that the people who do feel God’s love may be in the minority. That would just be a guess, I have not facts or research to back that up. All I know is that so many people do not love themselves. If we can’t love ourselves then how can we believe that someone else could love us? I went to a women’s conference, and the speaker and organizer, Rachel Hollis, said that at one of her events she asked how many woman hated their bodies. Not just didn’t like some part of it, but hated their bodies, and over 90% of the women stood up. If 90% of those women hated their bodies, then how many of them do you think have trouble believing that they are loved by God unconditionally, just as they are? Believe me when I say, you are not alone.
The second thing I want you to know is that it is never too late. God’s love is always waiting for you. He has loved you since the beginning of time and that is never going to change. He is a patient God and He will wait until you are ready for His love. Does He want to lavish it on you right now, definitely! Actually He probably already is. I don’t think that His love is not there, I think its just that we can’t feel it. Kind of like when our kids are looking for their shoes and they can’t find them. Sometimes they are looking right at them, but somehow, they still can’t see them. Some of you may be feeling like you are too old for God to start loving you now. You may be thinking you have done too many bad things for God to ever forgive you enough to love you. You may be thinking that God will love you when you get your stuff together, but right now He is too disappointed in you to love you. If this is you please try to hear me when I say,
THAT IS THE ENEMY TALKING!! You are not too old for God to start loving you because He never stopped. There was never a time in your life when He didn’t love you. You have not done too many bad things for God to forgive you. All you have to do is ask Him and He will forgive you. And by the way, the same goes for you. Even when you were doing those things, God never stopped loving you. God is not disappointed in you. God has so much grace. His grace is overflowing. God does not look at us and see all that we lack. He looks at us and sees all that we do. He knows you are doing your best. He knows you are human. He just wants you to keep showing up. Just keep trying. God is not looking for perfection. He just wants you.
Ok, now that you know you are not alone, and you know that it is not too late, how can you let God’s love in? How can you believe that you are lovable? The best thing you can do is ask God for help. God knows why you can’t feel His love. He knows your history, He knows your heart, He knows what is blocking His love. If you want to remove those blocks, God is the answer. He is just waiting for you to invite Him in. He is waiting for you to ask Him for help. God can do all things but He will not do it without your permission. He is a gentleman and is waiting for you to invite Him in to your heart. Once you do, He can get to work. We had another word given at today's prayer meeting and I feel like someone listening to this episode needs to hear it. I will end with the Lord’s words. The word was, “There are many doors to your heart that are still only cracked open to my love. Listen with your heart, receive the light in the crack of the doors and open it wider. There are many things in your life that are still not mine, that you have not given me. I wish to receive them so that I may heal them. So that the light of my love will shine brighter in your heart of hearts where I will reside and I will change you. But you, I ask, to call upon me to open the doors so I may cleanse you and heal you to a brighter, more holy, more loving commune with me.”
Dear Heavenly Father, I pray that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord we ask that you help us to feel your love. Fill us up with that love. If we are struggling to feel your love shine a light on any healing that needs to be done. Lord, we ask that you show us which doors need to be opened and we ask that you help us open them. We want to receive your light Lord, please help us. Lord, you are amazing. We are so grateful for your unconditional love. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name. Amen.
King Solomon
1 King 11:13 “I will not, however, tear away the entire kingdom; I will give one tribe to your son, for the sake of my servant David and for the sake of Jerusalem, which I have chosen.”
What is going on in this chapter of 1 Kings is that God is talking Solomon, David’s son. I am not sure how much you know about David, but the Lord loved David. David was so good at first. He was more or less a good king, although He did do some terrible things. He was someone who followed the Lord and when he messed up, he was really good at turning back to the Lord and asking for forgiveness. He was a Holy man who truly loved the Lord. Now Solomon, David’s son, is King.
Solomon does not follow the ways of the Lord. The Lord said that His people were not to take foreign wives because eventually they would “incline your heart to follow their gods.” However, Solomon didn’t listen, he had 700 princesses and 300 concubines. Eventually Solomon’s heart was turned away towards the other Gods. He built alters for these false gods and his wives where they offered sacrifices and burned incense to their Gods. The Lord appeared to Solomon twice to get him to change his ways, but Solomon wouldn’t listen. God was angry at Solomon and told him He was going to tear away his kingdom. However, God had made a promise to David that after he was gone the Lord would raise up an offspring and establish a kingdom forever. I was about to say, “Can you imagine the position that Solomon put God into?” God promises to establish a kingdom with the offspring of David and then Solomon betrays God.
The reason I said I was about to say that is because then I remembered, God knows everything before it happens. Nothing is a surprise to God. He has watched the movie of our lives and already knows how it plays out. Solomon didn’t put God in any position. God knew what Solomon was going to do. Even though God knew what was going to happen I can imagine it was very frustrating for God to go to Solomon twice and show him the error of His ways, and Solomon refused to change his ways.
We are lucky that God’s ways are higher than our ways, and His thoughts are greater than our thoughts. Can you imagine if the creator of the universe acted like we act? We are lucky that God is able to have the patience that He has. If you asked someone that you cared about to stop doing something and they didn’t do it, wouldn’t that make you angry. God chose David to be King and he chose David’s off spring to lead His people. God loved David and they had a good relationship. They were very close. David walked in the Lord’s footsteps and He trusted in Him. David trusted in the Lord and tried to be faithful. I wonder what David thought about the way his son Solomon was leading the people? I wonder what he would think if he could see the person his son had become. Solomon actually started off well. The Lord told Solomon that he could ask for anything and Solomon asked for wisdom to be a good king. He did not ask for riches or victory over his enemies, He asked for wisdom to be a fair and just ruler.
So, where did everything go so wrong? How does one that asks for wisdom, and receives it, then go against the heart of the Lord? I wonder if it was because he married so many foreign woman? Have you noticed if you surround yourself with people who do not understand your love of Christ then it is difficult to talk about Him when you are with them? If everyone you hang out with goes out to brunch every Sunday while you usually are at church, you may start to skip mass so that you don’t miss out on brunch with friends. What if you really like doing Eucharistic Adoration, but your spouse or kids hate that you are gone for that hour or two? Have you ever noticed that some people get uncomfortable when you talk about God and the things He is doing in your life? Also, there are the people that dismiss the miracles that are happening in your life and chalk them up to luck or coincidences. Then you start to view things like this and you stop praising the Lord for all the extraordinary things He is doing in Your life.
Can you see how this could have happened to Solomon? Can you see why God warned His people to not marry foriegn wives? Can you see how it might be difficult to surround yourself with people that believe in other God’s and not support them in their beliefs? Are their things in your life that are getting in the way of your relationship with the Lord? Is there anything that is pulling you attention away from the Lord?
What I love is that even though Solomon strayed away from the Lord, The Lord still says that He will not tear apart the entire kingdom. He tells Solomon that he will not take away the entire kingdom. He says that he will give one tribe to Solomon’s son for the sake of David. God could have taken everything from him and yet He chose to leave him at least one tribe. This is why His ways are better than our ways. If God were human then He would have most likely have let his emotions get in the way and may have taken the whole kingdom away, but He didn’t. I love that God is so fair and so just. He is also so patient. We keep messing up and He keeps forgiving us and giving us another chance. I am so very thankful that God’s ways are higher than our ways. I am not sure we would stand a chance if they weren’t.
Dear Heavenly Father, I pray that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, you are amazing and we are so thankful for all you have done in each of our lives. Lord, help us to have the wisdom of Solomon, and help us to put it to good use. Help us to stay faithful to you and to follow your ways. Lord, help us surround ourselves with people who will be a good influence on us and who will help us to grow in our faith. Help us notice those that are pulling us away from you and help us to stay strong against their attacks. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
God’s Commandments
Sirach 6:37 "Reflect on the statutes of the Lord, and meditate at all times on his commandments. It is he who will give insight to your mind, and your desire for wisdom will be granted.” (NRSVCE)
“Meditate at all times on his commandments.” This may seem like an impossible task, but I do not think that the Lord is saying that the only thing we are allowed to think about are his commandments. I also do not think he is saying that we need to think about them all day and night. I think what the Lord is asking us to do is to spend some time thinking about God’s laws and to really meditate on his commandments. What are these laws telling us to do? What does He require from us? When it says meditate at all times, what I think this means, is to have the commandments in the back of you mind at all times. In other words, study them so that you know what is expected of you and then keep this in your mind so that you can refer to it often.
For instance, if you have your drivers license then you know the rules of the road. You have studied them and practiced them enough so that when you drive the car, you can recall them when you need to. You don’t have to stop and read the rule book every time you come to a red light to figure out what you are supposed to do. You have it memorized and you stop when you see a red light because you know that’s the law.
Wouldn’t it be great if we knew God’s laws and commandments as well as we know the rules of the road. I know, when we are talking about the rules of the road, we are talking about life and death situations. If we forget a rule someone could die. It is that important. One small mistake could be the end of one’s life. I understand that. I get it. Luckily with God, one small mistake won’t end someone’s life. He is very forgiving and very merciful. However, I still believe that it is just as important to know God’s commandments. Actually, I think it is more important because we are dealing with eternal life.
God gave Moses his 10 commandments and they were passed down through the years. I learned these when I was a kid and yet, I am not 100% sure I could list all 10 of them off the top of my head. As I say this outloud I think this is so sad. How many rules to the road are there? Too many to count probably. Think of how many mulitiplication tables we learned growing up. Think of all the things we have memorized and yet I can not recite off the 10 commandments. Maybe I am in the minority. Maybe most of you know them. However, even if most of you that are listening to this podcast have them memorized, I bet a good majority of people don’t.
What I am sensing right now is that God doesn’t care if we have them memorized, but He does care if we understand them. How much time have you spent with the 10 commandments? Be honest with yourself, how much time have you spent examining the 10 commandments? When I was younger I used to wonder why so many people went to confession. When I read the commandments, I did know read anything the would really warrant confession from most people. I mean, thou shall not kill. I am guessing the majority of us don’t have to confess that we killed anyone today. I looked at all the commandments at surface level. I did not dig deeper. I did not try to understand what they meant other than the obvious meaning.
Have you ever heard of the Examination of Conscience? It is the coolest thing. The Examination of Conscience takes the 10 commandments and it breaks it down into examples of all the different ways you might be breaking that commandment. You may not think this is cool. You might be thinking that you don’t really want to know all the ways you could be breaking the commandments. Sometimes we think ignorance is bliss. If we don’t know we are committing a sin, then its not a sin, so why learn this information? Won’t we be held to a higher standard if we learn all of this? Have you ever thought things like this before? No, no-one, it’s just me. Well, I did have these thoughts. On more than one occasion I wondered if it was worth learning more about my religion and more about what God expects from us because if I know more then I will be expected to do more.
This may seem silly or crazy to some of you. However, I know that some of you know exactly what I am talking about. You have had these same thoughts. And you know what, that’s ok. It’s perfectly ok to ask these questions. God is patient. He knows we can be slow sometimes and He is willing to wait. I think He actually likes when we ask questions like this because it means we are trying to really understand things and not just go with the flow. But, that is just my thoughts. Anyway, what I came up with when I asked these questions is, Yes, you will be held to a higher standard. The more you learn the more that is expected of you. The other thing that I learned is you don’t really mind this. The more you learn about God, the closer you get to Him. The closer you get to Him, the more you fall in love with Him. I’m not just talking about “I love you” love. I am talking about head over heels in love with Him. You don’t mind being held to a higher standard because you want to do whatever you can to please Him. You will do anything to get to spend eternal life with Him.
Also, make no mistake, that is what is at stake here. How we spend eternity is based on the choices we make here and now, in this life. So, of course God wants us to know his commandments. Of course he wants us to meditate on them. He is our Father and He wants us to come home and spend eternity with Him. So, how can we do that? I think a great way to mediate on his statutes is to study the examination of conscience. There are many of them out there. There are some that are for everyone, there are some for single people, married people, parents, etc. They all are based on the 10 commandments, but the different versions look at the commandments through different lenses. I think they are very interesting. Some are very detailed. I think I like these so much for two reasons. First, I am a rule follower and so when I go to confession I want to do it correctly. Which, by the way, there isn’t just one right way to do confession. I just like the structure of the examination. Before I go to confession I go through and write down all the things on the list that I think I have done. That way I am not left up to my understanding fo the commandments and also so I don’t forget any. Second, because it helps me remember things that I might have forgotten other wise. It also makes we aware of things that I did not know about.
I like to use different ones from time to time. I feel like each different one I use gives me a better understanding of the 10 commandments. Each one has questions pertaining to the commandments. I thought I would go over one with you today, and I will put a link in the show notes in case you want to look at all the different varieties they have. You could always do a quick google search for Examination of Conscience as well. This one is A brief examination of Conscience that I found on the website of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.
I am the Lord your God: you shall not have strange Gods before me.
Have I treated people, events, or things as more important than God?
You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.
Have my words, actively or passively, put down God, the Church, or people?
Remember to keep holy the Lord’s Day.
Do I go to Mass every Sunday (or Saturday Vigil) and on Holy Days of Obligation (Jan. 1; the Ascension; Aug. 15; Nov. 1; Dec. 8; Dec. 25)? Do I avoid, when possible, work that impedes worship to God, joy for the Lord’s Day, and proper relaxation of mind and body? Do I look for ways to spend time with family or in service on Sunday?
Honor your father and your mother.
Do I show my parents due respect? Do I seek to maintain good communication with my parents where possible? Do I criticize them for lacking skills I think they should have?
You shall not kill.
Have I harmed another through physical, verbal, or emotional means, including gossip or manipulation of any kind?
You shall not commit adultery.
Have I respected the physical and sexual dignity of others and of myself?
You shall not steal.
Have I taken or wasted time or resources that belonged to another?
You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
Have I gossiped, told lies, or embellished stories at the expense of another?
You shall not covet your neighbor’s spouse.
Have I honored my spouse with my full affection and exclusive love?
You shall not covet your neighbor’s goods.
Am I content with my own means and needs, or do I com- pare myself to others unnecessarily?
This is a brief one to get you started. If you would like a more detailed one check out the link in the show notes. (click here) I think God is calling us to not just memorize his commandments but really understand them. To have a really good handle on what he expects from us and then to keep that in the back of our mind so we can use this information to make all or our decisions.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to understand your commandments at a deeper level. Help us to keep learning more about you so that we can grow closer to you. We love you and we want to please you. We want to live up to your expectations. We want to follow your commandments and we want to have an eternal life with you. Help us to achieve this Lord. Help us to know what to do and give us the wisdom we need to do it. You are amazing Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
How Can We Help God?
John 6:40 “For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”
The will of God is for everyone to look at Jesus and believes in Him so that we can all have eternal life. How can we help God with this? God is always doing so much for us, is there a way we could help Him with what he wants? I think there are a few ways we can help the Lord out with this mission. The question is not is there anything we could do, the better questions is will we do anything to help. Some of the things that we could do to help may take time out of our day, but won’t cause us much un-comfort. However there are others ways we could help that may cause us to step outside of our comfort zone. You get to choose not only how you will help, but if you will help. The good news about choosing to step outside your comfort zone is, that is where all growth happens. We do not grow when we stay inside our comfort zone.
The way I read this verse, it sounds like the Lord’s mission is for everyone to look upon Jesus and believe in Him so that they can have eternal life. I am going to go over two ways that I feel we can help the Lord out with this mission. My call to you is to listen to these ideas and see if either of them resonate with you. Do either of them sound like something you would like to do? I know God can do all things, He doesn’t need our help with anything. He is the almighty God, maker of all things. That is what makes the decision to help all the more special. He doesn’t need our help, but I am sure He would welcome it. God doesn’t need anything. What do you get someone who doesn’t need anything? Something money can’t buy, and for God, that is our love and our appreciation. Helping Him out is giving Him both.
The first way I can think of to help everyone to meet Jesus is to pray for all souls. Yes, pray for everyone, those you like and also those you don’t like, especially those you don’t like. Pray for your enemies because they probably need prayers more than anyone else. Pray for those that you feel may be evil or whose actions are unkind. Pray for those you don’t know, pray for the poor, pray for the sick, and pray for the lonely. Pray for the conversion of all souls. Pray for those in purgatory. It is not too late to pray for those that have died. Its never too late to pray for someone. You may look at some people and think that it is too late because they may seem so evil. Keep praying for them. Keep praying that they meet Jesus. It doesn’t have to take you a lot of time. You don’t have to spend hours praying for this. It could be a few simple sentences added to your daily prayer time. Lord, I pray for the conversion of all souls. I pray for the repentance of all sinners. I pray that everyone meets Jesus and that they believe in Him. I pray that everyone should have eternal life. God wants intercessors, especially for those sinners. He wants to know that we care about their souls. He wants us to intercede on their behalf.
The second way I thought of was that we could try hard to be a reflection of Jesus to all that we see. We can watch how we live and how we interact with others. What if we started to think of all of our interactions with other people through the lens of “What if my interaction with this person is the only time they will get to witness Jesus?” Can you let Jesus’s light shine through you? Can you interact with others as Jesus would? The world can be a very unkind place, especially lately. Actually, as I say that I am thinking that it was never probably that kind. I mean at the very beginning of time Cane killed Able. Then the world was such a terrible place when Noah lived that God flooded the entire thing. I think people always think that the time they are living in is the worst, but I think it has probably always been bad.
However, when Jesus walked the Earth people could tell that He was different. Why was He different? What did He do that was so different from others? He was kind to everyone. He did not treat people differently because they were poor, or because they were wealthy. He did not treat people differently because of their job, their religion, their gender, or any other thing that differentiates people. He was kind to everyone. He was loving and accepting to everyone. He welcomed everyone and made them feel like they were the most important person in the world. Have you ever been around someone like that? There are some people out there that are really good at this. They are genuinely interested in you and all you have to say. Right from the start the conversation is mostly about you, not because of any agenda, just because they want to get to know you. They pay attention when you talk, they ask questions to learn more, they encourage you and cheer you on. There are people out there that accept you for who you are and love you right where you are at. These people, are living examples of Christ. How can we be more like them? How can we be more like Christ?
I looked up the character traits of Jesus because I think if we are going to try to be more like Jesus it would help to know more about who He was and what traits we need to work on. Here is what I found. If you would like to read the whole article I put a link for it in the show notes. (click here). It was a great article by Michael Krauszer with more detail on each trait!
1.) Jesus was COMPASSIONATE. Matthew 9:36 says, “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a sheperd.” How can we be more compassionate this week?
2.) Jesus was a SERVANT. Mark 10:45 “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as ransom for many.” Who can we serve this week?
3.) Jesus was LOVING. Jesus died on the cross for our sins, could he be any more loving? How can we be more loving this week?
4.) Jesus was FORGIVING. Luke 23:34 “Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.’ And they divided up his clothes by casting lots.” How can we be more forgiving this week?”
5.) Jesus was COMMITTED. Jesus ran into lots of obstacles and yet he remained committed to His mission. Matthew 26:39 “Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My father, if it be possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.” Even facing death Jesus was still committed to God’s plan. What could we be more committed to this week?
6.) Jesus was PRAYERFUL. Luke 5:16 “But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.” Jesus prayed often, even in the busy times. How can we be more prayerful this week?
7.) Jesus was GENTLE. Luke 8:46-48, “ But Jesus said, “Someone touched me, for I perceive that power has gone out from me.” And when the woman saw that she was not hidden, she came trembling, and falling down before him declared in the presence of all the people why she had touched him, and how she had been immediately healed. And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace.” Jesus was gentle when he dealt with the people He was helping. How can we me more gentle this week?
8.) Jesus had PATIENCE. Jesus was so patient with not only the apostles, but with almost everyone He came in contact with. Imagine for a moment that you are God, you know everything, and yet you are walking around on Earth surrounded by humans. Imagine the patience it must have took for Him not to get frustrated on a daily basis with our lack of understanding. How can we be more patient with those around us this week?
9.) Jesus had so much SELF-CONTROL. Matthew 4:1-11 talks about Jesus’ time in the desert. Immediately after Jesus was baptized the Holy Spirit led Him into the desert for 40 days. After 40 days of fasting the devil approached Him. The devil offered Jesus, bread and He refused, even though He hadn’t eaten in 40 days. The devil asked Jesus to test the Lord and He refused. Finally the devil offered Jesus all the kingdoms of the world and Jesus refused. That must have taken a great deal of self control. Where in our lives can we have a little more self control this week?
10.) Jesus was HUMBLE. Mark 1:41-44 “Then Jesus, moved with compassion, stretched out His hand and touched him, and said to him, “I am willing; be cleansed.” As soon as He has spoken, immediately the leprosy left him, and he was cleansed. And He strictly warned him and sent him away at once, and said to him, “See that you say nothing to anyone; but go your way, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing those things which Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.” Jesus did not want credit for what He did. Jesus did not want to be revered and as stated earlier He did not come to be served, but to serve. In what ways can we be a little more humble this week?
I hope these 10 traits give you some ideas of how you can be a little more like Jesus. I know they have given me a lot to think about. One idea that just came to mind is to focus on one trait each week or each month. During that week or that month we could spend a little time getting to know more about that trait. Maybe look up what it means, other ways to grow in that trait or practice it? It might be a great time to focus on practicing that one trait as well because I don’t know about you, but if I have 10 traits to focus on and to try to practice, then I am most likely not going to practice any of them because I will feel overwhelmed. There are about 12 weeks left until Jesus’ birthday. What if you picked one trait a week for the next 10 weeks and focused on developing that trait. What a great birthday gift that would be for Jesus. What do you think? Do you want to give it a try with me? Remember, God is not looking for perfection. If you try and you don’t stick with it He will still be happy you tried. What have you got to lose?
Dear Heavenly Father, I pray that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we are so thankful for all that you do for us. We share your vision of everyone looking upon Jesus and believing. Lord we want to have eternal life and we want that for others as well. Help us help you oh Lord. Teach us to be a reflection of Jesus here on Earth. Help us to become more like him. Put in our hearts a desire to pray for those that need prayers. Not just those we want to pray for, but those that need our prayers, those you want us to pray for. I know you love all your children and it breaks your heart to see any of them go astray. If we can help prevent that from happening Lord, just show us how. We love you Lord, you are amazing! We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Favorite Scripture Verses
Proverbs 16:3 “Commit your work to the Lord, and your plans will be established.” NRSVCE
I heard this verse on the Bible in a Year podcast and Father Mike said that it is one of his favorite passages. He said he has this on a book mark ever since he was a little kid. I think this is great! I did not have any favorite passages when I was a kid. I knew bible stories, but to have a verse that could help guide you is an amazing idea. Then I was watching a mentoring session with Pamela & Lonnie Crim and he mentioned that one of the first scriptures he learned was Jeremiah 29:11 “ For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.” He said someone gave him a coffee cup with this on it when he was a teen and it became a verse that he relied on a lot.
The idea of having a few favorite scripture verses that you know well and that you can rely on when you need guidance or when you strength is a great idea! It is not something I had ever thought of before. I am fairly new to reading the Bible. I certainly didn’t have any scripture verses memorized before the last few years. The more books I read, the more I am hearing the authors talk about their favorite verses. Or they are talking about how we need to grab hold of the promises in the bible and claim them for ourselves. This is a new concept to me and it is one that I am on board for. I can be all in when it comes to claiming God’s promises. He gave them to us, so why wouldn’t we claim them for ourselves?
I would say most people probably don’t claim them because they, like me, have never heard of such a thing. What does that even mean, claim the promises for myself? How can you claim a promise? The Bible was written a very long time ago, how we claim those promises in today's day and age? Would they still hold true? Will they still be relevant? If you are like me, you probably had so many questions like this come to mind when I said that we should claim God’s promises that are written in the Bible. Let me explain the best I can my understanding of what the authors are saying.
When we claim a scripture verse or a promise from the Bible we are adopting if, if you will. We are saying that we want this verse to guide us and to be one that we can rely on. We are telling God that we claim this promise for our life. We are saying we believe this is true, not only when He said it, but now as well. We are saying that we trust God will keep this promise in the same way that He has kept all of His promises. One way to claim a promise is to write it down and place it somewhere where you can see it often. Memorize this scripture so that when you are feeling down you can call it to mind quickly. Or, when the enemy is challenging you or making you feel bad, you can quickly recall God’s promise and God’s words.
I have a few written verses around my desk that I look at from time to time. Although apparently I don’t look at them enough because I have today verse, Proverbs 16:3 on a post it note on my wall and I didn’t even know that until I just looked up. The other two I have are John 14:12-14 “Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.” And Matthew 17:20 “ He said to them, “Because of your little faith. For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.” If you don’t have a favorite scripture verse to rely on in difficult times, I recommend maybe writing a few down. If you need help you could do a quick google search, you could take one of the ones mentioned here today, or you could look in the Bible and see what stands out to you. If you ask God to lead you to the right verse or two, He will.
I wrote the Proverbs 16:3 verse down because I feel it is so important. I think it is something that we could all benefit from not only knowing, but remembering and referring back to. “Commit your work to the Lord, and your plans will be established.” Often times we have an idea and we set off to make it happen. We need a job, we go out and look for one and we accept the job that we get offered. How often do you pause when you get an idea and run it by God to see what He thinks? God knows what is best for us, I think most of us can agree on that. So, why are we not consulting Him with our plans? Why are we not stopping to pray about our decisions more and asking God to weigh in on these decisions?
Did you ever really want to do something but every time you tried to take a step forward with that plan it seems you were met with a roadblock? Did you ever have a plan and yet nothing went according to this plan? Have you ever had a time when it seemed like the whole world was against you? I wonder, when this was happening, did you pray about it? Did you pray about your plan before you acted on it? This verse says if we commit our work to the Lord, then our plans will be established. When you come up with a plan, turn that plan over to the Lord. Instead of trying to come up with all the details of that plan on your own, tell the Lord what you want to do and ask Him to establish a plan for you. When the Lord blesses your plan everything is so much easier. You do not run up against roadblock after roadblock. You have asked God for help and He will help you, He will show you the way.
The best example of this is when I felt God was calling me to write a book. I talked to the Lord about it and I told Him that I would write the book if that is what He wanted, but He would need to tell me what to say because I was not sure what He was looking for. I showed up most days to write and I wrote the words pretty easily. My friend and I prayed that I would know what publishing company to send it to and I felt like God made that clear to me. I did not run into a lot of road blocks writing this book and I believe that is because I committed this work to the Lord. I was writing the book for God, not for myself and I asked for His help.
Are there some places in your life where you are having a lot of trouble? Does it seem like everywhere you turn you are running into a roadblock? Are there some works in your life that you have not committed to the Lord? If you find yourself struggling in some area of your life, its never too late to talk to God about it. Tell Him your plans, tell Him your thoughts, ask Him for His suggestions and His Blessing. It doesn’t take a lot of time. I am not saying before you do anything you stop and have a three hour conversation with God about it. What I am saying is that things in your life will go a lot smoother if you commit them to the Lord and pause for at least a moment and turn things over to the Lord. He knows what is best and He wants to help us. If we would just stop and ask He would save us so much time and heart ache.
Dear Heavenly Father, I pray that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask that you help us all to commit our work to you. We ask that you help us to pause and ask for your thoughts before jumping into any new situations or plans. Lord, we ask that you are with us in our plans and that you pave the way for us so that our journey isn’t so difficult. We invite you in Lord, we ask that you accompany us on our journey. Lord, we ask that you bless our endeavors and guide us to the best choices. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
God Is Merciful
Nehemiah 9:31 “And yet, because your mercy is great, you did not forsake or destroy them. You are a gracious and merciful God!”
God is Merciful. The other day I mentioned that if you wanted proof of God’s faithfulness you could go to just about any book in the Bible and you would see how faithful God was to His people. I would say the same thing for God’s mercy. God’s mercy is definitely on display throughout the whole Bible. I decided to read the whole chapter so I could see where this verse came from. I wondered if there was a specific thing that they were praising God for. It turns out that the people that were speaking here, were confessing their sins to the Lord.
If you want to read a good chapter on God’s mercy, Nehemiah 9 is a great place to start. The people of Israel we recounting all the things that God did for their ancestors. They talk about how God lead them out of Egypt, did signs and wonders, gave them rules, gave them food from heaven, promised them land, etc. Then in Nehemiah 9:16-17 it says, “But they and our fathers acted presumptuously and stiffened their neck and did not obey your commandments. They refused to obey and were not mindful of the wonders that you performed among them, but they stiffened their neck and appointed a leader to return to their slavery in Egypt.” Then it goes on to say, “But you are a God ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and did not forsake them.”
The rest of the chapter goes back and forth between talking about how great God was to the people of Israel and how badly those same people treated Him. Even when the people of Israel, God’s people, were disobeying Him, sinning against Him, committing awful deeds, such as sacrificing their children, He did not forsake them or destroy them. This is not to say that God didn’t do anything. God is gracious and merciful and He is also just. God did allow them to be taken away by their enemies. However, even through all of that, He protected them so that they were not destroyed completely.
God did not just watch His people go astray and do nothing. He sent them prophets to talk to them. The prophets told the people to repent. Sometimes they did and sometimes they didn’t. Every time they did, God was merciful. Remember, that is why Jonah ran away from what God was asking him to do. God wanted Jonah to go to Nineveh and preach repentance. However, Jonah knew how merciful God was and he knew that if Nineveh repented God would save them. Jonah could not bear for Nineveh to be saved as they were a wicked people. He would rather run away from God then to try and help God save a wicked people.
I think we can all be like Jonah sometimes. We may think that someone is mean or wicked and we don’t want God to show them mercy. Why should God forgive them when they don’t deserve it? We may think to ourselves, “I may not be perfect, but I’m not as bad as they are.” Who are we to judge? Can we know what is in their heart? Do we know all they have been through and what has made them the way that they are? Have you ever done something that was really mean? Maybe you were really angry, or you were getting back at them for something they did. For whatever reason, you did something unkind to someone else? Does that make you a bad person? Does that mean that you don’t deserve forgiveness or mercy? God is the only one that judges.
God loves us. He loves all of his people. When we have a hard time understanding why God would be merciful to someone that did wicked things, it might help for us to remember that we are His children. If you have children, or if you have parents you can imagine what God feels for His children. Wouldn’t you do anything for your children? Wouldn’t your parents do anything to keep you safe? If God sees His children veering off course, He will do whatever He needs to do to get them back on track. However, if they repent and get back on track, He will show them mercy. Wouldn’t you do the same for your children?
The difference is that God is all powerful and all knowing, so when He does something to help His kids get back on track, He is doing it because it is the right thing to do. We, as humans, mess up sometimes. Often times we want to protect our children and we go about it in the wrong way. We yell at them and we are hard on them because we are trying to teach them a lesson and we are also trying to protect them. We want them to learn the lesson when they are younger and the stakes aren’t as high. Sometimes we don’t show mercy because we think of mercy as a sign of weakness. We are not perfect. We are all just doing the best that we can. God, however, is perfect.
Today’s talk at prayer group was about Mercy. The leader said something which I think we should all hear. She said that we are all called to be examples of God’s mercy here on earth. She gave some examples of how we could do this.
Be patient with people’s quirks. There are going to be people that annoy you as you go through your day. One way of being an example of God’s mercy is to be patient with them.
Be a bridge of love to anyone that is difficult. Instead of being frustrated and angry when you are dealing with someone that is difficult, love them. We don’t know why they are being difficult. They might just be having a bad day, maybe they just lost someone close to them. You don’t know the circumstance that lead to this person being difficult. Instead of being difficult back, or being short with them, be a bridge of love.
Give second chances. Where would we be right now if God didn’t give us a second, third, hundredth chance? Mercy does not make you weak, it makes you strong. People are going to mess up, people are going to hurt you, give them a second chance. Be an example of God’s mercy to others.
Value relationships over rules. This is a big one for me. As soon as she said it I felt like it was God talking to me. I am a rule follower to the core. I don’t know why I am such a rule follower, but I have put that before relations in the past. I am not talking about going out and breaking the law in the name of love. What I am talking about is caring more about the person and the relationship than the rule. For instance, if my child comes in 10 minutes late I am going to have mercy and listen to why they are late instead of just skipping right to punishment because they broke the rule.
We need to reflect God’s love to the world. If there is one thing the world needs right now, it is God’s love. There is not enough love out there in the world these days. God is asking us to be His examples, His witnesses not only to His mercy but to His love as well.
Thank you so much Jeannine for your excellent teaching on mercy today. Jeannine said another powerful thing at the end of her talk. It was something that we all probably have heard before, but I wonder how many of us think of it everyday when we get out of bed. She said that people should know you are Christian by how you live your life. These are words to think about each morning when we get up and each night before bed. When you wake up in the morning you can ask God, “Please help your light shine through me. Please help me to live my life so that when people look at me they know I am a Christian.” Before you go to be at night you can ask yourself, “Did I live my life today in a way that others would look at me and know that I am a Christian” The way to know if you did this or not is to ask yourself if you had mercy, grace, love & forgiveness for others. How did you do today? What can you do to be better tomorrow?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode. Lord, we ask that you have mercy on us and on our loved ones. We know we are not perfect and we ask that you forgive us for all that we have done. You are so merciful and we are so thankful. Lord, we may not always understand your ways, but we trust you know what is best. Lord help us to be examples of your mercy here on earth. Teach us what mercy is and how we can share Your mercy with others. Lord, we love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
The Power of The Spirit
Acts 1:8 “ But you will receive power when the holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, throughout Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth”
Yesterday we talked about when Jesus told his disciples that He would be leaving but that He would send the Advocate to be with them and to guide them. Jesus said He would be sending the Spirt of truth to them and that this Spirit would guide them to all truths. Today’s verse is telling them that they will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon them. I wonder if they knew what this meant. I wonder if they could possibly have imagined what power was going to be bestowed on them.
Have you read the story of Pentecost? In Acts 2 it describes what it was like for the night that the Holy Spirit came down to be with them. Acts 2:1-4, “When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues[a] as the Spirit enabled them.”
I can’t imagine any of them were expecting what occurred that night. I can’t imagine what it must have been like for them. I wonder if they were scared when it happened? I wonder if they were scared when they heard the noise like the blowing of a violent wind? I can’t even picture what they must have thought when they saw tongues of fire over each of their heads. Yes, you heard that correctly, tongues of fire. That must have been remarkable. Then they were each filled with the Holy Spirit and they began to speak in other tongues. I wonder if this was completely new to them or if they had heard Christ do it before? Did they know what this was? This is one of those times when I wish I was a Bible scholar. There are people that spend a lot of time studying the Bible, and the history around it. Those people amaze me. They would definitely know whether or not the apostles would have been familiar with the idea of talking in tongues or not.
However, even if they were familiar with the concept or the idea of it, actually doing it for themselves I am sure was a whole new and strange phenomena. Talking in tongues was not the only power that they received that evening. They also received a holy boldness. Before Pentecost they were morning in the upper room, but they were also hiding. They were frightened to go out and proclaim the Good Word. Their leader had been crucified and their were people that wanted all those that followed Christ to die the same way Christ died.
However, once the Holy Spirit came down upon them, they all had the courage to go out and proclaim the gospel of the Lord. They were no longer afraid. On the day of Pentecost, Jerusalem was filled with God fearing Jews from all over the place. When the Apostles came out of the upper room and began to spread the Good News about Jesus, each of these people could hear what they were saying in their own language. The apostles all spoke the same language, and yet when these other people were listening to them they could understand what they were saying. This is definitely a power from above.
The gift of tongues and a holy boldness were not the only two powers that were bestowed on the apostles when the Holy Spirt cam down. It says in Acts 2:43, “Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles.” Can you imagine what it must have been like during that time? I can’t imagine being there, present in the moment following Pentacost. It must have been incredible. There must have been so much energy floating around the apostles. Have you ever been around someone like that before? Have you ever been in a situation where you could just feel the presence of the Holy Spirit? It is almost like an electric feeling.
There is nothing that comes close to the feeling you get when you are with someone that is filled with the Holy Spirit. You might not even know that is why they are different, but you can tell something is definitely different. When someone is filled with the Holy Spirit, they have this peace about them that they can’t explain. Its almost as if they know everything will be ok. They don’t know how or why but they know it will all work out. They have an unwavering faith that the Lord will take care of everything.
When someone is filled with the Holy Spirit they are also filled with an unexplainable love for others and for themselves. They don’t know why, or what happened but they just love everyone in that moment. They see the good in people and they don’t see the bad. They don’t judge themselves and wonder what others think of them. They are confident in their love from the Father. They show others love in a way that is unconditional. They have this way of making you feel like you are a gift to them. Have you ever known anyone like this?
The only way I can describe being in a situation where you can feel the Holy Spirit is a similar feeling you might get when you came downstairs on Christmas Day when you were still young enough to experience Christmas with all the awe and wonder of a child. You know that feeling you get when you have so much excitement and you just can’t contain it. You want to jump up and down and shout for joy. You wish that everyone could feel the way you feel in that moment. This is probably a fraction of what the apostles felt. Even just reading about the account of what happened you can feel the excitement that they had.
Have you ever been around people that were so excited about something that you got excited too? Maybe you don’t even like football, but if you go to a football game with someone who loves football, you will take on their feelings by the end. If their team is winning you will be so excited because you just can’t help but be excited when those around you are excited. The day of Pentecost, guess how many people were baptized? You may already know as I am sure this passage is read each year on Pentacost Sunday probably. Three thousand people accepted Jesus as their savior that day.
Three thousand, do you know what makes that Teven more remarkable? Shortly before this 3,000 were baptized Jesus was sentenced to death. It may have been the pharasees that condemned Jesus to death, but there were not a lot of people sticking up for him. Where were these 3,000 when Jesus was being put to death? Why were they not there? What is the difference now?
The difference is the Holy Spirit. The Spirit can give them the holy boldness that they didn’t have before. The Holy Spirit can give them power that they didn’t have before. The apostles were full of the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit not only gave them power, but they also received the truth. They could understand things in a way that they could not before and they shared this new understanding with the crowd. The verse above says that the apostles are to be the witnesses of Jesus to the surrounding towns and also to the ends of the earth. I think they definitely followed through with this. Even in that one day they witnessed to Jews from all over the earth, and then those people probably went home and told their friends about all that they saw.
Father Mike is always saying during his talks on the Bible in a Year podcast, that the Bible was not just talking to the people way back when. He says that it is also talking to us. In this verse Jesus was not just talking to the apostles that were there on the day of the original Pentecost. He is talking to us as well. We are all called to be witnesses. We are called to spread the word to others about how Jesus is moving in our lives. We are called to witness the ways the Holy Spirit is talking to us. God is doing things in all of our lives. We are being called to pay attention to those ways, and then tell others about them. Are you answering this call? Can you witness at least one thing to someone this week? If you can’t think of what to say, then share with them something you learned at mass, or from a sermon this week. Or, maybe you share God’s love with someone. When you show someone compassion you are showing the Jesus’ light shining through you. Be a witness of God’s love, the world could use more of it!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we are so very thankful that you sent the Holy Spirit down to be with us. We thank you not only for the Spirit of truth, but the gifts and the power that we receive when we accept the Holy Spirit. Lord, we ask that you give us the same holy boldness you gave the apostles and that you help us answer your call to be a witness to our neighbors and to the end of the earth. We love you Lord, you are amazing. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
The Advocate
John 16:7 “But very truly I tell you, it is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.” NIV (New International Version)
This verse was from Jesus. Jesus was talking to His disciples and was trying to reassure them. Before this verse Jesus was letting them know that once He was gone, “They will put you out of the synagogue; in fact, the time is coming when anyone who kills you will think they are offering a service to God,” John 16:2 Jesus explained that He didn’t tell them this before because He was with them, but now He is leaving them to go to the One that sent Him. The disciples were understandably filled with grief over all that Jesus was telling them. This is when He tells them the verse above.
Jesus explains that if he does not go to His father, then the Advocate, aka The Holy Spirit, can’t come to you. Jesus tells them that there is so much more He wants to tell them, but that they wouldn’t be able to understand, or maybe more accurately, they wouldn’t be able to endure hearing it all right then. It was not just Jesus going to His Father that had to happen before He could send the Holy Spirit. It was how Jesus needed to go to His Father that allowed Him to send the Holy Spirit. It is only because Jesus died on the cross for our sins and then went to join his father in Heaven that we were sent the Holy Spirit.
Jesus needed to die for our sins and correct the brokenness that occurred when Adam & Eve ate that apple. God sent His only son to be sacrificed for us and that needed to happen in order for the Holy Spirit to be sent down to us. This was not something that the disciples could have truly understood before it happened. Jesus is trying to prepare them as best He can for what was to come in the near future. I think this whole chapter John 16 is a very good chapter. It is very informational. However, since the focus of this podcast is to focus on certain verses and not really whole chapters, I will talk mostly about this verse today. However, if you have a few minutes I recommend you read the whole chapter, there is a lot of good stuff in there.
Jesus is trying to explain that even thought the disciples will miss Him, it is better that He go because He is sending them a companion. He is not leaving them alone to figure everything out on their own. He explains in John 16:12-14 “I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. He will glorify me because it is from me that he will receive what he will make known to you. “ Jesus sent the Holy Spirit down so that He could guide the disciples. It says in the verse that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth and that he would guide the disciples to the truth.
The Holy Spirit can do the same for you. Do you ever wish you knew what to do in all the different circumstance you find yourself in? Have you ever been in a situation where you didn’t know what the truth was? The Holy Spirit is here for you. Jesus died on the cross for our sins and because of this He was able to send us an Advocate. Are you using this Advocate? Are you aware that you have one? The Holy Spirit is our advocate, that is what Jesus called Him. Here are some synonyms for advocate: champion, supporter, backer, promoter, protector, upholder. Here are some of the things an advocate will do: recommend, prescribe, commend, advise, favor, support, back, uphold, champion, and stand up for. Do these sound like things you would want done for you? Does an advocate sound like something you could use?
Jesus died on the cross for our sins and then went to join His Father so that we could receive the Holy Spirit, the Advocate. So, what are we doing with this Advocate? Are we aware that He is within? Are we asking Him for help? Are we listening to all that He has to say? When you are unsure of what to do, who do you usually turn to? Probably, hopefully, someone who is an expert in that subject. For instance, when I have a parenting question I would go to my mom. She was the oldest of 10 children and she is the mother of 11 children and is the grandmother and great grandmother of lots of other children. I don’t think there is anything that I could come up against that she has not seen before, so when I come up against something and I don’t know what to do, I ask for her thoughts. This is not a bad things. It is great if you have people you can go to when you feel stuck or are unsure of which way to proceed.
However, do you also go to the Holy Spirit and ask what He thinks you should do? I am betting that many of us would say no, we don’t do that. When I just asked myself why we might not do that the answer that came was because we can’t hear Him. If you call your mom, dad, sister, friend on the phone and have a conversation with them, it will be a two way conversation. You will talk and they will talk. You can both hear each other. However, when you have a conversation with the Holy Spirit its not always like that. I agree, its not always like that. However, I wonder how many of you know that it can be kinda like that. How many of you know that the Holy Spirit does talk back to you when you ask questions? Is this news to you? Have you tried this before and were discouraged with the lack of communication on the side of the Holy Spirit? If this is the case, I want to assure you that if you ask the Holy Spirit a question, He answered you.
So, if He answered you, why didn’t you hear it? That is a good question. I think sometimes we miss the answer because it was different than we expected, or because we just didn’t recognize it as an answer at the time. Also, I think sometimes we underestimate the Holy Spirit and we think that He can’t communicate with us. We don’t think we will hear anything so we talk to Him, but then we don’t listen for an answer because we assume we won’t get one. Do any of these things ring true for you? Have you ever asked the Holy Spirit, God, or Jesus, something, and then not listened for an answer because you couldn’t imagine how you would get one? Have you ever received something and then weeks, months, or years down the road you realize that was an answer to a prayer? These things are happening all the time. If we want to hear more answers, good or bad, then we need to expect answers. We need to ask questions, expectantly, and then wait for the answers.
I wonder if it would surprise you to hear that I know several people that hear God’s word frequently. They ask a question and then wait expectantly and they get an answer. The only thing that makes these people different is that they have asked God for this gift. They have spent time praying to the Lord and then asking Him to speak to them and giving Him the space to do it. You could do this too. You do not have to be extra holy to have the Holy Spirit guide you. He is already doing it. You don’t have to be a saint and be doing everything right in the world in order to hear the Holy Spirit answer your prayers. He is already doing it, you just have to listen.
There are many ways that the Holy Spirit guides us and answers our prayers. Most of these ways do not include an audible voice from the heavens. If this was how it happened, a lot less of us would miss it. Although we would all probably be freaked out and not know what is going on and the Lord doesn’t want that either. One way the Spirit guides us is with a small voice inside ourselves. You know when you are about to do something and you get a small voice inside that tells you whatever you are about to do is a bad idea, that’s the Holy Spirit. Another way is just a feeling you get. Sometimes you get a good feeling or a bad feeling, that is the Holy Spirit leading you and it is up to you to listen to that feeling or not. Sometimes you will ask the Holy Sprit something and instead of a voice, or a feeling, He will make something happen. For instance, you are asking the Holy Spirit to help you find a job, then you get a job offer from your dream job, that is the Holy Spirit.
Another way the Holy Spirit will communicate is through specific thoughts. For instance you ask the Holy Spirit a question and then the answer comes to your mind. He places the thought in your head. If I had to guess I would say that this way is a lot less common, but I don’t think that is the fault of the Holy Spirit. I think He would love for us all to have back and forth conversations with Him, but we don’t give Him that kind of time. This is also something that takes trust and vulnerability and those are not easy things to give. Why I say it requires trust and vulnerability is because you are asking the Holy Spirit a question and then you are beliveing that He is answering it with the thought in your head. However, you have no proof. As with most things involving trust, you can’t say for sure the thoughts you are having are from the Holy spirit. Why I say it involves vulnerability is because you are turning your thoughts over to the Holy Spirit.
I could go on and talk about the Holy Spirit for a long time because I just love Him and I know if people relied more on HIs guidance then the world would be a much better place. Also, our lives would be a lot less of a mess. If you need guidance in any area of your life, ask the Holy Spirit for help and then take the time to listen to what He has to say. If you want to hear Him, and you take the time to listen, you will hear Him.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, you are amazing and we are so sorry that we spend so much time asking and so little time listening. Lord we ask that you help us all desire to listen more. Instill in our hearts a yearning to hear your Word. Help us to rely more on the Holy Spirit than we do on the things of this world. Help us to Hear the Holy Spirit and be guided by Him. We thank you Lord for all that you do for us. We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
God’s Love is Constant
Psalm 36:5-6 “Lord, your constant love reaches the heavens; your faithfulness extends to the skies. Your righteousness is towering like the mountains; your justice is like the depths of the sea. People and animals are in your care.” GNT
If there is one thing in the whole world that I am sure of, it’s God’s love for me and for His people. I know not everyone can say this. I know that some people, maybe even some of you listening to this episode are not sure of God’s love for you. Sometimes it can be hard to believe that God loves us after all we have done, or after all that was done to us. Sometimes we can’t love ourselves and we wonder if we can’t even love ourselves, then how can someone else love us. How can God love us when He knows all we have done and/or all that has been done to us. This world can be an awful place sometimes and there is a lot of evil in it. When someone does something evil to you, that is not a reflection on you. That is not who you are and that does not make you unloveable. I know I have said this before, but it bears repeating. There is nothing that you can do to make God love you any more or any less than he always has.
This verse says that God’s love is constant. Do you know what that means? It means it doesn’t ever stop, it doesn’t ever waiver, it is not dependent on anything. If something is constant it means that it is always there. God’s love doesn’t stop because you did something He didn’t like, God’s love doesn’t stop when you commit a sin, God’s love doesn’t ever stop. He has loved you since the beginning of time and He will love you until the end of time. His love is constant.
The reason I am more sure of this than any other thing is because He is constantly telling us this in our prayer group, in my prayer time, in the Bible. I bet He is constantly trying to tell you as well. Are you listening? Can you hear it? Can you believe it? Can you believe that the Lord, our God, loves you! Yes you, God loves you in all your imperfection. Here is a word that was given at my prayer group and is a beautiful visual of God’s love for us. He said, “I love you so much you cannot understand the depth of my love. If I let the power of my love loose and hugged you, I would crush you. My love for you is that great; it consumes you.” If you struggle to believe that God loves you, I ask that you talk to God about this. Tell Him your struggles and let Him show you how much He loves you. Let Him heal the parts of you that need to be healed so you can feel His love. I guarantee that nothing will ever feel as good as the love from our Heavenly Father.
Next, the verse says that God’s faithfulness extends to the skies. If you ever doubt God’s faithfulness, all you need to do it read any section of the Bible. God has been faithful to His people throughout all the ages. His people have not been very faithful to Him and yet, he always honors His word and has always kept His promises. When the Lord had Moses lead the people out of Egypt, He did not just send them Moses, and then leave them to do their own thing. The Lord’s Spirit was with them all day and all night. God said He would deliver them from Egypt and He did. He also said He would lead them to the promised land and although His people questioned Him, disobeyed Him, and went against Him, God still gave the promised land to His people. The Lord was faithful to His people when He gave us Jesus, His only Son, to die on a cross for our sins. I am sure you can turn to almost any book in the bible and find plenty of other examples of how God’s faithfulness extends to the skies.
“Your righteousness is towering like the mountains.” I had to look up the word righteousness because it is one of those words that I understand the context of, but I could not put a definition into words. I felt like this was one of those times when knowing more about the word would be helpful to understand what the sentence is saying. The definition of righteousness is the quality of being morally right or justifiable. When we are talking about the righteousness of God we are talking about the fact that God always does what is right and just. Our righteousness is limited. When we make decisions they are based on the information we have at the time and the wisdom we have at the time. However, God is not limited. This is why they are saying that His righteousness is as high as the mountains.
Sometimes we may question why God does things. We may read about things in the Old Testament in the Bible and we don’t understand how a just God could do those things. God knows what He is doing. We don’t understand it because we have limited understanding. Also, we are swayed by our emotions. We may know on one hand that our child or our students needs to learn a lesson from their actions, and yet our emotions, whatever they are, may get in the way of carrying out justice. If you know that a certain action will have a negative consequence and then you do that action anyway, you should get that consequence. However, sometimes you can be angry and so you give a more severe consequence. The opposite can also be true, you feel really bad for the person, so you give a lesser consequence. Even though these are two different examples they both like have the same outcome, the person does not learn the lesson.
God’s righteousness is towering like the mountains and His justice is like the depths of the sea. There is no end to God’s justice. God does not get swayed by his emotions. He always does what is right. Does this mean that God doesn’t have mercy? No, not at all, but it does mean that if he has mercy it is the right thing to do in that circumstance. When we make a decision we do not know what will happen afterwards. We are making our decisions based on the info leading up to that point. However, God knows not only the info leading up to that point, but He knows all that will happen after as well. For instance, He knew when He sent Jonah to tell Nineveh to repent or they would be destroyed, He knew they would repent. When God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, he knew what would happen afterwards. God has 100% of the information He needs to make righteous and just decisions.
This verse is a great verse because it lets us learn more about God. Maybe you already knew all of this. Maybe you knew that God’s love was constant. Maybe you already knew that He was faithful. Maybe you knew that He is righteous and just. Even if this is the case, even if you already knew all of that. This verse is a great reminder. This verse paints a picture in my head of God surrounding me, from the heavens, to the skies, to the mountains, to the depths of the sea. God is amazing and we can learn so much about God and who he is from this verse. So I will leave you with the words of this verse, “Lord, your constant love reaches the heavens; your faithfulness extends to the skies. Your righteousness is towering like the mountains; your justice is like the depths of the sea. People and animals are in your care.”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we thank you for loving us constantly and completely. If there is anyone listening to this episode that is not 100% sure of you love Lord, we ask that you help them feel your love. We ask that you heal whatever wounds are keeping them from your love. If it is an evil spirit then pray that you bind it and remove its power. W thank you for being faithful, righteous and just. You are so amazing and we are so grateful that you always do what is right. Lord, we ask that you help us to be faithful, righteous and just. Help us to follow in your footsteps. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
A Call To Holiness
2 Timothy 1:9 “Who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began”
This is something that I am not sure that we are all aware of. Did you know that God is calling us to holiness? I remember when I did the Marian Consecration titled 33 days to Morning Glory, by Father Michael Gaitley, I was stunned when I learned that we are all called to be saints. I felt very uncomfortable with this idea. How could I become a saint? The Saints were so holy, they were so selfless. They gave so much of themselves to God. They made so many sacrifices. Also, they were so close to God. There is no way I could ever be that close to God. These, and many other thoughts went through my mind.
Also, if I am being honest I also had selfish thoughts. Thoughts like, “Do I want to sacrifice that much?” “Their lives seemed so hard, I don’t know if I could handle that.” Becoming a saint seemed to require so much work and the thought of it was very overwhelming. When we were doing the study, I went along with it. I didn’t really ask questions about what becoming a saint meant. I didn’t really ask about what it means to have a “holy calling.” I just did the study, and sat with this idea. I thought a lot about it.
I am not sure if I have talked about our reticular activator with you guys before or not. Your reticular activator is the filter on your brain. We see so many things in the course of the day. Our brain can’t process all that we see. Our reticular activator tells our brain what to focus on. Have you ever noticed when you decide to buy a new car, say you want at Toyota Camry, then you start to see Camry’s every. In the same way, if you start a new diet, you will start to notice things on that diet all around you. After hearing that I was called to be a saint in this study, I started thinking a lot about it. Then I started to notice other people talking about this as well.
I learned that there are two different kinds of saints. There is Saints with a capital S. These are people that have been formally recognized by the Catholic Church as Saints. There is a whole canonization process that one has to go trough to become a capitol S Saint. One of the requirements is that you have miracles associated with your name. You did not create the miracle, as only God can do that, but the miracle was granted to the person because of your intercession. If you would like to know more about the canonization process you can read about it here.
The other type of saint is everyone else that is in Heaven. Did you know only saints go to heaven? This was one of those things for me that when it is explained it makes so much sense it seems like I should have know it and yet, it honestly never occurred to me. God is perfect, and amazing and holy and almighty and all that is good. It makes so much sense that only perfect, holy, good people would be able to be in His presence. And yet, I guess I didn’t really give it much thought. I was at a mission at church one night and the speaker was Jon Leonetti. If you have not heard of this man, you should look him up. He wrote some great books. He also has a podcast called Your Catholic Life. The mission started with Jon asking us all 2 questions. The first question was, “How many of you want to get to Heaven someday?” I am sure every hand in the room was raised. Next, he asked, “How many of you want to become saints.” Can you guess how many of us raised our hands? I think there were 5 people that raised their hands. After this question he let us all know that the only way into heaven is to become a saint.
I want to clarify, because I know this was a lot when I was learning about it, and I don’t want anyone listening to this episode thinking that they are never going to be a saint so they might as well give up on heaven now. We are not called to get ourselves into Heaven. God is the only one that can turn us into saints. It even says in the verse above, “Who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace,” God has saved us and He is not calling us to holiness based on our works, but on his own purpose and grace. If we become saints it will not be because of something that we do, it will because of God’s grace.
You may be asking why I am even talking about this today if we can’t get into Heaven based on anything we do. My answer is that I want to make you aware of this call to holiness in case you, like me, have not heard it before. Just because you don’t have final say over the results, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do all that you can do to prepare. When you are in school and your teacher gives you a test, you don’t have control over the grade you get on that test. The teacher is the one that grades the test. However, you do have control over whether you prepare for the test or not. You can do everything in your power to prepare for that test so that you have the best chance of getting a good grade. But, what if you didn’t know about the test? What if your teacher gave you a pop quiz, would you be as prepared for that?
This may not be a perfect analogy, but it is what came to mind when I thought of a way to explain why I am telling you that you are called to be a saint. If you do not know that you are called to holiness, if you do not know that there are only saints in Heaven, then you can’t be prepared for it. You can’t do everything in your power to prepare for Heaven. And that end goal is much more important than any grade on any test.
If you are like me, your next question is how do I become a saint. I don’t need to be a saint with at capital S, but I do want to be a saint in Heaven someday. I think the first step is knowing that you have this calling and that God gave us His purpose and grace when He gave us Jesus. You already have everything you need to be holy inside of you. Being a saint does not require big gestures. You don’t have to give away all your money and possessions and live in a foreign country ministering to the poor and hungry. If you feel called to this, you are welcome to and that is great. But this is not what I am talking about.
I think small gestures of love are a great way to grow in holiness. Matthew Kelly talks about this in several books I think, but the one I think he talked about it the most in was titled, I Heard God Laugh. In this book he talks about how we can all create holy moments as we go through our day. We can hold the door open for the person behind us, we could do random acts of kindness, we could show our children a little extra patience when they really need it. All of these things are ways you can grow in holiness. God is love, and when we show that love to others we are reflecting God’s light through us.
Another way to grow in holiness is to learn about God and read His Word. I have grown so much in the last few years just by reading scripture and reading books about the Saints, and other spiritual writings. I have recently learned that a major saying in AA Alcoholics Anonymous is “If you want what I have, do what I do.” The meaning of this is for those that want the sobriety that they hear others talk about they need to do what they are doing, such as showing up for meetings, working the steps of the program, staying in contact with their sponsor or others at the meeting. I think this is also a great saying for how to grow in holiness. If you want to be like the saints, do what they do. Read about the saints and their lives. When I have read about them I learned two main things. One, they were regular people, like you and I. It is not that they did not have any struggles, they had plenty. What made them so holy is how they handled those struggles. And if they can do it, so can you. The second thing I learned is that they never gave up trying to be holy. They were humble and knew that they weren’t perfect, and they didn’t let that get in the way of them continuing to try over and over again. Read what they did and do what they did.
There are many ways that you can grow in holiness and I am sure I will talk about this again some time. However, I know you don’t have all day to listen to this episode so I will end with Purgatory. This is not a way to grow in holiness, but it is a way that helps you become a saint. God is so merciful and He knows that we are a fallen people and perfection is not in the cards for us. Instead of condemning us to hell, those that die in a state of grace get to go to Purgatory for a purification process. This is the reason for purgatory. This is where we go to be purified so that we can be good enough to be in the presence of God.
God wants us all to be saints. Yet, he also gives us free will so that if we do not choose to be in His presence we don’t have to. If you are listening to a podcast titled, Walk Boldly With Jesus, then I am sure you want to be living in the presence of God someday. This is possible. All you have to do is want it and then tell God you want it. Then do your best to live a holy life and He will do the rest. I look forward to the day we can all gather together in Heaven and celebrate the Lord together.
Dear Heavenly Father, I pray that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we accept your call to holiness and we ask that you help us to carry it out. We ask that you show us how to be holy and you put this calling on our hearts. Lord, we know that we can only get into heaven through your purpose and grace and we thank you so much for both of them. You give so much to us and we give very little back in comparison. We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
All Things Work Together For Good
Romans 8:28 “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.”
This is a verse that may be taken out of context sometimes. It is also a verse that may be used too often to try and cheer people up when they are having a really tough time. The verse says that we know that for those who love God all things work together for good. Does this mean that everything happens for a reason, I don’t think so. I don’t believe that everything happens for a reason. I do believe that God can use anything that happens for our good. I also believe that you can learn something from every situation or circumstance. I am not sure why god permits bad things to happen to us. However, I do know that He uses those moments for His Glory.
I wonder if we would all have such a strong faith if we did not ever have anything go wrong in our lives. If we never had the chance to rely on God for help, would we still believe as strongly as we do? There have been several time throughout our marriage that I have wished that we struggled more with finances. This may sound silly, but growing up we did not have enough money to pay our bills. There were 11 children in our family and my mom stayed home to take care of us and my dad worked. He had a good job and still we struggled to pay all the bills, as it is expensive to have a house big enough for 11 children, food for all those children, clothes, shoes, heat, electricity, water, you get it.
There were many times when my parents did not know how they were going to pay the bills. There were many tough decisions like, do we pay the electricity bill this month or the heating bill. I am sure it was a lot of stress and I am sure my parents don’t want to ever have to struggle like that again. The reason I say that I have wished for that stress at times is because when you don’t have enough you have to rely on the Lord. We tend to pray more and rely more on the Lord when we are in need. I know this is not the case for everyone, but I bet is it the case for many of us.
Take a minute and think about when you rely on God the most. When do you do your most praying? Is it when all is going well in your life and you have everything that you want? Is it when someone you love is sick and needs healing? Is it when you have no where else to turn? Do you see what I am saying? It is not that I wanted the stress of financial burdens, but I did want to rely on the Lord more. And now that I am thinking about it we did have plenty of problems. They weren’t financial, but we struggled with the best way to parent our children. We struggled in our marriage and with communication. There were plenty of ways that I have had to rely on the Lord, and I did my best.
I guess what I was missing was witnessing all of the miracles that my parents got to witness. When you are in need for something God provides it. It says that all over the place in the bible. God will provide, ask and you shall receive, God promises to give you all that you need. However, if you aren’t lacking anything then you don’t get to see miracles in the same way. Or, maybe you would, but you just aren’t looking for them. I don’t know. I do believe that my faith was made a whole lot stronger by watching my parents faith. I do think witnessing or hearing my parents stories about the miracles they have experienced helped me have a deeper faith. I wish my children would have gotten to witness more miracles like that when they were growing up.
I struggle with how anyone can not believe in Jesus, or God. It just doesn’t make sense to me when I can see Him everywhere. I especially don’t understand when they have gone through a really hard time and are now in a better place. Also, when they have witnessed miracles and yet, somehow couldn’t see them. Then I think about how you can have two children raised by the same parents and yet they can be completely different. As I mentioned earlier I have 10 siblings. Our parents have been married for 58 years now. We were all raised in the same house, with the same parents. We all heard the same stories and lived through the same events. One might thing that because of this that all my siblings have a really strong faith. However, there are not very many of us that still attend church.
There are definitely some similarities and some things that were passed down to all of us. The one that comes to mind the most is the willingness to give to someone in need, even if we means we may go without. Another one is that if we have met you once, you are considered part of our family. I’m not just talking about saying hello as we pass by, I am talking about come over for dinner, move in if you don’t have somewhere to stay, part of our family. We tend to love easily and I think that is because we were loved. The thing I find most interesting though is everyone’s take on how our life growing up was. I said earlier that the struggles my parents had deepened my faith because I could see how God came through for them time and time again.
However, for some of my siblings, I think that weakened their faith. I think they saw how much my parents prayed, how much they gave to others, how much they gave to the church and did not understand why God would let them struggle so much. I think they couldn’t see the miracles that were happening because my parents still struggled. Yes, they had food for that day, or they were able to pay that bill, but what about tomorrow, what about the next bill. God did not promise us an easy life. He did promise us that He would provide for us what we need for each day. In the Our Father prayer it states, “Give us this day our daily bread.” He did not ever leave my parent hanging. If they needed something He provided it. On some occasions He provided food to last a week, sometimes maybe just for the day. But He always provided what they needed for the day.
An example of God providing food for the day is found Exodus 16:4-5 “The Lord said to Moses, “I’m going to send you food from heaven like rain. Each day the people should go out and gather only what they need for that day. In this way I will test them to see whether or not they will follow my instructions. But on the sixth day when they prepare what they bring home, it should be twice as much as they gather on other days.” God was providing them manna, every single day, but only one days worth. If they tried to take more than a days worth it would be eaten by worms when they woke up. The Israelites were forced to trust in the Lord and He came through for them every morning. I am sure that relying on Him to provide food for them, and then God providing it built up their faith. If they could have just gone to the store and picked up their own food, they would not have felt like they needed to rely on Him.
This is the trap that I think many of us can fall into. We think because we aren’t struggling in some area of our life that we don’t need to rely on God or ask God for help in that area. We can start to think that we don’t need God because we are doing fine on our own. We start to pray less and less because it doesn’t occur to us to pray because we don’t need anything. We find ourselves relying on ourselves more than our Lord. If we do run into a problem, we do all we can on our own to fix it before we turn to prayer. I know I have felt like God has told me this on numerous occasions. Times when I thought I was turning to Him, He showed me all the ways that although I was asking Him for help, I was still trying to rely on myself to fix it.
Whether or not we feel like we need the Lord, we should continue to pray. If we are doing well and we don’t feel as though we need the Lord to provide for us, then this is a great time to turn our prayers more into praise. We may not think that we need the Lord, but who do you think got you your job, house, car, etc. You may be the one going to work, but God is the one orchestrating all of the behind the scenes work in our lives. We only have all that we have because God gave it to us. We must never forget that.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord I ask that you help us to understand what you mean when you say you use all things for our good. Lord, help us to know you are with us all the time. Lord, open our eyes to the miracles that you creating in our lives every single day. Use these miracles to strengthen our faith. Christ Jesus, we thank You that You use all things for our good. We ask that you help us to have faith that you will provide us with what we need for each day. Help us to not worry or be anxious about tomorrow as you will provide us with what we need when we need it. We love you Lord and we are so grateful for all that you do for us. You are awesome and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Sometimes The Pain Is Necessary
Romans 8:18 “ For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.”
This may be hard for some of us to hear as the sufferings of this present time are immense for some people. This has been a really hard 18 months. So many people have died. So many people have lost someone that was close to them. At the beginning of all of this there were so many people that had to die alone with no family around them because the risk of spreading Covid was so great. That meant that a lot of people had to miss out on being there when their loved one passed away. There are also all of the people that did not pass away but did suffer a lot with all the symptoms of Covid. This verse is not saying that the we are not suffering. It is not minimizing the suffering of the present time, it is trying to let us know how amazing the glory that is to be revealed to us will be.
It is trying to say that as bad as this is, it can’t even compare to how great the glory will be. For instance if we needed to rate the suffering we are in right now, some may say it is a 10 out of 10. If this is the case then the Glory that is to be revealed to us will be a 20 out of 10. The two can’t even compare. Sometimes you need to go through some pain in order to have something even better. A great example of this is child birth. You can’t have a child without someone giving birth to that child. Child birth is painful. I have not met one person who said they made it through the whole pregnancy and the birth without any pain. I also have never met a woman who said she would trade her baby for the pain. In other words, going through all that pain was worth it in the end because if it weren’t for the pain, they wouldn’t have their baby. Some of you may have adopted your child and if so, I am sure you experienced some emotion pain before doing so. All of the waiting, all of the unknowns, and all of the not this time was painful, and yet I bet you would do it all over again to get to have your child in your life.
Another example of this is the pain of losing someone. When you lose a loved one it’s painful. However, the only reason it’s painful is because you will miss what you had with that person. It is painful because you will miss doing things together. It is painful because they won’t be there to celebrate with or to talk to anymore. You miss them because you got to spend time with them and you got to make memories with them. Would you trade those years of memories and fun for the pain that you feel at their passing?
Some people have had a hard life. They have had a lot of loss and they have hardened their hearts and they don’t let people get close to them. I don’t know if they even meant to do this. I think it just happens over time. If you have been in a lot of relationships and you have gotten your heart broken a lot, then you may start to be more cautious in who you open up to. If you have been told by society that you are not ok just how you are, then you may start to become someone else. If you have lost a lot of people close to you then you may start to feel like people always leave, so why get close to anyone. These may be things you consciously decide to do, but they may also be subconscious decisions that your brain makes.
You have a part of your brain that is only concerned with your survival. We all do, it is the part of the brain that controls your fight or flight. Fight or Flight used to be super important when we were hunter and gathers primarily. We needed our brain to tell us to run when we saw a lion. In today’s society we don’t need it quite as much. However, its job is still to keep us safe. If our brain sees that we are constantly being hurt by something it will instinctively try to avoid it. If our brain sees that when we love someone they end up leaving, it will put up walls so that we don’t let ourselves love anyone. That way we won’t be hurt. Have you ever found yourself self-sabotaging and you don’t know why? Have you gotten into a relationship with someone and you can’t seem to let them in. You feel like you love them, you want to let them in, but then you always do something to end the relationship, or chase them away. This could be your mind trying to protect you.
Another way this could be affecting you is if you are finding yourself constantly trying to be someone that you’re not. Have you ever felt like you don’t feel comfortable in your own skin? Have you ever felt like you go through your day and then at the end of the day you feel like an imposture, or like you don’t know who you are? This could be your brain trying to protect you. If you were given a message as you were growing up that you are not accepted just as you are, or if society has told you that you are not enough as is, then maybe you are trying to be someone else so that you will fit in and be accepted.
In both of these cases, your may not be aware that anything is even happening. You don’t know why you feel the way you do. However, you do know that you are not happy with the current circumstances. If you are unhappy with some area of your life, it is important to take some time and examine that area. Are their any specific issues or patterns that you can see? Can you trace those issues back to a particular time or event in your life? Can you see how your brain might be trying to protect you from something. Just noticing that something is an issue can really help a situation. You can’t do anything about things that are in your subconscious until you bring them into your conscious mind. The first step to fixing anything is to become aware of it.
Have you even been really anxious over something that you didn’t think seemed like a big deal? Your body is reacting to some perceived danger, but you are not sure what it is. Sometimes in order to get out of the fight or flight mode, we just need to tell our brains that we are not in danger. This may sound simple, but that part of your brain doesn’t think, it just reacts. It sees a lion and it tells you to run. But maybe this lion is in zoo and behind bars. It doesn’t differentiate in the circumstance, it just reacts. If you grew up in a house with a lot of yelling, your body may react to all yelling as if you are in danger. However, sometimes their may be shouting for joy over winning a football game or celebrating the new year. If you find your body tensing up evaluate the situation and tell your mind you are not in danger. Your mind believes what you tell it.
If you have noticed that you have certain patterns, such as putting up walls, or being someone who you are not, then there are things you can do to fix these things. First of all, after you noticed the pattern, you can ask God for help with it. If we continually turn our faults or difficulties over to God, He will help us with them. God can do more for us in 5 minutes of prayer than we could do in our whole lives. Another great way to help you deal with issues that were hiding in your subconscious is to take it to an Unbound Prayer Session. I am not sure if you have heard of the book that was written by Neal Lazano titled Unbound: A Practical Guide To Deliverance. An Unbound Prayer Session is based on his deliverance ministry. The book discusses several doors that the enemy uses to gain access to our soul. We may have opened these doors accidentally without knowing what we were really doing. However, this book gives us the keys to lock those doors so that the enemy no longer has access. This is of course a really simplified brief description of the book. If you are not happy with the way things are in your life. If you see any patterns of worry, anxiety, depression, or any others patters in your life that you are unhappy with I suggest you read this book and see how you can be delivered from those feelings.
This verse above is talking about how the good at the end is far better than the pain that you are going through. If you are someone that has experienced a lot of pain, I hope that this verse brings you some comfort. Maybe write this verse down somewhere you can see it often. When things get tough remind yourself that there is a joy that the pain can’t even compare with. God will carry you through your tough times and then will reward you in the end. Sometimes the only way to get to the place you want to go is through the pain. The good news is that you don’t have to do it alone. God is there to do it with you!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord we ask that you are with all those that are suffering right now. We ask that you instill inside their hearts that “the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.” Lord, help us to remember that in the hard times. Help us to know you are with us all the time in the good times and the bad times. Help us to remember that you love us more than anything. Lord, if there is anything in our lives that we need to be delivered from, help shine a light on it so that we can let it go and move forward. If anyone listening to this episode really needs an Unbound prayer session then I ask for you to put that on their heart to reach out and try to find one, or for them to get the book. Heavenly Father you are so very amazing and we are so thankful that you are there for us every step of the way. We love you so much and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Three Commands
Romans 12:12 “ Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer.”
Wow, this is a relatively short verse and yet it gives us three difficult commands in that short amount of time. The first is rejoice in hope. You may not think this sounds difficult. Rejoicing is fun and who doesn’t like to celebrate right? The verse says to rejoice in hope. What is hope? Hope is a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen. Another definition was a feeling of trust. We are not rejoicing because we got what we wanted, we are rejoicing because we expect to get what we desire. We are rejoicing because it is possible that we will get what we desire. Hope and trust are really difficult for a lot people.
It is easy to hope for things that you don’t have a strong personal attachment to. I feel like I could rejoice in hope that my nephew wins his football game. I believe that is likely to happen and if it doesn’t, I was not personally invested as much as he was. But what about when the stakes are higher. What if what I am hoping for something that means a lot to me? What if I am hoping that I get a job that I have been rejected from three times already? What if I am hoping for a healthy pregnancy when I have already had two that were not? Do you see how hope can be tricky? In order to hope for something you have to be vulnerable. You have to place your trust in something other than yourself. This is hard for many people. If you are having trouble hoping for something you really want I hope you know that you are not alone.
It seems as though we talk about hope like it is an easy thing to do. We use the word in very different way and seem to assign it the same weight. We say, “I hope you enjoy the birthday party” and we also say, “I hope you get the job.” We say those two things in the same way, but they mean very different things. Whether you have fun at a party or not is completely in your control. Whether you get the job or not is not completely in your control. Also, you are probably more emotionally invested in finding a job than having fun at a party. I know several people that have deep desires and they have been waiting for them to be fulfilled for a very long time. I get why it is not easy for them to rejoice in hope. They can’t rejoice in hope because it hurts too much for them to hope. They have hoped for years and they can’t see how they are going to attain their desires. They feel like they have been strong and have hoped and now they feel as though it is too painful to hope. If this is you I urge you to confide in someone that you trust. Tell that person your desires and ask them to hope for you. Don’t give up on your desires, maybe just ask someone else to hope for you until you are ready to hope again.
The next command says to be patient in tribulation. Seriously, could anything be more difficult. We live in a fast pace world. We are all doing a million things at one time and we have very little down time for our brains to rest. We live in an age where we can order something on the computer and have it delivered to your door that day. You no longer have to wait in long lines at the grocery store, you can order online and have it delivered to your house. We are becoming a people who expect things to happen now, in an instant. If we order something and it takes more that two days to get here, we are annoyed. Imagine back when things had to be put on a boat and shipped here from England?
I can feel our ability, as a society, to be patient slipping away. If we are losing our ability to be patient with the small things, how is it possible that God is asking us to be patient in tribulation. Tribulation is a cause of great trouble or suffering. So, when we are suffering the most, God wants us to be patient. That’s not easy. It’s also not something we usually think about in the moment. When we are in tribulation, we usually just respond. We don’t take time to think about how we should respond. Although, maybe that is God’s point. If we were patient, slowed down and thought about our situation, maybe we would make better choices? Also, if we worked on being patient when we weren’t in trying times, then maybe it would come more easily to us when we are.
The next command is to be in constant prayer. Now, this is something I have researched as I question how we can be in constant prayer. We need to sleep, we need eat, we need to take care of ourselves and our loved ones. Not to mention find some time in between all of that to go to work so that we can afford to take care of ourselves and our loved ones. What I found in my research is not that you need to never stop praying, but more towards, having a heart for prayer. I read one article that described it more like a radio playing in the background of your mind. You do not need to be praying out loud every moment of your life. However, you could start to incorporate more prayer into your everyday tasks. I just read something the other day, I am not sure where I saw it, about how great it was to say the Liturgy of the Hours. The Liturgy of the Hours forms the official set of prayers "marking the hours of each day and sanctifying the day with prayer." Priests and consecrated religious men and women are required to say these throughout the day. However, even if you are not a consecrated you can say these prayers. They will only strengthen your spiritual life.
A great way to incorporate prayer into your already busy schedule is to pick a task and devote that time to prayer. For instance you could pray for a different person with each piece of laundry you fold, or each dish you wash. You could say a prayer while you were vacuuming or dusting. Another great thing to do is to dedicate each task to someone or some cause. For instance before you start washing the car you dedicate that time for the needs of your mom. Before you begin making dinner you dedicate that time for the needs of the homeless. I know that we are all busy. I am not suggesting that you add three hours of kneeling down prayer into your schedule. What I am suggesting is that you add prayer into the tasks that you are already doing. Matthew Kelly talked about praying without ceasing in at least one of his books. He said when he was younger his mentor told him to write the initials of someone on each page of the books that he had to study for school. Then pause for a moment before each page and say a quick prayer for that person. He had to study anyway, this just turned that studying into prayer time as well. There are many ways you can incorporate prayer into your current lifestyle. I wrote a blog entitled Pray Without Ceasing about a year ago. I will put a link for that blog in the show notes so if you are interested in learning more ways to pray without ceasing, you can check it out.
Dear Heavenly Father, I pray that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord help us to follow these three commands that you gave us in this verse today. They are not easy commands and we can’t do them on our own. However, we know we can do all things with you. Help us to be brave and vulnerable and rejoice in the hope even when it’s hard, even when we are afraid. Help us to be patient in the tribulations Lord. Help us to learn how to be in constant prayer Lord Jesus. We thank you for all that you have done for us. You are truly amazing! We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Pray Without Ceasing Blog
You Preserve My Life
Psalm 138:7-8 “Though I walk in the midst of trouble, you preserve my life. You stretch out your hand against the anger of my foes; with your right hand you save me. The Lord will vindicate me; your love, Lord, endures forever—do not abandon the works of your hands.
When I read this passage I get the picture of a football player holding the ball in his right hand, with his body turned away from the opposing player and his other hand out to block. However, instead of a football player it is God. He has His right arm around me shielding me from danger and His left hand out to shield me from the anger of my enemies. To me, this is a beautiful image. I am so thankful that I know that God is out there protecting me. I have heard some incredible stories of this protection. I think that sometimes we can think that God can protect us from things by helping us avoid them, or making sure we are in the right place at the right time. And He does do this. However, He can also protect you from danger in the moment as well.
The verse above starts with the statement that says, “You preserve my life.” I would like to tell you a story that is an excellent example of this. The story is from the book “How To Live Like A King’s Kid." by Harold Hill. If you have not read this book I can’t recommend it enough. It is so good and will definitely boost your faith. Here is a short excerpt of how God can save you from real physical danger in the moment.
“Recently I was driving down a divided highway to a meeting. The dividing strip was maybe 20 feet wide. Suddenly, a car coming from the other direction, going about 70, the same speed I was traveling, started to cross the strip. It was headed straight for me. A 140 mph impact was in the making with me in the middle of it. Mincemeat.
I was glad that I didn't have to wait to get into the high gear of praise and Thanksgiving, because I wouldn't have had time. It all happened so fast. Walking in the light has to do with all circuits being tuned up by praise and Thanksgiving all the time – in everything giving thanks for everything. I have been walking in the light all day. So I was thanking God and praying in the spirit for the people in the other car all in the same breath, realizing it could be my last one. But I was singing the songs of Zion, knowing that Kings kids don't have to graduate on Satan's terms.
The car hurtling at me was less than 20 yards away when suddenly is shot straight up in the air, and turned upside down. It was a convertible, the top was down and people flew in all directions. Then the car crashed flat, right alongside me.
"Lord, do you want me to stop?" I asked him then. “No. Don't stop. You intercede,” was is the message I got. In my rearview mirror I could see other cars and trucks stopping they wouldn't need my physical presence there but God needed me to be an intercessor. And so I kept on praying, praising God, praying in tongues. I was aware of raw power, rivers of living water, flowing from my innermost being direct to the throne of grace as I interceded in the spirit.
Before I was half a mile down the road, I had gods assurance that he had taken care of everything, and I went to my meeting satisfied. That was Friday. On Sunday morning, I had an invitation to speak at the Kent Island Methodist church near the place where the accident had occurred. I shared my experience from the pulpit and said that if anyone present knew the outcome of the accident, I'd like to hear about it. I knew something good had taken place. Sure enough, three different people came to me at the door of the church after the service and said they were at the scene just a few minutes after the accident happened, because they lived close by. The car had blown a tire, going at high speed and had gotten completely out of control. The people in the convertible had fallen clear of the car, and every one of them had walked away from the accident! The car was demolished Dash but no person was injured. It was a miracle.
A car coming straight at you on a level Road does not suddenly jumped straight up in the air. From straight forward motion to vertical motion is impossible unless you hit something curved to change the course. And that's what happened in that accident. The cars course was changed when it hit a curved surface – the curved circle of light that prevented darkness from entering to annihilate a kings kid. There were millions of foot pounds of energy involved but that's nothing for an angel of the Lord. Hallelujah! When we call upon the king he works supernaturally to deliver us from trouble.”
I always get emotional when I hear stories like this because I am reminded of how much God loves us and that He will go to any lengths to save us. I also get emotional because of how touching it is. These people all seemed to be headed for death. Their lives could have been over in an instant. And they weren’t. Satan meant for that tire to go out and for the whole situation to end badly. If Satan had gotten his way those people would have died. You and I don’t know the state of their souls, but even if they went to heaven, what about the after affects of their deaths on those still living. Unexpected death of a loved one often brings with it anger. It can cause some to question God and why He would let such an awful thing happen. Some people get angry with God and they don’t let it go. However, it says in Genesis 50:20, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.” God takes Satan’s plan for evil and uses it for good.
Harold Hill has sold over 1,000,000 copies of his book. He has also probably told that story to thousands of people or more. Instead of this story ending in tragedy it is a story that has probably given people faith that did not have it before and definitely strengthened the faith of those that were already believers. How incredible is that?
Dear Heavenly Father, I pray that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we thank you for your protection. We thank you for all of the miracles you make happen every single day, the big ones and the small ones. Lord, we thank you for all the times you protected us from something that we didn’t even know about. Lord, we ask that you help us learn to make a habit of praising you so that if we are in a situation like Harold was we would be prepared. We love you Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
You Are Fearfully & Wonderfully Made
Psalm 139:14 “I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.”
What first stood out to me in this verse was the I praise you part. Praise is one of my favorite things to talk about. I love praising the Lord. Also, I have read a lot of books and so many of them point out that praising the Lord is a great way to increase your faith, get more answers to your prayers, have more strength when in a difficult situation, and have more joy in your life. I was all set to begin with talking about praise when something, I think the Holy Spirit, told me to pause and read the whole sentence. So I did. “I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” I did not see anything jump out at me. So I decided to see what exactly that means.
I was thinking maybe I wasn’t being moved by the sentence because I didn’t understand what was being said. I was right! That is a very powerful statement if you know what those two words mean. Let’s take the first word, fearfully, first. Fearfully, when translated from Hebrew means with great reverence, heart-felt interest and with respect. I understand why we would have great reverence for God. He is our father and He created us. It makes total sense that we would have great reverence for Him. However, this is talking about us. This sentence is praising God for making us with great reverence, heart-felt interest, and respect. Did you know that’s how you were made? Did you know God put all those things into making you? Do you feel a little bit better about yourself now?
Let's take the next word, wonderfully. I bet we are all thinking that we know what that word means. We may also be thinking that although it is a pretty word it is used so often that when we hear it we don’t necessarily feel wonderful. The word wonderful when translated from Hebrew means unique and set apart. I am sure that it has occurred to everyone before that we are all different from each other. But I wonder if it occurred to you that that means you are unique? You are one of a kind. So the next time you are trying to judge or compare yourself to someone else, remember that you are unique. There is no one like you on this entire earth. There are people that are going through the same things you as you, there are people that have similar struggles as you, but there is no one exactly like you. You are not alone in your struggle but you are one of a kind in how you were made. You are also set apart. I like the sound of that. Instead of being lumped in with everyone else we are set apart. God set us apart from others.
Does knowing this change the way you think about yourself? Does is help you fight off that voice inside of you that tells you that you are not enough, or that you are not loved? Think about how amazing God must think you are to have made you with great reverence, heart-felt interest and respect. Did you know that God had reverence for you? Did you know that He respected you? Maybe this is not news to you, maybe you knew this all along. This is the first time that I slowed down long enough with this passage to ask myself what does that even mean.
This is one of the things that I am loving about doing this podcast. I am not reading whole chunks of the Bible at a time. I am reading a verse or two. When you break it down into bite size pieces like this you get to examine those pieces more carefully. I have also discovered that I am not the only person that did not know what those two words meant. I think sometimes we don’t ask questions because we assume that we are the only one that doesn’t know the answer. Then we start to tell ourselves that if everyone else knows it then there must be something wrong with us because we don’t, and then we don’t ask because we don’t want to feel stupid. Come on, you know you have done this before. I can’t be the only person this has happened to. Anyway, it turns out that the language in the Bible is confusing for lots of people. In the course of writing the episodes for this podcast I have searched for many answers, and I have always found them.
If I was the only person that was confused then someone else wouldn’t have taken time to research my same question and put the answer on the internet. The internet, that is also an amazing thing. I am not sure how many of you use it to answer your questions, but I highly recommend it. First, you can ask it anything. You don’t have to remember where in the Bible to find something because you can type it into the search bar and the internet finds it for you. You can type part of a verse into the search bar and the internet tells you where in the Bible you can find it. What I do is type my question exactly how I would ask it to a person and I always come up with great answers. I don’t just put a word or two, I put the whole sentence in the search bar. Second, you don’t have to feel silly asking a question that you’re sure you are the only person that doesn’t know the answer to, because no-one knows you are asking the question. You are asking the computer and it is not going to tell anyone. It doesn’t talk, so it won’t make you feel silly.
When reading through the Bible, asking questions is great. It was written a very long time ago in a different language and to a people living in a different time and a different culture. There are things in it that are not going make sense to us. However, if we ask the questions when we have them we realize that even though it was written so long ago to a very different people, it is still just as relevant today. It is still talking to us, today, When we just read through it and gloss over the parts, or pass over the parts we don’t understand we are missing an opportunity to know what God is trying to tell us. This verse above is well written and has beautiful language, but if I hadn’t asked the question “What does fearfully and wonderfully made mean?”, then I wouldn’t have learned that this verse is so much deeper than it seemed. Ask your questions! You deserve to know the answers.
Dear Heavenly Father, I pray that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we thank you that we are fearfully and wonderfully made. You are so gracious and we love you. Lord, we ask that you help us to understand the Bible when we read it. We ask that you give us the courage to ask questions when we don’t know what something means. Lord, we ask that you help us take in the meaning of the words fearfully and wonderfully made. We ask that you let those words sink into our heart and help us to know how special we are. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen
Shared Promises
Joshua 21:43-45 “So the Lord gave Israel all the land he had sworn to give their ancestors, and they took possession of it and settled there. The Lord gave them rest on every side, just as he had sworn to their ancestors. Not one of their enemies withstood them; the Lord gave all their enemies into their hands. Not one of all the Lord’s good promises to Israel failed; every one was fulfilled.”
There are several things I like in this passage. The first is that the passage says, “The Lord gave Israel all the land that he had sworn to give their ancestors.” If you have not read about why the original Israelites couldn’t enter the promised land you can find it in Numbers 13 & 14. I will summarize it for you. God promised to lead the Israelites to the promised land. A land flowing with milk and honey.
God asked Moses to send some men out to scout the promised land. Numbers 13:17-20 “ When Moses sent them to explore Canaan, he said, “Go up through the Negev and on into the hill country. See what the land is like and whether the people who live there are strong or weak, few or many. What kind of land do they live in? Is it good or bad? What kind of towns do they live in? Are they unwalled or fortified? How is the soil? Is it fertile or poor? Are there trees in it or not? Do your best to bring back some of the fruit of the land.” (It was the season for the first ripe grapes.)
When the scouts came back they brought fruit from the promised land and they reported that the land was flowing with milk and honey. However, then they said that the people there are very powerful and the cities are fortified. They were saying that they can’t go take that land because they weren’t strong enough. Caleb & Joshua, tried to silence them and said they should go fight. They reminded everyone that God was one their side and with God you can’t loose. However, the other scouts were scared and they convinced the rest of the Israelites to be too afraid as well.
God was tired of these people, who He saved from slavery and oppression in Egypt, complaining and not trusting Him. He asked Moses how long they were going to refuse to believe Him. He wanted to strike them all down with a plague, but Moses explained that wouldn’t be good as He had saved them from Egypt. Moses asked for forgiveness for the people. God granted forgiveness but said that because they saw His signs and His Glory and still disobeyed Him so often, they would not get to see the promised land. They would wander in the wilderness for 40 years until everyone 20 years or older had passed away.
Their ancestors questioned God and His plan, so they were not allowed to go into the promised land. They did not have faith that God would be able to defeat the people living in the land He promised them. And yet as we talked about before, God always keeps his promises. So, even though the older generation did not get to go into the promised land because of their lack of trust in God, their children were still able to go into the promised land.
Another promise that he made to their ancestors was that they would have rest on every side of them. It says, “Not one of the enemies withstood them; the Lord gave all their enemies into their hands.” This would be awesome. How great would it be for all of your enemies to be delivered into your hands? The scouts went out and saw that the people who were currently living in the promised land looked powerful. Then they talked about all the surrounding towns and how intimidating those people were as well. They did not trust in the Lord’s promise. However, as I have said before and will keep saying, God always keeps His promises. So, if God says that He will give you the promised land, He will. There won’t be anything that can stop Him. If God says He will deliver up all of your enemies into your hands, He will. God helped the Israelites take the promised land and then he helped them defeat all of their enemies.
I wonder how many of my ancestors’ promises I am benefitting from? I am sure my parents and grandparents have prayed for their children and grandchildren. I am benefiting from the answers to those prayers, even though I did not do the asking. Also, all of the promises in the Bible are for me as well as for you. God did not just make those promises to the people that lived back then. Those promises are for us too. If you look through the Bible it is full of promises. It is hard to imagine that those promises could be for us also. However, it says in Hebrews 13:8 “Jesus is the same yesterday, and today, and forever.” If Jesus was promising things to his followers back then, He is promising them to us now as well.
The last line in this verse is something that seems to keep coming up and is something that I think God really wants us to understand. “Not one of all the Lord’s good promises to Israel failed; every one was fulfilled.”
I think God keeps saying it because He wants us to know that it is true. God is faithful. I think that we all know this with our brain, but do we know it with our hearts? Do we know that He will always come through? I was just thinking that it might be helpful to list some of God’s promises. If we know what some of His promises are we can see that He always keeps them. In Matthew 11:28 the Lord promises, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” If you are weary and burdened you can go tot he Lord and He will give you rest. That is a promise. Have you already done this before? Was He there for you? Did you even know that was a promise? Another great promise is Jeremiah 29:11, “For I now the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” What about Isaiah 40:31, “But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.” God is promising to renew the strength of those that hope in Him. Have you felt this renewed strength before? I had not thought of it before but looking back I always had renewed strength when I was hopeful. Every time one of my parenting plans failed, I would create a new one, I would have hope that it would work, and I would definitely feel a renewed strength. God is so amazing! I will put a link to this article I found online that is titled God’s Promises: 50 Powerful Bible Promises To Build Your Faith. I encourage you to take a look at these promises and see how many of them God has already fulfilled in your life.
Dear Heavenly Father, I pray that you bless everyone listening to this episode today. Lord, we thank you for always fulfilling your promises. Even if you didn’t feel the original Israelites deserved the promise land you still fulfilled the promise for their children. Lord, you are so just and so faithful. We definitely don’t deserve you and we are so grateful that you love us anyway. We are so grateful that you shower us with grace and forgiveness. Lord, we pray that you fortify our faith so we can trust and believe in all that you do. Lord, we love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
God Is There In The Small Ways Too!
Mark 9:2-10 “ Six days later, Jesus took Peter, James, and John and led them up a high mountain apart by themselves. And in their presence he was transfigured; his clothes became dazzling white—whiter than anyone on earth could bleach them. And Elijah with Moses appeared, conversing with Jesus. Then Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here. Let us make three tents—one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” He did not know what to say, for they were so frightened. Then a cloud cast a shadow over them, and a voice came out of the cloud: “This is my beloved Son. Listen to him.” Suddenly, when they looked around, they saw no one with them anymore, but only Jesus. As they were coming down from the mountain, Jesus ordered them to tell no one what they had seen until the Son of Man had risen from the dead. Therefore, they kept the matter to themselves, although they did argue about what rising from the dead could possibly mean.”
God knows what we are going to need, even if we don’t. God knew that it was going to be difficult for the disciples to watch Him be crucified. He knew that they were not going to understand what was happening. He tried to explain what was to come but they never truly understood what He was saying. It was too much to wrap their minds around. Jesus knew this and so He took Peter, James, & John up a high mountain and let them witness the transfiguration. Not only did they get to witness the transfiguration but they got to hear the Lord’s voice tell them that Jesus was His son. This was meant to fortify their faith so they could withstand the upcoming trials.
God does the same for us. Have you ever noticed that God sends things into your life at the perfect time to help you get through a difficult situation. Have you ever had a friend call up and invite you to coffee right when you really need to talk, or you really needed to know that someone cared about you? Have you ever had the sermon at mass say exactly what you needed to hear that day, or listen to a podcast and feel like there person speaking is talking to you personally? These are not accidents, or coincidences. God is giving you what you need to make it through the hard time that you are in. He is giving you enough strength to make it through at least that day.
I will never forget one day when I lived in England and I was having a truly terrible day. I was feeling so defeated and so lonely. I saw my neighbor on her way into her house. She stopped and gave me a hug and I still to this day remember exactly how that hug felt. It was just a hug and yet it was exactly what I needed in that moment. It helped me feel loved. It helped me know that I was not alone. I can think of many times when this had happened for me. I remember another time when I was looking for a Life in the Spirit seminar. I knew I needed more in my spiritual life. Then one day a friend called and she said she saw a sign for the seminar at a different local church. I did not know when I started that seminar that I was about to go through one of the hardest times in my life. I needed that community, I needed that added boost of faith, I needed that strength. I had no idea I was going to need it at the time. But God did. He always knows what we need.
Sometimes I think we can get frustrated when we think God is not showing up for us in the way we expect Him to. We are expecting some grand gesture of His love for us and He is sending us a series of small gestures. I get it. It would be so much easier to know God was with us if He was doing miracles in our life every day. If we had a loved one and He instantly cured them, we would know God loved us and was there for us. If we really needed money and God sent us a check in the mail for the exact amount, we would have no doubts that God heard our prayers and answered them. But what about when He is not doing that? What about when we have that bill to pay and we don’t get a check from God in the mail?
Sometimes we can’t see God in our lives because we are not looking in the right places. There are so many ways that I have seen God show up for people. I have heard about ways He has shown up in big ways. For instance, one time my parents were praying and asking if they should get involved in a business venture. They did not have the start up money that they needed. I think it was $300. They left it up to God. If He wanted them to do it, He would have to provide the money. Otherwise, they would assume it was not the right time for them. That week they received a check from my grandpa that was for the exact amount they needed. They did not ask him for the money and they did not tell him about the business opportunity. When they asked him what the extra money was for he told them he didn’t know, he just felt like he was supposed to write the check for that amount. God does move in big ways sometimes.
However, I have heard just as many stories of times when He has shown up in small ways. I had a friend who was talking to God one time and she was saying that she knew she was loved by God, but sometimes she just needed to feel it a little more. Two minutes later, while she was still talking with God a neighbor showed up with a poinsettia for her. And you know what, she didn’t see it as an answer to her prayers. She had just asked for God to show her His love in a way that she could feel it and then when He did, she didn’t recognize it. She is not alone. I think this happens to all of us all the time. I think we are so focused on wanting God to show us He is with us and perform all these big miracles, that we miss the small ones that He does everyday.
What if we started looking for God in every part of our day? What if we tried to see God in everything that happened to us throughout the day? I wonder how much different our days would be. I wonder how much more our faith would grow. Imagine for a minute that you attributed everything good in your day to God. Imagine a day when you thanked Him for all the things that happened throughout your day. Do you think you would feel any different? How do you think it would affect your mood, what about your outlook on the day? If you looked at every small thing that happed throughout you day through the lens of “God orchestrated this just for me” I wonder how different your day would be.
Imagine, instead of just rushing through a green light without any thoughts, you could think to yourself, thank you God for that green light. When I go through green lights I thank God for them, as it is possible you could have hit every red light. So when I go through a green light I think of it as a hello from God. This may sound silly, but I can feel the difference in the days when I do this and the days when I forget. Also, parking spots, this is again a small thing, but when I find a parking spot I thank God for it as I have been to lots where all the spots are full. If you can learn to see God in the small things you will go through your days so much happier. If you don’t believe me, just give it a try. Why not try it today? Set your intention right now as you are listening to this that you are going to look for God in the small things today. Anything that goes right, or makes you happy, no matter how small it may seem, stop for a second and thank God for it. He is there for us in the small things, we just have to notice Him!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we are so very thankful that you are there for us in the big ways and in the small ways. Lord, we ask that you open our eyes so that we can see all the ways that you are there for us providing us with whatever it is we need. You are awesome. There are so many of us and yet you know each one of us personally and you fulfill our needs each and every day. It must be exhausting. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Fruit Of The Spirit
Galatians 5:22-23 “In contrast,, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.”
Yesterday, I talked about one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Today’s verse is on the fruits of the Holy Spirit. What is the meaning of the fruits of the church? The fruits of the Holy Spirits are actions that we can perform with the help of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, when we see these fruits we can tell that the Holy Spirit dwells in that person. It reminds me of a fruit tree. If the fruit tree is healthy, it will produce good, healthy fruit. If the tree is not healthy, it will not produce good healthy fruit. It may not produce any fruit at all. The fruits of the Holy Spirit are one way we can tell how spiritually healthy we are.
How are we living in the world today? Are we treating people like God asked us to treat them? The way we would want to be treated? Or, are we treating them how we think they deserve to be treated? Are we playing judge and jury with those around us? What is the Golden Rule? Treat others as you wish to be treated. Except how many of us are doing that? How many of us are being forgiving to those that wrong us? If you look over your last 24 hours, did you treat people like you would want to be treated? Did you lift people up and make them feel special? Did you yell at someone in traffic, or chastise your child for making a mistake? Is that the way we want to be treated when we make a mistake? What about when your child or your spouse does something that makes you very angry? Do you yell at them and make them feel bad? Do you stay mad at them all day, or week? Is this how we want others to treat us?
“The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.” How often are we feeling these things? How often are we acting out of patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, and self control? How much joy, love, and peace do we have in our days. These things are not things that just happen to enter into our day. These are things that we must cultivate in our lives if we want them. If we want to follow in Christ’s footsteps we need to examine how we are living out our days. What could we do to have more of these fruits in our lives? What do we need to do to become spiritually healthier?
First, pick one area at a time. I don’t think it would work if we decide today we are going to have more love, joy, and peace in our lives. We are also going to be kinder, more generous, more faithful, more gentle and have more self-control. If we set out to fix everything at once then we are setting ourselves up for failure. Have you ever set a bunch of New Year’s resolutions and given up after a week because it was so overwhelming. The same is true with this. If you take stalk on your life and you see some areas that you could work on, then write those areas down. Now that you have a list, pick one area that you would like to address first.
Second, be intentional. If you have decided on an area that you would like to work on, the next step is to be intentional about it. Spend some time thinking about and maybe researching, how you could become better in that one area. For instance, I want to be better at loving my family. I researched how to do that. I read “The Five Love Languages” By Gary Chapman. I had my husband and children take the 5 love languages quiz and now I know who they each receive love. I can love them better if I am speaking love to them in their correct love language. When you are speaking love to someone in the wrong language then it doesn’t matter how many times you say it, they can’t understand what you are saying. That book is not the topic of this episode but if you haven’t read it I highly suggest it! The point of mentioning here is to reinforce how important it is to be intentional about improving the fruits in your life. If you need to have more peace or more joy, figure out how you can intentional make time for and cultivate that in your life. It is not just going to happen.
Third, pray about it. If you are not seeing a lot of the fruits of the Holy Spirit in your life then talk to God about it. We can’t do anything without the Lord but with Him we can do all things. If you wish to experience more love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control in your life then spend time each day in prayer talking with the Lord. Maybe start a practice of spending one moment before you get out of bed thanking the Lord for giving you a brand new day of life. Maybe take a moment while you enjoy your coffee to tell the Lord what you need for that specific day. In my mentoring group, “Big Life Mentoring” Pamela Crim has us take three big breathes each morning and ask God what we need for the specific day. Each day might be different. One day you may need energy and patience to make it through a really long day at work. Another day you might need joy and peace and the ability to stay in the moment as you enjoy the weekend. Whatever it is that you need, just ask the Lord for it. He wants to give us what we need and is just waiting for us to ask.
The fourth thing to pay attention to how God is answering your prayers. You asked Him for help and so He is going to help you. Be on the lookout for and notice the ways that you are growing in those fruits. Notice when you have more love, joy, and peace in your life. Ask yourself at the end of the day if you were more patient with people. Did you feel more patient when your kids wanted to tell you 100 things right as you walked through the door? We you kinder to the person at the grocery story that messed up your order? Were you more generous with tipping your server? Maybe you notice that you have more self control these past few days. Whatever it is, take notice of it and be grateful. God is happy to answer our prayers and He also happily accepts our gratitude.
Gratitude is something that is so beneficial. Not only is it great to thank God for all the answers to your prayers that He is going to give you but it also makes you more award of other good things. When you set your mind on gratitude you will start to notice so much more around you. Our brain sets out to look for whatever we tell it to look for. If you are looking for the fruits of the Holy Spirit you will find them. If you are looking for all the ways you are struggling, your brain will find that. I wish every knew how truly powerful their brain is. If you set out to be grateful for all the ways God is showing up in your life, I promise you that you will notice things that you have not noticed before. I don’t know your thoughts right now on how much God is showing up in your life. Maybe you are struggling to see where He is. I guarantee that if you make it your mission to see how God is showing up in your life, you will notice that He is there in so many ways. Even if you change nothing else, and just focus your mind on gratitude for the ways He is showing up for you, you will be amazed.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. We pray that you bless all of us with the fruits of the Holy Spirit. Lord we ask that if we are spiritually unhealthy in any way that you shine a light on it for us so that we can fix the situation. Lord we ask that you help us to grow in these fruits and that you guide our actions so that they show the fruits of the Holy Spirit. Lord, help us to be grateful for all the ways you are showing up in our lives. Help us to know that you are there even when we can’t see it. Lord, show us what we need to do. You are amazing Lord! We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Praying In The Spirt
Romans 8:26-27 “In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.”
Praying in tongues is something that I have always found strange. My dad has been involved in a Catholic Charismatic prayer group ever since I was little. However, it was not part of our everyday life. I attended a group once for a few minutes as I was there for a different reason. It turned out the thing I was there for was in another room. While I was there I remember thinking that I had no idea what was going on. Everyone was praying out loud, all at the same time. I grew up in the Catholic Church and I was not used to spontaneous praise of our Lord. We prayed in church out loud, but we all prayed the prescribed prayers from the order of Mass book. In this meeting everyone was saying different things and all at the same time.
I have come to learn that what they were doing was praising the Lord. They were all expressing out loud how grateful they are to the Lord and praising His holy name. Now that I am adult and understand better what it is they were doing. I have joined a Catholic Charismatic group and have come to love the various parts of a prayer meeting. Today I would like to talk about talking in tongues. I think this is something that many people do not understand. However, since the verse above talks about it, I would like to explain my understanding about it. I think if more people understood what it is and that it is from the scripture, then it may make it seem less weird.
I remember when I first started to look at this differently was when I was at a Catholic women’s conference. The speaker was talking about how she had always prayed for the gifts of the Holy Spirit, but that she always add, “except for the gift of tongues. That one just freaks me out.” She was a counselor at the time and she worked some really difficult cases. She had this one client, a young teenage boy, that got right in her face and screamed at her. She felt scared at that moment and decided she needed more of whatever God had to offer if she was going to help all the people she wanted to help.
So, what is the gift of tongues anyway? This is when the Holy Spirit speaks to God directly through our voice. It is not usually a language that anyone else can understand. For instance, the verse above says that “the Holy Spirit intercedes for us through wordless groans.” You, the person speaking in tongues, does not even know what you are saying.” I love how the verse says,, “And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.” The Holy Spirit knows what we want and what the will of God is. He can pray for what we want in a way that it will align with the will of God. I find this truly amazing.
Do you ever feel like you don’t know what to pray for? You know you need prayers, but things are such that you have no idea how to pray. You can see pros and cons to both sides and you are not sure which is actually best for you. Or, you child is in trouble and you love your child with all your heart. You don’t want them to be in trouble and at the same time you do want them to learn that actions have consequences. Maybe you have lost someone and you don’t know what to do about that. You feel like God has let you down and you don’t know what to say to Him. There can be so many examples of times when you are not sure what to pray.
I heard about a deacon who was approached after church one week by a woman. This woman told him that her husband of 20 years had just left her for another woman that he worked with. He just left her and the kids all of the sudden. The deacon was speechless. He had no idea what to say to this woman or what to pray for. It is hard to know what someone needs when there is so much going on. The deacon asked the woman in she would mind if he prayed in the spirit (another way to say pray in tongues) over her. She agreed. He told her that he was going to pray over her in the Spirit for 3 minutes. After he did, she said thank you and went home. The next week after church, she went up to him all excited and said that she felt so much better. She said she didn’t know what he said to God but over the week she had this overwhelming feeling of forgiveness for her husband. Now, he hadn’t asked for forgiveness, he was still with the other woman, and she was still sad and upset, but she had forgiven him. She was so amazed that she asked the deacon if he would pray in the spirit for 3 minutes for her husband.
Remember, this is one week later. Can you imagine having the level of forgiveness in one week that you want someone to pray for your husband who just left you? The deacon agreed. The following week the husband came back to the wife. He said that he had no idea what he was doing. He did not want to be with the other woman. He told his wife that he knew she probably couldn’t forgive him, but if she could he really wanted to come home. The thing is, she had already forgiven him. Because she had already forgiven him, she was able to hear him when he apologized and asked for forgiveness. It all worked out. Can you imagine 3 minutes of praying in the Spirit two separate times and this family was reunited. The Lord is that powerful. Praying in the Spirit is that powerful.
Hopefully this has helped take some of the weirdness out of praying in the Spirit. I love praying in the spirit for several reasons. First, I don’t have to know what to say. It takes the pressure off of me to know the right words or the right thing to ask for. Second, the Holy Spirit knows my heart and prays according to God’s will. Imagine being able to pray for God’s will. I mean we can pray for God’s will to be done, but the Spirit can pray specifically for what God’s will is. He see’s into parts of our heart that we can’t see. We may be praying for a relationship to last when He knows in our heart that God doesn’t want us with that person and if we could be honest with ourselves, neither do we. The third reason is because no one knows what you are praying for when you pray in the spirit. That conversation is strictly between and the Holy Spirit and God. And if it is only between you and God then that means even the devil doesn’t know what you are praying for.
I feel like if the devil doesn’t know what I am praying for then it is harder for him to mess it up. It is hard for him to make his move when he doesn’t know what I want or how I am going to get it. Maybe that is part of the reason God reveals things to us one step at a time. If the devil knows everything about our lives and were we are headed, he has plenty of time to mess it up. He can plan his strategy and play the long game. If he is just learning things one step at a time like we are, then he always on the defensive. I have no idea if that last part I just said is true. I know the devil can’t understand prayer when praying in the spirit. I don’t know if the devil has anything to do with why God reveals things slowly. It was just something that came to mind when typing this and it seems to make sense to me. God is a mystery and He always will be.
I have spent this whole episode explaining what “praying in tongues” or “praying in the Spirit” is and why it is important. If you are interested in learning more about how you can get the gift of praying in tongues you could go online and get more information. I will also put my email address in the show notes. I would be happy to talk more about it and answer any questions. We all have the Holy Spirit living inside of us. We have the gift of tongues inside of us as well. I will put a link to a video in the show notes that you can watch if you are interested. There are three things that are required for you to pray in tongues. You must ask for the gift. God is not going to impart this gift on someone that does not want it. If you want it, it is available to you. The second is that you must believe that you can receive it. St. Agustine’s quote is powerful here. ““Faith is to believe what you do not yet see; the reward for this faith is to see what you believe.” Before you receive the gift you have to have faith that you will receive it. Third, you have to surrender your vocal chords. You have to surrender your ego of looking or sounding strange. You have to just start talking in sounds that don’t make sense to you. Almost like when you talk to a baby. You know how when you talk to a baby you make sounds like “goo goo gaa gaa.” Do something similar. There is no correct way to pray in tongues. No two people sound exactly the same. It doesn’t matter the sounds you are making. What matters is that you are handing over control of your sounds to the Holy Spirt. You don’t have to do this in front of others. You could practice in the car, or in the shower. I promise you, if you want to pray in the Spirit, God wants you to. He is willing to give you the gift, all you need to do is step out in faith and surrender.
Dear Heavenly Father, I pray that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord we pray that you search our heart. If we want the gift of tongues we pray that you give us the courage to ask and the courage to turn over control to the Holy Spirit. Lord, we love you and we know that you are amazing. The fact that you give us a way to communicate our desires as they align with your will is extraordinary. You have thought of everything. We appreciate that when we don’t have the words the Holy Spirit can search our heart and speak on our behalf. Lord, I ask that you grant all those that are listening a supernatural understanding of “praying in tongues.” I pray that they heard this episode with an open mind and an open heart. Lord, we pray all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus holy name, Amen.
My Email is Catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com
Video:https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=encounter+tv+speaking+in+tongues
Perfect Path or Wrong Turn?
John 17:24 “Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world..”
“You loved me before the foundation of the world.” That is unbelievable to think about, ”Before the foundation of the world.” There are billions of people in the world and yet, you loved each one of us before the foundation of the world. I went to a talk one evening on the angels. At this talk the priest that was presenting said that all the guardian angels were created at the same time. God knew how many people He was going to create at the very beginning. That just amazes me. Also the fact that He knew each one of us, He personally designed each one of us. Before my parents were even born He knew that they would be married to each other and that they would have 11 children. That just boggles my mind.
I can’t imagine what it would be like to have this type of forethought. God brings planning ahead to a whole new level. Imagine if we just had a fraction this ability. Imagine if we knew where we were headed at the beginning of our life. Sometimes I pray for that . I pray for God to just show me the way and I will go there. And He does, only He does it one step at a time and I want to know the ending before I even start. I don’t think I am alone in this. I think many of us wish we knew where we were headed. We wish we didn’t have to take so many wrong turns to get to the place that God knows we are going to end up.
However, these are not necessarily wrong turns. What if these were necessary to help you become the person that you need to be to arrive at the place you are supposed to be? Each time you felt you were taking a wrong turn you learned from that experience. You developed or strengthened qualities. You became stronger, more persistent, more resilient. Or maybe you became more sympathetic, smarter, more loving. Whatever it is that you gained from that experience, it was preparing you for your perfect future.
Do you know the story of Moses? He was supposed to be killed at birth as the pharaoh of Egypt demanded all Hebrew males be murdered upon birth. His mother couldn’t do it, so she put him in a basket in the river where he would be found by the Pharaoh’s daughter. It worked and he spent the first 40 years of his life as a prince. Then one night he saw an Egyptian taskmaster beating a Hebrew almost to death and so he made sure no one was around and he killed the Egyptian. However, it was discovered and he escaped to the wilderness for 40 years. He spent the next 40 years as a Shepard in Median. It was not until after this 40 years that he saw the burning bush.
If you are not familiar with the ending of this story, it can be found in Acts 7:30-36 “After forty years had passed, an angel appeared to Moses in the flames of a burning bush in the desert near Mount Sinai. When he saw this, he was amazed at the sight. As he went over to get a closer look, he heard the Lord say: ‘I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.’ Moses trembled with fear and did not dare to look. “Then the Lord said to him, ‘Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground. I have indeed seen the oppression of my people in Egypt. I have heard their groaning and have come down to set them free. Now come, I will send you back to Egypt.’ “This is the same Moses they had rejected with the words, ‘Who made you ruler and judge?’ He was sent to be their ruler and deliverer by God himself, through the angel who appeared to him in the bush. He led them out of Egypt and performed wonders and signs in Egypt, at the Red Sea and for forty years in the wilderness.”
I am guessing that when Moses found out he was Hebrew that he felt like his life had taken a wrong turn. I am guessing when he left Egypt to escape his crime, he felt like he had taken a wrong turn. What about during that 40 years as a Shepard in Median? He went from a prince to a Shepard. I wonder if he felt like he had taken several wrong turns. However, it turns out that he was exactly where he needed to be when he needed to be there. God was using this time to prepare Moses for his calling. Do you think Moses would have been open to seeing that burning bush when he was a prince in Egypt? Do you think that Moses was ready to see that burning bush right after he killed someone? God has the perfect timing. He approached Moses when He knew Moses was ready to listen. He is doing the same with you. If you haven’t reached you calling yet, its because God is still preparing you, God’s not done yet.
Jesus was talking to His Father, our Lord in this verse. He was asking the Lord, our God, to keep an eye on us and let us follow Jesus to where he is going. Jesus was wishing that all those around Him could go with Him and could see the Glory of God. How amazing is it that we have Jesus interceding on our behalf. Have you even had anyone ask you to pray for them? They did this because they knew how important intercessory prayer is. Now, imagine that the person asking God is His only Son. God hears all of us, but I can imagine that it doesn’t hurt to have Jesus also asking for us.
Many people that are not Catholic, wonder why Catholic’s pray to the Saints. I have been asked, “Why not just go straight to God.” If you have ever wondered this let me explain. We do pray to God. We take our requests straight to God. We do not feel that we need to go through the Saints because we can’t go to God. We pray to the saints to intercede for us in the same way that any of us would go to our friend or pastor to ask for prayers. The Saints spent their lives dedicated to God. Now, they get to be in His presence. They get the honor of being in Heaven and spending time with the Lord. I think of it kind of like the way one siblings figure out which child they think is the favorite and then get them to ask the parents for something. For instance, my children will send one sibling to ask me for something and another sibling to ask their dad for something. They are trying to set the odds in their favor. I guess we are doing the same. God has shown these people favor when they were alive so it makes sense that we would assume He would show them favor now also.
Each saint has a particular cause that they are known for. For instance St. Peregrine was a man who had a lesion on his leg that was cancerous. The doctor was coming the next day to amputate the leg. St. Peregrine prayed for several hours the night before and then feel asleep and had a dream that Jesus touched His leg. When he awoke the leg was healed. So, now when people need healing from cancer they ask St. Peregrine to intercede on their behalf as he understands what they are asking for. It is not that we are praying for the Saints to heal us, or solve our problems, we are praying that they will go to the Lord and intercede on our behalf. If you are struggling with a persistent issue or disease and you would like extra prayers, do a quick search on the internet for the patron saint of whatever it is and I bet you will be surprised at the results. The saints did not die and go to heaven and now just sit around praising the Lord. I am sure they spend a lot of time praising the Lord, but they also still want to help. We just need to ask them.
Dear Heavenly Father I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. We thank you Jesus for wanting us all to be right there with you where you are. We also thank you for being here with us each and every day until we can get there. Lord, we thank you for designing each one of us personally. We thank you for all of our trials and all the experiences we have that will prepare us for the future you want us to have. Lord, we are sorry that we try to rush to our future when your timing is perfect. We thank you for all the beautiful examples of how to live life that you have given us through the Saints. Lord, we ask that you help us all become saints. Lord you are almighty and forgiving and we love you. We ask all of this in accordance with your word and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Time To Pray
Hebrews 5:7-10 “During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with fervent cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered and, once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him and was designated by God to be high priest in the order of Melchizedek.
There is a lot in these verses. I think we all could have guessed that Jesus offered up prayers and petitions while he walked on earth. I find it amazing how many times in the Bible it talks about Jesus going off and praying by himself. Jesus was so busy in his three years of ministry. I am not amazed that Jesus wanted to go off and pray, I am amazed that He found the time to do that. I am also surprised He was able to go off and be by Himself to pray. It seems He was followed around by huge crowds of people. In order for Him to be able to go off by Himself to pray He had to have been very intentional with His time. He knew what He needed and He made sure that He got it.
This is a good lesson for all of us. Prayer time won’t just happen. If you are waiting for the perfect time for prayer, you will be waiting forever. If you are waiting for a time when you are less busy to pray, you may never pray. Time slots in your busy schedule don’t just happen to open up for prayer. If you want to make time for prayer in your life, you need to be very intentional. The best way to make sure you fit prayer into your schedule is to put it in your calendar the same way you would a work appointment or a doctor appointment. When you write it into your schedule you are much more likely to follow through with it. Sometimes we feel that we’re too busy to pray. We have so much stuff to do, we just don’t have time. I have this poem up in my work space and I feel I should share as it goes along with being too busy to pray.
Time to Pray (author unknown)
I got up early one morning and rushed right into the day; I had so much to accomplish that I didn't have time to pray.
Problems just tumbled about me, and heavier came each task. "Why doesn't God help me?" I wondered. He answered, "You didn't ask."
I wanted to see joy and beauty, but the day toiled on, gray and bleak; I wondered why God didn't show me. He said, "But you didn't seek."
I tried to come into God's presence; I used all my keys at the lock. God gently and lovingly chided, "My child, you didn't knock.”
I woke up early this morning, and paused before entering the day; I had so much to accomplish that I had to take time to pray.
I think I like this poem so much because it points our what many of us don’t see. We think that we are too busy to pray, but that is exactly why we must pray. God is there to help us. He wants to help us, He is just waiting for us to ask. If you have a busy day, that is the perfect time to take a moment and ask God for help. I think you will find that your days, especially your busy ones, will go by much more smoothly when you begin them with prayer.
This next part of the verses above are where it gets complex. Jesus was praying to the one who could save Him from death. It also says that He was heard because of His reverent submission. First, what does reverent submission mean? I looked this up online, as I really wasn’t sure. Everyone that wrote about it seemed to agree that reverent submission means that you obey the Father’s will even when you don’t feel like. You do not follow your own will but you seek the Father’s will. You obey the Lord even when you are weak or tired. One person talked about how Jesus’ reverent submission had two components. First was continual dependence, he never stopped relying on His heavenly Father to provide for Him. Second was surrender of His will. Even at the end when he was asking God to take this cup from Him, Jesus said, “not My will but Your will be done.” God heard Jesus’ prayers because of this reverent submission.
You might hear this and think to yourself, wait a minute, how were His prayers heard? God didn’t save Him from death. Jesus died on the cross for our sins. This is true, Jesus was crucified and died on a cross so that we could be saved. God did not save Jesus from the pain and suffering of dying on the cross. However, He did save Jesus from eternal death. Jesus rose again after He died. Next it says, “Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered.”
”Jesus learned obedience from His suffering.” I think this is a line that we could easily skip right over and yet there is an important lesson in it. I think this line is so important because we tend to want to skip over the suffering in our lives. We want God to save us from all of it. When we are suffering sometimes we wonder why He is not answering our prayers. Even though it feels like this, God always answers our prayers. He answers them according to His perfect will. If He is not answering your prayers the way you want Him to then trust He has something bigger in mind for the situation. God never promised us that we would have a life without suffering. What He promised us is eternal life in the next world. Once we make it to Heaven we will have endless joy. That was not promised to us in this world. This is a broken world and we will encounter suffering while we are in this world. There is no way around it.
The lesson is to figure out what we can learn from our suffering. Maybe we will learn obedience like Jesus did. Maybe we will learn something else. Please know that just because you are suffering does not mean that God is not answering your prayers. Sometimes the answer to our prayers is “no.” And sometimes we won’t know why that is the answer. But know that God did answer and that He is there with you just as He was there with Jesus.
Finally, the verse says, “once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him and was designated by God to be high priest in the order of Melchizedek.” “Once made perfect,” Jesus suffered and died on the cross and He was made perfect. He surrendered His will for the Father’s will and he was made perfect. He endured unimaginable pain so that we could be redeemed and He was made perfect. Once He was perfect He became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey Him.” How great is it that we have a source of eternal salvation? How amazing is our Father that He would not only save us, but offers us eternal life. Up until that point we disappointed our Heavenly Father pretty regularly. We certainly didn’t deserve eternal life. And yet, being the loving and merciful Father that He is, He gave it to us anyway.
I feel as though that was a lot to cover in one episode. It just so happened to be a verse with several things to touch upon. Hopefully it was not too much info or too confusing. Just as a quick refresher, the two main things to remember are:
- Be intentional about setting a prayer time. It won’t just happen, you need to actively seek it.
- The suffering in your life is important. Try to find out what the lesson is and then learn that lesson.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to the episode today. Lord, we ask that you help us to make prayer a priority in our lives. We ask that you help us be intentional about when in our day we are going to add our prayer time. Lord, we love you and we know you answer all of our prayers. Help us to be gracious Lord when you don’t answer them the way we want you to. Lord, help us to understand that your plan is better than our plan. Help us to know that even if we can’t see what your plan is right not, we will understand it all someday. Lord, help us to learn whatever lessons you want us to learn through our suffering. Help us to not become bitter or resentful during our suffering. Lord you are amazing and we are so grateful for all that you do. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
God Made You On Purpose
Psalm 139:13 “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.”
God created everything about us. I like this verse because it reminds us that He created even our inmost being. I like the visual of God knitting me together. One stitch at a time. I am not someone who knits, but I have family and friend that do. When you are knitting something you can make it look however you want to. If you are the person doing it, you get to pick the colors, you get to pick the pattern, you even get to pick which stitch or combination of stitches you are going to use. You are the creator for whatever you are knitting.
Now, imagine that is God, knitting you together. He chose all the specifics about you. He got to choose what color hair you have, and what color eyes you have. Do you ever take time to think about this, to think about the fact that God created everything about you? I was at a personal development conference this week so that may be why it is on my mind more than usual. I love attending these conferences because it is so great to be gathered in a room with like minded people. I don’t mean that we all think the same way, or even believe the same things, but in this instance, we were all there because we knew God had a bigger plan for our lives and we wanted to figure out what that plan was.
It was an amazing weekend and I learned so much. This happened to be a women’s conference and there were so many women gathered together all wanting to improve themselves in some way or another. This is a beautiful thing. One of things that usually comes up when you have so many women gathered together is the idea of insecurities. Insecurities are something that I believe everyone has. We don’t all have them about the same things, or to the same extent but I do think we are all insecure about something. We all have that one thing, or some of us have more than one thing, that we wish we could change about ourselves. That thing that we really don’t like about ourselves. Some of these things affect our lives in a big way and some do not.
When you look at yourself and your life, what are your insecurities? What are the things about you that you don’t like that may be getting in your way of living your best life? Maybe you are struggling because you are living the life that everyone around you wants you to live, but inside you feel like it's not right for you. For instance, you have a really good job and you are making good money but in your heart, you really want to be doing something else. Maybe you have insecurities based on your appearance. This is a big one with women. We feel too tall, too short, too thin, too fat. Or we feel our hair is too long, too short, too light, too dark. It seems like no one is happy in their own skin these days.
I wonder why this is? I wonder if people throughout the ages have always felt like this, or if this is new? I don’t think it is new that people don’t like something about themselves. I am sure that has always probably been a thing. However, I wonder if it was as wide spread and common place as it is today. I am not sure if I know a single woman who is so happy with her appearance that she wouldn’t change anything if you asked. I wonder if all this unhappiness has to do with social media and marketing? Once upon a time before TV, magazines, movies, etc. you didn’t have so much access to everything. You could compare yourself to those that lived around you, and maybe those in paintings or in books. However, you didn’t have the kind of access you have today.
Today you could spend five minutes on line and you could scroll through hundreds of images of whatever you wanted to look at. Also, if you have social media, you can just scroll down your feed and you would see plenty of posts of people. The internet can be a very dangerous place for those that have insecurities and are looking for proof that those insecurities are real. If you think you are too heavy and then you search for proof of that on-line you will find it. That is how the internet works. You ask a question and it searches all the data and gives you an answer to the question that you just asked it. Your brain is the same. If you have an insecurity and you ask your brain for find proof of it, your brain will. The awesome thing about your brain is that the opposite is also true. If you ask your brain to prove to you that your insecurity is not true it will do that as well. For instance, if you ask your brain why no one at work likes you, it will search all your memories and come up with reasons why your co-workers don’t like you. However, if you ask your brain to prove to you that people at your work do like you, your brain will come up with an answer for that question as well. If you do not like the answers you are coming up with then you need only ask better questions.
The main speaker at the conference said something this weekend and I think would be great if everyone in the world heard it. She said that when she was sitting in the audience at her first personal development conference, she had an realization wash over her. She felt it was divine intervention. The realization was “What if I was on purpose? What if God made me exactly like I am for a reason?” I think this is so important because I think so many of us feel like there is some part of us that is wrong. We feel like we would be better if that part of us didn’t exist. I always wished that I wasn’t so emotional. I have thought this more times than I can count. I cry at happy things, I cry at sad things, I cry at spiritual things, I cry for someone else’s happy times, and someone else’s pain. I am just a mess sometimes. I always thought this was a character flaw. However, now I know that God gave me that ability. I don’t know why He made me that way, but God doesn’t make mistakes. So, there must be a reason.
The same goes for you. You were made on purpose. God knew what he was doing. He designed each part of you for a reason. He pays attention to detail. How would your life be different if you could hear this and really take it in? How would you feel about yourself if the next time you started to feel insecure about something you reminded yourself that God made you this way on purpose. You are perfect just as you are. You are loved just as you are. Your are enough just as you are.
Dear Heavenly Father I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord help us to see ourselves through your eyes. Help us to see everyone through your eyes. Lord help remind us when we feel insecure that you made us on purpose. Remind us Lord that you created our inmost being. You knit us together perfectly and completely. And if you made us on purpose Lord then that means we can't be a mistake. That means our hopes and desires aren't a mistake. That means our character isn't a mistake. We love you Lord Jesus and we thank you for making us who we are and we ask that you help us learn to love who we are. We thank you for making us in your likeness and image. You are amazing and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus holy name amen.
A Willing Spirit
Psalm 51:10-12 “Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.”
These verses come within a series of verses addressing God. The person talking to God in this psalm is David. This psalm takes place after David had been visited by the prophet Nathan. Nathan came to him after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba. This psalm includes a lot of David asking God to forgive him for his sins. One thing I love about David is that he is so good at realizing he did something wrong and then turning back to the Lord. He messed up pretty badly sometimes. It was not as if he was anointed and so he always followed the Lord and never strayed. He broke some pretty big commandments. Thou shall not covet your neighbors wife, thou shall not commit adultery, and thou shall not kill being a few of them.
No matter how big the sin was David never seemed to feel too ashamed to turn back to the Lord. This is so great. This shows such a deep level of understanding or trust, or both. I think he was never afraid to turn back because he knew how much he was loved by God. I wish we all knew and could trust God’s love like David did. How great would it be to know with ever fiber of our body that no matter what we did God would still love us and welcome us back?
Have you ever done something and then not turned back to the Lord because you didn’t think you deserved forgiveness? Have you ever thought that you did something so bad that there was no way that God would forgive you?
I think that most people have probably thought this at one time or another. I wonder if we would still think it if we remembered in that moment all the things that God has forgiven over the years? David saw a woman bathing on the roof of another house in his town and called for her to be brought to him. Then he had relations with her. I doubt she had much to say about it as that was not really the culture back then. After he did this, she was pregnant and he was worried her husband would find out what he did. He tried to trick her husband and when that didn’t work he sent him to the front lines to be killed in war. Then he took Bathsheba for his wife.
Take a moment and think of the thing that you have been trying to hide from God because you think there is no way he will forgive it. Is it worse than what David did? If God could forgive David, He will forgive you. What if it is worse than what David did? What do you do then? Is it worse than what Saul did when he was going around stoning to death those that believed in Jesus? Was it worse than what the soldiers did when they whipped Jesus and hung Him on a cross? Because if Jesus can forgive them, He will forgive you.
Why is it that we worry so much about God forgiving us? We know He loves us and yet we don’t want to turn to Him when we mess up because… why? Maybe we are ashamed and we don’t want Him to see that we messed up? Guess what, he has already seen your mess ups and already loved you through them. Maybe we don’t want to bother Him with our mess-ups because we feel we should have know better in the first place. Guess what? He loves it when we turn to Him and ask Him for help to clean up our messes. Maybe we don’t feel like we are good enough to turn back to the Lord. Guess what? He is your Heavenly Father and He made you in His likeness and image. You are better than good enough, you are perfect just as you are.
In the verse David asks the Lord to create a pure heart in him. He knows what he did was wrong and he wants to do what is right. I think we all want to do what is right. I don’t think that any of us walk around all day wondering how we can sin against God. I don’t believe it is our intent to damage our relationship with God in any way. If we want to do what is right in the eyes of the Lord we can all be praying for the Lord to create a pure heart in us. God knows what is in our hearts. As much as we may try to purify our own hearts, God is the one that can help us with this.
It goes on to say, “Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me.” I think this statement can be an example of David’s humility. It shows us that even though David was brave enough and trusted God enough to turn back to the Lord even after David did some pretty awful things, David was humble enough to not assume God would forgive him. In this verse David is asking the Lord to please not cast him away or take the Holy Spirit from him. God loves humility. It says in James 4:10, “Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.” This is what David was doing. He was humbling himself and asking the Lord to not depart from him.
After David is asking for the Lord to not abandon him he goes on to say, “Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.” David knows that he is doing the things he does not want to do and not doing the things that God wants him to do. This is why he is asking the Lord for a willing spirit to sustain him. He knows that following the Lord’s word is the way to go, and he also knows that he can get off track sometimes. David did a lot of good things and he spent a lot of his time following the Lord, however, when he veered off course, he did it in a big way. If you feel like this is you, I hope that David’s story can bring you a little bit of comfort. I hope if you are feeling like you did something wrong and that it was so bad you can’t turn back to the Lord, that you will remember David and how he was able to turn back to the Lord even after he did some truly terrible things. And you know what, God always forgave him and kept loving Him. He does this for you too. God will always love you, no matter what it is you do. He will always be hoping, no matter how much you think that you messed up, that you will turn back to him. He is your Heavenly Father and you mean the world to Him!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask that you help us to remember to turn back to you every time we mess up. No matter how bad of a thing we think we did, help us to know that you still love us and forgive us. Help us to know that you are always there for us. Lord, create a clean heart in us and grant us a willing spirit. Lord, we want to follow you and we don’t know why we get off course sometimes. If you create a willing spirit in us we hope to use that spirt to follow you more closely. Lord Jesus you are amazing and we are so thankful that you alway forgive us and that you continue to love us, even with all of our faults. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
I Will Fear No Evil
Psalm 23:4 “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.”
I was attending a conference this weekend and the speaker mentioned this verse. It was not a spiritual conference so when I heard it I figured it was a sign that I should talk about it today. I talked yesterday about how being still is not easy. Today God is talking about something else that’s not easy. I am sensing a theme here. Life is not easy. The verse says though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. This is hard. It seems like there is so much to fear these days.
This last year and a half have been full of fear. Many were afraid of getting sick and having to go to the hospital. Others were afraid their loved ones would be sick. There were also people afraid of the police and afraid to go outside. There were people afraid to leave their houses because of their race or nationality. There were people afraid that wrong person would win the presidential election. We have people afraid to take the vaccine, we have people afraid not to take the vaccine. You get the point. It has been a rough year full of fear.
Then we read this scripture and we wonder how it is possible to fear no evil. How is it possible to fear no evil when you are surrounded by death, or the possibility of death? If you read on it says “for thou are with me; they rod and thy staff they comfort me.” God is with us, we all know this, we repeat this and tell others this, but do we really believe this? Do you believe that God is right there with you when you are in the valleys? We all know how all powerful God is, so if we believe that He is there with us, it makes sense that we wouldn’t be afraid. How could we be afraid when He is there? He is the Almighty One.
So, why do we have so much fear? Are we afraid that He won’t help us? Are we afraid He won’t show up? Are we afraid to die? What is it that we have been so afraid of over these past 18 months. Or maybe it is not just these past 18 months. Maybe you find yourself worried about a lot of things. Maybe you worry every time there is a storm coming. Maybe you worry about your finances. Maybe you worry about your children, parents, siblings, spouse. Worry may be a part of your everyday life. I am hoping to change that. It probably won’t change over night, and it may not be easy, but it is possible. The bible mentions “fear not” 365 times. This is definitely something that God wants us to get.
I will be honest, I didn’t get the last part of this verse. “Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.” I looked up the meaning of this because I wondered if there was something that I was missing. I am glad I did because there is a great article called “Understanding Psalm 23: What Does the Staff and Rod Acually Mean?" I put a link in the show notes so you can read the whole article. (Click Here) I highly suggest it as it is good. I will not retell the article, I will just touch upon the few descriptions of the rod and the staff. First, the author says that the staff symbolizes rest, as shepherds used to lean on their staff for rest. Next, the staff can symbolize rescue because shepherds used to use their staff to rescue sheep from the thick brush. Third, the staff can symbolize a guide as the shepherd used it to guild sheep across open fields.
This all seems to make a lot of sense to me. We just talked about yesterday how we need to rest in the Lord. This is just another way the Lord is reminding us of that. It seems like we are much happier and less afraid when we are able to just rest in the Lord. To just sit with Him and turn over all of our worries and fears to Him. Also, God rescues us from difficult situations when we need Him. He doesn’t abandon us. He is always there for us in good times and in bad. Lastly, He is definitely our Guide. How many times have we needed God to guide us through the rough parts of our lives? We need Him as a guide for the easy parts as well.
The article goes on to say that Rod is Our Protection. When shepherds were herding sheep they used their rod to defend against anything that wanted to attack the sheep. This is what God does for us. He protects us from our enemies. The Rod is also a symbol of Love. The shepherds used to use their rods to count the sheep. You might be wondering how this is a symbol of Love. This is act of love because the shepherd is making sure that all of his sheep are present and accounted for. God is doing the same thing for us. He does not want a single one of His sheep to get lost. He loves us too much.
Now that I understand what the words rod and staff mean in the context of this verse and in the time that it was written, I feel as though I understand the verse as a whole better now. I can’t believe how much the Lord is saying to us with just a short sentence or two. I am also in awe sometimes thinking about how much God loves us. It amazes me how He can be all these things for us, for each and every one of us. Understanding that His staff is our guide, rescue, and rest; and that his rod is our protection and love helps me understand why we should have no fear. We don’t need fear when we realize all that He has already doing for us. We don’t need fear when he is there to protect us, guide us, and rescue us. He has got us. We can rest in the knowledge that His staff and His rod are enough for us. They are more than enough for us.
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.” Is it any different hearing that verse again after hearing the description of the rod and the staff? Does it make you want to trust in the Lord more? Does it help you fear a little less? I hope that it has helped. I hope that we can all get to a place where we don’t have so much fear. It is so freeing when you can let go of some of your fears and learn to lean into and trust God. You won’t regret it. I will leave you with Matthew 6:27 to think about. “Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask that you help us to have no fear in times of trouble. We ask that you help us to feel loved. Lord, I ask that you help all those that are feeling anxious or worried today and every day. Help them to hand their worry over to you and not take it back again. We thank you Lord for guiding us through our lives. We thank for you for protecting us and for being our place of rest. Lord, we thank you for rescuing us every single time we need you to. You are the best! We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Be Still
Psalm 46:10 “He says, 'Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.”
This is no small feat. “Be still and know that I am God.” How difficult is it to be still? I can’t be the only person that struggles to just be still. It seems like every thing I listen to is talking about how important mediation is. How much better you will feel if you meditate each morning before starting your day. Have any of you tried this? Have you ever just tried to sit there and not think of anything? When I do this I feel like my brain is a two year old child. You know how you tell a child to do something and they want to do anything other than that thing? That is what my brain is like. When I tell my brain that we are going to be still and not think of anything it wants to do everything but that.
I will start to think of things I never think of. My brain will start to make a grocery list, it will recite some song I haven’t heard in 20 years, it will question why I said that thing to that person three weeks ago. It does everything except be quiet and not think of anything. Has that ever happened to you? Have you ever tried to quiet your mind and just sit with the Lord. The other day at a discernment meeting we were reviewing the words from a prayer group. There were at least three separate words that were given that talked about how important it is to just sit and be silent with the Lord. That meeting was on Wednesday and now this verse comes up that says “Be still and know that I am God.” I think God wants me to talk on being still. I think He really wants us to get the message.
Here is one of the words that was given at prayer group. “My children, take time to listen to me. Listen deeply, it is my time. When you listen, I can help you, I can heal you. I can enrich you through my presence. But it is in silence that I speak to you in a new and better way. But you must take the time, ever take the time to listen to my words, to let them absorb deeply, absorb them deeply into your being so that you will know how to proceed, so that you may know how to act upon the words that I tell you. Be joyful that I speak to you. Take the time to listen.
Did you catch that? God is telling us that when we take the time to listen to Him, He can help us, heal us, and enrich us. How much do we need healing? I feel like the whole world needs healing right now. How great would it be for God to enrich us? Could you use a little enrichment in your life? I wonder how many of us take the time to listen? How many of us set aside a part of our days to just sit and listen? God says that it is in this silence that he talks to us in a new and better way. How great would that be? I am definitely on board for having my Heavenly Father talk to me in a new and better way. I want to hear what He says and I want to absorb His words deeply. Who wouldn’t want God’s words to direct their way? Who wouldn’t want Him to help them know how to act?
All of that sounds amazing. Then I remember that I struggle to sit and be quiet. God is asking us to listen, but what do we do when we can’t listen, when we can’t seem to quiet our mind, then what do we do? Do we miss out on all God has to say? Do we miss out on his direction? If He comes to us in the silence and heals us, then what happens when we don’t make the time to be silent? As I said earlier, this same word was given in at least three different ways in this one month. I have no doubt that God can heal us anytime any where. He doesn’t need anything from us to do His thing. And yet, He took the time to give this message three different times. I don’t think He would have done this if it was not important. So, what can we do with this message?
I think it is important to figure out how to be silent and to listen for His Word. If your Heavenly Father tells you to do something, you do it. Doing new things is hard. Developing new habits is hard and yet they are always worth it in the end. There are many ways that you can learn to be silent and listen to the Lord. I talked about one already. You can sit still, and try to clear your mind. When something comes up that is a distraction, just acknowledge it and try to clear your mind again. You could start small. Maybe just take 5 minutes a day and sit in silence. You don’t have to do anything. It sounds like God just wants you to be available.
I think I get stuck because I am sitting there trying to quiet my mind and expecting to hear God’s voice. That is not really how it works, or at least hasn’t worked that way for me. It’s not usually a voice its usually a thought that comes into my mind. For instance, at prayer group I will tell the Lord that I am available if He wants to tell me anything. Then a thought will come into my mind and I will share it. I don’t question it, I told the Lord I was available and so I trust that what comes to mind is something He wants shared.
Another way you could be silent and listen for God’s word is to ask the Lord to speak through your pen and then sit quietly and write down whatever thoughts come to your mind. This is a particularly good way to quiet your mind and listen when you struggle to just sit still. This helps keep you from distractions a little more because you are busy writing whatever comes to mind. When I do this I do not question what I am thinking, I just write it all down. Again, I have asked God to talk through my pen and I trust He is doing just that.
A really powerful way to sit with the Lord and quiet your mind is to go to Eucharistic Adoration. This is when you are sitting in the presence of the Lord and quieting your mind. If you have not tried this before, I suggest you give it a try. It is such an amazing feeling. Another thing that is helpful when you are trying to learn to quiet your mind and listen is to enter into it without too many expectations. The only expectation that is necessary is the expectation that God will show up. The rest of our expectations can actually get in the way of our experience. If we expect that we will hear God’s voice, that He will speak to us in our thoughts, or that we will feel His presence we may be disappointed. God said that it is in the silence that He heals us. This can be physical, mental, emotional, spiritual or some other healing. He also said He speaks to us in a new and better way.
Sometimes you may take the time to listen, and you don’t feel anything happen. You don’t hear any words, get any new thoughts, feel any healing. You feel exactly the same as you did before you sat still with the Lord for 5 minutes. This is totally normal. Please don’t worry that you did something wrong. Trust that if you gave God the time, He showed up and did His thing. The more you take the time to show up for God and quiet your mind, the more He will show up in that time. You won’t always feel it when He is healing you. He may not always have something to say, but the more you practice listening the better you will become at hearing Him. Can you take 5 minutes today and quiet your mind and give God the space He wants to enter in and heal you?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. We ask that you help us to quiet our minds and listen to you Lord. We ask that you help us figure out how to make you a priority. Help us to set aside some time every day that we can spend quietly listening to you. Help us to give you that time in silence so that you can enter in and heal us oh Lord. Lord Jesus, you are so amazing and we are so grateful for all that you do. We love you so much and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Let It Go
Psalm 91:1-2 “Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, “He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.”
“Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty”… Where does the almighty need to be if he is providing shade. Can a tree be on the other side of the yard and provide you shade? NO! The tree needs to be close to you. Or rather you need to be close to the tree. That is something the Lord keeps telling us. “Come close to me my children” is said in some form or another week after week in my prayer group. Does the Lord keep saying this because we are not listening? Think about your relationship with your heavenly Father. Do you feel he is calling you to come close to Him? What could you do this week to come closer to the Lord? Could you spend a few extra minutes in prayer? Could you sit quietly and just listen to hear what He has to say? Maybe you could spend a few extra minutes reading scripture? Or, maybe it is as simple as just spending a few extra minutes while you drink your coffee talking to Him. I am not sure what is right for you. Only you know that. I do know that He would not waste His time repeating this to us week after week if He didn’t really want us to come closer.
It goes on to say, “I will say of the Lord, “He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.”” The words refuge and fortress seem to come up a lot when talking about God. Or at least it seems I am hearing them often. I just looked it up and refuge appears in the Bible 88 times. God is our refuge, that seems pretty clear. So what is a refuge? Refuge is a shelter or protection from danger or distress. That sounds about right. God is definitely our protection from danger or distress.
My refuge and my fortress, my God in whom I trust. Are we trusting that he is our refuge and fortress? Are we getting close and leaning in and letting his shade cover us? God will rescue you from your storm. He tells us this again and again. Sometimes we would feel better if there was no storm. We would like God to spare us from the storm all together. Doesn’t that sound nice? How great would it be to never have to worry about a storm, to just be safe all the time? Although that seems like it would be great, it wouldn’t. The storms are where we grow, they are what make us stronger. If we did not have any storms we would not need the Lord to rescue us. I heard this description the other day. Imagine you are an arrow. And you are getting ready to take flight and travel an amazing distance to a brand new place. However, you do not have the power to do that until the bow is pulled backwards and builds the tension and then you have the energy you need to go forward. God uses our storms to build us up so that we have the energy and strength to make it to a new place. We are always stronger after a storm.
Another way I have heard it explained by David Hollis is in reference to ships. If you are a ship, you are safe when you are in the harbor. You are less likely to encounter a storm when you are safe in the harbor. But that is not what ships were built for. Ships were built to leave the harbor and go out into the open seas. The same is true with you. You were not meant to sit by and watch the storms go by. You can’t grow if you avoid all the storms in your life. Yes, they are hard and they are not fun. They can be devastating and yet they can also be a source of great stength. If you are stuck in a stormy season right now I urge you to lean into God. Let Him be your shelter and you will be so much stronger when it passes. It will pass, they always pass. God makes sure of that. I know sometimes it may seem like you have been getting hit with storm after storm and you are wondering when they will pass. I assure you the end is in sight. Keep fighting, keep holding on, God’s got you.
I know I just talked about a song yesterday and I have no idea if you enjoyed that or not, but when this verse came up today I knew I was supposed to share this song with you. It actually goes well with the past few episodes as well. The song is about letting go of our worries and anxieties while we are in the storm. God is forever telling us not to worry and not to be anxious and yet we still struggle with it because we are all human. If you find yourself struggling right now, or you find that you are worrying more than you’d like I then I would like to suggest you listen to this song on repeat. It not only has good lyrics, but a pretty catchy tune too. Do people still say catchy anymore? Anyway, I will not sing it for you, as I am sure you don’t want that. I will go over some of my favorite parts, I will list all the words in the show notes, and I will also put a link so you can watch the lyric video if you like. (Click Here)
Here are the lyrics:
It's hard for me to let go, hard for me to breathe
Thinking that I gotta control it all
I can feel my worry and anxiety
When it's slipping through my fingers and I know it
I've been losing my sleep, I've been losing my cool
I can feel my heart go boom, boom, boom
Starin' at the ceiling, feeling like a fool
I'm going under and I know it
How many of us know exactly how he is feeling? How many of us feel like we have to control everything? We feel like if we don’t everything will fall apart. Then we feel extra anxious when it feels like it is all slipping through our fingers because if we can’t save it who will. Losing sleep and losing my cool is something that I have definitely experienced before. What about that line about feeling his heart go boom, boom, boom, how true is that. Can’t you just feel his anxiety when you hear the beginning words. Don’t worry, I am not going to leave you with that.
The song goes on to say:
But I hear You whisper to me
If I lose my grip I could see
That You are carrying me
This is true for all of us. If we loosen up our grip we would see that God has actual control. He is carrying us so we don’t have to worry about falling. But we can’t see this if we don’t loosen our grip.
Oh, I'm gonna let it
I'm gonna let it go
Oh, 'cause if I trust it
I could move with Your flow
Being carried in the current of Your love
When I lean into Your arms, You're enough
I love love love this line. “Being carried in the current of your love.” I can just picture being swept away in a gently flowing current of God’s love. First it says, if I trust it. This is the key. We can’t take that leap into the current if we don’t trust it will be there for us. Trust is hard and also so essential. God wants to help us trust Him, we just need to ask. I also love when it says “When I lean into your arms, You’re Enough.” I just picture God’s strong and gentle arms giving me a big hug as I lean in.
Time for me to let go, time for me to breathe
Knowing that He already holds it all
Time for me to turn down this anxiety
I can know my freedom in a moment
'Cause when I lay it all down, You gonna lift me up
When I pour it all out You gonna fill my cup
You're holding out Your arms and telling me to jump
One, two, three, here I go, yeah
What do you think is it time for you to let go, is it time for you to breathe? God is in control, as much as we feel like we are, its not the case. You can be free from this anxiety and worry. I love how he says, “When I lay it all down, your gonna lift me up. When I pour it all out, your gonna fill my cup.” This is exactly what happens. God lets us try to fix things ourselves if that is what we want. He only steps in when we put it down at His feet and ask Him to take over. Then He does. He will pick you up once you are ready to ask Him to. God is holding out His arms and He is asking you to jump. Are you ready?
Dear Heavenly Father I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord we ask that you give us strength in the storm. We thank you for being our refuge and fortress. We ask that you help us release control of our worries over to you. We thank you for the storms in our lives because we know that they are making us stronger. You are a good and faithful God and we love you. We want to jump into your arms Lord Jesus, help us. Give us the courage and the trust to take that leap of faith that you have been encouraging us to take. One, two three here were go Lord. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen
I’m Gonna Let It Go By: Jason Gray
It's hard for me to let go, hard for me to breathe
Thinking that I gotta control it all
I can feel my worry and anxiety
When it's slipping through my fingers and I know it
I've been losing my sleep, I've been losing my cool
I can feel my heart go boom, boom, boom
Starin' at the ceiling, feeling like a fool
I'm going under and I know it
But I hear You whisper to me
If I lose my grip I could see
That You are carrying me
Oh, I'm gonna let it
I'm gonna let it go
Oh, 'cause if I trust it
I could move with Your flow
Being carried in the current of Your love
When I lean into Your arms, You're enough
So, I'm gonna let it
I'm gonna let it go
Time for me to let go, time for me to breathe
Knowing that He already holds it all
Time for me to turn down this anxiety
I can know my freedom in a moment
'Cause when I lay it all down, You gonna lift me up
When I pour it all out You gonna fill my cup
You're holding out Your arms and telling me to jump
One, two, three, here I go, yeah
'Cause I hear You whisper to me
If I lose my grip I will see
You're always carrying me
Oh, I'm gonna let it
I'm gonna let it go
Oh, 'cause if I trusted
I could move with Your flow
Being carried in the current of Your love
When I lean into Your arms, You're enough
So, I'm gonna let it
I'm gonna let it go
Letting go of my worries (letting go of my worries)
And my need to control things (and my need to control things)
I'm gonna take You at Your word and (I'm gonna take You at Your word)
I'm gonna lay down all my burdens (all my burdens)
Letting go of my worries (letting go of my worries)
And my need to control things (and my need to control things)
I'm gonna take You at Your word and
I'm gonna lay down all my burdens (all my burdens)
Oh, I'm gonna let it
I'm gonna let it go
Oh, 'cause if I trusted
I could move with Your flow
Being carried in the current of Your love
When I lean into Your arms, You're enough
So, I'm gonna let it
I'm gonna let it go
Greater Is The One
John 4:4 “ Little children, you are from God, and have conquered them; for the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.”
Everytime I hear this verse a song starts playing in my head. Does that ever happen to you? I didn’t listen to Christian music growing up. We sang songs at church, but that was the extent to my exposure to Christian music and they definitely weren’t contemporary. I went to a retreat when I lived in Germany and the speaker was a Christian singer. I bought her CD’s and listened to them often. Her name is Ann Trufant. I thought it was great to have good music where the words of the song were helping me grow in my faith. I remember the first time I heard a reading at mass and recognized it from one of the songs. I had no idea that many of the lyrics were from the Bible. I was so excited. I felt like I should definitely get credit for reading the Bible when I listened to her songs.
When I joined a Christian mentoring group, the leader had put together a playlist on Spotify of upbeat really good contemporary Christian music. I instantly fell in love. There are so many great artists out there singing about God. The songs are so good. I love hearing about how much they all love God too! The reason a song came to mind when I heard this verse is because the last sentence of this verse is the chorus. This song is so good. It talks about all the ways that the world tries to bring us down, and how it doesn’t matter what they say or do, because God is living inside of us and He is greater than those living in the world. I thought I would talk about the lyrics of this song because they can explain it so eloquently. I highly recommend after you are done listening to the podcast you click on the link in the show notes for the song “Greater” by MercyMe. (Click here for video) I put the link for the lyric video so you can read along as they sing. I promise you won’t regret it. It’s an amazing song.
It begins with:
Bring your tired
And bring your shame
Bring your guilt
And bring your pain
Don't you know that's not your name
You will always be much more to me
This is so true! We often feel like we are how we feel. If we feel like a crappy parent then we take on that identity. Who doesn’t feel tired and guilty sometimes. But how many of us take that on and let the world define us by those feelings. How many of us let the world convince us that there is something wrong with us because of those feelings? God knows that we are so much more than that, so much more than we feel like we are. You are not your feelings. You are not a bad person for having your feelings. You are so much more to God.
The song goes on to say:
Every day I wrestle with the voices
That keep telling me I'm not right
But that's alright
'Cause I hear a voice and He calls me redeemed
When others say I'll never be enough
And greater is the One living inside of me
Than he who is living in the world
God calls you redeemed too! He calls us all redeemed. Yes, we all wrestle with the voices in our head or in the world. Voices that are trying to pull us down and telling us that we are not enough. But, it’s ok because God is greater than those voices. The Holy Spirit lives in you. The one that lives in you is great than the one who is living in the world. When you are struggling, try to remember that. Remind yourself that you have conquered those living in the world because God is greater than them.
The song goes on to say:
Bring your doubts
And bring your fears
Bring your hurt
And bring your tears
There'll be no condemnation here
You are holy, righteous and redeemed
We can bring our doubts and our fears to Jesus. He wants us to turn to him when we are hurt. Jesus does not condemn us, he loves us just as we are. We can bring whatever we have to Jesus and he will take us in. There is nothing we can do that would make Him stop loving us. We are God’s children forever. He will always love us and protect us. We are holy, rigorous and redeemed.
Next it says:
Every time I fall
There'll be those who will call me
A mistake
Well that's okay
'Cause I hear a voice and He calls me redeemed
When others say I'll never be enough
And greater is the One living inside of me
Than he who is living in the world
There are always going to be people that pounce on you when you make a mistake. People that pick on others to make themselves feel better. We live in a fallen world. We are not a perfect people, we don’t always get it right. But, when others are saying you are not enough, remember that God calls you redeemed.
The next part says:
There'll be days I lose the battle
Grace says that it doesn't matter
'Cause the cross already won the war
He's Greater, He's Greater
This is awesome. I love that this song can be real enough to admit that there are days when we lose the battle. There are days when we some of us can’t even get out of bed to fight the battle. This is ok. I love that it says “Grace says it doesn’t matter.” I love God’s grace and how freeing it can be when we learn to accept it. When we finally, finally, stop being so hard on ourselves and learn to give ourselves, and others grace, it is so freeing. It feels so good when we can mess up, or notice that we are not perfect, and yet we don’t come down hard on ourselves. When we give ourselves permission to not be perfect, life gets a whole lot easier. We can’t do this without grace. I love the next line right after that. “Cause the cross already won the war.” Oh my goodness, this is so true and yet we tend to forget it. Jesus died on the cross so our sins may be forgiven. Why is it so hard for us to accept this? Why do we let the weight of our sins carry us down. Why do we believe the world when they tell us how guilty we are and yet we don’t believe God when he tells us we are redeemed? God is greater than he who is living in the world. Keep reminding yourself of this.
The last part says:
I am learning to run freely
Understanding just how He sees me
And it makes me love Him more and more
He's Greater, He's Greater
This is what I was saying earlier. It is so freeing when you really start to understand how God sees you. Imagine what your day would be like if you weren’t worried about what people were saying or thinking about you. Imagine what it would feel like to not be constantly feeling like you were letting someone down, or listening to the criticism of others. You can have this life that you are picturing. If you can remember and come to truly believe that the one living in you is greater than the one living in the world you won’t have to listen to all the voices of the world. You have already defeated them. God is calling you redeemed. The cross has already won the war. There is no condemnation with God. He pours His grace on us, all we need to do is accept it. I have put a link to this song with the lyrics in the show notes. I hope you take a few minutes and listen to it. It is such a great song.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord we know you are greater than those living in this world. Help us to believe that we are redeemed. Help us to accept your grace Lord Jesus. Help us to learn to run freely and to see ourselves as you see us. Lord, on those days when we don't win the battle help us to feel your grace and help us to win the battle the next day. Give us the strength we need Lord Jesus to keep on winning the battles. When others tell us that we're not enough help us to hear your voice inside telling us we are. When we fall down and others ridicule us help us to stand back up. We love you so much Lord and we're so very thankful for all that you do for us. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Increasing Your Trust In The Lord
Proverbs 3:5 “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;”
In this episode I would like to talk about a practice that I had been doing for awhile and just decided I would start doing again because I found it to be fruitful, so I wanted to share it with all of you. Right now we are living in a time of turmoil. This pandemic has been going on for a long time and there is little end in sight. Everyone in our country is struggling for one reason or another right now. Then we also have everyday life that is hard enough to live with. Being able to trust God through all of this is no easy feat. Trusting that there is light at the end of the tunnel is difficult on a good day, but what about when a relationship you envisioned would last forever comes to an end? How do you find trust that things will work out then? What about when your spouse of over 10 years is cheating on you and leaving you for someone else? How do you go on trusting that God will work all things for your good? What about all of the uncertainty in the world right now? How do you go about trusting in the Lord when you are unsure if you will have a job next month; if your loved ones will contract a virus you can’t protect them from; or if the business you worked so hard to build will have to close its doors forever? I know these are real fears for so many people right now. I know there are also a lot of people that are fearing the unknown. What if our kids don’t go back to school in the fall, what if church services are never the same, when can we hug our loved one again, etc. I know fear is prevalent is so many people these days. How do we trust God with all of this? How do we trust Him with our future, with our safety, with our financial security?
The practice that I have been doing for a number of months now is saying the Litany of Trust almost every morning. I had been saying the Litany of Humility and found that was a great practice. I thought I would search online to see if there was a different litany/prayer I could do to help increase other virtues. I found the Litany of trust. I think this practice is helpful for a couple reasons. First, we are told in the Bible that God really likes it when we want something so badly we are willing to ask him for it everyday. In Luke 18:1-8 Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. He said: “In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’ “For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care what people think, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually come and attack me!’” And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?” Jesus is telling us not to give up, He wants us to keep asking our Father for what we need.
Second, I think saying the Litany frequently works because this prayer breaks down trust into many different parts. This is important because a lot of times we don’t know why we don’t trust, or perhaps we don’t understand the various ways that we hesitate to trust God. The Litany of Trust is broken down into two parts. First, it is asking God to deliver you from all the ways you may be scared to trust God. Ways that you are probably not even aware might be affecting your trust. These are thoughts that you may be having, but at a more subconscious level. Sometimes we know we are struggling, but are not sure how or why. There are 15 things in this prayer that you are asking Jesus to deliver you from.
From the Belief that I have to earn your love…Deliver me, Jesus
From the fear that I am unlovable…Deliver me, Jesus
From the false security that I have what it takes…Deliver me, Jesus
From the fear that trusting You will leave me more destitute…Deliver me, Jesus
From all suspicion of Your words and promises…Deliver me, Jesus
From the rebellion against childlike dependency of You…Deliver me, Jesus
From refusals and reluctance in accepting Your will… Deliver me, Jesus
From anxiety about the future… Deliver me Jesus
From resentment or excessive preoccupation with the past… Deliver me, Jesus
From restless self-seeking in the present moment…Deliver me, Jesus
From disbelief in Your love and presence…Deliver me, Jesus
From the fear of being asked to give more than I have…Deliver me, Jesus
From the belief that my life has no meaning or worth… Deliver me, Jesus
From the fear of what love demands… Deliver me, Jesus
From discouragement…Deliver me, Jesus
When I first read this prayer I was not aware that any of these had to do with me trusting in God. I was not aware that I needed to be delivered from any of these beliefs until I read them out loud. What about you? Do you need to be delivered from any of these beliefs?
The second part of the prayer has 14 things that you are telling Jesus that you put in His trust.
That You are continually holding me, sustaining me, loving me … Jesus, I trust in you.
That Your love goes deeper than my sins and failings, and transforms me …Jesus, I trust in you.
That not knowing what tomorrow brings is an invitation to lean on You … Jesus, I trust in you.
That You are with me in my suffering … Jesus, I trust in you.
That my suffering, united to Your own, will bear fruit in this life and the next …Jesus, I trust in you.
That You will not leave me orphan, that You are present in Your Church…Jesus, I trust in you.
That Your plan is better than anything else … Jesus, I trust in you.
That You always hear me, and in Your goodness always respond to me …Jesus, I trust in you.
That You give me the grace to accept forgiveness and to forgive others …Jesus, I trust in you.
That You give me all the strength I need for what is asked …Jesus, I trust in you.
That my life is a gift … Jesus, I trust in you.
That You will teach me to trust You … Jesus, I trust in you.
That You are my Lord and my God … Jesus, I trust in you.
That I am Your beloved one … Jesus, I trust in you.
Again, I had no idea how many ways we could trust in God, or how many ways we could be holding our trust back from God. Re-read this list. Where are you struggling to trust the most? What are you not struggling with, maybe you read some of these and you think to yourself that you are doing well with trusting that to God.
Both these lists have some pretty tough things on them. I know this and I am not telling you this to make you feel bad about all the ways you are failing to trust God. This is hard for all of us! We are all learning to trust. I am telling you this to let you know that you are not alone. To let you know that even though you may be struggling with some aspects of trust, you may be knocking it out of the park with other aspects of trust. Trusting God is a journey. God is not looking for our perfection, he is looking for our desire to be holy. We are not responsible for making our prayers fruitful, that is God’s job. God is just looking for us to show up again and again and ask him for His help. We are told in 2 Corinthians 12:9 that God said, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is perfected in weakness.” We can only succeed in trusting the Lord through His grace. He does not need us to know how to trust Him, we only need to ask him and His power will be perfected in our weakness. I challenge you to show up each morning for one month and ask God for the trust that you seek. Even if you do not think you have time for the whole prayer, even if you just pick one sentence, do something each day to ask God to increase your trust. I promise you, He will show up and come through for you, He ALWAYS does! I would love for any of you that take this challenge to reach out to me after the month and let me know how it went. Do you feel any different? Do you notice you are trusting more? Do some aspects of trust come a little easier for you now? You can send me an email to Catherine@findingtruenorthcoaching.com I know this habit of reciting the litany every morning has made a profound impact on my life and I know it will on your life as well if you give it a try.
Dear Heavenly Father I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord we ask that you help us increase our trust in you. Lord we want to trust you please help us. There are so many ways in which we can put our trust in you thank you for sharing these ways with us. Lord you are amazing and we love you. We asked all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Struck Down, But Not Destroyed
2 Corinthians 4:8-9 “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.”
I saw this verse written on a page in my book today and thought to myself, man if there was ever a time that we needed to hear this. The world is crazy right now. There is so much tragedy and pain. It seems like it all keeps coming in waves. It is like one thing after another. Life seemed like maybe it was beginning to calm down a bit and then all the violence in Afghanistan and now the hurricane in Louisiana. It seems to be nonstop these days. If you watch the news a lot you can easily get overwhelmed and scared. I think it is important to stay inform and I also think that we need to protect ourselves at the same time.
If you find that watching the news makes you anxious and fearful then maybe watch less of it. You can be informed without having the news on 24 hours a day. Remember that we are in charge of protecting our thoughts. We get to decide what we allow to influence our mind. There needs to be some balance between the craziness of the world and the grounding influence of God. For instance, if you are watching an hour of the news, maybe watch an hour of something that makes you remember all is not bad. Maybe listen to a podcast or read a spiritual book.
Anyway, back to this scripture. It does seem right now like we are “hard pressed on every side.” It seems like bad things are coming at us from all sides. Like in those movies when the walls start closing in and the room gets smaller and smaller. Life can often feel like that. It can be hard to breathe sometimes because we feel squeezed on all sides. It is important to remember when we feel like this that although we feel pressed, we are not crushed. We are still here, the trouble has not gotten the better of us. God will not let that happen. He may let us fall down with the weight of it all, but he will not let is crush us and he will be there to pick us back up again if we do fall.
The next part says perplexed, but not in despair. I don’t think there is a single person in the world, or at least in this country that is not perplexed right now. Trying to understand what is going on in the world right now leaves us all confused. A global pandemic, how does that happen? Why does that happen? All the systemic racism in this country, how did we let that happen? How do we begin to change it? Why all the natural disasters, the wild fires, the hurricanes & earthquakes, the flooding? What is going on in this world? Although this is all very confusing, hopefully we are not in despair.
What is despair? Despair is the complete loss or absence of hope. I can see how it could be easy these days to fall into despair. I could see how many could be starting to question if we have hope. What about the people that are in Louisiana right now. The last two years have been awful for everyone and I feel as though our country was just starting to come back to life a little. People seemed to be looking towards the future with a little more light and hope. Then this hurricane comes and devastates so many people. Or what about those that have lost people in Afghanistan, or what about the refugees of Afghanistan. It is easy to understand why people might be falling into despair. We must fight these feelings of despair. Yes, times are incredibly hard right now. Yes it seems like it is coming at us from all angles and we can’t seem to catch a break. But there is always hope. If God brought you to it, He will bring you through it.
The last part of the verse says persecuted but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. Is this how you are feeling? Are you feeling persecuted? I know many in this country are feeling this right now. If this is you, know that you are not abandoned. God never leaves your side. He is there with you even when you are feeling persecuted. God actually told us in the bible that we would be persecuted. Matthew 5:10-12 “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” God is there with you through this all and He even states that your reward is great in heaven.
If you are feeling struck down right now, know that God will not let this situation destroy you. It may feel like you are destroyed, but God won’t let that happen. You may be down, but you are not down for the count. God will help you get back on your feet again. Trust that He is there for you and lean into Him when you feel like you don’t have the strength to do it on your own. He is strong. He can handle the weight of your problems. Sometimes we don’t have to lean on God because we feel like He is too busy or because we don’t want to bother Him. He is your heavenly Father, He would like nothing more than for you to “bother Him” with your problems. He is up there just waiting for you to do just that.
You may be thinking to yourself, that all sounds well and good, but you don’t know my situation. You don’t know what I have been through, or what I am going through. How can I not be in despair when I have lost someone, or I have lost my home, my job, my health, etc. You would be right. I don’t know your situation. I don’t know what you are feeling. I do understand how easy it is to fall into despair and lose hope that things will change. I can tell you a few things I did to keep myself from despair when things seemed really bad. Hopefully you will find something useful in these ideas to either keep you from despair, or help you climb out of it if you already find yourself in despair.
First, I prayed a lot. I kept a journal and I wrote to God a lot telling Him all the things I was thinking, wondering, praying for, wishing for, all the things.
Second, I listened to praise music that reminded me of God’s promises and that He is always there for me. It was uplifting praise music that would lift my spirits when I was sad.
Third, I didn’t dwell on the situation. I did not spend a lot of time thinking about what may or may not happen in the future. I dealt with the immediate problem at hand and tried to plan for what may come up but I did not focus on all the ways things could go wrong. There is always time to deal with that if it happens. Although, most of what we worry about never happens. Even if it seems like you know where the situation is headed, things may change. So much can happen in a short amount of time. I did not try to predict the future.
The fourth thing I did was to study scripture and I was reminded about all the things the people in the Bible went through and how God was always there for them. If He did it for them He will do it for me. After all, "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever” Hebrews 13:8.
The last thing I did was I chose to be hopeful. I don’t think hope is just something that you either have or you don’t have. I think Hope is a choice. Actually at our prayer group we were giving a word that said just that. I think I will leave you with these words from our Heavenly Father. "Trust in Me, do not be afraid. You must choose to hope and trust in Me. It is a choice, it is not a feeling. When darkness comes choose hope, love, and trust. Choose me.
Dear Heavenly Father I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord we ask that you bless everyone that is struggling right now. Lord we ask you to help us know that we may be persecuted but we are not abandoned. We may be stuck down but we are not destroyed. Lord Jesus, please keep us from despair. When darkness comes help us to choose you Lord Jesus. Help us to choose hope and love and trust. We can do all things through Christ who strengthens us. Help us to feel that strength Lord. Help us to not feel defeated. Lord we pray for all those affected by the natural disasters going on in the world right now. We also pray for those in war torn countries. Lord our world is hurting and we need your help. We thank you for all that you are doing for us Lord. We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Truth, Wisdom, Instruction & Understanding
Proverbs 23:23 “Buy truth, and do not sell it; buy wisdom, instruction, and understanding.”
Well, this is an interesting verse. I wonder how we would sell truth? I wonder why God needs to tell us to buy truth and do not sell it? Then He also says to buy wisdom, instruction and understanding. I was stumped on what this verse meant or what God was trying to tell us with this verse. However, when it is put into context of our prayer group it makes a little more sense to me. During prayer group the leader talked about how sometimes we think about all that we are lacking and we may even ask God what it is that we lack. This is because we are looking to ourselves to gain eternal life. We are looking to see what it is that we can do to get ourselves into heaven.
The leader talked about how we need to trade our self reliance in for reliance on God. There isn’t anything we can do to get ourselves into heaven. We will get into heaven only through God’s grace. After the beginning part of our meeting we also had several words of prophecy that talked about how we are looking for God in all the wrong places. We are looking for Him in places that He does not dwell. He dwells deep within our hearts. He also said that He is there for us, but we are not looking to Him to solve our problems, we are looking to ourselves to solve our problems. He is asking us to turn our problems over to Him instead of trying to solve them on our own.
In this context I can see how God would want us to buy truth, wisdom, instruction and understanding. We need to see the truth that we can’t do anything on our own and yet we can “do all things through Christ who strengthens me” Philippians 4:13. We need to not sell this truth for all the things the world tells us. We need to not sell this truth in order to believe that we can do things on our own. We need to not believe that God is too busy to help us. We need to not believe that God helps others but not us. We need to buy the truth and not sell it for any of these other false truths that the world is trying to sell us.
Next, we need to ask God for Wisdom to know the difference. Wisdom is a gift from the Holy Spirit and according to the Catholic Church wisdom is the first and highest gift of the Holy Spirit. We believe that wisdom leads to an intimate understanding of God’s Word and His commandments. When we develop an intimate understanding of God’s Word and His commandments then we can better live out our faith. I believe this is why the verse above mentions truth and then puts wisdom, instruction and understanding in the same line. I believe wisdom leads to instruction and understanding. God has given us a lot of instruction in the Bible on how He wants us to live.
There is no question as to what He says in the Bible. I think the question comes in when we try to interpret what He says in the Bible. The Bible was written almost 2,000 years ago. Well, the old testament was written long before that I believe. So, reading the bible is not like reading something that was written 10 years ago. Times have changed a lot. Although as I write that I wonder, have they? I mean yes technology has changed a lot, circumstances may have also changed a lot, but have we as people changed a lot? That I am not sure of. I think we tend to struggle with the same basic things as people struggled with back then. The same underlying sins are there, we just have a different spin on them. That is just my opinion.
So, when it comes to reading the Bible, sometimes we can get caught up in the actual words of the Bible or the situation that they are talking about. We can read something and think that it doesn’t pertain to us because our situation is so different than that of the person of the Bible. We can’t really see any connection between how they are living and how we are living. This is why we need wisdom, instruction and understanding. We need wisdom to see how the situations in the Bible relate to our own situation. We need instructions on how we are to live our life right now in this century. We need understanding to know what is meant for us to read literally and what is meant as a story to teach us a lesson.
There are different writing styles in the Bible. There are things that are a historical recount of what happened during that time. However, Jesus also teaches a lot of lessons through parables. There are also stories meant to teach us a lesson. If we have a deeper understanding of God’s work we would know the difference. Wisdom can come in many different ways I think. For instance, we don’t have to gain this understanding all on our own. There are many people who have studied the Bible for years and are happily sharing all they know about it. You can learn from them.
I don’t think anyone gains the wisdom to understand everything all at once. For instance, I don’t think you will go to bed one day and then wake up the next day with all the wisdom you have ever wanted. I think the Holy Spirit opens your mind up to wisdom and then guides you to this wisdom. You may be praying for wisdom and understanding and then you get an email or notice an advertisement for a Bible study in your area. That is the Holy Spirit prompting you to gain the wisdom you are asking for. Or, maybe you hear about a podcast that you hadn’t heard of before. There are several podcasts that have really helped me gain understanding about God’s Word and about the Catholic Religion in general.
If you are looking for additional podcasts some of the ones I have tried are Father Mike Schmitz Bible In A Year Podcast, he also has another one that talks about all things Catholic. The Jeff Cavins Show is a good one. The Big Life Devotional with Pamela Crim is also good. All Things Catholic with Edward Sri, I haven’t listened to this one a lot, but I have heard him talk and he is really good. The Elevation Church with Steven Furtick is good. He is a minister that posts his sermons on this podcast. I have never heard one that I didn’t like. Abiding Together is one that talks about three woman’s journey in their faith. That is also informational. Your Catholic Life Podcast with Jon Leonetti is also a good one. He is someone that loves his Catholic Faith so much and you can just hear it in his voice. And last but not least Exploring My Strange Bible. This one is so good. Each episode is like a mini Bible study. He takes all the stories and goes into a lot more detail so that you understand the Bible stories in a whole new way. You get such a deeper understanding.
I didn’t mean to deviate there, but I do think that understanding the Lord’s Word is an essential part of Wisdom. Not just His word but His instruction as well. This is why I listed all those podcasts. They will definitely help with understanding and wisdom. I know it was a long list. I don’t intend for you to listen to them all, or any of them right now if you plate is full. I have listened to different ones at different times. This is why I am saying the Holy Spirit leads you to the wisdom you need. If you are feeling you need more wisdom or understanding say a quick prayer and ask the Holy Spirit to guide you to the wisdom your seeking. This list of podcasts is listed in the show notes so you can come back at any time and look through it. Remember, rely not on yourselves and what you can do, but what God can do through you.
Dear Heavenly Father I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. I ask that you help us to buy truth and not sell it and buy wisdom and instruction and understanding. Lord we ask that you lead us to your wisdom and not the ways of the world. Lord we ask you for instruction and understanding in how to live life the way you want us to. Lord we ask for a supernatural wisdom, a gift from the Holy Spirit, that will help move your word and instruction from our brain to our heart. We're asking for an intimate knowledge of your word and instruction so that we can live it with our actions. We thank you so much for all you do for us Lord you are amazing. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus holy name amen.
Stay With The Lord
Sirach 2:3 “Stay with the Lord; never abandon him, and you will be prosperous at the end of your days.”
Well, who doesn’t want to be prosperous at the end of their days? I wish life was as easy as it seems it should be. “Stay with the Lord; never abandon Him and you will be prosperous at the end of your days.” That seems simple enough. Those are pretty clear cut instructions. So, why then are they so hard to follow? Why is it so difficult to stay with the Lord and never abandon Him? Why is this such a struggle for all of us? I say all of us and not some of us because I honestly don’t think it is easy for anyone. We may all struggle with different aspects of this, but I don’t believe that staying with the Lord and never abandoning Him comes easy for any of us.
A perfect example of this is when Jesus went to the garden to pray. He was about to enter into the most difficult time in his life. He was about to be betrayed and beaten and hung on a cross. He was about to take on all of our sins and the sins of the whole world. He asked the disciples, His best friends, the people He had spent the last three years with to wait this Him while He prayed. They kept falling asleep. They couldn’t wait with Him one hour.
Jesus told his disciples what was going to come to pass. They could not understand exactly what would happen. However in Matthew 26:31-35 it says, “Then Jesus told them, “This very night you will all fall away on account of me, for it is written: “‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.’ But after I have risen, I will go ahead of you into Galilee.” Peter replied, “Even if all fall away on account of you, I never will.” “Truly I tell you,” Jesus answered, “this very night, before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times.” But Peter declared, “Even if I have to die with you, I will never disown you.” And all the other disciples said the same.”
Peter was sure there was nothing that could happen that would make him fall away from Jesus. He said in the verse above that he would be willing to give up his life to stay with Jesus. So, what happened? If you know the story of Peter you know that what Jesus told him came to pass. He was sitting outside in the courtyard trying to find out what was going to happen to Jesus. Three different times people asked Him if was one of the people that followed Jesus and each time he denied knowing Him. What makes someone go from being willing to die for Jesus, to denying Jesus. Fear. He was afraid that he would get arrested too. He was probably afraid that he would die also.
Fear is so powerful. It is something that comes into our lives whenever it wants to and usually at the most inopportune times. For instance, we find out that a loved one has a life threatening disease. This is when we need to be at our best, remain calm, and help them make some important decisions. However, sometimes we are paralyzed by fear. What if we make the wrong decision? What if our loved one dies? What if we could have had more time if I just made the right decision? Do you see how fear can get it and make a bad situation worse? Peter was afraid and so he did the one thing that he thought he would never do, he denied knowing Jesus.
If these 12 men, who had spent all of their time with Jesus for three whole years could stray from God, there is not much chance that we won’t stay. They got to witness first hand what Jesus could do. Some of them got to witness the transfiguration. There was no doubt in their minds that he was the son of God. Then, when the soldiers came to take Jesus away they scattered and left Him alone to go through the last day of His life alone.
What does this have to do with us? This illustrates how easily one can be led astray. Just hours after Peter said he would die with Jesus before he would disown Him, he disowned Him. We may think the same thing. We may think that there is nothing we would do to disown or walk away from Jesus. However, think about your decisions over the last month. Were there times when you strayed from God? Were there times when you placed something else before Him? I know I have. I know there were times when I could have been keeping my promise to pray for 20 minutes and yet I decided to stay in be and hit snooze for 20 minutes instead. I told myself I could just pray later, but I never did. Think about the last time someone said something controversial about God/Jesus. Did you stick up for Him and defend Him or did you stay quiet because you were afraid of what others would think of you.
There are many reasons we can be led astray, but I think fear is the biggest one because it seems to elicit the strongest emotion. Also, fear can lead us away from God in several ways. First, it can cause us to deny that we follow God because we fear what people might think of us. Second, we can be afraid of losing a loved one and so we try to do whatever we can to help that person and we are so “busy” that “we don’t have time to pray.” A third way that fear can cause us to fall away from God is that we are paralyzed with it. The situation we are in seems so overwhelming that we get scared and don’t end up doing anything about it. We don’t turn to God because we don’t think of it, we are too scared to think of anything.
Now that we know about how much fear can affect our lives and cause us to stray from God, what do we do about it? The verse says above, “Stay with the Lord; never abandon him, and you will be prosperous at the end of your days.” So if we want to prosper at the end of our lives, we need to stay with the Lord. How can we do this when so many things in life are trying to pull us away from Him? First, we can remember that He is our strength. We don’t have to be strong, he can be strong for us. In 2 Corinthians 12:9 the Lord says “My power is made perfect in weakness.” So, we don’t have to be strong all the time. We can admit that we are weak and that is ok because God’s power is made perfect in our weakness.
Second, we can ask God to help us when we are struggling. Instead of getting overwhelmed and turning away from God, we can lean into Him more. We can spend more time with Him. We can make sure He knows what we are struggling and that we are relying on Him to get us through this situation. We can look at past situation and see the outcome of those situations. I believe when you look back at all the difficult times you have had you will see that God was there for you. He got you through each circumstance up until now and if He did it for you in the past, He will do it for you again.
Fear is one of those emotions that can sneak up on us when we least expect it. We can be doing fine, we are having a good day and then something can trigger one thought and then we follow that one thought down a rabbit hole and the next thing we know we are afraid for all that might happen. This is so common. We all do this. However, just because it is common doesn’t mean it is fun. So, how do we not go down that rabbit hole? I would say the best way is to live in this moment. I know, easier said than done. What I mean is that we don’t know what the future holds. We don’t know if we will lose our job or we will get a raise. We don’t know if our loved one will be ok or not. We don’t know what will happen but we spend a lot of time thinking about and worrying about that unknown future. And I get it, the unknown is scary and we want to be ready for any possibility. But at what cost? Are you wasting away the days you have today thinking about a future possibility that may not even come about? Ask God to help you enjoy this moment. In Luke 12:34 it reminds us “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” God knows what you need. If you have asked Him for it, He will deliver. Trust that He’s got this. He’s got you in His loving hands. Things will work out and whatever happens, God will give you the strength to deal with it one day at a time.
Dear Heavenly Father I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord we ask that you were with us right now in this moment. Lord it's heavy on my heart today that many people are worried about different situations in their lives. Lord we ask that you help them live in the moment today. We ask that you help us not to worry about what may or may not happen. Lord we pray that you help us trust that you have the situation under control and that you are taking care of it. Help us to see that you are working all things for our good. Lord we ask that you take away any fear that we have. We pray that you help us feel your power and that your power is made perfect in our weakness. We love you so much Lord and we're so very thankful that you're here with us in this difficult time. We ask all of us in accordance with your will and in Jesus is holy name amen.
A Personal Relationship With God
Psalm 91:4 “He will cover you with his feathers. He will shelter you with his wings. His faithful promises are your armor and protection.”
I love this image. I picture the Lord as a giant eagle and He puts his wing over us like we would put our arm around a child. When I think of this I am filled up with a sense of love that I just can’t explain. Sometimes I think we think of the Lord as this all mighty being that is so magnificent and is so busy that He doesn’t really have time for us. I guess I don’t really mean that he doesn’t have time for us. I think that we all know that He is listening to our prayers. I think we know that He spends lots of time on us. I guess what I mean is that we don’t really think that He knows us personally, if that makes sense.
I don’t know, maybe I am wrong. Take a minute and think about your impression of God. What comes to mind when you try to picture Him. Do you think of a loving father, do you think of an almighty God that is kind of intimidating, do you think of someone that answers your prayers, but does not know you personally? How do you picture God? I think the reason I am asking this is because I think that many of us think of God as someone that is unapproachable. Yes, we can pray to Him and He will answer our prayers, but that is the extent of the relationship. I wonder how many of us know that God longs to have a personal relationship with each and every one of us.
Yes, even you. God wants to have a personal relationship with you. When I first heard this, I thought, what does that even mean? How does one have a personal relationship with someone that they can’t see, hear, touch, talk to, etc. This is when I began my journey to have a personal relationship with our Heavenly Father. (Actually with all three members of the Trinity) So, how does one begin something when they have no idea how to do it? Lots of ways I guess. What I did was try to learn what it means to have a personal relationship with God. I read some books and talked to lots of people. Here is what I have learned so far. Although I am still very much in the learning phase.
First, you can talk to Him. You can talk to God anytime you want to. He is always willing to listen. You can talk to Him about anything. Sometimes I think we feel as though God is busy and so we come to Him when we really need Him, but we don’t want to bother Him with our day to day stuff. Or at least that’s how I felt. God has time for you whenever you want. He is not bound by the same limits we are when it comest to time or attention. He can be there for each of us all of the time. He is not only willing to listen, but He wants to listen. He loves to hear about your day. If you are a parent, think about how happy you are when your children, no matter what age they are, take the time to tell you about their day. This is how God feels when you take the time to just sit and talk with Him about whatever is on your mind.
Second, get to know who God is. If you are trying to develop a personal relationship with someone one you would learn as much about that person as you can. The same is true with God. The best way you can learn more about God is to read the Bible. Reading scripture and spending time in God’s word is a great way to feel closer to Him. The more you read about and learn about our Heavenly Father, the more you will begin to see Him in a different light. You will begin to see how much He truly loves His people. How much He has done and continues to do for us, even when we don’t deserve it. Reading scripture will help you to get to see several different sides of God. You will get to learn so many different things about Him. Yes, God is all mighty and He is also very compassionate. Trust me, if you want to feel closer to the Lord, spend time daily in scripture.
Another way you can develop a personal relationship with God is to listen to what He has to say. Once you start to talk with God and tell Him all about your day, then you can also spend some quiet time just listening to what He has to say. You will most likely not get an audible voice that you can hear, however, some people have had this extraordinary gift. What I hear about most often is that you get a sense or a thought that comes to mind. For instance you are sitting there quietly and you tell God that you are available and listening. Then sometimes you will get a thought in your head from God. A sentence, a statement, some people get visions. It could be whatever you are open to. God is not going to force this on you. He will talk with you if you want to listen but only when you are open to it. I have had words of prophecy come to me in this way occasionally. How I usually listen to God is that I write Him a letter in my journal and then I tell Him that am listening and then I write down any thought that comes to my mind. I do not sensor it, I do not ask myself if this is really God talking, I just trust that I have told Him I am listening and so He is talking. That being said, I understand that I am new to listening to God and also that I may have heard something wrong or added something I wanted to hear. So, I do not take everything I write down as gospel, but I have found it is a great way for me to take time to listen to the Lord. I learned this letter writing technique from Fern Gorin at the Life Purpose Institute.
Those are just a few ways you can develop a personal relationship with God. I had no idea I was going to talk about that today. I thought for sure it was going to be about how God is our shield and our refuge. The Holy Spirit is funny like that. We think we have a plan but He knows best and so He just takes over. I love it when that happens. I think it is important that we develop a personal relationship with God so that we can truly understand how much He loves us. Also, so that we can truly understand how much he knows us personally. We are not just another person to Him. We don’t get lost in the shuffle. He calls each of us by name. I will leave you with a word of prophecy from my prayer group that shows you just how much God wants to have a personal relationship with you. “I have called you by name into life. I have called you every day by your name because I know you, I love you, because you are my friend.”
Dear Heavenly Father I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord we ask that you help us develop a personal relationship with you. We pray that you help us to understand how much you love us and how much you know each one of us personally. We thank you so much Lord for that personal attention. We thank you for all the countless times you have listen to us and we pray that we can teach us how to quiet our minds and listen to you. We love you Lord and we long to have a personal relationship with you. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
The Enemy
1 Peter 5:8 “ Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.”
A friend of mine posted this verse today. She had heard about it in a mentoring session last night. I think it is so important that we start to talk about the enemy a little more. It seems like if you mention that to most people they will quickly change the topic, or they will think you are crazy. However, I think we all need to know that there is an enemy out there. That there is a fight for our soul. I know this may make us feel uncomfortable, and maybe even a little scared if we think about it too much. However, avoiding it or not believing it doesn’t mean that it is not true.
There is a quote by Kevin Spacey from the movie “The Usual Suspects” that I love. He said, "The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.” I love this quote because it wakes us up to the devil’s plan. If we don’t know that there is something out there actively trying to destroy our connection with God, then we don’t know to be aware of it. How do you prepare best for a storm. Are you best prepared when you know in advance that it is coming and you do all the things to protect your family and your house? Or are you more prepared when a storm comes out of no where and you didn’t have time to prepare?
This is true for the devil’s plan as well. If we don’t know that he is out there trying to destroy us, then we don’t know to prepare for it. Are you struggling to believe that there is an enemy working against you? If so, think about the last time you tried to do something that was good for you. Think about the last time that you tried to take care of yourself, maybe you thought about taking a nap because you were exhausted, or you scheduled a date with a friend because you really needed some girl time or guy time. How did it go? Was it smooth sailing no issues? Or did you start to feel guilty for spending time on yourself? Did that voice in your head start to tell you that you were selfish for taking time for you? Did you run into all sorts of scheduling conflicts with your friend? Or, maybe as soon as you went to take that nap the phone rang and you got stuck talking instead of taking your nap.
Do you see, I am not crazy. This type of things happens more than you would like to admit I bet. Have you ever tried to loose weight? Just when you decide that you are going to eat healthy again, every temptation you can think of comes up. You go into work and someone brought in your favorite donuts. You go to a family gathering and they have all your favorite unhealthy food. You decide you are going to work out and then something comes up and you need to change your schedule and there seems like there is no good time to work out. I know you know what I am talking about. We can pretend that these are all coincidences all we like, but that doesn’t make it true and it won’t help us stop them.
I have found that I notice the enemy interfering in my life the most when I am trying to do something to increase my faith. I was just talking with someone the other day and she was saying how she wanted to get to church the other day but things kept coming up. She kept coming up with all these reasons why she couldn’t get there. How many times has this happened to you? I know it has happened to me numerous times. Sometimes, when I decide I am going to help someone out and do something nice for them I start to question myself. I start to ask myself, “What if they don’t want you to?” or “What if they take offense to you helping them?”. The enemy tries to make me doubt myself because he knows that when I am helping others I am doing God’s work, and he hates that.
Hopefully by now, you can start to see that there is really an enemy working against you. It is usually is subtle ways that you don’t even realize. That is why I like the quote so much, because it explains why the devil is not more apparent in his attack. If he was to come right out and attack you, you would know he was there. You would be wise to his ways and you would prepare better next time. But by coming at you in these seemly harmless, covert ways, we don’t even realize anyone is doing anything. We just chalk it up to coincidence, or our circumstances. Or even worse, we blame ourselves. We think that we are no good at loosing weight because we always give up. We believe the lie that we don’t deserve to have a few hours to ourselves because if we did, it wouldn’t be so hard all the time. And every time we believe these lies, or we blame ourselves, the devil smiles and chuckles to himself. He may even point a point on his side of the chalkboard because you know he is the type to keep score.
So, now that we know about what the devil is up to, what can we do about it? First, we can remind ourselves of his tactics when life seems really hard. When we notice that we are having a lot of negative self talk, we can say, “Not today Satan!” and we can pray to the Lord and ask Him to help us see the truth in our situation. We can remind ourselves that we are a child of the one true King, our Lord and Savior. We can remind ourselves that God made us in His likeness and image and that He is proud of us and loves us just as we are. We can remind ourselves that His love is unconditional and does not need to be earned. No matter what we do or do not do, God will not love us any more than He already does.
Second, we can stop and think the next time things keep trying to get in our way of doing something good. We can ask ourselves, if these are real obstacles that we can’t overcome on our own, or if they are lies that the devil is telling us. Sometimes there will be obstacles that get in the way of you doing good things. I am not trying to say that all the obstacles will go away now. It is not the obstacles that were the issue, it was how we deal with them. Do we let these obstacles prevent us from doing the thing that we know God wants us to do? Or, do we figure out a way to get around the obstacle so we can still do the thing? Also, what is our mindset? Do we let the obstacle bring us down and make us think badly about ourselves? Or do we remind ourselves of who we are and whose we are?
Third, we can pray about it. There are prayers you can say that protect you from spiritual warfare. There are quick prayers you can say each day to help make your days go a little easier. Prayers that make it a little harder for the enemy to get to you. I had several friends from my prayer group that said before they even get out of bed in the morning they say a quick prayer to God to protect them. It could be as simple as “Good Morning God, please protect me from any evil spirits that wish to do evil in my life today. Thank you!” You can say whatever you want to say, there is no right or wrong way to pray to God. Just say whatever you are thinking. If you are looking for a scripted prayer, maybe you aren’t used to just talking to God, and feel more comfortable with a scripted prayer, St. Michael’s Prayer is a good one.
“Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil; May God rebuke him, we humbly pray; And do thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Host, by the power of God, thrust into hell Satan and all evil spirits who wander through the world for the ruin of souls. Amen.”
These are just a few suggestions to get you started. I know that this topic may make some of you feel uncomfortable. The good news is that we don’t need to be scared of the enemy because the war was already fought we are on the winning side. God is victorious and he will protect us if we ask Him. We also need to do our part to protect our minds and bodies from the enemy. We need to do our part to not invite him into our lives and to not believe his lies. We can acknowledge that their is a devil and that he is powerful and yet also not be afraid of him because we have God on our side. This episode was not meant to scare anyone it was just to help us become more aware of the ways the enemy is interfering in our lives, so that we can stop letting him. We are more powerful than we know and part of the reason we don’t know how powerful we are is because we keep believing the lies that we are weak, and unloved and not enough in some way or another. Once we can stop believing these lies, we can live into the power that God has given us and become the son or daughter that God created us to be.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord we ask that you help us to see the ways that the enemy is working in our lives so that we can put a stop to it. Lord, we ask that you protect us from all evil spirits. We do not give them permission to be in our lives. Lord, we also ask that you protect all children in this world from the evil spirits. The devil seems to be having a hay day with our children, please help them. Lord, we thank you for all you are doing for us. You are amazing! We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with you will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Calm The Waters
Psalm 89:9 “You rule the raging of the sea; when its waves rise, you still them.”
There are several instances in the Bible when the sea was raging and God calmed it. One of the times was when God asked Jonah to go to Ninevah and preach repentance. Jonah did not want to do this and instead of going to Ninevah he went in the opposite direction and got on a boat going elsewhere. While they were at sea the waves began to rise up and a great storm came upon them. They called Jonah to see if he had any ideas as they had all prayed to their gods and nothing had happened. Jonah told them to throw him over the side of the boat into the sea. He explained that God was mad at him because he disobeyed God’s orders. Once they threw Jonah off the boat, the seas calmed, and those that were on the boat offered a sacrifice to God and made vows to him. You can read more about this in the Bible in the book of Jonah.
Another time that God calmed the storm is recounted in Matthew 8:23-27. “Then he got into the boat and his disciples followed him. Suddenly a furious storm came up on the lake, so that the waves swept over the boat. But Jesus was sleeping. The disciples went and woke him, saying, “Lord, save us! We’re going to drown!” He replied, “You of little faith, why are you so afraid?” Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the waves, and it was completely calm. The men were amazed and asked, “What kind of man is this? Even the winds and the waves obey him!”
The third time I was thinking about was when Jesus was walking on water to get to the boat. This can be found in Matthew 14:22-33. “Immediately Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowd. After he had dismissed them, he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray. Later that night, he was there alone, and the boat was already a considerable distance from land, buffeted by the waves because the wind was against it. Shortly before dawn Jesus went out to them, walking on the lake. When the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified. “It’s a ghost,” they said, and cried out in fear. But Jesus immediately said to them: “Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.” “Lord, if it’s you,” Peter replied, “tell me to come to you on the water.” “Come,” he said. Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!” Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. “You of little faith,” he said, “why did you doubt?” And when they climbed into the boat, the wind died down. Then those who were in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”
I think each of these instances can teach us a lesson about what we should do when we are in a storm and the waves are rising and we need God to come and quiet them. In the first story, Jonah was trying to avoid doing what God asked him to do. God gave him a direct order, and he didn’t want to do it, so he thought he could run away from the problem. I am not sure if you know the story of Jonah or not, but running away did not solve his problem. In fact, as soon as he was thrown overboard he was swallowed whole by a giant fish and there he stayed until he agreed to go to Ninevah. Has this ever happened to you? No, I don’t mean have you ever been swallowed by a giant fish. I mean have you ever tried to run from your problems, or responsibilities, only to end up in a worse situation than you could have imagined. I am not sure exactly what Jonah was running from. At first I thought he was scared of the people in Ninevah hurting him, as they were terrible people. Then I read that he was running away because he knew they would repent and he didn’t think they deserved forgiveness. Either way, his situation did not improve by avoiding this responsibility.
Running from our problems don’t make them go away. Jonah still had to go to Ninevah and preach repentance but he ended up first having to get thrown into the sea and spend a really long time all alone in the belly of a giant fish. Sometimes we are called to do things we don’t want to do. You may feel that you have a completely logical reason for not wanting to do it. Maybe you feel you aren’t qualified for the task or maybe you are afraid, whatever the reason is you don’t want to do it. Running from this task or avoiding it is only prolonging the inevitable. I think what this first story teaches us is that we should just do the task God is asking us to do. We may not think we are capable or qualified to do it but God wouldn’t ask us to do it if he wasn’t going to equip us for the task. If we are doing what the Lord is asking us to do, we can’t fail. He won’t let us.
The second story teaches us that we should trust in the Lord. Jesus was on the boat with them. He is the son of God. They could have just asked him to calm the waves and He would have. They could have prayed to God, and He would have calmed the waves as well. Every time I hear the words “you of little faith” in the Bible I wince a little. I wonder how many times God has said this in heaven when he watches me do something, or when he hears my thoughts. We all find ourselves in situations when we feel like the waters are rising and we can’t see a way out. I think this second story is teaching us to turn to God. Trust that he will take command of the situation. This is not easy. Sometimes the way out seems so impossible and though we know that God can do anything, we have trouble imagining that He would do that. Also, sometimes we may feel alone as if God is not with us during the storm. This second story also teaches us that God is always there. We don’t have to be afraid because God is right there in the storm with us. He knows what we need and is just waiting for us to ask Him for it.
I think the third story is maybe a little more subtle. I think the lesson from the third story can be found when we look at Peter’s interactions with Jesus. Everyone on the boat was afraid of this man walking on water towards them. They thought he was a ghost. “Lord, if it’s you,” Peter replied, “tell me to come to you on the water.” “Come,” he said. Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!” Peter was walking on water, even though he had never done it before, even though it was windy. Jesus told Him to come and Peter did. So, what happened? Peter looked away from Jesus. He shifted his focus. Once he looked away and started thinking about something else, other than Jesus, he started to sink. Isn’t this what happens to us?
If you look at the storms in your life, the times when you felt like you may not survive, where was your focus? Was your focus on all of your problems and all of the ways that you felt like you were drowning? If you are like most of us, yes, that is exactly what you were focused on. Its so easy to get wrap up in our problems and spend all of our time trying to come up with a way to get ourselves out of the storm. This third story teaches us where our focus needs to be. We need to turn our focus toward Jesus. He is the solution to all of our problems. God already has the answers worked out for every problem or situation that you can get yourself into. We just have to turn to Him and ask Him to save us. If He can command the waves in the sea to settle down then he can certainly calm the waves in your life. If we keep our focus on the Lord, we will walk right through the storms in our lives. God will calm the storms if we just ask.
Dear Heavenly Father I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord I ask that you help us do the things you ask us to do without trying to avoid them. Lord I ask that you help us not run from my problems as it never makes the problems go away. Heavenly father help us to keep our focus fixed on you. Help us to turn to you when the storm is raging and the waves are rising. Lord we know you were always there with us in the storm and we thank you for that. We know that you can fix all of our problems please help us remember this when we forget. Lord help us to be like Peter and jump out of that boat to walk towards you. We thank you so much Lord for all you were doing in our lives. We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus holy name, amen.
Live Unoffended By God
Matthew 11:6 “And blessed is he who takes no offense at me.”
This is a tiny sentence in a great big bible. You may have heard it many times before and not even noticed it because it is so small. Also, you may have heard and it not understood what it meant. This had definitely happened to me before. I have read something and for one reason or another I did not understand what it meant. Sometimes I will look at the footnotes and will get a better understanding of what the statement meant. To be honest, I am not sure if I heard this verse before or not. I know that I definitely did not understand what it meant or take any notice of it.
That is, until I read about it in that book I keep talking about The Circle Maker by Mark Batterson. You really must read that book, it is so good! Anyway, as soon as I heard about what this verse meant, I knew I wanted to share it with people because I had never thought of it before and I know it is something that we can all do. In the book Mark talks about this couple he knows that are prayer warriors or prayer giants. You know the kind of people I am talking about, right? The people who seem to have a direct line to God. All of their prayers seem to get answered. My mom and dad are prayer warriors. They have had so many answered prayers and witnessed numerous miracles. If you know my parents, they are the first people you call when you are in need of prayers.
Mark talked about how the couple’s prayers for others were often answered, however, prayers for their own lives went unanswered. He said they took a leap of faith and went into the world of filmmaking and they lost their life savings because the financial backing promised to them never came through. They lost their home in a fire. The lost three out of four parents in four years. And a rare genetic condition has taken a toll physically, emotionally and financially. It seemed like God was answering everyone else’s prayers, except their own. Have you ever felt this way? Have you ever felt like God was answering the prayers of everyone around you, but yours were going unheard for some reason? This couple said there had been moments when they have been tempted to throw in the towel, but the promise above has kept them going. “And Blessed is he who takes no offense to me.
Here is the context of that promises as Mark Batterson explains it in his book The Circle Maker:
Jesus is doing miracles right and left. He is healing diseases driving out demons and restoring sight to the blind, but John the Baptist misses the miracle train. It seems like Jesus is rescuing everybody except His most faithful follower, who is in prison. And John is his cousin, nonetheless. It seems like Jesus could have, and maybe should have, organized a rescue operation and busted him out before he was beheaded. Instead He sent a message via John's disciples. He tells them to tell John about all the miracles He is doing, and then He asks them to relay this promise: "Blessed is the one who is not offended by me.”
I had never thought of this before. I had never thought about how John the Baptist might have felt seeing his cousin performing miracles all around him and yet he was stuck in jail. I wonder if he did feel offended? My first instinct is to say that he didn’t because he seemed like he was so close to God and I think we tend to put anyone who we think is that close to God on a pedestal. We think that because they were devoted to God that they have it all together and that that following God and His ways comes easy to them. When I start to think like this, I need to remind myself that they are human and we all struggle with our thoughts and actions. I don’t know if John the Baptist felt offended by Christ or not. I do know that this is a completely normal human response.
If you are feeling offended because God is answering the prayers of all those around you and not yours please know that this is completely normal and understandable. We can be happy for others and sad for ourselves at the same time. I know I may keep mentioning that you can feel two things at the same time, but that is because I keep talking to so many people that are feeling guilty for being upset about something because they should be feeling grateful. Or, they feel guilty because they should be feeling happy that their friend just got pregnant, but they feel sad that they have not gotten pregnant yet. You don’t have to feel guilty about your feelings. It is ok to have two competing emotions at the same time. It is not just ok, it is completely normal.
I wanted to share this verse because I know some people that have been feeling offended by God lately. They are wondering why everyone else seems to be more favored or more deserving. If this is you, I hope you take comfort in this passage. “Blessed is the one who is not offended by me.”
God does not favor others more than you. God is a mystery. We don’t know why He does what He does. We know He has a plan for our lives and we also know He is not super forthcoming with what that plan is. He is more of a “reveal one step at a time” God. One thing we know for sure is that He keeps His promises. So, if God is not answering your prayers it doesn’t mean that He doesn’t care for you as much as others. You know Jesus had to have cared for His cousin. You know God had to have been proud of His faithful servant John who lived in the woods and baptized people and preached repentance. And yet, John the Baptist was beheaded.
God loves you! He loves each one of His children equally and more than we could ever imagine. If your prayers aren’t being answered, I know it is hard. I know it is hard to see others receive their miracles while you are still waiting. I know it may feel like you are never going to receive your answers. Please don’t give up asking. Please don’t give up expecting them to be answered. Try to rely on this promise that you are Blessed. My hope is this shift in perspective will help you not throw the towel in. Instead of thinking God must not like you or favor you because your prayers aren’t being answered, you can know that you are blessed. You can know that you are in good company.
Dear Heavenly Father I ask that you bless everyone listening to this episode today. Lord we ask that you help us be an offended by you. We thank you for all the miracles you're doing in the world today and all the prayers that you have answered. Lord we don't know why our prayers may be going unanswered and that is really difficult for us. Lord we ask that you help us with this. If our prayers haven't been answered yet we pray that you give us the perseverance to keep asking and to not give up. We ask that you give us wisdom and clarity if you want us to stop asking for something. As with Paul when he asked for you to heal the thorn in his side and you told him your grace was sufficient for him. If we are asking for something that we don't need or you don't want us to have please take that desire from us. Lord we are so thankful for all you were doing in the world today. Please help us to be happy for others when you answer their prayers. Please help us to not be offended by this and to know in the depths of our hearts that you love us and you have a wonderful plan for our life. Lord we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Ask Again
Acts 9:1-6 “ Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples. He went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem. As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” “Who are you, Lord?” Saul asked. “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” he replied. “Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.”
If you are not familiar with the story of Saul I suggest you read Acts chapter 9:1-19. I did not want to take up too much of your time recounting the whole story but I will summarize it later. When I was thinking of what to write about I got to thinking about how many people I talk to, that are worried about their children. They are worried because their children are not attending mass, or are no longer Catholic/Christian. They worry that they, as parents, are not making a difference in their child’s faith, or that their example is not enough. I have these same thoughts as well. I thought I would share something that I feel God pointed out to me that has given me a lot of comfort. People have always told me that if I pray for my children God will answer my prayers. And that they will come back to the church in His time, not mine. However, I still worried because I know that God gave us free will. I always thought that meant that the boys needed to at least be open to him, or maybe the needed to be looking for him in order for them to be saved. And I wondered if they would be open to Him. I wondered what would happen if they weren’t ever looking for Him. However, one day God gave me a thought, “What about Saul?”
In Acts 9:1-19 we learn about Saul. Saul was someone who was persecuting anyone that believed in Jesus. When he was on his way to another town, with the intent of finding anyone that believed in Jesus and bringing them back to Jerusalem in chains, he was blinded by a vision of Jesus. Jesus asked him why he was persecuting him? Saul was instructed to go into town and wait for someone to come and visit him. When Saul tried to open his eyes he was blind. A disciple of God went and cured his blindness and he was immediately baptized. This is of course the abbreviated version, I suggest you read the full version as it is a great story. So, if God can completely convert Saul, who was not open to Jesus, or looking for him, but was murdering and persecuting others who believe in him. Then just think how easy it will be for God to win our children back when he decides they are ready. I hope that this can put your mind as ease at least a little.
A second part to this, it that sometimes I think that we get tired of asking for the same thing over and over again. We assume the answer is no because God hasn’t answered our prayer yet. However, when we read Luke 11:5-8 “And he said to them, “Suppose one of you has a friend to whom he goes at midnight and says, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, for a friend of mine has arrived at my house from a journey and I have nothing to offer him, and he says in reply from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door has already been locked and my children and I are already in bed. I cannot get up to give you anything. I tell you, if he does not get up to give him the loaves because of their friendship, he will get up to give him whatever he needs because of his persistence. I know I have talked to you before about the woman who was persistent in going to the judge and asking for justice. She did not receive it because he was kind, she received it because of her persistence. We must keep asking. God will reward our persistence. If we need to reach out and have someone else ask on our behalf when we are weak, then we should do that. However, we should not give up asking just because God hasn’t answered yet. He will in his time! I am going to read a piece of writing that beautifully illustrates the “Ask Again” idea. I first heard this on the Big Life Devotional Podcast and then I went to Facebook and found it on her page titled Tera’s Online Christian Journey. I will put a link to her page in the show notes. To visit her Facebook Page click here.
ASK AGAIN By: Tera Elness
I know, I know, you’ve already asked Him a million times, I see those eyes rolling. But today, ask Him a million and one. Yes. Ask Him AGAIN. Ask Him again for that child to come home. That marriage to be healed. That mountain to move. Ask Him again for that friendship to mend. That work to begin. That end-of-tunnel light to appear. Ask Him again for the one who needs rescue, the one who needs healing, the one who needs new direction, new guidance, new focus. Yes. Even if that ‘one’ is you. Ask Him again for what you need. For what you want. For joy in the sorrow. Help in the struggle. A sip of living-water in the heat of your schedule...and the time to just sit at the well, amen? Ask Him again. Ask Him again to provide springs in your land; and while you’re at it, give thanks for that land, no matter how dry it is now, knowing He’s given it to you with good purpose. Yes. Ask Him again. Ask Him again to dig up the soil and plant the seeds. Ask Him again to stir up and settle, make and remake, pour out His peace that passes all understanding, because frankly; you could use a hefty dose about now. Yes. And Amen. Ask Him again for all that seems lost and all that seems nowhere even near the city of possible...and ask Him believing He can. Yes. Ask Him again. Not because you don’t think He heard you the first million times, but because you are realizing the longer you {truly} live, that persistence is a pretty strong faith-builder; not to mention how close it keeps you to Him for whom all things are possible and nothing is too hard, and because faith-based strength to persevere and closeness with your Creator is what you REALLY need. Whew. Yes. Absolutely. Ask Him again. With fresh eyes and a renewed spirit and a passionate resolve that He can, and if it’s His Will...He will. And if it’s not, you will keep on asking. You will keep on seeking. You will keep on believing just like Steve Perry says. Because persistent faith is where it’s at. It fastens it’s gaze on hope. The hope that is always three steps {Father, Son, Holy Spirit} ahead, providing the perfect focal point. Yes. And it never disappoints. Amen. So today; bow low, look up, and ask Him AGAIN.
Dear Heavenly Father I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord I ask that you bring peace and comfort to all of us that are worried about our children or nieces and nephews. Lord we worry because we know how great you are and we want so badly for our children to know this. Lord reassure us that you are in charge and that you have claimed our children and that we don't have to worry about them. Lord give us the strength and persistence to keep on asking even when we're tired. Lord if we don't have the strength to keep asking give us the wisdom to ask her friends to pray with us or for us. We love you Lord and we're going to keep asking because we have faith and hope in you every single day of our lives. Heavenly father we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus is holy name amen.
There Is A Time For Everything
Ecclesiates 3:1-8 “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.”
This verse does not tell us anything new. I think we all know that there are different times in our lives when we are called to do different things. However, I do think it serves as a great reminder. Sometimes we can be so focused on what we want that we don’t stop to see or ask what God wants. For instance, I have been focused on building my business over this last year and God has been telling me that it is not time for that right now. It is time to focus on my family and the time to build my business will come soon. You may be in a similar circumstance, you are wanting to do one thing and God is telling you that it is not time for that right now. Sometimes, we don’t want to hear this. We are like children and we want to do what we want to do and we don’t want our Father to tell us we can’t. However, I can assure you that if you do listen, and you do things in God’s timing, they will go so much smoother. There will be less obstacles and dead ends. If you are getting promptings that it is a new time in your life, I urge you to take some time to listen to what God is saying. Remember, His plan is better than our plan.
I think these last 18 months have been a mixture of all the things above. For some of us it was a time to slow down and spend more time with our families. It meant less appointments that we were leaving the house for and more time at home. For others it meant they were even busier trying to save their businesses or work from home while being their children’s teacher. It was a time for some to embrace those living in their house a little more and for those living alone it was a time to refrain from embracing. It was a difficult time and we are still not out of the woods yet.
Sometimes when were are in a difficult time it can feel like that time is never going to end. It can feel like we will be struggling forever. God always keeps His promises though. So when he says there will be a time to weep and a time to laugh, He means it. Maybe you are currently in a time when you are weeping a lot. If this is you, know that there will be a time to laugh just ahead of you. If you are in a time of mourning, there will be a time to dance. The problem for many of us is that we don’t know when that new time is coming. I think it would be easier for us if we did know. If we knew we were going to be sad for 2 months, or 6 months, or 3 years and then we would get to be happy it would be easier. If we know there is an end in sight, it is easier to keep pushing forward. But what about when we don’t know?
My friend once told me that she was so tired of everyone telling her that this was just a season because it felt like such a long one and there did not seem to be any end in sight. I get that. It is so hard to keep going on without knowing what is coming next or when it is coming. If this is you, know that you are not a lone. There are a lot of people that are stuck in a long period of suffering and are just waiting for that change in season. It is coming. Don’t give up hope! I don’t know when but I do know that God will not let you suffer forever. He will bring you a time of laughter and dancing.
One thing I have heard several times over the last few years is that if you want the time of suffering to go by quicker then the best thing to do is to praise the Lord while you are still in the difficult time. I believe this will have two benefits. First, you will not be as miserable in the situation because when you praise God you feel better. When you are regularly praising God for how wonderful He is and thanking Him for the good things He is doing, it helps you become more grateful and I think it also brings more joy into your life. I can’t think about how amazing God is without smiling and feeling joy. Even if I a am not joyful about some aspects of my life, I can still be joyful about the miraculous things God does every day. For instance, did you know that not everyone got the gift of a brand new day of life today? There are some people that did not wake up this morning, and you did.
Secondly, our praise makes God happy. He will reward those who praise Him. I think if we can show God that we can be grateful and praise Him when times are tough, then he will reward us with better times. It says in Matthew 25:23 “His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful slave. You were faithful with a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.” I believe this is the Lord telling us that if we can be faithful in small things, he will reward us with bigger things.
What does this mean for us and how does it help us when we are in a difficult situation? I think when we are struggling we can ask ourselves these questions: Can we be faithful with our praise, even when we are struggling? Can we continue to do the next right step even if when we can’t see how it all turns out? Can we be faithful with our trust in God in the little things? Can we be faithful now and forever? Yes, we don’t know what will happen. Yes, we don’t know how long we will be in this period of suffering. However, we believe that God keeps all His promises and that there is something good on the other side of this suffering. We just need to hold on and keep praising God and being faithful and He will deliver us from this hard time. I know this is easier said than done. But, please keep holding on. Please know that the season will change and you will have your time for laughter and dancing.
Dear Heavenly Father I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord I ask that you be with all of us in whatever season of life we are in right now. I ask that you make it clear what time this is for us. If we are in a difficult season I ask that you give us the strength to keep on moving forward. If this is a time for us to rest Lord I ask you to make that clear to us. Lord we ask that you help us to praise you wherever we're at right now. We love you Lord and we are so grateful for all that you do. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
God’s Love For Us
Ephesians 3:16-19 “I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”
I love this verse. I probably say that about a lot of these verses. I think when I am reading through the whole Bible, one chapter at a time I miss a lot of the information that is contained in each verse. I get the idea of the chapter and I understand the lesson and the main things I am supposed to learn, and yet even as I write this I am not sure I do get all the things I am to learn as it seems like there is so much in each verse. I am really enjoying taking a look at each verse or couple of verses individually and trying to see what they are telling us and how they apply to our lives.
I think this verse is particularly special that I read it today as I have a friend that is struggling with inner strength. Her situation if so difficult right now and she was trying so hard to be the strong one. She was trying to hold it together for her family. I bet if you are a parent, you find yourself doing this a lot. We feel all the weight of the family on our shoulders. No matter if you are a mom or a dad, you feel the weight. We try to stay strong because we feel if we fall apart our family will fall apart. We stay strong because we want our kids to feel secure and know that we have got it all together. We want them to know we are there for them. We all do this, you are not alone.
My friend said something today that made me think, if she is feeling this way, maybe others are too. Then when I read this verse I thought it could help me explain why we don’t need to feel this way. My friend said she tries to stay strong because she doesn’t want God to be disappointed in her. I am guessing that she is not the only one of us that feels this way. It can be tough because we know that we have a lot to be grateful for and we don’t want God to think we are ungrateful for all the things that are going right. We love God and we want to please Him. We want to do what we can to make Him happy. He is our Heavenly Father and it makes sense that we don’t want to disappoint Him.
My first thought was that we can’t disappoint Him. He loves us more than we could even imagine. However, I don’t think that is true. I think that He is probably disappointed when we sin, especially if it is something that we know better than to do and yet we do it anyway. We know how He wants us to live and so if we are continually breaking his commandments, He probably does get disappointed with us. Short of this, I do not think He gets disappointed with us. God is the one who made us who we are. He made us with our unique personalities and all of our feelings. He knows that we are not perfect. I don’t think that He gets disappointed in us when we feel weak. God said in 2 Corinthians 12:9 “But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” God’s power is made perfect in our weakness. It is when we can admit our weakness that God can move in and give us power.
“I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.” This is a powerful statement. The Holy Spirit lives in each one of us. And God gives us power through this Spirit in our inner being. Through this power of the Holy Spirit Christ dwells in our heart as well. Think about that for a minute. You not only have the power of the Holy Spirit strengthening your inner being, but you also have Christ dwelling in your heart. You can handle anything that comes your way. God has you covered. He is there every step of the way. This is something that He is repeatedly telling our Prayer Group. I am there for you, in good times and in bad. I will lift you up when you fall. Lean on me in times of trouble.
When we are weak, God is not disappointed, He expects it. He knows we can’t do it all on our own and He doesn’t want us to. He wants us to lean into Him. He wants us to ask for help. His Glory shines when we ask for help. Think about your children, or your pets. What do you feel inside when they ask for help, or when they are sad? Are you disappointed or frustrated with them? No, you love them and you would do anything to help them. This makes me think of a verse in Matthew 7:11 "If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!” In this circumstance it would be more like “If you have compassion on your children when they are sad and feeling weak, how much more compassion would your Heavenly Father have on you?” He loves you!
The second verse from above describes this love. “And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” Did you catch it? It talks about being able to grasp how wide and long and high and deep the love of God is. I wonder if we are even capable of this? The Lord is also repeating this message over and over again to our prayer group. This is a word that was given at one of our meetings, “I love you so much. You cannot understand the depth of my love. If I let the power of my love loose and hugged you I would crush you. My love for you is that great. It consumes you.” Can you imagine this kind of love? Think of the biggest bear hug you have received from someone, or maybe given to someone. Now times that by a million. That is how much God loves us.
I really liked this image. I think it helps me to imagine how much God loves us. It also helps me to remember that He loves us more than we are capable of loving others. You can see examples of God’s love all throughout the Bible. There were so many times when he gave grace to people who didn’t deserve it. When you read about all Jesus’ interactions with people, they were full of love. When I am struggling with thoughts that I might be letting God down, I remember this word and how much He loves me. I truly believe that He looks down on us and is so proud of us for all of our efforts. I will leave you with another word that was given at our prayer group. “My children, you strive hard to follow me. But I am asking you to simply lean into me. When doubts assail you and enemies crowd near; when your own thoughts rise in rebellion against my goodness; praise me and watch me work.”
Dear Heavenly Father I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord we ask that you help us to feel your love today. We pray as it said in the verse that we are able to grasp how wide and long and high and deep the love of Christ is. Heavenly father we love you so much and we know our love is just a fraction of how much you love us remind us of this Lord. When we are struggling and we feel we are letting you down remind us of your love. We are grateful Lord for all you've given us and we know that you are with us even in the hard times. Help us lean into you. Help us to praise you Lord even when we're sad and even when it's difficult. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus is holy name amen.
Renewed Strength
Isaiah 40:31 “They that hope in the LORD will renew their strength, they will soar on eagles’ wings; They will run and not grow weary, walk and not grow faint.”
This is a message that I have been receiving a lot lately. The part where is it says they will run and not grow weary, walk and not grow faint. I feel that God is wanting us to know that he is here for us. He knows what we are going through and if we hope in Him, He will renew our strength. It seems like a lot of people that I know are going through some really difficult things right now and they are definitely feeling weary. God wants us to know that he is with us in our struggle. When we feel weary we can renew our strength by leaning into Him, instead of pulling away.
What do I mean by pulling away? When we are going through a hard time sometimes we get mad at God. We don’t understand what is going on. We know He could fix the situation and we don’t understand why He is not doing anything. There is never a time when God is “not doing anything.” However, if we can’t see what he is doing, or we don’t understand what he is doing then it may seem like he is doing nothing. This can cause us to pull away. This can make it hard for us to pray. Our hope can sometimes diminish because we can’t see a way out of the situation. We can’t see a way for God to use the situation for our good.
This is normal. If you are in this situation right now, please know you are not alone. You are among good company. There were even some Saints that found that they could not find the words to pray sometimes. God understands this. God is not looking for us to have all the answers. He is not looking for us to know exactly what to say to Him, or what to do in each circumstance. He is just looking for us. Yes, that means you too. He just wants you to be with Him in whatever way you can.
He wants you to hope in him even if you don’t know what to hope for. I know that may not make sense, how can you hope if you don’t know what to hope for? I think that just means that you hope in the fact that God has a plan. That even though you have no idea what the plan is, you know He has one. You hope in the promise that God uses all things for your good. That even though you don’t know how it will turn out, it will ultimately be for you good. I know this is not easy, but it is possible.
I am currently in a situation right now that I don’t understand. A very good friend of mine is in a lot of pain in the hospital. She has cancer. I know she is close to the Lord and if it is her time to go then she will be going to Heaven. I also know that she wants to get better. I know God could heal her. It seems to me that if I ask God to heal her, and I trust that He will heal her, that He will in fact heal her. I have read a lot of Bible passages and they all seem to support this theory. Ask and you will receive. Have faith and trust with all your heart and it will be granted. (ok, that last one was a paraphrase) You get what I mean though, right? However, I think this is a trap that the enemy has set up for us to fall into.
This is something that I struggle with, so I am letting the Holy Spirit lead my fingers as I type this and I want to acknowledge the fact that I have not figured this out yet. I am not an expert on this, I am on a journey of discovery and understanding just like you. I have prayed for understanding on this a lot. I know I have talked about this before recently when discussing losing a close friend and my dog. What I am talking about now is my understanding from my prayer time.
The reason I say this is a trap the enemy sets up for us to fall into is because there is so much potential for anger and doubt. If we ask God to heal her, and she dies, we will most likely get angry with God and not understand what is going on. We may stay angry for a long time. We may also start to doubt that there is a God, or that He actually hears our prayers. We may start to doubt ourselves if we read verses like Mark 11:22-23 “Jesus said to them in reply, “Have faith in God. Amen, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it shall be done for him.” It says “does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it shall be done for him.” So if it was not done for you then you may start to question if you could have done something differently. Would things have turned out differently if you had just believed more?
Do you see how all of those things are things that the enemy wants us to feel? He would do anything to try and destroy our relationship with our Heavenly Father. The enemy is the father of lies. I talked about him the other day and how he uses scripture against us sometimes. It is usually not a blatant lie. Do you see how he is not even changing anything about the scripture. He is just using it as a way to try and show you that God doesn’t keep his promises and that God can’t be trusted. This is anything but true and yet the enemy takes advantage of our weakened vulnerable states and plays with our emotions.
So, if it’s not true that God let us down, what is the truth? This is what I was asking God this morning. What came to my mind was that we don’t know the whole story. Only God does. First, if we ask Him to cure or heal someone, and they end up dying, He still cured them as there is no sickness in Heaven. They are no longer in pain and are restored back to perfect health. He did still answer our prayer, just not the way we wanted Him too. Second, we don’t know what is really in the heart of the person. Only God does. For instance, my friend stated that she wanted to go to rehab. This implies that she wanted to get better and go home, as this is the purpose and goal of rehab. She did not just want to go to hospice and just be comfortable. To you and I this would seem like she was not ready to die or that she felt like she wanted more time here. Therefor when I pray, I pray that she is healed here on earth and that she gets to keep on living.
However, only God knows what is truly in her heart. Only He knows why she wanted to go to rehab. Did she choose that because she is scared to die? Did she choose that because she is afraid her children aren’t ready for her to go? Did she choose that because she wanted more time with them? We don’t know what is in her heart, but God knows. We don’t know what His plan is and how He is going to use the outcome of this for everyone’s good. All we know is that right now she is in pain. We know what we want. We know what we think is best. He knows what is really best. He has seen the ending of her story. He wrote the ending of her story. If God chooses that this is the ending of my friend’s story it will not be because I did not believe enough, or trust enough. That is a lie the enemy is telling me. If she dies it is because God has decided it was for her good.
If you are struggling and find yourself in a difficult situation right now, know that God is answering your prayers. The answers may not be what you thought they would be, but they are the best answers. God is not just trying to make you feel better in the moment. He knows the ending of your story and he is working all things for your good. You may not understand what He is doing, but if you can hope in the Lord anyway, he will renew your strength and you will “soar on eagle’s wings.”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. We ask that you help us to lean into you when times are tough. We ask that you help us to see all you are doing in our situation. We ask that you strengthen us and help us to fly on eagles wings, especially when we feel we can’t go on any longer. Lord, help us to not grow weary. We ask that you help us to understand when we feel like we don’t have any understanding. Lord we ask that you comfort us and help remind us that you will use all things for our good. We love you Lord and we know that you do so much for us. We are so grateful that you always keep your promises. You are so amazing! We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Have Mercy
Jude 1:20-23 “But you, beloved, build yourselves up in your most holy faith; pray in the holy Spirit. Keep yourselves in the love of God and wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. On those who waver, have mercy; save others by snatching them out of the fire; on others have mercy with fear, abhorring even the outer garment stained by the flesh.
This is a great verse because it tells us to build ourselves up in the most holy faith. It tells us to pray in the Holy Spirt and to keep ourselves in the love of God and wait for His mercy to lead us to eternal life. However, it doesn’t just stop there. It doesn’t stop with God telling us to take care of ourselves. It goes on to talk about how we should have mercy on those that waver in their faith. It tells us to snatch others out of the fire. This is a pretty vivid image. I think it paints an accurate picture of how important it is that we save others as well.
I think mercy is something that we need a whole lot more of in the world today. Mercy and Grace seem to go hand in hand and this world seems to be in a shortage of both of them. This world, or at least this country, the United States of America, seems to be so divided. If someone doesn’t believe the same way that we do, we tend to want nothing to do with them. Or, we want to argue with them and tell them all the reasons why their opinions are wrong. Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t think things can change with out us talking about our differences. However, these need to be respectful, calm conversations where both sides are listening to the other with the goal of understanding where each side is coming from.
These are not the conversations that I have seen happening in our country for a long time now. I did see a conversation like this last summer at my nephews wedding. My brother in law and my husband had a respectful conversation about their thoughts on a bunch of different issues going on right now. They couldn’t have been further apart on some issues, but they both listened respectfully and actually learned that they agreed on some things. I think they also cleared up some misunderstandings about some issues. It was nice to see and a welcome change to the conversations I am used to hearing.
Sometimes we can get so caught up in what we believe. We think that we are right and that must mean that the other person is wrong. Something I have been learning a lot about over the last few years is that two opposing things can be true at the same time. You can love your parents and you can also feel like you hate them some moments. You can be super happy that you got a promotion and also sad that you are leaving your old job, or the friends at your old job. In most circumstances, neither side is 100% correct. There are pros and cons to both sides. Their are facts that are misunderstood, or taken out of context on both sides. Also, our emotions always enter into the arguments and for good or bad, this makes us less objective.
Our feelings for the people we are talking to or arguing with can get caught up in our feelings for what they are saying. We can start to think that they are bad people just because we don’t like the things that they are saying. The day that this reading was given at prayer group the following word or prophecy was also given. “What I hear the Lord saying to me is that whether you believe it, whether you like them, whether you understand them, God tells us to love them. Love them in their misunderstandings, love them pray for them, don't be like them.” I think this is important for us all to hear. God is not asking us to just pray for those that we love or those that we agree with. He is asking us to pray for everyone. He is asking us to even pray for those that we don’t agree with and those we don’t like. He is asking us to have pray for those that we don’t understand.
I think in this verse God is explaining to us that everyone is at a different place in their journey. He is saying to have mercy on everyone, but in very different ways. He is saying to pray for everyone and to love everyone, but also he is warning us not to get so close that we become like those that are not following God’s ways. He says to “snatch them out of the fire,” but he also says “on others have mercy with fear, abhorring even the outer garment stained by the flesh.” To me this means that some people we can save, with God’s help, and others we need to have mercy, and pray for them, but that we need to be careful that we do not become like them. I love how the word that was given this day was about how we needed to love everyone. This is something that is so hard to do sometimes.
Actually, all of this is hard to do most of the time. It is hard to love someone that is saying and doing things that you don’t agree with. Possible things that are hurting you or your loved ones. It is hard to have mercy for people that you feel are wrong in so many ways. It is hard to have mercy for those that don’t seem to have any mercy themselves. It is hard to pray for people that have caused you harm. It’s hard to pray for people that seem so different, seem like they don’t care about anyone or anything. God understands that this is hard. I believe this is why he started the verse with, “But you, beloved, build yourselves up in your most holy faith; pray in the holy Spirit. Keep yourselves in the love of God.”
Have you ever been on an airplane before? Before you take off the flight attendant goes over all of the safety precautions. One of the first things that they tell you is that if the cabin air pressure drops you oxygen masks will drop down from the ceiling. They warn you to put your mask on before you help someone else. Why is this so important? This is important because if you help others first, by the time you get around to helping yourself you may not have the energy. I believe this is similar to what God is telling us. He is telling us to make sure that we are taking care of ourselves. He is telling us to build ourselves up in our faith, to pray and keep in the love of God. This will fortify our faith and strengthen us so that we can go out and snatch others from the fire.
If we are not keeping our faith strong we may have great intentions to go out and to help others and yet we find ourselves being pulled down instead. God tells us to love others and to pray for them, but to not become like them. This is a hard task. It is difficult to not give in and become like others in the world today. Especially if you are surrounded by sin in the world. However, if you are strong in your faith, if you are praying and staying in God’s love, you will have all the strength you need to resist these temptations. The next time you are in a situation with someone that you don’t agree with or that you feel is not a great person, remember that God is calling you to have mercy on them. Instead of arguing with them, say a quick prayer for them. The next time you pass by someone and you don’t understand them or what they are doing, instead of judging them, say a quick prayer for them. We are all going through something. We have no idea what someone else is going through, what experiences led them to where they are. We need less judgement in this world and more understanding and love.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. We ask that you help us to have more mercy and grace for others. We ask that you help us to judge less and seek to understand more. Lord, We ask that you strengthen our faith and understanding. We ask that you help us to stay in your love, so that we may be strong enough to offer love and mercy to others. Lord, we ask that you help us to remember in the moment that we are your ambassadors of love and mercy. The only experience that some people with have with you Lord is through us, help it to be a positive experience. Help your love and mercy to shine through us! Father, we are so grateful for all you do for us. We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Serving The Lord
Collosians 3:23-24 “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.”
I saw this verse on Facebook this morning and I felt moved to use it for today’s episode. I think it spoke to me because I know several people that are really not happy with their jobs right now. Sometimes when we are not happy with our jobs we can feel stuck. We don’t feel as though we can quit our job as we need to pay our bills, we may have a family to take care of, we may need the medical insurance. Whatever the reason is, just quitting our job because we are unhappy with it is not a feasible option. However, staying in a job where you are unhappy and stressed out or angry every day is also not good for your physical or mental health. So, what is one to do when they are stuck in this situation.
I think that today’s verse can help with this situation. Sometimes a situation that seems unbearable can become bearable with a change in perspective. This may seem too easy and some of you may be rolling your eyes and thinking that I am a Ms. Sunshine Pollyanna that always sees the good in everything and thinks that everything can be fixed with a positive attitude. While you are not wrong, I do feel as though a good attitude can make any situation better, I am also not saying that a perspective switch would be easy. We are all pretty stuck in the way we see things and switching that perspective may be simple but it is not easy.
There are many factors that can go into not liking our job. One of the main reasons is that we don’t like our bosses. We think they don’t treat us well, or we don’t understand where they are coming from. This can make working for them really difficult. It is hard to go to work each day and try to do your best when you don’t respect the person you are working for, and it is even harder when you are feeling unappreciated or poorly compensated for this job that you are doing.
This verse is letting us know that we should always try to do our best work and to put our whole heart into our work. Instead of thinking of your job as something that you are doing to make your boss happy or something you are doing just to get a paycheck, think of your job as something you are doing for God. Think of God as your boss. This shift in perspective may help to make your days go by a little quicker and they may make you try a little harder at your job. It may also make it more enjoyable, if you let it.
We are the masters of our emotions. Well, we can be the masters of our emotions. If we want to be in charge of our emotions then we need to work at it. We need to figure out what we are feeling in different circumstances and why we are feeling it. If we are upset with our boss, it is our responsibility to control our feelings about that situation. There are ways that you can change your feeling about your job or your boss without them changing at all. This may seem crazy, but it is true. We have all heard the saying, “You can’t make anyone change,” or some variation of that. The idea of this is that you can change yourself, but you can’t change anyone else. Although we have all heard this before and at some level we all know this. I don’t think we always believe it. I think that we all think, or maybe just wish, that we could change someone else. We think that the other person is the problem, their actions are the problem and if they would just change, everything would just be better.
This may be true, but most likely it is only partly true. You and your actions are a part of the equation as well. You own a part of each interaction you have. If you change your part of the interaction it will change the whole interaction. It is possible to change your perspective of your job or your boss and then change who you are showing up as at the job. Also, the perspective shift and help change your emotions about your job or your boss. This can make all the difference in the world.
How do we go about changing our perspective? One way is to change the story you are telling yourself each day. I am sure I have probably talked about this before, and that’s because it affects so much of our lives. Each day you are telling yourself a story about your job or your boss. It doesn’t matter if you are happy at your job or not, there is a story you are telling yourself. If you are happy with your job you are probably telling yourself that you like your job, you are well liked there, and you have a great boss and co-workers. If you don’t like your job you may be telling yourself that you hate work, that your boss is out to get you, that you are bored with what you are doing, that your co-workers don’t like you, etc. This story, whatever it is, has an affect on your emotions. If you change your story you change your emotions.
If you want to change your story all you have to do is come up with something that will serve your needs better. Can you see how telling yourself, or saying every day that you hate your job will create negative emotions? Can you see how telling yourself that your boss has it out for you would cause you to not like your boss? One way to do this is to ask yourself some questions. First, why do your think your boss has it out for you? Is there another reason why he may be acting the way he is acting? What could you be telling yourself that would help create a better emotion? One example would be, my boss is really stressed at home and so he is stressed at work. Another would be that he is under a lot of pressure from his boss. The truth is you probably have no idea why he is the way he is. So, if you don’t know the correct story, then why not tell yourself something that creates a better emotion?
Another way to shift your perspective is to try to put yourself in their shoes. Let’s shift from work to another issue. It’s the same concept, but different scenario. What about if you are really frustrated at home because you child is not listening when you tell them to go to bed at night. The story you are telling yourself is probably that they don’t respect you because they are not listening to you. Or maybe you are telling yourself that they are spoiled and just want to get their way. If we want to shift our perspective by putting ourselves in their shoes we would think about other reasons why they might want to stay up. Think back to when we were a child, why did we want to stay up? This helps us to not only change our perspective, but also have a little more empathy for the situation and that helps us react better. In the case of your job, put yourself in your boss or co-workers shoes and try to see a reason why their actions may make sense to them.
The last thing I will leave you with is going back to the verse. The last line of the verse says, “It is the Lord Christ you are serving.” This is important to remember and may be the best way to shift your perspective. If we keep this thought, “It is the Lord Christ I am serving,” in the front of our minds then I think our perspective is bound to be more positive. If you went to work each day thinking about the fact that you are doing it for Christ, wouldn’t that help shift your perspective? If each interaction you had with everyone you first thought was I am doing this for Christ, don’t you think your interactions would go differently? Before you do anything ask yourself, “Is it Christ Jesus that I am serving?” After your do something ask yourself, “Did I serve Christ Jesus well?”
Dear Heavenly Father I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord I ask that you help us all to shift any negative perceptions that we have. I ask that you help us to remember that we are serving you Lord. Help us to be a good servant. Lord Jesus I ask you to shine a light on any negative stories we might be telling ourselves and I ask that you give us the wisdom to change the stories to ones that help us live in your light. Lord if we are struggling with work or family life or in any areas in our life I ask that you shine a light on what we need to change. Lord we ask you to lead us in those changes so we can become the people you want us to be. Lord we love you and we thank you for all that you do for us. We asked all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus holy name, amen.
We Are Children Of God
John 12:2-14 “However, to those who did accept him and who believed in his name he granted the power to become children of God, who were born not from blood or human desire or human will, but from God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. And we saw his glory, the glory as of the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth.”
Wow, that is a powerful verse. To be honest, I didn’t see it at first. The first one or two time I read through this verse, nothing really stood out and actually I wasn’t sure I understood the first sentence. I was not sure what to talk about. Then, I reread it and the first sentence. It says God granted us the power to become children of God, who were not born from blood or human desire or human will, but from God. What I get out of that statement is that God gives us the power to be children on God. Those that accept Him and believe in His name, will become children of God. However, we won’t become children of god through human will or human desire.
To me, this means that if we accept the Lord and we believe in His name, we will be children of God. We do not have to do anything else. It is not based on our good deeds. We don’t become children of God because we do community service and we take care of the poor and feed the hungry. Although God does love it when we do that. He does want us to do those things. These are not the things that make us children of God though. We get to be children of God because God gave us that power. He granted us that right and nothing we do will take that away from us.
Sometimes I think that we want to be children of God so much that we put a lot of pressure on ourselves. We think if we do the right thing and say the right thing, then we will be worthy of being children of God. I appreciate that God is letting us know that this is not the case. That he is telling us that accepting Him and believing in Him is all it takes. Now, does this mean that you can go around and be terrible to everyone and that is ok? No. God still had expectations for us and He tells us how he wants us to live in order to get into Heaven. There are things we can do to fracture our relationship with the Lord. However, these things do not decide whether we are children of God or not.
Then the phrase says, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt amount us.” Jesus came to earth. God sent His only son to earth to become flesh so that He could save us. When you put it terms like that it is clear to see that there is nothing we could do to be worthy of this. That is a huge sacrifice for our benefit. Do you ever take the time to really let that sink in? I mean really sit and think about how much God gave up to save us? There was an email going around a long time ago, and it still surfaces every now and then during lent. It was an email about how a virus had come into he world, much like this current virus, Covid-19. It was discovered that a cure could be made from someone’s blood. Everyone had to be tested. It was mandated. Then it turns out that your son had the blood they needed. You were grateful that your son could help. You ask how much blood he would need to donate and they tell you all of it. I can’t even imagine what I would do. I get it, he would save everyone. At the same time, he is my son. This would be an impossible situation.
God was in an even more painful situation. We are all His children. He wanted to save us all. In order to do this, He sent his son down to earth to be mocked, whipped, and hung on a cross. Can you imagine the love He must have for you if He was willing to do this? Yes you. God loves you so much that He sent His only son down to die on a cross so that you may have eternal life. That is some amazing love and an incredible sacrifice. I am not sure that we spend enough time thinking about this. I am not sure that we really take the time to understand how hard that must have been for Him. I am not saying we should sit and obsess about it. I do think the occasional reminder is good. I think taking a moment every now and then to stop and think about how amazing God is, how much He loves us, and how much He sacrificed for us could only help us to be more grateful.
Some of us might think, after hearing all that, we need to be extra good and try extra hard so that we deserve this kind of love. We want to feel like we are making the most out of our life since God and Jesus sacrificed so much for us. I admire this thinking and I believe it is always a good idea to strive to make the most out of your life. You only have one life and I think you should live it fully while you still have it. That being said, I don’t think God would want you to put a lot of pressure on yourself to do this. I don’t think He would want you to go through life never feeling like you are good enough. Never feeling like you quite measure up. He wouldn’t want you going through life always thinking that you were letting Him down.
As the Lord let us know at the beginning of this verse, it is not through human desire or human will. There is nothing that you can do that will make you worthy of God’s love. God already loves you. You are His child and there isn’t anything you can do to change that. Don’t worry and stress out about whether or not you are worthy of God’s love. I can tell you right now, you aren’t. None of us are. And yet, He still loves us anyway. We don’t deserve the love that God has for us and yet He has it anyway. I am not saying we don’t deserve His love to make anyone feel bad. I am saying it with the hope that knowing this will help alleviate some of the pressure to be perfect. God loves you just as you are. God made you into the person that you are today.
The last part of the verse says, “And we saw his glory, the glory as of the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth.” I think this part is just as important as the first part because it reminds us that when we saw Jesus, we saw the Lord. We could see the Lord’s glory through Jesus. Jesus was so compassionate and he was full of grace and truth. He was a living example to us of our Lord. I think it is especially important that they used the words grace and truth to describe Him. Truth is something that seems so lost in today's world. It seems like people want to believe that there are no real truths. That whatever you believe is true to you. That we can all have our own truths, there are no universal truths anymore.
I don’t agree with this. I think there are universal truths that whether we like them or not, they are true. I also like how they said Jesus was full of grace. This is something that I wish everyone could see. I wish everyone could see or notice how much grace Jesus had. When you look at stories in the bible, Jesus was not usually harsh with people. Even people that had done things that he didn’t agree with. People who had sinned over and over again. When He met the woman that was about to be stoned for sleeping with a married man, he did not condemn her. He didn’t yell at her or lecture her on the laws of the church. He loved her and He he gave her grace and told her to go on her way and to sin no more. The stories in the Bible are meant to help us understand the Lord more. Jesus is a reflection of the Lord our God. Why is it that we can see the grace that Jesus had for other one minute and then the next minute be thinking that we are awful because of the thing that we did. We think that God can’t possibly love us after the things that we did. I wish that we could all understand the grace that God has for us and that we could all extend ourselves more grace. You are awesome, you are worthy and you are enough just as you are. The next time you find yourself being hard on yourself for something you did remember that Jesus is full of grace and He has already forgiven you, so be kind to yourself.
Dear Heavenly Father I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord I ask that you help us to realize that we are your children no matter what we do. Help us to feel the love you have for us Lord. Fill us with grace as Jesus was full of grace. Help us to be kind to ourselves and to forgive ourselves when we mess up. Lord we know we are not worthy of your love and yet you give it so freely anyway and we are so very grateful. Lord you are amazing and we are so thankful for all you do for us. Lord we love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus holy name, amen.
The Transfiguration
Matthew 17:1-8 “ Six days later, Jesus took Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain by themselves. And in their presence he was transfigured; his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly, there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, conversing with him. Then Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here. If you wish, I will make three tents here—one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud cast a shadow over them. Then a voice from the cloud said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased. Listen to him.” When the disciples heard this, they fell on their faces and were greatly frightened. But Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Stand up, and do not be frightened.” And when they raised their eyes, they saw no one, but only Jesus.”
The transfiguration is something that I find fascinating. I wonder what Jesus looked like during this transfiguration. It says His face shown like the sun and his clothes were dazzling white. I can imagine it would have been hard to see Him. I wonder if the disciples had to squint. I know I have to when I look into the sun. It must have been amazing to see Jesus like this. They had been following Him for a while now and it I am sure they suspected that He was the son of God. However, I wonder what it was like for them to see him like this in that moment.
Then, not only did they get to see Jesus, but they also got to see Moses and Elijah. For Jewish people this would be a big deal. I mean it would be a big deal for most Christians now a days too. However, Moses led their people out of Egypt. He is responsible for their escaping slavery. Elijah was a great prophet. Both of these two were no longer living and so for the disciples to see them standing with Jesus was astonishing I am sure. And, if Jesus shining bright as the sun and Moses and Elijah appearing wasn’t enough, a cloud appeared and a voice from Heaven said, “ This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased. Listen to him.” Can you imagine this?
Can you imagine being Jesus and hearing God say this. I mean Jesus was fully human as well as being fully God. I think this means He felt all the human emotions that we feel. I wonder if he felt proud of himself that His dad said this? I wonder if this warmed His heart? I bet it did. I can’t imagine anyone’s father saying that and it not making the person feel proud. Can you imagine what the disciples must have felt hearing this? I mentioned yesterday about how I talk with God, but I also mentioned that I never hear an audible reply. Can you imagine hearing God’s voice. I can’t.
I wonder what made Jesus choose these three people to go up on the mountain with him. I have been told that the transfiguration was to help sustain the disciples after Jesus was gone. It was explained as if seeing this would fortify their faith and help them hold on after the crucifixion. If this is the case, wouldn’t it have been good for them all to see it? God is a mystery. I think we could study the bible our whole lives and barely touch on all that it has to offer. This is why I am enjoying exploring it a few verses at a time. We get to look at the phrases in more detail and see what jumps out to us.
Another amazing thing about the Bible is that you can read the same passage over and over again and what you get out of that passage can change each time. It all depends where you are in life or what things you are going through. It also depends on our knowledge of the history and of the circumstances that the people in the Bible were going through. I have found that I get so much more out of the Bible when I do a Bible study. When I read a certain part of the Bible and concentrate on learning all about that part. There are people that have studied the Bible a lot. There are people who went to school and studied scripture, theology, history, and all sorts of other things that would help us gain a deeper understanding of the Bible and of Jesus and His life. Imagine you could sit down with this person and have them explain the Bible to you. That is what you get from a bible study.
Have you ever gone through a museum without a guide? You don’t really need one in most musuems, right? You can just read all the little plaques by each display? However, have you ever gone through a museum with a guide? Which experience did you like better? We are all different and what works for one of us, does not work for another. I for one, would much rather have a guide take me through a musuem. It is not because I don’t want to have to read all day, although I do appreciate that part, it is because they usually can go into more depth. They can give you more detail and sometimes even give you a back story, or an interesting fact that is not on the card. This is the same with a Bible study.
The people that write Bible studies have studied the Bible more than I have. Most of the time they have made it their life’s work to understand the Bible. They have also studied the history of the people back in the time when the Bible was written. They understand the meanings of the words in the Bible in a way that most of us don’t. We read the Bible with all of our past experiences and knowledge in mind. It is as if we are reading the Bible through a filter of all this information. However, the Bible wasn’t written in our time. It was written a very long time ago in times that we can’t even imagine. Father Mike is always reminding us of this on his Bible in a Year podcast. He reminds us that yes, many things we are hearing are awful and they don’t make sense to us. This is because we did not live in those times.
However, when you go through a Bible study, they help to explain what life was like back in the day. They explain in detail what the people of that time period were going through, what they might have been thinking, and if the words they are using mean something different back then compared to the meaning of those words today. Once I understand the Bible better then I get so much more out of it. The more familiar you are with something the more sense it usually makes. The Bible is a great way to learn more about the Lord and His expectations for us. Getting to know it more intimately helps us get to know our Heavenly Father more intimately. We also get to know Jesus better when we read about Him and His time here on earth.
Familiarizing yourself with scripture is also a great way to strengthen your faith and also to defend it when need be. I know we don’t like to talk about spiritual warfare in everyday conversation. I also know that not everyone listening to this episode believes that spiritual warfare is a really big probably today. It is. The enemy is always trying to steal our souls away from God. The thing is, we have free will. He can’t do it without our permission. You may be thinking that you would never give him permission, but he is a master manipulator. He can trick even the best of us. However, if we know and understand scripture well, we have a fighting chance against the enemy. You see, he likes to use scripture against us. He likes to take a scripture verse, twist the meaning and then use it agains us. However, if you already understand the true meaning of the scripture you won’t fall for his lies. The enemy even went after Jesus in the desert right after He was baptized. Jesus knew scripture and instead of fighting with him, He just quoted scripture right back to him. We can do the same! We can fight against any spiritual attacks. We can do this! We are already saved through Jesus’ suffering on the cross and the only way the enemy can win our souls is if we let him. Studying scripture is a great way to guard against this. We are equipping ourselves with the armor of God, His word.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless everyone listening to this episode today. Lord we thank you for giving us the Bible. We thank you for your words that help teach us, strengthen us and guide us on our journey to grow closer to you. Lord we thank you for the protection that your scripture provides us. Lord, we ask that you place a desire in our hearts to read and learn Your Word. We ask that when we do read it, you shine a light on the things you want us to know most. We also pray for an understanding so that we can understand what we are reading. You are amazing and we are so grateful for all you do for us. Lord, we love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Consulting The Lord
Sirach 2:11 “For the Lord is compassionate and merciful; he forgives sins and saves in time of affliction.”
The Lord is definitely compassionate. Tony and I watched The Chosen, season 2 episode 3 recently. I’ve talked about this tv series before, but if you haven’t heard about it I would check it out. It is a tv show about Jesus’ life in ministry and it will span over 7 seasons. The actor that plays Jesus in this series is so good. He does a great job portraying the compassion of Jesus. Every time Jesus interacts with someone on the show, the whole interaction is full of love and compassion.
One example of this compassion is the opening scene. Actually I think it is the whole scene for this episode. The disciples and Jesus walked a long way to get to where they were going. Then when they got there they noticed that people were all ready lined up to see Jesus. Jesus got right to work. He healed people all day and He didn’t even take a break. Those with Him thought it was amazing, but were also wishing that they had some down time. They were wishing that day was just a travel day and they would start work the next day. I am sure you can relate to this. Traveling can be so tiring and to have to get straight to work is hard. Jesus didn’t want to make anyone wait. He had compassion as those waiting in line had also traveled to get there.
The verse also says that the Lord is merciful. If you need proof of this, you could read almost any verse in the Bible. However, the story I just thought of is the story of Jesus on the cross. Jesus had a rough 24 hours or so. He was betrayed by one of his 12 most trusted friends. He was accused of things He didn’t do. He was beaten with a whip. He was sentenced to death by the very people he came here to save. Then when he was up on the cross, dying a slow and painful death He was still merciful. Jesus was crucified with two other people. One of them was mocking Him and asking Him why he can save others and not himself. There was another one that asked Jesus for forgiveness. Luke 23:42-43 “And he (the robber) was saying, “Jesus, remember me when You come into Your kingdom!” 43 And Jesus said to him, “Truly I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise.” While Jesus is dying a cross He tells this man that He will join him in Heaven. If that is not mercy, I am not sure what is.
He forgives sin. This is something that we can all be grateful for. Where would we be today if the Lord didn’t forgive sins? No matter how hard we try, we still sin. We just can’t help it. Sometimes when we are trying really hard, we can maybe go a little longer without sinning, or perhaps our sins are not as bad as they are when we are not trying so hard. However, it is impossible for us to never sin. I heard once that even the Pope, goes to confession.
Why is it so important that the Lord forgives sins? When we sin, we are breaking our relationship with the Lord. We are putting distance or space between ourselves and the Lord. Is this something that you want? I know I don’t. I don’t want anything to get in the middle of my relationship with the Lord. When we sin it is important to repair the break in our relationship. It is important for us to repent and make amends. How does one repent for something that they have done?
Repenting to the Lord is something that we could do every day. You could go to confession with a priest every day if you felt that was necessary. However, you could also take a few minutes at the end of you day and think about how your day went. You can review the day and see if there were any moments that you would like to talk to God about. Were there any moments in your day where you weren’t the best version of yourself? Were there any moments when you said something to someone that was not very nice, or that you wish you could take back? Were there moments when you acted out of anger or impatience instead of love? Were there times throughout the day when you chose something else above God? You do not have to spend a lot of time on this process. I think if you spend a few minutes reviewing your day, and then talking to God about the parts you are not happy with, you will start to have less and less of those moments that you are not happy with.
God is so happy when we ask him what He thinks of our day? If we ask God for His input and then wait and listen for a response I think we would be pleasantly surprised how much smoother things go for us. It is a short step. It doesn’t take a lot of time to pause and ask God what He thinks and yet it can make all the difference in the world. Your conversation with God will probably not be like your conversation with others. At least I haven’t found that to be the case when I talk with God. I ask God what He thinks I should do in a certain circumstance or situation and then sit quietly and wait for Him to tell me what I should do. However, I don’t ever hear God’s voice guiding me one way or another. I am not expecting an audible answer. It is more a feeling. While sitting there waiting to hear what God thinks you should do, you may get feelings that lean to one side or another. Another way I believe God lets me know what He wants me to do is that he removes one of the two options. For instance, I was choosing between two houses and then someone else bought the other one. I know many people that pray to God when they are going for a new job. I have heard many say, “God, if this is not the job for me, or if this is not your will, then don’t let me get the job.” This is another way we can know the will of God. Sometimes without saying anything God will open or close a door that we didn’t even expect.
God wants to be consulted in all your decisions. He wants to know that we care what He wants. He has a plan for our lives, and His plan is way better than any plan we could come up with for our own lives. So, why not stop and ask Him what He thinks before we make any big decisions? Why not check with Him and make sure this is in His plan for your life. We can make decisions on our own, and many of us do that. And some of those decision come out great, and some do not. I am not trying to say that we can’t make a good decision without consulting God. What I am saying is that if we get in the habit of stopping for a few minutes and asking God how He thinks we should proceed I think we will see a lot more things working in our favor.
Our lives work better when we put God first. When we realize that this life we are living is a partnership with the Lord. He gave us free will so that we could choose to love Him or not. He lets us decide if we are going to follow his laws or not. He does not force us into any of it. You have the free will to make all of your decisions on your own. You don’t have to stop and ask for His help. He will love you even if you don’t ask for His direction. He will work all things for your good, even when you are continually making decisions that are not great for you. He is that forgiving and merciful and He loves you that much. You can live your life your own way. You can make all the decisions and not ask for His help. My question is Why would you though?
Why would you not want to pause and ask the creator of the world if He thinks whatever you want to do is a good idea? Why would you not want to stop and ask if you are heading down the right path or not? Do you ever call your mom and dad, or older sibling and ask for their advice? I do all the time. Especially when I was newly married and when the kids were little. When I wasn’t sure what to do in a new circumstance, or a new stage with the boys, I would check with my mom who was the oldest of 10 kids and had 11 kids of her own. She had seen it all and would know how to help. This is the same concept except when asking God, you are even more sure of a good answer because He has seen your whole life. He knows all you do before you do it. He can lead you to the perfect life if you only pause and ask Him to.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord we ask that you help us remember to come to you before all big decisions. Lord God we want you to direct our lives. We want to live the life you have planned for us. We know that you have plans for us to prosper and we want to fulfill those plans Lord Jesus. Help us to not be in a rush when making decisions. Help us to pause and ask what you would want us to do and help us to take the time to actually listen to your answer. Open our eyes to all the way as you're trying to talk to us in our every day life. We love you Lord Jesus and we are so very thankful for all that you do for us. We are thankful for every door you’ve opened and every door you’ve closed so that we could have the life you want us to live. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus is holy name amen.
Choose Joy
Psalm 37:1 “Clap your hands, all you nations; shout to God with cries of joy.”
Today I would like to talk about joy. Joy has been something that I have been intentionally trying to bring into my life daily for a year or so now. One of my mentors in personal development always says that we need to bring the joy into the day, into every situation. Brendon Burchard is always saying, “The power plant does not have energy, it generates energy.” He says that it is the same with joy. One does not simply have joy we create joy. We do not have to wait around for someone else to bring us joy; we can decide to generate our own joy. The definition I found for joy online said it is a “feeling of great pleasure and happiness.” This is I think probably what we all think of when someone says joy. Here is another definition by Pastor Rick Warren, “Joy is the settled assurance that God is in control of all the details of my life, the quiet confidence that ultimately everything is going to be alright, and the determined choice to praise God in every situation.” Joy is a decision that we can make. Joy is different than happiness. Happiness is based on our circumstances. If our life is going well, we tend to be happy. If life is not going as planned we don’t tend to be happy. Joy is something we can have in the midst of our circumstances, no matter what those circumstances may be. Our life does not have to be going well for us to be joyful. However, we do need to decide whether or not we are going to choose joy in each moment. Choosing joy is not something that comes naturally to most people. We need to work at it in the same way that we would work on strengthening a muscle. In the bible Paul is talking to the Philippians 4:11-14 and he says, “I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength.” While listening to an episode of Big Life Devotional podcast Pamela Crim talked about the three steps Paul took to learn contentment. I think they could help us all learn how to choose more joy in our daily lives.
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Gratitude: Paul was grounded in gratitude. There is always something we can be grateful for in our life. Can you develop a daily practice of gratitude? What is it that you can thank God for today? The things you are grateful for don’t have to be big things. You could be grateful for the sun rising, or a nice cup of coffee, or the fact that you woke up to another day of life. I try to write down 5 or 10 things that I am grateful for every morning. I guarantee that if you start this practice, where you have to come up with 5 or 10 things you are grateful for each day, then you will develop an attitude of gratitude. It will change your life. What you search for you find. If you are looking for reasons to be grateful, you will find them. If you are looking for reasons why everything bad happens to you, you will find them. Your mind will answer whatever question you ask it. So, ask yourself better questions.
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Truth: Paul knew that God would make a way because God always had before. He knew that he was stronger than he ever thought because he was relying on God to get him through. You can do the same. Think back to all the difficult time you have had up until now. Did God get you through them? Did surviving them make you stronger? Paul also knew hardships. Paul had been whipped 5 times, beaten 3 times, and stoned 1 time. He lived through 3 ship wrecks and was thrown into prison a few times. If he can still know contentment after living through all of these things, isn’t it possible for us to know it also?
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Choice: Paul chose contentment in these circumstances. He could have chosen despair. He could have chosen defeat. He could have chosen anger. Instead he chose joy. Paul made a deliberate choice to choose contentment.
Looking at these steps and Paul’s story, I think Rick Warren’s definition of joy perfectly describes what Paul felt, “Joy is the settled assurance that God is in control of all the details of my life, the quiet confidence that ultimately everything is going to be alright, and the determined choice to praise God in every situation.” This is how we can choose joy each day. We can practice those three steps above. We can be thankful for everything God has given to us, we can look for opportunities throughout the day to be grateful. We can stand in the truth that we don’t have to worry because God will get us through anything and everything. Finally, we can do our best to intentionally choose joy in our everyday life.
Dear Heavenly Father I ask that you bless everyone listening to this episode today. Lord we ask that you help us choose joy. We ask that you open our eyes to all the things we have to be grateful for and help us celebrate those things. Lord I ask that you open our eyes to the truth in our lives. I ask that you help us to see all the ways you've been there for us in the past and help us to know that you will be there for us forever. Help us to remember Lord that we can do all things through You who strengthen us. Father a lot of people listening to this are really struggling right now and I ask that you're with them in that struggle. I ask that you help them feel your presence. Lord you are amazing and you do so many things for us and we are so very grateful. Help us choose joy Lord help us to see all the amazing things in our lives. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with their will and in Jesus is holy name amen.
God Has Chosen You
John 15:16 “God has chosen you and has set you aside for a special purpose.”
God has chosen you, yes you! Sometimes it is hard to believe that statement. We can clearly see why God chose some people, but cannot see why he would choose us. We are broken, we’re not worthy, and we are not enough. We believe that the saints were extraordinary people and so, of course God chose them. We see movie stars, musicians and speakers and think that they have an incredible life because that is just how they were made. Something I am constantly hearing in the personal development world is that you should not compare your beginning to someone else’s ending. This means that you should not compare where you are at in your journey to someone else who is further along in his or her journey. If you look at the beginning of some of the saint’s lives I think you would be surprised where they started.
I have been watching a series on YouTube lately that is called, “The Chosen.” It is a portrayal of Jesus’s life during his three years of ministry. You get to see the apostles in their lives before they were called to follow Jesus. It is amazing to me to see the apostles as regular people, people like you and I. I believe we tend to put famous people up on a pedestal. We think that we could never be like them. But the thing is, they were not always like they are now. They made a choice to say yes and to follow Jesus. Jesus is the one that transformed them into who they are now.
While watching the series I saw Simon, who was a fisherman, argue with his wife, try to cheat his in-laws in a fight, turn in fellow Jews who were fishing on Shabbat and was very behind on his taxes. He did not seem like the type of person that one would pick to be the leader of God’s Kingdom on earth. Jesus saw Simon and Andrew fishing and asked them to come and follow him. Matthew 4:19 “And he said to them, ‘Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” What I like best about watching this on screen was that you get to see how the apostles reacted. Both Andrew & Simon looked at each other and then followed Him. They did not think for more than a minute before they left all that they knew to follow this man they had just met. Later they are retelling the story and they admit that they have no idea what it even means, to be fishers of men, yet they are all in. There are many different translations of this verse but they all have the phrase “I will make you…” I think this is important to note because it reminds us that the apostles did not become changed men on their own. They made the choice to follow Jesus and then through him they were changed.
I know some of you may be thinking that whatever the apostles or saints did before they became saints could not be as bad as some of the things you have done. I mean, they are holy people so how bad could they have been. Whenever I think like this, I am reminded of Paul. There are 13 books in the New Testament that are attributed to Paul. Not to mention he was one of the most important figures of the Apostolic Age. But do you know the story of Paul? I find it an amazing story of how God can choose anyone to do his work. Paul was originally named Saul. The story of his conversion is found in Acts 9:1-19. If you don’t know the story you may want to read it. Saul was not nice to Jews that were calling on Jesus. He was actually on his way to Damascus to bring back in chains any men or women he found that might belong to Christ. On his journey he was struck by a light and a voice asking him, “Why are you persecuting me?” Jesus told Saul what he must do. When Saul got up he could not see and for three days he remained this way. Then the Lord sent Ananias to got and restore Saul’s sight. “So Ananias went and entered the house; laying his hands on him, he said, ‘Saul, my brother, the Lord has sent me, Jesus who appeared to you on the way by which you came, that you may regain your sight and be filled with the holy Spirit.’ Immediately things like scales fell from his eyes and he regained his sight. He got up and was baptized, and when he had eaten, he recovered his strength.” Saul was not looking for Jesus. Actually, he was actively persecuting him and everyone that believed in him. If God can take Saul and make him into a man that is known worldwide as one of the greatest Christian missionaries, then just think what he can do with you.
Every single one of us has a past and there is not a single thing you may have done or had done to you in your past that is too great for God to overcome. He chooses you! That same invitation that he gave to Andrew & Simon, he gives to you. Come and follow me. All you have to say is “Yes, I will follow you,” and then hold on and God will take you on an amazing ride.
Dear heavenly father I ask that you bless everyone listening to this episode today. Lord we ask that you help us to say yes to following you. We ask that you help us to see ourselves through your eyes. Lord sometimes it is easy for us to see the good in others and for us to believe that others are good enough to follow you or to be used as your instrument. However it is so much more difficult to see that in ourselves. Lord fill us with love for ourselves. Help us to say yes to you even when we don't understand what we're saying yes too. Lord you are amazing and we trust that if you were choosing us that you have a reason. Give us the courage to say yes and to follow you. We love you Lord and we ask all of that in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Stolen Blessings
Galatians 6:4-5 says, “Pay careful attention to your own work, for then you will get the satisfaction of a job well done, and you won’t need to compare yourself to anyone else. For we are each responsible for our own conduct.”
Do you ever feel like someone has stollen your blessing? In Genesis, Isaac called to his son Esau. He asked Esau to go out, hunt game, prepare savory food for him, and he will give Esau the Lord’s blessing before Isaac died from old age. Rebekah heard Isaac tell his oldest son this, but she loved the youngest son and wanted him to get the blessing. She told her younger son to go to the barn and kill two goats and she would make savory food for her husband. She wanted Jacob, the younger son, to pretend to be Esau so he could get the blessing. Jacob was hesitant but his mom told him to obey. Jacob went in and received the blessing that Esau should have gotten as the oldest. When Esau came back from hunting his father found out what had happened, and was so angry. Isaac was upset at what he had done and Esau was upset too. Esau begged his dad to give him a blessing too. However, he had already given the blessing to Jacob, he could not take it away. What was done, was done.
Have you ever felt like Esau? Have you ever felt like someone else has stolen your blessing? Have you ever been in a situation where you were up for a promotion at work and did not get it and yet it seems like everyone around you is getting promoted? Have you noticed that when you are wanting to have a baby, it seems like everyone around you is getting pregnant? Sometimes it can feel so unfair. It can seem like they got your blessings. It makes us question why some things happen to some people and don’t seem to happen to others.
We live in an age of social media. Most people are posting photos of everything that is going on in their lives. Well, it seems like they are posting everything. A lot of times they are just posting the good things that are going on. This can be very misleading and can paint a completely different picture than what their life is really like. We do not often see people posting about how they got in a fight with their husband last night or if they are struggling to pay the bills. Also, we do not see how their children are skipping school, fighting amongst siblings, or struggling in some way.
What is going through your mind as you are scrolling through social media? In 2020 the average internet user spent 2 hours and 24 minutes a day on social networking sites. It would be great if while spending all this time on social media we were reaching out and connecting with our loved ones and our friends. If we were writing back and forth and catching up, maybe even doing video calls with them, then it would be better. However, this is not the experience most people I know describe. Some people just scroll through everyone else’s pages and think that those people have it so much more together than they do. They wonder how that mom of four kids can be out and about doing so much with her kids and they are struggling to work and put food on the table with one child.
I know a lot of people that struggle with social media because they are always comparing what they have to what other people have. When we see a photo of a woman that just woke up in the morning having breakfast and looking perfect, we wonder how she woke up looking so good. Yet, we have no idea if she just casually snapped a photo while eating her breakfast or if she spent 40 minutes in the bathroom getting ready for that photo, then took 20 photos to get it perfect and then posted it. We don’t know, and it doesn’t really matter either way. We don’t need to compare our life to other people’s lives.
Everyone in this world is struggling with something. I do not believe there is anyone that is just skating through life without a care in the world. Some people may seem to have it all together, but they have struggles. Even people who seem to have the perfect life, struggle with something. Sometimes they struggle with the very thing you admire about them. You may think that they are so good at organizing things and yet they may be stressed out because they are so busy organizing things.
Galatians 6:4-5 says, “Pay careful attention to your own work, for then you will get the satisfaction of a job well done, and you won’t need to compare yourself to anyone else. For we are each responsible for our own conduct.” God does not want us to compare ourselves to others. We are all on our own journey and when someone else has something good going for them it would be great if we were able to celebrate with them. Their success takes nothing away from you. They are not stealing your blessing. God has blessings designed for each one of us in His time not ours. If God did not open a door by helping you get that promotion than He has better plans for you. I know it is hard to wait for His timing, but it is worth it in the end.
Dear heavenly father I ask that you bless everyone listening to this episode today. We ask that you help us focus on our own work Lord Jesus. We ask that you help us keep our eyes in our own lane and not to compare ourselves to others. Lord we ask that you help us see ourselves and our lives through your eyes not ours. Lord, help us not to feel like someone else’s success is our lost. Help us to see that you have special blessings for each one of us and that someone else’s success takes nothing away from us. Lord, you are amazing and we are so very thankful for all you have given to each one of us. We love you Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen.
For Such A Time As This
Esther 4:14 For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?”
We are now about 18 months into this pandemic. We are just now coming out of a time of social distancing and in some cases, quarantined to our homes. If there was ever a time to get down and out, it would have been over these last 18 months. Although, now that we can emerge from our homes again, there is a whole new set of challenges. Do we wear a mask, do we get the vaccination, do we travel yet, do our kids wear masks to school, there are a whole host of questions we need to ask ourselves. Also, just the fact that we can be out around other people is stressing some out. Eighteen months stuck in a house has given many social anxiety and they are not sure about going out and being around others now. This could be a time when we just want to say forget it all and stay in our homes. However, I am going to challenge you not to give into the temptation to just give up or to give in to your negative emotions.
God has been preparing us for such a time. There is a story in the Bible about Esther. She was a young Jewish woman who found favor with the king and became the queen. Her uncle Mordecai adopted her as his own when she was young, as both parents died. Mordecai had told Esther before meeting the king, not to reveal that she was Jewish, and she listened. This story tells about how a powerful vizier to the king, named Haman, wanted to kill all the Jews living in the Persian Empire in one day. You see, he was angry because Mordecai refused to bow down to him. Mordecai explained he only bows down to God and this angered Haman—who told the king that there were people living throughout his kingdom that did not obey the same laws of the king and that he should not tolerate them. He convinced the king to issue a decree that would destroy the Jews and upon doing so, Haman agreed to put ten thousand silver talents into the royal treasury.
When the Jewish people heard, they went into mourning with prayer and fasting. Mordecai got word to Esther and explained the situation. He asked Esther to talk to her husband, the king, and beg for the lives of her people to be spared. Esther explained that if anyone goes in front of the king while he is in the inner courtroom without being summoned, they will suffer immediate death unless he offers them the end of the scepter. Mordecai wrote back the following in Esther 4:14 “For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?”. Esther risked her life to go in front of the king and because of her bravery she saved her people, God’s people.
We do not usually know why we end up where we end up or why we go through the things that we go through. God is a mystery and only he knows what he is doing. He can see the whole picture, past, present and future. We can only see the past and present. I heard a quote once that I really liked and found comforting when I was going through some hard times. The quote said, “You were assigned this mountain to show others it can be moved.” I found it comforting to think that by my making it through the situation it would show others that they could make it through too. I also used the quote in reverse and thought, “Ok, then I just need to look for someone who has made it through this type of situation to show me that I could make it through as well.” There is a song by Christina Perri that’s called "I Believe." In that song she says, “I believe that you fell so that you would land next to me.”
Have you ever been in a situation and you can just tell that God arranged it? Sometimes, we can tell what God is doing. Sometimes, we can feel it in our bones that we are exactly where we were meant to be at that precise moment. God placed us here in this moment, and what if everything we have done up to this moment has been getting us ready for this pandemic? What if all the scripture readings we have done, bible studies and prayer groups we have attended, and all the praying we have done was specifically to help us get through these tough times. What if all those days at the gym, long walks, or yoga classes were to prepare us for the mental and physical challenges of these past few months? What if all the past experiences we have had with friends and families and coworkers were to prepare us for this extraordinary time in history?
Take a few minutes and think of all the experiences you have had in your life that have taught you persistence and resilience. Can you see how they may have been preparing you for all of this? Think about your qualities, strengths, what do you have to offer in this difficult time. If God placed you here and made you exactly who you are for such a time as this, why did he do this? What is it that you, with your unique background and experiences can offer to others at this time? Maybe you are really great at reaching out to people and making sure they are ok, or maybe you write really great poetry and it can help give people hope and make them smile right now. Maybe you are really great at praying for others and can hold us all in prayer right now. I don’t know what your circumstance is, but I do know that if we lean in to God during this difficulty he will lead us through it. Look at the circumstances the Israelites were facing when God led them out of Egypt. There are so many examples in the Bible of really hard times and yet when his people called, God saved them. So, let’s call out for him, and while we are waiting let us ask ourselves why God has put us here in such a time as this.
Dear Heavenly Father I ask that you bless all those listening to this podcast today. Lord we thank you for making us whoever you made us to be. We thank you for all of the training you've given us up until this point in everything you help us to learn in the future. Lord we ask that you show us what it is that we are good at, what it is that we can contribute in this difficult time. We ask that you are with everyone that struggling right now. Lord we ask that you give us the strength and perseverance to keep going. We ask that you show us those that have come before us they have overcome similar circumstances and give us the knowledge that we too can overcome the circumstances. Lord you are amazing and we're so very thankful for all you do for us. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus is holy name, Amen.
Resurrection Faith
John 11:21-22 “Lord,” Martha said to Jesus, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.”
I am not sure if you are familiar with the story of Lazarus. Even if you are familiar I encourage you to read the story over again. It will take you less than 5 minutes and yet there are so many great things to learn from it. I am not going to read the whole thing to you, I am going to go over some of my favorite verses in this story as there are some really great lessons Jesus reveals in this story. I will briefly explain the story as I go. The entire story can be found in John 11:1-44.
Jesus was good friends with Martha, Mary and their brother Lazarus. When Jesus and his disciples were away Lazarus got sick. The sisters sent word to Jesus that “the one he loved” was sick. When Jesus heard Lazarus was sick He said in John 11:4 “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.” I think this verse is so important because it shows us why Jesus did all the things that He did. Everything that Jesus did was for God’s glory and so that God’s son might be glorified through it. His healing people brought God glory and also helped more people to believe in Him.
Jesus did not go to see them as soon as he found out. He stayed where He was for 2 more days and then they left to go back to Judea. When Jesus had arrived Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. When Martha heard Jesus had arrived she ran out to meet Him. John 11:21-22 “Lord,” Martha said to Jesus, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.”
I had not paid too much attention to this verse in the past. I have heard this story many times. I payed more attention to the later part of the story because I guess I found it more exciting. However, I read a book called The Circle Maker by Mark Batterson and he explained this verse in a way I had not heard before. Batterson explained that there are two degrees of faith in those two statements Mary made to Jesus.
“The first statement is first-degree faith: "Lord if you had been here, my brother would not have died." First-degree faith is preventative faith like the prayer of Martha who believed that Jesus could've kept her brother from dying, first-degree prayers take preventative measures. We ask God to keep bad things from happening. So we pray for safety as we travel, or we pray a hedge of protection around our children. And there's nothing wrong with that, but there is another dimension of faith that believes that God can undo what has already been done. Second-degree faith is resurrection faith. It's a faith that refuses to put periods at the end of disappointments. It's a faith that believes that God can reverse the irreversible. It's a faith that believes it's not over until God says it's over. And it's epitomized by Martha's “even now” profession of faith: "but I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.” (Page 92 in The Circle Maker)
Martha had still not given up hope. Even though her brother had already been in the tomb for 4 days, she still believed that Jesus could do something about it. Jesus could fix the situation. This is such an important lesson for all of us. Sometimes we are pursuing a dream and we come up to a dead end and we think that is the end of our dream. We put a period there, but maybe it is just a stop on the journey. Maybe God put a comma and wants to keep going. Where in your life have you put a period where God wanted a comma? Is there any where in your life where you need to have resurrection faith?
After Martha made this incredible statement in John 11:22 “I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask” Jesus told her that her brother would rise again. Martha said in “I know he will rise again in the resurrection. This is when Jesus teaches us another lesson.
John 11:25-26 “Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?” Martha said she did. Jesus reveals who He is in this statement. Jesus promises us that if we live our lives believing in Him then we will have eternal life. Even after Jesus had said all of this, I still don’t think Martha understood the power of God or exactly what Jesus was saying.
I think sometimes we are hard on ourselves because we have trouble believing certain things. When we are struggling and we turn to God, we want to believe that He can fix things, but we can’t see how. We don’t see what He could do. I heard it explained one way that seemed to make sense to me. The person said that he didn’t ever doubt God could do something, but he sometimes doubted He would do something. I think this is all of us. We want to believe, we feel like we believe, but then we wonder if we actually believe. I know I have said this before but when I feel like this I pray Mark 9:24 “Lord I believe, help my unbelief.” When I read stories like this it helps me to feel better about myself when I question. Martha was right there talking to Jesus. Jesus said her brother would rise again. He said that He was the resurrection and the life. And yet, when Jesus asked them to roll the stone away from the tomb she was worried about the smell since her brother had been in there four days. I’m not sure she knew Jesus was going to raise her brother.
John 11:41-42 “ So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I know that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.” These two verses are also very powerful. The first one is a lesson that is taught over and over again in the bible, but it is subtle and if it is not pointed out, you may miss it. Jesus thanks God before the miracle happens. He does not wait until after Lazarus walks out of the tomb to thank God. He does it before anything happens, knowing that it will happen. He does this numerous times in the bible. Another time is when he is feeding the thousands with the loaves and fishes. He holds them up to the Lord and thanks God before God has done anything yet.
This is something that would be great if we all did. In John 14:13 God has said, “whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.” We know that God keeps His promises. When we ask for something God will answer. Why is it that many of us wait until we see the answer to start thanking God. Why not step out in faith and thank God before we see the miracle? I wonder if we would see more miracles if we started doing this?
The second verse in this is also powerful. Jesus says, “I know that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.” Jesus was not thanking God for hearing Him because He was surprised. He was thanking God for hearing Him because He wanted those around Him to know that God sent Him and that God gave Him the power that He has. Jesus was giving Glory to God and God was glorifying his Son by giving Him the power. This is an excellent example of how we should approach prayer, thanking God and giving Him all the glory.
This story ends in John 11:43-44 “ When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face. Jesus brought back his friend. There is so much more to this story. There are so many good parts to it. I tried to touch on a few of my favorites, and I would encourage you to go back and read through the story. Be open to whatever the Holy Spirit points out to you. It is really an incredible story. It also talks about how Jesus was moved to tears. I think that shows how human Jesus really was. Yes he was fully God, and he was fully human. He loved His friends and was sad to see them hurt. Even though He knew He would be brining Lazarus back, He was still moved to tears for them. I could go on, but I won’t. I will let you explore the story yourself and see what you find fascinating about the story.
I hope that you have many take aways from today’s episode. If I could leave you with just one, it would be for you to remember to not put a period where God has put a comma. It would be for you to remember that there is another level of faith. A type of resurrection faith in God that He can undo something that has already happened.
Dear heavenly father, I pray that you bless everyone listening to this episode today. I pray that you bless us all with unwavering faith in you. I pray that you show us how to have a resurrection faith in you. Lord we believe, help our unbelief. Help us to believe even when it's difficult. Help us to believe you can undo things that have already happened. Help us to know when you want us to put a period and when you want us to put a comma. Give us a firm conviction when you are putting an end to something. Help us to know when it's not the end, give us the perseverance and the persistence to keep asking for what it is we want. Lord God we know that you hear our prayers just as Jesus said. Lord we thank you for answering our prayers. We thank you for answering those prayers that you have yet to answer as we know those answers are coming. Lord you are so amazing and we love you so very much. Lord, I think we struggle to believe sometimes because the things were asking for seem impossible, and they are impossible for us but nothing is impossible for you. Lord please help us remember this. Heavenly father I ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus is holy name amen.
God’s Presence In Their Midst
Exodus 40:30 “Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.”
Did you know that when Moses led the Israelite's out of Egypt God’s presence was with them? When they were wondering in the desert God’s presence was with them. He was leading them. We use that expression a lot. God is leading you to where you want to go and this is true. The Holy Spirit within you is guiding you. This is not what I am talking about though. They could actually see God’s presence guiding them. It describes this in Exodus 13:21-22 “By day the Lord went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to guide them on their way and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, so that they could travel by day or night. Neither the pillar of cloud by day nor the pillar of fire by night left its place in front of the people.
Can you imagine this? I often have prayed things like, “God, please let me know if I am going in the right direction.” Also, “God, please let me know what your will is.” The Israelites didn’t have to ask this question. They had God right there in their midst guiding them. I wonder what that was like for them? I wonder if they were just walking around in awe the whole time? If you read the book of Exodus you will see that doesn’t appear to be the case. Even with God’s presence right there in the camp with them, they tended to veer off course. They tended to forget what Moses told them and do things that God told them not to do.
I often wonder how someone could witness the miracles of God every day and then still not live by His laws. I often think that if I was around in Jesus’ time that I would definitely have been a follower of Jesus. I would have been such a good Christian because I would want to please the Lord and follow the rules. I am very much a rule follower. However, then I wonder, the Jews that were persecuting Jesus, they felt they were following the rules. They were confused because they lived by a very strict set of rules and now Jesus is coming and breaking a lot of those rules. He is saying things that they just can’t wrap their head around. I am not condoning what they did and how they did it. I am just saying that it is easy for us to judge what happened thousands of years ago with all the knowledge and hindsight passed on to us from those that lived before us.
I struggle to understand how the Israelite's could live with all those miracles they witnessed and yet then still worship other God’s and do things that go against what God teaches. It makes no sense to me. I feel like if I witnessed the parting of the Red Sea, I would never doubt again. Did you know that God produced mana every day for them to eat. Each day they went to bed without food and each day they woke up with exactly enough mana, which is like a sweet bread type substance, for that day. They literally witnessed a miracle every day and yet they got tired of it because it was the same thing every day. It just boggles my mind.
When I start to think like this the Holy Spirit reminds me not to judge. He reminds me that I have witnessed plenty of miracles and yet I am not perfect. Maybe nothing like the parting of the Red Sea, but I was one of 11 children growing up. My dad had a good job, and yet there was never really enough money to go around because of the sheer number of mouths to feed and the size house we lived in. Yet, we never went without. Anytime my parents thought we may have to go without something, God always came through and provided it. I remember my mom making us tuna melts when we were younger. She would use 2 cans of tuna and feed how ever many of us were home that day. I have tried this at my house, and 2 cans of tuna is enough for Tony and I and that is about it. However, at my house growing up it seemed like no matter how much food my mom cooked, it was the perfect amount. We never ran out.
It reminds me of the story of Elijah and the Widow in 1 Kings 17:7-16. “Some time later the brook dried up because there had been no rain in the land. Then the word of the Lord came to him: “Go at once to Zarephath in the region of Sidon and stay there. I have directed a widow there to supply you with food.” So he went to Zarephath. When he came to the town gate, a widow was there gathering sticks. He called to her and asked, “Would you bring me a little water in a jar so I may have a drink?” As she was going to get it, he called, “And bring me, please, a piece of bread.” “As surely as the Lord your God lives,” she replied, “I don’t have any bread—only a handful of flour in a jar and a little olive oil in a jug. I am gathering a few sticks to take home and make a meal for myself and my son, that we may eat it—and die.” Elijah said to her, “Don’t be afraid. Go home and do as you have said. But first make a small loaf of bread for me from what you have and bring it to me, and then make something for yourself and your son. For this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘The jar of flour will not be used up and the jug of oil will not run dry until the day the Lord sends rain on the land.’” She went away and did as Elijah had told her. So there was food every day for Elijah and for the woman and her family. For the jar of flour was not used up and the jug of oil did not run dry, in keeping with the word of the Lord spoken by Elijah.”
I was young when my mom was making those sandwiches, and when the food never seemed to run out and I did not think of it as a miracle. Looking back now though, I can see it was. There was another time when my dad’s car broke down on his way to work one day. He was worried because we lived about 20 minutes away from where he worked and we needed that income to survive. He had no idea what he was going to do. He decided to not tell my mom until after dinner as we usually eat right at 4:45 when he got home. During dinner the next door neighbor came over and rang the doorbell. My dad knew this neighbor, but they weren’t really friends. They had gotten into an argument before over something to do with the kids in the neighborhood. Anyway, when my dad answered the door he handed my dad car keys. My dad was stunned. He asked what this was for. The guy asked my dad if he needed a car. My dad said he did, but asked the guy how he knew, since my dad had not even told my mom about his car yet. The guy said he wasn't sure. He just had a feeling that he was supposed to come over and give my dad the car. He said his wife no longer needs a car. The car is ours to do with as we please. He doesn’t want anything for the car and he is not expecting to get the car back. If we happen to not need it and want to give it back at some point we can, but it is not expected.
I tear up every time I recount this story because I can’t believe how amazing our God is. I can’t believe how he uses ordinary people to do extraordinary things. I wonder if the neighbor even knew he was helping God complete a miracle. I wonder how many times we have been part of one of God’s miracles and we didn’t even know. I bet God has used each one of us many times. We thought we were just doing a kind deed. However, you never know when a kind word or deed from you feels like a miracle to the person receiving it. You never know when that kind thing you are doing is actually the exact answer to someone’s prayer. This is why it is so important to listen to the Holy Spirit’s promptings. If you feel called to do something. Even if you are not sure why, try to do it. It could just be that you are being called to complete a miracle.
Even though I have either heard about or witnessed these miracles, I still don’t always follow in God’s footsteps. I still mess up, I still sin, I still worship false Gods. Well, I don’t intentionally worship false God’s. I definitely do not think that anything or anyone is more important than God. And yet, my actions don’t always back that up. Sometimes I know God is waiting for me to do something and yet I sit down and watch TV instead. Is that putting TV ahead of God? Yes. Is it worshiping a false God? I honestly don’t know. I felt led to write that, so I am guess it could be. Or are we worshiping the actors or sports players above God? I think it could be different for everyone. I don’t think there is a blanket answer. I do think that we should all take a look at our lives and consider if there is anything that we could work on.
This is what I mean when I say the Holy Spirit reminds me not to judge. When I start to wonder how the Israelites kept getting it so wrong, the Holy Spirit brings these thoughts to the front of my mind. He reminds me that I am doing the same thing, just in different ways. He reminds me that none of us are perfect and yet God is forgiving and patient and will keep being there for us when we repent and turn back. I know this episode is long already, but I wanted to just take a minute to explain that the Holy Spirit always brings up these thoughts in a loving way, never in a condemning way. If you are having thoughts that make you feel terrible about yourself, these are not from the Holy Spirit. These are from the enemy. I won’t go into a long explanation, but if you are ever wondering if the thought is from the Holy Spirit or the enemy, that’s the difference. The Holy Spirit convicts you in a loving way and the enemy condemns you and makes you feel bad about yourself.
Dear heavenly father I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord we thank you for all the miracles you do in our lives. Lord we ask that you help us to recognize all of the miracles you do for us and others. We ask that you open our eyes wide so that we don't miss any of it. Lord we ask that the Holy Spirit convict us when we are having judgmental thoughts. None of us are perfect Lord. Instead of looking and judging at what others are doing wrong we ask that you help us turn that gaze inward and show us how we can live more fully in your ways. Lord, we ask that you help us listen to the promptings of the Holy Spirit and give us the courage to follow through on any promptings that we hear. Lord we ask that you use us as your instruments to carry out miracles here on earth. Lord we love you so very much and we ask all of us in accordance with your will and in Jesus holy name amen.
I Will Rejoice In The Lord
Habakkuk 3:17-18 “Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.”
Talk about a bad day. This verse, is from a time when the people relied very heavily on crops and animals for survival. This verse is basically saying that they have hit rock bottom. That there is nothing going right for them. If their crops are not producing any food and they have not meat in their stalls, then not only do they not have anything to eat, but they have nothing to barter with either. Have you ever felt this low? Have you even been in a situation where you couldn’t really imagine it getting any worse. That is where this person was when they wrote this. Even if you haven’t been in a situation this dire before, I am sure you can imagine what they were feeling.
Take a minute and try to put yourself in their shoes. Close your eyes and imagine you are walking through your fields. You look from vine to vine just praying for some grapes that you may have missed, or that miraculously grew overnight, but you find nothing. Now imagine you are walking by your fig tree. This tree that was once full of figs now is now empty. Next you walk through the olive crops and pray that there will be some source of food, but again you find nothing. You think, at least you have your animals to provide you food. However, when you go past the sheep pen, there are none. When you walk through the cattle stalls, they too are empty. You realize you have nothing, you have somehow lost it all. What are you feeling right now? What are you thinking? How do you think you would react? Would you be angry at God? Would you blame Him for not providing for you?
I am not sure how I would feel or what I would think, but I do not think that my first thought would be to rejoice in the Lord. The verse says “yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.” I am thinking that I would struggle to find anything to be joyful about. I am joyful in God my Savior. He is amazing and I love Him so much. However, when I am at my worst, I am not sure that I would think of that. I do think I would turn to Him. I believe I would ask God for His help and for Him to give me the strength and courage to make it through this difficult time. But, would I rejoice in the Lord?
Honestly, I can’t picture it. I can’t picture how that would work. I do know that when life is going against us and we can’t see a way out, that is the perfect time to praise the Lord. We don’t have to see the way out. We can just praise the Lord for being so awesome that He can see a way out even when we can’t. We don’t have to praise Him for the situation, we can praise Him for who He is and for what He does for us.
Ok, so now that I am writing this I am starting to see how this could work. I guess we wouldn’t have to be rejoicing that we were in this dire situation but we could rejoice that God was in it with us. However, would we think to do this? Would it occur to us when the chips are down that we should rejoice and praise the Lord? My first thought is no. Not without someone reminding us, or without some practice ahead of time. Several things I have been reading over the last few years have been saying that the best thing you can do when you are struggling is to praise the Lord. The fastest way out of a difficult situation is to praise the Lord while you are still in it and all is looking lost. So then, how do we do this? How do we try to practice ahead of time so that when we really need to remember this, we can?
I have a couple of suggestions, some you may have heard before. Some I probably even mentioned before on this podcast. However, I think that’s how God works. He tells us something again and again until we get it. My first suggestion would be practicing gratitude. When you are focused on being grateful for things, you can’t also be feeling sorry for yourself, or feeling miserable at the same time. Even if you can find just one small thing to be grateful for. For instance, you have to go to a funeral and you are really sad, but you can be grateful that the weather is at least holding out for you. Or maybe the weather had been raining all day but on the way to the cemetery the rain stopped and now you can see a rainbow. I promise you, no matter how bad things are, there is at least one small thing you can be grateful for. Practice finding that thing and focusing on that, thanking God for that. I promise if you give this a try, you will find more joy in your life.
Another suggestion would be to find a few verses that talk about praising the Lord, or rejoicing in the Lord, and either memorize them, or post them around your house where you will see them often. You could put one on your mirror so you see it every time you look in the mirror. Or, maybe on your fridge so you read it every time you get something out of the refrigerator. You could put a note like that on your lock screen of your phone so when you look at your phone it reminds you to praise the Lord or rejoice. Why should you do this now, when everything seems to be going well? First, if you can get in the habit of praising God all the time, when times are good and when times are bad, I think you will see less and less of the bad times. I think God loves to reward his children for appreciating Him and thanking Him. Second, if you don’t intentionally get into the habit when things are going good, and it feels easier to praise the Lord and to rejoice, then the chances are a lot less likely that you will do it when everything feels hard.
Another suggestion is to listen to praise music. I think many of us listen to music. Maybe its when you are driving it the car, cooking dinner, cleaning the house, whatever the reason, most of us listen to music. What I am suggesting is that some of that music you listen to is praise music. What you listen to affects your mood. You could be in a perfectly good mood and then an angry song comes on the radio and if you don’t change the channel you can notice yourself starting to get in a bad mood. If kids listen to a lot of rap music they may start to feel negatively towards the police for no other reason than the lyrics that they are constantly listening to are telling them that police are bad. Those are examples of how music can negatively affect your mood, but the opposite is true as well. You can be in a really bad mood and then an upbeat song can come on the radio and your mood can change for the better. If you are listening to praise music about how great God is, then those will be the thoughts flowing through your head. The music can not only change your mood, but it can also change your outlook on life or your current circumstance.
Some of my friends are really struggling right now. When all seems lost it can take a daily, or sometimes hourly reminder to praise God in the struggle. Praise God for any slight sign of improvement. Praise God for the things that do go right in the day. Maybe you got up and everything seemed to go wrong. But, you know what? You got up that day, and not everyone can say that. You are able to walk, and not everyone can say. There is always something you can praise God for. Try your best to focus on those things and just keep turning over the other things to God and trust that He will take care of them for you. It is not easy to praise God and to rejoice when all seems lost, however, it is possible. If you take the time to learn how to praise God, even in the difficult times, I think you will be amazed how different you feel. I think you will be amazed at how much more at peace you will feel, even when it feels like things can’t get any worse. Give it a try, what do you have to lose?
Dear Heavenly Father I ask that you pray for everyone listening to this episode today. Dear Lord we ask that you help us to praise you. You do so much for us and we don't deserve any of it. You don't do it for any other reason other than the fact that you love us completely. Lord help us to see all the things that we can rejoice about even when we're struggling. Jesus shine a light on all the things we have to be grateful for when we can't see them. Lord it must be difficult for you when you see us struggling. We ask that you help us through the struggle that you help us lean into you and praise you for all that you do for us. Sometimes we feel like all is lost and that there is nothing anyone can do to change the situation. And you know what, that may be true. But you are not anyone Lord You are the Lord of lords and the King of kings. There isn't anything that you can't do. Help us to remember this Lord. Help us to rejoice when all seems lost because nothing is too big for our God to fix. We love you lord you are so amazing and we are so very grateful for you and all that you do. We thank you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus holy name amen.
Is Praying For Others Important?
1 Timothy 2:1 “First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people.”
Is it important to pray for others? I was taking a leadership course and one of the lessons was on Intercession. I am sure we have all been asked by people to pray for them and their situation. When you pray on someone else’s behalf, that is called intercession. You are praying for their needs. Every Christian is called to be an intercessor. We are called to not only pray to God for ourselves, but for our brothers and sisters in Christ as well. I don’t know if we always understand how important this is. Do we take this responsibility seriously, or do we say we will pray because that is what we are supposed to do, and then forget to actually do it?
If we look back to the Bible, we have some examples of great intercessors. Moses was constantly interceding on behave of the Israelites while they were wandering in the dessert. They continually turned away from God and did all the things he asked them not to do. Exodus 32:3-32 talks about how the Israelites made the golden calf, and the Lord was angry with them. However, the Lord relented after Moses interceded. This is just one example out of many.
We can also look back to Abraham. God wanted to destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham pleads with God not to destroy Sodom. In Genesis 18:16-33 you can read the account where Abraham is bold enough to ask God to save these people. He does not just ask once, he comes back several times. Abraham first asks if God will save the city if there are 50 righteous people, then he comes back and asks what if there are 45, and so on, all the way down to 10 righteous people. Abraham did not live in this city. He would not be affected if it was destroyed. Yet, Abraham was a true intercessor for that city.
There is a story in St. Faustina’s diary about how she prayed and interceded for her beloved country Poland. Saint Faustina was a nun in Poland. She received a vision that an angel was sent by God to chastise a certain city. She immediately began to pray for mercy, but no matter how much she prayed for mercy, she could not save the city. Then she saw the Holy Trinity and she felt the power of Jesus’ grace within her. At the same time she found herself praying these words she heard internally, “Eternal Father, I offer You the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Your dearly beloved Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ, in atonement for our sins and those of the whole world; for the sake of His sorrowful Passion, have mercy on us.” (Saint Faustina’s Diary, 475). As she continued saying this inspired prayer, the angel became helpless and could not carry out the deserved punishment (see 474).
In Ezekiel 22 the Lord talks about His Judgement on Jerusalem. In Ezekiel 22:30 The Lord says, “I looked for someone among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so I would not have to destroy it, but I found no one. So I will pour out my wrath on them and consume them with my fiery anger, bringing down on their heads all they have done, declares the Lord.” The Lord is looking for people to intercede on the behalf of sinners. God sent his only son so that we would be saved and he doesn’t want any one of his children to perish.
I think you can see by the examples above that the answer to the question I started with is yes, it is important to pray for others. How can you help? There are many ways that you can add intercessory prayer into your life. I will go over a few suggestions but these are just examples, you can find what works best for you. One way that I have started to make sure that I pray for those in need is that I pray immediately for someone when they ask for prayers. If I hear a request for prayers from a friend, or family member, or I read a request on social media, I pause and say a quick prayer right there before I forget. Another thing you could do is add this type of prayer to your daily tasks. For instance, when folding laundry you could pray for a different person for each piece of laundry you fold. You could do the same for washing dishes.
You could join a prayer line at church. A lot of churches have an email list of people that have agreed to be on this prayer line. When requests for prayers come into the church, someone emails them out to everyone on the list. Those people on the list say a prayer for those in need. When I usually get the email with the list of people that need prayers I try to take a minute and say a quick prayer for those intentions. However, you can do it any way you like. Another idea is to keep a list of people that are in need of prayers next to your bed and just read over it before going to sleep. If your church does not have something like this, you could volunteer to head it up. It does not take a lot of time, but does make a huge difference.
You could also pray for a specific cause daily as a form of intercessory prayer. Saint Therese of Lisieux, was the patron saint of missionaries even though she was very sick and couldn’t go on any missions. She prayed frequently for those that could go on missions. There were several saints, Saint Catherine of Sienna for one, that prayed daily for the souls of sinners. Others pray for families, for the church, for seminarians becoming priests, or for the violence in the world. There are so many things for which you can intercede. It does not have to be that you spend hours interceding for these things either. It could just be a quick prayer.
Some of us wish that we could do more for others. We wish we could give more of our time, but we really can’t. We wish we could go out and volunteer more, but for one reason or another we can’t. We wish we could donate more money, but we can’t. This is something that any one of us can do and is just as important as the other things. My hope is that the next time someone asks you for prayers you will stop what you are doing and say a quick prayer for them. I also hope that you will begin to intercede with prayer for other things that you feel called to pray for. We need more people like Moses in the world today. People who can see the bad things that are going on in the world and can pray for those people and their salvation.
Dear Heavenly Father I pray that you bless each person listening to this episode today. Lord we ask that you help us intercede for others. If you have a special cause that you want us to intercede for we ask that you put that on her heart Lord and convict us. If we don't know how to intercede Lord I ask that you show us. Give us the strength and the courage to pray for people right then and there when they ask us to. Help us to not be embarrassed but to be confident when we pray with them or for them. Lord God we thank you for everything that you do for us. You are truly amazing and if you want us to intercede for someone or something please just let us know. Lord God we love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus holy name, amen.
The Holy Spirit Lives In You
Acts 2:38 “Peter Replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins. And you will receive the Holy Spirit.”
I think when most of us read this we focus on the repent and be baptized part of this verse. Repentance is so important and it is something that we can read about all throughout the Bible. God is always calling His people to repentance and sometimes they repented and other times that did not. In the case of Sodom of Gomorrah, they were a wicked people and they refused to repent. God sent fire down to destroy the towns. However, when God sent Jonah to Ninevah to tell them they needed to repent they did and God saved them.
Did you know that Jonah was angry at God for saving Ninevah. We read in Jonah 4:1-2 “But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. And he prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord, is it not this what I have said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster.” Jonah ran from the Lord when the Lord asked him to go Ninevah. I had always thought he ran from the Lord because he was afraid of the people in Ninevah. However, this verse says that he ran because he knew God would have mercy on them, and he didn’t want them to be saved.
I feel like this is a somewhat common thing for us to do. Maybe not running from the Lord, but definitely wishing that people get what they deserve. Have you ever wished that someone got what they deserved? Have you ever seen a car speed by you, or weave in and out of traffic and think to yourself, “I hope their is a cop ahead.”? Or you see someone cut in line and hope that someone noticed and that they get kicked out of the line? Why do we do this? Why do we wish ill on other people? Maybe you are thinking that you are justified in thinking that you want the driver to get pulled over because you want them to learn their lesson and drive better. But, what if they did get pulled over and they just got a warning would you be ok with that?
Sometimes we can do this with our kids as well. Jonah felt that these people needed to be punished and he knew that God would have mercy on them. Sometimes we can default to the thinking that when our children do something wrong when they need to be punished, and maybe that is true sometimes. But, do we take the time to think about the situation first? Do we even consider giving them mercy? Sometimes our children need our mercy. Sometimes they messed up, did something they weren’t supposed to do and they know it was wrong. They are truly sorry and they learned a lesson from it. Times like these are times when we should consider mercy. Sometimes we think our kids will only learn if we punish them, however, I think they can learn a lot from mercy as well.
As I said earlier, we tend to focus on the first part of this verse, Repent and be baptized. However, I wonder how many of you also think of the ending of the verse? How many of you truly know what it means? The verse ends with “and you will receive the Holy Spirit.” I am not sure that everyone, or even most people, know how powerful a statement that is. Did you know that the power of the Holy Spirit is what raised Jesus from the dead? Did you know that same power resides in you? Romans 8:11 "If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.”
When you are baptized you are baptized in the name of Jesus Christ This means that when you are baptized you receive the Holy Spirit. If you are Catholic, then you receive the Holy Spirit again when you are confirmed. This is all amazing to me. The power that raised Jesus from the dead, lives in me. I just can’t get over that. I think if we all knew the power that we had through the Holy Spirit, and then used that power for good, the world wouldn’t know what was going on. Jesus said in John 14:12-14 “Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes in me will do the works that I do and will do greater ones than these, because I am going to the Father. And whatever you ask in my name, I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the son. If you ask anything of me in my name I will do it.”
Did you catch that? Jesus said we will do greater works than Him if we believe. This is only possible because of the Holy Spirit. We have the Holy Spirit inside of us, we just need to call on Him. We need to believe in Jesus and believe when He tells us that He sent us the Holy Spirit to guide us. The Holy Spirit raised Jesus from the dead. That same spirit lives in you. What are you going to do with it? Are you going to just sit around and let all that power pass you by, or are you going to use your new found power for good? Who do you know that could use some extra blessings? I am sure that I have talked before about how important repentance is and yet this will likely not be the last time you hear me talk about it. Repentance is so important for so many reasons. This verse just mentions one of the many, if you repent and are baptized you will receive the Holy Spirit. Now, after talking for a bit about how awesome the Holy Spirit is, wouldn’t you do anything to be close to Him?
Most, if not all, of you listening already have the Holy Spirit inside of you. Call upon Him and you will see how powerful He is. Don’t be afraid to talk with Him and ask Him for things. That is why God sent Him to us, to help us. Anything that happens as a result of the Holy Spirit glorifies God. Jesus is with the Father, so when we ask the God for things in Jesus’ name, the Holy Spirit comes through for us and the results glorify the Lord. It is a win win for everyone. One of the easiest prayers to remember, and yet one of the most powerful is, “Come Holy Spirit come.” When you ask, God answers. Anytime you are in need of a little assistance, or even a lot of assistance, pray “come Holy Spirit come.” I truly feel you will be surprised at all the ways He comes through for you.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord I ask that you send the Holy Spirit to everyone listening to this podcast. Lord we ask that you open our eyes to how the Holy Spirit is working in our lives. Lord we ask that you remind us to call on the Holy Spirit when we forget. Lord we are so very thankful that you sent down the Holy Spirit to guide us in your ways. Lord help us to see the places in our life where we need to repent and then give us the courage to do so. We want to receive the Holy Spirit Lord Jesus we are open to it. Lord God you are amazing we are so very thankful for all you do for us. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and then Jesus is holy name amen.
Are You Living Up To Your Potential?
Jeremiah 29:11 “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
The Lord has planned out your life. Before you were even formed He had a plan for your life. Isn’t that crazy to think about? His plans for your life are good plans. He tells us directly, we don’t even have to guess, “Plans to prosper you and not to harm you.” If we know that God has plans for us to prosper, then why do we sometimes run away from these plans? God’s plans are to give us hope and a future, so why do we question these plans? Why is it so hard for us to believe that God has plans for us?
I have been doing a lot of personal development and I am in a Christian mentoring group that is called Big Life Mentoring. In all of the personal development books, as well as the mentoring they talk about how we have a God-given potential. They talk about how we were all created to live an exceptional life. God wants nothing but the best for us. Does this mean that we will never have challenges? Nope. It does mean that He will be with us in those challenges and He will use those challenges for our good, not for our harm. I have talked with numerous people over the last several years about my belief that God created us all to live a big life. It is usually met with some opposition. I have been told that some people were created for a big, amazing life, and some people were not. Some people were created to have an “ok” life. Where they just go about their day and nothing special happens. They were not created to do great things.
I disagree with this. I do not think that God created any of us to just go through our days, day in and day out, just existing. I do not believe He wants that for any of us. I am also not saying that every person was created to be a movie star, or make some huge impact on the whole world. I do think that we all have the same potential for doing great things with our lives. How we use that potential could look very different for everyone. Someone could use that potential to be a movie star, a priest, a mom, a lawyer, a doctor, anything you desire. I don’t think it’s the career you choose or the role you play that defines you. I think it is more about how you are showing up in that career/role.
You do not have to go on a mission trip to another country to change people’s lives. If you are a parent, you are impacting lives every day with your parenting. People are always watching you and you could be changing lives in the grocery store when someone watches you handle a complaint respectfully. There are many ways that you could have a positive impact on the world. The opposite of this is true as well. If you are walking through life angry and taking it out on all that you see, this will also be observed by others and could be changing lives, but not for the better. If that is you, that is not the life that God has planned for you.
I wonder sometimes, how many of us are actually living up to our potential. Are you living up to the potential that God has placed inside of you? A lot of people that I talk to are settling for mediocrity. They are not truly happy with their life, and they think that is just how life is. They don’t seek to change anything because they don’t feel they deserve more, or maybe they don’t think there is anything better out there, or perhaps they don’t feel they’re capable of having more. I want to tell you right now, that if you are unhappy with where you are in life, there is more. God has more planned for you. Where you are now, does not have to be a final destination. It could be a resting place until you are ready for the more that God has planned for you.
What is it that you really want to do? What is it that makes your heart light up when you talk about it? This could be something big, like start a non-profit, write a book, change careers, or it could also be as simple as, see my grandkids more, be in nature, go to daily mass, spend more time in prayer. Whatever it is deep inside that you’re longing for, go get it. God has given you the potential to achieve all your dreams. Are you living up to your potential? Is there more you could be doing?
You may be listening to this and thinking that I am wrong, that not everyone was made for an extraordinary life. That you were made for an ordinary life and nothing more. I would argue that your outlook might be the difference between an ordinary life and an extraordinary life. Two people may have very similar lives, as far as marriage, kids, career, income, etc. Yet one may be living an extraordinary life and one may be living an ordinary life. What is the difference? The one living an extraordinary life has a positive outlook on their life. They are on the lookout for the miracles that occur every day and are willing to acknowledge them. They are also looking for ways that they can excel in the roles that they have. They are looking for opportunities to improve the life they have. The one living an ordinary life is on the lookout for all the ways his/her life is ordinary and so they that is all they see. They do not see opportunities to improve their life and assume that what they have is the best it is going to get.
God wants amazing things for you and your family. It is not too late. You are not too young. You are not too old. You have not been out of the game too long. You are not too inexperienced. You are strong enough. You are smart enough. You have so much potential. That thing that you have always wanted to do, it is not too late. Philippians 4:13 says, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” You can do all things through Christ. Do that thing, that thing you have been putting off, that thing that you have been too scared to do, that thing that you are convinced you can’t do. Why do you think you have that desire deep inside of you? Who do you think put that desire there? And if God put that desire there, don’t you think he will equip you with all you need to achieve it? Are you living up to your potential?
Dear Heavenly Father I ask that you bless everyone listening to this episode today. Lord Jesus we ask that you help us live up to our potential. We thank you for putting these desires in our heart and for equipping us to achieve them. Lord we ask that you give us the motivation and strength we need to live the life you want us to live. Lord if we are not living the life you want us to live or if we're not living up to our potential we ask that you shine a light on this and convict our hearts on what you want us to do. Lord we want all that you have to offer and we willingly except it. You are amazing Lord and we are so very thankful for all that you do. We love you very much and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen
Having Faith Through The Storm
Proverbs 3:5-6 “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.”
My question at the moment is how do we have faith in the storm? I find it easy to have faith when life is going good, when we might have an issue or two, but no big stressors at the moment. I find it easy to rely on God when everything is coming up in my favor, but what about when there are struggles? What about when things happen that cannot be explained? Last year around this time we received devastating news. Our perfect dog, that we adopted from a rescue two years ago had spinal cancer and was in a lot of pain. We knew she was sick and we had been taking her to the vet every so often for several weeks. They gave her medicine and she seemed to turn the corner. She seemed like she was on the way to recovery. Although we did not know what caused her to struggle for a few weeks, we were happy that she was on her way back to being healthy. She was only 3.5 years old, so we were sure whatever it was, she would get better. Then one day she started to whine all throughout the day and night. We were not sure what was going on. We finally were able to get her into the vet and she told us the worst news ever. She told us that our beautiful girl had cancer and was in so much pain and that there was nothing that could be done. We had a feeling going into this appointment as Skye was struggling to even walk, however, hearing it was so much worse. It made it so real. I instantly prayed, and I had every single person that I know pray. I know God is capable of miracles, I know he does them every day. I know he could have cured our girl in an instant, and he did’t. How does one wrap their head around that? How does one have faith in a situation like this? I was in a similar place less than a year before this as well. My friend had throat cancer. I prayer over her, so many people prayer over her and for her and yet she passed away. I know God could have healed her in an instant. So, why didn’t he? Why didn’t he save her from her disease? Why did he have to take her, why did he have to take our dog?
The answer is, I don’t know. I don’t know why some people die and some people are healed. I don’t know why some dogs live to an old age and some die at a young age. I don’t know why God does what he does. And, this is ok. We are not supposed to know everything, at least not on this side of heaven. God is a mystery. One thing I do know is that God’s ways are not our ways. Isaiah 55:8-9 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” God has a plan. His plan is greater than any plan we could possible have for ourselves. He does not think like we think. He knows every second of our life before we are even born. I trust that even though I don’t understand why we had to lose Skye, God has a plan. Skye came to our family when we were in desperate need for healing. We had had a rough couple of years to say the least and we needed to heal our hearts. We needed to learn to love again and to be calm and nice and everything that Skye was. She had the perfect temperament. She was calm, she loved to be pet, she could see when you were upset and she knew when you needed her to just be next to you. She got everyone outside walking again. She helped everyone to feel love again.
I know with 100% certainty that she was sent to us from God when we needed her most. I am so very thankful for the time we did get to spend with her and I know she is in a better place right now where she is no longer in pain. In Proverbs 3:5 we are told “trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding.” I did not want to just leave you with this thought and not give you some practical ways to trust God in difficult times. Some people find strength and comfort in reading the bible verses and hearing God’s words, and others need more practical steps in how to apply these words in their everyday life. I found this article called “3 Secrets to Trusting God During Difficult Times” on the Vibrant Christian Living website. (link: https://vibrantchristianliving.com/trusting-god-difficult-times/ )
I will summarize the three practical steps that she takes to trust God in difficult times.
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We must take responsibility for what we choose to savor. What are you taking the time to savor? Are you focusing on the fears and pain, or are you focusing on the beautiful things in life, like the sunset? If you allow your thoughts to linger on the “what ifs,” you will cripple your ability to trust God during hard times.
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We must quiet our lives so that we can discover (and savor) the quite undercurrents of joy. Life gets so busy that we don’t notice the small things that bring us joy. The author states, “When I am enduring a trial I have to regularly quiet my heart: to let out the surge of emotion that is building; and to allow God to replenish my soul with reminders of the beauty that is happening in my little world.” What are the small beautiful things in your world that you are not seeing because you are too busy? This sort of goes back to the practice of gratitude. If you are really struggling right now, take a notebook and start or end each day with writing 5-10 things for which you are grateful. You will be surprised how many more awesome things you will notice about your life.
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Release your fears to God and choose to savor His replenishing promises. The article mentions a well-known bible verse that Christians tend to quote during a trial. Philippians 4:6-7 says, “Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.” Then the author states that although this is beautiful the true power of this verse is actually outlined in the following two verses. Philippians 4:8-9 says, “ And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. Keep putting into practice all you learned and received from me—everything you heard from me and saw me doing. Then the God of peace will be with you.” First, we must release our fears and tell God what we need and thank him for all he has done. However, we must not stop there. We must fix our thoughts on what is true, honorable, right, pure, lovely and admirable. If you take this seriously, if you focus your thoughts on these things during a trial, you will find it easier to find joy. When you are tempted to let you thoughts wander into dark places, confess your fears to God and meditate on the truth. Make a list of what is true in your situation and meditate on those anytime you are struggling. There is truth and light in every situation. You just need to find it and focus on that. My truths are that Skye was here for us when we needed her. We were able to give her an amazing home filled with love for almost 2 years. She was happy here. She is no longer in pain. When I get sad, I can focus on these truths. What are the truths in your situation?
Dear heavenly father I ask that you bless everyone listening to this episode today. Lord Jesus there are so many people hurting right now and we ask that you are with them all during this difficult time. Lord we ask that you help us focus on the positive and that you shine a light on the truths in our situation. Help us Lord when we don't understand. We know your ways are not our ways and your thoughts are not our thoughts. Comfort us Lord during this difficult time. Strengthen our faith and help us rely on you. Calm the waves of our storm as you did for the disciples when they were in the boat. Lord, we love you so very much and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Can Your Faith Heal You?
Mark 10:52 “And Jesus said to him, “Go your way; your faith has made you well.” And immediately he received his sight and followed him on the way.”
How many of us have the faith of this man that Jesus healed? He was sitting on the side of the road and when he heard Jesus was passing by he called out to him. The crowd of people told him to be silent, but he kept calling out. How many of us listen when others tell us to be silent? Or worse yet, we don’t feel like we are worthy to speak up in the first place, or we are too nervous to speak out and ask for help for fear of rejection. Bartimaeus did not listen when others told him to be quiet. He kept calling out. He believed that Jesus could heal him, and he was not going to let the chance pass him by. Once Jesus heard him calling out, Jesus said to call him. When the crowd told him that Jesus would see him, the bible says, “He threw aside his cloak, sprang up, and came to Jesus.” How great is that? How many of us are jumping up at Jesus’ call? I know it’s different. Jesus was right there and he got to see him and talk to him. But we can also talk to Jesus anytime we want to. Even though we cannot see him, he is calling us to him. He wants to invite us in to a deeper relationship with him. Do we hear this call? Do we jump up, throw our cloak aside and run to him when we are called?
I love the faith that Bartimaeus had. He knew Jesus could heal him. He did not seem to have any doubt that Jesus could cure his blindness. He also didn’t seem to doubt that Jesus would want to help him or to question whether he was worthy enough. He saw Jesus walking by and called out to him. Do we do this? Jesus is here for us, he is wanting us to call out and to rely on Him. Are we doing that? It seems each week at my Prayer Group God is showing up for us and he is telling us to come closer. He keeps telling us to rely on him, that he is our protection and our refuge. Why are we not calling on him more then? When Jesus healed Bartimaeus, He said, “Go Your way; your faith has made you well.” How great would it be to hear those words from Jesus?
One scripture verse that I think is amazing and that I struggle with is Mark 11:22. This verse is Jesus’ reply to the cursed fig tree. Jesus said to them in reply, “Have faith in God. Amen, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it shall be done for him.” This is the type of faith that I strive for and yet sometimes wonder if it’s possible. I wonder if there are humans that can have this type of faith? I know that God can do anything. I truly believe this. And yet, when I think of myself commanding a mountain to be lifted up and thrown into he see, I can’t seem to wrap my head around that. I have searched for this type up faith for a very long time now. Probably since the first time I actually heard this scripture and let it sink in.
The very next verse is Mark 11:23, “Therefore I tell you, all that you ask for in prayer, believe that you will receive it and it shall be yours.” This again, just blows me away. All that you ask for, shall be yours if you believe, that seems like a lot of pressure, and at the same time, a huge promise on God’s part. As I said above, ever since hearing scripture like this, I have searched for this type of faith. I would love to believe without a shadow of a doubt that God can do all the things that I ask him to do, that he will answer all of my prayers. I find it a struggle to believe as much as I would like to and I wonder if this is because I have a human brain and we were trained from an early age to not believe in things that we can’t see or prove. We were mostly taught that there are certain things that can be done and things that can’t be done. I think as humanity grows, we are learning to question that more and more. But it takes time to overcome years of that type of thinking.
I thought I would give you one way that I have been able to deepen my trust and faith that God can do all he says he can do. I read books about all the miracles God had done and continues to do. I love to read books about healing. God is so amazing and he is preforming miracles every single day and if we would just be on the lookout for them, we would see them. If we can’t see them in our lives, we can read about them in others’ lives. Harold Hill’s book, “How to Live Like a King’s Kid” is an excellent example. If you read all the amazing things that God did in his life, you can’t help but start to believe he will do it for you as well. Harold Hill also talks about his faith journey and how he got to a point where he began to see God do amazing things in his life.
Also, reading any books on healing, Francis McNutt, Randy Clark, Mary Healy, Matthew & Dennis Linn are just a few that I have read that have been really good. When you read about God’s healing of others and how there are people out there today who are calling upon God to heal people every day then it strengthens your faith that he will answer your prayers as well. Hebrews 13:8 says, "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” We all know that Jesus was preforming miracles when he was alive and walked this earth. He rose people from the dead, he cured so many illnesses, he turned water into wine, he did all the things. This verse from Hebrews lets us know that these miracles were just not a thing he did in the past. “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” He is still doing these miracles today and if we struggle to believe this then we need to search out the testimony of it because it is out there. Another thing I pray often is Mark 9:24 “Lord, I believe, help my unbelief.”
Dear heavenly father I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord we ask that you increase our trust in you. Lord we believe help our unbelief. Lord we need you to show us the way. We would like nothing more than to have the faith to move mountains and we know that you are the only one they can give us that faith. So we're asking you Lord, we are asking for the faith to move mountains. Lord give us the courage to ask when we need healing or when someone else needs healing. Help us to turn to you first and ask for you to heal them. Lord, we give you permission to use us as your instruments of healing as you used countless people before us. Jesus, you are the great physician and we ask that you continue that work through us. There are too many people dying in the world today. Let us help you help them. Let us be your hands of healing Lord Jesus. We love you and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Be Silent Before Me
Luke 10:40-42 “She [Martha] came to him and asked, "Lord, don't you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!" "Martha, Martha," the Lord answered, "you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”
In the Bible, there were two sisters named Martha & Mary. When Jesus came to visit, Martha was busy getting the house ready and the food ready and waiting on everyone. Mary was sitting by Jesus’ feet just being with him. “She [Martha] came to him and asked, "Lord, don't you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!" "Martha, Martha," the Lord answered, "you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.” (Luke 10:40-42) What Martha was doing was important too, but Jesus said just sitting and being with Him was the better choice.
Do you ever sit in the silence? It seems like that is the last thing that most of us want to do. We fill our days with all the noise of the world. When in a car commuting to and from work we have the radio on. When we are at the house, we have the TV or the music on as background noise. If there is silence in a conversation, we rush to fill it. Why are we so uncomfortable with the silence?
I was on zoom with my prayer group and one of the ladies received this word, “My Dear Ones, Your chatter keeps me from touching your hearts in the silence. I need you to be silent before me. Some part of everyday I need you to be silent so that I can enter into your heart and enter into your spirit so I can heal those things that make you hurt. So that I can be there to heal your wounds. But if you chatter and chatter and chatter, I cannot be there to heal you. I need you to be quiet before me. Some part of everyday, please take that time and be quiet before me.”
I try to spend time in prayer daily, as I am sure many of you listening to this do. I pray for loved ones, any petitions that I have been asked to pray for, and anything that is going on in my life right now. Some days it is a few minutes and sometimes longer, depending on how much is going on and how much I have to say that day. I have somewhat recently, in the last year or two, started adding to this prayer time some time to listen to the Lord.
This is something with which I struggle greatly. It is hard for me just to sit and be quiet. I try, and then my mind starts thinking, “Should I be hearing something?” Sometimes I think, “How long should I sit quietly?” I think a variety of other things while I sit there and try to just be still with the Lord. Oh, I also often think, “Am I doing this correctly?” Guess what, there is no correct way to sit with the Lord. So, yes, you are doing it correctly. Just in case you ask yourself the same question. Why is it so hard for us to sit and be with our Lord in silence?
I do not have an answer for you. I think that is something that we should all ask ourselves. For me, I think it is that I always want to be doing things for others. I am someone who loves to serve. So, when I am just sitting there, I feel like there is something else I should be doing for the Lord, not just sitting with him. I should be doing a prayer, a rosary, praising, worshiping, something. All of these things are good to do. I am sure God loves it when we do those things. But as He stated above, he also needs us to just sit with Him. He wants us to do this each and every day.
Being silent with the Lord each day does not have to become something burdensome. You do not need to feel as if you suddenly have to add an hour of quiet time into your already over-scheduled day. This could be 5 minutes, while you wait for your coffee to brew in the morning. You could give God 10 minutes while you are in the shower. All He is asking you for is to spend some part of your day with Him in silence. Do you have a commute that you could share with the Lord, or what about a few minutes in between meetings? Take a look at your schedule and see where you could find a few minutes to sit with the Lord and just be silent.
How much would you love God to “enter into your heart and spirit and heal the things that hurt you”? I for one would love that! I loved this reminder that it is important to sit in the silence. I am hoping that this message serves as a reminder to myself and to anyone listening that we don’t need to fill every minute of the day will noise. The message talks about God coming in the silence, into our hearts, to heal us. Another great thing that happens in the silence a lot of times is that you can gain clarity on your life, your decisions, whatever it is that is weighing on you. God can put your mind at ease and can guide you in the right direction if you give Him the chance. If we need an answer to something in this day and age most people use the internet and “google” the answer or we “ask Siri.” How many times a day have you searched for an answer to a question on the internet or by asking a friend/coworker? How many times have you asked God the most important questions and then sat with Him and listened for an answer?
Dear heavenly father I ask you to bless everyone listening to this episode today. Lord we want nothing more than for you to come into our hearts and heal all that hurts us. Help us to be silent so you can do this. Help us to limit our chatter. Lord Jesus, help us to learn to love the silence. Help us to look at our schedules and set aside 5 minutes a day to listen to what you have to tell us. We ask you for so much Lord Jesus, and yet we don’t always think to listen in return. We are so sorry for all the chatter. You are so amazing and we love you so much. We are so thankful for all you do. Lord, you know that we are a broken people so we thank you for the gentle reminders of what you need from us. Lord, we welcome you into our hearts and we thank you for healing our wounds. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Looking Foolish For Jesus
Numbers 11:23 “The LORD answered Moses: Is this beyond the LORD’s reach? You shall see now whether or not what I have said to you takes place.”
I have been reading two books lately that have really got me thinking about how I pray. One is called the Circle Maker by Mark Batterson and the other is called The Cross and the Switch Blade by David Wilkerson. Both books have similar themes. One central theme seems to be praying boldly and specifically. They both talk about how if we want to see extraordinary things, we need to be willing to look foolish sometimes. Here is a short excerpt from the book The Circle Maker.
“Faith is the willingness to look foolish. Noah looked foolish building a boat in a desert. The Israelite army looked foolish marching around Jericho blowing trumpets. A shepard boy named David looked foolish charging a giant with a sling shot. The Magi looked foolish tracking a star to Timbuktu. Peter looked foolish getting out of the boat in the sea of Galilee and Jesus looked foolish wearing a crown of thorns. But the results speak for themselves. Noah was saved from the flood, the walls of Jericho came tumbling down, David defeated Goliath, the magi discovered the Messiah, Peter walked on water, and Jesus was crowned king of kings. Foolishness is a feeling that Moses was very familiar with. He had to feel foolish going before the pharaoh and demanding he let God's people go. He felt foolish raising his staff over the Red Sea, and he most certainly felt foolish promising meat to eat for the entire nation of Israel in the middle of the wilderness but his willingness to look foolish resulted in epic miracles; the exodus of Israel out of Egypt, the parting of the Red Sea, and the quail miracle.”
The quail miracle is what I want to talk to you about today. God had saved the Israelites from Egypt, he was providing a miracle for them every single day by providing manna, and yet they were not happy. They were complaining about not having meat to eat. They were talking about all the good things they had to eat when they were in Egypt and reminiscing as if those were good times because they had so much free food and fish. But they're forgetting that the food was free because they were not, they were slaves. In Numbers 11:10-15 Moses hears the people complaining and asks God why he treats him so badly as to give him the responsibility of all these people. Then in Numbers 11:18-21 God says “To the people, however, you shall say: “Sanctify yourselves for tomorrow, when you shall have meat to eat. For in the hearing of the LORD you have cried, ‘If only we had meat for food! Oh, how well off we were in Egypt!’ Therefore the LORD will give you meat to eat, and you will eat it, not for one day, or two days, or five, or ten, or twenty days, but for a whole month—until it comes out of your very nostrils and becomes loathsome to you. For you have rejected the LORD who is in your midst, and in his presence you have cried, ‘Why did we ever leave Egypt?’”
This is one of those times I talked about earlier when sometime faith requires you to look a little foolish. Moses did not understand how there could be enough meat to feed all these people for a whole month. He even questioned God about this. In Numbers 11:22 Moses asks “The people around me include six hundred thousand soldiers; yet you say, ‘I will give them meat to eat for a whole month.’ Can enough sheep and cattle be slaughtered for them? If all the fish of the sea were caught for them, would they have enough?” I find this remarkable, and comforting. After all the truly extraordinary miracles Moses has seen, he still questions the Lord when he tells him something. I find it remarkable because I would think by now, he would know to just trust God. I find it comforting because if someone who is as close to the Lord as Moses was can question or doubt the Lord, then I don’t have to be so hard on myself when I do it. Moses could not see how this could happen, the math did not add up.
Then the next verse is one that we should ask ourselves often, especially when we are facing a situation that seems impossible. Numbers 11:23 says, “The LORD answered Moses: Is this beyond the LORD’s reach? You shall see now whether or not what I have said to you takes place.” Wow, Is this beyond the Lord’s reach? What a great question! And I hope we all know the answer is No, nothing is beyond the Lord’s reach. I wonder what Moses was thinking in that moment when God said that to him. He was probably feeling the same way we feel when our parents ask us a question that we ought to know the answer to.
After this talk with God, Moses had a decision to make. Was he going to trust God and go out in front of his 600,000 soldiers and tell them that God would provide them meat for a month? Would he put his reputation on the line to say something that he himself had trouble believing? I think a lot of us find ourselves in this situation more often than we would like to admit. We all know the power of the Holy Spirit and of God and yet, we are hesitant to voice our prayers loud enough for others to hear. Or we are afraid to go out on a limb and pray a specific prayer out loud because what if God doesn’t come through? What if we look foolish? What will people think? Luckily Moses did go out and tell the people what God had said. And you know what, God showed up. He always does.
In Numbers 11:31-32 it talks about this miracle, ““There arose a wind from the LORD that drove in quail from the sea and left them all around the camp site, to a distance of a day’s journey and at a depth of two cubits upon the ground. So all that day, all night, and all the next day the people set about to gather in the quail. Even the one who got the least gathered ten homers* of them. Then they spread them out all around the camp.” Not knowing what a cubits is, or how much an homer is, I had trouble picturing how magnificent this miracle actually was. I did not understand how much of a miracle this was until I heard it explained in the Circle Maker book. I thought I would explain it how the author Mark Batterson explained it. The area which was filled with quail was 10 times larger then Washington D.C. and the quail were piled 3 feet high. Each person collected at least 10 homers. If you multiply 10 homers by the 600,000 soldiers you get 6 million homers of quail. Which means that the day it rained quail, it rained down at least 105 million quail. I had no idea it was so many. That seems so crazy to me. Can you even imagine what that must have looked like?
God provided this miracle for Moses and the people, however, he did not provide the miracle until after Moses went out and told the people what God had promised to them. What if Moses would have decided not to stand up and tell the people what God had said? Would they still have gotten the miracle? Often times if we want to experience a miracle we need to be willing to do something first. Take some action in faith. Often times that action on our part may make us look foolish or feel uncomfortable. Faith definitely asks us to step outside of our comfort zone at times. If we aren’t willing to risk looking foolish we may not get our miracles. You may be nervous to pray to God for certain things because you are worried that your prayers won’t get answered. But remember this, 100% of the prayers never prayed don’t get answered. If we don’t ask for it then we don’t give God the chance to answer it. We don’t give him the chance to show off his power and glory. The next time you are unsure how God could answer your prayers remember these words from God, “Is this beyond the Lord’s reach?”
Dear heavenly father I ask that you bless everyone listening to this episode today. Lord we ask that you give us the courage and boldness we need to do as you ask. Lord Jesus we ask that you give us a holy boldness to look foolish or step outside of our comfort zone if that's what you're asking us to do. We ask that you help us take a chance on you Lord. We know you always show up and we know you always come through. Lord we believe please help our unbelief. Lord give us the faith of Moses and Noah and Joshua and all those that came before us. Lord help us to have unwavering faith in you, help us to ask you for whatever it is we need without hesitation. Lord Jesus you are amazing and we're so thankful for all you do for us. We love you so very much and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus holy name amen.
King David
Psalm 42:5 “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation.”
This verse in Psalm 42 is repeated a few times. Almost like the chorus to a song. In psalm 42 David is talking to the Lord and asking Him why He is having to go through all that he is having to face. He is wondering where God is and asking Him how long He is going to stay away for. I find David fascinating. He was such a good king and was favored by the Lord and yet he did some pretty awful things as well. I am not sure how much you know about King David, I did not know nearly as much as I do now after listen to Father Mike talk about him during the Bible in a year podcast. Let me give you a very quick summary. I am sure I will leave some things out.
David had several brothers. He was the youngest I believe and he was tasked with tending to the family’s sheep. His older brothers went off to war. One day David was bringing them lunch and he saw that their was a giant that was threatening the soldiers. However, because the giant was so big, everyone was afraid to fight him. David was not afraid as he knew that God was with him. So, he persuaded the king to let him go up against this giant. The king wanted David to wear armor but it did not fit him so he did not. He went up to the giant with a sling shot and 4 flat stones in his pocket. The giant mocked him for being so small. David shot one rock at the giant and it hit him right between the eye, I think, and the giant went down. One rock and the giant was dead.
Then David went back to tending to sheep. Then when it was time to look for a king, the prophet Samuel was sent to David’s father’s house. He thought he was sent there for one of David’s brothers, but God told him no, he wanted David. David was anointed, but was not yet ready to be king. David was anointed for 10 years before he became king. This annointing did not come with any instructions. David had no idea when he would be king, he just accepted the anointing and then waited for God’s timing.
Can you imagine what that must have been like for him? Can you imagine having a prophet of God tell you that you were selected by God to be king of his chosen people, and then just go back to your regular job of tending sheep and wait 10 years? I wonder what that 10 years was like for him. I wonder if he ever doubted, or got impatient. I am pretty sure I would have done both. Waiting on God’s timing is so difficult. I know his timing is best and yet when you are waiting for something important, it seems like our timing is best.
Once David became King, he was a good king. He was favored by the Lord because he walked in the steps of the Lord. He frequently consulted the Lord before making big decisions and he praised the Lord often. However, David did not always do what is right in the eyes of the Lord. One day he was on the roof of his home and noticed a woman on top of another house. He had this woman brought to him and he had relations with this woman. He then found out that she was pregnant and was worried her husband would know what he did. He tried to get her husband to go home and be with her so that he wouldn’t find out. When he was unsuccessful in those attempts, he sent her husband to the front lines of the battle they were in and basically had him killed. Then he took this woman as one of his wives.
One thing that David was really good at, was turning back to the Lord and praising the Lord. The Psalms are filled with letters that David wrote to God. Some were written when David was rejoicing and some were written when he was running for his life. Before David became King, Saul was king. David had gone to work for Saul. He played the harp for him. However, Saul had become jealous of David and wanted to kill him. David was hiding in the caves when he wrote some of these letters. However, it seems no matter how down and out David was he always seemed to praise the Lord. He will go from complaining and asking how long God is going to forsake him and then in the next sentence he will be praising the Lord and saying how great God is.
David knew how the Lord wanted him to be. He knew the laws and he tried to walk in an upright way. However, even when he failed, David always knew that God was there for him if he repented. I wish we all knew this. I wonder how it was so easy for David to know this and so hard for us to believe it. Was it because he was anointed? Was it because of what his parents taught him about God when he was younger? Was it because of all the times that God had been there for him in the past? What was it about David that made his faith so strong? I really wish I knew. I wish I knew how he was able to have such radical faith in God that no matter what he did, God would never forsake him.
Then I wonder, was it easy for him? Just because he always repented and turned back to the Lord doesn’t mean it was easy for him. People do things all the time that are not easy. Maybe it wasn’t that it was easy for him, maybe he was just really disciplined or determined. I think we can assume a lot of things. When we see people succeeding, often times we will wonder, why things come so easily to them. We see them achieving their goals and everything working out for them and we compare ourselves to them. We may just be starting out and yet we compare our progress to theirs and assume that they had it easy. We assume that things must have just been handed to them. However, what we don’t see is the years of hard work and all the things that didn’t work out. We don’t see how many times they got knocked down and got back up again before they reached their success. I have heard a number of my mentors say, “Don’t compare the beginning of your journey to someone else’s ending.” You are not in a race with anyone. All of our journeys are uniques. That goes for your career, family, self-discovery, and faith journey. Your journey is yours.
Do you compare yourself with the people in the bible? Do you assume they had it easier for one reason or another. If we don’t study the bible and the lives of those in the bible it is easy to assume they had it easy. Before learning more about David’s life, all I knew was that he defeated Goliath with a slingshot and that he was a great king. Knowing this it can be easy to assume that because God favored David, it was easy for him to believe in God. It is easier to keep your faith in God when all things are coming up in your favor. Success is not the time when we usually question if God is with us. However, after knowing that he was running for his life because the king wanted him dead, it makes it a little harder too see how he kept his faith through all of that. It helps us to see him as a human and not someone that we need to put on a pedestal. It helps us to see that just because we believe in God and that he is on our side doesn’t mean we won’t struggle. Even those that God loved did not live in a perfect world without struggle.
Today’s verse is Psalm 42:5 “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation.” In this verse I think it is showing us that it was not always easy for David. He is asking himself why he is cast down and in turmoil. He knows he should not have to worry because God is on his side and God always gets him through and yet he is still cast down. I think this is great to hear verses like this, because I think sometimes we can get in our own heads and chastise ourselves for being upset. We tell ourselves that we should know God is there and therefore why are we upset. Yet,knowing that even someone who was as close to God as David was still has his moments of feeling hopeless or downcast is reassuring. If we know this we can feel better about ourselves. We can be more graceful with ourselves.
The verse also reminds us that when we feel like this we can have hope in God and praise him for our salvation. Hope and praise are things I have talked about before and yet I feel will be reoccurring themes. After being on the discernment team for my prayer group for over 2 years, one things is very clear. God repeats Himself a lot. Each month I feel as though He is saying the same type of thing, just in different ways. It’s like He has a few central themes and He really wants us to get them. I think God wants us to know how much love He has for us, I think He wants us to know that He is always there for us, I think forgiveness, mercy, grace are all important to Him. I think God repeats himself because we don’t seem to be getting it. Repetition is the key and if He keeps saying the same thing in different ways, one day He is bound to say it in a way that speaks directly to each one of our hearts. This why I think he uses a variety of people as His instruments as well.
How can you help to spread God’s word? We all have own unique abilities. What is it that you can do that is special to you? You may not think you have anything to say, or you may think that you don’t know enough. However, all you need to do is say yes and give God permission to use you as His instrument and He will. Will you say yes to the Lord today?
Dear Heavenly Father and I pray that you bless everyone listening to this episode today. Lord God we pray that you help us to have hope in you. Father we ask that you help us have the strength of David when we do something wrong so we can turn back to you and repent. Lord help us to praise you every single day. Jesus help us not compare ourselves to others but to see ourselves through your eyes. Lord I ask that you help every person listening to this know how special they are to you. I ask that you fill them with the knowledge that there is nothing they can do that would make you turn away from them. Lord you are amazing, and we love you so very much. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus is holy name, Amen.
God Will Show You The Way
Proverbs 16:9 “In their hearts humans plan their course, but the Lord establishes their steps.”
I think this scripture verse is important because it reminds us to follow the Lord’s lead. Yes, we have plans and we have an idea of where we want to go but the Lord shows us the way. I’ve talked about how important it is to have desires and then to go after them. What this verse is saying is that it is good for us to plan where we want to go, and then the Lord will show us how to get there. He will establish the steps for you. And you know what is even more remarkable, He can create steps where none exist.
A lot of times I think we look at where we want to go and we look at the road to get there and we think that we can’t do it. That the road is too long and the hills are too steep. Maybe when you look at the road to get to where you’re going and all you see are mountains that you will need to climb. Guess what? Our God can move mountains, and so can you when you have God on your side. However treacherous your journey looks, know that you are not alone and that with God you can do anything. Philippians 4:13 says, “I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.” God will give you the strength to take the steps you need to get to where you want to go.
This is easier for many of us to believe when it is about our career. It is easier for us to believe that God will open doors for us and show us the path for our career. I have heard many people say things like, “If I get the job, it was meant to be and if not, it wasn’t meant to be.” This is something that is easier to say and to believe when it is about something that we are not as emotionally invested in. For instance, if we get the certain car we want, or if the restaurant we want to eat at has a reservation. If we are not that emotionally invested then we can easily tell ourselves that it didn’t work out because it wasn’t supposed. We can tell ourselves that everything happens for a reason and we can not let it get us too down.
But, what about when we are emotionally invested. What about when we were really counting on that door to open, and it didn’t. I know several ladies right now that are struggling with some really tough things concerning their children. They are in situations that feel impossible and they can see no way out I totally understand this feeling. I have been in situations like this before. What about you? Have you ever been in a situation where you exhausted all possibilities and then felt like there was no choice other than giving up? Have you been in a situation where you could not see the way out? This is God’s specialty. This is often times when you will see God do His most miraculous work.
Why is this? Because this is the place when most of us finally turn the situation over to God. This is when we finally get down on our knees and beg God to do something. We are desperate and vulnerable and would do anything to have our prayers answered. We have exhausted all that is humanly possible and now we need some supernatural, divine intervention. Once we ask God for His help, he starts to show us the way. Sometimes, he will miraculously fix the situation and you can move forward with life. Other times, he will show you the way one step at time until you climb out of the situation that you are in. Either way, He helps you out of the situation.
You may be wondering why He waits until we have exhausted all possibilities. This is because that is when we ask him for help. Once we have tried all we can do to fix it, then, and only then are we ready to relinquish control to the Almighty one. Have you ever been on a committee with someone or had a co-worker that had to be in control? Have you worked on a project with someone that had such a strong idea of how they wanted the project to come out that you couldn’t get a word in edgewise? They were so committed to their plan, and even though you could see flaws in it, they wouldn’t listen to anything you were saying. They needed to try it their way and fail before they would listen to your thoughts or advice? I imagine this is how God feels all the time.
God knows what we are going through, He knows the best way to move forward and yet often times we don’t stop and ask Him. We are busy going through our lives trying to do it on our own. Why is that? Why aren’t we stopping and asking God to show us the way? Or maybe some of us are in some areas, and not in others. I don’t think it is intentional. I don’t think we are even aware that this is what we are doing most of the time. I think if we are spending time in prayer each day then we assume we have asked God for help and that we have turned over our difficult situations to Him. And maybe we did . Maybe during that prayer time we turned over our worries to God, we asked Him for help and then went on with our day. But, what about later in the day when those thoughts come back? Do you take it back from God and start worrying about it again? Is it like a tug of war where you hand your worries over to God and then take them back, hand them over and take them back in a repetitive cycle? If this is you, don’t worry, you are not alone, we all do this to some degree or another.
How do we get to a place where we can turn our troubles over to God and not take them back? How can we get into the habit of turning to God first instead of last? These are great questions and they are ones that I’m not sure I can answer. I would say that being aware that you are doing this is a great first step. Take a moment and think of the last big thing you were going through. Did you pray about it? Did you ask God to show you the steps to move forward? Did you do this at the beginning of it all, or did you do it as a last resort after you had tried all you could do? There are no judgements here. We are all learning and walking together on this road to holiness. Be honest with yourself. If you did not turn to God first, don’t be hard on yourself, this is not something that most of us do. We are not in the habit of doing it.
I guess that would be a great second step then. Become in the habit of turning to God. What does that mean? To me, it means to develop a daily habit of prayer. Figure out a time each day when you can spend even just 5 minutes with the Lord and tell Him what is going on in your life and ask Him what He thinks you should do about it. If you are not used to talking to the Lord, this may seem weird. Trust me, if you can figure out a way to spend at least 5 minutes a day with the Lord, this will quickly become your favorite 5 minutes of the day. At first it will seem like a chore. This is normal. I say this because I think we all feel as though we should enjoy prayer and then when if feels like a chore, we are hard on ourselves. Doing new things, things we are telling our self we need to do, always seem like a chore. Prayer is no different. However, if you can keep it up, you will soon start to love it. That time becomes a really special time between you and your heavenly Father.
Once you are used to turning to God every day for a few minutes, then God will be closer to the top of your mind when you need Him. Do you have a friend that you talk to when you are struggling? If so, that is probably who you think of when you are in a difficult situation. You want to talk to them because you are in the habit of discussing issues with them. It is the same with God. If you create the daily habit of talking with Him about life, then when you need Him, you will think to ask Him for help sooner.
Those are two ways that you can get in the habit of turning to God sooner, and not waiting until it is a last resort. Now, as far as turning our worries over to God and not taking them back, this is still something I am working on. My two suggestions for this would be first, ask God for help. It would be great if that could be our first step for everything. If we are struggling with something, the first thing we could do is ask God to help us. After all He did say in Matthew 7:7 “Ask and it will be give to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened for you.” So, if you ask God to help you turn your worries over to Him and not take them back, then He will help you with that. Second, I would say keep trying, keep practicing. When you are worried about something or in a difficult situation, turn it over to God. Then, if you notice that you are worrying about it again, turn it over to Him again. The more you do this, the less often you will need to do this.
God wants to help you. He wants to show you the steps you need to take to get out of a difficult situation. He just needs us ask for His help and then to get out of His way and to let Him help. We can do this. We can learn to turn to Him sooner. We can stop wasting all of our energy trying to get ourselves out of all these situations while He sits on the sidelines and watches. Will you keep God benched on the sidelines or will you ask Him to show you the way?
Heavenly father I ask you to bless everyone listening to this episode today. Lord we ask that you come into our lives and show us the way. Lord we ask that you help us turn our troubles and our worries over to you. Lord we ask that you give us the strength to leave those worries with you and not pick them back up again. Lord we know you are all mighty and powerful and you are more than capable enough to handle anything that comes our way. Lord help us not to worry and give us the wisdom and knowledge to know that whatever is going on you are working in it and with it and that you were going to use it for our good. Lord we love you so very much and we thank you for being so patient with us and not getting angry when we try and sell things on her own. We thank you for stepping in when we finally ask you to and for showing us the way. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Abiding Forever
Romans 12:2 “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”
Do not be conformed to this world. This is a tall order. There are so many things in this world that are vying for our attention. There is so much out there on social media, on the regular TV, on Netflix and Hulu. We live in a world that is so busy. There is so much noise in the world today. Everybody wants you to listen to them, to buy their product, to think the way that they do. And marketing has gotten so good at figuring out what people want and how to make people spend their money. I was in the appliance section at Sears dept. store once and they were baking fresh cookies so that the smell would draw people in and make them more likely to buy from them. Then there are the different news media outlets. They seem to all be saying something different and yet they all want you to believe what they are saying.
In a world with so much noise, how do we not get swept up in all that is going on? How do we resist the temptation to be conformed by the world? One thing I love about God is that He always helps us out. He provides guidance and judgement. He does not just tell us how He wants us to act, but he explains how and then He usually has someone show us what he means. In this verse He doesn’t just tell us not to be conformed but He goes on to say but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. So how do we get this renewal of the mind? The verse says that by testing you may discern the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
This can be really difficult at times to figure out as the world’s idea of good, acceptable and perfect vary greatly from what the Lord says. God has tried very hard to lay out the laws for us. He gave us the whole Bible to help us know how we should live. Reading the Bible is a great way to help discern the will of God. It is also a great way to see what God thinks is good, acceptable and perfect. There are so many books of the bible that are there specifically to tell us how we should live, both in the new testament and the old testament. Proverbs in the Old Testament is a great book to read if you are looking for direction from God in various areas. The letters to the different communities in the New Testament are also a great place to look.
If you are wondering how God wants you to live, you do not have far to look. He spells it out very specifically in the Bible. However, the bible may not cover all the things we have in today’s modern world. This is when we can look to the church, the Pope, the saints, the religious leaders in your church. The Pope writes letters called encyclicals which address his views on various church teachings. These can be a great place to turn when you want more detail on various church teachings. Also, God is continually raising up people who are inspired by the holy spirit to help us know right from wrong. He is raising up all different types of people so that there is always someone that you can relate to. If you have not found someone that inspires you to live a more faith filled life,I encourage you to start looking, or keep looking. Here are a few names to get you started, Father Mike Schmitz, Jeff Cavins, Jon Leonetti, Bishop Barron, Matthew Kelly, Bobby & Jackie Angel, Pamela Crim. These are just a few names, there are so many. Find someone that inspires you and then your journey will be so much easier.
Even with all the lengths God has gone through to teach us the right way to live, the world sometimes overrides that teaching. The world is often times louder. We can’t hear God through all the noise of the world. It is important that we not let the noise of the world be louder than that of God. It is important that we intentionally spend time grounding ourselves in God’s truth before we even try to go out into the world.
In 1 John 2:15-17 it says, Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions—is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.” I don’t know about you, but I certainly want to abide forever. Think about how fast each year goes. We are not going to be on this earth for very long compared to forever. Why is is so hard for us to see how important it is to follow Jesus now, right in this moment, and not wait until tomorrow. We are not always guaranteed tomorrow. What if we keep putting off doing what is right until we feel like it, and then that day never comes?
I know that those of you listening to this podcast are probably already striving to live like Jesus. You wouldn’t be showing up here every day if we didn’t love God and want to please Him. And yet, I felt strongly that God wanted to me use this verse today and to teach on not conforming to this world. Everyone needs to be reminded of this every now and then. None of us are perfect. The more we show up here and listen to the teachings, the more we read the bible and study it, the more we read/learn on our own, the deeper an understanding we get of God and His will for us. However, knowing something and doing something are two completely different things. I bet we all struggle with doing things that we know God wants us to do. For instance, God wants us to love everyone, but that is not easy. He wants us to forgive everyone, but that can feel impossible at times.
God knows us, intimately. He knows where we are at and what our struggles are and if we have asked Him to help us with those struggles, then He is doing that. I don’t think this was meant to reprimand us, I think this morning He just wanted to remind us to be mindful of ways that we may be conforming to this world. He loves us and wants to help us so we can join Him in heaven one day. What might you be doing that is more of this world and less of God? What are you spending more time thinking about, those things of this world, or God? What about your desires, are they of God or are they of this world? I for one would like to strive for a renewal of the mind so I can discern the will of God and do what is good, acceptable and perfect. How about you, would you like to abide forever?
Dear Heavenly Father I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Father we ask that you help us not conform to this world. We ask that you give us the strength and wisdom to follow your ways not the ways of this world. Lord we ask that you help us quiet the noise of the world and listen to your voice. We ask that you help us find time in our schedule and throughout our day to spend with you quietly listening to your will. Lord you are amazing and you have gone out of your way to show us how to live correctly. Help us to live the way you want us to live Lord. Help us to discern your will so that we may abide forever. Lord we love you so very much and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus holy name, Amen
Fear Of The Lord
Proverbs 1:7 “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.”
Fear of the Lord, this is something that my husband Tony and I were just talking about this weekend. I am not sure I understood what fear of the Lord really meant when I was younger. I didn’t understand why we were supposed to have a fear of the Lord when He was such a loving God. It didn’t make sense to me and yet I knew it was something that we were supposed to do. Even in the passage above it says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. So what does fear of the Lord really mean?
I found an article online that goes into a lot of detail. I will put a link for this article in the episode notes or summary. https://www.thetruthstandsforever.com/understanding-the-fear-of-the-lord.html Fear of the Lord is not being afraid of the Him. It does not mean that we are supposed to be frightened by Him. The “fear” in “fear of the Lord” comes from respect, honor and love. One definition is a wholesome dread of displeasing the Lord. The article states that while “fear of the Lord” brings obedience and submission to the Lord, it is so much more the that. Webster’s dictionary calls it a reverential awe (of God).
Fearing the Lord is more of a spiritual awe of the Lord. As I stated about it comes from respect, honor and love. Fearing the Lord helps you to obey the Lord’s commandments, not because you are afraid of the consequences, but because you love the Lord so much and you don’t want to displease Him. You are in awe of how amazing He is and you love Him so much that you want to do the right thing because you don’t want to fracture your relationship with Him.
I was relieved when I heard this as I never really was afraid of God. I didn’t understand why someone would be afraid of the Lord when He is such a forgiving person. Well, when reading the Old testament, it is a little easier to see why someone would fear the Lord. He did some pretty awful things back then. Well, things that seem awful in our eyes. But then again, the people were doing some pretty awful things too. Human sacrifice is not something to play around with and definitely should not go unpunished.
This fear of the Lord that I am talking about is a good thing because it helps us make better choices. It helps us to stay on track and do what is right in the eyes of the Lord. Did you know that Jesus had fear of the Lord? In Isaiah 11:1-3 it says “There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit. And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. And his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.” This passage in Isaiah is prophesying about Jesus. Jesus, the son of God, had fear of the Lord.
Why would Jesus need fear of the Lord, isn’t He God himself? Yes, Jesus was fully God, but He was also fully human. This fear of the Lord that He had helped guide Him to make the right choices and do the right thing while He was on earth. This fear of the Lord helped Jesus stay in tune with His Father’s will. Jesus was always looking to His father to see what He should do. Jesus was very busy and yet He took the time to separate from others and spend time alone talking with His father.
This is a great example to follow. How can we develop a healthy fear of the Lord? I am betting that most of you already have it and you don’t know it. Do you wish to please the Lord? Do you worry about disobeying the Lord, or letting Him down? Do you have a spiritual awe of the Lord? Do you love and respect Him and want to do what is right in His eyes? These are all ways you may have fear of the Lord. You are not afraid of Him, but you do want to please Him. You love Him so much that you do worry about disappointing Him.
“Fear of the Lord” is something that the Holy Spirit brings to us. When Jesus was here in person He was leading us to our heavenly father. He showed us how we should live and what His Father’s will was. Now that He left to go be with his father, we have the Holy Spirit to guide us in doing the right thing. However, there is so much in the world today that is not of the Lord. There are so many things that can divide our time and our loyalties. If we have no fear of the Lord then we have no obligations to stay on track and do what is right.
The article talks about how with the “fear of the Lord” it’s possible for us to be united with the Father’s will. However, this doesn’t mean that our personalities disappear. It means that we willingly submit to the Father’s will. We are not submitting with a sense of dread, like it is something that we have to do. We want to please the Lord, not because He may do something to us if we don’t, but because we want nothing more than to please Him.
“Fear of the Lord” is a choice. We need to decide if we are going to use it or not. “Fear of the Lord” can only keep you following the will of God as long as you allow it to. It is not a decision that we make once and then just have for the rest of our lives. We must make this choice everyday, maybe multiple times a day. In Luke 9:23 it says, “Then He said to them all, “If anyone desires to come to Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.” Let him deny himself and take up his cross daily. This is what we are being called to do. We need to decide each and every day that we are going to follow the Lord and try to align our will with His will.
Denying ourselves is not that easy for most of us. There are so many temptations and we are bombarded with them day in and day out. How do we deny ourselves and take up our cross? One way to get stronger at denying ourselves is to practice in small ways. I had a friend that would give up something she liked each month, just for one month, as a sacrifice to God and to make sure that she did not love that thing more than God. I bet most of us would say that we do not worship a false God. However, look at your life, what are you putting first in your life?
Is there something that you are putting before God in your life? Are you denying yourself and picking up your cross daily? Are you making that choice each day to fear the Lord and trying to align your will with the will of God? What is one thing you could do today to deny yourself? Maybe have one less cup of coffee? Maybe pass on that dessert that you wanted? Maybe fast from social media or your phone for 30 minutes? These do not have to be drastic ways that you are denying yourself. Each small step you take will get you that much closer to the Lord.
Dear Heavenly Father I pray that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord we ask you to instill in us a healthy fear of the Lord. We ask that you align our will with yours Lord Jesus. Lord we ask that you help us to spend time with you so we can get to know you and your will for us. Lord you are amazing and you do so much for us. We are in awe of you Lord and want nothing more than to please you. Lord if we are putting something else before you we ask that you shine a light one it so that we can correct it. Lord we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus is holy name, Amen
Link to the article: https://www.thetruthstandsforever.com/understanding-the-fear-of-the-lord.html
Joy vs. Happiness
Psalm 28:7 “The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and he helps me. My heart leaps for joy, and with my song I praise him.”
This is the third day with the same scripture verse. This is not something I would usually do, I just felt there were three very important lessons in this one scripture verse. What I would like to talk about today is the part that says, “My heart leaps for joy, and with my song I praise him.” This mentions two of my favorite things and two things that I think can really be life changing if you can incorporate them into your everyday life.
The first is joy. The first thing I thought of was the bible story about the first thing Mary did when she found out she was going to be pregnant with Jesus. She also found out her cousin Elizabeth we pregnant with child and she went to visit her cousin Elizabeth. In Luke 1:41 it says, “When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit.” It does not say that the baby leaped with joy, however, I think that is what happened. Even the little tiny baby in his mother’s tummy could feel the presence of the Holy Spirit and was filled with joy. Then Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. When you are filled with the Holy Spirit you can’t help but be filled with joy. There is so much to be joyful about.
Some people think that in order to have joy, we need to be in a good circumstance. We think when we are happy, then we are joyful. Sometimes we think we will be happy when we get the right job, finally get married or have children, make a certain amount of money, you fill in the blank. What are you telling yourself you need to have to be happy? There is a difference between joy and happiness. Sometimes we use words interchangeably without realizing that they actually mean different things. You can have joy, even when you are not happy. One definition of happiness that I think we mostly think of is: Happiness is that feeling that comes over you when you know life is good and you can’t help but smile. This is a great definition. In this definition it ties happiness to the events in your life. You are happy when things are going well. This is most of us. When things are going well, we feel happy.
Joy is different than happiness. When I looked online I found a similar definition to happiness. However, I believe joy is so much more than a reaction to our circumstances. Theopedia describes joy as “a state of mind and an orientation of the heart. It is a settled state of contentment, confidence, and hope.” I love this definition. It is much more in line with what I’ve discovered over the years. You can have joy even when things aren’t going well. Joy is a choice, or as the definition states, a state of mind and an orientation of the heart. Why does it matter if we know the difference between joy and happiness? I think it matters because if you know that joy is a state of mind and an orientation of the heart, you can work to achieve it more often.
It seems like there are so many things throughout life that are not in our control. Isn’t it nice to know that joy is not one of them? One of my favorite mentors always uses an analogy when talking about joy. He says that a power plant doesn’t just have energy, it creates energy. He said we are the same. We don’t have just have joy, we create joy. We can create the joy in any circumstance if we choose too. Now, you may be asking yourself, how do I create joy? I think there are two great ways to create joy.
The first one sort of leads into the second one. The first one is mentioned in this verse of the day, “my heart leaps for joy and my song praises Him.” Praise is an excellent way to create joy. I am not sure you can be anything other than joyful when you are praising God. You could start out in some other mood, maybe angry, sad, frustrated, you name it, but once you start praising God, it is hard to stay in that mood. Actually I think it may be impossible. When you are praising God you are telling Him how wonderful He is and/or thanking Him for all that He has done. I can’t see how you can stay angry, sad, frustrated or depressed when you are thinking about how amazing God is and all the things that God has done.
Usually when we are praising Him we turn more to gratitude. Which is the second way to create joy. I am not sure if I have mentioned gratitude in a previous episode or not, but you will hear me talk about it often. There are just some things that I think are so important that we need to keep mentioning them over and over again until everyone in the world hears them. Gratitude is one of them. If you are prone to negative feelings like anger or depression, gratitude can help bring you out of this. If you just want more joy in your life gratitude can help you with this as well. Gratitude can change your life. I am not just saying this. There are countless examples of people who have turned their whole life around by just starting a practice of gratitude.
Starting a gratitude practice does not have to be something that is time consuming. I can already tell that some of you stopped listening because you do not need one more thing to do. I get it, life is busy, crazy busy for some. Starting a gratitude practice could be as simple as you taking one minute before you get out of bed to say thank you to the Lord for the gift of another day of life. It could be you noticing throughout the day different things to be grateful for. Writing down a couple of things in a gratitude journal/empty notebook is a great practice to get into. One reason that writing them down is so helpful is because then you can go back and reread them, especially if you are having a bad day. It also reminds you at the end of the year, that no matter how bad the year was, you were able to find at least one thing each day that you were grateful for.
This is also a great way to remember what you did throughout the year. I know people that take one gratitude photo each day and then they have 365 photos at the end of the year of happy moments throughout the year. Let's be honest, our brains tend to remember the negative times more than the good times. I am not sure why this is. I am sure there is a science explanation for it, but I don’t have it for you. I do know that when I go back and reread my gratitude journal I am reminded of a lot of things that I had forgotten about. I always feel joyful rereading my gratitude journal.
If you want more joy in your life try being grateful more intentionally. Gratitude is something that I think we all have. What I am talking about is going through your day trying to intentionally find things to be grateful for. I think at any given time we could probably all come up with at least a few things we are grateful for. However, if you are writing down a few things each day, you are not going to write down the same thing every day. So, this puts your brain on the lookout for new things you can be grateful for. You will be surprised how many new things start to bring you joy when you are intentionally looking for gratitude.
I mentioned praising God leads to gratitude. However, some of you may be thinking that you are not sure how to praise God. There are several ways, you could just have a conversation with Him about how thankful you are for all that He has done or you. You could listen to praise and worship music as they have done a great job creating lyrics that praise God. You could just start listing all the names for God and how great He is just for being God. However, you want to praise God is great. There is no right or wrong way to do it. I think if you try to add more praising or more gratitude into your life, you will be surprised how much more joy you have in your life. The bible says “seek and you will find,” this is true for joy as well. If you are looking for more joy in your life, you will find it. Let me leave you with this question, “What’s one thing you could do to bring more joy into your day today?”
Dear Heavenly Father I ask that you bless everyone listening to this episode today. Lord we ask that you fill our hearts with joy. We thank you for all that you do and we praise you Almighty father you are the king of kings and you are the Lord of lords. You are the Alpha and the Omega and we're so very thankful for you. God we ask that you help us to be more grateful throughout the day. We ask that you show us how to do this. Lord we want to fill our days with joy and we to praise you with our songs as the verse said. Lord God we love you so very much and we ask all of us in accordance with your will and in Jesus is holy name, Amen.
Trust In The Lord
Psalm 28:7 “The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and he helps me. My heart leaps for joy, and with my song I praise him.”
I am using the same scripture verse as yesterday because re reading it, there is so much more to it. I am in awe of scripture lately. I never realized how amazing it was before. I have read the Bible before and I enjoyed a lot of it. There are some parts that are hard to get through, like Leviticus and all the genealogy parts. However, until listening to it this year with Father Mike Schmitz, where he takes the time to explain something about what he read each day, I never really saw it, or understood it like I do now. Also, taking the time to examine just a few verses each day, is also helping me see how much God speaks to us through His words in the Bible.
Yesterday I talked about the first part of this verse, “The Lord is my strength and my shield;” and that is so true and important for us to remember. I was thinking there was the second part of this which was about joy. However, there are three sentences in this verse and each one seems important for us to look at. The second part of this verse says, “my heart trusts in him, and he helps me.” There is that word again. Trust. How many of us struggle with that word? Trust is a funny things. Sometimes we struggle to trust people because we have been hurt or let down one to many times. This makes sense, we learn from our experiences. If we have put our trust in someone and they have let us down before, it makes it hard to trust them the next time.
Also, if we grew up in a home that did not have a lot of trust, then we will naturally be reluctant to trust. Our default settings are created from our past experiences. If we grew up being about to trust those around us, then we will trust more freely. If we grew up without having that trust, then it will be harder for us to trust others. The reason I say that these are our default settings is because you can always change if you choose to. I know people that grew up in homes that did not have a lot of love or trust and yet they chose to work on themselves so their children wouldn’t grow up in the same kind of environment.
I have been surprised to learn over the last several years how much of our lives are run on auto pilot. How much of our day we just do the things we have always done and we don’t even think about what we are doing. I don’t even think we are aware of most decisions that we are making. I just did a quick internet search to see how many decisions we make in a day and found an article that says we make about 35,000 decisions in one day. Can you imagine that? I think most of them are made on auto pilot, we aren’t aware that we are making a decision. And if you have set up good routines or habits, then is a great way to ensure better choices. What if you haven’t?
When your alarm goes of you have so many options of what you could do. You could hit snooze, you could turn it off and go back to bed, you could get up. Then once you decide what to do, you then have a whole host of new decisions to make. When looking up the amount of decisions we make it a day a found a quote that I think fits perfect here. John C. Maxwell famously put it—“Life is a matter of choices, and every choice you make makes you.” The reason I am telling you this is because once we become of aware of something, we can decide if we want to change it or not. Maybe you are happy with all the choices you are making, even the automatic ones, if so, that is great! If not, now that you are aware of how many choices you are making each day, you could consciously choose to make better choices, ones that will lead you closer to heaven. If you are unhappy with your relationship with God, or if you wish it would be better, ask yourself, are my choices helping my relationship or hurting it.
Ok, I feel that may have been a tangent, but it was an important one. Back to the main point which is the verse, “my heart trusts in Him and He helps me.” Trust in God is different from trust in others. Others can let us down. We are imperfect humans living in an imperfect world. No matter how hard we try, we don’t always get it right. However, God is not human and He never lets us down. His promises are the real deal and He will always keep them. We don’t have to worry about that. We don’t have to wonder if He will let us down or break His promise. We can trust that He will follow through on what He says.
I know that just saying that we can trust God, does not mean that we will automatically start trusting God. Trust is something that many of us have been taught needs to be earned. We can’t just override all that we were taught through our experiences and from those that influenced us growing up and suddenly start trusting God. Maybe you grew up in a home where trust came easily, or you have had plenty of experiences where you have put your trust in God and He has shown that He is trustworthy. I hope many of you can say this. However, if this is not you, don’t worry. Even if you struggle with trust, you can increase your trust in God if you choose to.
I feel like I need to explain why trusting God is so important. So, if you were just asking yourself this question, this is for you. The verse says, “my heart trusts in Him and He helps me.” How many of us could use a little help in our lives? We could all use a lot more than a little help in our lives. God wants to help us, He is there and ready to help us. However, if we don’t trust Him enough to ask for His help, then He is not going to step in and help. It is not that we need to trust Him completely for Him to help, but we need to trust at least enough to ask Him. Trust can be scary because it make us vulnerable. I think this may be why we try to solve everything ourselves. If we don’t rely on anyone else then we won’t be hurt when they let us down. I get it. Being vulnerable is difficult, more so for some than others. However, you never have to worry about that with God. God will never let you be vulnerable with Him, put your trust in Him, and then not come through. He is too good of a God for that. The thought that just came to mind is “be foolish for Christ.” He will not leave you hanging.
This is why so many miracles have happened all over the world. People have taken that leap of faith, been vulnerable, trusted in God and He came through. He did not leave them hanging. It says in Mark 11:22-23 ““Have faith in God,” Jesus answered. “Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them.” This is so crazy for me to wrap my head around. I continue to pray for this kind of faith. I am definitely not there yet. But, do you see what I mean my “be foolish for Christ?” It seems to foolish that we would tell a mountain to throw itself into the sea, however, if we truly believed, we could do it.
I can’t think of any reason why we would need to send a mountain into the sea. However, I am sure we all have something that we could use God’s help with. So, how do we learn to trust God with this unfailing trust that He will come through. I have been asking myself this question for a long time now. I definitely don’t have the complete answer so please reach out and let me know if you know of any ways to increase your trust in the Lord. I have found a few ways that have helped me, so I will share those with you now.
First, I found a prayer called the Litany of Trust. I started saying this every day and did so several months. I found this incredibly helpful in strengthening my trust. I think the main reason for this is not necessarily what the prayer says, although it is is great and does give you a better understanding of what trust is, but rather the fact that I was asking God every day to increase my trust. For it says in Matthew 7:7-8 “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.” If you ask God for something He is going to give it to you. If you ask for increased trust, He will increase your trust. This may seem too simple, but I bet we would be surprised at how many people really want something but do not ask for it for one reason or another. One main reason I don’t ask for things is because I didn’t know I needed them or it didn’t occur to me that I could ask for that. This is the case for both trust in the Lord and the Holy Boldness I talked about in a previous episode. Once I realized these were things I could ask God for, I did, and He came through, because He always does. I know I keep saying that, and I will continue to keep saying it because even if you get nothing out of this podcast, I hope you get that God will ALWAYS come through for you.
The second way that I have increased my trust is by reading scripture. Reading about God’s promises and how He has kept them over an over again has helped me to see that He will do the same for us. It says in Hebrews 13:8 “Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever.” If He kept His promises before He will keep them now. Reading scripture was not only helpful because it proved He has always kept His promises, it was also helpful in teaching me what His promises are. Also, the more you read scripture, the more you get to know God. The more you know about someone, the more you know whether or not you can trust them. The more you learn about God, the more you will see that He is trustworthy.
These are just two ways that I increased and strengthened my trust in the Lord. I am sure there are many more. However, I think the biggest one is to just ask God for more trust. If you ask Him for it, He will give it to you. He will probably also place on your heart some ways that will help you. Sometimes I think that we make things more complicated than we have to. I think if we ask God for something He will give it to us. So instead of us trying to figure out how to get more trust, just ask God and then listen to what He has to say. He will lead you to what will work for you. We are all different and just because these two things worked for me, doesn’t mean they are the best for you. God will know what is best for you. Will you ask Him? Will you start to trust God more fully? Let's ask him together, right now.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord we ask you to increase our trust in you. Lord you know where each one of us is at, you know our past, you know what we've been through and you know what it will take to overcome that so we can trust in you completely. Lord God we want to trust in you with all of our heart. We want to not doubt anything. Please help us Lord. We know that you have said ask and you shall receive and so this is us asking Lord. We ask that you increase and strengthen our trust in you. We ask that you give us the trust to be foolish for you Lord. We love you so much and we want to be able to trust and to ask you when we need help Lord. You are so amazing and we're so grateful that you never let us down. We asked all of this in accordance with your well and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
What’s Your Story?
Psalm 28:7 “The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and he helps me. My heart leaps for joy, and with my song I praise him.”
The Lord is my strength and my shield. This is something that I am not sure we always realize. I think most of the time we know that the Lord is our strength. Or, at least we know that we can ask Him for strength and He will give it to us. I think when we think of the Lord, we most often think of Him as our strength vs. our shield. But, did you know that He is your shield as well. This is the part of the job that probably goes most unseen and most unrecognized. If we are weak and God gives us strength we can usually tell. We are usually aware that He is helping us.
But, what about the times when He shields us from things that we didn’t even know about. This is when we don’t know to thank Him because we didn’t even know that He did anything. I think about this when I get stuck in traffic, or hit a red light when I am running late. I wonder what God is protecting me from. I wonder what would have happened if I had left 5 minutes earlier that day. I’m not saying that every time you get stuck in traffic, God is shielding you from something, but sometimes He might be. Have you ever had a morning when no matter what you did, you could not leave the house on time? Have you ever had a series of strange things happen that cause you to switch up your routine?
These could be times when God is shielding you from something. The next time that you have an experience where everything seems to be going wrong and you don’t know why, try thanking God for it. I know that may sound weird, but you will be surprised how much better you feel. Having a day or even just part of a day when everything is going wrong is very frustrating. We can get into a really bad mood dwelling on the fact that nothing is going right for us. Our mood can start to spiral downward quickly.
However, if you view this terrible start to the day as a gift from God your mood will change. Instead of thinking that everything is going wrong and the world is conspiring against you, you can thank God for protecting you from something worse happening. You probably will never know whether God was protecting you from something or not. However, the mindset change will be great. Most of the time our mindset is based on our view of things.
There is a saying that we view things not how they are, but how we are. This means that we view everything through our own lens. This lens is made up of our past experiences. Everything that you have been through up until this point is what makes up how view the world. Two people with different experiences in life can go through the same experience and yet view it very differently. My husband and I often encounter that. We have different views on life and different experiences. We can both be experiencing something at the same time and yet we feel very differently towards it. For instance, we can both be in the same car, stuck in traffic. He can be angry and frustrated and I can be happy and grateful, same situation, different mindset. Also, we can both be sitting at the same football game and he can be happy and cheerful and I can be bored and frustrated. What we are feeling in any given situation is based on our thoughts that we are telling ourself about that situation.
I am not sure what you think of all of this. Maybe it makes sense to you and maybe it doesn’t. I know when I learned about it I was slow to believe it. However, the more I read about it, the more it made sense. Also, the more I read the more I paid attention to my feeling and my thoughts. I played around with my thoughts and observed whether they affected my feelings or not. How about you give it a try and see what you think. Think about a circumstance where you recently got upset. Think about why you were upset. What were the thoughts in your head when you were upset? Can you remember the story you were telling yourself?
Let’s use the example of traffic for me to try to explain what I would like you to do. I would think about the last time I was upset. It would be when I was stuck in traffic. I was upset because I was going to be late to work. The thoughts in my head were: I should have left earlier. I shouldn’t have taken that extra long shower. My boss is going to be so mad at me. How stupid I am for leaving late to work. How I might get fired for being late. I think you can get the gist of my thoughts. The story I was telling my self was that I was wrong for taking a long shower and now I was going to lose my job. Can you tell how this story was driving my feelings? Can you see how these thoughts would inevitably lead to upset feelings?
Now, what about if I changed my thoughts? What if when I saw traffic I told myself a different story. What if I told myself that this was the perfect time to get caught up on that podcast I loved? What if I told myself that the traffic was a small price to pay for the happiness that longer shower brought me? What if I reminded myself that I am always on time to work and that being late one day is not the end of the world. I could change my story to one where I give myself grace for being late and enjoying a longer shower. Do you think this story and these thoughts would make me feel differently towards the traffic? What about your situation that made you upset recently? Can you change those thoughts and that story to feel better about it?
The thing about the stories we tell ourselves is that we make them up, we have control over them. Most of the time these stories are not something we are consciously thinking about. Our stories tend to default to whatever we are used to thinking or what our past experiences have taught us about a certain circumstance. However, when you become aware that your stories are controlling your emotions, then you can pay attention and consciously choose to change your stories. It is not easy, but it is so great when you are able to do this.
One reason knowing this is so powerful is because a lot of times we can’t change our circumstances. When you are stuck in traffic, you can’t change that. Most of the time you can’t do anything about the traffic except wait it out. You attitude and emotions while you wait it out can make all the difference in the world. If you had a choice, would you rather wait in traffic being upset or happy? Would you rather spend the time thinking about how much you hate traffic or how much you love the song on the radio? Once you realize that your emotions are a choice, a whole new life opens up to you. One where you are in charge of your emotions instead of your emotions being in charge of you. It is an awesome feeling!!
I was not intending to talk about this when I started writing this episode. I thought this episode was going to be about Joy, which I love talking about. However, it’s funny what happens when you let the Holy Spirit take over. I will address the second half of this verse in tomorrow’s episode. For today, take sometime and think about your emotions, the story you are telling yourself and how you can change that story to one that better serves you.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone listening to this episode today. I ask that you fill us with love today. We ask that you help us to recognize the stories we are telling ourselves that are unhelpful and not serving us. Lord we ask that you help us replace those stories with better stories. We ask that you help us change our mindset and outlook on life. Help us to see the ways in which you are our strength and our shield. Heavenly Father we thank you for the million ways that you protect us every single day that we don't even know about. Lord we know that you are amazing and we're so very thankful for all that you do for us. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus is holy name amen.
June 30, 2021
What Would You Have Asked For?
Ecclesiastes 7:11-12 “Wisdom, like an inheritance, is a good thing and benefits those who see the sun. Wisdom is a shelter as money is a shelter, but the advantage of knowledge is this: Wisdom preserves those who have it.”
Wisdom is a good thing. Yes, I think we can all agree on this. But what is the difference between wisdom and knowledge. Wisdom is the quality of having experience, knowledge, and good judgment. Knowledge is facts, information, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject. Do you see the difference? Wisdom and knowledge both involve facts that you gain from experience. The thing that wisdom has that knowledge does not is good judgement. You may know a lot about something but you may not have the good judgement to apply that knowledge differently in different situations.
Wisdom is so important. It is important to have good judgement. In fact, King Solomon is a great example of how important wisdom is. In 1 Kings 5:3-14 it says, “ At Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream by night, and God said, “Ask what I shall give you.” And Solomon said, “You have shown great and steadfast love to your servant David my father, because he walked before you in faithfulness, in righteousness, and in uprightness of heart toward you. And you have kept for him this great and steadfast love and have given him a son to sit on his throne this day. And now, O Lord my God, you have made your servant king in place of David my father, although I am but a little child. I do not know how to go out or come in. And your servant is in the midst of your people whom you have chosen, a great people, too many to be numbered or counted for multitude. Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, that I may discern between good and evil, for who is able to govern this your great people?” “ It pleased the Lord that Solomon had asked this. And God said to him, “Because you have asked this, and have not asked for yourself long life or riches or the life of your enemies, but have asked for yourself understanding to discern what is right, behold, I now do according to your word. Behold, I give you a wise and discerning mind, so that none like you has been before you and none like you shall arise after you. I give you also what you have not asked, both riches and honor, so that no other king shall compare with you, all your days. And if you will walk in my ways, keeping my statutes and my commandments, as your father David walked, then I will lengthen your days.”
I looked online how old Solomon was when he became king and it seems it is not confirmed anywhere; rather, it said that in tradition, we believe he was 12 years old, while other sites said 20. Either way, he was young and you can see by the conversation he has with God, that he felt like he was only a little child. He did not feel that he was old enough or wise enough to handle the task that he was given. How many of us have felt this before? You were asked to do something and you did not feel prepared. I would say almost every parent can say they have been in this position before. Did you feel ready to take that tiny bundle home from the hospital? I know Tony and I didn’t. I remember thinking we needed an instruction manual. When we put Sam in the car for the first time to go home from the hospital, we were beyond nervous. I remember that we did not even want to have him sit in the back seat alone. I think I sat in back with him so I could keep an eye on him the whole time. Now, imagine you are in charge of a whole nation at age12 or even 20? A nation that is too numerous to even count. That is a lot of responsibility for anyone, no matter your age.
I wonder what I would have said if I had the chance to ask God for one thing? I would love to envision me asking for the correct thing. I would hope that I would ask for something unselfish just as Solomon did. I am just not sure if I would. As a new parent, you want to give your child everything. It is as if your needs go out the window and all that matters is the safety of that little baby. What could you ask for that would ensure the safety of your little baby? You could ask for the baby to be healthy, but then what about your next baby? You could pray for the safety of your baby, but what about the safety of the rest of your family? There are so many factors to consider when thinking about the future and safety of those you are responsible for. I have seen enough fairy tale movies to know that your wishes don’t always turn out as you want them too. There are always unforeseen circumstances that happen when you least expect them.
Solomon was smart though. He did not wish for safety of his kingdom, he did not ask for his own life to be protected, or that he have victory over his enemies. He asked for wisdom. He asked for God to help him to discern right from wrong. This is why he stands out over all of the others in my eyes. He could have asked for all the riches in the world. He could have asked for the biggest army in the world, but he didn’t. He asked for a discerning heart to help him know right from wrong. I believe that Solomon had seen how great God had been to his father. I think that he knew if he did the right thing God would take care of the rest. I don’t know much about Solomon, but I know it talks a lot in the Bible how much his father loved God and how God favored his father, David. I wonder if David taught him to trust in God, or if he just learned it by watching all the wonderful things that happened to his father?
How many of us would have asked for the same thing? To me, it makes so much sense, looking at it on this side of it. God is always telling us not to worry and not to be anxious. He is forever telling us to just ask, trust and seek Him and He will take care of everything else. So, it makes perfect sense to ask for a discerning heart, to ask God to help us judge what is right from what is wrong. So, why then, isn’t that the first thing we think of when we get into trouble or face a problem we don’t know how to solve? Why don’t we look to God first and ask him how he wants us to solve it, or ask God to give us the gift of discernment so we know what he would like us to do? Why do we always spend so much time and energy trying to solve things and to come up with solutions on our own? Join me right now as I ask God for a discerning heart.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you for a discerning heart so that I can know what is right and what is wrong. I wish to do only what is right in your eyes. I know I will fall short as I am only human. However, with your grace I will stand back up and continue to try to do what is right. Father, I ask for wisdom as Solomon asked for wisdom. I do not have a nation under my care, but we all have someone that is counting on us and we pray that you give us the gift of wisdom so we can help others in their quest for doing what is right. We love you dear Heavenly Father and we ask all of this in accordance with your will in your son, Jesus’ holy name. Amen!
June 29, 2021
Never Give Up Hope
Psalm 71:5 “For you have been my hope, O Sovereign LORD, my confidence since my youth.”
This is something I hope many of us can say. If I had one wish for all of you listening it would be that you got to know Jesus when you were young and that He has been your hope and your confidence since your youth. When I was younger it was great to have my hope and confidence in Jesus. It was great to know, especially when I was a teenager, that I was not alone, that Jesus was there and that He was in control. I was happy for the rules of the catholic church as it was something I could rely on. It also helped me make hard decisions as I did not want to fracture my relationship with the Lord.
That is not to say that I always made the right decisions. I made a lot of wrong decisions. Sometimes I knew what was right in the eyes of the Lord and yet chose to do the wrong thing. That is pretty much par for the course. None of us are perfect, no matter how much we would like to be. I would love it if my mind and body would just get on the same page when it comes to following in the Lord’s foot steps. But as St. Paul so famously says in Romans 7:19, “ For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.” Even St. Paul struggled to do the will of God.
Sometimes we tend to think that although we know we struggle, we assume others aren’t struggling as much. We assume that because people seem closer to God than we do, it is easier for them to do the right thing. This may be true in some cases, however, we all struggle with something. I don’t think there is a single human being that finds it easy to follow along perfectly in God’s footsteps with no issues. Somethings may come easy and other things may be difficult. We are all different and the things we struggle with may be different but there is always a struggle.
If you did not know Jesus or the Lord when you were younger, don’t worry. It is never too late to get to know Him and to learn to rely on him as your savior and your confidence. It is never too late to have hope in the Lord. He is an awesome Lord who always keeps his promises and never lets us down. How many others can you truly say that about?
One of the reasons it is so great to have our confidence in the Sovereign God is because it is comforting to know that we are not the only ones in control of our lives. It is nice to know there is something bigger than ourselves. Once you are able to really believe this, it takes a lot of the pressure off a lot of the decision making in your life. When you can learn to stop and ask what God wants you to do in different circumstances then you be rest assured things will turn out all right.
It is comforting for me to know that no one decision will be the end of all that is good in my life. I try to make well though out decisions and use the wisdom God has given me. I also try to pray before I make any big decisions. However, in the end I know that even if I make the wrong decision, God can turn it around and make something wonderful come out of it. He is that good. Have you ever thought you were making the right decision and then it did not turn out so good? Have you ever made what seemed the wrong decision and then had everything turn out ok in the end? God has a plan for our lives and He is going to help us get there, even if we make a few, or a lot, of wrong choices on our way to get there.
The verse not only talks about our confidence in God, but also our hope in Him. I know people that struggle with the practicality of hope. Its not an issue with the idea of hope. I think many of us can say that we have hope for the future. It is hope for a specific thing that I think some people struggle with. If you have a desire deep within you and you have been waiting for a very long time to have this desire met, I can understand why you may struggle with hope. I can see how it may actually hurt your heart to hope for something that you feel may never happen. I wish I had something wise and comforting to say to you right now if this is you.
All I can say is please don’t give up on your hopes and dreams. I truly believe that God gives us those desires deep down inside of us. Actually He has confirmed this with the words He has given at prayer group and in Philippians 2:13 it says, “for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasures.” God is working in you! I know right now you are questioning if God really put those desires in you. You are probably thinking that He does not want you to have them or He would have given them to you already. I don’t know why some people have to wait a really long time and some people don’t. God’s ways are higher than our ways. He knows what we need and what we can handle.
If you have a deep desire for something, I ask that you keep hoping for it! Keep asking God to follow through on this desire. Ask Him to give you the patience to keep waiting on His timing. Ask Him for the strength to keep hoping when you feel like you can’t hope any more. I think we sometimes want to give up hope because we can’t see a way that our desire could come true. We can’t see any humanly way that our desire could happen. We forget that God isn’t human. He doesn’t need to find a humanly way for it to happen. He can find extraordinary ways for it to happen. He can find supernatural ways for it to happen. He is the creator of the entire world. He can surely handle helping us with whatever desire He put into our hearts.
Dear heavenly father I ask that you bless everyone listening to this episode today. Lord we ask that you help us not give up our hope for our desires. Lord we thank you for placing these desires inside us and we ask that you give us the strength and perseverance to keep hoping. Lord we know that your time is better than our time in your way is better than our way please give us the patience to wait for your timing. Lord we ask that you help us put our confidence in you. Lord we ask that you help us do the things we want to do and not do the things we don't want to do. We love you so very much Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus is holy name amen.
The Accuser
Revelations 12:10-11 “And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, “Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God. And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death.”
The accuser of our brothers has been thrown down. I think this is great! Do you know who the accuser is? Has he visited you before? Have you ever had a voice in your head that was constantly telling you all the things you’ve done wrong in your life? You know the voice I’m talking about, the one in your head that is the first one to point out when you do something wrong. The one that says negative things and tries to make you feel bad. That is the accuser.
The verse says “they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb.” Do you know what that means? Jesus is the Lamb. This means the accuser was conquered with Jesus’ blood. When Jesus died on the cross he took our sins with him. Whatever sins this accuser is trying to convince you that you did, you don’t have to worry because Jesus already paid the price for them. He paid the ultimate price for our sins, and now all we need to do is repent and turn back to the Lord.
Repentance is something that I have talked about before and I believe will keep coming up. I think there are two main reasons why repentance keeps coming up. First is that when we sin we fracture the relationship between us and God and each time we sin we cause that fracture to get bigger and bigger. If we want to repair the damage that we have done to our relationship all we need to do is turn back to the Lord, tell Him how sorry we are, and He is waiting there with open arms to forgive us.
The second reason repentance is so important is because of this verse. It is because if we have sins that we have not repented for then the accuser is going to come and use those sins as a way to drive an even bigger wedge in between us and God. Have you ever noticed that the accuser is always making you feel bad about yourself. He is never saying things like, great job at church today! You really prayed hard. No, the accuser wants to make you feel bad about yourself. He wants you to feel that you are unworthy of God’s love. He wants you to give up on trying to be loved by God. Do you know why he does this? He does this because there is a war going on every day for your soul.
I know not everyone believes in spiritual warfare, but it is alive and well whether we believe in it or not. The enemy wants nothing more than to win your soul for himself. He wants to spend all eternity torturing you in Hell. That may seem harsh and I am sorry if this is the first you are hearing of this. I am not trying to scare you. I just want to help you to be aware because when we are aware we can make a conscious choice on the things we do. The enemy has so many sneaky tactics. He will never come right out and question the facts of God because he knows he can’t win that debate. He is much more subtle than that.
If you have never read The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis, I would highly suggest it. The book is a series of letters written from a senior level demon to his nephew, who is just learning how to be a demon. The nephew is writing to his uncle about the soul he is in charge of “turning to the dark side.” The uncle explains the best ways to get a soul. He explains some tactics to use and why they are good or bad. It is very eye opening and thought provoking.
I found an article that lists the tactics of the enemy from the book. I have put a link for this in the episode notes. https://mindyclemons.com/2014/03/20/screwtapes-tactics-revealed/ It is not as much an article as it is a list of all the tactics. I think the list is pretty comprehensive. There are 100 tactics on this list. I am not going to go over them all, but I do think it is important to point out a few because if we want to change something, the first step is to be aware of it.
One of the tactics of the enemy is to get you focused on the church itself, and the people in it instead of God. Have you ever been sitting in church and you look around and think about everything except Jesus? Have you gotten distracted looking at someone’s outfit, or judging someone for talking or even worse, being on their phone at mass. Or, maybe you are silently judging how the parents in the pew next to you are dealing with their children? This is the work of the enemy. If he can get you focused on unimportant things during mass/church service, then you won’t be listening to what is really important, the Word of God.
Another tactic of the enemy is to get you focused on “mutual daily annoyances of relationships.” In other words, instead of thinking and focusing on how much you love your spouse and how God brought you two together, you focus on all the annoying things that your spouse does. Instead of being loving towards your spouse you may start to feel differently. You are no longer grateful for this loving spouse, you may even start to feel resentful. These are not the feelings that God wants us to have. These are the feeling that start to harden our hearts.
A third tactic the enemy uses is to “make prayer a mood not effort of the will.” Sometime we may not pray because we are not in the mood to pray. We tell ourselves that it is ok if we don’t pray today because we just aren’t feeling it. We don’t look at prayer as a discipline that we should be doing every day whether we feel like it or not. Back in the days before Jesus, the Jews used to pray 3 times a day. It was not whenever they felt like it. Daniel prayed 3 times a day even when it was decreed a law that you may not pray to the Lord. He was thrown in the lions den because he refused to stop worshiping the Lord. I wonder if it would change our attitude toward prayer if we thought about how lucky we are that praying to our Lord is allowed in this country. Some people don’t have that right and risk their lives when they do it.
A big tactic these days by the enemy is “fear and anxiety for the future. We tend to spend a lot of time worrying about what will happen next. What if out child makes a bad decision and ruins their future? What if our husband gets in a car crash on his way home from work? What if we lose this baby that we are carrying inside of us? What if I lose my job? What if questions come up and then we focus on them and we think about them instead of relying on God and trusting His word when He says that He will take care of us and that He will use all things for our good. When we are focused on our fear and anxiety we are not focused on God.
Sometimes the enemy can even use our success as a tactic to draw us away from God. You would think that the more successful you were, the more grateful you would be to God for all He has given to you. However, the enemy gets in there and uses your success to create an unhealthy attachment to the things of this world. Suddenly your success is no longer about how blessed you are to be doing so well. Now your focus shifts to all of the stuff you are able to afford. The you start to collect more and more stuff. This can lead to focusing more and more on worldliness and less and less on our heavenly father that made the success possible.
Do you see how these tactics are not overly obvious? The enemy doesn’t come into your life, guns blazing, and try to blow up all your have. He sneaks in the back door and attacks in small ways. Ways that most of the time we don’t even notice because they are so subtle and they happen so gradually. I think reading this book was so great because it opened my eyes to so many ways that our lives and our spirituality are under attack.
The scripture verse from the beginning of this episode is good news. Revelations 12:10-11 “And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, “Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God. And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death.”
If we focus on this scripture and we remember that God has already conquered our accuser than when he tries to pull all of these tactics on us, we can see them for what they really are. They are an attempt to pull us and our focus away from our heavenly father. Once we know this, it is much easier to resist these tactics. Take a minute and think about which tactics you have see the enemy using in your life. Are you going to let him continue to be the accuser? Are you going to let him take your focus off our one true God?
Dear Heavenly Father I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord I ask you to open our eyes to any ways that the accuser is affecting our lives. Lord please shine a light on any tactics the enemy may be using to draw our focus away from you. Lord we love you and we want to focus on you and we want to live like you want us to live and we need your help Lord. We need you to show us the way. Lord give us the gift and grace of wisdom so that we can see where the enemy is at work in our life. Lord we thank you for defeating the accuser and saving us from him. You are so amazing and we're so grateful for all you do for us. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus holy name amen.
I am the Alpha and the Omega
Revelations 1:8 “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.”
Have you heard this description of the Lord before? “I am the Alpha and the Omega.” I feel as though I have heard that a lot. I am not sure I knew before what Alpha and Omega were though. Did you know that Alpha and Omega are the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet? What God is saying when He says that he is the Alpha and the Omega is that He is the beginning and the end. God is with us in the beginning, before we were even born God was with us. He will also be with us in the end.
One of the ladies from prayer group yesterday mentioned that we can find comfort in this thought when we have aging relatives or friends. Sometimes when we have aging relatives they require a lot of assistance. We want to be with them an help them and sometimes we just can’t be with them all the time. There are many reasons we can’t be with them and that is not really the point. The point is that we can rest assured that even when we can’t be with them, God is with them. He is probably better company anyway.
I remember when I was little I always struggled with the thought that God was always there. That with God there is no beginning and end. He was just always there. Actually, if I think too much about it I still struggle with this. Then yesterday my friend Louise from prayer group explained this in a way that seemed to make a lot of sense to me. She said that we struggle with things like this because we are human and we think in very finite terms. Our minds are limited and we so we are not going to be able to understand or comprehend everything about God. He is not finite and we can’t try to make him fit into a box that our minds can comprehend. He is a wonder in so many ways.
I do take comfort in knowing that God was there at the beginning and He will be there at the end and He is there every day in between. We are never a lone. I am sure it does not always feel like this. Some days we can feel God’s presence more than others. Why is that? Why do we have some days where we know God is with us and then others when we feel like he abandoned us? Those are two excellent questions. Ones I am not sure I know the answer to and yet ones I still wanted to ask because I think it is something we could all think about. I think we would each have a different answer to these questions.
When I think about that questions I wonder when I feel closest to God. I think it is when I am praying or praising Him. Actually, maybe more so when I am praising Him. When I am listening to Christian music and singing along I can feel God’s presence. I follow this woman on social media name Kristina Kuzmic. She is really funny and does short videos about parenting and about being a woman. They are very uplifting and encouraging. They help you to know that parenting is hard for everyone and that you are perfect just the way you are. Anyway, she dances all the time. Just walking down the street she will be dancing. I used to wonder why. However, I’ve discovered I feel the same way when I am listening to praise music.
There is a playlist that is free on spotify called Big Life Mornings. It is filled with upbeat christian songs. I listen to when I go for a run, when I am walking my dog, when I am driving, or when I am cleaning. I listen to it a lot. When I am listening to it and singing a long I feel as though God is with me. I can feel His presence and it makes me want to dance also. I am not sure I am describing the feeling right, but it is a truly amazing feeling. If you are feeling like God has abandoned you and you haven’t felt His presence in awhile, maybe take some time today and play some Christian music and see how you feel. See if Jesus fills your soul.
Another time I feel the Lord’s presence is in Eucharistic Adoration. If you are Christian and not Catholic you may not know what this is. We, as Catholics believe that Jesus Christ is present in the Eucharist. Eucharistic Adoration is when the priest displays the host or eucharist in a vessel called a monstrance. The monstrance is placed on the alter or a table and is left there for a certain period of time. The we get to go and sit with Jesus and pray in His actual presence. I know that God is with us all the time. We do not need to go to adoration to be with Jesus. However, I find I do feel closer when I go. I am not sure how to describe it, other than comparing it to when you go to a grave site to visit someone who has passed away. You do not need to be at the grave site to talk to that person, but somehow, being there, where their body is buried makes you feel closer.
If you are Catholic and have never tried going to adoration, I would urge you to give it a try. Find out where it is located and go once a week for a month and see how much it changes your life. I try to go for an hour, but even 10 minutes could make a difference. Just go sit with the Lord. I think you will definitely feel closer to Him. You don’t have to do anything specific at Adoration. The point of it is just to spend time with Him. Even if you are not Catholic you could give Eucharistic Adoration a try. Most churches have adoration for at least a few hours a week and I think there is perpetual adoration, meaning 24 hours a day, every day, in every state. When I was looking I just googled Eucharistic Adoration near me. I am sure the Lord will do the rest.
As I said above, if we each took the time to ask ourselves, “When do I feel closest to the Lord?” then I think we would probably all come up with different answers. I wanted to share with you two things I do to feel closer to the Lord. You may be different. You may not like music or sitting in church with the Lord. You may feel closest to the Lord when you are out in nature, when you are painting or writing, maybe when you are with family. It doesn’t matter what the answer to the question is, what matters is that you ask yourself the question and then pay attention to the answer. If we are conscious about where we feel closest to God then when we start to feel abandoned or wonder “Where is God?” we can go to that place or do that thing and it may help us to feel Him again.
Dear heavenly father I ask that you bless everyone listening to this episode today. I ask that you allow each and everyone of us to feel your presence today. We ask that you just let us know that you're here. We ask that you help us answer this question when do I feel closest to you? Lord we want to feel your presence all of the time. It is especially important when we're going through difficult times and we wonder where you are. Lord Jesus help us to see where you are in our lives. Help us to know the things that bring us closer to you and also the things that separate us from you. Lord we love you so very much you are so amazing. We're so thankful that you are the Alpha and the Omega. We're thankful that you were there at the beginning that you'll be there at the end and every day in between. Lord it brings us so much comfort to know that you are always there. Also to know you are always with our family members and friends and so when we can't be with them we know that you are. We thank you for always being there Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will an in Jesus’ holy name amen.
An Unexpected Handstand
Jeremiah 29:11 “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
This is a great scripture verse to memorize or to put up somewhere where you will see it often. Sometimes it does not feel like God is for us. Actually sometimes it can seem like He is against us. We can go through long periods of life where it feels like everything is against us. This is when it is good to have this scripture verse to look at to remind you that God is for you. Someone in my prayer group asked for prayers for a friend the other day. She said this couple is really struggling to see God’s plan in everything that is going on. The couple has been trying to have a baby for a long time. The wife has had several miscarriages and is really starting to wonder if she will ever have a baby. They turned their struggle over to God and they asked Him for help. They asked what they could do and for God to reveal anything that might be getting in the way of them having a baby. The other day they found out that she was pregnant and they are very much praying this is the time they get to carry their baby to term.
When you are in one of these really difficult stretches of time, it can be really hard sometimes not to lose faith. You may ask yourself, what is even the point of continuing to believe when it seems like God has forgotten about you. I promise He is still with you, even in this hard time. If you continue reading after this passage in Jeremiah 29:12-14 it says, “Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” The couple that was trying to have a baby, they continued to pray, even though they didn’t understand why this was all happening. They continued to seek where God was in all of this and they found Him.
I know that depending on your situation and how long it has been going on, it may be difficult to pray. You may want to, but just aren’t sure what to say at this point. Or, maybe you feel like you have been praying for so long that God is not listening anymore. I assure you, He is still listening. He always listens to us and wants good for us. The Lord is always truthful and always keeps His promises. So, when He says that His plans for us are to prosper and not for harm, then He means it. If you are struggling to pray, reach out and ask a friend, co-worker, priest, minister, family member, anyone to pray for you, maybe even to pray with you. It says in Matthew 18:20 “ For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”
There is power in praying with fellow believers. If you are praying for something and not seeing the results that you wanted to see, ask others to pray with you. I went to a healing service the other night and instead of having one or two people pray over those wanting healing, the priest had everyone sitting around that person put their hands on the one needing healing and pray for them. It was very powerful to see all the people that needed healing surrounded by fellow believers praying for them.
God wants good things for you. He wants you to have a future and to have hope. So, why don’t we, what gets in our way of seeing this future that God wants us to have? There are several things that can get in the way. Sometimes, we get in our own way. Even though we know how God is calling us to live, we deviate from that because it is really hard or because it is not the norm in society today. Living the way Jesus wants us to live can go against what we are taught in society. We can look foolish when we follow the promptings of the Holy Spirit. Have you ever had a still small voice in your head that was telling you to do something that didn’t make sense at the time? Did you listen to it?
The Holy Spirit is inside each of us and He tries to guide us to the right path. But sometimes we can’t see where He is leading us. Sometimes He asks us to do things and we don’t because they seem crazy or we don’t understand where it will get us. I heard a story in a book I read called “The Cross and the Switchblade” by David Wilkerson about a woman who had learned to listen to that voice inside her. One morning she was heading out to work when she felt prompted by the Holy Spirit to bring her fuzzy socks to work with her. She thought this was a very strange request, but since she had learned to listen, she went and grabbed her fuzzy socks and threw them in her purse. When she got to work, there was a prostitute on her front step and she was passed out. She brought her inside and warmed her up. They got to talking and this woman asked the prostitute if she could have anything, what would it be. Do you know what she said? Fuzzy socks. The woman was so surprised and gave her fuzzy socks to the prostitute. The prostitute was so happy and said, “They even match my outfit.”
There is another story I heard from a person in a leadership course I was taking. They were talking about how a woman in their group at church had made a commitment to the Holy Spirit that she would follow any prompting she received, no matter how crazy it seemed. One night she was driving home and she felt the Holy Spirit asking her to do a hand stand. Now, this definitely seemed crazy. She was no spring chicken and she had not done a hand stand since she was a child. However, she couldn’t shake this feeling. She pulled over to a gas station where no one was around and went under the one light, and did a hand stand. When walking back to her car, the clerk came out of the store and thanked her. She asked him why he was thanking her and he said they have cameras in the store and he saw her hand stand. He had been feeling very low and abandoned lately and had wanted to kill himself. He made a deal with God that if he saw someone do a handstand that day he would not do it. He never dreamed that he would actually see someone do a handstand and he was so thankful he did.
Even when we get in our own way, God can use our mistakes for good. He is that amazing. Most of the time when we are in a difficult situation we can’t imagine how any good can come from it. It is usually many years down the road when we are out of the difficult situation that we can look back and see some good coming out of it. Often times that good might just be the growth or the strength we gained from the situation. Sometimes it can be the experience or the knowledge we gained from that situation that enabled us to get the job of our dreams or the relationship we always wanted.
If you are struggling right now I hope Jeremiah 29:11 brings you some comfort. If you are struggling to pray I urge you to find someone to either pray for you or to pray with you. God is always with you. He hears every one of your prayers. He will carry you through this difficult time and He will bring you out even better on the other side of it. When you are really struggling remind your self that God has promised good things for you and God never breaks His promises. Hang in there, I promise amazing things are headed your way if you just keep asking for them.
Dear Heavenly Father, I pray that you are with all those that are struggling right now. I pray that you give strength to those that find themselves in a really difficult situation. Lord, I know so many people are struggling with a lot right now. I know several ladies that are really hurting. Lord, I ask that you comfort them and you let them know that you are with them. I ask that you give the strength to make it through this hard time and the knowledge that you don’t want them to suffer. I ask that you help them to believe your promise of a future and of hope. I ask that you help them feel loved and take away any feelings of abandonment that they may have. Lord I ask that you bless all those that are struggling and all those that are listening to this right now, whether they are struggling or not. I ask that you bless them and strengthen them for all they are facing. Lord Jesus, we love so you much and we know how much you do for us. You are truly amazing and we thank you for loving us so much that you make all things for our good. Lord, we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Always Give Thanks
Ephesians 5:18-20 “Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
These verses are found under a subheading that said, “Walk in Love.” Did you know that the book of Ephesians is a letter from St. Paul about the church? If you read at the beginning of the book of Ephesians, it talks about how the purpose of this letter was to make God’s plan for salvation known throughout the universe. This theology that he is using is anchored in God’s saving love shown in Jesus. Jesus died on the cross for us to be saved. He died for our sins. St. Paul is sending out letters to the various newly formed Christian communities to instruct them in how they should walk in this faith. It was clear that Christ came for both Jews & Gentiles and so St. Paul was instructing the early Christians on how to walk with faith.
I think these are the parts of the bible that many don’t like to read. We want to follow in Jesus’s footsteps, we want to go to heaven, and yet sometimes we don’t want to be told what we can and can’t do. The Lord our God loves us and wants to be reunited with all of his children in heaven one day. However, He gives us free will and we need to choose that path. We need to choose to follow in his footsteps here on earth if we want to follow him into the kingdom of heaven.
This passage starts off by saying in Ephesians 1:18, “And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but we filled with the Spirit.” Some of you may be hearing this and you already don’t like where this is going. This podcast is called Walk Boldly With Jesus and if we are going to do that then we need to look at all the scripture verses, even the ones that we don’t want to hear. I looked up the word debauchery online as I did not know what it meant. This is what I found, excessive indulgence in sensual pleasures. I think what this passage is trying to tell us is that if we get drunk then we are more likely to commit sin. This is something we probably already know, however, I am not sure we all new it was in the bible. I don’t think I knew that.
Now, St. Paul is not saying do not drink wine at all. Wine was a part of life back then just as it is now. Jesus turned water into wine, He would not have done this if he felt wine was evil. What I believe he is saying is don’t drink so much wine or alcohol that you lose control over your thoughts and actions. If you do not have control over your faculties then you could be led to stray away from your beliefs and do things that you know are sins.
St. Paul doesn’t just say, don’t get drunk, he also adds but be filled with the Holy Spirit. If you are filled with the Holy Spirit, then He can help you make the right decisions. Whether you are filled with the Holy Spirit, or you are filled with alcohol, you have something influencing your decisions. Which would you rather have, a good influence or a bad influence. Life is hard enough and the devil is always trying to exploit any situation and convince us to do things that go against what we believe or what God wants for us. Do we really want to give him the opportunity to take advantage of us in a weakened state?
I am not sure if you have even been filled with he Holy Spirit before, but let me tell you, it is an amazing feeling. It is similar to a drunk feeling. Your body is warm, you are filled with so much joy that you are in an excellent mood. You have this sense of calm, a sense of peace that everything will be ok. A lot of people say they drink in social situations because they loose their inhibition and they stop caring what people think of them. When you are filled with the Holy Spirit, you can also loose your inhibition and stop caring what people think. If you get the chance to read this whole chapter, I highly recommend it. In chapter 2 of Acts it talks about what the apostles were like after they were filled with the Holy Spirit. In Acts 2:13 it says, “Some, however, made fun of them and said, “They have had too much wine.” Then Peter stands up and says in Acts 2:15-18 “ These people are not drunk, as you suppose. It’s only nine in the morning! 1 No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel:
“‘In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy.”
The apostles had been locked in an upper room. They were afraid to go out and talk about Jesus as the Jews had put Him to death by crucification not that long ago. And yet once they were filled with the Holy Spirit, they were filled with a Holy boldness. You too can be filled with a holy boldness. All you have to do is ask God. Have you ever prayed that before? Did you know that was such a thing? I remember when I first heard the term I loved it. I started to pray for it often. I am not sure I would be doing this podcast today if I hadn’t started praying for that. I knew that I wanted to share God’s love with the whole world. I knew I wanted to feel free to talk about my faith and my religion. I also knew that I was a people pleaser and that I don’t like confrontation. I knew that talking about my faith would open me up to criticism and I knew it would make me vulnerable.
I grew up in a large family and yet I still felt uncomfortable in large crowds. Especially if I didn’t know anyone. However, since praying for this holy boldness I am a lot less nervous in large crowds. I have joined a Toastmasters club where I give speeches in front of all of the members and I am not really that nervous. I think I have a healthy level nervousness. If you are nervous or anxious about anything, take it the Lord. He will help you. If you are one that likes to drink so that you will feel more comfortable in certain situations I would ask you to give prayer a try. Before heading out to do whatever you feel uncomfortable doing, try praying to God and asking Him for the courage to do the thing and then thank Him in advance for showing up. I think you will be surprised with your level of confidence.
I have spent most of this episode talking about the first part of these verses. However, I don’t want to end without touching on the last part as well. The last verse says, “always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” This is something that I am not sure we always remember to do. I think we are usually pretty good about asking God for things, especially when we really need something. However, I am not sure we always remember to thank Him when He does what we asked Him to do. How about you, are you good at remembering to say Thank you when your prayers are answered? What about when God gives you things you didn’t pray for, do you remember to say thank you? What has God done for you in the last few days that you could thank Him for? Here are a few things that He may have given to you that you didn’t ask for: a new day of life, a green light when you were running late, a nice cup of coffee, sun shine, rain, stars at night, a morning with no traffic…
I am sure if you tried you could think of many things that we could thank God for. The verse says to always give thanks for everything. I was not asking you how you are doing with this so that you would get down on yourself if you weren’t doing it. I was asking because I think it is great to check in with ourselves from time to time and see how we are doing. Especially if we are reminded about something like this with a scripture verse. I was listening to the Big Life Devotional podcast by Pamela Crim the other day and she mentioned that she felt like her relationship with Jesus got a whole lot closer and more intimate when she developed a daily gratitude practice.
If you are feeling like you wish you had a closer relationship with Jesus I recommend you take a notebook and start writing down 5 things every day that you could be thankful for. God gives us everything that we have. It is nice when we can be grateful for all that we have, even if we don’t feel like we have a lot. No matter your circumstances, there is something to be grateful for. Even if you can just find one thing and even if that one thing is that you got out of bed, or maybe you didn’t get out of bed, but you did wake up, that is something. Being grateful, especially in the hard times, is an especially powerful tool to strengthen your faith and your relationship with your creator. If you do not currently have a daily practice of gratitude I challenge you to start one and see how much better your days are. It does not have to be complicated. It could be as simple as before you get out of bed in the morning you spend 1 minute thanking God for waking up that morning. Thanking God can take less than a minute and yet can be life changing. Will you give it a try?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. We thank you for being with us today and every day. Lord I ask that you bless each one of us with a holy boldness. We ask that you replace our nervousness or anxiety with a boldness to go out and do the things were afraid to do. Lord we ask for you to help us to not get drunk on wine or alcohol but to fill us with the Holy Spirit. Lord I ask that you rain down the Holy Spirit on all of us listening today. Lord we thank you for all that you've given to us. Lord you're so generous and so happily rain down blessings on us and we're so very grateful. Lord God we know sometimes we forget to thank you and we're sorry for that. We are thanking you now Lord because we are so truly grateful. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus is holy name, amen!
Hindsight Is 20/20
Ephesians 1:3-6 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.
What beautiful scripture verses! These definitely seem like good ones to write down and re read any time we are having a bad day. God has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly place. I can’t even imagine how much blessing that is. God must really love us if he is blessing us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly place.
Then it goes on to say that He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. He chose us before the foundation of the world. That seems so crazy to me. It is crazy to me that God knew everything that was going to happen and yet he still chose to create us. He made us to be holy and blameless in His sight and yet we have failed at this over and over again.
Often times we say hind sight is 20/20. Meaning we can only see things perfectly when we are through them and looking back at them with he knowledge we gained through the experience. For instance, when we are going through a difficult time we don’t really understand it and we make our decisions based on the info that we have at the time. However, when we are through that difficult circumstance and we know how things ended, then we realize we perhaps should have made a different decision.
It is not the same for God. He knows everything. Nothing is a surprise to Him. I find it remarkable that even though He knew how often we would turn our backs on Him or do the exact opposite of what He wanted us to do, He still went ahead and created us. He not only decided to create us knowing all the times we would mess up He also keeps forgiving us. Time and time again we do the things we know we are not supposed to do, God keeps forgiving us.
I wonder if we would do the same? Many people say that they learned a lot after going through something really difficult. However, I wonder, even knowing all that we learned or gained from the difficult experience, how many of us would choose to go through it all over again. Think about a really difficult time in your life. Think about how hard or how painful it was. Then think about what you learned from it or gained from it.
Every thing that we go trough teaches us something if we are open to seeing it. We can find a lesson in every experience. For instance, going through a really hard time in a relationship can teach you resilience, and/or how to be persistent and to work hard at something. It can also teach you to be stronger. If the relationship ends it can be difficult and also you can learn something from that too. It can teach you what to look for and what to avoid in your next relationship. Do you see how there is always something you can learn?
However, even knowing all the benefits you have gained from this experience, I wonder how many of us would choose to do it again. What about a friendship that ended badly? Imagine you had a really good friend for several years and then something happened and that friendship ended. You felt really hurt when the it was over. Do you wish that you had never met that person? If you could go back in time to when you met that person, would you go meet them? Would you spend all those years building up the good memories, if it meant that you had to go through the pain of losing that friendship again?
I think that many of us would choose to not go though difficult times if we could. We would choose to stay in our comfort zone and not venture out of it. Not try new things because we could get hurt or we could fail. We would and often times we do tend to play it safe. The thing is, we do not grow when we are in our comfort zone. We do not grow without challenges. Do those challenges often bring difficult times, yes. Do we grow immensely in those difficult times, yes. Well, if we allow ourselves to grow then we do. This is what God wants for us. He wants us to grow and become stronger. He wants us to lean into Him when things get hard and to be open to growth during these times.
God chose to go through all the pain just for us. He knew all the things we would do, He knew all the ways that we would hurt Him, and yet He still chose us. He still chooses us every single day. Is that not incredible to you? I honestly find it difficult to believe some days with the way the world seems to be going. Its seems as though the world as a whole is trying to remove God from more and more things. And yet, He keeps hanging in there. He keeps performing miracles and blessing His children.
The next part of the verses listed above says “In love He predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ.” He predestined, that just verifies that He knew all that was going to happen and yet had a back up plan. He knew we would need saving and yet still predestined our adoption through His son Jesus Christ. He loved us so much that He sent his son to be crucified for our sins.
One thing that we may not often think about is the fact that God not only knew all we were going to do, but He knows how our story ends. He knows how all of this ends. By sending His son to be crucified on the cross for our sins He has already redeemed us and granted us salvation if we choose to accept it. It says in 1 Corinthians 15:57 “But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” God has already won this fight for us. We don’t have to worry about how things will turn out. Romans 8:28 tells us “ and we know that in all things God works for the good of those how love him, who have been called according to His purpose.”
God has predetermined that we would be his adopted children. Because of this we know that He will work all things for our good. He knows the mistakes we will make and he loves us anyway. Yes, you heard that correctly and yes I am talking to you. God loves you and accepts you for who you are, flaws in all. God knew you were going to do that thing that you keep thinking about and he made you in His likeness and image anyway. Remember the beginning of this episode, God has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. God has blessed you with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. What an amazing Father we have!
Dear heavenly father, I ask that you bless everyone listening to this episode today. Lord we thank you for blessing us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. I am sure we can't even imagine how many blessings that is. Lord we love you so very much. It is crazy for us to think about how you knew all the ways we were going to mess up and yet you decided to create us anyway. Lord we can never thank you enough for sending down your son to die on a cross for our sins. Lord we thank you for taking us in as your sons and daughters. We thank you for using all things for our good and for helping us be victorious in the end. Lord we thank you for being patient with us while we make these mistakes and for always forgiving us when we ask. Lord you are amazing. We ask all of these things in accordance with your will and in Jesus holy name, amen!
You Are Loved By Jesus
John 13:23 “One of his disciples, the one whom Jesus loved,* was reclining at Jesus’ side.”
This scripture verse was given at my prayer group and the following words of prophecy were given with it: “You are also the one whom Jesus loves. So, your place is to be listening to his heartbeat when you pray. So, put your head on his chest and listen to his heartbeat. Say I love you and be at peace.” Is there anything more calming than putting your head on someone’s chest and listening to their heartbeat? I picture when I was little and if I was scared and I went to lay with my parents. Just putting my head on their chest and listening to their heartbeat would make me feel better, it seemed so rhythmic and soothing.
“You are also the one whom Jesus loves.” How many of you believe this? Like truly in the depths of your heart believe this? You are also the one whom Jesus loves. Sometimes it is easy to say that Jesus is love. It is easy to say that Jesus loves everyone. And yet, even as we are saying it, we are discounting ourselves from that love. We know He loves everyone and yet we don’t believe that he loves us? We don’t feel that love or even understand why He would love us. Who are we to be loved by Jesus?
You are the son or daughter of the one true king, that is who you are. You were made in the likeness and image if God. You are deeply loved by Him. Why do you discount yourself from that love? Or maybe you put a lot of pressure on yourself to be worthy enough of God’s love. Maybe you think if you just do things perfectly, then God will love you. If you attend mass every week and volunteer for every fundraiser, then you will be worthy of God’s love. Are you constantly feeling like you are not good enough for God’s love?
Guess what, none of us are. None of us are worthy of God’s love, and yet he lavishes it on us freely anyway. You do not have to do anything to earn God’s love. Well, as I wrote that, what came to mind was we do have to accept it. God can tell us all day long that he loves us, but if we don’t accept it, then it doesn’t matter. Yesterday I talked about abiding in God’s love and how abide means acceptance. Can you accept God’s love? Can you accept that he loves you just as you are, no strings attached?
This is a new kind of love for so many. Some people have never had someone in their lives that loved them completely, with no strings attached. Unconditional love is not a thing they even new. If you are struggling to believe that Jesus loves you, just as you are, think about your childhood and you past relationships. What do you think of when you think about love? Did you have to earn love growing up? What did you feel you had to do to be loved? For instance, did you have to get good grades, be a certain weight, be quieter, etc. Did you feel like your parents love was conditional on your behavior? If so, don’t worry, you are not alone.
We live in a broken world and we don’t know how to love each other unconditionally like our heavenly father does. I think everyone is doing the best they can. We can only love others to the extent that we are loved. If you parents did not know unconditional love, then they can’t pass it down to you. The good news is, that you can learn to let Jesus’s love in. The good news is that Jesus does love us unconditionally. If we can learn to accept Jesus’s love then we can learn to pass this love on to others, even if that is not the love we were raised with.
If accepting God’s love is something you struggle with I would love to give you some practical tips for how you can begin to accept God’s love. I decided to go online and see if others had already written about his subject. I found an article written by Kara J. Lovett called “5 Keys to Accepting God’s Love.” I would highly suggest you read this article. I will put a link for it in the description of this episode but you can easily find it by googling 5 Keys to Accepting God’s Love. https://karajlovett.com/5-keys-to-accepting-gods-love/ In the article she goes into what God says about love and then a section on understanding God’s love.
Her article mentions 5 was you can accept God’s love. They are as follows:Accepting God’s love with scripture, prayer, grace, quietness & in unexpected places Kara says in her article that “by digging deep into Scripture and spending time with God in prayer, I realized that I need to stop striving for love and instead strive to accept God’s love, which He has already graciously bestowed on me.” As I mentioned yesterday reading through the bible is a great way to get to know what God’s love is like. You can see all sorts of examples of God’s love in the bible. 1 John 4:7-10 is a great example about love. It says, “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”
The second way she mentions is prayer. When we turn to God and ask for His help. He wants to help us, and is just waiting for us to ask. God knows what we are going through and what are struggles are, and yet he loves it when we talk to Him about them. Just sit down with a cup of coffee or tea and talk to God like you are talking to your best friend at the kitchen table. You will be surprised how much closer you get with God when you start having chats with Him on a more regular basis. They can be informal chats about your day, your struggles, your successes. God wants to share in all of that with you.
The third way she mentions is Grace. Man, learning about grace over these last few years has really been huge for me. Learning to be graceful with yourself is so important. Kara says that grace is the free, unearned gift of salvation that God has bestowed upon us. When I looked up the definition online it said 1a : unmerited divine assistance given to humans for their regeneration or sanctification. b : a virtue coming from God. c : a state of sanctification enjoyed through divine assistance. We are saved and redeemed through God’s grace. It is unmerited, meaning we don’t deserve it, we can’t do anything to earn it, it is just bestowed upon us. How amazing is that? The third definition said a state of sanctification enjoyed through divine assistance. We can’t forget this. We are made holy through divine assistance. God is always there to help us. We can’t do any of this on our own. It is always a partnership. God has so much grace and mercy for us. He doesn’t expect us to be perfect, so cut yourself some slack.
The fourth way to accept God’s love is through quietness. Spend some quiet time with God. There are so many ways that you can do this. Maybe you are someone that likes to meditate every morning. That is wonderful! Maybe you are like me and every time you try to quiet your mind, all it wants to do is talk to you. That’s fine too. Maybe your quiet time is spent in nature, going for a walk, or sitting outside listening to the sounds of nature. Maybe your quiet time with God is spent journaling all you thoughts. There is no right way to spend quiet time with God. You relationship with God is like any other relationship, the more time you spend together the closer you will be.
The fifth key to accepting God’s love for Kara was letting go of control. Even though we know at some level that we don’t have to earn God’s love, we still try to prove to Him that we love Him. We put all these rules and regulations on ourselves about how we have to do this and we have to do that. We tend to put a lot of pressure on ourselves. Once Kara was able to let go of control and remember that Jesus already secured our freedom on the cross, she decided to let go of all the pressure she put on herself and just tried to abide in Jesus’s love.
God loves you! He truly does. I hope that if you are not currently able to accept God’s love, that you will spend some time working on learning how to. I can’t tell you how amazing it is to know that I am always loved. To know that there is nothing I can do that would make my heavenly father stop loving me. It gives me so much more confidence in life. It brings me so much joy. It breaks my heart when I talk with people who don’t know how much God loves them. I know it is hard to let love in sometimes. I have been there before. It can be hard, it can take a lot of work and it is so worth it. There is so much more waiting for you once you accept and really come to know God’s love for you. It is there for the taking, free, with no strings attached. All you have to do is say yes and accept it!
Dear Heavenly Father, I am so thankful that you love us unconditionally. You love us so completely. Lord, some of us are struggling to feel this love. We ask you right now to come into our hearts and fill them with your love, perfect love. We ask that you begin to break down any walls that we have put up to keep love out. Lord we want all the love that you have for us. Lord, I ask that you bless everyone listening to this with a super natural feeling of love today. That the Holy Spirit descends on all of them and that they can physically feel you giving them a hug today. Lord, you are so amazing. We are in awe of all that you do each and every day. We pray that you help our loved ones to open up and feel your love. Lord, we pray that you shower your love on all the teenagers. Being a teen is so difficult and many do not feel any love. Please show them how amazing your love is Lord. We ask all of this in accordance with your holy will and in Jesus’s name, Amen.
Abide In My Love
John 15:9 “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love.”
Jesus loves us as His Father loved Him? Can you even imagine that kind of love. I have heard people talk about a father’s love before. It is not as if I can’t imagine what a father’s love is like. I have a father and he has an amazing love. I also have three children and I know how much I love them. I am sure a mother’s love is similar to a fathers love. Yet, even knowing all this, I understand that the love God had for His son is so much greater than anything we are capable of.
We live in a broken world. We don’t know perfect love because we are not perfect people. There are so many different types of love in the world today and so many varying degrees of love. We use the world love a lot. We say we love pizza and we say we love our children. Is it the same love? Then there are some people who have never felt love and so they don’t know how to love or to be loved.
I guess what I find most hard to comprehend is how Jesus could love us like His father loved Him. I know knew my Father’s love, however, I don’t love everyone like my father loved me. However, writing that statement did make me wonder, maybe I do love everyone like my father loved me. What I mean by this is we learn how to love from our parents, from those around us, those that raised us. However, we were shown love, that is how we tend to give love.
For instance, my parents were very generous and giving people. They would give their last dollar to someone in need even if that meant that they did not know how they were going to feed their children. The welcomed people into the family after just meeting them. You were treated like family, even if we just met you. This was passed down to all 11 of us children. We tend to give love pretty freely because we got love pretty freely.
If you are raised in a home where you have to work hard for love and recognition, then you will most likely be cautious when handing out your love. People will need to work hard to earn it. If your parents were very selective with who they loved and trusted then you will probably be too. I know this is nothing new. We take after our parents. This makes sense, they are our first teachers. I guess I just never really thought of it in this way until now.
In this way, it makes total sense that Jesus would love us as his Father loved Him. That is what we all do. We love like our parents love. Now, some of you may not have received a lot of love, or any love growing up. If this is you, I don’t want you to think that all is lost. That if you don’t like the way your parents loved that you are doomed to love like they did forever. You can change, you can grow. You can decide how you want to love others.
Just like with all things that we want to change, all we need to do is look to our Heavenly Father. He is an example of perfect love. We can look to see what He did, how He treated people, and most importantly, how He loved people. Reading through the bible is a great way to study God’s love and the New Testament is a great way to study Jesus’s love as well. They have a perfect love that even though we can’t love exactly like they did, we can try to love more and more like they did.
What is their love like? Their love is completely unconditional. They loved you from the beginning and there is nothing you can do to make them love you any more or any less. They do not hold grudges. They do not withhold their love when they get upset. They do not play favorites. Their love is not dependent on their mood or whether or not they had a bad day. Their love is not dependent on your behavior or your mood. Their love is available to one and all.
There is a Series called “The Chosen.” It is amazing, if you have not watched it yet, you should go look it up immediately after you finish this podcast. It is a series of episodes depicting Jesus’s three years in ministry. It will be broken up into 7 seasons. They are releasing season 2 currently. One of the reasons I love this series so much is because you get to see Jesus’s life enacted out. You are not just reading about His life, you get to see him live it. I love it so much because you can see how much Jesus loves the world. Every time he interacts with anyone He does it with some much love and caring. You can see it in his smile, in his eyes, in his whole presence. It is truly amazing.
The bible is full of stories where Jesus is filled with compassion and helps people. There are many stories where those around Him don’t understand what He is doing. Even people that are the closest to Him sometimes struggle to understand his level of love. Loving like Jesus loved is not easy. I have heard people say, “Jesus loved the unlovable.” He hung out with prostitutes and tax collectors. He spent time with the lame and the blind. He touched the lepers and talked with the woman at the well that was an outcast.
How many of us can say the same? How many of us can say we love everyone, no matter who they are and what they have done? I am going to guess many of us struggle with this. I know I do. I know I struggle to love the person the cuts in front of me in traffic. I also struggle to love the kids that says unkind things to other children. I struggle to love those I don’t understand. I am sure my list of those I struggle to love could go on. What about you? Are there people you struggle to love?
We are all called to love others. In fact, When Jesus was asked in Matthew 22:36 which is the greatest commmandent, Jesus answered in verses 37-40 “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” So first, we need to love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind and soul. I think we all know this and find this a little easier than the next commandment. However, depending on our relationship with God, we may have some work to do in this area as well. Second, we need to love our neighbor as ourselves. Well, this one is not as easy. Sometimes our neighbors aren’t so nice. There are plenty of people in this world that many would consider “unloveable” and yet, that is exactly what God is calling us to do, love them. Next it says that all the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments. If everything hangs on these two commandments, then it seems pretty important that we get these two right. How could you be better at loving your neighbor? Is there anything you need to do to love the Lord our God with all your heart, mind and soul?
The scripture I started with said “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love.” I don’t want to leave you today without spending a minute to draw your attention to those four small words. I know I talked a lot about love today and how we are called to love. I do think it is important that we look at how we love others and to see how we can love others better. However, I think it is equally important to mention that Jesus said to abide in His love. Jesus loves us with an unconditional perfect love, and he wants us to abide in that love. When I looked up the definition of abide it said acceptance. I think this is important to note because some people have a hard time accepting love. Are you abiding in Jesus’s love? Can you accept that He loves you perfectly, just the way you are? Do you struggle to accept that He could love you the way His father loved Him. If not, that is great! If you do, don’t worry. You are not alone in this. Many people struggle to believe they are loved like this. If you want to abide in His love and you don’t know how, tell God. He knows your past, he knows your struggles. Ask God to help you abide in His love and He will. He is up there just waiting for you to ask.
Dear Heavenly Father, thank you so much for being with us today and everyday. Thank you for loving us so perfectly. Lord, if there is anything in us that is blocking this love, we ask you today to remove it. Lord, We ask you to help us love better. We want to love like you love. We want to follow in your footsteps and love our neighbors the way you love us. Lord, you created all of us in your likeness and image. Help us to see people the way you see people. Help us to see others through our eyes. Lord, we all had different experiences with love growing up. I ask that you fill us up with your love and help us to feel what perfect love feels like. You are truly amazing Lord and we are so very thankful for all that you do for us. Help us to see that your love is all we need Lord. Please heal any hearts that need to be healed and help all of us that struggle with loving others. Father, I ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen.
“I Have Loved You With An Everlasting Love”
Jeremiah 31:3 “ the Lord appeared to him from far away. I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you.”
God loves us with an everlasting love. Did you know that? Did you know that there is nothing you can do to lose God’s love? Sometimes I know that we feel unlovable. Sometimes that’s after we have done something that we feel is wrong and sometimes that’s after someone else has done or said something to us. However, God never stops loving us. He loved us before we were even born and His love is everlasting, it never goes away.
I remember hearing a story once, I think it might have been Jeff Cavins, in the Great Adventure Bible Story, but I am not sure. Anyway, whoever was telling the story was talking about how God does not need anything from us. This was vastly different from the other Gods at the time. The other Gods got more power the more people worshipped them. They were almost fighting for people to worship them. Some of them even required human child sacrifices. However, our God was completely self sufficient and did not need anything from us.
I remember the person saying that this is the reason that some people turned from those other God’s to our God, the one true God. They turned to God because of His everlasting love. They turned to God because He loved them just for who they were. They did not need to do anything to earn that love. That love was just there. This was something they had not experienced before.
The next line in the verse is also an important line. “Therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you.” This is important because God is always faithful to His word. This is something we talked a lot about last week but I think it is important to touch on it again as it is amazing. I think sometimes we may think that God stops loving us when we sin in some way. Or that he stops answering our prayers when we have sinned against Him. However, this verse dispels that belief. God continues His faithfulness to us, even when we mess up.
Look how many times He was faithful to the Israelites after they messed up. In Matthew 18:21-22 it says, “Then Peter came and said to him, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.” If Jesus is telling us to forgive seventy-seven time, then how much more will our father in heaven forgive us?
There is a song called “Reckless Love” by Cory Asbury. It is a great song about how amazing God’s love is. The song first talks about how good God has been to him. The chorus says, Oh, the overwhelming, never-ending, reckless love of God. Oh, it chases me down, fights 'til I'm found, leaves the 99. And I couldn't earn it, I don't deserve it, still You give yourself away” When he mentions leaves the 99 is talking about Matthew 18:12-14 when Jesus tells the parable, “What do you think? If a shepherd has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray. So it is not the will of your Father in heaven that one of these little ones should be lost.”
God does not want to lose any of his sheep. He will not stop looking for us when we are lost. He will not stop loving us and hoping that we turn back to Him. Then the song goes on to say, “When I was Your foe, still Your love fought for me. You have been so, so good to me. When I felt no worth, You paid it all for me. You have been so, so kind to me” This is so true, when we have sinned and pulled away from God, or fractured our relationship with Him, He is still fighting for us and still loving us. When we don’t feel worthy, God is still there doing all He can for us.
This last part of the song is my favorite and it is a part I think we all need to hear because it the truth. “There's no shadow You won't light up, mountain You won't climb up, coming after me. There’s no wall You won't kick down, lie You won't tear down, coming after me.” There is nothing that God won’t do to chase after His children to try and save them. He gave His only son on the cross for us. There is nothing hidden in the darkness that will prevent him from finding you. There’s no wall He won’t kick down and lie He won’t tear down.
I think I like that part the best because when I think of it I think of a father searching everywhere for his child. Have you even seen the movie “Taken” with Liam Neeson? In the movie Liam Neeson is a father who’s daughter goes to Europe on vacation with a friend. However, in the movie his daughter is taken by sex traffickers. She calls her dad when she sees someone breaking into the house. Liam is some type of government spy in the movie and he stops at nothing to get his daughter back. He does whatever it takes to find her and get her back. If a mere human will go through all of that to get his daughter back, how much more do you think your Father in heaven will do to get you back?
I know people who have often wondered if they are worth loving. When I tell them the things I am telling you, they say that they know God feels that way about other people, but they tell me I don’t understand what they have done, or where they have been. If you are listening to this and you think that this is true for some people, but that it is not true for you, I want you to hear me. GOD LOVES YOU!! He loves you right where you are at. You don’t have to change in anyway for Him to love you. He loves your perfectly right now, right where you are at. Also, God’s love is everlasting. It never fades. It is always there no matter what we do or what happens to us. Also, God remains faithful to us. He keeps His promises. If we are lost He will come and chase after us and find us. He will be there for us whenever we decide to turn back to Him. He will welcome us home with open arms and he will say to us, “I have loved you with an everlasting love.”
Dear heavenly father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. We thank you for loving us with an everlasting love, with a reckless love that will chase us down and leave the 99 to come and save us. Lord God we're so very thankful that you love us so much and even though we can't earn your love and definitely don't deserve your love you give it to us freely anyway. Lord I ask that you reach out to anyone hearing this that has trouble believing you could love them. I ask that you surround them with your love, that you rain down love and grace on them. I ask that you open their minds and hearts to the idea of you loving them just as they are. Lord, I ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen
Here are the lyrics for Reckless Love by Cory Asbury:
Before I spoke a word, You were singing over me
You have been so, so good to me
Before I took a breath, You breathed Your life in me
You have been so so kind to me
Oh, the overwhelming, never-ending, reckless love of God
Oh, it chases me down, fights 'til I'm found, leaves the 99
And I couldn't earn it
I don't deserve it, still You give yourself away
Oh, the overwhelming, never-ending, reckless love of God
When I was Your foe, still Your love fought for me
You have been so, so good to me
When I felt no worth, You paid it all for me
You have been so, so kind to me
Oh, the overwhelming, never-ending reckless love of God
Oh, it chases me down, fights 'til I'm found, leaves the 99
And I couldn't earn it
I don't deserve it, still You give yourself away
Oh, the overwhelming, never-ending reckless love of God
There's no shadow You won't light up
Mountain You won't climb up
Coming after me
There's no wall You won't kick down
Lie You won't tear down
Coming after me
There's no shadow You won't light up
Mountain You won't climb up
Coming after me
There's no wall You won't kick down
Lie You won't tear down
Coming after me
There's no shadow You won't light up
Mountain You won't climb up
Coming after me
There's no wall You won't kick down
Lie You won't tear down
Coming after me
Oh, the overwhelming, never-ending reckless love of God
Oh, it chases me down, fights 'til I'm found, leaves the 99
I couldn't earn it, I don't deserve it, still You give yourself away
Oh, the overwhelming, never-ending reckless love of God
God Provides In Mysterious Ways
Psalm 145:14-18 “The Lord upholds all who fall and lifts up all who are bowed down. The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food at the proper time. You open your hand and satisfy the desires of every living thing. The Lord is righteous in all his ways and faithful in all he does. The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth.”
There are so many good things in this passage. “The Lord lifts up all who are bowed down.” How often is it that we need the Lord to lift us up, especially over this last year? It is so great to know that the Lord lifts us up when we pray to Him and ask Him too. When we are bowed down to the Lord is when we are praying and worshipping Him. When we spend this time with Him He is able to lift us up.
“The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food at the proper time.” This one is hard one for many of us. We do not want to wait for the proper time. We want things to happen on our time line, or maybe we think our time line is the proper time. Then we struggle when God does not agree. My dad told me a story one time that demonstrates how God will give those that look to him food at the proper time. My mom & dad have 11 children. They also had a friend that had several children, I think at least 7. This friend called up and asked my parents if they could watch their kids as something important had come up. My parents said yes because they were always there for those in need. However, my parents had just been talking about how they had no idea how they were even going to feed their own children dinner that night, and now they had 7 more mouths to feed. So, they did what they always did in these situations, they turned their eyes to God and asked for Him to provide.
Shortly after their prayer, they received a knock at the door. It was a neighbor holding bags of groceries. It turns out that the neighbors father had to move in with him unexpectedly and they needed to combine his father’s household with his. They had just gone grocery shopping and so they did not have room in their cabinets for all the food from his Dad’s place. So, they asked my folks if they could use any of the food. My parents graciously accepted. When looking through the bags they notice that there was plenty of pasta. My parents prayed, “Lord, if we only had some meat, then we could serve spaghetti to all these kids.”
Guess what? There was another knock at the door. It was a different neighbor. He had a cooler full of meat. He said that him and his friend had been hunting and they had too much meat. He explained that he and his friend had already stuffed their fridge and freeze and still they had no room for this left over meet. Again my parents graciously accepted. Then when they looked in the cooler, there was ground meat for spaghetti. They were so thankful. This was not a one time thing for my parents. My parents were faithful in their prayers, not just when they were in need, but even when things were going well. God was faithful in answering them.
“You open your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing.” This is another great verse. I believe that God puts our desires in our heart. I am talking about our deep desires, not the desire to eat ice cream at midnight. The desires I am talking about are the desires to have a certain job, the desire to be married and have children, the desire to sing, or act, or whatever it is you feel you are called to do. As stated in this verse, God wants to satisfy the desire of every living thing. I know this can be hard to believe if you have a desire that you have been waiting for God to satisfy. Maybe you have been waiting for the right man/woman to come along so that you can be married and have children. I know it is hard when we want something and we have to wait a very long time. Isaiah 55:9 says, “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
God has a plan for our lives and His plan is better than our plan. I know this can be frustrating because God does not always let us in on His plan for our lives. Sometimes we can be left wondering what is His plan and when am I going to understand it? If you have been thinking these things I want you to know that you are not alone. Many of us do not understand God’s plan, and do not understand why the things we have been praying for have not happened yet.
It can be easy to lose hope when are prayers aren’t answered immediately. It can be frustrating when we are praying for something, and we don’t seem to get any answers. I found this definition of hope online and I really like it. In the Bible hope is the confident expectation of what God has promised and its strength is in His faithfulness. We know God is faithful to His children. We know He keeps His promises. Therefore we can confidently expect that He will answer our prayers.
It says in Hebrews 13:8 it says, ”Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today, and forever." Jesus has kept all of his promises in the bible. If He did it then, He will do it now. If you are getting frustrated waiting for your desires to be fulfilled I ask that you turn to the scriptures and either use the ones in this episode or find other ones that show you how faithful your Heavenly Father is. He will come through, please don’t give up asking for what you want. Saying that makes me think of the story in Luke 18:1-8 of the persistent widow. “Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. He said: “In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’ “For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care what people think, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually come and attack me!’”
And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”
Jesus told this parable to show his disciples that they should pray and not give up. If He was worried his disciples would stop praying and give up and they lived with Him day and night for 3 years, then I think He will cut us some slack for wanting to give up. I am sure He gets how frustrating it is to wait for the Lord’s timing. If you are tempted to give up and stop praying for something that you truly desire I ask you to pause and remember this woman in the parable. What if she had stopped bothering the judge? What if she had not kept going back? Would she have her justice? We never know when the answer is right around the corner. What if you pray for 3 years and then stop and God wanted to give it to you on the next day? Don’t stop praying for your deepest desires, He gave you those desires and he will bring them into being if you let Him.
Dear heavenly father I ask that you bless all of those listening to this podcast today. I ask that you fill us with hope for those desires that we've been praying for. Lord we pray that you give us perseverance to keep praying even when there's no end in sight. Lord Jesus we ask that you give us strength to keep praying when we don't have any answers. Give us strength when we're weak and we don't think we can go on. Lord we know that you are the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. We know that you've kept your promises in the past and you will continue to do so. Lord we ask that you fortify our hope and faith in you. We ask that you increase our faith. Lord if there is a desire that we have given up on that you want to give to us we ask that you renew that desire in our heart Lord Jesus. We ask that you keep whispering it louder and louder until we can ignore it anymore. Lord we thank you for fulfilling these desires as we know you keep your promises and so these desires will be fulfilled. We thank you for helping us stay persistent and for giving us the strength to keep asking. Lord we thank you for listening to all of our prayers every time we ask. Lord we love you so very much and we ask all of this in accordance with your well and in Jesus is holy name. Amen
Shame vs. Guilt
Nehemiah 1:5-7 “Lord, the God of heaven, the great and awesome God, who keeps his covenant of love with those who love him and keep his commandments, let your ear be attentive and your eyes open to hear the prayer your servant is praying before you day and night for your servants, the people of Israel. I confess the sins we Israelites, including myself and my father’s family, have committed against you. We have acted very wickedly toward you. We have not obeyed the commands, decrees and laws you gave your servant Moses.
How many of us have found ourselves in a similar situation? In a situation where we have to come to God and tell Him that we messed up. That we sinned, yet again. That, despite knowing how He wants us to act, we did the opposite. This is never a comfortable conversation and it is one that quite honestly many of us avoid. We know that we have sinned in some way and yet we do not bring it to His attention. Why not? Because we are embarrassed or we feel shame.
Shame is definitely the work of the enemy. God did not create us to feel shame. Remember in the garden of Eden when Adam & Eve heard God’s voice and they hid because they were afraid because they were naked. But guess what? They were always naked. Their outfit was nothing new. They had never worn clothes before. Its just that they were not ashamed of their bodies until sin entered the world. They were perfectly happy walking around naked before Eve & Adam ate that apple. Then once sin entered the world, it brought shame with it.
Shame is a result of sin and of our brokenness. However, that does not mean that we have to allow it into our lives. Many times we get shame confused with guilt. Guilt is a feeling you get when you did something wrong, or when you think you did something wrong. Guilt can be a good emotion because it can help you recognize when you’ve made a mistake. It can help you see when you need to repent and ask for forgiveness and when you need to apologize and make things right again. Shame is a feeling that your whole self is wrong. So instead of just feeling like you may have done something wrong you feel like you are wrong because you did that thing.
God does not think we are bad just because we may do something that is bad. God loves us completely from the beginning. There is nothing we can do to earn his love or to lose his love. We always have it. Does it make him sad when we turn away and chose other things over him? Probably. Does he stop loving us because of it? Not at all. All God wants us to do when we mess up is to acknowledge it and to turn back to him.
This is why the devil brought shame into the world. Shame keeps us from acknowledging what we did. If we start feeling like we ARE our bad behavior, then we start to think we are not good enough to be forgiven. We start to think that we don’t deserve God’s love and so we don’t repent. We don’t ask God to forgive us because we don’t think we are worthy. When we don’t repent for the things we do, we grow further away from God. Then the further away we get, the harder it is to find our way back.
If we let shame permeate our lives then we start to feel like we don’t deserve anything. We don’t deserve God’s love, we don’t deserve our kids’ love, or our friends’ love. Then we start to change how we act. We no longer act like we are worthy of love. We don’t act like we are children of God. We may start to hide from other people, make ourselves small or little, because we think that is what we deserve.
Can you see how all of this is benefiting the enemy? Can you see how he can twist some small thing that you may have done into this big thing that you feel there is no way back from? You may be feeling guilty because you did something you perceive is bad. For instance, you are on a diet and you ate a cupcake. Then the enemy gets into your thoughts and tells you this wasn’t a one time thing. You have done this in the past, you will do it again. He tells you that this is who you are. You are someone who can’t keep promises to yourself. Then you begin to believe these thoughts. Then you let shame enter into your mind. Then you start to look for ways you may be doing this in other parts of your life. Before you know it you are feeling like you are not worthy of God’s love because you are someone who can’t do anything right. Do you see how shame gets in and tears you down?
This is not what God wants for us. God has so much grace for us. If you have ever read the old testament you know how much grace god has for His people. The Israelites had God’s presence with them, right there in their camp, and yet they were constantly doing things he told them not to do. It’s like they just could’t help themselves. And yet God kept forgiving them. Moses, or whoever was leading them at that time would lead them into repentance and then God would forgive them. God does not want us to feel shame.
I love how the passage begins by praising God. He is awesome and he does keep his covenant of love with those that keep his commandments. Even when we mess up and we don’t keep His commandments, all we need to do is repent and he takes us back under his wing and keeps his covenant. He is a God that is true to His word. If you are worried that you are not worthy of God’s love, let me clue you in on a secret, NONE of us are worthy of His love, and yet, he loves us with an everlasting love anyway. When you sin in some way, don’t let shame come into it. Yes, feeling guilty is ok. If you did something that you knew was wrong, then your feeling guilty is a sign that you should do something to fix the situation. Repent and turn back. However, do not let shame settle in and make you feel like you are a bad person. You are a child of God. You were made in His likeness and image and nothing you can do can take that away.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you that you be with all of us here today.We ask that you help us to see where the enemy has brought shame into our life. We ask that you illuminate it so that we can find it and let it go. Lord we are sorry for all we’ve done to offend you or turn away from you. Lord, we are so grateful that you are so merciful and offer us so much grace when we turn away. We are grateful that you continue to love us even when we mess us. We are grateful that when we mess up all we need to do is repent and turn back to you. You are our almighty, merciful, forgiving father and we are so thankful for that. Lord, I ask that you bless all those listening to this podcast. I ask that you help them let go of shame and recognize that although none of us are worthy of our love that you give it freely and without conditions. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Jesus leaves the 99
Matthew 4:1-11 “Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.” Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written:
“‘He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’” Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. 9 “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.” Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’” Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him.
Have you ever had a time like this? A time where you felt like the Devil was right there by your side attacking you? Did you know what to say? Did you know what to do? I remember reading this and wishing that knew scripture as well as Jesus did. I wished I new the right thing to say when the devil comes to tell me the lies. That is what he is known for after all. Satan is the father of lies. Usually they are not bold face lies. Usually they have some sliver of truth that is twisted to make you question something. But in this passage Jesus was not deterred from his faith. He did not get drawn into a debate, defending himself, or His God. He simply quoted scripture to the enemy.
This is one reason why it is helpful to read the Word of God everyday. The more we read God’s word the more we will know what to say to defend ourselves from the enemy. There are many reasons to read the word of God. Another one would be so that we know how God wants us to live. The Bible is full of stories, parables and laws that can help us govern how to live. Knowledge is power and if we know how God wants us to live, we can try to live in an upright manner. We can do our best to please Him. God does so much for us. The least we can do is try to obey his rules. We can try to live in a manner that honors Him and makes Him proud.
Do you struggle with this, with living in a way that honors God and makes Him proud? I know I do. I often think of the passage from St. Paul in Romans 7:15 “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” If St. Paul, who did amazing things for Christ struggled to live a holy life, then I think it is understandable that we may struggle at times as well. However, remembering this passages and turning over our struggle to God can help us struggle a little less. When we are struggling we need only repent and turn back to God.
God does not need us to be perfect, nor does he expect it. God knows every step you are going to take before you take it. Nothing you do is a surprise to Him. He is our creator, He is the creator of all things. He knows how your story ends before it even starts. He can see all the roads you will go down. He knows the windy road that is your life. And you know what? He loves you anyway. He loves you even though you are not perfect. He loves you even though you will turn away from Him from time to time. Maybe you have turned away from him a long time ago and have not come back yet. Guess what? He loves you anyway! And He is ready for you to turn back to him.
When you do, he will rejoice and celebrate. He won’t be thinking of all the things you did in the past. He won’t be holding your past sins against you. Once you repent and turn back to the Lord, He will rejoice that His son or daughter has returned home and He will welcome you with open arms. That is just one of the many amazing things about your Lord. He is filled with so much mercy and so much grace. He knows all of our flaws, all of our mistakes and yet He still loves us, flaws and all. There is nothing that you can do that is unredeemable in the Lord’s eyes.
I know people who don’t understand how valuable they are in the Lord’s eyes. They feel that because of their sins they are worth less than others. Or, maybe they feel they are worthless. If you are one of these people that is struggling with your self worth in God’s eyes, I ask you to picture that you have 2 pennies in your hand, one of them is shiny and new and the other one is old, dirty, and looks like it has been found in the gutter. What is the value of each penny? Is the penny that looks shiny and new worth more than the penny that is old and dirty? No, they are both worth the same. This is the same with God’s love. You are not worth less because you have made mistakes, made bad choices, or turned away from the Lord.
The Lord is our father and he is always there waiting with open arms ready for us to turn back to him. Nothing makes him happier than when one of his lost sheep find their way back home to him. In Luke 15:3-6 Jesus tells this parable, “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’ I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.”
I love this passage for a couple of reasons. First, I love the imagery of God leaving the 99 to come after me. He does not just let me wander away, but he comes to find me and guide me back home again. Another reason I love this passage is because it says that He will rejoice more over the one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent. If you are living you life righteously and you have no need to repent I admire you. That is not easy and it takes a lot of courage, especially in this day and age. However, if you are one that has turned away, or if you find yourself in the same boat with St. Paul, where you keep doing the things you don’t want to do and struggle to do the things you want to do, I hope you find comfort in this passage. “There will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.” Is that one repentant sinner going to be you? Is there some area of your life where you need to repent and turn back to the Lord? I can already hear the rejoicing in heaven.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you help us see in our lives where we could repent. Father, I ask that you shine a light on any darkness inside of us. We want your light to fill that space. I pray that you will put a love and desire for scripture inside our hearts. I pray that you help us to do what is right and help us to overcome the urges to do what is wrong. Lord, that is not easy and we cannot do it without your help. Lord we love you and we thank you for all you do for us. We want to repent and turn back to you, please just show us the way. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen.
The Tree House
2 Corinthians 1:20 “For all of God’s promises have been fulfilled in Christ with a resounding “Yes!” And through Christ, our “Amen” (which means “Yes”) ascends to God for his glory.”
All God’s promises have been fulfilled in Christ with a resounding “yes!” How great is that? All God’s promises have been fulfilled. There is not one thing that God promised that He has not followed through on. That is amazing. I wish I could say the same. There is a house down the street from us that just got renovated. The new owners built a whole new second floor to this house. They also did a lot of renovations on the outside of the house and in the yard. One thing they built in the yard is a beautiful tree house. It looks so awesome and even has a climbing wall on one side so if they didn’t want to take the stairs, they could take the more difficult way up.
I feel like life is like this. I feel like God provides us the stairs to make it to the top, but often times we choose the climbing wall. We could choose the path that was pretty well laid out for us where we just need to put one foot in front of the other and climb one step at a time. We know the next right step and we continue to take each step until we reach the end. However, sometimes we choose the difficult path. Sometimes we choose the climbing wall. We chose the path where we don’t know what the next step is. We need to feel our way through and look for where each new step is. We can’t find the next step until we take the first step. And depending on where we step, we will have limited options for our next step.
The reason I thought of this tree house when the reading was talking about promises is because we told our middle son, Noah, that we would help him build a tree house. And yet that never happened? Has this ever happened to you? Have you ever told someone, promised someone, that you would do something, and then not done it. It is an awful feeling to not keep a promise and to let someone down. I am not sure why it never got done. I am sure I can find a whole list of excuses. However, none of them make me feel better when I see the beautiful tree house this family built.
Regret is a terrible feeling. I am definitely not a fan. It is definitely an opening for the enemy to get in and destroy some people. I have seen it numerous time on TV and movies. Can you think of anyone you know that just can’t let go of something that happened in the past? Sometimes we can get stuck on something in our past and we let it bother us for far too long. I am not saying we shouldn’t feel bad if we broke a promise to someone. I wish we were like God and we could keep every promise that we make. Unfortunately, we are a broken people and so occasionally, we will break promises.
What is important is what we do after we break a promise. Do we repent and ask the person for forgiveness? Do we forget about everything and start over again? Do we pretend it never happened and just move on? What is the right protocol in this scenario? I would say we should go back to the golden rule. How would you like someone to act towards you in this scenario. I think repentance is important. Tell the person you are sorry you did not follow through with the action you promised you would do. Try to make it up to them in some way. If you can’t make it up to them then apologize and move forward from there.
What is not a good idea in this situation is to sit and think about what you did over and over again. Regret is not good because it eats away at you slowly from the inside. I read a book once called Miracle Mornings. It is a book by Hal Elrod. It is an excellent read in case you have not heard of it before. It is a book about how to start a really helpful morning routine. Anyway, the author talks about a 5 minute rule that I feel could be really helpful here. He used to see Cutco knives. He would get really upset when someone would cancel their appointment with him because he worked off commission. His boss told him about the 5 minute rule. This is a way to not get stuck in the negative feelings. He said when something upsets you take a minute and think about whether or not you can change the thing that just happened? For instance, someone calls up to cancel and appointment with you at the last minute. Can you change the fact that this customer canceled? No. In this case, where there is nothing that you can do to change it, you set a timer for 5 minutes and that is how long you allow yourself to be upset. You have 5 minutes to yell, scream, cry, etc and then you need to move on.
Hal found this 5 minute rule to be very helpful in his life. At first he said it took longer than 5 minutes. He said after 5 minutes if you still can’t let the emotions go, set the timer for another 5 minutes. Eventually you will train yourself to let things go sooner. If there is nothing you can do about a situation then there is no reason to keep dwelling on it.
This is what the enemy wants. He wants us to dwell on what is going wrong in our lives. He wants to keep us in a state of unhappiness. Unhappiness with who we are and what is going wrong. When we are thinking about all that is going wrong, then we are not praising God for all that is going right. When we are focusing all our energy on what we did and who we let down then our focus is inward on ourselves instead of our focus being on God, which is a much better place for our focus. The next time you are regretting something you did or did not do, take a minute and think about the 5 minute rule. Can you change the situation? If not, give yourself some time to be upset and then move on.
Dear Heavenly Father, I know you love us and don’t hold our mistakes against us. Lord, I ask that you help us to forgive ourselves. Why is it that we can forgive others more quickly than we can forgive ourselves. Lord, we ask that you teach us to not regret past mistakes. We ask that you help us learn any lessons we need to learn from it and then move forward. Father, we ask that you help anyone that is suffering from regret right now. We ask that you free them from this feeling. Lord, we know the enemy is looking for any way to get into our lives and we don’t want to give him an open door. Close all doors of regret and cover us in your protection oh Lord. Lord we thank you for being so amazing and wonderful. You are the God of all things and we are nothing without you. Living a life without regret is not easy, but we know it is possible because all things are possible through Christ who strengthens us. We love you Lord and we ask all these things in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Praise the Lord
Psalm 117: “Praise the Lord, all you nations; extol him, all you peoples. For great is his love toward us, and the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever. Praise the Lord.”
Praising the Lord is so important. It is important not only when things are going well, but when things are not going so well. God can and will use all things for your good. It may be impossible to see that when you are in it, but he will take what the devil means for harm and use it for good. I was going to say that praising God when things are going good is easy. But actually, that is not always true. A lot of times when things are going well we don’t think about God. We are busy just living our happy lives and unless something comes into our life to upset the good things we have going, we often don’t think of God.
I don’t think the problem is that we don’t want to thank God for all the good he has given us, I just think that it doesn’t occur to many of us. We more think of God when we need something. When things are bad, we are quick to blame God, or to ask Him why this is happening, but when things are good we don’t think to ask God why it’s happening. What did we do right to deserve all this happiness? Why did God allow the great things to happen? Those are not questions we usually ask Him. However, he is the first to be blamed when things go wrong. Why is that? Why do we give him none of the credit when things are going right and all of the blame when things go wrong? God is there in the good and in the bad. We would be nothing, have nothing, without him.
It would be so great if we could learn to praise in the good situations and in the bad ones. That probably sounds strange, praise Him in the bad situations? What and I supposed to say, thank you so much that my little baby boy is sick. No, that is not what I am saying. You don’t have to thank him, but you can praise. You could say something like, “Lord, you are all knowing, you are the great physician and I know that you can heal my son. You are all powerful and your ways are better than my ways. I don’t know why this is all happening, and I know I may not understand this side of heaven. What I do know is that you love us and you want the best for us. We ask that you heal our son. We thank you so much for answering our prayers. As you have said in Matthew 7:7 “Ask and it will be given, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened.” So, Lord God we are grateful for you hearing our prayers and answering them. We thank you for the strength you have given us, the strength just to get out of bed in the morning. We love you Lord and we praise you for being you.”
Do you see how there are ways to praise God even in an impossibly bad situation? There are plenty of bad things that happen. God does not want all these things to happen, they are not his perfect will. I don’t know why he does allow bad things to happen. However, I believe, if we start praising God more in our own lives, then we will see less bad and more good things happen. If we can learn to praise God when we are struggling, and also remember to praise him and thank him when things are going well, I truly believe that is the way to a happier life.
I have been listening to Father Mike Schmitz read the Bible in a Year podcast. We have spent quite some time now listening to the story of King David. Actually David was talked about long before he was king. When he was just a young boy he took a sling shot and 4 flat stones and defeated the giant that no one else would go near. The whole army was afraid of the giant, Goliath, but David knew God could do anything, so he was not afraid. David had a complicated life. He did so much good and yet, he also did some really terrible things.
One thing that David did really well was praising God. He thanked God when he was being blessed. He remembered to thank God when things were going well. He pointed out to all that would listen that God was the reason for his success. However, even when things were bad, he praised God. That doesn’t mean he didn’t question God. He definitely did that. He definitely asked why he had to go through things or why God was allowing things to happen, or how long the hard times would last. Then, after questioning he usually ended up praising. The Psalms in The Bible are full of David’s praises and his questions to God. In one minute David will be asking God how long he will have to endure this suffering, and then in the next verse David will be praising God and thanking God for all that He has done to bless him and provide for him.
I think when we start praising God more, we start to see more good things happen. I believe this happens for two reasons. First, I think God blesses us more when we remember to take a minute to thank Him and praise Him for all He has given to us. Second, I think we see more because we are looking for good. When we stop to praise God when something good happens then we are taking the time to notice it. It is similar to when you start a gratitude practice. If you stop and take 10 minutes in the morning, or even just 2 minutes and write down a few things you are grateful for, then you will start to notice more and more things you have to be grateful for. Is it because more great things are happening, or is it because you are noticing more good things?
Where you put your focus is so important. If you focus on all that is going wrong, you will start to see more bad things in your life. Where you are putting your focus is something that you have control over. There are plenty of things happening in our lives that we don’t have control over. However, the focus of your thoughts is not one of those things. If you do not believe what a difference this can make I ask you to give it a try. For one week, try focusing on noticing the good things that are happening throughout your day. Try at the beginning or end of your day to write down 10 things that you can be grateful for or that you can praise God for. If you know you are going to have to come up with 10 things, they you will spend your day looking for good things. When you are on the lookout for good things, you will start to see them. Trust me. I will leave you with Psalm 118:1, “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever.”
Dear Heavenly Father, I thank you for all that you do for us. I ask that you show us how to praise you Lord. I pray that we will remember to praise you in the good and the difficult times. I pray that we can all find something to be grateful for each and every day. Lord, I don’t know why bad things happen. I do know that you love us and work all things for our good. I know you are leading this journey and that we are just along for the ride. I ask that you lead our journey. Lord, I ask that you bless all those that are listening to the right now. Lord, I pray all of this in accordance with your holy will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen.
I Have Heard Your Prayers And Seen Your Tears
Isaiah 38:5 “Go and tell Hezekiah, ‘This is what the Lord, the God of your father David, says: I have heard your prayer and seen your tears; I will add fifteen years to your life.”
I thought I would take a minute at the beginning of this episode to explain how I get the scripture verses that I use at the beginning of each episode. Every Thursday I attend a Catholic Charismatic prayer group. During our meetings we begin with a 5-10 minute teaching, then we go into praise and worship. Then we go into speaking in tongues and quiet time where we are silent and listen for anything the Lord wants to share with us, often times that will include scripture verses. I use the scripture verses from these meetings as I figure if God is sharing them with us, they are probably good ones to share with you.
This morning, however, I am leading prayer group and I did not want to use a scripture verse that had just been used at the meetings. So, I prayed this morning that God would give me a verse. Now I have been part of this group for 3-4 years now. Every week God shows up and shares with us. And yet, I am constantly surprised when he does. Or maybe I’m not surprised He shows up, but how He shows up. This morning I was not sure how I would know what scripture to use. I thought I would maybe just open the Bible and pick one, or maybe one from my scripture writing would jump out at me. I was unclear and if I am honest, I am not sure I fully believed that God would show me what scripture to use. Then, right before I finished my prayer time the words Isaiah 38:5 flashed in my mind. It was as if it was written in the air. I could see it plain as day. This has never happened to me before. God has spoken to me, but not that plainly.
I share this story with you because I want you to know that God is there for you. He hears your prayers. Just as it says in Isaiah 38:5 “‘This is what the Lord, the God of your father David, says: I have heard your prayer and seen your tears; I will add fifteen years to your life.” Sometimes we wonder if God is really listening. When I read this verse this morning my first thought was of a friend of mine. She is really struggling right now and I felt like God was talking to her when He said “I have heard your prayers and seen your tears.” Then I got to thinking and I actually have several friends that are struggling right now. Struggling with some really difficult issues.
For all of you that are struggling right now, I want you to know that you are not alone. Life is difficult for so many people right now. On top of all that we went through over this past year, you have had added levels of difficulty. I am so sorry that life has been so hard. We have had many difficulties this past year as well. Remote learning was a challenge. The isolation from friends was really tough on our oldest son. It has been a crazy year. And yet, I can see God was with me through all of it.
What if you can’t see that? What if you don’t know where God was in all of it? You can be someone who loves God, someone who has a close relationship with God, and also you can question where God is and what his plan is. King David was anointed, he had a very close relationship with God, and yet even He questioned God. In Psalm 13:1-3 “How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me?” Have you had these thoughts before? Have you, or are you going through something, and you are wondering how long you have to endure the suffering before God will save you, before He will answer your prayers?
If this is you first, I want to let you know that this is okay. Sometimes we can make our pain worse because on top of the pain of the situation, we feel guilty because we are questioning the Lord, or we are mad at the Lord. Sometimes our minds say things like, “If I were a good christian I would just trust God,” or “I’ve had a relationship with the Lord a long time, I shouldn’t be worried, or questioning.” God can handle our questioning and our anger. He is strong enough for anything you have for Him. He wants you to turn to Him in times of need. You are not the only person angry with God and questioning how long you will have to suffer. Trust me, there are many people in the same boat. Please let the guilt go. Please do not judge yourself for questioning. David questioned often, just read the psalms and you will see just how often, and yet God chose David’s lineage to bring forth the savior of the world.
Second, I want you to know that this scripture verse is for you. God wants to talk directly to you right now when he says “I have heard your prayers, and seen your tears.” He is there with you, even when you can’t see Him or feel Him. He is there every moment of your life. I know it is a struggle sometimes, many times, to understand why you had to go through some of the things you had to go through. I know that the not knowing, is sometimes the hardest part. I want to assure you that things will get better. I don’t know how and I don’t know when. I do know that God wants ridiculously good things for you. It says in Jeremiah 29:11 “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” God will get you through these difficult times and there will be great times on the other side of this hardship. Just hang on. Just keep putting one foot in front of the other and you will make it through this hard time.
I would like to give you two things that may help get you through this difficult time. First, is from the same psalm that I read from earlier. In Psalm 13 David was questioning the Lord and asking how long he was going to have to suffer. Then he ended the Psalm with verses 5-6 “But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. I will sing the Lord’s praise, for he has been good to me.” David does question the Lord, and then he turns back to praising the Lord. Praising the Lord in a difficult time can really be helpful in getting out of that difficult time quicker. Now, I can already hear some of you saying, “but what if I am struggling to trust in God’s unfailing love?,” or “What if I don’t know what to say?” This is ok, God knows this. When I struggle to believe in something I go to Mark 9:24, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!”
Sometimes we get to a place where we can’t pray. Has this happened to you? If so I want you to know you are in good company. I am not sure if you know this or not, but Mother Teresa had this happen to her. She was so close to the Lord, she was doing His work every single day and yet she went through really long, like several years long, dry spells where she could not pray. She would enter into her prayer time and nothing would come. The enemy has a way of making us feel like we are the only one that these things happen to and that we are awful people because of it. I just want you to know that YOU ARE NOT ALONE.
I think that is part of the reason why God raises up Saints. I think we usually put them on pedestals and when we do I think we are missing the point. I think the Saints are actually to show us very real people that are not perfect, they made mistakes, in some cases big mistakes, and yet still were capable of carrying out God’s work. God does not use perfect people. He takes broken, imperfect people and makes them perfect through His grace. I think the Saints are showcasing God’s redemption. If you read about the saints you will quickly take them off the pedestal and you will be able to see parts of yourself in them. If God could turn their lives around so completely, He could do it for all of us.
The second thing is to read scripture. If you are going through a difficult time and you are questioning if God is there, reading scripture can be helpful. Seeing how God has shown up for others in the past can help you see how He may show up for you. If you struggle to trust in the Lord, read passages that talk about God’s faithfulness. If you struggle to believe God loves you read passages on God’s love. I have recently learned of something called scripture writing. I had no idea what this was. Well, obviously I could deduct what it meant, but I didn’t know how to do it. How do you know what scripture to write? How much to write? I had several questions.
The truth is, there is no one way to do it. The point is to familiarize yourself with scripture and you remember things better when you write them down. However, I like when things have directions that I can follow. So, if you are like me, here is what I do. I go online and google scripture writing plans. There will be tons of images that come up. Most of them have a theme, so I pick one that I feel is resonating with me for that month. One month I picked Be Bold, another month I picked Repentance & Renewal. Then the plan tells you which verses to write each day, it is usually just a verse or two. I just got a notebook and each day I write the verse for the day. It has been really great and I enjoy those 5-10 minutes with the Lord.
If you are struggling right now, maybe give scripture writing or praising the Lord a try and see how you feel afterwards. If you are not sure you would know what to say for praising the Lord, you could always listen to christian music and let the artists praise for you. If you are not sure what to pray, you can pray the scriptures. The Book of Psalms is also a great place to go for praising the Lord. If you feel like you can’t praise the Lord in your circumstances, you can borrow David’s praises.
You will get through this hard time. God is with you! You are not alone. He may let you fall, but He will be there to catch you and put you back on even stronger ground. You are amazing and God loves you more than you will ever know.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you be with everyone listening to this today. I ask that you let them see where you are in all of this. Lord, sometimes we don’t understand your plan or why we have to go through the hard times. We ask that you bless us with a supernatural trust in you. We ask that you help us to feel you in those really hard times. Lord, we ask that you fortify us with strength and protect us when we are weak. Lord, some of us are going through so really difficult times and can’t see the way out. I ask that you shine a light on each step of the way and fill us with assurance that you are there and are leading us out. Lord I thank you for being strong enough to handle our questions and our anger. I thank you for your mercy that when we are angry with you or questions where you are you do not get angry with us. I thank you for the graces you give us to each and every day. Lord we love you and are constantly amazed by you. Father, we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name. Amen
With God, All things are Possible
Revelations 7:17 “for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”
Jesus is our guide. He came down to earth to show us how we should be acting. He came down to teach us that the Lord our God is love. He is trying to guide us to springs of the water of life, but we keep wanting to do our own thing. We don’t want to follow in his foot steps. Why don’t we? Because it is hard. Jesus said to love everyone, even our enemies. Is this even possible? Jesus wants us to forgive, but aren’t there some people that just can’t be forgiven? Shouldn’t be forgiven? I wonder if we all realize what forgiveness is? Forgiveness is not telling the other person that what they did was right, or ok. Forgiveness is telling yourself that this terrible thing did happen, that you can’t change it, so you are releasing any hold that it has over you. I know forgiveness is hard. In some cases it is impossible. However, it is so necessary. God tells us right in the Our Father Prayer, Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. God is going to forgive us to the same extent that we forgave others. Think about the things or the people that you are unable to forgive. Do you really want the inability to forgive them to get in the way of God forgiving you? There are some things that no matter how hard we try, we can not forgive. This is ok, we don’t have to do this on our own. God can step in and help us forgive. The only thing we must do is to ask him. To give Him permission to work in your heart to forgive. We had a word or prophecy given at our prayer group last Oct. that I feel is so important to share.
“I ask you to forgive my children. I know that is a difficult command and at times may seem very impossible for you to do. But I remind you that I am with you always, and with me nothing is impossible. Bring your inability to me. Allow me to work with my grace through you, so that you can be my forgiving heart for all the world.”
In this word, the Lord is asking us to forgive. He is reminding us that even though we feel it is impossible, nothing is impossible in HIm. In Matthew 19:26 Jesus said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” It also says in Philippians 4:13 “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” We are not in this alone. We have God on our side and with that we can do anything. I love how God always shows up to remind us of things when we forget. I like how God is reminding us that He is always with us and then asking us to bring our inability to him. He is asking us to allow Him to work with His grace through us, so that we can bring His forgiving heart to all the world. How beautiful is that? How great is it that God not only wants to use his grace to heal our heart, but he wants us to be His forgiving heart for all the world.
God gave us free will. Can you imagine how frustrating it must be for Him to sit by and watch us squander all that he has provided for us? He would love nothing more than to rain down graces on us and yet we can’t be bothered to let him. God is not going to step in if we do not ask Him. He does not want to force us to love Him. The only way to ensure it is true love is to give us the choice to love him or not. Every day we have a choice to make. Are we going to choose God or are we going to choose something else? God has so much grace and so much mercy to give. He does not leave us alone to make these decisions. He is there for us every step of the way.
But we do need to make that choice. Once we do make that choice, He will be there to help us overcome all of the obstacles. And there will be obstacles. The life that God is asking us to live is not an easy life. Especially in this world right now. Forgiveness and love are two things that we are being called to do that are not the norm in society today. We live in a culture that does not want to forgive. We want to stay angry, blame other, and not even talk to someone that doesn’t think as we think. This is not what Jesus wants for us.
Jesus did not come to earth to be with people just like Him. He did not just hang around with those that believed like he believed. He didn’t find all the people that were getting it right in life. He came for those that were struggling. He came for those that needed Him. When he met these people, he did not meet them with judgement and unforgiveness. He met them with love and forgiveness. He accepted them as they were and encouraged them and helped them to become better.
How great would it be if we could do the same. If we could greet everyone we meet with the same love and acceptance that Jesus had. You may be thinking that you are different. Jesus could do that because he was man and God, so he had the Holy Spirit inside him to help him make the right choice. Guess what? So do you. You have the Holy Spirit inside of you and if you let Him, He will guide you to make the right choices as well. Just remember what Jesus said in Matthew 19:26, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
You can do this! It is possible! Just take a moment and ask God for help.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you come into our hearts and soften them. I invite you in and I turn over my inabilities to you. I want to forgive and I want to let go of all unforgiveness. I want to forgive completely so that you are able to forgive me completely. Lord Jesus, some people and some things are so difficult to forgive. We live in a broken world and some pretty awful things happen here. We are so very grateful that you are here to help us. We are grateful that we don’t have to do this on our own. Lord we ask that you help us. Even though it seems impossible we believe you when you say that all things are possible with you. Lord you are truly amazing and we love you so very much. Father, we ask all these things in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Backseat Driver
Phil 4:8 “And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable--if anything is excellent or praiseworthy--think about such things.”
“Peace of God, which transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” Peace that transcends all understanding. Have you ever had this? Have you ever felt at peace in a situation that was not peaceful? Have you ever had peace about something that you didn’t understand? There are so many things to be anxious about, especially in the world today.
However, God can give us a peace that transcends all understanding if we ask him too. If we trust that he is in control. We don’t have to worry about everything because we are lucky and we have Him taking care of everything and working all things for our good. Romans 8:28 says, "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” God is working for our good if we just let him work. If we just rely on him to come through for us. There are some situations that seem impossible. I get that. Some of you may be thinking that God offer’s peace to some, but not to others. Maybe you haven’t felt that peace before and you are wondering if God has forgotten about you. I assure you, he has not. God is offering his peace to all who want it. The thing is, we need to accept it. We need to step out in faith and hand our troubles, no matter how big or small they are, to God and let him take the wheel.
There is a song by TobyMac called Backseat Driver. It is a really great illustration of how we tend to want to take control back from God. God wants to go through this life with us and He wants to be the driver. He wants us to rely on him to get us to where we are going. There is one part of this song that says: “I'm putting my trust in You, putting my trust in You. It’s a little bit overdue, but I'm putting my trust in You” Isn’t this so true! We put our trust in God, when we have no choice, when we tried everything we could to fix it on our own and nothing has worked. Then, finally, when all else has failed we put our trust in God. We finally realize that nothing we have done has fixed our situation and so we turn over control to God. What if we could begin to do this sooner? What if we did this at the first sign of trouble? Imagine how great it would be to save all that time that we usually spend trying to fix things ourselves and the countless hours we spend worrying about things? Imagine how nice it would be if we could turn everything over to God, before we waste that time.
There is another part in the song that says, “Silly me, silly me, aye. Reverting back to my old ways. Them got to be in control days. Jump before I pray, Yo, I am heading out the doorway. But I want Your way, Yahweh.” Does this sound familiar? Have you ever found yourself stuck in a situation you didn’t want to be in? Have you ever found yourself wondering how you got there and promising that the next time you had a decision to make, you would pray about it first? And you did, at least for awhile, but then things were going good again. Everything seemed to be working out and you started spending less and less time in prayer? What if we consulted our heavenly Father before making any of our decisions? What if we took a few minutes at the beginning of our day and asked God what he wanted us to do that day?
Reverting back to our old ways is something that we all do. I have heard a lot of my mentors say over the years that “it is not a knowing problem, it is a doing problem.” Usually when we revert back to our old ways it is not because we don’t know better. We usually know what is best for us and what produces the best results. However, we tend to slip back into doing what is easiest, or what comes most naturally instead of what is best.
Letting God take the wheel and lead us is the best way to go through life. He knows what is best for us and can save us so much time and pain. Often times we think we know what we want in life and we are upset when we don’t get it. In times like these, as hard as it is, it will help to remember that God is the driver. His ways are greater than our ways. Isaiah 55:8-9 says, "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” If a door that you wanted to open, didn’t open, its because your heavenly father has something much better in store for you. It is not always easy to see that and I know in the moment of disappointment it is hard to remember. Think about when you were little and you wanted to watch tv, or eat the candy, or do something else that would not have been great for you and your parents wanted more for you. If you have children, think about how many times you have to say no to them because of something better you have in store. If we could do this for our children, think of how much more our father in heaven wants for us.
Where in your life have you been taking back control? Where have you been reverting back to your old ways? Is there somewhere in your life where you could put your trust back in God?
Are you being a backseat driver?
Dear Heavenly Father, please be with us each and every day. Please help us to turn control back over to you. Please help us to turn our worries and fears over to you as well. Lord, we want you to direct our lives. You want more for us then we could possibly want for ourselves. We thank you for protecting us from ourselves and from things that we don’t even know about. We thank your for all of the doors that you have closed for us in order for us to walk through even better doors. Lord you are truly amazing and we are sorry for all the times we forget to turn our trust over to you. You are our first choice and we ask that you help us to remember that each and every day. Lord we love you and we thank you for all that you do. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name. Amen.
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